Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’ve been playing for a while now, but I just need help figuring out a character. I’ve been studying a few in depth with all their traits, abilities, etc. But I still can’t figure it out.

I don’t want an immobile game play. I want to be able to both fill gaps and get away if I have to. But it doesn’t have to be crazy mobility.

I want 2 different kinds of builds.
1 that is mainly self buffs. Makes me naturally really strong so I can just run in there and concentrate on my weapon abilities (while continuing the self buffs).
And another that is mainly passive area/team buffs and helpfulness. So I can walk in and still fight the same way, but I’m helping everyone else out passively. This could also be things like dropping AOE things that help both me and them.

I also prefer melee, but by no means does it have to be.

Lastly, I need survivability. I don’t need to be impenetrable, but if I die in 2 shots I have a problem.

Who should I be? Please help!

You don’t need to look at the below wall of text, but it elaborates.

I looked at ranger and engineer in depth. Ranger has signets and spirits, which I like. But are there other better options? Engineer has elixirs which kinda do the same thing if I both use and throw the elixirs all the time, but I’ve noticed their regular weapons (Non-kits) not doing as much damage, so that takes away one elixir spot for a kit.
But I haven’t looked at others…are the warrior and guardian mobile? Do theives have good surviability that isn’t just stealthing all the time? Are eles, mesmers, and necros too squishy? It seems necros may not be squishy, but are they mobile and have what I’m looking for?

if you’re going to pick either, I’d go with engineer for now. ranger’s spirits are not very good and need alot of trait points to make them even slightly viable, and even after that they are still fairly weak. saying that, it might get fixed or reworked in the future, but until that point you’d be stuck with them.

According to the devs Ranger is getting a lot of fixes in the next patch (Nov.15th iirc):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update/first
I’d stick with your Ranger if I were you.

Elementalists are a very mobile class, and not just by necessity. Double dagger elementalist has a number of gap-closing and escape skills, and all elementalists have a teleport utility and several stun-breakers.

Built right, eles can stack a lot of boons on themselves. The Arcana line gives you fury and another, element-dependent boon whenever you switch attunements. As D/D, I can easily gain about 7 stacks of might with Fire 4 → Arcane Wave → Earth 4 → Earth 5. Various trait lines will also add boons to your skills, like protection on channeled skills or regeneration/vigor on cantrips. Staff eles can lay down many types of combo fields while supporting with CC (freeze/stun/immobilize/cripple), conditions (bleed/vulnerability/burning), healing, and AoE damage.

Double daggers is a semi-melee set, with your range being about 300 on average, I think. So you have room to move.

And survivability. I’ll venture to say that most of the people who complain that eles are too squishy either have gone glass cannon or haven’t learned to kite/dodge/control. I had issues with surviving early on, but that was because I stayed constantly in fire attunement, ran a staff without knowing the skills on it, and put all of my points in fire. When I respecced into earth/water/arcana and started attunement dancing with daggers, I was able to outsurvive warriors and guardians and solo certain champions. Heck, I’ve been able to sit in front of enemies and durrhurr autoattack them on water attunement without issues. So it all depends on experience and your build.

It sounds to me like you would like to be a Buff based guardian guardians have alot of utilities which give alot of buffs and most of their weapon sets are melee.

Talking to my brother the only thing he does not like about guardian is their low base HP so it is crutcial to either Trait/gear toughness, vitality or both. also looking into runes/sigils that would increase your buff durations would be good to look at other then that I cannot give you personal experience because i have not made a guardian just played along side them, killed them and watched them work.

I see. Thank you all very much! A few more questions:
When does the next patch come out?
How are guardians with mobility?
What about necros? I hear they have a bunch of survivability.