Guild Wars 2

This has probably been asked several times by a lot of people, but I’m trying to pick a profession to stick to until I learn more about the game. A lot of the professions seem attractive to me, so it’s hard to choose. I’m trying to find something that would be viable in most situations. PvE, WvW, and a bit of PvP.

The mesmer seems really interesting because the play style seems fun to me, but I want something with decent survivability, good utility and the option to support my team if it’s needed. I’ve narrowed it down to Ele, mesmer, ranger, or Guardian I think. Any kind of help deciding would be great! Even your own opinions and experiences.

I think Mesmer and Guardian fit best in your list of interests, Mesmer if you want to tool up for more DPS, Guardian if survivability is key. I love them both (and find Ele far too squishy and keyboard intensive, while Ranger bores me to tears and has too many pet options with both too little and too much micromanagement of the pets — all personal opinion to me alone of course).

1) Use all your character slots for 1 profession each.

2) When you are out of slots, buy more until you have 1 for each profession.

Done.

If you plan on playing this game for a while, play them all. They are all fun. Getting more slots is worth it. Some are more fun than others, but that’s where it becomes subjective. The simplest answer to your question is that Guardian and Warrior are the most balanced multipurpose professions while classes such as Mesmer and Elementalist have a high skill floor and isnt something you master in a week. Or a year for that matter. Elementalist in particular require you to be an octokitten to play to perfection. The others are somewhere in between.

For a new player, between mes and guard, definitely guard. Also, you could go warrior, those banners are pretty good support. Warrior is the most newbie friendly class in the game, and usually welcomed in any group, sometimes even more than one of them. But guard is a good starting choice too, though warrior levels up the fastest of them all.

Dawdler.8521:

2) When you are out of slots, buy more until you have 1 for each profession.

I did that, but that was the old gw2. Regret it now, dusty characters as anet moved away from being alt friendly with the gear progression. Now I just focus on medium armor classes, excluding the ranger though since ranger just sux. imo not even a “ranger”. er but anyway, yeah I’d recommend against it unless you just want to spend 1000hrs in a singe game but not ever really fully gear out one char with the best that could be gotten.

Ranger is Jack of all Trades and would be your best choice if you are new to this game, easy to learn game mechanics and IF you like the class plz just go on with it don’t let the bad cmts about this class ruining your moments and very reward gameplay if you stay away from bad ranger build.

Mesmer this class is fun, very good utility and if you get used to the game mechanics, combat, knowing boons/conditions then survivability just a tiny problem to mesmer but lvling one is really a challenge, i used to say meh to mesmer at first but after so many try i finally got it to 80 and end up playing mesmer most of the time cuz…well no spoiler…

One thing about mesmer you might mistake the damage mesmer provide is not great that doesn’t mean you playing it wrong or seem underpower compare to other…no just no…mesmer is all about how well you can control your enemies and the battlefield nothing can touch you or bring you down so easily if you play mesmer well.

Ele…same as mesmer but harder and more reward if mastered.

Guardian low hp is fatal but in return they have strong def very strong healing capability and defensive support, nice damg most well balanced class in the game easy to play not so easy to master but everyone love you kinda like pally or holy knight, you should have atleast one guardian or warrior or both in your family ( doesn’t have to be main tool but just in case you need to learn something hard while not familiar to game yet )

Mesmer and Ele can learn too but require more knowledge before you feel comfort to learn stuff with those classes

Ranger…this guy can do anything since you have pets to hold aggro for you but beware bad ranger came from rely too much on pets and distance.

Mesmers are great, but in my opinion a little harder to level. For Mesmers, its all about traiting your shatters and clones, and traits don’t become available till later levels.

From what I’ve been told Guardians struggle somewhat in pve. I leveled mine exclusively through pvp so I’m definitely not an expert on that though. Ele’s are the hardest class that I’ve try ed to play mechanically. Mesmer can be a lot of fun but they also have a rather steep learning curve. If you’re new to the game I would have to recommend ranger based on your criteria.

Thanks for all the great responces! I think it’ll be either mesmer or ranger for me, going to take some more thinking.

Ranger for me is by far the easiest profession in the game. But it seems to have players develop some bad habits in both PvE and PvP in terms of gameplay. It prevents some players to get better at higher level gameplay.

Exciton.8942:

Ranger for me is by far the easiest profession in the game. But it seems to have players develop some bad habits in both PvE and PvP in terms of gameplay.

What bad habits?

It prevents some players to get better at higher level gameplay.

How?

These are both very vague statements. Details please.

BeefyKnight.4859:

From what I’ve been told Guardians struggle somewhat in pve. I leveled mine exclusively through pvp so I’m definitely not an expert on that though. Ele’s are the hardest class that I’ve try ed to play mechanically. Mesmer can be a lot of fun but they also have a rather steep learning curve. If you’re new to the game I would have to recommend ranger based on your criteria.

The only struggle might be to do high dps. I began my GW2 life as a Thief main. Lots of dirt naps. Then I tried a support-spec’d Guardian in dungeons and I was in heaven. Sure, she’s doing double digit dps while my Warrior friend is chortling about 30K crits or higher, but she Does Not Die. Killing in regular PvE just takes her a little longer. I have a more dps-aimed Guardian as well. I seriously feel just about invincible on my Guardians compared to any other profession.

(Nowadays my mesmers are my go-to’s for dungeons and fractals. Plenty of support and survival without losing out on the dps. Imo if you can get through the no-trait times and get a feel for deploying clones and phantasms and when to shatter them, you’ll probably have a ton of fun on mesmer).

ChoChoBo.6503:

Mesmers are great, but in my opinion a little harder to level. For Mesmers, its all about traiting your shatters and clones, and traits don’t become available till later levels.

That depends a LOT on your playstyle. There is no right or wrong way to play a profession. If you want a necro with a ton of minions, you can do that quite well. If you want a necro with no minions at all, that’s not a problem either. If you want a mesmer who doesn’t focus on clones and phantasms, that should be quite possible too. Not that I have tried, but I don’t really see why it shouldn’t work.

And as for how hard they are to level, I’ve made it to 36 with no problems at all. The occasional boss has bugged me a bit, but I’ve never had to try one more than three times at most, and even that is rare. Of course it could be different at max level, but since you say they are hard to level, I kinda disagree.

OP: My suggestion is either warrior or guardian, leaning towards guardian. I think they are a rather boring class to play, but that’s mostly because they are so easy to play. You’re a walking tank. Army-tank, not MMO trinity tank. You can walk into a group of enemies and leave them dead without breaking a sweat. If yoyu want a nice profession to play to get into the game, this might be for you. :-)

BattleCat.2098:

ChoChoBo.6503:

Mesmers are great, but in my opinion a little harder to level. For Mesmers, its all about traiting your shatters and clones, and traits don’t become available till later levels.

That depends a LOT on your playstyle. There is no right or wrong way to play a profession. If you want a necro with a ton of minions, you can do that quite well. If you want a necro with no minions at all, that’s not a problem either. If you want a mesmer who doesn’t focus on clones and phantasms, that should be quite possible too. Not that I have tried, but I don’t really see why it shouldn’t work.

And as for how hard they are to level, I’ve made it to 36 with no problems at all. The occasional boss has bugged me a bit, but I’ve never had to try one more than three times at most, and even that is rare. Of course it could be different at max level, but since you say they are hard to level, I kinda disagree.

OP: My suggestion is either warrior or guardian, leaning towards guardian. I think they are a rather boring class to play, but that’s mostly because they are so easy to play. You’re a walking tank. Army-tank, not MMO trinity tank. You can walk into a group of enemies and leave them dead without breaking a sweat. If yoyu want a nice profession to play to get into the game, this might be for you. :-)

While there is a level of variety (and hopefully with the pre HoT patch even more) in Mesmer builds, due to the class mechanics you can’t avoid using illusions. Every Mesmer build has to choose to focus on one of the options below:

1) Using illusions to deal damage, either:
- using phantasms only (power or condition damage)
- using phantasms and clones (condition only, because clones deal ~0 direct damage)
2) Shattering illusions to deal damage:
- using Maim the Disillusioned (condition damage)
- using other shatter traits (generally power or hybrid damage)
3) Letting illusions die (condition damage only)
4) Mixture of the above.

With the pre-HoT patch, number 3 will no longer be an option with them removing all clone death traits.

Sure there are other damage sources on Mesmer skills/traits – ie damage/conditions on interrupt, mantra of pain, weapon skills, and so on that also make up the overall damage output. But clones/phantasms will always make up a significant portion of damage output, whether through shattering or passive damage application.