Guild Wars 2

Hello all, I’m considering making an alt character for those moments when I want to play more relaxed and mindlessly (ie, after a long day at work).

My only character at the moment is a Mesmer, and I really enjoy playing it! However, even though is really fun, it requires me to be on top of everything to manage both my characters and illusions. That said, I’m looking for a more ‘auto attack until everything is gone’ approach (I know, that doesn’t exist in GW2, but anything close to that will do).

Some things to consider:

• I want this alt for PvE, open world farming
• I would like it to be simple and forgiving, just to play mindlessly for a while
• I did not enjoyed the Warrior profession
• I do not have money to spare, so he/she will have find his/her own gear
• Ideally, this would be my Event/Open World character to go
• Mobility is key, whether movement skills or perma-swiftness

Any suggestions you may have? Any questions that could help with your advice?

Many thanks!

staff guardian

staff ele, just stay in fire all the time, signet of air for mobility, written in stone build and valkyrie gear, it doesn’t get any simpler and can handle most pve.

p/p thief, no stealth to maintain, just run around blasting the crap out of everything

pretty much any guardian build, weapon, and gear combination

Warrior would be my first choice. But since you don’t like that profession you should try a Guardian.

For me the most mindless is guardian followed by warrior.

I would have said warrior followed by guardian, but it might depend on how you play them. (Also I suppose there is the fact that guardians ckittene their profession abilities by just ignoring them and leaving the passive effects up, while warriors have to press F1 occasionally.)

But pretty much anything is simpler than a Mesmer. Except engineer, some ele builds and maybe some ranger builds.

Thank you all for your replies, much appreciated! It looks that the clear option is Guardian.

@Neko Dudley: I was under the impression that Elementalists were squishy and complex to play, am I missing something? Thanks!

Xour.5732:

@Neko Dudley: I was under the impression that Elementalists were squishy and complex to play, am I missing something? Thanks!

The squishyness of eles ranges from very fragile to bunker. It depends on the build. The build I suggested (written in stone/signet/staff) gets a lot of toughness from having 6 points in earth, plus using signet of earth gets you an extra 180 toughness, so its somewhere between bunker and glass cannon. Its the build I use for soloing vet karkas. Usually in pve I stick to a zerk build. You learn to keep moving while playing an ele since a lot of mobs cant hit you when you are not in front of them. For pve farming, you can stay in fire until you need an emergency heal from water staff 3 or 5, so its not really complex unless you want it to be.

I’m really tired, I hope that answers the question. I am not an expert on elementalist, just enthusiastic.

Ranger 6/4/4/0/0 Longbow/Greatsword Drake/Dog pet (you could even use bear since your not doing dungeons( Bowbear is so popular with newbies because it’s stupid easy in open world)) mix some zerk/knights/val armor depending on how much defense you need. Use ranger runes they’re not that expensive compared to other dps runes and they’re generally the best rune for ranger. Simple to play longbow has good dmg when solo for a range weapon, good vulnerability stacking, Aoe cripple, and stealth. GS has an evade on the auto attack, a block that can range cripple, a stun, and a great mobilty skill.

If you are not going to do dungeons and just want mindless play, then I vote for Ranger. Let the pet hold aggro and attack from a distance.

Ranger can be played as melee and with skill, but it’s a profession that has an ez mode play style available.

@Astral Projections: thanks for the suggestion. I won’t be doing dungeons with this char, just for Open World PvE. I’ll take a look at the ranger forums!

Warrior or Sword/Pistol thief.

thief is probably the most mobile class in the game. however they are not that easy a class, so you will have to use stealth, evade etc. to survive. an annoying thing with warrior for open world (especially world bosses) is that you cant autoattack on stack spot since you don’t have 1200 range unless you trait. this is inconvenient, but with thief and other classes you can autoattack pretty easily.

The nice thing about ranger is their ability to use healing spring for condition cleansing and long term heal when you are standing in one spot and if you do get downed the pet has a command available to come over and help heal you. This command works even if the pet is defeated. This healing when downed is very useful and decreases the number of times you die as well as getting you up from a downed state faster.