Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I moved from World of Warcraft to this game and found it to have a lot more interesting things in it. I am stuck on a problem though, I want to make a guy on here that would resemble my WoW guy and have similar playing style to it. I used to play a Dwarf Shaman and was wondering how I could sort of re-make him because it would be really cool to play with a character like that in the Gw2 environment and community. :) Any suggestions on how you would replicate it would be greatly appreciated. I played both with enhancement (melee) and elemental (range)

Thanks :)

You’ll run into some problems if you try for a faithful replica. One, there are no Dwarves, they are mostly all dead or turned to stone. For the cultural flavor, a Norn would actually be your best bet despite the size difference.

Two, the play style just won’t be the same. GW2 is all about mobility and rotating through roles on the fly. I had a serious disconnect when I went back to my WoW mage (played since the start of Burning Crusade) for the Theramore event and all my reflexes had changed because she couldn’t dodge or cast while moving. Plus GW2 involves rapid swapping between melee and range.

Three, there aren’t really shamans. Though I suppose you could go with an Elementalist, which is one of the harder professions to play well but does involve rotating through attunements for different flavors and utilities of spells. They can’t swap weapons during combat, however, so you have to pick in advance which tool set to use.

I never got my Shaman all that high level. Well, I got her to Outland … but I wouldn’t say I really delved into the class enough to know what GW2 profession would come closest. You could give Guardian traited for condition damage (lot of blue fire) a try.

I’d say my gut answer is to go with a Norn Elementalist, and pick the totem animal that reminds you most of your Dwarf (assuming you RP). Though you might want to make the smallest Norn you can as the larger ones have issues on jumping puzzles, plus s/he can then be considered dwarfish by Norn standards -winks-

Former Shaman and Dwarf enthusiast here.

If you want similar aesthetics, Donari already picked it out: Elementalists are near as you can get to the “I use the elements” flavor of a shaman, for both the elemental and restoration specializations. If you preferred enhancement? Kinda tough, you can’t really replicate that same hybrid of caster and melee. As for races: Norn feel similar both visually (despite the height, they’re very close) and socially. Though if you were really into the whole smithing-metalworking-engineering side of the dwarves, the Charr will take the cake in that respect.

If you’re looking for something that feels mechanically similar to a Shaman— dwarf or otherwise— you just aren’t going to find it. Casting feels nothing at all like it does in WoW. Only a very specific build and item set can reproduce the enhancement’s weapon procs, and even then it’s a pale shadow. So even if you make a character who uses the elements and looks and acts like a dwarf shaman, it won’t feel at all like playing one.

So I suppose it depends on what parts matter to you.

I agree, there’s no Dwarf. You can go with a race that has the same sort of feel, which is Norn, or the same sort of size, which is Asura. Asura are much more like Gnomes than Dwarves, though.

For class, I’d also say Elementalist or Guardian. Try them and see which feels better for you. They play quite differently.

For the feel of totems, engineer turrets are the closest you’re going to get.

For the theme of drawing from elemental forces, elementalist. (The combat feels nothing alike though.)

For close/mid-range caster that focuses heavily on buffs and has a little healing, try guardian.

I don`t know about shamans in WoW but the closest thing you`ll have to a dwarf atmosphere is with Norn as the race.

Okay thanks guys :) I’ll try out the elementalist then, I also have another character that is a norn guardian so I wanna see if I could make my elementalist another race, If I make a small really muscled human maybe I can get the sort of same look but then the environment won’t be the same. Thanks for the help anyways! :)

If you prefer the norn-look you can always just make a norn, go through the asura-gate in hoelbrak. This will bring you to Lion’s Arch. There are gates to all starter cities there and you can level in any of them. The only reason to return to the norn-area would be personal story

Call me crazy, but a power/crit dagger/axe necro with wells feels a lot like an enhancement shaman with totems. Obviously, they are different in flavor, but the mechanics feel right to me. I don’t really know what shamans are like any more though, as I played WoW ages ago.

Elementalist is the other choice I’d pick, but it leans more towards an elemental/resto shaman imo. And of course, it’s got the whole 4 elements thing going for it, so that could be a plus, unless you are just looking for menchanics/style of play.