Guild Wars 2

So, I don’t have any specific questions. More of a request: Sell me on your class!

So far I’ve enjoyed leveling thief the most (made it to 80). But when I looked on the forums, a lot of players of the class seem to lament the standing of the class in group content across the board. I heard “no group utility”, “weak defense”, “weak offense”, “no reason to bring a thief.”

As a new player, it’s hard to sort through that information because I haven’t experienced much group content (just a few fractals in the 15-30 range, which seemed easy enough but how do I know how much I was contributing to that?). All I know so far is that running d/p primary (p/p backup) in the open world and especially in the jungle has been a blast!

So I guess what I’m saying is, I can find plenty of reasons NOT to play a class when I read the forums. How about providing me some good reasons I want to play a class?

Thanks!

Ugg another one of these. I don’t intend this as a rude retort to a new player. Welcome to GW2 btw, but if you look through the various forums, you will find a lot of these style of post. The forum search doesn’t work well, but if you google search the forum URL you will get huge amounts of results.

As far as the answer, play what you like. That is the ONLY reason to pick a class. Play how you want with what spec makes you happy. There will always be someone to tell you your build sucks if your not running meta, and there are always overly dramatic people that lament the woes of their classes. Ignore it all, and if you have fun playing something do it. If people have a problem with you playing that way, find new people.

You misunderstand my intent. I’ve read a lot of discussions along these lines. The trouble I’m having as a new player is getting established players into conversation about the mechanics of this game (beyond complaining about balance issues). Hence the request.

I’m not asking you to tell me what I like or give me a build I can follow. I’m trying to get a conversation going wherein I can learn about playstyles, pros and cons, etc. from players who know what they’re doing. I can only learn so much from previous conversations because they only asked the questions they wanted to ask.

But I get it. Ain’t nobody got time for that. It’s cool. I’ll play the game, or not. I’ll find what I’m looking for, or not.

Classes like Mesmer and Ranger I know have to “kite” the enemy a lot to avoid being killed. I would recommend saving those for later.

I just started a Guardian and they have a melee style for the most part, but lots of blocks and shields that you must remember.

I think for someone new, a Warrior might be the simplest. Jump in there and hack away bcuz there are enough health points to not get squashed right away.

More important is positioning your hot keys and learning how to move and press keys without errors and without looking at your keyboard. I just added an update to my topic about this.

But then, I am new to the game as well so someone correct this post if I’m off.

I’m gonna have to side with Deedrick on this one.

For one, your post is extremely generic and open ended. The hard part to commenting on threads like this is that there’s no sense of direction. In other words, how do you want us to sell the classes to you?

• PvE, WvW, PvP?
• Roleplay vs on-paper capabilities?
• solo vs group?
• viability vs optimal?

Again, there’s just too much of an space to make a constructive conversation out of this thread. My recommendation would be to provide us some boundaries or some definition in what you’re looking for. Otherwise, as Deedrick mentioned, I would have to echo the concept of “play what you want”. The game is very casual, and there’s a lot of stuff you can do from the starting gate. Personally, I started with the Elementalist because I tend to play more of the mage-archtype in MMO’s so it made learning the game easier because I was playing a class I enjoyed. On the flip side I left Engineer as my last character to create because I didn’t find him very fun. Though at that point I knew enough about the game to where I was able to breeze through his leveling in 2 days vs my ele who took 2-3 weeks because of everything I was trying to learn at once.

In regards to the Thief discussion, what were they comparing the Thief to? In PvE, Thief excels as being one of the heaviest hitters in the game and is generally one of the first classes to fill an available spot once you have the “roles classes”. I don’t have hands on experience in PvP/WvW with that class, but from what I’ve read they’re not as highly praised in those aspects of the game.

Ultimately, what are you wanting in a class? If you provide us with that information we will happily help you piece that together. Otherwise, your thread just makes it sound like you’re wanting the best of the best. Which is great, but we’re (the community) are not about pushing you towards the ideal but would much rather work with you to make an ideal image of what you’re after in a class.

Agree, if you want a conversation then you will find people who are game. If your interested in play styles / strengths / weakness and all that, I recommend you dig into the class forums. You will find more knowledgeable people about every aspect of a class in there that will be very happy to share their amassed knowledge. As savacli.8172 said, give us more to work with and we can be more helpful, otherwise all we can do is suggest open ended options.