Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone!

I just bought Guild Wars 2 as it was on sale. Now I want to create my first character and am struggling with the profession selection. I already tried all of them out on my brothers account, but I still can’t decide:

Necromancer:
+Aesthetics
+Condition Gameplay
+Tankiness
+Control the enemy
-Only really like scepter and dagger as weapons
-Feels kinda dull

Engineer:
Gameplay, very fun
+Mad Engineer vibe
+Flexibility
+Control the enemy
-Kits are ugly(duh.)
-Only two weapons (kits)
-Ugly backpacks
-Steampunk

Mesmer:
+Interesting concept
+Cool visuals
+Illusion gameplay
+Control the enemy
-Bad mobility
-Mainstream

Thief:
+Cool style
+Mobile
+Stealth
-Can get spammy
-Initiative sucks
-Too few spells

And: Which server is the most active overall on EU, both general PvE and WvW?

Looking forward to your answers

Welcome to the game!

There is only one person who can make an informed decision about what profession you should play. And that person is you.
What works for me might not work for you, and what works for anyone else who may give you advice on what to do might not work for you either.

I can give you a suggestion regarding server choice. Gandara has a nice population mix of PvE and WvW. There are players from many different nationalities and language groups (including UK, Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy and Turkey, to name just a few), but the official server language is English, and mapchat is almost exclusively in English. There are a few large guilds, and many smaller ones.

Welcome to the game. You start off with 5 character slots, so roll something of each and play up to about level 10-15 and see which you like the best. The future farming/grinding and gear progression that’s in store for you will be the same regardless of profession. As far as EU servers go, I can’t help there, sorry. Welcome again.

Mesmers aren’t mainstream at all. Guardians and Warriors are.

Wellcome!

Mesmers really aren’t mainstream… And they don’t have bad mobility. You can teleport around the battlefield, teleport away, go invisible, get haste… It’s really neat.
And if you want to be a minority make a Charr Mesmer. :P There’s only like 5 anywhere. (probably more, but yeah. really rare).

And as you were already advised:
Make a few characters. Play with them a bit and see what you like.

I have a lvl 20 Engineer that i stopped playing because i didn’t like it much so i made a Mesmer that is now 80 with all skills unlocked. Now i’m grinding dungeons for gear. I have a warrior that i play when i’m bored with the Mesmer and a thief because i just wanted to see how that is. And a necromancer. but i’m not sure what to make of it.

But that’s just me. The best way to decide (and the way i decided) was to try the classes out and see what you like.

It’s really easy to get to level 80 so you should be able to maybe level multiple characters.

I’d say engineer. But im pretty biased towards them. And i heard somewhere theyre trying to get the hide back piece option to hide Engi kits as well. Now, why play an engineer? We’re easily the most fun. We have the highest skillcap. We also have lots of build diversity. I have 2 engineers, one human, one asura, thats how fun they are. Im also working on getting the legendary rifle the predator for my asura.

Honestly OP, you cannot go wrong in my opinion. I have had all professions to 80 for some time now. I find I can build any profession anywhere from glass cannon to very tanky, each in their own way.

Just randomely pick one and start playing it. Then go to that professions specific forums and folks are always there to aid new players in leveling and building out said profession.

Mesmer’s mobility problem is that it doesn’t have a permanent or semi-permanent speed boost for faster travel. However, it’s got great combat mobility. And it is mainstream. It’s one of the 3 more desirable professions in dungeons atm. However, it’s also not a faceroll profession like warrior or guardian. So there’s that.

I’m a big fan of the engineer. Yes, it has a small weapon selection and no swapping. However, its kits make it incredibly dynamic and offers more variability than any other profession. Nobody will argue with your aesthetic sentiments regarding the hobosacks that we’re forced to wear with kits. But word is they’re working on it. We’ll see. Also, if you like conditions, engi is one of the best. True story.

Necro has more to offer than just scepter and dagger. The other weapons though, tend to be more direct damage focused rather than conditions. And staff is like a staple offset. I think the solution to any profession that starts to feel dull is to completely change builds and try something new. Same thing actually happened to me with necro and it made all the difference.

Engieneer, mesmer, and elementalist may the 3 highest skillcap professions. They may come to you easily, but mastering them is the real challenge.

@Sirlath

You have issues man…
I offered to help out and we were suppose to meet up in game.

You don’t just block people for No reason or else people wont help you.

My Advice: Don’t ask for help if you don’t want it.

Goodbye.

Seras.5702:

Mesmer’s mobility problem is that it doesn’t have a permanent or semi-permanent speed boost for faster travel. However, it’s got great combat mobility. And it is mainstream.

Oh that’s what you meant. Yeah, outside of combat, there’s only focus skill “temporal curtain”. And it doesn’t last long.
And there’s a signet that grants random boons, but that’s not really helping to hasten up. :P

my mesmer has traveler runes. combined with some temporal curtain swiftness and blink, I’m faster than most characters out there.

Anet released some numbers at their 1-year anniversary: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/
and some 3rd party reports: http://gw2census.com/charts.php?pie=total÷=charprofession

I’ll tell you that pretty much every player could be happy with pretty much every profession. in my opinion, they all are 9+/10. it all just depends on your play style, which pretty much every profession can accommodate to.

Mystic.5934:

my mesmer has traveler runes. combined with some temporal curtain swiftness and blink, I’m faster than most characters out there.

Anet released some numbers at their 1-year anniversary: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/
and some 3rd party reports: http://gw2census.com/charts.php?pie=total÷=charprofession

I’ll tell you that pretty much every player could be happy with pretty much every profession. in my opinion, they all are 9+/10. it all just depends on your play style, which pretty much every profession can accommodate to.

According to this, Mesmers are so not mainstream!
Also, Charr Mesmers are an endangered species! :P

hehe, yeah. mesmers are a minority, but they have a lot of obvious skills that let you KNOW they are there – time warp, temporal curtain, a million clones, signet of inspiration, portal. Other professions give boons and heal and w/e, but mesmers’ party boosts are much more apparent, making it seem like there are more of them than there are.

That’s true. Maybe people are mistaking mesmer clones for players. :P

Anyway, OP is not responding. Maybe he BSOD’ed or something. Hope he recovers from a fatal error.

Or he just made a decision and is playing the game.

when I am the only mesmer in a 5-player party, there are sometimes 10 mesmers and 4 non-mesmers. we have great fun
you start from far away and just keep casting clones and shattering, all done within a couple seconds; there’s an army of clones kamikaze running at the unsuspecting grub.

Yeah, Mesmers are the signature unique profession in Guild Wars 2 but aren’t actually mainstream as statistics show (See screenshot). I would suggest just playing all the professions you are interested in until about level 20 and try out all the weapons they use to get a good feel of what they’re like to play and go from there.

Fay.2735:

Yeah, Mesmers are the signature unique profession in Guild Wars 2 but aren’t actually mainstream as statistics show (See screenshot). I would suggest just playing all the professions you are interested in until about level 20 and try out all the weapons they use to get a good feel of what they’re like to play and go from there.

…screenshot could be wrong,
since by what standards do it measure
the bountyfull proffessions, since one
can have more than one character?

DragonMind.2983:

Fay.2735:

Yeah, Mesmers are the signature unique profession in Guild Wars 2 but aren’t actually mainstream as statistics show (See screenshot). I would suggest just playing all the professions you are interested in until about level 20 and try out all the weapons they use to get a good feel of what they’re like to play and go from there.

…screenshot could be wrong,
since by what standards do it measure
the bountyfull proffessions, since one
can have more than one character?

The other link shows the database i guess, and you can filter it by prfession, gender etc, and mesmers are still at the bottom. And that’s across all characters all players have…

Of course it could be wrong or whatever, but for the sake of the argument, and since that’s the only insight we could have into character classes, we’ll just go along with it.

Also, the one that’s nicely made, “a year in GW2” is officially from ArenaNet i think. I vaguely remember them posting it on facebook or something…

the first one I posted was direct from Anet.
they didn’t specify how they rated each profession’s percentage. could be total characters (so if you have 8 characters, one of each profession, then each would be 12.5% represented). or it could be time played (the game does keep track of how long you’ve played each of your characters). time played seems like a good way to measure character distribution.

I know some will want to give me a beatin’ for saying this but I find all the classes are pretty much the same so far. I’m also new. They just seem to play a tad bit different. So I suggest playing the race/class that has the best immersion for you.

Hey everyone!

Was trying out some classes in game and narrowed it down to mainly 2 classes:

-Engineer
-Necromancer
-(Elementalist/Mesmer)

Now, my playstyle would largely be control – I want to make the enemy do what I want them to. I don’t want to just mindlessly go through rotations or focus on 5 skills or so. Now, the Engineer was fun and fits my playstyle kinda well (although I don’t like the Jack-of-all-trades mentality). But I can’t immerse with my Engineer.

But I want magic.

I really want to immerse with a Necromancer. I love their theme, their aesthetics and the Idea behind them and I love death and stuff.
After that comes the Elementalist. I kinda like the Elements theme less and the Staff isn’t my thing (Necro staff sucks as well :<), but their playstyle is more similar to the Engineer.

The playstyle does not have to be active though, it should have it’s depth and variety, but it should definitely be able to control enemies, I love that kitten.