Guild Wars 2

As title says, I’m new to Guild Wars 2, just recently bought it and wonder what profession you guys advise making as a starter?

Well it depends on your preferences as always, as well as your previous
experiences with MMO/gaming. Personally, I can recommend reading the
descriptions of each class and see which one appeals to you. For example, I
went the path of the Guardian, because I liked the notion of protecting my
allies. All the professions have strengths and weaknesses, so it’s really up to you ^^.

I don’t know if you’re able to. But if you want my help in-game, pick WhiteSides Ridge as your “home” server.

The GW2 devs have made this game is such a way as to avoid the 3 main class types: tank, healer, damage dealer. Each profession has some aspect of those 3 elements, with some slightly more skewed one way or the other.

The next thing is how are you going to play the game, mainly PvE, or PvP, or WvW, or a combo of all 3 or 2? Also, are going to play solo or with a group of friends?

After this, it is a matter of what play style is enjoyable for you. Try a few professions until lvl 20 at least. This won’t take you long and will help determine what you like. The game is not a race to lvl 80 ..

The most important thing is to have fun!

Well, I’m more of a purely PvE person, and i just want a simple class to start out with, an suggestions for that?

And i’m aready on the Sea of Sorrows server :P my mates are on there

simple but effective, ranger or engineer, both got pro’s n con’s+both ranged(ranger is decent s melee aswell), engineer has nice dmg with turrets+turret explosions…i started as Mesmer(my main), Ele=a bit sub par 2 what i expected n can feel really squishy, guardian=a paragon/monk/warrior n can hold it’s own in any battle….necro/thief/warrior i haven’t tried yet.

I highly suggest playing each class until about ~16-20 to see what you like best. There is no hurry to get to 80 in this game. Choose a class based on play-style, not what others say is powerful at the moment. GW2 will go through tons of changes and balancing iterations.

Ranger – Fairly versatile pet class. Pets are nice for leveling in the open world, but die very easily in dungeons. That kind of sucks, as they make up a substantial portion of your damage.

Elementalist – These guys are pretty cool. You can switch elemental attunements ( air, earth, water, fire ) to gain access to different skills and bonuses. Definitely a lot to do here, and they can be fairly complex. They are the normal spell flinging “wizard” type class.

Necromancer – You deal death, plain and simple. They are great at spreading conditions. Their summoned minions seem rather lackluster. Necros can also shift forms into virulent clouds, death shrouds, and liches. Definitely a lot to do.

Engineer – They are pretty fun. They can equip kits that change the skills available to them. You can use a pack of different grenades, throw elixirs that buff/debuff, strap on a flamethrower, etc. They can also set up turrets.

Mesmer – You’re a spellcaster that deals with illusions and confusion. You’re a trickly little kitten.

Warrior – Pretty self-explanatory. You hit things. Hard.

Guardian – They are mostly a melee support class. They give out a lot of buffs and can be fairly tanky. Their range options are limited and somewhat lackluster.

Thief – You hide in the shadows and pop out to do burst damage. They have the best escape mechanisms of any class. Think of them as skirmishers.

You can tell from andybmcc’s post that the simplest class is the warrior… hardly needs an explaination :-) lol
I’ve also heard that ranger is pretty easy because the pet takes most of the damage and you can kite just about everything.

But just remember that easiest class to get into, might not be the most fun. I play Dagger/Dagger Elementalist, because being the squishiest class at near melee range is thrilling and fun!

*edited for clarity

1) Warrior – This is one of the most straight forward classes in the game and probably one of the best ones to learn with. They’re tied with Necromancer for having the highest Health (aka Hit Point) pool in the game. In exchange for their high Health, they lack many of the more defensive buffs from other classes (such as Guardian). However you can easily make a defensive build which focuses on Knocks / Stuns or an offensive build based on bursting dps formula (which often leads to the cliche Greatsword crit build). Warriors even have some nice AoE buffing options through their Shout and Banner powers. (Disclaimer: I currently have both an AoE buffing character and a defensive Knock / Stun character.)

2) Thief – I like the class, but they have a unique casting system Initiative for their weapon skills. It can be fun, but it might be a bad choice to learn about the combat casting philosophies of GW2. (Disclaimer: I play a a hyrbid of an AoE buffing and dps spamming build.)

3) Engineer – This is quickly becoming my 2nd favorite class due to its versatility. While you only get x1 weapon combo to actively use (instead of the standard x2 weapon combo switching), you can use some of your Utility skill slots to gain access to extra weapons. While the class does get bonus skill slots as a form of compensation, Engineer will play different from any other class and probably isn’t the best one to learn on. (Disclaimer: I currently have a dot based dps character, but I’m playing on making a 2nd Engineer in the near future that’s more AoE healing and debuffing focused.)

Another thing to consider is whether the class has strong ranged or melee capabilties… or both. I’m not so great at melee, but I’m enjoying my warrior very much because her rifle packs a serious punch. She may even be helping me improve in terms of melee since I’m using the greatsword as my alternate weapon. Thief has surprisingly good ranged capabilities as well and a ranger with a greatsword for in-close work is fun, too.

I strongly recommend playing each profession to at least level 10, as you have time. You just won’t have any idea what you’re missing otherwise.

As many have already said, it depends a lot on your personal play style. And it also depends on what type of content you want to play (PvE, sPvP, WvW).

I don’t play PvP types of content, it’s just something that has never interested me in any game I’ve ever played. I personally am also not a fan of melee classes. I simply do not enjoy them. I prefer hit-and-run ranged classes. They can keep a target in attack range without having to chase them down all the time, and they can safely kite melee opponents without losing their damage output.

I also like seeing decent AoE output and/or very fast single-target kills. And I don’t like being so squishy that if a target manages to close in, I die in just a few hits.

If you’re interested in PvE, and your play style is similar to mine, then I would recommend taking a look at longbow/shortbow trapper builds for the Ranger (traps and barrage for AoE, Hunter’s Shot and Crossfire for single-target), various builds for elementalist (I’m particularly fond of scepter/dagger and using both fire and earth magics heavily, swapping to Staff out of combat before DE’s), or the Necromancer, especially an axe/focus and dagger/dagger minion master (superb survivability if handled correctly, and very respectable single-target damage).

You should also keep in mind that Condition Damage builds can be very effective when solo, but are not very useful in DE’s because of the way condition stacking currently works (devs have said they are trying to figure out a way to balance it better, so changes should be in the works in the hopefully near future).

But whether your have a similar playstyle preference to me or not, I recommend that you make use of the Heart of the Mists. Once you have a character past the tutorial part of the story you can go to HotM and have full access to any weapon, armor, rune, sigil, and skill set you like. This allows you to try out different things with your character as though they were full level 80, and you get an idea of where you would like to go with a build or whether or not you even like a particular build or class. You can also test out damage output and damage speed against the different target golems, and if you want to know how well you can survive against targets that will actually try to kill you, there are a few options for that as well. Try a few things out, and don’t be afraid to delete a level 2 character (the level you should be after completing the tutorial with any character), as you won’t lose much.

The thing is that no matter how many hard cold facts people give you… what will keep you playing a profession in the end is whether it ‘clicks’ with your personal taste. And that can be cause by the most random things.
(For example, I really like playing Ranger with a sword because doing his sword attacks while wearing Medium armour just looks super stylish to me. Thief would look just as stylish, but I don’t like the Initiative system. As you can see, none of it has to do with actual stats or tactics.)

I second the suggestion to just try them all. Get each class at least as far as needed to unlock all on-land skills. Preferably, far enough to be able to also check out some slot skills (the ones on the right side of your HP bubble.) If you are focusing on it, you can get a character to level 15+ really really quickly, so making temporary chars you delete afterward is no big deal.
Then decide on your own which one seems like you will enjoy playing it repeatedly for a long time.

Honestly, Mesmar has taken my interest, how do you guys find them? Pros/Cons? and what weapons would you suggest using on them, though i might find out myself what i like about them later on :P

On Mesmer i use Staff and Greatsword . Mesmer is slow to start but can be really powerful later on. I’ll say this though mesmer is a lot more of a party support class and you’re going to have to buff your clones/ phantasms to be effective . You definately have some fun toys though even if they more funny than useful ( i.e moa morph )