Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

After looking around a lot and reading reviews, I decided to pick GW2 up. I am a long-time League of legends player but wanted to shift to an MMORPG for a while. I was wondering if anyone knows of a fun and rewarding race + class that is not too difficult to play. I am a long time gamer but still new to the MMORPGs, and I want to make the most of my early experiences. Thanks for your help!

TwoGirlsOneUrgot

I was in the same exact position as you. I recommend the warrior. It’s fun and easy to use!

Warrior is by far the easiest to learn. Ending at the elementalist as 1 of the hardest to learn for new players but in my view also the funniest.

Welcome to GW2. :-)

Warriors have high health and wear heavy armor, so definitely a good starting choice.

Guardians have low health and heavy armor, but they can be very durable due to heals and blocks. Also a good starting choice. These guys are a bit like clerics or paladins in other games (but not exactly).

Necromancers have high health but light armor, but are also not a bad choice.

All of the above have fairly simple class mechanics, so it depends on which aesthetic appeals to you more.

Wouldn’t recommend starting with the other professions, because their class mechanics require more effort to manage (except for Thieves, but they tend to be squishy unless you know how to dodge well).

Welcome to GW2!

For race I’d go what you think you’d enjoy looking at the most. The differences between races are very minimal. The difference (besides aesthetics) are Racial Skills, generally considered inferior to anything the classes have available.

As for class, in open-world (leveling) everything is quite do-able, the only classes I’d set aside for later in that aspect are Elementalist and Mesmer. Mesmer starts of as a fairly weak leveling character, (little, more difficult to land AoE, relatively squishy, build-up on damage) along with getting used to a game this can put a lot of people off. Elementalist is extremely squishy (low HP, low Armor) and dances between 4 attunements which once again gives you a lot to take in at once.

Thiefs are often considered extremely squishy, but the thing is, they can keep up blind permanently (pistol 5) or just dodge-whilst-damaging (dagger/dagger 3) which is perfectly viable whilst leveling, aswell as decent kite options. Engineer has a similar mechanic as Elementalist with juggling skillbars due to their kits, difference is that Elementalist have to wait much longer if they accidently swapped. Slightly less squishy aswell.

Warrior, Guardian, Ranger and Necromancer are the safest options, though Guardian and Ranger get a bit more difficult in teamplay (Most of the Guardians survivability comes from Aegis/Blinds/Condi remove/Reflects which affect your group aswell, meaning you will feel squishier in teamplay. Some Rangers struggle maintaining their pets so they don’t aggro everything.)

As far as race there is looks to consider as well as race skills (which are mostly inferior to the profession skills) and size. The larger the size of your character the harder to see it’s position in many jumping puzzles and reaching some vistas. That can also be a problem with close-quarters combat.

Edit to explain: It seems counter intuitive but the camera goes all wonky when your character bumps into a obstacle like a wall or ceiling. So the larger the character the more this is a problem.