Guild Wars 2

Greeting, fine folk!

Having recently stumbled upon GW2 (or more like, having finally mustered up the motivation to try another MMO after a major WoW burnout) and fumbling around for a few days, I find the game to be very much to my liking – baring something drastic, seems like I will be sticking around.

So now comes the hardest part – choosing my first class to play. After a bit of looking around and gathering some preliminary information, along with poking around with the classes for a few levels each, I seem to have narrowed it down to either Revenant, Guardian or Necromancer (Reaper?). Would it be possible to ask for a condensed breakdown of each of these three classes and their viability?

And I’m pretty set on it being one of these three – I’m typically a ranged player when it comes to MMOs, so I figured It’s time to switch it up and get up close and personal with what I’m trying to kill. Warrior probably isn’t going to be it, I imagine – the class seems to be described as very easy/basic to play and I’m probably looking for something a bit more distinct, this hardly being my first rodeo with a MMO. To that end it looks to be on of these three classes.

Necro (Might Reaper being what I ought to aim for in a melee Necro, right?) looks both stylish and interesting thanks to the Shroud mechanic – seems like it could be a breath of fresh air compared to your usual MMO classes, but I must admit I’m slightly put-off by the Necro forum subsection being filled with doom and gloom to my untrained eye, with people complaining how the class is horrible at group PvE content and how getting groups is a problem – which is of concern to me, seeing as high end PvE content is what I enjoy and would eventually seek to do.

Guardian I like from what I see (I like the concept of high survivability that comes through active defenses and abilities, rather than passive damage soak through high HP/armor), but the Dragon Hunter elite spec, at a first glance, seems pretty weird to me. It looks like it would transform the character in to a ranged one more so than anything else, and like I said I aim to play a melee hero first and foremost this time around. If I wanted to shoot things with a bow, I’d probably roll a Ranger. Or am I looking at the spec wrong and it’s still possible to smash things in the face with a sword while playing Dragon Hunter to good effect?

Revenant, at a glance, appears to be pretty straight forward unless I am missing something, which is entirely possible – looks like a somewhat fancier warrior in terms of aesthetics/approach to combat at a glance, which is fine with me – fancier warrior would be fine with me, provided that’s what the class actually is :P

So … between these three classes, which would you recommend to a player that’s new to GW2 and looking to level his first character and bring it to engame content for a while, before resorting to alts?

Oh, and is there anything in particular I should immediately obtain with the 4000 gems from purchasing the Ultimate Edition?

Thanks!

By high end pve content I’m assuming you mean raids and/or T4 Fractals. I main revenant and have spent time on all classes.

Guardian: Most accepted of the 3 in raids (pugs) and is generally great in all game modes. Dragonhunter adds a 2nd long range option, but for DH to maximize damage it has to be close to activate it’s traps, so it’s still melee.

Necromancer: Might have a harder time getting into a pug raid with it, the best raid build for it is melee range, but condition based, not power. Power necro is less accepted in pug raids. Will do great in fractals.

Revenant: Probably the most undertuned of the 3 classes currently, which also means will hopefully be receiving buffs in the future and is probably a safe pick. Works great in t4 fractals including challenge mode 100 (i’ve never gotten kicked from a fractal for playing rev like some forum posters claim to). Pug raids will be the hardest to get into out of the 3 classes. However, if you find a guild raid to become a part of (which I recommend doing anyway), Revenant works fine; I run it consistently with my group with no problems.

The main thing about Revenant is that it is somewhat less flexible than the other two. That doesn’t mean it’s completely simple to play. You are juggling two weapon sets and two utility sets and need to remember which pair you currently have up and what it does moment to moment. You also need to swap Legend (utility set) as appropriate to swap the skills or at least grab a second heal fast. But overall, from my point of view, it’s a lot more constrained in feel. Even though I almost never change up my build on any one character, I still feel like I can do a wider variety of things moment to moment and have a larger choice of utilities to mix and match together.

I’m not a raider, so my fave of the three (of any profession, actually) is Reaper, the Necromancer elite. Regular necro is a lot of fun too, but Reaper is what I use to just jump into packs of dangerous mobs without huge fear of losing the fight. All the GS and Shout and Shroud skills flow beautifully together. Guardian/DH … why on earth they chose to make the special weapon long range and the special utilities short range I don’t know. You can take pieces of the profession and make a solid build, but as a whole it fights itself.

All very subjective to me. From day one of this game it’s been clear that each and every profession will have its die hard admirers and its players that run screaming from the very idea of using it.

What you may want to do, though this won’t give you precisely the same options as a level 80 in PVE, is make a starter character of each profession (only need one slot, you’ll delete and remake in between) and go to the Mists lobby (see wiki on structured PvP for how to get there). There are golems set up for you to attack. In sPvP you are auto-leveled to 80 and given all skills/traits/utilities as well as gear in your choice of stats (the idea being that PvPers cannot outgear each other, only out-skill each other). A small portion of these will be either tweaked differently from PvE or not even available as PvE combinations, but you’ll get a very good feel for how each profession moves and plays. You can switch things freely while there and test all the weapons and utilities you want. This may help you figure out which profession you like most.

My opinion is that, guardian is a good starter class if you’re looking for something less basic than a warrior. Guardian gets accepted a lot because it can buff, and support while doing damage. If you decide to go for range, guardian can do both. I hope i helped you and have fun in Gw2!

Guardian is a brilliant class, both in the hands of a new player and a veteran one as well. You’re going to have a great time with this class, and it’s Elite Spec is Dragon Hunter which is fun!

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Didn’t expect for Revenant to be considered the worst out of the three, but I guess it will work out in the end anyways for me – after fiddling with the classes some more and getting both Necro and Guardian to lvl 20-ish, I think it’s down to these two for me.

I’ll probably go with necro first, though I like the gameplay with both. I realize leveling experience probably doesn’t mean much, but Guardian indeed feels very comfortable to play and seems plenty powerful, but Necro has a feeling of fun novelty about it as well. I’ll likely end up leveling both of them, but I guess Necro will be the first one I take to 80.

Thanks for the advice