Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. I’ve recently got my wife into playing mmos with me and some of the mmos have a ton of button bloat that starts confusing her. I have thought about having her try out guild wars2 but I don’t know what classes to suggest to her.

She likes pve exclusively, I figured elementalist is probably not a good option for her due to all its options? (I’ve been out of the game some time myself). She seems to be interested in Mesmer, guardian, and necro the most.

I think Mesmer caught her eye because of the design seems girly. Are they wanted in pve dungeons? How “complicated” is the playstyle?

I’m thinking guardian is still a wanted class in dungeons? How hard is it to play in dungeons? The thing I worry about is pressure of what a guardian might have to perform in dungeons?

She’d most likely feel comfortable in a dps possible small support roll.

I have an 80 warrior, engineer, and thief but an to level someone along with her.

Suggestions?

Mesmer is fun to play, but the skill ceiling is higher than for some other professions. They are also a lot more dependent on traits to become truly powerful, which means your wife may struggle at the earlier levels when you don’t have a lot of options unlocked. They bring a great deal of support to groups via reflection, conditional removal, boon strips and more, although that usually means you’ll need to be swapping utilities and weapons quite frequently.

By all means, encourage her to give it a go if she really likes the theme of Mesmers, but I would recommend starting off with a simpler class like Warrior or Necromancer first if she’s new to GW2 (and especially if she’s new to MMO’s in general).

Thanks for the response Zaxares, are necromancers wanted in pve much? I’ve read a few posts and it seems like they aren’t all that wanted in groups?

Speaking as someone who hates button bloat, I will definitely counsel against Elementalist. It’s the squishiest class by far and I don’t think she’ll have fun taking dirt naps while wondering which skill of which attunement to use.

Guardian is a real blast to play, which I did not predict. I was so sure before beta that I would loathe it. By launch I had one of my five initial alts set and traited (she’s still my go-to for dungeons and fractals with friends, though since she’s almost pure support I hesitate at dps-demanding pugs). The F1-F4 skills have intuitive use, and the weapons all do some fun things. One thing I love about my guardian is that she does not die easily. As long as someone else is handling the dps, she’s cc’ing the foe and protecting her friends quite merrily.

Warrior is simple except for the vast array of weapon choices. I was quite bored by my first one (focused on GS/Rifle), had more fun with my second (swords, axes, and longbow). Necromancer is actually quite simple and sturdy. I’d say the main problem is that staff is so darn useful it’s easy to get in the habit of maining it, and since the 2-5 skills are ground target it can interfere with learning to be mobile while fighting.

She should stay away from Engineer, it takes even more button mashing than Ele and misses the fun of weapon swaps. Engi can be highly effective but it’s incredibly awkward to play if you don’t really love it.

Mesmer rocks. I love it, it’s my favorite all around class. However, I learned it in the old trait system, so it could be a struggle for a new player (also, I didn’t really play it until I’d learned the game with other professions). There’s some learning curve to figuring out how to keep up doubles and when to use which F1-F4 to shatter them, yet once you’ve got down there is such a sense of glee in combat.

She’s got 5 slots open, perhaps she should try two or three out, alternating between them, possibly even through the same zone to get a sense of how the same encounters feel from profession to profession. Then when she’s settled on one she really likes, she can venture further in the world to see tons of new stuff.

I was thinking about Necro or Warrior, certainly not Elementalist or Engineer.

Then you mentioned 1) Dungeons 2) She took a liking to Necro, Guardian and specially Mesmer.

I would say Necro is a no-go, just because they often aren’t welcome in Dungeons. They lack support. They can still be good on the other aspects of the game, but when it comes to team play in Dungeons they are the less useful profession.

Since i believe that it’s important to have fun and that people shouldn’t do something they don’t fully enjoy, i won’t recommend Warrior (who happens to be easy to play decently and good for Dungeons), let’s rather focus on the other two.

Mesmers are good for Dungeons and in certain open world activities such as Tequatl or Evolved Wurm (mega-events), more than good, they are desirable due to their reflects and secondly condi cleaning (which ironically Guardians are the other one profession that is good at this well), and then they are the best boon stripping choice and can do Time Warp, which is quite handy. There’s also Portal and Mass Invisibilty which are quite interesting tho i find them the most fun to use in WvW rather than Dungeons. Now the problem might be the learning curve. It takes sometime to master Mesmer (for Dungeons, open world content is always relatively easy), specially because they are squishy (light armor) and you have to be mindful of your illusions and play accordingly (for best dps performance).

Now there’s the Guardian. I never played one so i can’t give much insight about it, but i can tell you the following: I’m pretty confident that they are easier to master than Mesmers; they can rival the Mesmer when it comes to reflects and condition cleaning; they do lack some of the fancy skills like Portal, Time Warp, Invisibility ones or boon stripping but in Dungeons these aren’t really required and Guardian can do higher dps, survive without as much effort and will share boons with their team mates more easily.

I didn’t do Dungeons in a while, but both Mesmer and Guardian should be wanted about the same, tho back then i did see alot more people asking for Guard for certain Dungeons (which often was just due to their lack of knowledge that Mesmer could be as efficient in those instances). Let her play what she wants the most and have fun both of you : )

I love my necro. She’s my main, and I do dungeons, other basic pve, and wvw with her. It’s really a fun class, and I’ll never stop playing her. That being said, necros aren’t often wanted for many dungeon groups due to our lack of skills that help the group. So, if she’s wanting mostly dungeon runs, she might want to check out guardian or mesmer rather than necro. Both are very useful in dungeons and fractals. Guardian is the easier of the two to master, and you have lots of helpful group things.

Honestly, though, there’s no reason she can’t make one of each (necro, guard, and mesmer), mess around to see how she likes each, and then pick from there.

I feel I should point out that while Necros aren’t considered a “top tier” profession for dungeons, only the speedclear/zerk/meta groups will have an issue allowing one in the party. For the vast majority of dungeon groups, as long as you are level 80 and/or know what you’re doing, they don’t care what profession or build you’re using. (Trust me pon this. I use a condi-minion hybrid build on my Necromancer in dungeons and Fractals ALL the time. I’ve never been kicked. Ever.)

As such, don’t let the belief that “Necros are an unpopular dungeon/Fractal class” discourage you or your wife from trying one out if she likes the feel of the profession.

Wow you all are great, I didn’t really expect this many responses, especially that quickly. She played a mesmer tonight a bit. I am going to recommend that she try the guardian and necro as well. I don’t know that she will looking for speed clears or anything of the sort at least not for some time.

I intend to level another character along with her once she settles in on a class.

Ozzy, if you will be levelling together, I have a very good (I think) tip for you!

My SO and I levelled a bunch of characters like that. Without exception, playing a pair of professions that synergize well is a real blast!

If you’re open for suggestions on what you’re picking for your character, see what she picks and then select something that synergizes well with it!

I would have a good look at all those profession advice threads we have here, but none of them are about good dual profession synergy, so I’ll give you a couple of examples:

Profession → Synergy

Elementalist  - Any melee class that can make use of fields. Thief ideal.
Guardian       - Squishies, like a daggerdagger ele.
Ranger           - Means 4 team members, if you are two Rangers!

And so on, and so forth

Why not let her experiment and pick her own?

When my husband started playing I had similar concerns to you. He’s not that great at RPGs because he doesn’t have the patience to plan and stick to a build or consider tactics in combat (GW2 isn’t so bad for that, but he was terrible at Dragon Age: Origins for example, even on easy mode).

His first character was an elementalist, followed by a mesmer. I was literally biting my tongue waiting for him to get frustrated and angry so I could suggest playing something simpler like a guardian.

But he loved it, especially the mesmer. He got shown a few shatter builds by a friend and got really into it. And when he did try a guardian (and a warrior) later he found it really boring and never got them beyond level 15 or so. (This was before the NPE so that was enough to try out a few traits and get a feel for the profession.)

If I’d pushed him into a ‘safe’ profession it would probably have put him off the game.

Mesmer is a good profession that ppl like in dungeon, but I wouldn’t recommend it to your wife. Like someone else said, they are dependant on trait which make the early level can be difficult.

Guardian is far easier to play at low level and everybody love a guardian in dungeon.

Necro is also a good profession to play, but ppl don’t really like it in dungeon.

For high end content mesmers need to know what they’re doing, they also have quite some burst rotations which must be performed swiftly and on the go to be effective, when playing one you’re either really passive or really aggressive depending on the build.
The profession’s also slow out of combat, that’s fixed with runes which however aren’t available early, plus many things they can do require traits( imo it’s not a big deal).

As for guardian, they’re faceroll-y, can tank alot when going full damage and can support their team very well.

Overall, the classes i’d suggest you in order of how good they are in this scenario are:
Warrior and guardian as they have alot of room for errors.
Ranger because it’s straight forward and the pet helps alot in pve.
Necromancer is fine if she really loves the concept and what it can do.

I’ve assumed she’s little to no idea about how the game is, however, once she grasps the various mechanics and how things work then the profession i’d suggest over the others is the mesmer.
That’s because it’s an excellent profession in pve, it can support allies incredibly well and can do pretty much everything, at the cost of having to accomodate a few weaknesses (like the lack of mobility).

Any profession can be picked up by a new player, just some have lower learning curves than others. Those are all mentioned above. Even the higher learning curve professions can still be picked up and played effectively by new players. A more difficult to play or survive with profession can actually be a benefit to a new player, as they are forced to learn when to dodge, use survival skills, and position yourself faster than they would with a ranger or warrior.

She should just try ones that appeal to her until she finds a playstyle she likes. You have 5 character slots for that reason to experiment. The game does a decent job of easing a new player into it, aside from combos and specialized PvP, dungeon, or WvW tricks. All of those can be taught once the basics are down.

The only thing I don’t recommend is a “typical” new ranger setup with a tanky pet and a bow. This is a very safe way to play the game, but it doesn’t require the player to learn when to dodge and when to activate defensive skills. It becomes a lot harder to play another class after learning on a bow/tankypet ranger. Greatsword with an offensive or support pet is a better way to learn the game as a ranger.

Mesmer is my favorite. When I started playing GW2 the only other game remotely similar was Diablo, Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 where I played the ranged classes – rogue and sorcerer (really disliked the melee classes). So I started with a ranger, liked and still like ranger. I saw my friend doing incredible things with an elementalist so tried that next. Liked and still like it. For my third character I decided to try something different so went for mesmer. Loved it and still do. I tried warrior next and surprisingly had fun with it and still do. Now I have all professions plus 2 extra mesmers. My least favorite are thief and necro but that’s probably because I don’t know how to play them well.

I didn’t realize it was supposed to be hard to level a mesmer so just enjoyed it since it was so much fun. On my second mesmer I realized that the real fun started when I got some traits so was very impatient to reach level 40 so I could use Master traits. My third mesmer was only in her 20’s or 30’s when the trait system got reworked this past April. Even though she had all her traits unlocked it was pure agony to wait until level 60 to get the masters traits unlocked.

Your wife won’t realize how things used to be so won’t feel thwarted in her leveling but since traits are very important to a mesmer’s build and how she uses her illusions she will need to get most of her traits eventually so she can try the different fun ways to play a mesmer.

Since she won’t have gold or skill points that means going out to unlock them on a sub-par build. But with you two working together it can be fun. You might even try two mesmers so you know exactly what she’s going through and can compare notes. In one wvw encounter with another team it was very frustrating because they had 3 mesmers dressed and equiped almost exactly the same. Two were exactly the same. With 3 clones out for each of them it was very hard finding the real mesmers to target.

I think Mesmer would be fitting. There’s no need to use the high-skill builds – the default phantasm build is quite effective in PvE and easy as the phantasms are as fire-and-forget as it gets. You don’t need to shatter them, too, which simplifies the gameplay more. If she wants to try something more interesting later, mesmer can provide it as well.

When getting someone into the game who is new to mmos I would highly suggest not directing them to make a safe or easy character as their first. The most important thing is to find something they enjoy, can connect with, and works for them. The actual profession chosen is largely irrelevant.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I talked to her some more and I think she is going to stick to the mesmer for now. She was liking the greatsword play that she got in the starting area.

I am thinking about leveling a guardian or warrior alongside her. Which do you all think would compliment the mesmer most? She is primarily a pve player but I like to run WvW (one of the draws to this game for me) as well.

Do a guard, me and my S/O run that combo and its pretty good. We duo dungeons and such all the time. Warrior works well too(i have one) but in terms of support you are not going to provide her with much except your rez banner and other banners. Guard and mes on the other hand you can have perma reflects, nice perma swift buffs, her invis for you, the blinds and dazes both of you can pull off will make duoing a breeze. Those are just a couple of things i can think off of top of my head.

Great sword is fun. If you are in melee, with either the warrior or guardian, she will need to refrain from using GS-5. Also GS -1 does more damage the farther away the target is. So if they close in on her then switch to sword. Melee is also really fun with a mesmer, especially with a guardian standing by her side buffing her.

Danikat.8537:

Why not let her experiment and pick her own?

When my husband started playing I had similar concerns to you. He’s not that great at RPGs because he doesn’t have the patience to plan and stick to a build or consider tactics in combat (GW2 isn’t so bad for that, but he was terrible at Dragon Age: Origins for example, even on easy mode).

His first character was an elementalist, followed by a mesmer. I was literally biting my tongue waiting for him to get frustrated and angry so I could suggest playing something simpler like a guardian.

But he loved it, especially the mesmer. He got shown a few shatter builds by a friend and got really into it. And when he did try a guardian (and a warrior) later he found it really boring and never got them beyond level 15 or so. (This was before the NPE so that was enough to try out a few traits and get a feel for the profession.)

If I’d pushed him into a ‘safe’ profession it would probably have put him off the game.

What Danikat said. I played GW2 for over a year before hubby decided he wanted to try after watching me. He never had played any MMOs before so everything was a discovery for him. He just picked what seemed interesting to him and started playing. Sometimes he got frustrated but as he went he found what he enjoyed. Now he has several 80 level professions and he has gotten a lot of enjoyment out just discovering on his own.

She will get more out of figuring it out on her own as she goes. Sometimes I would join him as he was discovering areas had a good time together as he was leveling up. I helped him when he asked in-world but generally he did what he wanted. His play style isn’t like mine but he has done very well and it has been a lot of fun watching him discover things.

I will say since he had never played anything like this before, I did laugh myself sick when he first created a avie and ran it into the wall for 5 minutes while he was figuring out controls. I still chuckle…. He laughs about that now too.

Necro seems to be avoided – ironically – like the plague. Guard for suree

Dante.8456:

Necro seems to be avoided – ironically – like the plague. Guard for suree

Rofl. Nice one.

Warrior or Thief? Button mashing and pretty straight forward. That’s what my girlfriend did.

I have only been playing three weeks as Thief. ‘Button mashing’, is it?
As for the other new term, ‘button bloat’, I think keybinding helps a lot.

Would it work for Mesmers, Elementalists, and Engineers? No idea.

I can share my setup, but it is flawed:

All action keys to the number pad, WASD/QE & spacebar for movement.
That leaves the camera, which I revert to the mouse for, and get hit meanwhile- have to solve that.

Didn’t know that it took a lot of ‘button bloat’, but I have seen Elementalists rip a battlefield apart, again and again. Asurae, chiefly.
Mesmers can be very annoyingly good at multiplying themselves, but then again, I have control and targeting issues.

No idea what works best, but from all the advice people have given you, maybe you can find the best teammate for your character, and pair up as she levels up.