Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I’m pretty new to this game, been playing a week or so, and I’ve having a lot of trouble with picking a class.

I’ve tried both warrior and elementalist up to around 15. I prefer casters typically but I had a lot more success with the warrior.

The issue is I’m finding everything just kinda hard, probably as a result of being a long-time WoW player. Dodging and any sort of movement during solo PvE is very far out of my comfort zone. I can certainly not stand in fire, but that’s about it. I understand that it’s a skill I need to master for both PvE and PvP (which is a big interest of mine, eventually), but is their a class that will ease me into it more?

Essentially I’m looking for the class WoW players should go to in order to adjust to the drastically different dynamics of the game. Something I can learn to avoid damage instead of just mitigating it, without being punished very much for failing.

The only things I’d say are really out of the question are Thief and Engineer, if one of those is perfect for this I might change my mind though.

If you want a class that gives you a bit of distance between you and the mob. Try ranger. You get a pet that usually tanks the mob for you while you dps it along side your pet with ranged weapons. Also if you get aggro fro mthe mob and it runs to you, you have some distance from yourself and the mob to get used to dodging and interrupting the mob. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but most mobs, once you have layed longer, you can tell when they are gonna hit you or use a AOE spell or a DOT. Just takes a lil time to catch the tells form the mobs to know what they are planning. Hope this helped a bit

Go ranger to start out. You can find a tanky pet to engage the mob for you and do damage from a distance.

I will warn you now though of a difficulty rangers face: though extremely good in PvE it takes a high level of skill to be really useful in dungeons, high level fractals, and WvW. (Obviously anything that does damage and heals is helpful, but rangers are often considered sub-optimal) The reason it takes high skill (imo) is because to remain useful you probably need to build glass-cannon, and will need to compensate by being very mobile and generally good at not taking damage. Because rangers don’t NEED to practice these skills in PvE, many of them never develop these skills. Plus many people just choose to lvl other characters instead of using their ranger for this content.

If you have friends to play with though it won’t matter. Also, if you ease yourself into the game with ranger and then expand to other classes it won’t be a problem.

Okay thanks, I may end up playing Ranger because of what you guys said.

What would you suggest as a class that will force me to learn damage avoidance, while still giving me some lee-way so it’s not a miserable experiance?

Playing a thief will teach you how to evade for sure, it should be fine as long as you don’t get into a group fight.

Lindbur.2537:

Playing a thief will teach you how to evade for sure, it should be fine as long as you don’t get into a group fight.

Whereas Mesmer will teach you how to mitigate damage through all means available. Of course, Mesmer is not a friendly profession, so keep that in mind.

Looking at what you said about preferring casters, Mesmer might actually be what you’re looking for (although it will be hard early on). Mesmers are the equivalent of battle-mages, although they have the option of being ranged instead of melee (when you reach 80, you typically have one weaponset with a mainhand Sword).