Guild Wars 2

Good evening! My name’s Chase.

I’m about to be creating my first character soon, and want to know what classes are generally needed the most. My prior experience with rpg’s mmo’s has me as a supportive player, doing tank or healer professions in response to the severe lack caused by everyone and their mother wanting to be a dps hero.

What classes are needed? Also, how do they each fair in PvE and PvP?

To decide what build you want, first you should ask yourself, “What matters most to me?”

Is it looking cool, dealing a good amount of damage, support, etc?

Well, one of the nice things about GW2 is the fact that pretty much all the professions are capable of all these things, though some more than others.

To answer your first question, generally, guardians are needed the most. They are arguably the best at support, but can still do a high amount of damage.

All of the professions are highly viable in PvP. Once again, it just depends on your setup, how skilled you are, etc.

As for PvE, since you’re going to be doing a lot of running, you’re going to want a profession with a speed boost of some sort. The ranger, elementalist, and necromancer, for example(s), all have skills that you unlock that give you a passive 25% speed boost.
As for killing monsters themselves, doing more damage is probably better than defense, at least when you’re exploring. The warrior and guardian do a ton of melee damage.

My recommendation for PvE, though, would be a ranger. They do plenty of long range damage and have lots of movement skills/speed boosts.

I kinda figured the support class would be needed once again, that’s fine. I enjoy the role. Do races have any affinity towards the different classes? the main site wasn;t very specific about it. Assuming Humans are jack of all trades, master to none, as usual.

Actually, races have very little little to do with abilities. So whether you choose asura, charr, human, sylvari, or norn, you will mostly get the same things.

The only major difference is, of course, the looks. As for anything “special” that the races get, the only thing that they get are special racial skills, which aren’t that great. Plus, you can’t even use them in PvP. There are only about 2-3 racial skills per race, by the way.

Here’s the link to them, if you want http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Racial_Skills

You can use racial abilities in world PvP but not arena PvP, so it matters some but not enough that it should determine which race/class combo you pick. Pick your race based on aesthetic, your class based on playstyle.

I see the most “LF Guardian” than any other class. Everyone loves to have at least one in their group.

Guardian. It’s a support class that is strong in almost all group compositions. Excellent for PvE, PvP, and WvW.

Warrior would make a good starting class, easiest to learn and pretty strong through most of the early game. should help you get a feel for what you want.

The main difference between warrior and guardian is the type of support they bring. warriors r more self-centered in the sense their skills r built to save only themselves (with the exception of warbanner), however they provide excellent dps support like might/fury and banners. guardians have many heals/blocks and are always providing boons to help groups, except they dont have much dps support except with a staff. Also warriors are definitely easier to play, playing a good guardian is more challenging but is more useful for groups.

High efficiency dungeon runs sometimes can work with 5 dps builds, but if its members are all lousy the party can wipe. In terms of support/healing/tanking if you’re into that stuff, the elementalist and the guardian are the best at that role. Between which, the elementalist’s skill floor is so high it’s probably better to start with the guardian first.

The build I have linked is a support build used for WvW mostly – its heal is basically too strong for PvE applications, and getting that level of healing required sacrificing quite a bit of damage to be efficient. Though I do occasionally drag her into dungeons when the rest of the party completely and utterly fails at keeping themselves alive.

If you really only want to play the class that’s most needed, I’m going to have to echo everyone else and say Guardian. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, Guardians, while a good support class, have some really good damage options like Greatsword and Hammer. They also have utility skills that improve different sources of damage. It’s entirely possible to build an offense-focused Guardian.

At the same time, there are quite a few Guardians in the game already – they’re not an unpopular class, just the one that is needed in pretty much every group. I’d say it’s smarter to play what you want to play, and worry about grouping later. This isn’t a game where you need X, Y, and Z amount of tanks, healers, and DPSers.

Guardians are great support, and they’re hard to knock over too. For me, I didn’t find the guardian playstyle to be as engaging as other classes (perhaps I wasn’t doing it right), so I keep an Elementalist on my roster for support. I find light armor classes to be a lot more interesting as I know I have to keep my head in the game or I’m going to end up squashed :P

Elementalists are more of a skill-rotation class, and they have a good number of builds available that cater to many kinds of playstyles. If you like twitchy game play, dagger/dagger Eles are high action and fairly robust. If you like support, you can build for tons of healing and condition removals and boons for your party. And every so often, it’s fun to be a DPS hero, and there are glass cannon builds out there as well.