Guild Wars 2

Thief (my first lvl 80)

Pros: The highlights of playing a thief is having some sort of niche advantage in where you are op. Examples of this include constant blinds, stealths, smokescreens that nullify ranged and as many blast finishers as you want (which is amazing.) Lots of mobility to work with as well. Pretty cool looking weapons to work with.

Cons: Low hp. Low hp. Low hp. You gotta pay attention as a thief. If you forget one of your niche “get out of jail” moves you don’t live. Also I hate you for being cheap.

Ranger (my 1st main)

Pros: Game is easy. Press 2 with longbow and win. Pew pew pew. Bear bow for life. The skill cap is low and the skill ceiling isn’t actually that high. You can get through most of the game without any problems. They have the amazing water fields for mass heals and have access to pretty much fill any role in game. Does it mean that they are a great substitute for it? No. Pets are adorable with funny names but don’t rely on them too much.

Cons: I got bored of mine after awhile. I tried out every spec and every aspect. You are the jack of all trades but you have to specialize to be anything worth noting.

Guardian (I drop these so many times)

Pros: Guild War’s favored child. Low hp but high armor and upkeep makes u feel like a walking monster. All da buffs (cept fury). All the useful skills. All the useful weapons (except useless torch). A guardian in any group is welcomed, trust me when I say this. Staff on a guardian is the loot stick that lets you get every bag from every baddie in any event.

Cons: Slow (can be fixed). Limited ranged options. You’ve got a lot of responsibility keeping the dungeon group alive. Playing as superman gets boring after awhile.

If it looks like I am favoring guardians it’s because they are tier 1 compared to these other two.

Starbird, I see what you mean about being indecisive.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying levelling with your GS Ranger, having fun is a very important aspect of this game, and something many people seem to lose along the way, unfortunately.

Just be aware of a couple of things with your current chosen profession. As you face higher level enemies and participate in larger (boss) events, your pesky medium armour can become your downfall. GS requires you to be right up close, but your medium armour will often not give you adequate protection. Until you’ve mastered the game mechanics enough to keep moving and dodging while dealing damage, you’ll be dead before you can blink twice.

Remember also that your pet is a significant part of your dps capability and if it dies in combat, your dps tanks with it. This means keeping your pet alive in combat becomes a major priority and will divide your focus while fighting – not a good thing while you’re levelling.

I’ve levelled both Ranger and Guardian to 80 and my Guardian beats all my other alts hands-down. But – this is because he suits my natural play style : defensive + supportive. I’m not one of those ‘rush in and kill before i"m killed’ players, I prefer to hang back a bit and swoop in at the opportune moment.

Course, once I do, it’ll be with my Greatsword which allows met to hit hard enough to take down the necessary nasties. For me, the additional support capablities (read: virtues) of the Guardian are what wins it over Warrior for me. Warriors are actually way less tanky than new players expect, because they don’t have the extra heal+support skills the Guardian carries with the F1-3 skills.

Keep at it, though. As you play, you learn what does and doesn’t work for you – no one else can tell you that.

smhtjoa.7159:

Starbird, I see what you mean about being indecisive.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying levelling with your GS Ranger, having fun is a very important aspect of this game, and something many people seem to lose along the way, unfortunately.

Just be aware of a couple of things with your current chosen profession. As you face higher level enemies and participate in larger (boss) events, your pesky medium armour can become your downfall. GS requires you to be right up close, but your medium armour will often not give you adequate protection. Until you’ve mastered the game mechanics enough to keep moving and dodging while dealing damage, you’ll be dead before you can blink twice.

Remember also that your pet is a significant part of your dps capability and if it dies in combat, your dps tanks with it. This means keeping your pet alive in combat becomes a major priority and will divide your focus while fighting – not a good thing while you’re levelling.

I’ve levelled both Ranger and Guardian to 80 and my Guardian beats all my other alts hands-down. But – this is because he suits my natural play style : defensive + supportive. I’m not one of those ‘rush in and kill before i"m killed’ players, I prefer to hang back a bit and swoop in at the opportune moment.

Course, once I do, it’ll be with my Greatsword which allows met to hit hard enough to take down the necessary nasties. For me, the additional support capablities (read: virtues) of the Guardian are what wins it over Warrior for me. Warriors are actually way less tanky than new players expect, because they don’t have the extra heal+support skills the Guardian carries with the F1-3 skills.

Keep at it, though. As you play, you learn what does and doesn’t work for you – no one else can tell you that.

Thanks! Yeah, torn between Guard and Ranger now. Probably going to end up leveling both.

smhtjoa.7159:

Just be aware of a couple of things with your current chosen profession. As you face higher level enemies and participate in larger (boss) events, your pesky medium armour can become your downfall.

Not trying to persuade you one way or the other but just stating facts. This isn’t true. Armor grade has little to do with being squishy or not as the difference between light and heavy armor is about 200 toughness at level 80. It’s so negligable people rarely ever comment about the defensive advantages of heavy vs light, much less medium vs heavy.

GS requires you to be right up close, but your medium armour will often not give you adequate protection. Until you’ve mastered the game mechanics enough to keep moving and dodging while dealing damage, you’ll be dead before you can blink twice.

Just no.

For one, already covered “medium armor not giving adequate protection”. For two, Ranger Greatsword is one of the only professions that use Greatsword defensively. Most other professions use it as an offensive weapon to deal high dps (and oddly enough, Mesmer uses GS as a ranged weapon), Rangers use GS almost like a shield. It has an evade in the auto-attack, a daze (interrupt), a leap to get you close to the enemy or to rush away as well as a block that can protect you from projectile attacks or counter a melee ranged attack by kicking the attacker interrupting them in the process.

GS does require the Ranger to be close, but the GS is designed to be a weapon to protect you while in melee range. Not to mention the plethora of other tricks Rangers have to keep themselves alive…

Remember also that your pet is a significant part of your dps capability and if it dies in combat, your dps tanks with it. This means keeping your pet alive in combat becomes a major priority and will divide your focus while fighting – not a good thing while you’re levelling.

Also untrue. While the pet does do additional dps for you, it does not do anywhere near a “significant part” of it. I’ve heard a pet clocks in about 20-30% of a Ranger’s dps which is much less than half…and that’s even if your aim is to get dps from your pet. There are traits and pets built to fire at range, to buff your team or apply conditions or to mainly soak up hits and distract the enemy. If maxing dps is the goal of a pet, everyone would use birds since they can swift themselves and do a lot of crit damage…but that isn’t the case. People use different pets for different situations. I’m quite partial to my cat/dog combo, one for crits and the other for knockdown and immobilize.

For some, using or managing a pet becomes nusance. Other people enjoy the company or exploiting their pets’ strengths. Just know if you don’t enjoy the pet, think about rolling up something else.

People keep saying Thief is squishy. I swear, Thief is the easiest profession I’ve played to keep alive! So easy! And I haven’t even played a Necromancer (another tanky profession) and only limited play on Guardian. If you realize that stealth stops the enemies from attacking you and goes after others, you can keep yourself alive easy or simply run away before you get killed…or pick up a teammate that’s downed without getting molested. It’s a profession that can be simple as “backstab that guy over and over and he’ll die” to utilizing your teammates to apply your conditions for you or letting your enemies bleed out from your attacks while you’re undetectable.

Can rangers compete with Guardians dps wise?

Not really sure. Like I mentioned before, my experience with Guardians is limited. But you don’t tend to hear people talking about which is better than what, just who’s the best. For dps, tops is elementalist I believe. But metas change as well as the rankings as people discover more usable approaches.

The solution is easy.
Do all 3.
Effin´ get your kittendroppings together and focus on one class to level at least to 60 then do the next.
With your weird love for Trench coats starting Ranger is pretty much mandatory.

Pick a Norn Ranger so the Trench coats are especially big. :p
Also IMHO the Norn lore is the most suited towards the Ranger class and his pets.

As for Guardian´s flatfootedness, you already guessed it, Staff is the answer.
AND all things that prolong boon duration.
This together with the Retreat shout will help keep your Guardian mobile for a while, you get locked into two-handed weapons though.