Utterly New to GW2: Some basic questions
Servers only matter for WvW. Otherwise all servers play together on the same maps.
Professions are what you might call classes. Crafting disciplines can be perused in the Wiki (link above) to determine what you might like to level first.
Utility, Healing and Elite skills can be changed. Hero Points spent can not be ‘unspent’. Again, you can read up on Traits and Specialization in the Wiki.
My best advice is to leave the L80 Boost alone until you have leveled a character or two up naturally.
Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.
1) World choice only really affects the WvW game mode. For PvE and PvP all players across all worlds are effectively playing on the same servers.
2) Tailoring is the right choice for a necro’s armour and most necro weapons are crafted by either a weapon smith or artificer. Crafting is useful for making end game gear (ascended) but not required as there are other means of obtaining it. If you’re willing to put in the time and expense to level up the crafts, they can make your life easier, but you can also get by without if crafting is not your thing.
Crafting is also useless for food (chef) and utility consumables (weaponsmith, artificer, and huntsman) for endgame content. Most can be bought on the trading post, so again, not strictly required, but can be handy to be able to make your own.
One craft I would avoid right now is jeweller – top tier jewellery is not craftable, and relatively cheaply and easily available from farming the newest maps.
3) Respecs in terms of skills and traits is very forgiving. There are enough hero point available to unlock every skill and every trait, and you can switch which ones you have equipped at any time when not in combat. By the time you hit level 80, you’ll have enough points to get all the skills and traits from the core specs just from level-up rewards, so there’s little point banking them for later.
Respecs on gear are less forgiving when you get to the top tier ascended gear – depending on the stats you respec to, it can be quite costly. But it sounds like you’re a long way off that right now, so I wouldn’t worry about it yet.
1) Server choice does not matter, except for WvW. There’s no “new player” server, but folks here are generally helpful and asking questions in map chat is a good and helpful thing most of the time. Watch for apple/mentor tags for self-designated player helpers.
2) Most useful crafts for necro are probably tailoring and artificer (wands, staves, foci). Crafting is arguably the easiest way to get ascended gear— which has top tier stats.
3) Respec’ing traits/skills is as easy as clicking for any game mode. Respec’ing gear for PvE is potentially pricey, depending upon desired stats.
However, if you just want to experiment, pop yourself into the PvP lobby (crossed swords icon on left screen). There, you are L80 (like everyone else), have access to all build options, all weapon types, and amulets— which are “gear” in PvP. It is easy to experiment with any character class or race in the PvP lobby. There are golems and class NPCs in the lobby for testing.
You need not worry about gearing and perfecting a build until you’re max level. At that point, you can check with the class forums and sites like metabattle to decide what “the meta” currently is. Honestly, your build only matters to others in raids and high level fractals.
1) Does server choice matter? I’m on the east coast if that makes a difference. Tbh, I’d like a server that is meant for new players if that exists.
Only for World versus World. If you’re not interested in that, the server is of little to no relevance. World versus World is like an open world PvP where players of 1 server fight against players of 2 other servers.
2) I plan to play a necromancer (ultimately want to specialize in reaper). Would tailoring and weaponsmithing be good profession choices? In general, do professions actually matter in this game? I come from WoW where professions are kind of pointless.
This is an arguable topic, since crafting professions have very little use outside ascended and legendary armor crafting. It’s considered waaay easier to get exotic quality equipment, and ascendant trinkets by map currencies, event currencies, and other special currencies like Karma. You will however need to maximize the equipment crafting professions if you want to craft legendary armor, it’s not even an obligatory step for non-Heart of Thorns ascended armor. (the only reason HoT ascended armor requires crafting is because the signets are account-bound).
3) How forgiving/unforgiving is this game with respecs? Like if I want to experiment a lot with changing my skills or talents(or this game’s equivalent of talents), will there be a hefty price?
Depends on your point of view; you can freely change and move traits, skills, etc, as you see fit. There is no money or currency involved in changing your stats, equipments, traits or skills.
There is however, the outline of playing in groups, especially if you want to do fractals, the freedom in choice becomes less as people will expect you to run some of the proven optimal builds. In fractals there is still lenience to choose between optimal builds, but in raids for example they expect you to run picture perfect builds.