Guild Wars 2

I mean you no harm, I come from WoW. Overall. I like this game. I watched Angry Joe’s review of it online (whose videos I subscribe to) and was like “….dude I gotta get this.”

About me: I’ve played WOW for six years. In that time I’ve played a Paladin Prot/Ret Pally. An arms/fury warrior and a Warlock Demo/Aff warlock. I dabbled as a mage but wasn’t thrilled. My main for the last year has been a Rogue (but I’ve already decided against playing Thief, I know it’s too hard for noobs just from using Google).

I guess what I’m looking for is a guide for how to play the first 5 levels of the game, what professions I should try.

Overall, if your friends are HUGE WOW fans and are unsure or unwilling to try this game. Send them to Angry Joe’s review, after 20 minutes I was sold on it and it might help your friends decide too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-_06Acj8Y

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/page/4#post1354924

Lots of great tips in the sticky thread at the above link.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together/page/30#post1245247

That thread is a good way to meet people to quest with in game.

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/ —→ lots of nice guides

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page —> the official wiki

As for professions, I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve tried so far. Perhaps list your likes and dislikes and then folks will give their strong opinions about how great their favorite profession is.

I would recommend from what you wrote to go for maybe warrior? It’s hard to say really you just have to try all professions and play them to about lvl 10 or so and try all the weapons they can use to see how you feel about each. You might be surprised what you end up going with!

As for guides, just play the game, do events that pop up on your screen, do the heart events, look at vistas, point of interests. Grab some harvesting tools and equip them from merchants and harvest nodes.

Hey,
I do not think that Thieves are too hard for noobs. I started with it, and I was fine with it. I was definitely a ‘noob’ at that time, because the game had just come out.

I have played WoW, but my mains were Priest and Mage, so maybe our tastes differ.

You may want to check out Guardian as that would be the closest to a Paladin. Obviously, Warrior is closest to Warrior. Demo/Aff Warlock is probably closest to a Necro. If it helps, I don’t like playing any of Necro/Guardian or Warrior, so if our tastes truly differ, these may be prime for you

sounds like you like non-complicated direct damage? I’ll recommend warrior or ranger.
any profession, the first several levels includes trying every type of weapon that profession can use. each one will ease you into it (you start with only 1 skill, then after x kills you get a 2nd, then a 3rd, then 4th, then 5th). this lets you find which weapon you enjoy most.
one more thing: leveling is fairly linear. meaning the time it takes to get from 2 to 3 is maybe only half as long as the time from 79 to 80, provided you are fighting enemies at your level.

Hey!
You can create each class (five at a time if you have the five starter slots; or just create one and delete it to try another one) and after the short tutorial (I think you will be lvl 2) go straight up to the pvp area (*) where you will be upleveled to lvl 80 and are able to try all skills (if I am not mistaken!).

(*) There is a symbol in the UI that lets you travel to the “hearts of the mists”, you will have to do the pvp tutorial once and then will be thrown into the pvp lounge where you can try out your selected class.

I hope that helps. :-)

EDIT: Please anyone corrects me, if I am wrong or did forget to mention something.

Thanks for the help guys. I tried a Necro for a little bit. Wasn’t really enthusiastic about it. It seems ….I dunno.

One thing I’ve noticed is that some professions are fun from the start and some really don’t get fun until they are higher levels. For me the ones that weren’t much fun until around level 30ish were mesmer, necro, and ele.

Ranger and guardian were fun for me from the start. My personal opinion is that for just getting used to the gameplay of the game, ranger is one of the easiest to start out on.

Disclaimer: I haven’t played warrior, thief, or engineer enough yet to give an opinion on them.

Most of the professions can be difficult till they are mid level. Several take some time to “click” and you understand what they can do and offer to a group. It’s best to try one of each. Like said above, you can PvP right away and try out the skills. You might be surprised what profession you turn out liking and which of its weapons you think are fun.

I think you might really like Guardian, if you’re a paladin fan. Notable features include

• Symbols: Like consecrations, these deal AoE damage to all enemies standing upon them. They also give out various boons (buffs). They can be traited to be larger, or heal friendlies standing upon them.
• Virtues: Passive benefits that can be temporarily sacrificed (think “stripping” from GW1 Dervishes, if you’ve tried that) to give out buffs to nearby allies. Or keep them to yourself, if playing solo.
• Altruistic Healing: A self-heal that procs every time you buff an ally. A trait that makes Guardian one of the “tankiest” professions in the game.

For a warrior parallel, GW2’s warrior is pretty keen. Greatsword has one of the biggest burst damage abilities in the game, but you can’t turn while channeling it, creating a fun risk/reward factor.

Warlock parallels, however, are subpar in my opinion. Necromancers, the most “warlocky” class, can’t spend their HP as a resource, and their pets are awful. Conditions, the DoT of GW2, suffer from a lot of problems as well, including the bleed cap, and how condition damage is itemized separately from Power, the damage increasing stat for most skills.
——
I’d say make a Warrior your first character. They are very easy to play, and you will feel pretty powerful. If you want to try other professions afterwards, you can do so at anytime.

I spent 7 years in WoW, mostly doing cloth casters. I was sure I wouldn’t like Guardian because Paladin never did much for me. It turns out she’s my fave for dungeons and general survivability. You should give each profession a go here, they have very different feels from their WoW analogues. And no matter what you’re playing, make sure to dodge attacks, strafe, kite, move around. Learn your weapon swaps and use them freely.

A Warrior will be a good straight up learning experience for the game mechanics, as others suggest. Every profession has basic competence and then has superlative play possible, and though each one tends to different mechanics the overall idea of meshing your skills, dodging, using skills when appropriate rather than spamming them, and reacting to the situation instead of doing a rotation — all that will serve you well and make additional professions that much easier to figure out as you pick them up.

Sorry, terrible grammar, it’s past bedtime and I’m not crafting my words that well. Do some test runs on various professions with various races, see what feels fun and keep on doing the fun one. You can always roll another character to try out the next thing!

Play each profession till 30th level, you fill out all your skill bars then and choose which you like best…

Remember, save up 10 skill points from lvl 20 to buy your elite skill at 30th…

If you don’t like a class before you get to 30 abandon it, there is never any need to ever delete a character, unless you need the character slot btw…

Also, as a bonus, if you do your personal story for all to about lvl 31, you will get 16 black lion keys to open 16 black lion chests for free…

Try out Guardian. You played a Pally in WoW and so you might like the holy warrior playstyle.

My advice: roll every profession and, after the initial lvl 1 sequence) take them to the Heart of the Mists (accessed via the PvP window). It’s bascially the PvP lobby. There, you will be automatically up-leveled to 80 and all of your skills unlocked. You can then try out all of your skills on target golems to get a feel for their playstyle.

Welcome and good luck.

One caution about the Heart of Mists trick is that it can be overwhelming to try to integrate all the skills in your mind and reflexes for testing if you aren’t already familiar with how the game works. At least for me it is. In all my MMO’s I have always wanted to level from the beginning, adding in a few skills at a time so as to learn them properly.

But if you can understand the tooltips on the skills and parse them in your mind into how they work together, it -is- nice to have access to all of them to see how fluid they feel, how nice they look, how convenient you find the keyboard settings, etc.

From his text Guardian seems like a good fit, easy for noobs and has great extensive guides up for it. Also it has a Paladin feel to it so he should feel almost right at home.

Please see:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Profession-Selection-Guide/first

Irena.1062:

From his text Guardian seems like a good fit, easy for noobs and has great extensive guides up for it. Also it has a Paladin feel to it so he should feel almost right at home.

On this very point, while true, I would try to avoid making too many direct comparisons to WoW during your gameplay. I was in the same situation and found it, on occassion, quite limiting. For example, Rangers have some great melee capabilities but I found myself disregarding this due to the natural comparison I made to my Hunter in WoW and the fact that if you went into melee, you would get laughed off the server.

Just to be clear Irena, I’m not slamming your post! It is absolutely true (partly why I rolled my Guardian) and I definitley agree with you.

hmm, i wouldn’t base a choice on not playing something around ‘’its not noob friendly’’ in my experience getting on and playing what you REALLY want no matter how big the task it may seem is to just jump on the horse and get it going.

It’s kind of like saying ‘’i want to practice archery, but as im new ill start with darts’’

1) disregard anything and everything learnt from WoW about what classes do what.

but as a lot have said from your text it seems the guardian might be the best fit, however what is your desired type of gameplay? i am curious as guardian might not fill it, i.e. would you of picked your rogue over your other characters any day? and why?

pzykotic.4061:

Thanks for the help guys. I tried a Necro for a little bit. Wasn’t really enthusiastic about it. It seems ….I dunno.

Certain professions in this game take time to really blossom and necromancer is definitely one of them. It took me well beyond level 80 to figure out the best necro build for my playstyle. Despite the necromancer being the master of conditions manipulation, I have evolved a rather potent and fun death shroud/crit build for PvE that eschews applying conditions almost entirely.

My very first GW2 profession was the engineer, which I am sorry to say, I regret. I loved the idea of a firearms-wielding, grenade-tossing dude bristling with gadgets, but the reality is quite different and rather underwhelming.

Honestly, I wish I had started out as a guardian. It is a very well-balanced and inspiring profession. It is truly the only profession that comes close to “doing it all” quite well. Of course, guardian really excels in a support role (staff/shouts/virtues) with a mountain of sustain, but you can get very respectable DPS if you trait for it.

Guardian would be my recommendation for a “first”.

Some may recommend warrior as a “first”, but the profession is a dual-edged sword (pun intended). The mechanics are easy, lots of fun to play, and the red 10k+ crit numbers flashing on the screen are a hoot. But the warrior has probably the lowest sustain of all the professions and it takes time to really figure out the right build for your playstyle.