Guild Wars 2

My main since coming back has been a Mesmer, and I’ve loved it. About to hit 80 and I won’t be stopping, but I haven’t explored chronomancer just yet with her.

Leveling has been fun, but mesmers aren’t exactly super tanky – we get distortion and lots of fun tricks but we can’t actually take a bunch of hits. So I thought for a second character that I’d ask people which class they’ve had fun with that is also a bit resilient/tanky/can take the hits, and isn’t ~quite~ as involved as Mesmer while still being engaging.

I think I’m looking at warrior, revenant, and necromancer. Does that sound right? All three can take some damage, can do open world PvE easily? Can anyone compare them in terms of fun, or is one more boring than the other, or so on?

Am I stupidly leaving out Guardian or any other class? From what I read guardian has a lot of blocks and blinds and tricks, like the mesmer, but the small health pool means you can get taken down easily if you aren’t on your toes. For warrior, I worry it may be a little boring, and for revenant I hear all sorts of stuff about them but I don’t care about end-game raids, though I do care if they are still “buggy” which I’ve seen tossed around a bit.

I guess I’m looking for something where you don’t have to be quite as “on your toes” as with Mesmer, basically, while still being lots of fun!

I understand this is all subjective of course, I just want your opinion.

So what I am getting out of your post is you are looking for something that you don’t have to worry about proper skill rotation, is tanky, but, “Fun” too.

Do you want to be Tanky and deal condition damage or is power more your thing?

Both Necro and Warrior can build pretty tanky, and are forgiving as far as not caring to press your buttons in a proper rotation.

You are leaving out guardian. It’s a fun and engaging tanky. Warrior and necro are just afk tanky. You might also consider ranger. It’s extremely durable and gets ludicrously durable with the druid elite spec. Can be very fun to melee with.

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

Fluffball.8307:

You are leaving out guardian. It’s a fun and engaging tanky. Warrior and necro are just afk tanky. You might also consider ranger. It’s extremely durable and gets ludicrously durable with the druid elite spec. Can be very fun to melee with.

You know half the warriors tankyness comes from its mobility, not its durability, if you afk it, you’re missing half its durability

And then there is the normal example that you can literally park your warrior afk in a starter zone where an event spawns and just let healing signet make it impossible for 20 bandits to kill you (as they attack once per 5 seconds). I once saw an event stall because all the event enemies were stuck trying to kill an afk warrior and never got to the actual spot where they were supposed to go.

I’m just talking in generalities.

Amaimon.7823:

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

That’s incorrect. Water/Earth/Tempest with a tanky stat set (e.g. celestial) can face tank champions all day long and solo just about anything.

AliamRationem.5172:

Amaimon.7823:

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

That’s incorrect. Water/Earth/Tempest with a tanky stat set (e.g. celestial) can face tank champions all day long and solo just about anything.

Maybe in pve, but the sturdyness of the ele is practically nonexistant in pvp

Amaimon.7823:

AliamRationem.5172:

Amaimon.7823:

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

That’s incorrect. Water/Earth/Tempest with a tanky stat set (e.g. celestial) can face tank champions all day long and solo just about anything.

Maybe in pve, but the sturdyness of the ele is practically nonexistant in pvp

The OP specifically asked about open world PvE, but this is also incorrect. It would be more accurate to say that the meta for ele is not all that sturdy (which is also true in PvE). However, if you drop the team support and focus on self-preservation with your build, ele is very tanky in PvP as well. It’s perhaps the most versatile class, so you can play it many different ways.

Not that I’m recommending ele. The OP seemed to indicate a less complicated class to play. So ele probably wouldn’t be a good fit. But it has the tankiness covered, if that’s how you want to build.

For fun and tanky PvE my vote is with Reaper (the necromancer elite, does require HoT ownership). Slow, steady, and survives really well without taking too long to kill enemies. The elite weapon and utilities flow really well together. I pretty much hate using anything but my Reaper these days when it comes to wanting to slug my way through PvE.

Amaimon.7823:

AliamRationem.5172:

Amaimon.7823:

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

That’s incorrect. Water/Earth/Tempest with a tanky stat set (e.g. celestial) can face tank champions all day long and solo just about anything.

Maybe in pve, but the sturdyness of the ele is practically nonexistant in pvp

Someone doesn’t play pvp, eles have been staple team bunkers for years.

Odokuro.5049:

So what I am getting out of your post is you are looking for something that you don’t have to worry about proper skill rotation, is tanky, but, “Fun” too.

Do you want to be Tanky and deal condition damage or is power more your thing?

Both Necro and Warrior can build pretty tanky, and are forgiving as far as not caring to press your buttons in a proper rotation.

I don’t really care about condition versus power for the most part. I think I’m looking for something that’s more forgiving in open world PvE than my mesmer was when leveling up, and continues to be at 80 (chrono isn’t unlocked yet). So yeah, something where I can relax just a bit more and have a buffer before I die, but not something where I literally just sit and auto-attack either.

Warrior is definitely tempting. Necro is as well. I’ve heard I can look at revenant, ranger, and guardian as well but if I start looking at 5 classes that’s practically all of them besides the obvious glass cannons (thief, elementalist) so I’ll have to winnow them down at some point.

@OP: I would suggest to stick with your mesmer for a little bit more. Yes, base mesmer is indeed a bit squishy, but after you unlock chronomancer, it will increase your defensive capabilities and give you an immense group support potential. And if you still struggle on the standard chronomancer build, you can try out the minstrel chrono, which trades pretty much all your personal damage for even more group support and tankiness. That build is absolutely unplayable solo (you will take hours to kill anything), but it’s very good for difficult group content, where your teammates struggle to stay alive.

Your other options would include power thief and condition necromancer. Both of these classes have the option to take a trait, which heals you based on your outgoing damage (this trait is a minor DPS loss, but that’s perfectly acceptable for open world and can be easily swapped back based on your situtation). Both of these classes are naturally very survivable (thief thanks to the amount of dodges and blinds, necromancer thanks to high health pool + both have means of projectile mitigation) and with the healing trait they become virtually immortal, while still dealing respectable damage.

Healer druid is also an option, but it suffers the same fate as minstrel chrono, in that it’s very good for group play, but absolutely unsuited for any kind of solo play.

I’m not giving up on my mesmer at all. I really love the gameplay, and I like playing support in groups so once I work out the kinks and complete chrono I’m sure I’ll love it! Thanks for the encouragement though, it’s good to know it gets better.

I do think I want to give necromancer a good shot. Being an unkillable agent of death does sound like a ton of fun. I just need to figure out a good race for it now!

I have played five professions for about four years and Guardian is the most ‘naturally’ solid. You can spec them for auto-micro-heals and 25% movement without too much of a compromise in PvE. The addition of bow-and-arrow dynamic makes them equally solid in HoT against nasty HoT mobbing. A joy to play if a little limited on direct damage output – in HoT, not dying is far more important than in core maps. Very handy profession to have to drop into new maps!

Would also agree Rangers can be very solid as well, in time.