Guild Wars 2

So i have enough character slots to have one character of each profession.

I started playing engineer and elementalist.
but after going into their profession forums,
I see nothing but people saying how useless the classes are.

I want to play a class that is not going to be useless,or passed by for groups because said class is hyped to be under powered or not good enough.

since i have bought extra character slots, I have the option of having one of each profession as stated before.

what roles do i want to fill? I want to be able to solo, while also being able to do things in groups when needed.

i do not want to be the weakest link.

Play Ranger or play Warrior both offer great group support and are pretty good in the solo aspect of the game.

There are a lot of people complaining around the forums in every professions section. However, I am quite certain that every class still has viable builds. There are just certain days or weeks where you see more complaining threads on the front pages instead of interesting build discussions. But that will change again!

As for what you are looking for is a Thief for Solo and maybe a Guardian for Group Support. But as already mentioned pretty much any class has viable builds for both. Some are better suited, some less…

Guardians can do everything and are good at all aspects of GW2.

They are also fairly immune to being nerfed, as Anet think they are in ‘good’ place, so don’t tinker too much with them…

Take everything you read in the class forums with a pinch of salt

The medium armour professions have ‘some issues’ and require a bit more thought into build and gear setup when playing in the 5 map group content than the rest I would say.

Thankfully a lot of the 5 man group content can be cleared with any setup or mix of professions.

However if you are someone that absolutely has to play the class that is least likely to get kicked from groups doing the hardest content then I would roll Warrior or Guardian.

I would stress that player ‘skill’ and experience counts for a lot more than what profession they play in most cases.

Every single class is powerful (mesmer is more questionable but we still have our uses).

Guardians, warriors and mesmers are meta classes for the time being until PUGs catch up with the actual good class compositions, but if you wanted to be completely meta-proof, a guardian would be best since they’re in massive demandfor basically every single piece of content, plus doesn’t take too much skill to learn.

Every profession sub-forum has QQers complaining about being underpowered and useless and blah blah blah…

Rangers can bring great team utility, but you’ll hear people complaining about the constant pet death. Engineers have so much build variety and can fill any role, but you’ll get whiners complaining that profession X does it better. Warriors are kings of PvE dps, but they’re not nearly as top-o-the-charts in PvP. Etc, etc, etc…

Every profession has strengths & weaknesses. Play whichever is most fun to you. With updates every 2-4 weeks, every profession is going to change its ranking in the OP/UP listing.

I main an Engi cuz it’s the most fun. And I find my warrior incredibly boring, despite its ability to hit hard.

Warriors, Rangers, and Guardians are good martial professions that can easily be solo’d and still useful in groups. A Guardian’s role becomes more support focused than DPS when in a group though.

Necromancer is a easy solo caster profession and can bring good sustained DPS in groups.

The other professions are still mostly viable, but can have inconsistent power progression, making them somewhat difficulty to play initially.

WhiteLobo.4630:

I started playing engineer and elementalist.
but after going into their profession forums,
I see nothing but people saying how useless the classes are.

Don’t listen to whiners, or play with people who will pass you up because your profession “isn’t good enough”.

Oh and play a spec that’s viable. Every profession has at least one.

You’ll probably never be the best at everything, but as long as you’re playing a viable spec and know what you’re doing you’ll be fine.

Solkard.5136:

Warriors, Rangers, and Guardians are good martial professions that can easily be solo’d and still useful in groups. A Guardian’s role becomes more support focused than DPS when in a group though.

DPS and support are not mutually exclusive, a competent guard will run either 10/30/0/30/0 or 10/30/0/5/25 while in full berserker, giving you strong DPS while at the same time being able to support your team efficiently with condition removal and might stacking or faster consecrations.

Ignore the QQ on forums. No profession will ever be useless, theyre all balanced and arenanrt doesnt intend on changing that.

colesy.8490:

Solkard.5136:

Warriors, Rangers, and Guardians are good martial professions that can easily be solo’d and still useful in groups. A Guardian’s role becomes more support focused than DPS when in a group though.

DPS and support are not mutually exclusive, a competent guard will run either 10/30/0/30/0 or 10/30/0/5/25 while in full berserker, giving you strong DPS while at the same time being able to support your team efficiently with condition removal and might stacking or faster consecrations.

I did not mean they couldn’t dps, just that they would be expected to take on support duties as well. I have a friend who plays caster classes but refuses to do anything beyond dps because he doesn’t like to multi-task.

Solkard.5136:

I have a friend who plays caster classes but refuses to do anything beyond dps because he doesn’t like to multi-task.

Sounds like a personal problem.

There is nothing wrong with any of the classes, and those who imply there is are still new to the game and parroting others who don’t know what they are talking about. ANet spends quite a bit of effort balancing all the classes, to great success. Each class has group based skills and traits as well as individual skills.

The group based skills rely on your team, and out power individual skills by a lot when in a group. The group skills help you less when running solo, but more when in a team. Most newer (and some older) players get fixated on individual dps builds and use those metrics to judge everything. I think they do this because the math is somewhat easier and more consistent than trying to calculate team dps.

This is silly because the elegance of the game involves creating and finishing your own and your teams combo fields as well as buffing… The damage and dps gets way to hard to calculate when taking your effect on your teammates into account, so many avoid it altogether (to great peril) Take ranger’s spotter as an example. 150 extra precision is ok for you, nice for a team of 2, great for 3 (we are now talking 450 precision added to the team). How about a group of 5 or more?

Every class has a nice little team nugget to offer (think banners, AoE combo fields, team traits etc). And, every class can do great solo as well (up close or at range). Pick the one you like best and don’t look back, you’ll do fine.