Guild Wars 2

Thief would be my suggestion too, however the Thief is extremely squishy but you can dispatch an unsuspecting player in less than a few seconds if you’re prepared. Otherwise you’ll have superior burst damage to most other people but less sustainability in both damage and survivability in a fair fight. You usually have some option to get away too depending on your choice of utility skills and primary weapon.

If you do not want to play a Thief but want to focus on melee damage still with more survivability then a Warrior would be good. You’ll still have a good amount of burst with more sustainability, plus access to blocks and short duration immunity if you so choose.

Raideen.5973:

the spells don’t “speak” to me like some other mmo’s.

Heavy stuff man.

The main things I considered when I made this post is that Norn are obviously the most barbaric race but at the same time they don’t really do anything that is worse than the other races.

The most violent things I can think of that Norn do are hunt, brawl, fight the dredge, and oppose Jormag.

They don’t really hunt in a way that would cause a genocide of an entire species, and usually since they want to try to take on something that’s challenging for the sake of glory, something like an oversized ice wurm is probably causing problems for the ecosystem anyway.

Most of the Norn brawls seem to be good matured despite being naturally violent, I’m sure a few resulted in injuries but I doubt many result in death. They also request brawls from other races almost like a pastime too, and they don’t care much if they get turned down.

Fighting the Dredge is the closest thing the Norn have done that would be considered warfare, but at the same time, Dredge are pretty much openly hostile to everyone. So if I had to move basically my entire race to a new land, and then there happened to be people that wanted to harm them, I wouldn’t exactly let them be.

Finally Jormag and the other dragons are pretty straight forward. I wouldn’t want something that is essentially destroying the world just rampaging around, plus one that drove the Norn race from their homes in the first place.

Goorman.7916:

Class balance philosophies
We normally try to employ metered and controlled balance changes with each pass, rather than huge reductions or improvements to classes. We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance. HUGH increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct.
When designing and balancing the classes, we try to make sure that class roles and identities stay intact. So, in doing so, we make sure that there are rules and boundaries outlining the capabilities and weaknesses of each class.
Warrior
We want the Warrior to be capable of good melee damage in a sturdy body. They can still do some decent damage at range, but they aren’t as good at it as the Ranger (with their pet). They have a hard time taking enemy boons down, and instead, have to just go through them with raw force. They may have a hard time with enemy conditions, and may need to ask for ally help in order to keep themselves free of hampering conditions.
Guardian
The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.
Ranger
The ranger class combines its own innate abilities with the skills of their pets. We’ve balanced the class around the idea that you always have a pet with you to aid in any fight. The fact that the ranger can have multiple pets allows them to combine their pets in ways that most impact the current fight. We want the Ranger to have some of the evasion enjoyed by the Thief, as well as the mobility other classes employ. The class is able to deal physical or condition damage, and it can do this in melee or at range.
Engineer
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.
Thief
Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.
Mesmer
Mesmers rely on illusions in order to accomplish their goals. They need illusions to accomplish some of their highest damage and control, and without the illusions, they become fairly fragile. They can deal with enemy boons better than most classes, but enemy conditions can often be a problem. They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.
Ele
We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.
Necro
The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

From Jonathan Sharp

I quoted this entire thing to get a point across.

First if you’re going to try to “quote” someone something said, you better be using proper grammar as there’s no way a Game Designer would spell classes in their own game wrong.

Second, if you are trying to imply you’re in fact Jonathan Sharp, that’s basically fraud and impersonating an Arenanet employee are most likely grounds for banning.

I had this thought.

Humans : Sunk Orr, Self-Destructed Ascalon, Has multiple recognized wars between humans (Guild Wars, War in Kryta).

Charr : Race that is centered around the military. Formerly warred amongst themselves until they banded to make the High Legions, then they fought Humans instead.

Asura : Self-destructive race. One of the major political bodies attacks and is attacked by it’s own citizens on a daily basis.

Slyvari : Race that, at the beginning of their life is given a destiny that can involve killing or fighting something, which they follow like law.

Norn : Bunch of hunters. Besides hunting animals, I think the only war they wage is on Jormag out of necessity.

The main problem with most of the list is that there is no sense of balance at all, because many of the features listed are customizable ones that would directly affect gameplay, unless there would (for example) be a limit on how many turrets you can have in your town/hall or a pool of resources that no guild can exceed when building their town.

This would however simply encourage min/maxing if any sort of competitive play is involved, furthermore if your guild hall is open to attack at any period in 24 hours, you’re going to lose the guild hall when your entire guild is asleep except for like 2 members.

Now if you don’t care about balance, that’s perfectly fine, but most game developers nowdays do, especially ones with high profile MMORPGs.

I would say Guild Airships without any sort of competitive play other than allowing you to match up in a tPVP without awards match against another guild would be a start. I say without awards because if you give people the option to specifically challenge other specific guilds and then also give them awards for completing it, there’s going to be win trading.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Leveling is an extremely crux-worthy method of hindering the progression of most mmo’s purley for the sake of trying to justify it with a concept of advancement through numerical statistical supremecy. In any other mmo, this statistic based format would work flawlessly, as evidenced in games like world of warcraft, the old republic and others that are designed for it.

The way you’re viewing leveling is probably not the way most game developers view it. Not that I am a game developer myself but WoW’s leveling progression has been what you’ve stated at the start and instead turned itself into a lengthy tutorial that allows you to experience the game while you learn it.

Simply put, if you were to jump into a raid as soon as you just registered an account and activated a subscription, you basically wouldn’t know what the heck you were doing.

This is somewhat similar in GW 2, it’s true that you can beat and get credit for the Claw of Jormag by being AFK so long as you hit him like twice, but without learning the game through the leveling process, if you were to actually contribute to the fight, you would still be pretty confused.

As for the point that there’s less things to learn in GW 2, that’s certainly true but even with the limited amount of skills, there are ways you can use them that aren’t quite as apparent as the tooltip would describe. Heck, there are some tooltips that don’t even describe the full power of the ability.

Being tied to zones while leveling “could” be considered a problem, but would you really want to go to Orr immediately as soon as you buy the game?

Lastly.

GW 1’s leveling process still existed and was extremely linear especially in Prophecies. Prophecies (for me) had the most boring 1-20 and I would take GW 2’s 1-80 any day of the week. I started off in Factions as a level 20 so I can’t say what that was like, and Nightfall’s level grind was shortened tremendously.

So if that’s proof as to how Arenanet likes to handle grinding, I think that’s perfectly fine.

When the game is young, make things take longer as players are still learning the game then when the next expansion comes along, since they would know players are less interested in grinding, either remove the leveling process entirely or shorten it even further.

To me, the best thing that could be possible is to keep the 1-80 grind but somehow shorten it for future characters after you have a level 80 character.

That’s true, there’s really no reason to know things or emotes that have been going on for a long time anyways.

I feel like this is a really small change that Arenanet probably can and will do at some point as every MMORPG developer likes to improve their default chat systems it seems like.

By default, I had emotes not listed in my chat box.

Ronah.2869:

Why are dungeons a part of PVE anyway while they have a totally opposite mechanic?

I don’t exactly see how dungeons can be considered “Environment versus Player” if Open World PVE isn’t considered the same.

Most if not all MMORPGs cram areas full of mobs because it allows for grinding. Taking that away would bring up the issue of the lack of mobs for players to attack if there is an overabundance of players in an area.

With that said, if Arenanet was willing to commit to making an entire system based around randomly generated encounters, then maybe that might resolve the issue.

I also think that for the most part the pacing of mobs matches Skyrim as much as possible without being Skyrim, sure I didn’t fight something every 20 seconds in Skyrim but they are two different games.

Also the fact that there’s so many neutral mobs in the game helps with creating not only more of a manageable situation if you say, pull 3 enemies and then there’s also 2 neutral mobs around, but makes a more believable world since not everything in a realistic world would be hostile and out to get you.

On the note of Orr. I kind of feel like Orr is a good example of why Blizzard in Wrath of the Lich King did not make Northrend entirely undead, Orr definitely gets the idea across that bad things happened to it, but that doesn’t necessarily create a fun experience or at least I felt fighting like 30 variations of Risen wasn’t the most fun thing in the world.

My (user)name is Kreindis and I’m looking for a friendly and smart guild/community. I’m mainly looking for a guild to be able to do dungeons with but I’m not against just making conversation or hanging out.

Things I’m looking for in a guild are :

-Small to Medium size (roughly 10-20 members, will make reasonable exceptions if over 20 members but I don’t want to be in a 200+ member guild)

-Friendly

-Smart as in members can generally be depended on and will fix mistakes if made

-Members who do not complain about WoW or GW 2 on a daily or hourly basis

-Fairly active

-Members who actually have fun and can be relaxed

-PvE focused

As for the things I can offer :

Main Class : Guardian or Warrior (leaning towards Guardian but still undecided)

Preferred Role : Support or Damage

Time Zone : US-Pacific

Availability : 2 PM to 2 AM (PST). All Week.

GW 2 PvP experience : Glory Rank 23, limited tournament experience

GW 2 PvE experience : Very limited

Gameplay Preference : PvE

Current Server :Henge of Denravi (but very willing to transfer)

Other MMORPG experience : World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Everquest, Allods Online, Star Wars : The Old Republic.

Achievements : Amongst the first Lieutenant Generals of the World of Warcraft Server, Firetree (if not the first), top 100 in Call of Duty 3 Leaderboards, member of multiple raiding guilds in WoW.

Personality : I’m fairly quiet, but I do enjoy hanging out with people that I can get along with. I like to play games intelligently and to succeed in them, but still would prefer to do it with friendly people rather than with people I can’t stand.

So if you have a guild that meets my personal requirements, I might be interested in joining it. If you have any further questions I will answer them as well.

mercury ranique.2170:

During the events of the Eye of the North we know that sins, rits, dervishes and paragon’s started to grow in popularity in Tyria (continent) as well. After the cut off with Cantha, the sin’s adapted in the profession of thieves (atleast thats how I feel it). And there are some good indication’s that rit’s took part in the development of the guardian. Although Elona is lesser isolated (the order of whispers gets trough from time to time), the Elonian professions aren’t active at the moment.

I would like to see a return of for example the paragon. But off course game wise in a way they have learned from their mistakes in the past (so no more Imba).

The Guardian is WAY more like the Paragon than a Ritualist.

I think the ending is horrible so I’ll leave it at that, however I think that there were a lot of interesting moments throughout the story. I did Human Commoner and Order of Whispers.

When I found out that the Order of Whispers was one of the primary factions, I was really excited to actually join it since I was always curious about them in Nightfall. I don’t really think they’re portrayed well here though mainly because the factions are so tied into their roles of either Stealth, War, or Research that they align themselves too. Whereas I would say Order of Whispers in GW 1 weren’t as strongly tied to covert ops.

Even so, I think the characters are really what made the story interesting to me.

Tybalt Leftpaw – I haven’t done the other two stories but I do know of the Vigil Mentor, I think Tybalt is more interesting because he’s not really a mentor at all. He also says a line that’s really similar to the Sunspear Motto which was almost like a “stand up and cheer” moment. I was kind of disappointed to find out that both mentors die on Claw Island so I pretty much can just assume the Durmand Priory one also dies the same way, but oh well. I can understand that making the storylines vastly different would take a lot more time.

Trahearne – Apparently there’s hate for Trahearne, I don’t mind him so much but it might be because I’ve played the Slyvari intro storylines multiple times. Each time he appears out of nowhere and I don’t really like him for it. I actually really like his transformation into a Marshal though because before that, he’s fairly boring.

Another reason I think I like him is because he and Vizier Khilbron are both Necromancers, that happen to be in the first game of a “series” you could say. They are also key main characters, and are both mysterious. I was very much expecting him to become the main antagonist of the game but I got to a point where I doubted that and wondered if he would actually turn or not, I think making me question that is by itself pretty awesome.

Everyone else was kind of boring or didn’t have significant parts. The only other two that come to mind as interesting are the two Charr who’s names I forget that appear when you’re attacking the Mouth of Zhaitan.

In any case, I generally think the story is sort of boring and lackluster but it does have some interesting characters and moments.

I do however almost wish the player character didn’t speak at times because of the way we’re written.

Fred Fargone.3127:

As for the second idea, lets take a closer look.
So, you got a dagger and a pistol, as well as a bucket of poison. You dip your dagger in the poison and put it in your pocket. Then you draw your pistol and shoot someone. He is now poisoned. Seems to make sense.
Seriously, there is a reason you only get bonuses from the weapon which deals the damage.

Did you put the dagger in the pistol first? That’s important.

A ton of your suggestions break balance.

Reducing the usefulness of cripple and weakness would require multiple applications from different players to actually be sustained, it also makes a Thief’s third strike chain even less useful as it’s duration is short enough that you’d be lucky to have it apply to one hit.

Critical hits are left to RNG because it’s a RPG. Getting rid of stats further strays it away from an RPG and more to just an action game.

Allowing a Elementalist to switch weapons in combat as well as elements would give them way too much versatility. As for out of combat switching, that’s techinally already in the game, the only thing is that it requires a single inventory slot.

You could just never use an elite skill and be done with it.

I honestly like GW 2’s lore way more than GW 1 but I’ve not completed all of the main story honestly, working on it right now actually.

Here’s my problem with GW 1’s “lore”, it doesn’t really seem to focus on either being dark or light hearted.

Prophecies was decent I can’t argue with that, it maintained it’s dark tone pretty much consistently. I don’t really think it was put together well though, I never really cared about any of the characters because you hardly interact with them, in fact I think the best characters of Prophecies are Breknar and the Dwarf King who probably have the smallest parts and inconsequential parts compared to the Vizier and even the Shining Blade members.

There’s also major characters who are killed off immediately and the other characters don’t react at all about that, in fact the only two deaths that are really mourned in any way are one of the members of the shining blade and a dwarf (which is ironic because of who he’s mourned by).

Factions on the other hand was my favorite campaign, all of the good sided main characters are fairly involved. The main villian however is probably my biggest complaint in all of GW 1 but only because Factions was the only story I actually cared for, Arenanet very much sets him up as a sympathetic figure in flashback sequences but then he goes crazy which okay, that’s fine. However his evil personality doesn’t match his pre-crazed personality at all, if they went with a more sympathetic villain I’d really like him a lot more, or at least give some reason as for why he’s completely evil after his crazed turn.

Actually they do give that, but again, it’s done very horrible. It’s more like “oh by the way”, and it’s done at in the third campaign, Nightfall.

Nightfall is the campaign I dislike the most. They don’t maintain a consisent dark tone at all, even making Palawa Joko a humorous character at times and then it’s like “oh by the way, he conquered all of Elona in GW 2, and he’s a tyrant.” although they do say he’s really evil plenty of times in GW 1 but still, when you actually meet him it’s not conveyed that way at all.

Next there is drama between party members, drama I might add that is seemingly randomly thrown in after missions. There is a very specific scene that I remember where after killing a bunch of people, a love confession happens. What?

Also the ending is really lame and has no rationality behind it. At the same time though, Nightfall has my favorite character in GW 1 whom is General Morgahn, I think he’s not only really interesting, but plays a very major role in the story and has plenty of scenes. Plus he has an awesome voice and looks awesome.

If you take out the way the story is presented then yes, GW 1 has a lot of lore although it’s sadly very obvious that it’s developing lore. Basically GW 2 is a representation of that it was so developing that they threw it out the window and instead rewrote everything almost.

As for GW 2, my biggest complaint so far is how the Charr are American Military stereotypes.

Kaimick.5109:

But that is just it ( not saying your saying this as I agree with everything your saying ) but ME2 and ME3 and other Single player RPG’s are just that SINGLE PLAYER. This is a MMO things are going to be different

Sure, I’ll agree with that.

MMOs function differently because they’re techinally limitless, and it’s not easy to make high octane content that is either A.) Fun when you’re doing it for the 200th time, or B.) New every time.

Honestly of all of the games I’ve played, there is no MMORPG that doesn’t become a grind. Likewise however, there are very few single player RPG game that, if you play it for more than one or 3 at the most, play-throughs, also don’t feel like a grind.

The silver lining for MMORPGs however is that they’re basically 100% more likely to be updated after release with some sort of new content which single player games are sort of doing now, but not really.

I played GW 2 for like 500 hours after release then went back to WoW and then back to GW 2 simply because both games have a grind, however GW 2’s grind is more fun to me. I’ve probably played WoW for well over 20000 hours and maybe 1-3% of that is raiding, the rest is achievement hunting or PvP. All of which I would say are grinds of different levels, the type of grind I simply could not stand after months of it were daily quests. If they made the daily quests fun then fine, I’m on board, but when they’re boring, long and tedious, that basically effectively makes it a volunteer job.

Anyways I think the fact is that MMORPGs will have grinding, so will every other game though, but MMORPGs are definitely the most “offending” of the genres. That’s simply something people will have to accept if they want to play GW 2 or any MMORPG for that matter.

And maybe it was a bit of a sleight to in public, say that GW 2 doesn’t have grinding at all, but the alternative of saying “GW 2 has multiple levels of grinding that would appeal to a mass range of audiences” doesn’t really sound much better.

emikochan.8504:

I’ve yet to see a commander that didn’t help greatly in WvW. Who is going to spend 100g on something they don’t want to use?

I’ve seen that. They also mentioned that they bought gold from a third party company.

There are a ton of Commanders who buy it just for the symbol, it’s not just limited to people who buy it with a credit card either.

Ronah.2869:

emikochan.8504:

People that say gw2 is a grind have never played games with an actual grind.

Gw1 players plus the single RPG players are not used with this repetitive and mandatory grind system, that is why players are thinking GW2 is a grind.

There is a ton of grinding similar to GW 2 in both things you’ve mentioned.

GW 1’s “grind” is similar to GW 2’s, it’s basically completely optional, at most it takes 20 hours to get everything you would need for a full set of crafted exotic armor. Likewise, at least for prophecies it took about the same amount of time to get to “the best” armor stat-wise. I forget what it was for Factions because I went in with a level 20 character, and for Nightfall you get upgraded armor way quicker.

Mandatory to me entails you MUST do it in order to progress in the game. Unless your goal is to literally get every single set of armor and weapon in the game, there’s no real progression after exotic. Even then, you probably could complete all of the dungeons and content in the game with rares or even masterworks if you really wanted to.

As for single player RPGs, in most JRPGs and RPGs in general, there’s usually a secret dungeon that requires you to do way more grinding than the primary story would require, and depending on the game, it possibly took longer to get to that state than GW 2 would.

Now if you use Mass Effect 2 and 3 as a RPG example then yes, GW 2 has way more grinding than ME 2 and 3.

Animag.7634:

I’ve also made a thread about it also mentioning crossbows and polearms (but more like 2-handed axes than spears and scythes) but I have to admit I can’t find place for the cleaver in GW2. Isn’t it just a 1-handed axe that looks a little bit like a dagger?

The way the OP put it, I believe he was thinking more in line with “two handed axe” as “The cleaver”.

In any case, I think the suggestions are good, though for the most part now that I think about it GW 2 does cover most of the weapons that I’d expect from the archetype classes.

Whips I can rarely take seriously in any game, it would fit with the Mesmer though as Mesmer is the most eccentric class in the game.

My (user)name is Kreindis and I’m looking for a friendly and smart guild/community. I’m mainly looking for a guild to be able to do dungeons with but I’m not against just making conversation or hanging out.

Things I’m looking for in a guild are :

-Small to Medium size (roughly 10-20 members, will make reasonable exceptions if over 20 members but I don’t want to be in a 200+ member guild)

-Friendly

-Smart as in members can generally be depended on and will fix mistakes if made

-Members who do not complain about WoW or GW 2 on a daily or hourly basis

-Fairly active

-Members who actually have fun and can be relaxed

-PvE focused

As for the things I can offer :

Main Class : Guardian or Warrior (leaning towards Guardian but still undecided)

Preferred Role : Support or Damage

Time Zone : US-Pacific

Availability : 2 PM to 2 AM (PST). All Week.

GW 2 PvP experience : Glory Rank 23, limited tournament experience

GW 2 PvE experience : Very limited

Gameplay Preference : PvE

Current Server :Henge of Denravi (but very willing to transfer)

Other MMORPG experience : World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Everquest, Allods Online, Star Wars : The Old Republic.

Achievements : Amongst the first Lieutenant Generals of the World of Warcraft Server, Firetree (if not the first), top 100 in Call of Duty 3 Leaderboards, member of multiple raiding guilds in WoW.

Personality : I’m fairly quiet, but I do enjoy hanging out with people that I can get along with. I like to play games intelligently and to succeed in them, but still would prefer to do it with friendly people rather than with people I can’t stand.

So if you have a guild that meets my personal requirements, I might be interested in joining it. If you have any further questions I will answer them as well.

I think people were doing this during the release too. It probably is possible depending on your server still.

I find myself unable to decide between playing a Thief, Warrior, or Guardian. There are things about each class that I like but also things that I venomously dislike. I came to the forums seeking class advice before and it proved really helpful so I decided why not come here again, previously I was recommended to play a Thief which I actually really enjoyed but I still have particular problems with it as I’ll show below.

I have the greatest amount of experience as a Guardian (400+ hours, grinded 1-22 PvP rank, minor participation in WvW, no dungeon experience) and less experience with the other two classes (Thief and Warrior are 80, participated in 50 sPvP Matches each, no dungeons, 100ish hours played for each), here’s basically a summary of why I like and dislike a class.

Guardian – Weapon preference is the 1h Sword

Likes : The “Cleric/Paladin/Spellsword” image, Supporting others, the virtue system, Spirit weapons

Dislikes : The Greatsword, the fact that I can’t really fit spirit weapons into my builds without sacrificing way too much, the dominantly defensive nature of the class.

Warrior – Weapon preference is the Axe

Likes : The Adrenaline system, The offensive nature, Axes (as in the way the axes play in-game, I don’t usually like axes in RPG games), supporting others, dual wielding (sort of)

Dislikes : Purely non-magical class, the 1h sword, utility skills are kind of boring and generic but oh well

Thief – Weapon preference is the Sword

Likes : Stealing is fun, Offensive Nature, The way a sword/pistol plays is probably the most fun weapon skill set I’ve used in the game (for me), technically can be said to use “shadow” magic since I don’t see any justification for Shadowstep otherwise, traps are fun, Thieves Guild is probably my favorite skill and elite skill in the entire game (not only because it’s powerful, but it’s simply fun to have two other fighters on the field), and dual wielding skills

Dislikes : Stealth, and sPVP is seemingly regulated to hit and runs. I “can” fully use stealth or hit and runs effectively, but I don’t really like that style of play. Despite liking everything about the Thief class other than that, the fact that I don’t really like things that are key core components of the class makes me sticking with the class more difficult.

With that said, I have not tried to make a Thief with high vitality or something like that but even then I don’t see being able to escape the need to retreat after bursting provided the thing you’re attacking isn’t dead.

My personal preferences are melee, magical damage, emphasis on burst damage, and dual wielding. I also prefer being offensive and classes that aren’t reliant on stealth. That class obviously doesn’t exist though, so I’m trying to make due with what there is.

Also as a side note, I don’t like the way an Elementalist with Daggers plays at all.

I get that this whole dilemma is largely a issue of image vs mechanics, but I’m still at a loss as to how to proceed. I’d like to be able to have a solid pick on a class before committing tons of resources and playtime only to figure out that I don’t really like the class later on.

So with that said, any help would be appreciated, and if any further clarification is needed I’ll be happy to give that as well.

Wow, thanks for the responses everyone.

Even though I’m like conceptually against rogue classes, I think I’ll give Thief another shot.

Additionally, it’s good to know how heavily integrated the Illusion mechanic is into the Mesmer class, which is to be expected, but it tells me that since I take issue with that, it’s probably not the class for me, despite really liking the Mesmer sword skillset. Although with that said, I think trying a Mesmer out again is definitely something else I’ll do. I don’t actively “hate” the illusion mechanic, so maybe there’s hope there as well.

At least I have reasons to try the classes out again, thanks again for everyone’s response!

If I insist on using a one-handed sword as a primary weapon, and want it to be comparable to other options the class has, what class would be ideal for me?

Also, I’m not against weapon switching, but I do have a preference for one handed swords in RPG games, and I would like to spend time using it, rather than having it as a side set to switch for emergencies or something similar.

My first class was a Guardian where I thought the one-handed swords were fun, but I didn’t really feel like they held a candle up to the Greatsword in terms of pretty much everything except mobility, and defense. Although both come close in defense.

My second was a Thief, and I actually think the one handed sword for the thief is pretty good, although being a “stealth” class isn’t exactly my first pick.

Third was a Warrior, I’m currently 65 and I only started experimenting with Sword combinations just a few hours ago. I don’t really feel like it’s great though, I don’t really have a preference for DoTs which one handed swords seem to specialize in, for the Warrior anyways.

Additionally, I’ve played a Ranger and Mesmer. I didn’t really like the Ranger’s sword set at all. I did actually like the Mesmers, but I don’t exactly like the illusion aspect.

So, there’s some background for what I’ve done so far, and I’m still unable to really accept a class as my main because none of the sword skills I’ve seen are terribly outstanding. I would like to know what you all think however.

It’s like what you see on the ground before the aliens attack in a UFO.

I’ve been an an impasse with GW 2 lately and also World of Warcraft because I don’t really know what class I want to play. In both games I’ve played a Paladin/Guardian extensively with the most current builds of the game and I’ve been disappointed in either the lack of offensive choice or in general the lack of offense.

I fully understand that generally the Paladin archetype involves the healing or protection role more than offense, however, as both games allow the player the flexibility to choose to be a Paladin/Guardian and focus on offense, I feel like the classes should be better at it at least comparable to other classes.

For WoW, my predicament ends there. For GW 2 it gets a bit further with the weapon skill sets.

When I set out to make a Guardian, without any extensive beta experience or reading, just what I read from the GW 2 website. I wanted to make a character that had low defense, high melee damage and healing capability and used a 1 handed sword and torch. At first that seems like it works really well, but as I played more that definitely turned out to not be the case.

In PvE this is somewhat fine but still unfortunate, but in PvP this is a huge issue to me because I simply do not see a point in not using any of the other weapons over a 1h sword, they all perform their roles much more effectively than the sword does, and more to what my original goal was, the 2h sword certainly has lower defense, high melee damage, and decent support capability, but I don’t really want to use a 2H sword primarily with my “main” character.

So in short, I have a preference to use a 1H sword as a primary weapon, and of course with that would come options afterward that all classes have for their secondary weapon,

While I know that the original design philosophy (at least I heard this in an interview) behind the classes in GW 2 is that everyone can do everything “to an extent” I guess I didn’t really consider how much truth was actually in that statement. At the same time however, I fully know that a Guardian can do really good damage, but it’s not with a weapon or even playing style that I like.

So with that said, I decided to come here for advice, does anyone have any suggestions as to what other class I should try out?

I’ve played a Guardian for about 1-2 month after release, so my opinion on it is fairly formed at this point, but if there’s something I’ve missed about the 1h sword or if there’s a belief that arenanet will actually change 1h swords for the Guardian within a short amount of time, that could also be something.

As for actual things about classes I like :

-If possible, I like the option to dual wield swords
-I prefer melee over ranged, although I can play ranged well in most games, not that I enjoy it that much
-I also like to have a sort of spellsword aspect to the class where the class is able to cast some degree of ranged spells but also empower their melee weapons with spells and use those to fight, the trade off is that usually the class does not have a high defense and is not as skilled with melee weapons as a Warrior would be
-I have no preference in armor since I think they all look good in GW 2
-I also prefer direct damage types over an emphasis on debuffs, DoTs
-I do like having the option to support now and then but after experiencing the Guardian, I feel like I would be fine trading that off for being full offense or defense

I think that’s about it, I’m also aware that the class that has ALL of the points above does not exist (unfortunately), so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

For the second part of my question that requires less description, I was wondering about the state of GW 2 in general. I played for 1-2 months after the release but I took a departure for a bit to play WoW again for Mists of Pandaria, I was wondering if the release of MoP affected anyone’s game/social/server community to any extent?

For me, I’ve seen less people in areas but that was to be expected but it’s kind of unfortunate when most champions are hard if not impossible to take down without a group. I’ve also seen that WvW doesn’t reset everyday which I think is also unfortunate since my new server that I transferred over for a friend, is stuck in a rut. Although I honestly found WvW kind of boring compared to sPVP, so the only thing I miss about it for completely selfish reasons is that I’m at 98% map completion and some other server holds bases I need. Although with that aside, it was fun to be able to jump into WvW whenever and fight for a bit then leave knowing that it would still be there.

So, any suggestions or answers would be appreciated, and thanks for reading.