Guild Wars 2

Any craft you still haven’t got 400 (or even 500 if you can spare the money) aside from scribe is well-worth it. Not because it’s a smart way to level, but you might as well get the experience as well as the craft.

Aside from that, just… don’t.

I used my boost on Rev to open up the shared inventory slot. I do have every other class level 80, sometimes multiple, so there really wasn’t any competition.

I’ll be the 4th how-ever to tell you, try Necromancer. They’re good at everything at the moment, raids, fractals, but also simply open world content with an extra HP-bar, good tagging potential and decent burst. (Assuming a power build here, which is not high-end meta but likely what you’ll run until you can make a Viper’s set if you’re just dying to go Conditions.) They can even step into WvW/sPvP and you’ll never feel weak.

Elementalist is a similar story to Necromancer if you really don’t feel like Necromancer. Good at everything, how-ever you’ll either be very squishy or give up quite a bit of damage not to be, this may or may not be your playstyle. (I love it :p)

Warrior / Revenant are also just solid to have, good self-buffing capabilities for anything solo and enough armor/hp to walk through content without too much of a worry. I don’t enjoy them too much but if I feel the need to do Living Story twice (for rewards generally) they’re often picked above my more beloved classes for sheer efficiency.

I’d avoid double classes until you had a taste of all of them personally. I never thought I’d like Engineer, but I ended up loving them to bits almost instantly after creation, same with Ranger.

Lastly, don’t worry too much about ‘wasting’ it. I don’t know how old your toons/account is, but you get bombarded with leveling scrolls (birthday present for characters) and tomes of knowledge (log-in rewards) for another level 80 by the time you’re bored of whatever you picked.

Hello,

like you already mentioned, all classes are good, fun is subjective blabla. Most popular roaming classes are; Elementalist, Engineer, Guardian, Mesmer, Thief and Warrior, they all have excellent mobility (Guardian the least, but plenty of tools to chase their foes) with good damage and 1vX potentional.

As to your “who can survive burst and kill stuff fast enough” I’d take Mesmer, Guardian and Thief off your list aswell. They are immensely squishy to do the burst they need to be effective and all their defenses require you to actively react to a situation rather than having any sort of passive bulk. It’s an incredibly fun playstyle for some, but it doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for.

This leaves the Elementalist, Engineer, and Warrior. This is what sets the classes apart for me with a link to their meta-builds on which I based my opinions.

Elementalist
- Decent passive survivability through defensive gear and traits.
- Great active survivability through cantrips.
- Good amount of crowd control.
- Safestomp (essential in 1vX to finish of downed opponents) through Mistform.
- Decent damage despite defensive traits/gear due to might stacking by keeping up burning and some direct damage.
- Decent mobility through Burning Speed, Ride the Lightning, Lightning Flash and Conjure Fiery Greatsword.

Playstyle: You juggle all 4 attunements which allow different boons and weaponskills to keep yourself alive and keep the enemy pressured. Swapping to the right attunment at the right time is essential to stay alive. If you dislike swapping attunements or following cooldowns you can’t see, avoid this class.

Bonus: Meta in every aspect of the game.

Engineer
- Decent active survivability and burst healing (for groupmates also,) but lacks stunbreaks.
- Condition Damage based, allowing for loads of defensive stats on gear if preferred.
- High amount of crown control abilities with a game-turning Elite.
- Access to multiple good utilities based on a players preferences.
- Safestomp and downed control (poison) which are essential in 1vX.
- No a lot of mobility, but enough skills to prevent enemies from escaping and stuns to allow the Engineer to escape.

Playstyle: You often play it a bit safe to apply conditions that will quickly overwhelm the enemy. You can quite easily control your opponent through knockbacks and pulls, aswell as some immobilize and chill, allowing you to swap fights into your favour. Engineers are also one of the easiest 1 v 1 specs if you use Perplexity runes. Like an Elementalist you’ll be juggling multiple skill bars, but you’ll be punished less for swapping to the wrong one (no cooldown) allow you to react rather than think ahead.

Downside: Sadly they’re only meta in sPvP and WvW roaming, but they’re amazing there.

Warrior
- Immensely high base hp and armor, making them quite bulky in any spec.
- Good damage along with the needed CC.
- Can opt for a full Crown Control set-up that is still able to kill. Link"
- Decent mobility, unless you equip mobility-based weapons it’s not great, but enough to escape or finish of a foe.
- Quite slow/predictable attacks.

Playstyle: Warriors can survive quite a few hits, have strong direct damage and plenty of Crown Control. Their damage isn’t the highest even in full offensive gear (compared to Thief/Elementalist/Guardian their burst is very ‘average’) but they can Crowd Control an enemy to get good enough burst to win battles with easy.

Bonus: Meta in every aspect of the game.

The crafting system can indeed be a bit of a pain and a complicated mess until you learn how to work with it. Few steps you’ll have to take:

Getting your craft to 500
This can be done in the ways, follow a simple premade guide from gw2crafts or you can go for the more complicated way of gw2spidey to safe a bit of gold, in my opinion not worth the hassle if the crafting system already gives you a headache.

Use Crafting Boosters to save materials and you can chose to refine required materials for the ascended item from 450 onward (if you want to know which ones, follow the steps below before hitting 500)

Crafting your weapon/armor:
1. Buy your desired Recipe from a Master Vendor near the Crafting Station, 3g and 5 Laurels / each.

2. Select the prefix you’d like (go over them to see their stats, for example Zojja is +power +precision +ferocity, also known as Berserker) and consume the recipe.

3. Search for the prefix in your crafting station. Click the Magnifying glass next to the ingredients to get to base ingredients of each component and /wiki any component you don’t know how to acquire. (You can also purchase full refined components such as “Ancient Staff Head” from the trading post if desired.)

Tips:
For a full overview of the ingredients, search for the item in gw2spidey, for example Zojja’s Spire
Every item uses a similar material pattern
- 1 Inscription/insignia (Recipe is at the Master Vendor)
- 2 Components
- 1 Vision Crystal

The components and inscription/insignia use the Ascended Materials: Bolt of Damask, Deldrimor Steel Ingot, Elonian Leather and/or Spiritwood Planks which are all locked behind a once-a-day timegate on one of their components, but can be purchased from the Trading Post at the loss of a few silver or gold. The recipes for the materials unlock automatically if the respective craft is at 450. The inscription also requires Dark Matter which is obtained by salvaging exotics, I’d recommend buying some cheap exotics of the trading post or buy some exotics with dungeon tokens.

The Vision Crystal is completely account-bound (and it’s components) and is made of the following:
Obisidian Shards – Can be purchased from a vendor at the Temple of Balthazar (uncontested) for 2.1k Karma each. Alternatively Silverwaste Bandit Chests have a chance to drop them.
Bloodstone Dust – Drops from Champion Bags opened by a Level 80 Character.
Dragonite Ore – Drops from World bosses. Alternatively Silverwaste Bandit Chests have a chance to drop them.
Empyreal Crystals – Drops at the end of Dungeons. Alternatively Silverwaste Bandit Chests have a chance to drop them.
Silverwaste Chest Farm would be your best bet for all 4 of these items since a single chest drops a champion bag (bloodstone) and any of the needed materials.

Every Ascended Weapon costs about 50g in materials if you refine everything yourself. Armors vary between 40g-80g per piece, so be prepared to invest a lot of gold.

I added some printscreens I took for a friend when he wanted to craft his staff, he was completely new to the game and found them helpful, but they’re likely overkill for most players. ^^"

Race-wise, focus on aesthetics. Races will get a few skills available only to them, but they’re often inferior to the class-skills, though have some niche uses.

Class-wise every class is fun to play in my opinion (alts are quite easy to maintain, so it’s normal for people to end up with multiple classes they enjoy playing) and your best bet is to simply try them out. Sadly with the new leveling system it can take ages for a class to set themselves apart from the rest, unless you enjoy PvP in which all toons become level 80 automatically with almost all skills, traits and gear available to them.

For a class that deals a lot of damage, solo or in groups, I think you could be looking at an Elementalist. Elementalist have the highest AoE-damage in the game, but are also very self-sufficient buff-wise (they can provide themselves and the group with Fury (20% more critical chance) and stacks of Might (increases Power/Condition Damage) and Vulnerability (once again, more DPS.) Downside, they’re rather squishy, this gets off-set a little by some of their utility skills (Earth Elementals can be summoned to ‘tank’ tough foes) and the defensive options in traits and the Focus off-hand. They also juggle a lot of skills due to their class mechanics (5×4 skills per weaponset and some utilities change your skills aswell) which might not be beginner friendly, but does keep the class interesting. They’re also one of the few classes that actively use multiple different weaponsets depending on the group/situation (Staff for plain damage, Dagger/Focus for more survivability, Dagger/Dagger burst (leveling/PvP mainly) and Scepter/Focus (/Dagger) for buffing your groups damage.

Close seconds would be Thief (highest single target damage assuming your group gives you the needed buffs and their burst is amazing) They’re also squishy, but juggle less skills and have blinds/plentiful evades to avoid damage efficiently.

A honourable mention towards Warrior, in solo-play their DPS is quite impressive due to their easy-access to the essential buffs (Might/Fury/Banners) whilst having amazing survivability, how-ever in group play their DPS will be some of the lowest and they’re more focused at buffing a groups damage (through Banners and Might-stacking.) It’s also the one class I consistently hear people complain they’re bored with since survivability is often considerably easier than other classes.

I doubt they’ll introduce more storage space beyond the max. 160 slots. I’d try to focus on organizing your Storage/Inventory to deal with it. For example:
- Make a Guild just for you and buy a Guild Bank for it for any unbound items.
- Use empty Character slot and store account-bound items.
- Expand your Storage Tabs.
- Get a Copperfed.

It can never hurt.

I’m not sure how someone can run out of room, even with consumables, slaying potions/sigils, multiple weapons and armorsets, I still got plenty of slots to make it work. ^^"

Kaz.5430:

Would you prefer to have all your skills and traits wiped, and then spend the hero points that you have earned, possibly ending up with less skills and traits than you previously had, but giving you the ability to start working towards the new elite specializations immediately?

10000x this. The last thing I want is to get useless traits forced upon me, having to grind loads to pay that ‘dept’ off and only then get access to new, potential meta, traits/skills just because I have all traits unlocked atm. I’m certain I only use 30% of my traits if that, I still unlocked them all, because why not, but never use them (and don’t have the gear to be efficient with them.)

But that’s just me.

Gw2 is kinda based around working together, if an event says [group event] it will be considerably more difficult, hence they’re tagged as group event. I’m 99% certain you mean the Toxic Alliance events and they are meant for groups. Either you ask for help (join a social guild, use the groupfinder, just chat with people you encounter) or you step up your game and do it alone if you enjoy a tougher challenge (assuming no-one joins in) or you walk around it. The thing with Gw2 is the choice to go around, you never get stuck on something unless you allow yourself to be, can’t manage an event alone? No worries, move on to the next. Since they’ve introduced Mega Servers I hardly ever find myself alone (whether I like it or not) unless I play in the deadest of hours.

I get that some parts of Gw1 are missed, but a lot of things were done for a good reason. Henchman and Heroes often made people a lot less sociable, because Heroes would do the job (often more reliably than a random person) whilst allowing you to have full control, a majority of the players I know would take Heroes over Players in 99% of the game (anything but speedclears.) Even in PvP Heroes shined for a moment for how good they are if build properly (I think every HA player remembers Tease-Bot Gwen.) So I get this was completely avoided in Gw2 (not that a similar system would be easy to implement in a game like Gw2.)

Gw1 was also a lot more cluttered because you had cities/outposts, cluttering people together with a common goal (that particular mission / end-game challange.) Everything else was simply a road to the next outpost. Gw2 is more focussed on the actual maps and the usage of the groupfinder. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, but I don’t feel Gw2 is a step back from Gw1.

I didn’t play Gw2 upon release because it was so different from Gw1 (and I’ll never appreciate Gw2 as a PvP-only game which I did with Gw1.) But if you can look at it like a different MMO, it’s really quite a cool game in my opinion.

Any of the Orichalcum Trinkets will do, such as an Ruby Orichalcum Ring

Not going to lie, yes and yes.

Full damage traits and gear (power/precision/ferocity) is still the way to go if you manage to survive that way (which is nothing more than practice.)

Rangers are not in the worst position (they’re not Necromancers) but are indeed often overlooked in teams because other classes can do it better or work together better. In organized groups you’ll generally see 2x Elementalist, 1x Warrior, 1x Thief, 1x Guard/Mesmer because it has the needed support (Swiftness, Stealth, Reflects, Stability) and damage (Vulnerability, Might, Fury, Banners)

In unorganized groups a Ranger can fulfill a decent DPS-buffer with Spotter/Frost Spirit (more or less over either a Warrior or a second Elementalist) but there’s still quite a lot of Ranger-hate and people being misinformed, which will mean a group would easily kick a Ranger, yet run 3x Warrior despite it being less effective.

Ranger life is possible, but it won’t be easy. Despite them being in a relatively good position now-a-days (some personal damage buffs.)

PS: Only in Dungeons/Fractals can people really kick you for playing a class you like. In open-world no-one should care or judge… For just casual play (maybe even the occasional, relaxed dungeon run with a friendly social guild) you should be fine. Don’t let the elitist get to you.

Slalom.3174:

Not to hijack a thread, but since today’s announcement about Skills, Traits, Specializations, it looks like “speed-leveling” characters with scrolls and tomes will not get us to a playable condition until we complete skill challenges throughout Tyria.

I am hoping the new system is well-thought out, including the irritation level.

To be fair they did mention in the article that just being level 80 would give you access to a variety of builds, but to unlock everything you’d need to do Hero/Skill Challanges. Current meta-builds (assuming you focus on 1 game-mode per toon, except sPvP since everything auto-unlocks there) only use a couple of traits from all the available ones, doubt much will change there.

Your best bets would likely be the Log-in Rewards (10 per month, 6 extra if you pick the experience loyalty chest) and PvP-Reward Tracks (8 per full track, any track will do) for the Tomes of Knowledge (1 level each) and for a level 20 Scroll your best bet would be the 5k achievement chest, since other ways are out of your control. Should get you well over 80 levels total before HoT comes out.

I think it’s the top row 3rd one from the left (4th on from the right) from the basic faces. You will have to play around with the sliders quite a bit though, like head width almost completely to the left and chin length quite a bit to the right. The attachment is as close as I could get to it. Mask of the Wanderer (?) + the hairstyle made it a kittenallenging to see.

Either way, very pretty face one you’ve played with the sliders, props to whomever figured that out. ^^

Edit: She just had to blink… Sorry.

My interpretation is similar to Roseblood. I assume you’ll get Hero Points for leveling and for Hero Challanges, possibly more points per level than per single Hero Challange. The more Skill Challanges a toon has, the more variety of abilities they can unlock, but simply being level 80 will be enough to run a couple of set-ups.

My main account has all skills and traits unlocked on all the characters where-as my Alt account has been purchased after the trait-rework, most characters only have ~30% of the traits unlocked, I never feel I’m missing any of the traits I don’t have, was just a matter of picking the rights traits (which for a dungeon/fractal only toon will cover every meta-build and some stuff such as heatroom-solo traits or few traits to make (solo) skipping easier.) So I’m not worried about only having a few available, as long as I get to chose which ones.

Due to game mechanics, all classes are best place in relatively close range to receive buffs from other group members (most have a 600 range) and most classes are best played with melee-weapons. Staff Elementalist would be the only exception, being at their full potential as long as they’re within buff-range of their group. So if you’re looking for Range, I’d still stick with Elementalist.

A staff Elementalist also doesn’t juggle Attunements as much, mostly staying in Fire whilst in combat to not lose their DPS. Other attunements are mainly either for outside of combat (Air 4 + Air 5 for Swiftness, Water 3 + Water 5 for minor Healing and Condition Cleanse.) Or in the opener (Earth 2 → Glyph of Storms (Air for damage, Earth for Blind) → Fire 2) and thus might be something for you. Other weapons sadly do require some attunement juggling, which I found rather do-able with a little practice, but only you can judge if that’d be your thing. Other weaponsets also play in melee-range (or close to it) for the best results.

A Ranger, despite it’s name, will often use Sword for sustained DPS and a combination of Longbow (5→2 swap) and Greatsword for burst (3→2→auto) for openworld where stuff dies quickly. Campings Longbow or Shortbow will not yield great results, though gw2 can be played how-ever you like and it will still get done. (This goes for any class however since every class has Ranged, as well as Melee options, often Melee being superior.) If you think you’ll enjoy the pet-mechanic, it’s always worth giving it a shot.

Like Jerus mentioned; low mobility, highest ramp-up, not to mention rather pathetic low AoE and little self-buffing ability (might/fury.) That being said, get decent at using Temporeal Curtain to pull mobs together, load up a Shatter-build (something like 4 (I-X) 4 (I-X) / 0 / 0 / 6 (I-VIII-XI) equip some Centaur Runes, Blink and Portals (maybe a Toy-Axe) and you’re good to go as far as mapping is concerned. Even then, you’ll never be a Thief or a Warrior, or even a Guardian… Or Ranger, or Engineer…

In sPvP Shatter is kittenual go-to-build, but very difficult to play to a high potential without a decent team, Portal is your best asset, and you won’t be able to survive long if you don’t have a team looking out for you at least a little. There can be some variation in builds with a lock-down build, or a condition build (don’t PU, that’s just a kitten-take, but they’re good condition builds available that actually do stuff.) But you’ll always be this squishy bursty class.

Dungeons/Fractals is kind of the same issue as in sPvP, if you don’t have an organized team using your unique utility, you’re more or less useless; you can do a Guardians job, but without aegis and less personal dps. Timewrap is also rather underwhelming if your team is clueless burst-wise and thus won’t always make up for your low (burst) damage. Portal will be useless unless people take it / a Fiery Greatsword is provided to have the mobility to place it. (If people can skip with you, portal is kinda useless. :p)

Don’t know much about WvW besides trolling around with any build doing some skirmishes.

But to be fairly honest, if you can enjoy Engineer and you can get over a Mesmers weaknesses (lowmobility, low self-buffing ability, low AoE) since they’re not considered meta or optimal either except in sPvP. ^^ I personally adore them (but only in semi-organized groups, if not I’d take a Thief for sPvP or a Guardian in PvE instead. Personal preferance and I’m the type to play anything that would help my team.)

Few starters I gave to my boyfriend, not sure if things have changed:
1. Pick up some gathering tools; gathering gives experience. To avoid full inventories: Deposit Materials in your bank with the clog in your inventory (deposit collectibles.) Also pick up a Salvage Kit (Crude, or Fine) so you can salvage and deposit materials or try to sell the items on the Trading Post (can be done from any place, right click, sell on the trading post.)
2. If things get rough, update your gear to blue/greens from the trading post, it’s often rather cheap. For an extra boost look for minor Runes with +10 power, it can greatly help in the early levels.
3. Try to reach every Vista (Red icons) Skillpoints (Blue) Hearts (Gold) and PoIs (Squares that colour white when discovered) in maps for experience, completing a whole map will give you decent experience. If a point is too difficult to find, you can use the i-net to cheat; Exploration-Guides Note: Skillpoints can be rather challanging, level up some more, or even better, ask map-chat for help.
4. Try out every weapon and pick your favourites (most classes can have 2 weaponsets) once you can use all 5 weaponskills. I’d recommend to find atleast 1 weapon or utility set-up that helps with your mobility, most classes have a 25% increased movement speed signet or some access to swiftness (33% increased movement speed) since there’s a lot of walking involved. (No mounts ^^") Note: Mobility skills only stack in duration (Swiftness) and the highest will take effect.
5. Once traits become available click on them to see what task you need to do to unlock them, wiki can be a great help. You can also buy them, but for a first toon unlocking them can be a nice goal in rather big world with no particular guidance.
6. Try to unlock as many waypoints as possible during your travels. If you get bored of a certain zone, move on to a different zone (press M to see level ranges.) Having at least 1 toon with access to most of the map will be helpful at level 80 for Dungeons, World Bosses, Guildmissions, Living Story.
7. Challenge yourself, try to melee (except big events) and dodge big attacks (they tend to have huge animations) and such, it will greatly help in high-end content.
8. Have a lot of fun, take your time and just enjoy the game.

And don’t delete toons as long as you’ve got free slots. A lot of classes change drastically as more traits unlock, you might regret deleting them. By simply picking a different race or a different story and travelling to a start zone you haven’t experienced yet, things can still stay fresh if a class really bores you and you can pick up the other one later if desired.

If traits overwhelm you a little and you want a referance you can find meta-builds here

You can ctrl + left click on an enemy (or ally) or assign a hotkey to ‘call target’ to get an aim icon and ‘take target’-target on someone or something, this is for your whole group how-ever and can get overcalled by other people, but can also come in handy for any reinforcements that came to help you. I usually manually click before my hotkey sometimes bugs out (I should likely reassign that at some point.)

If you’re afraid to mess with team targets you can either get used to manually clicking, tabbing through (fine vs Rangers, not so much vs Turret Engineers) and have something assigned for nearest target if you have keys to spare.

Like mentioned above; targetting without a target works for quite a lot of weapons/abilities, such as any melee-weapon will hit what’s infront of you (in and out of stealth) and certain abilities (such as an Engineer Rifle’s Blunderbluss) will hit targets in a decent cone infront of you. Even an Elementalist Fireball will explode in a decent radius damaging things infront of you if no target is taken. Something worth getting used to for quite a few classes (especially vs stealth users.)

In return Targetting a foe isn’t a fail-safe and projectiles will still hit whatever gets in their path first, though it often requires fast positioning from the enemy unless you’re in downed state. (Nothing like hiding behind someones pet to stomp Warriors or Engineers.)

I’d also highly recommend you stick with ‘ugly’ weapons until you reach level 80 and buy Exotics you will stick with for a while. Unless you map/PvP a lot (or never change your look) you’ll never really be swimming in charges. I had 100+ at some point (a lot of PvP) and now I’m always low again. ^^"

It’d be far from a perfect world if all same-type weapons would automatically be the same skin; I use multiple weapons for different situations (10% more damage at night or 10% more damage vs certain foes for example) I’d hate not having the choice to give them different skins, not only for cosmetic purposes but also convenience. (No way I can quickly prestack 25 might with ~3 Scepters and ~6 Staves all with the Lovestruck icon and still get on the right Slaying/Nighttime sigil after. :p) Could be me, so many times I realised I was on my Strenght set instead of Scholar or vice versa whilst using an outfit. ;-; None of this likely made a lot of sense yet, but in short, the freedom to give different weapons different skins is highly appreciated by me.

They’ve announced that in HoT Ascended will still be best in slot, not only that but Ascended Gear has been out since before I even played the game, which has been over a year. This is an incredible long time for a game to not introduce a new tier of gear, so I only find it natural it’s a long term goal for newer (or even experienced) players.

Secondly, the difference is minimal, I notice a difference, but not a major one between accounts that are full Exotic and those who are full Ascended. More importantly, there’s very little content that’s not play-able in full Exotics (higher level Fractals.) This doesn’t mean Ascended Gear isn’t worth it, but it’s not a must in any way. On top of that there other ways to increase your performance that a lot of players simple avoid; Potions (10% damage increase / 10% damage reduction vs certain foes) for a measly dungeon token and Food (+100 +70 is a lot of stats, but even +80/60 or +60/50 for a few silver/copper make a considerable difference.)

Lastly, patience/research can save a lot of gold. Look at items you can craft for a profit and still gain some crafting-experience. Do your daily refinement on items you need for your gear (unless it’s cheaper on the tp) which can all easily be found on websites such as gw2spidey.

I’ll admit, the first time I decided to go for Ascended I felt overwhelmed, it seemed like a huge investment, but 8 armorsets, 40+ weapons and ~12 trinket sets further… It’s really not that bad, especially now Dragonite Ore isn’t such a pain to obtain. One dungeontour or three hours in Silverwaste and you already got yourself enough gold for another Ascended Weapon.

Level through sPvP if PvP and WvW is your main aim. sPvP gives you plenty of Tomes of Knowledge (1 level / each) through any reward track, this way you can do what you enjoy straight away (minus the tutorial instance) It’s not the fastest way, but for someone who enjoys sPvP it will be the most enjoyable way. I got ~310 ToKs left over from Wolf to Dragon and I used quite a few of them aswell.

If you plan on PvE’ing on the side aswell I recommend to at the very least unlock some Waypoints along the way.

Hi, welcome back to the game!

In PvE general rule is to run as much direct damage stats (Power, Precision, Ferocity.) For a lot of people this simply means full out damage (so-called Berserker/Assassin) but some people swap in a little bit of Toughness/Vitality as they need to survive. This is because in almost no content Toughness/Vitality is needed to survive (teamwork or knowing when to dodge is however) and Condition Damage is severely kitten by having a Condition Cap. Certain Conditions stack in intensity, but are capped (for example a target can only have 25 stacks of bleeding) which means your damage will suffer if anyone else is applying bleeds aswell (which a lot of classes can’t avoid doing.) Duration stacking conditions also don’t prioritize the person with the highest Condition Damage, once again harming a Condition users Damage, unless they are solo. For traits a similar ideal goes; take as much damage as you can handle.

WvW zerging requires quite a bit more survivability since you can’t dodge everything that’s thrown at you. For roaming run whatever works for you, since it’s mainly about dueling / taking camps solo.

sPvP you can change your stats/traits/runes/sigils between every match so just try a lot of different things and see what works for you. (Your PvE gear is purely cosmetic in sPvP.)

For ideas build-wise you could check: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

As on things to do, could purchase the recent Living Story, 200 gems per chapter, I don’t find it too enjoyable personally for 200 gems but that’s each to it’s own. (They unlock for free if you log in in the first 2 weeks they come out though.) Map a bit, do some Dungeons, Fractals, WvW, sPvP, whatever you and your friends enjoy. The game is a lot more fun together.

Class-wise just pick anything you enjoy, if meta is important to you just check the link. I personally enjoy all classes, they are all good in some aspect of the game.

Copperfed O’ Matic is hands down the best purchase I made in the Gemstore ever; It’s equal to a fine salvage kit (which I salvage anything but rares/exotics with) that can have 25 uses max. Silverfed O’ Matic is something I’d never purchase though as you can simple make a 250 uses Mystic Salvage Kit and I use it less frequent (Rares/certain Exotics.)

Second best purchase is the Watchwork Mining Tool, if you ever do Ore Runs (which I do when I’m bored/lagging or on dead hours) it easily adds 50s-1g per 30m run and the convenience would be superb if I had a main character since I’d never have to worry about not having any gathering tools.

Lastly Bag Slots (100 inventory slots just isn’t enough for me due to all the weapons/slaying potions/consumeables/second armor sets etc. taking up slots.) Bank Tabs (I got about 6, but 2-3 should be plenty) and Character Slots (since all classes are fun in some aspect of the game.)

Everything else has just been pure cosmetic. I really wish I’d played when Bunny Ears were out though. I’d do anything to get that skin. ;-;

From reading the Map Completion section in their news page “A Legendary Journey” I got the impression that maps will have rewards accosiated with the map itself, for example for Orr this would be T6/Lodestones, Silverwaste more along the lines such as Geodees, making me believe a map in ~level 55 range will have the materials accosiated with that level, so t4/linen etc. The starter zones are excluded, so t1 materials might be out of the question though. Still, I remember the poisonous attitude the Queensdale Champion Train could have (not always!!) when I started playing, so I see this as a smart move.

PS: Unless there’s a major price-change on Linen vs Silk, Rugged vs Thick Leather and Platinum vs Mithril I’d always keep my level 57 toons for opening champion bags though. Though opening on a level 80 and forging/selling the right things isn’t too bad either, I’m just lazy and salvage it all for luck.

Arianhod.3485:

mmmh I think you can only get those 2, ascended and assassin: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_trinkets

otherwise you might want to craft the exotic ones (the accessories, not the weapons :P with opal orbs), which is basically the same as ascended.

Aww that’s such a shame, guess only my Mesmer is getting lucky and I’ll have to get it out of gear or weapons after-all. ;-;

Hi,

I’ve got the Ascended Assassin Trinkets from completing the Dungeoneer Track, how-ever I’d like the stats on multiple classes, can I purchase multiple somewhere like the Sinister Accessories? I looked at the Guild Vendors and the Laurel Vendor but couldn’t find them.

I know I can swap them around, but I relog too often to bother with that. Nor do I wish to craft Assassin Weapons over getting the Accessories (if it’s possible ofcourse) so please don’t suggest that. ^^"

Thank you in advance.

The sad thing about Necromancer is that it does nothing;
It can’t buff up the groups damage through Banners, Fury or Might like an Warrior and Elementalist can. The Vulnerability they apply is (way) better done by Elementalist Glyph of Storms in Air or even an Engineer.
It has very little, if any ways, to help the team survive either. They’ve got Wells for Blind/Condition removal, but the cooldown is rather high, where-as a Thief can provide blinds way more regular, stack perma weakness along with it and use that same skill the Stealth Groups and the Condition Removal can be done a lot more frequent by a Mesmer or a Guardian whilst they also provide Stability, Reflects, Portal/Boon Removal (Mesmer) or Aegis/Protection (Guardian)

Leaving them with nothing but their personal dps, which isn’t too shabby, but it’s not an Elementalist or a Thief’s dps either.

If you love Necromancer how-ever, read Spoj’s guide and just have fun with it, hopefully they’ll be more team-orientated in the future.

Warrior, Guardian and Elementalist currently are in the meta of every game-mode, so I’d recommend one of those if you want to be as efficient as possible for yourself and those around you;
WvW
Warrior Shout Frontline
Guardian AH Frontline
Elementalist Staff Backline
PvE
Guardian
Phalanx Warrior
Staff Elementalist

Solo any PvE dps-build works, how-ever Warrior and Elementalist have significant ways to boost their personal DPS (Warrior through Might, Fury and Vul, Elementalist mainly Might/Fury with some of the highest personal DPS) so I’d recommend those if you really want to get into solo’ing difficult content but no class should really struggle with a proper set-up. Mesmer can feel very sluggish how-ever since they’ve got very little ways to boost themselves (be it Fury to make their reflects hit hard or Swiftness for running) along with not having the best personal dps, great team utility though.

In sPvP they’re all in the meta aswell and they’ve got good roaming builds, but I guess I already threw enough links at you for one post.

Obviously if you simply love some class’ mechanics, play that.

Edit: Can’t link to save my life.

For PvP: Every character has the ability to access ~90% of PvP gear and trait-wise regardless of their level. Keep trying out builds and classes until you fall in love with one is the best advice I can give.

If Mesmer is too squishy for your taste, you’ll likely not enjoy Thief much either, they’re both very high burst damage with good map-control (Portal in Mesmers case since they’re slow as snails ^^) To some extend Necromancer will likely also not make the cut since they have the poorest escape ability ever and natural bulk (Death Shroud, good HP) won’t save you for long. Everything else, just give it a go. If you want some build-inspiration: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki can be rather helpful.

For PvE currently Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist (2x) and Thief is the most common set-up, though Mesmers are more popular in actual record runs if a Guardian (or other classes) can be missed.) Warriors and Elementalists are the group-damage buffers (Banners, Fury, Might, Frostbows etc) whilst Guardian and Thief are more for the support/utility, whilst doing good/great damage still, PvE is all about damage. If you enjoy PvP you’ll be drowning in Tomes of Knowledge, which grant 1 level each, before you know it, making it quite easy to change your mind later on.

Wall on Wall should be fixed imo. It’s a very unique use of the mechanics (just like creating as many targets as possible for a Mesmers feedback for a similar effect or their own Curtain on Wall) but it does make cut out 2/3rds of the fight which is a shame.

Like mentioned above, most content in this game depends on reaction on the fly due to it’s dodge mechanic. No class can avoid it really, though a class (such as the mentioned Warrior) can get away with getting hit more often than certain others (like Elementalist.) However since it’s still PvE it’s relatively easy to learn and predict bosses. Since every class does deal with that I wouldn’t worry too much about it in your choice.

I’d recommend avoiding ‘support’-like classes, in gw2 everything is more or less played as a dps since there’s no proper aggro management and healing scale rather horrendous in and with PvE, but they’re certain classes that are more support aimed and are expected to adjust per encounter to the right utilities, not being able to do so can cause a lot of issues for the group. Those would mainly be Guardian and Mesmer (Knowing where to Reflect, Cleanse and give Stability) and to some extend Thief (knowing when, where and how to stealth and fit in some anti-projectile.)

Warrior, Ranger and Necromancers usually take a certain set-up and stick with it as they were more focussed on buffing the groups DPS, which doesn’t change much per fight if at all. Ranger and Necromancers do tend to be a bit less loved in the current ‘meta/favour of the month’ something that might affect your choice.

Elementalist and Engineer is a bit of a middle ground, you have quite a few ways to be more support-like without staying much from your dps. But in good groups you won’t need to and will likely focus completely on the damage and thus stick with similar utilities. Engineer, much like Ranger and Necromancer, tends to be a bit less beloved.

nanomidgy.9180:

wow thanks alot for the detailed info Mao, i was getting annoyed when i tried my best combo rotation did huge spike dmg but nothing dropped, its all about the timing eh? guess i def need some ranged wep when i follow a zerg train.

Focus on high mobility; make sure you always have swiftness (np in a zerg) and pack as many leaps, teleports, shadowsteps etc. as your class allows and stay on the ball as to where the zerg is going and group up, 5 chances are better than 1. Quite certain a Sword/Warhorn + Greatsword Warrior can get to the target quicker than its arrows for example.

Suggestions:
Elementalist: D/D with Fire 3 and Air 4 as ‘leaps’ or Staff for Swiftness/Range/AoE with Blinding Flash and Fiercy Greatsword.
Mesmer: Blink, Far-Reaching Manipulations, Master of Manipulations.
Necromancer: No idea…
Thief: Dagger 2, Shortbow 5 or Sword 2 (requires target) with utilities such as Shadow Step, Infiltrator Signet (requires target)
Ranger: Greatsword for it’s leap on 3 with a Longbow for tagging.
Engineer: Rocket Boots, Grenadier trait for Range.
Warrior: Sword/Warhorn for swiftness and a low cooldown leap along with Greatsword with Whirling Blade and Rush.
Guardian: Greatsword for a tiny leap, Sword 2 for a tiny teleport (requires target) and Judge Intervention / Merciful Invervention (both require targets, enemy/friend respectively.)

Most zergs don’t require all your effort to keep up, but it sure is easier with certain classes.

TL;DR: Every class in GW2 can be played in a wide variety of set-ups. Overtime certain set-ups (and classes that do them well / sync well together) have formed a so-called ‘meta’ which is similar to other games fotm expression, however, it’s not just the class that makes you meta (closest thing to favour of the month) it’s the builds (traits/gear/weapons etc.) For example a non-meta Guardian would be less ‘optimized’ than a meta-build Engineer, despite Guardian being a more common meta-class. For this reason I highly recommend to pick a class which mechanics you think you’ll enjoy, you can always trait them to be the ‘underdog’ if that’s what you’d like.

However to answer your question:
PvE meta is mainly dominated by Guardian, Warrior, Thief and 2x Elementalist (though Mesmer isn’t uncommon in highly organized groups instead of a Guardian.)
- Guardian / Mesmer for Reflects, Condition Removal, Stability, Aegis (Guardian) and Timewrap/Portal (Mesmer)
- Warrior for Banners, potentially for Might-stacking.
- Elementalist for permanent Fury, Might-stacking, burst Vulnerability and one of the highest DPS available and Frostbow (5s stun + high AoE dps.)
- Thief for smoke-fields (group-stealth) blinds and high personal dps.

For WvW a similar mixture of classes are generally preferred;
- Guardian for Stability.
- Warrior for heavy CC.
- Elementalist for some CC, Fire/Waterfields.
- Necromancer for high AoE dps (Wells + survivability from Death Shroud to allow more offensive stats) with boonstripping.

sPvP is mainly dominated by Celestial users (Engineer, Warrior, Elementalist) but it’s more of a Rock/Paper/Scissor game of builds countering each other.

Items that are available for a limited time will steadily increase in price, how much is always the toughest speculation since it depends on how popular the items stay. I’d definitely wait more than 1-2 months, but I expect them to steadily keep becoming more expensive.

Easiest to see an example of it are the Black Lion Ticket Skins; Lovestruck never climbed (far) above 100g, where-as Chaos and Tormented already climbed near the 200g, both released later, simply because a lot more people want them.

More advice would be wonderful ofcourse, I don’t dabble into the dye market enough (except unidentified dyes whenever I go on a game-break.)

Most noteable Bunkers would be:
Turret Engineer for off-point Bunkering in low-rated matches / solo-queueing. Very few people know how to safely engage this spec and even then it can be a pain to kill. Organized Teams will generally ignore it and focus other points.
AH Guardian Bunker How-ever this Bunker is aimed at team-support (through standing on the point, rezzing/stomping whilst teammates position more safely) and thus will be more focussed on the teamfights, you can’t kill or scare off anything solo.
Minion Master Necromancer Very similar to the Turret Engineer, but more prone to AoE since you can’t position the Minions as easily.

Though you might enjoy semi-bunk Celestial specs such as
Shoutbow Warrior
D/D Elementalist
Both kinda come down to being survivable (Elementalist through protection from auras and regen/vigor, Warrior from Healing Signet and healing shouts) and stacking Might to increase their damage and their teams. They excel at holding a point long enough for reinforcements arrive or for a single enemy to back off / die and offer variable teamsupport if more needed at team fights / small-scale skirmishes.

Celestial Rifle Engineer
Also a Celestial build, but more because Engineer benefits from all stats with considerable hard-hitting power-based skills (Rifle 3-5, Toolkit 3 for example) and Conditions (Burning, some Bleeds / Poison.) But a lot less surviveable than the previous ones and less aimed at teamsupport (through Healing Turrets is great and you can never have too much CC/Immobilize, which this build excels at.)

Or easy survivable specs such as;
Hambow Warrior
Spirit Ranger

It feels a bit lazy to just hand links, but http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki simply has about every semi-common effective build available. Might be worth searching around a bit there or create your own build. My personal favourite if I know I’ll be the one taking care of Home most of the fight would be Celestial Rifle Engineer. It’s quick and efficient, but maybe not your taste.

AC12, TAUp/Fwd, SE13 and CoF1(2) are all incredibly safe to pug. Most people know what to do and the rewards are decent. AC3 and CoF2 are sadly rather long through time-gated events, I tend to avoid those myself. Fwd I usually base on how the group did in Up since it can be a bit long aswell.

CM123/CoE123/Arah 12 are reasonable aswell, but more of a gamble because people need to have some basic understanding of the dungeon and class. Usually if I don’t see a good composition or food/potions I’d not bother with the group. Good if you have time left-over or want a change.

Stay away from Arah p34, 4 is too long (unless exploited I suppose) and p3 has a low gold-reward for the time spend generally, SE p2, too long and most people are clueless. HotW 123, 1 can be done but it’s often not worth the hassle with pugs, rest, just don’t torment yourself.

This is just my personal experience, though people can’t even drag me to groups with a single pug anymore. ^^" I’d recommend finding a guild that fits your needs with your limited playtime.

My priorities on short days are similar to Jerus, quick paths ftw.

If your main focus is PvP follow these steps:
- Go to the top of your screen and click the helmet to adjust your stats and traits.
- Click the Crossed Swords next to the helmet and join into a few Practice matches.
- Once you feel you’re ready enter some Unranked or Ranked Arenas.
(Popular builds for a guideline can be found here: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki in Ranked Arena)

All characters have access to ~80% of the traits/sigils/runes/stats etc, level/gear from PvE is irrelevant except for the looks. So you can take your Engineer or any other class you’d like to try without feeling underequiped. Through PvP you gain Tomes of Knowledge which can be used to gain levels. I’d slowly stock up on those for the Engineer to hit 80 on him/her (for WvW or general PvE) and start a new toon from the beginning as recommended above.

Like this you can enjoy PvP, the story from the beginning and not feel you ignore the Engineer completely.

Thank you very much.

Hi,

I just want some confirmation before crafting, any identical bound legendary will do? (Aka 2x Twillight) or do they both need to be equiped at the same time? (Aka 2x Incinerator.)

Thank you in advance.

Bonus Question: Best way for Karma/Shards? So far I’ve found Silverwaste Chest Farm relatively succesful, but was wondering if there’s a quicker way.

My 2 Cents:
1.) I play on an average 2-3y old laptop and I’ve got no issues running the game, even in large-scale fights (at which I do turn my settings down.) My main focus is solo and 5-man content however and I hardly got issues there. (Except right now, but I broke my laptop… ^^")

2.) Mainly vanity-hunts. You can hunt Achievements for titles or just the points, do Dungeons/Fractals (5-man content, quite a few things can be done solo if you enjoy the challange) which are usually meant to make Gold to buy skins or similar vanity-items. There’s WvW/sPvP which is always a fun way to spend your time. Once in a while a new Living Story gets added for an hour of story-fun.

3.) WvW is too server dependant. I’m on SFR and they tend to either not bother playing at all or to face-roll a lot. It’s to be expected from one of the more succesful servers, but it differs per match-up and time of day. There’s also sPvP which is mainly 5 v 5 Conquest, I personally enjoy it a lot, but I tend to prefer small-scale over big-scale fights.

4.) Not quite, Fractals/Dungeons are relatively short instances you do with a group of 5 generally. They won’t stay challanging for too long unless you’re into solos, but like mentioned above, there are promises of more challanging group-content when the expansion comes out.

5.) Vanity and Convenience.

6.) I personally really enjoy the game. It’s one of the few games geargrind isn’t a constant pressure (which pressures me to be in a Guild because counting on my luck has never got me geared in other MMOs.) I enjoy not having the Tank-Heal-DPS trinity but everyone being focussed on damage and having to make sure you stay alive by dodging or other means, it’s a refreshing and nice change. Soloing content can provide a refreshing challange when I feel like it. But as you can likely judge from all this, is that I’m seeing Guild Wars 2 as a casual game, not 100% sure that’s what you’re looking for.

SupremeLegacy.7638:

I really want to start leveling, but I unfortunately have to pay for a VPN since my apartment blocks the ports required to play GW2 -.-

Trying to justify paying $40 for a year to just play 1 game lawl

Edit: The VPN just dropped $9 lawl…guess that’s my answer

At least gw2 isn’t sub-based or you’d surpass that $40 a year easily.

Disclaimer: My advice goes by efficiency and meta, ofcourse you can play how-ever you want to play and I encourage you to do so. I just figured if that was the goal you’d simply look up which classes can use the weapons rather than post here, if that was your goal however:
Greatsword: Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer, Ranger.
Staff: Guardian, Mesmer, Necromancer, Elementalist.

Staff-wise I’d say Elementalist definitly sees the most use of a Staff, however Guardian, Necromancer and Mesmer all have good use for it aswell in sPvP and WvW, just not quite as popular in PvE. In PvE most people focus completely around damage on their weapons as the utility they provide is often unneeded and the truth is for anything but Elementalist staves tend to be very utility-focussed.

Greatsword-wise in PvE both Guardian and Warrior are a safe-choice. Both weapons provide good damage (though tend to be used in conjunction with another set for optimal results.) For Mesmer it’s more of a PvP-weapon; it’s damage is rather shabby and very burst-focussed (at the cost of sustain) packed with (unneeded for PvE) utility such as a boon-strip, non-groupwide might and a pushback, but in sPvP all those things are very beloved. For Ranger it’s rather popular in sPvP and WvW, good burst, some utility such as a block and a daze, but in PvE it will nearly always be inferior to Swords damage (though Sword can be harsh on the dodging.)

If you want to get more into other parts of the game http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki is a good place to start, they provide builds for any content. Overall carrying nearly every possible weapon for your class isn’t a bad idea, almost every weapon has some use somewhere.

I can’t see any guildchat whilst I’m invisible. So that part would be completely normal to me, not sure how your guildies can how-ever.

I tend to get the same glow once in a while, mainly after trying to loot enemies. It’s the same glow as loot, but I have no idea why it sometimes gets onto me aswell or if it’s even related. Then again I play on a rather horrid machine, I get the best visual bugs.

For PvE it is indeed the case that you can do everything without any defensive stats, heck most content you easily stay above 90% HP aswell (hence the Scholar Runes.) In group content half of the stuff (most Dungeons for example) dies under 20 seconds, it’d almost be an art to die, but even whilst soloing Berserker (or Assassin, or Sinister) is often preferred to speed up the kill. It really is just a case of learning the animations, required support (anti-projectiles, Aegis, etc) and knowing how to deal optimal dps to end a fight quick. Wouldn’t say any of that is easier (or more difficult) than your general tank and spank MMO with whack-a-mole healing, just different. I personally find it rather refreshing.

sPvP is quite a different case how-ever. There’re roles in which full Berserker can and will shine (e.g. all Thief meta-builds) but most teams will want to have their Celestials (or other more survivable specs) to stand on points during team-fights or hold the point whilst reinforcement arrives. Full Berserker set-ups also tend to have very little stomp/rez control, which you might find valuable in sPvP aswell.

I’ll focus on anything that improves my group-play ability the most, which is likely combat abilities. Or ‘must-haves’ to progress (which hang-gliding / Lore might be) and lastly things that will make my life easier, e.g. Legendary. Quite curious to hear more, I can feel the grind incoming.

I’m also going to get my Revenant to level 80 straight away. The leveling system is incredibly slow, to really grasp your class you need to be 60+ if not just 80. On top of that open-world provides zero challange, leaving little need to learn a class properly. Lastly most of the challanging content is 50% tactics/dodging the right things, 40% knowing what your team needs (e.g. Stability, Reflects or Might/Fury/Vul) and how your class can provide that and 10% doing an optimal DPS-rotation, for all these things I’ve got eyes to read my skills and traits and make choices based on that.

It’s just a bonus that I’ll be back to only 1 stack of ToKs and only have to buy her gear once.

To me the OP simply sounds honestly interested in the program, maybe I’m too naïve. I’m definitly interested to see how big of an HP-bag those PvE-mobs really are. Then again, eeek ban-hammer.

3rd Party Programs are always ‘at your own risk’ but I doubt it’s as risky as botting or exploiting, just ask yourself if you want to risk it.

Warrior and Elementalist is ‘meta’ in every single game-mode (much like Guardian) which can be beneficial. Rangers tend to fall just outside of the meta, but can be relatively effective and fun nonetheless.

Warrior:
PvE; Very self-sufficient (Fury/Might/Vul-wise) making them very good solo and each group will want 1 Warrior due to Banner of Strength and Banner of Discipline.
sPvP; Warriors are great teamfighters and can hold a node relatively well on their own in any build. Providing a long-lasting Firefield with a few Blast-Finishers to provide Might for the group and good passive survivability. Rez/Stomp control is decent.
WvW; Multiple succesful Roaming Builds. Any Zerg will want multiple Warriors due to their amazing CC making the live of anyone not having Stability hell.

Elementalist:
PvE; Also very self-sufficient, easily providing permanent Fury, decent Might and high damage over-all. Their survivability can be trickier at first, especially compared to a Warrior. Any team will want 1-2 Elementalist to provide Permanent Fury for the whole group. A Staff Elementalist mixed with a Scepter + LH Elementalist can maintain permanent Fury and 25 Might for a group most of the time. Glyph of Storms (Air) can cause 2 Elementalist to provide excellent Vulnerability for a considerable amount of time and Frost Bow has a 5 second stun along with good damage.
sPvP; D/D and Staff Elementalist are both rather popular. Both good teamfight and 1 v 1 potentional. Like a Warrior they are relatively defensive (though active rather than passive, so you’ll be weaker on rez/stomp control) and improve their (and the teams) damage through Might. Provides decent support through some Protection and Healing for anyone near them.
WvW; D/D is one of the most popular Roaming Specs, good survivability, damage and escapeability (especially with FGS.) Staff Elementalist tend to be present in any Zerg, providing Fire and Waterfields respectively aswell as good CC options through Earth and Air.

Over-all Elementalist tends to be a bit trickier than Warrior (often build squishier or focussed around active defenses rather than passive survivability.) They also have more skills to juggle/cooldowns to manage. In PvE overlapping fields can be difficult for people to get used to, but after some practice it’s really not that difficult. I personally feel Warrior is easier to play over-all, but Elementalist offers more once fights become familiar and my experience as an Elementalist grew, for both me and my team. (This is a personal preferance though!)

Ranger doesn’t really stand out in anything. In PvE they have Spotter and Frost Spirit to buff the groups damage along with high burst (Longbow 5→2) and decent sustain (Sword 1) which comes with the big downside that some people get nerved by Swords auto-attack chain (dodge doesn’t interrupt it.) They can be a great addition but often a second Elementalist is preferred. In sPvP they provide really good DPS in Teamfights and decent 1 v 1 potentional, but nothing to make them stand out (Thief has higher mobility, Engineer more CC, Elementalist/Warrior more utility/support, Mesmer less survivability but more utility (Portal) and some Boon-stripping, etc.) and in WvW they don’t have the support a Guardian has, the DPS a Necromancer has, the Utility an Elementalist has or the CC a Warrior has. But if you’ll enjoy Ranger, play it. Fun class and not useless by any means, just not as ideal in most cases.

Hi, welcome to the game!

On the topleft of your screen you should be able to see two crossed swords, these will take you to the Heart of the Mist, the PvP-lobby of this game. If I recall correctly you need to level any toon to level 22 for it to become unlocked for your whole account. In Heart of the Mist all toons are level 80 regardless of level. At the top of your screen in the middle you should be able to see a Helmet, here you can adjust your characters set-up. This is for sPvP only and puts you on the same level as anyone else (though certain traits/skills are locked at first, but most are available.) I recommend you try out any class you think you might enjoy and jump into some Hotjoins or Practice Games.

For PvE/WvW you’ll need to level your toons to play at full effectiveness. Sadly you won’t quite experience the full class until you’re max level or at least near it. Hence I recommend to jump into sPvP straight away (since you said you’ll most likely be PvPing anyway.) Each day you log in you’ll get a reward, once a week you’ll get something called a Tome of Knowledge, granting 1 level to your character. By playing sPvP you’ll also often get these tomes. Before you know it you’re drowing in them and you can get an alt to level 80 easily, so I wouldn’t spend ‘too’ much time making a choice. It’s not difficult to change.

To help your initial choice how-ever:
Thief: Your typical stealthy, high mobility, high burst class. You will mainly be reinforcing fights to outnumber the enemy or cap empty points. Your focus will be on enemies that are squishy (and often high threat) and then move on to the next place you’ll be useful.
Warrior: Warrior can be specced in various ways but are mainly played as teamfighters. In a build focussed around the Hammer (Hambow) you’ll be able to stack some Might to improve your teams damage and you’ll be able to stun/CC enemies whilst being rather dureable. Another popular build is the ‘shoutbow’ which is amazing for smaller scale fights, providing decent heals, condition cleanses and okish damage (once it stacked it’s might) and carries greater mobility. You can be decent at holding side-points as long as they are capped for your team due to high survivability, definitly long enough for your team to reinforce you if needed.
Ranger: Multiple popular builds, they have strong Ranged Damage to take out any threat whilst being a bit more survivable than a Thief at the cost of having no-where near it’s mobility (hence you’ll mainly focus on staying at the teamfights and defending your home-point.) Pets can be a bit annoying to get used to, their F2 skill has a bit of a delay and can be annoying to land, their other skills (which include a Knockdown and Immobilize) are semi-random, you’ll also have to provide some micro and be careful to not use a melee-pet when you’re on a ledge as it won’t reach the enemy. I personally don’t mind this mechanic at all, but some people do.
Elementalist Similar to a Warrior they can make excellent teamfighters (when you swap to Earth you provide Protection for allies near you, Water you heal, you can stack Might for increased damage) and you’re very capable of holding points 1 v 1 due to good survivability. The biggest difference is that you juggle more skills and it takes a bit more to be a good teamfighter (though 1 v 1s I find them considerably easier.) Warriors are also quite a bit better at finishing off enemies / rezzing allies (as your healing comes from pressing buttons a lot, unlike a Warrior.)

Also I recommend having a look at: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki when you wonder what other classes are throwing at you. Quite some decent guides in the useage section aswell. Traits can be a bit overwhelming at first.

Tl;DR: Plenty of classes are popular for roaming and very efficient at it, but all differ slightly in playstyle. Only you can decide which class you’d have the most fun with, there’s never a ‘best’ option because every class has it’s counters. I’d pick Thief is you enjoy being in the enemies face whilst bursting them down and you value extremely high escapeability and don’t mind being very glassy. Ranger is your best bet if you enjoy keeping a distance between the enemy and yourself whilst still being able to do considerable damage.

As Thief you’ll most likely be running either a glass-canon D/P spec focussed on bursting down enemies or a P/D spec more focussed around dwindling enemies down with Conditions whilst you’re hard to catch due to Stealth. Both are rather efficient though I personally feel D/P pulls ahead mainly because of it’s utility; Black Powder allows safe-stomps on multiple classes (e.g. Engineer/Warrior) and Headshot can be incredibly valueable in teamfights to interrupt stompp/rezzers, or solo to simply interrupt people’s healing skill or other vital skills.

A Thief will always be rather squishy, relying on smart positioning and stealthing for not only damage but also survivability and will almost always be near the enemy (P/D can kite a bit, but still ‘needs’ CnD.) I’d decide whether you enjoy that or not.

Ranger currently seem to be running the oh-so-popular Power Ranger spec with Longbow or a Trapper Spec with Superior Rune of The Trapper. Just like Thief one build is a glassy Power-Build, how-ever a Ranger focusses most of it’s damage from far away, having Point Blank Shot/Wolf F2 to recreate a gab and Lightning Reflexes/Signet of Stone for survivability. Along with Immobilize (Entangle/Spider F2) for survivability and to make Rapid Fire undodgeable. Great spec if you enjoy fighting from Range more. Greatsword is there in case you get forced into melee and it’s damage nor utility is too shabby.

The Stealth Trapper is a bit of a mixture, you’ll still be kiting foes around as much as you can (mainly with Shortbow and Axe/any for Conditions) whilst dwindling down their health. Putting traps down for foes to walk into and provide escapeability for yourself (thanks to Superspeed from the runes mainly as trap-damage will also reveal you.)

In the end it simply comes down to what you enjoy playing.