“Are races still more or less cosmetic?”
Yep! You can get achievements by completing the full personal story for each race, and of course each race has their unique healing/support skills, but no-one ever takes them. Race is cosmetic and lore-preferential, as it has always been
“Soloing”
I’m with you on this, but I’m afraid Ranger is not your best choice -not by a longshot. If you really want to solo things that aren’t meant to be solo’d, your bears won’t last long at all. They’ll be 2-shot, or most likely 1-shot. Literally, just his kick does about 15K+ damage. Which means if you’re a Thief like me, you can’t get hit once. Actually soloing bosses is where this game gets hardcore and requires complete knowledge of mechanics and endless practice and so on and so forth! When it comes to soloing in PvE, rangers are one of the worst-off classes. If you’re just wandering around the open-world killing trash mobs or trash champions/bosses on your own, and you wanna call that soloing, then sure, ranger is great. Pretty much any class can do that. But when it comes to soloing Giganticus Lupicus (a boss in the Arah dungeon), for example, then Mesmer or Guardian, and to a lesser extent Thief or Warrior would suit you much better. Soloing that guy is an entirely separate discussion though :p If you want to stick with Ranger, they absolutely shine in PvP scenarios! And they’re great for open-world PvE stuff, of course, too.
“Crafting”
Well, if you want to get into crafting there’s certainly a lot of new recipes released with the expansion that no-one knows about yet -I’m interested in the new foods, myself. If you want to craft then there’s certainly a lot of time and gold to be spent getting supplies, but also a lot to be made by selling your creations. If you want to aim at crafting a legendary weapon, you’re very likely going to have to either play the trading post to become rich, or play dungeons, Maguuma (Heart of Thorns) maps, fractals, and so forth! But I must say those things are quite fun when you truly understand the game’s combat system. So, crafting is a big timesink and is expensive if you’re doing it just for the heck of it, but it’s up to you! I only craft when I can really put what I make to use. (Meaning food, armor sets for build experimentation, and maybe a legendary.)
“Exploring”
YES. Get the expansion, dude. It’s ALL about exploring! You get a glider, which is basically a flying mount that just can’t go upwards without an updraft in the wind (which makes you go WAY upwards). You can hop on bouncing mushrooms that shoot you way up and are the only option to get to places others can’t go. All these things require masteries though, which means you have to train them by “leveling up” at level 80. Anyway, point is, get the expansion if you want to explore and you’ll be so happy
“Rerolling”
No! Never delete your ranger
He/She is a level 80, and is always going to be viable to play in pretty much any content you like! If you want to solo Lupicus, well, it’s possible but you’re going to have to become an amateur-perfectionist of PvE to do so Which means dungeons are a great place to practice refining skills and learning the finer details of combat mechanics.
“PvP”
Dude. If you’ve never played PvP in this game, you’re missing out! It’s not toxic or stressful like other games such as League of Legends and pretty much any other PvP game out there. Everyone’s armor is equalized and so all it is, is a giant battleground where you focus on improving your skill and learning awesome tricks with your class that you probably shouldn’t be able to do. ^^ I play Thief myself, and while we’re not in a very good spot in the meta right now, it’s still really fun to play out the class’ quirks. Such as shadowstepping and shortbow #5 teleporting spots that most thieves don’t know about on the pvp maps. And combos a LOT of thieves don’t know about, such as “Black Powder (off-hand pistol 5)” -> “Bound (Daredevil dodge)” -> Steal (before Bound finishes) -> Backstab. That’s just a gap closer that blinds them, gets 4 big damage hits off, stealths yourself thanks to the leap finisher from the Bound in a smoke field, and somehow the 3 hits don’t unstealth you and you can proceed to Backstab after stealth-teleport-blind-3-attacks-ing them. It’s a pretty straightforward combo though, so any decent thief would easily know it. Similar to how you can “Shadow Shot (d/p dual-wield 3)” in stealth and spam 1 for backstab, to teleport to someone, blind them, and get a backstab off somehow before the stealth breaks.
Just in general, you should play the game There’s so many awesome mechanically in-depth quirks to the game that I personally find are so awesome and fun to pull off. I know this was just my viewpoint, but I hope this helped a bit!
(edited by Purevil.5306)