Guild Wars 2

From the title, I thought this thread was going to be about how time management will be necessary for anyone who wants to play real WvW after the release of the new map.

You know, who can queue up for EB hours and hours and hours before their actual playtime. Since they are removing all but one WvW map and making everything else into PvE jumping puzzles…

(okay, I know, that’s pessimistic and reactionary, I’m probably just bitter that I didn’t get invited to any of the betas, yeah, that’s probably it)

As someone who spends a lot of time scouting and map hopping for defense, this is great.

What seems to be mostly overlooked in this thread is that ot only are these buffs unnecessary power creep, they generally buff attackers more often than defenders. Waypointing into a map with heavy enemy presence I often don’t have time to find some PvE mobs along the way to build stacks, but my own NPC guards that I ordered increased just buffed all the attackers with 2500 more HP and 100 more power (thanks veteran scouts! great job!).

A lot of builds will be changed, and lot won’t, I don’t mind. It’s a good change overall.
-some rank ~1200 nub

edit: I wouldn’t mind if they simply made the extra stats baseline for everyone, but I don’t see why people who primarily roam/scout (rank up slowly) should have to grind points for it, and I certainly don’t think it should be tied to NPC kills since that encourages all sorts of boring play (oh no, I don’t want to lose my stacks, I’m not going to push the enemy or waypoint to save a upgraded structure, etc….) and unbalance in favor of attackers over defenders.

It’s actually fairly common in large zerg fights. With over a hundred players on the field and lots dying on both sides there is a lot of exp going out, and I’ve seen several in a zerg level at once before (presumably when an objective they had tagged had an event end).

The heal to full part is fine (or tolerable anyway) but the knockback/launch effect is way over the top. It’s pretty lame in PvE most of the time as well. It’s rare that a random AoE knockback is useful. It’s also annoying in that the animation cancels skill channeling and interrupts combat flow.

I’m also wondering about HoT and potential changes to things like this effect, but so far the RNG of beta access hasn’t been in my favor…..

I got a G600 for this game a bit before release, so it’s nearly 3 years old now.

It took a bit to get used to the “g-shift” (ring finger clicker) because I had to change my grip style to not randomly hit it, but I really like it. I have it bound to AoE loot because I mainly play WvW, tapping it regularly without interrupting my other fingers from combat/movement, also there’s no danger of pressing it by by accident wasting a skill or dodge.

I don’t use the onboard memory function, I might if there I had limited memory issues or something but I’ve never even tried it. The software isn’t fantastic but it works.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I have no problem at all zerging with my engie.

Same here.

Focus party and frontline play are both totally possible with (enough skill, experience, and) the right build(s) and gear. I find grenades a bit lackluster for range/caster role, but perhaps mortar kit will change that. I certainly wouldn’t recommend using the pvp meta build, maybe that’s people’s problem.

From the WvW forum:

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

BTW, the ping number we show in the client on the options screen is probably different than you see in other games. We should name it something different. Traditionally the ping time is the time it takes for a packet to get to a server and back. In our case, it is the time to get to the server, get processed by the game map you are in, and then sent back. So our misnamed “ping” is much more variable than most ping numbers because it includes game processing time.

Keep your 80s. There was a change to the way traits are unlocked, but your characters you already have will be grandfathered to the old system (which most people seem to agree was much better).

You can do all low level content on high levels and still get some rewards and experience due to the downscaling system. You’ll be set to the stats of someone about 2 levels above whatever you are doing automatically. Start with some low level maps to get back into the feeling of the game.

There are 2 new maps: Silverwastes and Dry Top which are designed for level 80s also.

You can play the last season of the living story for a fee (it was free for anyone who logged in while it was active).

There have been several changes to class/game mechanics but that’s too much to go into, and mostly minor stuff gameplay wise.

Engineer says hi.

A new (relatively) player shouldn’t be spending gold on upgrades. Organized guilds should handle that. In case there aren’t organized guilds stepping up to upgrade, there are likely not enough people/organization to defend no matter the upgrade status.

That said, ascended armor is ridiculously expensive for the small benefit. Exotic armor is fine for WvW.

There are some areas in Orr and quite a bit of Fireheart Rise where invisible walls are used in rather awkward places. Many maps have them but those two areas can be very annoying (and immersion breaking).

Try engineer.

Well, try several, you get 5 character slots with your account. You can see (sort of) what they will play like at max level by going into the PvP area (heart of the mists) as long as you aren’t averse to PvP.

Engineer has very high damage and good team support. It has a pretty high skill cap also.

There are no “trash” classes. Every class can do damage. Fun is subjective. Try several to see what they are like.

Ascended gear is account bound also. Only really rich and lazy people will craft a new set for a new character. As with any new release, there may be a price jump on materials for a few days but I don’t expect it to have much effect.

The cooldown isn’t 2 hours, it’s a daily (resets at daily server reset time). Only ascended materials and charged quartz have this time gate. Not sure what the reasoning behind it is, but it’s been like that since ascended was introduced and they are unlikely to change it just for you.

ArchonWing.9480:

I wonder if the “body double” meta will become a thing.

It has. It’s of limited effectiveness due to the difficulty in getting players who are exactly the same rank, however. Still easy to tell which blue haired Charr is driving.

I don’t really understand what “endgame” means. It seems to have no real definition and the people complaining about it’s lack can’t come up an actual definition either.

It’s usually referring to a power creep based carrot&stick&treadmill system.

There are an enormous amount of games using that model already. It’s likely the people complaining here came from one or more of those games already and their expectations of “endgame” are colored by those experiences. It would be good for them to reflect on why they grew dissatisfied with those games before asking for this game to be polluted by that nonsense.

Want to know what endgame is in GW2? It’s developing personal skill. Your gear (read: time you have to grind, or money to waste depending on game) doesn’t make you better. You make you better.

thefantasticg.3984:

No… Reread the OP. This is for something that was some people ALREADY PURCHASED. This isn’t a “Buy it a 2nd Time to Access Content” thing. He’s also suggesting put it in the Gemstore as a FIRST TIME PURCHASE (which it would be for me). That way it can be accessed, through purchases already made, when the SAB is not “free” for the general public.

EDIT: Great. Now that it’s merged into MegaTopic it’ll get lost with all the noise.. That’s just effin’ great.

This is what’s referred to as putting something in the “round file”. (As in, the trashcan…..)

Oh well, it was a good idea.

“Best” is subjective.

For dungeons: Elementalist>Mesmer>Necromancer (this is a broad generalization on community opinion, all are fun and welcome in most parties anyway).

For World vs. World: Necromancer=Elementalist>Mesmer (again, very broad generalization and all are welcome and fun).

For Tournament PVP: Elementalist>Mesmer=Necromancer (repeating same as above).

For roaming around open world doing events and world bosses: play whatever appeals to you.

This is the best suggestion I have seen on the forums in a long time.

Dying your armor is free. Not sure what you mean.

I’ll probably use tomes till about 40-50. I don’t find there is much learning for me to do before those levels anymore. I will surely try all weapons and skill/trait/build combos (even sub-optimal ones, oh the horror) because I enjoy that sort of thing.

Windsagio.1340:

If you jump to 80, there’s skills you never learn (partially becauase you never need to), which is fine for performance, but your in-depth understanding suffers.

I know 80s who have very little idea what half hteir utilities and 2/3 of their traits do because they powerleveled and never needed to use them.

“Regular” leveling doesn’t make anyone “need” to learn all their class skills/trait combos. Powerleveling doesn’t make anyone unable to learn what all those skills and traits do.

“I know 80s who have very little idea what half their utilities and 2/3 of their traits do because they are lazy/don’t care/didn’t bother to learn” would be more accurate.

Voice comms are pretty essential in a lot of situations, ask in /t (team chat channel in WvW) for your server’s public voice comm info.

Joining a guild which has active WvW players for members is probably the best way to learn. It doesn’t need to be a specifically WvW focused guild, just having a few experienced players to party with who can explain things as you are doing them works wonders.

Specific advice isn’t really possible in this situation. Why couldn’t you get into a structure with enemies outside? I don’t know, too many variables. Some combination of better situational awareness, better build or better knowledge of terrain may be required. Why can’t you build siege sometimes? It’s already fully built, or you don’t have it targeted and proximity puts you closer to another object, or you don’t have supplies….

Don’t feel bad though, I’ve played WvW since beta and I still die to enemy groups. Really, the best advice I can give any new WvW players is:

Your character WILL die. A LOT. Especially at first. In PvE this is not the normal experience, dying means you are doing something wrong in PvE. In WvW it is expected to die. Your pixels aren’t you. The run back won’t wear out your legs or shoes. Repairs are free now (we used to have to pay for every death in silver, back in my day, get off my lawn kid…. um, woops….). Every death is a lesson and every lesson makes it less likely for you to die next time. When you die, think about why it happened, how it could be avoided through use of positioning/terrain and available class skills.

WvW is a whole game mode, it takes a while to learn the maps and intricacies. Be patient, get a good mentor/guild and have fun out there!

There are some good streamers on Twitch, some very open to questions.

http://www.twitch.tv/xerrex he likes to help, mostly does build demos and theorycrafting but you can ask anything.

Various streamers show weekly tournaments. http://www.twitch.tv/digitalprosports is showing one right now. Watching them helps understand high end play.

It depends a bit on what your friend is playing as well, but you each have 5 character slots and you can join structured PvP at level 1 with full stats/gear, so I’ll skip the class synergy lesson.

Mesmer:
PvE: Low damage generally, fairly high damage potential under some circumstances. Wanted for portals to skip dangerous/tedious mobs/terrain, backup invis when lacking thief/engi and time warp (increases allies attack speed). Not always easy to find dungeon parties as each party only needs one mesmer at most, not really an issue as long as you don’t get mad about a group not wanting you occasionally.
PvP: Mostly burst damage. Area denial. High level strategic play involving portal.
WvW: Zerg veil/portal bot. Popular solo/small scale roamer with annoying stealth based builds.

Guardian:
PvE: Boon factory. Mitigates large amounts of damage with reflection/blocks/blinds. Very high damage when specced while still offering a high amount of support. Popular in all game modes. Lootstick, I mean, staff is probably the best weapon for getting tags on world event mobs and WvW zergs.
PvP: All-in burst meditation build does great damage but has limited escape. Various bunker builds designed for holding/stalemating points and acting as a team buff/rez bot.
WvW: Zerg parties want 2 guardians each, running builds designed to keep stability on the group near permanently. Altruistic healing trait means you’re usually the last one alive on the battlefield in a wipe. Great profession for zerg commanding. Meditation burst build seen occasionally in roamers but limited escapes makes getting run down by groups too common for most players enjoyment.

Many world bosses cannot be crit, as well as some “boss” structures in dungeons, but champions can. Pretty much anything that isn’t a dragon or some type of structure can be crit (svanir shaman, megadestroyer, “champ train” mobs, etc.).

For world bosses (with perhaps the exception of tequatl and tri-wurm) it doesn’t really matter whether your stats are optimized, in a group of 100 people having 5-10% more damage personally amounts to a 0.05%ish increase to group dps. Condi damage on these event bosses is mostly nullified by the game engine condition cap. Assuming you have a decent amount of power in your build (it sounds like you do) you are already doing about as much damage as you can against the non-crit “boss” structures (dragons, etc.).

Should you be concerned about maximum effectiveness for some reason, I’d suggest a full set of Soldier (Power/tough/vit) gear for dragons and the like. It’s pretty cheap to buy, or free to acquire through karma/badges/dungeons. For all other PvE areas, zerker (or as close as you can get without downing excessively) is generally ideal (broad generalization there, no flaming please and thanks.).

It’s hard to have too much ferocity, unless you have no precision. Without knowing your exact build I can’t really give exact advice, using a site like: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ to show all the numbers would help with specifics.

Ascended weapons are account bound also, so you could use a longbow on a Warrior alt as well (or a shortbow on a thief, or a rifle for war/engi, etc.).

As for ranged dps you’re going to be hard pressed to find another class capable of what a longbow ranger is currently. Rifle engineer with grenades can be pretty impressive but grenades have no auto-attack (rifle auto can be great ranged dps with the right build but all the burst skills are melee range ideally, grenades are more efficient at melee range, and even traited rifle range isn’t as long as ranger bow range). Ranged warrior is generally considered poor dps, killshot is still very damaging burst however.

Any profession is fine for fighting mordrem. Choose weapons and utility skills that give a good balance of control and damage (some condition damage is helpful for the husks, but they can be killed with direct damage as well, it’s just slow).

Learn the mechanics of each type of mob. Take them out seperately when possible, they buff each other in proximity. Don’t zerg the mordrem events, mob upscaling really hurts with the leechers.

Interrupt the leechers when they have vines out and when they rise into the air and spin to start channeling the melee range aoe. Try to avoid pulling more than one of these. The arbor event can be cleared by killing respawns at the top edge rather than venturing down into the valley where multiple leechers can aggro, they heal each other with stolen health, 2 or more spread out with leeching vines can wipe a group fast.

Anything below champion can be stunlocked or chain blinded. Thrashers are least susceptible to blind spam due to their movement and multi-hit attacks, but they can be stunned during some parts of the animation or kited at max range using terrain. Boon stripping helps against wolves or anything they happen to howl near, simply stunning them or blinding them works as well.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

It does suck that necromancers can’t fulfill the interrupt required for the encounter’s mechanics, but allowing Fear to work just opens a whole new can of worms for the fight.

They can.

In Dry Top specifically this can be an issue.

I’ve also been in a t4 map which was well on it’s way to t5, then the Volunteer option pops up and (I can only assume here) a large portion of players on the map click the button. Progress all but stopped, map chat dwindled away and all chance at higher rewards vanished.

Using a transformation tonic can help for larger characters as well. Ascalonian mage potion or infinite watchknight tonic come to mind but I know there are others.

I find it easiest to make jumps on sylvari/humans. The camera is centered most realistically and clips into the terrain the least. Anything that can make you that size temporarily may help.

It seems that swoop is two leap finishers. No idea whether it’s the intended behavior.

Tested the other day (in PvE) and was able to proc both a heal and a fire aura from the same swoop when I timed the swoop to start .5sec before the water field expired and the fire field persisted into the 2nd half of the swoop animation.

There are many skill effects which are intended but the tooltips haven’t been updated. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_Elixir removing conditions for example (wiki says “a condition”, I was under the impression it was 2 conditions….. need to test….)

What is there to do in any game at max level other than grind (for stats or appearance or both), PvP and chat with guildies? What do you enjoy doing at max level in other games? (not being sarcastic or mean here, honest questions; I’ve played a few other MMOs but not many, it’s possible I missed something about them)

I tend to view PvP as endgame, because no matter how challenging any PvE content is it will become easy through repetition. Often boredom comes from performing scripted actions repeatedly past the point of mastery, playing against other humans provides the opportunity for surprise which can prevent boredom.

One thing that didn’t make your list is rolling alternate characters. Each profession plays somewhat differently, trying them all can be enjoyable.

I’d say don’t resign yourself to being bored already, at least wait till you’ve mastered all the hard stuff.

*random other stuff:
The fractal kick was probably due to your level. Not many people will run fractals with sub-80s (for several reasons, no grandmaster traits, no exotic gear, not wanting to/having time to teach, etc).
50% world completion is pretty good, but keep in mind that WvW maps are required for 100%. Start getting them done as much as your world holdings allow, enemy worlds won’t just let you into their castles to get vistas. You also may find this game mode fun, try to find out your world’s voice chat and get on there to get a better understanding of what’s happening.

A (modified version of a) system designed to rate competitive chess players is what they use to determine WvWvW rank.

Chess players generally don’t get substantially worse at the game.

Servers losing population is like the chess player becoming massively stupider. The system wasn’t designed to handle this sort of thing.

Maguuma is currently expected to do very badly in it’s matchup as far as the math is concerned. It has to do even worse than expected to lose any rating. Meanwhile, their opponents need to absolutely crush them to avoid losing rating themselves.

Also: seasons. Can’t drop brackets until that’s over.

Snowreap.5174:

I don’t think Defense Against Guards or Guard Killer are worth spending any points in, unless you can max them out (but if you can max them out they are definitely worth it). so rely on the opportunity that WvW tournaments provide, to spend points in lines that give more of an immediate benefit, then trade those points in later for maxed out Defense Against Guards and/or Guard Killer.

-ken

Agreed.

Build master level 1 and Supply mastery level 4 should be everyone’s first 11 points. The immediate returns of increased supply for your team and faster building are far more valuable than a very slight increase to your personal damage to (or reduction from) NPC guards (unless all you do is solo camps on uninhabited maps).

Guard killer/defense lines are only useful at their 115 point max trait. Not sure why people recommend starting with them since you won’t see a tangible benefit for 100-200 hours of gameplay. Even without a point reset, delaying +250vit/100pwr&cnd for 10-20 hours of gameplay isn’t going to ruin the fun of the game. Those lines are “the best” but only when maxed.

There is no “taunt” mechanic to lock aggro in this game, and no outside heals powerful enough for one player to take all the damage with their face.

There are ways to prevent your party from taking damage, like blocking, blinding and reflecting. There are also ways to group-heal and support through removal of damage over time effects (conditions), utility skills and cross-profession combo mechanics. These skills along with every character’s ability to dodge and self-heal take the place of old-school tank & healer. The idea is to avoid lethal damage through active positioning and skill use rather than assigned roles. “You take all the damage while someone refills your health and someone else deals damage” becomes “you try not to take damage, while dealing damage yourself, and supporting your team in a variety of ways”.

I’d suggest trying a few classes to level 10 or so, just to get the feel for their basic weapon skills. You can also test them out at full power in the PvP area (heart of the mists) to see what they will feel like at max level. The amulets in there aren’t exactly the same as PvE gear, but pretty close for a general feel.

The classes that best fit the “tank” archetype from most games are warrior and guardian (think barbarian and palladin, but not really, but sorta), they feel “heavy” from the start where most of the others get tankier options with later traits and gear stats (level 40+ after most recent patch….).

Elsdragon.5109:

If you meant me, Thrashbarg, then I will say that I have not tried to access it there post-patch, but even if it’s gone, there’s a portal to LA where you can go to access the guild bank after a little walk.

I meant the whole conversation, since it was based on false premise (accessing guild bank possible through WvW). I tried to quote the whole sub-conversation there, but the forum software seems to think the top comment should be removed, I’m bad at foruming….

I am aware of the existence of the portal to Lion’s Arch also. I did not say that bank access is impossible, just less convenient.

Is there a good reason for this negative quality of life change? It’s not game breaking, but is there any way this could be viewed as a good change?

Elsdragon.5109:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Brother Grimm.5176:

OP still hasn’t learned about WvW Borderland.

I have, but I’m sorry if I don’t want to port to Borderlands every single time I want to go to my guild bank, especially if I’m already IN Lion’s Arch for other reasons.

I think you still haven’t learned about the concept of “it’s inconvenient to warp to Borderlands when you’re already in a city that has access to a guild bank it’s just a long walk away from a waypoint”.

No need to be so aggressive. He was just pointing out that there is a way to access the guild bank through the Borderlands, albeit in a sarcastic(?) way.

This seems to be more of a convenience issue as it’s perfectly acceptable to port to a waypoint and walk a bit to reach a guild bank or make a trip far away from the bank/crafting stations/mystic forge to access the guild bank.

Go test it. They removed the option to access the guild bank from the borderland NPCs too.

It wasn’t a bug either. I learned about these NPCs from my old guild, who learned about it from an Anet employee around launch.

Having to leave WvW (and possibly re-queue) to access the guild bank is worse than having to port from LA to one of the other cities or, like, walk from the waypoint just outside fort marriner.

Whatever the motivation for this change, it is lame. Lame, I say.

No speed boosts stack, it defaults to the highest boost.

Jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, role-playing, guild missions….

Sarabande.8260:

Someone please confirm that if we just wait till some off hours or something that the distinction “FULL” may not be in place.

Yes. People do it all the time. Your level of success may vary.

Sarabande.8260:

Megaserver? I don’t care. I want RP.

I’m confused here (or maybe you are). Do you RP in WvW?

There’s no such thing as Tarnished Coast server for PvE anymore, it’s all Megaserver, your caring or not has nothing to do with this objective fact.

You can meet with anyone on any NA server without guesting. In the event you aren’t automatically assigned the same Megaserver, you can join through the party UI with 2 clicks (being in the same guild and on each other’s friends lists should generally cause you to be placed in the same Megaserver anyway).

I’d suggest buying or crafting rare (yellow) quality armor/trinkets, and exotic weapons at first.

2 reasons:

1) You may desire to change your build at some point, after you gain more experience in WvW.

2) Rare gear can be salvaged for ectoplasm to recover some/all of the cost, once you save more gold. Exotic weapons are often cheaper than armor and you only need a few at first.

I wouldn’t bother with jewelcrafting, pick another craft that benefits your profession. The reason is Ascended jewelery isn’t currently craftable, and it’s easily available (albeit time gated through laurels/guild missions). Jewelcrafting as a craft is mainly good for leveling EXP currently and you’re already 80.

Dungeons are a good way to get gear, assuming you can stand them. AC/SE/HotW for soldier’s stat gear (warrior/guardian frontline mainly, but good for survival on any class while learning) or CoF/CoE for berzerker gear (not recommended for zerg fighting, especially for beginners, but a few pieces can boost damage).

Price will settle at what the market will bear. Not many people going to pay 2000g for a daily chest.

On topic: The market manipulation by insiders stinks. They should do a complete purge of the alpha team and start over with a good NDA and the next team knowing kitten well that if one of them pulls this jive the whole team will be purged, again. Harsh, but having a few people totally up-end the economy every patch is worse.

IMO some Valkyrie gear is good for a WvW thief and fine for PvE. With foods/oils/stacks/sigils/traits you can over-cap crit chance in PvE/WvW.

Sure it’s still a dps loss over full zerk + power stacks/foods. As much of a dps loss as getting 2-shot every time you’re visible and/or not evading? I’d say not.

Every class is still good, in some ways some are better. There is another balance patch tomorrow, we’ll all be outdated for a few minutes while we figure out the changes.

Changes to the trait system made it very easy to switch builds, you can totally re-trait for free (out of combat only) anywhere.

Your armor shouldn’t be outdated, exotic quality armor is fine for everything except the highest level of fractals. Runes and sigils may need updating for some builds to be omtimal, but the basic stat sets are generally the same (soldier’s for wvw and dragons, berzerker for everything else).

“List all the changes to every class in the last year” is a tall order, even with my high quality coffee. The game is still fun, and still free, no reason not to jump back in and try it out to see.

Any guild demanding full ascended gear to join is silly anyway. This game is aging, fairly well for an MMO, but still, the population is declining as normal. Guilds can’t expect to recruit much if they limit themselves to the small pool of players with enough time in the game and dedication to have all top gear. Anybody with that much time in game already has a guild or doesn’t want one.

Unless you’re running with some super elite GvG group you don’t need any sort of “new meta” gear for WvW. (are there even any of those left?)

As long as you have exotic quality gear you should be fine, once you shake the rust off your dodging finger.

Most classes meta builds haven’t changed much or at all in a long time. Gear stats just augment a build anyway, more important are the skills, traits and some runes (shout guardian with trooper runes for example, hasn’t changed much since launch, still has a good place in any zerg and works with any of knight/soldier/sentinel/cleric/magi gear sets or a hybrid of a few types).

This is a good idea. Fields and finishers are a huge part of what makes the combat system function, players who master these effects are much more fluent in gameplay overall.

There was a suggestion along these lines a while back, for an NPC/heart/DE like the combat training heart in Queensdale where NPCs give instructions and provide a kit/bundle to create fields and finishers.

All opponents will knock you down at first, there’s a learning curve for sure.

However: Scoring is by total objectives held throughout the week and matches run 24/7, so top tier (very broadly speaking) just means highest off-hours coverage (highest total coverage in general). NA/EU prime times tend to be active on all worlds, the lowest ranked will definitely have less though. OCX/SEA time zones can be very erratically populated, some worlds have a disproportionate presence in these times so if that’s when you play, check out the top tier servers or you won’t see much action.

Lower worlds have very skilled players and noobs, same with high tier worlds. Higher tier is just bigger groups and more consistent PvP opportunities.

Whichever world you choose, find a good guild that does WvW to show you the ropes and help you learn the things. Lots on most worlds.

Avoid “tier 2” NA at the moment though, a couple of those worlds are pretty much imploding and there are likely not going to be much for good fights there until they settle in rankings (might take weeks/months).

All servers now use the “megaserver” system for PvE and sPvP. The only reason to be concerned at all what your homeserver is called is for WvW (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wvw).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Megaserver#Megaserver_system

Well, technically every profession in the game has ranged and melee options and can build tanky or damagy or hybrid.

Sounds like a warrior with rifle and axe/shield would suit your purposes well, or a rifle/bomb/toolkit engineer if you want a more demanding (lot of buttons) playstyle.

Just be patient and persistent. Think of each death as a learning experience.

Ask in the mesmer forums for a good build (PU something….. most solo players won’t engage you cause like, bleh, PU mesmer….).

Whenever you are on and have time, open your WvW panel and see what your side owns (or better yet, use a site like: http://www.gw2score.com/livemap/Eredon-Terrace to see exactly what you have). Take a run through and get every point you can which is easily accessible.

Looks like it’s been a few weeks since your server changed color, and that makes it difficult, but it will happen (it’s somewhat random each week). Check each week to see what color you are and get everything easy on the north side of your current home border and your “third” of eternal battleground. Get the south sections of each enemy borderland when possible. Eventually you’ll get everything this way.

Try joining a guild which does WvW at least occasionally. Advice on the forums isn’t as good as experience alongside other experienced players. You may find it fun, many previously PvE only players do.