Guild Wars 2

Hey and welcome to GW2!

As far as I’m aware there aren’t any addons that are supported by the game, there do however exist some overlays & apps on Overwolf that are fine to use.

I mainly play on EU so I can’t really help you ingame (the game doesn’t allow cross-region playing), but if you want company I’d recommend finding a guild – either by looking at the LFG subforum, asking in mapchat or contacting recruiters who ad in chat if they sound interesting to you.

In general:
- take your time to discover stuff and enjoy the leveling: there’s no need to rush to level cap, and everything gives you XP anyway.
- you can’t screw up: no matter which skills and build setup you initially go with, you’ll end up being able to have them all and to switch easily. Experiment, go with what looks fun, there’ll be time to min/max later down if you’re into that.
- if you have a problem about anything, an event or some game mechanic or just some random question about something, don’t be afraid to ask in chat! It’s been my experience over the past two years or so that you’ll nearly always get helpful people answering and/or coming over to where you are to give a hand. This board on the forum is great too, just slower than /map.

Good luck ingame!

Whispers, mail and party chat work, and you can both be in the same guild. Sadly other than that there’s not much else you can do.

@Jayden: I think stability prevents the bug, else it seems to trigger most when the crystal is killed too quickly so waiting a second or two before breaking it might help?

Hey and welcome to GW2, glad to hear you’re having fun! The biggest piece of advice I’d give you is to take your time and enjoy the experience, and to not be afraid to speak up in mapchat if you have a question about anything – people are pretty friendly and most of the time you’ll get good answers and/or other players coming over to help you out. Enjoy the ride

Mesmers are considered by most people to be one of the most painful classes to level because in most cases they’re a bit lacking in damage unless they have illusions (which are dependent on sometimes relatively long cooldowns) up and are on the squishy side. There’s also their skills, as you’ve noticed, that aren’t as straightforward as most others, but my experience has been the squishiness and need to constantly be kiting around were bigger factors. Nice to hear you’re doing okay with it though – at the end of the day it really does come down to personal preference.

Re: kitten: that’s the forum sensor. It tends to be a bit too broad at times, and basically took offense to that word combination because of what you’d get if you removed the -e from ‘one’ :P

Also just as a note – dungeons in GW2 are pretty quickly done (a good party can do some of them in 5-10mn, average/beginners is probably between 15-20), so don’t be so quick to dismiss them, you might be able to fit one or two here and there even with short sessions.

mercury ranique.2170:

engineer is a bit of an oddball. The reason I didn’t advice it to you is cause it lacks movement a lot. The main reason is turrets. They are pretty powerfull and among the more powerfull skills, but it is what it is. Once placed, it doesn’t move so you are then stuck to the radius of the turret. It got therefor more room for excelling. The “art” of finding good placement for turrets is almost endless. As you mentioned yourself. don’t worry bout the lack of weapons. worry bout the lack of quality in the weapons. Kits are superior and cause they take a utilityslot, most people don’t want to use more then 1 kit. The weapon itself is of limited use. It is something I hope is going to be fixed with the engineers specialisation in the upcoming update. So if that and the lack of mobility is not so much an issue for you go ahead, but had to warn you bout it cause it where things you described.

This is complete misinformation and I honestly can’t see how anyone familiar with playing engineer could say anything like it with a straight face.

Firstly: while turrets engineer can be seen in low-to-mid tiers of PvP and hold up pretty well due to them a pretty cheesy build, they become pretty obsolete once faced with people who know what to do against them (namely: avoid the point and 5v4 the enemy team on the other 2 points). Turrets are in absolutely no way “among the most powerful skills”, and considering they’ve recently been nerfed to allow for conditions to work on them (one of their strength before being that condi builds were relatively powerless against them) this isn’t likely to change for the better.

“Kits are superior and cause they take a utilityslot, most people don’t want to use more then 1 kit” This is also pure BS – 3kits setups are PvE dungeons meta for maximum damage and there are several variants running around sPvP and WvW using 2 or more kits, and knowing how and when to use your kits is an essential part of being a good engie, the reward for which is amazing damage and versatility.

And the fact is, engineers currently have extremely good mobility – perma-swiftness is accessible with just an adept trait and regular kit-swaps, high vigor upkeep with another adept trait, rocket boots and several leap skills, so I’m not sure what the point there was either.

Adding some more details, skipping the questions for which I feel you’ve gotten all the info already.

1. There is no protocol to follow for gathering nodes as everyone has their own ‘version’ of it and it doesn’t have to be competed for. If you mean getting mats by killing mobs, I would suggest simply being careful to let any low-level players also attacking that mob have some time to deal enough damage to get credit for the kill. It’s not necessary and lord knows there’s a lot of level 80s running around oneshotting mobs during events in starter zones, but personally I always do my best to not use my highest-damage attacks until I’m certain everyone around will get their loot and XP.

2. People use Renewed Focus because the invulnerability is a life-saver during long fights when you run out of dodges/aegis/blocks, and because it lets you renew the virtues which, when traited, can bring a bunch of nice things to the table (like the blind on Virtue of Justice activation, or the party heal + condition removal on Virtue of Resolve).

3. Thief has a higher armor stats, but is one of the classes with the lowest base HP pool (with elementalist and guardian) while necro has death shroud and is part of high base HP classes with warrior and (soon) revenant.

6. For sPvP: grab a build off metabattle.com so you can start with a set-up that is known to be good and give you a chance to not get destroyed immediately, then go test it out in hotjoin servers. You don’t have to stay there long (they tend to be pretty chaotic and not always welcoming) but try to at least see every map available and get familiar with the points and the secondary mechanics. Once you feel like you’re past the beginning stages of flailing randomly, move on to unranked queue.

For WvW, the safest way to get started is to get on at a time when people are online and try to find an open raid – assuming your server is active, probably in the evenings or week-ends. You’ll be able to tell from the commander tags and possibly mapchat, and then all you need to do is follow the commander and maybe get on teamspeak with the group so you can keep up better.

7. Basic guidelines: rez the downed unless it puts you at risk of also being downed, but do not rez the dead until the fight is over. If you can get them up by killing a mob, do that.

Guardian-specific: this is going to depend A LOT on your party composition and your preferred mode of playing. It’s possible to focus on healing and being pure support, and that’s fine if that’s what you like to do – it’s one thing guards do extremely well in PvP for example. However, a number of people who run dungeons (which is where party dynamics tend to come into play the most in PvE) tend to favor setups that, simply put, will maximize damage as much as possible (what you might’ve seen referred to as the “meta”). In which case healing takes a backburner – since as you said everyone has their own healing skills, on top of dodges/blocks/etc – but a lot of utility skills and buffs come into play and are valued. In this kind of environment people will expect the guardian to bring along projectile blocks/stability/aegis/condition clears and the likes, while DPSing – active defenses, if you will.

This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it can be fun. Whatever way you decide you want to do it, you should be able to find people who want the same. Just read descriptions carefully or be sure to make clear what the expectations are, and you’ll be fine.

8. Anet have mentioned that when they finish reworking the Personal Story they’ll make that last step soloable. However, if you don’t want to wait, it’s a relatively easy instance, if long (expect 30-45 minutes to be safe). I’ve done it several times with inexperienced people, just have the LFG says something along the lines of “Arah story, first timer, anyone welcome/help appreciated” and you’ll get people.

Generally speaking, for any dungeon – most experienced people I know are more than fine running with first timers and explaining encounters as long as said first timer is upfront about it (and didn’t join a LFG specifically asking for experienced people). There are definitely unpleasant or impatient people around, but if you’re honest and willing to listen/learn/communicate, a lot of runners will be glad to help you out.

9. Full ascended gives ~5-10% stats higher than exotics. It’s a difference, but you’re fine without them.

A last note – if you’ve got more questions or need details about something, feel free to send me a mail or a whisper ingame anytime. Hell, if you get me at a good time I can also probably show you around sPvP/a dungeon or two if you’re interested. I mostly play on EU but if you’re NA I can probably hop on my second account.

Fields and finishers are basically a two-step process.

First, a field is laid down using a skill. There are several kinds of combo fields which will depend on the field used – fire, water and light fields are the most common, but there’s also smoke, chaos, poison and dark fields (and maybe a couple others I can’t think of right now). They are AoE, and a small indicator is that the borders of the AoE circles will have little puzzle piece shapes rising from them. It will also be indicated in the tooltip of your skills.

Now, a combo field on its own won’t do a thing other than what the skill does. This is where combo finishers come in.

A lot of different skills are combo finishers, divided in different types: projectile, whirl, leap and blast finishers are the ones I can think of right now and should cover the majority. This will also be indicated in the tooltip. If a combo finisher is used in a combo field, it will cause a special effect depending on both the type of field and the type of finisher.

A concrete example: as a staff elementalist, your second skill on fire attunement (Lava Font) is a fire field. If you were to switch to earth attunement and cast skill 1 (which is a projectile finisher) over the still-active lava font, your attack would cause burning. If you instead used earth 2 or Arcane Wave (which are blast finishers), you would instead give everyone in proximity 3 stacks of might.

Similarly, you could go in water and use skill 5 to create a water field, which would give regen when crossed by a projectile or an area heal if blasted.

Assuming you’re interested in PvE/dungeons, here’s how things are in the current metagame as far as I’m aware:

Guardian: squishy but invaluable for defensive support (condition cleanses, aegis, protection) and projectile reflect. Pretty much always in demand, assuming they know what they’re doing. Mid-to-low DPS on their own iirc.

Warrior: relatively simple to play and with good durability, great offensive support (banners, might stacking if using the Phalanx Strength buff). Difficult to kitten-up, sdo popular. Lower mid-tier DPS.

Thief: most valued for ability to stealth the party and allow skips (mostly CM and Arah, also nice for TA up and a few other places). Amazing single-target damage, and good support when dealing with trash mobs thanks to pistol 5 blinds as well as blasting fields with shortbow. Top tier DPS, but squishy as heck.

Necromancer: pretty decent DPS (though certainly not with minions build, you’ll want something like wells instead), but disdained in meta parties due to the class’ current lack of party support. They don’t offer anything that another class can’t do better, and it’s probably not helped by the way some PUGs indiscriminately spam fear and mess things up during runs.

Ranger: mid-tier DPS, actually offers some nice party support with frost spirit and spotter. Distrusted in PUGs due to again tendency of bad rangers to 1. camp longbow 2. mess up mob pulls/aggro by not controlling their pets, but a good ranger is a good thing to have in your party.

Elementalist: top DPS, extremely in demand for dungeon runs for both the damage and the utility (might stacking usually falls to them, and ice bow 4 is amazing damage on bosses). Definitely super squishy. There’s 2 different set-ups that you’ll see a lot in dungeons, and that is staff ele (mostly staying on fire attunement spamming lava font for sick damage, the easiest to play) and scepter/dagger ele (much more complicated rotation but much better ability to stack might, DO NOT STEAL THEIR LIGHTNING HAMMER).

Engineer: third best DPS assuming you know what you’re doing, which is easier said than done. Incredible versatility & ability to cover up most gaps/weakness in party composition (can provide might, stealth, projectile block/reflect, condition clears, burst heals) as well as maintain 15-20 stacks of vulnerability on enemies (amounting to 15-20% increase in party damage). Involves a lot of juggling kits and utilities to optimize however, and you don’t see a lot of them around – while a number will do stuff like camp flamethrower throughout the dungeon which is pretty useless.

Mesmer: DPS highly dependent on length of fight and amount of reflects needed. They’re most valued for their utilities (portal, feedback, some mantras, timewarp, etc) which help runs go faster/smoother.

Engineer is complicated at high levels and/or if you want to really get the most out of the class, but for leveling/casual play you can get away with fairly straightforward gameplay. They have one of the best burst heals in game & a bunch of block/invulnerability abilities, as well as some blinds which help mitigate damage when you find yourself in trouble.

If a few hours down you decide engie really isn’t your thing, you may also consider elementalist – staff ele is the other big range user that has good damage and is pretty easy to play other than being super fragile, with room to get more close and personal by using different weapon sets such as dagger/focus or scepter/dagger.

Other than dungeons, gather everything you see & salvage your drops, then sell the resulting crafting mats. Mid-tier stuff (especially cloth: cotton, linen, etc) sell very well, due to the fact most people nowadays are level 80 and so get lvl 80 drops, making it more difficult to acquire mid-range ones which are in demand for crafting.

Try engineer. Different mechanics from ranger, but still mostly based from range. A bit of a compromise between ranger and melee people, since engineer has a lot of mechanics where they work well from far away but work even better mid-to-close range, which might be a way for you to ease into melee if you ever decide to.

You lose nothing, the zones are open to everyone even people/characters who haven’t played the LS, the only thing gained from LS is achievements + instance rewards.

Re: buying cultural armor of a different weight class: yes you can.

You will gain enough skillpoints as you play and explore to unlock every single skill and have some to spare, so feel free to spend them as you wish.

Zerk is shorthand for “berserker”, the power/precision/ferocity stat combo. LFGs marked as “zerk” or “speedrun” are asking for you to be fully equipped in berserker gear, and also generally expect you to be running meta (read: optimized for max damage and utility) builds.

If you’re only starting with dungeons, I would definitely recommend you to stay away from them and stick to LFGs that state something like “all welcome”, which are going to be less stressful and demanding. You can work your way up to speedruns after you get experience and know what to expect, if you are so inclined.

Running story mode is not a bad idea – first it will let you open explorable modes (which is what 90% of people run), and they tend to be less difficult than explorable, so it’s a good way to get used to the difficulty spike from open world.

They are all viable, but depending on the content you’re doing some are less optimal than others.

Necromancer for example is really, really nice in a WvW zerg, but isn’t part of the dungeon meta because they don’t have any really good party support to bring to the table compared to the other classes. That doesn’t make them not viable, and they can run dungeons perfectly fine, it’s just that they lack utility and so people looking to make things the smoothest/fastest possible will prefer to take something else instead.

Ranger is a bit of a different problem: it’s actually got good damage and utility, but it allows for very ‘lazy’ gameplay – a lot of people get into the habit of camping longbow and staying really far away from the mob while letting the pet take the aggro, on top of liberally using knockbacks (longbow skill 4), which all go counter to the usually accepted dungeon strategies (which prefer meleeing and keeping the mobs in place with you). The consequence is that people will tend to mistrust unknown rangers, and err on the side of safety by just not taking any they don’t know.

I don’t really know of any crafting guides but I think the wiki explains it fairly well, if you haven’t looked at it yet.

For roleplaying, the guildwars2roleplayers forum is probably where you want to look.

From your list of what you’d like (range, mobility, damage) I’d say engineer might be worth a shot for you. First there’s gonna be the novelty value, since you haven’t played it before, and yes, while endgame/optimized setup involves some serious kit switching you can actually do pretty well with 1-2 kits instead of the 2-3 that setup demands and then ramp up if you feel confident enough.

Pros:
- currently most of their weapons/kits are ranged, but get more powerful at mid-to-close range, so you get rewarded for getting close and personal but if things get heated you can pull out without losing all your efficiency
- possibly the best burst heal skill in game atm, which bumps up survivability
- several “panic button” skills to again stay alive when things get too hot
- top tier damage, behind ele and thief
- permanent swiftness thanks to an adept-level trait, regular vigor thanks to another trait of the same level, as well as a targeted leap skill on rifle and rocket boots which are good for extra mobility or making your escape
- a variety of support options, from stealth to buffing to CC to reflects
- not boring

Cons:
- carpal tunnel syndrome hell if you get really into the ideal build (as said above, not necessary, but worth mentioning)
- not actual speedrun meta and sometimes distrusted by PUGs due to the fact a lot of people don’t know how much a well-played engineer can bring to the table
- definitely harder to play than the majority of classes

For weapons PvP is relatively fast – you get 3 per track, vs 1 armor. Progress goes even faster if you take advantage of the dailies, the rewards for which basically will push your progress on the track even more.

On the other hand, dungeons can be fun with a good party, and have a better time:reward ratio in terms of stuff like gold or materials. It’s a bit daunting to get into them especially if you pug, but if you do 3 paths a day you can get a weapon in 2-3 days if I recall the token costs right, on top of the 10ish gold and whatever mats/salvage/rares/exotics you pick up.

If it’s the mission I’m thinking of (human level 10 story mission) then you don’t actually need to kill the drakes, what you want is to interact with the chest past them to get fuses, which can be done without killing a single drake.

You can be in five guilds at once, yes, though you may only be representing (which lets you see guild chat & get guild bonuses) one at a time.

It’s used to limit the amount of clicks you need to → 200 luck essence used in one click vs 20 10 luck essence used in 20 clicks.

I think med pack has its uses but healing turret is superior in the majority of cases. On top of the big burst heal you get using it as Shylock said above, the water field on toolbelt also gives you a chance to get some extra heals (ex with my 3 kits setup if I’m low on health and still need a few seconds before HT is off cooldown, I can pop F1 and instantly follow up with BOB, rifle 5 or EG4 for an extra heal).

Another suggestion: I’m running a variant of the celestial rifle build with 3 kits on my sPvP engie and having some pretty decent/good success.

It goes Elixir Gun, Tool Kit and Bomb Kit, and while it does require some dexterity I think it may be usable for you due to the fact it doesn’t require the constant manual targeting of grenades.

It has a panic button and a way to yank enemies to melee range with TK 4 and 5 respectively, so you can use bombs. You also get rifle 4 and BOB to get yourself some breathing space when they get TOO close, and the smoke bomb blind field offers some breathing room in melee.

Elixir gun is probably replaceable with elixir S or something, but I like it because of the stunbreak on the toolbar + condition clear and small heal on 5 as well as the movement on skill 4 that can also help get you out of trouble or deal damage as needed.

I would highly recommend engineer if you’re looking for a flexible, high-skill-cap profession. Damage-wise it’s lower than ele (while still being in the top 3), rotation-wise I’d say it’s about the same as a S/D or D/D ele, but in terms of adaptability and utility it’s superior IMO.

A good engie can cover almost any gap in party composition or compensate for people who aren’t that great at providing what they should, like for example if the party’s guardian has trouble remembering when to put down Wall of Reflection you can step in with Throw Elixir U, if the elementalist isn’t providing a fire field to stack might you can do it yourself with Flamethrower or Bomb Kit, if there’s no thief you can stealth the entire party…

It’s definitely going to be a step above guardian and warrior in terms of complexity, but if you click with the profession then it’s really fun and rewarding to play.

You did not do it for nothing. There was a bug a while back that gave full HoM rewards to people who had not actually gotten them, and so Anet temporarily shut it down so they can fix it and prevent those people from getting rewards they did not work for.
We don’t have an ETA for the fix yet, but it will be happening.

I think there’s some adjustment made to higher level characters so that it’s slightly less than the base percentage, but Beldin is absolutely not right, it is in fact very possible to level your level 70+ chars by having them sitting around low level areas and grabbing every other event. It takes longer than it would on a low level character because of the adjustment, but the experience gain remains significant.

The way I understand is that since higher level characters need more actual XP to level up, they get adjusted, but the percentage remains the same.

Like, hypothetical numbers, but if say, a level 1 needed 100XP to level they would get 7XP for the event, a level 10 needing 1000XP to level up would get 7+63=70XP for the same event? So the numerical value is greater for the higher level, but the effective value doesn’t. This is probably simplistic but I think it’s more or less what happens.

Ooh, I hadn’t realized it was a technical issue over convenience. In that case, stupid question number #2: was(/is) numlock on?

There is that. I do have the skills set to the numpad as a secondary keybind, but mostly my right hand is more busy controlling the camera (& I got myself a simple gaming mouse with 2 buttons on the side which I used for the 1 attack and the heal, to limit the strain from engineer grenade spamming). The times I use it most are for my elite skill, which is the only one I haven’t managed to otherwise find a good bind for.

Healing turret isn’t one of the default but can be bought for 3 skill points, it’s in the uppermost line when looking at skills from the hero panel! Just figured I’d mention it

The 25sp heal skills were additions they put in I think about a year ago? They’re also a lot more specialized, and I believe aimed at veteran players who already had level 80s and a lot of skill points to burn. Some of them are nice for certain very specific things (like the engineer AED is used for doing some achievements or going through a specific bit in fractals) but you don’t need need them in 90% of cases.

On that topic, it sounds like you’re still using elixir H? I’d recommend giving healing turret a shot, it’s honestly one of the best heals in-game imo.

Try rebinding to something not numbers that is easier to reach. I moved my 7/8/9 binds to Z/X/C and after the first couple hours of getting used to it I’m finding it a lot more comfortable.

Depends on what the player does. If they gather stuff and sell it, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.

Not 100% sure but I’d say staff ele on fire attunement, bombs engie and wells necro.

I’d say thief is probably less painful – it’s squishy, but the damage is not dependent on phantasms/illusions upkeep the way mesmer and it’s a lot easier to deal with solo.

Turrets do scale, just… not very well, so they get a bit outclassed for higher level content. Like I said, for casual solo play they’re okay and kind of fun, but there’s a lot better in terms of like, efficiency.

If you want to talk engie builds or have any questions feel free to shoot me mail or whispers ingame at one of the names in my signature (the first preferably, as it’s my main account and I’m more likely to be online on it), I’d be glad to help.

No, a lot of early skills remain very relevant and part of endgame builds. The higher tier skills usually offer more utility or specialized stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better than the others. Just to give you an example, the engineer I’m currently playing for high level PvE content is running elixir gun (tier 3), grenades kit (tier 1) and bomb kit (tier 2), and grenade kit is actually my main source of damage.

That said, to be entirely honest with you, turrets don’t scale that great in general. They’re fine for solo play and if you need something to distract the enemies for you, but they are a bit lacking in utility and damage other than that. (I wasn’t happy with that fact personally, I used to run two turrets while leveling, but there it is.)

But if it works for you, and you stick to solo PvE (please don’t bring turrets if/when you want to give dungeons a shot, it’s not ideal at all), then yes, they are useable at level 80, rifle turret and rocket turret both.

Buying accounts is against ToS I’m pretty sure, so would not recommend. Can you maybe just wait for a sale and buy the game from the website? It’d be a lot less risky.

Honestly, I would say do the personal story. Leveling is relatively fast in this game, so I don’t think you’ll ever find yourself in absolute desperate need of experience that would make it worth stalling. Having the story to point you toward new places and to give you a narrative to look forward to as you level is in my opinion a fun part of the game which may also give you some context to the world and make you enjoy things more. Once you hit level 30 you will also start opening dungeons, which can be a fun addition and a source of experience.

Other than that, there’s a lot to do but obviously it’s not for everyone. Personally I love doing map completion or finding jumping puzzles, for example. I also like collecting skins to make myself pretty, some of said skins are sold by various heart vendors around the world, which adds some motivation to completing them.

You can also consider hitting sPvP, where your level won’t matter and you can scratch the itch to kill other players!

You may also consider trying a different class to switch things up – if only to level your thief mainly but switching over when you start feeling tired/lost, sometimes having something else to compare or to just add variety can make the slow stretches a lot better.

Because ideally if you run with a good party fully decked out in berserker gear, you kill stuff faster than it kills you. It’s definitely a bit more difficult than running soldier/knight, but the idea is that once you get good you should be able to not take much, or any, damage thanks to dodging, buffs, stuff like blinding the enemy… and again, killing things real fast.

I was in a similar situation as you (started GW1 after playing GW2, had no friend there or guild) and it’s definitely tough at first. If you don’t know about it yet, I’d recommend looking at this setup for your hero team, it’ll take some effort to setup but it now lets me get through 90% of things with minimal trouble.

I’m less experienced on PvP so take with a grain of salt, but from what I know/have seen/heard:

Solo PvP is going to be roaming in WvW, basically, since structured PvP is 5v5 matches on smallish maps. I believe for this the most commonly found classes are dagger/pistol or sword/dagger thief (burst damage + ability to reset if things go badly thanks to stealth + high mobility), dagger/dagger elementalist (good sustain, damage and mobility) and engineer (idem). I’ve also encountered mesmers, guardians and rangers, though slightly less frequently.

Group PvP is also going to depend on your game mode (WvW zerging vs WvW small group/guild vs sPvP).

For zerging (aka running in a big pack into some other server’s big pack), last I checked the meta was to run frontline warriors and guardians with backline staff elementalists and power necromancers, the other classes having more specialized roles and being needed in lesser quantities (ie having a couple mesmers is appreciated to drop a short stealth field to setup an ambush or a charge, thieves and rangers can be useful to finish off wounded enemies, etc).

Small groups are going to be dependent on your guild/friends/whatever, I can’t really say, this is what I’ve played least so I’ll refrain lest I say something stupid.

For sPvP, there’s several good builds currently in usage like d/d elementalist, rifle engineer or sword+warhorn/longbow warrior (among others) but it’s more a system of hard counters, where no build is so strong that it won’t be possible to be countered by another build or skilled player.

@Abdiel: there is, in fact, no set best class. At high level and if you want to follow the current meta (which is the impression I’m getting from your post), most if not all classes are good, you’re the one who has to adapt depending on context.

More specifically: for solo PvE, literally any class goes. The choice is going to be dependent on what kind of damage you want to deal (for example, condition damage is not great in group play but becomes a good option in solo, while direct damage builds remain good for both solo and group play, which means less-liked classes/builds like condi necromancer become viable), what kind of utilities you want to use and how much of an error margin you feel comfortable with.

A lot people tend to go for warriors or guardians for their solo running, thanks to them being relatively more durable than other classes (warrior thanks to heavy armor + high health pool and guardian thanks to having easy access to defensive buffs despite their low health) and elementalists are also pretty popular despite being the squishiest class due to them having the highest raw DPS, but all of the classes have something to offer.

For group PvE, any class finds a place in the current meta except for necromancer, who lack group support skills. The way the meta works is everyone uses gear that focuses on increasing direct damage output (what is usually referred to as ‘zerk’, short for Berserker’s, which is the prefix for +Power +Precision +Ferocity stat set), while setting their traits and utility skills to bring support.

A typical speedrun party can have:
- 1-3 elementalists for damage and might (+power buff) stacking
-1 guardian or mesmer to reflect projectiles/buff (usually guardian, that has more panic buttons and blocks for the party; mesmers are however invaluable for average-strength groups or make certain skips easier)
- 1 thief for high single-target DPS and longer skips where stealth makes everything a lot easier, as well as blinding trash mobs
- 1 warrior for party buffing
- 1 ranger for party buffing
- 1 engineer to damage, debuff & bring a wide range of utilities (*rarer, due to the fact engineer is probably one of the hardest classes to master & generally one of the least-played)
Now, parties are only 5-man, so it’s going to depend on who you have. Some dungeon paths I would be wary of running without a guardian or a thief, whereas for others I wouldn’t care having neither but would ask for an elementalist, etc. There are no healers, at all. Everyone brings their dodges and their heal and keep each other alive by buffing the group, debuffing the mobs and generally killing stuff faster than it can kill you.

In my experience running dungeons a lot, elementalists are a lot more desired thanks to their really high damage + might/fury generation + ice bow. That said, a good engineer is also valuable (vulnerability, ability to fill most gaps in party comp), just not quite as wanted for speedclears. Ele is also WvW zerg meta IIRC, while engineer shines more in roaming.

That said, I personally find engie a lot more fun to play, and mastering kit rotation for maximum damage while not dying from being distracted juggling is very rewarding :P

Just gonna correct Eros in that a good ranger is actually pretty good in dungeons thanks to good party buffs (specifically Spotter trait and traited Frost Spirit), the only thing is that people will expect you to go melee after your first longbow burst.

If you want to get a bit more challenging than ranger, you can also consider staff elementalist – very squishy but still fairly simple to play compared to other elementalist builds, and in high demand for both WvW and PvE.

Bit late to the party but since you asked for someone to come and convince you :P

I main engineer but have all classes to 80 and do run guardian in dungeons when it’s needed, and for what it’s worth engineer remains the most fun to play in every mode. I use it for speedrunning/fractals and it works great.

Basically, they’re top tier DPS (third after elementalist and thief), are challenging to play (and therefore not boring), have incredible versatility.

A good engineer can keep 15+ stacks of vulnerability on a boss – that’s a 15+% overall party damage increase. They can also cover up any gap in party composition – annoying skip coming up and no thief? No problemo, drop a smoke bomb and blast it up. Long fight requiring a lot of reflects and you know the guardian/ele/mesmer is gonna run out of blocks? Pop elixir U toolbelt skill when the first wall has expired. Elementalist slacking off on the might stacking? Fire bomb and then blast that up too. On top of that they have easily accessible party-wide condition clears and the best burst heal skill ingame, which can be really useful if one of your squishies misses a dodge and is running dangerously low on health. And bonus!! Engineer is one of the few classes that can pull off running sinister/hybrid sets in low-condition parties or solo runs and still pull their weight.

IMO the main reasons you don’t see a lot of engies in dungeons is that it’s pretty demanding in terms of skill & dexterity to get near optimal damage/utility output, and that they have a bad rep due to a combination of 1. bad engie players who camp flamethrower and generally do crap damage and 2. PUGs being slow to pick up on meta changes (a lot of people still think engie is medium-to-low DPS output for example, and don’t have a proper idea of just how much an engie can do).

I can understand finding leveling boring, though for what it’s worth I’ve leveled two new engies recently to 80 running rifle+rocket boots/elixir gun/bomb kit with bombs as the main weapon and it was great.

Just got an abysmal team, lost something like 500-90 on Foefire, unranked. There was a quitter/dc for some of it which may account for some, but I got the impression at least two people on my side of the team were really bad.
3:54am GMT+1 on my NA account (ghostydog.1493).

Edits for details I forgot.

Keeping in mind there’s two modes that are technically PvP – sPvP (aka Structured PvP, usually referred to as just PvP) and WvW (World vs World, referred to as such), the first being a 5v5 conquest mode (until the upcoming expansion hits, at least, at which point there will be a new mode) and the latter being large scale, server vs server battles:

-Stats and equipment are standardized in sPvP and all skills/traits are unlocked(except a rare few that have to be unlocked with gold, but they’re not that expensive and can be bought pretty quickly), so a level 2 and a level 80 will be on the same level. The only difference will come from build, weapon set and personal skill/experience.

-In WvW, stats DO matter, as while a low level character will be ‘upleveled’ to max they will have less traits and worse equipment. That said, WvW equipment is the same as PvE so you don’t need to specifically grind out PvP equipment.