You basically summed it up. Bi-weekly Living World content, Fractals/Explorables, and World PvP are the primary endgame. You could also farm up your Legendary.
If you want the closest to healer playstyle, then it comes down to Guardian or Elementalist, maybe Engineer. That isn’t to say that other classes can’t pump out heals, but for them it is more passive healing compared to active healing/prot.
Guardian will have stronger protection and life-saving capabilities, however if “backline” support is a must then Ele can do it better from range with water fields and the like. But if you don’t mind being a frontline or mid-range supporter, then Guardian is the stronger option that encapsulates the heal/prot/supporter playstyle the best.
Do you mean hated because X class is annoying or perceived to be overpowered? Or hated because it’s perceived to be subpar and nobody wants them on their team?
Well Thief is guild wars 2’s version of the sneaky rogue class. Stealth works a bit differently here – it can’t be maintained forever, but there are many opportunities to re-enter stealth while in combat or use it to escape.
The design philosophy of classes in GW2 is that the are all jack of all trades to an extent. Every class can be built for good survivability, and every class can be built to glass cannon. Throughout PvE until you near max level/fully geared you will be a generalist no matter what class you choose. As mentioned, Warriors do strike a very close balance between dps and survivability and they have a ton of weapons to choose from.
Race will determine how you look and your starting zone. Profession will determine your gameplay.
The choices afterward will determine your Personal Story.
Guardian is a heavy armor class whose niche is frontline support. They throw out protections, heals, and magic damage. Lots of AoE, and most skills have both an offensive effect and a defensive effect.
It actually helps a lot to have a friend or small group rather than 1 on 1 assistance unless you already know the person. A lone player helping another lone player (especially if it’s a guy trying to help a girl) can arouse suspicion, a duo or trio is less awkward.
For example, in other mmo’s some classes where good at farming and making money from it, some were just power houses meant for PvP and bossing, other where meant as support.
I understand what you are saying, but GW2 classes are not like this. There is no “PvP class” or “PvE flash farming class”. Every class is jack of all trades by design. The game isn’t perfectly balanced so sure some classes are better at some things, but the difference is minuscule compared to other games.
Need more details than that. Describe your playstyle, not the mode you want to play, since the only substantive thing you gave us is “not squishy” and then proceeded to eliminate the two least squishy classes.
They added something called a Living World. So there will be new content to tackle every couple of weeks. But if your problem was with the core gameplay then no, nothing substantial has changed.
Servers don’t really have a personality themselves, every server has nice people and trolls. What you need to think about is how big (bigger = more people to play with, longer queue times in wvw) and what guilds you would like to join that make up that server. From what women I play with tell me, people don’t consider girl players as inadequate as much these days. You’re less likely to be called ‘bad’, more likely to be hit on.
I think humans are Guardians because human is the religious race, and Guardians are the religious class. Mesmer because humans are the most political, Mez representing the duplicity behind politics. Also because many important human NPCs happen to be mesmer.
Charr are Warriors and Engineers clearly.
Norn are Warriors (brawlers), Rangers (animal spirit worship), and Elementalists (the power of nature).
There are many people who consciously avoid voice communications, and that’s perfectly fine. Some people are just winding down after work and don’t want to be bothered, others dislike voice communications because it evokes the idea of whinny 10 yr olds voices.
However, there is a great number of people who don’t do voice comm in games simply because it it is unknown to them, it is a large step in changing their experience, they must download a 3rd party program (big deterrent), some people are just very shy. Also, “the base game doesn’t utilize it so why should I?”.
These are the people the OP should focus on – folks who would use voice comm if they got to experience it themselves but for one reason or another don’t want to take the chance of crossing the barriers, downloading 3rd party programs, buying a $3 mic down the road, etc.
Open World content, Personal Story, and Story Mode Dungeons, and Living World content are meant to be casual and less challenging so the majority can complete them without much trouble.
Explorable Dungeons, World vs World (difficulty may vary), and Fractals of the Mists can be considered the more challenging “end-game” content.
It is recommended that you get high level and properly geared before starting these activities, although you can technically start WvW and FotM as soon as you create a character, and Explorables as soon as you complete the story component of the same dungeon.
You can check the WvW Rankings - the higher the rank typically means more populated PvE world. Not an exact indication, but it should give you a range of servers to pick from that have the higher populations. Keep in mind there are two regions NA and EU.
GW2 lore is mainly based off Eye of the North expansion in GW, which is based off the original Prophecies campaign. Factions and Nightfall are more like spinoffs.
All the campaigns are worth playing, but if there is a limiting factor such as playing time or money you want to spend, then I would focus on Prophecies -> EotN since those events are most relevant to GW2 lore.
sPvP is more focused on the e-sport aspect, so all players begin maxed out stats for an even playing field. Progression there is mainly about increasing your rank on the ladder by winning matches. Also you win Glory which unlocks weapon skins. As far as actually improving your character and getting stronger, that is non-existant in sPvP. Anything that was accomplished in other parts of the game means very little there.
WvW has the long-haul achievements and traditional character progression (levels, gear, abilities, rank). It includes many progression elements from PvE – in fact it was intended so that moving from PvE -> WvW and back would be a seamless transition. So if you are looking for the long term goals that will benefit yourself and your guild, consider focusing on PvE/WvW.
However, the double edge sword of character progression is that you will be sh?t on until you are closer to level 80 and geared up. I would not recommend entering WvW until you are at least level 30+, even then you will be at a disadvantage. Stick to large groups until you are max level and fully geared. The best option imo is just to PvE until 80, it’s quicker and you will unlock more skills, earn more gold/karma, etc.
If your an aggressive player who goes for the nearest kill and fight to the death, try Warrior. If you are a cautious player who never wants to die and don’t mind retreating from fights, try Thief. Both are good solo roamers, good in 1v1 fighting. Thief brings more utility to roaming with stealth mechanic, but Warrior has better group/zerg utility.
PvE —> Level 30+ —> PvE+WvW —> Level 80 —> sPvP
is probably the best progression for a player with no preference toward PvP vs PvE. Although you WILL be disadvantaged in WvW until you are 80 fully geared.
However if you’re a hardcore PvP in other games and dislike PvE, then theres no reason you should waste the time PvE’ing to level 80 until you actually feel like it. You could PvE to level 20 or 30 to understand the basics of your class before getting into sPvP.
I found the Norn to be the most straightforward “Im a hero and theres a world out there to discover” which is a good starting point for a new player, compared to the other races which have some pre-existing agenda like waging war (charr), rooting out corruption (human), etc.
But really, just pick the one who’s lore/aesthetic intrigues you the most. It matters very little in PvE, none at all in sPvP (asuras). WvW it matters some, but not enough that it should decide your first character.
Stealth is what holds thieves back. If they weren’t balanced around a broken mechanic, Anet could buff them in other more interesting areas.
According to the devs when they first released class info, Thief was not supposed to be a stealth focused class. But since this game was supposed to attract the WoW audiences, I’m guessing Anet decided at the last minute they needed a stealther like every other mmo.
I applaud them for their attempt to make it feel different though the net effect is still the same. The truly skilled players of that class deserve better or they will never be recognized by the community as such, only as another “stealth abuser”.
1. GW2 is not a sandbox MMO by any stretch of the imagination, so PvE players require regular content additions and/or traditional endgame (carrot-on-a-stick treadmill).
2. It had very little traditional endgame at launch. Nothing to keep players farming or grinding. Fractals are not enough by themselves.
3. The regular content additions (Living Story) didn’t really hit its stride until summer of the next year and by then most of the players had left. It still remains to be seen how well this works with the remainder of the playerbase – I have high hopes.
4. WvW (the PvP endgame) was poorly optimized, servers populations were incredibly imbalanced, causing it to lose most of its steam by the next January.
No, Rangers aren’t bad. However in your description you mentioned you like burst enemies down before they knew what happened. Rangers are not a very bursty profession, rather they are steady damage dealers like the Necro. Not saying there aren’t burst specs.
If you want that high burst shock and awe class, consider Mesmer or Thief (or Warrior, but you have one). Even Elementalist can do decent burst.
The way Anet has been balancing, one class is useless then OP the next month, so don’t discard rangers because you think they aren’t viable. Can you provide more details about your playstyle?
You favor offense or support?
Ranged or Melee?
What class did you enjoy most in other games?
Managing pets and npc minions?
Being squishy but with escapes/stealth, or tanky and reliable?
Large ‘toolbox’ of skills to use, or fewer but more effective skills?
Well Warriors are currently very strong. Guardians have been universally good since the game came out.
Other than that, can you list your gameplay preferences? Like offense vs support? In your face or shoot from a distance? Big and tanky or squishy and evasive? What class you enjoyed most in other games?
And anything else you can think of – the more info you give, the more accurately we can recommend a class.
With Guardian there can be lots of activity, but less about saving yourself and more big picture managing the battlefield with shield walls, reflects, virtues, and party boons, and the occasional big save on a teammate. If you play in a solo ‘take care of myself, team second’ mindset then I can see Guardian being less active, snoozefest skill spam so keep that in mind.
From your response I think you may have misinterpreted many skills with narrow focus vs few skills with wider focus. Engi and Ele both have many skills available to them and can switch to the right ‘tool’ they need when they need it. Compared to Guardian and Mesmer who have less skills available to them, but the individual skills have composite effects. If you enjoyed the ‘toolbox’ aspect of the Engineer then you might find something similar with the Elementalist.
For an alt down the road I think Guard fits your preferences most accurately with Ele in second. I would try Guard simply because it is the most different from your previous class while still matching up with the preferences you listed, who said you can’t have variety . You will not be turned down when seeking a dungeon group.
Since I consider everything that comes after the main segment of the game (PvE open world/Personal Story) to be end-game, that would include bi-weekly LS content, Fractals/explorables, and World PvP. So I would rate it 7/10.
But if you go by strictly everquest/wow endgame which encompasses only hard dungeons and farming, I’d say 3/10.
Since your new, it would be helpful to post what level your toons currently are since that affects which dungeons you can’t or shouldn’t attempt yet, and what time of day or week you typically play. Also whether you are willing to use voice comm (makes it alot easier to teach and coordinate).
If both of you just started and haven’t gotten too attached with your characters, one of you might consider deleting all your characters and moving servers. Not being on the same server prevents you from playing World vs World with each other.
This is a band-aid fix, but I think WvW needs regular infusions of participation, especially from undermanned servers.
Every 3 hours, the horn blows all across Tyria inviting everyone to come WvW. A large NPC army goes out to retake keeps and such. Size/Power of the NPC force depends on how badly the server is outnumbered.
Psychology plays an important role in WvW, if players see allies forces fighting (and not getting completely stomped) they will be encouraged to continue fighting themselves. This is a way to get many players to show up at once.
Seems like one of those movies where they have a handful of characters that they introduce separately, then they all get come together midway when the plot kicks in.
Difference is that a movie is 2 hours so we can handle 30 mins of disconnected plot.
Anet’s been doing this whole character/faction introduction thing for the last 10 months…
I agree we should be able to replay story instances, but I don’t think redoing open world content is realistic to implement. I made a similar Suggestion earlier this year.
I hope they mix and match players from every server. Otherwise what’s the point of overflow when one server has hundreds more people waiting for opponents across different overflows, and other servers can’t get enough to populate one overflow.
Also there are friends on other servers I’d like to play large scale pvp with. The PPT driven “Server Pride” crowd has their exclusive WvW format already.
Well Thief is the premier roaming class due to stealth and high mobility, but also try Warrior as they are very strong right now and good mobility. Mesmer and Engis are also pretty good.
. You will not be turned down when seeking a dungeon group.