Originally posted by jazz.be

Originally posted by Distaste

Originally posted by jazz.be

Originally posted by Kyelthis

Originally posted by jazz.be

Man I'm going to have serious problems deciding my profession on the 22nd of August.

I have so little knowledge about the professions. But they look very different from each other with the various weapon abilities.

I know that every profession has some heal abilities etc. But which one is best at healing and which one is best at tanking?

I wonder if I'd make the right choice from start....kinda exciting.

Best at healing? Elementalist or Guardian.

Tanking? Necro, Ele, Guardian, Warrior.

That doesn't sound right for some reason :-)

I have more faith in Eir_S's comment. However I've read somewhere that the whole healer/tank/dps structure is still present in GW2, that it's just a little less important.

No, that statement is correct.

Elementalist and guardian just have more skills that heal making them better healers. I can only be specific from the elementalist side but they usually have 2 healing skills in the water attunement(the frost beam and tidal wave for example) as well as several other things like traits that make swapping into water attunement heal people around them.

Elementalists also have some very nice traits/skills for reducing damage they take, but I wouldn't say they are as good at it as the other 3.

Necro's have their class skill that basically gives them 2 health bars on top of their abilities that return health on damage. So they can certainly be pretty tanky. Guardians have the extra armor, aegis(blocks an attack), healing, and a ton of abilities that block or reduce damage. Warriors have the extra health/armor, shield block, counter attack, defensive banner, and a bunch of skills to stop their opponent from attacking(stun/knockdown).

That doesn't mean the tank classes can just sit infront of an enemy and "tank" or that the better healing classes can keep people healed indefinitely. It just means those classes do it better than others.

All right I may have been misguided by past experiences. Light armor good at tanking sounded a little bit weird.

But how about aggro, is there aggro or hate at all? Are there classes that can manipulate that hate/aggro?

There is nothing like aggro in GW2, or at least players seem to have very little control over it.  MOBs just attack based on their AI...most seem to attack what is closest to them.  Sometimes they go rush out and get other people, but there definitely doesn't seem to be a way to force a MOB to attack you ala trinity games.

And even if there was, you generally wouldn't want to do that.  GW2 is more about evading damage, or using specific skills to mitigate it, rather than just soaking it up and getting healed.

I've played

Mesmer to lvl 32 in BWE1 & 2

Engineer to lvl 28 in BWE 1 & 2

Elementalist to lvl 41 in BWE 3

so i can only provide these professions' impression in both WvW and PvE

But of course Engineer and Mesmer are subject to the modification by ANet during BWEs/

Elementalist: (I Speced 20 fire and rest in wind)

this class is great when you are teaming up with people. the damage it has will ensure the dps of your team during PvE situations such as dungeon & quest farming. However when you are alone, you should be fine up to lvl 25 area. After that you will find mob a bit painful to deal with especially with the dynamic events.

In WvW, you are great in defending points because of your aoe and the need of knocking down the door. If you can place your skills wisely, it is not that hard to kill a few range player that's targeting the door.

Wind traits with d/d are my favorites during skirmishes and they should ensure you have a good running speed to not get caught when running away. (but there are some instances that I have no clue how some people, very few people were able to catch up to me without any skill benefits...)

My damage in WvW the highest is only close to 5K crit (happens quite rarely, never exceed 4.8k, 2 ~ 3k dmg is the usual case)

the water battle with elementalist, I don't know what the heck were devs thinking. quite a few underwater skills are basically useless when it comes to PvE and PvP. Fire is almost useless, water is great if you can time your activate explosion at the right time, wind is nice but i often see people just swim right through my attack and earth is just mediocre.

But with right usages, D/D elementalist can help your team destroy the opponent team in open field WvW. there are many cases that I just flash right into enemy crowd and disable quite a few of them causing the total destruction of enemy.

The downside with D/D is that it sure has some awesome skill to make that burst surprise attack, but it lacks the skills to help you caught up to your enemy. I have no clue why but when not in wind, even with my 10% perma speed increase, I wasn't able to catch up to few people (those without buff that increases speed) and have to rely on storming skills to shorten the distance only to see enemies ran away.

from my overall experience that I suspected that some people already started to use speed hack during BWE.

Engineer: (I spec my traits in firearms and alchemy)

I had alot of fun with engineer, but during BWE1, engineer was a bit disappointing so i stopped at level 18 and changed to mesmer. It was back in BWE2 that I picked up engineer again to get it up to lvl 28.

Engineer is great for solo PvE and roaming in WvW.

In PvE, my engineer had no problem to kill stuff by itself, it's just fairly slow compare to all the warrior n' elementalist around me back in BWE1. When there are multiple targets my eng will usually die without question if I chose to man up and fight.

In BWE1 there was a bug with turrents that once it got a hold of someone, even if that person hid behind a wall, often turrent can shoot through the wall to hit the person. You can also stay near the door and place your turrent, and it will shoot people on the other side of the door.

The turrents that were useful were healing, rocket and gun. I've never found my net turrent useful. I often use rifle / dual pistols during almost all situations. sometimes during skimishes I would use elixer gun when playing with my girl. in most situation I only use healing / rocket turrents.

Engineer provides great versatility and has improved a bit from BWE1 in BWE2 in terms of survivability. They also improved engineer's damage a bit. With the ability of applying great amount of debuff at once, engineer's role largely become wearing your enemy down instead of hoping a 1 hit OMFGBBQ death.

I never made it to lvl 30 so didn't look for team for catacomb, hence I have no clue how engineer will do in dungeon, but I can imagine turrents will be quite useful.

There are times in WvW, I use my overcharged shot to knock enemies off a cliff lol....fun time.

Mesmer: (Illusion & Inspiration Spec )

I admit that Mesmer is fun to play when you first play it. But as I progress further into 20 lvl zone, I find Mesmer being position in a very awkward situation. The armor is bad, It can only rely on specific spells, illusions were only useful as mind whack makes the weapon selection ultimately between sceptor + pistol / staff. Of course you can go sword + pistol path or dual sword, but I dare you use that later on in PvE as you are basically asking to die fairly quickly when soloing.

I had a lot of problem with Mesmer in PvE back in BWE1 and 2. my illusions often don't even reach mind whack location to serve it's purpose before it died, if I was to confuse my opponents, sadly PvE mobs does not deviate from attacking the actual you since you need to attack them to summon the illusions, and everything can one shot my illusion rendering them useless (often before I even see my illusion appear, they already died from aoe)

In BWE2, pistol warden were buffed enough that we had good damager output, at the same time mind whack was nerfed by almost 95%. But this limits our high level zone progress to rely on a warden that can die easily too and will disappear right after your target dies, hence PvE was a pain for my Mesmer.

in WvW, mesmer are quite useless back in both BWE1 and 2. It normally can't hit anything and illusions do not attack door/siege weapons. if you hope your illusion to do anything, sure in a mess they can confuse human players, but when there are elementalist's aoe, you better not rush forward.

mirror were proven useful because they can block all projectiles (including siege weapons), chaos storms were also useful because of its intense debuff applications, but between those two skills' CD, you basically have nothing to do.

You mostly can't hit the oil / anything on top of the wall with your attack1 except if you wield a great sword.

But Mesmer is useful when its openfield battle in that you can help your team advance forward. But due to the fact that Mesmer are mostly useless in WvW, I ended up going to all the jump quest I can find.

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I've also tried thief and warrior each to level 10. But have never played them long enough to provide a good impression on them.

Initally I was going to make Mesmer my main, but I was extremely disappointed by the way Mesmer has been so probably won't bother rolling one. If you want front line fun and don't want plain melee warrior / guardian, I would recommend either Elementalist / Engineer.

to the person above me, there is something similar to aggro in GW2. there are even gear stats to reduce the generating of "aggro".

Before beta:

WIll play: Guardian, Thief

Probably Play: Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist

Wont play:  Warrior, Enginner , Necromancer

After beta:

WIll play: Ranger, Necromancer

Probably Play: Warrior, Guardian, Enginner,

Wont play:   Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist

Originally posted by ruonim

Before beta:

WIll play: Guardian, Thief

Probably Play: Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist

Wont play:  Warrior, Enginner , Necromancer

 

After beta:

WIll play: Ranger, Necromancer

Probably Play: Warrior, Guardian, Enginner,

Wont play:   Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist

I'm sort of in the same boat after the beta. I did not even have necromancer on my radar as a class I'd play. Now It's on the top of my list lol.

Played all three BW mostly with Necro, Mesmer and Warrior, i played all the time in SPVP, so i tested all of them at level 80 with all the traits and skills unlocked.

Warrior is the most polished class in game atm and imo the easy to get if you are a new player, just pressing keys randomly things happens and people die, for me is currently the strongest class in game.

The Necro, dont get wrong with this class, is more a tank class than a dps class, with the Guardian is the hardest one to be killed, it lacks a bit of dps and suffers some problems with the AI of their minions, which is a problem if you play a minion master build.

Mesmers are the class that need more work atm, some of the weapons are near to useless and they dont have so much choice on what to pick anyway, clones were nerfed in the last BW and now they do 0 damage, more than 90% of the traits need a rework , some give more dmg to illusions were clones do 0 dmg and others give more life to them when they die in 1 hit anyway, clones are useless also because players can mark you at the start and ignore your illusions, etc...

Besides all this the Mesmer class is fun to play and in good hands very hard to kill, i hope all the flaws ( or most of them )  that the class currently have will be fixed at release, like Jon Peters said.

To anyone thinking of going mesmer or necro for the summons, don't.

Necro minions don't regenerate health which makes them largely useless unless you heal them after each and every fight.

Mesmer illusions are extremely weak and pointless in PvE where you don't need to fool anyone. Phantasms are stronger but like illusions, they disappear when the monster you were targeting when casting them dies. This usually happens in about two seconds so the phantasm doesn't have time to do anything. You'll be spamming them left and right only to watch them disappear in a puff of butterflies as soon as you finish casting.

Ranger is the only pet class in this game.

Originally posted by fiontar

Ranger:  Pet taming is easy, but you can only tame Juveniles.

Having been on the fence about this for an age,  that one line alone has made me commit and just ordered it.

1) Elementalist: top of the list for me, as others have said, this class is extremely versatile, having an enormous amount of different options with each weapon type you use. You can also build this class both for amazing offense and very powerful support.

But really, versatility is key here.

2) Guardian: second on my list, I find that "dependable" describes the guardian. The class can be build to be very tough with respectable damage output and it can be build to give incredible support to friendlies while becoming nearly unkillable. You can really go for a build or playstyle with this class and carry it through.

In sPvP:

BWE1: played a support heavy staff-guardian, I felt nearly immortal and only died a handful of times over the course of more than a day of focused PvP. I had a lot of options for healing (and self healing) while being tough as nails.

You could simply see the effect of you being there when two teams clashed in matches as you could destabilize their team while making  yours last so much longer.

BWE3: Played as a meditation guardian with sword / shield & scepter / focus. This spec actually seemed OP to me, because it had both amazing toughness, great selfhealing / condition removal and great damage. You could successfully pull off several 2-3k aoe attacks coupled with a 4k single target attack. Enemies would literally need to bash on me with 4 or more people before I ever felt that I was in danger.

3) Necromancer: seemed strong as you could apply dozens of bleeds on people and extrend your own life significantly with death shroud. The pet builds really seemed lacklustre however (and they're not my thing anyhow).

I didn't spend enough time with this class, it looked like the class also had a lot of support options, once again dealing with removing conditions / turning them into boons / transferring them from your team etc.

An interesting class that requires a bit of time to set up correctly.

4) Mesmer: I didn't really *get* this class. It seemed weak in PvE as your clones and phantasm died nearly instantly when mobs focused them (sometimes so quickly that you don't even have the chance to shatter them) and they disappeared after each fight. The damage output was also not there.

The same happened in PvP, I just seemed to drop like a sack of shit with the class. I tried to make it do damage, but failed.

However, this can most likely be attributed to me, because I did meet a lot of good mesmers who managed to confuse the heck out of people and go invisible a good three times.

A lot of the mechanics of this class seemed to lie in the dark and weren't very well explained (to non-GW1 vets), they look like a powerful debuffer to take with you though.

Ok, here goes, given I did only play each class so far. So take it with a grain of salt. ^^

ELEMENTALIST: It was the first class I tried, because I loved the idea to have cool magic effects. And I wasn't let down in that aspect. But BOY, it was such a hassle to unlock and learn all those Elementalist skills. (Elementalist is so long to type... can't we say mage? That's much faster to type...) To be honest, I felt the Ele (hah!) was just underpowered given he was just wearing cloth armour. Especially if I compare him to my experience with Thief and Warrior, who also do great damage, my Ele simply died way too often. Yes, yes, you CAN play him so you die less or maybe not at all. But given he wears cloth I simply feel he is not powerful enough. Glass yes, cannon... no. Needs some post-launch tinkering.

THIEF: I really love this class, despite the fact it is not easy to play. Somehow the combat icons change within combat due to some mechanics I still don't fully understand. But you can swirl, jump and teleport around your enemy, and that is just so much fun to watch. Still, found thief very difficult for PVP, at least the open mass PVP. The 5 VS 5 thief is good, because he is great working with single targets, but his vulnerability and limited range just made him weak in mass PVP of the open zones. Still, he will probably be my main simply because I love the acrobatics.

GUARDIAN: Surely a strong a cool class. My only questionmark is, the Guardian has a lot of buffs and protection auras and such, and people in groups (or PVP) simply don't stay in your circles. So it feels a bit a wasted skill line. Still, it has great survivability and swapping to 2hand sword also has good damage. Solid class for people who feel a bit overwhelmed with the other classes.

MESMER: Tried this only VERY briefly, and I must say, it had way too little OOMPH early on. It took me endless to take down a mob early on, so I just quit. I am sure you can do tons with it, but it probably need someone who really studies the char and thinks a lot about it. I prefer more intuitive to play classes, and with Mesmer you REALLY need to know your stuff. I love the effects, like dissolving clones in purple butterflies! Lovely! :D

NECROMANCER: Another class like Mesmer which just is not mine. Somehow the mechanics puzzled me, and like Mesmer, I think you really need to know all your skills very well, and how they complement each other. A tad to much hassle for me, I prefer classes with simpler concepts. ^^

RANGER: I am still on the fence whether or not I play this. Pro: I LOVE to gather pets. It's just fun to play with a cool pet, and some pets really have a good survivability. On the other hand, Ranger has no rifles, which is kinda sad. Somehow I felt a bit bored with always shoot shoot shoot with the arrows. That was not so exciting to watch like the animations of other classes. Also in PVP you have the problem, that players simply ignore the pet, unlike a mob, and always directly attack you. Of course. Sure you can slow down and have a good range, but I didn't see the big advantage in Ranger. So it's really a so-so class.

ENGENEER: Only class I didn't play, because my buddy will play it and I just left the class for him. ;)

WARRIOR: Actually I wasn't interested at first, but when I finally tried it, it became one of my favourite classes! Warrior is pure fun. He has a wide variety of weapons and combat styles, which really makes it interesting to play. You can do tanking with shield, you can even do different stuff with the various 1h+shield combos, you can do huge dmg with 2handed weapons AND I loved the long distance power of the rifle. Just love guns and rifles for the noise. :)  Warrior also seems very good and powerful in PVP, you can shoot the long 1200 distance with the rifle and you have a great survivability too. Really loved that class.

So my favs were Thief and Warrior. My least fav Mesmer and Necro. On the fence with Ele and Ranger, I am really not sure what to think of these.

I fall in love for the warrior when i tested the 2-handed hammer, my second class would be the ranger that as many said, its very versatile and his moves are way cool.

I played in BWE2 and 3. Unfortunately I did have very limited time available :(

Warrior: Go close, smash and bash, kill enemy or die. Lot's of different weapon choices.

My prediction is that warrior is going to be nerfed and badly when GW2 is launched (or shortly after). It is just too fun class to play (and MMOs are not supposed to be fun).

Thief: Against normal mobs - go close and kill. Against bosses - use ranged attacks and hope that boss will never get close enough to hit you.

Thief have nice traps, teleportations and toys that keep enemy far away from you. But if hard melee enemy did get close - you were pretty much dead.

... sorry didn't play with other classes.

Likely to be playing either a Warrior or Guardian.   Would have liked to have played a Ranger (which I probably enjoyed most), just the dead pet thing got old quick.

For pve all classes are viable.

Battleground pvp, I found the warrior, thief, elementalist to be great for 1vs1 fights.. the thief, warrior, being best for glass cannon builds, (Imo)

5vs5 and WvsWvsW, warrior, thief, ranger, elementalist, mesmer(team support)

Best support classes for all pvp and pve, guardian, elementalist, engineer, necro, mesmer

In the end of all betas, I thought I'd be set on a mesmer, ranger, or thief. It looks like it will be the class I usually never like to play, the warrior, they have great dps in melee and ranged and I don't have to carry around a dead pet. I really wanted to like the mesmer but after 3 beta weekends with the class its just so lacking where other classes shine more. I usually don't like alts but the thief will definately be my alt I play.