I'm a 56 year old gamer with some questions...

I'm a 56 year old gamer, I am a veteran of that other game since '07.I have typically had my most success as a rogue and a warlock in PVP, but the apparent equivalents (necromancer and thief) in GW2 have significantly different play styles.I love GW2 and have no intention of quitting to find something easier, but I am having trouble settling on a class, I have had decent success on a revenant, and am intrigued by the elementalist, and the engineer too to be honest.I have a decent bit of tissue damage to my left hand so twitchy playing is difficult, though not impossible for me.So Necromancer, Revenant, Elementalist, and Engineer are what I feel most drawn to.I play primarily pvp (With a strong interest in WvW.) but pve is fun too and may be a good source of gear, I haven't figured the gear part out yet.Can anybody offer me any feedback or guidance on this?

Considering your limitations and prefered content, both Revenant and Necro are strong in WvW and PvP without being as demanding as Engie and Ele, and would make solid choices. Engie generally falls outside the WvW meta. Ele is wanted, but the meta is dominated by Guard/Necro/Warrior elite specs.

Edit: Make sure to set more comfortable keybinds than the default, but you're probably on this considering you're an MMO vet.

Interestingly enough, those are the 2 professions I have instant 80ed too.So how is elementalist demanding?I guess what I'm really asking is how twitchy is an ele?

Would it be prudent to make one an armorsmith/weaponsmith and the other a tailor/artificer?Or is crafting helpful for gearing?

Necromancer is your class I'd say. Works well in spvp and wvw, is not to twitchy and nearly indestructible in open world pve.

Elementalist is very twitchy as far as rotations, not as twitchy as thief maybe but definitely up there with the most difficult rotations.

Guardian would be a solid choice too. Strong in most game modes and no to hard rotations.

Engineer you'd have to give a try. There is people who absolutely love the class. It's one of those classes where you need very good understanding of your skills and their interactions and definitely as straight forward as say necromancer, ranger, guardian or warrior.

A short breakdown of class complexity would look something like this:

Very straightforward and not to complex:warrior, guardian, necromancer and ranger

Intermediate difficulty:thief (if twitch playstyle is not an issue, otherwise put this at hard), revenant,

High skill ceiling in both rotation and skill knowledge (or one of both being very high demand with the other intermediate complex):elementalist, engineer, mesmer

Necromancer, with an * on engineer and guardian, or perhaps warrior.Ok.

I can't comment on PvP, but in WvW the current top classes (even after the condi nerf) are Scourge necromancer, Spellbreaker warrior and Firebrand guardian.They are especially strong in group fights. As a scourge just stand near someone and you'll give them literally every condition in the game.

For WvW roaming Thief, Soulbeast ranger and Mirage mesmer are great. Especially mesmer since they can still bomb people 1v1 with confusion, torment and bleeding, and with the use of clones, you will actually confuse your opponent because clones can switch places and break targeting so your enemy won't know who you are.Thief has great mobility skills, great for moving around the map fast and taking camps, plus they can "abuse" stealth to an absurd degree.

The rest are "uncategorized" and you'll have to try them out to see if it's your cup of tea or not. Elementalist is still strong damage dealer (weaver especially) and Tempest elementalists are ok group healers, chronomancer mesmers are sometimes useful in groups too. Revenants i don't know. I've seen some good ones and i've seen some really shit ones that die in one mirage combo (i play mirage), so i don't know what's that about. I don't see a lot of berserker warriors in WvW though so i don't know about those. Engineers are ok, but as mentioned before, you really either love it or hate it, it's complicated. I see a bunch of Holosmiths, but not a lot of scrappers in WvW.

So, if you can, try them all out, i think you are autoleveled to 80 in WvW just like in PvP so there's no reason not to try out different professions.

@panchovilla.5986 said:I'm a 56 year old gamer, I am a veteran of that other game since '07.I have typically had my most success as a rogue and a warlock in PVP, but the apparent equivalents (necromancer and thief) in GW2 have significantly different play styles.I love GW2 and have no intention of quitting to find something easier, but I am having trouble settling on a class, I have had decent success on a revenant, and am intrigued by the elementalist, and the engineer too to be honest.I have a decent bit of tissue damage to my left hand so twitchy playing is difficult, though not impossible for me.So Necromancer, Revenant, Elementalist, and Engineer are what I feel most drawn to.I play primarily pvp (With a strong interest in WvW.) but pve is fun too and may be a good source of gear, I haven't figured the gear part out yet.Can anybody offer me any feedback or guidance on this?

Ele can be pretty rough, if you want to play in PvP,

Gonna suggest Rev or Necro.

As other people have already cleared up the classes part, I'll address your other concerns:Gear:

• Gearing up for pvp is a non-issue. Everyone's gear is leveled up to 80 in pvp, so dont worry about that.
• Take advantage of reward tracks to gear up while doing pvp/WvW. Dungeon reward tracks give you exotic weapons and one piece of armor at the end of the track. They also give you tokens which can be used to purchase weapons/armor from the appropriate vendor. There Crystal Desert reward track is exceptional in the way that it gives you access to one armor chest at the end which has selectable stats (any stat in the game). All of these tracks are repeatable too.
• Ascended equipment can be obtained through PvP, WvW, and Fractals without having to craft. Fractals in particular is very good for this at higher levels.

Twitchiness and hand issues:Have you tried playing with a controller? There are 3rd party programs out there (I use ReWASD) and an Xbox controller to play. Pair that up with in-game action cam and good keybind mapping and you can very easily play with a controller. I've found its less straining than keyboard play and allows me to twitch play without having to stretch my fingers or hitting the wrong buttons. In your case in particular, it switches the "twitch" hand to the right hand instead of the left (cause of the button layout). Hit me up if you need more guidance in this, I'd be happy to help.

@Strages.2950 said:As other people have already cleared up the classes part, I'll address your other concerns:Gear:

• Gearing up for pvp is a non-issue. Everyone's gear is leveled up to 80 in pvp, so dont worry about that.
• Take advantage of reward tracks to gear up while doing pvp/WvW. Dungeon reward tracks give you exotic weapons and one piece of armor at the end of the track. They also give you tokens which can be used to purchase weapons/armor from the appropriate vendor. There Crystal Desert reward track is exceptional in the way that it gives you access to one armor chest at the end which has selectable stats (any stat in the game). All of these tracks are repeatable too.
• Ascended equipment can be obtained through PvP, WvW, and Fractals without having to craft. Fractals in particular is very good for this at higher levels.

All of the armors and weapons from PvP, WvW and Fractals need grandmaster marks to purchase, and grandmaster marks need lvl 500 in their respective crafting professions to obtain, so you need crafting. Trinkets are the only ones that don't need crafting.

And if you are going to get exotic gear through reward tracks, might i suggest getting the triumphant hero armor reward track instead? It will enable you to get the ascended and later legendary version of the armor and it has selectable stats. So getting the dungeon armor is kind of a waste unless you want specific skins. In which case, it's easier to obtain those by just doing the dungeons.

Also, don't waste your skirmish tickets on ascended trinkets from WvW, they're much easier to get from fractals by doing the dailies.

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@"Strages.2950" said:As other people have already cleared up the classes part, I'll address your other concerns:Gear:

• Gearing up for pvp is a non-issue. Everyone's gear is leveled up to 80 in pvp, so dont worry about that.
• Take advantage of reward tracks to gear up while doing pvp/WvW. Dungeon reward tracks give you exotic weapons and one piece of armor at the end of the track. They also give you tokens which can be used to purchase weapons/armor from the appropriate vendor. There Crystal Desert reward track is exceptional in the way that it gives you access to one armor chest at the end which has selectable stats (any stat in the game). All of these tracks are repeatable too.
• Ascended equipment can be obtained through PvP, WvW, and Fractals without having to craft. Fractals in particular is very good for this at higher levels.

Oh I never said he didnt need to get his crafting up, he just doesn't have to craft the GEAR (which is the most expensive part). Also, playing ranked will give grand master marks on the league chests. However, seeing as he's just starting I think getting ascended gear is secondary for now, exotic should do to begin.

I recommended the dungeon tracks because you're gonna need weapons as well, which the reward tracks give for free. They also give the dungeon tokens which can be used to get more equipment and gear up faster than by just doing the Triumphant hero reward track.

And yes don't waste your tickets on trinkets (PVP or WVW), the easiest way to get them is actually farming bitterfrost frontier or any of the LW Season 3 Maps. That way you actually have some trinkets to start doing fractals. If you do fractal dailies you will, guaranteed, be able to gear up your toons with ascended gear at a minimal cost.

If you're diligent about fractal dailies, you'll come to a point where you dont know what to do with the gear.

How twitchy is Ele? Well, the average class has 10 weapon skills to choose from (not counting elite specs), An ele has 20 (5 x 4 attunements). The PoF elite spec adds another 42 skills to that.

In PvE you can get by with camping in Fire, in PvP you'll need to rotate attunements to access group healing, damage mitigation and cc as well as damage.

I too am of the "aged challenged" (56) and from WOW of many years. I tried Ele, with very little success, just to much piano playing for me as I do tend to click a few skills (mostly utilities) but I had fun with it when it came out and am having even more fun now with my Renegade!! (Rev). They are a blast and very viable in lots of content. Condi Mirage is one I have recently stumbled upon and they are quite powerful and again wanted/liked/etc. in lots of gameplay.But yea, rotation wise and such Revenant just might be your best bet!! Have fun! ;)

Dont use Elementalist on pvp, its broken beyond repair and have the resistance of a wet paper, Reve necro and Engi are good classes for pvp.

I have an 80 necro, revenant, and thief.With 2 character slots left I'm going to experiment with a ranger and a warrior as well.I'm getting kind of partial to the necro though.Thanks all, this thread has given me a good start.

@ StragesI use a G13 but I'll check out the setup you mentioned.