Recommended melee classes

Hi!I'm fairly new to GW2. I raised my 1st ranger and 2nd ele from 1 to 80. I feel both professions are very squishy.(at least ranger is tougher than ele thanks to its pets) Also they both are range jobs. I often die using ele so I got very annoyed.I want to try any other melee classes. Do you have any recommendation?I heard that dragonhunter uses a longbow. So is it a purely range job?

Tragonhunter can use longbow but its rly bad. All 3 heavy proffesions are mostly melee, same for mesmer. (I am talking about best pve builds, all of them do have ranged weapons)

Hi and first and foremost welcome! :)One thing to point out is that the way GW2 works is that any class can melee or range (to different levels of success). It's primarily more about the flavour and style that you prefer. At high levels some professions are more desired for certain roles though these often change with each patch so focus firstly on what you enjoy and worry about raid/high level content later :)

I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that when you say 'raised' you meant that you boosted them straight from level 1-80. If I'm wrong, ignore this, but otherwise I would suggest learning the profession by leveling it up rather than using the shortcut.

Do you have the expansions or are you playing solely core professions (such as ranger as opposed to druid or soulbeast)?

Melee is more dynamic in this game than other MMOs I've played and even at melee range the most important thing to learn is to dodge rather than soak up the damage. Rangers can be good in melee with greatsword or sword, whilst elementalists (harder to learn) have melee capacity through daggers. I'm guessing (but correct me if otherwise) that from the sound of things you prefer straight up direct damage rather than condition (DoT). Again all professions have some capacity for either type of damage at melee range, it really depends on style.

Here's a rough sort of breakdown that might help for melee gameplay (expansion elite specs or DoT in brackets):

Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast - Greatsword/SwordWarrior/Spellbreaker/Berserker - Greatsword/Axes/Dagger (spellbreaker)/Hammer/Mace/Sword (DoT)Thief/Daredevil/Deadeye - Daggers (DoT or Direct)/Sword/Staff (daredevil)Guardian/Dragonhunter/Firebrand - Greatsword/Hammer/Mace/Sword/Axe (firebrand DoT)Revenant/Herald/Renegade - Swords/Mace (DoT)Engineer/Scrapper/Holosmith - Sword (holosmith)/Hammer (scrapper)Mesmer/Chronomancer/Mirage - Sword/Axe (mirage DoT)Elementalist/Tempest/Weaver - Dagger/Sword (weaver)Necromancer/Reaper/Scourge - Dagger/Greatsword (reaper)

Starting out I would recommend warrior, guardian, or if you have Heart of Thorns, the Reaper as these I found generally more forgiving and easier to learn.More importantly, what sort of play style are you looking?

I personally started playing holosmith a couple of days ago (sword/shield), it'sa very fun specialization. Also you can always switch to rifle if you wanna snipe stuff from far away.Cheers.

@Kholem.6092 said:Hi and first and foremost welcome! :)One thing to point out is that the way GW2 works is that any class can melee or range (to different levels of success). It's primarily more about the flavour and style that you prefer. At high levels some professions are more desired for certain roles though these often change with each patch so focus firstly on what you enjoy and worry about raid/high level content later :)

I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that when you say 'raised' you meant that you boosted them straight from level 1-80. If I'm wrong, ignore this, but otherwise I would suggest learning the profession by leveling it up rather than using the shortcut.

Do you have the expansions or are you playing solely core professions (such as ranger as opposed to druid or soulbeast)?

Melee is more dynamic in this game than other MMOs I've played and even at melee range the most important thing to learn is to dodge rather than soak up the damage. Rangers can be good in melee with greatsword or sword, whilst elementalists (harder to learn) have melee capacity through daggers. I'm guessing (but correct me if otherwise) that from the sound of things you prefer straight up direct damage rather than condition (DoT). Again all professions have some capacity for either type of damage at melee range, it really depends on style.

Here's a rough sort of breakdown that might help for melee gameplay (expansion elite specs or DoT in brackets):

Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast - Greatsword/SwordWarrior/Spellbreaker/Berserker - Greatsword/Axes/Dagger (spellbreaker)/Hammer/Mace/Sword (DoT)Thief/Daredevil/Deadeye - Daggers (DoT or Direct)/Sword/Staff (daredevil)Guardian/Dragonhunter/Firebrand - Greatsword/Hammer/Mace/Sword/Axe (firebrand DoT)Revenant/Herald/Renegade - Swords/Mace (DoT)Engineer/Scrapper/Holosmith - Sword (holosmith)/Hammer (scrapper)Mesmer/Chronomancer/Mirage - Sword/Axe (mirage DoT)Elementalist/Tempest/Weaver - Dagger/Sword (weaver)Necromancer/Reaper/Scourge - Dagger/Greatsword (reaper)

Starting out I would recommend warrior, guardian, or if you have Heart of Thorns, the Reaper as these I found generally more forgiving and easier to learn.More importantly, what sort of play style are you looking?

I bought HoT and PoF, and therefore got 2 Lv80 boosters. I used one of them on ranger to get maount. But I still have one left. Maybe I won't use it on my new melee caharcter, as you said, to learn the profession.I'm very surprised to see your breakdown. There are so many melee styles in each profession. This breakdown is very helpful. <3Now I'm interested in dragonhunter, berserker, and revenant. But I don't know how these professions work.It's very disappointing that I can't try elite specs on Lv80 booster trial.

I'm interested in tough melee jobs. The job with high damage efficiency is also better. When I was exploring maps with my ele, I often struggled with hero challenges or exploring caves. I couldnt keep a distance from enemies though it is very fragile.

@Xeneth.9260 said:I personally started playing holosmith a couple of days ago (sword/shield), it'sa very fun specialization. Also you can always switch to rifle if you wanna snipe stuff from far away.Cheers.

Sounds good! I like greatsword or sword/shield style. The combination with melee and range seem useful.

Just keep in mind that you can only use 1 weapon at a time, and can't swap inside combat. :3

You can use the booster and remain in the Silverwastes area to test it out and cancel it before leaving or committing to the profession so that you can get a feel for the style. Then test it on other professions. Nonetheless, I would recommend leveling up and learning the mechanics better. Especially dodging.

You can use 2 weapon sets and rotate between them within combat - just not with Engineer. Staying in one weapon set the entire time is often less effective as your higher damaging skills will be on cooldown. Instead, swapping to the other weapon set will let you use those high damaging skills before switching back.

Out of those 3, Revenant (whilst thematically my favourite) is a little fiddly - I find it fun but a little restrictive. Guardian as a Dragonhunter is strong with both greatsword and sword but relies a lot on actively defending and knowing when to cast blocks etc. Once you have that nailed though, really strong and fantastic tools to support others. Warrior greatsword is great for mobility. Sword mainhand for warrior is more condition specced but I've seen some power warriors use it (mostly skill 2 & 3) to great effect. It's possibly the most forgiving of the 3 you pointed out, has very strong damage melee, and can provide team support through traits and banners.

Hope that this helps. Do try the boost temporarily to get a bit of a feel for the profession but I wouldn't suggest using it permanently until you are more familiar with the game mechanics :)

As you have HoT, trait your ranger to druid and you get very sturdy melee & ranged character for all sorts of playing. You could check out PvP Shoutbow Druid traits:

• Wilderness Survival traits give you protection from dodge roll, and also heal when you get protection
• "We Heal As One" is great, short-cooldown heal skill for you and your pet, with benefits from Beastmastery trait "Resounding Timbre"
• Use greatsword and longbow as weapons: longbow is just mainly a spare weapon which you may need in cases you have hard times to reach melee range (e.g. shooting mobs at ledges etc)
• Basically you go with Berserker or Marauder gears, but you can add some soldier pieces if you want bit higher health
• Hyena is pretty nice default pet: as all canine pets, it has CC, and you can get double hyenas to double the CC amount. But in general, try different pets and find the combination that suits best for you.

The other possibility to go would adjust Bunker Druid for PvE. In this case, you use longbow instead of staff, and axe & warhorn instead of sword & warhorn. This build tries to benefit from warhorn #5 skill, and it is bit more oriented to condition cleansing through Survivability skills (which is usually not an issue at PvE side).

The build DPS can be bit disappointing making fights longer, but it is very forgiving. You usually come out as a winner even if you mistakenly pulled bit too many mobs. When you get experience, you can start to tune the build to more offensive direction.

Like others said, compared to some other MMOs, in GW2 solo survivability is much more up to experience, practising and knowledge of the class and encounter, than class selection and high-grade gears. The main way to survive is to react to attacks, dodge damage and such. All classes have limited capabilities to soak damage (that is, face-tank mobs).

EDIT: And ah, forgot to say, that yes, Ele can be bit complex class to master, so it is no wonder if you struggle with that at first.

Stick a greatsword in your ranger’s hands. Enjoy!

Elementalist and engineer can’t weapon swap mid combat, but the others can.

Well ranger can be actually pretty brutal in melee^^But i know what you are getting at. All heavy professions do well in melee. Revenant has the least diversity in melee but has good AoE and CC.Warr has a lot of diversity and is basically the go to smash stuff profession and guardian has the best sword MH in the game IMO. You can gap close you get projectile hate some boons and a traitable zeal, very nice to burst stuff down.

On the medium professions there would be engineer as a scrapper. Not squishy at all and a lot of CC. Maybe you can get something out of Holo too, but this one is more on the dmg site than tanky (but depends a bit on build though).Ranger can be a fantastic evading condition tank or a druid bunker (indipendent if PvE or PvP).

Light profession have a bit the short straw in this one but necromancer has good tank potentials as a reaper, they have essentially two life bars in combination with very high bursts it is ideal for solo open PvE.

So take a pick :)