new player

Hi new player. i have had this game for awhile but never really played. What is a good profession to play to get and idea of the game? Also are the 2 expansions worth getting?

Best learn to play professions: warrior, ranger and necromancer.And yes they are worth buying. Hot delivers sweet endgame content and PoF fantastic openworld and story content.

@Skyraven.1580 said:Hi new player. i have had this game for awhile but never really played. What is a good profession to play to get and idea of the game? Also are the 2 expansions worth getting?

I am happy with my purchases, but of course, most people dedicated enough to be here on the forums will hold that view. :)

What @"InsaneQR.7412" recommends is the general advice; https://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World is a good resource and contains further written guides to getting started, what works in the open world, etc.

Keep in mind that the GW2 story includes the "Living World" seasons, and runs:

Core => LS1 => LS2 => HoT => LS3 => PoF => LS4

We are currently in LS4 episode 2, shortly to be 3. LS1 is not available at all, but seasons 2, 3, and any missed episodes of 4 are available for purchase on the in-game gem store. They are not included in the expansion packs. You get credited the Living Story episode to your account if you log in while it is live, even if you don't have access to it. Purchases are only required if you do not log in during that period at all.

In terms of content, LS2 is basically just lore, LS3 and LS4 contain substantial in-game rewards including LS3 being a hard requirement for the legendary trinket, they both make available various ascended gear, contain some good sources of gold farming, etc.

Owning the expansions is also required for their respective masteries, access to their raids, mounts (PoF) etc.

Finally, the question of when to buy them is interesting. The special right now is probably the best price you will ever see for both expansions, so if you can risk the money on a game you may not like, I'd suggest doing so.

However, with only the core game you have access to significant amounts of content -- all the core world, end-game fractals, world bosses, and a bunch of other stuff. It is absolutely possible to play through to, and experience most of, the endgame without the expansions. So, if you are uncertain about risking that money, take it slow, check out the core, and see if you do like it.

I think warrior truly offers a very strong melee feeling to the game if your trying to learn to get into fights good.

Necro is good at range and magic but also very good in close ranges. Minion builds make the game easy and make it harder to actually learn as you'll have a much harder time with any other class.

@Skyraven.1580 said:Hi new player. i have had this game for awhile but never really played. What is a good profession to play to get and idea of the game? Also are the 2 expansions worth getting?

Warrior, ranger and necromancer are the best professions to help you learn the game. Warrior has the largest variety of weapons, ranger has the better ranged weaponry and necromancer if you enjoy having minions with you. And yes, both Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire are worthwhile expansions.

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@"Skyraven.1580" said:Hi new player. i have had this game for awhile but never really played. What is a good profession to play to get and idea of the game? Also are the 2 expansions worth getting?

Worth while, but also a huge step up in overall difficulty. Well.... not really "difficult", so much as it expects you to use more mechanics in tandem. Core Tyria has extremely passive fights until you get to Silverwastes. Silverwastes was the precursor to Heart of Thorns, but came during a time before distinct expansions were part of the business model. Its also the place the Lvl 80 boosters take you, if you have them. The Mordrem there make an expansive use of control skills and AOE, making them impossible to fight if you're not proactively shutting them down via their simple, but not entirely apparent counters.

I've been numerous people rage quit on this alone, because it renders whatever (likely lazy) strategy they were using up to that point useless. But what most don't realize (because Core wasn't actually meant to teach you this), is that a hand full of build tweaks or key traits, and the knowing how to leverage them, is all it takes to get on top of a previously "unkillable" enemy.

If anything, having an awareness of PvP style combat and Build theory when going into the expansions gives players a huge leg up on simple counter-play strategies used throughout the late game content. As as backasswards as this might sound to PvE players, WvW Roaming and damage oriented builds are highly effective in Path of Fire, due to their streamlined use of self-sustain traits/skills. With a hand full of modifications, you can shift more of a build toward offense by giving up some defense.... but they aren't anywhere near as pure glass as what Raids meta tries to slink by on. Granted they might do less damage; but what good is 30kDPS if you can't finish a half skill rotation without getting downed by one solid hit? As you get better at practical defense, such as positioning and navigating the various blind spots most mobs have, you trade up for more damage as you go. Learning what builds can make use of odd stat combinations is also great for a lot of solo work.

For example. Firebrands are usually pretty vulnerable on their own... but Celestial stats on a hybrid burn build is just insanely flexible with the sheer power offered by the tomes. Enough defense to take a few solid hits in either controlled fights or big meta events, enough burning and direct damage to finish trash mobs that get in your way, enough internal synergy for Firebrand skills to scale off yourself (which normally they won't do well), and has enough distributed stats in all the right areas for all the tomes to be effective. All this while still having the huge potential for power reflection in a group events. I fell into this build because I was too lazy update my old WvW Dragon hunter build from before POF (spent most of the year loving Holosmith and SpellBreaker), so I didn't have Grieving or Viper gear ready to push for a full damage build.... so I just ran my existing Cele gear to fiddle with the mechanics. And to my surprise, it worked perfectly fine with how the tomes were designed. Easy 3-4k Burn ticks on its own, and 12-15k burn ticks in group events... more if people are generating enough boons (plus direct damage), 2k basic heals on Tome 2, and the only thing to pose a serious threat is too much overlapping damage. And this was just recycling old gear with a competent build....... A properly kitted burn Firebrand is just disgusting in the amount of damage it generates.

And this is just one class. With the exception of Revenant, every class has a half dozen solid builds between all 3 major game modes. While performance varies based on what content block you're doing, there are tons of tweaks you can make to many of the standardized builds to fit a wide variety of Encounter types. Or you if you find a good synergy, you can go off the rails with an effective off-meta build see how far you can take it. A major "make or break" on how much you'll like the game inevitably gets tied to how well you understand the game's buildcraft. I've seen a fair share of people rage quit the game because they can't face roll something at little effort..... but if you somehow managed to calm them down long enough to explain what they were doing, you'd find the majority was either ignoring a simple mechanic, or could do just 1 or 2 things differently to make the fight near trivial. Especially in the cases of first entering HOT or POF..... most up until that point never needed to keep moving, or manage dodges, or not stand AOE circles..... hell!!! I've met people who somehow made it through all of personal story, and half of one of the expansion stories, and not still know what a break bar is. Its even funnier when you take someone who never thought about build synergy, giving them basic build advise, and watch them go from "OMG this thing is unkillable" to "I AM BULLET PROOF!!!!!!".

I would just recommend Mesmer class to start, Minions make pve super easy, blink (teleport) makes moving around faster, along with having much run speed from signet of inspiration without clicking buttons, temporal curtain focus skill also adds run speed and can heard large groups of pve mobs into a ball to kill rooms quick, while minions take the hits. Portal skill lets you master Jumping puzzles or help other players with ease. To top it all off the specializations are good too and Mirage is VERY good for pvp and wvw. so you are winning all around, plus the skill effects look pretty :) Simple solution really.

Oh and yes the expansions are well worth it.