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what prof best fits each race


Lynx.9058

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If you had to pick one profession for each race - asura, charr, sylvari, human, and norn - without using any prof twice, what would be your picks?

I dont like to play duplicates and I'm wanting to only run one character of each race, so I'm trying to figure out which ones fit best theme and story wise. So far I've got a charr engineer in iron legion and that seems to be a pretty perfect match, as well as an asura elementalist. Given their magical background it seems like one of the casters would fit asura best and elementalist won out.

I was thinking sylvari ranger given the druid elite class, but ranger seems equally fitting for the animal centric norn. Human seems like itd be best suited by the necro, guardian, or thief, but I'm open to opinions

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If it's ONE profession per race, I'd say:

Asura - Necromancer. They say that Necromancy and Golemancy are very alike and given that all asura have to study Golemancy as part of their schooling, it makes the most sense.Charr - Engineer. A lot of what we see from the charr is their machines. Tanks, copters, rockets, turrets etc. Ergo, Engineer is a good fit.Human - Elementalist or Mesmer. It's a bit of a tie here. Since on the one hand, there are a lot of notable human characters whom are Mesmers (Such as Kasmeer, Jenna and Anise) as well as Lyssa using illusionary magic too. On the other hand, there's a lot that can be said about elemental magic with the various gods that had elemental affinities (Dwayna = Air, Melandru = Earth, Abbadon + Lyssa = Water, Grenth = Ice, Balthazar = Fire)Norn - Ranger. A notable part of norn culture is hunting and living off the land. They revere animals and their associated animal spirits and so Ranger makes a lot of sense for them.Sylvari - Thief. There exist Night blooms which prefer solitude and would take to keeping to the shadows (Such as notably, Caithe). Not to mention the results of the sylvari's first contact with another race could cause them to be more cautious. Thus Thief seems a good choice.

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@"Lynx.9058" said:Thanks for the input.

If I were to want a raven spirit inspired norn character (theme/lore wise), do you think ranger, necro, thief, or revenant might fit that better?

Thief or Mesmer for a Raven-centric character, imo. It's all about duplicity, ambiguity, subtlety, the wisdom of a soft touch.

Revenant is a great class but has a lot of its own strong flavor so it's kinda hard to force "Raven" into it.

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In terms of "lore," you can make almost anything work. That's baked into the design of the cultures and classes. Almost anything you come up with could have a pretty nifty backstory attached.

I think what you're going to want to think about is:

  1. Aesthetic. Will you like the animations, the clothes, the in-the-moment "vibe" of this character you've made?
  2. Which of your characters you're going to put the most time into. (E.g. which characters you're going to use to play through the whole story, to do map completion, or to do Fractals.)
  3. Which classes you want to play, since it sounds like you're restricting yourself to just 5 characters.

Let's go through these in order real quick.

Aesthetic

I think both your existing choices are pretty good. A lot of the engineer stuff looks like the other charr military gizmos you see around in the world; charr sometimes have awkward animations on account of how bulky and front-heavy they are, but imo the engie charr stuff is mostly pretty good. Asura elementalist lets you play a lot with "Eternal Alchemy" themes, Asura light armor has some really cool visual elements, and I think their animations work well with the class' natural tendency to "bounce around" (plus, it's easier to see what exactly you are doing). So, you're off to a great start, imo.

The other three species are much less "out there" in their body shapes and animations. Norn are quite a bit bulkier and taller, of course, and their voice acting is a touch "gruffer," so they tend to be popular for making physically imposing characters; they also have a lot of user-selectable tattoos. Humans are the most "average" but do have a lot of hair styles (some of which overlap with the norn). Sylvari have a very strong aesthetic, but you're not limited to "I'm a plant!!" — the range of colors and faces gives you room to make yours feel uncanny/otherworldly rather than tree-themed. E.g. you could make a really creepy necromancer by giving yourself very sharp facial features, or "missing" features like empty eyes or no human-like nose; I like to play with the idea that their cultural armor is an extension of their bodies as well. Sylvari also have a slightly more "youthful" run animation that tends to fit well for agile characters like thieves.

Since they're quite similar in body shape, most armor is going to look the same on sylvari, humans, and norn. So you may want to base your decision on which has "cultural armor" you like better for your class:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Norn_cultural_armorhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sylvari_cultural_armorhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_cultural_armorFor example, if you think the Norn Wolf armor is really cool, that's a good reason to make your a norn ranger rather than human or sylvari.

Playing Them

This is just a matter of having limited time and resources to invest.

It takes a while to do map completion and Living-World story, so you're likely to focus on 1-2 characters for those activities. (Getting an elite spec without doing all the personal story progression is easy: just get your character to the Crystal Desert and train or solo the hero points in those zones; takes about two hours. Most of the new zones sell a "portal tome" you can use to move any of your characters to a zone you want to farm or do events in without advancing their story, as well.) So you'll probably want to pick a PvE "favorite" to be your main exploration/story character.

Advancing in Fractals requires Ascended gear and Infusions, so I think most people also pick just one character for that. (You can do starter-level Fractals on any character, though, so you'll have the opportunity to try out a couple and see which you prefer, if you wish.)

If you do Raids or WvW, you will want to make sure you have good gear for those (Exotic or Ascended), and that you've unlocked a useful spec.

In contrast, you can do PvP with any character, even if they're not max level, and it'll unlock all the skills for you so you don't even need a single Hero Point.

Finally, note a special case: Ranger lets you go around picking up pets in the world, so if you really like the idea of "catch 'em all," you'll likely want to make that one of your map/story focus characters. (Otherwise you can just look up where to get 2-3 highly-useful pets, get those, and play a full-featured ranger just fine.)

Also, playing HoT story with a Sylvari character is pretty interesting and I recommend doing it at least once.

Which Classes?

Right now, you've got two classes that have a lot of state-switching abilities (kits and attunement, respectively), and can generally occupy DPS roles in PvE, and a mix of aggressive or support roles in WvW/PvP.

There's one class where you really can't go wrong, and it's Guardian. It's a very versatile, powerful, and (usually) forgiving class. You tend to play an important role in every game mode.

Ranger right now is having a pretty good moment in PvE, too. You dish out great damage and you can bring some decent unique group buffs. Druid healer is really standard in raids, but sees little use elsewhere — that means you'll want to play a different build in most contexts. Since you've expressed an interest in this class in your first post, I think you should go for it.

That leaves one more slot to fill… Hmm…

  • Don't bother with Warrior, imo. It's fine but doesn't really have that much cool unique stuff going for it, and you're limited on character slots, so.
  • Necro (Reaper specifically) is open-world easy-mode but can kinda fall behind a bit in other contexts. Scourge is very popular in WvW but it also feels like a clunky mess imo. Any species.
  • Mesmer is a very interesting and esoteric class, but it sometimes gets totally wrecked by bad balance updates. If you really like the style of it (illusions! mind magic! purple butterflies!), consider making a Power Chrono for PvE. If you don't, avoid it because it can be a lot of work. Sylvari or Human (playing up the dream connection or humans' cultural affinity for mesmers, respectively) both fit well here.
  • Thief is, in some sense, the polar opposite of what you've been playing right now. You get a limited set of skills and great flexibility in how you use them. They're a blast to play in competitive modes and actually have some great self-sustain in PvE. Sylvari or Human both fit well here.
  • Revenant is a really cool, surprising class with its own very different "state-swapping" mechanic. The meta party-support Alacrity Renegade can be kind of a thankless job, but ime you can have a lot of fun playing Power Herald or Condi Herald/Renegade in a variety of contexts. Some of the optimal "combos" take a while to get used to but they're very satisfying to pull off. Always a bit of an off-beat choice, but a cool one.

(TLDR but actually the stuff above is more important than this part) Recommendation Time

How about?

  • Human Guardian — Maybe a bit of your classic paladin type, but I think you can have a lot of fun customizing their look anyway. Highly desirable in group content.
  • Norn Ranger — Rugged traveler and explorer building your legend. Don't neglect your melee capacity because you're big and strong and not just cowering with a longbow behind a bear.
  • Sylvari Thief — Quick, agile, subtle, kind of the opposite of the big charr engineer running around with flamethrowers and explosives all over the place.

Or how about?

  • Norn Thief or Mesmer — All about Raven, like you suggested upthread. I think the Raven Ceremonial Armor or the Norn Cultural medium armors would look pretty good for this. Slightly unusual choice but it's a really great and thematic character concept. People will go "Why didn't I think of that!?" instead of "Huh, that's odd."
  • Sylvari Ranger — Just be silly with it. Run around the world trying to "Pet all the things!!" Maybe also shoot people off ledges in WvW, for fun. This game has a lot of colorful and silly things in it, alongside the dramatic and tragic bits, so sometimes it feels good to have a character that can engage with that stuff on that kind of level. You are a pretty flower that does top-notch DPS in Fractals and Raids.
  • Human Revenant — All the built-in style of a Rev compensates for humans' (relative) blandness pretty well. Making the Rev into kind of a "dark knight" figure is popular, but you can also do something completely different like put some crystals on your armor and really play up the "Zephyrite" aspect of connecting with Glint. (I have an asura Rev and my shtick is more like "horrible little goblin iconoclast.")
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I think I'll probably go ranger for the norn character. The elite specs seem to fit sylvari theming better but I like the kind of viking/native look and feel of the norn and the ranger fits better than the casters imo.

But that does leave me in a bind for sylvari. Cant seem to get around the idea that they should be somehow nature themed, and ranger is really the only nature themed profession we have.

At this point for human I'm thinking guardian (paladin esque), thief (more like a bandit/highwayman), or necromancer (corrupt royalty?)

Decisions decisions...

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@Lynx.9058 said:I think I'll probably go ranger for the norn character. The elite specs seem to fit sylvari theming better but I like the kind of viking/native look and feel of the norn and the ranger fits better than the casters imo.

But that does leave me in a bind for sylvari. Cant seem to get around the idea that they should be somehow nature themed, and ranger is really the only nature themed profession we have.

At this point for human I'm thinking guardian (paladin esque), thief (more like a bandit/highwayman), or necromancer (corrupt royalty?)

Decisions decisions...

Sylvari are also every curious as most are relatively new (as in just born) to the world with some taking quite naturally to things like engineer because of that curiousity. So roll a Sylvari Engi with a flamethrower.

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The game's iconic sylvari are a necromancer who wants to revitalize a dead place, an adventurous thief, a science-prodigy engineer, and a guy who really likes bombs, fyi.

If you're looking to dial up the "nature theme," I suggest leaning on your looks for that. A bit of cultural armor, maybe a backpack like Fervid Censor. Or possibly an Outfit is you see one you like. My Sylvari mesmer has a "big flower" look (mix of T1 and T2 light cultural armor); my Sylvari thief is wearing all artificial gear scrounged from her travels.

Hmm. Sylvari Guardian might float your boat — they have kind of a knight/paladin thing, and your elite specs enhance that: "Dragonhunter" fits the protagonist story perfectly (your Wyld Hunt, which is sort of a sylvari personal quest, is literally to kill Zhaitan), while the "Firebrand" flavor works for an energetic idealist who gets wrapped up in Elona's struggle for liberation.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Probably a bit late, but one thought about Sylvari:I think Necromancer works really well with Sylvari. Just remember they are basically walking plants. Plants feed on the remains of deceased creatures. So their tolerance for using the power of the dead should be pretty high. They are also described to be naturally curious. Trehearne who supposedly is the eldest Sylvari shows how much appeal Necromancy has to his people.

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If I were to narrow it down to the thematically best few classes for each race:

Human: you can make just about all the classes work, but Guardian and Mesmer are the most culturally human classes.Sylvari: Ranger if you want to play up their nature side, Guardian or Warrior if you want to play up their love of chivalry.Charr: Warrior, Engineer, and Thief for Blood, Iron, and Ash legions, respectively.Norn: Warrior and Ranger are both natural fits; Revenant is actually also a really good fit for norn spirituality.Asura: they're all about magitek; Elementalist, Necromancer, or Mesmer if you want to emphasize the 'magi-', and Engineer if you want to focus on the '-tek'.

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Human: elementalist, mesmer, necromancer, thief, engineer, guardian, warriorCharr: engineer (Iron), warrior (Blood), thief (Ash) and revenantNorn: ranger, warrior, guardianSylvari: necromancer, conniving vegetable thief, guardianAsura: elementalist, engineer, mesmer, guardian, warrior and occasionally ranger to take care of test subjects. Asuras are mostly above traditional thievery as they rather hack and scheme than use oldschool tricks.

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