New player need profession advice.

[Tinker.6924]

I last played in 2012 for a few months and I've decided to take another shot at this MMO.

For now, I'm looking to do solo pve play and prefer something simple, survivable, and a caster type. Game play focusing on questing, exploring, interacting, and crafting stuff for now but with the ability to deliver some smack down when its called for.

I've already decided on my race (Asura - because they look cute and I'm shallow) and one of these professionsMesmerNecromancerRanger (not a caster-type but I like the the idea of having pets)I'm not going to play an Elementalist for now. It's what I played back in 2012 and while I still have that character I want a brand new experience.

I would prefer to stay out of melee range but I get that its going to happen especially if I do group up with others.

[TwiceCookedPorkins.8940]

Mesmers will probably always be useful. I know they've gotten a bit of a nerf lately, but they're still required in pretty much every raid and can still be scary in PVP/WVW.

Necromancers are fun. I'm maining one at the moment. Necros aren't the most desired class, though (usually near the bottom). But their Scourge support builds are fun for fractals and can carry a bad group. Reaper is also just one of the most fun elite specs, even if it's not big outside of solo/open world stuff.

Rangers are probably in the best spot of any profession right now, imo. Solid in pretty much every game mode. Druids are the go-to healer and rangers have solid power and condi builds that won't get you to the top of the charts, but are at least acceptible.

[GlockBoy.2134]

Rangers are probably in the best spot of any profession right now, imo. Solid in pretty much every game mode. Druids are the go-to healer and rangers have solid power and condi builds that won't get you to the top of the charts, but are at least acceptible.

I'm also maining a Necromancer at the moment. Relatively new to the game, and I've heard/read a lot of down talk on the profession, however I've enjoyed it thus far, and additionally, I do pretty well in PvP.

I've been thinking of creating a Ranger for a few reasons. One being the druid elite spec. From what I've seen the profession is pretty well rounded.

In my honest opinion, @"EmmetOtter.8542" , depending on your play style, the Mesmer profession is certainly needed, but more complex. Ranger would be your go to if you wanted a bit of a "medium" difficulty profession that is a wanted profession is end game scenarios.

Just my two cents!Best of luck.

[joneirikb.7506]

In terms of easiest to play and progress with:

• Easy: Necromancer + Ranger
• Normal: Warrior + Guardian
• Hard(er): Engineer, Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist

Now going to explain a bit too much, just to show the differences.

---

Necromancer and Ranger

Have access to Minions and Pets, which can be used to keep all the NPC's busy while you can stand behind and twiddle thumbs or just range attack them down. Thus they're the easiest in most of the casual content (open world, story, events). On the flip side, they're classes you can get pretty far on without actually learning the game/combat, so when they hit some content their advantage doesn't work on, it feels like running your face into a brick wall.

For example, even at launch I managed to solo 2/3 of the open world champions with ranger pet, just standing behind with bows and dropping heals on the pet. But if I met a champion that could kill my pet, I didn't have the skills to back it up and had to run or die. Where on my main (Guardian) I've learned to fight and can take most of those Champions on solo because I know the combat/build etc.

---

Guardian and Warrior

Both have heavy armor, both have a lot of various sustain, defenses and other abilities that makes them very resilient compared to other classes. That still means you have to use active defenses (Dodge, Block, Invulnerability, Evades, Blind, Aegis, Moving out of attacks, and whatever else they have), because honestly there isn't any class in the game can can survive without those, the game is all about active defenses, but these two got the most passives in addition to that.

---

• Hard(er): Engineer, Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist

Engineer

Has a lot of skills to keep track off, and is one of the most complex classes in the game to play. The mix of weapon kits replacing your weapon and thus giving you 5 extra skills, and the toolbelt skill system giving you constant access to another 5 skills, and a lot of interactions between these with traits and combo system. It is a great class if you enjoy the complexity, it can be pretty daunting if you don't.

Mesmer

Mesmer is weird, it basically needs to create clones, and then blow them up to do damage. So if you don't use the clone/blow-up mechanic actively you do very low damage, it takes a while to get used to and wrap your head around. The clones can at times take enemy aggro away from you, but usually not very reliable at that, and you will usually get more benefit from blowing them up instead. In general Mesmers tend to have a pretty "active" play-style, requiring darting in and out of melee, and using active defenses, teleports, evades, and distortion a lot to play well.

Thief

One of the squishiest classes in the game despite having medium armor, the reason for this is that the class is near 100% dependent on active defenses to survive just about anything. You can kill down most normal mobs in pve with pistol/pistol #3 Unload using signets. But this drops of fast against champions and even some veterans in later maps/content.

Elementalist

Playing Piano. Elementalist is a combination of being the most squishy class by default (lowest health and armor), and the most complex one due to the elemental attunements. Basically since the attunements changes the weapon skills you have 20 weapon skills available, each wit different cooldowns which are long enough that you really shouldn't stay in a single element at all times, you should always cycle through them to use new skills. Most of Elementalist's sustain, defenses, buffs, damage, aoe's etc comes from cycling through the different element attunements. So trying to stand just in fire for example will in most cases limit you. This turns into playing Ele well, you got to start swapping between the atunements at need, if you need defenses swap to earth, then go to water for condition clear and some heals, and back to fire for damage, to air for some damage and CC then back to Earth.... Really fun and rewarding if you can pull it off.

Finally done. :p

[GlockBoy.2134]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Necromancer and Ranger

Have access to Minions and Pets, which can be used to keep all the NPC's busy while you can stand behind and twiddle thumbs or just range attack them down. Thus they're the easiest in most of the casual content (open world, story, events). On the flip side, they're classes you can get pretty far on without actually learning the game/combat, so when they hit some content their advantage doesn't work on, it feels like running your face into a brick wall.

For example, even at launch I managed to solo 2/3 of the open world champions with ranger pet, just standing behind with bows and dropping heals on the pet. But if I met a champion that could kill my pet, I didn't have the skills to back it up and had to run or die. Where on my main (Guardian) I've learned to fight and can take most of those Champions on solo because I know the combat/build etc.

Great post, very informative. I just wanted to bring something up regarding the Necromancer. I can agree that they are sort of "simplistic" in some instances, especially with the minions, because you can kind of cower behind them while they take aggro on the mobs, but from my experience (which I feel is not much yet, still learning, so maybe you can add to what I am talking about)-- the minions are practically useless in any sort of PvP type mode. Just as an example, yesterday I was in a conquest match and I ended up fighting a 1v1 against another Necro, however he was using minions and I was using other utilities:

1. Signet of Vampirism
2. Signet of Spite
3. Spectral Grasp
4. Well of Darkness
5. Plaguelands

And long story short, I deleted him in under 45 seconds. Given-- there is a chance he may not have been that skilled of a player assuming he has been strictly using minions throughout his game play, but even myself, I have used minions in a PvP match before and I find them to be completely useless.

Maybe there is something further you can add to the concept/role of a Necro in a PvP scenario or even just generally, rather than just the Minion feature. I do think Necro's can be viable when built correctly for the game mode you are playing.

Thanks!

[joneirikb.7506]

@GlockBoy.2134 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:

Necromancer and Ranger

Have access to Minions and Pets, which can be used to keep all the NPC's busy while you can stand behind and twiddle thumbs or just range attack them down. Thus they're the easiest in most of the casual content (open world, story, events). On the flip side, they're classes you can get pretty far on without actually learning the game/combat, so when they hit some content their advantage doesn't work on, it feels like running your face into a brick wall.

For example, even at launch I managed to solo 2/3 of the open world champions with ranger pet, just standing behind with bows and dropping heals on the pet. But if I met a champion that could kill my pet, I didn't have the skills to back it up and had to run or die. Where on my main (Guardian) I've learned to fight and can take most of those Champions on solo because I know the combat/build etc.

Great post, very informative. I just wanted to bring something up regarding the Necromancer. I can agree that they are sort of "simplistic" in some instances, especially with the minions, because you can kind of cower behind them while they take aggro on the mobs, but from my experience (which I feel is not much yet, still learning, so maybe you can add to what I am talking about)-- the minions are practically useless in any sort of PvP type mode. Just as an example, yesterday I was in a conquest match and I ended up fighting a 1v1 against another Necro, however he was using minions and I was using other utilities:

1. Signet of Vampirism
2. Signet of Spite
3. Spectral Grasp
4. Well of Darkness
5. Plaguelands

And long story short, I deleted him in under 45 seconds. Given-- there is a chance he may not have been that skilled of a player assuming he has been strictly using minions throughout his game play, but even myself, I have used minions in a PvP match before and I find them to be completely useless.

Maybe there is something further you can add to the concept/role of a Necro in a PvP scenario or even just generally, rather than just the Minion feature. I do think Necro's can be viable when built correctly for the game mode you are playing.

Thanks!

My post is mostly about the more "casual" content, I did specify that somewhat roughly:

Thus they're the easiest in most of the casual content (open world, story, events). On the flip side, they're classes you can get pretty far on without actually learning the game/combat, so when they hit some content their advantage doesn't work on, it feels like running your face into a brick wall.

PvP and WvW certainly falls in under that "Brick Wall" :p But if you're doing PvP then you're probably already learning the class past the minion-spam anyways.

Basically, don't rely on Ranger-Pet in PvP and not Minions for Necro. Though I'm not good enough at either to really give any good advice on either. I know from WvW that Rangers are some of the best roamers and is currently the "1-shot-king" when using Soulbeast so they don't exactly suffer. And in WvW Necro (Scourge) is one of the main classes in the Zerg. So they can do things in WvW at least, I just don't play them myself.

If you want more in-depth strategies for Necromancer in PvP, ask in the Necromancer sub-forum.

[Tinker.6924]

As of right now I'm 98% sure that I'm going to roll a Necromancer. Thank you for all the info.

How often do professions/builds get tweaked or balanced or nerfed by Arenanet?

[joneirikb.7506]

We get "balance patches" about every 3 months or so. But I wouldn't worry too much, the classes have mostly stayed the same/similar enough over the years, and they typically target specific weak or strong stuff for either the Competitive modes (PvP and WvW) or the Instance modes (Fractals + Raids), if anything affects the rest of the game, it's mostly collateral damage due to one of those.

For example if you like Necromancer Minions, you're in no worry, if anything they'll get buffed since minions is mostly useless in Competitive/Instances.

[Tinker.6924]

That's what I figured. Lots of complaints about end-game viability in the necro forum but I know from other games that today's garbage can be tomorrow's gold. Or it can be even worse. It can all change.

I rolled to 22 on my necro and really liked the minions but the AI is way overly aggressive with no ability to control or dismiss them. It is annoying when I'm just running from place to place and they attack things that weren't bothering me. A guy in the necro forum shared a work around which results in despawning them but it feels bad. It's my understanding that Rangers have the ability to dismiss their pets at least, tonight I'm going to try that profession.

[joneirikb.7506]

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:That's what I figured. Lots of complaints about end-game viability in the necro forum but I know from other games that today's garbage can be tomorrow's gold. Or it can be even worse. It can all change.

I rolled to 22 on my necro and really liked the minions but the AI is way overly aggressive with no ability to control or dismiss them. It is annoying when I'm just running from place to place and they attack things that weren't bothering me. A guy in the necro forum shared a work around which results in despawning them but it feels bad. It's my understanding that Rangers have the ability to dismiss their pets at least, tonight I'm going to try that profession.

Yeah Ranger has a bit more control over their pet, and everyone around you will love you for using it :) (No! Spot, not on the carpet!!!) The main issue I've had wit ranger is that you honestly can't turn the pet off at all, even the "Stow pet" button only works until you take nay kind of damage or attack (including falling damage), then the pet pops out of the pocket. Another note is that there exist a few ranged attack based pets (Devourers and Spiders at least for core) that can help keeping the pets out of range in some situations.

[Urud.4925]

@EmmetOtter.8542 said:It's my understanding that Rangers have the ability to dismiss their pets at least, tonight I'm going to try that professionDismissing a pet is annoying like despawning a minion (at least for me). But if you go soulbeast it's much easier imo. I usually merge with the pet when I loot some chest for example, less chances to enter in combat mode. Although I wouldn't pick up or abandon a class just for this.

And... Asura are cute? Those guys are dangerous, stay away from them!