Recommend a profession based on my interests and playstyle?

[Taxes.4512]

Hello community, I hope you can help me with some advice.

 

Based on the following information, what profession and elite spec(s) would you recommend that I focus on??

 

About me:

I'm a returning player after a long (4+ year) break. 

I have an 80 of  each profession.

I'm an older player, retired.

I have 4-6 hours per day to play during the day (10am-4pm EST.)

I have a budget of $50 per month to spend on GW2 if need-be.

 

My favorite activities in GW2:
I very much enjoy the map meta events (Auric Basin was my favorite the last time I played)
I am horrible at, but love, jumping puzzles
I used to love WvW, particularly large zergs
I really like the story content - the expansions and living world

 

My preferred playstyle:
I prefer to not die. Getting downed and sent back to a respawn point bums me out.
I love doing AOE damage.
I'd rather block damage than constantly dodging out of the way.
I absolutely love supporting groups - helping them move faster, heal, remove debuffs, helping people get up from downed state.
I'd like to have 1 character that can do all the things I enjoy - I'm okay with different sets of gear and builds.
I do not like (nor am able to complete) complicated rotations.
Though I have broad and lengthy experience in multiple MMO endgames, I would now consider myself a casual player, and prefer to learn by doing and experiencing rather than reading and watching videos for hours on end.

 

Additional Notes:
I'd like to branch out into other areas of the game (PvP, Fractals, Raids) but not at the cost of stress and sanity.
I'd love to find some friends and be part of a community (guild, wvw group, etc)

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read, and hopefully offering your guidance. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Taxes.4512

[Hogwarts Zebra.8597]

Guardian would fit all your criteria except this one (guard has no options to run away from a losing fight): 

36 minutes ago, Taxes.4512 said:

I prefer to not die. Getting downed and sent back to a respawn point bums me out.

So your choices would basically be either guard (fits all other criteria very well but fails this one) or scrapper (doesn't fit the other criteria as well but satisfies this one)

Edited December 15, 2021 by Hogwarts Zebra.8597

[Infusion.7149]

If you don't want to die then scrapper is a better option for WVW because minstrel guardian runs Mantra of Solace which is quite bad when you are solo. Engineer also is able to do jump puzzle skips with rifle and rocket boots just like guardian on DH.

For openworld PVE metas scrapper is also less skill usage intensive than guardian which relies on aegis ; if you need to deal with phase shift grenades do more DPS than scepter on firebrand or longbow on DH.
 

If you plan on doing fractals/raids then I'd say firebrand is better though as scrapper quickness is only typically run on power biased fights.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

4 hours ago, Taxes.4512 said:

My preferred playstyle:
I prefer to not die. Getting downed and sent back to a respawn point bums me out.
I love doing AOE damage.
I'd rather block damage than constantly dodging out of the way.
I absolutely love supporting groups - helping them move faster, heal, remove debuffs, helping people get up from downed state.
I'd like to have 1 character that can do all the things I enjoy - I'm okay with different sets of gear and builds.
I do not like (nor am able to complete) complicated rotations.
Though I have broad and lengthy experience in multiple MMO endgames, I would now consider myself a casual player, and prefer to learn by doing and experiencing rather than reading and watching videos for hours on end.

That is Engineer (class) / Scrapper (elite-specialization). There exist the extreme forms, as @Infusion.7149 has already mentioned = full support or full damage. But it can also be balanced manually to your personal needs. 

Most people who pick Scrapper just go full-damage-mode, as outgoing damage keeps you alive. That works, but requires good damage-output. And that means you have to rely on pre-designed rotations. Playing the Scrapper in an intuitive way can also work, but requires a little tweaking with the gear and build. 

There do exist builds that can survive in hostile territory and balance-out slower reaction-times, reflexes and difficulties with combat-coordination. But those do come at a loss of outgoing damage. The way Scrapper is currently designed, the support-aspect is applied automatically in most cases. When you are close to other players, they already benefit from you. 

Engineer is a walking weapon-arsenal, so there are plenty of options for every possible encounter. In addition, the Rifle comes with a jump-shot, that makes difficult jumps in puzzles a lot easier. It is aimed with ground-targeting. So as long as you do not try to jump through a solid object, this is a guaranteed precision jump.

[Harfang.1507]

Your profile looks a lot like mine. Looking at my number of deaths per hours (or lack thereof), I can tell you that pet classes are head and shoulders above the rest. Once EoD is out, I suspect that may include the mechanist, overlapping with the scrapper already mentioned several times. For the rest, I do not see an absolute clear choice. Play them all and follow the (amended) asuran saying: "[Professions ]are like cream... Good ones, rise to the top!" For me it was revenant, the last profession I tried, years after all the others.

[Kastylx.4657]

Cele alac rene or boon herald with tormenting runes. You can unbind heal/dodge, close you eyes and AoE your way thru the entire game.

[Infusion.7149]

8 minutes ago, Kastylx.4657 said:

Cele alac rene or boon herald with tormenting runes. You can unbind heal/dodge, close you eyes and AoE your way thru the entire game.

How are they going to do WVW with that or jump puzzles

You can run boon herald with power stats in WVW groups not condi.

[Taxes.4512]

So far I've tried out that scourge necromancer with all pets and staff (so aoe circles?).  It was okay, but didn't feel like I contributed much except rezzing everyone endlessly on the Claw of Jormag.  I think I need to do some more research on this build - I really felt ineffectual.

 

I also tried out the scrapper engineer, with a hammer and rifle - found myself just using flamethrower most of the time, but really liked the speed buff from healing.  While shooting flames everywhere felt fun, it didn't feel like I did much in terms of damage, but I sure felt tanky.

 

Tomorrow I'll give guardian a try.  Thanks for the suggestions so far, keep them coming!

[Infusion.7149]

44 minutes ago, Taxes.4512 said:

So far I've tried out that scourge necromancer with all pets and staff (so aoe circles?).  It was okay, but didn't feel like I contributed much except rezzing everyone endlessly on the Claw of Jormag.  I think I need to do some more research on this build - I really felt ineffectual.

 

I also tried out the scrapper engineer, with a hammer and rifle - found myself just using flamethrower most of the time, but really liked the speed buff from healing.  While shooting flames everywhere felt fun, it didn't feel like I did much in terms of damage, but I sure felt tanky.

 

Tomorrow I'll give guardian a try.  Thanks for the suggestions so far, keep them coming!

Scourge has poor mobility so it's not that amazing in openworld , I almost exclusively run scourge in harder raids/strikes , sometimes T4 fractals and not in openworld unless it's a boss fight that can't be killed in a timely manner. If you run condi scourge in PVE you generally want to run scepter torch not  staff because the auto attack does nothing in terms of condition damage.

Openworld version: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scourge_-_Condi_Scourge
Fractal version: https://discretize.eu/builds/necromancer/condi-scourge/
WVW version: https://gw2mists.com/builds/necromancer/power-scourge

The only place power scourge (without heals) is run is in WVW, in PVP it is support and in PVE it is condi or condi hybrid.

On scrapper you should try the meta power scrapper quickness builds that people run in raid/fractal with a grenade kit. (see https://snowcrows.com/builds/engineer/scrapper/power-quickness-scrapper , https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/scrapper-quickness) Flamethrower does less power damage in PVE than hammer or grenades. Rifle should be reserved for jumping puzzles, as if you use it without bomb kit you don't have any strong sustained power damage other than grenades. Openworld version can be seen here , it has no grenades but runs mortar for ranged (perfect for the "phase shift" effect that requires range on some things after Path of Fire expansion): https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Barrier_Bruiser

Edited December 16, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Ashantara.8731]

12 hours ago, Hogwarts Zebra.8597 said:

Guardian would fit all your criteria except this one (guard has no options to run away from a losing fight):

> I prefer to not die. Getting downed and sent back to a respawn point bums me out.

That is so inaccurate!

I play Dragonhunter in most content (except WvW, and if required HFB or cQFB in raids or strikes). You get TONS of blocks that make it super easy to escape (a frequent auto-block, F3, Focus 5). You can also leap in any direction with F2 and Greatsword 3, making escapes even easier.

However, why flee? Dragonhunter has such high burst damage, quite the AoE range, multiple blocks AND a heal skill ("Litany of Wrath") that is crazy efficient (because of the aforementioned specifics) - your enemies barely ever get to down you, leave alone kill you. You pull them all towards you and then pummel them to death. Easy! 🙂

Edited December 16, 2021 by Ashantara.8731

[Hogwarts Zebra.8597]

12 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

That is so inaccurate!

I play Dragonhunter in most content (except WvW, and if required HFB or cQFB in raids or strikes). You get TONS of blocks that make it super easy to escape (a frequent auto-block, F3, Focus 5). You can also leap in any direction with F2 and Greatsword 3, making escapes even easier.

However, why flee? Dragonhunter has such high burst damage, quite the AoE range, multiple blocks AND a heal skill ("Litany of Wrath") that is crazy efficient (because of the aforementioned specifics) - your enemies barely ever get to down you, leave alone kill you. You pull them all towards you and then pummel them to death. Easy! 🙂

In context of fleeing I was mostly referring to pvp/wvw, since in pve there's basically no point fleeing anything. And in pvp/wvw guard is literally the worst class in the game at fleeing unless you run trapper rune DH, which doesn't seem up OP's alley. 

[Ashantara.8731]

25 minutes ago, Hogwarts Zebra.8597 said:

In context of fleeing I was mostly referring to pvp/wvw

1. The OP did not mention PvP.
2. As for WvW, they mentioned that they preferred to run in a zerg, and you don't usually flee a lot in a zerg fight. 😉

[Hogwarts Zebra.8597]

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

1. The OP did not mention PvP.
2. As for WvW, they mentioned that they preferred to run in a zerg, and you don't usually flee a lot in a zerg fight. 😉

 

On 12/15/2021 at 11:06 AM, Taxes.4512 said:

I'd like to branch out into other areas of the game (PvP, Fractals, Raids)

 

And yeah zergs don't run much, but if he ever gets into roaming (he did say he wanted to try other areas of the game after all) guard's lack of mobility will be an issue.

 

I agree that guard will fit the OP better because it satisfies every single requirement better than scrapper does except for this one, but I do have to inform him of the issue guard has with disengaging. 

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Looks like Guardian, and specifically Firebrand. Not a bad choice, the rotations and flexibility are very enjoyable in PvE. You gain access to DPS (power and condi), support (healer, might and quickness) and tanking abilities.

Guardian's also a very solid choice for each section you mentioned: fractals, raids and general PvE.

Edited December 17, 2021 by NorthernRedStar.3054