What's a good casual/kid friendly profession/build? (June 2023)

[idpersona.3810]

I'm working on setting up a new character for my kid to play. She already has a mechanist and I was wondering what other professions/specs have decent tanky LI builds? She's pretty bad at dodging and so a new character that can be effective in OW and not die easily is preferred.  Any suggestions are welcome.

[Joxer.6024]

Necro with minions? Is pretty strong.

[oscuro.9720]

It’s never to early to start your child on a warrior! The other classes give hand railings and supports for players to lean on so they never have to truly aspire to greater heights. But on Warrior, your child will learn through tribulation and pain that, should they endure it, will turn them into a resilient force of nature!

Their arms will grow to be like wood, and their legs like roots that may hold them standing no matter the storm. For only on the path of the Warrior will you be pushed to grow beyond your own weakness and, in doing so, be forced to heights that the other professions are incapable of achieving.

And you, too, can join them! You too can cast aside the crutches you have taken for granted all your life and begin your feeble crawl up the mountain that is Warrior! For on day, your craw shall become a walk, your walk a jog, and your jog a leap that summits mountains one stride at a time. You shall stand at the top of the hill looking down upon the enemies who have gathered before you, bloodlust driving the veins of your eyes red and your heart to a torrent beat. Slowly you crouch, striations cutting deep into your barrel-like legs, then, in one swift motion, shall launch yourself down the mountain with speed imperceptible to the lesser professions. And the field shall turn red with blood as you dance to the symphony of their agony and pain. Armies shall cower before your gaze, crows shall flock above thine head in preparation for the feast ye shall lay out before them.

Take your child and forsake the ways of the lesser professions! Cast aside the shackles that bind thy hands and feet, and begin your climb to the glorious summit! 

[Terian.8359]

12 hours ago, idpersona.3810 said:

I'm working on setting up a new character for my kid to play. She already has a mechanist and I was wondering what other professions/specs have decent tanky LI builds? She's pretty bad at dodging and so a new character that can be effective in OW and not die easily is preferred.  Any suggestions are welcome.

If only for OW, then after Mechanist only celestial Mirage staff/staff - very easy and unkillable) only press dodge and swap weapon, and few buttons)

[idpersona.3810]

Thanks for the replies.

I main Warrior and wouldn't do that to my kid 😆

For the Staff/Staff Mirage...like i said, she's pretty bad at dodging.

I think minion Necro might be the way to go then for ease of use.

[ZuperTrooper.9145]

My kid plays both Mechanist and Reaper with minions. He seems to like Reaper a lot more due to the army he has running with him.

But also, I still make sure he doesn't go down. He sees a any mob, Champ or Legend and just charges.

[Buran.3796]

   I recently reset some of my old characters and deliberately chose to rise the new ones playing OW instead of using tomes or boosters. For a new player my ranking would be this:

1) Mesmer. GS + Staff, condi build. Insanely safe since does damage at range, has clones to tank/distract and has tons of ways to prevent damage. And once reaches 80 and unlocks Mirage is god mode.

2) Necro (Staff)and Ranger (LB + GS). High HP + shroud, plenty of cc and unblockable ranged AoE damage (and minions if you want) or a solid pet + high very long range damage and plenty of mitigation and mobility.

4) Dagger dagger Ele. Yes, is frail the first 20-25 levels, but has very good AoE damage and cc, and once you put gear with vitality and unlock the 4 attunements your re-sustain is quite good.

5) Revenant: the condi core build is very tanky and powerful but lacks mobility and can be a bit annoying until you reach 80 and get Herald or Vindi. Also, its only ranged  weapon sucks (hammer). The power variant has mobility but lacks sustain and AoE damage.

6) Thief: albeit the stealth can be useful while leveling to reach some areas and HPs avoinding combat, the overall damage is low and focused in single targets. Is very good at nuking things with low health, but facing larger number of enemies or bosses is hard unless you're elaredy quite experienced with the class.

   Engi, Guardian and Warrior: I didn't rise those manually in a long time, so I can't fairly put then on the list, albeit I'll say that core Guard mobility is bad and I wouldn't put him high in the list just for that.

[idpersona.3810]

21 hours ago, ZuperTrooper.9145 said:

My kid plays both Mechanist and Reaper with minions. He seems to like Reaper a lot more due to the army he has running with him.

But also, I still make sure he doesn't go down. He sees a any mob, Champ or Legend and just charges.

This is pretty much where I'm at. She runs face first into the biggest crowd of enemies she can find.

Any particular build for minion reaper you'd recommend?

I'm also wondering if a controller setup might work better. I can't imagine it'd be that difficult for this game.

Edited June 2, 2023 by idpersona.3810

[Nefras.7314]

7 hours ago, idpersona.3810 said:

This is pretty much where I'm at. She runs face first into the biggest crowd of enemies she can find.

Any particular build for minion reaper you'd recommend?

I'm also wondering if a controller setup might work better. I can't imagine it'd be that difficult for this game.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PShAYFlFwoYTsK2IOSXntbA-zRRYBBLGVszICVQFSBFPAA-e

something like this should work very well, you can swap spite to bloodmagic or deathmagic too if it needs some more sustain. 

Fireworks runes are just for the movespeed, can also make due with signets. If you want more buttons to press you can swap bone minions to rise.

 

Edited June 3, 2023 by Nefras.7314

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Auto attack renegade is always an option.  I won't lie though: they can get pretty raw at times, dropping F-bombs left and right.  I only recommend this for your kid if they're really cool.  

EDIT:   I had some more time, so I built a version for you.  This is very much a PHIW version, made more for the overworld than any sort of group content.  The strategy is pretty simple:  Turn one one of the toggles (impossible odds, vengeful hammers) then auto attack with either sword or shortbow until you run out of energy, then change legends and turn on the other toggles.  You do more damage by using shortbow and sword skills, but those are optional.  Some of the features that this build boasts:

• Self-sustained permanent fury and 25 might
• Decent regen while using sword and while using vengeful hammers
• High sustained auto attack damage at either close range or a distance
• Options to expand the playstyle greatly as your kid learns to be cool
• 100% chance to crit while under fury
• 24.6k health
• 2348 resting power and 243% damage on crit.

The only con is that it requires a bit more maintenance and knowhow outside of simply pressing one button.  

Edited June 3, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Ruisenior.6342]

I would say core celestial/viper (or carrion/rabid if going extremely cheap) ranger with rune of the afflicted, using mainly shortbow and axe torch to burst packs of mobs. There are plenty of tanky pet choices that will buy her alot of time, my favourite starters are the ones with some tankiness + dps like marsh drake or murelow bear(this one provides a very usefull poison field) and u can complement it with a secondary fully tank+utility brown bear, and unlike necro minions with proper pet management they wont die so they can tank alot of damage.

Later if she wants to improve skillwise, switching to soulbeast can be a challenge and at the same time an improvement over core ranger because it plays like it but with improved tools.

As a reference something like this will allow her to clear any content with ease, traiting wilderness knowledge instead of poison master+ brown bear will keep its character clean of condis if needed (if going with carrion i would trait trapper's expertise and fill the skill bar with traps and change the bow sigils for the ones that improve poison+bleed duration):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAUd/lFw8YfsQ2JWaP3L/Sm1VA-zxIY1omvUirAqLECMBKNCMYWg5ZDA-e

Edited June 3, 2023 by Ruisenior.6342

[loregnum.3619]

Reaper. Doesn't have to be a minion build as reaper with signets is easy to play and can't really die unless trying to solo champs/legendaries. You can also slap marauder gear and/or defensive trinkets/gear. Can even go celestial gear like Lord Hizen uses for his reaper build. Could use the vampirism runes that will give a big health bump and also give back 10% health after each kill if need be.  Using the trait signets of suffering in the spite spec and fear of death in soul reaping along with signet of undeath means you will have a lot of life force gen even while in reaper shroud (double tapping 3 in shroud will give 15% life force along with the natural amount you get from signet of undeath) so you can just go to town in there. It's a very easy build to play and powerful for open world. I use signet of spite, signet of undeath and signet of the locust since I like the increased movement speed it brings, especially while in reaper shroud. I only play open world so absolute max damage potential is not required. Spectral walk can give increased movement speed too yet I like the passive nature of the locust signet doing its thing. While dodging is obviously optimal, you can get away a bit with not dodging well when in reaper shroud, even if it means shroud will end sooner than it would by not taking as much damage.

Scrapper using gyros is another that works well since you create a lot of barrier when you use the bulwark gyro and the blast shield trait in the explosives spec which means you have a bit of buffer for not dodging. It requires a more active approach to play though in terms of buttons to press, even if you don't really have to have a strict rotation. Basically just use the gyros on cooldown and try and set up a lighting field with hammer 5 and then use hammer 2 and sometimes 3 inside the field. Hammer 4 also blocks attacks and creates even more barrier.

As for you mentioning setting up a controller, I only use a controller to play this game and it is not hard but you'll probably have to set it up using the triggers/bumpers with button combos for skills. Keyboard and mouse is easier for skill activation since you don't have to do the button combo stuff while I think a controller is maybe easer for movement. Action cam with a controller also kind of makes the game more like a regular action/adventure 3rd person game. I can recommend the controller, especially if she is used to using controllers. 

Edited June 3, 2023 by loregnum.3619

[Raarsi.6798]

On 6/2/2023 at 12:39 PM, idpersona.3810 said:

This is pretty much where I'm at. She runs face first into the biggest crowd of enemies she can find.

If that doesn't scream "warrior main", idk what does. 🤣

As someone who gets pretty bad carpal tunnel and needs LI builds, I'm a warrior main who stacks vampirism runes because I'm mostly doing overworld and am also terrible at dodging.

Revenant's another profession that can be fairly simple and built to facetank most things.  Start in main legend, use their persistent skill and auto-attack until you're out of energy, then switch to the other legend and repeat (this would probably be Jalis for extreme facetanking).  From there, they can start expanding once they figure out what to do.

Ranger's another easy one as long as they keep their pet alive and keep moving.

Engineer can also be pretty easy for facetanking stuff, especially scrapper.  Like revenant, engineer's another profession that's in the category of "it's as complicated as you want it to be", and it has a couple of elite spec options that can be played in a pretty simple fashion while being either near-invincible or just not being hit.

Thief can sorta facetank as long as you keep hitting things with their healing signet staying off cooldown.

Necromancer can also facetank, but I've also literally fallen asleep while playing it, so there's that.  

Mesmer can also facetank to some degree thanks to the fact that mobs prefer prioritizing clones.  On top of this, mirage can also teach using the dodge button because theirs creates clones that mobs will usually go after.

Elementalist....last time I played one, it was the "Fresh Air" tempest build, and that wasn't really facetanking as much as it was obliterating things before they could kill me.

[Rhinala.1739]

Both of my daughters play vindicator and love it, it think that the damage dodge make it a bit more fun in many aspects, Renegade can be extremely fun you she likes ranged playstyle.. 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Rhinala.1739