Low to medium intensity suggestion for main?

[DarkSoul.9187]

New player here, just started about 2 weeks ago looking for a main that's low to medium intensity. 

I have narrowed it down to Mesmer and Necro but I am open to other suggestions as well. 

Specifically for Mesmer, I am very interested in the Condi Virtuoso Build. It seems fun and flashy without being too intensive. I'm also interested in condi mirage (basically a pet class).

Necro - I'm interested in reaper/harbinger but it seems like reaper could be a little boring? haven't looked into shade spec but I didn't see any low intensity builds.

I do like casual PvP -but the funny thing is Necro seems to be much more spammy in pvp than mesmer. As a necro I'm constantly double tapping my mark /staff skills, while as my mesmer, I'm mostly baiting people out with various blocks, then exploding them with my virt blade skills. So PvP is actually more chill APM-wise as a mesmer for me. 

Any mains decide between these two? Any other classes I need to check out?

The reason I mentioned low to medium is when I asked about low everyone immediately suggestions necro. What's the next level above necro? How far away in intensity is mesmer? Is there any other classes that bridge the gap between being chill but fun? This would be PvX since I do enjoy PvP and PvE.

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by DarkSoul.9187
spelling

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

When it comes to the total number of button presses, almost every profession has low intensity options.  You won't be scraping benchmarks but you'll be able to do well enough for most PVE content.  PVP is... far more frenetic, and you'll largely have to match the actions of your opponent.  The only exception to this is Ele.  I'll speak a bit about each profession:

Elementalist: Has a Fire/Arcane/Tempest build that just camps fire attunement and spams minions.  It is the closest thing Ele has to a LI build, but it does still press a lot of buttons to get stuff done.  Weaver has a Fire/Earth/Weaver scepter build that alternates between Fire and Earth that is pretty good, but more intensive.  Catalyst is always frenetic.  It has the highest number of sheer button presses per minute out of any profession.

Mesmer: Mirage has the twin staff build that is alright... on paper.  The most difficult thing about Mirage is maintaining the clones, which die after their target does.  So, fighting big bosses and enemies Mirage is pretty low intensity, but while running around killing smaller mobs it can be quite taxing to always have to generate and manage clones.  Axe Mirage is better at cleaving and fighting multiple enemies, but requires more attention.  Virtuoso, both Condi and Power, are pretty straightforward.  I myself prefer condi virtuoso, since it has higher self-healing.  You'll have to pay attention to the blade counts and shatter whenever they fill, but it is probably the closest match to what you're looking for.  Chronomancer hinges a lot of its performance on Continuum Split, making it a make-or-break profession with about 10 seconds of utter madness every minute or so.

Necromancer:  A lot of people recommend minions, but they're more for tanking than for doing damage.  Both Reaper and Harbinger are pretty simple and roughly equal in intensity.  You press the weapon/utility buttons for DPS, go into shroud for awhile, then repeat.  The hard one to play is Scourge, which has to manage shades and presses all of its buttons with no fixed rotation.

Engineer:  Mechanist, both power and condi, are pretty simple to handle.  The builds run mostly signets and a lot of the work is offloaded to the mech, so the only difficult portion is remembering to go into grenade kit every few seconds.  There's kitless versions that do less damage for every build.  Scrapper is in second place, with no special mechanics to know of, but it has toolbelt skills that need pressing so the button demand is higher.  Holosmith is complicated, and plays a bit like a Necromancer that blows itself up if the bar fills.  Only go for Holosmith if you want more of a challenge, since heat management and being locked in/out of forge adds a lot of subtle complexity.  

Thief:  Thief is in a bit of an odd place.  Most of the meta strats you'll read tend to be lacking in flexibility, only working in specific circumstances.  Of all the thief specs, Daredevil (both condi and power) is the easiest to play.  It involves dodging to get a damage buff, then mashing one weapon skill over and over to blow initiative.  It's quite fun, IMO, to be flipping all about.  Playing it well is about getting as many cooldowns and bars flowing as possible, since you'll want the recharge time to be efficient, but that boils down to using one of each thing before going into a rotation.  Deadeye is also pretty simple, since it involves doing the same thing as daredevil, then once malice is built up you stealth-attack and repeat.  Rifle Deadeye runs its utilities in a specific order, but other versions don't.  Specter is more complicated, since it has a Life Force bar like the Necromancer, and it involves more careful cooldown and initiative management.

Ranger: Unfortunately, I don't know much about modern ranger.

Warrior: Spellbreaker is the simplest spec to play well.  It doesn't have anything particularly special, as its gimmick is that it has a built-in evade.  Berserker is more frenetic, requiring no more extra buttons, but it requires spamming the burst skill a lot and cycling through specific skills to maintain rage.  Bladesworn is the hardest one to play... at a high level.  It will require timing very specific buffs and abilities in proper sequence with very little room for error to get the most out of it.  However, it should be noted that there's a Strength/Discipline/Bladesworn LI build that is far easier to play.  It basically mashes axe skills, and lets Dragon Trigger carry most of the load.

Guardian: This is another profession that has a bizarrely high degree of technicality.  Dragonhunter is simple enough, in that you'll hook an enemy with the spear and then unload all of your damaging skills on it.  This will still require pressing most buttons on the bar very quickly.  Firebrand requires either good rotation is a good mental queue, since it depends a lot on invisible cooldowns from tome swaps and mantras to do its damage.  Bladesworn is about maintaining virtue buffs, and is the most demanding of the specializations to play.  

Revenant: Power Rev, particularly herald, has a few auto attack builds that I'll use when I'm so sick I can't be bothered to use my eyes.  The power builds for Herald and Vindicator are both easy to use, in that you turn on the damaging toggle and mash buttons until you run out of energy, then you swap legends and proceed to do it again.  Vindicator is more complicated than Herald, requiring regular dodges and generally swaps weapons, whereas Herald is capable of camping a single weapon set more effectively.  Renegade, particularly condi... is one of the hardest professions to play well.  It is constantly micromanaging energy in order to hit specific thresholds and breakpoints, with a slightly disjointed swapping order that requires sub-second timing, or else everything can come to a screeching halt.  Power renegade is the weakest of the three, so only try renegade if you're going condi and want a challenge.

[Sindust.7059]

If the choice is down to just these 2, Mesmer isn't harder to play per se if you're talking about just doing a DPS rotation, but mesmers are much more squishy, and you have to work much harder to stay alive, while with necro (specifically scourge) you can make a build that can face tank almost anything while still doing decent DPS.

[DarkSoul.9187]

On 12/1/2023 at 11:56 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

When it comes to the total number of button presses, almost every profession has low intensity options.  You won't be scraping benchmarks but you'll be able to do well enough for most PVE content.  PVP is... far more frenetic, and you'll largely have to match the actions of your opponent.  The only exception to this is Ele.  I'll speak a bit about each profession:

Thief:  Thief is in a bit of an odd place.  Most of the meta strats you'll read tend to be lacking in flexibility, only working in specific circumstances.  Of all the thief specs, Daredevil (both condi and power) is the easiest to play.  It involves dodging to get a damage buff, then mashing one weapon skill over and over to blow initiative.  It's quite fun, IMO, to be flipping all about.  Playing it well is about getting as many cooldowns and bars flowing as possible, since you'll want the recharge time to be efficient, but that boils down to using one of each thing before going into a rotation.  Deadeye is also pretty simple, since it involves doing the same thing as daredevil, then once malice is built up you stealth-attack and repeat.  Rifle Deadeye runs its utilities in a specific order, but other versions don't.  Specter is more complicated, since it has a Life Force bar like the Necromancer, and it involves more careful cooldown and initiative management.
 

For Thief, is it possible to play daredevil without dodging? I know it's the class mechanic but after the training dummy I don't really get how to land correctly. Or I guess, the dodge mechanic in the level 3 perk you can choose a cleanse instead of another DPS one. (One throws knives, another is a ground pound). Or do you actually have to keep dodging to do DPS?

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by DarkSoul.9187

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, DarkSoul.9187 said:

 

It is, but if you aren't dodging you might as well just play core thief.