Need help in choosing a new main

[Enzo Kensei.9850]

Hi all,

Well, i can't stand the Renegade... . I love the Revenant lore, but the class design was awful. The Renegade is the same, awful design. I don't do Raids, so in PvE mode, i see that my Renegade offers nothing new to the table, Warband takes to long to summon, energy consumption is very high, the shotbow damage is ok'ish (with fervor)... .

Well in order to get a new main (i have limited time for playing :anguished: ). I love magic classes, so my options are Guardian/FB (already have one DH ready to go FB), a new Mesmer or a new Elementalist. I love playing a mix of support and damage (direct or through conditions).

So, how are these 3 in PvE? About making a new character (Mesmer or Elementalist) i still have one boost to 80, stored.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Thanathos.2063]

Power DH and condi FB do tons of damage if geared correctly. I'm easily able to solo elites in PoF with my DH. Support is possible too, you can spread your buffs or heals in zergs etc :D

Ele is hard in PvE since he's pretty squishy, but he can throw out tons of damage as well, it just takes a bit more practice. Especially for weaver, where you want to constantly switch between elements. I'm still using my good old staff tempest because I can stay in fire, throw out my firefields and everything dies relatively quickly.

I don't have much mesmer experience, but it seems to be very depending on builds. Sometimes you virtually do no damage, sometimes it's okay. It's mostly a support class, even though I don't know about mirage.

[DebraKadabra.5278]

I haven't tested Chronomancer out in PoF yet, but I'm doing just fine on Dragonhunter. I tried Firebrand but.. not my thing.

As for Mirage? I think I might stay with Chrono.

[Rhatha.2376]

I think Guardian is the safest bet out of those if you're not sure, and is very flexible and survivable. I haven't played it nearly as much as others, but even without a lot of experience it was one of the easier professions to pick up and do well with.

Mesmer has amazing support, but if you plan to do the standard group build for Chrono it's a pain in the butt to get the gear for.. a bit easier now that Runes of the Firebrand exist, but still fairly annoying. They're also a lot more limited in their dps options, and mainly tend to favor long term fights on single, strong enemies. The best boon support also doesn't overlap with the dps as well as other professions - they want separate trait lines. You can do OK against swarms of weak enemies but it will be trickier than other professions at times. They have a lot of unique utility as well, like portal, which may or may not be important to you. Mesmer is a very strong class in the right circumstances, but it's one I'd hesitate to recommend if you're not really sold on the theme right out of the gate.

Elementalist might be a good choice, and has a lot of on demand defensive utility by briefly switching to water and/or earth. It can be very squishy, though, and is more complicated to pick up until you get used to when you need to swap to which element to use each of those defenses. On the upside, Ele is very good at healing even without focusing on it, and has much more of a traditional spellcaster feel if that's interesting to you.

If you want to do mostly open world, honestly, just try the one that has the most interesting concept to you. If the guardian is already 80, that's pretty easy to get a few HPs on, and in the long run, you'll get enough tomes and XP scrolls from logins and other rewards that you'll be able to take anything to 80 in short order, so it's not worth worrying over the boost too much (and there are good arguments for leveling characters more slowly to learn them as well).