Profession Selection

Hey everyone, I hope this finds you well.

I was wondering if you guys could give me a more in depth run down of the pros and cons to the professions. I've been wanting to fill my roster of character slots with them but I'm having difficulty deciding my last one.

I currently have a Ranger (Eric L) an Elementalist (Liam L) a Mesmer (Lucien L) and a Thief (Evan L)
and so I was looking at the other professions to choose for my fifth and final character. I was looking at a Necromancer because I kind of liked how they played in GW, I'm just not sure how there game play has changed.

I was also looking at trying the Guardian or Engineer but I'm not sure how the Guardian is different from the Warrior (aside from the ability to buff allies) and I know nothing of the Engineer except for the turrets.

Can anyone give me some information that might help? I would google the information that I'm looking for, but unfortunately the testimony would be stale and stagnant and would quite possibly like the conviction and passion of someone who has actually played the professions. Plus the pros and cons can be pretty sterile so if you can give me your opinions I would greatly appreciate it. Anything can help.

Thanks!

Well besides Hijacking the thread to say im comming back in full time ^.^ I also would say we have almost the same line up. Instead of a thief I have a warrior though. Take all you notions about a standard warrior and throw em out the window. They can use almost every weapon. The banners and shouts have great buffs. They do amazing damage. Also...get this, if specced for healing. Thier shouts heal on low cooldowns and it heals for a lot. At 80 I was healing 1.5k per shout/20second cd. The same trait that raises toughness also raises healing. Vit raises Boons so you become a walking healing Turtle. Mind you I was still doing great dmg. Took 3 or more people to kill me in pvp cuz of all the healing and dmg mitigation.

Down side time now. They dont have much of a mystical feel which I like. When you are used to strat and finesse with mes or ele, the bare bones easy style of the warrior can cause reptition. Warrior is kinda like easy mode. Thats why I took mine healing. To be diffrent.

Gaurdian, oh what to say about you. Basically a mystical warrior. Less weapons, but they get awesome summons. I dont like a lot of the mid/long range on them though. Moves kinda slow. The elite book skill on them is amazing for long range. Also comes with a long cooldown too. Unless you spec for shorter cool downs.

I never really got into engineer. First time I played one, I found I hated the first few bundles and gave up. I hear they get much better and with jump shot on the rifle they can cheese thru all the jumping puzzles. Ill Let a experienced engi answer on all that though. ^.^

I would love to offer some help but I have only played my Ranger so far and you already have one them. :)

Yeah the Ranger has been my main so far. It's comfortable and I like playing with him. But I have the others lined up. At this rate it'll be forever! But that's completely fine with me.

Quote by Halish

I would love to offer some help but I have only played my Ranger so far and you already have one them. :)

Ditto, I only play a Thief...but here's hoping someone will come along to help answer your questions. :)

Guardian is one of my main and I wanted to make either engineer or necromancer as my second main but I chose mesmer instead. I've done a lot of experimentations and testing for these three professions so I guess I could say that I've got good experience on this. :laugh:

Guardian:
A lot of people might think that guardian is a great melee fighter like a warrior, because they use heavy armor, swinging greatsword and all. But if you play dungeons and dragons, the cleric class uses heavy armor with mace and shield as weapons. So this is the idea of how a guardian should be. However they are still a good and strong melee class and can tank well. If a warrior depend on his offensive skills for battle, a guardian uses his buffing skills to defend himself. Guardians are well known for their Aegis as a defence skill, together with a lot of health regenarations skills. For offence, they have several burning skills for dot damage. So imho, if you think you want to win an opponent by playing a guardian like a warrior (by spamming all offeinsive skills), it could hardly happen. You gotta depend on your protection buff and some dot skills. Plus.. guardian is one of the class which has the lowest health other than elementalist and thief.

Conclusion: Guardian = awesome protection and healing buff + burning.

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Engineer:
To me they are the most fun class to play. They are best known for kiting, knock back and condition dealer. They are very good at keeping their opponents at bay with a lot of knock back skills. An array of condition maker that decrease movement speed and inflict poison/bleed/burn just make them better at this. You can either play this class like a desperado with pistols and riffle or focus on throwing bombs and grenades (which most of the condition skills come from). Turrets are fun too, but they're not so effective for pve, unless you're fighting champion monsters or in a dungeon or in WvW. You can do a lot of stuff with this class.

Conclusion: Engineer = condition maker + knockback / movement stopper (not sure if the term is acceptable but I hope you got it :unsure: )

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Necromancer:
People fear necromancer because of their crazy bleeding skills.. and poison. A lot of people would use this condition damage as the main weapon rather on using summoning simply because it's more effective. But still the summoning is pretty strong too and work effectively in PvE. Unlike engineer, a necromancer's condition damage is stronger and longer and has better radius too ( I think =/ ). Other than that, they are also good at removing condition by converting conditions to boon.. or "swallowing" it and putting the curse on the enemies. They also have the most HP of all the classes, on par with warriors. On top of that, they can suck blood out of the opponent which is why you can see sometimes a necromancer is the one who stands in front of the line tanking the boss monster. Their aoe condition damage can also be traited to heal themselves and allies (though very little regeneration).
The only reason why I didn't choose this for my main is because they can't buff allies.. and the aoe healing for allies is only when there are monsters around. They have good speed buff and shield buff though... but only for themselves.

Conclusion: Necromancer = strong bleed+poison, condition "eater", lots of HP with HP steal.

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All of these are only based on my experience with a lot of experiments and reading. I apologize if the way I describe the classes is not like how it suppose to be. But still, the best way to know is to play the class yourself. You should have a clear experience if you play the class until about level 17.

Cheers :laugh: