Guide to Class Selection

We have had a lot of players struggle with choosing a main profession. This guide will hopefully help you have a much easier time that some of our players.

Forget everything you’ve ever known about professions and classes in other games.

Everyone’s become so familiar with the typical profession archetypes in MMOs. Forget all of that for Guild Wars 2. The classes are built around play styles. The old archetypes have been dismantled and the old parts were used to create all of the classes. You’ll find bits and pieces of them across all of the classes.

Forget everything you’ve ever known about DPS meters and skill rotations.

Guild Wars 2 is a dynamic game with fluid combat and all of the classes embrace this. Skills aren’t meant to be spammed (outside of the #1 skills of course). ANET wants you to think about using your skills. This can be seen even in the Warrior’s skill sets. Let’s use the Warrior’s greatsword as our example. Hundred Blades does a lot of damage on a sort recharge but if you don’t set it up correctly you’ll do no damage since you can’t move while using it. Bladetrail is another situational skill due to the cripple. It’s something you’ll want to use to help control or gap close. Rush and Whirlwind Attack are both gap closers. The entire bar is filled with very useful skills that become near useless if spammed. But the warrior is supposed to be the easiest class to play? Play, yes. Play well, no. No class in Guild Wars 2 is easy to play well because there are no set skill rotations in Guild Wars 2.

Forget everything you’ve ever known about armor classes.

Guild Wars 2 has 3 armor classes: light, medium, and heavy. They mean next to nothing in this game. Take the thief class for example. They are a medium armor class but they come with some amazing evasion and escape abilities allowing them to take less damage than heavy armor melee classes in some cases. The thief can also run double pistol or short bow and kite enemies to death to avoid damage. In Guild Wars 2, how you build and play your class is the most important aspect.

Pick a class in which the entire play style of the class appeals to you.

Pick a class in which you like the overall game play of the class. That means finding a class that you’ll like playing with almost all of the weapons the class has available to it. Guild Wars 2 forces you to choose the best weapon for the situation. You'll be hindering yourself and your teammates if you try and play the weapon set that you want to of the time instead of what works best in the situation. If you pick a class that you like playing across multiple weapon sets, you’ll ensure yourself a good time no matter what situation you or your party find yourselves in.

Research, research, and more research.

Here’s where we start talking about how you do all of the above. The best place to start is the official Guild Wars 2 Wiki. I know the site’s really lacking in some places but it really shines for skills and traits. You should be able to get a pretty good understanding of how the different classes are going to play and what their capabilities are by reading through the skills and traits on the wiki. You can also start imagining some viable builds for your potential class or classes.

Play through the classes that appeal to you the most.

Finally, once you’ve done your research and you have your list narrowed down, it’s time to put those classes to the test. Play each class that you’ve selected to at least level 15 but my suggestion would be to go as high as 30. Level 30 will give you access to your first elite but more importantly it will give you access to your first dungeon. Playing through the first dungeon will give you a really good idea on how the class will play in dungeons throughout the game. You may also not want to delete any of the characters that you’ve played to level 30 so that you can easily come back to them.