Hi, just bought the game after listening to a few episodes of the lincolncast. I played a lot of gw1 and I am really enjoying gw2 so far but i have a bit of a dilemma. I cant decide between the engineer and the mesmer. I love characters that really control the flow of combat and have a ton of utility. the mesmer seems like it is all about the control while the engineer seems its all about the utility so I am having trouble pinning which one to focus on first. So i turn to you community of giant bomb with a few questions. What profesion shines at high lvl? which one is more viable in pve/pvp? what are good crafting professions for either class? also what are just some good tips for starting out in gw2(gold making tips, lvling, etc.) thanks in advance! hopefully get to meet up in play with some of y'all in game soon!

Out of eng or mes, i'd pick Mesmer. It has way more trolling potential and is quite good at the moment. Unstoppable in sPvP.

Warrior is a good all round class, can do anything. Has the HP and Armor to stand up to everything. Good for people to start with.

You can pick any crafting profession with any class, there's nothing to worry about that. I'd advise not going the cooking route however as you can just BUY all the food you want in the trading post (usually at bargain prices).

Leveling tips: Play the game. It doesn't take much longer to get from lvl30 to 50, as compared to lvl60 to 80. Simply playing will get you levels fairly quickly. If you're crazy, you can probably mash out a lvl80 in 2 weeks of playing (most of us did that in the first week).

Making money: Thats a hard one, but there are tons of websites dedicated to this sort of thing. But basically it boils down to Farming Vs. Trading Post. You're either farming for rares and stuff to sell, or buying and selling items on the trading post for a cut on the margins.

All of the professions have a good amount of control and utility, but you did pick the two where those roles are most overt. Mostly it becomes about the intangible "feel" of each one and what means you prefer to accomplish similar goals. In that respect, I'd advise you to speed through character creation with any professions you're leaning towards (and even those that you aren't might surprise you), quickly clear the tutorial, and get into the Mists from the last tab on your Hero panel. That way, you'll have access to all skills and traits and be able get an idea of what that profession "feels like" at 80.

If all that sounds like work you don't want to do, I'd say - based on your comments - mesmer. You've noted their excellent control, but they also have some of the most diverse and flexible utilities/elites in the game. Just search YouTube for videos of mesmers using Portal in various ways. You can do some crazy and creative stuff.

Engineer is probably better in PvE because of turrets and survivability (they were a really popular farming class in the betas, not sure if that has changed since launch).

They're both pretty good in PvP, but mesmer is the more popular choice because it's slightly OP (unstoppable in 1v1 like someone above said) and it can take advantage of a lot of map exploits with its teleport (mainly gathering repair kits instantly on Khylo and teleporting into team bases on Legacy). Regardless, you can just make both in PvP since there is no leveling there.

Engineers do get kind of sidelined in dungeon PvE due to their scarcity and the community's overall lack of understanding of the class. Engineers also tend to get shoehorned into one or two builds where other classes benefit from more viable build possibilities. Mesmers have a ton of utility in dungeons and in WvWvW, and they have great group utilities and superb tools for dealing damage. For solo PvE, engineers tend to have an easier time thank to their kits and grenades, but I personally find mesmers more fun because of their active playstyle. As many people have said, you can run with both for sPvP since there's no leveling there.

There's very little point to crafting for profit since none of the professions really will make any money. I personally recommend that new players check out crafting, since it does have some benefits (mainly making leveling faster and easier), but there's no denying how much gold you will have once you hit 80 if you just sell all the materials you gather on the trading post. Deciding whether to craft or not comes down to how much you want to invest in your character and whether or not you care to spend time to gathering materials/farming dynamic event mobs for drops as you get closer to 80. Be aware that good leveling gear is dirt cheap on the trading post, and you won't have any issues keeping yourself geared via the trading post until endgame.

If you do decide to jump into crafting, a good idea would be to pick up two professions that do not use the same required fine crafting materials like jewelcrafting/tailoring or cooking/leatherworking.

The best way to make money while leveling is....leveling. Exploring and fully 100% completing zones will earn you a decent amount of change, and you can make more by selling any blues/green items you can't use. Only use the basic salvage kit and use it on salvage items or white armor/weapon items. Whenever you get a rare (yellow) drop or a popular dye, chances are that you can sell it for a profit on the trading post, so make it a habit to check trading post prices on rare items. You can even sell unidentified dyes for a decent amount of money as well if you don't care for additional dyes to customize your armor. Selling gathered materials also is a viable way of making money (if you don't want to craft), but don't go out of your way to farm gathering nodes, just hit up nodes that happen to be on your leveling path.

Actually, you're wrong about making money @halcyonTwilight:, you can make a ton of money crafting.

For example, you can make a 1g profit per cycle crafting top tier armor right now. You just gotta know when to sell and when to buy materials, and which materials etc.

sweet guys thanks for the help. I went with the mesmer and I am around 11 right now. So far i really enjoy gw2, i love the world but i feel the story is really weak. I have just started to ignore it and powering through the story missions.

@Jmeisch10: This seems to be how a lot of people feel about the story, but as you said, you can easily ignore it and just focus on every other awesome aspect of the game. Out of curiosity though, what race did you go with? I hear Norn and Human storylines are pretty weak, but Charr and Asura are supposed to be (at least) tolerable, if not good. Sylvari themselves are interesting, but so far the story on my Sylvari engineer seems typical 'nature versus undead' crap that you see in every game, so it's fairly middle ground.

I was/am in the same boat about choosing a profession, but so far like the Asura story I chose for my Thief (she's fucking adorable too!). Their dialogue is witty, plus so far I've had the NPC voiced by Felicia Day in just about every quest, and she's got a very nice voice IMO.

TL;DR unless you absolutely love the look of your character, maybe consider re-rolling to a different race to see if you like the story better?

@Jmeisch10: Yea, the story is pretty forgettable in a lot of parts. Taking a friend or several friends along in your story can definitely speed things along. You don't need to complete the story missions to explore the world, but do recommend finishing up the story line at some point as they give nice exp and lead to and exclusive piece of gear that you can only get by completing the story missions (a item that goes in the back/cape slot). Some of the story missions can get difficult later on, especially as a squishy mesmer, so leveling and then coming back to do lower-level story missions can help.

I went with asura, I love the little goofy races lol. Ya i noticed that Felicia Day voiced zojja too, pretty surprised by that, but ya i just feel the story is kinda meh. I feel like they introduce you to all these characters and just try to make them meaningful right away with not a lot of context. As the missions went on it just kinda piled up but idk i feel like i may be to overly critical ill probably stick it out more on my play through with my engi and see if it picks up more. I do really appreciate the light hardheartedness of it all tho. I don't really like mmo's that drop you in and are like "yo there's some mutha fucken big evil over there, now go stab it with this rusty spork."

@Jmeisch10: The story can get a bit rote, but I think there's enough quality stuff in there for it to be generally enjoyable. Some of the missions in the back half inspired some legitimate "holy shit" awe in me, at least, and if you know anything about Guild Wars lore there are real treats for you. If you really hate yours, though, remember that you can always re-roll that race and pick different biography options during character creation (you can find which are more commonly cited as "best" through a search of the official forums).

@Ulain said:

'nature versus undead'

Plants vs. Zombies, you mean.

@Jmeisch10 said:

I don't really like mmo's that drop you in and are like "yo there's some mutha fucken big evil over there, now go stab it with this rusty spork."

I hate to break it to you, but eventually the stories for all the races eventually start to go down this path. However, there are some missions later on that are legitimately epic, and the story is definitely not one of the good parts of the game.