Now that we all have actually played Guild Wars 2, which profession was your favorite? Will that profession then be your main class? Is it impossible to choose a single profession?

This BWE left me wanting to only play a Mesmer, it was hard to go and try other classes after having enjoyed the Mesmer so thoroughly.

I personally also found the Warrior, Ranger, and Necro to be quite boring, even though my pre-bwe decisions were between Warrior, and Necro. I'm not touching the Thief cause i hate the whole premise of the profession.

Next BWE i'll try playing more as an Engineer, and an Elementalist. But i absolutely hated playing a dagger Elementalist this BWE.

I didn't get a chance to play Mesmer, Ele or Ranger but I know I'll hate the last one (I've almost always hated pets).

For now, I was really impressed with how survivable and damaging a warrior can get if you spec him out properly and think that class is the way to go for sustained DPS. The others have their advantages in support, but so many people are playing them that I think straight out damage is a bit under represented at the moment.

My first character will probably be a human warrior.

Even though I spent the majority of my time on a thief just because it was the first class I started, I think elementalist was the most satisfying for me. I only got through the first handful of levels since I tried five classes, but they were really fun and I could already see the versatility and possibility with the class. I may very well make it my main profession.

My least favorite, from what I tried, would probably be warrior. Nothing about it grabbed my attention or made me excited. It just felt very run of the mill to me.

I liked mesmer and ele quite a lot. Necro felt pretty bland and the death shroud mechanic was pretty boring. Think I will be maining ele on release though as it feels like the one with the most potential.

@selfconfessedcynic: I'd have to agree on the raw damage, I played as an Evicserate focused Warrior, and as a Sword/Shield Tank.

After a few PvP matches i found that people were actively avoiding my Evicserate Warrior out of shear fear of my damage output. I would essentially turn the tide of every skirmish i entered, everyone was busy dodging, evading, stunning but i'd just rush in with my Axes and add that needed burst to actually finish of opponents.

As a tank i found myself, grabbing the enemies attention so my team could finished them off as i tanked. I think i would die once a match, and you could tell enemies were getting frustrated with me when they were completely ignoring my teammates around me just trying to make me die.

I found the Guardian's combat to be extremely fun and addictive. That said, Memser comes a very close second. Definetely want to try Elementalist, Engineer and Thief in the next event. And try to play some PvP/WvW as well.

From the 3 professions I played this BWE.

PvE - Ranger > Warrior > Mesmer

PvP - Ranger > Mesmer > Warrior

I'm excluding Warrior and Mesmer from being my main at release. Mesmer was underwhelming in PvE due to the class mechanic being designed for much longer lasting fights, but it's a great class in PvP and loads of fun because of the insanity all the clones and phantasms bring into the fray. Warrior is plenty awesome in PvE, against predictable NPCs. The class is decent at range, but shines as melee, which just doesn't perform well enough in PvP currently. Overall, I found the adrenaline mechanic too slow building and too one-note.

I always gravitate to ranger type professions in these type of games - they always offer plenty utility, and decent pet managment can enable great things in PvE. The Ranger's pet mechanic is the best thought out I've had the pleasure of playing with in the realm of MMOs. There's gonna be about 30 pets at launch, each with an own fighting style and unique usable skill, one more awesome than the next. Traps and spirits and pet-specific utility skills were awesome too, and so far, the Ranger's heal (Troll-something, a 10s heal over time) proved to be extremely powerful. Oh - the Ranger's warhorn abilities are so much fun (birds in your face anyone?). Great class indeed.

My main in WoW was a hunter, so I don't really want to play something this similar again (though I might end up doing so anyways). I'll try the Thief and Elementalist next BWE (hopefully with Sylvari and Asura). I've seen very few Engineers, but the ones I met in combat where quite formidable and their 'utility kit skills', like flamethrower and mines look like a tonne of fun. I don't know about Necro, looking in from the outside, it's just not my thing - spawning all those ugly vile creatures. Guardian might be for me, love how tough they are and how much control they have, though I usually just ignore them as best I can on the battlefield - I don't like to be ignored. By the time GW2 releases, I'll hopefully have played them all, to make a sound decision. It's between the Ranger and Thief and Elementalist and Engineer now, unless Guardian or Necro really surprise me.

Guardian was definitely my favourite. You could outlast any profession. I was regularly taking on 3-4 people at once in PvP and holding my own for a few minutes. Damage output left a lot to be desired, but you could really waste people's time and hold points on the map well. I came up with some offense-oriented builds today but I won't be able to try them out until the next beta. :(

Guardian. Mostly because I was able to build more like a Paragon and less like a W/Mo.

Ranger was the biggest disappointment for me. Animal companion was totally useless and my damage output was meager at best. You would have thought that Anet would pay homage to the classic Thumper/Rampage as One R/W builds of the past with the 2H Sword dps, but both the ranged and melee combat of the Ranger left much to be desired.

My time was kind of limited, so I played Thief almost exclusively this beta. I enjoyed what I played, although I couldn't really figure out a good reason to go melee instead of ranged - felt like I could kill stuff just as quickly/efficiently from a safer distance. I'll probably focus on at least getting in a few levels for each profession during the next event.

I only played Guardian up until the last 9 hours, then I switched to Necro. Really enjoyed both classes but I am not sure if I will roll with one of them on release. Interested in Elementalist and might give Warrior a try too just for the heck of it.

started out as a ranger played that most of they way i tried guardian a tiny bit but did not like it one bit. on sunday at 2 am i tried the elle but i was so tired i couln't give it a fair judgement. so next weekend i will be trying the elle and engineer.

but i ahve to say i love my ranger way to much hes awesome.

I only played a Norn Guardian, so I voted Guardian :P

It was alright. They're dead simple to play (boring even?), and have decent survivability (I guess).

I tried out pretty much every class, but I only got a few decently leveled.

I really enjoyed my time with the Elementalist, Necromancer, and Guardian, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to play a Mesmer. I've made my goal for next BWE to figure out how to use one because of it.

The Ele was incredibly enjoyable for me due to their wide range of skills, they could get out of pretty much every situation if you used the right skill. I was using the staff at all times, and it proved to be my favorite after I tried the other weapons out in the Mists. You get a large selection of AoE attacks, and every element has something to deal with movement problems and range.

The Necro I found fun because you almost never die whether or not you dodge attacks. You can just stand there while your pet takes all the damage and spam attacks, though I can see it getting boring pretty quick. I didn't like that their staff skills were almost all AoE.

The Guardian was fun because it felt meaty and strong while also having a large amount of support and defensive skills to help those around you. One of my favorite parts of playing Ele was to help keep everyone healed, and while you can't quite do that with the amount of skills I got with limited dude, it was still really fun to put up shields and buffs to help everyone out. Though it did have a problem where I could almost never tell if I was hitting anyone right, the melee is tricky in this game for me.

@Seppli said:

From the 3 professions I played this BWE...

...PvP - Ranger > Mesmer > Warrior...

... The class [The Warrior] is decent at range, but shines as melee, which just doesn't perform well enough in PvP currently. Overall, I found the adrenaline mechanic too slow building and too one-note...

I have to say that I disagree with the above to some extent. As I've previously stated, I didn't get a chance to play either the Ranger or the Mesmer, but I DID face plenty of them in both structured PvP and WvW. Now, on the one hand, none of the Rangers I faced were good with their pets, so perhaps they were missing something really big there, but I can say without a question in my mind that not a single one of the above classes ever got me below 50% HP when I stumbled into them on the battlefield. For the rangers I met, I just out-DPS'd and out-armoured them (and, admittedly probably outplayed them - man people need to learn to keep moving and dodge properly) and for the Mesmers it was much the same, but GOD they were squishy.

I played (for structured) the standard Rifle Warrior set they give you with Bolas replacing one of the utilities (so not even an optimised build) and (for WvW) I played my lvl 4 Warrior I'd recently unlocked all of the rifle skills for (so very not optimised). I firmly believe that the rifle is the most balanced but focussed weapons in the game, and happily that focus is single-target-damage (I'd switch to the bow when facing a large group). It has a snare, inflicts vulnerability, has TWO spiking skills (the burst and volley) and all of them except the burst can be used whilst running and strafing.

The main clincher was knowing when to use the burst. I agree that they are boring skills, but damn are they effective. If I inflict vulnerability with skill 4 then hit the burst fully charged (I tested this on people and the targets in the mists) I could do anywhere from 2-8000 damage in a single chunk (depending on enemy armour). I out-damaged a friendly elementalist in the mists (we were standing in the targetting range and compared - and he seemed fine, though was using lightning magic instead of fire) and can take out all of the NPC class-masters one-on-one in the mists too (you find them all together, there's one of each class and if you agro them they chase you down and fight you).

*shrug* it could be that the build just clicked with me, but I think it is indeed legitimately good and definitely gives those two classes a run for their money at a minimum. Oh, and this isn't even touching on Axe/Sword or Axe/Axe (but admittedly, I liked playing ranged warrior more)

ED: What I DID fear were Eles and Necros. Goddamn, they are hard to pin down and dish out good damage to boot.

During the BWE, I mainly focused on the Warrior and Mesmer in PvE, so take everything I say from a PvE perspective. I got each character to 16 and unlocked the majority of their weapon skills. While I wanted to like the warrior more, as it was my main in GW1, there were issues that rubbed me the wrong way. Over my hours with the warrior, it appeared I'd have to spec towards defense for survivability, which is diametrically opposed to the GW1 warrior, which should always be played offensively. I'm sure after more time with the warrior I would adjust, but as it stands, I don't want to be ranged during large scale events. I guess it's my mentality with a 6+ year old GW1 warrior.

As for the mesmer, it's definitely a fun profession to play since it has some insane survivability (ie. Blink, Decoy, The Prestige), and the idea of clones and illusions is brilliant, but the profession has a couple major flaws. Clones are paper thin, and once their target dies, they die. But wait, other creatures can attack and kill my clones? I mean, what the hell? Not to mention the fact that once you use Mind Wrack to have them shatter and deal AoE, your foe can move immediately out of range (I'm not referring to dodging here, just walking out of the way). Without this, the Mesmer does too little damage. However, all of the Mesmer's weapons were satisfactory except the scepter. It's essentially useless in comparison to the other Mesmer weapons. Overall, the "new" GW2 Mesmer is an interesting profession, especially looking at it from a GW1 perspective. In the original, the Mesmer was the ultimate shut down profession; it could blind, disrupt, deal damage whenever the target attacked or used a skill; drain energy from the target; and increase the recharge time of the next skill used by the target. As a result of these abilities, it was somewhat less effective in PvE, and it seems ArenaNet understood that. I was simply hoping for more skills similar to the ones seen in GW1.

I voted Mesmer. I didn't have the opportunity to delve into the other professions, but I'll do that next beta. I'm thinking Guardian and Necro.

@Evelgest: Clones dying isn't a problem when you get the hand of generating them, you do have to switch weapons a lot to quickly put up clones. Oh and yes Scepter is a joke, apparently it got nerfed really hard after the closed beta, to the point of it only being used for making clones.

I played, Thief, Engineer, Mesmer, Warrior and Guardian (in the order of most played to least played).

I was the most survivable in PvP as the Thief and I don't think I lost one match the entire I played one; doesn't surprise me I always have a Rogue character in every MMO although not always my main. If you haven't read on GW2's forums most everyone who played the Engineer hated it, because the packs didn't make up for the lack of weapons at all (if fact it could punish you). The packs need a massive reworking and they should just give the engineer a few more weapons like hammers (popularly demanded), torches and I would love to see an Engineer version of the Warhorn (could do some fun things with that). Elixirs are the only thing worth using so everyone spammed them during beta. As far as PvP is concerned the Mesmer was definitely what I considered the most powerful of the 5 I played, so as expected just like GW1 (Me/N) I'll be rolling Mesmer main. Warrior was exactly as I suspected, a lot of fun and a lot of hitting. Guardian is definitely going to be among the top PvP demanded classes of arena team, but I expected that just like paladins (can someone please make a game where Cleric or Paladin classes aren't overpowered?).

@selfconfessedcynic:

Didn't play much of WvW. Just taking over a keep from NPCs and then an hour of zerging at the gates against dudes clamoring to get it back. WvW seems like endgame to me. Something I start doing, once my character is ready for it (and I found an active WvW guild with a standing group, with players being 24/7 on VoIP). Of course eles and rangers are more squishy than warriors in WvW, because you cannot optimize them like you would a real lvl 80 character. In structured PvP however, you can fully optimize your character - traits and runes and skills and evenfooting weapons are all on the table.

A well specced ranger beats everyone easily in one on one in the current build. I pretty much had double as many points in every round I played. Like 250 vs 125 points for the next best guy in the field. I used 3 selfbuffs as utilities another selfbuff for elite and that 10s second HoT as heal. 2 extra utility skills come with the pets, taking care of that. With all cooldowns available, I'd easily fight 2-3 dudes, kill a dude within 10 seconds, have 100% HP to flee or deal with the other two, whilst they are low from AoE. Mostly using axe & warhorn. Axe working like 1k per hit chainlightning (especially effective against Mesmers and Necros and their pets). Warhorn giving me a 5th buff (might & speed & stability - I believe), as well as CC with the birds.

A mesmer specced into survivability of himself and his clones and phatasms is a force to be reckoned with. With 3 'pets' out, his standard heal pretty much heals from 1% back up to 100%. With utility skills spawning 2 clones at will and such, having 3 out at the right time to heal and then suicide bomb is quite an easy feat. Again, in structured PvP, the Mesmer was much more powerful than most classes. Warriors don't even come close to being as dangerous and nasty to deal with. I could easily fight 2+ guys and get away with it for a looong time. Killing dudes in the process. Again - the key is speccing into survivabilty and having a very powerful heal at your disposal. Also topped the leaderboards frequently.

I played a rifle & x-melee weapon combinations warrior too. Survivabilty-wise, even an optimized warrior is easier to deal with, due to his straightforward mechanics. There's no guessing, no diversion, to the fighting the class. Here's the warrior, fight him. Just fight a ranger at range with your rifle, it's an eyeopener. Ranger's got more range, and at range with a longbow (longbows deal more damage the further away the ranger is), deals roughly double DPS of a rifle warrior. Like I said, warrior is competent at range, but doesn't shine like a Ranger or Caster could - there aren't even any decent ranged utility skills to speak of. It's a decent class, but far from top shelf. When I topped leaderboards playing the Warrior, I did so with smart tactical decisions, not with OP class mechanics.

Only the fewest players seem to have respecced their traits and re-socketed their weapons and armour with custom runes. My Ranger and Mesmer builds had survivabilty out the wazoo, sitting at 25k HP with as much toughness as humanly possible, combined with their utility-rich skillsets, they dominated structured PvP for the most parts. Did a lot of experiementing with the warrior, and nothing really got him out of the midfield for me. Played against a badass greatsword user (playing a sword and board warrior at the time), given enough stacks of might, a well-placed stun or knockdown, he could pretty much oneshot everybody on the field with the 100 blades strike (static channeled frontal AoE ability) - doing roughly 20k damage with one proper hit.

@selfconfessedcynic:

Oh - about the pets. You get 2 pets for your build (+2 underwater pets), each with a unique utility skill. You can swap pets mid combat. If you swap out a dead pet, it will be alive the next time you call it back into the fray. So rangers get 2 pets & 2 utility skills - most of which was lost on the general population it seems, whom didn't see past F1 (send pet to attack) and walked around most of the time with a dead animal at their side in PvP. Once you understand the class mechanic fully, it's insanely awesome. Adrenaline skills don't hold a candle to pets. It's the utility of 2 pets and 2 extra utility skills, as well as much increased surviability in PvE.

@Seppli: Hmm...

I definitely respect the amount of depth you've gone into in your experimentation, and I simply didn't put that much into it - but I do have a couple of questions to ask as it seems as if you've only addressed one half of PvP. Survivability aside (since I was running around with a warrior with only 22k health, it's not like I got into that side of things) damage output is one thing, but tactical capability and shut-down capability are in many cases far more important.

With those builds, what kind of utility were you working with? To what extent could you help your allies? What kind of movement capability did you have? What role did you play in combat?

It sounds to me like we both got into situations where we were playing with dudes who didn't already have a good idea of how things worked and how to play structured properly - though I never met another player who seemed legitimately better built than anyone else, or perhaps they just didn't have the skill to match their builds. For example, I got into a corner in the clock tower where a hundred blades warrior had snared me and activated his skill - by the time he had closed the distance, I had almost finished my heal (which removed his snare) then dodged past the the third and fourth hits of his attack and jumped out of a window (then proceeded to another point and capped it).

Of course, we approached structured from different directions - you had builds worked out and an understanding of how things worked, whilst I just had the understanding and a bit of scrappyness.

In the end, re-balancing aside, I think I'll have to try to make a proper warrior in PvP myself to justify what I think is the case (that you can make one darned good, top-tier level ranged warrior), but until then, I would love to hear more of your perspective.

ED: Just on the point of damage though, if your numbers are consistent and accurate, you have me beat there. I just never saw anything like that in my playtime and didn't have the chance to try going down that road myself.

The Guardian was definitely my favourite, particularly with the staff or a the off-hand torch. I've always loved heavy armour classes, but the ability to play them at a range in more of a support position was a lot of fun, particularly in WvW where you could get up close bashing people with your sword, then quickly switch to the staff when you get overwhelmed. I wouldn't say it's "over powered" as some are, but it's a very flexible class.

I didn't spend as much time with any of the others, but the mesmer and elementalist were a lot of fun too, from what I did play. I'm hoping to try the necromancer next time around.

@selfconfessedcynic:

Nah - I got nothing 'worked out'. I just applied the MMORPG PvP rule of thumb. 'Survivability trumps Everything'. No finesse or deep thoughts to it. It's a surefire way of being a viable build for PvP. At this point in time, it certainly does all but guarantee it.

Didn't really go for synergies. Selfish builds all the way. The best way to help the group is to help myself, is how I see it, playing outside of a VoIP'd group of friends. Of course there's group stuff in there. Like the Ranger's warhorn buff, which is immensely awesome, giving 15 seconds of might and movement speed, as well as stability I believe. Or the Mesmer's staff AoE skill, giving random boons to allies, whilst damaging and debuffing foes. There's loads of those things in the game. Inadvertently, everybody does these kinds of things, giving boons to allies and such. It won't be 'til later in the game, when steady groups start to specialize, and set-up crazy effective combos, before you'll be forced into doing so too.

As for that Greatsword warrior. He should have stacked some might buffs, then either used bolas while in melee range already, or bullrushed you into a static knockdown state, before hitting you with his big AoE attack - even if you break out of that with a skilll, you'll take around 10k damage before getting out of the world of hurt he's putting you in.

Played a fair bit of Engineer (to level 23) and Guardian (level 9). Had tons of fun with both, can't decide which I loved more. The minute I discovered that I could build my Engineer to play like a Guardian... my mind was blown. XD

Rifle warrior to 25.

84% crit, worked for me. >:D

Silliness aside, piercing shots is pretty awesome, and rifle has a decent set of tools for pve.