39 replies to this topic

[Bina]

I would suggest Staff Elementalist, Necro or Ranger.

Elementalist even though there people switch between Air, Water, Fire, Earth during a fight you can be effective not switching so much and as you play it you will continue to do more and more.

I would suggest using Toughness/HP gear, in Big fights stand in the back and heal with water, Then when you want to kill something switch fire, get low on health water.

Being you do not want to have to have fast reflexes, do not pick any melee character, between culling, lag and spell effects you are better off ranged.

You can get a pretty good feel for a character at low levels, and you can always take them for a spin in WvW, try out at least these three classes would be my suggestion.

No matter what people tell you in WvW Vitality and Toughness are a must.

Edited by Bina, 30 December 2012 - 05:58 AM.

[Grumpdogg]

As other people have stated, your two best support options are Necro or Guardian.

IMO, Guardian is probably the better choice for a committed team player looking to be involved in guild or server WvW events. Using a setup such as Staff with Mace/Shield you will have access to lots of different support options - reflects, walls, condition removal, healing, etc. This sort of build should work well in defensive/offensive sieges or field combat.

Then you can swap your traits/weapons around and make a more DPS orientated build for other situations, or as the mood takes you.

The only downside to Guardians is they have a smaller than average base health pool. Using gear, traits and applying boons appropriately to minimise this will be your area of learning as you improve your class knowledge.

My final recommendation would be to reach at least level 30 outside of WvW before you join the fray. This will max out your utility skills and allow you to get the basics of your class.

Good luck!

[CalmLittleBuddy]

The Shadow, on 30 December 2012 - 12:41 AM, said:

Yes but so too is Necro, Guardian (arguably the main class winning zerg on zerg these days), Warrior etc etc... Why is Mesmer a better suggestion?

I hate Mesmers cause the encounter is too easy. If I wanted easy, mindless, boring, tab-killing I'd do nothing but farm cursed-shore all day.

The class is useless, you don't even use their built-in mechanics because they're useless (great advice for Mesmers btw) Thanks for proving my point.

But hey, I should stop, you might get upset and think I'm bashing the class because I get killed by Mesmers with pocket Warriors.

Also, re-read this:

"Every time I see a Mesmer when I'm roaming around I just think; I really can't be bothered with this pre-determined, lame and simply annoying encounter. Just leave me alone or I will have to kill you. Seriously, they just annoy the * out of me.The only thing they can do successfully is pester/ bore you to death or kill people that have clearly never played an mmo in their entire life."

which equates to:

"But hey, sure bash one class you don't play and tell others not to play it, then claim you only are saving them from a bad experience... when even you admitted in your first post it was because they were too annoying for you on the field."

How?

You're clearly missing the point I made initially:

The only thing they can do successfully is pester/ bore you to death or kill people that have clearly never played an mmo in their entire life.

Well thank you for correcting my misinformed opinions.

But to all other, give mesmer a try and see how wrong this kid is.

OP, if you want to play in groups, like you said you do, then a mesmer is the perfect choice. Great survivability, good from range. Many awesome utility skills. Can do many things with AoEs that Necro's and Guardian's can't. Highly mobile. Many different builds and ways to play. Definitely NOT a gimmick class. Every successful group needs a mesmer. Don't take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

[The Shadow]

CalmLittleBuddy, on 30 December 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

Well thank you for correcting my misinformed opinions.

Every successful group needs a mesmer.

You're welcome.

And sure every organized group needs a Mesmer or two.... for portals.

I'd say IRON is a fairly successful group in WvW. You may disagree, maybe you've never even heard of us. One of the only big guilds on Deso that didn't server hop because it got a bit too difficult for successful PvDoor. Either way, our prime-time is around 20-40 guildies in WvW (a lot of the time this is much much less than the numbers other servers boast) and yet we hold our own in open combat against larger numbers and win, don't take my word for it? Ask around. The point is, we honestly never have more than 1-2 Mesmers online at any one time, that's not a choice, that's because people simply don't want to roll them. If a guildie were to ask; "I'd like to make a new char, what should I roll to be the most use to the guild?" the answer would be (not from me btw, this is general guild-consensus); Guardian or Warrior and whatever you do, don't roll a Thief (we have too many generally, and they serve a limited purpose, though it being an important one), regardless of the fact that we have very very few Mesmers.

Other good alt options are Focus/ Support Ele and Marks/ Epi Necro for the obvious purposes they serve to a group but the ones truly winning zerg on zerg atm are Wars and Guards. These may not be suitable choices for the OP however.

Now like I said don't take my word for it. I'm not posting this to continue a pissing contest.Take the general consensus that was reached with a successful competitive WvW guild; Mesmers TW golems and portal zergs (to get supply faster, to transport turtle, to mesmer bomb etc etc etc...) But those are their only real use to a group in WvW.

Take it how you will, roll one if you like, join a competitive guild, roam around WvW, just don't get annoyed when you find yourself either dead or using portals.

Whatever you do, don't roll a Mesmer, join a competitive guild and then never use Portals like the 'kid' I quoted, because then you would be entirely useless.

Edited by The Shadow, 30 December 2012 - 03:38 PM.

[Muhk]

Most of the cloth-casters tend to have fairly high learning curves to be effective, on most of the ranged-standoff specs (staff/greatsword) rely on you 'being where the enemy isn't' and a lot of careful positioning. The necro and ele are fairly important for their ranged abilities to strip siege/defenders off walls and ability to just blow an arseload of people up, the mesmer is primarily single-target takedown but they have a number of group abilities which drastically increase the mobility and damage of a group.

I probably wouldnt recommend any of them for a starting player.
In saying that I have around 980hrs on a necro and about 900 of those are in wvw. Do not use pets (ever!) or axes, go full condition/toughness/precision with staff, sceptre/dagger, dumping epidemics over zergs and you'll rack up a bodycount like a bipedal arrowcart. Fairly much no one likes Necros for pug-pve stuff in dungeons but they're not entirely useless and probably one of the most misunderstood and underplayed classes in the game, personally I like mine, I make lots of dead people and its tougher than old boots.

Played a lot of Ranger in the betas, its not a bad class, its played by a lot of very bad players though and probably suffered somewhat by Anet buggering around with their abilities. A good ranger played like a skirmisher who knows when to haul out a melee weapon and when to use their bow can tear a lot of arse though! The pets, arent great but not entirely useless, but its kind of fun collecting them and naming them silly names. About the only problem I had was that they where fairly boring in a lot of ways and not really any different from a lot of archer-classes I'd played in other mmos.

Warrior, we're starting to run more hammer/shout tanks on our offence-line group and quite frankly, they're fight winners by simply having the enemy roll around on the ground and getting punted like footballs. Theres a dozen or so different ways to make a warrior and you wont really go wrong with any of them (that Ive found yet) as they've got a weapon, utilities and a spec for any kind of job. I've got one Im yet to finish off for gear and levels, but i find it very easy to play and it achieves results.

Guardians, pretty much as close to a full-support class has in this game and as much as they'll cry a bit sometimes about not getting enough badges, the bastards are near unkillable and have some abilities which are pretty much the equivalent of someone yanking a stop sign out of the ground and then slamming it into the enemy's face. They can heal, buff and given enough time, kill people. They are a frontline class though and work really well in conjunction with warriors or fairly mich anyone really, very popular for most everything, if they cry about not having anything to do in keep defence, give them some siege to play with.

Personally, I think wvw is all about durability and teamwork rather than "big numbers" that a lot of glass cannon specs are enamoured of, dead/downed people do nothing and can put the entire team at risk trying to raise them constantly.

[CalmLittleBuddy]

The Shadow, on 30 December 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

You're welcome.

And sure every organized group needs a Mesmer or two.... for portals.

I'd say IRON is a fairly successful group in WvW. You may disagree, maybe you've never even heard of us. One of the only big guilds on Deso that didn't server hop because it got a bit too difficult for successful PvDoor. Either way, our prime-time is around 20-40 guildies in WvW (a lot of the time this is much much less than the numbers other servers boast) and yet we hold our own in open combat against larger numbers and win, don't take my word for it? Ask around. The point is, we honestly never have more than 1-2 Mesmers online at any one time, that's not a choice, that's because people simply don't want to roll them. If a guildie were to ask; "I'd like to make a new char, what should I roll to be the most use to the guild?" the answer would be (not from me btw, this is general guild-consensus); Guardian or Warrior and whatever you do, don't roll a Thief (we have too many generally, and they serve a limited purpose, though it being an important one), regardless of the fact that we have very very few Mesmers.

Other good alt options are Focus/ Support Ele and Marks/ Epi Necro for the obvious purposes they serve to a group but the ones truly winning zerg on zerg atm are Wars and Guards. These may not be suitable choices for the OP however.

Now like I said don't take my word for it. I'm not posting this to continue a pissing contest.Take the general consensus that was reached with a successful competitive WvW guild; Mesmers TW golems and portal zergs (to get supply faster, to transport turtle, to mesmer bomb etc etc etc...) But those are their only real use to a group in WvW.

Take it how you will, roll one if you like, join a competitive guild, roam around WvW, just don't get annoyed when you find yourself either dead or using portals.

Whatever you do, don't roll a Mesmer, join a competitive guild and then never use Portals like the 'kid' I quoted, because then you would be entirely useless.

I play alongside the best in NA T1. And calling me a kid, even with quotations around it, should convince anyone reading this not to listen to you. The general consensus of your guild is not the general consesus of WvW at large.

I think people will be bright enough to find out for themselves. Everything you've said about mesmers has been said about thief, warrior and ranger as well. But saying what you're saying about any class is not necessary. I'm glad you enjoy your time in WvW and much success to you and your guild. I'm not on EU servers, so it's a shame we'll never meet up to test this out.

I've spent a lot of time defending Thief as a viable WvW options, and people still say the same lame things about thieves in PvP. Great as roamers, utterly useless otherwise. I don't think Thief is only good as a roamer. Thieves can do many many things in WvW, some of them even successfully. The mesmer is the same thing. It's all about the player using the class.

Hopefully, OP, if you've learned anything at all from me and Shadow, it's that each class has passionate supporters, and plenty of theory/speculation to help you get started. I'd suggest pick three you find most promissing, play them to 30 in WvW, read the class forums for each. Then go with the one that feels right. If none of them works, then pick one you think might be fun, regardless of its strenghts and weaknesses.

Anyways, back to my current matchup. It's been fun.

[The Shadow]

CalmLittleBuddy, on 30 December 2012 - 07:22 PM, said:

I play alongside the best in NA T1. And calling me a kid, even with quotations around it, should convince anyone reading this not to listen to you. The general consensus of your guild is not the general consesus of WvW at large.

Coming from the person who called me a Kid first...?

"But to all other, give mesmer a try and see how wrong this kid is."

Do you read what you post?

[CalmLittleBuddy]

The Shadow, on 30 December 2012 - 09:39 PM, said:

Coming from the person who called me a Kid first...?

"But to all other, give mesmer a try and see how wrong this kid is."

Do you read what you post?

Because you are a kid. I'm not. You prefer 'young man'? Is 'kid' an insult now? I wish I was a 'kid'.

My point is, I am so old, calling me a kid is ludicrous. Calling you a kid is okay because you are young. It's a compliment.

[The Shadow]

CalmLittleBuddy, on 30 December 2012 - 10:21 PM, said:

Because you are a kid. I'm not. You prefer 'young man'? Is 'kid' an insult now? I wish I was a 'kid'.

My point is, I am so old, calling me a kid is ludicrous. Calling you a kid is okay because you are young. It's a compliment.

For all you know... I may well be a 45 year old pretending to be 19 in order to lure all the pretty guild wars ladies to my dungeon of choice... fyi it's not one that appears in-game.

Just as you could very well be a 19 year old pretending to be 45 in order to feign wisdom, or... lure all the pretty guild wars mums to your dungeon of choice.

We shall never ever know with any degree of certainty.

But yes 'Kid' is considered an insult nowadays, so too are 'Bro' and 'Son'.

[CalmLittleBuddy]

The Shadow, on 30 December 2012 - 10:32 PM, said:

For all you know... I may well be a 45 year old pretending to be 19 in order to lure all the pretty guild wars ladies to my dungeon of choice... fyi it's not one that appears in-game.

Just as you could very well be a 19 year old pretending to be 45 in order to feign wisdom, or... lure all the pretty guild wars mums to your dungeon of choice.

We shall never ever know with any degree of certainty.

But yes 'Kid' is considered an insult nowadays, so too are 'Bro' and 'Son'.

'Bro'? Really? Son I could see. Or boy.

If you are 19, you're lucky. No one 'pretends' to be 45. Wait. Let me restate that. No sane person would adopt the persona of a 45 year old online. Age = wisdom? Sometimes quite the opposite.

WvW mums in my dungeon? Sounds like I should call an exterminator. One woman is bad enough. I'd hate to be answerable to 4 or 5.

But anyways, pleasure talking to you, bro. (kidding)

Edited by CalmLittleBuddy, 31 December 2012 - 01:56 PM.