The Gaming Den

A friend of mine has convinced me to play Guild Wars 2. General advice would be nice.

After looking over the classes, I kind of want to play a Charr, either as a necromacer or a range, but I was told ranger is messed up and doesn't work right. Any thoughts?

Whether or not the ranger is messed up depends on what you'd like to do with it.

For normal PvE/exploration, ranger is fine - a longbow ranger with a tank pet is, in fact, almost easy mode and thus the target of a lot of scorn. (because making your pet attack and then spamming basic attack doesn't exactly teach you to play competently)

In dungeons the ranger - at least the bear/bow one - isn't exactly popular. It draws aggro and thus targets of the group out of the fight, and is isolated for healing effects and group buffs. Also ranged damage < melee damage.
Melee rangers are usually ok in dungeons, but require a completely different level of skill to pull off.

But unless your friend plans to drag you into dungeons a lot right away I'd advice that you make your first character by personal preference. Open world PvE isn't exactly hard, and leveling is rather quick in contrast to other MMO. Explore the game and it's mechanics at your leisure; once you know the nuts and bolts, you can make a second character 'in earnest'.

Oh, and by the way: ingame tutorials are almost non-existent. Browsing the wiki or watching player-made tutorials on Youtube parallel to playing is usually a good idea.

Oh, and two general tips that usually help:

1) In your inventory there is a menu in the upper right corner. That menu has a command "dump all that collectible shit in my bank". That button is your friend.

2) PvE is really not hard. To perform, it is enough to replace your equipment every 4-5 levels with blue or green stuff from the trading post (auction house), which is rather inexpensive. Buying exotic gear and worrying about gear optimisation comes soon enough at level cap.

Does every class in Guild Wars 2 operate on a cooldown-only schedule? I mean, at least all the cooldowns I have so far are reasonably short, but still. I appreciate that they've condensed the ability bar considerably compared to other MMOs and you can actually look at the stuff being rendered by the graphics engine to play the game, but until I've memorized and intuited every skill's cooldown I'm gonna be staring at that bar a lot.

crasskris wrote:Oh, and two general tips that usually help:

1) In your inventory there is a menu in the upper right corner. That menu has a command "dump all that collectible shit in my bank". That button is your friend.

Really wish someone had told me about that button when I first started playing. Could've saved me a few headaches. Still pretty new-ish to the game. Only have one level 55-60 character and haven't played in a bit.

John Magnum wrote:Does every class in Guild Wars 2 operate on a cooldown-only schedule? I mean, at least all the cooldowns I have so far are reasonably short, but still.

More or less. Rogues have a single ressource called Initiative fuelling their weapon skills, with no cooldown on the individual skills, but managing that little f*cker is a science on its own (though I'll have to admit that Rogue's the one I personally have the most problems with, so YMMV). Utility skills have the regular cooldown, though.

On the utility side for most classes, signets and summons are usually useful to clear up a little headspace in the beginning. Signets have a passive effect unless on cooldown after activation, so you'll not feel as bad when concentrating on the weapon skills in the beginning, and summons do operate on their own*, for a similar effect.

You might want to stay clear of elementalists and engineers in the start. Elementalists have 25 instead of ~16 skills to manage, and engineers can have up to 40+ at once with several kits (although easier to manage builds exist).

*whether or not the AI performs well is open for debate

Funnily enough, I've been playing an Elementalist the whole time :V I basically just stick to Fire Attunement 98% of the time, Dagger/Dagger Fire is a pretty fun set of skills. I also tried a Necromancer, got through the level 1 tutorial zone, noticed that I have a funky transform state with its own resource and skills, and put it to the side. (Is there anywhere I can see the skills I have access to in uber form? They don't seem to show up anywhere in the Skills tab of the character sheet.)

I'll roll a Warrior some time soon and see how that feels.

John Magnum wrote:Funnily enough, I've been playing an Elementalist the whole time :V I basically just stick to Fire Attunement 98% of the time, Dagger/Dagger Fire is a pretty fun set of skills.

John Magnum wrote:I'll roll a Warrior some time soon and see how that feels.

I went a similar route. I was mildly shocked how quickly enemies suddenly died, and how seldom I did. (But then I insisted on using staff in ele solo mode, which is basically like asking mobs to zerg rush you all the time. Nonetheless, warriors cut through the games' obstacles like a hot knife through butter.)

John Magnum wrote:noticed that I have a funky transform state with its own resource and skills, and put it to the side. (Is there anywhere I can see the skills I have access to in uber form? They don't seem to show up anywhere in the Skills tab of the character sheet.)

Whatever the question, the answer is usually GW2 Wiki. It is good enough that the devs seem to have abandoned all plans for manuals, tutorials and that other poppycock allowing players to actually learn stuff about their game, in-game.
I usually play in window mode, with a browser open in the background.