Ranger, Warrior or Thief?

[Siberys]

So this is my first thread in these forums, bear with me if I'm breaking some kind of sticky rule by posting this.

I've already played pretty far with my necromancer in this game and I cant say that I've been enjoying it... I want to play one of these three classes.

Why a warrior, thief or ranger? Because all three can use some form of the bow and have ways to get out of the way of damage or tank it outright. I love the playstyles of all three... but I want to know which one you think I should devote a lot of time into. If it helps at all I'm going to play the class on a charr. So I guess armor may come into your advice.

Also, kind of off topic, is the guardian any fun? I was thinking about putting some time into one as well... but for the most part I want to choose one of these three. I'm not an alt-oholic.

So help me out please? have mercy on this newbie?

[Centaur]

Hi Siberys, welcome to this forum.

I am an altaholic and have created one of each, and although their play styles are very different, I believe they are all fun in their own way. The thing with all of these professions (including the necro) is to figure out which part of the profession suits you best... different weapon sets, utility skills and trait point allocation can completely change the way a profession plays.
The best way to get a feeling for a certain profession is to just create a (dummy) character of that profession, get him to the Mists (the button on the bottom tab on your Hero panel) and try him out on the dummies - he'll be level 80 with all skills and traits unlocked, and you can get different weapon sets from the pvp weapon merchants there.
You can always delete those alts again once you've made up your mind.

That said, a short overview of the 4 professions you mentioned:

* Warrior - lives 'in the eye of the storm' - heavily melee oriented. He does have a longbow option, but it's hard to play this profession as a complete ranged class. Longbow is basically useful as long as your enemies are at range, then you switch to melee and start hacking at him. Heavy armor (meaning he can take a few hits, but you'll still need to dodge and evade a lot to stay alive) and he can do quite a bit of damage with his hits. Definitely not a "tank", though.

* Thief - medium armor, with a fairly low amount of health. Quite squishy to play, so the main tactic is stealth... sneak up on your opponents, fade in, do damage, then disappear into the shadows again. With regard to ranged weapons, his pistols or shortbow can definitely be used to stay at range a bit more, making it a bit easier to survive (though you will generally do less damage than with melee attacks).

* Ranger - relies quite heavily on his pets. The pets generally distract the target from you (the higher level you get, and the more intelligent the mobs get, the less they let themselves be distracted, though, so they will often come after you anyway). There's a wide variety of pets available, all with their own pros and cons (ranged attacks, melee attacks, lots of health, condition damage, etc), though it does take some managing to keep them alive (switch between your two active pets at the right time). Just like the thief, he has medium armor (health-wise he's a little less squishy than the thief, but can't take nearly as much as the warrior) and he can do both melee and ranged. His ranged attacks (longbow or shortbow) are generally very good and this profession is quite easy to play.

* Guardian - heavy melee oriented profession with magic infused into it. A great profession for both support and for survival. Has a lot of skills that benefit your allies. In general he does less damage than the others, but can keep taking hits for quite a bit longer (though he can be specced less defensive/more offensive as well).

I hope that helps a bit...

[Siberys]

Hi Siberys, welcome to this forum.

I am an altaholic and have created one of each, and although their play styles are very different, I believe they are all fun in their own way. The thing with all of these professions (including the necro) is to figure out which part of the profession suits you best... different weapon sets, utility skills and trait point allocation can completely change the way a profession plays.
The best way to get a feeling for a certain profession is to just create a (dummy) character of that profession, get him to the Mists (the button on the bottom tab on your Hero panel) and try him out on the dummies - he'll be level 80 with all skills and traits unlocked, and you can get different weapon sets from the pvp weapon merchants there.
You can always delete those alts again once you've made up your mind.

That said, a short overview of the 4 professions you mentioned:

* Warrior - lives 'in the eye of the storm' - heavily melee oriented. He does have a longbow option, but it's hard to play this profession as a complete ranged class. Longbow is basically useful as long as your enemies are at range, then you switch to melee and start hacking at him. Heavy armor (meaning he can take a few hits, but you'll still need to dodge and evade a lot to stay alive) and he can do quite a bit of damage with his hits. Definitely not a "tank", though.

* Thief - medium armor, with a fairly low amount of health. Quite squishy to play, so the main tactic is stealth... sneak up on your opponents, fade in, do damage, then disappear into the shadows again. With regard to ranged weapons, his pistols or shortbow can definitely be used to stay at range a bit more, making it a bit easier to survive (though you will generally do less damage than with melee attacks).

* Ranger - relies quite heavily on his pets. The pets generally distract the target from you (the higher level you get, and the more intelligent the mobs get, the less they let themselves be distracted, though, so they will often come after you anyway). There's a wide variety of pets available, all with their own pros and cons (ranged attacks, melee attacks, lots of health, condition damage, etc), though it does take some managing to keep them alive (switch between your two active pets at the right time). Just like the thief, he has medium armor (health-wise he's a little less squishy than the thief, but can't take nearly as much as the warrior) and he can do both melee and ranged. His ranged attacks (longbow or shortbow) are generally very good and this profession is quite easy to play.

* Guardian - heavy melee oriented profession with magic infused into it. A great profession for both support and for survival. Has a lot of skills that benefit your allies. In general he does less damage than the others, but can keep taking hits for quite a bit longer (though he can be specced less defensive/more offensive as well).

I hope that helps a bit...

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.

You've helped me decide to create a ranger, thanks.

[Anacrusis]

I played all three of these classes in spvp and I went with the thief for pve since it was the most fun for me. Although I enjoyed All of these classes and may make a warrior alt. I have not needed or used stealth much on my thief in pvp or pve outside of shadow refuge (optional utility)in dungeons and WvW. Perhaps an occasional cloak and dagger but I rarely use it. If you dont want to stealth, you can make a crit/power build like I did and be very effective without stealth.

Thieves don't have the hp or armor of the warriors, but we have alot more escape tools (speed, rollback skills, teleport via shadow step and infiltrators arrow, stealth) etc I found my thief had more survivability than my warrior in spvp once i mastered the escape tools. Theives have some serious burst damage plus aoe on the short bow. I liked all the classes but thief was my fav.

If you like speed,burst, dodging, living on the edge thief is your class. Sig of shadows utility gives you a perma 25% movement speed increase, and you can teleport all over the place with infiltrators arrow. I'd say ranger is the easiest of these classes to be good with.

If I remember correctly, ranger locks on a target and does not have to use aoe's or stay on mob in melee. The skills automatically keep you on target. By default this is easier than a melee class that has to manually stay on a mob/player while they are moving. Warriors have the most weapons of any class.

[Dark Slalom]

First...
Welcome to the forums.

Whatever class you pick up you will find it has its strengths and weaknesses. There are no bad choices.
So to ramble a bit...

Like Centaur, I have a few alts (10 atm).
Ranger was my first 80 though not my first character. It can be an easy class to play. Personally, I like the short bow and alot of movement. Long bow seems slow to me. Also I prefer the brown bear/armorfish for general stuff and switch pets for special mobs.

Thief and mesmer have been my least favorite only because of squishiness and my poor gameplay. Both will likely get better at higher levels with more skills and traits. and practice.

Warrior is fine for hack-and-slash, but I like moving and seem to be out of melee range alot. Again my bad.

Re; Necro, I have gone to a wells/signet build that tears through pve stuff. No minions except for heals. Lots of fun.

Re: Guardian - I have 2. The first was so much fun I had to do it again. The second is now only lvl 22 armed with both hammer and greatsword.

There are no bad choices. (oops, already said that).

Good luck

[Gilymonster]

Thief. What person doesn't enjoy teleporting to a target to quickly assassinate him then teleporting back, its badass and ranger and warrior are pretty boring.

[JKRaven]

Ranger...

[Anacrusis]

In addition, thief is probably the best WvW class of the three because in WvW AOE is king. Clusterbomb 1200 range AOE on short bow. There is also a poison AOE shortbow attack. I also found ranger to be a little boring because its too easy to play.

[Bogus Dude]

I would partially agree that ranger is easy to play in that you have your pet to distract attention away from yourself giving you time to sync you combo's, positioning etc, if you manage your pet effectively (healing, switching, calling target first etc). but that is countered by less damage, slower kills and if your pet goes down with a recharge it potentially then becomes a serious challenge with you running around in circles, trapping snaring and dodging while trying to face a target and kill him with half a dozenmore chasing after you and risk of aggroing more. People over state how "easy" it is, it can be, but it can at times be the hardest. Its also the class most RPGs are familiar with outside the warrior so people already have some inherent familiarity with the play style, which is not the case with say the thief. My Ranger is long past 80 and i'm staggering the levelling of my other chars so i can make use of the cooking cons i make. My next highest level is my thief, at first i didn't really like it but its getting better as i level him and the shortbow is fairly effective once you get used to it, but does feel more squishy than my ranger did.

[Fey]

Everyone should just make a guardian. You'd get a magical glowing bow that shoots stuff for you. They get everything!