With the Guild Wars 2 early access launch date only a few days away, I have a serious problem…
…I still don’t know what profession to play…
I got the chance to play in the last two of the beta weekends (sadly, I seemed to be working during all of the stress tests). Through both of those and all of the waiting, interview reading, and nail biting only one thing has stayed the same with my character choice: Asura are adorable and I want one.
Going into BWE2 (the first one I played in) I knew necromancer was for me. I loved the motif, life force sounded like an amazing mechanic, and minions and wells seemed awesome. Having come from GW1 maining as a necromancer, it seemed like an amazing fit.
Necromancer
And so, BWE2 I rolled a human necromancer, since the Asura were sadly absent, and I quite frankly loved every minute of it. I got to run around beating up some centaurs and had my mind blown by dynamic events and dodging. Some of my favorite moments were defending bases in WvWvW. I would stand on top of the wall looking down on the nicely grouped enemies below, activate my death shroud, drop down and destroy them with some aoes before running back into our base.
Like all good things, that weekend eventually came to an end and I was forced back into my average life (which sadly was lacking in exciting centaur attacks).
And then the second guessing started.
The problem was that, between the beta weekends, my life was lacking in Guild Wars content. So, I had to supplement it by reading anything I could find about it, be it blog posts, general reviews, or *gulp* profession overviews. I slowly (uh…quickly actually…) became obsessed with the elementalist, the mesmer, and the engineer. When BWE3 finally rolled around I ended up rolling one of each.
Mesmer
The mesmer caught my eye (and the eyes of everyone else in the universe) because of clone/phantasms. While their usefullness was a bit iffy in pve (totally my opinion, speak up if you disagree) oh my are they confusing to fight against in pvp. I could have sworn I killed those mesmers 20 times and every time it was a damn clone.
What really got me hooked on this class was the greatsword.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah.
Elementalist
Don’t worry guys, I can actually heal, tank, and dps like a boss. Hold on a second, lemme figure out what these other skills do…
-Me whenever I’m on elementalist
Seriously, the elementalist’s attunements give them so much versatility, but keeping track of all those skills is so difficult.
That being said, this was so much fun to play. I feel like once if you spend some time figuring this all out you’ll have an incredibly strong character.
Plus…ride the lightning. Everyone that I was playing with knows exactly how much I like to ride the lightning.
…wow that sounded wrong…
Engineer
Seeing as I’m studying to be an engineer, I probably should have given this guy more attention at the start.
Since this was the third character I rolled this beta weekend, I was able to get some advice about it. I ended up learning that the engineer can be a bit slow to start out since a lot of his power comes from his packs, which only come when you get utility slots. With this in mind, I took my engineer and used him to check out the structured pvp, and what fun was had.
I really wish I was recording all the time I spent in spvp, because that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I spent most of the time using a rifle build with med kit, the ever lovely flamethrower, the net turret, and of coarse the personal battering ram.
You saw that right, personal battering ram.
+ 
This bad boy pops out of your chest in hilarious fashion and knocks back anyone unfortunate enough to be right in front of you.
And then the flame thrower. SO MUCH FUN. I caught a mesmer in a tight corridor with all of its clones, brought out my trusty flamethrower, and we had some fried mesmer for dinner.
Decisions, Decisions
I absolutely love all three of these professions, and will eventually have fun playing them all. But I’ve got a decision ahead of me: what profession should I play first?
Any suggestions? Let me know below!
-key
MMO Authority 
Hmmmm… well do you want to micromanage more or less? I’d say necromancer has the least amount unless you go the minions route. Mesmer is managing illusions, elementalist is managing attunements, and engineer is managing kits. Then I’d say between mesmer, ele, and engineer that is the order from least to most of skill combo complexity.
Then again you should make one character of each race. 🙂
Yeah, I definitely will end up making one of each profession (and changing up the race for each). I just feel like my first character choice is important for some arbitrary reason.
The thing that put me off of necro was that there seemed to be too obvious of an ‘optimal build.’ At the end of that beta weekend I was pretty much using staff/axe+some off hand. When I looked up some of the theorycrafting builds people were making, they all ended up being exactly the same as what I ran. This will probably end up changing when people can play the game for longer at a time, but I dunno.
Also, if minions are as silly now as they were in the beta, I probably won’t be using them so much.
I think I may end up playing elementalist, but there’s too much time to convince myself out of it, and too many awesome professions to switch too.
ugh