Here’s an interesting situation that’s popped up a couple times recently. A new MMO will launch and I’ll make a vow to stick to a single class to the endgame. A lot of thought goes into my main character, and I generally enjoy my choice. But then when it comes time to open up the doors to altaholism, I find that I’m absolutely paralyzed. None of the other options seem as captivating, and I realize that that’s because I’ve picked the absolute perfect fit for me the first time around.
This happened with SWTOR — the Imperial Agent’s story and class was so good that it made subsequent picks seem like pale imitations. And now I’m encountering that with Guild Wars 2. I love my Engineer something fierce, and I think it’s spoiled me because I have been bouncing between potential alts like a drunken monkey on free banana night.
The Warrior is too dull for me. The Elementalist remains untouched. The Necromancer feels incomplete and underpowered compared to other classes. The Mesmer is interesting but there’s something a little off with her too. The Thief is too roguey for my tastes. The Guardian is too melee-centric and overplayed. The Ranger is too safe and standard, reminding me of WoW’s Hunter.
For weeks now I’ve been ping-ponging back and forth between my Mesmer and Necro, trying so very hard to come to peace with them as they develop. It’s just not happening, and I’ve grown frustrated with them.
Fortunately, the other day I decided to give the Ranger an honest try and think I’ve found my solution. It may not feel as unique as the Mesmer/Necro, but this right here feels like a better fit for me. I love ranged damage and pet classes, and the sheer variety of weapons and options could make this an interesting prospect for the long haul. I even splurged on a couple of Super Adventure Box skins for my longbow and shortbow, so now I’ve put my virtual money where my mouth is.
I’m hoping it’ll stick. It would be nice to have a fun alt to go through all of this content again with, and I think that there’s enough options with the Ranger to make the journey varied and challenging.
Bio Break 
You can find that a ranger with greatsword or other melee weapon too can be fun, GW2 rangers don’t need be “ranged” and GW2 are not exactly “standard”. My ranger goes with a longbow/greatsword and IMHO ranger with greatsword is a lot fun. There are too a good number of good builds for rangers, for example the “trapmaster” build (however, I prefer use a pet/ranged build).
Recently rangers get an upgrade to pet IA, so they are better now. Less people saying the pets are useless now. I advice you go look for tame all pets asap, diferent pets have diferent abilities. Bears and drakes are good tanks, birds make fast damage, spiders and devourers have ranged attacks (very usefull when you are defending a kepp in wvw maps). Learn to change pets when pet start to lose health, don’t let your pet die, the best strategy is frequently change pets in middle battle.
Try a necro dagger/warhorn well build. It is a lot of fun and much different from the scepter/dagger condition crush. Add an axe and some minions and the playstyle can change considerably.
I admit to being quite an altaholic. For me I love each one for different reasons and being able to play them totally depends on my mood. My thief has been my main since around November and I love her to pieces. One of the things I find useful when trying new alts is making sure I play around with all the weapon combos available. While its not a true test of the class I usually go into the mists, get all the weapons, and go kill some NPCs. This way I can test out not only weapon and utility skills but also traits and how that all plays together.
Elementalists have an incredible range of weapons and powers. I love playing my elementalists. The only drawback is that the clothes are terrible, especially the female ones. Still, it really is kind of fun playing somebody who looks like a prissy beauty queen with no fashion sense but can totally destroy you.
Imperial Agent storyline was good? My brother once described it as a “really bad Bond knockoff” and that sounded about right to me. A far cry from the Iain Banks style story that was promised. But at least he has some good lines in dialogue!.
Anyway, I swapped from Mesmer to Necro and really enjoy using an Axe/Dagger build that eschews minions for direct damage and control. But Ranger is a blast too!
I felt the same when I laid down my trusted necro and started playing with the rogue. My necro style was a bit different from the mainstream necro, though – my build was a typical engage from the distance, then jump into the melee type, which for me is much more enjoyable than the sceptre necro.
Here are some of my blogposts about playing the necro this way:
http://mmomuse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/playing-effective-necro-in-gw2.html
http://mmomuse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-latest-from-guild-wars-2.html
I definitely felt like it was an engrossing story with quite a few enjoyable twists. The general consensus is that the IA story is the best in the game.
After read the coments here (including mine) maybe I need add that ANY class can be interesting and “non-standard” if you just change the weapons. Want a melee mage? Just a necromancer with two daggers and use a necro poison/disease build. Or an elementalist with two daggers, something I don’t tested but people say is great. I never tryed mesmer, but for some reason players like mesmer with greatsword. Warrior is not dull if you use a hammer, because a hammer warrior need a lot of player skill, hammer warrior is a cc.
The only class I haven’t played to 80 is Guardian. I can honestly say they are all great. I thoroughly enjoyed leveling all of them and I play all of them regularly. Most days I play all seven levels 80s and do some levels on the Guardian and my second ranger.
There’s absolutely no need to choose between classes in GW2. Leveling is fast, gearing them is easy and affordable. Just play them all. Ranger is the best, though 😛
@bhagpuss “Ranger is the best, though”
However, you know very well a lot of players were saying ranger was broken because pets had problems… but I never had a problem with my ranger… so, figures, not everyone will be happy and they ever will find a way to make a critic about the classes….
The funnier critic is that classes don’t have variety of skills, when all classes just need change the weapon for have new skills.
I’m very much in the same situation. I started with an Engineer and gobbled that class up til 80. I decided to start an alt and have gone through a Guardian (which was okay), Mesmer (not for me), Elementalist (difficult, but at least visually entertaining), and Thief (which was an exercise in repeatedly dying).
I’m almost thinking of just starting a new Engineer and choosing a different race, but it hasn’t gotten quite that desperate yet.
I’m in the same position although reverse. I’ve played Necromancer and Ranger up to 80 and Ranger by far was my most favourite experience. I’m stuck deciding on a suitable alt. I’ve got a warrior and a guardian both in the mid-thirties, but I’m not finding the same hook I had with ranger.
I love ranged classes so I’ve been thinking on trying one of the casters or Engineer, but not sure.
Oh and for Ranger – go Longbow and Axe/war horn. The axe does amazing AOE damage as it jumps from target to target like a Frisbee of death and the war horn gives you a great speed buff. And the Longbow just looks iconic on the ranger. 😉
Yeah, the ranger strikes me as one of the nearer classes to the engineer playstyle, in that it seems meant to have a bunch of tricks as well as a more ranged damage focus (except the pet AI and lackluster spirits meant it still needed some help prior.)
The other one that comes to mind if the mesmer ain’t gelling is the elementalist. Also a lot of kit switching / attunement switching to get the most out of it, very jack-of-tradesy utility/support/control/buff, good ranged and AoE damage and the ability to get in close in melee and bunker if built for it.
I’m one to talk though. It sounds so busy I haven’t been able to bring myself to play one either. I think Anet very much nailed certain playstyle preferences in the different classes.
I actually wouldn’t say no to a THIRD guardian alt (or a fourth for that matter), that’s how much I like the defensive melee/buff/tank/support playstyle, but I’m trying to move over to two other different arenas: warrior for offensively minded melee/buff/support and cc, and necro for ranged aoe damage/condition play/support and still being tanky.
There’s just so many other things I could be doing than leveling alts though. Oooh, look, shiny. *ambles off*
Ranger was my second character and my first to hit 80 it was one of the funner characters I have. Shortbow warhorn combo was my fav. My second was engineer was not to bad. Third was elemental and it was the hardest most aggravating experience until I hit lvl 20.. Talking about a respawn fest it was the ele class.. I dont play the game anymore but that is the characters I played.