Mesmer/Necro Vs. Necro/Mesmer

I'm still pretty new to the game, and sort of trying out different things. I was wondering if anyone here could give me any insight into the practical differences between playing as Mes/Necro versus Necro/Mes. I'm a big fan of the refined "noble" look of the mesmers, but Soul Reaping sounds like it'd be a lot more beneficial, at least in PvE.

Any thoughts?

By the way, seems like a fun game, far different from City of Heroes/Villains, from which I definitely needed a break.

First off welcome to GWs
Sounds like you have already spotted the biggest difference "soul reaping"
It is possibly the best primary att for the PvE aspect of the game,you can be as reckless with your energy as you want. With caster classes in GWs energy is king!
Both are very good classes but as a new player, necro will be easier to get the hang of the game and will be a good long term class.

If your up for a real challenge play a mesmer, most people in GWs don't understand what they do so they rarely want to take them along

Bottom line is you start with 4 character slots so make 1 of each

Peace

Mesmer and necro are both very fun, and both very useful in PvE.

The primary profession you choose determines two things: the primary attribute, and the runes you can use to strengthen your skills (and most importantly, the look of your armor!!).

Mesmer primary attribute is called Fast Casting, and although it doesn't really do much in the early stages, later on it is extremely useful for interrupting and royally screwing with your targets. Boss monsters especially, it's great to have a mesmer around! Lots of mesmer skills steal energy as well.

Yes, Soul Reaping is also a great attribute, in battle it's hard to run out of energy with all the passive regen coming in. And you'll never have a superior minion master mesmer primary because you cannot use the runes available to a necro.

The way the professions are designed, a n/me and me/n for example, will never be interchangeable. Secondary professions are usually meant to complement the primary.

Make one of each! You'll see, you won't end up using the same skill sets on each one.

As a person who's played the heck out of a Me/N, I'd start out going the other way. Necros are more welcome in PvE circles and are quite a bit more straight forward in their abilities (easier to figure out).

Either way, look over the builds for each posted in the sub-forum that covers all that.

You're not choosing between Me/N and N/Me, you're choosing between a necro and a mesmer.

Secondary profession isn't anything permanent, once you get through the initial stages of the game and get to lvl 20 (yes, 20 is the start. Everything before 20 is a tutorial) you can change your secondary at will, so it shouldn't be a part of your character's "identity". Usually, people just use a couple skills from their secondary to suppliment their primary specialization.

With that in mind, I'd recommend a necro for PvE because in PvE they are ridiculously overpowered and anet is content on leaving it that way because necs aren't breaking PvP (whereas other classes suffer nerfs periodically). How are they overpowered?

• Energy returns from soul reaping are directly proportional to your rate of killing stuff and your "rate of killing stuff" increases if you have unlimited energy. Just ridiculously overload your group (heroes, if you prefer) with damage.
• Spiteful Spirit (SS) single-handedly outclasses any other AoE damage spell in the game. Yes, Sandstorm can deal more raw damage, but Sandstorm scatters enemies and ends up dealing less. Searing Flames is more effective in multiples (3-4 SF eles in a group) but a single SS nec will outdamage a single SF ele and will still have time to do /point and /laugh.
• Minion Masters (MM) necros do a lot of damage and minions are often more effective at "tanking" than a dedicated warrior tank because they create a wall between the monsters and your party.

I'm not knocking mesmers in any way... in fact, my favourite character atm is a mesmer, but a mesmer can only really shine in PvP. Their specialization is messing with opponents and in PvE you don't really need to mess with anything... you can just kill it in 30 seconds and move on. Why use a variety of precision tools when hammer works just fine for everything?

i agree with all the posts here i have both and yes you do play them completely different and different styles in pve. as for my necro i use mesmer most of the time but change to monk when i mm for i prefer the monk secondary for that aspect of the game. my mesmer has necro as a secondary and i don't think i've ever changes his secondary. really the question should how do you want to play the character and go from there that should determine your setup. i know this doesn't help much but in truth you should experience both then decide which to keep. me i just loved them both so much i ended up keeping them both

necros and mesmers are pretty similar in playstyle, but my basic rule is:
Necro= PvE
Mesmer= PvP

soulreaping is next to useless in PvP, and fast casting is completely useless in PvE.

Thanks for the great feedback, folks!

I most likely will start with a necromancer, and tackle a mesmer a little later on when I know the game better. Since it doesn't look like this game is the gigantic time sink/endless grind that other games are, I feel a bit more enthusiastic about running multiple characters.

I was leaning toward this decision for PvE anyway, as I could see the benefits of Soul Reaping looked a lot better for PvE. But I really like the aesthetics of the mesmers.