New duo, class suggestions?

Hey all, tried the free trial as a necro and enjoyed it enough to pick it up for me and the wife, so hey, good times there! I registered here to use the search function to find duo suggestions but I think the word "duo" is too short to be searched or something cause I couldn't find anything :|

Anyhow, looking for advice on a fun duo for PvE and PvP (plus we only picked up the GotY edition of the game so class choices are somewhat more limited). I figure one of us will end up as a warrior since they seem pretty fun and will make life easier on us. What would be a good secondary for it?

As for the second player, leaning towards a caster-type. Mesmer seems really damn interesting to me personally, I love PvP in the games I play and locking people down sounds like good times. Necro and ele look fun as well, and if my wife ends up playing the caster she's a fan of nuking things to hell. Please include suggestions on a secondary, whatever you suggest!

From the little bit of reading I've done here I realize a lot of it will be "play what you find fun", so here's a bit about us. My wife likes tanky types and high-damage nuking types. The less complicated the better. For me, I like high damage melee/ranged classes and crowd control. The more insane things I have going on at once the more fun I have really. Complicated classes make life more fun!

Anyway, thanks in advance for any info, and see you out there!

Warrior or Mesmer for yourself is the way to go.
Either Necromancer or Elementalist for your wife.

Warriors easily have the best damage output in the game.
-Easy crowd control, provided your group isn't completely retarded, or you flag your AI away.
-If you are desperate for a ranged class and want Ranger- by all means go ahead, but Ranger is a very difficult class to master, and is almost a waste of time if relying on the first campaign's skill set alone.
-Tanking <3 (1500 hp if possible while tanking!!!)
as for Mesmer...
-Lots of insane things going on at once- deciding what skill you need to use based on what situation you are in - is of great importance.
-e.g. what will be most effective?
-Backfire on the caster who will die in a few seconds anyway, the one most damaging to your team, the one causing the most health degen (pressure) to your team, or the one disabling your teams skills completely?
-Empathy on the melee'r dealing the most damage, the one knocking down your allies, or the one spreading conditions the fastest?
-Interrupt/Disable what skill of your opponents: Word of Healing, Panic, Searing Flames, or Spell Breaker?
--- Most of the time, you're having to think of all of these at once ;D---------
-VERY NICE damage buff this last year, lessens stress of choice of skills (cause your damage output can still be great anyway), but you should still choose carefully!



In other terms...
Elementalist is a great choice, if you just want to stick to Prophecies.
-NUKE!= Everything Dies! (in Normal Mode)
-NUKE!= Nothing Dies! (in Hard Mode)
A majority of almost necessary Elementalist Hard Mode skills come from other campaigns.
that's why in terms of Necromancer....
-Spiteful Spirit= An awesome, armor-ignoring "nuke" per se.
-Minions= Lots of Tanks and/or Bombs=Damage+Condition Spread
-Barbs/Mark of Pain/Order of Pain makes a great combination with any melee'r

Consider getting your hands on Guild Wars: Factions as well.
It has the Ritualist class, which would probably be a great class for your wife.
You can spam Spirits which can decently tank in addition to dealing massive amounts of damage.
They have quite a few [Great] AoE spells as well, although builds involving these are rarely seen in the meta (most Rits just run their AoE for fun generally)

All in all, have fun!
Oh and welcome to the game - hope you stay awhile!

anything under 4 letters i think you have to put in quotes for the search

@Apothic
hey my main is a ranger and all i had through all of prophesies was what came with GOTY but i do agree, rangers got a bit better once i got the other camapigns

as for the rest of his suggestions i agree, but in duos i actually believe in having one player as a monk cuz henchies seem to have issues (specially in prophesies)

You won't find much about duos, if anything. The game is based on teams of four to eight person parties. You fill the party out with either other players or the henchmen found in each town/outpost. If you buy a package that includes Nightfall or Eye of the North, you would get customizable (you select skills and armor buffs) henchmen for each character called heroes.

Welcome to a great game. I'm still playing after almost five years.

The most powerful direct nukes in Hard mode are Mesmer and Monk skills. Indirect "reactive hexes" aren't really what I call nukes.

Cry of Pain
Ray of Judgment (monk)
Chaos Storm

The most powerful "nuke" in Normal mode is Searing Flames. Spirit Rift is delayed so it doesn't hold up as well, but it has higher raw damage (short of Rodgort's Invocation which is impractical without Elemental Attunement or Mind Blast).

Indirect: Spiteful Spirit, Mark of Pain, Splinter Weapon.

You don't want to use DoTs (damage over time) like Fire storm, breath of fire, or Searing Heat in normal mode. The mobs will die faster to direct damage (i.e. Rodgort's Invocation) and DoTs cause scatter (even more so in Hard mode, save for Churning earth). The typical way to counter this is Deep Freeze.

If you want to make an easy and lasting character that works in Hard mode don't make a ranger, dervish, or elementalist since those classes' damage rely heavily on armor level of enemies.

In this current stage of the game, Necro, Rit, Mesmer, Monk are probably the best bets for you two.

As said above, you should pick a class between Necro, War, Mez, Monk...Rit or Sin could be also good choice if you plan to buy also Faction.
However, if you are two palyers that will regularly play toghether, i'd suggest two class that interact a lot: War and Necro. A well used Necro can double(or even more) the power of a good War....personal experience. You can always try different profs to see wath fit better to you..if you plan to play quite long to this game, reaching high-end pve(general HM), i'd suggest to avoid Ele: is great to nuke in NM(kill stuff!), so a lot of new player pick it(see me..) but it's not the class that should be when you jump in HM(you can't kill anything).....

Based on this info I'd suggest a warrior for your wife: best base armor, nice damage, simple in-your-face hack'n'slash. And for you, probably a mesmer: widely considered a more complicated class, but still very capable once you know what you're doing. My first character was a warrior and I've also since raised a mesmer, and I still enjoy them both in their own ways.

In any case, you'll have multiple character slots available to you, so there's no harm in trying out different classes to see what you think.

Good luck.

take it all with a pinch of salt and never settle
be flexible and explore all available options and roles.
this game pwns for new players, theres so much to discover


<--- ENVIOUS

One thing I would suggest is to go to wiki and look up all the skills for all of the professions. Make note of what skills are available to you for each profession. Then see what two professions compliment each other. For example if one of you is a warrior the other might choose Necromancer since they have skills that can increase a warriors damage, make thier targets unable to block or add conditions ontop of the ones a warrior can inflict making it harder for removal.

When it comes to your secondary profession think about only using one or two skills from that line. Chances are it will be something you can use without placing many attribute points into.

Personally I am a PvE player and after 5 years I still am finding things to acomplish so you have a lot to look forward too. I recomend getting Nightfall/Eye of the North since they will allow you and your wife to add heroes to max out your party and create functional team builds.

Wow, look at that, message boards that aren't dead! This is actually a nice surprise lol.

Thanks for the replies guys! As per your suggestions I looked into the mesmer, and the more I read about them the more I want to play one, so I think I found my class . I think I'm still a little confused on secondary classes, I'll have take some time to look into how they work. I get that you pick one to complement your primary class, but is it just like getting a weaker version of the class' abilities? Do you get to decide how much to spec into it? Is speccing into a secondary detrimental to your primary class? Debating if monk secondary would be able to heal well if at all. Well, either way I'm sure I'll have fun figuring it out

Thinking Warrior or Necro for my wife. Would either work with a mesmer? One better than the other?

The henchmen thing sounds pretty nifty. Think I'm really gonna get into this game .

My hubby and I did a ranger/necro duo. Me with spiteful spirit and mark of pain. Him with barrage. You can get a lot accomplished with that combination and the skills come from prophecies. Enjoy the game and welcome!

About warriors:
Without Factions, there's little incentive to run a warrior main, but then again most of the best skills aren't in Prophecies for some reason (extreme powercreep maybe?). You don't have the most powerful skill, "Save Yourselves!" which is a partywide +100 armor boost. Without Nightfall your AoE is limited: axes (cyclone axe), swords (100 Blades), Hammer (Earthshaker + Crude Swing). Then you will be lacking Enraging Charge, which is the best skillbar compression for a warrior. You'll also miss flail, which is basically the only IAS (increased attack speed) usable in PvE without disadvantages like double damage to you, less damage to your target, etc.

You will get crappy tanking skills like Defy Pain, which are bad gameplay since mobs target whoever has least armor and/or health. There's no "tanking" in GW and in Prophecies the only potential tanking skills are in the elementalist skillset (Obsidian Flesh, Armor of Earth). It's pointless anyway since bosses in prophecies don't do double damage, there's no "spammable" AoEs like Searing Flames, and killing faster is better than letting things wail on you for however long. In fact, just yesterday I did Sorrow's furnace in normal mode trying to get one of the greens (Rockmolder) and it took me 20 minutes to clear the entire zone. I only had the terrible healer hench as a healer.

However, you do get access to Eviscerate, Dismember, Warrior's endurance, Counter blow, and Executioner's Strike. There's a reason why in Prophecies days you only had axe and hammer dominating other than swords with conjures. Swords could only pump out Galrath Slath (Sever Artery - gash is inferior to Dismember in every way).

If your wife wants to play high damage, let her go axe/hammer warrior. Sword without Steelfang slash, Whirlwind attack, Standing Slash, and Dragon slash has no advantage over the two other weapons. The problem is without Enraging charge (from Nightfall) you need to whack the mob at least 5 seconds just to pump out the big damage (if you spec 6 into Tactics you can cheat a bit with "To the Limit!", which is inferior to enraging Charge since it has no increased movement speed).

Conceptual builds based off the above recommendation:
Eviscerate
12+1+1 Axe, 11+1 Strength, 6 Tactics (don't bother with rune for Tactics, get -20% blind clarity)
Sprint/Rush, "To the Limit!" (+6 adrenaline with 3 mobs), Eviscerate, Cyclone Axe, Executioner's Strike, Disrupting Chop, "For Great Justice!", Resurrection Signet

Adrenaline = 8,8,6

so 1 weapon strike is enough if you engage 3+ mobs. Berserker Stance isn't really great when it ends on attack skill use, Flurry lowers damage (though not damage form attack skills), and Frenzy is not viable on adrenaline bars with Henchman (it's not Nightfall so you can't control the skillbars and microing a combination of Frenzy-Rush is a pain. You could do Frenzy-Flurry or Frenzy-sprint.).

Earthshaker
12+1+1 Hammer, 11+1 Strength, 6 Tactics (don't bother with rune for Tactics, get -20% blind clarity) with stonefist insignia on hands
Sprint/Rush, "To the Limit!", Earthshaker, Crude Swing, Counter blow (for single targets like bosses), Crushing Blow, Mighty Blow/Irresistible Blow/Power attack, Resurrection Signet

Adrenaline = 8, 4 , 8 (if you choose Mighty Blow)

This is rough to run without an IAS (increased attack speed, but Crude swing allows it to work)

Warrior's Endurance
12+1+1 Axe, 12+1 Strength
Warrior's Endurance, cyclone axe, Power attack, Distracting Blow, Dismember, Swift Chop (filler skill, can also put Resurrrection signet), Rush, Frenzy

Frenzy is less risky here since your adrenaline is not being used up very much so the emergency "rush" stance is almost always available. The principle is that stances don't stack, if you use one then the other ends (" a cancel stance"). The ideal IAS here is Burst of Aggression which would free up a skill slot. Your only option other than Frenzy would be to use Berserker Stance or Flurry, which are bad ideas. Flurry actually increases your damage since the damage reduction only happens to the base damage from your weapon. Attacking 33% faster with 25% less damage would mean 99.75% damage but 33% more adrenaline due to faster attack speed.

About Mesmers:
A warning: Mesmers don't bring as much bargaining chips to normal mode since their specialty (disruption and shutdown) are best for when you can't instagib mobs. A warrior will do upwards of 100 just by critical hits on casters (easily proven by wild blow, which has no additional damage).

Lately mesmers gained many damage skills with AoE though their most powerful ones tend not to be the purely damage ones. Psychic Instability, Panic, Keystone signet for example. Energy Surge is decent, but in normal mode I wouldn't bother.

The key thing to remember is that +damage from attack skills is armor ignoring and so are all the dark/holy/chaos damage skills.

Regardless, there's no reason to go secondary monk other than for a fast cast resurrection chant (or restore life in your case since you have prophecies). Whatever you do don't use resurrect, bring rebirth, resurrection chant, or resurrection signet (recharges with a boss kill).

Conceptual prophecies only bars:

12+1+1 Illusion Magic, 10+1 fast casting, 8+1 inspiration magic
Ineptitude, Clumsiness, Arcane conundrum, Fragility, Drain enchantment, Power drain, Leech Signet, Res of choice (signet, Restore Life, Rebirth, etc.)
* You need conditions to be flying around for fragility to trigger

E-Surge
12+1+1 domination, 10+1 Fast casting, 8+1 inspiration magic
Energy surge, Mind wrack, shatter delusions, Power spike, Cry of Frustration, Power drain, Drain Enchantment, Resurrection of choice

12+1+1 domination, 10+1 fast Casting, 8+1 Inspiration magic , rest in healing (prot if running rebirth)
Panic, Wastrel's worry, Cry of frustration, Empathy, Power spike, Drain enchantment, Power drain/Inspired Hex (zone dependent), Resurrection signet (Restore Life in your case if you want a fast res or Rebirth for out of combat res)

A side note:
Personally I feel the most solid choices for someone with only Prophecies is necro or monk. Since you and your wife are mostly damage/utility centered that leaves necro.
For necromancer, most of the skills that are used are Prophecies and core. Spiteful spirit, Barbs, enfeebling blood, mark of pain, weaken armor for curses. Death nova, Aura of the lich, animate bone horror, animate bone fiend, animate bone minions, blood of the master are all available to you in prophecies. For blood, Order of the vampire/Order of pain, Strip enchantment, blood ritual are all available to you. Necromancer has the biggest usable skill set for prophecies players.

An easy bar to make would be:
12+1+3 Curses, 11+1 Blood, 6+1 Soul Reaping --> N/Me
Spiteful Spirit ("SS"), Arcane echo, Enfeebling Blood, Barbs, Weaken armor, Strip enchantment, Blood ritual, Resurrection signet

Or AoTL Minion Bomber ("MB")
12+1+3 Death Magic, 12+1 Soul reaping, 3+1 Blood Magic
Aura of the Lich, Animate Bone Minions, Blood of the Master, Dark Bond, Death Nova, Taste of Death, Infuse Condition, Resurrection signet

The best part is the synergy between the two necromancers. 10 minions triggering barbs = 160 damage per volley, not even including base damage

For monk, you get access to Dwayna's Kiss, Unyielding Aura, Mend condition, Divine Healing. Word of Healing, Aegis, Mend ailment, Protective Spirit, and Restore condition are core.

You could easily make a solid WoH hybrid bar.
12+1+1 Heal, 9+1 Divine Favor, 9+1 Protection prayers
word of Healing, Dwayna's Kiss, Protective Spirit, Mend ailment, Aegis/Guardian (in zones with 4-6 people), Divine Healing, remove hex /holy veil/smite hex, Rebirth (used outside of battle).

Rangers have mediocre options. You have Incendiary arrows and Barrage. without Splinter weapon the best you could pull off is Barrage with conjure Lightning or conjure Frost (the additional damage is armor ignoring for some reason) which basically kills synergy with Barbs, order of pain/order of the vampire, and mark of pain. Prophecies doesn't have heroes, so that locks one of you to necromancer with the role of putting hexes and enchants (barbs, weaken armor, mark of pain, orders).

Elementalists' best skills are in Nightfall. Mind Blast, Searing Flames, Invoke Lightning, Blinding Surge, Icy Shackles...you could do E/Mo ether renewal but neither of you expressed an interest in backlining (support role). Back in 05, the only options were Glyph of renewal Meteor shower (with fireball, immolate and other lame skills as filler), and air magic support (something like elemental attunement/ether prodigy, chain lightning, lightning orb, blinding flash, glyph of lesser energy, aegis, draw conditions, Gale, resurrection).

Plenty of info above for you both to digest.

May I ad a few things althogh not highly important they may assist you both.

You have Bonus items available .....enter /bonus to release the items into your inventory and you can do this as often as you wish.

Second is the game is cheap now look accross the web for the collectors or Trilogy packs ect.

By doing this you will have access to heros that as you play Duo then you can have a complete party ie 3 heros each to supplement your own profession. (7 heros not available as yet).

My main concern is that although
Prof is the best storyline ect and a nice slow learning curve..the cash available to you as you play along is not great as its the lowest gold drops. Just get your max armour in the desert area if you still have only Proph by the time you both get there from the Collectors to save on some cash

Welcome and hope the both of you enjoy Guild Wars