Returning with some questions

Hi there,

So, the roomie and I picked up GW years ago but other games came out and we never really finished anything. Well, decided to pick up the Trilogy and starting from scratch to try to play through the story before GW2.

Have a few questions though. If we want the story experience, should we start out with Prophecies?

My roomie likes classes with big flashy effects so he's planning on playing an Elementalist. I'm on the fence though about whether to play a Warrior, Necro or Mesmer. I loved the look of the Monk class but I'm more of an offensive player as well so that's out. Does it really matter?

Thanks for all the help. Greatly appreciated.

The usual advice is to try out the professions until you find one you enjoy. It makes no sense to play a character you don't like.

The warrior is great for melee but not very self sufficient. The necro is a fantastically versatile profession. The mesmer takes more knowledge of the other professions to be effective, but is a very fun profession. My main character is a warrior.

If you want to follow the story line, then start your journey in Prophecies. This is the slowest of the three campaigns as it was meant to teach you the mechanics and skill usage while covering the whole story line.

Factions is the shortest with the steepest learning curve, and Nightfall gives you heroes from the beginning with a mid-length story. In the expansion, Eye of the North, all of the story lines converge for a grand finale.

Then you have the new content that was added to Prophecies last year and more will be forthcoming this year. This is meant to be played after you complete Prophecies and part of EotN.

Elementalists are big flashy effects that don't do much damage in hard mode and have big energy, recharge, and cast times. If your friend wants to be a lightbulb, go ahead. (Mandatory Zodiac weapons/Voltaic spear + Chaos gloves + Vabbian headgear : it's the rage these days)

For easy PVE play Necro or mesmer. The necro is more reactive (hexes, minions), the mesmer is more proactive (Precast hexes/Keystone signet/interrupt).

Warrior is good too, but then you need to flag heroes and stuff like that. They're a solid choice, but without Factions' "Save Yourselves!" they're nothing special.

I'd start in Nightfall to get a few monk heroes. The Prophecies henchmen SUCK.

In general if you start in prophecies it's because
A. You want a perma-presearing character / LDOA character
B. You want a prophecies face+hair and are willing to wait til the end of prophecies just to get 15 attribute point quests (a big deal) instead of paying $2 USD ($10 = 5 uses)
C. You have a crush on Rurik/the Vizier (WTF)
D. You're a masochist who likes painfully long procedures and denied access to max armor til the end of the game

Best course of action if you want prophecies storyline is to make a character in Factions/Nightfall and jump to Lion's Arch, backtrack to Ascalon and do the missions in order. That way you get heroes/extra attribute points and max armor early on.

If you don't want to ruin the story, a good way is to make a Presearing character, get it to Lion's arch, then dump it before making a Factions/Nightfall character.

You need to get to LA before you can hop over to factions.

I'm afraid I don't like this particular piece of advice very much. "Cheating" the game will destroy any joy they might get out of it.

Prophecies was designed to be playable with henchmen, no heroes, and without max armor. If once you reach Lion's Arch you jump over to NF/EotN and get 7 heroes, elite skills and max armor, the rest of the Prophecies will be a complete bore. You might as well not play it.

In particular, taking a foreign character into Old Ascalon is mind-numbing. There's no quests for you to do, no skills/armor/weapons for you at the traders, the missions don't give out any XP and you are constantly reminded that these are past events you have no business playing. There's absolutely no sense of immersion.

The same applies to using heroes in Factions or getting a ferry to Docks in NightFall. Each campaign was designed to be played as such, and it will provide appropriate weapons, armor and henchies/heroes when there's a need for them, not before. Each campaign can be played perfectly well with just one live player; a team with two live players should have no problem whatsoever.

Attention, I did not say it will be easy. If it was easy there would be no fun. It will be challenging; sometimes it will seem impossible; but there's always a way, a puzzle you must unravel: some combination of skills, of teammates, a strategy. That's what makes GW a pleasure to play, not rolling over the entire storyline in a day.

My advice is to make characters in each chapter and play the individual storylines without crossing over to the other continents (except Balthazar's Temple, which is useful for testing builds on the Isle of the Nameless and certain cross-campaign services). The chapters can be played in parallel because the events take place roughly at the same time.

And I'd also advise leaving Eye of the North and War in Kryta for after you've finished the other 3 chapters.

Actually, while most people might think of the monk as only a defensive/healing character, an offensive Smiting Monk is viable. Admittedly, especially in the early going, a Smiter is not as powerful as other spell casters, but it does work.
When I was taking my second Monk through the game with Heroes and Henchmen, I used a smiting build (and henchie healers) so that it was easier to "direct" the group. As I said, given the skills available in the early stages, a smiting Monk is less powerful than other spellcasters, but it is powerful enough.
And, eventually, you can create a powerful RoJ (Ray of Judgment) build utilizing PvE skills.
And, of course you can also act as a healer when you want ("builds" are easy to swap using templates).

So, if you like the look of a Monk - go for it. You'll get more enjoyment by playing a character you like, than by playing a character you (or other people) think you should.

you will have plenty of character slots so why not try all of the classes you want? If you dont like them you can either delete them or just play one of the others (I started with an ele and made a necro a week later, a mes a day or so after that and finally a monk---and am glad I still have them all and like to have the options to play different classes)

You will learn a lot about the game from experimenting with different classes as well --as well as learning how skills from other classes work and how the mobs work too.

have fun--play around, no one says if you make a character you MUST play it...