Advice on proffesions for 2 player team

Me and a friend are about to get set on Guild wars, i used to play many years ago and had a level 20 ranger, and a level 20 ele. I was close to finishing prophecies but never quite did it. Then computer hardware failure and completely forgot about guild wars entirely. (Sorry for the blah blah)

Anyways i've lost that account entirely and me and a friend want to start playing, we are getting a quad bundle for a very low price and would like some advice on what classes we (that would benefit each other well) that we could play as. Also any advice on which campaign we should play through before heading to HOM in the eye of the north would be much apreciated. Please base the choice of classes on completely unfunded builds and the choice of Campaign based on which mission chains actually still have people playing!

Thanks for the time and hopefully we'll get to meet some of you ingame.

well there's only one area you'll be in a 2 person party, and that is the beginner area of the prophecies campaign. you'll always want a full party(typically full of henchmen) because the game is balanced and designed for full parties. with that being said though, seriously be whatever you wish to be and whatever you think fits your playstyle.

Well i was just wondering what classes go well when you only have 2 people that are actually playing and the others bots, and maybe which bots we should bring with us.
If there are other people around we will take them with us into missions however the majority of the time it will be us and 2 henchmen because i assume most of the campaigns are pretty empty now.

Should me and my friend just take the original prophecies campaign then?

I personally think you should start in nightfall and get the heros then quickly make your way to eye of the north and get the PvE skills to help you along the way with the rest of the entire series.

Having said that prophecies pre-searing is great fun and I will always remember my early days experiences from there .

Depends on what you want from the game really?..... are you wanting to enjoy it and have fun... if so start from the series release whcih was prophecies then factions then nightfall and finally eye of the north, but if you want pure speed for 30+/50 HoM for guild wars 2 then clearly the first paragraph stated here is quickest in my opinion.

Good luck and enjoy Guild Wars

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P.S profession wise there is no quickest in my opinion, play what takes your fancy. however I believe Ritualist and Elementalist are probably the easiest professions to learn.

Thanks again for the quick replies.

If we started with the main campaign, would we have to finish it before moving into the nightfall campaign?

And is there honestly not a defined monk requirement out of the two of us? Because i always remember back in the day it being a constant burden to recruit a monk for every mission. Did they balance it differently in the past 4-5 years?

Nope. All you have to do is to reach the port city of your campaign (LA for Prophecies, KC for Factions, Kamadan for Nightfall).

People use Heroes.

You can move campaigns when you reach the main campaign towns. (example lions arch for prophecies, kamaden for nightfall) i think nightfall is the quickest campaign to move away from.

Regarding monks, they are handy obviously but many players use healing Ritualists etc, however i still use monks and my main is a monk. but you can use a monk hero is your party. partys are always 4 or more 9/10

If you want to blast through all the stuff as fast as possible, you can't go wrong with 2 rits running complementary builds.

Word of warning though, unless you're buying the skill packs and using tomes, the most common elites (Signet of Spirits, Soul Twisting and Signet of Ghostly Might) are quite far into the game.

Would two ritualists have nice complimentry builds for each other from the start?

Also with 0 funding is hero's straight away very feasible? Seems as though you'd have to be watching out for their equipment alot so we should probably compelte the main campaign first then nightfall?

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Sorry for double post but i've just realised if i plan to start on prophecies campaign i need to choose two proffesions from the original 6 right?

With that being the case recommendations on what we should do as classes to compliment each other? We may go back and do nightfall with two rituals later but my friend must know the guildwars main story first! and you miss the beginning if you go into nightfall straight away.

Necromancer (Curse Magic) + Physical (warrior or ranger for prophecies) = Best Friends Forever. They are also two builds that heroes really don't do well with, so you can leave heroes to handle the other things while you handle the things only humans utilize correctly. Also Mark of Pain is a free skill in early prophecies, making it easily accessible.

Ok Kunder, what would be the type of build we would use together as curse (necro) + warrior or ranger. If i udnerstand correctly one would use curses to weaken foes the other would do the killing? This is fine by me but i don't know much about cursing necro's cuz about 5 years ago i was always a summoning necro with all those minions.

Would the warrior/ranger need to take a specific build style too?

Seconded.

One melee (especially because it's something the A.I. can't really do well at all), and one versatile caster.
Warrior + Ritualist would be a versatile combination, or
Warrior + Necromancer whom compliment each other well.

2 x Ritualist also work really well if you have the required skills, though until the A.I. for them is improved you'd have to skip on having melee in your team then, seems heroes don't do it too great.

Rits are really good as heroes, and not available in proph anyway, which is why i didn't recommend them.


Necromancer ideally wants to be N/A and run AP curses eventually (Look it up). Basically your job is to spam Mark of Pain which makes every physical hit into a 40 damage AoE hit. Combined with lots of physical hits its the single strongest skill in the game.

You won't have Assassin's Promise itself until you change secondary and skill tome it or go through factions to capture it. Until then you either need to just play more slowly or simply play another build (MM or Orders are both excellent).

Warrior really just has a ton of good options. Good elites to make a build around include Triple Chop, Earth Shaker, Warrior's Endurance, Hundred Blades, Dragon Slash. Aside from a build most of being the best warrior you can be is proper buffing, which means you want a channeling hero and a smite hero to cast Splinter Weapon (awesome combo with MoP) and SoH respectively.

Again you won't have most of these elites for a while, but warriors are still amazing as long as you have buffs on hand.

Rangers are currently on the low end of PvE power, but along with the curse necromancer and/or other proper buffing they can still absolutely dominate. Most good Ranger builds focus on one or more of the AoE attacks (Barrage, Incendiary Arrows, Volley), buffing themselves in a similar manner to warriors (except you trade SoH for EBSoH), and go to town.

Sadly, traps are useless, preparations only work on the least spammable of the AoE attacks (Incendiary Arrows), and Pets are kind of gimmicky and hard to use well (AI problems, though they can still output tons of damage and double up your combo with the curse necro).

Don't leave out:

Warrior + Smiting Monk (Strength of Honor, Smite Hex/Condition)
Warrior + Elementalist (now that eles have the ability to enchant allies)
Warrior + Mesmer (hex removal, cracked armor)

Really, I think a physical profession (including Ranger) can be complemented by any of the caster professions. The main difference is how the caster helps the partner: by setting up the foes to take more damage from physical attacks (necro, mesmer) or by buffing the partner to deal more damage (monk, ele, rit). Caster professions that have good hex and condition removal are a plus, since physical professions are easily shut down by blindness and any number of hexes.

But caster professions can complement each other as well. Sometimes even the same profession offers complementary builds. E.g., domination mesmer for caster shutdown and illusion mesmer for melee shutdown.

For that matter, there isn't anything wrong with pairing a warrior and a ranger, letting the heroes and henchies handle support for both.

In the end, it's all good. There just isn't any regular PvE content, normal or hard mode, that can't be handled by any given pair of professions. We're not talking about high-end farming or speed clears here. Just playing the game.

Yeah, if you're starting in Prophecies, I'd go with a Warrior and a Necro. Unfortunately, starting in Prophecies is probably the slowest way to progress in Guild Wars because it takes forever. Longest time to level 20, and longest time to heroes. In the current state of the game, it's a severely gimped place to start.

Starting in Factions gives you the ability to go back and do the Prophecies missions at a higher level than intended, meaning they're a cakewalk. Also, by time you leave the starter island (2ish days) you're almost lvl 20 if you do all the side quests, and can acquire heroes immediately who will all be at your level (circumventing playing with lower level heroes and having to level them).


The disadvantage of starting in Factions is that all the skills cost money, since there are no skill reward side quests as there are in prophecies. The advantage is that the one of the best places to farm feathers is actually on the starter island, meaning money doesn't have to be an issue.

Ritualists can run complimentary builds from more or less the point they leave the starter island. They'll never be optimal until you get some decent elite skills, but that's true of any combination.

On that note, one thing to bear in mind ...splinter weapon and mark of pain are available early in factions, and so is the Warrior elite Triple Chop, so maybe a necro/rit and a warrior would be the way to go. Necros make great secondary rits because of Soul Reaping for e-mgmt and the fact most rits only use a single attribute (channeling or communing depending on offensive/defensive). Splinter weapon is in channeling. Also, rits have decent options for hard rez.

The only problem i can see with starting in factions, is the fact my friend wont know what is going on when we swap over to normal guildwars, we will just be somewhere strange to him. Would it be beneficial to do the beginning part of the first guildwars with him then we swap to new characters and do the factions campaign up until we swap at the porttown?

If your starting in Proph, go with a Warrior and a Necro. They will pair up nicely and you can run Monk as a secondary on your Necro to help with healing. The necro curses do straight dmg but also can increase the damage your warrior will be doing.

If your going to start in Faction then Warrior and Rit makes a nice combo, don't go for assassin as a first character as they require some talent to play without dying constantly.

In Nightfall a Dervish and Elementalist or Mesmer would be very interesting and fairly easy with the help of heroes.

Hero armor increases as they level up, reaching max at lvl 20. You do have to add rune/insignias to them but minors drop failry often now and are all you really need for Heroes. The biggest thing your going to face is not having a massive number of unlocked skills available for your heroes when you start out.

I would suggest starting a character in prophecies with your friend so you can show him pre-searing ascalon as there is no way back there from the main prophecies campaign. After that I can't really say what you should do, but keep in mind that you can go back to the starting area's(except pre-searing) of each campaign and do the missions there with characters made in the other 2 campaigns but you won't be able to do the quests a character made in that campaign can do in those areas.

There's lots of people recommending Warrior + Caster, which can be a very nice combo. The issue becomes that a Warrior relies on a fair deal of support from the rest of the team to become truly effective. Until you've unlocked a large number of skills, have heroes, etc, it can be rather difficult to get all this set up.

For story-wise, you're limiting yourself to Prophecies. That's fine. And really, any two professions can play through just fine. So a brief few words on each of the six:

Warrior: Can do a great amount of damage, and can absorb quite a bit as well. However, they are also subject to a great many counters (blind, slow, hexes, etc), and mostly rely on the rest of the team to help buff them and remove the debuffs. When played well, is a lot of fun. But can be challenging to get to that stage from scratch.
Better Synergies: Monk, Necro.
Better Starting Secondaries: Monk for rez & removal skills. Ranger for condition removal, possibly bring pet.

Ranger: Not as great with the damage, but not horrific. Has a versatile number of play styles, from area damage, single target damage, condition spreading, or even some interrupts and other utilities. Their armor is less than a War, but they attack at range and have some nice survival skills, so when played right can very often be the last man standing.
Better Synergies: A second ranger, but any of the casters is pretty good too.
Better Starting Secondary: Most use their own skills, so Monk for a Rez.

Elementalist: Throughout the early to mid-late playing, they are the big damage class. In very late game, (read: hard mode), they are outshined by some of the other classes, but still are viable. Pretty straightforward to play decently, and who doesn't like big damage?
Better Synergies: Necros to put up a minion wall or pump energy, or anyone else who can help keep bad guys off you.
Better Secondaries: Mesmer for some energy management, monk for a rez.

Mesmer: In the right hands, one of the most powerful classes in the game, with an ability to shut down the enemies *and* pump significant damage. But likely the one which needs the most skill to play right. When played poorly, they are quite underwhelming. Not recommended for starting players.
Better Synergies: Can work well with pretty much any partner.
Better Secondaries: Necro for a bit more variety in hexes early on.

Necromancer: Until you can get a necro hero to do it for you (likely better), having a minion master in your party can make a HUGE difference in how you play. Later, there's plenty of other play styles that are very effective. They also have hands down the best energy management in the game, which lets them do a very good impersonation of any of the other caster professions. (They can make up for slightly degraded power in skills with an ability to keep casting them over an over again).
Better Synergies: Can help a War/Ranger put out more damage, but also works well with any of the casters.
Better Secondaries: Mesmer for more hexes, or ele for more straight damage options.

Monk: Every team outside of Pre-searing will want at least one heal/protter. And monk is the classic profession for it. But healing heroes and henchmen can get awefully boring, because let's face it, they're kinda stupid. There's offensive options to a monk, but if you want offense... don't play a monk. Might be fine since you have a friend to play with.
Better Synergies: Everyone loves you. Necro can help feed you energy.
Better Secondaries: Mesmer or Ele for energy management.

In the end, I'd say both of you should just pick what sounds fun to play, and go with that, and not worry too much about synergies. There'll be plenty of options between them all, and especially with heroes, to make any choices you make turn out fine.

No need to actually swap to new characters for Factions, unless you really want to (say if wanting to try a different class, like Ritualist or Assassin).
One way you could play through the campaigns is:

You could start in Prophecies with your friend, play through until you both reach Lion's Arch where you can then unlock travel to NightFall, EotN and Factions. From there you could take a short detour to both EotN and NF to collect some heroes - these can replace some henchmen in your party. One thing with heroes though, until you unlock more skills, their builds are limited to what you give them. When you reach areas where the henchmen are level 20, might even be worthwhile swapping them back into your party in place of heroes, if you've not unlocked many skills that is.

After you collect your heroes, bought any skills you want/need and max level armour head back to Prophecies and complete that campaign (make sure you complete the bonuses on the missions too, if ultimately you're after titles in the HoM), then move on to Factions, then NF and lastly EotN.
Mind you, this is purely if you're interested in the storyline/lore and would like to follow it through in chronological order. Not to mention that Prophecies also has a lot of skill quests that reward you with many free skills.

Otherwise, if you're not overly interested in the story then there's nothing wrong with following what you suggested - accompany your friend in the early part of Prophecies, then both start fresh in Factions.
Depends on what you want to get out of the game as to what approach you take, really.
As for best profession combinations - well, Rod above me gives a pretty good breakdown, it really comes down to what is most fun for the two of you to play. Which is kind of a cliche/standard answer, but you're going to be playing this character for a while, if you make it your 'main' anyhow, so you really do need to enjoy playing it.