Need help on class decision

I'm planning on going and buying guild wars pretty soon, but i have no clue what i want to be. i have World of Warcraft and am a warrior, def spec, tank on it so i dont want to go that way again. I'm leaning towards a primary Ranger or Monk but i have no clue of where to go from there...
Anyone have any personal opinions on fun builds to play? Nothing to complicated mind you because i have yet to totally learn the system

Well if your new and dont want anything difficult to start, i do suggest a Ranger for your first charicter. Why? Their very easy to play and dont take much to learn and setup. Their very easy to handle and you only have to worry about 1 type of weapon (a bow of course).

Anyways. Welcome to Guild Wars

Seems like this question comes up a lot. My advice would be to read about the different professions, their capabilities and limitations. There is plenty of information on the forums.

Try one, and if you don't like it you can always delete it and start over. What's fun for me may not be fun for you but ....... Necro seems to be a fairly self-sufficeint profession. Warrior may be the easiest to learn the game system (just my opinion). Mesmer takes a lot of finesse (sp?)

Play .... learn ..... have fun!

Actually, what role do you prefer playing? Something diverse where you can switch positions easily? Up in people's faces and beating on them? Back keeping your team alive? Making things explode while standing away and watching them die?

There's much more roles than this but yeah.

Warrior: if you wanna be solo based but generic
Difficulty to get team:Meh
Ranger: versatile but (for some reason) unpopular
Difficulty to get team:Meh
Elementalist: many people find this a bad introduction to gw, best avoided as first character
Difficulty to get team:Meh
Necromancer: can be quite fun if you're into death magic
Difficulty to get team:Meh
Mesmer: from experience it's a mysterious profession, probably not best for first character
Difficulty to get team:Poor
Monk: you'll be everyone's best friend as long as you don't sick to smiting
Difficulty to get team:No problem!

...guess that didn't help much

My first char was a Wa/Ne, which i hardly use anymore and I cant get enough of how fun my ranger is. Monk is good too, thats if you want to play a supportive roll.

I almost deleted my ranger (first character) but forced myself to keep playing him. After I got past Yak's Bend and started getting some decent skills I really started enjoying the profession.

I am a ranger person, if you want to try something other than tanking you might give a ranger a try. Ranger are the most versatile character in the game. Many creatures are especially vulnerable to a particular element, fire, ice, lightning and, yes, earth (ebon), ranger can switch damage on the fly. You have range weapons so you can rain death from above or below, medium armor so you can take a hit when needed. Rangers get some pretty good running skills for making to the next gate, and all come with a bonus, wether it is energy from being hit or just extra evasive maneuvers, to avoid being hit. Last of all rangers are never alone, you can have permanent pet and rangers can even for a time, get every body to help out.

The next few have light armor and are often referred to as "squishies".

Then there are elemetalist, the true power houses of the game, they have many massive damage (nuking) spells and of area of effect skills (AoE), they are somewhat less effective since the new AI gives monsters enough intelligent to leave the area once it starts, but if knocked down their targets are mashed. They can slow down a opposing group, blind targets, chain spells that can hit everybody, and boost their armor to near indestructible levels. Once you get past the "all I need are a few nuking spells" elementalist can become a fearsome damage dealer. When I see an elementalist cast fire storm it like "step aside for a 'wow, pretty'" but when he starts on the lightning "Holy Crap!!"

I often refer to necros as an "army of one" , a good necro can easily maintain a nearly unlimited supply of bone minions and bone fiends . Since most of their skills are poison and disease based, their targets armor is irrelevant, and they can easily infect, yes there some of there skills are infectious, the whole opposing group with so many status disorders no healing can save them. They don't have high energy, but when something dies they get energy and when fighting something will always die.

Mesmers are some of the more advanced and least understood. Steal your energy, interrupt your moves, and basically make you move so slow you end up practically standing still waiting to die. All of their hex skills ignore armor, so when a good mesmer sets his sights on a warrior, that warrior is going down.

Monks are the most skilled players in the game, as such not the best choice for a first time player. They can smite offensively and heal defensively, a good monk can make or break a team, and unfortunaly there aren't enough good monks. This is also made worse because some players expect the monk to keep them alive no matter what, and even the best of them can't over come stupidity, so many monks are reservered for guilds or other friend teams, like mine.

Now onto warriors, although often referred to as tanks, they can be much more than that. A good one can hold the ground while the leaders organize the team for a final assault, survive long enough for the monks to revive everyone to recover from a bad agro, and shield the team so the lighter armored, high damage dealers can create a killing field. Good warriors should be both a shield and a spearhead. Unfortunately the "TANK SMASH!!" mentality is all to prevelant in the game.

Add in a good complimentary second skill and you can be whatever suits your play style.

Monk was my first and i really got the most out of the game that way as it was easy to do missions etc. and all the quests as everyone needed a monk.Ranger is also a good choice due to the fact people find it so fun,myself included,to play.

Markaedw, NECROS steal health, not MESMERS :P
....
and I would say make a monk but you have limited hair options. IMO, Saintly armor and Judge's armor are decent looking. Ascetic is the worst, but gives extra energy and it looks like you are wearing underpants.

*********Make a NECRO. It has the COOLest armor and nicest dance (for males). Plus, they are VERY in demand for ALL TYPES and a BLAST to play with. You have all three lines of magic being useful, whether it be the death magic line with minions, blood magic line with lifestealing and support skills, or curses for debuffing. Then there is the typical SS farming builds, which monks want as farming partners. And you have condition removal.

Or make a ranger, but you have very limited hair options unless you like long hair...which is why most people end up with female rangers (to keep their sanity perhaps). Anyway for the class itself, it is very good for interrupting and trapping and even beast mastery but Arenanet has horrible pet AI so I would advise not going that route (of Beastmastery). Armor is okay for males except they all have animal/plant parts on them, decent for females except druid's 15k which looks like you are wearing your underwear (my opinion of course).
I avoided both because of the horrible hair they have but they are by far the best ones to choose for a first character, considering NOBODY wants a warrior because there are so dam many of them.
I would reserve mesmers for a last or second to last character as you need deadly reflexes to pull fo the 1/4 second interrupts for spells. Then again you cold go the easy way and use stuff liek diversion.
Elementalists are not in demand right now, but that is because of the AI changes.

lol thanks for all of the info and opinions, it actually makes the decision that much harder
but i think im going to go with a monk, that way i can find groups easy, cuz that is one of the most painful aspects of mmorpgs lol, at least until u get a good guild or plenty of friends

Now i want to be a great healer of course, but what should i pair a monk with if i want to be something else than a group's heal bitch lol? What would be best to pair it with if i occasionally wanted to solo or didnt want to always have to rely on a party to keep me alive?

btw, lol, i never expected so many replies in less than 8 hours

thats GuildWars community mate

anyways, it all depends on how you want to play. You want to be a killer, I wouldn't go for monk then (maybe smiting but not much ppl want to take those in their party)

Ranger is an all-rounder, actually its very easy to play a normal ranger, but playing a good ranger is a bit harder, but I don't doubt your skills

i dont mean i want to dps, i just want to know what to pair it with to give the most survivabilty, what will make it so that i can actually solo, cuz i dont want to be useless if not in a party
also, im glad that rangers arent nerfed in this game like in DnD lol

rangers go well with just about anything, warrior stances are good, the elemental skills conjure flame, frost or lighting go well with the approiate bow string, mesmers have some good interupt skills that rangers can use. I always end up back at monk, I just don't like the 1 time use res sig.

But for soloing, a warrior monk (aka wammo, aka tank), just about beats all. Although there are some usefull solo ranger builds, I have not had much success with solso rangers.

Then again, you have 4 slots, to work with. You can switch your builds around as often as you like, one for soloing and one for team play.

so being a Monk/Warrior will be good?
or is it better for me to go ahead and go Monk and then a high energy class/

Actually if you want to be a healer, Mo/N or Mo/Me is the way to go really due to the mesmer's energy management skills in the inspiration line can keep you going from battle to battle without breaks and still have a decent amount of energy when you're done charging into things. This is regardless of whether you're smiting, protecting or healing. For smiting, I'd suggest some mesmer damage skills to assist your damage rather than energy.

Necro secondary for a monk is a little less useful unless you're willing to wait until the very later stages of the game where you start to get skills that actually help you out.

Like it or not, you're going to be going in teams throughout the whole game and it'll take a bit of cash to set up your solo monk if you wish to do that, but does pay back.

Personally I would say a healer is a good and easy class to start off with, whether you want to be smiting, healing or protection. Everyone and his dog wants a healer, not many people want a smiter, but if you choose to go that way, they can be a very useful damage dealer. Just make sure you're smiting off the warrior and not charging in yourself, a mistake many new smiters use.

However, playing a monk, you don't really learn much about how the game works. Sure you learn how to keep your party alive, whether it be for reducing damage, healing it or dealing it, but the game is very much more complex than that. But by all means, if you want to play healer, don't let the fact that you wont learn much deter you, it'll at least teach you the basics of the game and from then on I reccomend a necro or mesmer primary for your second character. That's when you'll learn a LOT about how the game works.

On top of that, don't be dettered by the selections of what you can do with your class. You can change your attributes around freely in any outpost or town without penalty as much as you want. Just try and keep your attributes spread across at most 4 lines.

Oh and don't do the stupid thing I done last night in GvG, 9 in strength, 10 in tactics, 16 in swordsmanship, then take all axe skills. XD

i guess ill try Monk/Mesmer then, that sounds pretty good, and then if i want to learn more about the game ill make another char :P

but im not too worried, i always pick up the systems really quickly so its not too bad, but i just know im gonna love being in demand

well, thx for all the help u all, im gonna check out then with this all in mind, so dont be upset if u post something else here and i dont read it cuz ill be busy playing and not bothering with the forums lol

I'm a W/Mo, just fyi. My suggestion is you don't play a W or Mo primary anything unless you have a tough skin. Those two primaries generally get the blame of any bad situation. In fact, heavy disscussion of that fact on the board right now.

All classes are easy to playwell. I have found that E and N primaries are easy to play well. The key words are PLAY WELL. Playing a W or R well takes a little more practice. The hardest professions to play well are Me and Mo. Playing well means you can function in and out of a team with decent skill, and you can be effective in the various roles of your classes.

Some professions are harder to Master then others. N and R are the easiest to master in my experience. Elementalist holds the middle difficulty of mastery. W, Me and Mo are the hardest to Master. Mastery being so friggin good you can save the whole team. The only way to master any class is to either spend hours looking at charts and diagrams, or practicing enough to have gotten in and out of enough bad situations that you start having "moments or clarity" where you figure out something new about what your class is capable of, enough "moments of clarity" and you're on your way to mastery.

My suggestion, start 2 characters and run them both through Pre-Searing (beginning area). Then pick the one that you function best with or like the most.

Your description of the mes is good, but I think that in factions it will become a good deal easier for mesmers to find groups, at least on the missions that we've heard about that have PvP aspects to them. Probably the ones that we'll play to take control of territories. So for all you who have that mesmer layin around and feel tempted to delete it, don't be so hasty eh? You may find you become a lot more popular when your faction is trying to take control of the good towns.

Personally, I love my heaking monk, mesmers, and necro minion master. I also always keep a warrior, cuz although they don't suit me as well as the squishies do, they are always nice to have available. Ranger is actualyl the only class I have never wnjoyed playing. Not that they aren't strong or anything, I just can't get into them for some reason. I don't recommend a healer as a first character, it can be tricky, and you will always be blamed for everything.