New Warrior, looking for 2nd Job

Well, I picked up Guild Wars yesterday, and it's already sent me on the secondary job quest, and having all the experience of a rutabaga, I'm a bit lost.

Right now, I'm playing a Warrior, leaning towards the sword tree, for no better reason than I like swords.

My initial thought was to subclass Ranger, with an eye towards being a blade and bow that opperates by peppering a target on the way it, and switches to melee when it gets close. However, with the weapon switching mechanics, I'm not sure if that's a workable idea, or not.

Another possibility would be to go with Monk for a classic Paladin type build. Sounds like it works well in this game, and it ussually reliable, but it doesn't really call to me.

My current thought is that the life-stealing and life-trading ability of the Necromancer might combine rather nicely with the close in and high hitpoints of the Warrior, with the ability to mix things up a good bit with some curses and hexes. However, from what I can tell, Necros also tend to be very energy hungry, which may not work so well with the low energy Warrior. I'd probably want to focus more on Adrenaline based weapons if I went that route.

Another thought I have, is I am of the understanding that Mesmers can opperate effectively as energy stealers. It might be possible to leverage that to make a high energy build Warrior, but again, I don't have the practical experience to know how well that would work.

Elementalist doesn't rally call to me, but it does seem to have a number of catch skills. Conjuer Frost, Ice Prison, and Water Trident (don't know if you can use Elite skills on a secondary) all sound very nice supprot for a Warrior. For mix-up Conjuer Lightning and Iron Mist could work for trapping, though I wonder if Iron Mist may prove more troublesome than it's worth.

Anyways, any thoughts? I'm sort of overwhelmed by the choices available, and considering I'm going to have to work with this to at least lvl 20, I'd like to start with something reasonable.

Harry Voyager

In pre-searing Ascalon you can try out all the secondary professions by going and doing the quest for each class.
After you have done said quest, be sure to decline when asked if you want to commit to the profession as your secondary profession and then go and try another...
This is good because you get to try a few skills from every class so that you can get a feel for them, once you have done all the profession quests simply think back to which profession you liked the most and then go back to that 'trainer' and 'lock it in' as your 2nd profession...
Hope that helps!

Well, if you're anything like me your first character will not end up being your main :P

I would just try whatever sounds funnest to you. They are all reasonable builds, capable of doing well in the end game. Finding the right skills that compliment each other is the difficult part.

W/Mo is the most popular build, makes a good tank, and is pretty self-sufficient. Has many damage, healing, and protection capabilities.

W/N is similar in the sense that you have alot of life-gaining/life-stealing abilities, so you can do pretty good on your own. The other nice thing about Necro is kind of like what you were talking about with the W/R idea. You can hit them with some long distance Necro spells to weaken them, then go in for the kill.

W/R has some nice options as well. Doing the bow/sword switch like you discussed is possible, but may not be worth the effort. In order for it to be effective you would have to invest the majority of your attribute points into Swordsmanship and Marksmanship, so you would pretty much be mostly all physical attacks, with enough attribute points to pump up one other attribute. It could be done, but you might do better investing in other attributes instead. The ranger has some very nice skills - health related/protection, traps, pets, and is overall a very versatile character.

Those would be my 3 best picks, but W/Me and W/E are both very doable. Just depends what sounds fun to you.