Warrior and Guardian sound like good choices to use the lvl 80 boosts on. I do plan on investing heavily in other classes. The learning curve is pretty big in this game compared to other games I've played. I figured the best strategy would be to focus on getting good with my elementalist first. Not the best setup, there are cooldowns that do better jobs and minion actives are useful but you can pretty much use 3 buttons when on GS, can swap to axe and click 2 buttons to increase life force, F1 and just use Reaper 4 and 1. Reaper 1 is insane damage. Staff Daredevil damage is mostly from Staff 2 and autoattack chain. It has been long enough since the 15th Anniversary update that I think we can give educated perspectives on the new order of classes. Mesmer heroes are the best, but I think people get carried away acting like player Mesmers are alone on top of the mountain for PvE classes. I typed up this tier list in the "guide to PvE" post someone made earlier. 2. Armorsmith/Leatherworker/Tailor. Now the choice here pretty much depends on what professions you play. The whole point of these crafting disciplines is to gear your characters with Ascended Armor. Armorsmith is for Heavy Armor, Leatherworker is for Medium Armor and Tailor, you guessed it, is for Light Armor. WvW roaming builds are mostly self sufficient but look for combinations that complement eachother (for example one spec that provides stealth & cc and the other boons & cleanses) For pvp it's the same principle, but a roamer + sidenoder have the most carry potential. Bottom line: play what you enjoy. Here you can find the current metabuilds Anything but ranger is good for ranked. At this moment ranger can't find place in good teams and people prefer other professions. Don't get me wrong -the ranger can offer mediocre mobility and good burst dmg (but not sustainable damage), but in mobility and in damage (1vs1 or XvsX) there are a lot better options. Necro is in my opinion definitely the most sustaining class for new players. I’ve seen lots of gaming parents also having their young children start with that, cause you basically don’t die as easily and having pets helps a lot. =D. I personally started with a Mesmer and it was fine too. Wouldn’t recommend though. 4. Of the new specs in PvP the ones "worthy" of being meta at the moment are Specter and Mechanist; this later is really powerfull in PvE also but being its performance so linked to the jade golem can make risky to main it: moans in PvP can end ruining the class in other game modes rONQe8.