Since raids and strike missions are expansion content this guide will assume that you do own at least one of the expansions.
The first steps to getting a raid-ready character that are covered in this series are:
- Create a character.
- Level your character to level 80.
- Decide on the build you want to gear and start training the elite specialization.
- Try to level your masteries that are useful for raids.
Create a character
The first step is obviously to create a character! Don’t worry about selecting the wrong profession as all professions can be useful in a variety of roles throughout all raid and strike encounters.
Whilst some professions might fall behind at the highest level of speedrun groups, any profession with a well theorycrafted build can be useful in any group that is not speedrunning. Below is a brief overview of each of the game's core professions.
| Profession | Summary | Introductory Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Elementalist | With specialisations capable of both high DPS and healing/utility, Elementalist is a well rounded and capable profession. These builds do have a high skill floor compared to other classes, so expect a steep learning curve if you choose this as your first raid profession. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Mesmer | If you enjoy builds with range, mobility, and excessive utility, then Mesmer is for you. Specialisations for this profession allow you to swap between DPS, utility, and mixed DPS/utility builds with ease. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Necromancer | The condition bae, defier of death, bringer of boons and barrier, Necromancer is a profession packed with condition DPS and utility. Although it's utility effectiveness has been reduced in recent balances, it's still a strong contender with condition DPS through it's Harbinger and Scourge specialisations. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Engineer | Engineer contends as a reliable DPS and healing/utility profession. The current Mechanist builds lend benefit to newer players having a low skill floor, allowing them to maintain higher focus on mechanics and less on rotation. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Ranger | The original healing class with its Druid specialisation, Ranger has since grown to encompass a variety of DPS and healing/utility roles through it's elite specialisations. Most builds have a moderate skill floor so expect some learning involved when playing this class. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Thief | Although it suffers middle-child syndrome, Thief offers strong DPS, mobility, and utility earning its title as master of shadows. It performs strongly on specific encounters, and offers adequate range and melee DPS options. | Coming Soon ™ |
| Guardian | Guardian has long been the Golden Child among the nine professions. Recently it's seen some nerfs, but it still offers a large amount of different damage and support builds through its elite specialisations. | Introduction to Guardian |
| Revenant | Introduction to Revenant | |
| Warrior | Coming Soon ™ |
Pick the profession that you enjoy playing, not the one that does the most damage.
Level up your character
Next, level your character to 80 since both raids and strikes require you to be level 80. Either level manually by exploring and doing events or use a Level 80 Boost that you get for free whenever you buy any of the expansions. The second option will be faster, but will put you at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding your class.
Levelling manually will help you see if you like playing your profession and to help you learn the mechanics of your chosen profession. That understanding will help you learn rotations faster and understand why certain choices in builds are made.
The Level 80 Boost allows you to jump ahead and start progressing on raiding almost immediately. The Level 80 Boost will give you a set of level 80 Exotic (the second highest rarity stat wise) gear that will help you train your elite specialization and level your masteries. The gear that is given by the boost has Celestial stats, which means it gives a decent amount of all stats, this is relatively good as a starting gear and for a few classes can even be the best gear for your chosen build. The boost also gives 25 , these are a utility item used by power DPS (damage per second) professions.
Train your Specialisation
Once you have decided upon a build, go to its individual build page and look at the gear, food, traits, and rotation. There are build template links on every build page that allow you to copy the traits for your chosen build into your own characters’ build templates. You will likely have the third trait line and probably a few of your utility skills locked since it will be from an Elite Specialization that you haven’t trained yet.
The obvious next step is to train your chosen build’s Elite Specialization; this is most easily done by running through the maps of a specific expansion and completing hero points. Expansion map hero points provide 10 times the amount of hero points as core Tyria maps.