Which profession is the best on Guild Wars?

Question

Which profession? Which weapon?

Answer 1

From the top:

The core professions are in each of the games, they are:
-Warrior: A tank, more about taking damage than giving it.
-Ranger: Ranged physical damage, with pets and summons. Their attacks can do good damage, but are usually very slow.
-Monk: Healers and buffers primarily, but also good undead killers. Don't expect to kill much solo.
-Elementals: The best class for area effect damage. They are really fragile though.
-Necromancer: Can summon pets, debuff and loves cold damage. Many of their techniques require a sacrifice of your own health.
-Mesmer: A counter class. They have many debuffs and interrupt skills, but are hard to play.

In Factions there are two more professions: (I don't own Factions, so these are second hand accounts.):
-Assassin: I've heard these guys being called a glass cannon, very fragile, but capable of extreme damage.
-Spiritualist: A party buffer, basically specializing in the ranger's summons.

Nightfall also has two exclusive professions: (I do own Factions and have played these professions.):
-Paragon: Take the monk's buffs and add them to the warrior and you have the Paragon. Many party wide buffs, with the best armor around, but not a lot of direct attack.
-Dervish: Crowd control. The dervish is a melee warrior capable of hitting more than one target at a time and enhancing themselves through a LARGE list of enchantments. More fragile than a warrior though and their enchantments are all self-only.

The best profession depends on your play-style. The professions are fairly balanced to do one or two things really well, at the cost of something else. In fact, you can even change the way a class plays by the way you arrange their attribute points. A fire elementalist is very different than an air one; a hammer warrior is different than a sword wielder.

As for weapons:

Scythes - They have the highest damage value of all GW weapons I have seen. On the other hand, they also have the lowest, meaning your blows are really inconsistent. Only Dervish have skills related to the scythe.
Axes - The warrior skill equivalent of the scythe, just not as extreme. They have high max damage, but low minimum damage.
Swords - A more average weapon, with a lower max, but a higher minimum. Warriors choose swords for more consistent damage.
Hammers – Slow two-handed weapons, they are sword++ doing a lot more consistent damage-per-blow to make up for a slower swing speed.

Don’t choose a weapon for damage though; choose a weapon that matches your selected skills. A warrior can not use ax skills if they are using a sword, and a dervish can’t use scythe skills with anything but a scythe! It isn’t a good idea to select more than one set of weapon skills at a time, because this dilutees your attribute and skill distribution.