Guild Wars 2

One of the best ways of starting a conversation on class balance is looking at known weaknesses and strengths.

Will put out two threads. This one is about the classes YOU play and their known weaknesses keep it broad then go in depth in another section (see below). Later I will put one out where you comment on what you think the weaknesses and strengths of OTHER classes are. Hold off on that

I play a ranger and an engineer. Overall, the ranger is a bit weak even played well unless you truly enjoy “dance”/evade mode and the engineer is a solid class with bugs.

Ranger Known Weaknesses (Simple):

1. Pet AI reduces our effective damage to substandard
2. Trait inefficiency hampers effectiveness
3. We don’t have reliable access to out of combat movement without wasting utility slots
4. We don’t burst with range and lack defense afterwards.
5. Stability is on an elite
6. We have poor defense outside “dancing”
7. We lack group utility especially large group utility without gimping our builds or forcing a single build.
8. Pet F2 skills are unreliable.

Ranger Known Weaknesses and Causes of Weaknesses (detailed as needed):

1. Our damage is very low because our pet mechanic’s AI is very bad. This impacts every aspect of the game for a ranger including trait selection (as many traits are for the pet).
2. We have few ways to actively counter conditions
a. Our main condition removal is a GM trait killing build diversity.
3. While we are the masters of evading (‘dancing”), the rest of our defense is quite poor and we have no real escape.
4. Our traits are not aligned to efficiency in builds. In part, we have too many separate mechanics (all interesting in theory) with too little room in trait lines for them.
a. To the extent you pick a mechanic (traps, spirits, pets) you get “locked” into what feels like random skill lines to get “must have” traits.
5. We can’t do enough damage to a heavy armored class BEFORE it gets into melee range.
6. Our AE is limited and our key AE skill roots us.
7. We lack effective combinations. Too many of our fields are pet based and we have too few finishers (type and number).
8. We are very subject to CC. Very few ways for a ranger to cleanse actively save standing in a pool of water.

Ranger Strengths:

1. We have an excellent water field and ability to heal.
2. Our ability to “dance” and evade is second to none for 1v1 defense even if that doesn’t scale in larger play.

Engineer Known Weaknesses (Simple):

1. We lack stability and are more subject to CC than most (certainly not all)
2. We are very susceptible to retaliation given our heavy AE.
3. We are very susceptible to condition transfers given all our conditions
4. We have a very high learning curve given our using 20+ skills (we go into and out of kits more than an elementalist changes attunement) which reduces our numbers.
5. We lack burst in most builds and rely on damage over time (power or condition)
6. Healing falls apart under lag situations given complex blending of many actives (and combos)
7. Most things I can do, but not as well as a specialist.
8. Condition removal FOR the engineer.
9. Few gap closers (we have one exceptional one but it is a utility on a longer timer and better for evading).

Engineer Known Weaknesses (Detailed as Necessary):

1. Engineer has good theoretical healing with HT but it is extremely complex. Lag can really reduce the ability to actually use the water fields given their short timers.
a. Tool Belt, Passive and Active 6 Button HT abilities, E-Gun 5 all tend to work in combination
2. Lag destroys damage of our grenades too as you have to throw them where the enemy will be. Jerky animation makes that very difficult. So even if the graphics are not running smoothly, it is difficult to land the majority.
3. We also have extremely long animations and flight paths of many of our skills. (Not an issue of telegraphing as much as timing). Again, in lag that is a real problem.
4. AI makes turrets less than desirable in wvw and PvP particularly.
5. Our fields are critical to our play (we have lots of combinations) but the duration of the fields is short leading to very high learning curves and susceptibility to lag conditions (e.g. large wvw).
6. Combinations require significant sacrifices on cool downs and hurt defense.
a. Our blasts often come from our key defensive abilities (healing turret and shield) which have long cool downs. This makes us susceptible to the very damage that these tools was designed to protect.

Engineer Strengths:

1. Build diversity (try guessing what my build of the day is)
a. Almost as diverse as a warrior.
2. The ability to put on so many different conditions and reapply them.
3. Top flight auto attacks for kits given how traits work (they apply conditions) or inherent (weakness on e-gun).
4. AE conditions
5. AE or bounce defensive abilities (blind, weakness, poison, immobilize, etc)
6. Access to high per tick conditions (confusion, burning)
7. Excellent team support
a. Can be a very good healer
b. One of best condition removers for group
c. Lots of fields and important ones
8. Short term damage invulnerability (blocking, retaliation, elixir immunity)
9. Long term condition invulnerability (OP automated responses if traited)
10. Masters of on swap or on heal abilities given how kits work.

Good idea! :-)

Main: warrior
First i wanna say warriors do have a weakness, but i also want to say that i am not posting this to get it buffed, because every class should have it weakness:

Warrior Known Weaknesses (Simple):

1. Slow animations
2. Simple mechanics
3: No extra’s (pls read detailed)

Warrior Known Weaknesses and Causes of Weaknesses (detailed as needed):

1. Allmost all burst skills on weapons have long and good to read animations.
This is a good counter for others, but this makes a warrior feels slow also.
But thats the goal where Anet is going, its my number 1 weakness off warrior

2. Warrior is just a simple class if you talk about mechanic/style.. warriors are ofc not fancy mesmers or thiefs :-) they have a weapon and there armor and charge into battle without fear!! but the idea is that warrior are just a simple class without any skills to confuse or to distract a opponent.

3. Just about simple mechanics/style this also works for traits/utilities/weapon skills.
Warrior utilities are all simple, they give you + this or – that.. where these utilities/traits are powerfull! its also there weakness because they are easy to remember and to spot. You can see this also on there weapon skills.. they almost all do good damage but doesnt bring much more extra’s like an evade (only 1 on GS thats it) or blind (only 1 on longbow) or defensive boons.. its all about damage.
But thats warrior :-)

Warrior Strengths:

Besides its weakness what need to be there ofc, they are a strong class.
Many weapon combinations that almost all does its job, traits are almost all perfect in place and its utilities does its job also..
Warriors are in a real good place and where they can fulfill multiple roles in this games, they can survive good enough to make some mistakes and because there mechanics are all based to be simple you also dont need a mouse with 20 buttons :-)

But simple comes with a price against skilled players