Guild Wars 2

So I’m in-between games right now, and I haven’t played GW2 in quite awhile, as the title says. I’m interested to see how much has changed, and I’m looking to get back into a little WvW skirmishing and roaming.

I’ve got quite a few max level characters. Guardian, Ranger, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Elementalist. The only classes I’ve never really played are necro and engi. I’m not really particular to any of them, and I’m mostly concerned with effectiveness.

So what do you guys recommend for a little bit of solo roaming and maybe small team roaming? I understand that thief is most likely still the king of solo roam, but how about some alternatives? Or are they still just that overpowering?

Anyway, recommendations? Opinions?

teef

/15 chars

For small team action Engineer is the way to go. Fields/finishers at the switch of a kit. Power/Condition/Hybrid are all viable. You can keep the same traits and switch armor for a different role (most of the time). I’m probably biased though.

Last time I played(granted this was a year ago), engineers were kind of in a bad place. Has that changed much in the current day?

Nah engineers really haven’t ever been in a bad place imo. They do take a bit of skill to play well but they aren’t much harder to play than elementalist. Your fire field and water field with your various finishers are always welcome in small groups let alone how many conditions you can stack in a short amount of time. Just picture an ele with more armor, less cast time and1 or 2 less attunements.

If you want an easy start as engineer play a 3kit condi build that focuses on conditions. Especially one that uses the elixir gun as its “main” weapon. You can spam a ton of conditions at 1200 range with it if you trait it. This thing is seriously borderline OP in WvW because with no place to hide a lot of builds cant handle the permanent preasure of the elixir gun autoattack.

How well does a condition engi hold up under return fire? I’ve been reading up on them and supposedly engis have problems with condition removal on themselves?

Eliteseraph.4970:

How well does a condition engi hold up under return fire? I’ve been reading up on them and supposedly engis have problems with condition removal on themselves?

Condi removal is the achilles heel of the class. Most builds outside of elixir ones have a problem with high condi preassure. But its still managable because you have so many active defenses in most builds. In WvW roaming you will usually encounter 3 condi specs in 1v1 situations:

P/D thieves:
They spam condis – stealth – repeat, basicaly waiting for you to bleed out. One of the cheesiest spec in the whole game right now but as engi you can handle them quite well even with the condi pressure. You need to play some 1v1 against them to learn how they work. As with all thieves dont expect them to die to you because they can always bail out and run, grenades and bombs are a godsend against that class. Unlimited AoE spam is a thiefs worst nightmare.

PU mesmer:
PU mesmer are the kings of 1v1 in WvW right now and basicaly make you kill yourself with conditions. Its one of the hardest 1v1 enemy for almost any class/spec in the whole game and really really hard to kill (if they know what they do). On the bright side they are slow as kitten and need to waste their rune slots with traveler runes or else they would walk across the battlefield. You can always walk away from them and dont be ashamed to do so because they are really cheesy. Most classes have to do it so its not a engi problem. They are useless in tPvP, thats why the whine about them is rather small.

Condi Necros:
Now thats really a problem for an engi because that class basicaly hardcounters engineers. If the necro is pure condition specced and you are not a power build that can nuke him down fast dont bother its a uphill battle at its worst. They are a rare sight in WvW roaming and they have zero chance to catch up to you if you run.

That sounded depressing, right? But keep in mind that an engi can deal with more or less any other class/spec in a 1v1 situations and the first two specs are the kings of cheese in 1v1 and most builds on any class strugle against them.

EDIT:
Ok well I realized that I more or less advertised the thief and mesmer spec but keep in mind those specs rely on gimmicks and balance will change. Enigs are the healthiest roaming class, means the class is good at it no matter which spec you choose. The mesmer spec is also not a real roamer its basicaly a slow walking 1v1 spec that cant do anything else.

I’d say thief for solo roaming. I don’t think there is another class that is as forgiving and as challenging to play at the same time.

Warrior for me though. Smash stuff.

Mayama.1854:

Enigs are the healthiest roaming class, means the class is good at it no matter which spec you choose. The mesmer spec is also not a real roamer its basicaly a slow walking 1v1 spec that cant do anything else.

I would argue that Rangers are in the same boat if not better than engineers for pure roaming.

your standard condi regen ranger (some combination of sword, dagger, mh-axe, torch) is going to have perma burning, perma poison, equally good bleed stacks, and chill. hes going to have more mobility, easier healing (healing turret is so glitchy atm) and MUCH better condi removal. hes going to have easy access to stability. while both engi and rangers are seeing nice buffs next patch, the ranger buffs are pretty huge (all signets effect the ranger, 60sec base cd on Entangle, all pets effected by family traits). then there is the pet, which when its not holding the ranger back may actually do something useful, like apply a 10 second immobilize, 30 seconds of poison, a fear, a knockdown, a cripple. “something.”

on the engineers side of things, they get confusion and better range than the condi-ranger (1200 elixir gun, possibly ~1500 grenades), a smoke field, and their fire field is on a shorter cd than torch. the engie also gets slightly better vigor uptime, but that probably doesnt out perform sword dagger evades, which are short cd and usable while immobilized. an engineers ability to apply conditions to stealthers is better, but rangers have access to sic ’em and traps. while engies get their own reveal next patch, its not likely goggles will make the cut against 3 kits or 2 kits + rocketboots.

Ranger or engi, why? Both are getin some buffs in a month or so.

Ranger will be borderline op with axe and condies. May even get close to zerk warriors in speedclearing camps (7-12 sec + cap time)

far as large scale wvw goes, GWEN still reigns supreme

1.) Guardian
2.) Warrior
3.) Elementalist
4.) Necromancer

ranger, thief, engi will see little use in large scale, but are good for solo and havoc roaming. Out of Gwen, warrior is probably the best of both worlds.

Roaming warrior = run away or get rekt by any other class. That is the reality. Warrior 1v1 or 1vx is absolutely rubbish. Ig you think you are good with a warrior in those circumstances it boils down to one thing: your enemy was a seriously bad scrub.

thieves are the kings out there in solo

Seems like some people think that the ranger/engi Patch is just a patvh for this two
This stream was a preview of a whole balancr patch for all wll classes
Ready up just decided to show two classes to have enough time to zltalk about the changes instead of rushing through everything.
This friday are two more classes. That means in more thn 4 weeks all classes are discussed. And anet waits everytime one month before patch or so.

All classes will get a balance to deal with the changes but i doubt the other classes will get , buffs/ changes to the Degree of how its going to effect rangers + engis.

Anet themselfs choose Ranger because it was voted by most of the forum, and engi was a choosen due to Sutiable reasons by anet (i don’t know what reasons but they must have some good ones to be choosen for Improvements rather than a Balance).

these two classes look like they will be getting Buffs/changes to bring them up to date.
since flamethrower has pretty much remaind unchanged for a long while , and ranger have been blighted with the Pain that is Traited Signets (only to be able to match the effectiveness of normal signet use)

everything else will be a Balance a little buff here , Deduction there no major major changes like what the Ranger will/would be getting in the future.

we’ll have to wait to see all the ready ups.
since it was a CDi selected class/classes , i doubt they will be buffing other classes to the extent that ranger and engi are getting changes.

Prysin.8542:

Roaming warrior = run away or get rekt by any other class. That is the reality. Warrior 1v1 or 1vx is absolutely rubbish. Ig you think you are good with a warrior in those circumstances it boils down to one thing: your enemy was a seriously bad scrub.

Lol, are you kidding me? Of course there are bad Warriors out there, but those who know what they’re doing are very strong. For example, an Eviscerate from melee-range is instant and deals 8k damage (on a 10 second cooldown). Good luck trying to dodge that… it’s over before you see it coming. And there’s other stuff. So if you’re saying only scrubs/noobs lose to Warriors, you have no idea. Maybe the best players around never lose to Warriors; I don’t know. But good or average players certainly do sometimes, depending on the skill of the Warrior.