Guild Wars 2

So, the last time i played, warriors were braindead op and one of (if not the) top tier damage dealer and elementalists were considered garbage.

However, that seems to not be the case anymore, apparently warriors are one of the lowest tier damage dealers (is this even true?).

Now, I’m not looking to play a warrior, always found the class stale and boring, but that leads me to believe that if the warriors damage has been drastically reduced from top tier damage, to low tier, then what else have i missed?

Just after some quick info as to what’s performing best, what’s not, what’s normally wanted for dungeons, what’s not, those sorts of things, hopefully someone more versed in how Guild wars 2 currently is, can fill me in, so i don’t have to browse the forums for hours and put the pieces together.

Warrior was never the top tier damage dealer, only at the time when most people kept dieing in dungeons(l2p issues, people got better now), dead corps don’t do damage, thats why general community believed that warrior has high damage. that being said, warrior also received some damage nerfs so.

Elementalist was the top dps dealer since forever, in fact their DPS is lower now compare to year back, because anet fixed FGS. but still the best dps dealer.

Ok, so here’s the issue. GW2 consists of three entirely separate game modes – PvE, WvW, and PvP – and the considerations for each of these is totally different.

The other thing you must consider is that the Warrior has indeed received a few changes to its damage over the course of the game, mainly due to its initial huge popularity in PvE (4 Warrior 1 Mesmer lol) and its unpopularity in PvP.

The OTHER thing you need to know is that there are a lot of considerations that have to be made when people talk about certain situations in any of these game modes. The Warrior has low damage if you stack it against other classes in a spreadsheet or if you play under well-coordinated groups, in which case it’s basically a banner bot. But if you consider that the class has a large health pool, heavy armor, a strong passive heal with Healing Signet, and the ability to easily self-buff Might with Forceful Greatsword and Hundred Blades, then often you’ll find that Warrior will do much higher damage than most other classes in a PvE Dungeon PUG for a casual player piloting the game.

Simply put, to the average player playing the Warrior, yes, it does a lot of damage. In PvP, Hambow builds still do a lot of base damage with Soldier’s Amulet. In PvE, a typical GS/X Berserker build will still easily self-buff and do good damage compared to most other classes while still having a large health pool and heavy armor and Healing Signet. There’s a reason it’s still a very popular class to play and relax with – the class has a large margin for error and easily self-buffs to do well and do good damage.

Now, if you’re asking, at higher echelons of play, is the Warrior the super best? The answer is probably no. In PvE, the Elementalist can play a high-risk high-reward Berserker build that does quite a bit more damage with Staff spamming Lava Font, Ice Bow for burst, and Lightning Hammer for extremely high autoattack damage. The Elementalist has in many ways replaced the Warrior as the go-to damage class for super coordinated speed runs. Given that, many of those players still prefer to run casually on Warrior because quite frankly, it’s a lot less stressful with such high base defenses. In PvP the Warrior is still very very strong, but the Elementalist again has sort of eclipsed it with its re-powered, un-nerfed (they removed the nerfs to Cleansing Water and Signet of Restoration in PvP) D/D Spec, now equipped with Strength Runes and Celestial Amulet for even more tankiness and damage.

Also, the BIG thing that has changed with Warriors is that Warriors lose their adrenaline when they leave combat, and they lose it even on missing a burst attack. This severely cuts into the initial burst of Warriors at the start of PvE encounters who used to run around with a ton of initial Adrenaline for the Berserker’s Power bonus. In PvP, it means that they can’t open a fight with a burst skill and they’re forced into running Longbow even more now if they want to guarantee a cleanse, because using other burst skills risks losing your Adrenaline and thus your cleanse.

Basically, since you’ve left, Warriors got toned down a bit. Then, for PvE, people discovered Elementalist damage was really strong and made a bunch of high-damage builds. Then, for PvP, it got un-nerfed and now wreaks havoc in that game mode with the same boring overpowered triple-cantrip-water-arcana bunker build. It’s the best class in PvP and is in many ways the best class in PvE.

That was an excellent and well written post, just the thing i was after Neko, thank you very much for the post (and help) it seems i’ll be enjoying my Elementalist some more then when I’m finally back in game, which is fantastic news, love the class but back when i was playing, they were pretty sub-par and never really wanted.