Guild Wars 2

So basically, although every class can contribute in some way, there are apparently a few classes that are more wanted than others. From Fractals I’m getting the feeling that it’s mainly Warriors, Guardians, Elementalists and Mesmers that are wanted.

I was just wondering, when people are hitting the level ceiling (where it gets too hard to get further) of Fractals, what classes do you think will be left, what classes will be suitable for the hardest dungeon in the game?

Do you expect a mix or do you expect only Warriors and Guardians (seems to work together very well)?

Warriors, guardians and eles are wanted because those are the strongest professions at the moment. (mesmers no so much) I imagine this will change some, because considering the fractals I’ve seen so far melee is being punished quite hard.

Play the class you want in any combination or build, they said.

Its not just fractals, Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers, and Eles are just very strong professions.

Sina.9208:

Warriors, guardians and eles are wanted because those are the strongest professions at the moment. (mesmers no so much) I imagine this will change some, because considering the fractals I’ve seen so far melee is being punished quite hard.

How exactly are mesmers not as viable as eles? They can keep clones/illusions up which bosses target saving you from getting 1 shotted then there is timewarp and they put out decent damage with all 3 illusions up

Every class (potentially) is perfectly viable, IMHO.

we had a group with one ele and 4 thieves. It was way to ez.

Two of were blindness thieves so we could somewhat tank crap.

That’s just the way things are right now, some classes are just superior in PvE.

Classes like Rangers and Necro’s pretty obviously bring way less to a group then something like a Guardian or War.

Not saying you instantly fail by bringing on of those classes, but it is harder and slower.

being a necro i feel quite useful for the party….removing conditions, dealing with large amount of mobs, using teleport/long duration quickness skill, fears and knock backs to interrupt, and HIGH survivability. I often change skills inside dungeon to adapt the next encounter

nmoral.3876:

being a necro i feel quite useful for the party….removing conditions, dealing with large amount of mobs, using teleport/long duration quickness skill, fears and knock backs to interrupt, and HIGH survivability. I often change skills inside dungeon to adapt the next encounter

80 necro was my first class to 80, once you start playing other classes you’ll see how UP they are.

They offer terrible power builds for burst situations and offers no cleave for axe and dagger, obviously they are bad at killing objects which limits you on some dungeon paths, other classes will remove conditions quicker and easier for the full group then necros, many other classes have infinetly more ways to knockback, and while fear is good since it goes through defiant, necro it’s not really worth bringing just for that.

If you think necro has high survivability you haven’t played guardian, they face tank mobs which relieves pressure from the entire group to do more damage.

I wanted to love necro, which is why it was my main at launch and first 80, I logged ~200 hours on it before leveling a guardian and warrior to 80, they do not have near the survivability, support, or dps potential that other classes bring.

5 guardian groups are the way to go in my experience. Little damage, but good survivability.

I’ve found that the more warriors you have in the group the better. They have the best armor in the game, the best HP in the game and the highest dmg in the game. A warrior can stand toe to toe with a boss that will kill a thief in 1-2 hits and the warrior does 2-3x as much damage as well.

Guardian’s provide the best healing and buffing potential so if you can get 1 of them in the mix as well you are golden.

2 Guard 2 Wars 1 Mesmer.

If you would see what we do to dungeons your jaw would drop.

Puandro.3245:

2 Guard 2 Wars 1 Mesmer.

If you would see what we do to dungeons your jaw would drop.

You mean the dungeon comp for most of the videos in my sig? :p

I don’t care for Mesmer’s in PVE. Their utilities are pretty cool and their Time Warp elite is amazing, but I’m not going to go out of my way to bring one. Their AOE DPS capabilities, buggy clones and direct damage just doesn’t out-shine other professions outside of their Time Warp. I’d rather consistent raw DPS classes.

Currently, my group is Fractal LVL 9. We are running a Support Guardian, 2 Greatsword Warriors, 1 Glass cannon Staff Elementalist, 1 Grenade Engineer. Everything dies as if they’re normals and any attackable objects die within seconds thanks to the Engineer and Ele. Large AOE fights are also a joke.

So, to answer your question, I’d probably leave out a Necro and Ranger above anything else.

/EDIT
Oh and I’d probably leave out Thieves unless I knew them. It’s really hard to find a good Thief that won’t lay on their back for most of the fight.

It’s just that necros and rangers are probably the least useful in ‘high-end’ PvE right now (they CAN contribute and get stuff done, but they’re just too bugged/broken or designed more with solo/PvP playstyle), thieves are hard to properly use (so many glass cannon thieves out there dying in one hit from any boss) and engis are boring/weak/mediocre support/not fun – pick your option.

People have been saying that a 5war or 5guardian groups are best – someone even organised a 5war group for Arah4 to bruteforce Simin ‘cause they couldn’t beat her normally. Then it becomes clear that a mix of the two professions is awesome in dungeons – 3 wars, 2 guardians. Then it becomes clear that they have nearly no combo fields, and while they have lots of party stuff in shouts, it’s still limited – thus one elementalist enters the scene, getting 2g, 2w, 1ele in the end.

drkn.3429:

It’s just that necros and rangers are probably the least useful in ‘high-end’ PvE right now (they CAN contribute and get stuff done, but they’re just too bugged/broken or designed more with solo/PvP playstyle), thieves are hard to properly use (so many glass cannon thieves out there dying in one hit from any boss) and engis are boring/weak/mediocre support/not fun – pick your option.

People have been saying that a 5war or 5guardian groups are best – someone even organised a 5war group for Arah4 to bruteforce Simin ‘cause they couldn’t beat her normally. Then it becomes clear that a mix of the two professions is awesome in dungeons – 3 wars, 2 guardians. Then it becomes clear that they have nearly no combo fields, and while they have lots of party stuff in shouts, it’s still limited – thus one elementalist enters the scene, getting 2g, 2w, 1ele in the end.

I play guardian and thief. Up till now, I never took my thief into a dungeon. My guardian was my dungeon char and is built for support from the ground up, with Power/Vit/Tough gear to enable me to face tank and not go down easily.

Im here to tell you that my run through three fractals today with my thief was smooth as butter. Yesterday I used the guardian. You know who is my new main dungeon char now? My thief. I’ll use guardian for places like AC 2 (Detha) where the guardian has tricks to singlehanded play bait in the spike traps, for example, but a D/D – P/P thief (occasionally swapping P/P out for SB instead) just tears things up and brings all kinds of utility. Thief is also pretty nice when a boss has knocked you into the geometry because you have two different ways to teleport yourself back out. The middle fight in the dredge fractal is bad for geometry bugs like this. Fortunately it was me and a Mesmer who got stuck like that, and we were both able to get out. If it had been my guardian in that run, we’d have failed the run.

BTW our party was two thieves, Mesmer, warrior, and engineer. Easy peasy. And the thieves were instrumental to getting the swamp wisps done without too much aggravation because we each had two stun breakers for undoing cripples as wisp carriers.

Of course you can get things done in any party composition – some are just more demanding. We’ve done HotW with 5 eles, and if you can do AC in a duo, you can do it with anyone really.
The thing about thieves is that they’re hard to play – or maybe there are just not that many people playing thieves and not downing/dying 3+ times during each run.

drkn.3429:

Of course you can get things done in any party composition – some are just more demanding. We’ve done HotW with 5 eles, and if you can do AC in a duo, you can do it with anyone really.
The thing about thieves is that they’re hard to play – or maybe there are just not that many people playing thieves and not downing/dying 3+ times during each run.

The whole trick is to run a balanced thief not a glass cannon. As in nearly equal stats across the board for power, precision, vitality, and toughness. With a little more vitality than toughness. Settling for about 40-45% base crit chance. 15-20-0-20-15, prioritizing lotus poison to give you perma-weaken with either Dagger 1 or SB 4. Also prioritizing the 20 percent extra initiative regen from Acrobatics IX, unless you temporarily need to trait for an extra stun breaker with the Acro trait that makes dodge break cripples. And finally, put a superior sigil of Purity on your offhand dagger and offhand pistol, and put a sigil of Bloodlust on your main Dagger and main Pistol. And use Sigil of Malice for healing at 105 per hit at 80.

You’ll solo Orr effortlessly and fearlessly, you’ll get plenty of tagging rights and gold medals by lawn-mowering endlessly over swarms with Death Blossom, and you’ll be less squishy in dungeons than a dungeon-centric Guardian. Truly. I walked out of three fractals today with only 4s in repair costs. Much less than my guardian paid for the fractal runs yesterday.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this fractal run I talked about two posts up was done in all yellow gear with 5x pirate and 1x Traveller runes. By contrast, my guardian needs full exotic gear and 6x soldier runes, even with all the other native condition removal. It’s true that guardians never have to sweat condition damage and help the team strip conditions too, but honestly the thief is nearly as resilient against conditions with that sigil of purity on every weapon set.

Mesmers are pretty amazing in the swamp fractal! ;p Drop a portal in the middle of the map and voila! Ez mode.

Necros and Engineers were very useful in my FotM runs. Myself being an Elementalist.

It’s pretty simple, like in normal dungeons glass cannon builds are a total bust and will only give your teammate headaches imo. Guardians are always great for PuG because they rarely build glass cannon.

I’d say you need atleast 2 ranged for an easier time in some dungeons btw. Besides that a lot of it comes down to knowing your class and how to survive with it, building it right and picking the correct skills when needed. I’ve done major parts of more difficult dungeons with 3 people because we know exactly what to do and what the limits of our class are.

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s pretty simple, like in normal dungeons glass cannon builds are a total bust and will only give your teammate headaches imo. Guardians are always great for PuG because they rarely build glass cannon.

I’d say you need atleast 2 ranged for an easier time in some dungeons btw. Besides that a lot of it comes down to knowing your class and how to survive with it, building it right and picking the correct skills when needed. I’ve done major parts of more difficult dungeons with 3 people because we know exactly what to do and what the limits of our class are.

I run glass-cannon Elementalist and I’m the last one down usually. Of course, anything that hits for over 10k one shots me.

Puandro.3245:

1 Mesmer.

No thanks, I like something better than a timewarp bot.

Taikanaru.5746:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s pretty simple, like in normal dungeons glass cannon builds are a total bust and will only give your teammate headaches imo. Guardians are always great for PuG because they rarely build glass cannon.

I’d say you need atleast 2 ranged for an easier time in some dungeons btw. Besides that a lot of it comes down to knowing your class and how to survive with it, building it right and picking the correct skills when needed. I’ve done major parts of more difficult dungeons with 3 people because we know exactly what to do and what the limits of our class are.

I run glass-cannon Elementalist and I’m the last one down usually. Of course, anything that hits for over 10k one shots me.

If you can do it, fine! But most people, and more importantly most classes, can’t handle that. Frankly some bosses are really annoying with glass cannon eles unless they heal themselves 24/7 or have plenty of condition removal.

Well, at 20+, it’s obvious that certain professions are much more useful than others

The best are probably Guardians and Warriors. Guardians in particular seem like they’re going to be necessary 30+, because there is a lot of projectile damage, and the easiest way to deal with it is to block it. Guardians can solo block projectiles for 1:20~ or so, traited appropriately. Warrior banner regen is really good, and the banners themselves are also pretty good. Warrior damage overall is high.

Thieves/Necros/Engineers are probably the next tier. They all bring good damage and control. Thieves have AoE weakness and a projectile block, good condition or direct damage (depending how you spec), good sustainable AoE, AoE blind spam if absolutely necessary. Necros have a few decent support specs (wells), and condition+epidemic builds work really well. Fear ignores unshakable and is very useful for interrupting key boss abilities (dredge final boss healing). Engineers do great damage with grenades, and have some good ressing abilities (elixir s and toss elixir r). They also have good underwater combat damage, which does matter in one fractal.

Mesmers/Elementalist are probably third tier. Mesmers are pretty good utility, but they do not have good sustained AoE which is basically required when you’re constantly fighting 10-20 mobs on some of the harder fights at high difficulty. Elementalist support is not as good as it used to be, and you’re better off bringing more Guardians instead. Elementalist damage is alright, but conditions are ultimately going to be better, since the mobs are increasing in level as difficulty scales up, which hurts direct damage builds quite a bit. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Elementalists have any good AoE condition builds.

Rangers don’t really have a place in high level fractals. Pets can’t dodge and are just going to die to agony constantly, because I’m sure they have zero resistance to it. They also don’t bring anything unique or good that will help in a PvE situation. Sorry Rangers.

This thread is extremely depressing.

Entry cost to dungeons for all of those unfortunate enough to roll a ranger or necro, 30-50g + grinding several days up to 80 on an alt.

Strifey.7215:

Puandro.3245:

2 Guard 2 Wars 1 Mesmer.

If you would see what we do to dungeons your jaw would drop.

You mean the dungeon comp for most of the videos in my sig? :p

Haha wow, im curious on what you run on each toon.

To the people that say that mesmers are TW bots, you obviously dont know how to build a spec.

Rangers or necros really aren’t too bad if you have a balanced party. They don’t really bring that much to the party, I agree. But that doesn’t make them useless at all.

People just finally need to realize that speccing for raw power and ignoring utility and party based abilities/traits really isn’t the way to go, no matter what content u are doing.

Ivonbeton.6814:

Rangers or necros really aren’t too bad..

Necros are fine, they have a lot of utility, and epidemic is fantastic. It’s just Rangers that aren’t as good as the rest, since they lack good group oriented traits, and they don’t have good single target damage and no sustained 5 target AoE.

Puandro.3245:

To the people that say that mesmers are TW bots, you obviously dont know how to build a spec.

Mesmers are nothing BUT TW bots and you’re gonna have to work kitten hard to convince me otherwise. I know that for sure, I play one.

Pinch.4273:

Ivonbeton.6814:

Rangers or necros really aren’t too bad..

Necros are fine, they have a lot of utility, and epidemic is fantastic. It’s just Rangers that aren’t as good as the rest, since they lack good group oriented traits, and they don’t have good single target damage and no sustained 5 target AoE.

I disagree, both have group orientated builds and playstyles, people just rarely make them. Which is part of the problem.

Pinch.4273:

Well, at 20+, it’s obvious that certain professions are much more useful than others

The best are probably Guardians and Warriors. Guardians in particular seem like they’re going to be necessary 30+, because there is a lot of projectile damage, and the easiest way to deal with it is to block it. Guardians can solo block projectiles for 1:20~ or so, traited appropriately. Warrior banner regen is really good, and the banners themselves are also pretty good. Warrior damage overall is high.

Thieves/Necros/Engineers are probably the next tier. They all bring good damage and control. Thieves have AoE weakness and a projectile block, good condition or direct damage (depending how you spec), good sustainable AoE, AoE blind spam if absolutely necessary. Necros have a few decent support specs (wells), and condition+epidemic builds work really well. Fear ignores unshakable and is very useful for interrupting key boss abilities (dredge final boss healing). Engineers do great damage with grenades, and have some good ressing abilities (elixir s and toss elixir r). They also have good underwater combat damage, which does matter in one fractal.

Mesmers/Elementalist are probably third tier. Mesmers are pretty good utility, but they do not have good sustained AoE which is basically required when you’re constantly fighting 10-20 mobs on some of the harder fights at high difficulty. Elementalist support is not as good as it used to be, and you’re better off bringing more Guardians instead. Elementalist damage is alright, but conditions are ultimately going to be better, since the mobs are increasing in level as difficulty scales up, which hurts direct damage builds quite a bit. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Elementalists have any good AoE condition builds.

Rangers don’t really have a place in high level fractals. Pets can’t dodge and are just going to die to agony constantly, because I’m sure they have zero resistance to it. They also don’t bring anything unique or good that will help in a PvE situation. Sorry Rangers.

HAHA you put eles above thieves. What a troll. Do you even play an ele. We have bad aoe condition builds? lol. Go lvl a ele and come back and tell me we dont have good aoe condition builds and that thieves are much more useful in a dungeon than an ele.

Elementalist bring a whole lot to dungeons. Tons of crowd control. and we can do from a MUCH further range than thieves. We work really well with guards and warriors. Our fields dominate dungeons. If guards are the best support in the game then elementalist are the second best. But honestly elementalist can do a whole lot in my opinion. You just have to decide what kind of control you want to be doing most of the time and specialize into it. I roll with frost bow. I can slow enemies and freeze bosses for 4secs. I use S/D for the tons of blinds we have and support skills you get from it. Elementalist are much more useful than thieves. There is too much for me to go over but the possibilities are many.

Taikanaru.5746:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s pretty simple, like in normal dungeons glass cannon builds are a total bust and will only give your teammate headaches imo. Guardians are always great for PuG because they rarely build glass cannon.

I’d say you need atleast 2 ranged for an easier time in some dungeons btw. Besides that a lot of it comes down to knowing your class and how to survive with it, building it right and picking the correct skills when needed. I’ve done major parts of more difficult dungeons with 3 people because we know exactly what to do and what the limits of our class are.

I run glass-cannon Elementalist and I’m the last one down usually. Of course, anything that hits for over 10k one shots me.

Your teams are very bad, then, unless they’re also running glass builds (not necessarily even cannons).
In terms of survivability, tank guardian is always more durable than a glassy ele – unless the guardian player is really bad.

And yes, Pinch clearly is clearly theorising with not much prior experience with all the classes in high-end PvE.

I’m in a pug that reached lvl 11 difficulty in Fotm and I can say that all classes seem to work fine. I play an engineer with a balance between tankiness and dps. I suggest not going glass cannon at all with any build, but instead making a balanced build. When you have that balance, then you can start tweaking it with specific food/runes.

drkn.3429:

And yes, Pinch clearly is clearly theorising with not much prior experience with all the classes in high-end PvE.

I’m at Fractal 23, and I’ve played most professions at the cap in serious groups. This topic is about Fractals anyways, where projectile blocking, mitigation, and AoE debuffing is far more important than what an Elementalist can bring after evasive arcana was nerfed.

Fine if you want to talk about fractals and groups then I say bring an Elementalist because we can block all Projectiles in a large area for 6sec as well, aoe blind as well with Glyph of Storms earth, knockdown and remove conditions from nearby allies all in S/F. We can also spec into reduced signet cd for blind on Signet of Air blind. Elementalist have far more than 1 trait buddy not forgetting the 2 other blinds we have from S/F. I say Eles bring a whole lot regardless of fractal.

So you either never met a decent elementalist or couldn’t play that class ‘properly’ yourself. Their ‘only’ problem is, in general, low numbers – low hp AND low armor AND low damage AND mediocre support after the EA nerf. It’s not that they are jacks-of-all-trades, decent at everything but not masters of any specific role – it’s that their numbers are low. This means slower progression through content than with anything else (lower dmg output than warrior/guardian/thief) and higher skill threshold to not die and actually do anything useful (lower survivability and more complicated mechanics than warrior/guardian/thief/necro/ranger).
They still can get stuff done, though, and a player really good with their ele doesn’t keep their party back.

Iehova.9518:

Puandro.3245:

To the people that say that mesmers are TW bots, you obviously dont know how to build a spec.

Mesmers are nothing BUT TW bots and you’re gonna have to work kitten hard to convince me otherwise. I know that for sure, I play one.

Sword Auto Attack = rip boons.
Phantams bring perma regen
Signet on use = copy all buffs on themselves to everyone, and when you run a group that is providing buffs to everyone this a very strong ability.
Phantasmal defender = 50% damage reduction
Null Field is another great ability.

Tanky DPS is the best way to make everyone it allows everyone to take hits because if 1 person goes down you have to rez them and its a DPS loss to rezz. Also you can’t WP back into the fight in Fractals. If you make everyone be a bit tanky (Knight/Berserker mix) then they can stand in melee and all the buffs are shared with everyone. Also most classes to more damage with melee weapons. You also rarely have to dodge means more dps up time.

pretty much classes that can heal

Thieves. Support thieves, not the glass cannon ones. Thief is a very underrated support profession (mostly because there are so many glass cannon thieves that everyone thinks this is all they can do) and they have the best utility skill in the whole game in Shadow Refuge. 10 Seconds AoE stealth serves for many means, including easy resurrections (it heals the grounded, and breaks agro for the resurrection, incredible skill to keep a team alive) and skipping some content like stealth triggering the pannel on the dredge fractal to put an example. A good support thief can make life much easier in any dungeon.

Every class has their usefulness in any dungeon. I get in PUGs for every dungeon and providing people know the tactics and listen, it runs smoothly. But like alot of suggestions here, it would be beneficial to have a party based build for buffs and condition removals and not come with selfish glass cannon builds.

All classes are viable provided they don’t run glass cannon.

Necros aren’t too hot in AC path 3, but really nice in path 1-2 and not worse than any other class in Fractals.