Guild Wars 2

I’ve decided to make a character that i use purely for dungeons/fractals and nothing else, so i dont have all these sets in my bank taking up space on my other characters. I pretty much always pug, and so is like something that will make all my pug runs short, and relatively simple and smooth. I dont do PVE often, but when i do i like it to be over quickly so i can return to more serious matters (jk PVE is great too). I realize that there will just be those pugs that are absolutely horrible, but is like to lessen that as much as i can so that every run is rather quick and seamless.

I know one of the top reccomendations will be a hammer guard, however i really dislike just auto attacking with a hammer. I will take that if nothing else really comes close to the ease and helpfulness of a guard tho. Anyways reccomend away!

Id like a few more people to comment but i knew it would be a guardian. I like GS+Sw/f, but i really dont wanna have to waste time with people going down and wiping and such. So GS+Sw/f vs hammer which would be better?

Hammer for fractals, gs/s+f for dungeons.

For pugging, definitely Guardian. Brings reflects, condition removal, stability, blinds etc. Properly played, you can provide almost everything that pickups tend to lack.

The title asks for the “best overall dungeon class/build” – it doesnt say anything about fractals. For dungeons, its undeniably ele, in various specs: 30/30/10 for solo ele, and if there’s a 2nd ele in your party, one of you go 30/20/10/10/0 fire-staff, and the other ele goes 10/25/10/25/0 scepter LH (thats assuming you need vuln on crit for Fiery Rush vuln stack, since there may not be a thief in your pug).

For fractals, sure, go hammer guardian. But never use a hammer in dungeons, unless its for Banish then unequipping it and re-equipping GS.

Probably going to get flak for this but…. here goes:

I think Hammer guardian is fine for PUG-ing dungeons (including the ones that aren’t fractals). Perma prot is a great DPS trade off and hammer still offers competitive DPS. PUGs don’t blast fire fields anyways, you will not always have an elementalist in your party composition and protection will help the random players of varying skill levels survive. Worst case scenario, you can bring your own fire field and place it before the symbol.

For organized groups in dungeons (not fractals), hammer is not needed and generally should not be ran, but the OP specifically asked for PUGs.

To answer the OP’s originally question, i’m going to recommend warrior. High survivability, high utility and self reliant. You can single handedly ensure that your party will have 2-3 of the unique warrior buffs (EA, 2 banner) and provide enough might for yourself with strength runes. You can also opt for Battle Standard instead of SoR which is an amazing wipe recovery tool if you feel it is necessary outside of Fractals.

Guardians aren’t necessarily the best pug class. I’d say it’s a toss-up between engineer, warrior, and guardian, with mesmer or thief potentially being very good for specific content as well.

- Engineer has the highest solo DPS (using only buffs he can apply himself) and is also boosts party DPS by a large amount via high sustained stacks of might and vulnerability.

- Warrior are very good in a support DPS spec, using Phalanx Strength, which can give a pug a very wide range of buffs (including Empower Allies and banners) for the largest overall DPS boost a single character can give. However, your own DPS will suffer, which means you are basically gambling on having a good party comp. Even if you give your party a massive DPS buff, it’s meaningless if they’re dealing nothing for damage and/or dying all the time.

- Guardian gives extremely strong defensive buffs (Strength in Numbers + hammer auto + Communal Defenses = massive party-wide damage reduction). However, since the guardian is very weak on offensive buffs and pugs tend to be sketchy about boon sharing, your party DPS will be very weak. You will be very hard to kill but you will also take a really long time to kill anything.

- Thieves are great for “hard skips” in dungeons like Arah (although Engineers can provide stealth to a lesser extent too) and Mesmers can maintain 100% reflect uptime easily, which can totally shut down certain “hard” bosses like Alphard, COE Golem, etc. that pugs get wrecked by regularly. They’re not as useful otherwise due to lack of strong solo DPS options though.

alphard got “fixed”

RIP challenging alphard, you allowed me to carry many pugs

Everyone’s said “guard or war,” but nobody else has said ele, and i dont understand why. Maybe we have different ideas of the sort of pug group the OP is referring to. I was thinking of “p123, zerk only, ping or kick – no necro/engi” groups, where the pugs know how to might-stack, use FGS, and coordinate banners. Sometimes they know to knock bosses to walls, sometimes they dont, but it doesnt matter because i LH 3 push bosses to wall and FGS before they even get there. Which is why, in these sort of pugs, the best class to play is ele. You can pre-stack might, push to wall, and FGS all on you own, and the pugs are zerk and sometimes in meta, and they usually know how to use a FGS.

Anierna.6918:

Everyone’s said “guard or war,” but nobody else has said ele, and i dont understand why. Maybe we have different ideas of the sort of pug group the OP is referring to. I was thinking of “p123, zerk only, ping or kick – no necro/engi” groups, where the pugs know how to might-stack, use FGS, and coordinate banners. Sometimes they know to knock bosses to walls, sometimes they dont, but it doesnt matter because i LH 3 push bosses to wall and FGS before they even get there. Which is why, in these sort of pugs, the best class to play is ele. You can pre-stack might, push to wall, and FGS all on you own, and the pugs are zerk and sometimes in meta, and they usually know how to use a FGS.

I agree Ele is best for moderate to highly coordinated groups, but if I have to carry a group of absolutely clueless people I will take Guardian. It depends on the context.

Anierna.6918:

Everyone’s said “guard or war,” but nobody else has said ele, and i dont understand why. Maybe we have different ideas of the sort of pug group the OP is referring to. I was thinking of “p123, zerk only, ping or kick – no necro/engi” groups, where the pugs know how to might-stack, use FGS, and coordinate banners. Sometimes they know to knock bosses to walls, sometimes they dont, but it doesnt matter because i LH 3 push bosses to wall and FGS before they even get there. Which is why, in these sort of pugs, the best class to play is ele. You can pre-stack might, push to wall, and FGS all on you own, and the pugs are zerk and sometimes in meta, and they usually know how to use a FGS.

or, the boss moves out of the wall and you’re completely unsupported by a party full of range-ers and just explode because you have the lowest HP and armour in the game and are taking the full force of the boss’ attacks

warriors and guardians can sustain themselves much better, and wars, guards and mesmers have insane carry potential.

Engi’s are actually a great pug class, for the exact reason that they are non-optimal (imo) in speed runs – they can do a bit of everything. You have vuln, might, and stealth stacking all in one class. They even have a reflect you can use in a pinch. For dungeons where you don’t need the support elements (stealth/reflects), I’d probably take a warrior for the unique buffs, and warr is a lot less work to play. But, you said hammer guard seemed boring to you so maybe engi is more of what your looking for. For arah and fractals I find mesmer is the best pug-carry class.

Anierna.6918:

Everyone’s said “guard or war,” but nobody else has said ele, and i dont understand why. Maybe we have different ideas of the sort of pug group the OP is referring to. I was thinking of “p123, zerk only, ping or kick – no necro/engi” groups, where the pugs know how to might-stack, use FGS, and coordinate banners.

It’s probably this tbh, and the OP didn’t specify either.

I was thinking more along the lines of “P1 80s only”, “P1 experienced only”, “P1” and “P1 3k + AP!”. In bearbow and cleric staff guardian land.

Yea good luck surviving as a zerker ele in pugs where you won’t have reflects,stability and the only blind will be from your lh which they will steal for sure.

I see eles dies all the time in pug runs. Without reliable DPS the yolo ele will drop, unless the ele is actually, like, great. I don’t expect the OP who’s asking this question in the first place to be great at that yolo ele role.

So I’ll say, Guardian or Warrior.

If there’s no Guardian in that pug team, you be the guardian that will reflect, kite, gives off stability, blinds, swiftness, aegis, and protection if things really go south. If there’s no Warrior in that pug team, you go be the Warrior that gives Empowered Allies and Banner of Strength and Discipline.

When i say pugs, i mean this is as in the worst possible pug i could come up with. I do say “zerk only p123” but i dont typically ask people to ping gear unless its blatantly obvious the run is much slower or harder than usual, or if i see like a rifle warr or staff guard or something. Those highly coordinated pugs are always awesome when they come up, but thats fairly rare and id much rather be finished with the dungeon than still waiting for one more zerker. Im looking for something that will get me through both the good and the bad end of the pug spectrum. The easier it is to play the better. Also if this helps my most common paths are AC123, CoF1, TAup/f, and CoE p123.

How are mesmers after the whole empowering mantras thing? Ive wanted to make a full zerk shatter mes for WvW for awhile. Are mesmers helpful in pugs (obv not shatter, but whatever the current DPS/reflect build is)

Carpboy.7145:

When i say pugs, i mean this is as in the worst possible pug i could come up with. I do say “zerk only p123” but i dont typically ask people to ping gear unless its blatantly obvious the run is much slower or harder than usual, or if i see like a rifle warr or staff guard or something. Those highly coordinated pugs are always awesome when they come up, but thats fairly rare and id much rather be finished with the dungeon than still waiting for one more zerker. Im looking for something that will get me through both the good and the bad end of the pug spectrum. The easier it is to play the better. Also if this helps my most common paths are AC123, CoF1, TAup/f, and CoE p123.

Worst possible pug group Phalanx str warrior running empower allies and banners.
Or a guardian running a support build. Please note that in the case of the guardian there will be less deaths but it will still be horrible kill speed. With the case of the warrior there may be more deaths but at least things may die faster so maybe less deaths too.

Ele is gonna have a pretty hard time PUGing, that’s just how it goes. Ele is designed to be fragile and in PUGs with low DPS, bad pulls, and bad strats, you’re gonna get punished the most.

Given that, DPS Ele is both amazing damage and damage increase all in one.

Guardian has really good carry abilities. And I think Mesmer is pretty good too, if you keep up reflects and use your focus pull well. Engi and Thief have nice utility. Warrior is easy to play but not particularly useful.

Ele is the best, but what Neko said is true. In crappy teams it’s just frustrating. An ele in all-out DPS gets aggro like 99% of the time and with 11k hp, the attacks that were once trivial on a warrior can often times 2 hit you all of a sudden.

That’s generally how it goes from my experience.

Still, it’s fun in groups. The only huge complaint I have aside from noob pugs picking up my LH yet never picking up my ice bows would be that I HATE dragon’s tooth. Why can’t it just have normal ground targetting when you don’t have a target selected!? That and comet. Comet is worthless without a target selected, sadly.

E: Oh, also because of how often I need to change traits when on ele… it would be really nice to have trait presets… -.-

Pretty irritating to constantly have to swap internal fire/burning precision/conjurer/pyromancer’s alacrity in fire magic all of the time along with arcane lightning/air training/fresh air/tempest defense in air magic and swapping earth VI for arcana V over and over and over again. Why can’t they just let us have 3 custom trait presets to set or something like that? I’d pay gems for more trait presets for crying out loud… even if they were per character rather than account!

For what it is worth coming from a chronic pugger. (at least until i feel confident enough in my abilities to actually try out for a guild i have my eye on. but that’s another story )

Personally i think it all comes down to if you need reflects or not. Based on your above mention of your most comonly run paths, ( AC, TA, CoF, CoE ) Reflects are not as demanded. If you were running say… SE in your rotation it might be prudent to have reflection. I am basing my assumption on the idea of what at least I have had to do. as in I can NOT rely on the party to be able to provide the things that would be usefull. If they DO manage to do those things well it will come as a peasant surpise and life will continue to go on.

Guardian or Mesmer would be my suggestion. If you feel like you want to rely on your self for reflection up time. Mesmer being somewhat finicky as the obscene amount of reflection is traited. where as the good up time from guard is utility. That being said i think it would be down to what you would like to play more.

if you just don’t want to worry about reflection up time. I would suggest Warrior or thief. Thief at least has some projectile defense in the form of smokescreen, however they are fragile. Warrior as has been mentioned is self sustaining and its really hard to go wrong. Which is why I dont get to play my warrior that often as i cannot rely on PuG’s to be able to do what needs to be done.

Concerning Engineer. I honestly cannot say anything about them as mine is not leveld and i just cant find the willpower to work on it. However it is very true that they are really the swiss army knife of tyria and have a little bit of everything. just learn to “play the piano”

Concerning Elementalist, I have one. I like them. i think they are incredibly complex classes and capable of amazing things. I personally fell they are a direct reflection of the group they are in. if you have a coherent group the Elementalist will turn into god. If you have a… nasomuch (average pug). you will really only be capable of being average. Unless you are the type that can carry the whole group. I am NOT that guy so I don’t run My Ele very much.

Tl;Dr
Mesmer or Gaurd if you want reflections.
Warrior or Thief if you are not to worried about reflection.

Purple Miku.7032:

Still, it’s fun in groups. The only huge complaint I have aside from noob pugs picking up my LH yet never picking up my ice bows would be that I HATE dragon’s tooth. Why can’t it just have normal ground targetting when you don’t have a target selected!? That and comet. Comet is worthless without a target selected, sadly.

I’m sorry, Miku, but judging from that comment, I have to say that you are not a good Ele. But don’t worry, you’re a great War. lol

Watch this vid for a proper pre-stack with both Dragon’s Tooth and Comet without a target. You can see I get to 18 Might solo. I recorded this in DR just now.

Edit: On the reliability note, I land DT on Flamewall every single time, and I land Comet on it 60-80% of the time. As long as you bug the camera angle all the way up, DT will always land the same distance away from you. As long as you bug the camera angle all the way down, Comet will almost always land the same distance away from you. It’s all about positioning.

You will always find a group being a warrior… Some times even when it not makes.sense (lol Guesd Im just venting, as I just got kicked from a.cof1 zerkrr rush for beong a.zerke.r ele…and not a warrior -lools like they wanted a 4warr -1 mes group).

Sry with typo
.crap cell phone

Edit: Ill go for engis…but some timed you wont get any.group just for being an.engi. Go safe and pick guardian or warrior.

Anierna.6918:

I’m sorry, Miku, but judging from that comment, I have to say that you are not a good Ele. But don’t worry, you’re a great War. lol

Watch this vid for a proper pre-stack with both Dragon’s Tooth and Comet without a target. You can see I get to 18 Might solo. I recorded this in DR just now.

Edit: On the reliability note, I land DT on Flamewall every single time, and I land Comet on it 60-80% of the time. As long as you bug the camera angle all the way up, DT will always land the same distance away from you. As long as you bug the camera angle all the way down, Comet will almost always land the same distance away from you. It’s all about positioning.

In order to land DT between two mobs if they are not stacked you have to use this trick which takes time (unless you are a computer). Ground target would remove this annoyance.

Yeah I think i will just go guard. Thanks again guys