Guild Wars 2

So I spend a great deal of my time on my main in wvw and have slotted everything in wvw infusions.

I mirror my wvw build in PvE with 1-2 minor changeswears with good success.

I don’t want to regear her, create my pve build to suit fractals or load her with agony resist.

So that leaves me choosing an alt to gear exclusively for fractals.

I have been up to t3 so I do have some experience.

Who and how should I build for ease of play for fractals. Desire is for quick Daily before I go wvw on main.

All 4 of my alts are 80 and have full skill/traits unlocked into specialties.

I’ll list them with current setup from memory (may not be accurate)

(I have ascended gs / hammer / rifle and 90% done crafting long bow, which can easily be shared bank over for runs)

(Since these classes are gonna be ascended trinket/accessories at first, will be starting in T1 for awhile)

Thief – zerker gear – d/d SB staff d/p

Elementalist – soldiers – Staff

Guardian – soldiers – Staff s/s

Necro – (don’t remember exactly which set) condi – staff scepter dagger?

Not locked into a weapon sets, this is just what I remember they have on them

Necro will be easy to faceroll in, but won’t necessarily be the fastest clears.

Elementalists damage can make runs go faster if you are good at the class and don’t go down too often (of course some of your damage/survivability depends on your teammates abilities to buff properly before the fights)

I don’t know how thieves or guardians perform in fractals as I haven’t tried them yet

Guardian performs great in fractals if you’re flexible and have the right weapons available (hammer, sword+x, scepter+x, sometimes greatsword).

DD is good if you’re good at it. If not you end up role-playing a carpet and no one wants that in their groups.

Thief – zerker gear – d/d SB staff d/p

Good if you are good at it. Good thief can play pretty much all fractals melee without issues. However not amazing carry potential, so will depend on how crappy your group is. If not played well you will be dead more often than not.

Elementalist – soldiers – Staff

Useless. Elementalist is primarily damage class in PvE, so soldiers gear ele is as bad, if not worse than an empty group slot. To make useful, swap to full zerk. Worth noting that zerk ele is super squishy so once again, skill will be required even if in staff.

Guardian – soldiers – Staff s/s

Again, soldiers set in PvE is practically useless. Few bosses can be anchored, but most of the time it is not worth it to do so. Switch to zerk. Likely use hammer as primary weapon due to high group support ability. Haven’t played mine in fractals for a while, so not sure what else they use.

Necro – (don’t remember exactly which set) condi – staff scepter dagger?

Likely the best choice. High survivability, decent damage, easy to play, can carry fairly well if well played. In danger of getting nerfbatted on epidemic, which will hurt.

Out of classes/gearsets provided I’d go with necro followed by thief. Also note that since infusion extractors are relatively cheap, you can always swap between them by extracting the infusions if you realize that you’ve settled on the wrong class.

Necro can carry pretty hard; I’ll second this. Fractal Necro would be Scepter/dagger and x/warhorn. Considering you’ve not yet done T4s this would def. be my choice. Things start hitting harder, more enemy life, social awkwardness instability becomes scarier, and any fractal with Toxic Trails might make you wince if you chose a melee class. With Blood Magic in the meta, your spins pull and heal downed allies. Viper’s set with epi is quite fun.
I second what Zania said about the other classes. Thief staff does have some survivability with healing on crit, and I’ve definitely played it on every fractal before without too many issues (when Mai Trin was still 100), but these days you’d need to be fairly good to bring it to a Toxic Trails fight ;P Still doable, ofc. I think Ele works best if someone else initially takes the aggro, but yeah, zerker is meta, heh. High damage, easy to die, but c’est la vie.

Zania.8461:

Thief – zerker gear – d/d SB staff d/p

Good if you are good at it. Good thief can play pretty much all fractals melee without issues. However not amazing carry potential, so will depend on how crappy your group is. If not played well you will be dead more often than not.

Elementalist – soldiers – Staff

Useless. Elementalist is primarily damage class in PvE, so soldiers gear ele is as bad, if not worse than an empty group slot. To make useful, swap to full zerk. Worth noting that zerk ele is super squishy so once again, skill will be required even if in staff.

Guardian – soldiers – Staff s/s

Again, soldiers set in PvE is practically useless. Few bosses can be anchored, but most of the time it is not worth it to do so. Switch to zerk. Likely use hammer as primary weapon due to high group support ability. Haven’t played mine in fractals for a while, so not sure what else they use.

Necro – (don’t remember exactly which set) condi – staff scepter dagger?

Likely the best choice. High survivability, decent damage, easy to play, can carry fairly well if well played. In danger of getting nerfbatted on epidemic, which will hurt.

Out of classes/gearsets provided I’d go with necro followed by thief. Also note that since infusion extractors are relatively cheap, you can always swap between them by extracting the infusions if you realize that you’ve settled on the wrong class.

I appreciate the direct comparison to my opening statement. I did not intend to make it appear as the gear they are in is what I desire to run but rather that the gear they are in are just how they are set up at the moment, the guardian was built for wvw and the elementalist is just in the insta-80 gear from hot. My thief is in old beserker gear from 3yrs ago from roaming wvw and the necro was a royal screw up…I level up booked him to 80 for a guild class training night in wvw and messed up and geared him condi instead of power for the training.

All of this is fluid and I fully expected to regear any of them for this endeavor.

Awesome amount of information though and I thank you….

Was leaning on making the ele full power but heard from a guildie that they have like 12k hp, which is pretty scary melting character.

My necro has potential, huge hp pool /shroud…my weapon set I set up for wvw pretty much matches meta battle for fractals and if I bought a zerker set, I could swap between condi and zerker according to tier.

Meta battle guardian has a ton of weapon swapping which I don’t like the idea of, I’d rather have down pat 2 sets really good than switch between a ton of weapons. I do have a svaad’s accended hammer that he could use, which is a good leg up to start.

I have enough heroic marks to atleast fully gear in wvw exotics to start in a regear of any of them in 2mins and I’ve got enough laurels to get trinks set up.

My main in a warrior…and I could run ps warrior in full ascended everything marauders and gs / hammer / rifle but I don’t want to be playing the infusions game daily. Which is why an alt is in question.

Yes, a full zerker ele will only have a bit less than 12,000 HP, but I don’t see a problem with that. The damage output they can dish out is insane, and helps kill stuff before it can deal enough damage to add up. You can always depend on your party for some healing and defensive boons (aegis, protection etc…) in fractals if you want to, but even just the skills in Water and Earth attunement are pretty powerful at keeping you alive.

While I don’t have it geared up for fractals yet, I find that my tempest has incredible survivability in PvE just from its own skills.