Guild Wars 2

I’m a bit of an alt-oholic, with a possible side order of ADD, so I find myself constantly jumping professions time and time again. My hope here is to get some answers regarding what profession people think is the most useful in PvE Dungeons. As we all know, a lot of threads turn into bashing classes/builds, but I hope this can stay more about the positives.

What class do you think, from your own experience, adds the most to a dungeon group? Trying to take player skill/gear out of the equation, what profession do you feel like makes dungeon runs go much more smooth?

Guardian. No one else can bring over a minute of projectile blocking by themselves.

Guardian > warrior >>> mesmer & thief > ele >> engi & ranger >>> necro.
Howgh.

support warrio with full cleric gear and shout/banner build will make party immortal, of course the dps sucks but i m working on a new build with apothecary gear

Pretty much anything. But guardian and healing specced ele are my favourites. I also love necros in my group because they have a high pool of HP and are selfsustaining.

EDIT : support warrior is indeed also a great help, hi rhat

hey Tormir just reached lv 15… tomorrow we ll do some more fractals

If you haven’t ever been to a dungeon in 5man guardian party, best everyone with mace/shield tanky dps setup, you have no idea what ‘immortal’ and ‘mow through stuff’ mean.
Run up to boss, start autoattack, minimise the game – for most encounters.

It’s more about the ability of the player than the class.

drkn.3429:

If you haven’t ever been to a dungeon in 5man guardian party, best everyone with mace/shield tanky dps setup, you have no idea what ‘immortal’ and ‘mow through stuff’ mean.
Run up to boss, start autoattack, minimise the game – for most encounters.

It’s really not, atleast with one guardian you can still get instakilled if you dont pay attention (atleast at lvl 10+). Usually this doesnt happen, but 5 guardians really don’t add that much since protection stacks in duration and not in time and it slows killing speed. On some encounters a guardian party using wall of reflection 24/7 could be rather imbalanced I guess

So… General thinking seems to be that if you want to be very useful and “add” a lot to essentially any PUG, then Guardian is the way to go?

That’s kind of what I’m looking for. My playtimes are odd (I work nights and have small kids), so I’m basically always in PUG’s. I realize every profession can add something to every group and that player skill is probably the most important, but I am hoping to just find the class that will allow me to make the biggest impact in “any” group I joined.

drkn.3429:

Guardian > warrior >>> mesmer & thief > ele >> engi & ranger >>> necro.
Howgh.

This is complete bs. A conditionmancer can lay smack down on grp of mobs like no one else. Also some if these fights need constant, sustained DPS rather than burst. I have seen grps fall apart in the dredge from the mass of mobs while condition necro with epidemic freaking destroys them. Your list is way off because of lack of info and understanding. Also on the jellyfish boss, the adds are a non issue with a necro. Epidemic off the bosses conditions and they all die before they ever make it to any party member.

millerap.3614:

So… General thinking seems to be that if you want to be very useful and “add” a lot to essentially any PUG, then Guardian is the way to go?

That’s kind of what I’m looking for. My playtimes are odd (I work nights and have small kids), so I’m basically always in PUG’s. I realize every profession can add something to every group and that player skill is probably the most important, but I am hoping to just find the class that will allow me to make the biggest impact in “any” group I joined.

It’s more important that you communicate with your team. If your teammates seem insecure or new, it helps if you take the lead. Not everyone will comply, but generally people are eager to progress and will do what needs to be done.

I PuG’ed all the way through to lvl 14. Everytime I enjoyed playing with a group and they were progressing as fast as me, I added them to my friends list. Some of them are pulling ahead, but mostly I’m doing dungeons with atleast 1 or 2 guys I’ve played with before. Mostly I’ve encountered rather skilled players, but maybe I just got lucky.

That being said, you are best off with a class that can help the weakest link survive. Otherwise they might just be dead weight. So yes Guardian and warriors with supportive and tanky builds can be a buffer for people who like to take gratuitous damage. If you don’t like those I would recommend an ele or necro, unlike what some people said, they can add a lot to a team but they might need atleast one heavy in the team to be fully effective.

But again, more importantly than your class:

1) Think about your build, build it right and adapt to encounters. Don’t go into every fight with the exact same utility skills
2) Lead your team when no one else is doing it. Keep it positive, nobody listens to an kitten
3) Be good enough at the game to actually progress

Every class has the ability to bring massive amounts of group support. You’ll find people excelling at each and every class. Those are probably the people who are swapping around utility skills, traits, and even weapons/armor. Build to adapt = built to win.

That’s somewhat of a loaded question.

The most useful profession for a group relies at least partially on how aware everyone else in the group is. For example, a staff ele can be a huge boon to the party… provided people actually use blast/projectile finishers when the ele lays down fields. That’s not to say an ele can’t be good in a group without the help, but it is a night and day difference when combos happen.

I’ll try to give you an advice when playing dungeons. =)

Once you learn what every boss does, or what he is expected to do… pick your most appealing profession and start changing weapons, utilities and elites before every major fight.

Seriously, I don’t know why some people think they are bound to finish a dungeon without changing their skills to something that is way more useful against certain mobs/bosses. Guardians almost always use Greatswords, but hell some of the other weapons are far more useful in other is situations where the greatsword might get you killed.

It’s really not, atleast with one guardian you can still get instakilled if you dont pay attention (atleast at lvl 10+). Usually this doesnt happen, but 5 guardians really don’t add that much since protection stacks in duration and not in time and it slows killing speed.

Mace1 spam across 5 tanky sources with enough healing power to make it noticeable.
Yes, it’s not the quickest, but those tanky guardians still have about 3k attack.

This is complete bs. A conditionmancer can lay smack down on grp of mobs like no one else. Also some if these fights need constant, sustained DPS rather than burst. I have seen grps fall apart in the dredge from the mass of mobs while condition necro with epidemic freaking destroys them. Your list is way off because of lack of info and understanding. Also on the jellyfish boss, the adds are a non issue with a necro. Epidemic off the bosses conditions and they all die before they ever make it to any party member.

Oh, on the contrary. I have four toons on lv80 and seen plenty of dungeon play – ele, guardian, war and necro – and it’s the necro that sees the least use and feels the most useless in groups.
Excelling at killing non-veteran trash mobs is not something worth noticing, especially that everyone can do it really well. I just guess you haven’t seen a decent warrior/guardian in your dungeon groups or necro is your main toon and you’ve learnt to get stuff done – yes, it can get stuff done, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inferior to others at the moment.

I’m not talking only about the obvious bugs and broken skills, but its intrinsic design. You have to rely on conditions, and only bleeding/burning are damaging conditions. Power necros make little to no sense outside of specific sPvP teams, and i learned it the hard way, having to respec and recreate all my gear after going the power route.
The way how burning stacks and how easy to apply it is makes this condition unreliable and not particularly useful to spec for in dungeons. Yes, necros have limited means of applying it, but just getting it out of the way.
Then there’s bleeding. Yes, you can stack ~15 bleeds on one target and ~10 bleeds aoe; yes, you can get about ~130 damage per tick. Yes, you can burst it around with epidemic. At the expense of spreading your stats more as you have to make condition damage your main stat, at the expense of being useless against objects (gates, burrows, nests), at the risk of being useless against bosses with condition removal (heck, there’s even one that heals itself when it removes conditions, and does so often).
Then, after unloading your strong spells and epidemic, you’re autoattacking or just pondering the nature of the universe until you can apply those lots of bleeds again.
The 25 stack cap doesn’t help here either, with warriors applying bleeding on crits (even if they have just 100 condition damage, they still take slots with their bleeds), with eles applying bleeds in earth, with loads of bleeding flying around everywhere.

You’re still squishy as a necromancer, with low basic armor. The high hp pool helps to sustain a burst, but necros don’t really have enough health management skills to keep their hp high; on the contrary, eles rely on dynamic health management, with low hp pool but lots of means to keep it always up. Mesmers rely on deception and stealth as their way of survival, meaning they have more ways to not just soak damage and pray they are not targeted again in a while, but to completely avoid any incoming damage.
As a necro, you can only soak everything you get hit with, but there’s a limit to how many hits you can take, especially with mediocre healing from the skills on 6.

Necros provide some combo fields, but have next to no finishers, with their only two being a 20% projectile finisher on staff autoattack and double-blast finisher on staff 4, on long recharge and not really reliable to use as a finisher but as a condition removal. At the same time, they easily overwrite the important water and fire fields with their dark/poison fields, so they shouldn’t use their field-creating skills anywhere and anytime they like.

So to sum up necros:

• most bugged profession at the moment;
• squishy with decent soaking capabilities but no dynamic healing mechanics;
• required to spread stats on condition damage, making their non-condition attacks laughable with low power and losing out on survival;
• limited by the cap of condition stacks on targets;
• overwriting the more important fields with their dark/poison fields way too often;
• not much to do for a longer while after dropping all the cool skills – you can just autoattack with scepter, adding some bleeds, but it’s really really slow.

One 100b from a warrior can kill all that non-vet trash just as easily, with more armor, damage output, not relying on damaging conditions, not spreading stats… and so on.

Engineer’s on a grenade kit can rival a warrior’s DPS. People are starting to discover how powerful it is, pretty fun class to play as well. Also provide decent utility via elixirs and the elixir gun is pretty sweet.

Underrated class, people need to try it before they judge it. Grenade kit is seriously impressive DPS, as well as AoE and ranged.

In all honesty, most classes in this game have a particular build that will make them excel at a particular role, but people often judge a class too quickly to really think about what could be viable.

For example: Ele’s are usually built for DPS, but how many people make a support ele? Combine traits such as larger staff AoE, switching attunement grants boons and auras, throw on a cleric’s jewellery set. Situationally with out-support a guardian, they provide better AoE blinds and better straight heals, due to their skills scale better with healing power.

I don’t even know how people build engineer’s, but a p/v/t armoured, berserker jewellery engi on grenade kit shows out pretty insane AoE ranged damage, while also providing poison, chill, blind and bleeding on the same kit. Their elixirs are also amazing for sharing boons and there’s even one which helps res. Easily one of the highest DPS setups currently in PvE, if not the highest (Warriors may beat them).

Mesmer’s with crit damage and power instead of condition damage, their single target is insane (greatsword), and provide the generic mesmer utility. Healing mesmers are also pretty powerful, trait to have a shorter cooldown on shatters, take the appropriate other traits/skills, their flat heals do around 3k every 5-10 seconds with next to no healing power.

Not too familiar with necros, and sorry but I simply can’t try and make a ranger seem like it has a good build. Maybe someone else can.

What I’m trying to say is; take the time to read skills and traits and have an open mind. You might be surprised at what you can achieve with your class if you understand it better. Also helps to benefit your team(s) if you understand allies’ classes better.