Guild Wars 2

I will admit that my raiding experience is very minor, so for you veteran raiders, based on what we saw of the new Elite Specs last weekend, are there any you feel are serious contenders for raids?

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m stating all of this based on what we saw last weekend, and if things change between then and release a lot of what I say may be totally irrelevant/wrong.

Winners

• Condition DPS Renegade is going to be crazy good and will be best DPS for a lot of bosses.
• Firebrand is a real contender for team quickness uptime coupled with a DPS Chronomancer for alacrity. This is going to be close, so I’m interested in seeing how it plays with real encounters / golem testing.
• Condition Soulbeast is an improvement over base condition Ranger, but we have yet to see by how much. Power Soulbeast is hilarious with Sic’ Em’s 40% damage modifier, and may even result in a totally relevant power build for Ranger.
• Holosmith will certainly be better than Tools for power Engineer, and may even be worth taking over Tools for condition Engineer as well. Rotation and golem testing will be needed.

Neutral

• Scourge is lackluster unless they find some way in new raids to make barrier relevant. Its damage is acceptable and at least doesn’t require an ice field, but it isn’t winning any awards.
• Weaver is really complicated, and loses on a lot of the benefits of Tempest. It’s a tough call, really, and some of [qT]‘s initial rotation testing seemed promising. I’m hopeful it’ll be an improvement for staff Ele at the least, though I still think Fresh Air builds are dead in the water.

Losers

• Deadeye will be a potential improvement for D/D power Thief, but it won’t be enough to push it over Daredevil it seems. Rifle is terrible for organized PvE, and Deadeye doesn’t support condition builds at all.
• Spellbreaker is pretty bad for organized PvE.
• Mirage is pretty bad for organized PvE.