Guild Wars 2

A few days ago i was doing some dungeon runs with a few friends and we basically started talking about the ’’true’’ optimized party setup. Now, we all know that the 4 warrior 1 mesmer meta isn’t the fastest by a long shot, so i was thinking. What is the best party composition in your opinion?

I had the following in mind.

(2) 1 Warrior for the green banner (Maybe green and red), might take a second one over a ranger.
(0) 1 Ranger for the spotter trait and the frost spirit for party wide DPS increase while dealing great damage with sword auto.
(2) 1 Elementalist with a lightning hammer and a Fiery Greatsword for FGS rushing bosses after they are pulled into a wall.
(0) 1 Mesmer for pulls, reflects and timewarps, helping the Elementalist with their FGS rushes and optimizing DPS by wall pulling.
(0) 1 Guardian for additional reflects and extremely good damage on their sword auto when traited, although it’s not Warrior tier.

Keep in mind this was just a quick train of thought of mine, so it’ll probably be flawed. I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on this matter, though.

There is no such thing as an optimized group due to the sheer versatility of all classes and diversity of boss and trash fights. Though I will say the highest DPS group I’ve ever had was 2 warriors 2 engis and myself as an ele, the support skills were also abundant.

You might be correct in that matter, but i’m purely speaking from a theoretical aspect right now. I’m just curious which party composition would churn out the most damage while keeping good utility at the same time. All classes described in the OP would increase the party damage greatly, save for the guardian i suppose. The guardian does great damage and churns out a ton of reflects and blinds when traited, pairing that with the elementalist LH, you should be able to keep up around 60-70% blind times on random trash, which in turn increases the survivability of the party greatly. Again, this is just some theorycrafting, i haven’t tested this composition ingame yet.

It would probably contain warrior + ranger for banners and frost spirit. Im guessing some LH eles on top of that, maybe a thief and probably an engi for vuln and might. You dont actually need mesmers or guardians. They just contribute to comfort really.

Then in theory it’d probably be 5 ele’s in perfect sync with various field + blast and leap combos providing the maxed might stacks and 5 FGS extreme damage while cycling elements for permanent protection/healing. In theory of course.

Bluefox.9580:

Then in theory it’d probably be 5 ele’s in perfect sync with various field + blast and leap combos providing the maxed might stacks and 5 FGS extreme damage while cycling elements for permanent protection/healing. In theory of course.

Your missing out on banners with that comp. Thats quite a big difference.

Bluefox.9580:

Then in theory it’d probably be 5 ele’s in perfect sync with various field + blast and leap combos providing the maxed might stacks and 5 FGS extreme damage while cycling elements for permanent protection/healing. In theory of course.

You would however miss out on the banners from the warrior, which is roughly a 20% party wide DPS increase, and the spotter + frost spirit which is roughly a 12% DPS increase. Also, each elementalist conjures two fiery greatswords upon the skill cast, so having more than two would be kind of redundant. If there isn’t enough might, you can always throw in a mesmer and make it use signet of inspiration and Time Warp.

5 guardians.
No more no less.

5 players with brain, working fingers, a voip (and maybe some good laugh).

Everything else is just a plus.

/thread

The problem with the OP’s ideal comp is they have no way to get 25 stacks of vuln maintained consistently on bosses.

25 Might
25 vuln
Perma-Fury
Banners
Spotter/FS if you can manage it after covering the above.

That’s the framework basically. Within that, the Might and banners are easy because a fire field and banners can be handled by 1 or 2 warriors. Fury is is covered by Warrior + Ranger (who also covers frost spirit and spotter).

Vuln is tricky, and probably the only single class who can get 20+ stacks on their own are Engies. So as Guang has said, Warrior, Ranger, Engie is the core since it covers every desireable buff. The last two slots you fill based on the instance. I would argue Thief is invaluable for quite a few dungeons. Mesmer has it’s well known uses. And Guardian utility and dps is also well known to be useful.

Ele has one highly abusable mechanic, but for general purpose dungeon running it is much like a Thief, except instead of trash blinds and Shadow Refuge it brings easier Might stacking. So it’s your call to which you need/want.

This is for general purpose-all comers dungeon teams, for specific speed clear records you are obviously going to tailor your party comp to whatever the instance dictates, which may have special circumstances that make a less desirable profession more useful.

alternatively, you can stack 4 warriors and a Mesmer and get a team that is 95% as effective as the ideal group and put in significantly less effort for those nights when you dont care about max efficiency you just want a turn off brain faceroll session.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Spotter/FS if you can manage it after covering the above.

what do you mean with that?

3 berkerker warriors with GS, guardian, mesmer – perfect for every dungeon. Insane damage with buff and protection

Btw, never seen ranger in my party in dungeons (did dungeon master with random pugs from lfg)

PainShot.7154:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Spotter/FS if you can manage it after covering the above.

what do you mean with that?

He means if your group can’t get to 25 might, vuln, or permafury, you are better off getting that rather than bringing a ranger for Spotter. Of course, the ranger will provide some of the above, too, but say you are 4/5 and sitting at 15 might and 10 vuln, you will benefit more from an engie or something instead who can get you the rest of the way.

PainShot.7154:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Spotter/FS if you can manage it after covering the above.

what do you mean with that?

I mean, if you aren’t capping Might and Vuln and Fury worrying about Ranger buffs isn’t super important.

3 berkerker warriors with GS, guardian, mesmer – perfect for every dungeon. Insane damage with buff and protection

Thats a good party composition, but we aren’t talking about good, we are talking about the best.

Btw, never seen ranger in my party in dungeons (did dungeon master with random pugs from lfg)

We aren’t talking about bad pug groups, we are talking about perfect world dream teams for organized groups.

As someone already stated before there isn’t one optimal setup for all content. The “optimal party composition” differs from path to path, if there even exists one.

Its better to take 4warriors for dps 1 mesmer for control. You could probably get a little better if you toke only 2 or 3 warriors and then a hammer ele instead. but barely noticeable.

This is going to result in the same garbage that the ‘dps’ thread resulted in the other week.

xsquared.1926:

A few days ago i was doing some dungeon runs with a few friends and we basically started talking about the ’’true’’ optimized party setup. Now, we all know that the 4 warrior 1 mesmer meta isn’t the fastest by a long shot, so i was thinking. What is the best party composition in your opinion?

I had the following in mind.

(2) 1 Warrior for the green banner (Maybe green and red), might take a second one over a ranger.
(0) 1 Ranger for the spotter trait and the frost spirit for party wide DPS increase while dealing great damage with sword auto.
(2) 1 Elementalist with a lightning hammer and a Fiery Greatsword for FGS rushing bosses after they are pulled into a wall.
(0) 1 Mesmer for pulls, reflects and timewarps, helping the Elementalist with their FGS rushes and optimizing DPS by wall pulling.
(0) 1 Guardian for additional reflects and extremely good damage on their sword auto when traited, although it’s not Warrior tier.

Keep in mind this was just a quick train of thought of mine, so it’ll probably be flawed. I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on this matter, though.

I would remove the Mesmer for an Engineer and a Guardian for something else. Guardians get in the way because of the Light fields, extremely unsynergetic with Elementalists and their 25 stacks of might.

Mesmer is only good for Portal and Timewarp. They are terrible due to low damage.

Engineer can stack 25 stacks of AoE vulnerability for additional 25% dps.

I’m going to keep spouting this till its true.
One Warrior for banners and Empower Allies
One Guardian for control and Aegis to maintain those using Scholar Runes.
Three Elementalists – would have to tinker with how many would need to Vuln and might stack so there’s no excess of either. Remaining Ele/s can go balls deep DPS traits.
Maybe even replace Guardian with another Elementalist if the path is easy enough. Three to four Ele’s could juggle any projectile skills required with Focus.
Bam perma blind, at least one FGS for every single encounter, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.

Dolan.3071:

Three to four Ele’s could juggle any projectile skills required with Focus.

but by using focus it means the ele can’t use FGS or LH where as guardians and mesmers don’t really have to give up anything to provide reflects