Guild Wars 2

Now, before everyone says the obvious “all of them”, I ask in realistic terms, as one who has seen firsthand the raid community demand or ask for only certain classes.
And, will this ever change? I enjoy raids/raiding, always did way back to vanilla WOW. But Blizz killed it for me with making them to easy and gear scores and all the junk that sucked the fun out. But at least you could go on any toon as long as you filled a role. Raids should be about doing the content on a class you enjoy, not stacking the odds with the most OP of all the classes Now GW2 has raids, and I was having fun in them, until class restrictions got really crazy.
I was excited to see the new wing, in hopes of my fav class, Engi, seeing some love. Not the case. Ok, so I ditched him and went back to my DH, he was fun as well. Nope, not wanted. Raids have gotten to be so toxic I have only cleared VG (many times, lol),Gors and Escort. No further progression because I don’t play the “right” class.
This concept as a whole seems silly to me. As I have asked in other posts, why can’t any class be viable to do a raid? As long as I don’t come in with pvp or wvw gear or whatever, why is it so wrong? Now, on my Engi, don’t need condi…that’s fine, I can go power if that’s the case. But the class just gets excluded altogether.
Now, I am still fairly new to GW2 so this just may be the nature of how this game is done, I don’t know. Seems odd and an easy way to exclude ALOT of players, but who knows.
So, back to the OP. I am not a rock and I am willing to try and learn another class so that I can enjoy raids again. But at this stage what class? Will it change in 2 weeks? I see groups doing the new wing, which is said to be a bit easier (1st Boss perhaps) yet they run 2 mes,1-2 war and druids and the rest is Elementalists. Again, it could very well be my server or whatever but in LFG that’s all I ever see, with the occasional Necro asked for.
So, without ripping me a new one can anyone offer up some suggestions as to a class that wont be obsolete in a week (and yea, I know that cant be guaranteed but you get my point)?
This is mostly for the new wing but constructive suggestions for all doesn’t hurt. I am just trying to figure out a game plan and not waste time on classes that hold no value.
Thank you and sorry for the wall of woe…..

Joxer.6024:

Now, before everyone says the obvious “all of them”, I ask in realistic terms, as one who has seen firsthand the raid community demand or ask for only certain classes.
And, will this ever change?

Yes. One patch was enough to shake the meta already. Any future patch can do the same, and may see some classes go back on the list, while making others get removed from it.
Remember, that sometimes it can be a result of a change to single trait or skill.

No, this meta is not set in stone.

And there are no guarantees. I mean, i am reasonably sure, that Eles will remain useful, no matter what, but, knowing Anet, i wouldn’t really bet anything too valuable on it.

Most of the times the meta changes in the few weeks (1-3 weeks) after a balance patch most of the times, depending on the changes made. There is probably a balance patch coming out soon which might change the meta and make classes that are now less viable more viable and maybe the classes that are viable or ‘too’ viable a bit weaker.

I think overall if you don’t want to wait a few weeks till the balance patch comes out chronomancer, ps warrior and druid are solid choices. Alot has to happen to see these classes getting out of the raid meta. Also condi ranger seems pretty good in the new wing so you can fill 2 different roles with druid/ranger (heal role or dps role).

Keep in mind that the avarage raid player has an IQ that isn’t that great and they copy paste compositions and DPS benchmarks comparisons etc. from top guild like qT and SC. This causes for example that at the current meta ele is pretty much always used as a dps class in wings 1-3. The average raid player doesn’t seem to understand that a bad ele gets easily outdps’ed by a guard for example. The meta is made good if everyone plays their class perfectly, if not you can pretty much take everything you want.

As for what people run for the new wing, I don’t pug alot but i think people won’t use ele alot for boss 1 and 4 of the new wing, but i guess that still has to settle down in the comming days/weeks.

All of them except Necro and Revenant.

When a developer balances with a Sledgehammer, although they claim they don’t, you get a different meta every time a big balance patch appears. I believe there is a balance patch coming in the near future so if you can wait I’d suggest waiting for that, who knows what it might do.

Otherwise, Tempests are almost always needed for their DPS on big targets, Berserkers for Might and offensive buffs, Chronomancers for their great support/utility, Druids for their also great support/utility, Rangers for their great condition damage.
Guardians and Thieves are not in a horrible situation, I’d put them in good tier. Thief has great DPS but sadly not enough Support or any use other than DPS, so they are outclassed by others. Guardians provide reasonable support and dps. Both of them have stupidly easy rotations.
I’ve seen great success with condition Reapers on fights with multiple adds, that’s where they shine, but their usage is relatively low because there aren’t enough of those fights out there.
Engineers and Revenants are at the worst situation right now. Engineers can be amazing at condition dps but the rotation is very complex and you can achieve similar results with other builds with less complexity.

If I would rank them:
Top tier: Tempest, Berserker, Chronomancer, Druid and Ranger
Good tier: Dragonhunter and Daredevil
Mid tier: Reaper
Bottom tier: Engineer and Revenant

My best advice is to go for the big 3 buffers, Berserker, Chrono and Druid, as those are almost always needed (apparently everyone has a Tempest these days so there is more competition)

THANKS Doc!!!! That’s a huge help right there!!! Cheers

Heavily depends on bosses. Here is my list based on personal experience.

The meta:
chrono – needed for all fights, guaranteed spot due to quickness/alacrity/disorts etc.
druid – needed for all fights, guaranteed spot, healerrrsss…… duhh
war – needed for all fights, guaranteed spot, dem team buffs
ele – i would argue that you don’t necessary have to have ele, but they are one of the best dps atm, provide some group utility, basically guaranteed spot in all fights

The rest:
thief – only guilds and friends would take you, while they bring good dps, your average mindless sheep pug groups would rather blindly follow the meta and would probably kick you instantly
engi – condi engi is great for VG, escort…. and that is about it. You will have hard times finding a group that will take you for other bosses.
necro – great for VG, Matt, decent for w4 bosses. Once again, would have hard times competing vs ele for spot when joining pug groups.
rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/
guard – great for cairn, matt, deimos. Once again would need friends/guilds if you want to do other bosses. Pugs won’t take you instead of ele.

Necro is definitely worse than Engineer and Revenant. If you were to rank just the classes and not individual builds by tiers it would probably look like:

Tier 1: Mesmer, Druid, Ele, Warrior
Tier 2: Thief, Guardian, Engineer
Tier 3: Revenant
Tier 4: Necro

Could argue for putting Engi down to tier 3 since playing something like condi Ranger is comparable dps with a much simpler rotation, but a well played Engi still offers some of the best condi dps, while having a decent amount of utility (surprising amount of healing)

Necro is by far the worst. It sucks but for 4 years anet was on a crusade against ever splitting PvE and PvP balance, one unfortunate side of this is that Necro has, with a few exceptions, always been terrible in group content, and right now is not an exception. Maybe things will get better now that Anet has shown they’re willing to split PvE and PvP balance, but we’ll have to see. Even on fights like the ones in Wing 4 where condi necro is passable, things like condi Ranger are just flat out better.

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

Astralporing.1957:

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

This is nothing new really, especially if you pvp. There was always certain bias when it came to class balance.

Astralporing.1957:

So, no class is really secure.

Not true.

Ele, Warrior, and Mesmer have been a staple part of every meta and likely wont go anywhere anytime soon.

TexZero.7910:

Astralporing.1957:

So, no class is really secure.

Not true.

Ele, Warrior, and Mesmer have been a staple part of every meta and likely wont go anywhere anytime soon.

Druid too, probably. I don’t see them handing out equivalents to GotL and spotter any time soon. The biggest possible shake-up to warr, mes and druid (without a new expansion) would probably an increase of the buff cap to 10 targets, thereby reducing requirements for each class to one per raid.

My advice: The best time to try pugs is usually late into the evening depending on your time zone (I do around 7pm Eastern US/CA). Usually that’s when a lot of more laid back guilds are just looking for people to help practice encounters.

Also, I know it sucks, but it is probably best to try and get a few different classes up to par, even just another 2 helps (and DH is fine, you probably just ran into a group who had enough dps). It can be very consuming at first, but the good news is, the more you do it, the quicker the process gets. Go get your main to do fractals frequently and soon enough, you start getting enough stabilizing whatchamacallits to get some ascended weapons for your other classes. I hear around t4, you start farting out ascended regularly.

Just wait untill next week since Anet confirmed an balance patch

CptAurellian.9537:

The biggest possible shake-up to warr, mes and druid (without a new expansion) would probably an increase of the buff cap to 10 targets, thereby reducing requirements for each class to one per raid.

Won’t happen soon since Anet stated that increasing the cap has currently technical reasons. But at least they aren’t against it anymore, because when raids started they didn’t want to do it, because of some “Supergroup” BS.

But I think that some guys at anet are working on a solution right now. Hope that they can increase the cap sooner than later.

Astralporing.1957:

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

Actually, I think the reduction of effect of Facet of Nature was one that WAS aimed at raids. They wanted to make it harder to get permanent alacrity and quickness off one chronomancer, in order to make chronomancers less essential to raiding.

So they nerfed Facet of Nature to reduce the uptime… and the general response (and predictable if you think about it) was “fine, we’ll replace the rev with a second chrono and keep uptime high that way.”

draxynnic.3719:

Astralporing.1957:

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

Actually, I think the reduction of effect of Facet of Nature was one that WAS aimed at raids. They wanted to make it harder to get permanent alacrity and quickness off one chronomancer, in order to make chronomancers less essential to raiding.

So they nerfed Facet of Nature to reduce the uptime… and the general response (and predictable if you think about it) was “fine, we’ll replace the rev with a second chrono and keep uptime high that way.”

Chronos could reach 100% boon duration even before the facet nerf, so it has nothing to do with that. Also Alacrity is not affected in any way by the facet.

Coconut.7082:

draxynnic.3719:

Astralporing.1957:

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

Actually, I think the reduction of effect of Facet of Nature was one that WAS aimed at raids. They wanted to make it harder to get permanent alacrity and quickness off one chronomancer, in order to make chronomancers less essential to raiding.

So they nerfed Facet of Nature to reduce the uptime… and the general response (and predictable if you think about it) was “fine, we’ll replace the rev with a second chrono and keep uptime high that way.”

Chronos could reach 100% boon duration even before the facet nerf, so it has nothing to do with that. Also Alacrity is not affected in any way by the facet.

Exactly, nerfing the facet was also because of WvW, and because of what also happened with the SoI (because of WvW too) bringing two Chronos geared for 100% boon duration became a much better option than bringing a Rev because it would reach similar results while bringing perma alacrity to compensate.

Ran wing 4 all the way to Deimos with my rev and a thief or two. We stopped on boss for because we were sleepy so I’ll clean it up tonight. On samarog we had two people wipe early on and carried them to a kill. We ended up with almost 2 minutes on the timer so our dps was reasonable. There’s definitely meta class but as long as people know what theyre doing almost any combination will work. We alot of druids for cairn and we cleared that too. I haven’t had anybody really bother my rev in pugs ever. Cleared every wing with both my rev and chrono and it’s been great. One option people with less meta classes is to tagg up and lead your own instance.

I’ll be reiterating some solid investments towards a class profession here and then I’ll add a bit of why I ranked it in this way.
Tier 1 – Chronomancer | Druid | Warrior
Tier 2 – Tempest | Guardian | Thief
Tier 3 – Necromancer
Tier 4 – Engineer | Revenant

Chrono – lots of utility + really good as tank for it’s myriad evades, invuls, blocks + 2 dodges.
Druid – healers + dps buff (Grace of land) + Lots of cc + fury uptime (^ 20% crit chance)
Warrior – might bots + CC
Tempest – highest burst dps
Thief – lots of dodges + good dps
Guardian – good dps + stability/protection upkeep
Necromancer – Transfusion to pull people down + small group constant heal when dps boss + epidemic + can fulfill roles of kiting/flakking as perma ranged
Engineer – good for condi dps but complex
Revenant – dps + good cc

Overall, each profession brings to the squad something beneficial but if you PuG, Chronomancer, Druid, Warrior are solid investments. Guardian is pretty good too, especially for Matthias.

I first suggest using meta for Warrior as it has the easiest rotation and is mandatory in many PuG raids as might bots to get the hang of all the mechanics for the bosses, then expand to other professions and join a raid guild. Once in a raid guild, you don’t have to worry much about meta builds since by then you’re familiar with the boss mechanics and you can gear your profession (Revenant or Engineer) to better suite your squad without worrying about Meta builds. Of course, this is just my opinion on what I think would be most suitable as you already have Guardian geared so swapping over to Warrior shouldn’t be an issue if you’re willing to utilize the ascended armor stat transfers. (Meta is required because when PuGGing, you’re meeting a complete stranger and expect them to have at the minimum, suitable gear to fulfill their intended role (might bot, tank, healer, dps).

And a bit of an encouragement, don’t get frustrated and always try to keep a cool mind (physically and mentally). Read guides and ask questions! I hope you progress far with raids!

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

In the current meta, the only classes that will never be asked for are rev, thief, and engi. Engi and thief definitely are viable in the DPS role, but don’t specifically bring anything unique to the table. Anet has said they are taking a look at engi’s role in pve. Necro and guardian are not “core”, but come in handy for some of the fights. Guardian specifically is useful in some of the new raid fights.

I suggest that everyone who raids should have access to at least one of the core classes: ranger, ele, mesmer, warrior. Once you have that down, you can work on your niche picks and try bringing them in. If you develop a network of friends and guildies who you raid with, and show them your skill, you’re more likely to be able to bring off-meta picks more often. At the end of the day, anyone who is only able to play one class will be looked down upon due to the limitations you put on your group’s comp. Flexibility is key. I was a hard mesmer main before raids, but now I play 6 classes in order to be flexible. If you are stubborn about only wanting to play one certain class, and that class is not a viable one in the current meta, it says more about your personality than the game design.

And of course we’re all waiting for “make rev great again”. It just doesn’t have a place in the current meta due to the nature of buff sharing and how many other support classes are required in the mirror comp. If we see something like an increase in number of targets per ability, I’m sure rev will be viable.

I won’t be happy with anything less than to have either Necro brought into the inner circle or to see the inner circle brought down to our level.

Curo.2483:

In the current meta, the only classes that will never be asked for are rev, thief, and engi. Engi and thief definitely are viable in the DPS role, but don’t specifically bring anything unique to the table. Anet has said they are taking a look at engi’s role in pve. Necro and guardian are not “core”, but come in handy for some of the fights. Guardian specifically is useful in some of the new raid fights.

I suggest that everyone who raids should have access to at least one of the core classes: ranger, ele, mesmer, warrior. Once you have that down, you can work on your niche picks and try bringing them in. If you develop a network of friends and guildies who you raid with, and show them your skill, you’re more likely to be able to bring off-meta picks more often. At the end of the day, anyone who is only able to play one class will be looked down upon due to the limitations you put on your group’s comp. Flexibility is key. I was a hard mesmer main before raids, but now I play 6 classes in order to be flexible. If you are stubborn about only wanting to play one certain class, and that class is not a viable one in the current meta, it says more about your personality than the game design.

And of course we’re all waiting for “make rev great again”. It just doesn’t have a place in the current meta due to the nature of buff sharing and how many other support classes are required in the mirror comp. If we see something like an increase in number of targets per ability, I’m sure rev will be viable.

In my experience, I command many PuG raids so my job is usually stuck as Chrono and in my static guild runs, I’m always Chrono. It’s a difficult class to play because you’re more of a support/tank avoiding mechanics and trying to survive. So a solid choice if you really don’t want to be malleable is to invest towards a Chronomancer.

Mitch.4781:

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

lol, let’s try being serious here.

Necro is the worst class to bring to a raid. Even Revenant is better. Their damage is near the bottom and they offer no utility. The only thing they can do well is clear adds but, there isn’t a single fight where clearing adds is important enough or difficult enough to justify bringing a necro. Every fight that has adds all you do is have the chrono use focus 4 to group them up, and then your eles aoe them down.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Mitch.4781:

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

lol, let’s try being serious here.

Necro is the worst class to bring to a raid. Even Revenant is better. Their damage is near the bottom and they offer no utility. The only thing they can do well is clear adds but, there isn’t a single fight where clearing adds is important enough or difficult enough to justify bringing a necro. Every fight that has adds all you do is have the chrono use focus 4 to group them up, and then your eles aoe them down.

Challenge mote for mursaat overseer in wing 4. Many of the best/easiest/fastest clears I’ve seen in this fight include necro.

There really isn’t an argument here. Every class can raid. There is just this false perception that only elementalists can do damage. The damage checks are not that tough. Player skill is much more important than class in the long run. Hopefully with dps meters PUGs start to see their terrible eles do less damage than most condi warriors and will start considering other DPS classes.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Mitch.4781:

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

lol, let’s try being serious here.

Necro is the worst class to bring to a raid. Even Revenant is better. Their damage is near the bottom and they offer no utility. The only thing they can do well is clear adds but, there isn’t a single fight where clearing adds is important enough or difficult enough to justify bringing a necro. Every fight that has adds all you do is have the chrono use focus 4 to group them up, and then your eles aoe them down.

Challenge mote for mursaat overseer in wing 4. Many of the best/easiest/fastest clears I’ve seen in this fight include necro.

There really isn’t an argument here. Every class can raid. There is just this false perception that only elementalists can do damage. The damage checks are not that tough. Player skill is much more important than class in the long run. Hopefully with dps meters PUGs start to see their terrible eles do less damage than most condi warriors and will start considering other DPS classes.

What I’m really hoping for is that now that DPS meters are less verboten, we get more aggregation of raid logs, which let the community see actual numbers across large numbers of players — not just their own personal (and tending to be biased) experience.

Over in WoW land, where that has been going on for a long time, it’s actually pretty solidly possible for players to see when a class is really over- or under- performing.

In some cases this has even led to significant changes in classes despite the developers literally saying that there was a much higher DPS rotation for the class, just nobody worked it out yet. They accepted that, unless they wanted to announce that, they simply had to accept the players didn’t figure it out and change the class … and they did, to fix that perf issue, without letting someone guess that, and become wildly OP.

Yeah, those loggers are great tools, if the quality of data is sufficient. No idea what GW2 technically permits, though.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Mitch.4781:

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

lol, let’s try being serious here.

Necro is the worst class to bring to a raid. Even Revenant is better. Their damage is near the bottom and they offer no utility. The only thing they can do well is clear adds but, there isn’t a single fight where clearing adds is important enough or difficult enough to justify bringing a necro. Every fight that has adds all you do is have the chrono use focus 4 to group them up, and then your eles aoe them down.

Popular? No. But no utility? That is far from true. Necro has a ton of utility, utility that is unnecessary (because it is redundant) in good groups. But most groups are not good groups.

-epi: clearing mobs is real. Half the time someone downs at xera it is because mobs are not being cleared enough. Useful at sloth too, and gorse if doing updrafts.
-transfusion: save your whole raid from wiping at sloth by pulling them out of green poison.
-flesh golem: probably the strongest ranged cc possible, can be done further than 1200 range.
-projectile protection: CPC has good uptime (better than feedback), and unlike feedback/WOR, it destroys projectiles, which means it even works against elite slubblings.
-Plague signet: Ever try raiding while perma chilled?

thrag.9740:

-epi: clearing mobs is real. Half the time someone downs at xera it is because mobs are not being cleared enough. Useful at sloth too, and gorse if doing updrafts.

Or you can just have a mesmer pull mobs, and then have eles use lava font, meteor storm, overloads, ice bow 4, fgs 5, etc.

thrag.9740:

-transfusion: save your whole raid from wiping at sloth by pulling them out of green poison.

If you have an issue with people going down in poison then you have options like search and rescue, druid elite spirit, and warrior banner elite.

thrag.9740:

-flesh golem: probably the strongest ranged cc possible, can be done further than 1200 range.

Not sure if it competes with electric wyvern against large targets, but any competent group should have no issue with breakbars. Warriors have head butt, druids have wyvern/moa, eles have ice bow 4 or lightning hammer 3, mesmers have, things I think I actually don’t know much about mesmer.

thrag.9740:

-projectile protection: CPC has good uptime (better than feedback), and unlike feedback/WOR, it destroys projectiles, which means it even works against elite slubblings.

Not sure of any fight where projectile destruction is important enough to justify bringing a necro. Even against sloth the slublings are easily grouped and killed. If projectile destruction is really any issue you could have eles switch to dagger/focus like some groups did when wing 2 first came out, but that should be unnecessary.

thrag.9740:

-Plague signet: Ever try raiding while perma chilled?

No and I’m not sure why that would be an issue.

CptAurellian.9537:

Yeah, those loggers are great tools, if the quality of data is sufficient. No idea what GW2 technically permits, though.

Being a curious sort, I checked. Some condition damage from other players in your squad is estimated, but all their power damage should be accurate. Ideally something like BGDM will win the fight, and use the “everyone sends data to a central server” model, allowing accurate recording of multiple concurrent players.

(or anet just cave and add logs to core. that’d be a winner.)

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Mitch.4781:

Necro is very popular , especially in wing 2. Epi’s remain their best utility.

lol, let’s try being serious here.

Necro is the worst class to bring to a raid. Even Revenant is better. Their damage is near the bottom and they offer no utility. The only thing they can do well is clear adds but, there isn’t a single fight where clearing adds is important enough or difficult enough to justify bringing a necro. Every fight that has adds all you do is have the chrono use focus 4 to group them up, and then your eles aoe them down.

Um have you ever done wing 2? Necro is so great there. Epying the adds means that necro will OFTEN be near the top of dps. You realise that epidemic isn’t just about adds right? It’s about EPYING the conditions on trash back to the boss, thus draining him a lot faster. The same goes for all the trash and bosses on trio.Its also great in Matthias for condi removal, its sheer tankiness and the bloodline which can not only heal people but pull them to you to ress easily. It’s also very strong on the escort run with holding wargs and again epidemic.

Necro has a lot of utility. CPC is a very strong skill along with blood is power, which is very useful if condi groups are separated from a PS warrior. Flesh Golem has one of the STRONGEST effects on Breakbars. Excellent for SLoth and the Matthias sacrifice.

In an ideal world, where you have really skilled players and run with a constant 10 man, then yeah I could see your point. But there are simply SO many bad ele’s out there. Necro is more forgiving and it’s sheer health points and shroud give it much better survivability.

I think you are looking at things from a basic dps perspective. On a golem in the aerodrome, no they will never out dps a staff ele. In the real world, they are MUCH more relevant. I will take good necros over rotten eles any day of the week.

Mitch.4781:

Um have you ever done wing 2? Necro is so great there. Epying the adds means that necro will OFTEN be near the top of dps. You realise that epidemic isn’t just about adds right? It’s about EPYING the conditions on trash back to the boss, thus draining him a lot faster. The same goes for all the trash and bosses on trio.Its also great in Matthias for condi removal, its sheer tankiness and the bloodline which can not only heal people but pull them to you to ress easily. It’s also very strong on the escort run with holding wargs and again epidemic.

Necro has a lot of utility. CPC is a very strong skill along with blood is power, which is very useful if condi groups are separated from a PS warrior. Flesh Golem has one of the STRONGEST effects on Breakbars. Excellent for SLoth and the Matthias sacrifice.

In an ideal world, where you have really skilled players and run with a constant 10 man, then yeah I could see your point. But there are simply SO many bad ele’s out there. Necro is more forgiving and it’s sheer health points and shroud give it much better survivability.

I think you are looking at things from a basic dps perspective. On a golem in the aerodrome, no they will never out dps a staff ele. In the real world, they are MUCH more relevant. I will take good necros over rotten eles any day of the week.

I would love to see far more people with this attitude and decisionmaking when forming pug squads.

In the past weeks I’ve seen so many groups for Matthias only wanting one necro and persisting on tempests although dps temp is much harder to play there and those groups were constantly failing and got disbanded without a kill. My advices to pick additional necros knowing that several people of the squad could change to it were rejected with the reason we would lack on dps. But this is not true for pugs on Matt. Although you can’t epi things and not using cpc, the tankyness, the healing + condition removal with bloodmagic makes it easier for the group to survive and keeping scholar buff up for the rest resulting in more dps than with eles going into downstates way too fast and often. Necro dps is enough for Matt and even after the hard nerf very viable to play there because it simplifies the attempt for the rest of the group so heavily.
With that in mind people wouldn’t call for 200 LI +, so the overall access to the “harder” bosses would be increased as well.

I know the most skilled players want to go fast and they are able to kill Matt with a better team comp in terms of dps but it’s unbelievable how many pugs following this strat without exceptions, without having this higher needed skill and leading to fails instead of going the relaxed way to get the kill.

Vinceman.4572:

Mitch.4781:

I think you are looking at things from a basic dps perspective. On a golem in the aerodrome, no they will never out dps a staff ele. In the real world, they are MUCH more relevant. I will take good necros over rotten eles any day of the week.

I would love to see far more people with this attitude and decisionmaking when forming pug squads.

I’m really hoping that now we can get reasonable logs because DPS meters are mostly permitted, we will see the sort of “real world” aggregation of results from people running the raids that WoW has had for approximately ever.

I’m pretty cynical about people citing the golem results because back in the day I did a bunch of work with SimCraft in wow, and simulating on the equivalent of the golem (eg: boss stands there and takes punches until it dies) gave wildly divergent results to the real world.

Turns out those mechanics actually do make a difference.