Guild Wars 2

It’s amazing how self sufficient warriors and guardians are in berserker gear, yet if I want to run a full berserker s/d lightning hammer elementalist and land in a mediocre to bad PuG, my life becomes 100x harder than if I had just gone the route of the Guardian or Warrior.

And the worst part? Despite the effort to succeed with that setup I still do less damage than a berk guard or warrior since I need all these team reliant debuffs to be on the target and high protection uptimes and projectile reflection to not get 1-2 shot by some mob.

It’s been well over a year and Guardians and Warriors still benefit from being the most practical and well rounded classes in the game with high damage potential, support, and staying power that none of the casters can afford to bring without heavy team coordination.

Yeah, pretty much. The main reason for this seems to be that their balancing efforts are hugely disproportionately skewed toward pvp.

Also true for thieves , I was using my thief back then , but when Im the only one in zerker gear with 10k hp and 1,9k armor with a terrible PUG , you will go down first if they are cleric \ PVT users . I would suggest to roll warr if you’re forced to pug , because you can carry bads with a war .

Well until they completely separate PVE and PVP skills like they did in GW1 this will keep happening. They are mostly balancing for PVP these days at the expense of the 80% of the other content in the game. But they already said they wont separate it because its too much to keep up with sooo…

a t s e.9614:

Also true for thieves , I was using my thief back then , but when Im the only one in zerker gear with 10k hp and 1,9k armor with a terrible PUG , you will go down first if they are cleric \ PVT users . I would suggest to roll warr if you’re forced to pug , because you can carry bads with a war .

Adding insult to the injury, they’re probably thumping their chest because they’re alive in their pvt/clerics. Just gotta choose party well.

It’s just amazing. The amount of debuff/reflection stacking you need to do to even survive in places like 40+ ascalonian mobs, or attacks from charr mobs that have no real telling animations and can remove 90% of your health as an elementalist in berserker.

Meanwhile the warrior and guardian have several invulnerability options in addition to their higher effective health to continue doing high damage where the elementalist not only risks getting 2-shot, but has to switch to a water attunement and waste globals healing and not doing damage compared to the endure pain warrior landing axe auto crits mostly unbuffed for 3-4k.

And all this with a healing signet that is far superior to the ele healing signet.

As an elementalist you don’t even get to use daggers or scepter since the autoattacks on both weapons, especially the scepter, are so weak. If an ele wants to do any competitive damage, he MUST use lightning hammer conjure.

I can’t help but feel like a lot of the issues would be resolved if they would just close the gaps in health some. The huge difference in surivability between professions isn’t really compensated for by anything else, and Thieves and Eles struggle hard with attrition in a lot of the content without getting all that much in return for it.

Having a 10k difference in base health at level 80 is too much. It should be more like 5 or 6k.

Oh, and they need to correct ranged weapons across the board – they pretty much all have poorly tuned autoattacks and do too little damage. It’s supposed to be a risk vs. reward thing but in actuality it just screws the game up because certain professions are kinda supposed to stay at range and consequently they are punished.

Define caster before you create a thread that will turn into calling everything an exploit.

Gnat.9405:

Define caster before you create a thread that will turn into calling everything an exploit.

What is there to define. Elementalist, mesmer, necromancer. Anyone that’s not a guardian or warrior is on the same boat.

Einlanzer.1627:

I can’t help but feel like a lot of the issues would be resolved if they would just close the gaps in health some. The huge difference in surivability between professions isn’t really compensated for by anything else, and Thieves and Eles struggle hard with attrition in a lot of the content without getting all that much in return for it.

Having a 10k difference in base health at level 80 is too much. It should be more like 5 or 6k.

Oh, and they need to correct ranged weapons across the board – they pretty much all have poorly tuned autoattacks and do too little damage. It’s supposed to be a risk vs. reward thing but in actuality it just screws the game up because certain professions are kinda supposed to stay at range and consequently they are punished.

It’s just beyond me how classes with superior survivability in pve like warrior and guardian can be matching or be even close to classes with much less survival.

Thief, mesmer, and elementalist should do considerably better damage than warriors and guardians to account for the risk they take in melee. As it currently is, in practical terms the average warrior and damage are able to provide much better sustained damage in addition to being strong utility classes whose utility is EXCLUSIVE to them. No other class does banner buffs, and no other class can match the reflection/aoe stability/aegis uptimes of guardians.

Otherwise, what’s the point.

If my Necro is built as melee, is he a caster?

a full zerker war has 2 dodge rolls and a block from sword 5 or evade from gs 3 thats it for defence and if he wants to have max dmng starting of he wastes a dodge for the extra dmng bonus of not having max endurance

ele has 2 dodges , arcane shield and blind from auto attack with hammer or evade on fgs 3

anything that can one shot one will more then likely one shot the other , all those exclusive buffs/utility wars n guards have everyone in the party gets so eles can make as much use of em as the wars n guards

Gnat.9405:

If my Necro is built as melee, is he a caster?

Yes, he casts spells. You know, that big skeletal magic bite he does with his dagger auto, or his dagger #2 is a spell. Guardians are caster/melee hybrids. Your necro also puts down magical wells and when he enters death shroud he casts.

Bogy.2953:

a full zerker war has 2 dodge rolls and a block from sword 5 or evade from gs 3 thats it for defence and if he wants to have max dmng starting of he wastes a dodge for the extra dmng bonus of not having max endurance

ele has 2 dodges , arcane shield and blind from auto attack with hammer or evade on fgs 3

anything that can one shot one will more then likely one shot the other

Arcane Shield=Endure Pain. Don’t use utilities without including your own.

And no, a 17-18k HP berk warrior will not get 1 shot by what 1-shots an 11k hp berzerker elementalist. Stop lying.

And let’s not even mention healing signets. You get a passive 400ish heal regen on top of your large health pool and higher defense rating while doing the damage an elementalist needs full debuffs and boons for to match with a NON MAINHAND WEAPON. Not a single one of the elementalist mainhand weapons comes even close to competing with warrior weapons if you don’t spec lightning hammer.

The problem is how PvE and PvP is being balanced under the same umbrella. No, I’m quite sure they CAN keep up because even cheap F2P games like Dragon Nest balances the 2 game modes differently.

On a side note, it seems Mesmers can handle themselves fine. I guess it’s because they’re a class which pretty much stays at max 1200 range and their melee skills are designed to hit and run.

Zenith.7301:

Gnat.9405:

If my Necro is built as melee, is he a caster?

Yes, he casts spells. You know, that big skeletal magic bite he does with his dagger auto, or his dagger #2 is a spell. Guardians are caster/melee hybrids. Your necro also puts down magical wells and when he enters death shroud he casts.

Bogy.2953:

a full zerker war has 2 dodge rolls and a block from sword 5 or evade from gs 3 thats it for defence and if he wants to have max dmng starting of he wastes a dodge for the extra dmng bonus of not having max endurance

ele has 2 dodges , arcane shield and blind from auto attack with hammer or evade on fgs 3

anything that can one shot one will more then likely one shot the other

Arcane Shield=Endure Pain. Don’t use utilities without including your own.

And no, a 17-18k HP berk warrior will not get 1 shot by what 1-shots an 11k hp berzerker elementalist. Stop lying.

And let’s not even mention healing signets. You get a passive 400ish heal regen on top of your large health pool and higher defense rating while doing the damage an elementalist needs full debuffs and boons for to match with a NON MAINHAND WEAPON. Not a single one of the elementalist mainhand weapons comes even close to competing with warrior weapons if you don’t spec lightning hammer.

wars dont take endure pain they take fgj banner and sig of persic or another banner if they are the only one in the party. conjure eles take aracne shield hammer and arcane wave

hp dont matter frac 40+ ascalon wars will one shot anyone in full zerk alpha will one shot anyone that dont dodge

health regen from sig dont matter you are ethire getting one shot as full zerk or you burst everything down and survive thru use of blinds/blocks/reflects

eles have accses to the most personal dmng amplifiers of any profession so no wars aren’t going to outdamage you

Zenith.7301:

Gnat.9405:

If my Necro is built as melee, is he a caster?

Yes, he casts spells. You know, that big skeletal magic bite he does with his dagger auto, or his dagger #2 is a spell. Guardians are caster/melee hybrids. Your necro also puts down magical wells and when he enters death shroud he casts.

A bit off-topic, but thank you. I think you just clarified for me why I’ve been enjoying playing my Sylvari guardian in Kessex Hills this last week. He runs with Staff/Scepter-Torch and Meditations, and he’s been kiting and dodge-rolling like crazy to dispel poison during the Toxic events. Playing him as a caster is a very different experience from my GS/Mace-Shield melee guardian with her shouts.

Depends how good you are and if you know how to dodge.
Yesterday played FOTM 44 (?) with Zerker Thief, he seemed to do just fine.

You could always go full zerker scepter guardian. You’re basically a light elemental mage that does tons of dmg.

clint.5681:

Well until they completely separate PVE and PVP skills like they did in GW1 this will keep happening. They are mostly balancing for PVP these days at the expense of the 80% of the other content in the game. But they already said they wont separate it because its too much to keep up with sooo…

The thing is, the issue being raised has nothing to do with PVE and PVP skills….it’s to do with the base stats of the professions.

well, you see, i used to be an ele, and thought range wasnt good in the game, then I rolled a mesmer and my goodness. And yes, I have a zerker guard, and i also agree, eles are in a really bad place in PvE overall indeed. But oh well, GW2 stands for Guards & Warriors

Mesmers and necros are actually quite survivable in pve. I agree that eles are extremely squishy, though.

Necros have an amazing damage mitigation mechanic in Death Shroud, and Mesmers just actually never have to engage the enemy in PvE because of all their clones and the fact that they are just a max-range class.

Eles…. they don’t have much to stop themselves form being beaten to a pulp.

Please don’t derail my thread. The current meta is melee because melee does the most damage, and damage is the way to make fights the safest as extending the fight is a losing gamble.

I’m addressing how in a meta of melee only guardians and warriors seem to be able to function decently in PuGs as self sufficient units.

Yes, ele can work. BUT YOU REQUIRE TEAM SUPPORT TO DO SO.

Get that through your head. A warrior supplies himself with might and fury and vuln stacking and all he needs to do damage, and has high baseline survival. Casters are not afforded this luxury.

If you don’t have a team that coordinates guardian walls and aegis and prot uptime, you simply cannot melee efficiently as an ele, and because the only viable damage weapon the ele has is the lightning hammer, it’s not like he can use any of his far inferior mainhand weapons with horrendous autoattack damage.

If melee is to remain meta, you need to allow for all classes to self sufficiently melee within reasonable margins of effectiveness.

If you won’t do that, then you need to buff ranged damage for classes you intend to stay at range, because ranged weapon damage is just garbage relative to melee.

I’ve often wondered the reasons for the large gaps in health pools as well.
To me it doesn’t make sense that plate has better stats health and defense wise but maintain the damage of classes that are far less equipped with equivalent gear. You’d think casters (most people define caster as those who wear cloth) would do significantly more damage because of the loss and risk due to lower base health.

On another note, as to the PvP / PvE separation? They don’t need to, they simply need to make a global change to damage done when it’s player vs player. Many games have done this in the past (EQ at launch was 50% less damage in PvP for an example).

So personally they have an alternative to going through every single skill in the game and redoing them for the different areas, all they need to do is adjust the total damage percent a given class can do to another, as it may not be a global change due to balance. Hypothetically speaking here: War might get that -50%, but the guardian does less damage may only receive -40% and so on and so forth depending how it plays out.

Seems to be the easy answer to me at any rate.

Zerk mesmers have very good survivability, even better than zerk warriors imo. 100% Endurance uptime is huge and cannot be overlooked, mix that in with multiple evade options, clones/sealth, and max range dps. Switch to a sword+ focus and jump in with a blurred frenzy + warden for nice, quick, and painless melee.

Zenith.7301:

Please don’t derail my thread.

Who is this directed at?

The current meta is melee because melee does the most damage, and damage is the way to make fights the safest as extending the fight is a losing gamble.
I’m addressing how in a meta of melee only guardians and warriors seem to be able to function decently in PuGs as self sufficient units.
Yes, ele can work. BUT YOU REQUIRE TEAM SUPPORT TO DO SO.
Get that through your head. A warrior supplies himself with might and fury and vuln stacking and all he needs to do damage, and has high baseline survival. Casters are not afforded this luxury.
If you don’t have a team that coordinates guardian walls and aegis and prot uptime, you simply cannot melee efficiently as an ele, and because the only viable damage weapon the ele has is the lightning hammer, it’s not like he can use any of his far inferior mainhand weapons with horrendous autoattack damage.
If melee is to remain meta, you need to allow for all classes to self sufficiently melee within reasonable margins of effectiveness.
If you won’t do that, then you need to buff ranged damage for classes you intend to stay at range, because ranged weapon damage is just garbage relative to melee.

Elementalists are not the only casters in the game. Mesmer is INCREDIBLY self-sufficient. Necromancer has a great many tools for survival as well. They play differently than the warrior does, but who wants all classes to be clones of each other? Thief is very squishy, and it is a melee class. The whole point of having an active combat system is to not just stand there and take hits. Of course a warrior can take hits; that’s kind of a warrior’s whole deal.

I agree, they’re currently in a more powerful place than most (if not all) other classes. But I do not agree that casters require team support.

no love for the engis?

Not to mention guards and Wars are faceroll easy to play but most other classes require much more micro to get even close to the same damage numbers

Mesmer is not self sufficient damage. Their damage is horrendous compared to most classes. They are only brought for time warp+curtainpull+feedback. Otherwise they would be replaced by a guardian.

Eles have the strongest (self-, too) buffs, possibility to take care of all required conditions (burning, vulnerability) and high sustained damage combined with incredible burst for the first 120 seconds. If they are something, then too strong. All that just requires a lot more effort and better gameplay than a warrior. Won’t even speak of guardians, whoever played one yet knows that their self buffing sucks much. Not even going to deal half the damage of an ele forgetting about might/fury buffs.

Xae Isareth.1364:

On a side note, it seems Mesmers can handle themselves fine. I guess it’s because they’re a class which pretty much stays at max 1200 range and their melee skills are designed to hit and run.

I have been emphatically informed that the current mesmer pve meta is to stay in constant melee range, and that a mesmer with a ranged weapon (no weaponswitching allowed apparently) in a dungeon is a sign of pure fail.

I really only do this if my group kills stuff quickly and/or the aggro doesn’t get locked on me.

Zenith.7301:

Please don’t derail my thread. The current meta is melee because melee does the most damage, and damage is the way to make fights the safest as extending the fight is a losing gamble.

I’m addressing how in a meta of melee only guardians and warriors seem to be able to function decently in PuGs as self sufficient units.

Yes, ele can work. BUT YOU REQUIRE TEAM SUPPORT TO DO SO.

Get that through your head. A warrior supplies himself with might and fury and vuln stacking and all he needs to do damage, and has high baseline survival. Casters are not afforded this luxury.

If you don’t have a team that coordinates guardian walls and aegis and prot uptime, you simply cannot melee efficiently as an ele, and because the only viable damage weapon the ele has is the lightning hammer, it’s not like he can use any of his far inferior mainhand weapons with horrendous autoattack damage.

If melee is to remain meta, you need to allow for all classes to self sufficiently melee within reasonable margins of effectiveness.

If you won’t do that, then you need to buff ranged damage for classes you intend to stay at range, because ranged weapon damage is just garbage relative to melee.

im not sure what game your playing but gw2 is a team based mmo so if ure an ele that war thats pumping out might and fury is not just doing it for himself everyone in the party gets it. also i dunno what hammer build ure playing on ele but all the good once can buff themselves with might and fury.

every class has a viable melee build and you need to stop thinking about them as individual units because this is a team game. you aren’t soloing fractals or dungeons you are doing it with others.

you also need to stop thinking this game should be balanced around pugs , there is a reason why the pugs have made the zerk wars is a floor decoration stereotype