Guild Wars 2

I usually play dps classes, so which class does the highest dps?

Thief and I am directly quoting the devs, Anet themselves there…

I think Warrior is 2nd but not 100% on that one…

The highest dps class is axe axe warrior. Thieves are second but due to their incapability to stack might and vulnerability warriors win the dps fight.

Depends on if you are asking in a solo setting or in a dungeon setting where you get buffs/support from your teammates.

While I support that warrior is the most dps right now in the game. Almost all the classes can do decent DPS. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Find a class that fits the way you want to play and play it.

In a “tank and spank” situation, sure Warrior wins, but in many situations where there are condition heavy mobs, their DPS drops dramatically. Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions. So if conditions are factored in, a lot of other classes can beat Warrior in DPS, including Thieves.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

Warriors are ridiculously overpowered in PvE at the moment.

In an ideal scenario the class that will be able to deal the most damage is an elementalist.

This requires multiple things though. You will need a ranger and a warrior for their unique support, and you will need to be able to maintain 25 stacks of might, vuln and fury. You will also need to push the mob into a wall.

So, let’s say you were in a dungeon, ideally you would want to bring at least a warrior, ranger and engi in order to maintain maximum support, then an elementalist with a fiery greatsword using 3 and 4 into a wall with no target will hands down be the king of damage. Alternatively, I believe a lightning hammer Ele will still be the highest damage even without the need to fight into a wall. Not by as much, but still the most.

This is all situational though. If you want solo DPS then an Engineer wins because of their extreme ability to stack both might and vulnerability on their own.

As someone else said though, the numbers are actually pretty close. The only class that doesn’t keep up with the rest is the mesmer, which is unquestionably the lowest DPS class, but because of their unique support, they often find themselves in speedruns anyway.

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Lastly, warrior is not the highest DPS class. It is a faceroll class, definitely, but it is not the strongest.

Supreme.7352:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

So you went to list all condition removal skills just to counter my point without thinking that maybe — just maybe — you cannot possibly bring all those.

Typically a Warrior will bring 1-2 condition removals with low cooldown. Compare that to a Thief, for example, where they can remove condition on demand without sacrificing a utility slot.

If you’re talking from a team-play standpoint, and are looking to play in organized teams, roll a thief. If you’re looking to solo a lot, roll warrior.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Supreme.7352:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

So you went to list all condition removal skills just to counter my point without thinking that maybe — just maybe — you cannot possibly bring all those.

Typically a Warrior will bring 1-2 condition removals with low cooldown. Compare that to a Thief, for example, where they can remove condition on demand without sacrificing a utility slot.

The thief is not doing top DPS if they traited into shadow arts.

Warrior can slot 2 skills for condition removal and only take a small hit to DPS since they don’t have to put any trait points into conditon removal and they can also still get a few conditions removed with heal trait and warhorn if they want to have that on a second set.

Warrior has way more options to remove conditon, traits or skills, than thief does.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Supreme.7352:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

So you went to list all condition removal skills just to counter my point without thinking that maybe — just maybe — you cannot possibly bring all those.

Typically a Warrior will bring 1-2 condition removals with low cooldown. Compare that to a Thief, for example, where they can remove condition on demand without sacrificing a utility slot.

The thief is not doing top DPS if they traited into shadow arts.

That’s a lie. 10pts into SA is not a DPS sacrifice.

Warrior can slot 2 skills for condition removal and only take a small hit to DPS since they don’t have to put any trait points into conditon removal and they can also still get a few conditions removed with heal trait and warhorn if they want to have that on a second set.

Warrior has way more options to remove conditon, traits or skills, than thief does.

Options is not the point here. While the Warrior is suffering from a condition and and their removals are in CD, they’re DPS drops. While the Thief, Mesmer, Ele, Necro, Eng, Ranger, and Guardian can handle conditions sooner than Warrior, thus preventing drop in DPS.

Lightning Hammer Elementalist and Thief are both extremely high DPS.

Warriors are strong but aren’t the strongest.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Supreme.7352:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

So you went to list all condition removal skills just to counter my point without thinking that maybe — just maybe — you cannot possibly bring all those.

Typically a Warrior will bring 1-2 condition removals with low cooldown. Compare that to a Thief, for example, where they can remove condition on demand without sacrificing a utility slot.

The thief is not doing top DPS if they traited into shadow arts.

That’s a lie. 10pts into SA is not a DPS sacrifice.

Warrior can slot 2 skills for condition removal and only take a small hit to DPS since they don’t have to put any trait points into conditon removal and they can also still get a few conditions removed with heal trait and warhorn if they want to have that on a second set.

Warrior has way more options to remove conditon, traits or skills, than thief does.

Options is not the point here. While the Warrior is suffering from a condition and and their removals are in CD, they’re DPS drops. While the Thief, Mesmer, Ele, Necro, Eng, Ranger, and Guardian can handle conditions sooner than Warrior, thus preventing drop in DPS.

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In a “tank and spank” situation, sure Warrior wins, but in many situations where there are condition heavy mobs, their DPS drops dramatically. Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions. So if conditions are factored in, a lot of other classes can beat Warrior in DPS, including Thieves.

Sure, 2 months ago. Now we have more condition removal than rangers and engineers combined, and our traited one is on a 6-second cooldown. Run Lyssa runes with Cleansing Ire, Signet of Stamina and “Shake It Off!” And that’s only half of the condition removal we have. Not to mention, we now have a stance which makes us immune to all conditions for 10 seconds. Get with the times.

Honestly; I ignore my conditions for the most part now, when before I was constantly on them managing the few sources of CR I had. My DPS doesn’t drop at all. In fact, I start to care less when the fight gets down to it because I know that I’m not going to die to conditions.

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

But they’re sacrificing so much in order to do so. A staff or a scepter/dagger ele won’t survive when they aren’t with a zerg/team, and a thief’s damage can only go so far. Once you learn how to counter stealth, you rarely die to a thief. Warrior is the one class that has excellent damage AND survivability.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

But they’re sacrificing so much in order to do so. A staff or a scepter/dagger ele won’t survive when they aren’t with a zerg/team, and a thief’s damage can only go so far. Once you learn how to counter stealth, you rarely die to a thief.

They’re not sacrificing anything. I assumed anything related to ‘DPS’ would make most sense applied to PvE/Dungeons, since you don’t really care for DPS in PvP formats unless you’re talking about conditions.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

But they’re sacrificing so much in order to do so. A staff or a scepter/dagger ele won’t survive when they aren’t with a zerg/team, and a thief’s damage can only go so far. Once you learn how to counter stealth, you rarely die to a thief.

They’re not sacrificing anything. I assumed anything related to ‘DPS’ would make most sense applied to PvE/Dungeons, since you don’t really care for DPS in PvP formats unless you’re talking about conditions.

When Team Legacy was still around we ran a 20-man team, all full berserker. We ripped through larger groups like it was nothing, so in WvW, you do care about your DPS from a tactical advantage. If your entire team is full DPS and you’re focus-targeting people on the opposite team down quicker than they can hit their heal it really makes for fun and interesting scenarios rather than trying to survive as much damage as possible. When I speak about my class or combat, I’m speaking in WvW terms. PvE/Dungeons really don’t matter, because they’re doable in any composition with any build, regardless of the skill behind the player. PvP and WvW are where these things called “balance” happen.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

But they’re sacrificing so much in order to do so. A staff or a scepter/dagger ele won’t survive when they aren’t with a zerg/team, and a thief’s damage can only go so far. Once you learn how to counter stealth, you rarely die to a thief.

They’re not sacrificing anything. I assumed anything related to ‘DPS’ would make most sense applied to PvE/Dungeons, since you don’t really care for DPS in PvP formats unless you’re talking about conditions.

When Team Legacy was still around we ran a 20-man team, all full berserker. We ripped through larger groups like it was nothing, so in WvW, you do care about your DPS from a tactical advantage. If your entire team is full DPS and you’re focus-targeting people on the opposite team down quicker than they can hit their heal it really makes for fun and interesting scenarios rather than trying to survive as much damage as possible. When I speak about my class or combat, I’m speaking in WvW terms. PvE/Dungeons really don’t matter, because they’re doable in any composition with any build, regardless of the skill behind the player. PvP and WvW are where these things called “balance” happen.

Maybe I’m totally missing out on the specifics of GvG, however I feel like you’re misinterpreting burst for DPS. You aren’t really focusing on consistently out-putting damage on a target, you’re focusing large bursts on areas, no? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like in PvP/WvW, burst is more prevalent than actual consistent DPS.

What is the top DPS class is HIGHLY situational.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Supreme.7352:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Unlike Thieves, Warrior have a limited ways of handling conditions.

Mending takes care of 3 conditions
Shake it off takes care of another condition
Dolyak Signet and Balanced Stance gives stability and are stun breakers

Oh and Signet of Stamina gets rid of all conditions on you at once.

Yeah, warriors handle conditions insanely well now.

So you went to list all condition removal skills just to counter my point without thinking that maybe — just maybe — you cannot possibly bring all those.

Typically a Warrior will bring 1-2 condition removals with low cooldown. Compare that to a Thief, for example, where they can remove condition on demand without sacrificing a utility slot.

The thief is not doing top DPS if they traited into shadow arts.

That’s a lie. 10pts into SA is not a DPS sacrifice.

Warrior can slot 2 skills for condition removal and only take a small hit to DPS since they don’t have to put any trait points into conditon removal and they can also still get a few conditions removed with heal trait and warhorn if they want to have that on a second set.

Warrior has way more options to remove conditon, traits or skills, than thief does.

Options is not the point here. While the Warrior is suffering from a condition and and their removals are in CD, they’re DPS drops. While the Thief, Mesmer, Ele, Necro, Eng, Ranger, and Guardian can handle conditions sooner than Warrior, thus preventing drop in DPS.

Meh, not a lie, just wrong. A lie is an intentional misrepresentation with the intent to decieve.

Wrong is just being incorrect.

I though it was a grand master trait, not adept. I was just mixing up traits.

As far as a drop in DPS, it depends upon the condition that is applied because not all will cause a drop in DPS. It also depends upon the mob. Some PvE mobs will spam weakness and others will spam bleed. I haven’t seen a bleed mob get their stack very high either.

In order for that thief to remove conditions, they have to stay in stealth for 3 seconds because it only removes 1 condition for every 3 seconds in stealth, while that warrior will still continue to DPS provided their HP hold out. I can’t speak for any other class because I have not played them.

I will say that warrior over thief will do better DPS if condition removal is required because a warrior has a better HP pool to eat that condition damage and doesn’t have to stealth and do nothing while waiting for the condition to be removed.

I will also state that saying one is better isn’t really accurate because it all depends upon the situation you are trying to play.

I remember a post from devs saying that guardian scepter was the highest dps, maybe if you try checking the dps for 1 minute or 45 seconds the guardian would overcome the initial spikes warrior and thieves have cause of their spiky skills

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior is the best dps class from anything I’ve seen. It’s no contest. Feel like this is a troller.

You either don’t understand how Warrior works (probably thinking single hits from 100b are doing 20k+), or you’re just not experienced with the DPS potential of other classes. Both ele’s and thieves can, and will surpass a warrior.

But they’re sacrificing so much in order to do so. A staff or a scepter/dagger ele won’t survive when they aren’t with a zerg/team, and a thief’s damage can only go so far. Once you learn how to counter stealth, you rarely die to a thief.

They’re not sacrificing anything. I assumed anything related to ‘DPS’ would make most sense applied to PvE/Dungeons, since you don’t really care for DPS in PvP formats unless you’re talking about conditions.

When Team Legacy was still around we ran a 20-man team, all full berserker. We ripped through larger groups like it was nothing, so in WvW, you do care about your DPS from a tactical advantage. If your entire team is full DPS and you’re focus-targeting people on the opposite team down quicker than they can hit their heal it really makes for fun and interesting scenarios rather than trying to survive as much damage as possible. When I speak about my class or combat, I’m speaking in WvW terms. PvE/Dungeons really don’t matter, because they’re doable in any composition with any build, regardless of the skill behind the player. PvP and WvW are where these things called “balance” happen.

Maybe I’m totally missing out on the specifics of GvG, however I feel like you’re misinterpreting burst for DPS. You aren’t really focusing on consistently out-putting damage on a target, you’re focusing large bursts on areas, no? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like in PvP/WvW, burst is more prevalent than actual consistent DPS.

That’s very true. In WvW/PvP, burst is something very necessary. In general it’s hard to measure the DPS of burst classes. If we’re talking about constant DPS, I’d had to go with my condition thief who can maintain 25 stacks of bleed an entire fight, dealing 4k condition damage per tick.

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

This is an ignorant statement made by someone that obviously doesn’t play or know anything about Necromancers. Necros bring the best group condition management in the game. They can provide sustained protection to the group, nearly if not fully 100% up time. They are probably the 3rd highest single target dps with dagger/power/zerk buids and easily the single highest DPS aoe build in the game with rampagers stats and contidion spreading. They provide regen to the group, large scale CC useful in many dungeon situations and can easily stack and maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability while keeping up might on themselves (at no dps loss like that guy would have you believe).

The only problems necros have in dungeon situations are with minions and multiple condition classes at once. You shouldn’t be stacking condi classes in groups anyway. Anet needs to fix pets for necros and rangers alike. Those problems aside, necros provide top rank dps and great group utility on par with any other class in the game when built and geared properly in a variety of viable builds.

I thought it was engineer with the best consistent DPS? I’m too lazy to search out Guang’s video.

OP, what do you want to play?

We talking PvE, PvP, or WvW?

PvE, you can be full kitten DPS and have few problems but in WvW you have to have some kind of defensive mechanic because you’ll meet that condition player that will be able to do some damage if you don’t bring some way to deal with that, especially if the are ranged and can kite you around.

I don’t know why everyone keeps arguing , warrior beats everyone else in terms of DPS easily. I rolled a warr, level it to 6 and went to CP, it was enough to see that I was doing double the damage of my engineer with a blue gs and white gear. Enough said.

It’s a fact warr does crazy dps.

Warrior does good DPS, no one will argue that. It does not however do the most DPS. Anyone that disagrees either doesn’t understand how 100b works, or hasn’t played in good groups with a proper thief or LH ele. Go look at the fastest recorded CoF P1, filled with thieves, not warriors. It’s because warrior DPS isn’t as good as PUGs like you think it is. The reason most high-end guilds even keep a Warrior in their runs anymore is for banners, their DPS is easily outdone and replaced by a different class. You can’t replace banners, however.

except the dps is exceptional along with armor/hp. A thief MIGHT hit more dps,but they are also more prone to die the moment npcs sneeze in their direction, so yes warr either needs a nerf at damage, or the armor/hp.

Kronus.6048:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Kronus.6048:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Kronus.6048:

I don’t know why everyone keeps arguing , warrior beats everyone else in terms of DPS easily. I rolled a warr, level it to 6 and went to CP, it was enough to see that I was doing double the damage of my engineer with a blue gs and white gear. Enough said.

Bad troll is bad.

trolling?It’s a fact warr does crazy dps. Anyone else that disagrees is either a troll or someone just afraid the nerfhammer will hit them(like it should)

Warrior does good DPS, no one will argue that. It does not however do the most DPS. Anyone that disagrees either doesn’t understand how 100b works, or hasn’t played in good groups with a proper thief or LH ele. Go look at the fastest recorded CoF P1, filled with thieves, not warriors. It’s because warrior DPS isn’t as good as PUGs like you think it is. The reason most high-end guilds even keep a Warrior in their runs anymore is for banners, their DPS is easily outdone and replaced by a different class. You can’t replace banners, however.

except the dps is exceptional along with armor/hp. A thief MIGHT hit more dps,but they are also more prone to die the moment npcs sneeze in their direction, so yes warr either needs a nerf at damage, or the armor/hp.

Thief does do more damage. And yes, people take for granted the base hp/armor of warriors. I won’t disagree with you that it’s a pretty ridiculous advantage warriors have in PvE. The topic at hand however is what class does the most DPS, and the answer is thief/ele (I’m leaning more towards thief, but I don’t have any comparative math to prove one way or the other).

Kronus.6048:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Kronus.6048:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Kronus.6048:

I don’t know why everyone keeps arguing , warrior beats everyone else in terms of DPS easily. I rolled a warr, level it to 6 and went to CP, it was enough to see that I was doing double the damage of my engineer with a blue gs and white gear. Enough said.

Bad troll is bad.

trolling?It’s a fact warr does crazy dps. Anyone else that disagrees is either a troll or someone just afraid the nerfhammer will hit them(like it should)

Warrior does good DPS, no one will argue that. It does not however do the most DPS. Anyone that disagrees either doesn’t understand how 100b works, or hasn’t played in good groups with a proper thief or LH ele. Go look at the fastest recorded CoF P1, filled with thieves, not warriors. It’s because warrior DPS isn’t as good as PUGs like you think it is. The reason most high-end guilds even keep a Warrior in their runs anymore is for banners, their DPS is easily outdone and replaced by a different class. You can’t replace banners, however.

except the dps is exceptional along with armor/hp. A thief MIGHT hit more dps,but they are also more prone to die the moment npcs sneeze in their direction, so yes warr either needs a nerf at damage, or the armor/hp.

Right, so in the hands of a comptent player, thief dps > warrior dps.

Good to know, case closed.

Oxe.6142:

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Necros bring the best group condition management in the game. They can provide sustained protection to the group, nearly if not fully 100% up time. They are probably the 3rd highest single target dps with dagger/power/zerk buids and easily the single highest DPS aoe build in the game with rampagers stats and contidion spreading. They provide regen to the group, large scale CC useful in many dungeon situations and can easily stack and maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability while keeping up might on themselves (at no dps loss like that guy would have you believe).

The only problems necros have in dungeon situations are with minions and multiple condition classes at once. You shouldn’t be stacking condi classes in groups anyway. Anet needs to fix pets for necros and rangers alike. Those problems aside, necros provide top rank dps and great group utility on par with any other class in the game when built and geared properly in a variety of viable builds.

Exactly what does protection, condition management and regen have to do with DPS? Absolutely nothing. If you want an optimizied DPS setup the one class that will never have a use is necromancer. There is not one thing they can do that another class won’t do better.

Sure, they can do cool things, but a necromancer will never have a place in an optimized party with the current state of the game.

i really get sick of people quoting that stupid video from every little thing to ranger damage, to thieves, to everything else. that video was little less than an above average pug. in fact the speed came from the lessening of time between fights, not because thief > warrior.

just because they decided to take a thief or two, even the ranger does not make them inferior to the warrior. fact of the matter is, eyeballing it wont give any hard data whatsoever. unless we get real parsers for this stuff, the argument is moot.

Dog.1472:

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Exactly what does protection, condition management and regen have to do with DPS? Absolutely nothing. If you want an optimizied DPS setup the one class that will never have a use is necromancer. There is not one thing they can do that another class won’t do better.

Sure, they can do cool things, but a necromancer will never have a place in an optimized party with the current state of the game.

You said that necro’s offer next to no support. Top AoE dps in the game, 3rd single target only damage in the game (that order goes Thief, Warrior, Necro). I’d say with their combined utility and pack leading damage, they’re better to have in the group than not.

It kind of goes like this:

Warriors self buff themselves up pretty high so you can easily keep up 8k DPS in most situations.

Rangers and engineers can deal high amounts of damage but generally don’t have nearly as much self-might which severely reduces DPS in solo situations. With 25 might rangers can do fairly good and engineers can do extreme damage.

Thieves I haven’t tried yet.

Playing DPS on any class but warrior requires that you prove yourself and people will likely blame you for not being a warrior if things are going slow.

There’s a bunch of other reasons to roll a warrior too:

• Mistakes are forgiven by higher base HP and armor and smaller skill cooldowns.
• Less reliant on your group to reach your potential.
• Generally accepted everywhere.
• PvE content is mostly designed in a physical damage (warrior) fashion.
• Lowest amount of micromanagement to keep your DPS up.
• Has a full duration spammable elite skill. (Most other classes get about 10-20 seconds of eliteness out of at least 120)
• A lot of positive attention from balance updates.
• Great ranged damage too.
• High number of control options.

thiefs and ele’s for pvp for pve its war

Gele.2048:

thiefs and ele’s for pvp for pve its war

How is it any different? The inherent damage of the classes isn’t changed between PvP and PvE. There’s a difference between burst and DPS. DPS is sustained while burst is sudden spike damage, like backstab or Dragon’s Tooth.

DarkWasp.7291:

It kind of goes like this:

Warriors self buff themselves up pretty high so you can easily keep up 8k DPS in most situations.

Rangers and engineers can deal high amounts of damage but generally don’t have nearly as much self-might which severely reduces DPS in solo situations. With 25 might rangers can do fairly good and engineers can do extreme damage.

Thieves I haven’t tried yet.

Playing DPS on any class but warrior requires that you prove yourself and people will likely blame you for not being a warrior if things are going slow.

There’s a bunch of other reasons to roll a warrior too:

• Mistakes are forgiven by higher base HP and armor and smaller skill cooldowns.
• Less reliant on your group to reach your potential.
• Generally accepted everywhere.
• PvE content is mostly designed in a physical damage (warrior) fashion.
• Lowest amount of micromanagement to keep your DPS up.
• Has a full duration spammable elite skill. (Most other classes get about 10-20 seconds of eliteness out of at least 120)
• A lot of positive attention from balance updates.
• Great ranged damage too.
• High number of control options.

Pretty much this. If someone tries for instance an engineer and a warrior they will see the micromanagement is insane between those two classes. This is a comparison between the easiest class to play and the hardest. As a warrior I could equip a GS and press 1-2 for massive damage as well as F1 when it’s up giving myself a perma +20% crit chance. As an engineer I have to press 1-2-3-4,f1,f2,f3,f4 switch to say grenade kit add poison/fire grenade, switch to toolkit to add confusion,switch back to regular weapon 1-2-3-4 and repeat the sequence.

Personally I think they should have done like League of legends. Classes that require more micromanagement would deal more damage over time unlike classes that require next to no effort.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Gele.2048:

thiefs and ele’s for pvp for pve its war

How is it any different? The inherent damage of the classes isn’t changed between PvP and PvE. There’s a difference between burst and DPS. DPS is sustained while burst is sudden spike damage, like backstab or Dragon’s Tooth.

Pve mobs are a lot easier to hit than decent players, so there’s a good difference in effective dps.

Ryan.9387:

The highest dps class is axe axe warrior. Thieves are second but due to their incapability to stack might and vulnerability warriors win the dps fight.

Quoted for emphasis. All this talk of 100 blades? Lol…

Warrior overall.

Stack might + fury
Disc banner
Strength banner
Stack tons of vuln
Multi target DPS, unlike thief, who has to rely on single target D/D to get highest dps.

I thought we were talking pure dps here, nothing else?

If so its Thief period, end of discussion. Anet themselves have said so for a long time, its one of the cornerstones of GW2, Thief does the highest dps fullstop!

Thiefs can take me down from 24, 000 health to 4,000 health in a couple of seconds, loads of thiefs on a regular basis do that…Warriors can’t even get close to doing that ever…neither can any other class…

OMG ok let me end this. A phant mesmer with 3x Iwarlock out on a target with full conditions > every other class’s DPS. Now go home.

Dog.1472:

Oxe.6142:

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Necros bring the best group condition management in the game. They can provide sustained protection to the group, nearly if not fully 100% up time. They are probably the 3rd highest single target dps with dagger/power/zerk buids and easily the single highest DPS aoe build in the game with rampagers stats and contidion spreading. They provide regen to the group, large scale CC useful in many dungeon situations and can easily stack and maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability while keeping up might on themselves (at no dps loss like that guy would have you believe).

The only problems necros have in dungeon situations are with minions and multiple condition classes at once. You shouldn’t be stacking condi classes in groups anyway. Anet needs to fix pets for necros and rangers alike. Those problems aside, necros provide top rank dps and great group utility on par with any other class in the game when built and geared properly in a variety of viable builds.

Exactly what does protection, condition management and regen have to do with DPS? Absolutely nothing. Learn to read before posting. If you want an optimizied DPS setup the one class that will never have a use is necromancer. There is not one thing they can do that another class won’t do better.

Sure, they can do cool things, but a necromancer will never have a place in an optimized party with the current state of the game.

You need protection, condition removal, survivability, etc to maintain your DPS, otherwise it’s just a burst damage.

So you’re wrong for making that statement.

And yet guardian can provide protection through hold the line and hammer symbol, regeneration, condi removal (either skill or pure of voice) and even has the utility of reflects while providing strong DPS. Guardian can also put up blocks to help the team burst uninterrupted.

Necromancer sure is nice DPS, but doesn’t have enough group utility.

in my experience the dps largely is based on the circumatances. A thief is the highest dps using a combination of ‘cloak and dagger’ and ‘backstab’ followed by ‘heartseeker’ when the enemy is at 25% hp, but as some have mentioned they don’t stack might themselves. So thief is highest dps in a group situation when they have access to the enemies back. So in any dungeon a thief will ultimately come out on top.

Warrs have a reliable dps as they are easy to play they are second to thiefs in dungeon play and i can guarantee that. I play both and run various teams of dungeons and find a thief in the party speeds the run up immensely. The people that claim warriors do more dps are those that just don’t admit thiefs are greater damage dealers, have never played a thief or haven’t met a thief that plays as a zerker properly. if the enemy is against a wall then the warrior will do a higher average damage but only marginally and even then a thief can pretty much nearly get access to the enemies back for a decent portion of the fight. Just to clarify i am NOT talking about burst damage i am talking about AVERAGE damage a second over a boss fight. So please warriors stop quoting 100 blades it takes a whopping 3.5 seconds to cast you tend to forget. When a thiefs heartseeker will do half the damage of 100 blades in 3/4 of a second it starts to look a bit pathetic especially when they don’t have the same cd problem as all other classes. And yes i am comparing them BOTH in optimum conditions.

lastly the elementalist, some of you may laugh but i have a loyal band of followers that ask for my ele before any of the other classes. with a lightning hammer build the elementalist will do more damage a second than any other class using the fiery greatsword when an enemy is up against a wall, again those that don’t admit this have never seen it. furthermore an elementalist using the lightning hammer (with the right build) will match a warriors dps over a fight when the enemy is not against a wall. Furthermore they can stack a tonne of fury and might before the fight or on the mob during the fight.

overall if you want a reliable dps go with a warrior as they are the easiest to learn how to maximise their dps rate, even then you still get warriors that think greatsword is better dps as it stack might ( they are wrong) use an axe for the love of god please. however warriors are a touch on the dull side so the choice is yours :p

Dog.1472:

In an ideal scenario the class that will be able to deal the most damage is an elementalist.

This requires multiple things though. You will need a ranger and a warrior for their unique support, and you will need to be able to maintain 25 stacks of might, vuln and fury. You will also need to push the mob into a wall.

So, let’s say you were in a dungeon, ideally you would want to bring at least a warrior, ranger and engi in order to maintain maximum support, then an elementalist with a fiery greatsword using 3 and 4 into a wall with no target will hands down be the king of damage. Alternatively, I believe a lightning hammer Ele will still be the highest damage even without the need to fight into a wall. Not by as much, but still the most.

This is all situational though. If you want solo DPS then an Engineer wins because of their extreme ability to stack both might and vulnerability on their own.

As someone else said though, the numbers are actually pretty close. The only class that doesn’t keep up with the rest is the mesmer, which is unquestionably the lowest DPS class, but because of their unique support, they often find themselves in speedruns anyway.

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Lastly, warrior is not the highest DPS class. It is a faceroll class, definitely, but it is not the strongest.

Just to mention a point here about the fiery greatsword you do not need those circumstances for it to be worthwhile. think that if at maximum an ele can only get 10 or so stacks of might then all the other classes are going to feel that cap in the dungeon too. a warrior might be able to get 5 or so more but that simply alone doesn’t exceed the raw damage of the fiery greatsword.

if you religious speedrunners would actually listen to what people are saying here i find through experience the best speed run consists of 2x warrior 2x elementalist and 1x mesmer. warriors pick up elementaist gs and bosh the boss is dead in a few seconds. Obviously this depends on the dungeon.