Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’m pretty new to this game and as I understand it, there’s no traditional trinity in game.

So how come we have light, medium, and heavy armor sets?

Doesn’t that pigeonhole certain professions or give the heavy professions an advantage as they can deal a lot of damage, take a hit, and cleanse themselves of conditions better than other professions?

You can run a dungeon with five light armor users, or five heavy armor users.

Every profession can do things, but they don’t all do them exactly the same. If that were the case, there would only be one profession.

But as an example, warriors have more armor than mesmers, but mesmers have a trait which gives them armor for each clone alive in the world. Warriors have more armor than rangers, but rangers can trait to get more dodges than warriors, thus avoiding damage.

Play the game, and you’ll see. The trinity roles really are gone. But there are still some differences between professions.

Armor classes don’t neccessarily correspond with roles in a holy-trinity combat design.
Even if you wear heavy armor, you still can’t be a tank if you can’t keep an opponents attention focused on you (no taunt mechanics).
And no matter how ‘priestly’ your robes are, if even your best healing skill can’t heal as much as the enemy can do damage, you can’t be a dedicated healer.

Also, armor is a passive defense. You’ll learn quickly that passive defense doesn’t do all that much in GW2. If you just stand still and let yourself get hit, you’re just going to die, even in heavy armor. That’s why it’s not much of an advantage. The light and medium armor classes have other tricks to make up for it.

Combat in GW2 is designed around opportunity cost. If you make a character that can take large hits and heal very well, it will do very little damage. Since you can build a very damaged focused character, and still stay alive even though you’re very fragile, just by playing skillfully, the latter is usually the prefered option. The ‘best defense is a strong offense’ idea is what most players see as the best way to go in GW2, almost to a fault.

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

When you say that Warriors, for example, have more armor but that other professions can trait for armor. Can’t the Warriors trait for more protection anyhow even though they already get high defense in their armor?

I understand what you’re saying, but doesn’t it make it so that some classes can do the most important things in the game (deal damage and mitigate damage) just by virtue of their gear while others have to trait and suck it up?

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Can someone please explain?

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

And that’s your first mistake. All professions are quite viable. However the “accepted meta” says everyone should run Warriors with all Berserker gear. It’s not true, just an unimaginative cookie cutter build.

Honestly ignore that whole, only blank classes are viable crap. People say that because those classes can clear an instance in 7 mins instead of 10 mins. OOOOMMMMGGGGG hold the presses, three minutes is a game changer!!

Everything is capable of doing everything. Ignore meta builds, they don’t apply to the general public.

Example with fictional numbers:

A Warrior can suit up to mitigate 20.000 damage, an Elementalist can only take 10.000.
Your enemy uses a skill that does 30.000 damage. You can stand still and take it, or you can dodge it.

Is the Warriors extra armor actually usefull there?
Maybe you missed my edit about passive damage there? Armor doesn’t mean much in GW2. You simply do not stand still and take hits! You can’t ‘suck it up’, just doesn’t work like that.

Also what you’ve been told there was a lie. All professions are viable. The only time where people are really selective is in high-end dungeon speedclearing.

Sorry some of your responses came as I was typing my last response. Thanks for your quick replies.

What are the advantages of the other armor classes that heavy doesn’t have?

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

When you say that Warriors, for example, have more armor but that other professions can trait for armor. Can’t the Warriors trait for more protection anyhow even though they already get high defense in their armor?

I understand what you’re saying, but doesn’t it make it so that some classes can do the most important things in the game (deal damage and mitigate damage) just by virtue of their gear while others have to trait and suck it up?

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Can someone please explain?

There are always going to be meta builds in any game. It happened in Guild Wars 1 and it’ll happen here. People tend to try to figure out the most efficient builds and people who only care about efficiency use those builds. I’ve never seen any MMO where this doesn’t happen.

However, there are also metas now that use thieves for speed runs, due to their stealth. And of course, we’re just talking about PvE here. PvP is a completely different story.

I might love roaming as a thief in WvW, but I’m not going to be as good in zergs. On the other hand, necros and eles can be very powerful in zergs, but you don’t want them in the front line.

You’re trying to simplify something that can’t be easily simplified, no matter what happens. And even if metas develope, that doesn’t actually mean they’re factually correct. Meta’s reflect what the community believes at a given point.

There are some great engineers that are very effective in this game, but there’s a skill ceiling for playing that profession. You have to be much better as an engineer to make the cut than a warrior.

But I’ve seen plenty of zerker warriors lying on the ground waiting for a rez. They follow the meta because they read forums or sites, but they’re not necessarily good enough to time the dodges or knowledegable enough to know when to back off.

It’s just not as simple as you’re making it.

ALL classes are viable, that is just the commonly accepted for pug dungeon running because they are facerole and easy to complete without much coordination.

HOWEVER when it comes to soloing content or pretty much DPS, then all classes CAN and ARE viable.

Interestingly thieves/mesmers and engi’s do better at soloing content because of their EXTREME utility, they deal MORE than enough damage, thief is more single target though.

Damage mitigation is anything from armor, to vitality, to invis, to dodging.
The medium and light armor types actually have better access to blast finisher that can give a lot of things, from more dps to vigor.

So at the end of the day, all classes are equally viable for PvE content.

Novuake.2691:

The medium and light armor types actually have better access to blast finisher that can give a lot of things, from more dps to vigor.

Which professions have more blast finishers? Elementalists? I think Thieves have one? Mesmers one? Not sure about Engineers because I haven’t really taken a look at those or Rangers for that matter. Too many doohickies and I hate pets. I’ve never played in a game where AI pathing wasn’t an issue with pets.

Novuake.2691:

So at the end of the day, all classes are equally viable for PvE content.

What about other types of content? The reason I ask is because one of the commanders in WvW on my home server “strongly” encouraged me to main one of those three classes if I wanted to continue to participate. When I say strongly, I mean he discouraged me completely from participating further.

Spooksie.4930:

Which professions have more blast finishers? Elementalists? I think Thieves have one? Mesmers one? Not sure about Engineers because I haven’t really taken a look at those or Rangers for that matter. Too many doohickies and I hate pets. I’ve never played in a game where AI pathing wasn’t an issue with pets.

Here’s the wiki page about blast finishers – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher That gives you a list of blast finishers and the which fields give which buffs.

Spooksie.4930:

What about other types of content? The reason I ask is because one of the commanders in WvW on my home server “strongly” encouraged me to main one of those three classes if I wanted to continue to participate. When I say strongly, I mean he discouraged me completely from participating further.

WvW large group is generally GWEN (Guardian, Warrior, Ele, Necro), small and solo roaming is everything, with I believe Engi, Mesmer, Thief and Ranger are some of the best solo roamers (I don’t solo roam so if someone could clarify that would be great).

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

I assume you are talking about pve only. If that’s the case, every class is viable, specially for the regular dungeons (that present little to no challenge, so people speed clear them setting the timer as the only challenge)

In that case, in my ideal group i think i would carry one elementalist, a ranger, an engineer, a thief and a warrior. That way, you have weakness galore, might stacking, buffs that sum up intead of overwriting themselves, and insane damage. Dungeons can be cleared very quickly this way, with bosses lasting a few seconds only. Notice how out of these five classes, only one is heavy armored, and we take the warrior for the buffs and weakness stacking, not for his tankiness (which he doesn’t have, as berserker).

All classes are capable of dealing decent damage (but only the elementalists are capable of OMFG damage), and what makes them better suited for dungeons is what they contribute to the rest of the group. Necros, for example, deal excellent damage, but have nothing to share with their team, so they are a liability more than an asset in speed clears.

Pvp is another issue, and i’d say all classes are viable. I have a lot of fun with my power necro, even though i get thrown around a lot (necros don’t have much in the way of stability).

Spooksie.4930:

Glad you asked!

Mesmers have alternate options via other fields and utilities. For example distortion.
Ele’s and Engi’s have A LOT of blast and blocks.
Thieves have some finishers but A LOT of survival ability via invis, condi clear and vigor and plain old evasion built into a lot of their skills.

Now WvW, specifically zerging, when running in large groups :

Warrior : Great for zerging do to a lot of stability and support skills (buffs and condi removal. more defensive than offensive) that are easy and fast to do. They also have great disable. Decent AoE dps with innate tankyness.

Guardian : More advanced support, geared to AMAZING defense and also decent offence. Great AoE dps as well with very little chance of downing early in the fight.
Very versatile class to have in a zerg as they can do quite a bit on the front line.

Ele : Great AoE DPS backline class and can tank up AMAZINGLY well via shield and immunity to crits. Provides great might stacking via fire fields that the zerg can blast on.

Mesmers : Some more advanced strats via portals (some commies will run a small group of portal mesmers to perform portal bombs or keep sneak attacks) and decent AoE damage, but this class isn’t great for it due to low support potential and low overall AoE DPS and survival ability in a ZERG specifically.

Rangers : Same as above minus the portals.

Thief : MUCH MUCH more of a solo type gameplay with high single, duo target damage, poor AoE, little support potential.

Engineer : This class actually brings quite a bit to the zerg but it has some fundamental problems that kind of pushes it out, however some people still run it successfully.
They have great AoE backline or in the front line, great support potential for both defense AND offence. But generally its hard to do more than 1 of the above, so you choose one and then your limited.
However due to stuff like retaliation, the grenades at range makes it hard for them to do the backline DPS, in the front line their lack of condi clear makes bomb kit useless in zerging.

Feels like I missed a class? LOL Anyway…

HOWEVER VERY IMPORTANT.

Zerging is NOT the only content in WvW.
I am a solo or duo Engineer roamer. The classes that are considered not so great for Zerging ARE actually considered great of running alone and having outnumbered 2 v 1 or even 3 v 1 fights, even more so than the 3 that you were suggested.

For PvP the ONLY class I feel that is not viable to any decent degree is the ranger.
But some people have success with them.

EDIT : I DID FORGET A CLASS!!!!

Necro : TBH i have very little self experience with the necro, however I do know that they used to be great roamers AND zergers, these days the mostly join the zergs for mass disruption and soft CC on the enemy as well as decent support potential, the are a REALLY good front line with amazing tanking potential despite being a LIGHT armor class.

IMHO for
PvE all is viable as long as you are not full condition (unless you are very patient)
World bosses most is viable, range is usefull, making ranger very nice
Dungeons tend to be ZERKER Guardians, thieves, elementalists and a warrior atm.
WvW = GWEN, while some rangers,mesmers,thieves, tend to be usefull mostly as condi roamers while all bbuilds have a place I’d start with a bit of tankyness
PvP tend to be condi and celestial builds I do not run pvp that often, all classes are viable

As for strengths and weakness
Warrior, great DPS, good buffing (AOE), good armor, good survivability, good conditionn potential
Guardian great DPS or good buffing, good armor, medium survivability, no condition potential
Ranger, good DPS on range, bit squishy on Melee, versatile, medium survivability, good condition potential
Engineer medium DPS, very versatile, medium survivability, reasonable condition potential
thief extreme single target DPS, squishy, stealth, low survivability, reasonable condition potential
elementalist extreme AOE DPS, ultra squishy, might/boon dispenser low survivability
necromancer, medium DPS, reasonable AOE, extreme condition potential , good survivability
mesmer , mediocre DPS, good condition potential, “shutdown proffesion” Timewarp, invisibiility, mediocre survivability…

Thieves are often used for easy acces to invisibility, mesmers can timewarp and boonstrip, necro’s can condibomb and boonstrip, warrior have a res banner. and AOE buffing capability (see pug carrier).

Present Meta (Pve/dungeons/(world bosses)) doesn’t require armor , just dodging.

And for Rangers in condi?? SB/ A+T trapper?

looking at conditions: necro, ranger, mesmer, engineer warrior, thief, ele, guardian in this order, not suggested for pve certainly not for dungeons

Hilarious how none of you vets manage to answer his questions.

Not discounting their responses but the questions at hand were merely sidestepped.

No, there is no inherent advantage light of medium armor had for providing less armor than heavy. Why does this exist in gw2? It’s a good question. I don’t know and curious if there’s anyone around to enlighten us.

Yes, a heavy armor warrior has access to traits to bolster defense just like every other profession so it’s not like light armor somehow gets a pass to equalize armor rating.

No, I don’t belive blast finishers are doled out by armour rating either. There are simply professions that have more (ele/engi), some that have less (mesmer/ranger) and the ones in the middle. Finishers in general are doled out by professions. For instance, thief may only have a couple of decent blast finishers but they have more leap finishers.

That all said, having a better armor rating isn’t some freebie to deck yourself of in offense and think it’ll just be that easy. Armor by itself does help but only a little. The professions may be configured in a way that “pays” for the armor rating it gets. Consider warrior, with the highest hp and best armor tend to be considered easy, not because it facerolls everything but because it had a low skill ceiling, meaning it doesn’t have as many tricks up its sleeve. Professions like thief and mesmer have nuances that can be played to to allow them to do some amazing feats.

Check specific forums for veterans guides, like dungeon forums if u plan to run dungeon, pvp forums if you want pvp…
TIP: the stickies hold most of the asked questions.

Vayne.8563:

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

When you say that Warriors, for example, have more armor but that other professions can trait for armor. Can’t the Warriors trait for more protection anyhow even though they already get high defense in their armor?

I understand what you’re saying, but doesn’t it make it so that some classes can do the most important things in the game (deal damage and mitigate damage) just by virtue of their gear while others have to trait and suck it up?

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Can someone please explain?

There are always going to be meta builds in any game. It happened in Guild Wars 1 and it’ll happen here. People tend to try to figure out the most efficient builds and people who only care about efficiency use those builds. I’ve never seen any MMO where this doesn’t happen.

However, there are also metas now that use thieves for speed runs, due to their stealth. And of course, we’re just talking about PvE here. PvP is a completely different story.

I might love roaming as a thief in WvW, but I’m not going to be as good in zergs. On the other hand, necros and eles can be very powerful in zergs, but you don’t want them in the front line.

You’re trying to simplify something that can’t be easily simplified, no matter what happens. And even if metas develope, that doesn’t actually mean they’re factually correct. Meta’s reflect what the community believes at a given point.

There are some great engineers that are very effective in this game, but there’s a skill ceiling for playing that profession. You have to be much better as an engineer to make the cut than a warrior.

But I’ve seen plenty of zerker warriors lying on the ground waiting for a rez. They follow the meta because they read forums or sites, but they’re not necessarily good enough to time the dodges or knowledegable enough to know when to back off.

It’s just not as simple as you’re making it.

this

Spooksie.4930:

Sorry some of your responses came as I was typing my last response. Thanks for your quick replies.

What are the advantages of the other armor classes that heavy doesn’t have?

Really, just ignore the different armour ratings of the classes. I don’t know what the rationale is, but it really doesn’t matter. Everything is balanced in spite of it.

Olvendred.3027:

Spooksie.4930:

Sorry some of your responses came as I was typing my last response. Thanks for your quick replies.

What are the advantages of the other armor classes that heavy doesn’t have?

Really, just ignore the different armour ratings of the classes. I don’t know what the rationale is, but it really doesn’t matter. Everything is balanced in spite of it.

The rationale is as limited as base vitality and toughness. Which has very little impact in full exotic gear.

I’m actually kinda unsure what function armor class serves as a game mechanic. There are a few I can think of:

Economic padding: Heavy armor requires metals, medium armor requires lots of leather, light armor requires lots of cloth.
Achievement padding: You need to get all three sets of skins for the dungeon-specific armor sets, for example.
Class flavor: It doesn’t make much sense for a Thief to sneak around in full plate armor, or for a Warrior which is a class all about big guts and big weapons and big armor to be running around in a dress.
Increases ascended demand: You can share your Zerk’s Light armor between all three light classes, but you’ll need another set for Medium and another for Heavy.

I think profession flavor is the real reason they exist. This game is all about flavor really.

Those who focus on mechanics think that everyone do everything. But every profession to me is very very different.

I can melee on every single profession and each one feels completely different to me. Because I feel like a different character with each profession.

Having the armour classes is a throwback to the trinity that shouldn’t exist in this game. As others have said it makes no difference in a game where the monsters will just one shot you if you don’t dodge.

They should’ve done away with the traditional classes entirely instead of leaving a misleading shell of the holy trinity in place. From a realism standpoint, there’s no reason for warriors and guardians to wear heavy armour that provides no greater protection than cloth, but will slow you down and is far more costly (except no one can actually make cloth or leather for some reason, it just magically appears as scraps in bags. Nope, no sheep, cows or cotton plantations can make them). Everyone can dive and roll like a seasoned acrobat though, so why not just wear regular clothes for mobility?

This is what disappoints me about this game. The lack of a trinity really messes a lot of mechanics up (just look at the state of dungeons) and its hard for me to justify in my head why a full plate armoured warrior is no tougher than a cloth wearing elementalist (or why everyone went to clown college and majored in tumbling). They could’ve had the trinity AND dodging. I feel like they shouldve kept the trinity, or ditched it entirely and come up with new classes and gear from scratch and made a system that doesn’t feel shallow. I really feel like anet missed out on something epic purely to be different given how good the game is in its current state.

Spooksie.4930:

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Its just the typical RPG flavour. The same like classes, races and different weapon types.

And different armor classes even exist in solo games where you also don’t have
a trinity.

And Gandalf can fight a Balrog alone just wearing light armor.

Beldin.5498:

Spooksie.4930:

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Its just the typical RPG flavour. The same like classes, races and different weapon types.

And different armor classes even exist in solo games where you also don’t have
a trinity.

And Gandalf can fight a Balrog alone just wearing light armor.

I call hacks.

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Spooksie.4930:

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Its just the typical RPG flavour. The same like classes, races and different weapon types.

And different armor classes even exist in solo games where you also don’t have
a trinity.

And Gandalf can fight a Balrog alone just wearing light armor.

I call hacks.

Ok .. i don’t really get the meaning of that sentence .. is it just a joke about Gandalf is cheating .. or something else ?

If i try to translate it and then translate it back it could mean for example:
“I cry old weak horse”

Beldin.5498:

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Spooksie.4930:

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Its just the typical RPG flavour. The same like classes, races and different weapon types.

And different armor classes even exist in solo games where you also don’t have
a trinity.

And Gandalf can fight a Balrog alone just wearing light armor.

I call hacks.

Ok .. i don’t really get the meaning of that sentence .. is it just a joke about Gandalf is cheating .. or something else ?

If i try to translate it and then translate it back it could mean for example:
“I cry old weak horse”

Wut?

And yes, he is referring to a form of cheating.

The armor archetype goes back to original AD&D if not earlier in terms of fantasy RPGs where fighters are in heavy, thieves in leather and clerics/MUs in cloth. And even though Heavy has ~30% more defense than light and ~10% more than medium it makes little difference because relying on your armor stat to reduce damage head on is like fighting a forest fire with a garden hose. You might be able to take one or two more hits but since healing is not as great since no trinity the combination of the two still won’t let you tank and spank.

This game is all about moving, dodging, applying very short term effects on the enemy to force misses, etc.

Beldin.5498:

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Spooksie.4930:

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Its just the typical RPG flavour. The same like classes, races and different weapon types.

And different armor classes even exist in solo games where you also don’t have
a trinity.

And Gandalf can fight a Balrog alone just wearing light armor.

I call hacks.

Ok .. i don’t really get the meaning of that sentence .. is it just a joke about Gandalf is cheating .. or something else ?

If i try to translate it and then translate it back it could mean for example:
“I cry old weak horse”

I call hacks is almost a meme.

I’m accusing Gandalf of hacking the game so he can solo a balrog. Ah well. You win some you lose some. lol

Thanks to how mobs are designed in GW2, armor etc matters less for survivability than how many invulnerability frames you can spam.

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist.

Thats basicly what noobs will tell you. If you find a guild with decent players they will know all classes are very viable. For example ppl still thinks warrior is top class dps while its actualy mid tier dps what is good only for banners:-)

Classes in this game are very ballanced very equal and can often replace each other in roles if needed. Simply play what you like and play it as good as possible and you will be fine.

Armour types are just a way to define how well a certain profession deals with direct damage, and you can’t examine it without looking at health pools first, Guardians wear heavy armour but have the lowest health pool, which means that without condition removal any sort of condition pressure will melt them but due to their armour and their access to protection they can handle direct damage very well, Necromancers on the other hand have a massive double health pool coupled with strong condition removal and wear light armour, meaning they can shrug off condition pressure fairly easily but are more vulnerable to direct damage.

TL;DR: Armour types are heavily associated with class strengths and weaknesses and therefore, balancing.

Everyprofession have different ways to stay alive other than the two dodge they all have.

Warrior : Heavy Armor, High HP, but not much else
Guardian : Heavy Armor, Low HP, but they have hp regen, block and blinds to compensate
Elementalist : Light Armor, Low HP, but they have have a lots of boons and 4 times more skills than other profession. They also have a high amount of dmg to make them high risk high reward if you want to go that way.
Necromancer : Light Armor, High HP, but they have Death Shroud that act like a second hp bar.
Mesmer : Light Armor, Medium HP, but they have clones to take the hit for them and invisibility.
Thief : Medium Armor, Low HP, but they have a huge access to invisibility a high mobility and high damage and they also kind of a high risk-high reward profession.
Engineer: Medium Armor, Medium HP, but like the Elementalist they have access to a lot more skills than other profession and are independent in their field and finisher.
Ranger : Medium Armor, Medium HP, but they have pets and survival skills to boost their endurance.

I hope they make something in the future that tracks your toughness, so players who got 3k toughness or over, will take 90% less damage. Not all the time, but during certain events.

Maybe in future raids if ArenaNet decides to make it a thing, a certain room needs a certain amount of people, with over 3k toughness to be able to “tank” damage in some way. It can be anything, like, standing on 3 different pressure plates for 10 seconds, but if you don’t have over 3k toughness, you will tick for 10k damage per second.

You need to give every stat a purpose in some way. At the moment everything is a speed-killing test.

Rozbuska.5263:

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist.

Thats basicly what noobs will tell you. If you find a guild with decent players they will know all classes are very viable. For example ppl still thinks warrior is top class dps while its actualy mid tier dps what is good only for banners:-)

Classes in this game are very ballanced very equal and can often replace each other in roles if needed. Simply play what you like and play it as good as possible and you will be fine.

^^ Yep. The people who think warrior is top tier DPS don’t actually mean top tier DPS, what they mean is that a bad/mediocre/new player can get decent DPS output as a Warrior. It’s essentially a good starter class. That said, a good player playing a zerker warrior is very different than a bad player playing a zerker warrior. Insofar that a bad zerker warrior will be dead most of the time. Many bosses have one-hit mechanics, so if you aren’t good at reading telegraphed attacks and able to dodge, all the armor in the world won’t save you.

Ele is actually able to deal out the most DPS, but you are even squishier than warrior and it is largely considered one of the hardest classes to learn to play properly.

Spooksie.4930:

I’ve been told that essentially the only three professions that are viable in the game are Warrior, Guardian, and Elementalist. Everything else is a nice to have instead of a need to have.

When you say that Warriors, for example, have more armor but that other professions can trait for armor. Can’t the Warriors trait for more protection anyhow even though they already get high defense in their armor?

I understand what you’re saying, but doesn’t it make it so that some classes can do the most important things in the game (deal damage and mitigate damage) just by virtue of their gear while others have to trait and suck it up?

I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Can someone please explain?

No, some classes baseline are better at defense or better at healing, but not by much that training can’t handle.

In this game I play tank or healer in PvP or PvE. And I will say, many classes make great healers, but a few make great tanks, but you have to play them uniquely to tank.

Example, a thief need to stealth build to tank in PvP.
A warrior need some protection/block/CC stacking build to tank
A guardian need CC/Protection/block stacking to tank
Etc.
And a few classes are built baseline to do just that, like the three classes above. Some classes can be turned into tanks from traits to match the above classes, but won’t be as well if you intend to play them all the same way.

There is a soft trinity but its more like an octernary.

Guardian: healer
Warrior: flexibility
Thief: single-target damage
Engineer: AOE damage/support
Ranger: ranged weapons
Elementalist: DPS
Mesmer: distraction
Necro: conditions

My dream of dreams would be an 8 man dungeon where the party can only include one of each class.

Spooksie.4930:

Which professions have more blast finishers? Elementalists? I think Thieves have one?

Thieves have one main blast finisher, which is Cluster Bomb (#2 on shortbow). I’m picking this out because it is a good example of how different professions play differently.

Despite thieves having far fewer blast finishers than, say, elementalists, I’d dare say that Cluster Bomb is a more useful blast finisher than any other. Why? Because of initiative, a mechanic that is specific to the thief class.

While other classes have skill cooldowns, meaning that each skill can only be used once every X seconds, thieves have a pool of initiative, and each skill uses X amount of initiative. Once it’s gone, all you can do is auto attack, but until it’s gone you can repeatedly use the same skill until your initiative depletes.

This means that Cluster Bomb can be used to repeatedly blast the same field, something that no other blast finisher can do. With this skill, thieves are able to provide blasts longer than most fields last and quickly pump out might / stealth / healing / etc when necessary.

I think this is a good example of how different classes provide utility in different ways.

Rather than being pigeonholed into a role to satisfy a trinity, I can provide tons of support while dealing very, very high damage with the same build.

At the surface, some people can’t see past the dominance of berserker gear and say “only DPS matters in this game, there’s no diversity.” Looking at class mechanics and thinking outside of the holy trinity mindset will open your eyes to the “GW2 trinity” of damage, support, and control :-)

I don’t know PVP/WVW Roaming, so I won’t comment. But here’s a little summary of the meta’s.

WvW Zerg:
Guard: You’re there for 2 main things, Stability being the most important. Stand your Ground and Virtue of Courage (Traited Indomitable Courage) will provide stability for your team, rotating these with another guard will keep it up pretty consistently, the best way to get yourself dead in WvW is to stop moving, so this lets you keep moving even if they use stuff in an attempt to stop you. The Second is regrouping, Empower is a great ability on staff, heals + Might, whole package, on regroups you’ll hit this to try and reset, you’ll also hit it before battle. Along with those you have Hammer for immob/damage, and some other things, but those 2 are the big things.
Warrior: Big thing is Immob/Cripple, you’re the frontline, set the enemy up so your backline can take them out. Along with that Warhorn is great for clearing condis and keeping swiftness going in battle. Together with the guard you make up the frontline which as I said, tries to set up the enemy so the backline can wipe them up.
Elementalist: You’re there as the primary backline, Meteor is amazing damage, enough to make everyone scatter… or die… water fields on regroups or even on engages to help with condi. You’re both support and damage all in one, just stay away from the fight or you’ll die (speaking staff Ele which is what’s meta, you can do other stuff but it’s generally staff Ele in WvW Zerg).
Necro: You’re the damage, drop your wells when the enemy is all piled up, and watch them melt. You can also pinsnipe and focus on the commanders with Deathshroud and corrupt boon, but you’re primarily there to drop the bomb(wells) on the enemy forces.
Mesmer: Portal/Veil Bot. You can pinsnipe, but generally you’re there for those two abilities. It’s a thankless job with little reward due to the low AE ability, but it’s amazing how effective just those two abilities can be.
Ranger: Pinsnipe, that’s your job, kill that commander, track him down (the one everyone is following) and kill him.
Thief: Scouting, having one isn’t bad, they can look ahead for the commander without being seen.
Engi: Just like everything the Engi does, you can slip in and perform some of the roles others do but not as effectively, you can frontline, backline, anything just not as good as the GWEN setup.

For PVE (Mainly Dungeon/Fractal play)
EVERYONE IS DAMAGE! this doesn’t mean you don’t want to focus on your support/control abilities, but the idea is that once you have those covered you should be going as much damage as possible. A guard will rarely be sitting in his highest DPS build, instead he’ll be taking defensive traits and utilities, but just enough to get the job done then focus on DPS. So Support/control first, but just enough, then as much damage as possible.

Warrior: Banner Bot, Really, banners are their reason for being, add on some vuln/might/fury to help the group. General gameplay is you use the basics, dodges/whirlwind/blocks to avoid damage, and if you don’t you’re the beefiest thing out there so you can take a stray hit if you must.
Guardian: Defensive powerhouse, You provide blinds/aegis/reflects/stability to your group. You survive yourself with all that + blocks/dodges. You’re there to provide the support, but don’t let that fool you, you can still do great damage.
Elementalist: Damage galore, as well as Might, fury and Vuln. Between Ice Bow, Glyph of Storms, Fire fields +Blasts, you’re the king in PVE, so much damage, so many buffs, it’s just insane. 3 different play styles depending on Scepter, dagger, or Staff play, scepter being the best for might, dagger is the most fluid and provides the most utility, and staff brings the damage.
Necro: You’re not really wnated in PVE, not because you can’t damage, but because that’s about all you’re good for, there is no other thing you do, the only time you’d want a necro is if you’re looking for someone to just bring some damage, then they can do that.
Mesmer: Portal bot!, high end play you can do some crazy skips with portal, aside from that they provide a lot of support through reflects, stability, and condi removal, as well as control effects for interrupting and stripping defiance. Mesmer and Guard are the general support professions.
Ranger: Frost Spirit and Spotter are two damage buffs only they can give, they’re nice, that’s what you bring, add in some other bits of utility and that’s the ranger. You’ll mainly be using Sword though which has a very interesting play style and something that takes a bit of practice.
THief: Stealth. blinds and Damage, amazing single target damage from them, add on their control abilities and blasts and they have some interesting utility. Initiative mechanic is interesting (as dlonie pointed out above). You can keep hitting your target with headshot to strip defiance in a few seconds, you can blast 5 times in a row to stack might/stealth. Play style wise your defenses are blinds, some projectile defense, and main thing is evades/dodges you have plenty available.
Engi: You do everything, whatever someone else isn’t covering in the group, engi can do that. In Addition to stacking quite a bit of vuln and might and doing pretty nice damage.

Well that may be way TL:DR, but hope it helps give you an idea of what people look to different professions for in those two areas.

Spooksie.4930:

….
I don’t understand the need or role of the different armor types in a game that says the trinity is gone.

Can someone please explain?

Since classes share armor sets, having only one would be incredibly boring from a visual standpoint. If you haven’t figured it out yet, GW2 is much more of a “dress up” game than the NEED for statistical MAXing to be successful in combat. YES, you can maximize your DPS by following the Meta, but is far from a requirement to play the game.

Whoever told you Warriors, Guardians and Elementalists are the only viable classes have a very narrow view of the game and how to play it. I’m guessing it came from someone that considers the majority of the game taking place in Dungeons….

You can do most roles in most classes, but you will be optimal only in one. Warriors’ unique party support is limited to banners so you never need more than one. A single Guardian can already have full uptime on AoE protection, can apply sufficient Stability and Aegis as needed so you never need more than one. Elementalists are capable of doing full 25 might + fury uptime solo for the whole party, something only a specific niche build for warriors can replicate, and no other class can do. They are also the swiftness buffers for annoying NPCs like Spire. Necros’ job is to draw and send conditions back to the enemy, which is useful only in two dungeons, and can also be entirely nullified if people know how to dodge/if people know how to condiclear with utilities and combos, so they’re rarely taken. Thieves are your vuln, stealth, interrupt and blind source with the greatest single source of damage in the game, but don’t give might to allies, so you never need more than one either. Rangers are your condition damage and second waterfield source together with the engineer, but given how low boss toughness is they’re optional – they buff with frost spirit and spotter as well, but their damage is limited enough by the nerfed multipliers that this isn’t really significant over taking another class unless the boss has high toughness. Engineers do a little of everything but specialise mainly in AoE damage with bombs and primary vuln stacking with grenades, as well as a tertiary waterfield source. Mesmers are boonstrippers and can cheese some dungeon tasks with portals.

If you want to talk ‘optimal’ you’d probably want one warrior, one guardian, one elementalist, one thief and one variable member for every dungeon, where the variable is a mesmer with 3x iDisenchanters for bosses that selfbuff or for portals – and an engineer for everything else. But nearly nobody runs that. And realistically, organising an optimal party generally takes you more time than you will save from doing random party compositions.

Then throw this all out the window and redo your calculations once you start considering other content like World vs World or raidbosses like the triple wurm, because everything changes.

GuzziHero.2467:

There is a soft trinity but its more like an octernary.

Guardian: healer
Warrior: flexibility
Thief: single-target damage
Engineer: AOE damage/support
Ranger: ranged weapons
Elementalist: DPS
Mesmer: distraction
Necro: conditions

My dream of dreams would be an 8 man dungeon where the party can only include one of each class.

Gonna fix it for you

Guardian: damage mitigation (healing really, please)
Warrior: damage buff
Thief: single-target damage + stealth
Engineer: Jack-of-all trades, master of none (except vulnerability)
Ranger: A warrior with less buff, but more dmg (certainly not range )
Elementalist: DPS
Mesmer: utilities
Necro : Whatever, who care in PvE (and that make me sad)

Only apply in PvE.

Armor in PvE is pretty useless in this game… bosses are hitting so hard that having highest possible armor vs no armor at all is like 1 additional hit. Luckily (or not) boss mechanics are so laughable that you can avoid most of their damage by dodging or by using skills with similar utility such as warrior’s GS 3. This is why zerker meta exists in the first place… poorly designed boss encounters, stacking of everything from boons to players standing on same spot for quick rez and ability to avoid most of the damage. And even if you fail at dodging, you group cant stack or any other complication… full zerker group can kill boss so quickly that he has almost no chance to wipe even kitten iest group (ok there are few bosses that can do it…).

Oh and also since you can get BiS exotic gear from farming simple dungeons/paths, noobs who fail at zerking harder bosses do not go into these dungeons at all or get carried by those who has skill to zerker anything and those who can zerker anything do not need other stats than zerker

So no, no trinity in any shape or form… GW2 invented unity

Brother Grimm.5176:

Whoever told you Warriors, Guardians and Elementalists are the only viable classes have a very narrow view of the game and how to play it. I’m guessing it came from a tryhard that considers the majority of the game taking place in Dungeons….

FTFY :P

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. The “heavies/eles-only” crowd are typically farmers who rarely leave AC/SE/CoF Which is amusing, as those dungeons are pretty trivial for any party comp @80s in exotics.

And it’s buried above, but OP mentioned that it was a WvW comm who made that statement.

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Not really. Its just that there is some variation.

Elementalist, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer and Guardian all have a place in records run.

Engineer and Ranger fall between two stools so they don’t really have a place in records run, but are excellent in speed runs.

Necro is ok, but don’t bring that much to the group.

So all 8 profession can do a good job, 7 profession can do a great job and 5 profession can do excellent job.

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Truth. But we can all agree that necro is crap :-)

Not that it’s as bad as /(avoiding a kitty)/ some people make it out to be, but if you’re going to play anything in PvE….there’s always a better option.

dlonie.6547:

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Truth. But we can all agree that necro is crap :-)

Not that it’s as bad as /(avoiding a kitty)/ some people make it out to be, but if you’re going to play anything in PvE….there’s always a better option.

Such Elitism, necros are awesome, I love my hybrid build, necros are great with condi!

;) lols

Jerus.4350:

dlonie.6547:

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Truth. But we can all agree that necro is crap :-)

Not that it’s as bad as /(avoiding a kitty)/ some people make it out to be, but if you’re going to play anything in PvE….there’s always a better option.

Such Elitism, necros are awesome, I love my hybrid build, necros are great with condi!

;) lols

Ack! You’re my new nemesis!