Hey everyone!
I stopped playing just before the Heart of Thorns release a few years back and just started playing again.
When I left the four dominant classes for dungeons and raids were: Elementalist, Mesmer, Warrior, & Guardian. Everything else was seen as non competative.
I remember Engineers were ok, but limited to a single build using Grenades to be effective, and hence considered boring.
I see there is a new class, but based on what I read in the Revenant forum section it is not a very good class.
Has anything changed since I stopped playing?
Wat are the classes people use for fractals and raids now?
Thanks
Firstly, no one runs dungeons anymore for the most part. And if you do run them, its only for tokens and you’ll generally pug with any class and any build, speedruns are mostly over because the liquid gold rewards were … liquidated.
Second, what you refer to as raids was most likely fractals, because raids did not exist until halfway into HoT’s lifespan. Fractals are completely different to what you experienced back then, and doing high level fractals depends less on class and build and more about your group composition, teamwork, and attention of the fractal’s mechanics-you’re only likely to get kicked if doing zero DPS or making really bad mistakes like dying over and over. You still find your toxic fractal group but for the most part if you’re running with guildies just do whatever you feel is most effective and adjust it as needed as you go with advice from your group.
The gameplay that you’re referring to is now mostly confined to raids. This is where your character must be in ascended gear (exotics can work, but only in A+ runs), must have the right gear, must have the right build, must be played in a specific rotation, etc. If you want information on what is currently the meta in raids then I recommend joining a raiding guild, as this context is far more complex than dungeons or fractals ever were and needs heavy forethought, and changes with each major balance update which come far more often now.
This means there is no single answer about what class to play in raids, because in the next balance patch it could be completely back to the drawing board.
tl;dr, play what you want, unless you raid. All classes have had heavy changes and every build is at least somewhat effective now after all the fixes to things like conditions, CC (break bars instead of defiance), etc.