Guild Wars 2

Straight up question.

Which do you think is the class with the highest skill-ceiling? And why?

Personally I think it’s the Engineer BUT HEY what do I know…

For me that is a harder question then it sounds. I guess it depends where the challenge comes from, it also depends which aspects of the game you are talking about.

You could say a profession that less balanced like a ranger has a higher skill ceiling because it is more challenging to do well with them…that being said to answer this question we would also need to know your goals..

..highest skill ceiling for..what exactly? And would consider using an under used skill/trait spec to up the difficulty?

Thief has the highest skill ceiling. You absolutely cannot do rotations or facerolls with this profession. Thieves have the highest risk vs. reward if you plan on doing glassy stealth builds. Thieves are squishy and require abusing one of their two survivability mechanics to even last in a fight.

Secondly, the best way to kill a (really) good thief is to play a thief and learn their stratagems (if listening to direct advice fails).

Any thief can be a stealth-humping coward. What separates them from good thieves is all dependent on how they execute and adapt. A great thief, however, will win regardless.

I would say Ranger because of the level of skill required to manage a misbehaving, constantly dieing, never in f2 range and draws lots of aggro to you pet, plus your own skills on top takes so much skill, its mindboggling…

All other classes, even Ele with 4 attunements is a cakewalk in comparison…

All, Rangers who pull it off deserve a gold medal…

Zacchary.6183:

Thief has the highest skill ceiling. You absolutely cannot do rotations or facerolls with this profession. Thieves have the highest risk vs. reward if you plan on doing glassy stealth builds. Thieves are squishy and require abusing one of their two survivability mechanics to even last in a fight.

Secondly, the best way to kill a (really) good thief is to play a thief and learn their stratagems (if listening to direct advice fails).

Any thief can be a stealth-humping coward. What separates them from good thieves is all dependent on how they execute and adapt. A great thief, however, will win regardless.

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

I know its a noob question but what is skillceiling?

dragonrhapsody.6198:

I know its a noob question but what is skillceiling?

Hardest class to master/be good with…

Meglobob.8620:

dragonrhapsody.6198:

I know its a noob question but what is skillceiling?

Hardest class to master/be good with…

tyvm =)

Meglobob.8620:

I would say Ranger because of the level of skill required to manage a misbehaving, constantly dieing, never in f2 range and draws lots of aggro to you pet, plus your own skills on top takes so much skill, its mindboggling…

All other classes, even Ele with 4 attunements is a cakewalk in comparison…

All, Rangers who pull it off deserve a gold medal…

Only of they stop kicking rangers in parties… a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

I think the ele or eng would be my answer to this question.

In sPvP/tPvP – Warriors
PvE – Rangers
WvWvW – Necromancers (that mobility…)

Guys, the OP is asking for the highest skill ceiling. Not “Which class is hardest to do well at”.

What he wants is “which of the eight classes has the highest potential when played at the maximum level” (or simply ‘which is the hardest to master’)

I know a lot of people will dismiss Zacchary’s claim since ‘Thieves are so easy to do well at’ but that’s not the question. Oddly enough he kind of hit the mark (even though his post was clearly meant to convey something else), because Thieves are one of the professions with a higher skill-cap.

If you want my opinion, the hardest is the Engineer, by far.

(On an off topic note my Thief is face-roll in WvW, contrary to what Zacchary said. It’s super easy to do well.)

Edit: Read the title of this thread. Skill ceiling

Sunflowers.1729:

On an off topic note my Thief is face-roll in WvW, contrary to what Zacchary said. I know a lot of people will dismiss his claim as ‘oh Thieves are so easy to do well at’ (which is true) but that’s not the question.

What you are describing here would be best called skill floor, but I think it is a bit vague still. For reference:

Skill Floor = The difficulty of achieving at least average performance on a specific class, compared to other people playing the same class.

Skill Ceiling = The difficulty of performing flawlessly in this class, i.e. use it’s abilities to the fullest of their potential in any situation.

Those 2 are not neccessarily related; a class can be easy to pick up and hard to master, or hard to pick up but then have small room for improvement. We should also note that both are not to be confused with a classes’ overall power compared to others. I often see this distinction not being made, but I think it is a neccessary one to explain some of the predicaments of balancing.

A class can be difficult to master and still perform below average compared to other classes. Most would say rangers in pve are such a case; if you skillfully manage your pet, you can perform ok-ish in most encounters, but the class still lacks the tools to do anything special.

Sunflowers.1729:

Guys, the OP is asking for the highest skill ceiling. Not “Which class is hardest to do well at”.

What he wants is “which of the eight classes has the highest potential when played at the maximum level” (or simply ‘which is the hardest to master’)

On an off topic note my Thief is face-roll in WvW, contrary to what Zacchary said. I know a lot of people will dismiss his claim as ‘oh Thieves are so easy to do well at’ (which is true) but that’s not the question.

:C I don’t like how you worded that.

“Doing well” with a thief != being a shadow-humping coward imo. Anyone can Shadow Refuge and run away but it takes a little know-how to counter it. That’s when I learned how hard you could screw a fleeing thief over with cripple. Because of it I have not lost to another thief except for one in sPvP when I forgot to finish retraiting myself.

:| I didn’t realize it until I noticed Uncatchable not working. I was using 0/0/0/20/20 with no major traits.

Zacchary.6183:

Thief has the highest skill ceiling. You absolutely cannot do rotations or facerolls with this profession. Thieves have the highest risk vs. reward if you plan on doing glassy stealth builds. Thieves are squishy and require abusing one of their two survivability mechanics to even last in a fight.

Secondly, the best way to kill a (really) good thief is to play a thief and learn their stratagems (if listening to direct advice fails).

Any thief can be a stealth-humping coward. What separates them from good thieves is all dependent on how they execute and adapt. A great thief, however, will win regardless.

LOL I can’t tell if you’re serious or what.

The problem is that it is impossible to be unbiased. I personally have zero problem with hunter in PvE, have killed easier on it than just about any other class. The only classes I don’t have at 80 (have not started them) is warrior and engi. I have no desire to really try either until a new area opens up. Theif I do not enjoy, but I also do not enjoy guard that much. Love mesmer and ele is fun. Can I play perfectly on any of them? Not a chance, since I am not looking for perfection whatever that actually is.

In PvE elementalist without any doubt.

They are the only profession with a weaponset locked at short range…and short range can beextremely difficult sometime.

others can just switch weapon, ele can t :/

Being controversial here … Warrior.

Lowest skill floor, but highest skill ceiling. Easy to pick up, easy to do well with. But when you see Warriors vs Warriors, you can really tell the difference between someone who simply uses the class and does well because it’s powerful, and someone who has really learned, understood and mastered everything the Warrior is capable of.

I know people will struggle with this one because of the low skill floor aspect and people confusing this discussion with one about doing well with a class. The same is true for Thieves and Mesmers. All very powerful, all pretty easy to do some serious damage with. However, all very intricate classes and you can tell the greats from the people who just do well.

With classes such as the Ranger – I don’t find it anywhere near as difficult as several people seem to. However, I’d say it has a higher skill floor but a lower skill ceiling. You can master the Ranger much sooner than the others.

I think all professions are quite easy to learn, but quite hard to master, like in most if not all other MMORPGs.
Except maybe thief in PvP/WvW, which is faceroll easy. But that’s the problem with any class which can stealth in combat in any MMORPG. No class should have such easy escape routes. Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Ision.3207:

The Forum Warrior has the highest skill ceiling, with all the other classes not even close.

Forum Warrior’s have to delicately balance their trolling to perfection so as not to be perma-banned from the forums, while also maintaining a steady stream of posts that cause damage-over-time. Besides, no other class in the game faces the possibility of perma-death, so this alone makes the Forum Warrior the hardest class to play. So while it’s true that the Forum Warrior has the highest dps with his condition spamming dot spec, his dps requires a glass cannon build with very little room for error.

Very well done

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

I’d say Engineer, followed by Ele.

Usually when I see engineers roaming in WvW, it’s “oh hey, easy kill”. Then there are the few who can take on two or more and leave me dead, thinking “what… just… happened…?”. Elementalists are second for me simply due to the insane amount of button-mashing going on. And if you waste that combo field, you won’t be happy…

Engineer followed by Elementalist.

3rd place Honorable Mention: Mesmer

CrossedHorse.4261:

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

Only as resourceful as the available skills permit.
Farerolling the stealth button as soon as you’re about to die is not even remotely “skillful”.

engi or thief imo (although theyre the only classes that i havent gotten to 80 yet… which is odd now that i think about it)
engi because of the juggling
thief because the resource management

Korrigan.4837:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

Only as resourceful as the available skills permit.
Farerolling the stealth button as soon as you’re about to die is not even remotely “skillful”.

Nor is pressing any heal button. I guess it’s all in the timing. I’ve misjudged it a few times in the past and been destroyed. I’ve also got it just right in the past and it’s been great. Meh. Each to their own. I find it has a higher skill ceiling than some of the other classes I play – or maybe a higher skill floor (I’m certain I haven’t hit the ceiling, lol).

But I wouldn’t label Thief players “cowards”. That’s unnecessary – which is the bit I was really objecting to in your previous post. The truth is, they really just can’t take any damage.

I’m not sure what order they should be in, but the classes with the highest skill ceiling are: Engineer, Elementalist, Mesmer.

That said, the skill ceiling of every class is high in this game. A good player on any class is a force to be reckoned with.

gennyt.3428:

Zacchary.6183:

Thief has the highest skill ceiling. You absolutely cannot do rotations or facerolls with this profession. Thieves have the highest risk vs. reward if you plan on doing glassy stealth builds. Thieves are squishy and require abusing one of their two survivability mechanics to even last in a fight.

Secondly, the best way to kill a (really) good thief is to play a thief and learn their stratagems (if listening to direct advice fails).

Any thief can be a stealth-humping coward. What separates them from good thieves is all dependent on how they execute and adapt. A great thief, however, will win regardless.

LOL I can’t tell if you’re serious or what.

LOL I can tell that you have no clue.

I won’t discuss the PvE skill ceilings because they’re virtually nonexistent. PvP skill ceilings however, I would say a warrior. Now, a lot of people say, “But Ferrum! Warriors are kitten easy to play!” And I have to agree. But, if you’re facing the stongest builds on the strongest classes in the game, your skill is the only thing that will see your victory. Warriors are easy to learn, but they’re definitely the hardest class to master when every other class in the game out-“classes” you.

D/D elementalists have a very high skill ceiling. Good ones generally center on staying alive, doing some damage or supporting the team. Great ones dish out heaps of damage, are ridiculously hard to kill and elevate everyone around them. Few ever move past being good to true masters of the class. I know I gave up on it even though I can play the bunker d/d fairly well.

Highly skilled d/d elementalists of the non-bunker/slight bunker kind juggle a lot of moving parts by keeping themselves alive, fly all over the place, switch between 20 weapon skills, drop excellent damage, setup fields for other players and apply support to their team. They have to watch a low HP pool, conditions, enemy positions, teammate positions, team health/condition issues and often have to manage being focused an entire fight.

Elementalist high skill attack combos require you to activate 8-10 abilities, including multiple ground targeted abilities, in under a second. Playing the class at the skill cap requires the most manual dexterity and attention to both your buffs/conditions and your opponent’s to be optimal while having the narrowest margin for error.

That said, playing a D/D tanky brawler with simple skill rotations can be effective and fairly brain dead, so the class can be played at most skill levels. It’s nothing like a Thi333333f or a more one spam ranger, but still not especially difficult.

Zacchary.6183:

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

A thief who opens with Hide in Shadows is a terribad thief.

Doesn’t “skill ceiling” mean “affords the most opportunity for personal skill to make a big difference”?

IOW, what it means is that there are some classes that are designed to be easier to play, you can mash less buttons carelessly to do job X, whereas another class will have to press more buttons with more precise timing to do job X. The latter are “high skill ceiling” classes.

With that I’d say Engineer, Elementalist and Mesmer, in that order; then Necro, Thief and Guardian somewhere in the middle, with Ranger and Warrior being “easy mode”. At least, that’s my experience of it anyway.

That’s a completely different thing from saying that a class like the Warrior or Thief can be played really, really well, to a degree better than most people play it. Of course that’s true – if a class is of the first type, easy to play, then when someone who is innately skilled plays it, they’ll play it with a skill and elegance most people don’t.

But that high degree of skill isn’t necessary to play the character.

That’s different from “high skill ceiling”, which means that a high degree of skill is necessary to play the class to its full potential, or “high skill floor”, which means that a high degree of skill is necessary to play it even competently.

Korrigan.4837:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

Only as resourceful as the available skills permit.
Farerolling the stealth button as soon as you’re about to die is not even remotely “skillful”.

You make it sound like stealth makes you invincible, if you can’t kill a thief then take CC’s and shut them down. You sound like you get owned by thieves all the time.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Zacchary.6183:

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

A thief who opens with Hide in Shadows is a terribad thief.

Depends, if the target is alone and unaware of your presence, you can use Hide in Shadows to get closer and burst him down.

Kaizer.7135:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Zacchary.6183:

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

A thief who opens with Hide in Shadows is a terribad thief.

Depends, if the target is alone and unaware of your presence, you can use Hide in Shadows to get closer and burst him down.

Healing @ full health = stupid. It doesn’t matter who you are.

Zacchary.6183:

Thief has the highest skill ceiling. You absolutely cannot do rotations or facerolls with this profession. Thieves have the highest risk vs. reward if you plan on doing glassy stealth builds. Thieves are squishy and require abusing one of their two survivability mechanics to even last in a fight.

Secondly, the best way to kill a (really) good thief is to play a thief and learn their stratagems (if listening to direct advice fails).

Any thief can be a stealth-humping coward. What separates them from good thieves is all dependent on how they execute and adapt. A great thief, however, will win regardless.

A good thief you say?

I put engi at highest skill ceiling, and a relatively strong “win” in my mind.

The next batch I would put warriors, mesmers, and necros.

Next up would be ranger and thief.

And then eles and guardian.

Consequently, I also put ele at the highest skill floor. And, I think that playing any class to its full potential not only takes talent, but also a significant amount of time and dedication. None are “easy” to reach their skill ceiling on, imo, and the only one that really stands out to me is the engi. The rest seem to be relatively interchangeable in a lot of ways, so this was just how it went for me more than making a general ruling. Not to even remotely imply I have taken the classes to their actual ceiling, just my own ceiling. :P

Except for the engi. I think there is still a ton to learn about the class.

My vote definitely goes for Elementalist, then Engineer, then Mesmer. The reason why is because of the sheer amount of activity require to used the class:

Elementalist: Has to constantly switch between attunements and spam all of their weapon skills in the right order to be effective. They are very hard to build for, too, which is why so many people just copy the 0/0/10/30/30 build that someone came up with so long ago. Their skills are largely AoE and also have delays, which makes doing something like switching to Earth Attunement to reflect projectiles really difficult. Elementalists have the lowest health and armor out of any class, so making mistakes gets elementalists killed quickly.

Engineer: The devs have no clue what to do with this class. Engineers have to constantly switch kits to maintain utility, and their best skills require good prediction. They have overall low damage, and you have to manage their toolbelt skills as well as their main skills. Engineers are also hard to build for, since you have to sacrifice speccing one kit for another many times. Also this class’s top builds get nerfed every patch (R.I.P. 100nades, Elixir S, Elixir R, Static Shield, Zerker Grenades, Tri-stun net turret, etc). You have to be adaptable and can’t run FotM’s with Engis.

Mesmer: The difficulty in this class comes from requiring knowledge about every other class. You have to know how other classes will act and behave, and most of the mesmer’s skills aren’t straightforward.

This gives those classes a high learning curve. You must also consider that each of them seems to get more and more nerfs every patch to their top tier builds (seriously, I’d trade trade stun-breaking shockwave for old style Elixir R, even if you were going give me $1000 just to drop it), so that speaks about how powerful they are as a whole.

Difficulty from easiest to hardest:

Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Necromancer, Elementalist, Thief, Mesmer, Engineer.

Zacchary.6183:

Kaizer.7135:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Zacchary.6183:

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

A thief who opens with Hide in Shadows is a terribad thief.

Depends, if the target is alone and unaware of your presence, you can use Hide in Shadows to get closer and burst him down.

Healing @ full health = stupid. It doesn’t matter who you are.

By the time you kill that guy and find someone else the skill would be recharged, and you don’t open up with it for the healing, but for the stealth. Even a complete kitten could see that.

Sunflowers.1729:

Guys, the OP is asking for the highest skill ceiling. Not “Which class is hardest to do well at”.

What he wants is “which of the eight classes has the highest potential when played at the maximum level” (or simply ‘which is the hardest to master’)

If you want my opinion, the hardest is the Engineer, by far.

I find my engineer absurdly easy to play.

Get two pistols, slot the elixir with the purple icon, the one that’s got a green square bottle, and the wrench icon. I don’t even need to hit the win button, it’s set on a timer to hit itself…

I can’t even remember what my skills are named… its so easy I don’t bother… I have those, and its “what me worry?”

Excuse me a second, the win button just went off, there’s some stuff waiting for me at the counter.

Engineer is so easy… if the game had one change, I could program my computer to log itself in and play for me: click target to move to it like they had in GW1. That’s about all I need to do on my own when on engineer.

Oh that win button just went off again. I’ve told the lady at the counter to hold my stuff though, until I can get to the bank again. All this win is filling my bags…

As for the highest ‘skill cap’ I don’t know… That’s a weird term if its meant to mean the class that is the most powerful when played by a player who never makes a mistake, ever. Not even on tax day.

Since I don’t think any player is close to that point, egos aside: I’m not willing to say which yet. To me it often feels that way for whichever one I was logged into last: I see potential in all of them that goes untapped by the community (self included).

I feel like people don’t understand skill ceiling, and often misinterpret it as skill floor.

I stand by my assertions that warrior is the easiest class to learn, but by far the hardest to master.

Engenieer, no doubt about it, so eazy to fkup, to miss a skill, a toolbelt, a heal and then your dead, the engenieer use all keyboard from F1-F4 and 1-0 multiple times

@Thiefs who complain skill faceroll is skillceiling, LOL? If thief is hard for you I sugest AngryBirds or other simpler games.

If a person was to play every class flawlessly the mesmer would come out on top. They can play the most build options and if stun is timed to interrupt casts and is not random you can kill an enemy before they can even use a skill. They can play bleed burn condi, retal, tank, various forms of dps burst like shatter and phantasms. They can play stun they can even play confusion condi. Mesmer potential is very hard to limit unlike other classes.

Kaizer.7135:

Zacchary.6183:

Kaizer.7135:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Zacchary.6183:

wolfshirt.8459:

lmao. no way, dude.

Use stealth-heal at full HP. Press Dagger 1 on someone.

Then heal again if youre going to die.

If you really believe its that simple then maybe you should try that on WvW.

A thief who opens with Hide in Shadows is a terribad thief.

Depends, if the target is alone and unaware of your presence, you can use Hide in Shadows to get closer and burst him down.

Healing @ full health = stupid. It doesn’t matter who you are.

By the time you kill that guy and find someone else the skill would be recharged, and you don’t open up with it for the healing, but for the stealth. Even a complete kitten could see that.

You’de be right a majority of the time if we were talking about zerk vs. zerk. Zerk vs zerk doesn’t exist all the time though. Lets say the guy was more tanky then you thought and/or what if your backstab didn’t crit (which is what gives it it’s power)? You just burned your heal and you are Revealed as well. So unless you got a plan B for the next 3-4 seconds you are dead.

Kaizer.7135:

Korrigan.4837:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

Only as resourceful as the available skills permit.
Farerolling the stealth button as soon as you’re about to die is not even remotely “skillful”.

You make it sound like stealth makes you invincible, if you can’t kill a thief then take CC’s and shut them down. You sound like you get owned by thieves all the time.

I play a “tankish” warrior, thieves definitely don’t scare me – but it’s annoying that most of them just run away in stealth when going under 50% health.

Korrigan.4837:

Kaizer.7135:

Korrigan.4837:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Korrigan.4837:

Thief, just like Rogue in “WoW” or other theme park games, is the coward’s favorite class.

Cowardly, or simply resourceful? :p

Honestly, if the Thief had more health and toughness I’d agree with you. But the Thief is pretty squishy. If the Warrior could stealth? Sure. Game-breaking. However, not so much the Thief.

Only as resourceful as the available skills permit.
Farerolling the stealth button as soon as you’re about to die is not even remotely “skillful”.

You make it sound like stealth makes you invincible, if you can’t kill a thief then take CC’s and shut them down. You sound like you get owned by thieves all the time.

I play a “tankish” warrior, thieves definitely don’t scare me – but it’s annoying that most of them just run away in stealth when going under 50% health.

Annoying doesn’t make it bad, lol.