Guild Wars 2

Dear all,

I haven’t had time much to play Gw2 over the last 5 months however am looking to return.

As I am very busy and have only 1 hour/day during the week and maybe 2 hours/day during the weekend to play I am looking for a good pick.

I will mainly play PVP and WvsW as well as some PVE to get those hero points (which too be honest is something I hope they will patch next time as it takes quite long to unlock the advanced spec when playing only casual ).

Therefore, to make sure I pick the optimum class for my likes, I was wondering what are currently (after the spring patch) the top 3 classes for PVE, WvsW and PvP taking into account DPS and survivability (e.g. in 1 vs 1).

WvsW:
1.
2.
3.

PVP:
1.
2.
3.

PVE:
1.
2.
3.

Thanks a million!!

DPS and survivabiltiy?…

Maybe something along the lines of Herald, Tempest, Scrapper, or Mesmer

Choose what you like best.

Keep in mind anet intentionally and regularly changes the balance of professions that cause MASSIVE shifts in what people play. Even a single skill change can make or break a profession. So:

Razor.9872:

Choose what you like best.

PVE:
1. tempest
2. daredevil
3. reaper

for sheer personal dps and and ability to stay alive while doing it
does not include party support

From the heavy armor users the best class at the moment (overall, taking every content of the game in consideration) is probably the Revenant.

In leather armor I would advice the Thief: has tons of mobility and stealth mechanics (which are excellent for PvE and roaming).

In cloth armor the answer seems more tricky: currently Mesmers are very strong in PvP/duelling and are very good as support (buffers) in PvE, but they lack mobility a bit and definitely the Tempest and Reapers are better cleaving foes with their AoE at PvE.

Keep in mind if you choose mesmer for PvE, you will be the lowest DPS class in the game brought only for your party buff, alacrity. Like WoW vanilla’s Shaman and Paladin, buffbot.

Mesmer is bar none the lowest DPS PvE class, so if you wanna do solo PvE and roaming in HoT maps, your kill times will be terrible compared to a Revenant/Warrior/Thief/Reaper/Scrapper/Engineer/Dragonhunter.

Mesmer also has no viable aoe or cleave for easy tagging or constant aoe DPS. Your only aoe comes from 25+ sec cd stationary well utilities which aren’t even that damaging.

Mesmer has no good might stacking in any of its sustained DPS builds as well, so keep in mind mesmer is a GROUP class that’s pretty awful to solo with.

I would have to recommend reaper, they can scythe their way (literally!) through mobs with ridiculous dps on multiple enemies at once, and super-survivability with Shroud… doesn’t really have anything to bring to a group though, no healing, buffs etc. Only the ability to rush into mobs and mow them all down. Awesome fun for roaming though, for that reason

Reaper for everything.
Just make a build that lets you survive comfortably and fill up your DPS from there. In PvE things just melt anyway, and in PvP and WvW is always better to just be alive.

Ranger or Necro (reaper). Reaper has the iconic “get 100% crit with 0 precision investment” via traits, which lets him use Valkyrie or Cavalier stats for power builds rather then being forced to go berserker’s like most others. Plus lotsa protection and some life leech and you got yourself a pretty sustainy and damagy profession.

He’s also a great party player despite what others say. In pvp your boon corruptions do wonders (especially with tempests and their boon spam), in pve your transfusion trait makes you a life saver for big objectives in open world (especially HoT). People WILL die and you will pull them outta red circles of death, ress them and send them back into the fray, keeping the push going rather (especially on dragon’s stand) rather then watching whole wave of players run for their lifes, because front line got crushed hard.

Ranger’s sustain comes from his pet and ability for one to play one role (like dps) and other another (tank pet for example). Ranger’s also pretty darn simple to handle, and as druid (not so easy to handle) you’re a real nightmare in pvp, especially when holding a point. The amount of heals, cc, condi burst and protection you can get is crazy.

Both are good and not overly complex picks. If i had to choose one i would say:
- need flashy, always useful and tanky pick that manipulates condies like no tommorow? – go necro.
- need the simpler, less flashy, but more forgiving and much more ranged option? Go ranger.

Many thanks to all!! When taking Neco, what would be the best armor combination. ZeftheWicked, you mentioned Valkyrie or Cavelier, what would be the best? Or is a combination of different parts the way to go? If yes, which one for what part

Many thanks again!

Depends on what you want from it. If every ounce of power counts then valkyrie as it’s mainly power, vitality and ferocity secondary. Also with large healthpool you’ll be surviving condies better and enjoy beefier death shroud.

Cavalier is toughness primary (power and ferocity 2ndary) so if you’re going there you’ll be better vs power damage and you’ll get more out of your healing (less hp lost due to damage reduction from tougness)

Though with that in mind there is the Commander’s (if i recall right) stat set as alternative. It has more power, slightly less tougness, less ferocity but extra healing (which cavalier doesn’t) to stay on top of that sustain while dealing sweet power damage.

These 3 should be your main picks if you want berserker style power damage + sustain. But don’t forget necro is first and foremost a necro, and not just hanger for wearing armor. Majority of your survival will come from using your condies well (chills, cripples, weakenss, fears and some blinds), along with good deathshroud management (switching from nomal health pool to ds, then back, ensuring you got proper amount of healing vs life force gain to feed both your healthpools).

For damage+sustain traits you’ll definitely neeed reaper (has both), soul reaping (again both, focused on deathshround sustain and offence).
The last one is up to you. Each of remaning lines has something good to offer:

Spite makes you a self might stacking machine.

Blood magic provides ample amounts of life leech and healing. Pair that up with proper ds management and your survival goes through the roof.

Curses offer 3rd line boosting your crits (5s fury on entering ds) + 2% crit chance for every condition on your target.

Death magic is extremely noobie friendly traitline. It boosts your meatshields..erm i mean minion’s survival, lets them take condies off you, and lastly offers the most dangerous & powerful survival tool for noobie necros – unholy sanctuary.

The last one is simple and deadly. When you’re about to die, as long as trait itself is not on cooldown and you got over 10% max life force on you (your deathshround bar) instead of dying you’ll be automatically put into deathshroud buying you precious time to either finish the fight, escape, or leech some health back before your life force expires. This intervention will ignore deathshroud’s natural cooldown, so it’s an awesome lifesaver..OR NOT. If you let your instincs take over and try to pop ds as you die, there’s a high chance trait might beat you to it! Trait pops ds saving you, only to have your own self take it off because you forgot about the trait, and are deactivating already present deathshroud with you F1 press, thinking you’d do the opposite! Well done, see you at waypoint:p
If you manage to control your ds itchy finger when nearing death this trait will save your kitten like an undead superman;p

Also two fair warnings before you go into necro:
Necro has good power damage but hardly any burst. He’s just deals solid damage all the time, but no instakill ROAR damage spikes.

And between Ranger and Necro – Necro is the harder one to build (waaay harder) easier to play. Ranger is easier to build, harder to play (managing 3 swaps at the same time – weapon + pet + celestial avatar)

100% crit on reaper? How do you do that or is that only while in shroud?

Even without shroud reaper can still get pretty hefty crit rate from traits alone, albeit it won’t be pure 100%.

Reaper line gives 2% crit per vulni stack on opponent. On cap value (25 stacks) it’s 50% without any ds involved. Not something you can get immediately and always perfectly, but necromancer is pretty awesome at stacking that vulni all by himself, and in a zerg fight vs boss it’s nearly guaranteed 50% crit throughout the whole fight.

then there is the curses line, that offers 2% crit per unique condition on enemy (number of condies, not the amount of stacks counts here). In practice that’s 10-20% crit if the target doesn’t die in first 10 seconds of the fight.

You also get 5s fury when you enter ds, no cooldown on that trait. So if you wanna go shroudless, nothing stopping you from flashing shroud for that fury alone and getting back to business in your base form. That’s 5s of extra 20% crit that’s on 10 or 7s cooldown (depending if you traited for faster shroud recharge or not).

So summing that all up. Albeit it requires to stack some vulni, and putting some other condies on, what we have here in best case is:

50% +20% +20% (fury from curses line) + 4% (innate crit) = 94% if conditions are favourable and most off all applied to your target in number, and that’s without requirement to sit in shroud all day. For any zerg vs boss fights you can safely assume conditions will be veeeery favourable;)

Or you can just go for deathly perception and then get another 50% crit just for being in shroud.

As it will probably take me quite some time to get the reaper traitline (again, I only play casually and you just need TOO many points for that), I will mostly play MM or so in the beginning. How is the DPS of a MM in PvE and how is it for PVP?

And where is Necro in the DPS ranking with and without reaper after the spring patch?