Guild Wars 2

I could be wrong about my testing but here’s the feeling I got roughly when it comes down to sPvP for the new stuff:

A bit OP:

1-Mesmer: I’m bad at Mesmer and this feels like they took all of the difficulty out of the class to ensure that no matter how bad you are, you’ll be a beast in PvP. Your Phantasms stay, you can fight for extended time while throwing all of your spells and get everything back a few seconds later. The clones move super fast when going to explode so no need to position yourself properly for it to work. Basically, it feels like it’s the current Mesmer, just 2x stronger.

2-Revenant: This class seems to have tools to counter almost anything. I haven’t tested it in-depth but it really looks like someone skilled at the class will be able to deal with about anything. The class looks too versatile and I’m trying to understand what weakness it has. Maybe just because it’s new and I don’t fully understand the class yet.

Viable:

3-Warrior: It feels similar to the current builds but maybe with a small buff to it. You can go berserk and burst a few more times while having extra buffs (like stability the whole time). I haven’t really tried the Torch for condition builds so I don’t know how good those will be but it seems to me like it could work in PvP.

4-Thief: Some of the staff moves feel clunky. Some of the utility ones are hard to land but still. Some of it is good, the dodge rolls need improvement but can be useful for sure. The new ultimate has some potential. It can use some work but I can see some of it being useful in PvP.

Fun but maybe not so good against skilled players:

5-Necromancer: I really enjoy the spec. I think that Necro is my favorite character right now and overall, my favorite or one of them for the expansion as well. The Greatsword and Reaper Shroud aren’t useless. I can make it work in unranked arena but I really think that any skilled player will kite the Reaper easily. It’s lacking mobility and the gap closer options to draw enemies to you are unreliable (and just plain don’t work against block or stability or even a roll). If that misses, you can’t get in melee range unlike every other single melee build in the game pretty much. I’m afraid that this new elite spec will not be competitive at all for PvP and that the current builds will remain the only options in a competitive environment.

6-Guardian: It’s fun. Number 2 can hit hard with the Longbow. The spear from F1 looks cool. The traps can be fun when defending a point. A bit like the Necro though, I’m not too convinced that it can be viable in a competitive environment either. It might be fun to mess around with, maybe in some situations in PvE or WvW if you can’t get close. It isn’t bad but isn’t great either. As I expected, it also seems to have very little synergy with the current tools the Guardian has.

Builds that seem to be nearly useless in PvP:

7-Elementalist: Perhaps I built it wrong but the Tempest just doesn’t seem to fit PvP at all. It’s very weak to say the least. It feels as if this elite spec wants you to commit to one or two elements which I do like (I like to feel like I’m an Air elementalist for example rather than a bit of every element) but it just doesn’t work. The damage isn’t impressive at all and you are quite vulnerable with this type of spec. You have to go throw yourself at melee range if you want to deal damage with Fire or Air overload… which just gets you killed every time even with the -40% damage reduction. The least that could be done about it would be to give these spells some cast range (it still would be weak but it’d be a start). The new ult feels like it follows the trend of ele having awful ultimates. The shouts seem soso. I’m not too sure about the war horn. Overall, it really seems like it could be fun for PvE and mostly useful for a PvE water build (the water overload seems to be the best one out of the 4) but completely useless in competitive PvP. Not that Elementalists can complain much with the state of their D/D builds but it still sucks for them to get nothing new and fun to use in PvP.