Guild Wars 2

So, I kinda stopped playing GW2 about the time when the 2nd legendary shortbow was announced due to some boredom and the fact that they announced that they weren’t going to finish up the missing legendaries until possibly much later.
I was a Revenant main and I guess that’s also part of the reason why I quit. The class felt very shoe-horned into Power/Boon Support and a lot of the flavor of the class was either changed drastically (Mallyx) or just wasn’t that usable/fun (Ventari/Dwarf).

Regardless, I feel like picking up the game again and I’m kinda glad to see that new maps and new fractals were added since then and the last raid wings released (I had a ton of fun doing the first wing; although I didn’t beat the last boss before I quit).
However, I still feel like Revenant isn’t the class that was sold to me and reading the recent patch notes kinda tells me that it wont change any time soon.

This makes me want to just pick a different main entirely and that’s where I want some help. I’m contemplating picking Thief or Guardian. I always found Thief’s Steal mechanic to be incredibly fun, but I don’t particularly like Staff as a weapon, so I’m kinda wondering what weapon sets/builds are the most used nowadays and if I could get by in PvE/WvW/Fractals/Raids without the Staff. I also need to add that my only legendary, the Incinerator, would be usable on Thief (I used to main Ele, but hated its direction and REALLY hated the Tempest release), so it’d be awesome to be able to use that again.

I’ve never actually played much Guardian, which is why I kinda wanted to pick it up, but I’m a bit afraid that it wont be as engaging as Thief. However, it’d be a fresher experience, I already have full Ascended Zojja’s made for it (from my Rev…RIP), aaand there’s that off-chance that a future Elite spec will focus on using Tomes (like the Elite skills that were removed way back) and I think that’d be really awesome.

tl;dr Basically, how are Thief/Guard currently? Are they suffering from any diversity issues? Are they wanted to Raids/Fractals? What roles can they do best or decently?
Which do you believe would be more engaging?

I also want to make clear: I don’t care about how good they are in PvP, nor do I care about anything they have being OP, broken, or anything of the sort. I’m more interested in fun factor and usability in PvE/Raids/etc. I will do some light roaming in WvW, but that will hardly be serious and mostly just to goof around.
Thanks for any help.

Guard is decent with trap medi utilities(only utilities that work so ur forced to play with those utilities in any part of the game), and since pve mobs arent that hard get stats for full damage and use a hammer nothing special…hammer 1 everything.

Still imo if i would be starting now and know what i know of the game i would make a Warrior or Revenant for the long run.

I play with near all classes, except mesm and element.

In terms of versatility the champion is the necromancer, with the viper set, you can change u role just by changing some traits. And in extreme cases changing the trinkets. Necromancer is op on high levels fractals.

The guardian is quite versatile too, however it requires more sets saved, because the guardian is more dependent on armor stats than other classes.

Condi guardian with burn is very fun, theres build for classic zerker gear or still a never-die-guardian with some bunker gear.

Why did I emphasize versatility? For players who do not usually have many classes, versalitidade is important if u get bored with some gamestyle.

In my case I have several classes, it’s not a problem, because when I get caught up with one, I play with the other.

I would pick to stay with Rev from those, but between Guardian and Thief I would go Thief.

Thief is in a good place in terms of PvE damage and you can go either staff or dagger for fractals and raids; at the same time for WvW roaming is the class with better mobility and disengage tools, and you can chose to go either physical damage or conditions being equally succesfull.

I main a Guardian and the class pretty much demands a different set of gear in each department of the game, which makes it very expensive. From the heavy guys the Warrior is more easy to equip and more versatile in builds, imo.

Buran.3796:

I would pick to stay with Rev from those, but between Guardian and Thief I would go Thief.

Thief is in a good place in terms of PvE damage and you can go either staff or dagger for fractals and raids; at the same time for WvW roaming is the class with better mobility and disengage tools, and you can chose to go either physical damage or conditions being equally succesfull.

I main a Guardian and the class pretty much demands a different set of gear in each department of the game, which makes it very expensive. From the heavy guys the Warrior is more easy to equip and more versatile in builds, imo.

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Guardian being expensive is not an issue. I’ve been playing for years and I have several ways of gearing lvl 80s. Maybe not in ascended, but I can definitely do exotics very easily.

I don’t really find Warrior very interesting so I wont be picking that.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

Full berserker staff elementalist/tempest is my main for PvE. It’s glassy, but you’ll obliterate most things in the PvE world before they can kill you. AoE aplenty, water attunement for healing yourself and others, conjured weapons and elementals… What’s not to love?

Malchior.5732:

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Is true that lacks build diversity (condition Mallyx is arguably weaker than the power build, so you are almost forced to use Herald with Glint + Shiro) en even flexibility (no utilities to rearrange), and that currently is a high risk – low reward class, but what I’m starting to appreciate from Rev is how high the skill ceiling is.

Sure, doesn’t allow a single mistake, and playing without stability, almost no condition cleanses and barely a few breakstuns turns Rev into a very hard class to master… But learning Him makes you a better player, and in the right hands is a beast, specially in duels/roaming/pvp. Plus, since the HoT release Rev had so many nerfs and still retains so many bugs that I think that probably can only go better…

Buran.3796:

Malchior.5732:

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Is true that lacks build diversity (condition Mallyx is arguably weaker than the power build, so you are almost forced to use Herald with Glint + Shiro) en even flexibility (no utilities to rearrange), and that currently is a high risk – low reward class, but what I’m starting to appreciate from Rev is how high the skill ceiling is.

Sure, doesn’t allow a single mistake, and playing without stability, almost no condition cleanses and barely a few breakstuns turns Rev into a very hard class to master… But learning Him makes you a better player, and in the right hands is a beast, specially in duels/roaming/pvp. Plus, since the HoT release Rev had so many nerfs and still retains so many bugs that I think that probably can only go better…

I see your point, but, no offense, it boils down to: this class is legitimately broken in a bad way and takes a lot more work just to make it usable, hence it’s good to main. To me, it’s not worth the effort.

In PvP it might be more rewarding , but my focus is PvE and not only will I have trouble fitting into the average raid group, but I’m basically forced into a Power build with very little wiggle room and a terribly boring DPS rotation.
If I ever decide to play Condi, I would have to accept that I’d probably be outclassed by every other class in the game in terms of DPS, ignoring the issues I have with Mallyx having a rather boring design after BWE2.
I can forget about tanking or healing in any raid group.

Even when I tried theorycrafting builds before I quit, I ended up just going Power Glint/Shiro with Herald, Devastation, Invocation because it felt like the only build that worked.
Ventari was too clunky and way too specialized. Jalis was too costly and didn’t bring enough to justify using him outside of the elite. Mallyx lost his flavor and also has prohibitive energy costs.
Shiro kept getting nerfed. Glint was too good to drop in any build.

Unless I were to know that Revenant was going to receive some actual beneficial changes, I just wont be able to play it again. At least not for very long.