Guild Wars 2

How many of you have a core class you like to play but not plan on using the corresponding elite specialization?

Edited for several autocorrect mistakes

There will be many players not using elites. Rangers that don’t want to heal, guardians that don’t want traps, elementalists, etc.

Misguided.5139:

There will be many players not using elites. Rangers that don’t want to heal, guardians that don’t want traps, elementalists, etc.

I’m not interested in being some staff-wielding hippie in the woods. I plan on forgoing the Druid spec. I don’t see where I’ll need it. -Sid

It depends on what’s involved in fully unlocking the elite skills and traits. If it takes 170 HP per, well, I haven’t got that yet for Ele, Ranger, Warrior, or Mesmer. Or Engie, but I’m very close on Engie, just some Orr left to go on him. Nor do I intend to grind out HP at this point other than finishing the Engie because I’ve been playing DA:I and I know that will go on the way back burner once HoT hits so I’d like to advance the story in that game while I can.

Otoh if playing through some story and having 100 HP is enough, I’m likely to open up elites on all my alts.

Being that I’ve played 2500+ hours on my ele, I was really looking forward to the elite specialization. After seeing the Tempest though, I can say with certainty that I’ll just be keeping my hundreds of useless hero points. The spec doesn’t bring anything new to the table, unless you’re into cringeworthy shouts and cartoonish animations.

Morfedel.4165:

How many of you have a poor class you like that plan to not use the corresponding elite specialization?

I think initially people will be running mostly with elite specs for their ‘newness’ and ‘coolness’. However, once people are again playing what they really like to play or what is optimal to play the number of elite specs will decline quite a bit.

Some of them require other people being around to be of use. For example, it was kind of cool to be on my Druid and be healing melee fighters against Mordrem. However, I’m not sure a Druid is going to be much use when playing solo.

My main classes have always been Ranger and Elementalist, but those might be some elites that I hold off on at first. I couldn’t get into a comfort zone with Tempest, and Druid seems to be very situational.

On the other hand, Reaper and Scrapper felt sooooo good in the beta. I’m going to play those early on, for sure.

Not getting the expansion until it’s under £15 only about £6 to go, even once I make the drop I will not spec Druid.

At the moment, the only specialization I’m deliberately forgoing is the druid.

If any of you plan on doing a raid, you can bet you WILL be running the Elite, there is no way Anet is going to spend all this time promoting these new Elite Specs for them to sit idle and unused, they will make content that forces you to use the Elite or you wont get past it,

It may not be in the first few raids, but by this time next year it will be near mandatory to run the Elite.

The only one that I will even look at will be the Mesmer, and that’s only for sPvP, everything else just looks boring to me, I Main was a necro and the Elite spec was horrible I hated it.

Ok I Did It.2854:

If any of you plan on doing a raid, you can bet you WILL be running the Elite, there is no way Anet is going to spend all this time promoting these new Elite Specs for them to sit idle and unused, they will make content that forces you to use the Elite or you wont get past it,

It may not be in the first few raids, but by this time next year it will be near mandatory to run the Elite.

The only one that I will even look at will be the Mesmer, and that’s only for sPvP, everything else just looks boring to me, I Main was a necro and the Elite spec was horrible I hated it.

Challenge accepted. I’m a raid ranger now. -Sid

So of course im gonna unlock all specs eventually even if its just for the amour/weapons skins. But my plan is to run these classes/elites as standard.

Thief as main dps. Disappointed with the daredevil until they sort the animation out.
herald just for the new class kicks and new game playthrough
Tempest as a support and auramancer
Druid for healer
Reaper for dps
Scrapper for ?
Chrono for dps and pvp
Dragonhunter just for the kicks of wvw trapping
Berserker if im really bored

So yea, need to get back to farming all the gear im gonna need!

Some classes have too many good trait lines already. If the elite spec doesn’t bring strong flavor/variety it will be ignored by seasoned players.

While I’m not an expert on all classes, I suspect these classes will largely not use the elite spec beyond flavor/variety:

Guardian
Warrior
Elementalist
Engineer?

But yeah, a lot of new players in HoT will be thinking of elite specs as “the goto” simply because core game doesn’t have an elite spec.

i’ll probably stick with my vanilla engineer for pve..but i will at least try scrapper for pvp-depends on how balance is in pvp.

Now that they’ve put in a different combat mode, I’m going to give the Scrapper a try. The part where you if you wanted range but had to place each grenade on the ground with your mouse was killing me during the beta.

I didn’t understand something if i unlock an elite on one of my characters to check it out and want to revert back i just change the traitline back and i’m good to go or not ?

Ok I Did It.2854:

If any of you plan on doing a raid, you can bet you WILL be running the Elite, there is no way Anet is going to spend all this time promoting these new Elite Specs for them to sit idle and unused, they will make content that forces you to use the Elite or you wont get past it,

It may not be in the first few raids, but by this time next year it will be near mandatory to run the Elite.

The only one that I will even look at will be the Mesmer, and that’s only for sPvP, everything else just looks boring to me, I Main was a necro and the Elite spec was horrible I hated it.

If that’s the case hopefully they’ll put an indicator on the creation page then, I’d hate to get through the game having played a Ranger to be told I have to play Druid now.

WvW roamer, all classes at 80 with 2 guardians

Druid initially (Sinister/Soldier-Control/bleed/poison)

Herald(Glint/Shiro-Ham/SwSw Knight/Soldier-Burst) next if I can without too much work.

I doubt I take DragonHunter on my Guardian, but I might for the Virtue changes. I wasn’t overly impressed with them during the beta, but I did have some fun with the reveal trap/Hammer ring for mega vuln/burst.

If I ever played my Necro, I would likely go Reaper because they’re ridiculously good

Engi – never play, no interest

Ele – never play, no interest

Warrior – Happy with my Settler/roaming Condi bomb

Mesmer – Happy with my bursty GS/SwFo Keep hider-iner

Thief – never play, no interest in Daredevil

No, you play an elite by selecting it as one of your traitslines. Simply deselecting that trait line will restore you to a standard character

So far, ive decided ill avoid Druid, because im not interested healing or it’s Death Shroud 2.0 mechanics. The utilities are about as boring as the base Ranger’s utilities as well.

Im quite fond of Auramancer builds on Elementalist, so ill probably look at Tempest, but having to replace Air, Water or Earth with Tempest will be annoying, since all 3 of those Specs are vital to the Auramancer build. Ill probably just drop Water and go for Tempest, since my team can support themselves. Im not their mother.

Im in the very small camp of people who dislike Reaper, so I might avoid it on my Necromancer. I dislike Greatsword, I dislike the utilities, I dislike the traits. I only like the Shroud Knight, and that is it. Not sure if its worth taking a whole Spec just for 1 tiny bit that I like.

I was (past tense) going to avoid Berserker as well, because playing it in the BWE made me gag a little bit, but supposedly, they’ve fixed the Berserk function so it’s not so clunky and nasty to use, so if thats sorted itself out, ill give Berserker a second chance.

Otherwise, I think ill be using all the other elite specs. They add a lot of nice things to the other professions.

Morfedel.4165:

How many of you have a core class you like to play but not plan on using the corresponding elite specialization?

Edited for several autocorrect mistakes

My tanky Warrior and healing Guardian are where I want them to be – the current elites will not enhance or give them a viable alternative which is usfeul to my style of play or set up. I do have a 2nd warrior with a set up which may compliment the elite more.

Tempest, daredevil, druid and maybe scrapper are viable alternatives to my builds that I can switch into depending on the scenario.

Reaper is the only absolute elite at this stage for me.

The plan was/is to unlock Reaper, Scrapper, Beserker, Druid, and perhaps Chronomancer.

I personally feel that Core Guardian brings more to the table than Dragonhunter.
Don’t play thief much(at all).
I also think that the core Ele is a bit better setup for what I like to do with an ele than Tempest.

It all depends on the unlock mechanism though. I have the 170HP to unlock a Reaper and Scrapper. Sitting at around 145HP for the Beserker. Poor old Druid sitting at ~90HP, so I don’t know if that grind will be worth it. Then the Chrono, my poor little WvW-only Mesmer has a whopping 45HP.

For myself, I plan on running the elite for the mesmer, the Necromancer, the engineer, the thief. As for the others, I don’t play them very much, I do plan on playing the revenant, but I actually prefer to the other legends over Glint.

I think a lot of you are getting the wrong idea about Druid. You don’t have to adopt a healer mindset in order to benefit from being one.

I’ll be jumping right into Druid while maintaining my zerker playstyle and build. I did this in the beta and it worked out, and it’s also getting some nice buffs for launch.

Why am I taking my Ranger/Druid into HoT first? From my experience, it’s the best class for open world events. While lootstick gaurdians win at wave farming, and staff eles win at fighting dragon-toes, Ranger has just been more agile and flexible for the more challenging Silverwastes events. We’ve got good CC and stability too, both were important in the HoT betas. Now with Druid, I’ll be able to buff the damage of the people around me.

Meanwhile Elementalist is my second favorite class, but I’m not sold on Tempest yet.

Classes I’m definitely gonna use the elite trait line on most of the time:

- Revenant
- Mesmer
- Necromancer

Classes that I’ll sometimes use the elite spec on when the situation needs it:

- Ranger (if I wanna be the healer in a raid)
- Elementalist (again, if I wanna be the healer in a raid)
- Warrior (if I feel like playing a condi warrior)
- Thief (I’m not sure about daredevil but it might have some potential)
- Engineer (same as thief)

Classes that I’m never gonna use elite specs on because their elite specs are garbage:

- Guardian

Ok I Did It.2854:

If any of you plan on doing a raid, you can bet you WILL be running the Elite, there is no way Anet is going to spend all this time promoting these new Elite Specs for them to sit idle and unused, they will make content that forces you to use the Elite or you wont get past it,

It may not be in the first few raids, but by this time next year it will be near mandatory to run the Elite.

The only one that I will even look at will be the Mesmer, and that’s only for sPvP, everything else just looks boring to me, I Main was a necro and the Elite spec was horrible I hated it.

I don’t see how. Dragonhunter for example brings absolutely nothing new to the team that isn’t already covered by the core guardian or other core specs.

Same for daredevil. I can see the daredevil being good for condition thief builds, but again; it doesn’t bring anything new to the team that isn’t already covered by the other classes.

Same for pretty much every single elite spec except for druid. I can see druids becoming mandatory for content that needs a dedicated healer. But even then I think a skillful guardian could pull off a shared roll of both tank and healer at the same time without the need for a druid as dedicated healer.

Warriors pay a heavy price to go Berserker because a lot of their builds have must-have traits along 3 specializations. I expect the majority of them to drop the spec once the novelty has faded, although as someone who likes to play a very tanky type of warrior I may pick up the spec for mine to get Dead of Alive and either the stability or the AoE taunt.

Dragonhunter probably won’t see a lot of play, I don’t even expect it to have any novelty factor at all. Personally it just seems very, very boring. More importantly, I don’t know about others but I see Guardian as the “paladin” archetype of this game, so giving them an elite spec that fights at long range and uses traps is not exactly what I’m looking for in a Guardian.

Given how ridiculously o/p Herald are, I think every Revenant will use it at launch, then it will get meganerfed into a support-based specialization (instead of the support+tank+DPS all rolled in one that it is right now) and then revenants focused on damage will drop it, maybe the tank ones too if Jalis is properly buffed into an actual tank legend.

I don’t know much about Elementalists, but I don’t think Tempest will see much at first. (Even WP doesn’t like the elite specialization!) That said, I don’t think Revenants and Druids will be the only 2 viable dedicated healers for long. I think water elementalists (and guardians) will soon be asking for viability as dedicated healers because they are built to be strong support classes so it’s kind of disappointing if they can’t go dedicated support. Since Tempests are supposed to be melee support, maybe the spec could be salvaged into a spec that can match Druids and Revenants healing when they sit in water?

Right now, Reaper seems like a straight up upgrade to Necromancer so I think they will go Reaper in an even greater percentage that the Revenants that will go Herald. I just don’t see any advantage to stay vanilla Necromancer on my character.

I’ve had zero interest in playing a Thief since day one and now I have zero interest in playing a Daredevil either so I dunno, but I suppose the Thieves that are interested in survival (maybe to tank a boss?) will pick it up for evasion tanking, assuming this is viable for a Thief. Again, I seriously don’t care about Thieves so I’m probably just talking through my hat when I talk about them.

Ok I Did It.2854:

If any of you plan on doing a raid, you can bet you WILL be running the Elite, there is no way Anet is going to spend all this time promoting these new Elite Specs for them to sit idle and unused, they will make content that forces you to use the Elite or you wont get past it,

It may not be in the first few raids, but by this time next year it will be near mandatory to run the Elite.

The only one that I will even look at will be the Mesmer, and that’s only for sPvP, everything else just looks boring to me, I Main was a necro and the Elite spec was horrible I hated it.

And how are they going to do that? Create a mechanic that forces you to activate the elite class mechanic on a platform to open a door? Some of the elite specialisations are so bad at combat that it’s impossible to create an enemy that is easier to defeate while using it.

Apart from one or two elite specialisations that I want to try (read as test different builds and dump it if it doesn’t work out) I’m not going to use the new elite specialisations.