Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I’ve been asking myself this question quite a bit over the last few days, and I am trying to decide between whether to level up, gear, and master either a Mesmer, a Guardian, or a Thief.

I plan on making this character my main and having the best gear on them, so I plan on doing Fractals, and a bit of Arah on them, as well as the main purpose that I’m making them: WvW Roaming with a friend. I enjoy trolling and picking off/annoying my enemies, if that helps.

So which class would you recommend for this purpose?

I currently have a Zerker Warrior which I do CoF etc. on so that’s not really a problem, this character is purely for the reasons above.

Many thanks,
The Baws.

P.S. this is assuming a Roaming build is followed etc.

Trolling and annoying? Guardian, Thief, Mesmer and sometimes Necro are the most annoying classes imo. Guardian keep healing themselves to max health, mesmers have too many clones xDD thieves are always invisible and appear from nowhere with high damage. And necro’s keep doing small fears and throwing tons of condition on you.

kitten is wrong with your bolds o.0’

God… my disgusting bolds lol…

Ignoring that… xD

Guardian, Thief and Mesmer is basically what I’ve been stuck with in my head through the last few days.

I guess I’m just going to have to play them to find out which one I like but it’s so kitten time consuming…

Hmm… I would go straight for Guardian but they have such low mobility, and if I get caught by a Zerg I’m basically screwed, and this is what leads me to Thief. The problem is, that I get differing stories everywhere I go.

So many people say Thief is OP, UP, and everywhere in-between that it’s ridiculous lol. I have an 80 Thief but I’ll only spend the money and time to gear it if I feel like it’s worthwhile… any tips on build etc.?

Definitely go for healing. Thieves with healing are the most annoying ever….
They turn invisible almost dead and reappear with almost or full health.

Thief is strong against people who aren’t expecting you and/or don’t know how to play against you. The main problem with a Thief is that it’s relatively useless against a player that knows how to play against you because you won’t be able to get anything in. If you’re just going to do a trullzy roam pick off one person/flip camps, Thief is a good choice (especially if they’re Thief). Duo-Thief is a really nasty combo, able to kill a lot of other small groups (4 and smaller) with little risk (stealth + res, stealth + escape, etc). If you want to deal damage more than supporting your friend, pick Thief. (You will still have some support.)

Guardian doesn’t have much mobility, but if you’re running with, say, an Ele (kinda awkward, huh?) you can get 100% Swiftness uptime. (Can do the same with a Mesmer, or actually any profession, but Centaur Runes + Mesmer = <3.) From there, Guardians have a lot of flexibility in builds to be able to go tanky, squishy, etc. If you want to support your friend more than deal damage, pick Guardian. (You will still have some damage.)

Mesmers will have low mobility out of combat (easily increased via runes, yes RUNES). They have very good support and damage, but require a lot of micro-managing and positioning. Mesmers will go well with most other professions in a duo-roam setup, but will require a lot of practice (expect to fail again… and again… and again… and again…). Mesmers can easily go full-squishy while tanking harder than a Thief (and sometimes even a Guardian). This is because they have a lot of damage mitigation at their disposal, meaning they can avoid damage entirely (other than conditions on them). If you’re not sure whether you want to deal damage or support more than the other, go ahead and pick Mesmer, but be prepared to play a piano with your keyboard.

Yeah my friend is Thief so I think I’ll decide between Mesmer and Thief…

Thief/Mesmer and Thief/Thief are both really nasty combo’s.

Esplen.3940:

Thief/Mesmer and Thief/Thief are both really nasty combo’s.

I agree with this post, I went roaming on my thief with my mesmer friend, we had tons of fun.

The Baws.5164:

either a Mesmer, a Guardian, or a Thief.

Hmmz, the class I would suggest isn’t even listed..

/thread

Thief/Thief or Thief/Guardian are probably more effective than Thief/Mesmer, unless you’re planning on running bunker Mesmer, which is about as exciting at watching paint dry. Guardians can output a decent amount of damage while staying incredibly tanky, have lots of crowd control options, and are great for powering through a res, especially since the thief can stealth themselves. In addition, it allows for an easier transition to larger small-man play, as a Guardian in a 5 man situation is arguably much better than a Mesmer.

Thief/Thief great for obvious reasons, ability to benefit heavily off each other’s stealth, large spikes.

The issue with Thief/Mesmer is that a glass Mesmer is great the moment people ignore them. Most roaming thieves are built to be constantly dropping in and out of sight, which means the Mesmer will be taking the majority of the damage. Glass Mesmers cannot be nearly as effective while being defensive, so it’s sort of an anti-synergy, which means they have to run bunker confusion builds to synergize, and bunker confusion builds…………..

Overall, my opinion is that Thief/Thief > Thief/Guard > Thief/Mes.

Tribio.8531:

The Baws.5164:

either a Mesmer, a Guardian, or a Thief.

Hmmz, the class I would suggest isn’t even listed..

/thread

Alright, well it would be appreciated if you could say what that class is, and reasons why instead of just saying a completely useless response like that…

I’ve also been thinking about Fractals and Arah and I know that Guardian does well in these settings so I’ve been thinking about running one of them.

Slightly unrelated note: What are Necromancers like at the moment for what I’ve said? I tried one out and they seem really really fun.

The Baws.5164:

Alright, well it would be appreciated if you could say what that class is, and reasons why instead of just saying a completely useless response like that…

Well, I just wanted to add that there are more roaming classes than the ones you mention, but since you (seemed) only interested in those three, I couldn’t add any thoughts about it..

I would dare suggesting a ranger (preferrably spirit built), since it has some nice dmg from itself (due to conditions) and gives the rest of the (2 man) party some boosts.. Also the healing spring is awesome for support. And due to the normal armor you’ll be wearing for that (Toughness/Healing Power/Condition Dmg), you can tank quite nicely while keeping condition damage on your target and assisting your co-roamer..

Consider Thief/Guardian only if you want to build on the tanky side. Most people will try to go for the thief but as soon as your friend uses a teleport/stealth skill you will feel all their anger redirecting at you

I know this from personal experience.

Thief is by far and away the best class for trolling/roaming in WvW…

But not so good in dungeons/fractals…

Guardians are good at everything but are better in zergs in WvW really, rather than a 2 man group…

Esplen.3940:

Guardian doesn’t have much mobility, but if you’re running with, say, an Ele (kinda awkward, huh?) you can get 100% Swiftness uptime. (Can do the same with a Mesmer, or actually any profession, but Centaur Runes + Mesmer = <3.) From there, Guardians have a lot of flexibility in builds to be able to go tanky, squishy, etc. If you want to support your friend more than deal damage, pick Guardian. (You will still have some damage.)

Can you someone please elaborate on this? How does Guardian get swiftness from an Ele? And are there other classes that can give another player swiftness?

Mesmers give swiftness with their focus. Guardians through Retreat and their staff. Rangers and Warriors using their horns. Engineers have a random chance of giving swiftness with one of their Elixirs.

Thieves and Necromancers can’t give other classes swiftness, but they could if they slotted a specific rune.

Elementalist have blast finishers, air fields and a lot of AoE swiftness generation. All of this together means they can have very high uptime (if not 100%) of swiftness. Throw in Guardian Retreat/Staff and it’s 100%.

Mesmer mobility with the Focus is weak simply because it doesn’t add to your Swiftness, it only works if you have no swiftness.

As for whoever said that you need to be a Bunker Mes to run Thief/Mesmer, you are so wrong it hurts. If you run a staff shatter build, you can get in and out of situations like nobodies business. If you do happen to go down, the Thief can save you. If the Thief happens to go down, you can save the Thief (Mass Invis, Shadow Refuge). Mesmer’s are tanky because of mitigation. If you don’t utilize it, yes you will need to go bunker, but you will still die in a 1v1 if you don’t mitigate any of the damage.

And what about Engineer?

Where do they stand in WvW Roaming, Zerging and PvE?

@ Esplen: Guardian’s staff works exactly like Mesmer focus :p

Engineers are great duelists. Some of small-scale builds will WRECK people, and I don’t randomly capitalize words often. A well played Engineers is a force to be reckoned, as they don’t have glaring weaknesses. They have decent-to-good mobility, but they aren’t as slippery as Thieves.

That being said, while they have good AoE they aren’t that utilized in organized zergs because it’s either hard to aim (grenades) or self centered ( bombs ). But I may be really wrong on this one, as I haven’t kept up with WvW strategies for a while now.

For PvE, they are regarded as weak but I’m sure that their hard-to-learn playstyle has a big role on that perception. I’m not really experienced in PvE with Engineers though, so take this with a spoonfull of salt

Finally, don’ rely too much on “performance” when choosing a class: a balance patch may come and things may change, you know how balance works.

@Wolfheart, no it doesn’t. It will overlap your swiftness (to a maximum of 8s + boon duration) whereas Mesmer Focus will just not give you ANYTHING if you have even 0.5s of Swiftness on you.

Wrong. If you have no swiftness, it will give you 8s of swiftness + boon duration. If you already have swiftness on you, even 0.5s, it will just give you 1s swiftness per pulse (and it pulses once a second ). I don’t know particularly well the mesmer focus, I may have misunderstood you. This is however how the guardian symbol works.