Guild Wars 2

First of all, I’m a noob to this game so take everything with a grain of salt. I may be wrong on many conclusions or even on things I’m presenting as facts. So pls be forgiving…

Hello,

my question is about harder PvE content (dungeons, fractals, and bigger groups of world mobs). I have a lvl 80 thief already, and I enjoy the playstyle a lot. However I found that even if almost every aspect of PvE is doable on a thief, there are other professions that require less concentration and give you a bigger error margin. I like to leave the ‘110% sharpened senses’ – mode for PvP and some exceptionally challanging PvE content (relative to average GW2 PvE difficulty). With this being said – I’d like to find myself an other profession that is more suitable for solo grindig/leveling and dungeon farming.

My approach to choosing the right profession is based on the survival mechanics of the given profession (unlike most, who go for damage output). On my thief I use 25/30/0/15/0 instead of the regular 25/30/0/0/15, because those extra dodges are really helpful. Based on the little experience I have already accumulated, regen or protection won’t help you if you are about to eat damage 160-200% of your HP within the next 1-2 seconds. If the incoming damage is spiky (countering sustained damage did not cause me problems in PvE), you have to avoid those spikes completely. And the thief is a beast doing that. Tons of dodges with Acro traits, shadowstep, teleport, weapon evades, etc. My only problem is that due to the low HP pool, you have to play almost perfectly, because a fly’s fart will 100%-0% you in seconds.

So (yes we finally get to my actual question :P)… How do other professions counter spiky PvE damage? I read somwhere on the guardian forums, that even full survival specced guardians are unable to facetank stuff like tanks do in the old holy trinity MMOs. Which leads me to the conclusion that every profession is forced to avoid(/reflect with Ret) damage spikes, the game is designed that way.

So I’m looking for a profession that wont run out of endurance or defensive CDs that can counter spiky dmg. Again going back to my thief – if I use my 3 dodges, then use utility/weapon skills to avoid dmg. And by the time I have done that my endurance is up again at least for one dodgeroll.

But of course I dont expect other professions to be able to do this ninja-style fighting. I’m totally open to any other ways of survival as long as it will save my butt.

ty for the answers

p.s.: Is this just a L2P issue and every PvE encounter is managable with regular endurace regen? Shall I totally forget this survuval/utility thing and just go full damage (gear, traits, slot skills)? And if I die a lot then just admit that I suck?

Guardian for the defensive cooldowns.
Ranger (aside from thief) for the dodge/evade spam and some endurance manipulation.

Mesmers can basically let their clones take all the damage (including the instakill ones) and thus rarely have to dodge.

Guardians can outheal whatever they get hit by, generally. The mistake many people make is in speccing insufficient Healing Power – survivability over time is determined by Healing Power and Toughness, while survivability for single big hits is determined by Toughness, Vitality, evasion, blind, protection, aegis etc. Of course to support this your healing skills must have good healing power multipliers – 0.1 won’t cut it.

Rangers have high evade, good healing and the pet can tank for you. Unlike the mesmer’s version though, the ranger pets can die, while the clones can be regenerated at will.

Warriors with healing signet and high toughness can survive long enough to dps down most attackers, though they don’t have the infinite sustain potential of guardians.

Elementalists have some blinds, some invulns, some blocks, but are somewhat glassy.

Thieves are super glassy and use stealth in place of invulns and such. This is good against players who can’t use single attacks against stealthed targets, but useless against mobs, who don’t care and AoE you all day every day.

dungeon roles:
Guardian – reflect, protection, dps
Warrior – banner, dps
Engi – vuln stacking, dps
Thief – shadow refuge, blind spam, dps
Ranger – frost spirit, warhorn, dps
Mesmer – reflects, portal, time warp, dps
Ele – fire field, dps
Necro – vuln stacking, dps

Don’t have a Thief myself, but this is how my other characters survive:

Mesmer – Uses clones/phantasms to tank enemies. My Mesmer is traited for increased illusion health and phantasm damage (they also give me regeneration). She’s capable of soloing most Champions that don’t have massive AoE one-shot attacks.

Ranger – Uses a tanky pet (drake). Coupled with Troll Unguent and Signet of the Wild, it can outheal most damage, and last long enough against Champions to simply swap pets when it gets too low in health. Against particularly tough foes, I swap in “Guard!” to make my pet even more of a damage sponge.

Elementalist – Uses damage mitigation skills like Glyph of Storms (in Earth) for mass Blind and Radiation Field for mass Weakness. Water fields + several Blast finishers also provide burst heals for emergencies. Champions can be solo’ed with Elementals to help tank, but it’s far more risky on my Ele than my other characters.

Warrior – High toughness + Healing Signet + Adrenal Health + some block skills = god mode. Only thing I have to watch out for is massive condition stacking and one-shot attacks from bosses.

Necromancer – Uses minions to tank everything. Traited increased minion health means I can summon minions faster than Champions can kill them. Vampiric healing from minions also provides fantastic sustain in combat. Condition stacking can be a problem, but usually I just hop into Death Shroud when that happens and outlast the conditions while my minions kill the enemies.

Guardian for the ten million billion blocks, invulns and heals.

Warrior if you also want to deal some damage. Just use Knight’s set and you’ll be fine.

Both these classes are very wanted in PvE, be it FOTM or dungeons. Just keep in mind that more than 1 Guardian per party is usually meh, while more then 1 Warrior per party is always a win.

More than one warrior in a party leads to a lowering of the maximum theoretical damage from synergies, but it works because most players are incapable of reaching it anyway, and a meh-played meta warrior is far better than a meh-played anything else.

Guardians, you only ‘need’ one per party, but sometimes you might want to run a second one if your first guardian fails. Don’t do this by default, it slows dungeons with more competent teams; just be prepared to swap to one should your team wipe. Also if your team is good enough you can actually go without one with no issues as well.

Ultimately you’re going to want one specialised character from every single class. Each one has a particular niche; if you spec them properly you can bring the correct character for any given random party makeup you’re given to maximise run speeds in dungeons, effectiveness in WvW, etc. There’s no class that is flat out better at everything than any other class once your skill is at a level that you’re able to use all of them optimally, though initially the warrior seems to be in that place because of how low its skill floor is.

To OP’s original final question, don’t just spec for full damage, spec for the highest damage you can deal without ever being downed once. If that happens to be full berserker/assassin/rampager, good. If it isn’t, it’s better you lose some dps and live than be a liability on the floor. Half my pain with dungeons is by people thinking they’re good and spending time on the floor because of their pride… and leaving 1-2 of us to deal with the bosses. I’ve never had issues with new players playing safe, on the other hand… only with ‘experienced’ players that get carried so often by others they don’t realise how bad they actually are.

Very well said Hayashi. Really this game encourages you to have different characters with different profession. It has been like that since the original Guild Wars.

To the opener, just try them out. It’s interesting how you pick your profession based on survival mechanics, however I think you can only realize this after you have tried the profession itself. This is because survival for you is often determined by your play style and not simply your cooldowns or traits.

With this said you may just find the profession that excites you the most when you play and go with it. You’ll figure the survival mechanics out, no doubt

This might be a shot in the dark but I’m pretty sure all classes are capable of perma endurance bro. Just need sigil of energy and some vigor (or endurance regen food). And if you think your thief is squishy u should try ele :P For class suggestion, whenever I see ‘PvE’, ‘survivability’, and ‘bigger margin error’ all in one post its always warrior. Highest health of all classes thats something even guards cant boast. For instance we were jumping around in dredge fractal in my group, a fall almost killed me but i survived, even in zerk gear.. however my engi buddy wasn’t so lucky. Basically warrior is one of the only classes you can afford to screw up a lot and still remain standing. Guardians, yes you got more blocks but you also have to use your prot/regen etc. and if you forgot to then BOOM insta-down.

Stand The Wall.6987:

dungeon roles:
Guardian – reflect, protection, dps
Warrior – banner, dps
Engi – vuln stacking, dps
Thief – shadow refuge, blind spam, dps
Ranger – frost spirit, warhorn, dps
Mesmer – reflects, portal, time warp, dps
Ele – fire field, dps
Necro – vuln stacking, dps

This is correct. Don’t forget to add Weakness applicator to necro though.

The smallest margin of error is actually in thieves though people might think eles are squishier. They’re not; with the correct spec eles can have perm AoE blind, invuln and blocks, as well as a very large amount of heals, in addition to perm vigor – this gives them far more survivability even though they wear only light armor. Thieves on the other hand, while having the most dodges of any class by a very far margin, have only 4 surv mechanics – stealth, dodge, interrupts and blind. Of these the third and fourth are invalid against champions+ which comprise all dungeon bosses, and the first is often invalid because of how much they AoE, leaving ONLY dodge.

The coordination and planning required to pull off a good ele is definitely higher than that for a thief, but the margin for error is lowest on the thief.

If you’re used to dying a lot on the thief, don’t worry – almost all other classes are easier to survive with. The longest sustained survival is on the guardian with its crazy healrate that doesn’t even require a target… but then your role in the dungeon is not to live as a guardian (easy), but to ensure nobody else goes down (not that easy, especially with a thief). Against burst damage specifically warriors are harder to take down than guardians, but their heal rate is too low such that they will tend to fall to sustained damage – they need healing support from other classes, and in return they can Warbanner AoE resurrect other classes which can be downed by single enemy attacks.

nagr.1593:

For instance we were jumping around in dredge fractal in my group, a fall almost killed me but i survived, even in zerk gear.. however my engi buddy wasn’t so lucky. Basically warrior is one of the only classes you can afford to screw up a lot and still remain standing. Guardians, yes you got more blocks but you also have to use your prot/regen etc. and if you forgot to then BOOM insta-down.

That just means your friend fell a further distance than you did or wasn’t at full health or you have the falling damage trait and your friend doesn’t. Falling damage is percentage based. A 100% health loss will kill you regardless of what your HP happens to be.