Guild Wars 2

Which class/Profession have the least available/viable builds?

In theory every class has the same number of available builds. Some classes might have more builds that only an insane person would use though.

Elementalists, who pay for having four attunements with only three main had and two off hand choices for weapons.

In terms of optimal play, diversity of amulets and also including the practicality of utilities as well as elites:

Most-Mesmer

Least-Ele

IndigoSundown.5419:

Elementalists, who pay for having four attunements with only three main had and two off hand choices for weapons.

Engineers only get Rifle, Pistol (main/off) and Shield.

As for the OP, ask a hundred players and you’ll get a hundred answers. Some builds certainly are broken and some are more broken than others, but just about anything is viable in PvE.

Engineers have the most broken skills.
For instance our turret lines traits are all broken currently, completely decimating any sort of variety we had.

Viable builds or actual builds?
Personally say Engineer, Ranger, Necromancer and possibly Thief on very little viable builds.. outside of their standard “what everyone uses” builds

All the other classes can be changed around to some affect, i would say the most Viable classes with builds are Warrior and Mesmer..

Elementalist and Guardian are both middle ground to me they have good builds and bad builds but even their bad builds have some uses in the game, the group i first wrote really do not..

Its been a little while since I played my ele, but iirc x/x/x/30/30 is THE build, particularly when running double daggers. I’ve been playing engi and yes, so many trait lines are simply broken that taking HGH and chugging elixirs is one of the only ways to get reliable results. I also agree that Mesmers have a lot of options – as long as you stay away from mantras its hard to go wrong, and I’ve even seen people make mantras work reasonably well. Overall in terms of build I’ve felt most limited on my ele, but the strength of the class and the flexibility of attunement swaping makes up for it, for me.

IMO Ele.

Weapons other than D/D are v pidgeonholed or are plain sub-par.

Utilities other than cantrips are bad. Conjures and glyphs are particularly bad.

Ele basically requires 20-30 arcane just to feel playable.

Base survivability is really bad so 15-30 water is virtually mandatory as well.

Dante.1508:

Viable builds or actual builds?
Personally say Engineer, Ranger, Necromancer and possibly Thief on very little viable builds.. outside of their standard “what everyone uses” builds

Necros actually have a very high amount of viable builds.
Thing is they tend to be situational.
You might see only 1 or 2 builds for any one purpose.
For example in high lv sPvP many Necros run Corrupt Boon+Epidemic+Signet of Undeath and stay in team fights.

There are 1vs1 builds, “general PvE”-builds, farming builds and pretty much every Utility skill Necro has is used in at least one or two builds. (With the possible exception of Signet of Spite?)
Many other Professions have many skills that are just too bad to use for anything.

I presume this is viable builds, and this is very easy to answer!

Rangers – they have none!

bri.2359:

I presume this is viable builds, and this is very easy to answer!

Rangers – they have none!

Rangers are actually in pretty decent shape. Hint – use a melee weapon.

Eles OTOH….

mjharrison.3209:

bri.2359:

I presume this is viable builds, and this is very easy to answer!

Rangers – they have none!

Rangers are actually in pretty decent shape. Hint – use a melee weapon.

Eles OTOH….

Try melee rangers in 40+ fotm, lol

mjharrison.3209:

bri.2359:

I presume this is viable builds, and this is very easy to answer!

Rangers – they have none!

Rangers are actually in pretty decent shape. Hint – use a melee weapon.

Eles OTOH….

Your melee choices on ranger are greatsword, which crits for 900 in zerker gear, or 1h sword, which is the most awkward and frustrating weapon to use in the game by miles due to the animation priority on the #1 attack which prevents you from using other abilities, repositioning, and dodging while also sending you flying off in random directions occasionally.

Engineers are the worst. The devs like to nerf all our builds just to give Turrets 10% more damage… Which means our turrets do 330 damage instead of 30, whoopie!

Ranger is in a good place. They lack burst, but they pack the best Water Field in the game, and they are pretty handi sometimes, such as the CoF P2 final boss where your pet tanks the boss while your Ranger attacks the crystal.

Pets are also great at holding agro (contrary to the misconception they die easily), and Rangers even a 9 second fire field too! (Hint: Ping it to your team before they use their blasts.)

I also hear Rangers are used in high level FoTM, though I don’t have the experience to give advice.

Rangers are in a good place. They don’t have the high damage of Warrior, but they’re handy when used properly. Warrior is the burger, while Rangers are french fries.

Burnfall.9573:

Which class/Profession have the least available/viable builds?

You really need to be more specific are you asking about PVE or PVP or WVW? because each one of those has a set number of builds dependent solely on what they’ve done in the patches recently and what they’ve yet to fix from past breakage from them not separating the behaviors/damage of these three types of combat until now.

PVP engineers have plenty of builds available for various purposes, altho there are plenty of things engineers even in PVP cannot use because of how messed up certain things are (like gadgets and turrets survivability).

PVE engineers are suffering the worst. (I play thief/ranger and I’ve played necro) all PVE and they’ve done more to break engineers in PVE then any other class imo.

Vargs.6234:

Your melee choices on ranger are greatsword, which crits for 900 in zerker gear, or 1h sword, which is the most awkward and frustrating weapon to use in the game by miles due to the animation priority on the #1 attack which prevents you from using other abilities, repositioning, and dodging while also sending you flying off in random directions occasionally.

Hmm okay then why do I see crits of 1500-1900 on my greatsword ranger? Maul hits for 4000-4300 also. And then again, the ranger greatsword is not meant to be a dps weapon, but a defensive one, which is really good at it. I can’t tell how many times it saved my life in wvwvw and dungeons. I know rangers need better dps on all their weapons, but that doesn’t keep me from winning most of my 1v1 fights.