Guild Wars 2

Really been enjoying the last week after coming back to the game. At first I just made a Ranger to mess around with but started doing a lot of WvW running around in a zerg and it was a ton of fun. I read that Rangers were pretty good in open world fights away from the zerg but horrible in large scale battles. I hate small scale or 1v1 fights so who does well in a zerg vs zerg situation? I would prefer to stay ranged and care more about dealing damage than utility.

For Zerg fights I would say, Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist, Necro. Those four classes are the “Zerg” classes, now keep in mind that the other classes are also capable of eunning in zergs for instance both Mesmer and Engineer are more than capable of zerg play as is Thief and Ranger. If your really enjoying your ranger than stick with it, your probably better off getting some tanky gear so you dont melt. Make sure you have Entangle and Healing spring equipped, and I would recommend Signet of the Wild, and Signet of Stone those are arguably your most zerg friendly Utilities. Personally I would run Long Bow/Greatsword, LongBow has a decent AoE, a Knockback, Stealth and Greatsword for when you want to try and follow the melee train GS#1 hits multiple people.

Just my 2 cents, play what you enjoy. Yes there are better classes for zerg fights, but that doesn’t mean Rangers are completely useless and who knows maybe one day Rangers will receive that much needed and anticipated patch that makes them more useful to large groups.

Aoe heal/tank Guard and cc-lock Warriors are the vanguard.

Supporting roles are the staff berserker elementalists, the grenadier berserker rifle engineers, the full condition necros, the healer/tank rangers, the portal/proj reflect mesmers.

Thieves don’t have much of a role in zergs other than stealth-stomping due to the obscene amount of AoE spam around. They’ll usually contribute more to the WvW effort by soloing camps, killing yaks, killing roamers and guarding yaks – for which few other classes are as good as the thief.

Eles aim for large concentrations of people to reduce their HP fast, and aim freezing AoE on the opposing vanguard. The warriors aim for the other vanguard – charging through, hopefully knocking down as many of them in the process as possible, and then killing the squishy classes following behind. The guardians keep the warriors alive while they charge through a whole zerg. The engis pick off the lower HP ones, and knockback those who try to res the downed. The rangers keep the warriors off the squishier classes, and necros plain annoy everyone in the entire zerg with random multiple conditions. Mesmers usually portalbomb in the vanguard and drop reflection fields on any group of players holding ranged weapons.

Based on your description you’ll probably want an engi or ele. Trouble is, both of these roles are also very hard to play (especially the ele).

From what Hayashi said, playing an ele is hard but once you get comfortable, you can do a lot off damage very quickly.

went with Necro and up to lvl 12. Staff and Marks are fun in Zergs. Numbers everywhere. I gave Ele a shot and tried some hotjoin PvP so I could see how it was with traits and all abilities and it wasnt very fun. Too much going on with all the stance dancing.