Guild Wars 2

Well…I finished the above post patch and here’s what I’ve found.
Note: These are based on what I experienced….they aren’t law…although I feel 140 matches and 20 hours of WvW is sufficient for a general basis.
Also Note worth I currently play all classes at 80 except for Warrior. So my perspective on Warriors is strictly as a spectator.

sPvP:

Tier S – Mesmer
Tier AAA – Guardian & Warrior
Tier AA – Elementalist
Tier A – Engi & Necro
Tier B – Thief & Hunter

Now, again, this is in general. There are surely Thief’s and Hunter’s out there who can bring down anyone they come across. This is an observation based on the current class not on what the pro’s can do with them.

Mesmer:

I didn’t play my Mesmer……like…..ever. I loved the whole Mesmer class and the idea behind it. But just couldn’t get into the play style. Post patch has changed this. Not that I’ve suddenly become a huge fan of the play style, but more that playing a Mesmer almost assures me a win. Out of the 20 games played as a Mesmer my team was Victorious 19 of them, with the loss being due to 2 DC’s, and with me receiving top player marks in almost every one. Does this mean I am a great Mesmer? Hell no…..I hardly ever played the class….their new tech is just, simply put, insane.

Mesmer is currently #1 in Burst, Escape, Invis (Goes with escape), and Control. So…basically all your prime aspects in PvP. I can roam from point to point seamlessly with a near perma invis that gives me haste. Once I am there I can generally kill whoever’s guarding, even 1v2, without much effort by keeping them blinded. And once I lock down a point, I can defend it from 2-3 players no problem. With the ability to stealth myself and all my clones on the point and keep them that way for quite a while….all I would do is wait….for groups of 2…3….sometimes even 4 to come and try to take it back before shattering from invis and dropping them all into downed. (No I couldn’t finish the job because 4 downed people will still kill me) But it takes them out of the fight, giving my team an easy 3 cap.

Guardian/Warrior (Observation):

My guardian was almost just as successful as my Mesmer, winning 18 of his 20 games. Although there were no DC’s involved. Guardians are currently the strongest form of Condition damage, while being virtually immune to it. I would burn people out while using Purity and Resolve to basically make it impossible to condition me back. I also had the HP and toughness to survive any attempt to burst me down before they succumb to my conditions. The only exception to this was the above…..a well played Mesmer could indeed burst me down within seconds.

Note: Once…and only once. I was burst down by a D/D thief running a Pure damage and no Survival build. A build that is pretty much useless since he cant effectively take or hold points. But it did indeed do the job of bursting me.

My observation and info from friends who play warriors is almost the same except instead of using conditions, they use burst. They have the ability to burst down almost any other class before being burst down themselves (Minus Mesmer’s). They also have the control to take and hold points. On top of that, they have the ability to negate conditions, much like guardians, becoming immune to them for 8 seconds. Due to this, I would probably rate Warrior higher than Guardian, but since I didn’t actually play one myself, I feel they can be together.

Elementalist:

Arcane…….won 16/20

There really isn’t much to say. Their damage has always been through the roof, but unlike the above 3….you actually have to set it up. They beat out engi’s because I feel this patch increased their survival with things like being immune to conditions while over 90% health.
Note: This effectively makes them immune to certain character. While running my thief as condi I ran into a Ele running this spec who literally did /sleep with me shooting and spamming poisons on her with all of them coming up as “Immune”. Being full condi at the time I lacked the damage to drop her under 90%….making her literally God Mode….I eventually did /sleep with her and we sat there for a bout a minute before she attacked and I Shadow’s Refuge-ed away.

Engi:

Nade-Nado BOOM!

Really not much to report….won 12/20

I’m honestly not a big fan of the Engi class. I made one for my team because they can bunker hard. This patch I feel buffed them, then leveled them back out. Leaving them better…but not as buffed as many of the other classes.

Necro:

Condi was buffed…which means necro’s got buffed…right? Won 12/20

Well ya, to an extent. The problem is, they still don’t deal the condi damage that the burners do. They still have some great survival though. And honestly, I still run a bajillion pets, making me all but immune to range because I wear my pets like a suit lol.

All in all, I think necro’s got some help this patch. But their level of help was nowhere near the others so….ya

Hunter/Thief:

Well….my original character was my hunter…and my fourth character was my thief.

Due to my Hunter already being Power/Perc…my thief was made Condi…but eventually got the gear to be Power/Perc as well.

We will start with hunter……they were bad before….they are still pretty bad now. Won 9/20

Hunter’s lack the utility to survive or hold a point in most cases. Although they are some of the best support dps in the game. What I mean is, if my buddy is fighting someone, I will literally sit there and auto attack until I see him use both of his rolls, then unload rapid fire. Rapid Fire will hurt….it will hurt SOOOOO badly. But without the utility to survive the other classes initial burst, the above scenario is really the only time you get to see it happen in all it’s glory. I found myself running in to try and take a point only to get instantly blown up by mesmers, warrior, guardians, and even thief’s. If I tried to hold a point….it wouldn’t go much better. I would get stealthed up on and blown up unless my signet was up. This left me, as a hunter, having basically one role….run back and forth between 2 controlled points and support your friends from the high ground with rapid fire. If they had us triple capped….then sit at base and don’t feed them points until my allies had secured one back.

Note: I do not have the gear OR the experience at playing condi hunter to test it properly…so I didn’t. With the current state of Condi they could very well be monsters. But honestly, I played against plenty of them and they were never any real threat. I mostly watched them playing support DPS the same as I did before I went and stealth blew them up.

Thief:

Oh boy…..what happened to thief….Won 7/20

Our trait lines seem like they were made to screw us. All the best skills are compiled together in the same lines. Such as….removes a condition from you periodically while in stealth, vanish into stealth if your health hits a certain threshold, or 20% cdr on all stealth skills. And then in the next line you have, If you stealth an ally they heal for 300, applying a poison deals 200 damage, and stealing stealth’s. Now stealing stealth’s is actually pretty nice, but you get my point. Why the heck do I have to sacrifice my 20% cdr in order to get condition removal. Their solution is in another tree, every trick you use removes one condition…….1 CONDITION! Well then, I guess I better load my utility up with 3 tricks because there’s definitely going to be more than 1 condition on me……but wait…now I don’t even have any stealth because all I have is tricks…..oh man…

And when we are not dealing with all of our good traits being lined up together, we are dealing with ENTIRE trait lines being utterly useless. Acrobatics…I’m looking at you. Now don’t get me wrong, Don’t Stop, and Hard to Catch are good traits….but the rest of the line is horrid, and those 2 traits still aren’t INSANE like some of the other classes traits.

Now it’s not all bad, some of the skills are pretty useful, such as every time you stealth you blind all enemies around you. But I can’t help but feel the traits are what are holding thief back post patch. Well….that and revealed. Never understood why reveal was in the game. They even tried to make us love it by giving us a trait that was “While revealed you get 150 power”……well woopdie doo, that 150 power will go to great use while I hammer my blinding power trying to escape the Mesmer and Warrior who are turning my face into a Picasso. Reveal even causes some of your trait to do nothing. You just came out of stealth and hit 25% health. Well, that trait should have pulled you back into stealth…but you’re revealed…so your trait does nothing……mmm…..great.

As far as D/D goes, not much has changed. You have tons of burst. If your target survives your bust then gtfo because your running on empty for another 20 seconds. You cant really hold points, although if someone wanders up alone you can indeed blow them sky high.

Condi/Survival is a little worse for wear post patch. What I mean is…condi is being looked at as OP in the current meta. Meaning condi nerfs are coming…..but condi isn’t OP, it’s just Burn….which Thieves don’t even have. So when the condi nerf comes….condi thieves will be ever more bogged down.

As far as combat for Condi thief goes:

Stay away from mesmers, they can stealth more than you and burst you down before you have time to reload that pistol of yours.

Stay away from Ele’s because hell…they are just immune to you.

Stay away from warriors because they are immune to you for 8 seconds….more than long enough to kill you so just stealth away and go find someone else.

Stay away from Guards because you’re only buffing them…silly thief.

Stay away from other thief’s because that’s a fight of who strikes first…unless they have shadow step….then they are going to shadow step your Bass Venom and come back and make you eat that gun of yours. And really….who doesn’t run shadow step ;p.

So uh……hunters…..go for it. You can own hunters if you get the jump on them….unless that kitten PET eats your entire rotation because of his erratic hyper speed pathing around his master. But really, hunters aren’t a problem for you, fire away.

If the opposing team has no hunters….then sneak around and try and ninja points, it’s all you’re good for. And so you’ve fallen into a single role, much like hunter’s have.

In closing for sPvP, the rules for these 100 games were that they ALL had to be pugged. None of these were with a premade team as that would obviously alter the results.

WvW:

WvW will not be as detailed. As many of you know there is plenty of time spent in WvW that isn’t constant combat. Also the Zerg makes it hard to see pros/cons in the class I’m playing. There are also just too many variables and alternating scenarios’ that pan out that I can’t control to judge as a class issue.

There is one class that stood out though…..and I hate to say it because it’s all I am seeing on the fourms…..Mesmers.

A group of 4 of us all ran our Mesmers for over 4 hours in one sitting. None of us ever died, and we were able to kill groups of people twice our size. Our ability to stealth each other results in a literal perma stealth. Heck…2 Mesmer can perma stealth with each other….4 makes it so we don’t even need to coordinate. If any of us ever went down, we would just stealth up, rezz, and get back to the fight. This is of course when we weren’t coordinating stealth group shatters to drop groups of 10 in a split seconds or blind entire groups out while we tear then down. Was it fun? Hell ya it was fun! But fair….not really.

All in all, I think Anet know there are certain classes such as Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer that are just too strong right now. And I’m sure they will do something about it come expansion time.

In general though….I think the game itself just has too much burst. There is no reason to try and build tanky or support your group with heals because it takes 4 heals/defensive skills in order to equate to one offensive skill. (Minus condi removal….on certain classes cough guardian). I fell like the game has become like vanilla WoW raids. “You dare show up as anything but massive burst, well gtfo, you’re useless then” Burst trumps all in the current state of things, and I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Side note: I did an experiment in all 100 of these games. I tried to predict which team would win based on whichever team has more Mesmer’s/Guardians. If I was playing either of these classes I was indeed included in the count. I was right 90% of the time. That’s 90 games out of the 100, the team with more Guardians and Mesmer’s won. I even went up against a team….I presume premade, that was 3 Mesmer’s and 2 guardians. The game ended with us having about 60 points…..we literally couldn’t leave spawn. This has resulted in the 40 or so games I have played past these 100 ALL being played on my Mesmers….because I want to win darn it!

Note: I didn’t keep count, but I’d say about 35-38 of these last 40 games have been win’s on my Mesmer.

Lastly, having got to play with the Rev just today. I actually really like the Centaur path of its skills, being a supporty/healer type character. But I cant help but feel it will just be another useless attempt in the shadow of burst. After all, if I’m healing for 1700 every 2 seconds, and my ally is being burst for 15k every 2 seconds…I dont think I’m prolonging his life by even a seconds…in fact…what I’m doing is weighing my team down because I didnt bring massive damage to the party. Once again….not how I feel the game was meant to be.

I hope this helps some of the Dev’s see maybe some areas that are a little Under Powered and a little Overpowered in the current game.

I’m still playing and having fun, so thanks for my current main MMO. Just trying to help it stay that way.

I’m sure there will be many people who disagree with my findings so I am completely open to hearing your opinions. Lets keep it as a discussion though please, not a flame :P.

Final Note: I am aware that my skill in each of these classes is a factor. But considering I play my Guard and Hunter more than any of them, and my Mesmer least of all, and Mesmer still came out on top not only in win’s, but also in just plain ease of play. I don’t think that factor skewed the results too much.

Saw you place guardian in the second tier and felt odd. Saw you say hunter and quit reading.

hunter/ condi necro/ bunker engi nades/ wow

Ele worse than warrior or guardian made me laugh. After i saw it I didn’t bother reading the whole thing since it won’t be informative anyways.

I think my 1700 pvp games trumps your 140.

…i actually didn’t have anything constructive to say I just wanted to point that out Ü

Saiyan.1704:

I think my 1700 pvp games trumps your 140.

…i actually didn’t have anything constructive to say I just wanted to point that out Ü

I think OP meant 140 games since latest patch/balance.. Not sure

Terrorsquad.4802:

Saiyan.1704:

I think my 1700 pvp games trumps your 140.

…i actually didn’t have anything constructive to say I just wanted to point that out Ü

I think OP meant 140 games since latest patch/balance.. Not sure

It’s pretty clear he stated the numbers of games was testing the classes in the new system, not his whole pvp experience. It’s enough to read his post.

Laraley.7695:

Terrorsquad.4802:

Saiyan.1704:

I think my 1700 pvp games trumps your 140.

…i actually didn’t have anything constructive to say I just wanted to point that out Ü

I think OP meant 140 games since latest patch/balance.. Not sure

It’s pretty clear he stated the numbers of games was testing the classes in the new system, not his whole pvp experience. It’s enough to read his post.

Guys he obviously meant post patch omg learn to read sheesh… >.> -.-

Drennon.7190:

Saw you place guardian in the second tier and felt odd. Saw you say hunter and quit reading.

I see “hunter” enough that I wonder if in some localization, “ranger” becomes XXX, which itself translates best to “hunter” when moved back to English?

warrior is way lower in that list, Luclinraider.2317 should play 20 rounds of warrior first hand to experience it.

observation alone is not enough as Luclinraider.2317 may have simply observed good players bullying not so good players.

I’ve been playing some of every class (except Necro and Warrior) and don’t think the difference in power is that big.

Anyway, WvW is not balanced and I doubt they will ever make it so. Yeah it sucks, but when you have slower classes (Guardian, Necro) vs faster/more stealth classes (Mesmer, Thief) the latter will always have a massive advantage when roaming. Maybe the new map will change that (with more non-class related ways to disengage) but in the current state they can’t change this fact without messing up PvP balance. In any case I was able to do the ‘take down larger groups’ thing with Thief just fine, it’s not only Mesmers that can do it with ease. You can do it with any class it’s just that running away is easier on Thief/Mesmer when things go south.

Going back to PvP it did seem that the classes were slightly imbalanced but not really that much. Yes I even used ‘bad’ or ‘subpar’ builds like Medi Guard, P/P Thief (okay this one isn’t that good but you can still back-cap and +1 points easily, which you should be doing anyway), Mesmer (without PU or lockdown or interrupt mantra), S/F Fresh Air Ele .etc . No this doesn’t include useless things like Magi S/P Condi Thief.

Obviously I tested the ‘OP’ builds too and they were definitely stronger but not that much. Maybe if you are in a competition you’d want to use them, but casually it didn’t really matter.

Most engineers are still searching for their build, there isn’t any meta which emerged for now.

This is what is interresting about your ranking : since the patch, the class with the most obvious meta, the longer, the more stable, are at top.

Thief & Ranger may have something wrong, broken.
Most Engineer & Necro are still searching. Some found, when you meet them, you understand it.
Elem found a way.
Guardian & Warrior had an obvious build.
Mesmer may seems OP, or just wait for a balance from the missing class.

Thief tier B?
.
.
.
Hahahahahahahahaha, oh man, you got me so good. You’re such a riot!

Sure acrobatics isn’t as much of a thing anymore, but I’m completely fine with it, no more spamming random dodges and people complaining about it.
Condi thief in spvp? Is/was that ever a thing aside from just trolling around?? It was never a very competitive build.

Sincerely, teef player.

Luclinraider.2317:

I’m usually not one to talk about nerfs. And my main is a mesmer……but still, I have to agree we could use a little tone down lol.

Quote from another thread.

Luclinraider.2317:

I didn’t play my Mesmer……like…..ever. I loved the whole Mesmer class and the idea behind it. But just couldn’t get into the play style.

Quote from this thread.

Luclinraider.2317:

I can roam from point to point seamlessly with a near perma invis that gives me haste. Once I am there I can generally kill whoever’s guarding, even 1v2, without much effort by keeping them blinded. And once I lock down a point, I can defend it from 2-3 players no problem. With the ability to stealth myself and all my clones on the point and keep them that way for quite a while….all I would do is wait….for groups of 2…3….sometimes even 4 to come and try to take it back before shattering from invis and dropping them all into downed. (No I couldn’t finish the job because 4 downed people will still kill me) But it takes them out of the fight, giving my team an easy 3 cap.

You down 4 people with ease because you are a mesmer? Do you even have any PVP experience or are you here to just troll? Please say you are because it boggles my mind that you would think anyone would actually believe this…

I tried reading through the rest of your BS story but gave up halfway through.

Edit: Another quote from the OP.

Luclinraider.2317:

One of my main PvP chars is a P/D Thief, and I actually feel like we do more damage now…
But for the last 2 weeks ive consistantly been top player on spvp, and still am a brutal roamer in WvW.
The biggest difference I see is that I actually think we are EVEN STRONGER 1v1…..and we are now a little weaker 1v2+

Very convenient that you listed your thief in the bottom tier…

Im sorry but your classes go

1-mesmer
2,3- warrior guardian
4-ele
5-engy
6-necro
7,8-ranger thief

Are you serious? Right now every good team has 1 ele, mesmer and theif on there team. I dont know how warrior could be up so high and am wondering what this is based off of. Like is this solo ques? Are you in a premade facing solo ques?

I disagree with your rankings alot

Leodon.1564:

Luclinraider.2317:

I’m usually not one to talk about nerfs. And my main is a mesmer……but still, I have to agree we could use a little tone down lol.

Quote from another thread.

Luclinraider.2317:

I didn’t play my Mesmer……like…..ever. I loved the whole Mesmer class and the idea behind it. But just couldn’t get into the play style.

Quote from this thread.

Luclinraider.2317:

I can roam from point to point seamlessly with a near perma invis that gives me haste. Once I am there I can generally kill whoever’s guarding, even 1v2, without much effort by keeping them blinded. And once I lock down a point, I can defend it from 2-3 players no problem. With the ability to stealth myself and all my clones on the point and keep them that way for quite a while….all I would do is wait….for groups of 2…3….sometimes even 4 to come and try to take it back before shattering from invis and dropping them all into downed. (No I couldn’t finish the job because 4 downed people will still kill me) But it takes them out of the fight, giving my team an easy 3 cap.

You down 4 people with ease because you are a mesmer? Do you even have any PVP experience or are you here to just troll? Please say you are because it boggles my mind that you would think anyone would actually believe this…

I tried reading through the rest of your BS story but gave up halfway through.

Edit: Another quote from the OP.

Luclinraider.2317:

One of my main PvP chars is a P/D Thief, and I actually feel like we do more damage now…
But for the last 2 weeks ive consistantly been top player on spvp, and still am a brutal roamer in WvW.
The biggest difference I see is that I actually think we are EVEN STRONGER 1v1…..and we are now a little weaker 1v2+

Very convenient that you listed your thief in the bottom tier…

ahhhh man i wished i just read your post instead of wasting time actually reading his

Ristillath.6745:

Ele worse than warrior or guardian made me laugh. After i saw it I didn’t bother reading the whole thing since it won’t be informative anyways.

But it is weaker than both heavy classes, I play all 3 and win more fights on my war or guard even if I have about 4000 hours on ele, 100 on guard and 10 on war. Guard burst is faster than ele now (2.5 seconds or less to kill the heavy golem), and it has more survival ability. Warrior rampage is also way OP.

Luclinraider.2317:

Well…I finished the above post patch and here’s what I’ve found.
Note: These are based on what I experienced….they aren’t law…although I feel 140 matches and 20 hours of WvW is sufficient for a general basis.
Also Note worth I currently play all classes at 80 except for Warrior. So my perspective on Warriors is strictly as a spectator.

sPvP:

Tier S – Mesmer
Tier AAA – Guardian & Warrior
Tier AA – Elementalist
Tier A – Engi & Necro
Tier B – Thief & Hunter

Now, again, this is in general. There are surely Thief’s and Hunter’s out there who can bring down anyone they come across. This is an observation based on the current class not on what the pro’s can do with them.

Mesmer:

I didn’t play my Mesmer……like…..ever. I loved the whole Mesmer class and the idea behind it. But just couldn’t get into the play style. Post patch has changed this. Not that I’ve suddenly become a huge fan of the play style, but more that playing a Mesmer almost assures me a win. Out of the 20 games played as a Mesmer my team was Victorious 19 of them, with the loss being due to 2 DC’s, and with me receiving top player marks in almost every one. Does this mean I am a great Mesmer? Hell no…..I hardly ever played the class….their new tech is just, simply put, insane.

Mesmer is currently #1 in Burst, Escape, Invis (Goes with escape), and Control. So…basically all your prime aspects in PvP. I can roam from point to point seamlessly with a near perma invis that gives me haste. Once I am there I can generally kill whoever’s guarding, even 1v2, without much effort by keeping them blinded. And once I lock down a point, I can defend it from 2-3 players no problem. With the ability to stealth myself and all my clones on the point and keep them that way for quite a while….all I would do is wait….for groups of 2…3….sometimes even 4 to come and try to take it back before shattering from invis and dropping them all into downed. (No I couldn’t finish the job because 4 downed people will still kill me) But it takes them out of the fight, giving my team an easy 3 cap.

I only read as far as the quoted bit because it told me everything I needed to know, which is that you’re either making this up or lying about the details.

1) Hunter = Ranger. Not sure what game you think you’re playing
2) Perma invis that gives you haste? I guess you must be running PU, and “Haste” is what we who play the game call swiftness. Haste is something quite different.
3) You claim you can stealth yourself and all your clones, which while possible with Mass Invis (Elite), isnt frequent, and clones/phants will reveal themselves on their next attack cycle. Though they won’t if they don’t have a target, at which point they’ll despawn. So uh, you’re really talking out your kitten here.
4) You’ve made multiple mentions of all the stealth uptime at this point, aswell as mentioned invluns etc. Mesmer is also a ranged DPS class. Yet after talking about how you from-stealth burst 4 of the enemy team into downed state, for some reason you can’t finish them despite having unlimited stealth (great for stomping) invuln (also g reat for stomping) or just moving out of range and DPS’ing them with phantasms and something like GS skill spam? Claiming you’re a newb mes is one thing, but writing inconsistent “reviews” says it all.