First of all, current meta is semi-bunker also a common support bunker.
And there are 4 professions that common:
Mesmer – Chrono
Revenant – Herald
Engineer – Scraper
Elementalist – Tempest
All 4 are HoT elite specs. Why we join them together in current mate?
Revenant is semi-immune to condition, damage and effects, got high sustain vs ability damage itself.
In other hand* Engineer* is dealing ability damage and have abilities to counter play Revenant, and also got ability to counter play some sort of condition application, also got CC and zoning, also got skill that 90000000000000 timesbetter that shadow refuge.
Elementalist got both types of damage with high AOE. And he is full-immune to condition, damage, also got burst potential, also got CC.
Mesmer – got multiple way to deal with condition, damage, by himself and also support the party, also give strong zoning and CC potential to get kill.
Lets see who is left.
Thief
Guardian
Necromancer
Warrior
Ranger – Druid is super good, and could work, probably he got some problems with condition application, and sustain.
Ok, Thief
There is following problems.
Before start from new one, lets talk about old ones.
AOE was issue for thief before HoT, but it was in other forms that you can dodge, but constant bunker wars isn’t a place for position your self properly.
Retaliation – one of big problems of melee oriented classes, probably one of biggest ones.
Overglowing screen – some sort of class can absorb and heal damage that enemy team deal to you, but Thief is based on dodges, you can’t just random dodges, you need to notice incoming attacks.
And there is a couple new ones – HoT nerf thief damage.
You no longer gain stacks of might when you are in stealth, that make shadow arts not so good at general, and that mastery line gives you condition cleaners.
Acrobatics just looks strange. Let’s check this:
Expeditious Dodger – is a weak version of Unhindered Combatant
Fleet Shadow was useless from 2012 till probably forever.
Guarded Initiation – 90% threshold at thief, on class without constant protection access.
Assassin’s Reward – heal yourself at start of the fight, then start to heal yourself. Also it’s a weak version of Invigorating Precision
Don’t Stop weak version of Unhindered Combatant
Upper Hand 3 sec CD, for a 1 initiative, it’s a biggest initiative regen in minute if you constant dodging all incoming attacks every 3 seconds why i put this here – the problem is simple, it’s not rewarding in attack and thief don’t have good defense play potential.
Other Thief problems:
The revealed effect lasts 1 second longer in sPvP
If an enemy is channeling an attack on a player that goes into stealth, it will often continue to do so until the channeling ends or the player moves far enough away.
Conclusion: Thief got problems with condition and a way of dealing with it – losing damage and become more useless in constant protection meta, even if you steal protection new will instantly proc from runes of durability.
Guardian
There is a following problems – conditions, reflections, stability.
Guardian also are affected by retaliation.
Well it’s still decent bunker, but problem here is – team can support you and you can’t offer them anything.
You have new way of playing – DH, that can’t do much with weakness and constant protection.
Warrior
There is a following problems – conditions, other classes are probably full immune to cripple and immobilize, also semi or full immune to stuns.
Warrior also are affected by retaliation.
Warrior have big problems with damage on Hammer, mace and axe.
And new stats medallions make health pulls bigger and warrior damage not changed or nerfed in some builds.
Constant protections force you play condition warrior, but warrior traits that make warrior good condition damage dealer are separated by mastery lines, probably to much. You can’t offer good condition cleaner, defense potential and decent condition damage. But Revs have no problems with that even more, they also got more mobility.
Necromancer
In 100% of my games there is at least 1 necro. There can be games without meta classes, even more without few of them, but necro will be there.
Necro is one of most polish classes at start, necros problems wasn’t on top, probably because of that.
But i can talk about not optimal stas amulet combination for Necro, also there is problems with low damage output in power build, that make it not rewarding to play. And semi-immune to condition damage classes.
What Anet can do:
I don’t know.