Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

So I’ve been wondering. Classes are designed to have weaknesses. Thus engineer and revenant are relatively weak to conditions.
But what are weaknesses from other classes? I just cannot figure out elementalist, but also for necro or warrior I can’t really find out their weaknesses in combat.

What do you think?

Necro’s are even better defined than Engineer’s, actually. Necros lack mobility and avoidance ability. Basically, whatever you want to do to a Necro, they have to take. They can’t run away, they can’t ignore CC, and they can’t prevent you from hitting them. Their sustain also relies upon hitting their foes, so if you can avoid that, you starve them.

They also lack burst ability, lucky Lich Form crits (proccing Fire+Air+ Chill of Death) notwithstanding.

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

For necro weaknesses- They are pretty much the least mobile class in the game. and are the worst class at surviving focus since they don’t really have any form of escape aside from a somewhat unreliable port from the flesh worm skill and no blocks, evades, or reflect skills. All the necro really has for defense is Death Shroud and a high base HP pool.

runeblade.7514:

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

Fresh Air says “hi”.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

runeblade.7514:

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

Fresh Air says “hi”.

Yeah, Fresh Air can burst any player down from full health in less than a second. However, that build doesn’t have “high pressure, high sustain.”

Eles as a profession don’t really have any weaknesses at all. A particular build might have something it doesn’t do so well, but the profession doesn’t. Only thing they can’t do is strip boons (and then Tempest came along…)

UmbraNoctis.1907:

runeblade.7514:

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

Fresh Air says “hi”.

I guess you could melt someone in a few seconds with Fresh Air if they’re complete glass and don’t react, but without Bolt to the Heart and the loss of damage in Air(remember how we don’t have as many modifiers now), I don’t think there’s any reason to play a FA Scepter Burst Ele anymore, especially since Mesmers do literally everything better in that regard.

Rangers don’t have much in the way of hard CC, and have very limited options when it comes to dealing with conditions on them. They also can do absolutely nothing about enemy boons.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

runeblade.7514:

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

Fresh Air says “hi”.

What about Fresh Air? Its not even viable anymore.

I do not think that fresh is a weak build, more like cele is so good that nobody runs anything else.

Thiefs are weak to tankier targets that can sustain through their burst. Also tankier zerkers like medi guards can give them a hard time.

Mesmers have a hard time fighting on point.

quick list:

Warrior: very vulnerable to blinds, no teleport skills (can easily get outkited by porting to high ground), reliant on stances to not get bursted.
Guardian: Cooldowns, vulnerable to attrition builds (they can easily mitigate burst with shelter/renewed focus/virtue of courage, but these have high cooldowns). Burn guard is vulnerable to condi transfer (necro, some mesmers)
Thief: getting bursted outside of stealth. thief is hard to catch in stealth but has no blocks/invulnerable skills. You can screw up a thief heavily if you interrupt his black powder→heartseeker stealth combo or by using knockbacks against his shadow refuge. Also thief has low health, a quick burst can down him. Remember a stealthed thief cannot capture points.
Ranger: Projectile reflects against power builds, also low cd condi cleanse against his pet taunt. His defensive tools have some large cooldowns, avoid getting stunned by greatsword in melee. Condi Ranger: Condition transfer and moblity, condi ranger is much slower than power. Also no teleport skills.
Engineer: Spamming different conditions at him, beware of his random transmute every 15s . A lot of Stablity on your side or stun breaks are effective too, most engies have lots of knockbacks. Remember the gear shield cd (16s), nearly every engi uses it.
Mesmer: Has either weak condition removal (PU build) or low amount of stealth (Inspiration build). Also has low dps, but large burst, so either run tanky attrition builds or a glassy build which can evade/absorb shatter combo. Remember that a stealthed mesmer can not capture points.
Necro: Low moblity, no ways to absorb damage outside of evade. Do not attack him while spectral armor is up, you are just recharging his shroud then. Be careful with condition builds since he can transfer them back at you (however blind can prevent it).
Spamming crowd control is extremely effective.
Ele: Ele has no weaknesses and rule pvp right now))
jk they have some but they are hard to use. D/D has no way to prevent taking damage outside of a dodge roll, a coordinated burst from 2-3 mesmer can instantly down an ele. They also have a low amount of stunbreaks on them. Chill affects their attunement recharge rate, a well timed chill after they left water attunement can screw up an elementalist.

UBcktieDL.5318:

quick list:

Warrior: very vulnerable to blinds, no teleport skills (can easily get outkited by porting to high ground), reliant on stances to not get bursted.
Guardian: Cooldowns, vulnerable to attrition builds (they can easily mitigate burst with shelter/renewed focus/virtue of courage, but these have high cooldowns). Burn guard is vulnerable to condi transfer (necro, some mesmers)
Thief: getting bursted outside of stealth. thief is hard to catch in stealth but has no blocks/invulnerable skills. You can screw up a thief heavily if you interrupt his black powder->heartseeker stealth combo or by using knockbacks against his shadow refuge. Also thief has low health, a quick burst can down him. Remember a stealthed thief cannot capture points.
Ranger: Projectile reflects against power builds, also low cd condi cleanse against his pet taunt. His defensive tools have some large cooldowns, avoid getting stunned by greatsword in melee. Condi Ranger: Condition transfer and moblity, condi ranger is much slower than power. Also no teleport skills.
Engineer: Spamming different conditions at him, beware of his random transmute every 15s . A lot of Stablity on your side or stun breaks are effective too, most engies have lots of knockbacks. Remember the gear shield cd (16s), nearly every engi uses it.
Mesmer: Has either weak condition removal (PU build) or low amount of stealth (Inspiration build). Also has low dps, but large burst, so either run tanky attrition builds or a glassy build which can evade/absorb shatter combo. Remember that a stealthed mesmer can not capture points.
Necro: Low moblity, no ways to absorb damage outside of evade. Do not attack him while spectral armor is up, you are just recharging his shroud then. Be careful with condition builds since he can transfer them back at you (however blind can prevent it).
Spamming crowd control is extremely effective.
Ele: Ele has no weaknesses and rule pvp right now))
jk they have some but they are hard to use. D/D has no way to prevent taking damage outside of a dodge roll, a coordinated burst from 2-3 mesmer can instantly down an ele. They also have a low amount of stunbreaks on them. Chill affects their attunement recharge rate, a well timed chill after they left water attunement can screw up an elementalist.

High Five for writing that list

runeblade.7514:

What about Fresh Air? Its not even viable anymore.

Just because there are better builds, does not mean, Fresh Air builds are nonexistent. So “ele has no burst” is wrong. They can burst if build for it, thats all i wanted to say.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

runeblade.7514:

What about Fresh Air? Its not even viable anymore.

Just because there are better builds, does not mean, Fresh Air builds are nonexistent. So “ele has no burst” is wrong. They can burst if build for it, thats all i wanted to say.

Does it matter then if that burst is actually really garbage and barely does enough damage anymore? Yea, TECHNICALLY it’s burst, but it’s so bad that it’s hardly worth considering.

Don’t call me on these because I’m not a high ranking PvP’er but I believe some of the weaknesses would go like this:

Engineer, as you’ve said, condition pressure. CC also works relatively well.

Necromancer, CC and high ranged pressure/focus fire. They have poor defensive scaling and cannot withstand multiple sources of damage for long. Almost no stability and very feeble ways to kite also mean that they’re forced to facetank CC. Hammer Warrior’s and lockdown Mesmers are their worst nightmare.

Mesmer, condition pressure, blinds and evasive targets. Mesmers are a pretty highly single target based profession. It’s difficult for them to fight things like Thieves because they’re constantly losing their target and they don’t have a lot of AOE’s or skills that don’t require a target to fight it.

Warrior, high poison uptime, blinds, kiting. Mostly slow moving and highly telegraphed attacks, easy to blind. A lot of Warriors (like 95% of them) use Healing Signet. Keeping poison stacked on them effectively removes their heal.

Elementalist, high chill uptime, high burst damage. Chills really mess with their attunements, makes it a lot more difficult for them to combo fields and thus reducing their might stacking and healing. With low base health, they often cannot outheal heavy impacts. On my full berserker Warrior Ele’s melt so fast they either have to run or kite really hard.

Thieves, CC, condition pressure, high damage. Like Ele’s, Thieves have low base health. High damaging attacks/builds usually make quick work of them unless they’re slippery enough to keep disengaging before they’re killed (which good ones are). They also rarely take more than one stunbreak and have no stability assuming they’re not using Dagger Storm so watch their dodges, bait out Shadowstep and CC will really mess them up. Conditions can also be a big issue for Thieves but it depends on their build, some have relatively good condition removal while others have almost none.

Guardians, unblockable attacks, boonstrips, kiting. Low base health but lots of blocks, if you have access to attacks/abilities that ignore blocks (think Warrior Signet Of Power), you should make quick work of a Guard. Kiting works in most cases as well but Guards have better gap closers than Warriors so it depends on how well you can kite. And boonstrips do well against mitigating their defenses. Although Guards stack boons quite well they don’t stack them quite as abundantly as Elementalists which makes it easier to strip them.

Rangers, killing their pets, reflects, condition bursts. A lot of a Ranger’s build can depend on it’s pet and even if it doesn’t, the pets damage is nothing to be scoffed at. A jaguar can crit upwards of 10k and in a lot of builds their condition removal is tied to the pet. Most Rangers use a lot of projectile attacks, reflects will send those attacks back to sender. And although Survival Ranger in particular has extremely good condition management, Rangers tend to only have good prolonged condition management. Meaning they can last in a fight for quite some time if you only apply a few conditions at a time but they have a hard time removing them in large sums.

Very well Put, SpellOfIniquity. Those are mostly spot on. I would like to add a couple of points for a few classes.

Engineers: Stability is very strong against

Elementalist: In addition to burst and lots of CC, eles are neutralized by boon-rips. If you can frequently remove boons, esp their large might stacks they barely tickle you.

Thief: Thief is very weak to enemy sustain. They have burst and great sustained damage, but if they can heal up and recover then thief becomes very vulnerable. You generally beat a thief by being able to heal up their bursts and then counter-pressure with condis.

Mesmers: still relatively weak to condi bursts, but with inspiration they can do quite well against them now. Nowadays you have to also be very tanky to survive/outheal the burst and then apply continued pressure.

Guardian: Weak to soft-CC, as they lack many ways to stick to a target.

The response from the community is so good this thread should be made into a sticky. It’s something we could update regularly and could be a truly useful resource for anyone interested in improving their pvp performance.

Drarnor, in the first beta they removed boon removal from the tooltip of the fire field skill on warhorn, but I don’t know if they put it back or not.

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

Warrior is weak to blinds, they have slow attacks and rely on CC setups for bigger dmg hits.

runeblade.7514:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

runeblade.7514:

Elementalist don’t have the lockdown + burst.

They have high pressure, high sustain. But they cannot 100-0 in a few seconds.

Fresh Air says “hi”.

What about Fresh Air? Its not even viable anymore.

Fresh air is also a build that requires a target. Stealth and clones are incredibly debilitating to FA.

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

Yes, it necros were as resistant to their weakness as as eles are to theirs, they’d have either stunbreaks on a 6 second cooldown that works in and out of shroud or 3+stacks of stability up for 75% of the time.

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Laraley.7695:

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Specifically Water + 3x Cantrips. D/D Ele itself only has 1, while Staff has…however long Healing Rain is.

Malchior.5732:

Laraley.7695:

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Specifically Water + 3x Cantrips. D/D Ele itself only has 1, while Staff has…however long Healing Rain is.

Lets be clear about this, d/d ele term is used to describe the current meta d/d spec.

Just the fact people completely leave out stuff like fresh air shows how unviable it is.

Laraley.7695:

Malchior.5732:

Laraley.7695:

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Specifically Water + 3x Cantrips. D/D Ele itself only has 1, while Staff has…however long Healing Rain is.

Lets be clear about this, d/d ele term is used to describe the current meta d/d spec.

Just the fact people completely leave out stuff like fresh air shows how unviable it is.

I’m just making it clear, because a Staff Ele using Water line + 3x Cantrips actually has more cleanses.

Not that it matters, a Survival Ranger has a billion cleanses but no one complains about that one because it’s a Ranger.

Laraley.7695:

Malchior.5732:

Laraley.7695:

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Specifically Water + 3x Cantrips. D/D Ele itself only has 1, while Staff has…however long Healing Rain is.

Lets be clear about this, d/d ele term is used to describe the current meta d/d spec.

Just the fact people completely leave out stuff like fresh air shows how unviable it is.

Funny thing is, before traits, d/d and s/d have the least amount of condi removal of any ele weapon set. Even considering traits, weapon sets with dagger off hand have the lowest potential condition removal as pretty much all the condi removal comes from cleansing fire and traits.

ArthurDent.9538:

Laraley.7695:

Malchior.5732:

Laraley.7695:

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Also the only thing eles are particularly weak to is chill, because it kittens up their water attunement swap cooldown, which destroys them. However, this weakness is easy to mitigate simply because eles have a lot of condition removal. Stop drop and roll also exists, but can be wasted by burns or Ally cleanse procs.

What a convoluted way to say ele has no weakness.

You think so? Well-timed chill often leads to the ele death. Also, lets please stop saying ‘’eles have lots of condition removal’’. No, d/d ele has.

Specifically Water + 3x Cantrips. D/D Ele itself only has 1, while Staff has…however long Healing Rain is.

Lets be clear about this, d/d ele term is used to describe the current meta d/d spec.

Just the fact people completely leave out stuff like fresh air shows how unviable it is.

Funny thing is, before traits, d/d and s/d have the least amount of condi removal of any ele weapon set. Even considering traits, weapon sets with dagger off hand have the lowest potential condition removal as pretty much all the condi removal comes from cleansing fire and traits.

Once again, I wasn’t talking about weapon sets or some potentional condition clears but the actual d/d ele meta build. Compare it to an actual fresh air build and tell me what the difference is because before the changes you had very little condition removal.

Laraley, I was simply referring to the stop drop and roll trait as a main example. Isn’t it absurd that an adept level trait can cure your build’s weakness every 9 seconds (in theory)?

And besides that, the most played ele build has double cleansing fire, two more can trip cleanses, and the water swaps and water evasive arcana. It’s too much mitigation for their weakness, but part of that is because debilitating and damaging conditions aren’t treated separately (in terms of what should cleanse what), but they should be to promote better balance.

nearlight.3064:

Laraley, I was simply referring to the stop drop and roll trait as a main example. Isn’t it absurd that an adept level trait can cure your build’s weakness every 9 seconds (in theory)?

And besides that, the most played ele build has double cleansing fire, two more can trip cleanses, and the water swaps and water evasive arcana. It’s too much mitigation for their weakness, but part of that is because debilitating and damaging conditions aren’t treated separately (in terms of what should cleanse what), but they should be to promote better balance.

Nearlight, did you ever think about why almost no one runs that trait?

Exactly, because other builds aren’t viable. Saying d/d ele has only a few weaknesess is correct, saying the class does isn’t. There was no word about nerfing or not nerfing d/d ele, but people seriously needs to stop consdering it the only possible build and maybe also screaming for buffing those when they want balance so much.

Laraley.7695:

There was no word about nerfing or not nerfing d/d ele,

WRONG. Grouch commented a while ago about nerfs incoming.

Laraley.7695:

nearlight.3064:

Laraley, I was simply referring to the stop drop and roll trait as a main example. Isn’t it absurd that an adept level trait can cure your build’s weakness every 9 seconds (in theory)?

And besides that, the most played ele build has double cleansing fire, two more can trip cleanses, and the water swaps and water evasive arcana. It’s too much mitigation for their weakness, but part of that is because debilitating and damaging conditions aren’t treated separately (in terms of what should cleanse what), but they should be to promote better balance.

Nearlight, did you ever think about why almost no one runs that trait?

Exactly, because other builds aren’t viable. Saying d/d ele has only a few weaknesess is correct, saying the class does isn’t. There was no word about nerfing or not nerfing d/d ele, but people seriously needs to stop consdering it the only possible build and maybe also screaming for buffing those when they want balance so much.

Phantaram runs stop drop and roll, so I wouldn’t say that’s hardly anyone.

Or are you talking about fresh air again? In which case it’s pointless to discuss since zerker thieves and mesmers have pushed nearly every zerker out of the meta for the past few years, except for medi guard in the cele meta, which doesn’t really work anymore. It’s not just a problem relegated to the scepter being a worse version of Mesmer GS, or that traits don’t support the playstyle very well.

Tuomir.1830:

Rangers don’t have much in the way of hard CC, and have very limited options when it comes to dealing with conditions on them. They also can do absolutely nothing about enemy boons.

LB #4, GS #4 and #5, pet knockdown on Wolf/Drakehound autoattacks, SB #5. Nope. Not much hard CC at all.

Bark Skin, Healing Fountain, survival skills remove condis trait… That’s more CC and condi removal that most classes.

Auldon.1972:

Tuomir.1830:

Rangers don’t have much in the way of hard CC, and have very limited options when it comes to dealing with conditions on them. They also can do absolutely nothing about enemy boons.

LB #4, GS #4 and #5, pet knockdown on Wolf/Drakehound autoattacks, SB #5. Nope. Not much hard CC at all.

Bark Skin, Healing Fountain, survival skills remove condis trait… That’s more CC and condi removal that most classes.

GS #4 is a counter attack, it can’t be used as offensive CC, the pet knockdowns are unreliable, and the other three are one for a weapon set with lengthy cooldown. Outside weapon skills, rangers have only one more or less reliable hard CC, and even that is a pet F2 skill, wolf howl.

As for conditions, Bark Skin does nothing about them, you might want to check what trait you mean first. For traits, the only options are both in the same tier of the same spec, one is tied to survival skills and the other one can’t be controlled and doesn’t actually cleanse conditions at all, but transfer them to your pet. For build where the pet is valuable, this is not quite desirable. So, your options are to use Healing Spring or to use survivals. I’d say that’s quite limited options.

For Rangers, I’d say the biggest weakness is a downed pet, in super long CD. Most rangers run the BM trait line nowadays, because it’s just too good. If you are able to take out their pet, the ranger will have no choice but to sustain lots of damage without pet peels. It doesn’t matter what kind of ranger it is, power/condi, power ranger rely on their pet for peels as well as setting up 2-shot combo, especially with taunt – wolf fear. So if you can down the pet (which isn’t hard in team fights) you can beat a ranger pretty easily. Reflects work OK vs them, any smart ranger will not target you while you’re reflecting.

As for condi ranger… They have tons of dodges, and can survive much longer with decent condi damage, and can sustain a bit more than power. So to beat them, you have a to clear specific conditions depending on the build. Trap rangers usually carry most of their damage in poison, so as soon as you see 4+ stacks, cleanse immidiately. So just be careful, burns and bleeds also hurt from Rangers. If you’re necro, you can time your transfers when the full stack of vipers nest hits, that’s lots of damage. If you’re warrior gotta watch out for random blinds from f2, as well as weakness, from NM and BM trait lines. To counter this, attack in range, trigger the CD then burst, back up do the same thing. Mesmers and thieves can burst down a ranger quite easily, you just have to catch them off guard, usually with stealth, but again watch out for specific conditions.

Also! Watch the PET! The pet is like the biggest problem if you don’t watch it, KD,crippling, fear, Immob, tail swipe etc. all hit pretty hard so be careful. So best thing to do, kill the pet with fire or at least Kite the pet.

I can only speak from experience here, there are tons of other problems that you’d run into with a good ranger, but there are always ways to come out on top. Hope this helps though. Plus Rangers are like at the bottom of the totem pole… Soooo you already have the advantage, if you’re not playing ranger vs a ranger

UBcktieDL.5318:

quick list:

Warrior: very vulnerable to blinds, no teleport skills (can easily get outkited by porting to high ground), reliant on stances to not get bursted.
Guardian: Cooldowns, vulnerable to attrition builds (they can easily mitigate burst with shelter/renewed focus/virtue of courage, but these have high cooldowns). Burn guard is vulnerable to condi transfer (necro, some mesmers)
Thief: getting bursted outside of stealth. thief is hard to catch in stealth but has no blocks/invulnerable skills. You can screw up a thief heavily if you interrupt his black powder->heartseeker stealth combo or by using knockbacks against his shadow refuge. Also thief has low health, a quick burst can down him. Remember a stealthed thief cannot capture points.
Ranger: Projectile reflects against power builds, also low cd condi cleanse against his pet taunt. His defensive tools have some large cooldowns, avoid getting stunned by greatsword in melee. Condi Ranger: Condition transfer and moblity, condi ranger is much slower than power. Also no teleport skills.
Engineer: Spamming different conditions at him, beware of his random transmute every 15s . A lot of Stablity on your side or stun breaks are effective too, most engies have lots of knockbacks. Remember the gear shield cd (16s), nearly every engi uses it.
Mesmer: Has either weak condition removal (PU build) or low amount of stealth (Inspiration build). Also has low dps, but large burst, so either run tanky attrition builds or a glassy build which can evade/absorb shatter combo. Remember that a stealthed mesmer can not capture points.
Necro: Low moblity, no ways to absorb damage outside of evade. Do not attack him while spectral armor is up, you are just recharging his shroud then. Be careful with condition builds since he can transfer them back at you (however blind can prevent it).
Spamming crowd control is extremely effective.
Ele: Ele has no weaknesses and rule pvp right now))
jk they have some but they are hard to use. D/D has no way to prevent taking damage outside of a dodge roll, a coordinated burst from 2-3 mesmer can instantly down an ele. They also have a low amount of stunbreaks on them. Chill affects their attunement recharge rate, a well timed chill after they left water attunement can screw up an elementalist.

Warriors need stances so we dont get bursted…….. tell that to a shout or banner warrior or one with a shield must I also bring up that trait that gives us 1000 toughness and healing and that adrenaline heal with shout trait pretty much gives them full hp and even when they go bunker they still hit like a train people keep forgetting or dont realize warriors are super tanky

Taquain.6598:

UBcktieDL.5318:

quick list:

Warrior: very vulnerable to blinds, no teleport skills (can easily get outkited by porting to high ground), reliant on stances to not get bursted.
Guardian: Cooldowns, vulnerable to attrition builds (they can easily mitigate burst with shelter/renewed focus/virtue of courage, but these have high cooldowns). Burn guard is vulnerable to condi transfer (necro, some mesmers)
Thief: getting bursted outside of stealth. thief is hard to catch in stealth but has no blocks/invulnerable skills. You can screw up a thief heavily if you interrupt his black powder->heartseeker stealth combo or by using knockbacks against his shadow refuge. Also thief has low health, a quick burst can down him. Remember a stealthed thief cannot capture points.
Ranger: Projectile reflects against power builds, also low cd condi cleanse against his pet taunt. His defensive tools have some large cooldowns, avoid getting stunned by greatsword in melee. Condi Ranger: Condition transfer and moblity, condi ranger is much slower than power. Also no teleport skills.
Engineer: Spamming different conditions at him, beware of his random transmute every 15s . A lot of Stablity on your side or stun breaks are effective too, most engies have lots of knockbacks. Remember the gear shield cd (16s), nearly every engi uses it.
Mesmer: Has either weak condition removal (PU build) or low amount of stealth (Inspiration build). Also has low dps, but large burst, so either run tanky attrition builds or a glassy build which can evade/absorb shatter combo. Remember that a stealthed mesmer can not capture points.
Necro: Low moblity, no ways to absorb damage outside of evade. Do not attack him while spectral armor is up, you are just recharging his shroud then. Be careful with condition builds since he can transfer them back at you (however blind can prevent it).
Spamming crowd control is extremely effective.
Ele: Ele has no weaknesses and rule pvp right now))
jk they have some but they are hard to use. D/D has no way to prevent taking damage outside of a dodge roll, a coordinated burst from 2-3 mesmer can instantly down an ele. They also have a low amount of stunbreaks on them. Chill affects their attunement recharge rate, a well timed chill after they left water attunement can screw up an elementalist.

Warriors need stances so we dont get bursted…….. tell that to a shout or banner warrior or one with a shield must I also bring up that trait that gives us 1000 toughness and healing and that adrenaline heal with shout trait pretty much gives them full hp and even when they go bunker they still hit like a train people keep forgetting or dont realize warriors are super tanky

Shout support warriors doesn’t have the same weaknesses as a power rampage warrior, that’s pretty normal.

Beating tanky warriors is mostly about trying to keep poison them, and bursting them down. Those warrior do next to no damage, so you shouldn’t be too worried about that when fighting them. The best thing to do is often to avoid fighting them 1 on 1.

It makes me sad that a thread like this pops up and basically every response contains, “Well, I DEFINITELY know what necros are bad at…”

Yeah, necros absolutely fold under pressure and can’t break your targeting. Even super tanky necros are almost ALWAYS the best focus targets in a fight. They just eat damage and CC. Basically their weakness is “Attack them.” and it’s super effective.

Every other class is a bit more subtle in this regard, but they have weaknesses as well. I just often find a necro’s life very frustrating in SPvP vs competent, organized groups. 1v1s and small skirmishes are fun, but the moment a larger teamfight breaks out, prepare to have everyone switch to your no-escape-havin’ totally vulnerable self. Our health bars are just more of us to hurt. ):

It makes me bitter to see players complain about Reapers/Necros being too tanky. If that were so, then why does the majority of the community prioritize focusing necros and reapers alike with excellent results?

People just /assume/ necros are tanky because they live longer while taking damage than most other classes. The difference being other classes spend a long time not taking damage.

Sorry. I got salt everywhere…

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Mesmer, condition pressure, blinds and evasive targets. Mesmers are a pretty highly single target based profession. It’s difficult for them to fight things like Thieves because they’re constantly losing their target and they don’t have a lot of AOE’s or skills that don’t require a target to fight it.

I have to disagree with you a bit here, mesmer phantasms and illusions automatically re-target enemies that pop out of stealth, so a skilled mesmer should have no trouble keeping track of these targets. In addition, shatters are AoE, the key to fighting stealthy, elusive targets is to set up a clone surround on them, positioning your clones and phantasms so that no matter which way they move, the shatter still hits them unless they use a defensive cooldown.

Also, once upon a time, when thieves were an actual counter to mesmers, it was because the mesmer couldn’t really handle the pressure that thieves output, not because they had trouble targeting them. when mesmers got access to more defensive options while still being able to run offensive traits (IP becoming baseline was the big one) all but the most skilled thieves ceased to really be a serious threat.

The primary weakness of mesmer is that they are relatively weak when confined to a small area (AKA, on point). This is only something you can capitalize on as a tanky, point bruiser sort of class (guard, warrior, ele, cele necro). IMO mesmer is the unequivocally strongest “roamer” class in the game right now.

Also, condi pressure sort of screws you over. However, getting a good condition burn on a mesmer requires you to force that player to go toe-to-toe with you (ie, contesting a point) A good mesmer will simply burn you down with GS from range and then jump in to burst you down with shatters.

pretty much our worst enemies are classes like burn guardians and cele D/D ele, classes with both some measure of on-point sustain, and some level of condition pressure to force us back.

D/D ele is weak to chill and poison uptime. If you can range them/avoid their fire, that’ll take you a long way as well. Necro is the weakest class in the game, since they can’t escape, can’t block, can’t invuln. They basically rely on tons of HP to survive, or they get rekt. Warrior, assuming not shoutbow, then they have similar weaknesses to eles, is blind spam. That’s why a properly played thief or guardian will 9/10 shut a power warrior down. Hell, you could even stand toe to toe with a rampage warrior for as long as your cooldowns would allow.

Pnoi.8903:

Plus Rangers are like at the bottom of the totem pole… Soooo you already have the advantage, if you’re not playing ranger vs a ranger

This is kinda sad but true I’m afraid. I love my power ranger and do fairly well with her but if I make one mistake, it’s pretty much over. I’ve recently changed up my build a bit more to add some survivability but those conditions are a real pain.

About the pets – I tend to use a bird (eagle, crow, owl, etc.) as my DPS pet because of their mobility speed and how low their CD is on their burst. A bird can easily chase down and trash most “squishy” players especially if using some of our speed boost skills.

What is also sad (and perhaps this is just me) is that I’ve found my PU/shatter mesmer is able to dish out more sustained damage on a target than my glass cannon power ranger. I tested this on the jungle dragon at the end of season 2 and couldn’t believe it.