Guild Wars 2

For a long while now I’ve always found the “meta” builds for every class cheesy and requiring little effort. As a player who strives for a challenge to my skill, I constantly play my own builds which pose an inherent disadvantage to give me said challenge. Does anyone else do this, or do most people simply stick with face roll easy mode builds? (Granted in team play I’ll always play the strongest build, because it’s just selfish to handicap your team for your own preferences).

if you play out of the meta, doesn´t matter how good or skilled you are.
You will constantly get smashed by strongly synergized builds

Depends. I play top 25 as an MM Necromancer, technically not the meta, you never see MM in the top 100 really. It’s also not as easy as everyone says to play in high-tier play, while yes its pretty easy against low-tier players who stand still a lot when fighting.

I have always played a non-default build that I have made myself in all the games and gw2 is not an exception. Even when I still had my team (that was up to two months from launch) everyone ran builds that were fun for them, not the most powerful ones.

Meh. I played a lot of weird stuff like double-dps-guard, double-mesmer, backstab thief, ele (it’s sad that ele allone i considered weird but oh well) and I still always was arround 50-200 on the teamq leaderbords. Of course you get steamrolled by good teams with meta-setups but it just feels way more rewarding and is way more fun this way.
Also it feels very satisfying to win against double war/spirit ranger/bunker guard/filler setups with some random glasscannon setup.

uh..i play..older meta i guess
d/p thief here