Guild Wars 2

I’m writing a “short” tier list and impression of the elite specs. I won’t go into different builds/gear setups that are possible with each spec because it’s only been THREE days. So I’m sure there has yet to be a meta to be established, these are all just my opinion from playing conquest and stronghold.

My background: While I don’t have an extensive knowledge of GW2 PvP I do have a high competitive background from other games.
WoW: Multi-time gladiator. 2800+ in 3v3. 2600+ in 5v5. 2500+ 2v2
2900+ RBG leader.
League of legends: Gold. (I guess it’s not too impressive. I like to watch the game more than I play. I’m terrible at MoBAs)
Diablo 3: Top 100 in season 1 for monk. (If this even counts as being competitive)

Solo queue
God Tier: Can play almost any position of the game. Low cooldowns, durable, and can almost single handedly win the game.
Dragonhunter
I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this and believe that chronomancer is by far the strongest class. I’m going to have to disagree with the majority here. I’ll go into the discussion about them next, but what makes dragonhunter stronger than all the other classes is the consistency they can bring to the team. Their traps bring a large amount of cc, damage, and they are extremely durable. Being the god of solo queue means what you can do to carry the team, and being able to defend, be on offense, and steal points on relatively short cooldowns

SS tier:
Chronomancer
The burst class. A lot of people are calling nerfs on chronomancer mostly on the one aspect that they can almost 100-0 someone within seconds due to continuum shift. Well I’m going to reference another game here, and hopefully I’ll get my point across why I don’t think this needs to be nerfed. Anyone who played vanilla WoW, might remember the classic AP PoM Pyro mage, or a seccubus soulfire destroy warlock. To those of you who didn’t play WoW in the early stages of PvP, these two specs relied on heavy cooldowns and a “I win” combo. For people who are familiar with League of Legends, I think Le Blanc is the epitamy of what Mesmer/chronomancer is. Go in and out and get kills. But this doesn’t make her the best team fight champion In the right hands this assassin playstyle seems impossible to beat.

Through time these assassin builds slowly died out as people started to figure out how to counter these specs just through playing more defensively or changing their gear setup. I think this will become very true as the game continues on, I personally see a lot of people just getting 1-2 shotted by things, and I’ll ask what amulet they are running. They will be most likely be running full glass cannon. So does this one mechanic of chronomancers automatically justify their SS tier rank? No absolutely not. The reason I put them so high on the list is because of their group utility through alacrity. Alacrity is in my opinion one of the craziest things to be introduced to this game. This is an AoE team buff that recharges skills 66% faster Think 1/3 of you cooldown is shaved off, 60 second cooldown will be up in 40 seconds. Assuming you can sustain it 100%. I don’t necessarily think you need to have 100% uptime on alacrity, the usefulness comes through the clutch saves of your teammates when you are using Well utility spells. As solo queue player chronomancer can either be the super burst assassin or they can be a team fighter and support allowing more total damage and heal output by your team which can drastically shift team fights and the game itself.

S Tier:
Daredevil
The second assassin I consider in this game. These little buggers can go in and out of fights very fluid and seems impossible to catch them unless you catch them on the run from a previous fight. Their strength relies on the fact they can output very high damage in a short amount of time, and avoiding almost all damage. I would argue that they have the highest mobility in the game than any other combination of spec and spells. Their weaknesses are conditions and wasting a dodge. Having a class relying on dodge to be successful makes people perceive that this specialization is weak.

I mentioned La Blanc for chronomancers, I’d like to think Rengar is what a daredevil is. He has really annoying stealth mechanics, goes in and out, and seems impossible to catch. I’m not saying they have the durability of the old AP Rengar, but with divine fortitude healing as they dodge/evade does give them quite a great sustain.

Druid
The one and only true healer of gw2. They heal and win teamfights. Aside from their Avatar form taking forever to build up, they will always win the fights of the battle of attrition as long as their team isn’t full of Berserker glass canons. They can’t completely solo and win the game, but they can make a devastating impact. Also PSA they can heal NPCs just by standing next to them hitting their 1 attack. I’ve seen my champion on stronghold from 15% healed to 100% in a minute or so, as long as we kept them enemies from entering the stronghold.

Revenant/Herald
I don’t know much about this class yet. I’ve screwed around on it a little bit and I think people are still figuring it out. But I think they are just a better warrior, they deal more damage, have an attack that grants them evasion and continuously strikes opponents. (Imagine Cloud from FFVII doing omnislash. Or juggernaut from DoTA, Fiora’s old ultimate from league of legends) Offering high sustained damage and being able to stay in the fight and tank damage, with some CC utilities, earns the Hearld a S tier spot.

A:
Tempest
I have played a few tempests, and I think they are great supports, they are awesome! They can do a little bit of everything, some healing, buffs, and damage. Maybe I need to play tempest more for myself to get a better feel of the class. I just don’t think going tempest hybrid or even full support, is what will carry you a game in solo queue. If you want to full support I think druid offers you a better chance as you have a higher healing output allowing your teammates to tunnel vision more and make big mistakes that would have otherwise gotten them killed.

B:
Reaper
This elite spec was the plague of the first day. EVERYONE was playing the reaper class. Who wouldn’t? The name of the elite spec just sounds the best. Sadly they fall short of their name and don’t deliver death to anyone quickly nor swiftly. The most successful reapers are the ones who are just the old tanky necro builds, they go in, become a huge annoyance for the enemy team. If you go glass canon, you just can’t compete the amount of burst that the other assassin classes offer. Although you do give consistent damage, and chilling effect which is nice. This could be potentially utilized in more coordinated and group play. Solo queue though, I think running a tank chronomancer will offer more due to alacrity helping your team as a whole, instead of being a really beefy target dummy.

Scrapper
This is the least played elite specialization that I’ve seen. I think it’s fun they offer some cool utilities, and are more inline of a true hybrid than leaning towards more support which I felt tempest did. Since they don’t excel at anything, I believe that they are outclassed by every other elite spec. They do have a reveal stealth ability which can be one of the most devastating things to the classes who require stealth to be useful. For a person who wants to be a jack of all the trades who leans towards more damage, I think this might be the class for you. But don’t expect to see amazing healing or burst someone down from 100-0. You’re just kind of in the middle. And I think being just sort of being in the middle doesn’t win you games, it just gives you an option to deal with everyone.

C:
Berserker
I said the scrapper is the least played elite specialization. Warrior is the least played class ever in pvp. But hey let’s talk about berserker. Why are berserkers in the lowest and in a tier by itself? Well because they are the worst for solo play. I’ve seen some berserkers do well, but not solo. They usually have in my opinion stronger players/classes that support them. I have NEVER been afraid to fight a berserker 1v1 on other classes. They take a longtime to get into berserker form, their damage is intended to be hybrid (power/condition) which doesn’t seem reasonable because then they give up survivability. Okay you want survivability deal less damage then everyone else. You don’t get both or they are overpowered. So what the hell do we buff berserkers? Well my question to you is that, is Guild Wars 2 PvP revolved around 1v1s? You know when I saw berserker shine? When they had support. Jesus was I scared of a berserker when they had a druid running behind them. To the people who will warriors with pocket healers in WoW, this is what you SHOULD be afraid of. My prediction is that berserker + druid will be THE two guys who 2v5 your team. The berserker does have some natural beefiness due to being heavy armor, they have a trait where their movement abilities break immobilizations. They can consistently get stability through berserker mode, and can have a large amount of interrupts counting on what utility spells you’re running. Remember the plague for Druid Warrior 2v2 arena in WoW? It’s coming in Guild Wars in some fashion. But this is my solo queue tier list. Without a friend who will run around with you coordinating who you need to interrupt and focus down, you’re just going to have to run around with your team and hope they aren’t running around like headless chickens asking “How do I unlock my elite spec?”

Conclusion
It’s still REALLY EARLY what needs to be adjusted in the game in terms of balance, so keep trying out things and have fun. Figured I’d give my first impressions of the elite specs, maybe a slightly different point of view of certain things.

If you guys liked this I can talk about builds, a team queue tier list, and strategies for the maps/modes. Although I have limited experience in coordinated groups for GW2 since I have no friends ;_;

You’re crazy to rank Scrapper this low. The current celestial build with it is bordeline S tier. It’s currently outperforming Eles in the well rounded role by quite a lot.

Zanyu.2017:

Scrapper
This is the least played elite specialization that I’ve seen

ESL
•0 mesmer, 2 chrono
•0 necro, 4 reaper
•6 ele, 3.5 tempest
•0 engi, 8 scrapper
•0 ranger, 5 druid
•4 thief, 1 daredevil
•3 warrior, 0 berserk
•2.5 guard, 7.5 dragonhunter
•0 rev, 6.5 glint

But I understand where you are coming from. And yes there might be fewer scrappers in your MMR and more DH because it brings amazing returns

I tried a few builds with Daredevil and failed miserably. What setup did you use?

I don’t agree with most of these, but I can respect your opinion. The one i do agree on the ranking of is berserker.

I’d say that tiers are something like this for solo que.
Tier 1: Scrapper
Tier 2: Herald, dragonhunter, chrono
Tier 3: daredevil, reaper, druid
Tier 4: berserker

Reaper jumps up substantially with proper group support. The other specs do so as well in the right comp. Then there are also core specs i won’t get into.

Anyways that’s just my opinion off of a bit of pvp. Oh yeah and tempest falls somewhere in there. Probably tier 2.5.

lol DH god mode…haha…stopped reading after that.

I don’t get why Berserker is C tier when they power creep EVERYTHING to S tier (including tempest) and leave Berserker behind. Berserker would be F tier at this point because Dragonhunter, Chrono, Herald are ALL DISGUSTING and spams evades while attacking.

These devs are worse than trash.

I’d like to hear why everyone thinks tempest is good. Its bottom tier along with berserker.

DISCLAIMER to my post
Okay since I’m getting feedback about my tier list, I do want to explain how I broke the tier list down. First and foremost I want to stress that these are my opinions and that this is only for SOLO queue. What I mean by solo queue is that you picked a character, set up your traits, runes, sigil and you queue up. No friend to coordinate with.

The strength of the elite specs in solo queue, is to stress that which class can be played at any point in time and consistently win. So there are two ways to look at solo queue lists based on different tiers of skill level. There is popularity pick and win rate. A popularity pick does not correlate with win rate.

I’m not saying Dragonhunter is the strongest class and can 1v5 an entire team. The class has weaknesses no doubt. BUT I think dragonhunter is the one elite spec that can consistently have a higher win ratio than all the other specializations. As far as scrappers, I think they are great don’t get me wrong, but maybe because it requires a higher skill cap, or I’m just ignorant of how to play your role as a scrapper, but I don’t think you can have a high consistent win ratio as a scrapper in solo queue.

For those of you who play league, I’m sure you’ve come across this website:
http://www.lolking.net/charts?region=all&type=champion-winrate&range=monthly&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=challenger

This is the Master-Challenger divisions (The highest competitive divisions in solo queue for League of Legends)

Now here it is across all:
http://www.lolking.net/charts?region=all&type=champion-winrate&range=monthly&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=ranked

If you play league you’ll understand there is definitely a lack of supports. BUT we do know in the meta you generally at least run 1 support almost 99% of games. Sadly I’m inclined to believe that GW2 will follow this fashion and that it will be mandatory to have at least one support. I simply believe that Druid and Tempest are better merely because of healing output. I think druid honestly is just easier to “carry” on because of my reasons stated in their section. With higher healing, the team fight will mostly likely be swayed in your favor, more winning in team fights more objective pushing.

But going back to the solo queue tier list, I think it’s important to show, which specialization and set up allowing for you to push your team to win the game through the role you can play. I believe Dragonhunter can fit almost all roles other than a support, pushing objectives through their sheer power of team fights able to consistently 1v1 and defend points against a 1v2.

Zanyu.2017:

Daredevil
The second assassin I consider in this game.

Just for some clarification… an assassin is someone who chooses a target, engages on his own terms where his opponent has little chance to survive, and works best on his own.

An assassin is not someone who has others hold a victim down while he delivers the death blow.

Those are two entirely different things. That is why I cannot truly label anything involving the current Thief as “assassin.” Yes, while there are some “assassin” builds that have the potential to kill some opponents in 1-2 shots, there are SO MANY passive defenses and AoE’s in this game, those buiilds are hardly effective… especially once someone knows what you’re doing.

Beasto.6159:

I tried a few builds with Daredevil and failed miserably. What setup did you use?

I can’t remember the top of my head, but I think a great streamer who has I think a lot more extensive knowledge than me is Xerrex.

http://www.twitch.tv/xerrex

I ran a slightly similar build to:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVn0MBVOhFmCmOB8PhFqiyLE+gSornCggc+67+yH-TpBFABCcIAEvMABnAga2fYhjAAAPAAA

But I screwed around more with the staff.

Just for some clarification… an assassin is someone who chooses a target, engages on his own terms where his opponent has little chance to survive, and works best on his own.

An assassin is not someone who has others hold a victim down while he delivers the death blow.

Those are two entirely different things. That is why I cannot truly label anything involving the current Thief as “assassin.” Yes, while there are some “assassin” builds that have the potential to kill some opponents in 1-2 shots, there are SO MANY passive defenses and AoE’s in this game, those buiilds are hardly effective… especially once someone knows what you’re doing.

I can understand what you are saying. I guess they don’t have that overwhelming burst potential that comes out as what you call an assassin. But I believe daredevil is a great 1v1 because it lure out a lot of cooldowns, poke going in and out and just widdle you down until death. And I really don’t think unless they have a toughness/vitality based amulet they will last too long.

If another person comes by, as long as you play safe, you can distract them and annoy them as they try to catch you while you’re dodging their attacks.

Zanyu.2017:

Just for some clarification… an assassin is someone who chooses a target, engages on his own terms where his opponent has little chance to survive, and works best on his own.

An assassin is not someone who has others hold a victim down while he delivers the death blow.

Those are two entirely different things. That is why I cannot truly label anything involving the current Thief as “assassin.” Yes, while there are some “assassin” builds that have the potential to kill some opponents in 1-2 shots, there are SO MANY passive defenses and AoE’s in this game, those buiilds are hardly effective… especially once someone knows what you’re doing.

I can understand what you are saying. I guess they don’t have that overwhelming burst potential that comes out as what you call an assassin. But I believe daredevil is a great 1v1 because it lure out a lot of cooldowns, poke going in and out and just widdle you down until death. And I really don’t think unless they have a toughness/vitality based amulet they will last too long.

If another person comes by, as long as you play safe, you can distract them and annoy them as they try to catch you while you’re dodging their attacks.

So you mean it’s useless because no one uses zerker anymore and Thieves were always the best anti zerker.

Daredevil above scrapper and reaper. Lolk.

^lol agreed….. scrapper and reaper should be far above daredevil and daredevil should be down the bottom. As daredevil is not better than the current theif build.

So a daredevil build I’m running more for heavy damage in matches.

Critical: 1 – 2 – 1
Trickery: 2 – 1 – 2
Daredevil: 1 – 1 – 3

Satff and Dagger/Dagger

Maybe I need to give scrapper more time and see what I can do by myself. I think scrapper as a team fighter and coordinated group they are amazing. But solo, I felt as if I could be on a different class and do more. The reason I placed daredevil high is because I felt that I could actually go glass canon, kill people and escape with stealth waiting in the shadows again. This also was very useful in teamfights, getting to the back-line and killing the squishy. Maybe not as fast as the chrono but fast enough getting in and out. People who were dedicated to bunker/high suitability was extremely difficult and had to kite more.

I think people are really underestimating daredevil, I think they might need some tweaking, but I’ve seen people completely wreck as a daredevil. Just because something isn’t is as clear as some others for setup (IE: Setting up traps, or clones for shatter burst) doesn’t mean that the class is bad. As I mentioned before in my post I think many people who are playing daredevil in solo queue, perhaps they are misusing dodges. Try to kite and deal consistent big damage.

I’m going to say the daredevil is similar to the World of Warcraft shadowstep rogue back in season 2, when AR/Prep maces were popular. Everyone downplayed subtlety until Serrenia the highest rated player in all three brackets, consistently lost to a shadowstep rogue. Bring this mentality into daredevil maybe you’ll get different results. Don’t expect to pop full initiative and cooldowns hoping to get a secret kill, chronomancers do it smoother and better. Instead go in for a huge chunk of damage, and get out, and reengage.

To be fair though, since there isn’t a visible MMR system, it is very possible I’m just playing against less skilled opponents and going against super glass canon people, making my perception of daredevil skewed.

My list for soloq viability would be something like this:

1. Scrapper, Druid
2. Herald, Dragonhunter
3. Reaper, Tempest
4. Chronomancer
5. Berserker
6. Daredevil

The main factor that decided about each elite specialization’s place on this list was how well they are stackable in a team of randoms and how easily they are countered.

Scrapper, herald and dragonhunter are the first tier. Strong and relatively easy to play.

I might really have to try out scrapper again sometime soon to get a better understanding of them. Maybe I had a lack of understanding of what they could offer as a solo player to the team.

The main reason I placed scrapper lower than most is because for the main roles of Damage, Tank, Support, I thought they were just a good hybrid which a perfect lone wolf would want. I believe in the fact if you can force a player to be killed or sustain your team for a longer duration, it has a higher favor for you. My tier list really focused on the fact of how crazy damage is right now and that getting kills can swing momentum quickly.

With a majority of people running damage, a support definitely ranked higher than other just “Okay” damage types, which I felt scrapper fell into. Maybe I’m definitely undervaluing the elite spec. I’ll check them out some more and see how I feel how big of an impact I make in solo queue.

And I don’t want to claim I’m the “best” at anything. This is just my experience of playing mostly solo queue screwing around with classes and playing with randoms since the release of HoT seeing what class most people are consistently shifting the game with.

Tier 0 (SS) – Absurdly strong. In need of many drastic nerfs beyond all contention.

• scrapper
• herald

Tier 1 (S) – Very overrewarding. Needs notable amount of nerfs.

• dragonhunter
• chronomancer

Tier 2 (A) – In a good place, at the absolute most might need a nerf or two if proven truly necessary.

• reaper
• druid

Tier 3 (B) – Underwhelming and limited. Unarguably needs varying degrees of buffing.

• daredevil
• tempest
• berserker

Im glad we can all at least agree that beserker needs to be redone…warriors were dwindling in their usefulness before hot dropped…between the cleansing ire nerf, the stab nerf, and the broken traitlines its hard to find a usable pvp build, even shoutbow is better played as other classes now

Ragnarox.9601:

lol DH god mode…haha…stopped reading after that.

15chars

1) Way overpowered, needs to be nerfed into the ground: Scrapper.
2) Too strong, needs to be toned down: DH, Rev, Chrono.
3) On par with DDele: all other elite specs.
4) The rest of pre HoT meta builds (ie: bunker guard, PU mesmer etc.)

All this Scrapper hate ^^ , so funny .

He ranked Scrapper, Reaper and Herald lower than Druid.

Not sure if trolling…

Yea, this kinda shows that you can’t be an expert in GW2 just because of your WoW/LoL experience, even if you were a glad. =P

honestly I feel there isn’t really a tier at the moment. there are so many effective builds right now.

I feel chrono, scrapper and herald/shiro are probably top dogs for brawling. everything else is in another tier when it comes to offensive power. that being said, there are quite a few builds that dish out solid damage while bringing huge team support.

there are two mistakes that I notice less experienced players making when judging efficacy. even with its high numbers, DH really doesn’t rank that high. it’s mid-tier at best. and well-played scrappers are probably tied with the chrono for best brawling/dueling capability. this is only when discussing offense.

there is definitely a category for best all-around builds that bring a decent amount of damage and a ton of team support. druid, reaper and ele are in that category. the other misconception is that reaper is actually good in 1v1, but the truth is the spec shines mostly in team fights.

Jasher.6580:

He ranked Scrapper, Reaper and Herald lower than Druid.

I feel he could be misinformed or trolling to rank scrapper that low. but druid is very strong for the damage, tankiness, mobility and support it brings in one package. a few of us rangers are figuring out the most effective druid builds, but the general community wont really understand the strength of these builds until druid becomes a necessary part of every meta comp in the near future.

Daredevil is fun, definitely, but running melee is dangerous nowadays, that’s why DD doesn’t rank that high IMO. You’ll end up spending more time dodging than fighting and then eventually get rekt either way.

God (or posibbly even higher) – chronomancer. Its OP beyond everything. alacrity and f5 are broken. Skills are balanced around cooldowns, alacrity destroys that balance completely. Every single skill, heal, utility, elite all 5 shatters had their CDs reduced by 33%. Imagine a patch that did that to every skill on one class, even the crappy builds would be overpowered with such a buff. The new skills (wells) are balanced without alacrity in mind, 90s is already way to low for gravity. As a result the mesmer can spam clones/illusion/damage/cc along with invul/evade spam, heal spam, condi cleanse spam, utility spam, stealth spam. Its so easy to maintain alacrity – shatters which are on super low CD with it, wells with super-low CDs, shield. They can spam alacrity out of combat so they reset all skills in between fights. Oh and chrono also shares some of the alacrity with teammates. On top of it all continuum – do whatever the f you want then reset the encounter for yourself. double the burst of what already was probably the best burst class, why would that be a bad idea i wonder

SS tier – scrapper. ridiculous amounts of sustain/heals, borderline immortal while still doing major dmg and CCing

Unranked – everything else. Those 2 are so much stronger then the rest that you cant even judge the other classes.

You cant even discuss balance before chrono (in particular) and scrapper get fixed.

mistsim.2748:

honestly I feel there isn’t really a tier at the moment. there are so many effective builds right now.

I feel chrono, scrapper and herald/shiro are probably top dogs for brawling. everything else is in another tier when it comes to offensive power. that being said, there are quite a few builds that dish out solid damage while bringing huge team support.

there are two mistakes that I notice less experienced players making when judging efficacy. even with its high numbers, DH really doesn’t rank that high. it’s mid-tier at best. and well-played scrappers are probably tied with the chrono for best brawling/dueling capability. this is only when discussing offense.

there is definitely a category for best all-around builds that bring a decent amount of damage and a ton of team support. druid, reaper and ele are in that category. the other misconception is that reaper is actually good in 1v1, but the truth is the spec shines mostly in team fights.

I feel he could be misinformed or trolling to rank scrapper that low. but druid is very strong for the damage, tankiness, mobility and support it brings in one package. a few of us rangers are figuring out the most effective druid builds, but the general community wont really understand the strength of these builds until druid becomes a necessary part of every meta comp in the near future.

Hm. Again maybe it is just my perception of the scrappers I’ve faced so far or the ones I’ve played with, and I want to stress that I felt that they were STRONG, but they weren’t the “kings” of the match. Does anyone remember shamans during burning crusade? Just because they have a large utility and diversity at their disposal do NOT make them the best class. Resto shamans were the GODS of rush down comps such as UA and Shadow priest + resto shaman in 3v3, Double warrior + shaman, double healer and warrior (not rush down but because of windfury it was viable) Shamans were almost staple in 5v5 because of bloodlust.

What I’m saying about scrapper from my first impression is that while they are great, I simply don’t think they win games as hard as the other classes.

It may very well be that I’m undervaluing scrappers, but the way I ranked these elite specs are about how much they can offer on the match as a whole over the course of the game if you are part of an unorganized group. So what this means is that your team is allowed to make more mistakes while coming out ahead. Does scrapper do this? Potentially with the gyros and medkits, and their consistent damage.

Again I don’t think being the best 1v1 class makes you the strongest in any case. It’s about your total impact you can consistently make for your team. I actually believe berserker can outshine most classes if they are grouped up with a support that will follow them around. But matches like conquest doesn’t really allow you to do this. I know arenanet’s position on conquest vs team death match gameplay style. I would think berserker would shine on a TDM with a coordinated team. The most important thing I’ve learned from doing WoW arenas versus high rated battlegrounds, it’s about what you can do to shift the game into your advantage through numbers and not consistency of engaging and disengaging in the small skrims on the roads and not near points.

I’ll play more with scrapper and daredevil see if my opinion changes of them. But it’s been three days and I think people are still learning what to do against other classes and figuring out what’s best to win the game. Many people are so focused on their 1v1s and small skrimishes that they aren’t focusing what they can win bring to win the game with.

Have you ever been in a league of legends game where top/mid lane will be 12-2-3, then 45 mintues later is 12-12-4? Then they yell about how everyone else did poorly and that they played amazing but everyone on the team let them down?

Maybe some of you are getting tired of other game references, but I do hope I’m offering a different perspective to the PvP community. I don’t believe to know everything about PvP and balance, but I like to win games. I don’t care about my personal score, how many kills I got and how much damage I dealt, or that “oh lol I let this guy chase me for the whole match.”

Focus on what you can do to win the game, and how do these classes accomplish the objectives at hand.

I think if you’re a class that is a roamer and NEED to skirmish. How can you reduce the amount of information that is being telegraphed to the rest of the team (Does the enemy team see you breaking off?), how fast can you take your opponent out, and how consistent can you do this?

For support, how much can you increase your teams damage output and win the fight? Can you get in and out of fights and help another area once you know you’ve claimed this point?

The tanks, how much damage and disruption can you cause? You’re a mosquito, keep sucking the life-force out of others until you annoy them so much that they go after you.

So I found a video to maybe showcase what I mean by how I believe effective daredevil gameplay should be. Admittedly, this player is much better than me on daredevil, since I was mostly screwing around with shortbow, staff, and other weapon options.

http://youtu.be/Tyw_eJwGKfk

I’ll probably try out this build since the unload p/p might seem like a fun thing to try. It is probably a small bias as to that I’m having a lot of fun on daredevil.

Except his opponents were generally bad :P.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Except his opponents were generally bad :P.

I posted in the thread that the video was showcased, and I’ll paste my reply here as well.

While I don’t 100% agree that the opponents were on the best skill side of things, I actually find them quite average. I think a lot of perceptions of what bad players may do are actually quite common. Sure better players are less likely to make certain mistakes, but that’s what sets different skill brackets of players.

You’ll see pros make beginner mistakes all the time, miscalculations or wrong twitch movements.

IE: In League of Legends people messing up flashing over walls.
Hearthstone missing lethal.

I really don’t think the argument of he’s playing bad players is much to downplay his video and build. Until there’s a visible MMR rating to see within the game to determine the average skill level of the players you are currently facing it’s really impossible to determine what a skill level of brackets can offer.

Hardly any of this list makes any sense to me.

B Tier- Scrapper

Scambug.3502:

3) On par with DDele: all other elite specs.

While I can’t speak for all Elite specs, saying that Berserker is on par with DD ele is ludicrous. Berserker is weaker than a normal warrior.

Zanyu.2017:

mistsim.2748:

honestly I feel there isn’t really a tier at the moment. there are so many effective builds right now.

I feel chrono, scrapper and herald/shiro are probably top dogs for brawling. everything else is in another tier when it comes to offensive power. that being said, there are quite a few builds that dish out solid damage while bringing huge team support.

there are two mistakes that I notice less experienced players making when judging efficacy. even with its high numbers, DH really doesn’t rank that high. it’s mid-tier at best. and well-played scrappers are probably tied with the chrono for best brawling/dueling capability. this is only when discussing offense.

there is definitely a category for best all-around builds that bring a decent amount of damage and a ton of team support. druid, reaper and ele are in that category. the other misconception is that reaper is actually good in 1v1, but the truth is the spec shines mostly in team fights.

I feel he could be misinformed or trolling to rank scrapper that low. but druid is very strong for the damage, tankiness, mobility and support it brings in one package. a few of us rangers are figuring out the most effective druid builds, but the general community wont really understand the strength of these builds until druid becomes a necessary part of every meta comp in the near future.

Hm. Again maybe it is just my perception of the scrappers I’ve faced so far or the ones I’ve played with, and I want to stress that I felt that they were STRONG, but they weren’t the “kings” of the match. Does anyone remember shamans during burning crusade? Just because they have a large utility and diversity at their disposal do NOT make them the best class. Resto shamans were the GODS of rush down comps such as UA and Shadow priest + resto shaman in 3v3, Double warrior + shaman, double healer and warrior (not rush down but because of windfury it was viable) Shamans were almost staple in 5v5 because of bloodlust.

What I’m saying about scrapper from my first impression is that while they are great, I simply don’t think they win games as hard as the other classes.

It may very well be that I’m undervaluing scrappers, but the way I ranked these elite specs are about how much they can offer on the match as a whole over the course of the game if you are part of an unorganized group. So what this means is that your team is allowed to make more mistakes while coming out ahead. Does scrapper do this? Potentially with the gyros and medkits, and their consistent damage.

Again I don’t think being the best 1v1 class makes you the strongest in any case. It’s about your total impact you can consistently make for your team. I actually believe berserker can outshine most classes if they are grouped up with a support that will follow them around. But matches like conquest doesn’t really allow you to do this. I know arenanet’s position on conquest vs team death match gameplay style. I would think berserker would shine on a TDM with a coordinated team. The most important thing I’ve learned from doing WoW arenas versus high rated battlegrounds, it’s about what you can do to shift the game into your advantage through numbers and not consistency of engaging and disengaging in the small skrims on the roads and not near points.

I’ll play more with scrapper and daredevil see if my opinion changes of them. But it’s been three days and I think people are still learning what to do against other classes and figuring out what’s best to win the game. Many people are so focused on their 1v1s and small skrimishes that they aren’t focusing what they can win bring to win the game with.

Have you ever been in a league of legends game where top/mid lane will be 12-2-3, then 45 mintues later is 12-12-4? Then they yell about how everyone else did poorly and that they played amazing but everyone on the team let them down?

Maybe some of you are getting tired of other game references, but I do hope I’m offering a different perspective to the PvP community. I don’t believe to know everything about PvP and balance, but I like to win games. I don’t care about my personal score, how many kills I got and how much damage I dealt, or that “oh lol I let this guy chase me for the whole match.”

Focus on what you can do to win the game, and how do these classes accomplish the objectives at hand.

I think if you’re a class that is a roamer and NEED to skirmish. How can you reduce the amount of information that is being telegraphed to the rest of the team (Does the enemy team see you breaking off?), how fast can you take your opponent out, and how consistent can you do this?

For support, how much can you increase your teams damage output and win the fight? Can you get in and out of fights and help another area once you know you’ve claimed this point?

The tanks, how much damage and disruption can you cause? You’re a mosquito, keep sucking the life-force out of others until you annoy them so much that they go after you.

First off, I haven’t played WoW, but I do not believe a strategies from a click and skill game would work in a real time action game.

Secondly, talking about mobas, I have played many of them to a competitive level. Dota, hon, heroes of the storm etc. The only thing that can be brought over from moba to gw2 are rotational abilities, map awareness and mechanical skills to a certain degree.

Anyway, usually what wins a game in mobas is usually a player that has snowballed or a player that can win team fights. Since players cannot snowball here in gw2, players that can win team fights for their team are usually the deciding factor in gw2. Especially in high mmr ranked matches.

So what are the roles that win team fights in gw2? For solo queue, it’s bruiser classes. Classes that are balanced in both offense and defense. They can put out a decent amount of damage while being able sustain themselves very well. They are also able to win 1v1s on a side node or even hold 1v2 for a significant period of time for their team to win team fights on some other node.

Burst classes don’t work, as they always get focused. Tank classes don’t work, as they get ignored. Therefore bruiser is king in solo queue. Which is also why scrapper is good.

OP: Dragon hunter needs nurf

Good: almost everything seems pretty use full depending on situation

Meh: Berserker needs buff

First off, I haven’t played WoW, but I do not believe a strategies from a click and skill game would work in a real time action game.

Secondly, talking about mobas, I have played many of them to a competitive level. Dota, hon, heroes of the storm etc. The only thing that can be brought over from moba to gw2 are rotational abilities, map awareness and mechanical skills to a certain degree.

Anyway, usually what wins a game in mobas is usually a player that has snowballed or a player that can win team fights. Since players cannot snowball here in gw2, players that can win team fights for their team are usually the deciding factor in gw2. Especially in high mmr ranked matches.

So what are the roles that win team fights in gw2? For solo queue, it’s bruiser classes. Classes that are balanced in both offense and defense. They can put out a decent amount of damage while being able sustain themselves very well. They are also able to win 1v1s on a side node or even hold 1v2 for a significant period of time for their team to win team fights on some other node.

Burst classes don’t work, as they always get focused. Tank classes don’t work, as they get ignored. Therefore bruiser is king in solo queue. Which is also why scrapper is good.

I don’t understand your statement of WoW. Click and skill game? I feel as if this was meant towards League of Legends. WoW is a MMO just like GW2, while the combat is a bit different not to the point where any WoW player would not recognize how to play the game. They are the same genre. If you play a shooting game, some little things are different but the fundamentals are the same.

Since you brought it up, what was your competitive level of your moba career? I’m just curious.

Because there is a huge skill gap between platinum to challenger for League of Legends.

People keep bringing up “high mmr” okay from what I understand mmr is more or less determined by your win rate. But as far as I know there are no exact calculations nor is there an online calculator predicting your mmr like LoLNexus.

So really anyone who has higher than a 50% win rate can claim they have a “high mmr” Or sitting in long queues cause they have a high mmr. There is the argument that I played against X player, and they are a professional. Just because you faced a pro does not mean you have a high mmr either. Again unless there is something to show me how the mmr and queue system works in great detail then I’m going to have to look at the high mmr argument as moot. There have been queue systems where high ranked players will be matches up with severe gap differences of skill level just because of what is available. This again was part of the first 4 arena seasons of WoW, where I would be within the top 50 teams, and queue into a rank 400 team. This has happened to many occasions.

I do thank you for giving me an explanation of your breakdown of class roles and why scrapper would be considered the strongest for solo queue. I want to counter this argument in the fact of how season 3 of League of Legends played out during solo queue. League definitely does go through its meta shifts, and one particular time there was a time the league of assassins, where assassin characters were the gods of solo queue. Why? They had very strong roaming and burst potential. The main example of Kassadin, his level 6 allowed him to go to other lanes, go in deal burst, get a kill or make them burn summoners.

As far as the bruiser meta goes, I can agree that scrapper would potentially be king. I mentioned it in my first post how they are in the middle allowing them to take on a heavier damage oriented support with their utilities. I just think the way the game is being played at the moment, it’s about the maximizing on people’s lack of information of how to deter from bursts. That or possibly the oversight of certain damage numbers from the developers. So for me, the way sPvP is being played is around who can deal the damage in short amount of time and still being alive. Support was lower on the list, but I ranked support as to how the support can bring more damage for the overall team.

I played a bit more daredevil tonight, it is possible that my first few times of playing as to now is slightly more different. While I rank the mobility as one of the highest of the elite specs, I think believe that their durability isn’t in line of what the reverent offers. I started to balance this by running the stealth heal, which has allowed me to escape quite a few situations. But I guess a lot of people don’t like the idea of running away without actually getting a kill.

I still have a lot to try out and I’m having a lot of fun. With Anet pushing for a competitive scene in GW2, I’m confident that balance will slowly make its way here.

Zanyu.2017:

First off, I haven’t played WoW, but I do not believe a strategies from a click and skill game would work in a real time action game.

Secondly, talking about mobas, I have played many of them to a competitive level. Dota, hon, heroes of the storm etc. The only thing that can be brought over from moba to gw2 are rotational abilities, map awareness and mechanical skills to a certain degree.

Anyway, usually what wins a game in mobas is usually a player that has snowballed or a player that can win team fights. Since players cannot snowball here in gw2, players that can win team fights for their team are usually the deciding factor in gw2. Especially in high mmr ranked matches.

So what are the roles that win team fights in gw2? For solo queue, it’s bruiser classes. Classes that are balanced in both offense and defense. They can put out a decent amount of damage while being able sustain themselves very well. They are also able to win 1v1s on a side node or even hold 1v2 for a significant period of time for their team to win team fights on some other node.

Burst classes don’t work, as they always get focused. Tank classes don’t work, as they get ignored. Therefore bruiser is king in solo queue. Which is also why scrapper is good.

I don’t understand your statement of WoW. Click and skill game? I feel as if this was meant towards League of Legends. WoW is a MMO just like GW2, while the combat is a bit different not to the point where any WoW player would not recognize how to play the game. They are the same genre. If you play a shooting game, some little things are different but the fundamentals are the same.

Since you brought it up, what was your competitive level of your moba career? I’m just curious.

Because there is a huge skill gap between platinum to challenger for League of Legends.

People keep bringing up “high mmr” okay from what I understand mmr is more or less determined by your win rate. But as far as I know there are no exact calculations nor is there an online calculator predicting your mmr like LoLNexus.

So really anyone who has higher than a 50% win rate can claim they have a “high mmr” Or sitting in long queues cause they have a high mmr. There is the argument that I played against X player, and they are a professional. Just because you faced a pro does not mean you have a high mmr either. Again unless there is something to show me how the mmr and queue system works in great detail then I’m going to have to look at the high mmr argument as moot. There have been queue systems where high ranked players will be matches up with severe gap differences of skill level just because of what is available. This again was part of the first 4 arena seasons of WoW, where I would be within the top 50 teams, and queue into a rank 400 team. This has happened to many occasions.

I do thank you for giving me an explanation of your breakdown of class roles and why scrapper would be considered the strongest for solo queue. I want to counter this argument in the fact of how season 3 of League of Legends played out during solo queue. League definitely does go through its meta shifts, and one particular time there was a time the league of assassins, where assassin characters were the gods of solo queue. Why? They had very strong roaming and burst potential. The main example of Kassadin, his level 6 allowed him to go to other lanes, go in deal burst, get a kill or make them burn summoners.

As far as the bruiser meta goes, I can agree that scrapper would potentially be king. I mentioned it in my first post how they are in the middle allowing them to take on a heavier damage oriented support with their utilities. I just think the way the game is being played at the moment, it’s about the maximizing on people’s lack of information of how to deter from bursts. That or possibly the oversight of certain damage numbers from the developers. So for me, the way sPvP is being played is around who can deal the damage in short amount of time and still being alive. Support was lower on the list, but I ranked support as to how the support can bring more damage for the overall team.

I played a bit more daredevil tonight, it is possible that my first few times of playing as to now is slightly more different. While I rank the mobility as one of the highest of the elite specs, I think believe that their durability isn’t in line of what the reverent offers. I started to balance this by running the stealth heal, which has allowed me to escape quite a few situations. But I guess a lot of people don’t like the idea of running away without actually getting a kill.

I still have a lot to try out and I’m having a lot of fun. With Anet pushing for a competitive scene in GW2, I’m confident that balance will slowly make its way here.

Combat in wow consists of clicking on an enemy and casting a spell that cannot be dodged literally, which is also why I call it click and skill.

Before I quit moba roughly a year and a half back, I’ve hit 5.3k mmr in Dota, and 1900 mmr in hon, diamond in league. Only recently I’ve played hots to help my friend as a temporary substitute for his competitive team and reached rank 1.

As for mmr indication, it’s really quite easy to tell if you have a high mmr. First off are the queue times, secondly you’ll face against many r80s. Thirdly you’ll likely to be a r80 yourself. Lastly you’ll have a positive win rate (50+). I personally have 61%.

And yes, meta shifts, but in gw2 this has been an unchanging recipe. In a game where point holding is key, you must be able to hold a point. Also, you must be able to kill off others contesting your point. Therefore bruiser classes will likely continue being king.
Unless of course your opponents choose to ignore you when you play a burst role and focus you when you play a tank role. Then your opponents are inadequate.

Combat in wow consists of clicking on an enemy and casting a spell that cannot be dodged literally, which is also why I call it click and skill.

Before I quit moba roughly a year and a half back, I’ve hit 5.3k mmr in Dota, and 1900 mmr in hon, diamond in league. Only recently I’ve played hots to help my friend as a temporary substitute for his competitive team and reached rank 1.

As for mmr indication, it’s really quite easy to tell if you have a high mmr. First off are the queue times, secondly you’ll face against many r80s. Thirdly you’ll likely to be a r80 yourself. Lastly you’ll have a positive win rate (50+). I personally have 61%.

And yes, meta shifts, but in gw2 this has been an unchanging recipe. In a game where point holding is key, you must be able to hold a point. Also, you must be able to kill off others contesting your point. Therefore bruiser classes will likely continue being king.
Unless of course your opponents choose to ignore you when you play a burst role and focus you when you play a tank role. Then your opponents are inadequate.

Aside from the combat system, I really don’t think it’s fair to blow off that transition of playing WoW to GW2 or vice versa.

Honestly I believe that WoW is a lot more similar to GW2 than any MoBA and has more skills that can be transferred than most other games counting on their background.

And again, you’re really going off speculation of what leads to evidence of one thinks that they have a high mmr. I think we can all agree rank 80 does not equal a better player. It just means you played over say 700 matches or so.

What are considered long queue times? I go from 2-8 minutes queues all the time constantly fluctuating. I just consider the fact that there’s a lot of server instability.

The only thing I can really attribute to the fact of a “high mmr” is that you have a high win ratio. Assuming you completely play Solo and rarely group up with friends. A coordinated team in theory should always have a high win ratio versus 5 random solo queues.

But without any actual visible mmr, we’re just going on conjecture.

Most people think they are “good” at video games, and think everyone else is what’s holding them back.
You can read about Illusory superiority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

I don’t want to claim anything of my skill level in this game because I have no real evidence to support it. All I can do is talk about my visible achievements in other games, which you have also done. So I’m not trying to dismiss your opinion or anything.

Again this is all my own formulated opinion for the state of elite specializations when put up against each other in solo queue. The more and more I play daredevil, I can see where a lot of complaints are coming from.

I would like to offer a build that I’ve been currently been playing with:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaWlsMhynY3Tw0Jw+ELIFlXMcD9AXDEALwc7X/9PA-TJBFABiXGggHAgO7PAwJAAA

It’s a staff, p/p build, which heavily relies on the fact of restealthing.
You constantly go in and out of fights, and with every restealth your staff has a 2 second knockdown attached. I can switch to p/p to use unload for quick ranged damage. And I’m kind of a sucker for the idea of dual wielding pistols right now.

This build isn’t a 1v1 champion god. This is a go in and get out build. I don’t try to solo bunkers, I just roam look for squishies get them to use as many cooldowns as possible, and rengage. If I don’t win the fight, I move on to somewhere else. I know a lot of people really want to go rambo mode and get kills.

Personally I’m just loving this build and having a blast with it. It follows a heavy resemblance to a subtlety rogue from WoW. Since you and some others who may not have played WoW, the spec was the lowest in damage but was revolved around the fact it was about longer CC and consistently stealthing.

I will admit I have not gone through the long seasons that GW2 has offered since I was mostly playing other games. But I would like to play this game more and well potentially just be more than average. Who knows where I’ll plateau.

I do think you bring a valid point as to what the past meta has been in, the higher sustain and living long. It’s up to both players and the devs to introduce ways to make the game “fresh.” Let it be introducing nerfs, buffs, reworks, change is what keeps a game exciting to keep up with.

From my perspective, right now because of the massive amount of people just trying out things as well as the fact certain combination of things damage seems to be more on the rise than tanking. So I personally ranked damage and mobility to be higher than the idea of bruiser.

When you’ve reached r80, it doesnt necessary correlate to a high skill level. However, it does mean that you have more playing experience than someone who isn’t, hence more likely to know pvp better and therefore perform better.

Queue times (from what I’ve gathered) between 5-7 minutes are supposedly a good indication. Your games are also usually very polarised. There might be no actual mmr but these are the signs that have been recurrent among most skilled players so it’s safe to say that it’s accurate to a fairly high degree.

Anyway, I know about illusionary superiority. Its the same across every genre of video games. Low mmr people claiming ‘mmr doesn’t matter’ and that high mmr players are playing incorrectly. Also known as the dunning kruger effect.

Anyway, the meta can change as much as it likes but as long as the game mode remains as conquest, the performing roles will not change fundementally. Burst classes may be much better than bruiser in stronghold, for example.

What build are these scrappers using to be so OP?

hackks.3687:

What build are these scrappers using to be so OP?

all you need is HGH and opponents who can barely play

Vegito.3048:

I don’t agree with most of these, but I can respect your opinion. The one i do agree on the ranking of is berserker.

I’d say that tiers are something like this for solo que.
Tier 1: Scrapper
Tier 2: Herald, dragonhunter, chrono
Tier 3: daredevil, reaper, druid
Tier 4: berserker

Reaper jumps up substantially with proper group support. The other specs do so as well in the right comp. Then there are also core specs i won’t get into.

Anyways that’s just my opinion off of a bit of pvp. Oh yeah and tempest falls somewhere in there. Probably tier 2.5.

You sir, are correct, the OP is kittened.

Zanyu.2017:

My background: While I don’t have an extensive knowledge of GW2 PvP I do have a high competitive background from other games.
WoW: Multi-time gladiator. 2800+ in 3v3. 2600+ in 5v5. 2500+ 2v2
2900+ RBG leader.
League of legends: Gold. (I guess it’s not too impressive. I like to watch the game more than I play. I’m terrible at MoBAs)
Diablo 3: Top 100 in season 1 for monk. (If this even counts as being competitive)

Zanyu.2017:

Aside from the combat system, I really don’t think it’s fair to blow off that transition of playing WoW to GW2 or vice versa.

Your competitive background will get you up to speed a whole lot quicker in GW2 PvP compared to other new players.

You are new to GW2, at least, new enough to post a politically incorrect class tier list for reasons that’s already been said. It’s why you’re receiving heat from certain players, you’re inexperienced in the GW2 PvP Meta and it shows.

Mechanics and performances in the GW2 PvP Meta is vastly different than WoW or Moba games. As a comparison, GW2 is like a rising tide, you never know how high a wave is going to be. The coming ESL tournament in 4 days is going to be a whole lot different than the last tournament. The meta can and will change drastically. Builds could reemerge out of no where on any class while others could get pushed out of meta. It’s inevitable.

For the record, DH does not cover all areas of PvP. Cele D/D Ele is 2x more mobile, tanks better on point and still pressures well in team fights amongst the power creep classes. DH right now are the Burn Guardians of post patch. Once people stop staying together in a group, learns DH trap utilities and actually pressures the DH then he’s suddenly not a big threat.

Revs can be an incredible strong bruiser class. Basically an Ele on steroids except he has reduced peel mobility. Then you have the Scrapper that will obliterate any DH build 1v1. DH is currently mid tier. A 5th at best and I definitely wouldn’t stack one on a team.

scrapper is definitely top tier. you (op) don’t seem to understand what actually wins games and that is holding points. being able to hold out against 2 or even 3 opponents for quite some while while still being able to score kills in 1v1 (and even 1v2) and team fights is a huge deal in a point capture game mode.
with proper rotations the jack of all trades actually is king. defending a point, healing and supporting teammates in larger fights (blinds, condi removal, heal, might), having strong cc at your disposal, being able to cover a whole point with aoe and being able to deal substantial amounts of both condi and direct damage all at once is so much stronger than just damage.
as scrapper i have rarely had problems against chronos, dhs or whatever. daredevils i laugh at. drop dat blind field and spam aoe at your feet and all they can do is uselessly hover around the point. only thing that regularly gets me are long cc chains from 2+ people and instant condi bursts with more conditions than i can clear (requires to blow me my cooldowns first tho) like condi mesmer.

hackks.3687:

What build are these scrappers using to be so OP?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Celestial_Hammer

HGH keeps it loaded with damage and scrapper traits keep it very tanky.

For top builds right now I’d say they’re chrono, scrapper and maybe bunker druid.

I think scrapper is an all round very strong being tanky and might stacks allow it to do good damage too. It’s a ton of fun as well. I haven’t got the hang of it but trying to get there

Chrono is very powerful as it’s very easy and forgiving to play with the cooldown reductions giving high uptime on invulnerability and strong burst damage. The current game modes aren’t too much in the chronos favour though which keeps it in check competitively.

Druid feels very durable but I haven’t played it since the recent changes so I guess I’ll have to try it out to learn it’s weaknesses.

While balance still has ups and downs as always I have to say a lot of the elite specialisations are a lot of fun to play! Favourite so far are chronomancer and reaper.

It’s pretty clear here that this thread is full of different opinions in which class is too strong right now. This indicates a skill level difference among all the imbalance complaints. It’d be better if we could get more people with credibility in sPvP to respond such as people who actually play in ESL tournaments. Hopefully the PvP forum responses get better when players can prove that they have credibility by having Ranked MMR to back it up..