Guild Wars 2

What are the top three most popular builds for the classes that you run? Do you run them? and if so, did you tweak some of the traits or skills a little bit to your liking?

If you want to go the extra mile, you could list (in your opinion) the most popular builds for all 9 classes.

Mainly the ones on metabattle, quite difficult to popularise a build without it being listed there.

The only true popular build I’ve been running that’s close to what most run is Auramancer Tempest. The rest are my own concoctions.

I would say that compared to most Eles I see, I think the main difference is I run Warhorn rather than Focus.
This gives me 2 CCs for anti-rezzing or interrupting stomps. As well as a Blast heal in water with an added reflect aura in Earth.
Seems to work for me in most cases coupled with Sigil of Renewal and Water.
Coupled with the channel heal with runes of radiance.

I play Reaper with Curses and Spite instead of Soul Reaping. Full shouts + Spectral armor + merc ammy. Weakening Shroud + Spiteful spirit are nice if you know how to flash shroud (Going to die a few times learning when its safe to do so). Decimate Defenses + Curses gets your crit rate high, Shout heal+Spectral Armor are more than enough to get LF. I think its the best necro build atm for soloq, absolute beast at team fights. Twice as good as the usual for team fights at the cost of not having plague signet, which you shouldn’t need if you manage your many transfers decently.

Also a thief variant that sacrifices SB’s mobility for a Staff, it has some interesting tricks.

Also a thief variant of the typical deadly art builds that takes Trapper’s Respite, Deadly Trapper and Dragonhunter Runes, with Shadow Trap on your utility skills. Traps give like 20 might? Activating shadow trap gives another 15… Withraw (your heal) drops an immob trap, can be chained with steal or another gap closer to land it right on top of an enemy. Shadow trap stealthes, gives fury and gap closes you across 10.000 range, its a crazy good skill on the maps that won’t glitch it. Useless when it doesn’t work so learn the maps. Bonus points gets you called a hacker by noobs. Start casting it and gap close to leave an enemy ready for the stealth+gapclose if you are 1v1ing and want to use the trap. I like start casting shadow strap, steal to an enemy, Withraw and activate the shadow trap as the withraw is ending. Leaves you stealthed right next to an immob enemy with fury and 25 might.

I have many builds, but they are catered to my playstyle and I tend to play what will counter the enemy most.

Arcane Ele I use against teams that lack condi removal, same with this Burn Guard build or any of these Necro builds – dummfire/chilling blind spam/terrormancer or boon corruption build if they are heavy on boon applications.
If the enemy team has lots of condition users I tend to run with this Druid Support build or the support guard build if the enemy team has lots of projectiles with 1 necro or less. (any more necros and you put your team at disadvantage.)

Not sure what is meta but those builds are my favourite to play for most common situations I face.

I play a warrior, so gunflame is pretty much my only choice if I want to be even non-competitive.

All of our builds are kitten in sPvP, so I run what occasionally gets me kills.