Guild Wars 2

Here’s what I’ve gathered so far from testing the builds myself and also talking with high level players:

Scourge: Overpowered, ridiculous damage with low survivability, but the damage is truly just ridiculously broken to the point where you can 1v5 if left alone
Weaver: Garbage
Holosmith: great damage but lacks mobility and extremely low survivability makes it fall behind herald rev and base warrior who it competes with
Deadeye: Clunky
Soulbeast: Garbage
Spellbreaker: Hit or Miss, some players hate it others think it’s good, I personally think using daggers feels awful and super slow
Renegade: Complete and utter garbage, worthless at everything
Firebrand: Not that good so far but I don’t think a meta has been established yet so something may come up
Mirage: Garbage

TLDR: Scourge is OP, Spellbreaker and deadeye redeemable, rest garbage

1v5? If left alone? wtf does that even mean lol. Scourge is definitely strong but it will have a ton of trouble even in a 1v2, let’s not be ridiculous now.

Sabre.8627:

1v5? If left alone? wtf does that even mean lol. Scourge is definitely strong but it will have a ton of trouble even in a 1v2, let’s not be ridiculous now.

I got a lot of 1v2 kills off this weekend. They might have been bad players but on reaper it’d be a challenge to do what I did.

Ramoth.9064:

Sabre.8627:

1v5? If left alone? wtf does that even mean lol. Scourge is definitely strong but it will have a ton of trouble even in a 1v2, let’s not be ridiculous now.

I got a lot of 1v2 kills off this weekend. They might have been bad players but on reaper it’d be a challenge to do what I did.

I disagree, reaper has access to stability which is almost essential for any 1v2 against half decent players. Scourge does not have any except FitG which is 3sec of stab on 15s cd. Nightfall is also amazing for 1v2s. I win plenty of 1v2 on power reaper against bad players too but I don’t think that’s any metric for success, just trying to point out how ridiculous it is to say they can 1v5.

So people already started crying about necro nerfs? how original.

I like Soulbeast…a little clunky, but could just be learning curve…so many options with pets that it really makes the profession diverse without respeccing. The fact that ranger’s now have an ability to make attacks unblockable is bigger than most people realize. That’s huge damage from long range possible once people get used to the proper rotation. It can totally change the 1v1 matchup against many professions. Survivability may be an issue with Soulbeast, especially if you don’t take the full condi clear ability pet.

The direction they took with Scourge is interesting. They gave it zero defense to cc, stability or gap closer which you would think is typically needed for an on-point fighting class. I honestly thought it was going to be a disaster when they took away Death/Reaper Shroud too. Instead, they gave it extreme damage (ala Burn Guard/Condi Thief) as their quasi “defense”.

Since original release, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a player afraid to engage a Necro 1v1 on a point even though that’s what Reaper teased. Once people knew how to kite the range of reaper and dodge/block the RS3, it became a poor point holder and limited mobility profession that needed to be babysat. Scourge looks like it changed that, and I saw for the first time people avoid a necro 1v1 with shades on point.

I’m not sure if going the condi thief/burn guardian damage route was the best option for necro, but it does finally give the profession a role other than strictly corrupt bot. In fact, if people don’t take one trait (demonic lore), you have all the weaknesses I mentioned above without the damage as a defense. Thus, it’s literally 1 trait that makes this elite specialization viable or a total disaster. (I don’t think the healing versions of Scourge will be able to keep up with the huge burst and power creep of other specialties).

PoF is an all-out arms race! You could kinda see that at the end of HoT when 1 shot mesmers were brought back viable and condi thieves/burn guardians weren’t nerfed. It will definitely be a learning curve and take some time to see if the new direction works.