Guild Wars 2

DISCLAIMER (June 29, 2015)
I thought it would be a good idea to create a post notifying those just recently coming back into the PvP scene (or those who are interested) about the current direction conquest meta to aid those fitting on old boots. Of course, everything is just my opinion and in no way nearly represents that of the glorious top tier, but I’ll try to do my best based on participation on ESL and watching some of the VoDs. Another thing to take into account is that I do play thief, so there might be some bias.

GENERAL
Burst. Lots of it. The recent patch really did introduce a massive amount of powercreep, to the point where one shots and 30 stacks of bleed in a few seconds are achievable. Between condi and power, power seems to be more popular, and this is understandable with the widespread condiclear support on some classes. Most comps revolve around 2 bunkers and 3 damage dealers.

WARRIOR
Wampage with greatsword/hammer full on yolo zerker. Really strong build with tons of cleave and DPS that hits bunkers really hard. Offensive roamer, similar to thief.

THIEF
D/p crit strikes or SA maruader. Both specs are viable imo and depend on the other tean’s composition and thief player. Generally, SA is a bit more defensive and should be used against a high damage enemy team/enemy thief. Offensive roamer with an emphasis on decaps…very akin to classical beta thief (high risk/high reward with crit strikes) which is really nice. A step in the right direction.

ENGINEER
Honestly, I don’t think engi is in too great of a spot. A lot of the traits that an engi wants are in different trait lines, resulting in engis only have to a pick a few out of the ones that are considered essential. There isn’t a clear build yet for engi.

NECROMANCER
In a better spot than engineer, but still not in such great shape. Celestial might-stacking signet necromancer is alright, but I don’t think is extremely optimal. Necromancer however got a lot of new toys that have still yet to be I think experimented to their full potential, so we’ll have to see.

GUARDIAN
Bunker guard seems to be the new shoutbow, fulfilling the role of primary bunker/support. Guardian trait lines have many potent traits in the same lines, allowing guardian builds to become extremely synergistic. DPS guard has seen better days, as they only got a tiny slice of the power creep pie.

MESMER
You might as well rename this class “omnipotent god”. Out of all the classes, this one received the most love, with many new traits that escalate a mesmer’s damage and specifically its utility 10 times fold. They are now a force to be reckoned with, and are quite difficult to 1v1. Still gets farmed by thieves in teamfights, but not in 1v1s as much anymore.

ELEMENTALIST
Celestial D/f seems to be extremely popular with blinding ashes. A good homepoint defender and 1v1 hero, the elementalist still retains a somewhat awkward position as teams adjust to the new meta. Fresh air ele is more or less the same.

RANGER
Did not see too much of this, but skrimishing condi ranger with that bird taunt skill can potentially be a strong homepoint defender, but we will have to see. Power ranger does more damage than before so more pew pew.

Let me know what you think/let’s discuss!

i would say

Warr fails behind even more after the patch

ranger is a little bit better but not the top out there

Necro is so strong for tank … in normal queue game it may even be the best tank out there

engi might fail behind as well when they don’t have the bug.

the rests are pretty much stronger than before.

Burn Guard is hilarious. Don’t fight them if you have only 1 condi clear on a medium to high cooldown.

I mostly agree with OP on all points besides Guardian and Necro where I strongly disagree:

Guardian burn burst spec is hilariously overpowered and even some of their power builds kill you in 1-2 seconds. Haven’t seen a single bunker guard since the patch because why should they? Burst guard still has quite some defense and nukes enemies away.

Necros have quite an insane condition spec right now, signets were buffed a lot, and they have quite a few hugely bursting power builds – 3 power wells on a point and everyone on there instantly dies usually. Also bunker/support could be viable for them now with all the leeching health they provide to allies, and them being able to heal in deathshroud gave a LOT of defense to all of their zerker specs too making them quite a bit more surivable.

Engineer is hard to judge because anything they could do is completely overshadowed by the grenade bug.

On a sidenote, as basically always, zerker warrior has way too much defense and sustain with healing signet for a zerker spec – and they still have stuff like endure pain and zerker stance.

im very very surprised to see engies so…average. everything they have now is completely overshadowed by others’ power creep. let them keep the barrage bug imo.

my other surprise was how weak condi rangers are. u cant really go rabid or settler due to the extremely low health pool. both condis and zerker spikes end you in seconds. bunking with regen is completely useless as well. non-zerker remorseless power rangers are very strong imo. a vast majority of power rangers are not running effective builds, which is why they’ve been complaining a lot. Beastly Warden will make rangers competitive, unless ANet guts it.

seeing some effective guard, staff ele and necro bunkers/bruisers.

burn guards are a gimmick imo. haven’t been too impressed, but sadly they tend to wipe entire teams of baddies if they don’t slot condi cleanses.

overall, those interrupt mesmers have been my favourite this patch. I don’t play them, I don’t really die to them. but they require quite a bit of skill and are very effective.

thieves are solid. good thieves have already adapted and are highly effective. nothing too OP about em.

I love fighting rampage zerker warriors because making mistakes is very punishing and killing them is very satisfying. not OP imo.

the only outlier in my opinion is the cele ele. the new burns make them insanely strong and they were nothing but buffed this patch. that was dumb.

I agree mostly but disagree with two classes, engi and ele. Engi is in a great place. That is true even after they fix nades. It is still OP against physical damage team. It has just seen more counters recently with the addition of more condi specs.

Ele. This class is godmode. It is incredibly OP right now and there is a reason that a lot of top teams are taking two of them right now. Ele is by far the stronges class overall right now followed closely by mesmer.

I would agree with most of these, but also have to say there are a lot more builds with the potential to be meta. D/D ele still has its place over D/F in some situations, MM necro is broken, cele might stacking engi is ridiculously strong atm, some gaurds’ burns specs are also ridiculous right now, and i would also say staff ele now has a potential spot in the meta if things continue as they are.
Im sure there are a few other specs iv forgotten but these are the ones i can list right now that aeroxe didn’t mention

engineer will still be able to use barrage twice with no cooldown when the bug is fixed. so while 100nades will get more complicated to perform it will still be a thing. engineer nades instagib is here to stay.

I can tell you necro definitely is still with ranger in the bottom of PvP. They have an okay signet build but core problems with class design and weapon skills keep holding it back.

Most survivable burst classes + double eles looks like where things are heading atm. Wasn’t too impressed with bunker guard. I think engis will still have a spot as well just for the fact they have the best heal (imo) in the game and are so versatile. I think it’s just trying to find the most effective thing for them atm that’s the problem because they have so much.

Again though we dunno how much anet will tone down things like burning or just damage in general so we’ll have to wait and see.

If I had to rate classes overall just for fun I’d say Mesmer > Ele > Teef > Engi/Guard > War > Necro/Ranger atm.

Right now the game is completely wrong and i believe its gonna take sometime possibly even after the release of hot for professions like mesmer and ele to be nerfed and engi with ranger to be buffed (and i dont believe that grenade bug is even an option) otherwise we ain’t gonna be seeing a lot of profession diversity in pvp and some professions which already are not wanted for dungeon runs or pve generaly will be abadonded as they will be of no use.

I also believe necros are pretty overpowered with all that condi transfer and the billions of health they have with shroud.

mistsim.2748:

im very very surprised to see engies so…average. everything they have now is completely overshadowed by others’ power creep. let them keep the barrage bug imo.

Yea, I’m surprised as well. I think that so many of the good changes they received were just spread out into too many specializations. That being said, it’s also possible that there’s just a learning curve to all the changes they received and that engis may yet stabilize into a strong meta build. We’re just now hitting the week mark with the patch, so the meta is far from fully settled yet…