Guild Wars 2

Quit before HOT.

Do people still play base class builds or are the specialization trait lines mandatory power creep?

The latter.

some of the elite specs are definitely more powerful (cough chronomancer cough) so if you play ranked you’ll have a hard time. In unranked though, the difference is negligible.

Take it with a grain of salt, but if you look at metabattle, a lot of the “great” builds don’t use elite specs.

I don’t have HoT and still do alright in ranked, half way through Saphire solo-qing doing a max of 5-10 games per day, positioning, rotation, just be good as those things and you can be a great addition to any team.

I’ve taken some preHoT builds through ranked, some classes have it easier than others, and a lot of it is just knowing which abilities to dodge, which classes not to melee, which classes not to waste your time trying to fight:D

Yes, you need the elite specs. That’s the reason why they exist.

Yes, you can also play preHoT and do fine, but not at the pro level.

I still play vanilla. I stick to unranked because ranked has nothing to offer me but extra grief (vanilla thief).

HoT has little that I want, especially for 60 bucks or whatever. And paying Anet for this unbalanced, toxic mess is the wrong message to send them. I’ll give them more money if/when they balance everything. Which may be never.

I love playing my burn guard these days, it’s fairly good against any meta spec that is not a diamond skin as people don’t run that much condi cleanse these days with all the CC thrown around

But it is true that when there are two eles or even one sometimes I swap for revenant because being helpless is no fun

All meta builds you will ever find in tournament strictly require the expansion.

I still run old school staff ele earth water arcane and do rather well with it.

I also still run old school mace-sheild/ greatsword warrior power defense discipline.

I also still run 1/2 kits and 1/2 drink things on the engy but thats cause i like to use range.