Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a bit curious lately as to what opinions are on the various elite specs on the PvP front are. While I played a lot of PvP this past beta weekend (all on Reaper), I know my experience was rather limiting. I never encountered 5 of the 7 elite specs, so I really can’t give feedback on fighting with/against them.

All of my PvP was unranked Conquest. I’d be interested in hearing how the different specs also fared in Stronghold.

Here is my list of opinions.

Reaper
As I mentioned, I played this a lot It felt really good to play, especially in teamfights where general confusion let me rip into people with the powerful hits Reaper brings.

However, I don’t see it as being so durable as others seem to. This is one of the two specs I did see others playing in PvP this weekend and frankly, I wasn’t impressed by my opponents. I had one point where the opposing team had two Reapers and I took them both on solo for a win. Sure, they were most likely unskilled in comparison, but I never went below 60% health in that fight. I’m not sure how they weren’t able to do a lot more to me, given Necros aren’t known for their avoidance abilities.

Chronomancer
The other spec I saw, though this was rare. I had one opponent, who wasn’t very good, and one ally, who had brought greatly appreciated support. All in all, not enough for me to form a decent opinion. I can see Chronomancers being a strong option for PvP.

Dragonhunter, Tempest, Daredevil, Herald, Berserker
Didn’t encounter. Can’t comment.

Surprisingly, the one Revenant I encountered wasn’t a Herald (or at least wasn’t using the F2/Shield/Glint). The Revenant was a fun fight, though. Very back-and-forth.

Ive played tempest whole weekend in pvp, and I loved it. Brings good aoe support and damage, while being able to burst out high target damage

I did feel like reaper was the most common elite specialization. It’s also one of the more noticeable ones due to the scythe animations.

I saw chronomancer pretty often two, one double moed me and failed to kill me, while the other laid down some painful CC with the gravity well and shield skill.

I saw herald/revenant less frequently than those two. I played it and glint made the class click for me, to the point where I’m considering getting into serious pvp as a revenant when the expansion comes out. I mostly played condi-support herald builds that were really strong, but I’m looking forward to trying a bruiser build with Jalis next time, especially if it gets buffed, which it sort of needs compared to the others. I do think some of the damage on zerker builds is over the top, but crit substitution builds are nice too, with more sustain.

I tried berserker until I got bored, so threeish games, all fails at making some weird condi build. I even tried it as a shout build, and that didn’t really do anything for me. I saw only a few berserkers.

I played tempest once, but I honestly hate playing ele in general these days so I just stopped. Arcane is still too mandatory even with a spec that tries to break the mold of arcane playstyles. I also only saw one tempest player, who made it work reasonably well with the warhorn skills, but didn’t overload from what I remember.

I have a horrid memory of fighting two daredevils named Autism One and Autism two. Not only were their names disrespectful, but fighting both of the at once was irritating since they kept evading and CCing and SR rezzes eachother when they went down.

I met one dragon hunter who laid all his traps on a point, but it didn’t really hurt me as much as ranger traps did.

I can see reaper, chronomancer, and herald being meta for their classes pvp builds. The others have a chance, but compete with better base class builds, or just don’t ring enough donuts to the table.

Really enjoyed reaper obviously, hoping they can take some of the useful combos and add something similar to base necro. A few blast/whirl finishers would go a long way to fixing some of the weak necro weapons. This also applies to quite a few other classes. Fighting against them just makes me wish the class had 10k-15k less Life force plus health, and better invuln and sustain traitlines. Most of the time it’s like hitting a wall of HP, and while they do die pretty easily it never feels rewarding on either end.

Revenant was awesome. I don’t actually think heralds was that op, sword 3 needs a change, but otherwise rev was fun. Some of the weapons are still a little wonky though. Fighting against them wasn’t too bad, it is good that they have a good amount of defenses to force you to blow through.

Didn’t get to play chrono much, but it seems really good. Some of the traits make it okay to not take deceptive evasion and still have good clone gen, which is big. Wells also give them a bigger teamfight presence, and a few of them are quite useful with good cds. Fighting them is interesting because you really have to use your defenses effectively even more.

Didn’t see too many berserkers, so I don’t want to comment.

Daredevil was cool, but they need to smoothen out the new dodge rolls. Most of the physical skills aren’t amazing, and I hope they give that some attention as thieves already have weak utilities. Other wise I think it improves their diversity a lot, but might force at least a small rework of acrobatics. Fought against some pretty good daredevils and I’m happy to say the s/d build is probably back.

Hopefully tempest will teach Anet what necros have been saying for years, big channeled skills are hard to use in pvp, and need too imbalanced of a payoff to exist without rage. See warrior rifle, necro axe 2, necro dagger 2, necro DS 4, ele earth dagger 5, mesmer scepter 2 block, mesmer scepter 3, and mesmer sword 4 block (channel block + cast time is dumb, needs to be instant).

Herald was so good I had to play it with one hand…