Guild Wars 2

God Tier (Overpowered without question):

Reaper: Insane survival and damage. Can easily hold a point against 2+ people and probably kill half of them.

Herald: Very strong defensively, with amazing team support. Shield 5 is pretty much a fight reset. Also deals good damage with sword, stacks huge amounts of might passively, and high single target burst against singled out enemies. Basically the new D/D celestial ele.

A Rank (Got these right, closed to balanced, slightly strong):

Druid: Amazing healing and support. Can swing team fights easily and creates interesting healer play. Fulfills the heal role it was designed for extremely well. Staff also deals decent damage. I would consider this balanced because druids can be killed through good CC and sacrifice alot of damage to pump the healing they do. The new pets are amazeballs,

Chrono: Nutty burst and CC. F5 is godlike. Has alot of get out of jail free cards and gravity well is very powerful. Can easily nuke a single target from 100% to nothing instantly. Slightly powerful, but not completely OP. Probably the only thing aside from a herald that can kill a Reaper on its own.

B Rank (Decent, need some tweaks):

Scrapper: Played this one the least. The new gyros are pretty much useless except for the ranged stomp. Hammer is pretty good, toolbelt skills are good. Rocket charge is clunky to use, could use some QoL improvements for the dash distance locking on targets. Can be salvaged to be decent with some tweaks. Becomes really nuts with momentum + juggernaut and flamethrower.

C Rank (Major overhauls needed):

Berserker: Is this even an elite spec? Its just the same as a normal warrior. Same tactics apply. New rage skills are pretty much useless. New mechanic is not much different from regular warrior bursts. Most still slot rampage, which is still the warrior’s most devastating skill. Kind of boring. Torch is alright, moving fire field is nice. Only good for the rifle bug right now that deals damage twice and instakills people.

Daredevil: I played the most of this. The staff is really terrible, vault is difficult to use, the staff seems to want an in your face playstyle that the thief doesn’t have. This whole spec showcases how weak thieves are without stealth. Most thieves just use DD to supplement the old acro S/D thief or be a P/D thief with 3 dodges and dash. Aside from supplementing the same boring playstyle that thieves have had for the last year, DD pretty much fails at everything else.

Tempest: Largely useless, no one would ever use the overloads. D/D ele is still king. Needs some major work to make the overloads worth using. They are just giant signs saying interrupt me. On top of that they are never worth the CD they place on your attunement. Probably the worst elite spec out of them all.

F Rank:
Dragonhunter: lordhelmes forgot that specialisation even existed or it just simply wasn’t worth mentioning.

Akikaze.1307:

F Rank:
Dragonhunter: lordhelmes forgot that specialisation even existed or it just simply wasn’t worth mentioning.

Oh yeah that thing. Yeah that thing is C rank too.

lordhelmos.7623:

Druid: (…) The new pets are amazeballs,

Eh, what new pets? You can’t use them in PvP, they’re bugged.

Yea, I’d agree with OP. That’s pretty spot on.

Daredevil’s animations are a bit better, but it’s really just a troll build right now. You can dodge for days doing next to nothing and then get mega burst to downed in between evade frames.

Scrapper isn’t bad, but the gyros are really useless.

Reaper is just overtuned. I know people love the eye-watering damage, but it’s really not balanced. Necros need more than just imba dps to be a strong, well-rounded profession.

Dragon hunter seems to be weak, but worse than that, it just doesn’t seem like a fun specialization to play.

Dahkeus.8243:

Reaper is just overtuned. I know people love the eye-watering damage, but it’s really not balanced. Necros need more than just imba dps to be a strong, well-rounded profession.

What’s interesting is that when you look at actual DPS, Reaper is only about middle of the pack until someone gets low on health to kick off Gravedigger spam. Even then, it’s still not top DPS.

Is Reaper overtuned? Possibly, but I think it has more to do with people still figuring out that they can’t just brawl with the Necro and expect to win. Reaper was designed to thrive in teamfights, and that is exactly where it’s strongest, but even in those circumstances it has its weaknesses. The main thing that I think throws people off is that those weaknesses are not the weaknesses of a base Necro.

People simply don’t know how to build tempest and overload…fire/air overload can clear a team fight pretty quickly, you need good positioning/awareness to use one of them and ofc it helps to have armor of earth around. Main benefit of tempest is the great aura access..said it all, take the hints….

For me it would be from best to worst:
Chrono
Scrapper
Herald
Reaper
Berzerker
Druid
Dragon Hunter
Dare Devil
Tempest

Laughing so hard at this guy…

Herald has a low skill floor and is very new… Shield 5 isn’t a fight reset though in combination with Herald heal someone who doesn’t know how to fight a Herald or in group fights with AOE flying everywhere Herald does seem immortal when bunker specced. I’ve yet to see a Shiro or Mallyx main be able to swap to Herald and be the equivalent of a D/D Elementalist… they have to spec for it and it means they aren’t doing a lot of damage. It is working as intended and if it is over-powered it is too early to tell. I can tell you my vanilla Berserker warrior doesn’t have much trouble with them, if they are good I can’t win but they aren’t going to kill me either.

Reaper (I am biased – see my signature) is strong but certainly not God tier. I also seriously doubt it is even over-tuned but time will tell. People fight Reapers the wrong way (hell they fight vanilla Necromancers the wrong way)… I do the same thing on my Reaper that I do on my vanilla necromancer, I am just now able to apply pressure and finish opponents in the middle of fights.

Reaper and Herald are god tier in your eyes simply because it is unfamiliar. Chronomancer is a lot stronger then Reaper and Herald in direct combat but is pretty much just a Mesmer so we are used to their tricks and as with regular Mesmer only a very few give everyone a lot of trouble. Even though it is Mesmer on steroids it is still Mesmer and you don’t have to change your play style to deal with it. If anything is God tier I would say it is Chronomancer however like you I think A is where it belongs along side Reaper and Herald.

Druid – yeah, a game changer but not over-powered. It is no different then Herald in its group fight potential but they are not gods.

Scrapper – no comment, strong high skill floor, it will take a lot of testing before we can place it anywhere but I disagree about the Gyros being useless… the purpose of the Scrapper is to change the play-style of the Engineer and they word when you play the Scrapper as a Scrapper.

Berzerker – I personally feel I need stances and Rampage too much to make my build work, however Berzerker wasn’t mean to be played the way I play my warrior. Regardless… until the myriad of bugs most obviously Headbutt are fixed Berzerker is in the garbage. It could be good and offer new ways to play the Warrior but when Headbutt doesn’t hit, half the traits don’t work, and adrenaline regen seems worse then vanilla we won’t know. My warrior will stay a warrior, but that is simply because I am not interested in the play style Berzerker offers.

Daredevil – Doesn’t belong in the scale system… it makes the Thief even better at doing what it’s good at, sadly what it is good at isn’t want the Thief playerbase want it to be good at. Daredevil will be a game changer in high level play where the goal isn’t necessarily to kill the other guy but even then it is a “Specialist Unit” whose value is lies outside of combat.

Tempest – It is only garbage if you are garbage. Tempest is exactly what an elite specialization is supposed to be. Not everyone will use it but those who do will use it with devastating results. I would put it on B-tier.

Dragon Hunter – This is like Tempest-lite, it needs buffs most Guardians will always hate it, but it provides new ways to play the class and many Guardians enjoy it. I would say C-tier for now merely because we don’t know if traps will ever be useful in PvP outside of specific maps like Stronghold, possibly Courtyard.

I am pretty sure scrapper, dragon hunter, tempest and chronomancer is a lot better than you think while Herald and Reaper are not exactly as overpowered as you believe.

To be fair, a lot comes down to unfamiliarity. Is difficult to test something in just 2-3 days. Some require a different play style.

Dragon hunter for example has a extremely strong burst build via fragment of faith, communal defense and shattered aegis but I doubt a lot of people has tried it out.

Scrapper currently is pretty much unkillable due to its defense and multiple ways of getting away. At least with reaper if you hit hard enough, a reaper will die. Scrapper will just run away with jumps and super speed.

I would do the tier system as follows, rather then rank classes on power I would rank them on whether or not they do what they are supposed to do well and are overall balanced.

Where they need to be:

Chronomancer (any nerfs this specialization warrants are actually nerfs on core skills – namely Moa… it is not however the Chronomancer’s fault that Moa is in the game and it’s mechanic shouldn’t be nerfed because of Moa).

Herald (core class still needs balancing but Herald by itself is fine).

Reaper (is perfect how it is).

Tempest (a very strong side grade that some players will utilize to great effect and others will ignore).

Needs polish and possibly minor buffs:

Daredevil (Daredevil, contrary to all the naysayers does what it is supposed to do, however more then any other class every trait, every ability, every dodge, every evade, every blind needs to work perfectly – Daredevil needs a lot of polish. Staff needs some minor buffs either more blinds or evades. Any major buffs the spec needs are actually buffs to the core class which is why I put it here rather then in the third “trash” tier).

Druid (pet to my knowledge isn’t working correctly with Druid so there’s that. Some think it’s healing is to good but the only immortal face tank five people druids are the ones who can’t kill anything so that is balanced).

Scrapper (very strong even in this early stage, but could use some tweaks and some buffs on gyros… core Engineer needs all of it’s traits revamped for more synergy).

Is not working as intended and needs Elite traits and utilities to work correctly before we can render judgement:

Berzerker – Headbutt not hitting someone that is right in front of you… enough said… oh and the fact that you lose the Warrior’s defensive capabilities and have a Heal that is good on paper but people just kite when you use it keeps it from doing anything other then condi support builds. The fact that it’s core mechanic, Berserk mode is buggy and unreliable puts this in trash tier, even though it somewhat does what it set out to do on paper).

Other:

Dragon Hunter – still needs a role for PvP, might be a PvE only specialization which is fine but players will want to know that. Other is not a bad category persay, I simply lack the knowledge to place it anywhere.

In retrospect, I would say that the one place I disagree with OP is that Chrono needs to be in the top tier when played right. I’d say even above revenant and reaper.

I’ll credit that it does take a bit of skill to play chrono well since I’ve wiped the floor with some people that were obviously new to playing mesmer, but in the right hands, it’s ridiculous.