Guild Wars 2

I understand that we have great players that can perform well regardless of class or build, but assuming all other things equal, what classes are at biggest disadvantage?

This ranked season, I’ve only encountered a hand full of eles and they seemed rather easy to put down. After that, maybe necro then thief? Though, thief seems to be very viable when played correctly but it has a narrow window for that

People complain DH OP but Mesmer, warrior, Druid, and engineer still have solid builds and may be better on higher end. Thoughts?

The most popular classes are usually a mix of most effective and with lower skill floor . I don’t see many elementalist in this meta …

Eles are weakest this season, simply because they are a support class, but other support classes, like druid and scrapper bring as much (or more) support, have more hard mitigation, and most importantly, have way more map mobility to get to the fights where they can support. At the point they took away toughness/healing power amulets, eles lost their place. With tough/healing power amulets, eles could at least do more for their team if caught at the wrong point, by bunkering for a long time and surviving extremely long in teamfights. Without toughness/healing power, other classes that have sustain that doesn’t depend on stats, now excel at that role (bunker) even more.

Overall, ele is stuck as an extremely slow support build that can’t really escape bad situations and is susceptible to burst.

Necros are relatively weak in soloQ, as they have a similar problem as eles, but they last longer than most damage builds if not being pressured by a whole team, and can drop insane amounts of damage. A well-played necro can do its role better than any other class if properly protected/played carefully. At lower-tiers, minion-mancer can almost endlessly bunker and force such long 2v1’s that it can basically be a free-win.

Any non druid ranger is the worst class. Tempest is the worst otherwise, it is basically a bad engi/druid.

As for soloq, necro is usually the second worst but can still scrap out a 50% winrate. Warrior is painful to play in soloq as well.

dragon hunter is definitely the weakest this season.

Balance seems great this season. All classes have a place. Even Ele can work when paired with Necro or Warrior. I think what we need right now is a viable dps ele build (maybe rework arcane line traits), but I’m really against the insta-casts on fresh air, so I really don’t know how this can be worked. Also, I think retri-rev is a bit too strong and could use a little shave.

PS: Thief shortbow buffs pls

Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).

Vagrant.7206:

Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).

I play with really bad ping (avg: 250) and it works well enough to get me to legend x2 this season so far. Honestly, rotations and knowing match ups is waaay more important than ping. What you should be able to dodge, you can dodge with that ping. Only thing I can think of that I wished I could re actively dodge is quickness berserk mace f1. Honestly, at high tiers, it doesn’t matter what class you play, you need to dodge stuff and have good reflexes. Thief makes your life a bit easier in this regard since you only need to +1 instead of 1v1 anyway.

Rome.3192:

Vagrant.7206:

Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).

I play with really bad ping (avg: 250) and it works well enough to get me to legend x2 this season so far. Honestly, rotations and knowing match ups is waaay more important than ping. What you should be able to dodge, you can dodge with that ping. Only thing I can think of that I wished I could re actively dodge is quickness berserk mace f1. Honestly, at high tiers, it doesn’t matter what class you play, you need to dodge stuff and have good reflexes. Thief makes your life a bit easier in this regard since you only need to +1 instead of 1v1 anyway.

Finding +1’s is tricky. More often than not, the +1 becomes a 2v2 with a DH in the middle.

Rome.3192:

Vagrant.7206:

Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).

I play with really bad ping (avg: 250) and it works well enough to get me to legend x2 this season so far. Honestly, rotations and knowing match ups is waaay more important than ping. What you should be able to dodge, you can dodge with that ping. Only thing I can think of that I wished I could re actively dodge is quickness berserk mace f1. Honestly, at high tiers, it doesn’t matter what class you play, you need to dodge stuff and have good reflexes. Thief makes your life a bit easier in this regard since you only need to +1 instead of 1v1 anyway.

Yeah because it is near impossible to land any hits on you since your character is porting around and rubberbanding – i gave up trying to land backstab on you. Can’t even stomp you because your body is gliding around all over the place.

Hard to say which profession is the weakest, but least popular i would say is Engineer. PvP is full of Thieves, Warriors, Necros, Rangers and Guardians(ups, DHs i mean), there are some Mesmers and Eles, but Engies and Revenants are not as popular as other profs: i barely see any engie, maybe once per every third match.

The least popular (games without one of these are not uncommon):

• Elems are not very popular. The class has been nerfed, and only experienced elems have stayed faithful to it. The class still works though, mostly support with good damage.
• Warriors have bizarrely fallen out of grace. The class has not become weak, but simply seems to have lost its favor.

The regulars (almost always 1+ in each game):

• Necros and thieves are popular classes, but paradoxical ones. Bad necros and bad thieves are (way) more common than good ones, which is often key to victory or defeat.
• Scrappers, druids, chronomancers and revenants are the same as ever, polyvalent classes, solid and dealing decent damage – possibly too polyvalent. More power druids creeping in these days, good to see.

The super popular:

• Dragonhunters have become super popular, having 4+ per game is not unusual. It’s not that the class is too strong, although some things could indeed be nerfed (as for most classes), it’s just that most players still don’t know how to deal with it.

Thieves are fairly weak, but only because DHs are so abundant. Without DHs, thieves would destroy because power damage was indirectly buffed, and they already hit insanely hard.

Ele is clearly the weakest because all they had last season was the very spec they nerfed hard. Without that spec and Cleric’s, they are nearly useless. There’s no way they can stay up close into a fight and heal, even though Tempest is designed for the thick of battle. They totally screwed them by removing all toughness with healing power amulets.

Other weak professions are Reaper, but only because it’s so easy for everyone to stay on them, and it’s still too hard for Reapers to get away and relieve pressure on themselves. Vitality doesn’t help them live longer because power damage hits so hard now and and toughness doesn’t increase Shroud hp.

I’m a bit surprised they’re still considered meta, even though there’s no good reason to take one. You can just do two DHs, a Condi Mes, a Power Rev and a Druid. There, you have a bunker/power dps, a condi/portal bot, another power dps, and a healbot/power dps. And all of them have high mobility and map travel capabilities. If you don’t need extra healing because of the two DHs, switch out the Druid for a Condi Warrior. If you want more dps, take Scrapper over Druid. In pro League, I suspect the best team will be one DH (because you can’t do two), Druid, Condi Mes, Power Rev, and Warrior. This gives, powerful power dps, incredible map mobility, tons of CC, lots of quickly stacking and powerful condis, some group condi cleanse, powerful healing. And you may see Scrapper over Warrior if a team wants more power damage and group utility.

Ele is definitely the least popular class right now in my experience and it is obvious why. Anet has pigeon holed them into a pure support role that few people found interesting, and then proceeded to heavily nerf it so that it is neither a fun, build, nor a strong build so why bother playing it? It is still far stronger than more offensive ele builds, so most people just re-roll to a class that can still be fun and effective rather than work with something that is not fun and sort of effective, or fun but very ineffective. Of course fun is subjective so I guess some people enjoy auramancer.

Ele and Necro.

Ele isn’t terribly bad, but they was assumed to be OP and they was OP from —-always?
The nerf they get made them fall by a lot and the lack of defensive amulets (expecially amulets with both toughness and healing) make them easly to get killed by the actual direct damage meta.
Anyway, they’re still strong. They have big mobility, a lot of block/immunity skills, very good damage (both single target and AoE, depending on the build) and can give a great support to the team. They’re not the best class of that season, but the best reason they fall to the last post is why they was Op for so long that a “weak” ele is unplayable for that 90% of players that focused on they’re top bunker meta status to win matches. But they still have good damage, high mobility, AoE skills, support, immunity/block skills, a lot of heal skills and CC.
A skilled ele can really change the end of a fight from lose to win.

Necromancer is the always good and bad class. Really strong if the team is strong, really weak if the team is weak. No defensive skills to protect him from CC, damage and cc conditions and direct damage with “only” a high amount of HP to adsorb al the enemy hits, with the Shroud to contstantly fill to stay up.
They had to take the head out of the water for breath all the time while the others have a tank for divers.
That make the necromancer a “bad” class in this meta: no chance to survive or flee to a fight against a lot of classes/builds (direct damage war and reve, dh, thief and druid, with a 50-50 against scrapper and mesmer) and no defensive skills to stop CC and debuffing conditions, with a low amount of stability skills (only by the elite and while in shroud, with 25 sec. cooldown), no movement skills, no support, no good healing skills.
They’re good only in a team fight and only if the enemy don’t focus them first or they have enough LF and all the skills ready to try to CC or stop the enemy from kill them, with a team to help them survive.
But still there, a skilled necromancer can be that one that is able to turn the tide of a battle.

There’s not a real “bad” on that classes. They can be strong or weak depending on the situation. But is that douplicity that make them unable to fight in this meta, simply why you’ll never be shure if they will be strong or weak fight by fight.

All the other classes can fight at a high level, then there’s not a real need of tiers or similar things. They all have they’re role and strength and can work together pretty well.