Guild Wars 2

Hello all, my name is Mojja and I PvP alot. Maybe too much sometimes.
And while Ive felt that the game always had its “metas” and original builds, its safe to say I have never been more aware of the lack of builds as of right now.

So in my games I notice a trend. There is basically a bunch of classes I rarely see, then there are classes I see pretty much in every game.

Necro, most of them cele bunker necro or minion master bunker necro.
Guardian, all are burn guardians. Why? Who can resist 60 k done over 10 sec right?
Rangers, all zerk pewpew ( havent seen a condi trapper ranger in a long time)
Mesmers, PU or Shatter, both super strong and super annoying to fight.

Classes I see in some games:
Thief, D/P and nothing else
Engineer Soldier rifle or Static discharge
Elementalist , Fresh air.

Classes I rarely see:
Warrior, mostly GS/Hammer.

Its gotten to the point where Iam on a team and I’m suppose to fight against 3 mesmers and two bunker necros. Or two minion necros, two mesmers and a burn guardian.
Or three rangers and two mesmers.
Iam gonna pull some statistics out of my behind here , but say 1 of 10 games are balanced. Rest is pretty much onesided. The good ol “Close” matches are pretty much non existing and I’m sitting here wondering why.

Is it balancing? Is it the flavor of certain classes?
I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.

considering you only have personal opinion & no actual data how are we supposed to say anything at all?

i feel like i see 70% meta builds & 30% non meta, but who knows really.

By spending time in pvp, by writing down what you face and see. And then find a percent, say over 100 games. The problem here is the diversity. And some of the builds are so strong it often wins games on its own. Anyway I’m here to hear what other people think and feel.

I find more condi rangers than power rangers. DD, staff and Fresh eles. The two soldier variant engineers, elixir gun engineers nd condi engineers. Maybe 30% of thieves I encounter are S/D. I usually find more bunker guards than burn guards, maybe in a 60/40 ratio. And a lot of warriors, both GS/hammer and shoutbow. I only agree with you on mesmer/necros, I rarely see power necros or lock mesmers.

Havent seen a condi build in a long time, but it will be enjoyable to see what the elite specializations bring to the pvp aspect

There is diversity but many builds fall out of the loop on a higher skill level. Not all builds can work on every level and some builds are only favored in a certain meta. Some builds dominate the beginner stage but can be easily countered if you learn what its weakness is. Many people also want to play proven powerful and easy to learn builds.

Meta builds are popular not because they are the strongest ones (except D/D elementalist maybe), but because they are easier to adapt. When I start a class, I will try meta build first and adapt it as I get more experience.
I do agree though. Some classes and builds are much more frequent than others.

Right now, there are two classes and two builds that is seen in every match and that is ranger, usually with a LB build, fully embracing zerker. And then there is the PU mesmer, or the GS s/x mesmer. Both dealing extreme damage from afar in few secounds with tons of defensive skills to support what would otherwise be a slaughter.

Decreasing diversity is largely from the crappy PvP amulet system and increasingly less stat diversity.

You’re either glass cannon, really tanky, or celestial. There’s almost no possibility for anything in between. If you’re a glass cannon and don’t have escapes or can chain immunities, then you’ll be trained down quickly by those which do (thief, mesmer). If you can’t stack might or offset it with power in some other way, celestial doesn’t really work. For the tanky amulets, you need crit chance to make them work and for guardian and elementalist, you need vitality if you want to be tanky and most amulets don’t offer it. Many bunker or support builds also need healing power to work well.

It’s pretty simple to fix too. Just divide the PvP amulet into multiple items and allow players to mix and match. Your offensive builds can now pick up a few hundred toughness, which makes them a lot less squishy. Low HP professions can now get the HP they were missing without completely compromising a build. Hybrids can now exist that can actually crit and not hit like a wet noodle. The arguments against doing this have no legitimate backing.

Playing diverse builds only gets you so far. Once you start playing with some more skilled players then you are basically looking for the most optimal build you can get from your class and then there is generally only 1-2 options to choose from.

Build diversity for each class is certainly an issue, but that’s not what the original post is talking about. He’s talking about rarely seeing certain classes at all. However, I don’t think that’s an issue currently. Every class has strong, meta specs that are useful in competitive play. Warrior is probably the least prevalent in top tier NA, but that’s as much because people don’t play it as it being weak. Thief can have trouble because of how tanky the meta is, but that’s rarely a problem in solo queues.