Guild Wars 2

Many times, i see people calling one class or another overpowered. On the forums, when people politely ask for advice on how to beat the fotm builds, all people say is L2P.
So I got wondering what made some builds so popular and/or powerful.

From my point of view, I’ve noticed that all the “op” builds always have a large amount of get out of jail free skills or traits.
The thief jumps you, but fails and gets smashed? shadow refuge and restart the battle in 8 seconds at full health.
You manage to catch a guardian off guard and almost kill him? A couple of the guardian’s numerous heals and blocks while healing can fix that.
You catch a warrior off guard? he dies.

It is not that they kept control of the battle, nor is it a well timed dodge. It is the ability to recover from a major blunder that should have killed them that makes them frustrating to play against, and easy to play as.
I am quite sure I haven’t seen many p/p thieves, or eles without 30 arcane + 30 water, or mesmers without staff or sword + 2 to 3 utility stunbreakers, and so on. It’s just too easy to recover from multiple major blunders and return with some hefty damage if you use one of the fotm builds instead.

This is what I see as the difference between the powerful and the unused builds.
What do you see as the difference?

The only difference I see in builds is theoretical correctness and how whiny people are.

Also, thief’s Shadow Refuge: I never even touch it any more. Perhaps it’s a bug, but whenever you step out of SR for any reason, you get slammed with a 4s reveal that usually results in your death. If you get pulled, pushed, whatever- dead. It’s ridiculous at this point.

Builds that are considered OP are IMHO defined by 3 Aspects:

1) The Builds is very strong; Not necessarily Gamebreaking, but it needs to of course be very viable.
2) They fit into the Metagame very well.
3) They are often played, get lots of exposure and spread like wildfire.

There are some very decent Builds that are potentially strong, but no1 would ever call them OP because they simply dont’ fit into the Metagame. I also think that there are good Builds that work well in the current Meta, that some Teams are playing, that don’t get too much exposure; so no1 would ever call them OP, because most ppl don’t know about the Build.