Guild Wars 2

Ithilwen.1529:

I’ve been maining Mesmer for something close to 3 years. I don’t find it easy to play at all. Easiest, I’d say d/d ele.. you almost have to try to die.

You have PU which is a no brainer build no matter how you look at it. And shatter isn’t hard to play once you understand how landing hits work. Mesmer is not a hard class.

Thief is harder than Mesmer, that’s a fact. You know why? Because Thief has lower HP and when they’re spamming evades, they don’t do ridiculous burst damage. And most of all? Thief doesn’t have Phantasm’s which guarantees baiting a dodge to help land shatter after dodges are gone.

Well that is the problem with the new changes. Mesmer and ele were some of the skillful professions earlier. Now they are called “facerolls” and that is not fair. I can not play my mesmer because it is boring. I can not play my main, ele, because dd is a real faceroll, and staff, my favourite weapon, is so underpowered that even I feel lucky when I encounter a staff ele.

Only profession I enjoy is engineer, but it is hard to master, hard to learn. At least I got that for me, which is nice.

alain.1659:

Well that is the problem with the new changes. Mesmer and ele were some of the skillful professions earlier. Now they are called “facerolls” and that is not fair. I can not play my mesmer because it is boring. I can not play my main, ele, because dd is a real faceroll, and staff, my favourite weapon, is so underpowered that even I feel lucky when I encounter a staff ele.

Only profession I enjoy is engineer, but it is hard to master, hard to learn. At least I got that for me, which is nice.

Which before patch, cele engi was considered faceroll by many. Just goes to show there is no such thing as an intrinsically skillful build. If anything gets buffed enough, it will become face roll no matter how high the skill cap is.

xDudisx.5914:

From hardest to easiest:

1)Engi
2)Ele
3)Necro
4)Thief
5)Ranger
6)Guardian
7)Mesmer
8)Warrior

1st off. Engi and Ele are mostly rotation classes, learn rotation repeat till you win.
I wouldnt put mesmers so low on the list, Aside from PU mesmers that are perma invis most powerbuilds on mesmers still requires a lot of knowledge. Warrior yes its easy to start with but kinda hard to master. Ranger would be 8 in my list, totaly brain dead with some builds require standing in 1 point and autoattacking enemy to death (as long as you take beastmastery you will be GOD in 1v1), Guards especially shoutguards are only easy on paper, in reality managing condis on whole team isnt easy job. Thief is kittenly cuz it is less effective in fights than any other class. With necro i dunno, necro is rly strange for new players to play sometimes it feels easy sometimes it feels like i cant do much as necro.
Real list:
1)Thief
2)Engi
3)Mesmer
4)Necro
5)Guardian
6)Warrior
7)Ele
8)Ranger

infantrydiv.1620:

Nova Stiker.8396:

xDudisx.5914:

From hardest to easiest:

1)Engi
2)Ele
3)Necro
4)Thief
5)Ranger
6)Guardian
7)Mesmer
8)Warrior

This.
Engineers used to be one of the easier classes. As they had the best recovery in the game from Healing Turret and Gear Shield on a 16 second recharge. Made a mistake on an engineer? It’s k bro, make all the mistakes you want on last meta Engineer. Obviously this meta, that is not the case.

---

LOL at all the scrubs winning Elementalist by mashing buttons. True story, I beat a dude on my ele by swapping attunements and mashing buttons with 1000 ping too. I was in WvW against a level 12 first time Mesmer, dem ele’s are ez class.

Here is another true story, I never lost to a bad Elementalist no matter what build or class I was using. The fact is, anyone can beat a scrub, even if you are one yourself.

True story, mine was in a high MMR queue. Saying D/D elementalist is ‘hard’ is a joke since it’s literally the easiest thing in the game to be effective on currently. Defending it when double ele is probably the most common comp in the game is also a joke. There’s no doubt that Elementalist has a high skillcap, but that doesn’t matter when you can play it like garbage and still be more effective than classes you have 10x the games on.

+1

Mesmer is never faceroll ranger is. terrifying howl + rapid fire
do the same as we do with 6 buttons

TheBlackLeech.9360:

The class with the highest skill cap is thief.

This is rather bad design. I am angry every time I play with my thief, pretty much all must be adjusted in the options, and when I then again another class play everything back. It sucks. All other classes will work with the same settings, only thief not.

Extreme.8350:

Mesmer is never faceroll ranger is. terrifying howl + rapid fire
do the same as we do with 6 buttons

Mesmer can use fear and rapidfire when pressing 6 buttons? Sounds like a weird bug to me :p

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Extreme.8350:

Mesmer is never faceroll ranger is. terrifying howl + rapid fire
do the same as we do with 6 buttons

Mesmer can use fear and rapidfire when pressing 6 buttons? Sounds like a weird bug to me :p

The result are the same now you are just grasping for straws
not to mention their 1 skill crits for +3,5k while our is 300~/s with gs from medium range.

Here’s my personal tier list for difficulty, by which I mean skill-needed-to-play-class-optimally (not just which classes might be imbalanced atm):

Very Easy -
None. This game in general has a high skill cap. Compared to most games, every class in GW2 PvP has a very high skill cap.

Easy -
Warrior, Ranger

Average -
Guardian, Necro, Mesmer

Hard -
Elementalist, Thief

Very Hard -
Engineer

I main a necro so no ele bias here.

infantrydiv.1620:

Nova Stiker.8396:

xDudisx.5914:

From hardest to easiest:

1)Engi
2)Ele
3)Necro
4)Thief
5)Ranger
6)Guardian
7)Mesmer
8)Warrior

This.
Engineers used to be one of the easier classes. As they had the best recovery in the game from Healing Turret and Gear Shield on a 16 second recharge. Made a mistake on an engineer? It’s k bro, make all the mistakes you want on last meta Engineer. Obviously this meta, that is not the case.

---

LOL at all the scrubs winning Elementalist by mashing buttons. True story, I beat a dude on my ele by swapping attunements and mashing buttons with 1000 ping too. I was in WvW against a level 12 first time Mesmer, dem ele’s are ez class.

Here is another true story, I never lost to a bad Elementalist no matter what build or class I was using. The fact is, anyone can beat a scrub, even if you are one yourself.

True story, mine was in a high MMR queue. Saying D/D elementalist is ‘hard’ is a joke since it’s literally the easiest thing in the game to be effective on currently. Defending it when double ele is probably the most common comp in the game is also a joke. There’s no doubt that Elementalist has a high skillcap, but that doesn’t matter when you can play it like garbage and still be more effective than classes you have 10x the games on.

+111

My 6 hr playtime on Cele D/D Ele now out performs my Guardian main of 1900 hrs in TPvP.

I do nothing but PvP and duel with Guard do I already knew (more or less) the Ele rotations and playstyles before I started the class. Am I better than other Ele pros who main the class? Absolutely not, but I have won against others who’ve played longer.

Jackalrat.5493:

Here’s my personal tier list for difficulty, by which I mean skill-needed-to-play-class-optimally (not just which classes might be imbalanced atm):

Very Easy -
None. This game in general has a high skill cap. Compared to most games, every class in GW2 PvP has a very high skill cap.

Easy -
Warrior, Ranger

Average -
Guardian, Necro, Mesmer

Hard -
Elementalist, Thief

Very Hard -
Engineer

I main a necro so no ele bias here.

This is a good list. However, this should have two lists. Easiest to play and easiest to master.

It’s interesting that thief is medium-hard to hard in virtually every list. That seems like a vast change of opinion over the past.

Coming from a competitive player and someone who has talked to a lot of other competitive players the list goes like this. From highest required skill to play optimally to lowest.

1. Ranger
2. Thief
3. Necro
4. Warrior
5. Engi
6. Ele
7. Guard
8. Mesmer

Ranger is the absolute hardest class to play right now simply because they just suck. They have use to have faceroll when gs/lb was an issue way back in beta, they were also faceroll back before the condi bunker nerfs, and the current state they are in where they are considered the worst class in the game. Rangers have gotten almost no love from the devs and no one really sees Anet changing that. People will tell you ranger is faceroll because of a hate bandwagon that started 2 years ago that is completely irrelevant today.

Thief has always been pure risk and reward. Everything they do is a risk and at any moment they can be pretty much deleted from a fight, so they have to play extremely smart and pretty precise otherwise they are punished the hardest of all the classes.

Necromancer can be considered lower because of the blood tank build, but in general the necro has always been very tough to play at high levels ever since the bleed condition meta was killed, which is a good thing.

Warrior has been in the same boat as thief for sometime excluding the hambow days. They are a lot more forgiving though on their placement and don’t require the amount of precision gameplay that thief has to do. People give warriors bad names because of when hambow was god tier, but that isn’t the case now. That doesn’t mean the class isn’t easy to pick up. You can wreck from day 1 as warrior against unskilled players with relative ease, but once you get into high skilled players it becomes very difficult.

Why is engineer in the middle? Having more buttons does not equal being more skilled. That doesn’t mean that engineer doesn’t have things they must learn, but it’s nothing that every other class has to do already. They have and most likely will always be a safe pick for just about anything.

Eles are pretty kitten easy and extremely forgiving in every scenario. They would actually be considered less skilled than guardians if they didn’t have combos they used, even if extremely simple to do combos.

Guards are your standard paladin. Straight forward with high defense. Not much to really do with them. You just are tanky.

Mesmers are currently low on the spectrum since they were in in the top 3 hardest classes simply because they do so much damage, have so much utility, and so much control that it’s pretty kitten hard to lose as mesmer in any situation.

PU Condi Mesmer, easily the most cheese build ingame.

Can be played by smashing your face on the keyboard so long as your face hits the F keys.

Glitchfull.5826:

Why is engineer in the middle? Having more buttons does not equal being more skilled. That doesn’t mean that engineer doesn’t have things they must learn, but it’s nothing that every other class has to do already. They have and most likely will always be a safe pick for just about anything.

Actually yes, having more buttons require more skill as it adds an extra layer of complication.

Landing nades takes tons of skill. It is considerably harder to land nades on your target than arrows or bullets. It takes longer to master an engineer than any of the classes except maybe the thief.

Wait when did thieves become a hard class to play?? I thought all you had to do was kitten your 2 key??

From hardest to easiest:
1.Ranger
2.Necro
3.Thief (at top tier)
4.Warrior
5.Guard
6.Engi
7.Mesmer
8.Ele
This is based on the class in the current meta, not on my personal play level.
I can play any of these classes competently and others much better. (I have maybe a total of like 2 hours on Ranger as I just dislike the class but to play it in high tier pvp is extremely difficult)

imhop its opinon based, people find different playstyles easier

for example

I found it easier to pick up the engineer, yet I cant grasp the elementalist in the slightest, I found the necro really easy to pick up yet I cant play a ranger or a warrior for the life of me, therefore i’d say

Elementalist, Warrior and Ranger to be the hardest, they’re playstyles I cant work or adjust to so I cant be good playing with them, no profession is hard to play, its just simply what does and does not fit ur playstyle and preferences.

ele is the easiest class because you just repeat a rotation for success. no other class can do this and succeed. sure, you have to learn the rotation- but that’s a lot easier than learning, say thief. furthermore d/d is strong in both sustain and damage, to the point of being widely considered OP. it can fight any other build with a good shot at winning, if not guaranteed win.

it’s not hard to see that a tanky class with strong damage where you just repeat a rotation is easy when the player jumps over the initial hurdle (learning the rotation). sure d/d gets more complex at higher levels, but at low-average the rotation spam will take the player very far.

Drayos.8759:

people find different playstyles easier

Agreed. I also agree with what someone else said that Gw2 is overall, a high skill cap game to play compared to many others.

My opinion on the matter would be, from hardest to play to easiest;

1. Thief
2. Engineer
3. Necromancer
4. Ranger
5. Elementalist
6. Warrior
7. Mesmer
8. Guardian

Second list, from hardest to easiest, this time for mastering;

1. Engineer
2. Ranger
3. Thief
4. Mesmer
5. Warrior
6. Elementalist
7. Necromancer
8. Guardian

Necromancer is a lot easier to master than it is to play. It takes a while to get used to it but once you understand the profession it’s really quite easy. Or at least, IMHO.

Mesmer, although it’s pretty darn OP atm… Is difficult to master. You know when you’re against a good Mesmer because they won’t just be annoying they will decimate you. I have played very little Mesmer so maybe my opinion on the matter is irrelevant but I’ve always found it a lot easier to tell a good Mesmer from a bad one when compared to other professions.

Guardian is… Calling it easy doesn’t mean I’m calling it a bad profession by any means. It’s one of the best professions in the game if anything. I just don’t think there’s much to master about it and there isn’t a huge difference between a good Guard and a bad one. So many blocks, blinds, healing and invulnerability make even a full offensive Guard (Medi, usually) easy to play. Medi is pretty much the berserker hard counter to any other berserker build because they can just plain negate the damage.

And Engineer, I think it’s difficult to play and takes a lot of practice but once you understand it it’s not too difficult. However, that’s just learning how to play it not how to play it versus other people. I’d say Engineer is easily the most difficult to master simply because there are so many little intricacies with the profession that take a long time to hard wire in to your brain. You’ll always know when you’re against a good Engineer and not just a decent one. A good one pretty much schools you and makes you think “wtf.”

I’ve just been noting key professions in the lists I’ve given but I’d also like to toss it out there that although Warrior is extremely simple it’s also difficult despite how straightforward it is. I’m not sure if it was in this thread or another, I’m too lazy to read through right now, but someone had made a great point; Warrior is easier to play the lower the skill cap. The stronger your opponent is the harder it becomes to play. Because it’s such a highly telegraphed profession with very easy mechanics it takes a lot of discipline to be able to land key skills. On the average joe, Warrior rekts everything pretty much. On a good player, you’re gonna need to be twice as good.