Guild Wars 2

Henrik.7560:

Before: 1# Thief (as always) #2 Mesmer (glamour builds) #3 Elementallist (superior AoE)

After: 1# Thief (still haven’t nerfed heartseeker -.- ) #2 Guardian (superior healing) #3 Mesmer (badly nerfed)

What class/build do you play?

Anyone who says thief is definitely new at WvW. Thieves are only good for ganking out of place noobs.

The reality is that the current meta in WvW is zerg warfare. That means the best classes are those that are good in zerg warfare. Those include: warriors, necros, guards, and eles.

style.6173:

Anyone who says thief is definitely new at WvW. Thieves are only good for ganking out of place noobs.

The reality is that the current meta in WvW is zerg warfare. That means the best classes are those that are good in zerg warfare. Those include: warriors, necros, guards, and eles.

On the flip side, anyone that says a thief is useless in zerg warfare is giving up too easily. No, there’s no one build that will do it all great, but if you want to focus on zerg warfare, you can build to be effective at it. Most people just don’t want to give up their ganking ability in order to be effective in a large group.

There’s also some value in being able to move through the enemy zerg and hassle the people on the outskirts of the fight.

I gotta point out again that the lack of consensus on this thread is a good indicator of balance. Sorry Chicken Littles, but the classes are pretty well balanced.

After about 8 hours of wv3, I’m coming down to agree that classes are more balanced than before. Not perfect, but a start. Maybe it’s just the op arrow carts bombarding my mind, who knows lol.

frostshade.3617:

Ele nerf wasn’t that big lol

Yes it was. Most of ele’s like me rerolled.

You were d/d weren’t you?

Space.8053:

this is like asking which is best, rock, paper or scissors.
it’s clearly rock.

so who is the rock?

frostshade.3617:

Ele nerf wasn’t that big lol

It was significantly high to break the the class, and if you say so then you have not played an elementalist, before and after the patch especially a staff elementalist.
And to those that say eles are still op – just lol
Mobility and survivability is out of the picture…..

In a zerg/gvg perspective:

OvertheTop tier:
-War/Guard.
Top tier:
-Ele/Mes.
Good:
-Nec/Engi.
Bad:
-Thief
Very bad:
-Ranger.

If we account roaming, Thief gets to the top. Engi/Ele/Mes get better too, while War/Guard are a bit less powerful.

If Ur running in an organized force then anything can be useful. Just depends what is needed

Life.1576:

frostshade.3617:

Ele nerf wasn’t that big lol

It was significantly high to break the the class, and if you say so then you have not played an elementalist, before and after the patch especially a staff elementalist.
And to those that say eles are still op – just lol
Mobility and survivability is out of the picture…..

Did you read my sig?

AndrewSX.3794:

In a zerg/gvg perspective:

OvertheTop tier:
-War/Guard.
Top tier:
-Ele/Mes.
Good:
-Nec/Engi.
Bad:
-Thief
Very bad:
-Ranger.

If we account roaming, Thief gets to the top. Engi/Ele/Mes get better too, while War/Guard are a bit less powerful.

Engi are good in groups necros op jus gotta go juggerwell spec engi need to be made or bombkitten spec or even elixer spec for support

top 3 classes in wvw after patch:

lvl 5 newbie with a arrow cart (low tier)
lvl 80 pve scrub with a arrow cart
lvl 80 wvwers with arrow carts mastery and a arrow cart ( high tier)

Kript.3291:

top 3 classes in wvw after patch:

lvl 5 newbie with a arrow cart (low tier)
lvl 80 pve scrub with a arrow cart
lvl 80 wvwers with arrow carts mastery and a arrow cart ( high tier)

above all lvl 80 with arrow carts mastery + arrow cart and high condition dmg

and top 3 classes which were before patch :
- guardian
- ele
-warrior

after patch:
- guardian
- ele
-warrior

nothing changed in this patch here…

Anyone that doesn’t list a necro in the top 3 for WvW is wrong.

covenn.7165:

Anyone that doesn’t list a necro in the top 3 for WvW is wrong.

Got mine to 60 yesterday crafting. Gonna finish the last 20 in WvW for karma to get geared up at 80. I still like my Staff Ele but I think I was ready for a change and this patch gave me the excuse. No more SW siege blocking took a big niche away from the Ele (for better or worse), although fields are still very valuable of course.

I haven’t even been to WvW since the patch – needed to completely respec my Mesmer which cost all my karma stash and a bucketload of gold. Now I’m figuring out how best to play the completely different build, which is gonna take a while – it’s not really a class where you can just mash buttons.

If I go back to WvW anytime soon it’ll be on my Staff/Hammer Guardian, which rocks in groups but ssssuuuucks in solo play.

After patch strongest class #1: Arrow Cart
After patch strongest class #2: Arrow Cart
After patch strongest class #3: Arrow Cart

Guardian, Eles, Warriors in that order.

Are you kidding about thieves lol? WvW isn’t about roaming, it’s about massive zerg vs zerg battles. Guardians are the best for this. They have their support, their CC, their area control, their healing, boons, and general their I’m hard to kill and with these allies around me infinitely harder to kill mentality. I wrote a post on what guardians can do in WvW and it massively outclasses those of any other profession except maybe the two I listed above, and I’m still of the opinion they’re better than the two above.

Warriors are your heavy CC dps and facetanking class. They do everything guardians do above with the exception of two things: sustainability in battle/defensive support and area control. They make up for that with vastly superior offensive support, higher health pool for up front tanking, and higher DPS. And not to mention a warrior who brings warbanners to the party is a warrior who would be turning the tide of the battle in your favor.

Eles can either go D/D for best dueling class to staff for amazing zerg abilities. Dropping meteor showers every 30 seconds provided you are protected is the highest aoe dps in the game, not to mention you can switch out to lightning and provide the best aoe stun in the game, to water to provide a massive amount of healing and support, to earth that…well…I’m not exactly sure what use earth has actually. There’s the churn bomb tactic for D/D eles but anyways, this is all before we even consider their utilities.

Mesmer will always be the strongest profession in WvW, and glamour was hardly nerfed into the ground. It was brought back to a balanced level, if not still a little OP.

Thieves: still good, but culling changes were what really reeled them in. Now some are still good and annoying to kill (in and out of stealth all the time) but you don’t die to a theif because he was hitting you for 4 seconds before he rendered.

Ele: still seems the strongest of my 3 80s (ranger, warrior). The range and AOEs just make him usable in nearly all fights, and I can run him full zerker in zergs if I want, or from tower/keep tops. Or go with tough and D/D still. Changes affected them but not that much IMO.

Ranger: same as before, I like my ranger a lot for a few reasons, a decent all-around char but lacks some punch, though some builds have better than you think survivability.

Warrior: the changes helped to make some new builds but weren’t what I was looking for. I don’t need to be able to chase people down better, was already great at that if I traited for it, its the ‘inability to detach from massive concentrated fire’ that is the problem. Many classes have escape abilities where they take no damage and/or you lose target. Even my ranger has great escapinest because of near constant vigor, so I can dodge a ton (dodging is sooooo much better than absorbing). Warriors get ignore pain but it simply isn’t as useful as my near constant dodging example, or Ele telport, Mesmer escapes, etc. And you really can’t absorb damage in this game, well, you can, my warrior is max toughness and a bit of vit, but you still can get hit for a ton. In GW2 it is all about AVOIDING damage. Good players can stick to my warrior like glue and 3 DPSers will drop anyone pretty fast. Warriors can really shine in some fights, that is a good point for em but in general, they are still so-so IMO. I do like playing my warrior, I just don’t see how players can say they are ‘OP’, that seems silly.

Mesmers: mesmers are still good, just that it seems a good build is no longer viable, which is pretty lame. I don’t like it when devs over-nerf. (or over-buff)

Necros: seem better but not sure why people say they are ‘OP’, they needed a slight boost. But I haven’t fought enough of em yet to say, aren’t a lot of geared necros in WvW.

Gaurdians: not sure, seem same so far.

Arrow carts: like someone above said, you the range mastery and get on one of these and any char becomes OP, heh.

hmm good post im leaning towards ele or ranger

just make sure you use the arrow cart, you will be fine…no matter what class you decide to play…

covenn.7165:

Anyone that doesn’t list a necro in the top 3 for WvW is wrong.

I really am wondering if the people who place the necro low on their list ever played 1.

You can aoe for 18k with 1 skill/aoe blinds/CCs/Plague/boon removal and you have deathshroud+ highest healthpool ingame.

Aytrix.4059:

1. Any profession that can man an arrow cart.
2. ?
3. ?

xD
Agree

Oeps Rolls Necro.2594:

covenn.7165:

Anyone that doesn’t list a necro in the top 3 for WvW is wrong.

I really am wondering if the people who place the necro low on their list ever played 1.

You can aoe for 18k with 1 skill/aoe blinds/CCs/Plague/boon removal and you have deathshroud+ highest healthpool ingame.

i have seen a guild from JQ [SF] doing some crazy stuffs with Necro marks, no kitten.

I did yesterday the monthly at WvWvW (100 veteran kills & 100 events, and actually much more than 50 invader kills). Just like I had predicted there was a huge surge of thieves and signet warriors everywhere (euro tier #1). Based on my observations, the most common professions were:
1. Thief
2. Guardian
3. Warrior
(in that order)

The least common professions were necromancer and engineer (like before).

The reasons for these are obvious:
Thief has still very good burst damage, superb mobility and the best tools in the game to get out of harms way (thief decides when to end the fight). A thief player can run full glass cannon without much any risk. Reverting the revealed to 3 seconds was a very bad decision from the developers. WvWvW maps are huge compared to pvp and fights much more chaotic, thus stealth and shadowstep are even more powerful in WvWvW setting. The burst is much higher in WvWvW than it is possible in tpvp due better equipment and consumables. The only major nerf the thieves got for WvWvW is the shortbow #1, which was a bit too good before (heat seeking), but now I guess the army of thieves complaints will get it reverted soon. Contrary to the belief thieves are very common in zerg fights. Thieves just spam dagger storm, then U turn back towards their own group or flank the sides and take down the weak ones and do stealthed stomps all the time. Combination of high burst, teleportation (shadowstep) and stealth on demand is the easy mode. Thus thief is the most common profession in WvWvW. I hope Thief Wars 2 won’t make a comeback, as I would like to see variation, not just more of the same.

Guardian is a solid well-balanced choice for all game modes (pve, WvWvW, pvp). High survivability + high damage (if you spec for that!). Thanks to its many virtues and other passive effects it is the favored choice for Stonemist castle fights where the incredible skill lag prevents to use anything else than the autoattack. Thus guardians are at advantage when the mega lag hits.

Warrior have gotten more popular with the new buffs. Signet warriors are still easy kills, but melee train front line hammer warriors just got even more dangerous. Warriors are still a weak as solo roamers, but very strong in big groups. Huge amount of CC and damage with the popular hammer + sword/warhorn build, combined with high survivability.

All these 3 professions are also very common in pve. I would want to hear the developer’s explanation why guardian and warrior got buffed so much as they were already the two most common professions in pve!? Were warriors or guardians ever weak in pve, huh? At least my level 80 warrior never felt weak.

Ranger pet buffs went a bit overboard. I also have a level 80 ranger and I can tell you ranger is already the best profession underwater. Now with the new buffs, it will be almost impossible to kill a ranger underwater. Is that the purpose? E.g. the ursines have now about 2.6k armor and almost 30k health = more health than most players have!

Strangely the developers once again decided to nerf engineer profession the most (confusion dmg %50, elixir S, nerfed traits, big drop in survivability), even though it is the least played profession. Elixir gun #1 pathfinding is now broken and hitting the ground more often than before, elixir gun #2 has always been broken underwater. What is the logic to nerf the least played profession with every single patch? If engineers would be almighty in pve, we would be seeing Lion’s Arch full of “LF1M, only engineers”. Yet, we see dungeon parties seeking only mesmers, warriors, guardians and thieves.

I also noticed a lot of culling bugs (enemies not appearing until they are next to me) and collisions bugs after the patch e.g. >90% of attacks missing enemy Dolyak or NPC, which seemed to render like 30 feet off its actual location.

Overall the game feels less polished and much more buggy after the recent patch. I guess it was rushed and several bugs slipped in.

The one I happen to be playing on any given day.

ok so i got it best class is arrow cart

I’m perfectly happy with my Necro. I outlast just about every other class.

Thief class absolutely destroys me though (that’s nothing new for this OP class)

Deniara Devious.3948:

The only major nerf the thieves got for WvWvW is the shortbow #1, which was a bit too good before (heat seeking), but now I guess the army of thieves complaints will get it reverted soon.

I el oh el’ed….

Contrary to the belief thieves are very common in zerg fights. Thieves just spam dagger storm, then U turn back towards their own group or flank the sides and take down the weak ones and do stealthed stomps all the time.

maybe in eu and underdeveloped countries… Here we dodge around max range (1k-1100) spamming 1 and clusters. Which is why there “army of thieves” crying about the 1 nerf, it nerfed out half our keystrokes dood.

1. Arrow Carts
2. Arrow Carts
3. Arrow Carts

First thing you should do, is ignore anyone who says thieves are OP. Why? Because thieves are terrible for the most part, if you die 1v1 to a thief, youre bad, deal with it.

If you want to play with a zerg, and fight with them in the front, hammer warrior and staff/great sword guardian are pretty amazing. If you want to stand in the back of the zerg, Necro or Ele are your choices.

If you want to roam, it depends heavily on what else you’re roaming with, or if youre solo. Recently I’ve been roaming solo on guardian and destroying people, and its good fun when they dont run away from me (I cant catch them ; ; ). Just make sure you roll a norn for snowleapard form elite, so you can get out of bad situations without giving people 60 wxp.

If you just want to be a troll and wreck pugs and uplevels and bads, roll thief. It makes them angry. But a lot of this game is playstyle really. If you dont like the way something feels or how it works, youll never be good with it. Why not tell us how you like to play so people can give you a better answer.

i wanna play a ranger but it seems that they don’t fair so well in wvw

1. Warriors. Survivability built. (Hammer/sword/horn warriors running soldier runes and shouts) Totally OP in WvW. I mean it’s really bad, I’m not kidding. Huge amounts of CC built into the weapon as well as on call blast finishers for water fields, super tanky to form the core of the front line, and the condition removal and conversion possible with a handful as part of your zerg is just insane.

2. Guardians Survivability (Team Stability and boons, support damage, lines of warding shares front line with warriors)

3. Staff Ele (Combo fields, Tons of AOE CC, Big AOE damage, biggest long range AOE’s for siege clearing)

4. Mesmer (Portal, Vail, feedback, null field, chaos fields, basically everything glamor, extra blinds and confusion are just bonus, time warp)

5. Necro (Properly spec’d the blindness + chill combo to the enemy zerg is murderously effective, also provides good condition damage provided it’s not cured)

6. Thief (Spammable blast finisher on short bow, finishing downed enemies, roaming and scouting)

7. Ranger (Ranger’s are not bad. They are not, not at all. They just don’t have the 1-2 slelect semi-OP zerg builds the other classes have. Like the OPness of the thief spamming clusterbomb into water fields.)

GhostHawks.6519:

i wanna play a ranger but it seems that they don’t fair so well in wvw

ranger is not the best , but is very strong in groups
pro’s:
best water field in game
ranged aoe damage
strong in 1 vs 1 with melle weapons
very strong underwater

Henrik.7560:

Before: 1# Thief (as always) #2 Mesmer (glamour builds) #3 Elementallist (superior AoE)

After: 1# Thief (still haven’t nerfed heartseeker -.- ) #2 Guardian (superior healing) #3 Mesmer (badly nerfed)

Why it changed:
Thieves are still overpowered and will stay because they denny that heartseeker spammers are completely easy to counter (steal- 3k heartseeker- 3k, 4k, 6k, 6k), apparently isnt overpowered. The steal nerf was good, but that other skills are far too powerful. Cloak and Dagger should have a nerf too, its a source of stealth, enemy vulnerability, AND deals 6k damage on crits.
Mesmers had a HUGE nerf which ruined every confusion build as of its damage is crap now, losing their zerg popularity.
Elementallist had a HUGE nerf as well which stuff RTL up for zerg travel, and skills while in mist form and many other things.

You’re a commander and you’re dying to HS spam?

Noob level: 10^99

@OP: I can’t say there are three “top” classes, I think you need to define that based on different roles you can play in WvW. For example, Thieves are inarguably the best scouts, but Guardians are the best mass-condition cleansers, while eles are probably the best AoE healers.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

Thieves: still good, but culling changes were what really reeled them in. Now some are still good and annoying to kill (in and out of stealth all the time) but you don’t die to a theif because he was hitting you for 4 seconds before he rendered.

Ele: still seems the strongest of my 3 80s (ranger, warrior). The range and AOEs just make him usable in nearly all fights, and I can run him full zerker in zergs if I want, or from tower/keep tops. Or go with tough and D/D still. Changes affected them but not that much IMO.

Ranger: same as before, I like my ranger a lot for a few reasons, a decent all-around char but lacks some punch, though some builds have better than you think survivability.

Warrior: the changes helped to make some new builds but weren’t what I was looking for. I don’t need to be able to chase people down better, was already great at that if I traited for it, its the ‘inability to detach from massive concentrated fire’ that is the problem. Many classes have escape abilities where they take no damage and/or you lose target. Even my ranger has great escapinest because of near constant vigor, so I can dodge a ton (dodging is sooooo much better than absorbing). Warriors get ignore pain but it simply isn’t as useful as my near constant dodging example, or Ele telport, Mesmer escapes, etc. And you really can’t absorb damage in this game, well, you can, my warrior is max toughness and a bit of vit, but you still can get hit for a ton. In GW2 it is all about AVOIDING damage. Good players can stick to my warrior like glue and 3 DPSers will drop anyone pretty fast. Warriors can really shine in some fights, that is a good point for em but in general, they are still so-so IMO. I do like playing my warrior, I just don’t see how players can say they are ‘OP’, that seems silly.

Mesmers: mesmers are still good, just that it seems a good build is no longer viable, which is pretty lame. I don’t like it when devs over-nerf. (or over-buff)

Necros: seem better but not sure why people say they are ‘OP’, they needed a slight boost. But I haven’t fought enough of em yet to say, aren’t a lot of geared necros in WvW.

Gaurdians: not sure, seem same so far.

Arrow carts: like someone above said, you the range mastery and get on one of these and any char becomes OP, heh.

You are completely correct about the escape stuff with warriors. Whenever my group goes against a zerg they seem to tunnel vision on me. My warrior is max tough/vit and even with my condition removal it seems much harder to get out of tough situations.

I play Ranger and likely win or Draw over 90% of my 1v1 fights and Win/Draw a good 50% of 1v2…they are a very fun and complete roaming class, perhaps not the best at anything but pretty strong at many things if you micromanage you pet well.

My gripe is their strong Roam setup is not a good Zerg setup so I tend to guild small man/solo support roam as a playstyle.

So far despite negatives about the class I simply sidestep those negatives and enjoy the Ride

Kalo

Top 3 from best to third best:

1. Three Superior Arrow Carts
2. Two Sup. Arrow Carts
3. One Sup. Arrow Cart

EDIT: kitten someone beat me to it

Confusion Mesmer

Because in one week they will be so rare that no one will have a clue how to counter it when u drop the doom on them.No one ever will see you coming
Pretty much like my condition longbow/swordhorn warrior .Love it when their like “Hey, a warrior ,activate chasing the free bag RTl gogogo shiny shiny kill xd” only to “Oh snap ,wtf, when did a train hit me or something O.O”

Oeps Rolls Necro.2594:

covenn.7165:

Anyone that doesn’t list a necro in the top 3 for WvW is wrong.

I really am wondering if the people who place the necro low on their list ever played 1.

You can aoe for 18k with 1 skill/aoe blinds/CCs/Plague/boon removal and you have deathshroud+ highest healthpool ingame.

i don’t dissagree but sorry mate i would never place necro above ele, or heavy armored classes. If u look at wvw like on random running, joining zergs, then you can easily choice any class. But if you feel like you wanna more team play, you just can’t forget about guards, eles or warriors. Direct damage is simply better than conditions, because you can always pull em off.

So im thinking of playing an arrow cart

I don’t understand everyone’s difficulty with thieves. As someone said before, if you get killed by a glass thief, you are either glassy yourself or are upscaled. Every time a thief pops out of stealth behind me and tries to burst me (which usually hits a max of 7k) I laugh at them, use three abilities and they’re shadowstepping back to their zergling team mates with their tail between their legs and a quarter health left.

Deadlyguy.6104:

i don’t dissagree but sorry mate i would never place necro above ele, or heavy armored classes. If u look at wvw like on random running, joining zergs, then you can easily choice any class. But if you feel like you wanna more team play, you just can’t forget about guards, eles or warriors. Direct damage is simply better than conditions, because you can always pull em off.

You do realise that there are other builds then conditions on a necro?
I only see people naming necros overhere in the ranged/condition style. They can do so much more then that. Think a little out of the box.

Henrik.7560:

Before: 1# Thief (as always) #2 Mesmer (glamour builds) #3 Elementallist (superior AoE)

After: 1# Thief (still haven’t nerfed heartseeker -.- ) #2 Guardian (superior healing) #3 Mesmer (badly nerfed)

Why it changed:
Thieves are still overpowered and will stay because they denny that heartseeker spammers are completely easy to counter (steal- 3k heartseeker- 3k, 4k, 6k, 6k), apparently isnt overpowered. The steal nerf was good, but that other skills are far too powerful. Cloak and Dagger should have a nerf too, its a source of stealth, enemy vulnerability, AND deals 6k damage on crits.
Mesmers had a HUGE nerf which ruined every confusion build as of its damage is crap now, losing their zerg popularity.
Elementallist had a HUGE nerf as well which stuff RTL up for zerg travel, and skills while in mist form and many other things.

He said it perfectly +1

Henrik.7560:

Thieves are still overpowered and will stay because they denny that heartseeker spammers are completely easy to counter (steal- 3k heartseeker- 3k, 4k, 6k, 6k), apparently isnt overpowered.

Why don’t we just nerf them, then?

Maybe make it so that their damage output is kitten, right? I mean, that would only be fair. their crits SHOULD hit for negative dmg, right? Why don’t we beef up revealed to 3 minutes because everybody just hates it when they stealth, too?

First of all if you think thieves are not overpowered you should learn a new build or level to 80 first. And if we are nerfing mesmers because they barely pulled off WvW in the first place, lets just nerf thief/warrior/guardian 50% damage to bring them to our level it’s only fair right? lmao

so are necro’s good or not their is so much confusion on this post lol