Guild Wars 2

One thing I liked about DAoC was just running with a massive zerg and steamrolling everyone we saw while taking towers and keeps. Also running with AoE bomb groups where 8 people could kill 50 was hilarious. What would be the best profession for running with the zerg? I have never liked small man PvP or 1v1 crap. I wanna zerg it up and just drop AoE death on everyone and watch the numbers fly across my screen.

Guardian is pretty good and useful for the group when in the middle of a zerg

hugemistake.5317:

Guardian is pretty good and useful for the group when in the middle of a zerg

I dont want to be useful for my group i want to be detrimental to theirs.

Kirito.8796:

warrior/thief if you want to see big numbers

More than elementalist? Also how come a thief? Arent they gonna notice me when im trying to stab people with my daggers?

If you want AOEs and numbers in a zerg that would be elementalist or necro.

Despite what people may tell you, there is no “best” class for anything. Every class has it’s perks in every situation:
Guardians: Great support abilities and survivability;
Warriors: Massive Point Blank AoE, can take a ton of damage and have a lot of support utilities;
Engineers: A wide variety of support abilities, bundles for dishing out insane amount of AoE;
Rangers: Probably the best healing ability in the game, long-range sniper support, AoE cripple, spirits;
Thieves: Single target assassin, AoE stealth capability, shortbow offers spammable AoE;
Elementalists: AoE heals, conjured weapons and offensive AoE;
Mesmers: An elite on short cooldown that stealths a ton of people for a long period of time, strong PBAoE, portals;
Necromancers: Great crowd control capabilities, boon/condition management, lots of combo fields.

The best zerg would have a variety of classes, but since you’re looking for a class that deals high AoE DPS — I’d recommend either the Engineer with the grenade kit or the Elementalist with a staff build.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

hugemistake.5317:

Guardian is pretty good and useful for the group when in the middle of a zerg

I dont want to be useful for my group i want to be detrimental to theirs.

Kirito.8796:

warrior/thief if you want to see big numbers

More than elementalist? Also how come a thief? Arent they gonna notice me when im trying to stab people with my daggers?

Being useful to your group = being detrimental to your enemy.

Rregardless, if you want to be dealing damage and in the middle of the fight and chain stunning people, go with hammer warrior. If you don’t mind a little less damage, go hammer guardian. If you want damage and combo fields, go d/d ele. If you don’t like being too close, go staff ele. If you’re just plain reckless, go thief for cluster bombs/dagger storm.

5 necros chain epidemic and corupt boons zerg enders

Been running around with my newbie d/d ele and having a blast gotten 4 levels so far cause our server controls nothing so we taking everything now

NOT a thief, if you aren’t a good thief player. Low hp pool and low toughness make thieves hard to be effectively played in wvwvw. If all you want to do is just spamming an aoe from the distance thief is fine. If you want to be REALLY effective with not that much effort a warrior would be a better choice.

In a zerg maybe, but thief is a very powerful class everywhere else in WvW, whether you’re good or not. Engineer or ele would be the ones to pick for AoE damage in large group combat.

What? Thief not good for a zerg? Please! A single thief can cause havoc on a siege line. Stack for condition, place caltrops, sneak your way to the line, drop your caltrops, CnD the siege, and watch 10 people carelessly hack the air while you’re causing cripple & bleeds and preventing them from helping out the main zerg offensive. Need to escape? Drop shadow refuge a safe distance away where the enemy isn’t looking, blinding powder, or Dagger Storm your way out. Sure, not a lot of kills, but if your definitely helping out your zerg and when your zerg finally gets to you, you’ll be surrounded by loot bags.

I dunno. But I’ve been leveling an engineer in WvW by hiding behind and flamethrowering/grenading everything that moves. Seems like a good gig.

I think the thief sentiment runs the lines of they are not very noticeable unless they are running small gank groups. You are definitely going to notice that elle spam in a zerg by comparison.

Staff Ele
Staff Necro
Grenade Engineer
Hammer Warrior

The Engineer was arguably the best at raw targeted AE damage until the #1 skill damage was nerfed, but it’s still pretty good. The problem is, a Nade Engi doesn’t bring much else to the table in terms of utility besides the Vulnerability stacking that goes along with the grenade damage. Also, you have to spam target that damage, which can be rough on the fingers after awhile.

Staff Ele (which is what I’m currently playing) is pretty fun and useful in large group WvW. Lots of AE, lots of combo fields, good utility, and Mist Form for a decent “oh shoot” button. You won’t see massive damage numbers unless you go full glass cannon and die to a slight breeze, but the damage can be consistent and add up depending on the circumstances.

Necro. I never played one, but I understand their wells and epidemic are really good in WvW.

Hammer Warrior. This is the guy you leap into the fray with, smashing the ground and stunning those in the area, then doing damage with big sweeping strikes. Here’s a video of a guild that used Hammer Warrior trains with excellent results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hxN-DOYbw I’ve never played one but it looks pretty fun. Again, no massive numbers here but very effective when played right.

You can play a monkey and be good in a zerg.

Suralin.3947:

What? Thief not good for a zerg? Please! A single thief can cause havoc on a siege line. Stack for condition, place caltrops, sneak your way to the line, drop your caltrops, CnD the siege, and watch 10 people carelessly hack the air while you’re causing cripple & bleeds and preventing them from helping out the main zerg offensive. Need to escape? Drop shadow refuge a safe distance away where the enemy isn’t looking, blinding powder, or Dagger Storm your way out. Sure, not a lot of kills, but if your definitely helping out your zerg and when your zerg finally gets to you, you’ll be surrounded by loot bags.

Nope. You probably run with unorganized zergs and against unorganized zergs. I’m talking about guild vs guild zerg fights. Here’s why aren’t easy to play in that situation:

1) Conditions are easily removed = condition based build isn’t viable.
2) you HAVE to stik to your commander = all thieves escapes aren’t viable (no SR, no Shadowstep, no runs to go away and get out of combat.
3) Low HP pool and low toughness = easily killed.

Thieves in random wvwvw zergs are fine just as any of the other professions.

*Please notice that I’m not saying thieves aren’t good in wvwvw, just that they require more … hmm… dedication to be effectively played.

VakarisJ.5619:

Mesmers: An elite on short cooldown that stealths a ton of people for a long period of time, strong PBAoE, portals;

To add a few things.

- Mass Invis: Elite = 5 target limit, invisibility for 5 seconds in your area.
- Strong confusion application, through Glammour field build, or Shatter build
- Time Warp: Elite = Powerful tool for both golems and players.
- Portals: Portals
– Veil: Utility = Unlimited target limit, when placed at the front of a zerg group, will cloak all who pass the field within 4 seconds.
(The reason it’s unlimited, is it’s a Line effect. All line effects are infinite target limit, though line of warding on the guardian can only stop 5 people at once from passing through it.)

Veil is easily your strongest utility with a Zerg. If done right, things will look something like this. Which is powerful in combination with Might, and retalliation stacking before the zerg moves forward.

Mesmer or thief are your choices enough said.

For running with the zerg in particular:

Guardian: Extremely powerful healer with amazing survivability. If you build your character right and play right, many people consider it the most OP class in WvW at the moment. Not enough people play support/healer, as I suppose it can lead to less loot bags dropping, but if you want to be a huge asset to your zerg, be a good healing guardian.

Elementalist: These have some insanely powerful combo finishers that can be used to give area buffs and are currently used in some annoying tactics where everyone has perma-swiftness, tons of might, etc. They also have very good AOEs, and d/d elementalists are considered very overpowered. However, there has been clear talk from Anet that nerfs are coming.

Mesmer: Mesmers are not very powerful on their own anymore compared to what they used to be, and compared to something like a thief. However they have great survivability if played well and have some of the best support skills of any class. A good mesmer who’s a team player can really make a difference to the zerg, either by providing great combo fields, portaling people, making people go invisible, etc. If built right they are also decent at providing boons and removing conditions for the entire zerg.

The other classes can be nice in the zerg or solo, but the three above are definitely the most useful to the zerg in WvW at the moment.

There is no best profession for running in large groups, but if you want to see yourself doing a lot of damage, while putting up Cripple and Bleed on your enemies, you might want to try a Thief. Signet of Malice (heal on each hit, incl. Conditions like Bleed/Poison) combined with Dagger Storm, allows you to pretty much dive straight into the zergs, even with more glass cannon builds. Once you’re done spinning around, throw Stealth on yourself and pull back, switch to Pistol/Shortbow and fire at the enemies from a safer distance.

If you can spot a Warrior, by all means Steal from them to get Whirling Axe, as that is basically another spinning-round you can do while being healed at a rapid rate.

People tends to underestimate the amount of damage a Thief can provide in the middle of a zerg clash, on multiple targets, not just a single gib. And that’s combined with pretty decent survivability.

As a bonus, your Steal can also provide yourself and nearby allies with Might, Fury and Swiftness, if you spend at least 10 points in Trickery. Shadow Refuge can be thrown down to save downed players from being finished and/or as a regenerative heal to yourself and other allies within it (limited by “AoE cap”). You can also Trait to share your venoms with allies nearby. Shortbow also works well for pushing back enemies on top of a tower wall, due to good damage, poison and bleeds.

PS: An often overlooked thing, is Thief’s ability to block projectile attacks (e.g., counter-Trebuchet/Catapult shots) with Smoke Screen. It requires a bit more work than the Elementalist’s Swirling Wind perhaps, but once you’re used to “reading” projectiles in air, you can quite easily help with the rotation of protecting your groups siege.

By the way, I feel I should mention that while thieves are powerful, I don’t see why people are suggesting them as a class for running with the zerg. Thieves are more useful on their own or in small thief groups. While they can go into the enemy zerg, make a kill, and get out, they aren’t really any more useful in a large group than other classes like the Necro or Ranger.

The utility the Mesmer brings to the table wins it for me. There’s nothing better than popping Feedback and watching the sheer chaos it creates.

Joining an organized guild and discussing with them, might also be effective.

Mesmer .. they give zerg speed buff, portals (although more limited now), invisible veil to cloak an entire zerg … and they’re pretty tough to kill for a cloth wearing class. Under water fighting, they’re amazing.

I dont really see how a mesmer or support guardian will see lots of numbers pop up on my screen, which is what I want.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

I dont really see how a mesmer or support guardian will see lots of numbers pop up on my screen, which is what I want.

Feedback.

OK been playing with a Mesmer for the last 2 hours doing non stop spvp to get a feel for the class. They are horrible. Even classes that everyone says are terrible in PvP like Warriors and Rangers owned me. Same thing happened when I tried Elementalist. Guess I will have to try another class until I find one thats good at pvp.

So, here is the best advice I can give you when it comes to PvP, no matter the game (to an extent):
The best class in a PvP situation is the class you understand, you are effective with it and also enjoy playing!

1. You must understand you class to know how much you can extend and who is your food vs who is your enemy

2. You can understand your class, but for some unknown magical reason you cannot play it; be it either because your micro-management is not at the level required by the class or it could be that you are not experienced with the role (if it is the last situation, play it more to get familiar with the role)

3. If you do not enjoy the class your effectiveness will drop visibly resulting in being detrimental to your own team and helping the enemy.

So final line is: try all classes in sPvP (it does not require you to level for a large number of hours) and get familiar with the tools at their disposal, skill set required, the roles it can fill. When joining an unorganized WvWvW match you’d probably throw all you learned away, but if you like the class, you can easily adapt

V.

To be good in allies zerg you must have:
(than more of it you have than better you are)
1. Good, fast and constant nontarget wide AOE-damage
2. Good nontarget wide AOE support skills
3. Good survivability (HP, Defense, Self-cleanse etc.)
4. Good nontarget AOE-control
5. Good nontarget AOE-debuffs

1. Elem, Guardian, Warrior, Engi, Necro, Thief, Ranger
2. Mesmer (portal and veil only, but it is very-very useful), Elem, Guardian, Warrior, Necro
3. Guardian, Warrior, Elem, Thief
4. Warrior, Guardian, Elem, Necro, Engi
5. Elem, Necro, Engi, Thief

So, we have a 3 leaders: Elem, Guardian and Warrior. Every zerg musthave 2-3 Mesmers too.
All another classes - unneeded. Especially Rangers and Thieves - this is solo-gank or small scaled group (2-4 ppls) classes.

The best class for running with a zerg is ele. There is no question on that. Strong aoe damage, speed, and heals. It is the one class that can do it all.

lol @ people who say thief

Builds for running in a good group that can defeat big zergs and running in a zerg. Are 2 completely different builds.
If you want to run in a good group your build will loose a lot of dps mostly.
And every class has something usefull to bring to these kinda group, with the right build.

Zerg you can just go glasscanon. And you take a class thats good at dps like the elementalist warrior or thief.

style.6173:

The best class for running with a zerg is ele. There is no question on that. Strong aoe damage, speed, and heals. It is the one class that can do it all.

lol @ people who say thief

Don’t forget thiefs can provide AoE stealth, which I have seen completely kitten

Pretty much all classes can contribute well to a zerg. The bigger the diversity the better. I think with zergs the biggest problem is not having any or many of a specific class.

sadly this game has 2 standards for WvW:

1. you have what is good for your group to run with, so high support builds

2. and you have what gets you a lot of lootbags and badges: high aoe damage builds…

The high support builds get far less drops than the others.
Those drops matter, since they include rares or even exotics. Badges aside.

In our guild runs I often hear what others are getting in exact the same groups, exact the same fights. And the damage builds get waaaay more drops than the support builds.

But what builds do guilds ask for in a group? Those very support builds… they are always what the group seems to ‘need’ the most. Yet it’s the dps build that gets the best reward?
This system is utterly flawed.
Support needs to get better rewards, in all aspects of this game.

sostronk.8167:

style.6173:

The best class for running with a zerg is ele. There is no question on that. Strong aoe damage, speed, and heals. It is the one class that can do it all.

lol @ people who say thief

Don’t forget thiefs can provide AoE stealth, which I have seen completely kitten

Pretty much all classes can contribute well to a zerg. The bigger the diversity the better. I think with zergs the biggest problem is not having any or many of a specific class.

most organised WvW guilds that I see apparantly have a very uneven set-up of professions.
Count the guardians, than count the engineers… Count the warriors, than count the rangers…

Some professions are far better for raiding guilds than others, even if they still have that one engineer or those few rangers for aoe.

The biggest impact classes in zerg fights:

1. Necro
2. Mesmer
3. Guardian
4. Elementalist

SilverWF.4789:

To be good in allies zerg you must have:
(than more of it you have than better you are)
1. Good, fast and constant nontarget wide AOE-damage
2. Good nontarget wide AOE support skills
3. Good survivability (HP, Defense, Self-cleanse etc.)
4. Good nontarget AOE-control
5. Good nontarget AOE-debuffs

1. Elem, Guardian, Warrior, Engi, Necro, Thief, Ranger
2. Mesmer (portal and veil only, but it is very-very useful), Elem, Guardian, Warrior, Necro
3. Guardian, Warrior, Elem, Thief
4. Warrior, Guardian, Elem, Necro, Engi
5. Elem, Necro, Engi, Thief

So, we have a 3 leaders: Elem, Guardian and Warrior. Every zerg musthave 2-3 Mesmers too.
All another classes – unneeded. Especially Rangers and Thieves – this is solo-gank or small scaled group (2-4 ppls) classes.

Just as a note to the above post. Some of those classes can do exactly what he is saying, however, in some cases they are mutually exclusive to being able to do other things well in that list at the same time. It is dependent on weapon, spec, and gear.

A bunch of hammer warriors, guardians and epidemic condi necros, with the occasional mesmer.

In an organized zerg you can be any class and be useful. In a pug zerg, ranged classes with escapes are the best so you don’t die when the pugs do something dumb like run into a bunch of cannon fire. When I switched from my necro to my ele, I noticed I got a lot more bags, most likely because my AoEs were doing a lot more damage. Remember aoe caps at 5 targets (which sucks) so things that look cool like necromancer’s epidemic aren’t nearly as impressive as they seem.

Veltoss.9135:

Elementalist: These have some insanely powerful combo finishers that can be used to give area buffs and are currently used in some annoying tactics where everyone has perma-swiftness, tons of might, etc. They also have very good AOEs, and d/d elementalists are considered very overpowered. However, there has been clear talk from Anet that nerfs are coming.

You are misinformed and need to learn about classes before speaking.

A bunker d/d ele is good support in a zerg fight, but poor damage. A DPS d/d ele in a zerg fight more often than not is a huge negative because they die before doing much and trigger rallies. The only realistic argument that D/D eles are overpowered is 1v1. Not because they dish out a ton of damage, but due to the fact that they can outlast people.

A staff ele is low mobility and low defense regardless of their gear. They can use CC fields to control areas of the fight while doing moderate/above average AOE damage (compared to the capability of other classes). If they go full glass cannon, they will have to rely 100% of positioning and range as most classes can rip through their light armor and 14k health and low toughness with 2 or 3 hits. (sometimes 1 hit from another high damage glass cannon)

D/D eles can only keep perma swiftness on themselves. Staff eles can both keep perma swiftness on themselves and add supplemental swiftness to people around them by dropping their air 5 combo field and having people blast finish in it.

Regarding might stacks. A ‘buffbot’ bunker d/d ele variation running boon duration can in fact keep dishing might stacks out to allies. Like anything else, this is limited to how many players it can effect. If people stay on top of the ele, they can probably keep slightly north of 10 on them on average. Of course, people don’t generally stay on top of the ele unless using the noob zergball tactic. heh. Staff eles typically don’t provide much in the way of might stacks. They do add some to allies, but it is typically extremely minimal because their fire field generally does not get dropped at their feet like a d/d’s whose main one if pbaoe.

So yeah, you really need to learn what you are talking about before buying into forum nonsense that is far out of touch with reality.

Spammer warriors bull rushing really doesnt impress me any more. Really easy to break.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

OK been playing with a Mesmer for the last 2 hours doing non stop spvp to get a feel for the class. They are horrible. Even classes that everyone says are terrible in PvP like Warriors and Rangers owned me. Same thing happened when I tried Elementalist. Guess I will have to try another class until I find one thats good at pvp.

Iguess you need to find something that fits your play style, my mesmer leads sPvP boards 90% of the time and rarely dies even in a 2v1 or sometimes 3v1, you may be going about this wrong and thinking big numbers mean win, I think survivability trumps all in the long run

Great the only thing I am finding really fun will probably fail in WvW and thats a full glass cannon Warrior with dual axes. 80% crit chance with “For Great Justice” up and 60% crit damage. Been tearing it up in sPvP but Im pretty sure I will never even get close enough to anyone in a Zerg fight to even cause a single point of damage. Which is sad. What ever happened to playing the build you liked and not just whats OP/FoTM?

That build is much better suited for skirmishing or catching people delaying behind the rest of a group. Running blindly in the middle of a zerg is a very specific part of WvW, and if you really want to use your build, you should choose a part of WvW better suited for it than zerging.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

What ever happened to playing the build you liked and not just whats OP/FoTM?

That’s actually what most of us do. Usually that means we aren’t uberslaughter machines, or if we are it is at our own peril. I play ele most often because I like the versatility and the animations, but I dabble in warrior, guardian, mesmer and engineeer, too. They’re all fun to me in different ways.

the only prof that has little to nothing to offer is the ranger. all others have very good contributions to large scale fights.

Depends on your goal really, any will do, if you want to get your kill counter up for wvw, any weapon or skill with aoe is pretty choice.

If you want to see lots of numbers, I have seen a bunch on my warrior with a bow, and my engi has some nice tools for that too, but nothing has topped all the confusion numbers I see flying around with my glamour mesmer.

I have heard ele and necro have great AOE too, but I haven’t play them much.

Gaiawolf.8261:

If you want to see lots of numbers, I have seen a bunch on my warrior with a bow, and my engi has some nice tools for that too, but nothing has topped all the confusion numbers I see flying around with my glamour mesmer.

I have heard ele and necro have great AOE too, but I haven’t play them much.

Warrior, go hammer, huge aoe arch, really solid weapon
Ranger, axe, bows with piercing shots, traps
thieves, shortbow, daggerstorm =D
Guardians, greatsword or staff have lots of aoe coverage, hammer aint bad just a bit slow.
Necro, staff and wells
Engineer, grenade, flamethrower and mines can do it.
Ele, they have tons of aoe, staff works great and d/d if your more aggressive.
Mesmer, Only class I have limited time with so far, clones and staff? =P