Guild Wars 2

What is the best profession to lead as a commander?
I have Warrior, Guardian, and Engineer as the three I can’t decide between. They all offer something to the party, so I was wondering if I had missed something that would make one preferred to the other.

What ever profession you can survive the longest on, as you will be targeted by the enemy, don’t think in terms of party support put your own survivability.

Guardian or Warrior for the heavy armor. Play which one you like the most.

Blackarps.1974:

Guardian or Warrior for the heavy armor. Play which one you like the most.

You signature explains everything.

Engineer is not good.

Guardian is probably the best, close up by Hammer Warriors. Necro is acceptable. Mesmer is acceptable too.

Like others have said, guardian or warrior. Best survivability, the hammer can blast fields, and when you want to be the last player alive in a battle so full PVT with either of these can take quite a bit of damage

Guardian is the best by a mile. Warrior is OK and Mesmer is a maybe.

If it’s a mindless zerg you usually command against enemy with brain, then it doesnt really matter, you will die regardless of class.

If it’s a serious group, then u would need to be someone who can lead the charge and survive, while also being highly mobile. GS/SS full tank warrior is the best for this, the hammer provides CC and some AoE but it’s not really what you need being commander. Guardian is the close second for their survivability.

Necro with dire stats is best, Out of those 3 warrior.

Warriors are the most common for commanding from what i’ve seen. Prob because they have the most survivability. But at times I think this becomes an achilles heel because if they aren’t mindful, they may not realize everyone else in their group isnt as tanky. As well warriors are highly mobile, so they may leave their zerg behind.

So a close second is a guardian, sure less tanky, but is less likely to charge blindy into the zerg and getting their entire zerg killed. As well, less likely to leave their zerg behind, because guardians are slow.

Necro isnt a bad 2nd choice either. Since Necro’s with the right build have a ton of tankiness.

But either way any class can be a good commanding class in the hands of a skilled player.

I’ve commanded on a guardian, and its fun. Can survive longer than most of my zerg.
I’ve also commanded on my mesmer, which is bascially dead in 10 seconds lol.

Im tempted to try commanding on a warrior but,that would require me to level a warrior to 80.

There are no best profession for commanders i know excellent commanders that go from thieves, engi’s mesmers, it all deppends you attitude towards your populations and the result of your actions.

As long as it isn’t a thief I think you will be fine.

Warrior is best for commanding pugs because you can get away when they get steamrolled with no stab. Guardian is better for a semi organized group because it add more to the team. Engineer is just… no, even with their new shiny and reliable stability still no.

Funny thing is, one of our best commanders is an engi. He does extremely well, but he has gurds wars in his group providing what he himself is missing.

If you dont want to rely on other peoples group buffs, go guard or war, I think guard is slightly better because extreme mobility makes it too hard for rest of your people to stay on or near your tag while commanding. I use my guard when I tag up. I also play war, mesmer, ele, necro so I understand fully what I can and cant bring to the group on each toon.

And as others have stated, when commanding, go all out for survivability, stability, stunbreakers. leave support and everything else to your people, your primary role is to be the focus, the rally point and not go down.

We have a pretty awesome engi commander who usually outlives the group that follows him lol

I used to command alot on Thief, if you are willing to give up some damage in favor ofa bit of survivability it works really well, especially in those fights where you want your zerg to push forward. Alot of momentum comes from commander positioning and if your sees your tag in the heart of the fight they usually crash down on the enemy more effectively to get to your position. Thief is fun to pull this off with because you can hop in behind the enemy frontline during a chaotic battle and drop stealth while issuing commands.

Heizero.9183:

I used to command alot on Thief, if you are willing to give up some damage in favor ofa bit of survivability it works really well, especially in those fights where you want your zerg to push forward. Alot of momentum comes from commander positioning and if your sees your tag in the heart of the fight they usually crash down on the enemy more effectively to get to your position. Thief is fun to pull this off with because you can hop in behind the enemy frontline during a chaotic battle and drop stealth while issuing commands.

I can also see how being able to stealth could come in handy. Want to see whats around the corner? Tell your peeps not to follow you, and take a peek.

A good commander isn’t defined by their build or class but if we are talking all things being equal a guardian is phenomenal and the premier class for group play. Even more so now that party priority is in full effect. Not having a guardian in your party is like coming to a gun fight with a nerf bat.

Only one class is ridiculously tough in groups, buffs the hell out of everything near it, heals like a machine, removes conditions, has lots of control and AoE tags like crazy. Even during heavy lag they are still good.

The light and medium armor classes have a tough time leading from the front since so much of their defense comes from evasive abilities rather than reduction/healing. Most bunker guardians are reliant on 3+ players around them to be awesomely powerful.

Guardian, not even close.

Guardian or warrior would be my choice them being able to tank fairly well in the front lines and both have very tanky builds available. Since their main purpose is to guide the team to the target and survive rather than be damagers themselves.

But I do like the staff guardian who’s tagging range is a lot and able to keep more enemies contested than a warrior’s skills 1.

Guardian survivability is pretty much unbeatable with sigil of stamina, pvt and clerics

Ugh, this old again…

Being a guardian isnt going to help if no one wish to follow him into battle. Crappy guardians/warriors are badly over represented since people think its the ultimate commander class, then they die and cry all over the place because they ran into an impossible situations 3/4 of the people following him saw coming a mile away. If your pug zerg outnumber the enemy 4 to 1 then good for you, you could have played a Quaggan and still not die so arguing about what class you are is pointless.

Knowing the flow of battle is far more important than having the “correct” class. I had a laughable situation the other day where a commander stopped outside the door of a breached keep (rushing to defend) in order to stack buffs, while friendly defenders was dying inside. What do you think happened? Few listened. Everyone ran through the kitten door to help, there was no time to stack – especially not outside a keep that could have been taken any second.

During the evening less and less of us wanted to follow him regardless of the class. How strange :/

TLDR: Put the commander tag on your main or the class you enjoy the most in WvW. Even worse than seeing a poor commander is seeing someone play with a class he doesnt like playing.

Having it on a ranged class is useless.

Dawdler.8521:

TLDR: Put the commander tag on your main or the class you enjoy the most in WvW. Even worse than seeing a poor commander is seeing someone play with a class he doesnt like playing.

This more than anything else, if you don’t enjoy the class you’re playing then there’s no point.
I have a tag on both my engineer and guardian, and I actually find I survive in zergs way longer with my engineer (with soldiers gear). (tip, combine all the damage reduction traits for when you’re stunned, with food it can get up to about -80% damage).

That said, the above posted has a point, don’t use a ranged build when commanding, you need to be in melee (any class can have melee builds though).

Marty McFly.9084:

What is the best profession to lead as a commander?
I have Warrior, Guardian, and Engineer as the three I can’t decide between. They all offer something to the party, so I was wondering if I had missed something that would make one preferred to the other.

Commanding on my engi) Would not recomend only because class is complexive and people ussualy making useless builds for it, and being just useless unit as player or even rallybots. I’m 60% pvt, 40 bers..something like this, and i’m not rallyboting) 1 good point in that is that u have your own 2 waterfields then u only need to call blasts on u, not waiting for non-ts eles.

Warrior or Guardian is best choice. Warrior good HP pull, surviveability and support.

Guardian awesome aswell for commanding. U can have alot of survivability +great support for your zerg with leas and buffs.

Necro can be good if good build.

Other classes…i don’t think so, but u can always test and ask another commanders who uses that classes, but if u enjoy playing warrior/guardian – go for it as a commander, it will be the best choice.

If u just starting don’t go on RANGED classes, because i see this problem even on guardians commanders that equiping stuff pressing 1 1 1 1 11, and they think thir zerg hitting same targets but they got no idea what this idiot with blue marks means.

If it’s pug raid u better show them by your position where your zerg’s dmg spot must be, cause standing on 600 range and saying “drop it here” will be disaster.

Warrior, guardian, thief.

Eggyokeo.9705:

What ever profession you can survive the longest on, as you will be targeted by the enemy, don’t think in terms of party support put your own survivability.

Yea, whatever keeps you alive. I’d rather follow a bad pin over a dead pin :P

As a thief commander i would say it is a lot easier on my group for me to lead confrontations as my guardian.

Stay away from necromancer as a commander.

1. Slowest class in the game
2. No party buffs, little party support
3. No reflects, immunities, vigor and Death shroud gets worse the bigger the fight
4. You are paper if you get focused or CC’d
5. Your defensive trait line offers minion support and no defense
6. Can’t be healed when you use your class mechanic. (And you are even slower)

Definitely a ranger. Make sure to wear berzerker equipment, use a longbow and shortbow, and only run around with a giant brown bear named Yogi. In fact, it might actually be better if you just didn’t wear armor. Nothing is more terrifying to enemy zergs than a longbow ranger and his bear charging them, naked and screaming as the day he was born.

Dawdler.8521:

Being a guardian isnt going to help if no one wish to follow him into battle. Crappy guardians/warriors are badly over represented since people think its the ultimate commander class, then they die and cry all over the place because they ran into an impossible situations 3/4 of the people following him saw coming a mile away.

That’s a valid point. Commanders should have “a feel” about what the raid they are leading is capable of. If you base that on your personal boosted survivability, you will be last man standing all right. In every battle. Literally.

I’m also not a big fan of the “high personal mobility” for commanders. Especially if you are leading PUG raids. All you will accomplish by zooming across the map constantly is you will lose all your raid, period. My opinion is mobility-wise commanders should rely on what their raid provides in terms of speed buff.

Having mobility in terms of being able to get out of sticky situations quick is also double-edged as while having escaped personally, you will probably have half of your raid stuck there and dead so (if possible) you shouldn’t have put your brothers in arms in position they cannot handle as a raid in the first place.

Pureglass bearbow ranger.

Thief/Ranger recommendations… I am going to assume these are purely jokes. Absolutely the worst classes to choose as a commander barring using the tag as havok group rally.

Well, actually I wouldn’t agree about rangers.

My experience with ranger on WvW is surprisingly that it feels exactly as guardian in terms of survivability while running with raid. Granted, I was running guild raid build with GS/axe+warhorn, but anyway. Though that particular build was quite selfish (as if all ranger builds aren’t lol), but at the same time it was providing arguably best support for raid ranger can provide while, again, being on par with our raid guardians in terms of sustain, and, I’d call it, playstle feel. Sounds like a plan for a commander class, isn’kitten..

A little bit of background, you can skip this if you don’t feel like reading. So my main initially was a mesmer and that was a decision to try something new in a new game, previously my default class choice in basically every game was paladin/templar kind of class. That was quite a trip tbh with mesmer on WvW. Then at some point along the path I have switched to guardian and immediately felt myself at home. And never looked back for another main. Then I’ve started leveling and occasionally running with our raid with all professions.

The point is, I know pretty well how it feels like to be a guardian in all kinds of fights on WvW. My ranger felt almost the same.

Yaro.3251:

Well, actually I wouldn’t agree about rangers.

My experience with ranger on WvW is surprisingly that it feels exactly as guardian in terms of survivability while running with raid.

I am going to assume that the said ranger was standing near several guardians. No way does a ranger do as well as a bunker guardian in a zerg. The dodge heals on a guardian alone out strips anything a ranger can do and that doesn’t even get into group stability, alt healing, blocks, control, boon sharing, condition removal, retaliation, etc.

It isn’t even close not even remotely close.

Indeed. But current meta guarantees you’l be surrounded by guardians/warriors. One of staple GS ranger sustain perks though is an evade every third swing. That alone is huge.

I’m not up to discussing specifics here, but the point is, and I was really surprised by that initially, it felt exactly as guardian sustain- and play feel-wise. Not like any other profession, and I ran all of them in raids.

And yeah, warrior is NOT a profession.

Marty McFly.9084:

What is the best profession to lead as a commander?
I have Warrior, Guardian, and Engineer as the three I can’t decide between. They all offer something to the party, so I was wondering if I had missed something that would make one preferred to the other.

Any one of those three can be built to survive in the front lines, it all depends on how you want to survive in the front lines.

Warrior – More the solo survivor requires very little to live in the zerg besides proper gear and utilities, there is also the option of support based play with shout builds so there are more options for a warrior to survive pinned than most others. I tend to pin up on my warrior when leading militia around as I need to be able to charge into the fray and survive long enough for the militia to overcome their fear of death and push in.

Guardian – The group support heavy and one of the best commanders for heavy group play focus. With shouts they buff their allies tremendously and increase their and your personal survival, the issue is you need allies to buff to get the heals to increase personal survival, the guardian shout build can also be easily switched to a solo survivable meditate build, or other variations of boon sharing. With reflects and/or weapon heals this is a very good pin choice for guild group play and synergy. Cannot forget tome of courage either which is a heal spamming elite.

Engineer – A lot of people don’t feel engi’s offer the same survival as other classes, and while somewhat true, there are a number of specs which offer incredible survival and group support, most revolving around turrets and blasting fields. When you throw in bomb heals you have a very nice key stone for group play and a very good commanding class. The only issue with engi is they have a much higher skill curve and make pinning on it harder if the class and spec aren’t second nature to the user.

Overall any is really good and can make a good pin I would personally recommend whichever of the three you are most comfortable and most leveled Wexp wise because its going to give you the best return when pinned. Hope this helps answer your questions!