Guild Wars 2

I play different classes in WvW, mainly guardian, warrior, necro, ranger and engineer.
All of my toons are builded for wvw, and I get on Teamspeak every time I come into the Mist War.
When i play guardian-berserker-reaper, it’s all good. Liutenants put me into a melee party, i have stabs,resistance,boons and so on.
The same thing doesnt happen when i am on my frontline scrapper or with my frontline healer druid. In fact they put me into that “Bottom-of-the-squad-useless-party”, full of thieves, mesmers, engineers and rangers without any kind of support from other classes. A lot of people will understand this.
The fact is, even if you put your efforts on building yourself correctly (i do also gvg’s with my druid and scrapper), even if you bring your food maximizing your performance, even if you come on ts and listening at your commy, people still think that classes that are not rev-guard-war-necro-ele are complete trash.
They don’t mind if you are a boonshare chrono, they will put you into that “useless-bottom of the squad-party” like a normal mesmer with 0 group utilities.
They don’t mind if you are an healing bot druid that can outheal x3 an ele with tons of waterfields, boons and blasts, they will put you into that party because they think you are kitteneless zerker pewpew ranger.
They don’t mind if you are a frontline scrapper with tons and tons of condi cleanses,waterfields and good aoe damage, they will put you into that party because “engi is better at roaming”, you know.
If is full, sometimes you get even kicked from the squad. This is racism against those classes. I played this game for more than 4 years, but if I am on my druid, people still prefer a full signet warrior with 2k ap in the squad, or a minionmaster necro because “Hey, they are warrior and necro”.
The fact is, people’s mentality is locked in the “2 years ago old meta”, when rangers,mesmers and engies were almost useless except few skills. Even with HoT, the mentality persists.
Druid is a fantastic healer that can push with the melees sustaining them with indinite waterfields, scrapper is a very useful frontliner with tons of damage and group utilities, and chrono brings very good utilities to the group like boonsharing, veils and wells.
I think that people should try new team-comps (like most gvg guilds are doing), or atleast give them a chance, because right now World vs World accepts only 5/9 classes.

Let the haters hate, they will do that anyway. Form your own squad and pewpew the kitten out of other haters.

It’s not racism, it’s classism or professionism (since we don’t call them class here but professions). It would be racism if they called you out for being a Charr or somenthing.

But back on topic. I couldn’t care less about what people think I should be playing. If I want to play mesmer, I will play it, and the commander can go kitten himself if he want me to change profession. But I never bothered entering squads before and I continue to do so.

Don’t hate the players hate the game. Its not their fault that some classes just aren’t as well suited for zergplay as others.

Thats not to say they are entirely useless or anything. You can have some of them and its fine. But when half the zerg is made out of rangers, mesmers, thiefs and engis you are gonna struggle.

@Pride
I agree completely, but this does not justify the fact that those classes are left without any kind of support. A zerg based on ranger/teef/mesmer/engi is not good at all, yes, on the other side they bring unique utilities if builded correctly so there is nothing wrong if a large group have those classes aswell (of course in less numbers than guards-revs-ele-necros). The fact that they are left in the bottom of the squad, kicked, and blamed even if they are experienced, in TS and with a good build kinda makes me sad.

You get this on all classes except guardian and necro, not just those 3.

Oh so you are a full cleric tempest doing 1000+ hp/s AoE healing to the melee ball? Lets put you together with 4 other tempests, you’ll be fiiiiiine.

Dont play druid but if im right then Druids only really have 1 decent water field? the other glyphs heal but the field left is a Retalliation field? the other thing about these classes Mesmer exluded is most of there skills are Single target, for WvW most people are looking for AoE damage which Guards,Revs,Eles,Necros and Mesmers can provide, it isnt racist xD just Commanders and lieutenants will be looking for a Comp that has 0 Medium classes in it

kappa.2036:

even kicked from the squad

I never got kicked from squad because I was using ranger (the days when ranger was “ugh”). You just need to find a server where people dont get kicked because of their class. On Piken we just ask for a specific class if we lack it. No one gets kicked if they dont change class or arent on the desireable. Why kick people if they feel more comfortable with another class? As said: find your server.

PS: Its “Classism” :P

Mini Crinny.6190:

most people are looking for AoE damage which Guards,Revs,Eles,Necros and Mesmers can provide

Druid can nuke down single targets really fast since staff autoattack isnt a projectile, staff3 has a great heal, and staff4 is awesome for slowing down the backline since they mostly lack stability/cleanse. So even with a roaming build youre usefull

@Mini Crinny
^Thats the standard mentality bois^
Only 1 waterfield? CA#4 + Staff #5 with the Quick Draw trait + Healing spring (healing skill) grants 7 waterfields in 30 seconds with the right rotation lol.
And scrapper have “mostly” single target damage? lol? With hammer? Not mentioning that a lot of kits if slotted have mostly AoE like mortar kit/bombs/grenades/flamethrower or even elixir gun.

Haha we must build a wall to keep the unwanted classes from our zergs

Jeknar.6184:

But back on topic. I couldn’t care less about what people think I should be playing. If I want to play mesmer, I will play it, and the commander can go kitten himself if he want me to change profession. But I never bothered entering squads before and I continue to do so.

I’m the very same.

I’ve been in a whopping 4 guilds since I started playing 3 years ago and I’ve never taken WvW seriously enough to care about running meta builds or using TS.

I understand meta is meta for a reason and that TS provides unique communication but I literally do not give a single kitten about any of it. I play video games to have fun. I don’t care if I’m good, bad, playing what’s meta or isn’t, etc. All I care is that I’m relieving stress and having fun as long as my enjoyment isn’t intruding on other people’s enjoyment.

It’s unfortunate that so many people get personally offended when you bring a Ranger to a zerg or use a personal build on a meta class, etc. I’ll never understand why it matters so much to some people how other people play the game. In large scale combat, it hardly makes a difference if some people are playing non-meta builds/professions/playing more casually. Yes, it’s definitely problematic if a large percentage of people are doing this, but that’s just a pug blob and you can’t expect GvG tier quality from that 100% of the time.

When commanding, you should work with what you have not with what you want.

That’s what I do when commanding in EOTM. Yes, I know EOTM is a whole different beast but my point is that I’m not screaming at people to pay attention or to change classes, etc. If they’re not good at open field fights, I look for other ways to fight. If they’re all dying on inc., I avoid fights all together unless we’re able to surprise the enemy. If they’re listening well and doing great in fights, I make sure to dominate the map.

I’m not going to deny that what I choose to play/how I choose to play isn’t always beneficial to the zerg I’m following. I understand how to “properly” play, but I ain’t gonna if I don’t wanna and I’m not gonna be made ’ta.

I feel I’ve more than proved my point the many, many times I’ve gone front line on a vanilla, full glass, non-Marauder, Ranger and lived longer than the front line Guardians. I didn’t bring any kind of support those times or any other times but it shows I know what I’m doing and know how to stay alive regardless of whether I’m getting support or not. If that’s not worthy of a squad invite, you’re not worthy of being revived when I see you go down.

Fate guild does same to me on my boon share Mesmer. But if I get on my lolhealer warrior I’m put in good comp. People often just see classes. The sad part is that they asked me if I wanted a NA guild while I’m displaying STRM tag. I politely decline. Truth of the matter is, when I’m supporting I don’t care who I’m with, I just want to support the people I’m near. And fate does get me alot of bags so I just forget the group I’m in and take mantra of concentration (probably the best stability ingame) and bountiful disillusionment for stability. Thankfully when I play Mesmer in STRM I’m put in commander group and sometimes TIME aswell because they know I’m not a trash press 1 gs mesmer.

i dont care, i play thief perma and i get squad invites when commander try to get started and kicked later on when he need slots.
nowadays i dont even accept invite and i just roam around the blob im barely ever there where the commander is.

its a choice u made tho, i want to be thief i dont need to sit back on blob crap.
u want to be druid u can solo perfectly fine also
mesmer can solo fine aswell
and scrapper is just beyond me kitten is strong as kitten.

i understand u wanna be with the blob then play what blob needs the most in order to succeed and dont play classes that dont bring much.

btw i think my healing power ele out heals every druid on the field without a problem so i wouldnt scream to hard about out healing ele’s
not every1 playing power ele.

It’s just lazy stereotyping, but when dealing with large groups like that, especially pug groups, it’s probably also necessary lazy stereotyping. I don’t mean necessary to succeed btw, I just mean necessary to start playing within a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve never really paid attention to where I’m put though tbh, I just play the way I like to play, I mean from an organisational standpoint it might make sense to have the commander dealing with the overarching stuff and having “lieutenants” or whatever delegated with fiddling with party comp or looking at individual contributions to optimise teams or whatever but really, honestly, I’d rather everyone just get on with playing and having fun.

kitten those all Asura squads.

@Kappa, dudee i did say i dont play Druid i have no idea about the class other than the 1 healing skill, the retal field i only found out from another guy speaking about it, it would be great if every class could be part of the blob squad, but there not because the way each class is built to be or another class will do better, for instance, Ele is Meta in WvW because it has the best support as of right now. @ Justine My guild always runs Mesmers in there main comp, we dont run warriors these days as there not as good and like ive said, other classes do it better.

The thread is a little off, boonshare mesmer is one of the strongest zerg classes….. and warrior sucks for zerging because it’s complete epidemic bait and outclassed by something like a mallyx jalis rev that can frontline while spamming resistance and damage reduction….. Anyway you can’t blame a commander especially if hes commanding pugs to want to have meta classes and builds, which means Guardian/Ele/Revenant/ Mesmer.
I believe that there are specific uses for Engi/Druid ( stealth to break targeting on a focused target in gvgs), but its too specific of a niche to be needed.

OP, any chance you are running in a guild led raid where the commander is giving frontline party preference to guildies running guild builds?

Or with a commander who isn’t familiar with you, so has no way to know that you’re on, say, a frontline tempest, or a full out healing druid?

There’s also another side to the story- a reason why a lot of commanders make assumptions. I’ve literally had people show up in TS and start explaining why their <insert honestly bizarre build for a particular class> is amazing. They’ve just told me that what they are running won’t sync with my team. So to an overflow party they go.

Or they ask what traits/weapons/elites I want, then tell me why they don’t like playing those. Ok. Teamwork fail. To an overflow party with you.

If someone wants core frontline priority, show up, let me know what you are running, and give me a chance to get to know you. If you are competent, it’ll be obvious. And if you show up regularly enough, you’ll start finding yourself in one of those frontline parties.

But guildies are usually going to get priority there, regardless.

Tell the commander you are a melee frontline build and you need stab. A good commander will place you in a melee party. If not, your commander is an kitten.

Until anet gets off their anti elitism high horse and enable the ability to view squad damage taken damage dealt heals given and boon share count this will always happen its almost impossible to see who is useful and who is kitten on the backline.

Digikid.7230:

The thread is a little off, boonshare mesmer is one of the strongest zerg classes….. and warrior sucks for zerging because it’s complete epidemic bait and outclassed by something like a mallyx jalis rev that can frontline while spamming resistance and damage reduction….. Anyway you can’t blame a commander especially if hes commanding pugs to want to have meta classes and builds, which means Guardian/Ele/Revenant/ Mesmer.
I believe that there are specific uses for Engi/Druid ( stealth to break targeting on a focused target in gvgs), but its too specific of a niche to be needed.

Psssh… thank God as a Warrior I bring my own stab for days, and with nearly 1k healing per sec plus invuls/blocks & resistance out the wazoo, I don’t tend to give a kitten what party the commander puts me in. :-)

don’t call it racism, it makes you look not so smart.

its not your fault the commanders you play with are incompetent. tell them what you can do, and if they still say no, then its 100% on them.

Play what you want and just hang around the commander. It’s not like he can banish you from the map lol

I personally like to get on vanilla ranger just to annoy elitists tags or guilds. Have fun with it bud

it all depends on the commander i guess. on maguuma we’re not fans of necro’s in our pug groups.

So how is anyone supposed to know you do all this cool stuff? You’ll have to communicate it, or find someone that will listen.

And really, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that individual guilds or groups have their own priorities. You can’t just expect them to cater to you. So when the commander or whatever is managing 30-50 icons, there’s no reason why you, a single person, get preferential treatment off the bat.

Some server like for example maguuma, they will just flat out reject any ranger. Period. It doesn’t matter if you are a full geared heal support druid. Just the culture of the server they have created and pugs have to go along with it.

This is also reason why maguuma commanders are so prone to pin snipe because they don’t have those thief, druid, engineer stealth to prevent the other party from marking a “KILL ME PLS” sign above their head.

To be fair he’s talking about being accepted as a Pug druid, I agree engi/druid stealth to break targeting is an actual role in gvgs/open field fights, but its a role that actually requires co-ordination and strong decision making skills on the part of the player doing the stealthing, theres no way you would trust a random unknown player with that, you’d have a guildie/known person to you doing it instead.

kappa.2036:

I play different classes in WvW, mainly guardian, warrior, necro, ranger and engineer.
All of my toons are builded for wvw, and I get on Teamspeak every time I come into the Mist War.
When i play guardian-berserker-reaper, it’s all good. Liutenants put me into a melee party, i have stabs,resistance,boons and so on.
The same thing doesnt happen when i am on my frontline scrapper or with my frontline healer druid. In fact they put me into that “Bottom-of-the-squad-useless-party”, full of thieves, mesmers, engineers and rangers without any kind of support from other classes. A lot of people will understand this.
The fact is, even if you put your efforts on building yourself correctly (i do also gvg’s with my druid and scrapper), even if you bring your food maximizing your performance, even if you come on ts and listening at your commy, people still think that classes that are not rev-guard-war-necro-ele are complete trash.
They don’t mind if you are a boonshare chrono, they will put you into that “useless-bottom of the squad-party” like a normal mesmer with 0 group utilities.
They don’t mind if you are an healing bot druid that can outheal x3 an ele with tons of waterfields, boons and blasts, they will put you into that party because they think you are kitteneless zerker pewpew ranger.
They don’t mind if you are a frontline scrapper with tons and tons of condi cleanses,waterfields and good aoe damage, they will put you into that party because “engi is better at roaming”, you know.
If is full, sometimes you get even kicked from the squad. This is racism against those classes. I played this game for more than 4 years, but if I am on my druid, people still prefer a full signet warrior with 2k ap in the squad, or a minionmaster necro because “Hey, they are warrior and necro”.
The fact is, people’s mentality is locked in the “2 years ago old meta”, when rangers,mesmers and engies were almost useless except few skills. Even with HoT, the mentality persists.
Druid is a fantastic healer that can push with the melees sustaining them with indinite waterfields, scrapper is a very useful frontliner with tons of damage and group utilities, and chrono brings very good utilities to the group like boonsharing, veils and wells.
I think that people should try new team-comps (like most gvg guilds are doing), or atleast give them a chance, because right now World vs World accepts only 5/9 classes.

This has always been this way. there is a top, mid and bottom to team usefulness. I don’t blame the players, I blame A-Net.

But you have to also understand that you are an experienced player that runs dedicated WVW team builds. Most players do not. And I would say that number, depending on week, month, servers, can vary between 75%-90%, literally.

Vast majority of druids we get in squad are not healers. Sometimes they heal a bit here and there, but thats it. The vanila rangers ? Well, sorry, its not your fault, its A-Nets, but the bottom line is anything is better then you.

The scrapper builds can be decent, but even those tend to be more selfish rather then team oriented, kinda like warrior builds nowadays. They are OK, but there are simply better choices so they get replaced, and again, there are just too many players that dont bother running a solid build. You dont even need to be great or meta, just solid.

Chronos in WVW groups, lets face it, nothing beats veil + portal. That is all, that is king. The boonshare thingy was good before the nerf, but now its just meh, and necro wells, hell, necro staff marks are better then mesmer wells except maybe gravity.

Thieves, outside of scouting and peripheral functions in general do not perform well in heavy frontline battles, again, I do not blame the thieves, but A-Net.

So things will pretty much stay the same until A-Net changes them, heal druid, warrior, scrapper will stay mediocre, top will stay at the top and bottom at the bottom.

You should really contact A-Net and let them know about this because personally I would love for this to change as well.

kappa.2036:

@Pride
I agree completely, but this does not justify the fact that those classes are left without any kind of support. A zerg based on ranger/teef/mesmer/engi is not good at all, yes, on the other side they bring unique utilities if builded correctly so there is nothing wrong if a large group have those classes aswell (of course in less numbers than guards-revs-ele-necros). The fact that they are left in the bottom of the squad, kicked, and blamed even if they are experienced, in TS and with a good build kinda makes me sad.

What is stopping them from switching toons to provide support and balance the parties ? I would rather have a primary and secondary stab generation for my commander and the 2nd front party, or our reapers, then rangers and thieves. Sorry, If they want double stabs like that in their 5 no guardian parties then some of them obviously need to switch. its as simple as that.

I use ONE metric to determine where I put rando pugs in squads. It’s ‘activeness’.

If someone has been talking in squad/map, knows his business, and actively whispers to me to me to ask to be put into a frontline party, then I’ll oblige him. If he wants to be in a frontline party and is aware of the need, then he’s competent enough to be in here. I’ll put him in. I’ll prioritize good players I’m familiar with (and I WvW enough to know who they are in a timezone), then those who are on teamspeak, then those running zergy classes (meaning all Heavy and Light armour classes), then randos running medium armour classes. Sometimes if there aren’t many people around, I’ll ask them individually about their builds.

Oh, lemme describe you a common scenario. There are 4 Tempests milling around, not in squad. I invite them in, they join fine. I ask “Is anyone here running Heal/Auramancer Ele? Please X up in chat.”

Not one reply. So I shrug and put them in the same party as that one 400 AP vanilla ranger. Don’t care if they’re running full Ministrel’s Auramancer or Masterwork Shaman with Staff. They need to interact to get a good party, simple as that.

And if a commander is being an kitten and refusing you even after you ask politely, they can kitten off, because clearly they don’t need you and don’t care. You can go off and roam or something.

That’s not racism, it’s elitism. Now if you it’s your little asuran getting the boot all the time, then sure go ahead and claim racism in a game.

Other than that, you can thank Anet and their crack team on class balance that forces players into certain classes to be effective in certain combat situations, which was made worse with HoT.

Mini Crinny.6190:

Dont play druid but if im right then Druids only really have 1 decent water field? the other glyphs heal but the field left is a Retalliation field? the other thing about these classes Mesmer exluded is most of there skills are Single target, for WvW most people are looking for AoE damage which Guards,Revs,Eles,Necros and Mesmers can provide, it isnt racist xD just Commanders and lieutenants will be looking for a Comp that has 0 Medium classes in it

Nope – Druids can heal with other skills. That is why they are ending up the group healer now.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Mini Crinny.6190:

Dont play druid but if im right then Druids only really have 1 decent water field? the other glyphs heal but the field left is a Retalliation field? the other thing about these classes Mesmer exluded is most of there skills are Single target, for WvW most people are looking for AoE damage which Guards,Revs,Eles,Necros and Mesmers can provide, it isnt racist xD just Commanders and lieutenants will be looking for a Comp that has 0 Medium classes in it

Nope – Druids can heal with other skills. That is why they are ending up the group healer now.

Druids primarily are capable of much higher burst healing than other classes. However, they have lower sustained healing capabilities than a properly specced tempest. Druids, of course, also bring a very significant damage buff in the form of GotL. This is why you see druid healers in PvE raids but elementalist healers in WvW. In PvE, the damage from GotL and intermittent burst healing of a druid is enough to keep a party healthy and dealing damage. In WvW, the higher sustained healing output of an elementalist is a better way to keep your frontline parties alive and kicking.

Squads in general have created a culture of elitism and bullying. This is just 1 symptom of it. I play druid and dont even bother with squads anymore. Commanders will use squads to bully people into their play style. If you take a bathroom break, regardless of class, expect to come back and see yourself booted from the squad. You squirrel, booted, mess up a portal or invis shield, gone.

Anjo.3170:

Squads in general have created a culture of elitism and bullying. This is just 1 symptom of it. I play druid and dont even bother with squads anymore. Commanders will use squads to bully people into their play style. If you take a bathroom break, regardless of class, expect to come back and see yourself booted from the squad. You squirrel, booted, mess up a portal or invis shield, gone.

Don’t call people wanting to have a competitive comp so they can fight things bullies, they’re tagging up so they can actually fight things, and want to have a comp that allows them to fight things, whats wrong with that?

Anjo.3170:

Squads in general have created a culture of elitism and bullying.

Before the new squad ui, it was almost unheard of to join a commander’s squad. Now people get mad if they’re excluded from a squad despite the fact that you don’t need to be part of a squad to see and follow a tag.

Here’s a dirty secret: join a guild that runs a squad in WvW and get on VOIP with them.

Fay.2357:

Druids primarily are capable of much higher burst healing than other classes. However, they have lower sustained healing capabilities than a properly specced tempest. Druids, of course, also bring a very significant damage buff in the form of GotL. This is why you see druid healers in PvE raids but elementalist healers in WvW. In PvE, the damage from GotL and intermittent burst healing of a druid is enough to keep a party healthy and dealing damage. In WvW, the higher sustained healing output of an elementalist is a better way to keep your frontline parties alive and kicking.

But shouldn’t be burst healing much more valuable in WvW than healing over time? I mean, people aren’t under constant (low) pressure all the time in zergfights, it is more phases of high pressure – where you want tons of healing in a small time frame – and some sort of recovery/regroup phases.
If you meant total healing with “sustained healing” though, you are wrong. Druid should be able to heal for more than tempest.
What tempest brings over druid are the auras, eventually boons (?) and the (slightly) better survivability in the frontline (with d/f tempest – staff ele is a different story). And it might be easier to use in pug zergs, because tempest’s heals tend to have higher radius, which makes it easier to “hit” allies, that are not stacking perfectly.

Lol, yeah you’re totally outhealing the ele but are you outhealing and outcleansing them? Nope not even close, that’s why they prefer ele.

It’s more that while an engy can bring a decent amount of cleanse it’s not near the support of the other classes, you have tossed elixirs, elixir gun and healing turret if you bring that, though that means no team protection. A guard will bring all that and might without the weird travel times.

Warrior is great because it can have insane regen, insane damage, cleave all while being largely invulnerability to damage for periods of time, most other classes cannot do that, same with DH F3 as it blocks loads of attacks allowing them to mitigate a lot more damage but war is better.

Necro is the only classes with corrupts and is mandatory to kill anyone in the boonshare meta. Mesmer can remove boons but a necro is a lot better and with them being condi they get damage doing it.

My mesmer has 2 stunbreaks on low cool down, one of which is a teleport, a block, invuln and an evade for 2s, I don’t need the support from the heavies, I find someone out of place and down them.

My engy has lots of stab and protection with easy might generation, why do I need people to support me? I do more damage than those minstrel guards and rez faster while having projectile destruction and lots of self cleanses. I don’t need them, they don’t need me, I’m fine with that and that is some of these classes strengths ATM, that they are so self sufficient.

Well, i don’t know, how meta zerg tempest exactly looks like, but does it even have that much cleanses? I guess it runs aurashare, so no cleansing water. It has water overload and eventually shouts (with soldier rune), what more?
Druid can bring a bunch of cleanses too.

Now on my server, we have someone that tags up allot, pretty decent tag, and he plays the same kinda toon I do, Condi PU Mesmer.

When I play, its for my own enjoyment, Not some random tag that thinks he/she is a great at fighting.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Well, i don’t know, how meta zerg tempest exactly looks like, but does it even have that much cleanses? I guess it runs aurashare, so no cleansing water. It has water overload and eventually shouts (with soldier rune), what more?
Druid can bring a bunch of cleanses too.

5 shouts with trooper runes and each aura gives regen so that’s usually 3 shouts that cleanse 2. They run warhorn so that gives more regen on water 4, overload water gives regen which is another cleanse and all this is AoE which means allies just have to be near the tempest.

Druid on the other hand the cleanses come from the seeds which have a delay so must be put ahead of where they are needed. The exception being glyph of alignment which will cleanse 2 conditions but isn’t superior to an eles skills tbh. A druid has the better directed heals but ele does the healing and cleansing much better and brings a water field they can self blast quite easily a few times, it’s much harder for the druid to self blast anything but sublime conversion.

Im sorry.

Im a commander that will do this most of the times.
Sometimes when I know the person and know what they run as a engi druid or mesmer I will put them in a melee group (ditching the condi necro for instance, imo they dont need dem stabs… but they say they need the stab, ah well cant please everybody).

The point is that the vast majority of guardians warriors (necros less and less) run the correct builds to support the group they are in.

The majority of ranger engi and mesmer builds I seem to find in my squads are roaming, 1v1 and niche builds. If I find one that runs proper and I know that Ill help them out. Its just that the majority I find are running for themselves and not for the group. Most people I find with these classes run: Pew Pew Ranger, Condi Scrapper and Shatter stunlock etc mesmers. They bring less to the table than others…

Im sorry I dont have the time when commanding to evaluate all random people that join. I need to make a judgement call and make the groups as workable as possible.

Start running proper builds and I will notice and put you in stab groups (if they are available, when running 30+ people I might have 3 to 4 guards in total most of the time)

Monster.4802:

Im sorry.

Im a commander that will do this most of the times.
Sometimes when I know the person and know what they run as a engi druid or mesmer I will put them in a melee group (ditching the condi necro for instance, imo they dont need dem stabs… but they say they need the stab, ah well cant please everybody).

The point is that the vast majority of guardians warriors (necros less and less) run the correct builds to support the group they are in.

The majority of ranger engi and mesmer builds I seem to find in my squads are roaming, 1v1 and niche builds. If I find one that runs proper and I know that Ill help them out. Its just that the majority I find are running for themselves and not for the group. Most people I find with these classes run: Pew Pew Ranger, Condi Scrapper and Shatter stunlock etc mesmers. They bring less to the table than others…

Im sorry I dont have the time when commanding to evaluate all random people that join. I need to make a judgement call and make the groups as workable as possible.

Start running proper builds and I will notice and put you in stab groups (if they are available, when running 30+ people I might have 3 to 4 guards in total most of the time)

This.

A key point being made is regarding the class build. A commander cannot tell a player is running a “good” WvW build simply by class identification. There are “bad” builds.

There are uses for engis, mesmers, and even pew pew rangers. But they have to be decent at their job. Sadly most pew pew rangers seem to think firing off barrage into the front of the melee train is a good idea and will fire randomly at any target in range whilst they run away.

A good ranged snipe team is great in open field fights (or SM battles) where they are on their own tag and can call their own targets, which will be back line out of position eles, necro in lich form and other support classes. Well worth having.

Biggest problem I have with pugs in wvw is not so much the class they play as the complete brain shutdown that seems to occur as soon as they start following the tag- and the absence of doing anything useful at all if there is no tag on the map.

I’ve even had an engi with the job of pulling off 5-6 people from their zerg to try and kill him then steaming in with the rest of us when we have the numbers.

Not everyone needs to run a support build- but my pet hate is seeing eles in large fights with our players dropping like flies whilst they throw fire around and then switch to air to run away and then wonder why we all keep dieing!! Or worse, only switch to water when THEY are under 50% HP (and 75%of us are already dead..).

Generally I prefer staff eles in wvw to d/f just for the greater ranged utility.

juno.1840:

This.

A key point being made is regarding the class build. A commander cannot tell a player is running a “good” WvW build simply by class identification. There are “bad” builds.

Yet at the same time, necros/guards/wars are always assumed to have good build by class identification.

Necros in particular get a complete pass, considering so many are running a fairly pointless reaper instead of a core wellomancer.

Guards are not even looked at as long as they dont bring the obvious tell of the taboo bigger marks and use a staff, lol

Hm. Kind of odd, no?

@apharma
I might be wrong, because i’m usually not a zerg/GvG player, but from what i can see in WvW, warhorn and 5 shouts is not meta, because it will leave the ele way to vulnerable to focus/spike dmg (An issue that applies to druid to some extent). They usually run focus offhand and lightning flash, sometimes even armor of earth. For cleansing water you also have to give up powerful auras, and aurashare is imo the biggest advantage tempest has over druid.
Druids can bring healing spring, which doesn’t only cleanse conditions, but is overall a very strong (the best?) water field. They can easily selfblast it multiple times (d/f tempest has no water field, d/w only 1). Add Glyph of Alignment, Glyph of Equality and/or brownbear, soft cc remove with Vine Surge and you don’t have to rely on the delayed (but still potentially strong) cleanse from Seed of Life. Shouts with soldier rune would be an option too for druid (though not optimal imo).

I’m not saying, druid is better than tempest, but after messing arround a bit with support druid in pug zergs, i think, it is not as bad as many people claim. AOE stunbreaks, cleanses, blinds, projectile destruction, regen, fury, vigor, swiftness, stealth, superspeed, spotter, strong rezzing and of course tons of healing shouldn’t be underrated. It basically just lacks on demand stability/invuln and maybe a bigger radius on some skills.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Fay.2357:

Druids primarily are capable of much higher burst healing than other classes. However, they have lower sustained healing capabilities than a properly specced tempest. Druids, of course, also bring a very significant damage buff in the form of GotL. This is why you see druid healers in PvE raids but elementalist healers in WvW. In PvE, the damage from GotL and intermittent burst healing of a druid is enough to keep a party healthy and dealing damage. In WvW, the higher sustained healing output of an elementalist is a better way to keep your frontline parties alive and kicking.

But shouldn’t be burst healing much more valuable in WvW than healing over time? I mean, people aren’t under constant (low) pressure all the time in zergfights, it is more phases of high pressure – where you want tons of healing in a small time frame – and some sort of recovery/regroup phases.
If you meant total healing with “sustained healing” though, you are wrong. Druid should be able to heal for more than tempest.
What tempest brings over druid are the auras, eventually boons (?) and the (slightly) better survivability in the frontline (with d/f tempest – staff ele is a different story). And it might be easier to use in pug zergs, because tempest’s heals tend to have higher radius, which makes it easier to “hit” allies, that are not stacking perfectly.

Burst healing has a place in WvW, and that place is on the regroups. However, it’s far more efficient to get that burst healing by dropping a single water and having all the guardians blast it with a 5 second cooldown than it is to make a druid burn a bunch of strong skills to accomplish that burst healing. Auramancer tempest is also far better at healing on the move than druid, since druid is quite tied to ground targeted effects they drop. It’s much more possible for an auramancer to heal throughout a push.

Auramancers also are providing heavy buffing that druid simply can’t provide. They provide huge uptime on vigor and substantial uptime on prot, which is necessary to jumpstart the mesmer’s boonshare as they don’t inherently produce either of those. This is on top of the other defensive/offensive benefits of the auras themselves that druid can’t supply.

When it comes to water fields and blasts, druid is better than d/x tempest. So auras and protection (which you get almost perma from durability rune alone if everybody runs it) and easier to use (but weaker) heals is all a tempest provides, that druid can’t. Pretty much what i said.

As a main tempest, I usually run Healbot Staff instead of D/X aswell as using ‘Eye of the storm’ to give my team super speed to catch or surprise the enemy