Guild Wars 2

I’m just wondering what you all suggest in leveling a “clothie.” I played a GS Mesmer back in the day and really liked the class even though I felt like a huge target to d/d Thieves. I also have a d/d ele right now at level 80 but I’m sick of trying to make him effective. I have seen a few vids of the terrormancer in eotm just trolling people (which looks fun). Of the two though, I’m not sure which would be better for solo roaming.

I’m very familiar with the mesmer class but don’t know a great deal about the necro. From what I hear, they can play several viable builds (condi, power, CC) and are easy/quick to level. I also hear they do well in PvE and sPvP and are overall, pretty effective.

My main goal in playing a clothie is just to roam around and create havoc for the enemy. I’ll be honest by saying the idea of being a complete troll is appealing.

What do you all suggest?

Mesmer would be an easier roamer choice. Necro is slower with less escapes, although if definitely can be done.

Since I made this post, I chose a mesmer and have her up to level 46 now. I forgot how much fun the class really is and if you play a shatter build with traveler’s runes, it’s pretty quick and exciting as well.

I would honestly suggest elementalist. They are very entertaining, have large amounts of regent and sustain and have good burst. Mist form when downed allows u to hold off zergs from upgraded towers single-handedly and endlessly fight.
Access to stability and many boons makes it very durable and a good d/d elementalist can withstand a lot of hits and beat most classes 1v1.

Roll Ranger.
why?
People hate losing to rangers.
It has more regen then any other class (ref to above post)
It has a stupid AI Pet that is underestimated a lot.
It can run hybrid builds better then most (DD ele being the only one better)
It takes zero skill to play it at a respectable level
It eats mesmers for breakfast
and necromancers for lunch
The pet had a thief for dinner.
The ranger has surprisingly good mobility
It is surprising, because it is so awkward to use that you do not notice how fast you’re going, the rotation alone is enugh to keep you occupied.

No seriously though, mesmer is a utility bot, even for roaming it is not that great and it will lose to every thief there is due to thief having massive advantages over mesmers in the first place from how the professions were designed.
Necromancer is slow, does a bit of damage and is part of meta. If you get left behind or gotta run to your zerg then you got little to no chance of fighting off a roamer.

Ranger does not have the utility of the mesmer, nor is it part of the meta like necromancer, but it can bridge every aspect of WvW better. In some cases, it can roll the same build for roaming, zerging and havoc, yet still perform good. I say good, because no hybrid setup can ever truly shine in more then one form of combat. You can say DD ele is so good all you want, but it has obvious weaknesses once you increase numbers.

So yeah, roll a ranger. But whatever you do, do not roll a longbow ranger. Run something with actual combat prowess, not just a build with trolling potential and ezmode lulz kills.

Prysin.8542:

It eats mesmers for breakfast
and necromancers for lunch

No seriously though, mesmer is a utility bot, even for roaming it is not that great and it will lose to every thief there is due to thief having massive advantages over mesmers in the first place from how the professions were designed.

Please don’t bring your Ranger to a Roaming Server, T6-T8, because I hate watching people rage quit. Those utility bot Mesmers almost always beats a Ranger, as well as Thieves, where I play.

Telly.4962:

Prysin.8542:

It eats mesmers for breakfast
and necromancers for lunch

No seriously though, mesmer is a utility bot, even for roaming it is not that great and it will lose to every thief there is due to thief having massive advantages over mesmers in the first place from how the professions were designed.

Please don’t bring your Ranger to a Roaming Server, T6-T8, because I hate watching people rage quit. Those utility bot Mesmers almost always beats a Ranger, as well as Thieves, where I play.

Talked my thief friend into going Ranger and he hasn’t looked back. We roam T7 (soon to be T6) and do just fine. Every class is good in the right hands and vice versa-every class sucks in the wrong hands. Rangers are deadly in the right hands.

When deciding on a class for solo roaming there are several factors you need to look at:

-damage ability
-mobility
-sustainability
-escapability

Mesmers-
can do great damage to both npcs and players, in both power and condi based builds. Mobility is an issue if not running runes like pack/centaur/traveler for example for switftness duration buffs or traveler for the 25% boost. Focus gives you a swiftness boost to use with those runes but other offhands might be more useful in certain situations, pistol can be very good at times especially with thieves as the clones attack will follow the thief in stealth. Mesmer can sustain for a long time despite being a light armor class because of clones and stealth options, some decent heals, and plenty of interrupts and some invulnerability on a shatter. Stealth, blink, staff #2, invulnerability also allow mesmers to escape. So mesmer is an ideal class for solo roaming if speed is not an issue for you, and you can get comfortable playing the class because it does have a learning curve, its not simply spam clones and expect to win.

Necromancer-
Zerker builds can pump out extremely high damage and can melt tanky classes in seconds. Many viable power/condi builds. Mobility not an issue because there is a 25% speed signet, just swap out before going into combat is my suggestion. Excellent sustainability thanks to deathshroud, but this also means you must have knowledge of the profession to properly utilize deathshroud so as not to waste it. It can give you a big damage boost or give you a second life, so you have to be aware of each situation before using it. The biggest issue you will face on a necro is escapability, if you come across someone you cant beat, chances are you wont get away unless someone helps you.

Telly.4962:

Prysin.8542:

(…)

Please don’t bring your Ranger to a Roaming Server, T6-T8, because I hate watching people rage quit. Those utility bot Mesmers almost always beats a Ranger, as well as Thieves, where I play.

You want to tell me that your rangers/thieves are so incredibly bad, that they manage to lose against a Mesmer equipped with [Potal], [Veil] and at most one Stunbreak? Probably with Focus on one Weaponset as well? Kitten, your Thief/Ranger Roamers must be the worst i’ve ever heard of (o_ô) Might telling what exactly the names of the Servers you meant are?

Mesmer is a good duelist, and seem deceptively strong, that being said.
I am not a uber pro player, i know how i should play to be at “pro” level, but my mechanical skill isnt good enough. However I am very good at building WvW setups for rangers, ive gotten good enough that i can tell that the build will be viable from the stats alone (the utilities make little difference). This is why i can say mesmers wont beat rangers without either one being drastically better then the other, or the ranger making a mistake, or the mesmer being lucky.
Mesmer is strong vs players unfamiliar with their functions, i do not play mesmer so my understanding is limited, however it is not hard to see how they can be beaten.

UNIEVERSAL FOR ALMOST ALL MESMER BUILDS IS THAT THEY ARE WEAK TO CONDITIONS.

this is not true for ALL builds, but most of their builds are not good at dealing with conditions.

Rangers on the other hand, they can get near immunity from sheer cleansing spam. Set it up correctly and you get bunker stats, kittened amounts of healing, the ability to cleanse so much that even a decent condimancer will struggle to kill you, and last but not least, they can dish out more condies faster then any other setup then a condimancer blowing all cooldowns.
This is the ranger in a nutshell, and they do not need fancy rotations or special gear to do this. You can roll full dungeon/WvW exotics and still get the right stats.

Mesmer also loses to ranger in mobility, like really badly. Just GS alone on a ranger has more mobility outside of combat then almost all the mesmers builds has.
Portal may seem like a great mobility skill, but it is only good for backtracking. You go “from here to there, then very fast back again”. You still need to get “from here” and “to there”. Which in no way is remotely fast on a mesmer.

If thief and ele is not your thing, the only strong mobile roamer left is ranger. Warrior and guardian is by no means an option. Engineer gonna take too much time to learn and by the time you get good with it, youll quit the game

Prysin.8542:

If thief and ele is not your thing, the only strong mobile roamer left is ranger. Warrior and guardian is by no means an option. Engineer gonna take too much time to learn and by the time you get good with it, youll quit the game

Eh? How so for Warriors? In the meta roaming build its impossible to catch them and near impossible to kill 1v1.

Stick with med armor classes for roaming (thief, engi, ranger). Thieves and engis take a while to learn, but are lots of fun. Rangers are extremely easy to play but still fun. Of the 3, ranger is my current favorite. Tanky regen/condi builds are very hard to bring down 1v1 and can stack bleeds like crazy. I also enjoy my ranger in zergs as a backline sniper.

I would vote for Mesmer over Necro for wvw roaming.

Dawdler.8521:

Prysin.8542:

If thief and ele is not your thing, the only strong mobile roamer left is ranger. Warrior and guardian is by no means an option. Engineer gonna take too much time to learn and by the time you get good with it, youll quit the game

Eh? How so for Warriors? In the meta roaming build its impossible to catch them and near impossible to kill 1v1.

impossible to catch, yes. But do they present any real danger to any player that can locate the dodge key on their keyboard? Nope, they do not.

the usain bolt zerker warrior that runs all over the place like their pants is on fire does not pose an actual threat to anything but NPCs. Sure if they get some help from a friend to properly lock down enemies and hinder movement, then they are dangerous, but that goes for any burst build. A zerker staff ele with a PvE meta setup would wreck anything it fought if someone else CCd the target hard enough to prevent escape from the DPS nuke. same goes with the warrior setup. It is great for camp flipping, but VS other roamers it is not. It als suffers from bad condi removal (you gotta land a F1 to use Ire, shouts are usually not used by the build, signet removal is on long CD etc…). In short, if you take a full condition nuke from a Survival ranger, with nearly 20 seconds of burning, 20+ sec of poison, 20 stacks of bleeding lasting 8 to 10 seconds, in addition to CC slowing you down. Not only is this noticable, but you cannot run away when low on HP without cleansing first.

the same applies VS longbow ranger or thief. Both are quick enough, or have long enough range to simply kill you WHILE you run.

Warrior is no more efficient then longbow ranger. Both have painfully obvious counters, unfortunately in their current state, all warriors suffer from the same darn issues.
They do not have any effective defenses VS other classes. Their stances is only a temp solution that does not solve anything, only delay things a little bit. They cannot maintain any sort of pressure while going on defensive, thus you can just keep pressuring them and forcibly set the rythm. Breaking the rythm of a fight is harder then starting one and maintaining it.

Double ranged shatter mesmer with 1200 blink and decoy + mass invis for escapes. Case closed.
You can drop any longbow ranger meta scrub in seconds, one full mind wrack will drop a thief, and you’ll tear up the condi trash builds if you stay at 1200 range.
Warriors will tear you up if you do not have kiting skills to slowly burst them down, and that’ll take a while because they’re incredibly hybrid with their -65% condition duration and immunity to cripple chill and immobilize.

The problem is the zerker part of your post which has nothing to do with the nike part of the warrior build. Warriors can achieve great tankiness vs both physical and condition, have mobility rivaling a thief, and still deal great physical damage (1200 avg damage per hit) all at once.

The only way for other professions to achieve the damage a warrior can while being as tanky is if they go with a condi build.

The pet isn’t under estimated. You just went against bad players. I run an 80 ranger and an 80 thief and while I deal with thieves fine on my ranger, I do so with my ranger and not my pet. My pet actually makes it harder for me vs a thief with off hand dagger since I can dodge CnD but my pet can’t.

A mesmer shouldn’t have an issue against any profession that specializes in single target dps. The biggest thing you can do to a mesmer to leave them helpless is being able to pop their clones the moment they make them. That’s where the condi’s come from and that is what they hide behind. So dealing really good aoe (ele would do great here) is great.

You should really try roaming on a higher tier (T3 here) for people who do roam, know their class really well.

Henrik.7560:

longbow ranger meta scrub

Your argument fell short at this one piece of your statement.

Longbow is by no means META.

Incase you doubt me check out http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

While LB GS is listed under “Great builds” it has never, will never and had no chance ever to make it into the meta. It has too many counters.
LB GS