Guild Wars 2

I primarily play elementalist in WvW but I’m slowly starting to get fed up with how bad elementalist feels. I can handle myself ok against a lot of professions but “ok” isn’t quite good enough considering how much effort you need to put to merely surviving.

Sure in zergs I crank a lot of kills since it’s just about AoE spam and running with the tail between my legs if things look bad. It’s decent enough but I’d like to have a bit more survivable profession. Warriors and thieves specifically are my bane. It’s a choice between instadeath (if stopping to fight) or delayed death (if trying to run) when facing them. From others I can at least run!

Does anyone have any tips which profession would be good for handling themselves both in groups and while roaming? Especially when faced with warriors and/or thieves? I know the “warrior” and “thief” are obvious answers but those are actually the only professions I don’t have at 80.

As mentioned I’ve all other professions leveled up to 80 except warrior and thief. Bonus points if you can link to training videos/builds.

Mesmer. I have killed every single Ele’ I’ve seen in about 3 hits, and I’m not even Berzerker gear. I wear PVT armor in WvW. I can solo any warrior, but usually they run off like cowards, so I don’t get many Warrior kills. Thief’s and their constant stealthing is annoying but easy, just keep moving around and dodging. Don’t let them get behind you. Necro’s if they get a mess of dot’s on me, then I usually go down, but if they target a clone and waste their attacks, I usually win. Rangers are easy, engineers are easy, guardians are easy. IMO it just takes time to master your class. When I say master your class, I don’t mean “ok I know what everything does, lets go fight!!” What I mean is you’ve been on that class so long, that you know what every button does without thinking. You know when you run solo you need these utilities. When you run in a zerg, you use these utilities. When you fight this class, you do this, or that. That is mastering your class. Then you will be able to take out any class.

Northlander.4619:

I primarily play elementalist in WvW but I’m slowly starting to get fed up with how bad elementalist feels. I can handle myself ok against a lot of professions but “ok” isn’t quite good enough considering how much effort you need to put to merely surviving.

Sure in zergs I crank a lot of kills since it’s just about AoE spam and running with the tail between my legs if things look bad. It’s decent enough but I’d like to have a bit more survivable profession. Warriors and thieves specifically are my bane. It’s a choice between instadeath (if stopping to fight) or delayed death (if trying to run) when facing them. From others I can at least run!

Does anyone have any tips which profession would be good for handling themselves both in groups and while roaming? Especially when faced with warriors and/or thieves? I know the “warrior” and “thief” are obvious answers but those are actually the only professions I don’t have at 80.

As mentioned I’ve all other professions leveled up to 80 except warrior and thief. Bonus points if you can link to training videos/builds.

You should try a Necromancer. They have decent survivability in group fights and they can roam with the best of them. My Necromancer looks forward to stomping the thief that tries to gank me.

There are a number of viable builds, my personal preference is for power necro with might stacking and might duration.

Necro might be a good option for me. I already have close to power necro so I think I’m going to try that. Got any specific build links?

Mesmer would be fun and useful but I play only little my Mesmer so he is not very well geared up.

If you prefer AOE bag collection, necromancers will become nigh immortal once the feature build hits, thanks to HP regen during DS.

As for overall functionality, ranger. You can do everything anyone else can do at about 80% performance without speccing for it, and if you decide to spec for something, you generally outclass any class in that specific function.
Tanky ranger builds can get lots of HP, armor and very strong attacks. Condition rangers are ok’ish in zergs, if all you want is tagging. In roaming, they can outlast and destroy more or less any profession.

The most troublesome professions for my rangers are usually mesmers and sometimes medi-guards. Thieves is a game of patience and concentration, the first one to screw up generally loses. If you worry about thieves, run trapper with dire gear and laugh at them as they try to take you down while being burnt, poisoned, bled and mauled to death by your pet and your traps.

As for zergballs, i advice you to NOT run longbow at first. Get accustomed to the melee weapons first. Then axe mainhand. For zergs, this weapon is a godsent gift. All you need to do is spam 11111111 while aiming at the enemy and the axe will bounce around racking up loads of bags, while also dealing respectable damage (3200 power + 65-70% crit damage = 1400-1800 crit pr target).
Axe offhand is amazing, but to fully capitalize on its brutal burst, you need to trait it (off-hand mastery, 20 points into Wilderness Survival). The Axe #4 can deal up to 9k to all enemies in a line, and pull them towards you. a good way to kill off smaller portions of enemies is to use the axe’s pull by firing off “Path of Scars” then quickly swap to GS and use maul at the same time as the axe pulls the enemies into your range. End result can yield a burst topping over 20k total damage on light armored targets. Not easy to pull off, but the reward is spectacular.

As for bows. Longbow, full zerker, Piercing arrows + Eagle Eye. Just stand far far away from the battle, aim in the center of the enemy blob and let lose. Do not get surprised if you end up downing large amounts of players quickly. You will generally hit somewhere around 2900-5400 damage depending on the targets armor. Since the arrow pierces, you can hit large quantities of enemies and simply destroy chunks of enemies with your AA alone. Be aware, thieves loves to hunt glass rangers.

As for general performance, if you decide to play support, you got some of the strongest passive group healing in the game, coupled with protection and direct damage boost proc. on attack from spirits.

In roaming – Do try out condi BM Bunker. If you think you have seen ridiculous damage before, just wait till you see conditions dealing 3500 damage/tick (total) and a pet critting for 4-7k direct damage. All while running full bunker.