Guild Wars 2

I know there was a similar thread before but it seems to have died down. So now I am curious if people are still having the most issues with the same classes that were listed in that thread, mainly thief and mesmer. Overall however, I want to know what class out of all the classes seems to give you the most problems in WvW and not just between thief and mesmer. If are you running to your group and someone comes up on you, what is the one class you don’t want to see? If you are in group combat against the enemy, which class seems to give you the most problems for surviving? Etc. I am just curious what class people think is currently dominating WvW with its damage and tactics. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like an explanation as for why so that why I can use that knowledge to better educate myself on those classes and what to look for. For example, why do people seem to have so many problems with mesmers?

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to to receive some useful information.

In short, what class murders you and why?

any class that deals heavy damage and can run away from danger is the best class.. thief,mesmer,ele

But wouldn’t thief and ele’s be quick kills since all you have to do is like knock them down and it’s about GG for them with all the damage they would have taken, even from just like three people?

Any class can be a problem if played right. What comes to mind straight away are Mesmers, Thieves, Guardians (especially survival specced. They just don’t die!) and Necros.

Thief
/thread

So far my most hated classes to meet head on are Ele’s and Rangers (depending on terrain).

Ele’s can do some pretty good damage and have decent survivability. Rangers are just a pain to deal with unless I can stay on top of them. Usually if I’m ontop of a wall with my SB, I’m always on the move, trying to avoid ranger’s barrage (hate that <.<) or ele’s fire abilities.

I hate thief, not because they are so strong ( most of them are really bad at playing thief, HS HS HS). One dodge and one stunt breaker and they are done for, most of the time. Sadly, I’m rarely able to finish them. They can just invis and run away each time.

Mesmer, this is the class I fear the most. They hit like a truck, they have mass illusion around, and a lot of defensive field to protect them. My friend started to play one (he had a guardian) and said WvW experience is so much better now. He rarely ever die, and kill most people. A Skilled mesmer is the class I fear the most.

Bunker Guardian are a pain, always blocking, always reflecting. I have 3-4 big aoe attack, when they block them, it make it a lot harder to kill them. But overall they are a good fight.

Other class it depends a lot of the player, Ranger can hit really hard with some gear, but should fall fast. I hate fighting other Engineer but only because we use the same skills.

@kara, what defense fields do you talk of? Chaos storm? Also, do you mind asking your friend what his build is? I actually tried playing a mesmer at one point and I guess you can say I failed…I tested it out in spvp and my damage seemed mediocre. And yes I did have a researched build and stuff. It probably didn’t help however that I always had like 2 thieves kitten me the whole match…

Thief, Mesmer, and whatever that class was (Guardian or warrior I think) that has the ability to heal completely. Hell… being a necro makes every class harder to deal with…

I have never faced a Ele 1v1, but we will see how that goes…

Usually playing my thief. When I’m fighting with the zerg with my shortbow its usually the longbow rangers in full zerkers that bother me the most. Even if they aren’t in full zerkers they’re my least favorite to deal with while fighting in the zerg.

In smaller fights I’d say guardians are my least favorite to deal with.

A well played Backstab/HS build will kill me instantly. 95% of them are not well played so I usually don’t have a problem but those few guys that can will send me to the rez point in less than 4 secs.
Mesmers are tough too, just makes me so confused I get frustrated trying to chase all their crap lol
I will say ive run into 2 Engineers out here that CC’d me so much and rifled me down with massive hits of 2-4 k on rifle shots, the were nasty
lastly a good guard can take a while to kill so you end up with more people showing up.

Ive yet to die to ranger, ele, or necro…and very raely to warrior solo. but all classes can be rough if they play well together.

I break down WvW into 4 seperate roles. Some classes are better in some aspects, but then there are classes that are great in multiple aspects.
-Siege Defense> Defending keeps/towers, involves control abilities and GTAOE’s to zone control, and pushing enemies where you want them to go.
-Siege Offense> Attacking keeps/towers, involves dropping defensive bubbles to shield and heal allies, or attacking enemies and siege weapons on top of walls with AOEs.
-Zerg Combat> Large group battles, the only way to win is to focus 1 person at a time, otherwise they will retreat to the back lines, heal up, and rejoin the fight.
-Roaming Combat> Small group skirmishes, sometimes 1v1 encounters, movement is important, with heavy burst damage and control abilities beneficial

The warrior is very frustrating to fight, they excel at burst damage which is great in Zerg Combat. The warrior’s base stats are also significantly higher than any of the other classes, which gives him a nice edge. But the key benefit for the warrior is how universal his weapons and utility skills are, whereas most other classes have skills that are situational or requires a set-up to be used effectively.

The Elementalist is also exceptional, they can move fairly fast, which is great for roaming. They can also use a variety of support heals and devastating AOE’s which makes them awesome at zerg vs zerg combat and siege sitations.

The Thief is fast and hits hard, though hindered by their 900 range. Thieves are currently benefitting from a rendering delay when they drop out of stealth, which makes them difficult to fight. They do devastating melee damage, and are excellent at roaming,, small skirmishes, and scouting. However, I should mention, during offensive siege situations, you will be pigeonholed into securing the perimiter around the zerg, and making sure stragglers don’t manage to get inside the keep/tower.

Engineers- I almost didn’t want to mention them, but they can spec for Permaswiftness,, and their grenade build is great for tower/keep defenses, but they are noticeably lackluster in Zerg vs Zerg combat and Offensive Sieges, they are also somewhat ineffective in skirmishes and roaming.

Mesmer- The benefit of the mesmer is that they can use their clones to the fighting for them, allowing them to be further out of reach than other classes. They also have portals and mass invisibility, which is great for transporting golems, portalbombing entrenched enemies, and quickly moving your allies around. Their phantasms can also attack siege and enemies on top of walls. However, they do have significant downsides, they have only 1 skill that gives swiftness, and it is attached to the focus. 75% of a mesmer’s damage also relies heavily on clones, which are easily killed in 1 shot.

The easiest answer right now is a dag thief.
The fact that there is horrible rendering problems now that thiefs can take advantage of + daggerstorm + dagger build being slightly op as it is
I never see a thief render since the change, before the change at least I could see them
Kinda like karate kid three. A man can’t see, he can’t fight
Probably the only class that wouldnt say thief would be a prot guard, but they can take alot. Its the one class if I see I just avoid, it just simply isnt worth the time to whittle away at them

Metalripper.5406:

Engineers- I almost didn’t want to mention them, but they can spec for Permaswiftness,, and their grenade build is great for tower/keep defenses, but they are noticeably lackluster in Zerg vs Zerg combat and Offensive Sieges, they are also somewhat ineffective in skirmishes and roaming.

It really depend of the engineer build, because a Grenader will be awesome for offensive sieges, and even zerg vs zerg. 1500 range AoE Grenade + Grenade barage = Dead player/siege on the wall. Grenader is a bit less effective in zerg vs zerg, because people are moving around, but we can still do a lot of AoE damage.

What kill me most of the time, is when I get bursted down. Once you catch me, I will go down fast since rifle/Grenade don’t have the shield block abilities ( I miss them alot). But it’s all balance!

mesmer, due their frequent ease of access to both confusion and retaliation. i can understand having one or the other, but not both. no other class, not even instagib theives/warriors comes close to a mesmer’s risk/reward efficiency which is double what ever other class can do.

As a Mesmer the only class that gives me any real trouble is Thief, simply because it takes a while to really cast any clones/phantasms that give me my damage and Thief’s just go in and out of invisibility far quicker than it takes to cast my spells.
I imagine once the the graphic rendering gets fixed it should make them a little easier to deal with since most of them are taking advantage of the rendering issues and just walking around invisible the majority of the time!
Other Mesmer’s sometimes get the better of me too either by MOA’ing me or just spamming clones and running like hell, I tend to be an all or nothing kind of Mes and don’t run until either their dead or I am!

Thief – because it’s a pain to catch them when they attempt to run away.

Mesmer – because even though downing one is easy, but usually can’t afford the time it takes to actually kill one in an even group vs group fight. Similar problems with the thief – although a mesmer has limited access to swiftness, stealth can be annoying when trying to track one down.

WvW is so different from actual pvp. IMO the worst is whatever profession is running the arrow cart or ballista.

It’s all about numbers, siege, and range for any fight that matters.

Its all very situational and depends on the player behind the class.

I have had trouble with all classes and have killed all classes easily. Really comes down to build vs build and skill vs skill.

I can say the most ANNOYING are Mesmers because of all the illusions and Thief’s (when I am not on my Thief) because of the evade mechanics.

I agree with Mog for pretty much the same reasoning. Every class has given me trouble, depends on the player and our builds. Different classes pose different problem’s as I change my build.

I find guardians can be a pain in the kitten, well played ones save groups, imo.

nobody has problems with necros lol?

as a mesmer, thieves still trouble me, and I have to play smart against a war, meaning as long as I’ve noticed its a war fast enough and set up for his burst I’m ok, but my spec isn’t thief friendly.

For a war I need to be ready for a long fight. I’ve had my Time warp come up twice in a war fight… he was persistent.

Necros can be trouble if you let em live.. just kill em fast, TW drops them like no tomorrow, same with a Mes if you have the mesmer not the clone.

I don’t shatter much except on thieves because you only have short bursts to hurt them. I’m specd to siege and defend, my burst for a thief is staff/chaos storm and a lot of decoy work to get them to blow their wad on the decoy. If they happen to have a Bow I’m happy, if not I have to work for the win.

I really have to work for a thief kill personally as they arnt visible long enough for my hard hitting phantasms to hurt them. I actually rolled a thief just so i could better counter their stuff in WvW environment… I found it helpful.

I got kitteny against a thief just today where I was holding off on my heal to draw him/her back to the camp and let em stun me just 1 too many times and she took my tags …

Fighting another mesmer can be problematic too, it comes down to spec/gear/utility choice often for me. It’s easy to see quickly if the mesmer has chops or not as another mesmer, but usually it’s a draw rather than a loss on close calls, but I’ve never lost a 1v1 against a mesmer who uses Moa =p.

Theifs especially with the rendering bug.

Level 80’s in full gear.
Any profession.

Mesmer – they have everything other classes have, just better.

In WvW i’d have to say that the warrior and mesmer give me the most grief. Thieves are a pain with the rendering problem but to be fair that’s a bug.

As a thief since head start.

Mesmers give me the most problems with their confusion, retaliation, stealthing and clones.
Followed by warriors if they catch me by surprise with their spin to win – thousand blades haste combo.

I have no problems with other thieves. Especially dagger thieves. Though the rendering bug makes them appear invisible for longer periods. You just have to learn how to kite them when they stealth, because they’re always going to try and get in melee range with you whilst a stealthed mesmer wants to get away from you to bombard you from afar. Once thieves are out of stealth. Immobilize is your friend.

RayneOfChaos.9856:

nobody has problems with necros lol?

We have only two, maybe three possible good builds.
Half our skills and traits are just broken.
There’s no really good armor and accessories for condition necro (possibly our best build).
Worst downed state skills ever (only engi as bad as we are).
Minions, one of our specialties, have broken AI.
Etc-etc.

I very rarely see Necro’s in WvW tbh, not to say there aren’t any, just not enough to have put me through my paces like other classes, poison builds can screw me over since I rarely use remove spells on my mes as I find other utility’s more useful to me in the long run.

A good player, regardless of class, who knows exactly how is character works best will put up a great fight, but if you know how your own character performs best you should always know the best way to fight/defend against specific classes.

With my spec as a guardian i have to say i fear no class 1v1, some classes i can can kill and some classes end up running away (Thief) and i cant catch them so i leave, or its a never ending battle and the one that gets back up first wins.

Anyone with 3 orbs that has all (or mostly) exotics and isn’t a complete idiot.

Thief. Only because of stupid rendering bug abuse.

I play ele dual dagger and i fear no class on 1vs1 but mesmer (average skilled and above) and necro (only the good one)

Mesmer.

Without a doubt, mesmer.

Thieves are annoying too because they can spike me down pretty quickly if I’m not paying attention, but on the flip side they’re fairly squishy and with good co-ordination I can avoid a lot of their damage (I still regularly accidentally fire into their spinny dagger thing that reflects projectiles. Still a total noob )

But mesmers…boy they make my head spin. Take on a mesmer and poof suddenly there’s four of them, I’ve lost which one is the real one and suddenly have no idea what I’m doing. I know again this is partly my fault because I shouldn’t get so bamboozled, but it is what it is and mesmer is my least favourite class to face.

First and foremost WvW is a team fight not 1v1, and all classes have counters to all the other classes you just might not be specked for it. I play a thief but i do not stealth except my heal skill and thats only because it heals for the most out of all of my heals. I fear no class because I know how to play my thief and I have it specked 5 ways… well i use 5 specks and I change as needed. I have to say you just have to learn other classes as well as your own know their strengths weeknesses their skill cds, ranges and cast times. I hear several complaint in game about mesmers and their clones granted portal bombs cant be stopped but the clone thing is simple take a second and look at the mes and clones does one have the green arrow or star by their name, how are they moving. Clones will never move away from you and will only move if your out of their range, The clones also will not have that explorer star or the green arrow. I will say I do have dificulties not with classes but players who know their class and know mine. i.e dagger storm only flies out about stomach to chest level so running away up or down ramps stairs slopes will cause you not to be hit. Aoes and Fear effects still happen when invis and so does that buble a gaurdian can place on a location.

The major reason for not getting explorer and wearing a pin as a mesmer is it’s a neon sign to anyone who half pays attention, well and I hate exploring prefer to kill PCs and all too =p

You can tell who knows how to spot the mesmer pretty quick and gotta be tricky about it, but thieves just so fast it’s really futile to try and trick em you just gotta kill em, cuz all the mesmer movement give you away when you go against thief imo. They have less pressure to evade when circling you in stealth …

For me, the thief gives me the most problems as it can do 10K+ dmg in a single attack (haven’t seen any class that can do that) / can kill someone within 3 secs literally (again haven’t encountered any other class that can do that), and can not target at all the entire time (again haven’t come across other classes like that).

Mesmers, once you know how their strengths and weaknesses, are rather easy to counter. If you are struggling, think of what is giving them their edge and then you should be able fight them without any significant issues.

Of course, for mesmers too, they can never kill me within 3 secs and I can target them without any issues unless they cloak which can only be for 5 secs max unlike a thief which is like seriously more than 30 secs??? O_o

Oh and I can outrun mesmers but not thieves!

I’m in a bit of a unique position. Currently have a lvl 80 mezzer, necro and warrior and have WvW’ed in all of them.

I can tell you they are all a problem and they all have their weaknesses.

IMO any other lvl 80 toon played by a half decent player is a problem in WvW in skirmishes (small group fights of say no larger than 8 v 8).

Like any other MMOG that I’ve played over the years, in large group fights…aka da zerg…it’s pretty much luck of the draw. You get focus fired, you’re going down.

Thieves, stealth, culling, and the fact that the entire stealth mechanic is a WOW cancer that should be eliminated from gaming completely. I was seriously disappointed to find out that GW2 was going to cave to a bunch of brats and include stealth in their game. Cowards don’t deserve acquiescence.

Necro gives me the biggest problem, since i play it.
Already the most nerfed, least buffed, lowest dmg output, Aoe that doesn’t target everything [ 5 pl max i understand], line of sight aoe skills that don’t work with camera angles, as opposed to other classes, i actually have to climb on the edge of a wall to be able to cast my aoe straight down to be able to touch the ground[ not players] and be able to cast.
glitches when polymorphing so my character is still visible to enemies in original form.
Not being able to spike when polymorphed ever. [even though we have the most polymorph skills, wich genarally suck due to the max Aoe targets]
MM is not MM anymore, there is no way of sustaining your minions, few as they are.
Where are the feast skills? no way to heal trough minions except the crappy floating minion that is utterly useless since it rushes to any foe you target and gets instakilled.
conditions are great, just the spread is really bad.

Only good thing is the HP, wich allowes you to stay alive to scout around a bit, untill you get hit for 15k damage in one hit offcourse

I can basicly cover the escape of teammates by sacrificing myself and slow down the other team , a bit. then again, kitingskills are great, only problem is they arn’t instacast and have to be used with a staff and the marks have to be placed unlike other marks. so while running i have to switch caamera’s turn around place a mark to be able to cripple. Locustswarm is utterly useless since when a melee is in range it’s instadeath.

Basicly necro is, as it is now, a support class wich also means there is little to no loot to pick up.
If a class has somany close combat condition skills at least give it some close combat defense.

I tagged somany people in pvp with conditions, crippled many people rushing tried to convert boons etc, etc.. no rewards gained, no deaths recorded no use playing necro..

I rolled a thief yesterday :P

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Basicly necro is, as it is now, a support class wich also means there is little to no loot to pick up.
…
I tagged somany people in pvp with conditions, crippled many people rushing tried to convert boons etc, etc.. no rewards gained, no deaths recorded no use playing necro..

That part is quite untrue.

Yesterday in WvW on my lvl 60s guardian, I had 3 solo fights. One, an engineer, killed me. The other 2, a warrior and a necro, I killed, despite running with a staff equipped and being a lowbie in blue/green gear. The warrior did the stand-up thing, so I had to kill him twice.

Yet I know from doing pvp that a warrior is much stronger than any engi, and prob’ly I’d give the edge to necros, too (except I have oodles of condition removal as guardian). But seriously, to lose to my very kitable lowbie guardian, there’s more L2P than profession involved.

So I come to the conclusion that profession, per se, in wvw doesn’t particularly matter that much.

Thief – Too much burst given that they can just run from any situation. First, no class should be able to take you out as fast as a thief does. Second, couple that damage with the best escapes in the game and it’s just a farce.

I find the each class has a pretty good counter to it so I don’t think the balance is as bad as it is made to seem. The one class I don’t enjoy going against is a thief but not because I’m not able to kill them or they kill me too easily but that they can escape almost every time if they know what they are doing.

re: the thief

I figure every thief that runs away from me is a personal victory. I also count alt-F4 escapers a victory, too. They are the mobility class, with the fastest base run speed, plus ports, plus stealth, but weak range.

Mesmer is also designed to be an unpleasant profession to face, not because they’re deadly (which they can be, but not all are), BUT because they were designed to be freakin annoying.

It’s odd. Every pvp match there’s a mesmer, but I don’t often run into them roaming wvw maps.

The only class that’s a “problem” per se is Thieves, because you can’t tell what spec they are by glancing at them, and if they are in the maximum Backstab spec, they can burst >30k damage from range within a half second. So, it’s silly.

Halo.8976:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Basicly necro is, as it is now, a support class wich also means there is little to no loot to pick up.
…
I tagged somany people in pvp with conditions, crippled many people rushing tried to convert boons etc, etc.. no rewards gained, no deaths recorded no use playing necro..

That part is quite untrue.

pm me your build dude

I am still waiting for the day that an organized group use 3 plague necros as their anti-zerg vanguard…

As things stand currently, the only class that gives me problems (when playing Engineer) is the thief, and mostly because of rendering issues rather than their burst. With any stunbreaker it’s not that hard to get away from glass cannon thieves, then turn around and drop them. Personally I think Engineers have the easiest time in handling thieves.

Mesmers can be annoying, but only in terms of time it takes to kill them if they keep spamming clones/phantasms. It’s usually just a matter of time before they die, but man they make you work for it.

Necros CAN be annoying if they are correctly spec’ed and geared (condition build, with the all-too-elusive condition damage/prec/toughness gear). But the problem with Necros is you can ALWAYS outrun them if things go badly.

Guardians can be annoying if they are running a bunker build, in which case they take longer to kill than Mesmers. However, bunker build Guardians really have no bite, so it’s a matter of choosing to spend 2 minutes chasing one or not.

Engineers can certainly be annoying for all glass cannon builds – I tend to avoid bunker Engineers because it just isn’t worth the effort to try and kill one, plus it is very hard to get away from one if his friends show up.

The other professions do not really stand out in any way.