Guild Wars 2

By small groups I pretty much mean anything besides a zerg. I hate being restricted to fighting with a zerg, I would much rather roam with a group of 5-15 friends. So what class would be the best in that situation?

And please don’t say:
“It’s all about what you feel the most comfortable with” (because I play ranger and it isn’t)
“There’s no best” (I’m really just asking for your opinion, so give it to me! )

You and friends making 15 thieves sounds about right atm

Thieves. It’s all people roam with. You are annoying, can deal insane burst damage and can also run away like a noob as soon as you might get killed.

In any size group you cant go wrong with a Guardian

If your asking which class is best for roaming with 5-15, your asking the wrong question. What you need to think about is builds. In team play you need players who can stack buff, lay down fields, spam combos on those fields etc etc. No one class can do all that without very different builds and specific builds on various classes will do it better than others.

Can’t go wrong with thief, ranger, elementalist, guardian, or mesmer for small groups and roaming.

If you plan to be functional in large groups or do heavy zerg contribution, scratch the first 2 off the list.

If I could organize 10-15 people to all reroll a roaming group right now I’d have to say mesmers. Nothing would be cooler than 10-15 mesmers all identical in looks each with 3 clones each. Name yourselves after pokemon or something.

Nirvana is right. To roam you need a group of synergized builds/classes/players. Until you have other people to run with, you can make anything you want.

Side note, ask yourself OP how good of a player with personal skill are you? Can you win 1v1s without running bogus specs like portal thieves or bunker guardians/mesmers…?
The class needs to fit the player’s personal skill otherwise you mine as well Zerg.

Thieves can bring good damage and interesting support with stealth. Mesmers have great team utilities and elites and have a ton of different specs, although their effectiveness tends to go down more with larger groups. Guardians and ekitten th can be effective in support, damage, and bunkering, and Necros and engis can bring a ton of AOE and condition damage.

The odd ducks out are (in my opinion) warriors and rangers.

I know that isn’t one class like you wanted, but it does depend on what you want, what your style is and what else is in your group. If you don’t know, probably guardian or elementalist are your best bets to be generally successful.

Ranger can be really good for small roaming group play. They have water fields. Can keep up swiftness + furry, this well let the rest of your group use a few valkryie/cavalier pieces. Rangers also have a plethora of AoE immobilizes, I think you can have up to 4 at a time from what we’ve tried. AoE immobilize is super important to counter stability. They also are superior at taking down that low health target that is just barley getting out of range of the rest of the group with the longbow, and can be very evasive if focused causing the enemy to waste a lot of cool downs while being hit by your group at the same time.

1v1 builds generally are not very good for small roaming group, so if your running a 1v1 ranger build that is probably why you have that impression. Zerg builds are generally not good for small group play either.

If you want to start a roaming group, which I fully think you should!, you just need to really find people on your server you seem to work well with, the most important thing is that you play in a cohesive way. Once you get a few people you get the fun of theory crafting builds that all work together, and you will see all the ways that Rangers and any class can be useful in a small group.

Just make sure you have at least one Healing Guardian.