Guild Wars 2

Which class has the best versatility for WvW?
Im looking for a class that is useful in all WvW situations.
Attacking, defending, etc.

Thank you.

Depends on where you want to be – the big sieges or the skirmishes around supply camps and caravans?

The ranger seems to be very effective at important strategic locations like sieges, Pop down the aoe arrow shot and you can both keep attackers at bay and make defenders rethink their wall positioning.

Once out on the field though. Can not say. My sever has only been attack this keep or defend that keep. everyone tries to avoid open combat

Thief without any doubt

Elementalists can destroy careless enemies in 3-4 seconds in sieges/zerg surfing.

im going to say NOT guardian if you want to be in the zerg.
Yes, they have wubwub from staff.. But after that? Really nothing.
Their heals are lackluster, ranged DPS is slow and pitiful… So youre basically regulated to manning the machines and doing shouts/placing walls.

However, they are GODS at raiding.

situational.

Ranger – great for spamming castle walls/pressure & single target high dmg
Guardians/Warriors – without these the range dps would die
Elementalist – versatile, good AOE control and pressuring fortifications
Necro/Mesmer – CC/debuffing (these 2 im not 100% sure)

basically every class has a need, it depends on what you want to do

If you want kills, loot or xp rewards, dont go mesmer.

Yes you kickkittenin small battles, but ramp up time means you wont tet credit in the zerg.

Thief rules wvwvw, eles and warriors are also good.

I vote engineer for overall versatility.

Some jobs that need doing:

• AE retaliation. Engineers are one of the best at it. Light fields + mine explosions yield pretty lengthy retaliations. Guardians are good at retaliation too.

• Hitting nasty things up on walls, especially siege engines. Engineers are one of the best at it, particularly if you get the “3 grenade + longer range” trait. The mortar elite is good for this too. Elementalists are better at this but engineers are very good too.

• General AE. Lots of classes can do this. I like the engineer flamethrower for it, though. It’s not the best, but it’s good.

• General survivability. Engineers have solid hit points and the Alchemy trait line in particular has some nice survival toys. (Automatic Elixir S saves me about two dozen times a day.) Again, many classes can do this, engineer included.

• Messing up the enemy. Really this is the guardian specialty but engineer “toss elixir U” can result in a wall of reflection or smoke, which is awesome and great for helping you rez someone or disturb a zerg attack on a door.

• Stripping boons (such as retaliation). Okay, engineers can’t do this. Mesmers and necros can.

• Healing/buffing. Engineers can do this. The elixir gun heal is also a light field so it’s part of the retaliation ritual, which is handy.

In short, if you had stated a SPECIFIC job you wanted to do, I could probably tell you a class other than engineer that could do it.

If you want to do EVERYTHING, though, engineer is the class for you. It can do almost everything. “Jack of all trades, master of none” applies to the engineer.

Elementalist with staff great for throwing fire etc at walls. Just don`t expect to live 1v1 ;p

Staff elementalist if you want to stick to big battles. Excellent AoE damage, excellent AoE healing/dispelling, and excellent escape abilities. The downside is that while your defensive abilities are excellent, they have long cooldowns. Great for retreating if you catch too much heat in a zerg, but of limited use in smaller fights where there’s no zerg to hide behind while you recover.

They’re not BAD in small battles, but there are better choices if you’re mainly interested in skirmishes.

Necro are underrated, they have good AoE and good survivability. They have good utility as well, ever seen a group of people feared on top of a wall, or feared off of siege? There are a lot of bad necros out there though and since they are probably the least played classed right now people probably think that the good necros are mostly a fluke.

Staff elementalist works great for me, great AoE and being able to throw AoE up on a wall during a siege in multiple places is great for keeping enemies from hitting your close range guys. 1v1, they aren’t so great, but if you spec into air a bit, you can move pretty quick along the ground and coupled with a couple of stuns thrown out means that it’s quite easy to run if you need to.

I applogize for not being more clear on the role I want to have in WvWvW. I have a level 30 engineer and a level 20 guardian.
I had a hard time finding a decent build and toolbar setup for engineer to feel effective at sieging and defending. I think it would be worth looking back into that class since I did drop it because I didn’t fully understand it.
I made guardian hoping to feel more useful, but it’s lack of range is disappointing. I feel like I serve no purpose in anything other than battles out in the world.
I’m tempted to turn to warrior for their ranged and melds weapons.

As has been said, it really depends on what you want to do. All professions work in WvW, but they do have different specialties.

Mainly, I play a Guardian. I go with Staff/Hammer and I keep groups alive. I rarely directly kill anyone, but I love running with a small team (or even better – a Guild group) and filling in all the gaps + providing multiple Light Fields for cleansing, regen, heals, and retaliation.

It’s all about buffs for me. I am a walking, buffing, brick wall.

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I applogize for not being more clear on the role I want to have in WvWvW. I have a level 30 engineer and a level 20 guardian.
I had a hard time finding a decent build and toolbar setup for engineer to feel effective at sieging and defending. I think it would be worth looking back into that class since I did drop it because I didn’t fully understand it.
I made guardian hoping to feel more useful, but it’s lack of range is disappointing. I feel like I serve no purpose in anything other than battles out in the world.
I’m tempted to turn to warrior for their ranged and melds weapons.

Ah okay. Well yes, Guardian isn’t fantastic at range.

I play a Warrior in WvW too sometimes. Their ranged options are much more powerful, especially if you build everything around the Longbow and it’s multiple burns. Rifle is good for single target DPS, Longbow is good for AoE DPS.

And what’s nice with a warrior is the ability to swap to a very defensive melee set (say… Mace/Shield) to protect yourself when the enemy closes in on you. Also, they have some pretty good group support options with shouts and banners – if you learn the banner skills by heart you can really change the battle quickly and fluidly.

My guardian seems to have high surviveability.
Is there a build for warriors that makes them feel indestructible at the cost of lower damage?

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My guardian seems to have high surviveability.
Is there a build for warriors that makes them feel indestructible at the cost of lower damage?

I don’t have specifics for you, but I am CERTAIN there are several.

I make my own builds, and the way I would approach this idea would be to decide on my two weapon sets first. Personally, I think Mace/Shield and Hammer would be the most “defensive” type weapons.

So then I would fully explore these weapon sets. Figure out what combos you can perform by yourself – what combo fields you can lay. Which boons and/or conditions you will be juggling with those weapon sets. ALSO – maybe most importantly – figure out what you’re missing. Will you need access to Swiftness (very very important in WvW), or Cripple?

Next, I would work out my traits and utilities at the same time. Maybe do traits first, or utility skills first, but either way make sure they have some synergy and mesh well with my weapon sets (which are really the cornerstone of the build).

When all of that is done, I like to choose Sigils and Runes in this way:

Sigil – should compliment my weapon set’s primary theme or focus.
Runes – should help balance my character. If I built around high damage, I will pick runes that offer a little bit of defense. If I built around defense, I might pick runes that slightly touch something defensive (say boon duration if I am using a lot of boons) but are primarily offensive.

Just my $0.02, maybe a Warrior expert will come along with the perfect WvW defensive build for you. I tend to feel much more comfortable designing my own builds, though.

Thanks for the awesome replies to my admittedly dumb question. The community for this game has rocked so far.

Guardian, Mesmer, Ranger and Warrior would be my picks. I would really like to add Engineer to the list but they get slammed by Retaliation far too hard. Your mortar will die in seconds if anyone deploys it.

What are guardians best at in wvw?