Guild Wars 2

Warriors and necros do the highest straight up damage of any other class safely with their huge HP pools and abilities.

Guardians and eles are the best support, provide sustain for the frontline warriors/guards as well.

Mesmers are useful in smaller numbers, as they have powerful boonstrips and veil/TW/feedback

Rangers are awful, every single thing they do can be done better and safer by an elementalist. Engineers are ok, but severely outclassed by a necro or guardian in whatever role they are trying to perform (frontline bombs outclassed by a guardian because no AoE stab, no shoutcleanses, and weak heals. Backline nades/other dps is just out dpsed by necros)

Thief has its uses, shortbow can spam poison and weakness better than any other class. Snipe builds can punish poorly positioned eles/necros. But their effectiveness does not really increase in larger numbers, versus a guardian or warrior.

Trap builds are very viable in WvW, who doesn’t like a fire field in the middle of a blob hitting people for ~850-1k a second (depending on might stacks)? Who doesn’t like 6 stacks of regen in a giant water field that strips conditions? Who doesn’t like reduced heal for the entire enemy blob?
Engineers have condition for days, stealth, CCs and a huge water field that doesn’t go away until the turret does (2 if you run supply drop).
1 Mesmer can shut down 15 people with one skill, who doesn’t like up to 15 people dazed at once. Buh bye hammer train. It is a survivable squishy class, due to the amount of damage avoidance it has. Feedback + back line = dead back line. For some reason, people love to stay in that kitten. They aren’t just there to veil, portal and timewarp.

Who needs trap builds for fire fields hitting 1k a second, when you can get an Elementalist spam perma lava fonts hitting for 2-3k a second? Followed by Meteor which is the best skill to clean battlements and destroy ACs.

Along with 4 water fields, one of which is also a giant waterfield that strips conditions. Elementalists can do everything Rangers can do, only better.

However, Rangers are more survivable than Eles by quite a bit. So if you can’t handle being as squishy as an Ele, then Ranger may be the next best thing, but it really doesn’t compare IMO.

As for Mesmer dazing…. all those hammer warriors have Balanced Stance (some of them have Last Stand, so they even do it automatically) so it doesn’t do a thing. Feedback doesn’t affect Elementalists who are spamming lava fonts and meteor swarm.

All the classes are either useful or great in Zerg fights. Mesmers being the least useful in direct combat, but great for portal, veil and Focus Pull.

Warriors all around great. No, not great, more like Godly. Guardians too, especially the buffs. Eles are great for combo fields and AOE DPS. Necromancers deal debilitating conditions en masse and have lot sof warm bodies lying around to distract the enemy as shock troop fodder. One of the most overlooked abilities of the Necro is their ability to “inflate” the size of the zerg, which is helpful in making the opponent lose the will to fight or get intimdated. This is especially effective when you are just on the edge of vision of the enemy, and they just see a blob of enemy name tags floating and can easily cause a panic when they see 6 tags which actually just belong to one person.

Engineers very good all around with heals and area damage, buffs and crowd control — though frankly I don’t see too many of them in zergs, mostly I just see them roaming.

Rangers, dunno what the hate is, they are great as roamers but in zergs GS rangers are not half bad. Though GS Warriors or Guardians are, strictly speaking, better in just about every way. Longbow though is good for AOE backliners, but Eles are better at that, too.

Thief maybe the least viable class for Zergs, I usually just see thieves hanging out in the back in Zergs and picking off weakened enemies at the fringes of enemy zergs. IMO the best use of a thief in zerg fights is to kill high impact squishy targets — like Staff Elementalists. A staff Ele left alone can change the flow of a zerg fight all by himself, whether he is spamming combo fields or raining death with fire, so it’s important to take them out.

As for 30 Mesmers vs. 30 everythign else, it would be fun to see, but I don’t agree that 30 good Mesmers can take on any other class. In single combat, sure. But group ZvZ is totally different from single combat. First, there’s a geometric increase in potential when you group things like a lot of guardians together. The boon stacking alone increases their power multiple times beyond what a mesmer can do.

Mesmers can also buff, but their buffs aren’t insta buffs the way a Guardian does it, Guardians just need to press 4 buttons and everyone in the group has 20 stacks of might, aegis, regen etc. etc. and loses all conditions. Mesmer has to cast Chaos Storm, create some clons, fire Winds of Change a few seconds, and wait for signet of inspiration to give a buff, then activate it before they can give everyone a substantially lower amount of stacks.

Second, Guardians and Warriors can cleave with their auto attacks. Among others. Mesmers will create clones and all, all of them will get cleaved to oblivion in an instant by simple auto attacks in a group battle. That’s not even counting the AOE effects from Necro or Ele. And there is Mesmer’s greatest weakness — no AOE. Mesmers have pathetic AOE. Either create a ton of clones and shatter, or rely on GS Phantasmal Berserker or iWarden. Neither of which are really gonna hit consistently or fast enough.

So lesson is: teams win on synergies. All these other abilities in a zerg work synergistically so that the whole is greater than the individual parts. Mesmers unfortunately do not give that much synergy when it comes to killing others, they are lone wolves in this respect. Their group tactics are good, but are not killing techniques — Veil, Focus Pull, Portal. Their best group ability is Chaos Storm and Time Warp, but Time Warp last so short. Oh and Null Field. I love Null Field.

All classes are viable, maybe not for what you want to do with them, but there are roles they can play very effectively.

That being said, as far as versatility, some classes can run very versatile builds. For example, I can play warrior with basically any set of armor I wish, swap to any weapons I want, change any utilities, and still be effective. Other classes get stuck into their role through trait or weapon limitations (like being forced to use certain traits to function in the build)

Of all the professions, the ones who have the hardest time in LARGE scale WvW combat are pretty much ranger and thief. There are some good build options, but often they are BORING to play. These classes have excellent builds for small combat and roaming.

I find myself playing warrior the most because I have so many options. I can play Condi bow, condi swords, zerk bow, zerk hammer, tanky dps hammer, full tank hammer, mace shield hammer pony, zerk rifle, hambow, regen tank, team buff support, axe assassin, etc. In addition to that, I can make any of them tanky by adding a warhorn, quick breathing, and cleansing ire. I can swap in traits like Death from Above on command and knock people off rams. I can also scout better than any other class in the game.

Part of it is (or was, now that it it seemingly fixed, or a whole lot better anyway) skill lag. Passive regen + heavy armor + melee cleave #1 spam was the best counter to not being able to use skills.

I can play any of my characters fine in a zerg and contribute, right up until that 80v80v80 inside garrison makes it impossible to use any skill other then autoattack and dodge. At that point it becomes highly preferable to be on my warrior or guardian.

I think this is one of the main driving forces behind the prevalence of warriors. Hopefully it will change a bit now that skill lag seems less common.

naphack.9346:

Madora.9340:

Engineers have several uses in a zerg fight. Elixir X helps out in a fight with the amount of CC’s it has, Mortar has many AoEs including a heal and a chill, the flamethrower (I believe) isn’t capped at five targets due to it being a cone of fire, piercing shots tag everyone in the ball, the glue shot immobilizes, etc. There are many uses.

Elixir X: I’d rather have the original.
Mortar: Stationary as hell. If a zerg runs over you, it will not be helpful at all.
Flamethrower: 3 hits times 10 ticks = 30 ticks of retaliation damage PER ATTACK SEQUENCE or 12 retal ticks per second.
Piercing shot: With pistol, up to 25 hits per shot, amounting to 25 potential retaliation ticks per attack, with a bit less than a second per attack, you can do the math.
Glue shot: I’d rather have muddy terrain.

On a sidenote: Without heal, 100 retaliation ticks equal your death, even in full PTV.
Let’s not even talk about what retaliation or reflect walls do to you when you use grenades.

On the other hand, I just thought of a cheesy trollstrat: Stack up on retaliation on 5 very tanky team mates(best, if your crit is as low as possible), stack at one spot and shoot your grenades right into the enemies reflect wall, then watch him die to your retaliation on the reflected projectiles.

I don’t really get hit with retaliation damage, but Self-Regulating Defenses seems to catch you if you get retaliated too hard. It’s all about paying attention to the zerg too, I mean, don’t sit there on your Mortar if the zerg is running your way, you’re just asking to be murdered.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Part of it is (or was, now that it it seemingly fixed, or a whole lot better anyway) skill lag. Passive regen + heavy armor + melee cleave #1 spam was the best counter to not being able to use skills.

I can play any of my characters fine in a zerg and contribute, right up until that 80v80v80 inside garrison makes it impossible to use any skill other then autoattack and dodge. At that point it becomes highly preferable to be on my warrior or guardian.

I think this is one of the main driving forces behind the prevalence of warriors. Hopefully it will change a bit now that skill lag seems less common.

Passive regen actually doesn’t give you anymore benefit in skill lag. Passive regens (stamina, health) are only an advantage when servers speed back up.

You have to realize that “skill lag” is not what you think it is. It’s not a que for your skills, and spamming them when they get off cooldown won’t help you. When “skill lag” happens, the server slows down and stretches out time. Your client think your skill is ready to use again after 10 seconds, but the server says its not ready for 20 seconds. If you wait the 20 seconds and press your skill once, it WILL activate on first attempt.

So to summarize, in skill lag:
1. Time slows down. When the engagement finishes, time speeds back up.
2. boons and conditions seem to last longer, but they are ticking at a slower rate.
3. Your auto attack is easy to use, as it has the shortest cooldown.
4. Don’t waste your big cooldown skills on nothing, as you will have to wait a long time for them to be back up.
5. There are 2 communications happening between server and client as far as cooldowns go. It first checks client to see if the skill is ready to use. If it passes client then it asks server, if server says no, it won’t let you use your skill. It also works the other way around, if server says yes it’s ready, and client says no, it won’t let you use it. Both server and client must agree that the cooldown is ready for use.

Number 5 is the reason why passive regens are amazing when servers speed back up. I can use my warrior healing signet and it will tick 2-3 times faster than normal. The guy I am attacking used his heal skill and it is now on a 20 second cooldown. He doesn’t benefit from the speed boost on his heal skill like I do, as his client will still restrict it’s use, even though the server knows the skill is ready.

It was mentioned above that thieves can clusterbomb and backline play.

If you meant the back of enemy zerg, I would strongly recommend against that for thieves. Because the zerg in a split second likes to do u turns and you could be left for dead. As far as cluster bombing, its debatable since the short bow range was reduced youd be better off picking off the fat kid at a departing enemy zerging and stun stopping for your zerg.

Johje Holan.4607:

Didn’t you know WvWvW means Warriors v Warriors v Warriors?

Hahahahah xD

Mochann.5298:

Who needs trap builds for fire fields hitting 1k a second, when you can get an Elementalist spam perma lava fonts hitting for 2-3k a second? Followed by Meteor which is the best skill to clean battlements and destroy ACs.

Along with 4 water fields, one of which is also a giant waterfield that strips conditions. Elementalists can do everything Rangers can do, only better.

However, Rangers are more survivable than Eles by quite a bit. So if you can’t handle being as squishy as an Ele, then Ranger may be the next best thing, but it really doesn’t compare IMO.

As for Mesmer dazing…. all those hammer warriors have Balanced Stance (some of them have Last Stand, so they even do it automatically) so it doesn’t do a thing. Feedback doesn’t affect Elementalists who are spamming lava fonts and meteor swarm.

Eles are squishy as hell, no way around it. A dead support player provides no support at all (unless they support the other team by being a rally bot).

As for mesmers v hammer warriors, balanced stance and last stand don’t do kitten when they are in a null field.

Tibstrike.2974:

To answer your question more exactly. All classes are viable in zerg fights. The only classes that tend to not be wanted as much are thieves and rangers.

Thieves are not as many people play builds better suited to roaming and duels and are quite glassy (rallybots). However, they are excellent squishy killers and general mayhem makers in zerg fights. They can spam poison clouds and effectively stop a regroup by themselves. They also can spike those pesky necros and eles.

Rangers tend to be looked down upon as other professions can handle what a ranger can do to a higher level. This includes CC, water fields, and ranged damage. That said, don’t let it discourage you from playing ranger in a zerg. I don’t know exactly what builds to use, but a melee ranger can be quite good while mixing in CCs such as Entangle. Just be aware that people will probably comment on it. Just live longer than them in the fight and laugh as you grab your loot bags.

That said, guilds tend to have compositions they want filled before having these two last professions played. The Warrior/guard/necro trinity at the moment is the meta and often times people only think those three professions are involved. Each guild is different so try asking around to see what they are looking for. Also, maybe roll and alt in one of the main zerg professions. It can’t hurt and would allow you flexibility!