Guild Wars 2

I’m new to this game but not new to MMO’s.
I’ve always liked to min-max builds including classes (in this case professions).

In no game has there ever been a proper balance and I doubt this game has it either. One class is always superior at DPS than others.

So my question is:
Is this class superior in AoE DPS? What about single target DPS? What about burst in PvP?

In PvE, Fire Staff Ele is the most damage in the game, yes.

But I think most people play things other than this because it’s hard to run in a PUG with that sort of build (incredibly squishy).

For PvP, if going for great damage, there’s a lot of good choices. Thief is good burst direct damage combined with mobility. Warrior has good sustained damage while also being very easy to play and very tanky. Ranger, Engi, and Necro have good Condi Damage builds and are tanky thanks to being able to take defensive stats.

Going back to PvE, Ele does have some really strong DPS-oriented builds. Fire Staff and Lightning Hammer Ele are the best for speedclearing and do really great damage. Again, though, they’re hard to take into PUGs without going down. For that reason, if I PUG, I’ll often take a D/F 30/30/0/0/10 build due to the great defensive cooldowns on Focus.

In PvE in general, Mesmer has very high theoretical damage (spamming Phantasms) but often ends up on the bottom because of how easily their Phantasms die, and the windup time to summon them; they have some of the best team utility in the game. Thief has astounding Single Target damage with Backstab and great AoE damage with Sword, as well as the utility of Pistol 5. Warrior has great base damage, good offensive buffs, and is very easy to survive in thanks to high base stats. Guardian has very good base damage as well, and access to a ton of Defensive utility to carry your team through just about anything.

Those would be my suggestions.

Ele is the top glass cannon.

In WvW, they contribute a lot in AoE chokepoints.

Just to add on, eles have some of the biggest, untelegraphed burst in the game. The trade off tho is theyre insanely squishy when going for this type of build

We have stupidly strong burst through Scepter/Dagger Fresh Air builds - using instant-cast skills, and the Fresh Air grandmaster trait, it’s possible to get very high burst damage in PvP (though it leaves the Ele with a long cooldown period).

For AoE dps... yeah, Staff definitely wins. Full glass cannon staff does incredible damage in all areas of the game... and will die as soon as it’s breathed on. A true GC.

Veril.9408:

I’m new to this game but not new to MMO’s.
I’ve always liked to min-max builds including classes (in this case professions).

In no game has there ever been a proper balance and I doubt this game has it either. One class is always superior at DPS than others.

So my question is:
Is this class superior in AoE DPS? What about single target DPS? What about burst in PvP?

Scepter/dagger will give you the strongest form of burst you can apply.

The usual reliable burst method with s/d :
Earthquake, lightning flash, ring of fire, arcane skills if slotted, phoenix, go into air attunement to finish the job if target not already dead. If you get good at doing this, you can basically fire all these skills off in about 2 seconds, and kill multiple people stacked up on each other before they can do anything, note though if you miss your burst you’re gonna want to play it safe until you can burst again.

Staff is good for for a larger AOE burst. The usual reliable burst method is:
Meteor shower, tornado (for extra stats to make meteor shower hit harder). Tornado will get a single meteor to crit somewhere around 7-10k depending on target. Note that staff has great large aoe burst, but doesn’t have the greatest methods to sustain dps.

d/d is very mobile and has some aoe, some cone AE.

Burst method for d/d: burning speed, lightning flash as you take your stance for burning speed, ring of fire, (Fire grab optional, use it if you think it will land), dodge in earth on top of ring of fire for blast finisher, magnetic grasp, ring of earth, earthquake. From here you go into air to apply more damage. This burst method isn’t as strong as s/d burst, but that doesn’t mean d/d isn’t viable, you get great mobility and nice cleave dmg as well as chill/immobilize/cripple.

Veril.9408:

I’m new to this game but not new to MMO’s.
I’ve always liked to min-max builds including classes (in this case professions).

In no game has there ever been a proper balance and I doubt this game has it either. One class is always superior at DPS than others.

So my question is:
Is this class superior in AoE DPS? What about single target DPS? What about burst in PvP?

One thing you gotta keep in mind is that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t apply a tank-healer-dps combat setup. In practice this means actual dps is much less important than in games like World of Kittencraft. Dealing a lot of damage is fine, and certainly useful. But all professions are damage dealers. DPS is not done by carefully min/maxing your stats or spending hours on spreadsheets. It’s all about how you play your profession, and they can all deal tons of damage in their own ways.

Just a heads up.

Because of Cleaving and the five target maximum the difference between being a good single target damage class and being a good aoe damage target class aren’t as important as in other games. So many of your best auto attacks(LH and MH dagger air) will hit 3 nearby targets and your true aoes can only hit 5. That last one means GW2 will never have a traditional mage class imo.

Ele have the best DPS of the game. But to reach that, you really have to sacrifice a lot of surviability making that hard to do. Its not that bad in a organized group, but in PuGs that depend on you, I can bring my ele in pugs group, but not for all dungeons, but i’m working on that, need to practice Ele are in a really good place right now for PvE. Since you need to give up so much surviability and some of these attack are telegraphed and static, that don’t make the Ele that much powerful in PvP. The profession have its place for some specific job, but its not at a great place right now for PvP.

Mesmer is probably the second highest DPS in theory. It easier than an ele to reach that potentiel, but you also need a lot of chance. A big part of that DPS potentiel come from your Phantasm. Good player can put down phantasm really fast, but it hard to control exactly where they gonna spawn and if they won’t be kill by a random aoe. They are mainly single target, but have access to some good AoE.

Thief have probably the best Single Target urst dps. But they are squishy. In PvE that a problem, since they don’t have that much surviability. They still have more surviability than a full DPS Ele, but less than a mesmer. They may have less single target DPS than a mesmer, but they dps is instant, meaning that they can burst down someone as soon as they engage them, and don,t have to build up phantams like a mesmer. They also lack in AoE.

Warrior have good dps, but not as high as the other 3. The difference is that its easier to get a good dps with that profession. Sure getting better at your rotation, will boost your dps, but the difference between the dps of a good Warrior and a bad Warrior is not as high as the same situation with a Ele, Thief or Mesmer. That make the Warrior, one of the first profession to been min-maxed in the game, participate in speed clear and is one of the most popular profession in the game.

Necromancer is in the TOP when it come to Condition damage. Too bad that condition is so bad in PvE. But they have their revenge in PvP, when they are in the TOP profession. They also have access to some powerful direct damage burst aoe attack that make they pretty good for Range Pressure in WvW.

Engineer have the best AoE condition damage of the game. They can spread condition everywhere, especially Vulnerability. Again, that make them not that good in PvE, but powerful in PvP. You need to use a lot more skills on an engineer to compete with the top profession, making the Engi less common than Necro, Mesmer, Thief or Warrior in PvP. But they can be as powerful as the other when play well.

Ranger. They have the best single target, range DPS while moving. (Ele have better range dps, but their attack are more static). That pretty specific and useless in PvE. But that make for a great combat profession in PvP.

Guardian. They can do dps. Actually, they can reach the higher tier of DPS at some time (but its mainly in theory, in practice they only have normal DPS, most of the time). Their strength is in their support capability, which is amazing. Because of that you’ll see them everywhere, from dungeon, to fractal to zerg, to node protection in sPvP, even some roaming build (love the hammer in EotM).

Thaddeus.4891:

Ranger. They have the best single target, range DPS while moving. (Ele have better range dps, but their attack are more static). That pretty specific and useless in PvE. But that make for a great combat profession in PvP.

Thanks for the information but I found that particular piece of particular interest.
How common is it for a character to stop and have cast time? And is the ranger really that much better at it? How much better in % would you say? (rough estimate)
Also how is their mobility? Are you noticeably faster than other classes?

Also I found the combat interface to be really odd and uncomfortable. Is there any way to change it to be less point-and-click and more like Neverwinter Online? I can’t even make the right mouse button toggle, no such option…

Veril.9408:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ranger. They have the best single target, range DPS while moving. (Ele have better range dps, but their attack are more static). That pretty specific and useless in PvE. But that make for a great combat profession in PvP.

Thanks for the information but I found that particular piece of particular interest.
How common is it for a character to stop and have cast time? And is the ranger really that much better at it? How much better in % would you say? (rough estimate)
Also how is their mobility? Are you noticeably faster than other classes?

Also I found the combat interface to be really odd and uncomfortable. Is there any way to change it to be less point-and-click and more like Neverwinter Online? I can’t even make the right mouse button toggle, no such option…

Are you talking about targeting enemies with out using the mouse? Yeah you can assign a hotkey to target a player.

Were you intrigued by the ranger comment because you’re trying to find a class that excels at roaming solo? Because ranger is actually a pretty good choice then, regardless of all the talk about them being kitten , they have great utility. axe/dagger + long bow is quite amazing for 1v1. You get a skill that dishes out 10 seconds of weakness with 3 seconds of chill with your axe, a cripple with dagger, and then stealth with long bow along with a knockback. It makes for a great single target dps roamer with long range. They can also be pretty mobile as well.

As for their single target dps being higher than staff eles? Yeah I’d say so. As for how much more? Hard to say with so many builds out there, I’ll tell you they can do more dmg than a staff ele and less than a d/d ele when considering burst potential.(going to exclude lucky meteor shower + tornado combo). Look into some ranger vids on youtube and play around with them in spvp to get a feel for em, you really should mess around with every class so you can learn to counter them anyway.

Fastest class is probably still thief? Right behind thief is warrior, ele, ranger… depending on weapon choice.

Grimreaper.5370:

As for their single target dps being higher than staff eles? Yeah I’d say so. As for how much more? Hard to say with so many builds out there, I’ll tell you they can do more dmg than a staff ele and less than a d/d ele when considering burst potential.(going to exclude lucky meteor shower + tornado combo). Look into some ranger vids on youtube and play around with them in spvp to get a feel for em, you really should mess around with every class so you can learn to counter them anyway.

Fastest class is probably still thief? Right behind thief is warrior, ele, ranger… depending on weapon choice.

I was referring to the ability to apply DPS while in motion and without cast time. The post I quoted implied rangers were really good at it. And I wanted to know how much better than others they were at it.

^actually eles are the best at that with a s/d fresh air build

Veril.9408:

I was referring to the ability to apply DPS while in motion and without cast time.

Skills without cast time are a rarity…but so are skills that require a player to stand still while using them. The elementalist has 2 attacks that require them to stand still. All the others can be used while moving. And eles have quite a few instant or near instant skills.

Again. Guild Wars 2 isn’t like other mmo’s. You’ll be moving a lot more, and you’ll be doing a lot of things other than dps.

To be clear about my comment on Ranger.

They don’t have the best Single target dps, the thief is.

They don,t have the best Single target, ranged dps. Because that the Ele staff. Properly build, the staff Ele can bring HUGE dps with Lava Front. But the ele can only claim that status in specific settings. He need a lot of stuff for all his damage modifiers to be active, which in PvP is almost impossible. Also, lava front is bad in 1v1 since if the target move, he’s not on top of the lava front anymore. That’s why i said that Ranger ranged single target dps is better while moving. For an ele is harder to hit a moving target while moving, but it’s fairly easy with a ranger.

Whats the best ele weapon combo while leveling? D/D ?