Guild Wars 2

The best thing I loved about DAoC were the massive battles. I hated small manning and hated 8v8s. I loved zerg surfing. Whats the best class for doing that in this game? I want to be able to drop tons of damage on people trying to take a keep we own or if running with a group of people and we come across another large group in the open or trying to take the a keep drop serious AoE on them. I could care less if Im glass cannon and die in 10 seconds I just enjoy doing a lot of damage really fast to as many people as possible.

Sounds Ike an Elementalist or Engineer with a power grenade build would be up your ally.

Arent eles kinda hard to play cause you have to always switch attunements?

Grenade Engineer is ridiculous… Once you hit level 60 and gain access to the grandmaster trait, giving grenades effectively +50% damage(3 instead of 2 grenades) and 1500 range. Before that, it’s kinda lackkluster and engi is one of the hardest classes to level through the lower levels anyway.

Necromancer with Marks and Wells can be ridiculous too. Bonus for being the hardest to kill out of any heavy AoE classes.

I mentioned these 2 classes first because they are hardly ever played. Necromancer got a bunch of bugged traits and a narrowed-down traitline, making it hard to build anything flexible. Most builds do exceptionally well in one thing and suck at the rest but necro is a hard counter to most classes considered op right now.
Corrupt Boon eats Elementalists alive, wells and marks screw up backstab thieves.
Also Lich and Plague can really turn a zerg battle.

Also Elementalist but d/d is waaaaay superior to any staff build. You could play a signet-Auramancer tho. It’s a real kitten Staff support build.

I agree with Liquid. Necro isn’t too bad either, or if you like simplicity a thief with clusterbomb spam does alright, but it sounds like you want Ele or Eng glass cannon to me.

Critical damage grenade Engineer sounds like the class for you, possibely the highest DPS class in-game.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqSXHvSiF17IyYGd2EC+Ag95x81WQIA;TYAKuMcJ4yyljLJXA
(Copy and Paste)

Full Berserkers armour with Ruby jewelery, dodge roll backwards and then forwards, stand still and nuke from above with Elixer B and U and laugh as people collapse, Grenade Barrage is also OP broken.

The thief has a few great things going for it:

• You can spam Clusterbomb, which is a big area attack capable of 5k crits. It’s powerful area denial.
• Clusterbomb is also a blast finisher. It arcs over wall nicely when you’re on the defense. If people move out of your target zone, you can pop it into sub-munitions that fly everywhere.
• Moving through a zerg with Dagger Storm is fun.
• “Glass cannon” gear you’d want for big ranged blasts works well with the thief’s melee strategy.
• The class has good movement abilities to get you where you want to be.
• Thieves are the masters of finishing downed opponents. Stomping is fun.
• The downed-state teleport is handy for getting you back behind your own lines.

However,

• Clusterbomb has a very slow flight time due to its high arc.
• Other than Clusterbomb, your ranged attacks are 900 range. You kinda have to run into harms way if you want to start spamming your bouncy arrows.

There are other options… seems like engineer, ele, warrior, maybe wells necro might be enjoyable for you as well. I don’t have personal experience with these, though.

ASP.8093:

The thief has a few great things going for it:

• You can spam Clusterbomb, which is a big area attack capable of 5k crits. It’s powerful area denial.
• Clusterbomb is also a blast finisher. It arcs over wall nicely when you’re on the defense. If people move out of your target zone, you can pop it into sub-munitions that fly everywhere.
• Moving through a zerg with Dagger Storm is fun.
• “Glass cannon” gear you’d want for big ranged blasts works well with the thief’s melee strategy.
• The class has good movement abilities to get you where you want to be.
• Thieves are the masters of finishing downed opponents. Stomping is fun.
• The downed-state teleport is handy for getting you back behind your own lines.

However,

• Clusterbomb has a very slow flight time due to its high arc.
• Other than Clusterbomb, your ranged attacks are 900 range. You kinda have to run into harms way if you want to start spamming your bouncy arrows.

There are other options… seems like engineer, ele, warrior, maybe wells necro might be enjoyable for you as well. I don’t have personal experience with these, though.

lemme finish your sentences:

• You can spam Clusterbomb, which is a big area attack capable of 5k crits. It’s powerful area denial and the only way, thieves can deal respectable AoEdamage anyway.

• Moving through a zerg with Dagger Storm is fun until that necro turns your stability to fear or that big guardian with the hammer just ignores your elite and whacks you away.

• “Glass cannon” gear you’d want for big ranged blasts works well with the thief’s melee strategy and contradicts the aforementioned daggerstorm brilliantly while making you instand-fooder for anything in the huge ZvZ clash.

• The downed-state teleport is handy for getting you back behind your own lines where an opponents thief will wait in stealth and spike you regardless.

Might try a Fire ele out.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

In my opinion, if you’re going to try ele, don’t waste your other attunements either. Elementalists give up a second weapon set for their 4 elements that they can use If you only use fire, you’ll end up using only 1/4th of your skills

Monztor.9207:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

In my opinion, if you’re going to try ele, don’t waste your other attunements either. Elementalists give up a second weapon set for their 4 elements that they can use If you only use fire, you’ll end up using only 1/4th of your skills

Yea but im looking for faceroll easy here.

If you want that go ranger. You have a big AoE on longbow 5, can place handy traps down and can buff the party nicely with off-hand warhorn. In zergs the ranger is actually a very solid profession.

Ele is good but if you don’t want to attunement switch i’d recommend ranger over ele. Engineer is the other major AoE option for direct damage. Very nice. Finally the necromancer can be worth considering, nice conditions but arguably more importantly in a big zerg, conditions to boons for your team.

Just don’t be surprised if people won’t help you after the second time you are downed.

naphack.9346:

• Moving through a zerg with Dagger Storm is fun until that necro turns your stability to fear or that big guardian with the hammer just ignores your elite and whacks you away.

OH NOES!

Then you Shadowstep away.

If you’re rolling ele but want to put out tons of damage go with 4/6 zerkers, 1 knights/clerics, 1 valk, runes of the wurm, 4/5 ruby jewels and one with healing power.

Trait defensively 20-30 arcana, 20-30 water, 10 air, 10 w/e else recommend earth. Carry 2 exotic daggers and an exotic staff. Roam with daggers, flank and ambush, do tons of damage and get out. Swap to staff when preparing to assault or defend, you’ll see meteor shower crits of 3-4/per.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Monztor.9207:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

In my opinion, if you’re going to try ele, don’t waste your other attunements either. Elementalists give up a second weapon set for their 4 elements that they can use If you only use fire, you’ll end up using only 1/4th of your skills

Yea but im looking for faceroll easy here.

Oh well thats your problem. “I wanna kill people but dont want to have to learn my class or try to do it.” Sorry, not gonna happen. Youll get a few cheap kills, get crushed, get fed up, and quit.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

This guy – lol! Fire Ele, hah

My vote goes to fire elementalist.

Many professions has high dps AOE (Engineer has grenades, Thief has cluster bomb, Necro has staff/marks, Fire elemental has lava ring and cosmic fire rain, Ranger has longbow AOE like those from arrow carts).

However, high dps AOE is only one quarter of the equation. You have to also consider the cool-down on these AOE spell. Ideally, you want a high dps AOE with little cool-down.

When you take AOE spell cool-down into consideration (the second quarter of the equation), you eliminate Ranger profession as their longbow AOE has a long cooldown comparatively. Arguably, you can also eliminate thief cluster bomb, which is fueled by initiatives and not cooldown. You run out of initiatives, you are basically hit with the cooldown effect until you recover your initiatives.

The third quarter of the equation to consider is the effectiveness of the hit rate of the AOE. AOE is a ground target based spell. There is a slight delay from the time it is activate to the time it causes damage to the targeted ground. The longer the delay, the lower its effectiveness because enemies are mobile and can move out of its AOE circle before it do serious damages to them. Considering this factor, you can eliminate thief cluster bomb because its trajectory travel time to the target is lengthy in comparison. Although Engineer grenade has a lower trajectory travel time compared to thief cluster bomb, I will also eliminate it because there is still some delay in the travel time.

The last quarter of the equation to consider is the flexibility to switch easily from high dps AOE to high dps single target spell. AOE is good for enemy crowd, but at other times, you want high dps single target spell, especially if you want to kill off a downed enemy from a distance. Necro’s staff number 2 to 5 skills are all marks (AOE) with only a single target spell in number 1 skill. However, number 1 skill is not a truly high dps spell. At the same time, marks are useless against downed enemy as downed player will not trigger off marks.

With that, we are only down to the last contender, the fire elementalist. Fire elementalist has a very low cooldown and immediate cast number 2 lava ring AOE if traited and zero travel time (immediate cast and damage). At the same time, it has high dps single target number 1 and 3 fire spell as backup. Fire elementalist spell range of 1200 is also pretty good. Its is quite ‘balanced’ on many considerations.

PS: if you want a specialist to take out seige enemy defending from the WvW tower/keep, you may want to look at Ranger whose AOE can reach 1500 range. At the same time, its AOE circle damage range is also quite wide, often hitting enemies/seige machine on the inner side of the tower/keep wall where AOE from other professional cannot often reach.

If you want to deal lots of damage I suggest Guardian, Thief, or Warrior. My top pick would be Thief.

Fire ele…*chuckles

You certainly can be one, even do pretty respectable damage.

But….
If someone targets you, dead.
You´re alone, dead.
You get caught in cc, dead after aoes land.
somebody misses their cast and gets you instead, dead.

Mostly everything is avoidable if you learn to use the kitten profession, but if you want easy ele…well lot´s of dying ahead mate.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Arent eles kinda hard to play cause you have to always switch attunements?

Not really. The trick is to not dive into all the attunements all at once, but to work your way up to memorizing your skills and swaps little by little. First, just focus on memorizing the skills in your first attunement of choice (whatever that is). Then, work your second attunement in at around the same level that weapon-swapping is introduced for other professions. Once you’ve memorized that second set and can swap between the two easily, then work-in that third attunement. Once you’ve memorized that third set and can swap between those three attunements easily, start working on your fourth.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to swap attunements quickly and easily!

Manoa.5897:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Arent eles kinda hard to play cause you have to always switch attunements?

Not really. The trick is to not dive into all the attunements all at once, but to work your way up to memorizing your skills and swaps little by little. First, just focus on memorizing the skills in your first attunement of choice (whatever that is). Then, work your second attunement in at around the same level that weapon-swapping is introduced for other professions. Once you’ve memorized that second set and can swap between the two easily, then work-in that third attunement. Once you’ve memorized that third set and can swap between those three attunements easily, start working on your fourth.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to swap attunements quickly and easily!

wrong.
While leveling up, just keep switching and casting random skills regardless. During leveling it dowsn’t matter much.
Don’t learn weird stuff, which you certainly will when staying in attunements. Switch as much as possible. Cast 3 spells, switch, cast 3 spells, switch.
Learn what cast is good in what situation and work your way up from there, switching to the right attunements.
By staying at one attunement for too long, you waste kill time and learn weird stuff. Keep switching from the beginning or you’ll have to un-learn the stuff you learned earlier at a later stage.

naphack.9346:

Manoa.5897:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Arent eles kinda hard to play cause you have to always switch attunements?

Not really. The trick is to not dive into all the attunements all at once, but to work your way up to memorizing your skills and swaps little by little. First, just focus on memorizing the skills in your first attunement of choice (whatever that is). Then, work your second attunement in at around the same level that weapon-swapping is introduced for other professions. Once you’ve memorized that second set and can swap between the two easily, then work-in that third attunement. Once you’ve memorized that third set and can swap between those three attunements easily, start working on your fourth.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to swap attunements quickly and easily!

wrong.
While leveling up, just keep switching and casting random skills regardless. During leveling it dowsn’t matter much.
Don’t learn weird stuff, which you certainly will when staying in attunements. Switch as much as possible. Cast 3 spells, switch, cast 3 spells, switch.
Learn what cast is good in what situation and work your way up from there, switching to the right attunements.
By staying at one attunement for too long, you waste kill time and learn weird stuff. Keep switching from the beginning or you’ll have to un-learn the stuff you learned earlier at a later stage.

Not necessarily wrong. Everyone has different methods of learning. Some people pick up attunement swapping right off the bat. If someone picks it up easily, then no reason to ease into it.

But others struggle with it. 40 skills (20 land and 20 water) can be rather difficult for someone new to eles to master. And spamming a bunch of powers without learning what they do and the best situations to use them gets them nowhere. If someone finds swapping all four attunements too difficult or the number of powers too difficult to memorize/master, it may be better for them to ease into it. As you work your way up, you learn the best situations to use your powers and how each attunement works with one another. Weapon swapping is introduced at level 7 for a reason…it gives a new player the opportunity to learn/master the skills for their first weapon before they start playing with a second. If a new ele who struggles follows a similar structure (introducing a new attunement no more than every 7 levels and mastering their swaps with the newly added attunement), they should be proficient with their attunement swapping for all 4 elements no later than +/-Level 20 (maybe sooner if they pick it up quickly).

Worked for me and it can work for other folks who struggle.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Monztor.9207:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

In my opinion, if you’re going to try ele, don’t waste your other attunements either. Elementalists give up a second weapon set for their 4 elements that they can use If you only use fire, you’ll end up using only 1/4th of your skills

Yea but im looking for faceroll easy here.

You aren’t going to get ‘easy’ with elementalist, especially if you attempt to do it with a single attunement. If you don’t get used to attunement swapping, you really aren’t going to maximize your damage, utility, or survivability.

Kneemin.4235:

You aren’t going to get ‘easy’ with elementalist, especially if you attempt to do it with a single attunement. If you don’t get used to attunement swapping, you really aren’t going to maximize your damage, utility, or survivability.

Yeah I gotta agree with this. Back in GW1 I had eles who focused on one element and did just fine. But the way skills are done now, I’d say it’s extremely difficult, almost kitten near impossible, to make a good build that only utilizes one attunement.

Kneemin.4235:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Monztor.9207:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Might try a Fire ele out.

In my opinion, if you’re going to try ele, don’t waste your other attunements either. Elementalists give up a second weapon set for their 4 elements that they can use If you only use fire, you’ll end up using only 1/4th of your skills

Yea but im looking for faceroll easy here.

You aren’t going to get ‘easy’ with elementalist, especially if you attempt to do it with a single attunement. If you don’t get used to attunement swapping, you really aren’t going to maximize your damage, utility, or survivability.

100% agreed. You HAVE to learn your attunement swapping whichever way you can. If you focusing on only one attunement during your gameplay experience with an ele, you very much miss out on the ele’s power and things will get more difficult for you if you aren’t reaching your full potential.

Ha, fire ele, that’s funny.

But seriously you want ele for big, high damaging AOEs.

Ele no doubt. A well played ele is just impossible to kill. Even a mediocre ele can handle 1 v 10 situation pretty easily.
After today’s patch, ele becomes back the most OP class in every situation, pve, pvp, wvw etc.