Just change your skin color with the makeover kit.
I like how Zelyhn is just talking to himself now.
I remember when he thought he could theorycraft but turned out to be terrible at it so now he just goes around digging up old grudges.
straight dps?? thief
Well here’s what I’ve got on thief. You’re free to take it however you like, I don’t care.
6/6/0/0/2 D/D, Backstab until 33% then Heartseeker spam:
With infinite initiative/until starting inititiave pool drains: 13572 DPS
Factoring in initiative cost: 11946
By comparison my numbers for other classes:
6/2/2/2/2 Staff ele: 14614
6/6/0/0/2 Rifle/Nades engie: 12601
6/6/0/2/0 GS “second warrior”: 12396
4/6/0/4/0 A/M "standard warrior: 10657
Not everyone does WvW or sPvP. Mesmer is and has always been strong in PvE so regardless of what you think of PvP balance, there’s really nothing stopping you from rolling mesmer for any content that a mesmer actually needs to be rolled and leveled and geared for.
I do understand why mesmer might be the least played class, but I can’t get what’s wrong with engineer.. I’m only lv 30, I’m quite new to GW2 and in my opinion engineer isn’t that hard.. I’m using 3 kits + healing turret at the moment, the only difficulty might be to remember which skill is responsible for blindness, which causes burn etc.
But, yea – in comparison to warrior or guardian engineer might look complicated to control him.
Ok, wish me luck in learning engineer, it’s going to be a long road tho.
1) High-level engie requires TONS of button pressing.
2) No 1200 range auto-attack for AFKing world events.
3) None of the “I’m a cool medieval knight with a big sword” RP factor.
4) Lots of bad engineer players give a bad name.
5) Strong builds aren’t super intuitive (see also #4).
I don’t think it’s really so much that engineers are “controversial” for anyone other than a few naysayers, it’s just people aren’t really willing to take a risk on an unknown.
recalling various theory crafting number threads…..
Assuming Full damage traits, Armour and buffs, (might, fury, vuln)
Elementalist and thief are tier one. (thief becomes highest with an Ele conjure and the improvisation trait. so those 2 can be interchangeable. )
Guard, Necromancer, Ranger, tier 2
Warrior, Engie, Mesmer tier 3
note: Mesmer is VERY dependant on phantasms. so depending on how many are out and alive at any given time. they will move all over the scale.
For “tanking”
assuming Defensive Gear, Traits. and when you say tanking meaning that you just stand there and be a punching bag.Gaurdian, Warrior, Elementalist would be tier one.
the rest I will be honest and say that I truthfully dont know how well you could turn them into meatbags.
One of these days I’d really love to just sit down and find out how these super-inaccurate tier lists get spread and by whom.
Oh wait, I’m sorry, you guys wanted NUMBERS? I thought you were just going off whatever. Based on actual numbers:
Sustained DPS over time: Staff ele > grenade engie > dagger thief > GS warrior > GS guardian = dagger necro > sword ranger (mesmer dependent on number of phantasms maintainble, between ele and engie with all 3 up)
Burst: Subjective based on definition of burst but FGS ele, SotH/QZ ranger, grenade/rifle engie, and Heartseeker thief are all up there.
Tankiness: Depends on build, no one runs full tank so it’s hard to say.
Are you really that hung up over the cancer thing?
Also just so the convo doesn’t derail too much, if you think engie isn’t 2nd DPS, maybe you’d like to tell me what you think it is.
A support build without full ascended Magi or Clerics? What a crappy build.
Also you need to spec for more regen, you can’t heal anyone else if you’re dead yourself.
Speedrunning is not all about DPS. Engis are bad for speedrunning. You certainly got that idea from Guang, and it’s a bad idea.
Not like there’s anyone else in this thread who knows anything who could tell him better.
kitten just got real
But you know what’s not real? His lengthy speedrunning experience among a famous high-end guild :p
Yet I still manage to do Arah P2 without wiping.
This is like complaining that Ryu is OP because his DP is easy, he has a fireball and good normals, and it’s easy to combo into Ultra. That doesn’t make him OP just because he’s beginner friendly though.
…only that war is more like e-honda difficulty with his 100 hand slap… if e-honda could become immune to damage… and had projectiles that covered half the screen
Is that actually a thing people complain about? Honda sucks.
He wouldn’t if he could become immune to dmg and had massive aoe… aka I think you missed the point.
You mean like the warrior’s massive AOE projectiles?
You reallize there’s no way to determine “burst” or “tankiness” unless you define them properly? If tankiness literally just means standing and facetanking, warrior or guardian take the cake. If it means avoiding damage easily, mesmer is probaby best, etc.
This is like complaining that Ryu is OP because his DP is easy, he has a fireball and good normals, and it’s easy to combo into Ultra. That doesn’t make him OP just because he’s beginner friendly though.
…only that war is more like e-honda difficulty with his 100 hand slap… if e-honda could become immune to damage… and had projectiles that covered half the screen
Is that actually a thing people complain about? Honda sucks.
Speedrunning is not all about DPS. Engis are bad for speedrunning. You certainly got that idea from Guang, and it’s a bad idea.
Not like there’s anyone else in this thread who knows anything who could tell him better.
I got a 25 might/vuln/fury/banners/frostspotter pug once, it was pretty godlike.
I main an engineer in a guild that runs dungeons on a daily basis and honestly it’s a really good class to have in a party. As said above one nice thing is that you have a bunch of different stuff to offer, be it fire/smoke/water fields to blast, a metric ton of blast finishers, a LOT of vulnerability which will make bosses go down easier and faster, good mobility, even a reflect/projectile block which is always good to have.
Personally I like engineer over thief because thief feels much more ‘specialized’, ie are basically just stealth+high single-target DPS focus with little variation, whereas engies are extremely versatile, and while they don’t have quite the raw damage of thieves their use to the party overall can be extremely high.
I also play engie in PvP and can confirm it works really well, in a variety of roles, thanks to that versatility. For example, I tend to go with a bunkery build to hold close or support mid, am pretty durable with water fields + blasts + shield while being able to kill or outlast the other person in a 1v1 most of the time, and if not I often manage to stall enough for my team to come and finish it before we lose the point. But it’s also very valid to play a decap engineer, which are really frustrating to be against if they’re played well and can often be a huge hassle and stall points gain. I’ve also seen a bunch of more offensive, roamer-type engineers although they’re much rarer, but they can work pretty well too.
Compared to thief again I think it’s the ability to fill in a lot of different roles that differs. A good thief roamer is awful to fight against, but hell, I’ve fire-bombed a good dozen of them while doing my bunker thing simply because I know how to dodge and thieves can be pretty one-note.
Engie actually has better DPS than thieves, thieves are just good for speedruns because Shadow Refuge makes some stuff really easy. Engie can stealth through most stuff but thieves are the only ones who can really stealth through all of Arah P3 without ever entering combat, which makes them really good for speeding the part after Lupi and opening the WP, as well as for getting through the gate before the Crusher without fighting anything.
For everything else engie stealth gets you through just fine, especially given that Engies move really fast.
This is like complaining that Ryu is OP because his DP is easy, he has a fireball and good normals, and it’s easy to combo into Ultra. That doesn’t make him OP just because he’s beginner friendly though.
You could axe him, it’s pretty much identical to using a sword since most of the sword’s bleed is from auto-attack anyway.
Rooting yourself for HB against Ooze probably isn’t fun times though, although I haven’t actually tried it yet.
If you’re in a low-DPS pug that is STILL dying despite everyone being in tank specs, the occasional short stun/knockdown on a hammer isn’t going to save them. Conversely, if they’re all zerks but just bad and keep wiping, lowering your DPS and forcing them to dodge tells for longer isn’t super helpful either.
Elixir U’s toolbelt skill works fine as a block but it is unreliable for when you want the reflect for actual damage, i.e. agaisnt Lupicus or Stargazer. It’s fine for when you’re just using it to negate attacks that don’t really add that much DPS though, like COE Golem or Alphard. It really depends on the situation, a bomb engie with reflecting turrets and Elixir U can swap on the fly to fill in for a guardian or a mesmer in some cases and give better DPS, but it’s situational.
And yes, Elixir Gun is good, it gives a stunbreak and a strong burst damage skill that also doubles as a blast finisher. Mine Field is a bit better for minmaxing DPS is practice since you can actually see the recharge on it at all times, but Acid Bomb/Elixir Gun just offers more overall utility. Don’t use the cripple shot or the Fumigate obviously.
With recent buffs, engineers became an excellent pve class.
Their damage, which was what they where lacking before, got buffed huge. Rune of strength works also well on them and they still have all the good stuff from before. Crazy vulnerability stacking, crapton of explosion finishers and all the nice stuff on demand like reflection, smoke field etc.
The sad thing is, most players still dont know this, so you will most likely not be welcomed by most pugs(=random people from the lfg menu)
Pretty much this. Most of the engineer hate you’ll get, if any, will stem from one of several things:
1) “Most engineers are bad so I’m not going to take any chances on this one” (see also: rangers, mesmers)
2) “I don’t know anything about engineers but I heard they were bad” (see also: #1, above)
3) “My guild of hardcore dungeon runners is going for a dungeon clear record time and I think that we can shave four seconds off the clear time if we use an elementalist to kill this one boss instead of an engineer.”
The gist of it is that engineers are rarely played, poorly played when played, and the situation MAY mean that a strictly minmaxed group is sometimes better off just bursting with an elementalist rather than going for higher sustained DPS using an engineer. That said that only applies to strict record runs; engineers will actually speed up pretty much any run that isn’t strictly minmaxed point for point and once Anet finally gets around to nerfing Fiery Rush, they’ll be good for everything, period.
I’d say the risk is plenty proportional to the reward.
You realize the fact that Anet uses warriors as a benchmark goal means that they’re perfectly average, not too strong and not too weak, right?
I am not full sure what Anets stance on Warriors. Though most of the time when players complain about the inadequacies of there on profession they compare it to warriors. Same goes when players try to defend there class or build they simple say how is (insert class/build) op when warriors have hambow or lb/evis and are faceroll?
Given that warriors are supposed to be well-rounded, it’s not super hard to single out one aspect where warriors are better than ______ class and harp on that and conveniently ignore all the aspects where they’re worse.
Any trait that is “X weapon deals Y% more damage” only affects skills from that weapon. That applies whether it’s a 1H weapon or a bundle or a weapon equipped under a bundle. The trait language could be a bit more transparent, I guess, a lot of them make it sound like you only need to have the weapon equipped and everything will benefit.
Why bring a necro? Because this game is a casual play at your leisure game. There is no reason not to unless you want to clear it fastEr or you want to do a speed run. Even then a necro is not bad. If this game really required teamwork and not just damage spam then you could worry about what classes you bring. The only diff in what classes you bring is the speed of the kill, and necros are not that bad. Outside of kill time, this game requires no thought in class combos, and what people are worried abOut is how to do these boring dungeons as fast as possible
That’s kind of the whole point of this thread, dungeon runners like to kill things fast.
Anyone have videos of our second highest DPS in action? I wanna learn this.
Also, if we’re second highest DPS, why is it we’re still relatively middle on the class tier? (Below Warriors, Guardian, Elementalist, and Thief?)
There’s not much to explain. Engineer sustained DPS is very high and that’s before you count DPS contribution through party-wide buffs. They also have very good personal buff stacking but I wasn’t counting that in the numbers you quote.
In case you were wondering what the build I reference is, it’s a 6/6/0/0/2 Grenade/Rifle build with relevant DPS traits (Shrapnel, Explosive Powder, Modified Ammunition, etc.) and Static Discharge. Your utilities should be Grenade Kit (obviously), Bomb Kit, and Throw Mine. You can replace Bomb Kit with Elixir Gun for slightly more DPS, or replace Throw Mine with it if you don’t mind losing the extra vuln stacks and the E-Gun’s defensive skills are helpful for you.
In general the engineer’s biggest issues mostly have to do with the fact that most people either just don’t know how to DPS with them or they don’t really know how to measure DPS. I just saw some guy tell me I was wrong about necromancer DPS (I think it’s from the thread you just quoted actually) because his Ghastly Claws hits for 12k, never mind that it’s a 3-second channel and on a 8-second cooldown and you do next to nothing with your autoattack. By comparison Grenade usually hits about 2.5k-3k per so people like that will see it and think “oh engineer DPS is only around that much, my Ghastly Claws hits way more” never mind that you can throw something like 40 grenades in the time it takes for him to do one Ghastly Claws.
If we replace Bomb Kit, what happens to our fire field? GASP You can’t honestly expect others to use a fire field, can they?
There’s a few reasons why engies are considered “middle tier”, as you call it:
1) When it comes to straight DPS, there’s no reason to take anything other than an ele.
2) When it comes to support, banners and EA plus might blasting tend to be sufficient.
3) The engineer’s sustained vuln stacking is amazing but most bosses can be bursted down quickly with FGS before it becomes an issue and most people can deal with losing 10-15% DPS against the ones that can’t.
4) There are very few competent engie players even in the pro speedclear guilds (see: rT_tries_run_engie_in_arah_and_wipes_repeatedly.flv) and even the good ones have to admit that while it’s fun for setting a record, when you’re running 5-6 paths a day, you really don’t want to put a ton of effort into a risky class with a high margin for error when you can AFK with a hammer guardian.
5) Even the speedrun “meta” takes a long time to catch onto things. It’s one thing to theorycraft a good build but another to practice it enough to make it work. See also #4.
That said I don’t think anyone seriously disputes that engie is extremely strong, a lot of the “engie is bad for speedruns” thing is more of a “an ele would still be 1-2% more overall DPS here” thing. In any comp that’s not being strictly minmaxed to perfection the engie will be a significant buff due to high competitive DPS and massive vuln stacking.
You realize the fact that Anet uses warriors as a benchmark goal means that they’re perfectly average, not too strong and not too weak, right?
Ain’t it though. I thought it would be fun to share.
Just throwing this out there since lately I’ve been looking for ways to minmax solo damage against open world mobs and event vets/elites, etc. and that led to doing calculations on stuff outside the usual dungeon meta. This isn’t a PHIW thread btw, we’re still talking optimization. If you’re posting to go “lol i dont care whats optimal i just do whatever i want and i get by fine kittening elitists ruining the game for me” etc. then I can’t stop you but I sure can ignore you. Best to just not bother.
Warrior:
Sword: Best weapon for Celestial-stat beginner builds (better DPS than axe or GS in full Celestial gear)
Pros:
- Reduces DPS tradeoff when running a “training wheels” build
- High attack speed gives lots of condition and boon procs
- Savage Leap is excellent for mobility
- Does not require investment in Strength line, allowing more flexibility in traiting (i.e. can spec stuff like 0/6/04/4)
Cons:
- Extremely poor burst
- Condition damage component has high ramp-up time
Mesmer:
Greatsword: Fastest-recharging clone generation for open-world clearing shatter builds
Pros:
- Fast opening burst (Mirror Blade > Berserker) with decent might/vuln stacking and respectable damage
- Fast recharging clone generation skills allow multiple shatters in rapid succession
- Berserker hits AOE
- Berserker summon range is long and hits AOE, making it good for AFKing world bosses and still getting respectable damage
Cons:
- Line cleave is crap for clearing packs
- Sustained DPS output is bad outside of initial shatter burst
Staff: Best weapon for AFKing world events
Pros:
- Generates burst of clones extremely quickly for a very fast shatter
- Chaos Storm is a decent-szied AOE burst, albeit not amazing damage
- Has the fastest recharging and hardest-hitting phantasm with a long summon range, making it good for world bosses (just like GS)
Cons:
- Very low sustained damage
- Requires investment in bad trait line overall
Engineer:
Flamethrower: Generally better effective DPS than grenades for short open-world roaming due to passive buff stacking and high burst (compared to grenades’ high vuln stacking and bleed component which is generally negated by quick mob deaths)
Pros:
- Stacks might extremely easily thanks to Juggernaut and flexibility in traiting (if traiting Deadly Mixtures, HGH only requires an additional 10 points)
- Mandatory investment in Alchemy rather than Explosives makes maintaining swiftness and fury easier
- Flame Blast provides strong initial burst
- Procs Strength and Frailty sigils quickly for quick damage ramp-up
- Burn damage does not require substantial ramp-up time compared to bleed
Cons:
- Overall damage is still weaker than grenades once both reach optimal damage after ramp-up
- Shorter range and worse AOE than grenades or bombs
- Burn component can be difficult to juggle when running between weak mobs due to long cooldown on burn-inflicting skills
Bombs: Higher direct damage component than grenades but less vuln stacking
Pros:
- Higher direct damage component means less conflict with other players in dungeons and group events
- Larger AOE makes it easier to clear packs
- Stacks more might since it comes with its own blast finisher and frees up a utility slot
- Does not require 6 points in Explosives, giving slightly more flexibility in traiting
- Can be made to autocast
Cons:
- Weaker overall damage than grenades
- Melee range only
- Long delay on bomb explosions makes it cumbersome for quickly clearing trash mobs
- Huge loss in vuln stacking capabilities means that grenades will almost always deal better direct damage in practice
And that’s it for now. Will update as I think of other stuff.
There’s not much to explain. Engineer sustained DPS is very high and that’s before you count DPS contribution through party-wide buffs. They also have very good personal buff stacking but I wasn’t counting that in the numbers you quote.
In case you were wondering what the build I reference is, it’s a 6/6/0/0/2 Grenade/Rifle build with relevant DPS traits (Shrapnel, Explosive Powder, Modified Ammunition, etc.) and Static Discharge. Your utilities should be Grenade Kit (obviously), Bomb Kit, and Throw Mine. You can replace Bomb Kit with Elixir Gun for slightly more DPS, or replace Throw Mine with it if you don’t mind losing the extra vuln stacks and the E-Gun’s defensive skills are helpful for you.
In general the engineer’s biggest issues mostly have to do with the fact that most people either just don’t know how to DPS with them or they don’t really know how to measure DPS. I just saw some guy tell me I was wrong about necromancer DPS (I think it’s from the thread you just quoted actually) because his Ghastly Claws hits for 12k, never mind that it’s a 3-second channel and on a 8-second cooldown and you do next to nothing with your autoattack. By comparison Grenade usually hits about 2.5k-3k per so people like that will see it and think “oh engineer DPS is only around that much, my Ghastly Claws hits way more” never mind that you can throw something like 40 grenades in the time it takes for him to do one Ghastly Claws.
I remember back when I could say guardians had more DPS than warriors and everyone would get all up in arms about it.
Now I hear randoms throwing that around all the time and it’s not even true anymore.
“Well-argumented” lol.
Top tier (15k+): Elementalist
High tier (13-15k): Engineer, Thief
Mid tier (11-13k): Warrior
Low tier (<11k): Necromancer, Guardian, Ranger
Situationally anywhere tier: MesmerAnd I think that’s a pretty fair way to break it down. I don’t think it really changes the ultimate conclusion I originally stated which was “necro is 2nd worst, maybe third” which is perfectly supported by data.
What data? Where did you get this info?
Also, what about claims Guardian DPS is higher than Warrior?
Scroll up a bit.
Also spoj those numbers still put Guardian slightly higher than necro because the necro numbers still have about 800 DPS in minion damage and conversely I didn’t count the DPS from Sword of Justice.
Without minions necro drops to 9693 direct + 416 bleed, with spirit sword and hammer guardian goes up to 11149 direct, not including burn. So either way the guardian still slightly edges out the necro in my spreadsheet, although due to imprecisions in any thereotical calculations that slight difference isn’t really worth anything. So either way necros are still 2nd or 3rd worst which takes us back to exactly where we started.
Also lol @ comparing “utility” necro to utility warrior, you can’t compare the utility on a warrior to something that doesn’t exist.
That wont be the best build.
Ill humour you just this once. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBIhhu1IDN102SjjNs3mAXQgeQgWR/5UKq2C-ThRBABXt/o8DP9DoohBgnAAlq/YmSQA-e
Im sure you can work out the best combo of assassins/berserker gear and food yourself. I placed Well of Corruption because it adds good initial burst. A minion might be slightly better dps over time but they are unreliable so i rarely use them. If might is an issue I would take Blood is Power instead but I assume were talking about max buffs here so thats pointless.
Heres the important part. The rotation excluding wells (they should be used on cooldown or saved for aoe bursting).
Locust Swarm > Weapon Swap > Reapers Touch > Deathshroud > Tainted Shackles > Dagger auto > Flash Deathshroud > Reapers Touch > Weapon swap > Locust Swarm > Dagger auto > Flash Deathshroud > Dagger auto > Weapon swap > Reapers Touch > Deathshroud > Tainted shackles etc (Deathshroud flashes may not be ordered exactly correctly, just use roughly every 10/11 seconds).
Basically dagger auto as filler. Rotation is use warhorn 5 then camp focus for 2 reaper’s touches before going back to warhorn. All while flashing deathshroud every 10 seconds for weakening shroud proc. And every 3rd/4th flash you should cast tainted shackles. Most of the time you wont flash DS perfectly every 10 seconds so you will often be able to cast tainted shackles on the 3rd flash.
Also things to note. Tainted shackles is not a channel. After you cast it you can immediately leave DS and continue rotation and it will add torment and strike for good damage a few seconds later. Reapers touch will bounce between caster and target four times resulting in 3 procs of damage and applying 12 stacks of vuln. Its a very strong burst skill considering it has a 14 second cool down and only takes a second to cast. Locust Swarm will tick for 13 procs of damage instead of 15 even with trait.
The build also applies a lot of passive bleeds in addition to the torment from tainted shackles and target the weak will benefit from the extra immob, weakness and chill which are uncommon conditions in most groups. Remember conditions are applied before damage so this means tainted shackless will always benefit from an extra +4% from immob and torment when it finishes.
That build gives me an overall DPS of 10542 direct + 416 bleed with all buffs which seems mostly in line with the DnT numbers. By compairson Warrior gets 10489 direct + 167 bleed with a 6/6/0/2/0 Axe build, 11949 + 209 with signets instead of banners, and ele gets 14614 with 6/2/2/2/2 staff. 4/6/0/4/0 Guardian is 10970.
Incidentally you can squeeze out an extra 100 or so sustained DPS if you use Shadow Fiend instead of Well of Corruption but you lose burst and it’s a tiny difference anyway so who cares. It does scale slightly better with fewer buffs though.
Either way I don’t think that tells us anything we don’t already know, which is that necromancers aren’t straight-up terrible at DPS but it’s not really that great either.
Isn’t your argument basically “if there’s 4 other DPS in the party it’s okay if I don’t contribute since everything gets done fast enough anyway”? I’m pretty sure that’s the mindset of the majority of dungeon runners (myself included when I’m feeling lazy and just want some free gold, it’s why I have a Magi set on my warrior) so it’s not going to go as smoothly as you think.
Also there are better classes for CC than hammer warrior so why not roll one of those?
if you can get it to the point where all you do is look over at the screen for a few seconds between each fight to autorun to the next boss and trigger AFK auto-attack on him.
Try that on Mai Trinn and let me know how long it takes for you to get kicked. Of course, any competent group is going to kick your worthless self to the curb way before then, but even IF you made it that far its likely you’re going to cause a full wipe, repeatedly, because you’re not contributing.
AFK leeching is the dumbest metric for gear comparison I have yet heard. As others have said, a mix of Celestial is generally the optimal gear setup (here and other forums, Reddit, etc.) and while going FULL Celestial is not the optimal setup all the time, it does offer the most flexibility in build diversity and stat usage.
Though, I don’t even know why I’m arguing the point with someone who is convinced the optimal way to play a game is to leech.
Fractals isn’t a good AFK leech dungeon simply because it’s hard to get enough defense to go full AFK mode. Most other dungeons it’s easy to pretend to be a zerk and just afk in defense spec gear. Just grab a cleric warrior with Phalanx/EA and drop banners and quietly auto-attack with axe and most people probably won’t even notice you’re not doing anything.
People need to stop whining about heavy armor’s extra 5% damage reduction like it makes any sort of real difference in practice.
With that logic why should fully focusing on DPS be optimal? Full DPS works, the other two don’t. I was just pointing this out.
That’s why every dungeon party is just 5 staff eles running pure DPS. Because speccing pure DPS always works.
Except they’re not and it doesn’t so…
That’s because Lupi has like 1k armor more than the average mob and also forces you to dodge a lot so long-lasting bleed applications have comparatively more effect.
Incidentally, if you want a situation where sword is actually better than axe or GS, you can run with Celestial gear and easymode through content with Adrenal Health slotted. Your EHP and EHealing will be super high and you will deal more with a sword than an axe due to the gain in condition damage stat and the fact that you get Blademaster in the Arms line which you’ll already have maxed anyway. Obviously not as good as just going straight zerker axe but it’s better than Celestial Axe if you’re in need of a “training wheels” and/or “afk easymode” build.
i’d just point out that warriors would do well in celestial BUT NOT IN PVE
pve warr should never touch anything besides zerker’s, there’s just no reason at all for it (other than backup soldier’s for dragons)
they have some of the highest natural survivability of any class, making the toughness and vitality redundant, and healing power on a warr requires one of two very specific builds (shout or banner) both of which are totally outclassed by having an ele or guard support, and warr condition in pve is just kind of bad
They also have no active defenses or vigor access and their only other dodge skill is WWA but let’s not get into that.
In terms of PvE the question shouldn’t be “is zerker better” because it always is, the question should be “does this class benefit more from this given gearset than others” which is basically a function of several things:
1) Amount of condition damage they can output with a direct DPS spec, since Celestial’s condition damage stat will better offset the direct DPS loss with more condition stacks. This is pretty much just engies and to a lesser extent sword warriors.
2) Nonreliance on gear stats. Classes like the ranger, who get damage from the pet unaffected by gear, and also necromancers (from Flesh Golem) fall within this category. It also includes classes that get a large amount of offensive stats from traits alone (again, rangers).
3) Overall role in the party. Obviously a bit of a DPS loss won’t be felt as hard if you’re a low-hitting necromancer than if you’re a elementalist that people expect to DPS.
With that in mind I’d say go with ranger, your DPS already sucks and like I mentioned before, you take a comparatively smaller hit from losing the DPS stats.
I like how people always post “guys what class would I like” threads with zero context as if we’re all already familiar with your life history and psychological profile.
I’m pretty sure the thought process of 99% of world event zergers (myself included) isn’t “how can I minmax DPS so this guy goes down faster” but rather “oh hey there’s like 200 other people here so my DPS contribution doesn’t even matter, let’s see if i can find a safe spot to afk at range so i can go do other things till he’s dead”.
If you’ve ever soloed a world boss with an actual zerker in a DPS spec, you’d realize they go down REALLY fast with a zerker’s sustained DPS. The reason they take so long currently is because most people don’t have DPS, they’re using ranged specs with low DPS gearsets and traits because there’s no reason to pour in effort to raise overall average DPS by .01%, unless you can guarantee that everyone else is going to do the same. And you know they’re not so might as well just afk at range.
I’m not quite sure how you did your calculations but that mesmer number you just quoted is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off.
Not really when you consider I wasn’t adding vuln or condi damage, which when you consider those puts the mesmer up to 12k-ish dps which is pretty much spot on. One thing you may need to reconsider with mesmer is the 3rd auto attack in the sword chain is bugged and the coefficient/tooltip is totally wrong and it does way less damage than it is “supposed to.”
Vuln scales equally for everyone without heavy zerk condition damage (i.e. everyone but engies) and mesmer bleed from iSwordsmen is going to be less than 2 stacks per, it’s not going to push the mesmer up to 12k from 9.5k.
If people actually think mesmer maximum DPS is only on par with necro DPS then I’m starting to see why there’s a misconception that they’re not good for speedruns. It also doesn’t help when people run builds that clearly aren’t max DPS (“I run GS in offhand for the AOE”) or stuff that just isn’t practical (“I don’t trait for reduced cooldowns cause I can take this other trait that gives me like 5% more maximum DPS instead”) and then they complain that it’s impossible to maintain 3 phantasms. Of course you’ll hit like crap when you’ve got one phantasm skill on 20s CD and another on a weapon with no DPS of its own.
Getting a bit off topic anyway so whatever.
So in case anyone was wondering, under the following conditions:
- Solo
- Strength and Frailty sigils
- Mandatory 4 points in Inventions for Power Shoes (for convenience)
- No might-blasting combos or anything else that would blast mobs away from you
- MF food
- Low-health trash mobsA 0/6/4/4/0 Rifle/FT engie with Juggernaut might stacking, Strength Runes, and MF food (with boon duration) is within 7-8% DPS of a 6/4/4/0/0 Grenade build and considerably better than a 4/6/4/0/0 Bombs build. Cut out the vuln and bleed stacking since you’re not likely to build up substantial stacks of that on trash open-world mobs and FT is actually a fair bit better than grenades.
So I guess there’s a practical use for FT: clearing open-world trash while being lazy.
I just posted that. The gist of it is that FT works out pretty well in situations where
1) You are killing mobs too quickly for bleed and burn to have a significant effect.
2) You are too lazy to swap constantly to maintain Speedy Kits, so you use Power Shoes instead.
3) Might blasting isn’t worth the time/effort to do because it takes too long and ends up blowing the mob away from you, forcing you to chase it.
A 0/6/0/6/2 HGH build also works pretty well for that purpose, just chug elixirs while running between mobs to keep up might, you should be able to maintain a constant 15-20 stacks of might without too much effort. Much more efficient and practical than stopping to blast might before engaging some random trash mob which you will kill in two hits anyway.
Re: Mesmers. Mesmers require a lot of assumptions, but a 64004 mesmer with 3 Swordsmen up, 2 mantras readied and the same buffs we considered here (banners, 25 might, spotter, frost spirit, no vuln) would be somewhere around 9.5k. How feasible 3 swordsmen up at a given time is your call, I aim inclined to say “not very” but I think 2 swordsmen one Warden is slightly more realistic. Each phantasm is around 1900 dps so feel free to add or subtract the phantasm dps as you see fit.
Also remember the numbers I put are with ZERO vuln. Even a bad team is likely to have 10-20 vuln on bosses pretty much so increase the numbers by that much. Also, the numbers I gave for the above classes include their condition damage which is important. I haven’t yet added condi damage in for mesmer and thats likely to be a few hundred dps.
For pet dps we assumed fury and might, but not banners or spotter or frost spirit.
I’m not quite sure how you did your calculations but that mesmer number you just quoted is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off. That’d put a 3-phantasm mesmer in necro tier which is pretty much just absurd. My own calculations give me 3-phant mes as second-highest in the game, just barely below staff ele. If you’re putting staff ele at 12k (not gonna bother with that thief figure for now) 3phant mesmer would be somewhere around 11.5k. People have argued about the practicality of mesmer DPS in the past but I don’t think anyone’s ever really disputed the potential. Not to mention ever since I did the crunch on ranger DPS and figured that it would always be a net loss to bring a ranger, I stopped using Frostspotter so mesmer DPS got a relative boost (since they don’t take the hit of being the only ones who don’t benefit from Frost Spirit anymore).
No offense, but I can’t be assed to parse through that late at night. I will say that I have accounted for crits and all that, and if there’s a 250~ damage difference between our numbers, it’s because you’re not accurately timing the pet’s attacks as I mentioned before. I can also say that if you’re just looking at your opening burst using stuff like Signet of the Wild and QZ, Ranger comes out slightly better but so does everyone else, so their comparable DPS over time still doesn’t look too hot. In fact, depending on how you want to gate the repeatability of the burst (i.e. is a 60-second CD acceptable, but an elite on 180s CD not?) the highest effective burst DPS class I think is actually engineer due to the sheer number of skills they have available to open a fight with.
Thats pretty cool, so that means
Net Turret + Grawl shaman = no more arrow to da face/knee?
Probably works for Mai Trin, svanir,mossman, etc.
Grawl Shaman kills the Net Turret way too fast for that to be effective. I don’t think he needs to be facing anything to do his swoop or AOE.
Give me a necro build (including utils) to model and I’ll pop it into the spreadsheet and that’ll decide it. I suppose there is a small chance they might be able to beat guardians if specced right which would put them in 3rd which I guess could be considered middle-tier DPS, we’ll see.
Ive given you builds and stuff before to calculate and you always did a kitten job. You even thought wells were channeled at one point. Forgive me if I dont think its worth the effort trying to get you to do any calculations when you dont have any clue how the class plays.
When did I ever say wells were channeled? I’ve calculated necros in the past and they always came up kitten, if you have a better build then let’s see it. Otherwise they stay kitten just like before barring a new patch that buffs them significantly.
Also I just looked at the DnT thread and it looks about right. A good 20-30% lower than warrior outside of Lich Form, throw in minions if possible (Golem elite does a fair bit) and it goes up about 1.5k and the numbers become comparable. Now to be fair Necromancers scale poorly and thus do better comparably with less stats (primarily because Golem doesn’t scale and conditions scale poorly) but in the general course the warrior will almost always do better than the necromancer just due to having better self-buffing.
I don’t think there’s really any disagreement that warrior is pretty much dead solid middle of the road DPS or that necro is worse than warrior so the only real point of contention left is whether necro is worse than guardian but at that point it’s just splitting hairs. Since DEKeys’ numbers match mine for warrior, I think it’s safe to say that her necro figures are probably reasonably comparable to my numbers for guardian which are also in the 10k range.
So that basically gets us to:
Top tier (15k+): Elementalist
High tier (13-15k): Engineer, Thief
Mid tier (11-13k): Warrior
Low tier (<11k): Necromancer, Guardian, Ranger
Situationally anywhere tier: Mesmer
And I think that’s a pretty fair way to break it down. I don’t think it really changes the ultimate conclusion I originally stated which was “necro is 2nd worst, maybe third” which is perfectly supported by data.
(edited by Guanglai Kangyi.4318)
So in case anyone was wondering, under the following conditions:
- Solo
- Strength and Frailty sigils
- Mandatory 4 points in Inventions for Power Shoes (for convenience)
- No might-blasting combos or anything else that would blast mobs away from you
- MF food
- Low-health trash mobs
A 0/6/4/4/0 Rifle/FT engie with Juggernaut might stacking, Strength Runes, and MF food (with boon duration) is within 7-8% DPS of a 6/4/4/0/0 Grenade build and considerably better than a 4/6/4/0/0 Bombs build. Cut out the vuln and bleed stacking since you’re not likely to build up substantial stacks of that on trash open-world mobs and FT is actually a fair bit better than grenades.
So I guess there’s a practical use for FT: clearing open-world trash while being lazy.
Leeching off your team is objectively the best thing you can be doing in a dungeon format, in terms of effort expended versus reward gained.
Well you just lost any credibility.
Using leeching (i.e. not playing) as the baseline for determining the worth of gear is about the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week. If you’re fine with leeching, then you don’t need ANY gear, and the question becomes moot.
Your argument ignores the extra time required for a 4 man team to accomplish what a 5 man team could, as well as the possibility of dungeon failure and the reduced rewards. Which equates to a waste of time, all because you weren’t geared properly.
Tell me again how leeching is awesome?
Let’s say you’re a zerk. You deal high DPS (above the average for the group) and dodge perfectly. You’re amazing. Your party is also all zerks and you’re at 100% DPS potential. It takes 10 minutes to do X dungeon and you get 1.5 gold for it, which is 15 silver per minute spent at 100% effort expended.
Now let’s say you go full tank spec. Full TVH, regen traits, etc. and just AFK auto-attack mobs while watching a movie on your other monitor. If you were the primary DPS carry before and contributed a third of the DPS, now your team is at 66% efficiency and takes 15 minutes to complete the dungeon. You’re getting 10 silver per minute, which is less than before, BUT you’re barely even playing in this case so you’re literally actually only playing something like 10% of the time. That means you’ve actually only been playing for a minute and a half and got 1.5 gold for it which is ONE FULL GOLD per minute played, if you can get it to the point where all you do is look over at the screen for a few seconds between each fight to autorun to the next boss and trigger AFK auto-attack on him.
I think it’s obvious which is objectively the better choice for you in the individual case. Of course the calculus is slightly more complicated in practice (setting up to “look like” a zerker so you don’t get kicked, etc.) but the basic principle is still the same.