Meta Classes from a long time ago...

Hey, I am a post-PoF era player, so I do not know what the meta was before all the expansions. If anything I'd love to know (if you were around) what zerg builds existed before PoF and before HoT! I am very interested in those, as I am looking for creative ways of playing now and those old builds always help! I'm more interested in zerg builds that got switched for the likes of Firebrand, Spellbreaker, Scourge etc.

It was a transition;

First we have the hammer warrior train; two groups that crash each other, and move without to much problems.

Then, before HoT, the stability was changed, and the pirate ship META stroke hard. The stability disappeared almost completely after the first charge.

Then... The power HoT came... And the pirate ship META was even greater. The elementalist meteor shower was amazing. And also this time was the prebuff, that was funny.

During this time, also was famous the epidemic META and condition damage, until it was nerfed. The necromancers were everywhere.

Then some changes in stability loss and cc changed a bit to a mele META more or less, but not until PoF and firebrand + scourge.

And that is what I remember, I am sure I have forget something.

The take home message is; WvW has always being around guardian and necromancers changes.

As far as I can remember:

GWEN -> GRTR -> FRSSS

Guard, warrior, ele, necro -> guard, rev, tempest, reaper -> firebrand, rev, spellbreaker, scrapper, scourge

(rev=herald, as always)

That's pretty much it over the years IMO. On top of these comes a couple specific purpose classes - mesmer for veil (mesmer->chrono->mirage->back to chrono). Ele has a tiny spot still but tbh anything it does isnt really needed, it can too easily be replaced by... literally anything. There where short bursts non-meta popularity too such as groups utilizing arcing slice to roflstomp. Some have also gone up and down yet still exist, like the spellbreaker - every zerg had 10+ bubbles everywhere, now it's much more rare. Same with the necro, they've been heavily utilized in the past with 50 man zergs having 25+ necros (ie the lovely red carpet of death) but now its been pushed out by more support. The absolutely insane buff of deathly chill trait that singlehandedly upended the entire zerg melee meta and caused the condi meta in WvW for 8 months until Anet finally nerfed it 1 week after everyone had stopped playing reaper because the vastly superior scourge had come out changed the necro alot.

Very interesting. Thank you for the responses. Browsing around, I stumbled uppon frontline healer druid. How helpful was it? Did at any point, ranger, become a class that was needed in zergs? And before scrapper, I guess engineers didn't do much? Or did they utilize as much of a potent cleansing capability?

Interesting to think that core necros would be in zergs tbh. Life force means no shades, so taht must have played out interestingly with no barrier/aoe coverage.

@Grand Marshal.4098 said:Very interesting. Thank you for the responses. Browsing around, I stumbled uppon frontline healer druid. How helpful was it? Did at any point, ranger, become a class that was needed in zergs? And before scrapper, I guess engineers didn't do much? Or did they utilize as much of a potent cleansing capability?

Interesting to think that core necros would be in zergs tbh. Life force means no shades, so taht must have played out interestingly with no barrier/aoe coverage.

Rangers: Not really. Same as with the imob builds now, it has seen some use but never really been regarded as meta for pickup play. Pickup meta is often derived from GvG trends in one way or another and Rangers have seen some sporadic use in guilds throughout the years in various roles. It never really made into common use in pickups though. In part because of its wonky mechanics and in part because Anet snubbed quite alot of its interesting uses early.

Engineers: Scrapper didn't really become pickup meta until PoF. It was widely used by guilds in HoT but then more as stealth/stealth-counter with some cleansing. Detection pulse used to be the F-skill on Sneak Gyro. Sneak Gyro also used to have something like a 40/40 up- and downtime but be regarded as an object (think Ranger spirits). Many HoT Scrapper builds were power damage as a result. In vanilla Engis did not see much use, no.

Necros: Core Necros were mostly used for wells and Lich forms along with weapon skills and the shroud was used to tank or in melee crossovers. It's not too different from how Scourges are used now with Shades, Wells and Breaches on crossovers. Scourges have really just become creeped vanilla core Necros. Even though core Necro may not have been as strong most classes did not have as many damage options as now and even more importantly, boon rip was far more restricted to classes than it is today so Necro was really the only class that had broad boon rip (even if some groups dabbled with Mesmers for some of that, then same as now). The way the old stability worked though, knowing how to boon-rip or the value of Necros for that was one of the telling signs that separated the decent enough guilds from the run-of-the-mill.

pwar (might 25)commander stats on chrnodruid in 5x fractals ..

@Grand Marshal.4098 said:And before scrapper, I guess engineers didn't do much? Or did they utilize as much of a potent cleansing capability?Engineer had bomb/grenade kit builds but they where never really meta anywhere. Scrapper had some power builds early on but only became popular after Anet fixed the pathing of gyros and buffed medkit by alot, wasnt even during the HoT era it was later. Unfortunetly they've nerfed everything else to the ground.

I miss my rabid gyro commando build, sigh... All gyros, barriers when hit, lightning stunfields every time a gyro expired and so low cds with them starting on activation a sneak gyro could almost permastealth. Getting the gyros to follow you was artform in itself. Watching the blast gyro hunt down enemies could be either hilarious or sad, 50/50 chance.

Today I run a core engie roamer. Anet specifically made sure scrapper was pointless on condi because purity of purpose balance patches.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Grand Marshal.4098" said:And before scrapper, I guess engineers didn't do much? Or did they utilize as much of a potent cleansing capability?Engineer had bomb/grenade kit builds but they where never really meta anywhere. Scrapper had some power builds early on but only became popular after Anet fixed the pathing of gyros and

buffed medkit by alot

, wasnt even during the HoT era it was later. Unfortunetly they've nerfed everything else to the ground.I'm not sure medkit was all that super buffed (the coeff was changed from 0.04 to 0.2 [or per 1k Hpwr from 40 to 200] but overall output was 33% down) but they certainly made sure it was far worse without Hpwr, leading people to discover Minstrel builds for it and giving up alot of the old gear varieties. That in turn obviously turned focus towards its purely supportive build functionalities.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Engineer

Not sure if I expceted very different cases tbh. I suppose it has to do with how currently zerg fights are way more intense? Low risk high reward? There is a reason the old meta is not practical anymore, but as I see it it's nearly beyond useless. It may be good to get some fresh air in the metas, but I don't know if balancing could have saved many of those interesting builds.

Like Power Warrior with Banners frontline? XD

Sounds very weird. It happened though (the range and contribution of the classes is what intrigues me the most).

@Grand Marshal.4098 said:Very interesting. Thank you for the responses. Browsing around, I stumbled uppon frontline healer druid. How helpful was it?

it can be good in a commander group for strong burst heals and stealth to combat pin sniping. it would be a contender for 2nd support if its CA aoe was bigger.

@"Grand Marshal.4098" said:Interesting to think that core necros would be in zergs tbh. Life force means no shades, so taht must have played out interestingly with no barrier/aoe coverage.

All you need to know about Necro is that Epidemic used to have infinite range. And after that was nerfed, it still transferred all Condition stacks and their full durations. Using it on downed players to one shot everyone nearby was meta for a good while. Epidemic has been repeatedly nerfed because of this, and honestly for good reason. The skill had way too much power, and you could even bounce it by doing an Epi and another Necro hitting someone who just got Epi'd, lol.

@Dawdler.8521 said:As far as I can remember:

GWEN -> GRTR -> FRSSS

Guard, warrior, ele, necro -> guard, rev, tempest, reaper -> firebrand, rev, spellbreaker, scrapper, scourge

(rev=herald, as always)

That's pretty much it over the years IMO. On top of these comes a couple specific purpose classes - mesmer for veil (mesmer->chrono->mirage->back to chrono). Ele has a tiny spot still but tbh anything it does isnt really needed, it can too easily be replaced by... literally anything. There where short bursts non-meta popularity too such as groups utilizing arcing slice to roflstomp. Some have also gone up and down yet still exist, like the spellbreaker - every zerg had 10+ bubbles everywhere, now it's much more rare. Same with the necro, they've been heavily utilized in the past with 50 man zergs having 25+ necros (ie the lovely red carpet of death) but now its been pushed out by more support. The absolutely insane buff of deathly chill trait that singlehandedly upended the entire zerg melee meta and caused the condi meta in WvW for 8 months until Anet finally nerfed it 1 week after everyone had stopped playing reaper because the vastly superior scourge had come out changed the necro alot.

At least in the early days you could have thf and ranger even mez as they where very good pick for the ele and core necros. I think eng was the only class that was comply out of the meta.

How could people forget boonshare chrono? Especially with gravity well on bombs.It is pretty obvious some people don't play mesmer here...

Warrior: Hammer warrior is gutted now since it does basically no damage to anything with stability and neither does the burst ; now mostly for CC (which boon rips on spellbreaker) and winds of disenchantment--> see https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fierce_BlowGuardian: anything DH is pretty much done outside roaming (used to have Hunter's ward on spike), you're better off with core guard or firebrand ; in core days people would blast water fields with hammer--> mace used to be much weaker as a weapon , in 2017 the healing power scaling was doubled and in 2016 aegis and protection was added to protector's strikeRevenant: Condi Mallyx didn't really pick up but power herald used to be much stronger due to the cooldown of 2s on COR and it didn't have a interval so you could be hit by 5 of them or moreRanger: who uses ranger in WVW groups... there's immob soulbeast currently but it isn't a must haveThief: venomshare thief used to be in core days but staff daredevil is the predominant build (vault still does damage)Engineer: scrapper only picked up after gyros were made into wells; holo isn't a must haveMesmer: see boon chrono ; mirage is and always will be a meme since it's primarily a condi spec , today it's mostly for boon ripElementalist: staff weavers used to be more popular , aurashare frontline tempests as wellNecromancer: in core days they were run with well of suffering + corruption as a power spec (same with reaper) , scourges were nerfed but in their original iteration sand shades were able to be spammed and sand savant changes made it 10 targets (which was overnerfed afterward)---> necros used to be stronger because spellbreaker didn't exist and stability was not stacks but a boon that isn't ripped by CC

The biggest shift in meta from back then to now is that your dps back then where true glass build classes and your dps now are much more tankly. Ele vs Rev even core necro vs scorge. Added gear combos play a roll in this as well bezerk being the main dmg gear sets back then and marders being the main dmg gear set now.

Wow, so if you could maintain high stab uptime you were basically immune to any cc? I'd imagine the counterplay was that the cd on stab skills was longer and the stab applied for less time?

In any case hammer guard rn captured my interest. I've only seen 1 hammer guard in PvE lol. And I guess core rev never got to shine since it appeared along with herald right?

@Grand Marshal.4098 said:Wow, so if you could maintain high stab uptime you were basically immune to any cc? I'd imagine the counterplay was that the cd on stab skills was longer and the stab applied for less time?

In any case hammer guard rn captured my interest. I've only seen 1 hammer guard in PvE lol. And I guess core rev never got to shine since it appeared along with herald right?

It stacked duration so you only had one stack. On the other hand, CC did not rip stacks so you had to use rip-skills to catch the stab and then rip through all the cover boons. That's why I mentioned how use of rips kind of separated the better and worse groups since effective rips kind of required focus and synchs. If people were not they would usually never cut through to the stab and it just ran its duration. There were less sources of stab too so the pacing of combat (that you can still see with guilds running and stopping to regroup with empowers etc.) was usually determined by stability uptimes. That too of course differed a bit when certain guilds were good enough to break the typical pacing and be more aggressive or be agressive for longer (at the risk of getting out-regrouped and counter-pushed). There was also much less on-the-run healing so the regroups were usually heal-ups too (using water field blasts). That wasn't the only source of healing but water blasting was seen as the main source of healing.

@Grand Marshal.4098 said:Wow, so if you could maintain high stab uptime you were basically immune to any cc? I'd imagine the counterplay was that the cd on stab skills was longer and the stab applied for less time?

The counter play was to have some points in condi duration even though it was a power meta and immob/chill/cripple players that made mistakes like be out of position where they couldn't get those cleansed. Stab uptime was handled by having two guardians per party that would rotate stand your ground so there was very little downtime.