PvP Ranting in 3 2 1

  Hello everyone.  I'm at that point again where I'm ready to complain non-stop about the professions in this game based on my own personal experience.  Maybe it's because I'm not "god-tier" with every profession and I can't expect to do anything until I reach that level, however I want to see what everyone's responses are based on my opinions of the current professions. Let's begin:

Elementalist- By far my favorite class to play however I have felt under powered playing this profession. Let's start with core builds. In my opinion, core elementalist is still by far the best spec in regards to dueling and 1v1's, that is if you're playing Sc/F Fresh Air. The reason I believe this is because you get the opportunity to not only use both arcane and water together, but you then have all the damage from air and scepter which carry this build. If we look at weaver, we are forced between wanting a damage build with no defense or a complete gimmick build. Swords damage really seems to under perform even post buff and if we want to actually trait and build into damage, we have to sacrifice our entire defense abilities and cleanses forcing Ele's into incredibly bad build decisions. Core Sc/F was able to shine by having both defensive traits and offensive, along with the ability to kite. If you want to play Sc/F weaver, kiting is much harder as you have to be facing the enemy for every 3 skill that you use apart from double attuning. This leaves us with tempest, the heavy support class which is now being pushed under the rug as Firebrand has easily taken it's place.

Warrior- Uggghhh my bane since I began. Warrior has always frustrated me as a profession simply because of the incredible tanky-ness that this class has but while still being able to dish out 20k damage between only Rush and Whirlwind. Let me start by saying I hadn't experienced pre-nerf Spellbreaker as I was currently taking a break from GW2 (as I'm sure so many more people are as they continue to be frustrated) but that being said, this class is still incredibly devastating to any class that decides to go melee, which it seems with the new PoF expansion, are most of the classes now (I say this as a lot of the new elite spec's give professions more melee opportunities such as Engineer's using sword, Elementalist's using sword, Mesmer's using axe, Rangers now getting a dagger mainhand etc.) Core Warrior was definitely difficult but manageable if you play well enough to fight off in melee range, provided you dodged all the stuns, didn't use skills during the double endure pain, dodged the incredible damage, blocked the unblockable Signet of Might (lol) etc. but now with Spellbreaker, melee is quite literally impossible. If you're fighting against a Spellbreaker that has any sort of game sense, they can immediately nullify any damage you try to output while dazing and hitting insane numbers. I mean, come on. If you're going to give a class the ability to nullify entire spells along with taking no damage, you don't give them the ability to hit insane numbers. Anyways, on to the next.

Mesmer- Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed playing power Mesmer. I enjoyed it because dodging rushing clones is pretty easy if you have the evades, but once you land a great Mind Wrack, wow. It's so thrilling to see your opponent go from 100-0 if you could land everything. But let's get real, power Mesmer died in 2015. The reason? Condi damage has slowly taken over Guild Wars over the past few years and condi Mesmer is so mindbogglingly brain-dead, it befuddles me. The reason i say this is even with power Mesmer, you had to make sure you landed your shatters, but not every shatter did the same amount of damage. With condi Mesmer, each shatter does identical condition damage on death meaning that if you get hit by 1 mesmer clone, you're eating the full damage possible of the build. The problem with this? The fact that it's condi and every class you're playing is forced to not only have to clear conditions the entire time, but trying to evade further clones while you're cleansing that applying pressure against good Mesmer's is unrealistic. If we get into some of the traits if you wanted to actually apply pressure, well you could choose the blind on shatter trait and then... there ya go. That's a miss for you and 3 conditions for the opponent. I don't want to say Mirage itself is completely busted, but I do thing that condition Mesmers in general are. Sorry if I offended you elite condition Mesmers, but get real. It's not a hard spec to play.

Thief- Thief for a while was my favorite class to play, until I really got into Elementalist. I sort of stopped maining the class before HoT came out, however HoT was fantastic for Thieves. I mean 3 evade frames was enough, not to mention your pulm spamming Thieves, endless dashing or damage on evades, the way easier perma-stealth etc. But Deadeye is really uh, clunky, in my opinion. While you have the opportunity to one shot huge targets, that's a bit unrealistic against a player that knows how to dodge. The mobility on Deadeye is so bad compared to Daredevil that while you can do great damage to people that can't evade, it's unrealistic to think you're going to be able to keep up with any sort of kiting or be able to kite yourself with the lack of mobility. Now I haven't played too much thief since the PoF expansion, except only to mess around, so I don't want to dig way too deep into it when I don't know what exactly I'm talking about. Sorry :pensive:

Guard- Gotta love trap guards right? DH was definitely the most frustrating spec for structured matches in PvP as they could press 3 buttons and the unknowing victim was a memory. I mean of course, you could dodge roll like you do Necro marks, but the traps were on such short cool downs that they could just be spammed and then you'd be tossed around by Spear's of Judgement and Bow CC. Basically, DH's could go entirely into Berserker mode and rely on their countless blocks to absolutely decimate anyone that wanted to get on top of a point. But now we have Firebrand. The ultimate support class. Is there a Firebrand sitting on a point you want? Hahahaha... just... just walk away. He will troll the absolute hell out of you and your friend for 15 minutes while there is a 4v3 fight going on somewhere else... or... he'll sit on top of the friendly/enemy scourge and then they never die while the scourge get's to sit there and press F1 F2 F3 and F4. Woopie! I don't think i really need to say much more about this, we all know firebrand is insane for support and maybe should be toned down just a bit.

Necromancer- For so long, everyone complained about how bad Necro was in the 1v1 sense and that there only option was to hope that their enemy was incompetent which forced them into mediocre condi-bombs. Well... now we have Scourge. If you ever go a game without seeing a scourge in your match... I don't know what happened. All of them must be asleep or something. Scourges are so popular now as they are able to pop shades on points and then push a couple buttons and OH MY G-------... all 13 conditions on one target... how exciting! I think that if we are going to say Scourge is balanced, I'm assuming youre talking in an open field scenario where you can just walk around their condi-bombs and hope to hit them from far away (you know, just so long as you're not using any PoF weapons as DAMN NEAR EVERYTHING IS MELEE (see above :) )). It is true, in PvP you can use all your resources to focus these bad boys down and then you don't have to worry about too much about them... however if the Scourge is at all decent, they'll cover the entire point with shades so you have no where to be except off point losing a cap while the enemy Firebrand laughs as he spams resistance and heals. Isn't that exciting?!

Let me just go get some food as I am absolutely famished from this rage induced essay I have created and I'll get back to you with the final professions shortly :D

Oh, let me just add this before I go..Renegade Revanant- lolThat is all

Where is engineer ?

Alright I'll finish with the other professions: (guys remember, like I said I'm not a pro player, I'm speaking on the behalf of my own experience.. so let's not get too wild)

Engineer- For so long pre HoT, this class was pretty uh... whatever? I guess. You were really limited to two kinds of builds: your condi pistol build and glass cannon rifle build. Of course you could use kits and turrets, but those were a total laugh. The only time I remember complaining about core engineer was when they dropped a crate on you in a duel.. but then HoT came and we were given our bunker gyro Engineer. Probably not what a lot of people wanted as they wanted more viable builds, however it gave them more build diversity. I can speak on behalf of Holosmith's though because that is what I've had the most experience with. Holosmith was great for Engineers because, finally, they actually have some damage and in my opinion, the first fun build Engineer had to offer. I think this class is pretty balanced in the sense that, while you can deal out incredible amounts of damage, Holosmith's can still be countered easier than said other broken classes cough warrior/mes/etc/etc cough. Yes, you can build up 25 stacks of might effortlessly, butttttt later boon rips. The animations are nearly impossible not to dodge if you're an experienced player as they are so incredibly slow that while you are able to massacre with that primed light beam you love so much, you just have to hope that the person you're aiming at has no evades or hasn't read the skill description and thinks they're safe with Aegis. I mean, if you want to use this build in a structured PvP setting... well, I hope they don't have a scourge on the point you're trying to get on.

Ranger- I think we can all agree when we say this- 6 months ago kitten menders druid. Am I right? It was so incredibly busted, the fact that you could press 1 on staff a few times, get your celestial avatar and then you heal you and all allies around you for 15k with just your 4 and then yeeeeeettt you're invisible. Then let's have a 15 second root while your condi cleanses the much needed 1 stack of bleed instead of the year long root because priorities amiright? But now we have Firebrand cause you pay for whats better. That's how it works right? But now for some reason, core ranger is making a come back. The CC on pets is pretty incredible given that you only control 1 skill per pet in core ranger and they get to knockdown or do whatever they want on their own. So yes, you can focus on evading the Rangers abilities and damage, but then here comes a maul that deals 10k damage from your cute innocent pet. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I rerolled my weaver into a core Ranger :P . Then we have Soulbeast. Uhhh, I mean i still prefer core in 1v1 situations. I guess it's cool that you can use Smokescale's evade in your beast form.. but then.. yeah I mean that's about it. I don't know, from giving them both a look and trying each of them out, I still prefer core. Maybe I'm just completely wrong on everything I've said up until this point but I'd probably take core in any fighting situation over soulbeast. Cause we know if you're playing a build in high level ranked, it's the troll menders druid.

Anyways, this has been my rant. Feel free to flame me. Already been told I'm "dead wrong," but you know, what can ya do? Oh yeah, that's right... reroll into a Spellbreaker, Condi Mesmer, Scourge, or Firebrand. Put those 30+ dollars to good use.

Lol people keep saying core scepter ele is good and then you run into better dueling classes like Mirage, spellbreaker, thief, rev, guard, ranger, hell even necro which practically eats you.

Ele runs on gimmicks people, the scepter is decent. It's not amazing, it's not god-like, it's decent. If Anet touches even one trait that effects fresh air eles they are gone and we are right back to auramancers. Ele will never be a proper dueling class until it gets some proper buffs, tweaks, nerfs to the more support crap whatever.

Has me frustrated when people can pick up any other class except for maybe necro and have at least a proper dueling build compared to fresh air eles that pales in comparison to most because all the other classes have proper 1v1 tools, while we have the sub-par scraps. I don't want to dominate, I just want to actually duel with friends instead of having to hop onto another class or just practice bunkering with them.

@Lilyanna.9361 said:Lol people keep saying core scepter ele is good and then you run into better dueling classes like Mirage, spellbreaker, thief, rev, guard, ranger, hell even necro which practically eats you.

Ele runs on gimmicks people, the scepter is decent. It's not amazing, it's not god-like, it's decent. If Anet touches even one trait that effects fresh air eles they are gone and we are right back to auramancers. Ele will never be a proper dueling class until it gets some proper buffs, tweaks, nerfs to the more support crap whatever.

Has me frustrated when people can pick up any other class except for maybe necro and have at least a proper dueling build compared to fresh air eles that pales in comparison to most because all the other classes have proper 1v1 tools, while we have the sub-par scraps. I don't want to dominate, I just want to actually duel with friends instead of having to hop onto another class or just practice bunkering with them.

Agreed. It is very frustrating being someone who enjoys Ele so much. I'll admit that against some classes, Fresh Air is still pretty good and can be hard to deal with as you have 3 rotating blinds if you build into Arcane (which you always do). But it is no where near the classes that there are now. I've never had a problem with spending more time learning a class. I don't care if Spell breaker is super easy to pick up and learn. I just want something that is viable and can contend with other classes if I am going to spend that extra time to learn the class

Revenant is not bad, it just takes a lot of practice to be any good, unlike so many of the new pof specs that dominate pvp. The difference is rev doesn't have giant circles you just stack on points like necro and dh, or multiple invulneravility buttons (And "below health threshold crap") like warrior. This is the direction every class should be heading in.

But Renegade does have aoes now... they're just so bad.

@Ceredon.2583 said:But Renegade does have aoes now... they're just so bad.

Revenant was never meant for anything but spamming aoe boons in dungeons and raids. But even so, if you cooperate and protect this boonbot it works in PvP.

Also, props for a small enjoyable novel.

eh, I still like my core Ranger...however, projectile blocking is getting to be a real pain