Is any pure core classes actually viable compared to their especs?

Been wondering if any pure core classes can stack up at all to the improvements from especs anymore.I well remember that anet said long ago that especs would only be a different way of playing your class. But as weve seen, rampant powercreep and becomming ridiculously powerful.Chronos and Druids as the most noticeable examples.

Base power warrior is extremly great, not sure about pvp and wvw, but in PvE its meta in fractals and raids.It brings the banners, Empower allies, good dps + good crowd control if needed.

Any specific game mode?

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Been wondering if any pure core classes can stack up at all to the improvements from especs anymore.I well remember that anet said long ago that especs would only be a different way of playing your class. But as weve seen, rampant powercreep and becomming ridiculously powerful.Chronos and Druids as the most noticeable examples.

The core specializations that are equally as viable, if not more viable are as follows:

1. Warrior

Core warrior is surprisingly doing well when compared to its' elite counterparts. Some may say that it is more vulnerable because it doesn't have the Full Counter ability from Spellbreaker, but in my opinion, Spellbreaker is core warrior set on easy mode. It's a specialization that doesn't acknowledge the weaknesses that come with the profession. Core warriors realize their weaknesses and that they do not excel in certain situation (mobility, shadowstep, ranged combat, kiting...).

Spellbreakers are the special snowflakes of the warrior profession. It's a specialization that caters to bad warriors, the types who don't want to face the good without the bad. They do not want to feel like they are weak in some things while being good at other things. They want to feel like they are good in almost everything. I'm sorry, Spellbreakers, you're not.

2. Thief

Sword/dagger thief is doing amazingly good. Sure, its' damage might've been nerfed and a few of the Acrobatics traits got nerfed for who knows what reason, but that didn't stop anyone from playing s/d thief and keeping playstyle viable. Some say that d/p Daredevil thief hardcounters s/d core thief. Maybe when it comes to bursting them from stealth or from the pistol skill 4 Headshot, but that is only true if the d/p thief is good. It's all based on personal skill. But the best part about core thief is that both core thief and Daredevil thief counter Deadeye. Try fighting a p/p thief as a core thief or Daredevil thief and they are a piece of cake.

3. Elementalist

Fresh Air may be a glass cannon specialization, but that is its' intention. Elementalists are meant to be glass cannons. They have the lowest health next to the thief and the guardian, but they also wear light armor. Due to the amount of vulnerability, it was purposely designed for elementalists to be hard hitting. With the right amount of training and having good reflexes, a core Fresh Air elementalist can be the deadliest profession out there. Also, focus will always be better than dagger because of the utilities it gives you, like Magnetic Wave, Obsidian Flesh, Gust etc. Use Magnetic Wave and watch p/p or rifle Deadeyes die within 1 or 2 seconds. I've lost track of the number of times I've killed thieves this way.

4. Guardian

While not many will agree with this, I still think that core guardian is still good. It may not have the bunker capabilities of Dragonhunter or the supportive capabilities of Firebrand, but from my point of view, core guardian is more of a mixed bag sort of profession. One that focuses on dealing damage while also buffing allies with boons. I like that middle ground that core guardian is in.

5. Ranger

Longbow Rangers are still doing good. They have the longest attack range with the weapon. They excel at range to kill their foes. The play more defensively at first, but offensively once their target has almost reached 0%. While not as good as Druid when it comes to sustain and supporting allies, it's still a solid profession to play.

The gamemodes I'm mentioning are PvE (High-end content, Raids and stuff), sPvP and WvW. Not mentioning Open-World because well, everything works there.

-WarriorYes it is. It is extremely viable in all game modes.

-GuardianIt is viable only in PvP. Maybe WvW a bit but y'know, most roaming specs just destroy core Guardian.

-RevenantNo.

-Thief

Yes. But only in PvP and WvW. S/D Thief is the best example.

-RangerKind of. It is viable in PvP and WvW but still shadowed by SB and Druid.

-EngineerNo. The only viable core build was Condition Engineer, which was only viable in PvE and had the hardest rotation in the game (literally the hardest), and that got destroyed a few patches ago.

-NecromancerNo.

-ElementalistYes. Core Elementalist has it's uses in all types of content, but shadowed by it's elite specs.

-MesmerKinda. It's does well, has some stuff going for it. But both Chrono and Mirage are extremely powerful compared to core.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:-NecromancerNo.

Kind of disagree with that, in PvE at least. Necro does survivability and durability very well, and although Reaper and Scourge provide some boosts to this, they also have sacrifices (increased shroud drain for reaper, loss of shroud for Scourge). Blood Magic, Death Magic and Soul Reaping all help you stay alive in various ways, while Curses is the only real power trait for necros – so taking an elite does feel like a sacrifice in some respects for me. WvW and PvP are a different story, of course.

Warr, guard and mesmer.All of them have builds for core class that are pretty viable.Ranger has viable options too but is outperformed by its elites.

@Manpag.6421 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:-NecromancerNo.

You're absolutely right.

But, I should've mentioned that I was talking about high-end PvE. Gonna edit the post.

In terms of PvP, both core Guardian and core Thief are very good. Core Warrior as well but I do think Spellbreaker is better. Core Guardian vs. Firebrand is not really a contest, they are in entirely different roles and I'm currently playing both.

@Manpag.6421 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:-NecromancerNo.

There are fringe cases where a core necromancer could be better than scourge and reaper in PvE. But these are fringe cases and don't account for these cases could be filled by another profession that just preforms better. Since reaper and scourge have all the tools core has it needs to define itself through trait synergy or it's death shroud mechanic. And it's trait synergy just isn't as potent as other professions are. They mostly stand on their own. And death shroud is a poor hybrid of ranged and melee skills that don't function well together. It also lacks stability which puts it in a tough spot more frequently than scourge and reaper which both have access to the boon. The best case for core necromancer is that it is more effective than scourge against mobile bosses. But not by much. It's dps still tanks in those situations and it's potential for damage even in ideal situations is far lower. Core also lacks real support. Power damage reaper is going to be your choice. Condi damage scourge. Tanking, both scourge and reaper are better since they have the tools to get people off of you. Core does not. Support isn't a real good option on necromancer but scourge is you best bet.

Is core necromancer effective in open world? Well that depends on the area. I'd sat no, they are not always effective. Especially in hot maps. In the old maps sure. But that's nothing to write home about. Everything works in core open maps.

increasingly sounds like that Anet is expecting that you have an e-spec now, instead of it just being an alternative way of playing. But tbh, the new specs is a strong part of what drives the appeal of the expansons. So its no real wonder to me that they are being pushed.

Consider the overall situation as a whole. Especs were meant to be the new baseline for more difficult game play, that required more Trait synergy (the game's strongest selling point is buildcraft). When they revamped traits, they did so with the intention of them supporting Especs to build class synergies, both internal and external. You can argue the amount of success they've had with this- but there is no argument that this was the intention, and overall this next best thing we can get to GW1's freeform system.

But the "balance problems' we're seeing now tends to be inherent in the classes themselves, and how flexible their core lines are. Especs tend to shoot for one of 2 things..... to either give a class a specific role, or to fill a gap in its existing design. Most of HOT Especs were an upgrade, because they all attempted to correct a weak aspect of their Core designs, so the stronger parts of it shine brighter. However, the 2 outliers are Druid and Revenant.

Rev as a class is designed to have Especs as baseline.... this is pretty evident in their trait partitioning, as each trait line relates directly to one legend, the Especs are noticeably more flexible then core, and that Evocation seems to be almost Mandatory with what it does to Energy management and Swapping. So Revs seem to run most smoothly with Traits for its 2 Legends, and Evocation addressing how you transition. Unfortunately this design also limits the Rev's capabilities, because the 4 core legends and their trait lines don't play off each other enough, nor is each powerful enough in its own right to cover the multitude of situations a Rev will face in just one battle. Its expecting the Espec to cover the majority of situations, while the second legend was to over specialize in one area the Revs wants to emphasize.

The Ranger also suffers from a similar design flaw, where each trait line doesn't play off each other well, and the utilities are highly specialized. This results in needing multiple traits sunk into one aspect, but not reaching the kind of compounded highs the other classes can with a combination of fewer traits and utilities working in tandem. The only reason Druid works is because of its internal synergy with its trait line.... but venture outside of that, and only a few traits make any kind of sense. Soul Beast built itself in a way where it can play off of the other traits much better, thus is much better in everything except the one thing Druid over specialized in. But despite this, its opportunity cost is much higher due to core trait lines not having as much cross synergy as the Espec has. Rangers overall performance is still suffering, and will continue to suffer, until either trait lines indirectly support more then one utility type, or each utility becomes more versatile.

Compare both to Core Guardian, where its core profession mechanic is the least rewarding, but its weapons and traits interplay extremely well, and its utilities are highly versatile in their own right. DH resolved the problem of the Virtues being too unrewarding (used more passives then anything else), and made them into highly versatile tools that greatly increased their fighting range and combat mobility. Tomes took core Guardian's strengths and cranked them up to 15.... and it works well because, because expending virtues now have significant payouts if used well. Core Mesmer is strong, but is too slow to ramp up..... thus both Chorno and Mirage speed up their pacing, and both Especs play extremely well. Necro was another slow class where the Especs get around their low mobility, so they can get into a position where their tankiness can be used offensively. DareDevil allows a thief to brawl better, while Deadeye allows to strike from better range; both are still glass cannons, and both allowed a more direct style of combat.

Basically Rev and Ranger are the 2 classes have too much overhead in their Core, so their Especs do more to define their class design, rather then the other way around. It also kind of hurts their ability to be 2 things at once, which is a practical requirement for raids to maximize group support and DPS at the same time. Druid is losing steam because its forced to choose being a buff bot or healer, but can't be both, and can't hybridize enough to pair with another class to get the overall effect. Chrono, despite the changes to alacrity and its quickness, still holds because it can still share boons and do the tank role effectively in most fights.

@LucianDK.8615 said:increasingly sounds like that Anet is expecting that you have an e-spec now, instead of it just being an alternative way of playing. But tbh, the new specs is a strong part of what drives the appeal of the expansons. So its no real wonder to me that they are being pushed.

I think the introduction of new ways to play the same classes and/or different themes is enough to drive the appeal, unfortunately most e-specs do come with more power and/or utility that are better at handling the high end game. The base game is ridiculously easy and so the base (core) specs are not that impressive now.

I'd like to see each core class have an existing trait line converted to an elite trait line that can only be slotted as the third option. A buff to that line, and the associated utility skills, would go a long way to making the core classes viable again while limiting overpowered combinations with the elite specs.

Short answer: Yes.

Well, the question is poorly formulated to the extreme...IF you mean are core classes still viable? Yes, just look at all the F2P people out there. It also depends on the class and the game mode as well, some core classes get closer to their elite counter-parts than others (Power Warrior for example, if you look at GW2 Raidar's stats, Core warrior is actually performing better than SpellBreaker in the 50th percentile, and even in the 99th percentile - the top 1%- you still see only a difference of about 1kDPS), so you can safely go to a raid and a fractal, and if someone questions your decision of taking a core warrior you can tell them to git gud.

But, even then, if you're at the peak of the class bleeding it for all it's got, Elite specs are simply designed to do their jobs better. So they will.Core classes were initially designed under the aegis of the "no trinity" philosophy, so they are designed to be jacks of all trades, but usually jacks of all trades are masters at none, and this is the basic principle of why, for the most part, elite specs are better than core classes, because the elites are usually designed with more specific jobs.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Consider the overall situation as a whole. Especs were meant to be the new baseline for more difficult game play, that required more Trait synergy (the game's strongest >selling point is buildcraft). When they revamped traits, they did so with the intention of them supporting Especs to build class synergies, both internal and external. You >can argue the amount of success they've had with this- but there is no argument that this was the intention, and overall this next best thing we can get to GW1's freeform >system.

I'd argue it wasn't that successful. And what they were intending to do was attempting to extort/induce players to buy Heart of Thorns at the time.

Seriously. You're joking, right? The game's strongest selling point used to be build freedom and level scaling so that no overworld zone -leading eventually to dungeons and competitive game modes- would ever become obsolete so that you could bring a friend over and not be 'too far ahead to still hang out with them as they leveled to catch you up. Now, the biggest draw is playing dolly dressups with your character because when they revamped traits, just before Heart of Thorns, Anet destroyed buildcraft.

Instead of being able to pick and choose traits from multiple lines(more than the three we're stuck with now, sometimes four and perhaps even five if they hadn't changed the trait investment system) they'd locked us into having three spec lines only. Even if those spec lines weren't necessarily synergistic within themselves. Sometime we had adept traits worthy of being master traits, sometimes we had grandmaster traits unworthy of even being adepts.

Instead of allowing for the plethora of builds - even if they were non meta builds- that we'd had before just about every profession got distilled down to about one or two traitings which actually worked. The trait revamp did anything but encourage diversity in build making.

Even worse they gutted functionality from certain core trait lines and either sold it back to us as part of the new lines which we couldn't access unless we bought the expansion, or completely removed it never to be seen again. And we were sold this steaming pile under the tag line of 'hard choices' when in truth it only simplified the process of cookie cutter build making. The take away being that, on average, any given line was two thirds rubbish that could be ignored. Sometimes whole lines.

Some professions- engineers being one of them, have been waiting til today to have a much of this damage undone. The medkit changes have been a step in the right direction but it's small. And along the way we've had turrets further destroyed, our damage kits left in the dust, marginalised elixirs, and a still largely-useless gadgets line. Throwing a new e-spec at the community and then telling them, 'We've listened to your cries, Holosmith is what you play to do damage now.', is not listening. It's not build diversity.

It's the bread line school of illusion of freedom of choice - 'play any way you want to be competitive so long as it's Holosmith.'

@Glider.5792 said:Base power warrior is extremly great, not sure about pvp and wvw, but in PvE its meta in fractals and raids.It brings the banners, Empower allies, good dps + good crowd control if needed.

Yeah, I agree base Warrior is the only class that might not need elite spec to be viable, especially the power variant.Ranger comes close, but Soulbeast is still pretty darn good for that 10 CD pet revival mechanic.For other classes, E-spec is pretty much mandatory if you want to stay viable.

Depends on your definition of "stack up". I purposefully play Core Guardian over DH, mainly because I don't care for the trap mechanic, and the bow pretty much sucks, but also because as Core, my DPS is close to that of DH, but I have greater group utility which I find rewarding, especially in Fractals. I'm sure no RAID leader would accept me, but since I don't care to raid, that's a moot point.

But I'm regularly pugging T2/T3 fractals and keeping up with everyone else, so for me, Core Guard stacks up just fine.

Core guardian is good in PvE. The virtues line can be used as substitute to DH line in the meta build. Core warrior also is decent. Core thief is meta in sPvP. Core guardian and warrior are useable in sPvP.

In raids, core guard gave more dps then dragonhunter. This is because chaos chrono is very strong and core guard can take virtues (i think) for bonus damage per boon without droping zeal or radiance

@"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:In raids, core guard gave more dps then dragonhunter. This is because chaos chrono is very strong and core guard can take virtues (i think) for bonus damage per boon without droping zeal or radiance

Its because of Unscathed Contender giving 20% if you keep an Aegis up. That's a huge caveat for Core Guard, unless you're dodging is godly. For how much of their class plays with Aegis, they actually don't have a lot of sources in Core to replace it on demand (nor does the raid builds take any). This makes DH more stable with its damage, with 2 traits (one of which is a minor) already exceeds "Power of the Virtuous", while being completely passive. You can then add Big game Hunter and the Traps (which also give CC) for general utility.

Core Benchmarks better because that 20% boost is huge.... but it hinges entirely on one boon that knocks out on errant AOE, and isn't easily replaced outside of the chornos refreshing it.

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:In raids, core guard gave more dps then dragonhunter. This is because chaos chrono is very strong and core guard can take virtues (i think) for bonus damage per boon without droping zeal or radiance

In actual raid they are closer together but the diference will be minor.

What about fractals? I wanted to raise my core guardian for fractals, but I don't know is it pointless or not. And what's fractal level limit for core professions? Can someone answer me this please?