What class/elite spec surprised you the most?

Assuming you had one or two (or three) mains throughout most of GW2 life, what specs/elite specs surprised you the most when you tried them out?And did you roll them into your main rotation?

I always wanted my thief to be a daredevil, but a friend convinced me to try out the deadeye spec for a little while. I had no idea it could be that much fun. Every aspect of it, from the visuals to the sound effects to the playstyle, is so well-designed. My thief is still going to be a daredevil in PVE for headcanon/RP reasons, but deadeye is absolutely amazing. I'll definitely be trying it out more in PVP...if I can wrap my head around the whole kneeling-and-immobile thing... :tongue:

Also, as a bit of a rambling tangent to the actual question...TLDR: I was really surprised at the holosmith elite spec, because I hadn't started playing GW2 when I heard about it. I wasn't expecting anything quite so...high-tech. I thought GW2 was in a stereotypical high fantasy setting, and I was wrong. (I do have an engineer who'll be a holosmith when he eventually hits 80. I've completely fallen in love with the idea of the holosmith, and I love how it plays.)

! Before I started playing GW2, I played SWTOR. Shortly after Path of Fire was released, a certain someone on the SWTOR forums - who also frequents these forums - mentioned that the holosmith elite specialization gets a lightsaber (or, well, a sword that looks really similar to one). No, really! He showed a few screenshots to prove it.! Being a Star Wars fangirl, I was intrigued...and surprised. I had thought that GW2 took place in your typical high fantasy, low-tech, magic-out-the-kitten (boring) setting...but, apparently, that wasn't quite accurate. Maybe my other assumptions about this game were wrong, too. So I started to look into GW2, wondering just what the setting actually was. I saw fantasy, yes, but also science fiction and even a bit of steampunk...I saw living plants, supergenius gnomes, giants, massive cat-like creatures... And there were Elder Dragons. Dragons are always awesome. The rich lore behind the game and the story captivated me.! I've been playing this game since January, and have no intention of leaving anytime soon.! Thank you, @Steve The Cynic.3217, for mentioning that the holosmith gets a lightsaber. :) That (and realizing Fear Not This Night was connected with this game) was what got me interested in GW2.

Necromancer surprised me and not in a good way. And Scourge surprised me in a good way.

Soulbeast and Druid surprised me and not in the good way from mechanic to visualize, firebrand was amazing visual and mechanic

@Batel.9206 said:Thank you, @Steve The Cynic.3217, for mentioning that the holosmith gets a lightsaber. :) That (and realizing Fear Not This Night was connected with this game) was what got me interested in GW2.

You're welcome. Glad to see that you like GW2 for more than just the holosmith's lightsabre.

Necromancer surprised me. I felt like it had a pretty bad reputation but the class is so much fun to play.I was also pleasantly surprised by Soulbeast, as I don't usually like melee.

For me it is Engi, specifically holosmith. In any game, I tend to avoid techy, gadget oriented classs or specs. But Holo is just so much fun the way its implemented.

I was very positively surprised by Power Soulbeast since I had written it off as a condi spec.

I was rather disappointed when I had a first look on the Revenant. Started with GW2 on release (not beta) and played until ... a few weeks before HoT. Watched a lot of videos and previews of the upcoming new class "The Revenant." I prepared everything, a full set of gear with preferred stats, tomes/scrolls to instantly level up and even got a few very unique skins just to get going the instant it was released. Then my computer broke and I had a few RL issues to deal with. Nearly half a year later, I managed to get back into the game. To my surprise HoT was live and the revenant was implemented. Lucky for me it was polished already and balanced.

But it was no longer the class I was anticipating for such a long time. It received a lot of fixes to please the community, which were against the original design. Including the joke with the max-hp, weaponswap and the copycat-traits. When I saw the ranged hammer, I was just shocked. The more I looked into the profession, skills, traits and the class mechanic the more I felt bad of creating one. At last I took a look on the Herald elite specialization, which was basically a buffbot. Back then, the revenant was still hyped the best class in the game, because it "does everything better!" I understand ANet's decision to make the Revenant a cool class, so a lot of people played it. But at what cost? What came then was probably the highest fall of a class in GW2 so far.

I created a few Revenants until today, but never played any seriously. One was a DMC3 Vergil cosplay. The other one was planed to do raids. It is geared in full 'urgh' meta 'shudder' build, but I only used it to gather berries in BFF and open bags, because of the perma-buff ability. Every attempt of playing the class for real is a total failure. I simply cannot. It feels boring, tedious and I feel a little disgusted as an engineer-main to play a class which was artificially boosted for no reason whatsoever.

-Positive surprise: Guardian/Dragonhunter. Still my number-one recommendation for new players. It is easy to play, does nice damage and has good survivability. You do not need to master this class to have fun with it, even on vanilla. Mostly self-explaining mechanics and a few nichès if you want to overpower certain aspects. I have not touched warrior type classes for a long time. But when I tried out the guardian, I was truly impressed.

I agree, the rev was a small let down. It is currently the only class I play in WvW. I tried being a tabby rev but keeping track of the tablet in a fight is way too difficult. Went to a more traditional glint/jalis, burning elite skills and keeping up boons. Still somewhat disappointed with the class.

I would say an overall disappointment is the entire thief class from an elite spec perspective. Both Daredevil and Deadeye are amazingly squishy and have their own glaring problems. Maybe I am playing them wrong but its the class I struggled with the most since coming back. And this is from someone who mained a thief throughout beta and the first 1.5 yrs when I played way back when (hundreds of hrs on thief).

I would say out of HoT and PoF, the spec that surprised me the most might be Firebrand. Great AOE dmg, obviously great group utility to it. Need to refine my rotations to be a bit better and not lose so much health in a fight. Its fun. But I think firebrands are dime a dozen which turns me off from making it a main character I play.

I still have Ranger to try...I have never leveled one up so I am really looking forward to it, and then eventually the elite specs.

Druid because in a million years I never imagined GW2 would have a dedicated healer.

For PoF what surprised me the most & what I didn't expect to be interested in, was condi soulbeast.

It wasn't on my top list of elite specs that I really wanted to try, and I hadn't played my ranger in a long time and never tried druid... but somehow -- I'm not even sure how it happened -- I noticed I was playing soulbeast a lot. It was so fun with dagger / condition / poison / no pet, plus I liked the green cloud effect.

Weaver. I thought it would be amazing to merge attunements and solve the attunement-CD problem core ele always had - instead it actually made it worse and locked you into an even tighter attunement rotation.

Firebrand. I couldn't get into Guardian for 5 years. Then PoF happened. I main Firebrand now. <3

Deadeye since it's what really got me into Thief. I generally don't care for classes that have low health/armor pools (I'm more of an offensive/high damage player so Warrior, Guardian, Revenant, and Necromancer are kind of my mainstays) so Thief just kind of sat on the sideline most of the time for me. Then Deadeye came out and not only did I love it to death, it also taught me how to Thief better in general, regardless if it's core Thief, Daredevil, or Deadeye.

Having fought warriors in wvw on a half dozen classes, they were clearly broken. Then I rolled a warrior for wvw and was surprised that they were more broken than I had thought. Such cheese and so easy to play. So many bags.

I was surprised that you can use photon forge underwater which makes holosmith the only spec where underwater combat is at least somewhat bearable.

Mirage, as someone who hasnt enjoyed any other proffesion nearly as much as necromancer/scourge I found myself having alot of fun with the more movement oriented survival of mirage combined with clones.

Back when they announced Holosmith I feared that it would destroy kit-engineer, but happily enough Holosmith with kits works perfectly fine.I was surprised at how well the shade-mechanic on Scourge feels, sadly the rest of the class does not fit my play-style.

Firebrand.

I had just come off having mained Thief and Necromancer since launch and Reaper through HoT and was really sick and tired of being unwanted in groups/slowing my groups down, and started looking at other professions.

I started with Firebrand and it completely blew my mind with the versatility of DPS, boon support, healing, condi cleanse, mechanical interactions like reflects, invulnerability and on and on it had, especially after having mainly played Necromancer/Reaper for about 2 years at that point.

Really opened my eyes to ingnore theme and leave Necromancer behind. At this point I have all professions in multiple ascended sets, got into raiding not being bound to an unwanted profession anymore, am working on my second set of legendary gear, and am barely touching my Necro anymore.

Feels weird to be back on Thief though, with DE being a meta DPS now, and while I still have some complaints about the spec, after the recent reworks and balance tweaks, Deadeye pretty much is what I wanted Thief to be since launch.

While I don't enjoy FB much anymore in PvE after all the (much needed) nerfs due to sPvP and WvW, it's the spec I have to thank for getting me away from Necromancer, and opening up so much of the game for me by doing so.

Mirage continues to surprise me by how long Anet leaves it brokenly OP, considering how rather quickly they smashed Scourge.. over and over and over again.

Of the ones I've played Tempest surprised me the most. I didn't expect to like it, I just trained it up because my ele was getting the hero points and there was nothing else to do with them (this was before PoF obviously). I don't think I realised how much I was enjoying using those skills until after PoF came out, when I actually ended up making a 2nd ele to be a Weaver because I didn't want to stop playing Tempest. (And I didn't want to have to carry around 2 sets of equipment and swap everything over when I felt like a different playstyle.)

@Lily.1935 said:Necromancer surprised me and not in a good way. And Scourge surprised me in a good way.For me, it was the other way around. Reaper was surprisingly good and fun, even though it didn't really fit my image of the Necromancer with all his melee approach. Scourge on the other hand, not only wasn't the Necromancer i wanted, but also didn't have any fun gameplay associated with it. It was also a reason for reaper nerfs, which was one more cause to dislike it.

But as far as the spec that surprised me the most, it would be

@Oglaf.1074 said:Druid because in a million years I never imagined GW2 would have a dedicated healer.this.

I was surprised by Dragonhunter and Firebrand... the reason: core guardian is stronger in PVP

@Mea.5491 said:Firebrand. I couldn't get into Guardian for 5 years. Then PoF happened. I main Firebrand now. <3

Im considering that as well...guardian has been so boring, even dragonhunter. But firebrand is hella fun. I just feel they are too dime a dozen...such a go to healer and utility.

@Danikat.8537 said:Of the ones I've played Tempest surprised me the most. I didn't expect to like it, I just trained it up because my ele was getting the hero points and there was nothing else to do with them (this was before PoF obviously). I don't think I realised how much I was enjoying using those skills until after PoF came out, when I actually ended up making a 2nd ele to be a Weaver because I didn't want to stop playing Tempest. (And I didn't want to have to carry around 2 sets of equipment and swap everything over when I felt like a different playstyle.)

It is such a pain in the arse to completely switch talents and gear when you want to play a different spec. At this point in the game with many trait lines, 2 elite specs per class and many ways and builds you can play in an elite spec(condi, power, hybrid, heals, etc)...its time arenanet put in the next great QoL: Profiles (or builds, or armory, or something where you can click one button and easily swap it all out).