Can someone explain the pros/cons of the heavy classes?

See title! Getting into pvp. I'd prefer heavy, and I very much like having at least a little variety at times.

Warrior is low risk, high reward. Solid pvp class. overtuned resilience.

Guardian has quite a few builds to choose from, can be bunker support, one shot people, or some variant inbetween all that.

Revenant is high risk, high reward. Very agile with good mobility and insane burst.

The cons of all 3, I really don't think heavy armor looks good, but you can wear an outfit.

Well, all of them behave really differently.

Guardian right now has two main builds that are popular: Core glass cannon or Firebrand support. Both have their own limitations. Guardian in general doesnt have much mobility to start with. Core is a really simplistic build that doesn't have much depth to it, making it easier to predict. Not to mention it can be shut down easily if caught with its pants down. It isnt brought very often on high-end teams because of that, despite offering really high burst potential. Firebrand does not have much damage potential and is really team reliant, as its a support spec. It does provide the team with very significant healing and damage mitigation. There are other build variations running around but these are definetly the 2 most popular ones.

Warrior i cant talk too much about because i do not have much experience with it. It is mostly a very selfish class, usually seen running the greatsword spellbreaker build. It brings decent mix of mobility, damage and survivability, making it a really good duelist with capability of holding its own on a 1v2. It is usually used as a side node contester because it can be easily kited/avoided in a team fight vs an experienced team.

Revenant is extremely glassy right now. Usually its played with the herald elite spec using glint/shiro legends. It is packed with really high mobility (probably behind only thief and mesmer) and insane damage for the sustain it has. It really rellies on active defenses and can be hard to pick up though. The class lacks practically any passive defense and has very little condi removal, making it really punishable if mistakes are made. Currently it is played with a +1/roamer role, taking advantage of its high burst, mobility and ability to deal unblockable hits and reveal stealthed enemies.

Currently i'd say that all 3 are viable but everything is very meta subjetive though and can shift with ease with just one balance patch.

@Malpractice.7850 said:See title! Getting into pvp. I'd prefer heavy, and I very much like having at least a little variety at times.

I am not sure if you like heavy for the looks, cuz it has little to do with functionality. Gurdian, rev and warrior are different. They also have different builds. Honestly, unless you played all three in PvE before, it is really difficult to explain how they work.

If you are new to the game, I would recommend warrior. Easy, tanky and mobile.

All these are good answers, good luck @OP and most importantly have fun.

Heavy isn’t quite what it usually means in games, a tank. Neither light is a glass cannon. Weaver (elem) as an example is a bunker while revenant is a GC.

Each class, and even build, has completely different pros, cons, and good/bad matchups vs the rest of the high tier builds (lower tier builds will likely lose unless they’re highly specialized to deal with said high tier build).

Look up streams and builds to see what styles fit for each class at the current meta.

But keep in mind meta is aleays subject to change, so I suggest you give classes your own go to try and test their flow.

@Malpractice.7850

Warrior is a good profession to start the game with. It's one of the three most beginner friendly professions right next to ranger and necromancer. Both core and Spellbreaker work well in PvP, don't bother with Berserker. It's got high cleave damage and mobility with the greatsword and great single target damage with the axe. Warrior benefits the most from melee weapons, but that is also a huge drawback, as it makes it the easiest profession to kite by far.

Guardian has quite a lot of build variety to choose from, whether it's core radiant hammer/greatsword, core hybrid/burn guardian, Dragonhunter and Firebrand. Core radiant and Firebrand are the most effective in PvP currently, but Dragonhunter can be viable if you know how to play it. The downside to this profession is the low health. Because of it, you have to use meditation skills in order to stay alive and not die so easily to conditions. Firebrand isn't affected by these problems too much, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to them.

Revenant wasn't as viable in PvP as it is today. With the recent balance patches, revenant has been made viable as a high risk, high reward profession. One that has solid mobility and focuses on downing low health enemies to give your team the advantage. The only thing you have to watch out for are those condi happy scourges and mirages who will destroy you if you're not careful.

There are no real cons to heavy classes. They have almost as much mobility as light and as much utility as medium.