experience with post PoF so far

i would like to talk about my personal experience with the post PoF balance and builds in this thread. i'm currently at 1650 rating, so nothing fancy but still enough to provide some valid opinion. playing since beta, i have 8700 pvp matches and used to play for some semi pro teams in esl, weekly stuff and other tournaments as a main elementalist and later revenant back in my "serious gw2 days".

thief

haven't seen many thieves in ranked since the expansion hit. mostly d/p daredevils, some rifle deadeyes which were mostly bug abusing, a s/d deadeye and a s/d condi daredevil. d/p daredevil is still the strongest thief build as it provides excellent damage and mobility. rifle deadeye is not a decapper but a teamfighter, and not a good one at that. i think a d/p deadeye as a more offensive variation of the d/p daredevil could work, but i see no reason to do that because you don't really need that bonus damage and are better off with more survivability. condi daredevil is pretty much dead and nobody cared about it in the single match i had one.

ranger

honestly, i haven't seen a single soulbeast so i can't talk much about it. i tested one myself with a sage build but felt like the relation between damage and survivability wasn't great and druid does a much better job at that. as far as druid goes, i feel like druid is struggling against this "rise of the dps bruisers" because they deal enough damage even through avatar.

guardian

people that want to play an offensive firebrand will most likely be disappointed. while firebrand does have a big burning spike on the f1 tome it can easily be cleansed and their survivability isn't as good as a dragon hunter's. the main problem i see is that once you get low and are forced into your f2 and f3 tomes is that you don't really deal any damage and give your opponent enough time to simply recover. core guard and dragonhunters don't have that problem as they press the f skill and continue doing damage.support firebrand on the other hand is a very good support build and in my opinion above tempest. you have incredible healing output and utility. i had matches where i reached 800k healing. it is a bit fragile but still a very valuable pick for your team. i haven't seen many guardians in general, one valk hammer guard, some burn firebrands and no dragon hunters at all.

revenant

revenant seems to be the weakest pvp class right now. ventari was nerfed and power/condi rev weren't really strong before the expansion either. i think even without the nerfs ventari rev would be unplayable right now because of all the cc combined with a lot of power and condi dps. renegade doesn't make it any better though. designed as a condi spec yet completely bad as a condi spec, renegade seems stronger as a power dps build. it can build a bit more tanky as you can reach high numbers of crit chance through traits while dealing more damage than a glint power spec, but really lacks a good 2nd legend and the sustain of shield/glint. i think with such bad condi cleanse revenant is just not viable.

elementalist

ele currently seems to be mediocre overall. tempest struggles with the amount of damage and cc flying around right now. while you do have a good amount of cleanses it's simply not enough. another problem is that you lack strong burst heals and it might prove difficult to heal up your allies in a teamfight. using overloads is quite risky and with the lack of stability easily punishable. you do however still have your invul that can get you out of tricky situations.weaver seems to be quite balanced, not too strong, not really weak. it is an okayish side node holder with the sage amulet but doesn't really have impact in a teamfight and basically gets carried by primordial stance. reactive use of your offhand skills is difficult with weaver as you have to go through 2 global attunement cooldowns to reach your desired offhand skills. i have seen some people play it with mender but i don't think it's that good. you're not really a support and you don't really have the damage to kill something either. there was one player playing it with s/f fresh air, dealing a lot of damage, but i don't think the build can survive under focus fire because of the offhand problem i talked about before.

necro

i saw maybe one reaper, and i was glad it wasn't a scourge. most of the time i have 2 scourges on my team and 2 scourges on the enemy team... scourge damage is brutal. watching my condi bar have 10 burn stacks and 20 torment stacks doesn't feel nice, i tell you. having the whole point covered with shades is quite punishing, and while not everyone has to stand on the node, one guy has to. the survivability on scourge is quite good, especially if you play the sage dagger build. not having to give up your weaponskills when using shroud skills is really strong. honestly, scourge is too strong. the corrupts are too much, the condi output is too much. either shroud cooldowns have to get changed or condition application has to be tuned down.

mirage

i'm not sure if i've seen any mirage in my matches. mesmer is my least played profession too, so i can't really talk about personal experience here. overall mirage looks to be alright, most likely on the level of weaver. it seems to have good condi output, a good amount of mobility and decent survivability, albeit less than chrono. ambush skills look like fun and no dps downtime on dodge is interesting. again, not many mesmers in general, regardless of spec.

warrior

oh boy. when i said i usually have 2 necros on my team; the other 2 are warriors. let's start with the positive stuff.. spellbreaker plays a lot better than berserker. it feels more like a warrior and the animations are pretty cool - that's where the positive stuff ends. the strongest build i encountered most of the time was d/sh greatsword and it deals an immense amount of damage with a survivability that other classes can only dream of. dagger is probably the strongest warrior weapon overall. it deals a lot of damage, has a gap closer, has a cc, is unblockable and can be used with shield for even more cc, mobility and survivability. the problem with dagger is, while mace and axe can be kited, dagger can not. the difference between the dagger leap and the dagger burst is also not evident enough. then there is full counter. full counter simply does too much. it is a lvl 1 burst that blocks damage, deals unblockable damage, gives you (traited) resistance, stability, cc, slow etc. on a short cooldown. it either has to do less, have a longer cooldown or be a lvl 2 burst. another annoying thing is that it procs off random stuff like guardian symbols, a random aoe field, primordial stance and what not, but that might be hard to change. yes you can dodge it, but there's way too much other stuff that you have to dodge too. spellbreaker is simply overtuned right now, in every aspect.

engineer

i take it many people didn't like the playstyle of scrapper as i haven't seen many pre PoF and none post PoF. the way holosmith plays is quite fun and takes some micromanagement when in holo mode. i think holosmith currently gets overshadowed by scourge and spellbreaker as i haven't seen that many holosmiths; but still more than the other elite specs. holosmith is a slight offender when it comes to power level. not on the level of spellbreaker and scourge, but still slightly overtuned in terms of cc and damage, mostly because of how easily you can get might stacks.

those are my experiences so far. feel free to agree or disagree with me.