Which class would you consider the most "honest" Of them all

Just asking out of curiousity. which class would you say is the most honest class. not just lorewise but gameplay wise

Edit: The term "Honest" means in this case, a class that isnt that hard to understand and when fighting against it you dont need to trancend space and time to know what its doing. doesnt mean weak, it means that it doesnt utilize that much on shinanigans.

You're going to need to elaborate on what you mean because its extremely vague.

Core engineer and Scrapper. Not only do they perfectly fit lore wise, but they also fit theme wise and work gameplay wise.

Core engineer is a brilliant inventor who uses many weapons to apply multiple conditions on enemies while also being capable of assisting allies in combat. It's the closest profession to ever being a jack of all trades, master of none. It's not the best at one specific thing, but it is good at multiple things.

Scrapper is, well, a scrapper. A somewhat different engineer, one that uses hammers to fight their opponents, but still one that fits the engineer theme well. It's a tank specialization that has pretty much everything a tank profession needs: stability, lots of toughness, CC, damage mitigation and projectile reflects. Put core engineer alongside the Scrapper and you can see them working out fairly well together.

Then there's Holosmith... oh boy, here we go again. I don't care how much the specialization fits lore wise, but it certainly doesn't fit both theme wise and game play wise. It's a specialization that is stupidly easy to play and that's the main reason why I hate it. For a specialization that seems to be designed as a glass cannon, it sure has a lot of sustain while having both strong AoE CC and CC immunity. It turned the engineer from an intelligent fighter to a bumbling idiot who swings his weapon in the air. Speaking of weapons, swords don't fit the engineer theme. For a profession with a very small arsenal of weapons, being only firearms, it's better suited with blunt type weapons.

The engineer isn't meant to be an acrobatic thief or a warrior with big muscles wielding giant greatswords. It's meant to be more of a tactician, someone who's ready for any combat scenario and with careful planning can outwit their opponents. Holosmiths don't need to do any of that. They can just jump into fights, swinging their weapons in the air without a care in the world (that rhymed).

what in rytlock's blindfold is an "honest" class?

As many have said before, you will need to elaborate on the term "honest"

Waiting for the definition of "honest class" before i cast my vote.Is it the least gimmicky, the more direct with least mechanical prowess? Is it the one that in lore would be more honest? What do you mean by honest class?

sorry should ve defined the term "honest" earier my bad.

You can already remove thief lol

Unfortunately I couldn't refrain myself from chosing thief for the irony.

Necromancer, probably.

What you see is what you get: some poor bloke in a light robe trying to run at you but he can't because he's rooted to the ground. When you attack him you always do damage, no silly invulnerability passives or stealth shenanigans, there might be an occasional teleport, but usually only once... Maybe there's a few additional health-pools here and there, but otherwise... You fight him and for every good honest hit you make, you see his health go down, but if you let him close he'll do nasty things to you. Straightforward. Most of them in WvW seem to have a serious lack of stability as well, so any control effects you have are likely to land true.

I love Necromancers.

I think "mesmer" is the most honest class, mainly because it doesn't even pretend to be anything but dishonest. Honesty for dishonesty counts, right?

warrior, no doubt, everything is super telegraphed, you see what hes doing, no stealth, no blinks, no bs, just straight stuff into your face.

Thief. We run around killing and looting just like every other Professions but we don't actually pretend there's any "grandstanding" behind why we're doing it.

Self-aware murder-hobos.

Core Engineer/Scrapper. Unless making their opponents laugh so hard at their used-to-be-effective-in-2012 turrets, rifles, and kits that they wet themselves and lose the fight that way is counted as deception. If that's the case then we need to have a music box, or eight bit Super Adventure Box version of 'Send In The Clowns' playing every time we do one of those.

@"Lucas.3718" said:Just asking out of curiousity. which class would you say is the most honest class. not just lorewise but gameplay wise

Edit: The term "Honest" means in this case, a class that isnt that hard to understand and when fighting against it you dont need to trancend space and time to know what its doing. doesnt mean weak, it means that it doesnt utilize that much on shinanigans.

If we're going by this definition, I'm going to say engineer or warrior. Very few tricks on both classes -- you can tell exactly what they're doing most of the time. There are some exceptions of course, but by and large you generally don't feel too gimmicked with these classes. Neither features teleports, engineer has some stealth, warrior has some evade frames built into attacks, but they're not blinking everywhere or casting with impossibly subtle tells.

Guardian would come in a close third due to how flashy the class is -- very easy to read most of its tells.

Hrrrmn. Thinking this one through:

Starting by process of elimination, let's rule out everything with convenient access to Stealth. The professions with that all have levels of shenanigans apart from Stealth, but Stealth makes a suitable cover-all without going over them individually.

I'm also going to rule out Warrior, because while Warrior is straightforward to play and doesn't obviously have much in the way of trickery, there are times when a warrior can have major effects coming into play without much in the way of visual tells. Endure Pain is the obvious example here: you have to be paying reasonably close attention to the AI to understand what's going on when that triggers.

This leaves revenant, guardian, elementalist, and necromancer. Each of those have reasonably strong graphical cues that you can use to identify what they're doing - most of the time, anyway.

I could look at them individually, but here, I think revenant trumps the rest in the 'honesty' department.

Why?

Because revenant builds have few secrets. Once you've identified which weaponsets and legends they're using, you've pretty much identified their entire skillbar, and you probably have a good idea as to what their traitlines and statistics are likely to be. It's also probably the most flashy: even other professions that made it this far have some skills with subtle animations, but the shorter skill list on revenant allowed ArenaNet to go all out with skill effects, making it so that you pretty much always know what a revenant just did (after the fact if not before). About the sneakiest things it can do are Infuse Light, the odd unblockable attack, and condition spreading: but most of these are things other professions can also do, and with the revenant, you pretty much know what's in its toolbox early on so you know which of those tricks to watch for.

I voted for Mesmer because I have a sense of humour.

@"draxynnic.3719" said:Hrrrmn. Thinking this one through:

Starting by process of elimination, let's rule out everything with convenient access to Stealth. The professions with that all have levels of shenanigans apart from Stealth, but Stealth makes a suitable cover-all without going over them individually.

I'm also going to rule out Warrior, because while Warrior is straightforward to play and doesn't obviously have much in the way of trickery, there are times when a warrior can have major effects coming into play without much in the way of visual tells. Endure Pain is the obvious example here: you have to be paying reasonably close attention to the AI to understand what's going on when that triggers.

This leaves revenant, guardian, elementalist, and necromancer. Each of those have reasonably strong graphical cues that you can use to identify what they're doing - most of the time, anyway.

I could look at them individually, but here, I think revenant trumps the rest in the 'honesty' department.

Why?

Because revenant builds have few secrets. Once you've identified which weaponsets and legends they're using, you've pretty much identified their entire skillbar, and you probably have a good idea as to what their traitlines and statistics are likely to be. It's also probably the most flashy: even other professions that made it this far have some skills with subtle animations, but the shorter skill list on revenant allowed ArenaNet to go all out with skill effects, making it so that you pretty much always know what a revenant just did (after the fact if not before). About the sneakiest things it can do are Infuse Light, the odd unblockable attack, and condition spreading: but most of these are things other professions can also do, and with the revenant, you pretty much know what's in its toolbox early on so you know which of those tricks to watch for.

by your logic warrior is still more honest...you just said that its hard to see endure pain...which is honestly pretty darn easy to see, lets say its on par with infusing light (0 dmg and green numbers that is enough tell basically)for rev you said you also need to see the weapons AND legends, which are 4 things to consider, warri only has his 2 weaponsets

now for "honesty" warrior has few evade frames, no blinks...rev has evade frames and blinks, with burst that has imo less tells than warrior burst

managing facets and for example glint stuff with secondary activations is also alot harder to see through

on top of that is that none if the warrior specs rly change their playstyle, no big changes to f1 bursts that rly vhange how you play against them etc

ps. ele, for example, has automated or active defenses that negate dmg and need closer looking to not hammer everything into them (same for guard and others)

@RedShark.9548 said:

@"draxynnic.3719" said:Hrrrmn. Thinking this one through:

Starting by process of elimination, let's rule out everything with convenient access to Stealth. The professions with that all have levels of shenanigans apart from Stealth, but Stealth makes a suitable cover-all without going over them individually.

I'm also going to rule out Warrior, because while Warrior is straightforward to play and doesn't

obviously

have much in the way of trickery, there are times when a warrior can have major effects coming into play without much in the way of visual tells. Endure Pain is the obvious example here: you have to be paying reasonably close attention to the AI to understand what's going on when that triggers.

This leaves revenant, guardian, elementalist, and necromancer. Each of those have reasonably strong graphical cues that you can use to identify what they're doing - most of the time, anyway.

I could look at them individually, but here, I think revenant trumps the rest in the 'honesty' department.

Why?

Because revenant builds have few secrets. Once you've identified which weaponsets and legends they're using, you've pretty much identified their entire skillbar, and you probably have a good idea as to what their traitlines and statistics are likely to be. It's also probably the most flashy: even other professions that made it this far have

some

skills with subtle animations, but the shorter skill list on revenant allowed ArenaNet to go all out with skill effects, making it so that you pretty much always know what a revenant just did (after the fact if not before). About the sneakiest things it can do are Infuse Light, the odd unblockable attack, and condition spreading: but most of these are things other professions can also do, and with the revenant, you pretty much know what's in its toolbox early on so you know which of those tricks to watch for.

Okay, so I logged in to warrior to check:

There is a visual tell for Endure Pain. However, I don't think those subtle smoke clouds are a match for visibility for the tendrils of light for Infuse Light (even if the latter is the most subtle of the dragon consume skills, visually) - as possibly indicated by my having played warrior for a while, often using Endure Pain, and never having noticed until I went specifically looking for it. Now, Infuse Light is a bit tricky (every profession has some tricks), but you get plenty of warning it's coming. As soon as you identify Legendary Dragon Stance on a revenant, you know they have Infuse Light in their toolkit, while a warrior might have one, two, or no instances of Endure Pain. A revenant needs to be in Dragon Stance and have Facet of Light up in order to access Infuse Light, so you know to keep an eye out for it when those conditions are fulfilled, and once it DOES pop you know you won't see it again for a while, as opposed to a warrior that might have a second Endure Pain in reserve.

So, all up, I still think Infuse Light is more 'honest' than Endure Pain. Yeah, it can punish you, but if you pay attention you always have warning that it has the potential to be triggered. It's no more 'dishonest' than a well-timed Full Counter.

Furthermore, I was mostly using Endure Pain as an example - the warrior has a fair few skills that have weak or no visual tells. I went through all of the other stances to double-check, and the only visual tells I saw for those were the tells indicating the presence of boons. The Shield Stance tell is certainly noticeable, but it's not as noticeable as some comparable skills that provide several blocks from other professions, such as Echo of Memory, Crystal Hibernation, Shield of Courage, and Arcane Shield.

Regarding your other comments:

"for rev you said you also need to see the weapons AND legends, which are 4 things to consider, warri only has his 2 weaponsets"

I think you've missed the point here. Warrior has two weaponsets... and five utility skills. The only way you're going to know for sure which utility skills a warrior has packed (apart from any signets, of course) is by seeing each one in action individually. You can certainly make educated guesses based on what's in the meta, but you don't know for sure. As soon as you've identified a revenant's legends, though, you know every skill the revenant is packing in the second half of their bar, and the only surprise they can have is in their traits.

"now for "honesty" warrior has few evade frames, no blinks...rev has evade frames and blinks, with burst that has imo less tells than warrior burst"

Warrior may not have many evade frames, but they do have plenty of block frames (if built for it) and the aforementioned Endure Pain. They may not have blinks, but they do have plenty of gap-closers. Like I said earlier, every profession has some tricks, but with the revenant, it takes little observation to identify what they're going to be. Besides, if we were going to base this on lack of evade/block/invulnerability frames and mobility, necromancer wins hands down.

"managing facets and for example glint stuff with secondary activations is also alot harder to see through"

Given how flashy most consume skills are, I don't see how? The facets themselves can be harder to see in the heat of battle, to be sure, but you can have a pretty good idea of what they're using by looking at the row of icons after you've targeted them... and by doing so, you have advance warning of which consume skills they might have to throw at you. And, again, as soon as you know the legends they're packing, they can't surprise you with a skill you didn't know they had.

"on top of that is that none if the warrior specs rly change their playstyle, no big changes to f1 bursts that rly vhange how you play against them etc"

I'd kind of accept that for berserker, although there is a bit of a distinction between watching out for the occasional big burst, versus how you'd respond to a berserker going berserk. (Berserkers are also pretty flashy.) Spellbreaker... not so much. You always have to keep Full Counter in mind when fighting a spellbreaker, and that makes a significant difference.

"ps. ele, for example, has automated or active defenses that negate dmg and need closer looking to not hammer everything into them (same for guard and others)"

Again, every profession has their tricks, including warrior - the aforementioned Endure Pain, for instance, and warrior traitlines have plenty of other automated triggers, not to mention active skill use. Eles and guards, however, are on the whole flashier than warriors, and thus you can more easily see what's going on. If I'd continued the analysis, it's possible that I would have found something that gave me a specific reason to eliminate them... however, at the bottom line, guard and ele didn't have anything that marked them as being more "honest" than a revenant to balance out the revenant's "know their entire skillbar with four pieces of information" behaviour, so I didn't think an in-depth analysis was necessary.

The real contest was between revenant and necromancer. If it wasn't for the scourge, it's possible that I would have considered the necromancer to be the more honest of the two.

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@RedShark.9548 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:Hrrrmn. Thinking this one through:

Starting by process of elimination, let's rule out everything with convenient access to Stealth. The professions with that all have levels of shenanigans apart from Stealth, but Stealth makes a suitable cover-all without going over them individually.

I'm also going to rule out Warrior, because while Warrior is straightforward to play and doesn't

obviously

have much in the way of trickery, there are times when a warrior can have major effects coming into play without much in the way of visual tells. Endure Pain is the obvious example here: you have to be paying reasonably close attention to the AI to understand what's going on when that triggers.

This leaves revenant, guardian, elementalist, and necromancer. Each of those have reasonably strong graphical cues that you can use to identify what they're doing - most of the time, anyway.

I could look at them individually, but here, I think revenant trumps the rest in the 'honesty' department.

Why?

Because revenant builds have few secrets. Once you've identified which weaponsets and legends they're using, you've pretty much identified their entire skillbar, and you probably have a good idea as to what their traitlines and statistics are likely to be. It's also probably the most flashy: even other professions that made it this far have

some

skills with subtle animations, but the shorter skill list on revenant allowed ArenaNet to go all out with skill effects, making it so that you pretty much always know what a revenant just did (after the fact if not before). About the sneakiest things it can do are Infuse Light, the odd unblockable attack, and condition spreading: but most of these are things other professions can also do, and with the revenant, you pretty much know what's in its toolbox early on so you know which of those tricks to watch for.

i stick with warrior, no flashy stuff to distract you, the big hitting stuff is very slow with big tells. if you dont stop attacking after seeing the first 0 or after bursting him the first time below 50% you have no understanding of the game whatsoever and do you rly think that adding fullcounter to the warrior rly changes how you play it alot? lol no, its just like aegis you can proc every 9sec that retaliates dmg after a delay, easily dodgeable aswell after the proc

and to your utillity skill arguement; in a discussion like that i assume that both ppl know metabuilds and warrior in pvp has very little options in what to choose, thus having less variabillity than revenents set utillities with their 2 legend swaps. the only thing you rly have to keep an eye out for is bullscharge, because if you dont dodge that one you can be in alot of trouble, but again it has a long kitten animation

also i dont understand why you are so hung up on endure pain and infusing light, for me there is no big difference in them, both are shown in the buff bar with infusing light having a bit more tell at the beginning, both are very predictable on when they are used.

rev distract alot more with flashy animations with rather short animations to their big bursts inbetween all that discolight going on

Full Counter doesn't change how you play it much.

However, the clarification given by the OP regards to how you play against it, and Full Counter changes that quite a bit. Triggering your opponent's Full Counter means that you've not only missed an attack, you've given the warrior an AoE attack and potentially interrupted your whole team. There are means of avoiding it, of course, but the very fact that you have to watch out for the most powerful riposte-type skill on a fairly short recharge means that you have to treat an enemy spellbreaker differently to how you'd treat an enemy berserker or core warrior.

You're right in that warrior meta builds tend to have pretty much the same utility skills, but you don't know for sure. One or more of the skills could still be substituted for something else, and you wouldn't know until you saw it. Revenant... you know as soon as you've seen the second legend. It's as simple as that.

When it comes to flashiness - from my perspective, flashiness makes it easier to see what a character is doing rather than harder. With warrior... you have to be paying pretty close attention to them to know what they're doing. With the flashier professions, you just need to have them in the corner of your eye to know what they're doing, or at least what they've just done. You're free to disagree if you think otherwise, but this is a large part of the logic of why the warrior got eliminated on the second pass: therefore, by the logic I'm using, warrior was justly eliminated on the second pass and revenant was what remained after the third.

Your logic might be different, but it is certainly not a case of...

@RedShark.9548 said:by your logic warrior is still more honest...

...because my logic chain has good reason for eliminating the warrior on the second pass.

@draxynnic.3719 said:Full Counter doesn't change how you play it much.

However, the clarification given by the OP regards to how you play against it, and Full Counter changes that quite a bit. Triggering your opponent's Full Counter means that you've not only missed an attack, you've given the warrior an AoE attack and potentially interrupted your whole team. There are means of avoiding it, of course, but the very fact that you have to watch out for the most powerful riposte-type skill on a fairly short recharge means that you have to treat an enemy spellbreaker differently to how you'd treat an enemy berserker or core warrior.

You're right in that warrior meta builds tend to have pretty much the same utility skills, but you don't know for sure. One or more of the skills could still be substituted for something else, and you wouldn't know until you saw it. Revenant... you know as soon as you've seen the second legend. It's as simple as that.

When it comes to flashiness - from my perspective, flashiness makes it easier to see what a character is doing rather than harder. With warrior... you have to be paying pretty close attention to them to know what they're doing. With the flashier professions, you just need to have them in the corner of your eye to know what they're doing, or at least what they've just done. You're free to disagree if you think otherwise, but this is a large part of the logic of why the warrior got eliminated on the second pass: therefore, by the logic I'm using, warrior was justly eliminated on the second pass and revenant was what remained after the third.

Your logic might be different, but it is certainly not a case of...

@RedShark.9548 said:by your logic warrior is still more honest...

warrior animations are ling plain and simple, THIS is why trey are so easy to be seen, they are just as easy to see as any flashy abillity, BUT the problem.with föashy stuff is that you aometimes cant ve sure what the kitten is happening behibd all those lights, sometimes tere is still anozher effect going on while the rev casts his next stuff (flashy is in my book stuff with many lighteffects and special effect). plain and simple animations are way easier to see and distinct between each other

Again, my experience is different. I find the flashy animations easier to read, especially when an engagement involves multiple opponents. You're free to disagree, but at the end of the day, my logic is based on my own experience, not yours.

Anecdotally, too, I've seen evidence of this in other people: while playing warrior (back when berserker macebow was still a thing - I'm not a fan of obligatory melee builds), I've had opponents in sPvP make comments to the effect of "how are you even still alive"? (Answer: double Endure Pain, Shield Stance on a 16s recharge, the Dead or Alive trait, and assorted other blocks and damage prevention effects, most of which have fairly subtle animations.) I've never had that happen with Revenant. People might swear a bit when they realise they've sunk their burst into Infuse Light, but anyone who has a basic understanding of revenant will know what happened. (They might still think it's an OP skill, but they know what happened.)

I was gonna vote guardian but they have ports. anyone who is in one spot then suddenly another is inherently a liar. they lied about where they were and its not okay.

not so much with warrior. they will dash at you, sure, but never port. their animations are easy to see (well most of them anyway, there are some liar animations with spellbreaker.) the elite transform is pretty liar, im thinkin hmm you were one guy but then you changed so a little liar there, but theyre still the same dood just bigger. its not like lich form. now theres a liar.

@"Lucas.3718" said:sorry should ve defined the term "honest" earier my bad.

I don't get why people are so confused I got it instantly. some things you get, some you don't. that's just how it goes folks. keep on truckin that's what I say.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:Necromancer, probably.

What you see is what you get: some poor bloke in a light robe trying to run at you but he can't because he's rooted to the ground. When you attack him you always do damage, no silly invulnerability passives or stealth shenanigans, there might be an occasional teleport, but usually only once... Maybe there's a few additional health-pools here and there, but otherwise... You fight him and for every good honest hit you make, you see his health go down, but if you let him close he'll do nasty things to you. Straightforward. Most of them in WvW seem to have a serious lack of stability as well, so any control effects you have are likely to land true.

I love Necromancers.

Pretty good summary and people still want necro in PvP to be nerfed xD