PoF tier / meta predictions?

Assuming the maps do not change or rotate and no new maps are added, no new amulets are added, and no balance changes are done to the core and gen1 specs... what are your predictions for PvP in early PoF era?

Spellbreaker is going to be pretty intense. Boon strip, boon prevention, massive counter damage. Scourge is going to be absolutely necessary in team fights if you want to win because of damage mitigation (Able to extend team wide EHP immensely). Those are the two I feel are going to benefit greatly from PoF in sPvP.

Condi Scourge is obviously gonna overtake current condi necros role.

It'll likely depend on changes to numbers on new specializations. It does seem like there will be an even greater focus on condition damage with the new specs.

In terms of new specs, assuming bugs get fixed:Spellbreaker: will be used over berserker and core warrior.Firebrand:will be used by those who want to do burn and support, dragon hunter for power inclined guardians. Core will not have a place.Revenant: Herald will probably be better in general, but people will experiment with Condi renegade.SoulBeast: Difficult to predict for me, damage oriented rangers will go for this, ones that want to have sustain will still go druid.Deadeye: will not be used except in low tier gimmicks.Holosmith: should be one of the go to glass cannon builds, scrapper will still be a good bruiser/support.Scourge: makes it much more difficult to go with the plan "focus the necro". Will shake up the meta quite a bit in my opinion.Mirage: will have difficulty usurping chronomancer.Weaver: may bring elementalist into a dps role rather than support tank.

In terms of strength/meta:Meta: holosmith, scourge, spellbreaker.Sleeper-op: Weaver, firebrandOkay: soul beast, mirageBerserkerStatusAtLaunch: deadeye, Renegade

Sleeper op firebrand lol, it'll be worse than renegade even with my build ideas

First 2 weeks meta:Scourge will be required and meta.Holosmith will dominate lower tier due to people don't know how to dodge.Weaver will play pure DPS, and the forums will be filled with a lot of complaints.Deadeye complaints are everywhere. People complain about getting one shot by Deadeye, or not being able to win as a Deadeye.

After 2 weeks:Weaver lacks condi cleanse, and the global cooldown is extremely weak against Chill. After the first month, most Weaver will swap back to Tempest just to survive the condi.Scourge/Holosmith is even stronger now that they have a Tempest baby sit them.Mirage becomes meta after people realize how strong the Shatters are. And portals.Deadeye perma-kite specs become meta. No one can kill them.Druid is still the best point holder.

@alemfi.5107 said:Scourge: makes it much more difficult to go with the plan "focus the necro". Will shake up the meta quite a bit in my opinion.

With current amulets I'm not seeing this at all for regular queuing. Scourge is much more vulnerable to tunneling than reaper due to lower EHP and much higher life force requirements. More importantly the biggest concern is that lack of decent self heal capability on scourge. Scourge's barriers eat far less damage than shroud does, which results in Scourge being much more healing dependent than reaper, yet scourge's self healing is poor.Moreover the amulets don't really exist to make scourge work. Scourge requires vitality (so that LF is manageable), healing power (so our barriers are worth anything), condition damage (duh), and precision (so that we can make use of the Curses line)

Also people are massively overestimating Scourge's boonrip and dps capabilities.

My expectation is that Scourge will likely have a presence in the tourneys, but it's going to struggle significantly in solo queue.

• Spellbreaker, thief
• chrono, druid
• holo, scrapper, rev
• reaper, scourge, tempest
• deadeye, firebrand, weaver, renegade

Metacomp: Spellbreaker, thief, druid, chrono, holo/scrapper/rev

Scourge + tempest will be the best duel fighter

Tempest no longer needs to worry about heal wasted on shroud. Scourge can do a lot of condition cleanse and barrier to further improve the survivability.

Last but not least, if tempest goes down, scourge can use terrain to portal and tempest just mist form into it. You get an easy resurrection.

Spellbreaker will probably be a strong counter to condition specs(except scourge who has too many corruption) with perma resistance and condition copy.

The meta could shift towards long range power spec due to spellbreaker and scourge.

@Exciton.8942 said:Spellbreaker will probably be a strong counter to condition specs(except scourge who has too many corruption) with perma resistance and condition copy.

The meta could shift towards long range power spec due to spellbreaker and scourge.

What's interesting is my Firebrand never lost to a Spellbreaker in soloQ. In duels, it was 6/4 against a fairly decent Spellbreaker. Holosmith, more like 4/6 - Firebrand has to play darn well but the fight is quite fun.

FB isn't as bad as people say we are but the forums will blow it up. Fine with me, I'll receive the buffs. IF we're the bottom, we're the best of the worse and a contender to the 5th spot (per usual...)

My moneys 50+ vanilla ranger zergs

I just hope the incoming Deadeye complaints dont force Anet to kill the class. I loved it in beta. It felt gimmicky, but really impressive in the right circumstances and was refreshing to play in contrast to the regular thief/daredevil.

Still i guess, it'll be very hard to use in higher level play.

My bets are on Firebrand, Scourge and Spellbreaker as the new meta. Not sure about holosmith though.

My predictions for the PoF the meta:

Spellbreaker, DaredevilChrono, DruidTempestScourge/ReaperScrapper/Holo

Weaver lacks condi cleanse, and the global cooldown is extremely weak against Chill. After the first month, most Weaver will swap back to Tempest just to survive the condi.

Thought I'd point out that if/after Anet fixes unraveling hexes to actually remove (any) conditions while you have superspeed, Weaver will have the most accessible Condi clear in the game if they go air line.

Healbot tempest stays meta...the end. Waver at best will be another bunker without team support and weak 1v1 potential.

Not buying PoF.

2x Ventari Rev2x Scourge1x Whatever else your team wants to run

I played spellbreaker over the elite demo in a few matches with a quickly made power burst build. It was good 1v1 and team fights, but that was in the context of opponent players not knowing what to expect with it. I think it has potential to be great but I'd have to see how it fares against the other new elite specs.

I played holosmith too and it was fun, but I believe scrapper remains a safer choice for its team support. I can see holosmith be played with teams that can hold their own individually, but for soloQ the gyros and healing output of a scrapper are almost mandatory.

I didn't get to play Scourge, but it looks like a strong contender for more OP condi necro. I heard it even has teleports now.

A part of me feels Renegade will be put on the meta backburner for a long time, Herald traits are still the top dog imo.

Herald + Soulbeast BFF

No one is high on the Soulbeast? That's a shame, I only briefly looked at it's traits + abilities and I thought stance sharing could be pretty effective(if they weren't so lackluster) in PvP.

@AimEd.3519 said:No one is high on the Soulbeast? That's a shame, I only briefly looked at it's traits + abilities and I thought stance sharing could be pretty effective(if they weren't so lackluster) in PvP.soulbeast w GS, shout buffs and 11sec of endure pain has potential imo

@choovanski.5462 said:

@AimEd.3519 said:No one is high on the Soulbeast? That's a shame, I only briefly looked at it's traits + abilities and I thought stance sharing could be pretty effective(if they weren't so lackluster) in PvP.soulbeast w GS, shout buffs and 11sec of endure pain has potential imo

Bear's Heal/Resistance sharing and haste + GS's AA evade tho!

@Mr Godlike.6098 said:Healbot tempest stays meta...the end. Waver at best will be another bunker without team support and weak 1v1 potential.

Not buying PoF.

-Weaver has bigger and better DPS potential respect to a tempest in a strictly speaking PvP environment : close to instant cast aoe dmg pumping both condi and direct dmg, cannot be easily interrupted like overloads-Better manoeuvrability with 2 sword dodge skills, 2x dodge/stunbreak and ele best elite ( weave self ) used as a mass float, all this makes weaver 2-3x harder to pin down than a tempest, this increase the personal sustain of the spec(on top of double tapping into water for sword 3 heal , plus the heal on all water sword), making it more soloq friendly respect to tempest-Unravel Hex- you cannot be easily immobilised/slowed down on weaver

There would be more to say but.. all in all, if you want a more team oriented spec then Tempest is still there, it will shine in an organised team respect to weaver but in the chaos that is soloq, playing a tempest is often detrimental as you strongly depends on randoms to score kills and make good use of your supporting efforts.

I've had limited experience in the previous PoF beta events, but from what I did manage to test. Spellbreaker seems to have big potential with boon removal and area denial for team support-- possibly rotating boon corruption necromancers out of top tier. Their new counter also could be used for big counter play against power specs. With Holosmith having a favourable opinion during the beta events, I can possibly see a small shift towards a power meta due to sheer abundance of holosmiths, which could also have a cascading effect on other classes playing power specs.

I still think condi will remain on top, but i believe (and very much hope) that the meta becomes more diverse in condi versus power specs.