External Poll: Rank all classes in terms of skill ceiling and skill floor as a roamer

Based on current balance patches, rank all classes in terms of their skill floor and skill ceiling for roaming.

Before we confuse the terms:

Skill Floor refers to the minimum amount of skills required to play the class decently.

• A class with low skill floor means it doesn't take much skill to play it acceptably/decently. Generally noob friendly, easy to pick up.
• A class with high skill floor means it requires more skill to even play it acceptably/decently.

Skill Floor Ranking link here (highest on top, lowest below):http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/bijamm/highest-skill-floor-as-a-roamer

Results:http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/semqdp/highest-skill-floor-as-a-roamer/view

Skill Ceiling refers to the amount of skills required to fully master the class and play it to its full potential.

• A class with low skill ceiling means it doesn't take much skill to master it fully.
• A class with high skill ceiling means it takes a lot of skill to play it to its full potential.

Skill Ceiling Ranking link here (highest on top, lowest below):http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/sczdjc/highest-skill-ceiling-as-a-roamer

Results:http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/rqnqix/highest-skill-ceiling-as-a-roamer/view

Why? Just wait on SnowCrows/Metabattle.

Huh? I know it's early but everyone said mesmer was "op" there for easy to play yet it's no where near the bottom

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:Why? Just wait on SnowCrows/Metabattle.

Um well, because some folks have been saying mesmer and ranger carry players.So I thought it would be good to rank the class skill floor and ceiling.Are players carried by the class because it has a low skill floor and ceiling?Or perhaps it has a low skill floor but high skill ceiling?etc.

Mesmer gets carried by visual clutter.Ranger gets carried by Pew Pew.Thief gets carried by stealth.Warrior gets carried by passives.Ele gets carried by how many skills you can press in a short amount of time.Guard gets carried by f - skills.Engineer gets carried by Scrapper/Holosmith.Revenant gets carried by sword offhand and hammer 2.Necro gets bullied by everything above and creates a forum post.

Everybody just hates Rangers. That's why they say all the bad things about them that they do. It's not the best class and it's not the worst class, it's just meh. Always has been, always will be.

@beatthedown.2651 said:Necro gets bullied by everything above and creates a forum post.They are carried by disengenuous sympathy.

I'm quite surprised that Elementalist is leading both the skill floor and skill ceiling.Are they that hard to play and master?

These results are terrible. Laughable, even...

Who put Thief with such a high roaming skill ceiling? LOL And NECRO! Necro apparently is EZ mode for roaming boys. Who knew?

Pretty sure the profession with the highest skill cap is the one I play, and the one with the lowest is the one that consistently beats me.......

You guys can go ahead and copy/pasta that instead of just thinking it.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I'm quite surprised that Elementalist is leading both the skill floor and skill ceiling.Are they that hard to play and master?

It has a lot of skills which are noob trap since most of them can be quite worthless if not comboed/used properly.

The biggest part of mastering it is surviving on squishy builds and doing damage on bruiser builds because you cant have both damage and sustain by simply being in combat.

On top of those you have micromanagement of many cooldowns and skill cast times.

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:These results are terrible. Laughable, even...

Who put Thief with such a high roaming skill ceiling? LOL And NECRO! Necro apparently is EZ mode for roaming boys. Who knew?

Necro is easy mode, but that doesn't make it any less terrible for roaming. The question was about skill floor and skill ceiling, not about how powerful these classes are. When roaming the skill floor for necro is a bit higher than in other game modes, because of how badly you will get beaten by everyone. So yes, it does take a bit of skill to not be a free kill. However, the skill ceiling is not that difficult to reach. The problem is that even when you do reach that skill ceiling with necro, players of other classes that have reached their skill ceiling will be way more powerful roamers than you.

@steki.1478 said:

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I'm quite surprised that Elementalist is leading both the skill floor and skill ceiling.Are they that hard to play and master?

Yes, they are both hard to play and unrewarding. Only necros perform worse, but at least necro is not that hard to play.

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:These results are terrible. Laughable, even...

Who put Thief with such a high roaming skill ceiling? LOL And NECRO! Necro apparently is EZ mode for roaming boys. Who knew?

From how I read the results, the voters so far think that Thief as a roamer:

• Has an average entry level (5th highest skill floor) - not too easy also not too hard for newer players to roam on
• But a high max-skill cap (2nd highest skill ceiling) - hard to master and use the class to its full potential.

From how I read the results, the voters so far think that Necro as a roamer:

• Has a high entry level (3rd highest skill floor) - not easy for newer players,
• But a low max-skill cap (3rd lowest skill ceiling) - easy to master the class.

Edit: not that I agree but meh

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:These results are terrible. Laughable, even...

Who put Thief with such a high roaming skill ceiling? LOL And NECRO! Necro apparently is EZ mode for roaming boys. Who knew?

• Has an average entry level (5th highest skill floor) - not too easy also not too hard for newer players to roam on
• But a high max-skill cap (2nd highest skill ceiling) - hard to master and use the class to its full potential.

• Has a high entry level (3rd highest skill floor) - not easy for newer players,
• But a low max-skill cap (3rd lowest skill ceiling) - easy to master the class.

Yeah that's totally backwards I'm sure you agree. Daredevil especially has a LOT of mobility, stealth and evades. It has a LOT of safety nets, and I'm sorry, maybe lining up a backstab takes some skill, but vault spam is brainless and Deadeye is also braindead.

What does necro have, as a roamer? How is necro a lower skill ceiling than thief? Necro is one of the hardest classes to roam on. If we're talking about blob fights, sure, then Necro is in fact extremely easy to play. But roaming is enough story.

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:These results are terrible. Laughable, even...

Who put Thief with such a high roaming skill ceiling? LOL And NECRO! Necro apparently is EZ mode for roaming boys. Who knew?

Ahem.Just thought I would point out that you started by saying it is 'not about how powerful these classes are' and then ended by talking about other classes being 'way more powerful roamers' :p

I would agree though, that the skill floor is higher for necro because necros have comparatively lesser mobility, range, no scaling defense, no ability to drop target, can't disengage reliably etc.Being so badly limited just means that you need a lot more skills to roam decently, hence a high skill floor.

The skill ceiling on the other hand...hmmmmm...I am a little divided on this.To most people, perhaps they are looking more at combos, rotations, complexity etc. to define skill ceiling levels.However, Necros are a unique class among all the other classes.

I think Anchoku described it best so I'll just quote him here:

@"Anchoku.8142" said:Necro has always felt like the opposite of "piano play." With Necro, the skills are all meant to be used when appropriate and not so much as on rotation.

Necromancer's have to save skills as counters while autoattacking more than many other professions. Epidemic is an example. Epi is all about waiting to time a potentially huge attack for when you expect to maximize damage while misstiming could yield zero damage. Necro is like this all over.

Use the condi pressure at key moments, shroud to soak damage, corrupt stability when it comes up but not some other boons, know when to un-shroud so you do not miss heals, track the skirmish front and do not trust allies to pull your slow bacon off the fire...

Necromancer can lurk one moment and shut down opponents the next but is highly vulnerable at the same time. Rotations, though, are rough guidelines, at best. Necro was designed for soft CC burst.

I'm not sure if he roams, but from the way he describes a Necro's playstyle, I dare say that he would make a great Necro roamer.

build matters just as much so I don't see how this poll can be accurate.

Easiest to hardest

1. Ranger (longbow pew pew)
2. Warrior
3. Mesmer (condi garbage. power mes would be much lower on the list)
4. Guardian (meditrapper build)
5. Thief
6. Engineer and Revenant
7. Elementalist

Necro is really hard for me to judge because I've never roamed with it and I very rarely see roaming necros

Highest skill ceiling is difficult to calculate and I don't feel like finishing this post. Cheers!

If it's meta, it's easy. Why? Because if something is easy-braindead, you will no longer need to think much about skills, but about counterplay and all the other stuff running around. Always has been the case in League of Legends (Zilean troll top build, sion feed build, etc.), always will be in all games. Meta favors the braindead because it's 100% overtoned.

@Auburner.6945 said:If it's meta, it's easy. Why? Because if something is easy-braindead, you will no longer need to think much about skills, but about counterplay and all the other stuff running around. Always has been the case in League of Legends (Zilean troll top build, sion feed build, etc.), always will be in all games. Meta favors the braindead because it's 100% overtoned.

Overtuned doesnt necessarily mean easy. Both tempest and weaver were once extremely strong in pve group content, yet majority of people failed on them because they werent that easy to play.

@steki.1478 said:

@Auburner.6945 said:If it's meta, it's easy. Why? Because if something is easy-braindead, you will no longer need to think much about skills, but about counterplay and all the other stuff running around. Always has been the case in League of Legends (Zilean troll top build, sion feed build, etc.), always will be in all games. Meta favors the braindead because it's 100% overtoned.

I agree. A person can use a meta-build approved by class experts but not necessarily play it well enough to get the claimed dps out of it.

Memorizing a rotation, a timed sequence of keystrokes, may be more difficult for some players so a player may seek a profession like Necromancer that has a fair amount of sustained auto or random button damage. Minionmancer is an example of decent reward for a lower skill level.

There are other aspects to combat, though, that require more skill but are not well measured by attacking a passive golem. Necro has a lot of on-demand skills that have no place in a rotation and require closely monitoring opponents' boon-condi-health status. Necro effectiveness also scales up well with allies able to support the Necro and exploit the openings created by the Necro's condi pressure. Players claiming Necro requires no skill and is OP have probably not played it enough to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses.

Necro in WvW is a lot like a mobile version of an arrow cart. A player can build it for solo roaming but that is not the role it is the strongest at. Arguments over dps and rotation complexity really serve no purpose because the skills required to play Necro as tactical offensive support are not measured that way.

Lowest to highest:

RangerWarrior
Necromancer
Engineer
Mesmer
Guardian
Revenant
Thief
Elementalist

Warrior, Ranger and Necro are all incredibly easy to pick up and have moderate success with. Engineer, Mesmer and Guardian require a little understanding of mechanics but both are still relatively easy to play. The remainder, with some exceptions, are more punishing to mistakes and require a greater understanding of mechanics for success.

That said, I'm thinking some what specifically about certain builds, or at least in the ball park. Eg. Holosmith either Static Discharge or Pistol/Shield or bruiser Scrapper. Or longbow memebeast or boonbeast, etc.

Of course there are certain builds between each of these classes that require much greater skill to play successfully but it's impossible to analyze every possible scenario. So the way I listed this was based purely on common encounters and effective builds. Many of the lowest skill floor classes like Warrior or Necromancer for example become exponentially more difficult to play the better your opponent is. So although they're easy to use against average players, they'd be much closer to the top against skilled players. There are lots of things you can pick up with low/moderate mechanic and strategic skill while still finding a good deal of success but some of those things will work in a greater variety of circumstances.

The only reason I place Elementalist so much higher than Engineer, which is thought to be a very difficult class to play, is because in WvW Engineer requires much less skill input. Holosmith, even when playing something as offensive as Static Discharge, still has lots of room for error with enough offensive pressure to ensure opponents cannot play carelessly.

Strictly due to the kind of damage it's capable of, I feel I may have placed Revenant a little too high but, it always requires the player to be cautious even if it's easy to do damage with. Since it isn't the kind of class that allows for many mistakes on the users end, I think it's fair to put it higher even if it's easy to delete people with.

And again, I don't believe it's possible to take every build and circumstance in to consideration so people's opinions on the matter will probably vary greatly. I could have put more thought in to this list but, meh.

@Elementalist Owner.7802 said:Highest skill floor (only counting viable builds with the highest skill floor on the spec)

1. Ranger (longbow pew pew)
2. Warrior
3. Mesmer (condi garbage. power mes would be much lower on the list)
4. Guardian (meditrapper build)
5. Thief
6. Engineer and Revenant
7. Elementalist

Necro is really hard for me to judge because I've never roamed with it and I very rarely see roaming necros

Highest skill ceiling is difficult to calculate and I don't feel like finishing this post. Cheers!

In all my years in this game I've found significantly less skilled Necromancers than any other profession. Although it is one of the least popular roaming specs for obvious reasons, that doesn't mean it's a unicorn in terms of general encounters. And I think a big part of that has to do with people being in the wrong state of mind when playing a Necro.

I don't believe it to be incredibly difficult to play, even when roaming. It just requires better situational awareness than the other professions due to it's lack of mobility or ability to withstand focus fire. I would say however that against skilled players, it is easily near the top (probably top 3) for skill ceiling. That said, I'm also not an exceptionally skilled player despite years of experience. But I think my familiarity with the class gives me enough understanding to properly gauge it.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:

I agree. A person can use a meta-build approved by class experts but not necessarily play it well enough to get the claimed dps out of it.

This is a flaw in the meta mentality. If you're not playing a class or build approved by "class experts" you're worthless, with no consideration towards what you're experienced in or even physically equipped to play.

This is why comms and guilds that possess no creativity of their own, set no standards, or do no evaluations, need 50+ to get a job done.

When the 20 you have are just jumping on whatever you're calling for and still can't get it done, more is betterer.

@Elementalist Owner.7802 said:Highest skill floor (only counting viable builds with the highest skill floor on the spec)

1. Ranger (longbow pew pew)
2. Warrior
3. Mesmer (condi garbage. power mes would be much lower on the list)
4. Guardian (meditrapper build)
5. Thief
6. Engineer and Revenant
7. Elementalist

Necro is really hard for me to judge because I've never roamed with it and I very rarely see roaming necros

Highest skill ceiling is difficult to calculate and I don't feel like finishing this post. Cheers!

SKILL

ur skill floor goes wrong way around :D

Any chance of a ranked list for the twenty seven professions we actually have with a small write-up of combinations/possibilitys for subspecs within them? Core specs for each profession and then the eighteen elites added on? They don't play the same. They should be given rankings on their own merits or failings.

Thanks.