Profession with the highest outplay potential through skill-ceiling?

[Tridentuk.1625]

Hi,I come from a Dota & Starcraft background and I want to scratch that itch of having to press a lot of buttons and react fast to different situations. Looking for the class with the most complex button pressing (dodges, counters, bait plays, etc.) and delicate positioning requirements, but that also rewards these things with an extra advantage for high skill players. My goal is just to spam one class and just become a master at it for PVP/WvW modes. Basically the midlane position of professions for people familiar with MOBAs.

Playing Ele D/D PvE at the moment, and it's quite fun cos I'm improvising, but looking at the most competitive builds for it (weaver) even though there are a lot of buttons it seems like it's more about getting off combos, which are more about muscle memory a bit like playing a set piano piece to me. Am I wrong?

TLDR: I'm looking for a class with a lot of button pressing and improvisation in PVP modes, high skill ceiling with high rewards for skill.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

If you are looking for complexity you choices are:

Any flavor of ele.Firebrand.Any flavor of Engi that brings a few kits along.Necros of any flavor, scourge in particular.Revenant of any flavor.

[Trianox.3486]

To be fair, ele does have a lot of piano play involved, but if you want to optimize your DPS and impact, PvP or PvE, there is not that much room for improvisation.To a certain degree there is a lot of risk (to screw up rotations), but it's relatively predictable to play against because one know what skills in which order they will have to land to maximize their DPS or keep you down.

That's also what bothers me.

I'm not sure other would agree with me, but the way I see it: classes with more meaningful/impactful individual skills (or in 2-skills combos) tend to be either very boring/repetitive, because really 2-3 skills do it all, OR when they have many impactful skills, those classes allow for a good deal of improvisation because almost anything will work in almost any order.

On the contrary, classes with complexe rotations tend to leave less room to improvisation, and even if you can improvise, it's more about finding the opening to use your complexe rotation, or being able to start it from any point along what forms a relatively linear pattern.

In a weird way, it's as if many classes lacked enough meaningful/potentially impactful combos. Most build usually have 1 or 2 key rotations, are tailored around that, and that's about it, with complementary utility for safeguard. Any other skill put in the wrong order will have you decrease your DPS.

But then, when you can improvise easily, you tend not to have complexe combos at hand.

In short, I wished we had more skill combination potential to react to a diversity of situations.

I find Guardian allows for more improvisation. Yet, relatively simple to play.Certain really specific thief builds require high skill ceiling to pull off, but wont be as impactful as some of the more easier/cheezier builds.Revenant has a great deal of adaptability built in, but also more or less stuck with very specific rotations to be effective if built to maximize that sort of play.

Bottom line, I'm not sure what you want really exist here.Engineer and ele might be the most complex, but don't allow for that much improvisation, I find, if you want to remain effective. Other people might say otherwise.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Toughest ones for me this far have been:Any type of Ele, core is a good start, weaver is super offensive and tempest can be super challenging if fighting with 1 or 2 more teammates.Firebrand (I always thought of it as a spam-my role and tbh I have a hard time seeing it as a roamer in WvW at least, but it needs plenty of clicking)Revenant, with Shiro to be speficic. Shiro has some very high cost skills that will benefit you if you play correctly, but it can be a trouble trying to figure it out, especially with it's life siphoning not being the ' classic time to save myself ' button, as you gotta hit to heal.sword dagger thief of any variant. Some players have truly made me wonder how much time they have put into their gameplay to survive just about any situation.mesmer has a lower skill ceiling compared to the afformentioned but some builds require plenty of clicking. core in particular needs very good positioning.

[Jski.6180]

Ele is a skill trap you feel like your doing a lot but your realty not. Your best bet for skill game play to out play humans (you CANT out play ai and pve) is mezmer.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It's long been said that a perfect thief is unstoppable. Elementalists, Mesmers, and Engineers are also really strong in the hands of a skilled player.

[Tridentuk.1625]

@Trianox.3486I think I'm leaning toward thief and guardian, and then deciding between the two. Thief sounds really fun but I'll also be playing PvE modes and people seem to suggest it's sub-optimal for those, and I might as well create a less reflex/awareness oriented character for when I'm tired or it's late. Mesmer also sounds like an option but I never really liked illusion play in previous games.

I do want to press more buttons but I don't really consider playing set piano pieces to be what I'm looking for, coming from a MOBA/strategy background where I spent countless hours practicing mechanics anyway it's not going to be the challenge I'm looking for I don't think. A learning curve in when/how/what to do with a higher variety of rewards and consequences is a higher one in my book, although being a nub I suppose I'll actually have to try it out before I can really comment.

[Downstate.4697]

You dont need to play a meta build to outplay people. Honestly i think a ranger has a high skill ceiling while pet managment makes it a bit more complicated. They have the capability to hit quite hard with decent mobility and escape options. Ive seen greatsword/lb soulbeasts who use zerker amulet poop all over people with their high damage

[Yasai.3549]

Thief, Revenant, Weaver, Ranger, Mesmer are all up there in terms of needing skill, reactive timing and game knowledge in order to best opponents.

Difficulty usually depends on matchup, because there are just some GG ez builds which are strong.