What is the class is always in meta for pve content?

[Blackrystal.3508]

I want a building for fractal and open world solo

[Fueki.4753]

Guardian will always be in the meta.

Unless Arenanet creates a more effective alacrity spammer, Revenants will always be in the meta as well.

[Dadnir.5038]

I'd say that guardian is relatively "new" in regard of being meta, thought. Pre Hot, the safe bet was elementalist. Then, during HoT era, the safe bet was mesmer (due to their respective e-specs). PoF led to the current rise of the guardian but it could change with the x-pac coming in a bit more than half a year.

So, in the short term (roughly 6-8 months), I do agree with Fueki, that guardian and revenant are good pick. On the long term they can very well fall back to a sub-meta spot.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Warrior. Bannerslave for instanced content. Afaik this never changed in all the years.

It also performs well in Open World.

[Blackrystal.3508]

what do you think about engi and ranger?

[Dadnir.5038]

@"Blackrystal.3508" said:what do you think about engi and ranger?

I'll sum up all professions (personal opinion):

• Elementalist: The profession that have the possibility to specialized itself the most. Pros: builds highly specialized with often good performances. Cons: You often sacrifice the most to reach your results, rotations tend to feel complicated, provide mostly common boons (aura tend to not really be attractive in PvE).
• Engineer: In itself the profession is amongst the least popular to play for PvE players. Pros: Highly versatile. Cons: Optimale rotation feel complicated, top dps is often average at best.
• Guardian: The profession in flavor atm. Pros: Pretty easy to play, provide optimals boons with low amount of sacrifice. Cons: top DPS is average on small hitbox foes.
• Mesmer: A pretty strong profession in PvE whose builds tend to suffer from sPvP backlash. Pros: can provide essential boons/utility, pretty high DPS. Cons: Burst is inferior to guardian's, tend to sacrifice a lot for reliably providing it's boons.
• Necromancer: Very popular profession amongst player. Pros: boon corruption, resilience, user friendly. Cons: low damage, lack of utility/boons for the group.
• Ranger: A solid profession in PvE. Pros: Nature spirits, Spotter, boons output. Cons: Average damage.
• Revenant: A solid support in PvE. Pros: Alacrity, Provide "high" life leeching to the group. Cons: lack of flexibility due to legend skillsets, average damage at best.
• Thief: Strong but situational in PvE. Pros: Can simply carry a team based on the encounter, stealth/port can be very useful on some fractals. Cons: Not effective on all encounters, "frail".
• Warrior: The bannerslave. Pros: Provide invaluable extra stats, easy gameplay. Cons: low damage output.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Ranger is in a good spot at the moment. Soulbeast is useful enough to be meta at the moment. Soulbeast works great for soloing PvE content and even in PvP. In Fractals you can also play Druid (healer).

Engineer has seen worse days. Scrapper is nice for soloing content, especially Story and Open World. High sustain, even on full-dps gear. There exists the Heal Scrapper for group support, which is also used in Fractals. The Holosmith does very good DPS and is rather easy to learn and use.

It mostly depends on your resources, your goals and your interests. We can make suggestions, but we cannot decide for you. You started the thread asking "which class is always meta." Especially Engineer was not always meta. Guardian had a very difficult stand in its early years, Ranger was considered a solo class until HoT.

If you like to play Engineer, go for it. If you enjoy Ranger, go for that. Both currently have options for Fractals and perform well in solo-content. Will they always be part of the meta? We cannot say.

[Touchme.1097]

Mesmers and Revenants will always be in the Meta, they are the only source of alacrity.Rangers and BS Warriors will always be in the Meta, they bring unique boons like spotter, spirits and banners.Guardian is currently in the Meta solely because it gives permanent quickness, it doesn't excel on anything in particular.The other professions are replaceable

[Fueki.4753]

@Touchme.1097 said:Mesmers and Revenants will always be in the Meta, they are the only source of alacrity.This doesn't need to stay that way with EoD.Arenanet could give us a support warrior that provides Alacrity as good as Renegade.

[Touchme.1097]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Touchme.1097 said:Mesmers and Revenants will always be in the Meta, they are the only source of alacrity.This doesn't need to stay that way with EoD.Arenanet could give us a support warrior that provides Alacrity as good as Renegade.

I am looking forward to this idea of making certain boons available for more professions, however I would be happier if every profession had unique boons that were equally desired in a raid squad.

[Yasai.3549]

Mesmer.Mesmer has always dominated and still dominates certain roles in the meta.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Guardian, its anets love child and pretty much meta in everything and is very effective even when just mashing random buttons as 75% or more of ur damage is passive burns.

[Agrippa.1693]

If I have to answer the question in the title it's quite easy actually: it's the Warrior. Since launch of the game (2012) it's the only class that has never gone out of Meta in PvE (endgame) content.

Edit: honourable mention is indeed for the Mesmer (as you can read above), although I doubt if they were always THAT Meta as the warrior (in the dungeon days they were taken for portal in certain dungeons only) and these days they're not meta anymore in fractals but still are (and always have been) in raids, though.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:If I have to answer the question in the title it's quite easy actually: it's the Warrior. Since launch of the game (2012) it's the only class that has never gone out of Meta in PvE (endgame) content.

It is not totally true.

They were meta with great damage at launch of the game, but those damage took a serious nerf and they fell out of grace for a few month. Then they were blessed with phallanx strength which gave them a second breath, yet, if it allowed them to enter and even be essential to casual groups, it wasn't enough to make them "meta" in front of the elementalist almost absolute dominion. After HoT release, they indeed ended up being meta but I believe their spot isn't very solid since banners lost a chunk of stats.

[Fueki.4753]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:If I have to answer the question in the title it's quite easy actually: it's the Warrior. Since launch of the game (2012) it's the

only

class that has never gone out of Meta in PvE (endgame) content.

It is not totally true.

They were meta with great damage at launch of the game, but those damage took a serious nerf and they fell out of grace for a few month. Then they were blessed with

phallanx strength

which gave them a second breath, yet, if it allowed them to enter and even be essential to casual groups, it wasn't enough to make them "meta" in front of the elementalist almost absolute dominion. After HoT release, they indeed ended up being meta but I believe their spot isn't very solid since banners lost a chunk of stats.

I think Agrippa Oculus was referring to the banners, which have been used in every group instance META since the Berserker META in Septembre/Octobre of 2012. And that was the first META of the game.

[Moradorin.6217]

I think war is the only one who has always been meta as BS.

[Dadnir.5038]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:If I have to answer the question in the title it's quite easy actually: it's the Warrior. Since launch of the game (2012) it's the

only

class that has never gone out of Meta in PvE (endgame) content.

It is not totally true.

They were meta with great damage at launch of the game, but those damage took a serious nerf and they fell out of grace for a few month. Then they were blessed with

phallanx strength

which gave them a second breath, yet, if it allowed them to enter and even be essential to casual groups, it wasn't enough to make them "meta" in front of the elementalist almost absolute dominion. After HoT release, they indeed ended up being meta but I believe their spot isn't very solid since banners lost a chunk of stats.

I think Agrippa Oculus was referring to the banners, which have been used in every group instance META since the Berserker META in Septembre/Octobre of 2012. And that was the first META of the game.

No, core wasn't really fond of banners, and I've played more than enough donjon and fractal within core era to be sure of it. Banners start to really find their place in PvE with raids and that was end 2015 with HoT. Before that it was of marginal use, meta group favoring comp with mostly elementalist for their frostbow and fiery GS with the occasional thief/mesmer to quicken the pace. I'm not saying that it wasn't used but not "meta" (and I played phallanx warrior in a 6-7 daily paths runs). Furthermore, the "berserker meta" took time to find it's place as well, it really became a "meta" around mai/june 2013.

I'll be a bit excessive but the only profession that could be called "meta" in core was elementalist, other professions were either submeta (warrior, thief, mesmer and guardian), ignored by the playerbase (Engineer) or simply rejected (necromancer and ranger).

[Fueki.4753]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:No, core wasn't really fond of banners, and I've played more than enough donjon and fractal within core era to be sure of it. Banners start to really find their place in PvE with raids and that was end 2015 with HoT. Before that it was of marginal use, meta group favoring comp with mostly elementalist for their frostbow and fiery GS with the occasional thief/mesmer to quicken the pace. I'm not saying that it wasn't used but not "meta" (and I played phallanx warrior in a 6-7 daily paths runs). Furthermore, the "berserker meta" took time to find it's place as well, it really became a "meta" around mai/june 2013.

I'll be a bit excessive but the only profession that could be called "meta" in core was elementalist, other professions were either submeta (warrior, thief, mesmer and guardian), ignored by the playerbase (Engineer) or simply rejected (necromancer and ranger).

You must not have played the four Warriors + one Mesmer META in CoF, which happened around one month after release.But maybe you play on EU servers and they did it differently there.

[Agrippa.1693]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:No, core wasn't really fond of banners, and I've played more than enough donjon and fractal within core era to be sure of it. Banners start to really find their place in PvE with raids and that was end 2015 with HoT. Before that it was of marginal use, meta group favoring comp with mostly elementalist for their frostbow and fiery GS with the occasional thief/mesmer to quicken the pace. I'm not saying that it wasn't used but not "meta" (and I played phallanx warrior in a 6-7 daily paths runs). Furthermore, the "berserker meta" took time to find it's place as well, it really became a "meta" around mai/june 2013.

I'll be a bit excessive but the only profession that could be called "meta" in core was elementalist, other professions were either submeta (warrior, thief, mesmer and guardian), ignored by the playerbase (Engineer) or simply rejected (necromancer and ranger).

You must not have played the

four Warriors + one Mesmer

META in CoF, which happened around one month after release.But maybe you play on EU servers and they did it differently there.

Same in EU :)

[Obtena.7952]

Let's be clear on a few things here.

1. OW solo content is NOT related to being meta. Some of the best OW solo classes aren't very 'meta' in group instanced content
2. What is meta can change with ONE balance patch so if you are going to choose something because it's 'meta everywhere', then you should also be ready to roll another class or maybe get new gear when it changes also.

If you want something safe, FB is the answer you are looking for, though I question it's OW solo capability relative to the highest performing OW classes

[Dreamreaver.4908]

@Blackrystal.3508

You're going to need multiple builds, two at the least. Everyone is naming classes, which is fine, but the message of your post (not the title) suggests that you're looking for a singular build for both. What's meta for fractals--group content--is by definition incompatible with soloing.

www.metabattle.com can help with your open world needs.www.discretize.eu for your fractal needs.

[Hornet.6357]

Although Thief and Necromancer are very good for open-world, I'd avoid them for organized PvE. You can literally make a case for any other class other than these two. Engineer is actually really good because of meme builds, then you can learn holo for raids/fractals. There's almost no place where a guardian can't excel but you need atleast power gear set, and condi one. Gear can be an issue for some players if they're new. Power Chrono can be great for support/tank/DPS but you have to love butterflies.

[Agrippa.1693]

@"Blackrystal.3508"You ask several different questions, one is in your title and like I said above, Warrior (and secondly Mesmer) has objectively the best run so far (as in regard to your "always" part in the question) when it comes to the PvE endgame (be it Dungeons back in the day, or Raids/Fractals (T4) and maybe even Strike missions, now).

In the post yourself, you talk about Open World (solo), where IMO META is not really a thing (it's more a thing for the PvE endgame (and PvP/WvW) where you can more easily objectively benchmark and calculate a META). And if it was a thing, every single class has at least a few META options. And I even dare to say, that every single class is as good as the next one. Furthermore, it's probably the one gamemode (if you can call it that) where it's THE most difficult to calculate/benchmark on real numbers/statistics, which one is objectively the best. For Open world is so incredibly diverse: from world bosses to doing hearts, from solo-ing champions to jumping puzzles ... etc. I even believe that overall there might even be several hundred different builds across all classes out there that at least excels in one specific scenario. Therefore how much better certain builds and classes are in Open World is imo pretty much always subjective and more or less based on sentiment and even stigmas instead of real objective numbers and statistics.

You also mention Fractals, and like @"KidRoleplay.3615" already mentions, https://www.discretize.eu is the place to go when it comes to META and guides and such which imo are really helpful when you want to effectively play T4 (and CM) Fractals.

[The Boz.2038]

OK, seriously, why do people write meta in all caps? Calculate META?What do you think the term means?

[Fueki.4753]

@"The Boz.2038" said:OK, seriously, why do people write meta in all caps? Calculate META?What do you think the term means?

It depends what it means.While it started out as "meta-gaming", it also became the acronym for "most efficient tactic available".And since acronyms usually are written in caps, some people to so with META as well.