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Do vanilla (non-elite) specs have a place in fractals or raids?


VDAC.2137

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Before PoF, I knew several people who had DPS vanilla rangers but now I can’t say I’ve seen any non-elite specs in fractals or raids. Especially with Anet emphasizing that they want the elite specs to have trade-offs, vanilla builds should generally be as good as them, just with different strengths and weaknesses. This is what I mean by “viable”, although it was perhaps not the best word choice, I wanted to keep the poll options concise. As it stands, are elite specs always better?

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You should define what you mean "viable." The plain English meaning is "capable of working successfully; feasible." However, gamers tend to think of "viable" as meaning, "in the ballpark of comparable to meta" and some even equate "viable" with "nearly optimal." Rather than let the thread digress into which meaning is correct, you can clarify (or, better yet: use different phrasing that is less likely to be misconstrued).

For example, "all vanilla builds are inferior" need not mean the same as "there are no viable vanilla builds." A build can be inferior and still viable, from the dictionary definition. If you mean something else by "viable," please specify.

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@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:You should define what you mean "viable." The plain English meaning is "capable of working successfully; feasible." However, gamers tend to think of "viable" as meaning, "in the ballpark of comparable to meta" and some even equate "viable" with "nearly optimal." Rather than let the thread digress into which meaning is correct, you can clarify (or, better yet: use different phrasing that is less likely to be misconstrued).

For example, "all vanilla builds are inferior" need not mean the same as "there are no viable vanilla builds." A build can be inferior and still viable, from the dictionary definition. If you mean something else by "viable," please specify.

Good point! Hopefully I have now clarified this in the title and description? I have been enjoying vanilla guardian and would like to have a good vanilla ranger build (for thematic reasons). I realize that not even every elite spec is “meta” but having a greater variety of builds that are good and even situationally shine would be nice. :) I don’t know if this might already be the case, at least for some professions, just going mostly by what I see others play and the build ratings on MetaBattle.

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While it may seem to some that ArenaNet made the elite specializations to be better than the core professions, that's not entirely true.

Raids and fractals have different builds for each profession. Raids prefer having the most powerful or rather the more impactful build for each profession, such as chronomancer for the alacrity boon, druid for the boon sharing and healing, dragonhunter for it's huge burst damage etc. It all comes down to DPS builds dealing as much damage as possible and supports giving boons or some kind of utility for any fight.

Fractals, in my opinion, have far more builds variety for each profession. It's true some professions like necromancer are lackluster compared to the elite specializations, but that's not the case with most professions. It all comes down to how well you can play them. Let's look at core engineer and holosmith. Both of them are viable, but why is it that you see more holosmiths than core engineers? It's because holosmith is easier to play compared to core engineer, it deals plenty of damage and has a solid amount of CC. Core engineer is considered the most difficult profession in the game for a good reason, but so few players tend to play it because it's too hard to play and don't want to learn the complex kit rotations.

Whenever I play a profession other than core engineer in fractals, any core engineer I see plays a build with no kits and instead use turrets. It's bad enough that turrets do little to no damage, but they are immobile and are not immune to critical hits and condition damage and so they die pretty quickly. Core engineer relies a lot on kits because using your primary weapon set will not get you anywhere in terms of damage. Core engineer requires a lot of commitment to be good at and most players don't have that. They prefer playing the simpler build that is fun to play and it deals a solid amount of damage.

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