Al Masone.1274

Exactly. I'm not looking for the best performance, I'm looking for the most thematic build.

It's not for efficiency's sake, just for fun. In generally I like being a tanky dude in RPGs and I know that in GW2 the mobs focus on the guy with the highest toughness. So I'd like to know which class can get the highest toughness possible so the monsters will always want to spank me hard in every encounter.

First of all, I'm NOT looking for the best build in terms of damage. What I'm interesting in is finding which traitlines that actually complent and/or complement the herald spec, in terms of mechanics and theme. Herald, from what I understand, is supposed to be a decently tanky spec with lots of boonsharing. As a main mechanic it has the facets, so it should revolve around upkeep skills I guess. Regarding upkeep skills, the only traits related to them outside of herald are in retribution and corruption. Retribution I think fits well with herald, since it further improves tankiness. Corruption has a trait that improves energy regen if you use upkeep skills, but you also apply torment to yourself, which I'm not sure it's great in a tanky build. Also, the herald traitline doesn't seem to improve condi damage in anyway. Instead, it has a couple traits that improve strike damage. Speaking fo strike damage... Devastation I guess is the most selfish, pure dps traitline. But the 3 traits that give battle scars actually work wonders in a sword/sword or sword/shield build, since you can reliably proc it. Invocation seems to pretty much syngerize with every other traitline, since you'll always find yourself swapping legends, no matter which spec you play. And it does have a trait that gives more boons to allies when you swap stances, and also one trait that helps with energy management. That said, to me this traitline seems mostly skewed toward personal damage, and critical strikes/fury. Herald gives you pretty much perma-fury for free, though I'm not sure I should further focus on this boon in particular. Lastly, salvation to me feels more constructed with healing to allies in general. And while your shield 4 and a grandmaster trait do push some healing to allies, I was of the impression that herald in more focused on boon sharing, with just a sprinkle of ally healing on the side. Also, while you can push perma-regeneration with your healing skill, not trait in salvation actively boosts that boon anyway. It does however have a trait that gives you barrier for each boon you have, which fits, and one that gives you damage resistance everytime you heal and ally, and works with the herald's grandmaster trait. So in the end, I would say that devastation would work best in solo situations, and salvation would be better for teamfights if you want to stack as much durability as possibile. But there's really no trait line that says to me "pls take me whenever you take herald", Which is why I'm asking this question. Oh, and sorry for the long post.

I was afraid that allowing more than one vote would result in votes being spread all over the place. I am aware that pretty much everyone will like more than a single race/gender, but for the purpose of this poll I'd rather go for "choose only the very very best for you". It's nothing official anyway.

It's the first time I make a poll and I found that option. Not that it was necessary really, I just used it because I could.

After playing both a female charr and a male one, I found out that the difference in quality between the two genders is quite steep. Of course personal preference plays a role in it, but I'm quite curious to know which of the 10 race/gender characters available have the most liked voice acting to back them up. TO BE CLEAR: it doesn't matter if you haven't played through all the game with all of the options available, nor if you didn't really like any of them, just pick what your hears more or less enjoyed the most out of the characters that you played.

But the monsters will inevitably aggro someone, right? Or do they get confused if none has any toughness?

I would be ok with that in a game like diablo or path of exile, where finding the most broken builds is part of the fun. In a MMO like gw2 though I think that every spec should have very clear roles, and the attributes they have access to should complement their playstyles in very clean way. Of course every spec should have more than just one build path. Let's take herald for instance: the traits let you focus on either boon sharing or on personal survability. But given your skills, you're always a mix of those things, and you're also a frontline character. Which means that at least toughness should be a big thing for you. Yet the way the game is balanced, you're encouranged in anyway to build tanky, because there's not really a role for it. Also, given how it's boon time is already pretty good, there's no real need to build concentration, and healing power isn't really very effective. So you just power or condi because they're pretty much the only stats that have a tangible effect. But that really hurts the character's theme, since outside of active skills, it won't really have much personal survivability.

We have a lot of specs with a fire theme, but pretty much the only one with an ice theme is the reaper. Vindicator will have a decent chill uptime, but that's just for gameplay reasons, not because it actually fits in thematically with the spec. So I'd like to get a legend that would fit in in an ice/cold themed spec. Svanir could be interesting, with maybe the possiblity of shapeshipfting into a bear (like the norn racial), with ice themed abilities. Jora, Svanir's sister, could also bea thing. She's the hero who first stood against jormag. Asgeir is instead the norn hero who managed to sever one of jormag's fangs, the one you see in hoelbrak. And other cool idea would be to be able to actually commune with one of the spirits of the wild. Maybe snow leopard could be the more original, transforming you into a sort of ice werewolf (well, were leopard), with with stealth thrown in the mix, which is something no heavy class has yet. More or less think about the norn racial elite, and make it into a elite spec.

I quite like the options given by traits overall, for every class. What I simply can't bring myself to like is the attribute system. I'll leave PvP out of this, since in that mode you can change stats whenever you want without any hassle, and I guess pretty much every stat can have a place in the appropriate build. But of everything else, so Open World, fractals, raids, and wvw, I just can't understand the reasoning behind the system. There are so many atribute combinations to choose from, yet all I ever is full berserker, with the occasional viper for condi, diviner for renegade, and some minstrel or harrier for dedicated supports. The problem I see with this is that defensive stats are pretty much never a good option to focus on. It seems like you never look at vitality or toughness as relevant stats, and even healing power doesn't seem to be that important. Rather, all you're generally expect to be is pure damage, and sometimes concentration (for renegade or firebrand) when you need to maximise boons, in order to push out even more damage. And while that makes sense for the more fragile classes/specs, I just can't deal with it when it comes to tankier characters. Why am I expected to full zerker on spellbreaker or herald, or scrapper? I get it that it maximises damage, but at the expense of their core theme. As a herald I should be a defensive frontline, that distracts enemies and empowers allies, more or less like a traditional paladin. I should be expected to be as durable as I can, not to focus on pure damage. So now I have gone for the middle way. With celestial I get a little bit of everything, thus getting some of the resilience I personally crave, while still getting some offensive stats. And possibly the best part about it is that with cele gear, I can swap build whenever I want and always have at least some useful stats. As a "jack of all trades" gear, it will never be the best option, but it will never be useless either. Some builds benefit from it more than others, but again, every character can be somewhat decent with cele, and I don't have to get crazy about what I want or what I'm expected to build. I guess this is at least in part a rant, since they more I try to understand the reasoning behind attribute combinations, the more I get mad at how few options are actually meta. Inbefore "it's more nuanced than that", no it's not. Look at every site that gives you effective builds for group content, and see how many builds actually want you to build toughness or vitality as relevant stats. At least with cele gear, whenever a groups asks me to play a different build from my main, I just have to swap traits and nothing else. And since I main a reaper, this happens so depressingly often, which is why it gets me so mad.

Seeing how many bruisers the new expansion is going to introduce, and how they pretty much all have slow but strong attacks, in addition to other stuff, I wonder how reaper will keep its identity. Bladesworn is all about strong attacks that require a lot of charge up time. So limited mobility, slow, hard hitting strikes, lots of AoE, and is relatively durable as a warrior Vindicator's GS is pretty much all about AoE, is average-to-slow in terms of animations. The spec can have great or limited mobility depending on which traits you choose, and if you focus on damage your mobility will suffer, but is still survivable enough in melee. It also has decent chill uptime. And in addition to all that, it has a lot of group support. Catalyst, well, is kind of a mess, but still is designed as a bruiser, and the hammer again has slow but hard hitting attacks. The reliance on the jade sphere severly limits its mobility, and if you use the hammer, it doesn't seem like you can dash around a whole lot. Untamed has a shadowstep, but aside from that, all attacks are either lots of damage or lots of cc. Hammer again is slow but with lots of Cleave. It doesn't have chill but has plenty of other ways to keep opponents in melee range. What I mean is that all these new spec feel to me like "Reaper but with more stuff", and that more stuff is generally more team utility that will make the far more useful. Reaper doesn't even deal a whole lot of single target damage in the first place, and the shouts are widely considered to be lackluster and underperforming, save perhaps for the Elite. It has next to nothing in terms of party utility, something that the new specs seem to provide quite liberally. Personally I'd like the reaper to be the top of the top in terms of survivability, and have cc options that are a bit more reliable. Dps to me isn't much of an issue as long as I am able to walk around taking lots of damage and scaring everyone, as the big tough dude who doesn't afraid of anything I was supposed to be from the beginning.

In general I tend to gravitate toward tank classes, and while I'm aware that tanking isn't really a thing in GW2, I would still like to know which classes are most focused around "taking as much damage as possible and surviving". I don't just mean which class can absorb the most damage to cover up for mistakes in playing it, I mean which specs are actually encouraged to take damage for the team, or at least block/absorb it.

Tanky, support, decent self sustain, also good in wvw. My best bet would be scrapper. I'm levelling one these days, I'm not yet sure if it's the right class for me, after years of maining reaper, but on paper it should fulfill that all-rounder yet more of a tanky support idea I'm looking for right now. So while I have played little of it so far, after doing my own research I'd say that it's the best bet, outside of firebrand and maybe spellbreaker

Player will always revolve around what is most convient. And due to a painful lack of balance updates, we've had the same things for years. Thus players stick to what is keeps being most effective. Sure there are other ways to play the game, but then you have to build a full ascended set of armor (at least trinkets are trivial to get) and find a particular team composition in which you toon can fit. Meanwhile what has been generally popular continues to be effective more or less at all levels of play. IMO it's not the players, it's the devs who need to pay more attention to the professions, in order to keep the game fresh. I love, love this game, don't misunderstand me, but if the game is so stale it's because Anet is incredibly scared of touching the gameplay in general more than once a year, and even then they just change a couple things here and there.

I'd just like to know if there's any chance Anet might eventually post any kind of thread in which they kinda discuss how the old specs fare, in relation to their original concepts and in terms of overall balance. Mainly to see if they're still fiddling with the specs we already have, and to let us know if there's anything planned for them, in addition to the new specs coming with EoD

Considering that necro has such limited mobility to begin with, I'd never go as far as locking it in place by pressing dodge. I didn't think about a speed boost, but it coulud fit in there. Instead of just a small application of swiftness, it could be like Axe 5 for warrior, that gives +50% movement speed during the animation, which stacks with swiftness. It would still be very brief. My reasoning comes from the fact that necro in general has the least mobility of all professions, which already forces you to use the dodge button very wisely. So why not adding a bit more reward in at least one of the specs? Also it would be very cool if the reaper, instead of jump around to avoid attacks, would just run straight ahead toward the enemy, maybe with an extended arm to catch the incoming damage and convert it to life force. Personally I'm still convinced that the "power tank" reaper fantasy can still work, it just needs a little nudge here and there, without of course negating the pure power dps build everyone expects you to play nowadays.

"Capable of heavily afflicting their victims with chill and other conditions, the reaper wades into melee receiving and dealing blows knowing nothing can save its foes!" From the reaper release notes, also viewable in the wiki article. That got me thinking, what if reaper just ditched the standard dodge, since he's an unstoppable force who walks straight into danger? I tought about an ability that, instead of evading, would instead absorb all sources of damage when you press the dodge button. Kinda like a very brief parry (I'd say about half second, at most 3/4th just like a dodge), that would refill your life force pool based on how much damage you prevented. And if you used it while in shroud, it would instead restore a relatively small amount of health

I wanted to know how popular in general all professions are, and a quick search led me to the site mentioned in the title. I'm asking because the picture I find there is rather different from what I imagined. I'm not surprised that guardian and necromancer are very popular, while mesmer, thief and ele are a bit more niche. What surprises me is that revenant and engineer seem to be the least popular classes, and by a fair margin. Revenant's lack of popularity might be due to having been released later, but engi not only was here from the start, it has 2 specs that I thought were quite sought after because they both perform pretty well, especially scrapper. I'm levelling an engi right now and fair enough, the core professions isn't that fun to play, despite all the toys at its disposal. I'm yet to reach level 80 and unlock the specs, so I can't say anything about them. So I guess I'd like to know if in general, engineer and revenant aren't considered among the most fun professions to play.

Harbinger already does crazy damage is pretty much a glass cannon even with the healing. Scourge as well doesn't need more damage. I'd like them to remove the 2nd health bar on core and reaper not just for more damage, but because it's always been a mess balance wise. If it didn't replace health and had more of a fixed duration dependent on how full the bar is, it would feel way way better, and it would be easier to manage

Personally I really like the vindicator. Having abilities swap between offensive and support means that it's not just another one-dimensional dps spec. It's like you have a dps phase and a support phase, instead of just dealing damge and sharing boons at the same time. This way you have to be more aware what your skills do. Only thing I'm noticing so far is that it's kinda tricky to play solo: it lacks sustain and has only one dodge. I guess you either have to take dwarf as secondary for added durability, or have to pretty good at managing your endurance. Still, it's the spec I enjoyed the most of the three. Catalyst also feels good, and it's less squishy than I thought it would be, probably thanks to a good amount of sustain in water, but I feel like it's a lot of wasted effort. I mean, they picked the class in the game with least armor and least health, and gave it a spec that wants to stay STILL in mid-to-close range most of the time. Stay still, not jump around evading stuff. So it has a crazy amount of defensive abilities crammed into hammer, utility and traits, in order to give the catalyst reason to be a bruiser. Personally I kinda wish they gave this much attention to classes who already have more presence as melee bruiser, but whose gameplay could be more entertaining. Here is a class that, despite a squishy background wants to go melee, and needs to press so many buttons just justify its presence there, while Reaper and Bersekers litereally go spin with 1 or 2 skills and their rotation is done... Bladesworn is ok but not as interesting as I was expecting. I may very well have gotten it wrong from this first impression, but from what I've seen, pretty much 90% of your dps is crammed into the 3 "super attacks". Everything else is just there to give you more flow or more boons for when you use to skills. If they tone down the damage of the slashes, and give it to the regular gunsword attacks, then it could be better. The super slash is fun and a high moment, but if you get stunned while charging or accidentaly press F1 instead of F2 or get through some other inconvience that locks you out of it for a couple seconds, then you're literally doing no dps whatsoever. Overall I like these 3 specs more than first batch, and unless they do some changes to the old specs at some point, I might leave my old pal reaper for a vindicator,

I wouldn't say 5%. I don't really play wvw a whole lot, but whenever I run around with a zerg, most of the time I'm in front a wall or gate building siege, using siege, or taking down defenses. I don't find myself in teamfight really that often. I guess it depends on the time of day, but I'd say my time in wvw is more or less 50% siege and 50% teamfights. A buff to siege damage would be something I could always benefit from, but it would find decent use IMO: That said, I'm not arguing whether it would be a great addition or not, it was just and idea I had in mind. I kinda wondered how much it break the game, and whether it would add some interesting variety. I like wvw a lot but I hate more and more seeing the same 3 specs running around (scrapper, fb, scourge)

I agree both to your statement and your signature. Such a change wouldn't be enough to make a weak class like berserker (weak in wvw I mean) become relevant, though that wasn't really what I was trying to address here.

Fair enough I got a fair amount of kill with my reaper by just spamming GS2 on a gate under 50% health, plus the occasional GS5. Players either get pulled toward the gate or get into melee on their own, and GS2 just melts them. Though I was thinking about being able to do relevant damage to the structures themselves. Again, I would only give it to specs that don't yet have clear roles and/or strengths in wvw.

Not to invalidate the siege equipment, I'm just curious about what would happen if just a few specs were capable fo dealing siege damage. I'd say those that don't really have a clear purpose in wvw right now and are already themed around either being a battering ram. I wouldn't give it to classes who already deal considerable damage to players or are inteded to be duelists/roamers, like weaver or thief. Nor to those that are already capable supports, like firebrand or scourge. All of them would be even more mandatory if they could also deal siege damage. So it would be only for those who are more about raw damage but cannot reliably deal it to players in open ground, like say, berserker or reaper. And to prevent the other specs from exploiting it, it would only be applied to the spec-related weapon or spec-related traits. The idea would be to create some new niches without invalidating siege weaponry and without making already strong specs even stronger. In my head it would be hilarious to take down a gate by relentlessly headbutting it with a berserker.

Yeah in PvE I don't think reaper needs much in terms of dps to feel a bit better. What if gravedigger hit harder but didn't refund the full CD? That way you have to use other skills while it recharges. Then maybe add skills to other weapons that are worth using, instead of just axe 2 and the back to GS/Shroud. It's such a shame that some classes have so much weapon diversity and so much interactions between different parts of their kit, while reaper is pretty limited in that regard. Stuff has use in pvp and wvw so maybe it's not all bad, dagger on the other hand has been pretty much forgotten. on the wvw side, I guess you're right. They need to make more comprehensive changes to the mode, before dealing with specific class' balance