Dan's Pug Squad Tier list.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Tier explanations:

S Tier. Always wanted in great mass. 

A Tier. Wanted but not in high numbers. 

B Tier. Worse versions of S/A Tier builds. 

C Tier. It's OK I guess. 

D Tier. I heard great thinks about them. To bad I never see them do these great things. 

E Tier. The equivalent of getting a 2 dollar gift card. At least something. 

F Tier. What the hell are you doing? 

 

S Tier

• Firebrand 
• Scourge 
• Herald 
• Scrapper 

A Tier

• Tempest
• Weaver 
• Chrono

B Tier

• Guardian 
• Necro
• Reaper 
• Renegade 
• Elementalist 
• Catalyst 

C Tier

• Dragonhunter 
• Spellbreaker 
• Virtuoso 
• Soulbeast 
• Revenant 

D Tier

• Willbender 
• Harbinger 
• Specter 
• Berserker 
• Druid
• Untamed 

E Tier

• Warrior 
• Mesmer
• Daredevil 
• Holosmith 
• Engineer 

F Tier

• Bladesworn 
• Vindicator 
• Mirage 
• Ranger
• Thief
• Deadeye 
• Mechanist 

 

Edited May 5, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[subversiontwo.7501]

We have too many weebs with all these S-tier lists 😉.

I don't think it's really helping people understand WvW.

WvW and blobs in particular is all about roles; the meta builds fit into meta roles in a meta comp.

I would put it like this:

These are your 5 typical roles for the 5 spots in a typical party that pickup tags tend to spend time organising:

• A (Primary Support aka. hard counter-CC and gap heal)
• B (Secondary Support aka. soft counter-CC and bulk heal)
• C (Primary Damage)
• D (Primary Stripper/CC)
• E (Secondary Damage/Stripper)

Those are your roles, then you can tier in different builds for these roles:

• A Firebrand (nothing else has sufficient counter-CC to pass through 900r*)
• B Scrapper > Tempest > Not much else (possibly other Engis as medkit and elixgun is the core of the builds)
• C Herald > Core Guard > DH > Spinzerker (Remaining Guards, Revs and Eles)
• D Chrono > Shoutbreaker > Spinbreaker (arguably Spinbreakers can be more useful, but are less accessible)
• E Scourge > Demon Revs of all kinds > (possibly Necros and Mesmers of other kinds)

In some cases you can double up with certain roles or classes that have overlap, like double E instead of either a C or a D (eg., Double Scourge instead of a Chrono etc.). It should also be evident that the further down in tier you go, the more overlap there is. In a damage role there isn't much distinction between say a Weaver or a Spinzerker whereas there is quite alot of distinction between either and a Herald (given spike vs. DPS value or the ability to feed fury, gap stab and damage reductions even though the role is still just "damage").

*Most other stuff would require the capacity to build havoc parties

(When you can flank around 900r you only really need the support to counter damage and CC at such distances)

That's the stuff that enables Ranger builds, Most Ele builds (Weavers as 5th tier damage in a stabparty is not good use, whereas four Eles supported only by a Druid can be far more useful), Thief builds and so on.

Personally, I would never stick eg., a Druid as a third tier secondary support (B) as it simply is something else and excel at other things. It is not a balance thing, it is a design thing.

Flip that around horisontally and you have your meta party of:

FB + Scrapper + Herald + Chrono + Scourge

Then some of these A+B+C+D+E roles have secondary, tertiary and so on, options. Things that are good or useful, but generally lower-tiered. Some of the things that make this stuff useful is their flexibility. If you are on a server that is not very demanding on its players to pre-organize everything into "the meta" and then hits queues and stuff:

Things like Eles, Revs and Guards are incredibly useful as they can take on 2-3 different roles decently enough. Things like Scrappers or Scourges are meta builds and incredibly powerful in the right hands within the right comp but they are also rather onedimensional, filling just one role no matter what build and if your squad composition isn't stellar they quickly lose alot of usefulness. Warriors and Mesmers are flexible but not quite as flexible as the first group of classes, mostly due to how their builds may not be as accessible even if they can be very powerful.

Rangers and Thieves are mostly relegated to havoc no matter how they build, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing it just means that playing those classes you need to enjoy a smaller-scale or party-specialist flavour even within large-scale content. You can argue that those classes should get better group-utility stuff but it is also possible to argue that it is a bit weird to pick a class with such a specialist concept design and expect it to do something more vanilla.

For the most agreed-upon tiering you have the meta sites, but this should help explain some of how those sites present information too (as they list roles, but don't make them very clear).

Other than that, we will have to wait and see if any of this changes in 5 days from now with the may 10 patch.

Edited May 5, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[kash.9213]

How do you quantify a pug groups makeup? No one is relegated to anything in a pug group and the way they'll move and fight will be different along with their builds.

[subversiontwo.7501]

 

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

How do you quantify a pug groups makeup? No one is relegated to anything in a pug group and the way they'll move and fight will be different along with their builds.

Are you asking me or the OP? I put a line regarding that in the post above:

3 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

These are your 5 typical roles for the 5 spots in a typical party that pickup tags tend to spend time organising:

As far as I am concerned a squad could easily have as many havoc parties as it has typical tag-organised parties, that's the only distinction I make between them: That tags will typically just spend their own time looking to optimise typical parties, best as. If I havoc, I organise myself or someone other than the tag organises us (on a party level).

Ed. If you want to deep dive in the depraved nerdity of it, there are some pretty good takes on it here by Josh Strife Hayes, Inks and Teapot:

1hr marker JSH hones in on it. It is prefaced by a more general take on PPT/PPK, Scoring, Scaling, WvW, GW2 and what the game does well starting at 51min20sec. So you can watch 10 mins of it or just go to the 1hr marker and just watch 2 mins of it.

I think they are pretty spot on, but they are talking about it in pretty abstract terms.

Edited May 5, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[kash.9213]

2 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 

Are you asking me or the OP? I put a line regarding that in the post above:

As far as I am concerned a squad could easily have as many havoc parties as it has typical tag-organised parties, that's the only distinction I make between them: That tags will typically just spend their own time looking to optimise typical parties, best as. If I havoc, I organise myself or someone other than the tag organises us (on a party level).

Ed. If you want to deep dive in the depraved nerdity of it, there are some pretty good takes on it here by Josh Strife Hayes, Inks and Teapot:

1hr marker JSH hones in on it. It is prefaced by a more general take on PPT/PPK, Scoring, Scaling, WvW, GW2 and what the game does well starting at 51min20sec. So you can watch 10 mins of it or just go to the 1hr marker and just watch 2 mins of it.

I think they are pretty spot on, but they are talking about it in pretty abstract terms.

I was talking to the OP. I don't care about the rest of that. 

Edit: that was kind of rude, I apologize. I think I might have some outdated idea of what a "pug" is. 

Edited May 5, 2022 by kash.9213

[DanAlcedo.3281]

8 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

How do you quantify a pug groups makeup? No one is relegated to anything in a pug group and the way they'll move and fight will be different along with their builds.

The tier list is about what is wanted in your typical pug squad and how useful each spec is seen as in general. 

This does not mean that higher rated builds are always better. 

Your typical squad group is

Firebrand Scourge Herald Scrapper + X. 

After that you look whats seen as useful for the X slot. Which is either another S Tier spec or A Tier. 

Everything after that is simply about how good of a replacement it is. 

 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

7 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 

Are you asking me or the OP? I put a line regarding that in the post above:

As far as I am concerned a squad could easily have as many havoc parties as it has typical tag-organised parties, that's the only distinction I make between them: That tags will typically just spend their own time looking to optimise typical parties, best as. If I havoc, I organise myself or someone other than the tag organises us (on a party level).

Ed. If you want to deep dive in the depraved nerdity of it, there are some pretty good takes on it here by Josh Strife Hayes, Inks and Teapot:

1hr marker JSH hones in on it. It is prefaced by a more general take on PPT/PPK, Scoring, Scaling, WvW, GW2 and what the game does well starting at 51min20sec. So you can watch 10 mins of it or just go to the 1hr marker and just watch 2 mins of it.

I think they are pretty spot on, but they are talking about it in pretty abstract terms.

I know this video and I don't disagree much with it but my list is about pug groups. 

What does your average pugmander want. 

And this list is technically not even fully my own opinion. 

It it were, Tempest would be B Tier and Soulbeast A Tier but that's not reflected in reality. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

9 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

How do you quantify a pug groups makeup? No one is relegated to anything in a pug group and the way they'll move and fight will be different along with their builds.

It's actually pretty predictable. From my experience, people that I talk to rarely care about builds at all, so they usually get it from googling or someone they know. Or they just don't know what their build is.

 

Pug groups will inevitably favor a more pirate ship heavy style and appropriate ranged damage builds because they won't have access to fully comped parties regularly and thus do not have the sustain to push. And even if they do, it is no guarantee anyone will follow.  So it is better to cloud when others cloud.

Add in to the fact that this game has some truly useless choices for any game mode, and that narrows the builds down a lot. And of course, there are many that get killed quickly so it doesn't matter what they run. That makes things a lot easier.

I mean there's of course no 100% way, but for the most part I can look at a "pug" enemy group and expect consistent behavior on how they fight and what they use, the same way I can recognize a guild group and how they move as a boon train.

Anyhow, I think OP probably wrote in the context of leading in a public squad, and it is actually assumed people may be running whatever. In this case, it would be what OP thinks is the ideal additions to put into said squads and to prioritize these classes for putting into subgroups. And, in the unfortunate event the squad is too full, what to keep.

 

I mean, yes, that random firebrand may actually run 0 stability, but that's not the point of the discussion.

Edited May 6, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Dagger.2035]

Using your definitions I would make the following changes:

• Dragonhunter - S
• Tempest - B
• Berserker - C
• Virtuoso - D

Edited May 6, 2022 by Dagger.2035

[DanAlcedo.3281]

7 minutes ago, Dagger.2035 said:

Using your definitions I would make the following changes:

• Dragonhunter - S
• Tempest - B
• Berserker - C
• Virtuoso - D

I agree with tempest. But from my experience pugmanders over rate it. 

Berserker is wierd. You always hear good things about it but you never see it. 

Virtuoso is "fine". It still has mesmer tools and on the dmg front it's simply a worse core necro. And you actually see them around unlike D Tier builds. 

No way Dragonhunter is S Tier. Not from a pug squad point of view. 

DH is basically " I wish you were a Firebrand tier". 

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[kash.9213]

51 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

It's actually pretty predictable. From my experience, people that I talk to rarely care about builds at all, so they usually get it from googling or someone they know. Or they just don't know what their build is.

 

Pug groups will inevitably favor a more pirate ship heavy style and appropriate ranged damage builds because they won't have access to fully comped parties regularly and thus do not have the sustain to push. And even if they do, it is no guarantee anyone will follow.  So it is better to cloud when others cloud.

Add in to the fact that this game has some truly useless choices for any game mode, and that narrows the builds down a lot. And of course, there are many that get killed quickly so it doesn't matter what they run. That makes things a lot easier.

I mean there's of course no 100% way, but for the most part I can look at a "pug" enemy group and expect consistent behavior on how they fight and what they use, the same way I can recognize a guild group and how they move as a boon train.

Anyhow, I think OP probably wrote in the context of leading in a public squad, and it is actually assumed people may be running whatever. In this case, it would be what OP thinks is the ideal additions to put into said squads and to prioritize these classes for putting into subgroups. And, in the unfortunate event the squad is too full, what to keep.

 

I mean, yes, that random firebrand may actually run 0 stability, but that's not the point of the discussion.

That reasoning makes sense. Gotta hope they hold up though, especially if they're predictable. 

On an adjacent note, I really appreciate it when a pugmander thinks about builds for a moving fight. Makes it easier to cover people. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

17 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

On an adjacent note, I really appreciate it when a pugmander thinks about builds for a moving fight. Makes it easier to cover people. 

Same, not assuming everyone can read your mind is very important I think.

[Vortigern.1987]

5 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

No way Dragonhunter is S Tier. Not from a pug squad point of view. 

DH is basically " I wish you were a Firebrand tier". 

 

That's pretty much the point. A Guardian can be both, dps or support, whatever is needed atm. In Pugs people come and go and being able to fill out both spots is a great advantage.

[enkidu.5937]

10 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 

1hr marker JSH hones in on it. It is prefaced by a more general take on PPT/PPK, Scoring, Scaling, WvW, GW2 and what the game does well starting at 51min20sec. So you can watch 10 mins of it or just go to the 1hr marker and just watch 2 mins of it.

I think they are pretty spot on, but they are talking about it in pretty abstract terms.

1. What they say is that blobbing everyone at the same spot is a very ineffective way of playing WvW. So, if you’re good you can take enemy north camp alone. If you are bad you have to stack ppl. If you know what you are doing, you can defend home keep against a zerg with a group of 25 tag-less clouders. If you are bad you have to stack. And so on.

 

 

2. So basically, the more you fail in fighting, tactics etc. the more you have to stack in bigger groups to get things done. Therefore, its quite weired imo when something like berserker gear scourge is rated S Tier and Daredevil is E Tier. Bad / unexperienced players that need to stack in larger groups just fail with scourge, cause this build has no survivability, demands good positions, and good support. But they will contribute better with a daredevil that has high survivability, can escape from bad spots, and doesn’t need much support. And most importantly, its an allround build for WvW, where ppl that only play 4 hours a week can get familiar with that build, because they can use it all the time, for roaming, clouding, and dailies, and not just for that few zerg fights as it is for scourge (and they don’t have a fight guild with weekly fight training ofc).

 

 

3. But, as these guys say in the vid, ppl are lazy, they don’t want to play effective, but in an easy mode. So, even good / experienced players start to stack in big numbers and want to transfer the organization of a 5-ppl-guild group to the zerg by just copying the meta of a 5-ppl-guild group 10 times. So we end up with where we are now:

 

 

Good / experienced players stack in zergs because they are lazy, and bad players camp at spawn and flip spawn camp every 10 minutes for the pips. 😏

 

So, forget about those tier lists and let variety and chaos take over the rule again!  😁

 

TL;DR: So if Dan pics me up, and wants to meta-game his squad comp, you definately dont want me on a zerker scourge, cause I wouldnt play S tier then but at E tier. You might want me on staff thief, I wouldnt play S tier then due to limitations of the build but it would still be higher than scourge 😎

Edited May 6, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[enkidu.5937]

sry forum hick-up

Edited May 6, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[Dagger.2035]

22 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

2. So basically, the more you fail in fighting, tactics etc. the more you have to stack in bigger groups to get things done. Therefore, its quite weired imo when something like berserker gear scourge is rated S Tier and Daredevil is E Tier

It’s about using the right tool for the right job.  In large scale fights scourges are way more effective than thieves.  If you try playing a Herald, Dragonhunter, Scourge, or Weaver you’ll notice a huge increase in damage and kills.  I doubt you will want to play Daredevil any more once fights have 30+ people.

[Littlekenny.4196]

2 hours ago, Dagger.2035 said:

It’s about using the right tool for the right job.  In large scale fights scourges are way more effective than thieves.  If you try playing a Herald, Dragonhunter, Scourge, or Weaver you’ll notice a huge increase in damage and kills.  I doubt you will want to play Daredevil any more once fights have 30+ people.

Scourge and Daredevil don't fit in the same role.

As Sub said, Scourge is a Secondary Damage/Stripper but a Daredevil (if you don't bring the GvG one) would fill the role of Primary Damage and I don't really have Scourge above me in damage or downs contribution when I'm playing Daredevil.

Daredevil is capable of creating more downs and even doing more damage than all of those listed classes in 30+ fights. It takes a top tier Herald or Dragonhunter to match it, Scourge shouldn't really compete, and Weaver can beat all of them enemy stays in their AoEs but if you have a lot of movement then their effectiveness declines significantly.

[Dagger.2035]

2 hours ago, Littlekenny.4196 said:

Daredevil is capable of creating more downs and even doing more damage than all of those listed classes in 30+ fights. It takes a top tier Herald or Dragonhunter to match it

I’m not saying Daredevil can’t have good dps.  Reaper and Berserker can have high damage too.  My problem with those builds is that they are very situational and require melee fights.  Which is why I rarely use them any more.  You either need numbers where anything works, or a coordinated pug group which is doing frequent melee pushes.  It is much safer to run the builds I listed and switch to melee if the situation allows it.

[Littlekenny.4196]

40 minutes ago, Dagger.2035 said:

I’m not saying Daredevil can’t have good dps.  Reaper and Berserker can have high damage too.  My problem with those builds is that they are very situational and require melee fights.  Which is why I rarely use them any more.  You either need numbers where anything works, or a coordinated pug group which is doing frequent melee pushes.  It is much safer to run the builds I listed and switch to melee if the situation allows it.

I guess so if you are in a group that just pirate ships but I've not been in one of those for a while and if there are more than 4 ranged spikes per melee push I just leave since I won't have fun regardless of class.

[subversiontwo.7501]

9 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

1. What they say is that blobbing everyone at the same spot is a very ineffective way of playing WvW.

2. So basically, the more you fail in fighting, tactics etc. the more you have to stack in bigger groups to get things done.

3. But, as these guys say in the vid, ppl are lazy, they don’t want to play effective, but in an easy mode. So, even good / experienced players start to stack in big numbers and want to transfer the organization of a 5-ppl-guild group to the zerg by just copying the meta of a 5-ppl-guild group 10 times. So we end up with where we are now:

Good / experienced players stack in zergs because they are lazy,.

Well, they say a number of things in all of those 10 minutes, but yeah, they are making a couple of interesting points like these.

Teapot makes the distinction for PPT pointing out that, for score, it is generally better to play 10x5 than 50x1. If you have good groups it can many times be better to play 3x15 instead of 50x1 because any one of those groups may be good enough to preoccupy the blob alone even if they may not outright win over attrition, but if those groups can coordinate they can also simply beat the blob with two or three of them as 30-45 more ambitious players can take on 50 players picked up in a public squad.

JSH is talking about organisation being more difficult the larger you get as you need more and more sub-organisation to be effective (including voice etc.). He talks about it being easier to be organised enough to run tactics intricate enough to be fun at numbers around 10 and that growing larger requires more complexity to keep the same fun.

People are indeed being lazy in general (or teaching new players in a low-effort environment) which is why we see little sub-organisation, initative, break outs of groups, coordination between groups or just groups (guilds) being born in general. It's a reflection of the state of the game (both the waiting, the lack of attention and the dev possibly purposely keeping ambition down as ambition can be a double-egded sword; Teapots little hot-take there).

People who play alot of different things also tend to play the different things, differently. For example, yes, good players are lazy when they stack in zergs. That is not their height of competition. That's their low-effort relax time. Good players often relax in pickups. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is good that different types of content exists. WvW is a co-existance mode.  Good players often also play things that are not meta in pickups. Sometimes they play things that are more difficult yet still do it leisurely and relax.

All of this points back to the havoc discussion I first made when related to classes and content (or the discussion Kenny and Dagger continued here just above) as playing havoc assumes either a more ambitious sub-organisation or more self-organisation. A squad of 10 meta parties requires 1 leader. A squad that is half-half requires 6 leaders. A group self-organising on the side requires better coordination with the tag to add to the effort rather than subtracting from the effort etc. This also floats into the cloud, balance and boon discussions because there is a sharp distinction between clouding alone and raising ambition to coordinate into small groups. So it is far less about big-small or balance than it is about ambition in the face of development, coordination and organisation no matter who you are or what you prefer to do (if you're a tag, if you're a pug, if you're a havocker or small-group buster/roamer).

Edited May 6, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[enkidu.5937]

Thx for the good reads! I got a blast, reading a true meta-gaming discussion for pug groups on this forum! 🙂

 

PS:

Happy to see staff daredevil is still being considered. Though, not quite how I played it (some years ago): porting into our range bomb when the com calls (deep into enemy zerg is the savest spot ^^), jumping that meti shower ele at the flank to make him retreat (not even necessary to down him), making use of steal boon strip priority and boon spread: (aegis) -> stab -> prot

 

I feel to apologize for my generalization. Ofc there are dedicated players in blobs that constantly develop their skill usage, deeper teamplay coordination and such. 👍

(At least, I also played bubble bot warri and hammer rev for a short time^^)

Edited May 6, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[Dagger.2035]

It’s very self serving to call people lazy for wanting to zerg.  People play this game for a variety of reasons.  For example, I mainly play every reset for kills.  I like to play high risk glass zerg builds and measure my success by comparing my kill total to other players on the same server via gw2mists.com.  Others may have different reasons or goals for playing the game.

 

I also gave up on PPT years ago after HoT.  Game changes made the scouting/roaming role less important and there is less appreciation for upgrading objectives now since it happens automatically.  Roaming also feels like a waste of time to me since you can find better fights in PvP.  I don’t feel like I’m achieving anything by killing inexperienced players and players running zerg builds.

[kash.9213]

6 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Well, they say a number of things in all of those 10 minutes, but yeah, they are making a couple of interesting points like these.

Teapot makes the distinction for PPT pointing out that, for score, it is generally better to play 10x5 than 50x1. If you have good groups it can many times be better to play 3x15 instead of 50x1 because any one of those groups may be good enough to preoccupy the blob alone even if they may not outright win over attrition, but if those groups can coordinate they can also simply beat the blob with two or three of them as 30-45 more ambitious players can take on 50 players picked up in a public squad.

JSH is talking about organisation being more difficult the larger you get as you need more and more sub-organisation to be effective (including voice etc.). He talks about it being easier to be organised enough to run tactics intricate enough to be fun at numbers around 10 and that growing larger requires more complexity to keep the same fun.

People are indeed being lazy in general (or teaching new players in a low-effort environment) which is why we see little sub-organisation, initative, break outs of groups, coordination between groups or just groups (guilds) being born in general. It's a reflection of the state of the game (both the waiting, the lack of attention and the dev possibly purposely keeping ambition down as ambition can be a double-egded sword; Teapots little hot-take there).

People who play alot of different things also tend to play the different things, differently. For example, yes, good players are lazy when they stack in zergs. That is not their height of competition. That's their low-effort relax time. Good players often relax in pickups. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is good that different types of content exists. WvW is a co-existance mode.  Good players often also play things that are not meta in pickups. Sometimes they play things that are more difficult yet still do it leisurely and relax.

All of this points back to the havoc discussion I first made when related to classes and content (or the discussion Kenny and Dagger continued here just above) as playing havoc assumes either a more ambitious sub-organisation or more self-organisation. A squad of 10 meta parties requires 1 leader. A squad that is half-half requires 6 leaders. A group self-organising on the side requires better coordination with the tag to add to the effort rather than subtracting from the effort etc. This also floats into the cloud, balance and boon discussions because there is a sharp distinction between clouding alone and raising ambition to coordinate into small groups. So it is far less about big-small or balance than it is about ambition in the face of development, coordination and organisation no matter who you are or what you prefer to do (if you're a tag, if you're a pug, if you're a havocker or small-group buster/roamer).

I don't think they can chalk it up to laziness though. What can anyone expect if there's super serious fighting popping off on a map and they try to tag up to lead a small to mid size pickup group to take care of an area when there's already a tag or two on the map? Chat will fill up with "leave if you're not in squad and on discord, if I can't get my people on this map I'll just tag down." There's rarely any effort to work with other groups in tandem even loosely, in fact, there's almost always a big push against that. So, unless they're with a hidden tag, everyone will end up in the same blob anyway and probably not contribute feedback or give any effort beyond getting their participation because they were likely told to get into one squad where they're expected to shut up and stay right on top of tag.

I've seen the scenario where a lot of groups break away and handle their own thing but weaving in and out of each others objectives, making calls, and adapting. It's great when it can happen, but it just nearly never happens. The best team work I've seen lately is from multiple hidden tags loosely working together but that doesn't get your map under control unless the other servers are dead. 

Edited May 6, 2022 by kash.9213