Genuinely afraid to pick one main to dedicate to.

[voltaicbore.8012]

As a ranger main for the entirety of my time with this game, I just made peace very early on with being treated like a second-class citizen by both the devs and fellow players alike. I still main ranger to this day in all 3 game modes, because I like the aesthetic of the class, as well as the character I made.

I just accept that (1) to perform well in group content I need to be willing to adjust build/playstyle, or (2) bring another class to suit the group's needs/desires.

I find the thing that helps the most with main-nerf anxiety is legendary gear. I have all 3 weights of armor in legendary, and almost every ranger weapon in legendary as well. While far from completely safe (ANet is so good at messing up that I think it's possible for them to ruin every spec or build in a class), I feel much better knowing that it'll be extremely easy for me to shift to a different playstyle if my current preferences become utterly useless.

[Labjax.2465]

9 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

If you ever need a good open world build to play for... any class honestly (except warrior I bought the character slot for one only recently), HMU. I love theorycrafting and testing new builds, seeing if they can solo bounties, dungeons, the devil frog in Heart of Thorns... 

The sustain were harsh for some like thief, scrapper, and torment rune users, but left many other insane open world builds untouched. If that build gets nerfed I'll give you a new one 🙂

That's very kind of you, thanks, I will keep that in mind for the future.

[RadiantWolf.2058]

Just play what you enjoy unless you are really going for cutting edge progression raiding or something. In any MMORPG if you decide your playstyle/character based on balance patch cycles you are in for a bad time.

[Buran.3796]

   Just play a game which doesn't stress you. The goal should be to have fun, not to be worried about developers botching that fun.

[eXruina.4956]

yep, no security in terms of class balance, this game has had terrible class balance since i can remember, you'd think after 10 years it'll get better but it has regressed, balance now is worse than balance was back before the first expansion came out.

 

they also make current expansion specs much stronger and trash everything from previous expansions.

 

also you get punished for investing time and money into a character, once you do you're locked in, templates and bag slots are non transferable. there is no race change, no class change, leaving you no choice but to stick with it or reroll. you'll have to repeat things like map completion, story progression, etc.. which can be redundant and tedious.

 

this game is ok to play casually, just get your exotics and you're functional, there's really no point on working towards anything past that.

 

pve content gets old fast. so once you're done with the experience thats it. competitive modes are 💩, specially when compared to other games, so theres no future there.

 

its a very good game, but any potential it had has died at this point. after years of seeing how things play out its more of the same.

 

that's the gist of it. opinions may differ but that's how i feel after playing it since 2014.

 

lastly, one upside of this game, is the horizontal progression, anything you work towards will still be there. you can come and go, and pick up where you left off, you will always stay relevant.

Edited July 19, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Gonna be that guy again and say that I don't have a main.  I play 8 out of 9 professions, and while I favor some more than others that favoritism changes as time passes.  Don't get too stressed about it, and just play what you feel like in the moment.  

[Cuks.8241]

BS Warrior currently has top power dps and is overall also very high in dps charts. I'm sure power zerk and condi zerk are competitive. 

The banner changes are a pity yes, I liked the guaranteed spot in squad. But I will still be playing my zerker when I feel like just some easy dpsing.

It will be harder to get a spot though but if you can play the profession there is no objective reason to not take you as dps. But that is why I also have a guardian that is always in need 🙂 (well I have all professions and usually cycle through them) 

[Lily.1935]

On 7/17/2022 at 8:50 AM, Valisha.8650 said:

Perhaps I am being paranoid, but with all this mess around balance, Warrior's banners getting nerfed into oblivion for virtually no reason at all, and a lot of other balance decisions that even Teapot called unreasonable, I am honestly afraid to dedicate my time and effort to any class which is not guardian/mechanist (clearly OP) or condi necro (left in balance limbo).

Why would I put my time and, more importantly, money into gems for extra bag slots and cosmetics, only for my Specter to be turned into another Spellbreaker or pre-buff Untamed by some axe-only firebrand enjoyer dev?

GW2 has to be the first game in my history where I have such levels of uncertainty about a possibility of build, character, or something among those lines getting nerfed either for no valid reason, OR for a right purpose, but with absolutely awful execution, making it a total KEKW to play.

Seriously anet. Just like IRL people are unlikely to invest in countries with uncertain political stability, in the virtual world people are afraid to buy stuff in games with such questionable balance decisions being made about their characters.

Or maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mighty teapot can be hyperbolic at times. I would strongly suggest taking what he says with a grain of salt. He isn't always wrong, however he does tend to over exaggerated.

As for balance, Find a guild that you like and run what you like with them. So my favorite spec is scourge followed by holosmith. For most of scourge's life it was a 29k DPS class up until late 2021 when torment damage was flipped in PvE and I ran that in everything because I loved it. And because I was good at it my guild was happy to have me. I'm also quite good at holosmith and still run it because its fun.

Right now arena net is trying to build up the support specs and Warrior is still in a great spot as a DPS so they're not useless, far from it. So its not like people need to retire their favorite class. As for Specter, honestly they're fairly safe. Thief tends to go unnoticed and they're high DPS at the moment and have a pretty good support build on specter.

Just try and have fun. Balance comes and goes.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

On 7/19/2022 at 9:30 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Gonna be that guy again and say that I don't have a main.  I play 8 out of 9 professions, and while I favor some more than others that favoritism changes as time passes.  Don't get too stressed about it, and just play what you feel like in the moment.  

Now I'm curious. What profession got the short end of the stick?

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, ScottBroChill.3254 said:

Now I'm curious. What profession got the short end of the stick?

Ranger.  I rolled one for awhile, but deleted it shortly after HoT was released.  I simply do not enjoy playing ranger.  

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 7/18/2022 at 5:47 AM, voltaicbore.8012 said:

As a ranger main for the entirety of my time with this game, I just made peace very early on with being treated like a second-class citizen by both the devs and fellow players alike. I still main ranger to this day in all 3 game modes, because I like the aesthetic of the class, as well as the character I made.

I just accept that (1) to perform well in group content I need to be willing to adjust build/playstyle, or (2) bring another class to suit the group's needs/desires.

I find the thing that helps the most with main-nerf anxiety is legendary gear. I have all 3 weights of armor in legendary, and almost every ranger weapon in legendary as well. While far from completely safe (ANet is so good at messing up that I think it's possible for them to ruin every spec or build in a class), I feel much better knowing that it'll be extremely easy for me to shift to a different playstyle if my current preferences become utterly useless.

Warrior here, I acknowledge and understand your pain. Rangers and warriors deserve better than a shite sandwich. Still, you point out at something greater here: that is, anxiety. When you got people anxious and afraid to play a class in a game, trying to leverage their possibility of fun and to try and avoid Anet's balance hammer: YOU HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM. THAT IS NOT GOOD FOR A GAME.

[Labjax.2465]

5 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

Warrior here, I acknowledge and understand your pain. Rangers and warriors deserve better than a shite sandwich. Still, you point out at something greater here: that is, anxiety. When you got people anxious and afraid to play a class in a game, trying to leverage their possibility of fun and to try and avoid Anet's balance hammer: YOU HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM. THAT IS NOT GOOD FOR A GAME.

You can say that again. Games and the way they are run should not be inducing anxiety in people. Just the opposite! Some tension in taking on a tough challenge in the game... of course, that's fine. But not chronic anxiety about the game itself.

[JTGuevara.9018]

44 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

You can say that again. Games and the way they are run should not be inducing anxiety in people. Just the opposite! Some tension in taking on a tough challenge in the game... of course, that's fine. But not chronic anxiety about the game itself.

Of course, you say this and immediately the shills jump down your throat.

[Fueki.4753]

5 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

Of course, you say this and immediately the shills jump down your throat.

If shills jump down your throat, all you have to do is biting them back as hard as you can.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Ruisenior.6342]

   That's what it bothers me alot. Spending time to understand a class, puting sources on it to build it up and, suddenly, one day i start gw2 and all my stuff has been dismantled. 😪

   Anet let us play this game please!!

[Dawnbreaker.4901]

Mirage has been my most played character since the end of 2018. Behind that is my Necromancer and it trails off exponentially from there. Guardian was my main character throughout Core. I took an extended break during Heart of Thorns, returning to the game about mid-way through Path of Fire. I made an Elementalist at that point, but have never been good at it and the amount of struggling was enough for me to stop playing her entirely before I picked up the aforementioned Mirage.

The Mirage was a clean slate character. I haven't played Chronomancer or Virtuoso for a particularly noticeable amount of time. I picked up the Mesmer because it was a combination of a Subtlety Rogue and an Arcane Mage (Two classes I favored heavily in World of Warcraft). Mesmer was something I enjoyed playing in the original Guild Wars and I tried Mesmer at the beginning of GW2's lifetime, but I couldn't get into the Core gameplay - Shatter builds weren't all that fun and I didn't really understand Mesmer's clone/phantasm mechanics back then. Mirage is really what got me to stick around. If it wasn't for Mirage, I probably wouldn't have experienced what the entire game has to offer - I still need to complete End of Dragons. I only just finished Icebrood Saga a few months ago when I was playing actively.

My Necromancer remained with a Core build for eight years until Harbinger was introduced with End of Dragons. I did not enjoy playing Reaper or Scourge. I don't chase the Meta and I don't care to play popular classes otherwise. I have played on and off since Day 1 of Headstart Launch and Ranger is the class I've played the least.

I have roughly 7,000 hours total played time with nearly 2,200 of those hours being dedicated to playing Guardian in the pre-HoT days. 7,000 hours may not be very impressive and I've played the game less and less as the years went on. I won't go into specifics, but generally speaking, my enjoyment of the game has waxed and waned since HoT release. I'll probably end up poking my head in again when the 10th Anniversary events commence, but I have little intention of sticking around for very long.

As long as Mirage doesn't see too many hefty, dissatisfying balance changes, I'll continue to play the game until I'm sick of it and don't ever want to log in again.

Edited July 22, 2022 by FrenzyCat.9614

[Ashen.2907]

I understand the sentiment. My main is now retired after 7k+ hours since launch.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/18/2022 at 5:46 AM, CraftyK.9062 said:

And sure, raid meta is one thing and the rest of the game is the other. Though, I think that it is an issue if the builds are nerfed so hard that they are not even mentioned anymore on a raid-primarily build website. Especially when Power builds are(/were) harder to get value out of, whether it is through gearing (Power-Precision-Ferocity vs Condition DMG/Expertise), coordination (Unique Boons + set-up) and the rotation being more punishing in general (Condis can still tick if you're not doing anything, power on the other hand not so easily)

My god. I just had a look and there's less builds there now than there was pre-patch.

This is why people say Anet deletes more builds than they add.

Great work Anet.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Valisha.8650]

On 7/23/2022 at 12:33 AM, Kozumi.5816 said:

My god. I just had a look and there's less builds there now than there was pre-patch.

This is why people say Anet deletes more builds than they add.

Great work Anet.

Some specs are even entirely eliminated on build sites like snowcrows or lucky-noobs.

Seriously, it's one thing to admit that no game will ever be perfectly balanced, but it's WHOLE ANOTHER STORY to make it unbalanced on purpose / completely ignore the issue.

[CraftyK.9062]

7 hours ago, Valisha.8650 said:

Some specs are even entirely eliminated on build sites like snowcrows or lucky-noobs.

Seriously, it's one thing to admit that no game will ever be perfectly balanced, but it's WHOLE ANOTHER STORY to make it unbalanced on purpose / completely ignore the issue.

My limited raid/game experience started with Power DH and then I gradually moved on to also playing Firebrand and Willbender, condi/quick FB and Power/Condi WB. I really like Power specs as a whole because they feel more engaging and fun to play than Condi specs for me (aside from Willbender as it is kinda pog too)

 

Now, I think I would be catastrophizing if I said I couldnt get into any groups at all anymore, but I don't think that in a PUG scenario where most people can't tell how good someone is from the get-go unlike in a guild or premade I am making anyone a service playing pDH instead of stuff like cFB/qFB or just specs like mechanist or harb lmao.

 

It was demotivating to see pDH go from a pretty okay spec to Procession change making the rotation clunky, and then into basically obscurity as many other specs do more damage with less effort.

[OriginalSki.3908]

On 7/17/2022 at 7:50 AM, Valisha.8650 said:

GW2 has to be the first game in my history where I have such levels of uncertainty about a possibility of build, character, or something among those lines getting nerfed either for no valid reason

You've never played Warhammer 40k before...  Unreasonable nerfs are something I've gotten used to because of that game. My problem is, I'm a returning player and now I don't know what to play.  I was playing warrior and engineer 4 years ago, but I want to try something new.  I came back to the forums to get an idea about the state of the game, and now I'm all confused about all the doom and gloom...

 

[Valisha.8650]

1 hour ago, OriginalSki.3908 said:

You've never played Warhammer 40k before...  Unreasonable nerfs are something I've gotten used to because of that game. My problem is, I'm a returning player and now I don't know what to play.  I was playing warrior and engineer 4 years ago, but I want to try something new.  I came back to the forums to get an idea about the state of the game, and now I'm all confused about all the doom and gloom...

 

Things you could try out;

-Power/might bladesworn

-Condi alac specter

-Condi virtuoso

-Mechanist on your engi

-Condi willbender

[Labjax.2465]

On 7/26/2022 at 4:56 PM, OriginalSki.3908 said:

You've never played Warhammer 40k before...  Unreasonable nerfs are something I've gotten used to because of that game. My problem is, I'm a returning player and now I don't know what to play.  I was playing warrior and engineer 4 years ago, but I want to try something new.  I came back to the forums to get an idea about the state of the game, and now I'm all confused about all the doom and gloom...

 

Well as far as I can tell, the "safest" classes to play are Guardian and Engineer, specifically their specializations Firebrand (Guardian) and Mechanist (Engineer). They are also relatively easy to jump into for solo play if you adopt the right build, making them a solid choice for a returning player, and have, as I understand, some of the most wanted builds for instanced PvE too (especially Guardian).

Personally, when I play celestial Firebrand in open world PvE, I feel the most comfortable out of all the classes and builds I've played so far, in the sense that I'm the least worried about dying compared to other classes and builds I play. It took some learning to get a feel for using tomes, but once I got the hang of it, I started realizing how much I could handle in a more straightforward way. Comparatively, when I play celestial Tempest (Elementalist), I feel like I'm in hyper mode and am fighting placement of mobs in relation to overloads half the time. I actually prefer the 2nd one because it's more engaging, but it can get tiring lol.

[Ruisenior.6342]

16 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Well as far as I can tell, the "safest" classes to play are Guardian and Engineer, specifically their specializations Firebrand (Guardian) and Mechanist (Engineer). They are also relatively easy to jump into for solo play if you adopt the right build, making them a solid choice for a returning player, and have, as I understand, some of the most wanted builds for instanced PvE too (especially Guardian).

Personally, when I play celestial Firebrand in open world PvE, I feel the most comfortable out of all the classes and builds I've played so far, in the sense that I'm the least worried about dying compared to other classes and builds I play. It took some learning to get a feel for using tomes, but once I got the hang of it, I started realizing how much I could handle in a more straightforward way. Comparatively, when I play celestial Tempest (Elementalist), I feel like I'm in hyper mode and am fighting placement of mobs in relation to overloads half the time. I actually prefer the 2nd one because it's more engaging, but it can get tiring lol.

Firebrand is S+ tier for group content but for solo play is quite lackluster. There are way better specs for solo and when i use guardian for solo my pick is Willbender.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342

[Esufer.8762]

unfortunately picking a class and then crossing your fingers that it doesn't get arbitrarily burnt to the ground or knee-jerk over-nerfed (or just loses viability due to random bugs out of nowhere) is a massive part of GW2 right now. If only the balance and quality control was as good as the combat mechanics are!