Looking for advice on a class to main fractals

[Julius Seizure.4985]

Hey guys, I was looking for some advice on what to gear up for fractals. I used to use Necromancer and a Condi Ranger, but it seems like DPS is always available and maybe I should bring a support class.

I mostly play in pugs, and tend to value completing the fractal over pure speed. Would a Druid be best to bring to fractals and is it in demand? What about a Venturi Renegade? Or is it best to not go support at all?

Any advice and thoughts on this would be welcomed. Thanks—

[steki.1478]

Both are pretty good, but people probably prefer druid. You can always check LFG to see what's in demand.

[VanWilder.6923]

Druid and Chrono are the most wanted in both High tier Fracs and Raids.

[Nephalem.8921]

For pugs druid is probably asked the most as support. Condi in general is not that great that fracs so every power build is usually better. Holo, Dragonhunter, Weaver, Soulbeast are all really good.

Druid is not that great of a healer though. Firebrand is much stronger but druid brings offensive buffs so there is that. Druid heal is mostly overkill anyways.

[Feanor.2358]

Speaking from meta perspective, there are two compositions currently used widely:1x chrono, 1x banner warrior/spellbreaker, 1x druid, 2x dpsor,1x chrono, 1x banner warrior/spellbreaker, 3x dps.

Only the absolute top-tier parties opt for the 3x dps comp, so I'd say either of the 3 support builds (warrior is more like a support/dps hybrid) is a safe bet.

On the dps side, I would highly recommend Holosmith. Extremely strong and reliable, with excellent cleave and good access to CC. Dragonhunter and Soulbeast are also fine choices, with Slb having the higher burst and DH probably being the safest and easiest to play. Stay away from Weaver, unless you really, really like the playstyle. It is extremely reliant on the party, and unless you put a LOT of practice in it you'll be getting worse results with it than any of the other options while having worse utility.

If you're not that concerned with the meta parties, you can consider the off-meta healers as well. They will all outperform Druids in terms of raw healing, so they make for better carries. Ventari rev, support Firebrand, heal Tempest, maybe even heal Scrapper. The reason they are off-meta is the good parties don't need all that healing (see above for the people running without a healer at all), and that Druids offer unparalleled offensive support.

Hope that helps.

[Julius Seizure.4985]

Thanks for the feedback guys— it helps so much.

I already main Engineer, and am quite good at Holosmith. The thing is that I WvW on it extensively and don’t want to swap out the infusions (+5 Power, +1% guard damage) every time I swap game modes. I also was thinking it would be good to have Fractals be both a break from PvP/WvW game modes as well as a break on a class-play level.

It seems like Chrono may be the optimal class to bring, followed by Druid. I will mess around with these two classes and see which I like the most and go all in from there. I am still drawn to off meta support classes, like Rev and Tempest, but I might as well go for something in the meta.

Thanks again,