Im wondering about 2 classes...

[Inugami.1345]

I been reading a lot this past days about GW2 classes and after reading the builds and what classes can and cant do I go down to 2 classes. Necro and Guardian. I want to be able to have a class that can go 2 ways, either Strong DPS or supportive healer so I don't get tired of doing the same always. I liked chronomancer but I found it somewhat confusing. Necro can go full DPS with the Shroud ability and also "healer" with the scourge (I know is mostly barriers but hey, some can survive a direct death.) Guardian can be Power DPS too using the dragonhunter and the healer firebrand that most people want in a group (only that the tomes are a big confusing for me). Now Necro have a huge HP pool with is awesome and guardian not so much but the healing is great. Also my guild told me the necro healer is not required as before so I'm stuck on which one to play. I wanna hear your suggestions so can made a decision.

I know people want to have plenty of booms but I tend to forgot to keep the uptime with them. I read that healer Scourge is like a beginners route so I don't know what to do. I mostly solo content and never being in a raid.

[Bast.7253]

6 minutes ago, Inugami.1345 said:

I been reading a lot this past days about GW2 classes and after reading the builds and what classes can and cant do I go down to 2 classes. Necro and Guardian. I want to be able to have a class that can go 2 ways, either Strong DPS or supportive healer so I don't get tired of doing the same always. I liked chronomancer but I found it somewhat confusing. Necro can go full DPS with the Shroud ability and also "healer" with the scourge (I know is mostly barriers but hey, some can survive a direct death.) Guardian can be Power DPS too using the dragonhunter and the healer firebrand that most people want in a group (only that the tomes are a big confusing for me). Now Necro have a huge HP pool with is awesome and guardian not so much but the healing is great. Also my guild told me the necro healer is not required as before so I'm stuck on which one to play. I wanna hear your suggestions so can made a decision.

I know people want to have plenty of booms but I tend to forgot to keep the uptime with them. I read that healer Scourge is like a beginners route so I don't know what to do. I mostly solo content and never being in a raid.

Full healing scourge can carry a raid pretty hard but they're likely sacrificing a lot of damage and it may be unnecessary if the group knows the mechanics.

The playstyle is also more of a ... drop a shade.. spam some barrier.. drop a healing well.. rez people. It's not really a "healing" build in the traditional support healer kind of role.

If you're looking for something a little bit more active that takes more effort I would say probably Guard is your best bet. They also have a lot of options for damage builds where as necro is generally going to be stuck with condition builds unless you're running reaper. But reaper in raids I don't think is ideal for most groups and keeping up with shroud management can be kind of annoying - especially if you have to switch to greatsword and spam whirlwind 2 repeatedly below 50% health.

I'd say go with guard.

As far as healing specifically, I've found support tempest and druid to be the most fun at healing. Both have decent damage builds though I think ranger is kind of locked into only being a condition-oriented damage build in raids. I don't really raid so I can't say. But ele has a lot of options for damage.

Tempest admittedly is really easy to heal with and a lot of groups don't really carry it as much as they used to either I think because it's just so much healing that it isn't overly necessary for the damage loss. 

[Inugami.1345]

Ummmm never played ranger before...

[Pacificterror.7805]

I main a Necro but the more I read about Guardian, the more intriguing it sounds to me. It's definitely the next character I'll work on (at some point) but no idea if I'll like it more or less than my Necro.

[Inugami.1345]

I made a guardian, got to lvl 80 and a friend run me HoT to get the heal firebrand at least. I found it so... slow. Like I dont get the satisfaction I get from the necro. I mean I want a solo class. I was reading the Mirage class is viable soloing but the dps is horrible.

[Infusion.7149]

Yeh don't run heal firebrand in openworld. You want to go damage for openworld , worst case plageudoctor (condi + heal).

[Inugami.1345]

3 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Yeh don't run heal firebrand in openworld. You want to go damage for openworld , worst case plageudoctor (condi + heal).

I mostly run solo and random people fractals. Like I said, havent step into raids and mostly want to kill open world champions.

[Infusion.7149]

Have a look at https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Firebrand_-_Quickness_Seraph_DPS
and https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Firebrand_-_Quickness_Support_Condi_DPS

[Teratus.2859]

Dunno much about Guardians so got nothing there.

But Necros i'm familiar with.
While they can play DPS they are a bit lacking as you'll often hear people bring up compared to other classes.
Still they can fill this role fine it's just there are classes who can do DPS a tad better than Necro can.

When it comes to support and healing.. Necro is severely underrated imo.
Barriers are one element they do well when you go scourge but they can heal pretty well too and Necro's downed support is insanely good.
They can stop bleedout, pull downed allies, speed res and if need be instant revive someone with a signet.. which honestly they don't even need.
A single necro can revive a whole party, or even a full raid team in seconds if need be.. and they can do this fairly frequently as well on top of the barrier support, all while being very tanky and hard to kill.

It puts the revive potential of other classes to shame if you ask me, even good skills like Warriors Battle Standard which can instantly revive 5 players is nothing compared to the downed support a Necro has access to.. they are the best in this area without question.

Check out this recent vid from Teapot if you want to see a Scourge carrying a raid team 🙂
Even pulls off an 8 man res saving the raid from a wipe.. only misses the Druid and ends up solo healing the team for the rest of the raid.

 

[mikko.4013]

8 hours ago, Inugami.1345 said:

I made a guardian, got to lvl 80 and a friend run me HoT to get the heal firebrand at least. I found it so... slow. Like I dont get the satisfaction I get from the necro. I mean I want a solo class. I was reading the Mirage class is viable soloing but the dps is horrible.

You shouldn't use a healer build for solo open world... Healer build has no DPS, hence the slow pace.

 

As a returning player, I knew I would farm T4 fractals, and I knew lack of healer (HealBrand) was the big limitation of a fractal party. That's why I lvled up my guardian with a berserker build, so that I could wreck open world easily, and at the same time I lvled up my armorsmith and weaponsmith to 500.

At lvl80, I unlocked Dragon Hunter Elite to farm faster, and then I unlocked Firebrand Elite to be able to use a HealBrand build.

 

As long as I got a HB build with half the gear, i could apply to any fractal party. Now I have 162AR, and full gear, so I run daily T4 fract.

 

I also play HealScourge, and I enjoy it, but it lacks the HB utilities : quickness, stability, aegis, bubbles, packing...

 

IMHO, HealScourge shines most with hard carrying PUG parties.

If you play with good/organized/optimized players, HealBrand is superior.

[Inugami.1345]

Argh both classes are good. Both classes do what I want. Yea the HealScourge lacks a lot of boons for the team but I know under HB Im gonna keep forgetting keeping the boons up while on the necro I can be a little more relaxed on that. I think gonna go Necro while I learn how to properly play support since they only thing I know is to bite boss face and heal myself when needed.

[voltaicbore.8012]

Necro is the clear choice for you. As others noted, in a supportive playstyle, it's extremely simple but effective. On the other hand, you mentioned not being a fan of the tomes and not having confidence in the boon uptime.

 

While a full support necro does sacrifice a good amount of damage, you can easily change a handful of traits and flesh out a second gear template to do significantly more damage for when you don't need the huge barriers and revives.

[Inugami.1345]

18 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Necro is the clear choice for you. As others noted, in a supportive playstyle, it's extremely simple but effective. On the other hand, you mentioned not being a fan of the tomes and not having confidence in the boon uptime.

 

While a full support necro does sacrifice a good amount of damage, you can easily change a handful of traits and flesh out a second gear template to do significantly more damage for when you don't need the huge barriers and revives.

Yup gonna main a necro then and learn more about it.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

On 5/20/2021 at 7:08 PM, Inugami.1345 said:

Yup gonna main a necro then and learn more about it.

And there is a lot to learn:) But it'll be fun. Necro is simple, but not shallow. You'll be amazed at wealth of defensive options that don't destroy your damage output as well as at how many ways you can build your necro.
All the while you can rest easy regarding playing alone, as necro is very self sufficient profession that can basically provide everything he needs by himself:)

[Inugami.1345]

22 hours ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

And there is a lot to learn:) But it'll be fun. Necro is simple, but not shallow. You'll be amazed at wealth of defensive options that don't destroy your damage output as well as at how many ways you can build your necro.
All the while you can rest easy regarding playing alone, as necro is very self sufficient profession that can basically provide everything he needs by himself:)

So far Im even soloing champions... all I need is how to get ascended gear and which type. Sites says Magi, others say Shaman.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

3 hours ago, Inugami.1345 said:

So far Im even soloing champions... all I need is how to get ascended gear and which type. Sites says Magi, others say Shaman.

Whoa, easy there cowboy!
These are healing power sets - for a healer scourge that does endgame group content. Arguably Shaman can be used to solo, as it has condition damage, but not a great amount of it, and is missing secondary offensive stat for condition builds - expertise.

If you want to solo stuff and are not a necro prodigy do yourself and favor and consider these gear sets:

1. trailblazer - a condi tank gear set. It has  both offensive condition stats (condi damage and expertise) with two defensive stats (tougness and vitality). It'll provide very solid condi damage and a resilient stats base to build around so you can make your necro very hard to kill. The missing part to all this is self healing, but you're safe here too. Condi necro has a few ways to heal himself without needing the healing power stat and played right becomes one man army.

2. marauder - this is the direct/power damage gear set. Reaper's favourite when again you're not super proficient on a necro. It's a case of extremely fortunate sets of stats for a power necro, that by simply sacrificing some critical damage output when compared to pure power damage top dogs  like bersker and assassin grants you some bonus vitality not found on them, and that alone is enough to make your reaper that much safer to play. Because of the vitality and high precision stat, your marauder reaper can build in various ways, including tanky setups with death magic, and still not lose a large chunk of damage. Other power sets either make you too squishy or rely on specific crit boosting traits greatly limiting your build freedom.

3. knight/carrion/shaman/apothecary - both above gear sets come with expansions. If you don't have them and need to build tanky while having some damage, these are the runner ups. Knight is a tanky power set that gives some nice precision so you can hit these crits without having to build everything around crit chance. Carrion is the hybrid damage set with huge vitality stat. Still as it's main stat is condition damage and power requires both precision and ferocity to work proper, consider it a condition damage set, that will do bit of power damage along the way and give you very high health. Shaman is the solo condi healer spec. It has healing, it has very high vitality (scourges love that stat as it lets them use their shade skills much more freely) and has condi damage to pull through solo encouters. The flaw is that there is no expertise and condi damage value isn't that great, albeit still worlds better than magi  that has non. Apothecary is the super condi tank. Flaw same as shaman - the condi damage stat isn't very bountiful here, just servicable. Additionally no vitality at all, so scourges will have to watch their shades usage.
But the combo of toughness + beastly healing power along with things like parasitic contagion can make your scourge practically unkillable. Problem is it'll kill things very slowly..

Edited May 22, 2021 by ZeftheWicked.3076

[Inugami.1345]

Well I never go on speed runs so I dont mind taking 7 mins to kill something as long I can do it but yea Im gonna print this and start getting at least trailblazer and shaman for the time being. I would even join your guild and call you sensei for the awesome advice. (Yea my guild is becoming very lazy lately)

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

10 minutes ago, Inugami.1345 said:

Well I never go on speed runs so I dont mind taking 7 mins to kill something as long I can do it but yea Im gonna print this and start getting at least trailblazer and shaman for the time being. I would even join your guild and call you sensei for the awesome advice. (Yea my guild is becoming very lazy lately)

Well i'm a proud 1 man guild owner but sure, if you're on EU or NA (since these can do PvE together) you can add me ingame and join my Jungle Krewe. Since I'm about theory crafting and experimentation i can help you here and there when it comes to necro builds and theory 🙂

[Inugami.1345]

Well im at NA Tarnished Coast and already add you because I will surely need your help 

[Firebeard.1746]

Guardian has been a dev favorite for a while. We literally had to beg them to put it more in line with the rest of the other classes on the last balance patch.

That aside, in the current metas, guardian is definitely stronger. In theory. The rotation on power reaper is so simplistic that it actually tends to beat other DPS classes in groups where the other DPS aren't very good. Scourge is a very powerful healer, it lacks offensive boons and offensive buffs which tend to put it lower on the healer rungs of the ladder, but can hard carry almost on some encounters. heal tempest running water and earth is similar, but HS I would argue is stronger.

Also note that necro's DPS options, condi scourge and power reaper tend to do terrible on any encounter with a ton movement (largos being a primary example).

TLDR: if you intend to do high-end PVE and actually learn your class, go guard. Necro is basically open-world godmode.

Though, I'd put in a plug for working on both a little if you can manage it: they're both getting a new elite spec in EoD that could change things a bit. Any gear progression in this game is permanent, so it wouldn't hurt to play around with both if you have the time.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Firebeard.1746
more thoughts about EoD

[Touchme.1097]

You can also go both ways choosing a profession which can be played as condi DPS or power DPS, it doesn't have to be able to play as support because sometime condi may be just as valuable as bringing a support.

Guardian can fill everything

Necro can fill everything

Warrior can play condi, power DPS and also support

Revenant can play condi, power DPS and also heal and support

Mesmer can play condi, power DPS and support with boons (both alacrity and quickness)

Ranger can fill everything

Thief can play condi, power DPS and also support with boon thief

Elementalist can play condi, power DPS and heal but lacks quickness and alacrity

Engineer can play condi, power DPS and heal with scrapper which now brings quickness (not permanent sadly)

 

At the end of the day it's really a matter of preference, just avoid playing Elementalist because the juice is not worth the squeeze, it can be hard to play and brings little to no utility