I agree with Buddies tier list because every time I really like a class in an MMO it is the longest to be brought up to par. My faves were Engineer and Elementalist...sooooo.
I'll agree on necros, incredibly difficult to kill. I will disagree on elementalist. You obviously played with/against bad eles; they have the MOST versatility of any class in PvP because of their 4 forms.
This is SIMILAR to what I ran and seems a bit more optimal than what I actually did (which was put the 10 that's in water into earth and use arcane shield instead of the teleport; this is just better IMO). I regularly was able to take out thieves 1v1 and contribute to team fights in a significant manner. This is a super fast, super elusive build that allows you to run around to keep away from melee classes and put a significant amount of blind out.
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
I played the elementalist! . haha
I really liked the elementalist, I just felt that they were toned down and some of their damage needs to be tweaked. I said it in an earlier post that it felt like you weren't meant to switch attunements a lot, and to mainly use 2 with going into the other 2 for specific reasons like water to drop a condition and a quick heal. For the amount of setup needed to deal damage as an elementalist, it just didn't seem worth it to me and thats why I placed them in their spot on my list.
I'll agree that they are the most versatile, which is why I really like them. IMO they have the best ability to get into and out of fights, but are very fragile even with full Vit/Toughness gear traits, and so those escape utilities are a must.
That and their base health seemed the lowest out of all the classes I played. I'd expect their damage to be through the roof when the default build is built straight for damage and leaves you with 10k health. I did not experience as such, and spent most of the time being 1-2 shot by other damage dealers when I was no way capable of doing that to anyone else. I jumped on a thief after playing an elementalist for like 8 hours and was amazed out how easy it was to kill people.
Not to dismiss your point out of hand or anything, but I believe some of your trouble is that you're approaching this wrong.
EDIT: To clarify, it sounds like you're approaching it along the traditional role of some classes being "DPS/damage dealers" and some not.
This isn't really the right way to look at it.
Elementalists have very low health because of their extreme versatility, not because they're the "glass cannon" class or anything. They're the profession that excels at switching on the fly between damage, control, support, and defense. Other professions do have a lot of versatility, yes, but those professions can't really kick ass in all four at once like the elementalist does.
You can spec them solely for damage, but if you do so you're better off playing a different profession, honestly, one that is a bit more focused.
EDIT2: @REG_Rysk - That is exactly what you should be doing. Elementalists are incredibly fun, but only when you're playing them to their potential. They're a lot more complicated than they appear to be at second glance (first glance makes them look insanely complicated due to the abilities, second glance makes you go, "Oh, I can just focus on one or two elements at first." Second glance is wrong.)
The default build for the elementalist is straight up damage. They are traited and geared for it. They get Vapor Form and Tornado as defensive options, and then Arcane Blast and I can't remember the other utility. So that's what I tried to do at first, and it was terrible. I was playing with friends, so I wasn't going against people that didn't know what the hell was going on. I'd show up in a fight and I would immediately die to Bull Rush + Thousand Blades 75% of the time from one of the two warriors on the other team, the other 25% of the time I would hit Vapor Form and GTFO. So I quickly changed builds.
Went with a 25/20/5/0/20(Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Arcane) build I think after that. Tried to mix some damage, personal survivability, and support for my team. And that worked better for me, but the support to my team was severely lacking possibly from some traits not working. I kept Vapor Form because I feel that it is silly not to have it. Switched out Tornado for summon elemental. Picked up Glyph of renewal which turned out to not work or I didn't understand how it was supposed to work. And kept Arcane Blast because it did good AE damage. Swapped out the gear for more health and toughness but not trying to sacrifice too much power, and got my health to 20k. The next game I didn't die to one Bull Rush + Thousand Blades combo anymore, so I was happy. But now it took me a long time to kill people, despite being traited pretty deep in damage traits. Things were feeling better but not quite there. A few tweaks here and there, and it didn't get much better. I felt like I wasn't a waste of a spot as I was in the default build, but I didn't feel like I was really contributing like my friends playing necro, ranger, thief and warrior.
The next morning I rolled up a thief and tried out their default build, which was double dagger // double pistol traited and geared for damage. It was sickening how quickly I killed people. I was laughing my ass off finding low to medium armor people and dropping them. My friends get on and one of them gets on his ranger and joins my game. He gets on the other team, and we quickly gain respect for eachother. If we don't see eachother then we would drop the the other very quickly. As the game went on though, he was having a much easier time adapting to my thief than my thief was adapting to his ranger. He was also straight up murdering other people on my team worse than I was doing to his team.
I tried out a Shadow Discipline/Acrobatics build for a highly mobile and stealthy thief instead of the murder your face thief. It was pretty fun, but I think I sacrificed too much damage for too much mobility. I could stick to anyone, but my damage wasn't enough to kill some of the beefier targets. In fact, I couldn't even damage Necro and Guardians with it as they could easily out heal my damage with passives.
I tried out Warrior and Guardian builds, but didn't extensively test them. Two friends built warriors (the Bull rush + Thousand blades combo from above) and tried out many different builds. Another friend who had been in previous betas played a Necro and Guardian. And my one friend that played most of his time on many different classes in sPvP ended up on a necro tank build. He is also the one that tested out the ranger quite a bit. We couldn't find anything that could hold a candle to his necro.
Between the 6 of my friends, we had these characters.
3 thiefs
3 warriors
3 guardians
2 elementalists
2 rangers
2 necros
1 engineer
1 mesmer
That is where my little tier list that seems to have made quite a few of you really mad mostly came from. I took the opinions of what people have been saying in other forums as well, and for the most part they matched up well with our impressions of the classes. I'm glad to see that some of you, Rysk, had good success with one of the professions we saw as one of the weaker. Which is why I made that list to see what everyone elses opinions were. Rysk must have found some build tweaks that I didn't get to on the elementalist that may have made a profound difference in my experience with them.
My plans in the next Beta are to level a Ranger or Warrior, haven't decided yet, as I did an elementalist in this past BWE. I will make a level 2 elementalist to continue practicing with and trying to get better in sPvP with because they are the funnest to me as I really like switching between all the attunements to do stuff. And I think I will also make a level 2 engineer for testing in sPvP.
Another thing you don't really take into account here, and don't take this the wrong way, is player skill. What if you and your friends aren't really good? How is any of this meaningful? Or, a VERY likely scenario, what if some of the classes that you deemed "bad" or "shit tear" are just classes that you weren't good at? Most people are going to be better at some classes and terrible at others.
And it's all well and good to discuss the class strengths and weaknesses, but tier lists from some random guy on the internet rub everyone the wrong way. They are pretty useless and awful.
Also, easy does NOT equal better. Something may be easy to kill with but someione else might have some class/build that is much harder to use that can kick the "easy to kill with" classes ass everytime. But if that person playing the easy class tries it they may get their asses kicked.
Which is why I came to everyone here to see what their opinions are on my little list. I know for a fact that myself, and my friends, aren't nearly as good as a lot of people out there. I can account for how good my friends and myself are th. I know that one of my friends is better than me, so I don't take it too hard when he beats me. I know that if he wins 60% of the time, then what we are playing is pretty even, because that's about how often he beats me in other stuff.
So far I've gotten Rysk and Caedere disagreeing with my experience with the elementalist. Some agreement that necromancer is good. And a whole lot of "YOU CAN'T TIER THIS GAME!" okay... sorry to offend you with my opinion on what I think which professions have better builds than others.
You also got a really in depth view of engineer that nobody seemed to notice
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
Did you see what Jon Peters had to say on this? It was a really interesting point.
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
There were a lot of complaints about that and they are looking at the melee vs ranged balance going into the next BWE.
Edit: To elaborate on what Arenanet's stance is a little bit it's part balance and adding in more control tools and part the existing control tools not being used as much as they should be.
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Buddies, you're not some teenager posting on GameFAQs, man. You should know better than to force tiers onto things, especially onto games that don't even tier.
Why don't you just discuss general strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to rank the professions against each other? That would lead to a much more productive and fruitful discussion.
I thought that's what I did with my impressions of the classes under the tier list that seems to have caused this page of argument on whether such a thing exists or not for a game like this. I am not bringing some tier list down from the heavens written on tablets. I am not set in stone on what I think is the best.
I think Necromancers are a very strong profession. too strong. They don't have to sacrifice much damage to gain a ton of survivability, and have access to some really good CC and conditional damage.
Rangers are also another very strong profession. Their weapon skills and profession abilities synergize very well together. They have great survivability and great damage, but have less accessibility to CC and conditions while built that way. Did I make up a word there?
Engineers seem like they need a lot of work. I've read that a developer has acknowledge their kits need work. A lot of their stuff seemed to either not work as intended, or were just very weak for what you had to do to get it. I feel that for each thing an engineer can do for your team, another class can do better.
Guardians I feel are much better than what the past BWE has me to believe. They have some great support and utility, and may allow you to build a good team around one. Unfortunately we weren't able to reliably play on the same team, so we couldn't see if a support guardian could complement a profession built for straight damage to see if the whole was greater than its parts.
I think you will see a lot of necromancers in sPvP. A lot of rangers. You will likely see guardians often if they work as well as I think they might. Everything else will be in and out depending on player preference and team build/synergy.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I'll agree on necros, incredibly difficult to kill. I will disagree on elementalist. You obviously played with/against bad eles; they have the MOST versatility of any class in PvP because of their 4 forms.
This is SIMILAR to what I ran and seems a bit more optimal than what I actually did (which was put the 10 that's in water into earth and use arcane shield instead of the teleport; this is just better IMO). I regularly was able to take out thieves 1v1 and contribute to team fights in a significant manner. This is a super fast, super elusive build that allows you to run around to keep away from melee classes and put a significant amount of blind out.
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
I played the elementalist! . haha
I really liked the elementalist, I just felt that they were toned down and some of their damage needs to be tweaked. I said it in an earlier post that it felt like you weren't meant to switch attunements a lot, and to mainly use 2 with going into the other 2 for specific reasons like water to drop a condition and a quick heal. For the amount of setup needed to deal damage as an elementalist, it just didn't seem worth it to me and thats why I placed them in their spot on my list.
I'll agree that they are the most versatile, which is why I really like them. IMO they have the best ability to get into and out of fights, but are very fragile even with full Vit/Toughness gear traits, and so those escape utilities are a must.
That and their base health seemed the lowest out of all the classes I played. I'd expect their damage to be through the roof when the default build is built straight for damage and leaves you with 10k health. I did not experience as such, and spent most of the time being 1-2 shot by other damage dealers when I was no way capable of doing that to anyone else. I jumped on a thief after playing an elementalist for like 8 hours and was amazed out how easy it was to kill people.
Not to dismiss your point out of hand or anything, but I believe some of your trouble is that you're approaching this wrong.
EDIT: To clarify, it sounds like you're approaching it along the traditional role of some classes being "DPS/damage dealers" and some not.
This isn't really the right way to look at it.
Elementalists have very low health because of their extreme versatility, not because they're the "glass cannon" class or anything. They're the profession that excels at switching on the fly between damage, control, support, and defense. Other professions do have a lot of versatility, yes, but those professions can't really kick ass in all four at once like the elementalist does.
You can spec them solely for damage, but if you do so you're better off playing a different profession, honestly, one that is a bit more focused.
EDIT2: @REG_Rysk - That is exactly what you should be doing. Elementalists are incredibly fun, but only when you're playing them to their potential. They're a lot more complicated than they appear to be at second glance (first glance makes them look insanely complicated due to the abilities, second glance makes you go, "Oh, I can just focus on one or two elements at first." Second glance is wrong.)
The default build for the elementalist is straight up damage. They are traited and geared for it. They get Vapor Form and Tornado as defensive options, and then Arcane Blast and I can't remember the other utility. So that's what I tried to do at first, and it was terrible. I was playing with friends, so I wasn't going against people that didn't know what the hell was going on. I'd show up in a fight and I would immediately die to Bull Rush + Thousand Blades 75% of the time from one of the two warriors on the other team, the other 25% of the time I would hit Vapor Form and GTFO. So I quickly changed builds.
Went with a 25/20/5/0/20(Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Arcane) build I think after that. Tried to mix some damage, personal survivability, and support for my team. And that worked better for me, but the support to my team was severely lacking possibly from some traits not working. I kept Vapor Form because I feel that it is silly not to have it. Switched out Tornado for summon elemental. Picked up Glyph of renewal which turned out to not work or I didn't understand how it was supposed to work. And kept Arcane Blast because it did good AE damage. Swapped out the gear for more health and toughness but not trying to sacrifice too much power, and got my health to 20k. The next game I didn't die to one Bull Rush + Thousand Blades combo anymore, so I was happy. But now it took me a long time to kill people, despite being traited pretty deep in damage traits. Things were feeling better but not quite there. A few tweaks here and there, and it didn't get much better. I felt like I wasn't a waste of a spot as I was in the default build, but I didn't feel like I was really contributing like my friends playing necro, ranger, thief and warrior.
The next morning I rolled up a thief and tried out their default build, which was double dagger // double pistol traited and geared for damage. It was sickening how quickly I killed people. I was laughing my ass off finding low to medium armor people and dropping them. My friends get on and one of them gets on his ranger and joins my game. He gets on the other team, and we quickly gain respect for eachother. If we don't see eachother then we would drop the the other very quickly. As the game went on though, he was having a much easier time adapting to my thief than my thief was adapting to his ranger. He was also straight up murdering other people on my team worse than I was doing to his team.
I tried out a Shadow Discipline/Acrobatics build for a highly mobile and stealthy thief instead of the murder your face thief. It was pretty fun, but I think I sacrificed too much damage for too much mobility. I could stick to anyone, but my damage wasn't enough to kill some of the beefier targets. In fact, I couldn't even damage Necro and Guardians with it as they could easily out heal my damage with passives.
I tried out Warrior and Guardian builds, but didn't extensively test them. Two friends built warriors (the Bull rush + Thousand blades combo from above) and tried out many different builds. Another friend who had been in previous betas played a Necro and Guardian. And my one friend that played most of his time on many different classes in sPvP ended up on a necro tank build. He is also the one that tested out the ranger quite a bit. We couldn't find anything that could hold a candle to his necro.
Between the 6 of my friends, we had these characters.
3 thiefs
3 warriors
3 guardians
2 elementalists
2 rangers
2 necros
1 engineer
1 mesmer
That is where my little tier list that seems to have made quite a few of you really mad mostly came from. I took the opinions of what people have been saying in other forums as well, and for the most part they matched up well with our impressions of the classes. I'm glad to see that some of you, Rysk, had good success with one of the professions we saw as one of the weaker. Which is why I made that list to see what everyone elses opinions were. Rysk must have found some build tweaks that I didn't get to on the elementalist that may have made a profound difference in my experience with them.
My plans in the next Beta are to level a Ranger or Warrior, haven't decided yet, as I did an elementalist in this past BWE. I will make a level 2 elementalist to continue practicing with and trying to get better in sPvP with because they are the funnest to me as I really like switching between all the attunements to do stuff. And I think I will also make a level 2 engineer for testing in sPvP.
Another thing you don't really take into account here, and don't take this the wrong way, is player skill. What if you and your friends aren't really good? How is any of this meaningful? Or, a VERY likely scenario, what if some of the classes that you deemed "bad" or "shit tear" are just classes that you weren't good at? Most people are going to be better at some classes and terrible at others.
And it's all well and good to discuss the class strengths and weaknesses, but tier lists from some random guy on the internet rub everyone the wrong way. They are pretty useless and awful.
Also, easy does NOT equal better. Something may be easy to kill with but someione else might have some class/build that is much harder to use that can kick the "easy to kill with" classes ass everytime. But if that person playing the easy class tries it they may get their asses kicked.
Which is why I came to everyone here to see what their opinions are on my little list. I know for a fact that myself, and my friends, aren't nearly as good as a lot of people out there. I can account for how good my friends and myself are th. I know that one of my friends is better than me, so I don't take it too hard when he beats me. I know that if he wins 60% of the time, then what we are playing is pretty even, because that's about how often he beats me in other stuff.
So far I've gotten Rysk and Caedere disagreeing with my experience with the elementalist. Some agreement that necromancer is good. And a whole lot of "YOU CAN'T TIER THIS GAME!" okay... sorry to offend you with my opinion on what I think which professions have better builds than others.
Ok I believe errbody needs to chillax up in dis thread.
Hmmm... let me try and explain my view better. You still seem to be looking at it in the tier perspective... in that any information that doesn't apply to that should be ignored. Other information was offered but you are saying "the only people who actually responded with anything are these two people" That is simply not true. My comments were part of the overall discussion, not just some attack on you. I really meant for you not to take that personally. But everythign I said was me weighing in on the subject.
Please don't dismiss others comments so easily. Discussing THE OVERALL balance of the classes is imperative and what I was doing.
You keep saying for people to "prove what you disagree on my my list" but the problem is because no one else wants to use a tier-list, that discussion isn't quite working out. Try to pose that question in a different non-tiered fashion if you aren't getting the responses you want.
We're reasonible people around here. You just have to try and understand where we're coming from ;P
Why are you guys jumping up Buddies's ass? Maybe lumping into tiers isn't really accurate, and that's cool, so you should disagree with him. But you ARE being pretty hostile to him, and he brought something that is at least conversation worthy: his detailed opinions on what he saw of class balance in beta. We're starved for discussion topics while we wait for the next BWE. This is something fun to talk about.
I guess.
I just remember when it comes to PVP, he was in the SWTOR thread using term like "hardcore" and "carebear" towards other people... so seeing him bring that attitude that comes with "tier lists" is just gonna irk people.
One of the HUGE selling points of GW2 is that you can play it how you wanna play it... tier lists are the total opposite of that, and they try to dictate how people should play the game.
Its also just stupid at this point, since player skill is going to be EXTREMELY random in a weekend beta.
I think this might be what I was missing. I didn't know Buddies was already known for unpopular opinions in MMO's? All I saw in this thread was some guy who was new to me saying, "Here's what I think the power balance looks like across classes in this last beta weekend, what do you think?" and a bunch of people dogpiling the shit out of him.
For the record, I don't think A-net is very good at balancing classes. This was mitigated in GW1 because you could cross-class. Spirit spammer has been stupidly OP in PvE content for some time, and so any class that can take rit as their secondary just builds a variant of spirit spammer. They're slightly better at balancing in PvP, but there's still a reason that everyone quits your arena team if there isn't at least one monk primary and another monk secondary on the team.
There are balance issues all over the place and there may need to be some more utility for melee, but I think to some degree people who are complaining about melee haven't fully grasped GW2 combat yet. That is not an insult. I myself had trouble with melee weapon sets compared to ranged which naturally allow more breathing room. That doesn't necessarily mean that melee is doomed. Ideally it would be:
Ranged = Easy to learn, hard to master
Melee = Bit harder to learn, still hard to master
That is where my little tier list that seems to have made quite a few of you really mad mostly came from. I took the opinions of what people have been saying in other forums as well, and for the most part they matched up well with our impressions of the classes. I'm glad to see that some of you, Rysk, had good success with one of the professions we saw as one of the weaker. Which is why I made that list to see what everyone elses opinions were. Rysk must have found some build tweaks that I didn't get to on the elementalist that may have made a profound difference in my experience with them.
I'm not mad about the sPvP list, I just don't quite see the point at this stage, and the bolded sentence is why. We haven't had enough time with the game yet.
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
I can't speak for too much but I know as a melee mesmer I wrecked all sorts of shit whether it was ranged or melee. I also know that the little bit I played my guardian he SEEMED to have enough in the way of gap closers, condition removal and CC to get to ranged classes and stick decently. He also seemed beefy enough in WvWvW to get in and out without instantly exploding if I picked my targets well.
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
I played a warrior till about 11 or 12 and felt they were pretty damn awesome. Ranged or Melee. I was able to take on about 2 1-2 levels higher than me mobs melee. I did have to dodge and not sit in front of them while they hit me with their best powers, but I think that is with any class. And you can't always use range in the world, I was over by beetlebun I think it was called and started walking through the sewers and there was no room to kite or run. As long as I was able to keep them in front of me I was hitting both mobs with "single" attacks and also the few AOE type ones that the greatsword had.
I usually go range in most MMOs because melee is usually boring to me, but I had a blast with the warrior. Just my experience, I know I have read examples of both sides.
Fletchsm on
[GIR is disguised as a government agent]
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
I'll agree on necros, incredibly difficult to kill. I will disagree on elementalist. You obviously played with/against bad eles; they have the MOST versatility of any class in PvP because of their 4 forms.
This is SIMILAR to what I ran and seems a bit more optimal than what I actually did (which was put the 10 that's in water into earth and use arcane shield instead of the teleport; this is just better IMO). I regularly was able to take out thieves 1v1 and contribute to team fights in a significant manner. This is a super fast, super elusive build that allows you to run around to keep away from melee classes and put a significant amount of blind out.
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
I played the elementalist! . haha
I really liked the elementalist, I just felt that they were toned down and some of their damage needs to be tweaked. I said it in an earlier post that it felt like you weren't meant to switch attunements a lot, and to mainly use 2 with going into the other 2 for specific reasons like water to drop a condition and a quick heal. For the amount of setup needed to deal damage as an elementalist, it just didn't seem worth it to me and thats why I placed them in their spot on my list.
I'll agree that they are the most versatile, which is why I really like them. IMO they have the best ability to get into and out of fights, but are very fragile even with full Vit/Toughness gear traits, and so those escape utilities are a must.
That and their base health seemed the lowest out of all the classes I played. I'd expect their damage to be through the roof when the default build is built straight for damage and leaves you with 10k health. I did not experience as such, and spent most of the time being 1-2 shot by other damage dealers when I was no way capable of doing that to anyone else. I jumped on a thief after playing an elementalist for like 8 hours and was amazed out how easy it was to kill people.
Not to dismiss your point out of hand or anything, but I believe some of your trouble is that you're approaching this wrong.
EDIT: To clarify, it sounds like you're approaching it along the traditional role of some classes being "DPS/damage dealers" and some not.
This isn't really the right way to look at it.
Elementalists have very low health because of their extreme versatility, not because they're the "glass cannon" class or anything. They're the profession that excels at switching on the fly between damage, control, support, and defense. Other professions do have a lot of versatility, yes, but those professions can't really kick ass in all four at once like the elementalist does.
You can spec them solely for damage, but if you do so you're better off playing a different profession, honestly, one that is a bit more focused.
EDIT2: @REG_Rysk - That is exactly what you should be doing. Elementalists are incredibly fun, but only when you're playing them to their potential. They're a lot more complicated than they appear to be at second glance (first glance makes them look insanely complicated due to the abilities, second glance makes you go, "Oh, I can just focus on one or two elements at first." Second glance is wrong.)
The default build for the elementalist is straight up damage. They are traited and geared for it. They get Vapor Form and Tornado as defensive options, and then Arcane Blast and I can't remember the other utility. So that's what I tried to do at first, and it was terrible. I was playing with friends, so I wasn't going against people that didn't know what the hell was going on. I'd show up in a fight and I would immediately die to Bull Rush + Thousand Blades 75% of the time from one of the two warriors on the other team, the other 25% of the time I would hit Vapor Form and GTFO. So I quickly changed builds.
Went with a 25/20/5/0/20(Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Arcane) build I think after that. Tried to mix some damage, personal survivability, and support for my team. And that worked better for me, but the support to my team was severely lacking possibly from some traits not working. I kept Vapor Form because I feel that it is silly not to have it. Switched out Tornado for summon elemental. Picked up Glyph of renewal which turned out to not work or I didn't understand how it was supposed to work. And kept Arcane Blast because it did good AE damage. Swapped out the gear for more health and toughness but not trying to sacrifice too much power, and got my health to 20k. The next game I didn't die to one Bull Rush + Thousand Blades combo anymore, so I was happy. But now it took me a long time to kill people, despite being traited pretty deep in damage traits. Things were feeling better but not quite there. A few tweaks here and there, and it didn't get much better. I felt like I wasn't a waste of a spot as I was in the default build, but I didn't feel like I was really contributing like my friends playing necro, ranger, thief and warrior.
The next morning I rolled up a thief and tried out their default build, which was double dagger // double pistol traited and geared for damage. It was sickening how quickly I killed people. I was laughing my ass off finding low to medium armor people and dropping them. My friends get on and one of them gets on his ranger and joins my game. He gets on the other team, and we quickly gain respect for eachother. If we don't see eachother then we would drop the the other very quickly. As the game went on though, he was having a much easier time adapting to my thief than my thief was adapting to his ranger. He was also straight up murdering other people on my team worse than I was doing to his team.
I tried out a Shadow Discipline/Acrobatics build for a highly mobile and stealthy thief instead of the murder your face thief. It was pretty fun, but I think I sacrificed too much damage for too much mobility. I could stick to anyone, but my damage wasn't enough to kill some of the beefier targets. In fact, I couldn't even damage Necro and Guardians with it as they could easily out heal my damage with passives.
I tried out Warrior and Guardian builds, but didn't extensively test them. Two friends built warriors (the Bull rush + Thousand blades combo from above) and tried out many different builds. Another friend who had been in previous betas played a Necro and Guardian. And my one friend that played most of his time on many different classes in sPvP ended up on a necro tank build. He is also the one that tested out the ranger quite a bit. We couldn't find anything that could hold a candle to his necro.
Between the 6 of my friends, we had these characters.
3 thiefs
3 warriors
3 guardians
2 elementalists
2 rangers
2 necros
1 engineer
1 mesmer
That is where my little tier list that seems to have made quite a few of you really mad mostly came from. I took the opinions of what people have been saying in other forums as well, and for the most part they matched up well with our impressions of the classes. I'm glad to see that some of you, Rysk, had good success with one of the professions we saw as one of the weaker. Which is why I made that list to see what everyone elses opinions were. Rysk must have found some build tweaks that I didn't get to on the elementalist that may have made a profound difference in my experience with them.
My plans in the next Beta are to level a Ranger or Warrior, haven't decided yet, as I did an elementalist in this past BWE. I will make a level 2 elementalist to continue practicing with and trying to get better in sPvP with because they are the funnest to me as I really like switching between all the attunements to do stuff. And I think I will also make a level 2 engineer for testing in sPvP.
Another thing you don't really take into account here, and don't take this the wrong way, is player skill. What if you and your friends aren't really good? How is any of this meaningful? Or, a VERY likely scenario, what if some of the classes that you deemed "bad" or "shit tear" are just classes that you weren't good at? Most people are going to be better at some classes and terrible at others.
And it's all well and good to discuss the class strengths and weaknesses, but tier lists from some random guy on the internet rub everyone the wrong way. They are pretty useless and awful.
Also, easy does NOT equal better. Something may be easy to kill with but someione else might have some class/build that is much harder to use that can kick the "easy to kill with" classes ass everytime. But if that person playing the easy class tries it they may get their asses kicked.
Which is why I came to everyone here to see what their opinions are on my little list. I know for a fact that myself, and my friends, aren't nearly as good as a lot of people out there. I can account for how good my friends and myself are th. I know that one of my friends is better than me, so I don't take it too hard when he beats me. I know that if he wins 60% of the time, then what we are playing is pretty even, because that's about how often he beats me in other stuff.
So far I've gotten Rysk and Caedere disagreeing with my experience with the elementalist. Some agreement that necromancer is good. And a whole lot of "YOU CAN'T TIER THIS GAME!" okay... sorry to offend you with my opinion on what I think which professions have better builds than others.
You also got a really in depth view of engineer that nobody seemed to notice
I... I was credit to team
Oh yea! haha. Yea, I did read that, and I meant to comment on how good of a write-up it was. I got admittedly offended and started to respond trying to defend my position.
The problem, and the only one besides lag, with melee that I had was multiple-enemies, and the inability to successfully dodge because of the way their attacks were out of sync. As a thief this is important, we are kinda squishy, but I learned a few things about melee to avoid it.
Leaping death blossom does help dodge a lot of things, but not everything. Weapons switching is a MUST to take on multiple opponents at a certain level. Abuse the utility of your ranged weapon until you must go melee, you'll have done a good chunk of damage. Yes, this means weapon sets must be melee/ranged combo. Enemies didn't seem to regen instantly, so for thief at least, stealthing back into ranged combat was very useful, as was stealing in this large-group-battle scenario.
I didn't play other melee classes, but I'm sure with the right setup, there is similar things you can do. Once I got my shit together I melted enemies, it was no problem. I took on 3 etin at once which were two levels above me. Learning enemies as well, is important, which I like personally, but I can understand the disapproval some may have of not being able to run in and reliably kill things the first time you see them.
Why are you guys jumping up Buddies's ass? Maybe lumping into tiers isn't really accurate, and that's cool, so you should disagree with him. But you ARE being pretty hostile to him, and he brought something that is at least conversation worthy: his detailed opinions on what he saw of class balance in beta. We're starved for discussion topics while we wait for the next BWE. This is something fun to talk about.
I guess.
I just remember when it comes to PVP, he was in the SWTOR thread using term like "hardcore" and "carebear" towards other people... so seeing him bring that attitude that comes with "tier lists" is just gonna irk people.
One of the HUGE selling points of GW2 is that you can play it how you wanna play it... tier lists are the total opposite of that, and they try to dictate how people should play the game.
Its also just stupid at this point, since player skill is going to be EXTREMELY random in a weekend beta.
I think this might be what I was missing. I didn't know Buddies was already known for unpopular opinions in MMO's? All I saw in this thread was some guy who was new to me saying, "Here's what I think the power balance looks like across classes in this last beta weekend, what do you think?" and a bunch of people dogpiling the shit out of him.
For the record, I don't think A-net is very good at balancing classes. This was mitigated in GW1 because you could cross-class. Spirit spammer has been stupidly OP in PvE content for some time, and so any class that can take rit as their secondary just builds a variant of spirit spammer. They're slightly better at balancing in PvP, but there's still a reason that everyone quits your arena team if there isn't at least one monk primary and another monk secondary on the team.
I feel I was misunderstood a little in that SWTOR argument also. And to everyone's credit, I did stop playing SWTOR a couple months ago. You're synopsis of my initial tier list post was exactly what I was trying to put across, so I am glad someone saw it for what I meant it to be seen for.
And my experience with GW1 was the same as yours. What I remember of GW1 PvP was, your team was entirely Warrior/Monk with maybe one Monk/Warrior. I was disgusted that first couple weeks and so stopped playing and never looked back. From what everyone else here is saying though that may have been a mistake? But maybe not if what you say in your last sentence is true.
For anyone wanting a little easier difficulty curve for melee might want to try guardian first. Aegis gives you a much greater room for error than other classes that don't get a free automatic block (and another available on button push). Plus, you know.. GREATSWORD!
On a slightly different topic (WvW), does anyone go through and look at the various maximum range weapons for all the classes when deciding on which class to dubvdub on? I'm very hesitant to use a class that doesn't have a 1200 range weapon (i.e. guardian - coincidentally that feedback was very common on the official board). I don't think it matters nearly as much for sPVP.
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
There were a lot of complaints about that and they are looking at the melee vs ranged balance going into the next BWE.
Edit: To elaborate on what Arenanet's stance is a little bit it's part balance and adding in more control tools and part the existing control tools not being used as much as they should be.
I did not feel that Range had a distinct advantage over Melee. Every profession has an option, or multiple options, for range damage. Every melee build I played had multiple gap closers. You could get crippled and kited, but again, every build I played had a way to drop conditions. I had zero problems sticking to targets as a dual dagger thief, Sword/board Warrior, Greatsword/Great Hammer Warrior, Mace/Shield Guardian, and Dagger/Dagger elementalist(which was the funnest build I played).
For anyone wanting a little easier difficulty curve for melee might want to try guardian first. Aegis gives you a much greater room for error than other classes that don't get a free automatic block (and another available on button push). Plus, you know.. GREATSWORD!
On a slightly different topic (WvW), does anyone go through and look at the various maximum range weapons for all the classes when deciding on which class to dubvdub on? I'm very hesitant to use a class that doesn't have a 1200 range weapon (i.e. guardian - coincidentally that feedback was very common on the official board). I don't think it matters nearly as much for sPVP.
My friends and I had a short discussion about this last night. In places where that maximum range would be beneficial, keep sieges, it is just better to use an arrow cart. Arrow Carts are cheap and easy to build, and do way more damage than any weapon you can equip.
In skirmishes on the ground, you can use gap closers to get into the thick of the action. If you like to stay towards the back unnoticed though, then yea longbow ranger, rifle warrior and staff elementalist will be good choices for you.
For people who played thieves, how much damage did speccing out and out offense add? With maxed Acrobatics and Trickery you're looking at up to +45% damage, near constant Might upkeep and a shitload of initiative, as well as all the fun support and survivability stuff. It honestly feels like a class where you can spec just about anything (well, except for maybe 14/14/14/14/14) and still be effective.
While I really enjoyed my weekend, I did feel a little lost with regards to combat. I leveled a necro a touch, but it didn't really grip me. I spent the majority of my time on Ele, just doing everything in Wayfarer Hills and then beyond. I powered through trying to unlock everything on every weapon and every attunement, which probably contributed to me not having a great idea of what I needed to be doing in a given situation (must... unlock... water....). Staff clicked with me the most, followed by scepter/focus. Are there any resources out there where someone could show me an easy to understand build and how to go about playing it (even if it isn't elementalist)? Video would be helpful too.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly...thy micturations are to me/ As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee
I played a guardian for most of the BWE. In PvE melee is a little difficult. So much so that certain weapons/sets seem almost impossible to use because they did not have enough defensive abilities. Like the hammer and anything+torch.
Also Guardians dont really have a long range weapon, so that complicates things as well. Both the staff and the scepter have 900 range as opposed to the 1200 on everyone else's long range stuff. (I think I have the numbers right...) And neither have effective methods of gaining distance between you and the mob.
Then there is the greatsword... which has basically no defensive abilities but kills things so fast it doesnt matter. I think it was because the third chain on the default attack gave might...Thats why every guardian you saw was using one, btw.
All the pvp I did was wuvwuv, so I can't really comment on the melee vs ranged in pvp.
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
My feeling is that the statement is accurate but also wildly blown out of proportion. I played a mostly melee mesmer and there were only a small handful of situations where I just didn't think a pure melee solution was workable. Anything that could 1 shot me and mob pulls in excess of 3 were when I really needed to use a ranged weapon in addition to my melee skills. For example, if I saw 8 centaurs heading my general direction, my usual plan was to throw out a distraction phantasm to get them to bunch up, then I would illusionary leap in, blurred frenzy and then mind wrack. Once frenzy wore off, I would swap to my greatsword, illusionary wave the whole clump of them out of my face. The whole mess of them would be under half at this point and I would just kite the rest of them with greatsword ranged attacks, using mind wrack to finish up.
For every other PvE situation though? Melee was completely fine. In PvP the blatantly obvious breakdown occurs; anything small scale melee is fine while in anything involving 2 zergs looking at each other melee was mostly a death wish. Depending on class there were some tricks you could pull but meh. Certainly not enough to say that I think melee is fine in that environment. But melee has never been fine in that environment so this is the least shocking statement of the century.
However, the way people talk about it they make it sound like melee is a death wish. And it is, if by melee you mean stand face to face with the enemy and trade hits like an idiot. Even as a melee you need to be constantly moving. There are tons of attacks you can just avoid by strafing around in PvE. Darting in and out to allow for cooldowns to come up is also a really common tactic. Melee is highly mobile in GW2, much more so than other games and that might be what is causing the disconnect.
I designed a necromancer build, looking to try something along these lines next BWE, assuming the skills/traits remain roughly the same. Essentially, you rotate 1>1>1, then 4, then 2, then 3. You get in a few good conditions, cripple, and generate hueg amounts of Life Force. Said Life Force fuels a very powerful Death Shroud, where you then chase people down and toss out huge Life Blasts.
The general role for this is as a capper/chaser, where you try to dominate in 1v1 battles through superior firepower and health pool. And speed. So much speed.
Specific notes
Weapon skills: Scepter and Focus go together like peanut butter and chocolate, with shitloads of synergy between them. Abusing this is key—having a cripple every 10 seconds, and a chill every 20, makes it very hard for enemies to run away.
Slot skills: I really like Blood Fiend as the heal here, because it gives another target for your enemy to have to worry about, plus having an instant heal when you need it most is awesome. Flesh Golem can't be ignored when he's out, and he can help you escape if you get sorely outnumbered. Signet of Undeath is amazing, since it not only gives you moar Life Force on a constant basis, it's also an AoE Resurrection Signet every 4 minutes—you're often going to be the last person on your team alive, so this is pretty clutch. Signet of the Locust is here primarily for the passive speed boost, and Signet of Spite gives you a good boost to your power—something you're lacking because of the Spite not being your main trait tree—but, more importantly, if you combine it with Feast of Corruption you get a hard-hitting nuke that will instantly give you a good 12% Life Force.
Traits: I went Soul Reaping as the obvious focus. My choices ensure the following bonuses to Death Shroud: Life Blast, my main offensive skill, hits harder; entering Death Shroud gives a 10s weakness and bleeding to foes around me, drops all the conditions on me; while in Death Shroud I move even faster, I lose Life Force slower, and, because of stability, I am immune to crippling, chilling, knockdown, launching, and knockback, which makes me almost unstoppable. As if that wasn't enough, I also do a nice AoE heal when I leave Death Shroud - perfect when I'm sitting on the capture points.
EDIT: I should note that this build is made very sad by mesmers as a whole, thanks to their prevalence of confusion and dazing, and guardians can be a lot of trouble if they go for stability/area denial.
I think the main problem with playing melee in PVE was that you can't do anything against a champion mob in melee range. You die in a couple of hits and that's assuming they don't have some PBAoE that's guaranteed to kill you no matter how fast you try to dodge or block out of it, and if you're downed at that range nobody can save you, and champions generally have way too much health to effectively fight off with your downed skills. I played greatsword ranger in PvE but any time I saw that bronze-gold circle on my enemy's portrait I pulled out the longbow.
I played a guardian for most of the BWE. In PvE melee is a little difficult. So much so that certain weapons/sets seem almost impossible to use because they did not have enough defensive abilities. Like the hammer and anything+torch.
Also Guardians dont really have a long range weapon, so that complicates things as well. Both the staff and the scepter have 900 range as opposed to the 1200 on everyone else's long range stuff. (I think I have the numbers right...) And neither have effective methods of gaining distance between you and the mob.
Then there is the greatsword... which has basically no defensive abilities but kills things so fast it doesnt matter. I think it was because the third chain on the default attack gave might...Thats why every guardian you saw was using one, btw.
All the pvp I did was wuvwuv, so I can't really comment on the melee vs ranged in pvp.
Thief is also limited to 900 range. :?
I think 900 range is alright, but exactly how it is used going to vary with profession, etc.
I played a guardian for most of the BWE. In PvE melee is a little difficult. So much so that certain weapons/sets seem almost impossible to use because they did not have enough defensive abilities. Like the hammer and anything+torch.
Also Guardians dont really have a long range weapon, so that complicates things as well. Both the staff and the scepter have 900 range as opposed to the 1200 on everyone else's long range stuff. (I think I have the numbers right...) And neither have effective methods of gaining distance between you and the mob.
Then there is the greatsword... which has basically no defensive abilities but kills things so fast it doesnt matter. I think it was because the third chain on the default attack gave might...Thats why every guardian you saw was using one, btw.
All the pvp I did was wuvwuv, so I can't really comment on the melee vs ranged in pvp.
Guardian Staff range was 600, I think. I remember seeing that number often.
I played a guardian for most of the BWE. In PvE melee is a little difficult. So much so that certain weapons/sets seem almost impossible to use because they did not have enough defensive abilities. Like the hammer and anything+torch.
Also Guardians dont really have a long range weapon, so that complicates things as well. Both the staff and the scepter have 900 range as opposed to the 1200 on everyone else's long range stuff. (I think I have the numbers right...) And neither have effective methods of gaining distance between you and the mob.
Then there is the greatsword... which has basically no defensive abilities but kills things so fast it doesnt matter. I think it was because the third chain on the default attack gave might...Thats why every guardian you saw was using one, btw.
All the pvp I did was wuvwuv, so I can't really comment on the melee vs ranged in pvp.
Thief is also limited to 900 range. :?
I think 900 range is alright, but exactly how it is used going to vary with profession, etc.
BTW, Guardian staff is only 600 range! The trade off is that at least it's a cone aoe. I don't know if anyone else used the scepter any, but it's 1 attack was very slow and vertically challenged (i.e. it trailed along the ground and would run into stuff and fail)
So I got a question I'm hoping someone will want to weigh in on ... I missed the last BWE as I was spending time with the inlaws. But a buddy of mine says he felt Melee toons were distinctly weaker than Ranged.
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?
There were a lot of complaints about that and they are looking at the melee vs ranged balance going into the next BWE.
Edit: To elaborate on what Arenanet's stance is a little bit it's part balance and adding in more control tools and part the existing control tools not being used as much as they should be.
I did not feel that Range had a distinct advantage over Melee. Every profession has an option, or multiple options, for range damage. Every melee build I played had multiple gap closers. You could get crippled and kited, but again, every build I played had a way to drop conditions. I had zero problems sticking to targets as a dual dagger thief, Sword/board Warrior, Greatsword/Great Hammer Warrior, Mace/Shield Guardian, and Dagger/Dagger elementalist(which was the funnest build I played).
For anyone wanting a little easier difficulty curve for melee might want to try guardian first. Aegis gives you a much greater room for error than other classes that don't get a free automatic block (and another available on button push). Plus, you know.. GREATSWORD!
On a slightly different topic (WvW), does anyone go through and look at the various maximum range weapons for all the classes when deciding on which class to dubvdub on? I'm very hesitant to use a class that doesn't have a 1200 range weapon (i.e. guardian - coincidentally that feedback was very common on the official board). I don't think it matters nearly as much for sPVP.
My friends and I had a short discussion about this last night. In places where that maximum range would be beneficial, keep sieges, it is just better to use an arrow cart. Arrow Carts are cheap and easy to build, and do way more damage than any weapon you can equip.
In skirmishes on the ground, you can use gap closers to get into the thick of the action. If you like to stay towards the back unnoticed though, then yea longbow ranger, rifle warrior and staff elementalist will be good choices for you.
I've never heard of the arrow cart before - how do they work? This may make me re-evaluate my WvW class choice! Although keep defense as a staff ele felt very OP
I only tried melee seriously the once and I failed at is spectacularly. I blame the lack of sleep and just really not understanding the game well enough at the time.
Next BWE will see me giving it another go with both a guardian and a warrior to try and get acquainted with a side of the game I didn't really test too much this last weekend.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I've never heard of the arrow cart before - how do they work? This may make me re-evaluate my WvW class choice! Although keep defense as a staff ele felt very OP
I haven't used it myself, but it's a type of siege weapon that shoots arrows as an AoE. When you're in control of it, you move the cart around until you get it in a spot where you want to fire; it's incredibly useful for defending forts and gates because those arrows hurt like a bitch.
The problem, and the only one besides lag, with melee that I had was multiple-enemies, and the inability to successfully dodge because of the way their attacks were out of sync. As a thief this is important, we are kinda squishy, but I learned a few things about melee to avoid it.
Leaping death blossom does help dodge a lot of things, but not everything. Weapons switching is a MUST to take on multiple opponents at a certain level. Abuse the utility of your ranged weapon until you must go melee, you'll have done a good chunk of damage. Yes, this means weapon sets must be melee/ranged combo. Enemies didn't seem to regen instantly, so for thief at least, stealthing back into ranged combat was very useful, as was stealing in this large-group-battle scenario.
I didn't play other melee classes, but I'm sure with the right setup, there is similar things you can do. Once I got my shit together I melted enemies, it was no problem. I took on 3 etin at once which were two levels above me. Learning enemies as well, is important, which I like personally, but I can understand the disapproval some may have of not being able to run in and reliably kill things the first time you see them.
Yeah, this was my impression. 1v1, melee stands up really well to range once you get the hang of it. The problem was in PvE when fighting multiple opponents, dodging out of everything or using defensive skills became extremely difficult.
For range, multiple opponents just means kiting the same or maybe a bit better, depending on your class and weapon. For melee, it becomes a deathtrap as you can't avoid all that damage at once. You end up running away most of the time. And even then, that wasn't possible since some weapons (hammers I noticed primarily) rooted you when attacking all the time and were a death sentence to use alot of the time.
There were ways to mitigate this, but I don't think the balance is quite there yet.
The other major issue was DE scaling where the mobs would one shot you. For ranged, not a big deal since you were running the fuck away anyway. For melee, it was death over and over again.
Though the above plays back into the main issue, I think, which was melee didn't quite feel like they had enough ways to avoid/block/etc damage yet.
PS - Does not apply to sword mesmer. Blurred Frenzy is probably the best melee skill in the game as it's big damage and 100% mitigation, at the same time, on a low cooldown.
Does anyone know how the bonus experience you sometimes get on mob kills works? It seemed pretty random to me, and I can't find any information about it.
I've never heard of the arrow cart before - how do they work? This may make me re-evaluate my WvW class choice! Although keep defense as a staff ele felt very OP
I haven't used it myself, but it's a type of siege weapon that shoots arrows as an AoE. When you're in control of it, you move the cart around until you get it in a spot where you want to fire; it's incredibly useful for defending forts and gates because those arrows hurt like a bitch.
Yea, the arrow carts only cost 4s and little supply (20 was it? I can't remember off the top of my head). As such they are very easy to set up. They have three attacks, and on average hits a large area for 5k IIRC. In the BWE the cooldown on their 1 attack was only 1 second, so you could kill groups of players very quickly with them. They are nerfing that to a 3s cooldown. They are immobile, but if you are defending/attacking a keep you are pretty immobile anyway.
If you find yourself at a keep siege wishing you had a better range weapon than you have access to, then go get an arrow cart design and build it. You will not be disappointed.
I've never heard of the arrow cart before - how do they work? This may make me re-evaluate my WvW class choice! Although keep defense as a staff ele felt very OP
I haven't used it myself, but it's a type of siege weapon that shoots arrows as an AoE. When you're in control of it, you move the cart around until you get it in a spot where you want to fire; it's incredibly useful for defending forts and gates because those arrows hurt like a bitch.
Arrow cart is already nerfed on dev servers.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
PS - Does not apply to sword mesmer. Blurred Frenzy is probably the best melee skill in the game as it's big damage and 100% mitigation, at the same time, on a low cooldown.
True facts. Love blurred frenzy so much.
LoL: failboattootoot
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
In the BWE I tried using it, but there were GOONS on them all the time.
Warrior with a mace + shield is pretty capable of standing toe to toe with any melee mob, even veteran mobs. You can swap out to a sword offhand for another block or to a hammer for more knockdowns and stuns.
I played a warrior and mesmer and was always able to perform well in melee. With the mesmer I would switch out to ranged attacks if all my blocks and distortions where on cooldown while with the warrior I fell into a rythm of block/block/stun/daze/stun/dodge and repeat to keep the mobs from doing too much damage to me.
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I'm really not worried, though.
You also got a really in depth view of engineer that nobody seemed to notice
I... I was credit to team
Did you see what Jon Peters had to say on this? It was a really interesting point.
There were a lot of complaints about that and they are looking at the melee vs ranged balance going into the next BWE.
Edit: To elaborate on what Arenanet's stance is a little bit it's part balance and adding in more control tools and part the existing control tools not being used as much as they should be.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I thought that's what I did with my impressions of the classes under the tier list that seems to have caused this page of argument on whether such a thing exists or not for a game like this. I am not bringing some tier list down from the heavens written on tablets. I am not set in stone on what I think is the best.
I think Necromancers are a very strong profession. too strong. They don't have to sacrifice much damage to gain a ton of survivability, and have access to some really good CC and conditional damage.
Rangers are also another very strong profession. Their weapon skills and profession abilities synergize very well together. They have great survivability and great damage, but have less accessibility to CC and conditions while built that way. Did I make up a word there?
Engineers seem like they need a lot of work. I've read that a developer has acknowledge their kits need work. A lot of their stuff seemed to either not work as intended, or were just very weak for what you had to do to get it. I feel that for each thing an engineer can do for your team, another class can do better.
Guardians I feel are much better than what the past BWE has me to believe. They have some great support and utility, and may allow you to build a good team around one. Unfortunately we weren't able to reliably play on the same team, so we couldn't see if a support guardian could complement a profession built for straight damage to see if the whole was greater than its parts.
I think you will see a lot of necromancers in sPvP. A lot of rangers. You will likely see guardians often if they work as well as I think they might. Everything else will be in and out depending on player preference and team build/synergy.
Ok I believe errbody needs to chillax up in dis thread.
Hmmm... let me try and explain my view better. You still seem to be looking at it in the tier perspective... in that any information that doesn't apply to that should be ignored. Other information was offered but you are saying "the only people who actually responded with anything are these two people" That is simply not true. My comments were part of the overall discussion, not just some attack on you. I really meant for you not to take that personally. But everythign I said was me weighing in on the subject.
Please don't dismiss others comments so easily. Discussing THE OVERALL balance of the classes is imperative and what I was doing.
You keep saying for people to "prove what you disagree on my my list" but the problem is because no one else wants to use a tier-list, that discussion isn't quite working out. Try to pose that question in a different non-tiered fashion if you aren't getting the responses you want.
We're reasonible people around here. You just have to try and understand where we're coming from ;P
I think this might be what I was missing. I didn't know Buddies was already known for unpopular opinions in MMO's? All I saw in this thread was some guy who was new to me saying, "Here's what I think the power balance looks like across classes in this last beta weekend, what do you think?" and a bunch of people dogpiling the shit out of him.
For the record, I don't think A-net is very good at balancing classes. This was mitigated in GW1 because you could cross-class. Spirit spammer has been stupidly OP in PvE content for some time, and so any class that can take rit as their secondary just builds a variant of spirit spammer. They're slightly better at balancing in PvP, but there's still a reason that everyone quits your arena team if there isn't at least one monk primary and another monk secondary on the team.
Ranged = Easy to learn, hard to master
Melee = Bit harder to learn, still hard to master
I'm not mad about the sPvP list, I just don't quite see the point at this stage, and the bolded sentence is why. We haven't had enough time with the game yet.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
I can't speak for too much but I know as a melee mesmer I wrecked all sorts of shit whether it was ranged or melee. I also know that the little bit I played my guardian he SEEMED to have enough in the way of gap closers, condition removal and CC to get to ranged classes and stick decently. He also seemed beefy enough in WvWvW to get in and out without instantly exploding if I picked my targets well.
I played a warrior till about 11 or 12 and felt they were pretty damn awesome. Ranged or Melee. I was able to take on about 2 1-2 levels higher than me mobs melee. I did have to dodge and not sit in front of them while they hit me with their best powers, but I think that is with any class. And you can't always use range in the world, I was over by beetlebun I think it was called and started walking through the sewers and there was no room to kite or run. As long as I was able to keep them in front of me I was hitting both mobs with "single" attacks and also the few AOE type ones that the greatsword had.
I usually go range in most MMOs because melee is usually boring to me, but I had a blast with the warrior. Just my experience, I know I have read examples of both sides.
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
Oh yea! haha. Yea, I did read that, and I meant to comment on how good of a write-up it was. I got admittedly offended and started to respond trying to defend my position.
Leaping death blossom does help dodge a lot of things, but not everything. Weapons switching is a MUST to take on multiple opponents at a certain level. Abuse the utility of your ranged weapon until you must go melee, you'll have done a good chunk of damage. Yes, this means weapon sets must be melee/ranged combo. Enemies didn't seem to regen instantly, so for thief at least, stealthing back into ranged combat was very useful, as was stealing in this large-group-battle scenario.
I didn't play other melee classes, but I'm sure with the right setup, there is similar things you can do. Once I got my shit together I melted enemies, it was no problem. I took on 3 etin at once which were two levels above me. Learning enemies as well, is important, which I like personally, but I can understand the disapproval some may have of not being able to run in and reliably kill things the first time you see them.
I feel I was misunderstood a little in that SWTOR argument also. And to everyone's credit, I did stop playing SWTOR a couple months ago. You're synopsis of my initial tier list post was exactly what I was trying to put across, so I am glad someone saw it for what I meant it to be seen for.
And my experience with GW1 was the same as yours. What I remember of GW1 PvP was, your team was entirely Warrior/Monk with maybe one Monk/Warrior. I was disgusted that first couple weeks and so stopped playing and never looked back. From what everyone else here is saying though that may have been a mistake? But maybe not if what you say in your last sentence is true.
On a slightly different topic (WvW), does anyone go through and look at the various maximum range weapons for all the classes when deciding on which class to dubvdub on? I'm very hesitant to use a class that doesn't have a 1200 range weapon (i.e. guardian - coincidentally that feedback was very common on the official board). I don't think it matters nearly as much for sPVP.
I did not feel that Range had a distinct advantage over Melee. Every profession has an option, or multiple options, for range damage. Every melee build I played had multiple gap closers. You could get crippled and kited, but again, every build I played had a way to drop conditions. I had zero problems sticking to targets as a dual dagger thief, Sword/board Warrior, Greatsword/Great Hammer Warrior, Mace/Shield Guardian, and Dagger/Dagger elementalist(which was the funnest build I played).
My friends and I had a short discussion about this last night. In places where that maximum range would be beneficial, keep sieges, it is just better to use an arrow cart. Arrow Carts are cheap and easy to build, and do way more damage than any weapon you can equip.
In skirmishes on the ground, you can use gap closers to get into the thick of the action. If you like to stay towards the back unnoticed though, then yea longbow ranger, rifle warrior and staff elementalist will be good choices for you.
Also Guardians dont really have a long range weapon, so that complicates things as well. Both the staff and the scepter have 900 range as opposed to the 1200 on everyone else's long range stuff. (I think I have the numbers right...) And neither have effective methods of gaining distance between you and the mob.
Then there is the greatsword... which has basically no defensive abilities but kills things so fast it doesnt matter. I think it was because the third chain on the default attack gave might...Thats why every guardian you saw was using one, btw.
All the pvp I did was wuvwuv, so I can't really comment on the melee vs ranged in pvp.
My feeling is that the statement is accurate but also wildly blown out of proportion. I played a mostly melee mesmer and there were only a small handful of situations where I just didn't think a pure melee solution was workable. Anything that could 1 shot me and mob pulls in excess of 3 were when I really needed to use a ranged weapon in addition to my melee skills. For example, if I saw 8 centaurs heading my general direction, my usual plan was to throw out a distraction phantasm to get them to bunch up, then I would illusionary leap in, blurred frenzy and then mind wrack. Once frenzy wore off, I would swap to my greatsword, illusionary wave the whole clump of them out of my face. The whole mess of them would be under half at this point and I would just kite the rest of them with greatsword ranged attacks, using mind wrack to finish up.
For every other PvE situation though? Melee was completely fine. In PvP the blatantly obvious breakdown occurs; anything small scale melee is fine while in anything involving 2 zergs looking at each other melee was mostly a death wish. Depending on class there were some tricks you could pull but meh. Certainly not enough to say that I think melee is fine in that environment. But melee has never been fine in that environment so this is the least shocking statement of the century.
However, the way people talk about it they make it sound like melee is a death wish. And it is, if by melee you mean stand face to face with the enemy and trade hits like an idiot. Even as a melee you need to be constantly moving. There are tons of attacks you can just avoid by strafing around in PvE. Darting in and out to allow for cooldowns to come up is also a really common tactic. Melee is highly mobile in GW2, much more so than other games and that might be what is causing the disconnect.
LoL: failboattootoot
I designed a necromancer build, looking to try something along these lines next BWE, assuming the skills/traits remain roughly the same. Essentially, you rotate 1>1>1, then 4, then 2, then 3. You get in a few good conditions, cripple, and generate hueg amounts of Life Force. Said Life Force fuels a very powerful Death Shroud, where you then chase people down and toss out huge Life Blasts.
The general role for this is as a capper/chaser, where you try to dominate in 1v1 battles through superior firepower and health pool. And speed. So much speed.
Specific notes
Weapon skills: Scepter and Focus go together like peanut butter and chocolate, with shitloads of synergy between them. Abusing this is key—having a cripple every 10 seconds, and a chill every 20, makes it very hard for enemies to run away.
Slot skills: I really like Blood Fiend as the heal here, because it gives another target for your enemy to have to worry about, plus having an instant heal when you need it most is awesome. Flesh Golem can't be ignored when he's out, and he can help you escape if you get sorely outnumbered. Signet of Undeath is amazing, since it not only gives you moar Life Force on a constant basis, it's also an AoE Resurrection Signet every 4 minutes—you're often going to be the last person on your team alive, so this is pretty clutch. Signet of the Locust is here primarily for the passive speed boost, and Signet of Spite gives you a good boost to your power—something you're lacking because of the Spite not being your main trait tree—but, more importantly, if you combine it with Feast of Corruption you get a hard-hitting nuke that will instantly give you a good 12% Life Force.
Traits: I went Soul Reaping as the obvious focus. My choices ensure the following bonuses to Death Shroud: Life Blast, my main offensive skill, hits harder; entering Death Shroud gives a 10s weakness and bleeding to foes around me, drops all the conditions on me; while in Death Shroud I move even faster, I lose Life Force slower, and, because of stability, I am immune to crippling, chilling, knockdown, launching, and knockback, which makes me almost unstoppable. As if that wasn't enough, I also do a nice AoE heal when I leave Death Shroud - perfect when I'm sitting on the capture points.
EDIT: I should note that this build is made very sad by mesmers as a whole, thanks to their prevalence of confusion and dazing, and guardians can be a lot of trouble if they go for stability/area denial.
Thief is also limited to 900 range. :?
I think 900 range is alright, but exactly how it is used going to vary with profession, etc.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Guardian Staff range was 600, I think. I remember seeing that number often.
BTW, Guardian staff is only 600 range! The trade off is that at least it's a cone aoe. I don't know if anyone else used the scepter any, but it's 1 attack was very slow and vertically challenged (i.e. it trailed along the ground and would run into stuff and fail)
I've never heard of the arrow cart before - how do they work? This may make me re-evaluate my WvW class choice! Although keep defense as a staff ele felt very OP
Next BWE will see me giving it another go with both a guardian and a warrior to try and get acquainted with a side of the game I didn't really test too much this last weekend.
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I haven't used it myself, but it's a type of siege weapon that shoots arrows as an AoE. When you're in control of it, you move the cart around until you get it in a spot where you want to fire; it's incredibly useful for defending forts and gates because those arrows hurt like a bitch.
Yeah, this was my impression. 1v1, melee stands up really well to range once you get the hang of it. The problem was in PvE when fighting multiple opponents, dodging out of everything or using defensive skills became extremely difficult.
For range, multiple opponents just means kiting the same or maybe a bit better, depending on your class and weapon. For melee, it becomes a deathtrap as you can't avoid all that damage at once. You end up running away most of the time. And even then, that wasn't possible since some weapons (hammers I noticed primarily) rooted you when attacking all the time and were a death sentence to use alot of the time.
There were ways to mitigate this, but I don't think the balance is quite there yet.
The other major issue was DE scaling where the mobs would one shot you. For ranged, not a big deal since you were running the fuck away anyway. For melee, it was death over and over again.
Though the above plays back into the main issue, I think, which was melee didn't quite feel like they had enough ways to avoid/block/etc damage yet.
PS - Does not apply to sword mesmer. Blurred Frenzy is probably the best melee skill in the game as it's big damage and 100% mitigation, at the same time, on a low cooldown.
Yea, the arrow carts only cost 4s and little supply (20 was it? I can't remember off the top of my head). As such they are very easy to set up. They have three attacks, and on average hits a large area for 5k IIRC. In the BWE the cooldown on their 1 attack was only 1 second, so you could kill groups of players very quickly with them. They are nerfing that to a 3s cooldown. They are immobile, but if you are defending/attacking a keep you are pretty immobile anyway.
If you find yourself at a keep siege wishing you had a better range weapon than you have access to, then go get an arrow cart design and build it. You will not be disappointed.
Arrow cart is already nerfed on dev servers.
2012-2012
True facts. Love blurred frenzy so much.
LoL: failboattootoot
I played a warrior and mesmer and was always able to perform well in melee. With the mesmer I would switch out to ranged attacks if all my blocks and distortions where on cooldown while with the warrior I fell into a rythm of block/block/stun/daze/stun/dodge and repeat to keep the mobs from doing too much damage to me.
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edit: Wiki answers. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glamour
Warms my heart. Can't wait for the next one!