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.
If you think I'm an idiot for basing this off a Beta, and that everything will be peachy keen fine and balanced come release then I think you are very naive. I experienced GW1 PvP at release, and it was anything but balanced. Hopefully they have some really good play testers that have access to the game 24/7 and are giving them solid feedback that is blocked by NDA and is not getting out.
Its a new MMO and class based... so its almost guaranteed to be extremely imbalanced on release and for a while after that. Even once it reaches a state that the majority of the players consider "balanced", it will still have a metagame that dictates what classes/builds/teams are better. A class based MMO will never be a "perfectly balanced" thing in all situations... making the game feel "fair" is a more realistic goal.
Making a "tier" list at this point though... kinda pointless, as people haven't had enough time yet to say anything concrete.
Also most situations where something seems OP in a weekend beta, involves a bunch of people who might have only played the game for a few hours. You have to have equally skilled players who have experience with the class they are playing before anything can be said.
You should be using your "best" abilities with the long cool downs and then switching into whatever next best supports the combat.
I 1v1'd this Thief probably 4 times in a match that had next to no players so I got a decent feel for it. He'd run in and I would blind him immediately with Air Signet. Follow up with Air staff 2 blind, elec field, air 3 to push and get the stun. Swap to earth, signet of earth, 2 AoE, 5 to bleed, wall 4 between us. Swap to water, drop the 5 healing rain, maybe 1 more AoE power to slow, swap to fire, lava font, swap back to air.
Put your abilities on cool down and MOVE ON.
As a warrior, I usually ran 1 ranged and 1 melee weapon so I couldn't do this. But I would often go greatsword charge in, pop level 3 adrenaline, sword throw, 2 skill if immobile (or an NPC), spin to win AWAY from them, swap to ranged and start laying down more damage. Versatility IS damage, just using 1 bar is like playing 25% of your character (for eles) and 50% for warrior.
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.)
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
My understanding was that the passive effect was removed during cooldown. The 'boon' that is generated by the passive signet disappeared upon use and I think I remember stats adjusting. I'm pretty sure the signets are supposed to be a trade-off between either having a passive boost or burning it temporarily to gain a spike of some kind.
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
My understanding was that the passive effect was removed during cooldown. The 'boon' that is generated by the passive signet disappeared upon use and I think I remember stats adjusting. I'm pretty sure the signets are supposed to be a trade-off between either having a passive boost or burning it temporarily to gain a spike of some kind.
Earth Magic trait in that build that maintains the passive while in cooldown. THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD BE DOING THAT. If you can gain a passive benefit that goes away on activation (a sort of punishment) then you have to be studious about when you use it. If you make it so that it never goes away then you can use it without fear.
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EricsCharming to the lastChicago, ILRegistered Userregular
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
My understanding was that the passive effect was removed during cooldown. The 'boon' that is generated by the passive signet disappeared upon use and I think I remember stats adjusting. I'm pretty sure the signets are supposed to be a trade-off between either having a passive boost or burning it temporarily to gain a spike of some kind.
As far as I know this is how they work, unless they changed it without me noticing.
Yea. I don't know how old you ESDFers are, but I've been using WASD for over 20 years now. I'm old, and I am not switching. Get off my lawn!
Turning 30 this year (gah!), when I played Doom I used the arrow keys for movement... ah those were the days. WASD just never clicked for me for the listed reasons, it was like forcing my hand to do something that didn't feel right.
Also, ANet forums close to posting at 9AM PDT today so hop to it if you want to post something else.
When I played EQ (the first one) I used the arrow keys for movement, also. No mouse at all. But in that game you needed your left hand entirely for skills as you could only bind 6 per page, so you have to know where every ability was on multiple pages.
As for ESDF... I use Caps Lock for vent and it makes positioning easier (since I can tell where my hand is easier with the caps lock key). It also makes it easier to reach modifiers like alt and shift, which hopefully are added to GW2. I am content with WASD.
Also, I skipped every Story quest. I figured I'd save something for release, and maybe by then they've had a chance to polish it up a bit so it's not so Disney-esque.
Also, passive signet skills always in effect so ALWAYS drop your signets without fear.
This is not the case at all since there are at least 2 classes with traits that specifically say you still get the signet passive while it is on cooldown.
Hmm. Clones cause 3 seconds of Confusion when killed, and clones add a random condition when they are killed. *playing with builds*
Confusion is currently objectively bad and not at all worth traiting to get or actively pursuing. That said, the devs are aware and it is being worked on.
Also, I skipped every Story quest. I figured I'd save something for release, and maybe by then they've had a chance to polish it up a bit so it's not so Disney-esque.
Disney-esque doesn't seem like a good negative term to use. Incredibles, Up, The Lion King, Mulan are all Disney, and while none has a particularly complex story , they're all really well told, enjoyable, and only dark in small bits, they're all driven by their characters. If anything ANet should strive for their T-rated game to be Disney-esque in its storytelling (or 'Good Disney-esque' not 'Sequel #4 to Good Disney-esque'). I would say a better goal is to not be SyFy Original Picture-esque, where everything seems to be written and performed in one go and you only get good results when you get plain lucky (Husk) or it enters so-bad-its-good (Mega Piranhas)
steejee on
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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.
Buddies on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Ah, the casual smug arrogance of people who place value on tier list. I was hoping that would be contained to fighting game threads.
Ah, the casual smug arrogance of people who place value on tier list. I was hoping that would be contained to fighting game threads.
Well in the end it's already irrelevant. With roughly a month between BWEs I have a hard time believing balance won't change significantly on all levels.
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@Buddies I didn't get mad at the tier list, I said it's a goofy idea to tier a game like this, especially when it's in beta.
Now, much like myself, you have a lot of experience with fighting games; I know how strong that "tiering urge" can be. You probably sort different foods into tiers (chicken alfredo is obviously S tier), you likely sort movies into different tiers, and maybe you even sort your laundry into tiers.
All of those things are fine to tier, but do not tier Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2.
There are a few reasons it's goofy to tier the GW games. For starters, ArenaNet is quite good at balancing and rebalancing and tweaking and nudging skills on a constant basis in order to ensure that no builds are "too OP", whilst still maintaining a healthy metagame. FotM builds show up, counter-builds come up, counter-counter builds counter those counters, etc.
Secondly, notice how I said "builds" and not "classes" or "professions." That is because professions operate in a vacuum in these games; there are no Tiger Uppercuts or Phoenix Forces, no single abilities or moves that would make one profession beat all others. Each profession is merely a vehicle for different builds, and each build is a very complex interaction of skills, traits, sigils, runes, weapons, etc. The game is far too complex to tier.
Third... GW2 and GW1 are a lot closer to Magic: the Gathering than they are to fighting games. You have a constantly evolving field of different builds/decks—there may be a build/deck that dominates the others for a while, but tiering this is pointless.
Finally, it doesn't appear that you know how to tier. When you tier a fighting game, you play each character versus each other character over and over and OVER again, keeping track of the character-on-character win/loss ratios. You dump all of that information into a huge table, crunch numbers, and only then can you have an accurate tier ranking.
Quite frankly, it's borderline goosery to assume that you can accurately tier professions in any game with a group of just a few people and maybe, at most, a couple dozen matches.
I'm going to admit a deep shame. I use the mouse to click my skills.
i did on the weekend for 7-0 and f1-f4 simply because I didn't do binds. I was trying to explore and I didn't want to think about that stuff. When I start getting in to try to be a better player, when the game actually releases and I know my starting class, I'll worry about that.
Edit: At least until LordOfMeep did all my work for me. Next BWE I'm set up for key binds all day every day.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
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Ah, the casual smug arrogance of people who place value on tier list. I was hoping that would be contained to fighting game threads.
I totally agree.
And in this case its people who have had only days with the game...
Don't most fighting games have tier lists within the first day? Hell, don't most ave tier lists BEFORE the first day, based solely on pre-release footage?
I too find them just as depressing/annoying/goosey there as I do for this game, though.
Once again, if you disagree on the list, and you think all the classes are equal then please, prove me wrong. So far only Rysk is bringing a convincing argument. Your passive aggressive attacks insinuating that I'm some clueless arrogant elitist don't really add anything to the conversation, and I should do much better to ignore them.
And I disagree that it is already irrelevant. Our options are that we can discuss what we experienced and what we feel needs work or tweaking, or we can put our head in the sand and throw money at aNet and trust that the game will not have glaring balance problems. IMO, right now it does, and if noone says anything then the necromancer will stay really strong while the engineer works his ass off to just break even with the bottom half.
I really liked the game I played this past weekend. The game world is beautiful, the questing experience refreshing and fun, WvWvW is exactly what I had hoped for, the story is meh, and the sPvP feels like it isn't as polished as it could be for a game that started out with the dream of being an eSport.
Ah, the casual smug arrogance of people who place value on tier list. I was hoping that would be contained to fighting game threads.
I totally agree.
And in this case its people who have had only days with the game...
On this, I can absolutely, 100% agree. I don't play fighting games that can be tiered accurately, because it means they're unbalanced and generally shitty. Funnily enough, the more arguments that spark up about a fighting game's tier rankings, the better the game is.
Once again, if you disagree on the list, and you think all the classes are equal then please, prove me wrong. So far only Rysk is bringing a convincing argument. Your passive aggressive attacks insinuating that I'm some clueless arrogant elitist don't really add anything to the conversation, and I should do much better to ignore them.
And I disagree that it is already irrelevant. Our options are that we can discuss what we experienced and what we feel needs work or tweaking, or we can put our head in the sand and throw money at aNet and trust that the game will not have glaring balance problems. IMO, right now it does, and if noone says anything then the necromancer will stay really strong while the engineer works his ass off to just break even with the bottom half.
I really liked the game I played this past weekend. The game world is beautiful, the questing experience refreshing and fun, WvWvW is exactly what I had hoped for, the story is meh, and the sPvP feels like it isn't as polished as it could be for a game that started out with the dream of being an eSport.
I... uh... did... did you just... o_O
Projection, much?
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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 someone else might have some class/build that is much harder to use that can kick the "easy to kill with" class' ass everytime. But if that person playing the easy class tries it they may get their asses kicked.
@Buddies I mean, I'm glad you really like the game, believe me. That's always awesome to hear! However, you're being a bit... um... insistent on trying to tier the game and then you're warping the data to fit that conclusion.
Yes, it's important to ensure that the professions are each viable in structured PVP.
Yes, they weren't exactly balanced during the beta (that's why it's beta. :B )
Yes, ArenaNet values feedback and impressions about the professions.
In my experience this past BWE, the game is nowhere close to being able to release and have sPvP not turn into a joke.
based on the very flawed assumption that they're tiering it like a fighting game, and on the assumption that ArenaNet has zero experience with making eSports, is just goosery.
@Buddies I didn't get mad at the tier list, I said it's a goofy idea to tier a game like this, especially when it's in beta.
Now, much like myself, you have a lot of experience with fighting games; I know how strong that "tiering urge" can be. You probably sort different foods into tiers (chicken alfredo is obviously S tier), you likely sort movies into different tiers, and maybe you even sort your laundry into tiers.
All of those things are fine to tier, but do not tier Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2.
There are a few reasons it's goofy to tier the GW games. For starters, ArenaNet is quite good at balancing and rebalancing and tweaking and nudging skills on a constant basis in order to ensure that no builds are "too OP", whilst still maintaining a healthy metagame. FotM builds show up, counter-builds come up, counter-counter builds counter those counters, etc.
Secondly, notice how I said "builds" and not "classes" or "professions." That is because professions operate in a vacuum in these games; there are no Tiger Uppercuts or Phoenix Forces, no single abilities or moves that would make one profession beat all others. Each profession is merely a vehicle for different builds, and each build is a very complex interaction of skills, traits, sigils, runes, weapons, etc. The game is far too complex to tier.
Third... GW2 and GW1 are a lot closer to Magic: the Gathering than they are to fighting games. You have a constantly evolving field of different builds/decks—there may be a build/deck that dominates the others for a while, but tiering this is pointless.
Finally, it doesn't appear that you know how to tier. When you tier a fighting game, you play each character versus each other character over and over and OVER again, keeping track of the character-on-character win/loss ratios. You dump all of that information into a huge table, crunch numbers, and only then can you have an accurate tier ranking.
Quite frankly, it's borderline goosery to assume that you can accurately tier professions in any game with a group of just a few people and maybe, at most, a couple dozen matches.
Your comparison of GW to Magic is very good. I agree, there are many different builds, combinations and strategies to employ here. And I'm trying to see what all the different builds and strategies everyone has discovered already.
To be honest, talking about tiers is usually a pretty unhelpful way to describe class balance, unless you're doing so using purely statistical methods. So you can say that a team of composition X beats a team of composition Y Z% of the time, but even this can't be easily normalised for played skill and other variables during a typical RvB match. So you can state a statistical bias, but you don't have much ground to extend that towards lending support to an argument that class A is inherently stronger than class B.
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.
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.
Aye... a fighting game is 1 character vs 1 character
This is a group of characters vs another group.
Killing ability isn't everything. You have people doing different roles on the team. Comparing them all 1 to 1 doesn't work.
Even if someone DID use tiers (just don't so BAD) they would need to be tiers for various roles. Like a LoL tier list (still awful) doesn't compare Janna to Vayne. That would be silly.
You know I played like 7 rounds of sPvP with my warrior over the BWE and in those seven matches I was killed once.
The most valuable thing you can do for your team is not be dead and you can accomplish that through a lot of ways. I even got a rally for Rivien whilst using "I Will Avenge You!" which was VERY satisfying I must say.
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.
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.
Aye... a fighting game is 1 character vs 1 character
This is a group of characters vs another group.
Killing ability isn't everything. You have people doing different roles on the team. Comparing them all 1 to 1 doesn't work.
Even if someone DID use tiers (just don't so BAD) they would need to be tiers for various roles. Like a LoL tier list (still awful) doesn't compare Janna to Vayne. That would be silly.
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.
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.
Why are you being hostile to me? I gave specific information as to why tiers are a bad idea, and I gave helpful suggestions as to how he could approach this for a better discussion. Not to mention, I even told him that I'm glad to hear he likes the game.
Darkewolfe, jumping in to "defend" Buddies isn't going to help the discussion either. He's a grown-up, he can speak for himself, you know.
I disagree that we're starved for discussion topics, although I'm always for discussing fun things. Which is what we're doing.
What are your thoughts on the professions?
EDIT @ Buddies: Please don't try to martyr yourself by "sorry to offend you with my opinion on what I think which professions have better builds than others." That's not what's happening, okay? If you genuinely feel that that's the case, then I'd suggest doing something else for a while and then coming back when you're feeling a little better.
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 don't think anyone is taking issue with discussing relative class merits or shortfallings, I think instead we are disagreeing with the usefulness of arranging them into tiers based on a small data pool of 1v1 experience.
I found the class discussions pretty spot-on. Especially the survivability on certain necro builds. That I can testify to from personal experience!
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.
ArrynAsk not the InnkeeperFor destiny is thy name!Registered Userregular
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?
Posts
I played the elementalist!
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.
Its a new MMO and class based... so its almost guaranteed to be extremely imbalanced on release and for a while after that. Even once it reaches a state that the majority of the players consider "balanced", it will still have a metagame that dictates what classes/builds/teams are better. A class based MMO will never be a "perfectly balanced" thing in all situations... making the game feel "fair" is a more realistic goal.
Making a "tier" list at this point though... kinda pointless, as people haven't had enough time yet to say anything concrete.
Also most situations where something seems OP in a weekend beta, involves a bunch of people who might have only played the game for a few hours. You have to have equally skilled players who have experience with the class they are playing before anything can be said.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I 1v1'd this Thief probably 4 times in a match that had next to no players so I got a decent feel for it. He'd run in and I would blind him immediately with Air Signet. Follow up with Air staff 2 blind, elec field, air 3 to push and get the stun. Swap to earth, signet of earth, 2 AoE, 5 to bleed, wall 4 between us. Swap to water, drop the 5 healing rain, maybe 1 more AoE power to slow, swap to fire, lava font, swap back to air.
Put your abilities on cool down and MOVE ON.
As a warrior, I usually ran 1 ranged and 1 melee weapon so I couldn't do this. But I would often go greatsword charge in, pop level 3 adrenaline, sword throw, 2 skill if immobile (or an NPC), spin to win AWAY from them, swap to ranged and start laying down more damage. Versatility IS damage, just using 1 bar is like playing 25% of your character (for eles) and 50% for warrior.
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.)
My understanding was that the passive effect was removed during cooldown. The 'boon' that is generated by the passive signet disappeared upon use and I think I remember stats adjusting. I'm pretty sure the signets are supposed to be a trade-off between either having a passive boost or burning it temporarily to gain a spike of some kind.
Earth Magic trait in that build that maintains the passive while in cooldown. THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD BE DOING THAT. If you can gain a passive benefit that goes away on activation (a sort of punishment) then you have to be studious about when you use it. If you make it so that it never goes away then you can use it without fear.
As far as I know this is how they work, unless they changed it without me noticing.
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When I played EQ (the first one) I used the arrow keys for movement, also. No mouse at all. But in that game you needed your left hand entirely for skills as you could only bind 6 per page, so you have to know where every ability was on multiple pages.
As for ESDF... I use Caps Lock for vent and it makes positioning easier (since I can tell where my hand is easier with the caps lock key). It also makes it easier to reach modifiers like alt and shift, which hopefully are added to GW2. I am content with WASD.
Also, I skipped every Story quest. I figured I'd save something for release, and maybe by then they've had a chance to polish it up a bit so it's not so Disney-esque.
This is not the case at all since there are at least 2 classes with traits that specifically say you still get the signet passive while it is on cooldown.
Edit: Having to trait for it is different
Confusion is currently objectively bad and not at all worth traiting to get or actively pursuing. That said, the devs are aware and it is being worked on.
LoL: failboattootoot
Disney-esque doesn't seem like a good negative term to use. Incredibles, Up, The Lion King, Mulan are all Disney, and while none has a particularly complex story , they're all really well told, enjoyable, and only dark in small bits, they're all driven by their characters. If anything ANet should strive for their T-rated game to be Disney-esque in its storytelling (or 'Good Disney-esque' not 'Sequel #4 to Good Disney-esque'). I would say a better goal is to not be SyFy Original Picture-esque, where everything seems to be written and performed in one go and you only get good results when you get plain lucky (Husk) or it enters so-bad-its-good (Mega Piranhas)
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
Oh...well no shit you don't understand me.
Like I said, it's a trait in the Earth Magic line for that specific concept I didn't give you the details of.
LET THIS BE A LESSON, DO NOT TRY AND DO TWO THINGS AT ONCE.
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.
Well in the end it's already irrelevant. With roughly a month between BWEs I have a hard time believing balance won't change significantly on all levels.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
I totally agree.
And in this case its people who have had only days with the game...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, much like myself, you have a lot of experience with fighting games; I know how strong that "tiering urge" can be. You probably sort different foods into tiers (chicken alfredo is obviously S tier), you likely sort movies into different tiers, and maybe you even sort your laundry into tiers.
All of those things are fine to tier, but do not tier Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2.
There are a few reasons it's goofy to tier the GW games. For starters, ArenaNet is quite good at balancing and rebalancing and tweaking and nudging skills on a constant basis in order to ensure that no builds are "too OP", whilst still maintaining a healthy metagame. FotM builds show up, counter-builds come up, counter-counter builds counter those counters, etc.
Secondly, notice how I said "builds" and not "classes" or "professions." That is because professions operate in a vacuum in these games; there are no Tiger Uppercuts or Phoenix Forces, no single abilities or moves that would make one profession beat all others. Each profession is merely a vehicle for different builds, and each build is a very complex interaction of skills, traits, sigils, runes, weapons, etc. The game is far too complex to tier.
Third... GW2 and GW1 are a lot closer to Magic: the Gathering than they are to fighting games. You have a constantly evolving field of different builds/decks—there may be a build/deck that dominates the others for a while, but tiering this is pointless.
Finally, it doesn't appear that you know how to tier. When you tier a fighting game, you play each character versus each other character over and over and OVER again, keeping track of the character-on-character win/loss ratios. You dump all of that information into a huge table, crunch numbers, and only then can you have an accurate tier ranking.
Quite frankly, it's borderline goosery to assume that you can accurately tier professions in any game with a group of just a few people and maybe, at most, a couple dozen matches.
i did on the weekend for 7-0 and f1-f4 simply because I didn't do binds. I was trying to explore and I didn't want to think about that stuff. When I start getting in to try to be a better player, when the game actually releases and I know my starting class, I'll worry about that.
Edit: At least until LordOfMeep did all my work for me. Next BWE I'm set up for key binds all day every day.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Don't most fighting games have tier lists within the first day? Hell, don't most ave tier lists BEFORE the first day, based solely on pre-release footage?
I too find them just as depressing/annoying/goosey there as I do for this game, though.
And I disagree that it is already irrelevant. Our options are that we can discuss what we experienced and what we feel needs work or tweaking, or we can put our head in the sand and throw money at aNet and trust that the game will not have glaring balance problems. IMO, right now it does, and if noone says anything then the necromancer will stay really strong while the engineer works his ass off to just break even with the bottom half.
I really liked the game I played this past weekend. The game world is beautiful, the questing experience refreshing and fun, WvWvW is exactly what I had hoped for, the story is meh, and the sPvP feels like it isn't as polished as it could be for a game that started out with the dream of being an eSport.
On this, I can absolutely, 100% agree. I don't play fighting games that can be tiered accurately, because it means they're unbalanced and generally shitty. Funnily enough, the more arguments that spark up about a fighting game's tier rankings, the better the game is.
I... uh... did... did you just... o_O
Projection, much?
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 someone else might have some class/build that is much harder to use that can kick the "easy to kill with" class' ass everytime. But if that person playing the easy class tries it they may get their asses kicked.
Yes, it's important to ensure that the professions are each viable in structured PVP.
Yes, they weren't exactly balanced during the beta (that's why it's beta. :B )
Yes, ArenaNet values feedback and impressions about the professions.
But, saying
based on the very flawed assumption that they're tiering it like a fighting game, and on the assumption that ArenaNet has zero experience with making eSports, is just goosery.
Your comparison of GW to Magic is very good. I agree, there are many different builds, combinations and strategies to employ here. And I'm trying to see what all the different builds and strategies everyone has discovered already.
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'm only kidding. I'm actually pretty bad at pvp most of the time due to lack of practice.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Charr are S tier.
Aye... a fighting game is 1 character vs 1 character
This is a group of characters vs another group.
Killing ability isn't everything. You have people doing different roles on the team. Comparing them all 1 to 1 doesn't work.
Even if someone DID use tiers (just don't so BAD) they would need to be tiers for various roles. Like a LoL tier list (still awful) doesn't compare Janna to Vayne. That would be silly.
The most valuable thing you can do for your team is not be dead and you can accomplish that through a lot of ways. I even got a rally for Rivien whilst using "I Will Avenge You!" which was VERY satisfying I must say.
This as well.
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.
Why are you being hostile to me? I gave specific information as to why tiers are a bad idea, and I gave helpful suggestions as to how he could approach this for a better discussion. Not to mention, I even told him that I'm glad to hear he likes the game.
Darkewolfe, jumping in to "defend" Buddies isn't going to help the discussion either. He's a grown-up, he can speak for himself, you know.
I disagree that we're starved for discussion topics, although I'm always for discussing fun things. Which is what we're doing.
What are your thoughts on the professions?
EDIT @ Buddies: Please don't try to martyr yourself by "sorry to offend you with my opinion on what I think which professions have better builds than others." That's not what's happening, okay? If you genuinely feel that that's the case, then I'd suggest doing something else for a while and then coming back when you're feeling a little better.
I don't think anyone is taking issue with discussing relative class merits or shortfallings, I think instead we are disagreeing with the usefulness of arranging them into tiers based on a small data pool of 1v1 experience.
I found the class discussions pretty spot-on. Especially the survivability on certain necro builds. That I can testify to from personal experience!
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.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Any opposing opinions on that? As someone who prefers melee, and I'm going to just be fodder in the range-fest wood chopper?