Build Identification 101: Know Thine Enemy

The first few seconds of a match can be the most critical to your team’s success. In this period you are evaluating your team make-up, securing a tactically advantageous area of land, evaluating your enemies and trying to formulate your strategy.

The following is a list, so that by looking at the enemies’ class-combination you can know what build to likely expect, their strengths and weaknesses, and the strategy to apply against them. Note that just because they have a certain class combination that doesn’t mean that this will 100% guaranteed to be the build. (I have, for instance, played pure Mesmer with a warrior secondary just to throw them off.) Making generalized assumptions without verification can be a costly mistake. This is more of a ‘first impressions’ strategy guide and is geared more towards less experienced pvp’ers and applies more is the less organised arenas.




Class: R/N
Likely Build: Touch Ranger
Strengths: Ability to deal decent amounts of damage while healing self
Weaknesses: High energy demand, must be within touch range
Style of Play: Tend to spam touch attacks
Strategy:
- Stay out of touch range. Cripple if possible.
- Tend to focus on eliminating the rest of the team first
- The energy demand is still relatively high with high expertise. E-denial takes advantage of this.
- Blackout will totally negate their effectiveness for a short time period. Diversion will lock out their touch skills for an extended time if you can time it right while they are spamming.

Class: Me/W, Me/R, Me/A
Likely Build: Illusionary Weapon Master
Strengths: Constant, moderate DPS. Immune to blind/evasion
Weaknesses: Weak armour, relies on enchantments, limited spiking potential
Style of Play: Melee, sometimes with riposte skills
Strategy:
- Focus fire will eliminate them very quickly due to low armour
- Enchantment removal can render them useless
- Cripple and kite as they can be very reliant on being within melee range

Class: E/D
Likely Build: Echantment Stacker
Strengths: High tankability
Weaknesses: Limited Damage
Style of Play: Stack enchantments (armour/healing), tank, and spam stone daggers
Strategy:
- Ignore entirely until they are the last foe. Their damage barely even qualifies as ‘limited’.
- Some may use sandstorm, so be careful to move out of the area
- Amour ignoring damage or health-stealing can take them down quick
- Echantment removal or interrupting their enchantments when casting leaves them very weakened

Class: W/E
Likely Build: Shock Warrior
Strengths: High Armour, respectable DPS, knockdown and insane spike
Weaknesses: possibility of exhaustion, reliant on adrenalin and melee, frenzy damage
Style of Play: Can be very unpredictable. They will tend to build up adrenalin and then look for a weaker target and hit shock, frenzy, attack combo (usually eviscerate/exec)
Strategy:
- Never ignore. This build is very threatening, it is not one of the warrior builds you target last.
- Adrenalin denial (sympathetic visage, etc) and blinding will reduce/eliminate the damage (they can still shock though)
- E-denial can be moderately effective as they tend to have a low energy pool.
- Focus fire when they activate frenzy to do double damage
- Cripple and kite


Class: N/me or Me/N
Likely Build: Mega-Hexer
Strengths: Ability to shutdown your team
Weaknesses: Low armour, damage is punishment form
Style of Play: Hex, hex, hex. Shutdown melee, or shutdown casters, or sometimes both
Strategy:
- Hex removal
- Try to spike these foes relatively quickly in the match. One of the highest priority targets.
- If you are at an advantage you can sometimes attack/cast through the hexes if you can finish then off quickly
- If they are anti-melee heavy request caster support, if they are anti-caster request melee support

Class: Rt/caster
Likely Build: Spirit Spammer
Strengths: Ability to fortify position given time
Weaknesses: Low armour, long casting time
Style of Play: Set up spirits for a tactical advantage and try to draw enemy in
Strategy:
- Rush and eliminate before spirits are setup if possible
- Caster AoE spells to eliminate spirits if they are clumped closely
- Interrupt spirit summoning (ranger’s can excel at this)
- Try to draw enemy out of spirit range
- Know which spirits to eliminate (e.g. one’s providing defensive or strong tactical bonuses to the party)

Class: W/Mo
Likely Build: Wammo Tank
Strengths: Tanking and self-healing, sometimes stancing and riposting
Weaknesses: Only moderate DPS or spiking
Style of Play: Melee. Tends towards Mend and rush, but experienced players can be very effective (you can tell because they'll having mending touch to eliminate conditions)
Strategy:
- Ignore until the end of the match. The damage output is not threatening.
- Watch for a hard res (some actually might take one)

Class: E/Mo
Likely Build: Elemonk
Strengths: High energy pool, decent healing/protection, tend towards Air for blind and gale.
Weaknesses: Does not excel in any one area.
Style of Play: Party support
Strategy:
- This can be a very frustrating/strong opponent.
- One of the higher priority targets, kill quickly if possible
- Request caster support if they are blind-spamming (anti-caster Mesmer)
- Try to harass while focusing on eliminating another soft target.
- Interrupt any long-cast spells (1s or more)
- Watch for hard-res used with Glyph of Sacrifice

Class: R/Me
Likely Build: Cripshot Interrupter
Strengths: Versatility, ability to apply pressure/frustration, ability to interrupt
Weaknesses: Relatively low armour, moderate damage, relies on Line-of-Sight
Style of Play: Cripple, Poison, Interrupt, Evade
Strategy:
- Condition removal is very important
- High priority target for melee if they are keeping your casters from casting. Ignore if they are stance/evasion spammers.
- Secure advantageous ground (i.e. behind walls/rocks, up high) to limit the line-of-sight (especially when casting a long spell or heal/res-sig, etc)
- Rangers are typically among the last to be targeted, and as such, may have a false sense of security that can be exploited with a coordinated spike.

Class: R/W
Likely Build: Thumper
Strengths: Fast attacking, ability to almost continually knockdown.
Weaknesses: Relatively low armour for melee.
Style of Play: Melee with a pet
Strategy:
- Cripple and kite
- Anti-melee punishment hexes or blind
- Wait for them to rush your monk and focus fire
- Anti-knockdown measures (Ward of Stability, etc)
- If using RaO it can be negated by eliminating pet (also provides brief skill blackout)

Class: Mo/A or Mo/W
Likely Build: Return Monk or Stance/Ripost Monk (sometimes Smite)
Strengths: Healing/Protection and ability to kite melee or deal back damage to melee
Weaknesses: Low armour, can be less focused on ‘monking’ (more focused on self survival) compared to other combinations
Style of Play: Heal/protect, kite and use return/riposte when faced against melee
Strategy:
- Lower priority target especially if there is another monk type (applies when you're melee)
- Harass while you pick off other foes
- Request support (if you're melee) if they enter stances or starting kiting/cripple

Class: A/x or R/A
Likely Build: Generic spike assassin
Strengths: Insane damage from spike combo
Weaknesses: Low DPS outside of spikes, spike combo is chained (i.e. each attack must hit), low armour, high energy demand
Style of Play: Guerilla hit-n-run spiking
Strategy:
- If other team does not have a rit, play defensive and wait/bait for the sin to shadow-step to your monk and then spike
- E-denial so they can’t use their attack chains
- Stacking Anti-melee hexes such as empathy, insidious parasite, blind
- Evade during attack combo to defeat the attack chain
- Do not over-extend from your team or you might be picked off.

Class: Me/E or E/Me
Likely Build: Ele or Fast-cast Ele. They tend towards one element (usually fire-damage or air-blind)
Strengths: Fast-casting spike damage (if Me primary), High energy pool/management (if E primary).
Weaknesses: Low armour, skillbar tends to be reliant on one attribute, tends to have long casting time.
Style of play: Caster
Strategy:
- Anti-caster hexes (such as backfire/diversion/migraine) with melee support
- If they are blindbots request caster support and chose other target if appropriate
- Interrupt spells while being cast (Power Block can shut down their whole skillbar)
- Knockdowns
- Winter can limit damage (from burning) if they are a searing-flames/burning ele.

Class: Mo/Me
Likely Build: Generic monk
Strengths: Incredible healing and protection abilities, quick cast times
Weaknesses: Reliant on enchantments and e-management
Style of Play: Party healer/protector… can tends towards being tankish
Strategy:
- Coordinate enchantment removal and spikes
- Harass so they focus on keeping themselves alive while your team picks off another opponent
- Coordinate e-denial on the monk with pressure to try and drain their energy pool.
- Apply consistent knockdown pressure, gale-blackout chain, diversion, etc while spiking or spiking other target

Class: E/W or N/W
Likely Build: Meleemancer
Strengths: Moderate DPS or spiking, might not be entirely reliant on melee
Weaknesses: Low armour for melee, lower potential for casting, lack of healing if E/W
Style of Play: Cast n’ Slash
Strategy:
- Enchantment removal as they will tend to be reliant on this to survive in melee range or for added damage (e.g conjure element or dark aura)
- Watch for riposting is you are going to melee
- Mix of anti-melee and anti-caster hexes to limit functionability

Class: W/N
Likely Build: Plague Touch Warrior
Strengths: Decent damage and Spiking, protection against conditions, high armour
Weaknesses: Damage typically not as high as other warrior builds
Style of Play: Melee that will transfer conditions. Some might dabble into Blood (with limited effect) or Curses (with long casts)
Strategy:
- Medium priority target
- Don’t apply conditions unless they are crippled and you are out of range or would still be at a tactical advantage if transferred back to you.
- Standard anti-melee hexes or knockdowns work well.
- Difficult to melee against as they can apply and transfer conditions (deep wound, bleeding, etc)



If there are any class combinations that I missed, or any information I missed in the ones above, please send it in.