Do Spellcasters have it too good?

True, however...hee you put rangers twice.
Anyways Sins strength comes from a conditional situation... chain doesnt get screwed up which isn't too difficult. Anti-melee necro and mesmers don't have it too bad, and snare eles are somewhat more difficult.

Does that change the advantages of easier class shutdown?

Until you get to play decent pvp with decent players, you won't understand anyway. People don't run Aegis chains, wards and a blindbot in GvG so they can stop casters or the almost non-existent Assassin. They run all that to survive the 2 warriors on the other team.

Fine, whatever.

Just because something isn't done doesn't stop the fact that it exists.

However see things the way you wish, I see more advantagous on the spellcasters side then melee (advantages not unbalances). So I asked if any1 else saw that.

However the entire thing would not exists if Daze became more accesible for any melee class (recharge,energy, elitism ..whatever). Rangers have easy access to daze others don't without substantial energy loss, or a condition.

Anyways thanks for the opinions.

You see more advantage because you compare everything "1 on 1", which is pointless in GW.

Skuld knows his stuff, Warrior> any on overtime damage production. Sure eles and assassins hand out big damage in bursts. Warriors will just plain kill you. If you recall the most hated warrior build ever was IWAY, not because it didnt work, but because warriors with 16 in axe or sword or hammer flat out damage anything in the game. <-----Note the period

There are those who think that Elementalist is the highest damge dealing class well that is not true even an air Ele.I can even shut down an Ele with my Monk.It really doesn't matter as Warriors are damage dealer look at what a hammer warrior can do.The only thing a spell castor is great better than some melee classes is farming pure a simple.

ANY profession can kill ANY other profession, it just depends on your builds.

There's 10 primary classes. Depending on the arena, all of them shine, it just depends on circumstances.

Next, obtain UAX, and have one available PvP slot.

Then play all arenas with all viable characters, using viable builds. The only rules are rules imposed by particular arena.

Play 100+ matches with each build with each primary.

Then we can discuss which class/skill/team/gimmick/whatever is overpowered.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of every class and every build means winning.

But playing an assassin in random arena is not representative of either class balance, skill balance or anything. All conditions and hexes are a non-issue in organized teams, since they are removed by those responsible for it.

And if you do go 1 on 1, then accept there are situations you cannot counter.

Arguing which is the best profession in GW is like arguing what is the best paper, scissors, or rocks, in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissor...

Margretli, you silly person...
The obvious answer is a shotgun.

I'm still a bit confused as to the purpose of this thread. It seems a vast, convoluted attempt to elevate the assasin to the upper tier, somehow weaving a tangled web of argument that the 'sin is better than warriors and than casters (for various reasons).

As several have tried to point out, each profession has its strengths and its weaknesses. It's up to the person behind the keyboard to make the character either successful or fail, regardless of those advantages/disadvantages. Neither melee nor caster types are superior to each other EXCEPT under certain circumstances, in certain situations and then ONLY if the person playing the character knows what they're doing and can adjust accordingly.

I don't believe I know any casters who are serious about their profession (as in know what they're doing, have figured out how to play the profession and have an effective set of skills) who don't have some sort of defense. Eles, since you keep harping on them, have multiple spells (different elements) that only do damage to adjacent foe. In other words, if aggro breaks through our front line and rushes me so fast I can't kite, I stand my ground and set off something like Inferno or Aftershock (or any one of several others). Adjacent foe - to me - take quite a bit of damage, thus discouraging them from standing too close. And if a warrior isn't close enough, they can't hit me. Another example would be the monk's Wrath. Sounds pretty defensive to me.

Yes, I can be a warrior and beat a caster and vice versa. Notice, I repeat what you said -- singular terms. A warrior against a cadre of casters is mincemeat; a caster against a cadre of warriors/melee is mincemeat. The only other time a warrior or melee class would fall to a caster (and vice versa) would be if you're unprepared and go against someone vastly superior toyou in skills (thinking of some of mid-level tanks I've seen whine when a level 24 foe hits them twice and that's all it takes).

If you don't like playing a warrior, don't.

If you think a 'sin is the bestest there is, please be the best 'sin there is and quit trying to win the rest of us over.

If you think casters are seriously over-powered and should actually be demi-gods in their own rights, well, there are a few who might agree.

If you haven't been able to figure out a profession, be it caster or melee, enough to be successful in PvE and/or PvP, then please either spend more time taking and processing advice from those of us who have done so OR let it rest and go play your 'sin.

No embers, just a mild form of disgust that so much time has been taken trying to discuss something about which you will not make an intelligent conversation.

~Falcon

Well i thought this myself once, but i thought if you shutdown a casters offence his defence dies too. This isnt the case for a warrior paragon or ranger. And an assin has a huge attack anyway .

Come on this arguement pretty much boils down to

I am rock, NERF PAPER, scissors is fine.

In terms of build there is a buidl that beats the other so there isn't anything really unbalanced.

90% of the arguments in this thread make no sense or people are arguing on different levels.
Before we can accurately debate the damage from all clasess, we need to know certain circumstances such as are we referring to PvE or PvP. Both PvE and PvP play very differently and different classes favour each type of play better than others.
In PvP melee is your standard offence. The reason is because whereas a casters damage comes from spells, a warriors damage comes from attacking. Casters must expend energy to do damage (except for wanding) whereas a warrior can just sit there c-spacing someone and keeping a decent amount of pressure on the monks aswell as building adrenaline for potential spikes.
The second argument that has come up alot is the condition deep wound. Without a doubt, melee classes have the easiest ways of applying deep wound, be it eviscerate, wearying strike or twisting fangs. This is not to say a caster class cannot apply deep wound, however they are limited in their choices and often must use a secondary proffesion to access deep wound,further restricting what they can do. The other snag is that the secondary deep wound skills which I've heard mentioned such as Augury of Death are conditional compared to the melee classes unconditional deep wound.
Then there is the argument over anti-melee hexes and conditions that hamper a warriors DPS, the thing is, you have to think WHY these hexes or conditions are being used? It's is in effect to stop melee which is essential in pvp. If casters were the preferred damage choice then we would see anti-caster hexes and conditions being used. The whole point of the counters is to counter the meta or the prevent what you are most likely to go up against. Warriors have been for long time, the offensive weapon of choice. thus why hexes like reckless haste and b.surge ele's are so common. These counters are designed to stop these melee classes unleashing havok to their team. If it weren't for the warriors and melee classes, chances are we wouldn't see any b.surge eles or curses necros and there would be threads such as "Do warriors get it too good?".

In PvE nuking wins. The reason is because AoE damage is multiplied by the amount of enemies you hit, and in PvE there are alot of targets to hit. Enemy AI are stupid, they will clump up or stand in fatal AoE attacks whereas if you tried the same tactic in PvP, say use a Meteor shower in pvp, you would most likely be laughed at on the enemies vent as they easily sidestep the AoE attack, reducing the casters potential damage to zero, and wasting a 60r 25e spell. In pve, with clumped and numerous groups of enemies, spells like Searing flames do insane amounts of damage, well higher than a warrior could achieve.

So seriously,t his argument is largely flawed, A class's use it's largely dependant on 2 things,
1)What does the job easiest
and
2)What is likely to be the most effective against what I am likely to go up against.

I can't believe this thread is still going!

If you say that warriors can take a caster in 1 on 1, ensoriki will mention its about teams.

If you point out that a monk is only as good as the tanks in the team, ensoriki will say it about 1 on 1.

It also a matter of Appple Vs Oranges, it highly selected on personal choice.

ensoriki will not agree to any logical argument that differes from his view.

So far i've seen circular reasoning, bifurcation (only 2 options, caster are over powered; or warriors are underpowered), conditional reasoning, generalisation and can't forget the red herring replies.

It's all about secondaries. Warriors can shake off hexes and conditions with a spell from the second profession.

i think it is quite balanced.
for excample: in HM, some ele mobs with fire ball and meteor can bring a 2 seconds death to a party(mostly henchie and heros) without a melee char , i ve tried it, trust me on that, or try urself in HM Kodonur Crossroads mission.
so in PvE, war/dervish are mostly meant to be tanking or taking the most dmg for the team, if u are not smart enough, dont play sin in PvE(all based on missions and such, not for solo farming)
in PvP however, 1 or 2 melees in a balanced team is required( that's why they called "balanced" i guess:S) they meant to be the pressure of the oppsite team's middle line backline, and once they build up AD, they call out a spike with allyed casters togather to finish off an enemy.
so either spell caster or melee based char in both terms of PvE or PvP are pretty balanced, they help each other for the single purpose: let the target down faster easier and at the same time, reduce the most dmg that ally would be taken. long story short:it is a team work based game.

This needed to be posted at GWO in order to fulfill it's true potential.

Knowing how knowledgeable the OP is about guild wars, he probably already posted it there and got flamed for his stupidity, which is why he is seeking consolation here.

Yay..."cba to argue - I'll just link to Why Nuking Sucks"...a thread which is nearly a year and a half old, before the major elementalist buffs. I'm not saying you're wrong to say warriors deal more damage but it hacks me off that this thread gets quoted so often when it is SO old.

Physical damage dealers seem to me to be king of PvP...because it seems that they need to do half-decent damage by auto-attacking as well as with attack skills and, let's face it, wanding just doesn't cut it. In PvE however I'm yet to find a warrior who can deal the same sort of damage as some of my casters. Foes bunch up giving me a prime AoE target which means a caster can deal a LOT more damage over a short space of time to multiple foes. Sure, sometimes foes will run out of AoE, moreso in Hard Mode, but this is the reason why casters (elementalists in particular) have snares and knockdown which, if used correctly, can keep foes in an AoE for a lot longer. In PvP this doesn't work anywhere near as well as foes move out of AoEs very quickly...thus snares + a happy-slashing warrior with high 1v1 damage seems to win out.

I just want to say, when I started playing GW, I started with a caster. When I made it about halfway through, I then made a warrior and awed at how much easier I made it through the same missions. The more I played with both, the better I got (obviously), but I noticed something after a while... the better I got with the caster, it seemed more powerful and everything seemed so much easier; the better I got with the warrior, it seemed less powerful and everything seemed to get a lot harder.

The mobs in the end of the desert and the Southern Shiverpeaks is what began to color my vision of the two types of playstyles. They became increasingly aimed to take out the heartier, armored, melee-flailing targets, and more susceptible to the ranged magic slingers. The more advanced the game gets, the more melee defense it pours out, but never really has any caster defense - mainly because there exists very little of it in the game (at the time).

I can see how someone can think, after a while, that casters have it better than melee. Thing is, it's not true. I found out eventually why the skills and mobs are set up this way - melee is a lot more dangerous and needs all the defensive skills (and mechanics, like blind) to counter it. The casters and their spells are already balanced enough, and significantly weakened in comparison, so there doesn't need to be as much caster defense, like daze.

Ah well, long live warriors!

Whenever I play a warrior for a long time and go back to ele I get lazy, mostly because once you hit spacebar, you can just spam your adrenal skills till the cows come home, you're latched onto your target with autorun. With eles you have to think about positioning and moving around.

But hey, thats just me. (This is different in High level pvp{well, most of it})

Just thought I'd add that people seem to be missing that casters 'cast', they can spend up to 3 seconds standing still completely unable to kite damage (without the aid of another player, but of course then that is 2 players basically trying to cast 1 spell) while a warrior's attack skills (seeing as this thread is mainly about damage output) are instantaneous.

So the adrenaline gained by the warrior and the amount of skills he/she could use needs to be put against the time spent by casters casting.


--

Also to a point a few pages back (therefore lost the quote seeing as I read the whole thread lol) said something similar to:

How is a warrior going to put dazed on me while he's blind

But obviously thats just silly,

1. Monk (or self) condition removal is incredibly common (Mending Touch anyone?) so that blind isn't going to last full duration on a decent team

2. The same can be said for the caster, How will you blind the warrior when you're already dazed? (Thanks to a broad-head arrow ranger hiding round the back lines or what have you) and of course point 1 applies to you as well - although self condition removal would be difficult when constantly being interrupted

--

Anyway thats just my opinion, personally I would chose Warrior over Elementalist for dealing damage in PvP and visa versa for PvE, the elementalists saving grace here is the poor AI which allows AoE spells to hit for thousands of damage to large mobs

Rangers can do pretty annoyin interrupting and degen to casters. Plus they usually have high ele armor.

In the end, it all comes down to the right build for the right job. Suppose theres a caster build that pwns melee/ranged, I am sure I can come up with a build that pwns that caster. In turn, I can come up with a counter-build to that melee/ranged. Then it is possible to make a counter-counter build. Etc.

It's all in the luck of the draw, how the build of your opponent turns out. There is no caster or melee/ranged build that pwns all others. Though my Cursing necro comes really close. Pretty much kills everything melee/ranged, only some very good BoA sin could win 50% of the time. But I am sure I can counter myself with another pwn build if I want to.

I don’t deny Acolyte of Balthazar is a nasty boss but hes not a Warrior is he hes a Dervish

You do realise Factions and NF Warriors bosses also have there damage doubled and yet there still no threat

Well without the deepwound but Yes my Ele can do that kinda damage pretty easily.

Do realise a Good Ele can snare targets in AoE so they cant escape and not all Ele builds use AoE to say they do is just silly

I did - a Vampiric Spirit Necro, an invoke Lightning Ele, an Inepitude Mesmer, there u go theres 3 such examples.

As mentioned above a good ele knows when and hwo to use AoE spells and often will Snare people in AoE. Why do Warriors try to get out of AoE as quick as possible? – because its massively damaging. You cant Deny that. I neither deny a warrior can kill a caster, especially if they are set up to counter casters with KD as daze etc. however what I am saying is a Generic Caster is more damaging than a generic Warrior this is why Warriors are more often than not left to be killed last.

Well I run whatever I find to be very effective, if that means I have to have a skill or two from a cookie cutter build that’s ok, but I don’t believe in using a “preset” build from someone else, that’s true Cookie Cutter builds (one that every skill is just copied from 1 person to the next) I like to make my own builds and ill change a skill or two my suggestion if a party member needs me to but i wont change to a "preset" build.

In the words of ensign – Peace

In other MMORPGs, I would say yes, Casters have an easy trip to the top due to their power. Maybe not at low levels, but medium and up, they got it made.

[In my opinion]
...Not so in GuildWars. You try to pull groups and act like the tank, you're gonna get smacked. You try to take on multiple warriors in PvP, you're gonna get spanked. You try to cast your massive skills to do uber damage while under decent aggro, you're gonna get slapped. You want an easy class? Go play WoW. GuildWars is all about tactics, timing, management, and skimpy male Paragon skirts. T_T Whoops, maybe not the last, but still, casters are not the end-all. I <3 balance.

Now if we could only give all melee classes huge energy pools, fast casting, soul reaping AND 'ubar'-signets of utter doom... then it would be balanced in your view, correct? >_<

Ummm...no one ever says that. Well...the nubs might but no one who's been playing for a while.

Most caster professions only have one blind skill(Necros don't have a Blind skill at all) and they don't often figure into their PvP builds, save 1vs1.

Removal never works the way you want it to. Mainly because by the time you remove the spell or hex it is reapplied and you're back where you started. Bring interrupts and prevent unfavorable spells from being cast.

gah, just had a RA game: we were 2 sins, they were 2 necros... not even hex breaker could help me >.< a simple 10 energy spell and bam... shutdown for 30 seconds.

ok this thread seems kinda funny to me. Melee vs casters and casters have the upper hand? Ever heard of interupt? I play my necro mostly, SS, SV, MM, and BiP builds. there are two classes I struggle with consistantly in anykind of 1v1. those are mesmer and ranger. Both because they have a high interupt factorand can prevent me from doing anykind of dmg.

I'll admit warriors make me drool and I usually keep them around the longest, esp if I am in 55 mode cause they can't kill me the same way as the other classes can and provide me with a constant energy gain. But that isn't there job in a team fucntion. Warriors are supposed to take damage that others (casters/fleshies) can't and Kill other melee charactors.

I have found that the balance in this game is pretty good, everyclass I have played (which is all but paragon) seem to have two classes they kill very well and two that they struggle against. But I think it has little to do with Caster vs. Melee

As far as PVE is concerned, as long as you aren't a sin then life is good in GW because people hardly takes sins in their pve groups unless they go with guildies. Everyone else is good to go.

Short answer?

Yes.

Longer answer...

Melee attackers are simple to shut down or grief.

*For an Assassin, all you have to do is block a single attack to throw off their chain. Sometimes, just remove a hex or condition.

*For a Warrior, the simplest way to deal with them is to have a blocking skill. They're slow to spike you, and often need help from teammates to make a kill against monks. There are exceptions, but I consider the Warrior to be the least threatening of all the melee classes, excluding knockdown warriors, which are still usually relying on teammates to make the kill while they annoy you and sometimes exhaust themselves with caster skills like Shock.

*For a Dervish, the damage is usually pretty steady and can be pretty random. Once again, one block skill will ruin their day in most cases. I won't even go into all the ways to rape them via their enchantments.

*Paragon... haha. Well, whatever.

*Rangers I don't really consider melees, obviously. As the most well-rounded class, they're the most annoying to deal with. But as usual, just using one block skill will typically save your life.

Notice the common trend here? Blind isn't the end-all-be-all answer. All the caster classes have some way of denying physical attacks, but you don't even *need* to make a build designed around denying melee. Just bring Guardian. Bring Whirling Defense. Bring Signet of Midnight. Whatever. There are a lot of choices. You only need one skill that can be spammed, or at least used at the last second to build yourself back up.

Casters, on the other hand, can often deal out more damage than physical attackers. They're also more difficult to shut down most of the time. You can shout "Mesmer!" but Mesmer skills require you to time your attacks to theirs, or are conditional in some way. Even energy-denial skills aren't as powerful or spammable as they used to be, so you can't completely shut down a target 100%. I'll reiterate, with physical attackers, since all their damage output comes from their weapon, just shut down that and suddenly all they can do is heal themselves.

Physical attackers are either all-around, as in the case of warriors and dervishes, or are designed to hit and run, like an assassin. Or they are designed to be useless, like the paragon.

Casters are more hit and miss characters. They aren't all-around, so depending on who you meet in a fight, either you'll be screwed or you'll dominate them. Physical attackers can take on mostly anyone but are more easily shut down.

So yeah, physical attackers get kind of screwed, especially in PvP, but they're a little more reliable. At least to me anyway.

You seem to have missed the key fact that (in terms of an elemental) alot of their most devistating spells or skills have long casting times.

From a piro elemental perspective they do anyway! You can very easily interupt or deactivate a caster with a ranger or mesma!

Casters are a support class for a reason, because they stay at the back and cast from a distance. Up close and person most dont last 2 seconds.

Not unless you know a good armor boosting or protection build. But those arent much use in PvE, because you dont want casters upfront anyway.

Casters are good at dmg yes, but defensively they require a monk to heal and a tank to protect them!

That's why of course you see every day full-caster teams owning top GvG and holding halls.
Do I play the same game than you?
I wonder.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Sarcasm? If you're pointing out that team builds are balanced... well, duh.

In other news, noticed this question earlier... but a warrior can indeed daze a target while he's blind with Headbutt + Plague Touch. One of my favorite builds.