Least popular / played class in GW

After a year and a half or more of playing that is.......... /agree with the stupid part (and I don't play the necro I've had for 2 years) Its a darned shame.

pretty sure u wont say this when ur doing shards of orr and good corner blocking tankm and need. remember, paragons dont negate degen well, just dmg wit save urself. if the para is kd when ur swarmed, its gg for u if u cant build back up the adred/ but then again, most ppl playing as tanks cant control aggro so.....

I will try to give an explanation. I thought about that, too.

1.) Male Paragons have

a.) a rather special armor style (some would call it gay, especially for the males. It is very different to other player armors and not too varied, all gold and white mother of pearl)
b.) hairstyles seem to be lacking. My Paragon is bald, but every time I see another male paragon, big chance that he has this schoolboy or that one other hairstyle.

on the other hand, female Paragons are fine. At least to me. OK, this is my weakest and rather subjective point.


Besides some rather subjective visual reasons...

2.) Effects are not directly noticeable
Neither "There is Nothing to Fear" nor "Save Yourselves!" give you direct feedback that you really did something. In fact some of the Anthems do neither. "Go for the Eyes" is also very strong, but the concept of critical hits is maybe too much tied to game mechanics for the majority of casual players.

This leads to the next thesis


3.) Defense and Utility are valued less than area damage

Paragons can provide the party with protection and utility. They also have a highly damaging ranged weapon (spear, 1.5 seconds and almost the damage of a bow, like an axe with much higher minimum damage) with a superb IAS (aggressive refrain).

Still, it is single target damage. This is a problem with PvE and the mindset of the players.

AoE damage is wanted and valued highly. The Tank-Healer-Nuker mindset is still present. A Damage dealer is obviously SUPPOSED to do area damage. While Paragons can dish out, it is single target damage.

The Paragon is only a support healer at best, has great armor and still is a midline char and not a tank, "tank" being a difficult concept in GW that has been forced upon GW player mentality despite having no proper place in GW IMO (besides corner blocking, GW tanks have no taunts and cannot really guarantee to keep aggro!).


Then we have players that see Paragons as an utility class. They often try the motivation line of skills that also do not give immediate feedback what they did. They are usually disappointed, too.


4.) A new class that people still did not really discover

It is maybe too late with GW2 being so close. But think of RANGERS and NECROS. Both have gained recognition nowadays, but in the early days of Prophecies, they were totally unpopular for various reasons!



To sum it up, the problem is not really the class, but player mentality.
People are unsure what to do with them (I still have not found any motivation build that I like e.g., I always end up with spear/command builds) and are not satisfied with their own performance. As all players are convinced that they have godlike player skills, it must be the class that sucks hard. With not so many Paragons around, the problem of crazy synergies between several Paragons does usually not demonstrate its sheer power in PvE. Paragons ARE accepted in PvP, but PvP players are usually not casual players, and casual players without knowledge of game mechanics make up the bulk of GW players.

When saying "least played", I take it to mean both in PVP/PVE environment:

In PVE, in order of least frequency, my list are:

Mesmer
Paragon
Ritualist
Assassin.

But in PVP, Mesmer and Paragon are getting played and getting their due respect.

So that leaves Assasssin and Ritualist. If we base it on the Campfire Professional Forum (as of this date and time, the Assa forum has 1,446 thread and 21,187 post against Ritualist 716 thread and 8496 posts), this suggest Ritualist taking least interest among the professions

Only Paragon and Dervish has lesser thread post count in Campfire Profession but since this two profession are relatively new compared to the Rits, we may safely still assume Ritualist are the least played overall - PVE and PVP.

But I have feeling, its Paragon and Ritualist have the least number of PLAYING characters.

My take.

Paragon. I dunno why, I love their character art, they have amazing skills, amazing inherent abilities (shield, spear, 80 al). Just something about them though, I can't really find myself getting into them. I do role one in PvP occasionally though.

This times a million. I'd rather have any amount of mesmers, skilled or not, on my team than your averange PUG sin. There's not much worse than grouping up for Nahpui Quarter and realizing that the first three people in the group are sins.

At least a bad mesmer still (probably) carries some form of health degen, slowdown, or some other stuff that helps. A bad paragon usually has SOME group support on him. In my experience, the average PUG sin will run in, do about 30 damage, realize he's dying, cast Healing Breeze on himself, die, blame the monk, and ragequit before the MM can even exploit his corpse.

I don't understand Rit or Mes hate. They're both awesome classes. I like paragons too, even though I don't know the class well.

Mesmer and Paragon.

I don't see too many male mesmers.

Mesmer/Paragon. We all know it.

Sad but true :/

Sin all the way ^^.
"Something" happend ><.

hehe teledeath ftw

I've seen groups take -any- other profession other than a sin. They'd even rather take a hero/hench over one in a group. They'd even rather go with one less person sometimes! Now that's sin hate...:P

warrior definately. I mean, I was in ebon citadel of mallyx, and I didnt see a single warrior! not one!

i appologize for my above bad joke, but hey WTH im already perm ban/terminated .. LOL :S

I don't understand the sin hate throughout GW in general. They're a pretty good class that dishes out a ton of damage with nice survivability (if the person playing it has any sort of clue). Sure, there are a lot of crappy ones, but the same can be said about every single other class out there. I will admit though, that a terrible assassin player will die quicker than a terrible player of just about any other class, and perhaps this is where this hate stems from.

People in-game don't really seem to like rits either (although those of this board seem to think otherwise). It's a great class - definitely my favorite. I don't think a lot of average players really understand them, especially since they aren't played a whole lot. And I can see why, it isn't a very direct class that gets instant, easily noticed results like most other classes. Paragons suffer from this same problem. Buffing someone doesn't give you a whole lot of feedback, but hitting a group of enemies with rodgort's invocation most definitely does.

When Factions was first released, there was a large population of Assassins, and most of them were very brave, or in other words, suicidal. Initially, that's fine, because people make mistakes. However, later on, this suicidal behavior was just too much, and most players just adapted to a new idea: don't take Assassins.

Ritualist is a very cool class to play with, and indeed, it's a great class. However, the discrimination is a bit unfair for them. When Factions was first released, many people hated the new professions, since they do not own the campaign (Weird, I know). Later, when the first Ritualist Minion Master build was made, many Necromancers were outraged and discriminated against Ritualists for that. Personally, I experienced one myself. I was in FoW with a random PuG; I play a healer myself, and the only monk was told to go Smite/Heal/Prot. After about 20 minutes of FoW, someone aggroed two groups, although initially, we were doing fine, but I had a knockdown, and the monk was...not helping much, so we were wiped. Then this Necromancer started spamming me with messages like the following:
"Ritualists are useless."
"Ever since they made these new classes, these people think they are better than anyone."
Sounds a bit unfair, doesn't it? I believe the hate still exists today.

I rolled a Mesmer as my first character. I was starting to feel boredom edge in because I couldn't do direct damage.

Then I learned about tab-targetting. Now being a Mesmer is about hexing up the melee classes and then watching the caster classes and interuppting them. Energy management will be crucial when I hit endgame, but there is nothing like watching someone kill themselves trying to kill you.

Mesmers are an evil, nasty class. And I love them. Until I come up against a Mesmer type in PvE. Then I cry. Mesmer v Mesmer can be really really ugly.

Thats mainly because the female mesmer has such a great wardrobe.

I have a sneaking suspicion all my money will be going to armor. The Elite armor sets are without a doubt the best armor sets in the game.

Mesmer are the least played in PvE imho.

I really, really, really regret buying my mesmer 8 different types of elite armor...i could not stress this more!

Now i cant delete her because I spent like 200k on her. Now whenever i go play this char, I run to the bathroom and start crying. No, not really, but sumthing like that, you get the point.

mesmer nnext probably para for pve

mesmers are generally unplayed. and for good reason to...

Oh good this thread is back up again......................


Meh. There are no useless classes, only useless players.

But yeah, mesmer is probably the most underplayed. Especially in PvE.

8 sets of elite armor only cost you about 200k? Just a few sets could easily cost that.

And I agree with the above statement! No such thing as a "useless" class. Each class was implemented in the game for a specific role. If there's any reason to not play a class, it can only boil down to the player's limitations. I find classes that most think are "useless" to be very effective.

Assassin is actually my "main" right now, although I don't really have a main...bought a character slot after doing my Common Application over the weekend, started this new ranger...
Anyway Paragons and Mesmers are DEFINITELY underplayed in pve. PvP Mesmers become quite popular but paragons...meh. Just look at costume brawl(i know bad example but i'll use anyway) If you see more than 1 paragon on your team you KNOW you're screwed.

necromancer, i have a dervish but i got bored, i have a warrior and got bored. Im working on a monk and hope i don't get bored. I'd play my necro but isn't any other build that pwns as much as ss nuker .

1. Paragon
2. Rt
3. Mesmer

Mesmer was the least favorite class but after you rich enough you may want to make a mesmer bcos they look good xD

My old story about mesmer: I was looking for mesmer weapons in town.

seller: WTS (mesmer's weapon can't remember what is it) = 20k
me: 5k ok?
seller: LOL U N00B this worth more than that.
me: sry may b i'm a noob but u can try to count how many mesmer in town and PM me if u want to sell for 5k

10 mins later...

seller: alright, i will sell.

ERM,
don't know about you guys, but the class that i play the least is Assassin, carry one thru the faction campaign and has since been kept in the "fridge" until further notice.

all other class I play equally (ahem, okay, i lie! i love my ranger and elementalist) okay, i lie again i love them all except Assassin.

the reason i dislike assassin is the way they run, makes you feel like they are dragging a boat on the Volga. theres this invisible force pulling them back kinda feel that I dislike.

i hate peragons x)
but id say that mesmer is the least played maybe