The most balanced class.

Overpowered PvE:
(1) Shadow Form, which basically is 'cheating the rhythm game'.
(2) Imbagon the only Paragon. Disables Hardmode
(3) Spiritspammer. Works anywhere, distracts enemies, does good damage.
(4) Minionmaster. 4th because it does not work anywhere, but same concept.
(5) Sabway Combo. Because the AI does not seem to get it. It is not just the energy. Take a Mesmer a Healer and a MM, the AI will know how to tackle them. If all three are necros it seems to mess up the AI.

Underpowered PvE:
(1) Mesmer Hexes. Because the enemies just stop triggering them at some point.
(2) Interrupts. Since you can only see what one enemy is doing.
(3) Water Magic. Although Water being really cool, it just is not compatible to how people play PvE.
(4) Melee as an offense tool. Melee means people rush into the enemy, it means monks have to stay in casting range, that mean the AI will see and attack the monks. Shadowform, Spiritspam, MM, they all try to eliminate the element of AI getting to the ranged attackers.

Well, underpowered and overpowered are relative terms which depend on what you define as balanced. I arbitrarily set my standard of balance on the dervish, just as the rest of us set our arbitrary standards wherever they may go.

Strangely enough, the dervish also qualifies for balance in the sense that as it is currently designed, it is a mishmash of pretty much everyone else's stuff. It's got some melee, it's got some spells, it's got some buffs, it's got some heals, it's got some utility...

Well, it's either that or the other guy is overpowered (or, if you want to go even further, that the other guy is more overpowered). Again, it all depends on where you place that "balance" mark.

Also, could we quit with the paragon argument? The two sides are talking about different things. The OP side is talking about imbagons (and imbagons only), and the UP side is talking about non-imbagon paragons (and only non-imbagon paragons). Just agree that there's a huge discrepancy in power between the two sides of the Para and get on with life.

No one uses a balanced class because that wouldn't have anything broken to use ftw.

Mooooooonks.

Pfft non-imbagon paragons underpowered? I could also go the same route and claim non-SF / CA sins are not overpowered. Really the problem is with you if you refuse to run what's been proven and work perfectly fine builds in order to prove a (useless) statement that your <insert profession> is underpowered or not overpowered.

Balanced , yep the warior.

But o men is this topic being used to tackle lots of professions.

Love necro, overpowerd in PvE ??It's a team build, try it solo. It's PvE leave it.
Monk, ow you mean 600/smite. So its duo, O yea it's PvE.. leave it.
Rittualist. Spirit Spammer.. A yea nice.. lots of creatures.. Uhmm o yea PvE....

Must I go on.
Yes SF on Sins needs to be changed to my opinion, that is a bit to uber.

But don't spoil all the fun, people depend on having fun and somekind overpowerd skill. You won't get more people in this stage of the game by
changing to much, you would only lose players.

PvP should be ballanced indeed. but PvE .. it's only nice to have some overpowerd,fun, look him die quickly skills.
If not, you will soon get,, look this game die quickly feeling

I would say Warriors and Monks are balanced.

Overpowered PvE: SF sins(obviously) and Imbagons because they spam a secondary class skill which provides +100 armor, an extra -35% less damage(or so) every so often(can't remember the skill name right now..), they still do good damage and they do it from mid line + they have lolenergy management.

Underpowered PvE: Dervish

Overpowered PvP: Ranger

Underpowered PvP: Ritualist

Or they find the stupidly overpowered builds to be boring and hence don't want to run them. I don't see that as being a problem with the person - it really is a problem with the profession if there's only one or two builds that's considered viable.

Imbagon is boring as hell. SF Assassin is boring as hell (and not to mention far too slow IMO). Crit scythe sin is boring.

But what could I know. My main is a Dervish, and I play a non-Imba Paragon and a non-SF/CS Assassin. The only thing from the current meta that I run is Spirit Spam, which I had already been doing anyway before the Rit update and only became more effective after.

Anyway, my point is, if there is only one or two viable builds for a profession and those builds are considered extremely powerful, then the profession is very much not balanced and likely is underpowered as a whole then. Even more so when said builds rely on skills from other professions.

not really...
dagger sin > scythe sin > scythe derv
sword war > scythe war > scythe derv

And are you saying dervishes can't keep up mediocre damage?

Just replace the dervishes elite with Zealous Vow and you can keep up energy like the warrior and sin, you just lose on the DWing ability slightly.

Dervishes may not be as good as the other two with their pedigree weapon, but they're still pretty damn good at it.

You can say they're underpowered compared to the other two using a scythe, but it doesn't mean they can't do power in PvE.

I can't see why alot of you said Rangers are OP in PvP...they recently had their best elite nerfed twice concecutively, and still lack damage/attack speed.
IMO PvP Balanced=Warrior
PvP OP= Eles (E/Rt healer should be nerfed, and they should buff the other elements so fire isnt the only one used)
PvP UP=Paragons...they can be very usefull but please...someone buff aggressive refrain.

Let's ignore the stupid R/A meta (which is OP for obvious reasons) and take a look at a standard BA Ranger bar: very high party-wide pressure potential (Apply, BA), spammable-cheap-overpowered interrupts D-Shot and Savage (that don't require IAS anyway thanks to their activation times), high survivability (Mending Touch, Nat Stride, high elemental armor), superb e-management (Expertise allows them to spam the fast-activation interrupt skills to spread poison faster, doesn't that sound wrong?).

Everyone has troubles dealing with such a Ranger if it decides to camp them, specially if the Ranger knows what he/she is doing.

Expertise has been the root of most problems when it comes to Rangers abusing other professions' high damage weapon masteries, added to the class' high survivability.

I both agree with you and couldn't disagree more.

There are two types of balance in this game: Class balance and Skill balance. And they do not have to be mutually inclusive.

In PvP, skill balance is what it's all about. We all know this. In PvE, skill balance doesn't really matter. No one cares if tactics sucks, because we don't need a limitless amount of viable build combinations in PvE. We just need a few.

However, class balance is definitely important in PvE. If your profession doesn't have something unique to contribute, then there's no reason to use it. This is the problem dervishes are currently grappling with, and the one that ritualists used to deal with.

In fact, class balance is actually more important in PvE than in PvP, because if your PvP character's profession sucks, you can just delete them and create another. You lose 10 minutes, tops. If you get to level 20 and find that your PvE character's profession sucks, you can't delete them without losing a lot of work.

See the problem with Zealous Vow is that...well, other professions can use it. So, a ZW Warr > ZW Derv and a ZW Sin >> ZW Derv.

Therefore your argument is invalid.

Have a wonderful day.

They're not triggering anymore because they're dead.

I think people have overlooked how many ways rangers have broke the game for a long time.

There is basically just one template that has ever been hailed as "skillful ranger", and it's Elite, apply, dshot, savage, split survival stuff. To a degree the three staple skills reward skillful play, but they are vastly more powerful than even the other interrupt options, and are short enough recharge to reward mindless spamming too. The addition of natural stride and mending touch/antidote sig have made them splitting far more forgiving than it ever was, shrugging off blindness and buried cripples alike while running all over the map under constant blocking. And now able to fire off lightning reflexes and just camp in the backline too.

But anyway this is just one of the MANY ranger templates out there. Expertise has been screwing up melee classes for a very long time in many different forms, always leading to mindless button mashing with short-recharge energy skills. Beast mastery builds when viable are likewise extremely mindless pressure spam. Ranger spirits just about only ever show up in gimmick builds, because it takes a one-sided gimmick to not get screwed over by their symmetrical effects. Most of those same builds are filled with trappers too, spamming traps in combat with some kind of interrupt resistance. Whether or not the above mess is involved, bows have also been a very strong spike gimmick, first by machine gunning interrupts until that was fixed, then dual shotting into savage, and sometime inbetween mashing hunter's/melshot. All these wonderful ranger qualities continue to screw up tombz since the very first day of spirit spam, and have been a force in GvG on and off.

In short the larger portion of ranger skills support degenerate play, and it is just one very narrow (but powerful) apply-based template that rewards skill within the sea of crap the class produced.

Everything is overpowered in PvE.

It's called power creep and is bad. Just look at how easy areas that used to be "hard" are now thanks to NF and GWEN skills.


For the most part though, Warriors are the epitome of balance. Great when played well. Awful when played badly.

Save Yourselves translated:

Ahh....class balance....

Thank you for this well thought out statement. An assassin can use a bow just as good/better than a ranger in PvE, does this make regular rangers useless?

An assassin can tank/DPS better than a warrior. Does this mean regular warrior are useless for DPS and tanking?

An assassin and warrior can use a scythe better than a dervish in PvE, does this make scythe dervs useless?

By your logic PvE should be pure necros and perma form.

Sin can't out-tank and out-dps the warrior at the same time. Plus, sins have to restart combos when they kill their target.

Scythe sins and scythe warriors do almost make dervs useless (don't forget, they can also spam enchantments better; they just don't because it sucks). The derv has to go for incredibly gimmicky utilities in order to avoid complete redundancy.

Don't know about the A/R vs R/, though. However, there is a vast majority of synergies he can get from secondary professions to give him an edge over the A/R (such as splinter weapon, for example).

Anything correct you may have said in that post has been rendered void by you implying tanking is useful.

I can not possibly agree more. Sin's DPS generally sharply falls as soon as you add utility. You have a DPS of 0 when dead. For some reason people forget that.

I was mainly refering to high end PvE i.e. DoA/Urgoz where it is mostly tank and spank.

Never would you take a warrior over sin for tanking in higher end. And you wouldn't take a tank period in general NM or HM.

I would go with frontlining if you prefer that.

And to reaper, just because something does something better doesn't mean the inferior one is useless.

And if your sin is failing at doing damage because he is dead, your monks suck.
A sin can upkeep plenty of SY for utility and still put out DPS, but yes, it can't tank+DPS, I simply meant those as separate statements.

You forgot Dervish like the Sin is very Overpowered obviously.

I would say Monks are underpowered especially in pvp.

Warrior is good and balanced.

My pick is Sin and Derv. for both pvp(all forms of pvp) and pve.

I can live with Rangers being overpowered in that manner. As for the assassin comment, very true.

As for the OP question, I think the best balanced is a toss up between a Monk and a Warrior as far as PvE is concerned. Don't care about PvP so I have no clue there.