Hero tier lists

Quote: Originally Posted by mugen

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra

0) God tier - heroes of this profession are in your party all or almost all the time.
1) Top tier
2) Middle tier
3) Bottom tier - these professions are still usable, but they're hard to use
4) Garbage tier - no reason to use these professions at all. Using the above definition:

0) God tier - Rit, Necro, Mesmer
1) Top tier - Ele (only for ER), Paragon, Monk
2) Middle tier - Ele (damage based), Ranger, Dervish
3) Bottom tier - Warrior
4) Garbage tier - Assassin

I almost always have at least a rit, a necro, and a mesmer. ER eles are common with some of my characters.

I think paragon heroes are a little underrated nowadays. With IAS, and splinter weapon, they can provide decent damage, especially with MoP. SYG and FB are almost staple skills nowdays. Anthem of Disruption and Anthem of Envy synergize well in a dual spirit spammers team. Gfte also affects minions. "They're On Fire" is a leadership skill, just that you may need to build around it. But if you can, ToF can be useful.

Rit is the only class that you can't have more than 2 heroes, even with the recent Razah upgrade and yet they are commonly tier 0 or tier 1 unless you use mercs.

Let's see...I play Dervish primary myself, so I bring the melee damage and rely on heroes for support more than anything else. I don't use spirits much at all because it tends to wind up slowing things down.

0) God tier - Mesmer
1) Top tier - Ritualist (resto), Necromancer (MM or Resto), Monk, Paragon
2) Middle tier - Ritualist (all else), Dervish, Ranger, Necro (all else)
3) Bottom tier - Elementalist, Assassin (using a crit Barrage build)
4) Garbage tier - Warrior, Assassin (all else)

My general team that I use for 99% of things is me, two Mesmers (one Panic, one PI or Ineptitude), two Monks (one RoJ smiter, one WoH hybrid), two Necromancers (one JB MM, one Resto healer), and one Paragon.

Quote: Originally Posted by Daesu

Agree with above.
Prolly best meele hero atm are Dervs: they're so OP and eazy to use that Avatar Dervs aren't that bad afterall.

Since some people have posted expanded versions of their tier list, perhaps I should too. Definitely my lists are biased towards caster primary; I can easily see how RoJ Monks are important for melee characters etc.

God tier
SoS Rit
SoGM Rit

Both Ritualist builds are too powerful to give up, seeing that they deal twice the DPS of everyone else. SoS Rit is especially strong, since it can spec high into a second attribute too.

Top tier
ST Defensive Rit
AotL MM
Invoke Ele
Dom mes

AotL MM would be God tier if there weren't a fair number of areas that you can't use him in, such as Shards of Orr. ST Rit is nice to have but generally not necessary (elite areas excepted). Still it is a very strong build that provides tremendous amounts of party-wide defense. Invoke Eles are I've found the best mobile artillery available, capable of bringing heavy, sustained and LoS-ignoring damage to bear on any marked target. Especially strong with Weaken Armour + EBSoH. Dom Mes has slightly less damage than Elementalists but has large amounts of utility available, including but not limited to Mistrust, interrupts and hex / enchant removal. All powerful options.

Middle tier
FoC Nec
UA Monk
Illusion Mes
N/Rt healer

FoC Nec suffers heavily from the long cooldowns, but it does have the attributes to spec heavily into a secondary profession and the energy to use those skills. Also brings stuff like Rip / Rend Enchants, Weaken Armour, etc. UA Monks are nice to have, and having one in your party usually means you wipe a lot less. They also deal damage while keeping red bars up. Both are good options, but by no means necessary in general. Illusion Mesmers are excellent against physical damage and mediocre against everything else, hence mid tier. N/Rt healers tend to have some free space and never run out of energy, making them decent semi-healers as well.

Bottom tier
Most other Necro builds
Heal Monks
SF Eles
ER Eles
ED Rangers
Command Paragons
Spear Paragons (i.e. primary damage = damage from Spears)
Dwayna Dervs

Necros are highly versatile, so if you need something like Command support you can easily slot them on a Necro + bring something else. But outside of FoC and N/Rt healers I'd put such builds in bottom tier or at best low mid tier. In my experience Heal Monks are slightly weaker than N/Rt healers, but still a decent enough option (their secondary is free). SF Eles are OK against large mobs, Invoke is usually better though. ER Eles are dedicated defensive characters and so rather weak, although they do their job well. ED Rangers are the second best mobile artillery available (and arguably the best single-target artillery). They also pierce straight through stuff like Spellbreaker and Vow of Silence. Still they deal only single-target damage. Paragons have lots of utility options but that's all, damage output is low. Spear Paragons suffer from LoS and shorter attack range problems, otherwise decent enough. Finally Dwayna Dervs make decent healers and can easily bring stuff like Blood Ritual. It's an option, but in my experience UA Smiters' instant hard res more than compensates.

Garbage tier
Motigons
Earth Eles
Water Eles
Warriors
Assassins
Other Dervish builds

Motivation is bad. Earth Magic is also bad. Water Magic is even worse. Warriors, Dervishes and Assassins are constrained by melee AI. You could give them ranged weapons, but then Warriors / Dervishes have no energy to use Bow attacks and if they use Spears they're just weaker Spear Paragons. Any ranged Assassin build immediately suffers from no IAS. Prot Monks are seriously outclassed by ER Eles.

The variance in everyone's tier list is surprising ...

@Jeydra

Somewhat accurate but not entirely true. Dervishes have 4 pips of e regen and can usually handle Barrage and Volley fine, although concussive shot is probably out of the question and there's little compelling reason to even give them a bow in the first place since most of their stuff is melee only, so that part is correct.

Ranged assassin builds can get IAS from Rapid Fire (and Beast Mastery, but that's as silly as most of the other alternatives), but Rapid Fire means you're limited to using Incendiary Arrows and reeks of "why aren't you using a ranger in the first place?". Generally speaking, Critical Strikes, Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts have very little synergy with other professions and cost way too much energy. The biggest issue is you're stuck with Critical Strikes for e-management, which is terrible for non-dagger weapons and frankly not so hot on melee weapons what with bad AI and tons of melee hate.

Anyway, where's the variance with regard to warrior and assassin heroes? Everyone agrees unanimously that they stink.

Warriors have just the Earthshacker niche afaik.
Sins should be in a further lower tier-they haven't even 1 single hero friendly build.

God tier: Ritualist, Mesmer
Top tier: Paragon, Necro
Middle tier: Monk
Bottom tier: Elementalist, Ranger
Garbage tier: Warrior, Assassin, Dervish

God tier: Mesmer
Top tier: Necro, Rit
Middle tier: Monk, Elementalist, Ranger, Dervish
Bottom tier: Paragon
Garbage tier: Warrior, Assassin

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis

Paragon in 2nd tier? They can be useful but that useful stuff tends to be fine when run on a secondary (such as a Ranger). I went back and forth between putting them in tier 2 and tier 3. The reason I finally settled on them in tier 2 is that, like the other tier 2 classes, their value is very dependent upon what your player professions are.

Spirit pooping is nuts and the first two rits are pretty much staples in all but the most specialized builds; I'd take a hard look at a 3rd rit if it was available as well. The first dom mesmer is pretty high up there too; I'm tempted to put it in tier 0 as a must run. My main reservation is that I don't feel the 2nd mesmer is anywhere near as good as the first. Necros are similar; the minion guy is awesome most of the time, but after that they become very situational.

After those staples everything is more situational. More Necromancers are amazing when you're playing a melee of any sort; on the other hand, I've been rather unimpressed with non-MM Necros when playing an offensive caster, as their damage output kinda sucks. Monks are in a similar vein; when you're playing a melee all the smite is awesome and it's a top tier hero that you don't want to leave home without; but when you're playing anything else, they're more of an 'if strictly necessary' hero, where you'd rather see if you can get away with a few more spot heals on other classes.

Elementalist heroes are in a similar boat. When I'm playing an Assassin's Promise based caster, Invoke Lightning heroes feel wonderful; hell, even Fire guys feel pretty good when I'm goofing off with Deep Freeze. When I'm playing a melee, however, they feel pretty worthless, and I more or less never use them. Paragons have a similar, albeit smaller niche when playing a defensive caster (who does that?). Their offense isn't super impressive, but they function rather well without direction. They also act as a bit of a Necro-lite, having a lot of room for all kinds of utility without causing problems. If you're actually playing a Monk as a Monk I'd recommend Paragons highly. I'm also told they're pretty good if you are playing a Paragon primary yourself, from all the synergies there. But if you aren't playing a backline character (or Paragon) and will be directing targets, Paragons are pretty marginal.

Otherwise, you have Rangers squeaking in on occasion for some spirits or the like (but generally being inferior to one of the other options), and Dwayna Dervish heroes are a perfectly reasonable party heal bot; but melee suffers so much from the AI that it's more or less unusable outside of drunk-at-2AM builds.

That's my impression of the hero options when used on several different primaries now, though I'm still experimenting and learning and reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

I rarely use spirits, preferring to use targeted AoE and single-target damage over uncontrolled spirits. I wouldn't ever say the rit's are staples, and I dropped my rit for a third mesmer. While the damage is impressive, I prefer to see it going where I want - ie, I'd rather have less damage spiking a healer than a lot of damage going to waste hitting a blinded warrior.

As far as mesmers go, the usage of dom mesmers usually tops out at 2, sometimes 3 in caster heavy areas. The different skill lines means that having two mesmers, applies entirely different utilities through illusion, domination, fast casting, and inspiration. Such as Shared Burden (group DMS/DAS/DCS), Ineptitude (melee punishment), Panic (group punishment), E-Surge spikes, Stolen Speed (caster DCS and team ICS) , Keystone builds (good AoE, effective against E-Denial), Visions of Regret (caster punishment), Psychic Instability (long AoE knockdowns), Mantra of Recovery (extremely fast recharge times), Fevered Dreams (Daze and group conditions), Signet of Illusions (primary skill for someone else? Have fun! Potential for fun for players too with PvE spells like EVAS), Extend Conditions (like Fevered Dreams, but longer condition times and no daze), Lyssa's Aura (fun for spamming wastrel's on a mesmer), Tease (great e-management + interrupts for any use)... That's a heck of a lot of usable elites. Each one has a good purpose, actually a good one, and there's never a time where I can't see wanting at least two. There's at least two that are useful regardless of what types of foes you are going against. Stark contrast to other classes, I'd say.

Any team can use Shared Burden to make kiting easy and take a lot of damage away from the movement speeds/attack speeds/casting speeds. Fevered Dreams is fun for a condition inflicting dervish. PI supports melee and casters alike. Keystones are great to stick SoH on. There's plenty to go along with melee classes, and casters are of course going to have fun with 2 mesmers on a team.

Hrm, in my case, it's not so much that I like SoS - I like Ancestor's Rage and Splinter Weapon. However, the only other interesting option for Channeling is Clamor of Souls, which I mentally file into the "does less damage than Wandering Eye" category, but to be honest - Energy Surge does less damage than Wandering Eye, as I'll repeatedly remind people who think Illusion does less damage than Domination (If it wasn't for terrible hero AI, Illusion of Pain alone would outdamage rather a lot of domination skills) - It's just that Domination's damage is more spikey and immediate and the tree can prevent an opponent from recovering, while Illusion tends to be more subtle and is lacking in terms of interruption.

The main advantage of offensive spirits is that they are mainly a good option for enemy distraction and they're mostly idiot-proof.

Assassins kind of deserve a special layer of bad as far as heroes go - it's not for the lack of trying. They get put into the "like warriors, but squishier" category, they don't chain properly (Blinding Powder!) and they spend more than half the fight putting up self buffs and chasing after enemies than actually attacking and killing things. They don't really bring anything special to the table. I think they could do with a few changes - make scaling with Critical Strikes reduce the cost and recharge of Assassin Hexes and also dramatically reduce the cost and recharge of Shadow steps in PvE (or make stuff like Mark of Insecurity AoE in PvE or just give them a role as party-melee assisting debuffers instead of having that be the Necromancer's forte). I think they'd be pretty unique and actually workable as PvE classes if they ended up as the only melee class without severe kiting issues. Might compensate for their bad relative survivability.

Ah well, just food for thought.

0) God tier - Mesmer, Monk
1) Top tier - Necromancer
2) Middle tier - Ranger, Ritualist
3) Bottom tier - Dervish, Elementalist
4) Garbage tier - Assasin, Paragon, Warrior

Reasons:
Mesmer - Tons of armor ignoring damage, lots of protection from interrupts. Pretty obvious why they are at the top.
Monk - I always bring a healer monk, I think they're a lot better than ritualist healers.
Necro - I almost always have a minion master hero. And my ele and mesmer always have a battery necro in the party, so I can spam without any energy concerns.
Ranger - I sometimes bring a splinter barrage hero to add to the damage of the party. They also have some interrupts to help the mesmers.
Ritualist - I rated them lower than others have... it's because I think heroes are really bad at spirit spamming. I only bring them sometimes. I'll use a soul twisting hero sometimes too, when I don't think ER e/mo will be good enough. But the incompatibility with minions limits the usefulness of it.
Dervish - They can add a lot of damage, and help the minions bodyblock, but you have to be careful with their skills. I don't trust them not to cancel important enchantments, so I usually don't give them any teardown attacks.
Elementalist - I usually use an emo for protection purposes. And I'll bring a fire ele sometimes, if I think they'll be able to do their full damage (NM/low-lvl HM).
Assassin - They don't seem to add much to the party, and I've read that they don't understand dagger chains. I never bring them.
Paragon - A lot of their skills seem useless to me. I do always have "fall back" on two non-paragon heroes though.
Warrior - Same problems that the assassin has. I only bring one if I'm forced to.

Lol Ensign, your experience coincides very well with mine. I'll just add that FoC Nec is nice to have because of several things: ability to spec into Prot Spirit / Aegis / SoA and have the energy to use it; ability to throw out Weaken Armour / Rend Enchants (although with 7 heroes the times I've needed Rend are very few indeed) / Rip Enchant; and importantly the ability to throw out AoE cover hex for AP in Suffering. The more hexes are out there, the less likely AP is to get removed. But I definitely agree the damage output is subpar. That's why FoC Necs aren't top tier.

If you're drunk at 2am you should give N/A Dark Aura touchers a try

@Plutoman - spirits actually follow target calls. I've not studied the phenomenon seriously and they don't respond at once, but to some extent they will follow your instructions. For Mesmers, the big problem is that there aren't many powerful non-elite Mesmer skills. The list is quite short: Shatter Hex and Shatter Enchant to a lesser extent, Mistrust, Cry of Frustration, Fragility (maybe), Wandering Eye and Clumsiness, Accumulated Pain and ... what else? Sure, there are other usable skills, but they aren't outstanding. That's why using Mantra of Recovery on Mesmer spells isn't very productive, and a big reason why Mesmers aren't God tier (for me anyway). Also many Mesmer elites are reasonable but not really worth looking at. VoR is a reactive hex, Shared Burden is a little eh, Lyssa's Aura is easily compensated for by having more energy management same as Tease, Fevered Dreams goes away once the target dies, and so on.

@LexTalionis - I think Dom Mes > Illusion Mes because Illusion Mesmers are necessarily constrained around Ineptitude / Clumsiness / Wandering Eye. You are forced to use them because Illusion Magic is so barren. And all three spells only work against physical targets. Dom Mes will always be useful, but Illusion Mesmers are very mediocre against caster mobs.

Main advantages of offensive spirits are that their damage output is extreme, you can have them placed down before battle starts to make the fight easier and they serve as great tanks in a pinch. All very powerful. Personally I see no reason not to use both Rits in a team, and if a third Rit were available I would seriously look into using it, too.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jeydra

@LexTalionis - I think Dom Mes > Illusion Mes because Illusion Mesmers are necessarily constrained around Ineptitude / Clumsiness / Wandering Eye. You are forced to use them because Illusion Magic is so barren. And all three spells only work against physical targets. Don't they also work against caster wanding?

Casters don't wand very often ...

Don't forget Unnatural Signet, Signet of Weariness, Shatter Delusions, Spiritual Pain, and both Wastrel's skills in the dom line. I count 12 very usable skills in the domination line, all non-elites:

CoF, Mistrust, Power Spike (which is nice with frustration), Overload, Shatter Delusions/Enchantment/Hex, Sig of Weariness, Spiritual Pain, Unnatural Signet, and Wastrel's Worry/Demise.

Some are very niche; you may not need weakness, but it's useful in anti-melee areas. You might not need heavy enchantment or hex removal, but it's good in other areas. Power Spike is powerful against healers when paired with Frustration. CoF/Mistrust/Unnatural Signet, and in some cases, Spiritual Pain, are relatively steady damage skills that don't suffer from being stacked to a large degree. The recharges and AI usage (ie, using mistrust on two different casters) mean that stacking two to three mesmers increases shutdown without a loss in damage to most mobs (imagine 3 mistrusts going off at once, immediately after a mob is hit by two e-surges and panic).

In Illusion.. Not as many good options. Arcane Conundrum, Frustration is great when micro'd onto healers, Signet of Clumsiness, Clumsiness/Wandering Eye, Calculated Risk has some conditional usage, and Fragility. 7 skills that I would use in semi-general situations, but typically I would only use ineptitude/clumsiness/wandering eye/signet of clumsiness. I wouldn't normally double up on an illusion mesmer, because the skills tend to not go so well stacked up with short recharges. I completely agree that a Dom > Illusion, the uses are so much greater and less niche. I usually run 2 dom and 1 illusion. That's why (imo) they rate at the 'god' tier for me - there's always a use in my party, whether it's anti-melee, anti-caster, general shutdown, whatever else I may need. Inside the shutdown, blinds, interrupts, there's both protection and damage. Almost like the ol' Smiter's Boon, but protecting instead of healing alongside the damage.

In inspiration, hex eater signet is powerful and good energy management alongside.

Don't count Shared Burden short - think on it - 50% slower movement speed means easy kiting for you and heroes - 50% slower attack speed means, quite literally, that melee damage is halved, and either the party needs less healing or more minions stay alive - and 50% slower casting speed means more spells interrupted, less damage all at once. All 3 together, in a nearby radius (which can hit most of a mob generally), is pretty nice.

Overall, I see 14 usable elites, 4-5 of them that don't have a niche, ie, that are good for any general play regardless, and the rest which are dependent on builds, style, and area, but quite effective when used. Alongside that, I see 19 offensive skills in dom/ill, with about 8-9 that are also non-niche. The Insp line has 4 non-elite skills or so that are good e-management, and quite a few other skills that are conditional but have their own niches. It leaves a lot of flexibility and changes in my triple-mesmer groups. Anyways... There's my speech on mesmers, my complete opinion as to why they're important to every group. I do apologize, I type a lot, especially when I'm opinionated about something (and I'll admit that), so forgive the walls of texts.

That's interesting with the spirits, I'll have to do some testing and experimentation. I think I have a hidden bias because of all the times I tried to pug and rit's irritated me because the only build they knew and could use was an SoS. I also dislike the idea of stationary spirits when I'm moving around a map, and in any general play I don't like bothering to flag/set up spirits, which then a rit loses a lot of the effectiveness and usefulness. I won't argue the power of them; I just don't see the use unless I'm in an area difficult enough to require flags and spirit micro.

Illusion is solid damage but it's often not going to be on your target, you are busy messing up casters while they will instead target the attacking melee. Left on their own melees may or may not be balled when chasing around kiting heroes, but even so they often are not balled on the rest of the group, particularly when not playing melee.

Where this is a real issue is triggering AP which I'm finding mez pretty crap for unless you mess with spiritual pain. (Keystone might also handle this well enough..) They will make the whole mob fall over at once but that doesn't leave many AP triggers inbetween. So if you are chained to AP spam illusion is of limited value. (Coincidentally... Jedrya like most eles is always running AP)

The major issue with dom mesmers IMO is mistrust stacking. They only mistrust your target, basically regardless of what is on the target's bar. So even if you pick good targets, there's only going to be one mistrust at a time. This is the highest damage part of their bar so not having that trigger constantly is a limitation, running over 2 even in caster-heavy areas can be a waste. Everything else (cry, unnatural, esurge, shatter hex, spain?) does not suffer as badly, but you get way more value out of a panic or VoR than the additional esurges. (Not that esurge is bad...)

@Jeydra: What you said is more or less true, but Illusion does have one silver bullet - Frustration really screws up Casters. Needs assistance though (Technobabble is usually enough). Most modern Domination builds tend to overrely on Mistrust though... (which is quite definitely a mistake. I guess I should make a post about Mesmer stacking someday).

Edit: Yikes, Foxbat just took the words out of my mouth re: Mistrust.

@Plutoman: You forgot Accumulated Pain, which IMO is one of the best Illusion skills out there. Maybe I really should make that post after all.