Which profession has the largest variety of builds for high end PvE?

Hello all,

In preparation for Guild Wars 2, I'm returning to guild wars to work on my titles and HoM. Ultimately, I'm going to try to get GWAMM, so I'm going to be a lot of time grinding, farming, etc. I'm also interested in trying HMs, and I'll probably spend most of my time running with H/H, if that makes a difference.

Basically, since I'm going to be spending a lot of time with one character, I'm looking for opinions on which profession offers the most variety for high end PvE. I'd like to be able to try a variety of builds as I go along and not be stuck using my choice of just three super powerful elites. For me, this is probably more important than how fast I can farm or whatever.

It might be the case that all (or most) professions are the same, and if so, that's fine. But before getting too far along, I just thought I'd ask. Thanks!

I'd have to say the professions that are most prevalent in high end pve at the moment are assassins and mesmers.

When you say you want to use a variety of builds, do you mean in high end speed clears or in general pve while you are playing through the game?

Grinding out titles for GWAMM, which I'm sure I'll be doing for longer than I'll spend playing through the campaigns. That probably puts me a little closer to the speed clear side of things.

I would say mesmer and assassin would be the ones. many others has gotten nerfed one way or another

If I had to start over..............Rit.

SoS Rit with Mesmer heros and Discordway Necors will tear through most of this game for GWAMM title.

VQ's, Missions, Mapping all too easy with this. Only hard part would be saving anout $$$ for the party, drunkard, sweet titles.

Does the player run a SoS Rit much more effectively than a hero then? Because I know heroes aren't as effective at being melee in general.

Well you can do this with either assassin or mesmer, really depends on if you want to play as caster or melee.


Generally, from what I've seen, people don't run a pure spirit spammer SoS on heroes, they mix it up with damage and heals, so I'd say humans run SoS more effectively if you're looking to upkeep your spirits throughout a mob.

Just for the record GWAMM isn't needed unless you are going for 30+ you are setting yourself up for some major boring grind.

I'm at over 30 and don't even have rank 1.

Yes they do, but mainly because players can use the "Summon Spirits" PvE only skill that heroes don't have access to.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Summon_spirits

That depends upon a few factors. A lot of people here have responded with Assassin or Mesmer because those are the classes that are used in a lot of "speed clears" and/or other gimicky builds, but I wouldn't say they have much "variety" - the Assassin is almost always some form of Perma and the Mesmer is almost always a Panic.
But, of course, any class can do the "high end" PvE content, given the right build and party make-up, if you are more concerned with "playing" the game, rather than "beating" the game.
The classes that come to mind off the top of my head, as far as variety is concerned are Monk, Ritualist, Necro, and (maybe) Ranger.

As said above, the human player has the great advantage of using Summon Spirits, because that allows them to take the spirits to the foes. But, a Hero can be almost as effective if you pull the foes back to the spirits (and micro-manage a bit).

I would strongly advise to not run a rit tbh. Running SoS is one of the most boring and dull bars ever invented in GW. If anything run mesmer (would be my first choice) or assassin (second one) or necro (third one) those are the most fun to play because you can do a lot of variety. As a mesmer you can go heavy interrupt with Panic and see all these "!"'s appearing above mobs heads, or Esurge/VoR their asses etc. Also, don't forget to mention Mistrust etc. You can go caster hate, or melee hate, etc etc.. SoS is put down spirits, wait till they kill everything for you, commence. It's boring, period.

Sos is not only boring but most of the time I am annoyed when they, again, not attack the foe I need them to attack. :/

Right now I love my mesmer but prefer keystone over panic myself but thats just a preference. Also love my sin but I dont have that for High end Pve since I am not good enough for SF in DOA or UW.

Thanks for the replies all.

Before writing this post, I did what research I could, and it did seem that Ritualists pretty much run SoS and Assassins pretty much run Shadow Form (and/or Jagged/Fox/Death Blossom). I'm sure these builds are effective, but mostly, I'm trying to pinpoint the profession that has the largest number of viable options for the harder PvE stuff (and possibly PvP).

So far, I've heard a couple votes for Mesmer... with the way fast casting works and spells such as Signet of Illusions, it does seem like it has a lot to offer. Out of curiosity, how are warriors holding up these days?

There's little variety when it comes to a W/ these days; your choices start with axe/hammer/sword, then proceed onto the stock PvE build for the chosen weapon. Your heroes do all the work anyway, so in the end it doesn't matter. If you haven't rolled a Warrior... don't. An update to the Dervish means a lot of the attack skills are now adrenaline based (sans enchants & the like), and those are a lot more fun to play. That being said, my main is a W/N, and I love him for title grinding due to the lack of effort required for Missions, Dungeons, VQ's, etc. There are a lot of hero builds that are suited to support a melee character (especially with the 7 hero update) and are extremely effective when undertaking such tasks.

~ N

Necro and mesmer have the largest variety of viable builds.
Assassins are probably the most useful in the widest variety of elite areas.
Rits have a wide variety of builds and are always a welcome addition to a PUG, but their most effective builds are also some of the most boring, so YMMV.

I can't really decide between the Mesmer and Ritualist profession, I only miss one max title from GWAMM on my Monk. But I found my monk harder to do high end areas with H\H so I always end up as SoS or AP Caller..

After reading through these comments I've decided to start my journey as a Mesmer. Hopefully it won't be too troublesome to direct my heroes around without being melee myself. I had made a warrior, but I wasn't too far along, so in the interests of having more options to play around with later on, I'm happy to switch.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, everyone.

Truth is that I've seen GWAMM on eles and rangers; you don't need a specific class. You just need patience and time to do this stuff.

Just fill out your books as you go through missions (NM first, then HM) Get your SS, LB, Protector, Guardian, and 4 EotN rep titles that way. That's an easy 12 titles. VQ all four and map scrape while you are at it for cartography, that's 9 more (21 counting Master of North). Take all that cash you've earned (don't waste it on lockpicks) and cap all the elites in the game. That's 4 more and you have 25 and Many Leather-Bound Books. Beat FoW in NM 10 times and you have Survivor. Spend the rest of your hard-earned getting drunk, eating sweets, and lighting fireworks. That will give you 29.
Then go Kurzick (biased) and play JQ or do Kurz. SC's until you R12 allegiance.

Congrats you are GWAMM,

The only two substitutions are to start in Prophecies and get LDoA for an extra title, and/or max out both allegiance titles.

You could spend money chest running and wisdom tracks, but it's inefficient and hella expensive. You'll have to stop your title grind to farm, and that means creating a farming build. Yawn.

I see most answers revolved around the classes that are most gimmicked right now, and thus offer the LEAST variety.

I wouldn't even vouch for Mesmer, running one myself through EOTN. I wanted to use Ineptitude so badly, but every time I did if I didn't get a hero to run Panic for me we'd suffer a lot more. So if you want to group with people Panic is pretty much stapled to your bar, no matter how hard you try to replace it.

Elementalist offers an amazing amount of variety, as currently they lack a single elite that overpowers others. Not only that, but there are strong elites in every element, and the freedom to switch attribute lines on a whim while still being useful is not a luxury many other classes enjoy (if any). For example, Searing Flames is only slightly more popular than Savannah Heat. In earth there's Sandstorm/Unsteady Ground, in air Invoke Lightning, in water Ward Against Harm. And if you want to use another profession entirely, your large energy reserves can make you a very competent monk or any other caster profession.

I would disagree that Warrior lacks variety. Hundred Blades, Dragon Slash, and Defy Pain are meta currently, but there are other great ignored elites. I can do 57 dps with Warrior's Endurance. Enraged Smash makes spamming hammer attacks viable in PvE, and Battle Rage is fun for going crazy in easier areas. And I'm sure that some great builds can be made with Soldier's Stance and Steady Stance. Note that many of these skills aren't weapon specific.

Assassin is really in-your-face fun and allows a small amount of experimentation if you diverge into critical strikes spears and bows. Otherwise, it's gonna be the same 5 or so dagger attacks the whole game when you're not tanking. Even so, I would say assassin is the least boring class in terms of gameplay.

Necromancers are kinda stuck with Spiteful Spirit or various minion master duties, which are all booooring. But they are similar to elementalists with an abundant supply of energy so they can run other classes well. Lifesteal and sacrifice skills are exciting in the risk they bring all on their own though.

Monk is boring if you're hero/henching. Smiting skills recharge too slow unless used with Assassin's Promise. Always easy to find a group though, and monking for humans is NOT boring.

Rangers can do many things but groups will constantly insist that they run Barrage or SOS. Rangers have the lowest chance of finding a group unless they start one themselves. They're currently just kind of the "extra" class that no one needs. Instead, some other class will usually bring the one or two ranger spirits that are needed for the area.

Best class for hero \ hench play is clear cut dervish. Very sturdy for general PVE (balling foes, pulling, simple stuff), very good running builds (which comes in handy from time to time) and top notch damage.

Sin places second, top notch single target damage and spreads splinter weapon fast. Very good running builds and can also do specialized tanking (SF tanking) in speed clears.

Third would be shared between the different AP builds, Me/A, E/A, N/A with a good hero team. Very stressing way to play IMO but definitely top shelf performance. Building a team around that kind of a play-style can result in extreme efficiency.

Rit comes after that again. In short rit lacks synergy with the rest of the team, a sin \ derv can easily bodyblock on the corner and assist in a spike. AP callers do their calling thing doing massive damage and decimating groups at a quick pace. Rits though just kinda summon their spirits and deal damage \ tank for the rest of the team. As a side note ritu's have completely awesome split capacity which comes in handy for some missions like flagging heroes back protecting ghostly hero and then running off and soloing the bonus. That kinda stuff

After that again, Nec \ Mes \ War \ Imbagon.

And after that again everything else.

Mesmers are used in UWSC, FoWSC, DoASC, DeepSC, UrgozSC and I even know a couple of dungeon SCs that use mesmers. But I don't think SCs were what this man was looking for^^

Lol? Not enough variety? As a mesmer you can:
-VoR, pretty powerful skill, probably gonna take Mistrust, Empathy, Chaos Storm perhaps etc for fun.
-Esurge: your bar will be similar to VoR but the usage will be totally different
-Panic: always mehish about this build, but it's fun to run every now and then
-Ineptitude: gogo pure melee hate, wandering eye, Signet of clumsiness...
-Signet of illusions: you can pretty much do whatever you want when you run this, mesmer skills are strong enough in itself to be able to lack of an elite...
-Assassin's Promise: I used to run a build that has AP, echo and chaos storm. It was fun to see 4 chaos storms go in NM and nothign scattering. I raped through NF using that build, and it was pretty fun to run.

If you wanted to play an ele, your time has passed, there was once a day that they were viable and strong, now they have been reduced to nothing. Every elementalist Elite skill that does damage is outdamaged by normal skills from other professions. Because they deal armor ignoring damage and eles don't. And as such, kind of suck.

Again, false.
-Assassin's promise: you can run an AP caller with Mark of Pain and some other skills
-Spiteful Spirit: pretty generic nuker bar that can pump loads of damage
-Icy Veins: I've had some fun with that skill, bars can vary widely with this one, since it's a Soul Reaping skill. I advise running it along with putrid bile and see things explode.
-Pain of Disenchantment: that's a pretty popular skill now, it can also pump quite some damage
-Discord: lol...
-Minion Master: You can run Flesh golem to get this enormous golem minion to come to your aid, or you can run orders MM which is incredibly strong, and I've had fun running it, or Jagged bones (although that's more of a hero build) etc etc

Necro's have enormous variety, just try to find it.

I either agree or don't care enough to disagree on the rest^^

There is more to Rit than just SoS. A Rit can go as a straight damage build using things like Clamour of Souls, Spirit Rift, etc., or as a Restoration based healer, and of course, as specialized builds such as an FS (Frozen Soil) in a VSF group.
Furthermore, boring is in the eye of the beholder. I don't find an SoS build to be boring - but that may depend upon your particular SoS build.

Mesmers have plenty variety, Panic is overated and undeed for general PvE.

Invoke is the only elite you mentioned thats actually worth using atm.

I cba commenting on the rest...