Melee Professions

I'm trying to determine which melee profession is right for me. Warrior has awesome looks, but seems weak compared to Dervish. Dervish has skirts, but is able to epic scythe SY! and has avatars. Which would be better for general PvE? Elite end-game? Running? Versatility? Can any melee profession moderately use a bow, or would I be better off being a Ranger? My previous criteria fits, too.

The Warrior and Dervish are on about the same level as far as dealing damage. Avatars are a bit overrated at the moment in my opinion, but Dervishes still have strong offensive options. I think Warriors beat Dervishes on the damage and offensive side of things. Warriors have Dragon Slash, Earth Shaker, and Warrior's Endurance let warriors put out a lot of damage and full/are strong defensive or offensive options. Dervishes get Pious Renewal (the builds take some getting used to), Avatars, and Wounding Strike. Wounding Strike is very powerful because of the deep wound and now bonus damage, avatars are good for obvious reasons, and Pious Renewal lets you spam endless attacks without fear of running out of energy. Hundred Blades and Vow of Strength are basically the same skill.

Dervishes and Warriors are both capable of running, but I'd say that the Dervish will beat the warrior there.

Dervishes and Warriors both aren't insanely versatile, they are both made to be damage machines. Warriors have inherent armor bonuses that make them more durable than Dervishes, but Dervishes can use their skills and maybe and avatar to fuel builds that will provide massive party healing as well as single target spike healing.

Bows are a no on any melee profession except the assassin (even then it's questionable) and should really only be used for pulling and such.

Dervishes kinda beat warriors for endgame content as far as grouping with people go.

For general and even endgame PvE go, just pick the one that you enjoy playing more. Warriors are more tanky, Dervishes can do some stuff other than straight damage.

I play a Warrior and I love it, didn't like the Dervish a whole lot. It's all just personal preference in the end.

You have a secondary profession and within certain limits you can use a Bow cast spells anything at all.
The limits are the number of skill points you can put into the skill track and available energy.
Some combinations do not work very well others are great.

Each class has a primary skill line, ie a Warrior prime line is strength Warrior can put points into strength but another class cannot even if they are warrior secondary.
You can go warrior dervish and use a scythe but will be unable to put skill points into mysticism so dervish skills using that line will be all but useless in most cases.

I like the dervish not the look so much but they are pretty good in pve and have had a skill boost that made them better still.
I like the Paragon a little better heavy armour shield and throwing spear works for me.

All classes should take a bow not for damage but to use its long range to pull single enemies its just easier to kill enemies piecemeal.

dps isn't that important to me its how efficient the party is at winning battles.

Well, since you talk about "any" melee, I assume you just forgot about sins. Unlike casters, and ranged professions, I think melee professions have the shortest gap in power from one to the other. That said, each still has their own pros and cons compared to the other. In terms of looks, which is subjective, I cannot help you. However, my personal opinion is that the sin has the most awesome looks/armors. Also, you didn't mention what kind of playstyle you like most.

If you prefer raw tanking, then it would be a tie between warrior and dervs. Warrior has by default, the highest base armor of all melee. However, a dervs mysticism can allow it to reach a raw tanking level close to that of the warrior, and more so when using avatar of balthazar. However, if you consider a professions skill, then a sin can also become a good tank, though not necessarily due to having high armor, but because of their ability to block/negate/mitigate damage from skills like critical defenses and shroud of distress. In fact, in high end, I believe they are the best tanks due to shadow form. Warriors also have access to a plethora of tanking skills like defy pain and shield stance etc. Likewise, dervs have an array of tanking skills, like mystic regeneration and aura of thorns. In all, all melee professions have a similar ability to tank.

In terms of damage output or dps, sins are probably the front runners. This is because though they have the lowest base damage weapon of all melee professions, they have fast activating/recharging attack chains that deal decent bonus damage. In spite of this, warrs and dervs can also deal decent damage each. Both have high base damage weps, so their auto attacks are stronger than sins, and will have ways to bolster their offenses too. In all though, while all will deal good damage, I think sins will potentially have the highest dps out of them all. Furthermore, I think they are the only melee profession that can use a bow moderately enough to consider devoting a whole bar to the weapon, other than just for pulling purposes.

Now because I am tired, I will wrap things up quickly. I think sins and dervs will be the better runners due them having the ability to negate and mitigate damage. Sins can also shadow step and dervs have easy access to condition removal. Both classes have other utility skills that make running easier. In low level areas, warrs can also run though.

Versatility? Hard to say. They are all versatile in their own ways, e.g wars have access to various weps. Sins can also use other weps due to their primary ability affecting them all. Dervs have avatars that can allow them to be great offense and defense support, as well as other reasons.

Concluding this, for general pve, any class will do. For high end, I think all have applications though I believe sins are more needed generally.

If you're good with weapon swapping, then you could pull off WE daggers + yeti smash for both fast aoe damage & kd.

What I'm trying to determine, is which would be able to keep up SY! permanently. Or could I do a Ranger and spam it with Infuriating Heat? Are Rangers even remotely useful?

Assassins are a heckofalot good at spamming SY. With a way of the assassin build you can spam SY every 2-3 seconds. With a warrior it's a bit slower than that because Warriors aren't the fastest at gaining adrenaline. I don't see dervishes spamming SY that much, if you want a melee class that can protect just go imbagon.

Rangers are useful in a different area. In missions they aren't particularly useful, lots of rangers want to join but one of the reasons rangers exist (to give interupts), mesmers do a lot better job at interupting since their buff. Almost always now a Mesmer dominates at interrupting with panic and shutdown with ineptitude. Other than a splinter barrager ranger or a trapper for zaishen elite, there are a lot more efficient ways to go than a ranger.

I do have a ranger and he is great but I don't use him too much. But on the occasion I put him as a pet master and it's fun once and awhile but the current "meta" is:

Ineptitude Mesmer
Panic Mesmer
UA/HB monks
DwG rits
SoS rits
ST rit
SF tanks
SF ele
Imbagon para
Discord
WotA sin

Practically the non-used classes are warriors (except when you need a tank), necromancers (especially as mm's because everyone goes spirits now) and dervishes for damage

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Dervish > Anything for just about any PvE melee usage you can come up with. However, the difference is being able to finish any PvE area blindfolded one handed while drunk in 25 mins vs being able to finish any PvE area blindfolded one handed while drunk in 24 mins. In other words, they all perform fine, the performance disparity is well within the average variation from blind spawn luck.

Everything thats /w in the game can keep SY up once you use FGJ. Don't worry about that. Every melee profession also gets to take advantage of SoH/SW/GDW/MoP, which means their damage output is pretty much +-10% at most because 90% of all (non-sin) melee damage is from buffing. They all have pretty decent AoE, and the armor differences means jack shit in HM because even unprotted warriors die in 1s while a 60 AL profession can live forever with a prot. So yeah, don't really worry about being underpowered with anything in melee, you are universally very powerful.

No melee professions really use bows well. Mostly because bows are underpowered such that even rangers are better off not using them most of the time, as rangers are a perfectly viable melee profession going R/A w/ Enraged Lunge pet. They don't get SY from that, but in most battles you will probably find that SY isn't all that important anyway. R/W with bow of course can keep up SY better than any melee, but damage is somewhat weaker.

If you want versatility, Dervs are the best followed closely by Warriors. Sins/Rangers pretty much run 1 or 2 builds and stick with it.

Regarding bows, I struggled for a long time to make a bow warrior with fairly mediocre results. The biggest problem is that you’ll never do as much damage as a primary ranger or a melee warrior, and your high armour isn’t being put to good use at a distance. That said, if you really wanted to give it a shot there is some potential with a flourish-oriented build… but sadly, not all that much.

For a very similar aesthetic, you can make some incredibly effective spear warriors. It’s a good trade-off between playing an armoured ranged class, and still having a viable build.

i think alot of people are dancing around the fact that A paragon ( or IMBA, short for Imbalanced) is and probably will always be the best at keeping SY up. Not to mention TiNTF. It may be painfully META.. no reason not say it out loud.

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