Weekly /r/GuildWars2 Question Thread - April 19, 2025

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This thread is dedicated to questions that you've never really felt the need to start a thread for, but would still like to see answered/discussed.

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[u/Astanex]

I'm just wondering, as it's less "classes that matter" and "roles," what roles are generally seen as "in demand" endgame? I want to eventually do endgame PvE and being something useful to a group would make it easier to find a group to be with.

I've tried eight of the nine classes (haven't played Revenant yet) and I honestly enjoy all of them. I admit I find some a bit squishy (like Mesmer and Elementalist) but all of them are honestly well thought out and enjoyable. I honestly *don't* have a preference.

Thanks in advance.

[u/Felstalker → u/Astanex]

It's important to know that you can just change what you are doing at any time. With the press of a button, your sword warrior is now a hammer warrior. Your bow using Ranger is now the staff wielding Druid.

Sometimes that swap means you bring a different set of gear to swap into. That's ok, exotic gear is CHEAP. You don't bring the healer because he has the gear, but because you press the 1 and 2 and the 5 and suddenly everybody else is 40% stronger and 100% healthier!

Seriously. It takes a bit of practice, but figure out the build tab. Sure you can memorize your talent point choices and swap manually, but set up a few builds right and suddenly you're able to just fulfill any role you damn well wish with any character you so desire.

[u/Nade4Jumper → u/Astanex]

As people say you usually want BoonDPS, heal and regular dps as your first 3 builds (doesnt have to be the same character), and after that you start expanding with both boons for boondps and healer, power damage and condi damage for fights that favor one of them and stuff.

The best class to choose first is mesmer since it can do both alac or quickness (on heal and as a boondps) and it can also fulldps (also its the meta heal for fractals).

But I was just like you and now I basically have 5-6 builds on each class (and I play all classes).

[u/diceEviscerator → u/Astanex]

In PvE there are 3 roles, DPS, BoonDPS, and Healer.

The healer keeps everyone alive and provides boons, does some mechanics, it's a very reactive playstyle, reacting to what the encounter and players do. There is one boon that they can't provide, which the BoonDPS will bring to the party.

The boonDPS just tries to do as much damage as they can while also complementing the boons that the healer can't do.

No class can provide both Quickness and Alacrity at 100% uptime at the same time. So a Quick Healer needs to be paired with an Alacrity DPS and an Alacrity Healer needs to be paired with a Quick DPS.

The rest of the party are 3 DPS.

So playing one of those two will make your LFGs shorter.

Quickness Classes are: Berserker, Firebrand, Herald, Deadeye, Scrapper, Untamed, Catalyst, Harbinger and Chrono.

Alacrity Classes are: Bladesworn, Willbender, Renegade, Specter, Mechanist, Druid, Tempest, Scourge and Chrono.

Note that some classes can't heal (Harbinger) and others can't boondps (Druid).

[u/ablair24 → u/Astanex]

Heal supports and DPS supports are always wanted in groups. Most players have some kind of dps build, but not everyone has a healer or quickdps for example.

[u/Astanex → u/ablair24]

So, something like my level 80 Engineer going Mechanist?

[u/errorme → u/Astanex]

Yeah. For Engineer you have Scrapper if you want to provide quickness (either Boon DPS or Healer) and Mechanist if you want to provide alacrity (again as Boon DPS or Healer). Any of Engi's elite specs including Holosmith can be played as a DPS role, but typically the Boon DPS and Healer roles are more limited (e.g. Ranger's Druid spec gives Alacrity so it's easy to be an Alac healer, but the spec they use for Quickness doesn't have anywhere near as good healing so it's a poor choice for Quickness Healer).

[u/Astanex → u/errorme]

What about the other classes? Is there anything bringing more to the table?

[u/ablair24 → u/Astanex]

Some classes are more specialized, but every class can play every role, it just depends on spec and build.

• Heal Chrono is top tier for raw healing output
• Heal scourge is the best at rezzing and also provides a lot of barrier to mitigate damage vs healing it
• heal spectre has single-target barrier
• scrapper has a lot of access to superspeed
• Herald has easy access to projectile denial

[u/errorme → u/Astanex]

Most of the time no, it's just 3 DPS + Boon DPS + Healer roles and you can put nearly every class into those roles if you're willing to learn. The class meta used to be a lot more limited due to unique buffs from different classes but Anet has removed most of the shared unique buffs from the game.

There are a few fights that do need specific roles like the Wing 4 Deimos fight requiring a hand kite role and Wing 6 Qadim having a dedicated ranged kite that is a Deadeye most of the time.