So, I have some questions for those of you who have hit 80 and run Fractals/Dungeons.

What kind of class distribution are you seeing? I have a 42 Warrior, and am strongly considering making a Guardian to possibly main instead. I'm just curious as to what's more useful to dungeons at end-game, if that makes any sense. Any classes that are basically a "Don't bring that to this dungeon"?

To be honest, no. People will run with just about anything. I currently "tank" most instances with my warrior and it works out pretty great. Just about any class with a support build will do wonders in any of the dungeons so unless you're looking to play with a specific set of people, I would not worry much about the class and just play whatever you enjoy most at the moment.

I really don't have any issues bringing any classes into dungeons. Most professions can be pretty useful in most situations...except engineers. Those dudes need a buff pretty badly.

@shinboy630 said:

I really don't have any issues bringing any classes into dungeons. Most professions can be pretty useful in most situations...except engineers. Those dudes need a buff pretty badly.

I don't think I've ever seen a single engineer in the wild.

This now brings me to my next question - do we have a good population in the guild of Fractal/Dungeon runners? I'm not 80 yet (ha life), but plan to be soon, and this is what I want to be doing without having to go with nasty PuGs.

@theimmortalbum: A group of us run dungeons pretty much every night.

@shinboy630 said:

@theimmortalbum: A group of us run dungeons pretty much every night.

Great. You'd think I'd know this by now, getting in at the start of this whole thing. I'll have to jump into Mumble more often then.

I have an Engineer and it got bad after the changes to grenades. They just can't really hang. Rangers have it rough as well. Other than that, I think there's a pretty good mix

@sdharrison said:

I have an Engineer and it got bad after the changes to grenades. They just can't really hang. Rangers have it rough as well. Other than that, I think there's a pretty good mix

It really depends on how you build your ranger. Yes - in comparison with other professions they've little to contribute support-wise. When I compare a spirit beast ranger versus a banner traits warrior - the ranger's support is ludicrously weak. However, the condition damage & trapper build I'm running with is great - the amount of constant AoE condition damage such a build is capable of is nothing to sneeze at, and there's lots of attribute budget left over to increase survivability when focusing on condition damage. Lots of toughness and a bit of vitality is a must, regardless of profession, is how I see it.

The crux of the Ranger's weakness in higher end PvE is the unreliabilty of the pets. Often, it's impossible to prevent a pet from dying with the tools that are given to us, and the rules that the pets adhere to. As soon as a pet dies, the Ranger suffers from a punitive pet-swap cooldown increase, which begins a vicious cycle, rendering pets nigh useless and very frustrating. In short, pets need an overall survivability increase - best by changing certain rules for them in favor of their survivability (like decreasing all AoE damage they take), as well as giving us Rangers more pet management tools (like having them not pull aggro or sending them to specific locations - without such things taking up regular utility slots). Also - the punitive aspect of increasing the pet-swap cooldown because of a pet death is highly questionable in the context of other profession specific mechanics and overall balancing and unavoidable pet deaths in many encounters.

I still laugh my ass off, when I see rangers in glass cannon gear underperforming to the point of being useless in higher tier PvE encounters, and still not switching up their gear and traits. Oh well, some will never get over the playstyles they've adopted within the context of the holy trinity design. Their bad. Then again, GW2's group dynamics just aren't as interesting to play with as the classic setup of tank/healer/DPS is - at least in PvE. PvP is baller the way it is. So whatever.

And add in to this conversation, that other classes like the warrior have a lot of success by doing very little. I know there's always defensiveness on this, but when you look at what a ranger/necro/engie needs to do in order to be relevant, VS what a warrior does... Big disparity not only in terms of input and strategy required, but also reward. We do more to get less.

I love when GW did to get away from the trinity, but the reality is that the class balance isn't there yet. Alas

@theimmortalbum said:

So, I have some questions for those of you who have hit 80 and run Fractals/Dungeons.

What kind of class distribution are you seeing? I have a 42 Warrior, and am strongly considering making a Guardian to possibly main instead. I'm just curious as to what's more useful to dungeons at end-game, if that makes any sense. Any classes that are basically a "Don't bring that to this dungeon"?

I've heard that warriors can solo some dungeons (you can find videos on youtube). They're pretty great in PvE from what I'm reading on the official forums. It's sPvP where they are lacking.

@sdharrison said:

I love when GW did to get away from the trinity, but the reality is that the class balance isn't there yet. Alas

I think higher level fractals (starting from 20+) clearly show one of the main flaws of the trinity-less design of GW2 in the context of PvE. It's all about survivability, to the point that everybody in fractals 30+ pretty much runs a max survivability build with maximum group support traits and utilities, clad in high vitality and toughness gear - robbing GW2 of all the customization and playstyle diversity, which made it special to begin with. It simply cannot work out this way, and they should've anticipated as much.

I can confidently say, unless they change some major aspects of their design regarding group dynamics, especially in the realms of healing and aggro managment, the current iteration of these mechanics limit their encounter design so much, that PvE never will be as interesting as in games like WoW - as soon as things get rough enough, everybody builds a tank to match the challenge, and that can't be it.

@theimmortalbum:

In a good dungeon group all classes are viable, but obviously some classes are just more versatile and powerful than others in a PvE setting. Unfortunately, since ANet primarily wants to balance around PvP, none of this will probably be changing. Warriors and Guardians are powerful in the current PvE setting, and can carry a group of incompetent pug players through a lot of the explorables. This shouldn't stop you from playing an engineer, necro, ranger, or a mesmer if you find them fun however. Just keep in mind that they're just not as powerful in PvE as the aforementioned classes you're considering.

For now I advise just playing around with the different classes and figure out which class you like the best. Rather than worrying about which class is the most viable at endgame, figure out which class you have the most fun with.

I have a level 80 ranger. I've ran dungeons aplenty and if you build them right you can easily hold your own. A precision>power>condition damage build with a shortbow/longbow does great damage to both single targets and groups. They are also the easiest to solo the open world in my opinion due to your pet tanking for you. I'm currently building a warrior focusing on regen, and unless I'm just being an idiot, it's really easy to stay alive and kicking.

@sdharrison said:

I have an Engineer and it got bad after the changes to grenades. They just can't really hang. Rangers have it rough as well. Other than that, I think there's a pretty good mix

You say this...and yet last night I watched my Engi friend solo a boss in TA from half health to dead after the other four of us wiped...

As for me, I run a glass cannon Warrior (all power, precision, and crit damage). I think pretty much all classes are good to bring dungeons, but there are obviously some that people want more than others (attack speed buff Mesmers, greatsword Warriors, AoE Elementalists, Elixir Engis).

After running most of the dungeons & plenty of time in Orr, at least on the server I'm on, I tend to see quite a lot of everything except for the engineer & ranger. Nothing bad about either class as I have played some time with all of them but just seeing more of the mages I tend to play or the heavy armored classes in those areas. Might be different on other servers.

@fox01313: There's a definite sense among the player-base that engineers are generally underpowered (which I can't validate either way), and ranger pets are too much of an AI nuisance to function as a full mechanic (which is true in PvE).