60 replies to this topic

[chimeratech]

Hi I've played with a warrior and mesmer and have grown a little bored with using them.  Which other class has great dps (both aoe and single target) and has rather flashy attacks?  Thanks.

[ukgamer23]

I would say necro and ele, for those cool effects and tons of dps.

[Angelus359]

my pistol pistol can put out 30 thousand damage in 16 seconds, without using quickness in spvp... is that good?

[Lliath]

ukgamer23, on 08 September 2012 - 02:07 PM, said:

I would say necro and ele, for those cool effects and tons of dps.

If you think ele damage is actually good, you've never played one at 80.

[xxMOxx]

necro and ele

Edited by xxMOxx, 16 February 2013 - 11:20 AM.

[Altma951]

bmwmmm, on 08 September 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

warrior >>> thief/ranger/engineer > mesmer/ele > necro > guardian

Mm.. I don't totally agree with this, but I think it's pretty close.

Warrior > Ranger > Thief > Guardian > Ele/Engineer > Necro/Mesmer
is what I would guess is closer.


Warriors with Rifle, Longbow, or Greatsword(especially this one) are the highest dps, (Greatsword can break 15k damage in a second, while still having good dps outside of that burst.)

Ranger Shortbow can keep up with Warrior's Rifle & long bow, though. They lack in the AoE though.

Thief does great damage, all around. They're no Quickness-based Ranger, but they're up there.

Guardians can do good damage with Great Sword. Not sure why you rated this so low.

Both ele and Engineer sorta fall in the same place. They might be able to do good damage, but they both have huge flaws in it. Engineers are the highest underwater dps, though.(hi2u grenade set underwater)

Mesmer and Necro take up the bottom. Necro can actually do pretty good solo, with bleeds. Mesmers have great 'snap' or 'burst' damage, but overall have probably the lowest dps. Most of my Necro friends primary complaints are, when in group events - they have trouble getting Silver, let alone gold.

Edited by Altma951, 08 September 2012 - 10:56 PM.

[ProNexxus]

Angelus359, on 08 September 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

my pistol pistol can put out 30 thousand damage in 16 seconds, without using quickness in spvp... is that good?

What class is this?

[TGIFrisbie]

No one can compare to Thief for single target burst DPS.  Just putting it out there since there is no clarification in some of these claims.

Warrior may have strongest sustained single target DPS, but falls behind in burst.

[Xunlai Agent]

Thief has highest burst but Warrior has some of the highest sustainable DPS and also manages to bring good utility to the fight. Thieves do not have the same utility that other classes have however they boast high mobility and access to stealth!

[dawdler]

Angelus359, on 08 September 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

my pistol pistol can put out 30 thousand damage in 16 seconds, without using quickness in spvp... is that good?

Without defining the target and its gear/build, I would say no. I might as well assume that your 2K dps is 50% mitigated by toughness and the target has 500hps regen as well as 1500hp shout heals on every cooldown meaning your damage is... nothing. Especially not if said target reflect 15K of your damage for 8 out of 16 seconds and kill you on the spot.

Altma951, on 08 September 2012 - 10:55 PM, said:

Mesmer and Necro take up the bottom. Necro can actually do pretty good solo, with bleeds. Mesmers have great 'snap' or 'burst' damage, but overall have probably the lowest dps. Most of my Necro friends primary complaints are, when in group events - they have trouble getting Silver, let alone gold.

At least for the Mesmer (havent played Necro) that's not because low dps. Mesmer does in fact have awesome AoE dps if you combine all skills. The issue with group events in for example Orr is because of ramp-up time. When there are 20 Elementalists all blasting away and flattening 50 mobs in 1 second, being able to do twice as much as their dps after 2 seconds doesnt exactly help. You dont do dps on dead mobs.

[Coren]

ProNexxus, on 16 December 2012 - 06:49 PM, said:

What class is this?

Thief is my guess. Engineers can't do 30k damage with pistol/pistol, it's more of a condition weapon setup. So unless he's counting conditions, he means thief with the dual skill " unload"

[Reikou]

The highest DPS class, both sustained and burst is a glass cannon thief in melee.

No questions asked.

[Thaddeuz]

I don't know why people put Mesmer so low. I do a lot of dmg with mine, you have to play with the professions strenght. In PvE a lot of people playing Mesmer are going condition dmg with Confusion mainly. But Confusion is really not that great in PvE because mobs don't usually cast rapidly. They do an attack, stop and then attack again. It now like in PvP and peopl spawn they attack when you get within there range. As a mesmer (its my opinion, may not be the best way), if you want to do dmg go Beserker and use your best Phantasm like Duelist, if you are good at pulling foe with the Focus the Warden put SO much dmg on them, and the Warlock is really hard hitting in dungeon since mobs are usually tough and accumulate a Ton of condition (the Warlock get 10% more dmg for each condition type on the target).

The problem with the Mesmer is that they need to build up before doing there maximum dps. And against low HP mobs, he just don't have the time to do so. Its really agaisnt high HP mobs that the mesmer really shine.

[CepaCepa]

bmwmmm, on 08 September 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

warrior >>> thief/ranger/engineer > mesmer/ele > necro > guardian

This is what people typically think.

And this below, is my experience having played through all explorable dungeons with every profession:

Single Target Long Fight:

Mesmer >>> Warrior/Thief/Ranger > Elementalist/Engineer/Guardian > Necro

Single Target Short Fight:

Mesmer/Thief > Elementalist/Warrior > Ranger/Engineer > Guardian/Necro

Several Target Fight:

Warrior/Guardian > Elementalist/Engineer > Necro/Mesmer/Ranger/Thief

AoE Fight (none zerg):

Elementalist/Engineer/Necro >>> Guardian/Mesmer > Warrior/Ranger > Thief

Fights where Death can be Often and Things are Hard:

Ranger/Necro > Mesmer/Thief > Elementalist/Engineer > Warrior/Guardian

Edited by CepaCepa, 17 December 2012 - 06:29 PM.

[dawdler]

CepaCepa, on 17 December 2012 - 06:27 PM, said:

Fights where Death can be Often and Things are Hard:

Ranger/Necro > Mesmer/Thief > Elementalist/Engineer > Warrior/Guardian

Eh? I think you need to explain that one further because while I can appreciate the advantages of the ranger pet heal or the thief teleport when it comes to surviving downed state, I dont really understand how warrior and guardian can be at the bottom of the list, considering what insta-kill a glass cannon take like 30% off a properly built dungeon warrior/guardian (assuming they even lost any HP). When "things are hard" (I guess you're not talking about other... things...) whatever class have the most toughness will survive. Which is rarely theives, mesmers, elementalists or whatever.

Edited by dawdler, 17 December 2012 - 06:59 PM.

[Thaddeuz]

I agree with you CepaCepa (except on the last list). I play Guardian/Ranger,/Mesmer/Elementalist/Engineer and Guildmates play the profession that i don't play. Every profession have their strenght and weakness and i don't really support the ''Heavy are some much better that the other profession''.  My easiest dungeons runs were with a good mix of 3-5 profession, not a full Warriors/Guardian party.

Personnally, in Single Target Short Fight. I would put Elementalist before Mesmer. But maybe its because i don't know enough my Mesmer yet.

I can see your point on your last list : ''In Hard Fight''. Because, at high level fractal a lot of things can one shot/kill you. So melee is not a real possibility. You usually need to be careful and you can't stay realy long at that range. So usually melee oriented profession like Warriors/Guardian can use their main DPS weapons all the time, while a ranged oriented professions like Ranger/Necro/Mesmer can stay out of the dangerous zone while dealing constant dps.

I would really want to see what build are you using with your Ranger to put it at the top of your list. My ranger is for now the profession i use the less and the one i have the more difficulty with. I know its my fault, because i found a good way to use the all of my other profession and helped my friend to created their build.

[CepaCepa]

dawdler, on 17 December 2012 - 06:58 PM, said:

Eh? I think you need to explain that one further because while I can appreciate the advantages of the ranger pet heal or the thief teleport when it comes to surviving downed state, I dont really understand how warrior and guardian can be at the bottom of the list, considering what insta-kill a glass cannon take like 30% off a properly built dungeon warrior/guardian (assuming they even lost any HP). When "things are hard" (I guess you're not talking about other... things...) whatever class have the most toughness will survive. Which is rarely theives, mesmers, elementalists or whatever.

Indeed, a "properly built" warrior or guardian can survive for quite long, and they're very useful to the group. But a "properly built" warrior and guardian have no way of catching up to glass cannon dps, and that's what I mean by this --- In hard fights, elementalists or mesmers or engineers or guardians can be very useful and important, but NOT through dps. A decent elementalist would know to switch to other attunements to do some crowd control, or to put down a water field, whenever things go rough. That would benefit the team a lot, but the dps of the elementalist plummet. Mesmer may need to sacrifice time warp for quick rez, which of course means significant dps loss --- But you can't dps when half of your team is on the ground.

The reason that necros are at the top, is because their playstyle do not need to change much (or you can say, they can't change even if they wanted to lol), and in hard fights where your group can barely put full pressure on the boss, conditions ticking away at the boss really helps, they basically don't lose much by trying to survive at the same time. Rangers are at the top there because, with longbow + shortbow and two ranged pet, a ranger can tap into the benefit of pet/weapon swap at 1200 range and maintain somewhere around 80% of their maximum dps. And range helps, A LOT, even for boss/mobs that are ranged and shoots out projectiles --- Range give you that time to react to quick animations and dodge the projectiles. Also, shortbow #1 and longbow #1 are the highest single target damage skill on both of these weapons respectively, which means even if the ranger has to worry about other things and have no intention to dps at that moment (such as busy running over to a downed team member, or dodging huge red circles on the ground), his autoshooting (as well as his pets') is high enough damage by itself.

The above reasoning that I gave focused on ranged characters having an edge in survival in dungeons --- and in general, that is true. But what makes ranger and necro better in those fights than the other ranged professions --- mesmer/engineer/elementalist? Well I've already talked about a part of elementalist dps loss due to support --- Due to attunement CD, it is often quite a big dps drop if an elementalist has to switch out of their dps cycle for support (for example, staying in water for a few extra second to get that healing rain/geyser on CD, because if he switches out then he can't come back for 15 seconds and the team mate might just be dead). Also, elementalist dps is either ground targeted, with a noticeable time delay, or up close and personal with the mob. That means in hard fights, a lot of skills would miss, and/or not being cast at all.

Engineer's only viable dps option that is on-par with other professions' glass cannon specs is grenade, and grenades are not bursty throw-and-forget skills ---- You need to be smashing buttons and readjusting that ground target circle every single second. This puts a lot of constraints on the engineer in a hard fight, trying to aim at the moving boss is hard enough, having to dodge everything on top of that is even more difficult. Hence, realistically, in those fights the engineer can probably only land 1/2 to 2/3 of their grenades, a big dps drop.

Mesmers have the luxury of greatsword #1 not being a projectile yet at 1200 range, but other than that it is probably the profession that suffers the most from any "environmental deviation". A mesmer's damage mainly comes from 3 sources: phantasms, shatter, and greatsword damge. Greatsword damage mainly comes from #2 and #3, with #1 being a filler. Problem is, #2 on greatsword only does large spike damage when the group is positioned in certain ways, hence in hard fights where you can't control those details, the greatsword damage reduces a lot. Phantasms often die a lot faster than they can be summoned in hard fights, sometimes not even finishing their first attack. Shatter can still happen in hard fights, however sometimes (such as lots of adds) you'd want to have your illusions on the battle field diverging aggro from you and your friends, which means they're pretty much just sacrificed, you're trading dps for group survival. In any case, the mesmer's dps fluctuates a lot depending on the fight.

A Thief's initiative means that they can pump out concentrated damage when they want to and provide support/escape when he wants to. But this exact system prevents him from doing both at the same time --- If he spends all his initiatives for shortbow #5 + shortbow #2 in water field, he's not going to have any initiatives left for damage. So in hard fights where he has to dodge lots and/or support team mates, he'd take a heavy hit to damage. Nevertheless, unless he's a support thief he's probably not going to be selfless and saving up initiatives for blast finisher, he's still going to do bursts of personal dps from time to time even on hardest boss.

Now, warriors and guardians --- In hard fights, full duration of greatsword #2 on either of them is going to be rare. In fact melee in general would be rare. And if they'd want to be able to pull off 100B and whirl without dying they need to sacrifice offensive stats, which puts their dps behind the glass cannons anyways. What more, in many hard fights toughness does little help, so is vitality --- evasions and dodges will help you a lot more. Compared to the other professions, warriors and guardians do not have the ability to evade attacks while doing damage, and aegis/block only blocks 1 attack hence does not function like evasion. This is not to say they're not useful in hard fights, they definitely are --- Shouts/aegis are wonderful things, but if they're specced that way they're not the best damage out there. Conversely, you can have glass cannon signet warriors in hard fights, in which case they'd either die very quickly, OR they'd need to stand back and rifle away, which while is decent damage, does not compare to the ranged professions.

[Thaddeuz]

So you say that Ranger and Necro are on the top of your list because they pretty much can't help much their team in any other aspect so they just keep DPS even if what would be best for the team is something else like a Ele switch to water, or a Mesmer's Time Warp/Thief's Stealth for rezing, etc. And that trying to survive hard time don't affect as much as other profession they dps output.

Ok i can agree on that. (For the Ranger at least, never played the Necro). But that don't mean that Ranger or Necro is better for Team's Overall DPS, since i prefer a profession that can be adaptable to several situation and help the team as a whole and not only focus on DPS and Survive on his own.  A Rangers/Necro can DPS as much as they want, a full group will ALWAYS have the best damage output.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Uh.

The answer to OP's question is:

Direct: Warrior > Guardian > Thief > Elementalist > Ranger > Mesmer > Engineer > Necromancer
Condition: Engineer > Elementalist > Thief > Warrior > Mesmer > Ranger > Necromancer > Guardian

A few of the individual placements might be debatable but for the most part I think that's accurate.  It's pointless to debate about shit like BUT YOU COULD SUPPORT SO YOU MIGHT NOT ALWAYS BE DPS because if you're supporting you're probably a bad player anyway.  Support is useless in this game.  The only thing that should be factored into effective DPS is how practical it is to achieve the necessary conditions.  I.e. Thief would be higher in direct DPS but he needs to be in melee range with dual daggers and constantly attacking from behind the target with a Berserker's set which isn't really possible to maintain 100% of the time.

[gamblers_luck]

Warrior, with forceful greatsword and Deep strike traits with beserkers gear. Using the number two skill on the greatsword will easily stack might. Crazy damage. Crit crit crit.

[CepaCepa]

Thaddeuz, on 17 December 2012 - 07:37 PM, said:

Personnally, in Single Target Short Fight. I would put Elementalist before Mesmer. But maybe its because i don't know enough my Mesmer yet.

I would really want to see what build are you using with your Ranger to put it at the top of your list. My ranger is for now the profession i use the less and the one i have the more difficulty with. I know its my fault, because i found a good way to use the all of my other profession and helped my friend to created their build.

In Single Target Short Fight, basically we want big burst, and while eles are pretty good with big burst, thieves/shatter mesmer are as bursty as it gets (hence the complaints in PvP lol). And while a 10 30 0 0 30 mesmer with illusionary persona is the epitome of shatter mesmer, any mesmer with a focus on power/precision can have big and bursty shatters. Combined with the fact that phantasms basically do 5 second worth of damage within 1 second, means that the biggest theoretical burst definitely comes from a mesmer.

For my ranger, I run beast mastery right now, 0 30 10 0 30 sometimes and 10 30 10 0 20 at other times. I find pet scaling to be wonderful, you put 30 points in a line and you get 30X4 worth of stats on your pet, not even counting the traits themselves. Weapon sets are Sword + warhorn / Shortbow. I swap weapons either on CD or on pet swap CD (swiftness + fury on swap), going in with short bow + swap to sword ---> pet swap to eagle or lynx (who'd appear beside you so there's no time wasted running to mob, taking the most advantage out of 2 second of quickness), attacks for 2 second, and cast rampage as one + quickening zephyr (remember to use pet F2 on CD). Oh, and try to attack from the back of enemy, you can get there easily with Sword #3. Once you're done with melee be it your weapon CD ready, pet swap CD ready, or simply that you need to get out of danger, sword #2 to leap out, swap to short bow, and swap to devourer and you're suddenly in quickness bursting away yet again, rinse and repeat.  If you swapped too early you can shortbow #3 to leap out (but wasting a second of fury) or in the other direction, you can cast warhorn #4 while running in with sword. This is the "general build", it fits all purposes since it's got sword (our highest dps weapon) and shortbow (our most agile/versatile weapon), it's got melee dps pet and it's got ranged tanky/dps pet. But if I have a second to spec for fights, obviously I'd rather have 2 bird/cat for highest pet damage IF they won't get killed in a fight, and ranged pets if pets are in constant danger at melee.

Another good thing about beastmastery is that, you KNOW you can count on your pet to rally you when you get zerged by none-veteran (and even some veteran) mobs. In down state, you can order pet to attack a target or swap pet so there's 2 second of hasted rez for you too...

Basically, rangers shine in aweful situations because simply having you yourself auto attacking on the run + your pet auto attacking is already decent enough damage. Not the best that you can do, but a lot less dps loss compared to other professions. There's no added situational requirement such as animation rooting, melee range, CD management, positioning (well, there's positioning, you'd want to be at the back of the mob, but even if you can't do that, it's not devastating) etc to gimp your dps.

[CepaCepa]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 17 December 2012 - 09:20 PM, said:

Uh.

The answer to OP's question is:

Direct: Warrior > Guardian > Thief > Elementalist > Ranger > Mesmer > Engineer > Necromancer
Condition: Engineer > Elementalist > Thief > Warrior > Mesmer > Ranger > Necromancer > Guardian

A few of the individual placements might be debatable but for the most part I think that's accurate.  It's pointless to debate about shit like BUT YOU COULD SUPPORT SO YOU MIGHT NOT ALWAYS BE DPS because if you're supporting you're probably a bad player anyway.  Support is useless in this game.  The only thing that should be factored into effective DPS is how practical it is to achieve the necessary conditions.  I.e. Thief would be higher in direct DPS but he needs to be in melee range with dual daggers and constantly attacking from behind the target with a Berserker's set which isn't really possible to maintain 100% of the time.

Direct damage, so far you've done warrior/guardian/thief/engineer, but you should take a look at mesmer and ranger. Ranger dps needs to be looked at again from theory, because too often do people not take into account of swapping, which is a key factor in ranger damage (that not even some rangers realize). and grants nearly 1/4 quickness + constant fury and hence, 25% damage increase. Mesmer on the other hand --- Just consider this situation: 3 iWarlock standing there, mesmer himself using Greatsword to attack. Only mesmer players who have gone berserker before and gone into dungeons with staff knows how much dps the profession can pump out, because you simply can't test that in the mist --- The heavy golems would die before you get everything setup, and due to the ramp up time just counting golem death timer is biased (in either case, the other extreme is having a shatter mesmer blow up all CDs and kill things within 1 sec, obviously not meaningful either). Not to mention, tooltip damage for phantasms have always known to be off by a lot and gets funkier with every patch so you can't really even theorycraft without having a lvl 80 mesmer yourself to test things on (using LA dummies). I've been testing the dps between mesmer and warrior since BWE 1, my friend playing a warrior and me a mesmer and hence all kinds of competition, practical and in theory. We go into dungeons and each pick a veteran mob and see who kills faster. We test our numbers on LA dummies after every patch and compare against each other. The optimal damage of mesmer ALWAYS come out on top, due to the sporadic nature of the profession ---- While these "competition" were done more like competitive fun, they do signal something about the professions and their dps potential.

Condition damage, a necro can easily stack up to 20 and sometimes 25 bleed by himself, and have perma poison. Most importantly, epidemic is a 15 sec CD aoe that DO NOT have target number restrictions and have a very big radius (even grenades can each only hit 5 target max), and turns other people's condition damage into the Necro's contribution. While their direct damage is pitiful when in full condition spec, and while he'd need to do a death match with the new and improved condition grenadiers and possibly even eles (burning), I'm very certain that they're not worse than warriors and mesmers and rangers in terms of condition damage...

Edited by CepaCepa, 17 December 2012 - 10:28 PM.

[Red_Falcon]

From experience, a veteran Thief on a proper build can easily outDPS anyone on single target (except perhaps a Mesmer during a very long single target fight) and has high AoE DPS with cluster and DStorm but a proper DPS Mesmer can deal better AoE.
Warrior comes after Thief and Mes because it is way too reliant on mobs standing in place and staying in his 180 degrees or he will lose a lot of DPS and quickly fall behind Thief/Mes because their AoE is 360 degree, wider radius and doesn't lock them in place.

[gance]

@CepaCepa
you make me love my mesmer even more
can you share to me the best dps build for a ranger you tried? thanks


but seriously i dont know how an elementalist can become higher damager than a mesmer,
im a mesmer and my gf is an elementalist, i tried so many build of elementalist but still cant compete with my mesmer. so in the end we turn my gf's ele into support build, and all my guildies/party can notice her boons and heal
im using full berserk 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build.
gs s/s
and not to mention after wintersday patch, mesmer can now easily stack 10+ might.

[Coren]

Best single target : thief
Best AoE: engineer or elementalist

[mofogie]

i can put out insane damage on my thief, one reason being as a theif you don't get aggrod much if you're doing it right, so you can stack more damage gear.

greatsword wars do alot too, but still not like a sword/pistol, or dagger thief.  already doing loads of damage, it gets even crazier when the mob reaches 25% health, and i'm striking heartseekers for 12-13k each time, and able to once every 3 seconds.

also thief can do insane AoE damage with shortbow and clusterbomb.  i get bout 5-6k in dungeons, and cluster bombs are cheap on resouce.

[Coren]

CepaCepa, on 17 December 2012 - 08:48 PM, said:

Indeed, a "properly built" warrior or guardian can survive for quite long, and they're very useful to the group. But a "properly built" warrior and guardian have no way of catching up to glass cannon dps, and that's what I mean by this --- In hard fights, elementalists or mesmers or engineers or guardians can be very useful and important, but NOT through dps. A decent elementalist would know to switch to other attunements to do some crowd control, or to put down a water field, whenever things go rough. That would benefit the team a lot, but the dps of the elementalist plummet. Mesmer may need to sacrifice time warp for quick rez, which of course means significant dps loss --- But you can't dps when half of your team is on the ground.

The reason that necros are at the top, is because their playstyle do not need to change much (or you can say, they can't change even if they wanted to lol), and in hard fights where your group can barely put full pressure on the boss, conditions ticking away at the boss really helps, they basically don't lose much by trying to survive at the same time. Rangers are at the top there because, with longbow + shortbow and two ranged pet, a ranger can tap into the benefit of pet/weapon swap at 1200 range and maintain somewhere around 80% of their maximum dps. And range helps, A LOT, even for boss/mobs that are ranged and shoots out projectiles --- Range give you that time to react to quick animations and dodge the projectiles. Also, shortbow #1 and longbow #1 are the highest single target damage skill on both of these weapons respectively, which means even if the ranger has to worry about other things and have no intention to dps at that moment (such as busy running over to a downed team member, or dodging huge red circles on the ground), his autoshooting (as well as his pets') is high enough damage by itself.

The above reasoning that I gave focused on ranged characters having an edge in survival in dungeons --- and in general, that is true. But what makes ranger and necro better in those fights than the other ranged professions --- mesmer/engineer/elementalist? Well I've already talked about a part of elementalist dps loss due to support --- Due to attunement CD, it is often quite a big dps drop if an elementalist has to switch out of their dps cycle for support (for example, staying in water for a few extra second to get that healing rain/geyser on CD, because if he switches out then he can't come back for 15 seconds and the team mate might just be dead). Also, elementalist dps is either ground targeted, with a noticeable time delay, or up close and personal with the mob. That means in hard fights, a lot of skills would miss, and/or not being cast at all.

Engineer's only viable dps option that is on-par with other professions' glass cannon specs is grenade, and grenades are not bursty throw-and-forget skills ---- You need to be smashing buttons and readjusting that ground target circle every single second. This puts a lot of constraints on the engineer in a hard fight, trying to aim at the moving boss is hard enough, having to dodge everything on top of that is even more difficult. Hence, realistically, in those fights the engineer can probably only land 1/2 to 2/3 of their grenades, a big dps drop.

Mesmers have the luxury of greatsword #1 not being a projectile yet at 1200 range, but other than that it is probably the profession that suffers the most from any "environmental deviation". A mesmer's damage mainly comes from 3 sources: phantasms, shatter, and greatsword damge. Greatsword damage mainly comes from #2 and #3, with #1 being a filler. Problem is, #2 on greatsword only does large spike damage when the group is positioned in certain ways, hence in hard fights where you can't control those details, the greatsword damage reduces a lot. Phantasms often die a lot faster than they can be summoned in hard fights, sometimes not even finishing their first attack. Shatter can still happen in hard fights, however sometimes (such as lots of adds) you'd want to have your illusions on the battle field diverging aggro from you and your friends, which means they're pretty much just sacrificed, you're trading dps for group survival. In any case, the mesmer's dps fluctuates a lot depending on the fight.

A Thief's initiative means that they can pump out concentrated damage when they want to and provide support/escape when he wants to. But this exact system prevents him from doing both at the same time --- If he spends all his initiatives for shortbow #5 + shortbow #2 in water field, he's not going to have any initiatives left for damage. So in hard fights where he has to dodge lots and/or support team mates, he'd take a heavy hit to damage. Nevertheless, unless he's a support thief he's probably not going to be selfless and saving up initiatives for blast finisher, he's still going to do bursts of personal dps from time to time even on hardest boss.

Now, warriors and guardians --- In hard fights, full duration of greatsword #2 on either of them is going to be rare. In fact melee in general would be rare. And if they'd want to be able to pull off 100B and whirl without dying they need to sacrifice offensive stats, which puts their dps behind the glass cannons anyways. What more, in many hard fights toughness does little help, so is vitality --- evasions and dodges will help you a lot more. Compared to the other professions, warriors and guardians do not have the ability to evade attacks while doing damage, and aegis/block only blocks 1 attack hence does not function like evasion. This is not to say they're not useful in hard fights, they definitely are --- Shouts/aegis are wonderful things, but if they're specced that way they're not the best damage out there. Conversely, you can have glass cannon signet warriors in hard fights, in which case they'd either die very quickly, OR they'd need to stand back and rifle away, which while is decent damage, does not compare to the ranged professions.

I guess you haven't played engineers much. True that grenades are a major dps asset, they're mostly there to spread conditions. A critical specced grenade engineer is a conditions maniac. Also, 2/3 hitting? Please, true sometimes not all hit, but most of the time they do.

Pure dps is mostly used with either FT or a bomb kit (although I use bomb kit for tanking).

Also, mesmers don't deal damage only with GS. Staff and sword+focus is more powerful to be honest. GS is just safer.

Edited by Coren, 18 December 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[Thaddeuz]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 17 December 2012 - 09:20 PM, said:

Condition: Engineer > Elementalist > Thief > Warrior > Mesmer > Ranger > Necromancer > Guardian

Necromancer have one of the best condition damage of the game (In competition with Engineer and Ele, i'm not sure yet which one is best).

CepaCepa, on 17 December 2012 - 08:48 PM, said:

Engineer's only viable dps option that is on-par with other professions' glass cannon specs is grenade, and grenades are not bursty throw-and-forget skills ---- You need to be smashing buttons and readjusting that ground target circle every single second. This puts a lot of constraints on the engineer in a hard fight, trying to aim at the moving boss is hard enough, having to dodge everything on top of that is even more difficult. Hence, realistically, in those fights the engineer can probably only land 1/2 to 2/3 of their grenades, a big dps drop.

I see your point, but still. My main is a Grenade Engineer and if at start i had some difficulty to land all my Grenade on target, i praticed enough to miss really rarely. In hard fight i never will miss 1/2 of my nade. Made it 3/4-4/4 for someone who play the grenade engineer often. And usually, a hard fight is not a Single target big Boss, but more a boss with a lot of mobs around who chase you. In this case, there is a good chance that you grenade will damage at least one of the mobs.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Thaddeuz, on 18 December 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

Necromancer have one of the best condition damage of the game (In competition with Engineer and Ele, i'm not sure yet which one is best).

I think we already had this conversation.  Maybe it wasn't you.  Necromancer bleed damage is actually pretty low.  They have a lot of stuff that stacks on a bunch of different conditions but they don't really have any way to stack a lot of bleed at the same time.

[Thaddeuz]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 18 December 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

I think we already had this conversation.  Maybe it wasn't you.  Necromancer bleed damage is actually pretty low.  They have a lot of stuff that stacks on a bunch of different conditions but they don't really have any way to stack a lot of bleed at the same time.

The Necromancer Specter can stack about 8-10 stack of bleed. You had other attack you get up to 12-14 stack of bleed. Then you get to trait like the Barbed Precision that give you 66% chance of causing bleed on crits, the Hemophilia get you 20% condition duration on bleed, Lingering Curse get a 33% duration to the specter condition with is mainly bleed.

If you build your necromancer properly you can get between 20-25 stack of bleed and poison constant.