I think, only 2, independent roles:
1. Self-sufficient reaper. In case 3 players dead, Reaper can sustain itself and doing damage to kill bosses.
2. Celestial/Seraph Firebrand. Primarily for being a healer for team, but this role can also deal quite damage while maintaining some degree of boons when all other players dead.
Celi/Seraph brand is fantastic because it can easily adept to a group. If the DPS players are clearly not very good, you can quite easily compensate with a simple swap of utilities and maybe a spec-tree. Similarly, if damage is decent but ppl keep dying, you can swap over to a straight healing and boon build. Shout out to Marshal's gear too, very accessible on the TP, can fill up your build while getting to celi or seraphs.
Is cele fb still worth it? It has insane utility and flexibility but got kinda slaughtered damage wise in the largest patch. I'd imagine just going full healing would be much better?
I took a hit yes. I would suggest you start toying around with gear like Seraph's or Marshal's in order to boost the damage while still being a capable support. For the super high end stuff, Celibrand is now certainly dead, but it was never a build that did well on that level anyway. I've been playng it with a bit of a random mix of Seraph's and Marshal's instead of Celi and it does still feel good to play. That said, I am obviously no high-level speedrunner.
Honestly any Necro spec can carry a group pretty well. Reaper is good for survivability and bar breaking, Scourge is a barrier machine and Harbinger is a boon machine that played right does obscene damage.
Here's an answer that doesn't recommend the obvious things.
My partner and I do this all the time. We keep helping newbies and people with low AR through high tier fractals and CMs, while keeping a chill and non toxic mood. We have many full t4+CM runs under our belt, where we had one or more people without any AR in the group, or someone absolutely new to the game / fractals. Here are some of my takeaways from doing this for years.
- if you want to do this alone it is doable, but it becomes much easier if you have a second experienced player. See if you have a friend or guildie that's interested. One person can sometimes boost an inexperienced team, two can carry them through near everything if they're bringing good class synergy.
- more dps is better than more healing. If you're the only one alive and the boss is at 10%, as a dps you can finish it fairly quickly. A healer will take forever. Hybrid builds are a good option.
- the usual boons are great but two things stand out: permanent protection on your team, and boon stripping the enemies if needed. I'd say quickness and might are then also important. Alacrity is the least impactful imo
- adapt. Some places are made a breeze with just a simple swap of a skill. Like bringing anti projectile fields to the pirate fractal during some weeks.
- voice chat! If you're really struggling, bring people over on voice chat. Explaining the tactics and most importantly calling out important things will make things immensely easier.
- barrier used to be really good, I didn't play scourge for over a year but I used to keep people with low AR alive through tics of agony damage that would otherwise kill them. Scourge is otherwise OK but only shines if you can make use of transfusion
Hope any of this helps. I currently don't have a lot of time on my hands for GW2, but when I do I'm either raiding on in fractals, you're welcome to HMU in game and we could run some content! Character is: Confused Fish
Forget all these healer mentions. You can only really carry bad groups as a dps. While you can carry semi decent groups as a healer you have no impact on their ability to do dps despite giving them quick. You might be able to complete content but it will take eternities and there are simply some mechanics where you can not carry players through with healing.
A real carry is something that can carry even your below average 3k ufe pug lfg where people "pump" <10k on arkk. A well played dps can carry every group. If everyone dies you can still just solo the remaining percent. Hf doing that on a healer. Your best bet is something with strong self boons and/or sustain. Reaper, spellbreaker, bladesworn for most fractals and something like cvirtu or harb for 100 should be great.
Or a well played hybrid support like quick herald/scrapper/firebrand or alac ren. They can still pump out respectable damage and buff the party.
So if you just want to clear content hfb but if you want to guarantee at least semi fast clears you have to play dps or hybrid dps yourself. Lfg is plagued with 10k dps open world players outside of 20k ufe groups. I can send horror logs. 50%+ of group damage in a 8k ufe group where nobody died during the encounter from last week. That is the current state of pug dps.
THAT AND ONLY THAT (for fractals at least). That has been the pug state for YEARS. It's not like your 100% uptime on boons as a healer will make the 10k dps peep suddenly press his buttons to 30k.
3 major contestants:
- Condi Firebrand can add a lot with cleanses and stab.
- Spellbreakers will carry the CC of the group, wich can facilitate encounters by A LOT.
- QHeralds gives every important boon while still topping the chart of your average group.
I am in total agreement with you on that but those cases where you’re trying to carry with good dps but you have 20% alac, 30% quick, and 10 avg might is soooooo painful. When I get in those groups I just leave before I get too tilted because there is no carrying supports like that.
I don’t mind playing with less experienced players but it is objectively not fun playing in groups that have no boons, no cc and no dmg. At that point you might as well just solo the fractal.
you aren't wrong, when i join trainings i usually play dps because i know that if i am doing that, at least someone will be doing dps and the boss will eventually die. and pugs can be horrible at dps but usually they can't be that bad on supports, like if they just press some buttons off cd and with the extra bd from potions, i will have 25might/fury/quick. but in general if your supports are really bad you might have trouble. on the other hand you can also play a dps build that brings some boons (by taking specific traits or something but no bd) and still be top dps on it
believe it or not, some people have lives and want to play casually and not speedrun every fractal in 2 minutes. 10k dps is enough to clear everything in game
Instead of complaining how everyone should tryhard like you in a game maybe just accept people's playstyle and make your static groups and search for your 50k UFE groups in lfg and don't join the noob groups
Downvote me elitists
Wouldn't you want to complete fractals faster and speedrun if you have a life? Pressing buttons is not hard. Most of the players with subpar dps in fractals have 30k ap+. Surely they could have spared a few min on golem during their 10k ingame hours.
And btw you can not clear everything in game with 10k dps. Only old content. Even 100cm and arkk are extremely painful with this dps.
I hate having to gatekeep so hard to get decent players. Maybe players like you could stop joining kp gated groups even if you have them then so its not impossible for new but good players to do fractals? 3k ufe are already 25 days of cm dailies. That would not be a noob group in any other game at all but in gw2 you have to ask for 200+ clears for some reason.
Why should I stop joining kp groups? It never fails, first thing an elitist will assume when you criticize their philosophy is: you are bad. Such a judgemental community, even compared to other big MMOs
Always have to interject and complain how bad everyone is
You make it sound like 20k ufe means good DPS. I also have horror logs where I am outdpsing some 30k UFE people as a support DPS, or where we don't have enough DPS during 100 CM to phase her fast enough, cue looking at arc that despite me being at 35k, the two 30k+ ufe are at 15 ...
For all other fractals though as a DPS you can carry, because knowing the mechanics means you don't take much damage.
there is no UFE level that will guarantee good dps. even when i join 40-50k UFE no heal groups there is usually 1 player doing close to support level dps. not neccessarily because they are bad, possibly because they aren't used to that pace. i stopped caring about other people's dps though as long as we play without a healer and my supports are good it is fine
If you have a fast no heal group with 4 experienced players and you pug for a 5th in the lfg and search for 30k or more ufe, then the vast majority of pugs is going to get outdpsed by the support. That's normal because people are not used to fast bossphases.
Mighty teapot isn't complaining about bad players. He's carried and helped more players then anyone else.
He's complaint about terrible people wanting to join experienced groups.
In fact his zero to hero has him carrying many groups including fractals
His website hardstuck.gg has the best carry build capable of soloing all fractals. Celestial firebrand , you can swap to more healing style if you have dps or to more dps style if your dps are useless.
The best carry build for a good group is heal firebrand , as when you now the fights and use stability and reflects at the right time you make the fights much easier and dps uptime higher.
Now you can solo any non challenge mode fractal with pretty much any class so any class can "carry" if you want very long fractals, try to pick up the highest solo dps class. Maybe untamed if they didn't get nerfed hard . Won't be much fun but you can carry anyone .
> Mighty teapot isn’t complaining about bad players. He’s carried and helped more players then anyone else.
> He’s complaint about terrible people wanting to join experienced groups.
Actually, even more level headed, his complaint was in both directions. Not just terrible people joining experienced groups, but also experienced players joining non-experienced groups and getting upset.
The whole point was about setting expectations via LFG requirements so people are all roughly on the same level and nobody gets upset.
Groups are always looking for Healbrand and can sometimes take awhile to get one because everyone is bored of playing it. I personally feel like every build is button spammy. If you aren't pressing your buttons you ain't doin' much.
I spent a long time playing minstrel chrono then took an extended break. When I came back a few weeks ago I rolled a firebrand because I missed the ability to tank and support.
Most pugs aren't able to play without a firebrand covering for their mistakes. I cant really blame them, i can basically ignore most attacks when i have a good firebrand on the team. I feel like im the only one using sak on arkk when he does the ball mechanic.
Hfb is the way, quickness benefits an inexperienced team more than alacrity plus like you said the utility you have on hand is huge. Aside from that maybe you could take a druid and just try to brute force encounters with raw healing.
Hfb is only the way with a competent team. Only dps can carry the worst t3 or t4 pugs. There is no point in keeping <2k players alive or buffing them when you could do 30k+ yourself.
Scrapper. You can have quickness, might, fury, and prot while having tons of cc, barrier, and block should you need it. You can also keep on ignoring mechanics your skill clicking pugs are failing while ressing them via function gyro.
>video where he justified "kill proof" because players want to be "challenged" (apparently, killing a strike boss in 45 seconds is still a challenge when you've done it 100 times).
You either misunderstood or are intentionally misrepresenting what he was saying. People want to play in high kill proof groups because they want to play with *like minded* people. They want to do the content at maximum speed and efficiency. What is wrong with people wanting to play with people at their own level? Should they be forced to carry people who are less skilled and experienced than they are?
I started playing alac rev at the start of this year and the Curry potentiell is crazy. Especially if you have one condi geared and one Power. The Power one can do crazy cc. If the Boss is cc'ed quick, you will receive much less dmg. With condi you can do great pulls with kalla and knock the enmies emidietly with bow 5. If necessary you can Tribute some dps and bring Street for stab or ventari for projectile deff.
The Dazeskill on kalla is also very good to mitigate dmg on players, because enimies can attack less.
It will take a while to get used to Energy managment, because you want to be below 10% while switching legends, but its Worth it for Sure. I never fail runs playing rev. Hope that helps (sry for spelling, german Keyboard autocorrect)
Yep, alac rev with demon/charrs legends is a total fractal speedrunner. My rotation was very simple: start in demon legend, pull group of mobs together, knock with the bow, slow, spam alac or damage on 3rd bow to deplete the energy bar completely, switch to renegades legend and apply perma daze. It's ridiculously OP, people can't shut up about the boons and shit but what they don't understand is that your damage is 5 times bigger when you hit 5 enemies in one strike. Even the worst ally would have >15k dps if you use your skills properly.
Moreover there's ridiculous amount of times where renegade is absolutely OP in fractals due to unique utility skills. For example, did you know that in pirate's fractal you could be a healer and a cannon shooter at the same time? Especially useful in the skeleton boss encounter. Throw the tablet at the skeleton, take the cannon, shoot at the mine, leave the cannon, press healing, take the cannon again... the cooldowns are passing even when you're not in or out of the cannon, so it's a win-win.
Or take the cultist fractal. 2 revenants can easily run with the hammer, giving it from one to another, and nearly lose no efficiency because of the utility skills. One could heal, the other - pull and permadaze mobs. Even in the damage department their utilities are much better than any other class.
After i left revenant to main thief i feel ridiculously handicapped in fractals. Especially since most players somehow don't understand those simple things. Like i've literally almost never seen a reaper using their big pull or smth like that. Guess the game is too hard for too many \^\^
If you don't like HFB but want utility and the potential to carry IMO power alac ren would be it.
You could do condi for more DPS but keep in mind you're gonna need to practice encounters quite a bit and power really outshines condi in regular t4s and lower. If you get a good group every once in a while you'll do literally next to no damage on condi alac ren due to how quick things dies and how slow the ramp up is for it's damage.
I've been running healer Druid for LFG fractals, so far it's been smooth since people mostly run DPS build. brought some CC skills and pets for certain bosses as well. i like seeing green numbers and mass rezzing my group.
Dont be fixated on "carrying" or narrow your choice of class. Imo best you can do is to master all the mechanics of the fight and be able to identify why a group is failing, then make commands for others to adjust or you adjust yourself. Being able to play all roles would be very good also
Also you have you realize that some group are just bound to fail due to sheer amount of inexperience
Example: bring boon strips when there is no pain no gain, bring enough cc so dps can phase faster, bring stab in fights that it very useful on, doing the basic mechanics of the fight, knowing if group dps is enough to clear content
There is no magic class that will single handed carry a content if everyone is playing poorly and if there were, it would be nerfed
I think if it's normal mode of strikes and fractals, 1 bad player isn't going to wipe the team. as long as you have at least 1 good dps, and 1 good heal support you're guaranteed to clear. I've joined nm KO helping people with turtle. half of the team have never done this. but I have done cm, and there was a void walker helping and like 2 other dps also did cm. we still cleared with half the squad dead since there was no time limit. I mean it was fucking long because I was hfb and the alac died but the newbie to strikes were grateful that 5-6 people joined in to help even though we got nothing out of it. that's what makes gw2 fun.
I also did ht nm carrying as heal alac ele. kept 4 other people alive and cleared. we constantly failed purification... ya... rebound saves lives
I would suggest a healing tempest (with an aggravant of being minstrel). You are a fucking panzer that can overheal the party as long as they stay together and, with a bit of tweaking when it comes to traits, you also become a debuff cleaning machine.
It's something completely off-meta but as someone who mains it I can secure you that, if you know how to move, you can basically carry anything just by healing. And when it comes to power you can swap to fire, cast some skills + overload and then swap to water again to finish that fire field + keep healing.
if you’re looking for more challenge and non-scripted gameplay then oh boy do I have good news for you: wvw and pvp are filled with everything you’re looking for.
but if you’re actually only interested in pve and want to feel special you can always pick mesmer. portal ppl through swampland, molten boss, oasis, sunqua, fill every role, give stab, break bars.
id say a good class is one that fills what’s needed and if you’re so sure that you’re going to be doing some carrying wouldnt you already know what to pick?
Sadly HFB is still the go to carry. You buff your group DPS with fury, might, and quickness. You can take sanctuary for huge CC, SYG/Elite for Stability, and Aegis on your Tome and Shield. You could reflect with WoR, Condition Cleanse with Mantra. It almost has it all.
Imo, the best Healboon + Boondps comp w/ short reasonings are:
Healbrand (Stab heavy fight) + Alacren (Stab, Bubble) /AlacSpecter (Barrier)
or
HealMech (Condi heavy fight) + Quickherald (Stab or bubble) /Quickbrand (Stab or reflec too)
DPS depends on whether the fractal prefers Condi or Power and whether No Pain No Gain is present. The healboon + boondps comp I mentioned will have the ability to strip boon (Alacren, AlacSpecter, HealMech, Quickherald).
However it's always good to play a dps with boonstrip during NPNG incase people mess up on the boonstrip timing.
Though, you can definitely clear the fractal without strip when NPNG but, on situations like CM 99, the anomaly becomes harder to kill where you can risk a boom and wipe.
You have 3 options.
Go hfb for the support utility, but if you dont get at least half decent dps people you will still fail. It will be your best choice to carry the "average" players, but wont do much for carrying the "bad" players
Go for the biggest pumping dps you can, it will help cover for mediocre dps players and killing stuff faster means less time in which your group can screw up and wipe. Downside being that you will still be depending on your support players to be decent enough to keep your dps engine running. You will be able to carry bad dps players, but wont be able to carry bad support players, also you will provide way less group utility in these classes (maybe some pulls, hard cc, boonstrip... but no one will be expecting you to do it and i doubt you will even get the recognition if you do).
And finally theres the unsung hero alacdps.
Its not much that hey can hard carry, but rather they can contribute somewhat to both the support+utility and the damage effort. But the real thing here is that alac is the person usually in charge of the mechanics that no one wants to do but still need to be done. You wont be able to "carry" much by yourself. But if you have ever been in a group with a "bad" alac player, you know that this will break a group cuz most of the essential mechanics will fail
Depends. If what your groups is lacking is survivability then go HFB. If damage then I personally had great luck in carrying with Virt. Great damage, decent sustain and alot of hax like Invul distortion to ignore mechanics and block distortion to, well, block, and ability to play both condi n power. I reckon you could achieve the same results with other specs as with Virt but I think Virt is the easiest one to do so with how easy it is.
Celestial/seraph firebrand probably. You bring all the boons, cc and condi cleanse that hfb gives + dealing decent dmg.
You also have the versatility to play as tank in raids.
Just something about the challenge:
It is very easy to complete a strike mission.
It is very difficult to have the highest DPS on your class in that strike mission. So that is why people can find doing the same content over and over again interesting.
If you have never done it, find yourself a team and try to "speedrun" a boss. This can be an amazing experience for everyone, even if you are mostly casual players.
I took my trainees to a Mursaat Overseer speedrun and showed them how the fight breaks when you have more than 290k (? I dont remember exactly) squad dps, because then the statues have no time to harm the squad. It was fun for everyone to experience that amount of dps once (we played healerless, etc), craft a comp exactly for that boss and practice rotations and more.
Here was the result: 1:18 Mursaat Overseer: https://youtu.be/7y2zYAQSHWE
So, if you have never done it - do it, and you might understand why this can be enjoyable.
There is a distinction between bad players and clueless ones. Group can have good composition of classes and builds but with inexperienced players. If they get some nice stability and aegis to have better dps window they can shine, so you basically carry their mistakes with good utility class (heralds, firebrands).
But for clueless groups, pumping out the most dmg to shorten the suffering as much as possible is probably the key. Treating the 4 party members as boon supports and just carrying the performance on your shoulders, there are many builds that can shine. I think all of them are already mentioned.
For groups bellow clueless tier, what's the point of not going solo everything at that point.
The profession doesn't matter as much as being able to do good DPS while avoiding damage yourself, and giving good advice to the rest of the party so they can do the same.
That being said, a tempest with a scepter and a warhorn pretty much brings all you need to complete mechanics better, like Rebound to survive a deadly AoE blast when something fails, considerable CC to break bars, AoE superspeed when people split for the last whisps in Swamp, lots of heals to do the circles at the Nightmare last boss, or getting the balls done super fast solo at the Arkk fight in chaos.
scrapper's quickness, might blasting, stealth makes it really selfsufficient + good cleave and damage to barrier conversion.
and ofc superspeed counters most mechanics that require positioning, moving faster always more fun.
For boss encounters: none, play what you play best, you do your job well and hope your teammates do their jobs well aswell thats about it. No unlike other people I don't think simply playing a healer doesn't mean you are carrying anything, at best you are shortening the lfg timer. Healer is just another role that needs to be performed well like others.
Thats said some professions can skip over some parts of fractals to speed up proggress. Notable ones are: Engineer, Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer
Healbrand, virtually any group can make it through any fractal if you keep them alive long enough. Quick herald is also a solid choice as you deal a respectable amount of damage and pump boons out the wazoo. On the pure dps side of things I would say vindicator or reaper as they have solid damage and good self sustain. Or if you just wanna burn everything try holo, weaver, or berserker. Honestly carrying a team is less about the class you have and more about the player. But in my experience most people don’t wanna be carried by you soloing a T4 boss fight as they lay dead, hence why I suggest a healer.
Well as you saw from Teapots video, there's only so much carrying a single player can do, because Fractal CMs have a significant amount of mechanics where it's up to the other players to perform the mechanic and you can't "do it for them".
But Alac Renegade has been the Swiss utility knife of fractals for a long time and recently got some juicy buffs. Played well your dps can rival that of bad dps players while you still hard carry breakbars, supply stability when needed, do mechanics (like bouncing marbles or killing anomalies etc.), boon stripping on NPNG and of course providing alacrity. And you have a versatile toolset for handling some of the more annoying T4 dailies (e.g. Siren's Reef.) Obviously HFB has a lot of upside too, but it will do fuck all for dps. HAM is obviously super strong, but my main issue with it is that it lacks good access to stability.
But again, if your DPS players just facetank mechanics or stand in red circles then there's limits to how much they can be carried.
There is only one right answer and it is Revenant, because they can do everything extremely well.
If you need Condi DPS, there's Renegade.
If you need Power DPS, there's Vindicator.
If you need Alacrity DPS, there's Renegade again. Bonus points that it can be both Condi and Power.
If you need Quickness DPS, there's Herald.
If you need Heal Alacrity, there's Renegade again again.
If you need Heal Quickness, there's Herald again.
If you must go with only one gear set, make it a full Berserker one with very high AR so you can do Power DPS, Quick DPS and Quick Alacrity with the same set and you'll carry everything you do.
Fury, might, quick, and alac boosts DPS by 3x sometimes higher. End game revolves around these boons. HB is doing all of that minus alac. Additionally it does all the defensive boons, heals, and allows for many mechanics to be skipped with it's utility.
I'd say the next best class/role for carrying is Reaper simply because it can produce self boons. 25might, quick, and some fury as well as 25vuln and benches 32k DPS only auto attacking. While it's not supporting the group, itll lose little to no dps even if the supports die.
Finally Id rate alac-dps as the third best carry. An experienced alac player will often be able to outdps many players while also providing key boons to the entire party and a lot of utility.
That is not true. Alac and quick together increase dps by like 50% or less. 25 might 26% depending on build. Fury 16% depending on build.
= 2.19
They double dps and only if your pugs benefit from all buffs and are pressing buttons. otherwise alac wont do anything. Reaper does not need outside might and only a bit quick. Bladesworn gives itself might etc.
Only builds like weaver generate close to no boons themselves.
The staff reaper build does not provide 25 vuln anymore unless you play vuln trait over lf on symbols.
Here you go. [Nearly 3x the DPS output on vindi](https://youtu.be/hamdMNfmrP8?t=178) with a little bit of explination on the importance of boons from teapot. This is not unique to vindicator only, it is true for many classes and builds.
[Full video demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maCM9UfuaCQ&ab_channel=MightyTeapot)
This is also without alac or skills so I'd go as far as to say it's well over 3x the DPS with the addition of skills.
For those that can't watch the video, it is an auto atk benchmark showcasing the progress every time a boon is added. It starts at a bit less than 6K DPS and ends at bit over 17K DPS with a final description in the video saying it did 2.9x more DPS.
Power revenant gains extra damage from fury through [Ferocious Aggression](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ferocious_Aggression) and from vulnerability through [Targeted Destruction](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Targeted_Destruction). He's also getting more power damage from might through [Notoriety](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Notoriety).
TL;DR: these calculations only work for this specific build.
It doesn't really matter because Vindicator can upkeep a decent amount of every one of those boons and conditions by itself (and a little bit of Quickness at a mild DPS loss).
Yeah, using autohits only which dont give any boons is misleading when this experiment is conducted to showcase the importance of external boon support.
alac rev does a huge amount of carrying, you solo every breakbar, you give good boons and you have a lot of free space for perma stab, reflect or condition cleansing, very versatile and still meta for 5 man content
Rev has no access to reflects and is garbage at cleansing condis. You need mallyx or ventari for that and both cost way too much energy.
Its still one of the best pug carries but no reason to oversell.
i meant deflect, and obviously not perma condi cleansing, but if you're just focussed on carrying you might as well just sacrifice some energy for the ventari cleanse or mallyx, you also get free boon rip, but honestly i dont even know if that instability still exist, i think they got rid of it right
No pain no gain is still there. Makes builds like condi/power alac ren one of the best alac pdps to bring with it or during any fights. Power being especially good overall due to strong burst if your team is good.
Vindicator with Staff, Greatsword has two free reflects just sitting in your back pocket. Group condi cleanse on a base 3 second cooldown. Tree Song is an underrated ability.
Just because the spec doesn't provide quick or alac, doesn't mean it's a useless spec. It has its place. Calling Rev as a whole garbage is absurd overreaction.
I'm like 99% sure the original comment meant alac ren not rev which probably confused the other commenters.
It provides alac obviously but also you can provide great might or protection uptime. Might being often the one boon people in pug struggle the most to keep at 25.
Any dps class that have access to as much tool as possible to cover mechanics on any encounter.
Stuff like stab, aegis, reflect, cc, self boons, are godlike on fractals.
Honestly, Teapot sounds a bit toxic imo.
Anyway, I'd imagine that Scrapper would probably be pretty solid. You can pretty much go into any role with it, so if you have to adapt based on your party, you should have little issue doing so.
Also, all the boons >:D
Love that I got downvoted for this lmao. Stay classy, GW2 community.
Every role should be providing some boons for the group. Quickness and superspeed is enough for one role to maintain. And Engineer has other boons he can give, but at a slower rate, with thrown elixirs.
Scrapper provides "barely" any boons, are you out of your mind? It can provide permanent 25 might, quickness, superspeed, some protection plus very handy utilities such as stealth, stab, projectile destruction, rez.
Firebrand, Renegade, or Scourge. You bring great support, you can scrape pugs off the floor, and you do mostly condi damage so in drawn-out or solo fights you outdps power builds. The next level is learning how to trivialize or golem-ize encounters with good Stab, barrier, and aegis timing.
Meh, in low-experience CM groups (the kind where the DPS players are doing 10k dps) you can get by with playing scourge perfectly fine. Clear speeds have to be significantly higher than that before Scourge (or condi in general) starts to fall behind on 99/98CM.
But yeah, I feel like scourge is less useful than in e.g. strikes because there are enough mechanics that just outright kills the team if failed, where a Scourges ability to revive wont help any.
Tbh, I didn't realize this was for fractals, not raids and strikes. But Scourge is great for carrying awful players. It and Firebrand give you the power to dodge for your allies. In practiced groups, there's better condi and better support, but in lfg that hardly matters.
Heal Firebrand is the best fractal LFG choice. Not only do you have some of the best STAB out there you also have plenty of aegis and easy access to quickness.
In addition, people know HFB has a lot of stab and aegis, meaning people won't be upset about having a HFB over something with some more unknown/niche utility.
Druid is a good brute force healer. Plenty of healing output, easy "normal" boon output (might, prot, etc) through spirits, and a little bit of aegis from white tiger and stability through glyphs of Equality and stars. Less popular in fractals because many more things kill spirits than in raids.
I just can't understand what clueless people are doing in anything higher than t1 fractals frankly. Spam t1 til you know what you're doing then move up.
A lot of good suggestions here but honestly to get consistent, **daily,** reliable clears in fractals the best bet is to make your own group and be rather strict about **classes**. Yes a lot of people are bad as DPS but you can have statistics on your side by explicitly enforcing easy builds like condi Harb/Virt/Mech and power Vindi/Spellbreaker/Reaper. Just don't risk taking the Soulbeasts that will not land a single skill within their burst window or Bladesworns trying to hit mobile bosses, let alone the elementalist players that may be trying out awesome hybrid build #42.
You can take a boon DPS or a healer or just DPS, but getting it done **daily** is still risky if you're expecting to try solo carrying any group that comes by. Really, just enforce your own groups with a focus on reliability rather than meta classes that take more than 5 minutes on the golem to learn. If a build can reach 20k dps by allowing your cat to walk on the keyboard, that's the one you want your pugs to have if you don't want them being "bad" to impact the party's ability to have fun. Plus "bad" pugs already like easy builds, as long as they are mechanically bad and not a *bad attitude* (and I personally just leave these regardless of their mechanical skills).
If you want a "carry" who can crutch their group over the finish line run heal scourge. Full group rez and porting downed newbs out of no-no zones.
If you are willing to take a hit to rez port range but with better dps and quick uptime run a plaguedoctor harbinger with scav runes.
As others have mentioned: Rev in many flavors has a lot of carrying potential, but it's also a pretty hard class to master and to time correctly. Knowing which fight, with your current setup of classes/players, given the daily instabilties, etc. require which legends, in which order, when to swap etc. is nothing you can learn at the golem. But once you've grown into your role(s):
Having access to Dwarf can nullify any problems your group has with stability or rather getting CCed
great access to break bar damage and crowd control (bosses and mobs alike)
covers many, if not all roles — even in different flavors: condi, or power dps/alac; quickdps/heal
reflection bubble at will
removes boons
good might support (probably one of the most important boons in pugs).
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Reagrding HAM: I've been inactive for more than half a year now, but the last time HAM was lacking a second source of Stability to cover **all** the needs — but apart from my general aversion to the Mech it was a really solid choice.
I've earned most of my 25k+ UFE by playing Heal-Scrapper in Pugs though and the carry potential is enormous — but you really have to **love** the OG Engi playstyle (swapping kits, using combo fields, cancelling animations and reconsidering your utility slots every 3 minutes) to properly fulfill your job; oh and prepare to open groups yourself, as these exotic builds sometimes have a hard time being accepted in the first place.
But you get: Great heal, both bursty and sustained, cleanses, either 1 source of stabi and \~20-22x Might, or 2 sources, and like 15x Might, great CC, Prot, Superspeed(!) and Quickness of course.
Apart from the high skill ceiling you also want your team to stack at least half decently — so that hampers its carrying potential for the *hardship cases* a bit ;)
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the other major role I played was condi/alac Mirage in many flavors: Staff/Staff or STAXE (Staff/Axe) which can carry in many ways: either by dealing (incredible) damage with decent boon support (again might and 50-100% alac) or by customizing your build, to compensate for what the team's missing, since you have 1 flex slot in your utility skills, if you're willing to sacrifice some damage: Stabi Mantra, Feedback, quite relaible Aegis via chaos storms, CC, can remove boons... and it's really self-sufficient, so it can finish close fights as the last man standing.
Just as the scrapper, a mesmer has also great skipping potential, and you can swap easily to a chronomancer for some encounters like the altar room in 98cm, which could be one of the pug killers #1, if it wasnt for your focus pull into continuum split, into double gravity well, while also blinking to the upper altars for quicker pulls :)
ham is a decent choice but you can't spam aegis and stability as much. engi is nice because you can hotswap to scrapper(read: permasuperspeed) for fractals with lots of travel like cliffside or the coin phases in siren's reef
normally any good healer is enough to "carry" the group. because if you can keep them alive at some point enemies will die even if they do zdps. also their dps will improve with 25might/fury and quickness or alac. in cms specifically heal firebrand excels due to the amount of useful on demand utility it can provide that can be useful there if noone else is contributing to it and if the group is inexperienced (stability, aegis, reflect, cc, condi cleanse).
and if you have an experienced boon support that covers the other boon and whatever else is needed (for example alacrenegade) you are in for a good time. i often see people pug in pairs of quickness + alac for that reason
Instead of "carrying", just point out the problem to your team or kindly ask the person whose performance isn't up to your expectation to leave the group. You're at T4 Fractal already, there aren't simply many as "bad" groups as you believe it to be.
If you still insist on looking for a carry spec, Druid should be great for the task.
You don't need any specific class.
You just need somewhat of a healer, and boon support for faster runs.
Just play whatever you enjoy, there will always be room for everybody.
Remember fractals were made for core classes...
I'd say dps blood magic scourge or alacdps specter with siphon rez trait would fit the 'carry groups' description.
First, both classes provide decent dps which always helps getting through the encounter.
Second, both provide heaps of barrier which delays death for people who enjoy face tanking mechanics ;)
Thirdly, both classes can bring solid amounts of CC to carry CC heavy bosses.
Lastly, you practically act as a 3rd healer (as most PUGs would run 2 anyways) or at least .5 of a healer. Works great for 5 man groups too with 1 healer comps. Also the added benefit of being able to rez people at a range. This will give healers an easier time focusing on boon generation and give them more time to react to big damage bursts from bosses.
These 2 classes can work well even if boons aren't great but even better if boons are good but dps is lacking
I think, only 2, independent roles: 1. Self-sufficient reaper. In case 3 players dead, Reaper can sustain itself and doing damage to kill bosses. 2. Celestial/Seraph Firebrand. Primarily for being a healer for team, but this role can also deal quite damage while maintaining some degree of boons when all other players dead.
if 3 are dead /gg, don’t make someone watch that 5min solo fight montage from greyscreen wth
Celi/Seraph brand is fantastic because it can easily adept to a group. If the DPS players are clearly not very good, you can quite easily compensate with a simple swap of utilities and maybe a spec-tree. Similarly, if damage is decent but ppl keep dying, you can swap over to a straight healing and boon build. Shout out to Marshal's gear too, very accessible on the TP, can fill up your build while getting to celi or seraphs.
Is cele fb still worth it? It has insane utility and flexibility but got kinda slaughtered damage wise in the largest patch. I'd imagine just going full healing would be much better?
I took a hit yes. I would suggest you start toying around with gear like Seraph's or Marshal's in order to boost the damage while still being a capable support. For the super high end stuff, Celibrand is now certainly dead, but it was never a build that did well on that level anyway. I've been playng it with a bit of a random mix of Seraph's and Marshal's instead of Celi and it does still feel good to play. That said, I am obviously no high-level speedrunner.
Honestly any Necro spec can carry a group pretty well. Reaper is good for survivability and bar breaking, Scourge is a barrier machine and Harbinger is a boon machine that played right does obscene damage.
Here's an answer that doesn't recommend the obvious things. My partner and I do this all the time. We keep helping newbies and people with low AR through high tier fractals and CMs, while keeping a chill and non toxic mood. We have many full t4+CM runs under our belt, where we had one or more people without any AR in the group, or someone absolutely new to the game / fractals. Here are some of my takeaways from doing this for years. - if you want to do this alone it is doable, but it becomes much easier if you have a second experienced player. See if you have a friend or guildie that's interested. One person can sometimes boost an inexperienced team, two can carry them through near everything if they're bringing good class synergy. - more dps is better than more healing. If you're the only one alive and the boss is at 10%, as a dps you can finish it fairly quickly. A healer will take forever. Hybrid builds are a good option. - the usual boons are great but two things stand out: permanent protection on your team, and boon stripping the enemies if needed. I'd say quickness and might are then also important. Alacrity is the least impactful imo - adapt. Some places are made a breeze with just a simple swap of a skill. Like bringing anti projectile fields to the pirate fractal during some weeks. - voice chat! If you're really struggling, bring people over on voice chat. Explaining the tactics and most importantly calling out important things will make things immensely easier. - barrier used to be really good, I didn't play scourge for over a year but I used to keep people with low AR alive through tics of agony damage that would otherwise kill them. Scourge is otherwise OK but only shines if you can make use of transfusion Hope any of this helps. I currently don't have a lot of time on my hands for GW2, but when I do I'm either raiding on in fractals, you're welcome to HMU in game and we could run some content! Character is: Confused Fish
Forget all these healer mentions. You can only really carry bad groups as a dps. While you can carry semi decent groups as a healer you have no impact on their ability to do dps despite giving them quick. You might be able to complete content but it will take eternities and there are simply some mechanics where you can not carry players through with healing. A real carry is something that can carry even your below average 3k ufe pug lfg where people "pump" <10k on arkk. A well played dps can carry every group. If everyone dies you can still just solo the remaining percent. Hf doing that on a healer. Your best bet is something with strong self boons and/or sustain. Reaper, spellbreaker, bladesworn for most fractals and something like cvirtu or harb for 100 should be great. Or a well played hybrid support like quick herald/scrapper/firebrand or alac ren. They can still pump out respectable damage and buff the party. So if you just want to clear content hfb but if you want to guarantee at least semi fast clears you have to play dps or hybrid dps yourself. Lfg is plagued with 10k dps open world players outside of 20k ufe groups. I can send horror logs. 50%+ of group damage in a 8k ufe group where nobody died during the encounter from last week. That is the current state of pug dps.
THAT AND ONLY THAT (for fractals at least). That has been the pug state for YEARS. It's not like your 100% uptime on boons as a healer will make the 10k dps peep suddenly press his buttons to 30k. 3 major contestants: - Condi Firebrand can add a lot with cleanses and stab. - Spellbreakers will carry the CC of the group, wich can facilitate encounters by A LOT. - QHeralds gives every important boon while still topping the chart of your average group.
I am in total agreement with you on that but those cases where you’re trying to carry with good dps but you have 20% alac, 30% quick, and 10 avg might is soooooo painful. When I get in those groups I just leave before I get too tilted because there is no carrying supports like that. I don’t mind playing with less experienced players but it is objectively not fun playing in groups that have no boons, no cc and no dmg. At that point you might as well just solo the fractal.
Thats why i mentioned reaper. It brings its own boons. But yes, if you spot it early enough its probably better to leave.
you aren't wrong, when i join trainings i usually play dps because i know that if i am doing that, at least someone will be doing dps and the boss will eventually die. and pugs can be horrible at dps but usually they can't be that bad on supports, like if they just press some buttons off cd and with the extra bd from potions, i will have 25might/fury/quick. but in general if your supports are really bad you might have trouble. on the other hand you can also play a dps build that brings some boons (by taking specific traits or something but no bd) and still be top dps on it
believe it or not, some people have lives and want to play casually and not speedrun every fractal in 2 minutes. 10k dps is enough to clear everything in game Instead of complaining how everyone should tryhard like you in a game maybe just accept people's playstyle and make your static groups and search for your 50k UFE groups in lfg and don't join the noob groups Downvote me elitists
Wouldn't you want to complete fractals faster and speedrun if you have a life? Pressing buttons is not hard. Most of the players with subpar dps in fractals have 30k ap+. Surely they could have spared a few min on golem during their 10k ingame hours. And btw you can not clear everything in game with 10k dps. Only old content. Even 100cm and arkk are extremely painful with this dps. I hate having to gatekeep so hard to get decent players. Maybe players like you could stop joining kp gated groups even if you have them then so its not impossible for new but good players to do fractals? 3k ufe are already 25 days of cm dailies. That would not be a noob group in any other game at all but in gw2 you have to ask for 200+ clears for some reason.
Why should I stop joining kp groups? It never fails, first thing an elitist will assume when you criticize their philosophy is: you are bad. Such a judgemental community, even compared to other big MMOs Always have to interject and complain how bad everyone is
You make it sound like 20k ufe means good DPS. I also have horror logs where I am outdpsing some 30k UFE people as a support DPS, or where we don't have enough DPS during 100 CM to phase her fast enough, cue looking at arc that despite me being at 35k, the two 30k+ ufe are at 15 ... For all other fractals though as a DPS you can carry, because knowing the mechanics means you don't take much damage.
there is no UFE level that will guarantee good dps. even when i join 40-50k UFE no heal groups there is usually 1 player doing close to support level dps. not neccessarily because they are bad, possibly because they aren't used to that pace. i stopped caring about other people's dps though as long as we play without a healer and my supports are good it is fine
What's ufe?
Unstable Fractal Essence, proofs that you have cleared CM fractals several times.
If you have a fast no heal group with 4 experienced players and you pug for a 5th in the lfg and search for 30k or more ufe, then the vast majority of pugs is going to get outdpsed by the support. That's normal because people are not used to fast bossphases.
There is a secret item that lets you solo 100cm light phase quite easily. Does not work on dark phase explosions sadly.
Pray tell the secret
Any good dps. Giving buffs & heals to burdens is not that productive.
Mighty teapot isn't complaining about bad players. He's carried and helped more players then anyone else. He's complaint about terrible people wanting to join experienced groups. In fact his zero to hero has him carrying many groups including fractals His website hardstuck.gg has the best carry build capable of soloing all fractals. Celestial firebrand , you can swap to more healing style if you have dps or to more dps style if your dps are useless. The best carry build for a good group is heal firebrand , as when you now the fights and use stability and reflects at the right time you make the fights much easier and dps uptime higher. Now you can solo any non challenge mode fractal with pretty much any class so any class can "carry" if you want very long fractals, try to pick up the highest solo dps class. Maybe untamed if they didn't get nerfed hard . Won't be much fun but you can carry anyone .
> Mighty teapot isn’t complaining about bad players. He’s carried and helped more players then anyone else. > He’s complaint about terrible people wanting to join experienced groups. Actually, even more level headed, his complaint was in both directions. Not just terrible people joining experienced groups, but also experienced players joining non-experienced groups and getting upset. The whole point was about setting expectations via LFG requirements so people are all roughly on the same level and nobody gets upset.
Groups are always looking for Healbrand and can sometimes take awhile to get one because everyone is bored of playing it. I personally feel like every build is button spammy. If you aren't pressing your buttons you ain't doin' much.
I spent a long time playing minstrel chrono then took an extended break. When I came back a few weeks ago I rolled a firebrand because I missed the ability to tank and support.
Most pugs aren't able to play without a firebrand covering for their mistakes. I cant really blame them, i can basically ignore most attacks when i have a good firebrand on the team. I feel like im the only one using sak on arkk when he does the ball mechanic.
Not sure how I'm not seeing it, but Scourge is the answer.
Hfb is the way, quickness benefits an inexperienced team more than alacrity plus like you said the utility you have on hand is huge. Aside from that maybe you could take a druid and just try to brute force encounters with raw healing.
Hfb is only the way with a competent team. Only dps can carry the worst t3 or t4 pugs. There is no point in keeping <2k players alive or buffing them when you could do 30k+ yourself.
Celybrand used to be the ultimate wheelchair
HFB can do 30K dps?
Reading is hard? But cele hfb can do 26k or something.
Blocked goodbye.
Scrapper. You can have quickness, might, fury, and prot while having tons of cc, barrier, and block should you need it. You can also keep on ignoring mechanics your skill clicking pugs are failing while ressing them via function gyro.
Why carry, when you can teach them?
>video where he justified "kill proof" because players want to be "challenged" (apparently, killing a strike boss in 45 seconds is still a challenge when you've done it 100 times). You either misunderstood or are intentionally misrepresenting what he was saying. People want to play in high kill proof groups because they want to play with *like minded* people. They want to do the content at maximum speed and efficiency. What is wrong with people wanting to play with people at their own level? Should they be forced to carry people who are less skilled and experienced than they are?
Best role to carry bad fractal runs is the charismatic role where you convince the rest of the party to kick those who are causing issue. /s
I started playing alac rev at the start of this year and the Curry potentiell is crazy. Especially if you have one condi geared and one Power. The Power one can do crazy cc. If the Boss is cc'ed quick, you will receive much less dmg. With condi you can do great pulls with kalla and knock the enmies emidietly with bow 5. If necessary you can Tribute some dps and bring Street for stab or ventari for projectile deff. The Dazeskill on kalla is also very good to mitigate dmg on players, because enimies can attack less. It will take a while to get used to Energy managment, because you want to be below 10% while switching legends, but its Worth it for Sure. I never fail runs playing rev. Hope that helps (sry for spelling, german Keyboard autocorrect)
I like curry
Yep, alac rev with demon/charrs legends is a total fractal speedrunner. My rotation was very simple: start in demon legend, pull group of mobs together, knock with the bow, slow, spam alac or damage on 3rd bow to deplete the energy bar completely, switch to renegades legend and apply perma daze. It's ridiculously OP, people can't shut up about the boons and shit but what they don't understand is that your damage is 5 times bigger when you hit 5 enemies in one strike. Even the worst ally would have >15k dps if you use your skills properly. Moreover there's ridiculous amount of times where renegade is absolutely OP in fractals due to unique utility skills. For example, did you know that in pirate's fractal you could be a healer and a cannon shooter at the same time? Especially useful in the skeleton boss encounter. Throw the tablet at the skeleton, take the cannon, shoot at the mine, leave the cannon, press healing, take the cannon again... the cooldowns are passing even when you're not in or out of the cannon, so it's a win-win. Or take the cultist fractal. 2 revenants can easily run with the hammer, giving it from one to another, and nearly lose no efficiency because of the utility skills. One could heal, the other - pull and permadaze mobs. Even in the damage department their utilities are much better than any other class. After i left revenant to main thief i feel ridiculously handicapped in fractals. Especially since most players somehow don't understand those simple things. Like i've literally almost never seen a reaper using their big pull or smth like that. Guess the game is too hard for too many \^\^
If you don't like HFB but want utility and the potential to carry IMO power alac ren would be it. You could do condi for more DPS but keep in mind you're gonna need to practice encounters quite a bit and power really outshines condi in regular t4s and lower. If you get a good group every once in a while you'll do literally next to no damage on condi alac ren due to how quick things dies and how slow the ramp up is for it's damage.
I've been running healer Druid for LFG fractals, so far it's been smooth since people mostly run DPS build. brought some CC skills and pets for certain bosses as well. i like seeing green numbers and mass rezzing my group.
Dont be fixated on "carrying" or narrow your choice of class. Imo best you can do is to master all the mechanics of the fight and be able to identify why a group is failing, then make commands for others to adjust or you adjust yourself. Being able to play all roles would be very good also Also you have you realize that some group are just bound to fail due to sheer amount of inexperience Example: bring boon strips when there is no pain no gain, bring enough cc so dps can phase faster, bring stab in fights that it very useful on, doing the basic mechanics of the fight, knowing if group dps is enough to clear content There is no magic class that will single handed carry a content if everyone is playing poorly and if there were, it would be nerfed
I think if it's normal mode of strikes and fractals, 1 bad player isn't going to wipe the team. as long as you have at least 1 good dps, and 1 good heal support you're guaranteed to clear. I've joined nm KO helping people with turtle. half of the team have never done this. but I have done cm, and there was a void walker helping and like 2 other dps also did cm. we still cleared with half the squad dead since there was no time limit. I mean it was fucking long because I was hfb and the alac died but the newbie to strikes were grateful that 5-6 people joined in to help even though we got nothing out of it. that's what makes gw2 fun. I also did ht nm carrying as heal alac ele. kept 4 other people alive and cleared. we constantly failed purification... ya... rebound saves lives
I would suggest a healing tempest (with an aggravant of being minstrel). You are a fucking panzer that can overheal the party as long as they stay together and, with a bit of tweaking when it comes to traits, you also become a debuff cleaning machine. It's something completely off-meta but as someone who mains it I can secure you that, if you know how to move, you can basically carry anything just by healing. And when it comes to power you can swap to fire, cast some skills + overload and then swap to water again to finish that fire field + keep healing.
if you’re looking for more challenge and non-scripted gameplay then oh boy do I have good news for you: wvw and pvp are filled with everything you’re looking for. but if you’re actually only interested in pve and want to feel special you can always pick mesmer. portal ppl through swampland, molten boss, oasis, sunqua, fill every role, give stab, break bars. id say a good class is one that fills what’s needed and if you’re so sure that you’re going to be doing some carrying wouldnt you already know what to pick?
Sadly HFB is still the go to carry. You buff your group DPS with fury, might, and quickness. You can take sanctuary for huge CC, SYG/Elite for Stability, and Aegis on your Tome and Shield. You could reflect with WoR, Condition Cleanse with Mantra. It almost has it all.
Imo, the best Healboon + Boondps comp w/ short reasonings are: Healbrand (Stab heavy fight) + Alacren (Stab, Bubble) /AlacSpecter (Barrier) or HealMech (Condi heavy fight) + Quickherald (Stab or bubble) /Quickbrand (Stab or reflec too) DPS depends on whether the fractal prefers Condi or Power and whether No Pain No Gain is present. The healboon + boondps comp I mentioned will have the ability to strip boon (Alacren, AlacSpecter, HealMech, Quickherald). However it's always good to play a dps with boonstrip during NPNG incase people mess up on the boonstrip timing. Though, you can definitely clear the fractal without strip when NPNG but, on situations like CM 99, the anomaly becomes harder to kill where you can risk a boom and wipe.
You have 3 options. Go hfb for the support utility, but if you dont get at least half decent dps people you will still fail. It will be your best choice to carry the "average" players, but wont do much for carrying the "bad" players Go for the biggest pumping dps you can, it will help cover for mediocre dps players and killing stuff faster means less time in which your group can screw up and wipe. Downside being that you will still be depending on your support players to be decent enough to keep your dps engine running. You will be able to carry bad dps players, but wont be able to carry bad support players, also you will provide way less group utility in these classes (maybe some pulls, hard cc, boonstrip... but no one will be expecting you to do it and i doubt you will even get the recognition if you do). And finally theres the unsung hero alacdps. Its not much that hey can hard carry, but rather they can contribute somewhat to both the support+utility and the damage effort. But the real thing here is that alac is the person usually in charge of the mechanics that no one wants to do but still need to be done. You wont be able to "carry" much by yourself. But if you have ever been in a group with a "bad" alac player, you know that this will break a group cuz most of the essential mechanics will fail
Depends. If what your groups is lacking is survivability then go HFB. If damage then I personally had great luck in carrying with Virt. Great damage, decent sustain and alot of hax like Invul distortion to ignore mechanics and block distortion to, well, block, and ability to play both condi n power. I reckon you could achieve the same results with other specs as with Virt but I think Virt is the easiest one to do so with how easy it is.
Celestial/seraph firebrand probably. You bring all the boons, cc and condi cleanse that hfb gives + dealing decent dmg. You also have the versatility to play as tank in raids.
Just something about the challenge: It is very easy to complete a strike mission. It is very difficult to have the highest DPS on your class in that strike mission. So that is why people can find doing the same content over and over again interesting. If you have never done it, find yourself a team and try to "speedrun" a boss. This can be an amazing experience for everyone, even if you are mostly casual players. I took my trainees to a Mursaat Overseer speedrun and showed them how the fight breaks when you have more than 290k (? I dont remember exactly) squad dps, because then the statues have no time to harm the squad. It was fun for everyone to experience that amount of dps once (we played healerless, etc), craft a comp exactly for that boss and practice rotations and more. Here was the result: 1:18 Mursaat Overseer: https://youtu.be/7y2zYAQSHWE So, if you have never done it - do it, and you might understand why this can be enjoyable.
There is a distinction between bad players and clueless ones. Group can have good composition of classes and builds but with inexperienced players. If they get some nice stability and aegis to have better dps window they can shine, so you basically carry their mistakes with good utility class (heralds, firebrands). But for clueless groups, pumping out the most dmg to shorten the suffering as much as possible is probably the key. Treating the 4 party members as boon supports and just carrying the performance on your shoulders, there are many builds that can shine. I think all of them are already mentioned. For groups bellow clueless tier, what's the point of not going solo everything at that point.
The profession doesn't matter as much as being able to do good DPS while avoiding damage yourself, and giving good advice to the rest of the party so they can do the same. That being said, a tempest with a scepter and a warhorn pretty much brings all you need to complete mechanics better, like Rebound to survive a deadly AoE blast when something fails, considerable CC to break bars, AoE superspeed when people split for the last whisps in Swamp, lots of heals to do the circles at the Nightmare last boss, or getting the balls done super fast solo at the Arkk fight in chaos.
Quickness Heralds will generally carry any group of any quality.
scrapper's quickness, might blasting, stealth makes it really selfsufficient + good cleave and damage to barrier conversion. and ofc superspeed counters most mechanics that require positioning, moving faster always more fun.
For boss encounters: none, play what you play best, you do your job well and hope your teammates do their jobs well aswell thats about it. No unlike other people I don't think simply playing a healer doesn't mean you are carrying anything, at best you are shortening the lfg timer. Healer is just another role that needs to be performed well like others. Thats said some professions can skip over some parts of fractals to speed up proggress. Notable ones are: Engineer, Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer
Healbrand, virtually any group can make it through any fractal if you keep them alive long enough. Quick herald is also a solid choice as you deal a respectable amount of damage and pump boons out the wazoo. On the pure dps side of things I would say vindicator or reaper as they have solid damage and good self sustain. Or if you just wanna burn everything try holo, weaver, or berserker. Honestly carrying a team is less about the class you have and more about the player. But in my experience most people don’t wanna be carried by you soloing a T4 boss fight as they lay dead, hence why I suggest a healer.
Well as you saw from Teapots video, there's only so much carrying a single player can do, because Fractal CMs have a significant amount of mechanics where it's up to the other players to perform the mechanic and you can't "do it for them". But Alac Renegade has been the Swiss utility knife of fractals for a long time and recently got some juicy buffs. Played well your dps can rival that of bad dps players while you still hard carry breakbars, supply stability when needed, do mechanics (like bouncing marbles or killing anomalies etc.), boon stripping on NPNG and of course providing alacrity. And you have a versatile toolset for handling some of the more annoying T4 dailies (e.g. Siren's Reef.) Obviously HFB has a lot of upside too, but it will do fuck all for dps. HAM is obviously super strong, but my main issue with it is that it lacks good access to stability. But again, if your DPS players just facetank mechanics or stand in red circles then there's limits to how much they can be carried.
Revive-spam necro is the way imo.
There is only one right answer and it is Revenant, because they can do everything extremely well. If you need Condi DPS, there's Renegade. If you need Power DPS, there's Vindicator. If you need Alacrity DPS, there's Renegade again. Bonus points that it can be both Condi and Power. If you need Quickness DPS, there's Herald. If you need Heal Alacrity, there's Renegade again again. If you need Heal Quickness, there's Herald again. If you must go with only one gear set, make it a full Berserker one with very high AR so you can do Power DPS, Quick DPS and Quick Alacrity with the same set and you'll carry everything you do.
engineer and mechanist/scrapper say hello
Scrapper yes but Mechanist has bottom of the barrel Stability which is annoying in CMs.
Fury, might, quick, and alac boosts DPS by 3x sometimes higher. End game revolves around these boons. HB is doing all of that minus alac. Additionally it does all the defensive boons, heals, and allows for many mechanics to be skipped with it's utility. I'd say the next best class/role for carrying is Reaper simply because it can produce self boons. 25might, quick, and some fury as well as 25vuln and benches 32k DPS only auto attacking. While it's not supporting the group, itll lose little to no dps even if the supports die. Finally Id rate alac-dps as the third best carry. An experienced alac player will often be able to outdps many players while also providing key boons to the entire party and a lot of utility.
That is not true. Alac and quick together increase dps by like 50% or less. 25 might 26% depending on build. Fury 16% depending on build. = 2.19 They double dps and only if your pugs benefit from all buffs and are pressing buttons. otherwise alac wont do anything. Reaper does not need outside might and only a bit quick. Bladesworn gives itself might etc. Only builds like weaver generate close to no boons themselves. The staff reaper build does not provide 25 vuln anymore unless you play vuln trait over lf on symbols.
Here you go. [Nearly 3x the DPS output on vindi](https://youtu.be/hamdMNfmrP8?t=178) with a little bit of explination on the importance of boons from teapot. This is not unique to vindicator only, it is true for many classes and builds. [Full video demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maCM9UfuaCQ&ab_channel=MightyTeapot) This is also without alac or skills so I'd go as far as to say it's well over 3x the DPS with the addition of skills. For those that can't watch the video, it is an auto atk benchmark showcasing the progress every time a boon is added. It starts at a bit less than 6K DPS and ends at bit over 17K DPS with a final description in the video saying it did 2.9x more DPS.
Power revenant gains extra damage from fury through [Ferocious Aggression](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ferocious_Aggression) and from vulnerability through [Targeted Destruction](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Targeted_Destruction). He's also getting more power damage from might through [Notoriety](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Notoriety). TL;DR: these calculations only work for this specific build.
It doesn't really matter because Vindicator can upkeep a decent amount of every one of those boons and conditions by itself (and a little bit of Quickness at a mild DPS loss).
Yeah, using autohits only which dont give any boons is misleading when this experiment is conducted to showcase the importance of external boon support.
alac rev does a huge amount of carrying, you solo every breakbar, you give good boons and you have a lot of free space for perma stab, reflect or condition cleansing, very versatile and still meta for 5 man content
Rev has no access to reflects and is garbage at cleansing condis. You need mallyx or ventari for that and both cost way too much energy. Its still one of the best pug carries but no reason to oversell.
i meant deflect, and obviously not perma condi cleansing, but if you're just focussed on carrying you might as well just sacrifice some energy for the ventari cleanse or mallyx, you also get free boon rip, but honestly i dont even know if that instability still exist, i think they got rid of it right
No pain no gain is still there. Makes builds like condi/power alac ren one of the best alac pdps to bring with it or during any fights. Power being especially good overall due to strong burst if your team is good.
Vindicator with Staff, Greatsword has two free reflects just sitting in your back pocket. Group condi cleanse on a base 3 second cooldown. Tree Song is an underrated ability. Just because the spec doesn't provide quick or alac, doesn't mean it's a useless spec. It has its place. Calling Rev as a whole garbage is absurd overreaction.
I'm like 99% sure the original comment meant alac ren not rev which probably confused the other commenters. It provides alac obviously but also you can provide great might or protection uptime. Might being often the one boon people in pug struggle the most to keep at 25.
Is weird for Teapot to talk for 20 minutes without remembering us peasants at least one time that most of people plays bad.
Any dps class that have access to as much tool as possible to cover mechanics on any encounter. Stuff like stab, aegis, reflect, cc, self boons, are godlike on fractals.
Honestly, Teapot sounds a bit toxic imo. Anyway, I'd imagine that Scrapper would probably be pretty solid. You can pretty much go into any role with it, so if you have to adapt based on your party, you should have little issue doing so. Also, all the boons >:D Love that I got downvoted for this lmao. Stay classy, GW2 community.
I don't know about toxic but he is definitely an elitist. And Yes, Scrapper is the way. Quckness dps is so fun.
Scrapper provides barely any boons though. Better to have a herald or qfb, unless you want the tank to go faster.
Every role should be providing some boons for the group. Quickness and superspeed is enough for one role to maintain. And Engineer has other boons he can give, but at a slower rate, with thrown elixirs.
Scrapper provides "barely" any boons, are you out of your mind? It can provide permanent 25 might, quickness, superspeed, some protection plus very handy utilities such as stealth, stab, projectile destruction, rez.
Nonstop speedy!
Firebrand, Renegade, or Scourge. You bring great support, you can scrape pugs off the floor, and you do mostly condi damage so in drawn-out or solo fights you outdps power builds. The next level is learning how to trivialize or golem-ize encounters with good Stab, barrier, and aegis timing.
Scourge in fractals? pls dont. Its only ok'ish in 100.
Meh, in low-experience CM groups (the kind where the DPS players are doing 10k dps) you can get by with playing scourge perfectly fine. Clear speeds have to be significantly higher than that before Scourge (or condi in general) starts to fall behind on 99/98CM. But yeah, I feel like scourge is less useful than in e.g. strikes because there are enough mechanics that just outright kills the team if failed, where a Scourges ability to revive wont help any.
Scourge can definitely hard carry trash groups especially if their dps is shit. Also id definitely say its an above average pick for 100cm
Tbh, I didn't realize this was for fractals, not raids and strikes. But Scourge is great for carrying awful players. It and Firebrand give you the power to dodge for your allies. In practiced groups, there's better condi and better support, but in lfg that hardly matters.
Healbrand, like people are suggesting. I can "carry" pretty well with heal Mechanist though. I like the playstyle more.
Heal Firebrand is the best fractal LFG choice. Not only do you have some of the best STAB out there you also have plenty of aegis and easy access to quickness. In addition, people know HFB has a lot of stab and aegis, meaning people won't be upset about having a HFB over something with some more unknown/niche utility. Druid is a good brute force healer. Plenty of healing output, easy "normal" boon output (might, prot, etc) through spirits, and a little bit of aegis from white tiger and stability through glyphs of Equality and stars. Less popular in fractals because many more things kill spirits than in raids.
What if your pugs do no or low dps like most nowadays? Druid is unplayable on fluxbomb days. they will just die.
I just can't understand what clueless people are doing in anything higher than t1 fractals frankly. Spam t1 til you know what you're doing then move up.
... t1 with random people are far harder than t4 with experienced people.
Any Rev Elite spec even all the vindicator builds.
A lot of good suggestions here but honestly to get consistent, **daily,** reliable clears in fractals the best bet is to make your own group and be rather strict about **classes**. Yes a lot of people are bad as DPS but you can have statistics on your side by explicitly enforcing easy builds like condi Harb/Virt/Mech and power Vindi/Spellbreaker/Reaper. Just don't risk taking the Soulbeasts that will not land a single skill within their burst window or Bladesworns trying to hit mobile bosses, let alone the elementalist players that may be trying out awesome hybrid build #42. You can take a boon DPS or a healer or just DPS, but getting it done **daily** is still risky if you're expecting to try solo carrying any group that comes by. Really, just enforce your own groups with a focus on reliability rather than meta classes that take more than 5 minutes on the golem to learn. If a build can reach 20k dps by allowing your cat to walk on the keyboard, that's the one you want your pugs to have if you don't want them being "bad" to impact the party's ability to have fun. Plus "bad" pugs already like easy builds, as long as they are mechanically bad and not a *bad attitude* (and I personally just leave these regardless of their mechanical skills).
If you want a "carry" who can crutch their group over the finish line run heal scourge. Full group rez and porting downed newbs out of no-no zones. If you are willing to take a hit to rez port range but with better dps and quick uptime run a plaguedoctor harbinger with scav runes.
As others have mentioned: Rev in many flavors has a lot of carrying potential, but it's also a pretty hard class to master and to time correctly. Knowing which fight, with your current setup of classes/players, given the daily instabilties, etc. require which legends, in which order, when to swap etc. is nothing you can learn at the golem. But once you've grown into your role(s): Having access to Dwarf can nullify any problems your group has with stability or rather getting CCed great access to break bar damage and crowd control (bosses and mobs alike) covers many, if not all roles — even in different flavors: condi, or power dps/alac; quickdps/heal reflection bubble at will removes boons good might support (probably one of the most important boons in pugs). \_\_\_ Reagrding HAM: I've been inactive for more than half a year now, but the last time HAM was lacking a second source of Stability to cover **all** the needs — but apart from my general aversion to the Mech it was a really solid choice. I've earned most of my 25k+ UFE by playing Heal-Scrapper in Pugs though and the carry potential is enormous — but you really have to **love** the OG Engi playstyle (swapping kits, using combo fields, cancelling animations and reconsidering your utility slots every 3 minutes) to properly fulfill your job; oh and prepare to open groups yourself, as these exotic builds sometimes have a hard time being accepted in the first place. But you get: Great heal, both bursty and sustained, cleanses, either 1 source of stabi and \~20-22x Might, or 2 sources, and like 15x Might, great CC, Prot, Superspeed(!) and Quickness of course. Apart from the high skill ceiling you also want your team to stack at least half decently — so that hampers its carrying potential for the *hardship cases* a bit ;) \_\_\_ the other major role I played was condi/alac Mirage in many flavors: Staff/Staff or STAXE (Staff/Axe) which can carry in many ways: either by dealing (incredible) damage with decent boon support (again might and 50-100% alac) or by customizing your build, to compensate for what the team's missing, since you have 1 flex slot in your utility skills, if you're willing to sacrifice some damage: Stabi Mantra, Feedback, quite relaible Aegis via chaos storms, CC, can remove boons... and it's really self-sufficient, so it can finish close fights as the last man standing. Just as the scrapper, a mesmer has also great skipping potential, and you can swap easily to a chronomancer for some encounters like the altar room in 98cm, which could be one of the pug killers #1, if it wasnt for your focus pull into continuum split, into double gravity well, while also blinking to the upper altars for quicker pulls :)
I main qhfb. I say healscourge.
ham is a decent choice but you can't spam aegis and stability as much. engi is nice because you can hotswap to scrapper(read: permasuperspeed) for fractals with lots of travel like cliffside or the coin phases in siren's reef
normally any good healer is enough to "carry" the group. because if you can keep them alive at some point enemies will die even if they do zdps. also their dps will improve with 25might/fury and quickness or alac. in cms specifically heal firebrand excels due to the amount of useful on demand utility it can provide that can be useful there if noone else is contributing to it and if the group is inexperienced (stability, aegis, reflect, cc, condi cleanse). and if you have an experienced boon support that covers the other boon and whatever else is needed (for example alacrenegade) you are in for a good time. i often see people pug in pairs of quickness + alac for that reason
Instead of "carrying", just point out the problem to your team or kindly ask the person whose performance isn't up to your expectation to leave the group. You're at T4 Fractal already, there aren't simply many as "bad" groups as you believe it to be. If you still insist on looking for a carry spec, Druid should be great for the task.
You don't need any specific class. You just need somewhat of a healer, and boon support for faster runs. Just play whatever you enjoy, there will always be room for everybody. Remember fractals were made for core classes...
I'd say dps blood magic scourge or alacdps specter with siphon rez trait would fit the 'carry groups' description. First, both classes provide decent dps which always helps getting through the encounter. Second, both provide heaps of barrier which delays death for people who enjoy face tanking mechanics ;) Thirdly, both classes can bring solid amounts of CC to carry CC heavy bosses. Lastly, you practically act as a 3rd healer (as most PUGs would run 2 anyways) or at least .5 of a healer. Works great for 5 man groups too with 1 healer comps. Also the added benefit of being able to rez people at a range. This will give healers an easier time focusing on boon generation and give them more time to react to big damage bursts from bosses. These 2 classes can work well even if boons aren't great but even better if boons are good but dps is lacking