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[Slein Jinn]

Introduction

I kinda fell out of the WvW scene for a while after [Hawk] collapsed and all the server drama kicked into high gear, but I've been trying to get more active in Ehmry Bay WvW again now that the tidal wave of drama has seemingly died down.  It's great to see EBay rebounding, and we're getting some fresh blood too, which is awesome.  In [Hawk], I was one of the main theorycrafters behind the builds we ran, and I know the mechanics and maths that govern combat in this game like the back of my hand; it's been joked that I only play MMO's to give me an excuse to play with Excel. :-)

Motivation

The demands placed by large scale combat in WvW on your build are very different from what's required in other areas of the game.  As such, the vast majority of players come to WvW with frankly terrible builds at first. Some stay and learn to adapt to the different environment, but others get discouraged by their ineffectiveness and don't come back.  I'd like to try to help ensure it's the former as often as possible.   I don't want to tell people "you have to run this exact build or you're bad", but rather, I want to give people a framework for how they can create good builds, and I want to offer them some basic builds they can take into WvW right now and feel effective.  

For each profession, I will start by looking what your role should be and set up a framework around which to construct a build with the essential tools required to perform that role.  Then I'll give you a fully fleshed out, solid, battle-proven build or two, and I'll try to go through that build in detail, explaining why we've taken certain skills and traits and what makes it an effective build.  The goal is not to force people into cookie cutter builds, although I certainly wouldn't complain if every single person in my zerg were running these exact builds verbatim when I'm commanding--we'd see a big improvement overall if that happened--but rather to help you get a feel for how good builds are constructed.  Most players will want to fine-tune these builds to suit themselves, even if that's just a minor tweak to the balance between offensive and defensive gear sets, and that's a good thing.  But having that foundation is key, and I consistently see so many players who lack for it.  

General Principles

So what are the demands placed by WvW?  Well, your excellent PvE builds are probably too fragile, and your meta sPvP builds are probably too focused on conditions and burst.  In general, you want something pretty survivable--the first rule of any WvW build is don't die.  And you generally want Power-based DPS with as much AE as possible; conditions are great for control, but the prevalence of condition removal and the general nature of large scale combat means they're not a great source of DPS.  Boon sharing, condition removal, boon stripping, and control effects are all highly prized.  Stunbreaks and leaps are invaluable survival tools.  Stability is the one boon to rule them all, but Protection is not to be underestimated as well, and Might and Fury have a huge impact on DPS.  Similarly, spreading around Chill, Immobalise, Cripple, and Weaken makes a big impact; look to conditions more for control than as reliable DPS.  

Another key consideration when setting up both individual builds and also when looking at overall zerg composition is combo fields.  Many PvE and sPvP players don't even realise that the combo system in GW2 exists, and if they do, they often have relatively little familiarity with it, but it is an absolutely vital part of large scale WvW gameplay.  I'm not going to go into detail here, but in short, if you look at the tooltips on your skills, you'll find some of them have a line that says "Combo Field: X", such as Healing Rain (Elementalist), Healing Spring (Ranger), or Purging Flames (Guardian), and others have a line that says "Combo Finisher: Y", such as Call to Arms (Warrior), Cluster Bomb (Thief), or Whirling Defense (Ranger).  The most important Finisher by far is Blast, and the most important Combo Fields are Water, Ice, Fire, Air, roughly in that order.  Builds that offer good sources of these Fields and Finishers are highly desirable.  

When it comes to gear, there are basically two stat combinations that rule over all the rest: Soldier and Berserker.  There are some exceptions, but for the most part, you'll do well by following this simple maxim: Wear as much Soldier gear as you need in order to survive; wear as much Berserker gear as you can survive wearing. Power is a disproportionately valuable stat, and both sets have Power as the primary, and by mixing between these two sets, you can achieve a good balance between defensive stats and secondary offensive stats.  When in doubt, err on the side of too tanky rather than too squishy; not only is dying no fun, but it also rallies enemy downed.  The importance of this cannot be overstated; it's where we get the derisive term "rally bot"; a player that is too easy to kill doesn't merely fail to help but can actually hurt his team.  Look at full Soldier gear kind of like training wheels.  It's absolutely fine to even wear completely 100% Soldier stats in every slot if you want to while you're getting a feel for WvW gameplay.  It keeps you from killing yourself while you learn what you're doing.  As you get better, you can start replacing pieces of Soldier gear with Berserker one by one until you find a balance you're comfortable with.  Eventually, you can start working in other stat combinations to really fine-tune things, but you truly will never do badly if you never look beyond those basic two sets.  

To begin to go deeper, we can break your zerg into three broad groups--frontliners, backliners, and midliners--each of which fills different roles and has unique needs.  Let's look at each segment of the zerg in turn.

[Slein Jinn]

Frontliners

Generally the largest of the three groups in an ideal composition, Frontliners should account for about 11-15 members in a balanced 25-man zerg.  Your front line is generally composed of Warriors and Guardians.  Frontline builds obviously need to be highly durable, but they also need to have plenty of support.  It is for this reason that, although other classes can be built durably enough to survive in the front line, they're not desired for that role, because they lack the group support of Warriors and Guardians.  When zergs collide, individual tankiness alone isn't enough to keep your front line alive; you need to sustain one another.  Think of the front line like a Classical phalanx.  Especially in the case of Warriors, there are a lot of self-focused abilities you'll be tempted to run, but in the end, you're much better off supporting your allies so that they can continue to support you.  As Gerard Butler's Leonidas said, 'In the end, a Spartan's true strength is the warrior next to him.  So give respect and honour to him, and it will be returned to you.'

A key concept to keep in mind when playing as a frontliner in GW2 is that AE skills are capped at 5 targets.  This means that by stacking up very tightly, you can in essence "body block" a lot of damage for each other.  Stacking tightly also helps you to concentrate your own damage in the smallest possible area, which helps to ensure that your own team are all hitting the same targets as much as possible, allowing you to actually down enemy frontliners.  

As a general rule, I would aim for between 2700 and 3000 Armour on a frontliner in order to keep you durable enough to reliably survive while still working in some respectable damage to actually kill the enemy zerg.  That said, don't feel one bit bad about going even higher than that if it makes you feel more comfortable while you get up to speed with WvW.  If you're alive, you're helping; if you're dead, the best case scenario is you're doing nothing.  

Guardians

Guardian Build Framework
Guardians are your primary source of both defensive boon sharing and condition removal.  Both of these are vital roles, so you want to build around them.  Guardians will generally be wielding a Staff as their primary weapon, as all five skills are very well suited to large scale WvW.  Your weapon swap will be either a Hammer or a Greatsword, with both having valuable niche uses.  The Hammer is primarily valued for the very low cooldown Blast Finisher and for the third skill on the auto attack chain--Symbol of Protection--but the other skills have their situational uses as well.  The Greatsword is valued for the leap, Binding Blade, and the spike DPS from Whirling Wrath.  

On-swap Sigils are not particularly well suited to a Guardian's Staff, because you'll often be sitting in Staff for long periods of time without switching, but a Sigil of Hydromancy or Energy can be useful on your alternate weapon, as can Battle in the case of Greatsword, because you'll be swapping to it for relatively short periods of time.  As with virtually any build for any class, Force Sigils are always a good choice for a substantial and reliable DPS boost, as is Sigil of Fire.  Restoration and Celerity (formerly known as Sanctuary) are both useful when wiping large enemy Karma trains and the like.  As for Runes, Runes of the Trooper (formerly known as Runes of the Soldier) are ideally suited to most viable Guardian builds and synergy extremely well with Pure of Voice and the Shouts you're already running.  The only real alternative is Runes of Melandru, but this requires lots of other factors to be effective.  

0/0/10/30/30
This is the build I recommend basically every Guardian in WvW run.  It is simply the best at maximising the strengths of the Guardian's role.  You've got two sources of group Stability, two sources of group Protection (not including recharging them with your Elite), three sources of group condition removal, and a decent amount of healing.  And all of it on decent cooldowns.  You can run either Greatsword or Hammer for the weapon swap; ideally you'll have a balance between Hammers and Greatswords among the Guardians in the zerg.  The choice of Signet of Judgment or Purging Flames for the final utility slot is situational; if you take Purging Flames, you should trait it with Master of Consecrations as the 10-point trait in Virtues; otherwise, I'd take Vengeful for the duration increase on Retaliation from your Virtues and Stand Your Ground, but note that this does not mean you should be activating the Signet.  The 10-point trait in Valour should be Strength in Numbers by default, but if you're saturated on that trait (more than one Guardian per party), switch it for Purity if you find yourself needing the condition removal or Retributive Armour otherwise.  

If you're interested in alternative builds and a more in-depth explanation, consult my post HERE.  

Warriors

Warrior Build Framework
Warriors also bring a lot of group support, but it's notably different--and complementary--to what Guardians bring.  For Great Justice is an excellent offensive Shout and the raid's primary source of Fury, whereas Guardian Shouts are purely defensive, and where Guardians bring lots of group Stability for countering hard CC's, Warrior Warhorns are great at clearing soft CC's.  Traiting Shouts to heal the party, coupled with Runes of the Trooper further enhances their value, and the group support value of Battle Standard is second to none.  The Sword/Warhorn + Hammer combo is absolutely perfect for a frontliner; it ticks absolutely all the right boxes.  Sword gives you an amazing leap for engaging and peeling, traited Warhorn gives you a low cooldown Blast Finisher, permanent Swiftness for your party, and lots of condition removal.  Hammer is decent damage coupled with endless control effects.  

On Swap Sigils are excellent for Warriors, as you will be swapping weapons regularly.  Now that Sigils all have independent cooldowns, I would consider running both Hydromancy and Energy on Sword/Warhorn, since you're mostly using this weapon set for movement and support rather than for dealing damage; the extra dodge and the chill on enemies both serve that end very well.  On the Hammer you've got plenty of options.  Force and Fire are both good options as usual, and running them as a pair is hardly a bad idea.  Other options include Restoration, Celerity, or even Battle.  

0/0/20/30/20
This is a straightforward build that simply plays to the strengths of your weapons.  You've got tons of useful skills on both weapon sets, so we've taken Fast Hands and on swap Sigils.  We're running two shouts and a Warhorn, so the 30 Tactics provides huge group support.  Finally, the 20 Defense does just what it says on the tin--this is where you get a lot of your tankiness.  For Great Justice goes without saying, and I've slotted Shake It Off for a second low cooldown shout to utilise the Trooper Runes and Vigorous Shouts, plus it's a stunbreak and even more group condition removal.  The choice of healing skill is also situational and partly preference; if your front line is solid, the Signet is by far the best overall healing, but if you're not getting enough condition removal from your Guardians, consider Mending, and if you need more reactive healing, Healing Surge can be really strong, too (and you can use it offensively with Earthshaker).  The decision between Balanced Stance and Dolyak Signet as your source of stability is down to preference, but I personally favour the Signet.  The II, III, IV, and even VI skills are all viable according to personal preference for the 10-point Major in Discipline; my preference is Inspiring Shouts.

I've taken Destruction of the Empowered (20 Discipline) over Armoured Attack (25 Defense) here; it's a judgement call.  You'll generally need your opponents to have four boons for Destruction of the Empowered to beat Armoured Attack for DPS.  Stronger enemy groups will generally be keeping a pretty high uptime on their boons, and I'm a firm believer that you should optimise your builds for fighting the best, not for stomping bads.  You can respectably go either way, here, though.  

This new patch has also created a nice VARIANT.  You're giving up your condition removal and healing on Shouts in exchange for lots of group Might stacking; you should be maintaining 10-15 might stacks on your party with this build.  Because you're no longer enhancing your shouts, there's less pressure to slot two of them, so you may choose to run Stomp or a Stance instead of Shake It Off.  Note that, because of the increased Power in this build, your target only needs three boons for Destruction of the Empowered to outperform Armoured Attack.

[Slein Jinn]

Backliners

The mainstays here are Staff Elementalists, Necromancers, and Mesmers.  A balanced 25-man zerg should ideally contain 2-4 Staff Elementalists, 2-3 Mesmers, and upwards of 3 Necromancers; if you're going to overload one backline class, Necromancers are the most desirable to have in surplus.  Note that the number of Staff Elementalists you want doesn't really scale proportionally to the size of the force--even a 15-man group will still need 2-3, and even a 40-man group still doesn't really need more than 4--because there is no limit to how many allies can blast their Combo Fields.  

In short, your back line stays 600-1200 range away from the front line and supports your front line and pressures the enemy front line.  In practice, it's a bit more complicated than that.  Traditional MMO class roles have implanted certain stereotypes in our minds that the light armour classes should be standing at the back doing all the DPS while the heavy armour classes stand at the front and take all the damage, but GW2 breaks that mould to some extent.  Certainly DPS is an important part of the back line's job, and like everyone in the zerg, you should be trying to contribute as much DPS as you can, but DPS is only one part of your job.  A huge part of your job as a backliner is support and control.  While the frontliners are all tangled up wailing away, you play the cards that determine which frontline wins the scrum.  

Backliners are more fragile, but with the absence of true "tanks", they can't afford to be too fragile.  You don't want to be in a full glass build that melts when touched, because you will be touched.  Proper positioning will help to reduce the frequency with which you get touched, but no matter how clever your positional play, it's still going to happen.  Another important part of backline survival is having tools to escape when that pressure inevitably does come.  As far as that positional play is concerned, a lot of it comes from experience, and details go beyond the scope of this post, but some general guidelines include trying to find a different plane from the frontliners--above is best, but below can sometimes work too--and thinking of yourself as a satellite orbiting around the frontline--work with the full 360 degrees.  

Staff Elementalist

Build Framework
Despite the stereotypes that you might have of elementalists from other games and even other gameplay areas in GW2, your primary function is not DPS.  You are the master of Combo Fields.  You have ready access to all four of the most important Combo Fields--Water, Ice, Fire, Air--and your most important job is to be delivering the right combo field to the right location at the right time.  Playing a Staff Elementalist well is very tactical; in addition to the general backline issue of positioning, you have to read the flow of the battle to make decisions, and you have to coordinate with the rest of the zerg.  Perhaps more than any other class, being in Teamspeak is indespensible, as all those "short cooldown Blast Finishers" I've mentioned in other builds don't count for much if people don't know when to use them; always call your Combo Fields if possible.  

The 30 points in Water and 20 points in Arcane are a good stepping off point for an Elementalist build, leaving lots of options for the remaining 20 points.  The 30 Water not only helps to address the glassiness of the class a bit directly through the Vitality, but you've got awesome Major Trait options throughout this tree.  You've got a lot of sources of Regeneration, so you'll get a lot of mileage out of Cleansing Water.  Though your healing contribution is vital, the vast majority of it is coming in the form of your Water Fields which other players are blasting, and so you're not doing the healing directly, thus the new Aquatic Benevolence trait is not nearly as powerful as it might seem at first glance.  

Cantrips are your escapes, and you will need them.  Mist Form does everything that Stability does whilst also making you invulnerable and giving you out of combat movement speed while in combat.  It is a must have.  Lightning Flash is also incredibly useful for repositioning yourself.  When harassed, you can often blink to the far side of the front line scrum, making it impractical for your assailant to pursue you.  Note that, although not a Stunbreak, it is instant cast, so you can use Lightning Flash while stunned.  You have several options for your third utility skill.  Frost Bow's #4 skill does a ton of damage, Arcane Wave gives you a great Blast Finisher, and Armour of Earth is another Cantrip with excellent boons.  Ether Renewal is one of the best heals in the game, not only healing decently, but curing up to eight conditions on a fifteen second cooldown.  Your choices of Elite are all a bit underwhelming in large scale WvW, but each can be useful.  Popping Tornado immediately after casting Meteor Shower greatly increases its damage, and the knockback can be situationally useful.  The Water Elemental does drop Water Fields and survives reasonably well.  The Fiery Greatsword can do a lot of DPS in the hands of someone who can survive using it in the middle of the frontline scrum, and it's also fantastic for very substantial PvDoor DPS.  

On Swap Sigils work brilliantly for Elementalists, because they are triggered by Attunement Swapping, and you should be cycling through Attunements quite regularly.  Coupled with Runes of Strength, a Sigil of Battle should consistently maintain 9+ stacks of Might on you, which is worth an approximately 15% increase in DPS.  

2/2/0/6/4
Between the Runes and Sigil coupled with Internal Fire and Bolt to the Heart, you have most of the strongest damage modifiers incorporated into the build.  Vital Striking, the Adept trait in Water, offers a further minor damage modifier, but this can be substituted for Cantrip Mastery for more survival cooldowns if you feel the need.  If you find yourself needing more survivability, you can also consider Soothing Disruption in place of Aquamancer's Alacrity, giving you more dodges from Vigour and more condition removal along with the healing from Regeneration, but the longer Water cooldowns is a significant hit to your ability to perform your critical tasks.  Alternatively, you can take a hit to your DPS to shift 10 points from Fire or Air into Earth.  Shifting 10 points into Arcane for Evasive Arcana, which gives condition removal from Water or a Blast Finisher from Earth is also an option, but because of the nature of being at range when using staff, Evasive Arcana isn't as practical as it is for Dagger/Dagger Elementalists.  

As a general rule, you're going to want around 2200-2500 Armour on a Staff Elementalist.  You're slippery enough with escape skills to go fairly glassy, but you do need enough defense to withstand some pressure while you attend to your key roles.  

Note: Eruption (Earth 2 on Staff) applies its Blast Finisher at the end of the skill, so if you want to blast your own Combo Field, you can do this by starting in Earth, casting Eruption, then swapping Attunements and dropping the Combo Field on top of the Eruption.  Note also that you can swap Attunements while casting another spell.  

Necromancer

Build Framework
Necromancers present a potential exception to the mantra of "ignore anything but Soldier and Berserker".  You can still build perfectly viable Soldier/Berserker Necromancers, but in part because they have the highest HP coupled with the lowest Armour, and in part because of the function of certain traits, Knight stats can be very useful on a Necromancer.  Necromancers are in many ways the true glass cannons of WvW.  While their high HP pools and Death Shroud may make Necromancers appear to be fairly durable, they are still light armoured, and they have far less to work with in terms of condition removal and mobility than do Elementalists.  As such, Necromancers generally need to build a bit more tanky than other backliners.  

Some of that tankiness comes in the form of Life Steal from Vampiric and Vampiric Precision in the Blood Magic tree.  Vampiric Precision is another reason to favour Knight's gear, as the Precision generates more crits which in turn generate more healing.  Whereas an Elementalist does most of their DPS and support through their Staff skills and can use their utilities for survivability, much of a Necromancer's DPS and support comes from utility skills.  Chief among these are the Wells, and for these we take Focused Rituals from Curses and Ritual Mastery from Blood Magic.  

The choice of Staff is an obvious one; Marks offer significant AE damage along with useful control effects and a Blast Finisher.  The decision to take a mainhand Dagger will be a bit controversial, but it is simply too strong to leave out; many will question the omission of Axe, but the simple fact is that you'll do more damage auto attacking with the Staff than you will with the Axe--they have identical damage, but the Staff pierces.  Dagger is very much a niche weapon, but it is the only choice that offers something clearly different from just sitting in Staff.  Mainhand Dagger is a single-target melee range weapon, which seems like a strange choice for a backliner, but it deals massive damage, which allows players to fend off opposition harassment or even to opportunistically harass enemy backliners.  The choice of offhand is open to preference and circumstance.  Dagger offers condition removal, which is far from abundant for Necromancers, along with a decent AE Weakness.  Focus offers more damage along with some single target boon stripping and Regeneration.  Warhorn offers a Daze and Swiftness.  

As for utilities, you're basically looking at taking three from a pool of five candidates.  All four Wells are valuable, plus Spectral Wall.  Ideally, you'll want some variety among the Necromancers in the zerg; the one utility you want everyone running is Well of Suffering for the massive damage.  Beyond that, Well of Corruption is decent damage plus boon stripping, Well of Darkness is considerable control (especially coupled with the Chilling Darkness trait), Well of Power is condition removal as well as a personal stunbreak, and Spectral Wall is simultaneously both a great source of Protection for allies and disruptive to the enemy formation.  There's really only one choice of a heal; Consume Conditions is a very strong heal, and it serves a grave need for condition removal.  There's similarly only one choice of an Elite; Plague gives you both some survivability and control (this is the major motivation for taking Chilling Darkness).  

0/4/0/4/6
You've got the above basics covered, and you've invested heavily in Death Shroud, which serves both offensive and defensive ends.  Notably, you've got a 3s Stability on a 6s cooldown, which is borderline overpowered.  The Ferocity in the Soul Reaping tree is well utilised as well given the remarkably high crit rate of the build.  I've slotted offhand Focus, because Spinal Shivers is such a strong skill for finishing off a single target.  For the flexible utilities, I've loaded Well of Corruption and Spectral Wall.  In general, Well of Corruption should be the go-to second Well, and it wouldn't be a bad thing for every single Necromancer to have it slotted.  Spectral Wall is individually the strongest choice of third utility; as mentioned, diversity is important, and having several redundant Spectral Walls is certainly less valuable than having some Wells of Darkness/Power in the mix, but when in doubt, I'd default to Spectral Wall.  We've slotted Sigils of Force and Rage on the Dagger/Focus.  Force is straightforward--it's the highest damage option--but Rage is a less obvious choice; Sigils of Rage are a very strong choice for burst damage on weapons with strong auto attack chains, though, and that fits the bill here perfectly.  The Staff is well adorned with Sigils of Force and Bloodlust; on-swap Sigils would be a poor choice, as you'll be sitting in Staff for long periods.  

This ALTERNATIVE offers more raw defense from the toughness in the Death Magic line along with reduced Staff cooldowns and a nice boost to Power.  The 20-point Major in Death Magic could be any of a few things; Ritual of Protection would be my choice given the importance of the Protection boon, but Shrouded Removal and Greater Marks are both options as well (note, however, that the increased area of Greater Marks can at times actually be a disadvantage in that it makes it more likely that your damage will be spread around among more enemy targets rather than be concentrated).  

Mesmer

Mesmers are an unusual class in large scale WvW.  They're simultaneously both very poorly suited to this area of gameplay and also completely indispensable.  What I mean by this is that Mesmers bring a handful of cooldowns that can completely change the course of a fight if properly employed, but they have no obvious function to fulfil in between using those cooldowns.  Unfortunately, they're also rather poor at tagging kills.  The upside, however, is that a Mesmer has a great deal of freedom in terms of what gear to wear and what traits to take; all that really matters is what you do with your utility slots and that you stay alive to use them.  

So what are these game changing utilities?  Well, the one that more or less every single Mesmer should be running is Null Field; a decent group will be keeping quite a lot of quite powerful boons up quite a lot of the time, and stripping those boons is huge for allowing your players to get at the enemy.  When you add the condition removal on top of that, you get an absolute dream skill, and you can add even more goodies to it with the right traits.  After Null Field, you should be running at least one, and ideally two, of the following three: Feedback, Veil, and Portal.  Feedback isn't as gamebreaking as Null Field, but it is still a strong skill, especially when traited, and as an added bonus, it also can help you get tags in.  Veil and Portal are both niche skills; having them available is massive, but unlike the former two, adding more and more of them doesn't continue to add the same value.  Having 2-3 Veils and 1 Portal is a good target.  Moreso than for any other profession, having diversity among what your Mesmers are running is very important, so I strongly encourage you to coordinate with your commander and with the other Mesmers in the zerg.  Coordinating your cooldowns with the commander--many commanders will even want to be calling for them specifically themselves--in Teamspeak is incredibly valuable.  

So we've got four killer utilities; what should we do for the rest of the build?  Well, like I said, you can pretty much play whatever you're comfortable with otherwise.  I'm actually going to give you a Condition build here, which is something generally to be avoided in large scale WvW, but it is both reasonably survivable and somewhat less bad at tagging kills.  

4/0/0/4/6
We've taken Staff both for Chaos Storm for tagging (and the auto attack at least hits two targets instead of one!) and for the survivability skills.  Sword/Focus is the clear choice for your weapon swap with a lot of useful skills on both weapons; Sword is the only Mesmer weapon that cleaves, too.  Look at Blurred Frenzy more as a survival skill than a damage skill; the damage is just a nice bonus.  Swapping with the clone is also a good escape skill.  Traited for reflects, Temporal Curtain and the Phantasmal Warden both help you get tags, and though projectiles aren't the biggest source of damage, negating any damage is always welcome.  The pull on Temporal Curtain has all sorts of great applications. Pulling enemy frontliners out of formation (especially after you've stripped their Stability with Null Field) to help burn them down is great, but you can also yank players off of walls and the like.  

We've got Mantra of Recovery to work with the Runes of Altruism; with the Mantra heal, you'll be able to trigger the Might and Fury immediately off cooldown.  I've slotted Timewarp for the Elite here; it's a reasonably strong support skill, especially when holding a choke against an enemy push.  If you're running Portal, though, you're probably going to want to have Mass Invisibility slotted to help you utilise Portal.

We've got Carrion/Rabid gear slotted for condition damage to augment the Confusion you're throwing all over the place along with the conditions from your Staff.  This mix provides pretty reasonable defensive stats, but feel free to swap in some Dire if you feel the need for even more durability.  The Sigil of Energy choices on Sword/Focus complements the defensive uses of the Sword, whereas the Sigils on the Staff are intended to help a bit more with the damage/tagging.  

The main alternative is to basically run a standard Power Greatsword build, in which case you're sort of hybridising your role between backliner and midline harasser, because in between utilising your support skills, you're going to be pressuring enemy backliners with your Greatsword.  It's a bit more demanding to play, and you're not going to be getting as many bags, but it's ultimately going to let you have a bit more of an impact and probably be a bit more fun for a lot of players.  

If you've got enough Mesmers to get away with sacrificing one of your utility slots for Mantra of Pain, you can also take Restorative Mantras for a 2695 group heal every every roughly five seconds.

Engineer

Engineer Build Framework
Engineers don't really fit all that well into large-scale WvW.  You generally won't really find them on any GvG rosters or anything, and it can at times feel a little like the best you can do when building an Engineer is just hope you don't break anything as you jam the square peg into a round hole.  If you want to be really super serious about WvW, Engineer may not be the best profession to bring, but if you really can't see yourself playing anything else, don't fear.  They may not be ideal, but you can certainly contribute as an Engineer; better than a lot of people give them credit for, even.  Do be prepared to completely change the build you're accustomed to from PvE, sPvP, or roaming, though, as most of those skills transfer rather poorly.  The Flamethrower a lot of folks are rather attached to is a great way to kill yourself on Retaliation, for instance.  

The best way to fit an Engineer into large-scale WvW is to set up more or less a backline support build based around Elixirs.  You're going to be running three to four Elixirs with full trait support.  You've got thirty points left to spend after decking out your Elixirs, and you've got several options for how to spend them.  Because this is a Power build, Rifle is the natural weapon of choice, offering much better damage than Pistol.  The auto attacks do pierce, so with proper positioning, they can provide reasonable damage, and the combination of Net Shot and Blunderbuss can be effective for harassing enemy backliners or fending off midliners who try to harass you.  Might stacking is a huge part of this build, and your personal Might stacks should be sitting near 25 permanently, so Runes of Strength are a no-brainer.  I've taken Sigils of Battle and Bloodlust, but you could take Energy if you need the survivability.  On-swap Sigils are all strong choices for Engineers provided you're running at least one Kit, as equipping a Kit does count as a weapon swap.  

2/0/0/6/6
With a Sigil of Battle plus Runes of Strength, and taking the Elixir Gun for the final Utility, you should be able to float consistently between twenty and twenty five stacks of Might without taking Enhance Performance.  You could replace the Elixir Gun with another Elixir if you need it, but none of the other Elixirs have short cooldowns on the thrown Tool Belt skills, so they don't offer the same support that the Elixir Gun would.  Grenades may also be utilised situationally, primarily when you need to pressure the walls during a siege, but you shouldn't come to rely on them as a staple weapon.  If you opt not to run a kit, you should replace the Sigil of Battle with a Sigil of Force.  None of your Elites are particularly well suited here; Supply Crate at least offers damage, a Stun, and a Blast Finisher, even if the actual contents don't have much impact; Humans may do well to consider Avatar of Melandru in its stead, which offers a huge survivability boost along with some decent party support and a version of Entangle (minus the damage portion).  For the remaining trait points, we've gone deep in Tools, which serves a variety of functions in this build.  For one, you're getting decent damage mods out of it--300 Ferocity, 10% crit chance at range, and 10% damage with full Endurance, as well as some more burst damage from your thrown Elixirs--plus a ton of endurance regeneration, which both helps you keep that 10% damage active, and helps keep you alive.  Crucially, though, you're also getting 30% cooldown reduction on Toolbelt skills, including the thrown Elixirs this build is designed around.  

The core of what you'll be bringing to the table here is condition removal and boon stripping, along with some decent boon sharing.  Tossing your three core Elixirs will be stripping three enemy boons, clearing four conditions, sharing three stacks of Might, sharing 5.25 seconds of Stability, sharing three random further boons, and dealing a decent bit of damage, all with only a twenty-three second cooldown.  You've got plenty of personal condition removal, massive Might stacking, and modest ranged damage.  Not so bad for the black sheep of WvW, eh?

Your further alternatives for the traits here are to invest in the Firearms tree; you can trait Rifle range, Rifle cooldowns, and bonus damage based on the number of conditions on your target here.

[Slein Jinn]

Midliners

The mid line is less clearly defined.  This is basically the classification for less survivable, less group-focused melee characters.  It should be the smallest of the three groups by far.  A balanced 25-man composition might have, at most, three to four midliners.  This is where you'll typically find Rangers, Thieves, and D/D and S/D Elementalists.  We can further divide the mid line into Destroyers and Harassers; in short, Destroyers pressure the enemy front line, while Harassers pressure the enemy back line.  

Destroyers are essentially opportunistic melees focused on damage and control.  They're less tanky and offer far less support than frontliners, so they rely on movement to peel and re-engage throughout the fight.  As a Destroyer, you should be looking for the opportunities to inflict the most concentrated damage possible; any time your zerg is successful in isolating members of the enemy frontline, you want to be leaping onto them and unloading on them.  Listen for your commander to say something like "Bomb on me!"--that's your cue--but also just keep a keen eye on the flow of battle.  Similarly, most Destroyer builds will have CC tools to help create those opportunities by disrupting the enemy frontline's movement.  You don't want to be anywhere close to full glass cannon, but you should be speccing with much more of an emphasis on damage than frontline melees do.  

Harassers are to the enemy backline as Destroyers are to their frontline; their principle aim is to disrupt and, when possible, to kill enemy backliners.  This means that Harassers have relatively little interaction with the main scrum; they should be skirting about the edges of the battle looking for soft targets.  Even if you aren't able to actually kill him, forcing an enemy Staff Elementalist to constantly reposition and taking his attention off of the scrum is a great boon to your team.  If you have multiple players filling a Harassment role, they can work together to focus down the same target, or they can spread out and each pick up a different backliner to really upset the flow of support to the enemy frontline.  Because of their placement away from the frontlines, Harassers will typically be among the glassiest players in the zerg.  Unfortunately, because they aren't tagging the opposing frontline, they won't be getting as many bags as other players would.  It can be a very fun and satisfying role to play, though.  

Ranger

Ranger Build Framework
Rangers get a lot of bad press as a class, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the class just seems to be very attractive to bad players--if you find a clueless 12-year-old playing GW2, chances are, he's playing a ranger--but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of awesome ranger players out there too.  It's true that Rangers are ultimately stronger as roamers than they are in zergs, but even in large scale WvW, Rangers can be a lot more useful than many people realise.  The stereotype of "useless Rangers" is far from the truth; "bearbows" are useless, but Rangers aren't.  

So how do we build a good ranger for large scale WvW?  Well, first, we need to identify the class's strengths, then build around that.  The 10 second Water Field immediately jumps out, and this is definitely a must have for a ranger.  We also find that rangers have a raft of soft CC's.  Muddy Terrain, Barrage, and Entangle are all extremely disruptive to enemy mobility, and these skills form the core of the Ranger's role.  Now we need a weapon that can effectively hit multiple foes.  With the limited AE on all of the Ranger weapons, the natural choice here is a Greatsword, which cleaves rather well on the auto attack chain, and does great damage with Maul.  We pair that with a Longbow for the aforementioned Barrage, and we're off to a good start.  

Runes of Melandru are a natural choice, as Rangers are conspicuously lacking in both condition removal and stunbreaks.  Runes of Hoelbrak also an option that offers some of the defensive benefits of Melandru along with some additional DPS.  On Swap Sigils work reasonably well for Rangers, especially on the Longbow, as you'll mostly be swapping to the Longbow to blow cooldowns before swapping back.  The standard DPS options of Force and Fire certainly work well, too, as do the "we're facerolling" options of Restoration and Celerity.  

30/20/20/0/0
We've taken Signet of Stone and Signet of the Wild to provide some much needed defensive cooldowns.  Ranger Utilities are sadly mostly pretty underwhelming aside from the wonderful Muddy Terrain, but with Trait support, the Signets can actually be fairly useful.  Signet of Stone is a very strong defensive cooldown, and Signet of the Wild is your source of Stability.  The only other options of note for these two slots are Signet of Renewal, Lightning Reflexes, and Quickening Zephyr; take two of the five to suit your needs depending on the rest of your zerg.  For pets, we've taken Red and Blue Moas, both of which provide strong boon sharing in the form of Fury and Protection respectively.  Other options here are Brown Bear for condition removal, Pink or White Moas or Wolf for the CC, and Jungle Stalker for the might (but be aware that felines will be more likely to be killed than Bears or Moas).  

To round out the traits, we've taken Signet of the Beastmaster so that those Signet utilities actually do something worthwhile.  Piercing Arrows helps to keep you from losing too much DPS when you disengage and switch to Longbow, but Spotter is an option here as well.  Steady Focus is a bit more DPS, but it's not huge, because you're not going to be sitting at full Endurance all that often, especially with Protection on your Dodge Rolls; Signet Mastery is the alternative option.  Sharpened Edges is basically just the least underwhelming option for the 10-point Major in Skirmishing.  

The main ALTERNATIVE is to drop the Signet Stability and Invulnerability, picking up Lightning Reflexes for an escape and either Quickening Zephyr for burst or, if you're so inclined, a trap.  This also frees up the Marksmanship Grandmaster trait; you can take both Spotter and Piercing Arrows, or you can shift those points elsewhere, such as to pick up Empathic Bond from Wilderness Survival.  

As for gear, you're actually pretty sturdy here in terms of raw numbers, but because you've got relatively few defensive cooldowns and escapes, you're going to want to be a little more durable.  Melandru Runes help to compensate for Rangers' weaknesses nicely, and I've gone for the standard Sigils of Force and Fire on the Greatsword, with Energy and Battle on the Longbow.  The motivation behind the Longbow Sigils is that you'll often be swapping to the Longbow when disengaging, so the extra Dodge from Energy will help you break away safely.  Since you're not likely to ever be sitting in Longbow for more than 20 seconds, Battle will contribute roughly the same DPS on the Longbow as Force would, and since you'll often be swapping back to Greatsword more or less immediately off cooldown, you'll often get nearly 11 seconds of Might carried over to re-engaging with your Greatsword.  Note that I've taken Soldier stats on the Greatsword because you're going to be in the thick of the scrum when you're using it, but Berserker stats on the Longbow, because you'll be repositioning closer to the backliners after swapping.  

A note on gameplay: When you're in Greatsword, you want to be more or less stacked with the frontliners pressuring the enemy scrum.  When you switch to Longbow and disengage, your main cooldown is Barrage, but since you're stuck in Longbow for 9 seconds regardless, and it doesn't do a ton of AE damage even with Piercing Arrows, your best bet is to pick an enemy backliner and utilise your 1200 range to pressure them.  It's ideal if you can put the scrum in between you and your backline target, so you'll get some Pierce damage in addition to that pressure.  Also keep in mind that your pet can largely be treated as a buffbot in this setting, so you'll generally want to keep him on passive most of the time, but it can be useful to send him to harass enemy backliners, especially while you're disengaged to Longbow and can keep an eye on him.

Thief

There are two ways you can go with a thief in this context.  What I'm going to recommend is a very support focused build that could almost be treated as a backliner.  The alternative is to build fairly glassy for single target spike DPS, the end result of which will look quite similar to a typical roaming thief build.  The key feature that every Thief build will have in common in this context is a Shortbow; Cluster Bomb is unique as a Blast Finisher with no cooldown, the impact of which cannot be overstated.  Shortbow would be essential even if that was its only use, but it's also your best tagging weapon, and it further allows you to spread Poison at enemy regroups as well as providing great combat mobility.  Love thy Shortbow.  

30/0/30/0/10
This is a pretty straightforward Venom Share build.  It's quite tanky by Thief standards, but the primary function is support, and the Heal is being used more for that support role than for personal survival, plus you've got a lot less Stealth than you may be accustomed to, so some degree of tankiness is called for.  In addition to Cluster Bomb for blasting fields, the main thing you bring with this build is the Venom Sharing, which not only provide some really nice control effects, but also allow you to maintain 10 stacks of Might on allies with over 80% uptime.  Most of the Trait choices speak for themselves, but the Shadow Arts Adept can really be anything--I've gone with Infusion of Shadow so that Cloak and Dagger is more usable, but none of those options are particularly significant in this build--and the last 10 points could just as easily go into Acrobatics for Might and Swiftness on Dodge, but the 10 Trickery does provide just a bit more support to the build.  

We've taken Sword/Dagger for the weapon swap here for a variety of reasons, but this choice is not essential to the build.  Sword is the only other weapon that cleaves, which is good for playing this build as more of a Destroyer, but if you want to try to hybridise your role and play for more Harassment, you can do that with Dagger/Dagger or Dagger/Pistol.  Sword/Dagger also gives you a fair bit of survivability and movement skills as well as some additional sources of Cripple, Immobalise, and Weakness.  Cloak and Dagger also allows you to stack even more personal Might.  As you get more comfortable in the build and find yourself stepping into the scrum more opportunistically, you also may find you prefer Sword/Pistol for the burst; Pistol Whip is a great way to burst down targets of opportunity.  I've gone with Sigils of Strength and Fire on the Shortbow for synergy with the Runes of Strength and more tagging respectively; Force is also an excellent choice here, especially with the build's naturally very high Power.  For the Sword and Dagger, I've taken on-swap Sigils, because I envisage most players primarily sitting in Shortbow and using Sword/Dagger as a niche weapon for defense or a burst of Might stacking when there's Initiative to burn, but if you find yourself spending more time in Sword/Dagger, you should take standard DPS Sigils on these weapons, too.

[Slein Jinn]

Reserved

This was getting prohibitively long, so I've decided to roll it out in sections.

[North]

I disagree with the statements on Rangers. Longbow's only usefulness is to aid arrow carts in defending towers/keeps. If you're forcing yourself to go ranged, Axes are the way to go if fighting large scale engagements. The axes have higher aoe, more dps, and the ability to equip a warhorn for a blast finisher, aoe might/fury, and a ranged nuke that does comporable damage to a longbow rapid-fire cooldown. Furthermore, the Spotter trait is debatably the best trait Rangers have, so taking Piercing Arrows over it is a mistake even if you're gimping yourself by choosing Longbow. Melandru Runes are useless on Rangers, who have excessive mobility and ways to kite around the battlefield if you're a Midliner. Lightning Reflexes, Monarch's Leap, Parry, etc. all come to mind easily. Spending an entire build on compensating for weaknesses results in a lackluster version of other classes.

[Slein Jinn]

North, on 21 April 2014 - 02:55 PM, said:

I disagree with the statements on Rangers. Longbow's only usefulness is to aid arrow carts in defending towers/keeps. If you're forcing yourself to go ranged, Axes are the way to go if fighting large scale engagements. The axes have higher aoe, more dps, and the ability to equip a warhorn for a blast finisher, aoe might/fury, and a ranged nuke that does comporable damage to a longbow rapid-fire cooldown. Furthermore, the Spotter trait is debatably the best trait Rangers have, so taking Piercing Arrows over it is a mistake even if you're gimping yourself by choosing Longbow. Melandru Runes are useless on Rangers, who have excessive mobility and ways to kite around the battlefield if you're a Midliner. Lightning Reflexes, Monarch's Leap, Parry, etc. all come to mind easily. Spending an entire build on compensating for weaknesses results in a lackluster version of other classes.

As I said at the start of this project, I'm not claiming to have "the one build to rule them all" for every class or anything here.  But that ranger build is more or less exactly what our Rangers ran in Hawk, and we did consistently run 1-2 Rangers in our comp.  Most top WvW guilds frankly don't typically run any Rangers in their comps at all, but every one that I have seen has been built similarly.  The build I gave is what we came up with independently in Hawk, and after we did, we found it to be virtually identical to the one Ranger that Red Guard was rolling with, which has been picked up by a few others as well.  It is a sound build for sure.  The key to a good build is to have a clear function in mind for it, and then to make sure everything you choose fits into that function, and this build meets that criteria.  

Longbow fits the overall concept of the build better than an axe would; a big part of what you're doing is pouring out an overwhelming amount of soft CC to try to disrupt the enemy movement and help to spread them out so they're easier to burn down.  Barrage is one of your key tools to serve that end.  Longbow is also much stronger than Axe for pressuring an individual enemy backliner to disrupt them in their role--and as someone who has spent a lot of time playing backliners, I can tell you a good ranger can really be a nuisance--and Piercing Arrows makes Longbow much more reliable in that regard since they can't use their frontliners to body block the projectiles for them.  But as I said in the Ranger build, Piercing Arrows vs. Spotter are both options; Spotter is by far the weakest of the three +150 stat traits, though.  

If you want to get into details of a particular class, start a new thread and I'll crunch numbers, debate theory, etc. 'till the cows come home, but it's really beyond the scope of this thread.

[UltraEM]

Where do Engineers fit into this, though?

I see them as midliners or backliners, depending on how the engi is built. For example, tanky flamethrower and bombkit engies would be midline, while grenade engies are backline. Of course, there are a lot more builds, but I just want to know your opinion on them in the context of your guide.

[Slein Jinn]

I'm still working on this; every class will be addressed.  But Engineers really don't "fit into this", though; although really very strong as roamers (and great in sPvP), it really doesn't scale up very well, and they're easily the least viable class in large-scale WvW.  Any decent frontline will have a very high uptime on Realiation, which means that Flamethrower is suicide, and Grenades aren't much better, and they don't really offer much to the team.  All you can really do with Engineers is try not to break anything when you jam the square peg into the round hole.  

I don't mean that to sound too doom and gloom, though.  If you only play Engineer, that doesn't mean you should avoid large-scale WvW.  As I've emphasised previously, as long as you're staying alive, you're doing more good than harm.  Just because other classes are more useful than Engineers doesn't mean you can't be useful on an Engi.

[Solumin]

I can see Engies having two possible roles in a WvW zerg: backline and frontline. With the Grenadier grandmaster trait, Engineers can attack at a massive 1,500 range. Not only are grenades powerful, but they also have good  conditions; there are freeze, poison and blind grenades, which can also give vulnerability, burning and bleed if you have the right traits.

On the frontline, an Engineer with elixir-infused bombs can support his allies with the bomb kit. Not only will he be healing with every attack, but the bomb kit has the most powerful basic attack of any of the kits.

Of course, Engineers have some problems, namely the lack of easy Stability. But they really do have a lot to offer

[Levik Greywind]

I can't remember who was telling me this, it was either a guildy or someone on TS, but they said they had a lot of fun running bomb kit. They'd stealth then run into the enemy zerg right as a fight was about to break out and they'd drop a ton of their bombs. They said they usually died in the process, but then their zerg would ram the enemy zerg when they're all scattering to evade the surprise AoEs in the middle of their ranks. He said he'd then warp back to home ASAP and let the bags roll in and run back to meet up with his zerg.

[UltraEM]

My Grenadier Engi is a tanky backliner that can usually get through the enemy frontline and start bombarding the backline with conditions. Back when I was running with pk/Void, there were a few engies running beastly frontline bombkit builds.

For me, the trick to playing Engi in large-scale WvW (in general) is to use any of the huge amount of mobility skills at your disposal to get past the retaliation-crazy frontline of the enemy and then annihilate the mid/backline with your weapon kits; that's what I do, at least, and it works. Sometimes I'm still fighting after the rest of the friendly zerg is dead. lmao.

I didn't think that Engies could belong in this guide though, as I can't see a definite starting point for an aspiring WvW engineer; for me, it required a lot of experimenting before I found something I liked. It really depends on where you want to be in the zerg, tbh.

[Slein Jinn]

Like I said, any build that can stay alive can find some way to contribute something.  But every role you've just described building for can be performed in a far superior way by another class.  Bypassing the frontline to get at the enemy backline?  That's what Thieves were born and bread for, and S/D Elementalists and even certain Mesmer, Ranger, and Warrior builds all do a better job of it than Engineers do.  Being tanky and sticking with the frontline?  Warriors and Guardians offer simultaneously more support and better personal survivability.  

Engi's can certainly contribute, and if that's all you play, then go ahead and bring them to the zerg, but if you're really interested in trying to contribute as much as possible or optimise, then unfortunately they don't really have a place.  They sure are strong roamers, though.

[UltraEM]

I agree with you; I think that's what Engies were made for (outside being badass roamers). They can be built to fulfill every role, just not as well as the more specialized classes.

[Solumin]

I've heard "Engineers are fantastic roamers" a lot. But what does that mean? How are they well suited for that? What kind of build works well for roaming?

Or is that a topic for another thread?

[UltraEM]

Solumin, on 24 April 2014 - 09:06 AM, said:

I've heard "Engineers are fantastic roamers" a lot. But what does that mean? How are they well suited for that? What kind of build works well for roaming?

Or is that a topic for another thread?

This guide focuses on large-scale combat, according to the OP. But to answer your question (to the best of my ability), I think one of the reasons is that Engineers have a lot of mobility skills (escapes, stunbreaks, dodges, etc.). Not to mention the class' natural versatility. But I can't really answer that properly because I'm not a small group/roaming Engineer. I do see a lot of roaming engineers, though, and they are usually the most difficult to fight for me (not including thieves, because stealthing all the time is not fighting)

[Levik Greywind]

Unless they're still learning how to be stealth thieves, since part of it is outsmarting the opponent, too. I've been able to fend off a stealth thief with my staff in both wvw and pvp because they were predictable. It's the smart ones that keep you guessing that are truly evil and hard to fight. But then again, having that ability with any class can give you an upper hand. That can also work in an engie's advantage too with their versatility.

[Slein Jinn]

Mesmers and Thieves are listed now, though I may add some alternatives for them still.  Just Engineer left to finish.

[Slein Jinn]

Everything should be more or less finished now.  I may yet add some alternatives for certain professions, but there's at least one solid build up for every class, including Engineers, all fully explained now.  Enjoy! :-)

[Silvernis]

Quote

On Swap Sigils work brilliantly for Elementalists, because they are triggered by Attunement Swapping,

On a related note, is it possible to use, say, a warrior rune to reduce the attunement swap CD?