Guild Wars 2’s most recent expansion, Janthir Wilds, brought with it a new weapon: spears. To be precise, it took the existing spear weapon, which was previously only usable underwater, and gave every class the ability to wield them on land.
How fun are these weapons to use, and how well do they actually perform? Are they easy to pick up, or will they require a lot of practice? Let’s go over each class’s new skills and rank the spears from best to worst.
Thief (S tier)
Thief’s spear is a powerful melee hybrid weapon. It was the star of the spear beta, marking the second weapon beta in a row where Thieves were hitting ridiculous benchmarks of 50k+ DPS. Though it was nerfed to be significantly more reasonable, it is still a very fun and effective option.
The main gimmick of Thief’s spear is its 2nd and 3rd skills. For each of these buttons, the available skills are split into a ‘Lead Attack’, ‘Follow Up’, and ‘Finisher’. Using the lead attack of one skill causes both to flip over to their follow up version; using the follow up flips both into finisher form. This allows you to mix up your combos in satisfying ways, making for a much more engaging weapon than most of Thief’s other options, which tend to incentivize spamming one skill due to how the initiative mechanic works.
The spear has become the meta choice for quickness Deadeye, and its versatility and adaptability makes it a viable choice on just about every Thief build, be they power or condi. In particular, its access to a variety of crowd control conditions and a block, combined with its hybrid nature, makes it an incredible option for solo builds.
Overall, Thief’s spear is both fun to play and highly effective. Its hold on the current meta appears shallow at first glance, but it’s a powerful option you should expect to see more from in the future.
Revenant (S tier)
Revenant’s spear is a condi weapon usable both at melee and medium range. At launch, it was by far the most powerful of the new weapons, topping DPS charts even on support builds—its original incarnation would’ve easily claimed the top spot on this list. It’s since been nerfed to be more reasonable, but it’s still a very powerful option.
The spear’s main gimmick comes with its 5th and most damaging skill, ‘Abyssal Raze’. The skill has 3 charges, and each of the other spear skills reduces its cooldown. Each time you use it, you gain a stack of ‘Crushing Abyss’, and if you swap weapons after gaining three stacks, it casts an additional ‘Abyssal Raze’ for free.
Ironically, this second half of the weapon’s gimmick is actually completely ignored by many builds that use it—spear is so good that you’d never want to swap off of it. The builds that do take advantage of this mechanic do so by switching from their spear to… another spear.
What makes spear so great isn’t just its power, but its ease of use—a trend for Revenant, honestly. The optimal rotation for Revenant’s spear isn’t particularly hard, and you can get great value out of it just by using the 2nd and 5th skills.
Spear has become the weapon of choice for condi Revenants, particularly condi Renegade and condi (quickness) Herald. With its incredible damage output and easy-to-learn rotation, it can be expected to be a mainstay in the meta going forward.
Guardian (A tier)
Guardian’s spear is a melee power weapon, and one of the most impressive of the new weapon set. It brings both incredible burst damage and decent support effects, making it great in a variety of situations.
This spear’s main gimmick is the “illuminated” mechanic. For each skill (aside from the auto-attack), it has a more powerful effect if you use it in its illuminated form. Using skills 2, 3, or 4 causes your next attack to be illuminated; using skill 5 creates a ‘Symbol of Luminance’ that illuminates all of your attacks while standing on the symbol; finally, the illuminated version of skill 5 illuminates all of your attacks even if you aren’t on the symbol, granting more freedom of movement.
In PvE, Guardian’s spear brings incredible burst damage that makes it great for open-world and fractals. It’s become a meta pick on Willbender, and is also a good pick for heal quickness Firebrand and Dragonhunter.
The spear’s support features, while a nice addition to have, do relatively little for damage-focused PvE builds. Instead, where this aspect of the weapon finds its footing is in WvW. Its combination of AoE damage, resistance and resolution generation, and healing make it an amazing choice for that gamemode.
Overall, Guardian’s spear is incredibly powerful and will likely be a mainstay in the meta for a long time.
Mesmer (A tier)
Mesmer’s spear is a melee power weapon, putting it in primary competition with greatsword—a power ranged weapon. It’s a powerful option that’s viable across the board.
This spear’s gimmicks center around its 2nd skill, ‘Mind the Gap’. This skill is an AoE with a “tipper” mechanic—the outer ring of its hitbox deals more damage and is always a crit. Additionally, landing a hit with the tip of the AoE grants you a buff called ‘Clarity’, which adds additional effects to your next spear skill.
Finally, the 5th spear skill, ‘Mental Collapse’, teleports you to your target and resets Mind the Gap’s cooldown, which makes for interesting combos and grants Chronomancer’s rotation extra burst damage, something it was dearly lacking.
Mesmer’s spear has a fun and interesting rotation, and it has found a place as a meta choice for power Virtuosos and power boon Chronomancers. Statements by the developers show they also intended to make power Mirage viable using spear, though it seems that is yet to come to fruition.
Overall, the Mesmer spear is a powerful and widely viable option, and we can only expect it to improve if the developers follow through with some of their stated intentions regarding Mirage.
Warrior (A tier)
Warrior’s spear is a ranged power weapon. While easily the simplest of the new spears, lacking much of a unique gimmick or “minigame”, it’s effective at its job and a powerful ranged option for Warriors.
The closest thing Warrior’s spear has to a real gimmick is its 5th skill, ‘Spear Swipe’, which knocks the user backwards while launching/pushing enemies and reflecting projectiles. That aside, it’s overall a pretty simple, “vanilla” weapon, which has put some players off of it.
Simplicity aside, where Warrior’s spear shines is in its performance. It’s a viable option for all Warriors, and has become the meta choice for Berserkers. It’s also a viable alternative to hammer on Spellbreakers.
Given its simplicity, there isn’t much else to say about Warrior’s new weapon. It’s easy to learn and decently fun to use, and it performs well. To a certain degree, that sort of simplicity is the beauty of Warrior as a class.
Elementalist (B tier)
Elementalist’s spear is a power weapon that works at melee or at range. It’s shown to be a decent choice for Tempests and an excellent choice for Catalysts, becoming their meta weapon of choice.
As is par for the course with the class, Elementalist’s spear has one of the more complex gimmicks, though it becomes much simpler in practice. Each element’s 5th skill creates a large “etching” on the ground. Using other skills while inside the etching will charge it, and after three charges the fifth skill is replaced by a powerful attack.
The spear fills an important niche for Elementalists, giving them a second ranged weapon option—something they’ve needed quite dearly. It’s generally an incredibly good option in open-world content. While it hasn’t seen as much use in instanced content as other spears, this is primarily due to a bug which prevents some of its skills from working on certain boss platforms; once this is fixed, it will likely see much more use.
Another thing to note about this spear is its animations. All of the animation and effects work on the new spears is incredible, but Elementalist’s spear takes the cake with the most beautiful and flashiest effects. This is a draw for many players, though for some, particularly in instanced content, the sheer flashiness of its animations could be a drawback instead.
Overall, while the spear has become a powerful meta choice for Catalysts, it is otherwise a “sidegrade”—a viable option, but one that will perform about as good or slightly worse than other available options.
Engineer (B tier)
Engineer’s spear is a melee condition weapon, providing an alternative to dual pistols. It’s easy to use effectively and is a viable alternative to pistols on all three elite specs—in fact, it’s actually become the meta choice for Mechanists and Holosmiths.
It’s a very simple weapon, especially compared to most of the other spears, with its main gimmick coming from its second skill, ‘Conduit Surge’, which allows you to mark a target as your “focus”, increasing the damage dealt by your spear skills against that target.
While its simplicity comes with the benefit of being easy to learn, some players may find that engineer’s spear feels a bit too simple to them, especially to more casual players not attempting the optimal rotations. Simplicity aside, its effectiveness can’t be understated.
As mentioned above, the spear has become the meta pick for both condi Mechanists and condi Holosmiths. The former build is very easy to learn, with their even being a low-intensity version that deals pretty high damage only using all the spear skills off-cooldown; the latter is much harder, providing the benefit of slightly higher DPS. We’ve also heard word of a condi quickness Scrapper build using the new spear, though this isn’t yet in the meta and there’s little online documentation of it so far.
Overall, Engineer’s spear is easy to learn, fun to use, and very effective; definitely worth picking up.
Necromancer (C tier)
Necromancer’s spear is a melee power weapon, giving it a lot of Necromancer’s other established options to compete with. It does a decent job, outperforming dagger/sword in the right circumstances, but is ultimately still second to greatsword. That said, Guild Wars 2 allows players to carry around and use two weapon sets, so second place is still more than good enough to see plenty of use in the meta.
This spear’s gimmick comes from a new resource, ‘Soul Shards’. Using certain spear skills will generate these shards, and they can be spent by using the spear’s second skill, ‘Perforate’, to deal tons of extra damage. Spending Soul Shards also siphons health from your target, giving the weapon a decent bit of sustain.
The spear has seen meta use on power (quickness) Harbinger and, interestingly, condi Reaper. Though it can outperform other meta weapons (namely dagger/sword), it’s held back somewhat by the higher difficulty of its rotation. This has not, however, stopped it from staking a claim over its share of the current meta.
While not the best power weapon Necromancer has access to, it is very viable, and beyond its damage output it’s useful for tanks and solo builds thanks to the sustain granted by its lifesteal. Perhaps the biggest thing holding it back is that its rotation can be a bit janky.
Ranger (C tier)
Finally, we have Ranger. Its spear is a power weapon that works at melee or at range. Among the new spears, it has performed by far the worst, being the only one to not really make any impact on the meta.
This spear’s gimmick focuses on its 5th skill, ‘Panther’s Prowl’. Using this skill grants you stealth, as well as the unique ‘Hunter’s Prowess’ buff, letting you use stealth attacks even if you are revealed. Aside from the auto-attack, all of the spear’s skills have a unique stealth attack, giving you a variety of options.
When it comes to the spear’s performance, it isn’t actually a bad weapon by any means. It’s a viable option, particularly on Soulbeast, and the stealth it grants can be a nice convenience in open-world content while providing it a potential niche in competitive modes.
Where the Ranger’s spear falls behind is merely in comparison to Ranger’s other weapon options. It has to compete with hammer, dual axes, and dual maces—and unlike every other spear, it pretty clearly lost against its competition.
As mentioned above, spear is still a decent weapon, and you could have plenty of fun with it casually. If you’re willing to give up a bit of damage, it also isn’t a terrible option for endgame content. That said, its lack of presence in the meta clearly leaves it at the bottom of this list.
Conclusion
Overall, the new weapons are an amazing addition to the game. While they vary in quality and effectiveness, none of them are bad weapons by any means, with most taking up positions in the current meta. Most of them are a blast to play, and they come with some of the most stunning animation and effects work to date.
Finally, here's a brief summary of our ranking for those who scrolled straight to the bottom. This was a close race—you could make good arguments to swap around the top two or bottom two entries, and everything inbetween is pretty malleable. That fact is a testament to the new weapons' quality.
- Thief
- Revenant
- Guardian
- Mesmer
- Warrior
- Engineer
- Elementalist
- Necromancer
- Ranger
