Which Melee has the best sustained AoE DPS?

[Hizoka]

I think your misrepresenting Vanguards/PT's there. They certainly have AoE, but they have limits just like any other class. they're biggest AoE has a minute CD. It certainly is powerful, but it's VERY burst in comparison with smash on a Mara/Jugg. it may do higher damage when it hits, but a properly telented smash is on a 12 sec CD. I can get off 6 smash's in the same amount of time. and if your specced rage, the smash is an autocrit when it happens, and has severely increased damage over other attacks. without real DPS numbers, it's going to be hard to say one over the other.

 

As to the other AoE skills the classes have, they pretty much share similarities. the PT has a frontal cone fire attack. again, high damage, but on a CD. The Mara/Jugg equivalent does less damage, but is infinitely spammable (given rage), and cheap. PT's have an AoE fire spread, again on a longish CD. they key is how much does the damage add up overall.

 

I could say that based on experience, the PT can put out the AoE easier...but thats due to the harsh requirements to set up the "smash burst" in the rage tree. But until people start posting their personal log file results, it will be hard to tell.

 

OP: each class has decent AoE capabilities. At this point, I don't think any specific one is king over the other so much that you should pick solely on that. As an example, in PvP Smash damage is king due to it's higher set up and burst. but in PvE, over time the sustained damage smooths out, and it doesn't really mark much higher then the other classes.

 

you do not understand vanguards/pts... i'm not talking about the long CD of MV/DFA... smash is at most a 5k crit every 12 seconds when you dedicate everything to that skill... focus is a gimmick spec based around that one skill. Take a tactics vanguard not only do you have pulse cannon on a 15 second cooldown it hits harder then smash, you have gernades, you have shots that have slash damage you have another AoE in explosive surge which unlike cyclone slash is a 360 attack and nearly all of it cannot be mitigated.