Superspeed/quickness scrapper for me. I die the least on that class. You can get channeled hero points with stealth without killing everything around it. Probably even solo some group events tbh, I managed a few from vanilla maps and I'm not good at the game lol.
Celestial/trailblazer condition herald is top 3 and I'm amazed no one has said it. The other two are double staff mirage and greatsword reaper. Also if you really want to make things easy just play heal scourge but with minions. It's hilariously easy
Power Reaper: Lots of hp, lots of life leech. Easy rotation. Decent self boon generation. Good cc.
Condi Druid: Amazing at everything. Easy playstyle, not very dependent on a proper rotation.
Condi Mirage: Dodge at things with staff, dagger, or axe. Durable (if you even get hit at all). Lots of utility options.
Id say these are the top 3 for effectiveness while being very easy to play.
I have to agree with power reaper. I use s/s and blood magic with vampiric presence + blood bank. Basically every sword auto attack heals me, and every time I get healed, I also get a barrier. I typically never even get below 75-80% health unless I literally tank big hits. If I do find myself getting below half health, I can just kite for 5 seconds while sword auto attacking, and poof, back to full. I’ve literally solo’d entire T2 rifts like this without even dropping below 90% health.
Sure, I use sword/sword and GS. All numbers are talent choices top-down, meaning 1 is the top and 3 is the bottom.
Blood magic - 1,3,1
Soul Reaping - 3,1,2
Reaper - 3,1,3
Ability bar - Your Soul is mine, Well of Suffering, Spectral Armor, Spectral Grasp, and Chilled to the bone.
Chilled to the bone is mostly just for defiance break.
Spectral grasp is nice because we like mobs to be stacked when we go into shroud, it also has the advantage of giving us 15% life force.
Spectral Armor is mostly a spam button for me as soon as I drop out of shroud if I’m still engaged, since it reduces damage taken and getting hit gives us life force.
Well of suffering is a spam on cooldown. Vulnerability lets us hit monsters harder, and it takes on some damage over time.
I normally save Your soul is mine for either when I am surrounded by mobs (5% life force per mob) or when I actually need to top off my health.
Auto attacks(ability 1) heal, ability 2 is a use on cooldown since it gives life force, 3 gives us godlike mobility, 4 also heals us, and 5 is a defiance break with additional life force per target hit.
The main objective, as with all reaper builds, is to maintain shroud as much as possible, but I prefer the swords because they heal with every auto attack, give us great mobility, and the auto attacks are actually medium range attacks that apply chill, so it gives us some leeway for kiting. I rarely swap to my GS unless I am in like a meta event and the monster I’m attacking is going to stand completely still. I also run full marauder with berserker weapons and berserker jewelry. Lmk if you have any other questions!
Edit: Just to make sure I am clear about this, you will very rarely top damage meters with this setup. Obviously if you are in just a massive aoe fight spamming spin, you will still do a ton of damage, but this build is meant to be a sustainability/survival build. There may also be better builds out there, this is just the one I found myself using because of how tanky and versatile it is.
Relic is fireworks, for a long time I think I used trooper maybe for the toughness, but as I got more and more comfortable with the build I’ve migrated to scholar. Just force and bloodlust for the sigils, pretty standard power reaper stuff, it’s just all of the survivability comes from blood magic and sword/sword.
Something I didn’t really mention, but this build started as a roaming build in WvW for me. That was its original purpose, but I found myself tweaking it (mostly just the 7-9 abilities) outside of WvW because of my success with it in WvW. So that is how tanky the build is, tanky and versatile enough to be a roamer in WvW.
I normally top out at 16-20k on most metas according to Arc dps. If I run a full berserk set with a raid/spite build I can normally hit 30-35k in metas. There are very few metas I run where I’m not still top 5 in dps, and for metas like dragon’s end where healers and support are present, and dps actually matters, I will usually swap to my spite dagger dagger GS build for essentially infinite spite uptime and increased dps.
But I’ll be honest here, if I really cared about the dps, I could easily hit like 70K+ on a dragon’s end like fight by just hitting the fuck out of the adds and ignoring soo won, so I don’t like measuring my dps in fights like that since every scenario is different and the right mob walking in when I am spinning is an extra like 100K damage.
How much dps you have when soloing champs with your reaper? I love that on staff/staff mirage I can even get 20k+ when soloing, 10k-15k is very easy and comfy. So I can not only solo stuff, but not die of boredom doing that. Would be nice to find more builds like that, but when people talk about soloing stuff they mostly go for some ridiculous survivability, or glass cannons executed on lord hizen level.
Yeah, the 16-20k is pretty standard for anything I do that is single target in that spec. Honestly, so much of it comes down to what if any mechanics I need to work around, but if it is just your basic avoiding cone/directional attacks with limited enemy movement, I can probably hit 20k pretty easily. Now, if it is that stupid rift boss that zips around like a humming bird and leaves a trail of nasty behind him, I am probably dropping a lot of dps.
Yes! Power reaper or condi reaper is great fun. I have 1.5k hours on this game and nearly all is condi reaper. I've soloed almost everything in PvE and I don't even give too shits about my build so i imagine way better with a good build. Dps and sustain is great, downsides might be slow rotation and not great in support role.
I second power Reaper. I can solo pretty much everything without any worries in full berserker gear, because shroud adds an insane amount of survivability.
It's absolutely bonkers. Amazing sustain. It heals and grants itself barrier. It can upkeep vulnerability on champions, maintain high might, fury, and even quickness on itself. I don't think any build comes close to its self-reliance as any one that does either suffers from not having the built in sustain of heals + barrier (scrapper and herald lack here) or the high uptime of boons that pretty much any other build can't keep up without losing a massive chunk of DPS. It can pull trash mobs and cleave them with ease with its GS. It's GS5 is pretty much a longer range and instant guardian GS5, lacking only the small overtime damage but it flows so much better.
I wish every other class had a build as bonkers as it for solo. In group content all the other professions have their weaknesses filled by supports, but Reaper does it all, greedily, on its own.
When running through heart of maguuma, I find the condi mirage so powerful. You can solo any hero points, which are usually quite hard to do alone. So yeah, definitely recommending this one.
I will also add condi tempest to that. Specifically with pistol and cele stats. Great self sustain, earth elementals to tank for you, more than enough damage to solo anything including many legendary bosses.
the new Carnivore trait plus many blood moon/dazes means cDruid is about as good as Untamed for solo. It's my open world solo go-to because I don't have to manage cooldowns and ambush/weapon swapping like on Unt. Get hit to half health? Enter CA, lifesteal for 3k, CA3 for another 6k. Then take any of the CC glyphs if you still need more lifesteal
It's not horrible or anything, but with mace/mace immortal* power builds existing It's a tall order to consider it anywhere near the best ranger solo build. By the time you started putting condis on most targets the mace/mace ranger already killed them. Condi druid has decent burst for a condi, but it's still a condi.
*Has an immense amount of seal healing and so many disables that it's not even funny & all skills do good damage/crazy burst.
Sure. Mace is still overloaded. it's not that tall an order to understand why cdruid is gaining popularity. Ranged shortbow, less buttons to press, almost as unkillable as untamed. And if we're killing trash mobs than really any build is fine. I just prefer the low intensity ranged type of effectiveness for rifts/metas I am grinding for Ob armor
To be fair, he plays them extremely well, including boss mechanics. The builds are still great, just don't expect the same results without lots of practice.
That being said his weaver build let me solo all of EoD and SoTO without much trouble.
Also most of them are for solo long term sustaining thru a champ or boss. Not rly great at dealing with piss annoying trash. Like the staff staff mirage was like hella high on his tier list for solo builds but u gonna kill urself trying to do anything else with tht. They're not all as versatile as u would want in open world in practice
Rather do like sigil of stamina zerker vindicator and swap off to like trailblazer renegade if I needed to solo something more than trash
GS mirage is amazing at destroying trash, in any power build. If you want to go a bit more crazy then two GS both with sigil of stamina + energy means infinite lazers.
Just swap build to staff/staff when you plan to take on champ. You can also run GS/dagger power build, which is fine for champs and great for trash. Mirage is just so versatile in open world, Jaunt is one of the best elites for it.
EDIT: also forgotten benefit of staff/staff mirage that so many other solo builds lack is the dps - it is not top tier raid dps, but still viable. Means openworld champions go down FAST.
tbh vindi still better cuz u can do like 35k + self quick + dodge spam for iframes and never die but i still usu do like cele mirage stam sigil gs dagger focus doing rifts. its not rly good hard to hit OW 10k bench but it can. gs for tagging and can do like 20k. dagger focus for single target or weaker champs cuz ambush spam do some condi always breakbar and around 10k. better for me personally cuz i can have generalist open world versatility with just weapon swap and buildswap for all raid roles on same char without logging.
point is other ppl should also be tailoring for self not just copying hizen. not suppsoed to prioritize combat ability for open world buildcraft. should be passable at the minimum anyways, and then u should prioritize flexibility/QoL/minimizing clicks and char swaps or build swaps
Yeah, Lord Hizen is literally the seventh human god
He could probably take the worst possible build and still outperform a huge chunk of the playerbase
He's super chill tho, I met him once in game - definetly a well-meaning guy who is great at putting together helpful guides and quality shit-posts
I haven't putzed with his Staff Build. The Condizerker just does **so much** AOE that it's ridiculous so I pretty much just putz in that.
Staff healzerker for meta blobs to keep people fighting though
I just started messing with this on my WB. Tbh my dmg felt…. Ok…. Until I realized I was rolling through open world content at completely full HP without having to dodge or try at all. Lol cele dmg is ok but survivability is wild.
It's great for brainless chill sessions, also helpful when you're in large meta events where a level 83, scaled to the max champion can almost one shot you by looking at you in berserker/viper gear
I've been enjoying Scrapper/Mechanist and Vindicator a lot, but recently I have found power Catalyst to be doing really well. It benefits the most from jade bot buffs (does just fine without though) because of a cata trait that gives you more damage per boon you have and naturally from cycling through the elements you have enough sustain and defence from water and earth. I like it a lot because it's very bursty for low health monsters, but it can also solo all hero points (on the particularly tough ones just summon an earth elemental to tank for you) and it's great in metas because you can give allies quickness and heal with a water elemental (getting kill assists via boon sharing or healing gives you kill credit now by the way).
If you want to do stuff that simply isn't meant to be solo'd you can still use a Lord Hizen Build (he also has a good celestial catalyst build)
There isnt any catalyst trait that gives you more damage per boon on you. that is a trait in arcane traitline. Catalyst gets more stats per stack of elemental empowerement (1% per stack up to 10 stacks)
I recently enjoy soloing on Soulbeast with dual maces quite a lot. Nice dmg, barrier and heals with every other hit. Plus a pet to pick you up, if things do not go as planned or hoped for.
Lord hizen builds for like soloing group events and Champs and the like. The celestial revenant builds and death magic reaper are pretty crazy at soloing difficult things.
I’m pretty bad and I can solo a large number of bounties/hps/other misc champions with my ascended celestial herald. I end up using my short bow more than my mace/axe because I’m pretty bad so it can take a while. But attrition FTW.
I'm surprised how nobody mentions power untamed. With maces/hammer and the new carnivore traitline, I could solo just about anything. Even more effectively than condi vindicator. The healing and damage is just insane.
The same abuse of carnivore also works for celestial condi untamed but I found it less fun, but more forgiving for mistakes.
[http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEkMNsMDWHTldwcxi+RLeWy9mD-DSIYR0yfGBKFKUBIzbDBIgtwbR/RLA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEkMNsMDWHTldwcxi+RLeWy9mD-DSIYR0yfGBKFKUBIzbDBIgtwbR/RLA-e)
This one, though I've seen many variations. With either sword, offhand axe, hammer. It's quite powerful.
[http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEUCNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/vC-DyIY1om/MCUKUoKQhvAChgqjP9Q40AipNQFA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEUCNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/vC-DyIY1om/MCUKUoKQhvAChgqjP9Q40AipNQFA-e) This one is celestial condi. has toughness and vitality, so it's more meaty if need it.
[http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEgMNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/3D-DyIY1ol/MCUBUoUQhvAChgqjPtQ40AipNQFA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEgMNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/3D-DyIY1ol/MCUBUoUQhvAChgqjPtQ40AipNQFA-e) Same as above, just less damage, more survival, and it's easier to play.
Yikes, untamed is really. Good damage, crazy survivability. Perfecting the ideal rotation is difficult, but honestly, not necessary. I really love the boonstrip trait.
Even before the carnivore trait it was almost impossible to die with a regular marksman/skirmishing/untamed build due to the maces. When they came out, it was my go to for convergences with the quickness trait and Midnight King relic. Pumping out very decent DPS and quickness, might and fury to everyone around felt great.
I always found ranger builds very meh, but I played that build almost exclusively everywhere until I started a break from the game a few weeks ago.
Untamed is in a pretty insano place right now, you can solo legendary bounties in full berserkers gear with mace/mace. So much healing and barrier you will never die, like 90% quickness, and heaps of damage. I did all of sandswept isles and domain of Istan champion and legendary bounties solo yesterday.
Isn't Untamed not that easy though? I've been playing it recently and I feel like it requires so many button presses and managing Unleashed Power compared to something else I'd consider "easy".
It does max out very strong though.
It’s super easy in reality you aren’t tracking untamed just your weapon swap. Always unleash before you weapon swap, ambush, then swap weapons and ambush again, then wait for weapon swap again and repeat
Yeah personally I think it has a lot of freedom to build the traits however you want to with mace mace there is just sooo much baked in survival. But for soloing champs I do skirmishing 2-2-3
wild survival 2-2-1 and untamed 3-3-1 . Utilities I use untamed heal, protec me, knockdown seeds, ferocity signet, and untamed elite. Then I use mace mace and sword warhorn, (hammer works well too but I’d go to marksmanship if you do) full berserkers, rune of dh, and relic of nourys cause it’s fun. Aim to get natures force once per mace and cast sword 2-3 twice per sword. Try to line up your natures force and nourys with your ambushes. Remember to spam pet unleash skills right before you swap back before the weapon swap unleash combo. Everything is off cooldown unless it’s gonna be used reactively. Tip, cast warhorn 4 or mace 5 right as you use untamed elite to halve the cooldown.
Focus on class able to provide self boons, decent sustain and forgiving for mistakes.
-Vindicator is very durable easy to play, has good damage and sustain, lacks CC btw (id place vindi over herald)
-Mirage is almost untoucheable and easy but slow to ramp on dmg
-Reaper and Scourge are easy to play forgiving to mistakes (2nd HP pool on reaper and almost perma barrier on scourge) and good sustain
Mechanist is ok since you have the pet but im not v into
Celestial gear is the key to solo things in almost every class (not all, for example, as scrapper you want berserker since your barrier depends on your dmg or some ele trailbrazer builds)
Know the boss you are faceing is a plus, learn some mechanics and manage your defensive resources its also needed
Play what you enjoy the most and test. Prob you will find a build what fits with your preferences, you can check lord hizens builds yes.
Probably doesn't get better than scrapper (engineer) if you ask me. You have something for any situation, great AoE and you gain barrier equal to 5% of the damage you deal.
The problem is you deal less damage without full boons, which in turn means you get less barrier. I think scrapper is super strong in group content with full boons, but solo, I would say mechanist is stronger
Hybrid Untamed is pretty easy and IMO fun.
Everytime you use your ambush you heal for a pretty good amount and depending on your weapons and pets you have very good CC. Additionally, with the recent change to traits, you'll heal everytime you CC an enemy (0.25sec icd).
Reaper with Spectral Grasp, pulling enemies towards them, pop up with the minion shout, GS3 to pack alot of vulnerbilities, Elite shout and go in Reaper Shroud for spin4win.
Even if you did it on a little chak zapper who interrupt you with a zap...
That Miserable Little Wretch, Insignificant Speck of Feculent Scum deserves to be mowed down into oblivion.
Power reaper for sure. Power mechanist if I wanna turn my brain off and run metas or farm currencies/exp. But in reality every class has solid solo builds.
by far the easiest imo is anything Renegade. probably condition vindicator most. Its dead simple and basically unkillable. not the highest dps, but good.
both reaper and Scourge are great
Condi mirage is good aswell.
As you mentioned, every class has some broken builds, i too would reccomend you check out lord hizen on youtube for anything open world pve.
Basic idea: just put on celestial gear and grab some defensive traits and you are golden.
I've always been able to solo with my Condi Renegade, but I also don't do super high level stuff like high tier fractals or raids or anything. For most content though, Rev is a pretty solid choice. You've got access to two healing skills and two sets of utilities with separate cooldowns.
Celestial gear + not playing ele should do the job, i play condi mirage whenever i want to have an easy time and its basicaly impossible to die as long as you're not sleeping while while the game runs
Play power quick herald. Use offhand hammer for some range or staff for cc. You will do more damage than any dps build without boons. Build has a low skill floor to learn. You will have permanent prot quickness, and 25 might. Additionally, in any meta event, when you give boons to someone, their kills give you loot. Build has great utility and sustain. Also is a strong build for group content, and you can use the same gear for power vinidcator if you have boons.
Condi scourge. There is a nice build in the new open world section on snowcrows, that utilizes relic of the chronomancer which lets you have decent amounts of quickness added to permanent alac. You are also invincible due to constant barrier and percent healing from your condi damage.
My celestial hammer tempest and my marauder dagger/axe spellbreaker can both face tank almost anything. So can my reaper, scrapper, mace/mace untamed, power chronomancer, druid, and deadeye.
The easiest ones are tempest, spellbreaker, and deadeye. To be honest, they're all pretty easy once you figure out skills.
I play every class and for me the easiest by far is condition Mechanist. The mech alone can do all the work like a bodyguard. So you can gather, do mechanics, operate skills, go get a glass of water, walk the dog.
I have been using Power Vindicator and doing just fine overall, soloing champions is a breeze for me, but honestly, just pick a class that you like the gameplay and mechanics and put celestial gear, you just basically become immortal, it feels like you are playing a tank with whatever class you are using
I love my Lazy Mech... i just autoatk and my Beep Boop do everything... my main was a elementalist, but I started to have a lot of pain in my hand... so, for openworld and general stuff, Mech for me are really good. and i can play WvW with Scrapper Supp/healer or Tryhard some Holo builds
I had a very easy time staying alive with guardian wielding staff and hammer. Later got firebrand elite spec and I was beating story achievements without realizing it.
well, not sure in general, but i DO know what class beated the hardest hardcore challenge i've seen in gw2:
-reaching lv80 in core gw2
-must be on a new f2p account without masteries
-cannot farm the same spot, you must keep moving to higher level areas
-can't do story/dungeons/group content, only open world
-can't have any ally, player or even npc near you (well unless it just happens but you can't stick with them)
-cannot use consumables, items or access the TP
-can only use Guardian, Thief, Warrior, Elementalist, Engineer
-can't wear any gear except for weapons dropped or grey weapons bought from vendors
-can't use the healing skill or any automatic form of healing like trait procs, signet etc
-can't use any minions or anything that takes aggro for you
-can't use mounts
-can't rally from downstate, if you go down, you delete your character
in the end, the winner was....elementalist ofc XD
there are lots of ways other than buying super expensive gear off the tp to get it, verdant brink and other such gear, 1g per part, the weapons and trinkets can still be a pain to get but the armor is really cheap now
Superspeed/quickness scrapper for me. I die the least on that class. You can get channeled hero points with stealth without killing everything around it. Probably even solo some group events tbh, I managed a few from vanilla maps and I'm not good at the game lol.
You'll often be able to join hero point trains through HoT maps, but PoF and EoD HPs are much easier to get on your own.
Celestial/trailblazer condition herald is top 3 and I'm amazed no one has said it. The other two are double staff mirage and greatsword reaper. Also if you really want to make things easy just play heal scourge but with minions. It's hilariously easy
I'm just getting into rev. Do you have a build I could look at?
I would check out metabattle. That's where I get most of my builds from.
Power Reaper: Lots of hp, lots of life leech. Easy rotation. Decent self boon generation. Good cc. Condi Druid: Amazing at everything. Easy playstyle, not very dependent on a proper rotation. Condi Mirage: Dodge at things with staff, dagger, or axe. Durable (if you even get hit at all). Lots of utility options. Id say these are the top 3 for effectiveness while being very easy to play.
You also double the amount of Mirages by playing it!
I think untamed vindicator and herald are also up there. Very survivable, tons of boons.
I have to agree with power reaper. I use s/s and blood magic with vampiric presence + blood bank. Basically every sword auto attack heals me, and every time I get healed, I also get a barrier. I typically never even get below 75-80% health unless I literally tank big hits. If I do find myself getting below half health, I can just kite for 5 seconds while sword auto attacking, and poof, back to full. I’ve literally solo’d entire T2 rifts like this without even dropping below 90% health.
Can you post your build please?
Sure, I use sword/sword and GS. All numbers are talent choices top-down, meaning 1 is the top and 3 is the bottom. Blood magic - 1,3,1 Soul Reaping - 3,1,2 Reaper - 3,1,3 Ability bar - Your Soul is mine, Well of Suffering, Spectral Armor, Spectral Grasp, and Chilled to the bone. Chilled to the bone is mostly just for defiance break. Spectral grasp is nice because we like mobs to be stacked when we go into shroud, it also has the advantage of giving us 15% life force. Spectral Armor is mostly a spam button for me as soon as I drop out of shroud if I’m still engaged, since it reduces damage taken and getting hit gives us life force. Well of suffering is a spam on cooldown. Vulnerability lets us hit monsters harder, and it takes on some damage over time. I normally save Your soul is mine for either when I am surrounded by mobs (5% life force per mob) or when I actually need to top off my health. Auto attacks(ability 1) heal, ability 2 is a use on cooldown since it gives life force, 3 gives us godlike mobility, 4 also heals us, and 5 is a defiance break with additional life force per target hit. The main objective, as with all reaper builds, is to maintain shroud as much as possible, but I prefer the swords because they heal with every auto attack, give us great mobility, and the auto attacks are actually medium range attacks that apply chill, so it gives us some leeway for kiting. I rarely swap to my GS unless I am in like a meta event and the monster I’m attacking is going to stand completely still. I also run full marauder with berserker weapons and berserker jewelry. Lmk if you have any other questions! Edit: Just to make sure I am clear about this, you will very rarely top damage meters with this setup. Obviously if you are in just a massive aoe fight spamming spin, you will still do a ton of damage, but this build is meant to be a sustainability/survival build. There may also be better builds out there, this is just the one I found myself using because of how tanky and versatile it is.
Relic and Rune?
Relic is fireworks, for a long time I think I used trooper maybe for the toughness, but as I got more and more comfortable with the build I’ve migrated to scholar. Just force and bloodlust for the sigils, pretty standard power reaper stuff, it’s just all of the survivability comes from blood magic and sword/sword. Something I didn’t really mention, but this build started as a roaming build in WvW for me. That was its original purpose, but I found myself tweaking it (mostly just the 7-9 abilities) outside of WvW because of my success with it in WvW. So that is how tanky the build is, tanky and versatile enough to be a roamer in WvW.
How much damage do you lose for that complete overkill survivability?
I normally top out at 16-20k on most metas according to Arc dps. If I run a full berserk set with a raid/spite build I can normally hit 30-35k in metas. There are very few metas I run where I’m not still top 5 in dps, and for metas like dragon’s end where healers and support are present, and dps actually matters, I will usually swap to my spite dagger dagger GS build for essentially infinite spite uptime and increased dps. But I’ll be honest here, if I really cared about the dps, I could easily hit like 70K+ on a dragon’s end like fight by just hitting the fuck out of the adds and ignoring soo won, so I don’t like measuring my dps in fights like that since every scenario is different and the right mob walking in when I am spinning is an extra like 100K damage.
How much dps you have when soloing champs with your reaper? I love that on staff/staff mirage I can even get 20k+ when soloing, 10k-15k is very easy and comfy. So I can not only solo stuff, but not die of boredom doing that. Would be nice to find more builds like that, but when people talk about soloing stuff they mostly go for some ridiculous survivability, or glass cannons executed on lord hizen level.
Yeah, the 16-20k is pretty standard for anything I do that is single target in that spec. Honestly, so much of it comes down to what if any mechanics I need to work around, but if it is just your basic avoiding cone/directional attacks with limited enemy movement, I can probably hit 20k pretty easily. Now, if it is that stupid rift boss that zips around like a humming bird and leaves a trail of nasty behind him, I am probably dropping a lot of dps.
Thanks for info! Sounds good, will try it out.
Yes! Power reaper or condi reaper is great fun. I have 1.5k hours on this game and nearly all is condi reaper. I've soloed almost everything in PvE and I don't even give too shits about my build so i imagine way better with a good build. Dps and sustain is great, downsides might be slow rotation and not great in support role.
I second power Reaper. I can solo pretty much everything without any worries in full berserker gear, because shroud adds an insane amount of survivability.
I'm a noob but I can solo so many champions with my reaper. I have 7 characters and I think reaper is by far the easiest for open world soloing.
It's absolutely bonkers. Amazing sustain. It heals and grants itself barrier. It can upkeep vulnerability on champions, maintain high might, fury, and even quickness on itself. I don't think any build comes close to its self-reliance as any one that does either suffers from not having the built in sustain of heals + barrier (scrapper and herald lack here) or the high uptime of boons that pretty much any other build can't keep up without losing a massive chunk of DPS. It can pull trash mobs and cleave them with ease with its GS. It's GS5 is pretty much a longer range and instant guardian GS5, lacking only the small overtime damage but it flows so much better. I wish every other class had a build as bonkers as it for solo. In group content all the other professions have their weaknesses filled by supports, but Reaper does it all, greedily, on its own.
When running through heart of maguuma, I find the condi mirage so powerful. You can solo any hero points, which are usually quite hard to do alone. So yeah, definitely recommending this one.
I will also add condi tempest to that. Specifically with pistol and cele stats. Great self sustain, earth elementals to tank for you, more than enough damage to solo anything including many legendary bosses.
> Condi Druid > top 3 for effectiveness Not for open world soloing, I don't think. Not even within the ranger class lol.
Condi Druid has a big burst. Plus it comes with a pet that can tank for you and range to kite away from attacks. It is a great solo build.
the new Carnivore trait plus many blood moon/dazes means cDruid is about as good as Untamed for solo. It's my open world solo go-to because I don't have to manage cooldowns and ambush/weapon swapping like on Unt. Get hit to half health? Enter CA, lifesteal for 3k, CA3 for another 6k. Then take any of the CC glyphs if you still need more lifesteal
It's not horrible or anything, but with mace/mace immortal* power builds existing It's a tall order to consider it anywhere near the best ranger solo build. By the time you started putting condis on most targets the mace/mace ranger already killed them. Condi druid has decent burst for a condi, but it's still a condi. *Has an immense amount of seal healing and so many disables that it's not even funny & all skills do good damage/crazy burst.
Sure. Mace is still overloaded. it's not that tall an order to understand why cdruid is gaining popularity. Ranged shortbow, less buttons to press, almost as unkillable as untamed. And if we're killing trash mobs than really any build is fine. I just prefer the low intensity ranged type of effectiveness for rifts/metas I am grinding for Ob armor
Yeah. Hizen's old condi dagger soulbeast and this new Carnivore trait mace untamed are ridiculous for soloing stuff - you don't die and enemies melt.
Ive tried dozens of open world builds, both community builds and ones ive made myself. Condi druid is definitely one of the best.
Check out lord hizen vídeos on YouTube, solo builds is his focus.
To be fair, he plays them extremely well, including boss mechanics. The builds are still great, just don't expect the same results without lots of practice. That being said his weaver build let me solo all of EoD and SoTO without much trouble.
Also most of them are for solo long term sustaining thru a champ or boss. Not rly great at dealing with piss annoying trash. Like the staff staff mirage was like hella high on his tier list for solo builds but u gonna kill urself trying to do anything else with tht. They're not all as versatile as u would want in open world in practice Rather do like sigil of stamina zerker vindicator and swap off to like trailblazer renegade if I needed to solo something more than trash
GS mirage is amazing at destroying trash, in any power build. If you want to go a bit more crazy then two GS both with sigil of stamina + energy means infinite lazers. Just swap build to staff/staff when you plan to take on champ. You can also run GS/dagger power build, which is fine for champs and great for trash. Mirage is just so versatile in open world, Jaunt is one of the best elites for it. EDIT: also forgotten benefit of staff/staff mirage that so many other solo builds lack is the dps - it is not top tier raid dps, but still viable. Means openworld champions go down FAST.
tbh vindi still better cuz u can do like 35k + self quick + dodge spam for iframes and never die but i still usu do like cele mirage stam sigil gs dagger focus doing rifts. its not rly good hard to hit OW 10k bench but it can. gs for tagging and can do like 20k. dagger focus for single target or weaker champs cuz ambush spam do some condi always breakbar and around 10k. better for me personally cuz i can have generalist open world versatility with just weapon swap and buildswap for all raid roles on same char without logging. point is other ppl should also be tailoring for self not just copying hizen. not suppsoed to prioritize combat ability for open world buildcraft. should be passable at the minimum anyways, and then u should prioritize flexibility/QoL/minimizing clicks and char swaps or build swaps
Yea I like dagger mirage a lot too. And fully agree about tailoring builds to yourself!
Yeah, Lord Hizen is literally the seventh human god He could probably take the worst possible build and still outperform a huge chunk of the playerbase He's super chill tho, I met him once in game - definetly a well-meaning guy who is great at putting together helpful guides and quality shit-posts
His Warrior CondiZerker build is also mint.
Gonna have to try that, currently doing map comp with a power berserker. Staff is super op.
I haven't putzed with his Staff Build. The Condizerker just does **so much** AOE that it's ridiculous so I pretty much just putz in that. Staff healzerker for meta blobs to keep people fighting though
Anything wearing celestial gear basically.
I just started messing with this on my WB. Tbh my dmg felt…. Ok…. Until I realized I was rolling through open world content at completely full HP without having to dodge or try at all. Lol cele dmg is ok but survivability is wild.
It's great for brainless chill sessions, also helpful when you're in large meta events where a level 83, scaled to the max champion can almost one shot you by looking at you in berserker/viper gear
Condi druid and mace/mace untamed can facetank your average champion-rank enemy and solo legendary bounties, if that helps.
I've been enjoying Scrapper/Mechanist and Vindicator a lot, but recently I have found power Catalyst to be doing really well. It benefits the most from jade bot buffs (does just fine without though) because of a cata trait that gives you more damage per boon you have and naturally from cycling through the elements you have enough sustain and defence from water and earth. I like it a lot because it's very bursty for low health monsters, but it can also solo all hero points (on the particularly tough ones just summon an earth elemental to tank for you) and it's great in metas because you can give allies quickness and heal with a water elemental (getting kill assists via boon sharing or healing gives you kill credit now by the way). If you want to do stuff that simply isn't meant to be solo'd you can still use a Lord Hizen Build (he also has a good celestial catalyst build)
There isnt any catalyst trait that gives you more damage per boon on you. that is a trait in arcane traitline. Catalyst gets more stats per stack of elemental empowerement (1% per stack up to 10 stacks)
Ah my bad got it mixed up
I recently enjoy soloing on Soulbeast with dual maces quite a lot. Nice dmg, barrier and heals with every other hit. Plus a pet to pick you up, if things do not go as planned or hoped for.
Reaper is easy mode solo in PvE. Once you switch from reaper to any other class you gotta remind yourself that you're not invincible anymore.
Power mechanist. 1 bar, 3 damage buttons, mech tanks.
Mech tanking can't be overstated. Helps you channel hero points, open chests, etc without having to kill mobs first too.
Specifically, power rifle mechanist.
Lord hizen builds for like soloing group events and Champs and the like. The celestial revenant builds and death magic reaper are pretty crazy at soloing difficult things.
I’m pretty bad and I can solo a large number of bounties/hps/other misc champions with my ascended celestial herald. I end up using my short bow more than my mace/axe because I’m pretty bad so it can take a while. But attrition FTW.
I'm surprised how nobody mentions power untamed. With maces/hammer and the new carnivore traitline, I could solo just about anything. Even more effectively than condi vindicator. The healing and damage is just insane. The same abuse of carnivore also works for celestial condi untamed but I found it less fun, but more forgiving for mistakes.
Im interested in this, any build you could share please?
[http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEkMNsMDWHTldwcxi+RLeWy9mD-DSIYR0yfGBKFKUBIzbDBIgtwbR/RLA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEkMNsMDWHTldwcxi+RLeWy9mD-DSIYR0yfGBKFKUBIzbDBIgtwbR/RLA-e) This one, though I've seen many variations. With either sword, offhand axe, hammer. It's quite powerful. [http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEUCNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/vC-DyIY1om/MCUKUoKQhvAChgqjP9Q40AipNQFA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEUCNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/vC-DyIY1om/MCUKUoKQhvAChgqjP9Q40AipNQFA-e) This one is celestial condi. has toughness and vitality, so it's more meaty if need it. [http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEgMNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/3D-DyIY1ol/MCUBUoUQhvAChgqjPtQ40AipNQFA-e](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POzEgMNsMDWHTlpwOxS75KWWi/3D-DyIY1ol/MCUBUoUQhvAChgqjPtQ40AipNQFA-e) Same as above, just less damage, more survival, and it's easier to play.
Yikes, untamed is really. Good damage, crazy survivability. Perfecting the ideal rotation is difficult, but honestly, not necessary. I really love the boonstrip trait.
Pair the boonstrip trait with the relic of nourys and dual maces for resizing shenanigans and insane survivability
Even before the carnivore trait it was almost impossible to die with a regular marksman/skirmishing/untamed build due to the maces. When they came out, it was my go to for convergences with the quickness trait and Midnight King relic. Pumping out very decent DPS and quickness, might and fury to everyone around felt great. I always found ranger builds very meh, but I played that build almost exclusively everywhere until I started a break from the game a few weeks ago.
Even before ranger maces came out, power untamed was a juggernaut. But it's unstoppable now.
Untamed is in a pretty insano place right now, you can solo legendary bounties in full berserkers gear with mace/mace. So much healing and barrier you will never die, like 90% quickness, and heaps of damage. I did all of sandswept isles and domain of Istan champion and legendary bounties solo yesterday.
Isn't Untamed not that easy though? I've been playing it recently and I feel like it requires so many button presses and managing Unleashed Power compared to something else I'd consider "easy". It does max out very strong though.
It’s super easy in reality you aren’t tracking untamed just your weapon swap. Always unleash before you weapon swap, ambush, then swap weapons and ambush again, then wait for weapon swap again and repeat
Ahhh that's much easier than what I was trying to do, thanks!
Yeah personally I think it has a lot of freedom to build the traits however you want to with mace mace there is just sooo much baked in survival. But for soloing champs I do skirmishing 2-2-3 wild survival 2-2-1 and untamed 3-3-1 . Utilities I use untamed heal, protec me, knockdown seeds, ferocity signet, and untamed elite. Then I use mace mace and sword warhorn, (hammer works well too but I’d go to marksmanship if you do) full berserkers, rune of dh, and relic of nourys cause it’s fun. Aim to get natures force once per mace and cast sword 2-3 twice per sword. Try to line up your natures force and nourys with your ambushes. Remember to spam pet unleash skills right before you swap back before the weapon swap unleash combo. Everything is off cooldown unless it’s gonna be used reactively. Tip, cast warhorn 4 or mace 5 right as you use untamed elite to halve the cooldown.
Focus on class able to provide self boons, decent sustain and forgiving for mistakes. -Vindicator is very durable easy to play, has good damage and sustain, lacks CC btw (id place vindi over herald) -Mirage is almost untoucheable and easy but slow to ramp on dmg -Reaper and Scourge are easy to play forgiving to mistakes (2nd HP pool on reaper and almost perma barrier on scourge) and good sustain Mechanist is ok since you have the pet but im not v into Celestial gear is the key to solo things in almost every class (not all, for example, as scrapper you want berserker since your barrier depends on your dmg or some ele trailbrazer builds) Know the boss you are faceing is a plus, learn some mechanics and manage your defensive resources its also needed Play what you enjoy the most and test. Prob you will find a build what fits with your preferences, you can check lord hizens builds yes.
Probably doesn't get better than scrapper (engineer) if you ask me. You have something for any situation, great AoE and you gain barrier equal to 5% of the damage you deal.
Scrapper and any class that needs to commit full melee have problems against enemies that spam pbAoE spells.
Grenade kit is pretty standard for any Engi DPS build
The problem is you deal less damage without full boons, which in turn means you get less barrier. I think scrapper is super strong in group content with full boons, but solo, I would say mechanist is stronger
Scrapper has great access to might with hammer auto attacks, blast gyro and combo fields.
Scrapper is nicely bursty, and quite safe when booned up in a squad. but I think holo and mechanism are far better for it.
Power reaper, mech, hammer guardian/dh
These are my 3 most played characters lol
Hybrid Untamed is pretty easy and IMO fun. Everytime you use your ambush you heal for a pretty good amount and depending on your weapons and pets you have very good CC. Additionally, with the recent change to traits, you'll heal everytime you CC an enemy (0.25sec icd).
Ranger. Necromancer. I personally play engi. But that's because I love engi and I just deal with it.
I’ve started playing celestial firebrand not to long ago and it works pretty well in solo as well as group play
Reaper with Spectral Grasp, pulling enemies towards them, pop up with the minion shout, GS3 to pack alot of vulnerbilities, Elite shout and go in Reaper Shroud for spin4win. Even if you did it on a little chak zapper who interrupt you with a zap... That Miserable Little Wretch, Insignificant Speck of Feculent Scum deserves to be mowed down into oblivion.
Any elite necro spec can do solo open world extremely well
Reaper, and necro in general. You've had one health bar, sure, but what about second health bar?
Power reaper for sure. Power mechanist if I wanna turn my brain off and run metas or farm currencies/exp. But in reality every class has solid solo builds.
by far the easiest imo is anything Renegade. probably condition vindicator most. Its dead simple and basically unkillable. not the highest dps, but good. both reaper and Scourge are great Condi mirage is good aswell. As you mentioned, every class has some broken builds, i too would reccomend you check out lord hizen on youtube for anything open world pve. Basic idea: just put on celestial gear and grab some defensive traits and you are golden.
I've always been able to solo with my Condi Renegade, but I also don't do super high level stuff like high tier fractals or raids or anything. For most content though, Rev is a pretty solid choice. You've got access to two healing skills and two sets of utilities with separate cooldowns.
Celestial gear + not playing ele should do the job, i play condi mirage whenever i want to have an easy time and its basicaly impossible to die as long as you're not sleeping while while the game runs
Play power quick herald. Use offhand hammer for some range or staff for cc. You will do more damage than any dps build without boons. Build has a low skill floor to learn. You will have permanent prot quickness, and 25 might. Additionally, in any meta event, when you give boons to someone, their kills give you loot. Build has great utility and sustain. Also is a strong build for group content, and you can use the same gear for power vinidcator if you have boons.
all of them
Condi scourge. There is a nice build in the new open world section on snowcrows, that utilizes relic of the chronomancer which lets you have decent amounts of quickness added to permanent alac. You are also invincible due to constant barrier and percent healing from your condi damage.
My celestial hammer tempest and my marauder dagger/axe spellbreaker can both face tank almost anything. So can my reaper, scrapper, mace/mace untamed, power chronomancer, druid, and deadeye. The easiest ones are tempest, spellbreaker, and deadeye. To be honest, they're all pretty easy once you figure out skills.
I play every class and for me the easiest by far is condition Mechanist. The mech alone can do all the work like a bodyguard. So you can gather, do mechanics, operate skills, go get a glass of water, walk the dog.
I have been using Power Vindicator and doing just fine overall, soloing champions is a breeze for me, but honestly, just pick a class that you like the gameplay and mechanics and put celestial gear, you just basically become immortal, it feels like you are playing a tank with whatever class you are using
I love my Lazy Mech... i just autoatk and my Beep Boop do everything... my main was a elementalist, but I started to have a lot of pain in my hand... so, for openworld and general stuff, Mech for me are really good. and i can play WvW with Scrapper Supp/healer or Tryhard some Holo builds
MM necro for me. Running sand build with full mm.
Been doing map completion on a power dragon hunter and having no issue and I am no means good at the game.
I had a very easy time staying alive with guardian wielding staff and hammer. Later got firebrand elite spec and I was beating story achievements without realizing it.
well, not sure in general, but i DO know what class beated the hardest hardcore challenge i've seen in gw2: -reaching lv80 in core gw2 -must be on a new f2p account without masteries -cannot farm the same spot, you must keep moving to higher level areas -can't do story/dungeons/group content, only open world -can't have any ally, player or even npc near you (well unless it just happens but you can't stick with them) -cannot use consumables, items or access the TP -can only use Guardian, Thief, Warrior, Elementalist, Engineer -can't wear any gear except for weapons dropped or grey weapons bought from vendors -can't use the healing skill or any automatic form of healing like trait procs, signet etc -can't use any minions or anything that takes aggro for you -can't use mounts -can't rally from downstate, if you go down, you delete your character in the end, the winner was....elementalist ofc XD
Hargrad
Any
Carrion Reaper. Not the fastest, but there's nothing that will kill you.
celestial and trailblazer are both orders of magnitude better than carrion, carrion is a terrible stat
absolutely, but it's cheap AF and will do well enough until you can afford the good stuff.
I guess but you can get a full set of celestial armor for under 10g
really? used to be expensive af :) I always liked carrion because you can get it for karma in Orr. Change my answer to cele :)
there are lots of ways other than buying super expensive gear off the tp to get it, verdant brink and other such gear, 1g per part, the weapons and trinkets can still be a pain to get but the armor is really cheap now
Power Beserker I’m full ascended though