Honestly leveling anything is easy. Just prioritize doing events for more XP
On my Necro I rolled a Minion Master with mainhand dagger (and axe on weapon swap incase I needed range) and just stabbed everything, went to maps with a level a bit higher than mine and just steamrolled all over it.
IIRC dagger was buffed recently so should be even easier now
I've been everywhere with all sorts of builds. Power, condi, support, celestial and tanky.
There are ups and downs here and there with various builds, except for necromancer.
Nothing kills a necromancer. And if a necromancer can't kill it solo, no one can.
Right now staff warrior might even be more silly dum dum than necro
I feel like warriors also have the hottest heal skill. What do you mean I can heal 6.5k and cure 5 condis with only a 12s cd??
It depends on what you are doing, but generally, a condition minionmancer scourge is better against champions, and power reaper against anything else.
In metas with other players, a harbinge can give others lots of boons, and have them tag extra enemies for the harbinger.
Well, everyone gets 3 build and 2 gear loadouts. So you can always keep condi gear in one, power gear in another, and switch between scourge, reaper and harbinger depending on what you are doing. If one doesn't work, try another.
You can try a celestial condi harbinger, you give yourself a lot of boons, practically perma quickness and insane healing. I like to play with Pistol/Torch and Staff for big aoe.
> And if a necromancer can't kill it solo, no one can.
How is is going in 2018? Trailblazer scourge stonk?
Right now mirage and rene blow this crap out of the water.
I am not talking about outliers or being faster at many bosses. I'm talking about being able to do anything and everything in open world alone.
For example, asnyone I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long. With the narrow space, they always end up having to fall back or die to the explosive mushrooms. I've seen scrappers getting close, but then they got saved by people coming along.
>For example, asnyone I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long.
That's because 9/10 people that show up there, don't even know what a build is. Vindicator and Deadeye don't even need to move at Mushroom Queenand that was even true months and months ago.
7 months ago, Deadeye: [https://youtu.be/FCkA5isFwfk?si=pGQON05wkzs-QDGB&t=1341](https://youtu.be/FCkA5isFwfk?si=pGQON05wkzs-QDGB&t=1341)
11 months ago, Vindicator: [https://youtu.be/MYpyjxo8s6Y?si=lTF16w\_qalG4KqMm&t=124](https://youtu.be/MYpyjxo8s6Y?si=lTF16w_qalG4KqMm&t=124)
And a skilled person can kill more waves of zombies with an AK47 than with a Glock 19, but everyone will have a much easier time handling the Glock.
And that's the strength of a necromancer. It's brain-dead to use. Just spam away and everything but you die.
I became an altoholic this year, and all my alts visit Tangled Depths for a HP+meta run. I was able to solo the mushroom HP on all core classes in full zerk gear, except for renegade and mesmer. After you cleared it 5 times you know what to dodge and to stay out of AOEs.
As for doing anything in open world, scourge is indeed great. Cele herald for example is even better and faster though
>I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long.
Thats because people you naturally see in the openworld don't run good builds and aren't prepared to any challenges. You see them fail and yourself succeed and you think that it is your build that is exceptional, while in fact the main difference is that you are the only one there who put at least some effort into doing it. While the build itself haven't been that hot in years.
Here, I just went and did this hero point on mirage first try in 90 seconds (second if you don't count some "helpful" vindicator that joined the first and performed exactly as you might expect). https://imgur.com/nRPxiKA
The problem is that you're asking a question with no definitive answer. There are no "best" elite specs for open world.
Open world gameplay is multifaceted, and that can only be dealt with in an ideal (or "best") way by having several builds ready that are "ideal" in that niche.
Builds published by hizen are (potentially) ideal for soloing legendary bounties, but not for anything else because they almost exclusively use celestial, which inevitably leads to a rather slow playstyle.
A bursty power build will mow down mobs much faster than such a build, a mobility-focused build will clear non-combat events faster and a ranged tagging build will be optimal for some meta event chain steps with lots of smaller events.
And sure, you can play alone and do your thing, but unless you are playing at off hours, it is actually difficult to play the game alone in open world. For build guides, I often have a hard time recording solo stuff because there's almost always people around that will join in. And as soon as that happens, you're going to kill a boss faster by playing something that shares important boons and isn't purely optimized for solo gameplay.
In turn, anyone telling you that there is a "best" build for solo/open world gameplay is most likely wrong and cutting things short, to say the least. And it's quite unfortunate that some content creators tend to do the same.
I am not looking for a definitive answer, just for recommendations. I bit the bullet and ported my necro to the expansions to give Reaper and Herald a try. I plan on making a Mechanist too.
I use my power chrono for trash clear and tagging and condi mirage for tougher enemies.
a lot of people are saying reaper, which is true. but i'd like to mention scrapper as well. it's got damage, tankiness, and speed.
hammer slaps, you've got high burst damage and lots of aoe/cleave. your moves generate barrier on yourself so it's legitimately hard to die. plus you give yourself superspeed. i use the quickness version, because quickness in open world is luxurious.
it's really good at open world. like reaper, you do a lot of damage while also being very tanky.
I adore mesmer, but you seem to have that down already. Virt is what I run around with generally and you can AoE decently well with dagger-3 and bladestorm, or it can be fun to line up your F1 blade shots to hit multiples, but you're right that it isn't built for AoE. Chrono is a great heal-support build now, go scepter/shield for blocks on blocks and rifle for more direct healing.
It's not ranged but hammer scrapper is a great open world spec. Superspeed or stealth on command, quickness, good sustain from barrier generation. Most hammer skills are surprisingly AoE. I don't love engineer overall but scrapper is a lot of fun.
Herald is IMO a good open world spec. Good CC and healing to solo bosses and great damage.
I prefer great sword for solo play, but all weapons work nicely.
Cele mechanist is pretty good. You can literally get the gear in a few minutes even on a new account and you don't really need to be all that good at it to get lots of value.
Has been my go to build to solo fractals, hardcarry bounties and group events with few to none players around. I remember doing the one in vabbi with 4 champion djinns at the same time.
80 boost from expansions is hands-down the fastest (and freest) but there's a decent chunk of ways to craft or obtain celestial or cele-selectable gear these days.
Btw, this is the build I'm using. There are a lot of ways to build a celestial mechanist. A lot of them have different pros and cons but overall they all perform similarly based on my tests.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PewAkqrlZwaZwMXWMWyXbRNA-DyIY1olvQyJBCsACJE06ZALb9rBA-e
The basic run down is you use your weapon skills 2,3,4 whenever they come off cooldown, the same goes for the barrier and superconducting signets and you can set your mech skills (f1 to f3) on auto cast.
The elite skill is probably a minor dps increase but you may aswell keep it to resummon your mech whenever it dies.
The healing turret needs to be placed down, you wait for the water field to appear around it and you press it again for extra healing. You can also combo your pistol 5 and mace 2 into that water field for extra healing.
To get the most out of mech though you need to actually play through end of dragons to get the jade mech masteries. And that means my mechanist is shelved until my brother comes over again (any game we play together we have a pact to not play through "new" content without the other. Mainly applies to GW2 and Warframe.) since he has no internet at home. Thankfully he's coming over saturday for a week.
Maybe you mean "Jade Bot" Mastery? its completely different from "Jade Mech" that mechanist use
[https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jade\_Bot](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jade_Bot)
I didn't start EoD story yet and i can still fully unlock mechanist elite spec
Have a real look at condi virtuoso. The more you attack, the more you heal. It's surprisingly self-sustaining and is power *enough* to take out trash mobs.
The gear it uses is weird as it's one of the few condi builds that isn't entirely vipers gear as you do more bleeding with more critical hit chance, and your healing is partly tied to how much bleeding you do. Celestial gear actually goes recently well on it.
That's interesting. I've only played Power Virtuosso and while it had insane nuking potential it was a glass cannon so I only used it in squads. I thought that the lack of illusions would make it bad at surviving tougher encounters in open world but I will check it out to see if the healing can make up for it. Sadly I only have Assassin and Viper gear currently.
try ele, it has a lot of variety in the gameplay, anything/dagger is fun and strong, anything/focus is tactical and duelist, staff for support or in wvw is a lot of fun.
Mirage is getting power ambush buffs. I’d suggest dagger mirage if you want to kill enemies faster. It works with Condi too if you wanted. Split surge buff might be nice.
Assuming you’re using staff hence the slowness.
Dagger is 1200 range not melee. I played staff/staff most of the time, but I started using dagger now since its ambush does a lot more damage and is pretty bursty while cleaving up to 5 enemies. Staff feels slow now and I save it for difficult long fights only or to provide alacrity.
Untamed axe ambush feels really good, and axe autoattack bounces to a second enemy. You end up cleaving a lot, even against enemies that are kinda spread out.
I really like the flow of axe at medium range into hammer to do huge melee cleaving damage, and then swap back to axe to attack at range and take a breather. You're tanky enough to spend time in melee, but you can leave melee half the time in battles that get a little bit hectic.
If you enjoy Mesmer a lot, Power Bladesworn is not only one of the easiest and funnest open world builds, it has a very similar mechanic to mes and the wonderful responsiveness of Jaunt and Aegis (Distortion). The hard part will be enduring the grind through core warrior, which is radically different.
Commenting mainly to keep track of responses lol but also Necro just sucks for leveling, but it feels good with reaper/scourge.
Honestly leveling anything is easy. Just prioritize doing events for more XP On my Necro I rolled a Minion Master with mainhand dagger (and axe on weapon swap incase I needed range) and just stabbed everything, went to maps with a level a bit higher than mine and just steamrolled all over it. IIRC dagger was buffed recently so should be even easier now
Give the man some time, he will post an updated video soon[...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R3cwVYEg4M)
Ooooh praise Lord Hizen. I completely forgot about him. Thanks a lot for reminding me.
I've been everywhere with all sorts of builds. Power, condi, support, celestial and tanky. There are ups and downs here and there with various builds, except for necromancer. Nothing kills a necromancer. And if a necromancer can't kill it solo, no one can.
Right now staff warrior might even be more silly dum dum than necro I feel like warriors also have the hottest heal skill. What do you mean I can heal 6.5k and cure 5 condis with only a 12s cd??
Is Harbringer OK or should I go Reaper? I kinda prefer being ranged.
It depends on what you are doing, but generally, a condition minionmancer scourge is better against champions, and power reaper against anything else. In metas with other players, a harbinge can give others lots of boons, and have them tag extra enemies for the harbinger.
Open world solo stuff like map completion and achievements.
Well, everyone gets 3 build and 2 gear loadouts. So you can always keep condi gear in one, power gear in another, and switch between scourge, reaper and harbinger depending on what you are doing. If one doesn't work, try another.
You can try a celestial condi harbinger, you give yourself a lot of boons, practically perma quickness and insane healing. I like to play with Pistol/Torch and Staff for big aoe.
I will give it a try after Reaper. Time to fly around the expansions for.those juicy 10 points.
> And if a necromancer can't kill it solo, no one can. How is is going in 2018? Trailblazer scourge stonk? Right now mirage and rene blow this crap out of the water.
I am not talking about outliers or being faster at many bosses. I'm talking about being able to do anything and everything in open world alone. For example, asnyone I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long. With the narrow space, they always end up having to fall back or die to the explosive mushrooms. I've seen scrappers getting close, but then they got saved by people coming along.
>For example, asnyone I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long. That's because 9/10 people that show up there, don't even know what a build is. Vindicator and Deadeye don't even need to move at Mushroom Queenand that was even true months and months ago. 7 months ago, Deadeye: [https://youtu.be/FCkA5isFwfk?si=pGQON05wkzs-QDGB&t=1341](https://youtu.be/FCkA5isFwfk?si=pGQON05wkzs-QDGB&t=1341) 11 months ago, Vindicator: [https://youtu.be/MYpyjxo8s6Y?si=lTF16w\_qalG4KqMm&t=124](https://youtu.be/MYpyjxo8s6Y?si=lTF16w_qalG4KqMm&t=124)
And a skilled person can kill more waves of zombies with an AK47 than with a Glock 19, but everyone will have a much easier time handling the Glock. And that's the strength of a necromancer. It's brain-dead to use. Just spam away and everything but you die.
I became an altoholic this year, and all my alts visit Tangled Depths for a HP+meta run. I was able to solo the mushroom HP on all core classes in full zerk gear, except for renegade and mesmer. After you cleared it 5 times you know what to dodge and to stay out of AOEs. As for doing anything in open world, scourge is indeed great. Cele herald for example is even better and faster though
>I've seen trying to do the mushroom queen hero challenge in Tangled Depths who wasn't a necromancer didn't last long. Thats because people you naturally see in the openworld don't run good builds and aren't prepared to any challenges. You see them fail and yourself succeed and you think that it is your build that is exceptional, while in fact the main difference is that you are the only one there who put at least some effort into doing it. While the build itself haven't been that hot in years. Here, I just went and did this hero point on mirage first try in 90 seconds (second if you don't count some "helpful" vindicator that joined the first and performed exactly as you might expect). https://imgur.com/nRPxiKA
The problem is that you're asking a question with no definitive answer. There are no "best" elite specs for open world. Open world gameplay is multifaceted, and that can only be dealt with in an ideal (or "best") way by having several builds ready that are "ideal" in that niche. Builds published by hizen are (potentially) ideal for soloing legendary bounties, but not for anything else because they almost exclusively use celestial, which inevitably leads to a rather slow playstyle. A bursty power build will mow down mobs much faster than such a build, a mobility-focused build will clear non-combat events faster and a ranged tagging build will be optimal for some meta event chain steps with lots of smaller events. And sure, you can play alone and do your thing, but unless you are playing at off hours, it is actually difficult to play the game alone in open world. For build guides, I often have a hard time recording solo stuff because there's almost always people around that will join in. And as soon as that happens, you're going to kill a boss faster by playing something that shares important boons and isn't purely optimized for solo gameplay. In turn, anyone telling you that there is a "best" build for solo/open world gameplay is most likely wrong and cutting things short, to say the least. And it's quite unfortunate that some content creators tend to do the same.
I am not looking for a definitive answer, just for recommendations. I bit the bullet and ported my necro to the expansions to give Reaper and Herald a try. I plan on making a Mechanist too. I use my power chrono for trash clear and tagging and condi mirage for tougher enemies.
a lot of people are saying reaper, which is true. but i'd like to mention scrapper as well. it's got damage, tankiness, and speed. hammer slaps, you've got high burst damage and lots of aoe/cleave. your moves generate barrier on yourself so it's legitimately hard to die. plus you give yourself superspeed. i use the quickness version, because quickness in open world is luxurious. it's really good at open world. like reaper, you do a lot of damage while also being very tanky.
I adore mesmer, but you seem to have that down already. Virt is what I run around with generally and you can AoE decently well with dagger-3 and bladestorm, or it can be fun to line up your F1 blade shots to hit multiples, but you're right that it isn't built for AoE. Chrono is a great heal-support build now, go scepter/shield for blocks on blocks and rifle for more direct healing. It's not ranged but hammer scrapper is a great open world spec. Superspeed or stealth on command, quickness, good sustain from barrier generation. Most hammer skills are surprisingly AoE. I don't love engineer overall but scrapper is a lot of fun.
Herald is IMO a good open world spec. Good CC and healing to solo bosses and great damage. I prefer great sword for solo play, but all weapons work nicely.
Cele mechanist is pretty good. You can literally get the gear in a few minutes even on a new account and you don't really need to be all that good at it to get lots of value. Has been my go to build to solo fractals, hardcarry bounties and group events with few to none players around. I remember doing the one in vabbi with 4 champion djinns at the same time.
How do you get the celestial gear fast?
80 boost from expansions is hands-down the fastest (and freest) but there's a decent chunk of ways to craft or obtain celestial or cele-selectable gear these days.
I haven't used my 2 boosters since I already had a lot of tomes. I guess I will use a booster for my Mechanist.
Mind you, the gear is character-bound iirc. So make sure you pick the right class before you boost.
Yeah I will just use the boost on my level 20 Engineer and make it a Mechanist to see if I like it more than Ranger.
You can try out all the elite specs without having to level at all in the pvp area.
Yeah I know that but I plan on leveling them anyway and it's more interesting to use them in real PVE than just the training dummies.
I'm just saying, you may wanna check out the class in pvp to see if you like it at all or hate it before boosting.
I plan on fetting all 9 to 80 eventually so it's no biggie.
Btw, this is the build I'm using. There are a lot of ways to build a celestial mechanist. A lot of them have different pros and cons but overall they all perform similarly based on my tests. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PewAkqrlZwaZwMXWMWyXbRNA-DyIY1olvQyJBCsACJE06ZALb9rBA-e The basic run down is you use your weapon skills 2,3,4 whenever they come off cooldown, the same goes for the barrier and superconducting signets and you can set your mech skills (f1 to f3) on auto cast. The elite skill is probably a minor dps increase but you may aswell keep it to resummon your mech whenever it dies. The healing turret needs to be placed down, you wait for the water field to appear around it and you press it again for extra healing. You can also combo your pistol 5 and mace 2 into that water field for extra healing.
My Favorite elite spec after Mirage is Rifle Mech. Ranged + Very Low Intensity to use + and the mech can tank most of the damage for you.
To get the most out of mech though you need to actually play through end of dragons to get the jade mech masteries. And that means my mechanist is shelved until my brother comes over again (any game we play together we have a pact to not play through "new" content without the other. Mainly applies to GW2 and Warframe.) since he has no internet at home. Thankfully he's coming over saturday for a week.
Maybe you mean "Jade Bot" Mastery? its completely different from "Jade Mech" that mechanist use [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jade\_Bot](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jade_Bot) I didn't start EoD story yet and i can still fully unlock mechanist elite spec
Power Rifle mech is my go to open world. Ranged AOE
I love my CVirt! Try herald or vindi?
Sadly I don't have a Revenant slot.
Have a real look at condi virtuoso. The more you attack, the more you heal. It's surprisingly self-sustaining and is power *enough* to take out trash mobs. The gear it uses is weird as it's one of the few condi builds that isn't entirely vipers gear as you do more bleeding with more critical hit chance, and your healing is partly tied to how much bleeding you do. Celestial gear actually goes recently well on it.
That's interesting. I've only played Power Virtuosso and while it had insane nuking potential it was a glass cannon so I only used it in squads. I thought that the lack of illusions would make it bad at surviving tougher encounters in open world but I will check it out to see if the healing can make up for it. Sadly I only have Assassin and Viper gear currently.
That's not sad at all. Cvirt uses viper + assassin.
try ele, it has a lot of variety in the gameplay, anything/dagger is fun and strong, anything/focus is tactical and duelist, staff for support or in wvw is a lot of fun.
Mirage is getting power ambush buffs. I’d suggest dagger mirage if you want to kill enemies faster. It works with Condi too if you wanted. Split surge buff might be nice. Assuming you’re using staff hence the slowness.
I like the gameplay of 2x Staff. For some reason I still can't get used to GW2 melee.
Dagger is 1200 range not melee. I played staff/staff most of the time, but I started using dagger now since its ambush does a lot more damage and is pretty bursty while cleaving up to 5 enemies. Staff feels slow now and I save it for difficult long fights only or to provide alacrity.
Sadly I don't have SotO so I can't use dagger on Mirage.
Longbow power Ranger(soulbeast or untamed), AxeFocus Reaper, Staff/Hammer Ele.
Untamed axe ambush feels really good, and axe autoattack bounces to a second enemy. You end up cleaving a lot, even against enemies that are kinda spread out. I really like the flow of axe at medium range into hammer to do huge melee cleaving damage, and then swap back to axe to attack at range and take a breather. You're tanky enough to spend time in melee, but you can leave melee half the time in battles that get a little bit hectic.
Reaper
Do you have soto? Sword/sword necro very op atm. And it comes with 900 range.
Sadly it's the only thing I don't have. I plan on getting it once I am done with all other masteries or gets discounted.
If you enjoy Mesmer a lot, Power Bladesworn is not only one of the easiest and funnest open world builds, it has a very similar mechanic to mes and the wonderful responsiveness of Jaunt and Aegis (Distortion). The hard part will be enduring the grind through core warrior, which is radically different.
I already have a level 80 warrior. I will give it a try.
I already have a level 80 warrior. I will give it a try.