@@CaffeinatedDad Or you are doing it wrong. Saying Guardian lacks "toughness" is just factually incorrect. It has the same armor as warrior and revenant (heavy) and all classes have the same base toughness you can modify with gear stats. It does sound like this is a L2P issue on you personal part.
@@RyanApplegatePhDGuardians have ridiculously low HP and their defences mainly come from defensive weapons (mace, shield, hammer, focus). The Guardian has skills to keep others alive and honestly, it was the most common sight seeing a fallen Guardian (excluding mine) before a boss.
In my opinion, Vindicator with cele gear, shortbow + gs + evasion relic and stamina runes is hands down the best for open world Can solo pretty much every mob, never have to worry about my HP getting low. Can facetank everything. If i get low, jump & heal & repeat And on top of that the dmg output paired with perma boons is still good Most fun class imo
If we're talking core builds then yeah I agree necro takes the spot. However, when you include elite specs into the equation... And! Keeping with the theme of a casual player, meaning no fancy tricks and block damage mitigation and precise evading and whatnot, I believe that the soulbeast takes the spot easily. Why? Because soulbeast pets can never die. If your bear gets downed for some reason (really tough champion or legendary), merge with the bear and then immediately release, boom bear is full HP again. And you can repeat this forever. I really think no other build comes even close to the ease of this.
It is still die, but can revive in a few second. Also you will get the aggro, and bear not get it back every time. I have better results with drakes and hounds, but now polar bear stun too. (and you have invulnerable while merged ;) )
I started playing in june as a revinant main. I played through all of the base game heart of thorns all the living world and path of fire so far. I chose the renegade as my first elete spec and ive really had a much easier time since getting the short bow and using the summon skills to distract enemies while unloading a barage of shots. I just got my griffon and am working on my skyscale. 100 percent recomend
This list seems strange to me. I was able to solo bounty monsters as a reaper, berserker, power willbender and as a vindicator. As a herald or condi firebrand I get destroyed for some reason
as a thief main i will say if u get into the the class its true u have to be VERY carefull to how much damage you intake but if u use a shadow step before going into the fight and then when u get low use the hide in the shadows skill go back to your enemy and use your backstab ability it will do double damage to your regular attacks making them have vulnerability for 5.125 seconds to kill your target within the timespan make sure you have enough precision cause the critical strike is the most important part of this class ive done 12575 dps on one hit because all my armor and gems go into precision but if u go into daredevil its a high dps, moble class good one to start with thank you for telling people about the thief class to all are new people starting out. 💗
Hmm, strange. I watched a Willbender solo, in melee range, the hero point giant spider south of Auric Basin with ease, while I struggled with Daredevil. Eventually, I pulled it off after many tries, but it required a lot of correct timing - which felt like playing Dark Souls game.
Oh for sure the elite specs add extra survivability and defenses, however the majority of my channel focuses on new players to gw2, as such I mainly look at the core specs to judge this ranking off of
So, as far as guardians go, I could say you are just plain wrong but here's an explanation as to why. Regardless of the elite spec you choose, guardians, unlike many other classes don't have inherent (Passive so to speak) defenses. BUT they have access to a ton of reactive defenses, namely in the form of Aegis boon. For inexperienced players, yes guardian might look frail. Meanwhile for veterans, guardian is one of the, if not the most broken class when it comes to open world! And for revenant... well I'll just say that a full celestial vindi is the tankiest build I've ever played.
I`m a huge fan of playing "Monster Hunter" in Guild Wars 2. I like my Reaper Minion Master with as much minions around me as possible, this makes solo life so much easier in GW2. My second beloved solo class is the Power or Celestial Mechanist both with mace plus pistol or shield.
I'm a bit confused. You're a fan of playing "Monster Hunter", a game where you mostly hunt monsters by yourself, so you like GW2 classes that can summon minions? I think I misunderstood something 😂
@@carlosmspk "I`m a huge fan of playing "Monster Hunter" in Guild Wars 2." ... this only means, I like to play solo in GW2 and even as a Reaper with minions I`m still playing solo, same when I would play a Ranger with his pet or a Mechanist with his mech.
Imagine my surprise when I see Guardian is supposedly the hardest to play solo with, when I'm a new player who started a Guardian and got them to 80 first 😂 Guess my other leveling runs are gonna be a cakewalk!
Guardian was my first class and have have complet world map when game first came out and i'm a solo player all the way. Even i had very hard time understanding the mechanics of the stats of armor etc. i had lots, but LOTS of fun with that class even years after! I simply say, depends on people what they like : )
@@CaffeinatedDad so much I wanted back then to learn elementalist class, but it was not for me😞.. Last X-Pac, after 8 years after first try, I switched to Catalyst and I really understood the mechanics and completed the X-Pac with!!♥️ . Now with this new X-Pac I'm back with guardian 🥰. Btw I liked very much your video, as per always you do a great job!!💪😊 Keep that up that great work!
Deadeye, Mirage, Herald, Vindicator and Mechanist are hands down the best open world elites when used with celestial gear and traited appropriately, Willbender also gets a honorable mention.
Some will do better than others, a reaper with cele stats can work in theory but it's going to waste most of the stats. The specs I mentioned really make use of every stat and have good hybrid weapon options making them amazingly strong for solo and small group content in the open world.
Recently i am playing only condi mirage for OW/Solo. Classes i enjoy and find fun and easy are: Willbender both power and condi, Bladesword full berserker cuz it can sustain itself just good enough, condi Deadeye cuz of how funny it is. But to any new player i definitely recommend Revenant literally any e-spec (it is not a hard class, it just need a bit of practice and you can fly) and of course ranger with soulbeast or condi druid. Where condi druid is easy cuz pets will tank everything.....
Engineer (Mechanic). One of the most friendly build for solo play and beyond (for the lazy:). That green mech does the job, and the mace and shield for the character.... is something I love.
I tried all the LI elite specs for open world difficulty, easiest one I have tried is a condition quickness Firebrand, it's almost meme at this point, facerolling easy. Kills an entire pack of mobs in record time, with AOE and self heal to boot. Still slightly less op in the open world than a power reaper though.
When it comes to Necro, and it's elite Specs, I actually, *personally* think that harbinger is much easier to play than Scourge, of course, using the right build and gear, I've come up with a strike damage based harbinger build that uses blood magic as one of the trait lines for a lot of survivability, mainly from Blood Bank, now using the Soul Reaping trait line offers a decent boost to this build's DPS, but it comes at the cost of the massive survivability Blood Bank offers, so I wouldn't recommend it, but so far this build I came up with is surprisingly good in both solo PvE and PvP content and I've been using it non stop ever since I came up with it.
That's the beautiful part! Finding unique builds that work well for you! Harbinger I suppose I never dipped into survivability as a focus usually going the soul reaping route like you mentioned
Heh. If this is a ranking for core specs alone I agree. I remember having to delete my first character which was a human thief in exchange for a human necro since I simply can't survive with core thief in my journey towards level 80. This was in 2014 btw, so no mounts at all. Switching to the Necro was a godsend. Made GW2 so much easier and made the journey to level 80 so fun. The only problem I had was it's lack of mobility which I missed coming from a thief user, but I'll gladly exchange that for 2 health bars and minion tanks (minions werw so much beefier back in the day).
@CaffeinatedDad as you said, it is your opinion, you don't have equal experience in all classes, that is why we feel sometimes different. But there are facts, like Ranger and Engineer has MEDIUM health pool, not high! :) Thief can heal for doing damage. (crit trait-line) And guardians can protect themselves more effectively than an elementalist. So if you have to play properly for elementalist, do it with guardian too. ;) And thanks for contents!
Oh for sure this is biased from my opinion. Many players thrive as a guardian main whike at the same time they struggle for ele. Different strokes for different folks!
The best solo profession is the well-rounded Engineer. It can tank, heal, dps just about anything -- Mechanist just takes the Engineer to a whole new level of "I can solo EVERYTHING". Ranger is good at 2nd place. The problem with Necro is it lacks direct damage which makes them useless against mobs that are resistant to condition damage -- ANet's solution to this problem is the Reaper. Even though the Necro has the largest health pool and shroud, it struggle in healing itself backup -- ANet's solution to this is the Scourge. The Warrior as 3rd is weird because it has the worst survivability compare to the Guardian. The Guardian is another well-rounded profession and there's a reason why MediGuardian exists. So IMO, the top 3 would be Engineer, Ranger, and Guardian respectively. The worst one IMO is the Revenant.
Title should be changed to reflect core professions imo. Herald and vindicator have some of the highest if not THE highest solo potential in game. It’s true that core rev is a bit lacking, but the title feels pretty misleading. Love the content by the way, just an observation.
I have commented before on your videos about this topic, I have to say that I agree and disagree with your list from my own perspective. For me: 9) Elementalist | I just can't do it, every time I play ele I just end up looking at downed state. Every time, even with normal mobs. I feel like my armour is just paper. 8) Guardian | I used to find Guardian to be less weak than Ele, but only marginally. However I have recently been trying cele FB and I can say that this build is absolutely bonkers, I was literally able to solo the Chak Queen in Auric Basin which I have rarely been able to stay alive for on previous builds. The healing and the tomes with cele (and Staff / Axes - Torch) is just absolutely nuts. I am loving this build for world content (although it can be somewhat boring because of the less offence, and being defensive removes basically all offense). This build is the closest to a "Paladin" I have come across. 7) Thief | This is sort of down with Guard and Ele, but because I don't find the playstyle that enjoyable I haven't really bothered to try. 6) Ranger | I don't play Ranger so I haven't really tried to get it tankier. I know the pet helps but I find it boring and so I go down a lot. 5) Revenant | This is one of the most disappointing, there was 1 build back with the old torment runes that made this class unkillable however when they nerfed it, it's just not the same. There are ways to build it for tankiness but it's kinda 'eh'. 4) Mesmer | Every spec outside of Mirage is always so squishy for me, but holy crap is Mirage a powerhouse. If you get those dodging right it's an absolute menace for survivability and used to do pretty good damage. 3) Engineer | Scrapper is just a god of survivability with the barrier and with the Mechanist, well there is a reason you see a lot of mechs around. 2) Warrior | Until I tried the Cele Firebrand, the tankiest spec in the game was spellbreaker. Seriously the current hammer spellbreaker for open world is just a fucking menace. You have axe axe for the damage, the spec oozes breakbar damage and CC on hammer and every 2 seconds with good timing you have full counter which can cheeze so many mechanics. Honestly I was able to solo so much with this spec that I just couldnt' with anything else (until cele fb). 1) Necromancer | Reaper was just... *chefs kiss*, what more can I say about this powerhouse of survivability. What other class can boast glass cannon zerker stats and still be tanky af. I find scourge harder than this because of no shroud (and the sand things are repetitive to cast) and harbinger because of no shroud, but Reaper is just so freaking good. Anyway, that's my 5c
Favorite open world build is Marshals/Cele Weaver with restoration signet and sword dagger. Decent damage. Incredible self heal, good stun breaks, lots of dodges, and just a load of fun to play once mastered. I never get tired of it.
This is tough to relate to the uninitiated but yeah "The Right Build Can Make all the Difference" 2:35 I couldn't agree more, in fact I swapped mains from ranger to necro then to revenant (on my restarted account) because Alacrity Renegade is meant for 5-10 man dungeons but it has so much mobility and evades that it feels like you're actually fighting instead of trading damage Alacrity Renegade is a bad build now since celestial has been taking over in the meta but my renegade was my workhorse for so long and still is, and now Lord Hizen is pushing rev to the top of the leaderboards
Deadeye is infinitely better than daredevil. Easy boon generation, recharging utility skills by killing marked mobs, access to two stealths on demand with elite skill cantrip, combined with shadow arts traitline give it great venoms sustain. Sure, specter is easier, but daredevil is kinda a joke. Even Hizen agrees.
Ive tried a few times in the past to get into GW2 because I like so much about it. I bounce off because I keep getting absolutely wrecked in openworld solo. Im not sure what exactly im doing wrong but ill look up a "invincible open world build" gear it and practice a bit, then go try it and get pink misted just trying to get hero points.
No wonder I still have ZERO idea as to what I'm doing even after SIX years of playing. I started out with a guardian, then I moved on to a thief. I'm glad I'm starting as a necromancer this time. I've always liked how light armor looked in this game, and since the elementalist is the equivalent of invoker in Dota 2 to me and the mesmer is a little too weak for my taste, the necromancer was a no-brainer. Both decision-wise and gameplay-wise.
In my humble opinion, my own list for core-specs would be: Thief > Elementalist > Revenant > Engineer > Guardian > Mesmer > Warrior > Ranger > Necromancer
I think we can agree rough abouts the easiest ones for this. I've always had difficulty with guardian given how squishy it can be but perhaps I'm not providing the right build?
@@CaffeinatedDad In my humble take, playing only since January-2022 and around 70/80% of that time with a Guardian, I managed to survive some tough situations (btw, I can add that for some odd reason, I survive better when playing Core instead of any Specialization), but then again, can't be compared to a Necromancer or a Ranger.
Ngl I plan on playing this game, and I am very fond with classes that revolve around controlling npc to fight for me, so classes such as necromancer and ranger well probably be my top pick, thanks
Thieves and Elementalists have by far the most grueling _early-game._ When you are squishy, lack the big damage, *and* hardly have the appropriate tools to take care of yourself.
@@CaffeinatedDad Actually messed around with my mid-level characters of both, today and yesterday. And indeed, I'd say around roughly 30-ish is when both become a _lot_ more comfortable.
Fun list. I personally would drop Elementalist to the bottom only because I have trouble playing them. My first level 80 character was my mesmer and still found that easier to solo than others, though to be fair, I've not given necro a full trial yet. Hmmm, time to make one!
Condi staff/staff mirage is one of the best OW specs u can play in any type pf content. Good at taging, good at farming, provides a ton of alacrity, so autogood at group content, great for soloing group content e.t.c e.t.c.
Guardian shocked me with how easy it was. I started with a Mesmer ->> Elementalist & didn't try a Guardian until my 6th\7th character. Power wasn't great at the beginning but the survivability was never an issue, personally. If anything, it was one it's greater strenghts.
I'm a new player of a week- started necro because everything said it was so easy (and to be fair, I didn't die on it until I wandered into a world boss fight), but then started a guardian and I'm having super fun. I understand it better than I did necro and while I died a bit the first day while still trying to figure out what was happening, since then? I've been fine and find it so easy. In my first week, I have guardian at 71 so far and necro is at...20.
@@ally2115 Good progress! Necro & Guardian are good choices for orienting the mind in the world. Heart of Thrones & Path of Fire really benefit both clases imo. 👍
True! Lord Hazen has significantly more in depth builds especially talking about elite specs! However a great portion of my viewers are ne players who may not have all the expansions or perhaps don't know the game as well!
Lord Hizen last ranking is completely a miss , he just take celestial and dont master class to his best , he is strong on open world but on fractal ..he only solo fractal boss when a level appear with all bug and no meca fixed
Considering this video is titled solo classes in open world and Lord Hizen's builds are for open world, I fail to see how Fractals are even remotely relevant......@@Nomyxia
@@Nomyxiahizen has a very good understanding of the intrinsics of the combat system. He doesnt just pick celestial, but understands the power of boons and tries to abuse the extra total stats celestial provides.
tbh i think it all depends on the dexterity of the player to press many skills or if they want a low intensity build cuz then it kinda becomes a bit muddy . all builds can work but how much work do you wanna put into it! believe it or not some people find staff/staff condi mirage a bit too much with button presses and that one is already so easy to play and you only need to target your enemy for it to play and spam dodges...I personally find celestial signet catalyst/tempest neigh unkillable by anything but if you dont want to press skills then ugh yeah no 25 might no boons no healing and same goes for ranger and necromancer...
True it definitely falls down to the player in terms of easy to difficult. I've debated that elementalist is easier than say guardian but I've also play elementalist like non stop for 2 years so...
While I think this list is definitely valid for those who make their own builds, and for leveling on the core class, if you push to the limit of what's possible in solo open world with an elite spec & optimized build there's incredible potential. For example, the 4 most survivable specs right now are vindicator (a revenant spec), scourge (a necro spec), deadeye (a thief spec), and mirage (a mesmer spec). 3 of those are near the bottom of your list! Check out videos by Lord Hizen to see them in action.
Vindicator being good at survivability??? I played Vindicator for a decent amount of time, it felt to me like a big DPS, high mobility glass cannon type of class, how exactly do you turn it into a high survivability spec?? That's interesting, where can I find this high survivability vindicator build?
@@randomdude2306 Here is mine. Works great. [&DQkOJQwrRS3cEdwRBhIrEisS1BHUEQYSyhHKEQcEAwTUEQYSKxIrEtQRBhIDWQA1AAUAAA==] Gear is Celestial stats, Mace+Axe/Staff. Runes of Tormenting. Sigils of Stamina and Energy. The key to the build is spamming Scavenger Burst, so you can dodge every 3-4s, more if you get kills on mobs. Imperial Impact spreads and renews boons, so as long as you keep dodging every few seconds, you evade, damage, heal, get barrier, and upkeep all your boons. Use skills 2, 3, 5, and 10 between dodges. Use Scav Burst on CD.
As a tempest main ill say thay scepter/dagger ele is cracked. So much damage not even veteran mobs can get a single hit in before theyre nuked. Switch to earth when enemies get to melee and crank overloads as needed and its a cakewalk
I had no trouble with guardian until I started Path of Fire. There seems to be almost nowhere where you can mov e around without pullling a ton of adds
I disagree that Guardian and Revenant being the most difficult. Elementalist is top hard class to play imo, in pratically all modes, followed by Thief, Engineer and Mesmer. Their elite specs change it by a ton (Mechanist for example makes it really easy), but if we're talking only core classes, I can't recommend any new player to play an Elementalist. Ranger and Necro I agree 100%, they are really easy and if you consider all game modes, the most flexible.
See whats interesting is that I feel like the elementalist is significantly stronger in open world then say a guard, but perhaps I'm a bit biased because I've played ele for so long
@@CaffeinatedDad in that subject I may be biased as well because in the games launch (and HoT), I had a feeling I never killed anything without pressing like 20 buttons
I agree. Guardian in particular can have a ton of healing, and they can be cheap to gear. Just going soldier gear, then fire condition sigils that have vitality (can't remember the name), make you a durable monster that puts out crazy DPS. Then go axe/sword or whatever main hand, and torch in the offhand. Bam. You can casually solo most content. I have been in situations where everyone goes down, and I'm still easily up, and reviving people. The only easier class IMO is Necromancer. Elementalist is great for a group. You don't even have to be good if you have just one other person, but not as much solo. Otherwise, just go staff for easy mode, and switch between water and fire mostly. Fire for DPS, water for healing. It is really hard to mess up even for a noob. But, in terms of a noob friendly solo? Nah. They have more buttons than any other class.
for me the mechanist with trailblazer set was the best "against all" combo. I'd put thief and ranger after, in that order. Ranger was my first character (as in every other game, no matter what) and it was fine, up until the crystal desert... The thief is super fun and dynamic, if you don't go like you are on drugs, it has great survavility and awesome damage capabilities too.
Meh, I have to disagree with some of the choices. As a Thief main since launch til EoD when I went Guardian. I couldn't believe how much easier life is when you are a Guardian.
I disagree with the revenant points. Bow + renegade + assassin has enough sustain and damage for any situation. And if you really need toughness, go dwarf. I even do bow + dwarf for pvp. Revenant has a lot of cards it can use for any situation so I think it's the best class for solo play
Perhaps I am biased because of my experience with revenant? I have found it harder to stay up, until really I took ventari lines for sustain. After that I had a lot easier time!
@@CaffeinatedDad yesterday, I was doing a hero point run and after getting 2 more skills on the Renegade spec, I was having a decent time at Crystal Desert. You just need some fast hands for it to work. Some skills on the Renegade spec act as a distraction so you can have an easier time with multiple enemies. As long as the mobs have no long or chain CC, I was staying pretty healthy most of the time. And kiting is key. Also, I'm almost running full celestial so I think it might affect my overall "staying power"
I just need to pick a class that has enough versatility for solo or group play and I keep rerolling after level 20 and I have like 9 character slots now and I don’t know what to play.
One of the 2 strongest and easy to play open world specs right now is cele d/d deadeye you face tank everything incredible dmg, incredible sustain tons of selfboons, easy mode solo legendaries. Daredevils on the other hand is poop tier with sustain, self buffing. Almost everything you said about thief is wrong. Deadeye > Specter > every other pooptier class/spec > daredevil. Where did you get so much incorrect info?
Yes, the Necro is still one of the most flexible open world classes. As said in the video, it always depends on the build and the players ability to play the class. The reason I play Necromancer is because I enjoy the survivability aspect (I'm not the best at the less tanky classes). I built my necromancer as a 'vitailty vacuum' and with the reaper spec, it's damn near impossible to kill me in open world content. (When I say 'vitality vacuum', I mean that nearly every skill I use gives me health, as long as I'm doing damage. I don't kill mobs as fast as others can, but I always leave the fight alive with a massive health pool and extra toughness from gear, also I never use minions with my build). However, everyone is different, so build your character in a way that suits you, as long as you're enjoying the game.
guardian CAN become ridiculously tanky, but they need to build into it more than other classes, whereas with Thief you can stack a few "heal on damage" things and become immortal in open world, Guardian actually needs to sacrifice some damage for survival.
I'm still trying to decide which is the more comfortable class to play, as a newish player. It's down to the Elementalist, Neco, Ranger and Rev. Lately more Elementalist and Rev because I'm tired of looking like a trendy with a Ranger or Neco. Especially the Neco players that have an entourage of minions following them. Neco is great, but for some reason I find it slow and sluggish. Whereas the Elementalist, though lacking in HP, I find to be more snappy and reactive. Hardest part to the Elementalist is hitting the right elemental key at the moment, but CD's videos have been a big help in understanding the class. Rev and Ranger I like, and they're about balanced in how they feel to me.
Even tough I like the video and idea behind, but honestly ranking guardian on last position might be subjective but tbh, that is a questionable pick. Just asking for interest, was guardian the first class you've leveled? That might influence the ranking? I would rank Guadian second behind ranger. Not Sure where you've find a lack of defences 😮 Especially when we're talking about casual leveling for new players, guardian is pretty easy and forgiving to players too. Especially compared to thief and revenant, which both are imho by far harder to level up to 80 😮
he learned none of the demonstrated specs, honestly. this montage is extremely laughable. man struggles to kill common mobs, doing around 0 damage and having 0 boons
My go to solo play build has always been a trapper/shortbow ranger! Usually staff/Druid off set for some good sustain and c/c and now even helps with bleeds
There is no way the Guardian is the weakest in solo play pve. My most OP specs for pve are guardian (firebrand), then necro (scourge), and then thief (daredevil). They never die. Then there's my mesmer (mirage) that absolutely shatters everthing, literally. These specs can take on 30+ fire djinns without sweating. 😂
I think mesmer belongs lower on this list. I've played Mesmer as my main since i started to play 9 years ago and I don't think it's a great solo PvE class. It's not weak, just more taxing if you make a mistake and if an enemy gets on top of you from a blindspot (or maguma sharpshooters) you die instantly, which gets annoying
List like this are subjective especially with casual being the main thing, but theif is amazing with its 500 evades with no cool downs., add daredevil with the extra evades your never gana die. But casuals won't be able to keep up. But the Ranger is number 1 in my book hands down. Even in down state you have self revive and a infinite hp pet with pet swaps. (Also idk why people say theif has low base hp when there's only 2 classes with more. Trait wise it doesn't get an extra 2000 like the engineer but base hp it's the same)
Interesting timing. and order I'll provide my list of the (in my opinion) best core professions to level from 1 to 80 in Open World while playing alone and with minimal gear (purchased by a few silvers every 20 levels or so). I've been in the game since the release and have around 10.7k hours of experience but my list is due at the beginning of 2023 I chose to rise manually 9 new toons to refresh my memories of older parts of the game; those were my impressions: Let me start saying that this doesn't rank professions once they are fullly leveled core 80 characters (that would be a different list), and that contrary to most I think that while leveling power builds are worse than condi ones except for a couple of cases. Also: crit chance, ferocity, condition duration, boon duration and armor are mostly irrelevant (along with runes and sigils) before you reach 80, because your crit chance and other values will be so low that doesn't worth using before the level cap. So my advice is: go for power, condition damage and vitality (carrion) or mix then as much as you can. Now the list: 9) (last) Thief. The problem is not the low base HP and mid armor of thieves, but the very limited amount of defenses and the lack of cleaving, which is placed mostly in short bow #4, which is rather expensive. You have plenty of ways to deal with regular mobs, but things as blind only last a 10% in bosses and running away is not enough. Thief is also a complex profession in terms of handling, and fighting vs PvE doesn't make players to learn how to use it. 8) Engineer. This profession is also rather complex to master, and while has plenty of access to combo fields and finishers and a large amount of varied tools, cc sources and raged attacks, is quite limited in weapon options and is not as tanky as other options. Good AoE damage and control, tho. 7) Revenant. High armor, mid base HP, the Revenant has easy mechanics and good unilities in the legends, but most of traitlines are weak and people usually focus in power Shiro builds which will lead them to their demise. Instead, the slower paced Jalis + Mallyx with condi weapons will be way tankier and provide much more chances to endure any solo fight. But without specs I'll put this profession low (despite being my main) because doesn't have good burst. 6) Elementalist. With low base HP and armor Ele initially feels weak, and is one of the professions that at the start I would recomend to gear with vitality stats, but don't be fooled: Ele has plenty of cc and strong AoE burst skills. Witn ele is easy to set cc, land plenty of burns and use air to flee from danger, water to recover or earth to tank. Leveling using dagger x 2 is fast and fun and it felt more powerfull than the three above. 5) Ranger. Ranger is one of the few professions which felt good leveled with either power or condi builds. If you go power, long bow and greatsword will cover you; if you want condis, short bow and axes will do fine. Ranger provides plenty of mobility, ground control with cc and varied traps, strong "panic buttons" to save you from lethal damage and strong pets to tank for you and deal good damage and/or cc. The only annoying thing is that you have to recruit those pets, so the optimal choices and the overall experience can vary based on your initial race and the maps you explore. 4) Necro. Necro heads the middle of the pack: the shroud works as a second HP and allows powerful burst of damage; the base HP is large and you have plenty of strong AoE cc tools and conditions and corrupts to even preven foes from reaching you. You can also go with minions as a meat barrier to tank for you. Overall is one of the strongest professions to start, and easier to play than most in the list. The reason I don't put necro higher is beacuse the three in the top are faster at killing things in the 1 to 80 race. 3) Guardian. At leveling, Guardian is a high risk - high reward choice. High armor but minimal HP, and most people falls in the trap of running power gear. Just don't. Mix vitality, condition damage and power, get a greatsword, a scepter and a torch, equip Purging Flames, Sword of Justice and Stand your Ground! and you're ready to go. Pull mobs with gs #5, land the flames, land the Spiritual Sword, spint to win with gs #3 and boom! Everytnig is dead. The reason is not the best is because against bosses your nukes have longer cooldowns than the two first in the list and it takes longer to deal with them. But is easy to play and to master. 2) Warrior. Power Warrior has really crazy damage burst, but oftenly feels squishy and I wouldn't recomend power gear untill you unlock the Bladesworn. Instead, my go to for a leveling Warrior is condi stats with hammerbow. The hammer ccs and deals fantastic cleave damage, whereas the long bow burns cced foes to ashes. Is like the Guardin, but with better cc and more spameable skills. And is stronger at range, also.Bull's Charge, Stomp, Blow, Earthshake your enemies and then Combust them to death. The whole game 1 to 80 using only two weapons... 1) Mesmer. Mesmer is the easiest, safest, most underrated weapon of mass destruction in early PvE GW2. As with the Warrior, you only need two weapons: greatsword and staff. You cc foes, up your clones, land your burst and crush most of the content without even being touched. Just use the typical Mirage build with Duel + Chaos and then either Inspiration for sustain or Domination for extra damage. You don't need to use a shatter F skill from 1 to 80. You don't ever need to known what the skills does: just dodge attacks, push skills of cooldowns and dance around your perplexed enemies intil they fall (which happens really faster with carrion stats). That's my two cents.
Has the revenant really fallen off that much for solo play? I've been away for awhile but when I was playing lots TB/Celestial Herald was my goto for soloing stuff like Fractal CMs and world bosses. It was to only class I was able to successfully solo the VB tetrad on. I know the torment rune nerf hurt it but seeing it at the bottom of a list of soloing classes just seems crazy to me.
@@pizzaaFAEN Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't sure sure since he talked about elite specs for other classes. The ranking makes a lot more sense now. Core revenant has always been weak since it was built with elite specs in mind.
i think it would be better to take this tier list to solo specialization, because most of the pve content you dont play core classes... i mean there are some good niche core builds, but as i sad most of the content you play a specialization ^^
With Guard and Rev Being among my 1st 3 toons when I began ele was the 1st I think Guard and Rev where the easiest in solo play ele being the worst out of all the 9 classes imo
That's close to my experience back in the day. Balance has shifted since, but of the eight core professions, I found elementalist to be the hardest to survive on by far. The downstate ele meme goes waaaaay back. Guardian... if you try a full glass raid-like build you're going to suffer, but it has the option to bring a lot of damage mitigation, reflection, and self-sustain if you choose traits, utilities, and weapons accordingly. I was surviving things on guardian that would kill most of my other characters (including my ranger and warrior), including being one of the professions I was soloing champs on back in 2012 and 2013.
Your list is completely off. It is not my experience at all. My reaper necro would die from 1-2 hits from everything after lvl80. Minions do little to no damage at all, and die way to easy. Solo it was nightmare to play. It was down more than elementalist. Guardian is super easy solo with basic build. I can manage every expansion boss very easy with it. Not to mention anything in open world. Guardians elite specs makes it more squishy and makes it useful only in a group. But basic spec guard with all celestial gear is a proper tank. All my skills heal and/or remove conditions. No matter what I do and how attack, I constantly keep healing myself and others around me if there are any.
minion necro is one of the easiest way to never die, as the pets can heal you constantly and generate tons of barrier. pair this with a sword in main hand, and you have permanent maximized barrier
Funny I started with guardian for ~8years as my main and now my main is a necro, the only real reason I went to necro was DPS I could survive everything.....but I hit like an airsoft pellet :/
it look s like the engineer is the most boring class...i hope he gets a specialization where he builds an ironman armor during the combat and he gets into it.
guardian is the worst ? i mean, guardian is the most OP class in this game, it can do pretty much anything. If i had to recommend one class to new players it would be guardian.
I'm not saying guardian cannot perform in open world, quite the contrary! It's more so how difficult it is against tougher mobs in open world on your own!
@@CaffeinatedDad That's not what the title of your video indicates. Guards, especially FB with its tomes and cleave for mobs (most OW encounters are multi-mob events), offer phenomenal versatility to handle most OW content extremely well. WB is better/great for solo champs only. Champs are a small part of OW, and the build is less suited for other content, but still good. Even when playing solo, from my experience most times in OW you will run into other players when tackling content, which makes guards even more effective with their on demand support build it. I've played most classes, and I firmly would put guard as 2nd behind necro in all OW content, with ranger maybe tied with it. Revenants are in the same boat with their especs generating and sharing incredibly useful boons if you have any expacs.
The thing I find funny about this video, is he is gauging "soloing" as killing elites and vet mobs out in the world lol. If your build can't solo chakk queen HP, Balthazar HP, bloodsucker brood mother bat HP, caustic frog HP.. ect. Then your build is not a "soloer" any build can kill vets and elite mobs lol
Then the truly good solo builds can solo things like legendary bounties, I gauge my builds on these things.. all my builds can do these things, every class
I saw someone saying everything works fine on ow. I agree, but I started playing last month with a guardian and became a firebrand. I've never had such a tough time, it's squishy and the skills are so slow to cast, I don't know if it's me or I'm missing something
Firebrand is kind of a jack of all trades, but master of none. This means it's much more suited to group content vs solo content. If you're mostly playing solo, try switching to Willbender with Celestial gear for a much more enjoyable experience. Litany of Wrath is an unbelievable healing skill, and coupled with Relic of the Defender (which essentially will turn the F3 skill into another healing skill), you will have a ton of sustain and plenty of damage to handle most mobs. Run Sword/Torch with a Sigil of Bursting and whichever other sigil you would like (you can play whatever second weapon you want, but the optimal choice would be scepter to help keep your might uptime high). Radiance (2-2-1), Virtues (3-2-1), and Willbender (1-2-1). Full Celestial gear with Balthazaar runes. Skills you almost always use will be Litany of Wrath, Purging Flames, Sword of Justice, and Feel my Wrath. The last skill you can pick based on your preference, but I would suggest any of the following: Signet of Wrath (increases your damage), Signet of Judgement (gives you passive damage reduction and access to a stun break), or Bow of Truth (essentially a 3rd healing skill). If you feel like being a bit lazy, you can even swap Feel My Wrath for Signet of Courage for even more passive sustain and access to another healing skill. You could also use Heaven's Palm and/or Bane Signet to break defiance bars. The build is very easy to play, but still has a lot of room for skill expression and will still be challenging against very difficult content. Basically just use all of you F-skills off cooldown (specifically F1 is your highest priority skill and will refresh after every kill), then you can pretty much mash any of your other buttons to your hearts content. Torch 4, Sword 2, Purging Flames, Sword of Justice, and Feel My Wrath will be your next highest priorities, then you can use Sword 3 or Torch 5 and Sword 1 to fill in the gaps. Use Litany of Wrath every time you start to take noticeable damage, don't worry about wasting it as it is on a ridiculously low cooldown. Hope you enjoy if you make the switch 😊
@@DjNaste I wouldn't say FB fits the jack of all trades description because it really is quite good at several specific tasks thanks to its tomes focused on support, healing, and condition damage. It just can't do any two of those well simultaneously because of the way the pages are limited, so it excels only in group content that needs specific roles. 100% agree on celestial willbender, that build works wonders. After that I'd say core guardian can actually be pretty strong when built right, and FB and DH are just kinda sad to use when solo.
_Seven Months Ago_ _Mesmer at 6_ Really? R e a l l y? I barely get hit because of all the clones I make. It's like engineer turrets but better, a ranger pet that's less tedious. Also shines quite well with Full Celestial gear, making it a cinch for new players using a boost.
I wonder what the devs were smoking when they made the necro class, lets make a class with a huge basic hp pool and a secondary hp pool and give it minions that can tank for them. Also lets make it so that it has high dps, and make it op at giving aoe barriers... Then we have the elementalist lets give it a miniscule max hp make it so that for it to damage properly it needs to be in melee range while playing the piano like mozart and lets nerf it so that it doesnt get ahead in the damage department compared to the other professions... Because else the other professions whine. Because of this elementalists are more or less banned from raid content. I play ele main but I am strongly considering changing my main to necro instead.
eh. how can you be frustrated with "melee" ele these days? go pick a spear and get your catalyst rolling other everything (full ranged, good damage, boons, selfsustain). yes, it is harder to solo kill champions, but you can do that with both necro and ele
@@PhilosophicalSock Nah I just rolled a thief instead going dual pistols rolls everything. Got easy 20kdps by using auto attack on 3rd dual pistol skill. Its is funny how different the classes are, beat many challenges I got frustrated with while playing Ele without breaking a sweat. Then I grew bored of the game again will probably be back later when they drop more content.
@@vik2051 if you beat a challenge with clicking a couple of buttons - that one stops being a challenge at all. also there is a meme AFK guardian build who can only click 1 as a rotation. what "challenge" is that?
@@PhilosophicalSock Just found it funny how differently balanced the classes are. For the elementalist Anet made their mechanics complex their hp and armor set to the lowest. They are suppose to be the powerhouse of dps due to their tradeoffs but they only able to deliver that high dps if they hit the manage to hit that mozart symphony combination while at the same time playing the game in hardmode due to their low health. I haven't played that much with the spear didn't like it all that much but catalyst suits it fine I just don't like how Anet designed the classes, I think all classes should have the same Base HP and Armor if their dps output is the same. Having to play perfect while hardly getting rewarded for it and then extremely punished for switching to the wrong element by accident like -50% dps is not very good gamedesign, when other classes like the thief can get a consistent DPS of 20k by the use of 2 skills. When I play I'm going to play my thief or any other broken combo until they either fix the damage output of the ele or balances the HP/Def better.
@@vik2051 balancing is a thing that had been discussed since 2012. and people never were happy with it :D i think, there are no any MMOs where players are 100% happy anyway I personally have my catalyst/weaver at around 20k HP and surviving just fine. heck, even my dps guardian who had 11k HP some time ago - he now has same 20k while being all round berserker. meta changes, your stats do change as well. better accept it as it is. because balancing will never be 100% accurate
I noticed if your game play is your solo spec for that class a few you have are running the wrong healing trait that makes a big diff in survivability. Liek your Guardian WAAAY wrong one.
Assuming I don't also have it wrong, I wanted to point out for others who may be reading this just how amazing Litany of Wrath is. With 33% of damage dealt returned as healing for 6 seconds, it's effectively a full heal + 6s invulnerability which works by playing as aggressively as possible. Where most healing skills are a DPS loss, this one lets you go HAM! The 20 second cooldown is also quite low for such a powerful ability.
This is why Guild Wars 2 is so good, you think a profession is 'bad' yet I think its amazing, but it all comes down to playstyle and build, and no one is ever really wrong and every profession has its place
@@CaffeinatedDadI see you using zeal+virtues on guardian which is a very glass cannon setup while using death magic on necromancer which significantly boosts its sustain. If youre comparing them based on survivabilty, wouldnt it be expected that you would build either all of them as glass cannon as possible or as respectively tanky? Why didnt you use valor for guardian with meditations, yet use death magic with minions on necromancer? By what standard did you determine the builds per class?
As others have pointed out before me, after watching this I gotta say that there's quite a bit of misinformation in this video, and to make things worse, it might put players off professions that are actually great for soloing stuff. Every profession has tools to make it excellent against harder content in open world, and tier lists like this one don't cut it. The clickbaity title doesnt help either. People gotta stop calling anything "best" or "worst" because its a claim you cant make. Guardian (including core guardian) is one of the easiest solo specs if you build it right for example, and the reason why you might find it difficult is that the build used isn't great. When I look at the builds you used in the footage in the background, I can immediately see that there are questionable choices made in terms of skills and traits for PvE... Not using litany of wrath on guardian and not playong condi core guardian being one of them.
Respectfully, I don't think you did watch the video, or perhaps you didn't hear what was said. I specifically say at the beginning that all specs, when built right, can do incredibly well! Guardian being no different! Then, I follow up with a statement that this is my opinion and my experience! Anyone who watches can understand a difference of opinion because we are all different players. For example, I love the elementalist in the open world, and other players have commented that they had difficulty playing it. Point being is that players should always choose for themselves what works for them, and sometimes that comes through trial and error. Thanks!
@@CaffeinatedDad I'm aware that you said those things in the beginning, but the framing of the video is different. It is not exclusive to this video that creators claim to have "the best and/or worst for OW/Raids/WvW/Whatever", which is not a claim you (or any other creator) can make. My critique mainly goes towards that framing (i mean, look at the title of the video), and the implications that has for people that watch the video. If one doesn't pay very close attention to what you say, the expectation is that someone with profound knowledge of builds for all professions in PvE made this video. The comments below are a reflection of that. This isn't meant to sound condescending or anything and is in no way unique to your channel. However, I think we as content creators should be very clear as to what knowledge we really have and which content we can or cannot deliver. At the very least, we should frame it adequately, and this is an example of that not being the case. If the title was something like "my personal/subjective ranking/tier list for CORE professions in open world", then it'd be a better reflection of what the video contains. Finally, I understand why creators do this, especially if one depends on it financially in a competition. But if it leads to titles/thumbnails/videos being misleading and deceptive, I think we have a problem.
Willbender is the most disgusting class ever wdymmmmm. You can facetank everything on a full berserker build. Have to adopt more of an offtank playstyle though, endless evade frames, stun breaks, boon generation, self alac, and even heavy dbreak makes it a monster. A selfish monster.
Okay, I see the bias now. From myself and from Caff lol Personally I'd reverse this whole list, but I prefer high apm classes with a lot going on and high skill ceilings. Still enjoyed the vid xD
Honestly I'd prefer having a party to play with but that doesn't really feel like a thing in guild wars 2... so I mostly play minion master necro to pretend I have friends. Ihave personally found the easiest classes to play solo as Necro, Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer, and Guardian in that order. the key to solo mesmer is shatter spam builds with the passive to heal per clone shattered and and passive heal per clonecreated. You can solo champion level enemies fairly easy.
Sorry i've only watched a couple and then turned off. First of all, core specs? Wth who even plays them. You're gonna struggle playing them and you are supposed to! due to power creep. But! not even removing this weird thing from the menu we have: - guardian who destroys everything within sight with additional damage from symbols as well as receiving 10% damage reduction from light aura you get from them. Want lazy play? Cover yourself with light aura, signet damage reduction + protection boon and use litany of wrath when you feel low and you won't even have to time your aegis at all; - revenant. Core destruction spec gives you "battle scars" that are basically passive heals during combat. + you can take additional trait there for even more heals through vulnerability which all of you power weapons (sword, greatsword) apply. Dwarf legend gives you 20% defence passively through spinning hammers and 50% defence on demand (F2 skill). Bascially your specs are Invocation, Destruction and Retribution, all giving you boost to damage AND to defence/healing. You heal on using every skill (invocation), you heal passively (battle scars), you heal attacking with 1 weaponskill (battle scars upgrade), you have toughness buff as percentage of power (retribution)... and you have 2 healing skills... if there is an overperforming core class, this is the one. Dude i soloed 3 players at once on CORE REV in PvP where enemies actually have brains and all of your skills are nerfed into oblivion. Basically, the only problem here is that you never cared to read this thing properly. And yes you're saying "there are builds that help you survive etc" but ahem... the stuff i just mentioned, it's full berserker with minor tweaks in specializations... which you don't even have to do if you play well. Thanks for the video on gw2 though! Love the fact that the content exists even though i disagree with some takes ^^
First I take no offense! I specifically looked at it from this angle as many of my audience are newer or casual players. Many of which haven't committed to purchasing expansions or having access to all elite specs. And I never say it's impossible to solo most content with the core specs, simply that some have a tougher time compared to others. Also thank you for your kind words!
But what are you supposed to BE solo'ing in this game besides events and map completion? You can't clear dungeons solo, can't do fractals solo, fuck man, even group events can't be done solo.
This list is trash. The heck you put Guardian #9 ? It has everything you need. Damage, Heals, Aegis , the virtues itself is strong and you can use spec to increase the values like reset Virtue 1, etc. your reason is that guardian has lower hp and armor but never mention the traits and skills which give more value like Aegis block 100% of the dmg. + lots of other classes that has lower hp and armor but not much defensive traits n skills ... hardest to easiest: Elementalist -> lots of skills rotation spam, lowest HP Thief -> Initiative management, low HP, high APM needed Mesmer -> Hard to manage clones (decide to shatter or not, etc) Engineer -> lots of skills rotation management needed, turret placement, etc Revenant -> albeit survivable but energy management is crucial Warrior -> better bit than revenant cuz no energy management needed just press all your abilities like a true berserker. Guardian -> better than warrior because lots of heal and boons Necrom -> lifesteal, got pet but can't control it Ranger -> pet tank everything while u run around from afar.
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As someone who is thinking about getting into GW2, it is baffling to me why a class called "Guardian" is lacking defenses. Of all things.
Guardian is protecting allies but not themselves... lol that's a poor excuse
@@CaffeinatedDad Or you are doing it wrong. Saying Guardian lacks "toughness" is just factually incorrect. It has the same armor as warrior and revenant (heavy) and all classes have the same base toughness you can modify with gear stats.
It does sound like this is a L2P issue on you personal part.
@@RyanApplegatePhDGuardians have ridiculously low HP and their defences mainly come from defensive weapons (mace, shield, hammer, focus).
The Guardian has skills to keep others alive and honestly, it was the most common sight seeing a fallen Guardian (excluding mine) before a boss.
Guardians have a lot of defense. What r u talking about
Im talking about what was said in the video.@@youtubeistryingtocensorme
In my opinion, Vindicator with cele gear, shortbow + gs + evasion relic and stamina runes is hands down the best for open world
Can solo pretty much every mob, never have to worry about my HP getting low.
Can facetank everything.
If i get low, jump & heal & repeat
And on top of that the dmg output paired with perma boons is still good
Most fun class imo
what is gs? sorry i'm new.
@@moztyypinkygreatsword bro!
If we're talking core builds then yeah I agree necro takes the spot. However, when you include elite specs into the equation... And! Keeping with the theme of a casual player, meaning no fancy tricks and block damage mitigation and precise evading and whatnot, I believe that the soulbeast takes the spot easily.
Why? Because soulbeast pets can never die. If your bear gets downed for some reason (really tough champion or legendary), merge with the bear and then immediately release, boom bear is full HP again. And you can repeat this forever. I really think no other build comes even close to the ease of this.
It is still die, but can revive in a few second. Also you will get the aggro, and bear not get it back every time. I have better results with drakes and hounds, but now polar bear stun too. (and you have invulnerable while merged ;) )
@@enkeny Yes but you can easily re-aggro if you're using longbow.
I started playing in june as a revinant main. I played through all of the base game heart of thorns all the living world and path of fire so far. I chose the renegade as my first elete spec and ive really had a much easier time since getting the short bow and using the summon skills to distract enemies while unloading a barage of shots. I just got my griffon and am working on my skyscale. 100 percent recomend
Any spec can be great in open world! This video was more so covering the core specs and what they can do! I E seen deadeyes absolutely slap!
This list seems strange to me. I was able to solo bounty monsters as a reaper, berserker, power willbender and as a vindicator. As a herald or condi firebrand I get destroyed for some reason
I suppose it falls down to personal pr3ferencw and skill to effectively decipher the true best!
@@CaffeinatedDad nah it just trash. personal or not, the combat still same. same skills ,same everything.
as a thief main i will say if u get into the the class its true u have to be VERY carefull to how much damage you intake but if u use a shadow step before going into the fight and then when u get low use the hide in the shadows skill go back to your enemy and use your backstab ability it will do double damage to your regular attacks
making them have vulnerability for 5.125 seconds to kill your target within the timespan make sure you have enough precision cause the critical strike is the most important part of this class ive done 12575 dps on one hit because all my armor and gems go into precision but if u go into daredevil its a high dps, moble class good one to start with
thank you for telling people about the thief class to all are new people starting out. 💗
Oh for sure! I love playing my thief and it's one I want to do more often especially because I have some rp ish builds I'd like to showcase lol
Hmm, strange. I watched a Willbender solo, in melee range, the hero point giant spider south of Auric Basin with ease, while I struggled with Daredevil. Eventually, I pulled it off after many tries, but it required a lot of correct timing - which felt like playing Dark Souls game.
Oh for sure the elite specs add extra survivability and defenses, however the majority of my channel focuses on new players to gw2, as such I mainly look at the core specs to judge this ranking off of
the list is trash
So, as far as guardians go, I could say you are just plain wrong but here's an explanation as to why. Regardless of the elite spec you choose, guardians, unlike many other classes don't have inherent (Passive so to speak) defenses. BUT they have access to a ton of reactive defenses, namely in the form of Aegis boon. For inexperienced players, yes guardian might look frail. Meanwhile for veterans, guardian is one of the, if not the most broken class when it comes to open world!
And for revenant... well I'll just say that a full celestial vindi is the tankiest build I've ever played.
I`m a huge fan of playing "Monster Hunter" in Guild Wars 2.
I like my Reaper Minion Master with as much minions around me as possible, this makes solo life so much easier in GW2. My second beloved solo class is the Power or Celestial Mechanist both with mace plus pistol or shield.
I'm a bit confused. You're a fan of playing "Monster Hunter", a game where you mostly hunt monsters by yourself, so you like GW2 classes that can summon minions?
I think I misunderstood something 😂
@@carlosmspk "I`m a huge fan of playing "Monster Hunter" in Guild Wars 2." ... this only means, I like to play solo in GW2 and even as a Reaper with minions I`m still playing solo, same when I would play a Ranger with his pet or a Mechanist with his mech.
I have had the most success in open world with celestial vindicator + demon, with mace and axe ofc.
Imagine my surprise when I see Guardian is supposedly the hardest to play solo with, when I'm a new player who started a Guardian and got them to 80 first 😂 Guess my other leveling runs are gonna be a cakewalk!
This is of course opinion based! Some people also say the elementalist is hardest to solo with!
Guardian is easy. Ele, mesmer and even warrior are harder imho
Guardian was my first class and have have complet world map when game first came out and i'm a solo player all the way.
Even i had very hard time understanding the mechanics of the stats of armor etc. i had lots, but LOTS of fun with that class even years after!
I simply say, depends on people what they like : )
True this list was heavily biases on my opinion and experience. Perhaps I'm just not playing guardian right?
@@CaffeinatedDad so much I wanted back then to learn elementalist class, but it was not for me😞..
Last X-Pac, after 8 years after first try, I switched to Catalyst and I really understood the mechanics and completed the X-Pac with!!♥️ .
Now with this new X-Pac I'm back with guardian 🥰.
Btw I liked very much your video, as per always you do a great job!!💪😊
Keep that up that great work!
Deadeye, Mirage, Herald, Vindicator and Mechanist are hands down the best open world elites when used with celestial gear and traited appropriately, Willbender also gets a honorable mention.
Oh for sure most specs have versatility and of course celes stats and they will do fine!
Try quickness condition firebrand, hits so quick with TP gear and hit a ton.
I think any build with cele stats or marauder will do just fine in the Open World.
Some will do better than others, a reaper with cele stats can work in theory but it's going to waste most of the stats. The specs I mentioned really make use of every stat and have good hybrid weapon options making them amazingly strong for solo and small group content in the open world.
Recently i am playing only condi mirage for OW/Solo.
Classes i enjoy and find fun and easy are: Willbender both power and condi, Bladesword full berserker cuz it can sustain itself just good enough, condi Deadeye cuz of how funny it is.
But to any new player i definitely recommend Revenant literally any e-spec (it is not a hard class, it just need a bit of practice and you can fly) and of course ranger with soulbeast or condi druid. Where condi druid is easy cuz pets will tank everything.....
I've said for years: "Elementallist, you're either a God or Dead, not much in between."
I've been both God and noob and not in any particular order
Engineer (Mechanic). One of the most friendly build for solo play and beyond (for the lazy:). That green mech does the job, and the mace and shield for the character.... is something I love.
I tried all the LI elite specs for open world difficulty, easiest one I have tried is a condition quickness Firebrand, it's almost meme at this point, facerolling easy. Kills an entire pack of mobs in record time, with AOE and self heal to boot. Still slightly less op in the open world than a power reaper though.
When it comes to Necro, and it's elite Specs, I actually, *personally* think that harbinger is much easier to play than Scourge, of course, using the right build and gear, I've come up with a strike damage based harbinger build that uses blood magic as one of the trait lines for a lot of survivability, mainly from Blood Bank, now using the Soul Reaping trait line offers a decent boost to this build's DPS, but it comes at the cost of the massive survivability Blood Bank offers, so I wouldn't recommend it, but so far this build I came up with is surprisingly good in both solo PvE and PvP content and I've been using it non stop ever since I came up with it.
That's the beautiful part! Finding unique builds that work well for you! Harbinger I suppose I never dipped into survivability as a focus usually going the soul reaping route like you mentioned
Heh.
If this is a ranking for core specs alone I agree.
I remember having to delete my first character which was a human thief in exchange for a human necro since I simply can't survive with core thief in my journey towards level 80. This was in 2014 btw, so no mounts at all.
Switching to the Necro was a godsend. Made GW2 so much easier and made the journey to level 80 so fun. The only problem I had was it's lack of mobility which I missed coming from a thief user, but I'll gladly exchange that for 2 health bars and minion tanks (minions werw so much beefier back in the day).
@CaffeinatedDad as you said, it is your opinion, you don't have equal experience in all classes, that is why we feel sometimes different. But there are facts, like Ranger and Engineer has MEDIUM health pool, not high! :)
Thief can heal for doing damage. (crit trait-line)
And guardians can protect themselves more effectively than an elementalist. So if you have to play properly for elementalist, do it with guardian too. ;)
And thanks for contents!
Oh for sure this is biased from my opinion. Many players thrive as a guardian main whike at the same time they struggle for ele. Different strokes for different folks!
I just keep coming back to GW2. Thanks for the great content =).
Honestly, this completely depends upon the player and their play-style. Now, for me, myself and I, Necro, Engi, Mez, and Ranger.
The best solo profession is the well-rounded Engineer. It can tank, heal, dps just about anything -- Mechanist just takes the Engineer to a whole new level of "I can solo EVERYTHING". Ranger is good at 2nd place. The problem with Necro is it lacks direct damage which makes them useless against mobs that are resistant to condition damage -- ANet's solution to this problem is the Reaper. Even though the Necro has the largest health pool and shroud, it struggle in healing itself backup -- ANet's solution to this is the Scourge. The Warrior as 3rd is weird because it has the worst survivability compare to the Guardian. The Guardian is another well-rounded profession and there's a reason why MediGuardian exists. So IMO, the top 3 would be Engineer, Ranger, and Guardian respectively. The worst one IMO is the Revenant.
Title should be changed to reflect core professions imo. Herald and vindicator have some of the highest if not THE highest solo potential in game. It’s true that core rev is a bit lacking, but the title feels pretty misleading. Love the content by the way, just an observation.
True, perhaps I'll add core to the title so it's more focused
I just started GW2 yesterday. My first ever time playing any MMO, and I went with Thief profession and mainly use pistols or short bows
I have commented before on your videos about this topic, I have to say that I agree and disagree with your list from my own perspective.
For me:
9) Elementalist | I just can't do it, every time I play ele I just end up looking at downed state. Every time, even with normal mobs. I feel like my armour is just paper.
8) Guardian | I used to find Guardian to be less weak than Ele, but only marginally. However I have recently been trying cele FB and I can say that this build is absolutely bonkers, I was literally able to solo the Chak Queen in Auric Basin which I have rarely been able to stay alive for on previous builds. The healing and the tomes with cele (and Staff / Axes - Torch) is just absolutely nuts. I am loving this build for world content (although it can be somewhat boring because of the less offence, and being defensive removes basically all offense). This build is the closest to a "Paladin" I have come across.
7) Thief | This is sort of down with Guard and Ele, but because I don't find the playstyle that enjoyable I haven't really bothered to try.
6) Ranger | I don't play Ranger so I haven't really tried to get it tankier. I know the pet helps but I find it boring and so I go down a lot.
5) Revenant | This is one of the most disappointing, there was 1 build back with the old torment runes that made this class unkillable however when they nerfed it, it's just not the same. There are ways to build it for tankiness but it's kinda 'eh'.
4) Mesmer | Every spec outside of Mirage is always so squishy for me, but holy crap is Mirage a powerhouse. If you get those dodging right it's an absolute menace for survivability and used to do pretty good damage.
3) Engineer | Scrapper is just a god of survivability with the barrier and with the Mechanist, well there is a reason you see a lot of mechs around.
2) Warrior | Until I tried the Cele Firebrand, the tankiest spec in the game was spellbreaker. Seriously the current hammer spellbreaker for open world is just a fucking menace. You have axe axe for the damage, the spec oozes breakbar damage and CC on hammer and every 2 seconds with good timing you have full counter which can cheeze so many mechanics. Honestly I was able to solo so much with this spec that I just couldnt' with anything else (until cele fb).
1) Necromancer | Reaper was just... *chefs kiss*, what more can I say about this powerhouse of survivability. What other class can boast glass cannon zerker stats and still be tanky af. I find scourge harder than this because of no shroud (and the sand things are repetitive to cast) and harbinger because of no shroud, but Reaper is just so freaking good.
Anyway, that's my 5c
Favorite open world build is Marshals/Cele Weaver with restoration signet and sword dagger. Decent damage. Incredible self heal, good stun breaks, lots of dodges, and just a load of fun to play once mastered. I never get tired of it.
This is tough to relate to the uninitiated but yeah "The Right Build Can Make all the Difference" 2:35
I couldn't agree more, in fact I swapped mains from ranger to necro then to revenant (on my restarted account) because Alacrity Renegade is meant for 5-10 man dungeons but it has so much mobility and evades that it feels like you're actually fighting instead of trading damage
Alacrity Renegade is a bad build now since celestial has been taking over in the meta but my renegade was my workhorse for so long and still is, and now Lord Hizen is pushing rev to the top of the leaderboards
Deadeye is infinitely better than daredevil. Easy boon generation, recharging utility skills by killing marked mobs, access to two stealths on demand with elite skill cantrip, combined with shadow arts traitline give it great venoms sustain. Sure, specter is easier, but daredevil is kinda a joke. Even Hizen agrees.
Ive tried a few times in the past to get into GW2 because I like so much about it. I bounce off because I keep getting absolutely wrecked in openworld solo. Im not sure what exactly im doing wrong but ill look up a "invincible open world build" gear it and practice a bit, then go try it and get pink misted just trying to get hero points.
I have a warrior build on my channel that functions incredible well tons of sustain!
@@CaffeinatedDad The Core build from 7 months ago?
@@Fuhzix th-cam.com/video/oxgYjA8AUds/w-d-xo.htmlsi=SHAnG9X2QZyO5twn this corre warrior video!
@@CaffeinatedDad Will absolutely give it a try thank you
Hmm its weird. Im also fairly new, now 70+ mastery and i didnt have any difficulties in open world with necro. Maybe depends on the class
No wonder I still have ZERO idea as to what I'm doing even after SIX years of playing. I started out with a guardian, then I moved on to a thief. I'm glad I'm starting as a necromancer this time. I've always liked how light armor looked in this game, and since the elementalist is the equivalent of invoker in Dota 2 to me and the mesmer is a little too weak for my taste, the necromancer was a no-brainer. Both decision-wise and gameplay-wise.
It's funny because GW2 does a great job at letting you play alts where and when you want to. Bad part? Indecision
Bladesworn Warrior is the best for solo play in my opinion. You can solo anything.
In my humble opinion, my own list for core-specs would be:
Thief > Elementalist > Revenant > Engineer > Guardian > Mesmer > Warrior > Ranger > Necromancer
I think we can agree rough abouts the easiest ones for this. I've always had difficulty with guardian given how squishy it can be but perhaps I'm not providing the right build?
@@CaffeinatedDad
In my humble take, playing only since January-2022 and around 70/80% of that time with a Guardian, I managed to survive some tough situations (btw, I can add that for some odd reason, I survive better when playing Core instead of any Specialization), but then again, can't be compared to a Necromancer or a Ranger.
hope you're doing well, what are you using for your game to be so impactful or more emphasized impact on abilities and such?
Ngl I plan on playing this game, and I am very fond with classes that revolve around controlling npc to fight for me, so classes such as necromancer and ranger well probably be my top pick, thanks
Hey no problem! Necromancer and ranger are both great picks!
Thieves and Elementalists have by far the most grueling _early-game._ When you are squishy, lack the big damage, *and* hardly have the appropriate tools to take care of yourself.
Agreed! Once you get through the earlier leveling experience and get some utility skills you end up doing sooo much better!
@@CaffeinatedDad Actually messed around with my mid-level characters of both, today and yesterday. And indeed, I'd say around roughly 30-ish is when both become a _lot_ more comfortable.
Fun list. I personally would drop Elementalist to the bottom only because I have trouble playing them. My first level 80 character was my mesmer and still found that easier to solo than others, though to be fair, I've not given necro a full trial yet. Hmmm, time to make one!
Condi staff/staff mirage is one of the best OW specs u can play in any type pf content. Good at taging, good at farming, provides a ton of alacrity, so autogood at group content, great for soloing group content e.t.c e.t.c.
Power reaper is well known for it's ow strenght, but can struggle at soloing chalanging content.
Guardian shocked me with how easy it was. I started with a Mesmer ->> Elementalist & didn't try a Guardian until my 6th\7th character. Power wasn't great at the beginning but the survivability was never an issue, personally. If anything, it was one it's greater strenghts.
I'm a new player of a week- started necro because everything said it was so easy (and to be fair, I didn't die on it until I wandered into a world boss fight), but then started a guardian and I'm having super fun. I understand it better than I did necro and while I died a bit the first day while still trying to figure out what was happening, since then? I've been fine and find it so easy. In my first week, I have guardian at 71 so far and necro is at...20.
@@ally2115 Good progress! Necro & Guardian are good choices for orienting the mind in the world. Heart of Thrones & Path of Fire really benefit both clases imo. 👍
Watch Lord Hizen's newest tier list video, pick any class on his Legendary tier, use his build and WIN
True! Lord Hazen has significantly more in depth builds especially talking about elite specs! However a great portion of my viewers are ne players who may not have all the expansions or perhaps don't know the game as well!
Lord Hizen last ranking is completely a miss , he just take celestial and dont master class to his best , he is strong on open world but on fractal ..he only solo fractal boss when a level appear with all bug and no meca fixed
Considering this video is titled solo classes in open world and Lord Hizen's builds are for open world, I fail to see how Fractals are even remotely relevant......@@Nomyxia
That just takes the fun out of the game
@@Nomyxiahizen has a very good understanding of the intrinsics of the combat system. He doesnt just pick celestial, but understands the power of boons and tries to abuse the extra total stats celestial provides.
tbh i think it all depends on the dexterity of the player to press many skills or if they want a low intensity build cuz then it kinda becomes a bit muddy . all builds can work but how much work do you wanna put into it! believe it or not some people find staff/staff condi mirage a bit too much with button presses and that one is already so easy to play and you only need to target your enemy for it to play and spam dodges...I personally find celestial signet catalyst/tempest neigh unkillable by anything but if you dont want to press skills then ugh yeah no 25 might no boons no healing and same goes for ranger and necromancer...
True it definitely falls down to the player in terms of easy to difficult. I've debated that elementalist is easier than say guardian but I've also play elementalist like non stop for 2 years so...
While I think this list is definitely valid for those who make their own builds, and for leveling on the core class, if you push to the limit of what's possible in solo open world with an elite spec & optimized build there's incredible potential. For example, the 4 most survivable specs right now are vindicator (a revenant spec), scourge (a necro spec), deadeye (a thief spec), and mirage (a mesmer spec). 3 of those are near the bottom of your list! Check out videos by Lord Hizen to see them in action.
This is the way.
Vindicator being good at survivability??? I played Vindicator for a decent amount of time, it felt to me like a big DPS, high mobility glass cannon type of class, how exactly do you turn it into a high survivability spec?? That's interesting, where can I find this high survivability vindicator build?
@@randomdude2306 Here is mine. Works great.
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Gear is Celestial stats, Mace+Axe/Staff. Runes of Tormenting. Sigils of Stamina and Energy. The key to the build is spamming Scavenger Burst, so you can dodge every 3-4s, more if you get kills on mobs. Imperial Impact spreads and renews boons, so as long as you keep dodging every few seconds, you evade, damage, heal, get barrier, and upkeep all your boons. Use skills 2, 3, 5, and 10 between dodges. Use Scav Burst on CD.
@@randomdude2306vindi is veeery unkillable. If you haven't found by now, search for Lord Hizen's build, as OP mentioned!
As a tempest main ill say thay scepter/dagger ele is cracked. So much damage not even veteran mobs can get a single hit in before theyre nuked. Switch to earth when enemies get to melee and crank overloads as needed and its a cakewalk
I had no trouble with guardian until I started Path of Fire. There seems to be almost nowhere where you can mov e around without pullling a ton of adds
Path of Fire has some interesting mobs that can deal tons of damage very fast. Their HPs are far easier however
I disagree that Guardian and Revenant being the most difficult. Elementalist is top hard class to play imo, in pratically all modes, followed by Thief, Engineer and Mesmer. Their elite specs change it by a ton (Mechanist for example makes it really easy), but if we're talking only core classes, I can't recommend any new player to play an Elementalist. Ranger and Necro I agree 100%, they are really easy and if you consider all game modes, the most flexible.
See whats interesting is that I feel like the elementalist is significantly stronger in open world then say a guard, but perhaps I'm a bit biased because I've played ele for so long
@@CaffeinatedDad in that subject I may be biased as well because in the games launch (and HoT), I had a feeling I never killed anything without pressing like 20 buttons
I agree. Guardian in particular can have a ton of healing, and they can be cheap to gear. Just going soldier gear, then fire condition sigils that have vitality (can't remember the name), make you a durable monster that puts out crazy DPS. Then go axe/sword or whatever main hand, and torch in the offhand. Bam. You can casually solo most content. I have been in situations where everyone goes down, and I'm still easily up, and reviving people.
The only easier class IMO is Necromancer.
Elementalist is great for a group. You don't even have to be good if you have just one other person, but not as much solo. Otherwise, just go staff for easy mode, and switch between water and fire mostly. Fire for DPS, water for healing. It is really hard to mess up even for a noob. But, in terms of a noob friendly solo? Nah. They have more buttons than any other class.
the revenant one is weird lol, rev(its elite specs anyways) are probably the best solo chars out there for open world and its not even close
for me the mechanist with trailblazer set was the best "against all" combo. I'd put thief and ranger after, in that order. Ranger was my first character (as in every other game, no matter what) and it was fine, up until the crystal desert... The thief is super fun and dynamic, if you don't go like you are on drugs, it has great survavility and awesome damage capabilities too.
Heal scourge. Big survivability. Sucks on dmg but works.
If you sacrifice some damage for sustain, most builds do incredibly well!
Meh, I have to disagree with some of the choices. As a Thief main since launch til EoD when I went Guardian. I couldn't believe how much easier life is when you are a Guardian.
True it's a matter of perspective, however this video focuses heavily on the Core specs versus the elite specializations
I disagree with the revenant points. Bow + renegade + assassin has enough sustain and damage for any situation. And if you really need toughness, go dwarf. I even do bow + dwarf for pvp. Revenant has a lot of cards it can use for any situation so I think it's the best class for solo play
Perhaps I am biased because of my experience with revenant? I have found it harder to stay up, until really I took ventari lines for sustain. After that I had a lot easier time!
@@CaffeinatedDad yesterday, I was doing a hero point run and after getting 2 more skills on the Renegade spec, I was having a decent time at Crystal Desert. You just need some fast hands for it to work. Some skills on the Renegade spec act as a distraction so you can have an easier time with multiple enemies. As long as the mobs have no long or chain CC, I was staying pretty healthy most of the time. And kiting is key. Also, I'm almost running full celestial so I think it might affect my overall "staying power"
I just need to pick a class that has enough versatility for solo or group play and I keep rerolling after level 20 and I have like 9 character slots now and I don’t know what to play.
Ele more solo friendly than Rev? Total madness...
One of the 2 strongest and easy to play open world specs right now is cele d/d deadeye you face tank everything incredible dmg, incredible sustain tons of selfboons, easy mode solo legendaries. Daredevils on the other hand is poop tier with sustain, self buffing.
Almost everything you said about thief is wrong. Deadeye > Specter > every other pooptier class/spec > daredevil.
Where did you get so much incorrect info?
Is the necromancer still really strong in solo open world? Given it has been eleven months since the upload.
Yes, the Necro is still one of the most flexible open world classes. As said in the video, it always depends on the build and the players ability to play the class. The reason I play Necromancer is because I enjoy the survivability aspect (I'm not the best at the less tanky classes). I built my necromancer as a 'vitailty vacuum' and with the reaper spec, it's damn near impossible to kill me in open world content. (When I say 'vitality vacuum', I mean that nearly every skill I use gives me health, as long as I'm doing damage. I don't kill mobs as fast as others can, but I always leave the fight alive with a massive health pool and extra toughness from gear, also I never use minions with my build). However, everyone is different, so build your character in a way that suits you, as long as you're enjoying the game.
guardian CAN become ridiculously tanky, but they need to build into it more than other classes,
whereas with Thief you can stack a few "heal on damage" things and become immortal in open world,
Guardian actually needs to sacrifice some damage for survival.
I'm still trying to decide which is the more comfortable class to play, as a newish player. It's down to the Elementalist, Neco, Ranger and Rev. Lately more Elementalist and Rev because I'm tired of looking like a trendy with a Ranger or Neco. Especially the Neco players that have an entourage of minions following them. Neco is great, but for some reason I find it slow and sluggish. Whereas the Elementalist, though lacking in HP, I find to be more snappy and reactive. Hardest part to the Elementalist is hitting the right elemental key at the moment, but CD's videos have been a big help in understanding the class. Rev and Ranger I like, and they're about balanced in how they feel to me.
Ranger. The Troll heal, two pets who grab agro, and if you get Unleashed you get a ranged 50%+ heal every ten seconds.
Even tough I like the video and idea behind, but honestly ranking guardian on last position might be subjective but tbh, that is a questionable pick. Just asking for interest, was guardian the first class you've leveled? That might influence the ranking? I would rank Guadian second behind ranger. Not Sure where you've find a lack of defences 😮 Especially when we're talking about casual leveling for new players, guardian is pretty easy and forgiving to players too.
Especially compared to thief and revenant, which both are imho by far harder to level up to 80 😮
he learned none of the demonstrated specs, honestly.
this montage is extremely laughable. man struggles to kill common mobs, doing around 0 damage and having 0 boons
My go to solo play build has always been a trapper/shortbow ranger! Usually staff/Druid off set for some good sustain and c/c and now even helps with bleeds
There is no way the Guardian is the weakest in solo play pve. My most OP specs for pve are guardian (firebrand), then necro (scourge), and then thief (daredevil). They never die. Then there's my mesmer (mirage) that absolutely shatters everthing, literally. These specs can take on 30+ fire djinns without sweating. 😂
If anyone is looking for a proper list, check out Lord Hizen
Lord hizen has great content!
I think mesmer belongs lower on this list. I've played Mesmer as my main since i started to play 9 years ago and I don't think it's a great solo PvE class. It's not weak, just more taxing if you make a mistake and if an enemy gets on top of you from a blindspot (or maguma sharpshooters) you die instantly, which gets annoying
List like this are subjective especially with casual being the main thing, but theif is amazing with its 500 evades with no cool downs., add daredevil with the extra evades your never gana die. But casuals won't be able to keep up.
But the Ranger is number 1 in my book hands down. Even in down state you have self revive and a infinite hp pet with pet swaps. (Also idk why people say theif has low base hp when there's only 2 classes with more. Trait wise it doesn't get an extra 2000 like the engineer but base hp it's the same)
Thank you!
I completed every LW and expansion solo as a core guardian zerker build with GS and scepter/focus. I'm 41...it's absolutely doable.
Oh I'm not saying it isn't doable with any of these professions, Moreno how hard you have to work to accomplish said goals!
Interesting timing. and order I'll provide my list of the (in my opinion) best core professions to level from 1 to 80 in Open World while playing alone and with minimal gear (purchased by a few silvers every 20 levels or so). I've been in the game since the release and have around 10.7k hours of experience but my list is due at the beginning of 2023 I chose to rise manually 9 new toons to refresh my memories of older parts of the game; those were my impressions:
Let me start saying that this doesn't rank professions once they are fullly leveled core 80 characters (that would be a different list), and that contrary to most I think that while leveling power builds are worse than condi ones except for a couple of cases. Also: crit chance, ferocity, condition duration, boon duration and armor are mostly irrelevant (along with runes and sigils) before you reach 80, because your crit chance and other values will be so low that doesn't worth using before the level cap. So my advice is: go for power, condition damage and vitality (carrion) or mix then as much as you can. Now the list:
9) (last) Thief. The problem is not the low base HP and mid armor of thieves, but the very limited amount of defenses and the lack of cleaving, which is placed mostly in short bow #4, which is rather expensive. You have plenty of ways to deal with regular mobs, but things as blind only last a 10% in bosses and running away is not enough. Thief is also a complex profession in terms of handling, and fighting vs PvE doesn't make players to learn how to use it.
8) Engineer. This profession is also rather complex to master, and while has plenty of access to combo fields and finishers and a large amount of varied tools, cc sources and raged attacks, is quite limited in weapon options and is not as tanky as other options. Good AoE damage and control, tho.
7) Revenant. High armor, mid base HP, the Revenant has easy mechanics and good unilities in the legends, but most of traitlines are weak and people usually focus in power Shiro builds which will lead them to their demise. Instead, the slower paced Jalis + Mallyx with condi weapons will be way tankier and provide much more chances to endure any solo fight. But without specs I'll put this profession low (despite being my main) because doesn't have good burst.
6) Elementalist. With low base HP and armor Ele initially feels weak, and is one of the professions that at the start I would recomend to gear with vitality stats, but don't be fooled: Ele has plenty of cc and strong AoE burst skills. Witn ele is easy to set cc, land plenty of burns and use air to flee from danger, water to recover or earth to tank. Leveling using dagger x 2 is fast and fun and it felt more powerfull than the three above.
5) Ranger. Ranger is one of the few professions which felt good leveled with either power or condi builds. If you go power, long bow and greatsword will cover you; if you want condis, short bow and axes will do fine. Ranger provides plenty of mobility, ground control with cc and varied traps, strong "panic buttons" to save you from lethal damage and strong pets to tank for you and deal good damage and/or cc. The only annoying thing is that you have to recruit those pets, so the optimal choices and the overall experience can vary based on your initial race and the maps you explore.
4) Necro. Necro heads the middle of the pack: the shroud works as a second HP and allows powerful burst of damage; the base HP is large and you have plenty of strong AoE cc tools and conditions and corrupts to even preven foes from reaching you. You can also go with minions as a meat barrier to tank for you. Overall is one of the strongest professions to start, and easier to play than most in the list. The reason I don't put necro higher is beacuse the three in the top are faster at killing things in the 1 to 80 race.
3) Guardian. At leveling, Guardian is a high risk - high reward choice. High armor but minimal HP, and most people falls in the trap of running power gear. Just don't. Mix vitality, condition damage and power, get a greatsword, a scepter and a torch, equip Purging Flames, Sword of Justice and Stand your Ground! and you're ready to go. Pull mobs with gs #5, land the flames, land the Spiritual Sword, spint to win with gs #3 and boom! Everytnig is dead. The reason is not the best is because against bosses your nukes have longer cooldowns than the two first in the list and it takes longer to deal with them. But is easy to play and to master.
2) Warrior. Power Warrior has really crazy damage burst, but oftenly feels squishy and I wouldn't recomend power gear untill you unlock the Bladesworn. Instead, my go to for a leveling Warrior is condi stats with hammerbow. The hammer ccs and deals fantastic cleave damage, whereas the long bow burns cced foes to ashes. Is like the Guardin, but with better cc and more spameable skills. And is stronger at range, also.Bull's Charge, Stomp, Blow, Earthshake your enemies and then Combust them to death. The whole game 1 to 80 using only two weapons...
1) Mesmer. Mesmer is the easiest, safest, most underrated weapon of mass destruction in early PvE GW2. As with the Warrior, you only need two weapons: greatsword and staff. You cc foes, up your clones, land your burst and crush most of the content without even being touched. Just use the typical Mirage build with Duel + Chaos and then either Inspiration for sustain or Domination for extra damage. You don't need to use a shatter F skill from 1 to 80. You don't ever need to known what the skills does: just dodge attacks, push skills of cooldowns and dance around your perplexed enemies intil they fall (which happens really faster with carrion stats).
That's my two cents.
jokes on you I don't play solo bc I want to... I just don't have friends
*laughs in sad*
Has the revenant really fallen off that much for solo play? I've been away for awhile but when I was playing lots TB/Celestial Herald was my goto for soloing stuff like Fractal CMs and world bosses. It was to only class I was able to successfully solo the VB tetrad on. I know the torment rune nerf hurt it but seeing it at the bottom of a list of soloing classes just seems crazy to me.
He is talking about core classes not the elite ones. also, no, Revenant-Herald is VERY strong in open world.
@@pizzaaFAEN Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't sure sure since he talked about elite specs for other classes. The ranking makes a lot more sense now. Core revenant has always been weak since it was built with elite specs in mind.
IDK Guardian are my main and ok in solo
i think it would be better to take this tier list to solo specialization, because most of the pve content you dont play core classes... i mean there are some good niche core builds, but as i sad most of the content you play a specialization ^^
True! However s great portion of my audience is new players so I geared this list a bit towards them!
With Guard and Rev Being among my 1st 3 toons when I began ele was the 1st I think Guard and Rev where the easiest in solo play ele being the worst out of all the 9 classes imo
That's close to my experience back in the day. Balance has shifted since, but of the eight core professions, I found elementalist to be the hardest to survive on by far. The downstate ele meme goes waaaaay back. Guardian... if you try a full glass raid-like build you're going to suffer, but it has the option to bring a lot of damage mitigation, reflection, and self-sustain if you choose traits, utilities, and weapons accordingly. I was surviving things on guardian that would kill most of my other characters (including my ranger and warrior), including being one of the professions I was soloing champs on back in 2012 and 2013.
Your list is completely off. It is not my experience at all. My reaper necro would die from 1-2 hits from everything after lvl80. Minions do little to no damage at all, and die way to easy. Solo it was nightmare to play. It was down more than elementalist.
Guardian is super easy solo with basic build. I can manage every expansion boss very easy with it. Not to mention anything in open world. Guardians elite specs makes it more squishy and makes it useful only in a group. But basic spec guard with all celestial gear is a proper tank. All my skills heal and/or remove conditions. No matter what I do and how attack, I constantly keep healing myself and others around me if there are any.
minion necro is one of the easiest way to never die, as the pets can heal you constantly and generate tons of barrier.
pair this with a sword in main hand, and you have permanent maximized barrier
U go solo becuase u like playing solo
I go solo becuase i have no one to ply 🗿
Press f to pay respects
Thanks!
Absolutely! Thank you!
Funny I started with guardian for ~8years as my main and now my main is a necro, the only real reason I went to necro was DPS I could survive everything.....but I hit like an airsoft pellet :/
it look s like the engineer is the most boring class...i hope he gets a specialization where he builds an ironman armor during the combat and he gets into it.
Saw your other comment and absolutely agree!
I run a Deadeye pistol/dagger + short bow build with exotic celestial gear ( viper for best damage). But I can solo most champions
Going to come back to gw2 and level up my warrior to cap he is now 76 havent played in 2 years. Any tips?
guardian is the worst ? i mean, guardian is the most OP class in this game, it can do pretty much anything. If i had to recommend one class to new players it would be guardian.
Same thoughts. Especially if we are talking core classes
I'm not saying guardian cannot perform in open world, quite the contrary! It's more so how difficult it is against tougher mobs in open world on your own!
@@CaffeinatedDad That's not what the title of your video indicates. Guards, especially FB with its tomes and cleave for mobs (most OW encounters are multi-mob events), offer phenomenal versatility to handle most OW content extremely well. WB is better/great for solo champs only. Champs are a small part of OW, and the build is less suited for other content, but still good. Even when playing solo, from my experience most times in OW you will run into other players when tackling content, which makes guards even more effective with their on demand support build it. I've played most classes, and I firmly would put guard as 2nd behind necro in all OW content, with ranger maybe tied with it.
Revenants are in the same boat with their especs generating and sharing incredibly useful boons if you have any expacs.
I actually had the same order omg
Great minds!
Gaurdian is awesome but yea if you pull like 10 level 80 enemies at ones unless you are good at kiting there's a chance you will die.
Lord hizen builds: hold my beer
foreal tho king of solo OW lol
The thing I find funny about this video, is he is gauging "soloing" as killing elites and vet mobs out in the world lol.
If your build can't solo chakk queen HP, Balthazar HP, bloodsucker brood mother bat HP, caustic frog HP.. ect.
Then your build is not a "soloer" any build can kill vets and elite mobs lol
Then the truly good solo builds can solo things like legendary bounties, I gauge my builds on these things.. all my builds can do these things, every class
he struggles with killing common mobs, bruh.
it looks like a pvp match against a mob lmao
There is legit a Hammer guardian build that can solo HoT Heroic Points. The reality of these classes is *worst* doesn't mean bad.
I pretty much completely disagree with everything you said in this video but still liked it. gg i guess.
any race can be any class or there class limitation
I feel like Ranger might be #1 now with the maces
I went necro after main thief for years. Soooo much better for soloing.
I saw someone saying everything works fine on ow. I agree, but I started playing last month with a guardian and became a firebrand. I've never had such a tough time, it's squishy and the skills are so slow to cast, I don't know if it's me or I'm missing something
try playing firebrand with celestial gear
Firebrand is kind of a jack of all trades, but master of none. This means it's much more suited to group content vs solo content. If you're mostly playing solo, try switching to Willbender with Celestial gear for a much more enjoyable experience. Litany of Wrath is an unbelievable healing skill, and coupled with Relic of the Defender (which essentially will turn the F3 skill into another healing skill), you will have a ton of sustain and plenty of damage to handle most mobs.
Run Sword/Torch with a Sigil of Bursting and whichever other sigil you would like (you can play whatever second weapon you want, but the optimal choice would be scepter to help keep your might uptime high). Radiance (2-2-1), Virtues (3-2-1), and Willbender (1-2-1). Full Celestial gear with Balthazaar runes. Skills you almost always use will be Litany of Wrath, Purging Flames, Sword of Justice, and Feel my Wrath. The last skill you can pick based on your preference, but I would suggest any of the following: Signet of Wrath (increases your damage), Signet of Judgement (gives you passive damage reduction and access to a stun break), or Bow of Truth (essentially a 3rd healing skill). If you feel like being a bit lazy, you can even swap Feel My Wrath for Signet of Courage for even more passive sustain and access to another healing skill. You could also use Heaven's Palm and/or Bane Signet to break defiance bars.
The build is very easy to play, but still has a lot of room for skill expression and will still be challenging against very difficult content. Basically just use all of you F-skills off cooldown (specifically F1 is your highest priority skill and will refresh after every kill), then you can pretty much mash any of your other buttons to your hearts content. Torch 4, Sword 2, Purging Flames, Sword of Justice, and Feel My Wrath will be your next highest priorities, then you can use Sword 3 or Torch 5 and Sword 1 to fill in the gaps. Use Litany of Wrath every time you start to take noticeable damage, don't worry about wasting it as it is on a ridiculously low cooldown.
Hope you enjoy if you make the switch 😊
@@DjNaste thank you very much, I'm so eager to test this build out, I really like the guardian class ❤️
@@DjNaste I wouldn't say FB fits the jack of all trades description because it really is quite good at several specific tasks thanks to its tomes focused on support, healing, and condition damage. It just can't do any two of those well simultaneously because of the way the pages are limited, so it excels only in group content that needs specific roles.
100% agree on celestial willbender, that build works wonders. After that I'd say core guardian can actually be pretty strong when built right, and FB and DH are just kinda sad to use when solo.
_Seven Months Ago_
_Mesmer at 6_
Really? R e a l l y?
I barely get hit because of all the clones I make. It's like engineer turrets but better, a ranger pet that's less tedious.
Also shines quite well with Full Celestial gear, making it a cinch for new players using a boost.
I wonder what the devs were smoking when they made the necro class, lets make a class with a huge basic hp pool and a secondary hp pool and give it minions that can tank for them. Also lets make it so that it has high dps, and make it op at giving aoe barriers...
Then we have the elementalist lets give it a miniscule max hp make it so that for it to damage properly it needs to be in melee range while playing the piano like mozart and lets nerf it so that it doesnt get ahead in the damage department compared to the other professions... Because else the other professions whine.
Because of this elementalists are more or less banned from raid content. I play ele main but I am strongly considering changing my main to necro instead.
eh. how can you be frustrated with "melee" ele these days?
go pick a spear and get your catalyst rolling other everything (full ranged, good damage, boons, selfsustain).
yes, it is harder to solo kill champions, but you can do that with both necro and ele
@@PhilosophicalSock Nah I just rolled a thief instead going dual pistols rolls everything. Got easy 20kdps by using auto attack on 3rd dual pistol skill. Its is funny how different the classes are, beat many challenges I got frustrated with while playing Ele without breaking a sweat.
Then I grew bored of the game again will probably be back later when they drop more content.
@@vik2051 if you beat a challenge with clicking a couple of buttons - that one stops being a challenge at all. also there is a meme AFK guardian build who can only click 1 as a rotation. what "challenge" is that?
@@PhilosophicalSock Just found it funny how differently balanced the classes are. For the elementalist Anet made their mechanics complex their hp and armor set to the lowest. They are suppose to be the powerhouse of dps due to their tradeoffs but they only able to deliver that high dps if they hit the manage to hit that mozart symphony combination while at the same time playing the game in hardmode due to their low health.
I haven't played that much with the spear didn't like it all that much but catalyst suits it fine I just don't like how Anet designed the classes, I think all classes should have the same Base HP and Armor if their dps output is the same. Having to play perfect while hardly getting rewarded for it and then extremely punished for switching to the wrong element by accident like -50% dps is not very good gamedesign, when other classes like the thief can get a consistent DPS of 20k by the use of 2 skills.
When I play I'm going to play my thief or any other broken combo until they either fix the damage output of the ele or balances the HP/Def better.
@@vik2051 balancing is a thing that had been discussed since 2012. and people never were happy with it :D i think, there are no any MMOs where players are 100% happy anyway
I personally have my catalyst/weaver at around 20k HP and surviving just fine. heck, even my dps guardian who had 11k HP some time ago - he now has same 20k while being all round berserker. meta changes, your stats do change as well. better accept it as it is. because balancing will never be 100% accurate
I noticed if your game play is your solo spec for that class a few you have are running the wrong healing trait that makes a big diff in survivability. Liek your Guardian WAAAY wrong one.
Assuming I don't also have it wrong, I wanted to point out for others who may be reading this just how amazing Litany of Wrath is. With 33% of damage dealt returned as healing for 6 seconds, it's effectively a full heal + 6s invulnerability which works by playing as aggressively as possible. Where most healing skills are a DPS loss, this one lets you go HAM! The 20 second cooldown is also quite low for such a powerful ability.
This is why Guild Wars 2 is so good, you think a profession is 'bad' yet I think its amazing, but it all comes down to playstyle and build, and no one is ever really wrong and every profession has its place
Again I stress these were just what I found in my playstyle. It's different for each person!
can i see the build just in the video because like this i don't unertsand
What don't you understand? I'm not looking at specific builds, I'm looking at core classes in general
@@CaffeinatedDadI see you using zeal+virtues on guardian which is a very glass cannon setup while using death magic on necromancer which significantly boosts its sustain. If youre comparing them based on survivabilty, wouldnt it be expected that you would build either all of them as glass cannon as possible or as respectively tanky? Why didnt you use valor for guardian with meditations, yet use death magic with minions on necromancer? By what standard did you determine the builds per class?
As others have pointed out before me, after watching this I gotta say that there's quite a bit of misinformation in this video, and to make things worse, it might put players off professions that are actually great for soloing stuff. Every profession has tools to make it excellent against harder content in open world, and tier lists like this one don't cut it. The clickbaity title doesnt help either. People gotta stop calling anything "best" or "worst" because its a claim you cant make.
Guardian (including core guardian) is one of the easiest solo specs if you build it right for example, and the reason why you might find it difficult is that the build used isn't great.
When I look at the builds you used in the footage in the background, I can immediately see that there are questionable choices made in terms of skills and traits for PvE...
Not using litany of wrath on guardian and not playong condi core guardian being one of them.
Respectfully, I don't think you did watch the video, or perhaps you didn't hear what was said.
I specifically say at the beginning that all specs, when built right, can do incredibly well! Guardian being no different! Then, I follow up with a statement that this is my opinion and my experience! Anyone who watches can understand a difference of opinion because we are all different players. For example, I love the elementalist in the open world, and other players have commented that they had difficulty playing it.
Point being is that players should always choose for themselves what works for them, and sometimes that comes through trial and error.
Thanks!
@@CaffeinatedDad I'm aware that you said those things in the beginning, but the framing of the video is different.
It is not exclusive to this video that creators claim to have "the best and/or worst for OW/Raids/WvW/Whatever", which is not a claim you (or any other creator) can make.
My critique mainly goes towards that framing (i mean, look at the title of the video), and the implications that has for people that watch the video. If one doesn't pay very close attention to what you say, the expectation is that someone with profound knowledge of builds for all professions in PvE made this video. The comments below are a reflection of that.
This isn't meant to sound condescending or anything and is in no way unique to your channel.
However, I think we as content creators should be very clear as to what knowledge we really have and which content we can or cannot deliver. At the very least, we should frame it adequately, and this is an example of that not being the case.
If the title was something like "my personal/subjective ranking/tier list for CORE professions in open world", then it'd be a better reflection of what the video contains.
Finally, I understand why creators do this, especially if one depends on it financially in a competition. But if it leads to titles/thumbnails/videos being misleading and deceptive, I think we have a problem.
Funny. I thought the guardian was fairly easy solo. I've played 2 to 80th.
Willbender is the most disgusting class ever wdymmmmm. You can facetank everything on a full berserker build. Have to adopt more of an offtank playstyle though, endless evade frames, stun breaks, boon generation, self alac, and even heavy dbreak makes it a monster. A selfish monster.
Okay, I see the bias now. From myself and from Caff lol
Personally I'd reverse this whole list, but I prefer high apm classes with a lot going on and high skill ceilings. Still enjoyed the vid xD
Ill just play GW prophesies again
Honestly I'd prefer having a party to play with but that doesn't really feel like a thing in guild wars 2... so I mostly play minion master necro to pretend I have friends.
Ihave personally found the easiest classes to play solo as Necro, Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer, and Guardian in that order.
the key to solo mesmer is shatter spam builds with the passive to heal per clone shattered and and passive heal per clonecreated. You can solo champion level enemies fairly easy.
Sorry i've only watched a couple and then turned off.
First of all, core specs? Wth who even plays them. You're gonna struggle playing them and you are supposed to! due to power creep.
But! not even removing this weird thing from the menu we have:
- guardian who destroys everything within sight with additional damage from symbols as well as receiving 10% damage reduction from light aura you get from them. Want lazy play? Cover yourself with light aura, signet damage reduction + protection boon and use litany of wrath when you feel low and you won't even have to time your aegis at all;
- revenant. Core destruction spec gives you "battle scars" that are basically passive heals during combat. + you can take additional trait there for even more heals through vulnerability which all of you power weapons (sword, greatsword) apply. Dwarf legend gives you 20% defence passively through spinning hammers and 50% defence on demand (F2 skill). Bascially your specs are Invocation, Destruction and Retribution, all giving you boost to damage AND to defence/healing. You heal on using every skill (invocation), you heal passively (battle scars), you heal attacking with 1 weaponskill (battle scars upgrade), you have toughness buff as percentage of power (retribution)... and you have 2 healing skills... if there is an overperforming core class, this is the one. Dude i soloed 3 players at once on CORE REV in PvP where enemies actually have brains and all of your skills are nerfed into oblivion.
Basically, the only problem here is that you never cared to read this thing properly. And yes you're saying "there are builds that help you survive etc" but ahem... the stuff i just mentioned, it's full berserker with minor tweaks in specializations... which you don't even have to do if you play well.
Thanks for the video on gw2 though! Love the fact that the content exists even though i disagree with some takes ^^
First I take no offense! I specifically looked at it from this angle as many of my audience are newer or casual players. Many of which haven't committed to purchasing expansions or having access to all elite specs. And I never say it's impossible to solo most content with the core specs, simply that some have a tougher time compared to others.
Also thank you for your kind words!
But what are you supposed to BE solo'ing in this game besides events and map completion? You can't clear dungeons solo, can't do fractals solo, fuck man, even group events can't be done solo.
This list is trash. The heck you put Guardian #9 ? It has everything you need. Damage, Heals, Aegis , the virtues itself is strong and you can use spec to increase the values like reset Virtue 1, etc. your reason is that guardian has lower hp and armor but never mention the traits and skills which give more value like Aegis block 100% of the dmg. + lots of other classes that has lower hp and armor but not much defensive traits n skills ...
hardest to easiest:
Elementalist -> lots of skills rotation spam, lowest HP
Thief -> Initiative management, low HP, high APM needed
Mesmer -> Hard to manage clones (decide to shatter or not, etc)
Engineer -> lots of skills rotation management needed, turret placement, etc
Revenant -> albeit survivable but energy management is crucial
Warrior -> better bit than revenant cuz no energy management needed just press all your abilities like a true berserker.
Guardian -> better than warrior because lots of heal and boons
Necrom -> lifesteal, got pet but can't control it
Ranger -> pet tank everything while u run around from afar.
he barely can play either spec, you better bot expect him to have any clue.
this montage is so laughable, it is insane
Thief! Ever feel like pissing off EVERYBODY and being just a general pain in the ass? Try THIEF!