Returning semi-fresh, need main for soloing content

I would ideally like my character to be able to move fast, solo everything (even the elite mobs that appear on the map as good luck finding anyone in the wild on my server), and is not a drag to play. I also enjoyed pvp in the game at launch.

About me:Looking to temporarily get back in the game just to get the two flying mounts, and I need a character/elite spec to help achieve that easily. Will be using my 80 boost on this character. Haven't played since launch early access.

wrote more, but it only succeeded in driving the thread to petty squabblong so I will shorten this.

What I feel about the classes:Love the idea of guardians, never played one past level 4.

Love warrior, which was my "main" before the launch fire nation arrived; thematically dull.

thief is fun but made of tissue paper as core, and I regret using one of my 60 boosts on a 7 year old char (like the birthday chests, I hate char).

first character was an elementalist. no clue what they are like as I don't even remember. I really need that fast, quick solo/farm potential though.

Tried my old core ranger with a 60 boost, and even in level appropriate gear they are made of paper and only have maybe 2-3 viable attacks in all situations. even with the much vaunted bear pet they were only slightly more tanky, but that required using a bow and hoping the pet ai would hold together long enough to not lose aggro.

No relevant experience with engineer, but I am interested in holoknight (just holoknight).

Never tried mesmer, but I am interested.

no clue what revenant is like, even thematically, outside "dollar store illidan stormrage."

I like dots and pets, one of my favorite gameplay styles, but necro theme and aesthetics (especially those ghastly, greusome pets) give me nausea.

You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

You can use any vcass you want pick the one you like the most. Or you're not going to enjoy playing it.

If you want to move fast and be able to solo things. A good thief can.Gaurdians can solo bosses not meant to be solod but not easily. But you wont be doing this.

A fully leveled mirage is very useful for soloing, its strong and with ports is fast enough.

But every class can do the story without problems, tho may need build tweaking.

@Taygus.4571 said:If you want to move fast and be able to solo things. A good thief can.Gaurdians can solo bosses not meant to be solod but not easily.

But every class can do the story without problems, tho may need build tweaking.

Ignoring the rest of your post that added nothing to the thread, ok. What elite spec for thief and guardian? I am interested in both, mostly guardian though.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@"Taygus.4571" said:You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

I edited my post.

if you dont like the game that much....why play it?

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

I edited mine as well, look above, and I answered this in my OP in a minor aside. I don't need to be talked out of a game I will never take seriously anyways.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:What elite spec for thief and guardian? I am interested in both, mostly guardian though.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:What elite spec for thief and guardian? I am interested in both, mostly guardian though.

Both elite specs are useful for both classes.

Its more of learning how to play them.

Its story content you need, it really doesn't matter. It matters more to have exotic zerk gear (armor, weapons and trinkets) and know how your class works.

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:What elite spec for thief and guardian? I am interested in both, mostly guardian though.

Well, clearly the mechanics of both classes can't be more different, can they? What do they play like? What do they excel in, what is the rotation like?

I hear dead eye is very rigid and requires a lot of rotation uptime. I hear daredevil is mobile, absurdly so. I hear guardian is only dangerous with cds. stuff like that.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:You need the pof expanion.

You need to complete the pof story and unlock, raptop, springer, skimmer and jackal before you can do the collectiom for the griffon. You also need 250gold.

http://dulfy.net/2017/09/24/gw2-griffon-mount-collections-guide/

You need all LW 4 maps and to complete the last LW story to unlock skyscale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/brs41g/complete_skyscale_unlock_guide/

you're honestly going to get bored and burn yourself, if you're only playing to achieve those mounts.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:What elite spec for thief and guardian? I am interested in both, mostly guardian though.

These things are hard to explain, unless you play the class...

Just ...play ...them.

Different guard builds can excel at dps, heal and support.Same for thief, although support/heal is less useful. It has good and easy dps builds, if you can understand how thief works.It can feel squishy if you dont know how to position and use stealth/defences.

Guard is one of the simpler classes, supposedly, so you're probably best just sticking with it and make a firebrand.

@Taygus.4571 said:Just ...play ...them.If the mounts are so, so hard to get, why would I waste even a second of my time getting a class I may hate to 80, or (worse) boosting one I would hate?

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:Just ...play ...them.If the mounts are so, so hard to get, why would I waste even a second of my time getting a class I may hate to 80, or (worse) boosting one I would hate?

thats why you play them first ..a few levels is all you need to see if you like how they play...You can also boost to 80 with a level boost and play them in silver wastes. If you don't like them, you can cancel the boost and try on another class.

you have weeks, at least, of playing to get tbose mounts...do you want to use a class you hate, to do so?

because ALL the classes can do dailies, openworld, story easily and equally... yes, they play differently..but they are all equally viable for what you want.

why don't you watch videos of the classes, if you have no idea if you want to play them.

you can also try out the elites in pvp(regardless of your pve level), if you want to see a lil more of how they play.

Guardian is very strong for all forms of PvE content, both the Dragonhunter and Firebrand specialisations. Power Reaper is also a solid pick for just burning through anything in the open world, and it's not bad in high-end PvE if you're interested in that too.

I'm not convinceing you not play... I'm telling you the only real way to know if you will like a class, is to try it. And giving you ways to try out the classes

thief moves the fastest. But once you bget raptor, this won't matter at all.

ALL classes can solo elite mobs easily.What are you not understanding about all classes being equally viable in openworld and story?

holosnith can be very strong, it has loads of active defenses. You just don't know how to use them...because you havent played the game enough.

druid is not the only healer. Infact, its actually not the best healer, its the best at 10man buffs. Firebrand can heal, scourge can heal, tempest can heal, even thief and chrono can sort of heal.

ele and engineer are the most conplex classes to play.Then its thief, mirage and rev.then its gaurd, warrior, necro. as the easiest classes.

@Painbow.6059 said:Guardian is very strong for all forms of PvE content, both the Dragonhunter and Firebrand specialisations. Power Reaper is also a solid pick for just burning through anything in the open world, and it's not bad in high-end PvE if you're interested in that too.

I suppose guardian is the best choice, and I was going to boost that with one of my two boosts no matter what. really don't want anything to do with necro though.

I also like pvp, so that should be taken into consideration as well. I do want all the mounts so I will have to do it eventually.

ok, so firstly: premise of the thread is kind of void - if only thing to play for are those mounts then you are in tough luck because there is ALOT of stuff to be done to get them. Also I'd disagree with your sentiment on traversal in this game.

But You do You I guess so let's get into it:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:About me:Looking to temporarily get back in the game just to get the two flying mounts, and I need a character/elite spec to help achieve that easily. Will be using my 80 boost on this character.

just be prepared that this "temporarily" will take a while....

What I feel about the classes:I would ideally like my character to be able to move fast, solo everything (even the elite mobs that appear on the map as good luck finding anyone in the wild on my server), and is not a drag to play.

as far as open world and story content (stuff in between You and Your goal) goes outside of meta event grinding (for mastery exp if nothing else) You can pretty much solo anything with anything. so speed is only a case. also as far as PvE is concerned there is no "Your server" anymore.

Love the idea of guardians, never played one past level 4.

Depending on personal tastes - I'd say guardians are pretty fun to play, but forget about "speed" without mount.With Firebrand spec you can easilly achieve build that will make meta event grinding as braindead (a.k.a. easy) as it gets.

Love warrior, which was my "main" before the launch fire nation arrived; thematically dull.

for each his own I guess ;)

thief is fun but made of tissue paper as core, and I regret using one of my 60 boosts on a 7 year old char (like the birthday chests, I hate char).

Thief is the most mobile of the classes you list, but also takes most effort to complete story content solo, because it requires alot of positioning awareness.

first character was an elementalist. no clue what they are like as I don't even remember. I really need that fast, quick solo/farm potential though.

Not sure who told you that ele is go to for "fast quick solo/farm potential" but it does sounds kind of outdated information....

Tried my old core ranger with a 60 boost, and even in level appropriate gear they are made of paper and only have maybe 2-3 viable attacks in all situations. even with the much vaunted bear pet they were only slightly more tanky, but that required using a bow and hoping the pet ai would hold together long enough to not lose aggro.

Then you played Your ranger extremely wrong. Properly built ranger can easilly hold it's own against everything you will encounter in singleminded journey for the griffon/skyscale. More mobile than Guardian, easier to get better killing speed - especially with soulbeast spec, the only downside for your purpose I can honestly list is it's inferior capability of tagging targets for exp/loot in meta events....

No relevant experience with engineer, but I am interested in holoknight (just holoknight).

it's holosmith.and I am not sure how it fares in OW PvE/story

Never tried mesmer, but I am interested.

tied in mobility with thief, only considered tankier because of clones you can jizz out imo.

no clue what revenant is like, even thematically, outside "dollar store illidan stormrage."

I have no idea what "Illidan Stormrage" You are refering to, but rev is quite decent character, it's theme would be "gw1 ritualist meets gw2", You are channeling legends from the mists to do different stuff. Can't really compare it's efficiency for your purpose against others tho because I haven't done any PvE in mine....

I like dots and pets, one of my favorite gameplay styles, but necro theme and aesthetics (especially those ghastly, greusome pets) give me nausea.

minions. ranger has pets. but considering clones and amount of condi output this alone would suggest You going for mesmer - condi build to be exact - alot of dots and you spam dem clones (about as much of a "pet" as necromancer minions tbh) like no tomorrow. Is also quite mobile.

Yeah sounds like Mesmer would be a pick for You, should tick most if not all of boxes.

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:Just ...play ...them.If the mounts are so, so hard to get, why would I waste even a second of my time getting a class I may hate to 80, or (worse) boosting one I would hate?

Getting adequate gear for PoF content, getting through the story that includes a number of masteries trained to progress forward, obtaining hero points needed for elite spec had You chosen to use one, getting mastery point and exp for griffon mastery - yeah I can see it taking weeks even if you just buy the gold. question is - why buy the gold if you have no intention of playing the game from the get go?

How can I try these specs without farming levels and hero points? If I was just going to do that, why go to the forum to have people try to convince me to quit like you? Oy vey, how is "lol quit now or figure it out yourself" players helping players?

the "quit now" seems to be coming from You. Problem in here is that you came to the forum claimed game sucks and you don't want to play. but want to "just" want to hop in and get two of the most difficult to obtain mounts. And expect people to tell you what class you will be enjoying because everyone can read your mind right?

I would prefer you gave detailed explanations of what classes are like in certain content (especially in regards to movement, dailies, open world, farming, ANYTHING that would help my goal). you seem to be totally unwilling to do that, why post then?

And why would anyone give You detailed essays on classes when Your own starting premise is "I don't want to do anything but get those 2 prestige items over there"?

Not to mention that such class breakdowns are already out there if You have bothered to google it?

Seriously with that attitude, obtaining Your goal will be a very tough ride. That being said good luck.

It's been 7+ years since you last played.

I honestly would suggest starting a new character on whatever class you think you might want to do the mount stuff on and play from there and not use the level 80 boost. Maybe use some experience boosters to increase the leveling rate, but that's as far as I would go boost wise. It doesn't take that long to get a character to level 80. And you'll be able to pick up the necessary in game skills needed to do end game content. There was a difficulty spike between Core game and Expansion content and you're likely to face difficulty going in as an effective new player into PoF content.

The game's changed a lot since it first launched. The mount collections themselves take time and it takes time to get to the point where you can start working on those collections. And requires money to do so and if you didn't enjoy the game 7 years ago, I'd honestly make sure you are going to at least somewhat enjoy the game while working towards your end goal before you spend more money on the game.

Here's my current favorite open world setup of the moment:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

You can adjust the stats to taste. You have all the boons you need including easy 25 stack might as well as excellent swiftness, vigor, and protection uptime and stability rolled into your offense with primordial stance. You also have strong recovery with evasive arcana adding two additional heals to your water/earth rotation (cleansing wave on dodge in water plus an additional blast on dodge into riptide's water field on earth). On offense, your utility cooldowns dish out massive burn stacks with primordial stance, glyph of elemental power, and fire signet giving you solid damage even if you choose to go really tanky. All in all it's a fun and active playstyle that can handle almost anything.

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:Here's my current favorite open world setup of the moment:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

You can adjust the stats to taste. You have all the boons you need including easy 25 stack might as well as excellent swiftness, vigor, and protection uptime and stability rolled into your offense with primordial stance. You also have strong recovery with evasive arcana adding two additional heals to your water/earth rotation (cleansing wave on dodge in water plus an additional blast on dodge into riptide's water field on earth). On offense, your utility cooldowns dish out massive burn stacks with primordial stance, glyph of elemental power, and fire signet giving you solid damage even if you choose to go really tanky. All in all it's a fun and active playstyle that can handle almost anything.

I have been interested in leveling my elementalist, so I will definitely try to use this one. Is weaver with gs a good class?

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:Here's my current favorite open world setup of the moment:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

You can adjust the stats to taste. You have all the boons you need including easy 25 stack might as well as excellent swiftness, vigor, and protection uptime and stability rolled into your offense with primordial stance. You also have strong recovery with evasive arcana adding two additional heals to your water/earth rotation (cleansing wave on dodge in water plus an additional blast on dodge into riptide's water field on earth). On offense, your utility cooldowns dish out massive burn stacks with primordial stance, glyph of elemental power, and fire signet giving you solid damage even if you choose to go really tanky. All in all it's a fun and active playstyle that can handle almost anything.

If by gs you mean greatsword, Elementalist does not currently have access to the greatsword through any of its elites or with just the core spec.

And I take it you're taking my suggestion of not boosting a character to level 80 to get a feel for the changes to the game?

@Seera.5916 said:

@MisterMagician.8614 said:

@"AliamRationem.5172" said:Here's my current favorite open world setup of the moment:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAwilZwmYXMJmJOKXbvfA-zRRYkRC7NKwlROJQmFgDzCPTbA-e

You can adjust the stats to taste. You have all the boons you need including easy 25 stack might as well as excellent swiftness, vigor, and protection uptime and stability rolled into your offense with primordial stance. You also have strong recovery with evasive arcana adding two additional heals to your water/earth rotation (cleansing wave on dodge in water plus an additional blast on dodge into riptide's water field on earth). On offense, your utility cooldowns dish out massive burn stacks with primordial stance, glyph of elemental power, and fire signet giving you solid damage even if you choose to go really tanky. All in all it's a fun and active playstyle that can handle almost anything.

I was mistaken since I enjoy the flame greatsword so much. Am very interested in weaver though.

And, no, I have an absurd amount of scrolls saved up, and the first 80 levels are just terrible. I do enjoy the pof areas quite a lot. Already one of 5 zones done for griffon though!

For sheer ease of use in almost any situation, my first recommendation is always ranger. Your initial posts seem heavily edited so I'm sure I'm missing out on a bit of detail as to where your account is at in terms of completing important checkpoints, but even with a core game ranger spec you have a lot of versatility.

First tip would be to forget using bear, seriously. It has some niche uses with the soulbeast spec, perhaps, but the same zerker meta you might remember from back in the day still applies today. That is, offensive stats/builds/mindsets are generally superior to defensive ones, especially for solo content where you're responsible for making all the kills yourself. The killing power you trade away in favor of anything defensively oriented tends not to pay off - in the long run you don't get enough survivability in return for the loss of killing power. This is especially true for ranger, which has a lot of its dps locked behind a pet with bad AI.

That being said, I find core ranger can usually run from/run past everything that it can't kill, and ranger overall is my go-to for soloing content. My glass cannon longbow/greatsword ranger can solo every hero challenge in HoT and PoF, as well as every mechanically soloable dungeon path. This is what I used to use before getting into HoT and PoF, and it favors strong openings with longbow and pet rushing in immediately after. Being one of my earlier builds, it also relies on the Wilderness Survival traitline for condition clearing. You can tweak it to be even more sustain-oriented than it already is, and there are plenty of ways to make it far more offensive. Since it sounds like you like guardian already (which is a solid choice for many reasons already mentioned), I won't go through the effort of demonstrating such tweaks unless you're actually interested in them.

It's too late for this, but if you're sincere about your claim that you're only back in this for the two flying mounts, I'd say you wasted your money. While I believe that GW2 does mounts far better than any other game I've seen, I can't think of any real value the mounts would have to someone not really interested in using them for the wider game. Anyone who tries can get both flying mounts, so there's not really any prestige to it. Cool mount skins require gems to buy, and the base mounts generally lack sufficient dye channels to make them fully match any particular look.

Hopefully the process of getting back into the game and pursuing the mounts will allow you to find other reasons to stick around.

@"voltaicbore.8012" said:That being said, I find core ranger can usually run from/run past everything that it can't kill, and ranger overall is my go-to for soloing content. My glass cannon longbow/greatsword ranger can solo every hero challenge in HoT and PoF, as well as every mechanically soloable dungeon path. This is what I used to use before getting into HoT and PoF, and it favors strong openings with longbow and pet rushing in immediately after. Being one of my earlier builds, it also relies on the Wilderness Survival traitline for condition clearing. You can tweak it to be even more sustain-oriented than it already is, and there are plenty of ways to make it far more offensive. Since it sounds like you like guardian already (which is a solid choice for many reasons already mentioned), I won't go through the effort of demonstrating such tweaks unless you're actually interested in them.

Ok, get as detailed with tweaks as possible.

@"MisterMagician.8614" said:Ok, get as detailed with tweaks as possible.

Rather than give you all the different variations, I'll just give you the more offensively oriented one I used to replace the original build I gave above, with suggested tweaks should you need more or less of something. I also am assuming that you may not be interested in going after more optimum pets from HoT and PoF, so I only refer to core game pets.

This build replaces Wilderness Survival with Skirmishing.

• Pros: hits harder, thanks to the synergy between all your sources of fury and the Vicious Quarry trait, as well as the effects of Spotter.
• Cons: the original build could allow you to cleanse 8 different conditions with 2 button presses, but this build has exactly 0 sources of cleanse, and is also weaker in terms of cc (it loses a pulse of immobilize and several pulses of slow from the loss of Wilderness Survival).
• Usage tips: Offense- You have multiple sources of fury, learn to use them. Also use We Heal as One not just as a heal, but as a way to extend the fury you can give yourself. Vicious Quarry is the primary source of noticeable damage increase in this build, and that only works when you have fury. Defense - Survival in condition-heavy fights depends on your ability to nuke a priority target quickly, and avoid taking too many hits afterwards. The endless regen and swiftness you get from your shouts should help you escape if you aren't good enough to use this build to its maximum potential at first. I find drake pets are great as compromise tanks - they can take a few more hits than felines, all their attacks are aoe, and the River Drake has the advantage of an f2 attack that bounces between targets - no need to have enemies lined up to hit several of them.

Possible tweaks:

• Pet considerations: Lynx is great for dps (by pet standards) because it has a second source of bleeding it can stack on targets, but you can replace it with Tiger if you have trouble keeping up dps. Note that the Tiger's Furious Pounce ability only grants you fury if you're standing within a 240 radius of it, so the extra fury uptime will only help you in melee. If you can't give yourself perma fury without Tiger, however, it means you're just firing off abilities with no consideration; use We Heal as One to keep up fury. If lack of cc is an issue with any breakbar fights, you can swap in pets that have decent cc (wolf has fear and a knockdown, several pets have immobilize, etc). Just note that pretty much all your options will represent a dps loss, as well as other inconveniences (wolf fear for instance will scatter enemies, making greatsword cleaves far less effective unless you fear them all into the same corner or something).
• Traits: Within Skirmishing, you can replace Sharpened Edges with Primal Reflexes for more of the vigor boon, if you find yourself running out of dodges when you need them. You can also replace Quickening Zephyr on your utilities bar with Protect Me - that gives you extra protection, swiftness, regen, and allows you to keep a stunbreak handy at the expense of the very important quickness boon. Protect Me will also grant you a bit of extra cc, as the taunt is decent at helping drain breakbars.
• Weapons: Using this slightly changed build , axe/axe is a workable (and in most ways, superior) replacement for longbow. You do lose out on the enormous range longbow has, but every single axe ability hits quite hard, with axe 5 taking the cake. Axe 3 and axe 4 add more cc to your toolkit, in addition to helping you murder faster. Axe 5 does root you, but if if you can safely pull off a full channel on (an ideally knocked down) enemy, it does a crapton of damage and also reflects projectiles.

All that being said, I find these builds far inferior to power soulbeast. Given that everything you've said indicates your desire to keep your involvement with the game as minimal as possible, I figured that means you're not going to be interested in getting the 150 skill points needed to train soulbeast. If you are interested in soulbeast, plenty of builds for you to check out on metabattle and snowcrows.

Sounds like you should go with mesmer as someone else has said.

Mobility, survivability, forgiving enough with all the possible ways to defend or escape. Only thing is expect a learning curve, and expect to be fidgety with your fingers, play the piano and mash tons of buttons pretty quickly. But yeah it does the job very well.

Mesmer build: