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Who rules solo pve?


Sylent.3165

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Honestly I don't know what everyone hates on renegade. Malyx's "Unyielding Anguish" is by far my favourite skill in the game for soloing. It has a huge AoE, 5 target cap, chills everything so you can kite it and applies like 17 stacks of Torment on it's own with a practically instant move which is fire and forget, plus has a small leap for added mobility. It works underwater too. This skill alone is better than anything else I have seen on another class for solo pve. It kills any normal level mobs basically in one attack, I find my self leaping at a group of mobs then continuing on foot to my next destination as they suffer a horrible death.

Revs also have two heals out of the box, plus the Kala elite which can pull you out of a pinch if both are down. Also have plenty of CC, and heavy armor with high base vitality. The Maxe/Ace combo feels meaty, is fun and has a nice kit. The shortbow is a very acceptable ranged option. They even added a trident now for underwater which tears things to shreds.

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@"Esquilax.3491" said:Honestly I don't know what everyone hates on renegade. Malyx's "Unyielding Anguish" is by far my favourite skill in the game for soloing. It has a huge AoE, 5 target cap, chills everything so you can kite it and applies like 17 stacks of Torment on it's own with a practically instant move which is fire and forget, plus has a small leap for added mobility. It works underwater too. This skill alone is better than anything else I have seen on another class for solo pve. It kills any normal level mobs basically in one attack, I find my self leaping at a group of mobs then continuing on foot to my next destination as they suffer a horrible death.

Revs also have two heals out of the box, plus the Kala elite which can pull you out of a pinch if both are down. Also have plenty of CC, and heavy armor with high base vitality. The Maxe/Ace combo feels meaty, is fun and has a nice kit. The shortbow is a very acceptable ranged option. They even added a trident now for underwater which tears things to shreds.

We're looking at the pros and cons of each profession, not "hating" on any one profession. I accounted for revenant in my list and much of what you said can be achieved on core revenant and its ability to recover in a pinch is matched by herald with its unique heal and the fact the aspects are much cheaper to use. I can't just put what I personally enjoy at top then I'd say necro, engineer and rev are the top 3. But none of them made the top list in my analysis. Engineer actually dropping when elite specs being introduced because the elite specs where not a major improvement for their solo play. This doesn't mean engi got worse, far from it. But when comparing it to the others their improvements were far more substantial for open world.

Do note that NONE of the profession are bad for solo play. Some are better than others but this doesn't mean they are bad. They are all good in their own ways. And this says nothing about how I'd rank them in fractals or raids or dungeons. Revenant is exceptional in dungeons, great in raids and very good in fractals.

For group dungeons I'd say revenant is in the top 3 for sure. Hard to say at which position at this point. I think thief is the best for dungeons over all, possibly followed by engineer and mesmer for their stealth but revenant gives full might, fury as well as other boons while having sizable dps and shreds break bars. They also give permanent swiftness to your whole team which is just glorious. Just because rev didn't make my top list for solo pve doesn't mean they sick or they are useless. I like them quite a bit.

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@"Esquilax.3491" said:Honestly I don't know what everyone hates on renegade. Malyx's "Unyielding Anguish" is by far my favourite skill in the game for soloing. It has a huge AoE, 5 target cap, chills everything so you can kite it and applies like 17 stacks of Torment on it's own with a practically instant move which is fire and forget, plus has a small leap for added mobility. It works underwater too. This skill alone is better than anything else I have seen on another class for solo pve. It kills any normal level mobs basically in one attack, I find my self leaping at a group of mobs then continuing on foot to my next destination as they suffer a horrible death.

Revs also have two heals out of the box, plus the Kala elite which can pull you out of a pinch if both are down. Also have plenty of CC, and heavy armor with high base vitality. The Maxe/Ace combo feels meaty, is fun and has a nice kit. The shortbow is a very acceptable ranged option. They even added a trident now for underwater which tears things to shreds.

As a solo rev player i can answer that - problem is his specs and damage. Renegade has great damage, but his sustain is very risky. Basically it's just kalla elite in hopes you're healing more then receiving. Makes sense as he is meant to be damage support spec - so he thrives in parties where someone else is holding the aggro.

Herald is a must have for rev that wants to be able to solo engage a 1v5 fight with xpac mobs. Unlike Renegade he sports solid defenses that let him roam and fight almost anything. Much better self healing without ventari, 2 blocks (active and passive crystal hibernation), much better protection access then core, great boonshare and boon duration out of the box.

Problem here is that either your damage will tank compared to renegade (condi), or it'll be great, but at expense of being very prone to dying from a single mistake. Active defenses are godlike when used at right time, but useless if you run out of them too soon or time them wrong. And power herald has no amazing amounts of free crit and ferocity unlike renegade. So he must build full damage, full squish gear, which means his passive, stat based defenses are 0 and null...

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Open-world it's ranger hands-down. Before they nerfed the HoT hero point fights because they were too hard for small groups on any other set of professions, I soloed a number of them playing one-handed and without dodging while on the phone at one point. Rotating your pets and using stealth between when they get summoned and approach the target basically means you have something that can take and hold aggro indefinitely and you'll never receive it, as pets get massive damage reduction in open-world innately.

Pets are nerfed in instanced PvE (dungeons etc.) so mesmer probably beats it there since pets can be killed quickly.

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For the core game and Heart of Thorns ranger is indeed very nice, but in pof many foes have boons like protection and regeneration. It's quite annoying as ranger does not have boon removal. Yes, it is still very doable to kill those foes with boons but it slows down the gameplay.Mesmer is nice because it has access to everything (including boon removal) without losing damage output or survivability .

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@"Esquilax.3491" said:Honestly I don't know what everyone hates on renegade. Malyx's "Unyielding Anguish" is by far my favourite skill in the game for soloing. It has a huge AoE, 5 target cap, chills everything so you can kite it and applies like 17 stacks of Torment on it's own with a practically instant move which is fire and forget, plus has a small leap for added mobility. It works underwater too. This skill alone is better than anything else I have seen on another class for solo pve. It kills any normal level mobs basically in one attack, I find my self leaping at a group of mobs then continuing on foot to my next destination as they suffer a horrible death.

Revs also have two heals out of the box, plus the Kala elite which can pull you out of a pinch if both are down. Also have plenty of CC, and heavy armor with high base vitality. The Maxe/Ace combo feels meaty, is fun and has a nice kit. The shortbow is a very acceptable ranged option. They even added a trident now for underwater which tears things to shreds.

Dude I also don't get why people hate UA haha I sometimes use that trait that gives you 75 energy on the swap when below 10, then stack 3 UA's and pop the ult and watch everything melt. Decent for mobs and stationary bosses.

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I honestly thinks what zone you are in. Clearly, you can get away with the most frequent burst/high DPS class in Core OW Orr. That's pretty basic.HoT requires more thinking, but from my memory, there are lots of AoE to deal with, so I did really well with classes that could stand off out of danger, like Mesmer, Ranger and Necros.PoF was different. I felt I was much more successful with 'tanky' builds (like shout Warrior) that could face off better while dealing with CC and boons, even though I still had reasonable success with stand-off classes I used in HoT.

If I had to pick OVERALL one class to choose for every endgame zone, I would take Necro. There are other classes that are way better for very specific situations; I'm currently digging theif, but they just lack some very necessary elements to deal with the new nastiness in the LS3, HoT and PoF zones. For instance, the thief probably has the least problem with damage, as I proc heals on hit, crit and initiative use ... but it's very difficult to get condi clearing and really dependent on managing initiative and staying in the fight to heal.

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@otto.5684 said:It depends. If sustainability is what you are looking for, ranger, minion necro and condi staff Mesmer would probably be the strongest three. However, for damage over sustainability ratio, in solo PvE, nothing comes close to rev.

I haven't unlock elites on my rev yet (still leveling). I can say that its current sustain is very low. Shiro/jalis, mallyx/shiro, or even trying to mix in ventari. No matter what, I loose life as fast as a thief. Damage is great, even if I have a few healing/toughness trinkets.

Compared to my leveling warrior and guardian, it is night and day. Sure you can play hit and run with power shiro. But less with condi mallyx.Glint will probably helps later on, but until then, it is hard.

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@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@otto.5684 said:It depends. If sustainability is what you are looking for, ranger, minion necro and condi staff Mesmer would probably be the strongest three. However, for damage over sustainability ratio, in solo PvE, nothing comes close to rev.

I haven't unlock elites on my rev yet (still leveling). I can say that its current sustain is very low. Shiro/jalis, mallyx/shiro, or even trying to mix in ventari. No matter what, I loose life as fast as a thief. Damage is great, even if I have a few healing/toughness trinkets.

Compared to my leveling warrior and guardian, it is night and day. Sure you can play hit and run with power shiro. But less with condi mallyx.Glint will probably helps later on, but until then, it is hard.

It Requires a bit experience and you must have glint. The idea is you play sword/sword and sword/shield. Glint heal is 3 sec immunity to damage with 30 sec CD and usually heal to full in PvE. Shield is a 4 sec block with 25 sec CD. You should be also getting close to 100% uptime on protection and reg.

Then, sword 2, 3 and 4 are ranged attacks (short range). 3 is a 1.5 sec evade as well and shiro has an on demand dodge with no CD.

Do not get me wrong, rev is not the most survivable, but it has easier time playing full damage power build compared to warrior or guardian, sol fighting a boss.

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This is actually a question I've been going a little nuts with as well. I have bad hands so I have to find a class to play that basically makes up for the handicap. Signet Ranger and MM Reaper/Scourge both seem to meet the qualifications since they are simple and require fairly few buttons but I've always had a really hard time picking between them. I can't play for extended periods so it takes me forever to level but I still want to be able to do as much content as possible, you know? I virtually always solo because I know I would slow a group down so figuring out the best solo character for me is fairly important. Fortunately I have a guild that will play with me even if I'm slow but I still have no idea which class to focus on =/

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  • 5 months later...

After about 3k plus hours on just Rev alone, and 6k hours total in the game, I've found Rev to not only be tons of fun, but have tons of personal survivability while also deal tons of damage in both open world and in instanced content.

I love to solo dungeons, fractals, and champ mobs, and I've had the most success doing them on Rev, guardian, and necro.On Rev both Herald and renegade specs are more than enough to handle almost all situations.

Renegade spec: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAscmnXMvNSum7JRZzVlst5rSY3cWJ4besklNlSNGyhf4fHLyjsNAOgHA-jhSBQBk7IAYSlg4RPTGV+BiDBwg0EAgHUQCV/xYnQBas/w6gBgpU3AzMzMNyMzMzMTA-e

Herald spec: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAscmn3guNSuQ7JRboVlsP0rS4IaWJ4EdsklNFSNG54H2/LhPsNAH4BA-jhSBQBg4QAYSlg0Y/hBpJAP6ZI3RAIjK/So6PG7EKAgHUQAgDgzbe3fPw5nf+5nfeXf+5nf+5nf+5nfeA-e

You could swap out Retribution for invocation for an increase in damage and the added stun break on swapping legends, which is really useful. However, with the new steadfast rejuvenation trait, the amount of extra healing you get when your channeling skills is huge. Especially when your traited into renegade. The sustain with Soulcleave's summit combined with steadfast rejuvenation is the most op sustain in the game (so long as you have the energy). It also works as a group heal so long as the people in it keep attacking.

You summons will also give you life steal with almost every hit. So, when you combine all this sustain, with your evades, and high consistent burst damage, heavy armor, tons of hard cc abilities, and high health, you've got yourself a perfect solo class.

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REAPER! You are an unstoppable killing machine, and if something deals more damage than you can sustain, just swap spite for blood magic and NOTHING will stand in your way!Use the standard power reaper build for most stiuations I'd say, swap utilities/traits as needed.

Other than that, I rule solo PVE.

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Yea, I'd put mesmer at the top of the pack because of Mirage, but it's kind of ironic since it was the absolute worst for solo/open world PvE back before any of the expansions since it had almost no access to movement speed boosts and almost no AoE.

Necro is up there too. It's incredibly tanky with lots of AoE and has tons of minions that can absorb damage or just kill things for you while you're afk getting a sandwich.

Ranger is fine, but not near the top since pets don't really aggro and tank like other MMOs and are more likely to just be a liability if they die since they account for a lot of your damage. Soulbeast is solid though.

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  • 7 months later...

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Sylent.3165 said:Eggs> @steki.1478 said:

I'd say mesmer. Chrono in dungeons due to burst and cc, mirage in open world because of aoe condi spam while being practically invincible.

What makes a mirage invincible? I tried one once near release but did awful, is it a particular skill or trait?

You can evade while doing damage and evading gives you even more damage from clone ambushes. Vigor is easy to come by and endurance food and sigils also help. You also get easy access to mobility from staff, axe and utilities, as well as stealth on torch, so even in a tough situation you can disengage while clones still do damage.

Well disengaging is for weaklings.

The thing is... it's not really so easy to compare. And it really depends on what one defines as "best". Unless we're talking 100% optimised raids, it's really personal preference.

I have a full viper mirage and it is the "best" in some situations, true. Soloing champions without getting hit isnt that complicated. But just like any pure dps, it falls flat on it's face when you
do
get hit. You can do simple endurance tests if you want. Now with pavilion up, I recommend visiting the bandit forest and take on ~10 veterans at once. I have problems doing that on my PvE specced viper mirage but I have no problems doing it on my p/p scrapper that's built for WvW sustain, lol. The more mobs the merrier.

In open world PvE I personally find that doing 10k dps indefinetly is somewhat better than doing 30k dps and downing in the first seconds of the fight because a random mob farted in your general direction. Most will disagree though and just do full front loaded builds. Its ok.

Thing is, you'll only ever run into situation like this on purpose. You won't find 10+ veterans who engage you normally. And even if you did, as a Mirage you could simply disengage. Purposefully placing yourself in a bad situation and
choosing
to not evade it is a very poor reason to cripple your own damage output like that.

I do the opposite - in the extremely rare cases when I actually need to be tankier, I switch build. And then go back. Because 99.9% of the time you're fine in a full damage spec.
Especially
Mirage, precisely because it has a lot of mitigation built-in which doesn't sacrifice damage.

But if you do and manage to deal with them you increase your farm output > efficiency. Vs if you would take them one by one, easy test is Great Hall in Istan, mass pawns with 3-4 vet in close proximity and 10+ normals - so in that situation having a glass cannon that will take them in 1 min and die after that is not as good as a sustained jack of all traits that will take 2 min to take them but will continue for undefined time as long as you want = efficiency. Hence - Necromancer

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My necro is by far my main avatar. I do pretty well with my Ranger (pets & longbow) but prefer my necro (minion master). I send the critters out to fight, and take aggro, then I throw marks all over the place (if there is a bunch of critters to fight). I can take a fair amount of hits, but find that I generally do not. In groups I never have a problem getting looting rights. Between the horde of minions and the marks... I may not be doing massive damage, but enough for looting rights.

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As long as you don't get one-shot, thief is superb for soloing stuff (as far as Kitty has tested) thanks to Invigorating Precision-trait. It requires swapping between DD and DE depending on the enemy, however.As daredevil, you can pretty much stomp any groups of mobs with staff. Since it does damage with dodges and IP heals you, the heal vs damage taken-ratio should be very positive as long as you evade killer hits.If there's only one enemy, pistol+pistol deadeye with Maleficent Seven-trait is almost immortal. Maleficent Seven keeps up the important boons (refreshes with malice after using Stealth attack from stolen skill) and initiative so you can just Unload forever without ever needing to go to melee-range. Unload takes care of might generation. And the few hits you possibly take are healed in a couple seconds.

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