Buran.3796

Mesmer or Necromancer. Explanations: In the heavy armor plate users, the most "magical" choice is the Guardian, but its ranged core weapons are a support tool (staff, for healings and cc) and the scepter, which is mostly single target The Dragonhunter spec uses a longbow, but most of the damage there comes from the traps, which are deployed at point blank. Both Warrior and Revenant ranged weapons feel more ballistic that anything magic. The same happens in the mid armored segment: Ranger, Thief and Engineer rely for ranged attacks on devices which use either mechanical or chemical forces (even high tech in the case of the Holosmith). The only exception would be the Specter, which again is mostly a single target spec when fights at range. Amongst the the light armored users, the Elementalist could have been the obvious choice for ranged AoE damage, but ANet has been pushing most of the Ele specs to be providers of mele AoE damage. That leaves Mirage and Necro... Mirage is not only a pure spell caster but also unique amongst most of MMORPGs, most of its weapons are ranged and has a wide access to both strong ranged single target burst and huge ranged AoE damage and cc. Has viable ranged builds with staff, greatsword, scepter and dagger, with either condition or physical damage. The Necromancer is another ranged powerhouse: all of its core weapons have ranged skills of any kind, varying from single target to AoE, covering both condition and physical builds, and the Harbinger is a single target long range specialist (albeit pushed to fight closer in PvE). So, if you want to play a spell caster which fights at range most of the times, I think that currently Mesmers and Necromancers are the best at those role, both in WvW/PvP and PvE.

The offensive support build in Herald is usually power, and is centered around spamming Glint skills to share quickness. The stats of choice are usually Diviner, albeit with the latest buffs you don't need a full set of that to achieve permanent quickness. Celestial can perfectly work in terms of sharing quickness (specially paired with Leathership of Fireworks runes) and other boons, but will hurt your damage. Now, an hybrid celestial Herald is way tankier than a power diviner Herald, which would work better at soloing things, no only because the sustain but due power Herald builds have mediocre AoE damage, whereas condi based ones have strong cleave features. Celestial is also useful in Renegade and Vindicator. The offensive Renegade spec provides Alacrity and in that case celestial is arguably stronger than ritualist or diviner stats since beats both in damage while having the same boon duration as ritualist (but less than divinber). Celestial Vindicator is not a support build and doesn't fit any role in a conformed PvE group, but is arguably the strongest solo tank in the game at the moment (or ever). The staff is used for breaking defiance bars or when, for reasons, you feel the need to throw your dps down the toilet (I'm kidding, you run hammer when you have that urge!).

While I appreciate the explanations about the gameplay of the build, I disagree. The thread is about the best OW solo specs. Lets see the flaws of raid qFB at that task (even with Litany and other adjust): 1) The 37k dps will fade away instantly, since you're not in a group providing permanently all the boons to reach such numbers. The dps will also be eroded by the need to spent time and resources trying to be alive, since we are talking here about sometimes facing content which be hard to solo. 2) Due the build invest so much traits and skills trying to max out dps, the self sustain is rather poor. And yes, you have a loot of tricks in the pocket due Firebrand is like a Swiss knife, but each one of those tools (Valiant Bulkward, Wall of Reflection... ) have a cost of oportunity which translates in more dps loss. So: while qFB has amazing AoE dps burst (great vs regular mobs), once you face a solo fight which will last minutes the dichotomy between dps and sustain will fastly surface. And is not only vs legendary bounties with mean unstabilities: try to fight the platoon of level 84 charr veterans in the Archstone Dominion Camp at Drizzlewood with qFB and tell me how it goes...

I'll argue that if your gear set is full Dragon, Full Marauder or any mix between them Eagle runes are better than Wurm ones since both will provide you exactly the same critical damage progression, but Eagle will give you an extra 8.33% crit chance whereas the Wurm will givve you ~1.5k extra HP. My choice over both for power damage in Vindi would still be Fireworks because the qol of fast pace + extra boon duration.

PvE: extremely strong and with a large amount of varied builds; probably the best profession out there at the moment. WvW: very good at zerging, one of the backbones of that playstile. Good at roaming but far trom the top dogs. PvP: mediocre; Herald and Renegade are fairly weak vs the top EoD specs; Vindicator is better but is not part of the meta.

Level 1-20: use what the game gives you. At level 10 maybe buy some white weapons for a few cooper coins to unlock the skills. Level 21-30: buy some 2 stat weapons and armor, with either power or condition damage based on what you want to run. Would cost you 20-30 silver coins to entirely equip your character. Level 31-60: stay with the previous gear. Level 61-65: the gates of 3 stat gears are now open. Equip your character with the desired stats; go cheap: 3-4 gold coins are enough. Level 66-80: remain as before. Don't waste a dime in new gear until you reach 80. So: buy gear ~level 25 and ~level 61. Don't bother with sigils or runes until 80. Reaching 80 will take you 24-28 hours just exploring the core maps doing vistas, points of interest, hero points and teleports. Stay in maps of your level, avoid foes 5 levels above you, abuse cc and ranged attacks, clean foes from areas before facing hero point champios, and becarefull with fall damage (can easily one shot you, no downed state!). By the way: you buy gear in the Black Lion Market; the gear can be ordered by cost or level just with a click.

I would agree with that for the power variant, specially since marauder has larger crit chance than berserker and makes easier to reach the 100% cap. Diviner feels like leaving food in the table, tried it for weeks and never convinced me. But celestial totally works with Vindi, since currently condi Vindicator is the strongest PvE bunker in the game. "But this game doesn't have tanks!" Well, is hard to argue when you curbstomp content without dying. Happens that most of people finds not dying funnier than dying.

Nah, most of responses were positive and wellcoming to the build. And outside the forums and Reddit (which vast majority of players never frequent) players doesn't even known about Snow Crows/Sincretize etc (or if known, don't care).

Add Tempest, Heal Mech and Heal Renegade to the list. Maybe also support Scourge.

Greatsword is available as BASE WEAPON for a lot of professions. Of the heavy armor, the ones which have free access to greatsword are Warrior and Guardian. Greatsword is also available as exclusive weapon for SOME specializations. Of the heavy armor users, the greatsword is available as spec weapon for the Vindicator. This means that for heavy armor buildsyou can wield the greatsword weapon with core Warrior, Berserker, Spellbreaker, Bladesworn, core Guardian, Dragonhunter, Firebrand,, Willbender and Vindicator. Now, the game modes are essentially Open World PvE, Instanced PvE, WvW (roaming/small skirmishes/zerging) and PvP. NOT all builds have greatsword as "meta" (the theorical optimal build) in each one of those game modes. Take that in consideration. You can play what you want, but sometimes in some game modes some weapons are weaker than others...

In the light armor class tier, I would say that leveling Mesmer is the easiest profession, followed by Necromancer and Elementalist. Mesmer with sfatt + greatsword fights at range and has access to plenty of crowd control skills, with clones acting as a barrier ebtween you and the foes. Necros have higher HP + shroud and minions, buth they aren't as spammable as clones. Once you unlock Mirage you don't even need to swap weapon since staff + staff is enough to solo almost every content in the game (outside things that require more people for the mechanics). Ele at the start are frail (low HP) and a lot of their skills are mele, which is riskier, plus needs a lot of keystrokes to be played competently. I'm not sure about medium armor professions; on paper Ranger has pets to tank, but having to unlock their pets can be a bit annoying. Thieves and Engieners need higher keystroke inputs, albeit rifle Mechanist is amongst the easiest, layed down specs to play while yawning. I have to manualy level some mid armor professions again... In the heavy armor department, I would say that Revenant is easier to play than Guardian, and Guardian than Warrior. Warrior has high HP but requires plenty of focus and inputs in combat, and is mostly mele (again: risky). Guardian have symbols to combine AoE damage and healings, but their base HP is low and you can end easily mauled. Their Firebrand spec is easier; the Willbender is demanding. Revenants have mid HP value, but with Jalis + Mallyx they stack tons of cc, damage mitigation, re-sustain and passive AoE damage. Mace + Axe + Embrace the Darkness is pretty much all you need to safely rise a character soloing open world. Condi Vindicator is not as passive and doesn't deliver as much dps as rigle Mech or double staff Mirage, but can tank and kill the Balrog of Moria, with blinded eyes.

Quoting myself a few threads below: Bitterfrost is overall the best map to get ascended items; provides a ring (which can be infused to stack two of them), an ear ring, the back piece and the underwater breather (which can be salvaged to craft the Ball of Dark Energy. required for legendary items). All of them in a map which allows to gather ~50+ winterberries x character x day (while stacking large amounts of unbound magic in the proccess). Other notable maps include Bloodstone Fen (amulet, ring, back pack; way less convenient to farm since the nerfs of the rewards, but their gear can be reset in stats), Sandswept Islands (ring, ear ring), Dragonfall (amulet, ring, ear ring) and Bjora Marches (amulet, ear ring). Ember Bay has a pass as one of the few which provides ear rings, but the others named previously are better. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_trinket So: Bitterfrost Frontier + Dragonfall & Sandwsept Islands, Bjora Marches, Bloodstone Fen & Ember's Bay, in that order. Edit: also, if you plan at any time to buy nodes from those maps for your home instance at 50 gold coins, imo the only ones to inves in are: Bllodstone Fen node (due their trinkets can be reset and are hard to farm), Dragonfall and Sandwept Islands nodes (very versatile, as covers almost all trinkets) and maybe Ember's Bay (to much lesser extent). Winterberries are much easier to farm, and also the icy things from Bjora marches (in the 3 big chest, you can farm ~180 x day in 2-3 minutes if you have a springer and the griffon, a bit slower if you lack the griffon).

Teapot relied in exotic celestial stats in the whole "Zero to Hero" series to essentially perform in every game mode of the game (outside PvP) with his Firebrand. So is hard to argue vs facts.Rememeber also that ascended trinkets are extremely easy to get in Season 3 and 4 maps (and some even allows stat reset at very low cost, as the ones from Bloodstone Fen).

^ Mounts cover part of that issue. Being said that, celestial Vindicator can use the mobility from Alliance skills + Mallyx and have greatsword as side weapon (its chills can proc torment when traited) to have goot mobility in combat without giving up much damage nor losing a single bit of self sustain.

Finally worked as I wanted as H Y P E R Î O N Thank you all for your help!

Leveling from 1 to 80 without boosters, crafting, dungeons or even hearts (just discovering the maps, completing vistas, points of interest, Hero Points...) will take you 24-28 hours. If you chose to do it with a Revenant I will recomend you to use a condi build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAkeZlhQHMJyhFRNMI6hBSfMBKgjuSfKD-zxIY8o7vUSoA6KByMC6ME8fA-e Buy cheap gear with condi stats at level 30, then again with condi and vitality at level 60-65. That would carry you easily to 80. Don't bother buying runes or sigils before. If you chose to craft below 80, do it to earn xp (rising a craftmaship from 1 to 400 gives you 80 chacarter levels, but is better to use this with alt chacareters once you have some stuff in the bank to do the craft. Do also the dailies in low lwvel maps: the total cost of your gear purchased at level 30 and 60 wouldn't cost more than 3-4 gold coins. I say this as a vetaran which recently rised manually two characters to 80 despite having enough knownledge tomes to instantly rise two dozens pof chacarters to max level... And I did it just for fun.

That place already exists and are the Bounties. Bounties are designed to be faced by 5+ players and some of therm (specially the legendary ones) are demanding as solo content. The problem is that ANet is so afraid of the "hypergrinders" (people devoted to play the same content for 8 hours, as happens in PoE or Diablo) that they botched the rewards. So you jump in group against a bounty and after two minutes you get maybe a yellow which sells for a few silvers, or you do it alone and then is worse because is 4-8 minutes for the same reward. Bounties could have been as amazing as in Monster Hunter or Elden Ring, but isntead ANet made them just though bosses with no rewards.

Bitterfrost is overall the best map to get ascended items; provides a ring (which can be infused to stack two of them), an ear ring, the back piece and the underwater breather (which can be salvaged to craft the Ball of Dark Energy. required for legendary items). All of them in a map which allows to gather ~50+ winterberries x character x day (while stacking large amounts of unbound magic in the proccess). Other notable maps include Bloodstone Fen (way less convenient to farm since the nerfs of the rewards, but their gear can be reset in stats), Sandswept Islands, Dragonfall and Bjora Marches (Ember Bays has a pass as one of the few which provides ear rings, but the others named previously are better).

Some weeks ago I tried Nike's Defense Hammer build for PvE (albeit was portrayed as a build for instanced PvE and not OW) doing a HoT hero points solo run. Yes, the damage was amazing and seing axe #5 stacking 60-80k felt great... but 25% of the Champions mauled me. Sure, can be argued that in part was due I wasn't used to the mechanics of the build, but that's exactly my point: good OW builds are the ones which are easy to pick for anyone, offer versatility and re-sustain to mitigate mistakes. Meanwhile this afternoon I was completing the Dragonfall map with a rebooted character (a condi Vindi); I casually ran into The Arbiter of the Dead. Soloed that kitten in a cuple of minutes: try to do the same with the "meta" builds for raids...

I can't agree with your take (outside that you're fair demanding the builds you want in any team you form at instanced content, not like I would ever walk in, anyway). First of all, IF prioritizing performance is a must, the first thing you should do as a dps player is to ditch Vindicator, due is currently 5-6k below the top dogs. According to your own logic, there's no reason to leave a 10-12% on the table running a Vindi, when a Virtuoso or a Weaver is available. There's also better choices for hybrid support than Herald or Renegade, so the advice to new players trying the class would be keep away from Rev until somehow becames the best in slot again (which could take some years). Second, facts speak louder than words, and I would have to see videos of those meta builds soloing bounties to believe that they work better in OW. Sometimes Roul does that, but oftenly I find out the opposite, like that his glass cannon Willbender was slower at killing the Legendary Facet than Hizen's trailblazer Renegade. Being able to solo bounties and large meta events with plenty of room for errors and self sustain is the selling point of those kind of builds, specially for newcomers which aren't used to the game mechanics or lack the skill to perform long and complex rotatiions while reacting in real time to what those monsters are doing.. You known what's the most funny think about listening to Teapot, Nike and Sneb cosntantly moaning day after day after day about how players refuse to run meta builds or learn to play? Is that people are chill completing the map, or farming or doing wathever and then those "leaders" implore them to join instanced content, where they discover that "oh, but here you have to run this build, use this gear and food, do this mechanic..." and then most of them say "Oh well, I play to have fun and I don't have fun doing that so bye, I don't need you anyway"... And then those hardcore players rant for hours about the "casuals" while keep begging for new players to join instanced content. Talking about cognitive disonance...

I would say Guardian, specifically Firebrand spec. Hard to argue vs the only class able to instantly provide 5 stacks of stability to your allies, plus aegis, plenty of cleanses and every situational tool outside teleports and boon corruption (bubbles to block projectiles, or even wall to reflect them, AoE cleanses, heals and protection... ). It can also deliver plenty ogf quickness if you want to perform a more offensive role... Another alteranative is Engineer/Mechanist.

That's not true. Dragonhunter is hot gartbage in OW. Deadeye is miserable if you need to deal with tons of foes in OW. Harbinger is also mediocre at OW. Holosmith requieres x5 the effort to rival Merchanist in OW. Virtuoso has similar problems as the DE: amazing single target damage, terrible while dealing with large groups. Most of the meta builds for instanced content are a phenomenal ticked to a wipe if you try to solo HPs/Bounties/Meta Events, since those builds doesn't provide the theoretical potential dps outside groups which deliver the permanenrt roster of boons + max vuln stacks, and that's doesn't even count that the dps ranks are extracted from "a fight" vs a passive golem. In other words: full berserker + scholar runes deliver mediocre damage over time when soloing dangerous foes, and that even if you maneage to survive. @Waffles: nice build. The gear seems a blend ofHizen's power and condi Vindicator builds. Celestial works great with the condi variant, which is essentially immortal. For power I run gs + swords with Alliance + Shiro, fireworks runes (hate normal pace). Aside from the Assassin ear rings to cap crit chance I mostly stick to marauder, since I think that 3 stats gear provide low value. I refuse to play Jalis since the nerfs, outside Renebow builds: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmjAEZlxQmMP6k1RpMOClRSqMCqkn1kfsF-zRhYbBhJGVcCwBROHUwZkpUoCVgiPEjJ9DoeYJC4to/oFUB-e The condi variant is way more tankier and chill (requires less inputs) but the power is more visceral and engaging (despite the dps is low in both). But I agree with you: who cares if takes a bit more, it gets the work done. After the nerfs to the Mantras, I now slighly prefer Vindi over Mirage as the best OW spec (WB kills faster but is tricky to play).

The name is from the greek mythology, I don't see any potential infraction since the regular version exists in the character from other player (and I have my own interation of it). To prevent trolling I will just provide a similar example (is not the real name, just a comparable example): let's say that the name is "Hephaestus" God of the Forge, a 10 letter name. I currently have a character with Hepâestüs, and the "normal" version "Hephaestus" is taken; when I try to use H E P H A E S T U S (which fills exactly the max 19 letter cap between 10 letters and 9 spaces) the game saids "name not available". When I try with H Ë P H A E S T U S, H E P Â E S T U S and other more complex iterations as H Ê P Ä É S Ú S, etc. is still not allowed. Doing the same with less letters, still not allowed. That contrast with me not having any problem naming a character I created recently as A L Â S T O R . So that's why I'm asking if the rules of names for new characters and for name changing are different...

Bought that one to change and use a different name, which happens to be taken. The name follows the rules and limitations, so I tried iterations using letter spacing for capitals and combinations of umlauts ¨ and chevrons ^ but the game answerd "the name is not available". Did so many permutations that is just impossible for the name to be repeated, so I assumed that those umlauts and chevrons were not allowed (which is weird, since I have plenty of chacters using those). So I tried to just use space and capitals and replacing some letters, but again the game said "name not available". That make me think that the game doesn't allow so many capitals, but is not true since I have fresh characters with names composed by only capitals... What the heck is happening? Are the restrictions for renaming a character different from the ones of creating a new one? Why aren't names in capitals allowed in the Name Change Contract which cost me gems (and real money) but available in character slot creation?

At the moment I would say that Warrior performs better at PvP, Revenant better at OW PvE and both are equally capable (fairly good) at WvW (in both roaming, zerging and smakk skirmishes). For instanced PvE both are decent, I guess, but I can't talk much about that game mode.