Assistance Required

[psychosiz.7109]

Hello fellow players,

My teenage nephew has decided to begin to play this game.  I gave him my opinions and while he is thankful for them, he wants additional opinions.  He wants to play open world PVE and told me survivability is the most important thing to him in terms of his character as he goes through the story modes of the game.  What he wishes to hear from you is which profession and/or elite spec offers him the highest survivability chance.  For the record, I gave him my opinions which I promised I would not disclose here.  Any responses would be greatly appreciated.

[Acanthus.8120]

Of core traits, Guardian has the most defensive tools, and can get expanded tools via Firebrand later.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

For open world PvE, by running celestial you already guarantee a pretty good survivability.

 

With that out of the way, a lot if not all classes have a pretty good survivability, they just have a different approach on how to deal with damage. Holosmith for instance can keep up perma protection with light arena which lets him shrug off light damage and you only have to focus on evading the high damage with some margin of error if you fail. Mirage can just spam ambush skill on top of having clones to mess around with the enemy attack. Necromancer have basically 2-4 health bar they can play with if you manage your life force properly.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Alcatraznc.3869

[Raarsi.6798]

Guardian - I've been told it tanks well enough in open world, but I haven't quite figured it out yet.  Firebrand is the likely go-to for elite spec there since you can build more on the support side compared to the other two elite specs.

Warrior - Spellbreaker if he wants to keep his face pretty, but pretty much any flavor of warrior fares pretty well in open world.

Revenant - Same thing with warrior.  Literally any spec while running Jalis as a second legend works.

Engineer - Engineer standalone and holosmith both do decently enough, scrapper can facetank most things, and mechanist is more about avoiding while the mech blows things up.

Ranger - Don't have to worry too much about survivability since the pet should be the one tanking.  All three elite specs are pretty good for that.

Thief - Not sure how well spectre can tank, but it does have heals.  Otherwise, thief is less about surviving than it is about dodging and melting things.

Necromancer - Reaper has always been a solid choice to facetank anything and everything.  Core and scourge can do well enough.  Not sure harbinger is meant for tanking.

Mesmer - Surprisingly decent since enemies prioritize attacking clones over the caster, with staff or greatsword mirage being my personal favorites.  Chronomancer has traditionally been known to be a tank for a while now.  Virtuoso I think is roughly on par with harbinger for necromancer in that it's good for dps, but usually doesn't have the same survivability factor the other elite specs do for its profession.

Elementalist - Catalyst works....I haven't figured out how, but it works somehow.  I've also heard good things about condi tempest too, but elementalist is definitely the hardest profession to be tanky on.

Hope this all helps him!

[psychosiz.7109]

Thank you all for these posts.  It is truly appreciated.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

16 hours ago, Raarsi.6798 said:

Guardian - I've been told it tanks well enough in open world, but I haven't quite figured it out yet.  Firebrand is the likely go-to for elite spec there since you can build more on the support side compared to the other two elite specs.

Warrior - Spellbreaker if he wants to keep his face pretty, but pretty much any flavor of warrior fares pretty well in open world.

Revenant - Same thing with warrior.  Literally any spec while running Jalis as a second legend works.

Engineer - Engineer standalone and holosmith both do decently enough, scrapper can facetank most things, and mechanist is more about avoiding while the mech blows things up.

Ranger - Don't have to worry too much about survivability since the pet should be the one tanking.  All three elite specs are pretty good for that.

Thief - Not sure how well spectre can tank, but it does have heals.  Otherwise, thief is less about surviving than it is about dodging and melting things.

Necromancer - Reaper has always been a solid choice to facetank anything and everything.  Core and scourge can do well enough.  Not sure harbinger is meant for tanking.

Mesmer - Surprisingly decent since enemies prioritize attacking clones over the caster, with staff or greatsword mirage being my personal favorites.  Chronomancer has traditionally been known to be a tank for a while now.  Virtuoso I think is roughly on par with harbinger for necromancer in that it's good for dps, but usually doesn't have the same survivability factor the other elite specs do for its profession.

Elementalist - Catalyst works....I haven't figured out how, but it works somehow.  I've also heard good things about condi tempest too, but elementalist is definitely the hardest profession to be tanky on.

Hope this all helps him!

Mesmer has been my main since I started playing. 

But it should absolutely not be recommended for someone wanting safe solo play. Well maybe Mirage is tough enough. But Mesmer is so much squishier than most any other class except for probably Elementalist and maybe Thief.

Sure you have Clones but they do not seem to take aggro reliably and you shatter the clones for your damage. The class takes more damage than others without the self healing abilities that other classes have.

I play through the expansion stories with every other class without a single problem but when I try to with my Mesmer it seems I spend so much time in Downed state and respawning 

 

Edit: but I think I agree with every other of your assessments.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Roadkizzle.2157

[Jijimuge.4675]

Lord Hizen has a channel devoted to open world builds (many of which are capable of soloing very hard foes) - you could have a look at his various videos - they're available for each class, so your nephew ought to find something that he likes as well as being effective.

https://www.youtube.com/@LordHizen

[Raarsi.6798]

1 hour ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

Mesmer has been my main since I started playing. 

But it should absolutely not be recommended for someone wanting safe solo play. Well maybe Mirage is tough enough. But Mesmer is so much squishier than most any other class except for probably Elementalist and maybe Thief.

Sure you have Clones but they do not seem to take aggro reliably and you shatter the clones for your damage. The class takes more damage than others without the self healing abilities that other classes have.

I play through the expansion stories with every other class without a single problem but when I try to with my Mesmer it seems I spend so much time in Downed state and respawning 

 

Edit: but I think I agree with every other of your assessments.

How I do it on mesmer is like how I suggested with staff or GS mirage, but I don't shatter clones unless I absolutely need to bar break a stronger mob right this second.  Leaving the clones up also allows them to build up aggro to an extent as well as potentially do more damage than if you just go for max and then pop them, so the trick is to keep summoning them and if they don't have aggro, then you can still kite while the clones whittle that boss down.

[sigmundf.7523]

Reaper, Renegade, and Mesmer. These 3 are SSS-Tier solo open world.

And don't recommend guardian. Its borderline bad, with willbender being an exception as its better than the other 2 guardian e-spec but still worse than those 3 i mention above. 

Also, go to Lord Hizen youtube channel. He is someone that do solo open-world challenging PvE contents, like soloing legendary / bounties. 

[Roadkizzle.2157]

5 hours ago, Raarsi.6798 said:

How I do it on mesmer is like how I suggested with staff or GS mirage, but I don't shatter clones unless I absolutely need to bar break a stronger mob right this second.  Leaving the clones up also allows them to build up aggro to an extent as well as potentially do more damage than if you just go for max and then pop them, so the trick is to keep summoning them and if they don't have aggro, then you can still kite while the clones whittle that boss down.

Yes. I think it's fair to say Mirage is an easy tough solo spec.

 

But I think it's less accurate to say that Mesmer generalized is a good tough solo class.

With Mirage you have one button that does everything for you.

Dodge does everything you could need. It does everything every other class needs an entire skill bar for in just one button.

This makes it boring in my opinion and I don't care for the Mirage theme. But it's undeniably the best Solo Mesmer.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

1 hour ago, sigmundf.7523 said:

Reaper, Renegade, and Mesmer. These 3 are SSS-Tier solo open world.

And don't recommend guardian. Its borderline bad, with willbender being an exception as its better than the other 2 guardian e-spec but still worse than those 3 i mention above. 

Also, go to Lord Hizen youtube channel. He is someone that do solo open-world challenging PvE contents, like soloing legendary / bounties. 

Guardian I find funny. It is not as good as soloing Bounties or similar level enemies as other classes. But I think it's much better solo than a lot of other classes as you're learning the game.

Greatsword works well and it has tons of passive and active defenses. 

It does have lower Health than other classes but it has an absurd amount of Aegis and Stability to help keep it alive.

Its main weakness is the lack of ranged ability.

[TashaFoxx.7862]

get him a build from Lord Hizen

[Cuks.8241]

Any class with proper gear and build. 

My favorites are trailblazer condi herald, marauder power vindicator with salvation, celestial weaver, celestial harbinger and condi mechanist which just makes everything a joke (Im running my old spvp sidenode build with full dps viper and its still easymode) Not saying these are best but just my favs.