One class to solo Fractals

[Mic.1897]

What would you consider to be the best class to do a solo run of all (soloable) fractals?

I know Mirage and Untamed are up there but is there one that is dominant right now?

Thanks team.

[Gop.8713]

My first instinct would be something like mech or ranger bc the pet lets you cheese some, tho not all, mechanics that ordinarily take more than one person. I'd imagine mes could do similar with portals . . .

Edited August 9 by Gop.8713

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Probably Mesmer.

The most difficult part about soloing fractals isn't dealing with the bosses or enemies.  I've done that with several different professions (thief, engineer, mesmer, engi, ele, warrior to name a few).  The most difficult part is that nearly all of the fractals are going to have some sort of strange mechanic that requires multiple people to handle.  Throwing switches, keeping bonfires lit, catching volleyballs, carrying objects to certain destinations, etc.  The profession that is most likely to either bypass or solo these mechanics is the mesmer.  The ability to portal, jaunt, blink, and reflect all in one package makes them unparalleled at handling the weird gimmicks that a fractal will throw at you. 

Edited August 9 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[SeTect.5918]

7 hours ago, Gop.8713 said:

My first instinct would be something like mech or ranger bc the pet lets you cheese some, tho not all, mechanics that ordinarily take more than one person. I'd imagine mes could do similar with portals . . .

Pet aggro doesn't really work in fractals. At least not in t4.

In t4 they deal too much damage for your pet to tank away. At least it was like that with my untamed experience. 

Tho you are right it can for sure cheese some, but not like some high damage dealing ones. Basically it can cheese mobs where you wouldnt even need it to do that because you could rather take them yourself. At least thats my opinion on it. 

 

To reply to @Mic.1897:

There are tons of classes or builds which can solo fractals. 

I did that with power untamed, cele untamed, cele druid, trailblazers (and cele) herald, cele scrapper, cele mirage, cele harbinger and cele Catalyst. 

There might be more but these are the ones I tried and was successful with.

The ones with the most potential are probably Power/cele untamed, cele mirage, cele harbinger and cele Catalyst. Cele Catalyst might have the Lowest damage of them tho.

So cele mirage, power/cele untamed or cele harbinger are probably the best on the list.

If you need Immunity to projectiles (Endboss uncategorized), then cele mirage is your best bet. It also has immense cc with dagger ambush. It is vulnerable to undodgeable pulsing damage tho.

If you need slightly lower cc but a bit higher damage as well as Immunity to pulsing damage then go for power untamed. It also grants allies perm 25 might, perm fury and perm quickness if you want to take a friend with you sometimes. Cele variant has higher toughness at cost of a bit burst for small mobs.

Cele harbinger basically has the least cc of them (which can be Problematic at nightmare fractal 2nd boss cc-phase), but is the easiest of them. You can switch between soul reaping and blood magic depending if you need more damage or more defense. It is good against condition Instability and condition based bosses due to condi transfer. It has potential to be the highest damage build on this list IF you make successful use out of condi transfer (like transfering 20 burn stacks at volcanic and suddenly having 20k burn Ticks for like 2-4 seconds). There arent too many fractals you can use this effectively in tho. But it still has decent damage without it.

 

I also think cele thief (deadeye) has potential, but I didn't try it. 

With next expansion there is also the upcoming spear which has potential to open up some new options.

Edited August 9 by SeTect.5918

[Gop.8713]

sry you misunderstood, I was referring to using the pet to cheese mechanics, as stated . . .

The combat part is doable with any class I imagine . . ?

[SeTect.5918]

3 minutes ago, Gop.8713 said:

sry you misunderstood, I was referring to using the pet to cheese mechanics, as stated . . .

The combat part is doable with any class I imagine . . ?

Oh yeah you are right, I read that wrong, I'm sorry!

[Mic.1897]

1 hour ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Pet aggro doesn't really work in fractals. At least not in t4.

In t4 they deal too much damage for your pet to tank away. At least it was like that with my untamed experience. 

Tho you are right it can for sure cheese some, but not like some high damage dealing ones. Basically it can cheese mobs where you wouldnt even need it to do that because you could rather take them yourself. At least thats my opinion on it. 

 

To reply to @Mic.1897:

There are tons of classes or builds which can solo fractals. 

I did that with power untamed, cele untamed, cele druid, trailblazers (and cele) herald, cele scrapper, cele mirage, cele harbinger and cele Catalyst. 

There might be more but these are the ones I tried and was successful with.

The ones with the most potential are probably Power/cele untamed, cele mirage, cele harbinger and cele Catalyst. Cele Catalyst might have the Lowest damage of them tho.

So cele mirage, power/cele untamed or cele harbinger are probably the best on the list.

If you need Immunity to projectiles (Endboss uncategorized), then cele mirage is your best bet. It also has immense cc with dagger ambush. It is vulnerable to undodgeable pulsing damage tho.

If you need slightly lower cc but a bit higher damage as well as Immunity to pulsing damage then go for power untamed. It also grants allies perm 25 might, perm fury and perm quickness if you want to take a friend with you sometimes. Cele variant has higher toughness at cost of a bit burst for small mobs.

Cele harbinger basically has the least cc of them (which can be Problematic at nightmare fractal 2nd boss cc-phase), but is the easiest of them. You can switch between soul reaping and blood magic depending if you need more damage or more defense. It is good against condition Instability and condition based bosses due to condi transfer. It has potential to be the highest damage build on this list IF you make successful use out of condi transfer (like transfering 20 burn stacks at volcanic and suddenly having 20k burn Ticks for like 2-4 seconds). There arent too many fractals you can use this effectively in tho. But it still has decent damage without it.

 

I also think cele thief (deadeye) has potential, but I didn't try it. 

With next expansion there is also the upcoming spear which has potential to open up some new options.

This is awesome and it's glad to see someone who has had success with both Mirage and Untamed. Thanks for this.

 

Currently torn between those two.

[SeTect.5918]

2 hours ago, Mic.1897 said:

This is awesome and it's glad to see someone who has had success with both Mirage and Untamed. Thanks for this.

 

Currently torn between those two.

No problem!

And yeah its difficult. Most of the time its situational.

Cele mirage performs worse on "Old Tom" in uncategorized because mirages strength are its dodges, it doesn't stand out by good self-healing. Dodges cant avoid the pulsing damage so its very difficult to outheal that in t4.

Untamed doesnt struggle on this boss. To keep it in uncategorized, there isnt only "Old Tom" but also the endboss "Raving Asura". Mirage does better on this one because the boss shoots out high-damaging and agony-inflicting projectiles at you every few seconds. Mirage can easily reflect these because it has 2 seconds of projectile reflect on every dodge. Additionally mesmer has some projectile blocking utility skills avaible. Untamed doesn't have that much projectile reflection/block which makes this one harder as untamed. 

With multiple players "Uncategorized" is actually a joke, because Old Toms pulsing damage is outhealed by the healer and  Raving Asura swaps his projectiles between 5 players, it can only target one of them. Getting hit it one time wont kill you, but it grants you agony which reduces your healing immensely, so getting hit by it multiple times makes healing yourself impossible. This is basically the case if you go in there alone without projectile block or reflect.

Its basically about which fractals you want to solo and which one performs better there. 

Mirage is basically vulnerable to pulsing damage and Untamed has low projectile hate. They both are basically immune to ccs because mirage just avoids them by dodging and untamed has a good amount of stability. 

Untamed probably has better damage and far better burst, while Mirage has better cc (dagger variant, no staff). 

Untamed has quickness and mirage is baseline ranged. Using ranged as untamed will cost you a bit of damage, cc and minimal defensive decrease (because sword and mace have ccs which are basically your main source of healing. Mainhand Axe is ranged and Hits more enemies at the same time but deals slightly less damage and has no ccs).

 

They both have their pros and cons. Its really up to you and your preferances at this point. 

Edited August 9 by SeTect.5918

[Vidit.7108]

This question gets kind of hard to generalize too much about because it depends on things like which tier you are on and if by best you mean ease and consistency or if you mean by speed. Since they've been handing out stability a lot recently ease and consistency has gotten a lot better on all classes.

If you were trying to clear T4 with one class and valued speed, I would say you should probably switch around elite specs on mesmer depending on the fractal. Also, I've seen a lot of good times on CMs with different versions of condi rev over the years. on Ease and consistency you can probably find something for every class, however there are some which are effectively locked out of doing certain skips atm or are requiring a higher skill level to perform versus other options. 

There is also a lot of player skill involved with just managing things in a fractal solo that don't necessarily depend on the class. Like shuffling around movement skills and timing with the white mantle portal. 

[Kitty.4806]

Lol it's revenant. You can solo all fractals at all tiers with it. 

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

Definitely Mesmers. The only class with all the fckery and tricks to cheat at anything the game throws at a Mesmer.

[Zily.3152]

12 hours ago, Kitty.4806 said:

Lol it's revenant. You can solo all fractals at all tiers with it. 

That's not true. It's not able to solo Underground Facilities. It has the DPS sure, but doesn't have the gimmicks to bypass the switches and what not to proceed after the first half (before mining Lazer or bombs depending which route is open)

[WingSwipe.3084]

Mesmer

Old Bladesworn could literally skip mechanics and bug out bosses due to its damage output, skipping entire phases. Current iteration is in a horrible state though and would not recommend trying it.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 8/8/2024 at 11:20 PM, Mic.1897 said:

What would you consider to be the best class to do a solo run of all (soloable) fractals?

I know Mirage and Untamed are up there but is there one that is dominant right now?

Thanks team.

I've actually been working on this and recording footage for a compilation.

I'm finding that you can't solo all fractals on one class/build. You'll need to use several different classes/builds and utility/trait swaps or full template swaps mid-fractal to be able to solo these. Soloing fractals is proving to be insanely difficult in the weirdest places that you wouldn't expect.

A good example would be how Big Tom in Uncategorized is a joke boss for a full party. However, when you go to solo that thing, he is insanely difficult after the buff they gave to the poison bolts he throws around. You used to be able to summon minions or use any AI really, to hide behind those to block poison bolts. But now in current patching, those things pierce through everything including projectile reflects. It's extremely difficult to configure a build on anything that can actually deal with this. You either have the healing and not enough DPS, or you have DPS and not enough healing. Go in and try it, you'll see what I mean.

But needless to say, figuring out how to solo all fractals has proven to be a serious endeavor which is taking a lot longer to figure out than I thought it would.

G'luck with your own adventures sir. You'll need it ^^

Soloing these is a true milestone challenge for any veteran GW2 player.

Edited September 2 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[calva.2914]

Anything below T4 you can solo with mech mostly.

[Mike.7983]

Mirage/Vindicator Cele builds, look at Lord Hizen on youtube for reference.  He has done them solo including new t4 tower.

[Mic.1897]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:10 AM, Mike.7983 said:

Mirage/Vindicator Cele builds, look at Lord Hizen on youtube for reference.  He has done them solo including new t4 tower.

True but his t4 tower build doesn't exist anymore