Guild Wars 2

From my experience & research, I’ve learned these are best:

Minion Master Necro
AH Guardian (Also awesome for group play)
Shatter Mesmer
D/D Elementalist

Any thoughts? This is for both PVE & PVP.

Whatever class you can play the most without getting bored. Efficiency means nothing if you are only playing what’s popular.

That isn’t really what the thread was asking, but thanks for the input! I agree you shouldn’t play a class that bores you or play a class just because it is popular. Anyone else have an opinion on the best overall solo professions/builds?

Warrior is the best class in PvE all around. The leveling experience is mind-numbingly easy.

Solo? Try Ranger.

Not the “best” class by any stretch of the imagination. But solo? The presence of a pet makes a lot of solo content very trivial.

I switch between toons a lot, and the best overall survival/damage balance belongs to guardians.

Jarvis.9540:

From my experience & research, I’ve learned these are best:

You’re really looking to open up a can of worms by asserting that certain builds are ‘best.’ They’re best for whom?

Ranger or Guardian, to a less degree Engineer for PvE

Mesmer, Warrior or Thief for PvP

Guardian and Warrior from what I’ve experienced.

Ranger obviously.

Ya i would say ranger purely because there pets can last a lot longer then most of the other pets and as a class they have a lot of time makers to let you land lots of dmg (long ranges traps slow etc…).

Ele is ok in the late game but early on they are one of the worst at soloing.

Guardian can do some crazy things too at times but they are slow once you start a fight you must finish it or die trying they as a class have a hard time getting away. You must plan out your fights and make sure no random mobs are going to come into play when your fighting.

From my experience guardian, followed closely by warrior. While the warrior is squishier he has a very decent range option (rifle). A guardian has a scepter for ranged combat but that is mediocre at best. But you can melee all with a guardian. He is kind of immortal

Claudius.5381:

From my experience guardian, followed closely by warrior. While the warrior is squishier he has a very decent range option (rifle). A guardian has a scepter for ranged combat but that is mediocre at best. But you can melee all with a guardian. He is kind of immortal

Rifle is not a good range option for solo pve.

For solo PvE definitely Ranger and Engineer, at least that is what I found

Morrigan.2809:

For solo PvE definitely Ranger and Engineer, at least that is what I found

To expand:
Ranger for permanent pet and superior ranged. This profession shines in the open world.
Engineer for utility. Between kits, turrets and elixirs, you’ve got an answer to everything.
Necromancer is awesome too because of minions and durability.

Which is funny, since those three professions are most complained about in dungeons.

Solo? I’ve always loved my Warrior. In open world I’ve taken down everything from the Queensdale troll to Rotbeard to the Eye of Zhaitan to the Priestess of Dwayna. Ordinary mobs just give me Might to drop things faster. This character has provided me almost 1,700 hours of enjoyment and I wouldn’t trade any of them.

warriors and guardians for pve-easy mode

ele or mesmer if you are looking for a challenge

Ranger in both PvE/WvW. Double melee if you want to make it interesting.

I’ve leveled a necro, guardian, ranger, and engineer.

Ranger & guardian were easy from the start, especially ranger.

I think though over the course of leveling I die the least with my engineer, but that’s due to versatility. Next would be ranger, due to a perma-pet offtanking and spiking and endless kiting. Both engi & ranger can easily trait for perma-vigor and lotsa swiftness. Makes open world easy.

Warrior

Strong armour, strong healing, strong damage – it’s all-round face-roll in PvE compared to the other classes. If you fail at warrior you’re a bad player and should feel bad

The reason this doesn’t translate into PvP is that warriors attacks tend to be easier to avoid, and they lack utility flexibility. However in PvE thats rarely needed, NPC’s don’t demonstrate complex strategy like interuppts, immobilises and combos nor do they dodge your attacks (Instead happily standing in a big mob taking a full hundred blades on the chin)

I found Thief the easiest and the most fun in PvE out of every class that I’ve got to 80 (all except Necromancer and Engineer).

I’ll show myself out.

Ryuujin.8236:

Warrior

Strong armour, strong healing, strong damage – it’s all-round face-roll in PvE compared to the other classes. If you fail at warrior you’re a bad player and should feel bad

hahahaha! I must really suck because both my warrior and my guardian spent sooo much time dead!
Seriously, I do suck at melee based classes :P
I don’t feel bad at all though

Warrior for easy solo pve, the only class able to kill almost every mobs in less than 10 sec.
Gardian is not bad too, just need a little more seconds.

Thief or mesmer for solo pvp, they have the most annoying skills againts human players.

Ranger

15char

Must say Ranger followed closely by Guardian, two completely different play styles, mind…

When it comes to just doing the easy overworld content in this game, Warrior, Guardian, and Ranger are good choices for doing it quickly and/or easily.

That said, it doesn’t matter much.

I think ranger gives a lot of solo options if set up properly. I usually use bears for their toughness, and I generally can walk into a situation without worrying about the number of mobs. I do need to move quite a bit to stay alive and thin the numbers, but it still takes less than 1-2 minutes to clear 6 or 7 mobs even if there is a veteran (killing the adds first of course). The other advantage is not having to stress about adds. Plus I have solo’d several champions as a ranger, since my pets are so tough, just takes a bit longer than I have have patience for sometimes Champion rewards should scale if you solo it, yes this is primarily a group game, but I don’t always have time to play when my friends do.

Regardless, the key advantage to a ranger is to be a heartless b**ch and leave your pet to take the heat and aggro the mobs while you save your own kitten and run like hell. Also helps when you have a tough fight to snag a skill point or similar for map completion. Saved me from a few champion encounters where I realized there was no chance with the setup I had at the moment and, in each case, my pet died for me to live on R.I.P Fido!!!

With the trait to rally after you kill somebody in Vengeance you are nearly undefeatable as a Warrior for normal and small group PvE content. And with the overall damageoutput of the Greatsword and the Mobility of Double Axes I’d say Warrior is the best solo class for PvE.

I played many classes and I must say, that Sword/Warhorn melee ranger really makes solo content feel trivial. Rampage as One for long duration stability, Warhorn #4 for many many hits giving your pet lots of might and a feline pet means you melt down every veteran mob in no time.

Pet is also a great asset to get any skill challenge communing in hostile territory. The only “hard” thing is the risen abominations that get fury from your pet.

You are also very hard to kill since your pet will easily rally you once downed by killing some low life mob, or he can lick wounds you to life easily even under most bosses focus.

You also got a great healing spell that doubles as 15s of water field + condition removal, without having to use your other utilities for that.

First class I played to 80 was elementalist. Then I made a guardian and leveling it to 80 felt like a walk in the park compared to ele.

For soloing map completion I like warrior the most, durable, 25% perm walk speed, rush and whirlwind provide aditional mobility.

Frenzy, endure pain, sweet revenge. You can face tank kill most thing without thinking.

Minion necro is fine until you want to do any group content or PvP at all. Then you better be prepared to switch your build.

its the thief.
they have good dmg for pve content. good at pvp. and kings of wvw.
but only if you’re a good player.!

Most of my experience is open world PvE, but for that solo experience I’d recommend Ranger or Guardian.

Honestly I leveled a warrior it was really boring…I started a Guardian and I loved it but as soon as the harder fights came I quickly realized that it has no good ranged weapons…Then I started an Ele and it was soo much fun I couldn’t stop playing it.

Warrior. Large HP pool and built-in damage mitigation in your weapons along with extra immunities in utilities makes them a lot easier to solo with than other classes. They’ve also got enormous might stacking so you can output basically your maximum DPS possible no matter what you’re doing (minus vulnerability). Got a bunch of stuff in my youtube as examples.

Warrior is eSiest IMO for pve

And surprisingly I would say a thief spamming death blossom

Necromancer of course. It raised this year old thread from the grave.