Guild Wars 2

Just wondering, what do people consider to be the best class for PvE Boss Farming?

My poor elementalist keeps getting downed during the fights (can’t take a hit, and can’t dodge everything). Looking to switch it up a bit.

Staff guardian has no issues.

If you keep getting downed during World Bosses, then you are doing something very wrong.
What level are you and what is your gear?
Since most bosses can’t be crit you can use Soldiers gear, that way you’ll have max power and defense enough to be afk most of the time and still survive the whole fight, also equip a staff as ele the range will also make the bosses even easier.

Elementalist. Great ranged AoE damage render it the best one by a large margin.

Ele fire staff should have zero problems with world bosses. I have no clue how you are getting constantly downed.

A class with a Weapon Skill 1?

Soldiers gear is a good suggestion, but you need to learn the bosses and their tactics. There’s a tell-tale animation before the lightning field comes up near the Inquest Golem, for instance. Watch for red circles on the ground and dodge when fighting the Shadow Behemoth, etc…
I’ve done all the World Bosses with a Staf Ele. Learn the Bosses and pay attention, and you should be able make it through without getting downed.

I use a rifle warrior, set up auto attack and get a coffee. I could use a longbow, but I accidentally unlocked scarlet’s kiss and kitten it I am not gonna use it!

I find that Engineer is best for getting through those slow, droning pre-events. Set turret, /sleep, grab sammich. And rifle’s long range still keeps me out of trouble.

The absolute easist class is a ranger for one reason: Range. The range on the longbow (1500) is enough to outrange even the Inquest Golem Mark II. You don’t even have to stand on the crates, just on the stairs, and press stability sometimes.

They can pretty much just stand back and kill every boss this way. But if you just want pure survival so you can facetank it at melee, PVT heavy is good.

I do most world bosses and such on my necro. Staff for good ranged distance, dagger for melee, wells and marks (on staff) for tagging all the things, and a second health bar if for some reason I ever need one.

Kal Spiro.9745:

A class with a Weapon Skill 1?

Nah…. Go with the class that has a flamethrower and a rifle…

I usually fight PvE bosses on my Beserker Engie while listening to the song “Burn, baby, burn!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_sY2rjxq6M). I makes sure to use Beserker trinkets and weapons in addition to exotic / ascended Beserker armor. Engie also has a trait called Juggernaut (Firearms #8). This trait stacks might while using the flamethrower. For some bosses, like the Vinewrath champions, you want to use rifles and activate the Rifled Barrels trait (Firearms #4). That trait gives the weapon extra range.

If you want to fight Tequatl, you will need Solder’s armor (aka PVT armor).

Playing Engineer requires that a player learn how to use combos in battle. You will need to learn how to use the life-saving Healing Turret combos. How to do that is explained in this youtube video: https://youtu.be/iKt5GUW1uqA?t=1m8s

If you decide to stick to playing Ele, you should get exotic (Soldier’s) or ascended (Ahamid) armor. You will also want to use only ranged attacks on bosses. As an ele, it helps to hang out with the Guardians for extra protection. (The job of the Guardian is to protect the other players).

Ralanost.8913:

Ele fire staff should have zero problems with world bosses. I have no clue how you are getting constantly downed.

sounds like he just mostly stands there.

steve.2945:

Ralanost.8913:

Ele fire staff should have zero problems with world bosses. I have no clue how you are getting constantly downed.

sounds like he just mostly stands there.

Wow. You folks sure know how to make someone feel special. :P

I run a full zerker (rares, working towards exotics) staff elementalist on boss runs.

Claw of Jormag has a tendency to surprise me with those blasts of ice walls he throws down. The three final champions in the Silverwastes can get me down on occasion. So on and so forth.

I dodge when I see a warning area on the ground, but that and a 1200 range is not always enough. If I run out of endurance for dodging or just happen to get tripped up, all it takes is one good shot and I’m downed. I’m just looking too see if there’s something better out there.

Oh, now you specified a lot of things.
Jormag, VW, Teq and Triple Trouble are the bosses that I can excuse people getting downed.
Yeah, an ele with rare zerk gear will have a rough time in those bosses, zerk is indeed the best gear, BUT also requires you to dodge/block everything.
My suggestion is to get at least soldier trinkets with laurels or guild commendations or wvw barges. or you can get soldier armor from dungeon tokens.

The way you wrote your 1st post made us understand that you die for world bosses like Maw, Golen and so on.

Belzebu.3912:

The way you wrote your 1st post made us understand that you die for world bosses like Maw, Golen and so on.

Yeah, I was starting to get that.

Thank you for your help! Sounds like I need to keep focusing on getting my gear up then (and getting the right gear at that).

Indeed.
Ele is the squishest class (lowest HP pool in light armor), so if you gear with a glass cannon gear you better be a fantastic player

ranger. many world boss dont’ even hit at 1500 range.

Elias.3204:

steve.2945:

Ralanost.8913:

Ele fire staff should have zero problems with world bosses. I have no clue how you are getting constantly downed.

sounds like he just mostly stands there.

Wow. You folks sure know how to make someone feel special. :P

I run a full zerker (rares, working towards exotics) staff elementalist on boss runs.

Claw of Jormag has a tendency to surprise me with those blasts of ice walls he throws down. The three final champions in the Silverwastes can get me down on occasion. So on and so forth.

I dodge when I see a warning area on the ground, but that and a 1200 range is not always enough. If I run out of endurance for dodging or just happen to get tripped up, all it takes is one good shot and I’m downed. I’m just looking too see if there’s something better out there.

First off, you can’t crit world bosses like those, so zerk gear is close to useless. If you have about 200k karma or so, go to the temple of grenth in cursed shore. There is zerker gear and soldier trinkets. That 200k covers the armor, but if you want the trinkets for the survivability, I would suggest those first.

For Jormag specifically, I stay in water attunement while waiting for the wall to go down and heal people until then. With soldier trinkets you should be able to live through most of his attacks, just learn to dodge the ice crystals that form in the air, that will save you a good deal of damage. 3 final champs for VW are very easy to live through if you follow a good group. Like north opening flowers and stand on them when the boss runs to the west side of the room. Mid champ you have to bust open pustules and get inoculated and then stand in the white semicircle when it goes to the west side of the room.

So while some of your problem is your gear, some is you not knowing the fights yet. Learn, adapt and get better. It is incredibly rare for me to be downed on any world boss outside of Triple Trouble, but I don’t do that boss enough to know all the monsters attacks. Hell, I find some fights in the living story a LOT more challenging and unfair. Even then, once you learn the attack patterns, it’s just a matter of not being a failure and following the dance.

Also, what armor runes do you plan to run? Weapon sigils? Utility slots? Traits? Might as well get the full run down while we are here.

Actually, water arcane ele with mist form is super good at survival, even in zerker gear.

Since we are talking about open world here, there is really no reason to go crazy on dps with squishy builds.

ps. OP, no, gear is not your problem here, if you stick with current setup, you will die just as often as you do in exotic as in rare. For zerker gear, upgrade to exotic just makes you hit harder, you are still as squishy as ever.

Ralanost.8913:

Also, what armor runes do you plan to run? Weapon sigils? Utility slots? Traits? Might as well get the full run down while we are here.

Yep. This is my problem. Runes? Sigils? Nope, haven’t really bought many yet. I’m currently working on getting my engi up to ascended gear, but may have to “switch gears” (see what I did there?) and work on my elementalist instead. Time to hunker down and focus on a single character I suppose.

Elias.3204:

steve.2945:

Ralanost.8913:

Ele fire staff should have zero problems with world bosses. I have no clue how you are getting constantly downed.

sounds like he just mostly stands there.

Wow. You folks sure know how to make someone feel special. :P

I run a full zerker (rares, working towards exotics) staff elementalist on boss runs.

Claw of Jormag has a tendency to surprise me with those blasts of ice walls he throws down. The three final champions in the Silverwastes can get me down on occasion. So on and so forth.

I dodge when I see a warning area on the ground, but that and a 1200 range is not always enough. If I run out of endurance for dodging or just happen to get tripped up, all it takes is one good shot and I’m downed. I’m just looking too see if there’s something better out there.

Don’t forget that fire staff elementalist has an awesome extra dodge on 4. Also, the elementalist has a bunch of great survivability utilities (Arcane Shield FTW) and the usual fire staff builds have no use for what they normally slot when a world boss shows up.

If that’s not doing it for you, though, I guess that’s your choice. Personally, I wouldn’t bother changing equipment for world bosses, though. It’s really not necessary and they’re not worth it (Barring, like, if you do daily Triple Trouble with a guild). I’d sooner change characters than carry around multiple sets of armor.

I don’t recommend doing zerk ele if you have trouble handling it. It would be better to use soldiers or celestial, and in fact at most world bosses even clerics is great on ele because world bosses are overzerged so DPS doesn’t matter much there beyond just keeping people on their feet so there is less waypointing going on.

Why to not worry about DPS? Because elementalist skills like meteor shower and ice bow #4 hit large opponents such as world bosses many times and do massive amounts of damage regardless of your gear. Even the lightning hammer will bring great utility to the zerg even if you do zero DPS, due to the auto blast finisher.

You’re basically chosing the hardest combination to play in the game that requires a significant time investment to master and throwing it up against bosses that for the most part cannot be crit (making the gear next to useless).

Its best to keep meta builds in dungeons and fractals unless you have absolutely no choice to swap gear out due to limited or maxed out bag slots.

From personal experience, a zerkers staff ele helps a ton with Silverwastes bosses if you know what you’re doing. You can easily burn down 1/3 to 1/2 of a teragriff’s HP at Indigo in 1 rotation depending on upscaling, and 10k meteor showers help a lot in the DPS department against the VW bosses.

Elias: My main character is a Staff Ele and I have no problem with any of the scheduled World bosses (I don’t do the Triple Jungle Wurm so can’t speak to that one)

Here are a few tips.

You are squishie, plan accordingly

• Stay out of Melee range
• Dodge alot. Don’t forget Fire Staff skill 4(extra dodge)
• Exotic/Ascended armor, weapons and trinkets. Zerker armor is bad for world bosses(great for everything else) as the Big Bads are not ‘Critable’, so precision and ferocity are wasted. Add a few pieces of Solders Stats to bring up your defense.
• Fire when attacking, switch to Water when you are getting a lot of hate
• Proper Runes and Sigils are very important (Many schools of thought here).
• Once in Ascended Don’t Forget Infusions both offensive and defensive(I prefer Mighty and Vital)

Once outfitted properly Claw and Karka should not down you though those pesky SW bosses and Tequatl can still be a chalange.

Remember: An Ele can do a ton of damage which tends to attract a mob’s attention