Guild Wars 2

I ask this because I love making money, I don’t know why but I enjoy farming mobs while watching Netflix and other stuff. But what class would you say is most effective? I was looking at thief, but they seem a bit more of a pvp class than pve. Thoughts?

Engineer with flamethrower or Guardian with staff. In Zergs you don’t really need dmg, only for the champs. So you need a class that has a fast autoattack witch a good AoE!
One downside is that you sometimes don’t make enough dmg if you don’t play full berserk, so you might consider joining a group to compensate this

For single roaming thief since you can shadow refuge to be left alone when mining and logging while signet of shadows gives a passive speed boost, for big group fights guardian. Elementalist sounds good at first but all their attacks have a charge, so air staff 1 skill will go off after some ranger burst down your target with rapid fire cheating you out of potential look. Avoid traits that give others swiftness or haste (there’s a trickery traitline that gives boons to nearby allies) since it’ll make it easier for them to reduce your potential gains.

When your credit is secure (with two or three hits) then attack other groups to maximize your gains. This is when you’d likely play guardian but if you’re on thief use shortbow, haste, and clusterbomb in close quarters and sacrifice some group utility for tagging potential.

Rangers have a skill that pushes back, which can potentially cheat you out of credit so apart from staff go with sword/shield so you have access to sword 3 for the shadowstep.

did you know that the guardian’s staff is called the lootstick?

Flamethrower engie tags really good, can might stack and hit hard if you need more dps for some solo bosses, and its just too fun to play with.
Try running with your FT AA though Arah massive undead waves, and enjoy your impossible to count moldy bags.

The rotating Jalis hammers on Revenant are great for tagging

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t think of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t thing of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

I main mesmer, and if I wanted to farm something at a decent rate it was terrible, because they have almost zero AoE, aside from skill five on the staff which has a long-kitten cooldown. However, now with Chronomancer out I believe a mesmer can reliably tag mobs with their wells, so that’s what I’d say for mesmer :P

ZachAttack.3957:

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t thing of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

I main mesmer, and if I wanted to farm something at a decent rate it was terrible, because they have almost zero AoE, aside from skill five on the staff which has a long-kitten cooldown. However, now with Chronomancer out I believe a mesmer can reliably tag mobs with their wells, so that’s what I’d say for mesmer :P

Thanks for the input. I do play a Mesmer but really besides staff I could not think what the best options would be for zerg type situations off the top of my head. Alone away from the zerg I play my Mesmer pretty much like my thief and enjoy using Sword as it has some nice cleaving. You can add the offhand too that gives you the speed buff to help somewhat for the Mesmer’s lack of mobility options, yet even this is not so great as if enemies touch the field you are then slowed down again. Sigh they really need to give Mesmer and Guardian another decent option!

PS, not had a chance to play my Memser to his Elite Spec yet. I have 6 other classes to do first before him sadly lol. But that’s the price you pay for having all classes. :P

Paulytnz.7619:

ZachAttack.3957:

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t thing of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

I main mesmer, and if I wanted to farm something at a decent rate it was terrible, because they have almost zero AoE, aside from skill five on the staff which has a long-kitten cooldown. However, now with Chronomancer out I believe a mesmer can reliably tag mobs with their wells, so that’s what I’d say for mesmer :P

Thanks for the input. I do play a Mesmer but really besides staff I could not think what the best options would be for zerg type situations off the top of my head. Alone away from the zerg I play my Mesmer pretty much like my thief and enjoy using Sword as it has some nice cleaving. You can add the offhand too that gives you the speed buff to help somewhat for the Mesmer’s lack of mobility options, yet even this is not so great as if enemies touch the field you are then slowed down again. Sigh they really need to give Mesmer and Guardian another decent option!

PS, not had a chance to play my Memser to his Elite Spec yet. I have 6 other classes to do first before him sadly lol. But that’s the price you pay for having all classes. :P

Yeah the sword is nice but the issue is that it is melee. So in a Zerg mobs would die before you can get to them. And movement skills like blink have too long a cooldown to be used to remedy this. As for guardian, they were most likely the best farming class before elite specs thanks to staff 1, but now are even better with a long range option. They definitely do NOT need any more options :P

ZachAttack.3957:

Paulytnz.7619:

ZachAttack.3957:

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t thing of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

I main mesmer, and if I wanted to farm something at a decent rate it was terrible, because they have almost zero AoE, aside from skill five on the staff which has a long-kitten cooldown. However, now with Chronomancer out I believe a mesmer can reliably tag mobs with their wells, so that’s what I’d say for mesmer :P

Thanks for the input. I do play a Mesmer but really besides staff I could not think what the best options would be for zerg type situations off the top of my head. Alone away from the zerg I play my Mesmer pretty much like my thief and enjoy using Sword as it has some nice cleaving. You can add the offhand too that gives you the speed buff to help somewhat for the Mesmer’s lack of mobility options, yet even this is not so great as if enemies touch the field you are then slowed down again. Sigh they really need to give Mesmer and Guardian another decent option!

PS, not had a chance to play my Memser to his Elite Spec yet. I have 6 other classes to do first before him sadly lol. But that’s the price you pay for having all classes. :P

Yeah the sword is nice but the issue is that it is melee. So in a Zerg mobs would die before you can get to them. And movement skills like blink have too long a cooldown to be used to remedy this. As for guardian, they were most likely the best farming class before elite specs thanks to staff 1, but now are even better with a long range option. They definitely do NOT need any more options :P

I meant mobility options for Guardians. They have no Signet or traits that help at all unlike most of the other classes. All they have is staff 3 and that suffers from the same issue that Mesmer speed buff does. Being if any enemy hits it you lose your extra speed.

As a herald i use “unyeilding anguish” for quick tags on mobs… it’s a gap closer too

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t think of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

Guild wars 2 farming is the same as any other MMOS farming. Events for direct gold farming is terrible. Aoe farming mobs for x materials is the way to go, even more true once you hit Heart of Thorn maps which is pretty much mob grinding Korean style for that mastery XP after you do the big events.

The most efficient aoe farmer is still the Guardian with staff/greatsword or staff/scepter/focus ect.

Necromancer/Engi being 2nd best at aoe farming quickly if spamming the loot stick on the Guardian is boring.

Thief with shortbow/dagger/dagger is also not too bad but I would say it’s slower than Gurdian/necro/engi. Rest of the classes are much slower. Goal is for mass aoe farming very quickly, ranger and mesmer are terrible at aoe grinding.

Lucifer.7289:

Paulytnz.7619:

Dude that’s Runescape or possibly WoW (never played it so can’t really say tbh) farming which does not really work here. You have to farm events for decent farming. :P In which case any class is fine just as long as you have a way of tagging a lot of mobs at once, some examples:

Engi – Flamethrower
Ranger – Longbow skill 5 with also the trait that gives Piercing to arrows.
Necro – Wells and/or staff.
Guardian – 2 Hander Sword/Staff/Longbow
Rev – Jalis, Vengeful Hammers – nuff said.
Mesmer – Staff?
Thief – Off the top of my head I can’t think of many aoe options…maybe traps? However I do like Sword/Pistol as you can bunch groups up and Spam Blind and fast attacks on them.

Ele – A lot of options here for aoes, staff is fine but daggers and such should be equally viable

Warrior – Ummm, I don’t really like warrior much, although they have access to a lot of weapons they seem to be master of none. Pretty much the Jack of all Trades that Engi was promised to be. Maybe 2 Hander and just spin though everything….

Now, to address your question about single farming and what’s best. Just go with something that’s fast at killing. Personally I like Ranger as I can send my pet to solo 1 while I take out another 1-3 on my own. Of course you can do similar on other classes just by attacking a group 1 at a time and them bringing them all together to aoe them down. Examples Necro wells/Rev Jalis, Vengeful Hammers.

Lot of options just play with things. :P

Guild wars 2 farming is the same as any other MMOS farming. Events for direct gold farming is terrible. Aoe farming mobs for x materials is the way to go, even more true once you hit Heart of Thorn maps which is pretty much mob grinding Korean style for that mastery XP after you do the big events.

The most efficient aoe farmer is still the Guardian with staff/greatsword or staff/scepter/focus ect.

Necromancer/Engi being 2nd best at aoe farming quickly if spamming the loot stick on the Guardian is boring.

Thief with shortbow/dagger/dagger is also not too bad but I would say it’s slower than Gurdian/necro/engi. Rest of the classes are much slower. Goal is for mass aoe farming very quickly, ranger and mesmer are terrible at aoe grinding.

I did not say events for the gold, that would be just plain stupid. It’s the lootbags you want. Obviously having the events scaled up because of a lot of people in the area is the ideal way to go as you get a lot more lootbags and a lot faster. Add to that now too the BONUS MAP REWARDS and it’s a double win. Shiny baubles anyone? Not to forget to mention lodestones and such as well.

Have you never done the daily events and seen how many mobs come because of the zerg? I can tell you its a lot more than you could find just roaming around solo tagging groups of mobs. Haranthi Hinterlands is a good one that comes to mind. The number of Centaurs that charge in to their deaths vs the zerg is crazy. But hey as I am getting my loot and bonus map rewards I am not complaining. :P

… mesmer are terrible at aoe grinding.

I think you don’t know what you’re talking about, a chrono mesmer is one of the best for mob tagging thanks to the wells (dmging ones) and staff 5. A chrono (condi build is better for that thx to the dmg ticks) can cast 4 dmg Aoe’s within seconds. Staff 5 + 3 wells. If that ain’t tagging i don’t know what is.

HakunaMataBaby.2734:

I ask this because I love making money, I don’t know why but I enjoy farming mobs while watching Netflix and other stuff. But what class would you say is most effective? I was looking at thief, but they seem a bit more of a pvp class than pve. Thoughts?

You’re playstyle is like mine. You’re intuition is correct: thief is the best for farming mobs in open world (HoT is a different story, but it’s not really effective to farm mobs there). I’ve build openworld farming builds for every class but Revenant so far. Clearly, most of the people posting in this thread are clueless about what you’re asking for as I’m seeing nonsense about mass AoEing of mobs, which you almost NEVER encounter while running around in openworld in the first place (and you didn’t ask for an event camping build so … ). Even if you COULD collect mobs for that purpose, you still kill more mobs per unit time killing them individually over gathering them up and being all fancy with AoEs … for trash mobs.

Thief has all 4 elements needed for highly efficient OW farming: Passive Runspeed buff, High Damage, good opening move (so mobs don’t screw with your attacks that reduce time killing them) and closers (so your not impeded by conditions that keep you in combat and slow you down on your way to killing the next mob.)

Dagger/Pistol setup, full zerk. I use Scholar runes and Fire/Air sigils. Open with #3, end with an auto attack on single targets, Open with #5 on multiples. Signet of Shadows, Malice and Assassin’s Signet. You will want a closing move to cleanse long CC conditions. I run Roll for Initiative. Your steal is also a very valuable source of damage and opening move and even a heal IIRC.

Traits are:

Deadly Arts: Top Mid Low
Critical Strikes: Low Top Top
Trickery Low Mid Mid

This build/class requires no cooldown on critical skills between kills, so it’s very repeatable and consistent damage.

On the other hand, Mesmer is the worst. It’s damage requires setup and on Trash mobs … that’s wasted time. It has no runspeed buff, requiring the use of SIgil of speed or Traveller’s runes. Can’t even think of any effective opening moves not limited by CD’s making them useless on the timescales of killing trash mobs. Mantra’s had some condition cleansing at least but you no longer get damage increase for charged mantras.

(tl;dr incoming. I’m long-winded, sorry). There are a couple of great ways you can tag lots of mobs with mesmer, actually. I don’t even have Chronomancer fully unlocked yet, and I primarily run GS/sword+focus as I don’t like the long cooldown of the staff skills, and sword skill 2 does a lot of decent close range AoE with a relatively short 12s cooldown.

I think a lot of mesmers forget to take advantage of the greatsword’s auto-attack being able to hit any 3 targets in a line. Trick when auto-attacking is to always be sure you are targeting the mobs furthest from you, and position yourself so that you are hitting 2-3 targets at all times. GS skill 3 is basically instant cast and tags 5 mobs at a time, also with a pretty short cooldown of 12s. Also, change targets often—right clicking on enemies is a godsend here. Hit each target no more than twice with the GS auto-attack before changing to the next, as two cycles of skill 1 should do enough damage to get loot credit for the kill.

Basically my approach when following zergs or farming mobs is to get in close to the enemies and pop at least 1 clone before using shatter skills. Use GS skill 2 on approach to drop a clone, then get in close and switch to sword, strafing circles around them while autoattacking to pull them into a tight group. Works pretty well.

With shatter mesmer you just want to make sure you aren’t popping all your shatters or clones at once. You can get into a great groove of consistently creating clones/illusions and shattering them every few seconds to tag lots of mobs. If you’re soloing a large group of enemies just use GS 1 to agro them all and pull them into a tight group, then shatter+sword to down them fast.

For utilities I generally run decoy and mirror images for all of the instant clones, and I alternate blink or signet of illusions depending on the mob farm. Blink is great for getting in close and quick, but signet of illusions is ideal if you don’t need to rush as it doubles the frequency of your shatter skills. Set your traits up for typical shatter mes build.

Running in small mob farming groups of 2-3 players is ideal in most cases I’ve found, You maximize your ability to tag everything and also do enough damage to it to get “credit” for the kills before the other players melt them.

Relatedly, though, I finally made a necro and I must admit that it is significantly easier to farm kills and tag everything with necro staff and wells. Stupid easy for maximum profitssss.

That being said, I still love farming with a mes. It may be a bit more frantic and it may require a bit more work, but it can be a lot of fun, constantly dodging and shattering. Also, there are probably easier ways to farm with Chronomancer now, but I haven’t really experimented with that yet.