Guild Wars 2

I’m looking to get opinions on roamer professions including weapon sets, gear/rune, and traits as far as they are relevant to a roaming build.

Seems like an Engi with perma swiftness would be good.

Could see a thief as great with lots of escape too.

Warrior of course has some good options.

I’d also like to be able to take a camp solo and so some disruption. Would love your opinions.

Nothing even comes close to Thief’s mobility/run speed. A dire Thief can solo-flip camps and roam with the best of them as well.

Engie is good because of perma swiftness + super speed + rocket boots. Of course, that’s purely mobility and will make it hard to take camps solo.

Warrior will have good mobility and still be able to solo camps.

Thief can probably solo camps, but the mobility isn’t superb compared to the other two.

Remember to focus down the two scouts in camps to get rid of blinds first. Once they’re dealt with, take out the guards to prevent the immobilizes.

If you ever go down, take a dolyak down with you (if you can). Scouts are also pretty squishy.

Try not to fight the Camp leader until the scouts are dealt with. You can easily dodge the leader along with the guards, but the immobilize and cc might be annoying.

Esplen.3940:

Engie is good because of perma swiftness + super speed + rocket boots. Of course, that’s purely mobility and will make it hard to take camps solo.

Warrior will have good mobility and still be able to solo camps.

Thief can probably solo camps, but the mobility isn’t superb compared to the other two.

Remember to focus down the two scouts in camps to get rid of blinds first. Once they’re dealt with, take out the guards to prevent the immobilizes.

If you ever go down, take a dolyak down with you (if you can). Scouts are also pretty squishy.

Try not to fight the Camp leader until the scouts are dealt with. You can easily dodge the leader along with the guards, but the immobilize and cc might be annoying.

Fleet Shadow+tons of stealth+Infiltrator’s Arrow. Like I said, nothing comes close to Thief in a footrace. Rock some Dire gear and you can bleed out a whole camp and never get touched.

Tman.6349:

Nothing even comes close to Thief’s mobility/run speed. A dire Thief can solo-flip camps and roam with the best of them as well.

Thanks for the advice!

Are you meaning Dire thief as in condition dmg plus high Vit and Tough? In general, what conditions other than bleeds are you going for? What is a rough build? I’m assuming 6 in the last trait line for the condi dmg…

Esplen.3940:

Engie is good because of perma swiftness + super speed + rocket boots. Of course, that’s purely mobility and will make it hard to take camps solo.

Warrior will have good mobility and still be able to solo camps.

Thief can probably solo camps, but the mobility isn’t superb compared to the other two.

Remember to focus down the two scouts in camps to get rid of blinds first. Once they’re dealt with, take out the guards to prevent the immobilizes.

If you ever go down, take a dolyak down with you (if you can). Scouts are also pretty squishy.

Try not to fight the Camp leader until the scouts are dealt with. You can easily dodge the leader along with the guards, but the immobilize and cc might be annoying.

Thanks, much appreciated for this as well!

A 0/0/5/3/6 Dire Thief will wreck kittens. Might stacks will push your condi damage over 2k. Stealth and incredible dodge uptime will make sure you stay alive while condis tick.

I can post or message a build after I’m done with dungeon tour in a bit if you’d like.

Any prof can really be a good roamer, you will want to balance, damage, mobility and survivability/escapes. I would recommend trying out different professions.

Thief and Engi are excellent, though those 2 will require a bit more practice, Warrior has great mobility options, great surv, escapes and damage, good for a starting profession and is easier to balance out, Mesmer and Necros are good as well but require more specific setups for roaming.

But yea try them out, see what your comfortable with.

Tman.6349:

A 0/0/5/3/6 Dire Thief will wreck kittens. Might stacks will push your condi damage over 2k. Stealth and incredible dodge uptime will make sure you stay alive while condis tick.

I can post or message a build after I’m done with dungeon tour in a bit if you’d like.

Would love a post or message, whatever is more convenient for you. Thanks a ton!

For “ninja capping” the Ranger is usually recommended. Ninja capping is where you take out outlying scouts and sometimes other guards first at a far enough range that it doesn’t trigger swords on the map to trigger. Rangers can also solo fully upgraded camps because you can get the guards to target your pet instead of you.

For “fast capping” and general roaming, Engineer is a good choice. It’s easy to get permaswiftness, and you have access to several mobility skills. If you can obstruct LoS, camps are fairly easy to take with bomb builds. Although, you will probably want to switch your traits and skills before and after flipping camps since the best builds for flipping camps is quite different from builds that are good against other players. You should be able to solo fully upgraded camps if you are good, but you don’t get the free tank that a ranger has.

Thief is very fast and can do some sick damage. I have no idea how hard it would be to solo a fully upgraded camp, as I don’t play thieves. You should be able to take down a non-upgraded camp, especially if you pull the scouts first and fight the guards two or three at a time. I’m not sure if you can just clump them all together like you can do with an engineer/ranger.

Warrior has great mobility and is really strong. You should be fine with a warrior as long as you gear and trait him correctly.

Soloing camps is about being able to kill all the guards before the enemy notices their camps are under attack, and having enough survivability that you don’t have to retreat or lose damage from having to kite too much. Another thing that is useful to have is a skill which interrupts, since guards have heal skills.

Sokia.3710:

For “ninja capping” the Ranger is usually recommended. Ninja capping is where you take out outlying scouts and sometimes other guards first at a far enough range that it doesn’t trigger swords on the map to trigger. Rangers can also solo fully upgraded camps because you can get the guards to target your pet instead of you.

For “fast capping” and general roaming, Engineer is a good choice. It’s easy to get permaswiftness, and you have access to several mobility skills. If you can obstruct LoS, camps are fairly easy to take with bomb builds. Although, you will probably want to switch your traits and skills before and after flipping camps since the best builds for flipping camps is quite different from builds that are good against other players. You should be able to solo fully upgraded camps if you are good, but you don’t get the free tank that a ranger has.

Thief is very fast and can do some sick damage. I have no idea how hard it would be to solo a fully upgraded camp, as I don’t play thieves. You should be able to take down a non-upgraded camp, especially if you pull the scouts first and fight the guards two or three at a time. I’m not sure if you can just clump them all together like you can do with an engineer/ranger.

Warrior has great mobility and is really strong. You should be fine with a warrior as long as you gear and trait him correctly.

Soloing camps is about being able to kill all the guards before the enemy notices their camps are under attack, and having enough survivability that you don’t have to retreat or lose damage from having to kite too much. Another thing that is useful to have is a skill which interrupts, since guards have heal skills.

Thanks for this excellent post as well!

The reason why I don’t consider Fleet Shadows fast for Thieves is that, to my knowledge, you’re not going to want to be running 2+ stealth skills and stealth traits while fastcapping camps.

If you can slide that into a condi build, more power to you (I don’t play Thief TOO much), and yes you can stack stealth with Pistol 5 → Sb2 which is almost as good as Smoke Screen → Sb2. I just feel like it’s wasting a lot of potential for super speed versus playing Engie/Warrior who can maintain swiftness and leap.

petespri.6548:

Thanks for this excellent post as well!

No problem. Remember, any profession can be good at roaming. It’s just that some tend to be more useful in certain situations. The biggest limiting factor is mobility, since there are so few ways to increase mobility. This is why Warriors, Engineers, and Thieves are generally considered more useful. They have lots of mobility options. Thieves and Warriors can get around the map quickly, while Engineer has access to mobility skills that can be very useful both in and out of combat. Thief and Engineer can also stealth, which comes in handy. Ranger also has Greatsword 3, but you won’t be as fast a a Warrior with a greatsword.

Things like damage and survivability can be done with any profession to various degrees. But, how quickly you can travel to point A to point B is limited by the number of mobility skills your profession has access to. This is why I would probably not make a Necromancer with the intention of the character being a primary roamer. Personally I play Ranger, because with the Engineer I feel that I have to play Bach on my keyboard just to do damage (much less solo a camp). Ranger is much simpler, like a warrior, but I don’t really like the warrior’s skills.

If you’re competent at Ranger, you can do a Sword 22 GS3 for triple leap, but it requires good timing and has a few wonky delays.

Necromancer and Mesmer sort of have swiftness, but… that’s about it. Mesmer has good in-combat mobility with Blink and other teleports, but it’s not enough to move around a map quickly. Even using Phase Retreat spam won’t make it fast enough to compare to leaps.

I currently run a warrior spec aiming at getting peopel chase me.
Full Ascended Sentinel Armor/weapons, asc Soldier trinkets, vit infusions and melandru runes.
GS with Bloodlust sigil (need power to flip camps/kill dollies fast enough) and Hydromancy for chill on weapon swap (when enemy thieves chase you and get close).
Warhorn with Sigil of Energy for extra dodge and sword with new sigil of cleansing.

00644 – Dogged March, Sure Footed, Defy Pain, Quick Breathing, Lung Capacity, Signet MAstery, Mobile strikes.
Defiant stance, fear me, balanced stance, endure pain and signet of rage.
I cant really duel with this build but my main objective is to contest enemy objectives and waypoints, kill dollies, flip camps and have a couple of people chase me all the time.

I have about 34k hp and lots of mobility, condi removal and hard/soft cc counter.
I can usually handle 3-5 people chasing me depending on their class and skill. I also recommend to have a good underwater setup for escapes or kill thieves who are dump enough to chase you into the water.

For the last couple months i’ve been roaming with staff ele. It’s about playstyle, understanding what to expect, and knowing when to be aggressive or get the heck out. If you play single target heavy dmg, such as thief or ranger, try to line of sight the camp npcs so you hit all of them at once. If you’re aoe be sure to keep them gathered up to maximize your hits.
With experience you will get a feel for what you can fight and what you should run from, and how early you need to pull off to get away safely. Even a class with less than amazing mobility can survive if you react quickly and know what to do. I strongly recommend a lot of practice fighting thieves, though. Warriors don’t usually chase the way thieves do, and since they’re fast you’re likely to get caught by them now and then. Glass thieves need to be pinned down and spiked, and focus damage on yourself so they get hit when coming for the melee attacks. Against dire you just need a metric kitten of condi cleanse, since outside of condi pressure they have little damage.

Condy theifs solo camps by using that heal signet and then clustering them all and death blossom death blossom dodge (caltrops) etc etc