Guild Wars 2

Which are the best classes and why in your opinion for roaming in solo ( i do it a lot lately) ?
In my opinion :
thief ( can burst and can disengage and escape from groups )
condi mesmer ( strong in 1vs 1 and can have good access to stealth for run away )
Ranger/druid ( strong and can stealth and run away
warriors/guardian/engi
necro, ele rev

Men with extremely high testosterone run power necro
Women with extremely high fertility run power necro

Why: because there is no running or stealth, only fighting.

Whatever you decide on running with, for the love of god make it a power build, there is FAR too much condi spam builds in WvW that they all blend into one, talentless blob.

As always, the one you’re best with.

In terms of general effectiveness assuming the player using it is of average skill however:

1. Thief
2. Mesmer
3. Druid
4. Warrior
5. Engineer
6. Guardian
7. Elementalist
8. Necromancer
9. Revenant

Mobility and adaptability are key to being an effective roamer. You need to be able to disengage if you’re taking too much pressure/if you find yourself outnumbered and to be able to fight a variety of builds effectively. Skill will always be a big factor in whether or not you can do these things.

As for the reasons I’ve listed them the way I have:

Thief because it has plenty of skills that work in most situations coupled with high mobility, damage and stealth. It is objectively the best roamer even if it’s 1v1 capability is up for debate. I’m talking engaging and disengaging, surviving/winning and having an ace up the sleeve against nearly everything it meets. Not necessarily that it’s the best fighter.

Mesmer for similar reasons to the Thief but with less mobility, more sustain and effective 1v1/X potential.

Druid again for similar reasons to the Thief but with nearly the same mobility, better cleanses and high sustain. It’s skills/traits are much more situational but overall, it does well in most encounters despite being on the weaker side in 1vX unless very heavy kiting is going on.

Warrior because of it’s durability, damage and passives. It’s a powerful fighter that can be extremely difficult to bring down or even get close to but it struggles in 1vX unless it can kill it’s opponents in less than a minute. It has a lot more situational skills and thus why 95% will be running identical traits/utilities and is easy to overwhelm once those skills have been put on cooldown.

Engineer, despite having lower mobility, has incredibly high sustain similar to Druid with skills that are relevant in most situations. It is highly adaptable but suffers from skill demanding gameplay with less pay off than other professions but excels in unpredictability and 1vX. In my own personal experience, I in fact find that I do better against multiple players than just 1 on 1’s.

Guardian, also like Engineer, suffers from a lack of mobility but of which can be remedied with skillful use of 1h sword and Wings Of Resolve. Since it has such high access to powerful defensive skills much like Druid, it can adapt well to dealing with most builds and can survive being outnumbered for a good deal of time. High cooldowns and reliance on proper blocking and healing are however, the bane of it’s roaming effectiveness.

Elementalist has potential to be a very strong roamer. It could honestly be placed much higher on the list but only with certain builds that are well played. It has potential to deal with most encounters effectively but suffers from poor mobility without sacrificing utility. Ele is a bit of a wild card in the sense that it can be extremely strong and a great roamer in the right hands but very mediocre – poor in average hands. Which again is why I made this list assuming average skill.

Necromancer has poor mobility (albeit decent land speed) and doesn’t generally fare well against multiple players. It can be an extremely dangerous opponent but is easily overwhelmed by simply disengaging and forcing cooldowns. Although if you over commit, a Necromancer can seem like a very strong roamer, it still lacks much of what makes a good one. Situational skills and obvious tells are just a few things to note when considering it’s place on a solo scale.

And finally Revenant. Because most will not have any cleanse, or very, very little, they are straight up hard countered by condition builds, which there are a lot of. It’s mobility isn’t the worst but it isn’t a lot better than Guardians and it doesn’t tend to last very long in 1vX. Although it can deal massive amounts of damage and played well, it can pull itself back from the brink of death (hence the name “Revenant”), it still suffers greatly from lacking a lot of the key elements that make a great roaming profession.

Note:
I have seen at least one of each of these professions used to great effect in the roaming scene. I have seen Necromancers consistently winning outnumbered fights, Revenants that were impressively quick, Guardians that seemed unkillable and Elementalists that always had a back up plan. Although some professions are strictly better than others for the things they have access to, in the proper hands, the things they don’t have access to won’t matter.

my druid build

Can’t go wrong with DD(Acro), Zerker, Condi Chrono, or Druid. The only reason Druid is not very top tier is because they can be a little susceptible to sustained condi pressure/condi bombs. But really shine vs power builds.

Whereas the other three have access to a lot of clear(or resistance). Zerkers can have some crazy uptime on resistance.

Obviously Daredevil is the best by a long long way due to the combination of stealth, mobility and high spike damage with minimal setup. You can disengage at any point and the only real threat to your health is either overconfidence or another Thief. It is the optimal choice for solo roaming.

The only class that really struggles with solo roaming is Necro, although Reaper does a lot better. All other classes have viable solo roaming setups.

I consider power builds to be the best choice for solo roaming these days. Condition builds often do not have the spike damage needed to make the kill and get out quickly, plus there’s enough cleansing across most of the classes to mitigate a lot of what a condi build tries to do. It still works against….less experienced players of course of which there are many in WvW.

For solo roaming I’d list it as follows:

DP Thief/Daredevil: So long as you don’t over commit the only thing that should kill you is another thief or being 100-0 from stealth by something like an all in power shatter mesmer.

Condi core mesmer: Has lots of stealth, cleanses, good protection uptime, tons of kiting potential and applies anti combat conditions. The weakness is you aren’t very mobile and if you get revealed at the wrong time you may very well be a goner.

Wanderer/commander Druid: Can be tanky, very resilient to conditions, direct damage and can kite the apocalypse if played well. Not as bursty as other options and can get boring but it’s a very good all round roamer and if you kite well you should always get away except vs thief as you get 3s stealth+superspeed. A little more useful in team fights than the above if your solo exploits suddenly escalate.

Marauder/wanderer mix Scrapper: With durability runes and muscles gnashblade you’re very tanky with high boon uptime and if running elixir S and stealth gyro (which you should because they’re great) you have all the stealth needed to escape most situations. They are less mobile than the above but a lot more useful when a solo fight becomes a team fight and have excellent abilities that scale much better when more people get involved. You also have lots of options to adjust for a situation, if you can see a bunch known for high conditions you can run elixir C or purge gyro using stealth in between recharge to avoid conditions.

Honestly though I would say I enjoy scrapper more than the others as I don’t really enjoy the play style or in the case of thief I don’t like being the apex predator that is so completely better at getting away and chasing. SpellOfIniquity pretty accurately described all the classes but if you ever solve your issue of condition clearing with rev (condition removal sigils) then they could be a good roamer too as they only lack stealth.

Agree with the general consensus above Thief, Mesmer, Druid. All because of mobility and stealth options.

Condi Shatter Chronomancer. Build below with adjustments. Practice with build needed for success.

Overpowered at 1v1, can beat 2v1.
Facerolls anyone not prepared aganist condi duelist.
Facerolls anyone without skill. (Assuming you are average)
Beats thiefs with some awareness.
Can beat full condi hate prepared enemy. (Takes time)(Depends on player skill)
Facerolls camps.
Can run away easily.
Be prepared for “Cancer Mesmer” rage hate whispers.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Condi_Roamer

- Scepter/Shield and Staff. (Torch stealth and Focus pull will be useful)
- Full Dire Gear with Trail Ring + Trail Boots
- %30 Condi duration food. (Get more trail if you can’t afford price)
- %100 Confusion Duration with rune
- Skills depends what you face. (Blink,Moa,Illu signet) Recommended.
- Illusion tier rank 3 traits -> Choose Malicious Sorcery
- 250 Condi damage kill stack rune will be useful for long roams.

And unfortunately a lot of people run that kind of chrono build. I’ve tried it a couple times but it bores me to death really fast as the condition spam is immense.

People have stated above most classes and what reasons for running them, it all comes down to personal preference.
After having roamed for a long time with most classes I’ve gone back to core/vanilla d/d elementalist with various gear choices. Some or most will choose celestial which still works quite good for roaming and small scale group fights.

It just feels somewhat refreshing in this condi spamming meta to run a ‘normal ’ build again. Personally I have little trouble when running solo with ele and if need be it’s easy enough to swap over to a more group oriented build.

Play druid. It doesn’t have bad matchups, because any bad matchup is one where you can use druid’s insane evade/stealth/movespeed to just stall it to a draw or run.

Fivona.5061:

Condi Shatter Chronomancer. Build below with adjustments. Practice with build needed for success.

The Trailblazer variant is stupid good. The Viper variant in skilled hands is probably the single strongest dueling build in the game right now. That build has zero weaknesses and basically takes substantially superior play to beat it.

Fivona.5061:

Condi Shatter Chronomancer. Build below with adjustments. Practice with build needed for success.

Overpowered at 1v1, can beat 2v1.

Any class can beat 1 vs 2 in the right circumstances, but assuming that all the contenders are skilled enough no class in this game can win 1 vs 2.

Example: everyone knows that condi Mes hardcounters power Rev, and still in the Jebro tournaments we saw some highly skilled Revs defeating highly skilled condi Mesmers and all kind highly skilled Necros.

You won’t convince me that a very good Mes player can beat at the same time two very good players, albeit I’ll agree that Mesmer is along the Thief the best roamer in the game at the current state.