Guild Wars 2

But I am getting crushed in the HoT maps running around solo….

What kind of builds are you all running to solo the HoT content? I read they are supposed to be of the easier class’s to solo in HoT with events but I’m doing something wrong.

I run condi so… Curses, death magic and reaper.

But the power build most people use i think is spite, blood magic reaper

I mostly run around doing solo PvE, except when grouping periodically for champ hero points, meta events, etc. I have really been enjoying a reaper minions build – reaper/death magic/blood magic. I have full minions on my bar, including rise. I use greatsword and axe/dagger (love the fast speed when equipping dagger with the blood magic trait). My gear is all exotic or ascended (a few trinkets) zerkers with scholar runes. I find it works well for all solo PvE including HoT content.

Exotic zerkers/scholars can be a bit pricey, but not too bad if you can craft it yourself (assuming you have been saving up some mats as you leveled – by doing this it cost me almost nothing to level both tailoring and weaponsmithing to 400) and use buy orders to purchase mats.

Another good option is valkyries armor if you are still feeling a bit squishy (I haven’t felt this way with the minions build in zerkers to be honest). However, if soloing with valk armor it may be better to use soul reaping instead of blood magic to get the increased crit chance in shroud. This makes it more of a shroud build (with minions) as you want to be in shroud as much as possible. In this case it may help to use dagger/x also for fast life force generation. Valkyries seems to be a very good choice if you plan to do a lot of grouping as precision on armor is not important when you always have the precision buff plus 25 stacks of vulnerability (50% crit chance with the reaper trait). There are other posts on valkyries by people with more experience than I.

I’m sure it would also be fine to use the build mentioned above (reaper/spite/blood magic) with shouts/wells instead of minions, but for HoT content I wouldn’t try this without at least having exotic gear (this has been my experience at least – YMMV). Without minions having valk armor may be even more desirable (and possibly soul reaping instead of blood magic), but I’m sure people have managed this with full zerkers as well.

For solo PVE I usuall don’t switch from condi meta-build. But if kitten gets really hard, like you need to solo some HoT champ for skillpoints, pick Death/Blood/Reaper, slot everything with minions and Rise. Enjoy your AFK-fighting build.

I use a greatsword/staff. I run spite and soul reaping, and reaper for my specs. I have selected skills that will extend the life of my reaper shroud. I sport bone minions, Rise, Suffer, and a flesh golem for solo roaming. I love my build.

Spite –
Spiteful tailsmen, rending shroud, close to death

Soul Reaping –
unyielding blast, vital persistence (that extends your reaper shroud time), death perception (good crit chance boost)

Reaper –
Augury of death, grave digger, reaper’s onslaught

I have scholar runes a valk ascended, Berserker trinkets, also ascended.

I will say that you are going to have problems with mobs until you gain some masteries. That should be your first concern until you hit about 30 to 50, and then you will have a much easier time of it. The insights are a good source of masteries, most of them are fairly simple to get to. When you can get to dragon stand, keep doing the meta, this loads of XP and masteries for just running the lanes.

BTW, you can get temple armor in Cursed Shore for karma that you’ve earned. I would have told you that in my earlier post, but I didn’t think of it because I assumed you’d know this if you are doing HoT, but just in case you didn’t know what, you can get Soldier stats in Arah, Soldier stats will keep you alive better than Berserker.

I run my usual PvE build, Full zerk, spite, soul reaping, reaper traitlines. If I’m soloing HoT meta events or playing around in dragon’s stand, I’ll swap soul reaping for blood magic. If I’m soloing something really tough like a hero point champ, I’ll swap spite for death magic as well.

As for karma armor (mentioned in an above post) you can’t salvage it, so I would recommend against using expensive runes if you go that route.

I resolved my issue……

Apparently it helps if I remember to equip all my ascended trinkets from the bank.

Ah, well, if you had no trinkets equipped, that might make it tougher.

Two builds, in particular, do well for me in HoT roaming: shroud optimized power shout reaper and power MM reaper.

Sylent.3165:

I resolved my issue……

Apparently it helps if I remember to equip all my ascended trinkets from the bank.

If it makes you feel better…I used my new legendary greatsword for 4 days before realizing I had forgotten to select stats for it.