just buy as many rare reclaimed weapons as you need reclaimed metal plates off the tradepost for 77-80s per weapon, salvage them for 1 plate per weapon and you are done.
Air main pupose is CC with knockback, stun and blind. Additionally you get swiftness + movement impairing condition cleanse with #4 and an ok damage skill on #1 (and a very strong aoe damage skill with air overload)
Earth main purpose is also CC with “way-blocking” on #4 and immobilize on #5 (and on earth overload). You also get a nice explo finisher on a short CD with #2 (overload is also an explo finisher) and magnetic aura for projectile reflection on #3.
All around earth and air are not for damage but for CC and utility. And in that regard they are really useful.
VB 9/11 are soloable though golem is a bit difficult (vampire is duoable and coztic itzel requires a few more)
AB 7/11 are soloable with ranged class or 9/11 if you don’t get pulled from the shroom and can evade the arrowheads attacks though some are a bit more difficult (balthazar you need stealth or a few people, tengu, arrowhead and shroom are duoable)
TD 6/11 are soloable maybe 7 if you can solo the troll. All others except maybe the shroom under Rata Novus are duoable
DS 7/7 are soloable but (all?) require a successful meta event
so 29 soloable and 37 of 40 are duoable
the most important thing you need to solo them is to have a ranged (backup) weapon, are able to dodge some attacks and know your class. Breaking breakbars also helps a lot.
With +7 on weapon(s) and all trinkets (8×7 = 56), infused back and infused + attuned rings with 3x +10 and 2x +11 (3×10 + 2×11 = 52) you get 108 AR without armor. For swamp 77 you need 109 AR but 108 AR should be fine.
So you can do all dailies without ascended armor and with time will get your armor pieces for free.
If you then want to level to bonus level 100 you will need another 42 AR. That is 6×7 → get +7 on every droped armor piece and you are done.
I run this setup as backup tank. With a second warrior for banners you have around 90% crit chance and are able to provide some might stacks and empower allies while having good sustain and CC skills.
Maybe Strength runes would be better and if you need less toughness go for roasted cactus food that should give even more might for the raid. Also shield master is a good option for more blocks / stuns and might generation.
If you want a colored spineal backpack be aware that it is one of the most expensive backpacks ingame right now. 10 dynamic cores for example cost around 160 gold and will rise further because they are a limited ressource.
For sprockets. Easiest way to get them is to buy them. If you want to get some cheaper you can get the gift for 5-10 sprockets per day. You need thousands of those though (50 sprockets to make 10-15 blade shards and 500 for the mechanism).
If you only want an ascended backpiece Wanze just talked about a lot cheaper ones
In the long term the gift of sprockets will pay off though. It gets you around 30 silver per day with an investment of 15 gold and 25 laurels if you sell all sprockets you get out of it.
500 should be 1-2 hours of chest farming in SW. You get a bit less fragments than dragonite and bloodstone but still so much that you have to delete stacks while chest farming
you lose 0% crit chance in a power build by picking Dhuumfire (30% base crit chance with a mix of valk + zerk or valk + cele gear, 50% crit chance from decimate defences and 20% crit chance from fury is already 100% crit chance). So every tick burning is additional dps.
dps are ok. Food and/or trinkets can be changed for more direct damage (100 power 70 fero food and valk+zerk trinkets for example). Celestial gets you over 1k condition damage for higher burn ticks while enemies are over 50% health, gravedigger still did around 31k crits on tequatl.
maybe change the functioning of boons into something like protection does no longer reduce incoming damage by 33% but instead increases armor by 50%? So defensive boons are stronger with defensive stats and weaker with offensive stats.
you would still have to bring sufficient offensive stats to circumvent a possible boss enrage.
There is no useless class only some that lack in certain areas. For example necro is not a very good dps class. On the other hand necro has one of the best sustain and self buffs (25 might and 25 vuln, fury most of the time). Necro has always the ability to go range without the need to equip a “non-meta” weapon (useful for some fractal encounters) and can disrupt defiance stacks very easily.
If you have problems finding groups in LFG, find yourself a guild and do group content with guild groups. Easiest solution.
Level 1 underwater fractal is extremely easy soloable with a ranger (dunno about other classes but should also be possible with them). Thats one of the dailies done in 5-10 minutes so no need to change anything.
problem is, you can stack 25 vuln reasonably fast (well of suffering → fokus 4 → DS). But as soon as you get out of shroud you have to use axe 1 or it will drop to around 10 vuln. So 25 vuln for party = even worse dps from necro.
Maybe make those GS attacks unblockable? They are so slow and hard hitting that they just hit through a shield. Everybody should be able to dodge them so that wouldn’t be OP.
without infusions its 48.19% CC. You could switch backpiece to captain to get to 49.29% CC but that lowers your armor to 2987. Maybe switching food could work.
Variation1: LB-GS with Remorseless and Two-Handed Training (no animation lock, more vuln stacking)
Variation2: GS-S/A with Two-Handed Training (more cleave damage)
