MMORPGs are games designed to be tackled by groups of players working cooperatively. There are, however, some players who, by choice or necessity, choose to take on the game solo. The practice has come to be very creatively referred to as “soloing”.
As with other games in the genre, Guild Wars 2 is no stranger to solo players. The design of its open world makes it easy to temporarily team up with random players in order to take on large meta-events or world bosses; even so, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for solo players. The game has its fair share of content that, while on a much smaller scale than full metas or world bosses, is generally too difficult for the typical player to take on alone.
Whether it be Rifts, Bounties, Hero Point Challenges, or just random Champion bosses at the end of group events, some Guild Wars 2 players have concocted powerful builds capable of taking on these group encounters alone. These come with great benefits as well: everything mentioned above can be farmed for various reasons, but without an effective solo build, you’d be forced to rely on other players to stand a chance; taking them on solo can be not only a great time-saver, but quite lucrative as well.
Before we begin...
There are a lot of things to consider when ranking solo builds: their DPS, self-sustain, ability to upkeep boons, crowd control, and more. Combine that with the wide variety of different things you might use the build for and it suddenly becomes very hard to put together a definitive list. All that to say: everything listed in this article is top-tier, so depending on your specific purpose and personal preferences, the #10 build might be better for your purposes than #1.
I would also like to take a moment to mention Lord Hizen. If you’re a member of the Guild Wars 2 community, you’ve likely heard of him before: he’s a well-known content creator dedicated to crafting powerful open world builds, especially for soloing. He’s generally considered the final authority on everything open-world in Guild Wars 2, and much of the research for this article was based on his work, so I highly recommend checking his guides on any of the specs mentioned here for additional information and the finer details of each build.
10. Condi Celestial Soulbeast
While the solo Soulbeast builds lacks some of the damage output of other top-tier options, it makes up for it with very high sustain and an incredibly easy rotation. You can simply use all your skills off cooldown while sustaining yourself with lifesteal each time you apply poison to an enemy thanks to the ‘Predator’s Cunning’ trait. Its damage isn’t that much lower than the competition, either.
The Soulbeast takes the lynx as its pet of choice, but it can also take advantage of the jacaranda as its secondary pet, giving you an option to swap to for even more self-sustain in a pinch. The jacaranda also allows you to cleans negative conditions, which can come in handy against certain foes. Just be sure to swap back to your lynx as soon as possible, as the build relies on it for a passive damage increase.
Why Condi Celestial Soulbeast is good for solo:
- High sustain through poison application
- Extremely easy rotation
- Decent CC
Pick Condi Celestial Sulbeast if:
- You want a comfy rotation to zone out to in exchange for some damage
- You want a ranger build that can be easily retooled for instanced content
9. Condi Celestial Tempest
The solo Tempest build is very similar to the solo Catalyst build. The Tempest version deals a bit less damage, but we chose to include it on the list over Catalyst because it’s more accessible with an easier rotation.
Tempest has access to powerful healing skills while in water attunement, particularly the 4th hammer skill ‘Crashing Font’ and the elite skill ‘Crashing Waves’. Its damage rotation incorporates the spec’s unique ‘Overload’ skills, which have long casting times and therefore make the rotation much slower and easier to learn.
The Tempest’s similarity to the solo Catalyst build is also a notable advantage. If you ever want a slight change of pace or to increase your damage output, you can swap your Tempest build out for a similar Catalyst build without too much effort, making them quite versatile.
Why Condi Celestial Tempest is good for solo:
- Slow, easy-to-learn rotation at the cost of some damage
- High sustain
Pick Condi Celestial Tempest if:
- You want a relatively slow and comfy rotation
- You want a build with lots of versatility thanks to Elementalist’s high number of skills
- You want a build that can be easily swapped out for a similar, yet harder class for more damage output
8. Condi Scourge
The solo Scourge build is capable of dealing decent damage with very heavy sustain. Its rotation is simple and easy to learn, but does have a high APM (actions-per-minute).
Scourge sustains itself with a combination of barrier from its ‘Sand Cascade’ and ‘Desert Shroud’ skills and passive healing from the ‘Parasitic Contagion’ trait, which converts a portion of outgoing condition damage into healing. Using your ‘Sand Shades’ and other F-skills as often as possible applies torment and vulnerability and increases your condi duration, while Relic of Akeem applies even more torment and the ‘Demonic Lore’ trait applies burning for each torment stack.
Along with your sand skills, Scourge can spam its abilities off-cooldown (except for Signet of Undeath, which you’ll want to leave passively running). The combined barrier and passive healing do a great job of sustaining you while you unload your skills. The rotation is very easy and doesn’t require much thought, but it can get quite fast due ot the number of skills going off.
Why Condi Scourge is good for solo:
- High sustain
- Decent condition damage
- Simple rotation
Pick Condi Scourge if:
- You don’t mind a high APM rotation so long as the actual contents are simple
- You want barrier for extra security, or to deal with pesky HP% attacks
- You want a Necromancer build that can easily be retooled for instanced content
7. Power Bladesworn
Bladesworn not only boasts great damage, but its unique ‘Dragon Slash’ skill can easily one-shot groups of mobs and even some tougher enemies; it’s so good, you may want to avoid using it in story missions, since it’s easy to do enough damage to completely skip a phase and bug out the fight.
The build also benefits form great sustain, thanks in part to the high amount of aegis it generates, which will block many incoming attacks. It can also maintain 100% stability uptime, allowing you to ignore pesky crowd control effects and continue your damage rotation.
Bladesworn’s main downside is that it’s difficult to learn due to its unique playstyle. It’s also prone to catastrophic mistakes, such as missing your Dragon Slash. Bladesworn also tends to perform relatively poorly in instanced content despite how well it works in the open world, so you may have trouble retooling the build for endgame encounters.
Why Power Bladesworn is good for solo:
- Very high cleave and single-target damage
- High sustain
- 100% stability uptime
Pick Power Bladesworn if:
- You want to challenge yourself with a difficult rotation
- You want consistent stability uptime to ignore pesky CC mechanics
- You want to one-shot enemies with a powerful Dragon Slash
- You don’t care about taking the class into instanced content
6. Condi Celestial Mechanist
When it first released, Mechanist was infamously overpowered, to the point that it was one of the few builds to completely dominate both open-world and instanced endgame builds. It’s since been tuned down to be much more reasonable, but it’s still a very effective and versatile build.
Mechanist sustains itself with a combination of regen, barrier, and damage reduction while allowing its mech to tank most direct damage. It is also unique in being the only spec currently able to upkeep alacrity and quickness on itself, greatly increasing its overall damage. Though it’s a hybrid damage-dealer, it primarily deals condition damage.
The ideal build is somewhat lacking in CC and other utilities, but since the mech usually does most of the tanking for you, you can often swap out a skill or two for powerful utilities such as ‘Throw Mine’ for CC. Its ‘Shift Signet’ skill also provides great utility, allowing you to teleport out of danger in a pinch.
Its rotation is a bit trickier than many of the other builds on this list, but Mechanist’s general reliability and versatility are more than worth it. It’s also still a widely-used spec in instanced content and can easily be retooled to work in proper team comps.
Why Condi Celestial Mechanist is good for solo:
- Decent sustain, and the mech can tank for you
- Good damage
- Versatile utilities
Pick Condi Celestial Mechanist if:
- You want an NPC minion to tank for you
- You want a fast-paced rotation thanks to quick/alac uptime
- You want a build that can take versatile utilities
- You want a build that can be easily retooled for instanced content
5. Condi Celestial Renegade
The solo Renegade build has tough competition to stack up to, and isn’t quite as tanky as either of the other Revenant specs. However, it boasts higher damage than either—both at melee and at range—as well as amazing cleave and CC.
Though the Renegade’s sustain isn’t as impressive as its other Revenant cousins, it’s still nothing to scoff at. The ‘Invoke Torment’ and ‘Fiendish Tenacity’ traits work together to grant passive healing after each legend swap, while ‘Resilient Spirit’ and ‘Unyielding Devotion’ grant you barrier and reduce incoming strike damage, respectively. On top of that, it can upkeep protection and even has some lifesteal thanks to ‘Kalla’s Fervor’, plus a particularly powerful healing skill in ‘Breakrazor’s Bastion’.
Armed with a shortbow and the powerful Renegade utility skills, the build deals great damage and has amazing cleave. It can also abuse ‘Darkrazor’s Daring’ for heavy CC or to continually daze enemies, leaving them helpless against your rotation.
Why Condi Celestial Renegade is good for solo:
- Relatively easy rotation
- High damage with heavy cleave
- Good sustain and CC
Pick Condi Celestial Renegade if:
- You want to dish out heavy damage, especially against large groups of enemies
- You need heavy CC, or just want to give mobs a taste of their own medicine with some dazes
- You don’t mind trading a bit of sustain for increased damage
4. Hybrid Celestial Deadeye
The solo Deadeye build deals some decent condition damage through consistent application of bleeding. It constantly regains initiative by stealing and entering stealth, allowing you to spam the dagger’s 3rd skill, ‘Death Blossom’, which is a half-second evade. By combining the evade time with lifesteal from venom and stealth attacks, the Deadeye has very high sustain and good damage even with a relatively simple skill rotation.
The Deadeye can also take shortbow as its secondary weapon, which it can swap to in order to cleave groups of enemies, CC bosses via the ‘Choking Gas’ skill, or move around more quickly using the ‘Infiltrator’s Arrow’ skill.
Why Hybrid Celestial Deadeye is good for solo:
- High condition damage works well against most open-world bosses
- Heavy sustain via lifesteal
- Easy rotation
- Great mobility and decent CC
Pick Hybrid Celestial Deadeye if:
- You want to relax with an easy rotation and high damage
- You need extra mid-encounter mobility
- You don’t care about taking the class into instanced content (Deadeye is, on average, the least-used spec in logs according to GW2 Wingman)
3. Condi Celestial Mirage
The solo Mirage build boasts heavy damage on a very easy rotation. It’s capable of generating alacrity and applying mass vulnerability to its foes while also having access to good CC and decent sustain.
The Mirage heals itself and boosts its damage by constantly dodging, taking advantage of the spec’s unique ‘Mirage Cloak’ ability which replaces the normal dodge. The ‘Renewing Oasis’ trait grants regen with each dodge and reduces incoming condition duration while the ‘Deceptive Evasion’ trait tops up your clone count.
Mirage swaps between using the dagger and staff ambush skills after dodging to maintain boons. With alacrity and might uptime and easy vulnerability stacks on your foe, it can unleash impressive burst damage with a comfy rotation. One of its few downsides is that Mirage sadly underperforms in instanced content, so you may struggle to retool the build for party/squad encounters.
Why Condi Celestial Mirage is good for solo:
- Great damage
- Decent sustain
- Comfy rotation
Pick Condi Celestial Mirage if:
- You want to dish out heavy damage with a comfy rotation
- You love pressing the dodge button
- You want easy access to portals, blinks, and other Mesmer utilities while out soloing
- You don’t care about taking the class into instanced content
2. Celestial Vindicator
It might not be what you’d expect from a spec whose main gimmick is turning the dodge button into an additional attack, but the solo Vindicator is actually the tankiest of them all.
The solo Vindicator’s gameplan is to dodge as often as possible. After using the ‘Scavenger Burst’ skill to generate quickness, you can spam dodges to generate boons and extend boon duration thanks to the ‘Vassals of the Empire’ trait. The ‘Healer’s Gift’ and ‘Eluding Nullification’ traits cause you to heal and cleanse conditions after each dodge as well (and gain damage reduction from ‘Unyielding Devotion’), while ‘Resilient Spirit’ generates barrier for each of the boons you’re keeping up.
The build isn’t light on damage either, thanks in part to all the boons it generates. Each dodge deals heavy damage on its own, and a relatively simple rotation using ‘Scavenger Burst’, ‘Spear of Archemorus’, ‘Searing Fissure’, ‘Echoing Eruption’, and ‘Temporal Rift’ off-cooldown makes up the brunt of the rest of your damage.
If that isn’t enough, you can also use staff as your secondary weapon for even more healing (and excellent CC from ‘Surge of the Mists’) and Mallyx as your secondary legend for additional damage via ‘Embrace the Darkness’.
Why Celestial Vindicator is good for solo:
- Best solo sustain in the game
- Good damage and CC
- Relatively easy rotation
Play Celestial Vindicator if:
- You want to be immortal
- You need powerful CC
Considering the solo Vindicator’s sheer tankiness, you may be shocked it didn’t top the list. As far as self-sustain, it’s certainly the best, but one other spec ekes out the top spot thanks to its versatility.
1. Hybrid Herald
Herald is an incredibly powerful solo spec. It packs decent damage with one of if not the easiest rotation in the game while also upkeeping permanent uptime on several boons, including regen, might, protection, and quickness.
Using the shortbow allows Herald to deal decent damage even at range. Take Glint and Mallyx as your legends; use ‘Embrace the Darkness’ in Mallyx, and keep the Facets of Light, Strength, and Chaos active in Glint while consuming the Facets of Elements and Darkness off-cooldown.
What makes Herald particularly powerful is that this setup can be very easily modified to fit any given situation without seriously impacting its sustain or damage. You can swap out one of your legends for Jalis to generate stability, or Ventari for increased sustain. You can take staff as a secondary weapon for additional healing and heavy CC.
Even without changing up the build, Herald packs a few useful utility effects. Glint can generate and pulse swiftness, and even apply a short burst of superspeed by consuming the Facet of Chaos, which can help you get around or speed along NPC escorts. Mallyx also provides a boonrip, which can be particularly helpful against many of the newer SotO bosses.
Furthermore, many solo builds share a weakness: they invest lots of traits and part of their rotation into generating various boons and conditions (such as vulnerability), but this effort suddenly becomes wasted if other players happen to show up and start generating those things for you (as competent builds are like to do). Herald is lucky not to suffer from this, since the build is so simple—in fact, it will actually significantly buff anyone else who happens to join you, since it pulses most of the boons it generates in a wide area.
To top it all off, Herald has the distinction of being the solo build most easily translated into endgame content. Swap out your Celestial gear for Harriers and Mallyx for Ventari and you suddenly have a powerful meta-relevant healer ready to take into Raids, Strikes, or Fractals. Because its core mechanics and boon generation are so simple, even variations of the spec you’d expect to be completely different, such as Power DPS Herald, are remarkably similar and easy to learn.
Why Hybrid Herald is good for solo:
- An incredibly easy rotation
- Decent damage and sustain
- Incredibly versatile, with several useful utility effects
Pick Hybrid Herald if you:
- Want to cruise through with a comfy rotation
- Want a build that can be adapted to different situations with minimal changes to your rotation and setup
- Want a build that can be very easily retooled for endgame content
Conclusion
As stated above, all of the builds mentioned here are top-tier, and any could be the best choice for you depending on your specific playstyle and goals. There are also many different aspects to soloing; this list focused primarily on taking on open-world bosses, but if you’re just roaming and running events, other options may serve you better.
One of Guild Wars 2’s best aspects is the incredible amount of freedom and unique options it provides for buildcrafting. A competent player can make almost any spec work for any content type. If none of our choices tickle your fancy, there are dozens more to seek out or discover yourself.
