Guild Wars 2

I’ve beaten liadri and will post my specs, gear and strategy to do so with elementalist.

First, let me say that anet deserves praise for bringing difficulty into an AAA game in this day where everything is an interactive movie with no difficulty or carrot on a stick MMOs.

Second, let me say that the Liadri fight is terribly unfair, and if you are dying after you get the hang of it, it´s not really your fault – unless someone can provide an effective proven strategy to counter the issues I’ll mention as Ele here.

[Spec]
Fire: 25 points, Traits: Ember’s Might and Internal Fire
Air: 10 points, Trait: bolt to the heart
Earth: 20 points, Traits: Earth’s Embrace, Stone Splinters
Water: 15 points, Trait: Aquamancer’s Alacrity
Arcane: nothing

[Gear]
Full zerk gear from flame citadel, with scholar rune. Since your HP is hardly above 90%, using jewels would be much much better. 1 zerk scepter and 1 zerk dagger from flame citadel as well with 5% crit chance sigil and 5% damage sigil

Jewlery is ALL ascended celestial, with zerk backpiece upgraded once.

With this build you will survive well and do enough damage to not worry about timer. I killed Liadri by the first time announcer said “wrap things up”, so I still had plenty of time.

[Skills]
Heal: Glyph of elemental harmony
Utility: Signet of air, Mist form, Arcane shield
Elite: fiery greatsword

[Strategy]

First, you don’t have to worry about endurance. I hardly dodge during the whole fight. Not having to dodge is the first thing you’ll have to get used to. Still, having endurance regen food is great just in case.

The first phase is always exactly the same, except for the orb. You need to do this mechanically.

1) Go in, kill the first orb, position yourself in front of the White thing on the ground, so the AOE hits behind you. Next, go behind the white thing as the illusion approaches and hit with your first crystal. I usually heal myself during this part because evading Liadri’s attacks is not good here.
2) Again, just learn where the AOE is gonna hit and avoid it, after 2 AOEs stay in the corner of the screen waiting for the illusion. Keep strafing left and right and Liadri’s attack will miss you. Get crystal, throw at her and wait for orb to spawn and kill it.
3) After orb is dead, just lure illusions while again memorizing where the AOE is going to be.

For this part, if you are taking too much damage, remember that strafing left and right, depending on your angle towards her, will make her miss you. You can also use a dodge sometimes, but I would save at least endurance for one.

This should become second nature to you, you shouldn’t be wasting time during phase 1 since it´s always the same, nor should you have any difficulty with it since there are virutally nothing random to it.

[Part 2]

Before throwing the last crystal, I switch to fire and always turn Arcane shield on to avoid her initial spike damage. Now is when things get trickier. Start dpsing her but move away from her, while staying near the center of the arena.

There is a trick now to deal with the AOE. While the red rings are really really hard to spot, the black mass that drops from the air is very visible. You will have to constantly watch where it falls, because wherever it falls is where the safe area will be (not 100% precise, you still need to watch it, but being close to where the last black mass fell will put you almost at it).

Dodge the very first AOE because you probably won’t see where the safe spot is, but after that just keep moving towards the where the last black cloud hit the ground. You will quickly learn to spot where it is safe once you done it a few times.

Keep your camera to your back, so you can see the black mass and move towards it, but keep your character facing Liadri as much as you can for DPS. This is very hard, and as many mentioned, one of the worst things about this fight is the lack of feedback from the camera.

To sum up this part:

1) watch where the black falls at, and always move to it´s center
2) Once the AOE appears, make sure you are at the safe area. If you moved towards the black mass center, you will be at it or close to it.
3) Keep your camera at your back but your character facing liadri for damage.

Here is an image to show you the best move pattern I could find:

http://masterchan.org/x/src/13762502394.png

You should keep yourself at the red circles (the ones at the image I just linked. The ones that are around the center of the arena) as much as you can.

After a while, the orb will spawn. Kill it (provided you actually get to see it..). After you kill it, you will probably not see where the next safe zone is. This is when you wait for the AOE to come, and then trigger your Mist Form (or even arcane shield). While in mistform, watch where the black stuff falls so you can position yourself at the safe zones again to keep doing. I don’t recommend doing this fight without mistform unless you are really good at paying attention to different things.

[The real problem]

So, you are now just moving to the safe zone, never even dodging most of the time. Everything is easy except Liadri sometimes gets too close to you and will do a LOT of damage. Sometimes you will be sandwitched between her and the edge of a red AOE.

When this happens, I don’t know what to say. You just die. I could not find a solution to this. You need to get away from her, try to dodge to a far safe zone but that is almost impossible. And she might just keep doing her lunge attack at you.

This is why for Eles this fight sounds really unfair. We either protect ourselves from her and heal, or we DPS and watch the safe zone patterns. We can’t do both. If we are trying to avoid her melee attacks, we can’t move with freedom to the safe zones, and you will die.

Your only chance at this is hope that you can keep your distance from her, and that she spins and wastes time while you damage and keep walking towards safe zones. If she gets near however, I have no idea how to disengage and you will probably die within 5 seconds, either from her or from the AOE. Unless someone can provide an effective strategy for this situation, this fight is broken in my opinion for elementalists.

Finally, you can conjure a fiery greatsword when she is near death for extra DPS. But I ONLY suggest that if you can activate arcane shield. Beat her up some, and you can use skill #3 from it to do a whirling attack that makes you immune to all damage, including red rings, as my friend pointed out. In my case, I only used the sword for about 10 seconds, after that I dropped it, found a way to safety and kept doing regular dps. The DPS boost from the sword was helpful but not necessary, I still had time

As a final tip, keep in mind that if you for some reason failed to see where the next safe zone is going to be, just wait for the AOE to come and do a dodge inside it to evade, while paying attention to where the black mass fell so you can be at a safe zone again the next time

final bump.

Also curious if someone found a way to avoid high damage on ele

The pattern of the aoe per this video

is:

2
3 4
1

This build by an elementalist utilizes a fresh air build that enables alot of dps while kiting.

Both in phase 2 kite her to the outside. There are safezones along the outside edges. The elementalist in the 2nd video uses Sunspot, master fire trait, to destroy an orb when he is pulled to it.

I’ve noticed that the vids of successful attempts always make it look so easy lol. Duh. Implementation and keeping our wits about us is something else entirely. In the elementalist video I noticed he used fast-cast ground targeting tied to a hot key, of course, to proc a successful lightning flash and avoid an aoe. Same goes for fire attunement. All hot keys. Its’s the only explanation to fire the skills off as quickly as he does. There’s no hunting around for the icon on the gui to click with the mouse here.

The use of hot keys for skills is something I noticed happening regularly on all the vids I have seen. When we have to keep our eyes on the screen to keep an eye out for movement, illusions, aoes, positioning, target switching, camera view, check health, check cooldowns, etc, there is no time to be hunting with the mouse key for icons to change attunemets, blind, heal, proc utilites, dps, and everything else. In other words, when you see an illusion dangerously close, there is no time to take the eyes off the screen to mouse click icons to change to earth or air attunement to cast blind.

Baladir.2736:

All hot keys. Its’s the only explanation to fire the skills off as quickly as he does. There’s no hunting around for the icon on the gui to click with the mouse here.

Setting this gauntlet aside, I would urge you to get comfortable with hotkeys/shortcuts and try to stop playing via clicking, if you are.

It is generally much faster and smoother in MMO play.

synk.6907:

Baladir.2736:

All hot keys. Its’s the only explanation to fire the skills off as quickly as he does. There’s no hunting around for the icon on the gui to click with the mouse here.

Setting this gauntlet aside, I would urge you to get comfortable with hotkeys/shortcuts and try to stop playing via clicking, if you are.

It is generally much faster and smoother in MMO play.

Got it. I have always been able to get by with a combination of both until now. I think Anet has made your point.

That ele from the video was all over the place, he could barely follow a pattern. This is why I think this fight may be way too hard for eles, we have to make sure Liadri is far from us immediately if she gets close. That usually gets us killed