So after 24 tries, I’ve managed to to get this extra Liadri achievement using a necro. I just want to share some tricks to other players if they choose to use a necro to accomplish this achievement.
1. Gear and Food
To start off, I initially used PTV gear + ds crit build to kill Liadri without the achievement. However, after awhile I realized that timing out was the biggest problem in not killing her via condition build. Some people have argued that throwing light orbs against her makes her more “vulnerable” to direct damage, but it seems insubstantial since it neither lasts long (to the point where it runs out after about 30s and doesn’t help tally how many orbs you’ve already thrown at her) nor does it seem to have that much of an effect against her (seems equal to 1 stack of vulnerability).
As such, I used Settler gear to remain alive while dealing substantial damage to the point where I had extra time (I ended the fight at exactly the time when the announcer says “not much time left,” which is still some time away from the end of the enrage timer given the extra workload of this achievement) when I finished the fight. Settler seemed to be the best from my experience because Healing Power and Toughness are actually far more useful than Vitality against Liadri; having a high HP pool is useless since you’ll most likely go down due to the pull orbs, and having your life getting cut down due to the down state renders the extra Vitality you placed useless. Keeping high Toughness and HP however makes sure you can recover after going down once or twice.
If Settler gear is out of your reach, try picking a stat combination with CD and two other defensive stats (healing, toughness, or vit if it comes to it). Avoid Valkyrie or Rampager stats since survival is far more important in this fight than dps if you’re running a CD build.
As for food, use Orrian truffle stew and tuning crystals to boost both endurance for dodge and CD.
2. Traits, Weapons and Skills
To summarize the traits used, it was basically a cond removal build with heavy CD boosting traits and signet mastery (see image for full allocation used).
Use staff, scepter/dagger for weapons, and run consume conditions, plague, spite, and locust signets for utility skills; you want as much cond removal for this achievement since the battle will drag longer than if you were just trying to kill her. For elite, use Take Root if you’re a sylvari. Otherwise, you might be stuck with Lich Form, which doesn’t really combine well with a condition build and doesn’t help in your survival once lich #5 skill is used up.
3. Tactics
-Rapidly strafe (press ADADADA quickly) during the first phase. Her AI during her first phase seems very similar to the grawl fractal boss, and this method seems to allow you to avoid her necrotic grasp attacks without actually dodging.
-Use ds to soak up direct damage. If you find yourself receiving a little too much damage in either phase due to Liadri’s non-one-shot attacks, feel free to use your ds like a sponge; the only skills you’ll be using form it are 3 and 5 anyway, and that doesn’t consume a lot of lifeforce/time in deathshroud anyway.
-Unload your conditions at the start of Phase 2. Be sure to give her hell at the start of Phase 2; throw in spite, staff 2 3 5, ds 3 5. doing so sends Liadri to about half-life easy, giving you enough time to actually run around and kite the visions instead of strafe hitting Liadri and risking yourself from getting hit from the aoe’s.
-Dodge her crippling attack, remove cripple. It’s essential that your fast enough to run away from the aoe, so make sure to use plague signet, consume cond, staff 4, or dagger 4 the moment you get the cripple and weakness duo she does when she melees you.
-Use scepter 2 to break pull orbs. despite its 900 range limit, it’s your best bet for breaking the pull orbs if you notice them. Marks tend to be unreliable at destroying the orbs since Liadri’s Visions need to be close by for the Marks to be able to hit the pull orbs while necrotic grasp is so utterly slow that you’ll get pulled first before it hits the orb.
-Kite and dodge carefully, care less for dps. Numerous times I ended up killing her accidentally even before finishing the 6th or 7th orb. As I said earlier, necro condition build have the advantage of having some extra time before the enrage timer ends, so use this advantage to run towards light orbs (rather than strafe-hitting towards an available light orb). The speed from running instead of strafing is key in avoiding her aoe without dodging, as well as getting the time needed for you to throw the light orb at her before either the visions or Liadri’s aoe get a chance at one-shoting you.
I hope this helps! Please point out/ask questions if I’ve left some important part of the achievement guide unmentioned in this post.
