Guild Wars 2

Lupi’s locust attack in phase 1: anyone know what determines how many locusts spawn?

I’ve seen 0-2 locusts spawn when solo, but is there a way to “convince” him to spawn at most 1?

I’m trying to solo Lupi on a power necro — I can get through phase 1 but I’m having to occasionally pull out into range to deal with the accumulating locusts .. it’s really ugly and time consuming — anyone got advice on how to speed this up? Or is the answer more DPS?

0-4. Random.

You won’t need to move out of melee range, just circle around him. Locusts autoattack also has half a second cast time or so, so they will need to stop for a moment to hit you.
Use Warhorn #5, Focus #4, Death Shroud #5 &#4 and Well of Suffering(the damage/vuln) one to deal with locusts if they’re giving you a hard time. Keep your target always on lupi because by the time you dagger down locusts, he might just spawn some more.

Old melee berserker necro solo vid of mine for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1adt8Bi6Vw

I don’t advise pushing him to the wall in phase 1 unless you can avoid getting eaten up by locusts.

Lol yesterday i was fighting him with my thief, and i switched to dagger after i killed the first spawn, than he casted 4, than again 4 and than again 3-4 and again 3-4 i think i was running away from like 16 locusts xD and its not as easy as wth warrior to cleave them away cause i spend all my initiative on blinding them

IMO locusts are dealt with easily with sword/pistol. Probably because i like doing p1 at the wall too. Blind and cleave.

Its rng based. I have about 3-4 locusts spawn at once almost every attempt on my necro. Best way to deal with them is save well of suffering for when you get a group. Rest of the time just maintain locust swarm on warhorn and flash DS for weakening shroud as much as possible. It actually works quite nicely as a semi cleave when there arent too many. You can still fight him on the wall with lots of locusts but it requires a bit more experience with locust walking.

Phase 1 is a real pain on necro. But once you get used to it the other phases are pretty easy in comparison.

Out of curiosity what build are you using?

Emanuel.9781:

You won’t need to move out of melee range, just circle around him. Locusts autoattack also has half a second cast time or so, so they will need to stop for a moment to hit you.
Use Warhorn #5, Focus #4, Death Shroud #5 &#4 and Well of Suffering(the damage/vuln) one to deal with locusts if they’re giving you a hard time. Keep your target always on lupi because by the time you dagger down locusts, he might just spawn some more.

Old melee berserker necro solo vid of mine for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1adt8Bi6Vw

I don’t advise pushing him to the wall in phase 1 unless you can avoid getting eaten up by locusts.

Nice video! Looks like fury is doing you a lot of good. Warhorn as well. And I hadn’t been moving along the wall as much as you.

Also, it looks like he never used the bubble of death on you in phase 3 — as I understand it you have to stay stationary? Was using DS #2 a big factor in this when you moved back into melee from his AOE?

spoj.9672:

Its rng based. I have about 3-4 locusts spawn at once almost every attempt on my necro. Best way to deal with them is save well of suffering for when you get a group. Rest of the time just maintain locust swarm on warhorn and flash DS for weakening shroud as much as possible. It actually works quite nicely as a semi cleave when there arent too many. You can still fight him on the wall with lots of locusts but it requires a bit more experience with locust walking.

Phase 1 is a real pain on necro. But once you get used to it the other phases are pretty easy in comparison.

Out of curiosity what build are you using?

I’ve been starting with my WvW build and moving points around as I adjust.. right now I’m at 30 0 10 0 30 (almost all zerker — still cavalier trinkets from WvW)

the 10 in Death is almost is probably no good, but I’ve wanted to try using the flesh wurm to exit Lupi’s AOE in phase 3 and that’d require faster minion recharge. Plus, I’m curious whether he’ll use his single target life sucking attack on the wurm (or even other minions?) instead of me. Either way, it might save me some dodges so I can avoid having to get a new weapon set with energy sigils. (The furthest I’ve gotten is toward the end of phase 2 so I have no idea if the minion would work.)

Thanks for the tips!

This’ll sound really bizarre but I have to explain something from another game about how RNG affected gameplay.

If you’ve ever played RS before (trash game, but it used to be amazingly fun during its prime), you’d know there was a system implemented dubbed as “PID” which stood for player identification number. You weren’t able to view what it was. This number was randomly generated upon logging in and the lower your number was, the higher priority your character had upon determining whose action was prioritised in the case of two people performing the same action at the same time, such as picking up an item spawned on the ground or attacking a mob in a single target zone (in the open world there were single target and multi target zones so if it was a single target zone it’d say “somebody is already fighting that” when someone else was attacking the mob). This was more important for staking, which was a very popular form of gambling. People would log out and in and check their PID using their friends or random strangers to determine if theirs was low or high. It was known as “pidding.”

Might sound strange, but just for the hell of it I logged out and back in and I actually swear on it that every single time I’ve done this I’ve gone from getting a consistent 3 or 4 swarms each attack turn to a consistent 0-2 at the very most. Even if it is purely coincidental, I don’t give a crap. Works for me!

You could also try using harpy feathers and spykits to reset the fight, yell at your computer screen, type ingame and call Lupicus swear words, do emotes to taunt him, etc.

Just wait till you get to p2 with all those lovely delayed circles.

I assume you arent using DS to dps even though you are running 30/0/10/0/30. If thats the case I would suggest changing to 30/15/0/0/25. This is the superior trait setup for lupi solo on necro when using a power build. Gives good fury uptime and slightly higher base crit chance. Problem is you will still lack crit which is why its so difficult to get a good time with power necro on lupi.

I just used full assassin on my necro, but the time is still so much slower than rabid. ;_;
Also, you could use perception stacks for additional crit. I think full assassin(including trinkets) gets you to around 61% crit chance without fury or perception stacks in the 30/15/0/0/25 build.

Rabid necro being so much better for boss solos like this shouldn’t be allowed, seeing as how you still have a defensive stat. But then i guess the fact that alphard has like -80% condition duration makes up for it. Sort of.

IMO non-3 offensive-stat solos are boring.

Yeah i checked the numbers and full beserker with 30/15 was still better even though you lack crit chance. And thats including prec food and perception stacks. Its annoying because even though you put all that effort in to min/mix for lupi you still miss so many crits. :<

Purple Miku.7032:

This’ll sound really bizarre but I have to explain something from another game about how RNG affected gameplay.

If you’ve ever played RS before (trash game, but it used to be amazingly fun during its prime), you’d know there was a system implemented dubbed as “PID” which stood for player identification number. You weren’t able to view what it was. This number was randomly generated upon logging in and the lower your number was, the higher priority your character had upon determining whose action was prioritised in the case of two people performing the same action at the same time, such as picking up an item spawned on the ground or attacking a mob in a single target zone (in the open world there were single target and multi target zones so if it was a single target zone it’d say “somebody is already fighting that” when someone else was attacking the mob). This was more important for staking, which was a very popular form of gambling. People would log out and in and check their PID using their friends or random strangers to determine if theirs was low or high. It was known as “pidding.”

Might sound strange, but just for the hell of it I logged out and back in and I actually swear on it that every single time I’ve done this I’ve gone from getting a consistent 3 or 4 swarms each attack turn to a consistent 0-2 at the very most. Even if it is purely coincidental, I don’t give a crap. Works for me!

You could also try using harpy feathers and spykits to reset the fight, yell at your computer screen, type ingame and call Lupicus swear words, do emotes to taunt him, etc.

Drifting off a little here, but I remember that game, and that system.

It’s almost as if it was the gateway game to MMORPG’s

spoj.9672:

I assume you arent using DS to dps even though you are running 30/0/10/0/30. If thats the case I would suggest changing to 30/15/0/0/25. This is the superior trait setup for lupi solo on necro when using a power build. Gives good fury uptime and slightly higher base crit chance. Problem is you will still lack crit which is why its so difficult to get a good time with power necro on lupi.

Yep.. just flashing DS except sometimes DS 4, 5 for the locusts.

Thanks to all the tips (warhorn is great in phase 1) I can get deep into phase 2 pretty regularly — and as promised, phase 2’s actually not so bad… I just lose concentration every time at some point.

I’m doing the 30 in soul reaping for the stability — I don’t have energy sigils because buying an exotic weapon set after having gotten ascended makes me sad… stupid, I know — so I use DS to absorb the kicks in phase 1 when I need to save my endurance.

And I’m using 10 in Death for minion recharge reduction — I’m thinking maybe I can sometimes use flesh wurm to escape Lupi’s AOE and save some dodges. Or maybe he’ll even suck the wurms life instead of mine. (No idea if this works.)

If all else fails, I’ll definitely suck it up and do 30/15/0/0/25 with energy sigils — it’s definitely a better build (which Emanuel uses very effectively in the video above). But why use a better build when you can irrationally handicap yourself? I blame Anet’s introduction of Ascended gear

xD

You will definately need the energy sigils in phase 3 (if you miss some dodges and lose too much lifeforce you wont get enough time to regen it). Its actually pretty tight on endurance in both phase 1 and phase 3 with just energy sigils. So if not going for a record attempt endurance food + energy sigils is the safer way to go.

The bubble is only triggered by being too far away from lupi (around max melee distance) which can easily be avoided by dark pathing back to him. If you do trigger it by accident you can always use plague as your emergency stability. But one of the most important things about learning lupi is learning not to cause bubbles. So i would suggest scrapping the stability and forcing yourself to learn the hard way.

I commend your handicapping of yourself though.