Guild Wars 2

After reading some of the posts in and around the new Dungeon waypoint patch I have noticed some people have mentioned some really neat strategies to use when trying to resurrect a KO player. In the interest of helping players adjust to the new changes please post your own strategies here and we will try to get them together in one place.

General Tips
- Don’t try to res players if you have boss aggro.

- Don’t try to res players currently in an AOE damage field.

- Watch the boss, not the res-bar. Bosses like to target players resing other players, make sure you keep an eye on the boss and cancel the res (just move) and dodge incoming attacks. Always be prepared to re-evaluate, and let another player continue the res if things are too hot for you.

- There are lots of ways to help someone res another player, without doing the res. Try pulling the boss away from the resing pair if you have aggro, or stand between the boss and the resing pair to block incoming projectile attacks (remember projectiles follow a straight line, and hit the first player or object they encounter, even if that player was not the target).

- Use projectile blocking walls or reflect skills to give some safe time to perform the res. Guardian reflect wall, Theif smoke screen, and Mesmer reflect bubble work well for this.

- Use stealth, clones, invulnerability or mist form before you start the res. This gives you some free time to increase the meter without fear of adding your own corpse to the pile. Mesmer Decoy, Thief Stealths (all of them), Elementalist Mist Form are all good for this purpose.

- Some AoE ‘Dragon Tooth’ like effects do not require that you move out of the AoE field. You can dodge these types of attacks from within the red circle if you time your dodge with the impact. Cancel your res, dodge, then return to resing.

Anyone with tips or tricks please feel free to post them.

Tips:

• Spreading out all over the place is generally not a good idea. If you do get downed far away from your team, they can’t come to your aid right away. (This is a really bad thing to do on Subject Alpha)
• A downed player can still receive boons like Protection an Aegis.
• Generally speaking, if you see more than one person get Downed, that’s when you should use a skill to revive allies if you have any. (Although most aren’t that useful) The Warrior elite banner is probably the best one, since it’s ranged and revives multiple players.

“Tricks”:

• Ash Legion Spy Kit is your best friend forever.

For some encounters starting a res is a sure-fire way to get boss hate. You can kind of use NPC ressing as a taunt in these encounters.

Boss specific tip:

Lupicus: If someone needs ressing in phase 1 there needs to be more AOE on the locusts. In phase 2, unless you have a ranged res you need to wait until right after a shadow port or an AOE spam to res someone. In phase 3, unless it’s in his melee range, res like crazy. If the downed person is in melee range, try to kite him away.

Basic for professions : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revive each profession has skill to revive downed players, except Thieves but they have access to stealth.
Other useful skills :
Stability
Reflect and SoA
Block
Remove Conditions

Now a breakdown of AC, because that’s where most PuGs are (will do the other later).

-Spider. Spiderling attacks are projectiles. Use skills against those projectiles. Be careful, poison might end up killing you.
If someone dies, be careful that he isn’t in the middle of multiple red circles before reviving him.

-Kohler. He charges his spin attack for 2-4 seconds before pulling you and spinning around. You don’t have to wait to see his projectile to dodge.
Also be careful, even if you managed to dodged, don’t get too close to him while he spins.
Stability will prevent you from getting pulled, and anti projectiles work (but some have a long cast time, so be careful).
If someone dies, quickly save him.

-P1 boss. He has 3 attacks : scream and throw up monsters (he won’t do the same attack in a row and the animation for each one is different) and he hides under the ground, be careful about that, while he won’t move, it will do a lot of damage and knock you back if you are hit.
If someone dies because of the scream, quickly save him. If he dies because of spawns, be careful, you might be in danger.
The best tactic is to melee him. That way you only have to move behind him to evade his scream.

-p3 boss : almost the same as path 1 but instead of spawns, he makes the roof crumble. If you see a red circle, quickly move out. His scream has a range a lot wider than the animation. When he goes under the ground, he can also move around before coming up.
If someone dies, be really careful. If you are a thief, mesmer or elementalist, use your 2nd skill to get out only when it’s dangerous. Bringing a reviving skill might not be a bad idea if your team isn’t used to this encounter.

Tip (oh how did I forget this):
- Every profession has an Adept level trait which will assist you when resing a downed ally. Some of these provide shields, or boons at the start, others will grant buffs on completion. If your doing a dungeon runs and find you need a little boost when resing allies, swap one of these in.

Another thing I want to add is that reviving through interaction (“F” by default) isn’t the only way to revive someone from the downed state— you can kill rally by tagging a target and revive on its death. This is mainly for non-boss encounters or bosses with adds that you can rally off (i.e. flying shaman in volcano fractal).

Many PuGs I play with don’t understand this concept, and it’s something I always teach the new people on my personal dungeon team. Sometime’s it’s faster to kill a mob to rally someone (kill rally) rather than to tick them up (downed state revive). In fact, you get more progress value because something died and you revived an ally at the same time, instead of losing a lot of HP trying to revive your ally. Again, this varies on the situation, so I’ll explain a bit.

• When fighting a group of mobs, make sure your team stacks as many mobs together as possible, so that the party’s AoEs can damage/tag everything. Make sure there is a focused target for the AoEs, so if someone goes down, the team can spike it for the rally.

• If you are the one who is downed in the middle of a mob group fight, quickly call target on the lowest HP mob (near death target is optimal) in case normal revive is not possible. If your team cooperates, they can rally you up almost instantly without having to run to you.

• Sometimes, you get involved in boss fights where there is something to rally off of in the area. For example, against the Nightmare Vines in TA, you can kill a blossom in the downed state to rally. Against the shaman’s final form in the volcano fractal, you can have your team spike one of the elementals — manual revives will continually burn the reviver, so it’s not really safe. Against some “versions” of alpha in CoE, you can call and hit one of the tendrils.

• Sometimes, you can alternate between manual revive and kill rally if you have multiple downed allies. If all downed allies hit the same target and a standing player keeps those allies’ bars up to a manageable level, the standing player(s) can spike down the target for a multiple rally. The standing player should prioritize the player with the lowest downed HP unless one of the downed players is near full.

Downtime reduction helps your team DPS a lot, so staying alive as much as possible contributes to that. When manual revive is not the fastest option in the downed state, make sure you tag as many nearby mobs as possible, and be prepared to call and hit a target for a quick rally. Don’t spam your skills in the downed state — sometimes you will slow down your ability to rally if you do so (i.e. triggering Kholer to spin and kill you if you use an interrupt in the downed state). Sometimes your auto attack is a channeling skill and you may be hitting the wrong target. You may want to quickly cancel it and switch to the correct target so you can tag it.

Lightrayne.7829:

Another thing I want to add is that reviving through interaction (“F” by default) isn’t the only way to revive someone from the downed state— you can kill rally by tagging a target and revive on its death. This is mainly for non-boss encounters or bosses with adds that you can rally off (i.e. flying shaman in volcano fractal).

This needs to be emphasized. I’ve tried to ingrain into Guildies that while in a trash pull if someone goes down it is their responsibility to call target on a mob. It is on the team to decide if they can kill that mob or res the person faster.

Also, some dungeons have some easy-rally tricks:

AC: Baby gravelings from the breeders.
CM: Some of the terrible pulls have non-elite thieves but for the most part CM trash is horrid.
TA: Every single one of the corrupted flowers. Pre-nerf you could tell who knew this trick at nightmare vines, because they never died.
SE: Path 1 you can rally on the barriers.
CoF: Non-elite devourers in P2, but rally tricks are hardly necessary for CoF.
HotW: Spawned non-elite ice elementals, ice turrets.
CoE: Undead tendrils in the 2nd and 3rd Subject Alpha fights, non-elite risen
Arah: Summoned Risen Hawks (summoned by Risen Hunters). You cannot rally on Lesser Oozes, but you can on the larger ones… only after their rather lengthy death animation. You may be able to rally on the rock-tossing hands but you really don’t fight near those.

Time Warp speeds up rezzing. It is highly valuable as an offensive skill, so using it for rezzing may or may not be recommended depending on the boss and the circumstances. It is one to keep in mind as a last resort if a rally or a normal speed res is not reasonable (think kite-heavy bosses with no adds and high-damage skills)

+1

Should be a sticky

Silidus.7985:

- Some AoE ‘Dragon Tooth’ like effects do not require that you move out of the AoE field. You can dodge these types of attacks from within the red circle if you time your dodge with the impact. Cancel your res, dodge, then return to resing.

These are the rule, not the exception. The entire point of dodge rolling is that you are evading during that frame, regardless of what would hit you. There are very few attacks that cannot be dodged (I think Lava Shaman’s churning earth in FotM is one example, can’t even think of any others).

Quickness helps as well if it’s a tight situation. I do it very rarely, but if it’s really dire, I’ll drop timewarp to res people. I try to save this for fully downed people whenever that should happen(falling off the scaffolding in Colossus fractal).

Spreading out all over the place is generally not a good idea. If you do get downed far away from your team, they can’t come to your aid right away. (This is a really bad thing to do on Subject Alpha)

Emphasis on this.

Pay attention to your party members and stay close. If you see someone getting low on health, keep an eye on them and get ready to res them if you have to. There is almost no excuse for having someone downed more than a few seconds if everyone is prepared.

Pinch.4273:

Spreading out all over the place is generally not a good idea. If you do get downed far away from your team, they can’t come to your aid right away. (This is a really bad thing to do on Subject Alpha)

Emphasis on this.

Pay attention to your party members and stay close. If you see someone getting low on health, keep an eye on them and get ready to res them if you have to. There is almost no excuse for having someone downed more than a few seconds if everyone is prepared.

Depends on the boss imho. For instance you dont want to be grouped together doing Lupicus but its a good idea on the Nightmare Tree.

Getting downed people should be a priority if you can do it and not die yourself. Sometimes I got to revive someone and get boss aggro so then I change to kiting the boss and try to pull him away so others can revive. It sort of works sometimes :P

Kumakichi.2583:

Pinch.4273:

Spreading out all over the place is generally not a good idea. If you do get downed far away from your team, they can’t come to your aid right away. (This is a really bad thing to do on Subject Alpha)

Emphasis on this.

Pay attention to your party members and stay close. If you see someone getting low on health, keep an eye on them and get ready to res them if you have to. There is almost no excuse for having someone downed more than a few seconds if everyone is prepared.

Depends on the boss imho. For instance you dont want to be grouped together doing Lupicus but its a good idea on the Nightmare Tree.

Getting downed people should be a priority if you can do it and not die yourself. Sometimes I got to revive someone and get boss aggro so then I change to kiting the boss and try to pull him away so others can revive. It sort of works sometimes :P

When I say grouped, I don’t really mean stacked, I just mean don’t be more than a 2-3 second run away from any other person. This is quite possible on Lupicus, especially since it’s far easier to dodge his massive AoE if the bolts are all concentrated in one general location.

Heylo.4938:

Quickness helps as well if it’s a tight situation. I do it very rarely, but if it’s really dire, I’ll drop timewarp to res people. I try to save this for fully downed people whenever that should happen(falling off the scaffolding in Colossus fractal).

Love it! I had never thought of using Time Warp to speed up a tricky Resurrection.

Thief: Make sure you dont stealth your whole part, especially in boss encounters this might reset fight.

Against normal mobs you can also use pushback to get them away from downed players.

Buy fire salsa!
100% extra downed hp? Omnomnom!

<—- totally has a bunch of them he needs to sell