Guild Wars 2

Whats the deal with this dude. I’ve been trying to kill this guy for a week. Light night there were about 10 of us and he still wiped the floor with our faces. How many people should be expected to actually take him down?

It’s a really simple fight that people just can’t seem to grasp.

The lich has 3 noteworthy attacks:

The first, where he quickly rises up and strikes the ground, causing a large amount of damage and inflicting fear.

The second, where he creates an aoe which causes minimal damage and immobilize. Each player/pet/minion struck spawns a skeleton. This attack can and should be dodged. (dodge when you see the ground change color) Dodging prevents skeletons from spawning on you.

The third, where he rises up slowly, then strikes the ground. This kills any skeletons spawned by the previous attack, and any skeleton killed heals the lich by a fair amount.

So, if you can’t dodge the skeleton spawn, you’ll want to kill them before he can perform his lifesteal attack. The small skeletons cast AoE retaliation on themselves and the lich, so boon removal is extremely important.

That’s basically all there is to it.

You need to have necromancers and mesmers for boon strips, and anything for personal condi clear, in addition to the points listed above.

Guhracie.3419:

You need to have necromancers and mesmers for boon strips, and anything for personal condi clear, in addition to the points listed above.

Just be aware, if you’re a necromancer, and you use any of your AoE boon removal, the retal will most likely down you before it gets removed, because most of our boon removal also deals damage.

Miserymachine.7512:

Whats the deal with this dude. I’ve been trying to kill this guy for a week. Light night there were about 10 of us and he still wiped the floor with our faces. How many people should be expected to actually take him down?

If you are on EU, I can solo the fight for you.

Also if you can get few decent players to melee him it should be pretty easy. Just try dodging some attacks. Boon removal or condition clear is not needed if you dodge, block or kill skeletons fast enough.

Wethospu.6437:

If you are on EU, I can solo the fight for you.

GG

I could probably solo it too if I was you….but we can’t all be you.

I have tried though…My sustain can’t keep up with his auto attack, and I have to save my dodges for the fear and the skeletons.

His auto deals like 600-700 damage. All professions should be able to deal with that.

Edit: One attack every 1.75 seconds, equals 400 dps.

Wethospu.6437:

His auto deals like 600-700 damage. All professions should be able to deal with that.

I seem to recall it dealing significantly more….Maybe HoT is messing with my brain. All those mordrem snipers and their 12k killshots.

Needs a good amount of boon removals and reflects also help.

Is easy to deal with him in small numbers, two condi necro and one ele killed the lich in less than a couple of minutes.

Quarktastic.1027:

Wethospu.6437:

If you are on EU, I can solo the fight for you.

GG

I could probably solo it too if I was you….but we can’t all be you.

I believe he was offering to help the OP get the achievement.

The biggest mistake people make with this fight is assuming it’s simply a matter of throwing enough players at him.

I’ve seen it fail spectacularly on full “organised” maps. I couldn’t even see the Lich for all the attack effects and players but he didn’t even drop below 10% and at the other extreme I’ve seen it done with groups of less than 10.

As everyone said it’s a matter of knowing the fight mechanics and using effective counters at the right time. It’s very simple and easy to do once you know how.

Pifil.5193:

Quarktastic.1027:

Wethospu.6437:

If you are on EU, I can solo the fight for you.

GG

I could probably solo it too if I was you….but we can’t all be you.

I believe he was offering to help the OP get the achievement.

I like to pick on Weth because he can solo everything. That’s all really.

It’s impossible to even see the lich animations on a zerg map with all the particle effects going off, dodging isn’t going to cut it. And most maps end up full of undergeared uplevels that drop as soon as the skeletons spawn.

Bringing a truckload of healing (yay Druid), and constantly helping the downed up seems to be the way to manage in a Zerg.

I’ve managed to kill it quite a few times with very few players. There’s several strategies you can try, based upon what i’ve seen work:

1) The rock method. Stand on something where its hard for skellies to hit you, range the Lich and rezz each other while blinding skeletons and stealthing downed.
2) The tank method. Have eles and necros keep everything permanently chilled, strip retal from the skellies, spread conditions and heal allies.
3) The zerg method. Group tons of players inside the Lich house where the chest spawns, spam revives and AoE skills throughout the fight.

Note that for method #1, a pistol Thief works best, since they drop their smoke fields at their feet yet can still attack the Lich from range.

You can also put down waterfields for poor thieves like me who equip shortbow, daggerstorm and signet of malice and kill the little skeletons while healing the zerg.
But I might be the only thief doing that actually.

Wanderer.3248:

It’s impossible to even see the lich animations on a zerg map with all the particle effects going off, dodging isn’t going to cut it. And most maps end up full of undergeared uplevels that drop as soon as the skeletons spawn.

Bringing a truckload of healing (yay Druid), and constantly helping the downed up seems to be the way to manage in a Zerg.

I can dodge the big attacks fine on a zerg. The animations are really obvious, especially the summoning one.

Miserymachine.7512:

Whats the deal with this dude. I’ve been trying to kill this guy for a week. Light night there were about 10 of us and he still wiped the floor with our faces. How many people should be expected to actually take him down?

My husband and I tried this numerous times all week as well in other people’s groups with no luck, so we tried a new tactic tonight.

He put on his commanders tag and ask folks if they wanted to give it a shot. One said Lich was a waste, the rest said they’d be willing. My husband said, you all go pile up, I’ll bring him.

We had a great group that knew what to do. No wipes, went right as rain. Lich went down. The door farm carried on.

did it with 3 people total earlier tonight (twice in fact).
either pile up and burst
boon strip and burst
or lowman it. its easier with fewer people (requires boon stripping and a healer for a safe run)

A few users were saying area healing heals him too, I knew that had to be dumb, more so since no one mention it here.

TJgalon.5012:

A few users were saying area healing heals him too, I knew that had to be dumb, more so since no one mention it here.

most certainly does not. he has “steals health” as one of his skills

three guys were like, stop healing, he getting healed, lol.

The zerg I followed just told us to cluster up in a small section of wall and AoE heal/dps

Did the trick, I didn’t even know what was happening tbh, but we killed him.

Esquilax.3491:

The zerg I followed just told us to cluster up in a small section of wall and AoE heal/dps

Did the trick, I didn’t even know what was happening tbh, but we killed him.

This. A MILLION TIMES THIS.

There’s a small corner in the map where everyone in your group has to stack at. That’s how the group I was in did it as well. Don’t know any specifics. Just that that tactic works.

You dont need to stack in a corner, tbh it makes no difference.

In my experience the lich attacks do very little damage, not even enough to down my zerker ele. I could be wrong but he doesnt ever seem to be the problem.

The only thing that matters in the fight is boon stripping the retal from the small skeletons before people aoe or cleave themselves to death on it.

I did it solo yesterday with my engi.

Like people say just dodge the skelleton pop and you will be fine , they are the main source of damage of the lich.

I went in with my guild and we killed it a few times by all standing on the cliff across from his hut and ranging. Funny thing, while back on that cliff you’re not in range, so we watched two players duo him to ~50% fairly quickly. Otherwise my wells necro does pretty…. well. Traited for wells to heal, and the heal on attack, and have death shroud heal.

if u cant do it 10 ppl then it’s because you’re treating it like any other open world encounter, and just standing there never dodgeing or doing anything but autoattacking…

Yeah.. one of the commanders I ran with yesterday demanded to “STOP AOE!!”

There are two methods I’ve seen on how to deal with him. You can solo him if you want by the way, but you need some experience dealing with him, so prepare to die alot before soloing him.

The traditional way of killing lich is stacking in one corner or staying in the hut, and then pulling lich to melee range. This concentrates all the summoned skeletons so the necros and mesmers could boon strip them, including the lich. After boon stripping, the zerg cleaves down the skeletons and continue on attacking lich.

The range method is for those with few people with not enough boon strippers, or those who want to solo lich the lazy way. There’s a rock near lich where you can climb onto, then range the kitten out of lich from there. Be warned though, skeletons will still be summoned if you get hit by his summoning attack, so block if possible whenever you see his nearby area get cloudy. If doing range way, be sure not to summon any minions, turrets, and clones, as well as to stow your pets, as lich summons a skeleton for each of your own summons.

With a mixed group of players in a random zerg the most reliable way is the “stack round the corner” way. You can win even when most of the players are just randomly spamming skills. It’s not the most elegant way but it does mostly succeed.

The methods that rely on seeing the Lich skills triggering is harder to coordinate in the random chaos of the zerg.

The lich is ridiculously easy if you have a decent amount of players (10+). Just everyone stack round the corner behind the rock and AoE all the skeletons down. It’s really that simple.

Here’s the corner I’m talking about:

Unseenchaos.7036:

The lich is ridiculously easy if you have a decent amount of players (10+). Just everyone stack round the corner behind the rock and AoE all the skeletons down. It’s really that simple.

Here’s the corner I’m talking about:

It’s not that simple, actually – a lot of people already said what’s required on top of that.
But one things’s for sure: All minions/pets/clones not on the stack kill me every time (although I leave before that nowadays if I see a pet at the Lich).