Guild Wars 2

So, I mustered my courage and posted here. I always seen a lot of animosity in this forum, and with the reward tracks added now it seems to have gotten worse. Still, I won’t learn much if I don’t ask questions to those more experienced and knowledgeable than me.

I’ve been doing WvW a lot in the last months, so I’m not completely clueless, but in PvP I’m still at the level “Can’t tell apart the clones from the Mesmer 40% of the times”.

Questions!
1)Some advice on when to stomp? Never? I usually just keep whacking people until they die, but I’ve stomped some times when I were positive they used their down-state CC. Is it ok, or hitting with normal attacks is always optimal?

2)I gathered that running around capping points is not something to do, but you should stay there to guard those points. Is this right? I’ve done some matches, both in Hotjoin and now on Solo queque (had much more fun here), and I’ve seen both guarded cap points and matches where people were running around most of the times.

3)Some general guidelines on builds: I played Necro since dayone, and stubbornly playing Condi in PvE since then (I just don’t do dungeons anymore :P), so I’d feel more comfortable playing condi in PvP too. From what I’ve read, it’s okay here,no? Do I also have to pack on boon stripping and such (Now I’m using Corrupt Boon,Curses XIII, and Sigil of Nullfification)?

So here there are. Hope someone might help me.

Please don’t eat me

1) Generally if you gauge that you can stomp someone before they can get ressed go for it. Keep in mind who you are stomping. If they have CC from the ground and you are alone with them go ahead and stomp twice. If there are people around you will need stability before stomping. In super big teamfights if you think you can stomp before the enemy resses the guy go for it with stability. However since you are a necro and dont have too much access to stability, spamming condi and then epidemicing when people try to ress or droping marks and wells would be better.

2)Since you play necro you are not the most mobile class in the world but you can be a great bunker or just point defender. generally you should leave a bunker, however if no one tries to backcap do move to support mid. Otherwise you are leaving your team at a possible disadvantage. If you see they have thieves, you should pretty much always leave the bunker or you will get backcapped.

3) Corrupt boon/blood is power is great, just make sure you have your dagger ready to send your condis to them. You can go corruption condi necro fairly successfully. Personally I feel the minion master necro is just better once you know how to chain your CCs and they make far superior bunkers. But if you play your build enough you will become effective. I’d also go sigil of agony on scepter no exception.

Good luck!

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

Questions!
1)Some advice on when to stomp?

It depends on the situation and the class. If you are under pressure and think you will either be interrupted or AoEed to death, just go for the damaging kill from a range. Otherwise, do it depending on the class and what utilities you bring:

1. Thief – Almost always DPS them down (Known as cleaving). If you are a thief, you can teleport to them MID stomp and it won’t interrupt the cast! Use either Steal or Infiltrator’s Signet to do this.
2. Mesmer – DPSing them down works. You can also simply stomp, but they’ll teleport away. Once they do, the one with the arrow on their head is the real one. There are more advanced ways to handle mesmers, but for now just stick with those.
3. Engineer, Necromancer and Warrior – They have pretty good health and armor while downed so the faster you stomp them the better. Their downed skills SUCK so blinding them, having stability or dodging it will be enough to finish them. Necromancer’s is especially slow so if they don’t start the cast early in your stomp, it will probably not go through.
4. Ranger and Guardian – Both of these are extremely hard to counter as they are so fast. This is because their base health is lower than most (ranger is mid range). Simply go for the stomp, get interrupted and then stomp them without worrying. Some advanced rangers will use their pet fear to hit you again. Don’t worry about it. Knockback the pet if you can and finish them.
5. Elementalist – DPS these down or go for the stomp. If you DPS them down, they’ll mist form to waste your time. Once that mist form is done, they are done. Their #3 skill sucks.

Remember that poison is your best friend when someone is down. It lowers how much people heal them when they go for the res AND lowers their own healing from downed (skill 4 while downed).

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

2)I gathered that running around capping points is not something to do, but you should stay there to guard those points. Is this right?

In general, it is better to fight on points or near important objectives (such as the treb). The only exception is if you think that you can attack someone who is going towards a point you are defending. It will increase the time it takes them to get there AND people generally are much easier to kill if they are running towards something. If there is someone standing on a point that is on your team, you don’t want to be on point too. There is a crazy amount of AoE in this game and doing so will be the death of you. Only go on point if you think you can res a downed ally, stomp a downed enemy or if there is no one else on point.

Some classes are just too hard to fight on point and thus fighting just off point while they are on point is the best and sometimes only solution. Mesmers, for example, almost never fight on point. It’s just too easy to AoE their clones down if they all spawn on point. Bomb Engineers are DEADLY at melee range, so they generally stay on point and hope stupid people get close to them and die almost immediately. It really depends on what your build is and how much health you have left. It comes down to this:

• If you have the point and think you can hold, stay on it and keep it as long as possible.
• If you have the point but KNOW you will die if you stay on point, fight off it and try to kill the assailant quickly.
• If you have the point decapped (It’s white), just stay off point and try to end them fast.
• If you don’t have the point (it’s the other teams now), just stay off point and kill them quickly so you can full cap it.

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

3)Some general guidelines on builds: I played Necro since dayone, and stubbornly playing Condi in PvE since then (I just don’t do dungeons anymore :P), so I’d feel more comfortable playing condi in PvP too. From what I’ve read, it’s okay here,no?

Necromancer is good at Condition damage (All levels of play) and Power Damage (at Low to mid level play). In this last patch, their main condi trait got nerfed, however they are still very strong.

• Corrupt Boon is a must. It’s one of the strongest necromancer skills.
• Other good necromancer utilities are:
  • Signet of Spite – For the active. Super hard to dodge and really great conditions.
  • Spectral Wall – Used well, this is extremely strong. Definitely takes practice to master.
  • Flesh Wurm – Great stun breaker. Allows you to escape from battle. Make sure you place it in a good place before entering a fight!
  • Spectral Grasp – 15% life Force AND puts the enemy in a good range to be feared with Doom (#3 in death shroud).
  • Epidemic – Rarer now, but never got any weaker.
  • Spectral Armor/Walk – Both really good. They give you life force if you are attacked, in death shroud and outside of it.

Traits are generally something like this:

Build

I’m not teh super 1337 necro, but I imagine with the nerf to dhuumfire, someone trying to avoid it would use something like that.

Welcome to sPvP!

1) Check out Killchained’s video series on stomping. This will give you a good idea of how to stomp, when to stomp, which classes to stomp, and how to prevent stomps.

2) Staying or leaving a node greatly depends on your build. If you’re tanky enough to stand your ground, sitting on a node isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Generally, you only want to sit on home or mid. Leave far to roamers like thieves and decap engis unless your team specifically calls for help on it for some good reason.

3) I don’t play necro, so no help here, lol.

Some help for stomping enemies:
Versus…
Necro:
The downed CC-Skill of a Necro is a fear and very obvious. You can start a stomp, when you see him casting the skill, cancel the stomp and make an evade roll. Then, stomp. (Usally is faster than just eating the fear and stomp after it).

Mesmer:
He can make himself invisible and creates a clone. The one with the red arrow is the real one. If he is visible again, stomp him. Something which doesn’t work always is to start the stomp, hope that the will start to cast his invisibiliy, and start the stomp before he gets invisible. The reason is, that the whole stomp animation takes longer than the invisibility, so if the mesmer gets visible again, before the stomp animation is finished, the stomp still works.

Warrior:
His CC is throwing a rock. But the rock can be blocked if an friendly npc or player stand between the warrior and the one who is stomping. In addition the same tactics as vs. necro works, too. You should also now, if the warrior is in the vengance mode isn’t able to capture/defend a point. So you don’t have to defend a point vs. a warrior in vengance mode, you stimply can walk away.

Engineer:
Same as Warrior. You should also know, that if you get CCed by him while stomping, he has a second CC on downed #3, which probably is ready, before you manage to finish the next stomp try and you get CCed again.

Guardian:
His CC is hard to evade. But try to stomp him “from behind”, as as soon as he uses his CC, he will turn and face you, which might give you a better chance to cancel&evade the CC. His #3 also heals him, don’t underrate it.

Elementalist.
It is almost impossible to do anything against eles downed #2. But try to reach him before his #3 is ready, as it will immobilize you and you will need more time to reach him. However, while in the mist form, the ele can’t defend/capture a point. Against eles, it might be a better tactics to do damage instead of stomp, as some players only use downed #2 if they see sb is trying to stomp them. Thus, damage might be faster (plz note the conditional).

Thief
They can port away. If you want to stomp them, try to reach them as fast as possible. Since their downed #1 cripples you, going for a stomp might be rly annoying as they could port away, mulitple times.

Ranger.
Their downed #2 is rly hard to evade. In addtion, keep an eye on their pets, which might also CC you. However, always try to finish rangers as fast as possible. If they live long enough to reach downed #3 their pet will try to rezz them, which might work out bad for you.

Also note, that not every enemy has to get finished as fast as possible. You can let them die as slow as possible. This way, it will take them longer to die, which means they respawn later, thus take them more time to be usefull again.
Do this e.g. if you defend a point, your team has captured and an enemy gets downed within your range, without any of his teammates nearby which would be able to rezz him. Just watch him die and hit him if he tries to self rezz. But be carefull, if another enemy suprisingly comes in and rezzes him, you will face a 2 vs 1

Wow, thanks everyone! I’ll start to study everything as soon as possible.
In particular, I never tought about the whole “letting people die slowly” thing!