Guild Wars 2

So a skyhammer story…

I got my guardian knock-back build in-case soloq gives me that map. I usually go for the cannon. I mostly do ok, as I know the classes with knockbacks and stuff. So those who usually go for the cannon therefore I’m likely to fight. Long story short, I’ve encountered an MM necro. And I got kitten d over and over again. Actually I’ve never met them up there before even though I played 400+ games overall. The guys health didnt drop, no matter what I did. Maybe it was at 70% once out of my 6-7 tries to kill him. It was so embarassing. Why I think its not only a l2p issue is the fact that in any other environment I have no problem with them. I didnt even look into MM necros’ gameplay in detail, because I didnt feel I needed to know more. I play a thief as a main and guard+ele as alts for pvp. I’m no superstar or super skilled or anything (around 88% solo rating and 95-96% team) but no matter how I was defeated before, nothing seemed to be farther to achieve than actually killing this necro dude up there at the cannon.

It probably has to do something with the small space that is available to fight at the cannon. So kiting or LoSing the minions does not work well. I run a triple-med build, so quite a lot of condi cleanses, but I still had at least 3-4 on me all the time regardless. So is it only the small space or a necro build thats even cheesier than the standard MM build? Or has it taken 400+ games to fight the first skilled MM necro ever? I’m just so angry and embarrassed – it was literally like a kitten , I could not touch him. Help me stop my crying pls.

From what you are saying I think that Necro was built defensively. Honestly, with a med build and in a close space your best bet is to spike the Necro as much as you can before you die. Killing the minions would most probably trigger Death Nova and further burst you down. Spam blinds and your blocks. If all fails than tweak your sigil and rune set a bit. Have Sigil of Generosity or Purity and Rune of Infiltration. The sigils obviously help relieve the condition pressure while the stealth from the rune confuses the minion AI and makes them useless for a brief time after being revealed. You can also slot Shield of Avenger and Wall of Reflection if the minions are mostly ranged, and Hammer to CC melee minions away from you. Slotting more spirit weapons can also be a good idea to confuse minion AI. Remember to save your dodges for both any possible Death Novas an Putrid Explosions. Hope this helps you next time.

MM Necroes don’t seem to be anywhere near where they use to be at. That said they are very difficult to 1v1, since its really not an even fight with all that incoming minion damage and the support they give the necromancer. That build really falls apart in team arena though, once you get two or three people on them those minions are going to go down from unintentional cleave real fast.

My best recommendation is to make sure to cleanse conditions once they start getting high, not before, and to drop as much AoE as you can right on top of the necromancer.

Thank you guys for the answers, I’ll use them next time. What was strange to me is that not only did he take very little dmg, but he was dishing out a lot at the same time. My HP went down like crazy. On one occasion a warrior came up to help. I was in downed state and about to get stomped when he teleported up. He feared the necro and started rezzing me. I was around 95% HP when the fear expired, he dropped some red circles on me and started a new stomp. In that 3-4 second the warrior could not fill up my remaining 5% HP… not only that but I fell back to 65-70% HP while he was uninterruptedly rezzing me. Not even on my thief can I out-dps rezzing by this much. An other cluse was that I am usually able to outheal high dps classes. Like if a thief jumps on me and I fail to dodge backstab or a warrior can do his full stunlock combo because I’m out of CDs; it takes me to 10-20% HP. But then I use some healing skills and my HP climbs back up. They used their CDs, I survived, so its my turn. This is a typical scenario if I eat a burst. But the thing with this necro was, that even if I survived his initial burst; the insane dmg kept coming after that too. I started suspecting that maybe a venom-share thief was amongst those minions whom I didnt notice. But looking at the combat log I only saw minions names and occasinally the necro himself here and there. Wurm spit 1-1,2k, golem auto attack 1,8-2k, etc. Anyways it was insane… and a good lesson. :P

MM is really strong 1v1 because of the unmitigate-able chip damage (watch out for the immob + bone minion explosion). You also don’t really have the AoE to kill all minions + the survivability to eat all the 1-2ks and death novas. Even then smart ones spread out the CC and weakness/blinds to try and buy time.
It’s a bit like a turret engi and you really have to 1v2 him quick and bring down all the minions, at which point he would be rather helpless with a tanky amulet.

The reason you aren’t seeing any real high damage coming from the necromancer in your combat log is because most MM necroes utilize condition damage to deal the bulk of your damage. And if you are not clearing those condis off you are going to be burning down particularly fast, no matter how many blocks you pop. (since condis damage through blocks, including Shelter and Renewed Focus) Condition damage does not show (unfortunately) in the combat log.