Guild Wars 2

As I slowly increase my skill over many months of playing, I now find that I can play my phantasm roamer well enough to go against two seemingly good opponents and do okay.

The challenging thing for me is figuring out what to do after I get one target down. I know that I need to get the stomp, but often I’ve used up a lot of my cooldowns at this point (for reference, the build is below).

If I have it available, I’ll definitely use distortion and go for the stomp. But if it misses, all the damage capacity is gone (and I’m still finding weird cases where stomps seem to fail for no reason).

So I’m wondering about best tactics or rules of thumb for what to do when one opponent is downed but an ally is still engaged. I could leave the downed target down and let the phantasms continue to damage while I distract the ally. But I’ve seen the ally rez the downed foe too many times.

Any suggestions are much appreciated – thx!

Current build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAR7ansISZa2oGupB3aGJ1IM996LJHCK5XIA-T1yHABnt/AQKpE7CAEo6DIqCTPKT8RpwAPEAv0NAwRA4OlgBAQAYlPX4CX46sMAVLA-w

Very situational I would say…
it depends on the ally class,downed player class too.
Most of the time tho to secure a stomp you need to make sure the certain class dosnt have a stomp avoidable skill (teleport and stealth)..just use distrotion and save your decoy to use afterwards to start over the fight.

It is very situational like Sandrox said it depends alot on the classes involved and the circumstances. But these are your general options and the rules I generally follow.

#1: Go for a distortion stomp
#2: Try to go for a stealth stomp (this depends on the class however)
#3: Use GS #5 to knockback foes to prevent res (I rarely go for the stomp though depending on class)
#4: DPS the downed body hard if I can do it quickly enough
#5: Start focusing the other guy

Generally, if the first two options are exhausted and you can’t stomp, you want to prevent the person that is alive from ressing the downed guy as much as possible. So start putting alot of your pressure on them. If its a Guardian or a Ranger, you want to make sure at the same time you DPS them in down state sufficiently because they can heal easily. Once your two options are available to you, you can make a choice. If you can stomp the person without any delay, then do so. However if you are confident you can down the other guy, then do so.

What I find is the consistently good play is to start applying pressure on the other opponent if the stomp isn’t possible. While also making sure to apply a few auto attacks to the downed person to prevent a self-res. Another option is to try to save distortion and your GS #5 as much as possible. Distortion isn’t always possible but the GS #5 is definitely something worth saving when you down an opponent.

Just gonna add- MoD is a great way to counter ressing.

Thanks much – very helpful suggestions!

Since I only play mesmer, I’ve only learned the downstate capabilities of other classes by fighting against them.

I generally know what to expect what to expect from all of them. But rangers sometimes seem to be able to interrupt more/faster than I expect.

And sometimes I do the stomp with apparently nothing interrupting me, and the stomp doesn’t happen. Those are the really strange cases. I finish the whole move, but they don’t die. And the “finish them” message is still on the screen. It’s stuff like that which makes me sometimes choose to dps instead of stomping, but I know stomping is better.

Thanks again for the help – more stuff to practice

eldenbri.1059:

Thanks much – very helpful suggestions!

Since I only play mesmer, I’ve only learned the downstate capabilities of other classes by fighting against them.

I generally know what to expect what to expect from all of them. But rangers sometimes seem to be able to interrupt more/faster than I expect.

And sometimes I do the stomp with apparently nothing interrupting me, and the stomp doesn’t happen. Those are the really strange cases. I finish the whole move, but they don’t die. And the “finish them” message is still on the screen. It’s stuff like that which makes me sometimes choose to dps instead of stomping, but I know stomping is better.

Thanks again for the help – more stuff to practice

Lag can cause havok on a stomp.

Lag/bugs can occur when a player goes into down state. They land farther away than where their toon appears on the screen. So you get the stomp prompt but when you land it, they don’t die. You have to move around a bit to try and find where you’re in range. Scepter AA attacks are great because they’ll spawn a clone directly on top of the actual players location. Then stomp away.