Guild Wars 2

I’m doing AC with my necro (she’s level 69) for leveling and to collect tokens for the AC armor. I’m doing fine for the most time except two encounters, mainly path 1 with hodgins and the burrows and to a lesser extent path 3 again the part with the burrows.
I’m specced for hybrid (nemesis build) with scepter/dagger and axe/focus, level appropriate green gear with rampager stats.
Especially on path 1 it feels as I don’t contribute much on this encounter. I seem to do very low damage to the burrows with my axe and if I go the other route and try to protect hodgins I fail (could be due to me playing the necro, not the necro it self ;-) )
The last runs it ended with me changing to my guardian who seems to do more damage against the burrows and I do better in protecting hodgins.

I would really like to do it with the necro as I’m really enjoying playing this class.
Any tips that help me getting better are welcome.

If you don’t want to have to change your current build, try switching axe for dagger during the encounter, the dagger auto attack is quite powerful.
Another thing which I do is; use the Flesh Golem elite skill and target the burrow with his charge, he will damage it repeatedly taking half of a burrow down easy.

I’m open for a build change if you could recommend something that does better in that situation. Didn’t use dagger because I’m not sure if I’m good enough to survive melee in dungeon. I thought about wells, but they have long CD and so will only help with every second burrow. Flesh golems charge is something i will try definitly

When you get to the burrow part, just equip well of suffering, bone minions and flesh golem and activate their corresponding abilites as soon, as they stand at the burrow.
Then just use skills whenever they are off cooldown and you are at a burrow.
Once the burrow parts are done, just reequip your previous utilites.
Like gruvel said, equipping a dagger is also a good idea since its auto attack is one of our highest damaging abilities, but axe is also fine. Especially if you use its channel (axe2).

I think my problem with the axe damage is the lack of vulnerability on the burrows as they are objects.
Some good ideas to try, thank you. It’s always great getting help at the necro forum here.
Always open for more tips, so keep ’em coming ;-)

Staff marks can do a lot of damage to a burrow, and give quite a bit of help since they will CC the first few things out. If you put them right on top of the burrow they will damage the burrow itself, once things come out and trigger the mark.

Bhawb.7408:

Staff marks can do a lot of damage to a burrow, and give quite a bit of help since they will CC the first few things out. If you put them right on top of the burrow they will damage the burrow itself, once things come out and trigger the mark.

This. Staff is great for general purpose use anyways, and you can get around the marks not triggering on objects like Bhawb said or by kiting a mob over to the marks to hit them all at once with the power based AE component of the marks.

Main issue I found was making sure not to stand still at all due to the graveling knockdown spam. Necros just don’t get access to enough stability to make face tanking those a remotely good idea.

Actually I think the necro is an appropriate choice for kiting gravelings and keeping them off Hodgins. You just have to be very aware of the knockdown and never miss the dodge. My guild group had trouble with that fight until one of them jumped on their ele and put down an Ice bow. That group had a necro (me), a warrior, a guardian, and two mesmers, until one of the mesmers switched. I still don’t think we could have done it without the Ice Bow.

The hybrid build does rely heavily on crit. You can’t crit a burrow (right?). And compared to other professions our damage is more sustained, without much burst. It’s why we’re not ideal candidates for the totem in CoF path 1.

I’d also recommend plague form for kiting gravelings. It gives you a 20 second break, if nothing else, since you can cripple them enough that they can’t really swarm you, and if you do get caught once the stability keeps you from being knocked down. Plus blind spam if they’re going for Hodgins.

This is what I do with burrows in AC, which allows me to solo burrows, and for my team to then have 3-4 people attack the burrows and protect Hodgins.

Staff with 20% CD reduction, when a burrow spawns (or if you know where it will), put your marks directly on top, then drop all your wells with wells siphoning on top. That should kill a burrow (I run a glass hybrid, so high damage, if you don’t, it should just be a few auto attacks). Then the next burrow, drop every mark available, DS 4, then Plague with Blind/Chill, when that ends, throw down all your marks again, and it should be dead/close enough. For the third one, your wells should be back up or close, and repeat what you did for the 1st one.

You can actually drop burrows very quickly as a necro, the only thing I would caution is that you learn the burrows’ spawns. You do NOT want to try to solo the burrows that spawn guys that knockdown, miss a single dodge and you are screwed.

Tried the dagger / minion combo but failed as I don’t survive very well when melee between all the gravelings :-/
So I guess I’ll try bhwab’s suggestion.
That would be 30 Blood Magic for bloodthirst, vampiric, ritual mastery (20% CD on wells) and vampiric rituals. Then 10 in Death Magic for the Staff Mastery and 20 in curses for the ground targeted wells.

Will be enough time to learn to play until i have the tokens for the armor ;-)

btw it seems a lot of (pick up) groups are struggling with the burrows / hodgins part since the patch. as I don’t have a guild group i’m always pug-ing.

BOC member but on EU server, so no chance to play with you bhawb ;-)

We really need to get an EU guy who can focus on getting you guys together for grouping. I will see if I can talk to a few guys, and we can do something.