Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I play condimancer and roam alot with it. I just can t figure out how to kill a Lemongrass + Melandru warrior. I try putting as much condis on him as possible, but they are gone very quickly. I try to use the Signet of Spite fear combo, he get’s on half his health and uses Endure pain. He keeps stunning me too with hammer. These warriors are always Hammer , GS use lemongrass and melandru.

I hope you guys can give my some tactics for defeating them.

Re-roll to Warrior or Thief.

Dark FQ.1038:

Hi guys, I play condimancer and roam alot with it. I just can t figure out how to kill a Lemongrass + Melandru warrior. I try putting as much condis on him as possible, but they are gone very quickly. I try to use the Signet of Spite fear combo, he get’s on half his health and uses Endure pain. He keeps stunning me too with hammer. These warriors are always Hammer , GS use lemongrass and melandru.

I hope you guys can give my some tactics for defeating them.

There is no counter for that as a conditionmancer, they are simply made to kill us…

PS: Try to go up against automated response engineer with the same combo… he chased me for 30 minutes (I’m serious !…), and after that he whispered me saying how OP necromancer is and how kitten of a player i am.
I tried to fight him in the beginning but there was simply NOTHING i could do…

Signet of Spite looks impressive when it hits but it actually does very little damage by itself. It’s useful for its cover condis against classes/builds which cleanse conditions one at a time or have bad cleansing in general.
But I honestly wouldn’t bother using it against warriors. Despite their heavy condion duration reduction and hp regeneration, your damage should be high enough to bring them down eventually. So the question is: how do you survive that long?

1. Picking the right utilities.
It’s hard to give general advice here because everyone runs a different build, utilities can be much like using the right key to counter certain attack patterns which will vary from player to player.
Against Hammer/GS I’d try Spectral Armor – Well of Darkness – Corrupt Boon. This might not be the best for every Ham/GS warrior, but it’s a good start.

2. When defending against a warrior you’ll have to make it through several stages.
a. Initially they will use Signet of Rage and probably come at you with Bladetrail and/or Whirlwind Attack to close the gap.
b. They will probably use Berserker Stance at some point.
c. Hammer stun.
d. Stability from Last Stand/Balanced Stance or Lyssa. (maybe you’re lucky and they don’t use any of that with melandru)

Now, when they use their Signet of Rage the first question is: to corrupt or not to corrupt? Corrupting his elite immediately can be a good move. However, if they have any source of stability you want to save Corrupt Boon for later. In fact, if they have more than one stability, you might even want to take Well of Corruption instead of CB.

Berserker Stance: Golem Charge. If they have stability, strip it. Even if it doesn’t turn into fear, you’ll want to knock him down with your Golem.
If that doesn’t succeed, they are likely to try a stun lock with their hammer to bait you into Death Shroud while they are still immune to fear, torment, chilled and immobilized. That means: either dodge the hammer stun or pop Spectral Armor and just take beating in DS for a few seconds. Don’t panic, don’t use any skills… just let them hit you while Spec Armor fills back your life force.
Once Berserker Stance is over it’s time to counter attack. Use enough pressure, but don’t waste all your skills yet. Save your dodges and your blinds for when he gets ready to counter attack. Well of Darkness for the next time he switches to his hammer, you can blast finish blindness with Putrid Mark on him even if he stands outside of the well.

Eventually you’ll reach a point when your chilled, cripple, weakness and poison turns them into sitting ducks, but getting there is the tricky part.

Nemesis.8593:

PS: Try to go up against automated response engineer with the same combo…

Automated Response and certain Diamond Skin builds really are impossible for pure condi necros. But imo not warriors.

flow.6043:

Eventually you’ll reach a point when your chilled, cripple, weakness and poison turns them into sitting ducks, but getting there is the tricky part.

Against lemongrass, melandru, and dogged march?

this kind of fight is almost like fighting a diamond skin ele. you just wont win with conditions alone.

Oozo.7856:

flow.6043:

Eventually you’ll reach a point when your chilled, cripple, weakness and poison turns them into sitting ducks, but getting there is the tricky part.

Against lemongrass, melandru, and dogged march?

I’m not denying that it’s hard but I don’t think it’s impossible.
Chill of Death and Dark Path (maybe a Hydromancy sigil) add up to a decent amount of chilled, even with all those reductions. It’s better than nothing, and more than you can do against complete immunities like Diamond Skin.
Anyway, all of those builds are one of the reasons I play hybrid.

It is all about spacing out your fears, chills and cripples. Don’t just spam them. We use those to keep that warrior from rolling us over. If he is using dogged march it gets a bit trickier. You really shouldn’t win against any really good warrior using that sort of build.

You just need to remember that the warrior needs to use immobilizes and swiftness to lock you down. You should always corrupt boon when he has swiftness. The immobs and cripples are what you hold on to your transfers for.

The last factor is the hammer. This is the strongest part of the warriors build and the hardest to counter. You should always have 1 stun break around and you have deathly swarm. Swarm gives you the blind to stop the hammer spam and the stunbreak for getting away. This is also where fears become most important. When he is on top of you with a hammer this is the easiest way to make space. Hold on to your dodges for when he is using the hammer.

This is all you can really do. Once his zerker stance is done you are pretty much fine. Don’t spam your skills and play it smart. DON’T SPAM. Also don’t spam. If you try to use your skills like I said you should be able to take out almost any warrior, even the hammer spamming kittens.

Focus will help. Try corrosive poison cloud to get him to use his zerker stance early. Put a sigil of nullification on the focus for when he pops his first stability, and bring spectral walk and corrupt boon. Bring the flesh golem for cripple spam, decent damage, and an awesome knockback. Lingering curse might be necessary, as well as hemophilia and some condi duration runes. Good luck.

Had a cool 1v1 against a warrior the other day. He was running GS, Sword/Shield. He ran away when he started losing. He went out of combat, changed his food and utilities (for stability and berserker), switched to hammer and then came back to fight me.

That is the awesome thing about playing necro. If you run across a high mobility class, they can just run off when they start losing and switch their food, traits, weapons, and utilities to give them that sporting chance.

Once you lock horns with a necro…

Stack bleeds. We can stack them faster than they can cleanse them. Just keep stacking and stacking and stacking them and their health will slowly go down. If your conditions do enough damage they’ll completely negate their health regeneration and because we can stack our bleeds/other conditions so quickly all this leaves is to keep the pressure on.
They take a bit longer than other professions but as someone here has already stated it’s totally doeable.
My best advice would just be to do everything in your power to keep conditions on them at all times. When they hammer-stun you should be the only time you’re not applying them. Even then, you could use Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk to break the stun and continue to apply them.

Thx everyone,

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Stack bleeds. We can stack them faster than they can cleanse them. Just keep stacking and stacking and stacking them and their health will slowly go down. If your conditions do enough damage they’ll completely negate their health regeneration and because we can stack our bleeds/other conditions so quickly all this leaves is to keep the pressure on.
They take a bit longer than other professions but as someone here has already stated it’s totally doeable.
My best advice would just be to do everything in your power to keep conditions on them at all times. When they hammer-stun you should be the only time you’re not applying them. Even then, you could use Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk to break the stun and continue to apply them.

Problem with this is, endure pain. Endure pain keeps popping up. While they are healing from the healing signet.

?
Endure pain doesnt prevent condition damage.

Conditions goes through endure pain.

Run 100% duration and you cancel out all the work he put into countering you. Yes you still have all the normal problems of fighting someone with a long immunity to your skills and you have to surive that period of the fight, but when zerker stance is gone, the BASE duration on your conditions is more than sufficient to deal with him.

Or go even farther out, and go over 100% duration to get some duration back on him, as extra duration over 100% will cancel out his subtracted duration, and cause your conditions to last longer again.

Just a standard 40% food, 30% spite, 50% fear build (the normal build), will still have 2+ second fear on a warrior with that build….

Rennoko.5731:

Run 100% duration and you cancel out all the work he put into countering you. Yes you still have all the normal problems of fighting someone with a long immunity to your skills and you have to surive that period of the fight, but when zerker stance is gone, the BASE duration on your conditions is more than sufficient to deal with him.

Or go even farther out, and go over 100% duration to get some duration back on him, as extra duration over 100% will cancel out his subtracted duration, and cause your conditions to last longer again.

Just a standard 40% food, 30% spite, 50% fear build (the normal build), will still have 2+ second fear on a warrior with that build….

This is the weakness of my condition build. I don’t invest in condition duration to counter things like melandru and lemongrass. It hurts me in 1v1s sometimes.

I decided not to invest heavily in condition duration since most of our fights are group fights where the enemy group has a ton of cleansing. Condition duration means almost nothing when fighting those types of groups. I use the food, of course.

Dark FQ.1038:

Hi guys, I play condimancer and roam alot with it. I just can t figure out how to kill a Lemongrass + Melandru warrior. I try putting as much condis on him as possible, but they are gone very quickly. I try to use the Signet of Spite fear combo, he get’s on half his health and uses Endure pain. He keeps stunning me too with hammer. These warriors are always Hammer , GS use lemongrass and melandru.

I hope you guys can give my some tactics for defeating them.

Fundamentally, you have to realize you are betting against the house, here. Do not imagine you will win against an anti-condi with anything but skill and luck.

Oozo.7856:

Rennoko.5731:

Run 100% duration and you cancel out all the work he put into countering you. Yes you still have all the normal problems of fighting someone with a long immunity to your skills and you have to surive that period of the fight, but when zerker stance is gone, the BASE duration on your conditions is more than sufficient to deal with him.

Or go even farther out, and go over 100% duration to get some duration back on him, as extra duration over 100% will cancel out his subtracted duration, and cause your conditions to last longer again.

Just a standard 40% food, 30% spite, 50% fear build (the normal build), will still have 2+ second fear on a warrior with that build….

This is the weakness of my condition build. I don’t invest in condition duration to counter things like melandru and lemongrass. It hurts me in 1v1s sometimes.

I decided not to invest heavily in condition duration since most of our fights are group fights where the enemy group has a ton of cleansing. Condition duration means almost nothing when fighting those types of groups. I use the food, of course.

I understand your reasoning for not using duration but duration has a lot of potential depending on which conditions you’re focusing on using. If you decide to use one particular condition more so than the others, with high duration, you’ll more easily be able to stack them. No duration means that by the time you get to 5 stacks they’ll be going down instead of up because the duration isn’t long enough. The higher your duration the easier it is to put conditions on top of each other. I have an 80% duration with foods and my blinds last 10seconds, bleeds 10 – 15 second (1minute with Blood Is Power) and about 10seconds with poison. Which means the longer I’m alive the more dangerous I get.
So I’m by no means saying you should change your build but if you want to defeat an anti-condition build stacking condition duration will help a lot.
Just something to think about

I just eat a Koi Cake and their lemongrass buff is gone now dealing with melandrus is not that bad :)

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Oozo.7856:

Rennoko.5731:

Run 100% duration and you cancel out all the work he put into countering you. Yes you still have all the normal problems of fighting someone with a long immunity to your skills and you have to surive that period of the fight, but when zerker stance is gone, the BASE duration on your conditions is more than sufficient to deal with him.

Or go even farther out, and go over 100% duration to get some duration back on him, as extra duration over 100% will cancel out his subtracted duration, and cause your conditions to last longer again.

Just a standard 40% food, 30% spite, 50% fear build (the normal build), will still have 2+ second fear on a warrior with that build….

This is the weakness of my condition build. I don’t invest in condition duration to counter things like melandru and lemongrass. It hurts me in 1v1s sometimes.

I decided not to invest heavily in condition duration since most of our fights are group fights where the enemy group has a ton of cleansing. Condition duration means almost nothing when fighting those types of groups. I use the food, of course.

I understand your reasoning for not using duration but duration has a lot of potential depending on which conditions you’re focusing on using. If you decide to use one particular condition more so than the others, with high duration, you’ll more easily be able to stack them. No duration means that by the time you get to 5 stacks they’ll be going down instead of up because the duration isn’t long enough. The higher your duration the easier it is to put conditions on top of each other. I have an 80% duration with foods and my blinds last 10seconds, bleeds 10 – 15 second (1minute with Blood Is Power) and about 10seconds with poison. Which means the longer I’m alive the more dangerous I get.
So I’m by no means saying you should change your build but if you want to defeat an anti-condition build stacking condition duration will help a lot.
Just something to think about

Oozo is one of the few who runs a respectable spite-less build. That -30% compared to all other standard necro builds is a big hit, not to mention the loss of burning. In team fights, this tends to not matter as things die fast enough that the duration is a minor issue, and a guard puts out enough aoe burning buffs for everyone with the right build.

I think his point is really more about how broken the extremes of the build spectrum are, and how the only real counter to one broken build is another broken build. There shouldn’t be ways to build and trait that require an extreme counter…. diamond skin, auto-response, and this case of 98% control reduction just force more necros to pile on the standard build.

And come next patch, when they make spite far less appealing, those “broken” builds from the other classes will still exist to walk over condi builds that don’t maximize counter them.

The kittened level of extremes of performance the food +/- duration buffs enable are exactly the reason the nerf thread for them exists in the Balance forum. They crap all over balance. You either run the + duration food as a condi or get walked on by someone using the – duration food, but then red mist someone not running the – duration buffs which causes them to go and whine about the “condi meta” when really it’s more accurately a “duration food” meta in small scale WvW.