Guild Wars 2

After getting constantly crit for about 2k + when I had 2.9k armor, I decided to try out the crit necromancer build and found it to be…quite easy to roll my face on my keyboard and have good results (first time playing necro too). Life blasts amazing damage, range, survivability of the death shroud and the 50% crit trait in death shroud made it seem incredibly strong. I love to play short range classes with decent survivability (dag/foc ele, gs/hammer guard, flamethrower engi, etc…) so I always get life blasted for max damage because I’m under 600 range of the necro. What am I suppose to do in these situations? Getting feared multiple times and condi spammed then the have to deal with a crit death shroud necro seems like am impossible situation. The attack is slow, but I don’t have unlimited endurance. HELP T_T

If you’re getting “condi spammed,” you probably needn’t worry about “crit necros.” The two have about as much synergy in one build as bananas and chicken soup. Or you needn’t worry about the conditions because they’re weak.

Life Blast is a projectile, so any blocks work quite well against it. Try to keep moving around the Necro, as Life Blast does require facing. Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

How you deal with them outside of death shroud is vital as well. Check their mainhand weapon. If it’s dagger, kite to the best of your ability. This is the more sustained damage output and harder to prevent the life force gain, but the life blasts also hurt less. If it’s axe, dodge the #2. This makes up pretty much the entirety of the damage outside of death shroud and also is the primary life force gain. You can effectively starve them out.

If you have 2.9k armour chances are your damage is really lacking, or you have really low hp. Trying to out last a necro that can get ds really quickly doesnt work. I suggest dropping it down to 2600 and get your power between 2100-2400, your crit at a minimum of 50%(without fury) and a decent amount of hp and ferocity

The best way to beat life blast spams is to out dps it, if you have enough damage, life blast’s attack speed will work against the necro and chances are the necro has either low hp (below 19k), low toughness or both and wont last long outside ds.

Once DS pops just pop protection, stability, or what ever defensive stuff you have and go berserk. Make sure you save your dodges for the last hit on tainted shackles (dont worry about the torment) and the life transfer. Don’t bother dodging the life blasts if you can’t. Just smash and kite much as possible.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

Immobilize does not prevent turning. Visually it may glitch and not show the character model turning, but certain abilities that have facing requirement will automatically rotate the character to meet that requirement upon skill use. Life Blast is one of these abilities.

Each life blast has a lengthy 1 second cast time, so there is plenty of counter gameplay to this through interrupts, blinds, blocks, evades, and LoS around buildings and terrain. Applying weakness will shut down all of the Necro’s crits and severely reduce their DPS in death shroud.

From my experiences, bursting down the death shroud is the only reliable way of dealing with it. Conditions can burst the death shroud extremely fast because the Necro lacks condi removal while in death shroud. The other option is to wait for the death shroud to naturally decay because the life force drains very fast on its own without Vital Persistence trait.

Think of it this way: if the Necro is in Lich form, what would you do to counter that? Apply those same principles versus death shroud.

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

Immobilize does not prevent turning. Visually it may glitch and not show the character model turning, but certain abilities that have facing requirement will automatically rotate the character to meet that requirement upon skill use. Life Blast is one of these abilities.

Only if the player isn’t trying to rotate the camera, and even then effectiveness varies.

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it. Yesterday, I found out the same thing was true with Rending Claws (axe auto).

zone.1073:

Each life blast has a lengthy 1 second cast time, so there is plenty of counter gameplay to this through interrupts, blinds, blocks, evades, and LoS around buildings and terrain. Applying weakness will shut down all of the Necro’s crits and severely reduce their DPS in death shroud.

This and in addition: (depending on build) you got a 10 second burst window after a necro leaves DS, so use that. Also get accustomed to the healing animation.
Pretty much everyone runs consume conditions which has a rather lengthy 1.25 sec cast time and a unique animation (atleast for necro). Interrupt that to apply additional pressure.
Also keep in mind that defense outside of DS is rather limited and lich can be “side stepped” easily at around 500?! range. So if he lichs → gs leap away and simply run away while spamming strafe left/right.

Make sure you have melee assist unchecked in the options menu. Simply walking through a Necro will cancel their life blast channel.

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

Immobilize does not prevent turning. Visually it may glitch and not show the character model turning, but certain abilities that have facing requirement will automatically rotate the character to meet that requirement upon skill use. Life Blast is one of these abilities.

Each life blast has a lengthy 1 second cast time, so there is plenty of counter gameplay to this through interrupts, blinds, blocks, evades, and LoS around buildings and terrain. Applying weakness will shut down all of the Necro’s crits and severely reduce their DPS in death shroud.

From my experiences, bursting down the death shroud is the only reliable way of dealing with it. Conditions can burst the death shroud extremely fast because the Necro lacks condi removal while in death shroud. The other option is to wait for the death shroud to naturally decay because the life force drains very fast on its own without Vital Persistence trait.

Think of it this way: if the Necro is in Lich form, what would you do to counter that? Apply those same principles versus death shroud.

If you immobilize the Necro and sit on his back, Life Blast will constantly cancel itself and only previously fired blasts may have the homing.

Life Blast is 1.5 second cast.

Life Blast is casted right next to Necro’s face. If you move into character model or simply run through within the cast time, you won’t get hit.

Best thing you can do vs. most powermancers, who don’t run Near to Death, is to completly run away, ignore and leave them when they hop into shroud. Life Blast does way less damage at range, Necro is running out of LF with every second when doing nothing. Most will be forced out of shroud and give you 10 second window in which you can do absolutely everything with Necro. 99% Necros running usual power build will do absolutely dumbest thing – try to run or react similar way, because, as you said “Life Blast soo good” and entire build is that Life Blasting for them. Def best tactic for Thief or Mesmer.

Or you hop on the bandwagon and play medi guard. Best counter to powermancer and you don’t have to do, or think. much.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Make sure you have melee assist unchecked in the options menu. Simply walking through a Necro will cancel their life blast channel.

Holy kitten it works pretty well, but it’s still not reliable enough. And for those who are saying that 2.9k is too much, I am running a celestial ele build with toughness signet and earth attunement toughness bonus. My real toughness without the signet and the attunement is about 2600. I dish out very good damage, but necros who use utility condition spams such as chill, cripple, weaken, poison etc… and also have amazing condition clears are just too much for me to handle. I have tried the suggestions to use more aggressive play to out dps them and starve their death shroud. Though I beat most crit necros (mainly because of anti crit earth grandmaster trait), they almost beat me too and I know it’s because they weren’t that good. The good crit necros are just the hardest thing to deal with

Youre probably not going to be able to do enough damage as a high tough/cele ele. Necro are good at outlasting moderate damage with high health and shroud. If he is high crit means no stability so use that to your advantage.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it.

May I ask how?

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it.

May I ask how?

Hit dodge right in last 1/4th of the lb cast.

NeXeD.3042:

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it.

May I ask how?

Hit dodge right in last 1/4th of the lb cast.

Thanks. That’s actually more like the last 1/6th of the bar. Not a lot of room for error and requires good timing. Feels fine.

Yah I dunno I just do it naturally now. There are a few tricks with necro where you don’t have to wait for the skill to be fully cast to work, some others where you can still stow to cast something else faster.

zone.1073:

NeXeD.3042:

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it.

May I ask how?

Hit dodge right in last 1/4th of the lb cast.

Thanks. That’s actually more like the last 1/6th of the bar. Not a lot of room for error and requires good timing. Feels fine.

It’s not easy, and it’s certainly no reason to dodge at a time you wouldn’t anyway, but sometimes you can eke out a bit of extra damage. Not something to aim for, but rather a “hey, that’s cool.”

WeihGuy.9320:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Make sure you have melee assist unchecked in the options menu. Simply walking through a Necro will cancel their life blast channel.

Holy kitten it works pretty well, but it’s still not reliable enough. And for those who are saying that 2.9k is too much, I am running a celestial ele build with toughness signet and earth attunement toughness bonus. My real toughness without the signet and the attunement is about 2600. I dish out very good damage, but necros who use utility condition spams such as chill, cripple, weaken, poison etc… and also have amazing condition clears are just too much for me to handle. I have tried the suggestions to use more aggressive play to out dps them and starve their death shroud. Though I beat most crit necros (mainly because of anti crit earth grandmaster trait), they almost beat me too and I know it’s because they weren’t that good. The good crit necros are just the hardest thing to deal with

Lol, you’re complaining about Necro’s when you’re a Celestial Ele?

To be fair he’s not playing the right build I doubt he is running vigor traits, without vigor and elemental shielding a d/d ele wouldnt last agaisnt a good power necro.