Guild Wars 2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Plexxing.2978:

Question: Can other classes pop an invulnerability skill to survive a fall?

No, thankfully. Which is why cliffs were considered the necro’s only escape mechanism.

Still are if you have an unused Spectral Walk on your bar.

My first time using Spectral Walk was on a JP. I was testing to see if I had a way to “port” back if I fell. I used both Flesh Wurm and Spectral Walk, they both failed. It must’ve been a glitch on the Spectral Walk. Thanks for giving me a useful tool. I never knew of the DS fall ability either. I recently learned that if you use a skill that channels, such as Flesh Golems charge, it will hit a stealthed thief if you started it before the thief steathed (I can’t confirm that yet.) What other useful tricks might I employ? I run a MM build but can switch out skills for utility purposes such as the Spectral Walk gives and DS used to give.

Death Shroud fall got neutered in the last patch.

However, Dark Path is very strange regarding stealth. So long as you fire it off within a second or two of the thief going into stealth, it will still track down and take you to him. I have fired it off (started casting) a number of times after a thief stealthed and teleported right to him, watching the projectile’s path curve before it hit. Now, you had to have had the thief targetted before he went into stealth, but so far as I am aware, this is the only skill that does this.

Now, this may very well be because Dark path will seek a target in that general direction if you didn’t have one selected, and the skill itself doesn’t differentiate between stealthed or not.

Every untargeted attack will hit stealthed units.
Dark Path is untargeted too btw, it teleports you to the first target it hits, not necessarily the one you aimed at. Plus, the projectile is homing as long as you had a target selected at the end of the casting animation, therefore it will follow a thief even if he’s in stealth.

You can use dark path to dodge Lupi’s aoe. His aoe hits right underneath him before hitting the further out circles. So timing it right you will teleport to where his aoe has already hit and avoid the later hits completely. Similar method of dodging backwards waiting 0.2seconds then doding back to lupi in melee range. Except necro’s dont have access to enough dodges to get away with that.

A little “trick” – Flesh Wurm ignores stealth.

flow.6043:

Every untargeted attack will hit stealthed units.
Dark Path is untargeted too btw, it teleports you to the first target it hits, not necessarily the one you aimed at. Plus, the projectile is homing as long as you had a target selected at the end of the casting animation, therefore it will follow a thief even if he’s in stealth.

Dark path is very strange in that if you have no target and cast it, it will go out in a straight line and port if it hits something. If you do have a target, and it locks on ( not always happening) it will track. All you need to do is start the DP cast before the thief stealths, and it will hit them.

Rennoko.5731:

flow.6043:

Every untargeted attack will hit stealthed units.
Dark Path is untargeted too btw, it teleports you to the first target it hits, not necessarily the one you aimed at. Plus, the projectile is homing as long as you had a target selected at the end of the casting animation, therefore it will follow a thief even if he’s in stealth.

Dark path is very strange in that if you have no target and cast it, it will go out in a straight line and port if it hits something. If you do have a target, and it locks on ( not always happening) it will track. All you need to do is start the DP cast before the thief stealths, and it will hit them.

Definitely a favorite move of mine. Dark path to thief, run a few steps away and spam aoes where you just were. The chill usually will keep them in that area.

Death shroud 4 hits thieves, too, even when they are stealthier as you cast it.

Bhawb.7408:

A little “trick” – Flesh Wurm ignores stealth.

Little trick, minions dont use targeting, they behave on the same aggro mechanic as fighter npcs that since a patch kinda a while ago no longer drop aggro on stealth so since they are still player skills, its the same as dropping a well and the thief walking trough it, only exception for some reason are bone minions (that sometimes bug out, but you can explode em either way). Im not sure for pvp, but it sure as hell works on skelks on southsun.

Fun other stuff to do with aggro: Some annoying low level bosses use attacks that are based on your level, but they dont take downleveling into account, so using minions and dagger basic attacks from range to bomb them without getting the enemy to attack you can make the fight a lot easier (like enemy starting from 40% or with cripple and 1 min of poison).
Swapping utilites by going in/out of water if minions are attacking something/in combat, but staying on the surface of it makes the mobs (and phantasams and spirits) stick around alive most of the time, giving you bonuses like pulling conditions off you/bonus toughness from PotH, (retal/regen and the spirit procs respectively)

*and i said fighter since for some reason most bosses and ranged npcs tend to just drop you down on the aggro list, but dont remove you for at least 1 attack/15~ seconds if you stealth in their attack cooldown

As for dark path, it behaves the same as most necro projectiles in terms of targeted homing, it has a cone within it homes, but unlike most it does some kind of ground tracing/will follow outside of the cone if you can walk to the target, but that causes it to also not go underwater/float over the water, so:
If untargeted – line projectile
If target in front – line projectile with home
If target out of cone but can be walked to – projectile that can do a 380% turn; true homing
If target out of cone but cannot be walked to – projectile fails
If target in front but cannot be walked to – blinks you the closest you could go

Also some mobs that are “immune to fear” but just have its duration reduced to 0 will still treat Swall as a barrier/wont be able to go trough it (a lot of centaur and sylvari minibosses in open pve).

Andele, I will never know how you figure this stuff out, but thanks for the info.

1.You can use two elites in combat – One on land, second underwater, they don’t share cd. Helpful in W3.
2.As for Dark Path – use it wisely vs. Mesmers. Most pink class players will try to snare you, port in, cast Sword chain and follow with shatter. To avoid that, when Mesmer goes for combo, cast DP on furthest avalible target (or, if feel lucky, phanta swordsman. Takes practice, but with luck, when Mesmer switches place with phantasm for imbaflurrycombo, it may take you to place s swordsman stands after port^^). That way you’ll totally screw his rotation and get huge advantage without losing any HP.
3.Using Flesh Wurm can be gamebreaking, experiment with that. Unexpected port still confuses most of players and If you roll with DS Life Blast build, it can instantly win the fight by allowing you to put huge pressure.
4.Harder combat trick : When fighting larger group and disengaging, you may use trick nr. 2 combined with Tainted Shackles. Before you port away, wait for Tainted to apply immobilize. Saves asar.
5. Epidemic skill – Personally I think that’ best skill necro has. To begin with – excellent tool to double your conditions. When fighting player who uses some kind of NPC such as Phantasms, Pets, Minions, Thieves Guild etc. If you stack some conditions on NPC, spread them to player, putting insane pressure for example if they’re stealthed. Rangers are favourite in here since some of their abilities transfer conditions on pet (Bond, SoR). Right after they use it, epidemic it back from pet (I’ve been using that tactic to kill “unbeatable faceroll” BM rangers back in days with no problem).

Rym.1469:

1.You can use two elites in combat – One on land, second underwater, they don’t share cd. Helpful in W3.

This is kinda a general trick, since everyone except eles can do it.

Bhawb.7408:

Andele, I will never know how you figure this stuff out, but thanks for the info.

Steps how to know stuff: Look at said stuff, look at said stuff when someone else has it, look at other examples of stuff that can be simmilar to your stuff, apply logic, test it a few times in a safe and non-obstructed enviorment (then if you are me be lazy even when patches come out and dont document changes…)

I’m personally not fond of Dark Path. For catching up to an opponent, the opponent outruns the attack. I’ve never hit an opponent that attempted to run away with this skill. No hit=no port. As for escaping, it has the same issue that Flesh Wurm has. That is the time it takes for the skill to complete, you’ve already run half that distance essentially reducing its effect to near uselessness. Having the Flesh Wurm down already does help, but putting it at a range that would allow for max port distance (anything else seems ineffective if you’re running away) also puts it out of battle. Also, those I would run from often catch me even when I do this. Even so, it’s something to think about. Keep the tricks coming. :-)

Ever seen the double-port juke? It involves placing Flesh Wurm somewhere safe. Activate Spectral Walk when it’s time to leave, running for a couple seconds, then using Necrotic Traversal. People will use their gap closers to get to your new position, leaving you free to Spectral Recall back to your initial starting point and run off in another direction with 20+ seconds of Swiftness. Pretty handy in WvW as people rarely expect the second teleport for some reason.

Also, it’s a good idea to slot Flesh Wurm when you are assaulting a keep/tower in WvW. Place it on top of the wall for either a distraction (relieving pressure from your siege team) or free damage on defenders.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ever seen the double-port juke? It involves placing Flesh Wurm somewhere safe. Activate Spectral Walk when it’s time to leave, running for a couple seconds, then using Necrotic Traversal. People will use their gap closers to get to your new position, leaving you free to Spectral Recall back to your initial starting point and run off in another direction with 20+ seconds of Swiftness. Pretty handy in WvW as people rarely expect the second teleport for some reason.

Also, it’s a good idea to slot Flesh Wurm when you are assaulting a keep/tower in WvW. Place it on top of the wall for either a distraction (relieving pressure from your siege team) or free damage on defenders.

These are solid tips.

Others I would add are to never stack all of your marks on top of each other because they can be dodge rolled over.

You can attack water camp in wvw from the water with the trident and not draw all the camp in on you.

Someone mentioned in another thread that if you cast dark path before you are downed, it can teleport you even after you become downed if it hits a target.

Dark path has a lot of uses

Trident has high tendency to ignore LoS. As in you sit in water under rock/behind wall etc and yet you can freely hammer anything withing range no matter what is between you and target.

Candy Corn golem gives life force… yeah I know. But it still funny to load up on it when you have no other source to get it.

Trident doesn’t tend to, it just flat out ignores LoS. There are multiple bosses in the game you can 100% cheese with it, and it is absolutely hilarious. If you are in range, Trident will hit (unless its changed since then, which is completely possible), and it is pretty funny to win boss fights AFK.

Maybe I’m wrong… I was sure I ran into a situation where I couldn’t trident cheese. Hmm… Maybe I’m confusing it with something else.

Bhawb.7408:

Trident doesn’t tend to, it just flat out ignores LoS. There are multiple bosses in the game you can 100% cheese with it, and it is absolutely hilarious. If you are in range, Trident will hit (unless its changed since then, which is completely possible), and it is pretty funny to win boss fights AFK.

One quite funny thing that a necro could (and did) do is on the underwater fractal if the dead party was out of range (and they still couldnt rez/no WP) of the dolphin rez, going to the upper northeast corner of the room with the jelly, get behind the chain at the rock, use crimson tide to pull aggro then foul current up into the rock, tadah, you got a giant jelly stuck next to a prison and unable to attack you while it bleeds to death, sadly a-net fixed it by making it regen for 500~ hp pre second if it cannot attack but is stacionary in combat for a few seconds (just how they fixed the double hammer on blue man fractal).
Also now it sadly doesnt hit if fully obstructed, you have to have a way to get to the enemy for it to bleed (but since 40% of the UW terrain is plates stuck on eachother instead of real terrain, most of the time it will hit because of small holes – e.g. – in the orr underwater hidden location with the tentacles and fish remains).

flow.6043:

Every untargeted attack will hit stealthed units.
Dark Path is untargeted too btw, it teleports you to the first target it hits, not necessarily the one you aimed at. Plus, the projectile is homing as long as you had a target selected at the end of the casting animation, therefore it will follow a thief even if he’s in stealth.

I haven’t done this for months, so I don’t know if it’s been fixed yet or not.

But back then, if you had autotargetting on and there are no other enemies around except a stealthed enemy, your Staff #1 and DS #1 would autotrack the target through stealth.

Minions don’t appear to track steathed players as far as I can tell.

Basic but a lifesaver: Initiate stomp animation and pop Plague elite to ensure stomp.

Hitting your target first with chill/cripple will often get them to blow their condition removal leaving them wide open for a bleed spike. This is especially effective in WWW.

Another for Spectral Walk that I didn’t see mentioned earlier: when falling, pop it once you reach “safe falling height” and then immediately port to it. It will reset your “momentum”. Works on any fall, regardless of distance, you just need to time it right.

The Boz.2038:

Another for Spectral Walk that I didn’t see mentioned earlier: when falling, pop it once you reach “safe falling height” and then immediately port to it. It will reset your “momentum”. Works on any fall, regardless of distance, you just need to time it right.

Give it time. Now that Anet has told us they changed DS to prevent no-fall-damage, I would imagine 1-2 patches away from now they will make spectral walk no longer castable while falling (similar to blink).