Guild Wars 2

Okay, so last night I have discovered the Arah dungeon for the first time. It is an amazingly, overpowered, unforgiving dungeon with no sense of mercy or manners! It is the rude uncle that never gets invited to family gatherings, the love-child of Dawn of the Dead and Jurassic Park!

What makes it even better is “the Great Lupi”! Yes, I spend hours in the dungeon with some PuG’s where a couple of the players ran away in fear and frustration. The only ones remaining, constantly button-mashing and playing? The two Necromancers and the “support” Engineer. (Hats off to the engineer! Never met an Engi that could play the class that well!)

Now, to feed my new addiction – I am curious – how do you fight Lupi? What tactics, skills and elite do you use when you fight him? I’ve been doing the following in the dungeon, and while I pulled my fair share last night I always believe that there is place for improvement. So let’s discuss tactics, shall we?

Phase 1 – “The Grub phase!”

Weapon – Staff! I use the marks + wells to kill of the insects/grubs and range Lupi while we are all stacked together in one spot.

Phase 2 – “Shadow Step!”

Weapon – Scepter (mh) + dagger (oh). Stack bleeds, weakness and poison like crazy. I found out that while Lupi is chasing a team mate like some rabid dog I can get out of combat and change skills. Changed wells to BiP + Locust sigil.

Phase 3 – “Life Leech”

Basically a continuation of phase 2 tactics. Hit and spam conditions as much as possible.

NOTES:

I do keep the locust sigil on for speed, though I feel it isn’t much use during the fight. Perhaps the sigil that lets you revive fallen (downed) allies instantly would be a better trade off?

As for an elite skill I found that Plague is simply useless. Lupi is too fast to keep up with him, which leaves me floating around like a big cloud of dust. Same with Lich Forrm. I simply cannot keep up with Lupi to damage him enough.

At the moment I am using the Sylvari racial elite (turrets) only because I have no idea of what else to try. The turrets have a nice (1200) range but lack in damage. Don’t forget about the 3 seconds of invulnerability which can be a life saver! I assume that Fleshie will simply melt away in front of Lupi?

Anyways, long ramble short – Let’s discuss tactics and ways to fight Lupi!

:D

The Lupi fight is not really about damage as much as staying alive. You can get out of combat by running towards the wall. Since we necros do not have a great dodge regen its hard to take his life drain hits or his lifedrain on the 3rd phase since u waste 2 rolls just dodging that. What I have done is is use Fleshworm, and set him at the opposite side lupi is running around on. This way if I get into trouble i can quickly teleport to the wall and get out of Lupi’s range. I also use the signet that lets u revive 3 people. My other utility is specrtal armor for the damage absorb. I run full berserk gear set up for Arah and always try to keep in mind that surviving is more important then fast damage. Keep your distance and staff attacks at the ready. I use lich form as my elete because in phase one the high damage I can reach goes thru the locusts and grubs and right to lupi like the auto attack that our staff does.

Survivability. That makes a lot of sense. I have used the Fleshworm during my first encounter with Lupi (placing the fellow right up against the wall for the perfect escape) BUT it must have been my bad luck because Lupi kept on smashing my worm to bits. I think it might have been the ranger/warrior that was running into that direction that drew Lupis attention. But alas, a fleshworm makes for a poor shield.

Would you say going POWER against Lupi would be better than going CONDITIONS? The way that I reason it, half of the fight is spending time reviving party members. During such a situation the stacks of bleed/poison will still hurt Lupi, while when I am Power I can hit him hard, but will be useless while I am busy saving the day.

What are your thoughts on this?

I assume you range him, that is what most PUGs do afterall.

In phase 1 you can make an effort and dodge the grub spell, you want to dodge when GL raises his hand towards the sky. If everybody is at least trying to do that, you get almost no grubs at all.

Phase 2 is definitely the ugliest in a PUG and the reason why i bring Spectral Armor and Walk (and Blood is Power to boost the damage you can do to him actually).
Don’t get freaked out by his bouncing projectile, but either dodge, or go into DS if you are low on health or your heal is not ready.
If he is phase-walking towards you, wait till he gets close and dodge. If you’re low on endurance, hit Spectral Walk and simply run away. In case that skill is on CD aswell, you can activate the armor to mitigate the damage of his hit. With protection and the necro hp pool you’ll be fine.

If you get into Phase 3, you’ve bascially won the fight. It’s a good idea to cripple him every now and then so he can’t catch up with people so fast, but other than that; there is nothing really that should endanger a ranged group.

None of the necro elites are useful for this fight, really, so you might as well ignore them.

And sometimes it’s inevitable to get downed. I had fights where he absolutely would not let go of me and after 2 dodges, my DS pool and my utility skills, i landed on the floor.
GL then continued to shoot his projectiles at me until i was defeated proper.

Overall the fight is not that difficult, but can be a real pain if you have someone new, or someone who runs about like an idiot.

Thought this thread was about how to solo lupi as a necro.

Usually bring Signet of Undeth, Flesh Wurm, and spectral walk. Traits Stab on DS and Faster Speed in DS. Elite use Lich if DPS, Plague if Tanking. Flesh Golem usually doesn’t last much after summoned.

It really depends on ur build and how comfortable you are fighting him if ur just spamming with ur scepter or just going up and hit him with your dagger, dagger is nice because you can immobilize him.

Use vigor food and potions of undead slaying for an easier time.

Melee~! Like any good War can do

Phase 1: Staff~
(Melee’s too risky with Locusts and kicks, and if you pull aggro he moves around a nd it annoys the party~)

Phase 2: Daggerdaggerdaggerdaggerdagger
-He never shadowsteps to someone right ntext to him, and his ranged throw can’t hit you.
-If he tries to kick you, walk thru him.
-Giant Aoe, douple dodge roll in shroud(or tipple with sigil of energy), then regain yoru LF fast as possible if you took damage~
***LF is the key to this phase if you mess up and get hit by this AoE, I use Spectral Wall, Spectral Grasp, and Specral walk, with the LF on use trait^^. with the Trat Grasp is about 16% life force, Walk 5% ish and Wall 5% ish, and even more if you bring a focus+dagger1. Not to mention you can quick cast the wall when he starts his giant aoe and roll thru it for protection incase you messs up

Phase 3: Daggerdaggerdaggerdagger
-He will never try to bubble you if you stand too close to him, and he no longer has a kick.
-He will never try to life siphon you if you stand too close to him if there are still people alive standing far away
-He will never aggro to you if there’s a war or guardian in your party, he loves thos, so somtimes you just have to follow him around and back stab him constantly^^
-His only attack that hits you in this phase is his large aoe where he floats, just double dodge roll(or tripple with sigil) and continue~ (Carful tho, when he lands its a knockback, and if he lands and you get knocked backed he will most likly bubble you for standing close to him, but not close enough Deahthroud stability is greate for this part^^)

Sorry for my poor typing, and I hope this helps someone who wants to try to melee him, its the greatest. I learned to do it on my war and took a while to figure out how to safly do it on necro >~<. The only difference is instead of an extra dodge and block you get a 2nd hp bar you have to fill as fast as possible, and can’t hold aggro no matter how much damage you do in melee range~

Zogyark.4597:

Use vigor food and potions of undead slaying for an easier time.

Endurance food is also really good, as Zogyark says I use that or lifesteal^^

I use a beserker power/lifeforce build for everything in pve. But when i fight lupi I switch my grandmaster trait on soulreaping to provide stability for 3 seconds when switching into DS. This is the only reliable way for a necro to get out of lupi’s dome. Unless you have a teammate who can give you stability for a few seconds. I always take signet of undeath to quickly res any1 who is in a particularly dangerous spot to be downed. And the standard damage dealing wells (well of suffering and well of corruption). My guild always bring a mesmer and we melee lupi on all stages except stage 3.

Feedback and timewarp on stage 2 to melee burn through his hp and quickly get him into stage 3. If your all inside feedback when he aoe’s it will reflect back at him and do some pretty good damage along with timewarp and going beserk as much as possible. So I dont take anything to survive his aoe’s. If something goes wrong I will just rely on dodges or DS to soak up damage. But really the key to beating lupi is just learning all his tells.

Did this dungeon last night with some guildies. Starts like a bad joke…so 4 guardians and a necro go into a bar… I was the only spec’d dmg dealer so it was interesting. First pull on him we died as none of us had fought him. With 9 stacks phase 2 went poorly for us. Second pull we downed him and it wasn’t that bad. Key to this fight really seems to be practice not soo much party makeup.

That being said, his bubble of doom in phase 3 can be fatal to us. The key is to not be within 600 of him at all in phase 3, if you are you will likely be dead. I played staff/sceptor focus for all 3 phases. Tried the wurm, but found it unreliable. We lured him as best we could further into the room so moving to the doorway was out of combat. For the 2nd pull, played a 3 well setup with lich form.

1st phase, the guardians handled grubs, with 1 well each grub. The rest was marks on boss and switching to sceptor for bleeds during down time.

2nd phase, about the same. Everything on boss and sceptor when marks were on cd.

3rd phase, is about distance…also, see phase 2.

As for the boss ignoring necros for other classes: He picked on us equally during phase 2 (alternating between the 4 guardians and me), and basically spent all of phase 3 chasing me down. He also likes to stand on corpses. We had 3 total deaths during the second pull (1 of which was a bubble of doom on me). It’s not easy to get him away from a corpse it seems. Took Lich form for me to get him of my wife’s corpse near the end.

Fun fight.

phase 1: stack on your allies and attack from afar using a staff, dropping marks on your party pile to kill grubs

phase 2: dodge when he’s close to popping out of his “spectral walk” to you.

phase 3: really depends on your build. if you’re running a death shroud spec then the 3 seconds of death shroud stability means you can walk right out of his doom bubble.

If you are not running a death shroud spec then you need to save death shroud until he drops the bubble on you. Use death shroud to absorb as much of the damage as you can. If you take 20% or so damage to your health coming out of it, use your heal skill and then focus on building life force.

During this fight the only elite you can really use is lich form. Flesh golem AI isn’t reliable and it would probably die to his numerous AOEs anyway, and plague form doesn’t really have much to offer over lich form since you don’t want to hug the ugly thing (and blind doesn’t have a real impact on him since most of his attacks are multi-hit). The stability it provides is also really useful for getting out of the doom bubble. Save lich form to get out of the bubbles.

Another way of getting out of the doom bubble is to use skill #2 in deathshroud, it teleports you to him and out of the bubble.

I find signet of the locust amazing in the lupi fight. That 25% speed boost can save you a lot of endurance since you can just walk out of the way of most attacks(u can still do it anyway but much easier to do with the signet). I also use signet of undeath to get your life force to go up faster. Since my biggest issue is dodging the random balls he shoots out(with no red circles) i soak those up with DS and save dodges that way as well. Last utilities are Bip for the long bleeds and plague form for another bubble escape. I pretty much stay in scepter/dagger the whole fight, even in phase one i ask the group to get in 900 range so it goes faster. I only switch to staff when im low on health so i can stay at a far range to give me more time to react or i sometimes run up to lupi and get some regen(as long as i dont hav aggroe).
But as others hav said i also stay by the wall and lose aggroe to get my health bak sumtimes too.

Slagburst.5304:

Another way of getting out of the doom bubble is to use skill #2 in deathshroud, it teleports you to him and out of the bubble.

Thought of this but havent had the chance to try and see if it worked because GL hasnt domed me at all recently. Thanks for confirming it works.