Guild Wars 2

Hey i was just wondering if you have any tips for fighting Mesmer, guardians and Glass cannon thieves as power d/d necro

AirWick.1769:

Dagger off hand as a powerbuild is wasted with your dagger as a mainhand. You can get alot more hits in with warhorn’s locust swarm cripple.

I rather enjoy the condition transfer from deathly swarm, but I absolutely hate enfeebling blood. :/

Most mesmers run shatter builds these days and dodge rolls to generate clones. So the weakness applied would be surprisingly painful to a mesmer.

I mainly us it for the condition transfer. I’m a giving person so I’m sure people love having the cripple they gave me back. Whats the trick to fighting mesmers?

Dagger off hand is amazing, you get aoe weakness and 3 target blind… Its probobly most useful offhand against mesmer.

You just need to be aware of their escape options. Keep your camera as far up as you can to get a broader view of the area. The main issue with mesmers is “where is he now” but with familiarity they become extremely predictable.

Blink: Teleports them to a target location on a 30 sec cooldown. Does not give stealth.

Decoy: Gain stealth for 3 sec and summon an illusion to attack your foe. 40 sec cooldown. If you attack him and he disappears but a clone takes his place, just keep attacking where he was and wait for him to appear near you. Don’t worry about the clones, wait to see the swirl animation on the ground that shows up at the feet of someone leaving stealth.

The Prestige: Go stealth for 3 sec, blinding nearby foes. Burn foes when you reappear. 30 sec cooldown. Can only be used with a torch offhand so don’t worry about it otherwise. If he goes stealth and you’re blind, count to 3 and dodge to avoid the aoe burn or just prepare to send it back to him.

I use D/W + Staff with traited wells in my power build. I’ll avoid using staff right away because his greatsword at range will do more damage. Just get up in his face and start stabbing. Don’t waste Dark Pact + Well bomb early because he’ll blink away. AFTER you’ve pressured him to Blink, then you can Dark Pact > Drop Wells > Golem Charge > Life Siphon etc. If he has a staff keep out of Chaos Storm (looks like a giant bubble field around you). It’s good to have your auto-attack turned off also as Confusion will do a lot of damage to you without you realizing.

Most of them use Illusionary Leap > Blurred Frenzy. Need a sword main hand to use it. Illusionary Leap sends a clone from the mesmer’s location and has it leap to you and apply cripple. It has a 12 sec cooldown. It also has a Swap option, where the mesmer can then swap places with the clone and do an aoe immobilize. He’ll then use Blurred Frenzy (10 sec cooldown) to do lots of damage, and he’ll evade all attacks while doing it so don’t waste anything. I usually just use Death Shroud (with 5 sec of retaliation traited) to absorb the damage and then DS#3 to fear them as soon as they stop. If at any point his clones stop attacking and run at you, dodge toward them. They’ll explode and you’ll evade. Try to kill phantasms if you have a chance, they do a lot of damage (Epidemic works great to kill phantasms/clones without focusing on them).

The real trick to fighting mesmers is targeting the real one, then sticking to them like a fat person sticks to the buffet line.

There are special tricks to know above that, like using their clones to Epidemic off of, killing the right Phantasms, and knowing other things, but as long as your main goal is just murdering that mesmer quickly, you are on the right path.

For Guardians, every Necromancer build needs at least one of: Well of Corruption, Corrupt Boon, or Spinal Shivers. Save whichever you have until the Guardian gives himself the big burst of boons (I almost always save it for when I see stability), they usually do this as they get low, if you can destroy that big boon burst, then they have lost a lot of survivability. Besides that, learn their hammer and mace/shield setups, which is by far the most common (and the most viable) weapon setup, and learn when they throw up blocks, how to dodge their leap, etc. Guardian CC is actually really easy to avoid if you aren’t dead set on using dagger for damage.

For thieves, drop your AoE when they are in stealth, so: Axe 3, Scepter 3, Staff 2+3, Warhorn 5, Dagger 5. When they come out of stealth, chain together all the hard CC you have: Dagger 3, DS 3, Flesh Golem Charge, Staff 5, Warhorn 4. As you chain the hard CC, get ready for when they will try to stealth, you want to start any channeled abilities right before they go into stealth (Axe 2, Dagger 2, DS 4) because it will keep damaging them. It usually takes two stealth rotations to get them down, the first one you will be blowing all their defensive CDs, the second time is when you can hopefully finish them. And remember, move and turn around a lot, you want to make it impossible for them to easily hit your back.

Bhawb.7408:

For thieves, drop your AoE when they are in stealth, so: Axe 3, Scepter 3, Staff 2+3, Warhorn 5, Dagger 5.

Sceptre 3 isn’t aoe unfortunately. I used to think it was too because the GW1 skill is, but, sadly, no… Guess you meant 2?

Dont worry about Mesmers… shatters are my weakness too, but that is mostly due to stealth culling which is apparently coming to an end. Running axe/focus, dagger/warhorn makes guardians a waste. Dropping well of darkness traited with chilling darkness when a thief tries to burst makes them easy minus stealth culling as well.

Mesmer – if they are using Staff forget about it and target something easier to spike. The low cooldown on Phase Retreat makes it virtually impossible to lock them down with Dark Pact -> burst. If you have to target the Mesmer you pretty much have to use Spectral Grasp to counter teleports, make them burn distortion on your first spike, and then actually get them down on the 2nd one.

Bunker Guardian – the stability trait helps alot to prevent knockbacks when you are trying to spike. You have to keep track of their heal cooldown before trying to spike since pretty much every guardian uses shelter. Well of Corruption is strong here. If your spike is well timed you pretty much force them to use their invulnerability elite.

Glass cannon Thief – These are pretty easy unless you are caught with your pants down. Fear them immediately once they get on you (although watch if they use Lyssa which gives them aegis and stability), chain fear with Dark Pact -> burst. Your auto-attack will still hit stealthed players who are in front of you (you can tell by your entire auto-attack chain going off). Usually they die from one spike. If not just keep on the pressure. Thieves use stealth to catch their breathe but Necro’s have many ways to continue to do damage to stealthed players (Dagger 2 channel if you locked on before they stealthed, Life Transfer, Marks). I like to throw down Mark of Blood at my feet whenever possible when they are stealthed due. Due to Mark of Blood’s low cooldown it doesn’t matter if they dodge it and it gives me an idea of their position, so I can dodge once it is triggered or whatever I need to do, plus it gives me regen. Lastly make sure to save your fear mark for their shadow refuge. Really the trick is to keep the pressure on so they can’t catch their breath.

Dagger off hand can work if you can land enfeebling blood. It’ll reduce the endurance regeneration thereby allowing you to land more hits with auto attack. Glancing blows from weakness with keep you from taking some damage and transferring conditions is also helpful. The bleeds from off hand dagger are not great, but any bit of dps helps.

I don’t have anything to comment since I got trainwrecked by a glamour mesmer in a duel 4 out of 5 times. Of course he is perhaps the best mesmer on his server, but that cut my mesmer comments down alot.

As for guardians, just keep using your boon removals and then use your burst as soon as you do. They drop pretty quickly.