Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I have found the necro forum to be a really good source of information and lately there are some problems im struggeling with.

Me and a couple of friends are trying to progress trough fractals, were currently at fractal lvl 20. Most of the fractals we can do without to much trouble. But the grawl fractals last boss, the imbued fire shaman, gives us alot of trouble.

We run with a slightly imbalanced group of 1 ranger, 2 mesmer, 1 engineer and a power necro (me). Although i see the benefit of having a warrior of guardian in this group, we were able to come this far without one.

During the fight we are having trouble with the grub phases, usually we focus down the shield first and then kite the grubs.

I am running with a Power build necro with a gear focus of Pow/Tough/Vit and my traits are currently 30/10/0/0/30. I run with a Axe- focus atm with a staff offset (which i use alot in this fight during the grubs)

I was wondering if any of the necro’s on this forum have any tips for a necro during this fight. Or do you guys recommend that i should try another build?

Without decent crit chance, the 30 you have in soul reaping is kind of a waste. If you’re running primarily PTV gear, I would suggest moving some, or all, of the points you have in soul reaping into the blood tree and pick up the life siphoning traits.

As far as just kiting the grubs, no. Thats not going to work. You need to kill them or they will quickly overwhelm you. It is a good idea to break the shield on the boss first, though. Not letting him heal should be your first priority. Axe 2 is perfect for this as the rapid attack breaks the shield faster.

As for the grubs themselves, dropping wells on the grubs, followed by axe 3 and DS 4 when they clump up is a good option. You’re going to need a lot of AOE to deal with the grubs. Lich form is also not a bad idea for dealing with grubs, but realistically you can only use it once. Fortunately you have an engineer and he should be able to cover that with his grenades. Unfortunately, necromancers have really long cool downs on all their AoE so you need to save them for the grub phase.

This boss is the hardest fractal boss IMO, and its not uncommon for PUGs to get suck and disband when they get this boss on level 20+. Honestly, the biggest roadblock to this encounter is not having enough DPS, and being geared tanky for this fight is actually a hindrance, which is why people prefer warriors for this.

What I personally run in fractals is a 30/20/0/0/20 build using knights armor with berserker’s weapons and trinkets. For this boss especially, I use well of corruption, well of suffering, and signet of undeath. Someone always goes down in this fight so having a quick res is invaluable here. Traits to pick up that really help in this fight is having targetable wells and piercing life blasts so you can use DS to hit multiple grubs. Dagger/WH and axe/focus are my weapon choices. I’m good at dodging the bosses attacks so I just go toe to toe with him using dagger. I wouldn’t suggest doing that if you are unfamiliar with his tells, however. One dive attack will down you at this level.

should be rather easy with your setup, ranger can entangle and engie has grenades for nice aoe. for your utilities try well of suffering, well of power and signet of undeath.

Thanks for the advise! I currently have 30 points in soul reaping for the cooldown reduction on deathshroud. This is because i normally use the deathshroud for stacking might and vulnerabillity, also i use the deathshroud alot to eat unavoidable damage.

I could put those point into the blood tree, but what if i tried to increase my crit change (gearwise) would soul reaping then be better?

Zblorq.9712:

I could put those point into the blood tree, but what if i tried to increase my crit change (gearwise) would soul reaping then be better?

Absolutely. You could try using PTV armor with Knights trinkets and weapons. Swap out the exquisite emerald jewels for exquisite ruby ones on those trinkets since the 3% extra crit damage massively outweighs the paltry 15 stats you’d otherwise have. This way you will still retain the tanky stats but gain a lot more DPS. While you do that, don’t forget to get yourself some Quality Maintenance Oils from the trading post. They’re cheap and easy to get and with all that toughness you’ll easily get another 10% crit chance. If you are dead set on keeping 30 in soul reaping, do yourself a favor and grab the piercing life blasts trait if you haven’t already. It stacks 2 vulnerability per shot and will help with AoEing the grubs.

6% additional crit chance makes the SR tree instantly worth it (10% total), no need for more since its worth is more in DS and the traits (10 power pre 10% LF, a 60 second cd Spectral armor and the nice increase in LF gain).
Using D1+WH5 instead of another set can solo chip down the shammy shield in a couple of seconds letting your friends focus on the grubs, also you can immobilize the shielded shammy, remember to mention that (engie should setup the net turret and thumper turret in the middle on shammy boss).
Also 10 points into blood (20 if you use 3/4 wells) to pick up transfusion is well worth it, its a good source of aoe healing for your allies while picking off the svanir/grubs(dont use it while boss has shield up unless you are on grub duty)/4 boss rooms/etc
Overall it should be one of the easier fights in fractals if people remember that you dont have to all swarm the boss (just throw underwater nets/immobilize and let 1 or 2 person chip him with fast weapons/attacks) and instead aoe the grubs. Also using RP walk instead of running can allow for better zone control/less aoe fire hurting your allies.

Source of info: 1.3k play time since release, id say 80% of it on necro with my 20/0/0/20/30 build and getting thrown into a 38 fractal when i had just 5 AR one time and going trough it getting 6 achivements and with 0 deaths (sadly 5 downs).

I am on fractal 32 now, and have run up to that level more or less on GW2LFG.com. I don’t play power, and while many people in this thread apparently do, I have a hard time seeing the value in knights or PVT gear in that setting. (not a dig at anyone, just personal experince with those gear sets).

So for Grawl, you have two mesmers, and with both of them running feedback, and the reflect traits on their wardens/veils, it should be very easy to group up around the mesmers (dodging the firestorm), and just reflect back all the bolts he shoots out. The Iwardens will do this passively when they are up.

As for the grubs, that is one of the reasons I love to run rampagers. If you can land an epidemic right after the boss goes into shield mode, you are going to drop 5 of those grubs nearly instantly (which people can rally off of if they need too), you can go into plague form and float under the boss helping to take the shield down while tanking the grubs, you can spam staff marks around and more epidemic, and then use DS4 to tank as much additional damage as possible. If at this point the grubs are not yet dead, there is a good chance you will go down, but you will likely rally almost immediately.

This will free up pretty much the other 4 people to just focus the grawl boss, while the grubs are dying or chasing the necro around, until the bubble goes down. And since you have a ranger, he won’t be moving much.

The hardest part of the fight is learning when to dodge the firebolts that cause agony from the boss (and having enough resistance for the agony to not hurt). Having mesmers makes that easier, as you can reflect them back, though not as easy as a guardian.

As a power necro in this situation, I found my AOE to be very lacking, in a fight where the grubs need to die faster, though you are able to break the shamn bubble fast with axe. Also both dagger/axe, put you so close to the boss it is very hard to dodge the bolt, unless you can recognize the tell.

So I spent most of my time on staff during the grub phase (as a power necro). Since in both knights and PVT gear, my DPS is either equal or lower to rampagers, I just use rampagers. We can soak up enough hits from the grubs with plauge and DS if need be, and are much more useful to the team with the longer lasting conditions, higher damage bleeds, full up-time poison.

Personal preference, but I have run rabid/PVT/rampagers/zerker/knights at level 20+, and always find myself back to rampagers. Zerker for the dredge boss, or if your PUG group brought too much bleeding.

Rennoko.5731:

So for Grawl, you have two mesmers, and with both of them running feedback, and the reflect traits on their wardens/veils, it should be very easy to group up around the mesmers (dodging the firestorm), and just reflect back all the bolts he shoots out. The Iwardens will do this passively when they are up.

Isnt the feedback bubble lower than the Shamman projectile start location (same as with Lich)?

Rennoko.5731:

As a power necro in this situation, I found my AOE to be very lacking, in a fight where the grubs need to die faster, though you are able to break the shamn bubble fast with axe. Also both dagger/axe, put you so close to the boss it is very hard to dodge the bolt, unless you can recognize the tell.

One WoS takes care of 4-7 grubs depending on team coordination in plain pvt gear, thus rampager shouldnt really have a problem with aoe damage, especially if later combined with either Scepter/Dagger or Axe/Focus aoe skills (2/5 and 3/4 respectively).

I would drop the PVT gear, go for knights if you want extra survival. Vitality just increases the damage you take from agony and causes your heal to not scale well.
Even from non agony damage it is really unnecessary when a necro has around 19-21k without any vita. Feels like a wasted stat. You shouldn’t be taking several big hits in a row from a boss anyway and the toughness alone prevents any hard to avoid 1 shottings when combined with the high hp pool you naturally have as a necro.

With crit chance you can increase your dmg and survivability alot. You could go for blood magic for some life leach, and with crit chance you can make good use of a damage sigil such as flame/air/leeching.
It shouldn’t be about taking as much damage as you can. The sooner you get the grubs down the less damage they will be dealing.

Andele.1306:

Rennoko.5731:

So for Grawl, you have two mesmers, and with both of them running feedback, and the reflect traits on their wardens/veils, it should be very easy to group up around the mesmers (dodging the firestorm), and just reflect back all the bolts he shoots out. The Iwardens will do this passively when they are up.

Isnt the feedback bubble lower than the Shamman projectile start location (same as with Lich)?

Rennoko.5731:

As a power necro in this situation, I found my AOE to be very lacking, in a fight where the grubs need to die faster, though you are able to break the shamn bubble fast with axe. Also both dagger/axe, put you so close to the boss it is very hard to dodge the bolt, unless you can recognize the tell.

One WoS takes care of 4-7 grubs depending on team coordination in plain pvt gear, thus rampager shouldnt really have a problem with aoe damage, especially if later combined with either Scepter/Dagger or Axe/Focus aoe skills (2/5 and 3/4 respectively).

Given the HP of the grubs, at best you are going to help take out the grubs, not take out 4-7 on your own with the well, but WOS is very good against them especially after they have clumped. And rampagers doesn’t have an issues with AOE, it is superior (at least in my opinion) to a PVT/Knights build.

As far as feedback is concerned, I do play a mesmer on occasion, but I can’t think of any occasions where I ran fractals with him. The way feedback normally works is that if the target is standing in the bubbled it reflects on itself, or if it attacks someone standing in the circle. It should work on him, and I feel like it has reflected fine in the groups I have run with mesmer, but it is not nearly as obvious to watch as wall of reflection. Ill keep an eye out next time.

EDIT: And now that I think about it…. I have used it on Lupicus in Arah before and his model is way above the bubble, but it still reflects back on him… so I believe it is okay.

mesmers can do their reflect on boss and grubs + they can use their aoe pull on grubs and with wells and stuff they should go down easily. <- wish necro had cool support utilites ohh well.

I run 30/25/0/0/15 axe/focus + staff or dagger dealing with grubs it can be easier with dagger since the staff without greater marks is abit lacking and powerbuild you most likely wont use epidemic, i tend to swap the staff dagger depending on where im going and what i have to do final part of fractal i feel staff is almost useless with all the reflect mobs while dagger axe is actually quite good.

Keeping max distance to boss and tapping sidestep left right left right can make the arrow miss alot although axe 600 range can be abit tricky.

Rennoko.5731:

EDIT: And now that I think about it…. I have used it on Lupicus in Arah before and his model is way above the bubble, but it still reflects back on him… so I believe it is okay.

It only reflects back on GL if you stand under GL and inside the feedback.

Rennoko.5731:

Given the HP of the grubs, at best you are going to help take out the grubs, not take out 4-7 on your own with the well, but WOS is very good against them especially after they have clumped. And rampagers doesn’t have an issues with AOE, it is superior (at least in my opinion) to a PVT/Knights build.

EDIT: And now that I think about it…. I have used it on Lupicus in Arah before and his model is way above the bubble, but it still reflects back on him… so I believe it is okay.

I think i phrased that wrong, one utility ofc wont solo kill multiple mobs, but WoS will do the damage it takes to make them easy pickings; given a 10% damage increase. 700 damage ticks and general aoe count a necro has, you can go for either of the roles (grub slaughter or shield pop).

About the Feedback (dont know how its now since i didnt pick it up while leveling my mesmer – profession i didnt play since beta), i know Lich and Fire Elementals used to be pretty much immune to it because of how the dome field worked with projectiles that start on elevation, thus i kinda assumed it still worked like that.

Last but not least ofc Rampagers is superior in terms of damage to defensive setups, its mostly personal preference on how much you like to facetank stuff (and how many risks of going melee with a light armor class you wanna take). Id never say a Soldier Dagger Necro can do more dps than a Rampager, just that the Rampager will probably die instantly if caught out of place, but the Soldier wont.

Have mesmers talent feedback and focus. On eles, have mesmers Curtain and then Pull, then cast Warden. Feedback boss while you are killing eles (so you only have to worry about the eles). Mesmer GS is excellent at breaking the rock shield. Melee is minimally useful against Shaman because of his dive, you’d have to be very good at not getting hit (1 hit down) and even if you are good, if someone tries to revive you the boss can do his move again and now there’s 2 people down. You will basically have to use staff exclusively. Keep bleeds up on boss since bleeds break his shield quickly. Cripple the boss when he shields to prevent him from getting hostages. To me, handling this fight with the group you have should be extremely easy given all the reflection, the blinds, etc. If you keep having problems with it, message me ingame and I’ll come run with you to see what’s up.

For necro, I think Spectral Wall would be good (protection / vuln v. eles), The poison cloud thing (Corrupted something?) to weakness them, the blind well, life transfer, warhorn stun, would all be useful.