Guild Wars 2

Granted Anet feels dhuumfire needs a change, and it appears that it will be shifted to death shroud one with a horrible 10 second cool down. Fine, your game, your rules. That said I do not think this represents a grandmaster level trait. You will make it useless if you keep it at the grandmaster level. In addition this trait belongs in curses and brings absolutely nothing to power builds. Moreover the nerfs you have done to our other dmg conditions are going to make this even more of a necessity to do damage which ruins any build diversity if you want to do damage. You have pigeon holed condition builds and effectively made them weaker at the same time.

Im soooooo Happy they nerfed this trait.

Brando.1374:

Im soooooo Happy they nerfed this trait.

I’m happy they’re changing it. Not so happy the nerfs they made because of it are most likely staying.

Gryph.8237:

In addition this trait belongs in curses and brings absolutely nothing to power builds.

If you invest into the spite tree, it doesn’t mean you’re automatically a power build. Same thing with the curses tree and condi builds. It’s true there’s traits in there that are more beneficial to power builds, but a lot of them also benefit condi builds as well (i.e. Chill of Death). Similarly, there’s some traits in the curses line that can actually benefit power builds more than they do condi builds (i.e. Target the Weak).

Additionally, going 30 into spite gives you 30% condition duration, which is a really good thing to have as a condi necro. Similarly, putting points into curses gives you precision, which can be very helpful for power builds.

I believe the main reason it’s in the grandmaster tier is that it’s a powerful condition, and throwing it on top of all the other condition power necros can get can be quite overwhelming.

Gryph.8237:

with a horrible 10 second cool down.

It already has a 10 second cooldown on it. given that death shroud itself has a 10 second cooldown, condi necros can choose to pop out one life blast and pop back out if they want (though that might not be the best way to use death shroud). I think they’ll be removing the necessity of a crit when they make the change as well, but I can’t remember for certain.

Biggest downside i see with this nerf is that is takes away a big reason for a condition necro to get precision.
People are cheering that this is getting nerfed in the way that it is, but all this will do is prompt even more bunker condition builds, as people find there is less reason to get precision.

Conditions themselves cannot crit, and its these kind of condition-on-crit traits that give condition builds a good reason to invest into getting a decent crit rate.

Terrahero.9358:

Biggest downside i see with this nerf is that is takes away a big reason for a condition necro to get precision.
People are cheering that this is getting nerfed in the way that it is, but all this will do is prompt even more bunker condition builds, as people find there is less reason to get precision.

Conditions themselves cannot crit, and its these kind of condition-on-crit traits that give condition builds a good reason to invest into getting a decent crit rate.

Unfortunately, I agree with you and see that happening as well. It just seems like no matter what ArenaNet tries to do, they just can’t win either way when it comes to this sort of thing.

Seryi.7936:

Terrahero.9358:

Biggest downside i see with this nerf is that is takes away a big reason for a condition necro to get precision.
People are cheering that this is getting nerfed in the way that it is, but all this will do is prompt even more bunker condition builds, as people find there is less reason to get precision.

Conditions themselves cannot crit, and its these kind of condition-on-crit traits that give condition builds a good reason to invest into getting a decent crit rate.

Unfortunately, I agree with you and see that happening as well. It just seems like no matter what ArenaNet tries to do, they just can’t win either way when it comes to this sort of thing.

Honestly i dont think they shouldve ever added Dhuumfire. The damage increase for a Necro is incredibly high.
700-800 ticks of burning that suddenly stack on top of all the other damage comming out. Its not like an Engineer that already has perma-Burn in condition builds that it relies on, where Inc. Powder doesnt actually add 700-800 (or more) damage per second.

It doesnt take a greater understanding of space aerodynamics to have seen that one comming.
But with this current change they are going to have to look into another way to incentivize Necro’s to still gear for more then condition damage in their condition builds.

However in the end i believe we will keep running into big problems such as these aslong as Conditions are not redesigned in general. The very system of Conditions is just so flawed.

I only see hybrid Necros running Dhummfire after this.

Condi Necros spending points on this are just flushing 30 trait points down the drain.

Lets put it on an obvious, slow casting projectile that everyone will dodge… doesn’t belong as a GM trait – they should just remove it and undo the Necro nerfs that happened because of it.

Brando.1374:

Im soooooo Happy they nerfed this trait.

Not I. I would have preferred they removed it altogether and reverted the changes to fear.

Terrahero.9358:

Biggest downside i see with this nerf is that is takes away a big reason for a condition necro to get precision.
People are cheering that this is getting nerfed in the way that it is, but all this will do is prompt even more bunker condition builds, as people find there is less reason to get precision.

Conditions themselves cannot crit, and its these kind of condition-on-crit traits that give condition builds a good reason to invest into getting a decent crit rate.

not really so.. if u are not running signet of spite, your bleeds are gnna get cleansed easily. a lot of condi necros run on crit sigils like sigil of torment/earth that give a condition or effect on critical hit, which requires precision.

dhuumfire is bad because burning does so much damage. if you are fully buffed it is fairly easy to get burns to tick for 900-1000 per tick. given that 30 in spite is 30% condi dmg and no necro isnt running 40% condi food, the dhuumfire burning lasts for like 7 seconds. thats around 6-7k damage for something they dont have to skillfully cast. it just happens. for scepter skills you have to predict where they will be to use the scepter2 skill and same with dagger 5, and the resulting conditions from those skills do less damage than dhuumfire.

the trait itself is not that bad, the duration is too long. it should be a 1 second burning, and then able to be brought up to ~2 seconds with boosts and what not. an average of 700-1400 dmg is not as life threatening as 7k, obviously.

Terrahero.9358:

Honestly i dont think they shouldve ever added Dhuumfire. The damage increase for a Necro is incredibly high.
700-800 ticks of burning that suddenly stack on top of all the other damage comming out. Its not like an Engineer that already has perma-Burn in condition builds that it relies on, where Inc. Powder doesnt actually add 700-800 (or more) damage per second.

[…]

However in the end i believe we will keep running into big problems such as these aslong as Conditions are not redesigned in general. The very system of Conditions is just so flawed.

I couldn’t agree more. I ran Condi before Dhuumfire and, while sometimes challenging, still felt it was fairly strong. Dhuumfire was like Christmas coming early. My fights go three ways now:

1. I bowl them over with burst in <5 seconds.
2. They outnumber me and CC/burst me down before I can get to safety or establish distance.
3. They run a cleanse-heavy build that I’ll never beat, forcing a stalemate into draw/retreat.

My beefs with Dhuumfire (and its changes) are as follows:

1. Tying it to Life Blast heavily interrupts the flow of a Condimancer. I’m not going to pop into Death Shroud specifically to burn someone. If I do that, I either immediately follow up with my burst (which is now telegraphed as hell thanks to the Life Blast requirement) or risk something bad happening to me during the 10s DS cooldown.

2. A lot of Necromancer abilities were nerfed specifically because of Dhuumfire. They don’t look like they’ll be reverted even though Dhuumfire is going to eat dirt.

3. It feels like an sPvP-driven change that’ll adversely impact PvE and WvW performance on an already hit-and-miss class, something I thought they wanted to avoid.

4. The Spite tree is bad and is being made worse. Condimancers might take Spite for the condition duration, but it has all of 2 (now 1) useful traits for them. The minor traits are so nondescript I can’t remember their names or effects.

Would Necro be broken if the secondary bonuses of Spite and Soul Reaping were swapped? All Necromancers benefit from condition duration on their cripples, weaknesses, chills, etc – even if they don’t use them for damage. Powermancers love crit damage. Condimancers would love to invest in Soul Reaping, as it boosts their DS and promotes the attrition-style combat they’re built around.

It reminds me of how the Mesmer trait line has +Condition Damage – almost all their builds benefit from it, having confusion as a universal shatter ability, as well as easy access to bleeding. It’s clean, it’s sensible.

I think people are not giving enough credit to exactly how powerful this skill is by putting it on life-blast. Now, you have control over when it procs. This means, you have control over going: Life-blast—>fear as an additional condi bomb. I would need to play around with mixing in tainted shackles and dark-path, but this is still incredibly powerful when you combine it with your instant fear and realize you now have complete control over who and when it procs. People can’t just dodge everything.

I think this is still going to be an incredibly powerful trait.

When compared to other grandmaster traits, and coupled with the nerfs to our other abilities, dhuumfire in its new form will not representative of a grandmaster trait. In addition I do not believe it should be in the spite line. The extra duration granted from the spite line is good, I agree. However, I think putting a condition damage trait at the grandmaster level in this line really cuts down on build diversity as if you don’t try to add burning you will be less viable, especially with all the other nerfs we have suffered. They have essentially made burning a must have for a condition necro and useless for anything else.

The thing that irks me the most about the dhuumfire change is that it is shafted towards death shroud. Death shroud may be our class mechanic but the importance of it becomes is too big. Also death shroud is flawed by it’s design since it doesn’t allow any healing, it has no condition removal, you don’t have any utility/healing skills, signet doesn’t work in death shroud,… . A conditionmancer has it harder since they have low life force generation and death shroud is most of the time a loss of damage.

Ever since Dhuumfire was first added I kept saying that it should have been for Hybrids, not the already strongest Necro PvP build . (condi)

Then again I’m biased because I play mostly PvE and dislike pure-condi, only use it in sPvP out of necessity. :P

I think this might be a buff in PvE, actually.
Mobs generally don’t dodge Life Blast projectiles.

Maybe if you Life Blasted from 1200 range and then quickly started casting Epidemic you could Epidemic the Dhuumfire.

In prolonged usage it seems awfully awkward, though.
Jumping in/out every 10 sec sounds annoying.

I think they should just double the Burn duration but tie it into Doom instead of Life Blast.
That way it’d effectively be on a 20 sec cooldown but brutal if not removed.

And yea in PvP it’s probably quite a buff to Condi Bunkers.

the only thing im having trouble understanding is why are they associating it with deathshroud, it’s like there was no other ways to change it except putting it on ds 1.

The reason i dont understand this is because unlike every other class that has vigor/evades/blocks/invulns w/e … we have nothing, our defense is deathshroud, they keep forcing us to choose between using it offensively or defensively and it’s complete bullkitten, It wouldn’t be so bad if we actually had some other form of defensive skills but we dont.

Now your left with the option, if you even take this trait, do you go into ds to condi burst or do you save it for when the thief opens up with backstab …. choose the wrong one and your kittened …

Everybody relax.

It’s not like they’ll put existing necro dhuumfire on a skill that can only be activated at certain times, without buffing it’s damage.

Rite? Riiiite ?

I fully expect a buff to life blast-dhuumfire damage by a factor of at least 2 in order to preserve current necro damage output. Also with life blast pierce it may actually be something to consider taking.

…skillful play and all that…

(oh noes…life blast pierce and dhuumfire proccing on every pierced target… means life blast damage will be nerfed after next patch…!)

(December 2015 patch notes: life blast generates a nice looking red debuff icon when it contacts the enemy. The icon will be animated and will display a red santa dancing around a fire. The effect will be cosmetic only and can be purchased for 150 gems to permanently unlock)

Hex.6415:

Everybody relax.

It’s not like they’ll put existing necro dhuumfire on a skill that can only be activated at certain times, without buffing it’s damage.

Rite? Riiiite ?

I fully expect a buff to life blast-dhuumfire damage by a factor of at least 2 in order to preserve current necro damage output. Also with life blast pierce it may actually be something to consider taking.

…skillful play and all that…

(oh noes…life blast pierce and dhuumfire proccing on every pierced target… means life blast damage will be nerfed after next patch…!)

(December 2015 patch notes: life blast generates a nice looking red debuff icon when it contacts the enemy. The icon will be animated and will display a red santa dancing around a fire. The effect will be cosmetic only and can be purchased for 150 gems to permanently unlock)

Dumbfire has a 10s cd. even if LB hits 2 targets only 1 will proc dumbfire.

Avigrus.2871:

I only see hybrid Necros running Dhummfire after this.

Since it would no longer be an on-crit proc, it loses the synergy it had with hybrid builds.

If anyone is left using it, it’ll be in Power/DS builds.

^ It won’t be power/DS builds.

I use that and Close to Death in the same tier is significantly better than Dhuumfire for us.

+20% damage to enemies under 50% health VS a single condition with no condi gear.

They could swap Dhuumfire to Withering Precision, but reduce the CD or increase the weakness to 10s (13s because it would have +30% condi duration).

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Avigrus.2871:

I only see hybrid Necros running Dhummfire after this.

Since it would no longer be an on-crit proc, it loses the synergy it had with hybrid builds.

If anyone is left using it, it’ll be in Power/DS builds.

Carrion is Condition Damage primary, Power and Vitality secondary.
Thus it’d take full benefit from Dhuumfire.

It is just unforunate all the damage that has been done to necro as a result of this trait will not get un-done, when this trait gets pounded into the sand. Shaving bleeds only made sense because of the existence of this trait in its current form.

When you significantly reduce the effectiveness of Dumbfire, it will have to be moved to master level, or (less likely but more preferable) undo the damage to Scepter/Staff/Terror since that patch.

Most people don’t realize, but we are not far from the tipping point where the post dumbfire necro would be taken over the current necro iteration. You remember that necro no one wanted on their team because it wasn’t able to deal enough damage, survive long enough, or cover its own conditions.

One can hope this change will be accompanied by fixes to death magic and blood magic siphons so that we can replace damage with reliable sustain, which most have been asking for since the intial massive nerfs to the class during beta.

Totally agree with you rennoko. It needs to be moved to a master level and some bleed nerfs changed. In my opinion moving it to master level opens up way more builds. Plus in my opinion it should be in curses. Would help offset the duration issue iwith burning due to being in the spite line