Guild Wars 2

The May 16th change to Epidemic made it fire slow projectiles in a straight line towards the nearest 5 enemies. I’ll be focused on it’s effects on PvE.

As already discussed here, as with any projectile, the projectiles from Epidemic can be obstructed by enemies. However, any one enemy can be only affected by one projectile from the same cast of Epidemic. This change affects the outcome of many PvE scenarios, where multiple enemies tend to stack up very closely to each other.

Enemies stacking up is very, very common, intentionally or not. There are few tools available to the players to separate the enemies, and of the few there are, they have situational usage, such as at the beginning of a fight, or to rescue a player being swarmed. This makes the new Epidemic unreliable as an AoE skill when the enemies stack up, because it’s likely that most, if not all of the projectiles, will be obstructed by one or two enemies.

A video demonstrating the above point.
The graph for occurrences vs transfer rates.

Here are some ideas for improvement:

Arced projectile paths: Projectiles fire in a slight arc, similar to the Acid Rain ability by Champion Subject 6, although not as high/far, otherwise the same as before.
Pro: Retains projectile gameplay mechanics, i.e. predictable, obstructable.
Con: May not work in areas with a low ceiling.

Tethered, delayed effect: Tethers are created between patient-zero and 5 nearest enemies, similar to Tainted shackles. If the enemies move out of range the tether will break, resulting in no effect. If the tether is allowed to expire, it applies the same condition transfers. This also means the enemy patient-zero will also be responsible for avoiding their teammates.
Pro: ‘Body blocking’ no longer occurs, but enemies still have a chance to escape.

Tethered, pulsing effect: Same as above, except the tether pulses every tick, similar to Wells. So instead of transferring all the conditions at once, one condition is transferred each tick, until either the tether breaks, or all conditions present at the time of casting is transferred. The order maybe random, or perhaps ordered in such a way to further punish those who remain tethered longer (e.g. Weakness -> Cripple -> Bleeding -> Chill).
Pro: Removes the instant transfer of conditions, which seemed to be both a gameplay and server issue.
Con: Less powerful/effective, especially for PvP.

Well, delayed effect: Creates a well beneath patient-zero, activates after a delay, applying the same condition transfers, similar to tethered delayed.
Con: This is a corruption skill, not a well.

Well, pulsing effect: Creates a well beneath patient-zero, pulsing to transfer one condition per tick, similar to tethered pulsing.
Con: Even less power/effective than tethered pulsing.

And just as a closing thought, wouldn’t it seem logical for an epidemic to be more deadly for those closer to the source, tightly packed, rather than those farther away, spread wide?

I think the change for epi was ok/ needed, but I don’t get why it has to be a projectile?

Since it’s unblockable (read: unreflectable) there’s no big point in making infectious orbs. I always imagined some kind of a “wave” from the patient zero. Imagine Bersi from the molten boss frac (edit: or unholy feast). Heck you could even make it jump-able. Resultuing in a nerf against players and wouldn’t bother PvE

pro: no confusion with unblockable projectiles, no body block, still dodgeable/ avoidable, more reliable against AI, more dangerous the nearer you are to patient zero,..
cons: none, of course.. i’m a genius:D

Wave would be nice. Certainly better than losing 80% of the projectiles due to body blocks.

The delay-tether sounds like the best compromise to me. I haven’t tried my necro since the change, but I expect to run into the same issues as everyone else.

An auto-target cast with a delayed effect would slow down the pace of Epidemic while allowing for more PvP/WvW tactics against it.

I have an idea for Epidemic.

Some of the suggestions here already have some of these ideas. I’m just putting them all together and coming up with a visual change for the skill and using the new Plaguelands as a good start as this is a really well done update to the “Plague” Elite skill.

First, I’d increase the cooldown depending on how many conditions are transferred. For every condition transferred it adds 1 second to the cooldown. Adding to the current CD because this is a really strong skill in every game mode.

Second, I’d change it to something like Plaguelands. Instead of a projectile, a wave that ticks out conditions from patient zero. It wouldn’t be instant so it can be countered in pvp or wvw and if the conditions are cleared patient zero no longer ticks.

This would bring counterplay in pvp and wvw while having a visual effect that can’t be missed.

If the skill goes off for it’s full effect, it’d tick for as many conditions as patient zero has when the skill was used. It would apply every condition overtime. This would help the problems plaguing (sorry) Necro in PvE increasing damage over time but not make it stronger than it currently is. The conditions would be staggered by 1 or 1.5 seconds each in PvP and WvW. A wave pulse every .5 seconds in pve. It would be able to be split by the devs by adding time between “ticks” on players and it can largely be unaffected in pve. This way it makes it easier to balance in the future while keeping the functionality it would normally have. The waves can spread slower in later iterations in PvP and WvW.

The effect would be like a green pulsating icon on the chest of patient zero and it would spread in a radius around the person with the same range as Plaguelands.
The effect would move with the target making it an actual “patient zero”.

In PvP and WvW this would bring counterplay by being able to walk away from others OR clearing conditions in order to stop the effect from happening. This visual would have to be very visible, not visceral. Pulsating green Necro icon on the chest that can be seen from all angles and the same-ish wave from Plaguelands, only “Necro Green.”

The final suggestion is to have it reliably transfer conditions on a set condition hierarchy. Plaguelands has this already. The skill can check the target when the skill is used and spread the copies of the conditions in the same way Plaguelands spreads. This would help with splitting the skill if it becomes a problem. Changing the initial conditions that are too strong or changing the initial transfers into conditions that “ramp” up instead of a full stack of bleeds at first. Weakness, Cripple, Chill, Immob first in PvP and WvW, while staggering the conditions that want to be spread in PvE. Weakness, Bleed, Cripple, Torment, Chill, Poison and so on.

It is completely ridiculous that you can body block epi projectiles for no additional penalty.

Epi should punish for grouping. Its clearly made for that.

thrag.9740:

It is completely ridiculous that you can body block epi projectiles for no additional penalty.

Epi should punish for grouping. Its clearly made for that.

^This. Epidemic = Plague or sickness highly infectious and quickly spread among large groups of people.

What baffles me is that I don’t see how this makes it less of “heavy toll on our servers” than the old Epidemic was.

I main a necro and never go anywhere without epidemic on my bar. The new change almost negates the spread of the skill. I can hit my target, and usually one or 2 mobs around it, but the rest of the projectiles go nowhere.

Chadramar.8156:

What baffles me is that I don’t see how this makes it less of “heavy toll on our servers” than the old Epidemic was.

Probably because the bodyblocking causes most of the conditions being passed over to fail and disappear. :\

Chadramar.8156:

What baffles me is that I don’t see how this makes it less of “heavy toll on our servers” than the old Epidemic was.

That’s because it didn’t, they just needed an excuse to gut the skill because of a few people in WvW who didn’t want to run condi cleanse cried repeatedly until anet nerfed it,

The new skill is no use at all in PvE it is so unreliable that its pretty much fallen off the utility bar, when Anet do stuff like this they should just remove the skill from the game completely,

If it was really a problem in WvW/PvP like the claim all they had to do was make it that it transferred 3 or 4 conditions to 5 targets instead of all conditions.

So yea as it stands its just another useless utility that Necros have now, as it may or may not work, and if fails more often than not, I guess when they “tested” this skill they didn’t have any issues.

Maybe time to stop nerfing the game based on what a few people who play power classes in PvP/WvW cry about.

Sadly I very much doubt that Anet will read let alone even consider looking at epidemic now.

Epidemic is pretty useless now in group fights and highly situational in PvE. I’d rather have Corrupt Boon in WvW, it at least does something even it’s single target.

I can’t believe the forums sometimes, EPI is still by far the strongest skill in wvw. My celestial necro can get 60 k dps spikes on enemy players while my MARAUDER BACKLINE ELE WITH SCHOLAR RUNES never gets above a 20k dps spike. WITH SCHOLAR RUNES!!!!!!!!!!!
Meteor also takes 3 and 1/4 seconds to cast, has 1/3 of the damage radius, and also has a 30 second CD. Epi is horribly broken and by far the strongest skill in wvw . I can’t believe anet forget to make lords invalid targets for epi, at the moment it’s actually a disadvantage to defend a lord. That’s WRONG, it’s simply wrong. . honestly if they removed condi damage altogether and nerfed sustain the game would unimaginably more fun and decisive. kitten condi, it’s brainless spam while burst builds where about timing. What a horrible meta. How about anet finally splits the game modes ?

I would just like that if it says it spreads to 5 targets, then it must spread to 5, not 1 or 2 because some of the mobs get in the way. Projectile was a very bad choice for this, they are even lazy testing their changes.

Still, while does the projectile become useless if the original enemy dies before it hits? It’s always been a practice to use epidemic just before the enemy died. The conditions should be added to the projectile, not transferred from the target when the projectile hits.