Guild Wars 2

Haematic.4913:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-Skill-Balance-Thread-22-February-Update/page/4#post6505808

The post as described in the topic title.

Here’s an image http://imgur.com/a/LmFSu

Here’s a GIF that you should see from a fight I will explain in detail below https://i.imgur.com/zfQxqt0.gifv

My guild group Legends Never [DIE] (which has a focus in skilled, organized WvW fighting) went up against a group in response to a friendly group getting hard focused in a fight by a guild 2-3x larger than their current size.

Their original intent was to pincer this larger group with us, but due to the scaling of this skill, we were unable to help them fast enough, forcing my group to pull out of the fight. However, we didn’t get away for free, because the second we initiated the larger group one of our sub-squad members got instantly downed by the power-creep of the skill, Epidemic.

To add, the fight this was from was not near an objective lord nor WvW gate/oil/cannon.

You’re telling me that the light field buffs from the most recent balance patch are a legitimate counter to Epidemic, specifically? In what world will even a skill group (let alone a WvW bystander) be able to counter this sort of “spike” by blasting a field? I think you’re completely detached from the WvW community and you need to really look at what your customers are complaining about, and address them more appropriately, like you did with boon sharing and Signet Of Inspiration.

As someone who understands the strength of this skill and uses it in our composition (2-EPI necromancers) it scales quite astronomically and it requires the attention of your team to balance it better than you claimed to have balanced it with the addition of blasting light fields.

~Haematic

Looking at that gif: That’s why you don’t remove the condi-cap Anet. I hate to say this but I told Anet things would get out of hands the day they removed it. That image sums up in 1 second precisely the reason why I left.

Anyway, it’s been kitten for over a year now, the GvG community is dead and most of my friends moved on to some other MMO where they didn’t ruin their gameplay.

I don’t know what’s the deal with Anet balance team but it seems they do not play their own game.

Straegen.2938:

The argument that the defense against a one shot skill is to not get hit by it is ridiculous. Nobody can see everything coming especially when the game allows players to clip each other. An Asuran standing in the same spot as a Norn or Charr basically makes any of their animations invisible.

No damage over time skill should be able to effectively one shot players much less an AoE.

OriOri.8724:

B – Of course if you trigger an effect to cleanse by using a skill then you will take the condition damage. If you use a skill that cleanses first this wouldn’t be a problem.

If you are advocating skills should remove condi before activating Confusion, sure but that isn’t how it works now. The list of skills that cleanse before Confusion damage is applied is very limited and most of them need a trait component. Once a significant Epi hits there is zero counter play for most builds.

Any skills that natively remove conditions (that is, remove conditions without needing to be traited for it) will remove confusion without proccing damage. The problem is that when you have 12 conditions on you from an epi, it’s unlikely that the confusion will be one of the ones that gets cleansed first.

Yup ^ which is why I am in favor of a cleansing hierarchy for conditions that is based on the direct threat they pose

if any skill was ever a candidate for splitting it is epidemic

What about just increasing the CD of epidemic? Keep the payoff for landing a strong one, and penalises it’s current use of spamming it on CD in every fight- epidemic should be a high risk high reward skill, not a skill that can be spammed every 15s.

Digikid.7230:

What about just increasing the CD of epidemic? Keep the payoff for landing a strong one, and penalises it’s current use of spamming it on CD in every fight- epidemic should be a high risk high reward skill, not a skill that can be spammed every 15s.

This is why I’ve listed this as the 2nd most unbalanced part of the skill.

1st being the condition cap that’s broken (there was a patch to limit 25 condition stacks per EPI, but you’re able to stack over 25+ condition stacks per EPI).

Haematic.4913:

See attached, obviously the “25” cap isn’t working. If 31 bleed stacks are being applied on one epidemic.

There fear and chill come with the epi. Chill =3 bleed, fear =chill = 3 bleed.
25 + 3 + 3=31
Idk, maybe.

No down player can hold that amount of condi. The ele either stay close to lord, sieges or someone abuse resistance to tank condi. Maybe they epi from ranger’s pet.

Epi is pretty out of hand with how high you can get condi ticks now. I guess it’s a combination of the condi damage scaling so high and Epidemic, but I’d definitely say Epidemic is the main cause of the imbalance because of the AoE.

Fay.2357:

Any skills that natively remove conditions (that is, remove conditions without needing to be traited for it) will remove confusion without proccing damage. The problem is that when you have 12 conditions on you from an epi, it’s unlikely that the confusion will be one of the ones that gets cleansed first.

That is not correct. Some skills do like Consume Conditions but others like Soothing Stone, Signet of Agility, etc do trip it. Skills that proc Resistance also trigger Confusion. There are actually very few skills in the game that can remove conditions before Confusion procs. Skills that are tied to runes such as Lyssa or sigils such as Generosity also proc Confusion.

There are only a few activated skills that don’t proc confusion. Even dodges, weapon swaps, attunement swaps, etc all can proc Confusion depending on the build. Those swaps and evades are often directly tied to removing conditions on any number of builds.

nintama.9436:

Haematic.4913:

See attached, obviously the “25” cap isn’t working. If 31 bleed stacks are being applied on one epidemic.

There fear and chill come with the epi. Chill =3 bleed, fear =chill = 3 bleed.
25 + 3 + 3=31
Idk, maybe.

No down player can hold that amount of condi. The ele either stay close to lord, sieges or someone abuse resistance to tank condi. Maybe they epi from ranger’s pet.

The number one counter to condi: Pain Absorption (0 cooldown, purely energy based), just so happens to make the revenant a GREAT target for epidemic. So no, it isn’t just lords and siege that make great condi pylons.

But there’s an easy way to fix epidemic, make it only share the condis applied by the necro casting epidemic. This keeps epidemic’s identity, puts more effort on the casting necro to make sure that epidemic hurts, and prevents others from abusing your condis too hard.

Kiroshima.8497:

nintama.9436:

Haematic.4913:

See attached, obviously the “25” cap isn’t working. If 31 bleed stacks are being applied on one epidemic.

There fear and chill come with the epi. Chill =3 bleed, fear =chill = 3 bleed.
25 + 3 + 3=31
Idk, maybe.

No down player can hold that amount of condi. The ele either stay close to lord, sieges or someone abuse resistance to tank condi. Maybe they epi from ranger’s pet.

The number one counter to condi: Pain Absorption (0 cooldown, purely energy based), just so happens to make the revenant a GREAT target for epidemic. So no, it isn’t just lords and siege that make great condi pylons.

But there’s an easy way to fix epidemic, make it only share the condis applied by the necro casting epidemic. This keeps epidemic’s identity, puts more effort on the casting necro to make sure that epidemic hurts, and prevents others from abusing your condis too hard.

“Fix” in the sense of a vet and a dog, you mean? =P

Epi has existed 5 eva. It was NOT a problem pre-hot condi spam everywhere and the lifting of the cap. Those are the things that kittened it up. It’s just too EZ to spam condis it’s beyond epi and it’s boring gameplay. In the early years of this game condis were a debuff countering boons not some damage spike tool.

Frankly the skill is perfect lore for necro and it would certainly make condi necro weak if it were significantly nerfed. Best solution IMO would be to limit the spread number of each condi for example, 10 bleeds, 5 poisons, 5 burns, etc. etc. Another possibly difficult change would be to make an ICD on the player being epi’d so they couldn’t be epi’d by multiple necros at once causing these giant spikes. This would at least give SOME counterplay while keeping the skill powerful and in-line with necro’s “condi control” playstyle.

Wolfric.9380:

I would halve the radius but remove the target cap ….

That’s a hilariously bad idea, but I’d love to see the youtube video with a couple of condi necros dropping an entire enemy frontline on their regroup.

~ Kovu

I’m all for the nerf if it is World versus World only.

But knowing ArenaNet and their eagerness to split WvW from PvE as they did with PvP recently, I’d suggest Epidemic to apply an unique debuff that makes target immune to Epidemic for next few seconds.