Guild Wars 2

Hi all, just curious if the ‘Pain Inverter’ skill is useful as an utility — I believe it causes Confusion on enemies for 3 seconds? 30 second cool down with OK radius — wanted to get your take on it.

I am mainly condition build so my utilities are currently

epidemic
BiP
Rotation depending on Dungeon/Wvw = signet where it generates LF and res/Spectral Walk

Im thinking of including pain inverter in the rotation but wanted to know if it’s even worth it — not really sure how confusion works expect they take dmg when they try to attack (does it work for all attacks or just melee/range/spells/etc)

Thanks for feedback

I like the Asuran racial skills a lot and this one is pretty nice. Due to how you’re specced, it won’t help when soloing, since you’re going to not want to be in attack range anyway. But in DEs it could be quite nice. Though, something like Poisonous Gas Cloud will benefit more from your +condition damage (which I’m assuming your stacking). Epidemic also spreads conditions, but Pain Inverter is aoe so it sorta does that for you. Just my 2cents.
As an aside, I was using the human racial Prayer to Lyssa when leveling (low level) because it had a quick CD and was another condition to stack, plus free boon to me (often quite helpful like regen or swiftness). However, as I’ve leveled I’ve unlocked Necro skills which are just plain better.

In absolute honesty, I’m going to have to agree with Seras. The necromancer skills themselves seem much better suited for what you’re trying to do. I think the only time you’d really be able to take advantage of Pain Inverter would be in a retaliation specific build, and even then there are better ways of getting the boon.

Personally, the only racial I’ve found worth using on my Asuran necromancer is the Radiation Field. Even then, Corrosive Poison Cloud is far better in both duration and cool-down. The only time I actually had to use it was path 1 CoF pre-nerf.

Looking back, I really wish I would have went human- Reaper of Grenth looks pretty cool.

Thanks for the info — agree with most of what you said abt sticking w necro skills as they are prob more beneficial for condition build

I always overlooked the poison cloud bc of low dmg, but i’ll def try it out to see tonight

Ya, the reaper is much cooler looking and makes more sense for necro than a steel golem lol (before release, i was determined to pick asura bc of this — i was under assumption that it was a golem like flesh golem…then i was like lolwut)

I was under the impression that the battle suit golem would deal more damage and have more survivability than I would have had otherwise… In fact, I was really hoping that the suit would have a separate health pool entirely. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Technically I didn’t pick Asura for the racials though. Now, the only purpose the suit serves is entertainment value in Lion’s Arch.

I really don’t think racial skills are worth it. Sure, they can be situationally useful sometimes, but using them for any general play? I doubt it.

Pain Inverter and Epidemic make for a nice duo as 6 stacks of confusion on a group of enemies can really spread the pain. That said, its use is really situational. If you are standing in the middle of a bunch of enemies as a condition build, you’re generally doing it wrong.

for the sake of defending pain inverter, I play an Asuran thief, and the inverter helps if I ever end up surrounded. both confusion and retaliation really punish enemies for hitting my little squishy thief.

it may be worth noting that my thief is only level 25