Guild Wars 2

Instead of writing a long post on necros, I will only focus on one particular trait today. And that’s the Barbed Precision, which was silently nerfed in the Apr 30 patch.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barbed_Precision

“Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding. Grants 1 stack of bleeding for 1 second.”

For the record, the bleeding in this trait used to last 5 seconds before the Apr 30th patch. It used to be an exact duplication of the Sigil of Earth. Now it was silently nerfed, and now it only lasts 1 seconds. It probably had a 2 second cooldown too, although this was never confirmed.

Barbed Precision used to be one of my favourite passive necromancer traits. Those that watched my videos on necromancer will know what I mean. This trait converts critical chance into condition damage. That means when you increase your critical chance, you are also improve your overall damage output with conditions. This idea is awesome. Curses increases both critical change and condition damage, so everything works hand in hand.

Now this trait literally does nothing, along with most of the other necro passive traits. They are all useless now.

My condition damage is at 1245, which aren’t too bad. That one stack of bleed for one seconds will deal a total of 105 of damage, whenever I critical. 105 damage every 2 seconds, assuming that I can critical none stop, is still useless.

Look at it all:
-it is highly conditional, requiring a high critical build.
-it has very weak effect, only 1 stack of bleeding
-it has very short length, only last 1 seconds
-its cooldown is way too long for its uses, which is 2 seconds.

This is the general theme of a lot of the necromancer’s traits and skills. They are either highly conditional, very weak, very short or the cooldown way too long. When it all adds up, that trait or skills becomes invisible and non-existent.

Everything I love about the GW1 necro is gone. And everything good in the GW2 necro continues to get nerfed, often silently. It is crazy to see how easy it was for them to nerf necro skills and traits to the ground, and how hard it was to get any sort of buffs or bug fixes. The staff mark AoE indicators are still broken, 8 months into the game.

And that, my friends, is the necromancer is a nutshell.

CHIPS.6018:

“Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding. Grants 1 stack of bleeding for 1 second.”

For the record, the bleeding in this trait used to last 5 seconds before the Apr 30th patch. It used to be an exact duplication of the Sigil of Earth. Now it was silently nerfed, and now it only lasts 1 seconds. It probably had a 2 second cooldown too, although this was never confirmed.

hrm, I don’t usually run a condi build but this trait has only had a 1 second duration for as long as I can remember.

the wiki also looks like it listed 1 second since sept. last year

are you sure you are not thinking of the warrior version that lasts 5 seconds?

I was under the impression it was a 1 second duration as well. The main reason to go 100% bleed duration was to get 2 seconds out of it.

Barbed Precision always lasted 1s.

I do know however that it did not have a ICD pre-patch, but from your post you seem to automatically assume it has a 2s ICD now without even testing it. Personally I have not tested it post-patch so I have no idea (I’m at work), but to go on such a long rant without even testing to confirm it yourself is well… I assume you are not in a proper frame of mind ATM.

Every other profession that has a bleed on crit trait has a longer duration, but barbed precision has been this way a long time. It isn’t logical, but it isn’t new either.

Given the fact that Necro has very limited access to any DoT that isn’t bleed or poison a longer duration on this trait wouldn’t be bad for balance, but compared to other issues in the game this is not a major issue.

When shroud #5 gets a condition (months from now) then we can consider the impact of this. Right now we would only be constructing hypotheticals based on incomplete information.

That would actually be called a bug fix. This may seem like semantics, but people use the word nerf way too loosely and the two things are not interchangeable. To illustrate using the post made by CHIPS.

Had the Trait previously said “Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding. Grants 1 stack of bleeding for 5 second.” and ANet (stealth or in Patch Notes) changed the functionality to 1 second, this would be defined as Nerf as they are reducing the effectiveness of something that had previously been working as intended.

A bug fix, would be how the trait reads “Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding. Grants 1 stack of bleeding for 1 second.” and ANet prevented it from procing for a 5 second bleed. This is reducing the effectiveness of something that was clearly not working as intended (seeing as the Description reads 1 second, you have no reason to assume that 5 seconds would have been the intended functionality).

Please, for the sake of not sounding melodramatic, do not attempt to use the word Nerf to describe a bug fix. I actually stopped reading your post at that point CHIPS because it begins smacking of blatant sensationalism that, in my opinion, draws into question the credibility of the rest of the post, regardless of whether or not you made valid points.

If you watch my video you will see that it used to last for 5 seconds.

False. The bleeds you are referring to were caused by your Sigil, NOT by your Barbed Precision. You can even see at points in the video extremely short 1 second bleeds. There is no other possible sigil/skill that would cause 1 second bleeds like that, so they came from the Trait.

It has always been a 1 second bleed. Yes, I wish they were longer, but they have ALWAYS been that way.

Ratphink.4751:

That would actually be called a bug fix. This may seem like semantics, but people use the word nerf way too loosely and the two things are not interchangeable. To illustrate using the post made by CHIPS.

Wrong and wrong….

any change that reduces somethings effectiveness is a nerf, whether it’s a bug fix or not.

a bug fix can either produce a nerf or a buff depending on the nature of it.

stop being so ridiculous “stopped reading because you……omg saw a WORD!!!!”

It’s always been 1 second, and could get up to 2 with 100% bleed duration. No cooldown. Haven’t tested duration or cd since the patch, but don’t see any reason why it would have been touched.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

False. The bleeds you are referring to were caused by your Sigil, NOT by your Barbed Precision. You can even see at points in the video extremely short 1 second bleeds. There is no other possible sigil/skill that would cause 1 second bleeds like that, so they came from the Trait.

It has always been a 1 second bleed. Yes, I wish they were longer, but they have ALWAYS been that way.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
this
it’s been 1 second forever
people used to try and make it last 2 seconds for 2 ticks (300 additional damage on crit? thanks)

I’ve had it on my necro while leveling for months, with no other bleed proc equip. Auto attacking with dagger always gave very short bleeds, certainly nowhere near 5 seconds.

It’s one second, it has been since before release. It’s a reason why some people aim at 100% bleed duration.

I just tested it. It’s a 1s bleed like it has always been, and it has no noticable ICD. Way to not know your own class.

where did you get the idea that this was a duplicate of sigil of earth?

same as undertow, i used it with my dagger and it was always only 1 second of bleed without internal CD.

also, this is nothing specific to necromancer. similar traits of warrior, ranger, engi have comparable low numbers like 66%chance of 1 sec, 33% chance for 3 sec. etc.
Only thing that is waay better is ofc the mesmer version: 100% chance of 5 sec. bleed for clones -.-

I play a power build. No condi duration. Bleed was always 1 second.