Guild Wars 2

While I’m overall displeased with the necromancer skill balances (lots of unwarrranted nerfs to skills that nobody considered overpowered to begin with, all while every other class is accelerating from a power creep to a power gallop), there’s one particular change that I’m really not sure what the effect it’ll have on the game: the conversion skill changes.

This isn’t a necro-specific change, so I felt it deserved a separate thread, but I still put it in here because necros have by far the most conversion skills, with boon corruptions.
The change is that, instead of each conversion skill having its own secret internal priority list, it will convert boons/condis at random. At first, when I heard it, I thought “great! now if they have 7 boons on them, Corrupt Boon still has a chance of stripping that stability!” Which is a big buff, since Stability (the most important boon you want to convert), was always lowest priority for seemingly every boon corruption skill.

Then, however, I thought about the fact that Resistance is coming in. My concern is that if your target has Resistance and 5 other boons on them, and your corruption skill converts the other 5, you’ve basically done nothing, as your target still has Resistance on them and laughs in the face of all the conditions you loaded them with. So this turns a skill that could reliably turn a fight unless your opponent dodged it into a skill that’s a roll of the dice, with a 5-in-X (X=number of boons your opponent has) chance of turning a fight around, and an (X-5)-in-X chance of doing NOTHING!

Now, even if the odds are good (6 boons including Resistance gives you an 84% chance to convert it), having this kind of variance turns me off from using boon corruptions. If I’m holding back on my cooldown, biding my time for the best time to use it, then hitting it just at the right time (immediately after a Contemplation of Purity, or just after my target has used up all his dodges etc), I want a 100% chance to be rewarded, not 84% or less! Tactical decision-making and good reflexes should be consistently rewarded – too much variance makes for a frustrating experience, and a game that doesn’t motivate me to keep playing and get better. Of course, a little variance in competitive games is considered to be good because it adds fun (if it didn’t, chess would be the most popular game on the globe), but high variance on a skill like Corrupt Boon, that was previously the conditionmancer’s One Awesome Thing, their only trump card, just cripples a build that doesn’t really have much else going for it.

Think of all the times your opponent had Stability and 4 other boons on them. Think of how juicy a target they appeared, and how gleefully you noticed it and hit Corrupt Boon, expecting this to put the final nail on their coffin, getting ready to chain-fear them with Reaper’s Mark as soon as Corrupt Boon landed. And think of how frustrated you got when, in the 0.5" in between you starting the cast and the skill hitting, your opponent got a random Might proc from their runes, bringing them up to 6 boons, and resulting in Stability not getting stripped. Well, that frustration is nothing compared to the fury you’ll feel when Resistance comes in, because at least in the above scenario, your target still suffered all the other conditions you inflicted: but if the Goddess of Variance hates you and you don’t strip resistance, your target will be completely immune to all the damage your boon corruption would have inflicted on them too!

Of course, my fears might be unfounded, because we don’t know how common Resistance will be and how long durations it will have. But then I saw that Chill, a fairly common condition and one to become very ubiquitous when everyone rolls a Reaper, converts to Resistance for condition conversion skills! And while there aren’t all that many condition conversion skills around, they’re still around (the engi trait Transmute is pretty popular), and it means it’s not a specific few matchups in which we have to worry about Resistance making Corrupt Boon a dice roll.

If it were me, I’d make Resistance an exception to the random order and make it top priority for every corruption skill. That’s not unprecedented, since condition conversion skills like CoP typically also break stun and thus remove fear before they even convert any other conditions from you – making it functionally equivalent to Fear being top priority.

So, tl;dr, I’m really not sure whether this is actually a buff or a nerf to Corruptions. I really don’t like the thought that I could pull off a clutch CB cast just at the right time and have it do nothing cause it didn’t hit the right boon by chance, but otoh I don’t know how often that will happen, and it could be that being able to corrupt Stability more often will make up for it in aggregate. What does eveyrone else think?

2 seconds of Resistence is way too much.

Chill converting to Resistence on Guardian’s main condition clear kills the Reaper before the Reaper even exists.

It should be one second. Resistence is really strong. Why can’t taunt follow the same (silly) rules as fear and convert to Resistence?

I would point out, without the variance it would be very likely that corruptions would never have an effect on the enemy unless they have very low boons already, because Resistance would probably be hidden deep under all the crap. So don’t think of it as “X chance for it to suck” but having “X chance for it to not suck, whereas pre-change it was 100% to suck”.

I think its an improvement to the old situation. It is worse skill-wise than an upgraded system, but its better than we had.

Well first of all resistance isn’t in the game yet so we don’t know if it would, in fact, be low down the priority list of they kept it that way. But think of what it would mean if it really were like that (ie. Priority list-based, with resistance at the bottom): you’re telling me that there’s a boon that completely nullifies all condition damage, and that the only counter to it (boon removal/corruption) doesn’t remove it by design? Can’t you tell how unbalanced that would have made it? Why would they have ever done it that way?

@Manveruppd

There is no “priority list”

Skills which convert boons and conditions now randomly select from all boons and conditions on the target instead of taking the last applied.

There IS, in fact, a priority list right now. The priority list is being changed to a random selection next week. I’m perfectly clear on how it works, as you would know if you read the op.

There is, while they said random it has never been random, and they acknowledged this on the stream, that each skill had a hard-coded (though that was more random) priority system.

manveruppd.7601:

you’re telling me that there’s a boon that completely nullifies all condition damage, and that the only counter to it (boon removal/corruption) doesn’t remove it by design? Can’t you tell how unbalanced that would have made it? Why would they have ever done it that way?

We’re talking about ANet, yes I absolutely believe that could have happened.

It’s not really much of a change. Essentially, it’s there so that people who spam their abilities mindlessly have a chance to succeed, to lower the skillcap and soften the punishment for bad play. Randomizing conversions means the new player doesn’t have to learn its abilities as thoroughly as before. In practice, you’ll still only use it when you can guarantee removing the right boons.

Until we see the numbers for Resistance — how common it is, how long it typically lasts — we can’t really say how good or bad it will be. When Condition Necromancers lose either Terror or Path of Corruption, it’ll be tougher, no doubt, but it could turn out that Resistance is more of an inconvenience than a trump card.

It’s a net buff in terms of killing stability.
Currently, since it’s removed last you’d need to get them down to 5 boons for CB, 2 for PoC etc to strip stab. This is still the case after the patch, but you can now do so less reliably even if they have more boons.

Often though (and especially for the weaker boon removals) being able to reliably strip might, (as often people get loads of might) was pretty useful. Post patch, that’s much more difficult.

The introduction of resist makes boon corrupts much weaker overall though, so eh.

manveruppd.7601:

There IS, in fact, a priority list right now. The priority list is being changed to a random selection next week. I’m perfectly clear on how it works, as you would know if you read the op.

So why even mention a priority list and resistance of you know there won’t be one when it’s introduced :/

Also we don’t know its durations but we do know we will ha e extremely high boon corruption abilities so it shouldn’t be an issue either way. Also this way the problem you talked about in the op, them gaining a random 6th boon and stuff not getting hit, is less of an issue.

Its a massive nerf. Resistance now has no chance of being first to convert. As in it will sometimes convert and sometimes it wont. Basically all our corruption skills and traits will sometimes not work at all. This change effectively kills all boon conversion traits and skill for the next 3 years. As in it kills necro for the next 3 years. This is because the only good thing necro does is boon conversion. Now we have traits and utilities which will be totally unrealible because mostly they will not work at all. You will often use corrupt boon and not actually put any conditions on the target due to resistance. It is a complete and utter disaster for necro. Devs dont understand necro so they dont realise as usual.

Our only unique thing, boon conversion, has been deleted by this news. Resistance should always convert first. This will NEVER happen now. As in this change will not be made till another expansion. The result is trash tier for necro for at least 3 more years

Deleted dbl post

Lordrosicky.5813:

Its a massive nerf. Resistance now has no chance of being first to convert. As in it will sometimes convert and sometimes it wont. Basically all our corruption skills and traits will sometimes not work at all. This change effectively kills all boon conversion traits and skill for the next 3 years. As in it kills necro for the next 3 years. This is because the only good thing necro does is boon conversion. Now we have traits and utilities which will be totally unrealible because mostly they will not work at all. You will often use corrupt boon and not actually put any conditions on the target due to resistance. It is a complete and utter disaster for necro. Devs dont understand necro so they dont realise as usual.

Our only unique thing, boon conversion, has been deleted by this news. Resistance should always convert first. This will NEVER happen now. As in this change will not be made till another expansion. The result is trash tier for necro for at least 3 more years

You do realise we have more boon hate than ever before right?

Sigmoid.7082:

manveruppd.7601:

There IS, in fact, a priority list right now. The priority list is being changed to a random selection next week. I’m perfectly clear on how it works, as you would know if you read the op.

So why even mention a priority list and resistance of you know there won’t be one when it’s introduced :/

It was in response to Bhawb’s hypothetical that, if they kept it as a priority list instead of making it random, it would be even weaker after Resistance was introduced. Of course he’s assuming that Resistance would’ve been low on the priority list, and, really, we’ll never know if that would be the case since the priority list is being changed to random BEFORE Resistance ever comes into the game. :P

Also we don’t know its durations but we do know we will ha e extremely high boon corruption abilities so it shouldn’t be an issue either way. Also this way the problem you talked about in the op, them gaining a random 6th boon and stuff not getting hit, is less of an issue.

Yeah it’s true that you can POTENTIALLY have a lot more corruptions than before, if you trait into the right stuff (theoretically that is: in practice I think people will choose Terror over Path of Corruption, and that Spite would be passed over in favour of Reaper by most people, so no access SoS or SS either, meaning the most popular condi build will actually bring LESS corruption than it does now). My question wasn’t whether the necro’s ability to strip boons is going up or down, but whether the change to random removal is a nerf or a buff to boon corruption skills. As in “take a corruption skill, any corruption skill: will it be stronger, or weaker?”

Just to be clear, I’m not moaning, and I don’t really know whether it’s a buff or a nerf either! Like I said in the OP, it’ll all depend on how much Resistance will be flying around, and how often condition conversion skills/traits will be turning our chills into Resistance.

Bhawb.7408:

manveruppd.7601:

you’re telling me that there’s a boon that completely nullifies all condition damage, and that the only counter to it (boon removal/corruption) doesn’t remove it by design? Can’t you tell how unbalanced that would have made it? Why would they have ever done it that way?

We’re talking about ANet, yes I absolutely believe that could have happened.

Touché, Bhawb, touché! :p

We get more anti boon, but the cost everywhere else is greater than the gain. If you like making the life of a zerg guardian a living hell, enjoy those boon corruption buffs.