Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, But of Corpse will be discussing the changes in two hours, we’ll be going over literally every single change. We won’t be doing it live, but will be recording it and throwing it up on Youtube afterwards, so if you have any questions you’d like us to cover, please throw them up here and we will cover them. My guess is the show will take 1-2 hours, and I’ll keep this updated till the very end so hopefully we can cover everything you’d like us to.

Thanks for any questions, and hope you enjoy the show
-Bhawb

(1) Is Traited Signet of the locust = AoE path of corruption OP? If no please state why (hint, axe 3 has AoE ripped boons forever and the skill still is terrible). If yes, then the signet trait gets an internal cool down. Is the trait worthless if a long internal cool down prevents your long cool down signets from working correctly?

(2) Are we all going to be running golem now if we don’t take spectral mastery and aren’t a WvW zergling?

(2a) What’s the best way to build craft off the extra 2-3k damage we’ll be taking just to use Plague?

(3) Why did epidemic get its cool down nerfed when nobody was using it? Because somebody at anet realized it exists?

(4) Which master trait in Death Magic should I take? My choices are a minion trait that doesn’t work, an underpowered once in 60s defense against stun, and a boring power stat increase that doesn’t really work with any of the existing armors.

(5) Gates Assassin was very proud that he got us a 10% damage buff instead of that awful previewed axe training. But how trolling is it that a bunch of necromancers will take axe training with no axe? ( please anet fix axe)

(6) Does fact that the main guardian condition cleanse converts chill into Resistence (and all of the other nerfs to chill) hard counter the Reaper out of the meta before it even exists?

(7) Condition Duration seems really important to add, since a bunch of the previewed traits on other classes reduce condition duration passively. How do I best add condition duration to my build? And how in Pvp?

(8) With the changes to exotic armor, your choice of stats ascended armor seems really important, since it’s so expensive. Which choice offers the best flexibility for PvE / WvW.

(9). The great thing about poison is that it screws with healing & especially downed healing. Do you think that more intense, short non stacking duration poison turns out to be a killer nerf against passively healing warriors and Elementalists. Is this the big condimancer nerf that nobody’s noticing?

(10) What do you think about Reaper/Death Shroud skills sharing traits? Does this limit our build variety to have traits that dont work the same in both shrouds?

For example: Path of Corruption is great in Death Shroud, but will never land in Reper shroud against a moving enemy. Dhuumfire is awful for Death shroud, but might be Ok for reapers.

(11). Will blood healing be good? Will blood necromancers be as good as banner warriors at rezzing players?

(12). How many of our healing traits will not heal because of death shroud?

-Is there enough synergy between traits for someone who would like to get Curses specialization as standalone?

-Isn’t Reaper the case why some traits look especially weird/underpowered for Necromancer? Thinking Dhuumfire, Death Master trait converting Toughness to Power. Shouldn’t we just get split version of those,valuable to both Reaper and Necro, since their skillsets differ anyway?

-Is Blood Magic actually worth building any primary support build on? Or just a bonus traitline for some utility?

-Should each Specialization have “build ways” they talked about on Reaper livestream, showing synergy between traits in stright linked line?

-Vampiric Aura – what numbers should it bring to be desireable by groups?

-What would be the best way to provide feedback to Developers themselves? Because forums without actions like one taken by Gates Assasin don’t do the trick nor announcements of Subforum profession specialists are happening.
Should we, as a community, contact Developers via other media? Tweet suggestions in easy-to-access form? Make a blog ?

1. What do you think was the purpose of focus range change to 1200? Not that we have a main hand weapon that has the same range (apart form staff, which is two handed). I can see some use in WvW with that range (pirate ship meta).

2. Do you think that the 20% increase to siphonning skills across the board will make it somewhat viable?

3. Consume Conditions is now a corruption skill, so to compensate for the trait Master of Corruption they increased the cooldown? Also, increasing the cooldown and giving selfvuln is a nerf, wouldn’t it be better to buff the other healing skills and leaving CC as it is? Would be weakness be more apropriate instead of 10 stacks of vuln? Should it has the same treatment as the Guardian skill Shelter? (Ungategorized Skill)

4. I didn’t see any range on Vampiric Presense. What do you think will the range on it be? I think something in the range of 300 – 500 is a good value. (I know you can just speculate on it, but I want to hear opinions)

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Look forward to it, this a very confusing message anet is sending us with all the self inflicted conditions and rule changes affecting necros (chill, leaps, spectral walk). Are they doing this to get necro back to their original vision or is this a tangent?

Ok, specific things I’d like to hear about is if consume conditions is still worth taking without moc, Or is master of corruption the new must have trait? Are the other heals going to contend at all, assuming there will be many more condition builds?

1. Stance on signets, their trait and the auto proc signets.
2. Synergy between traits

Confused about the the stated vision of the Reaper when it was debuted a mos and a half ago in regards to the new anti snare CC changes that were announced last week.

It seems to me that the crux of the reaper was big damage coupled with virtual perma chill condition status.

What is the point of having a plethora of chill, when chills will not snare characters who have access to leaps, runbuffs, and teleports- which is just about every class.

It seems like they have neutered the Reaper before it even went live.

That makes me think that current HoT alpha testers must be complaining about the Reaper; and thus this anti snare travel mumbo jumbo has been devised

I’ll probably notice a lot of things you won’t cover in the podcast when I listen to it later.

You could talk about the changes to conditions, the new damage formulas, no stack limit on damaging conditions, vulnerability affecting condi dmg, and the impact this has on the necro’s place in each game mode. Are we going to see more condi builds, necro or other classes? Are zerkers and cele builds still going to be dominant in PvP despite of this change?

Another thing you’ll probably talk about anyway, Master of Corruption:
Regardless of it’s weird place in Curses and its competitors for the same trait slot, that 33% cd reduction: It seems a lot of corruption skills (including our only viable heal) were nerfed just so they are in a decent spot when traited. So is the opportunity cost of not going with MoC a legitimate choice at all? Or will MoC be mandatory? Is the cd of the untraited skills so high that they might as well have given them cds of several minutes but have MoC reduce it by 1000%?
I know a lot of this is pure speculation, but it seems that they wanted to buff a specific skill, like being able to have Plague on a 2 min cd, but in turn a lot of other corruption skills became colleteral damage.

Have they finally killed Axe completely? That is, with the only truly worthwhile skill (Unholy Feast) now available as a shroud effect and the axe specific trait not actually requiring an axe to utilize its damage boost will there ever be reason to use an axe?

Dont forget chill increased cooldown by 3 times so there is that part of it that will be very strong still and people cant always leap. Sure its been cut a little but until i play with it im not going to say it will be completely useless.

1. Your thoughts on the changes to conditions and how well you think Necromancer will be able to handle them with, and without, shouts / Reaper trait line.

2. Your thoughts on the increase in attack range and ranged builds for other professions versus Necromancer.

Hello.

First, big thanks to R. Gee , great rework on blood & signets. Now to actual issues:

1) CoCo Chanel – how, why, wtf and why no shelter treatment as it really is an alround stapple for all necro builds with actual counterplay and non healing turret crazy hps. Other heals plain suck

2) Curses Master pick – almost need all 3 ?
Recharge for actualy having a heal ?
No best trait since 2013… maybe only balanced for reaper
No terror…. know it was requested – but it still looks like a troll

3) Lich + plague nerf , while Rampage can stomp better than our DS

4) healing in DS:
When will parasitic contagion and other regens join the party?
example. eles have new water GM which gives 300hps just on soothing mist so ele can perma 600 hps in aoe …which will miss out

5) Axe is still axe

You’re probably already recording, but here are a couple.

- Would be interesting to hear what builds you’re planning on trying first when this update is released.
- Your opinion on whether power, condi or hybrid will be most dominant in each game mode in the short term and why.
- Your guess of whether 1v1 pvp fights are generally going to be shorter (because every profession is stronger) or longer (because everyone got more defense as well).

Looking forward to watching. Please post a link in these forums

These will probably be addressed anyway, but whats your opinion on the viability of a sustain based role in conquest for the necromancer? With the improvements to blood magic, does a death/blood/SR set up have a chance? The main issue I see is that life blast is crap for siphoning, but with reaper it could work later on, especially with blighter’s boon, but you’d have to give up death or SR to make that work, which would be tough.

Also what your opinion on the future of the condition DPS necromancer in pvp? The celestial meta, especially shoutbow, has sort of pushed it out of the meta, but do you think it has any hope of being viable in the future? What will the “meta” be?

Video should be up soon, just publishing and all that pizzazz.

with the condition changes will plague signet kill us by granting us 50+stack of bleed

plague is a corruption skill that focus on survival but hurt us to use dont make sense

consume condition nerf is uncalled for and hurt a lot of builds

why are the other heals still weak compare to consume conditions

Kill? No, however Plague will deal about 9,000 self damage via bleeds on a condi build, according to Drarnor’s math.

i dunno about u but 9000 is a lot to me even on a 50k hp build its still around 20% of ur hp, that’s no small damage

Zantmar.5406:

i dunno about u but 9000 is a lot to me even on a 50k hp build its still around 20% of ur hp, that’s no small damage

I have a question regarding your signature.

Why do you think Plague should be a well?

And why the hell Lich should’ve been a Corruption?

Btw, Plague could’ve apply even more harsh self-conditions but go down heavily with cooldown (60-90s with MoC), essentialy giving us very strong defensive anti-melee focus cooldown on reasonable cd with heavy health-punishment (Longer bleeds in exchange for longer intervals), but still transfer-able.

Though it would be probably quite overpowered.

Rym.1469:

Why do you think Plague should be a well?
And why the hell Lich should’ve been a Corruption?

Because they would’ve benefited greatly from the respective well and corruption traits. But that would’ve opened interesting build choices and a more interesting gameplay than entering yet another transformation spamming skill #1 for the entire duration. So no we can only dream.

Bhawb.7408:

Kill? No, however Plague will deal about 9,000 self damage via bleeds on a condi build, according to Drarnor’s math.

Assuming you have no bleed duration but Hemophilia.

Typical condi build could easily deal 15k to themselves with the self- bleeding.

So no one will use plague?

Gryph.8237:

So no one will use plague?

Power builds in zergs might. Nobody else will.

Someone give me hope and say signet of vampire will actually save power builds? I think they could have buffed it a lot actually. Anyone, someone give me a positive Chang.e for a power build. Condi bipolar are just… Idk right now

Rym.1469:

Zantmar.5406:

i dunno about u but 9000 is a lot to me even on a 50k hp build its still around 20% of ur hp, that’s no small damage

I have a question regarding your signature.

Why do you think Plague should be a well?

And why the hell Lich should’ve been a Corruption?

Btw, Plague could’ve apply even more harsh self-conditions but go down heavily with cooldown (60-90s with MoC), essentialy giving us very strong defensive anti-melee focus cooldown on reasonable cd with heavy health-punishment (Longer bleeds in exchange for longer intervals), but still transfer-able.

Plague:
should have been a mobile well that allows well trait to affect it -siphon health(maybe protection) which would give it what it deserve- a skill that give u great tankiness and time to recover. the need for health punish when ur trying to be tanky? comon

Lich:
should have been the corruption skill- it fits the theme and it actually have a condition removal- the duration should stay 20 sec or 25 seconds.
if the 5th skill become a aoe condition transfer then we can see playability with condimancers as well
edit: fixed the quote i messed up

Gryph.8237:

Someone give me hope and say signet of vampire will actually save power builds? I think they could have buffed it a lot actually. Anyone, someone give me a positive Chang.e for a power build. Condi bipolar are just… Idk right now

Signet of Vampirism will still be terrible. There is still a 1 second icd on the healing proc, and the effect lasts for 6 seconds, meaning the maximum healing you can get is still less than Consume Conditions if you have at least 2 conditions on you, and the Signet does not remove conditions. You will not get the maximum healing. Signet of Vampirism healing you through Death Shroud is meaningless. You will never land six attacks using DS skills; the best you could hope for is 3 from Life Transfer and then maybe landing one more if someone fails to dodge a Life Blast.

That’s the thing. Even after being eviscerated, Consume Conditions is still a better heal than the alternatives. Necromancer simply no longer has a good heal.

Traiting into signets is always risky, because you’re showing your hand to the enemy before you even engage.

On the broader topic of Elites: I’ll probably still run Plague, because it has utility for stomps/rezzes, though it will no longer be reliable as a blind-spam/escape. Lich just gets you downed and Fleshy is an idiot with 1 use.

Haven’t seen it uploaded yet, coming soon Bhawb?

Already uploaded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_DPcFdRFQ

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Already uploaded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_DPcFdRFQ

Lol’d at background.

If I could, I would change my character name to Lazarus.

I just put it up, I was trying to make a post about it but as it was saving I had to log in…

So yeah, its up, I’d love to hear feedback as well as ideas for what you want to get from us in the future. We should be back to having podcasts once every two weeks to discuss builds and our place in the meta as the patch develops.

A quick comment because I’m just half way through the podcast:
Carrion will still be a lot better than rabid.
Rabid will get a bigger bonus on Target the Weak and the additional sources of healing traits will give you a better healing effectivness against direct damage, but the fact remains: life force scales with vitality and lf regen is percentage based. This and the fact that conditions in general might be more potent in PvP will still give Carrion a better overall defense.
As for damage: power>precision.

Yeah I don’t see rabid being better either

flow.6043:

A quick comment because I’m just half way through the podcast:
Carrion will still be a lot better than rabid.
Rabid will get a bigger bonus on Target the Weak and the additional sources of healing traits will give you a better healing effectivness against direct damage, but the fact remains: life force scales with vitality and lf regen is percentage based. This and the fact that conditions in general might be more potent in PvP will still give Carrion a better overall defense.
As for damage: power>precision.

wtf??
I might be wrong but right now LF doesnt scale with vitality anymore.. and I dint read anything about this coming back. or did the mention that??
because right now I’m pretty sure LF doesnt scale with vitaliry at all nice we got about idk 10-13k LF in pvp? back in the times as it still scaled we had no problems getting 18-20k LF

I might be wrong though..

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

flow.6043:

A quick comment because I’m just half way through the podcast:
Carrion will still be a lot better than rabid.
Rabid will get a bigger bonus on Target the Weak and the additional sources of healing traits will give you a better healing effectivness against direct damage, but the fact remains: life force scales with vitality and lf regen is percentage based. This and the fact that conditions in general might be more potent in PvP will still give Carrion a better overall defense.
As for damage: power>precision.

wtf??
I might be wrong but right now LF doesnt scale with vitality anymore.. and I dint read anything about this coming back. or did the mention that??
because right now I’m pretty sure LF doesnt scale with vitaliry at all nice we got about idk 10-13k LF in pvp? back in the times as it still scaled we had no problems getting 18-20k LF

I might be wrong though..

You’re wrong. Max Life Force is a percentage of your max HP. Boosting your Vitality thus boosts your Life Force pool.

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

flow.6043:

A quick comment because I’m just half way through the podcast:
Carrion will still be a lot better than rabid.
Rabid will get a bigger bonus on Target the Weak and the additional sources of healing traits will give you a better healing effectivness against direct damage, but the fact remains: life force scales with vitality and lf regen is percentage based. This and the fact that conditions in general might be more potent in PvP will still give Carrion a better overall defense.
As for damage: power>precision.

wtf??
I might be wrong but right now LF doesnt scale with vitality anymore.. and I dint read anything about this coming back. or did the mention that??
because right now I’m pretty sure LF doesnt scale with vitaliry at all nice we got about idk 10-13k LF in pvp? back in the times as it still scaled we had no problems getting 18-20k LF

I might be wrong though..

LF is 60% f you Hp pool as a base or 78% with full Soul Reaping line. Robert even mentioned how we get extra LF after the changes which we do. We get an extra 1.35% Max LF compared to now.

Go test it in pvp. Put on a settlers amulet and full blood magic, you will have around 30k hp and 24k LF.