Guild Wars 2

It doesn’t look like there’s a dedicated thread to this, so I decided to make one.

The change to CPC was great – we got the active defence we’ve always needed. However, having to weaken ourselves to cast it is a huge problem, especially in PvE.
Since it doesn’t look like you’re planning to change corruptions any time soon, at least change the self-afflicted condition.

I think poison would be a good replacement. If you guys have other suggestions, make sure to post them.

It’s a condition based skill with high efficence against the enemy, making that skill a powerfull one.
AoE with big radius, spam poison and weakness, making the enemy with lesser healing and direct damage (if the hit go wrong the enemy lose 75% of damage, if you count that can’t critical hit).

Compared to other corruption skills, it’s one of the powerfull skills of the necromancer.

For me it’s not a problem why you can transfer easy the weakness with staff or dagger offhand, or signet.

It’d be nice to not get tagged with weakness. I personally don’t believe in the corruption design philosophies where they make us hurt ourselves to use things that other classes can do just as well if not better. And to have the trait Master of Corruption add even more negative effects, sorry, that just don’t settle well with me.

With that said, when I use CPC now, first thing I do after CPC is staff 4 to transfer the weakness away. It’s workable, but it does make you burn a condi transfer option just to use a skill.

That depend on your build.
I play condition, the same kind of damage that skill inflict, and I’ve not a single problem about that skill.

But yes, I also don’t like the high cost/low effect of corruption, expecially when add other conditions.

That make corruption lesser viable

Silv.9207:

It’s a condition based skill with high efficence against the enemy, making that skill a powerfull one.
AoE with big radius, spam poison and weakness, making the enemy with lesser healing and direct damage (if the hit go wrong the enemy lose 75% of damage, if you count that can’t critical hit).

Compared to other corruption skills, it’s one of the powerfull skills of the necromancer.

For me it’s not a problem why you can transfer easy the weakness with staff or dagger offhand, or signet.

You also lose all your damage for the full duration of the field thanks to the weakness.

And this goes for all corruptions. You should not be required to take extra cleanses or certain weapons just to use utility skills. They should be usable on their own without causing you major problems of forcing you to restrict your build in certain ways.

So yes. Completely agree with the OP. I want corruptions fixed deperately. But at the very least id like to see CPC self condi change into something less hindering. Like torment for base and poison for the traited extra (or vice versa). Although MoC should be completely reworked along with corruptions ideally.

I agree with OP, the much wanted projectile block was a step in the right direction, but CPC is still totally not worth to take most of the times imo.
The self-weakness, combined with the reduced duration of the field, is really bad, especially in power builds that would have to slot an extra utility JUST to get rid of the weakness.

Vuln, poision or bleed would all be better on this skill I think.

Just remove the stupid self conditions.

CPC is what all corruptions should be. Extremely powerful, but with a significant downside we need to deal with. None of this 3 stacks of self vuln business, that’s negligible in literally every situation.

Captain Unusual.9163:

CPC is what all corruptions should be. Extremely powerful, but with a significant downside we need to deal with. None of this 3 stacks of self vuln business, that’s negligible in literally every situation.

If you removed the self-weakness it would still be balanced, which by definition means the skill isn’t done well.

I love what they did with the skill, but I think the self-weakness really has to go.

Corruption are more group oriented with support
Give might
Rip boons
Block projectile and poison and weaken
Spread conditions

That’s why they give something back to us

Also using them smartly can proc the transfer the self condi to our enemy

messiah.1908:

Corruption are more group oriented with support
Give might
Rip boons
Block projectile and poison and weaken
Spread conditions

That’s why they give something back to us

Also using them smartly can proc the transfer the self condi to our enemy

I understand they like thematic skills but the base and traited self conditions are the reasons why it’s hard to accept them. In a group condition get cleared quickly so transfer is pointless and even if you are condi oriented they don’t really do much damage unless you have reaper for CPC. The idea that they should apply their base conditions around the necro is a way better than additional ones it rewards positioning current MoC is just terrible.

CPC is pretty powerful atm and I kind of like the weakness on it. Though I pseronally would prefer a health cost instead…
Imo the biggest change CPC needs is visually.

The way I see it, for corruptions to have the rather significant impact they have now on the necromancer himself; they would have to be among the best utility spells in the game, which they simply are not.

Would the skills be unbalanced if you removed the self-inflicted conditions? Hardly.

The effect is there just for “nostalgic / lore” reasons and it’s pretty bad for gameplay. Heck self harming spells in GW1 mostly went about stealing health or just placing a bleed on yourself. And back then the spells were ACTUALLY powerful, plus you generally had a healer which could cover for the self-harm with heals or regen abilities.

Don’t get me wrong though. I love most of the corruption spells, they’re among my favorites in the game. I just think they need a rework, because the current mechanic is an annoyance factor rather than a balance factor.

If they want to keep the nostalgic “sacrifice” characteristics in, plus want those to synergize well with our condition transfers. I’d make more sense to just stack a long duration bleed (1 stack for 20 seconds or something), on ourselves so that at least using a transfer on it is semi-worthwhile, yet not doing anything about it isn’t debilitating us to the point of being flat out annoying.

In my opinion Corrosive Poison Cloud is fine as is and I hope they don’t change the durations. I think the idea of self-corruption and giving ourselves condition is fine but what is not working is Master of Corruption: in a condition build the effect is negligible while in a power build, most of the cases, is best to leave corruption non traited.

Give Curses a minor that transfers conditions already.

My idea for corruptions: make them upkeep skills that sacrifice portions of your health while they are active (lets say 500 hp per second). Then have the trait reduce their cooldown, maybe up the damage we self inflict, but add a POSITIVE aspect to the trait where our condition damage increases by a percentage the lower our HP is. (example: +10% under 75% hp, 15 at 50 and 20 at 25). This might be a problem with party healing, but the funny thing is we can just use our greatest weakness as our strength: hide in DS to avoid your party healing! XD

im torn in two for this one. on one hand, corruptions are extremely powerful and there should be a downside to them, on the other hand i agree with you guys. the self weakness has always annoyed me, but i think the new blind on heal one takes 1st place for kittening me off.

well im only using it for dungeon solos and it works wonders. with traited corruptions because of plague sending activating 2 corruptions instantly gets rid of the condis. and when thats on cooldown i can cc them for a bigger heal so i dont really care.

it is more of a condition skill in the first place and only because people want to play power everything shouldnt be made for them.

weakness is the only condition that makes sense...or do you want plague with weakness per second? that doesnt fit

Arcades Saboth.5139:

In my opinion Corrosive Poison Cloud is fine as is and I hope they don’t change the durations. I think the idea of self-corruption and giving ourselves condition is fine but what is not working is Master of Corruption: in a condition build the effect is negligible while in a power build, most of the cases, is best to leave corruption non traited.

And that’s the problem really. Traited CPC is very good for sustain in a power spec, but the ‘corruption’ renders you nearly useless. A cele/condi spec could hardly care less about weakness, but already has sustain from raw stats. They added something we’ve wished for for ages, but in a way that is barely useful for any spec that would wish to use it. This is why I’ve argued for ages that the proj destroy should have gone to WoD. I was told, traited, that would be too stronk. then they nerfed traited WoD and I ‘knew’ it was finally going to get the proj destroy, but nope. They put it on CPC anyway and left us with two half- kitten d utilities. If CPC needed buffed (it did), then condesning the effect was definitely a good first step, but the utility should have gone to WoD which would have ended up being Necro’s ONLY psuedo-invuln skill. It would have been glorious (with GREAT team utility btw). I’m just THE bad necro though and probably don’t know much. :/

tboneking.2531:

My idea for corruptions: make them upkeep skills that sacrifice portions of your health while they are active (lets say 500 hp per second). Then have the trait reduce their cooldown, maybe up the damage we self inflict, but add a POSITIVE aspect to the trait where our condition damage increases by a percentage the lower our HP is. (example: +10% under 75% hp, 15 at 50 and 20 at 25). This might be a problem with party healing, but the funny thing is we can just use our greatest weakness as our strength: hide in DS to avoid your party healing! XD

I can somewhat agree with this and I LOVE the mildly coy last sentence. The condi aspect I have a problem with though. Skills like this (highly (somewhat really) aimed at active defense SHOULD NOT be relegated to a certain build type. The utility should be equally effective for a power/condi/hybrid spec. That’s WHY it’s called ‘utility’. How many other active defense skills in the game just flat out prefer ONE spec over ANY others. None, and that is why those skills are very useful on their respective professions. I still am adamantly convinced that the proj destroy should have gone to WoD. Power specs could benefit from the psuedo-invuln. Cele/condi specs are already taking Curses and that would have them make a bit of decision on their utility bar as well as giving a bit of an alternative to their Curses minor-major slot. Even MMs might consider it (with “Rise!”?) for increased sustain w/o popping Plague.

It would be similar to Smoke Screen. AND with Necro’s ZERO mobility and very little ACTIVE sustain it would be balanced (not to mention the much higher CD without going into an unorthodox trait line (which would buff the skill and make more valuable). That would actually be the ONE skill/change that could have given Necro a MUCH bigger influence on team fights.

*sorry for all the caps, but I can’t be more emphatic about how much better the proj destroy would have been on (the entirely neglected) Well of Darkness.

Edit: I know this thread is about changing CPC. Condensing the effects is a great first step. Adding stacks of Vuln could be good (CORROSIVE PC!). Adding a NEW effect could have been good (CORROSIVE PC!) ie. a ‘status effect’(can’t be cleared) debuff: Corrode your enemies weapon. They deal 10-20% (just spitballing numbers) less damage. 3 secs. per pulse. (Pulses with the poison effect).

Omg! Now we have TWO great utilities that are still thematic. And BOTH would be useful in a variety of specs (traitlines considered), but neither OP.

Bhawb.7408:

Just remove the stupid self conditions.

you can transfer those conditions to enemy, you know that?

vicious.5683:

you can transfer those conditions to enemy, you know that?

Or I could not waste valuable resources just to make sure I don’t neuter myself to use my own skill.

Bhawb.7408:

vicious.5683:

you can transfer those conditions to enemy, you know that?

Or I could not waste valuable resources just to make sure I don’t neuter myself to use my own skill.

its a profession mechanic and you should learn to use it. It’s just fine.

Deathshroud is a profession mechanic. Life force is a profession mechanic. Self condis on corruption skills are not. Also condition transfers are not a profession mechanic

I sort of like the design of corruption skills as being “harm yourself to perform powerful things,” but I think their issue is actually two-fold.

1. The actual means of self-harm: The conditions. Conditions are clunky as all hell – they keep you in combat, mess with transfers and cleanses, and actually punish you for speccing into condition damage / duration!

2. The skills themselves just aren’t that strong. Epidemic is the only one that seems super stronk, and even that is only in niche situations. Blood is Power is weak, and Corrupt Boon is entirely overshadowed by signets. Of course, CPC is much better than it was, before.

The second issue is harder to fix, but I think the first could be remedied just by changing corruptions to deal a fixed percentage to the necro’s health rather than inflicting a clunky condi. Not only would this not punish necros for building condi damage / duration, but it would also synergize super-well with blood magic.

As an example, what if CPC didn’t inflict weakness, but rather it was some sort of toggle-able skill that cost ~10% health per tick (or 5, or 7, etc.)? Similar adjustments could be made to the other corruption skills to make them not only cool, but also interesting.

Tman.6349:

tboneking.2531:

My idea for corruptions: make them upkeep skills that sacrifice portions of your health while they are active (lets say 500 hp per second). Then have the trait reduce their cooldown, maybe up the damage we self inflict, but add a POSITIVE aspect to the trait where our condition damage increases by a percentage the lower our HP is. (example: +10% under 75% hp, 15 at 50 and 20 at 25). This might be a problem with party healing, but the funny thing is we can just use our greatest weakness as our strength: hide in DS to avoid your party healing! XD

I can somewhat agree with this and I LOVE the mildly coy last sentence. The condi aspect I have a problem with though. Skills like this (highly (somewhat really) aimed at active defense SHOULD NOT be relegated to a certain build type. The utility should be equally effective for a power/condi/hybrid spec. That’s WHY it’s called ‘utility’. How many other active defense skills in the game just flat out prefer ONE spec over ANY others. None, and that is why those skills are very useful on their respective professions. I still am adamantly convinced that the proj destroy should have gone to WoD. Power specs could benefit from the psuedo-invuln. Cele/condi specs are already taking Curses and that would have them make a bit of decision on their utility bar as well as giving a bit of an alternative to their Curses minor-major slot. Even MMs might consider it (with “Rise!”?) for increased sustain w/o popping Plague.

It would be similar to Smoke Screen. AND with Necro’s ZERO mobility and very little ACTIVE sustain it would be balanced (not to mention the much higher CD without going into an unorthodox trait line (which would buff the skill and make more valuable). That would actually be the ONE skill/change that could have given Necro a MUCH bigger influence on team fights.

*sorry for all the caps, but I can’t be more emphatic about how much better the proj destroy would have been on (the entirely neglected) Well of Darkness.

Edit: I know this thread is about changing CPC. Condensing the effects is a great first step. Adding stacks of Vuln could be good (CORROSIVE PC!). Adding a NEW effect could have been good (CORROSIVE PC!) ie. a ‘status effect’(can’t be cleared) debuff: Corrode your enemies weapon. They deal 10-20% (just spitballing numbers) less damage. 3 secs. per pulse. (Pulses with the poison effect).

Omg! Now we have TWO great utilities that are still thematic. And BOTH would be useful in a variety of specs (traitlines considered), but neither OP.

Thanks for replying! Here’s my thing though: adding my changes wouldn’t turn corruptions into more condi based skills. If anything, by removing the self weakness and adding a self dot effect you increase its viability got direct damage builds. Also: I DO actually use well of darkness in pvp. It saves me extremely frequently, especially as its ground targeted, you can put it on a ranged foe to give you some time to close the gap/ get your heal off. And it WRECKS melee fighters. In a way it serves a similar function to cpc but in melee range (I am aware that cpc also gives foes weakness which helps melee too I’m just saying)

Anet, let me help you with your design philosophy, if you want want to have self punishing skills, make sure they are kittening worth it first! Themes need to NOT be what you design philosophy is based around, really, really sad and again your decisions pit the players against you the devs. /sigh

The simplest solution to this would be to make lesser plague signet transfer 2 conditions instead of 3. When paired with MoC you can auto transfer that self weakness and the secondary condition.

Do not use Corruption skills if you don’t have a way to transfer.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Do not use Corruption skills if you don’t have a way to transfer.

Do you not see the problem with that design?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Do not use Corruption skills if you don’t have a way to transfer.

Corruptions must be top tier and other players must not apply conditions. Oh wait that fits PvE…where anything works and mobs’ conditions are quaggan baby lotion soft. We can deal with base conditions but MoC passed the limit carelessly.

The only problem I have with the self condi is that if you take MoC you simply get double weakness…the condi needs changed when traited (I still maintain MoC needs a total overhaul to actually make the corruptions more powerful, not just self nuke us and reduce cooldowns, but that’s a discussion for another time)

MoC and CPC gives you weakness + cripple. Not double weakness.

I feel taking Master of Corruption, it should actually remove the single negative effect on these corruption skills, not increase the negative effects. If they did it that way, it’d make it a very attractive trait, and funny thing is it still wouldn’t make anything overpowered.

Or at the very least half the duration of negative effects on these corruption skills.

Assuming corruptions actually worked in the first place as a theme, the idea of having a trait designed to push them even further into the high risk/reward territory is great. Master of Corruption would then make sense, the self-harm is even more dangerous, and in return the skills are even stronger.

Of course, like Corruptions as a whole, the implementation itself falls flat. Would still really like to see something like a Witch Doctor like elite that made the core concept of corruptions into a full spec with complimenting traits.

Corruptions are a nice idea in general. I dont mind the self condis, i mean in every fight scenario you will have some condis on your self anyway, its not like im using a condi transfer just to negate the side effects of corruptions, if i already have bleed stacks on myself i can use blood is power before transfering them, increasing the potency of my transfer while benefiting from the corruption skills effect. That said, corruptions should be much stronger. They are rather niche, epidemic is a great example of that. Corrupt Boons is simply way too weak, it got stuck a few years ago and since then the boons where handed out like candy. It needs to corrupt ALL boons, on a lower cooldown to make any kind of impact. It just falls short otherwise. Blood is power is just a failed concept, and again stuck in the past. 1 min bleeds wont help if condi clears are everywhere. We dont want party might on corruption skills, that is just not a necromancer thing, not a necromancer way of supporting and just feels wrong.

Id really love if they gave our core utility and weapon skills some love after HoT launches. The new stuff they’re adding shows that they now have a clearer vision in mind. I like that, the old stuff (traits not so much) just feels so outdated at the moment.

Necromancers are the only profession with self inflicted conditions, a trait for more self inflected conditions and multiple weapons, utilities and traits to transfer those conditions, so yeah, it is a profession mechanic. It’s designed to work that way.

I like the idea of corruptions, but they not strong enough to be worth it, and it takes too much investment from traits and utilities to transfer conditions reliably. Necromancer isn’t the king of conditions (I really wish it was) but how about at least make us the king of transferring conditions? Make conditions potent enough where I would actually want to slot another utility/trait just to transfer, or, give us some unique condition transfer.

vicious.5683:

Necromancers are the only profession with self inflicted conditions, a trait for more self inflected conditions and multiple weapons, utilities and traits to transfer those conditions, so yeah, it is a profession mechanic. It’s designed to work that way.

They weren’t the only ones with revenant, but ANET scrapped it saying it’s a bad design but left it on necros GG

Sublimatio.6981:

vicious.5683:

Necromancers are the only profession with self inflicted conditions, a trait for more self inflected conditions and multiple weapons, utilities and traits to transfer those conditions, so yeah, it is a profession mechanic. It’s designed to work that way.

They weren’t the only ones with revenant, but ANET scrapped it saying it’s a bad design but left it on necros GG

revenant has no condi transfer only copy. and also lack condi cleanse only resistance

Revenant has a lot of condi cleanse. Point is, they admitted it was a bad design yet kept in on one class despite numerous suggestions such as buffing corruption skills but making it %hp scarifice on use, etc

If anything, we should be rewarded for using conditions, not punished.

Bhawb.7408:

Would still really like to see something like a Witch Doctor like elite that made the core concept of corruptions into a full spec with complimenting traits.

Well, I have This , but that’s not really about Corruptions, even though it has some sort of sacraficial theme :P

I agree, the condi we inflict to ourselves for using this skill is bad. change to self-applied poison (because that makes more sense,.. it is a poison cloud).

Sublimatio.6981:

vicious.5683:

Necromancers are the only profession with self inflicted conditions, a trait for more self inflected conditions and multiple weapons, utilities and traits to transfer those conditions, so yeah, it is a profession mechanic. It’s designed to work that way.

They weren’t the only ones with revenant, but ANET scrapped it saying it’s a bad design but left it on necros GG

That is not why they scrapped it on Revenant. They removed it from Revenants because their mallyx utilities were stronger when they had a set number of conditions on them, and being near allies would end up removing those, so they were actively punished for playing with supportive allies. Necromancers don’t lose anything when our conditions get cleansed, except maybe a stronger heal. Our goal is still to get the condis off ourselves, we just do it differently from other classes. Revenants did not want to get the conditions off themselves.

spoj.9672:

MoC and CPC gives you weakness + cripple. Not double weakness.

You’re right, I was thinking of epidemic. I still stand by my other point though, MoC needs to actually do something not just lower cd’s and self nuke you.

It’s basically a swirling winds that both wastes an utility slot and self-weakness-es you.

robertul.3679:

It’s basically a swirling winds that both wastes an utility slot and self-weakness-es you.

it also weakens mobs but yep this skill is underpowered as an utility

spoj.9672:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Do not use Corruption skills if you don’t have a way to transfer.

Do you not see the problem with that design?

No… Not really… I mean I do but I don’t.
I mean it’s silly that your own skills can harm you but at the same time it’s a risk/reward scenario. Time your corruptions to coincide with your transfers and you’re able to get a greater oomph out of your corruption. Or, use it to boost the effectiveness of Consume Conditions instead.

I’m sure you already know these things but I don’t consider it poor design only a design that has a reward slightly lower than the risk. If corruption skills had greater offensive effects they’d be just fine. Anet seems to think putting more conditions on us to transfer is the right way to go about doing so but obviously as pretty much everyone agrees, it’s not…

We have a ton of ways to transfer and our most used heal gets stronger with any conditions it consumes. I would consider it much worse design if we had less transfers but that’s not the case. Adding vulnerability on top of CC and adding additional conditions on top of the base ones when taking the mastery was straight up stupid though. It gets too risky to bother taking the trait because the reward is still the same.