Guild Wars 2

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

risk/reward scenario

High risk low reward is awful design. At best, in very rare and ideal situations you can time your corruption skill to stack on a condition you already had so that your transfer isn’t wasted at all. But in the majority of situations you are wasting a condition removal just to be able to use a skill. That isn’t a benefit, you are weakening your build to use an at best balanced ability.

Bhawb.7408:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

risk/reward scenario

High risk low reward is awful design. At best, in very rare and ideal situations you can time your corruption skill to stack on a condition you already had so that your transfer isn’t wasted at all. But in the majority of situations you are wasting a condition removal just to be able to use a skill. That isn’t a benefit, you are weakening your build to use an at best balanced ability.

That’s what I said essentially, lol. The risk/reward design is nice but the reward is low. Still, I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to think it is. The Master Of Corruption is however terrible because the risk becomes too high.

Either way, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t for example use Corrupt Boon then transfer just the poison. I’d either be sure I’m at a high enough health threshold that the damage from the poison isn’t significant or wait until I have at least 2 minimum other conditions on me to send them + the poison to someone else. It is definitely a “best case scenario” kind of thing but with all the conditions flying around in PvP and WvW it’s really not as out of the ordinary as one might think. I mean how often are you in a team fight without at least one or two other conditions already on you, right?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

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.

The thing is utility skills are very powerfull skills and are in general game changers . The problem with in increasing the rewards is that it has the potential to become an I win button especcially with its offensive nature.

Another problem is the nature of the self infliction let’s take an example: blood is power. An untraited BiP removes at max power ~30% of your base health and traited it can remove 61%. Yet a lot of (PvE) players take it in their skillset traited. Why because they can basically remove the self infliction with a cleanse and like you said it can cost them nothing since they were going to remove conditions anyway. On the other hand you see players who dedicate a transfer to remove it making the cost really high. This makes it really difficult to balance the reward aspect of the skill especially when you consider things like group cleanses.

Based on this I think it is best to shelve self inflicted conditions.

Instead of hitting us with conditions, it ought to be a base 20% HP sacrifice, with it being reduced to 10% when traited.

This would be more thematically in tune with the GW1 necro.

The corruption skills applying conditions to one’s self are fine, as it’s the flavor behind that archetype. The skill is quite strong now, so I think the weakness is fine. If you’re really concerned about it, why not run sigil of purity?

Honestly, I think the only issue here is the current discrepancy between burning and other conditions, making cpc look weaker.

Though, I think if you’really running a bunch of corruptions, you should be running that plague signet trait and saving your transfers and cleanses for when the enemy piles conditions on you.

Bhawb.7408:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

risk/reward scenario

High risk low reward is awful design. At best, in very rare and ideal situations you can time your corruption skill to stack on a condition you already had so that your transfer isn’t wasted at all. But in the majority of situations you are wasting a condition removal just to be able to use a skill. That isn’t a benefit, you are weakening your build to use an at best balanced ability.

I’m quite sure other people already made similar suggestions. But it isn’t that hard to keep the concept of Corruptions but make them less debilitating.

• Make all Corruptions apply Vulnerability to the Necromancer
• Balance number of stacks / duration based on the power of the respective utility
• Add additional bonus to Master of Corruption based on your Vulnerability stacks

Should make for some interesting gameplay if the additional bonus is worthwhile. And Vulnerability shouldn’t be too hindering in most situations. Plus, it caps out at some point.

It’s not a kittening risk/reward scenario. Other classes don’t have risk/reward stuff on their strongest skills. And corruptions aren’t even close to what other skills can do.

From aoe cleanses to aoe stability, proper fields, reflects, invulnerabilities..what exactly do they sacrifice? How would it feel if a warrior using shake it off would self-weakness? Nobody would run it. What about a mesmer using timewarp self-inflicted slow?

Corruptions are garbage and nobody really uses them except if they really need to. Like plague form cuz lich sucks and golem is potatoes, both regarding AI and utility. Oh and some use CPC for soloing stuff but I doubt solo capabilities are reasons for balance.

robertul.3679:

Other classes don’t have risk/reward stuff on their strongest skills.

Wot. Have you heard of Signets? That is exactly what they are, lol. Also Shadow Refuge, Shadow Step, all Warrior burst (F1) skills to name a few are risk/reward. I’m sure there are many others but I honestly don’t care to do the research to list them right now.

You need to stay in place while in SR making it difficult to avoid AOE/CC. Risk. Success of staying in the refuge for the full duration yields health and lengthy stealth. Failing means revealed.

Your point of return is visible to the enemy when you use Shadow Step. Risk. Succeeding means a condition cleanse and stunbreak.

Burning any Burst skills on Warrior means losing Adrenaline which means losing health regeneration. Risk. Succeeding in using a burst skill means additional effects like increased damage or boons like fury, conditions like burns or bleeds in high volume, etc.

It’s not the same as Corruption skills but we don’t want everything to be identical or it gets stale.

If people hate Corruption skills fine but in my opinion the risk/reward design is at least okay. I agree with another poster here that maybe all of the Corruptions should apply varying stacks of Vulnerability instead of the ones they currently apply but I still like the theme of Corruption skills regardless. I just wish the payoff was slightly more rewarding. tldr; Corruption skills are meh. I don’t love them I don’t hate them but I appreciate their design and the potential they have under the right circumstances.

tboneking.2531:

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)

I already understood what you were ‘just saying’. Necro is already proficient with Weakness. Maybe try ready me posts and then understand how my ideas are infinititely better ina variety of builds. Corruptions are fundamentally geared toward condi specs no matter how you try to spin it. Although I am already aware that you do realize the superior logic, balance, and implementation/usefulness across nearly every single Necro build. Maybe try reading my psts slowly.