Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

-Vuln effects condition damage
-Condition specs significantly boosted dps
-no more caps
-all conditions are intensity stacking now

I’m still unsure as to whether this will really benefit us as we can stack condis, though at a much slower rate. It will also depend on how they handle condi duration.

It also seems cripple and chill sorta will be reduced in effectiveness regarding slowing down leaps etc. so they will still be able to leap away. My god!!!!! Do they look at these freaking changes. Oh wait they don’t want their favorite classes to not be able to get away from necros, so they will just crap in Necros. Do they play this freaking game? Do they see how easy it is for a thief, ele, warrior, Mesmer, engie to get away with leaps, etc? That just made chill crap as a movement restricter. At least it grants some defense…..

That said like the vulnerability effects

A mixed bag of news

1. Doesn’t happen until specialization patch, aka HoT, aka August 30 if we are lucky
2. Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf
3. They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless

nekretaal.6485:

A mixed bag of news

1. Doesn’t happen until specialization patch, aka HoT, aka August 30 if we are lucky
2. Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf
3. They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless

1. Not true, this is coming much sooner. Next patch, in fact. Keep up with the news.
2. Chill, Cripple, Fear, and Immobilize will still stack duration. They only said it was the damaging conditions that stack intensity now. The bigger nerf is that Cripple and Chill can’t reduce leap distance anymore.
3. Axe is pointless anyway, since it stacks too slowly. Plus, increasing Vulnerability cap would break balance so hard.

Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf

They never said those condition are now stacking in intensity, only burn and poisons damage part.

They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless

considering that :

We will significantly lower the base damage on damaging conditions while increasing how much they scale with the condition-damage stat. This means at lower levels of condition damage you can expect to do less damage than you currently do, while at higher values you’ll do even more damage than you are currently able to. The formulas are still being adjusted, but to give you an idea, the break-even point before you start doing more damage is around 700 condition damage.

with high condi damage you will be doing more condi damage than now as well as now being able to increase that by a max of 25%. Vulnerability just because more useful especially as we can put out a lot of it and it would have a better effect on carrion builds because it working on both types of damage. axe still blows though yeah..

Gryph.8237:

It also seems cripple and chill sorta will be reduced in effectiveness regarding slowing down leaps etc. so they will still be able to leap away. My god!!!!! Do they look at these freaking changes. Oh wait they don’t want their favorite classes to not be able to get away from necros, so they will just crap in Necros. Do they play this freaking game? Do they see how easy it is for a thief, ele, warrior, Mesmer, engie to get away with leaps, etc? That just made chill crap as a movement restricter. At least it grants some defense….. s

It seems to me like they’re normalizing the distance that the leaps go. So no mater what a leap travels 900 units (for example) when under the effects of chill, or swiftness. So while chill will increase the time it takes them to go said 900 units, and swiftness will decrease that amount of time. Chill won’t drop the distance to 800 like it does now, swiftness won’t be able to increase the distance to 1000. I think it’s a balanced change. (numbers made up for sake of argument)

Even after retreading it twice I was confused: They talk about “all of the damaging conditions,” but they neglect to mention chill (which will soon be a damaging condition) and fear.

So I thought that, as damaging conditions, they might get treated the same way, but the article doesn’t say so. It just kind of ignores them.

Too bad. (I actually like the idea of making immobilize stacking == nerf, but I dont think that’s happening)

Its because they are not damaging conditions by default only through traits. They will have to rebalance the number on them so they dont get outshined and made obsolete by all the other ones.

nekretaal.6485:

Even after retreading it twice I was confused: They talk about “all of the damaging conditions,” but they neglect to mention chill (which will soon be a damaging condition) and fear.

That’s a good catch. We will certainly have to ask the Devs about this problem.

Rym.1469:

nekretaal.6485:

Even after retreading it twice I was confused: They talk about “all of the damaging conditions,” but they neglect to mention chill (which will soon be a damaging condition) and fear.

That’s a good catch. We will certainly have to ask the Devs about this problem.

Both only do damage due to Necro traits. In fact, the condition itself won’t deal any damage, rather the trait does.

That’s why we don’t have partial ticks on Terror.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Rym.1469:

nekretaal.6485:

Even after retreading it twice I was confused: They talk about “all of the damaging conditions,” but they neglect to mention chill (which will soon be a damaging condition) and fear.

That’s a good catch. We will certainly have to ask the Devs about this problem.

Both only do damage due to Necro traits. In fact, the condition itself won’t deal any damage, rather the trait does.

That’s why we don’t have partial ticks on Terror.

I think you’re right. Thanks for bringing this up.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nekretaal.6485:

A mixed bag of news

1. Doesn’t happen until specialization patch, aka HoT, aka August 30 if we are lucky
2. Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf
3. They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless

1. Not true, this is coming much sooner. Next patch, in fact. Keep up with the news.
2. Chill, Cripple, Fear, and Immobilize will still stack duration. They only said it was the damaging conditions that stack intensity now. The bigger nerf is that Cripple and Chill can’t reduce leap distance anymore.
3. Axe is pointless anyway, since it stacks too slowly. Plus, increasing Vulnerability cap would break balance so hard.

So what’s the Necro counterplay for leaps?

Drarnor is correct; chill and fear will both continue to stack in duration, not intensity.

I wish they didn’t sell death’s charge as being awesome for ignoring movement impairing effects before they made it baseline.

That’s a big change for us, using cripple or chill at the right time actually kept some of those classes around. Now they’ll always get away.

Roe.3679:

I wish they didn’t sell death’s charge as being awesome for ignoring movement impairing effects before they made it baseline.

That’s a big change for us, using cripple or chill at the right time actually kept some of those classes around. Now they’ll always get away.

I hope they changed it in some way to compensate.

Well for PvE condi necro seems to have some extra options. The first one is focus can become a secondary offhand especially with sinister gear. Reaper’s touch can apply massive long term vulnerability with scepter in the time your dagger is of cooldown. I also see some possibility for condi builds to take spite as a second traitline. Bitter chill,spitefull talisman, chill of death, death shiver ,signet mastery and close to death are some options from the power line.
I also see some kind of dhuumfire life blast hybrid necro but I am a bit worried it will work especially around life force management.
The condi reaper gets some nice synergy: chill does damage, might on chill and vulnerabilty on chill will become very strong.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-Condition specs significantly boosted dps

As far as I understood it, condition builds will only profit from the change to vulnerability (Spite will be very sexy for condi necros after this patch) but the change for the actual damage formula will mostly prevent power and celestial builds to have hard hitting conditions without any real investment in condition damage.

Anyway, fear and chill are definitely still going to stack in duration, but perhaps anet will come up with some hybrid solution for Deathly Chills and Terror.

Tbh, I expected Chill and Cripple reducing the range of blinks and teleports, rather than freeing up leaps.

As it stands now, those mobility changess bypass Thief anyway, who is the main issue here.

I would like our Necrocopter to be unique, but it got the Torment treatment.

Personally, I don’t think that Spite will be that amazing for PvP Conditionmancer or Condi Reaper, though. It’s just vuln in Spite. While you will probably go for Curses+SR in any case and then as Condi have an option. I would pick one of defensive traitlines as 3rd.

damage with less than 700 condi damage<Current damage< damage with more than 700 condi damage.

Biased on the movement skills change everything else seems appropriate, this doesn’t entirely improve condition necro but we have trait changes and more hopefully for that.

Not a fan of the movement nerfs. I was hoping that a good chill build would keep your opponent close enough to to you to keep the pressure on. These changes will just put us firmly back at square one. Giving any class with the ability to leap, teleport, rush etc a way out in order to reset whenever they want.

The condi changes sound good but other than in a few situations engies apply the pressure better than we do.

1. Parasitic Contagion
2. Epidemic
3. ???
4. Profit??

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

L Step.8659:

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

Meta will change with all te trait and stat changes so we dont even know whats going to be what.

Sigmoid.7082:

L Step.8659:

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

Meta will change with all te trait and stat changes so we dont even know whats going to be what.

Zerker will always be the most damaging gear and most meta specs like shoutbow are getting stronger. There’s going to be a huge power creep in PvP judging from the previewed trait lines. Also condi necro is still in a bad state regardless of traits. Not enough pressure. Cripple on scepter has just become weaker, still can’t generate life force reliably. All it has going for it are transfers, and a monkey can dodge deathly swarm.

L Step.8659:

Sigmoid.7082:

L Step.8659:

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

Meta will change with all te trait and stat changes so we dont even know whats going to be what.

Zerker will always be the most damaging gear and most meta specs like shoutbow are getting stronger. There’s going to be a huge power creep in PvP judging from the previewed trait lines. Also condi necro is still in a bad state regardless of traits. Not enough pressure. Cripple on scepter has just become weaker, still can’t generate life force reliably. All it has going for it are transfers, and a monkey can dodge deathly swarm.

Numbers and traits werent final. Before i see them i wont judge whats going to happen to the meta in pvp. Because of what we got told today i expect a bunch of skill changes as well.

I’ve not played in a while, did they up the condition duration multiplier? I notice scepter has 100% on its own.

With a large portion of Necromancer’s defense that is not DS coming from soft CC, the coming change giving mobility skills immunity to dampers like cripple and chill may further break Necromancer.

The condi stack change will open up other professions more than Necromancer, too.

The change looks positive at first but the only skill I think will benefit is Epidemic but I also feel Epi will get a cap-nerf soon.

imagine if terror stacks? >:-3
lay down wall, staff 5, DS 3!

L Step.8659:

Sigmoid.7082:

L Step.8659:

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

Meta will change with all te trait and stat changes so we dont even know whats going to be what.

Zerker will always be the most damaging gear and most meta specs like shoutbow are getting stronger. There’s going to be a huge power creep in PvP judging from the previewed trait lines. Also condi necro is still in a bad state regardless of traits. Not enough pressure. Cripple on scepter has just become weaker, still can’t generate life force reliably. All it has going for it are transfers, and a monkey can dodge deathly swarm.

Well, let’s just say if the insane burn damage from the Dragonhunter life stream stays the way it is (which it will most likely not), we are looking at pretty insane damage numbers per second, and thats not counting other conditions and power damage you deal on the side… Sinister might just be as viable as Zerk.

….hahahahahahahahahaha, ahhhh anet you had me. What a wonderful joke. You made me think you had finally made necros that supposed class that, if engaged, was hard to get away from, especially with reaper. Ahahahaha. Ahhhh good one.

Seriously, this just screwed reaper over hard. Classes with movement skills (which is EVERYONE except necros) will just run away, heal and reset whenever they get below 50%. Just scrap reaper and throw it in the garbage.

And I just realized how big a buff this is for thieves. Great! Just what else I wanted.

Base necro will still be worse than the other classes for condi damage. However Reaper could possibly compete for top spot if they can maintain bleed, burn, poison and chill.

TheLastNobody.8319:

….hahahahahahahahahaha, ahhhh anet you had me. What a wonderful joke. You made me think you had finally made necros that supposed class that, if engaged, was hard to get away from, especially with reaper. Ahahahaha. Ahhhh good one.

Seriously, this just screwed reaper over hard. Classes with movement skills (which is EVERYONE except necros) will just run away, heal and reset whenever they get below 50%. Just scrap reaper and throw it in the garbage.

And I just realized how big a buff this is for thieves. Great! Just what else I wanted.

Well, is it anything diffrent on live?

Besides, out of all mobile professions, Thief is the least affected, together with Mesmer.
Most of their mobility are just blinks and other instant teleports, which ignore our cripples, chills, immobilizes, whatever anyway.

In fact, only worthwhile Leap Thief has is Heartseeker. Which is currently used very rarely in PvP for actual mobility, rather stacking stealth.

It’s a buff to Warriors with Greatsword, Warriors with Sword, Rangers with Melee weapons, Eles on Daggers and Guardian Greatsword.

I don’t think it will change everything, suddenly

Necro will not be the best condition class because there’s a lot of classes that can stack bleed and burn better.
With the scepter trait, in Reaper you will be able to stack, more or less, 10-12 stack of Burn and a lot of poison and chill on the enemy, but only if you’re in PvE against a easy enemy. And a low amount of bleed stack by critical hit bleed minor trait.

For all the other situations, Necromancer isn’t the best class to del condition damage. You can’t stack a good amount of bleed, the same about poison. Burn will be only on DS/RS state and good only with Reaper Shround. You can inflict low damage with chill but it will be a duration-stack condition, not a numerical stack, like the Fear. And when you go in DS/RS you can inflict burn but not bleed, torment only in DS and chill and poison only in RS.

A ranger can inflict a large amount of bleed, burn and poison, engi can inflict bleed, burn, poison and confusion, mesmer torment and confusion but in high amount, war can inflict bleed, burn and torment easy with a condi build. And the ele will be the next condi leader with earth and fire attunement, while can take the enemy in a perma-burn state with high burn stack and a large amount of bleed. And there’s the Guardian, that can inflict a very high amount of burn (expecially with the future HoT Dragonhunter elite trait).

Condi Necro can be viable in PvE and www with Epidemic to spam a enemy conditions on the other enemies, but no more.

We have to wait for the final traits that will be released in that big patch, because there’s rumors on changes on our traits. But there’s low things that can make the necro better in condition damage than other classes.

Rym.1469:

TheLastNobody.8319:

….hahahahahahahahahaha, ahhhh anet you had me. What a wonderful joke. You made me think you had finally made necros that supposed class that, if engaged, was hard to get away from, especially with reaper. Ahahahaha. Ahhhh good one.

Seriously, this just screwed reaper over hard. Classes with movement skills (which is EVERYONE except necros) will just run away, heal and reset whenever they get below 50%. Just scrap reaper and throw it in the garbage.

And I just realized how big a buff this is for thieves. Great! Just what else I wanted.

Well, is it anything diffrent on live?

Besides, out of all mobile professions, Thief is the least affected, together with Mesmer.
Most of their mobility are just blinks and other instant teleports, which ignore our cripples, chills, immobilizes, whatever anyway.

In fact, only worthwhile Leap Thief has is Heartseeker. Which is currently used very rarely in PvP for actual mobility, rather stacking stealth.

It’s a buff to Warriors with Greatsword, Warriors with Sword, Rangers with Melee weapons, Eles on Daggers and Guardian Greatsword.

I don’t think it will change everything, suddenly

Bah true, just thief getting even more mobility on top of what it has just ticks me off. And while you are right, this is no different than what we’re dealing with now really, that’s because necro never had any pulls or gap closers other than spectral grasp, and dark path. Reaper would finally get a pull on gs5 and reaper’s shroud has Death’s Charge, but that’s just one dash every 6 seconds and most classes have At least 2 to use to get away. And reaper’s grasp only has a range of 600, and a pretty decent cast time and tell. Chill affecting leaps and such would have been a huge help in making sure it hit a fleeing for, now though…not so much.

Sorry, I’m just ticked off, the entire reaper concept was developed around chill being used to help lockdown a foe, and now that’s been wadded up and thrown away. That’s what is really getting me.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

-Vuln effects condition damage
-Condition specs significantly boosted dps
-no more caps
-all conditions are intensity stacking now

-Nice change, beneficial.
-Also nice change
-We can’t cap any condition stacks anyway, it doesn’t benefit us.
-This is a nerf to us since it’s difficult for us to apply Burn and now we will need to stack it for Dhuumfire to be at all significant. Same with poison, although it is on our scepter AA, it is also a fairly slow AA and we won’t likely ever stack more than 5 or 6 stacks of Poison.

50/50.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-no more caps

-We can’t cap any condition stacks anyway, it doesn’t benefit us.

We can definitely reach 25 stacks of bleeding on our own, but the main point of this change is to actually allow two or more condition builds to attack the same target without having them lose damage. So that change definitely benefits us.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-all conditions are intensity stacking now

-This is a nerf to us since it’s difficult for us to apply Burn and now we will need to stack it for Dhuumfire to be at all significant…

You’re making it sound like every necro is currently using Dhuumfire.
Besides, the icd will be removed so that somewhat evens out the loss of damage, it definitely will for the Reaper’s Shroud auto attack.

Since they said they will be “significantly” lowering the damage of non condition builds, and the break even point is only 700 condition damage, I suspect we will see double if not not more damage increase.

The leap changes do suck though

Assuming Epidemic stays the same functionally as it is now, removing condi caps means that dual Epidemic usage will be great alone. Especially in open world or against world bosses with lots of adds.

Having 2+ Necros using Epidemic on different mobs will greatly increase condition stacks. All stacks of condis from all allies would just get bounced back and fourth as new stacks buffed with high damage. The limit being how many times each Necro Epidemics before the original condis start running out hitting a ceiling of sorts. Blood is Power’s long bleed time and our generally good area bleed durations will be a great for condi propagation in this manner. The new change to condi caps will definitely keep me from whining about Epidemics cast time anymore…

Kind of bummed about leap changes. However, a lot of the time players did exploit the swiftness +leaps for huge distance coverage. I don’t think we will see people leaping half way across the map in wvw now. Not that we will catch them anyways… :p

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Since they said they will be “significantly” lowering the damage of non condition builds, and the break even point is only 700 condition damage, I suspect we will see double if not not more damage increase.

The leap changes do suck though

Honestly I was worried about the evidence of a new condi scaling in the previews. Nice to hear the break point is that low so some of my sustain condi builds get a damage boost as well.

I would like to see what 1700-2000 condi damage nets now though.

I think it will make condi specs viable in pvp. Also getting all our stats from an amulet is a big buff. Problem is more traits for other classes means more condi clear for them

As far as condition builds in pve go, I think they stand a shot at being somewhat viable, at least not at the speed clear level, but I think it would be find in PUGs.

It would probably use sinister gear to max damage altogether, as sinister is like the zerker of conditions. Still though, I feel like ranger and mesmer would be much better pve condition damage users for a few reasons related to group support. Ranger may still be able to take spotter/frost spirit for offensive support for non-condi group memebers, and shortbow while flanking offers a huge amount of bleed stacking and poison while axe/torch has more bleeds and lots of burning (plus a fire field!). Mesmer staff clones and the pistol phantasm with the improved trait have a great amount of condition output, including burning, bleeding, and vuln, while the scepter can stack torment (with a 50% damage boost from the improved malicious sorcery) and confusion too, and they’ll be able to use feedback and slot a focus when needed to provide support with reflects. They’ll also provide quickness and whatnot, as well as slow and alacrity and wells that have support potential for allies as well.

The necromancer, with lingering curses will be able to stack conditions pretty well. but I’m not sure if it will be fast enough to outpace the other classes, and like always, they won’t have the support that other classes can fulfill.

How is this a buff for thieves? Chill already didn’t touch their movement skills, they don’t have leaps.

Edit – I guess this is about heartseeker, which is like the 4th most important thief mobility skill.

Roe.3679:

How is this a buff for thieves? Chill already didn’t touch their movement skills, they don’t have leaps.

retreats will most likely be affected by the change as well (some of their rolls backwards are retreats).

Tim.6450:

Roe.3679:

How is this a buff for thieves? Chill already didn’t touch their movement skills, they don’t have leaps.

retreats will most likely be affected by the change as well (some of their rolls backwards are retreats).

That heal removes chill as it is, if anything this may reduce the movement from that skill because of the swiftness change.

Roe.3679:

Tim.6450:

Roe.3679:

How is this a buff for thieves? Chill already didn’t touch their movement skills, they don’t have leaps.

retreats will most likely be affected by the change as well (some of their rolls backwards are retreats).

That heal removes chill as it is, if anything this may reduce the movement from that skill because of the swiftness change.

I was thinking about shortbow and the roll for initiative but it seems thar that one removes chill as well , my bad (shortbow still counts though).

I feel like more of a nerf but thats as a power necro. Poison, which reaper will be applying on the shroud charge, will be nerfed overall for damage. And chill, which reaper has a lot of access too, wont keep people in place. Necros benefit from the chill/cripple nerf the least of all classes so it feels like a necro nerf. At least thankfully we will have a short leap in reaper shroud.

Roe.3679:

Edit – I guess this is about heartseeker, which is like the 4th most important thief mobility skill.

Heartseeker is their best mobility skill unless they have targets for sword 2 spam.

spoj.9672:

Roe.3679:

Edit – I guess this is about heartseeker, which is like the 4th most important thief mobility skill.

Heartseeker is their best mobility skill unless they have targets for sword 2 spam.

If that were true shortbow wouldn’t be the meta on every thief.

spoj.9672:

Roe.3679:

Edit – I guess this is about heartseeker, which is like the 4th most important thief mobility skill.

Heartseeker is their best mobility skill unless they have targets for sword 2 spam.

I think Roe might’ve meant in PvP. A lot of thieves prefer sb 5 or withdraw or shadowstep or d/p 3 for mobility in and around points

They need to make heart seeker work only if an enemy is targeted and in range hahaha. That would dry hump them well. Need a heart to seek before you can jump to them. Will never happen but my god I would love to hear them cry. And yeah , I know it would destroy d/p builds, so can you imagine the crying? Hahahah

Seriously, im very concerned that reapers are so going to be kitted to death as chill will hardly keep people in range if leaps, dashes, heart seekers, teleports, blinks are not at all effected by chills, etc, especially when we have only one skill that only leaps 600. God can they just not up that to at least 900 to give us something? Come on devs, you giveeth the and then taketh away our ability to lock anyone down. We have no cripple and no way to catch anyone. Ranger is going to eat us for lunch, along with every other class with a range weapon. Yeah we keep coming, but at a snails pace while eating shot after shot. Try to generate life force when you’re chaising someone. Hope there are some mosquitoes to kill.

Chill was the one thing where I finally felt we would be able to keep people locked to us.m good luck with that