Guild Wars 2

With the change of CPC, corruptions are becoming more attractive. Many of our corruption skill are arguably some of our best skills:

• Consume Conditions: simply our best heal
• Blood Is Power: one of our only party buff
• Epidemic: if used at the right moment, can be devastating both in PvE and PvP
• Corrupt Boon: our strongest boon corruption
• Corrosive Poison Cloud: now stronger and with projectile destruction
• Plague: a strong defensive skill

Yet, I feel (and I believe many others too) there is something not quite right about them, this “je ne sais quoi” which prevents them from being used more often. The problem is most likely the self-inflicted condition. Basically, there are 2 ways to look at it:

• the conditions are too punishing
• the conditions are not strong enough to justify wasting a condition transfer (and thus being vulnerable to a condi bomb)

So I was wondering what the community thinks would be the best way to make those skills great while keeping the theme. Here are some suggestions:

1. the skills should be buffed to make up for the self-inflicted condition
2. the self-inflicted conditions should be damaging conditions only (no weakness, crippling, blinding etc…)
3. the self-inflicted conditions should be buffed significantly to be worth using a transfer after
4. there should not be any self-condition but life force used (or HP, but makes little sense for the healing)
5. Master of Corruption should not add a different condition but increase the one already inflicted (to prevent covering conditions too much)
6. Master of Corruption should buff the effect instead of just decreasing the CD (more might, more poison, more condition copied, more boons corrupted, more healing etc…)

Please, vote for one or more that you think should be done, or please suggest your own (I’ll keep the list updated if necessary).

Only epidemic and now CPC are decent. But they are by no means so powerful that they justify the self harm conditions. Plague and consume were good before they became corruptions. Plague is still sort of ok.

My suggestion would be to remove self conditions entirely on the base skills. They arent justified. You could add the base self condis to master of corruption if you added increased potency + cooldown reduction. But as it stands there are far too many negatives and not enough positives. Plus the actual skills arent even that strong.

So yeah i agree with some of your ideas. Basically i can support 1, 4 (only as a compromise), 5 and 6. But i think the base skills should have no self conditions what so ever. Because not every build will want to take transfers and cleanses just to use the base versions of a utility set. If you trait for corruptions then you are using curses which means you will likely have plague sending so it can be justified. Requiring a cleanse/transfer for untraited skills is severely limiting the option to take these skills for niche situations. And thats not good.

There are three ways I think to go with the skills:

1. Remove the self-harm entirely, leave that concept for an Elite spec down the road where it can be built from the ground up in a much better way, and just have Master of Corruption be a fairly “bland” CDR trait that has some kind of potency increase, like Spectral Mastery.
2. Remove self harm from the base skills, and push it onto Master of Corruption, which gets a significant boost not to CDR but to the potency of the skills. For example, MoC’d CPC would not just destroy projectiles, but reflect them.
3. Keep self harm, but fix it up along with the effects of the skills so that the skills are strong enough to justify the self-harm, and the self-harm doesn’t have the range from ignorable (bleeds) to huge detriment (weakness). Make Master of Corruption increase both effects and self harm, or have some method of mitigating the self harm.

No matter what they do, Master of Corruption and Blood is Power need to be totally reworked. The other corruptions are okay in concept, just not power.

Consider a reaper with Chill on Blind and Vulnerability on Chill traits, as well as Master of Corruption.

Consume Conditions would transfer as: Blind, Chill, 8 Vulnerability (+16% Crit chance with the trait). Not bad, and we get our best heal with 10sec less CD. Blood is power self inflicts 2 bleed and 2 torment, and also gives 2 bleeds to the enemy. 8 Might on a 20sec CD…

The others could use some work for sure…

only self damaging conditions but strong enough to be worth a transfer + a trait that gives resitances or reduces condition damage

For pvp the only good corruptions are the heal, elite, and corrupt boon. An MoC build actually works relatively well on celestial, but can’t 1v1 things that aren’t eles/guards as well due to no SA.

The self-inflicted condis are awful (especially 6 sec weakness on CPC) and it’s unfair that Revenant got theirs removed and reworked. I support the idea of corruption skills removing % of health for very powerful elite-like effects. Anet would have to rework the skills to make up for the sacrifice.

I was a corruption necro on day 1. I eventually left, due to a long chain of nerfs and the increasingly obvious useless of conditions in general.

I vote for #2. In fact, this is largely how it was at release. BIP in particular was a great combo power, inflicting a really long set of bleeds (like 30 secs) and restoring a large amount of life force. Combined with Dagger 4 or Staff 4 and Epidemic, a corruption necro was an AOE DPS monster with great life force generation. When they took the life force off of BIP and replaced it with might, my build took a huge DPS and survivability loss (might didn’t affect conditions at that either).

After nerfing Staff 2, Staff 4, removing life force from corruption skills (In case all you guys are wondering why Sceptre life force gain is so bad, this is where it used to come from), all of the gameplay that was the Corruption Necro died horribly. Of course, it wasn’t much of a loss, since conditions themselves were kitten beyond recovery by the stack limit.

Right now, corruption is useful is with minions that transfer conditions, making the self-inflicted conditions basically unnoticable. But the tactical gameplay of building conditions and transferring them is gone. Now that conditions are viable, Anet should really think about reverting some of those very old nerfs to get this gameplay back.

One of the problem of the current corruption trait is that it is meant as “increase risk increase benefits” but the risks increase more than the benefits. Had they simply reduced the cooldown without the added benefits, then we would already self-inflict conditions to ourself more often, which is particularly annoying as our condi cleanse/transfer (except CC) do not scale the same.

So if the trait does not ALSO increase benefits, then we are just increasing the risk/benefit ratio.

I’m pretty sure MoC is the only trait in the entire game that actually has a negative attached to it. Which, while an interesting idea, is pretty indicative of how bad necro traits can be. We got the only one that makes our skills worse.

The corruptions need to have the conditions removed from them. It’s an interesting idea for condi builds but it makes using any of these skills (a couple of which (and now one more) have good utility) as a non-condi necro incredibly unattractive. And that suuuuucks. I’d really like to be able to use CPC as a power reaper to help defend myself and my teammates from ranged spam without then also being dreadfully ineffective for the next 6 seconds unless I have to also pack a condi cleanse. It’s just unintuitive and unfun. These skills are not amazing enough to justify having to pack another skill (or a specific weapon even) to make using them worthwhile.

I’ve also kind of wondered why MoC didn’t give resistance when you popped a corruption skill. Considering the fact that Anet seems dreadfully reluctant to give necros any actual cleanses (and I do not count Consume Condition since it just gives you new ones) resistance would be a good way to balance that out. Besides, it seems really thematic to boot. Necros, master of conditions, able to outright ignore them if they want to. I mean, seriously, mesmers got resistance before we did? Good for them, but come oooooon.

MoC’s design is backwards. Taking this trait should’ve removed the negative effects of corruption skills, not add additional negative effects. By taking this trait, we’re already sacrificing choices of not taking other traits. It just makes no sense to me.

And while I still use Consume Conditions, I’m still ticked that the cooldown was increased on it so MoC would be a bit more attractive to take.

gavyne.6847:

And while I still use Consume Conditions, I’m still ticked that the cooldown was increased on it so MoC would be a bit more attractive to take.

That was the worst about it if it was just the normal 25% CD reduction instead of 33% no CD increase would have been needed. Other than making Axe Training and Spiteful Spirit this was the only real cheap treatment our traits got. Seeing how they somewhat quickly reacted to Plague and Consume Conditions turning into corruptions makes me think that MoC will eventually change even if not tuesday. The idea that it should apply the baseline condition in an AoE has been around for a while.

I give credit to Mr Gee for trying something different than the “standard” 20% CD reduction + 2nd effect. In the case of MoC it seems to be more of a miss than a hit (personally I really like the 33% reduction on CC and Plague).

Suggestion for MoC:
- 20% CD reduction
- the self inflicted condition is applied to your target instead (or better, use the new list of condi so, for example, healing with CC blind the target)

Here’s an old pre-Balance Patch thread about Corruptions with a lot of good stuff. Check if you want: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/1-Corruptions-Do-we-need-them/first#post5115257

In PvE, I don’t see many problems with Corruptions, aside from transfers being very helpful. They do useful stuff and that’s good enough.

1. First problem with Corruptions in PvP especially is that each aside from Consume Conditions and Plague is niche. They’re good, but not universal enough to justify replacing Spectrals or Signets.

Let’s take a look at traited Corrupt Boon. Corrupts 5 boons on single target, self-poison & self-bleeding. ~26s CD. That’s it.
Now Signets with SoS. Plague – you can have one passive, cleanses allies, trasfers 5 condis, instant, no weird behaviour, cannot be blinded, corrupts 2 boons, applies 3 might, 24s CD. Locust – much needed good movement speed increase, damage, good healing, corrupts up to 10 boons AoE, 24s CD.

It’s just better to get these 2 Signets and replace MoC with PoC for much better boon corruption and utility at the same time. The effects is just not significant enough anymore to justify taking Corrupt Boon for example.

2. Second problem – self-applied Conditions. You can treat them as resource for transfers in PvE since outside of your own conditions there’s not much to transfer and that’s fine. But then you have PvP and spending your transfers (gated by cooldowns) to cleanse self-applied conditions? Against most of professions it’s a suicide.

If not Necromancer baseline, then at least Curses Specialization has to have a minor which can reliably transfer conditions and only then Master of Corruption added self-conditions can be treated as a gain.

3. If self-damage dealt by our own conditions is meant to be absorbed, we need more self-healing in Condition builds. That means finally fixing Parasitic Contagion.

My suggestions?

• Corrosive Poison Cloud already got nice change

• Corrupt Boon back to corrupting ALL boons on single target.

• Blood is Power – 15s CD, breaks stun. Apply 3x Bleeding to yourself. Get 2s Protection for each Condition on yourself.

• Consume Conditions – Remove Blind when traited with MoC, it’s absolutely terrible. Change to other condition if you have to.

• Epidemic – 2x Might AoE for each condition you copy from target.

• Master of Corruption – Bonus fact: Gain Life Force when you corrupt a boon or transfer a condition. 3-4% Life Force per boon/condition.

• Curses Minor – Plagued Heart – Your first 2-3 strikes after entering Shroud transfer a Condition.

I don’t think it will still be worthy taking it. With Reaper’s Death’s Charge you can corrupt 2 boons every 5 seconds. There is no chance for MoC there.

Lynnie.7213:

I don’t think it will still be worthy taking it. With Reaper’s Death’s Charge you can corrupt 2 boons every 5 seconds. There is no chance for MoC there.

What if I don’t go for Reaper? Or what if I don’t really need that much sustained boon corruption, but want one that instantly shreds all the boons? CB corrupting everything would be used on regular basis with many builds. 5 with amount of boons flying around means that you often still have to use second boon corruption to shut down the boonage and you don’t have 100% that you will corrupt that stability into fear, same with 2 boon corruption.

Rym.1469:

Lynnie.7213:

I don’t think it will still be worthy taking it. With Reaper’s Death’s Charge you can corrupt 2 boons every 5 seconds. There is no chance for MoC there.

What if I don’t go for Reaper? Or what if I don’t really need that much sustained boon corruption, but want one that instantly shreds all the boons? CB corrupting everything would be used on regular basis with many builds. 5 with amount of boons flying around means that you often still have to use second boon corruption to shut down the boonage and you don’t have 100% that you will corrupt that stability into fear, same with 2 boon corruption.

If you don’t go reaper then MoC is okay. I’ve already tested it for a couple weeks in WvW and give you a nice sustain but that blind on heal is bullkitten. Necros being the slowest attacking profession in the game, blind is just awful.
But if you go reaper, PoC is just superior.

If I had to chose, i’d vote for :

5. Master of Corruption should not add a different condition but increase the duration of the one already inflicted.

Which would simply give more time to transfer these conditions.

Silverkey.2078:

• Epidemic: if used at the right moment, can be devastating both in PvE and PvP

“The right moment” is such a rare occurrence that no one is using this skill. And even when the moment is right the kitten long cast time will likely make you miss it.

Why we can’t have:

Epidemic
Apply vulnerability on yourself and epidemic on a foe. Incoming conditions to the affected foe are spread to all nearby foes.

• Self Vulnerability (6s)
• Epidemic (6s)
• Number of Targets: 5
• Radius: 600
• Range: 1,200
• Unblockable

In my opinion it’s much better because:

• You don’t need a perfect or unlikely scenario to use it effectively.
• Rewards coordinated team play.
• Removes the potential for an unfair or game breaking condition insta-kills.
• The gradual condition build up leaves room to counter play.
• The skill is suddenly a must have for every condi necro, covering for the poor AoE condi application of mace.
• Any build that uses Dhuumfire can see the worth of slotting this utility even if it’s at the expense of survivability. Hurrah for meaningful build choices!

I like the corruption skills. I like the theme. I especially like master of corruption.
Though, as some have pointed out, it lowers your cooldown which just means increaing the self hurt.
I think it needs to go further, way further.

I think the the benefit and mutilation should both be much higher.

Instead if a mechanic the prevents from casting a skill to often being a cooldown, what prevents you casting it too often being that it starts to provide too much hurt that you end up unable to deal with.
I think the cooldown should be very small, say, 10s (-66%), and the inflicted conditions increased with MoC (maybe 5 bleeds instead of 2).
Sure you can deal with it a couple of times. Maybe your team build utilises it. Maybe you build with higher health but in the end you stop using it because you are just killing yourself. But the power it provides of having a 10s cooldown, is that good enough for you?

Charblaze.6958:

Epidemic
Apply vulnerability on yourself and epidemic on a foe. Incoming conditions to the affected foe are spread to all nearby foes.

• Self Vulnerability (6s)
• Epidemic (6s)
• Number of Targets: 5
• Radius: 600
• Range: 1,200
• Unblockable

Great idea! I love the mechanic of it. So much potential. It’s like a team support skill that fit the necro theme (trying to sell it poorly).

Probably too strong in team fights as is, though, would need a few tweaks, like reduced range for easier counter play, CD increase… Minor stuff.

Charblaze.6958:

Silverkey.2078:

• Epidemic: if used at the right moment, can be devastating both in PvE and PvP

“The right moment” is such a rare occurrence that no one is using this skill. And even when the moment is right the kitten long cast time will likely make you miss it.

Why we can’t have:

Epidemic
Apply vulnerability on yourself and epidemic on a foe. Incoming conditions to the affected foe are spread to all nearby foes.

• Self Vulnerability (6s)
• Epidemic (6s)
• Number of Targets: 5
• Radius: 600
• Range: 1,200
• Unblockable

In my opinion it’s much better because:

• You don’t need a perfect or unlikely scenario to use it effectively.
• Rewards coordinated team play.
• Removes the potential for an unfair or game breaking condition insta-kills.
• The gradual condition build up leaves room to counter play.
• The skill is suddenly a must have for every condi necro, covering for the poor AoE condi application of mace.
• Any build that uses Dhuumfire can see the worth of slotting this utility even if it’s at the expense of survivability. Hurrah for meaningful build choices!

That’s really good idea.

Rather big nerf to personal condi AoE damage PvE, but buff to PvP and organized PvE.

Consume Conditions- CD reduction is not worth the self-blind
Blood Is Power – AoE radius is too small and, like vulnerability, capping can make it useless
Epidemic – There are rarely enough adds in PvE to warrant Epidemic and there is a lot of cleansing in PvP so this is a niche skill better reserved for ideal conditions
Corrupt Boon – Great in PvP and WvW but useless in PvE as mobs’ boons and conditions do not work like those of real players
Corrosive Poison Cloud – The announced change for faster poison application and projectile destruction will help make this a lot more useful
Plague – Does almost no damage and is a cross between a panic button and an AoE irritant. I wish this corrupted boons on each pulse, too.

Plague Sending is absolutely mandatory for Master of Corruption – so much so that I think they should be rolled together into a single trait, if they are kept as they are.

I do not understand why Master of Corruption needs to self-inflict; especially with Plague Sending being required to prevent killing yourself. Why not add one additional condition on the output or increase current condition duration? It is a mechanic that does not make sense. Sure, it increases risk to the Necromancer for a “unique” mechanic but what other traits in all the professions actually do that? If it were me, I would just increase the effects on Corruption skills rather than decrease cool down.

CC – add flame blast AoE on heal
BiP – double radius
Epi – duplicated conditions add 15% base duration
CPC – duration increased 20%
CB – add 1.5 sec stun if no boons were corrupted
Plague – additionally converts 1 boon to 1 condition per pulse

Well i recently started to like the self applied conditions, even the effects of MoC are very nice. You can get some nasty combos with for example Blood is Power, MoC and an transfer makes up for some nice condi stacking.

The skills however are nothing special. They lack potency, even for being utility skills. Not even taking account the self inflicted condis. I think the way to go here is to make the skills exciting and powerful, adding some unique effects to the skills while also increasing the self harm. I’d imagine something like this for corruption spells traited with MOC:

CPC: Deals frequent poison and weakness in an 360 AOE field, targets inside the field can not regain health in any way.

Epidemic: Spreads all the conditions on the target onto nearby enemies, the target spreads all conditions they receive for 5 seconds onto nearby targets.

Corrupt boon: Removes all boons from the targeted enemy. The enemy can not get any further boons for 5 seconds.

Blood is power: Bleed the target foe, give yourself might. The target foe cant clean conditions for 5 seconds.

Plague: gain new pulses with a cooldown: freeze/torment and fear. These pulses have 10 sec cd.

CC: Effect like now, but furthermore you are healed for x% of your outgoing condition damage as long as you have conditions.

The effects seem very potent and borderline OP, But they have a distinct theme. The self harm should be balanced around this potency. It could range from conditions to self tsun or daze or root, to % hp loss or even increasing CDs or sacrificing lifeforce. High risk high reward spells that are centered around heavily hindering your enemies with conditions and potent secondary effects.

The problem is that the way they are designed, they are very hard to balance. If you increase their potency + increase the self-harm “to make up for it”, it can be actually too strong because you can send back the self-harm to the enemy.

I actually think some of the skills were balanced assuming you transfer the conditions back. That is why I think something like “you loose LF when using them” instead of a condition makes sense because this is easier to balance (this is a negative effect, not something you can send back). The only problem is that if it was like this, then you cannot use the skill if you have low LF, which is very dangerous with CC for example!

Silverkey.2078:

The problem is that the way they are designed, they are very hard to balance. If you increase their potency + increase the self-harm “to make up for it”, it can be actually too strong because you can send back the self-harm to the enemy.

Here is the problem with this thought process, the very act of transferring them takes an entire extra skill. That extra skill carries all the power budget of transferring conditions, regardless of their source. If I use a corruption and then transfer it with Putrid Mark, I didn’t gain any power, my corruption didn’t suddenly become stronger than another skill, because the entire reason I have putrid mark on my bar in the first place is to get rid of conditions. If anything, the conditions transferred have to be significantly stronger than normal conditions to warrant me losing out on my condition removal tools.

Think of it this way, you have a core build that already has just enough condition removal to deal with whatever you’ll face in the content you are playing. You can either load up the rest of your build with non-corruptions, and don’t need to waste any power budget on more removal, or you can take Corruptions, which not only take up power budget on their own, but also require additional power taken away from something else in order to deal with the fact that you now don’t have enough condition removal. In practice, this means you now have to take both your corruption and say Plague Signet, whereas in any other situation you would just take a single skill and it wouldn’t need an entire extra skill just to mitigate its downsides. In this way, Corruptions have to have nearly double the strength of normal skills, because they effectively take two skills to use: the corruption itself and the skill used to mitigate its downside.

Now, if you equip a corruption and don’t take anything to mitigate its downside, all of a sudden you are down on condition removal. If you transfer that bleed from Blood is Power, you now have one condition removal less than you would have had, and when you get hit with that long immobilize or huge bleed burst, you won’t have the removal to deal with it because you instead used it on BiP.

The self-applied conditions for these reasons are not a “plus” to the skill, because they innately require other mechanics (which by taking weaken you) to deal with. Because of this, the corruption skill itself doesn’t hold any “extra” power just because another skill can be used to take advantage of the self weakness.

Bhawb.7408:

…

Very well said, I think this is a very common misconception about corruptions, even among some of the devs.

Bhawb.7408:

Here is the problem with this thought process, the very act of transferring them takes an entire extra skill. That extra skill carries all the power budget of transferring conditions, regardless of their source. If I use a corruption and then transfer it with Putrid Mark, I didn’t gain any power, my corruption didn’t suddenly become stronger than another skill, because the entire reason I have putrid mark on my bar in the first place is to get rid of conditions. If anything, the conditions transferred have to be significantly stronger than normal conditions to warrant me losing out on my condition removal tools.

Think of it this way, you have a core build that already has just enough condition removal to deal with whatever you’ll face in the content you are playing. You can either load up the rest of your build with non-corruptions, and don’t need to waste any power budget on more removal, or you can take Corruptions, which not only take up power budget on their own, but also require additional power taken away from something else in order to deal with the fact that you now don’t have enough condition removal. In practice, this means you now have to take both your corruption and say Plague Signet, whereas in any other situation you would just take a single skill and it wouldn’t need an entire extra skill just to mitigate its downsides. In this way, Corruptions have to have nearly double the strength of normal skills, because they effectively take two skills to use: the corruption itself and the skill used to mitigate its downside.

Now, if you equip a corruption and don’t take anything to mitigate its downside, all of a sudden you are down on condition removal. If you transfer that bleed from Blood is Power, you now have one condition removal less than you would have had, and when you get hit with that long immobilize or huge bleed burst, you won’t have the removal to deal with it because you instead used it on BiP.

The self-applied conditions for these reasons are not a “plus” to the skill, because they innately require other mechanics (which by taking weaken you) to deal with. Because of this, the corruption skill itself doesn’t hold any “extra” power just because another skill can be used to take advantage of the self weakness.

I perfectly agree with you, and yet that is how the devs look at it. That is for example exactly what they explained in the stream for the specialization patch. We both know it does not work this way, but that is how they sell them.

Personally, the way I prefer to look at the corruption theme is: since necro has a lot of passive sustain, we cannot be bursty. Corruptions are a way to trade some of our sustain for some burst. That is I believe a niche where corruptions could shine. However, they currently don’t, because they don’t really reduce our sustain but actually prevent us from bursting (they are often non-damaging conditions like blindness, cripple or weakness) and do not offer anything that strong in exchange.

Imagine a corruption which uses our LF but increases by 25% our damage in the next 10s. PvE players would love that since currently the shroud is not a DPS increase if you already max crits. Or one where you use some LF but become invuln for a few seconds (trading passive non scalable sustain for active scalable defense).

Master of corruptions is fine in pve. Please don’t change ANet. Haven’t tried corruptions in pvp.

Conceptually I’d like them to add more to it. Maybe an elite spec down the road, but I think of it as the spiritual successor to the life sac skills in gw1. I think trying to take away the self-harm aspect isn’t fun design. There are plenty of traits that take care of condis, or turn them into a benefit. Improve those if they aren’t good enough. Don’t take away corruptions’ uniqueness.

I will start with “Anything works in WvW and PvE”.

I don’t who does but when I use a corruption, now only Consume Conditions, I never send the self condi it is not worth it. It doesn’t matter in PvE first because it’s easy and it’s flawed there is no real condition pressure so cleansing is often disregarded meaning 66% of necro is useless there. Even back then with CB there is no point in sending that 1 condi you have other conditions to worry about did I forgot to say PvE is flawed? So no they shouldn’t be scared of giving them more power without raising the self condi, it wouldn’t even reach requirement levels such as Ice Bow or PS war in PvE.

Oh how could I forget…my bad but yes PvE is flawed.

I’ll keep my points simple:

Consume Conditions:

- Remove self-inflicted conditions. Conditions on a condi-cleanse makes no sense, and it is completely counter-productive to the whole transfer strategy.

- The Blind is visually annoying, because it makes my screen goes black.

Other Corruptions:

- Remove self-inflicted weakness.

- Remove self-inflicted poison.

- Main skill effects not powerful enough to justify being inflicted with self-conditions in the first place.

- Why no Resistance?

- Why does traiting actually punish us?

Self-inflicted conditions need to be less intrusive. Less Weakness and Blind, and more Bleed.

One consideration is to modify Corruptions to be more like GW1 Sacrifices: Very little cooldowns in exchange for powerful effects.

The GW1 skills “Blood is Power” and “Order of Pain” come to mind for what GW2 corruptions should strive to be. I’m talking that corruptions should high-risk, high-reward. Imagine applying a stack of Burn to onself in exchange for a devastating AoE attack, turning our health into a resource.

I agree the MoC concept is cool. But the effects are too weak for the price, especially in PVP. And the title Master of Corruption doesn’t make much sense, because the nec doesn’t gain any additional corruption abilities (they just build up self inflicted conditions, which they can try to transfer)

How about either:
1. all transferred conditions are doubled in intensity and duration. (I think something like this was suggested already)
or:
1. Target of transferred conditions also gets a boon corrupted for each condition.

AND
2. Gain 2% lifeforce for each condition transferred.

Kain Francois.4328:

I’ll keep my points simple:

Consume Conditions:

- Remove self-inflicted conditions. Conditions on a condi-cleanse makes no sense, and it is completely counter-productive to the whole transfer strategy.

- The Blind is visually annoying, because it makes my screen goes black.

Other Corruptions:

- Remove self-inflicted weakness.

- Remove self-inflicted poison.

- Main skill effects not powerful enough to justify being inflicted with self-conditions in the first place.

- Why no Resistance?

- Why does traiting actually punish us?

Self-inflicted conditions need to be less intrusive. Less Weakness and Blind, and more Bleed.

One consideration is to modify Corruptions to be more like GW1 Sacrifices: Very little cooldowns in exchange for powerful effects.

The GW1 skills “Blood is Power” and “Order of Pain” come to mind for what GW2 corruptions should strive to be. I’m talking that corruptions should high-risk, high-reward. Imagine applying a stack of Burn to onself in exchange for a devastating AoE attack, turning our health into a resource.

Great point. I think making all of the skills cause 1 stack selfbleeding (one more when traited) (except CC) or vuln would be way better than giving weakness or poison which have other detrimental effects like healing for less or doing less damage…which is just silly on damaging skills.

I still would rather have a simple HP cost.

And yes, the effects of corruptions need to become a lot stronger; what they did to CPC is taking it into the right direction.

I always thought it’d be interesting if Corruptions skills had a baseline effect on cast with a short window to suffer a downside to enhance the effect, but with no initial self-conditions. That way Corruptions feel like a way to increase power at a price and reward intelligent use.

For instance, Consume Conditions could clear conditions and heal, then give you a few seconds to choose to take a few stacks of Vulnerability to decrease the cooldown by 3 seconds; Epidemic could transfer conditions on cast, then let you gain Weakness to do the present effect; Blood is Power could Bleed the enemy and give you Fury, and let you Bleed to give AoE Might and briefly make allies’ attacks unlockable.

Then Master of Corruptions could be reformatted to work like the Mesmer’s Mantra trait and let you Corrupt twice per cast, suffering the downsides each time.

spoj.9672:

Only epidemic and now CPC are decent. But they are by no means so powerful that they justify the self harm conditions. Plague and consume were good before they became corruptions. Plague is still sort of ok.

My suggestion would be to remove self conditions entirely on the base skills. They arent justified. You could add the base self condis to master of corruption if you added increased potency + cooldown reduction. But as it stands there are far too many negatives and not enough positives. Plus the actual skills arent even that strong.

So yeah i agree with some of your ideas. Basically i can support 1, 4 (only as a compromise), 5 and 6. But i think the base skills should have no self conditions what so ever. Because not every build will want to take transfers and cleanses just to use the base versions of a utility set. If you trait for corruptions then you are using curses which means you will likely have plague sending so it can be justified. Requiring a cleanse/transfer for untraited skills is severely limiting the option to take these skills for niche situations. And thats not good.

Or… Make Master of Corruption give you resistance. Like 3 seconds per Corruption skill. Not only would it make you immune to a condispike. But it would also make a Corruption Necro the true master of Condis. You can’t hurt him with it and he will hurt you back with all your might.

They could always make Plague Sending have a 2 second cooldown! That way you can transfer constantly without worry!

gemnscout.5739:

I agree the MoC concept is cool. But the effects are too weak for the price, especially in PVP. And the title Master of Corruption doesn’t make much sense, because the nec doesn’t gain any additional corruption abilities (they just build up self inflicted conditions, which they can try to transfer)

How about either:
1. all transferred conditions are doubled in intensity and duration. (I think something like this was suggested already)
or:
1. Target of transferred conditions also gets a boon corrupted for each condition.

AND
2. Gain 2% lifeforce for each condition transferred.

I support this 100%. Best and least complicated idea I’ve seen so far

I’d like to see Master of Corruptions turn into something like this:
Reduces recharge and cast time on corruption skills. Corruption skills inflict additional conditions on you.
Recharge: 33%
Cast time: 1 second

This changes everything but CC to an insta-cast skill, making corrupt boon and epidemic extremely strong, as well as decreasing the likelihood of your heal being interrupted.

I think MoC is fine. I’m experimenting with it now.

BiP is 2 bleed plus 2 torment. Getting that onto the enemy, or feeding on it with CC, makes a big difference. The 2s cripple on CPC is inconsequential, so MoC adds complexity which is welcome.

I think we need to take some more time to chew over how we handle MoC and let the meta settle now CPC is worth a kitten .

SupahSpankeh.8452:

I think MoC is fine. I’m experimenting with it now.

BiP is 2 bleed plus 2 torment. Getting that onto the enemy, or feeding on it with CC, makes a big difference. The 2s cripple on CPC is inconsequential, so MoC adds complexity which is welcome.

I think we need to take some more time to chew over how we handle MoC and let the meta settle now CPC is worth a kitten .

With Plague Sending it’s great, but not competitive enough in pvp as it stands, because with MoC, triggering Plague Sending is super easy without having to worry about condis coming from enemies, for example in PvE with a Sinister Condi build, since you don’t need to take the actual Plague Signet to transfer the extra condis. This gives MoC interesting synergy with the added Torment to the Scepter 3 which gives Torment, plus an extra stack per condition. On the golem in the HoTM, I was able to get on average 8-10 stacks of Torment with a mix of MoC (CPC, and BiP) + a crit with Plague Sending equipped, and Signet of Spite, and that’s a quick, repeatable combo thanks to how many different condis necros can put out. Although there is supposed to be a cap on how much bonus Torment you get from FoC, so not sure how much you can get from that.

I like how it plays right now, and I’m not sure how Sinister stacks up now compared to how it was before this patch, but a Condi build with SoV, CPC, BiP, and SoS, combined with Plague Sending, MoC, and the Signets of Suffering for the might per signet (works great with Plague Sending), is at the very least, a fun build to play imo. Before, only what? Three stacks of Torment was feasible for a Necro without outside sources? Now, you can get to 10+ with Shackles, and FoC? I would like someone to run the numbers to compare a Condi build now, compared to before patch, utilizing corruptions to combo with the new FoC.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

I think MoC is fine. I’m experimenting with it now.

BiP is 2 bleed plus 2 torment. Getting that onto the enemy, or feeding on it with CC, makes a big difference. The 2s cripple on CPC is inconsequential, so MoC adds complexity which is welcome.

I think we need to take some more time to chew over how we handle MoC and let the meta settle now CPC is worth a kitten .

MoC is not fine. The only thing this thing does is force you take more cleanse/transfers and lock them to your corruption skills.
Let’s take BiP: BiP (traited) can drain up to 61% of my health bar with no extra might or vulnerability. This damage is so high you practically have to cleanse it, consume conditions gives little advantage since you ate 547,5 torment damage during the cast alone and you gained 724 health and that’s assuming I do not have already torment apllied to me.
If using a single cleanse skill outside CC then I’m either forced to take staff or dagger offhand and use those skills then I locked my weapon usage to BiP, if I want to use other skills then I either need multiple of them or I lose the (bonus) cooldown reduction from MoC even if I traited the cleanse skills.
If that doesn’t suit you can just use it for a bit, take some damage and cleanse it later when you need the cleanse. That isn’t benificial as well because BiP is front loaded, the shorter torment + the might mean that the beginning of your self infliction hits harder than the end.
That’s just BiP now think this with 2 corruption skills.

If it’s 61% of your healthbar, it’s 61% of someone else’s too.

Yeah, we need to transfer or consume conds to mitigate MoC. So what? That’s a valid playstyle, and not one which we struggle with. MoC adds depth. It requires thought and planning. I like it.

If you use BiP with a transfer, that’s 2 cond types the opponent has to cleanse rather than one.

It’s not like it’s rare to have traits that enforce or require a playstyle, and there are two traits at the same level which work with almost any build.

I say keep it. In fact, I’d like to see the self conditions become even more severe. That 2s cripple on CPC is pathetic. Would like 5×10s poison.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

If it’s 61% of your healthbar, it’s 61% of someone else’s too.

Yeah, we need to transfer or consume conds to mitigate MoC. So what? That’s a valid playstyle, and not one which we struggle with. MoC adds depth. It requires thought and planning. I like it.

If you use BiP with a transfer, that’s 2 cond types the opponent has to cleanse rather than one.

It’s not like it’s rare to have traits that enforce or require a playstyle, and there are two traits at the same level which work with almost any build.

I say keep it. In fact, I’d like to see the self conditions become even more severe. That 2s cripple on CPC is pathetic. Would like 5×10s poison.

It’s not 61% of their since most transfer aren’t instant (only one instant is plague signet and plague sending requires a crit) so you take some damage already to yourself and since it is so front loaded well you lose quite a bit. Forcing a skill to be used shortly after another (or simply together) because the penalty is so front loaded is anything but depth, I would calling it dumbing down.

Using BiP with a transfer is not 2 more condi since necros using scepter already have 2 torment skills and bleed is just given on crit and by the base effect of BiP itself. So it’s 1 extra condi at best. Also if its one extra on the foe it is also possible to be one extra for the foe since a lot of our cleanses have a limit. Example: If you have poison, burn and confusion on you and then use BiP and send it back using deathly swarm you still have 2 conditions on you. The transfer-corruption combo is nothing more then a illusion which hides the power of the transfer as the power of the self infliction of the corruption.

Traits that require a playstyle is one thing but traits that force/ditactates the placement and usage of skills it doesn’t even affect or lose effeciency of the trait itself is basically unheard off. The trait itself is not a bonus in itself since you get more base self hurt due the cooldown reduction plus an extra condition: double hurt.

nice discussion shame it will fall on deaf earn and the traits will contunue to never be used because they seem to dream about us killing ourselves.. i spose it fits the emo i hate life theme of necros really

Wait, what fraction of the bleed/torment stacks are you allowing to tick before you dump it?

With MoC, only use BiP when you have Putrid Mark up, plague signet is ready, or dagger 4 is in flight at Max range.

Without MoC, use it whenever, but you won’t be putting 2×10s torment on your opponent.

Not sure what’s hard to grasp. MoC differs from other traits in that it requires forethought and tactical play to maximise the benefit. If that isn’t your style, the other two traits are very, very powerful indeed.

I’m all for MoC. Will I use itnin every build? Nope. Is it suitable at all times? Nope. Does it provide a 20s heal and interesting tactical tradeoffs? Yes.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Wait, what fraction of the bleed/torment stacks are you allowing to tick before you dump it?

With MoC, only use BiP when you have Putrid Mark up, plague signet is ready, or dagger 4 is in flight at Max range.

And who is going to walk into mark instead of dodging through it? Moving seem to be the counter to the deahtly swarm trick (need to test that to be sure though) and is needed if I want to run epidemic. Plague signet has a cooldown to high to fully use the 13% bonus cooldown reduction.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Not sure what’s hard to grasp. MoC differs from other traits in that it requires forethought and tactical play to maximise the benefit. If that isn’t your style, the other two traits are very, very powerful indeed.

It requires forethought, read slotting and maybe traiting a transfer and then lock the corruption to the transfer. I would not call that tactical play though. It is however very cramping for previously explained reasons. Also the alternatives, terror is a niche trait and PoC unfortunatly does need boons (which in PvE is not always available).

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Does it provide a 20s heal and interesting tactical tradeoffs? Yes.

It had/has that tactical tradeoff in the past it was.is called a big cast time. Nerfing it and then giving the option to trait for lower cooldown with an extra hindering condition was not their smartest idea.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Wait, what fraction of the bleed/torment stacks are you allowing to tick before you dump it?

With MoC, only use BiP when you have Putrid Mark up, plague signet is ready, or dagger 4 is in flight at Max range.

Without MoC, use it whenever, but you won’t be putting 2×10s torment on your opponent.

Not sure what’s hard to grasp. MoC differs from other traits in that it requires forethought and tactical play to maximise the benefit. If that isn’t your style, the other two traits are very, very powerful indeed.

I’m all for MoC. Will I use itnin every build? Nope. Is it suitable at all times? Nope. Does it provide a 20s heal and interesting tactical tradeoffs? Yes.

I may be wrong somewhere in my head, but what’s the point of the 33% cool down reduction if anyway, you’ll have to wait for one of your condi transfer to be up before using your skill?

MoC is a good try at focusing on corruption, but the trade off is awfull. If you want to make corruption attractive you gotta support them by at least one or 2 other traits that take advantage of them without crippling your character even more. I’m repeating myself but a trait that would siphon life around you each time you “corrupt” yourself would be a good example of trait that would make corruption attractive. At the moment, they are not (outside of main effect of each skill that is).

The necromancer corrupt himself, draw condition from allies but absolutely nothing in it’s specializations take advantage of that to push this into a place where you would actually want to corrupt yourself and draw condition from allies.

I think corruptions are in an alright place at the moment. Only thing I’d like looking at is a reduction on the Epidemic cast time. Everything else seems workable.

More important for me is a cooldown reduction on Well Of Darkness, or at least added functionality

Blood is Power: Needs better uptime on might, never going to compete with aoe might stackers when we can’t even get 8 stacks in a small aoe for 100% of the time.

Corrupt Boon: Could go up to 7 boons, and it would probably be fine. There needs to be a reason to actually run this over signets.

CPC: decent buff, still probably won’t see a ton of use, but it’s goodish now.

Epidemic: Not anywhere near as good as most suggest. One second cast, and aoe cleanse make it near useless in pvp. You would win most of the fights that this skill can win you. I’d like to see it get a cast reduction, or apply a bleed for each condition copied.

Consume Conditions: I miss the old base cd. Move it back down to 25 base, so necros don’t have to trait for a decent heal.

Plague: One of the best elites in the game, massively underrated if a little boring. AOE blind AOE weakness, and aoe bleed/poison are all useful.