Guild Wars 2

Seeing how the new terror trait seems to borrow from a suggestion made in this forum, thank you Nemesis.8593, I’d like to make a new suggestion for one of our utility types.

I don’t understand why our corruption skills inflict conditions on us, they aren’t more powerful than average utility skills. It feels like nothing more than an odd mechanic that was implemented as a nod towards GW1 Necromancers.

Some might say the purpose seems obvious, Necromancers have certain skills that allow them to transfer conditions ( 3 weapon skills + 1 utility + 1 underwater DS skill) or heal themselves (1 healing skill). Although these aren’t all our forms of condition removal, they are the only ones that actually “benefit” from us having conditions in the first place.

Condition removal is something every other class in the game does as a reaction to their enemies, however, not only do we have to keep our active condition removals to react to our enemies, we also need them to USE some of our utility skills without detriment.

I propose a change to the self-inflicted conditions from corruptions skills, these would involve a new mechanic that I’d like to call Contagion .

Contagion is a mechanic that affects only a few conditions in GW2, the Necromancer’s self inflicted ones. As the name suggests, Contagion conditions can be passively spread to nearby enemies, 600 range should be alright.

If an enemy approaches a Necromancer currently suffering from a condition with Contagion that enemy is afflicted with every contagion condition the Necromancer has with the same current duration remaining on the Necromancer, provided that the enemy doesn’t already have that condition from any Contagion source (multiple Necromancers would be unable to stack contagion conditions).

What this means is that if the enemy approaches a Necromancer with the self-bleed from Blood is Power and it has 5 seconds remaining the enemy would suffer a 2 stack bleed with 5 seconds duration and a contagion source. Now the wording in the previous paragraph is specific to allow the following thing to happen; if the enemy removes all his bleeds and remains close enough to the Necromancer that he’d be affected by contagion he would suffer the 2 stacks of bleed again with however long remains in their duration.

Contagion would allow many new strategic choices for Necromancers and at the same time would give us a way to deal with sustained condition removals.

Awesome idea, I prefer this forum so much more when I see threads like these and not Necros suck!

I wholeheartedly support this thread, I think it is an amazing idea that adds strategic depth to a necromancer. I worry about it not being explained properly if implemented, and making people who are new to the game feel a bit overwhelmed, or this guy must be “cheating”. If a small mark over the head like the skull from “Marked for Death” Reaper #2 were to be put in so that there is some sort of notification of what is going on instead of it being entirely behind the scenes I think that this would be really good and make a necro feel more unique, or differentiated from other classes

I wholeheartedly second this idea and it would certainly compliment my current Necro playstyle (inflict conditions on self, move those conditions to enemy) in a unique way. One of the many reasons I enjoy playing the class is being able to look at conditions as tools and assets instead of just another unwanted red mark on my screen (Consume Conditions for example is probably the best heal in the game and easily more effective than Blood Fiend and Well of Blood when combined with corruption skills). Having this mechanic would give the Necro something special while not buffing him to the point that other classes complain about the class being overpowered.

It’s a very nice idea but a bit too complicated for Anet to consider at this point.

Sry NO. it would make necros dull. Self inflicted dots boost healing ( dot consumption) & you can transfer them to a specific target with a staff. Necros are by far the most strategic class in the game + that is also why we have such high health pool & Ds , to mitigate dots/dmg.

A question for the OP:

I have 2 self-bleed stacks from Blood Is Power and my enemy has its 2 bleed stacks. Assume further there are other mobs in range. Would I be allowed to Contagion my 2 stacks onto the enemies; use a skill to actually transfer my 2 stacks to the first enemy; and then Epidemic that first enemy to spread its now 6 stacks to all the other enemies, thereby ending up with myself clean, the first enemy with 6 bleed stacks and surrounding enemies with 8 stacks, plus whatever other bleeds and conditions may have been applied first? Or would Contagion-spread conditions not be further spreadable via Epidemic?

EDIT: And I stupidly forget to post the main point…it seems that Contagion used in this way enables a necro to actually AoE-apply his self-conditions twice over, once directly and once through transfer and Epidemic. From what little I’ve seen so far (I’m still very new to the game), Blood is Power stacks are quite potent – would suddenly going from being able to spread 4 stacks of it to 8 be a bit much?

@Akame, I don’t understand how adding functionality would make us dull. It would add the trade-off of keeping the conditions on us to spread them further, besides just cleansing with heal or transfer asap.

@ Serenseven, As I suggest it, if you are within 600 range of targets, half BiP’s and Epidemic’s casting range, that’s exactly what would happen after you use 3 different skills, 2 of which are utilities, plus your enemies would also get the 3xVulnerability from Epidemic if you get within range of contagion after casting it. Take notice though, that since you would no longer be afflicted by BiP’s self condition, if they cleanse the bleed you would be unable to reapply it with contagion.

Edit: As I mentioned on the post, that whole combo used up 2 utilities + 1 weapon skill (putrid mark right?) and had you within 600 range of those enemies (who also need to be close enough to each other for Epidemic and putrid mark), something that complicated and that can still be countered with condition clearing SHOULD be that powerful.

To clarify some stuff about contagion.

The point of it is to create irremovable conditions and restrict them to be from the self-inflicted ones with corruptions skills.

The trade-off is that for those conditions to re-apply we must keep them on ourselves and be within range to our enemies, also by keeping these conditions on ourselves we’d also need to tank other conditions that might be inflicted for their duration.
Of course as Necromancers we do have the option to mitigate the DoT with DS, as has been said before and choose when it’s been too much and remove all conditions currently on us.