Guild Wars 2

Hi guys
Im a new Necro player and I have to say NECRO was the absolute last class i thought I would play, because I had hopes I would be maining another profession (Mesmer and Ele) never gave necro a chance on creation until a week ago when a guild recommended I give it a chance. MUST say I love this class, totally fits my playstyle.

But as I level up, I seem to notice something about our utility skills that seem to annoy me… and that is “corruption” type skills. These skills seem to place a debuff on us just to get the same debuff + a slightly and a bit more effect on the enemy. The problem may not be the debuff itself, but the payoff of the triggered effect seems mediocre to me :I. I thought that they were put there, just for the heal that eats it, but imo so many self debuffing skills for 1 skill doesn’t seem all that great specially for a not so great effect. Maybe im just too NOOB atm to see the goodness of these skills.

Also in my personal opinion, I would like to see the self debuff decreased or removed or the pay off effect to be buffed. Not to mention on the necro page in the wiki and the gw 2 site they only advertise necro special skill types are marks, minions, wells and spectrals. No corruption listed which I think may have been added in during last minute phase for necros.

List of corruption skills are:
Blood is Power Bleed yourself to gain might and bleed your target.
(why do we have to hurt ourselves to gain a buff, which classes like guardians can just buff)

Corrosive Poison Cloud Weaken yourself. The target area is enveloped in a noxious cloud that poisons foes and leaves them weakened.
(It seems thief short bows can get this out more easily than us)

Corrupt Boon Poison yourself. Transform all boons on your foe into negative conditions.
(don’t we have an aoe version of this as a well? )

Epidemic Apply vulnerability on yourself. Spread conditions on a target foe to all nearby foes.
(this one seems okay, not sure if imba if we remove the self debuff)

Sorry if I sound dumb, but these type of skills annoy me and don’t seem to be used alot by someone like me. Sorry for my noobness ><

Necro has a lot of ways to take that debuff from the corruption skill and throw it on the enemy along with the effect. Specifically Staff 4, OH Dagger 1, Plague Signet, and can also Consume Conditions for a bigger heal.

They also have a high base HP to help soak up condition dmg.

You’ve correctly pointed out that these skills aren’t used by all types of players/necromancers. The reason that these utility skills exist is because the Necromancer has a few tricks to let them either consume, convert, or transfer conditions on themselves. If you’re running a build with a few of these tricks, a self-inflicted poison debuff is no problem.

Consume Conditions will make it so popping a Corruption right before you need to heal anyways negates the condition you get.

Skills like Putrid Mark (Staff 4), Deathly Swarm (Dagger 4) and Life Blast (Underwater Death Shroud 1), and Plague Signet can all transfer conditions from yourself back to an opponent, which can let you weaponize conditions that are applied to yourself.

Finally, Well of Power can convert conditions to buffs, meaning hitting two corruptions and Well of Power can quickly net you regeneration and protection.

So Corruptions are given those weaknesses because with a build that plans for them, they’re more like weaponry than drawbacks.

Heh, hackks beat me to it. But yeah, there’s a lot of sneaky tricks to let the Necromancer not really care about conditions applied to them.

Here is something simple to test… get a stack of bleeds on a target 8-10 watch how much it the bleeds tick for. Use Blood is Power stop attacking…. watch how much the bleeds tick for.

The two bleeds it puts on you are nothing just tranfer those two bleeds to your target or feast on them for higher heal.

oooh thanks for the feedback and answer guys opened up my mind and perception of these skills.
So basically it’s more of a “SKILL” based utility skill where once you get the jist of necro and know what to do and their strengths you can utilise your “many” condition removals to use “corruption” skills to their full potential? :-D this reminds me of shattering and attunement swapping haha thanks! I guess it’s something for me to master

I think you underestimate just how good BiP is lol. You end up bleeding your opponent for 2 stacks for 30 seconds (doesn’t seem like much but trust me a 2 stack 30 second bleed will do quite a bit of damage) and granting yourself 10 stacks of might for 10 seconds is awesome especially if you have some boon duration along with that. For example, my BiP is giving me 14ish seconds of might because of my traits.

I don’t Often use Corruption in PVP (don’t get me wrong they’re good especially Epidemic with CD reduction, oh god yes), but they can be fantastic, in PVE I use a Conditionmancer Staff + Scepter/Dagger, utilities Blood is power, Epidemic, Well of Power, Consume conditions, Plague Form.

In PVE I basically Stand back, Spam Curses, Grasping Dead, Enfeebling blood, BiP and Epidemic then either Deathly Swarm/WoP/CC/Putrid Mark. I also did this in the recent Event by god it was fun.

You just go to bare in mind you add conditions on your self but you have plenty of ways to remove/exchange them.

After playing a bit of elementalist and having experienced recent events with my necro, i really wish those ground target effects would happen on my focused targets location if i double tapped the skill button. Trying to effectively put down that ground target while both myself and my target is moving, even with things like greater marks, is a major pain.

digiowl.9620:

After playing a bit of elementalist and having experienced recent events with my necro, i really wish those ground target effects would happen on my focused targets location if i double tapped the skill button. Trying to effectively put down that ground target while both myself and my target is moving, even with things like greater marks, is a major pain.

Have you tried enabling smartcasting? I don’t know from experience, but that sounds like it might be helpful.

Still need me to have the mouse on the target. Tho i guess i could put a piece of tape at the center of the screen, as that is where things apparently land when i hold down right mouse. Given that, i wonder why Anet didn’t provide a way to lock the mouse view and a crosshair…

digiowl.9620:

After playing a bit of elementalist and having experienced recent events with my necro, i really wish those ground target effects would happen on my focused targets location if i double tapped the skill button. Trying to effectively put down that ground target while both myself and my target is moving, even with things like greater marks, is a major pain.

The ground targeting trait should default at the location of your target and then be movable with your mouse. I was never sure why it wasn’t designed that way in the first place, since the whole point of ground targeting is to place it at your target, AWAY from you. So why not make it intuitive and do what its true purpose is. Its one of the many little things about GW2 that makes me scratch my head. Stuff that should be obvious to any designer right from the start.

Its not that its a pain to manually aim, but it isn’t as smooth as it should be.

Yea, the game UI is a odd hybrid of action and classic RPG. Action in that you are expected to move around a lot to stay alive. classic in that quite a few things favors that you actually stand still or suffer interface overload.

I’m a new conditionmancer and also have some trouble with the ground targeting spells… I have not tried the smartcasting or the trait but defaulting at the targets position is NOT useful in my opinion… one thing I Have quickly learned is that putting those ground targets on the target is usually a bad idea because by the time the mark goes down they will have moved out – you want to anticipate where they are going usually – I don’t know maybe it’s a lag issue.