Guild Wars 2

I’m asking myself, how is that trait worth taking? 5 seconds poison on minion’s death?
I think it would be way more interesting if it dealt damage (maybe 1000-1500?), also considering that minions, at this point, are good only at dying.

Dem posion fields, dem weakness, as in you crippled the enemy reactionary defenses by around 40% as punishment for them killing off minions or on command.

Imagine exploding both bone minions, then also getting death nova to proc more damage off of each minion…little too op, putrid explosion already hit hard and lowering the damage on a death nova explosion would make it pointless anyway. It’s ok as it sits although I think a grandmaster trait might be a bit excessive for it

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Imagine exploding both bone minions, then also getting death nova to proc more damage off of each minion…little too op, putrid explosion already hit hard and lowering the damage on a death nova explosion would make it pointless anyway. It’s ok as it sits although I think a grandmaster trait might be a bit excessive for it

Exploding minions only do roughly 2k damage each. There are plenty of skills in this game that do even more than that. It wouldn’t really be OP at all in the face of shatter/hundred blades/heartseeker/eviscerate/fire grab/etc.

They do roughly 2k damage at level 80 regardless of stats. That is important to note, because those listed things are all equally pretty terrible without very heavy damage investment and trait investment. I can get a 2k minion explosion at level 80 with no gear and no traits. In fact, 100b listed damage is only a little bit higher than putrid explosion (with nothing invested).

In my opinion, death nova just isn’t the place to put the damage. Yes it would be nice if it did like 500 damage on death, but if they are getting a damage buff, it should be somewhere else.

They do fixed damage that does not scale with gear, 2k is really poor damage considering they are slow to respond and dont stay on target. Takes a heck of alot of setup to get them to hit the target unless the target is a stand in place type.

Xom.9264:

They do fixed damage that does not scale with gear, 2k is really poor damage considering they are slow to respond and dont stay on target. Takes a heck of alot of setup to get them to hit the target unless the target is a stand in place type.

Not to mention the cast time just to get them out, while everyone else has their high burst high damage abilities all instant. Lets face it, the only reliable method to using bone minions is to cast them on top of the target you want them to blow up on. Otherwise they’ll never hit their targets.

100b isn’t instant. Neither is eviscerate, shatter, or firegrab when you consider every one of them requires some setup. Shatter needs clones out, firegrab needs burning, eviscerate needs adrenaline, and 100b takes 3.5 seconds channel.

And I reliably hit bone minion putrid explosions all the time. Yes there is the occasional miss because they aren’t quite on their target, and they aren’t hitting the target easily if they haven’t aggro’d, but like every other ability it’s up to you to make the ability hit, or not use it (yes they are unique with AI).

2k damage per explosion in full soldier gear with minimal offensive investment is very nice.

Ok, then lets also point out that minions have a travel to target time, whether or not they decide to lock on to and attack their target to begin with, playing a guessing game on which minion will actually explode if both aren’t on target, have a 1 second delay between explosions, or a possibility of them getting one shot by some AoE before being exploded. Bone minions still do laughably bad damage by comparison to the other skills listed. I’m not pointing out that they should ALL do the exact same damage, but 2k x 2 with a 1 second delay in between explosions in the face of 10k eviscerates, 9k shatter combo chains, and 7k fire grabs (fire grab is always followed immediately after ring of fire so burning is a non issue) is extremely weak. At least the mesmer clones run after their target before exploding. I figure the AI should at least do that with bone minions. We’ve all seen the necromancer videos during beta, and thats exactly what it looked like was happening. What happened? Did every single thing the necromancer have get gutted and given to other classes or something?

Eviscerate is very much instant. Its much like heartseeker. Hit the button and it jumps you to your target and hits them if you land within range. Especially if you’re already standing next to your target. Its a fire and forget auto lock skill. Very easy and almost impossible to miss with it unless blocked or dodged. There is no cast time to use this skill. Adrenaline is really a non factor and there are multiple ways to generate a full bar for an instant burst.

Regarding 100b, I was referring to the activation time. You press the button and it instantly starts swinging. I know its a channeled skill, but each individual hit during the channel still hits like a god kitten truck. More than what putrid explosion does. You don’t even need to hit someone with the full channel to bring the pain. Furthermore, 7 second cool down vs 20 second cool down. I would expect the 20 second cool down to do more than just 2k damage. HB does more than that per hit.

Honestly, we need our 3rd bone minion back. 2 putrid explosions are meh. 3 would actually put this skill on par with everyone else, even with the kittenty AI. At the very least you could still summon them on top of a target and blow them up there. There is still a 1 second delay between explosions, unlike clone shatters, so I have no idea why ANet thought bone minion skill was to powerful and needed to be nerfed.

You can kite people back to where the minions are, minion placement for the sake of putrid explosion isnt an issue, people are jsut as stupid as minion AI most of the time, they’ll run right into it. Why do you think shatter mesmers are so effective? Yes their illusions move, but it’s so easy to dodge out of it’s ridiculous…we have an instant aoe explosion that they can’t predict nor dodge out of if they’re in range….anyways,,,this thread isn’t about putrid explosion, the OP asked about what equates to the original form of death nova. just take into account not just putrid explosion+ death nova hard dps+ every other minion death nova-ing= too much because if that was our only skills like GW1, it would justify the punishment, but we still have our weapon skills, DS, and (if you didn’t choose flesh golem) your elite. I’m as much for giving necro ever scrap we can get as the next deadhandler, but that would be a bit too much. Would I like it? Of course lol! Would it be balanced…not really. It is definitely an opening for good dieas for the dev teams though, maybe extra effects can be added to death nova that don’t incorporate hard damage, honestly something like weakness automatically applied with death nova would be awesome. Weakness needs much more love in the game. It’s such an underrated skill, yet so powerful if used properly (although not as uberpowerful to the right people now that they did away with negative endurance, for those of you that never smacked people with negative E….I’m sorry…it was beautiful)

Edit: Ok yeah I know when to admit when I missed something, and re-reading I saw you mentioned our 3rd bone minion. I would be behind that 200%. Having that extra minion would make so much difference, I would even give up a combo finisher on the 3rd one. So yeah, I know when to admit it. See I’m not all bad ;-) we’re not so far off the same page

Just an idea. What if death nova increased the damage of bone minions explosion by a percentage? Like 30%-40%… instead of the poison field.

OMNIBUS.2913:

Just an idea. What if death nova increased the damage of bone minions explosion by a percentage? Like 30%-40%… instead of the poison field.

Nah the poison field is pretty nice, but you might be on to something, like I said an extra effect on it is good, and maybe not the hard damage you’re looking at, but Hell, even a good 1 second fear (with an internal cooldown to prevent chain fearing, gives them time to put up stability) would not only pressure them to throw stability early, but could give conditionmancers with a minion or two a fear spike (with terror trait) but yeah like I said it would either have to get an internal cd of respectable length to ensure no chain fearing (although I have been chain feared many times and it would be only fair to dish it back out, but we’re seeking balance here lol) OR only proc off of the bone minions so that it only gets max 2 second fear (if the hits land) since each minion has a cd, and feared opponents flee anyway in opposite directions from the caster depending on their starting position, so if the minion pathing worked properly it would only pursue 1 enemy anyway.

1k/1.5k damage on Death Nova isn’t that high.
Considering that Bone Minions explode on a 1s delay, their explosion is mostly unreliable thanks to their dumb AI and that the overall damage exploding both minion will be 6-7k (which is exactly the damage of a single backstab or a fire grab), it isn’t that overpowered.

At the moment, Death Nova is plain worthless, despite the fact that it has lot of potential.

Don’t forget we are talking about a Grandmaster Trait, not a minor trait everyone can bring. You have to invest 30 traitpoints into the Death Magic traitline to get this trait. Also, you are able to get this damage “on-demand” only with Bone Minions. Other minions must be killed by enemies to get only 1k damage, which isn’t that much considering the average cooldown of minions to be summoned.

Play gw1 death nova, and you’ll immediately agree gw2 version is underpowered Especially since it’s so hard to reach in grandmaster trait. It should do more damage.

I never said either Death nova was in the right trait category nor could it be compared to GW1 death nova. What I did say though, is that with GW1 necros, your entire bar was bui9lt around minions, most of the time anyway, so death nova required that spike. In this game, our weapon skills can very easily provide spikes, minions would be our sustained (in a perfect world) damage, and in certain situations they are. and you guys just aren’t reading my posts about this, I fully agree with adding more useability to death nova, or leaving as is but moving it to a lower tier. It was the ful damage I was concerned about, but something I just thought of you guys might like. Just like minion skills, the direct damage part of death nova could be a fixed value just like minion damages. That way powermancers and the like could still get a respectable spike if they took at least bone minions, but conditionmancers damages would still scale. Fod for thought, these are just forums after all, not like I’m mailing Anet a scoreboard

Kravick.4906:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Imagine exploding both bone minions, then also getting death nova to proc more damage off of each minion…little too op, putrid explosion already hit hard and lowering the damage on a death nova explosion would make it pointless anyway. It’s ok as it sits although I think a grandmaster trait might be a bit excessive for it

Exploding minions only do roughly 2k damage each. There are plenty of skills in this game that do even more than that. It wouldn’t really be OP at all in the face of shatter/hundred blades/heartseeker/eviscerate/fire grab/etc.

This. I don’t know why people keep saying stuff like “X would be OP” when clone shatters and auto attacks pump out 1.5-3k every few seconds without any input from the Mesmer. Exploding bone minions that generally sit afk and you have to hope the enemy is dumb enough to stand on both of them for 1.5-2K each are a complete joke TBH. A lot of players have a sense of entitlement on their class, but Necros are funny in that they have a sense of …detitlement? XD

No, some of us just realize that bad examples are bad. Putrid explosion, a non-scaling high base damage ability that is no more difficult to land than a shatter, cannot be compared to other high damage abilities that have added scaling from an entire build around them.

100b is a huge damaging ability yes, only on glass warriors, you throw together a PVT warrior and his 100b isn’t doing any more damage than my bone minions are. Same thing with every other ability that was listed; they are all only strong when used in builds that are entirely built around super high burst with only just enough defense to live.

Bhawb.7408:

No, some of us just realize that bad examples are bad. Putrid explosion, a non-scaling high base damage ability that is no more difficult to land than a shatter, cannot be compared to other high damage abilities that have added scaling from an entire build around them.

100b is a huge damaging ability yes, only on glass warriors, you throw together a PVT warrior and his 100b isn’t doing any more damage than my bone minions are. Same thing with every other ability that was listed; they are all only strong when used in builds that are entirely built around super high burst with only just enough defense to live.

I don’t know what world you live in where your bone minions home in to their targets and detonate without bugging out, but I wish I could live there.

So whats your excuse when the necro is in glass gear and those things still only hit for 2k?

Why are you using glass gear to try to increase the damage of something that doesn’t scale?

Bhawb.7408:

Why are you using glass gear to try to increase the damage of something that doesn’t scale?

That was my point. While the other abilities scale, and in turn do tremendous damage, ours do not. No matter what we do, our damage always ends up being mediocre, or just plain bad.

What I don’t understand, is why when someone comes up with a suggestion to put us on par with everyone else, we have people coming here and actually defend our weak position and say stuff like “That would be OP!” How can it be OP when it already exists on another class?

Well of suffering/axe 2. If you want to run glass gear, do it with abilities that scale, the rest of us will keep running full defensive setups with minions.

Not every single class is the same. People want to add burst damage to a class that isn’t built around doing burst damage.

Edit: also, you are right. I would really love to be on par with the god-tier of warriors in PvP.

Bhawb.7408:

Well of suffering/axe 2. If you want to run glass gear, do it with abilities that scale, the rest of us will keep running full defensive setups with minions.

Not every single class is the same. People want to add burst damage to a class that isn’t built around doing burst damage.

Edit: also, you are right. I would really love to be on par with the god-tier of warriors in PvP.

And in turn, necromancers are largely regarded as weak in PVP because we have no burst. You’re also trying to strawman me Bhawb. I expected better from you.

We are not regarded as weak at all. We are slow and easy to kill, but far from weak (there are multiple “tier” lists in sPvP forums that rate us mid to high depending on what they value). I’m surprised you are trying to defend more damage to a build that is already regarded to have very good damage.

Are you referring to the sPvP teams who all had to make sacrifices to support the one person who refused to play anything but necromancer? PvP isn’t always about fights in a box either. Especially a box where everyones burst damage is nerfed significantly.

I have yet to see a WvW video of a necromancer that wasn’t in the middle of a large zerg or pooping all over up levels and badly played opponents. Meanwhile I’ve seen many videos of mesmers, thieves, warriors, engineers, elementalists, and even guardians all 1vXing and winning. Every single 1vX I’ve seen involving a necromancer involved up levels. How are we not weak?

@Bhawb

OP ask for the 30 point trait to add some direct damage. Let’s say 1k direct damage on explosion.

So without damage trait, explosion does less then 2k. With the minion damage trait, it does around 2.3k if I remember correctly.

So you have 2 homing missiles, that require a precast, and (in WvW) that won’t run to the ennemy 80% the time. In sPvP, they are less buggy, but they still tend to bug for me (But not Bhawb, that guy use auto attack to debug it, but I’m not skilled enought to do that). So you have 2 unreliable missile, who are pretty slow once in combat. If they don’t get cleaved/AoE’d to death, you can explod them, but only if both of them are near the ennemy.

Because you have no idea which one will explod first, so you need both in range or it’s 50% chane of hit.You explod one, you have 1 cd timer, you explod the other.

You just did around 4.6k damage, let say 5k damage, with poison and weakness from the blast.Less then 4k without minion damage trait.

On a bunker build, meh it’s not that bad, but it’s nothing incredible. Especially how hard it is to land, how unreliable.

A Bunker Ranger can use a jaguar and crit for 5-6k on auto attack and still out bunker you.

In my opinion, the minion explosion is lack luster, as is the trait. Poison is good, but a lot of classe can counter it with cleansing, or poison removal heal.
Also take into account the liability of the attack.

Kravick.4906:

Are you referring to the sPvP teams who all had to make sacrifices to support the one person who refused to play anything but necromancer? PvP isn’t always about fights in a box either. Especially a box where everyones burst damage is nerfed significantly.

I have yet to see a WvW video of a necromancer that wasn’t in the middle of a large zerg or pooping all over up levels and badly played opponents. Meanwhile I’ve seen many videos of mesmers, thieves, warriors, engineers, elementalists, and even guardians all 1vXing and winning. Every single 1vX I’ve seen involving a necromancer involved up levels. How are we not weak?

Necros have the best “Boon Hate” in the game, making them incredibly helpful in busting bunker builds.
One Corrupt Boon or a well timed Spinal Shivers on a bunker Guardian allows any profession with better damage output to spike them down.

Signet of Undeath is the best Utility res skill in the game and Plague is very powerful in team fights.

With that said from my experience Necros aren’t very good 1vs1, and outright awful at roaming in WvW.

Warriors on the other hand are widely considered the weakest in sPvP.
They are predictable, have usually little Condition removal and don’t have any tricks in their sleeves.
The only things that make them dangerous are that they deal a ton of damage and are often quite mobile.

[quote=1918874;Kardiamond.6952:
A Bunker Ranger can use a jaguar and crit for 5-6k on auto attack and still out bunker you.

In my opinion, the minion explosion is lack luster, as is the trait. Poison is good, but a lot of classe can counter it with cleansing, or poison removal heal.
Also take into account the liability of the attack.
[/quote]

I play a Ranger in pvp, 5-6k is not even close for a bunker build on auto attack even with 30 percent more damage on crit. Running a full power pet build you can get 4k on a crit with might stacks and coming off stealth. 5-6 k is not even close it’s more like 1-2k crit on auto and 3-4k out of stealth.

Bone Minions as far as I am aware don’t trigger the death nova trait unless they die without blowing up.

Let me explain why damage on Death Nova is just a bad idea. You have poison field plus poison = aoe weakness – blast finishers. Just because you and your team aren’t using your poison field correctly doesn’t mean it’s bad. Putrid explosion boom use your finishers, and suddenly your opponent is struggling to keep up because even if the clear the initial poison your team readily reapplies it with finishers, now you add in the 4k damage from both explosions plus your axe 2 chain of 5-7k in Berzerker gear toss in the ticking damage, and the retal from axe 3 on you or flip to dagger and drop the guy with awell and dagger 1. Adding more damage to an ability like death Nova would be a mistake.

I don’t even take Death Nova anymore its better to spend the 30 to pickup Close to Death or Axe Mastery.

Bas.7406:

I play a Ranger in pvp, 5-6k is not even close for a bunker build on auto attack even with 30 percent more damage on crit. Running a full power pet build you can get 4k on a crit with might stacks and coming off stealth. 5-6 k is not even close it’s more like 1-2k crit on auto and 3-4k out of stealth.

Bone Minions as far as I am aware don’t trigger the death nova trait unless they die without blowing up.

Let me explain why damage on Death Nova is just a bad idea. You have poison field plus poison = aoe weakness – blast finishers. Just because you and your team aren’t using your poison field correctly doesn’t mean it’s bad. Putrid explosion boom use your finishers, and suddenly your opponent is struggling to keep up because even if the clear the initial poison your team readily reapplies it with finishers, now you add in the 4k damage from both explosions plus your axe 2 chain of 5-7k in Berzerker gear toss in the ticking damage, and the retal from axe 3 on you or flip to dagger and drop the guy with awell and dagger 1. Adding more damage to an ability like death Nova would be a mistake.

I don’t even take Death Nova anymore its better to spend the 30 to pickup Close to Death or Axe Mastery.

And here we are again :
“Just because you and your team aren’t using your poison field correctly doesn’t mean it’s bad. "

I was wondering if I could get away without Bhawb or Bas remembering me that I don’t know how to play this game. Thanks man

“I play a Ranger in pvp”

I also play it, and I also play it in WvW/PvE. I’m used a lot the BM bunker build in sPvP. We might use some different traits/utility, but I was able to pull those number. I didn’t pull them out of nowhere. There were also a post not too long ago on the Ranger forum, wondering what kind of damage you could achieve with Jaguar on BM bunker.

Bones minions trigger the death nova when they explod. Early on at release it wasn’t like that. They eventually changed it, might be around december, I’m not sure.

and we all know how AWESOME are poison field. Oh sorry did I just put a poison field over your firefield, sorry no might of stack for you, but hey you have now 30 sec of weakness on the ennemy

And you just forgot about all the difficulties we have to go tru to land it. It’s not a simple grenade barrage like my Engineer that can hit for 10k. That’s a summon-aim-fire-hope-maybetouch skills, which does less then half the damage, with a 1 second delay between each duration.

You even admit yourself it’s not worth the investissement.

The question is : Is it worth to have a poison field, or to have 20% more damage when enemy is under 50% hp? Is it better then 3 sec of stability? I think it’s nowhere near those 2 trait.

And other then bone minion, when was the last time you told yourself : “ kitten good thing I had poison nova” when one of your minion died?

And if you don’t like the damage add, we can add something else. Bleeds, cripple, immob, blind, fear(ahaha).

Kardiamond.6952:

And here we are again :
“Just because you and your team aren’t using your poison field correctly doesn’t mean it’s bad. "

I was wondering if I could get away without Bhawb or Bas remembering me that I don’t know how to play this game. Thanks man

My point was that adding damage to a poison field is a bad precedent to set. Essentially with a poison field you can get it going. Combo fields are horrible for solo play since we have a limited amount of finishers, but they work really really well in organized team play.

I also never said you can’t play. I said you weren’t using the poison field correctly.

Kardiamond.6952:

“I play a Ranger in pvp”

I also play it, and I also play it in WvW/PvE. I’m used a lot the BM bunker build in sPvP. We might use some different traits/utility, but I was able to pull those number. I didn’t pull them out of nowhere. There were also a post not too long ago on the Ranger forum, wondering what kind of damage you could achieve with Jaguar on BM bunker.

---

I actually talked with Battosai and Ovi about this recently when we were talking rangers in tournaments, both stated that bunker Rangers are amazing, because you can get as high as 3k crits with the jaguar regularly while playing a bunker build. I asked them how this was the case when I can only get 3-4k with my power build and a panther. The only way you can get 5k is against a thief who has stacks of vulnerability on them. We actually went over that, and now I wish I would have recorded it haha.

Kardiamond.6952:

Bones minions trigger the death nova when they explode. Early on at release it wasn’t like that. They eventually changed it, might be around december, I’m not sure.

and we all know how AWESOME are poison field. Oh sorry did I just put a poison field over your firefield, sorry no might of stack for you, but hey you have now 30 sec of weakness on the ennemy

And you just forgot about all the difficulties we have to go tru to land it. It’s not a simple grenade barrage like my Engineer that can hit for 10k. That’s a summon-aim-fire-hope-maybetouch skills, which does less then half the damage, with a 1 second delay between each duration.

You even admit yourself it’s not worth the investissement.

The problem with combo fields is that 90 percent of the population doesn’t use them correctly we just spam the ability, and then it keeps overlapping the other combo fields. The truly great wvwvw guilds and tournament teams call out combo fields, and learn how to use them effectively. Poison and Dark Fields are some of the most highly used to great effectiveness. posion field right on a bunker who is about to use a heal have your guy leap finish through and kill him off.

Trying to land it is not difficult at all with Bone minions. I agree with NAY I don’t rely on pathing issues to screw up my bombs, I kite people through the bone minion and blow it up then. The sad part is when pathing issues have them in two separate areas and it blows up the one I am not near. That’s an entirely different conversation.

Kardiamond.6952:

The question is : Is it worth to have a poison field, or to have 20% more damage when enemy is under 50% hp? Is it better then 3 sec of stability? I think it’s nowhere near those 2 trait.

And other then bone minion, when was the last time you told yourself : kitten good thing I had poison nova" when one of your minion died?

And if you don’t like the damage add, we can add something else. Bleeds, cripple, immob, blind, fear(ahaha).

It’s not a great grandmaster traits, but nothing in the Blood line is worth investing in, and I don’t take it because it’s not worth investing in, but rather due to the fact that they get wtf pawned every single aoe in wvwvw or massive aoe damage in a dungeon. I need a bit of personal damage to offset their loss.

I prefer boon stripping for tournaments, and don’t run Minions in wvwvw due to pathing issues screwing up the Flesh Golem and Bone Minions.

@Bas

Kitting people into your bone minion isn’t always doable, and it’s also not supose to be like that. They are supose to be like homing missile. Like when you summon them during a fight, they will go homing mode and hit.

You say you don’t use those trait in wvw/pve because of the AoE killing them. What about PvP? You don’t seems to use it ether, since you didn’t know about them exploding trigger the trait.

Is it because it’s not useful enought? Because I don’t see anyone using this trait.

Out of subject, I also disagree with you on the blood trait line, but we will discuss that when times will come

Why don’t you play boon stripping minions in sPvP?

Kardiamond.6952:

@Bas

Kitting people into your bone minion isn’t always doable, and it’s also not supose to be like that. They are supose to be like homing missile. Like when you summon them during a fight, they will go homing mode and hit.

You say you don’t use those trait in wvw/pve because of the AoE killing them. What about PvP? You don’t seems to use it ether, since you didn’t know about them exploding trigger the trait.

Is it because it’s not useful enought? Because I don’t see anyone using this trait.

Out of subject, I also disagree with you on the blood trait line, but we will discuss that when times will come

Why don’t you play boon stripping minions in sPvP?

Kiting people is almost always doable. As a necro you should be moving constantly anyways to avoid the non-tracking damage abilities.

AOE in WvWvW is ridiculous right now, plus the pathing in WvWvW is so bad that it’s bound to bug out Flesh Golem and bone minions repeatedly. When I do bring in Minions into WvWvW, I wait to summon bone minions until summon is within a few feet of me and then blow them up or wait until they are at 50 percent summon an bombs away. It’s less of a hassle.

Because both Bone Minions and Flesh wurm already drop a poison field when they explode, there is no reason for me to bring Death Nova for only two minions. So boon stripping if I am on the assault team and running Minions.

At the moment I am running a power build with spectral grasp/a well/signet of undeath and 30 points in soul reaping for 3 sec stability.

@Bas

I completly agree about minion in WvW. They have too many drawback.

I’m not sure I follow you with the bone minion and flesh worm poison field?

None of them drop a poison field. Bone minion only blast finish, and Flesh is a blast finisher and cast poison, but itsn’t a field. If you mean that Flesh Worm already cast poison, then I agree. But no field.

Even then, you say it yourself : Death Nova isn’t useful enought to take it. Especially for a GM trait.

Did I actually read that Poison field is one of the most useful field in the game?
Strange. I always knew it was the most worthless.

sorrow.2364:

Did I actually read that Poison field is one of the most useful field in the game?
Strange. I always knew it was the most worthless.

Poison fields are pretty much crap. You win PVP by bursting down your opponent. This is part of the reason why thieves and mesmers are able to 1vX so well, and why necros are so terrible at it. Pick a target, blow him up in under 3 seconds, suddenly that 1v3 turns into a 1v2 before you even know it, and in the case of mesmers, the other two are half dead now already. You can’t kill someone by stacking weakness, thats for sure. Doesn’t do much to stop them from turning you inside out either.

Poison Field isn’t that bad, but I would argue that it’s one of the weakess field in the game.

Surely depend of your team synergy tho.

Kravick.4906:

sorrow.2364:

Did I actually read that Poison field is one of the most useful field in the game?
Strange. I always knew it was the most worthless.

Poison fields are pretty much crap. You win PVP by bursting down your opponent. This is part of the reason why thieves and mesmers are able to 1vX so well, and why necros are so terrible at it. Pick a target, blow him up in under 3 seconds, suddenly that 1v3 turns into a 1v2 before you even know it, and in the case of mesmers, the other two are half dead now already. You can’t kill someone by stacking weakness, thats for sure. Doesn’t do much to stop them from turning you inside out either.

Kravick, you know I like you, but you are way off. Poison fields give weakness which doesn’t work against bang bang classes, but in a majority of tournaments, there are no bang bang classes, everyone is bunker, condition, or hybrid. Weakness = 50 percent less damage = easier chance to kill. Poison right before a theif/mesmer hits and boom your guardian can’t do enough to keep himself up.

Thieves are always trying to apply poisons, and Mesmers are one of the absolute worse organized tournament classes unless you have a team that doesn’t pay attention. Shatter mesmers get condition crushed and you can easily dodge all of their damage.

Thieves are situational. You use them to strike weakened targets or protect your necro and ranger. If you are dying in three seconds in a tournament to a thief as a necro there is something else wrong there.

Bas.7406:

Kravick, you know I like you, but you are way off. Poison fields give weakness which doesn’t work against bang bang classes, but in a majority of tournaments, there are no bang bang classes, everyone is bunker, condition, or hybrid. Weakness = 50 percent less damage = easier chance to kill. Poison right before a theif/mesmer hits and boom your guardian can’t do enough to keep himself up.

Thieves are always trying to apply poisons, and Mesmers are one of the absolute worse organized tournament classes unless you have a team that doesn’t pay attention. Shatter mesmers get condition crushed and you can easily dodge all of their damage.

Thieves are situational. You use them to strike weakened targets or protect your necro and ranger. If you are dying in three seconds in a tournament to a thief as a necro there is something else wrong there.

We are not talking about Poison itself, we are talking about Poison field, which is arguably the worse combo field in the game, maybe Dark field can be as bad as Poison field is, which is, guess what, another almost-exclusive to Necromancers.

Weakness does not grants 50% less damage. Weakness grants 50% chance of getting 50% less damage on non-critical strikes, which is different.

Reduced damage is nice, but the hit they take to endurance + poison you get from finishers really is the reason to use Death Nova.

How about change death nova into putrid ground. I think this change would balance MM completely.

Bas.7406:

Kravick, you know I like you, but you are way off. Poison fields give weakness which doesn’t work against bang bang classes, but in a majority of tournaments, there are no bang bang classes, everyone is bunker, condition, or hybrid. Weakness = 50 percent less damage = easier chance to kill. Poison right before a theif/mesmer hits and boom your guardian can’t do enough to keep himself up.

Thieves are always trying to apply poisons, and Mesmers are one of the absolute worse organized tournament classes unless you have a team that doesn’t pay attention. Shatter mesmers get condition crushed and you can easily dodge all of their damage.

Thieves are situational. You use them to strike weakened targets or protect your necro and ranger. If you are dying in three seconds in a tournament to a thief as a necro there is something else wrong there.

Guardians will just cleanse the poison, like they always do. You can’t keep conditions on them longer than 3-4 seconds. Its why condition necros are such garbage against bunker guardians. You can’t do any damage to them.

I know what your saying about weakness though, but weakness needs to effect the boom boom classes a hell of a lot more than they are now. The “non-critical hit” clause is whats making the condition bad. It doesn’t matter that it works on the bunker classes, which already do next to no damage to begin with. It needs to do more to the boom boom classes than just reduce their amount of dodges, which doesn’t matter since they have so many skills that dodge for them anyway. TBH, it needs to effect every build equally. Hell, I’d even be up for making it weaken your condition damage stat so conditions even do less damage while affected by weakness. This is part of the reason that people have such trouble with high burst builds. Weakness does nothing to stop the incoming damage. Nothing does short of kiting them. Necros can’t kite for kitten seeing how they have no mobility.

Stop bringing up sPvP for a moment and realize that not everyone PVPs in a box. I do on occasion (still no tournament team, solo queing is painful), but the majority of my PVP is in WvW. In WvW you are getting burst that badly. The critical damage stat is double in WvW than in sPVP, but the toughness/vitality stat doesn’t go up any higher than what you already see in sPVP.