Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Stx.4857:

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

If you are getting hit by enough people to get a high amount of might stacks, what good will it be that you live a handful of seconds when popping out of DS cause you are under 25%?

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

JonPeters.5630:

Stx.4857:

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

I really do appreciate you taking the time for the responses.

I’ll let others comment on Siphoned Power now.. because I’m not sure what else I can say about it. Even though the function of it might seem unique and interesting, in reality the performance you get out of it is no-where even close to other GM traits that give 200-300 power increases, 5% damage or 10% damage boosts. I feel this trait would be more suited to a Master level minor, or major(most players admit that it wouldn’t even be worthy of a minor adept slot).

Thanks again for your time, and I am very glad you reconsidered the change to Weakening Shroud.

The discussion of possibly moving Terror into Grandmaster tier is making me dread these upcoming changes, if it happens. 30 in Curses is a staple for my build (20/30/20/0/0), and being forced to choose between Terror or Lingering Curses is ridiculously harsh. With my current gear and traits, swapping Lingering Curses for any other trait causes a time reduction of over four seconds for my scepter conditions. For someone relying on long durations to help stack up bleeds, that is a massive blow to damage. Deciding to go with Lingering Curses instead of Terror makes fear an absolutely useless condition, which is also way too harsh a blow to damage for me. I currently also have 20 in Death Magic because I adore the underrated Reaper’s Protection trait, but that extra 10 points becomes literally worthless if my fear doesn’t damage. Not having Reaper’s Protection AND not having it inflict damage vastly reduces the appeal of Death Magic for me.

So, point is, if Terror is going to be moved up to Grandmaster, then other traits are going to need to be moved or redone unless you absolutely want to destroy Scepter/Dagger Necromancers. We’re already hated enough with condition capping and there being much higher damage alternatives; to have to pick between Terror or Lingering Curses is just going to make us even less worth having in any party. I strongly urge you to consider making Lingering Curses and Terror accessible simultaneously if Terror is moved.

Oneiroid.9245:

The discussion of possibly moving Terror into Grandmaster tier is making me dread these upcoming changes, if it happens. 30 in Curses is a staple for my build (20/30/20/0/0), and being forced to choose between Terror or Lingering Curses is ridiculously harsh. With my current gear and traits, swapping Lingering Curses for any other trait causes a time reduction of over four seconds for my scepter conditions. For someone relying on long durations to help stack up bleeds, that is a massive blow to damage. Deciding to go with Lingering Curses instead of Terror makes fear an absolutely useless condition, which is also way too harsh a blow to damage for me. I currently also have 20 in Death Magic because I adore the underrated Reaper’s Protection trait, but that extra 10 points becomes literally worthless if my fear doesn’t damage. Not having Reaper’s Protection AND not having it inflict damage vastly reduces the appeal of Death Magic for me.

So, point is, if Terror is going to be moved up to Grandmaster, then other traits are going to need to be moved or redone unless you absolutely want to destroy Scepter/Dagger Necromancers. We’re already hated enough with condition capping and there being much higher damage alternatives; to have to pick between Terror or Lingering Curses is just going to make us even less worth having in any party. I strongly urge you to consider making Lingering Curses and Terror accessible simultaneously if Terror is moved.

I believe Anet has stated several times that they greatly dislike weapon skill traits at the GM level. If Terror was moved up, I’d be shocked if it weren’t Lingering Curses moved down.

Jon, again, thanks so much for posting. On Weakening Shroud…. the big thing here for me is the removal of the ICD. Nothing was more frustrating than running a Near to Death build and this only proccing every other shroud. It was unreliable in the thick of battle because you didn’t know if it was up or not, or felt like you need to delay entering DS just in case. Much appreciated and with that I could stomach a 2-3 sec weakness, for sure.

[Edit] Oh, also, any thoughts on normalizing Reaper’s Precision w/ a small ICD + larger LF gain? Fairly good in very specific AoE situations, but the low proc rate for only 1% life force makes it lackluster in most cases. Unless that’s the design goal?

JonPeters.5630:

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

Bhawb.7408:

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

But that build would have to be:

30/10/0/0/20 (+10) … in WvW … with duration food … and double duration weapons … and duration crystals …

I think you meant 30/20/0/0/20 which is generally accepted as one of the best condition builds, which is what you run this with, and also not including food, but only including condition duration runes. With food it actually goes to.

54% uptime @ 2s
82% uptime @ 3s

Jon

As you are aware from reading these threads, there are quite a few vocal suggestions for ways to make 30 Spite no longer a common condition build.

JonPeters.5630:

jsduke.6537:

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

Like I said, it works while in DS.

His concern I believe is the DS lockout bug. Which you can avoid by just manually leaving DS right before it ends. If you take a big hit that knocks you from 10% DS to out, often times you get a split second lockout, which may prevent you from doing anything. If you can’t do anything, 25% HP isn’t a lot of time to react, and your DS bar is gone, so having might isn’t really helpful.

The window of 25% HP is too low for it to be safely used, so it just becomes a happy accident when it works, had by and large cannot be leverage actively, which is what people want… ACTIVE gameplay traits.

33% and a longer might in my opinion, perhaps a 6-8 second might, or a 10 second might with a 1 second internal cooldown. Even in WvW, where getting hit a LOT happens a LOT, I don’t get much use out of this trait.

JonPeters.5630:

AN UPDATE
Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Obviously this is a very big change so please discuss, and keep your discussion constructive, so that we can actually talk through the merits/downsides.

Jon

Several thoughts on this:

1. Much better than a regular Enfeebling Blood with 25 sec cd! So thanks in advance.

2. No ICD is really nice!
This gives a little more weight to Near to Death, more than any boon-upon-entering-DS-trait I believe.

3. This change will somewhat defuse how dangerous it can be to stand close to a necro once he goes into Shroud, yet from a necro’s pov it maintains (or even increases) survivability by always being able to mitigate some damage at close range when DS is available.

4. I’m a little confused as to why 100% condition duration would increase a 6sec bleed by only 4 seconds, and a 2 sec weakness by just 1 sec…?
Or was this regarding the highest possible duration increase in sPvP only?

5. I can see that it’s a bit of a bummer for players like spoj in PvE.
Perma weakness on npcs can be achieved by other means, but of course at the cost of losing some dps.
Maybe future patches will compensate for the shortcomings of necros in PvE anyway, but I think if the current Weakening Shroud needs a nerf then this is a really good solution.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

You brought up the issue that both of the Death GM traits are minion traits. Have you considered how merging Reanimator with Death Nova would effect that situation? How would that merger effect your options if you wanted to move or remove either of those GM traits? It seems like it would make more sense to merge it with Minion Master, I think.

For Death reworks in general:

*Death line currently focuses on Toughness, Boon Duration, Staves and Minions.

*Minor Traits should be focused on Toughness and Boon related buffs — independent of Staff or Minion skills so that they have utility to greater variety of builds.

*Major Traits should see an even distribution of Minion skills and Staff skills, especially at GM Trait tier.

*Consider adding/improving synergy between Staff and Minion skills.

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

Don’t forget the context of that uptime. To get it, we have to use DS on cooldown, which restricts our defense by a massive amount. Trading our ability to absorb bursts in exchange for weakness uptime that benefits the whole group actually sounds fairly fair. Since it’s only an adept level trait though, 2s would still be apropriate imo. It still lets us use DS to mitigate spikes, which is what it’s needed for. In reality, very few people will use the skill for it’s uptime. They’re going to hold their DS cooldown until it’s needed.

Similar complain about staff. The argument that MOB is one of the best abilities in the game relies on the assumption of a situation that almost never happens. To get the numbers you mentioned, you need to hit 5 enemys and 5 allies simulatneously, and the conditions need to stay for their full duration and not get cleansed or pushed off. Having all of these things at the same time is so unlikely that it can be discounted completely. In actual use, MOB is a mediocre ability made strong only by it’s short cooldown and the lack of any other DPS options on that weapon. If you really want to go through with nerfing this, take a look at adjusting the autoattack damage or upping the damage of the other marks to compensate.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

In the curses tree, or spite? If its 30 spite, it really still doesn’t make sense — since it would be based off precision and do condition damage (curses line). It would fit really well in Curses or Soul Reaping.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I really like the idea.

My only worry, what about piercing life blast?

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

That was my worry. What about a 10s ICD, so that it can’t be used with Near to Death to “abuse” the weakness duration?

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I like this in that it creates some interesting play in the “shroud and out” style to drop a single life blast + maybe a dark path, then drop out of DS. That being said I still question the placement of Dhuumfire in Spite, or at least with it taking up a Grandmaster trait that could (potentially) play off control skills like chill, immobilize, etc. I would say, short term, that’s an improvement, but long term I would like to see you re-evaulate that trait slot entirely.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

Interesting idea…. and it would discourage Dire play because of how weak life blast is, and how much you would lower your damage… of course such a change would significantly weaken scepter spam builds, but they are pretty mindless.

This would also be great for Carrion, as you no longer have to CRIT to activate it. I think the duration is too short really… maybe 3 seconds with an 8 second ICD.

I love the idea of giving people more reasons to go in and out of DS constantly… that is a playstyle I love.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I’m not a necromancer, but I want to add that it’s cool that you’re moving away from uncounterable passive effects, and linking those kind of powerful traits to specific skills, and thus to specific playstyles.

As a non-necromancer, by having dhuumfire linked to DS, it’ll be much easier for me to know when the burning is coming out or not. It also seems like it’ll take the burst out of condi-necros.

Now, if the trait is good or not, I’ll leave it to necro players’ opinions.

JonPeters.5630:

jsduke.6537:

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

Like I said, it works while in DS.

It’s not lost on me. However, now you are stacking multiple variables before this trait becomes actually beneficial.

<25% HP and in DS and Enough Life Force to absorb being hit “a bunch of times”

Realistically, you’re talking about 3-5 stacks of Might at a time when you are almost dead. No matter how you slice it, it’s Too Little Too Late. This might be a decent Master level minor, but at GM tier we should expect better.

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

Would this replace the current Dhuumfire? If so, there are a few problems:

The inner cooldown for this would effectively be 10 seconds because of Death Shroud’s cooldown.

Attaching a condition build’s damage to Death Shroud is a completely different beast than doing it for a power build. Condition builds barely keep up life force if they’re not killing targets, which, as we both know, is fairly difficult in a close PvP match. Power builds are constantly overflowing with life force. Given that, it seems a little impractical to ask condition necromancers to rely on Death Shroud for damage, especially since it’s also condition necromancers’ main survivability tool.

I also have a few questions:

If you do this, would you give Curses a worthy 30-point trait? Like I noted above, there are a few reasons a condition necromancer wouldn’t take this new trait, so it could end up an effective nerf to condition necromancers as the class sees decreasing use in high-level structured PvP.

On that note, are you guys concerned at all that necromancers are seeing less use in high-level play recently? I assume you think the warrior nerfs will help necromancers. But I’m unconvinced the warrior nerfs are that far-reaching, and it seems mesmers and elementalists getting enough new anti-condition tools to keep necromancers under control.

On the PvE side, are you guys doing anything about bleed cap? The last update we got on this issue was more than six months ago, and there have been a few large threads asking for an update in that time span.

Lopez.7369:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

Would this replace the current Dhuumfire? If so, there are a few problems:

The inner cooldown for this would effectively be 10 seconds because of Death Shroud’s cooldown.

Not if you 1) have near to death OR 2) are staying in DS

Reaper’s Might would encourage Spite to stay in DS, Might on Life Blast, and burning every so often on top of this. Even in a power build the Might would help to keep your condi dmg up to feed the burning.

Lopez.7369:

Attaching a condition build’s damage to Death Shroud is a completely different beast than doing it for a power build. Condition builds barely keep up life force if they’re not killing targets, which, as we both know, is fairly difficult in a close PvP match. Power builds are constantly overflowing with life force. Given that, it seems a little impractical to ask condition necromancers to rely on Death Shroud for damage, especially since it’s also condition necromancers’ main survivability tool.

I agree it would be an effective cooldown of 10 seconds for flashers, which is why I think it should be 8 seconds and a longer base, but I don’t think its a problem for condi necros because of LF. Condi necro’s really dont sit in DS much anyhow. It does further the dependence on SR 15 though, which may be a bad thing.

Supposedly they are looking at LF generation and improving it don’t forget as well.

JonPeters.5630:

jsduke.6537:

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

Like I said, it works while in DS.

No.

I mean, yes, it does work while in DS, but no, this is not a fun or interesting trait. I have understood this functionality to be the case since launch, but it’s never once proven useful. Please, please, please… change this trait. Anything would be better. I’d even take one of the tediously unimaginative +100 power if x traits that we have in our other lines.

Just change it. Anything. Please?

JonPeters.5630:

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

So just lock that skill out from working with epidemic? Like a stun or a daze.

@John,

Has there been any talks on Rune of the Undead actually being affected by Plague Form? Having 6 of the RotU is supposed to increase your condition based on your toughness and when the player drops into Plague, their toughness increases by quite a bit. While the condition damage is not affected. Is this as designed or is it a bug that needs a fix

JonPeters.5630:

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

I just want to say it’s awesome to be having a conversation like this, I think everyone here was really hoping we’d be able to have an opportunity like this.

With regards to life siphon and the recent changes, I’m curious if you are seeing the numbers / usage you were hoping to see from these changes? Or is there a possibility of further tweaking?

Is the idea of healing to our HP (even a greatly reduced amount) while in DS completely off the table?

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

make it 100% when life blast crits not when it hits.
and keep the 10s CD.

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

Stx.4857:

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

If you are getting hit by enough people to get a high amount of might stacks, what good will it be that you live a handful of seconds when popping out of DS cause you are under 25%?

Well in a very closely matched one on one situation in sPvP, those stacks might come in handy. Those few extra stacks of might could be the deal breaker.

However in WvW and PvE, it should be obvious that it is useless. If I am already at 25% health or less I would be seconds away from dying from the enemy zerg. Even if I pop into DS, my goal would be to escape and survive somehow (remember, the whole enemy zerg wants me dead). The last thing I wanted to do at that point is to rush into the middle of the enemy zerg to make use of my might stacks.

We already dying and then rushing into the enemy zerg to deal damage is twisted. To balance, we should be dealing a flat rate of like 300% original damage or something. If you want us to take such high risk, our damage better be worth the trouble. It shouldn’t be relying on the number of times the enemies hits us.

Jon, can we please get something here that’s useful in all of WvW, PvE and sPvP? Maybe replace those might stacks with protection or retaliation?

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I LOVE the general idea.
DS hopping should be encouraged imo, as it is such a fun aspect of necro. I would love to see the CD on DS lowered/taken away, and all the on-DS and on-exiting-DS abilities balanced via ICDs.

Whatever you do to Dhuumfire though, please stop balancing around 30/20///20 with +100% condition duration
80% is realistic in wvw, which is a huge clusterkitten anyway, 30% +20% for a specific condition is realistic in spvp. And that is assuming mandatory 30 Spite is here to stay.

Brando.1374:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

make it 100% when life blast crits not when it hits.
and keep the 10s CD.

The “on crit” part was oddly out of place in a non-crit tree… they made that comment before. I would prefer non-crit as it opens up more choices. Or 50% non-crit if you think its too strong at 100% non-crit. I think if it was 50% non-crit chance I likely wouldnt take it as I couldnt rely on it to proc.

JonPeters.5630:

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

I think the discussion then should become – can we rework epidemic, to allow for interesting conditions like this without being broken?

I hate to draw WoW parallels, but I loved the “Siphon Life” ability on my Warlock, which was exactly this condition. I also had some abilities to spread my DoTs around to multiple targets, but Siphon Life was excluded.

I feel like sometimes the Necromancer design is sort of hamstrung by the current condition design (including epidemic, in this case, being a simple “spread all conditions” ability).

Edit: WoW’s Siphon Life was also interesting because it was relatively weak on single targets. You could, however, cast it on multiple targets if you desired to spend the time to.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

This is an interesting idea, but I foresee a number of problems.

1: would be pretty useless in PvE. Burn is fairly common in PvE and 2 seconds of burning every 10 seconds (6s ICD is meaningless due to the 10s CD on DS)

2: Somewhat confused as to the use. A condition build where this would shine would almost never get to use it in PvP due to the insane task it is to build up LF as a condition spec. Whereas a power build can easily build LF but probably wouldn’t take this trait

On a side note, do you have any comment on what you think the current state of necro condition specs in PvE (specifically dungeons and fractals) is? There are a number of issues like condition caps, disproportionate gear scaling, that seem to limit the uses of condition specs in PvE.

Bhawb.7408:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I really like the idea.

My only worry, what about piercing life blast?

6 sec ICD, piercing doesn’t matter.

That Dhuumfire idea is really good btw, it would require doing something on the players part rather than it being a passive proc, and it be avoidable from the opponent’s perspective too. In short: it rewards skilled play
Also, you’d make Life Blast more accessible for condition mancers! genius.

alanis.6094:

In the curses tree, or spite? If its 30 spite, it really still doesn’t make sense — since it would be based off precision and do condition damage (curses line). It would fit really well in Curses or Soul Reaping.

He said “on hit”.
Imo this version would make even more sense in Spite than it does now, but maybe it could be lowered to master tier then.

Bhawb.7408:

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

That was my worry. What about a 10s ICD, so that it can’t be used with Near to Death to “abuse” the weakness duration?

There would be no abuse for the same reason that those % uptime numbers aren’t realistic.
Because:
For the Shroud cooldown to really line up like that would mean that you enter and immediately leave DS again, so you would trigger Weakening Shroud but never really get to use Death Shroud itself.
I can speak from my own experience when I say that I spend about 30-50% of my time during combat in DS, and Weakening Shroud with its current 15 sec icd triggers about 70% of the time when I’m entering DS.
So it’s safe to assume that neither 2 nor 3 sec weakness would not lead to an Enfeebling Blood spam.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

A lot of these considerations, unfortunately, don’t make a lot of sense.

We should consider the following realities:

• A damaging condition in the Power line both hurts condition builds that want it and limits power builds that don’t want it
• Having it force power players to use LB to get the burn may have some validity in PvP, but drives this trait further into the mud for PvE where LB is inferior DPS to Dagger

Consider the following instead, Jon:

• Move Withering Precision from Curses to Spite Grandmaster
• Move Dhuumfire from Spite to Curses Grandmaster and DON’T change it
• Move Terror up to Grandmaster
• Drop Lingering Curses down to Master
• Move Weakening Shroud up to Master and DON’T change duration
• Move Spectral Attunement down to Adept

Withering Precision: Deal 15% more damage to foes suffering from Weakness.
Siphoned Power: Deal 10% more damage when you have over 90% HP or 90% Death Shroud.

This does the following things:

• Conditionmancers are forced to take either Terror or Dhuumfire, but they can’t have both
• Dhuumfire is a cover condition for other conditions and can have longer durations depending on condition duration investment, but fear doing damage is also very powerful. From this position, you could possibly even buff Dhuumfire to bring it into line with Terror since they occupy the same trait spot on a bar.
• Weakening Shroud is kept valuable with its new synergy with the new Withering Precision, which is now in the Power line
• Withering Precision goes to the Spite line and actually provides a dps boost comparable to Close to Death with different conditions, which actually helps PvE necros too
• New Siphoned Power has synergy with Death Shroud because you can activate it when health is over 90% and keep it there safely, and this trait significantly helps power Necros in both PvP and PvE to actually be worth packing over condition variants

JonPeters.5630:

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

Hmm good point. Glad to hear you’d thought of it yourself, gives me some faith that you know what you’re doing after all this time ;-)

Personally, it really sounds like massive fun to me and could tie the class together. It really fits with the manipulator/attrition gameplay style. Even if you have to make it immune to epidemic, or limit it to one target, or just make it so LF only ever comes ikittenngle target rates, just having it there adds so much potential gameplay that it’s worth putting all kinds of artificial restrictions on it in order to have it in game. IMO of course.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I am not sure if its a best idea , i think non of necro gonna use that becouse they is no time to use it durning a fight , ppl will just not take this trait

Would much rather get protection or stability off of Siphoned Power. Even if it was 1 second duration that triggered on every hit it would be much better.

Rising Dusk.2408:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

A lot of these considerations, unfortunately, don’t make a lot of sense.

We should consider the following realities:

• A damaging condition in the Power line both hurts condition builds that want it and limits power builds that don’t want it
• Having it force power players to use LB to get the burn may have some validity in PvP, but drives this trait further into the mud for PvE where LB is inferior DPS to Dagger

Consider the following instead, Jon:

• Move Withering Precision from Curses to Spite Grandmaster
• Move Dhuumfire from Spite to Curses Grandmaster and DON’T change it
• Move Terror up to Grandmaster
• Drop Lingering Curses down to Master
• Move Weakening Shroud up to Master and DON’T change duration
• Move Spectral Attunement down to Adept

Withering Precision: Deal 15% more damage to foes suffering from Weakness.
Siphoned Power: Deal 10% more damage when you have over 90% HP or 90% Death Shroud.

This does the following things:

• Conditionmancers are forced to take either Terror or Dhuumfire, but they can’t have both
• Dhuumfire is a cover condition for other conditions and can have longer durations depending on condition duration investment, but fear doing damage is also very powerful. From this position, you could possibly even buff Dhuumfire to bring it into line with Terror since they occupy the same trait spot on a bar.
• Weakening Shroud is kept valuable with its new synergy with the new Withering Precision, which is now in the Power line
• Withering Precision goes to the Spite line and actually provides a dps boost comparable to Close to Death with different conditions, which actually helps PvE necros too
• New Siphoned Power has synergy with Death Shroud because you can activate it when health is over 90% and keep it there safely, and this trait significantly helps power Necros in both PvP and PvE to actually be worth packing over condition variants

Love the Idea of Making a necro choose to get burning or terror!!!!!
a necro should not be able to get both at the same time!

JonathanSharp.7094

…

We also like the idea of making Terror scale with # of conditions on your target, so there’s more “play” to trying to load your target up with a lot of condies before you hit them with Fear. Your opponent can try to keep condies low, so that Terror won’t hurt as much.

…

Love this idea!

Siphon suggestion copied from another thread:

Vampiric – Recover HP whenever you gain LifeForce. 50% of gained LifeForce is added to your current HP but HP recovered is capped at 50% of your current HealingPower (If you gained 2000 LF but had only 1000 healing power you’d be healed for only 500 HP).

Making vampiric trigger only from LF gain adds some strategic choices in a build that chooses to take it, especially since our ranged weapons have worse LF generation than our close range choices, this already rewards a more risky play-style with greater HP recovery.

Secondly, this removes issue of power affecting HP recovery since this healing scales only with Vitality and max LF ( since most LF gains are % based), while also being capped by current Healing power.

For a build to attain what could be considered ludicrous HP recovery ( 100s per second) it would have to expose itself in aggressive attacks while being mostly focused on defensive stats, so you are nigh-unkillable but deal very little damage ( the intended tradeoff for such a gain).

Finally, this implementation is actually pretty simple to be added in the game, it’s a subroutine triggered on LF gain that adds the calculated amount to our HP.

Also, since life siphoning wouldn’t be triggered by hits anymore, traits like vampiric wells could be tweaked to have higher scaling, without fear of mass instant gains because of too many compounding effects.

Brando.1374:

-snip-

Love the Idea of Making a necro choose to get burning or terror!!!!!
a necro should not be able to get both at the same time!

But only if terror has a small buff! The one suggested by Jon does add some skill to the play, on both sides.

Well with the much higher condition duration possible in pve/wvw, maybe this would be the first trait that could be split to be STRONGER in pvp than in pve… ;p

To people talking about DS use in condition builds:

You do realize that essentially every “meta” condition build right now finishes its burst with DS right? You do your bleeds on whatever weapon you’re on → swap weapon (Geomancy Sigil) → bleeds on that weapon → DS (Weakening Shroud) → DS 2/3

This is the current type of bleed rotation used, and it relies on DS for a pretty large amount of its damage, in fact DS is what gives it that little push over the top. It is reasonable to expect that condi Necros would have LF to do that more often. It also gives us more burning in situations where we can sit in DS, because this game isn’t only PvP.

Sorry to change topics, but when is the Mesmer Moa going to stop killing all my dang minions (putting them on full CD)? More and more mesmers are figuring this out and I’m getting Moa’d every time I get minions back up. Mesmers know it’s OP and leaves MM necros defenseless. So fix this already! You’ve known about this for a year.