Guild Wars 2

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.

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.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite → Doom → Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

ManaCraft.5630:

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.

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.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite -> Doom -> Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

Yes u are right and i agree 100% but u forgot smt , he also need some more sustain , becouse if we gonna lower the dmg and amout of condis that we can stack , ppl will just run over us , and for example AR engi trait , this one trait will counter whole condi build on necro what is OP , i dont mind some counter traits/skills but this is hard counter. The only thing that keep us alive atm is that we can condi burst someone , ofc its not good for the balance so devs need to figure out how to improve our sustain also.

Forsaker.9213:

ManaCraft.5630:

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.

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.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite -> Doom -> Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

Yes u are right and i agree 100% but u forgot smt , he also need some more sustain , becouse if we gonna lower the dmg and amout of condis that we can stack , ppl will just run over us , and for example AR engi trait , this one trait will counter whole condi build on necro what is OP , i dont mind some counter traits/skills but this is hard counter. The only thing that keep us alive atm is that we can condi burst someone , ofc its not good for the balance so devs need to figure out how to improve our sustain also.

Yeah, you are right – all well and good making our damage act more slowly, but we will need good sustain if that is going to be the case otherwise we will simply be out DPSd and be dead.

Forsaker.9213:

The only thing that keep us alive atm is that we can condi burst someone , ofc its not good for the balance so devs need to figure out how to improve our sustain also.

You’re preaching to the choir

I think the hope is that after lowering our condi burst, our need for sustain will become clear and adding sustain will not make one particular build overpowered

ManaCraft.5630:

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

this is true for all classes, not just condi necro.

Avigrus.2871:

Forsaker.9213:

ManaCraft.5630:

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.

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.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite -> Doom -> Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

Yes u are right and i agree 100% but u forgot smt , he also need some more sustain , becouse if we gonna lower the dmg and amout of condis that we can stack , ppl will just run over us , and for example AR engi trait , this one trait will counter whole condi build on necro what is OP , i dont mind some counter traits/skills but this is hard counter. The only thing that keep us alive atm is that we can condi burst someone , ofc its not good for the balance so devs need to figure out how to improve our sustain also.

Yeah, you are right – all well and good making our damage act more slowly, but we will need good sustain if that is going to be the case otherwise we will simply be out DPSd and be dead.

First of all: necros don’t get out DPSd even without burning.

Also, we need more sustain either way, but that is a seperate issue and absolutely not related to the existence of Dhuumfire.

ManaCraft.5630:

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.

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.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite -> Doom -> Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

Signet -> Doom -> Life Blast with 2 sec burning.
That would be some bleeding, poison, 2 ticks of fear and 3 (?) ticks of burning. How is this a burst? That combo wouldn’t kill anybody.

Also, Life Blast can be avoided. It has a 1 sec channeling time and a visible projectile that has a considerable traveleling time at long range. And it would be just this one skill! Dhuumfire in its current state can be triggered by everything. The difference would be huge, in a positive way.

Imo if this change would be implemented you’d not only fix all the problems that Dhuumfire caused in the first place, but Life Blast would be more accessible for condition builds too. It’s a total win-win for everyone.
Plus, it could be moved to Spite master tier (yes I believe such a trait should still be in this line) to defuse the obligatory +30% duration that comes with current meta condi builds by default. Which would also make room for another Spite grandmaster trait besides Close to Death.

vicious.5683:

this is true for all classes, not just condi necro.

Over time, maybe. But some classes are designed to take advantage of bursty mechanisms (thief is the prime example). Slow acting, predictable damage is not equally viable across the board.

flow.6043:

Signet -> Doom -> Life Blast with 2 sec burning.
That would be some bleeding, poison, 2 ticks of fear and 3 (?) ticks of burning. How is this a burst? That combo wouldn’t kill anybody.

Also, Life Blast can be avoided. It has a 1 sec channeling time and a visible projectile that has a considerable traveleling time at long range. And it would be just this one skill! Dhuumfire in its current state can be triggered by everything. The difference would be huge, in a positive way.

I do hope you’re right. It depends on the implementation, so I suppose we’ll find out when we try. I imagine dodging life blast can be tricky if you’re feared though. :-p

ManaCraft.5630:

I imagine dodging life blast can be tricky if you’re feared though. :-p

Sure, but it would require you to sync up 2 skills, as it is now Doom itself has a pretty good chance to inflict burning.
And keep in mind, for this to happen you not only need to hit your target with Life Blast but there is the icd of the trait, the Death Shroud cooldown and the requirement of having enough life force to go into DS at all. So even if it gives you the occasional strong condi burst, it will probably be less often but at the same time more rewarding. And from an opponents perspective, I’d much rather lose to someone who pulls that off than to someone who uses a passive and longer burning proc every 10 sec.

Siphoned power not being looked at? Sure it’s not terrible, but it isn’t practical either.

Necro isn’t my main, but I’m going to be sad to see Necro condi burst reduced. Honestly, I think it’s more of an issue with Epidemic than it is with any other part of the build. That skill is a favorite of mine, but it really is very powerful. I would rather see a reduction in that skill’s effectiveness than changes to Dhuumfire, for example.

IMO, Dhuumfire isn’t OP for a GM trait. However, once you time it properly and spread the burn with Epidemic, then it becomes questionable. So again, it seems like the issue is with Epidemic.

I think a lot could be solved by changing Epidemic to only transfer specific conditions, as long as the specified conditions retain enough of the potential damage and control. That way, future conditions could be balanced by being included or excluded from the skill as the devs feel is appropriate.

Changing Epidemic will practically be removing Necro from PvE

Hi there !

1)

Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.

This one is good

2)

Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

Huh … it hurts but yeah, definitely needed indeed …

3)

Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.

Was needed for some time

4)

Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Well, not bad though this line is still pretty meh.

5) What’s forgotten
- Viability of power builds : Axe is not bad, focus and warhorn can be useful yeah but MH Dagger ? Well, actually those are pretty good but you can’t really do much … maybe it should be improved more through traits, which I think would be the best thing.
The change to 25% speed with daggers out of combat makes it more interesting yeah.
The one for Warhorn CDs too.
But I still think power builds won’t be much viable :/

flow.6043:

Necromantic Corruption is overshadowed by Death Nova already, so maybe that one needs a buff..? How about merging Necromantic Corruption and Fetid Consumption (do MMs pick this trait?) in Death Magic as a defensive counterpart to Death Nova. Or merge them both in Blood Magic and make way for a non-minion gm trait in DM? It would be a strong Blood Magic gm for once, but makes you drop either 20 in Spite or 30 in DM to get it.

Fetid Consumption is picked up all the time, and in a full minion build is borderline broken with all your minions up (its kept in line because minions can and will die). You are essentially immune to conditions with that trait.

It is a pretty common build to have 0/0/30/30/0 for minions, with the last 10 floating around. The loss of increased damage doesn’t matter much when you’re pulling off 6 conditions every 10 seconds just from your minions.

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

The idea of removing ICD from WS is appealing. The concern is that 2 seconds seems a bit too short. I agree with Bhawb, 3 seconds would be more ideal.

However, the problem is when someone, like myself, is running 100% cond. duration and gets 6 seconds of weakness AND specs into Near to Death (which I don’t use and likely wouldn’t even if this change went through). That is near 86% up time. The better thing to do, I think, would be to put an ICD of 10 seconds on it. This would allow the max up time to be only 60%.

Either way, if the ICD is removed, the individual that would be using Closer to Death would have to use 20 pts to get it. For some this may be worth it.

My current spec is 30/25/0/0/15 with D/x as weapons.

As other have stated before, the bleed cap is a very big issue for the Necro. Why not change the 1 bleed to AOE poison for 2s because this would help all Necros, regardless of what weapons they use. We wouldn’t be limited by the bleed cap as we so frequently are.

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

Not a fan of this change, because it makes you have to go into DS, wait 1 second for LB to fire, then flash back out of DS and wait 1 second before you can use any abilities again.

The way Dhuumfire is right now is best because doesn’t it fire off no matter how you are hitting?

CHIPS.6018:

1) Dhuumfire – This is an overpowered trait that almost no one wants, not even necros. We necros hate this trait just as much as other professions.

I want Dhuumfire and I am a Necro. This trait is only OP when not cleansed, and we all know everyone has cleanse abilities…some far more than others…

Kitedyou.1720:

However, the problem is when someone, like myself, is running 100% cond. duration and gets 6 seconds of weakness AND specs into Closer to Death (which I don’t use and likely wouldn’t even if this change went through). That is near 86% up time. The better thing to do, I think, would be to put an ICD of 10 seconds on it. This would allow the max up time to be only 60%.

Those uptime numbers are only possible if you double tap F1, that means you wouldn’t use DS at all just to get the shortest possible cooldown for Weakening Shroud.

Kitedyou.1720:

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

Not a fan of this change, because it makes you have to go into DS, wait 1 second for LB to fire, …

That would be the point.

Kitedyou.1720:

…then flash back out of DS and wait 1 second before you can use any abilities again.

If you’re refering to the bug that locks your skills: this only happens if you didn’t exit DS by yourself, as in: your lf runs out or you take too much damage.

Kitedyou.1720:

The way Dhuumfire is right now is best because doesn’t it fire off no matter how you are hitting?

If by “best” you mean easiest to apply, then yes…

And I gotta defend CHIPS here, the minority are definitely the Dhuumfire proponents.

We could truely open up diversity in the necro class if we had a melee weapon that cleaved. Right now the risk vs reward for powermancer that use melee just doesn’t work out. You either hit hard vs 1 target and get beat up with your low survivabilty OR you can build for survival but hit like crap. Its hard to find a middle ground.

flow.6043:

And I gotta defend CHIPS here, the minority are definitely the Dhuumfire proponents.

And you know how? Is there a poll out there somewhere? Where is the statistical data to prove that CHIPS is correct? Did you ever stop to think there are a lot of people that don’t care to comment on the forums at all?

I personally don’t mind if Dhuumfire stays as a trait, but it cannot stay in its current implementation and be balanced. Either the method of application must change (which the devs are considering) or the condition applied must change.

I would also like to speak up and say that 2 second base Weakness on Weakening Shroud feels too short. While a shroud-dancing necro could have very high Weakness uptime, he also has completely forgone Death Shroud as a defense. I think that is a fair tradeoff. In the meantime, a 3 second base would allow necros to mitigate those damage chains a little better, but not so much that it would work out to be anything more than burst mitigation.

I think if Dhuumfire and Terror were kept in the Master tier of Curses this would be alright. If the conditionmancer wanted to then get both they would have to spend 30 points in Curses and miss out on the GM skill.

Moving Master of Corruption to Master tier in Spite would be good as well as adding a “Grants Life Force on Use” feature…because scepter users that like to use epidemic would benefit from this, as well as other specs that use corruption skills. The scepter is especially terrible for building LF though.

flow.6043:

Kitedyou.1720:

However, the problem is when someone, like myself, is running 100% cond. duration and gets 6 seconds of weakness AND specs into Closer to Death (which I don’t use and likely wouldn’t even if this change went through). That is near 86% up time. The better thing to do, I think, would be to put an ICD of 10 seconds on it. This would allow the max up time to be only 60%.

Those uptime numbers are only possible if you double tap F1, that means you wouldn’t use DS at all just to get the shortest possible cooldown for Weakening Shroud.

Kitedyou.1720:

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

Not a fan of this change, because it makes you have to go into DS, wait 1 second for LB to fire, …

That would be the point.

Kitedyou.1720:

…then flash back out of DS and wait 1 second before you can use any abilities again.

If you’re refering to the bug that locks your skills: this only happens if you didn’t exit DS by yourself, as in: your lf runs out or you take too much damage.

Kitedyou.1720:

The way Dhuumfire is right now is best because doesn’t it fire off no matter how you are hitting?

If by “best” you mean easiest to apply, then yes…

And I gotta defend CHIPS here, the minority are definitely the Dhuumfire proponents.

Minority? What are you talking about?

“We necros hate this trait just as much as other professions.”

“We Necros”

“We”

Sound more like he was speaking for LITERALY every single one of us. He didn’t even mention " the majority of us". Anyway, if you want to defend him, at least make it relevant to what he said.

Or, if you feel like using an absolute, at least have the decency to bring facts.

Samhayn.2385:

We could truely open up diversity in the necro class if we had a melee weapon that cleaved. Right now the risk vs reward for powermancer that use melee just doesn’t work out. You either hit hard vs 1 target and get beat up with your low survivabilty OR you can build for survival but hit like crap. Its hard to find a middle ground.

I have been saying this for a bit now…

Dagger 2 should be AOE with life siphon ticking per target; and Axe 2 should also be AOE, akin to the thieves whirling thingy they do.

Kitedyou.1720:

I have been saying this for a bit now…

Dagger 2 should be AOE with life siphon ticking per target; and Axe 2 should also be AOE, akin to the thieves whirling thingy they do.

I have to disagree with Axe 2, mainly because if they made it AoE, they would have to brutally murder the life force generation on it. If they change any skill on Axe to be AoE, it should be the auto-attack.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Kitedyou.1720:

I have been saying this for a bit now…

Dagger 2 should be AOE with life siphon ticking per target; and Axe 2 should also be AOE, akin to the thieves whirling thingy they do.

I have to disagree with Axe 2, mainly because if they made it AoE, they would have to brutally murder the life force generation on it. If they change any skill on Axe to be AoE, it should be the auto-attack.

Hrmm…well, either way, something needs to be done for Axe and Dagger (MH anyways)

Kitedyou.1720:

As other have stated before, the bleed cap is a very big issue for the Necro. Why not change the 1 bleed to AOE poison for 2s because this would help all Necros, regardless of what weapons they use. We wouldn’t be limited by the bleed cap as we so frequently are.

This would make the skill too strong for an adept, poison on command is a really strong thing to have for shutdown purposes, and paired with weakness it’d just be too good for the small investment.

Dagger 1, the first two attacks in the chain should be a cleave like lighting whip. Personaly I also think all Necro attacks should add a condition of some sort. Necro and Mes should really be the classes that want to mix conditions and direct damage.

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

I think adding a cleave to either dagger or axe is the first step in bringing the necromancer back on par with the other classes. At least as far as dungeons are concerned.

But then still the problems with the condition cap and defiant/unshakable remain.

Just wondering if we can get some clarification for Necromancers lack of Evade/Block/Invulnerablity?

Is this something you’d be willing to change in the future? If not what is the reasoning for limiting Necromancers in this way?

(My suggestion for fixing this problem: Suggestion for Necro Lack of Evade/Block)

JonathanSharp.7094:

Some great ideas in here. We’ve talked about moving Dhuumfire up to Grandmaster in the Curses line, and moving Terror as well.

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.

Seems like it might be too much of a penalty to do both:

• move Terror to GM, and
• have Terror scale off # of condis

I can see leaving Terror where it is and having it scale, by decreasing the base damage to be appropriate for a Master-level trait.

I think before you Nerf terror or dhummfire it would be better to ask why people use then so much.

I don’t think it has anything to do with them being overpowered as much as it has to do with the fact we are limited as a class. We have a lack of build diversity due to the poor nature of blood and death lines and under the current game meta we lack the defensive abilities to try attrition builds.

if the blood line siphons could justify the lose of free spectral armor, extra life force pool and plus crit damage. Things would change.

the death line, I don’t even know what to say. I used it stacked tough and power had over 2500 power and 3000 armor. Yet my damage output was so low that the few extra seconds the toughness bought me meant nothing. Mind you this was a power build with daggers, maybe a Condi build would work better but I was trying to take advantage of death 25.

plus crit and plus crit damage are to important a factor in the pvp meta at this time to give up. This can be mitigated by some abilities like strong CC and high stability up time (warrior/guard) or just plain elusiveness (thief/mesmer) the rest of us just need to either bunker down or go kill them before they kill us play style.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

This is not a good idea because it ruins Hybrid spec’s

Moving Terror to GM trait and making it scale with # of conds on target is a good idea. Then they could move that terribad Withering Precision to master trait, which is where it should be, especially because it is single target and has a 20s CD.

They could then leave Dhuum where it is if they did this…

The most opportunity will come from new weapon options for professions, in regards to cleave damage/ evades, imo. A 2 handed melee weapon is what we lack, and I’m hoping future updates will grant us access to either a Hammer or Greatsword which will hopefully provide something interesting for our lacking group play

Samhayn.2385:

I think before you Nerf terror or dhummfire it would be better to ask why people use then so much.

I don’t think it has anything to do with them being overpowered as much as it has to do with the fact we are limited as a class. We have a lack of build diversity due to the poor nature of blood and death lines and under the current game meta we lack the defensive abilities to try attrition builds.

if the blood line siphons could justify the lose of free spectral armor, extra life force pool and plus crit damage. Things would change.

the death line, I don’t even know what to say. I used it stacked tough and power had over 2500 power and 3000 armor. Yet my damage output was so low that the few extra seconds the toughness bought me meant nothing. Mind you this was a power build with daggers, maybe a Condi build would work better but I was trying to take advantage of death 25.

plus crit and plus crit damage are to important a factor in the pvp meta at this time to give up. This can be mitigated by some abilities like strong CC and high stability up time (warrior/guard) or just plain elusiveness (thief/mesmer) the rest of us just need to either bunker down or go kill them before they kill us play style.

I hate to say it, but all of this can be fixed by putting a really powerfun/nice trait at the end of Death, and the end of Blood. You do that, and people WILL drop either terror or dummfire (maybe both).

The right move is to add that skill in when you nerf the condi pressure.

Bhawb.7408:

Kitedyou.1720:

As other have stated before, the bleed cap is a very big issue for the Necro. Why not change the 1 bleed to AOE poison for 2s because this would help all Necros, regardless of what weapons they use. We wouldn’t be limited by the bleed cap as we so frequently are.

This would make the skill too strong for an adept, poison on command is a really strong thing to have for shutdown purposes, and paired with weakness it’d just be too good for the small investment.

You get “poison on command” using Staff 3. Otherwise, we have scepter…but you have to wait for the cycle of #1 to go through to the third step….none of the other weapons have poison…

Also, we have two class skills and one racial skill that give it “on command”.

It doesn’t have to be poison…it could be confusion, or torment…anything other than bleed would be nice IMO…because we have this large issue with bleed caps as Necros.

Kitedyou.1720:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

This is not a good idea because it ruins Hybrid spec’s

Moving Terror to GM trait and making it scale with # of conds on target is a good idea. Then they could move that terribad Withering Precision to master trait, which is where it should be, especially because it is single target and has a 20s CD.

They could then leave Dhuum where it is if they did this…

How does making Dhuumfire trigger off of LifeBlast ruin hybrids?

(Not challenging you – I just don’t see how it ruins them.)

On the topic of vigor, is it possible to give us necros some meaningful way of getting it? Right now, we remain the only class with virtually no means of getting any form of vigor, aside from turning bleed into it. A master trait like 10 sec vigor on spectral activation or something. This would be at least a bandage to our sustain.

Samhayn.2385:

I think before you Nerf terror or dhummfire it would be better to ask why people use then so much.

I use Dhuum because it fits in nicely with my hybrid spec. It is a tremendous help in fighting off thieves now…previously there were only bleeds readily available to dagger hybrids…which can be cleansed off pretty easily and don’t do a lot of upfront damage from condition because we need to stack and stack and….oh bother, they cleansed….stack and stack and stack… You get the point.

Kitedyou.1720:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

This is not a good idea because it ruins Hybrid spec’s

Moving Terror to GM trait and making it scale with # of conds on target is a good idea. Then they could move that terribad Withering Precision to master trait, which is where it should be, especially because it is single target and has a 20s CD.

They could then leave Dhuum where it is if they did this…

Well it depends how they scale Terror with/without conditions — as it is now it already scales off of whether there are any conditions or not. They could easily just added increased damage from where it is now for more conditions.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Kitedyou.1720:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

This is not a good idea because it ruins Hybrid spec’s

Moving Terror to GM trait and making it scale with # of conds on target is a good idea. Then they could move that terribad Withering Precision to master trait, which is where it should be, especially because it is single target and has a 20s CD.

They could then leave Dhuum where it is if they did this…

How does making Dhuumfire trigger off of LifeBlast ruin hybrids?

(Not challenging you – I just don’t see how it ruins them.)

Well, I guess, it was a knee-jerk reaction to what I read from your post… You said that “Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts”

I guess my concern is that LB takes so long to fire off that it will slow the game play down and it limits the use of this ability to only DS…which I don’t think is a good idea because some people, like myself, only flash in and out of it or use it for dire situations. I hardly ever sit around long enough for LB to fire off because I can be doing more DPS with my dagger.

As it stands right now, Power build are generally just that, power builds, they don’t worry about adding DOT conditions to their mix. Condition builds don’t really worry about adding power to their hits. Where, as a hybrid, I am trying to have a good mixture of both, almost 50/50 for damage sources and having Dhuum where it is allows me to do just that.

alanis.6094:

Kitedyou.1720:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

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 idea. Power builds will not have strong CondDmg and Condi builds that go 30 into Spite will have weak LifeBlasts. The ICD also keeps things under control.

I assume this would also work underwater?

This is not a good idea because it ruins Hybrid spec’s

Moving Terror to GM trait and making it scale with # of conds on target is a good idea. Then they could move that terribad Withering Precision to master trait, which is where it should be, especially because it is single target and has a 20s CD.

They could then leave Dhuum where it is if they did this…

Well it depends how they scale Terror with/without conditions — as it is now it already scales off of whether there are any conditions or not. They could easily just added increased damage from where it is now for more conditions.

Most definitely, how the scaling is applied is extremely important. It could be something like 2% bonus dmg per condition…much like Target the Weak does for DD.

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.

I’m not sure if this is a very good idea for a Grandmaster Trait. At least it won’t be good enough for a condition necro to spend 30 points in spite just to get that.
And it won’t be very good for power builds either cause the burning won’t have as much potential.
Also, condition builds don’t have a tendency of using life blast much, as the precious seconds could be used to do something else in death shroud.
I’d say, if Dhuumfire’s functionality needs to stick to burning, then it shouldn’t be in the spite line at all. Instead, it should be in the curses line, competing with another good trait in the grandmaster tier.

@ Burjis, that would be the point of moving Terror to GM and have it scale slightly with each condition on the target.

Thinking about it, Terror is nearly a mirror of Dhuumfire…they both have roughly the same DPT…Though Terror is based on fear’s duration.

Moving Terror and Dhuumfire both to GM curses could be, in my opinion, a good move although I don’t think Terror would need that huge a buff if it finds its way to the GM tier. Its damage scaling with the number of conditions would make it superior to even the current dhuumfire + terror combination.

Also, on the “necros don’t want dhuumfire” debate, I didn’t want a trait like dhuumfire either and it came as a shock to me.
But what’s worse than this trait existing as it is, is to replace it with something even worse. By worse I mean something that is broken either by being too overpowered (like dhuumfire in its current position) or totally underwhelming (like Withering Precision).

Andele.1306:

Because he is, no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire, if you like that type of condi playstyle , go play a engie, mesmer or guardian.

That’s quite a bit of revisionist history there. A lot of Necros recognized that without burning we were a subpar condition damage class in every aspect of the game. A lot don’t like what has happened since it was added, and don’t like how it was added, but that isn’t the same.

Burjis.3087:

Moving Terror and Dhuumfire both to GM curses could be, in my opinion, a good move although I don’t think Terror would need that huge a buff if it finds its way to the GM tier. Its damage scaling with the number of conditions would make it superior to even the current dhuumfire + terror combination.

Also, on the “necros don’t want dhuumfire” debate, I didn’t want a trait like dhuumfire either and it came as a shock to me.
But what’s worse than this trait existing as it is, is to replace it with something even worse. By worse I mean something that is broken either by being too overpowered (like dhuumfire in its current position) or totally underwhelming (like Withering Precision).

I am trying to be fair about playing hybrid here…if Dhuum and terror were moved to GM in Curses, I would be willing to put the 5 extra points into curses to get Dhuum. Not a big deal…but, I will still have 30 pts in Spite…and I will definitely make the move on getting Closer to Death… OP, yeah, IMO.

Edit: oops sorry, I mistook close to death with near to death. Although I still don’t think that would be OP.

With 30 in spite and 30 in curses with Terror moving to GM, you won’t have many points left to spend on defensive stuff. On a hybrid build, your gear would be either Carrion which doesn’t give you any precision or Rampager which is right on offensive with close to no defense.
It could be very powerful offensive-wise but not very powerful in the defensive area.
The problem with conditionmancers is that they go rabid, which gives them a nice chunk of toughness.

Burjis.3087:

You can for example go 30 curses for dhuumfire, then 20 spite, then 20 soul reaping for closer to death. You won’t have terror, you won’t have master of terror and hybrid builds are mostly stuck with Carrion which doesn’t give you any precision or Rampager which is right on offensive with close to no defense.
I don’t see how a hybrid build with those specs can be OP.

No, the spec would be 30/30/0/0/10*

*may get re-allocated, I would have to study my options.

Closer to death is GM trait (30) in spite and, IMO, would only be useful for melee builds because the base weapon damage is higher.