Guild Wars 2

So. Anybody else depressed?

It doesn’t work on the underwater life blast.

The fact that it doesn’t work on underwater Life Blast is something that should be changed, even if underwater combat isn’t a super frequent occurrence.

Is anyone who didn’t crutch on Scepter auto DPS finding the change to be extra debilitating? Is anyone finding the additional control an asset to their combo?

depressed? no, im happy they changed it. non dumbfire builds are also viable and there will be many more from now on.

power-deathshroud-health regeneration build can be one of them…

guys necro is fine and in realy good spot on pvp
-lysa nerf
-we can use geomancy + energy sigils
-nightmare runes now 2s fear
-new curse trait is just aswome

go 20/30/0/0/20 that will be new meat build

Cogbyrn.7283:

The fact that it doesn’t work on underwater Life Blast is something that should be changed, even if underwater combat isn’t a super frequent occurrence.

Is anyone who didn’t crutch on Scepter auto DPS finding the change to be extra debilitating? Is anyone finding the additional control an asset to their combo?

In the end, I notice it’s a net loss. Even with a mostly-Dire set.

Burning being gated behind Life Blast, and DS with it, makes the process of bleeding someone out a lot more rigid. Good players that see me go into DS know to start spamming blinds or dodging. I can’t use any ability except life blast, or maybe life transfer, to burn through the blind**, as Dark Path and Doom are too valuable to my damage output. As a result, I spend more time in death shroud struggling to hit my target – resulting in less bleeds/burns sticking on them, and taking a slight loss in the ‘attrition war’ that is any fight by virtue of DS being burned.

It’s awkward in teamfights, too. You don’t pop a half-baked DS without suffering for it. If you go all in, you might not have built up enough bleeds to make a decent health deficit. Like I said, it’s not flexible at all.

I will say that Path of Corruption (new Curses GM trait) is A+ material. There are a lot of boons that my opponent might have that I wouldn’t want to blow a complete Corrupt Boon on, for want of a better outcome. This lets me do so on a regular basis. As a result, I’m building up a lot more cripple, weakness, blind, etc. which really helps me survive the fight.

(** I’ve come up with two ways to get around the blindspam hassle. One is running Well of Power and dropping it before entering DS specifically to counteract this. Another is running Mark of Evasion (Blood 3) and blowing a dodge to spawn a mark.

Digno.6945:

So. Anybody else depressed?

I like the control.

Dhuumfire still deals a lot of damages, the faceroll still exhist, they just added a little counterplay.

Depressed? You’re joking, right?

Short of removing the trait completely, this is the best thing that could have happened to necros.

I like how Dhuumfire works now. I can now “condition spike” with burning on demand, while fearing my opponent down, so he can’t cleanse it properly. It is awesome.

@Furienify: This is the sort of counter-play that I was hoping to see out of this change. Good players have an option to save their evades to try to avoid your burst, and you’ve thought of a utility option to counter their blind option. It’s a back-and-forth, and I feel like it’s what the trait needed to make it “feel” better.

Sure, it isn’t as strong as it was. But based on your post, it seems a whole lot better to me. There’s interesting interaction now that good players on both sides can take advantage of.

TyPin.9860:

I like how Dhuumfire works now. I can now “condition spike” with burning on demand, while fearing my opponent down, so he can’t cleanse it properly. It is awesome.

I dislike how Dhuumfire is now. I main pve. Dhuumfire helped to clear out mobs faster with aoe crits. I now have to switch out of the skill as the only good use I see it for is pvp/wvw… something I don’t care as much about.

I can still kill mobs fast, just not as fast. The same goes for champions. This change was to help balance pvp, yet it nerfed pve. Wish they made the two separate so both sides win.

ThCakeIsALie.5306:

TyPin.9860:

I like how Dhuumfire works now. I can now “condition spike” with burning on demand, while fearing my opponent down, so he can’t cleanse it properly. It is awesome.

I dislike how Dhuumfire is now. I main pve. Dhuumfire helped to clear out mobs faster with aoe crits. I now have to switch out of the skill as the only good use I see it for is pvp/wvw… something I don’t care as much about.

I can still kill mobs fast, just not as fast. The same goes for champions. This change was to help balance pvp, yet it nerfed pve. Wish they made the two separate so both sides win.

Didn’t Dhuumfire only proc onto one target in an AoE situation?

Can’t you control Dhuumfire’s spread via Epidemic more easily now since you know exactly when it’s going to land on a mob?

Cogbyrn is correct, it only ever proc’d once, it still only procs once, they just changed the proc’ing (for better or worse).

In PvE I don’t think its gotten any worse really. It isn’t that big of a deal to just change your rotation to entering DS every 10 seconds for damage. It might be a slight loss of damage in really, really hard situations where you always need to wait on DS for defense, but then you could just take the other trait and be better off.

I wouldn’t mind so much if lifeblasts projectile speed wasn’t laughable and not to mention if you’re running condi you’re not exactly trying to get auto attacks off in deathshroud. I understand that nerfing needed to be done but I feel it’s just not all that worth taking dhuumfire anymore for pvp purposes anyhow.

At least Life Blast can’t be side-stepped. The thing is more accurate than a guided missile on its homing capability.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

At least Life Blast can’t be side-stepped. The thing is more accurate than a guided missile on its homing capability.

To add onto this, the cast time/missile speed is just slow enough that often people dodge too early, and LB hits them at the end of their dodge. It happens sometimes with Dark Pact as well. They see the anim, dodge with quick reflexes, then get immob’d anyway.

I don’t really find it super-annoying but it did become a bit more inconvenient.

Why is it called ‘dumbfire’ anyway? Because it worked like scepter condis, with an icd? I think I missed the train on that one

It’s “dumbfire” because it’s a dumb trait that everyone seems to hate for various reasons (other classes hate it because it’s a bunch of damage on top of a bunch of condition damage already, and Necros hate it because the rest of their conditions have been slowly balanced/nerfed around it since it came out, and still others hate it because lore). It was also auto-play in that you could use any attack, such as scepter auto, and do 1000-tick burns on crit.

It’s jokingly called dumbfire because it was widely considered to be a fairly dumb trait to implement in the way it was. It made Necros way too strong just by pressing 1 a lot, was stupid that it had an on-crit proc in a non-crit tree (and at the time a lot of necros weren’t running crit chance on condi either), and the addition of burning along with torment and some other things in the same patch made us even crazier.

TL;DR its called dumbfire because it was a dumb trait.

I’m depressed. I loved my burning/chilling build with Runes of the Elementalist boosting the duration of Dhummfire, along with Axe/Focus for chilling. Now I have to change both my build and my runes.

Malganis.7468:

I’m depressed. I loved my burning/chilling build with Runes of the Elementalist boosting the duration of Dhummfire, along with Axe/Focus for chilling. Now I have to change both my build and my runes.

^
This. Minus ele runes.

I am sure there is some sort of silver lining; just have to find it.

The new dhuumfire allows me to use full dire instead of rabid

Seigfried.5938:

The new dhuumfire allows me to use full dire instead of rabid

Full Dire had plenty of crit chance to proc a 100% on crit effect… even before the patch.

Works fine on anything that that doesn’t frequently stealth or blink or have lots of dodges. Works like absolute garbage against the one class that was a pain to fight before the patch, thief.

Going from a 70-80% uptime burn just from attacking something, to a 50-60% uptime burn in the most generous of situations is a pretty big hit. The reality is that when we go into DS, everyone is already in defensive mode and is perfectly ready to dodge a life blast, cut through us to cancel the life blast, burst us quickly with stability in melee range, immobilize to prevent turning to hit the LB, and so on.

Practically I wasn’t able to find the time to squeeze in a life blast unless I managed to land my initial interruption combo against someone with no stun break. For the record, the classes that I need this against have lots of stun breaks.

Not to mention anything body blocking between me and the target ended up with the burn instead. At any rate, it certainly feels like pre-patch in so far as to say that the best of thieves are going to wipe the floor with me, which I am okay with, but it will take some getting used to.

who need burning when u have this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL-8YQgXFJU

I ran it as a power Necro – it allowed me to maintain some DPS if i wasn’t hitting the target for whatever reason (stuns etc).

I’ve just changed it out for Close to Death now – it’s not even worth considering for my spec any more (if it ever was).

This whole patch has been irrelevant to me aside from the ferocity changes, which i don’t really understand anyway.

At least stealth spam is still in the game – it’s not annoying at all.

I dont really feel like we have a solid grandmaster trait, but i am still doing fine. as for Ferocity. before it worked like this, user had 25% of crit damage gear. now it works like this, user has 500 ferocity which will give the user 15% of crit damage. it normalized the trait to use stats rather than baseline percentage increases.

I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting, but slowly getting there. On balance, I think it’s only a slight nerf to Dhuumfire, while increasing the skill threshold needed to maximise DPS with the Dhuumfire/Terror combo, which are both good things.

The one thing I’m disappointed by is that I think Dhuumfire is still necessary for good damage with a condi build in spvp. The nerfs we got after Dhuumfire was introduced really show when you give it up. I do like the new traits, but for me the choice is between Path of Corruption and Master of Terror, rather than between Path of Corruption/Parasitic contagion vs Dhuumfire.

The DF nerf without undoing previous terror and bleed nerfs hurts. Axe is looking more like it did at release as little more than a vuln-applicator.

TyPin.9860:

I like how Dhuumfire works now. I can now “condition spike” with burning on demand, while fearing my opponent down, so he can’t cleanse it properly. It is awesome.

I agree with this, especially with my sigil combo and the new dark path trait when I swap weapon and enter DS its mega condi spike time..

manveruppd.7601:

I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting, but slowly getting there. On balance, I think it’s only a slight nerf to Dhuumfire, while increasing the skill threshold needed to maximise DPS with the Dhuumfire/Terror combo, which are both good things.

The one thing I’m disappointed by is that I think Dhuumfire is still necessary for good damage with a condi build in spvp. The nerfs we got after Dhuumfire was introduced really show when you give it up. I do like the new traits, but for me the choice is between Path of Corruption and Master of Terror, rather than between Path of Corruption/Parasitic contagion vs Dhuumfire.

I am trying… I really am… but it is hard to break the habit of not wasting time with a life-blast in a condition build. When I get under pressure I absolutely forget to life-blast, so no burning. No burning means not enough pressure against heavy removal and sustain classes.

Life-blasting in melee range is also rather unforgiving if they are not already CC’ed, as they can just jump around your side and the LB fails.

It is certainly a much higher skill cap to use effectively, but I don’t think it needed its duration reduced by 25%. That seemed too harsh from what it once was.

I have found the junk condition sigils work really well with burning not up all the time, at protecting the bleeds.

Rennoko.5731:

manveruppd.7601:

I’m having a bit of trouble adjusting, but slowly getting there. On balance, I think it’s only a slight nerf to Dhuumfire, while increasing the skill threshold needed to maximise DPS with the Dhuumfire/Terror combo, which are both good things.

The one thing I’m disappointed by is that I think Dhuumfire is still necessary for good damage with a condi build in spvp. The nerfs we got after Dhuumfire was introduced really show when you give it up. I do like the new traits, but for me the choice is between Path of Corruption and Master of Terror, rather than between Path of Corruption/Parasitic contagion vs Dhuumfire.

I am trying… I really am… but it is hard to break the habit of not wasting time with a life-blast in a condition build. When I get under pressure I absolutely forget to life-blast, so no burning. No burning means not enough pressure against heavy removal and sustain classes.

Life-blasting in melee range is also rather unforgiving if they are not already CC’ed, as they can just jump around your side and the LB fails.

It is certainly a much higher skill cap to use effectively, but I don’t think it needed its duration reduced by 25%. That seemed too harsh from what it once was.

I have found the junk condition sigils work really well with burning not up all the time, at protecting the bleeds.

Im glad I dont have to adjust to this nerf…. I had to adjust to all the other nerfs because of dhumfire.

Rennoko.5731:

I am trying… I really am… but it is hard to break the habit of not wasting time with a life-blast in a condition build. When I get under pressure I absolutely forget to life-blast, so no burning.

Hehe, that’s exactly my problem too, too hard to break the habit of jump in, use 2,3,5, jump out :p
I have been practicing though and I’m getting the hang of it: if you manage to get it bang on cooldown every time, and you have just a little bit of condi duration, the damage is greater than before! However, once you get into the habit of that, other probems become apparent:
1. You’re staying in DS longer, and don’t generate enough LF to cover it
2. DS is almost always on cooldown, so very rarely available as a defensive mechanism.
3. Your dps is very low at the start of the match when you start with 0 life force! (C’mon ANet, change starting LF to 25% already!)

There’s solutions of course, maybe taking 2 spectrals in your utility bar and taking Spectral Mastery. Either by dropping Terror which is a terrible idea or by going 6 into Curses and drop Master of Terror. Though if I’m gonna go 6 in curses I’d like to be able to take the new GM trait, I really like it… Or taking Soul Marks instead of Master of Terror like Ventari did in the ESL cup earlier tonight, although he wasn’t even using Dhuumfire so not sure what the imperative for more LF generation was.
(Another off-topic sore spot there: c’mon ANet, merge a few of the 5 – FIVE!!!! – staff traits already! No other weapon in the game has more than 2 traits associated with it! If Soul Marks and Spiteful marks were merged and both in Spite Dhuumfire would still be viable!)

I disagree with you on duration though, 3" is good. I know you play more WvW so for you it’s a nerf but in spvp it’s a 50% buff! :p And with the buffs to +% burning duration gear you should be able to get as much burning as before. At a slight penalty to the durations of your other condis, but not a big one since general condition duration stuff has been nerfed.

Life-blasting in melee range is also rather unforgiving if they are not already CC’ed, as they can just jump around your side and the LB fails.

Agreed, casting time on Life Blast makes it ridiculously easy to circle strafe around it. Which is particularly annoying since htey made it do top damage only at short range! They should reduce it to 0.5" and give it a 0.5" aftercast or something.
In the mean time, the best thing to do is fear them to ensure it lands, though I normally save my fear for Path of Corruption since its projectile speed is a lot slower than life blast’s and they can just side step it. But once PoC lands I’m right in their face and usually at that point Life Blast has just finished casting so they eat it in the face before they can dodge.

I have found the junk condition sigils work really well with burning not up all the time, at protecting the bleeds.

Yeah, you’ve got a bigger variety to choose from there in wvw, I really wish they had given us sigil of tormenting in pvp!

Yeah, the circle-strafing. It’s terrible enough that I end up not bothering with Dhuumfire against certain opponents unless I get the initiative. I don’t want to give up Vital Persistence just for a 20 degree angle increase on Unyielding Blast or whatever it is.