Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I just wanted to strike up a little discussion about Dhuumfire and its placement, and without making suggestions, I wanted to hear a bit for either side of this.

So my consideration here is to move Dhuumfire from Soul Reaping to Curses, as a GM trait. What would peoples’ general thoughts be on its placement?

Why I bring it up:
- It allows condition Necros to only require a single line for condition damage purposes, allowing Blast access to a condition in the condition tree.
- As such, better diversity.
- Curses has a better PVE trait.
- More interesting Diversity.

Potential problems:
- Merge with another GM, or replace one, what would go where?
- Potential builds that it steps on. (Any movement obviously affects some build lay out.)
- Preferences not aligning with the change in general.

So, again this is not directly a suggestion, but I wanted to get some other Necromancer feedback in regards to Dhuumfire placement and what their thoughts might be on this. So keep it civil, jut curious to pick your brains on the implications this might have.

Thanks for any input and feedback.

Mixed feelings about it as it would then be in competition with weakening shroud, a trait that I really like and try to incorporate into lots of builds, assuming no other changes. Also kind of depends on what your going to put back into soul reaping as its replacement, on the pvp front your running into the soul marks / vital persistence issue so you could end up in a situation where you feel you need to take the trait line but none of the GMs really fit.

I can kind of see it if there was another sweeping trait rework, but just by itself I think it would cause more problems then it fixes.

How’s Dhuumfire a PvE trait? Curses already has one PvE trait and it’s Lingering. That tiny bit of burning requiring you to camp Shroud in PvE for some reason doesn’t sound particulary interesting.

Curses already suffers from Devs trying to squeeze everything that makes Condition Necromancer anything into one single specialization, while rest are there for Reaper. Adding even more stuff to Curses makes this specialization even more terrible.

It wouldn’t add any diversity. People would still choose exact same Specializations, only diversity change would’ve been people forgetting about hybrid or condi Reaper.

My thoughts on dhuumfire’s placement in soul reaping:

The problem is just that the concept does not work with base necro and even reaper is questionable. The effect is also quite weak. It is placed at the right traitline for its effect though, the piercing, vulnerability and life degen reduction fit it very well.

My thoughts on dhuumfire’s placement in Curses:

If for some reason you still want to place it in Curses ( which I consider just a little bit below soul reaping in terms of being a good place for dhuumfire) , I would suggest merging it with parasitic contagion and allowing parasitic contagion to work while in DS. This gives parasitic contagion the option to restore health in death shroud while still maintaining (some) condition pressure. Plus if you take curses and soul reaping you could take death perception for some extra synergy with barbed precision and plague sending. It would still require some scepter/staff rework in terms of life force/condi pressure.

Thematically, I think it suits Soul Reaping best, as it encourages camping in Shroud.

No Dhummfire seems fine it’s Life Blast that doesn’t support it. Safest solution is Life Blast hitting twice.

Rym.1469:

How’s Dhuumfire a PvE trait? Curses already has one PvE trait and it’s Lingering. That tiny bit of burning requiring you to camp Shroud in PvE for some reason doesn’t sound particulary interesting.

Curses already suffers from Devs trying to squeeze everything that makes Condition Necromancer anything into one single specialization, while rest are there for Reaper. Adding even more stuff to Curses makes this specialization even more terrible.

It wouldn’t add any diversity. People would still choose exact same Specializations, only diversity change would’ve been people forgetting about hybrid or condi Reaper.

Couple notes:
- What would peoples’ opinions be (/ how would they change) if Vital Persistence was base line, making SR less pvp-mandatory (meaning Spite/Curses/Other would be more viable).
- I do realize this would impact PVE builds which may use Dhuumfire for padding Reaper DPS above 50%, and is a personal concern.
- A large consideration for this is to make better use out of Spite/Curses/Reaper builds, something I feel would be fun, but not overly effective without Dhuumfire.

Good discussion though, keep the thoughts flowing. This is specifically why I didn’t suggest this, but more wanted to get some perspectives going.

PvE Reapers won’t use Dhuumfire or SR in raids. It’s gonna be Spite/Blood Magic/Reaper. The only group utility line you bring is blood magic and however weak it may be, it’s the only thing you’ve got and you want that well cd reduction as well.

So moving Dhuumfire to curses doesn’t affect PvE people as much as it does hybrid pvp necromancers.

I can’t think of anything but Reaper lately, so bear with me.

The incentive to play Reaper with Curses is already very high: RS2 that chill and corrupt on 5-6 sec CD? Very appealing!

I can’t see any major change with that Dhuumfire move, besides, maybe, Spite dropped in favor of Curses for some players.

Every time I think about Dhuumfire, it’s to blame it for holding us back since its creation. Along Spite’s might stacking, I believe it plays a strong role in RS1’s atrocious base damage.

I want it removed and replaced by a better mechanic.

ronpierce.2760:

- What would peoples’ opinions be (/ how would they change) if Vital Persistence was base line, making SR less pvp-mandatory (meaning Spite/Curses/Other would be more viable).

If Vital Persistance was baseline I would move it to Curses as described in my previous post since I now consider Curses more or less equal to Soul Reaping in terms of favoring dhuumfire for base necro, but reaper does gain less benifit (no piercing and without Soul Reaping reaper still has decent life force generation) from soul reaping and might take spite instead.

The curses grandmasters are pretty good to give up, especially weakening shroud.
And I also disagree with the vital persistence baseline, it would make us too tanky. Dhuumfire is in its correct place in my opinion. it could maybe use some kind of improvement, but there was a pretty extensive thread with suggestions about that.

Pelopidas.2140:

The curses grandmasters are pretty good to give up, especially weakening shroud.
And I also disagree with the vital persistence baseline, it would make us too tanky. Dhuumfire is in its correct place in my opinion. it could maybe use some kind of improvement, but there was a pretty extensive thread with suggestions about that.

Possibly, in regards to the Dhuumfire discussion. But I whole-heartedly disagree about the “too tanky” comment in regards to VP. Pretty much every build in PVP runs it as it stands. Baselining it (so long as you nerf Spectral Mastery and don’t introduce some other alternative that would push Soul Reaping into a power creep), it would simply allow other builds to not take Soul Reaping. Any non-Soul Reaping build would still be less tanky than a Soul Reaping build as it stands because of all of the other Life Force-based traits and minors.

The trick isn’t preventing other builds from becoming too tanky, as VP already prevents much of that diversity, the bigger issue is making sure whatever you do with Soul Reaping after VP was made base-line doesn’t cause it to become stronger overall.

As it stands, Necromancer are both too squishy and a bit clunky (especially Reaper) without the trait/trait line. Giving some of that defense to the class would greatly reduce the necessity of soul reaping.

I do agree though, it would probably be a bit of a task to ensure that Soul Reaping itself doesn’t see too much of a power boost if it were to happen. But either way, I hope it happens eventually because being force into SR because of one trait gets rather tiresome.

(Note: Who knows, this might be significantly less of an issue if Gee ends up adding more LF to Axe/Scepter.)

Maybe nerf Vital Persistence to 25%, then make baseline.

Also improve Fear of Death somehow so that vital persistence isnt as vital, for example merge terror+fear duration, and change fear of death to something different. Thing is, I don’t know if fear duration isnt merged with terror in purpose already.

Yea, I reckon it should be moved to curses, it makes more sense to me. But I also reckon there should be some other changes… I have gone through and kinda reordered our traits to have thematic trait lines, like the reaper does. Check it out if you are interested.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Reworking-our-traits-synergy-and-theme/first#post5510977

I think it would make sense to be in curses as well as even just make it a minor. It’s so weak the only reason to take it is so your shroud is at least able to do some Condi damage. And merge terror and master of terror to curses.

I don’t think Dhuumfire belongs in Curses any more than Soul Reaping. It is a Shroud trait every bit as much as a Condition one, and most importantly it provides Condition builds with a second trait line to pick up condition based offense. Loading all conditions into Curses is the opposite of what we want, though arguably Curses should have a better GM level damage focused trait.

I think Dhuumfire should be moved to Curses, my reason for it is that if you look at both of the other grandmaster traits from Soul Reaping they benefit you no matter what type of build you are running. Unlike the other two Dhuumfire only seems to be built to benefit one specific type of build, condi so it would be nice seeing it moved to the trait line that seems to be made to improve your condi builds. I would like to seem them add a grandmaster in Soul Reaping that increases both condi and power dps in the form of a multiplier or see them add something like the warrior has increasing again your condi and power dps for a certain amout of time after you use your shroud.

I don’t like this because it would make curses feel congested. I don’t want to have to choose between dhuumfire and weakening shroud

random thought,

what about just straight swapping weakening shroud with dhumfire???

My first thought was to rework it in SR to have synergy with Reaper’s Deathly Chill such as increased chill damage.

Regarding your suggestion, if Dhuumfire was to go to Curses, i would combine it with Lingering Curse so that trait is not completely useless in DS or running another weapon.

Ropechef.6192:

random thought,

what about just straight swapping weakening shroud with dhumfire???

That would make even worse the current problem Curses has: no options outside condis in Grandmaster tier.
With the change you propose we will end up with 3 condi-related traits in Grandmaster. NO, PLEASE NO!

Then one option left. Just remove the dhumfire trait and make the shrouds skill 1 stack fire on its own. How is it ? too Op ?

dost.4209:

Then one option left. Just remove the dhumfire trait and make the shrouds skill 1 stack fire on its own. How is it ? too Op ?

.

I propose a removal of chilling darkness and instead replace it with dhuumfire!

Your shroud 1 inflicts burn, whenever you chill an opponent you also inflict burn.

All in favor! Burn a sylvari! All not in favor, burn with a sylvari!

Mmmmmm, roasted veggies – Humes like it, Norns laugh at it while drinking beer, Charr laugh at anyone who will actually thinks it’s food, and Asura are weary of experimenting on them.