Guild Wars 2

Iceflame.5024:

If burning is an on crit chance with a cd of 10 seconds and grandmaster then why would anyone ever take it when there’s a 20% damage increase below 50% health?

Conditionmancers. They get little benefit from the direct damage boost and can benefit from Spite’s increase in condition duration. Whether or not they’d want to take 30 points in Spite for the 5 second burn I’m not sure.

That choice is quiet balanced imo: given the 30% duration increase from spite itself, you’re looking at 6.5 sec of burning per 10 seconds. Even with 0 condition damage, that averages out to 213.2 dps. On the other hand, Close to Death results in an average increase of 10% direct dps. Thus, you need to exceed 2132 direct dps for Close to Death to overtake Dhuumfire, not trivial in single target encounters.

In other words:
zerker builds and aoe scenarios -> Close to Death
condition builds and single target -> Dhuumfire

Iceflame.5024:

If burning is an on crit chance with a cd of 10 seconds and grandmaster then why would anyone ever take it when there’s a 20% damage increase below 50% health?

Only because 20% more damage with low power is not alot anyway, while burning can be a good deal. These changes is making builds even tougher to build for Necromancer on all fronts.

Death Magic

Unchanged.

That had better not be accurate.

Edit: I know I know, wait 24 hours. But I’ve been waiting for almost two weeks now! D:

Yay, now there is no reason to ever go above 20 points in Curses unless you’re wielding a scepter. Way to increase build diversity…

Not pleased with the change to withering precision. The main draw before was that you could keep someone practically perms-weaknessed (so half the dodges). Now that possibility is entirely gone as you would have to have +100% weakness duration to get a mere 50% uptime.

Also, for condition damage builds, I don’t care about Dhuumfire anyway. Not having Terror+ Master of Corruption, however, will be a very large setback. I can understand why they did it (Terror was a very defining trait), and realistically, I like having a real choice to make.

Now, if Spectral Wall does start to inflict Fear, will people pick Spectral Attunement or Terror? They can’t have both plus Lingering Curse…

Arvid.3829:

That choice is quiet balanced imo: given the 30% duration increase from spite itself, you’re looking at 6.5 sec of burning per 10 seconds. Even with 0 condition damage, that averages out to 213.2 dps. On the other hand, Close to Death results in an average increase of 10% direct dps. Thus, you need to exceed 2132 direct dps for Close to Death to overtake Dhuumfire, not trivial in single target encounters.

In other words:
zerker builds and aoe scenarios -> Close to Death
condition builds and single target -> Dhuumfire

That 5 seconds is after applying the 30% bonus actually. It’s base 4 with 30% extra which gets you to 5.2.

Ah yes, sorry. So the break even point would be around 1700 direct dps.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Now, if Spectral Wall does start to inflict Fear, will people pick Spectral Attunement or Terror? They can’t have both plus Lingering Curse…

If I would go 30 into Curses I would prefer Banshee’s Wail or Spectral Attunement above Lingering Curse.

I think that -a- dev had said that EVERY trait line is getting at least ONE change. Some up to 5. I have seen none getting 5 yet, and some don’t have any.

Anyone else remember this?

Edit: Also , I really don’t think they will give Fear to spectral wall.. Imagine someone standing on the side of a wall, you use spectrall wall ON him(with terror) and for 9 seconds he constantly gets feared dying just by 1 skill. Really..I don’t see it happening..

natsos.3692:

I think that -a- dev had said that EVERY trait line is getting at least ONE change. Some up to 5. I have seen none getting 5 yet, and some don’t have any.

Anyone else remember this?

Edit: Also , I really don’t think they will give Fear to spectral wall.. Imagine someone standing on the side of a wall, you use spectrall wall ON him(with terror) and for 9 seconds he constantly gets feared dying just by 1 skill. Really..I don’t see it happening..

The wall skills don’t work like that. If you are in the wall and get a buff/debuff, you have to move out a resonable distance and come back in to get it to reapply said buff/debuff.

That being said I don’t see the wall getting fear for other reasons.

Yep I know how it works(not sure if it is intented to work that way tho)
But still you could do what I wrote, taking the wall a bit further than your target(most people would just walk right on it over and over) .

Still I am pretty sure some dev said that every trait line is getting a change..my suspicion of fake notes grows stronger..but they got the “Torment” name right…I am so confused and eager for tomorrow…

Dhuumfire should be the GM minor trait, because Might on hit below 25% is really really bad.

Also, withering precision uptime is awful at 25%, it should have a cooldown of 10 seconds max for 50% uptime.
I do realize we can increase condition duration, but remember that conditions are cleansable, having too much time between reapplies makes the actual uptime horrible.

That’s a pretty big nerf to terror unless there’s some change to marks. 10% of your fears won’t tick twice in 5v5, rng ftl. You could skip greater marks, but that’s even worse, particularly for a terror necro.

They LoL’ed and said that Vamp traits were totally useless.
They also said they didn’t like other class’s wasting heals on necro’s in case they were in DShroud & missed all effects.

Don’t worry tho, they will fix it by allowing necro’s to receive no heals at all, when they finally release the 1/3rd downed life fix. As it’s such “a pretty risky change”. ;-P

6 months after that Im sure the will add (Excluding Necro) in heals tooltips.

Trolling aside, I can’t wait to actually see what actually changes. Im not going to stress about non-official patch notes.
Tho, things they did say… was DS 5’s new condition to help stop people running away… Given to 2 escape artist class’s as-well as us?

Ah dammit, Near to Death from 50% to 30% ruined my idea for Perma-Stability/Retal. :P

If you had Near to Death (5 sec CD on DS) + Foot in the Grave (3 sec Stability on DS) + Spiteful Spirit (3 sec Retal on DS) + 65-70% Boon Duration, you would have perma-stability and perma-retal just by flicking DS haha.

The spec would probably ruin you for damage but it’d be fun to try haha.

O well, guess they realized that too. xD

Something doesn’t seem right, they nmoved down Near to Death and added a new grandmaster Death Perception in Soul reaping without removing any trait?

Xehanort.4589:

Something doesn’t seem right, they nmoved down Near to Death and added a new grandmaster Death Perception in Soul reaping without removing any trait?

On the pastebin leak decaying swarm got removed.
Good point noting that omission.

Tobbygnome.6793:

Ah dammit, Near to Death from 50% to 30% ruined my idea for Perma-Stability/Retal. :P

If you had Near to Death (5 sec CD on DS) + Foot in the Grave (3 sec Stability on DS) + Spiteful Spirit (3 sec Retal on DS) + 65-70% Boon Duration, you would have perma-stability and perma-retal just by flicking DS haha.

The spec would probably ruin you for damage but it’d be fun to try haha.

O well, guess they realized that too. xD

Pretty sure there’s a cooldown in foot in the grave, we were just never able to trigger it fast enough to notice.

lol nothing done to Death Magic. And that 50% recharge on DS now at 30%.

Necromancers… still dying.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Pretty sure there’s a cooldown in foot in the grave, we were just never able to trigger it fast enough to notice.

If we were never able to trigger it fast enough, how do you know there’s a cooldown xD, the Wiki says nothing, and Furious Demise has no ICD. :P

Doesn’t matter anyway, the idea is ruined \o/

Unpredictability.4086:

lol nothing done to Death Magic. And that 50% recharge on DS now at 30%.

Necromancers… still dying.

And ye, about the actual change, hurts abit, but 7 seconds isn’t too bad, if you’re getting thrown around so much that you need to pop DS every 5 seconds to survive then i’d like to see where your LF regen is coming from because it’d be pretty impressive. :P

I love my 5 sec DS, but a lot of the time it isn’t that needed in PvP, unless you go full zerk or something. I even switch to 10 sec CD specs to see the difference and i really don’t notice it that much, i think i’ll be ok with 7 secs if i am able to crit for 2-3ks in DS constantly.

Also Well specs don’t have to go 20 into Curses anymore, but then that crit chance was pretty nice. I dunno yet.

I guess we are just in the wait and see phase…

So far, not pleased with the changes at all.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Pretty sure there’s a cooldown in foot in the grave, we were just never able to trigger it fast enough to notice.

Assuming that the preview is true and it went from 50% CD to 30%, I don’t think there is going to be an ICD, otherwise the nerf makes no sense (the other DS related traits were okay, but no one was making OP builds with them).

Actually, in my opinion they did absolutely NOTHING for condition builds, but make it tougher to have a good condition build with terror, and decent cooldown on corruption utilities. I am actually hating EVERYthing they did. Let’s break it down.

Changes to spite, force people to try axe more because they move the never used grandmaster trait to master level… whoopie,, its still not going to be used. For condition builds, they add dumb fire… who gives a crap… so now, you can’t have any toughness for condition builds, if you want to add this whole new condition to you’re mix up, unless you kitten your existing condition build massively. Sure you can go 30/30/x/x/x but you don’t get kitten for it. You want to encorporate burning into terror, you kitten yourself, and you wont be using staff at all.

what they are doing is forcing hybrid builds, and kiling our best pvp skills. I.E. corrupt boon. F that.

BOring kitten changes that basically balance out to no godkitten difference. F this patch. zWhoopie freaking dooo… 7 seconds instead of 10 for DS. oh boy.. so huge a difference. BORING ANET. you did nothing again, once again all yyour talk and your still full of crap. yay buring… all crap.

and to top it off, you give a new condition to the two most mobile, and higest damaging classes in the game, that can dish out pain with the best escape mechanisms. YOU ARE kittenED! infract me, who gives a kitten

Balance does not mean kitten everything else so you can add some shiney new useless skills thinking it will make new builds. No. you did nothing. stop thinking you did.

To be fair, the supposed implementation of the new condition on mesmer and thief was very hard for them to get, and in very small quantities. In general, I think most of us are hoping the unspoken changes are better, but the more I consider the news so far, it does feel like I am going to be looking at far less build diversity.

It does seem like they’re (still) pushing for hybrid builds amongst necromancers. Oh well, we’ll just have to see what anet gives us tomorrow. Can’t be any worse than… I’ll just stop there.

I don’t actually think this will hurt build diversity on our side any, and actually increase it. There are two big changes I see so far that will hurt build diversity: Terror to Master, nerf to Near to Death. However, bringing Near to Death down to Master actually opens up one build option, so I really think it more or less evens itself out, leaving Terror.

To my knowledge no other change will actually hurt, directly, any build currently used. That means your standard PvP build that you use right now will be essentially untouched. The standard 0/30/10/0/30 build that many people use will remain usable. The only question is whether the new traits and changes open up build options, compared to the maybe 1 or 2 builds that died because of Terror. I think it will.

The changes appear to be overall in the right direction, although some of them concern me (CB nerfed, 5 is way too low when A/F can now do 4 on half the CD). And then again, we will see what actually makes its way into the real patch tomorrow. Then we can see where we are. Overall, I think it is a nice step, but no one can say we are going to be fully balanced after this.

Gryph.8237:

Actually, in my opinion they did absolutely NOTHING for condition builds, but make it tougher to have a good condition build with terror, and decent cooldown on corruption utilities. I am actually hating EVERYthing they did. Let’s break it down.

Changes to spite, force people to try axe more because they move the never used grandmaster trait to master level… whoopie,, its still not going to be used. For condition builds, they add dumb fire… who gives a crap… so now, you can’t have any toughness for condition builds, if you want to add this whole new condition to you’re mix up, unless you kitten your existing condition build massively. Sure you can go 30/30/x/x/x but you don’t get kitten for it. You want to encorporate burning into terror, you kitten yourself, and you wont be using staff at all.

what they are doing is forcing hybrid builds, and kiling our best pvp skills. I.E. corrupt boon. F that.

BOring kitten changes that basically balance out to no godkitten difference. F this patch. zWhoopie freaking dooo… 7 seconds instead of 10 for DS. oh boy.. so huge a difference. BORING ANET. you did nothing again, once again all yyour talk and your still full of crap. yay buring… all crap.

I sympathize with most of this. I think my current condi build likely got nerfed as much as helped. From what I see so far, not that interested in burning and losing around 5k of combined vitality/toughness/regeneration, as well as the awesome Last Grasp armor from SR, just to get in return overkill duration (which dont need outside sPVP due to food) and about 4k damage in burning per 10s, which is still susceptible to cleansing. Then pretty much every trait along the way to get there, inferior to what I have in other trait lines.

Yet somehow I get the impression we are going to start seeing a ton of these cookie cutter burning/terror builds, which actually then served to kill diversity, instead of increase it, as right now you can build a condi build with probably a dozen variations that are all similarly effective based on playstyle.

Corrupt Boon and Epidemic (or even BIP for PVE) with nerfed cooldowns due to terror moving up to master, and Corrupt Boon now only turns over 5 boons… bleh.

I don’t agree with you at all bhawb. I don’t think they did anything but hurt full on condition builds who tried to use our characteristic trait, which is terror/fear. It is boned now, if you want to bring any other utility and fear to your character, you just cant. Burning is moot, and useless in a condition build because they force you to go into spite to add this condition. 0/30/10/0/30 is no real change, other than yuou can swap terror to go into ds 3 seconds earlier… which i think is crap, compared to terror. SO basically, you can be the same as before, albeit weaker because i cant have master of corruption and terror, without gimping condition duration.

NO, they did nothing but hurt some builds to try to increase diversity which i see as failing 1 month in, when people figure out that the diverse builds are the weaker builds.

But whatever, im done with this game. I am so sick of hoping the necro devs grow a brain, play the class and actually THINK about their changes, without lickin their mesmers.

THey thought about this? HJAHAH they are just full of hot air and empty promises. I actually think they have 0 clue what to do with necros. oh burning… yay…. no mobility, so lets give them a condition that makes other less mobile, , but to offset it, lets give it to memsers and thieves too, who have insta invis and the higest damage. HAHAHAHAHAH F that.

Well it is unfortunate that it seems so much thought was put around preventing perm. stability (the nerf to the DS cooldown trait), and preventing easy access to burning and terror (the terror move).

I refuse to get bent out of shape till I see all the changes, but in either case, I think I will make it out the other side because of food. Sorry tourney folks

Gryph.8237:

Burning is moot, and useless in a condition build because they force you to go into spite to add this condition.

Basically if you want burning and terror as condi, you are going to be rather squishy. Either low toughness or base health. 30/30/10 is trading out a lot of defense and survival for burst potential, but necro isn’t a burst profession outside dagger main, which has the LF gen to ‘stick in the pocket’, but otherwise, none of our other skills or mechanics synergize for burst. And still susceptible to your burst being cleansed or stun broke out of, which simply isn’t the case for direct damage burst. Kind of goes against the whole concept of attrition they are supposedly trying to build up. The burning is also random, not on demand skill, so hard to use with terror in combination.

And there is really no ideal gear stat combo to get that survival back. Which would likely be Vit/Tgh/Condi for instance.

To offer burning as a new option, hey fine, but then to nerf existing, merely ‘decent’, builds that frankly need a bit more help yet still, that doesn’t make sense.

Torment better be a panacea.

Well I’m a huge fan of all the changes so far and I can’t wait to see the patch notes and log on afterwards to use DS5. I wish there was some defense added, but something is much better than nothing.

I actually agree with bwab, nothing we have now has been killed.

The change to corrupt boon, that hurt – what is actually funny is that if you corrupt a target with fury/protection/might/swiftness/retaliation, then the self poison could outweigh the damage done to the target. Lol.

But we are maybe getting sexy new spectral wall, honestly if that happens then watch this space for pitchforks

Power/Deathshroud builds got a massive buff 30/x/x/x/30

sigh Build Diversity? Take away a few builds to put in place one. Does not seem to be a nice thing to do.

If greater marks are not made baseline or merged with staff mastery in the 10th tier then that terror move completely screws up my terror+banshees wail combo.=(

Since burning is going to be an on crit trait, then it would require rabid gear while carrion is currently the way to go…. And again it’s an on crit with CD of 10 second in a grandmaster. 10 second CD for a uncontrollable chance even with rabid gear!!!

Surely hope there is a lot more to this new patch then this. My build looks to be in bad shape judging from this.

Iceflame.5024:

Since burning is going to be an on crit trait, then it would require rabid gear while carrion is currently the way to go….

And if you are going Rabid, then you probably want full Precision to take advantage of whatever on crit stuff you have, but yet are forced to get 300 power for going down Spite anyway. Very questionable how deep they think this stuff through.

The trait is capped at once every 10 seconds. Even your base 4% crit chance will, on average, crit every 25 hits. Lets say you throw on a Rabid Jewel (not a big loss), and have 10 points into Curses, you’ll have a 12% chance, or once every 8-9 hits. You should be able to hit 8-9 times easily within 10 seconds, considering all the AoE chances for crits.

Bhawb.7408:

The trait is capped at once every 10 seconds. Even your base 4% crit chance will, on average, crit every 25 hits. Lets say you throw on a Rabid Jewel (not a big loss), and have 10 points into Curses, you’ll have a 12% chance, or once every 8-9 hits. You should be able to hit 8-9 times easily within 10 seconds, considering all the AoE chances for crits.

I just prefer a build with as minimum on chance things as possible. Think if people are given the choice, the majority would prefer on demand stuff in PVP.

Yes, on demand is always stronger because it is there when you need it (like if he’s really low, and running off, and that burning proc will finish him), but RNG on crit stuff is pretty much how they are doing a lot of things.

As expected, no love for leeching and minion masters. They even removed the leaked death magic changes. At least some damage on nova would have made the line sort of tempting to ponder but nope, can’t have build diversity. Go DPS or go home.

This shows nothing about removing anything, this is an incomplete preview.

If this one is true the Near to Death nerf really upsets me, probably more than it should. I had a lot of fun on this build, the 100% uptime of fury was amazing.

Also, maybe I’m just not seeing a synergy somewhere, but who would spend a master level trait to get 3 seconds off of death shroud? The only place I can see that being useful is a boon duration build to try to get as close to 100% stability uptime. If this is the case and it isn’t useful to any other build, why not combine Near to Death and Foot in the Grave as a grandmaster trait. If 30% is too much cooldown reduction, make it 25%.

Burning trait feels like it will be very lackluster, especially if you use condi duration food. This will only increase the burning duration and allow it to be cleansed or transfer much easier. Against a necro with a lot of transfers, like my build for example, you will likely eat a lot of that damage yourself. If OH dagger gets the faster projectile speed from the leaked notes, that will be a huge buff to transfers. This means that even without burning, you can transfer it back to whoever lands it on you with an even better success rate than before. So for a condi build, why bother?

Honestly I feel that my build was buffed, especially if Spectral Wall does actually get Fear. I may alter it, though, if I can to get stability in DS fr sPvP but for WvW I see it as a buff.

I will need to duel some people that take Dumbfire though, but from what I’m seeing it is causing you to give up too much for it.

Yeah, Near to Death pretty much is not that great w/o it being 50% . The nerf makes sense, but the value is gone.

So Reanimator is still there? Blah.

No changes even in the leaked notes so yes, we’re are stuck with this amazing and useful minor trait. So happy.

Edit: After thinking about my build, no terror may actually make me reconsider my build/traits as I may not be able to fit it in now that it’s moved. Only means I’ll need to put ten points elsewhere or use another trait in its place. Hmmmm.. I hope the patch is in before I leave for work tomorrow so I can at least see my options.

Edit 2: I stand corrected. This actually has no affect on my build at all. Yay for buffs!

The Changes to Near to Death and the missing Death/Blood Magic changes upset me. I was actually looking forward to a Shrouddancer build, hopping in and out of Shroud all the time.
Hell, 3 seconds is still good, it just seems that 30/10/0/0/30 will be the build of the future. I thought they wanted to rework Vampirism!
I seriously hope these are somehow fake, wrong or outdated.
Also, where can I get an update on the skills?
I really want my Vampire-Knight to finally work.

If this is true, I’m screwed
wvwvw build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7djMaV7Nbib0bKAJFPbNUhdjKEM1D4THdA-jUgAlcR0YBA-w
(100% fear duration, AoE burn from Runes, Near to Death + Spiteful Spirit/Shrouded Removal)

So far the only buff in my spec (30/15/0/0/25) is the Near to Death. I doubt I’ll use the fire over 20% extra damage. I will have to replace Decaying Swarm with Near to Death. That’s about it…

I still am like WTF are they thinking. Could they not just having done something nice for us, and switched the grandmaster (weakness on crit) with the grandmaster (dumb fire on crit, im sorry dhuuuuumfire (stupid kitten name)). I mean WTF!!!!!! can we not have a nice condition build that can work in an extra condition without kittening ourselves with the lack of toughness now. I am so kitten ed at this godkitten change. Then they moved terror to the master slot, which makes it so you can’t take master of corruption and terror unless you kitten up your other trait choices. Why do they have to F up our builds to give us one or two other LACKLUSTER BUILDS!

godkitten you anet

Dhuumfire gives condition builds a reason to go into the condition duration tree. It shows just how bad the problem is when people are failing to see that. I don’t think it’s enough, but at least it acknowledges the issue.