Guild Wars 2

I’m new to the forums, and from what I skimmed through, this idea hasn’t been brought up. If though it has I apologize in advance.

So we all know that staff skill 1’s projectile is very slow. It is often it doesn’t hit its target. Fortunately it pierces by default so we can hopefully hit a couple of foes. Currently it has a combo finisher that has a 20% chance to proc.

I propose that due to it’s inherently slow speed it should have a higher chance to proc a combo. Say 40% or 50% … maybe higher? This would help make up for it’s slow speed and lackluster damage.

What do you all think?

The 20% chance is also called a ‘small projectile finisher’. Right now, skills with projectile finisher either have 20% chance or 100% chance to finish. Skills with ‘small projectile finisher’ tend to either be auto-attack skills or skills that fire a lot of projectiles at ones (e.g. the Rangers Longbow 2, “Rapid Fire”).
Increasing the chance to 40-50% would introduce a new category into the game, making the game mechanics (a little bit) more complicated. Increasing the game complexity is not really something the developers at ArenaNet tend to take lightly.
I think the problem with the Necrotic Grasp isn’t that it has only a 20% chance to combo finish. Rather, it’s the other stuff you mentioned. If the projectiles were slightly faster, they would hit more often. I think damage-wise the projectiles are in a good spot though, I personally don’t need to see a change in that.

I don’t know if ArenaNet has specifically commented on Necrotic Grasp, but perhaps someone else does. (hint, hint, readers…)

Personally, I’d like to see Necrotic Grasp altered just a tiny bit so that the projectile splits and spreads the farther away from the caster it gets. So from point-blank to 300-range, it’s “one” claw. From 300-600 it splits into three. From 600-1200 it splits into six. Or maybe it just gets larger with a bigger hitbox. You’d have to tweak the damage on the splits to make up for the sheer coverage of the attack, though…

The simply reasoning is that the Staff is the ONLY AoE power-based weapon that the Necro has, and the one spammable Mark is ConD. I’d honestly rather see Axe get a cleave, but this would work, too.

I prefer that Anet changes the skill so it bounces between foes instead of going straight.