Guild Wars 2

Well, I won’t say that I like everything they did but at least there are some pretty interesting things out there :

Signet :
We got a bunch of cool down reduced and 3 trait that I think are really worth it (especially if all 3 of them are taken).
Signets of suffering : CD reduction, might on cast and… corrupt 2 boons on foes affected (one word : AWESOME)
Plague signet : Free condition transfer every 30(24)s when bothered by incoming conditions (what else?). Beside, it benefit from Signet of suffering.
Blood bound : Free cast of Lesser signet of vampirism if we inflict up to 4 bleed stack. Benefit from Signet of suffering. While we don’t know what this “lesser” things mean, I hope it just apply the 25 stacks of vampiric mark on our foe. This could mean a pretty interesting dps/heal boost.

Siphon :
The effect of all siphoning skill and trait have been increased by 20%. Which mean :
- Vampiric mark will heal for base 240 and deal base 470 damage (not bad)
- Siphon from traits will probably be a base 46 damage/heal effect for Vampiric and Vampiric presence (overall it’s equal to vampiric + vampiric precision)
- Siphon pass through DS (even for Vampiric mark)

Minion :
No more choice to do, now minionmancer can go all out in minion without having to choose between options.

miscellanous :
- Whitering precision is buffed, blessed with an halved cool down and merged with weakening shroud.
- Corruptor fervor that reduce incoming condition damage by up to 20%.
- Chill from chilling darkness finally gain a whole 100% duration buff

I know, there are a lot of things that hurt current builds and habits, but there is still some good stuff that’s been added. The challenge (and this challenge will be the same for every profession) will probably be to be able to change our habit, think differently and adapt, because it’s not nearly half as bad as what you think it is.

NB.: Just to be sure that I’m not misunderstood here, I still think that there are core issue that Anet just don’t want to see and don’t want to adress, but I also think that the good stuff is real here. (I would’ve hoped for a trait that convert self inflicted conditions into boons to pair with master of corruption… This would have been awesome)

Totally agree. Necro’s are only looking at the “dark side” of the patch. However, there’s a lot of new stuff, especially for power necros, which can be considerer as a buff to our profession. Especially the Plague Signet’s one, or the Withering precision buff (5 seconds weakness with 10 seconds CD is nice). Well, as a power necro main, except that weird CC’s nerf (im waiting to see conditions added by the trait before starting whining hard), the upcoming changes doesn’t look that horrible.

I this may be another patch where necro doesn’t get all the changes we want, but the meta shifts around us. This has happened before where the necro community was upset with a patch, but the meta shifted around us in unforeseen ways. Not that it made us viable, but I have played my necro in pvp for over a year and been having fun despite it being an unviable class.

For example, engineers seem to be super strong post patch. Who counters engis? That would be necros. Thieves and mesmers seem very strong, but both carry almost no condition removal. If shoutbows somehow drop from the meta and diamond skin eles dont become a thing, condimancer will work again, and certain builds could mitigate a lot of damage.

Just a hypothetical there but its possible.

I’m not pumped about the consume conditions changes, and I think there is still a big disconnect between us and the devs, but otherwise there are some very positive things happening in this patch. And Reaper will help too.

Look, I was a bad patch for us, but OP is right a lot of stuff looks good.

(1). Anet listened to us. The previously previewed traits were beyond garbage. These are improvements.

(2) Curses is looking pretty great now for condition users and non condition users. Even the justifiably complaining condimancers are saying ‘I have to choose between great traits.’.

That’s good. Now get the other subpar trait lines up to par.

(3). Somebody put some work/thought into the blood line. If the changes fail, then somebody who presumably has a professional reputation failed.

All of the ‘Res allies’ traits combined aren’t as good as warrior banner or guardian bubble, but somebody is out there doing real work on the line. We didn’t get a blood balance of "we’re going to change 2+3 =5 into 3 + 2 = 5.

Put it this way, if necromancer sustain traits, combined are good enough that necromancers can use celestial, then that’s a game changer.

Previously, anet philosophy was necromancer sustain = life force. One of the problems with that was healing power was useless and that put every necromancer at a big stat disadvantage vs celestial. The blood traits, if they work, could fix a big issue with the class.

(4).* Team support, does it exist now? *.

The life siphon buff only works if your allies are getting more damage than you’re nerfing yourself.

Boon conversion buffs still aren’t as good as boon rip on autoattack (and booms are absent fom PvE).

Blood is power looks ok next to the zero cast time “for great justice,” but groups with an elementalist that stack 18 mights with 20s duration are going to get mad at you for overwriting long duration might with short duration might.

(5) Vigor Nerf and boon Conversion changes are good.

Not all of the changes are good. The poison changes gut all of our non scepter builds, and the chill changes (especially chill converts to resistance) seem to bury the reaper. (Reapers look really weak). But the vigor nerf is nice.

(6). The new Signet trait is good if it doesn’t have an internal cool down.

When it gets an internal coolown, toss it into the scrap heap.

(6) Well it’s obvious that :
Signets of suffering : No cool down
Plague signet : 30s cool down, 24s cool down if used with Signet of suffering
Blood bound : 35s cool down, 28s cool down if used with Signet of suffering

(5) Well, most if not all boon conversion are done by the necromancer if anything, it’s the Necromancer that benefit from the boon conversion table not the other professions…

(4) I agree that team support is still lacking but :
- The new BiP ain’t bad in itself, and it should be pretty usefull for burst phase in PvE while it won’t really be an issue in PvP and WvW.
- There aren’t a lot of boon junky mobs in PvE ATM but that ain’t the case in PvP and WvW. And HoT could introduce a lot of them… There ain’t anything more frustrating than a mob with protection on him.
- The Vampiric presence will probably be irrelevant but Blood Bound could be usefull if I m right about what it will do. Don’t brush it away.

(3) I think the blood magic traitline (spec) still lack real support and/or viable mean for basic survivability but, the fact that they finally allow siphon to pass through is a huge improvement and it could prove to be pretty good. If I’m right, we can hope that DS#4 heal us to up to 4k, this is not half bad and we won’t even have to crit for that.