Guild Wars 2

Just a thought I had, by no means have I thought out if this would be a good change or not. But basically, what does everyone think of making Epidemic castable on allies and/or yourself? From a point of view of fun, I could see this being very fun, especially the self castable making Plague Signet much more viable, and would certainly make me feel like more of a master of conditions. However I’d like to know what other people think, both about the fun-factor, and the balance.

A lot of skills would make sense if you could activate them on targeting a ally, not just necro ones (mesmer bounces, guardian fields, etc), but im not sure that a-net know how to program pure effects without damage components while having hit detection *cough spectral grasp (projectile with effect) vs Doom (invis projectile with small damage)* especially now that Epidemic is a projectile.

This would give me a reason to work towards c/v/t ascended gear, and create a condition vector build, as I can see the gameplay being really fun. The low base cooldown of epidemic might make this interaction a bit overpowered, especially since you will almost always use the skill successfully in a self cast.

Obviously a self cast would always work, however that requires you to sit on those conditions (and it doesn’t cleanse them), so the only way you could get off a 25 stack of bleed Epidemic is if you were willing to take that gamble. It could bring back some of the old feel of gambling with your life for game changing plays that many Necros miss with the old sacrifice system.

lol…. I was just picturing a 1v1 against another condition class….. you have 12 bleeds/burn/poison on you, and you self cast epidemic, followed by putrid mark….. lol

It would be to op IMO. Sounds good though.

High vitality necro with plague Sig taking cover and epi himself with out the risk of getting hit. plague copies condis pretty far, epi hits people from a good distance. after that land a putrid…

That seems totally balanced… Well, I did say I hadn’t thought it through much :P

That sounds interesting, except it would make self-casting pretty much always the best day to use it. How about if you doubled the cooldown on ally-cast?

I do agree that something would need to be different about self/ally casting. Longer CD makes sense, trading off reliability for less uses.

Very interesting idea. I’d rather replace the 25% chance on crit for weakness in Curses to a trait that “on successful condi transfer (dagger #4, putrid mark, plague signet) epidemic all transfered conditions to nearby enemies” 30-45 sec ICD.

Epidemic on ally’s is cool but too easily exploitable with double stacks with self epi and transfer. My idea essentially gets the self condi epi without pushing it OP with a transfer x2 stack.

Interesting idea.

When it would work: Epidemic cooldown increased to 30 and Removed invis projectile effect, cast time turned instant