Guild Wars 2

Just thought about it earlier today. What do you guys think about having the additional self-inflicted conditions from MoC apply to the targets as well?

e.g: CPC inflicts 2 seconds of self-cripple, therefore it would apply 2 seconds cripple to the enemies as well.

Would this make it more appealing? Or maybe throw things off balance? I just find it unappealing to have additional self-inflicted conditions just for CD reduction.

Step 1) Remove all self-harm from corruptions
Step 2) Make Blood is Power worth taking ever
Step 3) Make Master of Corruption totally different
Step 4) Recycle self-harm as an elite spec

I think the idea behind it is that you’re supposed to transfer the additional conditions towards your enemies. Could the trait be better? Yes, of course. but just saying.

Foverine.5342:

I think the idea behind it is that you’re supposed to transfer the additional conditions towards your enemies. Could the trait be better? Yes, of course. but just saying.

I can’t transfer a blind.

Foverine.5342:

I think the idea behind it is that you’re supposed to transfer the additional conditions towards your enemies. Could the trait be better? Yes, of course. but just saying.

You are correct about the idea, and that idea is stupid.

for blood is power id change the bleed stacks to this
6bleed 10 second on target
.. its a good start for the skill because 30second bleed stack are useless in every game type

For MoC trait i would have it do this. Corruption skill now additionally apply blind and poison on their first strike (mainly for CpC)

Bhawb.7408:

Step 1) Remove all self-harm from corruptions
Step 2) Make Blood is Power worth taking ever
Step 3) Make Master of Corruption totally different
Step 4) Recycle self-harm as an elite spec

There are quite a lot of transfers, i think the self harm with the number of transfers is pretty interesting design. Think about it, if you were to design something else for corruptions and you wanted it to be not the usual “X skills are reduced by X%” how would you do it in a way to fit the whole corruptions theme?

You take your off hand dagger, you take the plague sending trait, you can take plague signet, or you can take boon conversion stuff like well of power or lyssa runes which synergizes well with Blighter’s boon.

I feel like the only one who likes where corruptions are right now! The transfers we have (i use plague sending, dagger 4, and consume conditions to take care of any condis) means that the side effects are actually a decent benefit to you, and are rarely an issue if you play smart. The -33% CD is insanely awesome.

I just wish BIP was a little more well-defined. It’s okay right now, but I wish the damage was a little more upfront, and the radius of the effect up to 360, or to increase the duration/intensity of the stacks. Right now it feels too hard to snag your whole party in the tiny radius, and 8 stacks for 9 seconds isn’t even all that significant. However if it was changed to be a big burst of bleed and might around you, that might be cool.

What if it was just a 240 aoe effect for both the bleed and might, but a bit more powerful on both? That would feel cool and distinguish it from traditional might stacking (which it already doesn’t fit well with becuase of the short duration of it). I don’t mind having to make good positioning a requirement for an effective spell, since that seems to be the direction they’re going, so the short range might work if the effect was strong.

Ragion.2831:

There are quite a lot of transfers, i think the self harm with the number of transfers is pretty interesting design. Think about it, if you were to design something else for corruptions and you wanted it to be not the usual “X skills are reduced by X%” how would you do it in a way to fit the whole corruptions theme?

You take your off hand dagger, you take the plague sending trait, you can take plague signet, or you can take boon conversion stuff like well of power or lyssa runes which synergizes well with Blighter’s boon.

Here is the thing, if I take any of those transfers, I don’t take something else, there is a measurable economic cost to my build. If I take CPC, I get a skill that is otherwise balanced, but also FORCES me to take more transfers than I need in order to get rid of that weakness. In your example, I take a corruption, and then am forced into Well of Power (or Plague Signet/Plague Sending/etc.) over something else.

The only situation where corruptions become “beneficial”, is where I have so many transfers that it is just completely irrelevant to me if I apply one. But no matter the case, you end up with one of two situations: corruptions apply conditions that weaken the rest of your build to deal with, or those conditions are so meaningless you can ignore them. And both of those situations are awful design, and in both situations removing the conditions is a net improvement both in power and design.

Well-designed self-harm should have costs that completely change how you play, and should be worthwhile. GW1 BiP is an example, the self harm was so significant that you had to be careful to not kill yourself, and often required a dedicated healer, however the benefit was that you allowed another player to spam high cost high power skills far more than normal. High risk, high reward.

Corruptions are just badly designed. They don’t gain power through the self-harm, and the self harm is either not worth building around (skills aren’t strong enough), or so meaningless it doesn’t matter. That is bad design, it should be shelved (since all but BiP are just fine without self harm) and redone with an elite spec that properly deals with the risk reward.

I think you overestimate the cost of getting a few transfers, the other adepts in curses are pretty much a wash so plague sending is a given anyway. Dagger offhand or a staff, a given in any corruptions build will take care of the rest. I think personally they should extend the durations of the self condis, but it is worth noting that your condi duration extensions do count on self-inflicted condis.

In my hybrid build I generally bring CPC/BIP, and can easily spam them every 20 seconds if needed, only occasionally needing the D4. If I bring more than that it may start to be a little troublesome, though, but it works well for me.

this might be off topic a little but i agree with bhawb that the self harm should be redesign as a elite spec
Here was my idea for the elite spec
cultist
F2 ability soul link
tether yourself to target ally. Target ally’s maximum health increase equal to 30% of your maximum health.
you lose 30% of you maximum health

Mega Skeleton.8259:

I think you overestimate the cost of getting a few transfers, the other adepts in curses are pretty much a wash so plague sending is a given anyway. Dagger offhand or a staff, a given in any corruptions build will take care of the rest. I think personally they should extend the durations of the self condis, but it is worth noting that your condi duration extensions do count on self-inflicted condis.

In my hybrid build I generally bring CPC/BIP, and can easily spam them every 20 seconds if needed, only occasionally needing the D4. If I bring more than that it may start to be a little troublesome, though, but it works well for me.

Dagger OH is heavily subpar to WH if transfer isn’t needed, not all builds take curses (or want to waste Plague signet proc on 5 vuln from Epidemic) plus the fact that curses has no options is really just bad Curses design. Corruptions are desirable outside “corruption builds”, which don’t always have access to extraneous transfers, and would definitely lose power to pick them up.

My point is, I don’t think corruptions are badly designed, just poorly tuned. I think master of corruptions is a step in the right direction, but needs a little more oomph.

If they increased the conditions you self-inflict a lot (and the power of the upside of the ability, like say BIP granting 12 stacks), if you miscalculated your combos or get forced to use a corruption out of sequence, it may cost you heavily (like the 10 stacks of vuln they brought back down to 5 from CC, not that I’m advocating for that reversion but the idea was interesting). I think with some mild adjustments to the strength of the abilities and self-harm could go a long way.

The primary problem I think is the transferred conditions aren’t strong enough to be worth taking the transfers required. Perhaps MOC could increase the duration of self inflicted conditiosn by 50-100% too? That way the self-inflictions aren’t too strong on people not specced MOC.

Master of Corruption or self-debuff/condi send-out will never be a play style. Mallyx rev was a perfect example of what will happen. Devs will complain it interferes with the cleansing condi meta and will remove it. I like the play style. It’s unique but will sadly never get its day.

Bhawb the problem you are having isnt that Corruption design is bad its that you dont like the way Necro uses conditions to fight. There are so many things you can do with conditions on you that not only dont take away from a build but add to it.

If you make a low armour build with Spite and curses, you can get both a damage increase with the crit chance stacking, a free transfer and better and faster immediate heals with consume conditions and master of corruption traits which is what you will need for any build that cant take much of a hit. On the same lines you can also gain increased damage from traits like close to death, so what do you lose?

If you take Death magic you can cleanse the self conditions outright or transfer them for Corruptors fervour stacking bonuses which only just boosts the tanky side of the build

Blood magic, you can focus on converting conditions to boons with well of power and lyssa runes. You dont lose anything there, you arent hindered by having more boons especially with the new Blighter’s boon trait. In fact they are both excellent for counter attacking. Stun break with well of power, stay immune to blind and cast your “chilled to the bone” or cast chilled to the bone when you take a condi burst to cleanse and counter at the same time.

You have to really try to avoid all the gains from using conditions on you and if you do manage it chances are it will be a bad build. So you have two choices, make a bad build or make your build better by using conditions

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

Tman.6349:

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

That’s an interesting definition of fixed.

Bhawb.7408:

Tman.6349:

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

That’s an interesting definition of fixed.

Fixed = Neutered by the look of it.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

My point is, I don’t think corruptions are badly designed, just poorly tuned. I think master of corruptions is a step in the right direction, but needs a little more oomph.

Master of corruption is not a step in the right direction, you paid double the price since your self inflicted condition had a 33% cooldown reduction plus an extra condition. You only get a 33% cooldown reduction. So you got 2 negatives and only 1 positive.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

If they increased the conditions you self-inflict a lot (and the power of the upside of the ability, like say BIP granting 12 stacks), if you miscalculated your combos or get forced to use a corruption out of sequence, it may cost you heavily (like the 10 stacks of vuln they brought back down to 5 from CC, not that I’m advocating for that reversion but the idea was interesting). I think with some mild adjustments to the strength of the abilities and self-harm could go a long way.

Increasing the self inflicted harm on BiP is insane, right now it can traited reach 61% of your health and that’s without extra might or vuln on you. And you want to increase that?

Mega Skeleton.8259:

The primary problem I think is the transferred conditions aren’t strong enough to be worth taking the transfers required. Perhaps MOC could increase the duration of self inflicted conditiosn by 50-100% too? That way the self-inflictions aren’t too strong on people not specced MOC.

The problem is with that thinking is that there is no bonus from getting extra conditions on you unless you are overstacked in condition transfers/removal which is unlikely outside PvE. But why invest in extra removal/transfers when you can take other skills/traits instead?

Ragion.2831:

Bhawb the problem you are having isnt that Corruption design is bad its that you dont like the way Necro uses conditions to fight. There are so many things you can do with conditions on you that not only dont take away from a build but add to it.

On the contrary extra conditions on you will never add something since it means that other conditions are not dealth with.

Ragion.2831:

If you make a low armour build with Spite and curses, you can get both a damage increase with the crit chance stacking, a free transfer and better and faster immediate heals with consume conditions and master of corruption traits which is what you will need for any build that cant take much of a hit. On the same lines you can also gain increased damage from traits like close to death, so what do you lose?

And what has this to do with the extra self inflicted conditions of corruptions?Unless you are speaking about the transfer, sadly it does not work well on 2 corruption skills if you are taking MoC (weakness means 50% less chance on a proc).

Ragion.2831:

If you take Death magic you can cleanse the self conditions outright or transfer them for Corruptors fervour stacking bonuses which only just boosts the tanky side of the build

If you are running a condition build how can you not easliy cap the 10 stack? Scepter auto attack only is 4 stacks in 2~3 seconds, things like grasping dead only boost it.

Ragion.2831:

Blood magic, you can focus on converting conditions to boons with well of power and lyssa runes. You dont lose anything there, you arent hindered by having more boons especially with the new Blighter’s boon trait. In fact they are both excellent for counter attacking. Stun break with well of power, stay immune to blind and cast your “chilled to the bone” or cast chilled to the bone when you take a condi burst to cleanse and counter at the same time.

Well of power nor lyssa runes can keep up in terms of cooldown with corruption skills especccially when traited with MoC.

Ragion.2831:

You have to really try to avoid all the gains from using conditions on you and if you do manage it chances are it will be a bad build. So you have two choices, make a bad build or make your build better by using conditions

The problem is not “not getting gain from conditions”. The problem is “not getting gain from extra conditions”.

Well of power and lyssa will keep up when you consider plague sending and off hand dagger. I only isolated those two to show that boon conversion is a strategy for necro.

Lets simplify things, here is an example of a build i would run that lets me do anything i want with conditions without losing the point of the build which is to be able to respond to as many scenarios as possible. I dont even bother running well of power on the actual build i just run well of darkness to deal with ganks and speedy or stun heavy builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdG1IHN0aj90gzNwfjDjhamCxQOQDioYIi/cAMAA-TJBFABC8EAEvMQN7PAwJBAA

My actual build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdG1IHN0ajF1gzNwfjDjhamCxQOQDioYIi/cAMAA-TJBFABC8EAEvMQN7PAwJBAA

Here is celestial Reaper hybrid build for maximizing damage while using almost only corruptions. By the time you use both BIP and corrupt boon you will have met the requirements for Plague sending. You can easily deal with extra condtion pressure with consume conditions which is on a pretty short cooldown and send the vulns to the enemy with off hand dagger for extra crit chance, condi damage and direct damage or keep the conditions from BIP and CB for an extra 2340 heal then send the vulns with dagger. I think you would agree that the cd of dagger 4, plague sending and heal cd can keep up with condi pressure from both you and other targets

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRArY3dnc0AV3gl3AubC83gFcBL+K+FHjQXtAQLIar1BGBA-TJBFwACeCA12fAaZAAnEAA

I’ll probably repeat myself but :

The idea of corrupting self is not bad in itself and there could be ton of way to exploit it. Simply the way the GW2 necromancer deal with this idea is bad. Now, if they introduce some trait that really take advantage of the self inflicted condition by granting something to the necromancer in exchange for it’s blood and tears, then MoC would actually become valuable in it’s actual shape.

Let’s just imagine some possible tweeks on existing trait :
Spitful renewal : When you corrupt yourself or draw a condition from an allie, you heal yourself for a low amount (no ICD)

Parasitic contagion : In addition to it’s current effect, whenever you corrupt yourself or draw a condition, copy one of the condition on you to foes around you.

Unholy martyr : Make it so you gain life force when you draw a condition on you as well as when you corrupt yourself.

Just this. It wouldn’t be a lot but it would be more than enough to make self corruption valuable. Unholy martyr would become a valuable trait granting this hard to get life force which almost all condi spec starve so much for. Parasitic contagion would feel like something “contagious” and would finally gain some interest for players. Spitful renewal may be a bit to much of a trade of since power spec would lose a cleanse tool. But overall, trait like these would benefit to the profession and would make MoC valuable without breaking the game or the sacred necromancer’s thematic. Beside, just introducing this kind of mechanic open a lot of possibility for futur elite spec.

Edit : changed Unholy sanctuary to Unholy martyr

I don’t think the self-inflicted conditions are in and of themselves a bad idea. I would say just make some small tweaks:

1. Increase might duration on Bip to match the CD (untraited), and double the radius
2. Changed weakness on CPC to poison
3. Remove boom limit on Corrupt Boon
4. Replace blind with literally anything else on Consume conditions

With those small tweaks I think corruptions would be pretty good. These small changes are also much more likely to happen than a complete rework. It took 3 years to get 1 skill changed on scepter, go for small changes or they will never happen.

Bhawb.7408:

Step 1) Remove all self-harm from corruptions
Step 2) Make Blood is Power worth taking ever
Step 3) Make Master of Corruption totally different
Step 4) Recycle self-harm as an elite spec

You say this…

meow one twenty.4376:

Bhawb.7408:

Tman.6349:

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

That’s an interesting definition of fixed.

Fixed = Neutered by the look of it.

Then you say this…

Edit: I appreciate the well thought out and constructive tone/nature of your ‘arguements’ guys. We need more of ‘this’ to have any hope of worthwhile change.

Tman.6349:

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

The numbers are just thrown out there. It could be instead, 5-10% sacrifice of current HP and MoC adding a sacrifice of 5-10% of current Life Force. If the current LF threshold isn’t you get a 0.5-1/sec self Daze, but the skill still fires.

In either scenario it makes for more skillfully play w/o being pigeonholed into stacking certain condi clear/transfers traits and subpar weapons (depending on build, which is my next point.. It opens up for versatility across ALL Necro builds. MMs, Condis, and Celes are hardly hurting for HPs. Then there’s skills like CPC which is amazing for Power Necro sustain but gives self Weakness, rendering it nearly useless. What good is a few secs of less pressure from that Ranger/Mesmer/Engi/staff Ele wrecking you from range while fighting on point if you self inflict Weakness, killing your damage, or have to take offhand Dagg, starving yourself of LF, or swapping to staff, which has bad damage anyway?

Plague might need a bit higher sacrifice as it is strong and MoC reduces it’s CD by a full minute. I would also like to see a 2-3% LF gain per enemy on Deathly Swarm to give those Condi guys a bit of love (especially with this gem of an idea going live.)

Ultimately this change would open build options (or rather release them), it stays in line with the self sacrifice theme, it stays truer to it’s GW1 counterpart, and is INIFINITELY more intuitive.

MoC makes also corruption spells instant? No more healinterupts <3.
Or MoC make also corruption spells to inflict (self inflicted) condis on enemy instead of player.

Emapudapus.1307:

MoC makes also corruption spells instant? No more healinterupts <3.

That’s a bit much. Other players being able to counterplay is a good thing. Skills designed to directly counterplay our own build is a bad thing. :/

So the problem isnt that you dont get rewarded for self inflicted condition by turning it into boons, heal or transferring for damage, its that those rewards arent enough?

looks like the effect some of you might be looking for is a trait that automatically turns you into a god when you put 2 stacks of bleeding on yourself.

Tman.6349:

Emapudapus.1307:

MoC makes also corruption spells instant? No more healinterupts <3.

That’s a bit much. Other players being able to counterplay is a good thing. Skills designed to directly counterplay our own build is a bad thing. :/

Actually no, being counterplayed is fine, whats bad is if there is no counterplay to the counterplay. This is why i think necro should have reveal skills and stealth reliant classes should no longer be stealth reliant.

Tman.6349:

Bhawb.7408:

Step 1) Remove all self-harm from corruptions
Step 2) Make Blood is Power worth taking ever
Step 3) Make Master of Corruption totally different
Step 4) Recycle self-harm as an elite spec

You say this…

The first thing I said was remove all self-harm, your “fix” just changes the self harm, without addressing everything else I’ve been saying about Corruptions. The self-harm is still unnecessary, unless you used invisible ink to write the buffs to corruptions. At this point corruptions are too important to a wide variety of builds (CPC has our only projectile defense, CB is needed for a lot of burst applications, Consume is our best heal) to make the self-harm so meaningful that it has to be built around.

Bhawb.7408:

Tman.6349:

Bhawb.7408:

Step 1) Remove all self-harm from corruptions
Step 2) Make Blood is Power worth taking ever
Step 3) Make Master of Corruption totally different
Step 4) Recycle self-harm as an elite spec

You say this…

The first thing I said was remove all self-harm, your “fix” just changes the self harm, without addressing everything else I’ve been saying about Corruptions. The self-harm is still unnecessary, unless you used invisible ink to write the buffs to corruptions. At this point corruptions are too important to a wide variety of builds (CPC has our only projectile defense, CB is needed for a lot of burst applications, Consume is our best heal) to make the self-harm so meaningful that it has to be built around.

Well I whole-heartedly agree that the fundamental idea/mechanic/implementation of Corruptions is ridiculous and something no other profession has to deal with. Sorry, I guess I just misunderstood you’re idea of fixing them to be do away with the concept as a whole and just make a working and practical set of utilities, which I totally agree with and can support. The uses/usefulness of the effects of these skills is, like, not subject to any kind of debate. I spoke of the exact same sentiments regarding their base functionality.

The problem that WE’re faced with is Devs’ unyielding insistence on relegating Necromancers as THE profession to be weighted down to this ball ‘n chain of ’themeatics, even at the cost of fun, effectiveness, balance, and TEAMPLAY (that was supposed to be a big part of the game’s core philosophy right Anet?). NO other profession is so heavily burdened by this concept. (Although Ranger traitlines are a mess tbh.) Corruptions are the perfect example of this shortcoming with the “slow and hard-hitting, but ‘unstoppable’ greatsword Reaper” coming in a close second. Minions and Condi are not my style, but have mostly been the same ’ole story until some more recent changes that have improved them both a bit.

The Devs have said outright that Necro will always and only be a victim (*my word) of maintaining it’s ‘thematic identity’ and any changes/suggestions will/should take that into account. This understanding is how I came to my idea of this “neutered ‘fix’”.

Corruptions are gonna have some form of sadism attached to them no matter how it’s done. That’s the theme and that’s what we have to work with when making suggestions. The problem now is that they’re mostly geared toward condi builds and pigeonhole us into taking traits, weapons, and/or specific utility skills to make them work leaving you with a suboptimal build in nearly any case. I have to use my condi clears/transfers on self-inflicted only to then be bursted by a condi build. This is bad.

CPC is awesome and is, arguably, most useful for a power Necro. A pulsing poison field with projectile destruction but now I’m left Weakened making the poison useless and the proj destroy to only draw out the fight for a bit. Run offhand dagger? Meh. Swap to staff? Damage still sucks.

How about a condi build running Scavenger for sustain. Better pop my heal! Good thing that extra 1k leech is gonna fail. :/

I’m not saying my exact idea or the numbers are perfect but it’s still thematic and MUCH easier to work Corruptions into multiple builds.

As far as these “invisible buffs I’ve written into Corruptions”, I think making them more practical and initiative is a good enough start.

I’ll agree that your changes (at least in concept if not math) are at the very least the better version of a forced mechanic of self harm. I’ll just argue myself into the grave though before I accept corruptions being forced into self harm though.

Tman.6349:

Tman.6349:

New idea for Corruptions/Master of Corruptions.

Corruption skills sacrifice 5-10% of maximum HP. Master of Corruptions adds a 5-10% sacrifice of Life Force. If you don’t have at least 5-10% Life Force, you are Dazed for 1-2 secs.

Yay. Corruptions are fixed. Still thematic. Not counter-intuitive/‘pita’ to build around.

The numbers are just thrown out there. It could be instead, 5-10% sacrifice of current HP and MoC adding a sacrifice of 5-10% of current Life Force. If the current LF threshold isn’t you get a 0.5-1/sec self Daze, but the skill still fires.

In either scenario it makes for more skillfully play w/o being pigeonholed into stacking certain condi clear/transfers traits and subpar weapons (depending on build, which is my next point.. It opens up for versatility across ALL Necro builds. MMs, Condis, and Celes are hardly hurting for HPs. Then there’s skills like CPC which is amazing for Power Necro sustain but gives self Weakness, rendering it nearly useless. What good is a few secs of less pressure from that Ranger/Mesmer/Engi/staff Ele wrecking you from range while fighting on point if you self inflict Weakness, killing your damage, or have to take offhand Dagg, starving yourself of LF, or swapping to staff, which has bad damage anyway?

Plague might need a bit higher sacrifice as it is strong and MoC reduces it’s CD by a full minute. I would also like to see a 2-3% LF gain per enemy on Deathly Swarm to give those Condi guys a bit of love (especially with this gem of an idea going live.)

Ultimately this change would open build options (or rather release them), it stays in line with the self sacrifice theme, it stays truer to it’s GW1 counterpart, and is INIFINITELY more intuitive.

Infinitely more intuitive? How is a heal that does direct damage to you intuitive? Or how about “the more health you have the more health you lose using your skills?” One more, why would you add self-Daze to the class with nearly no access to Stability?

What the heck makes this more “skillful” when there’s nothing you can do about it? The current form is more skillful because you actually CAN do something about (most) of the conditions you receive from Corruptions.

Calling your own idea a gem made me hurl a little bit.

Tman.6349:

Corruptions are gonna have some form of sadism attached to them no matter how it’s done. That’s the theme and that’s what we have to work with when making suggestions. The problem now is that they’re mostly geared toward condi builds and pigeonhole us into taking traits, weapons, and/or specific utility skills to make them work leaving you with a suboptimal build in nearly any case. I have to use my condi clears/transfers on self-inflicted only to then be bursted by a condi build. This is bad.

CPC is awesome and is, arguably, most useful for a power Necro. A pulsing poison field with projectile destruction but now I’m left Weakened making the poison useless and the proj destroy to only draw out the fight for a bit. Run offhand dagger? Meh. Swap to staff? Damage still sucks.

How about a condi build running Scavenger for sustain. Better pop my heal! Good thing that extra 1k leech is gonna fail. :/

I’m not saying my exact idea or the numbers are perfect but it’s still thematic and MUCH easier to work Corruptions into multiple builds.

As far as these “invisible buffs I’ve written into Corruptions”, I think making them more practical and initiative is a good enough start.

Corruptions aren’t currently geared towards condi builds. Condi builds receive the most damage from them, so there is give and take to both sides. If you try not blowing all your Corruptions at once then many of the condi’s are much less damaging than your idea, I don’t see why you have to transfer them unless you are just spamming skills.

“CPC is awesome and is, arguably, most useful for a power Necro. A pulsing poison field with projectile destruction but now I’m left Weakened making the poison useless and the proj destroy to only draw out the fight for a bit. Run offhand dagger? Meh. Swap to staff? Damage still sucks.”

???
Is this serious? I don’t like the Weakness either but this logic sucks. Somehow you are saying the Poison is useless because you are Weakened… Yeah, that makes sense. Saying that projectile destruction only “draw(s) out the fight for a bit” is a pretty dishonest thing to say. Either this is a declaration that you don’t know how to PvP or you are knowingly being dishonest to make your point stronger.

If you want to make this idea something I can get behind, then turn health sacrifice into LF sacrifice and revert “too low threshold” from Daze back to current condi’s so we can counterplay.

Bhawb.7408:

I’ll agree that your changes (at least in concept if not math) are at the very least the better version of a forced mechanic of self harm. I’ll just argue myself into the grave though before I accept corruptions being forced into self harm though.

Thank you. I never meant for this to be any kind of arguement and I appreciate the de-escalation as we progress towards the fact that we stand on common grounds. The only difference seeming that you’re fed up and think it should all be done away with (which I whole-heartedly agree) and I’m just trying to put my own two cents in on the subject as I’m well aware that Anet’s version of ‘sadist corruptions’ aren’t going anywhere as they’ve already stated. We’re definitely not in any kind of opposition here and I can tell you’re seeing goal is not one of combativeness.

And yes I was going for a ‘better forced mechanic’ b/c that’s what we’re gonna get because themes and reasons. (Why Necro is the only profession subject to such imbalance for the sake of “yeah that’d be cool!”, despite all the balance problems and shortcomings it creates, is beyond me, but right now it’s what we have to work with and they’re not going to accept anything other than ‘Necro-ey’ suggestions. They made this clear in the specializations livestream outright and then backed it up with ‘Vampiric Presence’ and the ‘BiP buff’.

I’m only trying to come up with ideas suitable for the ‘corruptions/sadists/thematic’ gibber-jabber that they’re hellbent on pushing on this profession and this group of utilities.

Now as for my ‘at the very least a much better version of self-harm’…this is the middle ground I’m trying to find. And not for some Stoic reasoning but only that I understand what the devs ‘visions’ demand and also what we would like/expect as players. (For other posts I may trivialize my time with afterward, this is called being an adult and wearing big-boy pants.)

Now it seems like we can agree that HP/LF are much more directly manageable resources than things like condi clears/transfers/rotations/cooldowns/having that ‘one ally’ around at just the right moment, that a direct and predictable ‘sacrifice’ is the only way to go. I’ll admit that ‘sacrificing’ any percentage of ‘max hp or lf’ was/is unbalanced and quickly altered to a ‘percent of current hp/lf’ which makes this much more manageable and opens Corruption skills up to many other specs. The mechanics, this way, are much more flexible and easier to build around.

Now, as for the ‘problem with my math’, the 5-10% numbers were just thrown out there as I said, but that is nothing compared to 33% in GW (which actually involved some ‘sneaky thinking’ to even make work). Even at just 5% HP on the glassiest possible Power Necro spec (which is what I run) we have a base HP pool of 19k. That’s roughly 950 HP. That is a max HP sacrifice though. What if it were based on current HP? Suddenly a CPC at 5k HP only costs you 250 HP. This being the point at which you’d need it most and the ‘sacrifice’ would pale in comparison to the utility. Now Imagine this in a team setting. Charging onto a point with a full 25k HP (random mid-ranged necro hp number) you see your two friends getting pelted in a 3v2 by a ranger, a gs mesmer, and a warrior, so you sacrifice 1250 hp (this is one of the reasons I don’t think 10% of CURRENT HP is out of the question) to drop CPC on your buddies. The Ranger and Mesmer’s damage plummet and the Warrior is WEAKEND (I can’t stress how strong this condi is vs power/melee) and standing in poison field allowing a complete turn of the tides.

This is the kind of Anti/Counter/MasterofDeath/‘Neener!’ play that a SACRIFICE Necro deserves. Not some half-brained “well I think this skill is cool so let me select every single NECESSARRY thing that I need/have to to make it work, even though it’s usually to my own detriment.”

I’m just trying to be real given what we’ve been given.

@Meow: Sacrificing a 5% HP (again just a number) is hardly a burden compared to taking 5% MORE damage from all sources when you actually need that heal. Not to mention how that blind is gonna treat things like Runs of Vamp and Scavange or Sigils of Blood and Leeching. ANYTHING else really.

Also, if you don’t understand why/how a Power Necro would want to use CPC and how the awesomeness of the pulsing Poising on a node when you’re in turn hit with Weakness is detrimental, then I don’t think I’m the one who needs to brush up on game mechanics.
*Hint:Why would a POWER spec want to apply a lot of poison to an enemy?
*Bonus:What does Weakness do to Power specs?

Plz go be condescending to someone else.

Tman.6349:

@Meow: Sacrificing a 5% HP (again just a number) is hardly a burden compared to taking 5% MORE damage from all sources when you actually need that heal. Not to mention how that blind is gonna treat things like Runs of Vamp and Scavange or Sigils of Blood and Leeching. ANYTHING else really.

Check what kills you on death screens. When it’s not Burning or Confusion it tends to be attacks accounting for 2.5k to 7k damage, I don’t want to be inflicting as much damage on myself as my enemies are to me with their most potent moves.

And stop pretending I’m okay with the current conditions from Corruptions. This thread is here because we aren’t happy with them, so stop comparing the Vuln to guaranteed damage.

Tman.6349:

Also, if you don’t understand why/how a Power Necro would want to use CPC and how the awesomeness of the pulsing Poising on a node when you’re in turn hit with Weakness is detrimental, then I don’t think I’m the one who needs to brush up on game mechanics.
*Hint:Why would a POWER spec want to apply a lot of poison to an enemy?
*Bonus:What does Weakness do to Power specs?

Plz go be condescending to someone else.

Sheesh, and you are calling me condescending? Trying to make me look bad and avoid how your quote doesn’t make sense / is dishonest doesn’t help your case. If CPC wasn’t good then why would you be referring to it as “awesome?”

- Poison decreases their healing power while dealing small amounts of damage (4 stacks isn’t horrible).
- Weakness decreases your direct damage dealt and slows endurance regeneration.
What do they have to do with each other? Why does one negate the other?

Windler.4815:

Master of Corruption or self-debuff/condi send-out will never be a play style. Mallyx rev was a perfect example of what will happen. Devs will complain it interferes with the cleansing condi meta and will remove it. I like the play style. It’s unique but will sadly never get its day.

Mallyx got a buff to Pulsating Pestilence which is pretty much about copying conditions on yourself to others.

Pulsating Pestilence 15s ICD
25% chance when struck to copy all conditions currently on you to nearby foes for a few seconds (3). Radius 240.

So for 3s it copies all stuff on you to nearby dudes every 1 sec.

It’s still a lil bit underpowered I think but oh well, it’s there.

I kinda agree with Bhawb and the others.
Corruptions themselves are simply not strong enough to provide the disadvantages they provide. And MoC just makes that even worse.
For a necromancer, corruption skills are among the best utility skills we have, which is why we’re putting up with it; but in the bigger picture these utilities are far from strong enough to warrant such a down side.

You could remove all of the self inflicted conditions and none of the corruption abilities would become overpowered.

The self inflicted stuff might be nice theme/lore wise, but it doesn’t really work well in how the game is currently designed.
I loved the self harm in GW1; but in GW1 you had completely different mechanics. You had MUCH more powerful buffs and debuffs relative to GW2; plus you had dedicated tanks and healers meaning that the downsides of the self sacrifice was often of much lesser impact, even in pvp.

Ragion.2831:

Bhawb the problem you are having isnt that Corruption design is bad its that you dont like the way Necro uses conditions to fight. There are so many things you can do with conditions on you that not only dont take away from a build but add to it.

I see where you’re coming from. But Bhawb is right in that no matter how you twist or turn it, you have to give up something to get those conditions transfered away.
It’s either traits, its either other utility skills, it could be a subpar offhand.

Hell even switching to staff to transfer it away is still forcing you to do something, that you might not even wanted to do, just so you can use your utility skill effectively.

You say these things add to builds; and I’ve thought something similar for quite a while. But if you realize that every use of corruption skills (even more so with MoC) simply has to be paired with a Plague signet / Staff #4 / Plague sending (if you meet the req.) it kinda turns a bit bland. Why handicap it that way around, when the stuff you get for it isn’t even all that strong.

Don’t get me wrong. The concept of self corruption and then being able to play with that self inflicted harm is great. It’s unique, it’s fun and it has great potential.
But that potential is completely unused in this game. There are little to no traits that play into this well. And the effects you get from corruption are FAR inferior to even warrant these downsides.

Go look at GW1, how powerful the enchantments and hexes were that forced you to sacrifice 10-20% HP. Let me just list a few:

- A 30 second long, 33% healing reduction recieved on a foe. For 17% of your HP.
- 20 second long weakness in an area around the target for 10% of your HP.
- BiP in GW1 costs you 33% of your HP and gave an ally +5 energy regen for 10 seconds. Elite skill without cooldown. That’s basically like giving alacrity to someone for 10 seconds at the cost of 33% of your HP (since in GW1 you were often energy capped rather than CD capped like in GW2).

Now of course it’s a completely different game. But in GW1 a necro had the unique ability to shift the pressure in a pvp game, or to increase party potential through burdening the healer.

E.g. you’re doing PvE and your healer is having an easy time. Necro could burden the healer more with self conditions in order to enhance his party or weaken the enemy. Awesome gameplay, that totally made sense.

E.g. 2: You’re doing PvP and your healer is having a hard time keeping up. At the cost of some of your own HP (which you could even handle yourself through vampiric abilities such as life siphon) you can burden the other healer a bit more through healing reduction on their team (forcing either expensive energy+GCD on condi cleanse; or simply increasing their healing load). OR you could give energy regen to your healer.

Not saying these were part of the meta builds, but it’s just an idea how how different GW1 necromancer corruption was compared to GW2. And how it makes so little sense in the current form.