Guild Wars 2

Summon Flesh Wurm.

Most people seem to think that this is a moderately useful minion with rather decent damage . . however, the 2nd skill " Necrotic Traversal" seems to be rather counterintuitive . .

It defeats the purpose of summoning this minion only to kill it for a mildly useful terrain impaired TP and making us wait for a long cd to use it again. This sacrificing of expendable minions works themetically better for the weak looking bone minions but I’d rather have some more use out of the flesh wurm . .

Instead, I suggest changing the 2nd skill into "Necrotic Burrow " which plays to the pets strength instead of killing it off.

1st skill Summon Flesh Wurm

2nd skill Necrotic Burrow

Targeted (similiarly to how you would summon the wurm) 

1200 m range. 45 sec cd

The flesh wurm burrows into the ground, erupting at the target location, causing enemies in the vicinity to flee in terror for 1. 5 seconds and deals x amount of damage.

Alternatively it could cause a knockback / stun effect. (e.g. Maybe if traited it would stun / knockback in addition to the fear)

What do you guys think? Also depending on the range of the burrow attack enemies would be able to visually see the burrowing in a straight line towards them and be able to dodge out of the way, for balance reasons.

I wondered why it previously could not burrow like all the other wurms in the game :P

I think a targeted Burrow would be the best…

why would it have a lower cooldown and longer duration than our other aoe fear?

why would it have a lower cooldown than our elite pets knockdown/back?

its a neat idea though and would make some condition builds very powerful with all the CC and tankiness they could have

Dredlord.8076:

why would it have a lower cooldown and longer duration than our other aoe fear?

why would it have a lower cooldown than our elite pets knockdown/back?

its a neat idea though and would make some condition builds very powerful with all the CC and tankiness they could have

You’re right, the numbers I used was just to give an idea how it could work, they obviously need to be tweaked in order to be balanced, but I think we need some additional sources of cc if we are to be able to “lock horns” and prevent ppl from escaping like the devs envisage =).

This way the utility slot for the wurm would not be wasted, in fact it would be a rather attractive minion.

P.s. Also, I think this skill would be harder to land than the golem’s charge ability because you need to target the ground, and ppl can see the wurm borrowing and have time to dodge it (it wouldn’t be instant like marks), so I’d rather not have it on a very long cd . . however edited the cd up to 45 secs and reduced fear duration to 1.5 secs

I think this is a lovely idea, with a knockback/knockdown. I don’t use the wurm at all, not for a lack of damage but because the teleport isn’t worth killing a pet. That and I don’t like having to kill it and re-summon it every fight.

Thank you, that was my thought as well. I don’t want to lose the pet I just summoned for an extremely situational tp that has very little useability. I’d rather have an ability I could use offensively (and defensively) with it w/o instantly losing it.

After witnessing the wurms in game (mobs) that keept burrowing and emerging stunning enemies around it I keept thinking WHY can’t our wurms do that ! . . I mean the mechanism and visual effect are already in the game so I doubt it would cost much to apply it to our wurms . .

The tp is also a counter to the wurm being focused. It creates a blast finisher and poisons in an AOE around itself while giving you life force. This gives the enemy a “lose lose” scenario to focusing it or you.

If they focus the wurm (assuming you have death nova) they eat 10+ seconds of poison as well as guaranteed weakness (death nova self-combos with minion blast finishers.)

If they don’t kill the wurm they take size-able damage from it over the battle and have to deal with it being an escape mechanism for you.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,

Don’t take away my teleport.

The only reason why people doesn’t use the worm teleport, is because they didn’t learn to use it. It’s not situational at all, I use it nearly each fights.

Note : My reasonning is from WvW.

How to use the worm teleport ->

• Traveling. The worm can be used as a blink. Summon it as far as you can, and as soon as it finish the cast, teleport. It help you travel faster, I use it all the time to roam in WvW.

• Chasing. Using it the same way as traveling, when somoene is trying to get away from you (those pesky thief), summon and teleport to it, if it land on the ennemy, it will also poison them. If not, you will be a lot closer, so swap to DS and dark path them.
  (I have some video of it at home, will try to upload them tonight).

• Escape Mecanism. You are fighting somoene when all of sudden, 3-4 of his friends are coming for you? Well you aren’t a mesmer, so you better run away! How? Lets say your closest tower is to the north. Just run to the south! What? Yeah make them follow you. Cast your worm behind them, to the north. If they chase you, they will only see in front of them, to the south. As soon as they are all behind you, port back to your worm. BAM! No more necro. You will be ported behind them, and 75% of the time, they won’t turn around to see you. If they do, it will prolly be too late. I can’t count how many time it saved my necro bum. You can also cast it near building or rock, port to it and hide right behind, tho you have to stay in LoS to port.

• CC breaker : The activate teleport is also a CC breaker!

• Combo blast : And a combo blast! Tho I have to admit I rarely use it as a combo blaster.

For the mother of all worm, please don’t remove this ability! Even when I’m not MM specced, I miss my worm

P.S : Bone minions also destroy themself, I hope you won’t change them ether!

Nice wurm guide kard! I’m trying the wurm.

I agree with Kard, wurm teleport gives quite good advantage on battlefield.
I also want to add that wurm has some pretty good damage, and if you don`t like using wurm you could also change it to another minion. Wurm performs really good during defense, and it`s basically its function it isn`t a minion that is supposed to run after enemies. Besides that as Kard already mentioned, as long as it lives it will give you strategic advantage on battlefield and a way to retread of quickly dislocate if you`ve getting overwhelmed.
On the other hand I also understand the issue when you don`t need wurm any longer but the only way to get rid of it is to teleport or change skill to another and back, both of which are annoying. I`d like to see a way to remove wurm from battlefield without triggering a cd(outside of a combat of course). Let it go underground and then it just reappears in a different spot when you summon it again.

.. how about this, keep the 2nd skill as it is but change the first ability “summon flesh wurm” to have the worm errupt from the ground – instead of just appearing – causing a fear and /or knockdown effect in an area around it.

So 1st skill Summon Flesh Wurm

Targeted

1200 m range. 90 sec cd (upped 50 sec for balance)

Causes a flesh wurm to erupt from the ground at the target location, causing enemies in the vicinity to flee in terror for 1. 5 seconds. Deals x amount of damage.

(or knockback/ knockdown with trait)

2nd ability Necrotic Traversal stays the same.

This way everybody is happy, we get to keep the escape and tactical advantage of necrotic traversal and we get another hard cc to help “lock horns” with other classes.

Venom.6189:

.. how about this, keep the 2nd skill as it is but change the first ability “summon flesh wurm” to have the worm errupt from the ground – instead of just appearing – causing a fear and /or knockdown effect in an area around it.

So 1st skill Summon Flesh Wurm

Targeted

1200 m range. 45 sec cd (upped 5 sec for balance)

Causes a flesh wurm to erupt from the ground at the target location, causing enemies in the vicinity to flee in terror for 1. 5 seconds. Deals x amount of damage.

(or knockback/ knockdown with trait)

2nd ability Necrotic Traversal stays the same.

This way everybody is happy, we get to keep the escape and tactical advantage of necrotic traversal and we get another hard cc to help “lock horns” with other classes.

They’d need to give the flesh wurm a 90-120 second cooldown to try and balance everything it lets you do.

I’d be fine with a 90 sec CD as long as we get an useful and menacing minion that litterarly strikes fear in our enemies instead of just having underwhelming minions that our enemies can ignore and laugh at while bursting us down . .

There would also kind of be a built in balance with this ability in that you’d have to kill your wurm in able to be able to use the fear / knockback component again so you’d be unlikely to use this cc mechanic more than once during a normal fight . .

90-120 sec on my teleport!

Come on man!

Let my worm in peace! Try my tips, it’s really useful. It’s a lot better then our Scorpion (cant remember the name) and Shadow Fiend. If you want to change something, change those 2.

Not everyone pvp’s, and in pve the wurm in it’s current form is awkward to use at best, unless you plan of using the tp during/after the fight. Even then, it’s only really useful for vets/champs etc and they tend to kill it before u use it’s tp ability. This seems like a good case for pvp/pve separation of how the skill works (btw, WvWvW is not pve).

I agree with Funky in pve the wurm in it’s current iteration is not very good. Implementing burrowing would help make it an attractive choice for an utility slot.

You can still use the activation as a blast finisher, as a poison and as a CC breaker.

Necro got few combo finisher, so it’s far from useless.

You can also combo it with Poison nova. With the teleport, you can Combo blast and poison nova at the same time.

We need some situational skill, that’s why we have skill like Corrupt boon and spectral graps. That’s what make the class unique. Flesh worm isn’t your standart summon, you have to respect that.

You won’t see everyone travel with it, as you don’t see everyone walking around with Well of Power (the cond to boon well?).

I also PvE to farm with my toon. And I’m always using my Worm. The only minion not affected by bad AI, and doing a good amount of damage. He will tag mobs that you didn’t get to tag.

Funky.4861:

Not everyone pvp’s, and in pve the wurm in it’s current form is awkward to use at best, unless you plan of using the tp during/after the fight. Even then, it’s only really useful for vets/champs etc and they tend to kill it before u use it’s tp ability. This seems like a good case for pvp/pve separation of how the skill works (btw, WvWvW is not pve).

idk what you’re talking about, the wurm gives the second highest damage per second of all of the minions, making it better than bone minions for boss battles or champion enemies.

Wurms are good in dungeons. I don’t know about you guys, but my wurm doesn’t get targeted much, and it has good range. I also like to cast it behind me when I’m with newbies so that when we’re dying, I can just teleport back to safety and regroup.

.. How about this replace the 2nd skill of the wurm with Necrotic Burrow and make Necrotic Traversal a separate skill like it was in GW1

SO we’d have:

1st skill Summon Flesh Wurm Same as now

2nd skill Necrotic Burrow

Targeted (similiarly to how you would summon the wurm)

1200 m range. 60 sec cd

The flesh wurm burrows into the ground, erupting at the target location, causing enemies in the vicinity to flee in terror for 1. 5 seconds and deals e.g. 600 AOE spectral damage.

Alternatively it could cause a knockback / stun effect. (e.g. Maybe if traited it would stun / knockback in addition to the fear)

AND

Necrotic Traversal (as a seperate utility skill)

Instant
Poison: 10 s (840 damage)
Radius: 180
Life force: 20%
Breaks stun
Combo Finisher: Blast
Range: 1,200

Exploit a random corpse. You teleport to that corpse’s location and all nearby foes become Poisoned for 10 seconds (upped from 5). Grants 20% life force (upped from 10% to justify the transition to a seperate utility skill.

(could also e.g. return 10 % of max hp and prolong poison duration to 20 secs if traited)

This way we get an additional hard cc / source of damage with the wurm, while gaining a more powerful albeit seperate Nectrotic Traversal utility.

What do you guys think?

We keep Flesh worm, and you create your utility.

You have a nice idea, but understand that you are changing an utility that people that use it, love it. We would lose the dps from Worm, and lose our ability to target the teleport (There isn’t a lot of corpse in spvp).

I only ever use the wurm as a teleport/stun breaker. From the point of view of using it as a stun breaker, the fact that there’s a minion involved is just a liability; it can be killed and you lose your escape. I think it’s an unnecessary liability, because even though the stun breaker + teleport is powerful, it’s already got a significant downside in that it’s a reaction skill that has to be set up first.

I like Venom’s idea of Necrotic Traversal being a separate skill, but if corpses can’t be exploited due to the difference in game mechanics, then let the Necro place a chrysalis or some other inert thing instead of a wurm, so that the wurm can be its own skill.

As it stands, the main reason the wurm is next to useless as a combat minion is due to its immobility and long cooldown… and the main reason it has a long cooldown is definitely due to the Necrotic Traversal half of the skill. Has anyone actually killed an enemy flesh wurm and felt even marginally less doomed? They’re impotent and disproportionately overshadowed by their second function.

That’s a great idea Munrock. Maybe have the necro place a soul shard (something similiar to a phylactery for liches) that contain a part of the necro’s soul enabling the use of the necrotic traversal skill so we’d have:

1st skill Manifest Soul shard

1200 m range 40 sec cd

Instant 

The necromancer pours a portion of his soul into a shard enabling the use of 2nd skill Necrotic traversal. The soul shard can be destroyed if damaged sufficiently causing a powerful AOE doing x amounts of spectral damage. If the soul shard is destroyed the necromancer and the targets in its vicinity become dazed for 1 sec.

Alternatively the shard could be impervious to damage and therefore indestructible for a set amount of time say 1 mins before fading away resetting the skill.

2nd skill Necrotic Traversal

Instant
Poison: 10 s (840 damage)
Radius: 180
Life force: 20%
Breaks stun
Combo Finisher: Blast
Range: 1,200

The necro teleports to the soul shard’s location. All nearby foes become Poisoned for 10 seconds (upped from 5). Grants 20% life force (upped from 10% to justify the transition to a seperate utility skill.

(could also return e.g. 10 % of max hp and prolong poison duration to 20 secs if traited)

This way the enemy would still be faced by that lose / lose situation that Striker talked about. If enemies attack the shard they suffer an high damage aoe, if they don’t you have an escape ability, LF generation and the potential to poison them for a considerably time.

Furthermore, seperating Necrotic traversal from the wurm would allow the wurm to have a drastically lower cooldown, though there would still need to be a pretty long cd on Necrotic Burrow due to the hard cc it provides.

@Munrock

Just cast it at the beginning of the fight far from you. I don’t think I ever lost a Worm in a fight in WvW. People don’t attack the worm, they will only attack it if they touch it with AoE. But you have to stay away from your worm, to be effective. So AoE won’t touch it.

Don’t underestimate worm’s damage.Most of the time you don’t see him attack, but he does it. He will hit for around 800-1.2k non crit if I remember. That’s like having 5 permanent bleed on the target. That’s a really good DPS add, since you primary use it to escape.

Venom, I don’t mind if you want to create 2 separate abilities. But Why change worm? Just create your new minion, and let Flesh worm in peace.

When I was a MM, I was happy to have Flesh Worm. Since I had to use minion utilities for my traits to be at full potential, it was a blessing that I had a minion being something else then a DPS add. It’s our only minion that provide an escape mecanism AND CC breaker.

Because flesh wurm is such a perfect pet as a shock trooper instead of sitting in the backlines it should be used to inspire awe in the fronline charging head on with Necrotic burrow =)

I’d rather have minions that do more active special attacks then escape and roots like we do now ..

Kardiamond.6952:

@Munrock

Just cast it at the beginning of the fight far from you. I don’t think I ever lost a Worm in a fight in WvW. People don’t attack the worm, they will only attack it if they touch it with AoE. But you have to stay away from your worm, to be effective. So AoE won’t touch it.

Don’t underestimate worm’s damage.Most of the time you don’t see him attack, but he does it. He will hit for around 800-1.2k non crit if I remember. That’s like having 5 permanent bleed on the target. That’s a really good DPS add, since you primary use it to escape.

Venom, I don’t mind if you want to create 2 separate abilities. But Why change worm? Just create your new minion, and let Flesh worm in peace.

When I was a MM, I was happy to have Flesh Worm. Since I had to use minion utilities for my traits to be at full potential, it was a blessing that I had a minion being something else then a DPS add. It’s our only minion that provide an escape mecanism AND CC breaker.

Kard, I feel like you’re focusing on the PvP value of an ability and you’re ignoring the PvE utility of the skill. I also feel the teleport is useful in PvP, but it’s incredibly lackluster when you’re in a dungeon or doing DEs.

I’d be happy if the worm would follow in some way; maybe burrowing towards me once every 10 seconds when I’m further than 1000 away from him or something. Would allow most of the PvP functionality for longer range teleports to remain intact, and would make it a bit more viable in PvE. While PvP would lose the ability to summon him off somewhere safe and get a really long teleport out of him, they would also gain the advantage of having him be in the area at all times, so he’d always be available for a teleport.

I think this is an ability that us non-PvPers are going to have to realize just isn’t an optimal choice outside of PvP. Much like how that one signet that soaks up conditions from allies and sends them to the enemy can be OMGWTFAWESOME in PvP, but doesn’t feel like a good slot usage in PvP.

Regarding the death of the wurm; its combo field and blast finisher are usually completely wasted because there is nothing around the wurm to get hit by it.

Of course the wurm does more damage than bone minions- they are just to explode in a combo field (i can’t believe anyone uses bone minions for their normal damage). You might also note that i did specifically say that it’s good against champ mobs and vets, but once that fight is over you’re stuck with the wurm and have to kill it to move on.

If you find that the wurm isn’t getting aggro much, that’s because you have cast it far enough away from the mob to prevent it getting aggro, and the fact that it’s damage is not burst unless you trait for it and kill it.

I like the wurm as it is; a situational utility.

@technosatyr

The summon part of the worm is really strong. So lets forget about vet and champion, since we can all agree that worm is useful in that case.

But I also used it all the time in Dynamic Event. Like I said previously, the worm will tag mobs you didn’t even see. And as always it does a good bit of damage, and has a really good range.

Not everything can be as useful in PVE as it is in PvP, or the other way around. Take Shadow fiend as an example.

The activate can be useful in PvP, but the summon itself is mostly useless. It does weak damage, but that’s because he is suposed to be our “tank” pet. Sadly, a tank pet in pvp is no use. It is a lot more useful in PvE. I was using it to tank mob(minion seems to attract aggro a lot more then me) and he could take a beating!

But we don’t have to change de shadow fiend, since some abilities have to be situational for different build/gameplay style.

@Funky
It also does more damage then our Scorpion and Shadow fiend auto attack, at 1200 range.

In PvE Worm can also tank a good amount of damage too. When I attack camp in WvW (basically PvE since we find again npc) I use it to offtank guard, and kill the scout.

A burrowing wurm is a productive wurm =)

On another note I think we should have way more choice of minions than we have access to currently, we need more primary minions with special attacks as 2nd skills to make a MM playstyle more viable. That is after they fix everything else that’s wrong with our minions (AI, out of combat regain, hp / dps ratio)