Guild Wars 2

So I was reading the recent post by a necro on how “boring” marks feel on our staff; a weapon with the most skills of all the weapons we have; and they all feel the same. I don’t think the mark concept is bad I just agree with the poster about staff needing some versatility in its skills and visuals.

Why marks feel redundant: They have very little counterplay in actual play. Placing something on the ground for a set period of time that will trigger its effects upon enemy interaction sounds like a trap but marks are not used as a trap, they’re used like aoe nukes. It’s also the easiest “trap” to see coming and evade (dodge/roll). This makes the staff number of counter-plays less than 3, and the counter-play is a one-step action versus four skills. For example: a warrior blocks while or in anticipation to you laying down marks (or dodge/roll). When you fight a staff mesmer or especially a staff ele, they have a variety of move sets and skills that offer equally as many counter measures to you.

But like I said I really like the idea behind marks and feel that it has prime potential for a bit of expanded play. The updated version below is still a bit strange, like bawb said lol, but the idea is to still allow marks as utility while offering additional options for play through transformations.

I also wanted to make it clear that the marks will still produce their standard effects when triggered by an enemy. I just didn’t add those effects in the descriptions.

Concept: Invoking (UPDATED)
Invoking the mark will be a secondary skill given to each mark once its layed on the ground. Invocations transform the player and will trigger all nearby marks, gaining additional transform bonuses.

Change to marks: Marks will now have a 1 second delay before it may be triggered by an enemy. Marks will not recharge while in a invocation transformation thingy. lol

Examples

Mark of Blood:
Transform bonus: Gain regeneration and condition duration.
[secondary] Blood Bat: Transform. Stun-breaker. Become a vampire bat.
effects: 15% bonus move speed, 8 second duration.
1 – Claw: strike your enemy with a siphoning claw attack.
2 – Rebound: stun-break and a heal.
3 – Shriek: Daze a foe.
4 – Swoop: Deal damage in a line.
5 – Deep Bite: A massive siphon attack, causing bleed.

Chilblains:
Transform bonus: Gain might and health.
[secondary] : Chilblains Ooze: Transform. Become a sickly ooze that spreads poison and chill to enemies.
effects: 8 second duration.
1 – Ooze Slap: Hit your enemy with a short ranged attack.
2 – Bounce: Area damage and a poison field. (no range)
3 – Ooze Trail: Cause poison on yourself, leaving trail of ooze that chills foes.
4 – Spikes: Damage and bleed nearby foes.
5 – Liquid Death: Move through a foe, covering them in ooze causing poison chill and immobilize. Ends transform.

Putrid Mark:
Transform bonus: Gain healing power and condition damage.
[secondary] Putrid Sarcophagus: Minion. Transform. Become immobile and invulnerable while locked inside an undead coffin. Transformation ends when sarcophagus is destroyed.
effects: Invulnerable. 4 second duration. Sarcophagus gains 2 seconds stability.
1 – Putrid Hail: Cause a frozen skull to land on target area, chilling and damaging foes. (small radius, .45 second groud-telegraph cast time, fast recharge.)
2 – Toxic Fumes: Discharge toxic gas from your sarcophagus, poisoning enemies.
3 – nil
4 – nil
5 – Burst from your sarcophagus sending bone and flesh shrapnel in an area dealing damage. Blast finisher. 0.5 second cast time.

Reapers Mark:
Transform bonus: Gain ferocity, accuracy and +4 seconds transform duration.
[secondary] Lupus Reaper: Transform. Spectral. Take the form of a spectral dire wolf.
Effects: 25% bonus move speed. Bonus power. 8 second duration.
1 – Ghost Bite: Bite your enemy and gain 1% life force.
2 – Chilling Howl: Chill nearby enemies.
3 – Fearsome Gaze: Gain stability for 1 second and cause fear to up to 3 nearby enemies facing you.
4 – Pounce: Leap towards your enemy to damage and bleed your foe. Leap finisher.
5 – Dark Den: Enter Death Shroud and retain your current skill set.

Notes:
Your character would have to be within range of the active marks for the secondary to become available.

These secondary activations might seem extravagant but they can be simplified further. The idea is that these transformations will not be compounded often while in the middle of combat and will create a stronger transform in preparation of a fight.

Survivability, active defenses, and avenues for counter play is all these are geared toward. Restricting staff recharge during transform makes it different from ele.

Staff needs to be reworked, really. Not have secondary effects like this added, but some kind of (even minor) rework, because it frankly lacks counterplay right now, and that not only is problematic for a healthy game, but means that the strength of marks have to be restricted.

Other than that these ideas just get incredibly strange. Why would staff have a bunch of transforms on its set? It makes no sense, it is a utility weapon.

I hear ya bhawb im just toying with some ideas. I actually think a delay on the marks will add counter play like you’re talking about. The secondaries could make up for that or just reducing their cooldowns.

I’d like to see them make marks a better spacing tool. Give them a reduced cast time, but instead of activating when someone walks over them make them player activated with a delay between the player activation and the actual effect. Something like a half second. Then make each one colered differently give them stronger effects (like a boon for all allies in the area), and make the size of greater marks baseline. This idea will probably never happen because it’s too much to implement. The transform idea is too much though, you’d be adding 20 skills to necros and that will never happen.

I’d rather have staff become an Area control/Area denial weapon. Right now, it’s more for AoE bombing pressure, and many marks are incredibly strong in condition builds or rather meh in power builds damage wise.

Look at the area denial power of the warrior longbow or the staff Ele. Combustive shot and many of the Staff Ele skills literally control the battle field in pvp or in WvW (for ele anyway). When those skills are used, it’s get out of that area for those skills duration, or get wrecked if you stay in.

The concept of area denial and control are very interesting tactically for me. I mean wells can do that to an extent once you get very comfortable with spreading a well bombs where you think an enemy group will go.. just duration wise, wells don’t provide sufficient area denial like warrior/ele skills can, and marks certainly don’t approach that strength any where near it. Marks are great for condition burst combo chains on condition builds and pressuring from range on power builds.. which is still useful but lacking.

I’d prefer marks to be a 5 second field when they exploded and their initial effects could be toned down to compensate. Mark of blood could become a water field, chill brains should change to a longer lasting ice field. Putrid mark could become a poison field or just stay a blast finisher. And reaper’s mark could become a dark or ethereal field. Each of these fields would have an initial detonation and a weaker pulsing effect. In addition the mark should be able to be detonated by pressing the key a second time, so we could create these fields or blast them with more reliability. Cooldowns would have to be adjusted to compensate.

I updated again and it seems a bit less strange lol

@nearlight: Yeah most of our area control comes from wells like you said. But I like the idea of making marks a sort of “keep out” sort of thing even though thats solely a pvp type of strategy. Reactivating simply for insurance that they are not dodged through is also pertaining mostly to pvp so might feel completely unnecessary in pve. I think the staff is intended as an area denial/ utility set though doesn’t do the denail part as often as you’d like

I’d rather rework some skills to be like small Wells, a effect for some seconds in the area. Adjust damage and functionality of the skills a bit as well. I’d love to see a small siphoning well, pulsing 3 times and heals you and allies for each pulse while damaging foes.

I’d also beg for a change to the AA. It just feels so punishing to use this skill, its justified by the recent power of marks, but it would feel so much better if the AA would feel rewarding. Not necessarily more damage, but another function. Maybe a groundtargeted projectile, arc like grenades, but delayed.

it’s time for a ranged power weapon so i can get rid of my staff finally. staff is just a placeholder weapon for me until that happens.