What has changed with terrormancer which killed it?
Well a number of things have killed it. It was dead since January of this year to be quite honest, but the June patch only made things worse.
1. Curses traitline is messed up. You basically need any 2 of the 3 master tier traits in curses to be effective, but obviously the system makes it impossible. Meanwhile 2 GM traits are useless , and the useful one, weakening shroud isn’t really build defining like terror actually is.
2. Corruption rework and master corruption is bad. Your corruption skills will have too long of a recharge without the MoC trait, but the extra condis they apply are a bit much as you cannot possibly transfer back all of them without leaving yourself vulnerable to enemy condi bursts. Its just impractical. A heal skill should never blind you. The conditions that they apply to you are also too short to really be useful when transferred but stacked high enough that with condi damage they actually hurt you significantly as you use the skills over time. Therefore the only “viable” condi nec build uses signets over corruptions. Why use corrupt boon and poison yourself when you can just use signets, corrupt almost as much while doing other powerful effects and building might stacks? I can go on and on, on why corruptions are horrible (plague killing you with bleedstacks before it was hotfixed, and only corrupt boon, consume conditions, and plague being worth using at all) but I don’t want this post to get too long. Yeah, its THAT bad.
3. Condi application is still balanced around dhuumfire being strong as it was when it was first introduced, but with the condi rework, dhuumfire is no longer strong or GM worthy. It will be much better with reaper due to faster AoE cleave application, but right now the overall condi stacking output is far too low to have good sustained damage. We still have the nerfs from when dhuumfire was “balanced”, and now it does much less damage..
4. Boon corruption changed to RNG priority removes tactical use of boonstrip, so no more stripping stability reliably into a fear chain, which really hurt the terrormancer ability to secure kills strategically. Terrormancer was always about burst condi application, and this ruined the ability to use boon corruption as burst.
5. With no dire amulet, condi necro is far too fragile on carrion or rabid for the amount of damage it actually brings. Even with foot in the grave, it doesn’t give enough stunbreaks or stability to make up for the innate lack of tankiness.
6. The cele meta of shoutbow/ele/engi made pure condition specs have 0 pressure in teamfights in the past. Now ele/support guard/mantra mesmer has the same effect of tons of AoE condi cleanse just from those classes doing their normal rotations and self heals in teamfights, meaning that condition necromancer won’t be able to keep up with the cleansing without many other condi focused classes that can stack condis better to outpace the cleanse (condi cleave comp). As a rule of them, condi builds become more and more useless the larger the fight becomes, unless backed up by more condi specs, which also suffer from the same lack of tankiness/sustain.
7. The only decent condi specs on other classes have a lot of similar problems that make them unviable in teamfights, but much better bleed and burn stacking ability that the necro can’t compete with, that actually can be effective in more scenarios. Burning is too strong, and necro has so little of it because of the way in which dhuumfire is balanced for reaper.
8. Condi necro has poor life force generation, mainly due to the scepter 3 being strange. This is relevant to point 5. Deathshroud needs both toughness and vitality to be tanky in larger fights.
9. Few cover conditions too. Very little blind/vuln compared to say a condi mesmer with ineptitude. Torment application is also weak compared to what an unfinished revenant, a condi mesmer, or condi thief can do. Even if those classes have similar teamfight problems and can’t hold a point, they just stack condis with conver condis so much better.
I think that about covers it. Celestial and tanky power necro is really really good though because it avoids most of the flaws that make condition necromancer so terrible in conquest.Cele necro easily gets to 25 might stacks, has boon removal, near perma weakness, and is tanky enough to actually survive in deathshroud in teamfights from base stats alone, and it has good life force generation. Condi necro could be better in stronghold since it has smaller fights generally, but this is not yet certain.
