Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I was wondering if other people struggled with the reliability of the blast finisher on the staff no 4 skill.

Sometimes it gives me the combo when i place this down (this is without the mark being activated) Other times it doesn’t.

Does this genuinely work properly and should it blast when its placed down or when its activated.

Thanks

It only works when the mark is triggered. Its one of the biggest complaints I have about necro finishers.

I played a Necro for months before I found out that the Staff 4 blast finisher only works when triggered by an enemy, thanks to the bug that still applies the blast message over my head. “But but but it said Area Swiftness over my head!” Meh.

spoj.9672:

It only works when the mark is triggered. Its one of the biggest complaints I have about necro finishers.

It actually activates both times, I think- once when placed, once when triggered.

It doesn’t activate when placed, but it “stores” the field that you put it on for the finisher. And I believe it can activate twice, but it always needs to be triggered.

Sarrs.4831:

spoj.9672:

It only works when the mark is triggered. Its one of the biggest complaints I have about necro finishers.

It actually activates both times, I think- once when placed, once when triggered.

Its a graphic bug. The blast text will come up saying you get X boon but you don’t really get it. It only works if triggered. :/

Bhawb.7408:

It doesn’t activate when placed, but it “stores” the field that you put it on for the finisher. And I believe it can activate twice, but it always needs to be triggered.

What do you mean by “stores” and activate twice? Are you saying you could drop it in one field and if it triggers in a second (different) field you could benefit from both? I feel I’m misunderstanding you…

When you place it, it remembers the field you placed it on. So you can get a combo finisher even after the field expires. I do not know if what you say is correct, I’ll try it in just a bit and get back to you.

The combo it stores is from field which was in place when you placed the mark. When enemy triggers it, it releases the stored combo and comboes with the current field in place. (In practice 3+4 marks on opponent results in double poison blast combo if there are no other fields)

It’s bugged since forever, it doesn’t blast twice and rarely bleasts once when placed.
furthermore it doesn’t transfer conditions as stated and doesn’t blast your own combofields { mark }

The finisher on Staff 4 acts funny. It is bugged and in general inconsistent with the behavior of all of the other finishers in the game.

Most of the testing I did seemed to indicate that the most reliable way to get a proc out of it is to stand in the field, drop the mark at your feet and stay in the mark until it is triggered. Obviously this adds an element of impracticality to using the finisher that most professions don’t have. The good thing about staff 4 however is that you can fairly reliably blast finish fields laid by others at range, which can be handy in certain scenarios, like blasting a Black Powder field if a thief goes down in it in order to prevent an effective stomp from happening quickly.

Alright, since there still seems to be some confusion about how the mark finisher works, here are some details:

1. As some here have mentioned allready: double finisher, one when you place the mark and one when it’s triggered, both will only combo when the mark is triggered but the placement-finisher will always display the combo-icon before that.

2. It is actually very reliable, it never fails to combo, even the placement-finisher.
Why do people experience “random” results with this? Because: the blast area is the entire mark surface, but in order to get the combo the center of the mark needs to be placed on a combo field.
That means: sometimes ppl stand in a field but place the center outside which doesn’t trigger the combo. It also means that you can actually stand outside of a combo field but still on the mark and get the combo as long as the center hits the field.

3. Multiple combo fields (this in not specific to Putrid Mark but I’ll mention it anyway):
Which combo has priority when several different fields are overlapping?
There are two rules:
a: the nearest field (again determined by the center) has priority, so the center of the field which is closest to the center of the mark will trigger the combo.
b: the first field has prioriy if they have the same center (like when placed without groundtargeting). Unlike other mechanics in the game “new” does not push out “old”.
For example, a necro places on himself: Well of Blood, Well of Darkness and Corrosive Poison Cloud (in that order). Any blast finisher in this area will trigger retaliation because the light field has priotity over dark and poison.

4. the double finisher actually means that you get double the combo effect, like 6 stacks of might instead of just 3, or double duration of whatever stacks in duration.
Effects like Chaos Armor are the exception to that, apparently it doesn’t stack and will therefore last 3 seconds either way.

5. The placement finisher can combo the effect even if the combo field it was placed on doesn’t exist anymore, it “remembers” the combo for the entire 30 seconds the mark stays alive. The icon you see when it doesn’t really combo anything (yet) serves as a visual feedback for the player so he knows the mark gives an effect if he stands on it when triggered.

6. Because of the double finisher principle, the mark can actually trigger two different combos, see attatchment:
In the first panel I charge the mark with Chaos Armor on the eatheral field of Spectral Wall. I then place Corrosive Poison Cloud on the mark and pulled the warrior so the mark gets triggered. Result: combo weakness on the npc, Chaos Armor on me.