Guild Wars 2

It’s downright odd that the class which seems to be most based around conditions only has access to one of the three main damaging conditions (poison doesn’t really count, the dps is much too low and it is obviously intended more for the healing debuff than the damage).

In contrast, other condition-heavy classes have access to two or more. Engi gets access to all 3; Mesmers have access to all three; ele have access to burning and bleeding; rangers have bleed and burn.

Conditionmancers ought to also have access to two of the damaging conditions. The access to the second should probably be somewhat limited, to go with the pattern established by other classes. Here are a few options I can think of:

1. Replace Withering Precision (30 point curses: 25% chance for vuln on crit hits) with “Burning Blood: Bleeding an enemy has a 20% chance per second to burn them for 3 seconds.”

2. Merge the two condition/boon wells into one to make room for a new utility skill: “Ignite Blood – 15 second CD – convert up to 3 stacks of bleed on your target into 3 seconds of burning per stack.”

Obviously in group situations where burn is already present these skills become much less valuable due to the way burn works. But that’s ok. Conditionmancers are already strong in group situations (as long as there isn’t another bleed build in the group) thanks to epidemic. The point is to give the conditionmancer the same single target condition dps potential the other condition classes get. It doesn’t make any sense that conditionmancers are limited to bleeding as their only real source of dps.

I’d prefer if they just added Disease and made that the “Necro” condition. =[

A Boil Blood type spell or even spectral fire (as opposed to guardian’s blue fire) would work pretty well I think, thematically.

I’d like to see disease too but at this point they’re obviously not gonna add another condition to the game. It’d create too many issues.

Best we can really hope for is getting burning or confusion. Which conditionmancer really needs to be viable 1v1. A conditin build that has to rely on a single condition for almost all its damage is always going to struggle in 1v1 in a game where all other condition builds are built around having 2 or more damaging conditions up.

They could buff the Main hand axe skills to have one of those. They really need a change and this could be good without being OP.

Spectral Wall has Ethereal combo, projectile finisher, that applies confusion.

Honestly, no. What necro has viable access to burn and to a lesser extent confusion?
No shee like “Boiling Blood”. If anything make the Flesh Golem a fiery demon from hell that burns with each attack. But really, just no. And no you don’t need these conditions to be viable.

Adding another condition doesn’t add problems exactly since its just another “type”. It would help greatly with the stacking issue. All the condition, dot stocks in this game are completely out of hand in the first place. It’s another mini game within the game that mostly adds unneeded complexity to the damage system. It just seemed they tried so hard to be different, but in the end it’s really not better at all.

Burn is the most logical choice here since it doesn’t add much to conditionmancer’s power in group situations where conditionmancer is already strong enough. Butwith access to burn a conditionmancer can actually hope to kill someone 1v1 in a decent amount of time like other DPS classes can. Trying to 1v1 someone with just bleed takes far too long and you’ll hardly ever kill someone before backup arrives. It makes the class much too dependent on having a partner to do the damage for you.

Another possibility would be to take the talent that makes fear do damage and replace it and/or augment it with a talent that makes chill do damage. Call it “Frostbite” or something like that. Have the calculation be about 75% of the damage of burning.

While I am not sure what the best way to implement something like this would be, I have to agree it would be a welcomed change.
Either necro could use another condition damage so that we could feel a little more viable in fights – or – Give us some way to stack bleeding faster and higher than what we currently can do. ( the 25 stack limit to 30 or 35, and making bleeds stack 2 bleeds instead of 1).
Either way, something should be looked into here.

re: increasing the bleed limits just for necros: I don’t think there’s any way they could make that work with other peoples’ bleeds. I think a second damaging condition is the easier and more logical option. Burning is ideal because it doesn’t buff the class dramatically in group combat where it already does fine.

Honestly, I don’t think we need another condition. If our staff fear and DS fear gets increased by 1 second on default. We can then spec into soul reaping and get 3 seconds of fear each then we would have 6 seconds of fear total. our condition damage can do a lot in 6 seconds I think.

Also right now I think I was on my thief and I stole a 3.5 second fear off a ghost… a stealth dps class can fear longer right now with 1 skill than both our skills combined with speccing into fear which adds 50% duration… that’s messed up.

Oh yeah also, we kind of do have access to these… corrupt boon is amazing when it works.

I agree, necro’s need something like ‘disease’ or a ghostly/spectral fire damage type. confusion is pretty heavily associated with mesmers, i’d like to see a new DoT type associated with necros.

Corpus.5347:

I agree, necro’s need something like ‘disease’ or a ghostly/spectral fire damage type. confusion is pretty heavily associated with mesmers, i’d like to see a new DoT type associated with necros.

Agreed. If we had a unique DOT damage type, there would be no problem with stack limitations, besides bleeds.

As was said before it would be a painstaking process for them to add in a completely new dot type ( disease) In order to please us in this respect. Yuki’s idea of adding burning into our traits / and or our weapon abilities would be best. It would give us some semblance of doing better bursty* damage. Which once again I am all for.

The conceptual problem with adding a unique dot too is that because it would stack with everything else you would end up with higher total possible condition damage. Which would have wideranging balance implications.

The problem I see with necros is a lack of 1v1 condition dps. In group combat we bring enough to the table with things like epidemic that I don’t see us really needing another condition that can be stacked. Burning is nice because it doesn’t stack intensity, so it gives us a good 1v1 boost without potentially overpowering the class in group v group like confusion or a new unique condition would.

And yes you can apply some of the other conditions via corrupt boon and using their own conditions against them via dagger4 and plague signet and some other skills. But that only works if the opponent is running a condition or boon build. Conditionmancer shouldn’t be effective ONLY against other boon or condition classes. That’s bad class design.

Yukishiro.8792:

And yes you can apply some of the other conditions via corrupt boon and using their own conditions against them via dagger4 and plague signet and some other skills. But that only works if the opponent is running a condition or boon build. Conditionmancer shouldn’t be effective ONLY against other boon or condition classes. That’s bad class design.

That’s a good point Yuki… it’s always tough for me to decide which utility skill to use too. I feel EXTREMELY dependent on utility skills during sPvP, more so than weapon

I debate between these all the time:
Corrupt Boon(I almost think this is essential now in sPvP)
signet of plague
signet of spite(do people use this for sPvP? If we add burn to this would people use it more?)
blood is power
epidemic(I feel like you need to have blood is power if you wanna use epidemic)
spectral walk(speed boost is always nice)

I realize during battles I would wish I had one or the other with me instead of something else all the time.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion of sPvP: corrupt boon, signet of plague, spectral walk. For WvW: blood is power, epidemic, spectral walk.

Don’t know if there anything more effective…I’ve been in love with spectral walk for a while now… so it seems I must have it.