Guild Wars 2

It’s because necros have too many condi transfer skills now,like 4… and running them all makes you pretty much immuned to the other condi classes… like engi for an instance.

it’s a good change.

Considering we are supposed to be masters of conditions (and sending them back is the only part where this is true) i don’t think it is that over the top. it’s part of the design. we are good vs. conditions and are bad when facing hard cc/mobility/getting away.

4 transfers isn’t even that realistic. you’d need staff+x/dagger with plague signet to get to 3. the last one is underwater, thus almost never being able to count as a 4th. if you really wanna spec that much against conditions (and being master of conditions lore-wise) you deserve to be hardcountering anyone who mindlessly throws conditions at you

btw if i remember correctly putrid mark never worked that way. it always said to transfer condis from allies, but only ever sent them from you. some day the devs said it was ‘working as intended’ and changed the tooltip (prolly because fixing would have been dificult and nec shouldn’t have utility that ppl might want).

You’ve got a lot of your facts wrong. Here is what really happened:

At launch Putrid Mark trasfered all of your conditions and all conditions of up to 5 allies who stood on the mark to one single target.

It stayed this way until the June 2013 patch. There was no ally-cleansing buff or a 5-condi nerf.

June 25th, 2013:
Putrid Mark was buffed to transfer blindness instead of missing.
That is all the patchnotes said. But what also happened was: no more ally cleansing and 3 conditions per target instead of all to one.
It remaines open for speculation whether or not this gigantic stealth nerf was completely intentional and then left out of the patch notes by mistake.
What we do know is that it took almost 5 month to get an official dev’s statement, and a tooltip update a few weeks after that.

January 21, 2014:
Putrid Mark lost its double blast finisher.

June ’13 and January ’14, these two were the only nerfs to Putrid Mark since release.

Was it justified?

Double finisher: debatable.
I don’t think it was particularly overpowered, or strong at all for that matter. Many people were confused by the mark’s blast mechanic, maybe they wanted to make it easier to understand. Or maybe they just wanted to reduce weakness or blindness uptime for combos… who knows. Bottom line: anet considered it to be a bug.

Condition Transfer: this one needed to happen imo.
Before the big June patch Putrid Mark was a game changer in many team fights. With Staff Mastery you had a full team cleanse on a 20 sec cooldown that was able to one-shot a single enemy player.
While losing out on team support completely was questionable to say the least, the 3 condi/target transfer was a good change in context of the condition meta back then.
And even today necros are (one of) the strongest dueling class(es) already, a full unblockable transfer in 1v1s before the nerf was incredibly strong, now the condition pressure is reduced but we still get a full cleanse with enough targets in team fights.
A fair trade off. It makes Putrid Mark one of the few skills that actually scale with the number of opponents we’re facing, and we really need more of those.

seems like i was mistaken after all. ^^

flow.6043:

…now the condition pressure is reduced but we still get a full cleanse with enough targets in team fights.

i though it only transfers to a single target oO

I’m confused about this too, Flow. I’m pretty sure it’s only ever transferred 3 conditions off me no matter how many enemies I hit. Are you sure about this? I’d jump in heart of the mists to test it but I can’t think of a way to inflict more than 3 conditions on myself to test! :-)

Anyway, I fully agree with flow that it was overpowered in its original form. However, I really miss the team support options it gave us! Considering the conditionmancer does best in team fights, it really was necessary for us to have one skill that can help people. Currently the only ally cleanses we get are plague signet, which always transfers the wrong condition, and well of power, which people usually leave at home in favour of other, better stun breaks. The only other thing worth a kitten is transfusion, which condi builds don’t have enough healing power to use optimally, and spectral wall, which some people do take but very rarely.
Considering the post-Dhuumfire nerfs to our bleeds have never been reversed, the condition Necro now needs some team support skills more than ever in order to stay relevant in pvp.

I’ve rambled on this before, but I would be happy to see further nerfs to the personal cleanse functionality of putrid mark to restore its ally cleanse functionality, cause as it stands Deathly Swarm is better.

I’ve made some suggestions here:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Putrid-Mark-and-teamplay-suggestions/first#post3382145
But the gist of that thread is:
1. Remove ranged cleanse aspects (caster must be on mark to get cleansed)
2. For each enemy hit, the mark transfers up to 3 conditions per ally standing in the mark’s aoe to that enemy (ie no enemy can have more than 3 condis transferred to them)
3. Caster is always the first cleansed, if eligible (ie. Is in the aoe and has conditions). Same ally can be affected more than once only if there are more enemy targets hit by the mark than there are eligible allies.
3. If this is still too strong, even with the ranged cleanse component removed, also specify maximum allies cleansed: 3.

Putrid removes 3 per target, I can attest to it working that way recently, as I get in a lot of mass condition/zerg ball situations where it does a full clear when I hit a group of clones/people. Works just like dagger 4 in fact, except all at once instead of after each bounce.

It was too strong with a full clear, but removing all the team utility from it was stupid. As if the class needed less group synergy. Should have at least stayed to remove one condition from allies etc.

3 conditions per target, 100% sure, has always been working this way since the nerf.

manveruppd.7601:

cause as it stands Deathly Swarm is better.

Not really. Putrid Mark does more damage, has a higher range, hits all targets instantly instead of having a rather slow bouncing projectile, can be traited to be unblockable and it’s a blast finisher.
The only upside to Deathly Swarm is the blindness, but then again I can use Putrid Mark on wells to combo blindness if I get the chance.

manveruppd.7601:

But the gist of that thread is:
1. Remove ranged cleanse aspects (caster must be on mark to get cleansed)

I’m not against restoring the ally cleanse to some extent, but the ranged self cleanse is one of the best features of the entire staff weapon. For me this has priority over everything else.

Du Bist Schuld.8097:

4 transfers isn’t even that realistic. you’d need staff+x/dagger with plague signet to get to 3. the last one is underwater, thus almost never being able to count as a 4th. if you really wanna spec that much against conditions (and being master of conditions lore-wise) you deserve to be hardcountering anyone who mindlessly throws conditions at you

Consume Conditions is the 4th

Jinx.7258:

Du Bist Schuld.8097:

4 transfers…

Consume Conditions is the 4th

That’s not a transfer.
And the potential amount of transfer skills was not the reason for the mark’s nerf.

flow.6043:

Jinx.7258:

Du Bist Schuld.8097:

4 transfers…

Consume Conditions is the 4th

That’s not a transfer.
And the potential amount of transfer skills was not the reason for the mark’s nerf.

Would’ve never thought that consume conditions is not a transfer condi skill…. lawl. pointing out the obvioous is so kittened….

CC makes 4 condi REMOVAL SKILLS which makes the necro OP vs any other condi classes. On which side of the earth you dont understand why the change was done?

If it’s that obvious, why did you say it’s a transfer?
Also, if your argument was that the nerf happened because our cleansing in general is too good: wrong again. It was all about reducing the necro’s damage back then.
Plus, compared to other classes we really don’t have the best cleansing.

Jinx.7258:

flow.6043:

Jinx.7258:

Du Bist Schuld.8097:

4 transfers…

Consume Conditions is the 4th

That’s not a transfer.
And the potential amount of transfer skills was not the reason for the mark’s nerf.

Would’ve never thought that consume conditions is not a transfer condi skill…. lawl. pointing out the obvioous is so kittened….

CC makes 4 condi REMOVAL SKILLS which makes the necro OP vs any other condi classes. On which side of the earth you dont understand why the change was done?

Oh boy, you must be a thief on your main.
Ok, let’s take the slow route up the mountain. Necromancer was always supposed to be a brilliant shining example for condition play. We are made to excel at conditions. We have the tools to do so, if playing condition damage. Nerfing the Putrid Mark did exactly nothing to condition builds, nothing at all. The first change was fine, it was too strong and nuking someone with a billion stacks of bleeding, confusion and any condition in game, paired with incredibly high condition damage was bad. Removing the 5 condition cleanse was kinda awkward, since we have no real utilities to deal effectively with conditions, nor traits like other classes do. We have consume conditions, which is arguably the best heal in game, next to the healing signet since it’s utility is incredibly high, but what it essentially did, is force necromancers even more into taking that heal, since no one wants to run plague signet anyways. It’s not a bad signet, it’s just not great to constantly blow conditions cleanse, because you draw conditions from your allies. The double blast finisher was uncalled for, it wasn’t imbalanced or anything, just awkward. Since we have no leap finishers or any other real finisher, that is useable on demand, it was useful but not insanely great. The real issue, that most of us have with the nerf, is the reduction of our support / team viability. Most, if not all classes, have default utility casts on their weapons to help teammates, we do not. Staff does not have that utility anymore, or atleast, less. Mark of blood is still there, but giving regeneration, or perma regen to allies is just part of the work.

I hope that you now understand a little more about why we are a bit upset about all the nerfs to our putrid mark.

Well, Necros have the best quality of cleanses, not the best frequency of cleanses. Heck, necros are still the only profession that lets you hold off on your cleanses for as long as possible because they all do something with the conditions you get rid of.

Wasting my time talking to poor minded ppl…. believe what you want, you are bad… and as it seems you’ll stay bad..

Yeah, people will definitely take you more seriously if you start insulting us.
We made counter arguments to your post and you call us poor minded.

Fact is, even with the current Putrid Mark: condi necro > condi everything else. Arguably we’ve been weaker to some condition classes before June ‘13 because our transfers could all miss if blinded, yet over time all of our transfers have been buffed to transfer blindness first.
There’s simply nothing to support your arguments, we called you on it and now you’ve resorted to posts that will probably earn you an infraction.

flow.6043:

It remaines open for speculation whether or not this gigantic stealth nerf was completely intentional and then left out of the patch notes by mistake.

It was an intentional nerf, they’ve said so themselves. The only thing you can speculate on is if they purposely left it out of the patch notes or not.

Well, they also tried to tell us the 25" interrupt cooldown was intentional too, which was a bald-faced lie and something I’m still upset about personally…

I’m not sure the big Putrid Nerf went through the proper channels and playtesting before it was implemented, hence its not appearing in the patch notes. I think either they were experimenting with various changes to the skill and accidentally left more changes in the final build than they intended, or someone snuck it in because it was their own private peeve.

Of course, after Dhuumfire, necro was doing so much damage this nerf didn’t hhurt their viability at all, so they didn’t see the need to reverse it. Now though, if a team wants a condition player there are better options.