Guild Wars 2

This is the second of the 6 part installment of me writing a lot because I have too much free time. This time we’ll be talking about Curses, and I imagine this will spark a fair bit of debate.

Curses
In stark contrast to Spite, our best line and one of the best in the game, we have Curses, a line so mediocre that even most condition builds find themselves having difficulty justifying it. Curses focuses on condition damage and critical hits. Somewhat uniquely because of the presence of its minor traits that focus heavily on dealing more condition damage, it is a line that primarily appeals to condition damage builds, with a small potential draw to crit-heavy builds, and has very little overall appeal to non-condition damage builds. I’ll talk about the major traits, which have quite a few issues holding back the line overall.

Finally, I’d like to take an idea from Bluewizard, who suggested in the Spite thread to have traits that functioned based on consumption/transfer of conditions. I really like this idea, but I think its better suited towards Curses, so I’ll be talking about it here.

Minors
Overall I think the minors are relatively fine strength wise, however I want to point out that because they focus so much strength into condition damage, this trait line becomes particularly weak to non-condition damage builds. Think of going into this build as a crit-heavy power line, what do you get? You get an adept minor trait that gives you little worth mentioning, just a tiny DPS increase. You also get a GM minor trait where some of the power is in precision to condition damage conversion, again something that really does nothing for you.

This is a big contrast to all our other lines, which have minors that are useful to any build that goes into them (ignoring balance issues). I don’t necessarily think it will be changed, or that it even has to be changed, since it is hardly unique to Necromancers (and arguably Curses has far stronger minors than comparable lines in other professions), but I think its worth mentioning because in an ideal world this line would be equally appealing to all crit-based builds, not just those focused on conditions.

Edit: as others have pointed out, the minors are probably fine. Bleeding deals at least some damage in crit builds, and the rest still work fine in any crit build.

Adepts
Frankly speaking, Plague Sending is the only useful trait in this tier. It is not just very strong, able to transfer conditions (and stun break if you get lucky with a pre-cast effect), but also has built in synergy with Signets of Suffering, and a number of traits that work with conditions inflicted.

Chilling Darkness is a bit of a sad story. Once a trait that was quite powerful in combination with specific setups, it is now completely awful. Part of the problem is the huge ICD, 5s means that Plague and Nightfall are the only abilities that can apply it multiple times per use. However, we’re actually one of the worst professions in the game at directly applying blind, with most of the sources of it coming indirectly from the accidental corruption of fury now and then. There are a number of options with how to deal with this trait:

1. Revert it to how it used to be, 1s chill with no ICD – potentially too strong if Well of Darkness ever becomes useful, with Plague, WoD, and Nightfall on Reaper becoming huge sources of chill. Also hard to balance between the different chill sources.
2. Keep it as is with the ICD, but just buff the chill duration to say 3s. This allows builds that have just a few sources of blind to still see meaningful chill, but also makes the different sources of chill more even. This is probably the easiest option.
3. Completely change its functionality. I’d be interested to hear options, but we could just completely change how this works and look to solve some other problems within the profession. Things like blind application, some crit amplifiers, we could get creative.

The last trait in this tier is Terrifying Descent the unfortunate hold over from ANet’s insistence that we must have falling traits forced on us for some inconceivable reason. As most people know, the problem is that these just don’t do much of anything in 99% of the game, because taking fall damage is something that isn’t really happening regularly in combat; it is pretty specifically something that only sees niche use in WvW. However, since these traits seem mandatory, I think we are forced to do something similar to Cloaked in Shadow where the fall trait is rolled in to a related normal trait. Options include:

1. Keep the trait functionality as is, roll it into Fear of Death and replace with something new. This allows for Curses to get a new trait, and we roll more fear traits together. Of course the reverse could also happen, keeping this trait here and bringing Fear of Death into this tree for Terror synergy, which would allow Terror builds significantly more freedom of build options.
2. Combine with the buffed Chilling Darkness, change it to cast Well of Darkness on fall damage. This also opens up a trait in Curses, but doesn’t worry about the balance effect of changing Terror setups.

Either way, it needs to be rolled into an already functional trait, and then cause a skill that is related to whatever that trait does. But as long as it exists on its own it does nothing but take up a slot, and remind us that traits still really need work.

Masters
This tier has another issue of just having one realistic option in Path of Corruption, and outside of that this tier just doesn’t really have appealing traits. Unfortunately it has two awkward traits, one of which is a mediocre trait that relies on a poorly designed utility set, the other is a trait that was nerfed multiple times directly and indirectly because of its synergy with things completely unrelated.

Master of Corruption is just a huge mess right now. Firstly, it has the issue of having an incredibly weak effect, it basically just a CDR trait that gives higher CDR than normal, with a very significant downside, while other Master tier utility traits give 20% CDR plus other effects with no downsides. Secondly, it is designed with the same problem that Corruptions overall have, a positive effect that is too weak paired with a negative effect that is too significant to leave alone, but on a skill not strong enough to warrant taking other mechanics to offset.

Fixing this trait isn’t easy, because it probably needs to be paired with a set of changes to Corruptions, which is beyond the scope of what I’m trying to look at here. An easy option to retain its current use but make it more appealing is add functionality that all self-applied conditions are also applied to the target, including the additional ones. Still very “Corruption-y” but actually has meaningful power to make up for the downside.

Terror is a classic Necromancer trait. Once a huge facet of most condition builds, it is now so poor that even Deathly Chill builds, which should get amazing use out of it, don’t pick it up most of the time. This is largely due to a wealth of direct and indirect nerfs, starting with the introduction of Dhuumfire. First 17% damage reduced, then Nightmare rune nerfs, general duration nerfs when Spite was made to no longer give up to 30% condition duration, and finally the change that made conditions do partial ticks. Some of these changes are irreversible, however two good changes would be the incorporation of Fear of Death into the Curses Adept tier, and reversion of the 17% damage nerf. These shouldn’t be too strong, since most of the abuse cases of the old Terror builds are gone, and requires a large investment that precludes other strong choices.

Grandmasters
Hey look, another tier with only one real option (as I see it, not sure what PvErs would say)! Of course that option is Weakening Shroud which is a really strong trait, not to mention one that laughs at Spiteful Spirit from our Spite discussion. Our other two options are interesting, because they’re not bad ideas, but fail because of comparative power, or how they function in game.

Parasitic Contagion is a classic example of a “win more” trait, which is to say a trait that is extremely weak or even useless in bad or average matchups, and then only becomes good or great when you are already winning. This same problem is why all but one of our pure on-death traits were removed, because the only time deaths happen frequently enough to be strong is when you are already winning the encounter, and the trait’s influence is meaningless; you were winning before it proc’d. This is where I’d like to adapt Bluewizard’s suggestion to reward condition transfers, and suggest a few ideas for how to make this meaningful in far larger variety of situations, without it being just a win-more trait.

For effects, something similar to Bluewizard’s suggestion. Specifically I’d suggest something like gaining some kind of offensive buff. Think an offensive version of Corrupter’s Fervor, that would be non-specific to damage types, to allow this to work for all damage types. A precision buff would probably work well, since it helps any crit build, and also we’ve seen how interesting traits that reduce reliance on crit can work out. Might of course could also work, or a buff that specifically boosts direct and condition damage, so that it doesn’t favor one type of build.

The idea is to make the effect proc on transfers. This would have synergy with Plague Sending, and also general synergy with Corruptions which want to transfer often, and there are a lot of other smaller interactions with other transfers. This could also be tuned between a non-stacking buff that only has its duration refreshed, encouraging a certain cadence of usage, or a stacking one similar to Corrupter’s Fervor.

Regardless, the idea would be to open it up as more of a general condition option, and also smooth out how it works. I’m also going to propose a condition-related heal for Blood Magic, which we can discuss later. The reason I’m not retaining the heal is because Curses is related to offensive conditions and crits, not healing, and Weakening Shroud provides a defensive option already.

Finally, for those brave souls who’ve made it this far, we’ve got Lingering Curse. Lingering Curse is primarily based on increasing durations, which is a fine way to continue for this trait. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure on how to fix this trait; maybe I’m even wrong and this trait is fine. The problem I see is that for a duration trait, it doesn’t actually do that much. As an example, Chemical Rounds provides the same condition bonus, without the damage, as an adept. My suggestion would be to remove the condition damage bonus, since it conflicts with the idea of going heavy on damage, and open up the weapons it works on. This could be all weapons, giving any weapon skill 50% increased base duration conditions, or keeping it on specific weapons. I’m honestly not sure though, I think the idea of duration is fine, though fairly specific to PvE, but I don’t think this really delivers on a power level, and as someone who has no real desire to use this trait I’ll defer to you all on ideas to fix it.

Anyway, that’s it for Curses. This was probably the longest, and also the one I was least sure of, so I’ll be interested to know what you guys think.

I think that a write up about curses without mentioning anything about hybrid builds is sorely missing the point. The main problem with the tree is that it is loaded with majors that are a little too niche, but the minors are some of my favorites in the class, and are clearly geared towards hybrid builds (which sucks for pure condi guys).

I personally really do like the current corruptions and -33% CDR is very strong. It combos well with Plague Sending but the shortcoming is that Plague Sending has a 30 second cooldown, so you’ll definitely need something else to take care of those conditions, like staff or dagger 4, since most corruptions have a 20 second or less cooldown when traited.

But going back to the majors, there’s little options to stray from, but the ones that are available I think are quite strong.

The corruption trait should just be -33% duration with no extra conditions applied. Other options might be more interesting, but probably less effective, more cheesy, and more infuriating in the long run.

I agree that there needs to be better options for non-condition builds in general.

Chilling darkness just needs the cd reduced to 3 seconds, so well of darkness will always proc it twice, death’s charge will always proc it, etc.

I’ve always thought terror should be GM because it is very build defining for base necromancer. Terrormancer plays significantly differently from condi-mancer or at least it should. Lingering curse is a master tier trait at best, so move it down to swap places with terror.

Parasitic contagion should be reworked. We have 2 relatively bad defensive traitlines that have traits that make you go eh. Put something similar in those traitlines. Replace it with a trait that buffs allies condi damage or duration significantly.

Bhawb.7408:

The last trait in this tier is Terrifying Descent the unfortunate hold over from ANet’s insistence that we must have falling traits forced on us for some inconceivable reason. As most people know, the problem is that these just don’t do much of anything in 99% of the game, because taking fall damage is something that isn’t really happening regularly in combat; it is pretty specifically something that only sees niche use in WvW. However, since these traits seem mandatory, I think we are forced to do something similar to Cloaked in Shadow where the fall trait is rolled in to a related normal trait. Options include:

1. Keep the trait functionality as is, roll it into Fear of Death and replace with something new. This allows for Curses to get a new trait, and we roll more fear traits together. Of course the reverse could also happen, keeping this trait here and bringing Fear of Death into this tree for Terror synergy, which would allow Terror builds significantly more freedom of build options.
2. Combine with the buffed Chilling Darkness, change it to cast Well of Darkness on fall damage. This also opens up a trait in Curses, but doesn’t worry about the balance effect of changing Terror setups.

I agree with the fact that those traits should always be added to related non-fall traits. It will not make it OP in any actual situation. I already suggested the same for mesmers some time ago ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/My-take-on-mesmer-traits/first ). I like your first suggestion in particular, although I would move it to curses and not SR. We need to add synergy to curses, having the fear traits in 2 different lines is just not good.

Terror is a classic Necromancer trait. Once a huge facet of most condition builds, it is now so poor that even Deathly Chill builds, which should get amazing use out of it, don’t pick it up most of the time. This is largely due to a wealth of direct and indirect nerfs, starting with the introduction of Dhuumfire. First 17% damage reduced, then Nightmare rune nerfs, general duration nerfs when Spite was made to no longer give up to 30% condition duration, and finally the change that made conditions do partial ticks. Some of these changes are irreversible, however two good changes would be the incorporation of Fear of Death into the Curses Adept tier, and reversion of the 17% damage nerf. These shouldn’t be too strong, since most of the abuse cases of the old Terror builds are gone, and requires a large investment that precludes other strong choices.

The damage buff would probably not be enough. Currently, with reaper, chill does almost more damage than fear while we have significantly better access to chill than fear. Another problem of terror is that a big portion of our fear comes from corrupting stability, but they put it in the same tier as a “path of corruption”.

Parasitic Contagion is a classic example of a “win more” trait, which is to say a trait that is extremely weak or even useless in bad or average matchups, and then only becomes good or great when you are already winning. This same problem is why all but one of our pure on-death traits were removed, because the only time deaths happen frequently enough to be strong is when you are already winning the encounter, and the trait’s influence is meaningless; you were winning before it proc’d. This is where I’d like to adapt Bluewizard’s suggestion to reward condition transfers, and suggest a few ideas for how to make this meaningful in far larger variety of situations, without it being just a win-more trait.

I think if this would work while in shroud, this would be a good trait. With reaper, we have fairly decent condi burst. The trait in this form is a good scaling difference (we don’t have much of those) since if you manage to deal AOE condi damage (which we definitely can, even without epidemic, thanks to staff and scepter but most especially in reaper shroud) you heal for each target you hit.

Regardless, the idea would be to open it up as more of a general condition option, and also smooth out how it works. I’m also going to propose a condition-related heal for Blood Magic, which we can discuss later. The reason I’m not retaining the heal is because Curses is related to offensive conditions and crits, not healing, and Weakening Shroud provides a defensive option already.

I do agree with that though.

Anyway, that’s it for Curses. This was probably the longest, and also the one I was least sure of, so I’ll be interested to know what you guys think.

After I did my mesmer specialization guide a month ago, I wanted to continue with necro. But I got blocked by curses and blood magic. I just didn’t know where to go with it… One problem I have also is that I feel many of the spite traits should be in curses. Spite synergises well with chill and boon corruption, which I believe should belong in curses.

A good write-up, though my general feeling with Curses isn’t as dour as yours seems to be.

First, I don’t have a problem with limiting Curses to condi specs. Power-users can conceptually (if not in reality) make very good use of any of the other lines, so keeping one line specific to Condi Necros is ok to me. In that light, the Minor traits are actually all quite good. They feed into each other and really help boost the value of the Necro’s Crit and Condition damage.

That said, there’s an additional dynamic at play here which your analysis (by design) doesn’t really touch on: Curses for Necromancers vs. Curses for Reapers. It’s generally been my experience that Condi Necros are not as effective as Power Necros; it just takes Condi Necros way too long to rank up their damage to any significant degree and while Epidemic-bombing groups is fun, it’s really hard to stack serious levels of Conditions on a single target, which is how most of the more difficult fights in the game tend to go. AoE is already quite plentiful in this game so specializing it at the expense of single-target doesn’t really make sense.

For Reapers, however, Curses is a game-changer. The two actually have really good synergy with each other. Their synergy is so good in so many different ways that IMO there’s actually some good debates to be had about which traits to take.

As I said, though, that may be a bit beyond the scope of what you’re trying to do here. So let’s look at the Major Traits in question:

Adept

Plague Sending: Honestly, I don’t see the point in this. Condition Necros will almost certainly be running S/D+Staff, giving us two on-demand Condi transfers with reasonable cooldowns on top of CC. It’s not a bad trait, don’t get me wrong, but it seems overkill in most circumstances, certainly in most PvE circumstances.

Chilling Darkness: Definitely weak for Necros, probably still a little weak for Reapers. The ICD should stay the same, but the Chill duration could stand to go up; 3 seconds sounds good to me, especially if we get a bit more Condi duration in the game. Dropping the ICD would make this a little too build-dependent, making it somewhat OP for some builds while functionally the same as it is now for most others.

Terrifying Descent: Functional. Situational. Not much to say, but I don’t have a problem with it as-is.

Master

Master of Corruption: Long story short, I agree with the idea of applying the additional conditions to the skills’ targets (CC and Plague could apply their conditions in a small AoE around you when you use them). That’d be pretty neat, actually.

Path of Corruption: Barely usable for the base Necro because of how unbelievably slow the #2 projectile is and how you otherwise have no incentive to get in melee range of your foe. The effect is nice, I guess, but I really hate taking this just because of how terrible #2 feels to use.

Terror: For the base Necro, this is nice in theory but in practice it’s just not as much damage as we need. Fear duration is way, way down from before the Traitline changes and it’s just too darn hard to get more than a few ticks off on someone. Additionally, displacement effects can hurt your group’s efficiency more often than not which makes it really dangerous to tie so much of our damage potential up into something you just plain can’t fire at will. Plus, stunbreakers.

Here’s my suggestion that helps fix at least part of this: Fear no longer deals damage. Instead, Terror causes Fear applications to also apply a new condition called Dread with a duration equal to the Fear’s duration +X seconds (tuned as appropriate). Dread only deals Damage and isn’t removed upon Stunbreaking. This would allow us to give Terror more damage without risking excessive spikes and also decouples its damage from omnipresent stunbreakers. It doesn’t solve the Displacement problem, though.

Grandmaster

Lingering Curse: I think it’s fine… sorta. I don’t mind that Engis have a similar trait at the Adept level because Engis handle Condi application a little differently from us (they’re philosophically more interested in spike damage vs our ramp-up, current tuning aside). I do think the bonus to condition duration should apply to all our conditions while wielding a Scepter, though, even while in DS/RS.

Parasitic Contagion: I like this conceptually; Condi builds tend to have fewer hits per second so we can’t take advantage of Blood as well as Power builds. As such, a good sustain option would be really nice for tankier Condi builds, or in fights that are more about survival than burn (should those ever really exist). 10% is lackluster, though, and you’re entirely right to call it a win-more effect. What if the healing doubled when we were below 50% health? Would that be enough to justify its use? In any case, this should clearly heal us through Shroud, even if only at half efficiency.

Weakening Shroud: I’m personally not a very big fan of Shroud-flashing builds. I get that other people are but that playstyle has just never appealed to me. As such, I’ve barely used this. I get the appeal (a burst of AoE Weakness right when you need it) but we already have a decent number of Weakness applications, plus the Shroud mechanic itself is intended to give us good burst mitigation. This seems overkill to me.

Incidentally, thanks for putting together these write-ups. This kind of analysis and discussion is what I enjoy about game forums.

The minors need indeed to shift more towards crits and less to conditions. With the addition of expertise as a stat and scepter shifting away as a bleed weapon, we can shift away from bleed duration. So maybe replace the bleed duration increase to either vulnerability application on crit , a life force on crit or a crit damage increase (condition yet to be determined) preferably life force.

Chiling darkness preferably goes into reaper (merge with shivers of dread) or it needs something extra, something reaper can’t exploit with it’s better blind acces. Merging it with the fall trait is not a bad idea.

I think you are spot on with the master traits.

For lingering cures in pve, I think the 150 condition damage is almost needed at this point to boost up damage at an acceptable level. I would suggest a cooldown decrease of 20% on scepter skills.

The idea of a transfer based grand master sounds fun .

Bug report:

Lingering Curses gives you +150 Condi damage while wielding a scepter in Death Shroud, but not Reapers Shroud, due to how it recognises RS as a hammer, not a scepter. Tiny issue but still.

An extra comment: an easy way to band aid master of corruption is to make the next hit transfer a/the added condition after using a corruption. Could be some nice synergy if you implement a transfer trait.

We made tons of these threads the last 3 years. ANET never considered them.
So I think it hardly won’t do it again.

Anyway I’ll throw my idea.
Parasitic Contagion giving Life Force instead than health.
One problem is it would clash with Weakening Shroud. Another is it synergizes too much with Terror and Deathly Chill… If it wouldn’t work under DS it wouldn’t be that effective.
So let’s swap it with a minor trait so Condimancers will have that Life Force they really need.

I know they said they want orizontal lines with one theme, but this is easier than making a new Trait.

Also I’d merge Lingering Curse and Barbed Precision and would remove the Scepter limitation. So power builds will have less to do with Conditions and Conditions user will got what they need with 1 trait.

Blaine Tog.8304:

A good write-up, though my general feeling with Curses isn’t as dour as yours seems to be.

First, I don’t have a problem with limiting Curses to condi specs. Power-users can conceptually (if not in reality) make very good use of any of the other lines, so keeping one line specific to Condi Necros is ok to me. In that light, the Minor traits are actually all quite good. They feed into each other and really help boost the value of the Necro’s Crit and Condition damage.

That said, there’s an additional dynamic at play here which your analysis (by design) doesn’t really touch on: Curses for Necromancers vs. Curses for Reapers. It’s generally been my experience that Condi Necros are not as effective as Power Necros; it just takes Condi Necros way too long to rank up their damage to any significant degree and while Epidemic-bombing groups is fun, it’s really hard to stack serious levels of Conditions on a single target, which is how most of the more difficult fights in the game tend to go. AoE is already quite plentiful in this game so specializing it at the expense of single-target doesn’t really make sense.

For Reapers, however, Curses is a game-changer. The two actually have really good synergy with each other. Their synergy is so good in so many different ways that IMO there’s actually some good debates to be had about which traits to take.

Condi reaper is definitely stronger than condi necro. No doubt. If you do a condi reaper, you will most likely use SR and reaper. Then you would think that curses is the last of the trio. Yet very soon after you realize that spite helps you better.

There is nothing wrong with spite being useful for condi builds. On the contrary, this is why it is one of the best designed line of the necro: it appeals to everyone. The problem is that curses should still be an overall better choice for condi, and yet isn’t.

I note also that while saying “curses is fine” you then go on each trait and describe how it is lackluster. I can’t blame you, I have the same feeling each time I go through the line.

My issues with the Curses line:

- It’s the only real condition line we have but is by default focused on a Hybrid build by giving you bleeds on crit. There aren’t many people that build Precision but leave out the Power. So you want a Power/Condi/Precision build. This means you are moving away from a pure condi build.

- Lack of synergy with other trait lines. There are some traits that synergize slightly with Curses in other lines (most are more Hybrid oriented than condi). Let’s look at Curses at Grandmaster level. Parasitic Contagion doesn’t work through shroud meaning it’s not that useful in most builds (since a lot of traits in other lines centre on shroud. Weakening Shroud, is okayish but lacklustre as a Grandmaster. Lastly Lingering Curse. Free stats are always nice and this is a good trait. However you lose the damage when switching weapons and when you are in shroud. Again a lot of traits in other lines are centred around shroud, so you will probably spend a significant time in it. So when you want to use things like Dhuumfire (which is logical in a Condi build) you lose a lot of Condi Damage or Healing.

I agree that Chilling Darkness is kinda iffy. I think it needs something along with it – maybe a chance to blind a target when performing an action? (on top of what it already does). Or a chance to immob targets when blinding them or something.
I actually use this trait in WvW now and I’m having quite a bit of success with it with Plague and Death’s Charge (which blinds and is spammable). With enough chill duration the chill lasts pretty long (for me it’s a bit over 3 secs) and you get lots of might with Chilling Victory (Plague becomes pretty beastly with the damage and might and lifeforce generation). I think it also has potential for hybrid builds that use GS but I’ve never tried that. BUT… yeah, compared to Plague Sending… yeah.

I also agree that Terror is kinda weak. Terrormancer used to have really high fear duration but now Spite gives no condi duration and imo Fear of Death is really not worth it when compared to the two other traits. But then again, imagine doing 2-sec fears on top of Deathly Chill – scary damage. I suppose burning is similar in that regard though (burst condi damage) so it may not be as crazy as it seems.
I think Terror needs some kind of buff. On normal Necro, I ended up not even taking Terror half the time. On Reaper I still think Terror is decent, especially with something like Spectral Wall (fear dmg + chill dmg – but that’s kinda niche) but if one learned how to use Death’s Charge better, Path of Corruption could easily outshine it.

I actually think Parasitic Contagion can be very strong with Reaper (if chill does 800 damage per sec and you hit 5 people, that’s already 400 health per sec. Mix in other condis and the healing is really nice). Howeva’ …. I don’t know if I could ever see this trait making it into sPvP.

Other than that, I agree that for a condi/hybrid Reaper in sPvP, at the moment Spite outshines Curses, which is kinda funny. Spite provides so much cover condi and such massive vuln output that Curses seems like a much poorer choice.

Silverkey.2078:

Condi reaper is definitely stronger than condi necro. No doubt. If you do a condi reaper, you will most likely use SR and reaper. Then you would think that curses is the last of the trio. Yet very soon after you realize that spite helps you better.

There is nothing wrong with spite being useful for condi builds. On the contrary, this is why it is one of the best designed line of the necro: it appeals to everyone. The problem is that curses should still be an overall better choice for condi, and yet isn’t.

I note also that while saying “curses is fine” you then go on each trait and describe how it is lackluster. I can’t blame you, I have the same feeling each time I go through the line.

I didn’t actually say Curse is fine, though! I think — conceptually — it’s fine for it to stick to Condition damage. Regardless of the question of whether Necros or Reapers do better as Power or Condi builds, I think it’s pretty inarguable that Engineers are worlds better at outputting Condition damage than any Necromancer build right now, so some tuning is clearly in order.

Also, you could go through every trait line for every profession in the game and come up with a list of ways to improve them. Curses probably needs it more than most, but I do think it’s semi-functional as it stands. Which Spite/SR/Reaper condi build would you suggest? I’d love to have something else to fiddle around with.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Silverkey.2078:

Condi reaper is definitely stronger than condi necro. No doubt. If you do a condi reaper, you will most likely use SR and reaper. Then you would think that curses is the last of the trio. Yet very soon after you realize that spite helps you better.

There is nothing wrong with spite being useful for condi builds. On the contrary, this is why it is one of the best designed line of the necro: it appeals to everyone. The problem is that curses should still be an overall better choice for condi, and yet isn’t.

I note also that while saying “curses is fine” you then go on each trait and describe how it is lackluster. I can’t blame you, I have the same feeling each time I go through the line.

I didn’t actually say Curse is fine, though! I think — conceptually — it’s fine for it to stick to Condition damage. Regardless of the question of whether Necros or Reapers do better as Power or Condi builds, I think it’s pretty inarguable that Engineers are worlds better at outputting Condition damage than any Necromancer build right now, so some tuning is clearly in order.

Also, you could go through every trait line for every profession in the game and come up with a list of ways to improve them. Curses probably needs it more than most, but I do think it’s semi-functional as it stands. Which Spite/SR/Reaper condi build would you suggest? I’d love to have something else to fiddle around with.

Well what I had in mind was a PvP build, may not be what you are interested in. What I use since the first betas is essentially the meta reaper build now ( http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Carrion_Frostfire ). I do think that to a large extent, the core of the build would be the same for a PvE condi-reaper build.

First of all, thank you for writing these posts. It’s fun to read the discussion and different opinions.

I like curses. I mean, I want to like it. I found it appealing before Reaper but afterwards Spite and SR just oust it too much.

Parasitic Contagion
I really like the idea of synergizing Parasitic Contagion with Transfers. Especially if it stacks for each condition removed. This way it makes use of the additional self-inflicted condition from Master of Corruption. I’m a big fan of Corruptions and I really like that CPC w/ MoC is perfectly synced with Staff4.

Some ideas:
-A stack of bleed per condition.
-Steals x or x% life per condition.
-Restores 5% Life force per condition.
-Reduces cd on [something] skills by 10% per condition (30ish icd). [Perhaps Marks, Scepter skills and change Lingering, the Skill that transferred, etc.)
-Doubles the duration of transferred conditions.

Would still need something so its not useless without transfers? The existing 10% heal for condi damage?

Lingering Curse
I like the existing Scepter curse duration +50%. Perhaps the +150 condition damage should just be a flat +150 condition damage? I’m not sure it even works in Shroud and that kinda sucks. If the condition duration affected all skills that might be a bit strong, but I’d love it and use it, especially if its multiplier were still outside of the +100% cap.

Chilling Darkness
Somehow I think it would be more useful if it did the opposite; applied blind on chill, though I don’t know what complications might arise from how many sources of chill we have, especially aoe chill with Reaper.

Terrifying Descent
Definitely combine with Fear of Death or Terror, or add another effect to it. Also, if there were a way to trigger fall damage without falling, these fall traits could be useful everywhere on their own without any changes.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

I think that a write up about curses without mentioning anything about hybrid builds is sorely missing the point.

I tend to try to keep my personal bias out of these, but frankly I don’t think hybrid necromancer has ever been meaningfully powerful with the exception of Cele Signet and maybe current Reaper builds. And Curses is fairly meaningless for said hybrid, Signets of Suffering, Deathly Chill, and might stacking are far bigger contributers.

zapv.8051:

The corruption trait should just be -33% duration with no extra conditions applied. Other options might be more interesting, but probably less effective, more cheesy, and more infuriating in the long run.

While I tend to agree, Corruptions are corruptions, and they are probably here to stay, so we might as well have the trait do something more corruption-y, and at least in this case with the new Parasitic Contagion you are both rewarded for the trait and rewarded for the following transfer, giving some sense of reward.

zapv.8051:

I’ve always thought terror should be GM because it is very build defining for base necromancer. Terrormancer plays significantly differently from condi-mancer or at least it should. Lingering curse is a master tier trait at best, so move it down to swap places with terror.

The problem I have with moving Terror is while yes it is fairly build-defining, it ends up in a really awkward spot because of the gamemodes it is useful in VS lingering curse. Moving LC to master puts PvE in an awkward spot.

Silverkey.2078:

I like your first suggestion in particular, although I would move it to curses and not SR. We need to add synergy to curses, having the fear traits in 2 different lines is just not good.

Yeah, I think its the better suggestion, consolidate things a bit.

The damage buff would probably not be enough. Currently, with reaper, chill does almost more damage than fear while we have significantly better access to chill than fear. Another problem of terror is that a big portion of our fear comes from corrupting stability, but they put it in the same tier as a “path of corruption”.

Maybe, but increasing the damage along with moving in the other fear trait is a good place to start. The path of corruption is a good point though.

I think if this would work while in shroud, this would be a good trait. With reaper, we have fairly decent condi burst. The trait in this form is a good scaling difference (we don’t have much of those) since if you manage to deal AOE condi damage (which we definitely can, even without epidemic, thanks to staff and scepter but most especially in reaper shroud) you heal for each target you hit.

Still has the “win more” issue. If you’re applying enough damage to heal a meaningful amount (300 HP/s is pretty reasonable for a GM, yet that means constantly dealing 3k DPS) you probably are in such a good matchup it doesn’t matter. Obviously it needs to heal through shroud, but I just don’t see it working as is. Also, it doesn’t scale well, because condition removal scales far stronger than our condition output does. I’m proposing a similar option to Blood Magic, but that scales more appropriately without being so easily countered by a shout build rolling their face from 6-0 and erasing all your condi CDs.

Luke.4562:

We made tons of these threads the last 3 years. ANET never considered them.
So I think it hardly won’t do it again.

Anet has been listening recently, and honestly I am doing these because it helps me critically think through everything, not because I expect any of this to ever see the light of day.

Glacial.9516:

Parasitic Contagion
I really like the idea of synergizing Parasitic Contagion with Transfers. Especially if it stacks for each condition removed. This way it makes use of the additional self-inflicted condition from Master of Corruption. I’m a big fan of Corruptions and I really like that CPC w/ MoC is perfectly synced with Staff4.

I think it being useless without transfers is fine. You’re expected to figure out you need them :P and we have 2 from weapon skills, quite a few through traits and utilities, I think its fine to have it just on its own. Also that allows more power to be added to it. Definitely like some of the ideas though, and yeah the goal was to give Corruptions some more use.

Bhawb.7408:

Secondly, it is designed with the same problem that Corruptions overall have, a positive effect that is too weak paired with a negative effect that is too significant to leave alone, but on a skill not strong enough to warrant taking other mechanics to offset.

This is the part that caught my attention the most. Made me realize how used to taking other skills to offset how weak some skills are that I saw no problem with it. Compelling enough for me to revise my stance on Master of Corruptions, it is actually pretty interesting when you put it this way. Especially now that we need so many utilities but are limited to using 3 (minus elite and heal).

Generally very well written and interested in seeing posts on the other lines, particularly Reaper.

Here is the thing with Necromancer as a whole, The class is really complex, might just be the most complex class of any MMO ever created. Reasons and comparisons i wont go into but anyone who has played Necro and other classes extensively will agree. This means that to make the class truly effective and not a “win more” class like you put it, designers have to have a certain level of creativity and logical thinking to pull it off and Anet’s necro devs do not seem to be at that level.

For example necro is designed to be the slowest and most movement restricted of all the classes in the game without completely overshadowing other classes in DPS in a game that is based on movement and reacting quickly to the environment. The whole thing already contradicts itself making the founding idea for the class irrational. It is no surprise that the end result was a class that was almost always vulnerable or could easily be made vulnerable.

To even remotely begin to pull off such an irrational idea, it will have to come from the traits, each and every trait should be able to effectively punish other classes in some way for even being in the vicinity of the class, why? because they are faster with competitive damage potential which means they will do more harm to necros in a shorter space of time while at the same time equipped to avoid the slow high damage skills of necros.

Another point is the design choice of giving necros pulls as opposed to teleports other classes have. This would have been fine but of course illogically implemented. Pulls are affected by stability, evades and block, which there is plenty of on other classes but teleports are unconditional. Where exactly is the balance in that? Why is there no trait that bypasses stability? This means that on my Revenant or thief I can quickly pressure another class i see in the area which is a huge advantage, unaffected other players skills.wheras on Necro I have to run towards them in slow motion unless i activate a skill (putting it on cooldown) or use shroud 2 with Life force I may not have, (also putting shroud, the only defense on cooldown) then attempt a pull, that may not even work thanks to bad implementation, that can be blocked, evaded or nullified by stability

In my opnion chilling darkness should get merged with another trait in Reaper`s line, like could shoulder(i mean, this trait was totaly created thinking on reaper right? Even the nerf came because it would be too strong with reaper…) and we should get another adept tier trait
Maybe with that it would be fair to increase the ICD to 10s as at this point it would only be a bonus to any reaper build

Parasict contagion would be way more considerable if it worked on shroud

For lingering curses i would love see it as a party wide buff, like spotter, that gives expertise so it could be useful even if you`re not running a condi build youself, if you have a condi centered group

I won’t comment on everything because that would be to long So I’ll be a bit more general.

The minor : condition and crit chance
I’m probably one of the only guy that think it’s a good thing. The point is that by having crit chance you apply more condition. Condition build also need crit chance so I feel that the minor are in a good place.

Chilling darkness :
I’d rather see this trait return to it’s pre-specialization form. It would be ok and not to strong. 1 second chill on blinding a foe with no icd.

Fear :
I do think that terror is in a good place at the moment. We may argue that it used to be better or that it have a lot of drawback but fear in the hand of a fearmancer is still a pretty dangerous condition. Some buff to it wouldn’t do any good to the necromancer’s profession as it’s whole since it would easily become meta and outshadow everything else.

Lingering curse :
I think this trait need the same thing then Unholy fervor. This trait need to affect the scepter in a unique way instead of just a flat increase in condition duration (Yeah I’m not even talking about the lettle condi damage buff on this trait).
If it were me, I would make it affect Grasping dead in a way that the area of effect stay longer let’s say 4 seconds and apply it’s effect every 2 seconds (3 tics). (Though the base bleed effect would probably need some tuning).

Corruptions :
I want to believe that one day MoC and corruption’s self harm will become something that help the necromancer instead of crippling him. There is ton of way to make this self harm actually better but I guess it will need an elite spec focused on taking advantage of this very self harm.
Come on I’m pretty sure we would all love an elite spec focused on taking adavantage of our self harming skill. There is endless possibilities in this concept, we could even dream of being able to truly support our teammate through harming ourself.

My suggestion for MoC is this
your corruption skills now apply blind and poison on their first target struck. Reduce recharge by 20%.
This increases the effectiveness of chilling darkness by giving us more blinds
also more access to poison for putrid defense.
The trait line favoring condi or power is fine with me it cant do everything at once however it I agree it could use more crit chance. I think having a trait that gives fury or increases crit chance in some way would be good in the adept tier and also the GM teir

One of the problems I see with Curses is that the line is focused only on condition damage, not conditions in general. That limits its utility outside of a condition damage build. There is no bonus for condition duration in Spite like there used to be.

Minors seem good enough.

Majors
Chilling Darkness was nerfed too hard and, now that Reaper has plenty of chill access, is just not unique anymore. Off-hand dagger and this trait could use a rework. For a moment, I thought maybe reversing it so it blinds on chill but that would be crazy powerful. I would just change this to a 10% base duration increase on all conditions.

Terrifying Descent, like all falling traits, is largely a waste because you have to go find someplace to jump from and it also has an internal cool down. I wish I could jump and proc this trait without having to find a high place to jump from.

Master of Corruption is tricky to use. Plague Sending is required, in my mind. This is fine because it is the only useful adept trait, anyway.

Terror just needs its damage increased. Necromancer gets so little fear duration that terror needs to be strong. Most fears are gated behind DS or automatic proc’s. I am hoping another weapon besides staff shows up with a fear on it, too. I am not a fan of long durations, though. More frequent or more powerful short durations are my preference. One idea I had was to inflict Terror damage on all interrupts instead of fear.

Lingering Curse should increase condition duration for all conditions. Not as much as scepter but another 10% would be nice.

Anet should just make fall damage traits into a mastery and be done with it

I think that curses is fine as a condition only line. Most of the other lines are heavily focused on power damage and are of little use to condition builds. It only makes sense to have one condition focused line.

I think the minors are all fine, They are good for condition builds, not everything is about power users.

Chilling darkness needs some help. I agree that 3s duration would be a good solution as I don’t see them removing the ICD.

Plague sending is fine for condition heavy fights. It gives you an extra transfer if you need it, no problem there.

Fall dmg traits I don’t understand, they should really just be removed.

MoC is weird. It gives “more” CD reduction than other traits, but only because they increased the CD on all our corruptions a huge amount at the same time. If the corruptions had their normal CD’s then 20% would have been fine. I don’t mind the self harm since I can transfer them if need be, but the effects are too weak for the self harm to be necessary. If they applied the self conditions to the enemy as well then I think it would be more interesting.

Terror is suffering from a lack of application and duration. We only have a very few fears and their duration have all been destroyed through various nerfs. In the era when 2 stacks of burn does more damage than terror and most classes can constantly apply 5+ stacks, terror is just laughable. We need longer durations, more fear and increased damage for it to make a comeback.

Path of corruption is pretty great on reaper due to the 4s CD on RS2. I think this trait is fine how it is, and may even see use in raids for boon stripping.

GM:

Parasitic Contagion, this trait used to be pretty fun when it was in spite since it didn’t conflict with anything before the trait revamp. Since it doesn’t work through shroud and competes with lingering curse and weakening shroud It just won’t see any use. Make it work in some form in shroud and I could see it being a good tanking trait.

Weakening shroud. This is fine for PvP builds, not really needed in PvE but no need to change it.

Lingering curse. I would like this reworked into a group buff. Give 50% duration to ALL your conditions (remove the 150 damage) but also give 10% condition duration to all allies. This helps solidify our role in groups, nad makes us the long ramp up, high damage sustain class we are supposed to be. We don’t burst conditions and our condition may not do the highest damage per condition, but if you give us enough time we should be able to put a crap ton of conditions on a target.

A group condition damage or duration buff, similar to spotter, is what curses needs.

Add that and necromancer gets a meta role, even if condition necromancer has all sorts of other issues.

Curses
Adept:
Terrifying decent: merged with putrid defense ( make a new trait for this minor spot)
Plague signet: this is a good trait should stay the same
Chilling Darkness: cd reduced to 2 second
Masters:
Master of corruptions: all self-applied conditions are also applied to the target, including the additional ones like bhawb say
Terror: Fear last 1 second longer and kd at end of fear or if removed, damage increased by 50%
Path of corruption stays the same
Grandmasters:
Weakening shroud: stays the same
Parasitic contagion: while suffering a condition steal health when struck by a foe (can be an aura), a percentage of condition damage heals you 5% (this trait would be great with corruptions)
Lingering curse: apply to any weapon and make it 250

Mostly agree. I dont think the minors are an issue. They can work well on any build. The problem is the master traits. They are condition related yet all pretty sub par for condition builds.

I agree with your first solution to chilling darkness. Revert to 1 second chill with no ICD. Since chill has a stack cap of 5 the imbalance caused by plague and this trait should no longer be an issue. Heck even keeping it at 2 seconds with no ICD would be fine. You would only get huge chill durations if people stay in your high cooldown WoD or plague for over 5 seconds and you overstack condi duration. Which i think is fair play. And even then it would only be about 10 seconds max for a high cooldown combo + condi duration (no idea how much you can get in sPvP).

Corruptions are bad so master of corruption is bad. But the line seems to be far too focused on corruptions and countering their negative effects (transfers). So for a condi build that doesnt use corruptions what is there to take? Nothing of worth. Lingering curse is also bad simply because it doesnt work in RS so that kills its use for a condi reaper.

And then the whole line lacks more general purpose traits. Things that would work on any build. Chilling of darkness and weakening shroud can technically fill this role. But CD needs to be fixed first. And we need a decent master trait to compliment. Path of Corruption is good but rather useless outside of PvP and select PvE encounters. And the rest of the line isnt strong enough to justify taking curses over other lines simply for path of corruption.

Well written Bhawb.

Bhawb.7408:

…

Minors

Got to disagree here. Furious Demise works for nearly every build. Target the Weak is perfectly fine for hybrid builds but far from useless for power builds since even power Necros spew out conditions en masse. Barbed Precision does indeed cater condition builds. Still, the minors benefit at least two types of builds – condi and hybrid – and are still far from useless for power builds. That should be fine?

Terrifying Descent

I share your sentiment here. There is absolutely no reason why a fall trait shouldn’t at least have some minor benefit which works when not jumping off of cliffs. I don’t see why it couldn’t be combined with Terror?

Chilling Darkness

I think the ICD should be up for debate. While I mentioned in a different context (Reaper), why not add ‘Cause 2s of Chill to nearby foes when entering Death Shroud.’ to this trait?

Master of Corruption

I still think that Corruptions could easily be fixed if the self-inflicted conditions would be altered to something less severe. I already suggested turning all self-inflicted conditions into Vulnerability (stacks and duration based on the power of the respective skill). Master of Corruption could then grant a bonus based on the number of Vulnerability stacks on the Necromancer plus a cooldown reduction bonus ontop of the generic -20%CD. This keeps the spirit of Corruption skills but makes it way more usable.

Parasitic Contagion

I’d really like to see this trait being changed into something like ‘Siphon x endurance when applying a condition to your enemy.’ This would work for condition, hybrid and power builds equally since it doesn’t rely on condition damage. It would be unique. And it would work within Death Shroud.

Lingering Curse and Chemical Rounds

I’m not 100% sure if you can compare those traits this way. Does Chemical Rounds also apply to the base condition duration and therefore avoid the hard cap on condition duration? Regardless, the duration on most pistol skills is way shorter than on scepter skills so the comparison is quite off anyway.

And again: this is a weapon trait. It isn’t supposed to grant an universal benefit. I’d rather see something unique added to scepter gameplay. For example, what if scepter skills left behind a small locust swarm (10s ICD) which blinds players crossing it (e.g. synergy with Chilling Darkness)? Just no universal condition duration, condition damage or whatever multiplicator, please.

Blaine Tog.8304:

A good write-up, though my general feeling with Curses isn’t as dour as yours seems to be.

First, I don’t have a problem with limiting Curses to condi specs. Power-users can conceptually (if not in reality) make very good use of any of the other lines, so keeping one line specific to Condi Necros is ok to me. In that light, the Minor traits are actually all quite good. They feed into each other and really help boost the value of the Necro’s Crit and Condition damage.

That said, there’s an additional dynamic at play here which your analysis (by design) doesn’t really touch on: Curses for Necromancers vs. Curses for Reapers. It’s generally been my experience that Condi Necros are not as effective as Power Necros; it just takes Condi Necros way too long to rank up their damage to any significant degree and while Epidemic-bombing groups is fun, it’s really hard to stack serious levels of Conditions on a single target, which is how most of the more difficult fights in the game tend to go. AoE is already quite plentiful in this game so specializing it at the expense of single-target doesn’t really make sense.

For Reapers, however, Curses is a game-changer. The two actually have really good synergy with each other. Their synergy is so good in so many different ways that IMO there’s actually some good debates to be had about which traits to take.

As I said, though, that may be a bit beyond the scope of what you’re trying to do here. So let’s look at the Major Traits in question:

Adept

Plague Sending: Honestly, I don’t see the point in this. Condition Necros will almost certainly be running S/D+Staff, giving us two on-demand Condi transfers with reasonable cooldowns on top of CC. It’s not a bad trait, don’t get me wrong, but it seems overkill in most circumstances, certainly in most PvE circumstances.

Chilling Darkness: Definitely weak for Necros, probably still a little weak for Reapers. The ICD should stay the same, but the Chill duration could stand to go up; 3 seconds sounds good to me, especially if we get a bit more Condi duration in the game. Dropping the ICD would make this a little too build-dependent, making it somewhat OP for some builds while functionally the same as it is now for most others.

Terrifying Descent: Functional. Situational. Not much to say, but I don’t have a problem with it as-is.

Master

Master of Corruption: Long story short, I agree with the idea of applying the additional conditions to the skills’ targets (CC and Plague could apply their conditions in a small AoE around you when you use them). That’d be pretty neat, actually.

Path of Corruption: Barely usable for the base Necro because of how unbelievably slow the #2 projectile is and how you otherwise have no incentive to get in melee range of your foe. The effect is nice, I guess, but I really hate taking this just because of how terrible #2 feels to use.

Terror: For the base Necro, this is nice in theory but in practice it’s just not as much damage as we need. Fear duration is way, way down from before the Traitline changes and it’s just too darn hard to get more than a few ticks off on someone. Additionally, displacement effects can hurt your group’s efficiency more often than not which makes it really dangerous to tie so much of our damage potential up into something you just plain can’t fire at will. Plus, stunbreakers.

Here’s my suggestion that helps fix at least part of this: Fear no longer deals damage. Instead, Terror causes Fear applications to also apply a new condition called Dread with a duration equal to the Fear’s duration +X seconds (tuned as appropriate). Dread only deals Damage and isn’t removed upon Stunbreaking. This would allow us to give Terror more damage without risking excessive spikes and also decouples its damage from omnipresent stunbreakers. It doesn’t solve the Displacement problem, though.

Grandmaster

Lingering Curse: I think it’s fine… sorta. I don’t mind that Engis have a similar trait at the Adept level because Engis handle Condi application a little differently from us (they’re philosophically more interested in spike damage vs our ramp-up, current tuning aside). I do think the bonus to condition duration should apply to all our conditions while wielding a Scepter, though, even while in DS/RS.

Parasitic Contagion: I like this conceptually; Condi builds tend to have fewer hits per second so we can’t take advantage of Blood as well as Power builds. As such, a good sustain option would be really nice for tankier Condi builds, or in fights that are more about survival than burn (should those ever really exist). 10% is lackluster, though, and you’re entirely right to call it a win-more effect. What if the healing doubled when we were below 50% health? Would that be enough to justify its use? In any case, this should clearly heal us through Shroud, even if only at half efficiency.

Weakening Shroud: I’m personally not a very big fan of Shroud-flashing builds. I get that other people are but that playstyle has just never appealed to me. As such, I’ve barely used this. I get the appeal (a burst of AoE Weakness right when you need it) but we already have a decent number of Weakness applications, plus the Shroud mechanic itself is intended to give us good burst mitigation. This seems overkill to me.

Incidentally, thanks for putting together these write-ups. This kind of analysis and discussion is what I enjoy about game forums.

Anet, pls read this post when you finally decide to rework this trait line.

Terror simply giving extra damage is B-O-R-I-N-G. It’s exactly another icing on the cake trait that provides no counterplay or utility. Give it something fun like ‘damage ticks on enemy with fear tick 4x faster or something’. Or give fear more CC utility, like ‘applying fear will corrupt stability and resistance on foe’.

Re minors (since a lot of people brought it up): looking back over its probably fine. The bleed duration is long enough that a crit build would still get decent damage out of it, so they’re good enough that it’d work fine if the majors were solid.

Carlos.7915:

In my opnion chilling darkness should get merged with another trait in Reaper`s line, like could shoulder(i mean, this trait was totaly created thinking on reaper right? Even the nerf came because it would be too strong with reaper…)

Certainly a possibility and one that’s been passed around a lot.

For lingering curses i would love see it as a party wide buff, like spotter, that gives expertise so it could be useful even if you`re not running a condi build youself, if you have a condi centered group

That’s an interesting idea, though it’d take a huge nerf for solo play if it was just a group buff; even giving expertise in general will be a nerf. I’m not sure a scepter trait is really the place for a group buff.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think that curses is fine as a condition only line. Most of the other lines are heavily focused on power damage and are of little use to condition builds. It only makes sense to have one condition focused line.

That isn’t true though. Spite gives a lot of condition damage increase, Soul Reaping/Reaper both give both types of damage pretty equally, and Death/Blood provide options that appeal to both. There isn’t a single trait line that doesn’t benefit condi builds, while power builds only have 5 lines. That said, others have pointed out this is more a failing of the major traits which can be fixed.

Anchoku.8142:

One of the problems I see with Curses is that the line is focused only on condition damage, not conditions in general. That limits its utility outside of a condition damage build. There is no bonus for condition duration in Curses like there used to be.

Yeah, I think conditions less specific to dealing damage would open up the line without hurting it for condi builds.

nekretaal.6485:

A group condition damage or duration buff, similar to spotter, is what curses needs.

Add that and necromancer gets a meta role, even if condition necromancer has all sorts of other issues.

I don’t see that giving us a meta role at all. Not that it shouldn’t be considered, but I don’t think it’d matter. A lot of people seem to like the idea of 10% condition duration though.

spoj.9672:

Mostly agree. I dont think the minors are an issue. They can work well on any build. The problem is the master traits. They are condition related yet all pretty sub par for condition builds.

Barbed Precision is the only real issue I have, because bleeding’s damage is basically nonexistent without condition damage. But its still some damage, and cover conditions, so its probably fine.

And then the whole line lacks more general purpose traits. Things that would work on any build. Chilling of darkness and weakening shroud can technically fill this role. But CD needs to be fixed first. And we need a decent master trait to compliment. Path of Corruption is good but rather useless outside of PvP and select PvE encounters. And the rest of the line isnt strong enough to justify taking curses over other lines simply for path of corruption.

That’s a fair point. I’m not sure what to do for it though, because there are too many traits that people like that can’t be tuned in the right direction. It would require us to free up a trait in the master tier, which itself would probably require Path of Corruption being dropped to the Adept tier, with Plague Sending and one general trait, and then PoC being replaced with a general trait. Doable, but fairly hard, especially since the fear trait makes a lot of sense being in that tier.

Ramoth.9064:

Terror simply giving extra damage is B-O-R-I-N-G. It’s exactly another icing on the cake trait that provides no counterplay or utility. Give it something fun like ‘damage ticks on enemy with fear tick 4x faster or something’. Or give fear more CC utility, like ‘applying fear will corrupt stability and resistance on foe’.

Counterplay? Avoid the fears. It has the same counterplay as any damaging condition, in fact more because you can stunbreak it. Its also unique as being designed as a burst condition.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t see that giving us a meta role at all. Not that it shouldn’t be considered, but I don’t think it’d matter. A lot of people seem to like the idea of 10% condition duration though.

In PvE, at least, the shift towards high-Toughness enemies is making condi builds more and more desirable. Viper and Sinister are especially doing a good job of tipping the scales towards a userpation of the zerker meta. If condi ends up winning the day, some free group condi duration could make running with a Necro almost mandatory for any serious speed run group.

That said, almost every build dishes out at least one or two conditions of some stripe, so +10% Condi duration would always be at least moderately helpful, even if it doesn’t cement our position in the meta (which isn’t necessarily something to shoot for anyway).

My bad, counterplay is the wrong word. The thing is Terror doesn’t really change the way your opponent reacts to getting feared, and it really should for a trait that we build our build around. From a damage point of view, it doesn’t really change the way we play either. Once you have built your build around Terror, the terror only adds to your rotation, and unfortunately the pay off is the same whether theres 1 stack of bleed on your opponent or 25 stacks.

Chilling darkness does seem overnurfed. One could add to its effect:

‘blind a foe that you interrupt (10-15 sec ICD)’.

Necros now have quite a number of automatic proc traits – it would be nice to see something that rewards active gameplay for a change (you don’t interrupt that often on a necro anyway). Ppower/hybrid builds could also benefit from this using warhorn.

What if they made it so Master of Corruption also transferred 2 conditions on corruption skill use? So when you hit a corruption skill you are properly awarded and don’t get the awful negative effect and when you miss you’re stuck with a bunch of conds on you.

Or simply when you use a corruption skill you inflict the self-inflicted conditions on nearby foes as well.

Aktium.9506:

What if they made it so Master of Corruption also transferred 2 conditions on corruption skill use? So when you hit a corruption skill you are properly awarded and don’t get the awful negative effect and when you miss you’re stuck with a bunch of conds on you.

Or simply when you use a corruption skill you inflict the self-inflicted conditions on nearby foes as well.

I know the self- applied condi’s are a problem for quite some people, although I believe this is actually quite useful in certain situations as you can transfer these conditions allowing you to deal more damage.

However, a suggestion for people like you who dislike it as for people who want to see a buffed Parasitic Contagion. What if we had a trait that was some kind of merge between Parasitic Contagion and Shrouded Removal (from the Death magic line). My suggestion would be a trait that would still heal us for X% of applied condi damage while out of shroud, but while we are in shroud we would consume 1 condition every Y seconds gaining Z% of LF.

I’ve chosen for X, Y and Z to make it more general. However, the purpose of the trait seems quite clear I assume. While in normal state you would benefit from your applied conditions, in Shroud you would consume conditions on you meaning you either will have to chose between a condi transfer or LF regen.

Bluewizard.2694:

Aktium.9506:

What if they made it so Master of Corruption also transferred 2 conditions on corruption skill use? So when you hit a corruption skill you are properly awarded and don’t get the awful negative effect and when you miss you’re stuck with a bunch of conds on you.

Or simply when you use a corruption skill you inflict the self-inflicted conditions on nearby foes as well.

I know the self- applied condi’s are a problem for quite some people, although I believe this is actually quite useful in certain situations as you can transfer these conditions allowing you to deal more damage.

Transfers are less plentiful than corruptions. You can’t just blow a transfer every time you use a corruption. If we’re expected to do that then the self applied corruptions need to be increased substantially so you actually gain some mileage out of using a transfer to combat self-inflicted conditions. Most of the time those transfers are needed to save your own skin when you get bombed by conds in a teamfight or some such.

The issue with Curses is that traited Signets have such good value compared to rest of our skills, PvP-wise, now. And that Spite gives universal damage increase – Might boon, while Curses brings specific one to crit or some condi damage. So you go Soul Reaping, because there’s hardly PvP without it, you get Reaper because this profession is now being balanced around this Elite Specialization and then Spite + Signets and then….you ran out of space.
Spite offers burst and we pick it because with Condi Necro we can’t win at sustain.

This whole Specialization needs to be scrapped. It tries to be specific and niche, but we already have our omnitool powerhouse specs and while only 3 or 5 traits out of 9 see any use whatsoever, then we have a problem.

Long time ago, I proposed this:

Parasitic contagion: while suffering a condition steal health when struck by a foe (can be an aura), a percentage of condition damage heals you 5% (this trait would be great with corruptions)
or make it gain life force each second per condition suffered
why can’t we have a trait like this

Aktium.9506:

Transfers are less plentiful than corruptions. You can’t just blow a transfer every time you use a corruption. If we’re expected to do that then the self applied corruptions need to be increased substantially so you actually gain some mileage out of using a transfer to combat self-inflicted conditions. Most of the time those transfers are needed to save your own skin when you get bombed by conds in a teamfight or some such.

And Corruptions aren’t strong enough to warrant a transfer right now, which is why any Corruption trait changes are pretty much impossible to do well.

Tissitra.4153:

Chilling darkness does seem overnurfed. One could add to its effect:

‘blind a foe that you interrupt (10-15 sec ICD)’.

Necros now have quite a number of automatic proc traits – it would be nice to see something that rewards active gameplay for a change (you don’t interrupt that often on a necro anyway). Ppower/hybrid builds could also benefit from this using warhorn.

I’ve brought up giving us on interrupt traits a few times before, its a solid idea.

To be fair, terrifying descent is very fun in PvE <_<.

Remember when these traits were getting rolled out and terror was a grandmaster? The entire forum yelled and pleaded till it was back to a master. This is why curses is so screwed up. Parasitic contagion should be switched with terror, and terror got “nerfed” in order to be a master trait.

Also as far as MoC goes, I still think that it should be a Cast time reduction. For example 1 second cast time reduction take a lot of skills and turns them into instant battle effecting skills.

Dreaming serpent.5197:

Also as far as MoC goes, I still think that it should be a Cast time reduction. For example 1 second cast time reduction take a lot of skills and turns them into instant battle effecting skills.

Removing counterplay shouldn’t be a trait. It doesn’t matter for some, but heal/CB/epidemic would be way too good with a cast time reduction.

Bhawb.7408:

Dreaming serpent.5197:

Also as far as MoC goes, I still think that it should be a Cast time reduction. For example 1 second cast time reduction take a lot of skills and turns them into instant battle effecting skills.

Removing counterplay shouldn’t be a trait. It doesn’t matter for some, but heal/CB/epidemic would be way too good with a cast time reduction.

That’s the point. They would be way too good, hence a debilitating condition to offset it

That isn’t the right way to make them strong. Removing counterplay on okay skills to make them OP isn’t how Corruptions should work, they should still have counterplay, but be powerful enough to justify other parts of your build or team being weakened to compensate. But making Consume Conditions instant cast (basically) isn’t a good way to do that.

Two out of 5 corruption skill have zero baseline power and are situational I think having master of corruption giving corruption skill a baseline power would be the best bet.

Bhawb.7408:

That isn’t the right way to make them strong. Removing counterplay on okay skills to make them OP isn’t how Corruptions should work, they should still have counterplay, but be powerful enough to justify other parts of your build or team being weakened to compensate. But making Consume Conditions instant cast (basically) isn’t a good way to do that.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_skill I count as least 10 healing skills with a cast time of 1/4 second or less. That aside I can see what your getting at, because this is removing active counterplay for passive counterplay (and everyone knows this game needs less passive procs) instead of someone interrupting your heal, you get harmful conditions automatically. The counter-play still exists, just not as a mechanic that a player can interact with.

Dreaming serpent.5197:

Bhawb.7408:

That isn’t the right way to make them strong. Removing counterplay on okay skills to make them OP isn’t how Corruptions should work, they should still have counterplay, but be powerful enough to justify other parts of your build or team being weakened to compensate. But making Consume Conditions instant cast (basically) isn’t a good way to do that.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_skill I count as least 10 healing skills with a cast time of 1/4 second or less.

I believe all the healing skills that have low cast time make sense because their healing is not immediate:

• Litany of Wrath/Blood Reckoning: most of the heal based on damage you inflict
• Defiant Stance/Infuse Light: most of the heal based on the damage you take
• Well of Eternity: most of the heal after 3s
  etc…

So a low cast time would make sense for signet of vampirism (why the hell such a long cast time???), but not for CC.

Master of Corruptions:
Every corruption skill used (except consume conditions) reduces consume condition’s cooldown by X seconds, in addition to 20% reduction in corruptions, and the extra condition to self.

Chilling darkness + path of corruption with deaths charge would be one of the best synergies introduced by HoT specializations, except for one major flaw. Both of the traits require the full channel of deaths charge, which almost never happens in pvp. Unfortunately I doubt it will be changed due to the OP nature of the combo on only a 5 second cooldown.