Guild Wars 2

Would it be nice if the condition from this trait will also apply to the AoE around you when using Corruption skills.

That would mean, Consume Conditions will apply Blind to foe around you.

Interesting idea, but you have to factor in the ability to then transfer and spread the condition as well. Let’s say you get a condition from using a skill. Don’t worry about what condition or the number of stacks for the moment. You transfer that condition to an enemy then use epidemic. Now all nearby enemies have that condition. Simple enough.

Now suppose your idea were implemented. Now you and surrounding enemies have the condition. You transfer the condition to one of them, then use epidemic. Now your target has 2x that condition and other nearby enemies have 3x that condition. So you are multiplying the effectiveness of spreading conditions and they would have to be rebalanced.

Fix the corruption skills first, then deal with MoC

Bhawb.7408:

Fix the corruption skills first, then deal with MoC

Curious what you suggest doing with them, Bhawb, as a resident expert.

I don’t have good specifics yet, I’ve been thinking along the lines of making the self-applied effects significantly stronger/more meaningful, but also the actives, and focusing them on extremely non-selfish utilities, like the old BiP GW1 build, without making them strictly bad without a group.

Consume Conditions: Remove its label as a corruption, return it to pre-nerf 25s CD with no vuln applied

Epidemic: honestly no idea, the ability already has an insane ceiling, in a way it already has all the risk/reward of a corruption, but instead of self-harm the “cost” is it is super hard to use in best-case situations. I’m not sure how to make it stronger without making it OP, a lower CD probably wouldn’t matter, making it stronger under good situations isn’t needed as it is strong enough. My guess is somehow strengthening up its base use somehow, maybe make it apply the conditions you are spreading to yourself, and then spreading them from yourself and the enemy?

Corrupt Boon: instead of only corrupting 5 boons, it corrupts all boons on the enemy, and has a scaling effect with each corrupted on top of a base. This could be something like keep the current effect just to cast (if you miss you still get poisoned), with 1 more stack of poison per boon removed. This returns its previous power, but at a cost that you have to mitigate. I’d also say the poisons applied shouldn’t scale off your condition damage, but be a flat amount.

Blood is Power: I’d like to return this to closer to what it was in GW1. Make it AoE quickness for you and your allies, but you sacrifice a percentage of your max HP to cast it, and give it a relatively low CD so you could “spam” it, but if you do you really need to be careful.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: Now projectile reflect on top of current effects, has a lower CD, but is an upkeep skill. You are still self-weakened on activation, and spend a certain amount of HP every second it is active (if you go into shroud it remains up, and you still lose HP) to upkeep it. This can make it a significant AoE denial skill, and have a low CD, but you can’t keep it up forever.

Plague: another that I’m not quite sure of, mainly because the entire use of the skill currently is tanking, and corruptions by definition weaken you, making it harder to tank. Personally, I’d rework it to not being a transform, but instead being an effect like Reaper of Grenth that follows you as the blinding version of plague, and then I’m not sure what really fits. Maybe have it apply weakness to yourself (could even have a pulsing application to make it harder to just transfer once) so while you are defensive, you aren’t going to deal a lot of damage or dodge a ton.

Master of Corruption: I’d have it increase both the self cost and strength. For example, if it was 50%, you’d have to pay 50% more HP, or have 50% longer conditions, but Corrupt Boon would apply 50% longer base duration conditions, plague would last 50% longer, etc.

Some of these are mediocre ideas, but overall I think the best idea is to make corruptions more group oriented, though not necessarily bad without a team, but you have to really deal with the negative effects and build around them, while gaining meaningful strength out of it. Just like GW1 BiP couldn’t just spam BiP without thought, it required a dedicated healer or you to shift your build to accommodate it.

I’d be pretty satisfied with corruptions keeping their current functionality if, say, they made the self-applied condis not scale with your condi duration and damage. I would also like to see them add an effect to these skills that extends the duration of condis on foes they affect. Perfect to set up for Epidemic or Feast of Corruption. Imagine Poison Cloud or Plague with that… basically a zone where condis don’t go down in duration.

Bhawb, getting more group utility out of it would certainly be cool (especially the additional utility on CPC). Honestly, I love Consume Conditions, Epidemic, Blood is Power, and Corrosive Poison Cloud as they are. I didn’t play GW1, unfortunately.

Currently, Blood is Power is a pretty big damage source for me. What you describe sounds like a rather different skill (not that having aoe quickness wouldn’t be great)

I don’t find epidemic hard to use…were you referring to limited usage against a single target? I actually still use it at times against a solo target just to get a bigger heal.

I like the idea of CPC as an upkeep skill. Perhaps Plague could be as well (while removing the transform as you suggest)? Maybe there could be a corruption trait that gives condition damage based on health sacrificed?

This almost reminds me of the Glint Revenant spec with the upkeep skills, but using health instead of energy)

Treetoptrickster.4205:

I’d be pretty satisfied with corruptions keeping their current functionality if, say, they made the self-applied condis not scale with your condi duration and damage.

I don’t understand why you would want to not increase the duration of damaging conditions (self-applied non-damaging conditions aren’t affected by condition duration). This is limiting damage potential from transferring that condition, unless you meant for the other part of what you described to offset that. Even so, by not increasing the initial duration, you are losing a greater percentage of the duration before you can transfer the condition, especially if knocked back, etc.

Misguided.5139:

I don’t find epidemic hard to use…were you referring to limited usage against a single target? I actually still use it at times against a solo target just to get a bigger heal.

The skill is very rarely worth using in anything but PvE, where Necromancer is still quite awful regardless. In PvE yeah its fairly easy, just load up a mob with condis and Epi before it dies. In WvW/PvP though it is really difficult to manage to time the epidemic in such a way that you spread a lot of conditions, but get that epidemic cast off before the target is downed or cleanses.

Misguided.5139:

I like the idea of CPC as an upkeep skill. Perhaps Plague could be as well (while removing the transform as you suggest)? Maybe there could be a corruption trait that gives condition damage based on health sacrificed?

Also possible, though Plague would need a pretty heavy self-cost to do that, as upkeep skills really want to have fairly low CDs after dropping it off (no more than say 20s) but Plague can’t be allowed to be kept up too often.

I’d like to see Corruptions moved away from Condi-only utilities. We have very, very few utility skills that are specific in either direction (most are very general, without a specific towards condi or power), I’d like to see that mirrored with corruptions, though some things like CPC/CB would naturally be stronger on condi due to the damage scaling.

Bhawb.7408:

Also possible, though Plague would need a pretty heavy self-cost to do that, as upkeep skills really want to have fairly low CDs after dropping it off (no more than say 20s) but Plague can’t be allowed to be kept up too often.

I’d like to see Corruptions moved away from Condi-only utilities. We have very, very few utility skills that are specific in either direction (most are very general, without a specific towards condi or power), I’d like to see that mirrored with corruptions, though some things like CPC/CB would naturally be stronger on condi due to the damage scaling.

Re: epidemic, yeah I see what you mean, though when I am in WvW I tend to run in zergs, where I’m not relying on conditions I have applied myself.

A high upkeep on a skill like plague could work well with some of the ideas being thrown around, especially if that cost made you more powerful (and maybe it could be tied to building might instead of condition damage, to get away from being solely Condi)

If the party benefits were strong enough, I could see all of this working. Bleed yourself to give yourself might and the rest of your party quickness/fury/etc, then switch into shroud form and go to town when health gets low…

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t have good specifics yet, I’ve been thinking along the lines of making the self-applied effects significantly stronger/more meaningful, but also the actives, and focusing them on extremely non-selfish utilities, like the old BiP GW1 build, without making them strictly bad without a group.

Consume Conditions: Remove its label as a corruption, return it to pre-nerf 25s CD with no vuln applied

Epidemic: honestly no idea, the ability already has an insane ceiling, in a way it already has all the risk/reward of a corruption, but instead of self-harm the “cost” is it is super hard to use in best-case situations. I’m not sure how to make it stronger without making it OP, a lower CD probably wouldn’t matter, making it stronger under good situations isn’t needed as it is strong enough. My guess is somehow strengthening up its base use somehow, maybe make it apply the conditions you are spreading to yourself, and then spreading them from yourself and the enemy?

Corrupt Boon: instead of only corrupting 5 boons, it corrupts all boons on the enemy, and has a scaling effect with each corrupted on top of a base. This could be something like keep the current effect just to cast (if you miss you still get poisoned), with 1 more stack of poison per boon removed. This returns its previous power, but at a cost that you have to mitigate. I’d also say the poisons applied shouldn’t scale off your condition damage, but be a flat amount.

Blood is Power: I’d like to return this to closer to what it was in GW1. Make it AoE quickness for you and your allies, but you sacrifice a percentage of your max HP to cast it, and give it a relatively low CD so you could “spam” it, but if you do you really need to be careful.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: Now projectile reflect on top of current effects, has a lower CD, but is an upkeep skill. You are still self-weakened on activation, and spend a certain amount of HP every second it is active (if you go into shroud it remains up, and you still lose HP) to upkeep it. This can make it a significant AoE denial skill, and have a low CD, but you can’t keep it up forever.

Plague: another that I’m not quite sure of, mainly because the entire use of the skill currently is tanking, and corruptions by definition weaken you, making it harder to tank. Personally, I’d rework it to not being a transform, but instead being an effect like Reaper of Grenth that follows you as the blinding version of plague, and then I’m not sure what really fits. Maybe have it apply weakness to yourself (could even have a pulsing application to make it harder to just transfer once) so while you are defensive, you aren’t going to deal a lot of damage or dodge a ton.

Master of Corruption: I’d have it increase both the self cost and strength. For example, if it was 50%, you’d have to pay 50% more HP, or have 50% longer conditions, but Corrupt Boon would apply 50% longer base duration conditions, plague would last 50% longer, etc.

Some of these are mediocre ideas, but overall I think the best idea is to make corruptions more group oriented, though not necessarily bad without a team, but you have to really deal with the negative effects and build around them, while gaining meaningful strength out of it. Just like GW1 BiP couldn’t just spam BiP without thought, it required a dedicated healer or you to shift your build to accommodate it.

Epidemic could apply some basic DoT by itself OR the moment you start casting it it “copies” the state of conditions on your target. So for instance if you apply 6s Chill and then click Epidemic straight after, it would not copy Chill left by the time you finish the cast, but amount of stacks and duration there were when you started casting. That would make it much more useful.

Corrupt Boon – just keep the CD reduction and make it corrupt all boons like in the good old days and this skill will be brilliant.

Blood is Power – I don’t really have big complaints. However, I wouldn’t mind if they reduced the cooldown, bumped self-bleeding, kept the might and made it a stunbreak.
We all know that 2 minute Bleeding doesn’t really shine anywhere in the game.
So instead make it a very short cooldown stunbreak, maybe matching Zerker’s Outrage (10s) when traited, with Might application and strong self-bleeding as a trade-off for using it often. That would be the closest to what Corruptions/Sacrafices are meant to be – More powerful versions of skills avaliable to other professions, but with a trade-off.

Corrosive Poison Cloud – a lot of folks underestimate this skill. I think that after MoC change it’s our best Corruption. Would be fun if it transfered 1 condition with every tick or had increased radius. Doesn’t really need much, 20s CD makes it kitten good. Keep projectile reflection to Well of Darkness, so that bad boy can see some use.
The only real problem with CPC I see is that majority of “big burst” comes from range, like Mesmers. Not a fault of the skill, though.

Plague Maybe add a pulsing skill which extends applied conditions by 1s with every pulse? That could be interesting.
Plague is nice. As much as I would love to have a Transform to Orrian/Risen Wraith model and have something similar to Lich but for Condition players (like super-corruption form – similar feeling to popping Dark Soul on Affliction Warlock in WoW), I can wait for it in other Elite Spec.

Master of Corruption – Corruption builds need, first and foremost, sustain and Life Force. Wouldn’t mind if this trait gave us some Life Force & maybe Retaliation/short Protection when we transfer a Condition.

Now to solve two problems:

1. Problem Uno is that Curses traitline needs baseline transfer. And probably baseline self-condition application. That would solve many issues and make both the theme and synergy more smooth.

2. Problem Dos is that Self-Condition damage from Corruptions needs to be standarized when applied to Necromancer.
Currently Non-condi builds taking these skills lose absolutely nothing. What, 500 hp? That’s no trade-off. At the same time, Condition builds are being bullied by this trait because they have Condition damage and that damage from 500 can go up to 5000. That’s unfair. Make it equal risk for everyone.

There’s also third thing, a little bit controversial. I believe that transfered Conditions should scale with Condition damage stat.

About self-conditions – if you give Curses traitline users some way of transfering conditions baseline, I would finally see them as a gain and beautiful synergy. I don’t mind them and I understand the intentions, just give me the tools.

Uh, and replace self-Blind on Consume Conditions. It’s absolutely terrible condition to have on heal. Replace it with self-Confusion maybe.

Oh and get rid of that ugly Plague Sending proc. That’s disgraceful. Keep ya filthy Signets to Spite, I don’t want to cheese.

For Master of Corruption, I’d like to see a stacking condition damage
(or cdamage+power) buff and maybe a bit LF for every condition that the necromancer inflicts either on himself or draws off of allies, Corrupter’s Fervour style. Possibly on transfers too. That is, have this instead of the higher cooldown reduction.
While I’d like it to be per condition currently applied to the necromancer, like Mallyx, doing so would mean that friendly condition clears turn into a negative experience.

As for damaging conditions not scaling with Necromancer condition damage. Fairly certain that would result in them always working as if at 0 CDamage, even when transferred, turning them from a potential element to use in your playstyle to thematic fluff that is at worst taking up a spot on a transfer or blocks a friendly cleanse.

Personaly I would first make the self applied affects affected by condition duration.
Then I would improve each condition and it’s self application.
Consume conditions
No self vulnerability and cooldown of 25 seconds.

Blood is power
Applies 12 stacks of 12 seconds might to you and your allies and apply 5 stacks of 12 seconds of bleed on your foe and 2 stacks of 30 seconds to yourself.

This means that both you and you enmey get the same amount of bleeding (each 60 ticks) but the durations are so tweaked so tha the foe gets a significant amount more damage.

Epidemic
Gain 5% life force and 5 stacks of 8 seconds vulnerability for each condition on your foe instead of the 3 stacks of vulnerabiliy.

This means that the skill has some solo use plus increaseing the risk. 5 conditions and you have 25 stacks on you.

Corrosive poison cloud
Applies 3 stack of 1 second poison and 1 stack of weakness. It is also is a projectile destuction field, applies 6 seconds of cripple instead of weakness to yourself but for each projectile destroyed apply another 2 seconds of cripple (icd of 1 second). Interval: 1 second.

This gives corrosive poison cloud a very strong control of the field but also makes the necromancer dedicated to said field due to all the cripple. It also ticks moe to give the nemies less chance off being condition free.

Corrupt boon
Corrupts all boons on a foe, applies 1 stack of 6 seconds poison to yourself for each condition removed.

Simple high risk high reward stuff.

Plague
Now applies 2 seconds of cripple with every hit, plague of pestilence does not apply cripple anymore.Withering plague applies 5 seconds of bleed and torment. Instead of self bleeding on entry it grants 10 seconds of weakness on entry.

A bit more control of the field in return for a stronger negative effect and a serious boost to the dammaging skill.

Master of corruption
Cooldown reduction to 20%, no extra self applied conditions. Now grants a stack of corruption for a minute. Stack of corruption increase condition duration with 10% and can stack up to 3 times.

This makes the necromancer a much dangerous conditon applier but it also increases the self harm of your own corruption which you need to use to fuel your stacks.

CCLegion.5936:

For Master of Corruption, I’d like to see a stacking condition damage
(or cdamage+power) buff and maybe a bit LF for every condition that the necromancer inflicts either on himself or draws off of allies, Corrupter’s Fervour style. Possibly on transfers too. That is, have this instead of the higher cooldown reduction.
While I’d like it to be per condition currently applied to the necromancer, like Mallyx, doing so would mean that friendly condition clears turn into a negative experience.

As for damaging conditions not scaling with Necromancer condition damage. Fairly certain that would result in them always working as if at 0 CDamage, even when transferred, turning them from a potential element to use in your playstyle to thematic fluff that is at worst taking up a spot on a transfer or blocks a friendly cleanse.

Not necessarily 0 Condition damage. They could make them use whatever static number they like.

Upon transfer, these would start counting as Your conditions (similary to how Parasitic doesn’t heal you from self-applied, but once you transfer them it does), so as I suggested – transfers scalling off Necro’s Condition stat & duration.
It doesn’t have to work like that, I don’t know the game’s engine, but one of possibilities. It’s simply unfair that Condition builds actually have that trade-off and others do not.

Healing from gained conditions is already a trait in Corruption traitline for Mallyx. I doubt we would get the same. 3-4% Life Force & some other bonus per Transfered condition would help Corruptions compete with Spectrals and Signets.

I like these ideas, I always wanted Corruptions to have greater risk and greater reward too. I guess that’s the direction they tried to take it in with Master of Corruption and its huge 33% duration reduction, but it was completely the wrong way to go about it. And then they started panicking about how OP some of these skills would have been when traited, so they nerfed their base versions. (Utterly mistifying of course: if Consume Conditions had stayed at its old 25" recharge, when traited with MoC it would go down to 18", which is barely any worse than the 20" it goes down to now. It was a stupid and unwarranted nerf.)

I disagree that Consume Conditions should have its Corruption tag taken away. There were much better ways to make it a corruption than the ones they went for. I can think of 2 just off the top of my head:
1. They could have made it give you its conditions at the START of the cast rather than the end, so that they’re consumed by the heal. You could lower the base heal to make up for it. And if the self-applied condition is vulnerability then it’s still a decent trade-off, as you’re getting more damage while actually casting it. This would’ve been my favourite option.
2. You could keep the self-applied conditions at the end, but make them longer duration and fewer stacks, so that they could synergise with all your transfers. 3 stacks vuln 10" for instance.

I also love Bhawb’s ideas about skills like Blood is Power and CPC being sort of like “upkeep” skills, but I’m not sure how they would work with DS. If you would need to be able to switch them on and off manually to stop you from sacrificing yourself to death, you would need to turn them into toggle skills. But when you’re in Shroud, you lose your utility slots, so you’d lose the ability to turn them off! If that’s just sacrificing health directly that’s not a huge problem, as it could come out of life force instead (although it would be annying if it dropped you out of DS before you could cast your Doom or Dark Path or whatever), but if it’s pulsing self-applied conditions it’s a problem, as they would carry over when you exited and overwhelm your defences. I wonder if it were possible to keep access to the toggle skills while in shroud – can they selectively re-enable utility slots while in transformations?

@Rym what if epidemic increased duration of conditions on the target before copying them?

Tim.6450:

Personaly I would first make the self applied affects affected by condition duration.

Master of corruption
Cooldown reduction to 20%, no extra self applied conditions. Now grants a stack of corruption for a minute. Stack of corruption increase condition duration with 10% and can stack up to 3 times.

This makes the necromancer a much dangerous conditon applier but it also increases the self harm of your own corruption which you need to use to fuel your stacks.

Damaging self-applied affects already are increased by duration, while non-damaging ones are not. It is perfect the way it is, IMO. Increasing the duration of non-damaging effects was terrible when it worked that way, because the cripple from CPC screws up the transfer of the self-bleed from Blood is Power. You cast the cloud, then blood is power, then transfer weakness, bleed, and torment because the cripple has already worn off.

Why on earth would you want to remove the torment off Blood is Power? That’s a nice chunk of transferable damage you would be losing. And dropping the cooldown reduction to only 20%… why make the trait weaker?

Misguided.5139:

Tim.6450:

Personaly I would first make the self applied affects affected by condition duration.

Master of corruption
Cooldown reduction to 20%, no extra self applied conditions. Now grants a stack of corruption for a minute. Stack of corruption increase condition duration with 10% and can stack up to 3 times.

This makes the necromancer a much dangerous conditon applier but it also increases the self harm of your own corruption which you need to use to fuel your stacks.

Damaging self-applied affects already are increased by duration, while non-damaging ones are not. It is perfect the way it is, IMO. Increasing the duration of non-damaging effects was terrible when it worked that way, because the cripple from CPC screws up the transfer of the self-bleed from Blood is Power. You cast the cloud, then blood is power, then transfer weakness, bleed, and torment because the cripple has already worn off.

Well I find it a bit more consistent. A second more important reason was that corruption skills are stronger then normal skills should be but in return had a negative effect to compensate. Now stats increase effects from skills multplicatively so if the negative effect didn’t change it would mean that the positive effect would outshine the ngeative or the negative effect is much stronger when you dan’t too much stats. While it is simplified, I do hope you understand my sentiment.

Also only 1 condition on traited CPC anymore so that wouldn’t be a problem.

Why on earth would you want to remove the torment off Blood is Power? That’s a nice chunk of transferable damage you would be losing.

Strange considering the base negative effect is trippled in duration.

And dropping the cooldown reduction to only 20%… why make the trait weaker?

I really disliked the bonus 13%. It meant that your own transfers could not keep up, which was clearly a part in design of the corruptions. Traited plague signet can’t keep up with traited blood is power or corrosive poison cloud and you need to take dagger offhand and trait it to see even an advantage to 13% bonus of epidemic. It felt a bit to restrictive .

Also up to 30% global condition duration (that means other skills as well) and 20% cooldown reduction on corruption skills is not weaker then 33% cooldown reduction and an extra negative conditon.

Misguided.5139:

@Rym what if epidemic increased duration of conditions on the target before copying them?

Then I would proceed to Fear-> stow cancel Epidemic ;>

And increasing the duration of conditions can be tricky. Increasing the duration on bleeds by 3s is perfectly fine, but doing the same with Fear? Uh uh, gimme!

manveruppd.7601:

I also love Bhawb’s ideas about skills like Blood is Power and CPC being sort of like “upkeep” skills, but I’m not sure how they would work with DS. If you would need to be able to switch them on and off manually to stop you from sacrificing yourself to death, you would need to turn them into toggle skills. But when you’re in Shroud, you lose your utility slots, so you’d lose the ability to turn them off! If that’s just sacrificing health directly that’s not a huge problem, as it could come out of life force instead (although it would be annying if it dropped you out of DS before you could cast your Doom or Dark Path or whatever), but if it’s pulsing self-applied conditions it’s a problem, as they would carry over when you exited and overwhelm your defences. I wonder if it were possible to keep access to the toggle skills while in shroud – can they selectively re-enable utility slots while in transformations?

My idea for CPC would be to have it drain HP regardless of whether you are in Shroud or not. So if you turn it on then enter shroud it would still be draining your actual HP, not Life Force. Means you could combo it with life steal or Unholy Sanctuary to mitigate the HP loss, or just cover the HP loss with shroud.

Bhawb.7408:

Epidemic: honestly no idea, the ability already has an insane ceiling, in a way it already has all the risk/reward of a corruption, but instead of self-harm the “cost” is it is super hard to use in best-case situations. I’m not sure how to make it stronger without making it OP.

there are classes that are way more OP than Necro, and you worry if “1” skill will be OP? seriously?

Yes, because I care about balance.

Tim.6450:

Misguided.5139:

Why on earth would you want to remove the torment off Blood is Power? That’s a nice chunk of transferable damage you would be losing.

Strange considering the base negative effect is trippled in duration.

And dropping the cooldown reduction to only 20%… why make the trait weaker?

I really disliked the bonus 13%. It meant that your own transfers could not keep up, which was clearly a part in design of the corruptions. Traited plague signet can’t keep up with traited blood is power or corrosive poison cloud and you need to take dagger offhand and trait it to see even an advantage to 13% bonus of epidemic. It felt a bit to restrictive .

Also up to 30% global condition duration (that means other skills as well) and 20% cooldown reduction on corruption skills is not weaker then 33% cooldown reduction and an extra negative conditon.

re: BiP, fair enough, I missed that you had increased the effect. Though, I find it a bit puzzling that you think not increasing the duration of non-damaging conditions might be OP but removing the extra self-conditions (while buffing the ones applied to targets) aren’t (though I get you are trying to balance that with the corruption stacks, the decreased conditions on self just makes them easier to transfer)

WRT the cooldown duration, ok but you are losing an extra 13% cool down reduction on Epidemic (no big deal) and Consume Conditions (a very big deal, IMO)

I really disliked the bonus 13%. It meant that your own transfers could not keep up, which was clearly a part in design of the corruptions.

Staff 4 has a 20 second cooldown (and dagger is less than that as you already noted), which is exactly the same as Corrosive Poison Cloud, Blood is Power, and Comsume Conditions with a 33% reduction, which is how I came up with this build idea in the first place. It has a great rhythm to it. The cooldown of Epidemic is immaterial as long as it is ready when the others are.

Frankly I’m confused. If you weren’t using offhand dagger or staff with a corruption setup, what were you using? Regardless, there are two perfectly good options to transfer conditions.

Bhawb.7408:

Yes, because I care about balance.

i don’t care about balance, cause if other classes are OP(and they are) why can’t Necro be OP too? since Arenanet obviously doesn’t care to balance the game(this selective balance they do isn’t balance “we balance Necro to not be OP, and while we’re at it have some drawbacks as present. but Ele can be OP cause that’s how we want it to be”), why not make all classes OP so that they don’t have to bother with balance again, and focus more on somewhere else?

Dakunaito.9602:

i don’t care about balance, cause if other classes are OP(and they are) why can’t Necro be OP too?

Because that is awful game design, leads to bad gameplay, and isn’t remotely healthy for the game. Last time Necromancers were OP we got annihilated by nerfs, don’t want to repeat that one.

Misguided.5139:

Tim.6450:

Misguided.5139:

Why on earth would you want to remove the torment off Blood is Power? That’s a nice chunk of transferable damage you would be losing.

Strange considering the base negative effect is trippled in duration.

And dropping the cooldown reduction to only 20%… why make the trait weaker?

I really disliked the bonus 13%. It meant that your own transfers could not keep up, which was clearly a part in design of the corruptions. Traited plague signet can’t keep up with traited blood is power or corrosive poison cloud and you need to take dagger offhand and trait it to see even an advantage to 13% bonus of epidemic. It felt a bit to restrictive .

Also up to 30% global condition duration (that means other skills as well) and 20% cooldown reduction on corruption skills is not weaker then 33% cooldown reduction and an extra negative conditon.

re: BiP, fair enough, I missed that you had increased the effect. Though, I find it a bit puzzling that you think not increasing the duration of non-damaging conditions might be OP but removing the extra self-conditions (while buffing the ones applied to targets) aren’t (though I get you are trying to balance that with the corruption stacks, the decreased conditions on self just makes them easier to transfer)

WRT the cooldown duration, ok but you are losing an extra 13% cool down reduction on Epidemic (no big deal) and Consume Conditions (a very big deal, IMO)

I dislike the extra conditions mostly because a condi clear giving you a condi seems counterintuitive to me. I do not mind corruption skills ginving multiple conditions (there are limits though). I just think that the negatives should always scale with condition duration to make sure the extra positive does not get out of hand. And since all positives and negatives get boosted by condition duration (even epidemic though not directly). Just a little scenario:
Imagine a skill that gives 10 weakness to a foe and 3 to your self and is equally balanced with a flat 7 second weakness skill (because 10-3 =7). Now let’s boost both skills with 40% condition duration. The first one gives 14 second duration while still receiving 3 while the other one gives 9.8 meaning, the first skill nets 1.2 weakness more. If the negatice scaled to you get 4.2 which makes the skill banlanced again.
The scenario is quite simplistic but you get the idea. Also consume conditions got nerfed to 30 seconds because of that trait which in my suggestion was reverted.

Misguided.5139:

I really disliked the bonus 13%. It meant that your own transfers could not keep up, which was clearly a part in design of the corruptions.

Staff 4 has a 20 second cooldown (and dagger is less than that as you already noted), which is exactly the same as Corrosive Poison Cloud, Blood is Power, and Comsume Conditions with a 33% reduction, which is how I came up with this build idea in the first place. It has a great rhythm to it. The cooldown of Epidemic is immaterial as long as it is ready when the others are.

Quite interesting, I can see how it works but doesn’t mean that at some point you are in staff with no condition moves to use? Or do you use dhuumfire?

Frankly I’m confused. If you weren’t using offhand dagger or staff with a corruption setup, what were you using? Regardless, there are two perfectly good options to transfer conditions.

I do use dagger off hand but I don’t use staff. I use focus instead. Losing 150 conditon damage is quite a lot, also staff is not the best condition weapon.

Tim.6450:

Quite interesting, I can see how it works but doesn’t mean that at some point you are in staff with no condition moves to use? Or do you use dhuumfire?

To be honest, I don’t tend to weapon switch as often as one ideally would, so yes, that would be the case, but a more skilled player might drop the corruptions, weapon swap, then swap back when everything was coming off cooldown. I actually run staff and scepter/dagger but stay on staff most of the time (again, my play style isn’t optimal, but the basic idea is sound, I think).

I don’t currently use dhuumfire, but I plan to when Reaper comes out for exactly this reason. I tried it during the BWE and it was great fun.

Tim.6450:

I do use dagger off hand but I don’t use staff. I use focus instead. Losing 150 conditon damage is quite a lot, also staff is not the best condition weapon.

you don’t use staff as condi weapon. staff has heal(+some bleed as bonus), chill, 5 target condi transfer and fear. this is why you use it

Bhawb.7408:

Because that is awful game design, leads to bad gameplay, and isn’t remotely healthy for the game. Last time Necromancers were OP we got annihilated by nerfs, don’t want to repeat that one.

but the game design is already awful with this selective “balance” they keep doing, and the gameplay is also bad since there’s no balance of the classes. and they didn’t have to wait for Necro to be OP to get nerfed. even when class was already underpower they were keep doing nerfs. even now that class is underpower and dragged back by a bunch of drawbacks, in June patch they removed 1 bleed stack from staff 2 in pve, when Ranger can build bleed way faster than Necro. they nerfed Necro cause they don’t want it to be OP. selective balance. d/d Ele that does 1.5-2+++k dmg from each skill + the dmg from the OP burn is balanced? without vuln+might burn ticks for 10-12k+ in pve. where’s the nerf here? oh, i forgot, it’s Ele, so it can be Op

You don’t make already bad things better by making even worse design choices. Your idea is “hey this game has some issues, what if we made it complete garbage?”.

i don’t see any nerf happening to OP classes for balance. do you see any? this is much worse than what i said. Ele is OP, Necro gets nerfed, cause why not? my idea is going to be way better than how the game is now, cause devs don’t want the game to be balanced. it’s been 3 years after release, and classes should have been balanced ages ago if they cared. instead of having OP(Ele) and UP(Necro) classes and no balance happening, isn’t it better for all classes to be OP?