Guild Wars 2

Every class has them, but would could be done to make skills like Well of Blood, Corrosive Poison Cloud, Signet of Undeath and Spectral Grasp more useful?

They all have some niche use for which you might slot them temporarily but still fall short of being worth a slot on your bar as an actual useful skill.

Post some ideas on how these skills could be changed for the better.

Well of Blood: give necromancer more finishers (100% chance finisher on staff 1 needs to happen) and the well is useable.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: This a really weak version of thief short bow 4. It needs additional functionality. Projectile block has been suggested.

Signet of Undeath: Cast time decrease.

Spectral Grasp: the spectral mastery trait needs to do more for this skill.

For Spectral Grasp, I would make it a ground-targeted AoE (fires a projectile that strikes the ground at the targeted point, somewhat like Arcing Arrow). 5 targets, same range. Not sure what radius would be good – 180? 240?

Also, fix pull’s general bugginess.

change spectral grasp to something that make teleport/shadow step your target to you while knocking them down- problem solved
make the animation instead a reversion of necro minion summon to make it as if enemies got sucked into space
also rename it to Spectral Abyss

edit:
what basically happens is the target gets knocked down, a black hole (the minion summon hole) appears beneath the target, then enemies go down in to the hole and appear at kitten that’s right in-front of the necro

and as for fixing pull’s general awkwardness, i think a reverse shadow step/teleport should be the way to go.

Well of Blood: give necromancer more finishers (100% chance finisher on staff 1 needs to happen) and the well is useable.

^ this couldn’t hurt.

- Corrosive poison cloud : Well I think this skill is in a good shape atm, it’s not wonderfull but if we had more usefull finisher (like suggested before) this skill would be perfectly fine.

- Signet of the undeath : Yeah, a reduced cast time could help this signet.

- Spectral grasp : I think this skill could be split in 2 (like guardian greatsword pull). It could be like that :

Spectral grasp : Instant. Curse the target. Cursed target is periodically chilled. Chill 2s every 2s. Last 6s. (with trait it would last 8s)
→ Spectral pull : cast time 1/2s. Pull the cursed target to you, gaining LF.

We can remove the silly projectile animation since the target will have a debuff that litterally say : “You should dodge otherwise he will pull you!”

Well of Blood should be a water field and transfer conditions on pulse. It’s a godkitten ed WELL, why is it a light field instead of a water field. It could also see a cd reduction to 35 seconds.

Corrosive Poison cloud could blind targets in the area and destroy projectiles.

Signet of Undeath should be increased to 3/4% and reduce the active cast time.

Spectral Grasp should function like temporal curtain centered on the necromancer.

• Well of Blood: This is already a good enough skill. I don’t know what more should be done for it. The field could be looked at though.

• Corrosive Poison Cloud: This has already been improved and master of corruption makes it a very good skill. But for some reason, it’s underused. Blocking projectiles as some people have suggested doesn’t fit with either the skill or necro in general. If they want to boost that, they could add some vulnerability on top of it, add life force for the necro, or immunity to poison for allies. Each of these can make this skill OP in the right build though. Or maybe corruption builds need improvement?

• Spectral Grasp: This skill only needs to be more reliable. It already gives a lot of life force and a very long chill on top of its main functionality. The pull gets bugged out quite often for me though.

Burjis.3087:

• Corrosive Poison Cloud: This has already been improved and master of corruption makes it a very good skill. But for some reason, it’s underused. Blocking projectiles as some people have suggested doesn’t fit with either the skill or necro in general. If they want to boost that, they could add some vulnerability on top of it, add life force for the necro, or immunity to poison for allies. Each of these can make this skill OP in the right build though. Or maybe corruption builds need improvement?

How on earth is this a good skill? Is there any reason to use it over other stuff? And how does blocking projectiles not fit with the skill? It’s a corrosive poison cloud, you’re corroding the projectiles. And yes, corruption builds need an improvement. There are all of 4 corruption skills worth using and 2 of them are healing/elite skills. MoC is basically worthless compared to other traits. Anyways, here’s my suggestions.

• Well of Blood: Passive healing increased and changed to a water field.
• Corrosive Poison Cloud: Make it block projectiles. Maybe the duration should be decreased to 10 seconds to balance it out, especially with my suggestions for MoC.
• Signet of Undeath should grant 3% LF every 3 seconds, or in other words 1% LF every second and the cast time should be reduced to 2 seconds.
• Spectral Grasp: Make the projectile faster and track better or function more like engineers Magnet.
• Master of Corruption (the trait) should grant 1 second of quickness and 10% Corruption CD bonus per unique condition after using a Corruption (conditions gained from using said Corruption counts towards this trait).

>Corrosive Poison Cloud is a GREAT skill, especially traited. Pulsing AoE weakness is probably better than a protection field. Imagine how happy you guys would be with a 12s field pulsing protection with 20s cooldown. Thats also the reason why it will never get projectile block, it is 12s with 20s cooldown, it would be simply OP.
>Well of Blood, traited is AoE protection-heal-life steal, so not a bad skill at all. Of course I’d also prefer as water field, but now with our whirl finishers we can maybe cleanse some condis on allies.
>1% LF every second is too much! the 2% right now is ok, and the active I find very useful lately pugging high lvl fractals…
>Spectral Grasp could use the speed increase. Otherwise the chill and the LF are great.

Overall these skills aren’t bad at all.

What needs fixing is the cooldown on Well of Darkness, Well of Power pulsing stability to us and allies (which i doubt, necros are supposed to be ping pongs), Blood is Power has ridiculously low might duration and low range, and generally the MoC is too crippling for its benefits at the moment.

Did this person just say a weakness skill is better than aoe protection? Oh lord, some people.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness

Reduces endurance regen by 50%, and 50% of all hits do 50% less damage. Overall you could say 25% reduction so protection gives 8% more. But with weakness some hits you might get whole, some others might get mitigated 17% more than protection. It’s more of a gamble, and also reduces endurance regen. So in PvP content at least, yeah i think it is equivalent if not better than a protection field. And thanks for proving my point.

Grasp should just be instant after the cast time. No projectile. It should give the lifeforce regardless of the pull working or not.

Singet of undeath needs a cast time decrease as by the time u get it off the person/persons your trying to rez are spiked or dead to dmg.

Poison cloud Maybe get rid of the self inflicting condis from all the corruption utilities its the reason I wont use any of them. Ot atleast fix it so if your condi speced your not doing insane condi dmg to yourself.

Well of blood changed from light to water field

Foes don’t stay in field, it’s easier to remove conditions then boons and weakness is common already. I understand the reaper whirl+poison field combo but that’s it nothing else.

Pelopidas.2140:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness

Reduces endurance regen by 50%, and 50% of all hits do 50% less damage. Overall you could say 25% reduction so protection gives 8% more. But with weakness some hits you might get whole, some others might get mitigated 17% more than protection. It’s more of a gamble, and also reduces endurance regen. So in PvP content at least, yeah i think it is equivalent if not better than a protection field. And thanks for proving my point.

It’s RNG protection, that’s reliant on foes to be afflicted by the condition, whereas protection is centered on YOU and protects you from any attacks, far or near, regardless of the foe’s placement or whether they were inflicted with weakness.

It’s not even close to the same protection value. Especially with all the condi removal venues compared to the amount of boon removal.

Foes dont stay in the field: same could be argued about purging flames, yet it is all around in pvp…true but it is pulsing weakness not applying once…and what do you mean its common? it is the offensive type of damage mitigation along with blind.

And check Hollts new vid 5 reapers stack like 52 poison stacks

I said boon removal is not as common as condi removal, which places conditions in a specific defensive disadvantage compared to boons.

Partly why WvW is so heavily involved with guardians and elementalists as the backbone of any team. Boons are just way stronger than conditions and for necromancer as a condi centric class the scale needs to be balanced to bring defensive conditions more in line with defensive boons.

Pelopidas.2140:

Foes dont stay in the field: same could be argued about purging flames, yet it is all around in pvp…true but it is pulsing weakness not applying once…and what do you mean its common? it is the offensive type of damage mitigation along with blind.

And check Hollts new vid 5 reapers stack like 52 poison stacks

Purging Flames punishes you for moving CPC doesn’t the main benefit is also on activation.

Well of Blood really needs its healing power scaling on the pulses upped by ~83% and it should be fine. The Light field with Reaper finishers is actually pretty potent.

Corrosive Poison Cloud needs some extra effect, and Projectile destruction seems like the best fit, both thematically and with the needs of the profession as a whole. It also turns CPC from an ignorable circle to a “you fight me here and on my terms” skill.

Spectral Grasp really just needs improved projectile speed and homing ability. Give it those and it’s a fantastic skill.

Signet of Undeath just needs a shorter cast time or a complete overhaul.

Well of Darkness… I don’t know what to do with that but it needs a major change.

Signet of undeath- Make it an elite skill and lower the cast time, lower the cooldown, and make it 600 effective radius. Maybe slightly improve passive. We are necromancers, we should be able to bring allies “back from the dead” better than a warrior or ele.

Corrosive poison cloud is actually really nice on defensive builds. Especially when traited, 12s weakness and poison field on 20s cooldown. I think it might be OP if buffed anymore.

Spectral grasp- I like the suggestions of making this a flip skill that targets then pulls on the second activation. It would actually benefit from spectral mastery this way and it would be up to par with the other spectral skills.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well of Darkness… I don’t know what to do with that but it needs a major change.

Increase well duration to 10s. Reduce Blind pulses to once every 2s. Reduce recharge to 30s. Skill now has substantial Blind-pulse uptime (less than can be achieved with Black Powder, but it also has twice the radius). Would that make it an effective “defensive debuff” skill?

It should pulse blind every 1 second and have a cd of 30 seconds with a 10 sec duration. It costs a godkitten utility, black powder comes for free on a weapon thieves use anyways for aoe cleave.

In fact the answer to pretty much every well problem is “reduce its cooldown”. Well of Blood made a water field, 35 sec cd with condi removal on heal tick would still be an inferior ranger healing spring but at least it has the extra pulsing heals on it and benefits from well traits to make it a 29 sec cd that gives protection as well.

corrosive poison cloud is bad 3 second pulse is terrible, why would u use pulsing weakness when u can use well of darkness for pulsing blind
and regarding well of darkness’s longer cool-down, well sir u can trait the thing for pulsing siphon as well as protection on cast, so if ur enemies use immune/cleanse u still get something out of it.

corrosive poison cloud also halirously weaken yourself, have fun using it over any well, no offense but there are simply better utilitys to take

Zantmar.5406:

corrosive poison cloud is bad 3 second pulse is terrible, why would u use pulsing weakness when u can use well of darkness for pulsing blind
and regarding well of darkness’s longer cool-down, well sir u can trait the thing for pulsing siphon as well as protection on cast, so if ur enemies use immune/cleanse u still get something out of it.

corrosive poison cloud also halirously weaken yourself, have fun using it over any well, no offense but there are simply better utilitys to take

5 seconds of blind on 40 second cooldown vs 12 seconds of weakness + poison on 20 sec cd. Used with weakening shroud it’s nearly perma weakness uptime. That’s definitely nothing to brush off.

Sabre.8627:

Signet of undeath- Make it an elite skill and lower the cast time, lower the cooldown, and make it 600 effective radius. Maybe slightly improve passive. We are necromancers, we should be able to bring allies “back from the dead” better than a warrior or ele.

They really should do exactly this^

Our current elite options are terrible. Transforms, pets, or a ridiculously long cool down pvp oriented shout. A signet elite would be a perfect addition and Signet of Undeath would be the perfect choice…with the improvements you listed. Of course they also need to allow signet passives in shroud as well.

As has been said, improve combo finishers available to necros. They are a fundamental part of the game, and every class should be able to participate in this system meaningfully.

Well of Blood- 1S Resistance on pulse. With this and better finishers, the skill would have a number of uses in group support.

Signet of Undeath- As others have said, make it an elite and reduce the cast time to ~2 seconds. Make signet passives work in shroud.

Well of Darkness- Keep as is, make it a 20S cooldown (so 16S with traits).

Corrosive Poison Cloud- If it was buffed to destroy projectiles, you would need to reduce the uptime (with MoC you can get 60% uptime, which is probably too high). Make it last 5 seconds and pulse once per second, instead of once every three seconds. 25% uptime on projectile destruction traited, and you might actually hit someone with three+ pulses.

Blood is Power- Make the might last 20 seconds baseline, now you actually contribute some worthwhile might in a dungeon group.

Spectral Grasp- Either make it a narrow cone that hits up to 3 targets or make it a shadowstep/knockdown on a single target. A single target pull is honestly not that exciting compared to other utilities you could take (see: scorpion wire), so I’m not sure that this would be used if you just improved the reliability of the projectile.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Corrosive Poison Cloud needs some extra effect, and Projectile destruction seems like the best fit, both thematically and with the needs of the profession as a whole. It also turns CPC from an ignorable circle to a “you fight me here and on my terms” skill.

Well of Darkness… I don’t know what to do with that but it needs a major change.

Dark Fields went to school on the Short bus. Blasting a well of blind to get blind is a complete waste.

Dark fields being so bad is the reason that necromancer can’t use it’s biggest damage utilities in big damage PvE situations.

Dark field functionality needs to be looked at. Vampiric Aura resulting from leap through dark dies has been suggested.

Alternatively, put chilling darkness on a reaper minor, and put more finishers on base necromancer weapons.