Guild Wars 2

This skill has been discussed before, but I felt the need to revive the topic again.

On paper, this skill sounds like a useful skill for necromancers in structured PvP.
- It has the radius of a capture point (except for those in legacy of foe fire).
- It causes poison and weakness which are both great debilitating conditions in PvP.
- You can blast it for even more AoE weakness.
- You can transfer back the weakness you get to apply more weakness to the enemy.
- The duration of this skill is relatively long compared to some other AoE circles.

When Anet improved weakness, they reduced the weakness duration on many skills and yet they left the duration of the weakness applied by this skill intact.

All this sounds well and good, and yet, a skill designed for PvP almost never sees the light of day in the tournament matches on the higher slice of the leaderboard.
So what’s wrong? Is this skill really bad in practice? Or is it because the necromancer has so many great utility skills that this skill doesn’t even have a chance of competing with them?

To me, it seems like there are ways to improve that skill to bring it on par with some nasty competitors like signet of spite, epidemic or corrupt boon:

- Add 2 stacks of vulnerability per pulse on top of the weakness and poison to help cover the conditions and add another layer of functionality to the skill. It matches with the “corrosive” theme of the skill too.
- Alternatively, add 1 stack of torment per pulse for 4 seconds each, again on top of the weakness and poison.
- Alternatively, just increase the duration of the skill even more and let it tick 7 times instead of 5 times.

Not saying that the above suggestions are all good. I’m just throwing out some ideas. I mainly want to know other people’s opinions.
So, what do you think? Does the skill even need any change? If you already use the skill in PvP, I very much like to hear the situations that this skill might work better than its competitors.

TL&DR: Corrosive poison cloud, even though sounds like a good skill, is still not used often in competitive tournaments. Do you even agree with this statement? Do you use it yourself? Do you think it should be improved, and how? Discuss!

I’m sure you can use it if you’re going for a debuffer of some kind, but if you’re going for more damage, poison is not the right way.

It isn’t used largely due to the fact that it almost only be used by non-power, non-minion builds, because its largest use is downed pressure, and power/minion builds can get a ton of that already (through wells/death nova). At this point you’re almost strictly looking at condition builds, and its just very rare to see a non-damage focused condition build.

It’d potentially be very strong in support based builds, but those are just very rare, and the few that exist focus around wells.

Its just outclassed in every way by other skills they could be using instead as a condimancer.

Ie. The opportunity cost of losing that spell is too great for the benefit this spell has. And with current necro styles that are effective which is Burst before they can outlast you. It has no place in the meta.

The only attrition build is MM and thats largely outclassed by most things. And also how dumb minion AI is atm.

This is also tied to our RATE of life force generation. By having a large life force pool but having slow rates of generation. It is basically we have a big buffer and once we run out of life force we die. So you are forced to go into burst styles of builds before you run out of life force and die.

Only build that isn’t is a MM with high healing. As they have enough siphon to stay live. Thats onyl if the minion AI isn’t kittened.

This skill is PROOF that necromancers are not built for attrition.

Truthfully, I’d probably use the skill more if they shaved the recharge. 35 or 30 seconds would be awesome.

I love it in wvw and I would love it if it got a buff. I dont want its functionality changed to the point where its useless for what I use it for.

Its not far from a good skill, I used to swap it in in WvW small GvG fights, because my “team” was usually thrown together last second and we often had issues securing stomps. So picking up this skill would allow me to pretty much mark someone as dead the second they hit the ground (it even stops a lot of hard-resses), and then we could more or less ignore them, since their team trying to res them was actually a huge liability.

But, that was a very rare niche. This skill is so close to being amazing, but its just a tiny shred off of it. Like Drarnor said, a slight CD reduction would do wonders for the skill.

I like it, what I don’t like it the lengthy recharge and the lengthy cast time. Reduce the cast time and the recharge a smidge and I’d like it a lot more.
Still, I agree it is quite a good ability and I use it from time to time. It’s just a bit more costly to use because of it’s recharge and cast time.

I just don’t understand why this has a 900 cast range but the Asuran radiation field gets 1200.

I’d say, shave off some of the recharge time on it, AND increase the cast range.

Thanks for the responses.
Yeah, this skill is not bad; it’s just overshadowed by the other skills that a necromancer could pick in the current meta. It just needs a small edge to be able to compete with other skills of its class.
The reason I suggested an extra condition was because it would be a great AoE skill that helps cover other necro conditions and still serves its current purpose. Alternatively, increasing its duration or reducing its recharge and cast time can probably give it the extra edge it needs.

I think condition spam is already quite out of control in the game, so I would rather see the current effectiveness of this skill improved, rather than extra conditions stacked on top of it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think condition spam is already quite out of control in the game, so I would rather see the current effectiveness of this skill improved, rather than extra conditions stacked on top of it.

This. Plus the skill isn’t about the damage. Yes poison does damage, but even if it didn’t this skill would remain basically the same, because its about the shutdown potential of poison’s healing reduction plus weakness’ endurance/offensive reduction.

The honest to goodness problem with it is, the duration of the conditions themselves on it are laughable if you just walk out of the area of effect. They disappear almost immediately. In order to get the full “oomph” out of this skill, you need to keep them in it, which is a notorious problem of necros (keeping them in the fight where you want them)

Another problem, like op mentioned, would be the duration of the skill itself. It’s far too easy to simply kite around it until it runs out and then it has been wasted and it’s out of commission for another 40 seconds. The only fixes I can foresee making it viable would be larger area, longer duration, or longer condis/cover condi added but since necro condis are being phased out I doubt that will happen.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Truthfully, I’d probably use the skill more if they shaved the recharge. 35 or 30 seconds would be awesome.

Seriously. It is a freaking corruption skill and puts weakness on the caster. It should have a shorter cooldown (like BIP) because of that. The idea behind corruptions was that they gave a really powerful effect at the cost of putting a debuff on the necro.

I love all of the corruption skills, but this one has such an insane cast time and recharge for what it does. Effect is fine as is…. needs:

Shorter cooldown, shorter cast time, faster pulses with shorter duations on the conditions.

The skill is almost good but the cool down is too long.

I sometimes take it with me into PvE. In Pvp the self weakness is a big disadvantage not an asset, because you usually only have 2-3 condition clears which are all on long cool downs.

Druss.6917:

The honest to goodness problem with it is, the duration of the conditions themselves on it are laughable if you just walk out of the area of effect. They disappear almost immediately. In order to get the full “oomph” out of this skill, you need to keep them in it, which is a notorious problem of necros (keeping them in the fight where you want them)

Another problem, like op mentioned, would be the duration of the skill itself. It’s far too easy to simply kite around it until it runs out and then it has been wasted and it’s out of commission for another 40 seconds. The only fixes I can foresee making it viable would be larger area, longer duration, or longer condis/cover condi added but since necro condis are being phased out I doubt that will happen.

Ah you’re right. I forgot about duration. Its like 4s and doesnt stack on itself if they stay in it longer.

You know what skill stacks on itself and does poison and weakness in an AOE? Shortbow 4 for thieves with the trait that on poison gives weakness. The duration stacks on itself. A spammable skill compared to a 40s CD utility of a necro.

What if weakness and poison procced every other second with torment in between.
First sec weakness+poison second torment and so on. Shave off 3 sec in duration and 10 sec in recharge. That would be an ideal change imo.

Let’s not forget that the skill used to tick every second and Anet found the need to nerf it. Probably because for 12 seconds, the bunkers couldn’t effectively remove the poison and weakness off of themselves if they decided to stay on the point and both of these conditions are devastating to bunkers.
I doubt Anet would revert the skill back to its 1 tick per second.

Yeah it used to be absolutely godly – although I still didn’t use it back then, because I played condi and already had easy access to both poison and weakness.

But if I were playing a dagger/warhorn power build I imagine it could be very useful.

If they scaled it to ticking per second, they’d also need to scale back its durations, which is the point. Its actually more forgiving to enemies with quick reactions, and less forgiving to people who are screwing around.

Bhawb.7408:

If they scaled it to ticking per second, they’d also need to scale back its durations, which is the point. Its actually more forgiving to enemies with quick reactions, and less forgiving to people who are screwing around.

But you don’t need skills to take down people screwing around. They usually wind up getting themselves killed by just standing in one spot eating dps anyway. In it’s current state it really doesn’t have much place in pvp. Even in wvw, where you used to be able to drop it in front of a gate or something, it’s now pretty pointless to bring.

I think I used it in pve a few times, but with so much access to those conditions on shorter cd’s (or no cd at all on scepter auto) and epidemic along with other classes that can do the same conditions so even in pve it’s pretty pointless. A whole re-design of the skill is needed which is sad because it used to be such a neat skill (in theory anyway)

because staff 3/4 and other utilities too good to miss out on. Could maybe reduce cd to 30/35, lower duration to 4/5s and tick for 3s poison/2s weakness every second. But realistically, you need spectrals for defense and corrupt/spite/epidemic for offense. It’s just outshone by a lot of abilities and if buffed to the point of viability it’d have to be a no brainer to take or extremely niche (as it is now).

max condi duration in spvp 50%
20% cd on corruption from traits
4.5/3s max duration ticks for a total of (with 5 ticks) 22.5s poison/15s weakness aoe on a 24s (or 27s) cd with 9s self weakness.
seems kinda op but you lose out on terror. Would still be a niche utility and compared to poison nades/choke gas it’s still pretty strong but you have to give up a utility slot for it. Idk, maybe.

It’d definitely feel more impactful with shorter ticks between pulses. But in all honesty it doesn’t really need to be buffed or nerfed, other utilities are too good in general to give up.

I have tested it in pvp and the reasons why it sucks are:
1, Cast time – just too long. Not even useful to put on corpses as by the time you cast it they have been ressed. Cast time would be balanced at 1/2s
2, Pules – The pulses aren’t quick enough. I would say it should tick every 2 seconds not every 3 seconds.

These changes = balanced skill. Not even Op in the slightest. Fun to use and has counter play due to the cooldown.

Edit: IDK why everyone says the cd should be reduced. The cast time is way more important. You are gimping your team trying to spend a second casting this. If you can cast this quicker then you get a ton more use out of it.

Lordrosicky.5813:

These changes = balanced skill. Not even Op in the slightest. Fun to use and has counter play due to the cooldown.

Edit: IDK why everyone says the cd should be reduced. The cast time is way more important. You are gimping your team trying to spend a second casting this. If you can cast this quicker then you get a ton more use out of it.

I agree, but I also feel it’s on cooldown for way too long to be useful. The effect it has is not strong enough to warrant taking up a skillslot, while on cooldown for most of the time.

In WvW players can really easily move out of the cloud. So it’s really important to be able to cast it more often. Otherwise it’s a wasted skillslot, and I might as well replace it with something more easily spammable. Damage-wise and pressure-wise, any of the wells just seems like a much more worth while investment to me.

I think Lordrosicky is right about that. The cooldown, although long, is not as bad as the cast time or the intensity of the skill.

If the condis worked like they used to and stuck on them for a longer duration simply by the area touching them once, then this skill would be good still. but now, like I said, even with them sitting in it for a few seconds, it doesn’t matter. The second they leave that circle the condis drop off, thereby making this skill pretty pointless because no one is going to stand in it and our “attrition” methods of keeping them there are nigh-nonexistent.