Guild Wars 2

Gotten stuck twice after killing the Chak boss and waiting to go through the portal.

Muchacho.2390:

Vorgryn.9145:

The problem Muchacho is that the trait is only good for power users, meh for hybrids, and useless for condis.

Well thats the point of the trait. It is intended to be for power build only. Its the same with traits like Parasitic Contagion, which is intended for condition builds only.

Not every trait has to be good for every build.

The larger point is that for the current builds that use this trait, including condition damage wouldn’t be much of a buff since they’re not conditon focused. It’s not really “making a good trait better” so much as making it more accessible and useful for other builds. Not every trait needs to be good for every build is obvious, but otherwise you’ve failed to provide a good reason to not include condition damage other then “It is intended to be for power builds”. Tell me why it should be intended just for power builds when at the end of the day, condition damage and power damage are both just “Damage”.

I don’t see why there are so many naysayers in this thread. Of course it should effect condition damage too. To a novice player, text that says “increases damage by 20%” would of course be assumed to be all damage, condition and power. The fact that it only means physical hits isn’t stated, but is instead found out through trial and error.

Power necros already do more DPS then condimancers without the worry that their damage will be cleansed before it actually ticks. Updating traits like this and Spiteful Talisman(+5% damage against foes w/ no boons) would be a good start in addressing the fact that conditions are more risky to play yet have less reward.

Muchacho.2390:

I dont know if it is a good idea to make a good gm even better when we have gm traits that need more help.

The problem Muchacho is that the trait is only good for power users, meh for hybrids, and useless for condis. Making it effect all damage would make it a universally good trait, but wouldn’t have a big impact on the builds that already take this trait today.

The question is not if Spite is a condition line or not, because all lines have traits that are appealing to both condition and power users. I really would love to run a Close to Death that effected condition damage.

While this has been chatted about a fair amount in the feedback thread, in my opinion pretty much all of the Chill mechanics need rework. Chill has a 5 stack limit so Deathly Chill damage can easily be negated by party members, Shivers of Dread only improves one skill (RS3) unless you’re running staff or your target has stability to corrupt(PVP/WVW only), and Chilling Victory 5s might is so short as to not matter (and might sharing is everywhere already, so why take this over Decimate Defenses?).

Additionally, we really need word from the devs about healing through shroud. Given the added healing support other classes are starting to give, it’s really unreasonable for necros to be missing out on that due to our class mechanic. Hell, it’s been known how it even interferes with our own mechanics when it comes to Parasitic Contagion or using our new whirl finisher RS4 on our Nightfall Dark Field to make leeching bolts.

Sandrox.9524:

why the power builds get 3 stats related dmg modifiers and condi only one?

This is what really shows you haven’t actually played much condimancer. Many of condimancer’s bleeds come from bleed-on-crit sources like barbed precision and sigils of earth, so precision is also an important stat (the rework to target the weak with direct precision->condition damage reinforces this). Having a high crit chance and then praying to the RNGods is an important component of playing full condimancer.

Secondly, after they removed our general condition duration (now only available from food) basically we have to stack condition duration for each of our conditions separately. Bleed duration and torment duration aren’t the same thing, and compete for rune slots, but they all directly contribute to our DPS. You could in fact consider each condition duration a separate stat that condimancers basically have to choose one of.

Chiming in because I see so many people asking for changes to a couple of the traits that include an increase in damage against chilled foes -

Currently all of the traits that apply a flat damage increase only effect direct damage and not condition damage (e.g. Close to Death). This distinction between direct and condition damage effectively makes traits that give a flat damage increase useless for condimancers. While it’s unfair that condition damage isn’t considered “true” damage or some kitten by the devs, that seems to be the way they roll on this issue. If a trait increases damage, it should increase ALL damage, power or condition based.

Also: what are people’s opinions on shivers of dread? From the PvE context it basically adds a 3 second chill to a single skill (RS3) unless you’re running staff. I personally hate running staff b/c I find it boring, but it seems like as far as minors go… it could be more interesting?

I haven’t played around much with reaper in pvp though, how is this trait performing when it comes to corrupting stab into fear? Is this just a trait that’s great in pvp and less so in pve?

Just for the added context that nobody is actually saying:

The reason why you want precision as a condimancer/reaper is twofold:
1) Target the weak directly increases your condition damage based on precision
2) Barbed precision’s/sigil of earth bleed on crit chance.

That’s why the choice is usually between sinister and rabid. Sinister if you want that touch of extra DPS, rabid for survivability. I personally have been playing with rabid armor and sinister trinkets this weekend.

So this is what I’ve been running, which while I’m not entirely happy with, it’s performing decently:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYRnc0Ad3gd2AO3A0biFcBL+K+FHjQXtAwCIaD0BGBA-ThyCABAcIAU4EA4syvjfAAIrJ4S1fm4IAMz+D6pHYMlgECYxaA-e

The general idea is to spend as much time in scepter as you can, swapping over to greatsword for sigil proc, RS, and corruptions before swapping back to scepter to load more bleeds on the target. Also I’ll swap epidemic for BiP if I’m going up against a solo champ or other powerful single target where epidemic is meaningless.

The specific rotation that has been working pretty well for me is that you start with scepter 2 → 5 → 4 to get 5 condis on before scepter 3 to load up on max torment. Then swap to great sword and dive in to the enemy, use GS4 followed by GS3 and immediately pop reaper shroud. Use RS3 then RS2 (blind for chill) → RS4 or RS5 (alternate each rotation) before final RS 3 for fearchill. At this point leave RS, should have a second or so before weapon swap so hit the target with your corruptions and transfer self-corruptions with Plague Signet. Swapping back to scepter, use scepter 3 first, then keep rest on cooldown. I then wait until I can use scepter 3 a second time before weapon swapping back to GS and repeating the rotation. You can also squeeze in a DS flash for fury while in scepter if you can remember to do it immediately when it’s ready.

I’ve been trying to test condi-reaper, and I’m just not sure if reaper is worth it if you want to use conditions. Running Spite/Curses/Reaper with rabid armor and sinister trinkets, my chills only do 500/800ish damage depending on which side of the 50% mark you’re at (with no might/vuln/corruption stacks). Doesn’t necessarily seem worth the loss in survivability/utility from blood magic or soul reaping. I think the chill damage or condi-damage scaling needs to be ramped up for this one.

Aside from the damage, the five stack limit on chill resulting in the DPS being overwritten by others is especially frustrating. Each of our chills last such a short time we have to put out a fair amount of chills out in order to keep the dps going and if these are being overwritten then condi-reaper really won’t be worth it. If you’re not willing to remove the 5 stack limit on chill due to pvp concerns, then the only way forward really is to modify deathly chill in such a way that the damage is separated from the chill stack, like having it put a traditional damaging condition on chill instead. Alternatively, you can have a different number of maximum chill stacks on players versus npcs which would potentially solve the problem too.

Chilling victory is also disappointing, as the 5seconds of a single stack of might seems way too short to make it a worthwhile competitor to Decimate Defenses. Decimate Defenses synergies with all of those bleed-on-crit bullkitten that condimancers put up with. However, chilling victory is the only reasonable way of generating life-force while running scepter but that’s more because scepter’s lifeforce generation is known to be terrible. Compared with might from siphoned power (2stacks for 10s) the might from chilling victory is basically a non-factor. Would be nice to see either more stacks or a longer might from chilling victory. Even then, in group play where there is lots of boon sharing and you may be able to assume high stacks of might coming from teammates, Decimate Defenses definitely wins out due to the higher bleed stacks you’ll get based on a higher crit chance.

Finally, a really frustrating thing is how once again our class mechanics get in our own way, when we use nightfall and then RS4, the resulting leeching bolts don’t heal us through shroud. Comeon Geesus, let us heal through shroud already

Shiki.7148:

Vorgryn.9145:

Little worried about that nerf to lingering curse they briefly mentioned, but without knowing all the other changes to scepter it’s impossible to know what that actually looks like….

I might have had hallucinations because the changes were so awesome, but i think what they said was they made Lingering Curse from 100% to scepter condis to 50% for ALL conditions. If that is while wielding a scepter or always…no idea, and again, I might have hallucinated.

OMG, wait, did anyone else hear that? It’d be too good to be true….

Gah, do we really have to wait till Tuesday for the full patch notes? Ugggggghhhhh

Little worried about that nerf to lingering curse they briefly mentioned, but without knowing all the other changes to scepter it’s impossible to know what that actually looks like….

I’m not sure if this has been covered before, but I was wondering how Deathly chill will interact with multiple reapers and multiple sources of chill from other classes. Before the big condition rework where they removed damaging conditions stack limits, a lot of condimancers were complaining that other classes would reduce their DPS indirectly by other players over-writing their condition stacks. Given the fact that chill stacks a maximum of 5 times, I think anyone playing condireaper has to worry that other players may occasionally make Deathly Chill worthless by pushing out additional chills onto the target and removing the more-important damaging ones.

I suppose that means the condireaper in a group just has to push out a minimum of 20% of the chills so they maintain at least the one of the five stacks of chill on the target at a given time? This is probably just fine in five man dungeons and 10-man raids, since there is an assumption about a level of class diversity and reapers have the most chills. It gets trickier in PvE design though, where if they want to do large open-world boss fights like SW breach or VW then running into the five stack limit may be a legitimate concern.

Am I worrying too much here? I just get nervous about there being a hard stack limit on what is now a damaging condition resulting in a similar condi DPS competition as before…

So we know that devs are redesigning axe and scepter, but I’m kinda concerned that at some point they’ll release it without giving us a chance to actually playtest the changes. Given how great it has been to see how reaper feedback after beta weekends has been used, I can’t help but think that it’d be great if we had a chance to playtest scepter/axe rework before it went live. I know the chances of this are near zero, but since Anet doesn’t have any test servers it seems like the only way to give us a chance to check out what Rob has in mind for scepter/axe is in our last beta weekend.

While I’m (kinda) sure they’ll adjust skills after releasing the scepter/axe rework, it gets harder to do so after the new skills are ‘live’.

What do you guys think?

I like that someone on TTH attempted to bring attention to this issue, even if it was pulled. I get the fact that the devs can’t chime in during EVERY suggestion thread, but there have just been so many issues that haven’t been fixed, acknowledged, or mentioned by the devs over the last three years despite the various professional communities constantly highlighting the things that need to be fixed. Balance patches come out too infrequently and aren’t publicly tested before they’re live.

In general, the HoT speciailizations have seen an increase in the willingness of devs to discuss their plans of each specialization and iterate based on community feedback, but it simply isn’t enough. There have been hundreds of beta feedback threads started from the last weekends beta, but as far as I know, no devs have actually chimed in with anything other then a token non-specific comment about how things may be changed. Right after a beta weekend, devs should be actively discussing with the community, bouncing off ideas, saying why things can’t work, shouldn’t be done, or what can be done. Instead the sit on the sidelines relatively silent and let the profession community fight among themselves and take notes of ideas they like. The problem with that is that there is zero visibility and the community just feels more or less abandoned…

Bhawb.7408:

Scepter needs a complete rework of the 3 skill, reliable LF generation, and then just more condition damage overall. It also shouldn’t have an overloaded AA, the AA right now is mostly okay, its the 2/3 skills that are a big issue.

For Reaper’s condi, the fact that every fear turns into chill is enough chill application when paired with other sources of chill.

I actually view the chill on fear with a big old “meh”. Sure, we get fears from stability corruption, but otherwise it’s just shroud 3 unless you’re running staff. So in PvE where there isn’t stability to corrupt, it’s a minor trait that improves up to two skills (with 20s & 32s cooldowns) by adding a 3s chill? Won’t help us much to keep 100% chill uptime on any future raid/fractal/dungeon bosses. With boss breakbars the likelihood of any boss having stability to corrupt is basically zero.

Also if the boss has a breakbar and we cast fear on it, the fear will reduce the breakbar but not actually get applied correct? So even assuming that chill is fixed and will work on enemies with breakbars, will the chill on fear even get applied with this trait?

So I’ve seen a lot of people asking for torment on scepter both in this thread and others. With the upcoming reaper spec wouldn’t it make more sense to add chills or blinds (which we could proc using Chilling Darkness into more chills) to scepter skills? Maybe replace the cripple on Scepter 2 with chill?

Good feedback, but one thing I’ve been chewing on a bit is the usefulness of the minor trait Shivers of Dread. While I can see this having PvP applications due to boon corrupting stability, in PvE our meager access to fear basically makes this trait useless even while running staff. What do you think about it?

During my Valkyrie testing I was running with Decimate Defenses which gives you a 50% crit rate at the full 25 stacks of vuln. If you take the Unyielding Blast trait from SR, then often when you drop out of shroud and use GS3 your target will have the 25 stacks of vuln on it to have a 50/50 shot at critting it. Seems like it’s been working ok and in group content you can pretty much always bet on there being 25 stacks of vulnerablity on a given target.

meow one twenty.4376:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

guildabd.6529:

My suggestion to improve scepter AA:

1# chain: 2 stacks of bleeding.
2# chain: 2 stacks of poison.
3# chain: corrupt a boon.

Hahahahahahahah

Oh my word. No. Just no. Never. Not in this or any other lifetime. No with a side of nope, on a salad of not with a garnish of now way. This is the single most absurdly OP suggestion I’ve seen since the very first beta weekend.

Well that’s a bit of a rough response.

To be fair, boon corruption on autoattack would be pretty overpowered…

While they’ve been leaving it ambiguous on the stream and in the news article, the raid page on the new HoT site clearly states we’re getting Legendary Armor Precursors as rewards for completing raid content

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/raids

Tim – I’m assuming this would add a condition based on the presence of a stack of conditions rather then the stack size? To clarify, you would add one extra bleed per hit if the target had any number of bleeds on it?

It would also work with signet of spite pretty nicely…

While I agree with Nekretaal that weapon traits shouldn’t be required for a weapon to be decent, we also have to consider the fact that Lingering Curses is a grandmaster trait and should be appropriately build-defining like Dhuumfire, Signets of Suffering, or Death Nova. One problem with Lingering Curses as it stands is that it is far too narrow in application and basically is only useful for condimancers who have to sit around in battle autoattacking most of the time to keep their DPS stable.

The best way of making Lingering Curses a better trait is to expand the potential builds that would want to take it. I feel the most straightforward way is to add back some general condition duration for ALL applied conditions while wielding scepter as was originally previewed. In this way a Dhuumfire-based build may want to have a scepter equiped while in deathshroud to increase burning duration, Reapers may want it to further extend their chills, while traditional condimancers would still want to take it to extend their bleeds.

I would love a use of life force that doesn’t include shroud because Necromancer as it stands is waaay too transformation heavy. With two of our three elites and our shroud all completely replacing weapon skills and denying access to utilities, it’s extremely limiting in any gameplay mode.

I don’t think our AOE will matter when Reaper has such slow and highly telegraphed attacks that the thief will just dodge everything we do…

Will you need a Saturday pass to get in to the event or will any pass work? We were only able to pick up Sunday passes :|

For all the discussion of sticking to the theme that was in the Reaper stream, I was pretty confused by the shout choice myself. I think the stance idea is great and would fit the Unstoppable Horror theme that the Reaper embodies way better then shouts.

When people were discussing the possibility of shouts for a necro spec before reaper was annouced, I think it was discussed primarily within the context of a Banshee-themed specialization that was more support focused.

After playing the patch for the last couple days I’m more inclinded to agree with Nemesis. While we don’t stack bleeds as quickly as other classes do, ours stick around for longer and hit harder. While burn damage is maybe a little high right now, I don’t necessarily see that as a problem because necros can multiply that same burn damage through epidemic.

For years now, Necro has been referred to as the king of conditions, but Anet never really made clear what the meant. I think their answer is finally starting to crystallize through our expanding condi transfers and boon corruption capability. Including our added support and condition damage multiplier through epidemic, I feel as though condimancer synergizes with other classes and playstyles better then before. We may not have top condi damage, but that isn’t necessary due to the sheer utility we bring to condition manipulation.

Part of the problem currently, as Nemesis points out, is the content we are playing is outdated. Enemies rarely have boons to corrupt and don’t use many conditions. However, in the Silverwastes we have bosses that torment, poison, and use large stacks of bleeds. I think ANet is moving towards PvE content where condition management will be more important, I just hope they also add PvE content where there is more opportunity to boon corrupt as well.

Since curse lost it’s +30% condition duration, how about having MoC increase general condition duration – both applied to others and to yourself? Gives a clear reason why condimancers would want it, and I think it’d fit the trait because it would still keep the riskiness of using corruptions due to the fact that if we haven’t been managing our cleanses/transfers right then we’ll be stuck with a condition for even longer?

Actually, random thought: what if additional condition duration was part of Master of Corruption? That way it’d be a little more balanced because it would increase the duration of conditions that you apply to yourself as well as others? There is still some risk involved, because if you haven’t been managing your clears/transfers right then you’re stuck with a condition on yourself for an even longer duration but ultimately I think this would help out the build a fair amount while also addressing people’s concerns with MoC.

flow.6043:

I know you’re disappointed by Lingering Curse, but not having a 100% duration buff to every duration is a huge bullet dodged for us, it simply would’ve been terrible for the balance of the class to have such a broken trait.
Should they have completely removed the duration increase to affect other conditions? Mabye, maybe not, but LC in this version is still a significant buff over what we have now. Couple that with the new condition damage mechanics and the better scaling damage formulas, especially with the extra 150 condition damage from LC, and you’ll see it will still be a popular trait.

I don’t think many of us in this thread are suggesting that Lingering Curses needs the original 100% duration. Since we’ve already lost 30% general condition duration from the curses line due to the trait/stat seperation, it seems like the line could do with SOME amount of general across the board condition duration for all of our other conditions that non-scepter skills can put onto enemies. This isn’t just bleeds but is instead about some of the meager utility we bring to parties through blinds/chills/cripples/poisons/vulnerablities. What about making some amount of scepter duration increase baseline to the scepter and allowing this skill to give all conditions +50% duration? There surely must be some ways to tune this skill such that we maintain some of the exciting functionality that this trait gives.

flow.6043:

I like Parasitic Contagion and that it is in Curses, it really does fit the theme since it scales with condition damage and not power or healing power like vamp traits in Blood Magic. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t work in Shroud, but still 10% of your damage heals you seems like a nice sustain alternative and I’m sure it will be used from now on.
On a side note: apparently some people would like to see this trait in Blood Magic, but it would actually limit build diverstiy to be forced into one specialization if you want any traited healing at all. So again, Curses makes sense for Parasitic Contagion.

I am one of those that would love to see Parasitic Contagion in Blood Magic. Blood magic seems pretty cool right now but the problem but there isn’t really a grandmaster that does anything for a condition damage based (unless you run a well I guess?). Additionally siphoning is that it’s effectiveness is based around how quickly you can attack, and condimancers running scepter attack REALLY slow. They don’t benefit from the siphoning as much but I would still love to provide the vampiric aura to my party members. Parasitic Contagion fits into the blood magic line by providing healing we’re already used to getting alongside Lingering Curses (PC was in SPITE of all places before…)

If that doesn’t convince you about Parasitic Contagion, then I guess I’ll have to refer back to the GW2 meta: a party member is valued based on the DPS and Utility (read: might stacking) they bring to a party. Currently healing and tanking aren’t worth much, and Parasitic contagion is simply a selfish healing mechanic (that I happen to like). Anyone who chooses Parasitic Contagion over Lingering Curses would be a liability to their party in PvE or PvP due to a drop in group DPS without a gain in group-wide utility.

[edit] Obviously choosing parasitic over lingering would only be a bad decision in group play if you’re a scepter based condimancer. I guess with crit procing bleeds you’d probably be able to get half decent healing out of parasitic while running daggers? My focus here is only for the traditional scepter condimancer.

Ashur.6403:

The quick change is make it read that Lingering Curses makes your damaging conditions last longer (doesn’t affect Terror/Deathly Chill).

What is frustrating though is the fact that all of our non-damaging conditions have already been nerfed due to us losing our +30% condition duration from the traitline… We have NO general condition duration anymore.

Uriel was a regular contributor in the necromancer forums (longtime Necro forum lurker here), so I’m wondering if this is more about the continued state of necromancer than HoT…

Sorry to see you go! Best of luck!

Whoops, yeah I had just read that at the bottom of your post which is why I deleted my response. I don’t see a good solution but that sucks that you weren’t able to play with your friends

Yeah, I’m not sure that someone realized with the nerf to barbed precision they were making Furious Demise even more worthless then before. They should change Furious demise to be either generic condition duration (50%?), a straight up increase to condition damage, or maybe make current parasitic contagion a minor…

There was just so many times in the ReadyUp with all the other classes that they said “This will be really strong but we’ll keep an eye on it.” Why not just kitten-ing keep an eye on this stuff and tune parameters or durations as needed? Lingering Curses effecting all conditions by some N% couldn’t possibly have been a big enough buff to overpower Condimancers, who were already an underpowered class even when not competing for conditions on enemies.

Lily.1935:

• Barbed Precision: What was the point of dropping its trigger down to 33%? Considering the necromancer is the slowest attacking profession in the game combine with the fact that out of the slowest builds in the slowest profession condimancer is the slowest of the slow. Buff this back up to 66% chance.

This change made no sense. Condimancers get like one attack a second and with a 50ish% crit chance, this trait will give us one 2s bleed every 6 seconds or so? This wasn’t a trait that needed to be nerfed, since other faster attacking weapons (dagger) don’t put on any conditions themselves…

Lily.1935:

• Lingering Curse: Return it to what you previewed for us before. 150 condition damage along with 100% condition duration while wielding a scepter. If the duration is too much drop it down to 75% or even 66%. But it still needs to function on more than just two skills. A lot of potential builds were riding on this trait and without it they’ll never see the light of day. If I can be knocked down for 5 seconds, and stun-locked into oblivion I should at least have the option to return the favor. If its competing with terror than there is no complication between the two.

This was my largest issue with the update notes. They killed so many really fun builds before they even had the chance to see the light of day. If it was too powerful simply change the percentage to something lower. Then again, Arena doesn’t really seem to care if their Necros are having fun or not, but a grandmaster trait that buffs two skills is totally lame.