This is the second of the 6 part installment of me writing a lot because I have too much free time. This time we’ll be talking about Curses, and I imagine this will spark a fair bit of debate.
Curses
In stark contrast to Spite, our best line and one of the best in the game, we have Curses, a line so mediocre that even most condition builds find themselves having difficulty justifying it. Curses focuses on condition damage and critical hits. Somewhat uniquely because of the presence of its minor traits that focus heavily on dealing more condition damage, it is a line that primarily appeals to condition damage builds, with a small potential draw to crit-heavy builds, and has very little overall appeal to non-condition damage builds. I’ll talk about the major traits, which have quite a few issues holding back the line overall.
Finally, I’d like to take an idea from Bluewizard, who suggested in the Spite thread to have traits that functioned based on consumption/transfer of conditions. I really like this idea, but I think its better suited towards Curses, so I’ll be talking about it here.
Minors
Overall I think the minors are relatively fine strength wise, however I want to point out that because they focus so much strength into condition damage, this trait line becomes particularly weak to non-condition damage builds. Think of going into this build as a crit-heavy power line, what do you get? You get an adept minor trait that gives you little worth mentioning, just a tiny DPS increase. You also get a GM minor trait where some of the power is in precision to condition damage conversion, again something that really does nothing for you.
This is a big contrast to all our other lines, which have minors that are useful to any build that goes into them (ignoring balance issues). I don’t necessarily think it will be changed, or that it even has to be changed, since it is hardly unique to Necromancers (and arguably Curses has far stronger minors than comparable lines in other professions), but I think its worth mentioning because in an ideal world this line would be equally appealing to all crit-based builds, not just those focused on conditions.
Edit: as others have pointed out, the minors are probably fine. Bleeding deals at least some damage in crit builds, and the rest still work fine in any crit build.
Adepts
Frankly speaking, Plague Sending is the only useful trait in this tier. It is not just very strong, able to transfer conditions (and stun break if you get lucky with a pre-cast effect), but also has built in synergy with Signets of Suffering, and a number of traits that work with conditions inflicted.
Chilling Darkness is a bit of a sad story. Once a trait that was quite powerful in combination with specific setups, it is now completely awful. Part of the problem is the huge ICD, 5s means that Plague and Nightfall are the only abilities that can apply it multiple times per use. However, we’re actually one of the worst professions in the game at directly applying blind, with most of the sources of it coming indirectly from the accidental corruption of fury now and then. There are a number of options with how to deal with this trait:
- Revert it to how it used to be, 1s chill with no ICD – potentially too strong if Well of Darkness ever becomes useful, with Plague, WoD, and Nightfall on Reaper becoming huge sources of chill. Also hard to balance between the different chill sources.
- Keep it as is with the ICD, but just buff the chill duration to say 3s. This allows builds that have just a few sources of blind to still see meaningful chill, but also makes the different sources of chill more even. This is probably the easiest option.
- Completely change its functionality. I’d be interested to hear options, but we could just completely change how this works and look to solve some other problems within the profession. Things like blind application, some crit amplifiers, we could get creative.
The last trait in this tier is Terrifying Descent the unfortunate hold over from ANet’s insistence that we must have falling traits forced on us for some inconceivable reason. As most people know, the problem is that these just don’t do much of anything in 99% of the game, because taking fall damage is something that isn’t really happening regularly in combat; it is pretty specifically something that only sees niche use in WvW. However, since these traits seem mandatory, I think we are forced to do something similar to Cloaked in Shadow where the fall trait is rolled in to a related normal trait. Options include:
- Keep the trait functionality as is, roll it into Fear of Death and replace with something new. This allows for Curses to get a new trait, and we roll more fear traits together. Of course the reverse could also happen, keeping this trait here and bringing Fear of Death into this tree for Terror synergy, which would allow Terror builds significantly more freedom of build options.
- Combine with the buffed Chilling Darkness, change it to cast Well of Darkness on fall damage. This also opens up a trait in Curses, but doesn’t worry about the balance effect of changing Terror setups.
Either way, it needs to be rolled into an already functional trait, and then cause a skill that is related to whatever that trait does. But as long as it exists on its own it does nothing but take up a slot, and remind us that traits still really need work.
Masters
This tier has another issue of just having one realistic option in Path of Corruption, and outside of that this tier just doesn’t really have appealing traits. Unfortunately it has two awkward traits, one of which is a mediocre trait that relies on a poorly designed utility set, the other is a trait that was nerfed multiple times directly and indirectly because of its synergy with things completely unrelated.
Master of Corruption is just a huge mess right now. Firstly, it has the issue of having an incredibly weak effect, it basically just a CDR trait that gives higher CDR than normal, with a very significant downside, while other Master tier utility traits give 20% CDR plus other effects with no downsides. Secondly, it is designed with the same problem that Corruptions overall have, a positive effect that is too weak paired with a negative effect that is too significant to leave alone, but on a skill not strong enough to warrant taking other mechanics to offset.
Fixing this trait isn’t easy, because it probably needs to be paired with a set of changes to Corruptions, which is beyond the scope of what I’m trying to look at here. An easy option to retain its current use but make it more appealing is add functionality that all self-applied conditions are also applied to the target, including the additional ones. Still very “Corruption-y” but actually has meaningful power to make up for the downside.
Terror is a classic Necromancer trait. Once a huge facet of most condition builds, it is now so poor that even Deathly Chill builds, which should get amazing use out of it, don’t pick it up most of the time. This is largely due to a wealth of direct and indirect nerfs, starting with the introduction of Dhuumfire. First 17% damage reduced, then Nightmare rune nerfs, general duration nerfs when Spite was made to no longer give up to 30% condition duration, and finally the change that made conditions do partial ticks. Some of these changes are irreversible, however two good changes would be the incorporation of Fear of Death into the Curses Adept tier, and reversion of the 17% damage nerf. These shouldn’t be too strong, since most of the abuse cases of the old Terror builds are gone, and requires a large investment that precludes other strong choices.
Grandmasters
Hey look, another tier with only one real option (as I see it, not sure what PvErs would say)! Of course that option is Weakening Shroud which is a really strong trait, not to mention one that laughs at Spiteful Spirit from our Spite discussion. Our other two options are interesting, because they’re not bad ideas, but fail because of comparative power, or how they function in game.
Parasitic Contagion is a classic example of a “win more” trait, which is to say a trait that is extremely weak or even useless in bad or average matchups, and then only becomes good or great when you are already winning. This same problem is why all but one of our pure on-death traits were removed, because the only time deaths happen frequently enough to be strong is when you are already winning the encounter, and the trait’s influence is meaningless; you were winning before it proc’d. This is where I’d like to adapt Bluewizard’s suggestion to reward condition transfers, and suggest a few ideas for how to make this meaningful in far larger variety of situations, without it being just a win-more trait.
For effects, something similar to Bluewizard’s suggestion. Specifically I’d suggest something like gaining some kind of offensive buff. Think an offensive version of Corrupter’s Fervor, that would be non-specific to damage types, to allow this to work for all damage types. A precision buff would probably work well, since it helps any crit build, and also we’ve seen how interesting traits that reduce reliance on crit can work out. Might of course could also work, or a buff that specifically boosts direct and condition damage, so that it doesn’t favor one type of build.
The idea is to make the effect proc on transfers. This would have synergy with Plague Sending, and also general synergy with Corruptions which want to transfer often, and there are a lot of other smaller interactions with other transfers. This could also be tuned between a non-stacking buff that only has its duration refreshed, encouraging a certain cadence of usage, or a stacking one similar to Corrupter’s Fervor.
Regardless, the idea would be to open it up as more of a general condition option, and also smooth out how it works. I’m also going to propose a condition-related heal for Blood Magic, which we can discuss later. The reason I’m not retaining the heal is because Curses is related to offensive conditions and crits, not healing, and Weakening Shroud provides a defensive option already.
Finally, for those brave souls who’ve made it this far, we’ve got Lingering Curse. Lingering Curse is primarily based on increasing durations, which is a fine way to continue for this trait. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure on how to fix this trait; maybe I’m even wrong and this trait is fine. The problem I see is that for a duration trait, it doesn’t actually do that much. As an example, Chemical Rounds provides the same condition bonus, without the damage, as an adept. My suggestion would be to remove the condition damage bonus, since it conflicts with the idea of going heavy on damage, and open up the weapons it works on. This could be all weapons, giving any weapon skill 50% increased base duration conditions, or keeping it on specific weapons. I’m honestly not sure though, I think the idea of duration is fine, though fairly specific to PvE, but I don’t think this really delivers on a power level, and as someone who has no real desire to use this trait I’ll defer to you all on ideas to fix it.
Anyway, that’s it for Curses. This was probably the longest, and also the one I was least sure of, so I’ll be interested to know what you guys think.
