Guild Wars 2

The problem isn’t that corruptions are strictly weak, though some are, the problem is the entire theme doesn’t matter right now. If you removed all the self harm from corruptions it wouldn’t make a huge difference, except maybe for CPC. No one’s build would be ruined, they wouldn’t become OP, and (with maybe the exception of CPC) no one would pick up a corruption that wasn’t used before for any good reason.

This is a design failure. The core theme of corruptions is to gain access to a skill that would otherwise be overpowered, but is balanced because it hurts you in some way. But this isn’t what is actually happening. Corruptions as currently implemented are at best balanced skills, that for no logical reason other than to justify calling them corruptions have a self applied condition added on top.

I streamed a lot of power reaper yeah, unfortunately I didn’t pull it from twitch to a youtube account, so it got auto deleted after whatever the cutoff is. I’ll try to remember next time, assuming I can stream again.

Anchoku.8142:

Anyone experiment much with Curses’ Plague Sending? I found it insufficient but did not watch it closely enough. Will try it more adjusting critical chance to see if there might be an ICD. It is easy to load up on conditions running traited corruption utilities so I expected the conditions self-inflicted conditions to be less of a burden.

They still hurt and it was hard to build LF.

Even if you can mitigate the negative effects it isn’t worth running corruptions. You could be using Plague Sending for just transferring enemy condis instead.

Raziel.8072:

I’ve said it before, gonna say it again, giving us a 1-2 second resistance boon on casting a corruption would solve all the problems by not causing us to self-nuke, giving us enough time to transfer, but not so much resistance we can just sit in it. Not sure why this concept is so hard to accept…

It doesn’t fix the issue, at all. It is just covering bad design with more bad design to bandaid the original bad design. Corruptions should not have any self harm on the skills right now. In fact if we were to remove all the self-applied conditions on the skills, some of them would still remain worthless or underpowered compared to what they should be. This shouldn’t be the case, corruption skills should be overpowered if you don’t consider their self-harm, and be balanced by that fact. Then the Master of Corruptions trait would either mitigate the self-harm, or make the skills even stronger and the self harm even worse, with maybe some way to deal with the increased self harm if you use it well.

But as it is now just adding resistance is a really bad bandaid that doesn’t even fully cover the problem.

Dead or Alive isn’t nearly the defense that Death Shroud is. Just one bar of Death Shroud, without unholy sanctuary, is very easily going to outperform a best-case Dead or Alive proc.

Are they somewhat similar? Sure, Warrior torch is extremely similar to Guardian torch, Warrior traits are similar to a variety of traits through other professions, and Berserker has some similarities to transforms. And while I’d love to see Dead or Alive adapted to Necromancer as a true cheat-death mechanic, I don’t think anything else has to really change, nor is what they are getting OP.

meow one twenty.4376:

Going back to your Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp, you can’t be considering bugged/broken skills as not being bugged/broken for the sake of your argument. Things are or they are not. We can play the, “If they fixed ‘X’,” game all day long and get nowhere.

You can never make a trait work if the skills it affects are fundamentally broken. Nothing you will do to the trait will fix that.

meow one twenty.4376:

Saying, “people forget,” implies I forgot. I didn’t. With Vampiric Rituals I get more damage, healing, and more or less Protection uptime.

You don’t get even close to the protection uptime on a skill for skill basis. 66% Protection uptime with 2 skills plus the minor trait using Spectral Mastery (if they fixed Spectral Wall), you get 37% if you fill all 4 utility/heal skills with the lowest CD wells. So it isn’t even close. And they don’t compete as traits, one is a GM, one is master, different trait lines, one is damage/healing, the other is LF/increased effectiveness.

VP is good as is, the other traits should be good enough to compete. SM has a very serious position as being the in-combat version of VP.

The ability to mitigate the negative effects of corruptions is a side investment deal. Let’s assume you have a build that has just enough defense/healing/condition removal as it is, and then you add a corruption to it. This corruption has a really strong effect, but with a self-harm drawback. To mitigate this drawback you are forced to take another condition removal (remember you just barely had enough before, so this added condition needs mitigation), which by definition weakens you in some way. That is what makes corruptions with strong effects yet drawbacks balanced, the mitigation (or not) of that drawback is the strength cost.

The problem is I don’t think ANet understands this. They seem to feel like Necromancers can just use their transfers at will, without realizing that a transfer used on a corruption condition is a transfer not used on an enemy one, making you weaker to conditions or forcing you to weaken your build to shore up that condition weakness. I also don’t think they really invested into the idea of self-harm, most of the self harm we have is absolutely ignore-able (vuln on epidemic), or not strong enough to warrant a truly strong effect on the skill. This is further shown by what they did with Consume Conditions and Plague, instead of making these skills have really strong drawbacks with even stronger effects, they just lessened the drawback.

I don’t think ANet has really bought into their own idea of self harm skills in GW2 like they did in GW1.

Also just as an example of what they could do:

Corrosive Poison Cloud. Make it an upkeep skill, with a relatively short CD when you turn it off (say 10s, just so you can’t constantly turn it on and off). It has similar effects to now (add projectile destruction imo), but instead when you cast it you sacrifice a certain amount of flat HP, and lose HP every second while it remains in effect.

This is a really strong effect if you want it to be, or its just a more accessible version of CPC as now. If you build for it though, you could say drop CPC, and then use Blood Magic sustain to keep yourself alive while providing a long lasting AoE denial skill. Or you could pop it and jump into DS with US to mitigate the HP you are losing (you’d still lose HP, not LF, while it is on).

Much stronger drawback you have to pay attention to, but a much stronger effect. That is what corruptions should be.

Sororita.3465:

It is balance when it directly affects game play. If it’s not a question of thematics, don’t you agree that corruptions need to be stronger to justify the damage they do to the caster?

Yes, I’ve said that to you multiple times. But that is a completely separate issue to what you said in what I quoted.

Applying corruption theme to Warrior isn’t balance, it is theme. Think of perfect balance as every profession being able to arrive at a similar end point of strength, no matter their starting point (base profession before stats, traits, etc. are applied) and the route they use to get there (theme, skills equipped, specializations and traits equipped, etc.).

This is why Necromancers can technically be as strong as boon-heavy professions while applying few boons to themselves; in the reality of the fight Necromancers remove so many boons that the two professions end in a similar end point of having only a little bit of boon uptime, even though one profession got there through tons of application and little/no removal, and the other got there through tons of removal and little application.

But right now you are confusing that end point with the path taken. Warriors have no thematic reason to have self harm, so they instead should be taking a different path, one that fits their theme, to arrive at the same point as Necromancers.

No it isn’t. People seem to forget that spectral mastery also grants a 50% increased duration on what spectrals give, on top of the 5% LF on use and CDR.

This means 50% longer protection and SA effect, which is much stronger in combat than 50% degeneration. It means Grasp is now a 6s chill 20% LF on a 24s CD. The only problem with Spectral Mastery right now is it doesn’t work properly on everything. Spectral Wall doesn’t get 50% longer protection or 50% longer fears, and the swiftness on Spectral Walk also isn’t increased. If those were true, SM would absolutely compete with VP, you would choose between high potential DS uptime when not under fire, or high in-combat DS uptime.

But the issues with SM aren’t what it is supposed to do, it is the discrepancy between what it should do and what it does, and then any weaknesses in Spectral skills themselves.

Applying themes across every profession isn’t balance, its homogenization. Neither Warriors nor Berserkers have any real connection to direct self harm.

ronpierce.2760:

Also, Bhawb, make sure your in-box is cleared. BWE2 we need to get together again. I’m going to get together with several Necromancers here and we can just sort of bang out some thoughts and see what we can come up with again, but instead of MM related, it will be more generalized.

There’s a lot getting lost in these book-long posts, I feel, and not enough meeting in a middle. I’d like to get a clearer idea for Mr. Gee where we would like to move in direction, though the goal is sort of obvious, the route can easily be make or break.

How does my inbox keep filling…

But yeah, sounds like a good idea, a cohesive post would be really good for feedback.

Zenith.7301:

Spite doesn’t have too much. Neither does SR. The other traitlines just need to be brought up to par.

This absolutely. While I do think Spite and SR should maybe have some mechanics shifted around to make it so we don’t have so many traits and mechanics that conflict (like superspeed on speed of shadows, or some damage modifiers instead of vuln/might), they should be the strength standard everything else needs to be brought up to.

Zenith.7301:

They can put offense in those utility lines as well.

While true that isn’t the reason those lines aren’t taken, and it isn’t the way they need to be fixed. Death Magic isn’t taken because for a defensive line it gives extremely mediocre defensive benefits at the master and GM level. Blood I actually think is a pretty strong line right now, but standard Necro builds can’t run support really and that affects blood heavily.

Zenith.7301:

Death Magic won’t change until minions change. And given that not even ranger pets or mesmer illusions and their related issues with aoe and AI seem to be touched, I wouldn’t bet on minions receiving an overhaul either.

Death Magic is only 1/3rd minions, and its minion side of things is great. It is the non-minion traiting that is really suffering right now, and why the trait line is extremely difficult to take on a non MM.

And if scepter was reworked the 3 skill would change significantly, which is why scepter needs to be reworked first.

I don’t think it’d do anything, the durations are wasted in everything except PvE. Much rather they rework the weapon first, the trait would be fine if our durations weren’t obscenely long baseline.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m afraid of putting more of that stuff in spite until SR mandatory issue is resolved a bit. I’d be sad if every Reaper was tunneled into Spite/SR/Reaper. That’s my main concern.

Its already there. Our issues in Blood Magic/Death Magic are defensive, changing our offensive traits mechanics won’t change it at all.

I think upkeep is a good idea for corruption skills in general, but I don’t think it works well for the ones we currently have.

No CD is extremely important to a lot of uses of DS, just don’t double tap.

Dakunaito.9602:

shouts are so-so, but that dmg nerf on Suffer wasn’t needed. Berserker has utility skill that does ~1600 dmg and it has 100% crit chance. the traits where ubber horrible and weak as hell, so a rebalance was needed

And if this turns out to be an issue, we can provide that feedback in the next BWE, we aren’t even remotely close to that being the launch balance point.

It isn’t that Soul Reaping is mandatory because of Reaper, it is that Death Magic and Blood Magic are so mediocre, and Spite/Curses so specific to power/condi, that there is no way any trait line could compete with Soul Reaping. If our other traits lines were appropriately powerful they’d compete just fine, the only thing Soul Reaping brings that is particularly important to some Reaper builds is Death Perception, and even that isn’t needed, the rest is just nice LF management which we should have from other lines.

We need to see some of our might turned into damage modifiers, even a stacking damage buff would be welcomed, but we can’t keep throwing more and more might/vuln/crit chance at our traits.

arenta.2953:

and yes, you can get kicked out of PvP.
how? your team sees you, logs off, and leaves you alone. repeatedly

I’ve literally never had someone on my team in PvP complain that I was running MM.

arenta.2953:

and hence you either die, or waste the minion cause 1. it blows up the full hp bone minion, not the low hp one.
and 2. you dont see its hp in time before it dies

Bone minions should be blown up the instant they are summoned, and not summoned unless they are needed. You lose DPS by having them alive, as well as risking them dying without using their active, and the passive effects you get by having them alive a few extra seconds is extremely low.

All the things you are complaining about having to watch is literally the point of MM. The point of playing a summon-based build is the added micro of those summons.

Sabre.8627:

Didn’t Robert say we were getting projectile defense on shroud skill 2?

Projectile destruction from the from while using 2 yes

arenta.2953:

and listen to advice to make it better so that players don’t feel like absolute crap when playing it cause either your minions are dying instantly, or the necro is dying instantly due to paying attention to minions who are glitching on EVERYTHING

I’m not a dev, I can’t make any changes. I can propose changes, and I have, many times. I have nearing on 8,000 forum posts, almost all in the Necromancer forums, across those I do a ton of feedback work. A number of the Reaper changes were directly from my feedback. I’ve also made at least 3 large threads, 2 of them paired with ronpierce, another great MM, on how to fix MM.

arenta.2953:

cause you get kicked quite often for showing up with it. before you start dungeons/ world events/ pvp matches/ or even WvW raids with teams.

You can’t get kicked from world events or PvP matches, and Necro is flat out bad in PvE no matter what build you run.

The reason MM isn’t played more is because the AI is really annoying to deal with. It can be mitigated to a degree, but unless you really want to play MM there isn’t much of a reason to put up with their annoying AI on a profession that already has a lot of annoying interactions to deal with. So people don’t play it. They won’t be able to just fix AI, it is an incredibly complex issue and hopefully they can address it in the HoT patch, but that’s not known yet. Until AI is fixed, there isn’t a single thing that can fix the build, end of story, just a few ways to make it better in the hopes that the eventual AI fix will finally top it off.

It was brought up that shifting might duration from Reaper’s Might to Chilling Victory would be preferred over leaving Chilling Victory at such low might duration.

Sororita.3465:

You can’t manage bad AI nor can you manage low health pools. A MM necro is an easy kill, one Life Transfer and you can pretty much kill them all ( minions).

You don’t understand MM. If a single Life Transfer kills the minions, whoever is playing the MM is terrible at the build. Minions always take at least three large AoEs, or a really strong persistent AoE effect (like Combustive Shot) plus another, the first 1-2 AoEs force the Transfusion/Beyond the Veil/Renewal/whatever else the MM has to keep the minions alive (no one can burst through 20k HP in one go), the next few AoEs kill. But any decent MM build has at least 7k worth of AoE healing for the minions, some more.

Sororita.3465:

Minions have too low a HP Pool, too high CD and generally have terrible AI. Bone minions need to either have a targetable explosion or granted the ability to run to a target to explode for example.

15k base HP on most utility minions is bad? Bone Minions have low HP because they aren’t supposed to live, they’re the only ones who will die quickly to AoE, unless you are decent at the build in which case you blow them up too quickly. Minion AI is definitely bad, but can absolutely be mitigated by a good MM. Landing Putrid Explosion isn’t particularly difficult either, MM brings around 15s of hard CC, use some of it.

arenta.2953:

how about you make a suggestion for how to make it viable in PvP or WvW instead of sitting there uselessly saying “nothing works”

Yes. I have never made a suggestion to fix MM, right. Obviously you are new here, I’m one of the most well known MMs in the game, I have played the build since launch, and I have done very well in PvP on MM through our ups and downs.

You’re trying to remove what makes the build fun and unique to play. Why play a minion build if you don’t want to play with the minions. Next you’ll say stun breaks should just activate themselves, and blast finishers should automatically go off when fields are done. Heals will just activate when you’re low on HP, and the game will dodge for you. Its moronic. The entire point of playing MM is managing the minions, watching their HP to know to heal them or blow them up, knowing their positioning to be sure they are in range for ability use, tracking when they are in danger and you need to heal them or support them otherwise, using their CC to set up your abilities and your CC to set up theirs. You want to “improve” MM by removing this, and that’s an awful idea. I’ve already posted my feedback, I guarantee ANet has already seen it.

Sororita.3465:

Thematics such as those of corruption skills and Mallyx skills don’t work in a PvP environment, this includes WvW because you have player vs player activity, completely due to the fact that don’t offer anything additional for the conditions applied to the user. They do not fit practically in a PvP environment, thematically or not.

They work just fine in many other games, GW2 just did it poorly. They were good in GW1, they work in plenty of other MMOs and other games like MOBAs and RTSs. Again, implementation faults not design ones.

Sororita.3465:

Another thing to consider, how can a warrior become a walking fire field but not set themselves on fire? Warriors do not inherently have any ability to use magic, Guardians use magic so hence can ward themselves from harm, but how can a warrior?

Everyone in Guild Wars has magic, even the guy who flips burgers at McDivinity.

That’s what MM is for, you manage minions. If managing the minions is too much, MM isn’t for you.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It does make sense for a Berserker, though. Real life example: Blackbeard.

The man was famous for setting his beard on fire during battle to intimidate people. Sure, it probably hurt, but that was a secondary concern so long as he was scaring the kitten out of people.

Berserkers aren’t really concerned with self-preservation. Hurting yourself to get a bigger advantage? Okay!

Berserkers, the real life example, didn’t hurt themselves physically. We’re not exactly sure what happened, but theories involve it being a mental/physical condition or some kind of psychoactive drugs that put them into a rage where they felt no pain, from exhaustion or harm.

Also, the Blackbeard deal is a myth, a fun one though.

Sororita.3465:

Want me to drop that mic for you ?

Might want to hold onto it.

Sororita.3465:

Thematically no there isn’t, practically yes there is. The concept has no place in a pvp environment as currently instated. There’s no additional power behind the spell, compared to other classes, to counter-act the negatives. Or do you disagree?

That isn’t an issue with theme, but implementation. Of course self-harm should have an appropriately larger effect, just like longer-casting skills should have stronger effects as well. Looking towards the GW1 effects that corruptions stem from, the concept absolutely works when that increased effect is actually appropriately applied. But there is no thematic reason for Warriors or Berserkers to have it compared to Necromancers and Mallyx.

1. Eh, doesn’t matter unless you aren’t good at MM

2. No, less activity is bad

3. No, they need to blow up closest to target first

4. L2target

There isn’t at all better passion in the berserker traits.

The shouts aren’t useless at all, our traits all got rebalanced really nicely, we have access to a crapload of fields and our finisher situation is getting better, I’d be surprised if Gee doesn’t address it when he can.

This complaining makes no sense. Necromancers have been getting a lot of great attention, and now we’re going to start complaining that other professions aren’t getting shafted? That’s idiotic.

Except it would be silly for a Warrior to burn themselves. It makes “sense” for Necromancers and Mallyx, thematically, to have self-harm on their skills, it doesn’t for Berserker, at least not in this sense. Yes corruptions suck, it doesn’t make what he said any less valid, or make the idea of corruptions being self damaging a bad concept.

Berserker itself has almost no sustain or mobility. This means the only way for a Berserker warrior to have the same mobility/sustain would require them to give up only their offensive utilities/weapons/specialization, which makes very little sense when you see how heavily invested in offense Berserker is.

Realistically, Berserker can’t afford to have the same level of sustain as a normal warrior, it would invalidate the entire point of the elite spec, you might as well just be a base warrior.

spoj.9672:

I dont really understand why everyone thinks break bar is overpowered.

I don’t think people see the aftereffects. Unlike stability, breaking the break bar very nearly “refunds” the amount of CC invested, so you don’t “waste” CC trying to break through as long as you actually fully take it down. Once its broken it can lead to some severe issues for the user if the person in question doesn’t have a way to deal with the end stun (imagine getting break bar stun+25 vuln into Executioner’s Strike).

It was supposed to be that way the whole time, a lot of skills are like that.

Berserker is being made by Robert Gee, I would be very surprised if he’ll make it imbalanced, he’s done well so far. I would love to see him apply some of the trait design for Berserker onto core Necromancer though, some of those traits could apply really well. They have a really cool way to avoid death, and their version of FitG is really strong, would love to see those things get implemented into our profession in some way, maybe not exactly the same but a version would be really nice.

The stunbreak alone is amazing, the stability is a holdover from the old version of the skill. It could be a bit better sure, but a breakbar is not the way.

Exploding overlaps with Bone Minions and makes the two skills directly compete with each other. Bad design.

No. FitG is a great trait as is, why would we slap something that has a massive drawback to using it on it.

If you have a PS warrior your BiP is worthless already. Or your group is relying on fire fields, which have 20s base might duration, compared to 8s.

Arche.7326:

Bhawb, I just have to ask you, do you think that the damage on life blast is low compared to what the Dagger? Considering the whole “melee deals more damage because of increased risks” thing and that Life Force and Shroud is our profession mechanic. I’ve expressed my oppinion, but I’m curious on yours (and the other big names within the necro community).

Life Blasts damage is actually really high for a ranged auto attack, when you don’t consider group modifiers and look at what you can alone produce in PvP. It is lower than dagger in PvE, but in PvP/WvW dagger is almost unusable in glassy builds. Now yes, it loses out in PvE absolutely, because unlike the high DPS professions we don’t get good damage modifiers that play well with the PvE content. Instead, Necromancer has a wealth of might/vuln/crit chance stacking in Death Shroud.

In PvP Life Blast is incredibly self-sufficient with a +50% crit chance (BASE 25% damage buff, goes up to 55% with Berserker) and potential stacking might and vuln at the same time. So you get a 25-55% damage modifier through one trait, 20% below 50% HP on another, put in the fact that it is far more reliable than melee and stacks up to 25% increased damage taken and an extra 750 power, and you’re looking at an AA that rivals burst skills.

What needs to happen is shift some of the power away from so many might/vuln/crit chance traits, and instead turn some of these into damage modifiers, that are roughly equivalent in PvP, but are done through unique buffs. This doesn’t particularly affect our PvP/WvW DPS, which is pretty much fine as is (though it will likely buff it slightly in edge super-glass cases, which is totally fine as glass necro is incredibly unsafe), while greatly increasing our PvE DPS since the “loss” of might/vuln/crit chance won’t be noticed as these mechanics are maxed out anyways.

However, all those changes are unrelated to Life Blast. Life Blast, assuming it gets an adjusted cast/damage per hit, is mostly fine on its own, it is the supporting mechanics that are holding it back.

Blood is Power isn’t a meaningful group utility when Warrior brings 25 might permanently solo, or just fire fields + blast finishers, and BiP is such short duration it actually hurts the might stacking due to pushing off higher duration mights.

Nynuwe.5893:

Bhawb for president? I actually agree. It is an extremely reasonable buff that will allow more build diversity without hurting anyone.

Haven’t you seen the recent polls? Deez Nuts for president.

Actually yeah, I forgot stoning was a projectile finisher (should have known its ele), both would be great.

Not much has changed for our place in PvE, but the profession’s place as a whole is vastly improved since before the specialization rework. We’re finally getting the QoL and power adjustments we need, and most importantly we finally have a dev who listens to and implements feedback, as well as has amazing ideas of his own.

We aren’t fixed yet, but for the first time we have legitimate hope of being able to get there.

ZDragon.3046:

Our point is with things we are missing and should have as a light armored profession we shouldn’t have to have the idea that Some traits will only proc once per every other cast By doing that its a draw back to a buff because in those traits should proc every time you successfully completed the action, not ever other time. Its like saying well if you play ele “We will reduce the cooldown on swapping to water by 50% but now you only get traits that effect water every other time you swap into it.” :/ there should not be a need to limit necro with every buff they get by putting a drawback on it when other light armored professions don’t have these drawbacks. Increasing the speed of life blast shouldn’t have anything to do with Reaper shroud skills so lets not even include them.

IT.
IS.
A.
BUFF.
PERIOD.

Its called balance. Some traits are just flat out too strong to just immediately double because we’re weaker than other professions in some areas. This is not the place to make us better by doubling everything, that isn’t how balance works. Light armor means exactly nothing, stop acting like that should matter. And it is nothing like your ele comparison, this is an auto attack, this isn’t some weird ICD, and it worked just fine on Reaper’s Shroud.

Are other professions broken? Absolutely, that’s why they should be nerfed, not Necromancer made OP. This understanding is why Necromancer is one of the only communities that seems to understand how balance works. Apparently the idea of it is a flat buff in every single conceivable way is a bit difficult, but that’s literally what any version of this idea being presented is, a flat buff in every way.

I’d much prefer it gain an effect like weakness on hit so we can finally say it actually has utility without lying to ourselves.