Guild Wars 2

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

spoj.9672:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Do not use Corruption skills if you don’t have a way to transfer.

Do you not see the problem with that design?

No… Not really… I mean I do but I don’t.
I mean it’s silly that your own skills can harm you but at the same time it’s a risk/reward scenario. Time your corruptions to coincide with your transfers and you’re able to get a greater oomph out of your corruption. Or, use it to boost the effectiveness of Consume Conditions instead.

I’m sure you already know these things but I don’t consider it poor design only a design that has a reward slightly lower than the risk. If corruption skills had greater offensive effects they’d be just fine. Anet seems to think putting more conditions on us to transfer is the right way to go about doing so but obviously as pretty much everyone agrees, it’s not…

We have a ton of ways to transfer and our most used heal gets stronger with any conditions it consumes. I would consider it much worse design if we had less transfers but that’s not the case. Adding vulnerability on top of CC and adding additional conditions on top of the base ones when taking the mastery was straight up stupid though. It gets too risky to bother taking the trait because the reward is still the same.

The thing is utility skills are very powerfull skills and are in general game changers . The problem with in increasing the rewards is that it has the potential to become an I win button especcially with its offensive nature.

Another problem is the nature of the self infliction let’s take an example: blood is power. An untraited BiP removes at max power ~30% of your base health and traited it can remove 61%. Yet a lot of (PvE) players take it in their skillset traited. Why because they can basically remove the self infliction with a cleanse and like you said it can cost them nothing since they were going to remove conditions anyway. On the other hand you see players who dedicate a transfer to remove it making the cost really high. This makes it really difficult to balance the reward aspect of the skill especially when you consider things like group cleanses.

Based on this I think it is best to shelve self inflicted conditions.

Ilharn.6813:

Tim.6450:

Ilharn.6813:

Bhawb.7408:

These are all too strong to share. It is far better for us to get dedicated support options instead of kitten hybrid changes that end up with weak support and weak self buffing. Things like Blood is Power becoming real support. But overall the biggest problems we have with support is we just don’t have places to “fit” it, and also we technically CAN bring lots of support, it is just in forms that are currently worthless in PvE or builds that can’t function in PvP.

25 Stacks Might +150 Power + 170 Power Banner are not too strong?

The worst part of this is that they give up to 250 healing power as well.

Healing, Toughness+Vitality, Presicion…. Anything lost?

150 condition damage when using for great justice or battle standard (if the ele does not prevent it).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Strike

Ilharn.6813:

Bhawb.7408:

These are all too strong to share. It is far better for us to get dedicated support options instead of kitten hybrid changes that end up with weak support and weak self buffing. Things like Blood is Power becoming real support. But overall the biggest problems we have with support is we just don’t have places to “fit” it, and also we technically CAN bring lots of support, it is just in forms that are currently worthless in PvE or builds that can’t function in PvP.

25 Stacks Might +150 Power + 170 Power Banner are not too strong?

The worst part of this is that they give up to 250 healing power as well.

Xae Isareth.1364:

What about giving a necro-specific ability of being able to reduce target armour?

World bosses ruin this concept, there is a reason why signet of vampirism has 25 stacks.

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

2) group support
how about making dagger#2 an 600range AoE heal, not just healing you for up to 3.5k.
this would be 3.5k heal for your party every 12s,
maybe it could be made an AoE hit too with a certain amount of damage per hit and those 3.5k healing everyone close to you gets from those 9 pulses, so you dont have to hit with it to heal allies. (Additionally this is a good heal for minions too)

I don’t think that a potential 5k healing on a 12 second interval should be made AoE. Instead give well of blood some healing back and/or make the field better. Another suggestion (more raid orientated) is to give vampiric presence some better scaling preferably somewhere around 0.0325. The last suggestion (also raid orientated) is too release some power/healingpower/ferocity armor set. It’s not that we are low on crit options.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And if that chunk of our profession that is made irrelevant by the Defiance Bar fully worked, they’d just have to re-balance all of the encounters with it in mind. Suddenly, you have to keep Chill up 100% of the time, because boss abilities are balanced around the cooldown increase. You have to keep Weakness up 100% of the time, because Weakness + Protection is an incredible amount of mitigation that 10 players can easily maintain, so the boss would be tuned accordingly. Bosses would have to have some mechanism to avoid being kited the entire fight with the movement slow/immobilize.

That’s a strange point view. The weakness + protection combination is overpowered/mandatory in a (small) subset of PvE better make everything with a breakbar immune to weakness only. Oh no the boss can be easily kited, let’s negate the effectiveness of only 1 aspect of kiting and not the rest again on everything with a break bar. Also it does not deny the fact that might is mandatory for raids, vulnerability is mandatory, … .

Cogbyrn.7283:

And in those situations, you may just have to bring a Necromancer, because the Necro can manage those conditions fairly easily. Is that what we’re aiming for, being absolutely necessary in raids? That doesn’t feel like balance, either, I don’t care how many other builds for other classes are deemed necessary.

Since when does necro have a monopoly on weakness, chill,… ? It will require some shifts in other classes but they are capable of providing those conditions as well.

Do you really think that they can provide enough mechanics in a boss where a raid has to bring one of every class, at least? That’s a really tall order.

Actually one would be sufficient: 10 man wide buffing.

Cogbyrn.7283:

In short, I really think designing raid encounters without making bosses/specific mobs susceptible to soft CC like chill, weakness, and cripple is the correct approach. They’re just going to have to find another way for Necros to be useful.

And how is that going to be possible? The class is bassicaly crippled : every weapon combination has at least 2 skills that do not work at 100% due this change, a lot of our utility skills do not work at 100% due this and a lot of our traits are cripple as well. So how are we going to offer something wanted in PvE without being mandatory while maitaining PvP balance?

If they want, they can create a situation where waves of enemies spawn that you can greatly help mitigate with AoE Weakness, or kite with AoE Chill/Cripple, or otherwise manage. The Necro can help manage chaotic situations by debuffing specific mobs that are meant to be debuffed.

Or since the mob has no breakbar you just use hard cc and be done with it as well.

Cogbyrn.7283:

This is also ANet’s first foray into 10-man encounter design. They are going to need time to hit their stride. There’s absolutely no way Vale Guardian is going to be the template by which all raid encounters are built in the future.

And how many of those encounter will NOT have breakbar?

The ones that aren’t meant to be destroyed (golem, bone fiend, shadow fiend) do give life force when dead, all the rest (bone minions, blood fiend, flesh worm, jagged horrors and shambling horrors) do not.

I’m pretty sure you can move while using gravedigger.

Sigmoid.7082:

From my understanding of hot we get 5 new sets. I took this to mean stat combos. The only stat that doesn’t have an armour with it as a main is ferocity. If anything we should/should get main stat ferocity stat combos.

Ferocity have 0 main stat combos and vitality has 2. Would say I we got now combos there are the most likely.

Why would you ever take a ferocity main armor over a power main armor? They both boost the same thing (raw damage) only power does it better.

I didn’t know there exists a build with 4+ utility skills. Also what condi meta? We had/have at best a burn meta and even that is loosely said.

P.S. scepter has no blind.

My thoughts after playing berserker a little bit in the silverwastes and a CoF p1:

It was definitely nice, took me a few tries to get the right build but I noticed something strange. When using berserk after a burst skill ,the primal burst skill on half the cooldown. Another thing was when out of combat berserk is still up but my adrenaline is fading, quite annoying to be honest.

For dungeons , the necessaity of banners and phalanx strength do not help much for berserker and the lack of fury on GS hurts a lot. Therefore I don’t think it will have much play in dungeons.

To end my feedback a little suggestion: bloody roar could use the reaper shroud treatment: part of the fury needs to be given by default.

I have tested 2 reaper builds a blood/power reaper and a condition/chill reaper in the silverwastes. The builds weren’t optimised but they gave a good indicator of the reaper.

The blood reaper:
- Build : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQD7kjGolGsbTwmGgeTsgLYTFhmQVIuKuFHjQXtAQLA-TRSBABUcBAoU9GzUCe1+jyjbURAFNC4pLgMlYA8EAAA-e
- Playstyle notifications: shroud as a defensive tool/gap closer, dagger for out of combat mobility.
- remarks: It felt very good, sustain was amazing and jagged horrors did survive much better. Reaper shroud was a fantastic defensive option: executioner scythe did nice as a stun while soul spiral was just a fantastic siphon proccer. Greatsword had a variety of tools that did help me deal with the situation at hand. The only negative thing too say was that I didn’t notice the siphon from soul eater.
-suggested improvements: Replace soul eater siphon with something like greatsword do 5% extra damage and heal for (50% off) that amount.

The condition reaper:
-build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRArY7dn0ICd2gd3AW3A0biFcBL+K2FHjQDgAwCIaD0BGBA-TRyCABAcSAwR9HnVud8TAwNTCpof4Ulgzs/wRKJIEwi1A-e
-Playstyle notifications: shroudless outside soul spiral (and exexutioner scythe against stronger opponents), below 50% health easy 100% chill uptime, intended for full sinister hybrid.
-remarks: deathly chill was a bit dissapointing after doing the math for a fight against a veteran eath elemental I came to the following numbers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B46pHtMIfhsURmY2MTBER1BGNzA/view?usp=sharing (for dps a second is added due to opening with spinal shivers). My biggest problem was the bonus damage uptime of 33% which and the overal dps of 685 in the end consdering 100% chill uptime and having more condition damage due to lingering curse and target the weak. That being said reaper does make a nice suplementary role for a scepter based condition build.
-suggested improvements: Relax the bonus damage constraint on deathly chill to 66%~75% health or remove it.

I prefer the adamant guard warhorn.

Ara.4569:

- Corrupt Boon limited to 5. Tell me how a single target corrupt on a 40 sec CD is too strong. Don’t forget to check how many boons are generated in average.

Well, it was a full corrupt if I recall correctly meaning it could not only remove all boons it could also apply up to 9 conditions. So I would consider it OP. The other thing that has to be reminded is the meta both necro and non-necro. This skill was in a time where doom sigil was a common thing if I recal correctly. Since poison stacks in duration this means that self infliction was not that severe. The necro meta consisted of consume conditions and no siphons meaning that the healing reduction was not a problem either. So in short the skill was OP and perceived stronger then it was due to the meta so it got a bit overnerfed. So I wouldn’t it the most stupidest change, just a small error.

RashanDale.3609:

Why does it have a cap now? why did they have to reduce the reward for using this on an enemy with many conditions?

Probably because of plague signet. It has the potential for 7 conditions (5 transferred + 2 corrupted). It is also instant cast allowing it to be used during feast of corruption giving little to no counterplay for a sudden 9 stacks of torment condition bomb. That’s my theory about it, I’m not sure if I agree with it or oppose against it.

Killface.1896:

Its a bad it devalue all dungeon achievements…

pvp devalued dungeoneer.

Vydahr.4285:

Rising Dusk.2408:

554883kitten.1705:

Weird, cause everyone else in my guild insists that other projectile absorptions and reflects don’t work against those projectiles. Guess I might have to get on my thief and try to see how smoke screen works in comparison.

Many of them used to, but don’t anymore. I am entirely certain that CPC blocking the normally unblockable projectiles is unintended and will be fixed in the next bug fix round. It is not critical enough that it will get hotfixed, though.

That said, I love the new CPC a lot. I wish the special effect would be updated to look like the Toxic Alliance krait AOE field, but that can happen later. Functionally it’s great right now.

The only thing I absolutely hate is the self-weakness. Seriously, any other condition, but weakness is crippling to DPS and has to be cleansed immediately or you cannot even capitalize on the projectile destruction.

Soldier build. CPC as area denial. Weakness doesn’t matter when you have no crit chance

Glancing blows still do 50% less damage.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Wait, what fraction of the bleed/torment stacks are you allowing to tick before you dump it?

With MoC, only use BiP when you have Putrid Mark up, plague signet is ready, or dagger 4 is in flight at Max range.

And who is going to walk into mark instead of dodging through it? Moving seem to be the counter to the deahtly swarm trick (need to test that to be sure though) and is needed if I want to run epidemic. Plague signet has a cooldown to high to fully use the 13% bonus cooldown reduction.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Not sure what’s hard to grasp. MoC differs from other traits in that it requires forethought and tactical play to maximise the benefit. If that isn’t your style, the other two traits are very, very powerful indeed.

It requires forethought, read slotting and maybe traiting a transfer and then lock the corruption to the transfer. I would not call that tactical play though. It is however very cramping for previously explained reasons. Also the alternatives, terror is a niche trait and PoC unfortunatly does need boons (which in PvE is not always available).

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Does it provide a 20s heal and interesting tactical tradeoffs? Yes.

It had/has that tactical tradeoff in the past it was.is called a big cast time. Nerfing it and then giving the option to trait for lower cooldown with an extra hindering condition was not their smartest idea.

nekretaal.6485:

The changes were a case of changing 5+7 = 12 into 6+6 = 12

The weapon is no better now than it was before. It is however, now a pure condition user weapon which makes it easier to balance.

2 lost a lot of damage and cripple from lingering curses.

I don’t know more damage baseline does make it a better weapon,lingering curses got weaker though (come on cooldown reduction), also 2 got a boost around 40~50% in durations.

Basically it was intended to make lingering curse partially base line while more or less maintaining the upper limit with lingering curse. The auto attack lost 10% in duration but gained 50% in application resulting in a 35% boost, lingering curse adds 50% now so you get 1 * (1-0.1) * (1+0.5) * (1+0.5)= 2.03 which is around where lingering curse was in the past. The reason why they moved a bit from the first two hits in the chain to the last is problably when you invested too much in bleed duration, your first two hits in the chain became each stronger then the last hit, which was stupid.

@Ravezaar what condition meta? We had in the prepatch a burn meta at best.

Master of corruption and corruptions in itself are a point of discussion within the necro community. Personnally I consider MoC as conceptually flawed since your base self inflict gets a cooldown reduction plus on top of that an extra condition. Pro MoC consider good since you have an extra condition to transfer. Either way for pve it is the best we got.
As it is now and considering your situation, I would say: it depends. If you don’t need to dodge too much and have little crit chance you don’t really need to transfer anything since scepter is a poor power weapon and with no crits glancing blows have little meaning.
Otherwise you might invest in extra transfers/cleanses, plague signet is good candidate after dagger #4 due to being a the lowest cooldown utility cleanse but it can’t keep up with the traited corruptions even traited so you will lose some efficiency of MoC (the same for dagger offhand), plague sending your self inflicted conditions might not be a good idea since glancing blows from weakness means less crits. It still have use as an extra condition clear since your others are used to remove the self inflicted ones. But yeah keeping the transfer to use after using your corruption skill is the base of this playstyle.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

If it’s 61% of your healthbar, it’s 61% of someone else’s too.

Yeah, we need to transfer or consume conds to mitigate MoC. So what? That’s a valid playstyle, and not one which we struggle with. MoC adds depth. It requires thought and planning. I like it.

If you use BiP with a transfer, that’s 2 cond types the opponent has to cleanse rather than one.

It’s not like it’s rare to have traits that enforce or require a playstyle, and there are two traits at the same level which work with almost any build.

I say keep it. In fact, I’d like to see the self conditions become even more severe. That 2s cripple on CPC is pathetic. Would like 5×10s poison.

It’s not 61% of their since most transfer aren’t instant (only one instant is plague signet and plague sending requires a crit) so you take some damage already to yourself and since it is so front loaded well you lose quite a bit. Forcing a skill to be used shortly after another (or simply together) because the penalty is so front loaded is anything but depth, I would calling it dumbing down.

Using BiP with a transfer is not 2 more condi since necros using scepter already have 2 torment skills and bleed is just given on crit and by the base effect of BiP itself. So it’s 1 extra condi at best. Also if its one extra on the foe it is also possible to be one extra for the foe since a lot of our cleanses have a limit. Example: If you have poison, burn and confusion on you and then use BiP and send it back using deathly swarm you still have 2 conditions on you. The transfer-corruption combo is nothing more then a illusion which hides the power of the transfer as the power of the self infliction of the corruption.

Traits that require a playstyle is one thing but traits that force/ditactates the placement and usage of skills it doesn’t even affect or lose effeciency of the trait itself is basically unheard off. The trait itself is not a bonus in itself since you get more base self hurt due the cooldown reduction plus an extra condition: double hurt.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

I think MoC is fine. I’m experimenting with it now.

BiP is 2 bleed plus 2 torment. Getting that onto the enemy, or feeding on it with CC, makes a big difference. The 2s cripple on CPC is inconsequential, so MoC adds complexity which is welcome.

I think we need to take some more time to chew over how we handle MoC and let the meta settle now CPC is worth a kitten .

MoC is not fine. The only thing this thing does is force you take more cleanse/transfers and lock them to your corruption skills.
Let’s take BiP: BiP (traited) can drain up to 61% of my health bar with no extra might or vulnerability. This damage is so high you practically have to cleanse it, consume conditions gives little advantage since you ate 547,5 torment damage during the cast alone and you gained 724 health and that’s assuming I do not have already torment apllied to me.
If using a single cleanse skill outside CC then I’m either forced to take staff or dagger offhand and use those skills then I locked my weapon usage to BiP, if I want to use other skills then I either need multiple of them or I lose the (bonus) cooldown reduction from MoC even if I traited the cleanse skills.
If that doesn’t suit you can just use it for a bit, take some damage and cleanse it later when you need the cleanse. That isn’t benificial as well because BiP is front loaded, the shorter torment + the might mean that the beginning of your self infliction hits harder than the end.
That’s just BiP now think this with 2 corruption skills.

The thing with axe is that I don’t see what the role of it is and how the all different aspects of the skills serve this, including the trait(s).

Also please stop my human female necro trying to gently swat away some bees.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Skill points became Spirit Shards if I recall correctly. Also remember that the whole Hero Point cost unlocks new runes, sigils and the unique gear.

Isn’t that a bit problematic since the unique gear is ascended therefore account bound? Meaning I could litterally create a revenant lvl to 80 with scrolls and then spend the hero points to get another character an ascended piece of gear for free. If those things are stat swappable through the mystic forge I will never see the need to ever craft an ascended greatsword, hammer, warhorn, shield,longbow, torch and staff.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros can make a strong showing as secondary healer, but theirs is burst only for groups. It’s easy for a Necro to hit 12k group heals, but that has ~30 second cooldown.

Actually if the scenario requires things dying fast enough (let’s say 2 mobs every 15 seconds) reaper could burst out some impressive healing , a transfused soul spiral could heal over 10K with a cooldown of ~15 seconds thanks to reaper onslaught. It is niche but it can be done.

It just doesn’t have to be non beta testers, it can be beta tester who don’t want/can’t do certain parts of content with the class (for instance I don’t enter verdant brink to keep it a surprise, another exmple is the lack of gear/ toon with appropriate level) but still want a specific build be tested in that content.

I’m willing do some builds if I can do them.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Tim.6450:

If we are able to loop through to death shroud and heal back to 100% health then it means that their offense is too low.

Too low to kill us, certainly, but not necessarily lower than it should be.

Tim.6450:

Also have you seen a bunker guard, they can be healed while using a block , aegis, … . So why shoulld it be different when compared to necro?

Because they can still run out, plus there are unblockable effects that cut through that. Should unblockable attacks bypass Death Shroud? Should Death Shroud’s cooldown be increased? I don’t think so.

Next time i will be sure to mention the ones without counterplay like invulnerability, distortion,… .

Tim.6450:

Tim.6450:

Tell me how many people would throw their burst against an endure pained warrior, an engineer in elixer S or gear shield, an mesmer when it is distorted or blurry, … ?

You’re missing my point: a Necro that can heal fully through Death Shroud would lack meaningful moments of weakness. Those Warrior, Engi, and Mesmer builds all have moments of strength when their opponents should hold off attacking, but they also have moments of weakness when their opponents should strike. Skillful play will allow a defender the ability to minimize the time they spend vulnerable, but that time will never go away entirely. That might not be the case sometimes if the Necro could heal fully through Death Shroud.

This isn’t just theoretical, by the way. Necros healed through Death Shroud way back during the beta and they were literally unkillable. I’m talking full teams beating on them and still they wouldn’t die. That’s why Anet is so darn cautious with Necro buffs, and it’s why we need to champion another solution, because we do need a solution, but it can’t be as simple as heals just healing us.

Death shroud is not a moment of strength because it is still advantageous to attack the necro. By your definition it is a moment of weakness.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Tim.6450:

Tell me how many people go melee against a locust swarm user? How many people keep attacking when spectral armor is up?

Probably a lot, and they probably get pretty frustrated. That’s without heals going through Death Shroud. Can you imagine how much much more frustrated those people would be if there were literally no good moments for them to attack?

That’s because they are attacking in a necro’s moment of strength. Imagine a skill that heals for the same amount of damage taken. The moment of strength is when the skill is up. Now imagine the heals being delayed. When is the moment of strength (= the moment the opponent shouldn’t attack) when the skill is up or the moment when healing comes? I would say when the skill is up. Spectral armor is just like that just life force instead of healing.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Honestly, I do think full healing through Death Shroud would be OP. It could easily lead to situations where the Necro could become literally unkillable.

If we could heal and be healed while in Death Shroud, though, it might be possible for us to heal to full while in DS and then heal our LF back to full before running out of health, looping ad nauseum. That isn’t fair to the other professions and it ultimately wouldn’t be much fun for us, either. Our damage would have to be nerfed to compensate and we’d become unkillable but mostly useless. Even without any damage nerfs, though, unkillability still doesn’t sound like all that much fun to me. I’d rather be able to fail so that success wouldn’t feel empty.

If we are able to loop through to death shroud and heal back to 100% health then it means that their offense is too low. It is one of the few advantages off having a finite defense pool. Also have you seen a bunker guard, they can be healed while using a block , aegis, … . So why shoulld it be different when compared to necro?

Tell me how many people would throw their burst against an endure pained warrior, an engineer in elixer S or gear shield, an mesmer when it is distorted or blurry, … ?Tell me how many people go melee against a locust swarm user? How many people keep attacking when spectral armor is up? It is not that they don’t can counter DS they just don’t do it.

EDIT: changed the guard part

Thank you. /15charr

When looking at dulfy (missed part of the stream) I saw a strange profession icon in a picture. It’s Knightmare’s, I know that specialisations would get new profession icons but can somebody say which one’s it is?

Sigmoid.7082:

Tim.6450:

Without a change for scepter #2 this change could turn desastrous. I would not suggest more stacks or duration just a cooldown reduction. Speaking of cooldown reductions maybe it is time for a cooldown reduction for scepter in lingering curses.

Why.

Because it can result in a AoE dps loss around 486 assuming 25 stacks of might and vulnerabilty. The scepter #3 can turn the tide but it comes with an opportunity cost so I’m not sure about that. It also is single target so that doesn’t help. It’s not that condition necro is the best condition damage class in PvE.

Without a change for scepter #2 this change could turn desastrous. I would not suggest more stacks or duration just a cooldown reduction. Speaking of cooldown reductions maybe it is time for a cooldown reduction for scepter in lingering curses.

Corrossive poison cloud changes changes are all round fantastic, better then I could imagine. Now I can finaly have a champion fight where I have full weakness for the duration of the skill and a projectile destruction.

Scepter and lingering curse changes scream one thing: “What about scepter #2?”. You make the auto attack a slight upgrade when using lingering curse compared to the old one but scepter #2 seems to fall behind on this front. I will reserve my final judgement for the cap at scepter #3 when I see the durations. Also no duration decrease anywhere (in lingering curse or baseline)? :-(

Axe changes make no sense to me and bad at 900 is not (much) better as bad at 600 range.

Also still no moa fix???? This one is more dire then the plague or lich fixes.

flow.6043:

Drazerg.8956:

Flumek.9043:

Yup, i really dont know why ot even has to exist.

Just yesterday my 2 supportbots blew 10k+ heals on me, but seems devs think that with 2k hp and under focus fire is wrong time to enter your only defense mechanic.

^This

In all seriousness, reduce heal receive effectiveness while In DS by 50% and it should be fine.

Why 50%? Guys, please stop suggesting that, it makes no sense at all. Any kind of reduced healing in Shroud is just as bad as having non at all.

Couldn’t aggree more.

Don’t we have an aoe limit against this stuff?

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

Cecilia.5179:

and it will make staff unable to generate decent life force.

Soul marks generate life force when blinded.

Rising Dusk.2408:

That said, I don’t think you should be able to activate any utility/heal/elite skill in shroud.

Why? Would it make necro OP? Would it make them thematically less interesting?

If parasatic contagion gives me any indication, I would say no.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/Deathly-Swarm/4372927

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Speaking of raid bosses, do they still have the 50% weakness/vulnerability duration reduction?

Bluewizard.2694:

Captain Unusual.9163:

Lahmia.2193:

Captain Unusual.9163:

So, the general consensus of this thread seems to be that, since condi necro is weak, we should change what few condi traits there are into more power-focused ones.

Neat.

The general consensus is that Necro needs Target the weak to be changed back. I’ve never been told to run something else as a Condi Necro in pvp or wvw. But constant “no necros” in lfg have shown us Necros need a power buff.

So, yes, you want to remove condi necros in favor of power necros. 10/10, top tier design.

Luckily not everyone feels the same way. ^^

I do.

Curses has already enough trouble being a condition crit line as it is. Changing target the weak will not help it at all. Besides how will it help? I mean the rest of curses is not a good for PvE and for pvp we only reach 100 crit chance in shroud so it’s not useless there either. So how about instead of pointing our arrows at curses we point it at blood magic and give all our siphons a proper power scaling? Maybe vampiric presence might become a more noticable group utility.

Bunnytown.7801:

Archon.6480:

Personally, I would like the option to join Mordremoth’s horde, at night time, and aid Mordrem NPC’s in their quests. It would be great fun to aid the computer in vanquishing PvE players. Besides, the Dungeon crowd relentlessly harps on ANet for making PVE too easy… Well then, there is nothing like facing player controlled Mordrem to wipe that Zerker armor off your toon.

There would be so many tears from PVE’rs. I personally would love to see this happen though.

Honestly, one PVE’r will waypoint/rune to the entrance activate his commander tag and ping the waypoint and says something like “anti sylvari train here”. Then you get zerged down. You will be outnumbered 5 to 1.

Thund.2795:

I’ve try to do my best… here the entire elite specialization picture!

It looks good. I like this one more then the one on the heart of thorns page.

ronpierce.2760:

- What would peoples’ opinions be (/ how would they change) if Vital Persistence was base line, making SR less pvp-mandatory (meaning Spite/Curses/Other would be more viable).

If Vital Persistance was baseline I would move it to Curses as described in my previous post since I now consider Curses more or less equal to Soul Reaping in terms of favoring dhuumfire for base necro, but reaper does gain less benifit (no piercing and without Soul Reaping reaper still has decent life force generation) from soul reaping and might take spite instead.

My thoughts on dhuumfire’s placement in soul reaping:

The problem is just that the concept does not work with base necro and even reaper is questionable. The effect is also quite weak. It is placed at the right traitline for its effect though, the piercing, vulnerability and life degen reduction fit it very well.

My thoughts on dhuumfire’s placement in Curses:

If for some reason you still want to place it in Curses ( which I consider just a little bit below soul reaping in terms of being a good place for dhuumfire) , I would suggest merging it with parasitic contagion and allowing parasitic contagion to work while in DS. This gives parasitic contagion the option to restore health in death shroud while still maintaining (some) condition pressure. Plus if you take curses and soul reaping you could take death perception for some extra synergy with barbed precision and plague sending. It would still require some scepter/staff rework in terms of life force/condi pressure.

nearlight.3064:

@Lynnie, I think thats mostly due to conditions being poorly implemented in this game in order to sync better with the fast paced combat system. Conditions are either overwhelming burst (burn guard, dhuumfire era terrormancer) or incidental chip damage on hybrid builds, but not really sustained DPS. Plus AoE teammate cleanse has always made it hard to deal with.

I will say though that purge gyro is trash tier. After its 15 seconds are up it goes on CD for 15 seconds, and in a teamfight it will cleanse allies instead of the engi sometimes during the interval, making the engi more susceptible.

@Bhwab, I think super speed (and alacrity) should be reclassified into boons so that the counterplay paradigm is more even. Although it also needs to not have a stack cap of 1 as well. Also I think most scrappers will only have a few short bursts of SS, because final salvo requires gyro usage, which most engis don’t want to do, and theres a 10 second ICD on the SS generating adept trait.

Don’t gyro cooldown start ticking on death instead of on summon?

Lynnie.7213:

What i am most mad at scrapper and others specializations and ofc Anet because they did it, is that they are trying to kill condition builds slowly.
Berserkers can remove 3 conditions every 4 seconds if they play it right.
Scrappers now can remove 2 conditions every 3 seconds …

No condition build will kill them once everyone learn their classes, unless the player sucks.

Oh don’t you worry engineer is cursed with double kit and elixer S will always be strong contender so I’m not worried about the gyro. The hammer on the other hand, …. .

I do share your sentiment with the condition hate in this game though.

Muchacho.2390:

Mhhh adaptive armor is a defensive variant of corrupters frevor (getting hit instead of appling conditions). So why does it give more toughness on max stacks?

Well first beacause corrupter fervor can stack much faster and with more consistence thanks to not having an icd, secondly because the only way to get max damage reduction is by getting hits so to get the most damage reduction you have to take a ton of damage. Finally it loses potency when used with other defensive mechanisms with gear shield, elixer s, … will lower your stacks.

I’m more crossed with hammer 5 compared to staff 5.