Traited locust swarm is still only 13 seconds, and the CD didn’t change, so it had to be something else.
You keep the spectral buff, you don’t benefit from it, just like regeneration.
Speed in DS isn’t terribly good because it won’t stack with other speed boosts, so is only useful if you don’t run swiftness/signet (or do we not get the passive from that in DS? I remember a thread about that), making it rather undesirable compared to some other traits that can take that spot, I don’t think many people will be taking this.
With terror, the master traits in that line are actually rather good, and typically one was used (mainly faster corruption CD’s, but the others are very useful depending on the build), which means they can no longer take both, short of putting 30 in that line; on top of having to invest double the points to get terror if they weren’t interested in the old master traits.
Whether this was a needed change or not doesn’t matter, the fact is it restricts people when making a (rather common) build, so of course people aren’t going to be happy.
Currently between weakening shroud and withering precision I can stack 20+ seconds of weakness on someone in 3-5 seconds, and proc withering often enough that’s it’s effectively impossible to cleanse.
But as Burjis has said, the endurance regen reduction is a massive part of the condition (outside of PvE), and the heavy nerfing of almost all weakness durations, on top of a unpleasant CD on withering precision (weakness is twice as good as burning, What?) which makes it impossible to consistently apply weakness after the patch.
This wouldn’t be bad, except for the fact that the new weakness will only result in better damage mitigation against fairly high crit builds, and even against them, because of the reduced access to the condition, overall weakness will be in a much poorer state post patch.
As I said before, no one can hold a well played sword thief, sword 2 is too strong for that.
What blast are you talking about? Cluster bomb is the thief’s only blast; but between activating black powder and getting off a HS, you have almost one and a half seconds to react, enough time – if you’re quick on it.
Last time I check bone minions, they do proc twice each. What he’s describing is different though, it’s just them saying they’re doing a finisher when you first cast (even if nothing is happening at that point) and I believe effects a load of different finishers.
either I’m not in melee range, in which case it’s a single blind that gets cleansed almost immediately unless I’m not attacking, or I use DS fear and weakening shroud will sponge the blind (which will work in melee range as well because instant cast), or if use non DS fear in melee range, and for whatever reason don’t back out of the field, dagger 1 is hitting twice per second, and locusts and well will both be ticking once per second when up, so it’s fairly likely (but not certain) that I won’t have my cc blinded there either. If nothing else, I can golem charge so long as the golem isn’t in the field, as soon as the field drops, and even if they do get the stealth off they’re still CC’d and I can stand ontop of them and hit them/cc them more.
Not saying this is foolproof, it is was it would be OP, but it does work rather well – D/P thieves are the most common foe I see in wvw.
They still have to use HS to get stealth out of black powder, that gives you more then enough time to CC them after dropping the blind.
I actually just found out that DS’s recharge does start ticking down as soon as you enter it. But if you leave it voluntarily, it resets again to 10 seconds. However, if degen / damage kicks you out, the recharge timer doesn’t go back to 10: it just winds down the way it was already ticking down.
Still, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll remove the recharge reset thing. I don’t know all the gameplay implications that has, just yet.
Yeah I saw that thread, but other transforms won’t ‘reset’ the CD if you leave early, so presumably exit DS is coded to set a full CD when activated, so for consistency if nothing else, it would be nice if that was changed.
I disengage reliably from necros on my dagger/dagger thief. In fact, I can’t remember a single instance of a necro being able to keep me in a fight, ever.
That’s because next to no one builds for it, you can fit a huge amount of CC on a necro if you choose to, and you can reduce the CD on a great deal of it, but if you don’t, then plenty of builds have more escapes/shorter CD’s then you can counter.
That’s why sword thieves are the only ones that you literally cannot catch, if they choose so, since they have a stun break/condi cleanse/escape on no CD, which a good thief will have ready to use at all times.
I think condi cleanse on entering as well as leaving DS would be too strong (especially if near to death becomes a master trait) and in PvP you rarely stay in DS for five seconds. But hey, that thief condi cleanse trait works every 3 seconds, the first proc as soon as they enter stealth… so there is that precedent.
Sure Cempa I can’t outrun you, but if you try and disengage from a fight, you won’t be able to break. For GS ranger in particular, DS 2 is of note (gets you out of roots without wasting time and can’t be blocked by the gs block skill) and wail of doom which is also unblockable. Other then that, a d/d ele is more difficult to hold.
The only build that can reliably break off from a necro if you build for it is a sword thief with shadow step (withdraw works as well actually). Nothing else can safely disengage, but you do have to build with this in mind.
I would argue towards staying in melee range, as you have access to enough CC to hold any class in the game, (thieves with loads of stealth and shadow steps are a different issue that’s less reliable but whatever) burst strong enough to kill more or less anything in the game in 5 seconds, (only invulnerability can hard counter it, SG is your friend for most escapes or stunbreaks) and when that fails, you have high melee damage and naturally very high health, (when including DS) which gives you an advantage in shorter engagements.
Basically you can say sod off to the idea of attrition, we have the right tools to go for the complete opposite kind of fights.
Oh, and also I heavily recommend using foot in the grave. It’s extremely useful during a fight to block CC (and a lot of people seem to instinctively CC when you use life transfer) but the main selling point is to shroud stomp people. Being able to (fairly reliably) stomp people is often the difference between winning and losing, securing a kill, and making 1vX fights even possible.
We don’t know how much damage though, so it’s pointless to speculate on that until we do.
Also on a random note, Anet repeatedly said that DS is supposed to be like a regular transform – so no utilities, and why they removed the weapon swapping. There is one rather useful thing however, that every other transform in the game has. The cool down for other transforms start when you go into them, DS’s CD starts once you leave. Now wouldn’t that be something nice for us to have?
It seems to me that the land DS 5 would work perfectly fine underwater, perhaps that’s the case. either that, or the leak was from before they made an underwater DS 5.
We don’t know how much torment DS5 actually gives, so we can’t judge that, but the mesmer torment is actually rather strong. Every mesmer has at least 5 points in the last trait line, which cuts the CD of focus 2 by 20%, so a 9.5s CD. that means you need barely any condi duration to get that 3 torment stacks to last longer then the CD.
We’ll have to wait and see if that leads to it becoming overly strong, but the fact they have extremely easy access to perm torment can’t be denied.
Keep in mind if this is real, no one knows how old these notes are (they’re most certainly notes from a dev build), so they could be weeks old for all we know. Of course they could be final notes as well, guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I find it quite interesting to compare burning on crit and weakness on crit. Both are GM traits, both apply on crit, burning for a duration of 4 seconds, weakness 5 seconds.
But then burning has a 10 second CD, whilst weakness has a 20 second CD, I hope they don’t think weakness is twice as good as burning.
If banshee’s wail was in spite instead of curses I would change trait line in a heartbeat.
For people talking about retaining spectral buffs in DS… I talked about this with Sharp, specifically about keeping the buff but not benefiting from it while in DS, just like regen right now, and he said they would consider it. So if these notes are real, it will probably be like that.
Also it seems weakness has overall been nerfed – 25% total chance isn’t that great (certainly better then before on high crit builds though), and on top of duration nerfs across the board (and a massive nerf to withering precision, adding a 20s CD making it effectively useless, compared to now where you can get almost perm weakness out of it), weakness it in a poorer place then before.
Still, lots of great changes overall, but either these notes are fake, or foot in the grave has an ICD, no way would they let us have perm stability.
And some of those changes… how is any necro not running Spectral Wall after this?
Many pointed it out already, 2 necros could terror-ping-pong a zerg to death.
Or what would happen if you trapped someone between Spectral Wall and an actual wall? Too OP, can’t be true.
You can dodge through it just like line of warding, but yeah, in a zerg situation, where you can’t clearly see what’s going on, this would be rediculous.
(edited by War Mourner.5168)
It will only be awfully strong on thief if it’s on a weapon skill… How likely that is, I don’t know. Bonus points if it’s on the pistol/dagger weapon set – torment them, then shadow strike all day for giggles.
Same thing with mesmers and staff, with phase retreat.
This would be quite hilarious if it worked consistently… Fill someone with conditions, epidemic them then putrid mark them all back onto one guy.
Just doing basic tests you seem to be right, as the immob doesn’t wear off until the CD has ticked 4 seconds down.
Frapsing it and getting an exact time would be best though.
The cast time on the daze is already quick enough to interrupt heals, you just need to recognize them all. The daze skill is fine as is. Would it be better with a shorter CD or lower cast? Sure, but I would be more happy with locust swarm giving swiftness to allies (giving them locust swarm as well if you had the trait would be a laugh, but sadly I doubt this would happen), as we seem to be needlessly selfish – my wvw build has zero combo finishers, one combo field, and the only way I can directly help allies is if focus 4 bounces off them for a few seconds of regen.
That’s another thing, now that I mention it, focus 4 does some half decent damage and 4 stacks of vuln for a decent duration when it hits foes, but only 3s of regen when it hits allies – it seems to me that you actually want it to not hit allies as it currently stands.
>And shatters also have a universal cd if i m not mistaken, but who cares? u wont have any clones to use them back to back anyway.
That implies that the CD doesn’t matter because you can’t poop out clones fast enough.
I’m saying you can poop out clones fast enough to shatter 7 or more clones rapidly.
You’ve never seen a 7 clone shatter then…
well the tooltip not updating is a bug, but it’s a different one…
I don’t understand why it should be that hard to fix, surely somewhere there is a number that says how much based downed health we have (or more specifically, a multiplier of our normal health). Also since the bug doesn’t exist in PvP, they should have fully function code or whatever that they can look at.
I’m more curious how they said they already fixed it for newly created necromancers – makes you wonder how these things are calculated.
I think Rennoko brushed on a rather good point, our DS CD starts when we leave DS, why not have it start when we enter DS?
Minions will occasionally attack mobs that try to attack you, but missed, even though you just ignore it and keep running, forcing you into combat. It’s a tad annoying.
Yeah same, the shorter CD makes DS much more practical since you’re all but certain to have access to it every time you go into DS.
Can’t say I’ve had it never track at all very often, I know it will do that if you cast while they’re out of range, other then that though, I cannot recall personally having this particular issue. Is the projectile firing the direction you’re facing, or is it literally just going in a random direction like behind you or something?
If the target goes out of the 900 inch range, the projectile will (usually) stop tracking and go in a straight line. However, even after it stops tracking, it will still hit and teleport you up to a certain range/time beyond that, I’ve never tested it properly.
Also it will follow people when they shadowstep/teleport in an odd way, but does it very well.
I’m somewhat confused by the argument here. By experimental trial we’ve concluded that all conditions tick together, allowing fear to tick more then once without 100% duration if there are previous conditions applied. But he’s saying that fear is the only condition, so it should be impossible for it to tick a second time without 100% duration, so his test seems sound to me, an frankly it wouldn’t be the first time Anet has a poorly labeled description in the game.
…But he had those buffs. He had full banner buffs, trait buffs, food and oil, stacks, sigils, full vuln might and fury, close to death, I think runes of the thief judging from how he moved. Literally the only thing I can think of to increase damage is signet of spite.
Also 137% crit damage is the highest physically possible, but certain runes situationally give better damage, which I’m assuming he’s done.
Anyway, a more interesting result would be the highest hit you can do under your own steam.
The spectral buff should remain through death shroud, but not work, same as regeneration currently. This may be getting looked at though.
I agree with dred here (I’ve mentioned it myself before), near to death ultimately holds us back, as the necro must be balanced with a potential 50% shorter CD.
Give everyone the same CD, whatever it is; the variation I think is a negative influence on balance.
DS 1 and 2 both fire flaming dagger projectiles, as does dagger 4.
The best part of incinerator for me is it removes the annoying bite sounds/effect of the dagger auto chain.
Don’t pick frost fang just because you want to be a special snowflake. I picked incinerator and howler because that’s what I use most of the time – you won’t regret it.
It’s good that they specifically mentioned a lot of trait changes will be happening, as we do have a lot of traits that just aren’t worth taking right now.
Well if elementalists can have shocking aura, I wouldn’t mind a vampiric aura. Actually any excuse to replace dagger two with something relevant to melee will tickle my fancy.
>weakness will effect crits.
Mmm, my wvw build has boatloads of weakness, I approve.
I also assume the ‘life blast does more damage at close range’ will out right replace ‘do less damage under 50%’?
Enfeebling Blood (dagger 5) and the corresponding trait Weakening Shroud (Curses IV) should be blast finishers. That is all.
If weakening shroud was a blast finisher I would be forever satisfied by that.
Thanks for checking it out Jon.
It only shows % for display/obscuring the true number purposes. All the actual maths is done with the actual numbers, and stays that way. You can easily test it with gluttony and repeated use of LF gaining skills such as scepter 3 or dagger 1.
Thanks, it’s not a bug in pvp keep in mind, and there should be more details in the bug thread/other threads.
Good to see it getting worked on I suppose.
Jon could you say anything about the spiteful talisman bug? It’s been in the game since before release, and reported as such.
That’s because guardians are difficult to take down, high toughness and a lot of retaliation. Even if a guardian doesn’t attack me (running away or whatever), I lose around half my health as a necro from retaliation before he’s downed. That’s most of a thief’s HP.
And 30 seconds of testing in PvP with a steady rifle, does same damage to me in and out of DS while I was using a shaman amulet, so if nothing else, it works in PvP, and I’m willing to bet a thousand gold it’s the same in PvE. People on the stream who were specifically talking about pvp should check these things.