Guild Wars 2

Bhawb streaming as MM? That I want to see :o

Ok I just tested everything… and now I feel stupid -_-

The only transfer that turns the condition of someone else into your own is Epidemic.

So if A inflicts bleeding on B and B transfers it back to A it will not only tick with A’s condi damage but it won’t even appear in B’s combat log. A sees his own condis ticking on himself.
But when B uses Epidemic on A, nearby targets will tick as new conditions for B even though they are copies of A.

I could have sworn that transfers hadn’t always worked like this, but considering Tim’s test is rather old, I’m not sure anymore. :/

Signet of the Locust is getting a range increase, not Locust Swarm… and not Deathly Swarm :P

I’m not sure what you did, but your testing method must have been flawed in some way.
Transfers are your own conditions, they always have been, even 9 months ago when you made those screenshots.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

they would have to nerf the healing or increase the cast time

Compared to now this would still be a nerf considering you get 10 stacks of vuln (and another one with MoT) if your cast is interrupted.
Also, the healing amount of Consume Conditions is rather low to begin with, so an extra condition or two to consume doesn’t make that big of a difference, especially when you might already have the same condi on you before using the skill.

This has already been suggested in other threads, and imo it’s the only way that makes sense should Consume stay a corruption skill.
I can get over the longer base cd, but it’s completely unacceptable to have one or even two conditions applied after activating a skill that is supposed to be a full cleanse.

That was a fun watch.
It’s amazing how much difference our underwater mobility makes if our opponents don’t have more of it. You didn’t exactly fight the best players, but still, once you left underwater combat they instantly caught up and killed you.
Maybe, if you stayed in the water you would still be alive today

The point I was trying to make is: if you want Blood Bond to trigger reliably you can make that happen regardless of the type of build you’re playing.

Tim.6450:

Secondly you shouldn’t count condi transfers since you have to apply those stacks and transferred conditions are not “applied by you” (I did a test with parastic contagion on that one).

Of course they are “applied by you”.
Once you transfer conditions they are your own, it’s exactly the same as if you used any other condi skill or trait.
And I’m not sure how you tested Parasitic Contagion, but it most certainly does include transfered conditions for the amount it heals you.

Tim.6450:

flow.6043:

As for Blood Bond, 4 stacks is a rather low threshold, and it has a 15-20 sec cooldown. Any build can easily trigger this without traiting Curses at all.

It can be done with any build but not reliably. A power build for instance has to use 2 out of his three condition applying skills to trigger this so a dodge or cleanse can suriously prevent this skill from proccing.

By those 3 skills I’m assuming you mean: Mark of Blood, Mark of Evasion, Dark Path?
What about Weakening Shroud, condi transfers and all the ways to corrupt vigor with Corrupt Boon, Well of Suffering, Signets of Suffering, Unholy Feast, Spiteful Spirit, Path of Corruption… and if all that isn’t enough power necros can still take Blood is Power, Signet of Spite, a geomancy sigil or an off-hand dagger.
Really, if power necros wanted to increase their bleeding uptime just for the sake of Blood Bond there are ways to do that.

Anyway, Blood Bond is certainly not the reason for nerfing Barbed Precision. Condition builds have enough access to bleeding without Barbed Precision to trigger Blood Bond as soon as it’s off cooldown, the fact that some other builds can trigger it less reliably is irrelevant.

Foefaller.1082:

And I agree, Corrupter’s Fervor will not be hard to cap on… for a condition build. A power Necro, on the other hand, won’t be able to hit that cap reliably, much less maintain it for a whole fight. A 66% chance from BP might make maintaining that cap a lot easier, without having to focus most of your damage output on cleansible and resistible conditions.

Power builds have almost the same access to conditions as condi builds. Perhaps they don’t have geomancy sigils or a scepter to apply condis with auto attacks, but other than that power necros need a single Chillblains or Tainted Shackles against 5 targets to instantly max out Corrupter’s Fervor. Or any pulsing aoe skill like Locust Swarm, Well of Suffering/Darkness or Corrosive Poison Cloud which will definitely be taken with Putrid Defense. And this doesn’t even have to be a team fight, you can hit clones or turrets as well.
And as spoj pointed out, Corruptor’s Fervor itself is limited by (easily maxed) stacks and duration, it wouldn’t make sense to limit other condi applications in addition to that.
As for Blood Bond, 4 stacks is a rather low threshold, and it has a 15-20 sec cooldown. Any build can easily trigger this without traiting Curses at all.

nekretaal.6485:

Honestly, I think the combination they were afraid of was just the range increase on Deathly Swarm…

Deathly Swarm doesn’t get a range increase.
Besides, how would increased range of any skill make Barbed Precision better?

Foefaller.1082:

Actually, Now that I think some more, the crazy build they were probably trying to avoid was all fours traits combined; Old Barbed Precision + Blood Bond in Blood Magic, Corrupter’s Fervor in Death Magic, and Deathly Perception in Soul Reaping.

If only there was a way to avoid having a necro with 4 specializations! :P

But seriously, Corrupter’s Fervor will certainly be a nice tank trait (ironically more so than Unholy Sancturay) but maxing out this trait will be easy even without having Barbed Precision at all.
Same with Blood Bond. You don’t need Barbed Precision to for those traits, so in conclusion:

Foefaller.1082:

Now, would twice as many bleeds on crits change that

No.
And even if they did, the logical thing to do would be a duration reduction, not a lower chance to proc.

Foefaller.1082:

Also, RE: Barbed Precision. I think the combo they were afraid of was BP + Death Perception +Parasitic Contagion + Blood Bond. Transfusion hits 9 times, will crit almost every pulse with DP, and at 66% proc chance, would almost certainly trigger BB in shroud for in shroud healing, as well as leaving an average of 6 stacks of bleeds on up to 5 targets. With at least 1000 Condi Damage, that would be just over 300 healing per condi tick while all those bleeds are up, which is better healing over time that any healing skill we have, even pre CC nerf.

End result: effectively unkillable Necro.

Like I said, this combination of skills and traits (except for Blood Bond) is already possible.
Also, if you use Transfusion to stack bleeding Parasitic Contagion can’t heal you because it doesn’t work through Shroud. And 6 stacks aoe isn’t exactly amazing, you can easily get this with other skills as well, and with a longer duration than 2 seconds per stack.
So that kind of healing will be possible anyway, you don’t need Barbed Precision and Deathly Perception for it. Besides, 300 hp/s isn’t exactly immortal considering it won’t work half the time and we don’t have any other way of mitigating damage.

RashanDale.3609:

I dont like the nerf to Barbed at all. the damage you got out of precision as a conditionmancer was already pretty bad. if anything, they shouldve buffed the bleed-on-crit.

Indeed.

Bezagron.7352:

Not sure about all the traits but I believe the largest factor has to do with the removal of the 25 stack cap limit on conditions. Add all other reasonable sources of bleed with high crit chance + Barbed Precision at 66% chance & i think the achievable total stacks could be quite scary.

In the current system condi necros can reach 25 stacks with the help of Barbed Precision, but not maintain it. And that is PvE only!
If Barbed precision was gone entirely you would probably only average around 20 stack on a single target.

And what “other sources of bleed with high crit chance”? Sigil of Earth has an icd, and there are no other ways to get bleeding on critical hits.

My suggestion comes down to this:
Buff the axe cd reduction of Unholy Fervor from 20 to 33%.

Here is why:

Generally, I think Spiteful Spirit should’ve gotten the same treatment as Weakening Shroud, which has no icd. It just doesn’t make sense to have a trait gated by two different cooldowns.
Robert Gee said in Ready Up “we wanted this to activate whenever you activate Death Shroud”, he also mentioned that the dagger trait isn’t even in the same specialization.
Fair enough, Unholy Fervor and Spiteful Spirit are in the same specialization for some cooldown synergy. However, even if you take them both you’re still left with a 2 second gap between the cd of Shroud and the trait. This is guaranteed to have Spiteful Spirit fail a lot, and in that case effectively double or tripple its cooldown depending on how much time you spend in Death Shroud.

Also, let’s take a look at the traits that compete with Unholy Fervor and Spiteful Spirit:
The way I see it there will be 2 “most popular” trait combinations in Spite:

• Chill of Death + Signets of Suffering
• Unholy Fervor + Close to Death

The first one is the option for corrupting boons. Unholy Feast will also corrupt after the patch, but there really is no contest when you compare it to Chill of Death and Signets of Suffering. Especially when combined with Plague Sending, Blood Bond and additional signets on your utility bar, this trait combo will turn necros into boon corrupting machines.
The second combo will be taken for the damage modifiers, especially in PvE where people are already speculating that both axe and focus weapon traits will be taken for their damage mods without actually having to run either of those weapons.

I’m also sure that Rending Shroud will occasionally have a viable place in some builds.

So Unholy Fervor + Spiteful Spirit is really the underdog combination of Spite traits, but ironically they are actually supposed to synergize directly.

How would 33% cd reduction improve the situation:

1. You could actually sync up the cooldown of Shroud with Unholy Feast.
(unless you’ve additionally traited Speed of Shadows)

2. This provides an incentive to use Unholy Fervor as a utility option over the certainly still more dominant “Chill of Death + Signets of Suffering” combo.

3. It would also provide more of an incentive to actually take Spiteful Sprit if you would otherwise trait Unholy Fervor only for the damage mod against vulnerable foes.

4. Last but not least: the axe would be buffed.
Very few people use the axe because it is generally considered to be weak.
However, even if people could make decent use of Unholy Fervor and Spiteful Spirit without actually having an axe, a cd reduction for
Ghastly Claws from 8 to 5.25 sec (plus 2.25 sec cast time), and
Unholy Feast from 15 to 10 sec
would maybe sway some players to pick up an axe afterall.

Dyrk.8092:

I actually agree with the nerf, because by itself the skill is just too good at stacking bleeds for non-condi builds.

A condi trait has better synnergy with a power build (not really) where it would deal less damage anyway (especially with the new formulas), and that’s why you nerf it?

Also, just to compare:
Rangers get to keep their 66% chance on Sharpened Edges and get the duration buffed from 2 to 3 seconds. (a major trait though)
Warriors’ Precise Strikes: 4 seconds of bleeding, 33% chance on crit.
Engineer’s Sharpshooter: 4 seconds of bleeding, 33% chance on crit.

I’d gladly give up Barbed Precision’s 20% bleeding duration if it meant I could either get a higher chance or 4 sec duration instead.

Softspoken.2410:

The assumption that the previous build wasn’t using Hemophilia was so the math could be feasible.

Feasible but pointless.
Calculating on the basis that you will have access to more bleeding duration after the patch than now simply means you’re operating under a false assumption.

Softspoken.2410:

anything with a longer duration than Barbed Precision is a lot more likely to be cleansed before it expires on its own.

Conditions are always cleansed after four seconds? I’ll defer to the PvP experts, but if that is strictly true then I’m surprised that people try conditions at all.

Not always, “more likely” is what I said.
But generally yes, the aoe cleanse spamming in team fights is among the problems why in the current meta condition builds just aren’t as viable as zerker or celestial builds.

Softspoken.2410:

Maybe condition duration doesn’t actually contribute to damage, because of the ubiquity of cleanse. But in that case, why bring up the loss of Spite’s bonus duration in point 1?

You are mixing up two things here.
Frequent cleansing means short duration conditions have the best chance of doing their full amount of damage. That includes Barbed Precision.
Regardless, I brought up Spite because your damage calculation for the current trait system is based on not having access to Spite’s duration boost, or any other bleeding extension for that matter.

Softspoken.2410:

Rolling Hemophilia into Barbed Precision made the trait represent a lot more bleed output than it previously did

Wrong.

That’s exactly my point.
You potentially have access to even more bleeding duration in the current system. Combining Barbed Precision with Hemophilia might be a buff for some people but it’s really the same as having 4 points in Spite now (which I do, so it doesn’t change anything for me).
And while it’s true that merging into minors or baselining traits is a buff in the sense that you get to pick different traits instead, in regards to bleeding damage/duration/stacking however, this merger will not change anything at all.

Keep in mind, you can currently get 100% crit chance, +100% bleeding duration and combine that with a 66% chance to proc Barbed Precision.
And by “can” I mean: I have done this. I’ve adjusted my build to include Deathly Perception and maintain 100% bleeding duration.
Just a reminder, I have Mad King runes in my build, the 6th bonus triggers an aoe version of Hunter’s Call which does 16x damage. So I could basically combine that with Life Transfer for an additional 9 hits per target with a 100% crit chance. That actually did produce an impressive amount of bleed stacks with Barbed Precision. But ultimately it was a gimmick, an occasional damage spike that doesn’t actually produce more stacks than you could with your regular skills, so of course I didn’t keep this trait setup.

Now here’s what Robert Gee said in the video:
“When we combined a couple of traits the power of this thing [Barbed Precision] shot up really high so we ended up lowering the proc chance because it was getting out of control”

Now my question: What trait combination did you use to produce this result? What do you have access to in the future version of our traits that you can’t already do now?
Seriously, what??

Softspoken.2410:

adjusting the duration & the proc chance are equivalent ways of changing the bleed output of the trait.

Wrong again.

Adjusting durations means a static nerf to the trait.
Adjusting the proc chance, however, just means you need to have more luck with rng to produce the exact same result.

And yes, the bottom line will be that the trait inflicts less bleeding on average.
However, the fact remains: they want to reduce a crit based chance to proc a trait.
This can only be viable if under certain circumstances a 66% chance makes the trait triggers too often.
But how is this different from now when you can already achieve 100% crit chance in Death Shroud?
Perhaps with the Reaper? Maybe with Decimate Defenses in combination with some of the skills exclusive to the Reaper or the Greatsword?

Anyway, I just can’t figure it out. This nerf doesn’t make sense to me.

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

Also, even if moving Terror to master tier was an actual request from the community (it wasn’t)

There were multiple requests to. People didn’t like that it had been “nerfed” by going to GM, didn’t like that it fought with LC, and didn’t like that it was one of the traits clogging the GM tier with condi-only traits. So directly and indirectly people asked for it. Obviously it was based on old Curses, and it doesn’t mean it was the right choice, but there were requests for it.

I know, pretty much every possible suggestion has been made at least a few times at some point. But more importantly, I could have phrased this a little better. What I meant was, there were no reasonable requests.
Let’s be honest, we all knew the duration buff on Lingering Curse had to go, so the people who wanted Terror + super long fears were just asking for a buff instead of considering the implication of LC itself.
Also, tiers being an indicator of a trait’s strength is no longer true because you’re not investing points anymore. It’s really only about what combination of traits you want to allow.
As for having 3 condi traits in gm tier in the older preview, I was among the people who wanted Terror to move, but never to a different major tier.

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

The teleport will check for up to five allies with every pulse/hit, but it can only work on the same ally once, so you can’t drag someone in downed state across the map with you.

That would have been hilarious. Also sounds interesting, it means in zergs you could potentially scoop a LOT of people into a small area and heal them back fully if you have 2-3 Necros using these abilities. Coordinated in GvG its possible to “reset” a fight with that.

That would still be possible if you had necros standing in a line, 600 units appart. They would basically pass the downed bodies along with Life Transfers, and if there are 6 necros the allies would all be completely rezzed in the end.

This sounds rather theoretical now, but I think this might actually be done in GvGs in the future.

Softspoken.2410:

flow.6043:

2. Barbed Precision:
33% chance to inflict bleeding.
Apparently this was an intentional change. But the explanation for why they did it seems rather weak: “we lowered the critical chance because you’re also getting that 20% bleeding duration”.

I did a bit of math for this in another thread, but in the context of Necromancer the 20% boosted bleed duration usually adds much more bleed damage than the removed 33% chance to proc a 2s bleed on crit. It’s worth remembering Hemophilia used to be it’s own major trait that actually saw play, and it’s now rolled into the minor.

I see what you mean, but your logic is flawed.

First of all, my personal opinion on Hemophilia is this: it sould never be picked over Weakening Shroud. At best it’s a PvE trait for leveling your character when your access to other duration buffs is rather limited.

My personal feelings about it aside, you’re right, people do use Hemophilia. I believe it’s even included in the metabattle build.
But that actually means that for the builds who already used it, the merger with a minor trait isn’t a buff at all. The real upside to this is the alternative trait you get to pick instead, but that is completely unrelated to Barbed Precision because no major trait in Curses interacts with it, only the other way around.

Softspoken.2410:

Since the change reduced the bleeding output from the on-crit proc, (by lowering the percentage) but increased general bleed uptime (20% boost in duration), there’s some equilibrium point where the lost bleeds from the crit chance are made up for in the gained duration on your other bleeds. It just depends on what percentage of your bleeds come from Barbed Precision.

Taking 2 * 66% = 1.33~ bleed on hit, and the new version is 2.4 * 33% = 0.8~ bleed on hit, we can see that 40% of the BP crit bleeds were lost.
So at parity, the lost bleeds (BP * 0.40) should be the same as the gained duration on other bleeds. (Other * 0.20)
BP * 0.40 = Other * 0.20.
Since BP + Other = 100% of all bleeds…
BP * 0.40 = (100% – BP) * 0.20
BP = (100% – BP) * 0.50
1.50 BP = 50%
BP = 33%

So if more than 33% of your bleed output came from barbed precision (why) then this was a nerf. If less than 33% of your bleed output came from barbed precision, you’ve still come out ahead.

Your calculations are correct, but again, your logic is flawed.

You are assuming three things here:

1. The future system will give you those 20% bleeding duration but the current system doesn’t, when it’s really quite the opposite. Not only are you free to take Hemophilia now as well, but you actually get up to 30% duration from Spite.

2. Consequently, stating that other bleeding skills being affected by the duration buff as well would compensate for the loss of Barbed Precision’s damage is not only untrue, but also a pointless assumption because anything with a longer duration than Barbed Precision is a lot more likely to be cleansed before it expires on its own.

3. That is also what your conclusion is based on: you are assuming that every skill runs its full duration, and that would determine if either more or less than 33% of bleeding damage is done by BP or other skills.
Let me clarify right here: your other skills will always do more damage, easily. But it’s not because of their duration, but simply because they stack higher if you combine them. And in PvP it’s all about burst stacking.

Finally, any of that doesn’t even factor in other gear: sigil of agony (20%), Afflicted runes (30%), Krait (45%) and the ones I use: Mad King (35% bleeding duration and 5% condi duration), that combined with 4 points in Spite means that in PvP my bleeds are extended by 60%. If you add Agony sigils and Hemophilia you can actually max out your bleeding duration.
In light of that, can you honestly tell me that a puny 20% rolled into a minor trait can justify a 50% nerf to the proc chance of Barbed Precision?
Also, again, why the proc chance? If the duration is causing the problem, why not reduce the duration of the trait? The only reason you would reduce the chance to trigger it on critical hits is if you’d get a too high amount with a high crit chance. But like I said, rabid and sinister builds can already get more than 70% crit chance with that 66% chance to proc Barbed Precision. And this does not produce any absurdly high stacks of bleeding even with 4 sec long Barbed bleeds.

Really, I have no idea why they would nerf this trait.

gavyne.6847:

flow.6043:

5. Weakening Shroud:

No icd confirmed. Functionally identical in this case just means it’s the same but also a seperate skill from the dagger’s so it woudn’t interact with Quickening Thirst.

Wow, no icd on Enfeeble, that’s pretty awesome. I was leaving options open for another trait line but this kinda seals the deal for Curses for me. Which means every 7 seconds if traited, we get to go into DS and aoe weakness. Solid.

That would only be 7 seconds if you’re not using Shroud at all, so the weakness uptime in real combat probably won’t be close to 100% even if your opponents don’t cleanse.

Besides, the cd reduction on Speed of Shadows (currently Near to Death) was never about a high uptime of Shroud traits, it’s true purpose is to have a shorter window during which your real hp is exposed to damage. So if anything this trait will be used in bunker builds that actually want to stay in Shroud for as long as possible, which means that, ironically, the trait that could buff your weakness uptime of Weakening Shroud is typically used with playstyles that triggers on-Shroud traits the least often.

Zin.6170:

I thought it was implied on barbed precision that due to target the weak giving 2% crit now instead of damage you could get crit too high.

If you currently go into Curses you get an additional ~14,3% crit chance from the 300 precision the trait line provides. That is the equivalent of having 7 conditions on your target with the new Target the Weak, which will barely ever happen in PvP.

I actually use a full sinister build in PvE quite often, I even mix sinister into my WvW build, and with the occasional fury I can push my crit chance to a little over 70%. And I use stuff like warhorn and Ghastly Claws so I really try to push Barbed Precision procs as much as I can. And while you do get a nice extra chunk of damage (at the price of being more squishy), that 50-70% crit chance combined with a 66% chance on Barbed just isn’t enough to justify a nerf.
So my guess is that this amazing damage they were talking about must be a combination of the new damage formula and a trait like Deathly Perception.
Still, reducing the proc chance just means more rng than an actually reliable damage nerf (if it really is too strong, which i doubt). So it would definitely make more sense to just have it’s duration reduced, especially when the devs argument for it was that you now get Hemophilia rolled into it as well (which isn’t really a buff either because you’ll lose duration from Spite).

Tim.6450:

One thing I ould add as criticism maybe reduce the stacks required of blood bond to 3. It means that dark path can trigger it on it’s own.

I think this is the very reason why they made it 4 stacks of bleeding.
Too many skills could trigger this this by themselves, which I think is a good thing actually. It means you’ll have a little more controll over when the signet activates instead of having it trigger at random by hitting some unwanted target with it in some 2-stack aoe skill and an rng Barbed Precision proc.
Also, it’s rather easy to que 2 bleeding skills to have it intsantly trigger on purpose. Like any of your standard aoe bleeds (Mark of Blood, Grasping Dead, Enfeebling Blood) and then follow up with a Geomancy sigil or Mark of Evasion.

Muchacho.2390:

flow.6043:

13. Transfusion: Revival percentage is 2% per pulse.
Teleport range will be the same as the skill itself: 600 for Life Transfer, 300 for Reaper’s Shroud.

Are you sure about this? I also watched the ready up and i recall that he said that the teleport will always be 600 range. Only the rezzing/healing part will depend on the radius of the skill (aka 600 for DS and 300 for RS)

You’re right, I misunderstood that part.

7. Blood Magic:

In regards to siphons working through Shroud, they decided to limit healing through Shroud to siphons for balance reasons, but they are still looking into expanding it to other traits and skills if it becomes necessary.

8. Last Rites:

The values for this one will be:
- Above 75%: 150 healing power
- 50-75%: 300 healing power
- Below 50%: 450 healing power
(He didn’t say if below 25% adds another 150, I’m guessing no.)

The radius for preventing allies from bleeding out will be 300.
They didn’t say if the trait works in downed state to prevent several downed necros from being stranded in downed state limbo. But Robert specifically mentioned that the trait doesn’t work on the player himself as it would be too strong, which could either mean that the trait is disabled in downed state or it does work and they didn’t really consider the issue of having necros in downed state indefinitely if an opponent prevents them from rezzing.

9. Blood Bond:

Lesser Signet of Vampirism just marks the target and there will only be 5 stacks instead of 25. So there will not be an initial heal like the one of the real Signet, but the damage and healing of the stacks are the same, which allies can consume as well.
Also the coodlown will be lower, 15-20 sec – they are still figuring it out.

12. Life from Death: Revival percentage is between 5-7%.

13. Transfusion: Revival percentage is 2% per pulse.
Teleport range will always be 600, but the radius in which allies are healed will be determined by the skill used. So 600 for Life Transfer, 300 for Soul Spiral in Reaper’s Shroud.
The teleport will check for up to five allies with every pulse/hit, but it can only work on the same ally once, so you can’t drag someone in downed state across the map with you.

11. Vampiric Presence:

No icd, the values will be what the current values of Vampiric are. Radius remains unknown.

Final Words:

According to Robert, with all the changes – especially to Blood Magic – they wanted to create a necromancer exclusive niche type of support.
Although we don’t know all the numbers and how they will affect gameplay yet, personally I think they’ve done an awesome job in that regard. #Geelieve

For those who haven’t seen it yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbdl5WoAI90

Here’s a summary of the things we hadn’t known before we could watch the recorded stream on youtube:

1. Death’s Embrace:
More downed state damage and striking foes below 33% health inflicts 1 stack of vulnerability for 5 seconds.
What we didn’t know: there is no icd on that vuln application.

2. Barbed Precision:
33% chance to inflict bleeding.
Apparently this was an intentional change. But the explanation for why they did it seems rather weak: “we lowered the critical chance because you’re also getting that 20% bleeding duration”.
Seriously? Like you can’t just get that same duration buff now on top of extra condi duration from points in Spite? The 20% merged into this trait really can’t be the reason for this nerf.
I could imagine that in combination with traits in other specs like Deathly Perception would give this trait a noticable buff, and this might be the reason why they nerfed it. However, I’d much rather take -50% duration on that single bleeding stack than have the proc chance reduced by half. This way the potential to do just as much damage is still there, but now it’s more of a matter of getting lucky with rng than an actual static nerf to the trait.
So if any changes to Barbed Precision are still possible: please revert the proc chance to 66% and reduce the bleeding duration instead.

3. Master of Corruption:

What we didn’t know: the additional self applied condition is a different one from the initial condition, so not just another stack of the same.
Robert Gee didn’t know them by hard (they will be seen in the skill fact), but he mentioned blindness, poison, bleeding and torment being among those extra condis. He also said “some of them can be devastating if you don’t get them off of you in time”.

4. Terror:

Not an actual news regarding the skill itself, but Robert Gee said that it was moved to master because of the feedback they got from the community.
First of all, no one was bothered by the tier Terror was in! It was annoying that it didn’t get the same treatment of the baselining of traits that were standard picks accross all classes, including the necro.
Quote: we made a lot of staff traits baseline and rolled the remaining ones into one because those staff traits were taken all the time anyway. (obviously the very same logic applies to Terror)
Also, even if moving Terror to master tier was an actual request from the community (it wasn’t), this feedback would’ve been based on the version of the Curses specialization we saw before. With this new trait setup Terror makes just as little sense in master as in any other major trait tier. Seriously, please merge this with a minor already!

5. Weakening Shroud:

No icd confirmed. Functionally identical in this case just means it’s the same but also a seperate skill from the dagger’s so it woudn’t interact with Quickening Thirst.

6. Beyond the Veil:

In regards to the community’s request to make this apply to allies:
According to their explanation, Death Magic is not supposed to be a support line for allies but just for buffing your own defense. So Beyond the Veil is primarily protecting the necro and as an extension of himself also his minions.

Rym.1469:

I removed Barbed Precision because I had better idea and I don’t really enjoy passive procs. They add nothing to the gameplay besides RNG and reducing you in optimal gear.

I would agree with most rng based procs that trigger weapon skills or have long icds of their own.
However, Barbed Precision being a short duration bleed with a 66% chance to proc and no icd, the damage it does is really more of a pretty accurate reflection of your crit chance rather than an unpredictable passive rng.

Just fyi, you forgot to include the baselined cd reduction on the mark skills.

Most of these suggestions seem reasonable on their own, but having all of them together might be too much.

And some of those are clearly overpowered, like 25% faster Shroud #1. Or healing allies for 30% of your lf regen, especially if you stack several necros with this trait.

Also, @Curses, why would you remove Barbed Precision?

A quick comment because I’m just half way through the podcast:
Carrion will still be a lot better than rabid.
Rabid will get a bigger bonus on Target the Weak and the additional sources of healing traits will give you a better healing effectivness against direct damage, but the fact remains: life force scales with vitality and lf regen is percentage based. This and the fact that conditions in general might be more potent in PvP will still give Carrion a better overall defense.
As for damage: power>precision.

Just to clarify, I am in favour of Terror being a minor, and regardless, I’m also in favour Consume Conditions getting the Shelter-treatment.

However, with the suggestion I made here I’m simply stating that Terror freeing up a slot in master tier would actually lessen the blow we got to all of our corruption skills, which includes our only viable heal.

Terror is a trait that just fits into every condition build with every other Curses trait, there is not a single condi necro that wouldn’t make good use of it. So if Terror stays a major trait, regardless of which tier it is in, there will always be a conflict. Making this universally usable trait a minor, however, would prevent any kind of potential conflict, and to make this happen I would gladly take a damage nerf to Terror.

Bhawb.7408:

I personally would prefer that Terror be made into an effective burst trait, and condi Necro be shored up so that it wasn’t needed to have Terror.

I doubt this would work.
First of all, buffing necro to be strong enough without Terror and at the same time amping up Terror to be a stronger burst would just result in an even stronger combo if you pick the trait. So in that case, why wouldn’t you want to have it even more than now?
Also, for Terror to become a true burst trait, its damage would need to at least double, and it would have to do all it’s damage at once instead of per tick, basically a copy paste of Static Discharge or Lighting Rod, which kinda defeats the nature of it being tied to a condition.

Anyway, then there’s the nerf to Consume Conditions.
I won’t even start on the vuln that is applied after a full cleanse, but we also get a higher cooldown and then a trait that reduces it again by 33%. Basically a 50% buff to how often you can use your heal, and that makes Master of Corruption without a doubt a mandatory pick. I don’t even care about additional conditions the trait inflicts, you’d be mad not to have this cd reduction for Consume. And at this point any trait that is placed in the same tier against MoC is just dead weight.
As it happens, that would be Terror and Path of Corruption.
If Terror would be moved to a minor slot though, you’d feel less bad for being forced to take Master of Corruption.

As for Path of Corruption:
Like I said already, we get a lot of additional sources for corrupting boons with other traits the next patch, and Master of Corruption would actually reduce the cd of Corrupt Boon by a lot. So while PoC is a nice trait now I doubt it would be very tragic to not have it in the future in every standard condi build.

On another note, it would be possible to have Path of Corruption switch places with Chilling Darkness so PoC is in the same tier as Plague Sending. This matchup would basically give you the choice of a standard corrupt on Shroud #2, or as an alternative the Plague Signet proc which comes with the same effect if traited with Signets of Suffering. This way you could go with a boon corruption of your choice depending on which one provides better synnergy with the rest of your traits.
So with this setup you’d get PoC – Plague Sending – Terrifying Desecnt in adept, and MoC – Chilling Darkness – (new trait) in master. Or alternatively: PoC – Plague S – (new trait) in master and the others in adept.

Malchior.1928:

I’m ok with this. However, would the damage get to be too strong with fear and chill dmg, and burning, and literally every damage condi possible ?

You can trait for all of these condition buffs anyway, the difference would simply be that you don’t end up with a 30 hour cooldown on your healing skill.

Also, Terror isn’t really that strong to begin with, but the point of moving it has the primary purpose of not making Master of Corruption an imposition for necros but an improvement and a cost-effective choice if its alternatives were PoC and a new (power) trait.

The current uproar about the Curses trait arrangement is actually more about Master of Corruption and the nerf to Consume Conditions.

But what if Terror was no longer a master major trait?

And what if the rest of the new traits stayed like they are except the minor traits are changed to include Terror:

• adept: Barbed Precision: 20% bleeding duration + 66% chance to inflict 2 sec of bleeding.

• master: Furious Demise: When you enter shroud, gain fury for 5 seconds. And your critical hit chance is increased by 2% for each condition on your target.

• grandmaster: Terror. Additionally you gain condition damage equal to 13% of your precision.

If these changes were implemented your choice for condition builds in the master tier would be Master of Corruption vs Path of Corruption.

Clearly MoC would win for most builds, but corrupting boons is actually buffed with other traits and skills, so how much do you really need Path of Corruption?

Path of Corruption would still see some use in builds that aren’t using corruption skills, like spoj pointed out in a different thread:

spoj.9672:

Whatever you do to curses. I feel like it should maintain the choice to take 3 debuff traits. So that means chilling darkness, path of corruption and weakening shroud.
…

And it [Path of Corruption] doesnt have the negative aspect of bonus self harm conditions on use like MoC does. Which as a power debuffer I wont necessarily have access to a transfer to deal with.

Basically, merging Terror into the minors would have the following results:

1. All condition builds that use corruption skills (including Consume Conditions) are free to take Master of Corruption without compromising the essence of a true condi necro by giving up Terror.
Bonus self-applied condis aside, this would mean a semi decent buff in regards to the cooldowns of Consume Conditions and Corrupt Boon which are found on almost every necro’s skill bar in PvP.

2. Other builds will be free to take PoC if they would get little or no return on traiting corruptions.

3. There would be a free slot in the master tier.
How about we revive the current version of Target the Weak for this one: +2% damage for each condition on your target.
This stays true to the general theme of Curses and would provide a viable PvE option for power builds.

Lily.1935:

Right now Curses has okay Adepts, poorly placed Masters, and atrocious Grandmasters.

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

As for the other two traits:

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

And Weakening Shroud seems to longer have an icd. Notice how it says “functionally identical to Enfeeblind Blood” while other traits like Spiteful Spirit, Plague Sending or Blood Bond all say “This trait benefits from the recharge bonus of …”.
So it seems like what they did is: remove the icd, make it a full Enfeebling Blood instead of Enfeeble, merge in Withering Precision, but in turn bump it up to grandmaster.
With the new system you actually can’t assume gm>master>adept, but compared to Lingering Curse and Parasitic Contagion it really needs that buff to be a viable pick over the others.

Lily.1935:

interestingly, barbed precision used to be 33% with 2 second duration.

That’s not true, it’s always been 66%.
They did however buff the duration a long time ago, it used to be just 1 second originally.

Softspoken.2410:

poison fields have definitely become more valuable in terms of providing condition damage, which actually makes them a little less terrible in general.

I believe Corrosive Poison Cloud will be seen more often after the patch.
The stacks have also been raised to 3 per pulse, it provides a poison field for 12 seconds and if traited with Master of Corruption the cooldown is just 20 seconds.

Rym.1469:

Yes, it’s quite a thing. I’d still like that 1 bleeding back or bigger radius in which Regeneration applies, but it’s not bad as I thought.

Bigger radius for regen?
Not sure what you mean, but the trigger radius of all marks is 60 units more than the mark itself, so a standard 300 after the patch. And that includes the area in which regeneration is applied to you or your allies.

Rym.1469:

They could give us back the ally cleanse on Putrid Mark, though.

I agree, but keep the changes for conditions in mind: no stack limit, and more intensity stacking conditions. And while cleansing is going to be random instead of having a predictable transfer priority, transfering even a few stacks of poison/bleeding/burning from several allies to a single target could result in some weird situations.

Here’s an idea though, the ally cleansing could follow the same rules as the caster: 1 condition transfered per target. This way if there are more allies than opponents you won’t be able to cleanse everyone and stacks would spread more evenly in team fights.

Citizen.3869:

Will hybrid builds be forced towards condis in light of these new changes?

Hybrid builds have been working so far because the base damage of conditions means that – depending on the skills used – full condi gear yields a smaller return than suplementing some of it with power and direct damage.
I’m confident that hybrid builds will still exist. However, a low-ish stat investment in condition damage will make a more noticable difference in condi pressure compared to someone who’s running full dire/Scavenging with 2k condi dmg.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how the loss of trait line stats will affect builds, but I’m sure I’ll have to make some adjustments to my gear anyway.
Generally I think it’s a good change though.

I’ll probably notice a lot of things you won’t cover in the podcast when I listen to it later.

You could talk about the changes to conditions, the new damage formulas, no stack limit on damaging conditions, vulnerability affecting condi dmg, and the impact this has on the necro’s place in each game mode. Are we going to see more condi builds, necro or other classes? Are zerkers and cele builds still going to be dominant in PvP despite of this change?

Another thing you’ll probably talk about anyway, Master of Corruption:
Regardless of it’s weird place in Curses and its competitors for the same trait slot, that 33% cd reduction: It seems a lot of corruption skills (including our only viable heal) were nerfed just so they are in a decent spot when traited. So is the opportunity cost of not going with MoC a legitimate choice at all? Or will MoC be mandatory? Is the cd of the untraited skills so high that they might as well have given them cds of several minutes but have MoC reduce it by 1000%?
I know a lot of this is pure speculation, but it seems that they wanted to buff a specific skill, like being able to have Plague on a 2 min cd, but in turn a lot of other corruption skills became colleteral damage.

Mark of Blood will be getting 2 stacks of bleeding in all game modes.

Some people complain about this being a nerf, but overall the staff will be stronger after the patch than it is now.
And here is some math to prove it:

1. The damage formula of bleeding
At lvl 80 will be changed from 42.5 + (0.05 x condi dmg) to 26 + (0.075 x condi dmg), so the base damage is going to be lower but the scaling is increased by 50%.
That means with 1500 condition damage 1 stack of bleeding does 117.5 now and will do 138,5 after the patch (assuming you can still get 1500 in PvP). That means 2 stacks of bleeding after the patch will do about 18% more damage than the current 2 stacks in PvP and about 21% less damage than the current 3 stacks in WvW/PvE.

2. On the upside, a lot of features are made baseline.
We get lower cds and size by default, even the 10% direct damage from Spiteful Marks was added, so in regards to damage you will only need to trait for unblockable marks in Soul Reaping (which will be a popular spec anyway) to have the same result as a 4 point investment in Death Magic.
This is a straight up buff for all staff users.

3. Chillblains will get 3 stacks of poison for 5 seconds, now the duration is 6 seconds.
Duration nerf aside, the damage itself is a really nice buff:
Old poison dmg formula at lvl 80 is 84 + (0.1 x cond dmg).
New formula per stack: 33,5 + (0.06 x cond dmg).

If we apply that to a build with 1500 condition damage you get 234 and 123.5 per stack after the patch. That means 3 stacks on Chillblains will actually do 370.5 damage per tick. That is about 58% more damage per tick and about 32% more damage for the entire duration assuming both skills aren’t cleansed.

4. The poison field on Chillblains will be a lot more effective after the patch.
The combo field radius will be a standard 300 units for everyone. Also, every projectile and whirl finisher will stack more poison instead of just adding duration.
For now we only have a few rather unreliable projectiles, but our allies can combo with it and of course once the Reaper/Greatsword comes out we will be able to whirl through as well.

5. Vulnerablity
The change to vulnerablity means a serious buff to condition builds on top of better scaling with condition damage.
For example: the 1500 condi dmg build with 138.5 dmg per stack of bleeding could actually get 173 dmg if combined with 25 stacks of vuln.
As a reference, this amount of damage is currently only possible if you had 2610 condition damage. And a Mark of Blood with 2 stacks of those bleeds would do a total of 346 damage, which is almost as high as you can currently get with the same amount of condition damage and 3 stacks of bleeding: 3 × 117.5 = 352.5.

Bottom line:

In PvP where you have 2 stacks of bleeding already, all of the changes to conditions mean that Mark of Blood and our staff will be buffed.
In PvE and WvW it will also be a buff because we can actually stack condition damage higher than 1500 with full gear and might/vuln stacking in groups, not to mention that our own vuln application will be improved with the Spite specialization.

EremiteAngel.9765:

…

tl dr: There was a thief. You used the necro-exclusive feature “dodge” and kicked his butt with auto attacks. Ergo: necro op, l2p.

Guys! Put away your pitchforks and torches, it seems we’re solid afterall.

Rav.9475:

What if your Consume Conditions get interrupted?

I think it would be an improvement to have the extra vuln applied at the start of the cast, so when you actually make it through the agonizingly long cast time you are “rewarded” by consuming it for some extra hp, assuming you didn’t have vulnerability already.
This way it would still fit the currption skill theme but you’d avoid being in combat for a longer time after using it as a cleanse.
Also, it would create another element to Consume Condition’s counterplay: you take more damage while casting it and if it’s interrupted the vulnerability stays on you. And in my opinion, this would warrent leaving the regular cooldown at 25 seconds or 16 seconds if traited.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Solution

Can you please ensure this trait only place a Mark of Blood when we’re in combat?

I completely support this notion.
But I think this trait will be changed to ooc-only anyway.

Just to clarify, there are on-dodge traits on other classes as well. The warriors’ Reckless Dodge, the engi’s Evasive Powder Keg and the mesmers Deceptive Evasion only trigger in combat already.
The only dodge trait that triggers a damaging skill even out of combat is the thief’s Uncatchable (Caltrops). But if there is one class that can avoid getting into combat by leaps, teleports or even stealth, it’s the thief.

Basically, for all other on-dodge traits there are already mechanics in place to avoid forcing a player into combat, except the current Mark of Evasion of course. And not only do necros have the worst mobility, but the new standard 240 mark size would make this trait even weirder if it triggered ooc.
So yeah, I’m pretty sure Mark of Evasion will be made to only work in combat anyway, but since we couldn’t see any explanations about our traits on stream it should definitely be mentioned here on the forum, just in case.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Would that solve most of the complaints?

No.

Lordrosicky.5813:

This game has no healers and so every class needs to have a viable heal in order for it to be even remotely useful. It is of critical importance.

It’s definitely of critical importance for the one class that can’t be healed by allies half the time at all.

Ice Furl.4982:

it was probobly the strongest healing skill across any proffession so I am not surprised to see it take a hit.

Clearly you’ve started playing necro only yesterday (or maybe even the game?) so we’ll forgive your ignorance.

The only good thing about Consume Conditions is its utility, the full cleanse. The actual heal on the other hand is bad, it’s bad compared to the healing skills of other professions and it’s especially bad in context of how our class works. We have the highest health pool and no other defensive mechanic but face tanking, one might assume that such a class actually has the best healing of all classes but for now we’re stuck with life force regen and a single heal that fills on average about ~25% of our total hp every 25 seconds. In actual fights this translates to not being able to recover from damage at all unless we get out of combat again.

Now, the Consume nerf means several things:

1. The full cleanse isn’t actually a full cleanse anymore. The ONE thing this heal had going for it won’t work anymore. (don’t worry, our other healing skills are still worse than Consume so we’re stuck with it)
Well great, if I want to counteract this issue alone I’m forced to take extra cleanses like Shrouded Removal, Spiteful Renewal or Plague Sending. Not that these traits aren’t decent, but the latter two are rng based or depend on factors you can’t control and Shrouded Removal is now in a specialization that no one except minion masters will ever use again because the staff traits were move away. Either way, our build diversity takes another small hit.

2. The cooldown is higher.
Now this one is completely uncalled for, and I’m sure the only reason the cd was raised in the first place is because Anet wanted to buff some corruption skills indirectly by buffing Master of Corruption. But increasing the cd reduction of the trait to 33% would’ve made Consume Conditions have a 16 seconds cooldown, and apparently they thought 20 seconds is as low as they want to go so just bump the base cd up to 30 sec.

First of all, even a 16 second Consume wouldn’t have nearly been as much healing as we actually need. The amount it heals for is just laughable. So maybe they were worried about giving us that full cleanse (which isn’t actually full) on such a low coodlown? Clearly not, otherwise they wouldn’t have added traits like Plague Sending as the only reasonable choice in adept tier (until people go Chilling Darkness + Reaper).
So basically Curses has been reduced to a mandatory Plague Sending (because there is no other choice) and Master of Corruption (so your heal doesn’t suck). Terror and Path of Corruption – the current standard picks for condi builds – completely take a back seat, and the only realy choice you’ve got left is: Weakening Shroud vs Parasitic Contagion vs Lingering Curse.

So again, would the shelter treatment help? A little, but it doesn’t solve any other issues with Curses either.

I really don’t favour condi over power when I’m making suggestions, it just seems that you have a very specific PvE encounter in mind for the trait combo you’d like to have.
Anyway, if the only change to the current verion of Curses was Terror moving to minor, I’d be a lot happier than I am now.
The discussion here seems kinda pointless though, it’s not like they are going to make any more adjustments until the patch goes live next week.

spoj.9672:

There are boons in PvE. And there will probably be more in the future. I would rather have controlled boon removal instead of random uncontrolled condi cleanse.

Then take Well of Corruption? That is more effective in PvE anyway.

Also, Path of Corruption for boons in PvE? Really? A long cd, single target skill? That’s a rather thin argument against having traits in Curses moved that actually have a high impact in PvP.

nekretaal.6485:

The previewed traits had the condition removal trait as a minor, but this changed spite to have the downed state trait (functionally worthless) as the minor.

Actually Spiteful Renewal was switched with Reaper’s Might.
And btw, downed state dmg isn’t worthless and you actually get some bulnerability with it as well.

Muchacho.2390:

flow.6043:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Agreed. Problem is you will need to run rabid on condi after the patch. And then chill of death is pretty terrible.

Why rabid?

Because of the minor that gives condition damage based on your precision.

You mean the 650 precision on a rabid amulet? The trait would give you 85 condi dmg for that. Yeah, no I’ll gladly stick with carrion if that is the deciding factor.

spoj.9672:

Yeah and thats exactly the issue. Maybe i dont want to use corruption skills and maybe i dont want extra self weaken/poison on my self.

Those 3 debuffer traits are skill independant. Only chilling darkness require a bit of build investment for.

Plague sending is probably useless to that build in a lot of situations. Id rather not be forced to use a trait i dont get any benefit out of.

You can actually build a necro without any access to blindness, so in that regard it is just the same a MoC.
And like I said, if you don’t want corruptions you can take Plague Sending, why would you not benefit from? Are we talking about PvE? But then you wouldn’t take Path of Corruption…

Lordrosicky.5813:

Agreed. Problem is you will need to run rabid on condi after the patch. And then chill of death is pretty terrible.

Why rabid?

spoj.9672:

Ok ill put it another way. They are not condition damage traits and they are not condition dependant traits. All 3 of those traits work well on power builds. Master of corruption doesnt necessarily work due to its negative aspects and requirement for condi transfer/cleanse.

Your idea is great for condi builds, not so much for others. Maybe someone wants to go in curses to use debilitating conditions. Path of Corruption doesnt fit that exactly but it can do it under the right conditions.

Well, but in that case Path of Corruption really is out of place. It depends on your opponent having boons, and then it turns them into conditions (which are now randomly selected too).
And imo Master of Corruption will be a decent pick for any build. In PvP more so because you get a decent heal, but in PvE it reduces the cd of Blood is Power.

spoj.9672:

And it doesnt have the negative aspect of bonus self harm conditions on use like MoC does. Which as a power debuffer I wont necessarily have access to a transfer to deal with.

I don’t think Master of Corruption will actually add an additional unique condition, but more of the same. Like: one more stack of bleeding on BiP, or more vuln on Epidemic, or more poison on Corrupt Boon. I think that’s why the patch notes didn’t actually say how many stacks each corruption skill will get.
Also, you either don’t use corruption skills or you do, in which case you self inflict conditions either way. Being a “power debuffer” won’t change that. But in my suggestion (MoC vs Plague Sending) you’d be free to take Plague Sending if you want to avoid corruption skills entirely.

EremiteAngel.9765:

flow.6043:

EremiteAngel.9765:

Warhorn: No significant change = status quo, still viable as power/condi/hybrid

Banshee’s Wail was moved to Blood Magic.

um well i dont use warhorns so…not sure if it is a buff or a nerf…

Banshee’s Wail turns warhorn from ~meh into boss-mode.
And while I’m sure many warhorn users won’t have a problem going with the now pretty nice looking Blood Magic specialization, it does mean that compared to any current build with Banshee’s Wail they’ll either have to drop a spec for BM or go with a lame warhorn.

spoj.9672:

flow.6043:

Also, the adept traits in Curses basically make you choose Plague Sending until Reaper comes out when people will consider taking Chilling Darkness instead. No one is going to take the falling damage trait. But in that case, would Chilling Darkness really have to stay in adept tier?

What if we had this setup instead:

• Terror merged with Furious Demise as master minor trait.
• adept: Terryfying Decent – Plague Sending – Master of Corruption
• master: Chilling Darkness – Path of Corruption – Parasitic Contagion
• gm: Lingering Curse – Weakening Shroud – (New Trait)

Problem with this is it removes the debuff choice trait from the adept tier. Chilling Darkness should stay adept for this. Or maybe path of corruption to swap with chilling darkness as an alternative.

Whatever you do to curses. I feel like it should maintain the choice to take 3 debuff traits. So that means chilling darkness, path of corruption and weakening shroud.

Why?
For what build and in what game mode is having these three traits in seperate tiers the highest priority for Curses.

Also, I don’t quite follow your logic in regards to Weakening Shroud and Chilling Darkness being the debuffers.
I might as well argue that Master of Corruption is more effective as a debuff trait because it reduces the cd of Corrupt Boon and gives more conditions to transfer. And Plague Sending, especially if you pair it with Signets of Suffering will corrupt boons in addition to a condi transfer so it really doesn’t get more “debuffy” than that.

Lordrosicky.5813:

As for terror. I think you have to run it. I have gone back and forth on this. But you really do just have to run it. Otherwise no kills will be made ever. So we basically move out of this with a 30s heal instead of a 25s one. A pretty huge nerf as it nerfs every necro spec in the game by alot. heals are so important.

You might be right.

Also, switching Terror with Parasitic Contagion wouldn’t solve the situation at all. Weakening Shroud is now a grandmaster trait, and I suppose some people would still like to use Lingering Curse in condi builds, so having Terror matched up against those two would be just as horrible.
And Terror just isn’t that strong. I really don’t understand why this shouldn’t be merged with a minor trait. It’s just that little edge you need to push your damage here and there to be viable, and since it’s just a trademark trait of any condi necro I don’t see how this shouldn’t just be an automatic unlock if you pick a condition centered specialization.

Also, the adept traits in Curses basically make you choose Plague Sending until Reaper comes out when people will consider taking Chilling Darkness instead. No one is going to take the falling damage trait. But in that case, would Chilling Darkness really have to stay in adept tier?

What if we had this setup instead:

• Terror merged with Furious Demise as master minor trait.
• adept: Terryfying Decent – Plague Sending – Master of Corruption
• master: Chilling Darkness – Path of Corruption – Parasitic Contagion
• gm: Lingering Curse – Weakening Shroud – (New Trait)

In this case you would reserve Plague Sending as an option for those who don’t take Consume Conditions, maybe some will take the Shout heal or will make some use of Vamp Signet or Well of Blood in combo with Blood Magic. Anyway, the point is, if you don’t have a low cd Consume Conditions you can take Plague Sending to compensate for missing out on CC’s cleansing.
And assuming that Chilling Darkness will see more use with the Reaper, a core spec necro on the other hand could choose between Path of Corruption or more sustain with Parasitic Contagion.

Lordrosicky.5813:

As for condi necro. Again it is mandatory to take the corruption trait. So then you cant take terror OR path of corruption. This is huge. If only 1 of those traits was swapped with ANY of the GM traits (which are all useless more or less for a condi necro).

I think if terror is swapped with parastic contigian and CC has a base cd reduced to 25s with the trait reducing corruption skills by 25% instead of 33% then we actually have some decent specs.

Since the changes were announced I’ve been mostly thinking about 2 things:

1. How am I going to change my build? Because atm I would need 4 specs to get the same traits I have now.

2. How much do I really need Terror?
At this point we don’t even have to talk about Path of Corruption anymore, this trait is just dead. No one will ever use this again.
The real choice you have to make now is: fear does damage vs having a usable healing skill.
Just pathetic, we gave so much feedback on Curses, and while they listened to some of it and changed a lot, I’m not sure this version isn’t actually worse than what we’ve seen in the last preview.

ronpierce.2760:

Nope! How do you make crappy heals look more attractive? Nerf the only good one. Bam! All heals are equal!

The sad thing is, Consume Conditions would still be our best heal if its cd was 40 seconds. Our other healing skills just suck monkey balls so hard that it’s just no contest at all, and now they created a situation where the only way to make Consume usable is to take a trait that will automatically exclude 2 of the current meta traits from ever being used again.