Guild Wars 2

EremiteAngel.9765:

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

Banshee’s Wail was moved to Blood Magic.

Zin.6170:

I’m not optimistic about it being a typo, I’m fairly certain it is indeed 33%.

Sucks that the stream crashed yesterday.

Falcon.8713:

flow.6043:

Falcon.8713:

Barbed precision was and still is a crappy trait

Dude, hand in your necro card on your way out :P

Let’s do some math:
Every critical hit you have a 66% (maybe 33% in the future) to give an enemy 1 stack of bleeding of 2sec (3 if traited) for a total of 300 damage (traited). For each extra bleeding you do that you might crit. The only thing is on a carrion necro you don’t have crit chance at all so the trait is just Inneffective. Next to that if you attack with scepter on a rabid amulet you only have 50% crit chance. So that becomes 66% of a 50% chance on a slow attacking weapon —-—> Not worth it :p

First of all, how does Barbed Precision get 3 sec “if traited”?
And what if I told you that even a carrion necro “if traited” with Furious Demise, Target the Weak, Deathly Perception, Decimate Defenses… can reach a rather high crit chance.
Also, like Goldenrevolver has pointed out above, outside of PvP you can actually get higher crit chances by mixing stats or going full sinister entirely. And what if I then told you that such a necro can – among other things – actually get more bleeding damage with the warhorn’s Locust Swarm + Barbed Precision than the dagger’s Enfeebling Blood. Would you seriously call this a crappy trait?
Anyway, there are some skills and combos that have a high hit frequency, so if they trigger Barbed Precision only half as often after the patch, it’s going to be a noticable loss of damage.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well condition necro just got completely destroyed. Not even sure it is worth playing anymore.

1. Lingering curses back to how it was, means Dumbfire is even more useless than before, and we lose 30% duration from traits, nerfing us even further
2. Consume conditions is now the only heal in the game that hurts you instead of helping you
3. Epidemic nerfed to 20s CD meaning condition necros can no longer reliably AOE.
4. Barbed precision nerfed from 66% to 33%, meaning we lose the ability to stack bleeds past ~20 now, basically rendering the condition changes moot.
5. Can’t take terror even at master level because we need to take master of corruption if we want to even be playable.
6. dumbfire is so useless now it shouldn’t even be a minor trait let alone a grandmaster.

I completely agree.
Except in case of Dhuumfire they might be prepping this as a condi option for Reaper’s Shroud which has a quicker and cleaving auto attack.
Then again, even with a condi build you’ll probably get more damage with Deathly Perception instead.

One thing that might have helped the whole Curses situation is if Terror was merged with a minor trait. If only someone suggested this during the time they gathered feedback from the forums. Oh wait, we all suggested this a million times! Except the ones who thought it would be too strong if you could couple it with a general 100% condi duration buff from Lingering Curse. But now LC doesn’t increase all condis anyway, so there really is no reason why Terror shouldn’t be an auto-unlock by picking the condi specialization.

I completely agree.

Also, CC’s amount of healing is so low that it actually could’ve used a buff, and considering the opportunity cost of having Master of Corruption compete for a slot with Terror and Path of Corruption, a 16 sec cd would’ve actually been decent.

PoC/Terror shouldn’t be in the same tier

Chillax, you can completely avoid having to make this difficult choice between these traits if you don’t want Consume Conditions to have a cd of 30 hours.

Ocosh.5843:

Well, if it’s any consolation, Terror now applies the damage over the course of the condition’s duration, meaning it will often be broken and thus not do as much damage as before.

That’s exactly how it works already.

Falcon.8713:

Barbed precision was and still is a crappy trait

Dude, hand in your necro card on your way out :P

It says 33% instead of 66% now.
Considering there’s absolutely no reason to have the trait cut in half, this has to be a typo. Then again… Anet.

Did anyone notice how Barbed Precision says 33% chance now instead of 66%?
I really hope this is just a typo.

Falcon.8713:

CC will be a good thing for terrormancers.

How? Terror and cd reduction for CC compete for the same spot.

I’m so disappointed by some of those changes.
I’ll write up something longer later but for now let’s adress the big one: Curses.
What the hell did they do to Curses??
Consume Conditions is nerfed, it’s not like this skill didn’t need a buff in the first place, but now the only way to make it have a decent cooldown is to pick Master of Corruption. Where is this trait? In the same tier as Terror and Path of Corruption! What?!
So not only will there no longer be builds with Terror and Path of Corruption, but if you want a proper healing skill you actually can’t have either of those traits.

This is not necro only, I get this on all of my characters.
I’m not sure how this happens, my best guess would be that the game sometimes doesn’t register dying as getting out of combat but just the usual getting enough distance to your opponent. So if you die in a fight and the opponents you tagged are still fighting nearby, you only really start getting out of combat when you’re teleported away to your spawn.

That’s just Nemesis demonstrating something obvious in an unnecessarily complicated way. And no, there is no such thing as 133% condi duration.
The current version of Lingering Curse changes the scepter’s auto attack and Grasping Dead, they become completely new skills with different durations, and those longer durations (non of which actually increased by 33%, misleading tooltip) can again be extended by regular duration buffs, hence not violating the 100% rule.
This was actually something nice for PvE condi builds, and I don’t really understand why they would remove this base duration mod since it’s very easy to max bleeding duration with food and gear anyway.

That was badly phrased, I didn’t mean “now” as in just because of this video.

Ravezaar.4951:

The Necro he faced used an Axe vs a Thief…. speaks volume

I use an axe vs thieves. Problem?

On topic, players like him make me want to get an NA account, I’m always looking for competent opponents and thieves are one of my favorite matchups.

striker.3704:

It has the potential to be incredibly powerful.

It has the certainty to be incredibly overpowered.

striker.3704:

How often do you see a necro running corruptions right now anyway?

Always…?

striker.3704:

After all, it’s only 33% more duration than you would have pre-patch.

What?

Lily.1935:

You seem to believe that Arena Net are not aware of that interaction in the current game. They are aware of it. They’re not incompetent. More than likely LC will stack 100% condi duration above whatever else there is. Otherwise it doesn’t synergies with most rune sets, a couple other traits including one from the reaper or a few sigils. It would limit your options if it was the way you and many others believe it will work. From a design stand point it would be a terrible idea if it didn’t stack with them above the 100% limit. Which is why I don’t believe they’re doing what you and many others believe they’re doing.

There are 3 possibilities:
1. 100% was a typo in the tooltip.
2. They didn’t think about what 100% in a single trait would do at all. They just slapped a rediculously high number on Lingering Curse and called it a day.
3. Your version, they are aware of the issue of conflicting with other traits and will remove the cap on condition durations, or let Lingering Curse alone exceed the 100% cap. Either way this 3rd option would by far be the most rediculously op case of op-ness in the whole history of gaming, ever!
Some conditions of ours are short for a reason, like all fears, Barbed Precision, Chilling Darkness/Nova, Shivers of Dread… they are all likely to run their full duration even against opponents with excellent cleansing. Now, think back to when Anet took their time to decide whether necros should have 2 or 3 sec of weakness on Weakening Shroud, and then made it 2 because 3 would be too much. Keeping that in mind, do you really think Anet would allow necros to get one trait that not only doubles even harder CC conditions on its own but even exceeds the 100% mark in combination with other traits and gear? This would mean you could turn 1 second fears and chills into almost 3 seconds, 2 seconds into more than 5 seconds, how about 7+ sec of cripple with every Locust Swarm pulse, or a traited Corrosive Poison Cloud that provides more than 100% weakness and poison uptime on a capture point (not counting any combos with the poison field). Barbed Precision would inflict more damage than an unbuffed scepter auto attack, you wouldn’t even need to bother with the scepter itself anymore, just have it equipped before going into Reaper’s Shroud and auto attack with Deathly Perception and/or Decimate Defenses to inflict more bleeding aoe than the scepter could on a single target.
Seriously, while you might think that the devs can’t possibly overlook a redundancy in overstacking with certain trait and gear combinations, a 100% boost on top of other duration buffs without any limit would be the worst thing to ever happen to our balance.

Lily.1935:

Except you forget about the expansion of condi cleansing and resistance giving total immunity to conditions. That 100% duration is good, but not broken.

Yes… long durations definitely help a lot against complete immunities.

You don’t seem to understand the implication of getting +100% with just one trait.
It doesn’t make sense in context of the game, the class or even withing the same specialization where it would render Hemophilia useless.
Also, it’s a balancing nightmare, because the trait will be op unless you nerf everything else, but then you destroy all build diversity by making LC mandatory.

Tim.6450:

So in other words it only affects 2 skills on a specific weapon, what a grandmaster? I can feel the power of the trait. /sarcasm
…
It still won’t make lingering curse on the level of a proper grandmaster.

With the new specialization system you have to stop assuming that grandmaster traits are stronger than others. You always unlock the entire line, so you might as well call them tier A, B and C. The only thing that matters is which three traits compete for the same slot, and which builds will be possible by doing so.

Tim.6450:

You are right to some extent but a trait has to be strong enough to mak ean impact on it’s own to be taken.

That’s simply wrong, you always have to consider the entire build.

Tim.6450:

The only thing this does is make terror more desirable not LC.

Well, I’m actually hoping that Terror will be merged with a minor trait…

Tim.6450:

20%~30%!?? it doesn’t even cover the loss on cripple/chill/immob from dogged march, the 25% on melandru and barely the 20% from hoelbrak. This trait is still a grandmaster. 40% at least 50%~60% preferable, after all it is scepter only.

The trait actually gives condition damage as well, and I’m in favour that it still buffs the scepter’s base durations.

Also, you can’t just look at the trait on its own.
Like I said, they could raise gear related duration buffs, which would make more sense in context of the entire game where not every necro build or even other classes have access to Lingering Curse.
For example Runes of the Nightmare: they are still going to be a popular choice after the patch, so you could buff them to have 25% instead of just 15% condi duration, and if LC had another 25% you’d end up with a total of 50%. That’s actually already more than you can currently have with 6 points in spite, and as it happens that would leave exactly 50% for Master of Terror before you max out your fear duration.

Bummer ^^
You did win a few nice fights though, would’ve been cool to watch any of those.
Nice video anyway, I’m a fan of your channel now

Tim.6450:

I aggree 100% is a number too high , but can you accept a lower number or do you the trait concept completely broken? I do think the trait concept can work, because duration has counters.

Imo the concept is nice, but the duration would have to be lowered to ~20-30%.

Generally I think it’s good that you can pick a trait to counteract the loss of stats that were usually tied to trait lines, although in most cases this is solved through raised base stats and minor traits.
However, 100% is just mad, it makes no sense to give a single trait this much duration.
It would be more reasonable to have some runes and sigils slightly buffed, so you could still reach a high duration in combination with a weaker version of Lingering Curse. This way you’d create some form of opportunity cost, but having one trait instantly max out everything is just lazy.

Lily.1935:

If there is a cap on duration than Lingering curse wont count toward that cap. its as simple as that.

If that is true then Lingering Curse would be even more broken.

Barely anyone here is even considering how terrible 100% would be for the class. Every skill and trait would have to be balanced with the possibility of just doubling everything with this trait. And redundancy with other traits or gear aside, if this really would allow you to exceed the 100% cap then it’s actually even worse. We’d end up with a class that is completely crippled unless you run scepter + LC.

Seriously, if Lingering Curse actually goes live with 100% condi duration it would be the worst thing that ever happened necros. So, no thanks to that.

And to everyone who’s crying about other classes getting more than us: that’s just not true. And even if it was, the solution to that can’t be to simply dump a truck load of condi duration into a single trait.

Aesa.4819:

Did they say they would change our signets? I must have missed it, what did they say and where (if you remember the source)?

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/6594135 at around 03:07:30

Bhawb.7408:

TheLastNobody.8319:

It might possibly because it’s flesh golem doing the interrupt and not really you. though I’m not sure, never used perplexity runes before.

Basically this. When you activated Charge, you actually just press a button that makes your Flesh Golem use a skill; the Flesh Golem is the one to interrupt them. This is counter to how conditions applied by the minions work, as they are credited to you.

This could be explained by the fact that minions have their own stats and don’t scale with the necro’s gear. So you would probably have to equip your Flesh Golem with a seperate set of perplexity armor if you wanted him to trigger confusion for you.

This has been pointed out countless times already.
The duration increase of the new LC doesn’t make sense on so many levels, they definitely have to lower it.

Gexim.3289:

OLD Lingering Curse: Conditions inflicted by scepter skills have 33% increased durations.

Just fyi, it’s not 33%, that’s just a bad tooltip.

Anchoku.8142:

Technically, Terror is just a Fear condition buff. Necromancer does not really need it but the Dev’s added it to help a condition spec. Base Fear damage can be modified across all professions or Terror can be baselined into Curses as a minor. Making Terror require a trait slot creates a cost/benefit trade that I am not sure the profession still needs.

^This.

Anchoku.8142:

Regarding Signet Mastery, I have long wanted some trait to reward players who take multiple signets. SM does not do that. It is very linear and encourages just taking one signet so a full signet build remains awful.

But that’s not the trait’s fault. Our signets just aren’t good enough, but according to the devs they will be changed anyway.

Anchoku.8142:

Question: I forget if Retal is affected by condition damage. DoT may be excluded but I do not remember if this is true. However, if the new way of handling conditions includes Ret damage… I have no clue how that would affect balance. Any speculation?

Retal only works against direct damage and this will definitely not change.

After I saw myself whispering you in your chat window, I was almost expecting to observe one of our duels from your perspective ;P

Cecilia.5179:

Vital Persistence and Spectral Mastery are both defensive traits that are undoubtedly good, but still often lose to Master of Terror when running Terror because their benefits are muted behind the increased fear uptime, which does more damage and provides opportunities to make game changing moves, such as using Signet of Spite.

Considering how Terror’s tick mechanic hasn’t adapted the new partial damage tick system yet, there’s really no guarantee that you’re actually doing more damage with longer fears. And you don’t need longer fears to follow up with Signet of Spite, or almost any other skill for that matter.

Cecilia.5179:

Of course, I still don’t see the point of Master of Terror being a trait when even its name is just asking for it to be part of Terror.

If Master of Terror remains nothing but a fear extension then there’s no point in keeping the trait at all. Merging it with Terror makes more sense of course, but I’d really rather have Terror as a minor trait and in that case +50% would be too strong and just another redundancy in Curses. Mabye it could be just 20%, like Cold Shoulder.
Another idea was to have the “additional damage if the target is afflicted with another condition”-part move to Master of Terror. So in that case Terror as a minor trait would be weaker unless you also have MoT in Soul Reaping to buff its damage for pre-existing conditions. And this would elevate MoT to a damage trait that could actually be considered as an alternative to Spectral Mastery and Vital Persistance.

Cecilia.5179:

Spiteful Spirit gives no damaging conditions, just a cripple, which isn’t even all that helpful anymore, and it removes a boon, which is actually bad for a condi build, because condi builds gain more benefits from corrupting boons, and to top it off, the retaliation it grants scales with power, not even mentioning how mediocre retaliation is. I can’t actually see how this is a grandmaster. It seems like a poor option on any build.

You’re wrong about all of this.
Cripple is helpful, not just for kiting but as a cover condition as well.
Boon removal is bad? Really, in this meta? There are boon machines running around providing perma-every-boon to each other in team fights. You can count yourself lucky for every extra bit of boon strip you have, and Unholy Feast is a good one too: 600 range untargeted aoe on up to 5 opponents.
And last but not least: retaliation is boss. Yes it scales with power, but only with a factor of 0.075 and not with precision or ferocity, so the damage difference of a carrion vs zerker amulet is actually very small. And considering there’s no icd on retaliation, it can actually do far more damage than any condition per second, even with a condition build.

Cecilia.5179:

Signet Mastery only benefits builds that have signets, so it cannot be used on every build. The active on Signet of the Locust, which it pops at a health threshold, scales with power, making it very weak on condi builds.

Like Sigmoid said, this trait is about healing if you get hit with low hp.
The damage part is not only irrelevant here but it’s actually not much to begin with, like somewhere between Mark of Blood and Chillblains.
Also, the trait synnergizes with itself, so what you get is 3 stacks of might and a passive heal on a 24 second coodown that actually scales with the number of opponents. And that really is good enough to use without any other signets on your skill bar.

Anchoku.8142:

flow.6043:

Anchoku.8142:

Vulnerability cap stays at 25.
Therefore, axe still sux and is in need of rework.

Vuln stacking with axe would suck even if there was no limit.

True, but it would suck less in group PvE than it does now. >25 per cent damage increase would be useful. Knocking someone’s vulnerability off the 25 stack for your own latest one is absolutely useless right now.

Doesn’t matter, you’d still not use the axe to stack vuln, Bitter Chill will be far superior.

Chillblains + Epidemic will do 5 stacks aoe at first, then Epi will double that and stack another 5 vuln for the reapplication of chill. So that’s 15 stacks vuln aoe with just 2 skills. Now add Dark Path, Chill of Death, Death’s Embrace, maybe Chilling Darkness + Well of Darkness or blasting darkfields, or just whirl through your ice field as Reaper with Chilling Nova.
The point is, with Bitter Chill you’ll easiliy be able to maintain 25 stacks of aoe vuln on your own. Do you really think anyone would still bother applying 2 stacks per second on a single target with the weakest auto attack ever?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-no more caps

-We can’t cap any condition stacks anyway, it doesn’t benefit us.

We can definitely reach 25 stacks of bleeding on our own, but the main point of this change is to actually allow two or more condition builds to attack the same target without having them lose damage. So that change definitely benefits us.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-all conditions are intensity stacking now

-This is a nerf to us since it’s difficult for us to apply Burn and now we will need to stack it for Dhuumfire to be at all significant…

You’re making it sound like every necro is currently using Dhuumfire.
Besides, the icd will be removed so that somewhat evens out the loss of damage, it definitely will for the Reaper’s Shroud auto attack.

Cecilia.5179:

Master of Terror was the next issue I wanted to bring up. This trait is one of those “mandatory” picks whenever you invest into soul reaping. It’s very existence in the master tier invalidates the use of the other two traits, Vital Persistence and Spectral Mastery, on many other builds.

Actually Vital Persistance (merged with Path of Midnight) and Spectral Mastery (merged with Spectral Attunement) will vastly overshadow Master of Terror even if you don’t have Lingering Curse.

Cecilia.5179:

Spite Grandmasters (Lack of options for non-power builds)

Spiteful Spirit and Signet Mastery can be used by any build.

Let’s be honest though, even now a shorter chilled/crippled leap still means you’re getting away from a necro.

Anchoku.8142:

Vulnerability cap stays at 25.
Therefore, axe still sux and is in need of rework.

Vuln stacking with axe would suck even if there was no limit.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

-Condition specs significantly boosted dps

As far as I understood it, condition builds will only profit from the change to vulnerability (Spite will be very sexy for condi necros after this patch) but the change for the actual damage formula will mostly prevent power and celestial builds to have hard hitting conditions without any real investment in condition damage.

Anyway, fear and chill are definitely still going to stack in duration, but perhaps anet will come up with some hybrid solution for Deathly Chills and Terror.

spoj.9672:

Dagger 2 does the same damage as axe 2 but it also heals you.

That’s not true, especially with Axe Training.
And not only is the damage of Ghastly Claws higher, but more importantly: the channel is shorter, the cd is much lower and there is close to no precast on Ghastly Claws while Life Siphon has a windup of about 3 hours.
As for life force vs healing: I’d actually prefer healing but since there’s no life force on the auto auto attack of axe I’m fine with lf regen, which happens to be situationally more reliable that the dagger’s auto attack.

spoj.9672:

The point is dagger is far superior when you do get close. And that is going to happen sometimes.

*IF you get close.
Sometimes (especially in WvW) it’s impossible to get close to your opponent, and sometimes you don’t want to be close even if you could.

spoj.9672:

I mean sure you can choose to use axe and try to justify it any way you like. But the weapon is beyond bad and thats not going to change unless it gets a rework.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take any damage buff and a much better trait than our current Axe Mastery, plus a whirl and blast finisher on #2 and 3, and whatever else people have been suggesting. But the real reason why the axe isn’t considered viable is the auto attack. I can argue all day about axe 2+3 being better than dagger’s and scepter’s combined, but there’s absolutely no excuse for Rending Claws.

So when I “justify” using the axe then it’s because I don’t have to use its auto attack. And for my build Ghastly Claws + Unholy Feast simply outperform anything the scepter or dagger could do instead.

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

Why?
Because it heals? What about Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery, Unholy Sanctuary, Soul Eater and Blighter’s Boon? Should they all be moved to Blood Magic as well?

Also, we don’t know what Blood Magic is actually going to look like, so it’s really too early to tell if anything should be moved there. But generally, having sustain available in specializations other than Blood Magic is good for build diversity.

Because no other build has to have their sustain directly compete with their main traits. Power builds get their main damage/utility from Spite, and don’t have to give up Vampiric Rituals for it, MMs get their main damage/utility from Death Magic, and don’t have to lose sustain options for it. Conditions are the only build right now that have to choose between sutain, or being remotely useful.

I see your point but your logic is flawed.

You might as well complain that you can’t have Blighter’s Boon and Deathly Chills.
Some healing traits will inevitably compete for a slot with damage traits.
If you want to change this and move healing traits to Blood Magic then all you’re doing is limit build diversity.

Also, Parasitic Contagion is not the only sustain trait available for condition builds, just like Spite is not the only damage/utility source for power builds.
For example, who says a condi build can’t run Spite/Curses/Reaper with Spiteful Renewal, Blighter’s and Signet Mastery? Or who says power builds won’t work with Blood Magic/Soul Reaping/Reaper?

Besides, if Blood Magic is reworked properly it will be a decent sustain option regardless of what build you’re running. So if all goes well it should turn out to be a decent pick for condi builds even if it doesn’t include Parasitic Contagion.

Roe.3679:

I’m not sure I follow? I never said the damage of terror is too much. It would be too much if every fear was doubled in duration and still dealing terror damage, though. Assuming you had a scepter.

I just meant to point out (again) that the duration on LC is too long, even on its own.
So if that was lowered you wouldn’t have to worry about certain other traits becoming too powerful in combination with it.

Sagat.3285:

I’m losing you bro :/ .Bases on my propositions in Curses:
PvE condition necro=Weakening Shroud>Parasitic Contagion>Lingering Curse
PvP condition necro=MoC>PoC>Terror
PvE/P power necro=Chilling Darkness>BW>Punish The Weak(imo)my new proposed power GM

What is the issue?

Parasitic Contagion is not a PvE trait. PvE is all about dps, you don’t need healing traits.

So if you moved PC to master tier instead of Reaper’s Precision you’d end up with this:
PvE condi: any adept trait – meh – Terror.
Why Terror? Because you can easily get max durations with food and gear, so Terror will probably add up to more damage than the +150 condi damage from LC.
PvP condi: whatever – PoC – LC.

spoj.9672:

Sagat.3285:

No condition necros use WH in PvE.

Which was entirely flows point. You are forced into using warhorn for a power build and theres no trait for a PvE condi build.

Quick side note: a traited warhorn with sinister gear can do more bleeding damage with Barbed Precision than the dagger’s Enfeebling Blood. But still, atm Curses forces you to take warhorn in PvE, and that issue can be resolved by removing/reworking Reaper’s Precision.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Could work. Just looked at the repear traits for the first time though. Amazed how bad they are. Look at chilling force kitten . It only grants 1% life force and you have to strike a chilled foe. Which is rare to happen seen as they have to not cleanse chill and you have to land an attack. Seems stupid to me.

Same for blighters boon. The numbers are just too low I think personally.

Lol, I think you might be the first to dislike the new Reaper traits.
Especially Chilling Force and Blighter’s Boon will be really nice if they remain without icd.
@Chilling Force: it’s a lot easier than you think, keep in mind this works with aoe as well. Also, consider the skills you get with Greatsword and Reaper’s Shroud, there’s even an ice field you can whirl through and crits against chilled foes can trigger Chilling Nova for even more aoe chill. And I think Chilling Darkness might see a rise in popularity. Anyway, I doubt you’ll see a shortage of chilled foes with the Reaper, so 1% might even be rather high considering some of our multi-hit skills could completely refill our lf pool with this trait.
@Blighter’s Boon: Now combine that trait with Chilling Forc: Imagine RS#4 Soul Spiral + Locust Swarm through a precast ice field (or leap through for Frost Armor): every hit generates might + life force + hp. And this is just what you can do on your own, if you add all the boon sharing of other classes in team fights you’ll end up with a serious chunck of sustain.
Also, think about how people stack might and swiftness at the beginning of a PvP match, this trait basically makes it possible to start with a considerable amount of life force.
So I get that it might not seem like a lot on paper but I’m sure it will add up to quite a lot in actual fights.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Repeaer getting burning?

With Dhuumfire, in fact Reaper’s Shroud will probably be the only way to make Dhuumfire a viable trait considering there will no longer be an icd and Reaper has a much faster cleaving auto attack.

Sagat.3285:

Who uses PoC or WH trait or WH itself in PvE O.o?

Everyone uses warhorn in PvE, and if you have more than 2 points in Curses you’ll have Banshee’s Wail as well.

Sagat.3285:

Parasitic Contagion is already used in current PvE condition necro builds.

Parasitic Contagion isn’t used at all, especially in PvE.

I think you didn’t quite get was I was trying to say.
Reaper’s Precision is absolutely useless, there is no game mode or special situation in this game where this trait could ever be better than its alternatives.
That leaves Banshee’s Wail and Path of Corruption, which is fine for PvP but in PvE there aren’t any boons so Banshee’s Wail really is the only option left. Which means if you play PvE the Curses spec forces you to take a warhorn, which is fine for power builds but power builds don’t get any power grandmaster trait. So could you run a condi build in PvE with all those condi gm traits? No, because you don’t have a condi master trait.
Basically, the only way you could pick Curses is with a condi build in PvP.

Roe.3679:

Plus, if you could double the duration of every fear while it dealt damage it would be crazy.

Think about this: would you rather take 3k damage at once and be stunned for 1 second, or be stunned for 3 seconds and take 1k damage every second?

Clearly longer CCs are worse. So do you really think Terror would be the troublemaker in this combination of the two traits? I would even argue that doubling our fear durations with LC is terrible on its own, without adding the extra damage of Terror.

It’s actually funny how people on the one hand completely overestimate Terror’s damage (because it really isn’t much), but on the other hand forget that we’ll be able to add Dhuumfire and Deathly Chills to our fear lockdowns. And a Reaper will easily be able to apply burning + fear + chilled simultaniously, so… how are those conditions ok but the damage of Terror is too much?

Sagat.3285:

if boon corruption … was more frequent it wouldn’t such a problem, I gave proposition about Curses quite a few times
-Replace Reaper’s Precision with a lesser version of Parasitic Contagio (7-8%) that works in DS

Why would Parasitic Contagion have to be less effective if it was in a different tier? Or do you mean it should be nerfed if it actually worked all the time?

Also, wouldn’t it be counterproductive to replace Reaper’s Precision with Parasitic Contagion if you think our viability in the current meta hinges on being able to frequently corrupt boons? So in that case, who is going to drop Path of Corruption for it?

And another problem that has been pointed out several times already is that not only has the Curses grandmaster tier no power option, but the master tier doesn’t have any viable PvE trait other than Banshee’s Wail. And while the warhorn is really good for both condition and power builds, it scales a lot better with power and synnergizes better with a melee weapon like dagger.
So basically, the trait that replaces Reaper’s Precision in the Curses master tier should be a PvE condition trait. And Parasitic Contagion just doesn’t fit that requirement.

Bhawb.7408:

Parasitic Contagion needs to be Blood Magic…

Why?
Because it heals? What about Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery, Unholy Sanctuary, Soul Eater and Blighter’s Boon? Should they all be moved to Blood Magic as well?

Also, we don’t know what Blood Magic is actually going to look like, so it’s really too early to tell if anything should be moved there. But generally, having sustain available in specializations other than Blood Magic is good for build diversity.

Bhawb.7408:

LC gives you better conditions over-time (it shouldn’t give condi damage imo), it makes you a longer-term threat, whereas Terror makes you a legitimate burst-threat, something “unique” to Necro (though not atm due to terror being fairly weak).

Several Problems here:

1. As it is, the +100% on Lingering Curse is a huge balance problem for the entire class. Not to mention that you create several conflicting duration overlaps unless you lift the 100% cap, in which case LC would be even more op than it is now.
So for the sake of the argument, let’s assume that the duration on it is lowered to a reasonable amount: somewhere around 30%.

2. Would you still consider yourself a long-term threat with just 30%?
Besides, huge durations like 20 sec bleeds really only make a difference in PvE, where LC is actually getting a nerf because the base duration mod gets removed.
In PvP on the other hand the biggest advantage of having extended durations goes to short duration conditions like Barbed Precision, Dhuumfire, fears or all the chill traits in Reaper’s spec. Anything longer is usually getting cleansed.
This and the fact that even with a condi build you have to setup bursts to do any meaningful damage in the current meta, Lingering Curse just enables you to land more short term pressure with higher CC uptime on fear, chilled, weakness, etc.

3. 150 condition damage isn’t that big of a deal considering how conditions scale with it, like bleeding would just get 7.5 damage per stack.

4. @Terror being “a legitimate burst-threat and something unique to Necro”:
Like I said, in PvP duration extensions are mostly used to increase burst pressure rather than actual long duration conditions. So how would you buff Terror to actually compete with +100%, or just +30% for that matter? Double its damage, or even tripple it? All you’d be doing is turn up the volume on a trait that basically fulfills the same role as Lingering Curse: increase condi pressure.
Also, Terror being a unique necro feature doesn’t mean it can’t be a minor trait. Quite the contrary, if LC didn’t have its stupidly high duration there’d be no reason why the most iconic condition trait of the necro shouldn’t be an automatic unlock by picking Curses, just as much as you unlock Reaper’s Shroud by picking the Reaper spec.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Because that’d be too strong.
… long lasting conditions for long lasting pressure, versus powerful burst conditions with heavy CC attached.

1. A proper grandmaster setup would look like this:
Offensive condi trait – defensive condi trait (Parasitic Contagion) – power trait.

2. There is no CC attached to Terror, just damage and not a lot of it.
You have access to all your fears either way.

3. Don’t count on Lingering Curse actually getting released with +100% duration, that amount is just rediculous.

Cecilia.5179:

So, right now, the ele forums are buzzing because one of the devs told them that Elemental Atunement had been changed to a minor trait, so now they don’t have to suffer with Evasive Arcana vs Elemental Attunement.

That’s actually nice to hear, hopefully they will resolve our Curses line in a similar manner.

Just fyi, Terror getting merged with Target the Weak as a gm minor trait has been suggested many times already, and it was even included in the feedback of our forum specialists.
So… fingers crossed, hope dies last.

Pride.1734:

@flow
It is an open discussion and even though i have already read much on the topic and also tested some things, I am always open to be convinced by well funded opinions but you have to give your reasons so that i can understand them.

First of all, the point of getting toughness is to improve healing effectivness against direct damage. And while you get deminishing returns on toughness the more you have because of how damage is calculated, vitality always scales linear.

Secondly, for necros most of their defense comes from generating life force and absorbing damage in Death Shroud. Lf regen is always percentage based so in that regard you don’t have to worry about healing effectiveness at all.
Also, necros have bad healing. Almost no sources other than a main heal that usually refills less than a third of their health pool.

So, after doing some math (here are some more detailed calculations) you realize that the effective hp of a carrion vs rabid amulet is only slightly in favour of rabid if you don’t have any extra toughness at all. But once you add about ~80 toughness carrion starts taking the lead. In case of the current condi meta build with 4 points in Death Magic, you start with 200 toughness over base stats plus another 170 in DS.

The bottom line is, rabid can still overtake carrion after some healing, but only if you take nothing but direct damage and don’t use Death Shroud at all. Non of which would actually happen in a real fight, because of course you’re using your life force as much as possible and you’ll always take condition damage, especially in the current cele meta.
Basically, the scenarios where toughness is a better defensive stat for necros than vitality will never happen in real PvP matches or WvW fights.

Sigmoid.7082:

That should be done anyway because it’s a bug.

Thought it came from the confusion between exactly how much DS was since until a while ago the number couldn’t be seen. Testing had it either 120% hp but anet said it was base 60%. It just had an innate damage reduction.

Would count it as a feature since if it was a bug it would have been fixed by now.

It is a bug, and no, some bugs (especially on necro) just aren’t high on anet’s priority list.
The whole thing started almost 2 years ago. They fixed a downedstate -50% hp bug, which somehow seemed to double our lf pool. This had been tested even before we could see a number on our lf bar, so people just assumed 120% rather than a damage reduction, afterall having a damage reduction or a higher effective hp is the same thing. So when we got our actual life force numbers it became apparent that the displayed amount really was 60% of our regular hp, but the damage was still reduced – not in the damage log or on screen numbers but the amount of life force subtracted from our pool, so it’s not an actual damage reduction like you’d get with armor or a protection boon.
The question was: what kind of bug do we have here, reduced damage or just a wrong number on our bar? The bottom line would be the same, except for one thing: damage that overflows to our regular hp is the only case when the correct amount is subtracted from our lf pool. And that makes it more likely that there is a damage reduction in DS rather than a wrongly displayed number.
Either way, it is bugged and needs a fix.

Pride.1734:

From what i deduced vitality gives you a bigger hp pool in DS and as a result also increases the lf gain per 1% as well as the damage you take passively while being in DS.

Yes.

Pride.1734:

Toughness makes you last longer out of death shround and effectively increases your heal. It also makes each 1% life force more valuable.

No.

Pride.1734:

Another dillema is that necros dont need any vitality and scale better with toughness. This makes carrion somewhat suboptimal.

The exact opposite.

ODB.6891:

1. DS/RS no longer has any innate damage reduction

That should be done anyway because it’s a bug.

ODB.6891:

2. DS/RS can no longer be cancelled/removed/shortened by attacking us. LF can only be consumed by DS/RS abilities.

That would mean that as long as you don’t use any skills you are immune to damage.

Balekai.6083:

Ele, Warrior and Guardian group healing require setup ( waster field combos) or are limited in range or mobility in some way while not actually doing damage at the same time.

Life Transfer being easier to use doesn’t make it more effective.
Also, waterfields aren’t small and some of them are ranged skills, so are blast finishers, additionally they have their own blast radius that can extend beyond the combo field. So in that sense you can actually easily out-range Life Transfer.
And almost every blast finisher does damage, some way more than Life Transfer while also being less susceptible to interrupts.

Balekai.6083:

We don’t see packs of Necros using Tranfusion on eachother because DS right now only allows Unholy Sanctuary as healing.

You are assuming that the only way to use Transfusion in team play is if all necros simultaniously went into DS and Life Transfered each other back to health. Non of this would actually happen in a real battle.
Also, the reason we don’t see it used is because Blood Magic is a garbage trait line. If Transfusion was in a different line we might see it more often.

Balekai.6083:

It would be counter productive for so many DS Necros to be specced that way when we would be wasting those heals mostly on shrouded necros most of the time. Again, the problem of group heals having no effect while in DS.

Hey… you are the opposition in this thread, you were arguing against healing in DS, remember?

Balekai.6083:

I could easily see GWEN become NEWG.

GWEN is just a convenient way of arranging those letters, it doesn’t actually mean G>W>E>N.

Balekai.6083:

Not to mention this wouldn’t be a zerg problem only. It would also work on smaller scale 3v3-10v10 situations as well. Especially if one or two necros were specced with healing power.

You started with the zerg argument, according to you that’s where you could most easily abuse healing through Shroud.
And yes of course this would work in smaller fights as well, and of course it would be more effective with healing power gear. I’m still amazed how you see any problem with this.

I have read all of it the first time, still doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does.

Balekai.6083:

They wouldn’t even have to spec for healing. The 2K 600 radius area heals over 3 seconds would be more than enough to give all the necros in the zerg a restart button or two.

I just have to ask now, how often (or at all) do you participate in wvw zerging?

This “amazing” 20x necro immortal zerg you’re describing would not only have a ton of counterplay but the amount of healing you’re describing is far exceeded by guardians, warriors and eles, with the difference of them actually providing each other perma-every-boon, including stability. Current GWEN zerg compositions are and always will be better than pure necro comps even if those necros could heal each other with Transfusion through Shroud.

So, again, whatever outlier you can come up with, other classes can already do better.

ronpierce.2760:

…it will create frustration amongst players playing together.

You say it like that isn’t the case already.

ronpierce.2760:

At least, not in the same magnitude as there will be in HOT.

While I agree, this really shouldn’t be an argument for getting healing to work through DS. Even if your team comp doesn’t have any or very little ally support, there’s no reason why that little bit of healing shouldn’t work on necros all the time.

Balekai.6083:

If we allow full healing in DS, the DS mechanic would need to be changed dramatically. Instead of having DS as it is now, it would need to become a short uptime, spammable ability with a lot more LF gain, a much decreased cooldown and a much smaller life force bar. Why? Because otherwise Necros could easily wait for and abuse incoming healing, which is a lot more effective in DS for many reasons, while covering their 1%-10% health with large LF bars. This could be taken even further with Necros grouping up in say WvW and abusing each others AoE healing/support (Transfusion for example) in addition to lots of LF gain during battles for crazy attrition. The end result would be a nerf bat after all the QQing was over.

No to all of that.

First of all, you are totally overestimating the impact unrestricted healing would have. The scenarios you’re thinking of, Transfusion in WvW and such… do you really think a 5-target aoe 3k heal on a 40 sec cd is going to make a bunch of necros any more tanky than the same amount of eles or guardians healing each other?
You’re trying to think of some outliers, but the reality is that all other classes would do even better in those situations. It’s rediculous to think that necros could abuse something that everyone else always had access to.
“But in DS you can’t lose your real hp…”, yeah, I know, you’re still wrong.

Secondly, lower lf pool + better lf regen + lower shroud cd = no change to what we have now. Seriously, it would be exactly the same to have a lower pool that can be used more often. Solves nothing.

Just to mention it here again: there’s the 50% dmg reduction in DS, which is a bug, so if that is fixed our lf pool will be cut in half anyway. With +15% baseline from the new core spec system we’d end up with an effective 57.5% of our current life force pool.

Sigmoid.7082:

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

The problem is that anything less but completely unrestricted healing through Shroud makes no sense in context of both the class and the entire game.
If they need to rebalance life force or healing traits to make this happen then so be it, but healing through Shrouds simply isn’t a question of “if” but “when..”.

Rym.1469:

I always thought that Axe could be our go-to Life Siphon weapon.

Autoattack hits so low that it could easily be a siphon.

That would be nice.

Bhawb.7408:

Axe needs a bit better of an identity. It doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be, and besides the 3 skill does nothing well.

The only thing it doesn’t do well is the auto attack, which as it happens is the only reason why scepter or dagger are taken at all. Imagine you had Rending Claws on either scepter or dagger, they’d be the worst weapons ever. But if the axe had either the dagger’s or scepter’s auto attack instead, it would easily be our best weapon.

TheLastNobody.8319:

the 2 is great honestly, but the fact it’s a channel hurts it’s viability horribly because one stun or dodge and you loose a lot of damage.

Arguably that could also be an advantage because if it wasn’t a multi hit channel it would lose its entire damage when stunned or dodged instead of just some of it.
Also, there are other benefits to this, like being semi immune to blindness and having a better chance to proc sigils or traits, especially if they don’t have an icd: Barbed Precision, Chilling Force, vamp traits…

Azure.8670:

Have their been any changes announced for HoT

According to the core spec preview Axe Training will be nerfed! :P

Get ready for up to 12 sec fears with double skull!

Seriously though that change makes sense, but I doubt it will affect skill visibility in transformations because having your stolen ability moved to a different slot simply means that you always see the f1 icon, so in that sense it’s really nothing new.