Guild Wars 2

ronpierce.2760:

flow.6043:

I think the emphasis here wasn’t that traits shouldn’t increase damage, but the fact that having granades in your bar made Granadier a mandatory trait, as in: untraited granades are pointless.

With additional 150 cond damage and double duration either the trait will be OP or the base will be nerfed to needing the trait. The difference is too large for one of the other to not exist if 2 versus 3 grenades caused that much of a disconnect.

LC will definitely be OP and it will lead to baseline nerfs of other skills and traits.
But the Grenadier trait is a different issue. It’s basically like Greater Marks before they increased the base radius of marks from 120 to 180.

zapv.8051:

LC should be changed to: 15% attack speed and 20% condition duration on scepter skills. Then it should be master tier. The only way a trait like this should be a GM is if it adds an actual new effect, not just increased effectiveness.

I like the idea of increased attack speed, afterall the biggest selling point of the scepter is the poison on auto attack but for that you have to complete the attack chain.

However, people really need to stop thinking in tier-hierarchy with the new specialization system. Since you get the entire line anyway you can’t assume grandmaster traits are stronger than lower tiers.
So when you say LC should be master instead of grandmaster you’re not doing so because it isn’t strong enough, but you’re really questioning if the trait is paired up against the right alternatives.

ronpierce.2760:

… based on logic ANet applied to engineer where they specifically said they made Grenadier baseline because they didn’t feel a trait should be a flat 50% damage increase.

I think the emphasis here wasn’t that traits shouldn’t increase damage, but the fact that having granades in your bar made Granadier a mandatory trait, as in: untraited granades are pointless.

Anchoku.8142:

The real deal is scepter must be nerfed unless a GM trait slot is blown on it. Obviously, scepter is OP with any condition duration at all.

After this I just thought you forgot to write /sarcasm in case it wasn’t super obvious to some people.

Anchoku.8142:

Where will 100%+ duration come from to make scepter ok in PvP if a GM is not used?

You make it sound like scepter is bad unless you get +100% to all conditions?

Anchoku.8142:

I worry about scepter being astoundingly bad without that one GM.

Lingering Curse currently isn’t used in PvP at all, but scepter is.
Also, that “new” LC won’t make scepter any better because due to frequent cleansing all of its conditions are likely to not run their full duration anyway, but +100% will break the balance of all condition skills/traits that aren’t tied to the scepter.

Shiki.7148:

I think you all forget that traits do NOT award the free condition duration anymore. Which is NOT affected by changes in basestats, and if they do not up condi-duration on gear, it will be a LOT less than what it seems.

Sure, but guess what the right approach to this issue is: Increase base stats or introduce one trait that doubles everything?

ronpierce.2760:

What ever happened to the logic behind Grenadier???? “We felt it was strange having a GM trait that effectively increased your damage by 50%.”

-> Trait DOUBLES duration and adds damage to conditions…
-> Trait adds 50% bleed duration.

Where is the logic?

Lol, but the 3rd granade will be made baseline. Apparently it felt strange to them to withhold a +50% damage trait that everyone took anyway. In fact, a lot of the standard picks in Explosives are going to be either baseline or a minor trait in order to give engis “more meaningful choices”.
Now, if we applied the same logic to necros and had a look at Curses, can you think of the one trait that was the most standard choice for any condition build?
Yeah, Terror. And that trait isn’t even half as impactful as Accelerant Packed Turrets, a 3rd granade, bigger bomb radius and Forceful Explosions. But instead of giving Terror the engi-treatment they put it into grandmaster next to the single most overpowerd trait the necro has ever seen. And not only would this make Terror – the trademark trait of any condimancer – never be used again but Terror now also blocks a spot for power builds.
My mind is still blown…

nekretaal.6485:

All of the condition transfers will end up nerfed.

Transfers just copy the duration of the condition on you so they will be unaffected by Lingering Curse.
But yeah, 100% on LC would snowball into a balancing nightmare.

MAN.9046:

Target the Weak still contributes nothing to a condi build

1. Crit chance is good for all kinds of builds, especially for condition builds when you get Barbed Precision as a minor trait.
2. This trait somewhat compensates the loss of stats that were tied to the trait line.
3. One of the biggest issues with the Curses grandmaster traits: this specialization is not supposed to be exclusively for condition builds. There absolutely HAS to be a proper power trait in the gm tier, and of course universally usuable minor traits.

Skoigoth.9238:

Player.8373:

And I didn t know Weakening Shroud got an ICD

Yeah, it really sucks =/ It will be dagger off-hand #5 on DS entry basically, hence the 25sec cooldown. I doubt they will take it back, because then it wouldn´t fit their new “effects caused by traits should correspond to weapon/utility skills”-philosophy anymore.

If at least one person at Anet would play necro they’d have never implemented Weakening Shroud and Spiteful Spirit with icds. It’s inevitable that the cooldowns of Death Shroud and those traits will overlap in a way that the actual procs will exceed those icds by far, maybe by more than double.

Player.8373:

I rly love the new lingering curse , would be a bummer if it got nerfed.

It really wouldn’t. Think about it, LC is a gigantic double-edged sword if there ever was one.
Is it strong? Sure. But a lot of other duration extension lose their value because you intantly max out everything with this trait. Also, any further balancing would be done with the possibility in mind that you could just double up every duration with Lingering Curse. And that means that you’re screwed if you don’t use a scepter + LC.

And like Skoigoth already said, in PvE it’s just a flat nerf.

Skoigoth.9238:

I think they should keep the condi-duration increase the way it is now (33% base condi-duration; i.e. does not count towards maximum condi-duration) and just add the +150 condi-damage while wielding scepter.

I don’t mind the general duration buff, but 100% is just rediculous. And yes, they should keep the base duration increase.

Just fyi, it’s not 33%. In fact to this day I don’t understand why the tooltip would include this highly misleading number. All scepter conditions are increased by a different amount of full seconds, non of which by 33%. And since it modifies the skill itself you can again increase that amount by 100%. So for example 5 sec bleed on Blood Curse becomes 7 sec with the trait, so when you increase that by 100% you’ve actually gained 180% on your original 5 seconds.
Anyway, the tooltip should just say “increases the scepter’s durations”.

Skoigoth.9238:

The real problem is Parasitic Contagion, it doesn´t do enough for a GM trait (even with lets say ~7 stacks of bleeding, poison and 1-2 stacks of torment on your target the healing is laughable) and it really should be in Blood Magic not Curses.

I disagree.
I think it’s absolutely wrong to dump every healing trait in Blood Magic. For two reasons:

1. Healing shouldn’t be exclusive to a single specialization. If it is viable you’ll just make it a mandatory pick, if it isn’t you don’t have any sustain left in the other lines.

2. Blood Magic will never be viable unless healing through Death Shroud is possible and 100% unrestricted. Before then every “let’s put this in BM..” is just a euphemism for “this trait sucks, let’s move it to a place where no one will ever use it”.

And btw, I actually think Parasitic Contagion can be a very decent trait and a viable defensive alternative to (a nerfed) Lingering Curse if you could heal through Shroud.

So just to make it my position on the matter clear again:
Parasitic Contagion (if you could heal through DS) and Lingering Curse (if the duration is reduced to ~30%) are appropriate grandmaster traits in Curses.
Terror is the one that needs to be merged with a minor trait, and in turn there should be a viable pick for power builds in the gm tier instead.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Shiki.7148:

Thats free power, not build-defining.

So is Terror, and yet it defines the entire condi Necro meta.

Except it doesn’t. It really is just a damage buff, it doesn’t change your gameplay at all.

I’d like to point out again that “build defining” is something that the devs shouldn’t have said in the first place. All that did is confuse people and put an artificial and pointless value on traits, especially since the specialization system will no longer mean that grandmaster traits need higher point investments and are therefore supposed to be stronger than lower tier traits.
Just accept that there are “boring” traits like damage buffs and coodlown reductions, but that does in no way invalidate their importance to some builds.

Abimes.9726:

@Flow i think every one will agree necro should regen his lifeforce by playing agressively . ( the 10% could be OK) but passive regen is just not fitting necro theme.

Well, I wouldn’t call life force resetting to a certain amount out of combat “passive regen”, especially since it could also mean that you’re losing life force. Also, one could argue that half of our skills generate life force in a somewhat passive manner, like Spectral Armor/Walk or Locust Swarm. Of course you have to cast them, but after that you’re free to use other skills while the lf regen simply works by being near your opponents.
Anyway, I just thought that if there was a minimum of life force a necro should have out of combat (like 10%) then why not a maximum as well?

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Life Blast is poor for condition necromancers in the sense that they currently have to waste lots of points in the power line to get Dhuumfire and outside of Dhuumfire, the attack does no damage because they lack power. Power necromancers definitely get more use out of the skills, except for the fear because they don’t take the traits to maximise its duration or damage.

Doom is a valuable interrupt, the fact that power builds don’t do the same damage with it as a condimancer’s Terror-traited fear isn’t that important. Also, power necros usually have 6 points in Spite and not every condi necro has Master or Terror. So the difference in condition duration isn’t necessarily that big.

As for Life Blast, Dhuumfire is not in “the power line” but in Spite: condi duration, Chill of Death, Spiteful Spirit… nothing that a condi necro wouldn’t want to have.
And the damage of LB with a carrion amulet is definitely not nothing. Worse than a power necro of course but still somewhere around 1-2k dmg depending on crits and your target’s armor. Also, Life Blast can be used to remove blindness or aegis before using more impactful skills, among other things…

ronpierce.2760:

Zwets.3785:

You know, an easy fix for much of our “deathshroud is a poor alternative to actual escapes” complaints, would be Deathshroud coming with its own endurance bar for 2 additional dodges that refil separately from the non-DS endurance bar.
Possibly with a kind of ‘spectral dash’ animation to emphasise it was an extra dodge.

Even if you don’t want that in core necromancer, it could be part of a specialisation later, add in some traits that trigger effects when dodge rolling in DS as the traits for it and you’d have happy Necros.

o.O I like this. Decent alternative and easy to implement “baseline” boost for 1vX defenses for Death shroud. Certainly better than nothing.

But only if it has a green dash effect.

I like this too. It won’t solve every problem but it’s a good idea.

It’s a really nice article btw.
The only things I disagree with are that according to the author some DS skills are unusable by certain builds. That’s not true, Tainted Shackles is a really good skill for any kind of build, and even Life Blast and Transfer have some value for conditions builds.
Also, instead of being able to use regular utility skills in Death Shroud, I’d rather get new DS skills that actually provide more utility and scaling defense than the regular skills we already have.

Rym.1469:

The Struggle!
It’s our new take on Guild Wars Hard Mode content, inherited from the first game. In Struggle Mode, you all play as Necromancers and don’t have access to Life Blast or MH Dagger. Good luck. It’s real"

The struggle is real! :o

ronpierce.2760:

Yeah from reading it, ALL I see are people screaming “Necro are amazing at zergs”. Thats literally all I’ve seen. And then "you can’t say they’re broken they’re part of the “meta” in WvW"…

Is freaking Zergs REALLY what has been holding Necro back this whole kitten time? >_>:

Those people just lose all credibility when they say stuff like this, and I hope no one takes them seriously.
Of course a class with a high health pool and semi decent aoe damage is doing great in WvW zergs. But that is not because necros are good, it’s because they are kept alive by their zerg with perma-every-boon, perma-cleansing in organized groups and because a big crowd of players are inevitably going to peel rather well for them.

I’ll just link this here..
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Article-On-Ten-Ton-Hammer-About-Necros

Some thoughts on transparency in regards to fighting with and against necros:

1. Marks.

Icons:

Every mark has a different icon in the middle when you place it somewhere.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mark
Apparently Chillblains and Reaper’s Mark share the same one but Reaper’s has this black smoke bubbling on it in addition to that.
All this could lead one to believe that it was Anet’s intention to make those marks distinguishable if they aren’t instantly triggered. But let’s be honest here, not even someone who’s all zoomed in on their 4k monitor could tell those marks appart in the heat of battle. They all just look like green dots.

Solution: One of the marks can keep the green dot, the rest gets a cirlce (bigger than the dot), a square, a triangle, and an X. The latter three would stretch all the way to the edge of the mark.
This way marks could be told appart after just one glance.

Casting:

The only tell one gets when fighting against a necro on their staff is the slightly different hand gesture of Reaper’s Mark, but that is a rather negligible difference with a 0.75 sec cast time. Every other animation looks the same, but more importantly it is impossible to tell where a mark is going to be placed.

Solution: add one of those red circle aoe indicators during the cast time.
Mark cast times are relatively short so an indicator like that woudln’t make necros too predictable, but it will improve transparency in regards to timing dodges if you have a slight premonition of where necros are going to cast their marks.

2. Life Force:

Party UI:

Recently the party UI was updated with an indicator of how much life force a necro has and whether or not they currently are in Death Shroud.
This was done to make support coordination among team mates easier. But I was thinking, should enemies be able to have the same insight, should the party UI with life force become the standard hp indicator if you target or move your mouse over necros?
Obviously this would be more of a disadvantage for necros themselves, but could this be healthy for the game in general? People could more easily tell how hard or easy it would be to engage a necro, or if they should engage them at all. It would also give a little more insight into how effectively a necro is able to generate life force while they’re not in Death Shroud.
I know, you can’t see initiative or adrenaline or cooldowns of opponents either, but maybe life force could be an exception due to it’s similarity to actual hp?

LF out of combat:

Many people have already complained about starting pvp matches without any life force. Before the patch that locked in all skills and weapons during the 10 sec countdown you could at least sacrifice some minions so you wouldn’t have to run into battle completely empty. But today you clearly start your first fight with a disadvantage.
On the other hand, throughout the match it is entirely possible that you’ll start some fights with a full life force pool. Not that this matters much considering how badly Death Shroud scales in team fights as a defensive mechanic, but having 100% lf still provides a completely different way of engaging certain fights.

It has already been suggested countless times that necro should generate at least 10% life force out of combat if they are below that amount. But how about 30%, even if they have more than that? So pretty much like the warrior’s adrenaline bar when they get out of combat, but instead of being completely empty, necro’s lf pool could level off at something like 30%.
This would serve several purposes. For one, necros wouldn’t start without any life force as well as avoiding the other extreme of allowing them to engage some fights with a full lf pool. Also, if it is not made visible to opponents how much life force a necro has, people would always know that a necro who’s out of combat will start a fight with 30%.

Additionally, this would open up some possiblities regarding traits. There are still some traits that need to be merged, moved or improved.
Soul Comprehension comes to mind. Currently this trait generates an extra 2% lf for nearby deaths, this makes it without a doubt the worst minor trait we currently have.
So for example, if the life force pool would always settle at 30%, Soul Comprehension could be changed to give you 35% instead of 30% out of combat.

Abimes.9726:

I’ll close the thread if people show more intrest into, why i din’t mention their names than the project in it self. It’s not the objective Here.

The goal is asking the community to improve the trait lines and compile them into one working global trait page.

Cheers Abimes. Have fun.

It seems you’ve gotten over your grumpy phase already, but I’ll just add something to this anyway.

I don’t think anyone was offended by being or not being on your top 10 necro list. In fact I do admire your enthusiasm for trying to get some heavy weights to comment on your trait suggestions.
However, I suspect there are several reasons why people were hesitant to post here.
One being that this thread was created a week after the Ready Up stream. By that time there were already countless threads reviewing those changes, including the one by Gates Assassin (the forum specialist) which had already generated over 300 replies. I know you’ve linked this thread in the other one as well, but by then most people just didn’t want to divert from the biggest discussion on the forum where posts might actually be included in a summarized report for the devs.
Secondly, you have to know that there can’t be one version of our future specializations that is the best. The more ideas people post the more likely it is that some of those ideas contradict each other, even if they are all good. So by posting trait suggestions of your own you’re inevitably exposing them to controversy if you ask a lot of people to comment on them. And this also means that there is no version of optimal specialization trees out there which could simply be discovered by colaboration of knowledgable players.

Again, I’m not trying to deminish your efforts but just know that your expectations with this thread might have started out a little too ambitious.
And I will comment on your suggestions later.

Bhawb.7408:

Some ways to make traits more defining
Note, I don’t think every trait needs to be build defining. Spite for example has 3 GM’s that are all absolutely fine traits, they just don’t end up being build defining really.

“Build defining” is such a strange term, even more so because the devs used it to describe the impact grandmaster traits should have.

Obviously you make some good points in this thread, but certain flaws in traits can just as much be argued without referencing their value to a certain type of build.
Also, most of the time your build dictates what traits you’ll end up taking, not the other way around.
For example: arguably Deathly Perception is the most “build defining” trait we have in the way that the huge amount crit chance you gain allows for having different gear and changes the amount of time you want to stay in Death Shroud. But does that make the trait really build defining? Afterall every build with this trait is simply called “a power build”, in PvP anyway. So if someone plays power in PvP you know they have Deathly Perception, but they don’t say they run a Deathly-Perception-build because mentioning the type of build is enough to imply what Soul Reaping grandmaster choice you’re going with.

It’s just the same for Terror in the current trait system. If you say you play condi everyone will know that you’ve picked Terror. But it’s actual contribution to condition builds isn’t that outstanding when you compare it to other traits, and this is not a matter of how much damage it does. “Terrormancer” just sounds fancy so people started using this term even though there’s no difference to saying “condimancer”.

So yeah, some traits in grandmaster tier are strong enough to affect your choice of gear and gameplay, in that way they are build defining. But that doesn’t make them stronger or better than other traits, and it’s certainly not related to the trait tier they are positioned in because master, adept and even minor traits can have just the same impact on your build.

Sagat.3285:

vitality has a greater effect on DS than other stats that’s the issue.

No, you’re wrong.
Every stat has the same effect when you’re in DS as when you’re not. I have no idea why you are trying to single out vitality as the bad guy in all of this. And just to make it clear, this is not a matter of me not comprehending what you’re trying to convey, but you’re simply wrong about this.

Sagat.3285:

No matter what happens let’s understand that a great HP pool will only make it worse especially if we are locked to 5 skills.

Wrong again.
When you compare other classes with each other you’ll notice that the size of their health pool is different and has nothing to do with how durable they are.
And pointing out that you’re “locked to 5 skills” is just as pointless as an elementalist complaining that they can’t use all attunements at the same time. That’s not a matter of defense, it’s how the class mechanic works.

I know what your general message is supposed to be, but Death Shroud is never going to be removed or reduced to nothing but a 3rd weapon set the way that you want.
Also, it’s simply not true that it can’t be balanced to be equally effective as the defensive mechanics of other classes. Yes, there are and always will be scaling issues, but this can all be solved to some extent by providing defesive features that scale in the same way.

Sagat.3285:

first thing they messed up with DS was allowing it to scale with vitality…
…
Toughness is fine and nothing is unnatural about it you keep the same toughness as you was in and out

Vitality is a defensive stat just like toughness and healing power, but you’d exclude the one that makes the number on the lf bar bigger? Sorry, but that makes no sense.
It would be the same if you wanted them to remove power when in DS but keep precision and ferocity.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t count Well of Corruption since it’s not supposed to do that

Or is it? By now who knows really?
It seems rather strange that a single well would accidentally get such a specific amount of lf regen. 1.2% per pulse and hit is not something you find on any other skill. To me it sounds just as plausible that someone patched this in on purpose and then just forgot to add a tooltip.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I also don’t count Spectral Wall because it’s output is completely dependent on your opponent’s actions.

Not entirely, there are ways to make people run into it.
And to some extent every one of those skills depends on your opponents actions. Necrotic Grasp can just be side stepped and Swarm can be kited.

Anyway, I agree, we need more of those skills.

Sagat.3285:

Similar mechanic but necro has greater access to them they just suck, it doesn’t matter if it’s similar there are already there and they would help necro more than DS if they were balanced properly.

First of all, no, the access is much worse for necros. Those signets are healing skills, we on the other hand would have to take Blood Magic. Are you really saying that giving up 1/3 of your trait options is greater access than simply slotting a single utility?
Secondly, if vamp traits were balanced to sustain us without Death Shroud they’d do way too much damage. And if they would do lower damage than their healing amount then guess what, that’s basically a Signet of Malice clone.

Sagat.3285:

Only 2 ways: Removal of the HP part and balance that follows or HP cannot be raised,utilities and heals work in DS and balance follows.

What is “the HP part”?
Also, if you make life force not scale with vitality you must also disable armor in DS, and of course remove all traits that raise your toughness. I don’t know why you think this would be better, in the end you’d create way more problems than you are trying to solve.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros have only two sustain skills that scale with number of foes: Locust Swarm and Signet of the Locust.

Spectral Wall, Necrotic Grasp, Well of Corruption.
And those are just the ones that generate life force. Basically, every aoe skill scales with multiple opponents. But I know what you’re getting at, it’s not enough to have proper sustain.

coconutdown.6512:

Just wanted to know if the report had been sent to the Dev.
If yes, have we received some answers yet?

And I’d be interested to know if anything that is/was posted after the report was submitted is still monitored by Gates or a dev, because even after a week there are new ideas or problems with the traits being pointed out.

Softspoken.2410:

It has the caveat of staying somewhat close to your target the entire time the skill is active, but one could compare that to landing the slow animation of Enfeebling Blood.

Or to how a 10 sec bleed stack might have less chance of running its full duration while the reapplication of shorter stacks is likely to total a higher uptime.
Also, Enfeebling Blood is cast once at a single location. Locust Swarm on the other hand behaves a lot more dynamic because it moves with you and even accounts for opponents who join the fight later than when you first cast the skill.

Softspoken.2410:

Blindness, which is well known for its scaling with the condition damage stat.

I know it’s a lot to ask for people to read the relevant posts immediately before the one they’re quoting in order to get context, but it would make this exercise in miscommunication a hell of a lot frustrating.

To be fair, Anchoku started with this..

Anchoku.8142:

Horn is the only off-hand weapon that does condition damage.

…and then you mentioned dagger and bleeding.
Although, depending on the situation you can actually do more bleeding damage with Locust Swarm and Barbed Precision than Enfeebling Blood.
Enfeebling Blood does 2 stacks for 10 sec, 25 sec cd + 0.75 sec cast time.
If you have Banshee’s Wail the cd of Locust Swarm is 24 sec + 0.5 sec cast time.
So if 5 of those 15 ticks can proc Barbed Precision you’re already doing more condition damage. On average this would happen when 9 hits are critical = 60% crit chance, so basically with rabid or sinister and the occasional fury.

spoj.9672:

DS is a problem. But it can be left in tact and our problems solved.

I agree.

spoj.9672:

Theres a simple solution. Give us traits that tie active defence to DS. So you enter DS and you get an aegis. Or you enter DS and you get 2 seconds of reflect/evade.

A traited solution would create a new set of problems though.

1. Thematically something like aegis on DS entry would probably have to be placed in Death Magic. Arguably there’s a bigger need for on-demand blocks in PvE than in PvP.
So PvE + Death Magic..?

2. If those traits would be able to solve all of necros problems you’d throw a big chunk of build diversity out the window.
So the only way to really make buffs like these available to everyone is by adding it to Death Shroud, either as a baseline feature or in form of additional skills.
And maybe to some people it would sound outragous to add a skill like block/reflect/evade to DS “for free” but seeing how DS is lacking as a defensive mechanic there’s really no reason to completely withold some buffs like these. Also, it wouldn’t need to be as frequent as an “on entry” trait. It could be a 60 sec cd skill that also consumes half of your life force, something that doesn’t completely change our gameplay but still allows for the occasional protection against big hits or focus fire.

Sagat.3285:

Necro style sustain…siphons,parasitic contagion,retaliation healing based on damage,weakness,projectile destruction,blindness,protection,condition/boon manipulation etc. nothing that would make us copy of other classes.

Non of the things you listed are unique to necros. Not even vampiric traits, in fact if you want a better version of it look at Signet of Malice or Signet of Restoration.

Sagat.3285:

no scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

Why? Don’t other classes get ways of improving their class mechanic through traits and gear? Why should necros be limited in this way?

Tobias.8632:

Corrosive Poison Cloud – what is this even supposed to do? The poison damage is pathetic, and the weakness on self is a massive hindrance unless you waste yet another utility slot or pop your heal for condi removal. AoE weakness on enemies is okay, but not enough to put this skill in place of a good well.

Poison damage is not pathetic, also it reduces healing effectivness which is not only a good utility but when you compare the healing it can prevent to the damage of some conditions then poison just might occasionally be the winner.

Imo CPC in underrated. The fact that other skills tend to overshadow it is a problem, but generally it’s a good skill.
Also, the self weakness is from a time when weakness wasn’t as effective as it is today. So it probably would be appropriate to change this into something like cripple or torment.

Tobias.8632:

Spectral Grasp – I get that this is supposed to be a pvp skill, or something, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone using it because, again, it doesn’t do enough to compete with available alternatives.

It’s rarely used in PvP but many ppl use it in WvW, especially in duels. The skill might be niche but there’s no reason to change it.

Tobias.8632:

Spectral Walk – cooldown is far too long to use this as a real mobility skill, only time I’ve ever seen it used is for that part in arah where you have to carry the damaging light to open the doors.

Really, the only time? It’s one of the utility skills for the current PvP meta build..

Tobias.8632:

Well of Darkness – … in PvP all they have to do is just not go in the well. Useless.

In PvP, when you cast this you don’t want to be hit by melee attacks. Guess what happens when people get out of the well and you stay in it: they can’t hit you with melee attacks!
Also, if you cast this (or CPC or any other well) on a capture point your opponents can either take the well pulses or move out of the point, in which case: thx for the easy decap.
Plus, Well of Darkness is one of our only safe stomps.

Tobias.8632:

Spectral Wall – one use, as an additional source of fear in the terrormancer build. Aside from that it’s only good for making people run off cliffs in edge of the mists. Make this thing reflect or even just destroy projectiles, or provide stealth to allies. Protection isn’t really a big deal in my experience and the cooldown is restrictive. Speaking of protection…

It’s actually a good WvW skill for zerg fights. There’s no aoe limit so if you time it properly you will not only get a million life force but it’s also a good area denial skill and with proper coordination it can provide your entire zerg with protection and chaos armor.

Tobias.8632:

Spectral Armor – a sort of okay pvp skill, but useless in other game modes

It’s not “sort of ok”, it’s really good in PvP, and the fact that it hase no use in PvE doesn’t change that. There simply are some skills that are better in one game mode than in the other…

Tobias.8632:

Plague Signet – has anyone ever in the history of GW2 put this skill on their bar for more then 5 minutes before dismissing it as a complete waste of time?

I’m not saying that it couldn’t use some alterations, and apparently Anet said in their stream that they are actually looking at all of our signets, but Plague Signet really does have some value in certain 1v1 matchups.
When I think about it, I’d rather have this than any of our other signets, although that’s rather a testament to how bad all of our signets are than the quality of Plague Signet.

Shiki.7148:

Remove the afore mentioned “take 50% less damage” for that if it turns out to be too strong (which it shouldn’t, cause still no stability or blocks in DS).

Those 50% are not a feature but a bug. So yes of course this should be fixed, but at the same time the lf pool shouldn’t stay at 60% of our regular hp. Even if you currently max out Soul Reaping and effectively make your lf pool be 156% of your regular hp, your defense will still be lower than that of other classes.

Sagat.3285:

Every time I say reduce or remove DS can we stop implying I don’t want proper compensation!?

We get it, but removing DS and getting the same defense as other classes would be pointless because if you really want that you could just play one of the other classes.
Also, like I mentioned above, we deserve some defensive buffs without having to give up anything in return. Even if we got some better sustain there’s absolutely no need to lower our hp or lf pool.

Sagat.3285:

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

Exactly DS is not much of real ressource or a stance like mechanic they see it has a strrrooong second HP bar,high HP=must receive hits=easy target. DS is not the problem the problem is the HP attached to it.

Edit: If the HP would have to stay it would have to stay at specific amount low amount,it would have to stop scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

We take -50% in DS which makes our lf pool effectively double of what you see on the lf bar, and still our defense is really bad. There’s absolutely no reason to make the pool any lower or change the way it scales even if they added extra skills to make our defense better.
You have to stop thinking: more blocks/invuln/mobility = lower hp. That might be the reason why other classes have lower hp to begin with, but necros are far away from that status quo to even think about trading hp for a different form of defense.

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

Softspoken.2410:

Anchoku.8142:

I also like where war horn is in Curses. Horn is the only off-hand weapon that does condition damage.

What

Actually, Wail of Doom is the only off-hand weapon skill that doesn’t inflict any condition.

Darwec.3784:

manveruppd.7601:

Honestly, I also think that FitG is better than ever. Having a stunbreak on a 10" CD (!!) is incredible!

You can trait a necro for 3 seconds of stability every 7 seconds in PVP, which is why i doubt they would change it any further. Thats a crazy amount of stability uptime even if its only onestack.

7 or 10 seconds is only true if you don’t use Death Shroud at all, completely unrealistic especially in PvP.
Then again, this is how Anet came up with 2 sec of weakness for Weakening Shroud.

Tobias.8632:

Isn’t stomping generally considered to be a bad idea pretty much most of the time?

Safe stomps are one of the most valuable things you can bring to any team fight.
The only time you don’t want to stomp someone is if they are down off-point and there’s no chance for them to get rezzed or rallied.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Based on the duration shown in the video the burn will do less damage than scepter auto attack so it would make no sense for a necro to have it.

You do get the direct damage from Life Blast though which isn’t that bad with a carrion amulet. Also, it’s a cover condition so it’s not just about doing more damage than bleeding.

On topic: I really hope Lingering Curse will not be released this way. +100% is just stupid and in the end it will harm the class because everything will be balanced or nerfed with the possiblity of having this trait.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

A version without icd would be acceptable, but not in the grandmaster tier. Perhaps a replacement for Reaper’s Precision, or a combined trait even?
Something like: 33% chance on crit to inflict 1 sec of weakness and generate 1 % lf.

Replacing Reaper’s Precision I like. It could also work at Grandmaster if we got something like “your endurance regeneration in increased by 20% for each foe you have weakened” on it as well.

Interesting, although it wouldn’t even have to be grandmaster as long as you don’t turn into a thiefomancer with something like Deathly Perception and Life Transfer.
Also, gm should really get a good power trait instead.

A version without icd would be acceptable, but not in the grandmaster tier. Perhaps a replacement for Reaper’s Precision, or a combined trait even?
Something like: 33% chance on crit to inflict 1 sec of weakness and generate 1 % lf.

Anchoku.8142:

The Curses line begs for a condition build and no condition damage build works well without scepter.

I disagree :P
If you think about it, the only thing that makes the scepter unique is the auto attack. And one sequence of applying 2 stacks of bleeding and poison takes 3 seconds. Of course it stacks rather high over a longer period of time but not any higher than you can get by burst stacking with other weapons and sigils.

Anyway, I don’t want to derail the discussion too much from the traits, so I’ll just say that Curses always has been a trait line that was versatile enough to make it a viable pick for almost every type of build.

nekretaal.6485:

Lingering curse is a boring, numbers based, trait that just holds necromancers back.
…
We should get, as a build defining grandmaster, a trait that actually does something new and interesting instead of just increasing numbers. The other two traits accomplish this even if both require you to take condition damage on your gear.

Replace lingering curse with withering precision

I think the first priority should be to add a grandmaster that power builds can use.

Withering Precision simply doesn’t meet that job requirement. In fact, I don’t know why anyone would want this trait, it was never good and now you can get Parasitic Contagion which is a way better defensive trait than a single target weakness proc.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to get rid of Lingering Curse entirely, just bring it down enough.

A thought exercise:
3 traits in the same line and tier are all equally good if they are all viable choices or even the optimal choice depending on the kind of build you’re running.
With +100% duration Lingering Curse is just too strong to even consider any of the alternatives. On the other hand, if it had no extra duration at all and just the 150 condi dmg buff it would be too weak. Therefore the sweetspot for the duration boost must be somewhere between zero and 100.
Now, would you take it if it was 10%? No. 20%? Maybe. 30%? Probably. 40%? Definitely.
Then you have to check with other traits and how they would synnergize. You still want to accomodate the possibility that someone might want Master of Terror, runes or sigils with duration extensions or food buffs without breaching the 100% duration cap (I know there’s chatter about the cap being raised but I don’t belive it).
Now combine that and think about what a reasonable duration buff for Lingering Curse would be: somewhere between 20 and 35%, I think.

Anchoku.8142:

Whatever you think Lingering Curse’s problem is does not change the fact I would never take scepter without it.

I’m assuming you mean for PvE?
There’s no reason to get rid of the extended scepter base durations on Lingering Curse. Also, like mentioned above, you can max your durations by other means than this trait.

Anchoku.8142:

Curses is tied exceptionaly strongly to scepter because Necro has no other high dps condi weapons.

That’s not true. Staff, DS and gear related stuff can pump out just as much condi pressure.
Also, Lingering Curse is literally the only scepter trait, so saying the entire line is tied to it might be a far stretch.

Anchoku.8142:

flow.6043:

Wow, just checked it myself, I never even noticed that you don’t get any life force at all.
How is this even possible? Must be a bug.
You don’t even get the animation with the green bubble floating towards you.

This has always been the case, iirc. Only Life Transfer gains LF while in DS. Prevents players from hanging out there too long.

Litterally every other method of generating life force works in DS.

Also, let’s assume you could get the life force from nearby deaths while in Shroud. If you really wanted to stay in DS indefinitely you would need Vital Persistance, at least 1 death every 5 seconds to counteract natural degeneration and take no damage at all during that time. The only place where there’s even a chance of that happening is in PvE. But in PvE staying in DS that long isn’t optimal for dps and you don’t have a need for extra life force regeneration anyway because it’s so easy (which is probably why I never noticed this).

Roe.3679:

I see the resemblance to dhuumfire, though….

I guarantee that a +100% trait will be even more op than Dhuumfire was back when it was first released.

Roe.3679:

I think it’s more realistic to balance/replace the other traits instead.

Keep in mind that this would include a lot of traits that affect power builds as well, like all the vulnerability traits in Spite for example. If the stacks and duration of them is balanced to include Lingering Curse you’d just end up with way to little with a power build where you could actually make much better use of vuln stacking.

Roe.3679:

Remove master of terror – it’s peanuts compared to lingering curses.

It really is, but that just further proves my point.
LC completely invalidates the existence of MoT, was it not for the fact that you can’t have +100% when you pick Terror in the Curses gm slot.
And MoT is already somewhat overshadowed by Vital Persistance and Spectral Mastery. So out of those 3 traits Master of Terror is apparently supposed to be the offensive option, but +100% on all durations easily beats +50% on fears and some damage to go with it.

Roe.3679:

For pvp, having weakness, chill, poison, fear, slow – everything – lasting twice is a huge buff in defense.

The thing is, the real defensive option in Curses should be Parasitic Contagion. But yeah, if you double every defensive condition you put out you probably end up being more difficult to kill than with some extra healing.

Roe.3679:

Instead of having condition duration food you can have precision food with more on crit effects, so would t the change there be more of a push? Serious question, I’m not as well versed in pve.

If you insta-max out all durations with a single trait then yes, you don’t need duration food anymore and can go with something different. Other than that, +40% from food beats everything else for condition builds easily.
And the fact remains that the new Lingering Curse would no longer have the modified base durations.

So I’ve just listened to the recent BoC podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_js1MvyJG0

I know it’s been posted here and in other threads a thousand times already, but I’ll just say it here again as a direct response to the video:

Lingering Curse should not have +100% condition duration.

Whenever they discussed a trait in the podcast they where saying something along the lines of “…and if you have Lingering Curse it will be even more amazing!” or “… but if this was changed then it would be overpowered because with Lingering Curse it would double…”.
Seriously, the cause or obstacle to any meaningful balance change can’t be a trait in Curses that simply doubles everything.
For example, by now there’ve been countless people supporting the idea of Terror becoming a merged minor trait. So when the argument against that is “…but Lingering Curse!” then guess which side of it is the real culprit: Lingering Curse, without a doubt.

Also, why would it have +100% anyway if even within the same line you have another condi duration modifier as a minor trait: Hemophilia. Then you can have duration extensions on runes or sigil, and let’s not forget Master of Terror.
So really, 100% doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

Also, for PvE builds LC is actually a big nerf because you could max bleeding durations easily with food and gear anyway. But with this change you completely lose out on the modified base durations and get your total bleed duration on scepter cut back from 14 seconds to 10 seconds.

And let’s not forget, there’s the whole issue of power builds not having a proper grandmaster option. So something needs to be done here anyway. And the solution that makes the most sense to me would be merging Terror with the +2% crit chance for condis to make room for a power gm and drastically reduce the duration buff (30%) on LC but include the extended base durations on scepter.

magicsparadise.4871:

I’m sorry but I just double checked it and you literally get no(0%) LF from nearby death will in DS. This is as simple as that.

Wow, just checked it myself, I never even noticed that you don’t get any life force at all.
How is this even possible? Must be a bug.
You don’t even get the animation with the green bubble floating towards you.

magicsparadise.4871:

General principle #1 Rework effects that work against our class mechanic such as heal upon entering DS.

Instead of changing traits to accommodate the fact that heals don’t work in DS they should rework DS to allow heals and keept the healing traits (which we desperately need) as they are.

magicsparadise.4871:

General principle #2 Don’t include ICD on skill that inherit DS CD.

Yup.

magicsparadise.4871:

General principle #3 Moving traits between Adept/Master/Grand Master ask for trait rework.
…
Reaper’s Precision -> This skill deserve to be buff in order to feat a Master slot. (General principle #3)
Terror -> This skill deserve to be buff in order to feat a Grand Master slot. (General principle #3)

The thing is, with the new system you no longer have to make a bigger point investment to reach the end of a trait line. You get the entire line anyway so assuming gm>master>adept is actually irrelevant.
What you really need to think about is which 3 traits should compete for the same spot, and what builds should or shouldn’t be possible when doing so.
For example: Reaper’s Precision – Path of Corruption – Banshee’s Wail.
No one in their right mind would ever pick Reaper’s Precision over the other two. Maybe if you play PvE and don’t have a warhorn, but there’s never a shortage of life force in PvE. Either way, Reaper’s Precision is just a waste of space.

magicsparadise.4871:

Soul comprehension -> Will nearby death grant LF will in DS someday? If not, change this trait. (General principle #1)

It does, lf regen always works the same way when you’re in DS.
However, 2% extra lf for a nearby death is just pathetic, so this one needs to be changed anyway.

spoj.9672:

flow.6043:

Yeah, Weakening Shroud bums me out too especially after the community had to argue the very same issue last time they wanted to make it a regular Enfeebling Blood.
And the sad thing is, some necros will even consider this a buff.

spoj.9672:

I understand the devs want to use real weapon skills on DS entry so they benefit from weapon skill reduction.

Honestly, I don’t understand this. This might make sense in general but not when skills are already time gated by the cooldown of Death Shroud. You just lose control over your abilities because you won’t be able to tell when the cd is ready.
Also, I’m sure that even if you’ll have Quickening Thirst or Axe Traing (jk, nobody will use them) the average “cooldown” by simply using Death Shroud as usual will be somewhere around 25 seconds anyway.
But if you ever need to go into DS more frequently because you need to defend yourself you’ll not only lose out on the aoe weakness for defense but the actual time passing between procs would probably double to somewhere between 30-60 seconds.

Exactly. It just doesnt make sense on the necro. Its fine on the other classes. But with DS its just a build hindrance.

Just to add to this:

Mark of Evasion: 10 sec cd, not affected by Staff Mastery.

Well, there it is, the one trait where it would make sense to use the actual weapon skill, Mark of Blood.
But no, this gets almost twice the cooldown, minus 1 stack of bleeding in WvW and PvE, and it’s also limited by your endurance bar.
Seriously, even if this was considered too strong without a cooldown (which it isn’t), now you’d have to go with the entire Blood Magic line to get this trait which means you’re giving up a lot of damage just for picking this line over Spite, Curses or Soul Reaping.

Meanwhile in a parallel universe, aka engi-land:
Evasive Powder Keg: no cooldown, and a new gm trait turns it into a blast finisher.
Whaaaat?!

Ragnar.1546:

Spiteful Renewal: Remove & Replace with …

We get a really nice sustain trait for once and you want to toss it. lol

Gryph.8237:

we are the only class not receiving improvements, or if they are improvements they are marginal at best.

That’s not entirely true though.
If you look at Spite for example: Spiteful Renewal looks amazing, vulnerability application is buffed and has nice synergy with chilled. So overall it’s definitely an improvment compared to now.
But then there are traits like Siphoned Power in a gm minor slot: 2 stacks of might gated by an icd and a health threshold. Understandably people complain about this, even if it’s better than the current version of it.

Roe.3679:

If axe got big buffs, axe mastery would still be good.

Only if the auto attack is completely changed and the damage buffed again.
Because the new Axe Mastery only has the same effect as the current one if your target is perma crippled and you perma auto attack to reduce cds.
So if the axe and Axe Mastery stay this way there’s no reason not to take Chill of Death instead.

Roe.3679:

If reaper’s precision were buffed, it might be an ok option (although probably not still master tier).

That buff can’t just be more life force though, it would have to be a different trait entirely because utility is more important than a simple stat or life force boost, especially when the trait is competing with Path of Corruption and Banshee’s Wail.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The thing is, Terror really can’t truly be made baseline. This isn’t like Greanade Kit getting a third grenade baseline, this would make all Fears in the game deal damage. Claw of Jormag would become hell…

I actually meant baseline just for necros, like a class specific feature
But I guess if it’s tied to the Curses specialisation as a minor the bottom line would be pretty much the same.

MethaneGas.8357:

flow.6043:

If they merge Greater Marks and Soul Marks the empty spot could be filled by bringing back Decaying Swarm: At 25% health, you become surrounded by a locust swarm.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decaying_Swarm

I like this idea a lot. The only problem with this is that it could reveal you if you’re low on health and yell to your allies “stealth me guys!” and they stealth you and bam… locust swarm. If you don’t rely on allies’ stealth, this trait would be awesome though – it would synergize with Banshee’s Wail too. It might be too strong for a minor though, especially when we consider it can last 15 seconds. Assuming you had warhorn as well, that would be 30 seconds of Locust Swarms! This trait is grandmaster worthy, in my opinion – perhaps a new blood/death/curses grandmaster?

Yeah, might be a good Death Magic grandmaster option next to Unholy Sanctuary if they moved one of the minion traits down one tier.

And btw, I use both warhorn and Banshee’s Wail, that combined with the 6 seconds auto attack channel that can’t be canceled makes me almost impossible to stealth rez.
Thousands of Shadow Refuges have been completely wasted on me! ^^

So here’s another one for the devs:
Please make it possible to cancel the downed state auto attack.
Also, Fetid Ground could use an upgrade for ground-targeting so we don’t cast it into the middle of nowhere if we don’t have a target selected.

MethaneGas.8357:

I haven’t been able to keep up with the [Report] PvP Forum Specialist Report or Necro Spec Notes & Feedback threads but if the staff trait changes haven’t been suggested already… they definitely should!

By now pretty much everything has been covered.
I think every idea that anyone has ever had somehow made its way into one of these threads. But it’s still a good read if you find the time ;P

Fyi, I even suggested the good old “1% lf per hit instead of 3% flat” for a mark baseline feature.

MethaneGas.8357:

True that you’d be able to have both after the patch, but if Soul Marks were baseline, and the cooldown reduction went to Greater Marks…. holy mackamolly…

You’d be able to go Curses/Death/Soul Reaping

To be honest, I will go wherever they put the merged staff trait (*fingers crossed) and I couldn’t care less if it’s SR or DM. Overall Soul Reaping seems to be more of a total package, but if staff mastery moves to Death Magic I’ll gladly take the extra defense that line provides.

Bhawb.7408:

Parasitic Contagion needs to be a Blood Magic trait, no other build has to select between its major damage option and sustain in the same tier. Power builds can have Death Perception and Close to Death while still picking up Vampiric Rituals, MMs can get whatever they want and still get blood magic sustain, but condi builds have to choose? Makes absolutely no sense.

I see your point and I both agree and disagree.

Generally, the effort it takes to pick sustain traits and combine them with a proper dps build is disproportionately difficult compared to other classes.
But in that regard, moving traits like Parasitic Contagion to Blood Magic would actually be counterproductive. You’d end up with a single trait line that has all healing traits, so if you want any kind of sustain besides life force you’d have to pick this line. And that is either not worth it at all (because most of its traits don’t work in DS) or it becomes a must-have trait line which would limit build diversity.
So I agree that sustain options should be available to every build and specialisation. But that also means that certain healing traits should stay in lines other than Blood Magic: Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery, Parasitic Contagion, Unholy Sanctuary.
Therefore the proper solution for Anet would be to ease up their grip on offensive traits (like Terror becoming baseline) and as a result giving any kind of build the choice to pick one of those extra heals instead of forcing them into a mandatory dps trait that those builds wouldn’t be able to work without.

Anchoku.8142:

I suggest SR Master of Terror be changed to proc on interrupt rather than on downed. It is not a very good defensive trait on downed despite along extending all fear duration.

That would be Reaper’s Protection, still exists in Death Magic.
That fear when downed was just added to MoT because Fear of Death was in Soul Reaping as well, now they’re merged.