Guild Wars 2

When you trait Dhuumfire, Life Blast’s range is reduced from 1200 to 900. This affects both tooltip and actual range. Multiple players confirm here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/dhuumfire-nerfs-range/

Same, reduces both range and tooltip.

oZii.2864:

flow.6043:

Parasitic Contagion!

…jk, Weakening Shroud.

Is Parasitic Contagion that bad? I have been running it since I am in BM also. After playing around in WvW I felt Lingering wasn’t that good. Parasitic contagion seems decent if I can stack multiple types of conditions and get’s even better the more people around I hit with staff and aoe skills.

The problem is most damage on this game is spike damage, and the enemy will prep you for bursting with an immobilise or a stun/knockback/whatever. The sceptre’s conditions are mostly short duration so you need constant reapplication to keep your condition damage up. When you’re disabled, you’re not reapplying conditions, so your condition damage goes down. So just when you actually need the healing from parasitic contagion, the amount of healing you receive drops suddenly and sharply. Even if you survive the burst, your enemy now has like 2 bleeds on him when before they burst you they had 7-9+2 poison. So Parasitic Contagion doesn’t deliver healing when you need it.

If it worked through Death Shroud, it could have been almost worth taking. Someone opens with a lot of burst damage on you, they get you to half health, you pop DS and fear them off with Doom. You do 1000+ damage and get healed for 100 (a pathetic amount, but better than nothing), then hit them with a couple of life blasts to proc Dhuumfire and get a couple hundred more points of healing out. I still wouldn’t take it, but it could have been viable. But with our 2 most damaging conditions locked behind DS (especially since they still haven’t fixed the Stability corruption bug), Parasitic Contagion is worthless. Honestly don’t understand how that trait survived the massive culling of the rework, it’s even worse than the pre-path Withering Precision.

thanks, posted

Tim.6450:

Boon corruptions When stab is corrupted it is not turned into fear.

I can confirm that this is the case for all boon corruption skills, including Corrupt Boon, signets traited with Signets of Suffering, and Dark Path traited with Path of Corruption. I’ve tested in a custom arena under controlled conditions.

OK, I can confirm this, tested in control conditions as well. Stability IS removed, but not converted into fear. This is the case for any skill that corrupts boons (tried with SoS-traited signets and with PoC-traited Dark Path too).

@OP, can you link to your thread in the bug forums so I can post there too? Devs should know it’s not just the one person this is happening to.

Remember, everyone got 150 bonus baseline toughness and vitality, to make up for the loss from trait lines. Unfortunately we also all got bonus power and precision, and they upped damage all round, so overall everyone’s squishier, no matter what profession they are :p

So the stability is still being removed, it just doesn’t fear them?

Cue 6 months down the line, a developer replies to your Bug Forum thread to say “Corrupt Boon does not work on stability because it’s one of the strongest skills in the game”

#UNNERFPUTRIDMARK

Good to see you back man. I’ve been trying variations of the Signets of Suffering build too and, while I think it’s the strongest condi build right now, it feels very gimmicky. It’s the kind of build that snowballs when a fight is going your way, but it doesn’t have as much means to turn a fight around when it doesn’t as the old Terrormancer did.

One reason for that is that Path of Corruption was a much more reliable way of stripping boons than SoS is. You’re stripping way more boons now, and some of them passively, but you could cast Dark Path when you needed it, and when the boon stripping mattered. You won’t cast Plague Signet when you need a boon strip, you’ll use it as a stun break so you’re probably being pressured and want to run away or heal up afterwards, you’re not in a position to take advantage of the boon strip. And Signet of Spite, well, I mostly use it to guarantee a down, when someone’s burned all their cleanses. At that point I don’t care about stripping boons.

I agree with you that FitG is a necessity if you’re only running Plague Signet as your stun break. I’ve tried to make PS work in the past, and, frankly, it’s no Flesh Wurm. It doesn’t really get you out of danger, its active is annoying as all hell (I like the concept, but when it pulls a random blind as you’re casting Corrupt Boon I just want to punch through my monitor) and severely limits your mobility, especially on Kyhlo.

But having to take FitG means no Dhuumfire, which really helps with our damage frankly. And it also means you can’t go into Blood for Blood Bond and really exploit Signets of Suffering to its ultimate brokenness. I tried it with Blood, and it made me too fragile, since life force generation and max life force went even lower.

And yeah, I feel much glassier in rabid gear, but really can’t bring myself to go back to Carrion because the brand new Weakening Shroud is so much better than Lingering Curse in pvp!

I played a lot of games yesterday, tried 3 radically different builds, and I think the SoS one is the strongest, but an overall nerf from pre-patch terrormancer.

I only got to play 5-6 games, and my impressions aren’t reliable cause I tried 3 different builds, but my impression was that engis died instantly to their own conditions due to Plague Sending. Against anyone who could avoid my own condition applications I was boned.

Urukami.4796:

Whether you have 3 boons or 7 boons it will be converted to a random condition so using corrupt boon on a guy who may only have stability will cause that stability to change to a random condition doesn’t specifically have to be fear. I’m not 100% sure if this is a bug however if not then it’s working as intended…lol

You misread the patch notes: corruptions don’t convert boons to a random condition. The conversion table is fixed. See here: http://dulfy.net/2015/06/16/gw2-june-23-specialization-changes/#BOON_UPDATES
What has changed is that corruption skills choose which boons to convert randomly, instead of according to a priority list. So stability isn’t always last, for instance.

Does the signet proc from Plague Sending also act as a stunbreak by the way? Chaith seems to think it does but he’s not the one playing it so it might be hard to tell, and Nos didn’t say anything about it.

Nos was using power gear against Chaith, said the first few duels were Soldiers, then Celestial, then he tried zerker. It really does seem like Plague Sending is ridiculously overpowered, wouldn’t be surprised if it got nerfed.

EDIT: maybe changed to when you reach 50% health?

OK, I watched it, that wasn’t Karl though who was beating Chaith. Karl was “Necronomikarl”, the 2nd necro Chaith duelled, and Chaith absolutely demolished him.

The necro who was beating Chaith was Noscoc, Chaith said. He was Necromancer Dd, the staff/axe/warhorn guy with three signets, who was cancel-casting the signets for might stacks.

I’ve gone back to Terrormancer in pvp for the past few days, I’ll miss being able to slot both Path of Corruption AND Terror. I’ll also miss Foot in the Grave since it seems Dhuumfire will be compulsory for us to get any condition burst damage at all.

From every necro roamer who escaped a zerg by jumping off a cliff, or tricked an enemy into jumping off after them, we salute you! :p

I absolutely agree, Immobilise to Resistance (and vice versa for boon corruptions). I know immobilise is very strong and maybe they didn’t want anything converting to it, but, well, so is resistance, so it seems fair. Chill is fairly common, and will become A LOT more common with Reaper, and having it convert to Resistance will give a lot more access to the boon than is good for the game.

Link to vod?
/fifteenchars

Sigmoid.7082:

manveruppd.7601:

There IS, in fact, a priority list right now. The priority list is being changed to a random selection next week. I’m perfectly clear on how it works, as you would know if you read the op.

So why even mention a priority list and resistance of you know there won’t be one when it’s introduced :/

It was in response to Bhawb’s hypothetical that, if they kept it as a priority list instead of making it random, it would be even weaker after Resistance was introduced. Of course he’s assuming that Resistance would’ve been low on the priority list, and, really, we’ll never know if that would be the case since the priority list is being changed to random BEFORE Resistance ever comes into the game. :P

Also we don’t know its durations but we do know we will ha e extremely high boon corruption abilities so it shouldn’t be an issue either way. Also this way the problem you talked about in the op, them gaining a random 6th boon and stuff not getting hit, is less of an issue.

Yeah it’s true that you can POTENTIALLY have a lot more corruptions than before, if you trait into the right stuff (theoretically that is: in practice I think people will choose Terror over Path of Corruption, and that Spite would be passed over in favour of Reaper by most people, so no access SoS or SS either, meaning the most popular condi build will actually bring LESS corruption than it does now). My question wasn’t whether the necro’s ability to strip boons is going up or down, but whether the change to random removal is a nerf or a buff to boon corruption skills. As in “take a corruption skill, any corruption skill: will it be stronger, or weaker?”

Just to be clear, I’m not moaning, and I don’t really know whether it’s a buff or a nerf either! Like I said in the OP, it’ll all depend on how much Resistance will be flying around, and how often condition conversion skills/traits will be turning our chills into Resistance.

Bhawb.7408:

manveruppd.7601:

you’re telling me that there’s a boon that completely nullifies all condition damage, and that the only counter to it (boon removal/corruption) doesn’t remove it by design? Can’t you tell how unbalanced that would have made it? Why would they have ever done it that way?

We’re talking about ANet, yes I absolutely believe that could have happened.

Touché, Bhawb, touché! :p

Haven’t listened to it yet, but just wanted to say that seeing the Necrojeesus background screen as soon as I clicked the link made me chortle pretty hard!

There IS, in fact, a priority list right now. The priority list is being changed to a random selection next week. I’m perfectly clear on how it works, as you would know if you read the op.

Well first of all resistance isn’t in the game yet so we don’t know if it would, in fact, be low down the priority list of they kept it that way. But think of what it would mean if it really were like that (ie. Priority list-based, with resistance at the bottom): you’re telling me that there’s a boon that completely nullifies all condition damage, and that the only counter to it (boon removal/corruption) doesn’t remove it by design? Can’t you tell how unbalanced that would have made it? Why would they have ever done it that way?

While I’m overall displeased with the necromancer skill balances (lots of unwarrranted nerfs to skills that nobody considered overpowered to begin with, all while every other class is accelerating from a power creep to a power gallop), there’s one particular change that I’m really not sure what the effect it’ll have on the game: the conversion skill changes.

This isn’t a necro-specific change, so I felt it deserved a separate thread, but I still put it in here because necros have by far the most conversion skills, with boon corruptions.
The change is that, instead of each conversion skill having its own secret internal priority list, it will convert boons/condis at random. At first, when I heard it, I thought “great! now if they have 7 boons on them, Corrupt Boon still has a chance of stripping that stability!” Which is a big buff, since Stability (the most important boon you want to convert), was always lowest priority for seemingly every boon corruption skill.

Then, however, I thought about the fact that Resistance is coming in. My concern is that if your target has Resistance and 5 other boons on them, and your corruption skill converts the other 5, you’ve basically done nothing, as your target still has Resistance on them and laughs in the face of all the conditions you loaded them with. So this turns a skill that could reliably turn a fight unless your opponent dodged it into a skill that’s a roll of the dice, with a 5-in-X (X=number of boons your opponent has) chance of turning a fight around, and an (X-5)-in-X chance of doing NOTHING!

Now, even if the odds are good (6 boons including Resistance gives you an 84% chance to convert it), having this kind of variance turns me off from using boon corruptions. If I’m holding back on my cooldown, biding my time for the best time to use it, then hitting it just at the right time (immediately after a Contemplation of Purity, or just after my target has used up all his dodges etc), I want a 100% chance to be rewarded, not 84% or less! Tactical decision-making and good reflexes should be consistently rewarded – too much variance makes for a frustrating experience, and a game that doesn’t motivate me to keep playing and get better. Of course, a little variance in competitive games is considered to be good because it adds fun (if it didn’t, chess would be the most popular game on the globe), but high variance on a skill like Corrupt Boon, that was previously the conditionmancer’s One Awesome Thing, their only trump card, just cripples a build that doesn’t really have much else going for it.

Think of all the times your opponent had Stability and 4 other boons on them. Think of how juicy a target they appeared, and how gleefully you noticed it and hit Corrupt Boon, expecting this to put the final nail on their coffin, getting ready to chain-fear them with Reaper’s Mark as soon as Corrupt Boon landed. And think of how frustrated you got when, in the 0.5" in between you starting the cast and the skill hitting, your opponent got a random Might proc from their runes, bringing them up to 6 boons, and resulting in Stability not getting stripped. Well, that frustration is nothing compared to the fury you’ll feel when Resistance comes in, because at least in the above scenario, your target still suffered all the other conditions you inflicted: but if the Goddess of Variance hates you and you don’t strip resistance, your target will be completely immune to all the damage your boon corruption would have inflicted on them too!

Of course, my fears might be unfounded, because we don’t know how common Resistance will be and how long durations it will have. But then I saw that Chill, a fairly common condition and one to become very ubiquitous when everyone rolls a Reaper, converts to Resistance for condition conversion skills! And while there aren’t all that many condition conversion skills around, they’re still around (the engi trait Transmute is pretty popular), and it means it’s not a specific few matchups in which we have to worry about Resistance making Corrupt Boon a dice roll.

If it were me, I’d make Resistance an exception to the random order and make it top priority for every corruption skill. That’s not unprecedented, since condition conversion skills like CoP typically also break stun and thus remove fear before they even convert any other conditions from you – making it functionally equivalent to Fear being top priority.

So, tl;dr, I’m really not sure whether this is actually a buff or a nerf to Corruptions. I really don’t like the thought that I could pull off a clutch CB cast just at the right time and have it do nothing cause it didn’t hit the right boon by chance, but otoh I don’t know how often that will happen, and it could be that being able to corrupt Stability more often will make up for it in aggregate. What does eveyrone else think?

I found the changes a mixed bag too. Clearly a lower base damage for condition is good, especially now that burning will stack, as it would allow celestial professions to do more condition damage than rabid/carrion ones! (I know burning’s damage per stack is getting lowered, but they did say it’ll still be the most damaging condition, so the prospect of multiple stacks of it is scary.)

Making movement skills not be affected by snares though, I absolutely don’t like it, and I think it devalues the already paltry power of soft CC in this game.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This is one thing that the current point system has going for it. We don’t need decay because players can pass each other. However, this gives the impression of grind being how to climb. The point system would have to be much less granular for wins to be a good tie breaker.

It’s not an “impression” Evan, it’s actually true. Because of how forgiving the current system is for losses, and because of the lack of granularity in points awarded/lost per game, the best way to amass leaderboard points is to amass a large number of wins. It doesn’t matter if your win ratio is only around 50% or your wins were against mediocre or bad opponents, if you have the most wins you will easily score the most leaderboard points.

Not that this is ENTIRELY a bad thing: I don’t think anyone should be able to start playing in the last day of the season and climb to the top of the leaderboard, it would make everyone who sweated blood for weeks to gain their spot feel cheated. Non-participation should equate to no reward, no matter how good you are. But it’s easy to take the current system and make it less grindy, giving better players a chance to shine even if they don’thave the time to farm the leaderboard 24/7, with one simple change:

Currently, the amount of points you gain or lose after each game is determined by how the game calculates your odds of winning, based on, among others:
a. average MMR of each team
b. party size of each team (eg. premades vs soloers)
c. a few other lesser-weighed metrics like rank

The change I propose is the following: in the above formula, replace average MMR of each team with average ladder rank of each team. Therefore beating the top-ranked player on the leaderboard should award you more points, and would cost that #1 player more points when they lose to someone who’s ranked 19,508th.

This would make it harder to maintain a leaderboard rank that’s far in excess of your relative skill level as determined by your MMR (not that MMR is a perfect metric but it’s better than leaderboard rank). Sheer number of wins should still count for A LOT, so participation will still be rewarded, but it will be impossible to just farm points by scoring wins against terrible opponents, as you’ll occasionally come up against better players who, due to having fewer games, are lower-ranked than you, and when they beat you your ladder rank will drop sharply. In short, leaderboard rank will tend towards MMR, but won’t be determined by it.

Luthic.7290:

1)CHANGE CHANNELING. Mabey so that dmg will break it, or after taking like 50% ur max life, the channel would break. or just change it so you cannot cast skills AT ALL while channeling and no shape shifted entities can channel.

I agree that it’s too hard to interrupt Rampage/Plague Form/etc channelling right now. I think making it break on damage like the Temple buffs would make these far too difficult though: the heroes are the only way a team that’s behind can come back right now, spending too long fighting over a cap, or having to devote too many team members to it, would mean the other team can finish you off while you’re still trying to get the channel off!
Ultimately, having stability prevent channel interruption would work, IF:
a. boon removal/corruption prioritised stability, or
b. the map was 6v6 or 8v8, so you could bring enough people with enough interrupts to bear on someone channeling under pulsing stability stacks!

2) ADD SCALING FACTOR TO LORD . Such as a 10% reduced dmg for each allied defender so that teams cant 5 man the lord and ignore your team for the win.
2a) perhaps even add a time scaling to heroes to make them stronger the longer teh game goes and increase the time fore each match.

Scaling based on defender proximity is dangerous: it could actually encourage people to NOT defend their lord to give him more damage reduction, making this game even more of a gank rush with no actual pvp component than it already is!

3) GENERAL BUFF TO NPCS. buff guards and archers to make them impactful. perhaps even add a way to re spawn guards with supply.

Agreed, the outer gate guards especially should be veterans, like the inner ones. More importantly, they should prioritise NPCs, especially doorbreakers, not players! It’s too easy to aggro them and let the skritt do their job. Respawning them with supply would also be interesting, but I think repairing the gate with supply would be more so.

4) MAKE SKRITT SUICIDE. This way teams have to get more supply and cant do the 1 push win.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH THIS. It would also create a greater incentive to fight at mid over the supply depot. I’m fine with an initial wave of 5 skritt being able to take down outer if the enemy doesn’t bother them, but then you should have to go back for more supply. It would increase interaction with enemy players and force teams to think about coordination and map control.
A related feature I would like to see introduced is for the skritt and archers to be spawned in 30" waves: instead of spawning one immediately when you spend your supply, the depot remembers how much supply you spent and spawns that many at the next 30" period. This structures the pushes, and helps players know when to go where to best help the team. It would be especially helpful for pugs without voice comms, who can’t organise a coordinated push otherwise.

5) REPLACE THE TREB. that goes entirely unused and replace with either oil barrels or cannons. The treb is a bit unreliable when fights are so mobile. The faster cannon would be more useful dealing with mobile fights.

Yeah, I’m also finding it pretty ineffectual. You could argue that’s because we haven’t played enough games to learn the ranges yet, but here’s the thing: this isn’t Kyhlo, where you just have to learn the range to 3 fixed points where the fighting is gonna be. This is a map where you need to hit mobile targets, like heroes constantly moving closer and closer to the enemy base and the players escorting them. Your trebbing needs constant adjustment, and they’re VERY slow to turn and you have to correct for range constantly. Moreover, some of the bridges and other terrain features prevent you from hitting some spots at all, especially inside Red base. They’re just underwhelming, and if you’re a staff ele or well necro in zerker gear it’s actually faster to take out doorbreakers yourself than to use the treb to do it! This shouldn’t be the case: if you have siege it should be more powerful than players, otherwise it’s meaningless.

6) INCREASE PLAYER CAP The map is large enough to support more characters, and would just be fun and help slower clases feel more useful.

Agreed with this too, I think they should at least let us TRY 6v6!

Between engis and shoutbows there’s so much aoe condi clear right now that conditionmancer is useless in team fights, which used to be where they were strongest. 1v1 you can still kill things but it’s totally dependent on getting a good matchup, and right now there are more bad than good matchups around.

Yeah sure it’ll hurt being on a point with a reaper, but what about Stronghold where your opponent doesn’t have to stand in a narrow circle? If the target stays at over 600 you can’t pull them, you can’t teleport to them, you can’t snare them, you can’t even build life force to use Death’s Charge to catch them! What are you supposed to do vs a staff ele, AA with staff?

zapv.8051:

As for death’s charge, I think a blind and poison might be too strong, but I think it needs a minor buff to the distance or cast time to be effective as a gap closer.

Yeah I’m surprised nobody else is worried about that. Reapers will have trouble catching up to ranged classes with their only gap closer being gated behind life force (which you can’t build at range).

That’s good to know. I think a celestial GS reaper might be a thing you know…

EDIT: Karl, another clarification: is the damage from that trait per second, or just a one-off when chill is initially applied? If the latter, does it proc again if chill is reapplied on an already chilled target?

Bhawb.7408:

The only siphon things in the game which currently work have an ICD, either explicit or effective due to their proccing mechanics. This is an undeniable fact, every single one that currently is useful has built-in limiters. Vampiric Master has effective ICDs, runes/sigils/food which we always complain are better than ours, have built in ICDs. Yet ICD will break Vampiric how?

If you don’t want an ICD, and you want it to only work for some builds that is totally fine, but don’t make it a minor trait. We had this issue with Reanimator, let’s not force it on ourselves again.

Fully agree: don’t make it a compulsory choice if you can’t use it fully with ANY weapon. How much better would those traits be if they procced for around 1000 health like the blood sigils, and had a 5-10" CD! You’d get just as many procs whether you were a spinning scythe reaper type or a slow lifeblast type. (although reapers would still get more lifesteal procs as a whole because GS has its own trait on top of hte two blood magic ones)

I think Lingering Curse is only “while holding a scepter” isn’kitten Meaning your other weapon set won’t be affected at all, and possibly not even DS conditions depending on what state of bugginess DS is currently in.
I could be wrong, might be you only need to have a scepter equipped, not currently using it.

Well Souleater+Vampiric+Vampiric precision. Those 3 proccing together might actually be a decent amount, considering the autoattack cleaves, the 3rd attack in the chain is a 360 degree pbaoe, Gravedigger hits like 600 times within a second (proccing potentially all 3 lifesteal traits with every hit if they crit!) and the other 3 skills are also aoe in one form or another. It’s not just that you’d be getting 55 health per hit from Soulstealer, it’s that you’d also gett many more VampiricVampiric Precision procs from the aoe!

Is it really intentional that a necro in wvw with a GS should be stealing roughly 6 times more life than a necro in spvp with a dagger? Why not just make it as effective for anyone who wants to choose those traits, regardless of what weapon they’re carrying? Just slap an ICD on each trait, and make it give about 10x the health!

PS. I get why a necro in wvw in a zerg situation might NEED to steal more life to sustain their HP, given that in a big fight like that you’re also getting hit a bunch more times, but that could easily be accounted for by making the ICD per target rather than internal to the necro.

I agree with what Bhawb says, but I’d add reduction of recharge times. Not on Bone Minions of course, cause that would give you infinite spammable bombs! But on the other minions, well they’re your utilities, it’s not fair that you should be locked out of them for 30-60" because they were too dumb to step out of a meteor shower!

I’d also love:
1. If transformation elites didn’t destroy minions. And I don’t think it’d be unbalanced either, I mean you’re still locked out of their actives, which is a big nerf, and I don’t see why Plague and Lich should be the only transformations in the game that work like this – they don’t die every time you go into Death Shroud, an elementalist’s elementals don’t die when he uses mist form, and a ranger’s pet doesn’t despawn if their vampirism #6 bonus procs.

2. If there were a new elite skill that summoned a bunch of short-lived temporary minions (maybe jaggies, maybe a new type) on a reasonably short cooldown. Something like the new Rise shout, but with a fixed amount of pets rather than the ridiculous 1/enemy stipulation.

Atherakhia.4086:

It would be nice if they made both it and terror scale off both. Either cut the coefficient so it can use both stats or be ‘smart’ and just decide to base the damage off whichever stat is higher. This way both traits are useful to the class regardless of spec.

I think that could be an interesting idea, but it’s never gonna happen as long as they stick to linear scaling. If they had a diminishing returns scaling formula (eg. “root of power+condition damage” rather than “power*0.5”) then they could do that, but it seems like a radical departure for them given that they haven’t budged off linear scaling (not just for damage, but for healing and everything else too) for nearly 3 years.

I actually posted in the other thread about ways in which they could make Reaper traits more useful to conditionmancers if you feel like reading: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Condi-Reaper-thread/5072967

Quick note: I’m encouraged by the fact that lifestealing will now heal us in DS! However, I’m not happy that life steal procs are still such tiny amounts. It means that fast attack speed weapons get a much bigger benefit from it than slow weapons – and, honestly, that benefit isn’t all that much even on the fastest weapons. GS might actually be decent since you can get 3 simultaneous lifesteal traits proccing from it, and since that whirl attack hits so many times and recharges instantly if target<50%HP.

But the thing is, why balance lifestealing so it’s ok only at the best possible scenario? If they increased the amount of life you can steal from each proc, and put an ICD on each trait, then slow weapons would gain almost exactly the same benefit from it as fast weapons, and it would be balanced for ANY necro that decided to spec in lifestealing no matter how they built. Why make it a “GS or GTFO” affair?

Tman.6349:

A Dhuum’fire and Ice’ hybrid build with Rune of the Elementalist?

It would be absollutely awesome, but like I said in the other thread on the subject, I don’t see how you can get the chill uptime if you’re a conditionmancer (ie. if you’re using scepter/dagger+staff). Seems like all the traits are designed to ghet maximum utility out of GS, and GS would be lousy condi weapon as it only has 1 damaging condition on a long cooldown.

Shiki.7148:

The thing is you don’t factor in the extra bolts from whirls, and for whatever reason completely ignore how Dhuumfire will actually work with RS. With the faster attack trait and 100% condi-duration, You should be able to retain 6-7 stacks of burning on 3, and 3-4 on 5 foes… And currently burning seems to hit like a truck (6 stacks = ~4.5 k damage with 25 vuln which we can also easily sustain now, see DH bursting chieftain).

The extra finishers are awesome (not just the whirls, reapers will get a leap finisher on a 6" cd too!), but it’s not like they’ll help chill uptime specifically: we get one ice field on a 30" cooldown. You can leap through that for 5" Frost Armour, which will probably chill an enemy for 4" if you’re lucky and they hit you twice.
Also, the activation time is REALLY slow, and we don’t know if the ice field forms if they dodge the attack.
Bottom line is don’t count on the finishers for extra chill uptime, and my post was specifically on what Reaper brings to conditionmancer. I think I argued pretty convincingly that the only things the specialisation brings that are useful for conditionmancers require either high chill uptime or frequent reapplication, and I’ve yet to be convinced we can get either of those without GS.

Well I hope it’s condition damage too. I assumed it scaled with power and that they made the damage proc low since reaper GS has very frequent Chill application. You’d have to make the damage low to balance it for GS. But if Robert was wearing power gear when he was demonstrating that, then the trait might actually proc for a reasonable amount with rabid or carrion gear on! It would make the trait a more reasonable option for terrormancers, though I still think core terrormancer would be better.

Well it’s all about lift and air resistance guys. If the scythe was smaller the necrocopter just wouldn’t fly.

I just thought of a 6th one:

6. Increase the life force gain on Blighter’s Boon and put an ICD on it. That way, it’s not useful only to builds that can gain frequent, spammable boons (eg a Reaper with Chilling Force and high chilled uptime). Only problem is, most of the boons we can give ourselves are on DS entry, so…

To the OP: Life Rend won’t do extra damage within 600. That’s a Life Blast stipulation, this is a completely separate skill that simply inherits Life Blast’s traits.
It IS true that the faster attack speed will make Dhuumfire more powerful though, especially in WvW. Imagine the 3rd attack in the auto chain, which is a 360 degree pbaoe inflicting burning AND generating life force per target struct in a zerg vs zerg scenario!

However, I suspect they’ll adjust the legacy traits, so they’ll be balanced for the new skills once you equip the Reaper spec. Maybe reduce the burning on Dhuumfire, or whatever.

What I’m curious about is how on earth will the melee Life Rend work with Unyielding Blast? How can you make a melee attack pierce? Or will they just drop that and only keep the vulnerability?

OK, since I’m on this train of through now I might as well say how I think they should fix it:

1. Increase the damage on Deathly Chill, and stick an ICD on it. That way, instead of doing bonus damage on each and every 3rd attack on the GS auto chain, it’ll proc every 10-20" for a respectable, significant amount. That way, conditionmancers who want to use it to give themselves more Terror burst will actually do some real damage instead of just a smidgeon more. The ICD on this would be per-target, so that you wouldn’t waste this on a target that got hit accidentally from your aoes or your chilling novas.

2. Put either Chill or Blind back into Death’s Charge (Reaper’s Dark Path). Honestly, I was excited that Dark Path gets turned into a charge skill, and had its cooldown drastically reduced. But then I saw that it only has 600 range and its movement speed is VERY slow, and my excitement waned a bit. Gap closer skills need to either be longer ranged/faster, or should have a snare associated with them to be useful. A shorter-duration chill (1") would do it, but I think a blind would be better, since Dark Path used to have that back in betas, and it was removed. Then you could combo that with Chilling Darkness to give yourself a snare. This wouldn’t just benefit conditionmancers, but GS-wielding Reapers as well, because, honestly, they’d struggle keeping . I mean, it’s bad enough they gave us the ONLY greatsword in the game that doesn’t have a gap-closer (except the mesmer’s, but that’s not a melee weapon), but they also remove our gap closer from Shroud? I know reaper GS has a pull, but it only has 600 range! Honestly, to be the “monster movie”-style villain that you just can’t get away from, in a game where your targets have a myriad teleports, you need to get into range and land your snares in the first place. Pulls are useful in order to land melee-range burst skills or to interrupt: they’re not used as “inverse gap closers”. To catch people, you need a teleport/charge of your own!

3. Reduce Chillblains cooldown to 15" (12" traited). I don’t think thjat’s too much, and with an only 4" chill it’s still pretty bad uptime. Give us something that makes it worth swapping to staff for EVERY time your weapon swap recharges! (Restoring the extra bleed stack on mark of blood wouldn’t hurt either…)

4. Feast of Corruption needs a condition on it. It’s ridiculously sub-par, both in its damage and its life force generation, so a condition would help. A 5" blind or a 3" Chill would be very nice there, thank you very much.

Optional:
5. If they won’t make scepter/staff a good option for Reaper, how about making GS a good option for conditionmancer? They could do that by replacing Reaper’#s Onslaught with another GM trait that added conditions to GS skills. A single bleed on each of auto 1&2 would make GS a perfectly viable condition weapon. It won’t stack as many bleeds or have the poison uptime of scepter, but you have Reaper’s Shroud and your other weapon set to make up for that.

I’m not as optimistic as you guys are. Reaper will make an excellent line to spec into for power necros, but I don’t see the benefits to conditionmancers as clearly.
The benefits of speccing into Reaper for conditionmancers SPECIFICALLY would be:
a. Reduced damage from chilled enemies from cold shoulder
b. Increased damage from Deathly Chill (especially when fearing people)
c. Massively improved life force gain (which is possibly the biggest issue for conditionmancers right now) from Blighters Boon in combination with Chilling Force.

Now, to get the most benefit from b. you need frequent reapplication. But to get the most benefit from a. and c. what you really need is uptime. In pvp and wvw, frequent reapplication helps with uptime, because there’s a lot of cleansing and long-duration conditions rarely stick. But when those frequent reapplications are only 1-2" duration, it still means that total uptime will be low, possibly under 30%.

With chill on autoattack on GS, full-on power reapers would have both frequent reapplication (proccing Deathly Chill frequently) as well as good uptime, because even though most of their chills are short duration, they’ll reapply them constantly, and they have the longer applications to stack them with.

But conditionmancers (meaning scepter+dagger/staff) have only one “long”-duration chill (from Chilblains) on a 20" cooldown. If you can call 4" long. All other applications would be from Chilling Darkness or Shivers of Dread procs, and there won’t be that many of those. Deathly Swarm has a fairly low cooldown, but you’d probably save that for the condition transfer. All the conditionmancer’s fears have long cooldowns, and a Reaper-specced conditionmancer will actually have fewer fears applications than the current conditionmancer, because assuming you want Dhuumfire or FitG (and you’d be crazy not to) you won’t be speccing into Death for Reaper’s Protection. I personally would probably drop Nightmare runes for Grenth, so that’s another fear gone. Plus, Doom becomes Infusing Terror, which is a 360 range pbaoe rather than a 1,200 range single-target skill, so Reaper’s Mark becomes your only ranged fear! You’ll get the occasional chilling darkness proc by corrupting Fury, and presumably Alacrity will corrupt into Chilled, but you can’t really count on those, and they’ll be short duration. So Shivers of Dread won’t really do much for uptime: its purpose is to provide more Terror burst and that’s it.

So my point is that conditionmancer’s Chilled uptime is pretty terrible. GS Reapers will do much better, and even hammer guardians can keep Chilled up more now (although they’ll losing Glacial Heart soon). So the benefit you’ll get from Cold Shoulder and Blighters Boon/Chilling Force aren’t that great. Honestly, today’s conditionmancer can keep Chilled up more than a Reaper conditionmancer will be able to, since Dark Path is losing its Chilled! Considering you’ll also lose the Bleeds from Dark Path, the Torment from Tainted Shackles, the range from Doom and the extra fears from Reapers Protection, plus the fact that your Dhuumfire will only proc in melee range, I really don’t think that Reaper conditionmancer will be better than core conditionmancer. Chill uptime just isn’t good enough to help with damage mitigation (through Cold Shoulder) or life force generation (through the Blighters Boon/Chilling Force combo).

So that leaves Deathly Chill. Now, I know the numbers are preliminary here, but the damage on the tooltip seems pretty low. Assuming that damage scales with power, and assuming Robert had zerker or soldier gear on while demonstrating it, those number4s will be even lower in carrion or rabid gear. So, if your plan is to boost your Terror damage from the Shivers of Dread/Deathly Chill procs, I really don’t think your plan is a goer. Especially considering you’ll lose 1,200 range on your Doom and won’t be able to spec for Reapers Protection, so you’ll have fewer Fears.

I could see a tough reaper-conditionmancer spec with Runes of Grenth and some chill-related sigils being viable in conquest as a bunker build. That kind of conditionmancer would probably even drop Dhuumfire and spec into Death for Putrid Defence: assuming it’ll stack with Cold Shoulder it’ll result in SIGNIFICANT damage reduction . But, thing is, the conquest meta has moved away from bunkers lately. Good teams prefer to actually kill enemies so they can be 5v4 across the map and dominate that way, rather than have 1 person holding up 2 enemies for ages so their team can outnumber the enemy on the other 2 points. So, while that build would be pretty tough, I don’t see it catching on. Plus, since the necro needs to keep attacking to keep chilled and poison on the enemies, stun-locking them will be as effective as ever

AFAIK engis are always complaining about their pulls as well so it’s not just Grasp. It’s the same problem as golem charge I think, movement skills just stall if there’s the tiniest bump in the terrain. Except for a rare few that actually lift the user slightly above the ground like ranger’s Swoop. Even that doesn’t always work, but it’s better. They should just make all of them work like that, both pulls and move skills.

Darwec.3784:

So it seems like you’re infavor of adding more stability, just not to skills tied to deathshroud, which makes a lot of sense to me. Tying more things to death shroud seems pretty bad. I mean im all for the class mechanic being useful, but just throwing more things on top of DS probably wont do a good job at making it better.

Yeah exactly, I wouldn’t mind getting long duration/deep stacks stability tied to an appropriately long recharge skill (maybe a new skill, or one of the spectrals), but I really like having that little bit of stability on a short recharge, it makes a huge difference in pvp now that they added a stunbreak to it!

Good stuff Nemesis! Mostly on the ball analysis, and your Flesh Golem sections made me laugh till I cried! Well, maybe I also just cried a little bit too… :p
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about the trait revamps.

flow.6043:

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.

Yeah that’s precicely true, it IS completely unrealist. You can theoretically get 42% stability uptime, but it’s gated by a. having life force, and b. always flashing DS on cooldown so you can refresh your stability. It’s just not realistic.
Which is precicely why this trait is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of Withering Shroud’s ridiculously short 2" weakness: they DIDN’T balance for the best case scenario of 42% uptime. They balance around “what’s a reasonable amount of stab we could give necro on a short cooldown so they can get their heal off or stomp someone?” And, for that, 3" is balanced.

Let me be clear: I wouldn’t be averse to it getting 1-2 more stacks, or slightly longer duration (probably no more than 4"). I was just saying to Kilger.5490 that I think the trait is stronger now than before the stability change, because the stunbreak more than makes up for the nerf to stability.

And let me also point out: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ALSO have access to longer-lasting stability that gives more than 1 stack. And that isn’t a 3-minute cooldown elite. In fact, I think it would be awesome if Well of Power would pulse 1" stability instead of only giving it at the start. Or if the Spectral trait would make them give additional bonuses instead of just life force and reduced cooldown (maybe stability for Walk, retaliation for Armour, projectile reflecction for Wall?). And I suspect we’ll get a new utility skill that gives retaliation as part of the elite specialisation, cause we’ve been asking for it far too vocally for far too long. But let’s get this straight: more powerful stability effects would be on a far longer cooldown, like they are for every other profession in the game. You therefore wouldn’t blow them just to get a heal off, or to get out of a short duration stun when you’re in a 1v1. You’d use them in a big team fight where the CC is flying around like crazy and for whatever reason you have to stand in the middle of it instead of standing on the periphery of the fight like you normally would.

For THOSE situations, yes, we need longer-lasting stability. But it would do a whole diffferent job than the short duration stability FitG gives us. You don’t use that if you have to revive a teammate while an engi and a hambow are lobbing knockbacks at you one after the other. You use that if you’re in a 1v1 and need to get a heal off, or ensure a stomp cause you see the enemy’s teammate coming to +1. Or you use it for the stunbreak, because you saw that the opponent used their CC to line up a big damage skill. And if you’ve also got Reaper’s Protection traited, you use it to exploit that nice 3" fear to land some big damage of your own.

Whole different thing, whole different use cases. Just because we also need a completely different thing doesn’t mean that this thing is not a thing we need!

Kilger.5490:

Nerf to FITG has hurt necros too much.

Necros have no mobility options (leaps/evades/blocks/teleports) to get out of harms way, with smart play fitg used to be the safe haven to escape “pinball” mode. The buff to give it stun break is only part of the cure as you cannot use it to move anywhere without getting stunned again.

Honestly, I also think that FitG is better than ever. Having a stunbreak on a 10" CD (!!) is incredible!
I agree that 1 stack of stability for 3" is pretty puny, especially now it’s been nerfed. But it’s enough to make it reasonably safe to shroudstomp, or to flash and get off your heal. Yeah they can still interrupt you, but that was already the case if there was another necro on the enemy team (I’ve interrupted many a stability stomp with corrupt boon).

Nonetheless, I don’t think it would be OP for it to become pulsing stability like you suggested. Few builds have the ability to stay in DS long enough to take advantage of it, and the most popular one of these (the zerker shroudmancer) would still take Deathly Perception anyway.

What actually makes me upset about FitG is that it now has to compete with Dhuumfire in the same slot. Our damage is pretty low nowadays, and the new Dhuumfire would be a decent buff, but that means going back to having 2 stunbreaks and still getting ping-ponged around the place till we’re dead. I know making a build is all about trade-offs, but when your profession has two such glaring weaknesses, it’s downright cruel for the trade-off to be “do miniscule damage, or be a pinata”.

Options to restore some survivability/self control in shroud are possibly a block, or for dark path to be a ground targetted teleport to use as escape.

Oh I totally agree with those. Aegis on DS entry would be excellent. People were already using it for that before the damage overflow bug was fixed. It could even be a part of FitG. Sounds OP doesn’kitten Aegis, stability, AND a stunbreak on DS entry? Well, yeah, it is a little bit. Guardians can trait their Virtue of Courage (which grants Aegis) to also break stun and give stability, not just for themselves BUT AOE AS WELL! Not a fair comparison, as Virtue of Courage is on a 60" recharge instead of 10 (7 with Speed of Shadows!), but OTOH Virtue of Courage’s use isn’t gated by hard-to-build life force, it’s available on demand and has a passive effect as a bonus. So yeah, maybe adding aegis to FitG would be a little over the top, but not wildly so – it’s comparable to similar abilities of other classes.

As for Dark Path becoming ground-targeted, I’ve been begging for it to go back to that since the 2nd beta weekend!