Guild Wars 2

Aesa.4819:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

manveruppd.7601:

Would have been nice if we’d gotten a blind on fear trait to go with it!

That buff and the small buff to Armored Shroud seem to have gone unnoticed by everyone.

Ooh! It could be called Blind Panic!

Fear of the Dark

Both awesome names, but as a metalhead I’d have to go for Fear of the Dark! ;p

Yeah Spite will probably end up being the 3rd condi tree, unless the elite has anything good for condis. The disappointing is it’s gonna be that almost by default, and despite the fact that Spiteful Spirit is pretty mediocre for a condi build.
If Unholy Sanctuary wasn’t so abominably awful that it makes Spiteful Spirit seem like the holy grail of grandmasters, Death would have been a viable alternative to Spite: the reduced damage from poisoned enemies adept is really interesting, and almost makes up for our kittened access to weakness!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@ manverupped: Chilling Darkness is still there. In fact, it’s effectiveness was doubled.

That’s awesome! I didn’t notice it cause it was all the way at the bottom of Dulfy’s screenshots and I didn’t scroll down enough :p

Would have been nice if we’d gotten a blind on fear trait to go with it!

It’s also possible the character didn’t have any condition damage gear on when they were showing it. Terror damage also seemed lower. However, it’s also possible that they lowered Terror damage so Terror+Dhuumfire won’t be as big of a disaster as it used to be.

Also, it’s entirely possible that not only base condition damage will change, but that the scaling will change. So maybe those bleed and terror values are accurate for 0 condition damage, but they’ll be up to normal levels when wearing carrion/rabid. But no doubt burning will be seriously lower than it is now if they’re allowing it to stack.

Thanks for starting this, Gates! I put my opinions on the trait changes here and in the 3 posts immediately after that one, but I’ll put a tl;dr here for you:
1. Because conditionmancer’s build bleed stacks really slowly, and don’t inflict a lot of different conditions, they need the burst damage from Terror to down people. Otherwise a full cleanse means your opponent has managed to reset the fight. Condition duration doesn’t matter when cleansing is frequent.
2. New Terror tooltip damage seems 45% lower than now. If this is accurate then it won’t be able to provide that burst.
3. New Dhuumfire is excellent, because going into DS always meant lower DPS as a terrorrmancer. Now this allows you keep up that DPS. But Burning damage seems to be 50% of current levels (probably correct, since they’d have to lower damage if they’re gonna make it stack), this can’t replace Terror either.
4. The post-patch Terrormancer would need both Dhuumfire and Terror to maintain current levels of burst. This is possible, but it means you can’t take Foot in the Grave.
5. The conditionmancer lacks sustain, escapes, stability, and mobility. The new buffed Foot in the Grave made a huge difference when fighting against lots of CC, and it would be a shame to be locked out of access from it because we now need Dhuumfire to replace the nerfed Terror damage!
6. Like I said here Drarnor’s suggestion of merging Terror and Master of Terror into a SR GM, moving Dhuumfire to master tier,and creating a new power-focussed trait for Curses GM would solve this problem, as well as making Curses a good option for powermancers. Any other change that puts Dhuumfire and FitG on different tiers would work for me.
7. Every line should have options for all different kinds of necro builds. Curses has no GM worth taking for power builds, Death has no GM worth taking for non-MMs, Spite and Blood have no GMs worth taking for condi.
8. Spiteful Spirit is ok, but it would’ve been better if it either buffed boon removal (“remove or corrupt one additional boon” when using a skill that does that) or if it profited from it (“when you remove or corrupt boons, inflict damage for each boon remaining on your target”, low scaling so zerkers can’t one-shot people with it, and 5" ICD so it doesn’t proc multiple times on well of corruption).
9. Why remove Chilling Darkness now that we have an “on chill” trait to synergise with it?
10. The Weakening Shroud change is a huge nerf. Necros need more weakness, not less! We have no vigor, no blocks, little mobility, at least give us more means to debuff the enemy’s offensive strength. Not less weakness and less chill. Longer cooldown on the new trait means Weakness won’t stick with the amount of cleansing around these days. Frequent reapplication is more important than longer duration.
11. Similarly, Withering Precision should’ve been buffed and kept, not removed.
12. Death Shiver, Reaper’s Precision, Parasitic Contagion, Unholy Sanctuary, and Blood to Power are weak.
13. Deathly Invigoration is a terrible change! We need more healing in DS, not rubbing our faces into the fact that we can’t get any!
14. Beyond the Veil needs to affect all allies, not just minions
15. Necromantic Corruption is a good idea, but the transfer interval needs to be lower and not tied to attacks, because minions will just kill themselves between conditions applied to them and conditions they pull from you.
16. Since we can’t have Vigor (for religious reasons, apparently), what about Bhawb’s idea of a trait that lets you steal endurance when you attack someone? Could be something like 2% per boon on the target. Could become the new Withering Precision even.

Let me also echo the desire for a rework of DS. Every class is getting more and more team support abilities that necros can’t benefit from. Healing needs to at least partially go through it – self-traited healing like life siphons needs to be allowed to heal fully.
I know there would be a trade-off: maybe life force will run down a lot faster, so that the most DS you can get is 5-6". That’s fine, as long as they let us build life force up faster too.
Maybe it isn’t an extra health bar at all. Maybe you still take normal damage (maybe full damage, maybe reduced), and DS just equips the DS skills. If so, we’ll need more on-entry DS defensive traits (boons, debuffing surrounding enemies, etc). More stuff in the vein of Foot in the Grave.

Let me also echo this:

I’ll just leave this here: August 2011 Dark Path

They said the cooldown reduction is baseline now. MM will be pretty decent with the changes, though I recommend you stick to Death Nova as I think minions would kill themselves with Corruption.

SOUL REAPING:

I feel this line’s revamp was the most successful, good job!

- Soul Marks: this is a good trait, but I feel a little hard done by that staff still has 2 traits associated with it, when all the weapon traits for all the other professions have been merged (and in fact some affect multiple weapons, eg “staff and trident”, or ranger’s “torch and dagger”). You could have merged this with Greater Marks, and it would have even deserved a GM slot.

- Dhuumfire: This is not bad, not bad at all! Conditionmancers have always had the problem that staying in DS for an extended amount of time (which sometimes you have to if your HP is low and your heal is on cooldown) meant all their conditions expired and their DPS took a dive. This will help with that a lot. And you can also jump into DS short term, put a couple stacks, and get an additional little bit of burst when you really need to down someone. The only problem is it shares a slot with:

- Foot in the Grave: This is SUCH a good trait in its newly-buffed form! Having a stunbreak on a 10” cooldown makes a huge difference to conditionmancers, for whom susceptibility to crowd control is their greatest weakness, and the main reason why most condition necros playing at high level are forced into carrying 2 stun breaks! I know we’ve only had it in its current form for a few weeks, but it already feels like a must-have for me: it makes play much more fluid, much less frustrating, and it forces me to think about whether I want to use my DS now for a Path of Corruption or Tainted Shackles, or whether I should save it in case I get disabled. It’s an EXCELLENT trait, enabling you to do more without actually making you more powerful.

The necromancer’s sceptre builds bleeding stacks very slowly, unlike a shortbow ranger who can get you to 20 stacks within 3”. This means that a full cleanse means an opponent can reset the fight, even if their remaining HP is extremely low. This is what makes Terror so crucial for a conditionmancer build: it gives you the little bit of burst damage needed to finish off someone who’s low before they can reset, even if they no longer have 10 stacks of bleeding on them. If the tooltip numbers on Terror are accurate, it means its damage has gone down by about 45%. It can no longer provide the kind of burst damage that a necro needs to finish off someone. If the tooltip numbers stay the same, only Dhuumfire will be able to provide that kind of burst (at 3” duration you’ll be able to get 2 burning stacks, which at the numbers demonstated is about 80% of Terror damage, but constant and not dependent on having other conditions!), making it a must-have. I feel this locks both condition and power builds out of taking Foot in the Grave, and it’s very disappointing because I’ve enjoyed playing with it a lot these past few weeks.

Fortunately, someone’s already suggested a solution:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here is my idea for the Curses problem:

1. Merge Terror with Master of Terror. Move to the Grandmaster Soulreaping slot.
2. Move Dhuumfire to Master tier for Soul Reaping.
3. Add a new, non-condition damage focused Grandmaster trait in Curses.

Drarnor was actually concerned about the fact that there are no good options for Powermancers in Curses when he suggested that. But this reshuffle would also solve the conditionmancer problem: it will allow you to take Path of Corruption and Lingering Curse in Curses, and give you a plethora of meaningful choices in Soul Reaping. You could take Dhuumfire and Foot in the Grave, giving you the burst from burning and the option to escape stunlocks. Or you could choose Spectral Mastery or Vital Persistence in Master tier, to give you more life force to soak up damage with, and get your burst from Terror at GM level. Or you could even live dangerously and take both Terror and Dhuumfire, crossing your fingers and hoping you’ll down opponents faster than they can stunlock and destroy you!

BLOOD

- Siphoning traits: as has been pointed out, siphoning is very marginal. First of all, doesn’t work in DS, end of. Secondly, it’s VERY low! You should increase the amount stolen to about 1k (same as the sigil and rune procs), and put an appropriate ICD on each traits, so it’s just as effective with a 0.25” dagger autoattack as with a 1.4” Life Blast.

- Bloodthirst: I’m disappointed that this stayed, when you did such a great job of getting rid of all the other “make this thing ever so slightly better” traits. Could have been replaced with a trait that allowed siphons to heal you while in DS. Yes, this is so vital that I would use up a trait slot to be able to do it! Or, if you want to be more imaginative, a trait that heals nearby allies by a small amount whenever you siphon health (like a mini-Transfusion).

- Quickening Thirst: THANK YOU for making the movement buff flat whether you have one dagger or two, long overdue! The recharge reduction mechanic is very interesting: much stronger than the typical 20% reduction from most traits, but I think making it contingent on being ABOVE a health threshold is counterproductive with most dagger skills: Life Siphon is a heal, after all, you don’t want to use it when you’re already at full health, and Deathly Swarm needs you to have 3 or more conditions on you to be most effective. So maybe the health condition should have been “below 75%” instead? OTOH Dark Pact and Enfeebling Blood might benefit from this, since they’re the longest recharges on dagger and you don’t need to wait until you’re hurt to use them. Is this basically ANet acknowledging that those 2 skills could use a cd reduction? :p

- *Vampiric Rituals: *this trait is MONSTROUS now! I personally think this trait alone will make Blood the 3rd specialisation of choice for powermancers (Spite and SR being compulsory). There’s not much else for them in the lower tiers (even Quickening Thirst isn’t a must-have, since you have high Swiftness uptime from warhorn), but this alone is worth going for!

- Unholy Martyr: Still pointless

- Deathly Invigoration: This is the single worst change announced in the livestream! Not only is this the only effect in the game that heals allies without healing the user (even Transfusion will heal the user if your life force runs out while Life Transfer is channelling), but putting it in the GM slot of what is supposedly the healing/survivability specialisation goes beyond “bad design” and edges into “bad manners” – it’s deliberately taunting us with Death Shroud’s design problems! The justification for this that was given during the livestream (“We felt it was wrong of us to design traits that force you to leave DS”) was logical, but doesn’t take account of real world scenarios: what happens WHEN IT RUNS OUT, DUDE? If you’re stunlocked and focussed down by multiple people, DS won’t last long! A heal on exit could be just the window you need to get your heal off!

- Blood to Power: Well, I suppose the logic of giving bonus healing power while ABOVE a health threshold is that you’re trying to create support necros. But, frankly, necros don’t have enough outgoing healing to do that, just Deathly Invigoration, Transfusion, and regeneration from staff 2. As I said above, you need the combination of multiple simultaneous healing effects, and you yourself need to stay alive long enough to put out that healing. This trait doesn’t help you do that. As for your self heals: apart from the regeneration from Full of Life, the only trait affected by the bonus healing power would be Vampiric, and it will benefit by a grand total of… 1.2HP per hit.

DEATH

- Beyond the Veil: they put so much effort into overhauling the Death line so that it has traits that are useful to everyone, not just minionmancers, and now they come and introduce an unavoidable minor that’s useless to everyone except minionmancers? Why not make it give Protection to “you and nearby allies” instead, so that your minions get it if you’re a minionmancer, and your teammates get it if you’re not? 3” is pretty short duration anyway, it’s not like it would make necro’s into the new bunker guardians.

- Putrid Defence: very interesting idea for a trait! It’s like the sceptre necro’s own personal mini-weakness! It’s a shame there’s nothing at the GM level worth taking for a conditionmancer. I actually think this would be a better trait for minionmancers who take Death Nova instead, rather than for conditionmancers!

- Deadly Strength: I find these attribute conversion traits really boring and marginal, but the “double while in Death Shroud” idea is interesting. Could make zerker shroudmancers hit even harder, but would they really take it over Greater Marks if they chose Death?

- Necromantic Corruption: Interesting rework! Needs some tweaking though. 10” cooldown is very long! Minions already die to aoe burning pretty easily, if they also drew it off you they’d be dead before they could transfer a single bleed stack, even if you take Flesh of the Master! Moreover, tying the transfer to their attacks is a mistake: they all have very slow attack speed, the melee ones can be easily kited because they can’t move and attack at the same time and have terrible pathing AI, and the ranged ones don’t seem to realise when their line of sight is obstructed and try to attack through walls! Unless they’re getting a massive AI overhaul for HoT, this trait means they will die about twice as fast as they do now. It could work if the condition transfer were not tied to minion attacks, but instead just pulsed a transfer to the nearest enemy, and at a lower cooldown than 10”. I believe the cooldown for them transferring conditions should be about half as long as the cooldown for them cleansing them off you. Otherwise, between your conditions and their own, they wouldn’t live long enough to transfer anything.

- New MM builds? I can see people taking Death Nova paired with putrid Defence, and Necromantic Corruption paired with Flesh of the Master. A bit of variation on MM builds is a good thing.

- Unholy Sanctuary: still very marginal, the healing is just too low! Professions that rely on tiny packets of healing-over-time use multiple such at the same time (eg. elementalists will have both regeneration and Soothing Mist active, engis will have regen and backpack regenerator, warriors will have Healing Signet and Adrenal Health, etc) to add up to meaningful healing. Even more crucially, those healing-over-time effects are also active during periods of blocking/invulnerability! The necromancer has no invulnerability windows for healing-over-time effects to make a difference in, and no other healing-over-time effects to combine Unholy Sanctuary with (well, actually we have both vampiric effects and regeneration, but NEITHER WORKS IN DS!). Therefore, a trait that grants a healing-over-time whose base heal is even lower than regeneration, and which by design CANNOT be combined with any other HoTs, will be sub-par, even for the few builds that have enough life force generation to stay in DS for ages. This slot could have gone to one of the deleted traits, like Withering Precision (reworked or buffed, of course), or to a new life force generation trait, which is the biggest weakness for most builds.

CURSES:

- As others said, no worthwhile GM for a power build, which is a shame as Banshee’s Wail and the minor traits would be useful. With so many professions running Celestial and being able to find use in both condition and direct damage traits, necro’s need to specialise in one or the other means the devs need to work harder to make every line useful to different builds.

- Barbed Precision: I love that they rolled Haemophilia into this – almost makes up for the nerfs to Grasping Dead and Mark of Blood! But I was hoping they’d turn it into something that’s as useful to Carrion as to Rabid necros. They could have changed it into something like “when you apply a condition to a foe, also apply 1 stack bleeding” (perhaps putting an ICD on it.) This would not only make it useful for Carrion, but also enable hybrid builds, using a power-based weapon like an axe with its vulnerability on autoattack, and still applying some bleeding.

- Adept: WHERE’S MY CHILLING DARKNESS?? I’m surprised this was removed, especially now that we have Bitter Chill to synergise with it in Spite! Not saying it was awesome, I usually preferred Enfeebling Shroud, but it had its uses, especially in WvW when running Plague. And it was very fluff-appropriate!

- Weakening Shroud: MASSIVE nerf. In theory this new version gives us higher total weakness uptime if you trait Lingering Curse (50% theoretically, 96% combined with offhand dagger!). In practice though, there’s so much aoe cleansing in pvp that long duration/long recharge conditions never “stick” – they will be cleansed promptly, and then you’ll have to wait for its full recharge to reapply. Low duration/low recharge conditions are more likely to stick when you need them (ie. when it actually matters, like when you jump into DS as soon as a thief opens on you), even if the theoretical uptime is lower. The current 20% uptime Weakening Shroud with no ICD would, in practice, be much stronger than this new 50% uptime 25” recharge version. Besides, there will be times when you will need to jump into Death Shroud for OTHER REASONS than to use Weakening Shroud (eg. to cast Path of Corruption, or fear someone), meaning the proc is wasted if no enemies are around you, and won’t proc again for 25+”. A very disappointing change if it goes through, and a huge blow to a build that relies on debuffing their enemies’ damage in order to stay alive.

- Reaper’s Precision: a joke of a trait when it was adept, an utter insult at Master. Even for powermancers with zerker gear this is marginal, and for conditionmancers, who normally take Carrion, it’s useless. Life force generation being one of sceptre’s biggest weaknesses, I would have hoped that this trait would have gotten a buff, if it were kept at all.

- Path of Corruption/Terror: I don’t get why they felt the need to switch the position of these two. It’s not like switching their places makes you choose between Terror and Dhuumfire. The only reason I can think of is they didn’t want us being able to take both Terror and the new and improved Lingering Curse, so that we wouldn’t be able to get 3” Fears that do 790 damage/s. But we already have Master of Terror, which gives us 50%, and can take it up to 70% with runes. Is 100% really so much worse? They could have kept Terror in Master tier since we can take our fears almost up to +100% even without Lingering Curse.

- Terror, part deux: is it just me or does the damage on the Terror tooltip seem SIGNIFICANTLY lower? Or did they not have condition gear equipped when they were showing it?

- Parasitic Contagion, which moved over from Spite, takes up the slot that used to belong to Withering Precision. The reasons why this trait is bad have been discussed before: the healing, if you can keep up 10 stacks of bleed and a poison, isn’t terrible, but as soon as you actually NEED it you stop receiving it! Examples: thief opens on you, you jump into Death Shroud, oops, no healing. You get focussed in a team fight, Wurm out with 20% HP left, you’re no longer applying bleeds, they expire within 3”, oops, no more healing! So yeah, let this trait heal in DS, or scrap it.

- Withering Precision: Was hoping this trait would be buffed and kept (instead of Parasitic), or merged with Lingering Curse. The necro desperately needs survivability: better uptime on debuffing conditions like weakness, chill, and blind would be an EXCELLENT way to provide this! I’m disappointed that ANet are putting more and more hard CC into the game and have seemingly forgotten about soft CC and debuffs. Also shocked that rangers, who have a million evades and don’t really need weakness, are getting a GM trait that gives 50% weakness uptime completely passively, whereas the necro’s weakness application is the weakest it’s ever been!

Was gonna start my own thread but might as well post here and have it neat and tidy.

A few comments on specific traits, mainly from a pvp standpoint:

SPITE

- Spiteful removal: good change, but threshold should probably be 33 or 50%. Stick a higher ICD on it if necessary.

- Other minors: feel a bit like space filler, they basically do exactly the same job as Close to Death (more damage to enemies with low HP), except in slightly different ways. I’d have liked something more creative, something that covers a gap in the trait line. It has traits helping you finish off people who are low, but nothing to help you GET them to that state. Or maybe something to help your allies? Sharing Might stacks you gain, that kind of thing?

- Spiteful Talisman: the basic idea is very nice! I wonder how useful it’ll be outside pve though. Passive boon proccing and sharing is practically universal, so even if you’ve just cast a Corrupt Boon at someone they’ll have another boon up in seconds. What if it was the opposite? Damage boost if your target HAS boons! That way it helps you get them down to 50% so Chill of Death can proc (after which Close to Death takes over and it doesn’t matter if you lose the Spiteful Talisman bonus).

- Death Shiver: I can’t imagine any situation where you would choose to take this over Chill of Death, except in PvE where few enemies use boons. It was a bad trait when it was in adept tier, promoting it to master is terrible, even with the buff.

- Spiteful Spirit: as others have said, would’ve been better to have something that buffs boon stripping (eg all your corruptions/removals do +1 boon), or which takes advantage of it. One option would be “Whenever you remove or corrupt a boon, deal X damage for each boon remaining on your target”. That damage would have very low power scaling so it would have similar effectiveness for both power and condi builds, and it would have an ICD of 5” so that it didn’t trigger repeatedly on Well of Corruption.

I genuinely don’t understand why you folks seem to expect to be able to queue solo and still end up high on the leaderboard. It’s a TEAM GAME fer cryin out loud, teamwork matters and of course it’ll give the side with premades an advantage!

If you are real pvp’ers with a true competitive ethos you would understand this, and either get a team or make peace with ending up not at the very top of the leaderboards. To ask that you not lose points if you got beaten by a premade is basically asking for pity points. Why on earth do you think you deserve a handicap bonus?

I’m not trying to bait or insult you, it’s a genuine question: why do you think you deserve a handicap for queueing solo? I understand that it’s frustrating to lose, I just don’t get why you think you should lose but still end up high on the leaderboard?

Personally I’m not a great player, I don’t have a regular team, but when I’m watching high level games, I want to know I’m genuinely watching the best. Not just the players with the best mechanical skill, but the ones with the best teamwork, map awareness, and co-ordination as well. Those are all valid parts of the skillset, just as big, if not bigger, a part of the game as pulling a clutch interrupt on an enemy’s heal.

If you give soloers a leaderboard handicap, then the people at the top won’t be the best in the whole range of skills that make a great GW2 player. I wouldn’t want to climb the leaderboard like that. It would cheapen the sense of achievement, and the prestige of the game. I’d rather be stuck right at the bottom and have some genuinely good players to look up to, rather than be able to get high despite losing to premades, only because losing to premades doesn’t cost me leaderboard points.

I mean come on, Evan said that you were favoured to win in your first two games – that means that the opposing team all had significantly lower average MMRs than you, even with the 5% MMR inflation you get when you’re partied up! So a bunch of mechanically less skilled players managed, through teamwork and communication, to squeeze out a victory against better players with 4,000 games experience. Doesn’t that deserve applause? Haven’t they earned their leaderboard points? Don’t you deserve a penalty for losing to less skilled players?

Besides, we saw what allowing you to not lose points if the enemy team is favoured to win gets you: the leaderboards become a farming exercise, where it doesn’t matter if you’re solo or premade, good or terrible, only how many games you played.

Anyway, I suspect you disagree with me on principle, so I doubt I’ll get you to agree to my point of view. Let me instead suggest something that’ll make your solo queueing experience better. Download Curse Voice, set up a chatroom before each game, and past the link to it in team chat when you get into a match. Anyone with a microphone and Curse Voice also installed can just click it and join, and you’ll have instant voice comms even though you’re all solo. So no more excuses: if you’re genuinely good and think you should deserve to be winning against those premades of worse players, this will level the playing field.

I know what you mean… trying to hold onto quarry on Foefire while the enemy runs around the sides of the point is incredibly frustrating. Especially if it’s an engi chucking nades onto the point, being able to hit me while I can’t hit him cause he has more and larger aoes than me. Best bet is to wait for the big boon buff they get from the 75% health trait, fear them directly away from the point with reaper’s mark so you can see them, and then use corrupt boon. That, or just give up the point and freecast condis at them from the ledge.

WOAH! They really DO read the necromancer forums! :o

Well we do have a lot of aoe, and targetting them right can let you hit people behind obstacles. Especially if you have Greater Marks which makes their radius MASSIVE.

I’ve been playing guardian and warrior lately but since this FITG buff I’m definitely going back to necro! I think SoS is the only real replacement for SWalk that makes a significant difference to the conditionmancer’s performance. The current problem is that with all the elementalists and shoutbows running around the aoe condition cleansing is just too much to catch up with our output. The condition bomb from SoS should help you down a guy you’ve gotten low enough, assuming you lock them down with a fear to make sure it lands first.

Bye bye, Reaper’s Protection! I’ll miss your ridiculous 3" fear, but, well, you were kinda cheesy tbh, so not very much…

fluxit.8247:

*And also, FYI, this isn’t a cheese build. Lockdown builds require perfect timing and awareness. If a lockdown mesmer beats you, it’s because they outplayed you, not because of some faceroll 1111ing. *

This IS true, it’s a hard build to play, but don’t forget that necros are basically the easiest possible target for them. Long animations, poor access to stability, no vigor, no blocks. It’s like sitting someone at a piano and asking them to play chopsticks: they might actually BE a concert pianist, but they don’t HAVE to be to play chopsticks :p

Really it tries to do 2 things, and it does neither of them well:
1. it’s a direct damage finisher, so you can down people you’ve gotten low
2. it’s LF generation.

As for 2, 3% every 10" is pathetic, and there’s no other LF generation on scepter. You could run warhorn offhand of course, but that’s gonna leave you weaker against condis and take away your only source of weakness.

As for 1, the 8% scaling isn’t very much on carrion or rabid gear. Even if you use it right after signet of spite, you might get a 2k crit, that’s all. If you’re trying to give someone in condi gear a physical damage skill, you can’t make it scale on power, otherwise they’ll still hit like a wet tissue. They could increase the scaling (something like 30% per condition would make it hit pretty kitten carrion gear), but then you’d be giving zerker necros 10k crits, not sure that’s a great idea either!

Really, the only way to fix it is to make it conditional. Do damage, gain LF, but also if target has less than X condis gain extra life force, if target has X or more do extra damage. Simples. And it would make sense to make the bonus damage a flat amount and not have it scale with power, so it would actually be useful for conditionmancers without letting powermancers 1-shot people!

Guys, there’s no such thing as skills that need facing “at the beginning” and skills that only require facing “at the end” of the cast in this game. If you cast a skill that requires facing, your character will turn to face your target DURING THE CAST. If for any reason you’re not able to turn, the skill will go on 5" cd. There’s only one kind of facing.

Rym.1469:

If you just run and cast CB it will work.

If you want to quickly cast it and turn back, it fails and goes on full cd.

You telling me that you can run directly away from your target and cast CB WHILE RUNNING and it will hit?

It’s not impossible that some skills work differently for different people, but it would be VERY VERY surprising!

If PS=Plague Signet I tested it by having a guardian mate immobilise me and stand behind me recently. It does NOT work. There’s a whole other thread of people arguing about this. What’s happening is some skills that ordinarily require facing are a little bit “flexible” about letting you cast them while you’re moving. I’ve noticed this a lot with ground-targeted aoe skills, maybe PS is the same. But if you’re immobilised and can’t turn around to face your target they don’t work.

Haven’t tested corrupt boon in similarly controlled conditions, but I’ve often seen it go into 5" cd because my target dodged through me and ended up behind me, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work either.
Life Siphon DOES keep channeling without facing. As long as you have facing when you first cast it you can turn around and run away from them and you’ll complete the channel! It’s pretty great!

Tman.6349:

What if it only pulled damaging condis? The last thing in the world a Necro needs is to have mobility impaired anymore than it already is. Would this simple change be enough to make it an option? I really think the CD is a bit much for what it does as well.

Yeah that would totally work! Last night I actually had my heal interrupted by randomly pulling 0.25" of Fear off a teammate! I didn’t die cause I jumped into DS and ran away, but it was a close call.
I still think the biggest problem is the active though.

Stand The Wall.6987:

manveruppd.7601:

Or maybe you weren’t immobilised so your characters just turned around, which you didn’t count on.

immob has always behaved erratically. i think you should post in bugs subforum as there is no reason for plague sig to fail when immob is on you.

What do you mean? How does it behave erratically? If you’re immobilised, you can’t turn around to face your target, so skills that need facing fail and go on 5" cd. You can still drop Putrid Mark at your feet to cover an area a little bit behind you, but that’s about it.

The only weird thing is, certain skills (mostly targeted aoe skills like marks) WILL let you cast them behind you if you’re not immobilised EVEN IF YOU CAN’T TURN AROUND TO FACE YOUR TARGET. For instance, if you’re running directly away from them. This works if you’re running, but NOT if you’re immobilised. This has made a lot of people think that marks don’t require facing, but they do. You can tell because they fail if you try to cast them behind you while immobilised, and also by the fact that, if you’re standing still, your character will turn to face the point where you placed the mark. If you’re standing still and cast Doom, which doesn’t require facing, you won’t turn to face your target.

I really think PS should be made like Doom, and not need facing at all. It’s literally the worst stunbreak we have, and the only way to make it better is to make the condi transfer guaranteed.

CastIron.7364:

Flesh Wurm won’t explode and die if you can’t find a valid path.

That would be an AWESOME change! So what would happen to necrotic traversal though? 5" cooldown?

Plague and Lich will apply 3 stacks of stability every 3 seconds with a base duration of 3 seconds.

Oooh not sure about that… Boon stripping and CC are basically the only counter to lich form right now, this would make it just sick.

Something about various traits now working while in the downed state?

Could be a Flesh of the Master thing?

Well guys, like I said I tested this with a friend in a custom arena 3 days ago and it didn’t transfer when the target was behind me. I used Blood is Power to give myself a nice long bleed so it would be unmistakable when it transferred, and it was still on me. I also had him immobilise me so my character wouldn’t automatically turn to face him. Maybe you two are using a new and improved Plague Signet that just didn’t make it onto my client yet. Or maybe you weren’t immobilised so your characters just turned around, which you didn’t count on.

Well, I hope you’re right man, chill on AA would be pretty good

It’s true Elixir S and Mist Form are the most secure stomps. Stability can be stripped/corrupted, stealth stomping still leaves you vulnerably to cleaving/aoe, but Elixir S and Mist Form give you immunity to those. But even they can be countered by stealthing the downed body or teleporting away. So it’s not massively game breaking. I don’t know, in my opinion they do need a nerf, but it seems they don’t unbalance the game too much right now. Of course, I’m saying that because nearly every team has a thief so there’s always the option of stealthing a downed teammate, and d/d eles normally don’t carry mist form. If thieves were less common, taking away the only real counter to these stomping methods, maybe I’d be singing a different tune.

Oh you’re basing it on that? I hope you’re right, but I wouldn’t put much faith in it. After all, Treahearne could summon 6 Flesh Golems… :p

I think we all agreed in a previous thread that dagger 4’s projectile is appallingly slow. :p People have even learned to dodge Putrid Mark nowadays, and I’ve dropped Reaper’s Protection for Greater Marks because of the amount of blocks around. Being able to transfer conditions is awesome, but the fact that it needs to hit to transfer makes it less reliable than an ele or shoutbow’s cleansing. I don’t have a problem with Putrid Mark and Deathly Swarm being able to miss or be dodged, as you’re in full control of your character when you cast them so you can set them up (fear the target, bait dodges, etc) to make sure they hit. But with Plague Signet that isn’t the case: you’re disabled when you use it, you can’t set it up properly, you can’t even control your facing! The active NEEDS to be changed to make it a more reliable transfer.

It’s true that the Abj all fell apart a bit in that last game, but before that I really don’t think Nos or any of them was playing much worse than usual. But he definitely did get focussed very aggressively, and the reason his teammates weren’t able to help him much is because orng were forcing team fights (3v3s and 4v4s). There’s only so much you can do for your teammate when there’s 3 people focussing him, and with his stunbreaks at 60" cooldowns there’s only so much he can do to keep himself alive as well. ORNG knew that since they had more burst they could quickly turn a 4v4 into a 3v4, and Abjured also didn’t have very much to help with stomps and revives.

The reason Nos was getting targeted first wasn’t because conditionmancers are so much deadlier than anything else on Abjured’s team. It was because they’re easy to take out with their long-cooldown, unreliable escapes (I’m sure I saw Wurm glitch for him at least once in that second Foefire match), so orng knew they could take him out quickly. Especially with Tage on zerker guardian, which is a very hard matchup for necro.

As far as buffs go, nobody thinks necro should be made easier. The skill floor is already pretty low for the class. But they could definitely increase the skill CEILING, make it easier for good players like Nos to get more out of the profession. It takes a lot of tactical awareness to play necro (knowing where to stand so you don’t get instagibbed mainly), but not much mechanical skill. There’s stuff they could do to make our skills more responsive, allowing skilled players to pull off clutch moves. Stuff like decreasing Wurm’s casting time so you can actually place it during a fight, making the golem’s charge instant cast, giving us better death shroud on entry/on exit traits (remember when damage didn’t overflow, so entering death shroud with very little life force was like getting Aegis?), making Dark Path a targeted teleport or at least increasing its projectile speed, all sorts of little things that don’t actually buff the skills in themselves, but allow you to use them under pressure better and therefore increase their utility.

Considering how hard thieves counter mesmers, there was no reason for them to change it. Plus I think thieves already get quite a big advantage by being basically immune to chill’s cooldown reduction for their weapon skills (and also mostly immune to the movement reduction, since their gap closers are unaffected by it due to being teleports rather than movement skills).

Bhawb.7408:

Also worth noting, once the expansion hits greatsword will do wonders for chill builds.

Do you have any inside info on that? Cause if you’re right, it would be awesome, but if you’re just guessing it’s really cruel to tease us dude!

Well now that Noscoc is no longer singlehandedly making necros look viable, maybe we’ll finally get some buffs.

Rejoice! We’re officially no longer OP! :p

Bhawb.7408:

Its once every 3s according to the wiki, although I can’t say I’ve tested it. This makes it 3 times stronger (from the perspective of your allies) than any of the other signets that remove conditions, with the “downside” being that they are pulled to you instead of removed fully (“downside” since we have 3 ways to transfer and 1 to turn into boons).

You’re right, I didn’t check the wiki. My point stands though: it might be potentially powerful, but when was the last time you pulled 10 stacks of bleeds or a poison off someone? It seems to prioritise movement-impeding conditions, and the fact that it’s random (can’t be timed, can’t pick which ally to transfer from) means it just puts the necro in danger without helping your team. It’s one of those that has a thousand to one chance of turning a fight around, but it’s a completely random chance you have no control of. I’d rather do without it. It should either cleanse something useful, like poison, so at least you know you’ll do some good, or it should give a buff to the necro like every other signet in the game.

nekretaal.6485:

(1) Just add 1 second of resistance when pulling a condition

Like I said above, the problem isn’t so much that the necro suffers, it’s that you never cleanse anything useful.

(2) Activating the signet removes the condition and breaks stun regardless of whether the skill “hits”

It can keep the wonky targeting and long cool down if the above are met.

That won’t be anywhere near enough. As I pointed out, for a stunbreak to be useful it has to mitigate future danger as well as break the stun: either by teleporting you out of trouble like Wurm, by giving you protection and life force like Spectral Armour, or giving you total invulnerability for a short while like Elixir S. The idea behind Plague Sig is it doesn’t do any of that, but it transfers all your conditions to the enemy. That way whoever’s trying to hit you gets blinded so they miss, or snared so they can’t chase you, or gets weakened, or gets a million bleeds and dies or whatever. That in itself is already pretty bad, because 1. it’s useless if you’re being focussed by 2 or more people (only 1 target gets the condis) and 2. it’s useless if you don’t have any disabling condis on you. For such a long cooldown skill, making sure the condis always transfer is THE VERY MINIMUM they would need to do to make it worth taking!

For pvp you’d struggle pairing with a necro. Getting jumped on by a thief really hurts if you’re a mesmer. If your necro is godmode in theory he would instantly fear the thief off and then you’d take him down together, but if he’s just a little too far, or reacts just a little too slow, or is out of life force and his weapon swap is on cooldown the thief will get you before you can do anything. In WvW I’ve had success roaming with a mesmer though, there’s more space to run there and not all wvw thieves run the ultra-bursty d/p build, so usually the mesmer can back off and leave me to take care of the thief. As a mesmer in pvp you’d do best with a thief of your own, or an ele or engi.

In terms of what can cover the necro’s weaknesses, I find shoutbow works quite well. Warhorn 4 can get immobilise off you, which is a real problem for necros, and the fury from that one shout is always useful too. I’ve also had fun teaming up with a zerker medi guardian. Their teleports are invaluable for getting close to those power rangers, which I find to basically be a hard counter against necros, and the chill, blind, and burning they do synergise tremendously well with the necro’s own condition spam, overloading most enemies’ cleanses. Engi, as others have said, also works well for the same reason, between your bleeds and poisons and their, well, everything else, most enemies will be struggling to cleanse themselves. Eles too, to a lesser extent (plenty of burning and a few bleeds), and, like engis, they can heal and grant boons to help if the necro gets in trouble. The necro’s corrupt boon covers the one thing these classes have no access to, which is boon removal.

If you’re enjoying mesmer I reckon you should stick with it though. In PvE you can make anything work, and if you’re still learning the class you shouldn’t be blaming it for losing in pvp, you’ll get better with practice Plus the real benefit of playing with a friend in pvp is having voice comms and knowing what’s going on in different parts of the map, so you won’t necessarily end up in the same fight much of the time. (Though, if you don’t, who better than a mesmer to quickly portal his way to the necro’s fight?)

I also think that the passive is interesting, but badly implemented. You’re not helping your teammates by pulling 1 condi every 10" randomly. Especially when it seems to prioritise cripple, of all things. (it would be good to test this somehow, maybe have an engi or a necro with SoS unload on someone with no passive cleanses while the necro is standing around) If you’re cleansing your allies it has to be timed and deliberate if it’s going to help them.
So I’m thinking either completely redesign the active (to +10% condi duration or maybe “gain life force for each condition on your target”?), or change the current active to be more deliberate. How do you do that on a PASSIVE ability though? It’s almost like a contradiction in terms!
Well, the only thing I can think of is, maybe have it just transfer one condition, and remove the ICD. Like, not just 1 of any condition: 1 specific condition. And I think the only thing that could be that would be actually useful and also thematically appropriate with the signet is POISON. Think about it: it’s not a lot of damage, so it won’t kill the necro like transferring 25 bleeds (or, even worse, an immobilise) would, but it still helps teammates tremendously because it’s not really about the damage, but about the healing reduction.
Perhaps, if you’re gonna reduce or completely remove the ICD, its range has to be reduced too: so maybe make the passive “Whenever an ally within 600 suffers poison, that poison is transferred to you.” So a buff in removing the ICD, but a nerf in range and in the fact that pre-existing conditions don’t get transferred.

I still think the active needs a buff too though. As a stunbreak it’s pretty terrible, because condition lockdown usually involves immobilise, which restricts your field of view. A stunbreak needs to do more than just break stun, it neesd to get you out of trouble, or allow you to cast other skills that get you out of trouble. This doesn’t teleport you, it doesn’t give you life force, it doesn’t give you stability or protection: the “getting you out of trouble part” is supposed to be handled by the transfer: loading up the enemy with condis so they can’t hurt you, and you turn the tables on them. I mean, I know it’s still niche, cause it does nothing against Sleight of Hand thieves who daze you without putting any other conditions on you, but it’s flavoursome and fun when it works, and would be a great counter to condi burst. But if your transfer is restricted by field of view WHILE YOU’RE DISABLED then it’s completely useless! Immobilise, fear, stun, and knockdown all restrict your FOV, so you can’t cast it in the fraction of a seccond where you NEED to cast it before the rest of the damage burst is delivered.

Needs to be changed to either closest enemy, or your target but unrestricted by fov – and imo also made unblockable.

Honestly, there’s very little in it. Yeah, Carrion makes you much tankier if you have a full life force bar, but it takes awhile to build that and you’re squishier in the beginning when you start off empty. I personally take carrion because I find the extra direct damage from life blast, staff 1, an feast of corruption (if you have enough condis on them, people really don’t use that skill as much as they should) outweighs the extra bleeds you’d score from on-crit effects. It’s a pretty small difference though, since you get more crits with rabid.

I’d say Rabid is perfectly viable too, especially now that sigil of tormenting got into pvp.

I do mean facing, you’re right.
And marks can be placed behind you while you’re moving, but it doesn’t work if you’re immobilised. I don’t know why that is.

Ever since someone on here told me it was changed to transfer blind, I’ve been using it in pvp in place of Spectral Walk as my second stunbreak. I’ve also made a friend chuck condis at me in an empty hotjoin server to test under various circumstances.

I can confirm it does transfer blind.

However, it still requires LOS to transfer condis. This means that if you’re immobilised and can’t turn to face your target, the condis stay on you.

This is a huge problem since immobilise is the one thing that can kitten up a necro the hardest. It can’t easily be cleansed since all our other transfers need LOS too (though if whoever immobilised you is at melee range you can drop a Putrid at your feet, that works), it often causes Wurm to glitch so you can’t reliably teleport out of it, and you’re a sitting duck for further CC so you can’t try to heal through the damage either.

Considering its passive tends to transfer Immobilise off allies first for some reason (that and cripple are the things that I most often find myself stealing off an ally, don’t know who made that weird priority list), I still don’t think Plague Signet is a viable stunbreak in pvp. Its active needs to be changed to not require LOS and to make the cleanse independent of the conditions getting copied, and it would help if the priority list for the passive would copy damaging conditions rather than disabling conditions first. I know that sounds worse, but the necro has transfers and a big health pool, so damaging conditions would actually synergise more. By transferring an immobilise and turning you ionto a free kill you’re not helping anyone on your team, since it’s not like your teammates could rely on that immobilise being copied off them anyway.

There’s no reason they couldn’t have kept it as a hotjoin map

But Blink isn’t limited by pathing range, only by direct-line range. Wurm is limited by both, that’s why it bugs out. In other words, when it’s working out the (walkable, not direct line) path between you and the wurm, if that path is longer than 1200, the teleport won’t work. It will instead teleport you directtly towards the wurm until it hits the first obstacle, instead of taking the walkable route.

Not stability: swiftness! WvW involves a lot of running around!

Even if it were made “1,200 as the crow flies”, as opposed to “1,200 as the flesh golem waddles, manoeuvring its way around every little pebble ‘blocking’ its path with the elegance of a 3-wheeled supermarket cart”, it would be a massive buff and would instantly fix all its glitching. There’s precedent for that in the way Portal and Spectral Walk work. Both are unlimited by pathfinding, but have an as-the-crow-flies range of 5,000. So the code exists in-game, and it would be easy to apply it to Necrotic Traversal, replacing its current functionality.

Bhawb.7408:

Flesh Wurm acts the exact same way as every other blink move, only it has 1200 range (instead of the usual 900) and doesn’t require LoS. The only exception to the rules is Portal.

Blink (and lightning flash), don’t have a 900 teleport range: they have an infinite teleport range. You can put the target template down within 900, but that could be a spot that, to walk to, you would have to walk a range of 9,000 round a lake and up a mountain to get to it.
Flesh Wurm is different. You can put the target (the wurm) down anywhere, in advance, and walk halfway across the map before activating, but it will only ever teleport you a walkable distance of up to 1200.
So there’s no basis in comparison between the two, and making it sound as if Flesh Wurm is a longer-ranged teleport than other teleports is absurd. A thief can teleport from the ground floor up to the walkway outside Clocktower on Kyhlo. If I walked that distance (down the roof, round clocktower, up to the point, and onto the walkway) it would be a stupidly long way, much longer than Wurm can teleport you.
It’s the only teleport that works this way, and it’s severely limiting. I know it has added utility by the ability to prepare its positioning, but that utility is very niche. The pathfinding in this game is very basic, as anyone who’s watched their minions trying to catch an enemy who simply jumped on a crate knows: it only works along 2 axes, whereas players move in 3. Making a teleport skill limited by the same dumb, broken pathfinding Flesh Golem uses cripples it.

If I were making this game I would have wondered: you already scripted Spectral Walk to teleport players an unlimited distance. Why write completely different code for a similar skill in the same profession? Was whoever scripted necro skills hourly or something? Or was there a massive management failure and absolutely no kittening oversight of the skill designers?

I wish they would if they’d remove the cooldown!

flow.6043:

manveruppd.7601:

I still maintain it’s the least-used stunbreaker in spvp for a reason

And the reason is that metabattle tells people to use Wurm+SWalk.
Also, Plague Signet is probably the least used stun break.

That’s a circular argument though: the reason metabattle tells people to use those is because good players have decided they are currently our best stunbreakers. You think if Noscoc or whoever started using wop metabattle wouldn’t update it?

Also, I recently tried out Plague sig when someone on here told me they changed it to transfer conditions without line of sight, so in my experience WOP is the least used stunbreak :p

Bhawb.7408:

Basically, it doesn’t provide the most important aspect of our other common stun breaks (getting the kitten out of the bad situation).

Yep, that’s exactly the reason people don’t take it, but think about it: isn’t the fact that we have little access to stability and damage mitigation the reason we prefer stunbreaks that teleport us out of trouble? If WOP gave us more stability, it would basically become the kind of stunbreak that lets you stay there and tank the damage, rather than the kind that lets you disengage.

akaCryptic.2389:

Flesh wurm’s problem isnt the range, its the buggy naturr of teleport mechanic due to height and line of sight. It fails me like 20% of the time do the buff would not at all make it OP.

(tl;dr: it’s not 1,200 in a straight line, it’s 1,200 going around obstactles, so increasing the teleport range will make it bug out less)

I’m not entirely sure about this, but over hundreds of hours of using the stupid thing I suspect that the reason it bugs out so often IS the teleport range. Unlike other teleports it has to trace a walkable line between you and the wurm that goes around obstacles. If there’s too many of them, it can eat up a 1,200 range very quickly, and when that happens it glitches and instead teleports you directly towards the wurm until it hits the first tiny little obstacle (which is usually about 2 paces left of where you were standing, so whatever burst you were trying to avoid you eat in the face anyway).
Like I said, I can’t actually look at how the skill is scripted and even if I could I wouldn’t understand it, but, from my usage, I think this is the reason it happens. The only way to test is if the devs increased it for a trial period and let us play around with it, see whether it still glitches as frequently or not, etc. So I’m wholeheartedly in favour

The fact that it would also allow for faster rotations is an incidental, but very welcome, side effect.

Running without a stunbreak and no swiftness will be incredibly frustrating for you in wvw tbh. Replace grasp with walk maybe?

OK, guess it would have been utterly broken in WvW if anyone who wandered into the well after the initial cast got that buff too. Still, way more powerful than I thought in large group settings! I still maintain it’s the least-used stunbreaker in spvp for a reason though, and slightly more stability would be agood way to buff it .

Really? I never noticed that! Does that work just for the caster or any friendly in the well? And if it’s for any friendly, does it only work if you were in the aoe on the initial cast, or even if you wander into the well after the initial cast?