Guild Wars 2

The May 16th change to Epidemic made it fire slow projectiles in a straight line towards the nearest 5 enemies. I’ll be focused on it’s effects on PvE.

As already discussed here, as with any projectile, the projectiles from Epidemic can be obstructed by enemies. However, any one enemy can be only affected by one projectile from the same cast of Epidemic. This change affects the outcome of many PvE scenarios, where multiple enemies tend to stack up very closely to each other.

Enemies stacking up is very, very common, intentionally or not. There are few tools available to the players to separate the enemies, and of the few there are, they have situational usage, such as at the beginning of a fight, or to rescue a player being swarmed. This makes the new Epidemic unreliable as an AoE skill when the enemies stack up, because it’s likely that most, if not all of the projectiles, will be obstructed by one or two enemies.

A video demonstrating the above point.
The graph for occurrences vs transfer rates.

Here are some ideas for improvement:

Arced projectile paths: Projectiles fire in a slight arc, similar to the Acid Rain ability by Champion Subject 6, although not as high/far, otherwise the same as before.
Pro: Retains projectile gameplay mechanics, i.e. predictable, obstructable.
Con: May not work in areas with a low ceiling.

Tethered, delayed effect: Tethers are created between patient-zero and 5 nearest enemies, similar to Tainted shackles. If the enemies move out of range the tether will break, resulting in no effect. If the tether is allowed to expire, it applies the same condition transfers. This also means the enemy patient-zero will also be responsible for avoiding their teammates.
Pro: ‘Body blocking’ no longer occurs, but enemies still have a chance to escape.

Tethered, pulsing effect: Same as above, except the tether pulses every tick, similar to Wells. So instead of transferring all the conditions at once, one condition is transferred each tick, until either the tether breaks, or all conditions present at the time of casting is transferred. The order maybe random, or perhaps ordered in such a way to further punish those who remain tethered longer (e.g. Weakness -> Cripple -> Bleeding -> Chill).
Pro: Removes the instant transfer of conditions, which seemed to be both a gameplay and server issue.
Con: Less powerful/effective, especially for PvP.

Well, delayed effect: Creates a well beneath patient-zero, activates after a delay, applying the same condition transfers, similar to tethered delayed.
Con: This is a corruption skill, not a well.

Well, pulsing effect: Creates a well beneath patient-zero, pulsing to transfer one condition per tick, similar to tethered pulsing.
Con: Even less power/effective than tethered pulsing.

And just as a closing thought, wouldn’t it seem logical for an epidemic to be more deadly for those closer to the source, tightly packed, rather than those farther away, spread wide?

The chill effect applied by the 3rd chain in GS #1 skill does not affect break bars.
Tested on any mob that’s not immune to chill effects.
Applying chill with skills such as “Chilled to the bone”, or Executioner’s Scythe does affect break bars however.