sPvP thread: Putrid Curse nerf

This is a sPvP-only thread, please refrain from comparing, analyzing, or generally derailing the thread by commenting about WvW or PvE.

This is, by far, the most consequential nerf. The condi corrupt has made scepter a premier weapon because the auto attack chain has been outrageously strong... the caveat being that you have to be skilled at kiting and CD management to pull of a full autoattack chain, unlike warriors. It was strong for a good reason.

This change should be protested. Certain other nerfs, like the Dhuumfire nerf, are perfectly fine in my view. The Blood as Sand nerf, a great change, I hate passive bonuses like that. But this was too far, not only because it hurts necro where necro needs to be strongest (boon corrupts) but also because it hurts core necro.

It got moved to scepter 3 and corrupts 2 boons now. I'd rather have on demand boon corrupt than using autochains.

If Feast of Corruption had a 6 second cooldown then yeah. But as it is this is far less frequent boon corrupt, and is a big risk (I miss that one skill and oops there goes all my torment AND boon corrupt).

@Huskyboy.1053 said:This is a sPvP-only thread, please refrain from comparing, analyzing, or generally derailing the thread by commenting about WvW or PvE.

This is, by far, the most consequential nerf. The condi corrupt has made scepter a premier weapon because the auto attack chain has been outrageously strong... the caveat being that you have to be skilled at kiting and CD management to pull of a full autoattack chain, unlike warriors. It was strong for a good reason.

This change should be protested. Certain other nerfs, like the Dhuumfire nerf, are perfectly fine in my view. The Blood as Sand nerf, a great change, I hate passive bonuses like that. But this was too far, not only because it hurts necro where necro needs to be strongest (boon corrupts) but also because it hurts core necro.

Personally I'm not 100% sure the boon corrupt was added into scepter 3 and now corrupts 2 boons up from corrupting none. I personally would much rather have an on demand boon corrupt vs one thats stuck on the last chain of the auto attack. Considering how often necros are targeted if you are under pressure there is a good chance you wont be able to just run through scepter auto chain after scepter auto chain repeatedly over and over anyways. Unless no one else on the other team or your foe is not doing their job and just letting you slowly smack your way through the auto chain you wont get many boon corrupts off that way anyways certainly not more than 2-3 before they should die/disengage/or kill / force you to use other skills in which case you are not using the scepter auto to convert boons anyways.

I still think scepter will be a strong condition weapon (considering its the only main condition weapon for necro anyways) I would personally be more concerned about the other hits that effect condition builds more than this one.

Honestly even if the change is worse, I'd rather have active skill usage than just randomly using autos and hope it corrupts. Even if the numbers don't match I think the overall mechanic change is fine.

That change would have been acceptable, if they resolved the issue with the never ending boon spam that the other profession have. Too bad they didn't.If the "corruption" is a so big issue, why they don't just turn it into a simple boon removal instead?

@"bernstein adelheid.8590" said:That change would have been acceptable, if they resolved the issue with the never ending boon spam that the other profession have. Too bad they didn't.If the "corruption" is a so big issue, why they don't just turn it into a simple boon removal instead?

Totally agree with that.

I'd wager they just don't want passive skill usage which has been a big point of contention in pvp these days. Is why you see things like corrupt boon got buffs but autoattacks get nerfed. If you want boon corrupt then take the skill that literally does nothing but corrupt boons.

This is a buff. The double corrupt on s3 is better. In PvP you only care about bulk corruption.

@"bernstein adelheid.8590" said:That change would have been acceptable, if they resolved the issue with the never ending boon spam that the other profession have. Too bad they didn't.If the "corruption" is a so big issue, why they don't just turn it into a simple boon removal instead?

Honestly I'd prefer if they just removed boon corrupts and condi conversion altogether.

Feast of Corruption: This skill no longer automatically inflicts torment. It now corrupts boons before gaining life force and inflicting torment based upon the number of conditions on the necromancer's target. The number of boons corrupted is 2 in PvP and 3 in PvE and WvW.

Corrupts 2 boons and stacks torment based on condition count after the corruption?

Dhummfire nerf was really bad. They basically killed scourge pressure in spvp. GG anet, next patch just delete scourge already.

@Warscythes.9307 said:I'd wager they just don't want passive skill usage which has been a big point of contention in pvp these days. Is why you see things like corrupt boon got buffs but autoattacks get nerfed. If you want boon corrupt then take the skill that literally does nothing but corrupt boons.

I don't get why more people haven't mentioned this. Ammo mechanic was added on corrupt boon (3 boons corrupted and unblockable) with 2 charges. Giving Scepter 3 the ability to corrupt 2 boons, in combo with the corrupt boon change, core necro got buffed in terms of spiking corrupts in PvP.

@DuckDuckBOOM.4097 said:

@Warscythes.9307 said:I'd wager they just don't want passive skill usage which has been a big point of contention in pvp these days. Is why you see things like corrupt boon got buffs but autoattacks get nerfed. If you want boon corrupt then take the skill that literally does nothing but corrupt boons.

It's a nerf actually, let me explain why.Corrupt boon now have a 18 second recharge for every charge, which means that now it recharge 3 second later than before.

Without the shade ability that the scourge have, the scepter skill 3 can be easily dodged by the enemy player.In short, core necro will have even more problems at corrupt the enemy boons.

Necro has other on-demand boon corrupts. I've always regarded the sceptre corrupt as just a sneaky little one to catch-out other players as it would just happen with little tell. Moving the corrupt to a more telegraphed and dodgeable skill is more of a nerf imo.

It's an interesting change because the corrupt on auto was specifically added after the chronobunker tragedy that was Season 1 to give necro enough tools to balance out the amount of boons flying around with the constant corrupt pressure. While indeed burst corruption is generally better, the scepter auto corrupt was here more to put pressure on bunkers than to just kill on it's own.

And it did the job, but oh boy isn't corrupt on auto irritating. Moving the corrupt to another weapon skill is welcome.I just wish #3 wasn't as packed as it is now. It does three different things at once. Speaking of purity of purpose... Instead, one of those effects could be moved from #3 to #2.

Removing auto corrupt is a good class design decision. Question now is, if you remove the stitches, won't the boon wound open up again?

@bernstein adelheid.8590 said:

@DuckDuckBOOM.4097 said:

@"Warscythes.9307" said:I'd wager they just don't want passive skill usage which has been a big point of contention in pvp these days. Is why you see things like corrupt boon got buffs but autoattacks get nerfed. If you want boon corrupt then take the skill that literally does nothing but corrupt boons.

Depends on how long a fight goes on. With the new corrupt boon, ~20 seconds into a fight you may have corrupted 9 boons. There is the potential to corrupt 6 within seconds. With the old corrupt boon, its only 6 boons total in that time frame. That assumes you spam it on cd which is not the way to use corrupt boon since you want to save it for the resistance and stab corrupts. If you don't cast it on CD, which again, you usually shouldn't be doing, the ammo mechanic lets you "save the CD" while the old version effectively had a longer CD than 15 seconds in practice.

Corrupt boon has always been better than RS2 or DS2 + path of corruption in terms of range, unblockable and number of boons corrupted. The ability to spam both back to back to spike 5 boons corrupted is why PoC > MoC. Now that corrupt boon has an ammo mechanic, master of corruption > PoC. So corrupt boon effectively has a 12 second CD because MoC should be meta now.

So going back to the first paragraph. 12 seconds into a fight, MoC+Corrupt boon has corrupted 9 boons unblockable + 2 x 2 from Sc3. The old Corrupt boon has only managed to corrupt 3, and 2 from PoC. How many scepter autos landed during that time? Does a scepter auto matter as much when enemies have pulsing boons?

@DuckDuckBOOM.4097 said:

@bernstein adelheid.8590 said:

@DuckDuckBOOM.4097 said:

@"Warscythes.9307" said:I'd wager they just don't want passive skill usage which has been a big point of contention in pvp these days. Is why you see things like corrupt boon got buffs but autoattacks get nerfed. If you want boon corrupt then take the skill that literally does nothing but corrupt boons.

In general, no, one boon corrupted per chain won't put a big dent into someone with 6 boons. But what it does is applies 2 bleeds and one poison stack in addition to the corrupt. It used to be very strong constant pressure, but now the auto is barely going to be used. Which actually is a good thing, because autoattacks are supposed to be fillers, but since this is increasing the risk involved in corrupting boons (and nerfs the amount of boons that can be corrupted over time), it's a nerf.

I don't mind the scepter change tbh... the Dhummfire change is a little shitty.