Why is Box Of Nails so useless?

Another poster reminded me of this in one of the other threads, but this has bugged me for a long time.

It does practically no damage. On my WvW condi build, it does ~400-500 per bleed application, so assuming your opponent stands in the tiny AoE for the entire 5 seconds it lasts AND does not cleanse the bleed for the entire length it ticks, that'd be .. 2500 damage, less than a single swing of a Holo autoattack. With no exaggeration, the devs could buff this by 500% or more and it would still probably be sub-par.

It doesn't cc very well. The aoe size is too small and the cripple duration too short to make it an effective deterrent. The enemy can easily run around it .. but they can also run right through it because a meager 2s of cripple is hardly going to slow them up at all.

The cast time is really long. I know it was recently buffed from 1s down to 0.75s, but honestly that only brought it from a NEVER TOUCH THIS SKILL EVER level to REALLY REALLY BAD TRY NOT TO USE level. Look, if the cast time was INSTANT, it'd still only be barely usable. It's hardly worth moving my finger to the button in its current state.

Everything you just wrote is 100% accurate.

Always has been the joke skill of toolkit.

ArenaNet has done nothing to improve this skill. The cast time needs to be reduced once again and the worst part of this skill is the short cripple duration, it doesn't help you to get away from mobile professions like teleporting guardians, mesmers and thieves at all. They don't have to increase the bleed damage, just increase the field size to from 240 to 300 and the cripple duration from 2 seconds to 5 seconds. "But that would make it overpowered!" Well, sorry kiddo. Either use your condition cleanse to get rid of the cripple or let the core engineer escape.

What makes this skill worse is when you consider the cripple duration that can be applied from other professions like the ranger's off hand dagger (6 seconds) or the necromancer's scepter (7 seconds, 10.5 seconds if traited), also they are ranged, just to add insult to injury.

It was laughably weak even before HoT. It has not improved with age.

Replace it with caltrops, at the very least...

Whenever I happen to have it, I use it for crippling yaks in wvw.

Yea, it's total junk in an otherwise good kit. Rather than buff it somehow I wish they would just change the intent all together. Maybe make it an oil slick with knockdown and have it apply some benefit to turrets in the field, increase rate of fire or something, since tool kit is supposed to synergize with turrets.

@"Vagrant.7206" said:It was laughably weak even before HoT. It has not improved with age.

Replace it with caltrops, at the very least...

It pretty much is caltrops with 1/5 effect, but also 1/5 cool down if take power wrench trait. This seems to be a common theme among core engi skills.

@Tehologist.5841 said:

@"Vagrant.7206" said:It was laughably weak even before HoT. It has not improved with age.

Replace it with

caltrops

, at the very least...

Unfortunately, 1/5th the effect is not worth using no matter what the cooldown. If it had no cooldown at all, it'd still be terrible.

I only use this skill when I have to run away/kite sometimes, but during battle I mostly have beter things to use than this slow/weak thing. Some people put Box of Nails on autoattack (to get more use out of it?), I dont do that though just to be sure it is off cooldown in the rare occasion that I do need it.

Don't laugh at this skill when it comes to synergy with Sanguine Array, in all other situations, laugh away.

does this skill still reveal you with air (never tested with fire) sigil equipped? that always used to piss me off.

Give it 360 radius and boon corruption per pulse.

360 radius yes, but that should only be increased when traited with power wrench.

Boon corrupt makes no sense to me...

When I think about it rationally (ie, as if I'm walking on nails)... I'd like at least, also cause torment to foes inside the area.

used to be a solid escape tool pre hot, but ever since elite specs cripple is just plain irrelevant, and yet it keeps getting crept on over and over and over.