Buff Well of Darkness

We all know the dark truth - among wells, Well of Darkness is the red haired stepchild.Unlike just about any other well it has nothing special going on for it..

1. Well of Blood - the only light field a necro can cast himself. Also great healing power scaling, can revive if traited.
2. Well of Suffering - hits like a truck, applies vulnerability boosting already high damage
3. Well of corruption - corrupts boons but also does damage and grants lifeforce when hitting enemies.
4. Well of Power - Not enough room in post to write about the awesome utility of this well...
5. Well of darkness - it pulses blinds..the end. No extra utility, no damage, no nothing...

This well is clearly underperforming and needs a boost. Here are few ideas for it that should make it on pair with rest:

1. make it a stunbreak. This would give it the identity of your panic button to get outta tight spots, and let well of power be used for it's original purpose, rather then losing it just because you needed to stunbreak and no other well can do it.2. make it pulse slow in addition to blinds. Slowed enemies have less actions per second, making these blinds much more effective in shutting down enemy damage. Sides rangers have much more disgusting pulsing aoe slow (Muddy Terrain) and nobody's complaining about it.3. Make it a smoke field rather then dark field - blinds with projectile finishers, and stealth with blast finisher (which necro has 3 of at best, 2 of them being tied to bone minions)4. Make it pulse dark aura for allies inside it (self included). Necro has the most dark fields in whole game but only one leap finisher and locked behind elite spec (reaper). Would be fair to give him another means of using the aura that is naturally most suited to his profession.

The problem with buffing it is that its already a powerhouse on Reaper, in which the blind not only gives nigh-invulnerability to Reaper's already considerable tankiness, but that the blind also pulses chill and bleed, respectively, making it very dangerous for any enemies to get stuck in, since not only can they not move away from it due to being slowed, but they're also unable to attack you and are taking heavy condition damage as well, and because it pulses, not even a cleanse helps you to get away from it.

Its not so great on core Necro and Scourge as well, but, that's not how balance has to be done.

@Hannelore.8153 said:The problem with buffing it is that its already a powerhouse on Reaper, in which the blind not only gives nigh-invulnerability to Reaper's already considerable tankiness, but that the blind also pulses chill and bleed, respectively, making it very dangerous for any enemies to get stuck in, since not only can they not move away from it due to being slowed, but they're also unable to attack you and are taking heavy condition damage as well, and because it pulses, not even a cleanse helps you to get away from it.

Its not so great on core Necro and Scourge as well, but, that's not how balance has to be done.

It can chill/bleed (1 stack in pvp/wvw) twice per cast, having to take 2 traits to do so, one of which is in Curses. Hardly a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm still in favour of it gaining projectile block, making it a power alternative to CPC.

unfortunately anet has stated that they want certain professions to have sole or near to it access to specific boons/ condis. disagree heavily with this, but slow is probably out. I think it would be cool as an aoe immob.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:unfortunately anet has stated that they want certain professions to have sole or near to it access to specific boons/ condis. disagree heavily with this, but slow is probably out. I think it would be cool as an aoe immob.

As far as necro's kit shows - he is an exception to the rule, in terms of conditions. He is the condition profession and should have access to all condies there are, maybe in lesser quantity but still.

They wont change it. We can just hope they reduce the cd a lot to justify its function. Personally i wont take it even if it had 20sec cd.

A stunbreak on it would be cool. But yeah I wouldn't put anything else on it as the skill is fine as is with its pulsing aoe blind spam. And lol @ the thought of stealth reapers...yeah...no...

@"XECOR.2814" said:They wont change it. We can just hope they reduce the cd a lot to justify its function. Personally i wont take it even if it had 20sec cd.

I think at 20 second CD it would be worth it even if it's 20 second CD traited. Look, traited it would grant you up to 10 second of protection (with max boon duration), 25% melee blind uptime and some juicy life siphons. Personnally I'd take it and I'm pretty sure it would be enough to make some players (playing melee build) cry about "necromancer being OP" in PvP.

Personnally I think the skill is strong enough and necromancer mainly need better ways to exploit dark fields because apart from reaper in reaper shroud, necromancer truly suck at combo finishers. It's not that the core necromancer don't have combo finishers but they are just awfully unreliable and we are complaining about this fact since the vanilla game...

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"XECOR.2814" said:They wont change it. We can just hope they reduce the cd a lot to justify its function. Personally i wont take it even if it had 20sec cd.

Agreed; WoD is useful in competitive modes. The power creep since the game release has led to shortening cool down times and dark fields do have auras, now. However, increased condi-cleanse, lack of use for blind against bosses, and Necromancer's extremely poor ability to finish combo's continue to make this skill controversial.

Integrating more combo finishers into core Necro is probably my highest priority request for the development team at Arenanet.

I think it can be done unobtrusively by modifying minor or weapon traits. For example, increasing staff's combo chance when staff is traited, adding a finisher to off-hand weapon traits, adding a finisher to Curses' Target the Weak if the bleed stack is high enough, changing Soul Comprehension to include a finisher on ICD and critical hit, or even making Dark Path count as a leap.

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"XECOR.2814" said:They wont change it. We can just hope they reduce the cd a lot to justify its function. Personally i wont take it even if it had 20sec cd.

Make dark path ground target and blast finisher. I cannot explain in words how much better the core necro experience would be if they do that.

I agree it needs a buff; certainly getting the CD even lower is needed.As much as I would like to see it get a smoke field, that would mean stealthing reapers (WoD down, Reaper Shroud 2 leap), which would make people cry lots because an Executioner's Strike is coming but they can't see it.I would like to see it have poison pulses.

@XECOR.2814 said:Make dark path ground target and blast finisher. I cannot explain in words how much better the core necro experience would be if they do that.

While I agree that dark path could make use of some love, I don't think Anet would change it so drastically.On another hand, I'm of the opinion that ANet can simply:

• Modify beyond the veil so that we get a leap finisher when leaving shroud on top of gaining self prot (remove useless minion's prot gain).
• Rework flesh of the master totally so that it give the necromancer combo finishers (at the necromancer's feets) when using a minion's active skill (blood fiend and bone fiend: whirl finisher, bone minions and flesh wurm: blast finisher, shadow fiend and golem: leap finisher)
• Give life blast a 100% projectile finisher
• Add a blast finisher to the last strike of tainted shackle (Not very attractive change since it will be another unreliable combo finisher)
• Dark path could also proc a leap finisher and for all I know dark path projectile could be a projectile finisher on top of it without making the skill feel strong

None of those change would hurt balance in any way but they sure would give some appeal to the core necromancer's fields.

Reducing the cooldown would be enough to make it more desirable, IMO. It isn't an amazing skill, but with certain traits it's not terrible either. The cooldown is the primary issue because even when traited for the most benefits, there's still too much risk involved in using it if it's done at the wrong time. It's good to have skills that you can't just spam mindlessly, but this isn't one of those. The payoff isn't high enough.

If the cooldown isn't reduced, I think it should at least get a small additional effect. Projectile destruction as suggested by @ Lahmia.2193 or a stunbreak would be good. My suggestion would be to add an effect like "Target area pulses Blindness, striking a foe within the area of effect applies Blindness." That way while inside the Well, you can basically perma-spam Blindness for the duration which would at least justify the longer cooldown and force melee opponents to give you some breathing room.

Cooldown reduction is unlikely to make it much better. PvP is by far the most friendly mode to well of Darkness (because enemy don't wanna leave point so your wells actually hit their mark) and even there it's...just bad.

Reason being that necro's utility slots in competitve, where he is #1 focus target are extremely precious and usually occupied by stunbreaks (this well is not one), boon corrupt (turning enemy stab into fear or 25 might stacks into weakness is definitely a good defense) or other high impact defenses (spectral ring, Corrosive Poison Cloud, spectral armor).

More over necros' enemies for most part are not necros. Just because blinds shut us down hardcore due to our slow cast times does not mean this applies to most other professions. A lot of them have rapid attacks that will still get around 2/3 of their damage in despite the well of darkness, others will snipe you from outside the well, rest will get resistance or pop some sort of invulni/evade frames and there goes your well of darkness value.

And this is it's best gamemode to use. In pve you're just discarding dps for a 2nd rate defense utility. In WvW ppl just walk out of it - there's nothing there that would force them to stay inside....

Honestly, I like the idea of adding Slow to the pulses. Makes it a far more effective defensive tool.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:Honestly, I like the idea of adding Slow to the pulses. Makes it a far more effective defensive tool.

That might work. Chilling Darkness worked so well with chill builds that blinds could result in perma-chill and the trait ruined. Adding a second condi to WoD and reworking Chilling Darkness to divorce blind and dark fields from Reaper and core chills may be good for the game. Too much up-time of a single condition was a problem that resulted in many nerfs to chill application.

I suggested slow on well of darkness months or even years ago (can't remember)... it did not and will never happen. They are happy with the existing trait synergies (curses, bm).

Besides that: wells are trash as long as we can not trap targets into them like mesmers can. Even a buffed well of darkness won't be usefull on any competent opponent.

Your target stays into a well for more than one pulse? GZ you discovered a bronze division player!

The best well is well of power as it's super selfish (target does not need to stay into it) and an area denial since 99% of the players in this game can not distinguish it from a damaging well and will dogde out of it.

I wish Arenanet would do something about the power creep. A lot of core skills (Necro has a number of AoE in its original kit) have lost competitiveness. The problem is not only dps but utility. Well, mark, shroud, and many other non-dps skills designed for utility value feel like they are losing value.

Control effects and mobility skills seem more resistant to losing value due to power creep.