Just learned something about Locust Swarm

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

When you trait Banshee's Wail, the siphoning damage/healing on Locust Swarm gets amplified by 50% as well as the duration. Notably, Life Force gain is not affected at all by the trait.

It's still a virtually useless amount per pulse, but in Power primary gear, you do reach around 4500 non-reducible damage over the duration. So...not the worst use of a cast time in PvE. PvP, you will never land all 15 pulses due to the miniscule range and 7.5s duration.

Or you could just run Vampiric Presence and do more damage/sustain all the time. That's the better use for your trait.

[Yasai.3549]

Pretty sure no meta pvp build uses Banshee's Wail.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Yasai.3549 said:Pretty sure no meta pvp build uses Banshee's Wail.

With good reason. Warhorn sucks horribly after they nerfed Locust Swarm into the ground. Even before then, it was of questionable use.

[LucianDK.8615]

not to forget the fact that the trait is in the blood magic line.

[Anchoku.8142]

Coincidentally, I messed about with WH for a few hours over the weekend and decided its only value was a stun and swiftness in PvE. This was with and without the trait.

They really killed it. I wish they would increase Wail of Doom's range to 900 and make the siphons much stronger.

Edit: Also, make WoD include a blast finisher.

[Brujeria.7536]

Yeah its pretty sad, it was the only real reason to pick vampiric traits before the nerf. No matter the game mode, its effects are far to weak compared to how hard it is to get any decent use out of it.

[Infusion.7149]

Usually I use warhorn to proc curses traitline (Barbed Precision , Weakening Shroud) rather than just blood magic. Not much other use for warhorn other than the unblockable daze.

[TwiceCookedPorkins.8940]

And even that daze sucks, considering.

[Dadnir.5038]

Wasn't this common knowledge? Locust swarm used to be great to extend your stay in shroud. Coupled with the warhorn trait, it was a great zerg impact tool in WvW even if not many players used it. The compressed duration is what really killed the skill, the life siphon things just added insult to injury.

[Shroud.2307]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Wasn't this common knowledge? Locust swarm used to be great to extend your stay in shroud. Coupled with the warhorn trait, it was a great zerg impact tool in WvW even if not many players used it. The compressed duration is what really killed the skill, the life siphon things just added insult to injury.

I'd like to see this skill reworked to something similar to Ranger's skill "Hunter's Call."

Summon Locusts to swarm your target and damage surrounding enemies.

Instead of only damaging the target it also damages anyone the target that's effected touches. Remove the Siphon, Swiftness and Life Force and revert and increase the damage. Make the trait increase the duration and radius around the effected target.

[KrHome.1920]

The worst of the skill is the reduced range. It's not even 180 like the tooltip says. It's more something around 160 (it's lower than gravedigger - I've tested it).

The functionality compression could work if the range was doubled to 360. But this would cause other problems like accidently entering combat and become slowed down when you intentionally casted it for swiftness. All in all the current design is horrible.

They should remove the leeching completely and make it a skill that just applies swiftness and generates 3% of life force over 5 seconds (15% in total). Then it would at least be a decent utility skill. And while we are on it: warhorn4 should strip a boon per target on hit.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Infusion.7149 said:Usually I use warhorn to proc curses traitline (Barbed Precision , Weakening Shroud) rather than just blood magic. Not much other use for warhorn other than the unblockable daze.

You're wasting your time. Locust Swarm is life siphon damage and cannot crit. It's worthless with on-crit effects.

[Yasai.3549]

Imo rework Warhorn.Change Wail of Doom from a Daze into a Fear - instant BiS for Terrormancers.Make Locust Swarm give Swiftness + 20 Charges : attacking an enemy expands one charge to siphon health and gain a small amount of Lifeforce. (1% Life force)

[MorgothLich.1253]

Ye warhorn is now useless, unless you really need an unblockable daze.Imo the change should be locust swarm destroy projectile as long as it's active, might be the first active defence of necro xDAnd the daze should not be cone but a classic Aoe circle with ground target

[Dadnir.5038]

@MorgothLich.1253 said:Ye warhorn is now useless, unless you really need an unblockable daze.Imo the change should be locust swarm destroy projectile as long as it's active, might be the first active defence of necro xDAnd the daze should not be cone but a classic Aoe circle with ground target

Look, ANet just removed a stunbreak and a stack of stability from the necromancer's kit, I'd be willing to bet that they'd rather remove the projectile block from CPC than give projectile block to locust swarm.

[Lahmia.2193]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@MorgothLich.1253 said:Ye warhorn is now useless, unless you really need an unblockable daze.Imo the change should be locust swarm destroy projectile as long as it's active, might be the first active defence of necro xDAnd the daze should not be cone but a classic Aoe circle with ground target

Look, ANet just removed a stunbreak and a stack of stability from the necromancer's kit, I'd be willing to bet that they'd rather remove the projectile block from CPC than give projectile block to locust swarm.

And the new Life force gain trait still doesn't work in WvW. Fun times...

[Emapudapus.1307]

If only it still got cripple and life siphons trough shroud. Also now Warhorn trait in blood magic, with 0 synergy with blood magic traits (no vampiric proc). Before you could also proc bleed on crit from curse trat, had so many synergies y.y . Someone needs nobel prize for this rework.