Epidemic needs a nerf/rework

[anbujackson.9564]

5 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

 

 

You're using your dpsmeter wrong.  They do 40k because they do mechanics/ trash mobs.
It doesn't mean they do 40k on boss, and the group couldn't do mechanics otherwise with same or close efficiency.

 

We could worry or question about how fast it clears some mechanics against particulars encounters or on contrary make it useful in more situations, but the "QQ 40k dps on 5 targets" isn't the issue.

40k dps on 5 targets as a scourge? Try at least 70 and you would be accurate. 

 

[Mell.4873]

14 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

 

 

You're using your dpsmeter wrong.  They do 40k because they do mechanics/ trash mobs.
It doesn't mean they do 40k on boss, and the group couldn't do mechanics otherwise with same or close efficiency.

 

We could worry or question about how fast it clears some mechanics against particulars encounters or on contrary make it useful in more situations, but the "QQ 40k dps on 5 targets" isn't the issue.

Funny thing is i normally do more dps on trash with my shatter mirage. It's bosses with large hit boxes that scourges do amazing dps on. 

Edited October 19, 2021 by Mell.4873

[anbujackson.9564]

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Funny thing is i normally do more dps on trash with my shatter mirage. It's bosses with large hit boxes that scourges do amazing dps on. 

Scourge damage isnt dependant on hitbox size

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

2 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Scourge damage isnt dependant on hitbox size

To expand on this, Necros currently have no skills at all that benefit from a larger hitbox size.  Harbinger Shroud 2 will be our first.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Agrippa.1693]

@ROMANG.1903:

 

It's actually the scourge which is suboptimal, btw: https://discretize.eu/guides/meta-explained
It's obviously a good build but not optimal/meta. There are literally faster comps to clear fractals (in general). A scourge would hold these comps back!

So, this whole topic is based on a factual wrong assumption!

Edited October 19, 2021 by Agrippa Oculus.3726

[Mell.4873]

10 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

To expand on this, Necros currently have no skills at all that benefit from a larger hitbox size.  Harbinger Shroud 2 will be our first.

Oh, well I have no idea how they are doing so much dps on some fights

[Anchoku.8142]

Epidemic is Necro's trash cleave skill. It's like having a 900 condi-cleave that does 0 damage to its target. Without Epi, Necro had no dps cleave skills on any weapon or utility - nothing.

 

Arenanet dev's probably realized in 2012 that balancing for PvP left Necro with terrible PvE dps and made Epidemic explicitly for groups in PvE. Maybe they thought it would be super awesome but forgot other professions could cleave trash mobs without using a skill that did zero damage to a boss.

 

Epi worked better in WvW zerging right from the beginning. In contrast, Epidemic in PvE was often unnecessary, even if it was cool, because good dps on the boss was mandatory.

 

Also, back in the day, maximum stacks for conditions on bosses was severely limited so Epi dps on trash was lower and Necro's practical condi-dps on bosses with scepter was a joke as players kept pushing each others' stacks off. Back then, power-dps, with cleave, was the build to have if you were not playing Ele and stacking max burning.

[LucianDK.8615]

2 hours ago, Anchoku.8142 said:

Epidemic is Necro's trash cleave skill. It's like having a 900 condi-cleave that does 0 damage to its target. Without Epi, Necro had no dps cleave skills on any weapon or utility - nothing.

 

Arenanet dev's probably realized in 2012 that balancing for PvP left Necro with terrible PvE dps and made Epidemic explicitly for groups in PvE. Maybe they thought it would be super awesome but forgot other professions could cleave trash mobs without using a skill that did zero damage to a boss.

 

Epi worked better in WvW zerging right from the beginning. In contrast, Epidemic in PvE was often unnecessary, even if it was cool, because good dps on the boss was mandatory.

 

Also, back in the day, maximum stacks for conditions on bosses was severely limited so Epi dps on trash was lower and Necro's practical condi-dps on bosses with scepter was a joke as players kept pushing each others' stacks off. Back then, power-dps, with cleave, was the build to have if you were not playing Ele and stacking max burning.

 

No cleave whatsoever?  Take a very good look at the Reaper's greatsword skills.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

4 hours ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

 

No cleave whatsoever?  Take a very good look at the Reaper's greatsword skills.

He was talking about 2012, which was pre-Heart of Thorns.  Reaper didn't exist, and staff was Necro's only mainhand weapon that could hit more than one target at a time (Axe 3 and Scepter 2 excluded) and did even less damage then.  Burning, poison, and confusion stacked duration at the time, and bleeding was capped at 25 stacks.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[LucianDK.8615]

49 minutes ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

He was talking about 2012, which was pre-Heart of Thorns.  Reaper didn't exist, and staff was Necro's only mainhand weapon that could hit more than one target at a time (Axe 3 and Scepter 2 excluded) and did even less damage then.  Burning, poison, and confusion stacked duration at the time, and bleeding was capped at 25 stacks.

Ah! Didnt realize it was an ironically necroed thread!

[Dadnir.5038]

3 hours ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

Ah! Didnt realize it was an ironically necroed thread!

It isn't a "necroed thread", it's called giving context to why a core skill work the way it does. Epidemic was introduced at release, in 2012, when the necromancer only had no "cleaving" dps weapon and you even had to trait the shroud AA if you wanted it to hit more than a single target.

Like anchoku said, due to this "handicap", the necro at this time needed all the help possible in PvE which is why epidemic ended up being designed this way. Ironically, even with this design it ended up being useless because, at that time, bosses and trash mobs were being killed faster through power cleave than you could by applying conditions on them.

Now, nearly 10 years in the game, Stacking in a corner of a boss room is no longer the main tactic, conditions are no longer caped, large health pool target take more than 15s to be killed and there is often adds to the fight. It's enough for the original design of Epidemic to shine brightly and generate a seemingly high dps thanks to trash clearing (because it's easier to hit trash in a 900 radius around a large health pool target than in the 130 radius of a cleaving melee attack in the current game).

[Zenith.7301]

13 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

It isn't a "necroed thread", it's called giving context to why a core skill work the way it does. Epidemic was introduced at release, in 2012, when the necromancer only had no "cleaving" dps weapon and you even had to trait the shroud AA if you wanted it to hit more than a single target.

Like anchoku said, due to this "handicap", the necro at this time needed all the help possible in PvE which is why epidemic ended up being designed this way. Ironically, even with this design it ended up being useless because, at that time, bosses and trash mobs were being killed faster through power cleave than you could by applying conditions on them.

Now, nearly 10 years in the game, Stacking in a corner of a boss room is no longer the main tactic, conditions are no longer caped, large health pool target take more than 15s to be killed and there is often adds to the fight. It's enough for the original design of Epidemic to shine brightly and generate a seemingly high dps thanks to trash clearing (because it's easier to hit trash in a 900 radius around a large health pool target than in the 130 radius of a cleaving melee attack in the current game).

 

 

It's not about stacking in a corner. It's that epidemic has a far greater effective cleave range than any power cleave melee DPS, or any condi cleave class period.

 

There is simply no competition for convenience of mechanics skips in fractals because a scourge affords you to ignore mechanics in 100 CM and 99 CM. No anomalies to deviate DPS to, much easier to just press epidemic than have a person keep an eye where an anomaly spawns and try to kill it in time, which means more DPS uptime on the boss.

 

Moreover, that 2-3k barrier periodically is not insignificant at all, and neither is the periodic 2 condi aoe cleanse and being the only condi class besides revenant with consistent boon strip since mesmer is hot garbage in fractals and only good in raids.

 

And let's be honest, epidemic and scourge's current tuning makes power reaper entirely useless in most real scenarios that aren't Keep Construct, Conjured Amalgamate, or Samarog. Why use power reaper when power reaper doesn't have as much consistent access to boon strip, have less effective cleave range, does less actual DPS in real world scenarios outside the golem due to the flexible profile of scourge's damage delivery being unhindered by range or positioning or a boss walking outside wells, etc, not to mention that scourge's survival toolkit is not mutually exclusive in competing for the same resource as their main DPS form output since sand shroud skills are so cheap and easily spammed and unaffected by damage intake.

 

Sure, power reaper is a  trashcan spec and deserves buffing maybe instead of nerfing scourge DPS too much, but honestly scourge's epidemic gimmicks alongside the oppressiveness of firebrand in boon provision and burst condi profile with exposed is NOT healthy for the game and needs to be addressed.

[Dadnir.5038]

10 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

It's not about stacking in a corner. It's that epidemic has a far greater effective cleave range than any power cleave melee DPS, or any condi cleave class period.

What I meant, is that we used to do what epidemic does by stacking into a corner and pulling mobs to the grinder while now encounter mechanics make epidemic a better tool to do the job. Again, I'm not saying that epidemic isn't a strong tool in the current game, I'm saying that it does have a design that was necessary on a highly flawed necromancer in the vanilla game.

10 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

And let's be honest, epidemic and scourge's current tuning makes power reaper entirely useless in most real scenarios that aren't Keep Construct, Conjured Amalgamate, or Samarog.

Epidemic is only good for boss that do have adds to clear which similarly restrain it's usefulness in some real scenario. There is pros and cons, as good as epidemic seem to be it is still a situational tool. It's not that power reaper is entierly useless but it's often that players would rather not switch from condi to power based on the encounters and scourge have the edge over the reaper on the "utility" side (barrier).

 

10 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Sure, power reaper is a  trashcan spec and deserves buffing

It isn't a "trashcan spec" and It doesn't "deserves buff". Power reaper is in the sweetspot right now and shouldn't be touched at all.

[Zenith.7301]

On 10/21/2021 at 5:25 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

What I meant, is that we used to do what epidemic does by stacking into a corner and pulling mobs to the grinder while now encounter mechanics make epidemic a better tool to do the job. Again, I'm not saying that epidemic isn't a strong tool in the current game, I'm saying that it does have a design that was necessary on a highly flawed necromancer in the vanilla game.

Epidemic is only good for boss that do have adds to clear which similarly restrain it's usefulness in some real scenario. There is pros and cons, as good as epidemic seem to be it is still a situational tool. It's not that power reaper is entierly useless but it's often that players would rather not switch from condi to power based on the encounters and scourge have the edge over the reaper on the "utility" side (barrier).

 

It isn't a "trashcan spec" and It doesn't "deserves buff". Power reaper is in the sweetspot right now and shouldn't be touched at all.

 

 

How is it on the sweetspot when it provides literally no utility and performs on average the same as a spec who does have utility and has the flexibility of range (scourge)?

 

It doesn't even compete with DH or Holosmith or Soulbeast, and all of those bring far more utility.

[anbujackson.9564]

Keeping scourge and epidemic the way it is, restricts boss design. Im not changing my PoV on this. What happens when there is at least 1 more spongy mob in a boss encounter? Exactly, its more likely to take more necros. I mean just play molten boss when you have 50k+ boss damage and 70k+ cleave. Now imagine ANET designing a raid encounter where you fight two bosses at the same time (like the kodan strike or even kc to an extent lol). I wonder what will happen duh. Even epi bouncing is still a thing (thankfully much worse).

 

 

[Zenith.7301]

7 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Keeping scourge and epidemic the way it is, restricts boss design. Im not changing my PoV on this. What happens when there is at least 1 more spongy mob in a boss encounter? Exactly, its more likely to take more necros. I mean just play molten boss when you have 50k+ boss damage and 70k+ cleave. Now imagine ANET designing a raid encounter where you fight two bosses at the same time (like the kodan strike or even kc to an extent lol). I wonder what will happen duh. Even epi bouncing is still a thing (thankfully much worse).

 

 

 

Even if it's not a spongy mob. The moment the mob is outside melee cleave range and this can't be dealt with with a mesmer/guardian pull, epidemic suddenly becomes the strategy of choice.

 

I won't even go into how stupid it is that only condi necro has a reliable boonstrip built into their main weapon while greatsword reaper can't even be given a 2 boon strip on its worthless GS3 skill or autoattack chain like mesmer mainhand sword.

 

It just makes absolutely zero sense how much more utility and flexibility and synergy with utility skills condi necro has while power reaper is a totally mediocre DPS spec with no useful utility outside spectral grasp, which condi necro can bring as well so it will never be a reason to bring a power reaper.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

On 10/25/2021 at 2:26 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

Keeping scourge and epidemic the way it is, restricts boss design. Im not changing my PoV on this. What happens when there is at least 1 more spongy mob in a boss encounter? Exactly, its more likely to take more necros. I mean just play molten boss when you have 50k+ boss damage and 70k+ cleave. Now imagine ANET designing a raid encounter where you fight two bosses at the same time (like the kodan strike or even kc to an extent lol). I wonder what will happen duh. Even epi bouncing is still a thing (thankfully much worse).

 

 

Twin Kodan: most of the fight, they are over 900 range from each other, making Epidemic a wasted skill slot.

Keep Construct: the only mobs you need to kill run right into your cleave anyway, and you WANT them to die on the boss, not 500 range away.

Molten Duo: Doesn't matter how much cleave you do, as soon as one dies, the other goes invuln and a full heal.

 

Why did you pick these three encounters as examples of Epidemic being strong when it's useless in all of them?

Edited October 27, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[anbujackson.9564]

On 10/26/2021 at 5:51 AM, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Twin Kodan: most of the fight, they are over 900 range from each other, making Epidemic a wasted skill slot.

Keep Construct: the only mobs you need to kill run right into your cleave anyway, and you WANT them to die on the boss, not 500 range away.

Molten Duo: Doesn't matter how much cleave you do, as soon as one dies, the other goes invuln and a full heal.

 

Why did you pick these three encounters as examples of Epidemic being strong when it's useless in all of them?

KC: I was referring to people who kill kc with epi bouncing the adds and not cc at all. Obviously its stupid, thats why the "lol". But while its stupid, it also works.

Kodan: Ok I guess?

Molten duo: Read the damage numbers again.

 

Its nice how you just took my examples and completely ignored the main statement of my post: Necro turning everything with more than one mob to an absolute shitshow. 

But hey go ahead, give me just one example where a multiple mob encounter can not be absolutely dominated by scourges with epi (while being near or top dps on the main target). I wait.

 

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

14 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

KC: I was referring to people who kill kc with epi bouncing the adds and not cc at all. Obviously its stupid, thats why the "lol". But while its stupid, it also works.

Kodan: Ok I guess?

Molten duo: Read the damage numbers again.

 

Its nice how you just took my examples and completely ignored the main statement of my post: Necro turning everything with more than one mob to an absolute shitshow. 

But hey go ahead, give me just one example where a multiple mob encounter can not be absolutely dominated by scourges with epi (while being near or top dps on the main target). I wait.

 

 

Molten duo gives false effectiveness numbers on DPS meters.  Sure, you see massive numbers, but somewhere between 30-50% of it is completely meaningless because it doesn't matter if you deal 1 or 500k damage to the second boss during the first phase: the time to kill doesn't change.  Oh, and the adds that spawn during the second phase are irrelevant because the boss should be dead before they're a factor.

 

Have you ever even done KC?  Because the only time you use CC is break bars and pulls on the rifts.  You don't use it at all for mob management.  They naturally run into the cleave which is exactly where you want them to die in order to apply a debuff on the boss. Not to mention the frequent phasing makes condition builds awful for that fight, thus making Epidemic even worse.

 

Epidemic sees use in only one or two CM encounters in fractals, despite there being multiple bosses that have adds.  Mai Trin, Cliffside, Underground Facility, and Underwater are all bosses where Epidemic just isn't worth using, despite the adds.  Mai Trin is notable because, even though the adds are very much worth killing in that fight, the constant phasing makes Epidemic extremely unreliable.

 

Then in raids there's Slothasuar, which is a boss that is a good one to bring and use Epidemic in, but you have to be very careful with the timing of your casts or you can easily cause a wipe.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[LadyKitty.6120]

On 9/26/2021 at 10:39 PM, ROMANG.1903 said:

I know this sounds bad. I know everyone, including me, loves to play with their unique class tools. I wouldn't be suggesting this if Epidemic alone wasn't effectively excluding burst builds from CM fractals. The last thing I want is to turn this ability useless. But currently, it virtually makes entire builds sub-optimal.
I do not know for sure how to fix the ability. A couple of things I can think of are, reducing the transfer area, or limitting the condition transfer to only those that were applied by the necromancer using Epidemic.

This transfer radius nerf would actually be quite helpful at reducing the abusivity of Epidemic. It currently has extremely huge radius for essentially "1-press-kill"-button and nerfing the radius would make it a good AoE cleave that still leaves room for others.

Nerfing from 900 to 600 would leave Sorrows in CM100 and Xera's Bloodstones (when at Center) out of Epi's reach but still allows doing stuff like killing Anomaly in CM99 and epi'ing TD at Soulless Horror (though it's still kinda abusive in this regard).

Nerfing the radius to 360 would still retain its ability to cleave enemies near the target but prevents many cheeses and thus allowing others to compete for the role Epi did in a healthier way  (aka. makes people actually do the mechanics instead of skipping them with one press of a button).

To cover for reduced Epidemic radius, Scourge still has scepter, torch and Shades to kill ranged stuffs manually (like everyone else do) and Epi from faraway target to its surroundings and if the targets are pull-able, pull them to Epi range with Spectral Grasp.

And considering the incoming elite spec numbers, boost Scourge a tiny bit when EoD arrives pls.

[Zenith.7301]

On 11/5/2021 at 2:22 AM, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Molten duo gives false effectiveness numbers on DPS meters.  Sure, you see massive numbers, but somewhere between 30-50% of it is completely meaningless because it doesn't matter if you deal 1 or 500k damage to the second boss during the first phase: the time to kill doesn't change.  Oh, and the adds that spawn during the second phase are irrelevant because the boss should be dead before they're a factor.

 

Have you ever even done KC?  Because the only time you use CC is break bars and pulls on the rifts.  You don't use it at all for mob management.  They naturally run into the cleave which is exactly where you want them to die in order to apply a debuff on the boss. Not to mention the frequent phasing makes condition builds awful for that fight, thus making Epidemic even worse.

 

Epidemic sees use in only one or two CM encounters in fractals, despite there being multiple bosses that have adds.  Mai Trin, Cliffside, Underground Facility, and Underwater are all bosses where Epidemic just isn't worth using, despite the adds.  Mai Trin is notable because, even though the adds are very much worth killing in that fight, the constant phasing makes Epidemic extremely unreliable.

 

Then in raids there's Slothasuar, which is a boss that is a good one to bring and use Epidemic in, but you have to be very careful with the timing of your casts or you can easily cause a wipe.

 

Unreliable my butt. Because Firebrand is so oppressively overpowered (or, really, the burning condition is relative to other conditions), and it frontloads condition damage so quickly, Epidemic in Mai Trin is trivial.

 

And let's be honest, regular T4s can be done by anyone and it doesn't matter (though, guess which power classes shine in here? Same color classes as the dominant condi ones, and it won't change until breakbar bonus damage is removed). Cm's is where actual strict fail mechanisms enforce the path of least resistance, which is bringing the strongest classes to lessen the burden of playing in an uncoordinated environment with complete strangers.

 

Could I theoretically go into 100CM with a full power group? Of course, the worst that happens is you have to do the actual phase mechanics since you can't skip phases due to the ridiculous breakbar changes massively favoring condi damage. You could say the same of KC and Conjured Amalgamate, you could bring condi classes, just as you can to Slothazor or Samarog.

 

Is that what happens realistically? No, this is a MMO, and the social aspect is a key component of the player experience, and this means that you are subject to the fashions of the crowd. FFXIV would see this problem if the developers weren't so careful with managing the classes to be pretty kitten close (no more than 5% difference) and the utility roles were evenly spread and utility was balanced accordingly to damage output (which it isn't in GW2, boons are massively overpowered in boosting group and player personal performance, in FFXIV utility might mean a 5% damage boost every minute window or group mitigation skills which are nice to have, but optional as all healers are balanced around not needing extra mitigation/healing increase skills).

 

The balancing in GW2 PvE is absolutely abysmal, but it doesn't seem to matter because if this batch of elite specs proves anything, is that the developers don't really develop the classes and specs with PvE in mind. Any outcome in PvE is incidental to their main design goal which is always PvP use cases.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Dadnir.5038]

8 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

The balancing in GW2 PvE is absolutely abysmal, but it doesn't seem to matter because if this batch of elite specs proves anything, is that the developers don't really develop the classes and specs with PvE in mind. Any outcome in PvE is incidental to their main design goal which is always PvP use cases.

sPvP players will always argue that everything is designed and balanced to please PvE players and PvP is ignored, thought.

Truth is that PvE balance is low priority while PvP balance is high priority (WvW being once in a while priority), the e-specs and professions are designed with an utopia in mind that players corrupt by their eternal quest toward efficiency paved with mechanics abuse.

That said, all this is understandable as, ultimately, a group of players that have a good grasp of a PvE encounter will always find  many way to trivialize it which is why PvE balance isn't high priority.

[Zenith.7301]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

sPvP players will always argue that everything is designed and balanced to please PvE players and PvP is ignored, thought.

Truth is that PvE balance is low priority while PvP balance is high priority (WvW being once in a while priority), the e-specs and professions are designed with an utopia in mind that players corrupt by their eternal quest toward efficiency paved with mechanics abuse.

That said, all this is understandable as, ultimately, a group of players that have a good grasp of a PvE encounter will always find  many way to trivialize it which is why PvE balance isn't high priority.

 

 

And PvP balance is absolutely worthless because no match will ever be between evenly skilled players either, especially WvW. PvP is the equivalent of matching people with T3 fractal clears against Qhadim half the time.

 

Then the outmatched players will complain forever more balance is bad because they lost a 1v1 or teamfight against XYZ class/comp.

 

PvE is the only format where you can make the conditions equal for everybody, which is why balance should be a priority there as the only controlled environment.

Besides, sPvP is a moribund format. Nobody plays MMO's for PvP, nobody watches on streams, and there are no sponsors for this format anyways whereas WoW and FFXIV's lead sponsors are for raiding guilds.

 

Organized PvE is the most popular format in MMO's by far.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Rym.1469]

Copying only caster's own conditions would be fine. Could bundle it with an additional buff to counteract the nerf, such as extending the duration of copied conditions by flat 2-4s.

The UI doesn't currently support showing you more detailed conditions breakdown aka who applied how many, but I don't think any UI work would be necessary for Epi.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Rym.1469