Skill change idea, Signet of Corruption

Signet of Corruption (PvE only, allegiance rank)
-10% health, 1s, 20r

Signet. You create a patch of corrupted ground at your target's (foe or ally) location. The next spell you cast that would exploit a corpse instead targets and consumes the corrupted ground and will take effect at that location without requiring or exploiting a corpse. The corrupted ground effect expires when you create a new one (or when it is consumed).

Requires a PvE skill slot, replaces a skill that is neither popular nor important, fits the name of the skill it is replacing, makes wells more useful in PvE, makes MMs more useful in low corpse areas. Cost, cast time, and recharge might need to be changed to balance it better. Description is a bit long. From a technical standpoint may be hard to implement. Would be the only allegiance rank skill that doesn't scale.

Maybe have the function that exploited the corpse be dependent on your rank, rather than the attribute rank. Meaning if you would use this skill, then at 0 death magic summoned a minion from this corrupted ground, it's level would depend on your allegiance rank rather then your death magic rank.

Not worth it, AotL is there for corpse light areas, and if they're so bad you have to take this skill, MM is redundant.

10% sac for 1 minions every 20 seconds? Even if it scaled this wouldn't be a good idea.

I'd rather it be a AoE virulence, if target is affected by X, foe and all nearby foes are affected by X, X, and X.

I kinda like it the way it is

If you want to see it ever get used, simply lowering the recharge to 10 seconds would mean it competes with SoLS for energy gain (lower the energy gain respectively).

Without making too overpowered it isn't going to see much if any use when their are lots of other PvE skills around and I don't want to promote more power creep to further simplify the game.

The minions thing was really just secondary, the intention is mostly to make wells more useful. I would definitely enjoy the minion master benefits too though because there are plenty of areas where MMs are just not even viable even with a free bone horror every 45 seconds and even in normal areas it's just annoying having to wait to build up your army. I don't see it being power creep for MMs since it's not like it raises the minion cap or anything, and like anybody's going to whine if people start actually using wells in PvE.

I don't really have much of an opinion about the current version of signet of corruption except that I don't think it will be missed if it gets a complete functionality overhaul. It just happens to be the perfect vehicle for my idea since Anet doesn't do skill updates that actually create entirely new skills.

Make the energy gain large and based on oen target but give it aoe damage. Stacking conditions is relatively useless in PvE.

Increasing the energy gain but keeping the recharge isn't going to change much.
Larger, infrequent energy gains are more likely to be made less effective by or render ineffectve, a trigger of Soul Reaping. Smaller, frequent energy gains do not have that issue and are more desirable for a Necromancer. This applies in a generic setting when things are dying but the Necro is running a very energy intensive build (e.g. an OoU MM).

Larger energy, less frequent gains are the same as smaller, more frequent ones when dealing with large boss-like characters (dungeon bosses etc) who can take a long time to kill and there are not likely to be any SR triggers.
Since for a Necro the obvious comparison skill is SoLS, then any alternative that has a less annoying condition for this type of scenario is going to be more desirable.


And conditions don't need to be stacked for this skill. One cast of Enfeebling Blood would do (and EB is very useful) or one AoE hex (Reckless Haste, Shadow of Fear, Meekness...).

Maybe make it so that enemies with conditions or hexes take additional damage in addition to the caster gaining energy. ATM, it's very weak.

Signet of Corruption should give Soul Reaping. Like a necromancer version of Mindbender.

I'd like to see it provide decent, compressed e-management for Mo/N and Me/N builds, as those two classes are the ones left in the dust energy-wise right now.

Probably a much shorter recharge (10 sec?) and a decent unconditional energy gain (gain 1e per kurz/lux rank + 1e per affected foe).

We could also try making a useful PvE curse elite, though I don't have any ideas at the moment. As is I end up running SoS on barb/mop heroes, of course AP will be hard to beat on humans.

Well....

SS remains not bad. It's a reactive hex, but at least it's a doubly-leveraged armor-ignoring one. I tend to run it on my pure curse heroes. (Though recently I've been compressing curses onto my MB to free another slot in many cases.)

Two thoughts for a decent elite:

1. FoC would be reasonably effective if it's recycle time wasn't a month and a half.

2. I'd like to see an elite version of MoP with a decent recycle time, a bigger AoE radius, and a broader trigger set (like "takes damage" or "is successfully hit or the target of a skill").

2.5. Another, somewhat more overpowered, way of getting the same result would be to make an "orders" spell (Order of Apostasy seems like a good candidate) that causes allies to do AoE bursts on hit. (Which is essentially elite MoP if people follow targets and essentially elite Splinter Weapon if they do not.)

(It's more overpowered because an elite MoP-like hex would do nothing if the team didn't stay on target, whereas an elite MoP-orders enchant would still do something pretty strong if the team failed to stay on target. Which brings me to another idea that solves that problem in an interesting way

2.75. While I'm crossing skills, why not throw Barbs and Icy Veins in the mix? A MoP-Orders-Barbs-Icy Veins hybrid might look like this: "For 5 sec all non-spirit allies cause Nasty Hex for 5 sec whenever they hit. When Nasty Hex ends, if it has been re-applied a least 5 times, that foe and all nearby (adjacent?) foes take 10...30 shadow damage for each time Nasty Hex was applied."

The more I think about that, the more I like the concept. The ceiling is very, very high. You could certainly call the ceiling overpowered. But the floor is very, very low. A team that can't get 5 hits in 5 sec gets zero benefit out of this skill. That forces a team that wants to use this skill to follow targets, or at least use non-crap physical builds that can spam packets reasonably well.

1. The problem with FoC is that the recharge is the only thing balancing an other wise very powerful skill. FoC falls in the same category with other AoE armor ignoring skills like E-surge in that if you reduce the recharge, then it becomes incredibly powerful. Maybe a slight reduction would be nice but 15 sec imo should be the min amount of recharge chosen.

2. An elite version of MoP? MoP is already overpowered, and this skill you suggest seems as though it would be very overpowered... especially if it had a lower recharge.

ehhh i kinda like it the way it is : /

Signet of Corruption

Instant, 120r

Your next 10 spells that exploit corpse raise minion also create random well at corpse location and spells that exploit corpse to create well also raise random minion at corpse locations. Spells that exploits corpse without creating minion or well will recharge Signet of Corruption instantly.

Notes:
* Bone minions will create only one well, Aotl will create well for every exploited corpse
* Yes, there will be chance that elite summons or elite wells are procced from nonelite spells.

Basically, this gives your minion master immense amount of utility for free: Every raised minion will grant well ... It will be lottery but free Well Of Profane is going to be nice as well as well of suffering. Diping att points to blood or curses would be quite rewarded (Well of Ruin!).

It is also going to provide interesting possibility of raising diverse minion army by spamming quick casting, cheap and fast recharge well (even if you do not actually put any points to relevant attributes.).

Player would have to waste ones skill slot on underused corpse skills to be able to actually spam corruption-enhanced skills.

Mostly something you would not build serious bar around, but serious fun.

1sec cast
10sec recharge

Creates one exploitable corpse at your location.