Disease: What is it good for?

I'm currently trying to adjust to the avatar changes, and I've been wondering... Just how useful is disease? Compared to Balthazar's aura which can dish out incredible amounts of burning, what good is Grenth's disease effect? Also, is it useless in PvP?

Disease : See "Darwinism"
It's gods way of saying we are not all created equal.

No really, inflicted fleshy targets suffer 4 health degeneration, and spreads like the plague. I know a few necros that swear by rotting flesh. Kinda makes me want to break out my old Anthrax - Spreading the Disease album.

Probably weaker than AoB's burning, but still constant (even throught heavy removal) dot on everything. It's probably not too bad, accept it dowsn't synergise with ele/para.

Barbed Spear + Signet of Infection ??

I would say its MORE useful in PvP than PvE. Why you ask?

All your targets in PvP are the same race, so its able to spread. In PvE you commonly face mixed groups or different creature type mobs will frequently patrol near each other.

But burning is ALWAYS effective except against a few very specific creatures like Destroyers and Burning Spirits, plus does 7 versus Disease's 4 pip health degen.

Of course, AoG allows almost constant re-application of Disease, so the multiple creature type issue isn't really all that bad.

It would depend I guess on your team synergy. If you have Burning causing Paragons in the midline, then taking another Burning skill like AoB won't really help, as degen from multiple conditions don't stack, so you'd be better off with AoG. The reverse is true if you have Disease spreading Necros, take AoG.

As for PvP, it's not useless at all...
It's still 4 pips of AoE degen that reapply every so often and covers things like cripple or deep wound. It makes trying to remove those harmful conditons require skills like Draw, RC, or FF... all of those infact :/
That plus the noticeable life steal and dark damage conversion make AoG very potent at dealing damage (as much at least than adrenaline and burning would IMO). Vampirism helps with durability more than lousy armor for which you just need to swap weapons :/

For PvE I suggest you stick with balthazar, as mobs don't change weapons, and are often weak versus light damage and immune to disease, unless against destroyers...

I used it last night against destroyers a Avatar of Grenth build.
Some cracked armor here, some deep wound there, disease all over the place, plus quite some life stealing, and you can be in the middle of a bunch of destroyers in HM without needing much healing.
Every 20 seconds, my health jumped up with Grenth's Aura.

And along mystic corruption, you can even use disease against humans while also removing disease from your allies.

I think they did the stuff with disease and dervs being able to remove it so its more viable in PvP. I like the change.

Disease can be quite strong in PvP. Tainted Flesh Necros go in and out of vogue from time to time, but will never really go away simply due to how strong it is. You can also take a look at some of the matches from yesterday's MaT to see just how strong disease can be.

considering i seen more grenth then balth dervs in pvp i say its good. xD alot of gvg i watched had least one with them. o.O

Hmm, but in PvP, u would also risk infecting yerself (not yerself if u run AoG ) and teammates then.


I would have preferred if AoG does Poison to nearby foes (instead of Disease to adjacent foes)

Which is why teams without AoG that run Disease often run Tainted Flesh.

Disease is just like poison but it can spread to nearby targets that share the same creature type.

In PvE mobs die so fast that degen is pretty minimal in usefulness. If anything Balth's and Grenth's "end on enchant" effect synergizes effectively with Reap Impurities + Mesmer's Fragility with bunched up foes.

Well in PvP

Grenth's Avatar is strong not just because of the disease but numerous other things combined.

For starters scythes and the +damage lifesteal on Grenth lets them pump out damage like crazy. U can also stack with grenths aura which allows a derv push right up into the lord pit and not die. On top of this your scythe does dark damage. since there is no +armour mod against this damage type monks can't make full use of their shields. Then finally we come to the disease which stacks up with all the other degen from blood necros and rangers. Since the disease from grenth lasts only 5 seconds it doesn't really get much of a chance to spread but its still adds 8 damge per second over 5 seconds and in condi-pressure builds this really adds up.

In PvE I herd people are too busy abusing Sand Shards, Pious Renewal, Vow of Strength etc to care about grenths avatar.

I find disease to be an incredibly good PvP condition. In fort aspenwood as a EoE bomber, although gimmicky, disease helps to lower all humans on both teams and kill gunther faster.

As far as grenth goes, I agree the disease is moot when compared to burning, but grenth is for life steal rather than the disease, it is just a bonus.

i run rotting flesh in FA all the time and at 16 death with +1 from AotL it lasts for 28 secs. i find its a good source of pressure on healers when you spam it everywhere as MoO said spreading the disease was a great album, you just need to be able to live through it on yourself

PvE - waste of a slot for skill that would kill mobs faster.
PvP - adding a pressure, mostly for the monk(s). Not only DoT, but also kind of a mind game, especially in RA, as monk has to plan his spells and energy better.

Nothing but cold hard armor ignoring OP caster damage matters in PvE so disease is pointless.

In PvP disease can be used for pressure and covering other conditions like daze

PvE- eh, degen is mostly useless against enemies save burning if you are running something that synergies with it (ToF!, SF)

PvP- what everyone else said

Well,Kurzicks seems to like it in FA,especialy when I'm monking.
They like to spread the disease on the luxons,then get it back,and then spread it to the whole fort.

I suppose it's ok for Luxons to use it,it's a great weapon,since most kurzicks get disease and RUN BACK (argh )to the fort,thus spreading the disease to the NPCs