Guild Wars 2

I read another thread earlier about classes and their leveling experiences, and I contemplated responding to this thread with a detailed list of available traits and abilities as one levels, but then my ADD kicked in and I watched Dirty Jobs repeats.

But, while formulating that post, I noticed something. I was writing the “useful traits as you level up” list for the Necro and the Engi, and they were as different as night and day. For the engi, hitting the master tier opened up so much potential. This is especially true in the explosives line, where you have to weigh having more direct damage with explosives vs. a shorter recharge of with explosives vs. might gained through healing skills (which may be more than the previous two traits) vs. strong passive proc burning. It just feels exciting to go through the trait tiers, and look at all the new toys that you unlock along the way. It is like this for the Engineer, the Elementalist, the Mesmer, the Thief… pretty much every class I have played.

Except for the Necro. Choosing traits for the necro is like pulling teeth. You have to trudge through a wasteland of traits you’ll never find useful just to pick and choose the least crappy traits. The traits for the necro don’t feel exciting or empowering. They just feel like the best of a bad situation, with most of the good traits being a recharge reduction or a few extra points of damage.

I’m going to make a list and go through all of the bad and unremarkable traits that the necro has, and while writing this list I realize that what I’m about to do for the necro, I can’t do for any class. I can’t make an expansive list of “this trait sucks and should never be used” for thief, or elementalist, or mesmer. But what is the most frustrating about this is the lack of zingers, or crucial build defining traits for the necro. When asked about leveling the necro, the only answer I can give is “How the necro plays at level 15 is exactly how they’ll play at level 80 in high end content. Their traits change nothing about them”. The necros need something like Grenadier, or Persisting Flames, or Illusionary Persona, or Bewildering Ambush, or Phalanx Strength, or Empowering Might, or Spotter. The best attribute I can give to a trait should never be “It isn’t bad”.

So, the shorthand list of traits that I think are bad, whether they’re ineffective by themselves or if they affect a part of the necro that is simply useless. I’ll go in depth as to why each one is horrible later, but for now I just want to get the list out of the way.

Parasitic Bond
Death Into Life
Siphoned Power
Death’s Embrace
Spiteful Removal
Spiteful Marks
Parasitic Contagion
Toxic Landing
Chilling Darkness
Reaper’s Precision
Withering Precision
Dark Armor
Minion Master
Shrouded Removal
Full of Life
Vampiric
Bloodthirst
Vampiric Precision
Deathly Invigoration
Vampiric Rituals
Quickening Thirst
Unholy Martyr
Gluttony
Fear of Death
Speed of Shadows
Renewing Blast

Not included on this list are traits that aren’t bad, but just aren’t good, either. Now, the lukewarm list are traits that are “alright, but won’t go out of my way to get”, and thus still contribute to the problem of blandness in necromancer performance.

Signet Mastery
Spiteful Spirit
Axe Training
Dhuumfire
Weakening Shroud
Path of Corruption
Armored Shroud
Soul Compensation
Death Shiver
Death Nova
Unholy Sanctuary
Dagger Mastery
Ritual of Life
Vampiric Master
Mark of Revival
Near to Death
Foot in the grave

The difference between a bad trait and a lukewarm trait being that, were these a single point into a single line, I’d actually take a lukewarm trait, but a bad trait I’d just avoid totally. I’m trying to be inclusive of sPVP and WvW in this list, but from the perspective of a PVE player, my choices are even more limited than the list above.

Now for an in-depth analysis!

Parasitic Bond
Status: 3/10
Reason: There is a certain philosophy that I have with traits, and that is that a trait should contribute to my victory in any fight. Parasitic bond fails because it only takes effect after you’ve won. In sPVP this is nigh useless, since in small bouts you’ll just heal up anyway. PVE has a similar problem, where this trait is only useful when engaging hordes of consecutive enemies without rest. But, even there, the problem with this trait is that the necro has horrible AoE and no cleave, so necros can’t maximize use of this trait. The only time this trait will ever mean anything is in a disorganized WvW zerg vs. zerg fight where enemies on both sides take considerable losses, and a staff necro happens to tag most people. To top it off, this trait doesn’t work while in DS, which is when many necros both need healing, and are more capable of tagging enemies.

Death Into Life
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Necros are horrible at healing, and healing is horrible to begin with. Healing power is a badly scaling stat, and the necro has no way to make use of it.

Siphoned Power
Status: 1/10
Reasons: A single stack of might at OHKO range for 5 seconds doesn’t contribute meaningfully. At all. Ever. There is no play where 35 power/malice at 25% health for 5 seconds has ever made a difference.

Deaths Embrace
Status: 2/10
Reasons: Only takes effect after you’ve already fallen, and boosts what is horrible direct damage to begin with. 50% of nothing is still nothing.

Spiteful Removal
Status: 3/10
Reasons: This is another trait that only takes effect when you’ve already won. Necromancers are not lacking in condition removal in any way whatsoever, so at its best the trait is redundant and never there for when you need it (I.E. you are dying to conditions, and your opponent is not dying).

Spiteful Marks
Status: 3/10
Reasons: In theory this trait is fine, but in practice it is nigh useless. This is because marks have very little direct damage, with Putrid Mark being the only exception. So in the end, Spiteful Marks ends up boosting the most useless aspect of the staff in a manner that will never significantly matter.

Parasitic Contagion
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This trait is balanced off of a series of theoretical circumstances which will never occur. In sPVP, against any few targets you’ll never build up and sustain enough condition damage for this trait to be meaningful. In PVE your conditions will be overwritten, or enemies will be killed before the regen can possibly take effect, making you both horrible at doing damage and horrible at healing. In WvW large scale fights, your conditions will just be cleansed before you can heal off of them anyway. The only time this trait is useful is in solo PVE dungeons, where the condi necro has the ability to spread around massive conditions against enemies that live long enough to both build a ton of conditions and have the enemies stay alive long enough for it to matter.

Toxic Landing
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Every class has a fall damage reduction trait, but Necromancers have the second worst version of this trait next to Rangers. The poison field on fall is nearly useless, since all it does is inflict poison. Necros don’t have anything to combo meaningfully with the poison field, either.

Chilling Darkness
Status: 2/10
Reasons: I’m not sure whether this is by bug, or by design, but I never see chill meaningfully affect enemy actions. Ever. Chilling darkness just does a pittance of a chill on blind, which means that it’ll rarely ever contribute anything meaningfully to the fight. The one second chill is useless in Deathly Swarm and Signet of Spite, so the only purpose chilling darkness serves is to make it harder for players to get out of Well of Darkness, and to really stall someone when chasing another player around using Plague of Darkness.

Reapers Precision
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Assuming 50% crit rate, you’ll get about 3/20ths of a percent of life force on each hit, and while this trait doesn’t have a cooldown, Necros lack the cleave and AoE to really make use of this trait. Close, though, since this nearly made it into the lukewarm category.

Withering Precision
Status: 3/10
Reasons: This trait, however, does have a cooldown. 5 seconds of weakness every 20 seconds isn’t that good, considering a few other things. Firstly, long internal cooldown, so if you are attacked by a horde of enemies or an AI based player or multiple players, the contribution of this skill drops to nearly nothing. Second, the place where this trait would be good would be against a champion or legendary mob, but as it happens those mobs cut weakness and vulnerability duration by half, meaning that this trait gets neutralized by default. Because of this, the trait goes into the “nice idea in theory, horrible in practice” box.

Dark Armor
Status: 1/10
Reasons: The whole “toughness when channeling” thing is horrible. Channelling skills does not take up a meaningful length of time while doing anything, and taking 22% less damage (assuming minimum armor) during that time will never amount to anything, either.

Minion Master
Status: 3/10
Reasons: Nearly every other trait in this line has to deal with keeping minions alive. That’s how minions work: the longer they live, the more they do. Now, minion master works to reduce minion recharge upon their death, which seems fine, until you realize that minions spend the majority of their time alive. Because of this, the total amount of time saved by minion master is miniscule at best, shaving off a few seconds from several minutes worth of active time. There are exceptions to this rule, however, in that bone fiends and flesh worms benefit quite well, since their active causes their death, and thus you’d want them up as much as possible. Because of this, the trait isn’t completely useless, but it is still largely bad.

Shrouded Removal
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Though shrouded removal isn’t too bad in theory, it simply lacks in potency. The removal of a single condition while entering death shroud makes this trait inferior to many passive condition removals, and in a condition based fight will probably not mean very little as far as the whole fight goes. This trait is both ineffective and redundant because of this.

Full of life
Status: 3/10
Reasons: The minimum amount of HP a necro can have is 18,376, which makes 10% of the necros HP equivalent to 1,837 health. This trait, on a 30 second cooldown, will only heal 650 health, or a little over one third of the health necessary for activation. Overall, this trait simply lacks meaningful potency: the 5 seconds of regen given by this trait doesn’t mean squat in the short game, or even in the long run. It isn’t bad in concept so much as it is bad in execution.

Vampiric
Bloodthirst
Vampiric Precision
Vampiric Rituals
Vampiric Master
Status: 2/10
Reasons: The entire vampire line suffers from a very strange conflict of interest and an innate fear by developers. On the one hand, none of these traits work in deathshroud, and necros lack the cleave to truly make use of these skills. On the other hand, these traits are balanced to be slightly ineffective under peak conditions, meaning that they are all taken together and are used to maximum effectiveness. This means that, for practical purposes, the overall healing and damage contribution of vampiric traits is ineffective. The idea of having unresisted damage + healing tacked on to every individual hit of every individual attack spread out among 5 traits and multiple stat lines is simply flawed, as there is no sweet spot to balance around, and no peak to the theoretical limitations to this trait. Because of this, I argue that the whole vampire line should be scrapped, and Anet should try again.

Deathly Invigoration
Status: 3/10
Reasons: In theory this trait isn’t that bad, simply lacking potency and range. In practice, it lies below another problem: You don’t gain health in Deathsrhoud. Sure, there’s a grandmaster trait in a nigh useless line that gives regen in Death Shroud, but the lack of healing in DS has always been a mechanic that perplexed me. Deathly invigoration is one of those traits that, in practice, exists solely to attempt to overcome an issue with DS, which is the inability to heal. In practice this is just compensation for the inherent flaw in DS. Now, a second problem is that Deathly Invigoration suffers from in appropriateness. It is balanced solely on the premise of spamming DS to get effects, but in practice many players will hang in Death Shroud for extended periods of time. Meaning that, this trait gets balanced around more unrealistic circumstances than what actually occurs.

Quickening Thirst
Status: 2/10
Reasons: This is one of those movement speed buffs for a class that isn’t lacking in movement speed options. Worst part is, this is a relatively bad movement speed buff, since it requires you to wield D/D or lose the effect. When you throw on top of this Signet of the Locust, and swiftness via Locust Swarm + Spectral Walk, you get a trait that tries to fulfill a need that necros do not have in a manner that is simply unsatisfactory.

Unholy Martyr
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This is arguably the worst cleansing mechanic in the game, right up there with plague signet. A good team cleanse will usually do something like 1) actually remove the condition instead of burdening you with it 2) affect multiple people simultaneously, removing a nasty team wide condition from the entire team 3)affect teammates on-command and quickly instead of taking forever to take effect. In the end, you get a cleanse that just does more damage to you, doesn’t cleanse damaging conditions from teammates promptly or effectively, and provides no direct means of dealing with the condition itself. This is a grandmaster trait, but if it were the adept minor trait of this line, I still wouldn’t take it.

Gluttony
Status: 1/10
Reasons: In theory this trait isn’t that bad. In practice, the life force gain is negligible. LF is gained mostly from kills, and even the skills themselves have minor advantages at best. All in all, gluttony is the worst life force gaining trait necromancers have, and the only reason it is ever taken is because it is forced down our throats on the soul reaping line.

Fear of Death
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This trait only works after you’ve already lost. The one second fear only means something in a devoted terror build, where even there it lacks effectiveness, and outside of this build it is a minor nuisance, or it completely ruins stacks in PVE.

Speed of Shadows
Status: 1/10
Reasons: And now we have a trait that is worse than quickening thirst. This is because using D/D, while cumbersome, doesn’t actually cost you anything. This trait exchanges life force for speed, and Death Shroud itself has almost no use for running a bit faster.

Renewing Blast
Status: 2/10
Reasons: It is not brilliant to put a healing utility outside of the healing line, especially when the healing line is so horrible. Renewing blast is a heal skill that is extremely hard to use, many times going right through players but not taking effect, and also forces you to line up friendly players in an attempt to heal them. The healing itself is only so-so, resulting in a skill that is hard to use, expensive to trait, and isn’t rewarding.

Now for the lukewarms!

Signet Mastery
Status: 5/10
Reasons: In theory, this is a good trait. Recharge reduction + decent might on activation is good. The problem is, Necromancer signets are pretty bad, have long cooldowns, and are rarely used in conjunction with each other. Because of this, the most Signet Mastery can contribute is just 3 stacks of might when you condi bomb with spite, or 3 stacks of might with emergency healing from locust. Because of this, it is almost never worth a spot.

Spiteful Spirit
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Could stand to be a bit more potent, but otherwise not too bad. It is retaliation in DS, and one of the functions of DS is to absorb bursts, so it serves its function to a decent extent. But still, an additional two seconds would really bump this trait up.

Axe Training
Status: 6/10
Reasons: This is the same as Signet Mastery, in that necro axe is really bad. This is a good damage boost and recharge boost, and on good weapons this would be an extremely powerful trait, but it isn’t on a good weapon.

Dhuumfire
Status: 5/10
Reasons: Dhuumfire has the most complicated and controversial history as far as traits go, and it may just be my bias in the matter, but as Dhuumfire stands now it is just way too cumbersome to use. You have to go fully into the power line to get it, and even then you have to sit in DS which as no condi utility, and you have to fight with DS’s cooldown, and all for a measly 3 seconds of burning. When you stack this up to every other burning skill or trait that every other profession has, Dhuumfire shows its colors as the weakest and most inconsistent method of applying burning in the game.

Weakening Shroud
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This trait used to be epic, but it was nerfed assuming Close to Death + 100% condition duration + DS flashing tactics. Because of this, the trait has become nothing more than a weak hit with negligible weakness and the tiniest bit of a bleed. Still, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so it gets higher marks.

Path of Corruption
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that should be innate, but instead got tacked on as a grandmaster. Dark Path itself is a weak skill that is used for mobility more than anything else, and while the boon corruption isn’t bad, it is also highly conditional and difficult to use (I.E. forcing you into melee range). Because of this, the trait gets a solid “Meh” from me, and I’m pretty sure the only reason people take it is because there aren’t any better options in the curses line.

Armored Shroud
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Though receiving slightly less damage (9% less) in Death Shroud isn’t bad, it isn’t that good, either. For one, in PVE you’re either using DS to absorb a big hit, in which the 9% reduction doesn’t change the fact that you only have two shots before the bar is depleted anyway, or you are sitting in DS to lifeblast stuff, in which the degen is where the majority of lifeforce is lost. But in PVP this trait is more useful, since life force is both harder to get, and also doesn’t get blown past as often.

Soul Compensation
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This trait is what gluttony dreams it could be. The reason why it goes onto the lukewarm list is because it shares the flaw of only taking effect after you’ve already won. In PVE you’re probably nearly full up on DS all the time anyway, and in PVP the 20% gain per death is, again, mostly negligible.

Death Shiver
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that would be so much better at the adept tier. The minor AoE vulnerability on a regular basis isn’t bad, especially if you’re in a lifeblasting build. However, it is slow to apply, is inappropriate in other builds, and often is inferior to other damage buffs.

Death Nova
Status: 4/10
Reasons: It is a small hit and poison field when a minion dies. In PVE this is nearly useless, and in PVP the best application is blasting bone minions inside of the fields they leave behind. The ability to summon jagged horrors for the slaughter helps minion builds out more, but overall this trait is just lackluster.

Unholy Sanctuary
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Superior to deathly invigoration if you stay in Deathshroud for more than 4 seconds, Unholy Sanctuary is one of those traits that, again, works to try and compensate for a weakness that I’m not even sure should exist in the first place. It gives basic regeneration, with the advantage being that it is the only regen that works while in Death Shroud, but still it ranks pretty low on the list, and should definitely not be a grandmaster trait in the tough/boon line.

Dagger Mastery
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Yet another trait that suffers from the “fine in theory, doesn’t work in practice”. On the main hand, the dagger has a weak siphon skill and an average immobilize, neither of which gain any advantage for getting their recharge reduced. The off-hand is where this shines, though, since Deathly Swarm and Enfeebling blood both benefit much more greatly from a recharge reduction. Because of this, Dagger Mastery doesn’t dip into the “bad” category.

Ritual of Life
Status: 4/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that plays with an idea, but in practice is impractical. From a support standpoint, the ideal modus operandi is preventive: to stop teammates from going down is far superior to rezzing teammates when they go down. It should be quite simple to understand: rezzing a downed teammate is kind of like fear of death, in that you can only use this trait when failing. However, given that, Ritual of life is arguably the best nigh-failure activated trait, since it essentially compensates the necro for any damage they would’ve taken while rezzing. The gradual heal from well of blood is quite weak, so as far as the rezzed goes this trait is useless. Also, this trait only activates upon a successful rez, so if you are attempting to rez someone that is surrounded by players or is being stealth/haste stomped, this trait is useless. In this sense, it is a trait that only works when you’ve won, but can only be activated when you’re about to lose. Wholly impractical, definitely.

Mark of Revival
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is a better trait. While ritual of life only rewards you for accomplishing a goal, this trait actually helps you to accomplish a goal. The two actually go quite well together, albeit still flawed in that it would be better to prevent teammates from going down instead of investing time to rez them quicker. From a PVE perspective, though, Mark of Revival is nigh useless, since enemies don’t stomp. You’ll fear them for a second, which will prompt them to turn right back around and pummel you as you are rezzing your friend. The worst part is that mark of revival scatters enemies, which ruins stacks.

Near to Death
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that, despite its theoretical uses, I really hate. There are a lot of “gain x effect when entering/leaving Deathshroud”, and unfortunately many of these traits have to be balanced around the assumption that DS is being spammed with the Near to Death trait. The worst example being the weakening shroud nerf. Either way, this trait is incredibly situation by itself. Near to Death is only useful in a circumstance where, assuming other “enter/exit DS” skills can be balanced by themselves, a player is both gaining a lot of life force and also needs to expel a lot of life force defensively. In essence, Near to Death is only useful in similar circumstances to Parasitic Bond, with two exceptions. The first being that it is possible to gain a lot of LF without having to kill things, and the second being that no other trait is balanced around Parasitic Bond.

Foot in the grave
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Foot in the grave is a nice idea, giving stability when entering in Deathshroud. But again, in practice, the Necro doesn’t truly have the means to make use of this trait. Firstly, necros don’t have any big bursting skill they can use, so there’s no clutch plays for stability. This means that stability here is only used defensively. Secondly, Foot in the Grave doesn’t break stuns, which means that the stability here can’t be used reactively. The end result being that stability is on/off fairly randomly, with enemy players sitting back and waiting for stability to drop before going for the kill. In PVE foot in the grave is far more useful, since you can time the stability requiring attacks, but again, the short duration makes this trait quite hard to use.

The hardest part about all of these trait issues is solving them. Sure, I can stare at a gigantic pile of manure and declare that it stinks, but this doesn’t do anything to get rid of the manure. I could look at a lot of these traits, but my answer to half of them would just be to obliterate the concept and try again.

If it were “a” trait that I needed to fix, that would be easy. But with just so many traits that should be buffed, changed, or replaced completely, its hard to know where to begin. Its nearly on the level of designing a new class from scratch.

a lot of ppl use signet mastery

Signet mastery is a lukewarm. Besides, a lot of people use a lot of these traits, but it doesn’t make them good. Best of a bad situation and all that.

Finally, another problem I see with necromancer traits is a large amount of specialization. The traits are highly specific in their uses, affecting a particular aspect, or weapon, or utility that a necro has. It is rarer to find a general “buff something” trait, or any traits that merely add something.

When making any particular build, the actually diversity available to anyone is much shorter than just crossing out the bad and many of the lukewarm traits. Once you’ve picked a gimmick (I.E. Minions), you have to pick a whole bunch of traits that affect that gimmick to make it useful, and then there’s a gigantic hole of good general utility traits that are missing for the necro, but available to every other class.

well to be honest, some of the stuff u listed r actually good depending on situation, and ever proffession has tons of useless traits..

Its a good list. All classes have a few traits suffering from these problems. Necro seems to have more and they also lack any build changing traits like persisting flames, fresh air and phalanx. So yeah its pretty disappointing overall.

However I disagree with a few things. I feel signet mastery is a very good trait. But like you said its the signets which are the problem not the trait. Most other classes get two seperate traits to do what necro signet mastery does. So we are quite lucky in that regard.

Also Path of corruption i feel is probably one of our best grandmasters, but yes we dont have a great selection to compare with. Its pvp based but its a strong and a pretty build changing trait. Everything else i have a similar opinion as the OP with.

I like the Minion Master and Death Nova for making minions go boom…

…but yeah, 90% of necro talents are borderline worthless, and the rest you can’t live without.

Yeah some traits are useless. But what i find the biggest problem is, that traits like parasitic bond or all life siphon traits dont work in DS due no healing in DS…
I think allowing them to work in DS would make them all decent.

So this is the first thing they should change imo.

Nice post, especially the lack of decent grandmaster traits annoys me as a Necro.

HeadCrowned.6834:

Nice post, especially the lack of decent grandmaster traits annoys me as a Necro.

We have some decent ones. I would argue the 50% crit chance in ds is quite good and build defining.

Death Nova is bad? WHAT?!??!! The single trait can stack 30s of poison on someone with bone minions alone, it makes melee cleaving minions to death extremely dangerous, it provides ample fields that all of your minions combo off of (putrid explosion blast finishes itself, giving 50% weakness uptime with bone minions alone), and it summons a jagged horror to proc itself even more.

Minion Master itself is good too. Why? Minions die, in fact, you kill them off a lot (bone minions in particular, also flesh wurm). Minion Master in fact effectively not just increases their uptime, but most important it decreases their downtime (which is the big time of weakness for you), and in the case of bone minions greatly increases the effectiveness of the skill (more DPS, better weakness/poison uptime from death nova).

I also think a few traits are being badly rated because they are niche (which is ABSOLUTELY fine) and so are only useful in builds that support them, and minors, for not being “strong enough”, despite the fact that all minors are generally like that anyway. Or they’re being rated badly for ridiculous reasons (path of corruption? you really think a 15s bleed/chill/two boon corruption that is unblockable and teleports you 900 units without any traiting is balanced?).

Perhaps I can change your mind on Shrouded Removal, a trait I’ve been using for ~ a year now.

It removes fear before all other conditions, making it a pseudo stunbreaker. Every thief that you fight can fear you. Warriors, necromancers and rangers can also fear you.

Some specific notes:

Parasitic Bond
While I totally agree overall that this is a mediocre trait mainly because of how it procs currently (all on-death traits are largely mediocre imo because of their on-death mechanic), there was a bit of misinformation here. This has kitten ICD, meaning cleave or tagging people really doesn’t matter at all, you have more than enough time to change targets before the ICD is up for you to proc it again.

Death Into Life
Necromancers have the highest raw healing in the game, and some of the highest ratios overall. Meta builds don’t take advantage of it because they only bring Consume for general healing (which still scales better than most heals, as it has a 1.0 + 0.1 per condition scaling), but that is more due to Necromancers being forced into full DPS roles. This might not be a fun trait, but it is appropriate for its tier, and is fine on its own (other things need to change, not this trait).

Chilling Darkness
This is simply a niche trait, and that is 100% okay. In builds that have blinds it can be amazing (turns WoD and Plague into pretty strong chill stacking mechanics).

Full of Life
650 “free” health as part of an adept minor trait is fine, especially when the very tree it is in synergizes with it by giving it more healing power. The only issue with this trait is that it is regeneration, what we should have is something like Ele’s minor, which is an unremovable non-boon heal over time. Give it the exact same scaling and everything as regen, but just don’t have it be regen.

Vampiric Master
This trait is fine, it is the only trait of the Vampiric set that is actually gated well. Minions only hit so often, they hit one target, and even in a perfect situation this trait is okay, and it rewards you and your opponent for playing as you should be.

The rest? Awful and need changes as you said.

Gluttony
Fine trait, it increases all skill-based LF, and in fact you gain a lot of LF from weapon skills, unless you are condi and haven’t taken any LF gain (in which case don’t expect to gain LF). If someone had a trait that said “all of your healing from skills is increased by 10%” it’d be extremely good, and this is almost exactly what gluttony does (only through LF “healing”).

Dhuumfire
While I agree it isn’t a 10/10, you said “you have to sit in DS which as no condi utility”, except that DS w/ Dhuumfire has 4 abilities out of 5 that have condi utility on them. Its still an okay trait, not amazing, but okay.

Path of Corruption
This is taken because it is one of the best traits Necromancers have. 15s (lower when traited) unblockable 900 range (with good tracking) teleport that chills, applies bleeds, and corrupts two boons (applying up to 4 separate conditions) is very strong, especially in the current meta where so many popular builds are reliant on maintaining boons, and this also increases the strength of Corrupt Boon because now you can save CB for the big stacks and use PoC to keep the smaller stacks down.

disagree with loads of those:
chilling darkness? use it with plague for for perma aoe chill, you’ll ruin the day of everyone on a point.

deathnova, vampiric mastery, and minion mastery are all cornerstones of MM builds!
vampiric mastery is the best trait ever for MMs!

The main one I disagree with is foot in the grave, because it was very useful for me when I was learning how to position myself as a Necro in WvW. If you get CCed in WvW, you’re probably done unless you have melandru runes and saffron bread to bail you out (must buy those runes!!) While its a bit suboptimal since a guardian should provide you with enough stab to survive the first push, its a good utility to fall back on, kind of like WvW training wheels, since once you do get better with positioning, deathly perception lets you contribute a lot more to the fight by making sure your bombs have a 100% chance to crit,, just in some matchups the extra stability is very nice. Its basically a toss up between extra damage or extra survivability if you think you could make mistakes or if you don’t trust your teammates to support you in that regard, since guardians can provide you with so much stability that you barely need the trait, but if you’re guardians suck then obviously taking the trait would be more beneficial.

And as we all know, Anet please give us useful PvE + team damage traits so we can stop being the annoying band geek of PvE.

And as for the people defending chilling darkness, it has a niche but its base chill duration isn’t long enough. With tanky frontlines running melandru or hoelbrak + lemongrass, you are forced to gain ludicrous amounts of weight off of scarfing down koi cakes and rare veggie pizzas, especially taking condition food for a power build, which detracts from the focus of your build. Similarly, you have to give up more useful runes/sigils for ice/grenth runes etc, which is also a bit of a negative. Hydromancy sigils are fine though. I used to run a chill build in WvW, but after moving those 10 points from curse into DM for the the staff mastery and the significant extra toughness in DS, I feel like my utility and tankiness has been a lot better, especially since I can run lemongrass or saffron bread now. I also feel like I contribute more damage and utility by using WoC over WoB as well, which is another positive in my eyes.

@Bhawb: Reading is OP. I’ve already mentioned many of the things you’re bringing up.

Anyway, the problem with poison is that poison isn’t that good. It does little damage, and the only use is the -healing effect in PVP. Add on the fact that, on a condi MM build, poison is already nigh permanently afflicted via scepter auto attack and putrid mark. Similarly with weakness, caused by putrid mark + chillblains, as well as enfeebling blood. It is hard to justify this being a grandmaster trait when it accomplishes the same thing as the scepter auto attack.

Likewise, with minion master, the theory is alright but the overall effect is minimal. Other than bone minions, which do more DPS when sacrificed immediately, a group of minions can live for several minutes at a time. It is important to note that minions don’t have long cooldowns, either. After bone fiend runs around for 5 minutes, shaving off 6 seconds from the recharge is the most minimal boost to minion performance possible. If anything, what minion master should do is reduce the cooldown on minion active skills as well as the minions themselves. But regardless, minion master gets used a lot because, for a minion build, the only competition from the adept tier of Death Magic is staff mastery for condi builds. So really, minion master is a case of “there’s nothing else to take here”.

It is important to note that, while death nova and minion master work better together, they actually run contrary to a lot of the other traits for minions. In particular, Flesh of the Master is an excellent trait for prolonging the survival of both the minions, and the necro themselves. In doing this, it cuts the usage of Death Nova and Minion Master down by 50%. Other traits work better the longer minions are alive, such as fetid consumption, vampiric master, and necromantic corruption. I like to use Flesh of the Master as an example of a good trait, because instead of a paltry increase to the most minimal recharge in the game, it actually works to keep your minions alive and fighting.

Just dubbing something a “niche utility” doesn’t deal with the fact that many of these traits are unrealistic, unrewarding, too costly to use, and balanced around improbable scenarios. It is quite hard to realize from this extensive list that there are a lot of traits that I left out due to build differences and niche uses that are actually good. Remember: there’s a lukewarm list for a reason.

still @Bhawb:

Parastic Bond
Ah.. I could’ve sworn when I checked the wiki last night there was no listed cooldown. This will be my bad, here.

Death into life
This is utter nonsense. Necromancer healing lags far behind what elementalists, engineers, guardians, mesmers, and warriors can crunch out, and that little healing power will never amount to anything in any build, ever. Here, let me show you:

Full zerker DPS: will get about 175 healing power, but won’t be traiting for healing utilities, so other than a 3% boost to consume conditions it goes completely to waste.
Full Cleric Support: will probably not bother putting in 15 points into spite just to get 123 healing power. But, on top of the 1300 healing power, 123 additional extra isn’t even a 10% increase. Most healing skills have 0.1 to 0.4 modifiers, so this means that Death into Life will only increase healing by 1% to 4% in a full cleric build. It isn’t worth sacrificing renewing blast (well, maybe because renewing blast is horrible to use), transfusion, ritual of life, or deathly invigoration for.

This trait is the definition of useless. It can’t be useful. Period.

Chilling Darkness
I guess you can define “niche” as “runs well of darkness”. But regardless, it is actually pretty bad for a chill stacking mechanic: 1 second worth per blind. Well of darkness and plague form have an attack rate of once per second, meaning that without additional chill duration, the effect leaves as soon as the enemy leaves the blind field. Plague form essentially disables the necro for the duration, letting you do little more than tank and decap a point. It is important to note that you can accomplish this without chilling darkness, since spamming blinds is enough of a defense. I’ve run a chill necro before. Chilling darkness is the worst way to go about it.

Full of Life
Soothing mist also has the additional effect of being a large AoE effect. It also isn’t neutralized by the ele class mechanic (much like how Deathshroud is). As I said before, the biggest problem is that it completely lacks potency.

Vampiric Mastery
Agreed. It is a little known fact, but I categorize mastery as a lukewarm trait. I just lumped together the entire vampiric line in one big thing, because the flaws with the system are fairly pervasive. Mastery is the exception to this rule, however.

Gluttony
The big problem is that a lot of lifeforce isn’t gained through skills. It is gained through deaths. Likewise, life force is different from health in that it degens naturally while in use, so the total sum of contribution that gluttony provides is an additional second or two in Death Shroud. In a fight when a player is lacking DS it doesn’t provide enough for a clinch movement (since you’d have to regen up half the bar to buy a single second of time), and unless you have a build that specifically generates a lot of life force through skills the trait contributes little to nothing at all. The total impact of gluttony, can be summarized as “it only provides enough lifeforce when you don’t need it”.

Path of Corruption
I categorize this as a lukewarm trait, because it lies in the shadow of what is IMO a far superior trait: chill of death. Chill of death triggers automatically at 50% health with no need to activate DS, no additional animation or projectile to stop, and also removes up to 3 boons. Now, you can make a case for Path of Corruption, but as an avid necro player I have had a horrible history with Dark Path being dodged, being blocked by terrain, being interrupted, or otherwise failing to work at all. The second issue, other than the infrequency of Dark Path, is that the skill forces players to “belly up”. A large portion of my necromancer play has been about safety in positioning and maintaining distance, since no active defenses results in necros getting thrown around like ping pong balls while in the fray. While spectral grasp can remove someone from the safety of their teammates, Dark Path puts me right into the line of fire, where I am helpless, and will get piled and burst down very quickly.

Because of this, Path of Corruption is a mixed bag. It adds universal frequent boon corruption regardless of any build, but it does so by forcing me to use a skill that I’d rather avoid the vast majority of the time. If this corruption were on something like spectral grasp, or if Dark Path pulled enemies instead of pulling me, then Path of Corruption would get 9/10 easily. The fact that path of corruption is one of the better grandmasters necros have is more of a statement on how bad necro traits are, rather than how good Path of Corruption is.

Dhuumfire
I keep forgetting that tainted shackles exists… darn my head.

EDIT: Fixed a poorly written section.

One of the things I dislke the most is that we have 4 separate traits in separate trees to max out the effectiveness of one weapon (staff). Most other classes have one trait per weapon, which for most classes is the 20% cooldown reduction and then either some stat/damage bonus while using the weapon or some additional range or utility added to the weapon skills.

A fully traited staff can do quite a bit more than most other fully traited weapons particularly with unblockable life force generating marks, but it seems bad design to have so many traits for one weapon.

If necros got a redesigned trait line to allow for the team damage support buffs we need that could be gained from traits, I would probably merge spiteful and soul marks, and merge staff mastery and greater marks, and in the spots that open up add traits that could be a passive ferocity boost to our allies or some other type of damage buff, which would be a step towards making us more desirable in PvE.

This is a great thread, and it also makes me a little sad, because it’s true. The necromancer has a ton of terrible traits that simply don’t work well with the class and how it is played.

And Nearlight is also right that the staff having 4 different traits in separate trees is really bizarre. I feel like maxing the effectiveness of the staff takes such a heavy investment trait-wise, that I might as well not bother.

My own pet peeve is “on fall” traits. Traits that activate their effect upon landing, such as “Toxic Landing” are absolutely garbage, and have no use in the game what so ever. They don’t need to be garbage. I’ve made suggestions before to change Toxic Landing so it actually provides a team benefit (which would be great in WvW for example), by reducing fall damage for any allies landing where the necromancer did. Right now however, it is a filler trait. A lot of necro traits feel like filler. I don’t feel like a decent amount of design went into them to make them even halfway decent or useful.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

This is a great thread, and it also makes me a little sad, because it’s true. The necromancer has a ton of terrible traits that simply don’t work well with the class and how it is played.

And Nearlight is also right that the staff having 4 different traits in separate trees is really bizarre. I feel like maxing the effectiveness of the staff takes such a heavy investment trait-wise, that I might as well not bother.

My own pet peeve is “on fall” traits. Traits that activate their effect upon landing, such as “Toxic Landing” are absolutely garbage, and have no use in the game what so ever. They don’t need to be garbage. I’ve made suggestions before to change Toxic Landing so it actually provides a team benefit (which would be great in WvW for example), by reducing fall damage for any allies landing where the necromancer did. Right now however, it is a filler trait. A lot of necro traits feel like filler. I don’t feel like a decent amount of design went into them to make them even halfway decent or useful.

Yeah I agree with this. The only really decent fall down trait is the ele’s arcane abatement for solo roaming, in which they bait people into falling off cliffs to lower their enemies health while falling in water attunement so they don’t lose as much health.. Its a tactic that I saw excala do in his youtube videos that over populazrized D/D ele at the start of the game.

@Blood Minion Master is good regardless of how long minions live because it reduces, by 20%, the window in which you are weak. In addition to that, no matter what your build is, all good builds will have two minions that will die. They have to die, its how their actives work, and they are such useful actives that you are going to use them.

All MM players, even those who like myself have a bit of investment into keeping the minions alive, know that they die eventually, and when they do you need them up ASAP. As long as minions are alive its unlikely you are dying.

Also Death Nova is 100% essential on MM builds right now. It does everything, it punishes the enemy for killing minions in melee (I’ve outright killed hambow warriors because they popped too many minions), it self-synergizes with Jagged Horrors, the poison field has massive synergy with nearly every minion, and it keeps up nearly 100% weakness and far more than 100% poison (why even bring up condi MM when that isn’t a thing?).

The real issue for me, is that minion traiting is a bit mixed up. There are a number of traits that support keeping them alive and a number that support not caring, that needs some help so that there is enough support for both. The only time that traits like MM and DN will not be mandatory for full MM builds is if they introduce traits that contribute to an opposite build type, which allow you to choose what kind of minion build you want, one where minions are kept alive or one where they are expendable.

Totally agree with the Op.
This Thread is made with precision and a fair opinion about the current (and past) situation.
Most of the traits are trash, and people just adapted on accepting the best of the worst.
It’s been like this since the release.

Unluckly the last patch made clearly the point.
After 22 months from release, ANET can’t and won’t expand the game nor will rehaul traits.

So don’t expect Necromancer nor any class which needs it to get out of this misery.

I praise you for the effort, but at the same time I think it won’t matter to ANET, it’s been like this since the beginning: keeping hopes, giving feedback, making theorycrafting on this forum is an absolute waste of time.

I agree that some traits are nearly useless. But overall the choice is true and I like Necro’s traits.

Ranger traits are in far, far worse state tbh.

It’s dificult to even take ranger in acount since he exelcs or has some use in both pve/pvp, from my experience the necro is literaly shut out of pve and bottom of barrel for tournaments, but thats my perspective.

until they balace every class, to even the playing feild, the state of the necro is an “avoid me” sign

I’m not saying about Ranger overall, but it’s traits which are horrible, boring and out of place.

There’s very little to no creativity in them and there are “pet” traits which should be in pet traitlines if those existed.

You want to experiment a bit with them and then you catch yourself that you’re not even interested in most of the choices, because some are just brutally required and most are so dull that you pick the best looking one among the worst.

Rym.1469:

I’m not saying about Ranger overall, but it’s traits which are horrible, boring and out of place.

There’s very little to no creativity in them and there are “pet” traits which should be in pet traitlines if those existed.

You want to experiment a bit with them and then you catch yourself that you’re not even interested in most of the choices, because some are just brutally required and most are so dull that you pick the best looking one among the worst.

Problem is while the GW2 ranger has an easier time buff pet and himself its all boring. +ferocity pet trait is GREAT, its alot of free stats to your pet…. but thats it. its just… free stats. its pretty boring yeah.

yeah my guild’s WvW ranger build is such a joke. It takes all the traits that activate as the ranger loses health or becomes downed. Basically the circle of life trait which is a free water field for bringing rangers where can’t do well at all

I’m pretty sure necro traits being bad and ranger traits being bad are really independent of each other. Both can have bad traits.

Though someone else will have to make the “I hate ranger traits” thread. I have very little experience playing rangers, and thus don’t know the practical applications of the traits.

I am sorry for bumping this but this thread deserves some attention and is actually still current.
Consdiering the few adjustments in traits , did the last patch change anything mentioned in this post?

I would also like to note that necromancer traits for what he needs not for what he wants.
Leaving the necro with 3 builds with 2 trait variations each useable in spvp.
(power,condi,mm) thats it.. no boonhate, support, healing, cc, signet and bunker specific builds.. they all are in the lukewarm state as described above.

Again, sorry for the bump. but this is one of those threads that slipped trough the maze unnoticed.

I like a lot of traits conceptually (Life Blast heals, blind chills, fear damages, there’s just so many mutating traits, which are some of the best ones, instead of simple enhancing/quickening ones which are pretty boring in use). A lot of them actually, more than on many other classes.

Many of them aren’t well-balanced however, so yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Was going to ask if anything’s changed in the last half a year or so, but I figured it’d be a rhetorical question, so yea.

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

We’ve always known how it works, and it’s still not a good trait.

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

We’ve always known how it works, and it’s still not a good trait.

Never said it was a good trait.
And the guy who wrote this clearly didn’t know it.

Holl.3109:

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

We’ve always known how it works, and it’s still not a good trait.

Never said it was a good trait.
And the guy who wrote this clearly didn’t know it.

You think he wrote this whole thread and doesn’t understand siphoned power? I don’t get how you would think that. His description of the trait stands, it’s not helpful having short duration, selfish might when I’m low on health, regardless of how it works in death shroud.

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

We’ve always known how it works, and it’s still not a good trait.

Never said it was a good trait.
And the guy who wrote this clearly didn’t know it.

You think he wrote this whole thread and doesn’t understand siphoned power? I don’t get how you would think that. His description of the trait stands, it’s not helpful having short duration, selfish might when I’m low on health, regardless of how it works in death shroud.

He knew everything about the trait EXCEPT that you get might EVERYtime when you are struck when below 25% health. He said something like “a single stack of might at 25% health won’t help”. Just correcting a mistake man.
And agains I never said this was a good trait. I also think it sucks. Just showing how it really works.

Holl.3109:

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Roe.3679:

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

We’ve always known how it works, and it’s still not a good trait.

Never said it was a good trait.
And the guy who wrote this clearly didn’t know it.

You think he wrote this whole thread and doesn’t understand siphoned power? I don’t get how you would think that. His description of the trait stands, it’s not helpful having short duration, selfish might when I’m low on health, regardless of how it works in death shroud.

He knew everything about the trait EXCEPT that you get might EVERYtime when you are struck when below 25% health. He said something like “a single stack of might at 25% health won’t help”. Just correcting a mistake man.
And agains I never said this was a good trait. I also think it sucks. Just showing how it really works.

its still one of the better minor traits tbh…

Holl.3109:

Yet another necro that doesn’t know siphoned power.
Just watch this: http://youtu.be/z66E6vYR7EY
It will explain it all.

True,I do think that they forgot to alter the trait when they added DS damage overflow hence the trait being less usefull. thanks though

If you did 100 fights with siphoned power, at best you would have one fight you won where siphoned power actually made the difference.