Guild Wars 2

• Blood Magic
• Death Magic
• Axe
• Scepter

All of these things still suck, let’s be honest.

Robert Gee said he’ll take a look at scepter and axe, so I’ll start with some scepter ideas. I’m afraid that if he doesn’t receive any real ideas then all we’re going to get are number changes.

_____________________________Scepter_____________________________
This is very clearly the necromancer’s condition based weapon but it pales compared to other class’s condition abilities.

Blood Curse (Scepter chain#1) – Fine as it is.
Rending Curse (Scepter chain#2) – Change to 5s of torment.
Putrid Curse (Scepter chain#3) – Increase poison duration from 4s to 5s.
Add projectile animation to chain 1,2 and 3 and change to 20% projectile finishers.

Grasping Dead
IMO, this skill is fine. You could change it to a pulsing AOE field but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Feast of Corruption
- First, change the skill to have a pulsing animation like the Risen Plaguebearer in Orr.
- Second, make every pulse (5 pulses like Risen Plaguebearer) transfer 1 condition and grant 2% life force per hit
- Alternatively, make every pulse inflict poison and grant life force.

The argument against a condition transfer change would be players deeming this skill to be too powerful. However, compare this skill to other necromancer condition transfers. Plague Signet is a 30s ICD, group support, 5 condition transfer, 1200 range instant cast stunbreaker. Putrid Mark is a 20s ICD, 1200 range, blast finisher that can be traited for life force and to be unblockable – also very fast cast. Our Plague Sending trait is also instant. Deathly Swarm is a bouncing blind condition transfer with a mere 18s ICD.

Feast of Corruption (scepter #3) would be a (2s?) channeled ability that simply transfers 1 condition per successful hit and grants some life force. Similar to other condition transfers, this skill won’t be very useful if your opponent doesn’t use conditions against you. We’ve also seen how powerful channeled abilities become after players become accustomed to them – see: rangers rapid fire. A very powerful skill on a 10s ICD as well but players now know how to counter it.

_____________________________Axe_____________________________
Dunno

___________________________Blood Magic___________________________
Minor Traits.
Mark of Evasion – Fine as is.
Vampiric Presence – Replaces Vampiric. Minions siphon health made baseline.
Last Rites – Fine as is.

Adept Traits.

Grandmaster Traits.
Vampiric Rituals – Wells now pulse protection and allies in your wells siphon health.

Anyway, that’s all I feel like thinking about. I’d like to merge some fear traits, remove some traits, change some traits like making banshees wail change warhorn skills (warhorn 4 becomes fear) but that’s a waste of my time and I’d have to think about creating entirely new traits by merging traits.

Scepter as a concept works absolutely fine, it just lacks in numbers. Apart from number tweaking, I’d primarily just change #3 to apply 2 torment and 1 extra torment for each unique condition on the enemy. Axe needs 900 range and extra damage, and the #3 should be a blast finisher. Spiteful Spirit shouldn’t have an ICD and Unholy Fervor’s damage bonus should apply to all weapons.

For Blood Magic, Mark of Evasion shouldn’t have an ICD. Vampiric and Vampiric Presence work fine, though personally I’d like to see them merged into a single minor since they accomplish basically the same thing. If they are merged then my idea for a replacement would be “Sacrificial Recovery”. If over 50% health, when a nearby ally would be downed, instead transfer 25% of your health to them. Both of you gain 3 seconds of invulnerability. 360 radius, 120 second ICD. Making Vampiric Rituals do that makes sense to me, though the Protection duration should probably be decreased to 1 second per pulse.

For Curses I’d move Parasitic Contagion to Master and let it heal in Shroud. Terror should be moved to GM, have a damage boost, and grant 50% fear duration (merged with Fear of Death in Soul Reaping). Apart from that, for Curses I’d say expand Lingering Curse to grant 66% bonus duration to all conditions and an extra 33% for Scepter (meaning 99% for Scepter) to let it compete with Terror and Weakening Shroud.

For Soul Reaping, I did say to merge Terror and Fear of Death. Instead of Fear of Death, I’d suggest “Life Conversion,” 15% of gained LF is given to you as healing. This could have some really interesting synergies, and I don’t think it’d be OP. Consider that your LF pool is only 80% of your health pool if traited, so if you get 100% LF then you’d be healed for 1*0.8*0.15=12% of your health for completely filling up your LF. I’d also like to note that the healing would obviously be based on Vitality instead of Healing Power. You also wouldn’t be able to take Vital Persistence or Spectral Mastery with it.

Honestly Blood Magic and Death Magic are fairly solid at what they accomplish, they aren’t that bad right now.