Baruch Bay.
(edited by Torres.2890)
Combine Staff Master with Greater Marks.
What you’re really asking for here is a free Death Magic adept trait.
It would be a flat buff for those who have 20 in DM already and a nerf for those who just have 10 points invested for Staff Mastery. Unless you’re implying that the combined trait should be adept tier, which would be even more op.
Besides, not all cd reduction traits on other classes have secondary effects. And there are many “secondary” effects that don’t come with cd reductions.
What i would like to have is:
DM Adept: Staff Mastery
20% cd reduction
60 increased Radius
DM Master: Soul Marks
Marks are Unblockable
Marks generate 3% life force
SR Master: New Trait
Something related to DS
Not gonna happen; the current system is working as intended. Greater marks was intentionally moved to the master trait line, leaving staff mastery an adept trait and staff is pretty good untraited regardless.
People took greater marks back then because the default radius was too small, but nowadays the difference isn’t as huge. If necros need buffs, it is not staff.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)
After the dhuumfire nerf, necros clearly need some nerfs to be reverted.
Many traits and skills are nerfed just because of dhuumfire, then why they aren’t getting reverted to their previous state ?
For example staff #2/mark of blood has still 2 stacks of bleeding in spvp, and needs to be reverted back to 3 bleed stacks.
Not gonna happen; the current system is working as intended. Greater marks was intentionally moved to the master trait line, leaving staff mastery an adept trait and staff is pretty good untraited regardless.
People took greater marks back then because the default radius was too small, but nowadays the difference isn’t as huge. If necros need buffs, it is not staff.
I’d rather see Spireful Marks and Soul Marks get merged in to Staff Master and Greater Marks than Staff Master and Greater Marks being merged together. Spiteful Marks especially, as the trait is just bad.
Staff should have maximum two traits to max.
Two traits brings it in line with norms for most weapons for most classes. The more traits a weapon has the weaker the weapon is: stuff like ranger bows with tons of traits are some of the weakest weapons in the game.
The other traits should be merged & eliminated. Spiteful Marks/Greater marks both good candidates for elimination.
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Greater Marks is an amazing trait, if nothing more than just the ability to give you nearly an entire skill bar of unblockable skills, and especially when you can then cancel out a Guardian’s shelter heal (as well as force anyone out of a blocking skill very quickly), which not just stops the blocking, but stops the heal as well, leaving them in an awful situation.
Spiteful marks is awful, sure. But the other staff traits have very valid uses.
The issue is we have 4 traits for staff spread out across 3 trait lines 3 of which are master tier. No other class is required to invest 60 trait points to max out a weapon. At the same time the traits they get are better. Many traits give a %10 damage increase and cool down reduction, or a cool down reduction and a secondary effect. There should only be 2 staff traits, and I personally want to see a trait open up in death magic, so we can get more boons in our boon duration tree.
Necros don’t have reflects, invulns, vigor, blocks,
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
Simple, don’t max out staff then. You don’t need a single staff trait to make it a really good weapon.
No, he’s right, no other weapon in the game has 4 traits associated with it and it’s ridiculous. Especially so many marginal ones. You might think well you don’t have to take the marginal ones. Sure: staff is a decent utility weapon even untraited. But even if you theoretically take every single trait associated with it, it would still never be a decent main weapon!
If we had decent traits associated with staff, then you could choose to take it untraited for utility or to trait it to use as your main damage-dealing weapon. But at the moment no combination of traits makes it worth using except when you need a specific thing (eg the fear), or in marginal situations like zerg vs zerg (even there you’ll just be biding time until you can drop your Wells, use your elite, or go into Death Shroud for piercing deathly perception lifeblasts).
On every other profession marginal bonuses like +10% damage would be rolled into other traits like -20% cooldown. cf the equivalent mesmer staff, sword, and GS traits, which give -20% recharge, bonus to attributes (a small one, admittedly, not equivalent to +10% damage), AND each affect a corresponding underwater weapon as a bonus. Or ranger traits, like Quick Draw, which affects both shortbow AND longbow, Blade Training which works like the mesmer ones I mentioned, or off-hand training which decreases recharge and increases range for ALL OFF-HAND WEAPONS! That’s right, 1 trait for 4 weapons! So in effect our staff traits are underpowered by being split up, and while you don’t NEED to take any of them, maybe they’d be more tempting if some of their bonuses were combined. Soul Marks would be great for Deathly Perception builds, but would you really take it over Near to Death? Of course not, but if it was combined with Spiteful Marks or Staff Training you might! Moreover, even if you accept that staff will always be a utility weapon and that you don’t need any of these traits, having all these marginal traits that we never use takes up space for potentially useful traits the devs could come up with to help in other areas!
Therefore, as I’ve on here before, I believe staff marks should be merged into two. My recommendation would be as follows:
Greater Marks, Death, adept: -20% recharge, marks become unblockable; and
Spiteful Marks, Spite, master: +10% damage on staff skills, marks generate life force.
This would allow access to decreased recharge for condition builds, and force Deathly Perception builds to invest in the Spite tree to get life force generation.
Moreover, I believe that Deathly Grasp should have its projectile speed increased x2 and its piercing property removed. Optionally, Spiteful Marks can also trait it to reintroduce the piercing property.
As an aside, is the staff even a must for utility anymore? Putrid Mark was a conditionmancer’s best team support skill and it’s been nerfed to the ground. transferring 3 conditions is still powerful, especially in this meta, but I personally could live with 1 less transfer (I used to carry warhorn instead of off-hand dagger and did ok with just staff as a condi transfer, the daze can actually be more useful than fear with swarms of Berserker Stance warriors still infesting spvp !). Personally I mostly carry it for Reaper’s Mark, which is still excellent (a skill that powerful would probably be 50-60" cooldown if it weren’t on such an otherwise mediocre weapon), though less so now than it was a year ago, since access to stability is easier for most classes. The first 2 marks are still ok for spreading a bit of aoe in team fights, but I’m sure we all drop them and immediately switch to scepter unless your vantage point is more than 900 away.
It would take a major redesign to make staff into something you stayed in all the time. It would be tricky too, because if you reduce the cooldown on Mark of Blood and Chilblains to the point where you could stack enough condis on a single target to compete with the damage on scepter, it would make it hideously overpowered in aoe! If Mark of Blood were on a 2" cooldown you could stand on a ledge and rain down bleeds in team fights to the point where you’d be doing more total damage than a staff ele in zerker gear! One possibility is to give the weapon more fields, and increase the duration of the poison field on Chilblains, so you could exploit that projectile finisher on 1 a few times (assuming they incrfease projectile speed ot something reasonable). Possibly add a short-duration dark field on Mark of Blood to get a bit of life stealing?
A bad necromancer always blames the corpse.
Ranger longbow has two traits dedicated solely to it with an additional two traits that it shares with shortbow. Again, 4 traits. Technically, all of the Staff traits but Staff Master also work with Mark of Evasion, Mark of Revival, and Lich Form, so the comparison is valid.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Spiteful Marks a bad trait, IMO. Stickytape it together with Soul Marks.
Nalhadia – Kaineng