Guild Wars 2

Unlikely. They buffed that trait to promote more DS use, because before, it was rather pointless to try and even trait for DS. It simply degenerated to fast. Making it a GM trait would defeat the purpose of why they buffed it in the first place.

It isn’t too strong, like at all. All that it does is essentially double your “passive” in DS time, so if you could have sat in DS for 3 seconds, now its 6, all assuming 0 damage being taken.

However, DS has built in mechanics that discourage being a sissy about its use. In fact, you pretty much always want to be just within 600 range of your opponent if you’re in DS, if not closer. That alone will get you targeted and taking damage.

The fact is, you should be rewarded for being able to sustain DS for long periods of time, when passive DS play is already highly discouraged. It is unnecessary to put a second factor on top of that.

Soul Reaping has some of the toughest trait choices already. It’s not like this trait has nothing good competing for the slot, and you can just toss it into your spec without giving anything up. There are many excellent T1 and T2 traits that benefit DS builds greatly that this one has to compete with.

If you want to run around in DS longer, this will allow that, but it does have a price tag. There’s no point in shoving it further up the trait line to make it harder to choose when it’s already not an easy choice.

Personally, I love this trait, and I’ve been using it since even before the buff from 25% to 50% because every second counts when you dive into a group of 30 enemies. Does it suck to not be able to get the 20% CDR on Spectral Armor, or the +50% fear duration, or the 15% CDR on DS skills? You bet. That’s the tradeoff.

Vital Persistence is balanced, Soul Reaping is in great shape. They’ve been working at this for a year now, and it shows.

I really don’t think this trait is worthy of such high praise.

For someone who spends a lot of time Life Blasting the two must have traits would be Deathly Perception and Unyielding Blast, right? As a master trait I’d much rather have something that either improves lf regen outside of DS or just the cooldown reduction for DS itself so I can get back into it more quickly.
So imo Vital Persistance is still either niche or a subpar trait depending on the build.

If anything this trait should be buffed:

• Merge Death Shiver with Vital Persistance.
• Move Vital Persistance to master tier instead of Mark of Revival.

I consider it more of a PvE trait, in PvP DS cd reduction, spectral cd reduction, or DS skills cd reduction are all superior.

I suppose if you are never being targetted and are just pelting people with Lifeblast from the back lines, this trait could be good, but then your lifeblasts wouldnt hit very hard from that range.

It’s a nice trait, but not OP. You won’t see anyone using it on its own. It has to be with other means of ’slowing life force degeneration’ by acquiring life force while in death shroud, such as spectral skills, locust swarm, reapers precision, etc. As soon as you’re out of life force (assuming a power build since that’s what would have the improved life force regeneration and vital persistence) you’re a sitting duck. You’ll be without defenses, remember necro is a light armour class, and necro’s weapon skills are terrible except for axe 2 which while weaker than other similar abilities that other classes have and does not cleave, generates 12% life force. However, axe 2 and all other direct damaging abilities a necro has except axe 3 and staff 4, are not instant and require a LoS. They are channeled or have a 1-2s cast time, and due to the LoS requirement can be canceled and put onto full cool downs just by having your target run through you, or to your side. For those skills like axe 2 and dagger 2, it is very annoying because the slow casting of the skill makes it very easy for an opponent to avoid it without using any endurance. Sadly, running around like a headless chicken is very popular in PvP at the moment.

What? Vital persistence is worthless! The 2 builds that actually rely on ds have more than enough LF generation for you to be over 40% in ds even if no death ever happens… with deaths and short dips out of DS to get that LF you are pretty much in it for over 80% of a pve thrash mob encounter.

Andele.1306:

What? Vital persistence is worthless! The 2 builds that actually rely on ds have more than enough LF generation for you to be over 40% in ds even if no death ever happens… with deaths and short dips out of DS to get that LF you are pretty much in it for over 80% of a pve thrash mob encounter.

If your build relies on life blast for damage, since it’s necro’s only multi target capable ability (traited) that deals decent direct damage, then you want to be in death shroud as much as possible – way more than 40% even 50% of the time you’re in combat. For PVE certainly, Vital Persistence is very useful. I am in death shroud about 80% of the time, only coming out when I let life force expire, or when there’s only one target that can be easily taken down. When my life force runs out, I just use ghastly axes, locust swarm, spectral grasp and back into death shroud for half a minute. Obviously, Vital Persistence improves the effectiveness of the life force you generate twofold.

10(VI)/30(V,VIII,X)/0/0/30(II,X,XII) + Signet of Undeath, 1 spectral skill and 1 well – it is awesome to survive with good damage. Tested it in pvp with valkiria stats, dagger/warhorn for life force and staff for DS damage/supporting… and got a lot of fun. In pve i tryed this with full berserk gear but only in AC/TA/COF dungeons and its imposible to die The great thing is you have no CD on DS if life force just expire. When you leave it, you heal and use spectral skill, taking damage → life force is full, use locust swarm, swap to staff and enjoy
lack of phys damage slightly offset by condition damage by 30 in Curses.

Vital Persistance does no damage on its own nor does it reduce LF damage taken or the LF cost of DS skills. It only prolongs the transform timer. DS skills still have ICD. Personally, I would rather shorten the transform CD but being able to stay in DS longer to ensure a big incoming attack is paid in LF is not bad, either.

Impact.2780:

If your build relies on life blast for damage, since it’s necro’s only multi target capable ability (traited) that deals decent direct damage, then you want to be in death shroud as much as possible – way more than 40% even 50% of the time you’re in combat. For PVE certainly, Vital Persistence is very useful. I am in death shroud about 80% of the time, only coming out when I let life force expire, or when there’s only one target that can be easily taken down. When my life force runs out, I just use ghastly axes, locust swarm, spectral grasp and back into death shroud for half a minute. Obviously, Vital Persistence improves the effectiveness of the life force you generate twofold.

As i mentioned in pve you already are more than 80% of the time in DS if you know how LF works and that deaths cause 10% lf generation, also any boss you can stick on for 10 seconds with D1 WH5 lets you keep in DS for over 4/5 of a fight.
Its worth only exists on hybrid builds that dont use Axe/Focus as their second combo (so that use staff without soul marks), in which case i do admit its useful.
Also this little thing called taking damage doesnt help VP very much.

What i will also admit is that its a very nice playstyle trait, just how in WoW a lot of minor glyphs are good playstyle based traits so if you wanna use it i dont think that anyone will take fault for it since a more adapted player playstyle is usually superior to a uncomfy build that would in other cases be mathematically better.

If anything, I’d switch places of minor traits in Soul Reaping. Gluttony being 20-25% increase and switched with Strenght of the Undeath.
It would promote going deeper into SR for more LF generation

As for trait itself – it’s in a very good place. However, merging it somehow with Spectral CDR, moving it to Master tier would be…. Ah, dreams, my build would be truly roam meta ;p

It’s quite useful sometimes in PvP. If you fight against a class with very high CC, if you get trampled while in DS every single second you lose tons of accumulated Life Force. If player blocks, blinds, you just lose your Life Force. In those fights, Persistance is way better than Spectral CDR.

Andele.1306:

As i mentioned in pve you already are more than 80% of the time in DS if you know how LF works and that deaths cause 10% lf generation, also any boss you can stick on for 10 seconds with D1 WH5 lets you keep in DS for over 4/5 of a fight.
Its worth only exists on hybrid builds that dont use Axe/Focus as their second combo (so that use staff without soul marks), in which case i do admit its useful.
Also this little thing called taking damage doesnt help VP very much.

What i will also admit is that its a very nice playstyle trait, just how in WoW a lot of minor glyphs are good playstyle based traits so if you wanna use it i dont think that anyone will take fault for it since a more adapted player playstyle is usually superior to a uncomfy build that would in other cases be mathematically better.

You won’t be in death shroud 80% of the time without vital persistence. 40% I can see, but not 80%. Exiting to gain some life force puts death shroud on cool down. You’d have to be in death shroud for 28 seconds for each cool down period for it to be 80%. Untraited degeneration is 4% per second, so 100% life force will last you 25 seconds if you’re not taking damage. Obviously you’re not going to regenerate 100% life force every single time you dip out, which further decreases the death shroud up time. Anyway, even if you were to gain full life force each dip out, and weren’t taking any damage while in death shroud, you wouldn’t be able to stay in there 80% of the time without vital persistence.

Of course, instead of using life blast for those 7 seconds, you’re using axe or dagger. Axe being weak, and dagger being melee range and single target. If it is a single target situation then dagger would be better anyway, but you can still use dagger for a single target while also traiting vital persistence, so there’s no argument there. Time spent out of death shroud to regenerate life force reduces DPS, since life blast is the only decent sustainable direct damaging ability a necro has that can hit more than one target.

By using Reaper’s Precision and WH 5, you can and will gain LF while in DS. Against a single target, WH 5, LB spam, and RP with 100% crit chance will give you an average of 2.93 LF per second.

LB spam will proc 1 RP every 3 seconds (on average) – .33% LF/s
WH 5 – 2% LF/s
WH 5 will proc 1 RP every 3 seconds (on average) – .33 LF/s
Total: 2.66% LF/s (on average)
Total w/ Gluttony: 2.926 LF/s

So for the first 10 seconds in DS you only lose 11% LF, leaving you with 89% LF
The rest of your time you are still gaining .363% LF/s from RP off LB spam, so the remaining 89% will take 24 seconds to fully degen.

That allows you 34 seconds in DS. And this time only grows when hitting more than 1 target.

My approach was general, leaving out spectrals, warhorn and reaper’s precision to compensate for the damage being taken since I don’t want to bother trying to come up with specific results for each scenario i.e every path of every dungeon. If you’re going to try to be specific, including all the sources of life force generation, then you must also consider the damage you will be taking. Once you do, you’ll find you still need Vital Persistence to remain in death shroud 80% of the time.

It isn’t that difficult to avoid damage as long as you don’t get aggro.

I don’t know how anyone can pass up a shorter cooldown on Doom, possibly the most powerful and reliable CC skills in the game, which shares a spot in the tree. This isn’t an overpowered trait in the least, it just allows PVE builds to be lazier and not generate as much life force.

Practically no condition build would sit in DS long, even tanking damage, and any power build, even those built around using DS, would want to get in and out a lot to generate as much life force as their cooldowns allow.

I am actually shocked anyone thinks this is overpowered.. it would have been third on my list of useful traits in the first major in the DS tree.

Bhawb.7408:

It isn’t that difficult to avoid damage as long as you don’t get aggro.

Uh... well yeah... why would it be difficult to avoid damage when you don’t have aggro? If you don’t have aggro you’re not being attacked, and have 600 range with which to avoid AoE. That doesn’t contribute anything to the dispute.

There are trash encounters ranging between one and a few dozen mobs where it is likely to have a few focused on you, a few catching you in their AoE, and of course you’re bound to be hit if the group adopts the stacking approach. There are bosses with strong attacks that cannot all be dodged due to obvious restrictions. You are always going to take some amount of damage, even if in some encounters it’s only a small amount every 10 seconds. It adds up.

Had you said (or meant) it isn’t difficult to avoid aggro, since it is a variable that cannot always be predicted accurately, it depends on the player, group composition, and a degree of randomness. It would be to too theoretical to support a claim, and were it to be accepted, the same manner of argument can be used to counter.

Bhawb.7408:

It isn’t that difficult to avoid damage as long as you don’t get aggro.

This I have a problem with in joining PUGs. Hate finding out my defense is higher than any one else. I carry lots of armor to adjust play styles. (Stpd Zerks)

Anchoku.8142:

Bhawb.7408:

It isn’t that difficult to avoid damage as long as you don’t get aggro.

This I have a problem with in joining PUGs. Hate finding out my defense is higher than any one else. I carry lots of armor to adjust play styles. (Stpd Zerks)

1. Don’t join to pugs.
2. Don’t complain to getting agro in “tanky” armor …

Dalanor.5387:

1. Don’t join to pugs.
2. Don’t complain to getting agro in “tanky” armor …

For point 2, even if you are in any toughness based build, you should have learned how to kite by the time you start doing dungeons, which pretty much negates 9/10 encounters in terms of taking damage. Even better if you use chillblains and Hydro sigil correctly noone has to take any damage from for example the spiders during the spider queen encounter or from the risen stairway in coe or from the massive ball of flame legion doom when exploding the gate.