Guild Wars 2

So what are people’s opinions about this trait? I know that it’s a good trait when you have a staff equipped, but I honestly feel that our marks should originally be this big.

In PvE its training wheels, for PvP/WvWvW its mandatory.

It’s nice, but it’s kind of token. Eles also get a similar trait for staff, and I’m sure other profs also get something of this nature. It’s the equivalent of “bonus damage” or “extended range” for other weapons.

I won’t use staff without this trait. The marks are so excruciatingly small that it’s too easy for pvp’ers to simply run around the mark.
With the trait however, it becomes godlike, you can hit a lot of players (ca kitten till 5) with ease! You can protect yourself against thieves and so on.
Not to mention it becomes a lot more easy to actually hit marks with this trait, and in addition you gain more range because of it. You can place the mark at 1200 range and because it is cast at the center of the circle, some of it goes beyond the 1200 range. With greater marks, you will have a greater reach as well, as the improved mark diameter extends farther away from the center.

/endrant

For wvw it is a must trait. I don’t see how any necro can be without it in wvw.

The staff is basically kitten without this trait and because of that greater marks is a must with any build that utilizes staff, especially in pvp scenarios. I would love to see Anet either making staff marks be like greater marks as a standard, or atleast buffing them to half of what the greater marks trait does. This would make room and make many more builds viable in terms of competetive pvp.

Well… as everyone here stated allready: If you use the staff you trait for greater marks (which also makes them unblockable). It’s just a standard thing to do.
As to the question, why it isn’t standard in the first place: balance. Freeing up a trait slot would be an incredible power boost. You could have greater marks and staff mastery (-20% cd) by only investing 10 points in death magic. So unless you are a minion master, it’s like giving you a total of 80 trait points instead of 70.
In my opinion the staff is allready the most powerful weapon of the necromancer (if traited), buffing it with an extra free 10 trait points would tip the scale in its favor even further.

flow.6043:

Well… as everyone here stated allready: If you use the staff you trait for greater marks (which also makes them unblockable). It’s just a standard thing to do.
As to the question, why it isn’t standard in the first place: balance. Freeing up a trait slot would be an incredible power boost. You could have greater marks and staff mastery (-20% cd) by only investing 10 points in death magic. So unless you are a minion master, it’s like giving you a total of 80 trait points instead of 70.
In my opinion the staff is allready the most powerful weapon of the necromancer (if traited), buffing it with an extra free 10 trait points would tip the scale in its favor even further.

I kinda disagree! Sure the staff is a powerful weapon but you would never use it without greater marks because it becomes almost useless without it. I am not saying that they should make greater marks a default but Anet should atleast consider making the marks easier to hit by default. As a necro player with above 1200 tournament matches with most of them won i can easily say that missing marks without greater marks has nothing to do with being a bad aim.

djooceboxblast.9876:

flow.6043:

Well… as everyone here stated allready: If you use the staff you trait for greater marks (which also makes them unblockable). It’s just a standard thing to do.
As to the question, why it isn’t standard in the first place: balance. Freeing up a trait slot would be an incredible power boost. You could have greater marks and staff mastery (-20% cd) by only investing 10 points in death magic. So unless you are a minion master, it’s like giving you a total of 80 trait points instead of 70.
In my opinion the staff is allready the most powerful weapon of the necromancer (if traited), buffing it with an extra free 10 trait points would tip the scale in its favor even further.

I kinda disagree! Sure the staff is a powerful weapon but you would never use it without greater marks because it becomes almost useless without it. I am not saying that they should make greater marks a default but Anet should atleast consider making the marks easier to hit by default. As a necro player with above 1200 tournament matches with most of them won i can easily say that missing marks without greater marks has nothing to do with being a bad aim.

“…you would never use it without greater marks…” – that’s exactly what I said. My point was, that a by-default-greater-mark would free up 10 trait points to spend in a different traitline… that would give you a huge boost, hence overpowering the option to go with the staff compared to other builds.
I don’t quite understand what you mean by making them hit more easily. Like an auto-aim?
I agree that greater marks don’t necessarily improve your aim. But that’s not the point, I think. It’s more about the aoe-benefits of the bigger surface area.

if they made greater marks default my terror condi build would be verging on OP, heaven forbid.

Size of greater marks should be default. Making them unblockable on the other hand could be left as a trait. Frankly I do agree that original mark size is just pathetic. I was going to add but I rambled enough for today and its almost 9am and I didn’t sleep so to hell with that.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Size of greater marks should be default. Making them unblockable on the other hand could be left as a trait. Frankly I do agree that original mark size is just pathetic.

This. The default mark size should be increased at least partially, because as it is now, Greater Marks makes too much of a difference and is, for a 10pt-trait, way too important/powerful.
Staff should be somewhat usable without the trait (like every weapon/skill should).

Default radius of 180 should be the minimum.

[/quote]

“…you would never use it without greater marks…” – that’s exactly what I said. My point was, that a by-default-greater-mark would free up 10 trait points to spend in a different traitline… that would give you a huge boost, hence overpowering the option to go with the staff compared to other builds.
I don’t quite understand what you mean by making them hit more easily. Like an auto-aim?
I agree that greater marks don’t necessarily improve your aim. But that’s not the point, I think. It’s more about the aoe-benefits of the bigger surface area.[/quote]

It would free up 10 trait points – and that might become a little too viable for many other things but all i am saying is that default staff marks if not placed 100% accurately wont hit and unactivated marks in pvp are useless because enemy players as you know can see them. I would like seeing the marks made a tad bigger so the staff becomes viable without being traited like all weapons should be.

RashanDale.3609:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Size of greater marks should be default. Making them unblockable on the other hand could be left as a trait. Frankly I do agree that original mark size is just pathetic.

This. The default mark size should be increased at least partially, because as it is now, Greater Marks makes too much of a difference and is, for a 10pt-trait, way too important/powerful.
Staff should be somewhat usable without the trait (like every weapon/skill should).

Default radius of 180 should be the minimum.

Exactly this. The current default staff mark size is ridiculously small. It shouldn’t be the size of greater marks but it should be at least double what it is now to make Greater Marks not 100% mandatory. I run a build D/W + Staff that has to be 30/20/0/20, tried it every other possible way to incorporate Greater Marks and it’s just not as good. I shouldn’t feel like I HAVE to have 10 pts into Death Magic for any build utilizing Staff. If they were even double in size by default and GM made them the current Well size plus unblockable, it would be helpful in freeing up people to not be forced into 10 mandatory points.

Replace the totally useless Reanimator with Greater Marks. It still costs 5 pts but at least it frees up a trait slot.

Hanzo.9624:

RashanDale.3609:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Size of greater marks should be default. Making them unblockable on the other hand could be left as a trait. Frankly I do agree that original mark size is just pathetic.

This. The default mark size should be increased at least partially, because as it is now, Greater Marks makes too much of a difference and is, for a 10pt-trait, way too important/powerful.
Staff should be somewhat usable without the trait (like every weapon/skill should).

Default radius of 180 should be the minimum.

Exactly this. The current default staff mark size is ridiculously small. It shouldn’t be the size of greater marks but it should be at least double what it is now to make Greater Marks not 100% mandatory. I run a build D/W + Staff that has to be 30/20/0/20, tried it every other possible way to incorporate Greater Marks and it’s just not as good. I shouldn’t feel like I HAVE to have 10 pts into Death Magic for any build utilizing Staff. If they were even double in size by default and GM made them the current Well size plus unblockable, it would be helpful in freeing up people to not be forced into 10 mandatory points.

This. Plus, there’s FOUR staff related traits in THREE different trees. FOUR. Talk about bloat. Mark of Evasion is kind of in that gray area (which could be a fifth trait).

Greater marks radius should be baseline, the unblockable aspect of it should be combined with spiteful marks (10% more damage). Soul Marks (3% LF) and staff mastery should be combined. The pairings would make sense because it offers synergy between the two.

I use staff all the time without Greater Marks. It’s ok. It isn’t fantastic, but it’s ok.

I do this because I don’t usually like taking “Quality of Life” traits. I don’t like Blasting Staff for the same reason. It makes my nukes appear larger, without making them any better. It’s still got a 5 person cap. It still does the same damage and has the same range. Sure, the unblockable feature is nice but I don’t think it’s worth 10 trait points.

In sPvP this might be different, because with the trait the marks cover an entire node. But, I don’t do sPvP.

QOL Traits make me mad. They might as well add traits to give you 1 extra inventory slot or turn your spell effects blue.

Traiting staff is more dependent upon how much you intend to use it. If running minions, it is not so important but in tower defense, heavy zerging, or against multiple mobs in PvE Greater Marks becomes important because you can tag more enemies at one time in addition to the unblockable aspect.

The trait is in the lowest tier so it usually is not a big deal to change it depending upon the situation. If it was placed, say, at Soul Reaping 30, then Arenanet would receive a lot more feedback on it.