Guild Wars 2

This minor 5 point trait generates an unjustified amount of crying. So lets instead of crying look at this trait from a few different perspectives.

Minion Master: 20/0/30/20/0 (full exotic/ascended berserker gear with ruby orbs).
Jagged horror hits for ~350 damage and applies 5 second of bleeding with every attack, at base condition damage that is 44 damage a tick with 2 stacks being maintained by jagged horror. When it dies death nova hits for ~1.1k aoe damage and applies roughly 12 seconds of aoe poison, at base condition damage thats 86 damage per tick. Also provides a field that provides weakness on blast finishers and as minion master you have 3 semi reliable(jagged horror will most likely be right there next to bone minions).
On comparison, 1 bone minion hits for ~210 damage with same attack speed and applies no bleed. Putrid explosion… assuming full berserker does about double death novas damage.
Each hit if I have loodthirst heals me for 120 on comparison I heal myself for 42 every hit tho I hit a lot faster.(Imagine all minions healing me with all their hits and blood fiend pumping 1k that the the highest passive healing out there).
And some life force… admittedly not something all that lacking on minion master build but its FREE.

Condition: x/30/5/x/x Any variation here really as long as it involves condition necro that has jagged horror.
Numbers are about the same you simply lower the damage by 30% from previous example and remove death nova. But… that bleeding from jagged horror increases in duration by a very much noticeable amount, minion master only has 20% increase from 20 points in spite and duration is 5 seconds something, condition necro would have that doubled not to mention damage from that bleed could tick 130+ easily. And life force when it dies… which is SORELY lacking on condition necromancer that goes in for pure conditions with scepter/staff.

Anything really… that doesn’t involve training of the master 30% damage increase, condition duration/damage.
It still provides a small damage coupled with bleed. And life force when it dies.

Now for the rant.
How is this nothing worth mentioning exactly? Why do people consistently spit on this trait as if it cusses their mother and steals their children? That is far FAR from nothing. We have an utterly pointless no matter the situation traits all over the place, some grand master traits that are just SAD. And this is a 5 point minor trait. Jezuz bloody fiend grandmother.

Some wishful thinking:
I’d love for this trait to go back to having a cap on how many jagged horrors can be alive at once. With cooldown we already can have 2 but it overlaps and makes a mess forcing to usually waste them on travel.

Now if it was made a major adept trait, with a much lower recharge or remove the recharge altogether and just have a limit on the number, then you’d make a lot of players much happier. Swap it with Dark Armour.

I’m pretty sure that jagged horror’s bleed damage is independent of your condition damage as from my testings with lich form, my jagged horrors bled for significantly more than they should’ve. (By default they don’t show the ticks flying but in some situations you can see them)

The problem is that it only serves one build. Not everybody is a minion master.

It used to be far worse at aggroing everything on you too, but they have fixed that mostly. Its not as bad now.

Jagged Horrors are fine even if you aren’t a MM. It’s not a bad trait, people just want something else.

There are, however, two changes I would like to see with it. They are NOT meant to go together, so one or the other.

1. No ICD, but a cap on the number of Horrors you can have.
2. Instead of animating when you kill a foe, you get a buff that summons a jagged horror when you next hit with an attack.

Each of these solves a different issue. Jagged Horrors are actually pretty good, as seen with Mark of Horror, but they really need numbers. Removing the ICD would make this viable. The other issue is that Jagged Horrors rarely survive long enough to land more than one attack because you had to travel between fights and they dropped really low on health during that time. If they were summoned when you hit with an attack, it would guarantee that you would be in a situation where the Horror was useful when it got summoned.

For Minor Traits that need to go, Protection of the Horde is higher on the list than Reanimator. Reanimator gets better with a MM build. PotH requires a MM build.

I’ve always thought they should move reanimator to the condition line anyway and free up that spot in death magic. But that would require at least one other minion specific trait to be lowered so that you still had enough trait points to include it in a minion build (thinking probably lowering vampiric master, which really wouldn’t break anything because not many people take bloodthirst/ vampiric and vampiric master because you really don’t see any significant gains) but it largely depends on where they decided to put the jagged horror in the curses line too. I agree though, it needs either better uptime, or more consistent summoning (I’ve always loved the idea of having no ICD but limiting the number, or possibly letting us summon 2 at once. Or heck, even making it like the original jagged bones with a cap on how many you can have
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Jagged_Bones
Which is should have been in the first place anyway, not your little cheerleader. )

Jagged horrors seem much more useful since the 6/25 patch when minions allegedly became more responsive. Now it gives some damage, distracts some nova, gives some life force when it dies. It’s not bad anymore, IMO.

Roe.3679:

Jagged horrors seem much more useful since the 6/25 patch when minions allegedly became more responsive. Now it gives some damage, distracts some nova, gives some life force when it dies. It’s not bad anymore, IMO.

Does it actually give LF now? Most minions won’t except wurm on transversal and now shadow (occasionally you’ll get a green bubble off golem if he dies in the water). It would be nice if every minion gave full LF death-amount when sacrificed or killed, but they don’t. If horror does now I’m impressed, although I haven’t noticed it. Admittedly I don’t really play necro anymore either. Not till this PAX fiasco is over. My blood pressure is high enough.

only minions classed as allies give Lf. That is golem, shadow fiend and bone fiend. Wurm active gives LF as well, but that’s part of the ability, not from it dying.

Jagged Horrors aren’t bad on their own, they are bad because the impact in reality is very small. In PvP you only get one after killing someone, and as a build-type that almost always is geared for 1v1s or smaller fights, it is at best a tool to finish up the Xv2-3 that you just had. Otherwise it is just a little trophy you get after killing someone that dies.

In PvE they are okay, but again the actual impact comparatively is minimal. It will deal in perfect situations maybe 5k damage? Every 30 seconds. But look at other adept minors, they are very often vigor (defensive tree), which can invalidate a 30k hit from a boss every 10 seconds.

It isn’t that Reanimator is absolutely useless, it is thakittens effect is incredibly small and niche, requiring very specific circumstances for it to make a difference. And then you can compare it to other defensive tree traits, and it is pathetic. I’m not saying we should get vigor, or any endurance regen; and the idea is cool. But make it better.

My mistake if they don’t give LF, I always just assumed it did because the other minions did.

The problem is that they’re worthless without traits. Skill categories should never be worthless unless traited into – they should all have baseline efficiency. For instance, conditions aren’t worthless unless traited into. In fact, they’re about 40%-50% as effective as a condition build, depending on how much cdamage you can gather. Jagged horrors probably aren’t even near the 10% mark of a minion master’s own.

More issues arise when you’re “forced” to pick them due to the fact that they’re one of the very bad and unversatile minor traits in an otherwise very good traitline. “Want to improve your staff? Here are some worthless minions, and 20 toughness you’ll never benefit from!”

Lets put it this way, its the worst of the other 5 point minor traits, excluding perhaps barbed precision (2 second bleed… really?), unless you are MM.

Parasitic bond and Full of life are really good heals and Gluttony, why not more life force. These are all good regardless of build.

Valderro.6389:

Now if it was made a major adept trait, with a much lower recharge or remove the recharge altogether and just have a limit on the number, then you’d make a lot of players much happier. Swap it with Dark Armour.

Dude I would love to see that change, dark armor as a minor trait! Love it!

Swap It with Shrouded Removal or Spiteful vigor (and then PotH with Reapers protection). Remove itc and make it also spawn one on minion death, max 3 (for PotH just make it 50 toughness pre minion or minions take 5% of the damage you would take for you).

A problem with DA would be we only have 3~4 skills for it to be used (depending on if downed counts).

Jagged horror are just fine. The problem is that, at low levels, they die too fast to be useful. But at high levels, they live for a long time.

Kilger.5490:

Lets put it this way, its the worst of the other 5 point minor traits, excluding perhaps barbed precision (2 second bleed… really?)

You must be out of your mind. For a condition necromancer, that’s 450 damage. Tell me if a jagged horror can even deal that damage over its unaltered full lifetime.

450 damage per proc, mind you. With no ICD, and our vast access to AoE you can proc those all over the place.

I actually read all of this and thought it was a troll post. I for one have defended reanimator in certain situations, but it is by far and away our worse minor trait.

Wait what?? When did barbed precision become 2 seconds??? How did I not see this in patch notes or something else….

The wiki now clearly says 2 seconds on crit…. and I am certain it was 1 second on crit for the longest time.

When did this change? Or is the wiki wrong?

Moving it to curse line… really?… So actual condition trait line that doesn’t use minions would get it? Where is the logic behind that? Death tree is where most minion traits are. Sadly they are also spread around across blood and even one in spite master which is required.

Jagged applies bleed and does damage I fail to see how it does less considering barbed only works with condition spec. You basically compare a trait that only worth having if you are condition with crit chance to a trait that work always… not in best way but it always works at least.

Also besides jagged and barbed every other minor is garbage of epic proportions. Why the bloody hell would I care about a measly 1k heal after something is dead already… in pvp in a zerg that makes no difference what so ever if you need healing you are getting hammered and that 1k is a drop in an ocean in pve its largely redundance unless you are farming as melee spec.
Don’t even get me started on 75% hp regen… That is an utter disgrace.
Gluttony… sure… great. Except its once again situational. If you don’t generate life force then what in gods green earth does that trait do exactly? 10% increase of 2% is not even visible. Unless trait gives a large chunk in one go that traits usefulness is practically negligible.

Is one jagged enough. No. There should be a whole lot more. And they should spawn in some different way too so that they don’t work in same redundant way as healing after you killed your target already.

Barbed doesn’t proc nonstop chance is far from 100%(It is a great trait with a right spec) but completely take things out of context. Again… comparing a trait that also only works on the right spec with another that only works on right spec is just silly.

Death tree holds most nessesary traits for minion master along with blood. So what? Should all minion traits be thrown out because staff happens to be tossed there? What kind of obscure logic is that?

Our trees are horrid true but suggestions like that just make things even worse. Kind of as horrid as having condition duration on a tree that pretty much exclusively power tree with exception to utterly out of place fire(useless now outside of pve and most likely going to get nerfed to kitten in pve too).

Also, unlike most of traits/skilsl of this class it does feel necromatic… unlike some bizzare nonsense like fire. Or armor skill w/o stability. And so on.

Even with the above, I would disagree with your analysis. I can’t tell you how many times that extra 1k hp has done a great thing for me in WvW when mobs are always around in group fights, and when you are out numbered and can manage a stomp. It helps to keep me alive especially when I am plauging and it procs.

The regen trait by itself isn’t amazing, but when used in conjunction with MOE it gives lots of regen uptime to keep you topped off. It is certainly better than a minion which may or may not apply some bleeds if it gets in range of a player, avoiding all AOE in the meantime.

And gluttony is just always good, because you should never be sitting on 100% DS, so you should always be getting some benefit from it.

Barbed precision does indeed last 2 seconds now base… which is amazingly good compared to what it was before (which was 1 second). I would say it is our best minor trait now (though as a rabid user, I always thought it was).

I do agree that the JHorrors should have a shorter ICD on spawning, that way in high mob or player turnover situations, you could get a few out. I still don’t think I will ever take the trait again outside of a minion build though, which I don’t really play.

I do agree for a minon mancer that they are a great addition though.

Personally I think if they made shrouded removal the 5 point minor, many people would be much more likely to go at least 10 points into the tree.

Rennoko.5731:

Wait what?? When did barbed precision become 2 seconds??? How did I not see this in patch notes or something else….

The wiki now clearly says 2 seconds on crit…. and I am certain it was 1 second on crit for the longest time.

When did this change? Or is the wiki wrong?

The edit went up shortly after the June 25th patch, so I’m inclined to think it happened then. And like I said in another thread: Stealth Ninja buff of the century.

Rennoko.5731:

Personally I think if they made shrouded removal the 5 point minor, many people would be much more likely to go at least 10 points into the tree.

I’d like this, as I would occasionally go 10 points into Death Magic just for that trait alone. It’s one of the most affordable on-demand condition cleanses in the game. (Personally I value the on-request nature of it far more than passive “every 10 seconds” removal traits)

There’s one slight complication though: it sort of conflicts with how underwater Death Shroud works. Specifically, life blast. I realize that’s a pretty niche scenario, but I’d love to see an elegant solution that includes it as well.

Softspoken.2410:

There’s one slight complication though: it sort of conflicts with how underwater Death Shroud works. Specifically, life blast. I realize that’s a pretty niche scenario, but I’d love to see an elegant solution that includes it as well.

Its on entry, so not really a problem. Also by god i hope some devs takes the advice every necro with a bit more brain power said, let us slot in/swap out land and underwater DS skills for their respective slots (TShackles being the/should be the same so it doesnt matter for them).

WAIT, they ninja buffed Barbed Precision?

Yeah, it was a while ago, some people mentioned in a few threads, I only noticed myself when my power build was occasionally stacking like 8 bleeds from that trait alone.

Andele.1306:

Softspoken.2410:

There’s one slight complication though: it sort of conflicts with how underwater Death Shroud works. Specifically, life blast. I realize that’s a pretty niche scenario, but I’d love to see an elegant solution that includes it as well.

Its on entry, so not really a problem.

I know it’s on entry, that is the problem. If I get a 10s stack of burning, I want to drop into DS and throw that sucker back, not cleanse it.

Softspoken.2410:

I know it’s on entry, that is the problem. If I get a 10s stack of burning, I want to drop into DS and throw that sucker back, not cleanse it.

Well in a 1 condi situation, wouldnt it be better to then just plain cleanse it and use a chain of 2-4 Plague Blasts (historical name) to transfer over stuff?

Andele.1306:

Softspoken.2410:

I know it’s on entry, that is the problem. If I get a 10s stack of burning, I want to drop into DS and throw that sucker back, not cleanse it.

Well in a 1 condi situation, wouldnt it be better to then just plain cleanse it and use a chain of 2-4 Plague Blasts (historical name) to transfer over stuff?

No, not really? In a 1 condition situation I wouldn’t have anything else to transfer, unless I self-inflicted the conditions at which point I would just as rather use BiP and Corrupt Boon or whatever then transfer them all rapid-fire. (Plague Blast has a fairly short cast time right now, it’s kinda sexy with Reaper’s Might)

I mean that still doesn’t solve the essential issue: I get a condition that I want to transfer, and now a minor trait (not of my choosing) is stopping me from using it as an attack bonus. Again, it’s a niche enough scenario that I could shrug it off, but I’d love to see someone come up with a clever solution / better alternative.

Anyways, I just realized that I haven’t posted anything about reanimator / jagged horrors in this thread yet, which is quite egregious of me.

Regarding Jagged Horrors and Reanimator
I really, really don’t think you can talk too much about the extra damage given by a jagged horror. It’s a bleed and a relatively weak hit, on a fairly low attack rate (same as bone minions, I think?) tied to a fairly slow-moving ally.

The greatest value of a jagged horror is that it’s an extra minion. Death Nova, Fetid Consumption, occasional body blocking and such. But that minion isn’t worth nearly as much without investment in other minion traits.

Now to look at Barbed Precision, (a 5 point minor I think is excellently designed) it’s not worth much without condition damage or precision (or, more obviously, both) but those stats are available via equipment, not other traits. As well, it’s in the trait line for precision / condition damage, so at least it works well with what you’re getting.

By comparison, Reanimator isn’t worth much without other minion traits. This means that the 5 point minor is weak unless you’re invested in a particular way with other traits, which I would argue is a more restricting condition. As well, this tree is one of the only ways to gain boon duration, and spamming mark of blood on jagged horror just seems like a waste.

Above all else, this ally spawns after you kill something. Which means that it doesn’t do anything until after you kill your first opponent, unlike Gluttony, Barbed Precision and Full of Life, all of which contribute throughout the entire fight. I really don’t like on-kill traits, and the way that a jagged horror becomes more vulnerable as time goes on means unless you’re in multi-opponent fights, it’s even less effective than advertised.

See also: Parasitic Bond. There’s a trait I’d like to move / rework. It would be worse than reanimator, but it doesn’t have a 30s internal cooldown so at least in mass trash clearing scenarios it can be an ersatz sustain mechanism.

You can argue whether the darned thing is effective until you’re blue in the face, I don’t care. While Death Magic seems an appropriate title for the line which includes minion traits, why is the title Death Magic applied to the Toughness line? As a dagger/focus Necro, I am in melee range a lot. Toughness is my friend. I don’t use minions. I don’t want minions. I don’t want to listen to my character talk about having hand-raised minions. However, if I trait Toughness, I have no bloody choice.

If the kitten thing was an Adept trait, I could ignore it. So, your analysis of its potential aside, I’m going to continue to complain about the thing. Afaik no other minor trait in any profession saddles players with a minion.

Softspoken.2410:

Now to look at Barbed Precision, (a 5 point minor I think is excellently designed) it’s not worth much without condition damage or precision (or, more obviously, both) but those stats are available via equipment, not other traits. As well, it’s in the trait line for precision / condition damage, so at least it works well with what you’re getting.

By comparison, Reanimator isn’t worth much without other minion traits. This means that the 5 point minor is weak unless you’re invested in a particular way with other traits, which I would argue is a more restricting condition. As well, this tree is one of the only ways to gain boon duration, and spamming mark of blood on jagged horror just seems like a waste.

So basically the part in bold. You state it yourself it isn’t worth much if you aren’t speced into conditions have gear to support it and have precision to proc it. Yet you at the same time say jagged is bad because it mostly has best benefits for minion spec. I just simply don’t understand this logic.

Going by this “Oh noes wells that don’t scale with condition in condition tree” Must be worthless/broken/wrong/blah blah.

That trait is in the tree with highest amount of minion related traits. If you want staff related traits deal with it. Same as you have to deal with the fact that fear duration is in tree that doesn’t deal with conditions in any meaningful way. And a whole lot of other examples.

HiSaZuL.2843:

You state it yourself {Barbed Precision} isn’t worth much if you aren’t speced into conditions have gear to support it and have precision to proc it. Yet you at the same time say jagged is bad because it mostly has best benefits for minion spec. I just simply don’t understand this logic.

What I was pointing out is that there’s a difference between a minor that works well if you have high precision or high condition damage, two stats available on equipment, rather than a minor that only works well if your entire build is minion-oriented.

And as is? Minions do not properly relate to boon duration or to toughness. They only relate to boon duration in that they provide targets for your (sparse) boon application, and they relate to toughness in about the same way that they relate to power: they don’t scale with either one of them.

Curses is almost uniformly about precision and condition damage. The mismatched traits are more the exception than the rule. But Death Magic doesn’t have much relation to its own base stats because minions don’t have much of a relation to any stat, and minion traits completely dominate that line by virtue of taking two minors and both grandmasters.

So in summary: I think letting Death Magic be “The Minion Line” was a huge mistake, rather than making it be “The Toughness and Boon Duration Line”. I haven’t run the full numbers, but I think very few trait lines are so absolutely focused on one category of skills for a profession, and I think it’s a major flaw for Death Magic.

So your idea, because you simply dislike minions is to shaft it all, because you want staff skills not on curses line or any other place you already have points. But you can’t deal with compromise on minor traits that are in that line… That’s silly man.

Thats like me saying hey… I’m MM but I want barbed precision because it would nicely buff my damage so yeah. I guess could you guys move it to spite or something so I can have it too. I mean I have to take points there might as well be useful to me.
Or a thief saying… welp… I want more then 3 traits from shadow arts so… imo dump something in other line and replace it with stuff I want.

Just having stats wont make barbed useful. Just having crit damage won’t make barbed do much… just having condition won’t make barbed do anything at all. And having both on spec that has 0 codition duration would make for a mediocre at best boost that would hurt other condition users instead of helping.

People are so kitten entitled. We want staff but we can’t deal with minor trait in that line even tho its one of the most dedicated to minions line and the trait is minion related.
Deal with it. Its the most necromantic trait from the whose trashy cesspool that is necromancer traits. Yet everyone wants everything to be tailored to what they play. This is no better then every mesmer crying about necro “damage”. No better then any thief whining about perma fears. No better then spvp forum witch hunting mob.

Pfft… so dedicated to minions… it has no more dedication to minions then curses has dedication to conditions.
No more dedication to minions then water tree is dedicated to healing/cleansing on ele.
No more dedication to minions then arcane is dedicated to atunments.
No more dedicated to minions then soul reaping is dedicated to DS.
If there is something there that you want. You put points on it and deal with passive bonuses. If you want 15 points trait from SR you take the whole package even if you do not care one bit about DS or LF.
You want clensing on ele…. welp guess what you are stuck with water tree. You want to swap atunments on ele not once a year but faster…. guess what? Arcane.

And considering minion master is stuck with minions and nothing else and single spec that is most hurt when skills are down… yeah… both boon duration and toughness make a whole lot of sense. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean one spec should be scraped just for thakittens there and thats how it was made. And frankly as far as I’m concerned minions and tanking make a lot more sense then anything else.

1. Until this last patch, virtually all Necro builds that wanted to use Staff (so, most of them most of the time) used 10 points in Death Magic for Greater Marks. Consequently, you had to take Reanimator, whether you wanted it or not.

2. It’s a trait whose benefits can be wiped out by AoE. Few other traits have a weakness like that.

3. If you’re running a power build in a group setting with someone specced for condition damage, this trait can actually lower your group’s DPS by canceling out your ally’s bleeds, and there wasn’t much you could do about it if you want Staff for its utility until this patch.

4. The trait is fairly flashy but doesn’t actually give you any interesting play options. The Jagged Horror just shows up on occasion. It’s front-and-center but doesn’t inform your decisions much. Whether the effects are useful or not, this makes it feel kinda useless.

5. It isn’t a defensive Trait, yet it’s mandatory for anyone going into Death (a line that grants defensive bonuses). Barbed Precision is an offensive trait that benefits from condition damage and precision in an offensive line that grants condition damage and precision, so it’s giving you more of what you want (it even allows you to benefit from the condition damage you got when using skills that don’t naturally apply conditions). If you’re in Death for more defense, Reanimator doesn’t have you covered.

6. Since it’s on-kill, it doesn’t give you any benefit at all until the fight has already started going your way. If you don’t like snowball mechanics, or if you simply want to front-load your defense(/damage), this trait isn’t going to give you what you want.

7. It’s a minion. Minions have a particular aesthetic. If you don’t like the aesthetic, you’re not gonna like Reanimator, most likely.

8. Death Magic is the minion line, but it has other uses as well. Forcing you to take a minion if you go into Death makes the line feel much less versatile.

I’d imagine that’s a few of the reasons why people don’t like Reanimator.

HiSaZuL.2843:

So your idea, because you simply dislike minions is to shaft it all, because you want staff skills not on curses line or any other place you already have points. But you can’t deal with compromise on minor traits that are in that line… That’s silly man.

-snip-

People are so kitten entitled. We want staff but we can’t deal with minor trait in that line even tho its one of the most dedicated to minions line and the trait is minion related.
Deal with it. Its the most necromantic trait from the whose trashy cesspool that is necromancer traits. Yet everyone wants everything to be tailored to what they play. This is no better then every mesmer crying about necro “damage”. No better then any thief whining about perma fears. No better then spvp forum witch hunting mob.

Pfft… so dedicated to minions… it has no more dedication to minions then curses has dedication to conditions.
No more dedication to minions then water tree is dedicated to healing/cleansing on ele.
No more dedication to minions then arcane is dedicated to atunments.
No more dedicated to minions then soul reaping is dedicated to DS.
If there is something there that you want. You put points on it and deal with passive bonuses. If you want 15 points trait from SR you take the whole package even if you do not care one bit about DS or LF.
You want clensing on ele…. welp guess what you are stuck with water tree. You want to swap atunments on ele not once a year but faster…. guess what? Arcane.

And considering minion master is stuck with minions and nothing else and single spec that is most hurt when skills are down… yeah… both boon duration and toughness make a whole lot of sense. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean one spec should be scraped just for thakittens there and thats how it was made. And frankly as far as I’m concerned minions and tanking make a lot more sense then anything else.

Hey now, I didn’t say I dislike minions. (I don’t like them, but it turns out that is not the point!) What I tried to say is that I thought devoting a trait line to a single category of active skills was a poor decision. I’d say the same thing regarding corruptions, wells, and signets. Unless every single one of those got its own trait line to dominate via two minors and featuring in both grandmaster slots, then I’d just say “Well that’s how it goes but at least it is fair”. [/tangent] Also, this is not about staff skills for me. Not by a long shot.

If you want my idea on what to do with the line, I could try and come up with something and get back to you tomorrow. But I am not going to waste the time coming up with that on the spot, because not only do I suspect you don’t want to read my attempt to revamp an entire trait line, but I also suspect a few other members of this forum have done that exact thing quite competently already.

My problem with minions is: minions are niche for a Necromancer. They are not on any weapon skills, and they work drastically better taken on mass with traits than here and there as a way to fill gaps in a build. They heavily encourage all-in builds, and require the usage of some of your utility / heal / elite slots. That’s not to say they are useless without those traits because they aren’t! However, they become significantly more powerful with traits, to the point one questions the relative efficacy of using them without.

In your list of examples of other profession trait lines, did you compare how well represented those mechanics are for that profession? Arcana is allowed to be all about attunement swapping because one of the primary stats in that line is increased recharge rate on attunement swap, letting an elementalist switch through attunements more rapidly / freely, while almost all the traits support that. Attunement swapping is the profession mechanic of an elementalist: it’s built into nearly every aspect of their play. Soul reaping can be all about boosting the capabilities of Death Shroud because that is a profession mechanic. It’s a large part of the class that plays into how a lot of abilities work for a necromancer, as well as providing an entire set of abilities. Minions are not a profession mechanic any more than spirit weapons are for the guardian. They’re a subset of abilities, not constants across all builds.

Minions just do not have wide enough play and availability on necromancers to justify devoting a trait line to them. If they were available on weapon skills I could see it, but as is, they are not.

I think I’m done here, since I really don’t appreciate the way you’re comparing me to witch hunting mobs and implying I’m entitled. I like a good debate, but I won’t abide being insulted by you.

Softspoken.2410:

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Hey now, I didn’t say I dislike minions.
*
Minions just do not have wide enough play and availability on necromancers to justify devoting a trait line to them. If they were available on weapon skills I could see it, but as is, they are not.
*

Again… you make it fairly clear you dislike minions and you don’t want them and advocate for dumping minions in favor of something that works for you.

If you simply said trait lines on necro make no sense and they are horrid. We would agree. If you said trait is lacking… I agreed with that in my first post. If you said it drives you nuts that your character comments the passing of every minion including jagged horrors… I would agree. But you didn’t you went on and on about how minions are niche, horrible, not viable… shouldn’t be there period and you want something that works for “insert a spec here”.

If your guardian specs into bunker with shout healing… he is forced to take shouts. Just like minion master is forced to take minions when you specs into minions. That train of thought that they aren’t optional enough is just invalid. Plenty of people take golem because it provides all benefits and no drawbacks unlike the other 2 elites that are absurdly situational. Same for flesh worm…. again it can do what it does w/o needing minion spec I’ve seen plenty of necros use it for stun break in wvw long before we got well of power got turned into stun break(now its probably weakest stun break compared in versatility but thats anet fault and id still agrue that crap signet that needs a target and rarely lands is worse then blink stun break). Bone minions once again they can be taken for aoe+combo finisher on short cd. Was farming… few people got together and made a party and shortly after we ended up with a nice aoe farming party… I was asked specifically by eles and mes to get my bone minions out to finish their blast finisher rotation. Just because you think something is worthless/niche/horrible/nobody wants it doesn’t mean its true.

If you take offense in examples on how people act entitled that only speaks of your own issues it does not mean I ever said so to you directly or indirectly.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Plenty of people take golem because it provides all benefits and no drawbacks unlike the other 2 elites that are absurdly situational. Same for flesh worm…. again it can do what it does w/o needing minion spec I’ve seen plenty of necros use it for stun break in wvw long before we got well of power got turned into stun break(now its probably weakest stun break compared in versatility but thats anet fault and id still agrue that crap signet that needs a target and rarely lands is worse then blink stun break). Bone minions once again they can be taken for aoe+combo finisher on short cd. Was farming… few people got together and made a party and shortly after we ended up with a nice aoe farming party… I was asked specifically by eles and mes to get my bone minions out to finish their blast finisher rotation. Just because you think something is worthless/niche/horrible/nobody wants it doesn’t mean its true.

Would like to make a little edit here, Lich is better both in reliability, damage and a effect we really need – stability; as for Wurm, it wasnt really needed/got that much of the spotlight that much till the Swalk changes since they were both just as viable.
And last but not least, WoP is a awesome stun break (i do still wish they just made wells semi-instant like CB instead of adding stability onto cast stun breaks).
Overall minions shouldnt go away from necros, just be actually a interactive and viable playstlye option instead of a niche build like signet builds are for all professions.

Let me put it this way: I like corruption skills. I wouldn’t like it if both grandmaster traits and two minors in, say, Spite were only be useful with corruptions equipped.

I’m hardly advocating for the removal of minions, I just think they’re over-represented in the traits of a necromancer, to the point of choking the death magic line.

HiSaZuL.2843:

If you take offense in examples on how people act entitled that only speaks of your own issues it does not mean I ever said so to you directly or indirectly.

Stay classy.

Okay… I’ll make the last ditched attempt to illustrate my point. lol

Lets say you are running 30 spite/30 sr/10 curses. For a death shroud spambot spec in spvp in full soldiers. With wells. I take 10 in curses solely for ground targeted wells. Barbed as great as it is… is utterly useless for me since I only crit in DS and with soldiers gear that bleed is sad and hardly useful for anything other then hiding vuln/chill stacks.
Should I say barbed sucks… and curses should be changed simply because a trait relevant to skills that aren’t condition based is there? No. Hell no. I wanted that skill thats why I put points there. Nothing in that tree including passives does anything for me, except maybe LF on crit… but even then it would be kind of iffy since I only crit in DS.

@Andele Yeah… wurm is not the best. But for wvw at times when we have much fewer numbers considering we always… always… have SoR with their swarm… having utility bar filled with stun breaks does wonders. I don’t really care if its not the best. It gives me a blink which is huge for me. When I need to get back to tower that has a 100 people aoe spaming the living hell out of it, a well placed wurm near entrance can give me that saving dash w/o which I would have got wrecked and never made it to the gate.

Also as necro… I find myself heavily abusing anyone who goes into lich form. Stripping 1 measly buff and nullifying any advantage that form has is very simply after thakittens just funny to watch a huge green target getting tossed around.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lets say you are running 30 spite/30 sr/10 curses. For a death shroud spambot spec in spvp in full soldiers. With wells. I take 10 in curses solely for ground targeted wells. Barbed as great as it is… is utterly useless for me since I only crit in DS and with soldiers gear that bleed is sad and hardly useful for anything other then hiding vuln/chill stacks.

Barbed gives you more more condition damage when you crit, two stats which you certainly have in some degree because you took points in Curses.

In the worst case scenario jagged horrors can lead to more damage on you through epidemic (although they won’t take many conditions before dying…) or bouncing attacks like a certain ranger’s axe 1 skill, which will hit you twice if you have a pet out.

Also very rarely, but it does happen, I’ll have a minion randomly attack a mob that tries (unsuccessfully) to attack me, putting me in combat.

So that’s why I suggest aegis on entering DS, it’s a more practical but arguably not too strong defensive tool, which at the very least would be interesting for anet to try internally.

aegis is not so much necro but it would be cool to have cause it yould make you resit some bosses that multihit

I don’t think whether it ‘fits’ necro really matters to be honest, if it’s that much of a deal for necro blocking a hit, just give it some dark edgy name and it will fit right in.

Oxygen.5918:

Kilger.5490:

Lets put it this way, its the worst of the other 5 point minor traits, excluding perhaps barbed precision (2 second bleed… really?)

You must be out of your mind. For a condition necromancer, that’s 450 damage. Tell me if a jagged horror can even deal that damage over its unaltered full lifetime.

Youre missing my point, I’m not minion master specced or condition specced so neither are good for me. The others are good regardless of spec.

Not sure when they changed it to 2 seconds, I had to edit that in, thought it was 1 second too. Still not substantial enough for a power necro to really care about.

Kilger.5490:

Oxygen.5918:

Kilger.5490:

Lets put it this way, its the worst of the other 5 point minor traits, excluding perhaps barbed precision (2 second bleed… really?)

You must be out of your mind. For a condition necromancer, that’s 450 damage. Tell me if a jagged horror can even deal that damage over its unaltered full lifetime.

Youre missing my point, I’m not minion master specced or condition specced so neither are good for me. The others are good regardless of spec.

Not sure when they changed it to 2 seconds, I had to edit that in, thought it was 1 second too. Still not substantial enough for a power necro to really care about.

Well even if it does no damage for you, it can still help to cover chill from shout spamming classes that remove condtitions, and passive removals as well. Also it does still tick for 50 on a power build, which isn’t nothing (more than siphon).

Still significantly better than JH, but I get that what you are saying is it really is very lack luster for a power build. In my opinion, all the minor traits should have been like gluttony, in the sense that any and every build would want them, and put the powerful build specific traits up around 25.

HiSaZuL.2843:

@Andele Yeah… wurm is not the best. But for wvw at times when we have much fewer numbers considering we always… always… have SoR with their swarm… having utility bar filled with stun breaks does wonders. I don’t really care if its not the best. It gives me a blink which is huge for me. When I need to get back to tower that has a 100 people aoe spaming the living hell out of it, a well placed wurm near entrance can give me that saving dash w/o which I would have got wrecked and never made it to the gate.

Also as necro… I find myself heavily abusing anyone who goes into lich form. Stripping 1 measly buff and nullifying any advantage that form has is very simply after thakittens just funny to watch a huge green target getting tossed around.

For wurm, i never said it wasnt useful, its good, but thakittens uses are now set since our other “escape” stun break was nerfed quite hard.

For Lich, you got 3 professions that will actively go for the stability, but its the well bomb and burst strength it gives that is important, Golem is sadly still quite fragile (unless traited) for a elite skill by comparison (for some reason both 3 elementals and the spirit have more hp, being 21k and 15k in comparison to the 9.3k).

Rennoko.5731:

Kilger.5490:

Oxygen.5918:

Kilger.5490:

Lets put it this way, its the worst of the other 5 point minor traits, excluding perhaps barbed precision (2 second bleed… really?)

You must be out of your mind. For a condition necromancer, that’s 450 damage. Tell me if a jagged horror can even deal that damage over its unaltered full lifetime.

Youre missing my point, I’m not minion master specced or condition specced so neither are good for me. The others are good regardless of spec.

Not sure when they changed it to 2 seconds, I had to edit that in, thought it was 1 second too. Still not substantial enough for a power necro to really care about.

Well even if it does no damage for you, it can still help to cover chill from shout spamming classes that remove condtitions, and passive removals as well. Also it does still tick for 50 on a power build, which isn’t nothing (more than siphon).

Still significantly better than JH, but I get that what you are saying is it really is very lack luster for a power build. In my opinion, all the minor traits should have been like gluttony, in the sense that any and every build would want them, and put the powerful build specific traits up around 25.

Or at least make build specific traits choices, no matter what tier they’re in. That said, I find Barbed Precision easy to shine on. I can ignore the bleeds as they’re occurring on the math level of the game, not the visual level where the JH is.

Blaine Tog.8304:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lets say you are running 30 spite/30 sr/10 curses. For a death shroud spambot spec in spvp in full soldiers. With wells. I take 10 in curses solely for ground targeted wells. Barbed as great as it is… is utterly useless for me since I only crit in DS and with soldiers gear that bleed is sad and hardly useful for anything other then hiding vuln/chill stacks.

Barbed gives you more more condition damage when you crit, two stats which you certainly have in some degree because you took points in Curses.

Which part of soldiers gear you missed? A useless for my spec trait is still useless. Jagged horror will do infinitely more bleeding damage then barbed precision if I have no crit chance due to running tank build of some kind. Rendering any thought train of that kind simply invalid. If it doesn’t proc its a dead weight trait.
I’m sorry to break it since you didn’t read the very first post. But 350 damage + 5 seconds bleed is not nothing its far more then a trait that doesn’t scale nor procs for me.

People need to be honest. You want kitten to be tailed to your spec and as soon as it isn’t here comes the whine fest.

I’m done here. All I ever see in this game is nerf this/make this work for me/l2p/and anet ignoring anything that doesn’t interest them.

If you have Weakening Shroud or Focused Rituals, you have, at bare minimum, an 8% crit chance, regardless of the gear you have equipped. This means you are generally proccing Barbed Precision once every 20 hits, doing an extra 100 damage when it does proc. Barbed Precision is good design just because it takes advantage of what the trait line gives you. Whether you decide to take it further or not is your perogative.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Blaine Tog.8304:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lets say you are running 30 spite/30 sr/10 curses. For a death shroud spambot spec in spvp in full soldiers. With wells. I take 10 in curses solely for ground targeted wells. Barbed as great as it is… is utterly useless for me since I only crit in DS and with soldiers gear that bleed is sad and hardly useful for anything other then hiding vuln/chill stacks.

Barbed gives you more more condition damage when you crit, two stats which you certainly have in some degree because you took points in Curses.

Which part of soldiers gear you missed? A useless for my spec trait is still useless. Jagged horror will do infinitely more bleeding damage then barbed precision if I have no crit chance due to running tank build of some kind. Rendering any thought train of that kind simply invalid. If it doesn’t proc its a dead weight trait.
I’m sorry to break it since you didn’t read the very first post. But 350 damage + 5 seconds bleed is not nothing its far more then a trait that doesn’t scale nor procs for me.

You missed my point entirely.

If you’re in Curses, you necessarily have more crit chance and condition damage. Barbed is a condition applicator that scales with crit chance.

If you’re in Death, you necessarily have more Toughness and Boon Duration, so it’s largely a defensive tree. Jagged Horrors provide no defensive benefit

It’s totally possible that you may want 10 points in Curses for one of the Major traits while Barbed is just sorta superfluous to your build, but you have to take the stats that power Barbed in order to get it at all. This means that there are gradations of synergy with Barbed, but there’s always some synergy. Jagged Horrors, on the other hand, are are just sorta… there. Doing their own thing. Regardless of whether they make sense for your build. Whether they’re good or not is beside the point.

HiSaZuL.2843:

People need to be honest. You want kitten to be tailed to your spec and as soon as it isn’t here comes the whine fest.

We like customization. Reanimator fights that to a greater degree than

Blaine Tog.8304:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Blaine Tog.8304:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lets say you are running 30 spite/30 sr/10 curses. For a death shroud spambot spec in spvp in full soldiers. With wells. I take 10 in curses solely for ground targeted wells. Barbed as great as it is… is utterly useless for me since I only crit in DS and with soldiers gear that bleed is sad and hardly useful for anything other then hiding vuln/chill stacks.

Barbed gives you more more condition damage when you crit, two stats which you certainly have in some degree because you took points in Curses.

Which part of soldiers gear you missed? A useless for my spec trait is still useless. Jagged horror will do infinitely more bleeding damage then barbed precision if I have no crit chance due to running tank build of some kind. Rendering any thought train of that kind simply invalid. If it doesn’t proc its a dead weight trait.
I’m sorry to break it since you didn’t read the very first post. But 350 damage + 5 seconds bleed is not nothing its far more then a trait that doesn’t scale nor procs for me.

You missed my point entirely.

If you’re in Curses, you necessarily have more crit chance and condition damage. Barbed is a condition applicator that scales with crit chance.

If you’re in Death, you necessarily have more Toughness and Boon Duration, so it’s largely a defensive tree. Jagged Horrors provide no defensive benefit

It’s totally possible that you may want 10 points in Curses for one of the Major traits while Barbed is just sorta superfluous to your build, but you have to take the stats that power Barbed in order to get it at all. This means that there are gradations of synergy with Barbed, but there’s always some synergy. Jagged Horrors, on the other hand, are are just sorta… there. Doing their own thing. Regardless of whether they make sense for your build. Whether they’re good or not is beside the point.

HiSaZuL.2843:

People need to be honest. You want kitten to be tailed to your spec and as soon as it isn’t here comes the whine fest.

We like customization. Reanimator fights that to a greater degree than

For me personally jagged heals me for 120 damage every 2 seconds… Not defensive enough? It provides weakness. Still not enough? In masks my vulnerability with bleed and poison and weakness. Not enough? It feeds me life force.

And in the context of being in soldiers gear tanky spec if I have both barbed precision and jagged horror I will get a truck load more bleeding out of jagged horor then barbed. Still utterly pointless argument as far as im concerned and biased.

Imagine that… there are people who play with minion specs. And jaggeds provide more then any other minor trait out there combined. Keep advocating that those people should be nerfed because you want staff traits. Keep the nerf trait going.