List your three, least desirable traits (major or minor) and explain why they are so unimpressive. Please order them from worst to not quite worst.
For example (and please forgive the facetiousness):
1. Soul Comprehension – This helps me, how?
2. Reaper’s Protection – This helps me, how?
3. Fear of Death – Is Fear a thing, again?
1. Spiteful renewal. Too useless.
2. Beyond the veil. Annoys me that it doesnt give protection to allies.
3. Mark of evasion. So many other nice skills to cast for free yet they chose this one
Disclaimer: These are picks from traitlines I use. I basically ignored Death Magic because I find it to be so bad, the entire line could be deleted and I wouldn’t give even a single kitten .
1. Soul Eater – Bad elite spec trait made worse by how good the other 2 competitor traits are. Other greatsword weapon traits have 3 tiers of effects, this has 2 of which 1 is just awful. Even the beta version was more desirable (niche life steal build with blood magic).
2. Fear of Death – Traits that have effects on down are just bad design to begin with. Then HoT powercreep has killed fear completely.
3. Spiteful Renewal – What even is this?!
Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death.
Soul Comprehension: Useless in PvP, as things that give you life force just don’t die frequently. Useless in PvE and WvW as your life force gain is naturally going to be high enough that this trait might account for half a percent of your total life force gain. Needs to be entirely scrapped and replaced. I suggest a variant of Decaying Swarm.
Soul Eater: Needs a new effect rather than life siphon on Gravedigger. In addition to or replaced, don’t care, but it needs something else. Life siphon amounts are just too low to matter and Gravedigger is unreliable to hit in many situations due to its long cast time.
Fear of Death: there is no reason to take this. Our fears are short and infrequent enough that people don’t even care about 50% longer ones.
There are so many, I just can’t chose 3 out of them…
Soul comprehension : I agree with the choice of my peers. 10% LF per death or 12% with the trait… The difference is absolutely negligible granted the fact that either you are in an environment where you litterally drown in life force (WvW zerg) or environment where nothing die regularly around you (everywhere else). Though I could understand that if this trait was meant to be used with short lived minions used as fuel for life force. However, they do not. The trait could be changed to : “minions grant some life force”, and it would simply grant an amount of life force on death for the minions that don’t give life force at the moment. A simple solution that synergize with the traitline.
Soul eater : This does not help the greatsword at all. I understand that anet is proud of gravedigger, that they want it to be the ultimate skill used by the reaper and that for them a huge siphon effect that heal for more than 270 per hit is the most supreme effect that can be given to a necromancer. But gravedigger is slow and you can give it all the siphon effect you want, it won’t help the skill to connect with a foe. Why don’t they just put a damage reduction effect when using a GS skill with a cast time.
My last trait will differ a bit, I chose vital persistence. It’s not because it’s underperforming but on the contrary because it’s a trait that have an effect that is to overbearing. The 50% degeneration decrease is something that have to begone in order for this traitline to become a bit healthier. It hurt diversity and that’s why I think this trait is not desirable.
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
Spiteful renewal. This is just so small and oddly placed i can’t see how or in what situation or build to use it, and it’s up against bitter chill.
Soul eater. The life siphon is actually pretty good when fighting a huge amount of enemies while you need health. But the other options here are much better for everything. If i want sustain i’d pick chilling victory or just switch a line to blood magic, or just pick parasitic contagion if i’m using curses. Whatever you do, switching other traits is always better than picking soil eater.
Soul comprehension. This trait is poorly thought out.
Oh, c’mon. Blood magic is cool in so many ways that it’s not even funny.
As for traits, those mentioned are popular enough already, so:
Terrifying descent – relic of pre-gliding era. Why are those traits still a thing? And why would you need fear application on something so bizarre?
Vital persistence – just roll it into base class already. It’s so mandatory for SR-based builds it’s legitimately bad at this point.
Weakening shroud – just doesn’t compete with other 2 traits. Partially because other 2 are condi-based traits as well.
This post is a good example of why we need a dislike button.
It’s also the single least helpful thing you can possibly do when giving feedback. Imagine anet reading it: “oh, ManiumX doesn’t like the blood magic trait line. I wonder why?”
…and there they get stuck, because you have not said anything other than “I hate it.” Give reasons for why you don’t like things.
