Guild Wars 2

Before I go further this is not a troll post I’m being completely serious.

I’ve done some serious testing with multiple kinds of necro-builds and I’m not really impressed with any of their trait lines, they DON’T do much of anything. Nothing is -that- beneficial to any their attacks or skills at all. Bugs aside. I know a lot of traits and skills are bugged but this is beside that point.

It’s disappointing a real fun class in GW1 has become a neglected half implemented class with barely anything going for it. I get upset every time I play mine and usually end up deleting it.

The major problem lies in the fact the traits are too specific or aren’t specific enough. Stay for instance the 5 point in precision trait, 66% chance to bleed on crits. Well that sounds GREAT. But the problem here lies in the fact necros don’t nearly hit fast enough or even have any weapon outside of staff that can hit multiple targets with its auto attack or multi hit skills. Simply put, this trait is valueless because there isn’t enough multi-attack.
Then you have warriors which have that 40 precision per signet trait and guardians have the virtue of justice refresh trait on kill.
Gaining more life-force per hit traits? This is just lazy. Since shroud has a cool down this really has no specific purpose then to fill the meter faster, which already fills up fast enough if your hitting multiple things. If you god rid of shrouds CD this would gain value. But that would never happen because ‘balance’ apparently.
It feels like the developers wanted the necro to revolve around death shroud. But shroud itself has become nothing more then a health sink and an AoE to players. Death shroud needs more potatoes and meat, because it’s really pathetic compared to other classes abilities, even if you trait it. It’s just an extra health bar, I’d personally rework shroud into a more real ‘death incarnate’ thing. But that’s another post.

Going deeper into trees the taste of points get more bland for the value. In the end your better just traiting for just the extra stat points, I’m not joking either. There really is no point traiting for some kind of build when it gives you practically no return. Meanwhile guardians, and warriors become godly when they trait builds. Even engineers have that 50% endurance regen trait which turns them into tumbling champs.

Simply said, the devs really need to go through and re-evalute the necromancer traits. Make weapon builds not just viable but actually changes how the combat mechanics work in the build.

tldr:u dont know this class at all
ur solution: switch classes?

Garo.5304:

Going deeper into trees the taste of points get more bland for the value. In the end your better just traiting for just the extra stat points, I’m not joking either.

Your dream traits:

Then you have warriors which have that 40 precision per signet trait

Sausage: the point i think the OP is trying to raise is that other professions actually use their weapons to deal damage but we use ours to generate LF. Name me one single necro weapon skill which out-damages well of suffering. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that we have to use our utilities as a major source of damage, especially AOE damage, instead of our weapons? Other classes get to use their utilities as, you know, utilities…

have u tried full berserk dagger mh? it deals pretty decent dmg imo,and utilities are utilities,we use them to do stuff,even dmg(same goes for LF regenerate,dagger mh is beast)

66% to bleed on crits.
Trait precision.
Drop 2 wells fighting a mob of 5 enemies.
5 pulses x 2 wells x 5 enemies = 10 chances to crit and cause bleed and when it does proc it causes bleed on 5 enemies at once.

Yeah, it really is a learn your class issue IMO. Necro is an AoE beast so to say we don’t have any options really to hit multiple targets is asinine.

Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.

Not to mention an addition 20% chance to crit while doing it from the 5 seconds of Fury gained from the 15 pointer in Curses.

I don’t find that very useless.

The OP’s arguments arn’t all that great but he is right that necro traits are pretty underwhelming compared to the traits many other classes get.

I think different designers must have done the traits for different classes because there are definite patterns. Necro, ele, ranger have pretty boring and bad traits trees, while mesmer, thief, engi have generally amazing ones for example.

Well I kind of agree with you Yuki, but at the same time, “underwhelming” and “useless” are two completely different words and definitions :P

Yeah, I agree. It’s not that necro talents are AWFUL, they’re just underwhelming and boring. Few of them change the way you play the class dramatically. Even the best necro talents tend to be boring +% talents like fury on DS or 33% longer conditions from scepter.

Yeah. Depends on the build I guess. I’m a wellmancer, and the ground targeting trait, wells recharge 20% faster, 50% more dmg while downed (I know several classes have this), marks do 10% more dmg, etc

they are all invaluable to me. It’s not GAME CHANGING for sure, but I do a hell of a lot better with them than I did without that’s for sure.

And the 20% more dmg to targets with less than 50% health, for an AoE beast like the necro, is far from useless.

Man I think we can agree that Necromancer don’t have the best traits around. When I compare it to my engineer (static bolt? Grenadier?) at least!

But no offence OP, but you prolly got the worse argments ever about it.

I never have enought Life force! How can you say it’s always full. I’m always switching in and out of DS for stability,boon and fear. I need more!!! But I agree that gluttony is lack luster.

I have no issue with bleed on crit? And we have a lot of AoE/fast attacking skill. You lost me again there.

P.S : 50% endurance regen of engineer is actually really weird because, Ranger got the same trait for 5 points. I don’t think a lot of engineer focus on this trait.

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

Yeah. Depends on the build I guess. I’m a wellmancer, and the ground targeting trait, wells recharge 20% faster, 50% more dmg while downed (I know several classes have this), marks do 10% more dmg, etc

they are all invaluable to me. It’s not GAME CHANGING for sure, but I do a hell of a lot better with them than I did without that’s for sure.

Yeah, but I mean look at those traits. The only thing that changes the way you play is ground targeting for wells. The rest just give bigger numbers.

They are classic examples of a boring passive +% trait. The necro trees are full of these, and the ones that arn’t boring passive +%s tend to be awful, like the 5 toughness trait that spawns those useless minions who do nothing but keep you in combat longer.

Compare that to something like the engineer, which has tons of gamechanging traits like the perma swiftness/vigor combo, static discharge, piercing bullets, grenadier, healing on bombs, the condition removal traits, kit refinement, etc.

Garo.5304:

Before I go further this is not a troll post I’m being completely serious.

I don’t have to read anything beyond this in order to know that the rest of your post is useless. The title of your post is “Necromancer traits are useless” which they are obviously not. Perhaps some of them need to be changed. Perhaps some of them need to be moved. But they’re not “useless” and starting your post with that shows you’re a troll. No need to read farther.

I had a look here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_traits and there are some pretty sweet traits that got dumped…

Funky.4861:

I had a look here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_traits and there are some pretty sweet traits that got dumped…

which ones? it looks exactly the same as what we have

Well while Funky sorts that out….

Re: OP’s notion on Necro traits – consider for a moment that Barbed Precision, our BEST adept minor trait (as in miles ahead of our next 5pt trait), is exactly the same as Sigil of Earth which is available to any and all professions.

OK, well what about the other profession’s 5pt minor traits in the same tree? Well they are: 10% increased movement speed (Ele), bleed on crit proc (warrior/engi), aoe blind (guardian), Vigor on crit proc (Mesmer), swiftness on weapon swap (ranger), and 5% crit chance increase while health above 90% (thief).

Now aside from the Warrior and Engi those are some rather singular and class relevant minor traits and for only 5 trait points. Warriors I see, however, can also trait for a nice 10% dmg boost on bleeding targets and extend the duration of their bleeds by 50% with a single Major and Minor trait – and all in the same tree without even having to max it out. Engi’s seem to have virtually the same traits available as the Warrior’s. I’d call that pretty decent synergy.

Looking at the same trait line for Necro’s we see traits for 2 different weapons, 3 different utility skill sets, and a 2% dmg per condition stack in a primarily condition based tree that doesn’t focus on direct dmg output. That litttle cluster kitten would be the opposite of synergy.

There’s no arguing that Necro traits are lackluster and the trait lines are poorly thought out. Whether OP’s example was correct or not, is besides the point.

Whether you like/love/hate your Necro makes no difference. Bad trait design is bad. Nothing more to it.

hackks.3687:

Well while Funky sorts that out….

Re: OP’s notion on Necro traits – consider for a moment that Barbed Precision, our BEST adept minor trait (as in miles ahead of our next 5pt trait), is exactly the same as Sigil of Earth which is available to any and all professions.

OK, well what about the other profession’s 5pt minor traits in the same tree? Well they are: 10% increased movement speed (Ele), bleed on crit proc (warrior/engi), aoe blind (guardian), Vigor on crit proc (Mesmer), swiftness on weapon swap (ranger), and 5% crit chance increase while health above 90% (thief).

Now aside from the Warrior and Engi those are some rather singular and class relevant minor traits and for only 5 trait points. Warriors I see, however, can also trait for a nice 10% dmg boost on bleeding targets and extend the duration of their bleeds by 50% with a single Major and Minor trait – and all in the same tree without even having to max it out. Engi’s seem to have virtually the same traits available as the Warrior’s. I’d call that pretty decent synergy.

Looking at the same trait line for Necro’s we see traits for 2 different weapons, 3 different utility skill sets, and a 2% dmg per condition stack in a primarily condition based tree that doesn’t focus on direct dmg output. That litttle cluster kitten would be the opposite of synergy.

There’s no arguing that Necro traits are lackluster and the trait lines are poorly thought out. Whether OP’s example was correct or not, is besides the point.

Whether you like/love/hate your Necro makes no difference. Bad trait design is bad. Nothing more to it.

I can’t agree more with your explanation. I feel so bad when I play my level 80 guardian after playing my 80 necro… almost every trait I see in the Guardian’s lines is really good and have some sinergy.
When I play with my necromancer (PvE and sPvP), trait choice is always “choose the lesser of two evils” but when I play guardian (PvE and sPvP), warrior (only played sPvP) or engineer (PvE and sPvP), I always have to choose between one trait that is great and another one that is even more great.

Well actually, the Barbed Precision trait is notably worse than the Sigil as it’s 1 second of bleeding vs 5 seconds. (I still like it though)

Personally, as I was arguing in another thread I think the Curses tree is totally designed with condition/power synergy in mind. Prec/Condition damage stat gains, traits that benefit both power and condition builds throughout. Saying it’s “primarily a condition tree” doesn’t make it totally true. Even the scepter has condition/power synergy built into it’s abilities, with Feast of Corruption. And if you say “oh it’s bad” that’s not a synergy issue, that’s a numbers issue.

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

66% to bleed on crits.
Trait precision.
Drop 2 wells fighting a mob of 5 enemies.
5 pulses x 2 wells x 5 enemies = 10 chances to crit and cause bleed and when it does proc it causes bleed on 5 enemies at once.

Yeah, it really is a learn your class issue IMO. Necro is an AoE beast so to say we don’t have any options really to hit multiple targets is asinine.

Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.

Yep.
1 stack of bleeding for 1s on a 66% chance on critical. I can’t live without that trait.
Only Ranger have a similiar trash, but it isn’t Minor, so they can chose to not bring that trait.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Well actually, the Barbed Precision trait is notably worse than the Sigil as it’s 1 second of bleeding vs 5 seconds. (I still like it though)

Personally, as I was arguing in another thread I think the Curses tree is totally designed with condition/power synergy in mind. Prec/Condition damage stat gains, traits that benefit both power and condition builds throughout. Saying it’s “primarily a condition tree” doesn’t make it totally true. Even the scepter has condition/power synergy built into it’s abilities, with Feast of Corruption. And if you say “oh it’s bad” that’s not a synergy issue, that’s a numbers issue.

Scepter has lower base dmg than the other mainhand weapons and is the only mainhand weapon aside from staff that consistently generates conditions. Feast of Corruption’s dmg output is also based on conditions. It is a condition weapon, not a power weapon. No ‘ifs’, ‘ands’, or ‘buts’ about it. And what other power traits are in that tree? Because from what I’m looking at every trait is condition based aside from Banshee’s Wail and the warhorn is a utility weapon not a dmg weapon.

sorrow.2364:

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

66% to bleed on crits.
Trait precision.
Drop 2 wells fighting a mob of 5 enemies.
5 pulses x 2 wells x 5 enemies = 10 chances to crit and cause bleed and when it does proc it causes bleed on 5 enemies at once.

Yeah, it really is a learn your class issue IMO. Necro is an AoE beast so to say we don’t have any options really to hit multiple targets is asinine.

Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.

Yep.
1 stack of bleeding for 1s on a 66% chance on critical. I can’t live without that trait.
Only Ranger have a similiar trash, but it isn’t Minor, so they can chose to not bring that trait.

Look dude I never said the trait was god like or that you needed to have it. The argument was that the OP said it would never proc because we don’t have enough multiple target abilities which is absurd. I agree 100% our traits need work but if you’re going to complain complain legitimately. And minor traits are just that, Minor. They are secondary traits which are meant to be a little tiny “bonus” if you will. Not something that is supposed to dramatically impact your character.

Frankly, I’d be more upset that a ranger’s major trait slot is wasted by that than I would be the fact it’s a minor for a necro.

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

Look dude I never said the trait was god like or that you needed to have it. The argument was that the OP said it would never proc because we don’t have enough multiple target abilities which is absurd. I agree 100% our traits need work but if you’re going to complain complain legitimately. And minor traits are just that, Minor. They are secondary traits which are meant to be a little tiny “bonus” if you will. Not something that is supposed to dramatically impact your character.

Frankly, I’d be more upset that a ranger’s major trait slot is wasted by that than I would be the fact it’s a minor for a necro.

Actually, having those kind of things as a Minor trait is far worse than having as a Major trait, because if they were a Major, you aren’t forced to pick that trait you don’t want, you don’t need or is completely worthless.
Actually, most Minor traits are incredibly useful as many other professions put points just to get that Minor trait. We have also good minor trait, like Furious Demise, Last Gasp and other professions have way better minor traits, like Inspired Virtue (Virtues), Zephyr’s Speed (Air Magic), Arcane Fury (Arcana), Illusionists Celerity (Illusions), Vengeful Images (Inspiration) and that are only one of the few I’ve found.

What about Necromancers?
T1 minor traits:
Parastic Bond: doesn’t work. Also if it worked, it would be worthless anyway.
Barbed Precision: as I said.
Reanimator: lol
Full of Life: the only trait which is worth something. Quite sad reading its effect and comparing it to others
Gluttony: Doesn’t work.

Enjoy the Necromancer panorama.

> Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.

You forgot the part where you pray the targets don’t block or dodge because your “massive AoE” isn’t going to be recharging for a great deal of time.

But hey. that’s why they gave us locust swarm, right?

Actually all level 80 exotic axes, daggers and scepters have the same median base damage of 952.5.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghastly_weapons if you want to run the math yourself. (axe actually has lower base than scepter but a wider range)

Staff doesn’t generate conditions, axe does. Not sure if typo.

For Curses being a hybrid tree, 300 precision obviously benefits power builds. Other traits in tree that come to mind: -20% damage to corruptions cooldowns, grants you greater might uptime with Blood is Power, enhancing power ability (as well as condition uptime). Ground Targeted wells are power enhancements exclusively. Life force gain traits from V and X tend to benefit power builds than condition (since deathshroud is mostly power damage). Furious Demise benefits power as well, which goes hand in hands with the trees emphasis on critting for both conditions and innate power bonuses.

And to fulfill my selfishness:

‘ifs’, ‘ands’, ‘buts’

Also addressing feast of corruption, your wording is misleading. It’s damage IS based off of conditions, but it’s the number of conditions on it. Condition damage as a stat will never affect the damage it deals. Power does.

Manticore Five.9867:

> Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.

You forgot the part where you pray the targets don’t block or dodge because your “massive AoE” isn’t going to be recharging for a great deal of time.

But hey. that’s why they gave us locust swarm, right?

45 seconds or 36 traited is a great deal of time?

Jeeze.

Compared to the ~5 second re-use on HB, yeah.

It occurs to me you were probably referring to base damage on abilities, not on weapons available. And sure, that’s fair, but that’s what weapon swap is for. Axe is regarded as a power weapon but no one is writing home about the axe’s auto attack. There SHOULD be a condition option, and undoubtedly scepter fills that role. But I think viewing it as only a condition weapon is limiting to build potential.

Scepter’s status isn’t largely relevant since you don’t need to use it curse specced. You don’t need Axe for Spite spec either.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Actually all level 80 exotic axes, daggers and scepters have the same median base damage of 952.5.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghastly_weapons if you want to run the math yourself. (axe actually has lower base than scepter but a wider range)

Staff doesn’t generate conditions, axe does. Not sure if typo.

For Curses being a hybrid tree, 300 precision obviously benefits power builds. Other traits in tree that come to mind: -20% damage to corruptions cooldowns, grants you greater might uptime with Blood is Power, enhancing power ability (as well as condition uptime). Ground Targeted wells are power enhancements exclusively. Life force gain traits from V and X tend to benefit power builds than condition (since deathshroud is mostly power damage). Furious Demise benefits power as well, which goes hand in hands with the trees emphasis on critting for both conditions and innate power bonuses.

And to fulfill my selfishness:

‘ifs’, ‘ands’, ‘buts’

Umm, “Staff does not generate conditions, Axe does…” Are you for real? ! Axe = Vulnerability, Cripple; Staff = Bleed, Chill, Poison, and weakness if you count the blast combo.

Corruptions are power based? BiP is the only one that does anything for power builds and that’s only by happy coincidence. Corrupt Boon, Epidemic, and Corrosive Poison cloud are obviously condition based utilities as that is exactly what they do, apply conditions.

Life force gains are there to supplement the slow LF accrual that comes with using the Scepter. Dagger, Axe, and Staff all accrue LF at a faster rate.

The Fury in DS is their to provide the On Crit procs for condition builds as you can see from the On Crit traits residing in the tree as well as the lackluster dmg output in DS for condi builds.

Seriously, you are grasping at straws. Saying crit benefits power is hardly an argument for Curses being a “hybrid” tree. The only you get “hybrid” out of curse is by speccing equally deep into Spite.

Oh. Thought you were referring to auto attacks because you said “the only thing that consistently generates conditions” which all of our weapons but dagger mainhand does.

You saying power benefitting from crit doesn’t constitute any basis of hybrid synergy is silly when half the trees stat gains and all the trees minors benefit both power and condition.

The mandatory traits all benefit hybrids more than a singularly focused condition build. How is that grasping at straws?

Well, it’s not as if a power build can’t incorporate the curses tree into their build and benefit from it. But it should be understood that you’re augmenting your power build to a more hybrid build by incorporating condition dmg with it. Which is not necessarily a bad thing for Necros. But because Curses is so narrowly condition focused your not going to have a ton of options to choose from or find a lot of obvious synergy. Creatively you might be able to come up with something. Currently though, I don’t spec more than 10 points into curses in my power builds and that’s only to add a little extra bleeding and crit. There’s nothing else in there I want unless I’m going spectral and want the increased durations.

Yukishiro.8792:

engi have generally amazing ones for example.

If you would like to see a community of players even more irritable, confused, and annoyed than the necromancers then the Engineers are where you should go. Their best pvp burst got nerfed, their trait lines are awfully muddled and one line is almost entirely neglected because the only thing worse than minions are turret utilities. They’re left wondering what, if anything, they should be doing in PvP and PvE, as the dream of a multi-role engineer is (charitably) difficult to fulfill without being underwhelming in all things.

Elementalists are similarly generally pretty mad that 30 in arcane seems utterly mandatory. Don’t believe me, go ask.

Mesmers, though, I agree with. That class goes from extremely frustrating to extremely interesting within the span of about 30 trait points.

So don’t feel too bad.

Uh I play an Engi. You are rather clueless. Engis have a lot of bugs, and some design issues, but Engi traits are pretty awesome. Certainly way better than necro ones.

Like I said, I can name like 8-10 awesome Engi traits off the top of my head that change how the class plays quite dramatically. Necro traits in contrast tend to be “+10% more this” and “+5% more that.”

KirinDave.6451:

Yukishiro.8792:

engi have generally amazing ones for example.

If you would like to see a community of players even more irritable, confused, and annoyed than the necromancers then the Engineers are where you should go. Their best pvp burst got nerfed, their trait lines are awfully muddled and one line is almost entirely neglected because the only thing worse than minions are turret utilities.

Elementalists are similarly generally pretty mad that 30 in arcane seems utterly mandatory. Don’t believe me, go ask.

Mesmers, though, I agree with. That class goes from extremely frustrating to extremely interesting within the span of about 30 trait points.

So don’t feel too bad.

Do you actually play an Engi?

Yukishiro.8792:

Uh I play an Engi. You are rather clueless. Engis have a lot of bugs, and some design issues, but Engi traits are pretty awesome. Certainly way better than necro ones.

Like I said, I can name like 8-10 awesome Engi traits off the top of my head that change how the class plays quite dramatically. Necro traits in contrast tend to be “+10% more this” and “+5% more that.”

because Yuki does. and so do I. and I agree with Yuki

The problems with engi arn’t really with the traits, which are pretty amazing. Engi problems have to do with bad implementation of kits and turrets mostly, along with the cast time bug on pistol auto attack.

Hmm, interesting interwebz failure- this is the web page link:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits_2

and i merely scrolled down to the necro section and pasted that instead of the whole shebang, but i guess ctrl+v got confused somewhere. Our current traits are also there though…

hackks.3687:

KirinDave.6451:

Yukishiro.8792:

engi have generally amazing ones for example.

If you would like to see a community of players even more irritable, confused, and annoyed than the necromancers then the Engineers are where you should go. Their best pvp burst got nerfed, their trait lines are awfully muddled and one line is almost entirely neglected because the only thing worse than minions are turret utilities.

Elementalists are similarly generally pretty mad that 30 in arcane seems utterly mandatory. Don’t believe me, go ask.

Mesmers, though, I agree with. That class goes from extremely frustrating to extremely interesting within the span of about 30 trait points.

So don’t feel too bad.

Do you actually play an Engi?

Yukishiro.8792:

Uh I play an Engi. You are rather clueless. Engis have a lot of bugs, and some design issues, but Engi traits are pretty awesome. Certainly way better than necro ones.

Like I said, I can name like 8-10 awesome Engi traits off the top of my head that change how the class plays quite dramatically. Necro traits in contrast tend to be “+10% more this” and “+5% more that.”

because Yuki does. and so do I. and I agree with Yuki

Yes, I have a L80 engineer partially decked out for the tools-based burst spec. I play a lot of WvW and some PvE, but no real sPvP.

I don’t want to drag another thread off topic discussing minutiae, but I’d be happy to PM you about it. Long-story-short, the engineer might get some really interesting traits like Juggernaut, but that doesn’t save the class from being ultimately frustrating outside of a support role that I think many other classes can play equally well.

If a trait is mechanically powerful but no one wants it due to bugs in its use, then is it “interesting”? I’d argue Jagged Horrors is “interesting” under that criterion.

The necro traits may not be as game-changing, but I sort of like that. It’s very frustrating to be required to be >= L60 to actually see skills perform before you know if you will like a class, and sPvP is not the sum of my experience so I have to grind. You can tell if you’ll like playing Necro pretty early, and their power curve is pretty linear as opposed to a friggin stair step.