Guild Wars 2

I’ve decided to create this thread to discuss what I think is the main reason we Necros have so much dificulty picking traits for our builds, namely the relationship of available traits and our utility skills.

I’ve counted the number of utility traits available for us and by writing them down based on which trait lines they are available it looks like this, capitalized denote major traits:

Minion – POW tou tou TOU TOU TOU TOU VIT VIT – 9

Well – PRE TOU VIT VIT VIT – 5

Signet – POW POW – 2

Corruption – PRE – 1

Spectral – PRE soul SOUL – 3

Now I can understand some rationale behind the number of traits available for each category, we can equip minions as a heal and elite besides filling our utility bar, we also have a 4th well available as a heal. HOWEVER, such rationale has a counterargument in that 2 of our elite skills instantly kill all our minions and the most popular heal skill is by far Consume Conditions. Just these 2 points are in my opinion enough to counter the argument for the excessive amount of minion traits we have available.

Analyzing each type also shows some odd choices –

Minions – We not only have 2 different grandmasters for minions in the same traitline, but it also contains 2 minors that are related to minions. The whole Toughness tree is minions. That’s really bad for Necros, especially because it also contains the 2 most desirable staff traits. I’ve seen many Necros argue that even though they want Greater Marks they avoid it because the minor traits are Minion Traits. I don’t think minor traits should in any way be related to a utility class and instead be general buffs.

Wells – Wells also have a higher than average number of traits available, but don’t let that deceive you. The most popular reason we use well builds is for burst in power,precision,crit builds. Most well traits are in the vitality tree and even then, the only trait there that benefits power builds is reduced cooldown which is a 20 pt trait.

Signet – we have 2 signet traits, -20% cd and gain 3 might stacks on use for 10 seconds. Our signets have huge cooldowns, all are 1 minute or more, the might stacks don’t last anywhere near long enough compared to cooldown on the skills which grant them.

Corruption – 1 measly trait of -20% cooldown. Corruption skills are our second most popular utility skills after wells. One of our 2 most popular builds the conditionmancer revolves around corruption skills. We only have 1 trait that directly affects corruption skills.

Spectral – 3 traits, one of which is a minor (Last Gasp), I’d make a bigger issue of this if spectral skills were useful, but they generally aren’t.

So, although we are free to choose our builds, the trait lines are heavily biased about which utilities can be improved and unfortunately they are either undesired, out of the way for the purpose behind using those skills, or even worse just not available at all.

The number of minion traits has to be toned down and other utility types have to get traits that interact with them.

This has been posted about before, I think Kravick and I were in a lengthy discussion about it, refer back to there (I’m sure you can search it or something). In my opinion, they are all situated nicely in the place that makes the most sense for them, just because the meta has chosen something doesn’t mean it makes the most sense (wells are not for power builds, well of suffering is) or that it should warrant a complete redesign of our trees.

As for # of traits, minions by far have the most things that are possible to change, as they are actual summoned creatures that can have base stats buffed, CDs changed, special on-hit abilities added, etc.

i love the fact that necromancer is such a complex class what i dont love is the fact that a more simpler built from other clases can counter it

Keeping so much of the traits focused on a single type of skill is not constructive for diversity. That this specific type of skill is generally considered underwhelming is even worse.

Removing the excessive amount of minion traits, by combining them or outright removing and instead implementing traits for other utilities would have a great effect in making the choice of such skills a more rewarding option.

ANet keeps saying they want more build variety and making undesired skills more appealing, I’m just pointing out a good way to that for the Necromancer, by uncluttering our traits from minions.

Bhawb, you didn’t actually defend the number of minion traits, you just stated that because we have so many minions are vastly customizable, that is because we have so many traits. That in itself doesn’t justify the number of them.

Adding traits for increasing AoE and extra conditions on wells and corruption skills, extra effects on use of signets, different boons on use of spectral skills would also make those skills more customizable, as minions are right now. Since we can’t have new traits without removing old ones, I’ve pointed out that minions do in fact have more then their fair share of the traits.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Keeping so much of the traits focused on a single type of skill is not constructive for diversity. That this specific type of skill is generally considered underwhelming is even worse.

Removing the excessive amount of minion traits, by combining them or outright removing and instead implementing traits for other utilities would have a great effect in making the choice of such skills a more rewarding option.

ANet keeps saying they want more build variety and making undesired skills more appealing, I’m just pointing out a good way to that for the Necromancer, by uncluttering our traits from minions.

Bhawb, you didn’t actually defend the number of minion traits, you just stated that because we have so many minions are vastly customizable, that is because we have so many traits. That in itself doesn’t justify the number of them.

Adding traits for increasing AoE and extra conditions on wells and corruption skills, extra effects on use of signets, different boons on use of spectral skills would also make those skills more customizable, as minions are right now. Since we can’t have new traits without removing old ones, I’ve pointed out that minions do in fact have more then their fair share of the traits.

Minions aren’t vastly customizable, their very nature as allied entities makes them more able to have buffs, and in fact many of their buffs are things that the utilities you are talking about already have. I need to trait minions to take off boons, corrupt boon and well of corruption do it automatically. I need to trait minions to lay down combo fields, spectral wall, all wells, and CPC do that automatically. I need to trait minions so their direct damage is noticeable, well of suffering and BiP already have high base damage. Minion health is exclusive to summons, but comparing it to duration, you couldn’t increase the duration of wells or corruption abilities without making them too powerful (spectrals have that option). All of them can be traited for lower CD. Spectrals and wells can be traited to be activated without using the skills, just like Jagged Horror.

You are basically complaining that minions need trait points to do things that those other skills already do or simply cannot do, for balance purposes.

Not a utility skill, I know, but staff has 4 traits spread across 3 trees.

Spiteful Marks (Spite)
Greater Marks (DM)
Staff Mastery (DM)
Soul Marks (SR)

Necro trait tree is an absolute joke. Most of these traits could be merged and replaced with more interesting ones. Which probably won’t happen until a major patch like an expansion, unfortunately. Even then, I’m doubtful whether they’ll be fixed.

The fact that our traits are spread out is actually a good thing in my eyes. We have a ton more options in traits/builds than most classes. The fact that classes are almost pigeonholed into trees no matter what stat bonuses it gives or what kind of build they are going for is a massive flaw in how the trait lines are supposed to work. Having 4 traits for staff in 3 different lines is fine considering where they are. Higher dmg marks? Most likely picked up in a power build and hey look at that its in the power line. Want larger marks and shorter cooldowns for more utility you go in a more defensive line. Marks that generate life force? Geuss what its in the line that give you a larger lf pool. Staff is a very universal weapon and its traits reflect that.

station.6421:

Not a utility skill, I know, but staff has 4 traits spread across 3 trees.

Spiteful Marks (Spite)
Greater Marks (DM)
Staff Mastery (DM)
Soul Marks (SR)

Necro trait tree is an absolute joke. Most of these traits could be merged and replaced with more interesting ones. Which probably won’t happen until a major patch like an expansion, unfortunately. Even then, I’m doubtful whether they’ll be fixed.

This is the perfect example of why a seemingly unnecessary dispersion of similar traits makes absolute sense. It’s because they serve different purposes.
1. Greater Marks and Staff Mastery are in the same line anyway, and that makes sense.
2. Soul Marks does not improve your staff skills per se but your life force gain. And many builds that heavily implement death shroud in their playstyle use the staff anyway. Therefore it has to be in the Soul Reaping line.
3. Spiteful marks, more damage →Spite, nuf said.
I’m not sure if anyone ever uses that one though. Conditionmancers certainly don’t need a 10% increase to the relatively low and unfrequent damage of the marks and power builds usually have better alternatives (maybe this should be an adept trait?).

On the other hand, let me ask you this: Would you rather have all of those 4 traits in the same line? Or all of the minion traits in the same? No, because if you want more than 3 then they need to be in different lines.

Bhawb.7408:

Minions aren’t vastly customizable, their very nature as allied entities makes them more able to have buffs, and in fact many of their buffs are things that the utilities you are talking about already have. I need to trait minions to take off boons, corrupt boon and well of corruption do it automatically. I need to trait minions to lay down combo fields, spectral wall, all wells, and CPC do that automatically. I need to trait minions so their direct damage is noticeable, well of suffering and BiP already have high base damage. Minion health is exclusive to summons, but comparing it to duration, you couldn’t increase the duration of wells or corruption abilities without making them too powerful (spectrals have that option). All of them can be traited for lower CD. Spectrals and wells can be traited to be activated without using the skills, just like Jagged Horror.

You are basically complaining that minions need trait points to do things that those other skills already do or simply cannot do, for balance purposes.

That is nowhere near my argument. I argue that minions take an unfair amount of traits available for no reason besides the fact that we can slot more of them at once.

I also argue that many desirable traits for what came to be our functional builds are locked into trees with stats that aren’t desired by those builds.

If minions aren’t customizable why do they take so many traits? To make them viable or comparable to our other utilities? In that case minions are weak skills. The point of traiting is to customize your characters, including his utility skills, to make them different from other players who don’t use those traits.

Traiting minions to do things they didn’t do is plainly customizing them to what you desire.

Having so many traits focused on only 1 type of skill is an issue in build diversity, since everyone who takes an uncsutomizable utility will have it working the same as everyone else.

It may not be the focus of the thread, but I’m glad the discussion of the Necromancer trait tree is growing into something more focused and thoughtful than “The tree’s a mess!” and “No it’s not!”.

Anyways, I agree with a few of the complaints about the death magic tree. Having both grandmaster traits be minions only is kind of bleh, but I can live with it since you can invest 20-25 points in a trait line if you just want the stats before grandmaster traits are a problem. What really bothers me is how the first two minor traits are minions only. (Protection of the Horde actually bothers me more than Reanimator. In a non-minion build, while reanimator is of severely limited usefulness, protection of the horde is only good for 20 toughness at level 80 while your jagged horror is alive. Yet it’s a minor trait, despite how very niche it feels.) I feel like minions are just not necro-wide enough to justify minor traits made for them. This is especially because minion builds benefit so much from going all minion traits, and other builds tend to hurt themselves a bit when they throw in a minion just for the heck of it.

I also think necromancers should have the option to invest more heavily in corruption skills but I don’t have a really solid idea on how that would work. I’d like to see the trait(s?) outside of Curses though. The idea would be to make corruption skills a little more attractive to non-condition damage builds they, if you take a certain interesting trait. (Make it more attractive for power builds with a power-focused trait in Spite, for example?)

I’d actually support having a few minion traits removed if the minions were buffed accordingly. There really are a lot of them everywhere, and some of them are sort of boring (I’m talking about flat stat boosts. Death nova, necrotic corruption, fetid consumption, vampiric master are all interesting and alter what minions are for, which is just what I want out of traits.) so I wouldn’t mind them being moved aside for more gameplay-altering traits.

Actually many of our traits are in lines where they would make sense to be in. Having minion traits in a line that gives you stats to stay alive longer makes sense. The longer you live the longer your minions will have to whittle down an enemy. Giving us options to make them live longer themselves/boon strip/remove conditions gives us different options to how we can build at the same time. There isnt just one MM build because of that
Edit: softspoken you do make a good point about the lack of corruption traits. There should be more for those skills. But complaining about the grandmaster traits both being centered around minions is a bit lame. Someone could just as easily say they were mad about both grandmasters in SR being for DS. If you dont want those traits then pick something else. If there is nothing else why are you still going down that line? They cant give us everything in every trait line otherwise the whole trait system would be pointless. Picking and choosing what you want comes at the price of sacrificing something else in another area.

I just wish Reanimator and Protection of the Horde did not exist. That would fix my HUGE issue with playing a staff-using, non-minion necro. Both are bad for non-minion builds.

danbuter.2314:

I just wish Reanimator and Protection of the Horde did not exist.

Yes!
Even for minion masters those traits are mediocre at best.

Make them more meaningful (more jagged horrors, or stronger ones), or just axe them.

My personal “gripe” with our traits is how absolutely boring most of them are. This is slightly in line with what Softspoken has mentioned, in that it seems a large portion of the traits available simply are “Percentage Based” traits. What I mean by this is that traits aren’t creative, but rather along the lines of “X does Y% more damage” or “X recharges Y% faster”. While inherently useful, these traits don’t tend to reward creativity or ingenuity, which is how some new builds tend to be formed.

Let’s perform a quick count of “Percentage Based” traits (excluding minors, since they are obtained without choice)

Spite

• Death’s Embrace – Deal 50% more damage while downed.
• Spiteful Talisman – Focus skills recharge 20% faster and have increased range.
• Signet Mastery – Signets recharge 20% faster.
• Spiteful Marks – Marks deal 10% more damage.
• Training of the Master – Minion damage is increased by 30%.
• Axe Training – Axe damage is increased and axe skills recharge 20% faster.
• Close to Death – Increases damage by 20% to enemies below 50% health.

Curses

• Hemophilia – 20% increased bleeding duration.
• Master of Corruption – Corruption skills recharge 20% faster.
• Banshee’s Wail – Warhorn skills recharge 15% faster, and their effects last longer.
• Spectral Attunement – Spectral skills have longer durations and grant life force on use.
• Lingering Curse – Conditions inflicted by scepter skills last 33% longer.

Death Magic

• Minion Master – Minion skills recharge 20% faster.
• Staff Mastery – Staff skills recharge 20% faster.
• Flesh of the Master – Minions have 50% more health.

Blood Magic

• Dagger Mastery – Dagger skills recharge 15% faster.
• Bloodthirst – Siphoning health is 50% more effective.
• Ritual Mastery Wells recharge 20% faster.
• Quickening Thirst – Move 15% faster while wielding a main hand dagger, move 10% faster while wielding an offhand dagger.

Sould Reaping

• Vital Persistence – Life force drains 25% slower while in death shroud.
• Path of Midnight – All death shroud skills recharge 15% faster.
• Spectral Mastery – Spectral skills recharge 20% faster.
• Speed of Shadows – Move 15% faster while in death shroud.
• Master of Terror – Fear you inflict lasts 50% longer.
• Near to Death – Death Shroud recharges 50% faster.

I’m certainly not against Percentage Based traits at all. My concern is that many of these traits don’t particularly allow for great levels of diversity and creativity. In their design, they “tell” you how to use them. "This one decreases recharge times, so you use the same skill(s) more often! Spam that skill and feel the non-monotonous creative juices bubble within you! "

I may just be a noob (and I am), but Percentage Boost traits seem to usually make “poor” builds better.

I don’t want traits that turn a mediocre build into a decent one. I want traits that turn a good build into my build.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read my silly post. Have a nice day and take care everyone! <3 Necro

flow.6043:

station.6421:

Not a utility skill, I know, but staff has 4 traits spread across 3 trees.

Spiteful Marks (Spite)
Greater Marks (DM)
Staff Mastery (DM)
Soul Marks (SR)

Necro trait tree is an absolute joke. Most of these traits could be merged and replaced with more interesting ones. Which probably won’t happen until a major patch like an expansion, unfortunately. Even then, I’m doubtful whether they’ll be fixed.

This is the perfect example of why a seemingly unnecessary dispersion of similar traits makes absolute sense. It’s because they serve different purposes.
1. Greater Marks and Staff Mastery are in the same line anyway, and that makes sense.
2. Soul Marks does not improve your staff skills per se but your life force gain. And many builds that heavily implement death shroud in their playstyle use the staff anyway. Therefore it has to be in the Soul Reaping line.
3. Spiteful marks, more damage ->Spite, nuf said.
I’m not sure if anyone ever uses that one though. Conditionmancers certainly don’t need a 10% increase to the relatively low and unfrequent damage of the marks and power builds usually have better alternatives (maybe this should be an adept trait?).

On the other hand, let me ask you this: Would you rather have all of those 4 traits in the same line? Or all of the minion traits in the same? No, because if you want more than 3 then they need to be in different lines.

My complaint isn’t the fact that they’re spread out; I actually agree that it helps give more build options. My complaint is that it’s just bloat. All four traits could be reduced to 2, and it would allow for more build diversity. Necro’s need some consildation to allow more room for interesting trait choices. Like, seriously, 9 minion traits is out of control… and i can’t even get a kitten vigor trait!

Trait trees are plagued with boring traits that really don’t offer much in terms of game play other than just very one-dimensional dps boosts. See Omega’s post. It isn’t a problem unique to necro obviously, but necros do seem the worst offenders.

Bryker.5719:

Edit: softspoken you do make a good point about the lack of corruption traits. There should be more for those skills. But complaining about the grandmaster traits both being centered around minions is a bit lame. Someone could just as easily say they were mad about both grandmasters in SR being for DS. If you dont want those traits then pick something else. If there is nothing else why are you still going down that line? They cant give us everything in every trait line otherwise the whole trait system would be pointless. Picking and choosing what you want comes at the price of sacrificing something else in another area.

One major difference is that SR boosts death shroud intrinsically in one of its attributes, and that every build (like it or not) has death shroud. High toughness builds exist without being minion builds, and boon duration doesn’t seem relevant to minions in the slightest. Plus it’s a lot more feasible to have a build without minions than a build without death shroud.

It’s not a big deal though, because it’s literally the last thing in that line. I’d rather have the grandmaster traits be niche than almost anything else in the tree.

Bhawb.7408:

Make them more meaningful (more jagged horrors, or stronger ones), or just axe them.

I agree. I like some of the concepts behind them, but just feel like they could be made more impactful and thus, more interesting. I have ideas for this but they’re not well formed and probably better placed in a different thread.

OmegaProject.9831:

My personal “gripe” with our traits is how absolutely boring most of them are. This is slightly in line with what Softspoken has mentioned, in that it seems a large portion of the traits available simply are “Percentage Based” traits. What I mean by this is that traits aren’t creative, but rather along the lines of “X does Y% more damage” or “X recharges Y% faster”. While inherently useful, these traits don’t tend to reward creativity or ingenuity, which is how some new builds tend to be formed.

Let’s perform a quick count of “Percentage Based” traits (excluding minors, since they are obtained without choice)

-list snip-

I’m certainly not against Percentage Based traits at all. My concern is that many of these traits don’t particularly allow for great levels of diversity and creativity. In their design, they “tell” you how to use them. "This one decreases recharge times, so you use the same skill(s) more often! Spam that skill and feel the non-monotonous creative juices bubble within you! "

First, I meant in the context of minion traits, although I’m starting to second-guess my judgement on that.

Second, while I agree that most of these % boosts are boring, others really aren’t. Death’s Embrace is a massive boost in damage, in a very restricted, edge-case environment. I honestly feel like it has an interesting role. Near to Death also counts, since the 5 second DS enables the double-tap builds that keep really high uptime on fury and retaliation, or other such gimmicks like consistent healing from Deathly Invigoration.

I’m now on edge about Flesh of the Master and Training of the Master though. Both are pretty drastic boosts, and could be used to define if your minions are there to soak damage or to deal it.

So I feel like % changes can be really interesting when they’re quite dramatic. Otherwise yes, I agree they can be boring. Effective, but a little boring, because they don’t change/form your playstyle so much as they just cement it.

Trait trees aren’t there so you can play Dress Up with your necro, thats what dyes, armor, and weapons are for. Trait trees are for the stats side of the game, where you make your build more efficient at what it does. If that is a straight statistical increase, fine, if that makes something a bit flashier like Death Nova, cool.

But they are there to define your build and allow you to fine tune exactly what you want from what you are doing. If you want more utility, then grab some traits that give utility, if you need more damage grab some traits that pack a punch, if you need to survive longer then pick up something along those lines. Traits are the other pieces of the puzzle that fit in with your runes, gear stats, weapons, and utilities to define your build, and just like the rest of them, they have trade offs. If I pick up a minion trait, I can’t grab that bit of personal damage or defense. If I pick up reduced well CDs, maybe I can’t get stability. That trade off keeps builds from being OP.

Like Softspoken said about me, certain traits are meant to cement your build, to be that last little bit of min/maxing, while other traits (like Terror) define the very essence of your build. They both have meaningful places.

TL;DR, you’re complaining about the very nature of how traits work. I agree that a few traits could be swapped around, but not in the way you are talking about.

Bhawb just hit the nail on the head with that last post. I would just like to add that a few professions have kinda mislead how people veiw traits in general. Look at eles, they have these two traits lines that have so many good things in them that it is very difficult to move away from those to actually make a unique build using other lines. Those lines are very likely going to beneefed or reworked until they have a tree just like ours…useful traits spread out among multiple lines but unable to get everything they could want like they can now.

Bhawb and Softspoken — Thank you for your time in reading my post, and I apologize if it sounded like I was overly complaining about the traits, as that was not my intention. Regardless, your insight and views are greatly appreciated, and you are absolutely correct in your assessments. Take care and have a nice weekend!

OmegaProject.9831:

Bhawb and Softspoken — Thank you for your time in reading my post, and I apologize if it sounded like I was overly complaining about the traits, as that was not my intention. Regardless, your insight and views are greatly appreciated, and you are absolutely correct in your assessments. Take care and have a nice weekend!

No worries, I didn’t think you were complaining too much, just trying to explain my thoughts on why there are a significant number of traits overall with what you were talking about.

OmegaProject.9831:

Bhawb and Softspoken — Thank you for your time in reading my post, and I apologize if it sounded like I was overly complaining about the traits, as that was not my intention. Regardless, your insight and views are greatly appreciated, and you are absolutely correct in your assessments. Take care and have a nice weekend!

Don’t get worked up over it. :P

I think I agree with you: the traits are good! It’s just too bad they couldn’t be more interesting at the same time, but there’s nothing wrong with being straightforward, clear and useful.

@Bhawb
I’m complaining about a single type of trait, minions, occupying the glut of our trait options and not leaving space for traits that benefit other ability types.

Guess what, even if 2 Necros pick the same equips and skills they can achieve different results based on traits, because those skills may work differently, since they customized those skills in a different manner.

For any Necro that doesn’t use minions this leaves them with a whole 9 traits that are dead for him and if this Necro uses utility skills without traits or whose traits are on horrible places for his desired build, like the well-bomber who wants reduced cooldowns, he gets off even worse.

For months we’ve had a consensus that out traits are badly laid-out I’m just trying to pinpoint the exact points that give that impression, an overabundance of minion traits is part of the problem. With that in mind I’ve proposed a solution, take out some minion traits and include traits for other ability types, personally I’d want more for corruption.

And having well thought-out traits doesn’t make us OP it just makes our lives easier.

you are arguing that if a necro runs without minions 9 traits are wasted. good point I guess. but look at a warrior. how many of their traits relate to certain weapons and they have so many weapons that they must have alot of dead traits too. Having useless traits using certain builds etc isnt just a necro thing.

I think the class has an assumption inherent in the design that we will always have at least 1 minion skill slotted.

That is the only explanation of why our trait tree is so heavily slanted toward these skills, especially when compared to the Engineer tree that has only a few lackluster Turret traits.

Also, I take issue with the tendency we have to see all these minion traits and feel we must take as many of them as possible and as many minion skills as we can fit on the bar. It becomes too much to juggle and ends up sacrificing our build in other places, such as basic survival.

Bull Zooker.1672:

you are arguing that if a necro runs without minions 9 traits are wasted. good point I guess. but look at a warrior. how many of their traits relate to certain weapons and they have so many weapons that they must have alot of dead traits too. Having useless traits using certain builds etc isnt just a necro thing.

2 wrongs don’t make a right. I think the number of traits dedicated to a single type of skill is ridiculous and if warriors think they have too many dead traits because they relate to weapons they don’t use then it’s a problem as well.

However, from what I’ve seen the traits seem pretty spread out, with each weapon having at most 2 traits exclusive to it. The trait distribution over all available weapons is balanced and some traits affect multiple weapons. This is not the case with our utility traits.

To be honest the entire trait system is a mess for all the classes. Probably my least favorite part of the game (and build design is my favorite part of any game usually). Between that and the disaster that elite skills tend to be all the classes need a lot of work.

I’d rather have trees and have the ability to have Wells Master, or Minion Master, or Staff Mastery and have those build up to a really good trait at the end. As it is I have 30 in Death Magic for my build. All 3 major traits are adept and 2 of the 3 minor traits are worthless. This wouldn’t happen if we had some sort of tree system instead of this lazy linear junk.

Oh, and why are staff skills in the Minion-Toughness line?