Guild Wars 2

…or at least increase marks’ default range to 240.
It now takes these two traits to even consider using the staff as one’s main weapon, and this penalize A LOT anyone aiming to play a Minion Master (as many minion’s traits are in the Death Magic traitline too).
Just posting this in the hope a Dev reads it.

Full agreement on this. Having four separate traits in three trait lines for one weapon is beyond silly.

Either merged or just flat out increase the radius of marks. Shouldn’t have to expend a major to get one weapon in working order.

Edit: That goes for staff ele as well and any other class where these shenanigans are going on. These are AOE weapons, so why do I have to spend points to make them AOE?

Any other wishes, after all they ARE free? How about Marks triggering on walls and siege weapons? Or downed foe? What about underwater marks…err wait what? I know marks on PvE boss target that is not mobile!

Cempa.5619:

Any other wishes, after all they ARE free? How about Marks triggering on walls and siege weapons? Or downed foe? What about underwater marks…err wait what? I know marks on PvE boss target that is not mobile!

I only got you are ironic because you spoke of “underwater marks”, because all the other things you mentioned seems completly reasonable to me.
It’s not like staff does huge damage aside from mark 2 and 3 conditions, and downed players/walls/siege weapons are immune to conditions anyway (as de-facto are world bosses due to the bleeding cap and poison stacking in duration).

Anyway I didn’t ask for any of those things.

Yes I agree with the OP. Anyone willing to use the staff needs to invest in both these traits. They might as well make them one trait.

This is a big bottleneck to necro diversity. If you are running staff the enlarged marks are a requisite, shorting you 10 points anywhere else you might like.

If Anet is keen on diversity even within build styles, they should make them bigger by radius by default, then merge the unblcokable with the cooldown trait.

Staff is still too situational outside zerg fights anyway, because most necros just don’t like using auto-attack, outside farming up some LF vs mobs maybe, which makes it always a secondary, swap in/out weapon.

Its a swap in/out weapon but its abilities are extremely powerful otherwise. That is the point to me of being able to swap weapons.

Yes, staff marks are worthless without the Death Magic II trait. What they should do, as others have suggested, is to make the greater marks radius (just the radius) the default for staff and change the Staff Mastery to make marks unblockable and reduced recharge.
Currently, staff without death magic II is absolutely worthless.

One problem though, is that staff, as it is, is the most commonly used necromancer weapon in structured pvp and WvW, and I guess if they give it such a buff, it will be even more of a must.

Add soul marks into the combo as well.

Totally agree with OP.
Staff’s marks need to be larger by default and combine unblockable effect with 20% CDR into one trait, give us another trait on Death Magic with attrition tematic to fill the placeholder left by the combination.

Absolutely agree with this. /signed. With pretty much every class’ weapon cooldown skills being mashed together with the corresponding weapon buffs, this should be a no-brainer.

Please don’t mention this or they’ll move it to a grand master trait.

Jokes aside. Yes. I’d sign this with my blood if necessary. Please, Anet, please, I beg you, merge the traits. Or atleast make one of the the 5 point trait and one the 10 point. It’s really really really annoying to have to commit to 20 points in an otherwise “not that great”-Traitline (the other options considered. I’d love to go for more soul reaping.)

Actually, this HAS been suggested quite a few times.

Too bad ANet don’t care.

psygate.5632:

Please don’t mention this or they’ll move it to a grand master trait.

At least it would be one less Minion grandmaster.

I would really like to see this change as well.
I’d say more, but it’s all pretty much been said xD; It would be a good change, I think.

I thought this was so stupid obvious… Staff without Greater Marks (at least) is completely useless.

Either merge the traits or make Greater Marks default on the staff. As it is it punishes everyone. MM builds will need to sacrifice 2 MM traits for staff to be viable, and non-MM builds need to sacrifice 20 points in a kittenty tree (for non-mm builds).

Yeah, this has been suggested a million times already. I’m still crossing my fingers for this to change at some point.

Like Pendragon said, it creates an unnecessary bottleneck for many builds.

The one thing that makes sense is bigger size by default and merge unblockable with shorter cooldowns.

I really enjoy traiting as a minion master, without minions just to get some survivability and usefullness to be honest ^^

The more i look at the necro the sillier it becomes XD

BTW still waiting for my well of silence.. just saying..

The unblockable part is actually pretty huge, might end up just being bottlenecked into taking the new staff mastery with the unblockable part. The best thing would probably be to just make greater marks completely baseline and would be nice to make soul marks baseline as well, heh.

Well the upside is that with greater marks you don’t have to have pin-point precision and near clairvoyance to land default Marks. I think I could live without the unblockable effect, or at the very least learn to time my marks for when the target isn’t invul of blocking.

Due to the staff CD’s (as I never take the CD reduction anyway) and damage overall, I feel it’s mostly a utility weapon so really anything going through a block isn’t going to effect much anyway. Really all the unblockable effect does for me is let me begin my rotation slightly sooner and the only time I ever really notice it being useful here is against a shield carrying Warrior or a Guardian. Even then, it isn’t that noticeable to me. Most other professions rarely seem to block and instead either stealth (Mes, Thief) or go completely invulnerable or evade anyway (Engi, Mes, Ele, Ranger, Thief)—thus the unblockable effect does nothing. Invuls and evades are way more common than blocks due to the majority of professions having those over blocks.

This is just specifics to me though, as I said, and I have no idea how others would see the change. I’m not sure it would be quite the bottleneck we have now though.

Well I get the feeling that people underestimate it by a lot. Then suddenly 50%+ of your marks start getting blocked lol.

Iceflame.5024:

Well I get the feeling that people underestimate it by a lot. Then suddenly 50%+ of your marks start getting blocked lol.

Totally agree. People usually don’t realize that with Great Marks trait every single mark you land hits on the enemies in range, that’s really important.

In conclussion, I’d suggest making greater marks baseline and move the unblockable effect to Staff Mastery. This way, we will have a useful weapon without investing traits on it, a better trait for it (Staff Mastery: 20% CDR and marks are unblockable) and a new place for a new trait on Death Magic line.

People will just end up being bottlenecked into staff mastery that way, so nothing really changes. Greater marks should fully be made baseline with the unblockable part.

Iceflame.5024:

People will just end up being bottlenecked into staff mastery that way, so nothing really changes. Greater marks should fully be made baseline with the unblockable part.

That’s definitely an avenue Anet could take, but it could be a little overpowered considering you could technically invest no points in making staff better and still have it dominate the field of battle (unblockable AoEs is a big deal imo worthy of having to be traited). The problem is the initial radius of Staff being kitten and having to invest in at least Greater Marks to get anything out of the weapon.

So if I was reworking Death Magic I would, like others, make Greater Marks AoE default, merge Greater Marks unblockable with Staff Mastery. Then replace Greater Marks with an attrition boosting trait.

I would also move Staff Mastery to a Master trait (yes, I would do that) and move Spiteful Vigor or Reaper’s Protection down to Adept. Then I would merge Reanimation and Protection of the Horde into Minion Master and Flesh of the Master respectfully. Then use those empty innate trait slots for additional attrition, reactive CC or mitigation traits usable by all Necros, not just MMs or a Necro with Flesh Golem.

Death Magic as a whole would be fixed then… imo

Well Staff is mostly a utility weapon and it has a trait in SR called soul marks which is really important. I don’t see how you can call it to be dominating when all of the marks barely do any damage outside of putrid mark and even that means something only in WWW. Is it all around dominating in the current state where everyone takes greater marks and staff? I don’t think so.

Moving staff mastery into the 20 tier and reaper’s protection into the 10 tier sounds nice. But again, in the end the importance of the unblockable part is enormous. If you just make greater marks radius baseline and merge unblockable into staff mastery, people will end up being bottlenecked into staff mastery. A lot of marks will suddenly start getting blocked, a LOT!!!! If you then move staff mastery with the unblockable part into the 20 tier, then people are bottlenecked into 20 death magic and a lot of people will cry about, I will.

Making greater marks fully baseline with the unblockable might sound too much to ask for to someone, but I explained the other 2 possible situations which are not really ideal and don’t bring much of a change or improvement. End result would be bottlenecking us into 10 or 20 death magic points.

I very, very rarely have issues with marks being blocked at all. The issue isn’t having them blocked, its having a tiny location that enemies avoid by accident that requires Staff to be traited in order to be useable right now.

If the Greater Marks radius was made default, then you wouldn’t be forced to trait staff just to be useable. You would trait it to make it better.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I very, very rarely have issues with marks being blocked at all. The issue isn’t having them blocked, its having a tiny location that enemies avoid by accident that requires Staff to be traited in order to be useable right now.

If the Greater Marks radius was made default, then you wouldn’t be forced to trait staff just to be useable. You would trait it to make it better.

Do you mean you rarely have your marks being blocked without greater marks or with greater marks? If you mean with them, then ofc you won’t have them blocked a lot since greater marks makes them unblockable. And which part of the game are you talking about? I’m mostly talking form the sPVP perspective.

Remember that our marks can be dodged too.

I don’t see the need, to merge recharge and mark size in one trait. The reason for saying that is the following. Opening up 10 more trait points for the necromancer would be too strong inho. I myself find myself already being very strong in WvW. Now haveing 10 more trait points, I could go for the stability DS trait… I would be invincible^^ (not considering, that there are for example super combination ranger traits lowering recharge and range of all off hand weapons)

Of course, it is weird, that staff not traited is very weak. And to hold trait points in a skill tree, just that one can finally use a weapon the way it’s supposed to, is a bad design. And the trait line, except the toughness and boon duration, doesn’t offer much, with those random minions and the unnoticable low toughnes increas with minions. The 25 points trait might be interesting to power necros, but then again, I would rather go for precision then, or even invest in DS. But I’m getting off topic.

I agree on the sugestion to increase basic mark area of effect (but still smaller than the traited mark size) to make staff, even untraited, a viable weapon.

PvE and WvW are where I am referring (I don’t do much sPvP, but I imagine the same issue exists there). In my ventures into PvP, I’ve really never ran into lots of blocking issues (I usually fight with scepter/dagger and ground targeted wells, so I would notice blocks).

The default area on staff marks right now is so small that enemies (both NPC’s and players) avoid them by accident, just with their typical movements.

Dodging through marks is a different issue, but since every attack can be dodged, I don’t see that as a huge problem.

Iceflame.5024:

Well Staff is mostly a utility weapon and it has a trait in SR called soul marks which is really important. I don’t see how you can call it to be dominating when all of the marks barely do any damage outside of putrid mark and even that means something only in WWW. Is it all around dominating in the current state where everyone takes greater marks and staff? I don’t think so.

Moving staff mastery into the 20 tier and reaper’s protection into the 10 tier sounds nice. But again, in the end the importance of the unblockable part is enormous. If you just make greater marks radius baseline and merge unblockable into staff mastery, people will end up being bottlenecked into staff mastery. A lot of marks will suddenly start getting blocked, a LOT!!!! If you then move staff mastery with the unblockable part into the 20 tier, then people are bottlenecked into 20 death magic and a lot of people will cry about, I will.

Making greater marks fully baseline with the unblockable might sound too much to ask for to someone, but I explained the other 2 possible situations which are not really ideal and don’t bring much of a change or improvement. End result would be bottlenecking us into 10 or 20 death magic points.

I see your point and I agree with your points. My changes would bottleneck people into 20 points of death magic to get 100% out of staff. However, right now no one wants to invest in lots of Death Magic because the traits are lackluster as a whole. If we make Death Magic investment worth it by adding nice defensive goodies/anti-CC traits, I think many people would be ok investing points for a Staff Mastery/Unblockable merged trait in the Master line.

On the other hand, moving Staff Mastery with unblockable to Master would somewhat to severely cripple a good amount of builds that use staff currently as you say. So maybe it would be a good idea to leave Staff Mastery in the Adept line (maybe make a trait that adds something else for staff usage). I’m just not keen on the idea of having a 100% unblockable mass AoE skills on staff pickup. I feel that just allows us to wiggle current staff builds into any build without sacrificing specialization.

Again, the source of criticism for investing 10 points in Greater Marks is Staff default AoE is too small and Reanimator is a useless/wasted trait slot in the way of getting that AoE. If you want Staff Mastery as well you also get another near useless trait in Protection of the Horde save for MMs (in which its almost but not quite near useless).

Honestly though, you wouldn’t see me complaining at all if Greater Marks as it is now was just made default.

Well I might be wrong and over dramatic here, but I do still believe that people do not realize that the unblockable part is actually a significant deal, so basically underestimating it. If it’s really not THAT huge, then increasing the baseline mark radius and swapping tiers for staff mastery(while merging the unblockable part here) and reaper’s protection is a good idea, yeah.

Still I get the feeling that there would be lots of situations where putrid mark, chillblains and reaper’s mark will get blocked. Putrid mark and reaper’s mark are very important and have a significant CD.

Make soul marks baseline or merge them into staff mastery too!!!

Iceflame.5024:

Well I might be wrong and over dramatic here, but I do still believe that people do not realize that the unblockable part is actually a significant deal, so basically underestimating it. If it’s really not THAT huge, then increasing the baseline mark radius and swapping tiers for staff mastery(while merging the unblockable part here) and reaper’s protection is a good idea, yeah.

Still I get the feeling that there would be lots of situations where putrid mark, chillblains and reaper’s mark will get blocked. Putrid mark and reaper’s mark are very important and have a significant CD.

Make soul marks baseline or merge them into staff mastery too!!!

I agree with the blocking thing. The reason people don’t notice how much unblockable matters without Greater Marks, is because the default radius is so small that it hardly hits anyone if at all in the first place.

Increase the radius of marks by default and make life siphoning scale with healing power. THEN they should start working on torment and giving us burning… Anet’s prioritizing doesn’t make sense at all!

Do you think there’s some chances to see this in today’s patch?

doubtful Arlen. That would make us happy, and be entirely too logical to implement. Too simple… stop using logic with our class.