Guild Wars 2

I was thinking reanimator could be less of a regretful choice if it offered more to non-minion specs, while keeping the general flavour of the trait. I am suggesting that instead of a jagged horror being spawned on a kill, it could be an icy simulacrum, which still fits the whole reanimation theme.

The simulacrum would still have its’ health ticking down, but on death it would explode and leave an ice combo field, which the necromancer could use to gain frost armour.

The well would be a well of rime which pulses and lasts the same as the other wells. Each pulse applies a short duration of chilled and some damage, for every 5 successful pulses on an enemy, an icy simulacrum would spawn with a max of perhaps 3 icy simulacrums at once. This would be harder to bring in to full effect against one enemy, but could cause chaos among groups.

Maybe add a trait somewhere that makes simulacrum explosions remove a boon, although I wouldn’t want it to outclass well of corruption.

I would rather see it tweaked in a different way – the automatic summon would only work when I have other minion skill equiped. Death magic has some great traits (Greater Marks, Staff Mastery) but Reanimator ruins the fun for non MM build with useless summon that runs back and forth pulling aggro of everything.

Or maybe a 10% chance to summon for each minion skill you have, so 50% at best. While I haven’t seen how they work at 80, I have yet to see where I was glad to get a Jagged Horror. Assuming they still die in seconds at level 80, I only see them being useful for a few seconds of +20 Toughness and Death Nova.

With alot of healing power and using staff constantly for regen you can keep them up indefinitely now, I’ve had 4 I think was the most at once. That is really hard to do seeing as the regen only affects a certain number of targets, but since they cut down its bleed-out damage if you’re in a situation where the mobs/players don’t aoe (lol, never) the little buggers can actually stack bleeds pretty nicely. Of course the amount of times the stars align for situations like that is extremely rare, the skill definitely needs a buff..they shouldn’t even bleed out at all.

How i would like to see the trait changed:
A Jagged Horror is summoned. When it dies, it takes 20 seconds until a new one rises (no corpses/kill needed).
The horror has no life degen and you can only have one at a time.
Out of combat, it does nothing, just follows you; in combat, it runs to your target and blows up (just like mesmer-illusions, when you hit the shatter-hotkey).

Remove the one every 30s limitation
Remove the self bleeding
Add a limit to having 10 max

Build up is the definition of attrition – so why limit to one every 30s?

If that’s too powerful, then make it so they don’t give you lifeforce on death.

Jagged Horror shouldn’t be automatic – it’s as simple as that. There’s absolutely no reason for some version of it not to be a major trait that you can choose, but to have a minion thrust upon when you want to put points into Death Magic for toughness or traits unrelated to minion builds isn’t fair. It’s just not. Mesmers don’t have a minor trait that gives them a quick, weak phantasm or clone, Elementalists don’t have a minor trait that summons a mini-elemental, Engineers don’t have a minor trait that drops a turret when X condition is met, etc.

Minion mastery is fine, and you should be able to fully spec into it. But you should also be able to completely avoid it (as you’re able to avoid similar builds in other professions while still traiting to your liking).

Are you talking about introducing a well as purely trait-based? Either way I don’t think such an ice well will ever happen. For one, there are already 4 well utilities, and another well wouldn’t fit with the whole “4 of each skill type” (wells, spectral, corruption, signet, minion). If it were trait based only, it’d be a reiteration of well of darkness + chilling darkness – AoE which applies chill on blind. And to have it summon your simulacrum things PLUS remove a boon per pulse…I just don’t think it’s different or balanced enough to warrant any consideration. :-/