Guild Wars 2

All 3 spite minors aren’t cohesive with the line, and don’t do enough relating to power (aka doing more damage) or condition duration(need conditions for it). They simply don’t make sense where they are at. Furthermore, they aren’t good traits period. Gaining health when you kill a foe is somewhat useful in wvw, but everywhere else people don’t die enough to proc it often. Healing power isn’t that useful in a damaging line (There is a healing power line for that), and while it can be useful in a well build with well of blood there shouldn’t be forced healing power on a class with minimal healing power skills on a normal build. Far and away the worst is the Grandmaster Spite minor Siphoned Power. One stack of might for dropping below 25% health. Literally 1 stack of might, that’s 35 power for falling below 25% health. To me it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game because it has such a minimal impact and you invest 25 points for it.

I realize that was a massive rant, but Anet needs to change the classes traits in this game to actually fit the tree that the trait is in. Furthermore, the traits need to have real value because there are too many traits that are either far too niche, or are simply outclassed in every way. If they changed these 3 traits to benefit group dps, or give us a serious power boost then maybe necromancers would be more viable in dungeons, and the power builds might become even more prevalent especially in higher level play. I would suggest might or vulnerability stacking, but anything that increases dps instead of giving us healing and 35 power would be preferable to what these traits are now.

I think a lot of the traits (both minor and major) have this problem of inconsistency. All the connections seem random or non-existant. It’s much more fun when you build up your character and realize “Hey, this would work well with this, this and this!”. Rather than having very rare possibilities for synergy, it would be more interesting to have enough of them to start thinking about prioritizing instead of desperately finding one single link. Ok, maybe it’s not entirely the case, but the problem does exist and I do hope they will work on it in a later update.

Going back to the topic about Spite… I do agree that the minors aren’t too great, but I have found the first two to be useful for my build (MM Necro). While not great, it’s not utter beep. I have to also address that I run mainly in PvE, so the benefits from these traits are far greater. The last one… 5 trait points to get Might when close to death? I could work with it if it was a 3 point trait but 5? I dunno. For me it just feels a bit too much.

zapv.8051:

Far and away the worst is the Grandmaster Spite minor Siphoned Power. One stack of might for dropping below 25% health. Literally 1 stack of might, that’s 35 power for falling below 25% health. To me it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game because it has such a minimal impact and you invest 25 points for it.

The description of Siphoned Power reads (emphasis mine):

Gain might when struck while your health is below the threshold.

As far as I can tell, that description is accurate. If you get hit five times and you are under 25% health, you get five stacks of might (each lasting 5s). If there is an internal cooldown, it is a short-ish one.

One can certainly say many things about this minor (e.g. not every build or playstyle can or will benefit from might when you have little health left), but probably not that ‘it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game’.

Mickk.6875:

zapv.8051:

Far and away the worst is the Grandmaster Spite minor Siphoned Power. One stack of might for dropping below 25% health. Literally 1 stack of might, that’s 35 power for falling below 25% health. To me it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game because it has such a minimal impact and you invest 25 points for it.

The description of Siphoned Power reads (emphasis mine):

Gain might when struck while your health is below the threshold.

As far as I can tell, that description is accurate. If you get hit five times and you are under 25% health, you get five stacks of might (each lasting 5s). If there is an internal cooldown, it is a short-ish one.

One can certainly say many things about this minor (e.g. not every build or playstyle can or will benefit from might when you have little health left), but probably not that ‘it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game’.

That title definitely belongs to either Hard to Catch or Last Refuge, both of which are thief traits.

Siphoned Power is weak, yes, but there is no ICD on it and if you go into death shroud, you can get hit quite a bit without dying, stacking up some decent (if very short-lived) Might. Honestly, I feel they should up the Might duration, but that would probably be enough.

The adept minor is very strong in Largescale WvW.

Still a bad trait. A power (dps) traitline should increase dps. 5 or 10% more dmg vs foes without a boon would be awesome.
Way better then this. A DPS Traitline Minor shouldn´t trigger if u are close to death. And it will not give u any benefit while fullbuffed.
Or if u don´t have any hardhitters (because the fight is nearly over and most skills are on cooldowns, that´s why u dropped such low).

Even heal if u get struck would be better.

The only issue with the 5/15 minors is that they are a bit strange to have in the tree.

Yeah they dont really make sense. The 5pt minor isnt bad though. The 15pt is kind of useless for every build that goes into spite. And the 25pt minor is one of the worst and most useless traits in the game, its not even worthy of a 5pt minor.

15 (or 3 now, I keep forgetting) isn’t useless, although it isn’t amazing. You always have a healing skill, and consume conditions scales really well with healing power, and it also makes the previous minor trait stronger. Its certainly not as useful as, say, if it converted it to vitality, but it still gives something.

Siphoned Power is awful as a Grandmaster trait. It’s a minor at best and even then I’d long for something else. I agree with the OP; the entire trait line is a head-scratcher.

I am glad that they finally reworked the Death Magic tree, however.

Duleshna.7430:

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I completely agree, a lot of our traits are in trees that don’t give stats that help them. For instance, we only have 2 traits in Death Magic that give Boons. That’s the boon duration tree. I’d like it if they moved some of our traits that give boons (which isn’t a ton) into the tree that makes them better, and then move other traits out of that tree. Seeing Death Shiver in Spite for instance would make since, and be awesome.

Mickk.6875:

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Hmm the build editor I was on read differently, but I’ll take your word for it. The problem still remains that getting hit 5 times while under 25% health probably means you are dead. I guess it kind of synergizes with death shroud, but I still don’t think it’s good for a grandmaster minor. Like I said it was a rant, but it has to be among the worst traits in the game for the point investment.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

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Ya fair enough if you could get 10 stacks by going into death shroud at 20% health it might not be bad. The issue I find is that the trait is very reactive instead of proactive. Necros already have an end waited dps boost in close to death. It would probably be better if we could get a front loaded one.

Roe.3679:

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Really, because if enough people are dieing to give you a decent amount of health you have probably already won the fight.

Norjena.5172:

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I would like something like that.

Bhawb.7408:

The only issue with the 5/15 minors is that they are a bit strange to have in the tree.

The 1 point minor is bad, simply put if someone has died I probably don’t need health as much as I would have needed a faster kill. The 3 point is ok, but really shouldn’t be in a dps line.

spoj.9672:

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As above I still don’t like the 5 point, but agree with your other opinions.

The real issue is that the 1 and 3 point minors don’t fit, and the 5 is really underpowered for grandmaster level. I’d like to see some kind of group might stacking, Death Shiver, or a flat power boost in death shroud replacing these because currently they don’t have much of anything to do with Power or Condition Duration.

In general, I could see two ways of sorting traits:

1. All traits relating to a certain mechanic are in the same line. If I want to specialize into that mechanic, I face the choice of picking only 3 of the traits out of 13, and I have to also spend points on a different mechanic (since the other trait lines have traits relating to other mechanics).
2. Each line has traits for each mechanic, so that any spread spec can fully specialize into a single mechanic. On the other hand, within a single line there’s no synergizing traits, only themes.

So the first promotes stacking a line to 30 (or two), the second promotes spreading out further. The first also emphasizes gameplay mechanics, the second design themes.

Both would work well (IMO), but they have to decide on one of them.

The current trait ideas are fine. Each tree has a theme, although some are loosely defined and need fixing, and certain mechanics associated with it. For example while Death Magic is partly the minion tree, Spite has +minion damage because its the damage tree, and blood magic has the siphon trait because it is the siphon/healing tree.

Same with staff, death magic holds the general staff traits to make the base weapon better, spite holds the trait to give more damage, and soul reaping has the LF trait, because those two traits fit those trees.

I agree. Spite minors suck bigtime. Luckily spite majors are pretty sweet.

I really can’t help but feel that most people hate Siphoned Power just because they don’t read it correctly. I don’t really feel that it should be a GM trait, but it’s certainly not the worst trait in the game. Maybe it should be a Master level trait.

It’s reactive as all hell, but it can be pretty neat, to get knocked down to 20%, pop into DS, and then see might stacks start spraying all over you.

And… so what? Dying with 25 stacks of might isn’t any more helpful than dying without them.

Bhawb.7408:

The current trait ideas are fine. Each tree has a theme, although some are loosely defined and need fixing, and certain mechanics associated with it. For example while Death Magic is partly the minion tree, Spite has +minion damage because its the damage tree, and blood magic has the siphon trait because it is the siphon/healing tree.

Same with staff, death magic holds the general staff traits to make the base weapon better, spite holds the trait to give more damage, and soul reaping has the LF trait, because those two traits fit those trees.

Well, thats kinda not true. Stuff like minion condi pull, spectral attunement, focused rituals and mark of revival (both being a mark thus going into DM and like most downed state related traits going into vit/hp or toughness/x trait lines).

Exceptions do not make a rule, especially with how many archaic systems they’ve tried to put in one. I’m not saying they’ve done a perfect job, but each tree has certain themes they tend to stick to in a majority of their traits, and some exceptions, especially for balance reasons (like why Dhuumfire could never have been in Curses GM, despite it fitting that spot far more than Spite).

I’ve found the problems in the spite tree to be… the problems with many necro trees, actually. Most necro minor traits suck, so much so that I completely ignore anything that isn’t in curses, or is Last Gasp:

Parasitic Bond: This is one of those traits I don’t like to use, because it is only works if you’ve already won the fight. But, if you’ve won the fight, you don’t need additional help. If you are fighting against loads of weak mobs… you’re probably killing them before they can do a lot of damage anyway. All in all, I can’t point my finger at one instanced where PB has ever helped me win a battle against anything, PVE or PVP.

Death into life: Healing power is utter crap. Sitting at 2700 power regularly, the addition of 180 healing power accomplishes nothing. Necromancers are lacking both in self healing and group heals, and an extra point or two from siphoning isn’t noticeable.

Siphoned Power: Much like haste at 20% health, this is something I can never take advantage of, because I’m already dead once I hit this point. 20% health for a necro is 3.7k health, and at that point I"m either losing the fight so badly that additional might won’t save me, or the enemy’s burst rotation has pushed beyond this and killed me. In PVE, enemies just don’t attack fast enough for this to matter, or attacks are so strong they go well beyond the 20% mark.

Curses: This trait line is pretty solid in minors.

Armored Shroud: a 9% reduction in damage while in DS. It is better than nothing, by mere fact that it isn’t nothing. At least it helps me win fights…

Soul Comprehension: The LF from deaths can be pretty major, but this is another one of those “only works when we’re winning” traits.

Deadly Strength: Isn’t too bad.

Full of Life: This is a really weak trait, but it is not “bad” like parasitic bond or death into life. Full of Life works when it is needed, and helps you win a fight. Basically, it is what parasitic bond and death into life dream to be. Still, the contribution is barely noticeable, and often overwritten by how easily regen is permanently available from teammates anyway. Never seen it meaningfully contribute.

Vampiric: Life siphoning is bad. When I’m hitting for 6k with the dagger, an extra 33 points of damage means nothing. The 31 points of health also means nothing. But hey: at least it helps you win the fight instead of waiting until after to do something.

Blood to Power: Pales in comparison to deadly strength. Where deadly strength gives you 126+ power based on your toughness always, Blood to Power gives 120 power only when you are above 75% health. So, for power builds, this is less than a 5% increase in damage, but only at the start of the fight.

Gluttony: The additional LF gain is invisible. I’ve never even seen this skill have a noticeable effect. Ever.

Last Gasp: this is an awesome skill, so good that I’m willing to put up with gluttony to get it.

Strength of the Undead: Also not too bad.

Just to mention: it arent just exceptions, necros got the highest total healing power ratios on aoe in game (not counting blast finisher potential since its not really related to healing power, but blast finisher count), Blood to power is good enough (worth the slot), would say same for vampiric if they beefed up base damage and healing by around 15~17, btw its still bugged, tooltip saying on power build to deal 36 and heal for 33, but it actually does just 33 and heals for 32.

Strength of undeath would have been better if they kept it power for every 10% life force (but beefed it to 15 instead of 10).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Curses: This trait line is pretty solid in minors.

Armored Shroud: a 9% reduction in damage while in DS. It is better than nothing, by mere fact that it isn’t nothing. At least it helps me win fights…

Soul Comprehension: The LF from deaths can be pretty major, but this is another one of those “only works when we’re winning” traits.

Deadly Strength: Isn’t too bad.

Wowowowow….. What happened to barbed precision? Did anet replace it?

Barbed precision is in curses.

Strength of undeath should be 10%. Just like other classes dmg mod 5pt minors. Its an alright trait but it needs to be buffed to be on par with what other classes have. Which I have been saying for a long time. Same goes for Blood to power.

spoj.9672:

Deadly strength should be 10%. Just like other classes dmg mod 5pt minors. Its an alright trait but it needs to be buffed to be on par with what other classes have. Which I have been saying for a long time. Same goes for Blood to power.

I think you mixed something up deadly strength is already 10%…
You probably meant strenght of undeath.

Muchacho.2390:

spoj.9672:

Deadly strength should be 10%. Just like other classes dmg mod 5pt minors. Its an alright trait but it needs to be buffed to be on par with what other classes have. Which I have been saying for a long time. Same goes for Blood to power.

I think you mixed something up deadly strength is already 10%…
You probably meant strenght of undeath.

Yeah thats what i meant.