Guild Wars 2

A completely selfish suggestion, but I’d like to see these two swapped so Spite is more focused towards damage and Soul Reaping more focused towards utility/control. When creating a direct damage build one doesn’t necessarily desire more condition duration. Likewise when you’re going into Soul Reaping condition duration duration synergizes so much better with the chill/fear in death shroud and the general theme of this line.

Good idea/bad idea?

I had nearly the same idea, but I think giving spite crit dmg would make the spite line too OP.

but maybe giving crit dmg to the blood magic line and healing/vitality to SR would fit better… maybe not vitality since that would make DS too OP =D

It definitely feels awkward to build a direct damage build as a necromancer. Soul Reaping gives you good tanking abilities as a damage focused necromancer, but it shouldn’t be mandatory.

In any case we don’t really have a great setup to support a direct damage build. Dagger traits are tanking traits and the axe is just sad for damage (but a great support weapon).

They should give us Minions that modify our secondary stats instead of forcing Trait line specializations. It would require making minion HP higher or removing the recast cooldowns, but it would be a functional way to make Necro multi-faceted like all other classes.

As it sits right now Necro has two choices:

1) Group Support + Condition Swapping and Rez Signet
2) Death Shroud Tank + Condition Swapping and Rez Signet

And both of those are played pretty much exactly the same way. So really the only difference in Necro is what Jewelry you choose. Every build you can use effectively is the same. And now with the damage reductions we no longer have a viable burst option. Conditions and DS are not Necro. That is a Warlock.