Guild Wars 2

Greetings fellow necromancers. I had an idea to lay out our traits the other night and then assign them grades according to their usefulness. Some of our traits are basically givens or necessary for most builds; some are specific to certain builds; and some, well, some are… well, worthless. What I would like, is an honest, straightforward, realistic discussion about our traits. Obviously, I will give you my opinion, and you can tear it apart, shark style. I grade these scales taking into consideration their level (i.e. adept vs. grandmaster), their usefulness, and to some degree in comparrison with other classes. Ok, so without further ado. here are our Spite Traits.

Traits in the Spite line
Minor Spite Traits:
Adept(5) – Parasitic Bond: Gain life whenever you kill something. I find this to be a decent trait for the adept level. In large scale fights, like wvw, this is noticeable, and helpful, and sometimes I only go into the power line 5 to just get this trait. Thus, I give it a grade of A.
Master(15)- Death into Life: 5% of power is given as a bonus to healing. I have never seen the effects of this, noticed it, or based any builds around it. Essentially, I find it relatively useless and out of place. I could be wrong, but it just is so underwhelming, I give it a D.
Grandmaster(25) -Siphoned Power: Gain might for 5s when hit and under 25% health. Ok, So I am 25% health, I get hit, and i get might for 5s? Utterly useless. one might when I am about to die that lasts the amount of time it takes for me to heal and cast a spell or two is worthless. This is an F grade trait. I am ashamed for the devs for this trait, what were they thinking? I would skip this skill entirely because it is useless.

Major Spite Traits:
Adept – Death’s Embrace: Deal 50% more damage while downed. Useful in PvP (i.e. tpvp). In Pve, worthless, because if I am dying in PVE, and have to depend on this trait, I suck at this game. In wvw, it does nothing, unless you find yourself in a 1v1 somewhere in the middle of nowhere and its close or there is a low health mob around. In tpvp, i found it useful because most fights are close, or can be close. I give it a B merely for its t/s pvp uses. It is limited to t/s pvp though, thus likely more a B-
Adept – Spiteful Talisman: Focus skills recharge 20% faster and have increased range. Good trait if you delve into a power build and need the CC and vulnerability stacks. I find it helpful when I run Axe/Focus or Dagger Focus. Solid B.

Adept – Spiteful Removal: When you kill a foe you lose three conditions. Ok, I bounce around on this one. In large scale fights, it might be helpful, in pve its worthless, as I usually never die to conditions, and pvp is just to fast paced for this to really help. I give it a C+ to a B-.

Adept – Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster. Ok, well Signets for a necro are pretty much useless to situational, even after the boost to spite signet. For one, most of our signets are useless, or the passives are 100x better that you don’t even use the effect. (i.e. locust, spite). In addition, the cooldowns are so long, that even with a 20% faster refrekittens just useless. The only time I think that this trait becomes needed is really in tpvp when you take the res signet and hope the 180s cooldown will help out, or plague signet. Other than that, I give this a flat C, only because it becomes slightly decent for the res/plague signet. Anything else, it gets a d-.

Adept – Spiteful Spirit: Gain retaliation for 3 seconds when entering Death Shroud. Fair trait, I have used this myself to help absorbe the 100 blade or thief initial burts, and turn it on them. 3 seconds is an eh, but its refreshable every 10 seconds or so, when you go in and out of DS. I give it a B+.

Adept – Reaper’s Might : Life Blast and Plague Blast grant might for 15 seconds. Hmm, I have occasionally used this and benefitted for the 1-2 stacks of might you get before exiting DS. To be honest, I never seem to need the might or at least 1-2 might stacks is not that noticeable. Perhaps if Life Blast was a bit faster on the cast rate i would use this more. It just seems so… slow, thus grade = B.

Master – Spiteful Marks: Marks deal 10% more damage. Hmm, 10%, on marks. I have wavered on this one, but most of the time I end up leave it behind for Chill of Death. Just cant see it being so usefull and the staff, unless traited (i.e. Death Magic) is too cumbersome. I give it a C+.

Master – Signet Power: Activating a signet gives you three stacks of might for 10 seconds. Skipable, never even tried it, as most of my builds use 0 signets, or a signet in a condition where 3 stacks of might is negliable. I give this an F, because this an irritating trait and just never selected.

Master – Training of the Master: Minion damage is increased by 30%. Ok, good if you actually choose minions. I would use this if my minions were useful, attacked, and did their job. So, withuseful minion AI, i give this an A. With the current state of AI, i give this a C+ given that it is so specific to minion builds, and i rarely run minion builds.

Master – Chill of Death : Cast Spinal Shivers on an enemy when they hit 25% health. Good trait, I use this mostly in power builds because it just locks them to you when they are about to die, and you need to finish them. This is a solid trait and I give it an A.

Grandmaster – Axe Training: Axe damage is increased and axe skills recharge 20% faster. I like this trait when I am running Axe/Focus or Axe/Warhorn. I have a hard time choosing actually between Axe Training and Close to Death, as I like Axe 2 and 3 coming off cooldowns so much faster. Thus, I give this trait an A.

Grandmaster - Close to Death: Increases damage by 20% to enemies below 50% health. Another solid trait, I give this an A as well. This trait is what a power build is all about.

When I look at our Spite trait lines, I am impressed with the grandmaster traits and they are useful, especially compared to our other trait lines. Thus, you have my thoughts, please provide yours below. Thanks for your time and I welcome discussion. I will do this with each trait line. I thought of combining all of them, but it gets too cluttered and I would like a solid discussion on each trait line. Thanks. Gryph

Gryph.8237:

-Siphoned Power: Gain might for 5s when hit and under 25% health. Ok, So I am 25% health, I get hit, and i get might for 5s? Utterly useless. one might when I am about to die that lasts the amount of time it takes for me to heal and cast a spell or two is worthless. This is an F grade trait. I am ashamed for the devs for this trait, what were they thinking? I would skip this skill entirely because it is useless.

Adept – Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster. Ok, well Signets for a necro are pretty much useless to situational, even after the boost to spite signet. -snip- C, only because it becomes slightly decent for the res/plague signet. Anything else, it gets a d-.

I don’t think I’ve met anyone that likes Siphoned Power, but honestly my only problem with this is the duration on the might. Because it’s so short, you can’t really take advantage of it. I love the idea of a Necro hanging on at the edge via Deathshroud popping their heal and going back in to finikitten with 8 (or more???) bonus might stacks, but as is, most of that might will expire by the time the heal finishes. The trait isn’t quite there, but it’s so close. D+

It’s nit-picky, but the idea of the trait is fine. Signets come back up faster, so you get more out of their passives and more frequent actives. It’s just that signets themselves are iffy, especially on necromancers.

Gryph.8237:

Master – Signet Power: Activating a signet gives you three stacks of might for 10 seconds. Skipable, never even tried it, as most of my builds use 0 signets, or a signet in a condition where 3 stacks of might is negliable. I give this an F, because this an irritating trait and just never selected.

I also think this is a poor trait, but not just because signets aren’t that great. I just feel like 3 stacks of might is a really boring reward for using a signet. On a few it’s sort of fitting (Plague, Spite) but it doesn’t really match Locust or Undeath. I get that it matches traits on a few other professions, but I’d like to see it (and similar traits on other professions) be altered to match the profession more closely. D because it’s just so bleh, but not actively insulting.

Gryph.8237:

I thought of combining all of [these threads], but it gets too cluttered and I would like a solid discussion on each trait line. Thanks. Gryph

I’ve now posted to each one, I hope I don’t come across as nagging at your or anything. The ones I didn’t pick out of your lists I either generally agreed with, except maybe sliding up or down a letter grade.

I think what the OP said.

I would like to see Axe Training moved to 20 points and Closer to Death moved to another line at 30 points… maybe that would be too much?

Warrior Axe Training is at 20 points…

If you wouldn’t mind going back and perhaps BOLDING your scores… I am going to read it, but my wall of text-o-meter is hurting my eyes.

In response:

Parasitic bond is fine/good in WvW… it isn’t amazing, but given that the on death heal sigils are very popular now when 40 people crash into 40 other people, it definately has a nice place in ZvZ. It’s down right garbage in 1v1, but I can live with that.

Death to life is trash, it just plain is. If our healing power meant more to us, I would care, but since it doesn’t, its a meaningless trait. I would take any other stat over healing power in that position. Vitality would be much appreciated.

I would argue that the 25 point trait in spite is the worst 25 point trait in the game… hands down. If it was under 50% HP it would be better, but still not great. I would rather that it provided might and stole a boon for every hit under 25%. If its too strong, give it an internal cooldown of 2 seconds. Or 1 stack of might and 1 random other boon. I can think of 3 dozen ways to made this better…

Cherry picking some others:

Spiteful Talisman bothers me, because while the increased range is nice, you still must be in close quarters to get the bounce off the focus 4, which sort of defeats the purpose of the increased range. It isn’t a bad trait, it just isn’t amazing. Also I tend to pair focus with either axe or dagger, both of which require me to be in normal focus range anyways…..

Spiteful removal is really not that worthwhile, though I have run it before. Generally in the big fights, when the other guys are dying, you don’t really need condition removal. Most conditions in WvW are short, and the removal is hardly noticeable, especially with a heal, mark, dagger 4 that all remove most if not all conditions.

Signet mastery should have another side effect. 20% reduce cooldown and passive effects stay after use… Then it would be good. This is not just necros, but other classes as well. The thief for instance gets: Signet Use – Gain 2 initiative when activating a signet. Reduces signet recharge by 20%. That is nice, but others are not as lucky.

Spiteful spirit can be okay in a power build, but not so much with conditions.

Chill of death is amazing, and the only great trait worth taking in my opinion.

Spiteful Marks in a very zerker staff heavy build is actually not bad. It is horrible in any other case, because of how limited it is, but if you build around it, it can be good.

Axe train/close to death are both the only reason to go into the tree at all. Personally, if it wasn’t for close to death, I would never go in the tree period. (and if the tree didn’t give condition duration).

Avigrus.2871:

I would like to see Axe Training moved to 20 points and Closer to Death moved to another line at 30 points… maybe that would be too much?

Warrior Axe Training is at 20 points…

That would be amazing to see. Though, I think you’re right about it perhaps being too much. That just might make all the local blacksmiths have their supply of axes bought out

I largely agree with the OP’s ratings on this tree, Spite seems to be a well-made trait line.

I’ve never seen Siphoned Power actually make a difference. When you’re that low on a power build another hit or two will usually end you. Yeah, it needs a revamp.