Guild Wars 2

These two traits sound thematically interesting and seem to be useful, but in use, well, they aren’t stellar. They’re certainly not bad, just not GM worthy. I personally think they should be though:

Spiteful Spirit: It was touched on this patch, but it doesn’t offer anything to sell itself as more useful than Signets of Suffering or Weakening Shroud. So why not change that?

-Entering shroud casts “Unholy Feast” (now dubbed “Spiteful Spirit” since the patch). When Spiteful Spirit strikes an enemy gain fury and consume all stacks of vulnerability on you, healing yourself.
-Fury per stack: 0.5 seconds
-Healing per stack: 75

Unholy Martyr: The name fits the trait-line, but the effect would be better suited elsewhere, at least the condition part.

-Receive a percent of nearby allies’ damage, gaining lifeforce when damaged in this way. Downed/Drowning skills can now be used in your skill-bar.*
-Percent: 10%
Lifeforce: 1.5%
Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 600
*Life Leech could be used as a Healing Skill, Fear/Feeding Frenzy as Utility Skills, and Fetid Ground/ Death Curse as Elite and/or Utility Skills. (I personally like the downed/drowning skills of the class and would like to use them outside of being half dead)

Opinions? Better suggestions?

You’re right that these 2 traits ain’t worse GM.

I like your answer to Spiteful Spirit, it’s a refreshing idea. However, I think there is still the issue of the fact that they don’t want us to be able to be healed in shroud (outside of the siphon effects) that get in the way of this solution.

Unlike Spiteful Spirit, I don’t like your idea for Unholy martyr. I think this trait only need the small addition of giving some life force when you corrupt yourself. Thing that could finally help condi spec to build some LF.

Thanks for your thoughts. Honestly, I was thinking you could attempt to out-sustain the damaged received from my suggestion for Unholy Martyr through siphons, but I certainly see more benefits for lifeforce from self corruption. Regardless, I mostly would like to see the downed/drowning (or something similar) piece implemented, particularly for a fully offensive healing skill i.e. Life Leech.

Dignified Loser.7689:

They’re certainly not bad, just not GM worthy

Since you don’t have to spend points in traitlines anymore, assuming that GM traits need to be better than others is pointless.

Dignified Loser.7689:

Spiteful Spirit: It was touched on this patch, but it doesn’t offer anything to sell itself as more useful than Signets of Suffering

Unless you don’t use signets.

Sidenote regarding this patch: Removing the cd should’ve been done in the very first place, so shaving those 2 seconds off a shroud flash rotation wasn’t really a great buff but the only sensible thing to do.
Also, this skill split actually came with a nerf as well, because now Spiteful Spirit does less direct damage than Unholy Feast. Apparently Anet thought it was too strong…

Spiteful Spirit always did less damage than Unholy Feast, so that’s just the same. Though the tooltips for its combat log ability vs its traitline ability don’t match up. Maybe they forgot to buff the damage as well in this patch?

That it’s flat-out worse than Close to Death or Signets of Suffering is false. The former does barely anything for condi builds, and the latter is only useful for signets. I find I have less issues finishing someone under 50% than I do actually getting them there in the first place, especially factoring in Chill of Death; so I tend to run SS over CtD. SS is also surprisingly effective when run in tandem with Blighter’s Boon, especially when you can hit 3-5 targets. Not only that, you would also be surprised by how much power damage the retal adds, especially with 900-1200 power amulets. SS isn’t bad, it’s just not quite there.

I would agree that it could be given a passive proc that doesn’t require you to be switch into shroud, similar to Weakening Shroud’s ‘weakness on crit’ proc I disagree with Fury, though, as Spite isn’t a crit line. It’s a generic damage line (through multipliers, might, and vuln). Off the top of my head, I’d say retal procs causing might (with an internal cooldown for each opponent hitting you) and/or vuln.

Unholy Martyr isn’t total trash, but it’s just not compelling. Am I running even one Well? Vampiric Rituals is the obvious go-to. Am I running no wells, and I’ll be around someone else and/or have minions? Why would I run UM over Transfusion? The latter helps my allies more, helps my minions way more, and makes you capable of pulling off “Clutch Plays” by pulling a downed ally far away from stomps. There are definitely some builds that could have synergy with it. UM + Shrouded Removal / Plague Signet / Plague Sending / Necromantic Corruption could help you stay in shroud longer while also helping your allies with condition removal. But… meh? The other two are still better.

And… and there’s a glaring hole in the GM choices of Blood Magic. None of them help you in 1v1s. Transfusion does literally nothing for you personally, other than bump your healing meters up. So if I’m running a build without any wells or minions (that I want to keep alive), that’s focused on being by myself, I can just leave that slot unfilled. The obvious trait here would be a big, fat, stinky vamp effect, similar to what Revenants have. Another might be a protection/retal proc with a passive that causes you to be healed whenever someone hits you while protection/retal is up (possibly giving this passive effect to allies in a radius). Hell, give me another button right next to Shroud that lets me bite someone for a kittenload of damage and healing and possibly a stun. Something. Please.

flow.6043:

Since you don’t have to spend points in traitlines anymore, assuming that GM traits need to be better than others is pointless.

This would be true, if ANet didn’t specifically make it not true by designating GM traits to be more impactful. The fact is that GM traits ARE meant to be more powerful than any other traits because that is how ANet has decided they want their system to work.

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

Since you don’t have to spend points in traitlines anymore, assuming that GM traits need to be better than others is pointless.

This would be true, if ANet didn’t specifically make it not true by designating GM traits to be more impactful. The fact is that GM traits ARE meant to be more powerful than any other traits because that is how ANet has decided they want their system to work.

Well, I’ve heard them say such things in some of their streams, but regardless of what Anet or anyone else thinks, it still is a pointless distiction.
Also, to some degree there has to be a designation of gms being stronger, but only as a remnant of the old system. So maybe when they want to buff a grandmaster trait because they don’t deem it “gm-worthy”, they really mean: this trait can be chosen for a slot that used to require a heavy point investment in our old system, and we need to make adjustments in order for it to be an equally viable choice as its two alternatives. And all of those three traits happen to be in a spot that is called grandmaster, that is still its name today but it might as well be called the apple tier. Either way, even though it is pointless, for the sake of simplifying the explanations, let’s just keep saying adept<master<gm.

Dead.5829:

Hell, give me another button right next to Shroud that lets me bite someone for a kittenload of damage and healing and possibly a stun. Something. Please.

That’d be neat. Though I would exchange some of the siphoned health for lifeforce. The trait could be renamed to “Mister Sandman” or some kitten and be an F2 ability.