Guild Wars 2

The most common complaint is the internal cooldown being longer than Shroud. I agree with this and I am really surprised ANet has left it this way. With any internal cooldown at all, it breaks all the synergies that this trait could have. If it had no internal cooldown it would have synergy with Speed of Shadows and Unholy Sanctuary, which would make those traits more appealing to take.

Another big problem is even without an internal cooldown it probably wouldn’t be worthy of being a grandmaster trait. It has to compete with Close to Death which is crazy good. I wouldn’t say it competes with the Signets of Suffering because that one is quite build specific.

Signets of Suffering is the only one that benefits condition damage builds, but it is very build specific. Without a bunch of signets it’s not good. This leaves a niche open for Spiteful Spirit which would be for other condition or hybrid builds that don’t use signets, while Close to Death is obviously for power builds.

With all that said I have a suggestion. The trait should do the following:

Spiteful Spirit
Unholy Feast applies 3 stacks of Confusion to enemies for 5s. Cast Unholy Feast when entering shroud. No internal cooldown.

This makes the trait useful for more builds, gives condi necros more AoE for PvE, and buffs the axe.

The change you propose seems interesting, although with added Retal it’d be stronger because with Rabid I still get about 180 retal ticks or so… so that + confusion would be very nice.

This trait as is actually works wonderfully with a condi build. If you’re not in the signet craze, the trait is aweeeesome for a condi build. When you enter DS and have weakening shroud too, thats instant 4 condis on our enemy, which is crazy. I personally think that in many cases a bunch of cover condis beats a single damaging condi. I’m not sure why no one else sees the potential in this trait.

…although I’m all for interesting changes/buffs

This makes no sense. Make the skill no ICD and make normal Unholy Feast a blast finisher, which applies to this, and would then benefit all builds.

make the skill have no icd as well as merge it with the axe trait would be nice

going with the theme of the trait, my version would be
Remove ICD
Make Axe 3 a blast finisher
Cripple effects you apply last 50% longer. Foes under effect of cripple expend extra endurance to dodge
While under the effects of Retaliation, Foes striking you lose endurance for each skill used on you.

tbh this trait cant be saved since it competes with 2 far superior traits.

I’m not a fan of using somewhat memorable and iconic Necromancer’s Hex name from GW1 in GW2 for that trait.

I mean…I know that it doesn’t really matter, but I just don’t like that. Spiteful Spirit should be something more interesting.

Rym.1469:

I’m not a fan of using somewhat memorable and iconic Necromancer’s Hex name from GW1 in GW2 for that trait.

I mean…I know that it doesn’t really matter, but I just don’t like that. Spiteful Spirit should be something more interesting.

The reason I suggested confusion instead of another damaging condition was to make it more like the old GW1 skill.

Bhawb.7408:

This makes no sense. Make the skill no ICD and make normal Unholy Feast a blast finisher, which applies to this, and would then benefit all builds.

This. It would also make builds who take spectral wall better because you can blast it for chaos armour, give us more blind or retaliation. We really lack finishers.