Guild Wars 2

Good news everyone! In the future, Necromancer will get new traits (as will all professions) so let’s make a few, and pick a winner from the fold! I could be the judge, but who am I to judge? Let’s see if we can get an ANet employee to be the judge. Enough posts and they might read this.

Also, rules! (important)
The challenge is to design an Adept Tier Major trait for any Necromancer Trait line. So make sure your trait is:
- not overpowered (It’s not a Grandmaster Trait)
- balanced (e.g. will not combine too well with another trait)
- interesting and creative
- fits in the chosen traitline

EXAMPLE
Soul Barbs ( Spite )
Gain 5% life force whenever you remove a boon. (5 second recharge)

And…. Go!

explain this
“- balanced (e.g. will not combine too well with another trait)”
most of our traits lacks synergy and you’re proposing the new ones should be the same?

vicious.5683:

explain this
“- balanced (e.g. will not combine too well with another trait)”
most of our traits lacks synergy and you’re proposing the new ones should be the same?

Just don’t make a killer combo. Don’t make a trait that gives you a second of protection whenever you steal health. On face value, it makes dagger 2 better. With vampiric it turns into permaprotect.
By all means, go for synergy. Make a trait that makes going for Withering Precision supercool. just don’t make it too cool. I emphasized ‘too’ there so it stands out.

Reanimator (lose the adept minor)

When a minion dies summon a Jagged Horror in it’s place. (Doesn’t effect Jagged Horrors) Decreases the cooldown on minion abilities by 20%.

(Merged New reanimator with Minion Master)

I bent the rules – I didn’t want to make just an Adept Major.

New Blood Magic Grandmaster:

Shrouded Vitality
Heals and regenerative effects on you while in Death Shroud restore a portion of your Life Force.

New Death Magic Adept Major:

New Blood Master Major Trait:
Corrupted Blood
Gain 20 healing power for each unique condition on you.

New Soul Reaping Adept Major Trait:
Searing Blast
Your Life Blast deals 3% more damage per unique condition on your target.

New Spite Adept Major:

Forstbite. Deals damage to the target when you inflict Chill. (scales off Power)

Makes for an interesting synergy with something the necro is already very good at. Damage wouldn’t have to be high, due to the ease for necros to cause Chill, but on the upside, it’s something every necro can make some use of. It’s also not a DoT, so the damage can’t be cleansed off.

Deathly Oppression: (Replaced Dhuumfire as I don’t feel it fits the tree) When chilling or fearing an enemy you also apply Vulnerability. You deal increased damage to Vulnerable foes. (maybe 1% more damage for every 5 stacks of vuln?)

This can create some useful builds around the focus, which currently lacks a good deal of synergy with, well, anything.

Draehl.2681:

Deathly Oppression: (Replaced Dhuumfire as I don’t feel it fits the tree) When chilling or fearing an enemy you also apply Vulnerability. You deal increased damage to Vulnerable foes. (maybe 1% more damage for every 5 stacks of vuln?)

This can create some useful builds around the focus, which currently lacks a good deal of synergy with, well, anything.

Vulnerability already is in the game, it’s 1% more damage per stack.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Draehl.2681:

Deathly Oppression: (Replaced Dhuumfire as I don’t feel it fits the tree) When chilling or fearing an enemy you also apply Vulnerability. You deal increased damage to Vulnerable foes. (maybe 1% more damage for every 5 stacks of vuln?)

This can create some useful builds around the focus, which currently lacks a good deal of synergy with, well, anything.

Vulnerability already is in the game, it’s 1% more damage per stack.

It is an addition to the current condition, effectively making it more potent than it is currently, but just for yourself. The Chill/Fear part is just to add synergy for the focus in particular. 25 stacks of Vuln would effectively give you +30% damage.

You could probably get the same effect by getting stacks of might when you apply chill.

Thedenofsin.7340:

You could probably get the same effect by getting stacks of might when you apply chill.

You could, but for a few mechanical differences.

-Might is a boon while Spite has condition duration. Maybe if we were talking Death Magic.
-Might does nothing to improve the desirability of Vulnerability. When you’re not running with a group you’re better off continuing to autoattack than bother applying Vulnerability from most sources (excepting Well of Suffering)
-The proposed implementation increases Necro damage in group situations where there may be more stacks of Vuln that you personally couldn’t sustain.

ronpierce.2760:

Reanimator (lose the adept minor)

When a minion dies summon a Jagged Horror in it’s place. (Doesn’t effect Jagged Horrors) Decreases the cooldown on minion abilities by 20%.

(Merged New reanimator with Minion Master)

I like this idea. Its actually something that Necromancers had in GW1 as well. When Shambling Horrors died, a Jagged Horror would spawn in its place.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shambling_Horror
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jagged_Horror

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

New Spite Adept Major:

Forstbite. Deals damage to the target when you inflict Chill. (scales off Power)

Makes for an interesting synergy with something the necro is already very good at. Damage wouldn’t have to be high, due to the ease for necros to cause Chill, but on the upside, it’s something every necro can make some use of. It’s also not a DoT, so the damage can’t be cleansed off.

Change Dhuumfire for Dhuumfrost:
Chilling does damage
Don’t listen to ppl who will say “oh no that would be too OP” it would not.

another one:
Eluding Death
Gain 4% life force when you dodge roll

vicious.5683:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

New Spite Adept Major:

Forstbite. Deals damage to the target when you inflict Chill. (scales off Power)

Makes for an interesting synergy with something the necro is already very good at. Damage wouldn’t have to be high, due to the ease for necros to cause Chill, but on the upside, it’s something every necro can make some use of. It’s also not a DoT, so the damage can’t be cleansed off.

Change Dhuumfire for Dhuumfrost:
Chilling does damage
Don’t listen to ppl who will say “oh no that would be too OP” it would not.

another one:
Eluding Death
Gain 4% life force when you dodge roll

Add “while in combat”. Otherwise, sounds pretty good.

ronpierce.2760:

Reanimator (lose the adept minor)

When a minion dies summon a Jagged Horror in it’s place. (Doesn’t effect Jagged Horrors) Decreases the cooldown on minion abilities by 20%.

(Merged New reanimator with Minion Master)

This.
A million times.

It would make two useless traits a balanced, well-designed useful trait.
It even synergizes well with Death Nova, making dying minions deal a significant pressure in PvE.

Kravick.4906:

vicious.5683:

Eluding Death
Gain 4% life force when you dodge roll while in combat

Add “while in combat”. Otherwise, sounds pretty good.

yeah sure, that’s exactly what I was thinking, tnx

Blood to Life or Spiteful Blood

Life siphon whenever you take damage from a foe.

Consistent with being an adept trait (though it doesn’t necessarily have to be an adept trait), the amount of life siphoning would be low; 20 health per hit at level 80, perhaps. However, it would benefit from Bloodthirst’s 50% improvement to life siphoning and, similar to Vampiric, perhaps it could scale with Healing Power.

The idea being this trait alone is not going to save you in a fight. When combined with Bloodthirst, Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, and/or Vampiric Rituals, it’s one more trait in a blood necro’s arsenal that contributes to their sustain when taking all of their life siphoning skills and traits into consideration.

Personally, I’d like to see it siphon much more than 20 per hit. However, given how lackluster our other sources of life siphoning are at the moment, had I called for any greater amount it would likely have been considered OP.

Spite
Gift of Spite
Whenever you grant yourself Retaliation, nearby allies will gain an equal duration of Retaliation.
Your retaliation effects last 20% longer.

Curses
Curse of the Master
Your minions have a 15% chance to cause one of the following conditions when attacking:
Bleed(2 stacks, 3 seconds)
Poison(2 seconds)
Torment(1 stack, 2 seconds)

Death Magic
Never Waste a Corpse
Whenever one of your minions dies, gain a boon.
Blood Fiend: Regeneration (6s)
Bone Fiend: Retaliation (6s)
Shadow Fiend: Protection (5s)
Bone Minion/Jagged Horror: Might(1/15s)
Flesh Wurm: Swiftness (10s)
Flesh Golem: Stability (5s)

Blood Magic
Toxic Power
Whenever you are poisoned, gain 5 seconds of Regeneration and Vigor. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds.

Soul Reaping
Frozen in Fear
Your Fear effects apply 3 seconds of Chill to the target.

Gift of Spite gives the necromancer more of an ability to grant Boons to its allies, which is something that they’re sorely missing right now. It also directly competes and synergises with Spiteful Spirit.

Curse of the Master makes you feel slightly less silly when you use minions as a condition spec, and allows your minions a solid route to being fire-and-forget attackers in conjunction with Training of the Master.

Never Waste a Corpse fills out the options for a Death Magic-centric Necromancer, and grants a possible consideration for a non-Grandmaster minion-centric trait.

Toxic Power gives the Necromancer a means by which to gain Vigor, and the Regeneration is mostly gravy. Besides, I find it kind of surprising that Necromancers can’t benefit from being poisoned outside of Well of Power. It also makes Corrupt Boon a bit better, though, and I’m not sure that it needs it.

Frozen in Fear gives an option for builds which don’t really rely on Fear too much outside of as an interrupt.

Parasitic Corruption.
grandmaster(30) cursed/blood magic trait.

Applying a condition on foes heals you.

basically something similar sence to Altruistic healing. You as Necro are supposed to be master of corruption/curses. Guardian is a master of boons and as a holy warrior he is healed for applying boons. You on the other hand as necro could also heal, but from applying conditions.

This will make a perfect epidemic hit even more rewarding.

vicious.5683:

Change Dhuumfire for Dhuumfrost:
Chilling does damage
Don’t listen to ppl who will say “oh no that would be too OP” it would not.

This is a good example why you can’t have abilities that are overly synergistic. This would either be pointless without chilling darkness, or insane with it. If you’re talking about doing damage when you apply chills that is. If you mean chill becomes a dot as well as having the regular effect, seems fine.

Mammoth.1975:

vicious.5683:

Change Dhuumfire for Dhuumfrost:
Chilling does damage
Don’t listen to ppl who will say “oh no that would be too OP” it would not.

This is a good example why you can’t have abilities that are overly synergistic. This would either be pointless without chilling darkness, or insane with it.

If it tick for 300 every second as a full conditionmaster(~1500condition) i dont see it to be op at all.

DriV.6203:

Mammoth.1975:

vicious.5683:

Change Dhuumfire for Dhuumfrost:
Chilling does damage
Don’t listen to ppl who will say “oh no that would be too OP” it would not.

This is a good example why you can’t have abilities that are overly synergistic. This would either be pointless without chilling darkness, or insane with it.

If it tick for 300 every second as a full conditionmaster(~1500condition) i dont see it to be op at all.

Yeah I missed the potential for it to be a dot. Ignore me

This is fun. Hmm. I’ll try to think of one for each trait line.

Spite

Feel My Pain
When you hit a target at full health, you lose 10% of your maximum health and your target loses the same amount of health. 60 second internal cooldown.

Curses

Desecration of Refuge
Whenever a foe loses all of your conditions, they are Poisoned for 5 seconds. 15 second cooldown per target.

Death

Graverobber
Whenever you down a foe, you gain one of the boons they had on them (10 second duration for most boons, 3 seconds for Stability).

Blood

Blood Surge
You instantly gain 25% Life Force if struck when below 25% health. 90 second cooldown.

Soul Reaping

Dark Traversal
Dark Path teleports you instantly to your target instead of firing a projectile.

I dunno if these are OP or not but they sound like fun to me.

I’ll give it a shot

Healing Shroud – You can now regenerate Health (to a maximum of 75%) while in deathshround. Apon entering deathshroud gain 4 seconds of regeneration. The 2nd part of this ability can only be triggered once every 20 seconds

Soul reaping (adept Trait)

Leaving out grand master traits is kinda lackluster since some of the necro grand masters suck… Mainly our minor for spite…..

Grand master minor trait… Touch of agony deal 10 damage per hit +.02 damage per power capped at 60 damage to target foe on hit. Procs on all direct damage hits and is not affected by armor functions like vampiric but does NOT heal you

adept death magic minor trait…. Deathly invigoration gain 5 seconds of vigor when something dies near you 15 second cooldown.

Soul reaping combine path of midnight and vital persistance make into a master trait…. Make a new adept major trait called dark renewal…. Allow healing while in death shroud.

Change blood to power grand master blood trait from +5% damage above 90% health to +5% damage while the target is bleeding.

adept blood magic major mark of evasion changed to chilling retreat…. Chills targets around you 350 range for 3 seconds on dodge.

Blood adept combo Vampiric precision and bloodthirst combined and moved to master tier. New major trait Order of the vampire You and allies range siphon 30 health on hit The bloodthirst effect only affects you This would give the necromancer some more group utility like the warriors 170 power, eles healing , rangers 170 precision. This also goes along with the lore from guild wars 1.

I like some but the base traits need to be moved around….

Blood to power switched with death into life.

furious demise switched with parasitic bond, parasitic bond new: gain health when one of your minions die.

the necro traits are just super messy and some are super useless…

Radmage.3741:

furious demise switched with parasitic bond, parasitic bond new: gain health when one of your minions die.

the necro traits are just super messy and some are super useless…

so you want to create a new minion-related minor trait (which is already horrible enough) and put it into curses?

i agree that necro traits are messy but why do you want to make them even messier?

Wanted to make terror more terrorfying.
Terror
When applying a new non-damage condition (blind, chill, cripple, fear, immobilize, vulnerability, weakness) target takes damage (100 damage base at level 80)

Not sure if too op for master trait or if it should get the the 50% bonus effect as well. But would love to test.

Blood Magic – Adept
Take it to the grave
Whenever your minion dies you loose one condition.

Spite – Master
Long cold night
chill duration increased by 20%

This is something I thought of… but idk too much about mechanics or IF can this be made, but it could be quite fun.

Death Magic Grandmaster Trait
Bloody Sacrafice
All summoned minions have their abilities redesigned so that after using it the minion dies
(something like flesh wurm’s attack + modified death nova trait but for every minion)

Blood Fiend: Heals for X hp and cures 2 conditions.
Summon Bone Minions: Explosion causes blindness for all foes for 3 seconds 240 radius finisher blast, poison field for 3 seconds.
Bone Fiend: Immobilizes enemies for 1 1/2 second 200 radius and leaving a field (3 seconds) that cripples for 1 second.
Flesh Golem: Gives the necromancer 3 seconds stability, and launches all enemys (400) in a 200 radius.

It’s just an example values can be changed I’m not so good with balancing but having such trait would be awesome for a MM necro

Blood Magic Master trait level…both aimed at survivability thru mobility…a real weakness at the moment
“Get me out of here”
“When you recover/fight back from being downed you gain 33% movement speed increase for 4 secs”.
or

“Where am I?”
When you recover/fight back from being downed you are teleported a distance of 600 in a random direction"

Blood Magic needs a real worthy and build-defining trait.
What about this?

Soul Feast:
You are healed each time you gain Life Force.

The main idea is this. The healing may vary:
- Fixed amount regardless of how much life force you gain
- Dynamic amount scaling with the Life Force gained
- Converts a portion of Life Force into health each time you gain some.

Super simple trait but something I would really like to see. The distinct lack of Vigor on Necromancers has never made much sense to me since it would seem natural that necros would have a lot of ‘stamina/endurance’ due the the whole sacrificial, self inflicting stuff we got going on.
-
-
Deathless Vigor

Gain X seconds of Vigor for every X amount of life force you generate.
-
-
-

It would work and integrate really well with our current weapon choices. We all know some classes (Guardians, Mesmer, Ranger etc) have traits that gives permanent or near permanent uptime of Vigor.

This would therefore work really well with our weapons, Dagger generates a lot of LF and is also a melee weapon (high risk high reward), so we can afford to stay in melee range for longer since we can dodge more .

Axe is our mid range and mid generator of LF which means we would have Vigor up a lot but not all the time and then there’s scepter with really poor LF regen but better range so less Vigor uptime.

Lastly there’s staff as well of course, would be quite similar to Axe I’d imagine.

So, instead of copying the other professions Vigor trait I think this would make a lot more sense. The further away from the mob you are, the less you need Vigor (to a certain degree) and with our LF gaining abilities following a similar principle it makes sense (to me) to tie a trait to it.

Wow, there are some really great entries already. Some of them are really cool, some of them are somewhat overpowered, and some of them aren’t even pretending to be Adept Major traits.
But who cares, right? They are still great (although they can’t win, rules are rules.)

Here are some of my favorites (disclaimer: I am not a judge.) with credits of course:

ronpierce.2760:

Reanimator (lose the adept minor)

When a minion dies summon a Jagged Horror in it’s place. (Doesn’t effect Jagged Horrors) Decreases the cooldown on minion abilities by 20%.

(Merged New reanimator with Minion Master)

This one is really cool, also clearly the audience favourite: strong, creative, synergetic, clearly an adept trait. Would probably require a slight debuff of Death Nova to not make it overpowered, but that’s Death Nova’s fault.

Sarrs.4831:

Death Magic
Never Waste a Corpse
Whenever one of your minions dies, gain a boon.
Blood Fiend: Regeneration (6s)
Bone Fiend: Retaliation (6s)
Shadow Fiend: Protection (5s)
Bone Minion/Jagged Horror: Might(1/15s)
Flesh Wurm: Swiftness (10s)
Flesh Golem: Stability (5s)

Blood Magic
Toxic Power
Whenever you are poisoned, gain 5 seconds of Regeneration and Vigor. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds.

A lot of suggestions from Sarrs and all of them fleshed out to the max; cooldown timers, durations, flavour.
These two are my personal favorite. Toxic Power is incredible; no instawin effect, but fits the Necromancer incredibly well as well as having some synergy with Corruption skills. I would like a whole spectrum of these in my skill trees. Never Waste a Corpse is a very cool trait name, and the effect is strong, but not game-breaking, exactly what an Adept trait should do.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Death

Graverobber
Whenever you down a foe, you gain one of the boons they had on them (10 second duration for most boons, 3 seconds for Stability).

Obviously a PvP-only trait (perhaps change to ‘when you hit a foe under 10% health’ for all-round implementation) that fits the necromancer very well. I consider boon stealing a very ‘Mesmer thing to do’ but this trait has a really Necromance-ey vibe.

Everything I read is great!

BadJas.5178:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Death

Graverobber
Whenever you down a foe, you gain one of the boons they had on them (10 second duration for most boons, 3 seconds for Stability).

Obviously a PvP-only trait (perhaps change to ‘when you hit a foe under 10% health’ for all-round implementation) that fits the necromancer very well. I consider boon stealing a very ‘Mesmer thing to do’ but this trait has a really Necromance-ey vibe.

Yeah, it could be phrased “whenever you down or kill a foe” to make it useful for certain parts of PvE as well. I just think it’s weird that the Necro’s boon duration trait line doesn’t give them very much in the way of boons.

Spite – Grasp from the Underworld: Necrotic grasp deals 33% more damage, has increased range (1500), counts as a targeted ground projectile (ele Imaple, mesmer Mind Stab ish fusion, so targeted, spawns from ground/isnt a projectile, 95 radius) and is a 100% projectile finisher.

Soul Reaping – Abyssal Blast: Underwater Life Blast replaces the regular.

Both are gameplay changers for reliability/secondary support effects.