Guild Wars 2

Death Magic has a clear purpose and isn’t bad, but several traits, especially the minors, need improvement. Without further ado, these are my thoughts on traits that should be adjusted:

Minor Adept: Armored Shroud
Unholy Providence: Whenever you gain protection, gain retaliation.
-Retaliation (3s)

Major Adept: Putrid Defense
Putrid Defense: Take less damage from poisoned foes. Whenever you are below or at the health threshold, striking a foe or being struck by a foe poisons them.
-1x Poison (3s)
-Damaged Reduced: 10%
-Health Threshold: 40% (could be lower)
-Cooldown: 5s
Or
Death Nova: Minions explode in a cloud of poison when they die. This effect also triggers when you are downed. Take less damage from poisoned foes.
-Damage Reduced: 10%
Or
Channeled Fervor: Gain increased toughness and generate lifeforce while channeling.
-Lifeforce: 3%
-Attribute Adjust: 400
-Interval: 1s

Minor Master: Soul Comprehension
Dark Armor: Gain toughness based on your current lifeforce.
-Toughness above 75% Lifeforce: 125
-Toughness below 75% Lifeforce: 250
-Toughness below 50% Lifeforce: 375
-Toughness below 25% Lifeforce: 500
-Combat Only
(Similar to Last Rites in Blood Magic)

Major Master: Reaper’s Protection
Beyond the Veil: Generate lifeforce and blind nearby enemies when leaving shroud.
-Blind (2s)
-Lifeforce: 6%
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 240
Or
Channeled Fervor: Channeled attacks generate lifeforce and grant protection for each successful strike. Successfully channeling a skill heals you.
-Protection (0.5s)
-Healing: 275
-Lifeforce: 1%
Or
Soul Comprehension: Gain a portion of lifeforce from nearby deaths while in shroud. Heal for a small amount when you gain lifeforce from nearby deaths.
-Healing: 50
-Percent: 15% (I guessed, could be more or less)

Minor Grandmaster: Beyond the Veil
Reaper’s Protection: Leaving shroud grants you, your minions, and nearby allies protection.
-Protection (3s)
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 300

Major Grandmaster: Death Nova, Unholy Sanctuary
Death Nova: No change except for a cooldown reduction on spawning jagged horrors.
-Cooldown: 10s
Or
Beyond the Veil: Shroud 5 inscribes a Mark of Horror; however, the skill has an increased cooldown. (Potentially too strong but it would be fun to use)
-Minion Damage: 318
-Minion-Inflicted Bleeding (5s)
-Radius: 360
-Cooldown Increased: 15s (probably should be more)
Or
Re-animator: Whenever a minion or foe dies summon a jagged horror to fight for you. Summoning disposable minions (Summon Bone Minions, Summon Flesh Wurm, Summon Blood Fiend) has a chance to summon additional minions.
-Additional Minions: 1
-Chance: 33%
-Cooldown: 10s

Unholy Sanctuary: No change except for slightly increasing the healing per second.
-Healing: 175
Or
Unholy Sanctuary: Regenerate your and nearby allies’ health while in shroud. If struck with a lethal blow, fully regenerate your lifeforce and activate shroud.
-Healing: 120
-Lifeforce: 100%
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 300
-Interval: 1s
-Cooldown: 90s
(A bit like Guardians’ Battle Presence but oh well)

Thoughts? Better suggestions?

Except for the interrupt ones, which imo doesnt make that much of a sense for necros, I think those are good suggestions

The Beyond the Veil – jagged horror mark buff would be crazy to abuse. 5 jagged horrors every 30s or less. That would be even more broken than the Viper Horror adrenal mushroom abuse on Sabetha, that was nerfed.

Krysard.1364:

Except for the interrupt ones, which imo doesnt make that much of a sense for necros, I think those are good suggestions

You have a point, but there’s a decent amount of ways, notably by corrupting stability, to interrupt others while using a necro. That’s why I thought a perk to capitalize this capability would be nice.

Lahmia.2193:

The Beyond the Veil – jagged horror mark buff would be crazy to abuse. 5 jagged horrors every 30s or less. That would be even more broken than the Viper Horror adrenal mushroom abuse on Sabetha, that was nerfed.

Oh no doubt it would be too strong, but it still would be one hell of a thing to have/use.

Minor Master: Soul Comprehension
Soul Comprehension: Your passive lifeforce generation from nearby deaths is increased. Heal for a small amount when you gain lifeforce from nearby deaths.
-Healing: 50
-Effectiveness increased: 20%

I dont think this would change all that much. It’s still an awful trait making a snowbally effect even more snowbally. How about “gain half the amount of life force for deaths while in shroud”? actually, i’d rather just remove this thing and replace it with something good.

Dignified Loser.7689:

Krysard.1364:

Except for the interrupt ones, which imo doesnt make that much of a sense for necros, I think those are good suggestions

You have a point, but there’s a decent amount of ways, notably by corrupting stability, to interrupt others while using a necro. That’s why I thought a perk to capitalize this capability would be nice.

Lahmia.2193:

The Beyond the Veil – jagged horror mark buff would be crazy to abuse. 5 jagged horrors every 30s or less. That would be even more broken than the Viper Horror adrenal mushroom abuse on Sabetha, that was nerfed.

Oh no doubt it would be too strong, but it still would be one hell of a thing to have/use.

Yes, I know, but even if necro has a huge load of CC, its not instant CC, and therefore you will not intentionally interrupt anything unless you predicted that the enemy was going to use that skill

i was really looking forward to minions in gw2, but sadly they suck. here are some of my suggestions:
death nova – whenever one of your minions die, it summons a jagged horror. whenever you kill an enemy, summon 2 jagged horrors.
summon bone minions – now summons 4. detonating minions crit based on your precision/ crit damage, but minions enter a 2 sec animation.

death magic does close to nothing in terms of its 2nd intended purpose, which is tanking. so here are some improvements:
putrid defense – take 20% less damage from poisoned foes. without the poison on minion death, it will be a lot harder to maintain poison without taking scepter. with scepter? might be op, idk.
corrupters fervor – this skill is competing with unholy sanctuary. change it to sync with necros main specialty, which coincidentally is in the trait name, boon corruption. maybe something like copy any boons you corrupt to yourself.
unholy sanctuary – refill and activate shroud when you take a lethal blow. what would be the point of this trait if it activates when you have no lf?

Thanks for the feedback; it’s always appreciated. Also, most of these comments/suggestions I agree with so I suppose I’ll make some adjustments.

One suggestion for Putrid Defences would be that whenever they hit you with an attack they are poisoned, in addition to the current damage reduction. That way it would be useful even if you had no skills that inflicted poison. It could have an ICD per each foe but the duration of the poison could last as long as the ICD, therefore allowing you to permanently keep up the damage reduction. Maybe even double it to 20% while in shroud? That might be too much though.

Death magic is stupidly underrated as is. Corrupter’s fervor, deadly strength, reaper’s protection are borderline OP and should absolutely not be touched. Try death magic in a build thats built for it; just because it doesnt synergize with the meta archetypes doesn’t mean it needs to be shoehorned into that role.

Linnael.1069:

Corrupter’s fervor, deadly strength, reaper’s protection are borderline OP and should absolutely not be touched. Try death magic in a build thats built for it; just because it doesnt synergize with the meta archetypes doesn’t mean it needs to be shoehorned into that role.

Of the ones you mentioned, I only touched Reaper’s Protection since I too think Corrupter’s Fervor and Deadly Strength are strong enough. Personally, I don’t like most of the “anti-cc” traits and Reaper’s Protection is no exception. Regardless, I was actually attempting to help the traitline better fill its own roles, not shoehorn it elsewhere. But I’m not perfect so I could have very likely glossed over some of the specialization’s subtle strengths. Ultimately, I just wanted to make suggestions and get a discussion going; not kitten on anyone’s parade, so to speak.

Linnael.1069:

Death magic is stupidly underrated as is. Corrupter’s fervor, deadly strength, reaper’s protection are borderline OP and should absolutely not be touched. Try death magic in a build thats built for it; just because it doesnt synergize with the meta archetypes doesn’t mean it needs to be shoehorned into that role.

thats why death magic will never be used outside of a non serious mm build. its not good for anything other then mm. many traitlines for all professions are the same way, unless you build very very specifically (and alot of the times even then) they are completely useless. every class role archetype (tank, healer, dps, support) should be available to everyone, cuz thats the way the game was designed.

Figured I might as well put what I believe should be changed without all the “or’s”

Death Magic 2.0:

Stand The Wall.6987:

Linnael.1069:

Death magic is stupidly underrated as is. Corrupter’s fervor, deadly strength, reaper’s protection are borderline OP and should absolutely not be touched. Try death magic in a build thats built for it; just because it doesnt synergize with the meta archetypes doesn’t mean it needs to be shoehorned into that role.

thats why death magic will never be used outside of a non serious mm build. its not good for anything other then mm. many traitlines for all professions are the same way, unless you build very very specifically (and alot of the times even then) they are completely useless. every class role archetype (tank, healer, dps, support) should be available to everyone, cuz thats the way the game was designed.

Death magic is used in both necro tank specs, and necro condi specs that while possessing some minions, does not focus on them overtly. While we generally take all of the minion traits, the only minions we summon are either Jagged Horrors (for bleed stacks) or Shambling Horrors (for defensive and/or Poison stacks). Neither scenario is really a ‘serious mm build.’

I think Death Magic has a place on some builds, its mostly just an issue of needing slight buffs to actually be great. Its got a few weaknesses depending on your build that make it awkward for non-MMs, especially the Master Minor slot, which is terrible even on MM, the only build that really makes use of it.

Ceit.7619:

Death magic is used in both necro tank specs, and necro condi specs that while possessing some minions, does not focus on them overtly. While we generally take all of the minion traits, the only minions we summon are either Jagged Horrors (for bleed stacks) or Shambling Horrors (for defensive and/or Poison stacks). Neither scenario is really a ‘serious mm build.’

what i was trying to say, albeit poorly, is that i believe all class archetypes for all professions should be meta. my buffs aim toward that goal.

I wonder if the people who get on the necromancer furom actually play this game lol.