Guild Wars 2

No introduction needed. We have a tone of problems with trait placement and there isn’t a single trait line that doesn’t have at least one useless trait. If not more. So I’m going to go through a list of traits I feel should be changed and give a few suggestions to help improve their usefulness. Gimmicks will be included as well since not all builds can be meta builds. Some should just be really fun in concept and execution. We also have a few skills that just aren’t very good.

I’ve had some time to calm down about yet another nerf so I wanted to post with a clear mind. Well, lets get into it.

Spite

Spite has 2 useless traits in its line. The rest are fairly solid. We have Spiteful Spirit and Unholy Fervor. Spiteful spirit could be improved but Unholy Fervor is only useless because of how bad of a weapon Axe is. If axe was a better weapon Unholy Fervor could see allot of use.

• Spiteful Spirit: Cast Unholy Feast when you enter shroud. When you corrupt a boon the condition applied lasts twice as long. A bit of a odd change, but I feel with the axe changes I’ll be suggesting later this will make allot of sense. The extra duration can go along way into making this a contender for Signet of Suffering.

• Alternative Spiteful Spirit: Retaliation you apply steals life rather than just dealing damage. I honestly couldn’t decide between these two. I really like the increased corrupted condition duration, but at the same time giving the necromancer a actual retaliation build that rewards you for being hit is also tempting.

Curses

Probably the worst trait line out of all of them, this one needs the most work.

• Barbed Precision: Increase its bleed on crit trigger back to 66% and reduce its duration to 2 seconds. The only justification for the change was reaper. But even that is flimsy as other professions hit 2 to 3 times more often than even the reaper’s shroud does with a comparable trait that does almost the exact same thing.

• Chilling Darkness: Blinding a target will also apply chill. Cannot occur more than 5 times in 10 seconds. The nerf was uncalled for. But I understand why. The reaper might cause a problem with this trait. But they shouldn’t be afraid to use experimental ideas with these traits. Allowing it to trigger multiple times will cap it quickly against multiple foes so it can still scale without totally crippling the trait. It is just a minor after all. Although I’d much prefer its old function this is a decent compromise. Not that I’m really in that position it would be nice if arena net listened to these ideas and use the tools at hand.

• Master of corruption: Reduce recharge reduction from 33% to 25% and have each corruption skill grant 3 seconds of resistance along with the bonus conditions. It doesn’t make sense to me why we weaken ourselves even further by taking this trait. It just doesn’t. From any stand point. The “Oh I can just send it back” argument is really bad because that fails to understand that we’re sacrificing vital defenses to do that with potentially no pay off for doing so which means we sacrifice a trait slot and a skill if not another trait to achieve this effect. Basically the pay off isn’t remotely worth it. With resistance it becomes worth it but still risky as someone else might corrupt it or strip it off before you can send the conditions back, giving it some more interesting counter play as well as providing a defensive trait that can go wrong if used poorly.

• Terror: Move up to Grandmaster slot, Increase its base damage, fuse with Fear of Death. No, I’m not joking with this one. Terror should be a defining build. But we also need to have the tools in order to do it. Freeing up two slots to make this work would be worth it. It can’t be competing with 3 traits that all fill a role in the exact same type of build.

• Weakening Shroud: Drop to Master tier and adjust numbers accordingly. I know a few people like this trait. And it is good, but I was never that impressed with it. That’s me personally though I still want it but I don’t feel its a build defining trait as a grandmaster trait should have that sort of quality or at least do something really amazing.

• Lingering Curse: Put 50% of the condition duration into the base duration of the scepter and change it to increase condition duration by 30% for all outgoing conditions while wielding a scepter or trident. Gain a bonus 20% condition duration while in shroud. +150 condition damage. This should be the dedicated condition trait. But it should be worth taking. Just adding condition duration to what is effectively 2 skills just doesn’t cut it as a grandmaster. But it should stay as one. The added duration in death shroud should also give a condi player incentive to stay in shroud a bit longer.

• Remove Parasitic Contagion from Curses.

• Move Unholy Martyr to Curses and change Function to: Draw conditions from allies and gain 2% life force for each condition drawn this way. Up to 1 condition from up to 5 allies in a 600 radius. Add function. Critical hits while in shroud copy a condition you are suffering onto your target. 33% chance. Can’t copy an entire stack of a condition only 1 stack. This could be really interesting for the necromancer. Combine with Master of corruptions you suddenly have an outlet to turn your suffering into everyone’s suffering without being a carbon copy skill of the revenant’s Mallyx stance. As well as having a way to support allies in a minor way outside of blood is a nice touch as well.

Death Magic

Another rather strong line. Decent in its balance but its issue is more the skills and other trait lines surrounding it rather than the line itself. Still a few traits could be improved to be more effective as an option.

• Soul Comprehension: Added effect, Gain 5% life force when your health drops below 50% 20 second cool down. Can’t trigger while in shroud We are in the defensive line. We should be able to survive a bit longer. I didn’t want to remove its base function. But its also important that we have minor traits that aren’t completely useless in many situations.

• Unholy Sanctuary: Increase its base healing. Added function to grant 2 seconds of invulnerability when its triggered. compared to the other two traits, this really isn’t very impressive. Giving us a way to escape large amounts of damage when being focus fired then giving a small window to punish people for trying is something we sorely need. Especially considering we are expected to stick the entire fight out.

Blood Magic

Mostly solid trait line. Only really one change I’d really make. With the move of Unholy Martyr I suggested above blood magic will need a replacement don’t you think?

• Parasitic Contagion, renamed to Blood Drinker: Bleeds you apply heal allies for 10% of their damage around your foes. 240 radius. A blood build should be a thing in my opinion. And blood magic should have a grandmaster trait to really support a blood necromancer. Giving us the ability to provide decent and consistence heals with a condition build could give us a good decent GM for the condi necros.

Soul Reaping

Soul reaping is really powerful. It has great traits, but you often find that you’re stuck with a few traits and really not exploring too much in this line. Especially at the master tier. My suggestions have already removed one trait from master so this leaves an open slot to play with.

• Speed of Shadows rename to Deathly pursuit: Add Function, if you are in combat gain super speed for 2 seconds when you enter shroud. To catch our prey we can’t just be running as fast as them, we need to be faster than them. At least for a short duration. Give us a way to close the gap just a bit quicker. This trait really has stiff competition at the moment and it would be nice to have this added function to help it out.

• Cultist’s Fervor(new): Reduce the recharge rate of Utility Skills used while in shroud by 15%, but they cost 3% more as much life force to cast. What??? We can’t use utility skills in Death shroud/reaper’s shroud? OH I know! But I’m also going to suggest allowing us to have access to them. So just wait and it’ll all make sense.

• Foot in the Grave: break stun and gain stability for 3 seconds and every 3 seconds you are in death shroud gain one stack of stability for 3 seconds. Being hard to CC should be on our list of things to do. Yet we’re pretty easy. Once people figure out Foot in the grave though its not going to threaten them. They’ll be able to control us just as easily as before. With this change we can dish a beating while we’re taking a beating without worrying that we’ll be face down in the dirt the whole time.

• Dhuumfire: Shroud skill one applies 1 stack of burning for 3 seconds. Shroud skills 2-5 apply burning for 2 seconds one striking a foe.Will this be too much? I really don’t know. But giving us a major reason to stick around in death shroud and burst out some burning seems like it could give high incentive to stick it out. You still have allot of skills with massive cool down with Life transfer and tainted shackles with an extremely high cool down of 40 seconds each. How would this effect reaper? hard to really say at this point, but we need a reason to take it without reaper. Even 1 second of burning with the other skills might be enough. Hmm. I’ll have to think on that.

Shroud Changes

Death shroud has been a real thorn in our sides for a long time. Lots of anti synergy with our profession with one of these problems being fixed just last month. The life stealing one.

• Allow utility skills to be used in shroud: I believe we should be allowed to use these while in death shroud or reaper’s shroud. But it shouldn’t be free. Activating a utility skill should cost us 2-5% of our total life force. Depending on how we should balance it. This way you have to make a choice. Do I want to use these skills in death shroud? Or do I want to wait until i’m in the clear to use them outside. Signets shouldn’t cost any life force for using them but should provide their passive when off cool down.

• Healing should be visible in shroud but grayed out: being able to see when your heal is off cool down is important. But at the same time the passive skills from something like signet of vampirism should still function just as it normally would.

• Elites should be usable in Death shroud: Transform skills should drop you out of death shroud. So Lich, for example would force you out while your “Chilled to the bone” or Flesh golem’s charge wouldn’t. These skills could also cost life force like your utility as to reward good players.

Skill

• Consume condition: Revert the skill back, reduce recharge to 25 seconds. Even with the changes I’ve suggested I still am firmly in the camp of keeping this skill the way it used to be. With some of these changes and existing ones in the game we could be seeing some major competition with CC even in its old version.

• Well of blood: Change to a water field. Its blood. its a liquid. Having it as a light field is just awkward. Yeah, the combo to give your minions retaliation is cute, but it should be a water field.

• Necrotic Grasp&Life blast/plague blast: Each should be a projectile finisher with 100% to trigger. Pretty self explanatory. Both have a rather long cast time and the 20% on Grasp is rarely noticeable and Life Blast/plague blast shouldn’t be excluded.

• Axe:

1. Axe 1: Should be a 3 skill chain. Rending claws 1/2 cast time, 1 stack of vulnerability for 7 seconds. Tearing claws 1/2 cast time, 1 stack of vulnerability for 7 seconds. Tainted claws. 1/2 cast time and convert a boon on the foe struck into a condition.
2. Ghastly Claws: added function to be a whirl finisher at your location and damaging up to 3 targets in melee range along with the damage applied at range. With these two changes the axe suddenly becomes an extremely powerful weapon both capable of comboing with fields as well as dealing double damage with its skill two to foes within your melee, rewarding you for getting close. The ability to corrupt boons gives this weapon a powerful dual function as both a condition weapon and a power weapon. Being valuable in both without overshadowing the other weapons with higher range.

• Feast of Corruption: Remove the bonus damage and have it apply 2 stacks of vulnerability per condition on your target. This should be a dedicated condition weapon. And one that further rewards condition builds just makes sense. This weapon isn’t designed like a hybrid weapon anywhere else, we shouldn’t treat it like it was meant to be one.

• Deathly Swarm: Add function to grant 2% life force for each target hit, double the life force if a condition was transferred. Not having our off hand condition weapon provide life force puts allot of attention on the scepter as a bad life force weapon when it really isn’kittens just not often pared with a offhand that can also provide life force. So giving Offhand dagger the ability to provide life force should alleviate the issue.

• Corrosive Poison Cloud: Break Stun. Surround yourself in a corrosive poison cloud that destroys projectiles, poisons and weakens foes and moves with you for 6 seconds. 60 second cool down. A very strange suggestion. This completely changes the function of this skill. But its something we desperately need. And having a corruption skill that is a stun break gives us the option to not run non corruption builds aside from our heal if CC gets changed back.

• Signet of Undeath: Reduce cool down to 120 seconds, decrease cast time to 2 seconds, increase life force to 3% every 3 seconds and increase radius to 240. I’m not suggesting to change its function entirely. Just make it good at it since utility slots are more valuable than elites allot of the time. It should be worth taking even if its in a very fringe situation.

• Well of darkness: Reduce recharge to 40 seconds.

• Well of Power: Added function. Well of power pulses 1 stack of stability to allies in it for 1 second each second.

Spectral Skills

These skills actually just straight up can’t stay the same if we’re going to use utility while in death shroud. Sure, having the 5% life force from a trait would nullify their cost which is fine, but otherwise they need more changes than just that. Otherwise they could easily cause some problems. Well, Spectral wall wont, but the others will.

*Spectral Armor: Function flips While in shroud remove vulnerability. You don’t take bonus damage from critical hits while under the effect of Spectral armor.

• Spectral walk: Added Function remove immobilize, chill and crippling on activation. Flipped function: While in shroud gain 1 stack of stability each second for 1 second while under the effect of spectral walk.

• Spectral Grasp: Flipped function, while in shroud send out a much larger hand that grabs up to 3 targets.

• Plague: Surround yourself in a sickly aura that poisons foes around you. Attacks against you copy conditions you’re suffering on your attacker. Striking a foe with your skills spreads one stack of one condition on them to nearby foes. Increase your health pool. Applies bleeding to yourself each second. Traited with Master of corruption will grant resistance each second for 3 seconds every 3 seconds as well as self inflicting poison each second. Suddenly the skill gets allot more interesting. No longer a transformation but a aura type effect gives us some variety in our elites and makes this an easy choice for a condition build. No more fighting over if you want to take a racial skill over plague. You just take plague.

• Lich Form: No longer destroys minions on entering Shroud. _I don’t mind having my minions destroyed when people moa me. But come on. Destroying them myself? No.

Minions

So many problems with minions. First their AI needs to be fixed before anything can really happen. Other than that a few quality of life changes should be in order for this.

• “Rise”: Summon Shambling horrors. When shambling horror dies, it spawns a Jagged horror. Although it would be really fun to have this summon something like bone minions and get a potential 7 minion explosions out of it, I really feel it should just summon an entirely new type of minion that has its own unique skin. This will also be functional with a minion spammer build as well since its still our highest number minion spawning skill outside of Lich form.

• Jagged Horrors: Remove the natural degeneration from these minions. Cap the number of Jagged horrors you can have out at a time to 8.

• General minion change: Reduce Cast time to 1 second for each minion.

• Shadow Fiend: Have it teleport instantly.

I think that about covers it for as much as I can handle at the moment. These changes would provide an extremely high number of potential builds into the game. And I’m not a 100% sure on the spectral changes I’m suggesting seeing as we’ve never had utility in Death shroud before. So its rather unpredictable how good or bad any potential changes could be in that realm. Over all I think this is a good start and even with part of these changes our usefulness and people interest in us could spike.

As always, I look forward to hearing your guys’s thoughts. I did have other ideas that other people mentioned considered for my list, such as Making Foot in the grave a minor trait but thinking about it I figured with the other changes I’ve suggested that might actually be a bit too powerful with everything else. I’m sure some of the numbers would need to be adjusted here but for the most part I feel this direction for us could be extremely helpful.

Lily.1935:

• Jagged Horrors: Remove the natural degeneration from these minions. Cap the number of Jagged horrors you can have out at a time to 8.

Sry but this is just ridiculous. Minions are affected by these traits:
extra health for minions and toughness for you for each minion
minions do more damage and transfer conditions from you to the enemy
dead minions explode in a poison cloud
minions siphon health for you
your minions gain protection if you leave DS

And you want all this with a total minion number of 14 (6 minions from utility skills/heal/elite and 8 jagged horrors from minor trait). You can’t be serious.

Kodama.6453:

Lily.1935:

• Jagged Horrors: Remove the natural degeneration from these minions. Cap the number of Jagged horrors you can have out at a time to 8.

Sry but this is just ridiculous. Minions are affected by these traits:
extra health for minions and toughness for you for each minion
minions do more damage and transfer conditions from you to the enemy
dead minions explode in a poison cloud
minions siphon health for you
your minions gain protection if you leave DS

And you want all this with a total minion number of 14 (6 minions from utility skills/heal/elite and 8 jagged horrors from minor trait). You can’t be serious.

Moa still kills all your minions. Plus the death nova has pretty low damage. Totally serious. If you have a better suggestion I’ll be happy to hear it. I imagine since you’re going to provide criticism you have a great alternative, right? I’m all ears.

Kodama.6453:

Lily.1935:

• Jagged Horrors: Remove the natural degeneration from these minions. Cap the number of Jagged horrors you can have out at a time to 8.

Sry but this is just ridiculous. Minions are affected by these traits:
extra health for minions and toughness for you for each minion
minions do more damage and transfer conditions from you to the enemy
dead minions explode in a poison cloud
minions siphon health for you
your minions gain protection if you leave DS

And you want all this with a total minion number of 14 (6 minions from utility skills/heal/elite and 8 jagged horrors from minor trait). You can’t be serious.

So let me better explain this. You’re assuming that we’ll have all the minions active at the start of the fight. But Jagged horrors take a while to build up unless you take either “Rise”(which we don’t have access to yet) or Lich form which means you lose out on flesh golem. With the changes you’ll still start with maybe 6 minions at most on entering the fight. And there is a chance your minions will die. But if you play your cards right and you walk away from the fight you might increase your numbers by a little bit. The further you go down and the more victories you have the higher your numbers could become. Which translates to a snowball effect with the minion build. Starting its about as strong as it normally is but as you progress through a match or dungeon your numbers start to snowball. This is a zergling strategy and its a fun one to play. But it also has allot of holes in it. Jagged horrors wont be the problem if the build becomes popular. You’ll be able to cleave through them pretty easily. And if it ever got out of hand there is always the hard counter in Moa.

Incidentally, Moa does not kill Jagged Horrors, since they aren’t tied to an equipped skill.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Incidentally, Moa does not kill Jagged Horrors, since they aren’t tied to an equipped skill.

Interesting. Honestly I don’t use minions very often because I don’t like the way they feel. Either way, it shouldn’t be a problem.

This pretty much covers everything. Really good list of changes. Can’t say that I disagree with any of them.

zapv.8051:

This pretty much covers everything. Really good list of changes. Can’t say that I disagree with any of them.

Really? Because I don’t fully agree with myself on Cultist’s Fervor. I’m still debating that one because it might just be too powerful or too weak. I’m not sure which and alternatives would be interesting to hear on how we might want to affect utility while in death shroud.

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

This pretty much covers everything. Really good list of changes. Can’t say that I disagree with any of them.

Really? Because I don’t fully agree with myself on Cultist’s Fervor. I’m still debating that one because it might just be too powerful or too weak. I’m not sure which and alternatives would be interesting to hear on how we might want to affect utility while in death shroud.

Concepts are more important than numbers. Could always be tuned later. If I had to come up with something else there it would be a damage modifier for pve. 10-15% extra damage on skills that generate life force would be a big buff to our pve builds without being OP in pvp.

I also tend to think gluttony should be baseline because it is boring. Then they could make piercing on LB default and move the vuln trait to the minor slot. Maybe introduce another damage modifier in it’s place, or just the one suggested above.

Lily.1935:

Moa still kills all your minions. Plus the death nova has pretty low damage. Totally serious. If you have a better suggestion I’ll be happy to hear it. I imagine since you’re going to provide criticism you have a great alternative, right? I’m all ears.

So there will be 2 professions which are able to beat this build and they have to take a specific elite skill to do so with a really long cd. I just don’t think this will be balanced. About alternative: I never said all you are saying is wrong or something like that. I’m fine by reduce the casting time of minions or shadow fiend teleport to be insta cast. But I don’t get the point why the jagged horrors have to get rid of their degeneration. It’s just a way to cap you’re ability to hold minions and it is fine as it is. You are able to have 8 jagged horrors at the same time, but it needs investment, you have to heal them up. In GW1 all minions worked like this, all had a natural degeneration and to be a true minion master with 12 minions (yeah even the minions in gw1 which only could be casted while using a corpse of an creature didn’t reach the number of 14) you had to heal them the whole time to keep them alive.

Kodama.6453:

Lily.1935:

Moa still kills all your minions. Plus the death nova has pretty low damage. Totally serious. If you have a better suggestion I’ll be happy to hear it. I imagine since you’re going to provide criticism you have a great alternative, right? I’m all ears.

So there will be 2 professions which are able to beat this build and they have to take a specific elite skill to do so with a really long cd. I just don’t think this will be balanced. About alternative: I never said all you are saying is wrong or something like that. I’m fine by reduce the casting time of minions or shadow fiend teleport to be insta cast. But I don’t get the point why the jagged horrors have to get rid of their degeneration. It’s just a way to cap you’re ability to hold minions and it is fine as it is. You are able to have 8 jagged horrors at the same time, but it needs investment, you have to heal them up. In GW1 all minions worked like this, all had a natural degeneration and to be a true minion master with 12 minions (yeah even the minions in gw1 which only could be casted while using a corpse of an creature didn’t reach the number of 14) you had to heal them the whole time to keep them alive.

This isn’t GW1. Minions in GW1 would often be replaced as soon as they were destroyed, if not sooner. The issue I have with current minions is you don’t have the zergling strategy with them or the minion bomber strategy. It just doesn’t work, I’ve tried. You sacrifice too much to try that sort of build with little to no pay off. I’ve had other suggests for minions but that would require a whole redesign of them which would take more work than just helping jagged horrors. Also, minions in GW1 were far tougher and hit much harder than they do in GW2.

Personally, I’m not a fan of most of those, but that’s just me.

Rym.1469:

Personally, I’m not a fan of most of those, but that’s just me.

What would you suggest?

Change Chilling darkness to something like 3sec, cus now it will never be used.

trait ideas
unholy aura
Gain unholy aura when you break out of a stun
Unholy aura (4sec): Stun nearby attacking foes with unholy energy (only once per 2 seconds per attacker)
stun (1sec): unable to use skills or move

Vampiric rituals
Wells super charge vampiric and grant protection to allies when cast. Reduces recharge of wells.
vampiric effectiveness increased (5sec): 500%
Protection (3sec): -33% incoming damage
Recharge Reduced: 20%

Parasitic Contagion, renamed to Blood Drinker: Bleeds you apply heal allies for 10% of their damage around your foes. 240 radius. A blood build should be a thing in my opinion. And blood magic should have a grandmaster trait to really support a blood necromancer. Giving us the ability to provide decent and consistence heals with a condition build could give us a good decent GM for the condi necros.

While it seem like a good idea, it also feel like one hell of a headache to balance. Let’s say that with 2k condition damage you can achieve more than 1700 HPS (per ally).

NB.: Never forget that necromancers are balanced around optimal situations.

Giving some feedback on things that i find wrong/good/or disagree with. It was said that barbed precision was too good with the specialization changes, not the reaper. I also thought terrormancer is destroyed with the placement of terror, but terror is now stronger than before, probably due to vulnerability. Actually a condi dhuumfire-terror-signet necro is very strong right now, i wonder when more people will discover it^^
Weakening shroud is one of the most awesome traits we have right now, so much weakness uptime is crazy. If it were protection instead of weakness everyone would go nuts over it, when weakness and protection are pretty close in damage mitigation. Parasitic contagion is also a cool trait, no need to remove it(read your other suggestion later, doesnt sound bad). Parasitic Contagion might become useful in the ‘’challenging content’‘, sustained heal+burst heal (epidemic). Unholy Sanctuary can become too good, i doubt they will buff the heal. Its secondary effect is more important anyway imo. The soul reaping line is very good as it is. Also dhuumfire would become OP with more stacks/application i think, already if you get 2-3 hits in you can reach 1-1,5k burns. Using utility skills with the cost of life force…hmm think of high lf regen spectral skills…endless DS^^
Signets should provide their passive effect through DS. Whirl in light fields can remove conditions from allies, it isnt that bad with reaper. Although i also prefer water field on WoB. CPC traited right now is pretty strong, i do not see any reason for change. Signet of undeath 3% every 3seconds is too much imo. Scepter/dagger and generally condi builds aren’t meant to have strong LF generation, so i disagree with dagger4 giving LF. I agree with WoD and WoP. The suggestion for Spectral Walk isnt too bad, maybe a bit too good in fact, and Spectral Grasp suggestions sounds awesome. I dont really care about minions, but from what ive hearing they are very good atm (except kittenty AI).

Pelopidas.2140:

Giving some feedback on things that i find wrong/good/or disagree with. It was said that barbed precision was too good with the specialization changes, not the reaper. I also thought terrormancer is destroyed with the placement of terror, but terror is now stronger than before, probably due to vulnerability. Actually a condi dhuumfire-terror-signet necro is very strong right now, i wonder when more people will discover it^^
Weakening shroud is one of the most awesome traits we have right now, so much weakness uptime is crazy. If it were protection instead of weakness everyone would go nuts over it, when weakness and protection are pretty close in damage mitigation. Parasitic contagion is also a cool trait, no need to remove it(read your other suggestion later, doesnt sound bad). Parasitic Contagion might become useful in the ‘’challenging content’‘, sustained heal+burst heal (epidemic). Unholy Sanctuary can become too good, i doubt they will buff the heal. Its secondary effect is more important anyway imo. The soul reaping line is very good as it is. Also dhuumfire would become OP with more stacks/application i think, already if you get 2-3 hits in you can reach 1-1,5k burns. Using utility skills with the cost of life force…hmm think of high lf regen spectral skills…endless DS^^
Signets should provide their passive effect through DS. Whirl in light fields can remove conditions from allies, it isnt that bad with reaper. Although i also prefer water field on WoB. CPC traited right now is pretty strong, i do not see any reason for change. Signet of undeath 3% every 3seconds is too much imo. Scepter/dagger and generally condi builds aren’t meant to have strong LF generation, so i disagree with dagger4 giving LF. I agree with WoD and WoP. The suggestion for Spectral Walk isnt too bad, maybe a bit too good in fact, and Spectral Grasp suggestions sounds awesome. I dont really care about minions, but from what ive hearing they are very good atm (except kittenty AI).

1-2k damage is incredibly low for a condition spec. Like, INSANELY low. Considering that I get about 3k on average with my bleeds and if going for long its 5k and about 2k poison this is incredibly unimpressive. Even when taking into considering the physical damage from Life blast. Compared to other professions its even weaker than that since many professions can burst out 9-10k condition damage while at the same time sustaining 5-7k DPS and do it much quicker than we can. Considering I’ve played multiple condition builds on multiple professions there is absolutely nothing impressive about the necromancer’s build. Even a terror dhuumfire combo is extremely low damage in comparison to other professions. Its actually straight up laughable. Signets builds are great at the moment but not super impressive either.

As for Condi builds, to say they’re not supposed to have good life force generation is complete and utter nonsense. Considering that A condition build is supposed to be our method of attrition to wear down our opponent. Without decent decent access to life force it becomes anti synergistic.

For a Terror build you’d generally want to take Foot in the grave, not Dhuumfire. And you’d want all 3 of the master traits because of hope poor the condition builds are at generating life force. Reduced recharge rate of DS traits, increase lifeforce Generation and the bonus duration. Its why I’ve made the suggestions I’ve made. To make the build at least usable. With Dhuumfire triggering on the other skills it lets you burst. It allows you to burst out your damage rather than just try to sustain a piddly little 1-2k burn. Which is another area the necromancer is sorely lacking in. The capability of bursting with condition damage. Along with the extremely high cool down of both Life Transfer and Tainted shackles you wouldn’t be able to sustain that burning even with 100% condition duration.

To add to that, Condition builds have incredibly poor valn stacking capabilities as compared to other condition builds of other professions. Especially when compared to engineer. Yes a Dhuumfire build Could do it, but From my tests its not even remotely worth it. You’re better off staying out of death shroud unless you absolutely have to.

Barbed precision? Well we’re not a warrior, engineer or anything like that. We attack 2-3 times slower then they do so the amount of bleeds we can get off of it is extremely low in comparison. So why should we be expected to use an almost identical trait when we proc it half to a third of the time compared to other profession?

Balancing is based on pvp, not talking about pve at all, just mentioning.

Yeah compared to eles/engis dhuumfire seems incredibly low, but we can stack more bleeds/poison than these classes do, and we can ’’force’’ these conditions to run when the opponent runs feared…ele/engis CC aren’t as effective as fear in that regard..anyway i do agree dhuumfire could use some love, and it seems that more experienced necros in pvp than me think that condimancer doesnt do enough damage(source:Noscoc). Anyway on your suggestion for dhuumfire i agree 100%, and i think it would work for RS as well.

Signets are awesome right now, engis die around even with sentinels amulet:)

Ill explain why i think condi builds were (well not so much now) supposed to have bad lf regen.

First condi set has only one skill for life force(scepter 3).
Second, the old terrormancer, if you wanted to go dps, you’d pick Spite and Curses leaving only 2 points possible for Soul Reaping (no spectral armor at 50% hp and no soul marks.) The possible lf regen was through the one trait in Curses that provided 1% lf with 33% in critical hits(garbage imo), and spectral skills, but spectal attunement was competing with terror back then and so did banshees wail. From a theorycrafting point of view it was hard to get lf regen stuff+and do good condi dps.
Third, power builds have insane lf regen compared to condi, embedded in the weapon skills. I think the devs did that for a reason
Anyway if my explanation isnt enough for you, agree to disagree

No need to take FitG as terrormancer, in fact i prefer dhuumfire. I completely dislike the fact that spectral attunement competes with 50% fear duration, but that seems to go along with the mindset i described above

We passively apply Vulnerability when enemy is below 33%. Also personally ive tried Rending Shroud instead of Chill of Death(i know, blasphemy) and it produces good vuln, if i manage to cast SoS and get couple of stacks out of a corruption its not bad at all. ‘’ You’re better off staying out of death shroud unless you absolutely have to.’’ What? in a dhuumfire build ? most of our burst comes from going into deathshroud.

Dunno whats up with barbed precision, robert gee said that from the calculations it was too much with 66%.

Pelopidas.2140:

First condi set has only one skill for life force(scepter 3).

Thats not a reason, just a description. Condi builds on necromancer were treditionally weak. And it was only during a short short time when Dhuumfire triggered on critical hit when it was even remotely strong. And it was the same time that arena net back peddled and said “We want them to be bursty, not attrition.” which was a serious slap in the face to the community at the time.

Pelopidas.2140:

Second, the old terrormancer, if you wanted to go dps, you’d pick Spite and Curses leaving only 2 points possible for Soul Reaping (no spectral armor at 50% hp and no soul marks.) The possible lf regen was through the one trait in Curses that provided 1% lf with 33% in critical hits(garbage imo), and spectral skills, but spectal attunement was competing with terror back then and so did banshees wail. From a theorycrafting point of view it was hard to get lf regen stuff+and do good condi dps.

Except it was acceptable to go 30/20/0/0/20 (or 6/4/0/0/4) at that time as well. After the nerf to have it trigger only in Death shroud’s life blast it became more likely for you to run 0/6/4/0/4. Some people did run 6/6/0/0/2 but it wasn’t nearly as universal as you think. And people were still complaining about the poor life generation. Just because it was traditionally bad doesn’t mean that its intended.

Pelopidas.2140:

Third, power builds have insane lf regen compared to condi, embedded in the weapon skills. I think the devs did that for a reason

You mean life force generation. And they really don’t unless you’re willing to sacrifice a few skills and slots. Also, the devs have been wrong about the necromancer. It seems more often than they where right. Such as “Stability isn’t in your design.” or “Death shroud is enough.” Both incredibly flawed and extremely wrong statement. I used to agree with them, but after 2k+ hours on my necromancer alone I can’t possible agree with them.

Pelopidas.2140:

No need to take FitG as terrormancer, in fact i prefer dhuumfire. I completely dislike the fact that spectral attunement competes with 50% fear duration, but that seems to go along with the mindset i described above

Someone’s never had the pleasure of being CCed into the ground, hard with no chance of getting up. Seriously.. Take Foot in the Grave. And you also want Vital Persistence. Thats 3 traits that are all desired in the exact same build in the exact same spot.

Pelopidas.2140:

We passively apply Vulnerability when enemy is below 33%. Also personally ive tried Rending Shroud instead of Chill of Death(i know, blasphemy) and it produces good vuln, if i manage to cast SoS and get couple of stacks out of a corruption its not bad at all. ‘’ You’re better off staying out of death shroud unless you absolutely have to.’’ What? in a dhuumfire build ? most of our burst comes from going into deathshroud.

No, I’m saying a dhuumfire build is bad, don’t take Dhuumfire at all. Its terrible.

Pelopidas.2140:

Dunno whats up with barbed precision, robert gee said that from the calculations it was too much with 66%.

Calculations are different than practice. In practical situations we have to look at that and can’t strictly go off calculations.

I feel like I can agree with most of your changes since it would actually get us to feel like we have actual competition between traits, since some slots just have objectively lacking traits compared to ones that are given picks.

In particular I like your idea of changing the axe into a hybrid weapon, since necromancers don’t really have a solid pick for a main hand hyrbid weapon, even though the offhands (well dagger and warhorn) are pretty good. From my experience, I completely think that celestial hybrid necromancers are the way to go, because its the only way to get tanky stats without having kitten poor damage. And those builds are using dagger/WH and staff right now, and the dagger is only really there for the immob and some autoattacking to stack might with siphoned power, and I guess the life steal heal isn’t bad either. A true hybrid weapon would help it immensely, although its not in that bad of a place now.

About dhuumfire, I think its best to keep the skill the way it is simply because I predict that it will be really strong with reaper. In fact a mightstacking celestial hybrid with spite/SR/reaper will be really strong I think (with dagger/wh and staff or GS) because the reaper shroud autos will be able to apply burning in an AoE cleave, and its fast enough to have at least 3-4 stacks up at all times while just pressing 1, and it will build might more quickly than life blast with the spite traits, and with unyielding blast over soul marks it could make up for the loss of death perception using decimate defenses. Blighter’s boon and relentless pursuit would give it some sustain. While it would lose pretty much all ranged damage, reaper shroud is such a drastic improvement over death shroud in my opinion, especailly because of the very high stability uptime, especially when coupled with vital persistance.

So yeah, basically I’d like to see a hybrid weapon take the place of dagger in a cele build, because greatsword won’t really be able to.

I was running spectral terrormancer with dhuumfire for a long time before the patch…with 6/4/0/0/4. In fact i dont recall anyone posting that build ever in the forums or metabattle.
Anyway i think you are too absolute in some of your thoughts, but im too tired to respond further..everyone is entitled to their opinion i guess…:)

Spiteful Spirit should give the necro retaliation on pulse while in shroud and also apply confusion to nearby foes when entering shroud. That would be true to the spirit of spiteful spirit, heh.

Khristophoros.7194:

Spiteful Spirit should give the necro retaliation on pulse while in shroud and also apply confusion to nearby foes when entering shroud. That would be true to the spirit of spiteful spirit, heh.

I miss SS as well.

Pelopidas.2140:

I was running spectral terrormancer with dhuumfire for a long time before the patch…with 6/4/0/0/4. In fact i dont recall anyone posting that build ever in the forums or metabattle.
Anyway i think you are too absolute in some of your thoughts, but im too tired to respond further..everyone is entitled to their opinion i guess…:)

I don’t know about metabattle since I’ve never used it but there where quite a few threads about it when it came out. I keep a very close eye on that sort of thing since Conid is how I prefer to play.