Guild Wars 2

@Rym:
The Siphoning Fear can be a nice idea, but I see it better on Blood Tree, the idea about feeding on the opponent’s terror feels cool. Maybe making it a special heal passing through DS.

Your suggestion about Demonic Flesh sounds nice, like some kind of empowered Spiteful Spirit (good times from GW1), but I see it as too much op. And for sure it’s a defensive trait, I don’t see it fitting Spite tree, maybe it can stay in Soul Reaping tree.

I don’t agree with Animator’s Vigor. As said multiple times by more people, minors shouldn’t force people on taking minions, also it would be too much situational for it to proc on Jagged Horrors’ death, it would work mainly on a “sacrifical” build and as Dalanor said I don’t think MMs would need more vigor.

MMs definitely don’t need much more defense. MMs are pretty well balanced right now, and the general changes/upgrades to the class overall will bring them to balance well enough.

If anything, MMs just need a slight redesign to increase the amount of playstyles they support (instead of being totally focused around minions being disposable meat-shield utilities, which is the only real use atm), and slight redesigns to increase the range of their uses.

Vigor though, would be a crazy buff.

My main goal with Animator’s Vigor was not only Minionmancers. More likely other specs which could benefit greatly from for example using placed Flesh Wurm’s teleport, getting bonus vigor for that move, or taking Bone Minions to PvE/PvP just to proc vigor by bombing them when needed.
I think MM will see some slight changes in the future to make it less passive. Currently, after for example, hard counters as Moa or Engineer bomb spam, your minions die and you’re left with nothing. With that trait, you’d at least have very long vigor, not leaving you that vunerale till cds are back.

As for Demonic Flesh – protection may be a little bit over the top. However, hard damage reverse is a good option IMO.
It could be toned down a bit and have some personal ICD for each enemy in bigger WvW encounters, but it’d certainly solve one of our problems – being focused. Good players would be aware of it anyway, since it’s only 2 seconds and next is in maximum 8 seconds, but it can add whole new level of gameplay.
It also belongs to Spite, since it’s a replacement for Dhuumfire and having even more very strong traits in SR would make it completly no-brainer mandatory and best line in-game (if it isn’t currently)

Balefire.7592:

Well, the one week survey period is complete. The survey will continue to accept responses, but as far as discussion is concerned, I feel like this is sufficient data to more forward. I finally got Google Forms working right, so here is the link for the data overview.

Do any of these results surprise you?
I was surprised by how many people would like to see Banshee’s Wail and Spectral Attunement moved elsewhere. In particular, the “move” slice is the biggest slice for Spectral Attunement. Also, I’m surprised how many people are happy with where Target the Weak currently sits, both in strength and in location.

Banshee Veil is a bout the warhorn, who have a skill who applies a Daze and the other one applies cripple (non damaging condition) and swiftness (a boon). I think this trait could go on the death magic trait for the boon duration.

I think Spectral Attunement could be move in another line (soul reaping maybe ?) because there is only one spectral skill who applies a condition (spectral wall : fear) and the three others give you life force.

@thanatosryback:
If you take some time to read the back posts..
We discussed about it and get to the point that Banshee Veil is a actually the only viable choice for Powerbuilds going into Curse tree, and Spectral Attunement is a good choice because it helps condition builds with LF, which they’re not good at developing.
It’s not a matter of absolutes, some traits are mixed to allow more build diversity, some traits are really good, some are the only choice.
If they’re good traits, think carefully of the build using them, not where they should stay.
_________________

What about going on with the discussion on the remaining trees?

Luke.4562:

What about going on with the discussion on the remaining trees?

I’ll start putting the next poll together.

As it turns out, having held out for while before moving was a good thing, since we got some napkin-back patch notes to increment the poll with, and one of them is fairly contentious on a fairly contentious trait. So, without further ado, I present to you the Spite poll. Note that I have included both the current (at the time of posting) and incoming Dhuumfires.
Let’s get rolling, shall we?

Minors

- Parasitic bond: While the trait itself is good, im not sure it’s enough for sustain in every game mode. Lower the cd and the amount it heals maybe could make it even better.
- Death into life: Meh. Just meh. Change the conversion from healing power to power and replace Blood to power (blood 25) with it.
- Siphoned power: Aaaaaaaand the crappiest trait award winner iiiiis … yeah, it’s just crap.

Majors

I – Death’s embrace: Standard downed trait, which isn’t good, but necro at least got an insane amount of profit from this trait. Removing all these type of traits would be the best.
II – Spiteful talisman: Off-hand CD reduction with added bonus. Great!
III – Spiteful removal: I would call it a filler trait, but it’s a surprisingly good one.
IV – Signet mastery: You know, cooldown reduction blablabla, but im nut sure the might bonus is exactly what it needs. If a full signet build comes viable somehow it may need a rework later on.
V – Spiteful spirit: Anothet trait balanced around Near to death, it could have a better uptime.
VI – Reaper’s might: The pug trait for a DS build. Just fine.

VII – Spiteful marks: Marks do too meaningless damage, to give a standalone trait for it. Merge it with Staff mastery.
VIII – Axe training: Good one, i like how it affects DS too. Maybe the damage bonus could be more, if axe won’t get aoe / cleave somehow.
IX – Training of the master: Well, it will get a nerf tomorrow, but it will be a good one still.
X – Chill of death: After the change its more reliable and won’t trigger after the enemy is already dead and leaves some counterplay to the enemy.

XI – Dhuumfire: The new change will be wellcomed, maybe it will vanish into thin air later. The thematic still disturbs me. Fire? To a necro? Just … whyyy? Im still not sure that burning was the best idea to make up the damage loss we had in the past. Especially that it got introduced along with Torment. Previously necro had access to every other condition too (well, confusion was still gimmicky but oh well …), which means a great cover, bleeds could still do the majority of the job sooo … i don’t know … Burning on a necro is just broken.
XII – Close to death: Sweet. Like apple pie.

Added my opinions to the poll

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQBAA

Minors:
Parasitic Bond with an ICD of 5 seconds is a somehow decent minor trait in both PVP and PVE. The problem I see here it’s not really a Spite trait, it doesn’t fit with the role of the tree but with the “Spite” word AND it doesn’t work under Death Shroud.
Death into Life is just out of his place and discording with the role of the tree.
Siphoned Power as it is now it’s just trash, getting 5 seconds of Might when people are focusfiring you it’s totally situational and underpowered.

Majors:
I) Death’s Embrace: Downed traits must be scrapped. Never took this and never will I.
II) Spiteful Talisman: It’s fine on an Adept slot. I’d like the focus would be more useful..
III) Spiteful Removal: On death trait with 10 seconds CDR, too much situational, not reliable. I barely never considered taking this into a build.
V) Spiteful Spirit: Too much scarce. I used this just as a filler trait with no better options. It doesn’t deserve the name of one of the strongest GW1 skills.
VII) Spiteful Marks: Worst major trait of this tree. It have to be increased to at least 25%-30% damage increase given the fact Marks have long cooldowns and low damage (both Direct Damage and Condition Damage) or be totally removed and merged. This can be a valuable trait for Condition based buildsin PVP, but the staff isn’t enough strong to deserve a trait like this.
XII) Dhuumfire: The noob&FOTM-metabuild-abuser carrier. With the incoming patch it will have what it deserves.
The only problem with the changes is explained by Lopez in this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-Too-much-placed-on-Death-Shroud

This line is over all good, but it has the worst Minors and Adept traits among all the trait lines.

Luke.4562:

XII) Dhuumfire: The noob&FOTM-metabuild-abuser carrier. With the incoming patch it will have what it deserves.
The only problem with the changes is explained by Lopez in this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-Too-much-placed-on-Death-Shroud

The change will have no affect what so ever on builds, Condition builds will STILL take it as without it its a BIG damage loss. Powermancers i still don’t see taking it as Close To Death is in my opinion better.

Now if it was moved to Master level then that could change things, but we all know that won’t happen despite the fact it is tied to Death Shroud and Life Blast unlike IP which already lasts longer, in Master tree as well…

@ArmageddonAsh: with that noobs won’t have to sit autoattack scepter to win matches. And I welcome it.
The real deterrent here is that if you want to burst you’ll have to pop Death Shroud, involving the necessity for LF and eventually making you a possible focus when your DS-used for the burst- ends potentially leaving you with less defenses.

Here the real problem as Lopez said, is focusing too many tools on the Death Shroud, so making you more weak in the start of a fight and overall if you can’t develop LF properly.

Luke.4562:

@ArmageddonAsh: with that noobs won’t have to sit autoattack scepter to win matches. And I welcome it.

It is nothing more than another Nerf to Necromancer. If this trait doesn’t get buffed enough to make it Grand master quality or gets moved down to Master then IP needs to be nerfed or moved up to Grand Master, the class can already have perma Burning anyway…

The problem with it before was you never know who would get the burning when fighting multiple foes, in this regard – its a buff in the fact that you have to stop attacking and using your skills and go into DS to get it off is going to be a damage loss compared to its current state. Then you have to consider the fact that Life Blast will be dodged, LoS and blocked more often now.

Luke.4562:

@ArmageddonAsh:
The real deterrent here is that if you want to burst you’ll have to pop Death Shroud, involving the necessity for LF and eventually making you a possible focus when your DS-used for the burst- ends potentially leaving you with less defenses.

The problem here becomes for Condition builds now having to rely on DeathShroud a lot more, other than staff they don’t really have that much Life Force Regen compared to Power builds and DS is normally reserved for when you get burst attacked now having to go into it every 10 seconds just for the HOPE of getting Burning which could be dodged and such is going to weaken them even more in my opinion.

It has to be buffed in my opinion, or moved down to Master line, this could then free up 10 points that could be spent in Soul Reaping for much needed Life Force Pool as well as a few traits in there.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The problem here becomes for Condition builds now having to rely on DeathShroud a lot more, other than staff they don’t really have that much Life Force Regen compared to Power builds and DS is normally reserved for when you get burst attacked now having to go into it every 10 seconds just for the HOPE of getting Burning which could be dodged and such is going to weaken them even more in my opinion.

scepter 3
Feast of Corruption 3% LF per condi, 10sec reus

pierwola.9602:

scepter 3
Feast of Corruption 3% LF per condi, 10sec reus

Not as good as Axe or Dagger imo.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

pierwola.9602:

scepter 3
Feast of Corruption 3% LF per condi, 10sec reus

Not as good as Axe or Dagger imo.

It’s not that bad. It synergizes well with Spite Signet. Also, putting 4 different conditions on the target isn’t anything hard. Cripple, Bleeding, Poison, Weakness, Chill, Torment maybe. And you already outperform Axe

Chill and Torment need DeathShroud. And if you have no Life Force, no Chill and Torment. (Chill from Staff.. it’s a bit intricate spamming conditions from staff and then switch to scepter just for LF)
Anyway, enough with this offtopic.

Balefire.7592:

Spite poll

Come on guys and gals, we’re sitting at less than a third of the voting turnout for Curses! We can do better!

Anyway, it seems that ANET wants to give precedence to the Living History, so I assume for the next 2-3 months they won’t add any balance patch, so imho we can discuss, find some solution and propose them to ANET through the Class Balance Forum in time, we have plenty of it.

Seriously, I don’t understand why people don’t know this yet:

They have different teams for different things. The living story team does absolutely nothing about balance. They don’t touch it. The PvP team that makes maps and new PvP stuff doesn’t touch balance either. The balance team balances, that’s it. They can’t do things nearly as quickly as people on this side want, because it just isn’t possible.

Bhawb.7408:

Seriously, I don’t understand why people don’t know this yet:

They have different teams for different things. The living story team does absolutely nothing about balance. They don’t touch it. The PvP team that makes maps and new PvP stuff doesn’t touch balance either. The balance team balances, that’s it. They can’t do things nearly as quickly as people on this side want, because it just isn’t possible.

I think it’s because for the longest time, we would get mixed patches with balancing, features and living world stuff. Now that’s it’s separated, it’ll take some time to get used to. Frankly, I think I would prefer something like scheduled quarterly balance patches anyway.

Its just generally better practice for them to roll as much into one as possible (which is why they don’t have 4-5 separate patch times for every single team), although I guess that could confuse people.

Balefire.7592:

Come on guys and gals, we’re sitting at less than a third of the voting turnout for Curses! We can do better!

Most necro’s gave up and turned into cynical kittens.
Heck 3 of my guildies wanted to roll necro and gave up because , why play necro when you can play warrior.
Next to that there are quite a few guilds trying to recruit necro’s for gvg.. but barely can get the spots filled .As for dungeon’s.. try to get a party as a necro.
This might be a small indication about the state of necro’s
to complete that there are guilds trying to run necro’s in wvw, but mostly the necro’s just slow the group down, get focused, can’t retreat and are the first downed so yeah.. why play necro?

Noones come and attempted my necro trial for rT yet. :<

Bhawb.7408:

…

To your attention

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/The-patch-on-the-21st-of-January-a-hoax/first#post3530343

Josh Davis.6015:
To clear up the confusion, the balance updates will be in the next feature build – a build that adds features to the game. The next feature build will take place after the Living World season has finished. Today’s update added another chapter to the Living World story arc.
Here’s a quote from Colin’s blog post last year on the subject:

Due to the size and scope of the final four story releases in season one, the next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished. Once the story has completed, we’ll go into much greater detail on what’s to follow, but for now we want to focus on making sure our last four episodes shine.

The above is what we were referring to on the livestream with ‘feature build’. As I mentioned in my post on the PvP forums earlier today, previewing something on Friday and releasing it on the next Tuesday would give us an incredibly small amount of time to react to feedback – and that wouldn’t be fair to you.

I wasn’t claiming something strange, what I wrote was an assumption made about this post.

Cm’on people lets make this again!

Balefire.7592:

Spite poll

We’re currently sitting at less than half the number of votes Curses had by now.
I believe in the Necro community – vote on!

maybe put the poll link in your first post. people will find it easier.

Balefire.7592:

We’re currently sitting at less than half the number of votes Curses had by now.
I believe in the Necro community – vote on!

i could vote a second time. would that make you feel better?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

maybe put the poll link in your first post. people will find it easier.

Done. Plus the title too. The character limit on titles sucks.

We need more help here, we’re still in time to make ANET notice our necessities before the end of the Living World Season!

Answer the poll, give a try to brainstorm on the traits with us!

Spite poll

Luke, I copy pasted your post because I liked the formatting.
Moving on:

Minors
- Parasitic bond: I really dislike all on kill traits, so I rate this as terrible. Besides disliking the trigger, the amount restored is pitiful.
- Death into life: All % attribute grant another attribute traits are lazy as hell, granting healing power just makes this a joke as well.
- Siphoned power: If I’m at 25% hp I don’t need might, I need protection, vigor, something to keep me alive long enough until my heal comes off CD. No the whole it triggers in DS argument doesn’t excuse this, hell I usually don’t have any life force left over when I hit the 25% HP mark since keeping a full DS for low HP is a horrible play style.
Majors
I – Death’s embrace: Standard downed trait, which means it’s a pretty useless slot.
II – Spiteful talisman: Very good trait, gives something more than the bland cooldown reduction. Range increase is very welcome to focus skills. Traits for offhand really need to give more than just CD reduction since they only have 2 skills.
III – Spiteful removal: On kill traits are just bad.
IV – Signet mastery: Very powerful, the effects aren’t that interesting but I like the trait as a whole. Unfortunately, only 2 or 3 signets are worthwhile and very few builds use more than 1.
V – Spiteful spirit: This is trait is kept sub par because of Near to Death – back when it was 5 seconds as well-, a very bad design decision.
VI – Reaper’s might: Very good trait for the power line and DS builds.
VII – Spiteful marks: Direct damage on marks. HAHAHAHAHA, oh wait you’re serious? Let me laugh harder.
VIII – Axe training: Very good skill, held back by the Axe’s inherent crappiness.
IX – Training of the master: Powerful minion trait, integral to minion builds focus on damage.
X – Chill of death: If the cooldown was lowered the skill would be magnificent, as it is right now I was issues with it triggering on unintended targets, especially in well builds.
XI – Dhuumfire: Numerous remake suggestions available by everyone, tells you enough about this.
XII – Close to death: I wish it had a more interesting effect, feels more like I’m taking this to actually have a GM advantage since the minor is a joke.

Minors:
- Parasitic bond: The heal on kill trait is quite useless since you can’t reallly control it, together with death shroud makes this a weak trait.

- Death into life: It’s a stat boost not a great one but an alright one.

- Siphoned power: very situational and quite weak as well since necro’s don’t like to be hit at all.

Majors:

I – Death’s embrace: Ok trait but not that great.

II – Spiteful talisman: The 20% cooldown is great but the range increase puzzles me since there isn’t a main hand weapon that can be used at the same range.

III – Spiteful removal: It’s a good trait. Ver usefull if you don’t want to rely on consume conditions when you walk out of combat with conditions.

IV – Signet mastery: It would be a good triat if signets were better.

V – Spiteful spirit: 3 seconds of retalition when entering death shroud? Make it 5 and it would be usefull.

VI – Reaper’s might: a very good trait for DS builds.

VII – Spiteful marks: useless.

VIII – Axe training: Very good trait.

IX – Training of the master: Good minion trait.

X – Chill of death: A good trait but maybe we could add an extra trigger requirement like the enemy having at least one boon.

XI – Dhuumfire: Vey good for the conditionmancer but only them.

XI – DhuumfireV2: Junk, Death shroud is a damage loss for the conditionmancer, life blast even more .

XII – Close to death: A strong trait maybe even a bit OP (20% is a lot).

I was thinking about Withering Precision in the Curse tree. It’s another trait balanced around the interaction with other spells and traits, it add 4-5 seconds each 20 seconds to a rotation of skills that garants a good uptime on weakness:
Chillblains + Putrid Mark combo field, then Weakening Shroud, Enfleebling Blood.
At this point it’s better nerfing a single trait than other 4 spells (even if they nerfed them a bit yet -they hit Weakening Shroud and Putrid Mark which wwas proccing 2 blast combo-).
Imho these talents should be really good to exhist as standalone or totally deleted, they don’t have any mean of exhistance.

If you think about it, these multiple interaction were made to make a potential synergy, but they’re limiting it instead of allowing it. They should remove all these “Boon Duration” and “Condition Duration” base stats from the traitlines just to start.

Oooh, didn’t read the forums for some time, so I didn’t saw this thread. Nice Idea ^.^
I’ll get to vote immediately (even if I don’t use the Spite line that much anymore…)

And now, to bring the Spite discussion into its next stage, here are the results.

Do any of them surprise you? If so, why?

Bhawb.7408:

MMs definitely don’t need much more defense. MMs are pretty well balanced right now, and the general changes/upgrades to the class overall will bring them to balance well enough.

If anything, MMs just need a slight redesign to increase the amount of playstyles they support (instead of being totally focused around minions being disposable meat-shield utilities, which is the only real use atm), and slight redesigns to increase the range of their uses.

Vigor though, would be a crazy buff.

I understand you are talking from a PvP perspective. And from what I’ve seen, yes they are in a good place at the moment. However, from a PvE stand point they are not in a good place at the moment. Although I will agree a redesign would benefit them in PvE for sure.

Balefire.7592:

And now, to bring the Spite discussion into its next stage, here are the results.

Do any of them surprise you? If so, why?

It’s surprising how many ppl consider Death’s Embrace to be alright (or parasitic bond).

Or why some think Spiteful talisman is subpar. It’s a normal 20% CDR trait with a very good extra. As a minor trait, it cant get any better.

It’s funny how absolutely everyone hates siphoned power

It suffers from a lack of direction. At the end of the trait line, you have the two best GM traits for Power and Condi builds. The minors are all very weak, and the Adept traits aren’t stellar either.

that comment sums it up pretty well (and no, it’s not mine), i disagree with reapers might and spiteful talisman not being good tho.

RashanDale.3609:

It’s funny how absolutely everyone hates siphoned power tho

I guess to answer my own question, that is, by and far, the most unsurprising result I’ve ever seen. Ever. EVER.

Balefire.7592:

RashanDale.3609:

It’s funny how absolutely everyone hates siphoned power tho

I guess to answer my own question, that is, by and far, the most unsurprising result I’ve ever seen. Ever. EVER.

yes but usually you have at least a few ppl who say it’s not terrible (like with death’s embrace).

good job bale..

15 chars ( i need that picture)

RashanDale.3609:

Balefire.7592:

And now, to bring the Spite discussion into its next stage, here are the results.

Do any of them surprise you? If so, why?

It’s surprising how many ppl consider Death’s Embrace to be alright (or parasitic bond).

Or why some think Spiteful talisman is subpar. It’s a normal 20% CDR trait with a very good extra. As a minor trait, it cant get any better.

It’s funny how absolutely everyone hates siphoned power

It suffers from a lack of direction. At the end of the trait line, you have the two best GM traits for Power and Condi builds. The minors are all very weak, and the Adept traits aren’t stellar either.

that comment sums it up pretty well (and no, it’s not mine), i disagree with reapers might and spiteful talisman not being good tho.

Death’s Embrace: I am fairly certain most classes have this, or something like it. At least 4 do. So I never expect Anet to change it. Since it is a trait found on multiple classes, I weigh it based on the usefulness compared to the other traits. And I don’t feel this trait is inadequate compared to the other ones. So as is, I believe it is fine. If Anet decides to change the trait as a whole for the other classes, than necro should of course remain on par to the rest. But until then I see no reason to complain.

Parasitic Bond: How can you complain about free health? Sure, this tree may not be the best place. But 1k health from killing something. In terms of necro support, thats a hard hitter. xD

I was surprised at how many thought Spiteful Marks was terrible. While I agree that no one should be really taking this trait, ever, it seems weird that most people didn’t want it merged with say Staff Mastery or Greater Marks. Unless they thought it was so bad, they would rather call it out as Terrible, rather than put it to Move/Merge. xD

I’m actually fairly interested in some of these results.

• Would Death into Life be better as Vitality? Would you keep it as HP if it was a minor trait?
• Would you rather Spiteful Marks be merged, or do something else? If merged, with what?
• For Spiteful Removal and Parasitic Bond, is the concept bad, or the reward? I personally have gotten great mileage out of these in WvW zerg fights, but…
• Would you prefer that Spite be more self synergistic, or be useful to more builds?
• The comments seem to indicate that people really dislike this trait tree in the way it’s set up, as well as the traits within, citing “unremarkable” or “disjointed.” However, many of the traits received positive reviews – so what gives?

I’m fine with Death into Life, tbh. The only issue is that we need a wee bit more HP scaling before people like it. But with a bit more siphoning work the trait will be good.

I’m assuming Spiteful = Spiteful removal. In which case I think its a bad trait overall, same as Parasitic Bond. They aren’t weak, they just proc badly. I think all on-enemy death procs need to be expanded to work on minion death, ally death, and enemy down, and then rebalance them. Obviously death should be the biggest triggers but I think partial benefit from other procs would make these traits usable. Whereas now in sPvP they are basically useless.

Spite needs more condition-based things. No on-crit traits, but traits that deal with conditions overall. As it is now, only Dhuumfire directly applies a condition, and Chill of Death indirectly does via the skill its attached to. We need more condition procs, especially offensive conditions.

While some might dislike the tree overall, there are a few traits here that are still absolutely amazing. Almost all power builds go 30 into Spite for a reason. But strong traits =/= good tree.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m assuming Spiteful = Spiteful removal.

I seem to have stumbled over the word “Marks”. Edited.

Either get rid of it, or have it increase the usefulness of staff skills, not just power damage.

Yerffejy.6538:

Death’s Embrace: I am fairly certain most classes have this, or something like it. At least 4 do. So I never expect Anet to change it.

So? This doesnt make Death’s embrace any better. Noone should ever pick this garbage.

Parasitic Bond: How can you complain about free health? Sure, this tree may not be the best place. But 1k health from killing something. In terms of necro support, thats a hard hitter. xD

I just really dislike On-Death-traits, cause theyre absolutely useless in a lot of scenarios. And it gets countered by our class mechanic. Would rather see a parasitic bond that works more like its GW1-counterpart.

Would Death into Life be better as Vitality? Would you keep it as HP if it was a minor trait?

No. I would prefer having more use for healing power.

Would you rather Spiteful Marks be merged, or do something else? If merged, with what?

I like the idea of merging it with soul marks.

For Spiteful Removal and Parasitic Bond, is the concept bad, or the reward? I personally have gotten great mileage out of these in WvW zerg fights, but…

The snowball-concept. It’s good if youre in a big fight, if ppl die, if youre not in death shroud. A bit too many ’if’s, imo. And by the time enemies are dying, i often dont need parasitic bond anymore either.

So, when do we begin the more controversial trees? Namely, Death and Blood?
Those will probably generate the most entertaining results.

+1

Death into Life can actually be useful just on PVE Minion Mancer builds focused on maxing healing power to support the team.. Which atm is heresy.
A 7% boost from MAX 2000 power it’s 140 Healing power. Which isnt’ anyway that useful. And anyway our healings wouldn’t still be that impressive.

Spiteful Marks would be “good” if raised to almost 30-40% given the Marks cooldown and improving both the DD and the Condition damage, but then again, which build would use it? We must reason about their viability in defined builds, not about the trait as good by itself alone.

Spiteful Removal and Parasitic Bond are BAD because of more requirement to make it proc: I’m not really sure about it, but it requires that YOU land a kill on something. It’s even bad in WVW because you can’t have it procced by allied kills. The requirement is HARD to achieve, the reward is forgettable. And anyway, Parasitic Bond won’t heal you under DS. These would be good traits on an assassin class like Thief, not on Necromancer. It totally goes away from our objective.

While Spite line is yet useful for more builds (Powerbuilds, Conditionmancer in PVP, MinionMancer) it feels like the real problem with this tree is that it’s the only tree for Necromancer that garants a relevant DPS increase (for both the passive Power and Close to Death * ), so it’s mandatory in both PVE and PVP to maximize your damage; and don’t forget all traits to increase the direct damage are on this tree.
This forces a lot of builds into it, while the minors on other trees seems to be just a support to it.
I’d like to see with a potential change to Strenght of Undeath (Soul Reaping minor) if this would change.
After that, it would be nice if as other classes, the Damage traits would be split on the other trees too. Maybe it would give less dependency on Spite line to raise the dps and allow more build variety.

.* Elseway I don’t think anybody would take this trait line. They should solve this problem with passive stats bound to each tree.

Waiting for the next Trait line!

Kiriakulos.1690:

So, when do we begin the more controversial trees? Namely, Death and Blood?
Those will probably generate the most entertaining results.

I’ve given it about a week in between each poll, so unless everyone is really antsy to move on to those, I planned on starting them on Sunday.