Guild Wars 2

Compare Withering Precision to Enfeebling Shroud, and you’ll see why its bad. A 10 point trait has, even in its nerfed form, has only 5% less base uptime; but at the same time applies a bleed, does this AoE, does not rely on crit chance, and a few other things.

I wouldnt mind withering precision if the icd was per target instead of just one global icd. It would still be pretty weak for a grandmaster though.

spoj.9672:

I wouldnt mind withering precision if the icd was per target instead of just one global icd. It would still be pretty weak for a grandmaster though.

Really, they should revert it to what it was: 25% chance on crit, no ICD. The duration should be reduced from the original 5 seconds, though. 2 or 3 seconds is enough for no ICD, 25% chance on crit.

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

Andele.1306:

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

We have way more skills to apply Weakness while throwing other conditions on our enemy. Warriors have limited access to it (which is more than enough to slam your enemy with a hammer), ele and engi camping earth / E-gun well .. ehm .. maybe not the best idea to do.

Dalanor.5387:

Andele.1306:

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

We have way more skills to apply Weakness while throwing other conditions on our enemy. Warriors have limited access to it (which is more than enough to slam your enemy with a hammer), ele and engi camping earth / E-gun well .. ehm .. maybe not the best idea to do.

Warriors need only 50% cond dur to have easy 100% uptime via blow and hammer is kinda a thing you use against necro, Both ele and Engie if they sit in said “weapon set” for more than 3 shots are wasting their time since by the time projectile 2 hits not even half of the first projectiles weakness passed without any cond dur… so on full coni builds they all have built in weapon permaweakness, no need for GM trait for it (no need on necro too just saying that we got it more split up and the GM makes no sense).

Andele.1306:

Dalanor.5387:

Andele.1306:

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

We have way more skills to apply Weakness while throwing other conditions on our enemy. Warriors have limited access to it (which is more than enough to slam your enemy with a hammer), ele and engi camping earth / E-gun well .. ehm .. maybe not the best idea to do.

Warriors need only 50% cond dur to have easy 100% uptime via blow and hammer is kinda a thing you use against necro, Both ele and Engie if they sit in said “weapon set” for more than 3 shots are wasting their time since by the time projectile 2 hits not even half of the first projectiles weakness passed without any cond dur… so on full coni builds they all have built in weapon permaweakness, no need for GM trait for it (no need on necro too just saying that we got it more split up and the GM makes no sense).

You don’t even need that much. Look. It’s completely viable, almost perma weakness. HAMMER TIME!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQFACGQQP0wqgLMF+B1D7oOiDA-jUBBYfApmFRjtMqIas6aYKXER1A-w
And agree on ele / engi part, but as i said it not necessary practical to sit on those skills, but in a pvp situation could be good. Im more of a pve person, sorry. :/

As I stated before Withering Precision has been nerfed to this because with a complete rotation with offhand dagger and staff blast field you could bring a major uptime on weakness.

Anyway, are we going for Death line?

Yes, death! More death!
Btw what will happen when we finished with the last traitline? Will you make a summarized post on the balance forum Balefire?

A summary of all feedback for each traitline and a link to this thread should definitely be posted on the balance forum once we are done. I dont usually pay much attention to blood magic and death magic traitlines because I dont use them. But this structure allows everyone to give good feedback and discuss why others feel certain ways about different traits. Ive been very surprised with some of the opinions ive seen (some i feel are completely misguided and wrong but thats just my opinion).

Dalanor.5387:

Yes, death! More death!
Btw what will happen when we finished with the last traitline? Will you make a summarized post on the balance forum Balefire?

Yes, and more. However, I would like to re-run the Soul Reaping survey, as it did its job well for a first poll, but the formatting was very different, making direct comparison difficult.

Since the Devs have finally started opening up the floor to discussion (see here), and Necros are currently in third place for “class that needs the most work” by popular vote, I’d like to try and finish this up ASAP.
Hence, what you’ve all been waiting for: the Death Magic Survey.
PLEASE KEEP WRITTEN SURVEY RESPONSES BRIEF. POST ANY PARAGRAPH RESPONSES TO THE THREAD. AT THIS POINT IN TIME, ALL I AM LOOKING FOR IS AN EVALUATION, NOT SUGGESTIONS.

Sorry about that, but I don’t want the survey responses getting too out of hand. Any major text responses should be put in the thread to further discussion. Putting them in the survey only increases my processing workload.
Please ask any and every Necro to fill out this survey.

My feedback on the tree in general

For minions
The tree is good. The one big issue I feel is that DM and minions in general are only supported by a single playstyle; expendable utility minions. There are no good minion upkeep specs, or ones that have weaker MMs and strong minions, or a variety of other possible setups. I’d love to see DM have slight expansions in the adept/master slots to accompany other playstyles, and then have other trees get the “big” things to fill those out. For example BM has the ability to support a super selfish MM who uses his minions as health batteries and survival utilities. Spite could support high damage minions (but with weak MMs), Curses could have similar but condi-based, SR could have more DS/LF based minion mechanics.

But overall the tree is fine for MMs. Minion Master trait is great, FotM is great, Death Nova is great, there is your tree. Necromatic Corruption is terrible however, it should move to a different tree with significant upgrades, and open up the slot for a true bunker trait.

For non MMs
This tree is bad. Plagued by two minors that aren’t even good for MMs, let alone useless for non-MMs, and a plethora of traits that are not that good all around. There need to be much better of two things: support based traits, and selfish bunker traits. Pair that with improved minors (that aren’t minion based), and you have a decent tree.

However, this also leads to another suggestion:
I think ANet needs to increase all trait trees and trait tiers by a few traits each. 3 traits for Adept, 2 for Master, and 1 for GM, for a total of 18 traits instead of 12. It’d allow for a lot more niche traits (like more varied utility type-specific traits), whereas now a lot of things have to be pretty all-purpose, especially at the GM level.

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

Minors:

• Reanimator: Minors traits shouldn’t force players on getting a certain tool for a certain build if they don’t want it. Same as Vampiric in Blood line.
• Protection of the Horde: Same as said for Reanimator. Plus this trait can be useful if it would raise the Toughness of all your party.
• Deadly Strenght: Fine trait, imho it should increase not just power, but condition damage too.

Majors:

• I) Dark Armor : Thrash trait. Maybe give it Stability for the duration to allow uninterruptable Ghastly Claws and Life Transfer?
• II) Spiteful Vigor : Totally forgettable trait. It’s just a filler.
• III) Minion Master : Nice trait.
• IV) Ritual of Protection : Nice trait, the best for wells.
• V) Staff Mastery : Somehow ok, but I feel it has to be merged with Soul Marks (Soul Reaping X).
• VI) Shrouded Removal : Useful trait, but it would be better if it would allow to remove almost 2 conditions. Ofc this won’t happen because Near to Death (Soul Reaping VIII) has influence on it.
• VII) Greater Marks : Not a bad trait, but… i feel it’s not in a good place to be taken, maybe let’s see after the next change to Death Magic minors.
• VIII) Reaper’s Protection : Mostly Pvp trait, it’s not bad.
• IX) Death Shiver : Totally lackluster on this line. Anierna.6918 on this thread suggested to move it to the Curse line so Powermancers could run it in PVE to increase dps; I suggested to move Banshee Wail (Curse VIII) on adept tier after scrapping Chilling Darkness (Curse III) and moving Death Shiver to Curse VIII place.
• X) Flesh of the Master : Essential trait for every Minion Master build. This trait is gold and mandatory.
• XI) Death Nova : Nice trait, but Imho it doesn’t allow a decent backfire for intentionally destroying Necromancer’s minions.
• XII) Necromantic Corruption : It’s not a good trait, it should be used mostly in pvp, but I don’t see it any useful by the numbers it has now. It must be reworked or scrapped away. Anyway I see it better on the Spite line.

Comments : WIP
…
About Staff traits:
Staff is a supportive tool, all the traits we have aren’t making it strong as it need.
Imho Greater Marks (DeathMagicVII) is mainly a WvW tool and so it should be merged with an improved version of Spiteful Marks (SpiteVII) to be a valuable source.
Don’t forget Greater Marks has been “nerfed”, it was on Adept tier and over abused in Wvw for condition spamming, that’s why ANET moved it to Master tier.

About Minion traits:
Minion traits on this line are awesome, but I feel like they are mandatory and have no competition. Of course, every Necromancer running minions will have Flesh of the Master and Minion Master, so the only viable choice would be to decide if taking Death Nova or spend points in another trait line. I’d like to see those 2 traits (MinionMaster and FlashOTM) to be merged to allow MMs to get some other adept traits, to make it less reliant just on minions.

Offtopic regarding the interaction with Minions, Curse and others trait lines:
We know Curse line has no interaction or utility for Minion Masters. Why can’t Furious Demise (Curse minor Adept) allow Fury to minions and teammates?
It would allow more team utility and a little interaction with minions for more build variability.

It would be nice to see some Master or Adept trait for minions in Soul Reaping and Curse lines too, maybe something revolving on backfire or Life Force generation (in GW1 you were always receiving energy every time a minion of yours was dying).
Maybe for Curse a lesser Death Nova, like “on death your minions explode spraying bones and conditions around” or for Soul Reaping “on death your minions give you x% LifeForce, or reduces the cooldown on every minion spell”.

Get some inspiration from GW 1 maybe..
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Jagged_Bones

I feel like a lot of the minion traits could be merged/buffed. And some more boon orientated traits added to replace them.

Spiteful vigor should be vigor, not retal.

I dont like that death shiver is so unaccessible. It should be moved to either curses or at the very least back the adept position.

Also the minors being minion related feels very odd to me. No other class has a line which essentially forces you to play with certain things. The minors should be useful to a wider range of builds. This means they shouldnt be minion related. They should be defense/boon related to keep in line with the deathmagic core theme (defense and boon duration).

Agree with the above comments, but i want to ad that Deathly strenght is not a bad trait, it’s just another really boring and uninspired GM minor trait. No insulting, but a flat damage increase indirectly is meh. Especially that we have traits like this at every GM minor slot …

edit: apparently every class suffers from this except in a few cases. Oh well, daily fail achieved.

I never understood why we have a boon duration trait when we hardly have any boons.
then again i never understood why they nerfed retaliation without compenstating this profession that almost solely has access to this boon.
And where are my booonstealing skills?!
The thing that irks me most is so little diversity.

dat spelling.

It would have an interesting interaction with conditions to boons conversion.

Minors:

• Reanimator: I find this trait to be unfairly discriminated against. I agree it shouldn’t be a minor trait, but its effect is actually pretty decent. Merging it with Death Nova will honestly be a great change.
• Protection of the Horde: This needs to go die in a fire. Reanimator at least has uses even if you aren’t a MM build. PotH doesn’t even have a use for a MM build.
• Deadly Strength: Good trait in my eyes. Stat conversions are always handy.

Majors:

• I) Dark Armor : Pretty bad. I think I mis-voted on this one saying it was just sub-par, but the trait is actually quite bad right now because we really don’t have many channel skills.
• II) Spiteful Vigor : Doesn’t even work properly on Blood Fiend or ground-targeted Well of Blood. Could use a longer duration.
• III) Minion Master : Lots of builds can make use of this. I like it
• IV) Ritual of Protection : The Protection duration is a little low, but otherwise this is a good trait.
• V) Staff Mastery : Classic 20% cooldown reduction trait. Nothing wrong with it.
• VI) Shrouded Removal : Useful trait, but it really should be 1 removed on entrance, one on exit. Necromancers are the masters of conditions, so if the trait is stronger than other class condition removal traits, that’s actually fine.
• VII) Greater Marks : A good trait, but since the baseline mark size increase, it feels a little lackluster. Merging with Staff Mastery or Spiteful Marks sounds good.
• VIII) Reaper’s Protection : I love this trait. Since the cooldown got reduced to 60 seconds, it’s better, but we really need more things like this to dissuade people from CCing us. Or more Stability.
• IX) Death Shiver : Decent for Death Shroud builds, but it’s in the wrong place to be really good for them.
• X) Flesh of the Master : Great trait. Needs no changing.
• XI) Death Nova : Strong trait. No complaints on this one, since the poison is such long duration on each pulse of the field.
• XII) Necromantic Corruption : Chance is just too low to be any good. Buffing it to 25% chance would make it better, but honestly, I’d rather see the trait get nixed and get a non-minion Grandmaster trait with a defensive focus.

Death Magic is well, bad.

Minors:

• Reanimator: Could be merged with Death Nova or gotten rid of
• Protection of the Horde: If you doubled or trippled the toughness and made it an adept trait I still don’t know if anyone would want it.
• Deadly Strength: Good enough

Majors:

• I) Dark Armor : on channel skills just aren’t useful, maybe if it was stability to fit the boon duration.
• II) Spiteful Vigor : LOL it says vigor give me vigor
• III) Minion Master : Minion master trait in Death Magic that isn’t mandatory, I like that.
• IV) Ritual of Protection : Great aoe protection, this is a good trait.
• V) Staff Mastery : There are 4 staff traits, they need to be merged into 2. Don’t care how
• VI) Shrouded Removal : I guess this is nice, but we don’t really need more condition removal
• VII) Greater Marks : There are 4 staff traits, they need to be merged into 2. Don’t care how
• VIII) Reaper’s Protection : This is great, I love it.
• IX) Death Shiver : Shouldn’t this be in a damaging tree? it applies vulnerability that isn’t defensive.
• X) Flesh of the Master : Minion master trait in Death Magic that isn’t mandatory, I like that.
• XI) Death Nova : GM worthy trait
• XII) Necromantic Corruption : Like Drarnor said I want a defensive trait that isn’t minion reliant.

We have to remember that Death Nova direct damage won’t proc on Putrid Explosion, just the Aoe poison. This isn’t a bug: they clearly declared it work so because elseway it would be too much OP.

Keep it in mind when you think about the trait’s value.

Imho if not the direct damage, the poison damage should be raised or make it better scale with condition damage, because it still have a chance of being dispelled and would work as a better deterrent for people destroying intentionally necro’s minions.
At the moment with about 1200 Condi damage the Poison would deal around 1100 damages.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Minors:

• Reanimator: I find this trait to be unfairly discriminated against. I agree it shouldn’t be a minor trait, but its effect is actually pretty decent. Merging it with Death Nova will honestly be a great change.
• Protection of the Horde: This needs to go die in a fire. Reanimator at least has uses even if you aren’t a MM build. PotH doesn’t even have a use for a MM build.
• Deadly Strength: Good trait in my eyes. Stat conversions are always handy.

Majors:

• I) Dark Armor : Pretty bad. I think I mis-voted on this one saying it was just sub-par, but the trait is actually quite bad right now because we really don’t have many channel skills.
• II) Spiteful Vigor : Doesn’t even work properly on Blood Fiend or ground-targeted Well of Blood. Could use a longer duration.
• III) Minion Master : Lots of builds can make use of this. I like it
• IV) Ritual of Protection : The Protection duration is a little low, but otherwise this is a good trait.
• V) Staff Mastery : Classic 20% cooldown reduction trait. Nothing wrong with it.
• VI) Shrouded Removal : Useful trait, but it really should be 1 removed on entrance, one on exit. Necromancers are the masters of conditions, so if the trait is stronger than other class condition removal traits, that’s actually fine.
• VII) Greater Marks : A good trait, but since the baseline mark size increase, it feels a little lackluster. Merging with Staff Mastery or Spiteful Marks sounds good.
• VIII) Reaper’s Protection : I love this trait. Since the cooldown got reduced to 60 seconds, it’s better, but we really need more things like this to dissuade people from CCing us. Or more Stability.
• IX) Death Shiver : Decent for Death Shroud builds, but it’s in the wrong place to be really good for them.
• X) Flesh of the Master : Great trait. Needs no changing.
• XI) Death Nova : Strong trait. No complaints on this one, since the poison is such long duration on each pulse of the field.
• XII) Necromantic Corruption : Chance is just too low to be any good. Buffing it to 25% chance would make it better, but honestly, I’d rather see the trait get nixed and get a non-minion Grandmaster trait with a defensive focus.

I agree 100% with this evaluation.

Come on dudes, contribute smartly on this poll!

the Death Magic Survey

Death Magic is clearly meant to be the defense and minion trait line. Another attribute of the trait line is that it provides “bunker buster” traits that weaken enemies’ defenses. It’s rather disappointing that the defensive traits here are quite lackluster. Unlike Blood Magic, I don’t think the trait line is fundamentally flawed. However, I do think that there are simply too many types of traits trying to fit in here (staff, minions, defense, anti-defense, support).

Minor

Reanimator – So much potential wasted here in one of the most unique traits. This is the only trait that attempts to fulfill the role of creating a snowballing minion army, but the minions are so weak that they’re nearly worthless. Buff it somehow, combine it with Death Nova, do whatever you have to, just make it good.
Protection of the Horde – This is meant to combo with Reanimator and other minions, but it’s too weak. Combine it with another trait or get rid of it.
Deadly Strength – This is quite powerful, since it’s a boost for defensively built minion masters (which would be most of them).

Adept

Dark Armor – A mediocre trait, although it applies to a decent few abilities (Life Transfer, Ghastly Claws, Life Siphon, Wicked Spiral, Frozen Abyss, and Life Leech). It would be great if it at least did as much as Protected Mantras (600).
Spiteful Vigor – A contender for “worst trait in the game.” I’m really not sure what can be done with it. Perhaps it can be merged with Spiteful Spirit so they can be married and terrible together? Or perhaps it could gasp provide vigor?
Minion Master – A bog standard trait. Makes minion masters more annoying since you have to kill all their pets 20% faster.
Ritual of Protection – This trait is decent in its current state. However, I feel that it could use a little extra. Perhaps it could have an additional boon, even if it’s just regeneration/retaliation? Putting that on an entire group might actually be useful. I also think a slight duration boost is in order.
Staff Mastery – A simple trait that sees some use. I do think having four staff traits is too much when it’s not used as a primary weapon outside of zergs. Perhaps this could be merged with Spiteful Marks or Soul Marks? I do wish the staff could effectively fill its role as a support weapon instead of spam/burst, but ANet’s opinion seems to differ (see: Putrid Mark).
Shrouded Removal – Technically this is a good trait, but I don’t think it gets used much, mostly because necromancers have other really good condition removal abilities already. There are also some traits that do the same thing. I actually think this or Spiteful Removal would make a good 15-point minor trait to encourage the use of other healing abilities besides Consume Conditions.

Master

Greater Marks – Before necromancer marks had their baseline radius increased, this was a must-have. Now, it’s still pretty good, although making a weapon “unblockable” seems rather niche. The increased radius is certainly helpful, especially if you wanted to be a support necro—oh wait, Putrid Mark. Whoops.
Reaper’s Protection – This is one of those traits that seems like it would tip the balance in my favor approximately once every 1000 fights. I think this should just be merged with Fear of Death.
Death Shiver – Wasted potential all over. This would be an amazing trait…if it was located elsewhere. Put this in Spite, Curses, or Soul Reaping and it would get used all the time.
Flesh of the Master – Another really basic trait. It’s traits like these that make the more interesting traits obsolete.

Grandmaster

Death Nova – From what I know, this is an excellent trait, perhaps even overpowered. It certainly makes minion masters a complete pain to fight. This goes perfectly with Reanimator. I think having the trait also apply when downed is a crazy number of features to have in a single necromancer trait (although it would be on par as a warrior trait cough cough).
Necromantic Corruption – This is another trait that would pair well with a theoretical good version of Reanimator. It’s also weakens enemies, like Death Nova. However, I feel that Death Nova is simply better. Since they fill similar roles and the same slot, I think that this should be moved or changed.

I think a lot of trait lines overall suffer from “passive” vs “situational” traits – the “passive” traits are usually just better. Compare Flesh of the Master and Reaper’s Protection – do you want a permanent boost, or a boost that might be useful once every few minutes? Other problems would include inaccessible traits (Death Shiver) and incredibly weak traits (Spiteful Vigor). Since traits occupy the same slots as others, those that are weaker or in effect for less time are not used. It’s astounding that so many “useless” traits still exist.

Come on dudes, keep on contributing with answering this poll!

the Death Magic Survey

yeah!

maybe link this on reddit..?

I don’t think it’s a good idea to let that community touch it. Trolls and such, you know … :/

Dalanor.5387:

I don’t think it’s a good idea to let that community touch it. Trolls and such, you know … :/

Not so much trolls as people utterly incapable of criticism. Their karma system seems to have actually removed their capacity to disagree with anything that isn’t the majority opinion and the majority their thinks that ANet can do no wrong.

Hi guys. I let the poll sit for an extra little bit in order to get some more votes. Here are the results.

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

On an unrelated note, I’m going to have to take some away from the game in general, and possibly from the forums as well as I have been transferred in my workplace, and will need some time to move/adapt.
If anyone would like to take up the reigns of this thread/discussion for the time being, it would be appreciated. Please PM me for further info.

Balefire.7592:

Hi guys. I let the poll sit for an extra little bit in order to get some more votes. Here are the results.

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

On an unrelated note, I’m going to have to take some away from the game in general, and possibly from the forums as well as I have been transferred in my workplace, and will need some time to move/adapt.
If anyone would like to take up the reigns of this thread/discussion for the time being, it would be appreciated. Please PM me for further info.

It gave me an access denied. I guess it needs to be set to be open for everyone like the other stuff.

same here..

……..

Just feel the defense trait line, minors and majors, are too minion focused and could be opened up to give necros more options. Two minion focused grandmaster traits has always been very diss appointing when a non minion master wAnts to go gain more toughness.

Balefire.7592:

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

Its because PotH is objectively 100% useless in every situation where you do not have a significant number of minions, and is subjectively bad even with a full bar of minions. Reanimator isn’t totally useless, you can still get something out of him sometimes, which is still pretty pathetic, but better than nothing always.

Balefire.7592:

Hi guys. I let the poll sit for an extra little bit in order to get some more votes. Here are the results.

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

cant view it either.

About Reanimator and poth: pretty much what bhawb said. Poth can be completely useless and the idea of a pure MM-trait as a minor is just bad..
Reanimator on the other hand can at least be a little bit useful. If theyd manage to change Reanimator in such a way that it’s actually useful on non-MMs and not overpowered on MM’s, i’d prefer that to getting a completely new trait.

As for death shiver: i really like the idea of the trait. we have so many traits that do have an effect when you enter DS and all; it’s refreshing to see a DS-trait that works differently and can provide you a bonus for staying in DS longer. i just think the numbers need a buff and the trait itself doesnt fit the traitline. could be moved to spite maybe.

It should be fixed now. Try this.

Balefire.7592:

It should be fixed now. Try this.

45% think ritual of protection is Subpar or Terrible. What?

Vampiric Master and Training of the Master more important and mandatory than Flesh of the Master?
Meh

RashanDale.3609:

Balefire.7592:

It should be fixed now. Try this.

45% think ritual of protection is Subpar or Terrible. What?

I think the trait could give 1 second more of protection base. The issue is more along the lines of well builds not generally going into death magic, as well as its terrible uptime (though that is due to well cooldowns).

Luke.4562:

Vampiric Master and Training of the Master more important and mandatory than Flesh of the Master?
Meh

What do you mean?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I think the trait could give 1 second more of protection base. The issue is more along the lines of well builds not generally going into death magic, as well as its terrible uptime (though that is due to well cooldowns).

Like said above, its a very low base protection on abilities with very long CDs, and it just doesn’t fit with well mechanics in general.

I meant that in this question:

Which minion traits do you believe are absolutely essential to one or more builds?

..the highest quantity of favor was given to Vampiric Master and Training of the Master OVER Flesh of the Master, which is the core, the real “must take” trait that makes minion builds running. In both PVP and PVE without that trait your minions won’t last.
But people just think most about making damage..

I’m not saying those are bad traits, but they aren’t the staple of our builds.
The most known minion build is that 20 0 30 20 0, people won’t think about making builds with other traitlines or using their brain, they just copy the traditional most seen all around build, say GG and think those traits are the best.

So what about this thread? It would be nice to bring all this work to ANET’s attention before the March patch… We’re pretty late yet. We can’t waste all this work.
Or almost keep it ready for the next Collaborative Development.

PS: Balefire read your Private Messages please.

I think it is best to save this when we ever get our turn in the cdi (if that ever happens), introducing it right now would be a bit disrespectfull towards the ranger community.

I know, that isn’t my intention, but I thought the earlier they can see it, the earlier they can start developing better ideas about it.

Agree, it worth the posting so they can analyze it before the CDI and maybe it gets the attantion of others and it recieves some feedback too.
But since Balefire is out of town … Bhawb, Drarnor, Luke? Can you make it to a readable format?

You would think that it would be better to release such things but with the insane speed of posting in the ranger CDI , this piece of information will not even looked at by the devellopers due to its size. The same will be happening with the elementalist CDI. So posting this piece will have no positive influence whatsoever.

Random trait suggestion if Dhuumfire gets moved to lower tier for GM trait (Spite).

Necrosis
Whenever you apply an unqiue condition, siphon X health (I suggest 70-80 base)

Attrition trait. Not OP 1v1, useful for any Necro.

And excellent for wise usage in bigger scale combat, especially with Epidemic.

For an attrition trait in Spite, I’d rather see one that plays off of the condition duration in there. Something like “For every condition on your attacker, you receive 2% less damage.”

I would like to suggest a new trait called Relocated Well.

After using your well skill it would change to a “Relocate” skill with 1 sec CD that when pressed it would change the current position of your well.
If you have “Focused Ritual” trait you could select a new position to the well, if not it would go to where you are.

This would make the wells more desirable in PvP once you can change their location.
What do you guys think?

1) Actually we were discussing about the actual traits and potential doable changes to put the lines into some evaluable position.
2) Wells last 5 5 5 6 10 seconds. On 30-40 seconds cooldown. So, literally it’s a poor effect.

Wells are quite poor when a Necro is in a fight that’s not static because usually your enemy stay on it for 2 seconds at most making 3 3 3 4 seconds of your wells useless and you need the hole time of these skills to make it worth the long CD.

Instead of buffing all the numbers, which can cause some balance problems (enemies staying for 5 seconds makes it OP “PvE” and enemies staying little time makes it ok “PvP”), why don’t make that almost their full duration will land in the opponent and then balance around that?

Adding a trait was just a suggestion to solve that kind of problem. It can be turned baseline (which I think makes wells very powerfull) or added in an existing trait (20% well recharge?).