Guild Wars 2

I saw a thread of the same name in the Mesmer side of the forums, and thought it’d be a good to get together a list of utility skills that are underused, useless, or maybe just under-appreciated. And of course, its a quick go-to list for the Devs (assuming they don’t already know).

I’ll use the rules applied to that thread, utilities only (no heals or elites).

Blood is Power
Corrosive Poison Cloud
Corrupt Boon
Epidemic
Plague Signet
Signet of Spite
Signet of the Locust
Signet of Undeath
Spectral Armor
Spectral Walk
Spectral Wall
Well of Corruption
Well of Darkness
Well of Power
Well of Suffering
Summon Bone Fiend
Summon Bone Minions
Summon Flesh Wurm
Summon Shadow Fiend

The utilities I NEVER use:

Corrosive Poison Cloud – Poison is a nice condition, making healing less effective, but the poison duration isn’t long enough considering people will only be hit by it once, then leave the AoE

Plague Signet – The passive sounds awesome, but last I checked its bugged and only copies conditions to you instead of transferring them. If it worked properly it would almost instantly earn a spot on my bar for dungeons. The active is good, but the cooldown is a tad bit long for my liking.

Signet of Spite – Extra power is always nice, but isn’t worth a slot. The active sounds nice, but the duration on the conditions is so low, and the cooldown is so long its not worth it.

Signet of the Locust – Haven’t tried it since they buffed the run speed, but I prefer Spectral Walk for almost permanent swiftness, and the secondary effect of SW is just a bonus. The life steal active portion of this signet I remember being really weak last time I tried it.

Signet of Undeath – This is an interesting one. I used it a couple times in dungeons, and sometimes it didn’t revive downed allies, sometimes it revived all three properly. Its a power effect, but with the theme of the Necro I feel it should be able to revive Dead players, not just downed. The Life force regen isn’t much compared to what I can generate on my own, and all in all this signet has a very niche use. I can see it being useful in WvW, zerg vs zerg fights though, or assaulting a keep to revive players hit by siege.

Spectral Armor – One of our few sources of protection, but the cooldown is way too long for what it does. I generally just use the trait that gives SA at 50% health instead, and slot another utility.

Spectral Grasp – This is far from a useless ability, but its too buggy for my liking. Over half the time I use it the view is obstructed on if there is any sort of rise or dip in the ground.

Spectral Wall – Again, one of our few sources of protection. Its a decent ability all in all, but no enemy would willingly run through it to get the vulnerability outside PvE, and half the time allies don’t bother running through it for protection either. If the protection duration was 8-10s instead of 5s, and it had a sort of secondary effect, like Mesmer’s Temporal Curtain, or projectile blocking I’d have no problems using it. Low cooldown which is nice.

Well of Power – This isn’t exactly a weak utility, but I find I generally don’t have a problem with conditions, between my staff and Consume Conditions. Instead if I’m going to use a well for utility its Well of Corruption, which can be very powerful in some situations.

Bone Fiend – One of the few minions I find actually responsive, it is still kitten near useless. A cripple every 10s on its auto attack can be useful I suppose, but I have enough cripples and chills that I don’t notice it. The active ability, Rigor Mortis is nice but I feel that NONE of the minions’ active abilities should have a cast time, or at least not more than 1/4s. It takes time for the “projectile” to travel, so when you need the active, its about a full second or 1.5s before it actually seems to take effect.

Shadow Fiend – Hardly attacks anything like all minions, and again my issue with the active ability is when you need a blind, you need it NOW, not in 2s from now. Also, since you’re sacrificing a utility to have this kitteny minion I think the active needs to be more powerful than a single target blind – possibly an AoE around the target.

Flesh Wurm – This is one I can see having some niche uses, placing it when you’re defending a point in case you need to retreat or something. Using it as a damaging minion though is annoying. You have to place it at every fight, then explode it and wait for the CD before you can use it in the next fight.

Well, I think that covers it all. Let me know what you guys think, about what I had to say about the abilities I don’t use, and let us know some of the ones you don’t use, and what you feel would make it powerful enough to consider using.

Spectral wall:
agree with you. i tried it out in some fractal runs and its just too weak. might be better as an AoE like mesmers chaos storm instead of a wall.
or, like another thread in this forum suggested, it could absorb projectiles.
btw, the ethereal field is still on your position, not where the wall is.

Flesh wurm:
as you said, niche skill. i use it in the swamp fractal. nowhere else.

Signets:
locusts passive is nice; i use it in nonDungeon-PvE because im lazy and dont need utilities there.
everything else about the signets is kitten. weak actives (except undeath), the cooldown is waaay too long and the passives are weak and boring (except locust). i have no idea if plague signets passive now finally works, but i didnt find anything about it in the patchnotes.

Spectral Armor
I never use it. Spectral Walk shares its “gain life force when hit” ability, lasts longer, has the same stun break, has great utility, a much longer duration boon, and has a shorter cooldown. Why would I ever use Spectral Armor?

Bone Fiend I think I’ve seen Rigor Mortis work once. Half the time the bone fiend follows me into melee range. Terrible surviability on a minion that really doesn’t do much damage and is unreliable as hell on the active. Doesn’t make it onto my skill bar.

Spectral Wall
This skill is pretty good on paper, but it just doesn’t work outside of certain situations. I swear, my allies actively avoid this wall unless I position it so they are forced to run through it.

Well of Power
I use this a lot, I find it more useful than Plague Signet personally. I can see it being a little lackluster if you run with Consume Conditions because you’d want to eat up those conditions for extra healy goodness. I like it because 1. it’s a well (so reduced cd, lifesteal, protection) 2. It’s AoE, so allies benefit. 3. It reverses the effect of anything my enemies throw at me, so if I’m running away and I get snared/crippled I get swiftness instead.

Downsides are long cd (48s with cd trait) and only converts one boons per sec.

Other fact is that WoP actually applies a buff for its effect (which oddly looks like the well of blood icon), which means you can run out of the well and still have the cleansing effect. This also effectively extends its duration to about 8 secs.

Signet of Spite – worthless power increase, single stack of conditions is lackluster.

Plague Signet – blows my mind that it’s been left in this state. Copying conditions rather than pulling them off your teammates and onto yourself means you’re only hurting yourself by slotting it. Literally.

Spectral Armor – needs to have Stability added to the effect to make the skill even remotely worth considering for such a lengthy CD

Spectral Wall – ummm what kind of “wall” allows people to shoot straight through it without any negative side effects? it’s a “wall”, it should reflect projectiles.

other than that our utilities are fairly solid and have useful applications in at least one of the game modes (PvE, WvW, PvP)

-Corrosive Poison Cloud-

Useless. What did the devs say about racial skills? This is the exact same thing as the asura radiation field only with a horrible animation. Also if anybody can be kept inside for the entire duration i wouldnt use this skill ever.

-Corrupt Boon-

Too unreliable. Its borderline OP if u cancel elite skills with it, and its useless if your enemy doenst use boons. Complete waste also in PVE.

Epidemic

Very strong in condition builds – useless in any other build. A way to make condition builds more effective in PVE-

-Plague Signet-

Useless. Long cooldown, Active is lackluster, passive is also weird. I dont even use this skill in condition builds because it basicly doenst give me anything i have a real use for.

Signet of Spite

Horrible long cooldown. Weak effects, only crap conditions. Wheres the freeze? Wheres the fear? I dont take it for ~ 5 secs of one stacked conditions. Also in a power build the active is useless – in condition builds the passive is pretty useless.

Signet of the Locust

- very underrated active. Its one of the must have skills on any build for me. 25 passive speed and up to 4k – 6k heal? Yes please. Cooldown is a bit long and the damage is a bit low though.

Signet of Undeath

justified cooldown – however the passive effect is way to weak compared to the active strenght, and the passive isn’t active during that awfull long cooldown.

Spectral Armor

useable if you are in desperate need of a reliable stunbreaker. CAN give you a potential refill of your Lifeforce bar. However, long cooldown pretty much ruins it.

Spectral Walk

Can be useable. I would never pick a utility skill only for that speed bost though. Life force generation and juking is good. Preventing fall damage is nice, but i think more thats a bug and not intended at all.

Spectral Wall

a wall that gives… protection? thats all? dont even bother using it in pve or spvp. It CAN be usefull in wvw to give that entire zerg a 10 second of protection if they run in a long line – however its way to unreliable for a spot on my bar.

Well of Corruption

okay skill, has its good moments, is pretty popular pick but only because there are no better choices.

Well of Darkness
-basicly good. however the pulse rate is too fast to be really usefull, 1/s is too slow for multi hit skills – yet again its to fast to get the full 5 blinds out at slower attackers. horrible long cooldown. decent in PVE and against thieves in pvp and wvw.

Well of Power

really? no real use for this skill. is basicly a crippled version of the mesmers nullfield. if i really want to get rid of conditions have better ways

Well of Suffering

-probably the most picked utility skill. does good damage, good vulnerability. Also i think its just so popular because its really the only reliable damage utlity skill available.

Summon Bone Fiend

-nope – weak, fragile, sequence skill is very unreliable. okay for PVE Minionmasters only.

Summon Bone Minions

blast finisher. fire and forget pets. if they remove the pet part altogether it would be the same thing. can be usefull, feels weird to use a pet skill only to blow them up 0.1 second after summoning.

Summon Flesh Wurm

actually a really nice skill. the only minion skill that has a purpose outside of a MM build. this is like minions skills should be – the only minion skill i would pick without minion traits.

Summon Shadow Fiend

- nope again. what is this pet for? low damage, average health, gapcloser with blind? other then in minion master builds it has no use. and even as a minion master i would pick this because the other minions are just as bad.

There’s only a couple of skills for the Necromancer that I straight up dislike.

Signet of Spite
The active on this looked so good the first time I saw it, but you can’t really feel much of an impact from it when you use it. The only use I can think of is setting up a good Feast of Corruption, but there’s more effective ways to do that. The passive is kind of boring too, as well as a little unfitting.

Spectral Armor
This has a bizarrely long recharge for six seconds of protection. I can’t help but compare it to Spectral Walk, which has a 30 second shorter recharge, a lot of swiftness and a clever teleport effect in exchange for six seconds of protection. I know protection and swiftness are apples and oranges, but it seems like a lot of oranges.

Spectral Wall
I think I just don’t ‘get’ this skill. I can’t see myself using it for the vulnerability, but that’s mostly because I just don’t like vulnerability as a condition.

Summon Shadow Fiend
I feel like this minion has the weakest gimmick out of all the minions Necromancer has access to. An on-demand blind can be a weird form of interrupt, but the delay and casting time kind of prevent that. Maybe if it caused a 1 second fear instead or something?
Edit: Turns out the blind is actually a small AoE! That’s kind of cool. Still pretty on the fence about it though… I guess I just don’t love blinds that much.

I do not use the following utilities. Some are simply weak or underpowered. Others have way too long a recharge to be of any use. Others are too specific in specific situations to be of general usage. Lastly many are bugged.

Corrosive Poison Cloud – weak
Corrupt Boon – specific
Minion skills – bug
Plague Signet – recharge
Signet of Spite – recharge
Spectral Armor – recharge
Spectral Grasp – bug
Spectral Wall – specific
Well of Darkness – recharge
Well of Power – recharge

I use all the time and they rarely leave my slotted options-

Blood is Power
Corrupt Boon (solo) or Epidemic (group)
Spectral Walk

Situational circumstances in static keep/tower defense for combo-fields and effects-

Spectral Wall
Well of Corruption
Well of Power
Well of Suffering

I will never use the following because they are complete junk with either a very low-cyclic turnover to have any tangible advantage or ineffective to the point they’re useless.

Corrosive Poison Cloud
Well of Darkness
Plague Signet
Signet of Spite
Signet of the Locust
Signet of Undeath
Spectral Armor

I am smashed drunk, I don’t care who see’s me in public and yes kitten it, I haven’t repaired my armour because I got deathshroud an hitpoints an yes… this is an axe I am using.
Whut are you lookin’ at? Eh?

Summon Bone Fiend
Summon Bone Minions
Summon Flesh Wurm
Summon Shadow Fiend

Corrosive Poison Cloud is one skill, regardless of build, that I use for Arah P4 Dwayna…

Well so far it seems like everybody mostly agrees on some of the more useless abilities.

@Brujeria, you had a good point about Corrupt Boon. I forgot that it may be good to mention which utilities are only useful in certain areas (PvE, WvW, PvP), and which are useless only in certain areas as well. This definitely falls under that category.

I also agree with you on your point about minions, Flesh Wurm specifically. They should all be good enough to be serious contenders for a utility slot, even for a non-minion builds, and as they are almost none of them are good outside of a MM. Except like you said, Flesh Wurm has its uses, and Bone Minions are good for a nice bit of burst damage, although yes it would be the same thing if we essentially just had two casts of an Ele’s Arcane Blast, as both of them get blown up within .5s of being cast.

I mostly play WvW and the utilities I rarely, if ever, use are:

• Signets: Even with the buff to Signet of the Locust, I still prefer Spectral Walk. Plague Signet was bugged last I checked but just read on the wiki discussion that it’s fixed (?) so I may give it more playtime now.
• Minions: AI is a problem. Flesh Wurm can be kind of fun though.
• Well of Darkness: Long cool down.
• Well of Power: I typically use Consume Conditions.
• Spectral Armor: I use the trait instead.

The ones I use every now and then:

• Corrupt Boon: I would use this much more often if it wasn’t bugged.
• Spectral Wall: It’s decent in PvE since you can stack a target with 20 (or more) vulnerability by just fighting on top of the wall. Not much use otherwise.

Just wanted to add a comment about Spectral Walk: I prefer this over Signet of the Locust because of its teleportation ability. For WvW, trait it for duration (from 8 to 12 seconds) and charge into the back lines and pop down marks + S/D bleeds + Epidemic and then pop back out. Trait it for cooldown and you only have 12 seconds of downtime for swiftness.

just so you know, the shadow fiend blind actually is a small AOE around the target.

spectal armor- It doesn’t have a big enough effect to warrant it’s use over other skills.

spectral grasp- it’s a cool idea but it really needs to be adjusted to be more reliable.

plague signet- why does this copy instead of draw?

signet of spite- why does it only apply 1 second of each condition? If it was more like 4-5 it would be considerable.

I think Levian and Brujeria summed up my thoughts pretty much…some situational changes but rarely.

striker.3704:

just so you know, the shadow fiend blind actually is a small AOE around the target.

spectal armor- It doesn’t have a big enough effect to warrant it’s use over other skills.

spectral grasp- it’s a cool idea but it really needs to be adjusted to be more reliable.

plague signet- why does this copy instead of draw?

signet of spite- why does it only apply 1 second of each condition? If it was more like 4-5 it would be considerable.

Wow, are you kidding? I never knew this before, although at the time I used minions I also used dagger offhand, with it’s bouncing blind.

If this is indeed the case, then the tooltip is bugged. Or the ability. Probably the ability, and it will most likely be “fixed” now that it’s been mentioned and is beneficial.

Utilities I use all the time:

• Corrosive Poison Cloud (EVERYONE underestimates the ability of this skill, and I’m fine with that I know how powerful it is, unless of course you run a necro with 0 condition dmg, in which case you’re a lost cause lol)
• Blood is Power
• Signet of the Locust (if I need more mobility, if not Signet of Spite for the passive power even though the active on it is garbage at best)

Utilities I only use depending on the situation:

• Corrupt Boon
• Epidemic (I use it more than it sounds like I do, but it’s still more a situational thing for me)
• Plague Signet (again another one I use a good bit but more situational)

Utilities I rarely ever use unless it’s for a specific support build:

• Any of the wells

Utilities I never use:

• all of the minion skills with the exception of Flesh Golem
• Spectral Grasp
• Spectral Armor
• Signet of Undeath
• well of darkness (the tiny amount of blind pulses never seem to make any difference in situations you really need it in)

Am I the only one who uses Spectral Wall in WvWvW and PvP? It’s awesome – it gives me 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown with my build, and players with melee builds (D/D eles, thieves, warriors) will run through it if you stay close to it. They have to if they want to attack you, after all.

On topic: I’ve never used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor, or Corrosive Poison Cloud.

lettucemode.3789:

Am I the only one who uses Spectral Wall in WvWvW and PvP? It’s awesome – it gives me 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown with my build, and players with melee builds (D/D eles, thieves, warriors) will run through it if you stay close to it. They have to if they want to attack you, after all.

On topic: I’ve never used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor, or Corrosive Poison Cloud.

I never really have much +boon duration, since we have few boons to take advantage of (or at least compared to most other classes). I used it a bit in PvE when kiting champions with adds, and I used it a little in sPvP as well for a little on demand protection, but I still find its just easier to use the trait for Spectral Armor.

Levian.6742:

lettucemode.3789:

Am I the only one who uses Spectral Wall in WvWvW and PvP? It’s awesome – it gives me 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown with my build, and players with melee builds (D/D eles, thieves, warriors) will run through it if you stay close to it. They have to if they want to attack you, after all.

On topic: I’ve never used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor, or Corrosive Poison Cloud.

I never really have much +boon duration, since we have few boons to take advantage of (or at least compared to most other classes). I used it a bit in PvE when kiting champions with adds, and I used it a little in sPvP as well for a little on demand protection, but I still find its just easier to use the trait for Spectral Armor.

I don’t have any boon duration either. Just Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery.

I think that the major issue with Corrupt poison cloud is that weakness is counter-intuitive in PvP.
Weakness is supposed to decrease physical damage, but doesn’t affect critical hits.
Physical damage builds focus Critical chance and Crit damage so CPC is actually less effective against it.

I love Flesh Wurm for WvW and sPvP, the damage it deals can pile up quite fast and if you place it correctly can be used as a great escape mechanism.
PvE though? Having to put it on cd only after a fight and having it on cd between fights kills this utility.

I agree with most people that too many of our utilities are too niche, or are only desirable on very specific scenarios.

@striker.3704 Signet of Spite inflicts 5 seconds of each condition, except blind which is 3 seconds. Just goes to show that piling a bunch of different conditions doesn’t actually make for a good strategy, especially if they’re the weakest conditions in the game. Also what’s the use is in a single stack of bleed and vulnerability?

Utilities I have used or I find useful

Blood is Power
Epidemic
Spectral Walk
Well of Corruption
Well of Darkness
Well of Suffering
Signet of the Locust
Summon Bone Minions – These with Death Nova and Well’s really do some nice damage with their activated blast.

Utilities which ive found occasional use for but need improving

Spectral Grasp

A utility which is borderline on being good, if it would only be more successful at landing. I find its very fickle wither it works or not. For that reason I tend not to slot it.

Corrupt Boon

A very situational utility in that its good for WvW and PVP but not very good for PVE. The problem I have with this utility is that it suffers from the same issues as Spectral Grasp. I tend to pick other utilities mainly because if im going to wait on a cooldown I at least want a utility which I can rely on. It is frustrating to see the enemy hit the enemy with an auto attack from my staff yet Corrupt Boon says obstructed when cast and this when the enemy hasn’t moved.

Signet of Undeath

I liked the idea of this one and in some situations it can be useful but ive found that the revive for me has been a hit and miss affair. If your not really close to on top of your ally ive found that the revive part sometimes works. For this reason its not useless but not great either.

Spectral Wall

Another ability which is borderline on being really good, like some had suggested it would be better if it blocked projectiles. Other than that and fix the ethereal field point to be at the wall rather than at your feet and it would go a long way to making this alot more useful.

Well of Power

I used to have this equipped and then realised that it only done 1 condition per pulse. I have found that the pulse is not quick enough to prevent the reapplication of the conditions in WvW or PvP, therefore its better to use something else to get rid of those conditions. Would be better if each pulse converted all conditions at once to boons.

Summon Flesh Wurm

Another situational utility it has its uses in some situations but more times than not I do not find a need for it. I would like to have the Wurm move rather than remain static but then that would probably mean the teleport would have to go which is one of the major plus points for using this. Have the teleport work the way the portal teleport works rather than line of sight like it does now, would make it alot better.

Utilities ive found no use for

Corrosive Poison Cloud

Must admit that this utility I have really no use for. Maybe its the lacklustre effect or maybe its the fact I dislike the self weakness or maybe its the length of cooldown on it for what you get but I have no use for this utility.

Spectral Armor

Another ability I really don’t have any time for on my bar. I do use the trait ability (15 points in Soul Reaping) but with the really really long cooldown for this ability and for what you get I don’t find a use for the utility on my skill bar.

Plague Signet

I don’t have a use for this one at all, and haven’t found a build where it has came in handy. I know other people use it but ive found all it does is cause more problems for me and doesn’t help out my ally’s like I thought it would do.

Signet of Spite

When I first seen this signet I thought that looks cool, but then I looked at it a bit further and noticed that the conditions you put onto people on activate don’t really last that long. It gives me about an extra 100 power when slotted and to be honest Blood is Power gives you more from its might and has a decent bleed condition also.

Summon Bone Fiend
Summon Shadow Fiend

I shall bunch the two of them together mainly because I don’t really use these minions at all. With minion AI not being great and one good area attack being able to wipe them out, I find there are better utilities to use than these.

Here are the utility skills I still cannot find any use for.

Blood is Power
10 Stacks of might 50% of the time isn’t bad.
But what do I do with 2 stacks of bleeding for 36 seconds? When would those ever reach their full duration? I’d rather have 25 stacks for 2 seconds.
And yes I can send my 2 12 second stacks to the enemy too, but why would I waste a cooldown of condition removal on only 2 stacks of bleeding?

Corrupt Boon
I hate poisoning myself, I rely on my regeneration too much, and I want to save my condition removals to remove poison and burning others apply to me.

Signet of Spite
Huge cooldown for some short duration conditions. And the passive doesn’t even help a condition build. The passive’s effect on a power build is only 1 stack of might.

Signet of the Locust
I was using this underwater for a long while, but now I’m not even sure if the speed boost works underwater…
The active effect has such short range, its very hard to find a situation where it can be fully utilized. It should cripple instead IM(H)O.

Signet of Undeath
I’m probably spoiled due to Battle Standard and Spirit of Nature that I use on my alts, but I find the area too small.

Spectral Armor
Huge cooldown for a tiny effect. Even with the cooldown reduction trait.