Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone.
Since I’ve noticed that ArenaNet seems to not get the real point of the Necromancer weakness, I want to make a compendium here about all the traits which are useless, situational while being a minor trait or makes no sense at all to me.
I will not refer to bugged traits.

Spite:
- Parastic Bond: this trait is extremely situational and worth using only in PvE because of the low kills amount in sPvP and WvWvW. I don’t know what is the amount of heal this trait is supposed to give, because it looks like it is bugged. Anyway, the best think to do is to make this trait as a Major trait, while moving a trait like Spiteful Spirit as a minor trait.
-Spiteful Removal: this trait is quite similiar as Parastic Bond, but 1 condition removed doesn’t make this trait useful compared to Reaper’s Might in any situation.

Curses:
- Terror: deals way too low damage compared to the average fear duration on Necro. It needs a substantial damage buff.
- Focused Rituals: why is this trait in Curses? Should it supposed to be into the Blood Magic traitline?
-Withering Precision: the weakness duration or the chances to cause it should be buffed. It isn’t worth using compared to Lingering Curse.

Death Magic:
- Reanimator: pretty obvious. This trait should be buffed and moved to a major trait.
-Protection of the Horde: same as reanimator. It could use a buff, but the important thing is that this trait shouldn’t be as a minor trait because doesn’t fit into every build.

Blood Magic:
- Dagger Mastery: should be merged with Quickening Thirst. Those traits are quite useless but if combined together they should be a good choice to a Necro running daggers.
- Blood to Power: the damage bonus should either be increased to 10% or the requirement should be lowered to 50% hp. Now it is quite weak compared to any other damage booster.
-Deadly Invigoration: the heal amount should be buffed.

Soul Reaping:
-Speed of Shadows: the amount of speed increase should be buffed. Looks like it isn’t worth chosing over any other Soul Reaping trait.

That’s all guys.
All opinions and considerations are well accepted.

wouldnt it be easier to make a compendium of necromancer traits that are actually good?

anyway, my additions to that:

Transfusion: not that bad but it has to scale with healing. is this considered a bug or intended? i dont know.

Reaper’s Precision: way too weak. 33% of maybe 50% to get 1% life force? lol

Furious demise: good trait, but why exactly is this in Curses? Would better fit in the Spite-line

Necromatic corruption: 10% chance? thats crap for a grandmaster trait. I’d change it to 100% but with an internal cooldown. or another requirement like ‘If a minion dies it rips a boon off of every nearby enemy’ or something like that.

Full of life: Not bad, but the 90%-limit is a bit too high. The mesmer version of it is way better:
Metaphysical Rejuvenation: Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 75% (30-second cooldown).

Blood to power: Many other similar grandmaster traits add 10% damage with a better requirement. For example Exposed Weakness, First strikes, Fluid Strikes, Radiant Power, Elusive Power etc.etc.
Same with Strength of Undeath

Siphoned Power: Not even sure how exactly this trait works, but some might at 25% health is weak.

Gluttony: Barely noticed a difference. raise to 10%?

Wells- and minion traits: Why are they scattered across 3 different traitlines? And why do minions need that many traits? The traits in particular arent useless, but their placement looks strange.

The 50 pct minion health one is pretty bad too, 50 pct of the minions paltry HP makes it barely noticeable, Personally minions should have the base health this trait provides and this trait should be a 30 pct reduction to damage like the engineer turret trait, if not 50 pct for PvE seeing as how minions seem to be the best taunt in the game T_T.

Reaper’s precission desevres an honorary mention!
33% of all crits give 1% LF?
Wow.
This losses even to bugged traits.
Make it 100% crits and at least 2%.

These are pretty much traits that I don’t believe any decent necro uses. (Excl OP/previous posts)

Vampiric precison – It siphons only slightly more health than vampiric (on crit.) and doesn’t work on utilities. Considering ~50-60% is the max crit , its pretty horrible.
Spiteful Marks – Marks don’t deal much (power) damage at all, besides #4. Also doesn’t affect condition damage. even if this was a 100 damage boost, it wouldn’t be too useful.
Pitch Black – This is only slightly useful in combination with plague
Dark Armor – Decent in PVE, however useless in PVP considering the amount of interrupts that exist. Something like gain stability while channeling would be extremely useful in sPVP.
Vampiric Master – iirc, it siphons only slightly more than vampiric precision.
Fear of Death – I don’t really see it being of much use in either PVE or PVP.
Decaying Swarm – even at its current state of triggering when damaged in death shroud, is not that useful. If this trait were fixed, it would be quite useless. Should be instead triggered on DS and the cooldown lowered to 30 or 45 (from 90) or so.
Master of Terror – .5 secs of fear doesn’t help much. In its current state, necro fears are just used as interrupts instead of CC.

Also,
http://www.teamparadigm.net/forums/Necromancer/374/The-Sorry-State-of-the-Necromancer-in-SPvP-Long-Post/
is another thread with a collection of fail traits, utilities, etc, although it it slightly outdated. (Vampiric precision definitely doesn’t leech 300/crit, foot in grave no longer breaks stuns etc.)

Wayfarer.2051:

Reaper’s precission desevres an honorary mention!
33% of all crits give 1% LF?
Wow.
This losses even to bugged traits.
Make it 100% crits and at least 2%.

Works a third of the time, every time!

Gluttony does literally nothing in the curent game.

Before BiP had the LF generation removed, I tested it. 5% of 20 is 1, but BiP gave 20% LF, so it didn’t work then.

The other day I tested Locust Swarm with 4 targets twice and got 80% LF. Not working.

I then tested Spectral Grasp 8 times, 80%LF. It does nothing.

100% of the time, it doesn’t work all of the time.

Lets remake this thread as “usefull and working Necromancer Traits Compendium”
It will be LOT shorter.

PinCushion.7390:

Wayfarer.2051:

Reaper’s precission desevres an honorary mention!
33% of all crits give 1% LF?
Wow.
This losses even to bugged traits.
Make it 100% crits and at least 2%.

Works a third of the time, every time!

Yeah but it’s crap. Doesn’t even feel like 33% of the time. It is pretty garbage. Signet of Undeath restores more than this trait with it’s passive – Fact.

Reaper’s precision is pretty much significantly worse than vampiric.

Assuming you have 24k hp and 30 points in soul reaping, you will have around 19.2k equivalent lifeforce.

Then, assuming 1 lifeforce health = 1 normal health, which is definitely not true -(I’d much rather prefer staff’s autoattack leeching 576 hp per hit instead of 3% LF), Reaper’s precision would be a 33% chance to gain 192 health per critical hit.

With a 50% crit rate (Equivalent to almost full exotic berserker’s), it would equal a 18.33% chance to leech 192 health – or on average, 35.2 health per hit.

That more or less only slightly more than vampiric, or even less if traited with bloodthirst.

Then, considering that most necros consider 1 LF to be significantly less useful than 1 health (Considering DS is used to absorb bursts, instead of normal health), Reapers precision is just a completely fail skill