Guild Wars 2

Vital Persistence
Life force drains 25% slower while in death shroud.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Persistence

This trait is currently garbage, but I didn’t realize until listening to Skyro in the latest BoC podcast just how bad it is. He commented that Soul Marks outperforms it in LF generation/conservation. That got me thinking. There are several other traits that are currently unusable because Vital Persistence is too weak to support them.

Reaper’s Might
Death Shiver
Speed of Shadows
Unyielding Blast

That’s 4 other traits that are currently not worth taking because staying in DS is just too expensive, in terms of EHP sacrifice. 5 total traits, that have obvious synergy (whether or not that synergy is “awesome”). That’s a build. A full build that is useless because of one trait that just doesn’t do what it should.

The drain reduction needs to be bigger. It needs to be much bigger. I’d say it’d have to be a 50-75% reduction, minimum, to make it worth staying in DS to spam Life Blasts or let Vuln stacks build up.

I don’t normally post balancing suggestions, since I figure the devs can do their job better than I can, but this trait seems like such low hanging fruit. It’d be pretty easy to implement, since it’s just a numerical change. We have a healthy chunk of our trait tree devoted to staying in DS for longer periods of time, even though that’s probably the worst way to play a Necro. It’s a shame because it’d be so easy to change that and add quite a bit of build diversity in the process.

I prefer Unyielding Blast over Vital Persistence any day. Reaper’s Might is good regardless.

Death Shiver is pretty lame (1 stack of vulnerability every 3 seconds is terrible), and Speed of Shadows is outdone by Signet of the Locust or Quickening Thirst.

Not really a trait bottleneck, as 2 out of the 4 traits you listed are good without it and the other two suck regardless.

Agree with Dranor, Unyielding blast is great in PvP and WvW (punish those rezzers!), and Reaper’s Might is incredible in PvE (I’m still trying to get the hang of using it in WvW).

Death Shiver I haven’t tried out. It seems like it could be good in a DS-oriented bunker build in teamfights. Passively applying vulnerability with no way for the enemy to avoid it is great. However just reading the description, it seems like it stacks up too slowly. But I haven’t given it a proper go yet, so.

Speed of Shadows on the other hand does seem kinda bad given our other options for speed. It seems like it’s a crutch in case one’s build doesn’t use any of the other speed options. But I can’t think of a build that would spend points in SR that isn’t better benefited by the other traits or other speed options. So yea, doesn’t seem worth taking to me either.

lettucemode.3789:

Death Shiver I haven’t tried out. It seems like it could be good in a DS-oriented bunker build in teamfights. Passively applying vulnerability with no way for the enemy to avoid it is great. However just reading the description, it seems like it stacks up too slowly. But I haven’t given it a proper go yet, so.

Your generic DS bunker build is going to almost always have 10/0/10/0/30 (for retaliation, condition removal, and 5s DS CD or stability, depending on how you feel about the recharge time on death shroud). Death Shiver isn’t really worth it in this kind of build, you are only going to stay in death shroud if you take the stability trait, otherwise you are going to be flashing DS and only staying in for 2 seconds or so, and if you take stability you are still probably going to want a much better trait (greater marks). The vulnerability just isn’t worth it, when you can just Focus 4 for more stacks.

Yeah but what the O kitten aying is precisely that the basic trait that’s supposed to enable staying in DS longer (so that you can really use traits like Unyielding Blast etc to their maximum potential) is too weak.

The Life Blast traits are fine, you just don’t sit in DS for them (fire 2 then leave for a while). I agree about the rest though, and it isn’t an issue that they are too weak themselves, if you know where Death Shroud used to be you’ll know why those traits exist. Basically speaking, they are relics of a time when Death Shroud could be maintained permanently, and was more about staying in as long as entirely possible, not flashing it like we do now.

Vital Persistence is not particularly useful. Don’t use it. I agree in general that buffing the trait would make some sustained DS builds viable if it was done right, but Necro already has more build diversity than most classes.

There are tons of bad traits in this game, and I don’t see where this one warrants more attention than others. There are bigger fish to fry.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Vital Persistence is not particularly useful. Don’t use it. I agree in general that buffing the trait would make some sustained DS builds viable if it was done right, but Necro already has more build diversity than most classes.

There are tons of bad traits in this game, and I don’t see where this one warrants more attention than others. There are bigger fish to fry.

I know Necro has a lot of build diversity, but it isn’t enough. Garbage traits are garbage traits, and they need to be addressed on every profession. It isn’t just for PvP Balance, but also for new-player retention. Nobody likes to put time into building a character only to learn that most of their “options” are just filler. This forum has been awash in “Necro is Terrible” posts, and I think that’s for a number of very valid reasons. First, the profession is incredibly complex but that complexity is not instantly apparent. Second, it’s difficult to tell at first what’s working, working poorly, bugged/broken, or just poorly designed.

I would say don’t even fix the trait, unless you are going to change Death Shroud mechanics overall. Death Shroud in its current form does not encourage staying in for much more than 3 seconds (unless you are super low and are just delaying all that you can), so either change traits to reflect that (make Shivers apply vulnerability on entry, have persistance negate the first 1 or 2 degen ticks), change Death Shroud to support that style, or just get rid of the traits entirely and give us something different.

Bhawb.7408:

I would say don’t even fix the trait, unless you are going to change Death Shroud mechanics overall. Death Shroud in its current form does not encourage staying in for much more than 3 seconds (unless you are super low and are just delaying all that you can), so either change traits to reflect that (make Shivers apply vulnerability on entry, have persistance negate the first 1 or 2 degen ticks), change Death Shroud to support that style, or just get rid of the traits entirely and give us something different.

I think the current mechanics are fine. It’s a spare bucket of hitpoints, much like a savings account, with a 4% per 2 seconds tax on using them. We have various methods for refilling the bucket in combat, and near total control over when we use it. As regen mechanics go, it’s a pretty good deal.

My main complaint is just with useless traits that could be quickly and easily fixed. Vital Persistence is basically just an EHP boost, and it’s pretty obvious that it’s not a very effective one.

I don’t mind the mechanics at all. I brought the mechanics up merely because the trait so obviously clashes with them, so they should change either the trait or the mechanic to fit the other, or just take an outdated trait and replace it (the trait used to be good I’m sure back when DS was maintainable).