Guild Wars 2

Just a topic for fun since I’m at work.

Which trait do you think is the worse trait in our arsenal? (Bugged traits doesn’t count! :P)

Edit : I forgot, Reanimator is so bad, we will place it it the bugged section. So reanimator isn’t an option, or this poll would be useless.

I would say :

Signet Power -> Activating a signet gives you three stacks of might for 10 seconds.
--—————

Seriously, I don’t know if it’s the worse, but every time I come upon this trait, I wonder : Does anyone really use this?

Signet are on 60 sec CD minimum! we have one 90 and one 180 cd. With the 20% reduction, it’s about 48 sec minimum.

Our 2 low cd signet have useless activation, one is bugged and the other is a really weak life syphon. Not taking in account that you lose this passive for 60 sec.

But even with the CD and the weak activation, it could still be an option for some signet focused crazy necro.

But… 3 might for 10 sec? Really? 3 miiiiight?

Really, I love the might buff. But 3 might for this is so weak. It’s useless.

Does anyone use that trait?

I’m sure you can find a worse trait!

Reanimator- i will not go into details, none are needed to know why.

I should say : Not counting Reanimator.

I think everyone know Reanimator is the worse, but it’s so bad I think we can consider it bugged.

Terror: Fear does damage.

300 Damage if you spec juuuust right.

I think that Reaper’s Precision is the most useless – 33% chance to gain 1% life force on crit. Whoop de kitten doo.

Runners up are Terror, Dark Armor, and Siphoned Power (it seems bad on paper to me, could be good in practice, haven’t tried it).

About Terror, I don’t think it’s that bad. If you focus on Fear, it still free damage on a CC.
I used to have it on my Fear Heavy Build, but fear just doesn’t feel long enought to focused on.

Reaper Precision : 90 second CD is waaaaay over the top. Could be good oherwise.

Siphoned Power : Does it work? Never see it really. Most of the time, when I’m at 25% hp, I’m dead right after. Especially since you gain might ON HIT. You can’t suffer many hit at 25%hp.

Kardiamond.6952:

About Terror, I don’t think it’s that bad. If you focus on Fear, it still free damage on a CC.
I used to have it on my Fear Heavy Build, but fear just doesn’t feel long enought to focused on.

Reaper Precision : 90 second CD is waaaaay over the top. Could be good oherwise.

Siphoned Power : Does it work? Never see it really. Most of the time, when I’m at 25% hp, I’m dead right after. Especially since you gain might ON HIT. You can’t suffer many hit at 25%hp.

Damage on fear is next to useless. We have two active fears, staff 5 and DS 3. 300 or so damage on each of them isn’t really useful in any way… I could see if maybe we had a trait that gave you, I dont know, a chance to cause fear on crits, in combination with damage on fear

Protection of the Horde from Death Magic.

You’re forced to take it (Minor Trait) and it gives you 20 toughness per active minion. Unless you’re a Minion Master, this is completely useless. Engineers get a similar trait, but theirs gives them 90 toughness just for equipping a shield.

Good times.

lettucemode.3789:

I think that Reaper’s Precision is the most useless – 33% chance to gain 1% life force on crit. Whoop de kitten doo.

Runners up are Terror, Dark Armor, and Siphoned Power (it seems bad on paper to me, could be good in practice, haven’t tried it).

Actually, if you dance in and out of DS a lot, both Reaper’s Precision and Siphoned Power are quite nice.

Reaper’s Precision helps with the LF gain, and Siphoned Power grants you might when you take dmg in DS (though I think there’s an internal cooldown, I forget). Not the best trait, but certainly not the worst.

For the worst… well, I can’t pick just one.

I’ll only do major traits, because the minors are 80% bugged or broken

Spiteful Removal: When you’ve killed a foe, you’ve won the fight. Losing one condition isn’t going to help.

Terror: As mentioned above, it hits for almost nothing. It’s especially disheartening when you contrast it to the thief trait that makes Steal do damage. You know, when they crit you for 5k+

Necromantic Corruption: 10% chance to remove a boon when minions attack. Nuff said

Death Nova: Doesn’t do enough dmg for a 30 pt grandmaster trait

And finally: Everything in the blood magic line except for Mark of Evasion and Ritual Mastery

i’m not sure 100% what rtaits but i think there’s more then 1, i think Reaper’s Precision is the most useless – 33% chance to gain 1% life force on crit is one but i have not think about witch is the worse, i think what do i need & want & what i find useful, but 33% chance to gain 1% life force on crit seems useless

I want to change my answer. I think the two minior traits Protection of the Horde and reanimator from the death magic line are horrible.

Kardiamond.6952:

About Terror, I don’t think it’s that bad. If you focus on Fear, it still free damage on a CC.
I used to have it on my Fear Heavy Build, but fear just doesn’t feel long enought to focused on.

Reaper Precision : 90 second CD is waaaaay over the top. Could be good oherwise.

Siphoned Power : Does it work? Never see it really. Most of the time, when I’m at 25% hp, I’m dead right after. Especially since you gain might ON HIT. You can’t suffer many hit at 25%hp.

It wouldn’t be a bad trait if it was the only trait. Free damage is never a bad thing… but it isn’t free. You are giving up another trait. Now, admittedly, our traits are largely underwhelming I can think of a few that are immediately better than fear damage like Chilling Darkness or Weakening Shroud.

Were you to use Fear on CD as just a damage dealer, the trait would still be underwhelming. It is likely adding a few 10s to your DPS if even that over the course of a fight.

For my money it should come standard on fear and the trait should be entirely replaced.

QSpec.4298:

For my money it should come standard on fear and the trait should be entirely replaced.

That would mean fear would be blocked by aegis, mist form, endure frenzy and everything else.
(I’m assuming it isn’t currently)

Master of Terror: Fear you inflict lasts 50% longer. Great! It’s now 1.5s…

It might be gluttony. I really can imagine this trait being not bugged and working as intended. The 0,05% of Life force from every % you gain which might even be rounded down sounds just about right for necromancer.

Poison cloud on fall?… Troll trait is troll trait.
The entire soul reaping tree with a single exception being Last Gasp… everything else in that tree is cabbage. Hell you don’t even get 30% life force from it… what a joke.
All the traits that do “utterly bad effect” after you killed the target. Yeah remove 1 condition, heal for less then regen tick… and so on.
Full of life just makes me want to laugh… yeah great… i got regen… when I don’t need it.

Reanimator, for the question and for obvious reasons.

For the amended question Death into Life (Spite 15 trait.) Even fully speced out for healing & life siphoning with daggers and wells, the health recovery makes me want to cry compared to a healing speced Elementalist healing 500+ per spell.

Ascii.9726:

For the amended question Death into Life (Spite 15 trait.) Even fully speced out for healing & life siphoning with daggers and wells, the health recovery makes me want to cry compared to a healing speced Elementalist healing 500+ per spell.

This trait makes sense if Vampirism scaled with +healing because then you could go dagger power build

But it doesn’t scale… so yeah

Dmg on Fear trait is a slightly stronger burn, and scales with condition dmg. My spvp Condition build uses the 50% fear trait and 20 in Spite + 20% condition duration runes for 2 second fears with 750 dmg per second, basically 1500 dmg per 2 second fear. It’s actually pretty good, corrupt stability another 2 sec 1500 dmg fear, fear when downed, 3+ second fear and even more dmg.

Our signets do really suck. Only time I’ve used that might on signet trait was when doing an all out gimmicky epidemic build in WvW. Blood is Power, Signet instant transfer, Epidemic + 13 might.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Poison cloud on fall?… Troll trait is troll trait.
The entire soul reaping tree with a single exception being Last Gasp… everything else in that tree is cabbage. Hell you don’t even get 30% life force from it… what a joke.
All the traits that do “utterly bad effect” after you killed the target. Yeah remove 1 condition, heal for less then regen tick… and so on.
Full of life just makes me want to laugh… yeah great… i got regen… when I don’t need it.

Full of Life has to be by far our most useless. 5 seconds of regen with a 30 second cooldown that pops at 90%. You know what that means? It pops most of the time in Death Shroud which you can’t be healed in.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Poison cloud on fall?… Troll trait is troll trait.
The entire soul reaping tree with a single exception being Last Gasp… everything else in that tree is cabbage. Hell you don’t even get 30% life force from it… what a joke.
All the traits that do “utterly bad effect” after you killed the target. Yeah remove 1 condition, heal for less then regen tick… and so on.
Full of life just makes me want to laugh… yeah great… i got regen… when I don’t need it.

Actually the falling traits are great for WvW.

Knote.2904:

Dmg on Fear trait is a slightly stronger burn, and scales with condition dmg. My spvp Condition build uses the 50% fear trait and 20 in Spite + 20% condition duration runes for 2 second fears with 750 dmg per second, basically 1500 dmg per 2 second fear. It’s actually pretty good, corrupt stability another 2 sec 1500 dmg fear, fear when downed, 3+ second fear and even more dmg.

Our signets do really suck. Only time I’ve used that might on signet trait was when doing an all out gimmicky epidemic build in WvW. Blood is Power, Signet instant transfer, Epidemic + 13 might.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Poison cloud on fall?… Troll trait is troll trait.
The entire soul reaping tree with a single exception being Last Gasp… everything else in that tree is cabbage. Hell you don’t even get 30% life force from it… what a joke.
All the traits that do “utterly bad effect” after you killed the target. Yeah remove 1 condition, heal for less then regen tick… and so on.
Full of life just makes me want to laugh… yeah great… i got regen… when I don’t need it.

Full of Life has to be by far our most useless. 5 seconds of regen with a 30 second cooldown that pops at 90%. You know what that means? It pops most of the time in Death Shroud which you can’t be healed in.

I find this hard to believe. Unless wiki is wrong (of which I don’t believe because I’ve emulated results similar to their formula).

80*1.5 + 15% of condition damage (we’ll use 1400) = 330 damage per second. Which funnily enough is nothing compared to the usefulness of a burn because with 0 condition damage, burn hits for 328.

Every trait that has to do with helping our fear. 50% longer fear on nothing isn’t all that great. When I saw the fear does damage one I was so excited too only to realize that it hit for nothing -.- It’s like they are afraid of our fear >.>

What they really should do is apply burning to enemies that fear you. 2s please.

kKagari.6804:

Knote.2904:

Dmg on Fear trait is a slightly stronger burn, and scales with condition dmg. My spvp Condition build uses the 50% fear trait and 20 in Spite + 20% condition duration runes for 2 second fears with 750 dmg per second, basically 1500 dmg per 2 second fear. It’s actually pretty good, corrupt stability another 2 sec 1500 dmg fear, fear when downed, 3+ second fear and even more dmg.

Our signets do really suck. Only time I’ve used that might on signet trait was when doing an all out gimmicky epidemic build in WvW. Blood is Power, Signet instant transfer, Epidemic + 13 might.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Poison cloud on fall?… Troll trait is troll trait.
The entire soul reaping tree with a single exception being Last Gasp… everything else in that tree is cabbage. Hell you don’t even get 30% life force from it… what a joke.
All the traits that do “utterly bad effect” after you killed the target. Yeah remove 1 condition, heal for less then regen tick… and so on.
Full of life just makes me want to laugh… yeah great… i got regen… when I don’t need it.

Full of Life has to be by far our most useless. 5 seconds of regen with a 30 second cooldown that pops at 90%. You know what that means? It pops most of the time in Death Shroud which you can’t be healed in.

I find this hard to believe. Unless wiki is wrong (of which I don’t believe because I’ve emulated results similar to their formula).

80*1.5 + 15% of condition damage (we’ll use 1400) = 330 damage per second. Which funnily enough is nothing compared to the usefulness of a burn because with 0 condition damage, burn hits for 328.

Really? You find this hard to believe, then look at the wiki for proof?

I’ve tested this in the mists, and have ran it multiple times in spvp matches. It works.

Go test it for yourself, in game, doesn’t take long.

kKagari.6804:

What they really should do is apply burning to enemies that fear you. 2s please.

Except that would be worse than what it is now, considering if anyone else has a burn on your target already, atleast this way you can always sneak in fear dmg.

Tested: if you trait for Terror and have 1.400 condition damage (a few runes and Rabid or any other jewels, talking about sPvP) it does about 800-900 damage.
It is not useless. It’s useless indirectly: since if you get 6 runes of Necromancer, all the trais for fear, your fear is LESS then 2s: don’t get fooled, it’s less, like 1.99 but not 2. Due to the fact fear is a condition it ticks and I never seen it ticks more then ONE single tick. If we could have a 2s, even traited, than it would be about 1.800 damage and I think it would be wonderful.
But it’s not. Trait and runes can’t give you more then one tick.
I didn’t test with full Spite line for the +30% condition duration but it’s quite a joke: For have a useful fear you must trait 30/20 but then going conditions. Totally unsynergic.

I agree that traits “on falling” are mostly useless, even in WvW you are wasting a traits slot for this? But at least, every class got it, so it’s no shame.

Death Shiver : Apply vulnerability for 10 seconds every 3 seconds to nearby enemies while in Death Shroud.

I tried this one in a Heavy Vulnerability build, thinking it could be really useful.

But after testing it, it’s actually pretty bad. It apply 1(!) stack of vul every 3(!) sec in a very very short range. That’s so bad, Vulnerability is already not our best debuff, it’s not helping. Better stay in normal form and use Axe, or take those 10 point and put them in SR for Vuln on Life blast (2 stack every sec).

Kardiamond.6952:

Just a topic for fun since I’m at work.

Which trait do you think is the worse trait in our arsenal? (Bugged traits doesn’t count! :P)

Edit : I forgot, Reanimator is so bad, we will place it it the bugged section. So reanimator isn’t an option, or this poll would be useless.

I would say :

---

Signet Power -> Activating a signet gives you three stacks of might for 10 seconds.
--—————

Seriously, I don’t know if it’s the worse, but every time I come upon this trait, I wonder : Does anyone really use this?

Signet are on 60 sec CD minimum! we have one 90 and one 180 cd. With the 20% reduction, it’s about 48 sec minimum.

Our 2 low cd signet have useless activation, one is bugged and the other is a really weak life syphon. Not taking in account that you lose this passive for 60 sec.

But even with the CD and the weak activation, it could still be an option for some signet focused crazy necro.

But… 3 might for 10 sec? Really? 3 miiiiight?

Really, I love the might buff. But 3 might for this is so weak. It’s useless.

Does anyone use that trait?

I’m sure you can find a worse trait!

Found this bit the most interesting, while on paper this trait looks like kitten

There are some rather clever things you can do by combining runes of holebrak/of the fire/of strength with the 20% reduction trait, might on life blast, sigil of battle on staff and Blood is Power – 25 stacks of might? 12-18 up near constantly….. yes please.

Still fine tuning this but the results are actually rather promising

back on topic

Still, for that might, you are using utility slot for weak signet? I mean the life transfer activate is reallyy weaaak, and the other is bugged.

Post the result, but I really doubt this skill. Even if you get 6 more might, is it worth sacrificing a utility slot that could be BiP (10 might) or any other good utility? for 3 might each :P

Here’s the build I have been working on for a couple of days

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYbjMaN7pbub87JCJFP7aQKevtieQMjlMA

Weapons: Rabid
Gear: Rabid
Accessories: 3xRampagers, 2xCarrion, 1xRampager back – provides 50% crit
Sigils: MH: of blood, OH: of corruption, Staff: of battle
Runes: 2xof strength, 2xof the fire, 2xof hoelbrak
Rotation: Scepter 2, dagger 5, BiP, dagger 4, dagger 3, epidemic, swap weapons, staff 2, staff 3, staff 4, enter Deathshroud, 3xdeathshoud 1, deathsroud 4, exit deathsroud, 1xstaff auto attack, staff 2, Swap weapons – REPEAT

This provides a whopping 80% duration on might

Now as you can see that is a rather cumbersome rotation which makes testing it against the conventional 6xundead conditionmancer spec that much harder

I would be interested in hearing from any theorycrafters out there, or someone who would be interesting in trying it out

At Least the signet is a stun breaker.

But you seems to work a lot with the staff (lots of trait buffing the staff), but you choose to traits for a 10 sec 3 might (around 85 cond/power) over a traits that gives 10% increase damage with every staff damage. It also mean you are using a bugged signet with the same effect then you your #4 dagger (not countaing the stun breaker) every 60 second.

I’m really not sure man, but it’s all theory. Might work better in practice, but with what you are sacrificing for 3 might, not sure at all.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

Tested: if you trait for Terror and have 1.400 condition damage (a few runes and Rabid or any other jewels, talking about sPvP) it does about 800-900 damage.
It is not useless. It’s useless indirectly: since if you get 6 runes of Necromancer, all the trais for fear, your fear is LESS then 2s: don’t get fooled, it’s less, like 1.99 but not 2. Due to the fact fear is a condition it ticks and I never seen it ticks more then ONE single tick. If we could have a 2s, even traited, than it would be about 1.800 damage and I think it would be wonderful.
But it’s not. Trait and runes can’t give you more then one tick.
I didn’t test with full Spite line for the +30% condition duration but it’s quite a joke: For have a useful fear you must trait 30/20 but then going conditions. Totally unsynergic.

2 Lyssa/4 Nightmare for 20% + 20 in Spite + 50% fear trait gives you 2 tics.

I’m not sure how the Necro runes work, I’m assuming the 20% fear and 50% fear duration are additive rather than multiplicative.