It’s late. I’m tired. So I’m going to be unreasonable about this.
Reanimator is probably the worst trait, minor or major, in the entire game.
1) Reanimator benefits none, nada, zilch, of the builds available to the Necromancer. The minion’s either weak as a kitten due to lack of trait support for condition/power/support builds, or doesn’t last long enough to help out in combat for a Minion Master.
2) Reanimator, while fitting the theme of Death Magic being centered around minions, does absolutely nothing for anyone who wants to dip into Death Magic for a little extra toughness/boon duration, staff efficiency, or protective wells. As such it has abolsutely no place being the first minor trait in the Necromancer toughness tree when compared to other professions, as I shall do so now:
Warrior: Extra armour when health is above 90%
Guardian: Gain Aegis when you reach 50% health
Ranger: Increases Endurance regeneration by 50%
Thief: Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches 25% (90 second cooldown)
Engineer: Gain Regeneration for 10 seconds when you are attacked while under 25% health
Elementalist: Gain 1 toughness per level while attuned to Earth
Mesmer: Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when you are uner 75% health (30 second cooldown)
If you have the 5 points to spare in any other professions’ toughness tree, they are universally useful towards the professions’ survivability. Reanimator is not.
EDIT: It’s actually really interesting to see this play out. Initially I was perplexed as to why the Mesmer regeneration kicked in sooner than the Engineer regeneration. The only conclusion I can draw from this is because Engineers have better defense stat because they wear a higher grade of armour. This also accounts for just how good that Elementalist minor is, and is even more condemning that the Necromancer got lumped with something functionally useless to the profession. Could we chalk this up to another “lolDeathshroud”? Possibly.
3) Reanimator has synergy with Protection of the Horde. Unfortunately it’s a paltry extra 20 Toughness for 8 seconds, right where the toughness is least useful – at the end of a fight when you’ve killed your enemy, severely hampering the pathetic window the summoned Jagged Horror has to do anything, even passively boosting your toughness.
4) Reanimator keeps you in combat after the Jagged Horror has bled to death, delaying the regeneration of health, and waypointing.
So, here I am with a couple of suggestions, which I’ll arbitrarily switch to lettering instead of numbering because it’s late:
A) Provide a cap on Reanimator at say, 3-4 Jagged Horrors. Give it a 30-second cooldown and remove the self-bleed-to-death so you can at least get a pack of the little critters going.
B) Make Reanimator summon a Blood Fiend instead that you can’t sacrifice to put it roughly on par with Engineer/Mesmer getting Regeneration.
C) (The idea I’m most biased towards) switch Reanimator with Deadly Strength and make Reanimator summon something more noticeably useful. Which at this point barring just a 4-5 strong squad of suicide horrors or a temp flesh golem, is going to require more forethought.
D) Swap Reanimator with Shrouded Removal. It’s probably the most noteworthy Major Trait in the Adept stage of the tree that could be made into a good Minor. The only other real option option that fits the criteria of “universally useful” is Dark Armour, but Dark Armour is reviled for being terrible due to its’ lack of ability coverage (Two channels exist on our weapons, both of them on main-hand weapons, and one for Life Transfer. Whoppee), so let’s go with something that’s actually passable as a trait.
