You guys are definitely onto something. My necro is build pretty tanky, and in any dungeon I run, or even in PvE, in any sort of sustained fight the enemy or boss always ends up on me, and just wont shake.
It used to be pretty annoying, but now I find it amusing, unless there’s casters/ranged enemies. I just juggle cripple and chill and kite in circles, back and forth in lines without getting touched, and it keeps my party safe too.
What’s the description? I don’t play atm and I’m not really planning on it, but I’m curious.
I’ll admit I only read half this thread. Most of it was the OP arguing with someone who didn’t seem to understand what he was saying, but there were some good suggestions here. So forgive me if I say something that has been said.
I definitely think life steal need some form of buff. As it is, they aren’t even a slightly appealing option to me – I always go for Transfusion and recuded Wells cooldown when I go into Blood Magic. If we are supposed to be the attrition class, we need some form of sustainability, and DONT give me the “Well we have DS, our second healthbar, and blah… blahh… blahh…” because at that point I just stop listening.
Yes we have extra health, but it degenerates, and because the damage it takes is percentage based, it gets burned through WAY quicker than real vitality. As in, say I die in exactly 10 hits with just my health bar, no healing or DS. In DS, with a roughly equal health bar you would only be able to take around 4 of those hits before your LF went to 0. This is because it drains by itself over time, and of course damage is always rounded. And conditions do more damage in DS. But anyway, this is another subject, back on topic.
Elementalists currently have a CRAPTON of healing. They get regen every time they blink from traits, from what, three different sources or something? On top of their weapon healing abilities, even more so if they use a staff with blast finishers, resulting in an extra 5k or so heals from their own blasts alone. All this PLUS their main heal.
Currently, we have what, two sources of regen? And ONLY if you use the proper weapons. No, I don’t use Mark of Evasion, but I wouldn’t really count that as an extra source anyways. Since we have no way to regenerate health other than our main heal, and we ARE an attrition class supposedly, we need something. Currently life stealing is laughable, it heals for peanuts. Yes you can use omnoms but so can every other profession, we shouldn’t have to rely on it.
Although I don’t think it should scale off condition damage. That means that no build other than a condition build gets healing. No, if its going to scale it needs to scale off the stats in the tree it came in, so its viable for ALL builds who go into Blood Magic. Essentially, it needs to scale of Vitality, or Healing Power, and Healing Power is the more obvious (and easier to balance) choice. Now, after saying this there is still a bit of a issue – life stealing for condition builds. Yes the sceptre auto attack hits fairly often proccing life steals, but it has nothing comparable to the daggers #2 and the axe’s #2, a multi hit way to steal life in bursts. My idea is this – a trait in the Curses line that makes Life Stealing proc on Bleeds. This may seem a little OP because of the speed they hit, but maybe there’s a 1s or .5s cooldown on how often it can proc or something.
I like Death Shroud. It absorbs damage since we lack invulnerabilities/vigor/any sustainable heal like the Ele has with regen (our life steal hardly counts, its peanuts). It also does pretty good damage, if you build around it.
BUT as it is, it is NOT a second health bar. It’s more like an extra 1/4 of a health bar. The LF naturally degenerates in use, essentially eating away at our health. Have you ever noticed that you can take a TON of hits before you die normally, then in DS you can’t even take half those amount of hits before it runs out?
I would change the way the Life Force bar is calculated to use actual numbers, not a percentage. Yes, attacks that generate LF would still go by a %, but taking damage would actually revolve around the damage the enemy does vs the LF you have, not in some form of vague percentage based damage that doesn’t seem to work well.
I would also take away the degen while in DS, and possibly make Life Blast consume 10% LF with each hit (maybe, just a random number), and the damage WOULDN’T decrease based on your LF % remaining, making DS actually useful to use for something other than a damage pool when you’re below 50%.
It would take way too much time for them to make the DS abilities change based on your equipped weapon. The quicker option would be to add a bleed component to Life Blast, and possibly add a #5 ability. Of course the new ability would just be inserted in the middle and be the #2 or #3 ability, and the fear would be #4 (and pbAoE or a wave, like our under water version) on a longer cooldown than currently, and Life Transfer would be #5 with a longer cooldown as well. The fact that LF wouldn’t degen anymore is a good reason to make Life Transfer a longer cooldown – it actually builds your LF meter now instead of merely slowing the degen, and only accomplishes that normally when there are 3-5 enemies being hit.
This is a legitimate post, I’m not trolling (because I expect people will think that).
90% of people run a 0/0/10/30/30 build, or close enough to it. It’s really the only (most?) viable spec there is. I haven’t leveled mine that high yet, but I’m rarely in the situation where if I’m low health I can switch to water and heal back up. Because when I’m anywhere near half health, I get one or two shotted.
This is coming from my experience as a level 25ish Ele. I had 10 points in water and 5 Arcana, and tried D/D but changed for staff. I really wouldn’t want to be pigeonholed into the only viable spec anyways. People will criticize me about this post, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure all of them will be people who run the 30 water 20-30 arcana D/D FOTM build and claim that the Ele is OP in every way and its my fault for not using the holy grail of builds, as this is the feedback I’ve seen in every other thread.
Sorry for the negativity, it’s not typically what I do. I’ve stuck with a Necro this whole time and stayed positive about it, but what’s happening with the Ele just irks me.
The way I use the Ele’s downstate (and I expect almost everyone else does too) is to just use Vapor Form (#2) and hopefully get out of combat into a safe zone.
If that doesn’t work and you’re in PvE, and you think you’re going to get downed, try to bring an enemy or two to low health, then leave them alone until you DO get downed so its an easy kill and revive.
What are you using for weapons? If you’re using a Sceptre, and a condition build then you’ll want the condition damage.
If you’re using a dagger or axe, or using DS for damage with Life blast then you’ll definitely want Power and Precision
If anything I think our power builds need a little love. As it stands, condition builds are the most powerful of the Necro builds, AND they have Epidemic. Right now as a power build, you’re pigeon holed into using close range daggers. Being a close range clothie means you’re going to get destroyed unless you spec vitality and toughness, but doing so sacrifices all damage output, completely negating the point of being a power build.
My f1-f4 and 6-0 are set on my corsaid m90 mouse, but sometimes abilities dont activate on the first press, so you have to spam it in the heat of combat.
Its pretty easy to double click it this way, and its annoying as hell. I saw a thread about this exact issue that a Dev responded to. I think s/he said they were looking into the possibility of adding a .5s delay, or cooldown before you can press abilities like that twice so you don’t accidentally exit them. I can’t really link the thread, it was months ago and I can’t remember exactly where it was in the forums.
Personally, I would suggest dropping Plague Signet for Spectral Walk.
Plague signet I think only copies conditions from allies to you, not transfer. And the conditions you put on the enemy with the Active portion aren’t really worth it, they’re only single stacks of short durations.
Spectral Walk gives you a long duration of swiftness, usually more than enough to get from A to B, and its also useful in fights to generate LF
I assume there have been no stealth changes? After browsing the Ele forums, I noticed one of their Dagger skills got a buff/change, and there wasn’t a word of it in the notes.
Now it has been splashed in two skills. First a 2s imobilze (AND a combo projectile finisher), and then you can press Earth 3 again to make the regular leap and get your leap finisher.
I liked it pretty much! I’ve been able to freeze an enemy inside AoE’s and then leap at him. Just wondering why there was no mention to it in the update notes….
That’s actually pretty awesome. I’m still a wee little Ele, but I find I hardly ever used this skill, and would instead just use RTL and Burning Speed when I needed a gap closer, as one would always be off cooldown. Now, the extra utility makes it more worth while!
On a side note, I’m curious about any other stealth buffs/nerfs/changes they’ve made to this, and other professions. Much testing is required
I am nowhere near an expert, but from what I hear, D/D is easier and more forgiving in PvP. In the popular build, you have a ton of healing power, so once you get down the rotation you will have to much healing that you can survive kitten near anything.
I’ve also been told that Staff isn’t a very good weapon in PvP, that it shines more in WvW. S/D seems to be do-able in PvP, but mostly by people who know the class inside and out, and know how to make it work.
If you want to learn the class, I suggest reading these two threads (links incoming). It may be helpful to play the class in PvE to 10-20 or so, just so you can get familiar with all of the abilities on all the weapons. Be warned, this is a LOT of reading.
Links:
The famous guide by daphoenix
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-12-20-12
And a bit of a closer look at specifically how to play D/D, by Riften
I didn’t notice anything in the patch notes, and I haven’t downloaded the patch yet.
What exactly changed? From what I gather, a stealth change to Magnetic Grasp?
Now you have me curious as well. Do conditions -bleed and poison- siphon health as well each tick?
You initiated combat with ground targeting abilities.
You never once used your Golem’s utility skill to reset his attack.
You jumped off a cliff while attacking which screws up every pet/utility AI out there.
You ran up and let them attack you before attacking back while noting he didn’t defend you.
These are the issues everyone noted earlier. Again I am not saying the AI needs some tweaks. The second video gave a clearer example of issue that crop up as he did every trick that we like to use to reset them, and still had the Golem bug out though the fiend did reset.
While in the video, he didn’t do any of the things that are supposed to help “fix” or work around the minion bugs, I personally think that was his point. This (in my eyes) was a video to show players (and A-Net) who may or may not believe that we actually have minion AI issues, or think that we are exaggerating the issues we do have.
This video shows clearly the average gameplay of an average PvE player, who might not have any idea of the little work arounds we have figured out. Minions and Pets are supposed to defend you when you’re attacked, whether or not you attack back. And they do, sometimes. Also in PvE, I too often jump off cliffs with or without pets just because its something you do when travelling. We shouldn’t have to worry about little things like this, it should be working.
I know you’ve worked hard to make minions work. I can see it in the threads you’ve made. I think your the first person in a long time to admit they use a minion build, and share it on the forums, let alone offer solutions to some of the issues. But like I said, I don’t think this is the point of the video, it’s to show that there are some very big issues with our AI, and it gives a very clear example to anyone who watches what they are, and what may be causing them.
@Bas
I know some people are asking for this. In another thread a few months back people were asking for the Ranger’s F1-F3, and I made a similar argument, about how it would be in no way fair, us getting their profession mechanic as well as our own.
By asking for the Ranger AI, I (and I assume most others) just meant something functional. Something that attacks your target when you attack it. Something that attacks an enemy who attacks you first when you are out of combat. Something that doesn’t run off to attack enemies who aren’t even close enough to draw aggro from you OR your pet.
Personally, this is all I want. I just want it to work =\
He did say that you would have to be out of combat to do this utility switch. Its basically the same thing we have now, except that you change the utility while its on cooldown, so you don’t forget when its off cooldown.
I’d definitely support this idea. In WvW, i switch between Spectral Walk, Spectral Grasp, and Corrupt Boon on the same utility slot. It IS really annoying to try to change the utility to find out as you click, no, you still have 10s left on your cooldown so your stuck waiting
What really helped me was putting my first 10 points into Arcana, and getting Elemental Attunement. Its the quickest way for you to have easy access to regen and protection, and from there you can go into Water for even more regen.
My level 25 ele still has a hard time against multiple mobs though. I can take on 2, maybe 3 mobs my level but i’ll be almost dead, and have to switch to earth for protection and water for regen and a heal. Right now we just don’t have the healing, or toughness to stay alive. Literally withing 3 hits your health is going to be around half. Dodge all you can, and kite around but the enemy still hits you. I’m hoping it gets better around 30
While yes, some people are asking for a simple attack and follow button, most of us would be happy with properly functioning minion AI. Just as it was stated, the AI that Ranger’s pets have.
Let me reiterate that for everybody – NOT asking for Ranger’s f1-f3 skill mechanic, JUST a working, functional AI similar to Ranger’s pets
Ranger’s Pets AI is not their profession mechanic – that’s the “attack” “Pet special attack” and “follow” buttons. So please, Bas and Cempa, and people like you, stop criticizing for a minute and think rationally. What would be so OP, so broken about asking for minions that function properly? Nothing at all, because they should never have been broken from the start.
Dagger 1 spam, and you compensate for the lack of swiftness by having 1 pull and 1 grab. Dagger 1 spam does insane damage.
Yea, Dagger 1 does do push out the damage. I used to use a dagger well bombing build and it was insane. But in a DS centric build where you use Life Blast for your main source of damage, use Axe #2 for Life Force gain, then the Focus skills for Life Force and Vulnerability, on top of utilities, it seems there almost isn’t any time to use daggers.
I suppose it could be used if enemies are on top of you , you just came out of DS and have less than 50% LF and so you can’t use Life Blast for damage, but that’s really the only situation I can think of.
I think personally I’d use a staff just for a bit of utility, but I’ll have to give it a try either way and see how I like it!
I can understand why making/fixing AI can be difficult, but I CANT understand why (like the OP said) they can’t just cut/paste the Ranger pet AI onto Necro minions. I’ll admit I haven’t played the Ranger much (level 25) but so far I’ve hardly noticed any issues with it. Even without using the “attack” and “follow me” F1 and F3 buttons on the Ranger the AI is still exceptional.
Literally the only two things I can think of – First, A-net tried to make our minions dumb, since they are just flesh constructs. Second, they may not realize we actually have Minion AI issues, although I don’t know how that’d be possible.
Mesmer clones have pretty decent AI. Ranger pets have great AI. Ele’s elemental summons all have good AI. Same with Thief’s Thieve’s Guild elite. Why is ours broken?
I’m not sure about WvW, but I just did a dungeon yesterday with THREE Necros. Two cond builds and a power build, a Warrior, and a Mesmer. We certainly didn’t have any problems.
Wow, I never knew it removed them from 1200. I really hope its intentional, or at least not needing to be in the circle is intentional. Because how often do we actually lay our Marks on top of ourselves really? For me its maybe 1% of my total usage, possibly if I’m kiting a champ, or sPvP fighting on top of a node.
Do we know the distance the Necro has to be from our Putrid Mark for it to take our conditions?
There is a Master trait under Inspiration, trait X called Restorative Mantras the heals allies on activating a Mantra. I would assume it heals the caster as well.
Casting does not equal activation when it comes to mantras. They heal you and your allies on cast, not activation.
Awh, really? I guess that would have been a bit OP if it was on activation, but kitten
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 see any reason why it shouldn’t be a Corruption skill, other than the fact that one of our heals can already have reduced cooldown – Well of Blood. Still, the theme of corruption spells sort of fits the heal. I also think that Plague Form should be a corruption skill
It has been since October that I actually played my Necro for more than half a day here and there, so its very possible that there’s a lot of things I’ve missed, even checking the forums every day. Thanks for the update on that though, I loved the idea of that signet.
Like Animando said, it’s better to place Chaos Storm on yourself usually. It gives you buffs including Aegis, and can actually keep your clones alive much longer while getting directly attacked.
Thanks for the advice guys! I really enjoy the staff, and I did figure out the Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat trick before.
What about Mantras? I remember a while ago people saying they are absolutely useless. In PvE some of the better utilities aren’t so useful (Null Field is one for sure, although it’s another ethereal combo), so I’m thinking maybe Mantra of Pain if its any good. Maybe also Mantra of Recovery, but I assume that won’t be as good until I get the 3 mantra traitYou are welcome bro , did you check my build ?? http://tinyurl.com/boseadv
I use Mantra of recovery and pain ( both are traited ) , they will give you the most healing you can ever get from your class. Mantra of Pain will damage and heal at the same time.
Yea I checked it out and it looks pretty good. The only thing I’m thinking is that it won’t be very effective until I get Harmonious Mantras, and Restorative Mantras which won’t happen until 60. I’ll still give it a try though and see how it is!
Mantra of Pain will damage and heal at the same time.
That is not quite true. MoR aside, mantras do not heal on activation.
There is a Master trait under Inspiration, trait X called Restorative Mantras the heals allies on activating a Mantra. I would assume it heals the caster as well.
What about Plague Signet’s active, transferring conditions from allies to yourself? Last I heard, it only copied the conditions to you, leaving them still on allies.
You mean the passive, I assume?
Whenever I pay attention to this in PvE events, I can watch conditions be fully transferred, curing allies. (Last time I followed around a thief fighting harpies. They would get a 7+ second cripple on them, which would eventually transfer to me (I can’t remember the delay, but often around two seconds and I was around 900 units away) without me entering combat prior.
I haven’t personally tested it, but from what I remember, the first condition transferred properly, and the rest were just copied. I don’t play this game much anymore, so chances are I won’t get around to testing anything again until the next patch.
I’m guessing 1-3 traits will be modified/moved. DS UI won’t be fixed, that’s probably still a ways away.
I’m guessing something will be done with Wells, possibly a small AoE reduction or a 22% damage reduction on Well of Suffering or some such.
Minion AI won’t be fixed either, that’ll come Feb or later no doubt. They may fix their Blood Fiend change to actually work.
^
According to this fella, Shadow Fiends active ability Haunt applies a an AoE blind at the target, instead of the single target blind the tooltip says.
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.
About the self-mutilation part, striker’s explanation sounds reasonable from a design standpoint. If you are into the general necro-goth-dark lore i general, it still makes sense. However, from a clear game pov getting self-afflicted gives you two options:
a) Use a dagger offhand, the #4 skill (Deathly Swarm) will take up to three conditions and slap them to your taget. Works for all conditions, those others put on you and those you put yourself there.
b) Use Consume Conditions for your healing slot. The skill has a strong self heal and adds more per condition consumed.I use both of the above for levelling in Pve and usually with the Blood is Power skill. The self bleed can either add to my stacks or help in the heal. Bit tricky to time but nice.
And you can also use them for Well of Power, converting conditions into boons. Not the most reliable way of gaining boons, and it only strips one condition at a time, but it’s another option.
@OP
That was my concern with the Blood Fiend as well. It would generally get aggro before I would, die, and then I would get focus fired and have my heal on cooldown without having healed. His active life stealing on hit doesn’t give enough health to make it worth while.
I’d suggest using Well of Blood, as you can usually just stand or kite in it without worrying too much about the enemies in PvE, especially if you’re using minions. Also as a bonus, it can heal your minions!
If your minions are dying fast, try using staff 2 as often as possible to give them Regen. Also, 10 points into Blood Magic can get you Life Transfusion, making Death Shroud’s #4 heal all nearby allies for a substantial amount, and can save your flesh rats every 40s.
(edited by Levian.6742)
What about Plague Signet’s active, transferring conditions from allies to yourself? Last I heard, it only copied the conditions to you, leaving them still on allies.
Thanks for the advice guys! I really enjoy the staff, and I did figure out the Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat trick before. And thanks to Mr Prometheus, I realized you can use Chaos Storm to keep Illusions alive much longer!
I’m thinking of pairing the Staff with the GS, because it has all AoE attacks which I’ve always found key in PvE. I’ll play around and see what works best for me for sure, I still have to unlock the other abilities.
What about Mantras? I remember a while ago people saying they are absolutely useless. In PvE some of the better utilities aren’t so useful (Null Field is one for sure, although it’s another ethereal combo), so I’m thinking maybe Mantra of Pain if its any good. Maybe also Mantra of Recovery, but I assume that won’t be as good until I get the 3 mantra trait
Sorry for the thread necromancy, but hey, I main a Necromancer.
Just wanted to say this is a HUGE annoyance for me, left clicking to move the camera de-selects my target constantly. I’ve tried three different mice, two I already own and a third brand new one and all have the same issue, so it is clearly an issue in the game, not with my hardware.
I’m glad that someone is finally doing this. I used this same setup, exactly, until around level 30-40 then switched.
One question. Does it really have some of the highest damage? Even more than a DS crit build? Because those are beastly, especially combined with Wells
While there is some of this going on, there is a bit of a lack in trait synergy, coupled with broken (lifesteal) mechanics. I understand that thematically Blood Magic fits with healing power. But when you understand how well toughness and healing power work together, especially for our profession which is lacking any substantial Life Stealing/Regeneration it sort of hurts.
We have all this health, doubled with Death Shroud, but because Healing Power goes along with Vitality, we go without Toughness and our high HP gets burned down in no time (lack of protection doesn’t help either). You COULD get toughness, along with vitality and healing power, but you sacrifice any damage potential you once had.
Perma-regen from staff2 not good enough for you?
Between runes and soul reaping’s Last Gasp, I get 21 secs of protection at 50% health every 60 secs in addition to the protection from wells. With that and 33k base health, I am a tough cookie. I sacrifice all the damage potentials and do 150s ’cause I enjoy that kind of play (the tanking, not the 150s ^.~) But then, that is not for everyone.
If lifesteal were based off of healing power, oh if only….
I suppose we CAN get regen from the staff, but for being the “attrition profession” we have nowhere near the regen/self heal potential of say, the guardian or ele, who can both heal themselves to full multiple times in a fight, without using their heal ability once.
I used to run a build similar to what it sounds like you are, full of protection and toughness and vitality, but I my damage was so bad people were starting to comment on it. It’s really a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get a reliable source of protection though, having three different ways of applying it, but all three are on extremely short durations. Considering the insane cooldown on Spectral Armor compared to the protection duration, then comparing that to Spectral Walk, its cooldown and very long swiftness duration. I know that swiftness and protection are two completely different things, but I feel a similar idea applies.
I tried leveling a Mesmer, and got to around 25 but I ended up deleting it, because I wanted to give every class a try. I had a hard-ish time leveling, and 3 enemies at once my level was a struggle.
Are there any suggested weapons for PvE to make it a little easier? My assumption would be what ever has the most AoE on it, but I don’t know how effective a GS+Staff would work together, one being a power weapon and the other a condition weapon. Are power builds or cond builds more effective in WvW?
Also regarding clones. Is it worth investing in a Phantasm build, considering how often you move between groups of enemies and the cooldowns involved? Would it be better to run with a shatter build, or would it just be easier to get the -on death- traits and only use clones as a distraction, to tank a hit or two for you?
I love the overall theme of the Mesmer, but already having done all starting areas 3 or so times each, it gets boring, so the easier and quicker it goes, the happier I am! Thanks for any suggestions
I did a lot of PvE with my friend who rolled a thief. He didn’t have much healing, but had a ton of damage. I didn’t have much damage, but I had a ton of health and healing through Life Transfusion and he just couldn’t get over the amount it healed him for.
It would also be good to think about picking something that has group-wide benefits like the Mesmer of Guardian. With the Guardian you can provide lots of Regen and Boons to the both of you, which are two things the Necro seriously lacks.
I hear a lot of “This isn’t in my build. I don’t want it. ANet change it pls.”
Traits that are affected by healing:
Full of Life
Mark of Evasion – for regen (ignoring the fact that it is a Mark of Blood in the Blood Magic tree)
Ritual of Life – (once again ignoring the fact that is a Well of Blood in the Blood Magic tree)
Transfusion
Deathly InvigorationTraits that indirectly help healing:
Dagger Mastery – for dagger2
Ritual Mastery – for more well of bloodsYou may argue that these are not enough traits. For comparison, let’s look at Death Magic and Boon Duration:
Traits in DM that are affected by boon duration:
Greater Marks – a bit of a stretch but more regen to more people I guess
Ritual of Protection
Staff Mastery – again a bit of a stretch for staff2
Spiteful Vigor
While there is some of this going on, there is a bit of a lack in trait synergy, coupled with broken (lifesteal) mechanics. I understand that thematically Blood Magic fits with healing power. But when you understand how well toughness and healing power work together, especially for our profession which is lacking any substantial Life Stealing/Regeneration it sort of hurts.
We have all this health, doubled with Death Shroud, but because Healing Power goes along with Vitality, we go without Toughness and our high HP gets burned down in no time (lack of protection doesn’t help either). You COULD get toughness, along with vitality and healing power, but you sacrifice any damage potential you once had.
To be fair, it IS a really strong trait (or would be if anything on the axe did damage, except #2. Honestly, auto attack is useless on it). A permanent 20% damage increase, all the time, on top of any Might you have, and Vulnerability the enemy has.
That applies for all direct damage no?
Yes, of course it does. I’m just pointing out some of the damage potential. 25% max for vulnerability + 20% from Axe Training, on top of might, you can exceed normal damage by 50-60%.
20% is a big buff to move down to a Master trait, as much as I’d love to see it happen, I can’t see it.
To be fair, it IS a really strong trait (or would be if anything on the axe did damage, except #2. Honestly, auto attack is useless on it). A permanent 20% damage increase, all the time, on top of any Might you have, and Vulnerability the enemy has.
It generally would make more sense for Healing Power to be under toughness, because Healing Power is more effective when paired when toughness than vitality. This is especially true for Necros, having the highest health pool and no way to get constant health generation (I’m looking at YOU Ele and Guardian).
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 generally aim for around 50% crit in a Power/Crit DS build or dagger build. 50-60% crit damage is usually pretty good as well, although I haven’t tried in PvE or WvW with good gear and food yet.
Like Lettuce said, every time you pop into DS you can get fury which really helps, especially in a DS build. It’s nice seeing those 4-6k’s popping up on Life Blast, especially when it pierces.