Guild Wars 2

Nostromo.4126:

GW2<>GW1.

Death Magic=summoning undead minions. Nuff said (again).

I mean seriously – not enough to QQ about than a couple minor trait levels, which mind you, will spawn minions randomly & passively & therefore give you the stat bonus on the minor master anyway…?
There are 4 other trait trees – you can only max 2. You do the maths.

I swear, it’s my own fault for reading forums huge Shrek sigh.

That was fine in GW1, but now that the stat lines have other benefits than just making a set of skills more powerful, that doesn’t work so well. Sure, Death Magic has a lot of MM traits, but it also has Well protection and some handy traits for Staffs and Death Shroud and is the only tree that grants much in the way of toughness.

To use an analogy, it would be like if getting Vampiric Master(Minions siphon health) required you to get the trait that granted you protection from wells, or if Training of the Master(Minion damage) required you to get signet recharge. It requires staff and well necros to get sub-standard traits so that they can get the ones they really need to get their build to work.

I’ve been playing the Necromancer for a little while, so I guess I may as well put my own 2 cents in. I am enjoying the class, but I keep running into a problem with my build: the Toughness tree seems to be limited to people running MM builds.

I’m not going to comment on whether that’s a viable build right now. People more experienced than I have already put up forum posts on the subject. It just seems odd that they’re restricting a trait line to a specific build.

Traits I’m referring to:

• The Master-level Minor trait(The one that you can’t choose) grants toughness per minion. This is the big one, in my opinion. If it was just traits that we could choose to ignore, then it would still be an option to go down the tree. As it is, non-minion builds are burning a trait slot that could be used for other things. In my opinion, it could be moved to a Major slot, but with how loaded the major slots already are, I can see the difficulties.
• Both Grandmaster-level Major traits grant boons to minions, whether Death Nova or boon removal. Well, to be fair, it is the Minion line and we can choose around this one. It is annoying that non-minion builds don’t have a GM trait in here though.
• The Adept-level Minor trait summons a jagged horror when you kill an enemy. Would be hard to complain about this one if the target acquisition was quicker. The thing I see with this one, though, is that AN is going to have to balance this so that it’s not overpowered for people who run minion builds, which hurts people without Minion extra health and explosive minions and so on.

To sum it up, our Toughness tree contains 2 traits that can’t be ignored and are useless or almost so for any build that doesn’t want minions and both Grandmaster traits are minion-specific. It’s my belief that people should not be forced to choose or ignore certain trait lines because they have a specific build.

Note: I’m not trying to say that certain trait lines shouldn’t be focused towards specific things that multiple builds can make use of, such as critical hits or life steal. The difference here is that every build will occasionally crit, every build will hit their foes at some point, but only a specific kind of build will put down minions.

Well, that was longer than expected. TL;DR: I want people without minions to have access to the toughness trait line.

Got to say, I’m really enjoying my Necromancer. That being said, I have to agree that several of the Traits don’t seem to work that well.

Under Spite:

• Parasitic Bond: Gain life when you kill anything. Life gain seems to be a bit low. I barely notice it. Not saying that it has to fill things up, but a bit more health or triggering Regeneration for a bit so it scales with healing would be nice.
• Spiteful Removal: When you kill a foe, you remove a condition. Seems a bit weak to me, but I don’t have any suggestions for changes there.

Curses: Honestly, I like the curses tree pretty well. Crit chance in the tree that I use for condition damage doesn’t seem too useful but crits are never a bad thing so I don’t really mind.

• Reaper’s Precision: You have a 33% chance to gain 1% life force on a critical hit. Seems like too many variables for too little payoff to me, but I don’t play crit builds most of the time so take that as you will.

Death Magic

• Reanimator: Summon a Jagged Horror when you kill a foe. Interesting trait and I like it in theory. If the little monsters are as useless as it sounds like though, it’s not as useful as it could be. I could see it being cool in conjunction with other traits to empower minions though, so maybe it would be better as an optional trait?
• Protection of the Horde: You get +20 Toughness for every minion under your control. I like this trait. I really do. However, it only has any use for minion builds. That makes it highly inefficient for any other build to put points into Death Magic. Not saying to get rid of it, just make it an optional trait. I like being able to dive weak mobs, so not being able to spec for toughness traits is frustrating.

Blood Magic

• Vampiric: Siphon health whenever you hit a foe. It’s been mentioned several times that this needs to be made more powerful, so I’m not going to go into depth.
• Blood to Power: Deal 5% more damage while your health is above 90%. Seems too limited-use. I could see advantages for initiation though. Question: Does it apply to condition damage or just direct?
• Vampiric Precision: Siphon health whenever you critical hit. See ‘Vampiric’

Soul Reaping:

• Near to Death: Death Shroud recharges 50% faster. Don’t really know any situations when I would have to switch that fast. Doesn’t seem useful enough to be a Grandmaster level trait.