Guild Wars 2

No, more rapid attacks do NOT help you claim stacks faster. There is a 1 second cooldown for each attacker on the signet active.

Defiant Stance heals you directly based on how much damage you (would) take, so the builds with less toughness heal for more with it.

I’m working on a WvW build for zerg-fighting that has one open trait slot at Death Magic 20. The build is a minion-bombing build to take advantage of the shorter Reanimator cooldown, so I should have a decent stream of time bombs in a typical zerg v. zerg battle.

Build is using my currently owned gear, so don’t expect perfection from it:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djMal61aebM8JCpHRDATDSx7lGli1xOA-jkDBoLQoMAYNwEEwUFA0FQJQFRjtEMaVRhtcKIKZJVVDQdDT/Ky

General idea is to use the staff to build life force and spend most of the time using the piercing life blasts to harm the opposition, summoning new minions (and detonating bone minions) when necessary. Using Spectral Wall helps control the area of the battle and also provides a nice combo field to blast. Shadow Fiend is chosen because it can go where I want very quickly and grants me more life force.

The numerous poison fields, fear, and vulnerability should make it easier for my side to win the engagements. If I get caught in a solo position, the minions still provide good damage and the build is otherwise a decent DS might stacker.

But, as you see, I have a dilemma. Death magic 20 is the perfect spot for either Greater Marks or Staff mastery. Greater Marks means it’s easier to get the marks to hit the enemy while Staff Mastery gives me more frequent Chilblains, Putrid Mark, and Reaper’s Mark (Mark of Blood recharges fast enough anyway) for utility and life force.

Actually, Defiant Stance rewards the warriors for building more glassy, since not only does it give them another way to just not take damage, but its healing is higher the less defense you have.

We’re not sure why the hint is mercurial (I got it the first time I used death shroud), but try fiddling around with various amounts of life force before entering.

Tim.6450:

The only thing I can come up with is for bunker minion masters who want to heal their minions. You will lose blood fiend but the heals could make your other minions live longer. It is better than well of blood sincit isn’t range bound. I didn’t test it though.

Minions can’t benefit from the active, though, so even in that situation it’s worthless.

Alkaholic.3875:

@Drarnor: Ur last statement invalidates ur advice. W/ multiple minions attacking at once, he’ll be eating death novas often. Also, most good MM necros can survive/kite w/o minions for a bit. DS1 hits pretty hard too and DS3 is a 10 sec CD.

Death nova isn’t an issue because his friend is running 20/0/20/30. Death nova is a grandmaster Death Magic trait, and his friend only has 20 points in that line.

Also, not sure if you play necro, since Doom (DS#3) is a 20 second cooldown untraited (17 seconds traited).

So no, my advice is still sound.

to OP: Try swapping greatsword for hammer. You can get the valuable Protection to shore up your defenses with easy blast for retaliation (helps nicely against minions). You should be able to just crush most of the minions that way.

Dark Path getting a projectile speed/cast time buff and a range increase would go a long way. Spectral Grasp needs to be seriously worked at so it works most of the time.

Having another utility or weapon skill that reduces the ability of foes to get away would be welcome. Stuns, pulls, or move-to-target are needed to prevent people from running away.

But I would love to see a unique debuff that disables teleports and shadowsteps on the target.

The idea behind the skill was good. We know that from the datamined version. The implementation is what failed horrendously.

The good news is that if he is using the trait setup you say, then the answer is actually pretty straightforward. Use the Greatsword (or try Hammer) to destroy his minions, then go after him while they are on cooldown. He will likely detonate the bone minions, but you may be able to kill one of them before it goes boom.

Wall of Reflection stops Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm for its duration.

You might find it’s worth calling for assistance to take down the blood fiend. Since Guardians don’t have access to poison, and the Blood Fiend has a lot of health (pretty close to the Flesh Golem), you may want to have someone else focus on the blood fiend while you take on the necro himself. Even though the Vampiric Master trait is very good, it won’t sustain him without the Blood Fiend.

The main reason the “kill the minions first” strategy works is because he is not running Death Nova. Binding Blade the minions,, drop Symbol of Warth, then shred them apart,before going after the necro. He has 16 seconds for his shortest cooldown and if you keep up the pressure, he will likely not have a good opportunity to re-summon them once that time is finished.

Also, Soldier runes on a necro? I’m not sure this guy is actually that good.

I’m going to be sticking with my necro, but I agree that it really feels like ANet just doesn’t know where to take the profession. We know they have good ideas (as evidenced by datamined SoV), but then they nerf what the necro needs more of and buff what the class doesn’t. Necro is supposed to be an aggressive attrition class, but what we are currently most known for is a passive burst. It’s pretty clear that somewhere along the line, things got screwed up.

Faranox.4217:

I see a lot of people suggesting this be instant cast. Are you seriously getting interrupted while casting this? I haven’t been.

I think they just don’t want to pause their attacking to heal just like everyone else. A quarter-second cast is almost impossible to interrupt anyway.

For that matter, stick with a condi necro, but don’t use Dhuumfire (or any points in Spite). You will find things much more difficult because you actually have to work to maintain those stacks and you don’t have the burst ability that Dhuumfire gives.

sorrow.2364:

One life blast and you’re out of the Diamond Skin threshold.

Life Blast from a typical condi necro is only about 600. Even baseline ele health means DS is still active after one.

Even so, you’re blowing six cooldowns and 30 trait points (or more) to get those kinds of numbers. If I was using six skills all in their absolutely perfect situation, I would hope that I get some really impressive results from it. Even though 22k health sounds really impressive, all it amounts to is a full heal over 10 seconds assuming nobody hits you in return. For using that much of my build in that kind of burst, I’d actually hope I could get a bit more out of it. The necro gets one full heal from investing most of their build into it in a perfect situation.

The Guardian, by just investing their heal skill in their typical damage build, can refill their health entirely 2-3 times in those same circumstances (once you factor in the necro’s much larger health pool, it’s still the same return for much less investment).

I understand that the absolute perfect circumstance needs to be accounted for, but that is not what ANet is (or should be) balancing around (at least, not across the board). If the absolute perfect circumstance for a skill or combo shows up, and the player uses said skill or combo, they should get greatly rewarded for it. Everyone wants those moments where they just feel awesome. Let these moments happen on the rare occasions where they can and don’t make things suck for everything but that ideal circumstance.

TLDR: Reward players when they use their abilities to the maximum effect. Don’t punish them when the perfect circumstances don’t happen.

I don’t PvP much, but I also agree that the new skills should have been auto-unlocked for PvP.

Then again, in the (current) case of Skelk Venom and Signet of Vampirism, perhaps this is a good thing?

Lopez.7369:

CursedShaitan.9720:

When enemies can blast through death shroud and another 75% health before your skill bar even refreshes out of ds and the last 25% during the cast duration of your last desperate move How in the ever living kitten are you supposed to use death shroud for protection.

I have never seen this happen in my thousands of hours playing necromancer.

I have! It happens all the time when you try to solo a zerg in WvW!

Oh…wait.

Other than the obvious people who can’t be bothered to read, the OP now is up to date with all ideas presented thus far.

When I am talking about the profession and not those playing it, yes. I do. That is the proper way to refer to it, after all.

I agree with you that this is is a massive problem for the eles and it’s probably why the class is my second-least favorite profession (I dislike Thief more for other reasons). The Elementalist is designed as a generalist class, but the traits force specialization. The class design fights itself.

Heck, I’d just immobilize and dodge through him. That will be even funnier, because he can’t stunbreak out of it.

May want to factor in that only two of the wells even can proc Vampiric Precision, there.

Earth Magic has always had good traits. The problem is that Water and Arcana were/are so necessary.

To be fair, I think that it would be more effective on S/D or S/F, since then you could stay out of the necro’s “power range”. Outside of 600 range, necros don’t have any half decent power option.

The healing is independent of the amount of damage you took.

Heck, I’d fight you too. I’m not very good at PvP (though I roam a lot in WvW), but I’m pretty sure I’d beat you too, since you don’t have a real heal.

And yet, Defiant Stance was put out where the potential truly is infinite.

I can understand why it was a unique debuff, and not a condition. On top of Epidemic considerations, there is also condition cleansing and duration that would factor in, not to mention traits like Target the Weak.

Just one problem with your assessment, McWolfy: necros do not have excellent sustain. They have the worst. You also tried a neco in literally its strongest environment, which is ZvZ in WvW.

It was hilarious with Dark Path and getting reflected before they made it unblockable and immune to projectile hate. You would get chilled and bleeding, but they would get teleported to you. Dropping a Putrid Mark on yourself first meant that they were not happy.

It does to my knowledge. I haven’t done much testing on it, though.

I don’t believe Well of Blood can trigger Vampiric or Vampiric Precision as it does not normally affect enemies.

I just limited this thread to those two slots due to that specifically being what ANet is looking at.

@Overkillengine: tier for those?

EDIT: Never mind, I wasn’t reading carefully.

Don’t forget that by dodging, you automatically lose a potential heal tick from the signet…

I really Hope that Diamond Skin isn’t going to be the Ele’s Dhuumfire. If it is, then prepare to get every condition defense you have nerfed other than this trait.

Consider for one that player deaths and some minions already give life force. The trait may be more trouble than it’s worth. I have it listed above, but I think it could probably use some extra thought.

I think Morbid Plunder will get listed for player allies (no minions, pets, spirits, spirit weapons, turrets, clones, phantasms, or summons) as otherwise it would be too easy for a necro to just tank indefinitely. Bone Minions alone means two instant-refills of life force on a 20 second cooldown.

I’ll make an undecided category, I guess.

Chilling Presence is getting added, since it’s not a repeat.

Umm, sorry I linked the Maguuma video? :p

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Life After Death – healing from boons, allies and siphons will now function while in Death Shroud.

Death is not the end – Offensive skills will no longer penetrate through the Death Shroud Life Force pool (i.e. DS before the fix, but things like falling damage will still penetrate).

Which tier are these for?

OP has been updated with all other ideas given, plus one of my own. I hope nobody minds me coming up with names to go with the traits that don’t otherwise have them. If you like a different name, let me know.

Master of Timespace.2548:

mtpelion.4562:

Seems balanced to me: Either trade some of your DPS out for vitality or die.

Or roll condition and get both.

And this is why condition DPS should never be as high as direct DPS, at least not against a single target. Max direct DPS is from Berserker’s gear. Max condition DPS is from Dire, Carrion, or Rabid. Berserker’s has no defensive stats, Dire, Carrion, and Rabid do.

That said, condition damage also should not be reduced with 2 or more condi specs attacking the same target.

Dirame.8521:

So because you can’t build around the trait, it shouldn’t be made better in such a way that it makes you think about how you play?

I don’t get your logic in this discussion to be honest. I’m asking for the trait to be changed functionally because right now it either sucks or is too good, and you’re telling me because it sucks it shouldn’t be changed?…… I’m sorry but what???

Ele arguments in a nutshell, right here ladies and gentlemen.

If you think the trait sucks horribly, why are you against the calls to change it?

The purpose of this thread is to help collect community ideas for the new Death Magic minor traits at 5 and 15, as more or less requested by this post:

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

I will try and keep this first post updated with ideas that people post in this thread. Please be sure to mark each idea as replacing at the Adept level (in place of Reanimator) or Master level (replacing Protection of the Horde). If you think an existing major trait is better suited to one of these slots, please make a note, then a suggestion for what to replace the now-vacant Major slot with.

Adept tier ideas (replacing Reanimator):

• Deadened Flesh – Gain Protection for 2 seconds upon entering Death Shroud
• Spectral Shielding – Gain Toughness based on Life Force
• Absorb Vis – Gain Life Force when struck below health threshold
• Barbed Armor – Gain protection (5s) whenever you gain retaliation.
• Immunotoxin – Incoming damaging conditions have reduced duration.
• Hardened Blood – Gain protection (5s) when struck by a critical hit.
• Tyranny – Gain toughness for every boon on you.
• Anguish – Retaliation you apply lasts longer.
• Last Breath – Chill foes hit by channeled attacks for 3 seconds (10sec ICD)
• Life Corruption – Life blast poisons target for 3 seconds on critical hit, cooldown 10 seconds.

Master tier ideas (replacing Protection of the Horde):

• Between Worlds – Gain Aegis on leaving Death Shroud (with ICD)
• Dark Emergence – Blind nearby foes when exiting Death Shroud (with ICD)
• Karmic Backlash – Gain Retaliation for 3 seconds when disabled.
• Chilling Presence – Chill enemies around you when you drop below 50% (30 second cooldown)
• Tendrils of Corruption – Chance to corrupt a foe’s boon when struck.
• Hypothermia – Chilled foes deal less damage to you. (N%)
• Restitch Limbs – Receive regeneration (5s) when you take damage greater than a percentage of your maximum health. (10%)
• Morbid Plunder – Whenever a nearby ally dies, maximize your Life Force.
• Flesh Allergy – Reduce incoming damage from melee attacks. (N%)
• Grasp of Death – Chance to steal a boon on hit. Chance scales with number of conditions on you.
• Patient Zero – Auto transfer one stun or condition/stack per x seconds to a nearby foe.
• Nurtured Soul – Gain health while above 50% life force.
• Immortal – While under the effects of regeneration, you generate life force.
• Undying Flesh – Gain lifeforce when struck while not in Death Shroud.

Undecided tier:

• Life After Death – healing from boons, allies and siphons will now function while in Death Shroud.
• Death is not the end – Offensive skills will no longer penetrate through the Death Shroud Life Force pool.
• Putrid Retaliation – When suffering from Burning, Confusion, Torment or more than 15 stacks of bleeding, nearby enemies suffer 0.3 of the conditions multiplier (0 cond damage retals 0 damage, 2k cond damage retals 600 damage pre second).
• Swarm of Discord – Non-damagin conditions have additional effects depending on life force (0 max effect 100% no effect): Chill – enemies deal 33% less direct damage, Vuln – condition duration increased by 2% (pre stack, so reverse sunless/melandu effect), Poison – Boon duration reduced by 20%, Immob – Enemy loses 10 endurance pre second.
• Evasive shadows – Life Blast, Dark Path and Life Transfer cannot be evaded.
• Corrupting Energies – Life blast is now Plague Blast (UW life blast)
• Rage against the Night- You cannot lose more than 10% of your current life force pre second, doesnt apply to degeneration if your HP is under 75%.
• Winter of Dhuum – If you hit 0% Life force while CCed, you lose all remaining life force and nearby enemies are encased in blocks of ice for 5 seconds (enemies in ice are get 2s chill pre second applied to them, they can break out of ice faster down to 2s by spamming a 1 skill/think jorlag ice, utilities are locked off, ice instantly kills npcs), 90s CD
• Corrupted Death – 50% Chance to send condition to target on Crit, 5seccool down
• Corrupted Life – 50% Chance to steal Boon from target on Crit, 5second cool down
• Creeping Fatigue – When your target reaches 50% health, siphon endurance for each condition on your target (X%).

In that case, you’re giving up your healing skill for a shot at 5k damage. Still not a good trade.

mistsim.2748:

isnt this thing used to melt targets down in a coordinated fashion with your team? in spvp, i basically do a countdown and the whole team trains a target simultaneously. target melts. i used with the signet trait, so it’s up every 24 seconds.

28 seconds is the minimum recharge, but no. If you do a countdown to simultaneously focus a single target, they’re going down whether or not you use this signet on them. Better to run a real heal if you’re going to do that. The 5k damage you get from the signet just isn’t worth it for a spike (especially as it’s capped at 1k/second). sing the signet for the spike gives them a good warning that the spike is coming.

If you want to run a bleed build, avoid Berserker, Soldiers, or really anything that doesn’t have Condition Damage as a stat.

Lily.1935:

Brando.1374:

Lily.1935:

Brando.1374:

it was always 4 seconds in pve/wvw
it was reduced to 2 seconds in svp

it was 4 seconds with the added 30% duration with spite. its base was 3 seconds. Now its base is 4 seconds.

No it has always been 4 seconds in pve/wvw.
ew Grandmaster trait—Dhuumfire: Players can inflict burning to opponents for 4 seconds on critical hit. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.

taken from the patch notes of june 25th

See, I’m looking up the history of this skill and I’m finding a base of 3 seconds. Not 4.

The wiki is wrong, simple as that. It has always been a base of 4 seconds.

Monoman.2068:

Wait… what? They added a ICD to spectral life generation? seriously?

I haven’t been playing much wvw or pvp since I’ve been mostly crafting if I can get in game but was this even a necessary change? I mostly use spectral abilities for their utilities and the life force generation is a bonus, but I don’t understand the reasoning behind this change.

Consider that they buffed Spectral Armor from 3% when hit to 8% when hit as well as let it apply while in death shroud. The ICD there was actually justified (though it was a nerf if you get hit 3 times per second).

Blood Fiend is always better for a MM, since the minions can’t use the signet active and the blood fiend just provides you with more healing and damage than the signet. It also works with the traits you are taking anyway.

Funnily enough, the build that gets used in PvP has absolutely no siphoning/leeching.

And yes, the necros have been constantly getting nerfed ever since the Dhuumfire patch.