Guild Wars 2

To be fair, siphons aren’t really held back by death shroud from being good, that’s just the final nail in the coffin.

Also, Necro blinds are actually quite weak outside of Plague. Deathly Swarm is a slow projectile, Signet of Spite is a 3/4 second cast, Haunt has a 2 second delay, and Well of Darkness is easily just walked out of, plus has a long cooldown. Necro blinds can’t be used to stop particular attacks. They have good access to the condition. but characteristics of the skills that apply it prevent it from being a defense.

I feel it would be all right to have skills be designed so that they are kind of overpowered in the ideal situation. After all, if you used a skill at the moment when the conditions were perfect for it, you should get a sizable reward. Litany of Wrath and Defiant Stance both follow this philosophy, for example.

Well, in PvE, you very rarely need to heal at all anyway, so the passive is all right there. It’s still somewhat decent against popular champions/legendaries, too.

Neptune.2570:

Kahrgan.7401:

a t s e.9614:

Tao.5096:

Nerf Warrior’s hammer first, then let’s talk about Terror.

Hammer has animations, necro’s fears do not….

much passive fear such wow so skill

Did you just imply that hammer takes skill?

hhmmffkk… Hmmmffkk.. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What’s even more hilarious is that warriors have so many passives I can actually watch youtube while in a pvp match with my warrior.

He’s not talking about skill. I can evade a warriors hammer. I can’t evade 5 and a half seconds of fear from nightmare runes/reapers protection as soon as I attack.
IMO the rest of the necro fears are fine. It’s those two that are a problem.

Sooo, stop leading off with a CC or be prepared to stunbreak instead? If you get feared for that long, then that’s 3 of a necro’s fears blown, two of which are on 60+ second cooldowns.

As it stands, I don’t think anything relating to Fear actually needs a change right now. None of them are particularly hard to deal with, and Reaper’s Protection is basically the necro’s only defense against CC. Nightmare Runes can be used by any profession, but you don’t see that happen. Ever stopped to consider that maybe the runes aren’t actually problematic? People just view them as such on necros because the necro gets a bit more milage out of them.

Given how easy it is to proc both of them simultaneously while ignoring their effects (pop Stability before CCing, CC from long range, Zerker stance, stunbreak right after CC, instant cleanse right after CC), I really don’t see an issue. Heck, opposing necros can be even meaner and launch a Deathly Swarm right before proccing them, transferring the long fear straight to the defending necro.

@Tao: No it isn’t. Reaper’s Protection has never feared the necro. That’s some other effect (Fear proccing it or Mirrored Anguish)

Really, the passive needs a change more than the active. The passive desperately needs either a removal of the ICD or have the ICD changed to be per-attacker instead of global ICD. Changing it from a basic heal to a siphon would also help the skill.

Pretty sure Well of Blood was not a stealth nerf, since it was explicitly stated in the patch notes.

Ezeriel, you just lost basically all credibility on necro balance with your latest post. Terror, Dhuumfire, and minions? This has never been a good build. Plus, condition builds cannot sit in death shroud long because if they do, they lose all pressure, in addition to having terrible life force generation. They simply can’t afford to sit in death shroud.

I disagree that “real sustain” means necros become OP. The reason is that all of a necro’s sustain has counterplay. Necro sustain has more options to limit/prevent it than any other profession because it all requires hitting or being hit, rather than throwing up a couple of buffs and letting those work.

Dude, Terror is not to blame for builds that “cannot counter stunlock” not being viable. Hammer warriors, decap engies, and multiple Mesmer and Thief builds also do that just fine.

CC is very prelevant in this game. Terror has nothing to do with that.

1) Parasitic Bond, Parasitic Contagion, Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Master, Vampiric Rituals, and the Regeneration boon operate at full capacity while in death shroud

2) On many utility skills, reduce the cooldown significantly. If part of the effect needs to be lowered to remain balanced, so be it (hint: Signet of the Locust does not need an effect nerf).

3) improvements to non-Consume Conditions healing skills.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I am a bit indifferent…

Yes, boon spamming, mostly might, is over the top – but if people seriously need boon removal badly, why do we not see Sigil of nullification more often?

The thing also is, giving boon removal on hits to certain classes, thus not the classes who do so at this moment, you might decrease the value of said classes… Maybe a turn for the best as well, since you open more diversity to those classes, but it still irks me whether to give away “boon removal” like that…

As far as the sigil is concerned, it’s probably becasue running Sigil of Strength instead lets you have an easier time killing those boon-spammers than the Sigil of Nullification does a lot of the time and also still works well when facing boon-light classes like Necros and Mesmers.

For additional boon stipping options, let’s just remind people that the most popular classes right now are those that actually lack boon removal entirely (Ele, Warrior, Ranger, most Guardian builds). Giving them boon removal options will actually push those classes that do have boon removal abilities further out because their boon stripping isn’t as important.

Mystogan.4157:

they changed axe auto and dagger auto i can tell

Both in the 9/9 patch. Dagger auto cleaves to a 2nd target, axe had its aftercast reduced.

Putrid Mark transfers 3 conditions per enemy hit, not 3 total as many here say/imply.

I’d get Tooth of Frostfang. It’s the last thing I need for my Frostfang!

I’d save the rest to get a start on Howler.

Anubis.7058:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lorndarken.3702:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Basically, anyone saying necros ever have a problem with conditions has zero clue about the profession. Conditions have always been something necros have been very, very resiliant to. Now, helping allies with their conditions? That’s a different story. Ever since the Putrid Mark nerf, there hasn’t been much in the way of ally cleansing that’s any good.

the reason for why they wanted to nerf putrid mark was because blah blah blah blah the one good thing about necros have blah blah blah blah nerf nerf nerf . and so anet devs all got together and said what were we thinking ? we have to take away something necros used that made them important ! lets do it ! no reason

I suspect the real reason for the putrid mark nerf was because a 5-man total cleanse on a 25 second cooldown is overpowered, especially since it’s not just a cleanse.

Plus, there was the weird functionality of when you had three sides getting caught in the mark where it would transfer conditions from side B to side C and vice-versa. I would prefer the mark still had ally-cleansing ability, but the nerf was actually pretty well justified. The biggest problem with the nerf is that they never replaced the support it gave elsewhere.

Chance is its that they didnt know how to fix the second.
Since a 20 second cooldown cleanse for which 4/5 people need to melee their enemy is not something even remotely far off with what you can do. Everything from Shouts over Elixirs to plain using your profession mechanic (aka water attunement) has equal effects taken in the values of risk and reliability.

Everything you’re comparing it to is one or two conditions, though. Putrid Mark was a total cleanse for up to 5 allies standing in the mark as well as the necro himself. Up to 59 conditions removed (Torment didn’t exist and, at the time, Blind on the necro still stopped it) on a 20 second (traited) cooldown was entirely too much. Of course, the fact it was a transfer instead of an actual cleanse didn’t help matters either.

Yeah, I was really frustrated at the time, too, but it really was entirely too powerful of a skill before the nerf.

ofLegends.9853:

Finally did some pvp yesterday. It was great
Spent a lot of time following around some zerg group and trying to learn what to do. Map feels huge.

Sounds like you did WvW, not PvP. PvP is teams of 5 and the maps, while large for some game’s standards of PvP maps, are really not that big. Still, WvW is a totally different monster.

I think you will find, though, that your first point ties in with your last two. The game has been built entirely around player cooperation, which actually annoys trolls, because they really can’t, well, troll. They can’t impede anyone’s progress, so they either give up trying to troll or move on to another game.

Behellagh.1468:

Karma like many of the alternate currencies is designed to reward certain activities with their own pool of items you can use Karma to purchase. Buying Karma with gold would circumvent this. What’s next Dungeon and WvW badges/tokens for gold? Laurels for gold? Buying ascended mats with gold so you can avoid chest grinding?

Ascended materials may not be the best example, as many of them can already be bought and sold on the TP. Or were you referring to Bloodstone Dust/Empyral fragments/Dragonite Ore?

Ehecatl.9172:

Also, the goddess of nature in Tyria is Melandru, and she is only worshipped by the humans.

And Quaggans (Mellagan). Heck, even the Charr have legends regarding her (despite not worshipping anything).

Tman.6349:

Jski.6180:

I think they do not fit the set what i think it when your under the effect of an aura type effects so say a + to power def etc.. on thoughts lines. It would be nice if you could make it work on other ppl from your auras but it should not be a must every class can make aura some better then others auras are only a real support ability for one class eles beyond that they are mostly a self buff only and rune sets should not be made for one class.

So i say remove the 2 and 4 and replaces them with blunt + effects when under the effect of an aura. No cd just an effect for having aura up and making the #6 work very well because longer you have an aura up the longer you have the +.

It’s not just for one profession at all. Like you said, every profession can make Auras. Yes, it,s catered more to Eles, b/c Auras are something they do well. That’s no different, though, that saying Krait Runes are catered more to other professions that have access to a lot of Bleeds. +%Protection Runes could be considered to me tailored for Guardians. With clever use of combos, they’re not useless though. Look at Rune of the Elementalist and then try to argue that they don’t deserve something more for one of their niches.

Well, not every profession. Necros lack leaps, so their one aura-making field doesn’t work (Chaos Armor is, afaik, not an aura despite its similarities) Thieves lack aura-making fields altogether. Mesmers can only do Light Auras, and everyone else can at least do Fire.

Nope. Life force actually got no improvements over the last year, save for reduced cooldown on Spectral Armor and the Soul Comprehension trait.

Vayne.8563:

Crise.9401:

Vayne.8563:

So let him alone to explore the game for an hour —- How is showing your friend a bunch of stuff he could discover helpful anyway?

Why should two friends have to feel like they have to wait an hour to play together when they didn’t have to do so before the last feature pack.

As for how is showing a friend bunch of stuff helpful, well it is about playing together in the end. Maybe he could discover all of it on his own as well but this is an MMO and playing with friends is always more fun.

Mind you, there are also things in this game that a player coming for example from a different MMO wouldn’t even know to look for.

I played with my friend. I just didn’t feel the need to preempt the game for him. I hung out, let him take the lead and explore. I didn’t say you should wait. But trying to show him a bunch of stuff he doesn’t have access to, doesn’t help him or you. It’s not giving the NPE a chance even.

What I was trying to show him were things like combo fields (which the NPE never helps you learn about) and underwater combat, enough to give him a sample of what the game had to offer. Of course, NPE locked away any of his potential combo finishers (he was on Mesmer and never got a staff) until later levels, so that fell flat, and it also locked away underwater combat for quite some time. In addition, it was really hard to make it feel like not so much of a grindfest when no events spawned near us You heard that right. We found nada and the guide arrow wasn’t helpful because it was just pointing us toward the dodge tutorial we had already completed.

If ArenaNet wants new players to learn quickly that dynamic events are one of the main parts of the game, they need to increase the density in the starter areas. This may mean making some events run more frequently or it may mean making new events. It should not allow me to run around the starter zone for a half hour not even knowing they exist, and that’s the impression my friend had. He played during the trial weekend and never even learned that dynamic events existed. I couldn’t even say “hey, let’s go do this event over here” because I didn’t get any notification that there was one.

lorndarken.3702:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Basically, anyone saying necros ever have a problem with conditions has zero clue about the profession. Conditions have always been something necros have been very, very resiliant to. Now, helping allies with their conditions? That’s a different story. Ever since the Putrid Mark nerf, there hasn’t been much in the way of ally cleansing that’s any good.

the reason for why they wanted to nerf putrid mark was because blah blah blah blah the one good thing about necros have blah blah blah blah nerf nerf nerf . and so anet devs all got together and said what were we thinking ? we have to take away something necros used that made them important ! lets do it ! no reason

I suspect the real reason for the putrid mark nerf was because a 5-man total cleanse on a 25 second cooldown is overpowered, especially since it’s not just a cleanse.

Plus, there was the weird functionality of when you had three sides getting caught in the mark where it would transfer conditions from side B to side C and vice-versa. I would prefer the mark still had ally-cleansing ability, but the nerf was actually pretty well justified. The biggest problem with the nerf is that they never replaced the support it gave elsewhere.

While Tao is apparently one of those “I shouldn’t have to worry about conditions, but I do, so those that use them are broken” people, he does bring up a good point that Corrupt Boon on necros can very easily wreck a D/D ele’s day very, very quickly.

There are strong counters to the build, but they are few.

Anchoku.8142:

1. Necromancer
2. Necromancer
3. Necromancer
4. Necromancer
5. Wait for it… Necromancer

For 1-3, you mispelled some other profession really badly.

Basically, anyone saying necros ever have a problem with conditions has zero clue about the profession. Conditions have always been something necros have been very, very resiliant to. Now, helping allies with their conditions? That’s a different story. Ever since the Putrid Mark nerf, there hasn’t been much in the way of ally cleansing that’s any good.

lorndarken.3702:

one last thing i forgot to mention necros have 2 ways to transfer conditions not that it matters because hard cc can and will shut that down . putrid mark , deathly swarm , as for transfer of boons into conditions only 2 , corrupt boon and dark path when traited . and that was nerfed , putrid mark was nerfed and no longer transfers conditions from allies to the target/s

Transfer: Deathly Swarm, Putrid Mark, Plague Signet (all of which can potentially be full cleanses).
Corrupt boons: Corrupt Boon, Well of Corruption, Path of Corruption
Ally cleansing: Well of Power, Plague Signet, Unholy Martyr

sendaf.8375:

Why is the mine skill rangers have not labeled as a trap? We can throw it untraited, it sits on the ground like a trap, and explodes for direct damage AND condi damage when an enemy walks over it. i just don’t understand why it is not counted as a trap

Because Rangers don’t have a “mine skill?”

Do you play a Charr?

Simon.3794:

Riccardo.7254:

1- Warrior
2- Guardian
3- Mesmer/Thief
4- Guardian/Warrior
5- Mesmer/Thief/Ele (depends most on the race)

4- you must be high, because warrior can not kittening tag, like at all

anything that is related to a huge farming zerging activity which requires you to tag the most enemy possible to get loot, you don’t want to be a warrior.

Off-hand Axe is extremely good for tagging mobs. Just as mobile as normal, but you’ve got 75 hits to tag things from whirling axe.

As to the OP, Necromancer or Engineer for #5. Necros, because Spectral Walk lets them try again without restarting the whole puzzle. Engineers, because Jump Shot makes particular jumps easy.

I’d rather see some of our skills have their effects reduced some in exchange for a drastic cooldown reduction. For example, Well of Corruption having its damage reduced by 90%, but also having its cooldown reduced to 25 seconds would turn it into sustained boon corruption and zone control as opposed to now where it’s generally used for damage with some additional utility.

Also, more finishers. Staff 1 could be a 100% projectile finisher, which would allow for better sustain via dark field lifesteal.

Rusc.4978:

I’m just going to quote my response to a different suggestion of this type:

Rusc.4978:

Why should anything go through invulnerability? The few skills that provide invuln have short durations, long cooldowns, and leave the user unable to capture points in a PvP format that revolves around capturing points. And…it would invalidate the whole point of the mechanic.

As for Diamond Skin, an Ele running Celestial with 6 points in Water Magic has 18,295 health. That means their opponent has to do all of 1,829.5 damage to render that GM trait totally useless.

To be fair, the issue isn’t doing the 2k damage to get an Ele down below that threshold, it’s keeping him from healing it all right back up as fast as you dish it out, which is made harder since necros can’t poison or fear them to prevent that from happening.

@OP: No. Necros don’t need anything like that. Diamond Skin needs a rework to be less binary, but Necros don’t need a method to pierce immunities.

Tim.6450:

Tao.5096:

67k from 2 stacks of Bleed in 1 min.

how is that possible? That requires like 10000 condition damage.

10,716.665 to be exact. Literally no stat in the game can hit even a quarter of that total.

Just goes to show Tao is clueless.

Now, back on topic of well-designed elements instead of complaining how impossible values are OP, please.

We should, occasionally, start more positive threads going over what we do like about the game so the devs can use that information in making more stuff we like. I recently started a thread in the Necro forums discussing which elements of the profession we feel are designed right. Hopefully, a dev reads it and they think more about what the players feel already is done correctly when they make further changes (because further changes will come to everyone).

Anchoku.8142:

Was Dark Path not nerfed so it would not work on critters? Cannot remember some of the early nerfs.

I still Dark Path to rabbits all the time in WvW. Works nicely as a gap opener.

AirWick.1769:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Plague means it will never, ever happen.

Well of Darkness, too.

Wrong terror trait is why it will never ever happen.

Plauge is worse. Pulsing Fear means you can’t really even stunbreak out of it. That’s 20+ seconds of Fear, which any allies will easily be able to capatalize on.

Terror compounds it, but Plague really is worse than Terror in this situation.

Plague means it will never, ever happen.

Well of Darkness, too.

Cynz.9437:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@Cynz: Yes, lifesteal can be decent if you’re a thief. All of a necro’s lifesteal traits combined are outdone by food. Yes, food.

Also, Withdraw being a lengthy cooldown? Please, it’s the second shortest cooldown Heal in the entire game! Beaten only by traited Signet of Malice.

food can’t be used in pvp
if we really going bring food in, should we talk about veggie pizzas maybe? yeah, no?

withdraw still has longer CD than a lot of weapon sets that usually apply cripple (not to mention those cripple effects are applied by persistent aoe in few cases)

Bring in veggie pizza all you like, as it’s rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. Veggie Pizza alone can’t entirely replace a build while any lifesteal food outdoes an entire necro siphon build.

Brujeria.7536:

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect.

I would argue that that’s the worst solution. Siphons cannot not be volatile. They have swings in effectiveness by their very nature, and an ICD doesn’t change that fact, only caps it. Instead of trying to fight the inherent volatility by adding an ICD, it should be embraced by actually letting it be awesome in those situations where it would be awesome.

Because you cannot siphon from someone you don’t hit, siphons can be negated. They can also explode in effectiveness with no ICD. All that adding an ICD would accomplish is preventing the explosion, so they are still volatile, but only in a downward direction. For a sustain mechanic, this is very bad.

Now, why it would be all right for siphons to scale with hits landed is because currently, a necro has no active defenses that scale with numbers of opponents. Spectral Armor is great against one, but the second, third, or fourth attackers see no difference between Spectral Armor and Protection (to be clear, I don’t want Spectral Armor changed, it’s great as is). Since we can’t really defend against multiple foes, we need instead to sustain against multiple foes. The way siphons already function is actually perfect for this, just the values need work (and interaction with death shroud). You can’t siphon from foes that aren’t there, so siphons won’t become OP for one opponent, but at the same time, they help sustain against multiple foes when multiple foes are actually there.

Now, if you were to try and improve siphons to an amount relevant to multi-foe sustain with an ICD, they would become a brick wall for a single attacker.

TLDR: Siphons are not comparable to other healing, both due to the “must hit” nature of siphons and the profession’s limitations.

kyubi.3620:

god im so laughing at all these because its so true yet… well you should’ve made an update to ranger with the RF hate :P

He probably will if he can find a faster-firing machine gun sound clip :p

This is a case where I would say “no.” Right now, there’s counterplay options to Life Siphon that aren’t there for Life Transfer, which is fitting with it’s drastically lower cooldown and effectively larger “heal” most of the time. Once you started casting, facing doesn’t matter, but it does for the start. At the same time, someone who stealths before you start casting is safe.

Really, the only thing Life Siphon needs is a cast time reduction so it doesn’t utterly kill DPS.

Zealot’s I’ve found actually works well if you have lots of Protection. It lets you do a lot more damage than Cleric’s gear while still having good heals. It’s generally better for those who have a bit of team healing ability, but you can make it work on a more selfish level as well, since Sigil of Blood does scale at 10% of healing power and Dagger 2 has a total ratio of 36%..

NeXeD.3042:

Doesn’t he mean on the active? Maybe he is including all his vamps

Yeah, I meant on the active as well. To hit 800 damage per hit on the active portion, you need well over 7k Power. Even factoring in Vampiric and Vampiric Precision, you’re still looking at an impossible amount of Power required.

Lucentfir.7430:

Muchacho.2390:

Dont use SoV. It is a terrible heal and no necro should ever run it…

It’s good when you run Zealots and you have over 1k Healing power. Pair it was Regen boon and you’re healing quite nicely. 300HPS per sec, and a proc of 400+ healing when hit. Include Blood Magic traits for Siphoning for a additional 50-100 Healing per hit, not including life leech food and blood sigil. It works quiet nicely in my opinion. Also active life siphon when hitting someone with the signet is about 800 per hit.

Yeah…no it isn’t. To reach 800 damage per hit with Signet of Vampirism, you would need Bloodthirst traited and a total of 7568.38 Power, a ridiculously impossible amount. You would be two-shotting bunker warriors with Life Blast if you had that high of a Power stat.

Since there’s enough negativity on the Necromancer boards, figured I’d do something positive. What elements of the Necromancer do you think work well? Which skills, traits, or other necromancer mechanics do you think are spot on?

The highest on my list is Locust Swarm. It rewards aggression with great sustain (even untraited, it has the potential to fill life force from 0-100%), it makes the necro difficult to escape (pulsing cripple and the necro has swiftness means you must have a leap or blink if you want to escape), and the damage is actually rather good, considering how spread out it is. It’s a great attrition and sticking tool that rewards aggressive play. It’s everything a Necromancer skill should be.

Well, Necros aren’t the only class that lacks stability, but unlike the others that do so, Necros don’t have avoidance methods to otherwise prevent being CC’d.

lorndarken.3702:

Muchacho.2390:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@Cynz: Yes, lifesteal can be decent if you’re a thief. All of a necro’s lifesteal traits combined are outdone by food. Yes, food.

Yepp, you know a traitline is bad if it is outdone by food…

bloodlust use to be decent being at 30 % if i remember , but they nerfed it and allowed healing factor to now play a role . but in the end it was a huge nerf to what it use to proc for builds that did not run high healing specs .

It used to be 50%, then they “buffed” siphons by giving them a .4% healing power ratio (maxxing out Healing Power gives you 6 extra health per hit) to all of the siphon traits but Vampiric Master (which later on got a 1.7% healing power ratio) and nerfed Bloodthirst to 20% while playing with base values so the total result was the same. This also, however, nerfed Signet of the Locust and Dagger 2, as they get boosted by Bloodthirst, but their values were unchanged. The only people that came out ahead were those that ran siphon traits, but did not run Bloodthirst (basically nobody). Everyone else that siphoned either stayed the same (no mainhand dagger or Signet of the Locust, but did run Bloodthirst) or were nerfed.

Perhaps instead, Foot in the Grave gave 50% stun reduction in Death Shroud, then? The current Stability could stay for flashing and to provide the current counterplay opportunities. I chose 50% because it’s a Grandmaster and limited on when it can apply.

However, it might cause a problem with Melandru runes + Bowl of Roasted Lotus Root, as that would be -115% stun duration in death shroud. Sigil of Paralyzation would be required for any CC duration at all on the necro in that situation barring a few specific traits.

@Cynz: Yes, lifesteal can be decent if you’re a thief. All of a necro’s lifesteal traits combined are outdone by food. Yes, food.

Also, Withdraw being a lengthy cooldown? Please, it’s the second shortest cooldown Heal in the entire game! Beaten only by traited Signet of Malice.

What if it instead became pulsing Stability while in Death Shroud? Say 3 seconds every 3 seconds? I’d like that, really.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Reflexmonkey.1943:

how exactly do they build up lifeforce from swapping weapon skills out of combat? lol. maybe they should give them skills that can get them in and out of combat easily.

Not skills, but with utilities it can… You can Exploit Corpse- I mean err, they can Cast a Minion and re-equip another utility, getting them the lifeforce for the “Minion Death”…

Granted, this only works in PvP before the match starts and in WvWvW only if you are completely OOC

And only with Flesh Golem, Bone Fiend, and Shadow Fiend. Minions with sacrifice actives give no life force on death.

2.5 of those are already in the game. Only necros can cause damage with Fear (and quite potent at that, for a condition), and the Curses grandmaster minor trait increases the damage dealt to targets per condition on the target. Wells can also grant Protection if traited and Well of Power grants boons if it does anything at all.

Really, the main thing that has to happen to improve necros in PvE is to have mobs behave more like players and also revamp boss mechanics. This, however, is a difficult process. For now, adding more enemies like the Toxic Alliance and Mordrem is the best route to improve necro viability without affecting PvP/WvW balance.

The second thing that can be done is improving unused traits and utility skills. Strictly speaking, this would shift PvP and WvW balance, but not in a way that actually makes anything overpowered (unless the change itself is OP). If you stick to only the largely unused traits and utilities, all that happens is build variety is introduced, as extant builds remain the same. Prime candidate here is the Blood Magic line, which almost all necros on these forums agree needs some serious help. My personal take on this is merging some of the traits (such as Vampiric Rituals and Ritual Mastery or Quickening Thirst and Dagger Mastery) and introducing new ones, preferably that introduce unique buffs that the necro brings, such as a necro’s siphons healing his nearby allies, or allies receiving a stat boost of some form.