Death Magic[Discussion and Suggestions]

Death magic widely accepted as necromancer's worst Specialization. Although you'll have people defending death magic because of the Minion traits, these traits are also fairly bad. And I'll explain that in a moment. Death magic has little cohesion in the way their traits are supposed to synergies with each other and the only solid theme of death magic is Minions. This leaves players who are looking for a trait line to completely ignore Death magic unless they want to use minions. It has a trait to sorta help with power, but even if you're going defensive on a power build Spite and soul reaping are just superior options providing might, vulnerability and much more life force while its strange condition theme doesn't have the proper support in the specialization to achieve that goal either. Defensively it relies on deaths in order to maintain itself and turtling in shroud to sustain itself, but doesn't give you the tools in order to get to that point to turtle in shroud. All and all, the Majority of Death magic is an incoherent mess.

Even when looking at the theme of Minions the power of the traits available doesn't line up with their position in that line. Death nova is extremely weak for a grandmaster and its arguably not strong enough for a Master trait either. Necrotic corruption is easily the strongest of the 3, granting increased damage and pulling one condition from you every 10 seconds for each of your active minions. Flesh of the master is helpful to minions in PvP or WvW, however in PvE its fairly worthless aside from that it tells you how many minions you have active at a given time. A feature that shouldn't be on a trait but just be active at all time. Like how GW1 did that. The Minion traits overall should probably just be streamlined into a single grandmaster trait while some of the passive buffs should probably just be rolled into the base minions.

How can we solve this problem?For starters we should figure out 3 primary themes that the specialization should have and focus on those. My thoughts are sustain, summoning and poison. These 3 themes should be able to cross with each other, but their should be a clear choice for one of these for builds over the others.

• Sustain: For this lets take a look at what's there. Shrouded removal, Corrupter's Fervor and Unholy Sanctuary. This spread isn't that good as it is. We have two grandmasters and a fairly powerful adept. If we are going to fix this up I'd say remove Deadly Strength and replace it with Spectral Mastery. Now, why spectral mastery? Well, because its actually a pretty good trait. But when it's competing with Vital persistence there is no comparison. In death magic this fits our sustain theme and would be the best defensive choice for this line. it would also help us to get to the point to turtle in shroud. Shrouded removal should be moved up to grandmaster tier and changed from condition removal to condition converted into boons when you enter shroud and every three seconds while in shroud. I'd also give that the added bonus of converting a condition into a boon whenever you'd spend life force to give it some synergy with scourge and future elite specs. This trait is already fairly strong, probably too strong for an adapt. But it isn't strong enough for a Grandmaster. With this change it could be strong enough as a grandmaster. For the Adept, lets put Deadly Strength here and change it from conversion to power to something a bit more useful like Concentration. Suddenly you have a line that works with sustain and a bit of boon action. You build up your concentration and have spectral mastery to use with some boons it applies and gain boons from converted conditions. Perhaps this might not be what you're looking for so leave a comment and discuss how you'd deal with sustain.
• Summoning: As opposed to Minions as a theme I'd go with summoning. This for the core necromancer wouldn't provide anything majorly different, however for a scourge or other future elite specs it could offer something of interest. Lets say in the future we get turrets or spirits or something similar. Death magic already has a hard time trying to fit in on a Summoner's build that doesn't involve minions, but this could pull you in that direction. First, like I said above I'd keep the Grandmaster as is to involve minions. The Adept could be something along the lines of Explosive growth. Which could cause damage and poison around the area of where you summoned something. Weather you summoned a minion, Shade, spirit, turret or what have you. This gives you a bit of damage on entry. It doesn't have to be major damage, it could be incredibly minor. The Master could be Boon of creation which could either grant allies around your summon protection or convert a condition. Whichever is more reasonable. Although the grandmaster would deal exclusively with minions the two below could have uses for something else. Spirits comes to mind but Shades being impacted by these could allow for Death magic to be taken in a scourge support spec.
• Poison: For this last one, Conditions have a bit of a theme in Death magic but it isn't very solid as I've mentioned above. I feel that limiting its theme to one condition and that condition being poison would fit. In GW1 the condition that Death mostly dealt with was Disease. However Disease doesn't exist in GW2 so poison will have to take its place. For the Adept, putrid armor should have its 10% damage reduction against poisoned foes, but also gain a 20% poison duration. A simple trait as it is now, but the added duration could be helpful. The Master Trait should be Corrupter's Protection. Cast lesser corrosive poison cloud when you enter Shroud. 30s cool down. This would be a corruption skill and its duration would be shorter than CpC and would cast at your location. It would be affected by Master of corruption as well which could reduce its cool down while also applying another condition. its utility should be obvious to anyone in that CpC is a projectile block. For the Grandmaster Lets call it Discord. Fear causes 2 stacks of poison, poison reduces healing by 50% instead of 33% and when you get knocked down cause fear. Maybe this is a bit of a fantasy of mine, but I'd really like to see more poison synergy with death magic. I feel this could work well with its theme and the cross synergy with these traits are there.
• Minor traits: Overall, I feel the only minor that really should be changed is Soul Comprehension. And I don't think its effect should be changed, but rather should also offer something like 1-2% life force on the death of a summon or vanishing of a summon in the case of shades. This could be good, and wouldn't be too high were players are just summoning shades to permanently maintain life force since the cool down should disincentivize players from really abusing it. I feel it should only be your minions though, as with 5 necros this could get pretty ridiculous. Overall I don't feel that the Minors need to be that grand when compared to the rest of the specialization. It should be minor.

With this said, these are a couple of my suggestions. Tell me what you think, what you'd like to see. Do you agree with my core 3 ideas but think my traits aren't that good? Well, let me know. lets discuss.

Death Magic definitely needs a cohesive theme beyond minions. I don't think the traits all need to be replaced entirely (Soul Comprehension does), but the exact effects need work.

For example, what if Reaper's Protection cast Well of Power instead of the PBAoE fear? Or gave you a unique buff when disabled that made you immune to incoming CC for a few seconds with no ICD, blocking chain CC from working?

Putrid Defense is one that I feel should either see some buffs with a bigger Poison theme being present in Death Magic, or go away entirely.

Soul Comprehension I propose gets replaced with Decaying Swarm, though I would like to see it trigger when your life force drops below 50% than tied to your health.

I have more ideas, but won't be at my computer until Monday.

There is a way to make soul comprehension "sexy". And this way would make the traitline both extremely frustrating and extremly interesting.

Just change soul comprehension in such a way that while in shroud heals that shouldn't pass the shroud give 1% LF instead. Apply for every tic of regen/soothing mist/virtue , heal from skills and combo. Do not apply for siphon since they tend to pass throught the shroud.

This answer 2 questions:

• defense, which is the thematic of the spec
• teamplay, up to now, the necromancer just ignore a part of the support that is given to him while he is in shroud.

It might be just my opinion but I find it logical that while i'm supported by a healer, I gain more survivability.

As for poison, I'm all for it. And I still have hope that one day we will have a proper poison aura (and dark aura) added as combo to the poison field. There is really no reason for these auras to not exist.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Soul Comprehension I propose gets replaced with Decaying Swarm, though I would like to see it trigger when your life force drops below 50% than tied to your health.

Ooo I like the life force idea. Makes it far more useful due to the control you have over it rather than relying on getting hit to trigger it.

I like the idea of summoning to affect both minions and sand shades and whatever future summons we might get.

I would like DM to add shareable group support similar to Vampiric Presence and useful gimmicks like Transfusion and other traits in Blood Magic.

Something like an AoE concentration, vitality, or another buff would be a start. Some useful utility like AoE condition flipping to boons could also be desirable in groups and allow other professions to cut back on their own condi cleanse.

I like the Summoning and Poison ideas!I would also like to see Poison Aura and Dark Aura being implemented, as Dadnir also mentioned.

@Dadnir.5038 said:There is a way to make soul comprehension "sexy". And this way would make the traitline both extremely frustrating and extremly interesting.

Just change soul comprehension in such a way that while in shroud heals that shouldn't pass the shroud give 1% LF instead. Apply for every tic of regen/soothing mist/virtue , heal from skills and combo. Do not apply for siphon since they tend to pass throught the shroud.

This answer 2 questions:

• defense, which is the thematic of the spec
• teamplay, up to now, the necromancer just ignore a part of the support that is given to him while he is in shroud.

It might be just my opinion but I find it logical that while i'm supported by a healer, I gain more survivability.

As for poison, I'm all for it. And I still have hope that one day we will have a proper poison aura (and dark aura) added as combo to the poison field. There is really no reason for these auras to not exist.

I'd like to see more useful traits. Poison could be a good line. A poison aura would be neat for like blast finishers and leap finishers in a poison field. But then again, weakness is extremely powerful. Ah, I'm sure they could figure it out.

@Anchoku.8142 said:I would like DM to add shareable group support similar to Vampiric Presence and useful gimmicks like Transfusion and other traits in Blood Magic.

Something like an AoE concentration, vitality, or another buff would be a start. Some useful utility like AoE condition flipping to boons could also be desirable in groups and allow other professions to cut back on their own condi cleanse.

I've been thinking about a trait that gives 150 concentration to allies within a 600 radius, much like what is given to most professions. You have Spotter and friends. Necromancer has this too in vampiric presence however nothign quite on the universal usefulness that we see on something like ranger.

AOE Concentration though is something that doesn't quite fit necromancer. Especially since we don't do much with boons aside from might and Scourge. Some of the changes I suggested for the sustain aspect would change that with conversions a focus on Spectral skills to fit along this idea, but that still isn't quite enough to justify such a trait.

AOE Expertise on the other hand fits necromancer perfectly, and I've been rolling that around in my head for a while. But that seems more in line with curses than Death so I didn't mention it here.

Ok, my feedback on the subject.

Deathly StrengthThe trait is good, the placement's bad. Merge it with grandmaster minor (Beyond the Veil) and we're golden, no better place for it, no one gets hurt and power necros get their bone :)

Soul ComprehensionI would change it to giving +20 tougness per summon (so shades too) and generating 5% life force on minion death (2s icd). Flesh of the master could be merged with another minion trait.

Shrouded RemovalI would advise against condi to boon conversion. In 2 outta 3 game modes scourges are a thing, and uncontrolled boon application is basically presenting yourself on a silver plate to them.

I like death magic on power builds with death shroud or reaper shroud, but there's no synergy with scourge.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Soul ComprehensionI would change it to giving +20 tougness per summon (so shades too) and generating 5% life force on minion death (2s icd). Flesh of the master could be merged with another minion trait.

No i dont want a reanimator 2.0. The minor traits should be independent of minions.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Ok, my feedback on the subject.

Deathly StrengthThe trait is good, the placement's bad. Merge it with grandmaster minor (Beyond the Veil) and we're golden, no better place for it, no one gets hurt and power necros get their bone :)

Soul ComprehensionI would change it to giving +20 tougness per summon (so shades too) and generating 5% life force on minion death (2s icd). Flesh of the master could be merged with another minion trait.

Shrouded RemovalI would advise against condi to boon conversion. In 2 outta 3 game modes scourges are a thing, and uncontrolled boon application is basically presenting yourself on a silver plate to them.

From my testing deathly strength has been awful. Not good, awful. And to say that its good on core necromancer isn't a feat as Core necromancer is also awful. Sorry, to say this but concentration would be more useful to us than power.

Your soul comprehension suggestion would be busted on minion builds and useless on everything else. ONe of the major issues of death is its over focus on minions which with this suggestion I'm trying to get changed. Minion builds also have an issue with being overly tanky. Something that they shouldn't have due to the nature of how minions work. There should be some bulk but not the level of bulk they have now. Especially considering we want to make them good, not overwhelming.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. More boons isn't a bad thing. Since even though boon removal is quite strong in other game modes you still see it in mass. And the reason for that is because the pros of boons heavily outweigh the cons.

Deathly Strength - being able to not lose much damage while going tanky is a necro's thing for ages and this trait supports that. Vitality necros already have it great with valkyrie stats plus rune of the wurm and vital persistance. Tougness power necros (like crusader set users) need the extra omph to make up for it and that's where deathly strength shines. Only complaint about it that i have is that it should always be 13-14% conversion and not only half of that when non-shrouded.

As for concentration - there are better spots for it, like blood magic. Blood is by default the party oriented line, only thing that needs concentration badly is also there (well traits for triggering rune of chronomancer quickness). Let's remember necro is not a boon sharing profession unless you're scourge, and he already has his boon duration traits.

Minion builds being tanky is bit of a stretch. There's a lot of damage mitigation and condition cleansing you lose if you go minions. But i see your point about minors being tied to not necessairly player-chosen playstyle. That does make sense.

As for shrouded removal i mean that in competitive modes (spvp and wvw) boons you have become conditions for the enemy scourge to inflict. That being the case you want to avoid uncontrolled boon generation which can be turned on you. And passive boon generation by shroud would be one such danger.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Ok, my feedback on the subject.

Deathly StrengthThe trait is good, the placement's bad. Merge it with grandmaster minor (Beyond the Veil) and we're golden, no better place for it, no one gets hurt and power necros get their bone :)

Soul ComprehensionI would change it to giving +20 tougness per summon (so shades too) and generating 5% life force on minion death (2s icd). Flesh of the master could be merged with another minion trait.

Shrouded RemovalI would advise against condi to boon conversion. In 2 outta 3 game modes scourges are a thing, and uncontrolled boon application is basically presenting yourself on a silver plate to them.

Why not 5% LF when summon end. No matter if minion die or Shade end/its recast.

Your Master tier looks incredibly boring with a summon trait, spectral trait and CPC on shroud entry. If you don't pick up minions or spectrals, which is very common, there is only one choice here unless you are running a scourge. The same happens with your Adept traits. The Grandmasters are not GM worthy either, being mostly rather bland.Overall, I see very few interesting decisions or builds to be made with this.

Spectral MasteryHonestly, it is fine in its current spot. The big problem with it is that of the spectral skills, 1 is worth using. 2 if you are stretching it. That's not enough benefit from the trait, so you end up with Vital Persistence again, even when running them. Fix Grasp, Wall and Lich first, the recent rework of the last one arguably made it worse outside of PvE, then look at the trait.Minions/SummoningThe same problem as with spectrals exists with minions. If minions actually did anything useful, the traits themselves would be fine. Rework minions first, then see about the traits. Not to mention that those traits don't actually fix any of the underlying problems of minions and are out of place in Death Magic in the first place.PoisonIncreased reliance on poison is fine but give the spec a way to apply said poison that doesn't lock it into other parts of the spec or summons dying. Everything that is not either using a scepter or a corruptionmancer is gonna have trouble actually finding appreciable amounts of poison on its build. Boon corruption is not reliable enough to count here. Shorter duration CPC on shroud entry is also pretty terrible, especially considering that cooldown.Deadly StrengthConcentration is the single most useless stat on a necromancer in PvP and WvW, even a support oriented scourge build wouldn't pick it up, and so that would be a nerf to Deadly Strength in those areas. In fact, I'd say Toughness->Concentration would be worse than Soul Comprehension and not just by a bit.

I don't feel like doing a big block of suggestions so I'm going to make a little block of suggestions.

1. Add +x% Life Force per y seconds to Soul Comprehension. If you were getting 1% LF every 2 seconds for taking Death Magic, Soul Comprehension is actually doing something. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
2. Condense the minion traits into one trait. "Flesh of the Master" master tier, you gain bonus toughness per minion, and your minions explode when they die. Make the +damage and +hp effects baseline. You shouldn't need to focus so much on condition clearing since you now have room for Shrouded Removal.
3. Add in new traits to fill the room left by minion traits. I don't really care what. Decaying Swarm Adept, something cool for the GM, idk.

@CCLegion.5936 said:Your Master tier looks incredibly boring with a summon trait, spectral trait and CPC on shroud entry. If you don't pick up minions or spectrals, which is very common, there is only one choice here unless you are running a scourge. The same happens with your Adept traits. The Grandmasters are not GM worthy either, being mostly rather bland.Overall, I see very few interesting decisions or builds to be made with this.

Spectral MasteryHonestly, it is fine in its current spot. The big problem with it is that of the spectral skills, 1 is worth using. 2 if you are stretching it. That's not enough benefit from the trait, so you end up with Vital Persistence again, even when running them. Fix Grasp, Wall and Lich first, the recent rework of the last one arguably made it worse outside of PvE, then look at the trait.Minions/SummoningThe same problem as with spectrals exists with minions. If minions actually did anything useful, the traits themselves would be fine. Rework minions first, then see about the traits. Not to mention that those traits don't actually fix any of the underlying problems of minions and are out of place in Death Magic in the first place.PoisonIncreased reliance on poison is fine but give the spec a way to apply said poison that doesn't lock it into other parts of the spec or summons dying. Everything that is not either using a scepter or a corruptionmancer is gonna have trouble actually finding appreciable amounts of poison on its build. Boon corruption is not reliable enough to count here. Shorter duration CPC on shroud entry is also pretty terrible, especially considering that cooldown.Deadly StrengthConcentration is the single most useless stat on a necromancer in PvP and WvW, even a support oriented scourge build wouldn't pick it up, and so that would be a nerf to Deadly Strength in those areas. In fact, I'd say Toughness->Concentration would be worse than Soul Comprehension and not just by a bit.

I'm sorry you find them boring. But boring translates to "Balanced" which I supposed doesn't have as good of a ring to it as "Boring". But perhaps we could think of some better criticism? Personally, I find them extremely interesting.

As for your complaint about Deathly strength? Deathly strength is bad. There is absolutely no way to slice it. Concentration gives it a use but not every single trait needs to be good in all game modes. And the Spectral mastery move gives it a place where it should work well. Death magic is supposed to be defensive yet it doesn't have synergy with our most defensive type of ability.

@Sarrs.4831 said:I don't feel like doing a big block of suggestions so I'm going to make a little block of suggestions.

1. Add +x% Life Force per y seconds to Soul Comprehension. If you were getting 1% LF every 2 seconds for taking Death Magic, Soul Comprehension is actually doing something. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
2. Condense the minion traits into one trait. "Flesh of the Master" master tier, you gain bonus toughness per minion, and your minions explode when they die. Make the +damage and +hp effects baseline. You shouldn't need to focus so much on condition clearing since you now have room for Shrouded Removal.
3. Add in new traits to fill the room left by minion traits. I don't really care what. Decaying Swarm Adept, something cool for the GM, idk.

1. Would be too powerful. I don't mind some change to it, but it should still have its normal theme and function behind it. Passive life gen is not something that makes good gameplay.
2. Should be a Grandmaster. As I suggested above.
3. Already did that in the suggestion about summoning.

Flesh of the Master or Necromatic Corruption should additionally reduce minion recharge by 20%.

Death Nova should either additionally increase your poison duration by 33% or make the poison field last 2 seconds longer or add 15 seconds to the jagged horror's life. I'd be happy with any one of those three.

These won't "fix" DM but would be some attractive changes. Biggest problem with DM is that it is the first spec dropped when you have to bring an elite. All the others have a place outside of a pure core build.

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Flesh of the Master or Necromatic Corruption should additionally reduce minion recharge by 20%.

Death Nova should either additionally increase your poison duration by 33% or make the poison field last 2 seconds longer or add 15 seconds to the jagged horror's life. I'd be happy with any one of those three.

These won't "fix" DM but would be some attractive changes. Biggest problem with DM is that it is the first spec dropped when you have to bring an elite. All the others have a place outside of a pure core build.

Minion recharge was made baseline when the massive specialization change rolled in. So, in terms of that I feel minions need a redesign, but this is more about death magic, not minions specifically. That deserves its own post which I'm still working out how to go about that. Additionally, I don't think that the purpose of the 3 lines I'm suggesting should be muddled so far. As for Jagged horrors, I say remove the duration entirely and make them function like they used to and just put a cap on 8 at a time... Instead of the expiration date.

Death magic's biggest problem is its identity. It doesn't provide better sustain or defense than blood or Soul reaping and the minion traits are a bit of a mess which is the one thing that does seem to define it. Other than that its going off in 5 different directions when you don't include minions. There is no purity of purpose in the spec aside from minions.

Funny thing with Death Magic, and it's large amount of minion traits, is that the only good minion trait is in Blood Magic.

@Lahmia.2193 said:Funny thing with Death Magic, and it's large amount of minion traits, is that the only good minion trait is in Blood Magic.

I wanted to thumb up more than once for that comment...

@Lily.1935 said:

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Flesh of the Master or Necromatic Corruption should additionally reduce minion recharge by 20%.

Death Nova should either additionally increase your poison duration by 33% or make the poison field last 2 seconds longer or add 15 seconds to the jagged horror's life. I'd be happy with any one of those three.

These won't "fix" DM but would be some attractive changes. Biggest problem with DM is that it is the first spec dropped when you have to bring an elite. All the others have a place outside of a pure core build.

So if I want better survivability I'd be better off switching to Blood from Death Magic? Perhaps Equip 2 Wells and 3 Shouts using the trait that turns wells into heals and the Reaper traits that shorten shouts and cause them to heal as well? What traits in Soul Reaping compliment a build like that then?

The thing with Death Magic is that it's amazing for solo PVEing, but just sucks for everything else. When solo, the added survivability and extra minion health and dps goes a long way. I do agree that Death Nova should be stronger, mind you. 15 second cooldown on jagged horrors is weak. I was quite comfortably running Death Magic/Curses/Reaper in HoT and had zero problems with anything thrown at me. Death Magic is not a team spec. At all. It's only meant to keep you and your minions alive. And it does this very very well.

Now I'm playing Curses/Soul Reaping/Scourge. My DPS is noticeably higher, but so is my death rate ;)