Death Magic[Discussion and Suggestions]

[Lily.1935]

@Mina Ion.7852 said: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 ;)

You actually lose DPS by taking Death magic if you are running a full minion build. No joke, its a DPS loss of something like 15-25% over all. Minions just are not the build of your DPS. And for open world if you are really concerned about survivability blood magic will do that job much better.

[Mina Ion.7852]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Mina Ion.7852 said: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 ;)

You actually lose DPS by taking Death magic if you are running a full minion build. No joke, its a DPS loss of something like 15-25% over all. Minions just are not the build of your DPS. And for open world if you are really concerned about survivability blood magic will do that job much better.

Ewww. I'd MUCH rather play with Death Magic than Blood Magic. Blood Magic depends way too much on Healing Power to be effective. Useful for group play perhaps, if you're into gimping your damage in exchange for group healing support, but utterly useless otherwise. At least Death Magic beefs up my wall of undead flesh and keeps me and my minions alive longer. Although I definitely don't rely on minions for DPS. At all. Their sole purpose is to take hits so I don't have to. And given Scourge's dependence on creating fixed Shades for damage, those minions are actually very useful for keeping mobs on them rather than running around the place while chasing me. I don't currently run Death Magic with Scourge, but I always make sure to have a pair of minions on the field. It's just that they now die faster than they did when I had Death Magic.

[Lily.1935]

@Mina Ion.7852 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Mina Ion.7852 said: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 ;)

You actually lose DPS by taking Death magic if you are running a full minion build. No joke, its a DPS loss of something like 15-25% over all. Minions just are not the build of your DPS. And for open world if you are really concerned about survivability blood magic will do that job much better.

Ewww. I'd MUCH rather play with Death Magic than Blood Magic. Blood Magic depends way too much on Healing Power to be effective. Useful for group play perhaps, if you're into gimping your damage in exchange for group healing support, but utterly useless otherwise. At least Death Magic beefs up my wall of undead flesh and keeps me and my minions alive longer. Although I definitely don't rely on minions for DPS. At all. Their sole purpose is to take hits so I don't have to. And given Scourge's dependence on creating fixed Shades for damage, those minions are actually very useful for keeping mobs on them rather than running around the place while chasing me. I don't currently run Death Magic with Scourge, but I always make sure to have a pair of minions on the field. It's just that they now die faster than they did when I had Death Magic.

Blood magic doesn't require healing power to be effective. In fact most of its traits that heal have poor coefficients. Beyond that you can actually help sustain your minions with transfusion. However that shouldn't be a problem since in PvE your minions have a 90% damage reduction. Beyond that Transfusion heals you if you're taking Scourge while also providing massive healing in reaper's shroud. Death doesn't give you recovery which since it gives you very very minor defensive boosts this becomes a problem. If it had good defensive boosts it wouldn't be, but that's not the case. Not only that Vampiric presence gives your minions more sustain because if you are by yourself you give them vampiric aura which increases their damage as well as gives them life. Plus the pulses from the shades do the same.

[Sarrs.4831]

@Lily.1935 said:

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.

Do you genuinely think it's too powerful?Obviously in a PvE context it is not powerful at all. It will not make you move out of Curses/Soul Reaping/Scourge, Spite/Curses/Reaper, Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper, or Curses/Soul Reaping Reaper.In a WvW context it is not particularly powerful because you can enter every fight with 100% LF anyway.In an sPvP context, you enter the first engagement with roughly 15-20% LF more for taking Death Magic than you otherwise would. Is this good enough to pull you away from the Curses/Soul Reaping/Scourge wombo combo?

If it's too powerful, you would likely change your trait picks based on it. I don't see people doing that.

2. Should be a Grandmaster. As I suggested above.

I don't think it fits into GM at all with the tree as it is. You're just comparing Flesh of the Master to Corruptor's Fervor which is a drastically less interesting decision as you're comparing toughness to toughness. Down in Master it makes sense.

[Dadnir.5038]

@Sarrs.4831 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

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.

Do you genuinely think it's too powerful?

You don't get it... what you suggest is just the old vital persistence so obviously it will become a mandatory trait.

[Sarrs.4831]

@Dadnir.5038 said:You don't get it... what you suggest is just the old vital persistence so obviously it will become a mandatory trait.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not :(

[Dadnir.5038]

@Sarrs.4831 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:You don't get it... what you suggest is just the old

vital persistence

so obviously it will become a mandatory trait.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not :(

Well more or less. The point is that it's passive gameplay, not really exciting and that you end up reducing the natural decay of life force just like the old vital persistence. It's doomed to become mandatory however you put it for the same reason that VP was mandatory. A passive buff to the shroud uptime.

That's why I would personnally prefer something that would grant us life force when we receive heal while we are in shroud. It would promote a different way to use the shroud and favour teamplay, not changing your survivability when alone but improving it when supported by others. Something that should be "logical".

[Sarrs.4831]

@Dadnir.5038 said:Well more or less. The point is that it's passive gameplay, not really exciting and that you end up reducing the natural decay of life force just like the old vital persistence. It's doomed to become mandatory however you put it for the same reason that VP was mandatory. A passive buff to the shroud uptime.

Passive gameplay's more or less the point of a minor trait. They aren't really supposed to alter your gameplay. If they do, they tend to do it in the GM spot; Beyond the Veil actually is good and is a reactive trait which you can play around.

Comparing Vital Persistence in Soul Reaping to Vital Persistence in Death Magic is comparing apples and oranges because the rest of the trees do different things, even before considering that they wouldn't be same by any stretch of the imagination; less actual staying power, benefit for being out of shroud.

That's why I would personnally prefer something that would grant us life force when we receive heal while we are in shroud. It would promote a different way to use the shroud and favour teamplay, not changing your survivability when alone but improving it when supported by others. Something that should be "logical".

This is the sort of mechanic that Grandmaster Major traits are for. They're supposed to bring big bonuses or bring big changes to the way you play. The two bottom Death Magic perks actually do this.

Assessing the actual idea... This is exactly what a Minor trait shouldn't be. "I need team support to work" just means that the tree is a non-starter in any situation which you don't have team support.

[CCLegion.5936]

With boring I mean that there is not interesting choice to be made, they basically pick themselves because everything else at their tier is terrible. But yeah, sure, I can elaborate.

Your adept tier currently looks like this. Explosive Growth - Putrid Defense - Deadly Strength Conc version.

No one is gonna pick up Toughness->Concentration because core necro and reaper don't care about concentration and Scourge got several other things that are more pressing to pick up than additional boon duration, even in this tier. We are looking at 10-11% in full toughness gear here, ignoring the shroud bonus because the boons applied in there are usually long enough for what they do. More than 5-6s on 3 stacks of stab is usually a waste and might is easy to come by.The primary benefit from this would be the extra protection on spectral armor and a couple other sources, most of which is around 0.3s gain.Putrid Defense is alright but I already pointed out the issue with poison. Poison sources are kind of limited on builds that are not either using corruptions or scepter.Explosive Growth is straight up useless if you are not a Scourge. Rise would not enough to give it value. Minions are in a terrible spot overall so that's not going to work either, not that they have the proper targeting system to make use of it anyway. And for Scourge, it's going to be stronger than your master tier traits thanks to Discord but to that I'll come later.

So here, Scourge grabs EG, everyone else goes Putrid Defense because it's the only thing that does anything for them.

Now the master tier with Spectral Mastery - Boon of Creation - Corrupter's ProtectionBoon of Creation is basically good for 1 thing and that is burst defence with Rise, by providing both protection and rise damage reduction. Scourges might also pick it up because they have don't have much better to do in this tier.Corrupter's Protection faces bad value and awkward ICD/trigger. It's mostly going to end up being uncontrollable in a defensive fashion because you can't keep it in reserve, resulting it in being wasted a lot of times when you just enter shroud on a core necro or reaper. Scourge might pick it up for the same reason as Boon of Creation.Also, can we detach things from shroud entry instead of adding onto it? That skill feels incredibly overloaded in some builds.Spectral Mastery is an alright trait in itself, outside of it not doing much for some spectrals. Problem here is that suddenly, we have 2 traits that heavily depend on your utility skills in the same spot unless, again, you are a scourge.The end result is that this tier will feel heavily restrictive. And yes, you can already see similar tiers in necromancer traitlines. BM Adept traits are a good example for this since they basically end up as "Are you condi or got a dagger? No? Here's ritual of life".

So, are you a Scourge? If yes, you pick up Boon of Creation, unless you want Corrupter's for point control. Everyone else just runs with Corrupter's Protection unless they are running spectral armor.

Grandmaster tier, which is where it gets silly. Minion trait - Shrouded Removal - Discord.Shrouded Removal is kinda broken in your version, giving practical immunity to conditions, especially in combination with Scourge. There are builds than can cleanse a lot less over time, with worse burst cleanse as well, that can already end up being unassailable by condition builds unless outnumbered by several people.Discord is completely and utterly broken. Currently, well applied poison can already destroy a supporter's ability to assist its teammates and you are buffing the health it cuts out from all healing by another 50%.If you have a scepter, you can easily keep up decent uptimes of poison on a single person. Also forget about ever reviving somebody while an enemy necro is around with that trait. RS4 or CPC on a down is pretty much going to guarantee that they'll get killed. And all this before we even come to the point that it'll be a pain to see this new and improved poison in the UI, unless you make it a non condition effect, which is going to get weird when it comes to cleansing and applications of different length.The rest of its effects don't even matter, it's that good.Minion trait is a dead option because minions are still terrible. With or without it, minions are not worth picking up when fighting against other players.

What's gonna happen is that condi builds pick up Discord and proceed to laugh at every support in the game as they fail to actually heal their friends for any significant amount of health.I could write a lot more but it's already decently long. Might do so later.

[thrdeye.1028]

@Lily.1935 said:You actually lose DPS by taking Death magic if you are running a full minion build. No joke, its a DPS loss of something like 15-25% over all. Minions just are not the build of your DPS. And for open world if you are really concerned about survivability blood magic will do that job much better.

I love running around in open world nearly invincible as Death/Blood/x and full minions but the sacrifice is just too much where dps is important and minions don't survive against players. Even then if you can't find a group of mobs to AoE down it gets a bit tedious. That's with the absolute maximum damage that can be done by minions, nothing other than Death traits or life siphon from Blood can increase it. I don't think it's a problem with Death Magic so much as a problem with minions. They're just weak offensively even if you fully dedicate your build to buffing their damage.

[GrOOvey ViBes.1706]

If your running condi reaper I think death magic is useful. The toughness from minons up, they are stronger and are constantly taking condi from you and giving too people they attack, and when they die gives poison clouds at each death spot to spin to win in is crazy. Minions I have are shade, golem, blood fiend, and rise 1 to 5 that are on time limit of 60 secs and take 33% damage for you per one spawned of course the jagged horors you spawn any time you kill something with 10 sec delay. Just thought nobody was taking about rise untility

[James.1065]

@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.

Not really the minion cleansing you of conditions is pretty good.

[James.1065]

@GrOOvey ViBes.1706 said:If your running condi reaper I think death magic is useful. The toughness from minons up, they are stronger and are constantly taking condi from you and giving too people they attack, and when they die gives poison clouds at each death spot to spin to win in is crazy. Minions I have are shade, golem, blood fiend, and rise 1 to 5 that are on time limit of 60 secs and take 33% damage for you per one spawned of course the jagged horors you spawn any time you kill something with 10 sec delay. Just thought nobody was taking about rise untility

I also pvp with DM and rise! And it works great for me.

[Lily.1935]

More than a year old. This post is more than a year old. And it's still all true. Although my suggested fixes might have changed a bit since I can adapt. Death nova was improved a bit. Although it should trigger on non jagged horror minion deaths as well. But w/e.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Unholy Sanctuary is still the worst necromancer grandmaster of all, even parasitic contagion has more purpose then this, despite not working in shroud..