A Closer Look at Necromancer Traits

By
Sardu
– February 20, 2012Posted in: Features

The press closed beta event for Guild Wars 2 held this past weekend was easily one of the highlights of my entire gaming career. While I’ve had the pleasure of watching the game evolve over the past two years at various industry events, this is the first time I’ve had the luxury of sitting down and playing GW2, uninterrupted, for a longer chunk of time.

Over the course of the weekend I was able to experience all major aspects of gameplay, including personal stories, structured and world PvP, dungeons, crafting, skill point challenges, some insanely brilliant jumping puzzles awaiting the explorer types out there, and much, much more. I’ll be sharing my experiences in each of these areas in as much detail as I’m able over the next couple of weeks.

While I busy myself writing and sorting through 25+ hours of video footage, I figured I’d share one of the core aspects of gameplay that many of you have expressed interest in ever since the first press beta announcements were made: necromancer traits.

One of the highlights of the event was getting to spend an entire day leveling my charr necro with Colin Johanson who showed me some of the cooler things awaiting players in and around the ruins of Ascalon. At various points we were also joined by Jon Peters who was awesome enough to give me some pointers on the new trait system, and some of the things necros will want to consider while leveling up.

I’ve put together some details on how the system works below, followed by a video featuring all current necromancer traits for your viewing enjoyment.

GW2 Trait System Basics

Traits are unlocked for new characters starting at level 11. At that point you’ll want to visit your local necromancer trainer who will sell you a book that unlocks the first of three tiers of traits, or the ability to spend up to 10 points in each of the 5 necro trait lines. The three training books / tiers of traits are:

  • Adept – Available at level 11, unlocks the first 10 points for each line
  • Master – Available at level 40, unlocks the next 10 points (11-20)
  • Grandmaster – Available at level 60, unlocks the final 10 points (21-30)

In total there are three tiers, each worth 10 points, for a total of 30 that you can spend in a single line. Starting at level 11 you’ll gain 1 trait point each time you level, so by the time you reach level 80 you’ll have earned 70 trait points which is enough to fill 2 1/3 of your available lines.

The trait lines for the necromancer are:

  • Spite
  • Curses
  • Death
  • Blood
  • Soul Reaping

Each point you spend in a single line will grant you an automatic increase to two attributes or bonuses. Then for every 5 points spent in that line you will unlock either a Minor trait (at 5, 15, and 25 points) or the ability to choose from a list of Major traits (10, 20, and 30 points) that allow you to customize exactly what benefits you want from that specific line.

The passive benefits per point spent in the five necro trait lines are:

  • Spite – Increases Power by 10, Increases Condition Duration by 1%
  • Curses – Increases Precision by 10, Increases Condition Damage by 10
  • Death – Increases Toughness by 10, Increases Boon Duration by 1%
  • Blood – Increases Vitality by 10, Increases Healing by 10
  • Soul Reaping – Increases Critical Damage by 1, Increases Life Force Pool by 7%

While you’re free to spend points in all 5 lines if you choose, you’ll notice in the video below that each of the trait lines tend to pair best with either a particular weapon set or playstyle better than others.

For example, Death has some amazing traits for minion master builds and pairs well with using a staff for your primary weapon. A couple of my favorite Death traits are Evasive Animation which summons a Jagged Horror every time you dodge roll, Flesh of the Master which gives your minions +60% more health, or Protection of the Horde which gives you +20 Toughness for each minion summoned.

As Jon Peters pointed out during our discussion about necro traits, Death is a very strong line due to the increase to Toughness, so one worth investing in regardless of your playstyle. He also noted that, while the trait system may appear to be deceptively simple on the surface, it still offers a lot of room for experimentation with various builds.

A Note on Unlocking Traits vs. Skills

As noted above, trait points are gained automatically each time you level. However, for anyone who was looking forward to the original idea of discovering various challenges in the world to unlock traits, that system is still largely intact, only it allows you to unlock skill points now instead.

You gain one skill point each time you level which can be spent on healing, utility, or elite skill unlocks. Each skill costs a set amount of points that range between 1-7 points for healing and utility skills, or between 15-25 points for elites. Normal leveling will allow you to unlock a good chunk of skills, but to unlock all available points you’ll want to go out and complete various challenges that are marked on your map.

I managed to complete the majority of challenges up to around level 20 in both the charr and human starting zones. Some were fairly straight forward and easy to obtain, while others were in difficult to reach locations that were a challenge even while grouped. I’ll have more details on the skill system in the near future, but for now I at least wanted to touch on how the original concept behind unlocking traits has transitioned over to skill points instead.

Necro Traits Video

I’ll be going over some of the specific builds I experimented with during the event in more detail shortly, but for now I thought I’d share a video that shows each of the currently available necro traits. This one was filmed in the Hall of Memories which serves as a staging ground for structured PvP matches.

You can travel there at any point and will be leveled up to 80 with all skills and trait points unlocked so that you can put together specific builds before jumping into a match. It’s actually a pretty sizable map, and even has heavy, medium, and light armor practice dummies so that you can mess around with your build a bit to see how effective skills are against base armor types.

More on structured PvP and how insane mesmers can be coming soon, but for now I’ll finally let you get to the video watching fun.

Bonus Video!

I’ll have a lot more content to roll out shortly both here and on Ten Ton Hammer, but in the meantime here is a short bonus clip (and I mean really short) of our elite minion, the Flesh Golem:

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