ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Necromancer/Verata's Aura

Note: As of September 2, 2009 this page is no longer active. If you have suggestions for Guild Wars skills please go to Feedback:Main to learn how to submit suggestions that ArenaNet can use.

Verata's Aura

Somewhat niche skill

Discussion

Issue

This is a bit of a niche skill, and nowadays it's not really used even where it might be useful (i.e. Alliance Battles) all that much.

Suggestion

I would suggest something like:

20% 15 ¾ 30

Enchantment Spell. Up to 1...4...5 hostile animated undead in the area become bound to you. For 15...51...60 seconds, you can control 0...3...4 more minions than normal. When Verata's Aura ends, you lose your bond with 0...3...4 undead creatures bound to you.

This still allows you to steal minions from other MMs, but it's now limited to 5 at the most. However, it gains a new ability in that you can keep these minions (or at least all but one of them) even if they would take you over your minion limit. It can also be used even when you're not likely to come up against other MMs since you can increase your limit to as much as 14.

IMO this would be much more useful (especially in PvE where corpses are often plentiful) and yet it doesn't lose its old ability. A sacrifice decrease also makes it a bit nicer to use (now that it doesn't last as long and has to be re-used). It can also be kept up indefinately but there's enchantment removal to be wary of and it will cost you at least, on average, 1/4 and 1/3 per second. Of course, it could also be limited further by adding 1 .

What's more, having 14 minions at once might sound like it could be overpowered, but since everyone uses Blood of the Master to heal their minions, the cost in terms of sacrificing would be quite high since you are sacrificing 20% to use this and then 33% to heal them all. That's quite a lot, so you probably wouldn't actually be able to maintain them for long. However, it would still allow you to replace them and would probably be quite useful in AB since you would be able to steal from other MMs (albeit not their whole army any more) and gain four extra minions to swamp people with (and when they die you can replace your lost minions and so on).