The latest from Guild Wars 2

As I have even less time to play these days, I became very picky about the things I do in GW2. For one thing I upgraded the two crafts to a level where I can use higher level ingredients, and moved to higher level areas, so that I can play without being constantly levelled down. For another, I only do trivial vistas now, and don't care about the jumping puzzles. Same for the daily achievements - I do a lot to finish them, but nothing extra beyond what I'd normally do - thus, I often lack the number of required events. 

One thing I have noticed lately is that the fights are becoming longer - although I have retalented to a crit build from the previous one that was mainly focusing on health and healing, it still takes more time to kill a group of enemies. As I have just recently upgraded my gear to something that is close to my level, this seems to be a bit strange, but it's probably just the way how the game is balanced. 

Here are a few things about the necro, btw:

• There is a trait (Greater Marks, Death Magic, 10 points) that increases the effect range of the marks (kind of magic traps, the main source of AoE damage) which is a must have. These skills are usable with a staff, thus that is one of my selected weapons.
• Besides the staff, I have a dagger and a focus as the secondary weapon set. Although dagger is usually frowned upon, I find this combination to be very effective against 1-2 enemies - good dps and two skills that heal me. 
• For 3 or more enemies, I use the following: Staff marks, dark fields, Death Shroud, and Plague. Usually I can handle same level non veteran enemies up to 5 without much trouble. I also have the worm pet, that has a fairly good dps, and a long range, and can teleport me out of the fight. 
• After retalenting and gearing for precision, my crit chance is 36%, so more than one third of my hits are critical hits. My build now: Death 10 points, Curses 20 points, rest is Blood Magic. On lvl 80, Death 10, Curses 30, Blood 30 is the plan, if I go with the same build.
• Some useful traits for basically everyone: Greater Marks from Death, Focused rituals from Curses, Bloodthirst from Blood Magic. These are fairly low level, and make life much easier.
• I've learned two elite skills so far: Plague and an Elite Pet. The pet seems to be a waste, the dps is only passable, the special skill is useful, but not a must have, and it dies a lot. On the other hand, Plague is unbelievably useful against groups, especially combined with blindness in solo. Basically, I just float there, every enemy around me takes a lot of damage, in small, quick doses, and with every tick, they get a blindness, so basically all of their attacks are missing. The range is pretty good as well.
• The first staff skill is a projectile finisher. In theory there is only a 20% chance, in practice it seems to be 100%. This, combined with my Poison and Dark fields gives me a lot of extra damage. I also have a skill that creates an ethereal wall, I'll probably replace one of my dark fields with that. 
• There are two things I am planning to experiment with: A full pet build, and replacing the dagger with another weapon, probably a Scepter. I need to find out what would be the best traits for these.