This guide covers the traits which benefit the weapon mod skills in “Remnant: From the Ashes” granting extra mod power generation, enhanced mod damage, duration and more powerful summons. Traits are passive bonuses your character has that can be leveled up, increasing the strength of the effect up to their max level of 20. These bonuses can grant a variety of buffing effects that make your character more powerful and increase their abilities.
Mod traits are passives that buff the Weapon Mods (aka Spells) you slot into your guns, or in the case of boss weapons, are pre-slotted. These enhancements come in the form of increased damage from the likes of Evocation, longer durations from Concentration and more mod power being generated with Spirit and Arcane Strike so you can cast them more frequently. Mods that summon creatures that fight on your behalf, also have their own two special traits, Invoker for their own separate damage buff and Blood Bond to allow them to soak damage on your behalf.
Last Updated for Patch: Subject 2923 DLC (August 20th, 2020)
Mod Traits By Importance
Note: Traits are listed in terms of my own analysis of their overall importance and impact, starting with the best Trait to max out first (Spirit) and ending with the least important or impactful (Blood Bond). If you disagree with me or have a reason why this order should be changed, I would love to hear your opinions in the comments section below!
Spirit takes the lead spot among the Mod Traits for the simple reason that you cant benefit from any of the other passives when you aren’t casting your Mods. Since Spirit helps you cast your mods faster and more frequently by filling your power bar, it solidifies it’s importance at the top of the list.
Evocation takes the #2 spot due to the damage bonus being one of the most directly useful benefits across all of the mods.
Concentration is another highly useful mod trait, that loses out to the damage bonus of Evocation simply because not all mods work with durations. Many of them do single bursts of damage and as such, receive no benefit from this passive.
With Catalyst we start to get into the more situational mod traits, where there is a secondary requirement of some kind to actually gain the benefit, thus its place on the priority list. Will the effect is very useful, the fact that it applies only to status’d enemies means it wont be useful to everyone.
Again, Arcane Strike is a situational bonus to mod power generation, like Catalyst, so gets knocked down the priority list. That being said, combining this with a status proc, and maxing out the other generation traits, you can really reduce your downtime between casts. Finally, this ranks after Catalyst, since that trait can benefit you at range where you are generally safer, unless using a melee focused build.
Casting speed is a useful benefit in and of itself, but less useful than all the other traits before it simply because very few mods have long casting times. On top of many of them being quick to cast already, a lot of mods allow you to keep moving while you cast them, thus negating some of the danger you might during the casting animation time. For a handful of mods, this can be very useful, as there are some that can get you ganked at times due to the ways they occupy your character.
Invoker is highly useful but also the most situational, along with its other summon-specific trait, Blood Bond. The direct damage buff now stacks with the base mod damage benefit from Evocation, after Subject 2923’s pre DLC patch, allowing summoning skills to perform much better than they had previously. There are still limits to the Summon Mod’s uses, just due to the nature of the skills themselves, but for those looking to use those skills, Invoker will be worth going after. Everyone else can put this off until they have the extra trait points to spare on ancillary benefits.
Blood Bond
Increases damage absorbed by summons when the summoner takes damage.
Like Invoker, Blood Bond is limited in it’s use to character’s using Summon Mods, with no benefit granted otherwise, which is the primary reason for it’s place on the list. While Blood Bond can can be incredibly useful for survival purposes, perhaps even being more desirable than Invoker, it takes special consideration that your summons will also now die faster than before, perhaps much faster if you are used to shrugging off damage through high health regeneration, which won’t necessarily cross over to your summons.
Unless you are mindful of your build and how it interacts with this passive, you can end up causing some unintended effects, if you need your summons to help take aggro off you, cant re-cast them fast enough, or aren’t fully prepared for the difference in damage you’ll take in the moments you don’t have any active. Since some players might want to actively avoid putting trait points in this passive, to help keep their summons alive longer, Blood Bond gets knocked down to the bottom of the list.
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