Guild Wars 2

What if, Necromancers have more than one “Shroud” skill sets?
All Shrouds Activation F1 – F4 have Shared Cool Down.
All Shrouds Skills 2 – 5 have Shared CD.
1 = Auto Attack
2 = 15 s Cool Down
3 = 20 s CD
4 = 40 s CD
5 = 40 s CD

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

F1 = Death Shroud (Black) [Standard]
- decay 4% life force / s
1 Life Blast ~ pew pew pew
2 Dark Path ~ teleport, bleed, chill
3 Doom ~ fear cc
4 Life Transfer ~ aoe, gain life force
5 Tainted Shackles ~ aoe, torment, immobilize (if they flee)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

F2 = Blood Shroud (Red) [Tank]
- decay 2% life force / s
- skills gain life force per activation
- skills consume health % to activate
- enters downed state when health is depleted

1 Blood Transfusion (draws blood from afar)
~ single target, reverse beam attack, apply 2 bleed 10s, 1200 range
~ gain 2% life force per hit, consume 1% health per hit

2 Bloody Grapple (attach a stream of blood at foe)
~ apply immobilize 1 s, leap towards target foe
~ 600 range, gain 4% life force, consume 10% health
~ leap finisher

3 Blood Bath (release blood to bleed nearby foes and heal nearby allies)
~ apply 10 bleed 10 s
~ gain 2% life force per foe, consume 5% per foe
~ heal nearby allies for xxx + yyy healing power
~ give regeneration 10 s to nearby allies
~ gain 2% life force per ally, consume 5% per ally
~ 600 range, max 5 nearest target foe or ally
~ blast finisher

4 Pool of Blood (melts into a pool of blood)
~ increased 50% movement speed
~ channeling 4 seconds duration, consume 10% health per second
~ 130 range, apply 5 bleed, cripple 5 s, gain 4% per target per hit
~ evade all attacks, cannot contest capture points

5 Corrupt Blood (corrupt the blood of nearby foes)
~ self root, channeling 4 seconds duration, consume 10% health per second
~ unblockable, apply 25 bleed, 25 torment, burning, poison 1 s per second
~ 600 range, gain 4% per target per hit

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

F3 = Blight Shroud (Brown)
- decay 2% life force / s
- skills requires conditions on enemy to work properly
- skills increases conditions duration on self
- skills transfers conditions from enemies to self

1 Jaundiced Gaze (stare at foe intensely)
~ single target, instant hit, 1200 range
~ transfer 1 condition from foe to self per hit
~ remove 1 boon from foe for 2 conditions transferred to self within 10 seconds

2

3

4

5 Howling of the Profane (cry and wail profanely)
~ 600 range, max 5 target foes
~ remove all boons from foes
~ transfer all conditions from foes to self
~ increase duration of conditions on self by 200%

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

F4 = Soul Shroud (Blue)
- 2% life force per second decay
- skills consume energy to activate
- skills consume life force to activate

1
2
3
4
5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Discuss!

I cant say I dont think it would be too strong

The idea is good, as unlike spamgineer kits, this would have the regular 10s DS cooldown.

But unless the defense and utilty skills are useles (which negates the point of them) , OR if they have long cast and chanells (which necro has too many already),
everyone will use the 7s DS CD trait and just spam the skills like engie does

Even just 1x extra F2 set with a defense, drup and self heal skill seems too much. So i say no idea, though its not bad. Rather have traits fixed, like our DS heal is basicaly a weaker version of healing ripple for ele etc.

I would only say yes if once you went into combat you were locked into 1 set type. Being able to have another 15 skills would either be too helpful or the skills would be useless. If you lock necros into 1 type they could fill in more group roles. It might make necros more viable for group content.

I think all the DS skills would have to have a shared CD and LF bar including the F# transform.

Changes would require rebalancing all necro skills, not worth the effort to implement, as it will drastically change the way necro is played and put the profession in its entirity back into a discovery state.

hmmm really that hard to introduce 15 new death shroud skills ha?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm really that hard to introduce 15 new death shroud skills ha?

The hard part is adding 15 skills to be available during combat when there are already 20 available.

You’re almost doubling the amount of tools available to the profession, which means all it’s existing utility skills and weapon skills need to be nerfed in various ways. Traits may need to be nerfed as well.

If you don’t go back and figure out what needs nerfed, then you’re just introducing an incredible amount of power creep.

Shockwave.1230:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm really that hard to introduce 15 new death shroud skills ha?

The hard part is adding 15 skills to be available during combat when there are already 20 available.

You’re almost doubling the amount of tools available to the profession, which means all it’s existing utility skills and weapon skills need to be nerfed in various ways. Traits may need to be nerfed as well.

If you don’t go back and figure out what needs nerfed, then you’re just introducing an incredible amount of power creep.

i see.

but we haven’t even seen what all those 15 new death shroud skills are, how can we say it is power creep?

what if there are disadvantages to using them?

or, like Plexxing has mentioned

I think all the DS skills would have to have a shared CD and LF bar including the F# transform.

shared recharge times for death shroud skills 2 – 5
and the F# transforms

i.e. upon exiting F1, all F1 F2 F3 F4 are on recharge.

upon using death shroud 4 in F1, all death shroud 4 in F2 F3 F4 are on recharge.

surely there may be some balance in there no?

more choices does not necessarily mean power creep.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Shockwave.1230:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm really that hard to introduce 15 new death shroud skills ha?

The hard part is adding 15 skills to be available during combat when there are already 20 available.

You’re almost doubling the amount of tools available to the profession, which means all it’s existing utility skills and weapon skills need to be nerfed in various ways. Traits may need to be nerfed as well.

If you don’t go back and figure out what needs nerfed, then you’re just introducing an incredible amount of power creep.

i see.

but we haven’t even seen what all those 15 new death shroud skills are, how can we say it is power creep?

what if there are disadvantages to using them?

or, like Plexxing has mentioned

I think all the DS skills would have to have a shared CD and LF bar including the F# transform.

shared recharge times for death shroud skills 2 – 5
and the F# transforms

i.e. upon exiting F1, all F1 F2 F3 F4 are on recharge.

upon using death shroud 4 in F1, all death shroud 4 in F2 F3 F4 are on recharge.

surely there may be some balance in there no?

more choices does not necessarily mean power creep.

Part of the power creep is in giving a class the ability to deal with every situation at any time. If you give a class 15 extra skills that are available all the time you are making it so that they can work better in a lot of new situations. To make the new skills worth using they’d need to be able to work in new situations. If you make it so the class can, without changing anything else, work in new situations, the class becomes much more powerful.

I dont think Death shroud needs a complete rework like you essentially proposing. There are however things that need to be changed with DS.

First the Bloodmagic tree and DS should be changed in such a way that they dont hinder each other. The easiest way would probably simple to allow all siphons to work while in DS or allowing a percentage of all incoming healing (maybe 50% or so) to work while in DS.

The next thing would probably maybe some change to Lifeforce in general to normalise it. Maybe something like regenerate up to 30% Lf while out of combat but in order to compensate there should be also a LF degeneration to say 50% while out of combat. This would ensure that necromacer always start with some LF but cannot go with 100% into combat (This may also stop the senseless and cruel murdering of critters in WvW).

But that is only my opinion…

This is power creep incarnate. You can’t give a profession access to 15 brand new skills as a complete baseline change. Even if you can’t use them at the same time, you still have access to 16 non-AA CDs that you can cycle through. Not to mention this heavily intrudes on elementalist toes.

i could see one thing tho, to make necros more wanted in pve (i dont play necro myself)
f2- create a reflecting bubble / or absorbing
it heals allys in it, reflects or absorbs anything that hits the bubble, it has infinite duration (aka till ur life force runs out) , it consumes life force as long as its up, if u tap f2 again it stops, 40-60 s cd (could be broken in pvp against some proffessions like rangers or longbow wars etc, therefor the somewhat long cd)
ofc the lifeforce consumation should at least be 10% /s
its ground target with 600 range, u can walk further away once its casted, u can gain life force with weapon skills while its up, has around 360 radius? like feedback maybe, could be smaller for balance
thoughts?

copied from a thread in necro forums, did write it myself, sry for some fail in grammar etc , dont kill me, pls no hurt

Bhawb.7408:

This is power creep incarnate. You can’t give a profession access to 15 brand new skills as a complete baseline change. Even if you can’t use them at the same time, you still have access to 16 non-AA CDs that you can cycle through. Not to mention this heavily intrudes on elementalist toes.

what if F# shroud skills 2 – 5 have shared recharge time?
anyway, i think many of you are overeating.

let me put in more substance into my proposal since everyone else is quite adamant that this will not work.

Well, I’ll agree what most replies have said about power creep and what not. Though they do tend to just focus of one thing. The number of skills it introduces.

However, the concept overall is good, I think.

I’m thinking more that the ‘Shroud’ changes to match the type of build you make. Using those life leaching traits in the Blood Magic line and the ‘shroud’ skills change to the ‘blood shroud’ type to support it.
Use more Curses traits and it’s the ‘blighted’ type to support the condition manipulation build more. etc. but not do everything.

That’s good thinking there, though.

(I liked the health sacrifice too..it’s a feature from GW1 I liked as well. Fits the necro well.)

I think death shroud is fine as a concept as it is, and that the skills are fine. Realistically adding options for F2-F4 isn’t going to matter much if the underlying concerns with death shroud aren’t addressed.

So I’d rather send the message of “please refine my class mechanic” rather than “please completely re-do my class mechanic.”

I actually like the sound of this. Of course it would need to be balanced but
I don’t see a problem with adding more variety if you added appropriate cooldowns. Let’s say maybe the usual CD when exiting a shroud for the shrouds you have not used yet and a 15 second CD for the one you just left. As long as you can’t switch between the multiple shrouds every second I don’t see a problem. After all it should be a tactical decision about which shroud you need in a situation, not something you can just pop into and use all the CD for.

if you pick which one you have itd be like https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/A-More-Magnificent-Mesmer-Main-Mechanic/first#post4238170 and id agree wholeheartedly. more choice is good as long as it’s fair

I like the idea a lot, but having all of these would be broken.
Maybe keep the current F1 but change the skills based on what weapons are equipped?
shrug

Concept is interesting but it’ll never happen (obvious power issues aside mentioned above). ANet is never changing class mechanics. Talk to any ranger about pets and the personal responses ANet has given about reworking pets/ranger class mechanic. I’ll give you a hint: despite it being overwhelmingly the single-most demanded thing to change in the entire game (including all aspects of the game), the pet mechanic is going unchanged, formally announced by ANet on the basis that “they don’t want to change it.”

I think it’s a cool idea, but really introducing only one more death shroud [f2] would work well. Like it’s been said, 15 skills is really a lot. But only adding 5 new ones wouldn’t be too much of a power creep. Possibly even introduced as a trait so that it’s not just given but has tradeoffs to take.

Though, it’s much more likely that the current death shroud be improved through traits.

I don’t think they will add 15 more skills to necros because necros already have 20 which is above average. Instead they could make the F2 F3 and F4 skills, simply one skill that related to the classes mechanics. For instance, F2 could sacrifice life force to summon a minion, F3 could sacrifice life force to siphon health, and F4 could sacrifice health to do massive damage. This would be a lot easier to implement, but it still probably won’t happen. Unless there is a significant expansion I can’t see Anet changing any of the class mechanics.

I would actually want ArenaNet to balance out the skill spam that Elementalists and Engineers have access to before they try to give that kind of skill spam out to yet another class. It is bad enough having to deal with two professions that can spam almost twice as many skills as you have access to without adding to that particular problem.

On the other hand, if this was part of a revamp of profession mechanics to bring the number of skills available to all professions to a level comparable with the Elementalist and the Engineer, then I am all for it. Although I could see both Elementalist and Engineer players balking a bit at losing their advantage in the number of skills they can spam.

Thanks.

Michaeas Magister.1589:

I would actually want ArenaNet to balance out the skill spam that Elementalists and Engineers have access to before they try to give that kind of skill spam out to yet another class. It is bad enough having to deal with two professions that can spam almost twice as many skills as you have access to without adding to that particular problem.

On the other hand, if this was part of a revamp of profession mechanics to bring the number of skills available to all professions to a level comparable with the Elementalist and the Engineer, then I am all for it. Although I could see both Elementalist and Engineer players balking a bit at losing their advantage in the number of skills they can spam.

Thanks.

You have no clue what you are talking about, I actually wrote a long post to explain why more skills doesnt equal better but I deleted it because I guess its a waste of effort.

Michaeas Magister.1589:

I would actually want ArenaNet to balance out the skill spam that Elementalists and Engineers have access to before they try to give that kind of skill spam out to yet another class. It is bad enough having to deal with two professions that can spam almost twice as many skills as you have access to without adding to that particular problem.

On the other hand, if this was part of a revamp of profession mechanics to bring the number of skills available to all professions to a level comparable with the Elementalist and the Engineer, then I am all for it. Although I could see both Elementalist and Engineer players balking a bit at losing their advantage in the number of skills they can spam.

Thanks.

did you even read what i wrote?
how is this skill spam?
all of them have shared recharge.

once i exit a shroud, all other shroud is on recharge, i can’t enter another shroud immediately.

once i use a shroud skill 2 – 5, all other shroud skills 2 – 5 will be on recharge.

please tell me how is that skill spam.

thank you.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Michaeas Magister.1589:

I would actually want ArenaNet to balance out the skill spam that Elementalists and Engineers have access to before they try to give that kind of skill spam out to yet another class. It is bad enough having to deal with two professions that can spam almost twice as many skills as you have access to without adding to that particular problem.

On the other hand, if this was part of a revamp of profession mechanics to bring the number of skills available to all professions to a level comparable with the Elementalist and the Engineer, then I am all for it. Although I could see both Elementalist and Engineer players balking a bit at losing their advantage in the number of skills they can spam.

Thanks.

did you even read what i wrote?
how is this skill spam?
all of them have shared recharge.

once i exit a shroud, all other shroud is on recharge, i can’t enter another shroud immediately.

once i use a shroud skill 2 – 5, all other shroud skills 2 – 5 will be on recharge.

please tell me how is that skill spam.

thank you.

KK, maybe skill “spam” was the wrong way to describe having access to more skills. Your proposal would limit the time between accessing the extra skills and that is one step towards balancing them.

And I did say I was all for it provided it could be balanced. Having long cool-downs between the different “Death Shrouds” would be a good step towards that balance.

Thanks.

What on earth is the purpose of adding more stuff onto the Necromancer?

The bizarre shared recharge time of different skills and different kit skills is completely unintuitive. The Necromancer doesn’t need more kits. The class already has plenty of tools with DS and its 5 skills, along with the standard 2 weapon sets. I don’t see what this will accomplish or achieve, at all.

well okay i actually just made a post like this a week ago. post

The idea isn’t bad imo.. The fact that it still locks utilities defines it from that of ele and is not based on your weapon set.

Neko.9021:

What on earth is the purpose of adding more stuff onto the Necromancer?

The bizarre shared recharge time of different skills and different kit skills is completely unintuitive. The Necromancer doesn’t need more kits. The class already has plenty of tools with DS and its 5 skills, along with the standard 2 weapon sets. I don’t see what this will accomplish or achieve, at all.

DS locks you out of your utilities and from any of your life gain (regen, siphoning, etc). This is a restrictive tool set and is why it should be expanded to allow the player to involve more of the games basic mechanics.

When you compare the mechanic to any other class mechanic in the game you can see how difficult it is to really expand your available builds and functionality. The simplest answers:
allowing healing (not a valid answer imo because then necro’s will never die)
add your utilities to the DS transform (also not a great idea since it escapes the essence of what DS is.. a transform)

TheDevice.2751:

When you compare the mechanic to any other class mechanic in the game you can see how difficult it is to really expand your available builds and functionality. The simplest answers:
allowing healing (not a valid answer imo because then necro’s will never die)
add your utilities to the DS transform (also not a great idea since it escapes the essence of what DS is.. a transform)

The problem with the no healing in DS causes a whole trait line (bloodmagic especially the siphon traits) and healing skills like bloodfiend to become useless half the time.

While i agree that simply allowing all healing to work in Ds may be to strong, a change is needed to make the siphon life play style more viable and not so punishing. I think fixing the problems with bloodmagic would give necros the sustain playstyle they supposed to have.

As you guys know one of the main issues and motives why Anet always hesitate on adding new things for necros is that we have ``a second health bar`` so what about giving new uses to LF?

For example:

Shadow Rush(F2 skill)
The necromancer uses 50% LF to leap towards the target
1200 range
10 sec CD

Deathly Gift(F3 skill)
The necromancer uses 30% LF to give 2 random boons to himself and up to 5 nearby allies for 10 seconds
600 radius
10 sec CD

Life Force Overflow(F4 skill)
The necromancer uses 30% LF to overflow the life force from his body blasting the nearby area (similar effect to Arcane Wave)
600 radius
Combo Finisher : Blast
5 sec CD

This way we would have to choice on a certain situation if we want to be more tanky with DS or if we want a little more mobility(F2) or group support(F3, F4)

Obs: remember that this would benefit more power builds than condition builds because power weapons have way more LF regen than condi weapons

Muchacho.2390:

The problem with the no healing in DS causes a whole trait line (bloodmagic especially the siphon traits) and healing skills like bloodfiend to become useless half the time.

While i agree that simply allowing all healing to work in Ds may be to strong, a change is needed to make the siphon life play style more viable and not so punishing. I think fixing the problems with bloodmagic would give necros the sustain playstyle they supposed to have.

I guess it would be super OP (and I play a necro too) because you could endlessly switch between healthbars but yeah something needs to be done. They are just to scared to give the necro some tankiness/attrition back. In the beta necros could outlast 5 or more people in WvW or slowly kill up to 3 people on point in tPvP. One patch later they basicaly removed or nerfed every tanky skill/trait etc the necro had back than. They never changed it back or adjusted it.