Guild Wars 2

I’m just starting to level a necromancer. I get a great deal of satisfaction corrupting boons. Me <— smug face.
I posted some months ago about necros vs. Zhaitan powers. Recently accepted that necro minions are more a collection of dead body parts pulled from the ground rather than the disrespectful raising of a person’s form. Zhaitan is like an identify thief today.

Anyway, Death Shroud. What do you think Death Shroud is?
I know the mechanic used to be like an out of body experience, complete with a tether to your actual body. You would say the necromancer leaves his body behind and his soul moves on. The screen still takes on its green hue like you are somewhere different. This kind of lives on in Spectral Walk now. It doesn’t seem like that’s the current version of death shroud though. Body and soul move together in this form, and never have to go back.
To me, with it being a shroud, I picture life force is warped into a second skin or barrier to absorb damage. It works visually because you are covered in this black flame.

Let me know how you envision it? Planeswalker or energy armor.

Raising undead isn’t really in of itself “disrespectful” – especially since, lorewise, minions are made from the bones and tissues of corpses (basically, minions are scrambled corpses!).

As for what Death Shroud is, I kind of figured it to be giving a more physical form of death and necromantic magic – Reaper of Grenth human racial skill is a lot like Death Shroud, and kind of seems to be doing the same thing by calling upon Grenth, but is a bit weaker since it can be used by non-necromancers (who, while in Death Shroud, I’d say are able to further manipulate what makes it). Not so much as “energy armor” but along the same concept.

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

I personally think the “energy armor” explanation makes more sense to me. The Death Shroud is powered by life force, which Necromancers gathers from slain opponents. I believe that a Necromancer can call forth this stored energy into a visible aura that surrounds their body, and then they utilise this energy in a number of ways as per the skills available while in Death Shroud.

It has to be more than just an “energy armour”: remember that Death Shroud also grants you new abilities and prevents you from using your old ones. This is why I think it is a sort of “phasing” away from reality.

Embolism.8106:

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

I really do love this description of the Death Shroud mechanic. So I want to ask a question regarding this – say for RP purposes, how would the fact that you gain Life Force through “pain, death and suffering” around your character be tied into this? Would this Life Force be akin to “Mana” or “threads of power” that the necromancer gathers in order to achieve this state of being halfway into the Mists…?

DayLight.9603:

Embolism.8106:

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

I really do love this description of the Death Shroud mechanic. So I want to ask a question regarding this – say for RP purposes, how would the fact that you gain Life Force through “pain, death and suffering” around your character be tied into this? Would this Life Force be akin to “Mana” or “threads of power” that the necromancer gathers in order to achieve this state of being halfway into the Mists…?

Maybe to help, what also needs to be considered is the sound effect when you enter DS. At least for my necro, when she enters death shroud, if you listen closely you can hear the dying scream sound effect for female humans, which ( i have no theory) but life force may have something to do with souls. But that’s just me.

DayLight.9603:

Embolism.8106:

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

I really do love this description of the Death Shroud mechanic. So I want to ask a question regarding this – say for RP purposes, how would the fact that you gain Life Force through “pain, death and suffering” around your character be tied into this? Would this Life Force be akin to “Mana” or “threads of power” that the necromancer gathers in order to achieve this state of being halfway into the Mists…?

From a roleplayer perspective… I guess I would interpret it as the ability to stand in that half-way space (not really in the world of the living, but present enough not to be fully in the Underworld) through an understanding of life force. Maybe because I’ve roleplayed a blood magic focused necro in the past, but I’ve always seen Guild Wars necromancy as requiring a thorough understanding of life as much as of death (another friend of mine had a GW1 necro who was an initiated priest of both Grenth and Dwayna).

A lot of necro stuff isn’t straight killing, like yanking someone’s life away – it’s manipulating their life force in some way, weakening them from the inside, at the essence of their being. That’s complex, and requires a subtle touch. You have to know what it means to be alive in order to mess with the state, right? So death shroud, for me, would be something halfway between being a mortal necromancer here in the world, and being a shade or wraith based in the Underworld. It’s like you let yourself die a little, knowing you can pull yourself back, I suppose?

As for fueling it with ‘pain, death and suffering,’ it comes back to the idea that pain lets you know you’re alive. People remember and cling to their lives when they’re threatened. You could argue that a necromancer thrives on the strength of the will to live, even if that sometimes means pushing it to the brink and drawing power from that. Just my thoughts

Couldn’t put it more eloquently than Curuniel did.

As I see it, the necromancer’s grasp on life is more flexible. A necromancer can choose to leave his or her body for a time, and wander as a spirit. It’s risky business, because this leaves the body vulnerable and if the necromancer strays too far from his/her body, he/she risks wandering across the barrier between the world and the mists—and losing the way back. In which case, the abandoned body would die.
I think the necromancer sees the world differently as a spirit, because he/she is seeing the overlap of the living realm and the mists. He/she can see things that are invisible to living eyes.

Wow! Some wonderful answers from the community! I’ve always believed that Necromancers would be the most knowledgeable when it comes to issues of life/death, possibly making them a great alternative to a healing class.

I understand that this might be slightly off topic, but how would you explain the Mists to somebody that has never heard of it? It isn’t a physical location, is it? Is it a bridge between “realities”…? Perhaps I could have a better understanding of Death Shroud if I understood the concept of the Mists better. Thank you everybody!

I guess it’s sort of like the “essence” that envelops and permeates worlds, very roughly analogous to Oblivion in TES or the Fade in Dragon Age. I don’t really like the implementation of the Mists in Guild Wars however as it seems far too “explored”, stripping it of the mysterious quality it might otherwise have.

Bridge between realities… it’s probably more apt to think of it as the sea that separates islands of realities, or the space that separates planets of realities… although we don’t know much about other realities apart from the fact that humans and their gods came to Tyria through the Mists.