Guild Wars 2

Unholy Sanctuary is the new GM trait for the Death Magic. toughness + boon duration line, which is being introduced in the next feature patch, it mechanically grants the Necromancer the regeneration boon while he’s in DeathShroud and will be the only possible way in the game to recover health in DeathShroud.

As the trait currently stands it seems incredibly underwhelming, the reasons for this are the following:

Just like the regeneration boon, it will restore 130 + 0.125 * Healing Power health per second. Death Magic is a trait line which grants no Healing Power, so this trait already has a partial lack of synergy with it’s placement. Seeing as how the dev team has been trying to avoid or remove on-crit traits from non-crit related traitlines, this already seems odd.

Necromancers have very low synergy with healing in general. Healing has synergy with professions that have high damage mitigation and as it stands, Necros have the worst damage mitigation in the game. DeathShroud is a resource based damage mitigation tool which doesn’t scale when the number of damage sources increases. For a Necromancer with full Life Force, spending more than 15 seconds in DeathShroud during any engagement is considered a very rare occurrence, this is important in relation to my final point.

Necromancers have the highest Health in game the game, just like Warriors. The regeneration boon heals for 230 a second with 800 healing power, a pittance when compared to the total Health pool of these professions. Health recovery needs to be somewhat proportional to a profession’s Health, since damage avoidance availability was balanced around base Health and Armor values, a similar issue was present in the first iteration of Healing Signet. The health recovered will probably be negligible in most engagements, having higher damage and ending a fight sooner will probably be a more viable strategy for survival.

Considering the investment required to take this trait and the limitations in it’s usage, I believe that a higher healing rate is required or some added effects to increase the player’s survivability.

It could be even argued that anytime you spend less than 5second in DS, youd get more healing from the Blood (actual healing tree) magic trait- Deaathly Invigoration- for 20pts.

Oh and its aoe.

Should allow for siphoning through shroud and switch places with the new blood grand master trait. But yeah, as it stands it’s just another worthless trait to add to the list.

Maybe if it could ramp, so the more you stay in DS, the more it would heal…

To be honest, I tend to spend over 30 seconds non-stop in Deathshroud pretty often with my build, it’s not an issue.

I think the problem might be Deathshroud not appealing to Condition necromancers. With Vital Persistance you can stay in DS, even under some pressure, for pretty long time. But you won’t maintain condition damage. So it sucks balls.

The other option is Power variation. While Condition version has very good stat combo for Unholy Sanctuary/condi play (Toughness, Condition Damage, Healing Power), Power version can either go for Zealot’s which totally destroys your survival aspect or Cleric’s. Second option, when having stats allowing you to survive, doesn’t allow you to put any pressure. It’s worse than Cleric Guardian and has worse healing. You can spec for Deathly Perception, maybe get some precision.

But here comes the Ferocity change. People haven’t realised yet that the spec that is getting hit the most game-wide is Power Necromancer with Deathshroud build. Since we have 100% uptime on criticals and very long Shroud, patch reduces our damage by ~30 in PvE and WvW.

We have to wait anyway, but if they want to make one step foward, they should think who may use things they bring.

Rym.1469:

To be honest, I tend to spend over 30 seconds non-stop in Deathshroud pretty often with my build, it’s not an issue.

I think the problem might be Deathshroud not appealing to Condition necromancers. With Vital Persistance you can stay in DS, even under some pressure, for pretty long time. But you won’t maintain condition damage. So it sucks balls.

The other option is Power variation. While Condition version has very good stat combo for Unholy Sanctuary/condi play (Toughness, Condition Damage, Healing Power), Power version can either go for Zealot’s which totally destroys your survival aspect or Cleric’s. Second option, when having stats allowing you to survive, doesn’t allow you to put any pressure. It’s worse than Cleric Guardian and has worse healing. You can spec for Deathly Perception, maybe get some precision.

But here comes the Ferocity change. People haven’t realised yet that the spec that is getting hit the most game-wide is Power Necromancer with Deathshroud build. Since we have 100% uptime on criticals and very long Shroud, patch reduces our damage by ~30 in PvE and WvW.

We have to wait anyway, but if they want to make one step foward, they should think who may use things they bring.

I didn’t even see this coming. The powermancer getting the worst nerf from this ferocity change. I’ve been holding on to my necro…trying not to delete..but it just keeps getting worse.

i dunno, as a pvper i see this giving us alot of sustain,
we’ve all done it, got to low hp and used deathshroud as a “last stand” mechanic.

currently when that “last stand” ends you have a large chance of dying before you can cast your heal,
but with the few thousand health you’ll have gotten from turtling in death shroud you have a much greater chance of getting your heal off before you die.

Another issue with Unholy Sanctuary is that, in PVE, the most players use DS to avoid getting damage. On my generic LB build (30/0/0/10/30), I can sit in Death Shroud for forever, face tanking mobs while blasting away for long periods of time. Unholy Sanctuary wouldn’t be of any help, since I’m not taking damage in the first place.

In emergency usage, I’ll sit in DS to disengage and use a heal skill once it goes off cooldown, and not to get my health back very slowly. All in all, I have trouble justifying the use of this trait in any game mode.

I’m not sure what kind of damage they expect us to “turtle” into DS and tank through, but when it comes to focus fire while in DS, anything more robust than clone damage eats it up. Having such painfully low healing won’t even matter because we won’t be in DS long enough to notice how little it heals anyway. Most necromancers will tell you thatregeneration on a necro is by large, pointless. Our hp pool is just too high for it to make a noticeable difference. The reason it works so well for warriors is because they have so much other means of regen outside of the boon (adrenaline trait, heal Sig, and immunities to stop damage from mitigating that regen). Now if our siphons were healing any decent amount and also worked in DS then we would have no issues making regen and this trait work properly

I would take this trait, if it were a minor..

I find it similar to the engie master major trait Backpack Regenerator. It heals for more and scales better, but i guess it has overall less hps then the engie trait, since necros arent as long in ds as engies using kits.

So with the current numbers i am nor sure if it is grandmaster worthy, but it should definetly be a major not a minor trait.

I think, since the deahtmagic line doesnt offer any healing power, a higher base hps and worse healing power scaling would be better.

Also, even in a death shroud build you are in Death shroud less than 40% of the time. So spending 30 trait points to get less than 40% regeneration uptime see,s really bad.

I expect they’re scared of making Necromancer’s stronger in PvP, so they’re intentionally low-balling this trait and will bump it up once they see that no one actually uses it.

Some comments bring to mind another issue.
If you need healing, you’re under attack and the more damaging and dangerous the situation is the more important that healing becomes, but at the same time the less time you’ll be able to spend in DeathShroud.

So the most critical moments where you’d need healing are also the times when Unholy Sanctuary will have the worst performance.

I can see this possibly being worthwhile to me.
I like using the Dagger.
Using Dagger means I get hurt, but it’s Life Force generation combined with mob deaths means I tend to have ton of Life Force.

When I’m hurt or just wanna fight at range I use Death Shroud or build up more Life Force with a Staff.
And I sometimes I even use Vital Persistence, just to sit in Death Shroud for a very long time while blasting away!

I’m gonna try a 10/0/30/0/30 build and see if it’s any good.
Both new Death Magic minor traits sound like they would fit my playstyle and Unholy Sanctuary should heal much of what Health I’ve lost after Consume Conditions → Death Shroud.

With that said I don’t think that this trait will be a part of any optimal build for as long as PvE favors DPS over healing.
I can see it being fun, though!

In terms of improved survivability, I cannot see any reason why you would want to use this trait, when there are much better survivability traits at much lower cost.

Last gasp is our best survivability trait, at 15 points, with an excellent range of traits to choose from for the 10 and 20 slots, for any build. Hell, I would argue that gluttony is more useful for survivability, then sanctuary, and it’s a near useless 5 point trait!

Perhaps having a gain health on on hit while in DS would be more useful, depending on the amount, but either way, this trait as is, is simply a waste of points.

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

If it healed for similar % amount that D/P SA Thief heals while in stealth, it would be a nice pick. Otherwise, if it’s just a poor man’s regen it isn’t worth investing 30 points.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

This. Consider it a test to show them that letting Necros heal at all in DS does not automatically make them unstoppable eaters of children and small cute woodland creatures.

Now if Necros were given Warrior level sustain, condi removal, and mobility while in DS they might have a case for their fears.

But there is a huge difference between that and what is basically a regen boon tied to a resource pool instead of spammed on recharge.

If this trait converted a % of life lost in DS due to direct damage, even if it was as low as 20% it would be much more synergistic and desirable compared to how it is right now.

Keep in mind that total LifeForce is lower than actual health but damage is mitigated to compensate and make the two values equivalent. So 20% of LF lost to damage is not much more than 3k HP for a full LF gauge with 0 points in soul reaping and if you take that much damage in DeathShroud you’re probably in a lot of trouble even with the health recovered.

Overkillengine.6084:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

This. Consider it a test to show them that letting Necros heal at all in DS does not automatically make them unstoppable eaters of children and small cute woodland creatures.

Now if Necros were given Warrior level sustain, condi removal, and mobility while in DS they might have a case for their fears.

But there is a huge difference between that and what is basically a regen boon tied to a resource pool instead of spammed on recharge.

To be fair, the DS mechanic in general makes me an eater of all small, cute woodland creatures I see. If I could kill NPC children to gain LF as well, I mean… wouldn’t you?

Cogbyrn.7283:

Overkillengine.6084:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

This. Consider it a test to show them that letting Necros heal at all in DS does not automatically make them unstoppable eaters of children and small cute woodland creatures.

Now if Necros were given Warrior level sustain, condi removal, and mobility while in DS they might have a case for their fears.

But there is a huge difference between that and what is basically a regen boon tied to a resource pool instead of spammed on recharge.

To be fair, the DS mechanic in general makes me an eater of all small, cute woodland creatures I see. If I could kill NPC children to gain LF as well, I mean… wouldn’t you?

Yes, this is a nasty habit necros have…

Muchacho.2390:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Overkillengine.6084:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

This. Consider it a test to show them that letting Necros heal at all in DS does not automatically make them unstoppable eaters of children and small cute woodland creatures.

Now if Necros were given Warrior level sustain, condi removal, and mobility while in DS they might have a case for their fears.

But there is a huge difference between that and what is basically a regen boon tied to a resource pool instead of spammed on recharge.

To be fair, the DS mechanic in general makes me an eater of all small, cute woodland creatures I see. If I could kill NPC children to gain LF as well, I mean… wouldn’t you?

Yes, this is a nasty habit necros have…

Yeah, before entering WvW every trip back from the waypoint i can be seen slaughtering rabbits, badgers and other furry creatures.

Avigrus.2871:

Muchacho.2390:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Overkillengine.6084:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Regardless of the numbers involved, this trait represents a willingness by ANet to consider the possibility of granting HP regeneration mechanics while in DS.

Seems like a giant step forward to me, even if it seems mathematically lackluster at the moment.

Precisely. We’re pretty sure the trait will be quite underwhelming, but what the introduction of the trait means is important: ANet is considering letting the necro heal some in death shroud, which is by far the biggest weakness of the mechanic.

This. Consider it a test to show them that letting Necros heal at all in DS does not automatically make them unstoppable eaters of children and small cute woodland creatures.

Now if Necros were given Warrior level sustain, condi removal, and mobility while in DS they might have a case for their fears.

But there is a huge difference between that and what is basically a regen boon tied to a resource pool instead of spammed on recharge.

To be fair, the DS mechanic in general makes me an eater of all small, cute woodland creatures I see. If I could kill NPC children to gain LF as well, I mean… wouldn’t you?

Yes, this is a nasty habit necros have…

Yeah, before entering WvW every trip back from the waypoint i can be seen slaughtering rabbits, badgers and other furry creatures.

Pretty sure that’s the reason they put those ambients in the spawn areas.

Would Unholy Sanc have any synergy with the new Unholy Martyr (5% DS pool for every condi consumed every 3 sec from 5 other toons)? That means every 3 sec you get up to 25% life force.
Seems to me you pop into DS, stay in for as long as your pool lasts, Consume conditions, back into DS. Just wondering.
Granted this means going deep into a non DS trait line but still…
Something like this (with the blank traits for the new ones)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNAoYWjc00Zb3NO2whbCQ6x1/Cw0js3GAqCuD-zwBB4hCiUDRkIAILtIasVQFRjVnEThlIqOAwBA/+7v/+7vFC47YA-e

Indweller.1402:

Would Unholy Sanc have any synergy with the new Unholy Martyr (5% DS pool for every condi consumed every 3 sec from 5 other toons)? That means every 3 sec you get 25% life force.
Seems to me you pop into DS, stay in for as long as your pool lasts, Consume conditions, back into DS. Just wondering.
Granted this means going deep into a non DS trait line but still…
Something like this (with the blank traits for the new ones)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNAoYWjc00Zb3NO2whbCQ6x1/Cw0js3GAqCuD-zwBB4hCiUDRkIAILtIasVQFRjVnEThlIqOAwBA/+7v/+7vFC47YA-e

I don’t think we’re sure on how that trait works. Is it 5% per condition per ally? 5% flat while pulling from 5 allies? Or is it simply 5% life force for just one condition from one ally? I would hope that it pulls and adds up for everyone since DS has no way to deal with conditions, and could help necros with both support and sustain all at once.

Consider you lose 4% LF every second while in DS.

not if you have vital persistence….its 2%

Indweller.1402:

not if you have vital persistence….its 2%

If I take 10+ stacks of bleed from someone, it’s a metric ton.

I think it should be like 200 + 0.0625*healing power.
More healing without healing power but worse scaling with it.
Main reason for such number is that deathmagic doesnt offfer any healing power.

If we compare it with the gms in the toughness line of guardians. Both have good base heals but bad healing power scaling. So it would be more like them.

Don’t Judge the trait too fast. I guess it can be very well in a tanky build. And please note that ArenaNet can still adjust traits if they think it is too strong or weak (They said it at the 100% crit chance trait on adrenaline at warrior).
Give it a chance

Fvux

People’s problem is that they are building for stats instead of traits, rather than making up for it in other areas with rune and amulet sets. The lack of synergy is a definite deliberate choice, and the furthest thing from an oversight here.

The V.8759:

Don’t Judge the trait too fast. I guess it can be very well in a tanky build. And please note that ArenaNet can still adjust traits if they think it is too strong or weak (They said it at the 100% crit chance trait on adrenaline at warrior).
Give it a chance

Fvux

My problem with that is that if ANet keeps their release schedule as is, this trait being tuned to usefulness might take months. Vampirirc Signet was universally panned before release when it’s final version was shown and it hasn’t received a single fix to make it more desirable.

After playing for so long, a good margin of players can look at the stats for unreleased content and make a very accurate judgement call about something’s power and looking at Unholy Sanctum it looks very underwhelming for it’s investment cost due to the issues we outlined throughout this thread.

Nearly a month after the patch, has anyone seen evidence of the contrary and found Unholy Sanctuary to be meaningful and useful?

Kiriakulos.1690:

Nearly a month after the patch, has anyone seen evidence of the contrary and found Unholy Sanctuary to be meaningful and useful?

Nope.

Nope.

Exactly what I was expecting. Trolling customers again.

Unholy Sanctuary isn’t the issue with Unholy Sanctuary. The issue with the trait is that it is designed specifically to be a full bunker trait, but with no bunker builds to support it. I guarantee if Necromancers got a support weapon (staff isn’t good enough) that allowed them to play main-bunker (had healing/support/tankiness on the weapon skills), then we’d see this being used. It isn’t actually that bad, you should EXPECT a healing based trait to scale heavily with healing power, the issue is you need a build with enough LF regen/HP regen over time to proc this over and over. And as it is right now MMs are the only fully effective bunkers.

Come on, this attitiude isn’t productive, they aren’t able to solve the real problem or give Necromancers what they need, it’s useless contenting ourselves with these tiny bits of “maybe it can work in this circumstance”.

Unholy Sanctuary requires a build with Vital persistance, almost 1300 Healing Power and the need and capability to stay in Death Shroud for really prolonged time to get a consistent amount of healings..
In PVP there is no rational way and need of doing it. In WvW idem. In PVE maybe, but again it’s worthless when you can get oneshotted in a matter of seconds.

They just have to give Necromancer via Traits a 50% reduced healings under DS from whatever source or a Life Transfer Healing for full every 40 seconds. Enough said.

Honestly this trait is probably the worst trait in the whole game. A grandmaster trait which gives you conditional regen. That is hilariously bad. It makes no sense whatsoever. This trait needs to be buffed by about 300% and even then I doubt it would be useful.

The problem i have with that trait is that it needs healingpower to be effective and since it is only active while in Ds you want the traits that extent DS. But the problem here is that DS and healing in general have a bad synergy since healing doesnt work in Ds. This means you want to minimaize and maximize your time in Ds at the same time, which obviously doesnt work…

Its a 6 point trait that gives you conditional regen which doesn’t stack with any other healing, and demands very high healing power along with high DS uptime, both of which directly conflict with each other.

Its a mediocre trait at best that has no remote synergy with any viable build type. If it stacked with other types of healing, if DS and healing didn’t have such binary interaction, and if bunker builds weren’t so all around useless, it might be okay. As it is now, it just doesn’t pull its own weight, let alone the extra weight of only being useful in a useless subset of builds.

It is conceptually sound, in trying to give Necros a way to bunker, but once again it just heavily falls short because devs are too scared of us becoming too good.

Bhawb.7408:

Its a 6 point trait that gives you conditional regen which doesn’t stack with any other healing, and demands very high healing power along with high DS uptime, both of which directly conflict with each other.

Its a mediocre trait at best that has no remote synergy with any viable build type. If it stacked with other types of healing, if DS and healing didn’t have such binary interaction, and if bunker builds weren’t so all around useless, it might be okay. As it is now, it just doesn’t pull its own weight, let alone the extra weight of only being useful in a useless subset of builds.

It is conceptually sound, in trying to give Necros a way to bunker, but once again it just heavily falls short because devs are too scared of us becoming too good.

Its funny how they are so petrified about necromancer becoming good. I mean warrior has been the best class in all aspects of the game for over a year. Thief is so broken it shuts out many builds from pvp. Guardian is so good that it is almost always used in pvp. Elementalist and warrior are so good that running 2 of them in pvp is probably a good thing.

Yet with necro they have this deep fear of them becoming good.

It should grant 3s of protection when entering death shroud. Ditch the healing garbage.

Zefrost.3425:

It should grant 3s of protection when entering death shroud. Ditch the healing garbage.

It needs to be WAY WAY WAY WAY better than that. For a grandmaster trait such low level of condition protection is bad. Rangers get a minor trait for similar protection on dodge which is spammable.

It could grant the regen AND 3s of protection. That would still be weak though imo

Sad joke:
Make it also allow healing in DS. why do we so much regen, wells, transufion, TEAMMATES, just so they cancel other out…. If 100% healing in DS is too strong, nerf it by 8% after a year

The real, wnb constructive part:
Make heals heal DS hp. I seriously have no idea why it wasnt like this in first place.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Zefrost.3425:

It should grant 3s of protection when entering death shroud. Ditch the healing garbage.

It needs to be WAY WAY WAY WAY better than that. For a grandmaster trait such low level of condition protection is bad. Rangers get a minor trait for similar protection on dodge which is spammable.

It could grant the regen AND 3s of protection. That would still be weak though imo

To be fair, you can’t really compare traits between classes. I could easily make a good build with 3s of protection to survive bursts. Burst has became pretty big in the meta lately (eviscerate, backstab, fresh air eles, SD engis, power rangers, etc). The protection duration would actually be 3.9s since you’d have 30% boon duration.

Protection would be a good buff for players who complain about survivability vs multiple opponents.

All I know is that the healing sucks and it should be change to anything else. It is impossible to make a good build with that worthless trait.

Flumek.9043:

Sad joke:
Make it also allow healing in DS. why do we so much regen, wells, transufion, TEAMMATES, just so they cancel other out…. If 100% healing in DS is too strong, nerf it by 8% after a year

The real, wnb constructive part:
Make heals heal DS hp. I seriously have no idea why it wasnt like this in first place.

Also make siphoning traits from bloodmagic restore life force. 1% life force on life blast wouldn’t be too OP.

nearlight.3064:

Also make siphoning traits from bloodmagic restore life force. 1% life force on life blast wouldn’t be too OP.

Unyielding Blast means you could conceivably get 5% life force off of life blast, even without Reaper’s Precision. Factor in Vital Persistance and you would have necros never leaving death shroud rather frequently. WvW would quickly get all-necro zergs just life blasting until all enemies are dead.

So yeah, 1% life force on life blast probably would be OP.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nearlight.3064:

Also make siphoning traits from bloodmagic restore life force. 1% life force on life blast wouldn’t be too OP.

Unyielding Blast means you could conceivably get 5% life force off of life blast, even without Reaper’s Precision. Factor in Vital Persistance and you would have necros never leaving death shroud rather frequently. WvW would quickly get all-necro zergs just life blasting until all enemies are dead.

So yeah, 1% life force on life blast probably would be OP.

Then make it less than that. Like the actual blood magic traits that restore like .25% of our total health.

But even if it were 1%, WvW would never have all-necro zergs. I assume you’re joking when you say that, because of how easily a GWEN group can destroy a gaggle of necros. My guild had an MM necro zerg once as a joke. Granted its different, but we know how easily necro only groups get wrecked lol. A group with no stability, no frontline power, let alone no recovery gets wrecked. And your enemies would have to be stupidly clumped or immoblie or /dancing to get kittens from one life blast.