Guild Wars 2

Necromancers have been begging for this for a very long time now. Initially, necromancers could survive a 1-hit kill in Death Shroud. But somewhere along the line, even though it was not overpowered in any way, and no one ever complained about it, it got changed. Nowadays necromancers have no way to survive insta-kills, other than their 2 dodges, because damage received spills into their actual health pool.

There are 4 reasons why this change should be reverted:

1 – All classes have a way to avoid insta-kills apart from their dodges, such as stealth, evasion, invulnerability, blocking. The necro is the only class that does not have access to a way to survive a huge damage spike.

2 – The PVE game is littered with one-hit kills.

3 – The change removed a very important and fun strategic element from the necromancer class. In other words, it made our class more boring, and less fun to play.

4 – It was never overpowered to begin with.

It was changed when they introduced Sky Hammer to Spvp. Necro’s were being punted off the edge, but because of no dmg spill over from DS they wouldn’t die and just be running around on the bottom. I can’t say if it was OP or not, but that is the reason it was changed.

Preacher

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

1 – All classes have a way to avoid insta-kills apart from their dodges, such as stealth, evasion, invulnerability, blocking. The necro is the only class that does not have access to a way to survive a huge damage spike.

Yes indeed. It’s well known that a stealthed thief is invulnerable and I routinely use C&D to soak up the dungeon bosses instant kill attacks.

Necromancer can still “abuse” jumping by Spectral Walk and fall from every cliff, ledge, whatever not dying.
Also, Wurms at the bottom of Skyham do have some purpose. They kill if you didn’t die.

So I see no issue here why Necros shouldn’t have DS block brought back

Necros really need this for PvE – we’re one of the few classes that doesn’t have any way to block insta-kill moves aside from dodging.

If falling damage is a concern, just implement it in a way that will block all damage apart from falling damage.

However, I can’t see that stopping falling damage is a big concern. A dev has already said that using spectral walk to avoid falling damage is fine (I can find the link if needed).

Devs have said we are supposed to be an attrition class – if so then please give us the tools to do so! Our new healing skill was worse than every other healing skill in the game, and noone uses it.

Besides, nothing is stopping the level designers from simply placing a big kill zone in areas where players aren’t supposed to be. There literally is no reason not to give necros this ability back.

stof.9341:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

1 – All classes have a way to avoid insta-kills apart from their dodges, such as stealth, evasion, invulnerability, blocking. The necro is the only class that does not have access to a way to survive a huge damage spike.

Yes indeed. It’s well known that a stealthed thief is invulnerable and I routinely use C&D to soak up the dungeon bosses instant kill attacks.

Given that most of the instant-kill attacks are targetted, stealthing stops the boss from charging it if you were its target. Even for those that are AoE, thieves have a large number of Evade skills. Necros have 0.

Indeed, we really are the only class in the game with no alternative to the 2 dodges. But I think a more important reason to put it back, is that it gave us a reason to do more shroud-dancing. By removing it, they removed a large amount of fun and strategy from our class, and that is just unforgivable.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given that most of the instant-kill attacks are targetted, stealthing stops the boss from charging it if you were its target. Even for those that are AoE, thieves have a large number of Evade skills. Necros have 0.

Stealth doesn’t disjoint ANYTHING. Neither a spell cast time or channeling nor a projectile in flight

The only way to use stealth to avoid a targeted attack is to stealth before it’s even started. Which has the nice side effect that the mob will just wait for you to get out of stealth to throw it in your face.

Preacher.4836:

It was changed when they introduced Sky Hammer to Spvp. Necro’s were being punted off the edge, but because of no dmg spill over from DS they wouldn’t die and just be running around on the bottom. I can’t say if it was OP or not, but that is the reason it was changed.

Preacher

Still works with spectral walk if you want to hang with the wurms.

stof.9341:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given that most of the instant-kill attacks are targetted, stealthing stops the boss from charging it if you were its target. Even for those that are AoE, thieves have a large number of Evade skills. Necros have 0.

Stealth doesn’t disjoint ANYTHING. Neither a spell cast time or channeling nor a projectile in flight

The only way to use stealth to avoid a targeted attack is to stealth before it’s even started. Which has the nice side effect that the mob will just wait for you to get out of stealth to throw it in your face.

Actually every non aoe/melee cleave targeted boss attack requires you to be visible, stealthing doesnt disjoint but plain prevents the targeting/finishing the cast since they dont have targets. Also you got 4 dodges instead of 2 like every other profession and shared with mesmers rangers and eles can keep 100% vigor uptime with no real bother so no you do have more invuls than a necro has. 0.75 more on base+0.5 pre passing 10 seconds more to be exact.

Stealth doesn’t prevent any cast from finishing. Killshot, rapid fire, all of that will keep channeling/hitting after you’ve gone into stealth. The same applies to bosses and mobs in dungeons.

It’s silly they changed deathshroud because of Skyhammer, I wonder if there wasn’t a different solution to fix that. Apart for the pvp map it wasn’t something that required any changes. And Skyhammer is a crappy map anyway.

Eviscerate warrs and backstab thieves complained for necro cant be spiked with 10% LF … If i remember, in one of the State of the game podcast it gets mentioned how cheap mechanic it is. Yeah, learn to play … just for necro, every other class exluded.

Also, the spill over is bugged still in a horrible way and something kittened up too. In rare situation necro just gets insta downed. Someone started a topic about it not too long ago.

Preacher.4836:

It was changed when they introduced Sky Hammer to Spvp. Necro’s were being punted off the edge, but because of no dmg spill over from DS they wouldn’t die and just be running around on the bottom. I can’t say if it was OP or not, but that is the reason it was changed.

Preacher

weird thing is, if you survive you can just run up to a worm and agro it to die. Why would they add 1 hit kill worms otherwise?

I wouldn’t say stealth being a replacement for evade. But last time I checked s/d thief has an evade skill. A heal that also gives evade. I dunno others evade/invul/vigor/block skills as I’m still leveling my thief but I know there are at least 2 evades.

Afya.5842:

I wouldn’t say stealth being a replacement for evade. But last time I checked s/d thief has an evade skill. A heal that also gives evade. I dunno others evade/invul/vigor/block skills as I’m still leveling my thief but I know there are at least 2 evades.

S/D, D/D, and Shortbow all have evades on weapon skills. Withdraw and Roll for Initiative also are evade skills. Factor in Feline Grace (base 3 dodges instead of 2) and pretty easy access to perma-vigor and it’s not difficult to see where the perma-dodge thief came from. Still, this thread isn’t about thief defenses. It’s about the fact that, other than the two base dodges, Necros have no means of negating a boss’s one-shot attack (since Blind is worthless against them 90% of the time).

And let’s not forget how the DS overflow got added right before the Queen’s Jubilee event.
Killing Liadri on a Necro was a hell of a lot harder than any other class just because we only had our 2 evades as damage denial mechanisms.

I really find it interesting that in the Zerker Meta thread about PVE it gets repeatedly mentioned that GW2 is a game where defense is supposed to be active with skills and dodges, so pure Zerker is a completely intended playstyle. But the Necro class is clearly designed to do the exact opposite and face tank everything.

Our damage block got removed and when Spectral skills began to work in DS, giving us a pseudo-invul against multiple enemies, that also got removed REALLY FAST.
The Necro is designed WITHOUT access to damage mitigation and denial. It’s supposed to face tank everything and yet has the WORST sustain and recovery options compounded with the worst stability access from all professions.

It’s a contradiction in mechanics, implementation and every other area between design and execution.

PvE – dodges are all you need, even with no vigor.
PvP – it was pretty silly you could take a 10k eviscerate while on 5% life force and lose only that life force.

And please don’t mix in stealth into it if you don’t fully know its mechanics.

Killing Liadri on a Necro was a hell of a lot harder than any other class just because we only had our 2 evades as damage denial mechanisms.

On the contrary. I used my condimancer to kill Liadri because it was kitten easy, while i struggled on war, thief, ele, and guardian. Took me three attemps on necro – just dump all conditions and kite.

I have two lv80 necromancers, played a fair bit of PvE and PvP with them. One is power-specced, one is a condimancer; both offer a different playstyle across formats, use different weapons, builds, and have their distinctive (dis)advantages.
I do agree that Death Shroud is in very bad state, and is arguably second-worst profession mechanic in the game (the worst being ele attunements inflating the micro level of the class but not rewarding skillful play in any way). It acts only as an extra AoE dps, extra fear, and extra health buffer; it could be more and/or something else than that, and become actually useful, but the proposed change is ludicrous and propagates going back to a broken mechanic.

drkn.3429:

PvE – dodges are all you need, even with no vigor.
PvP – it was pretty silly you could take a 10k eviscerate while on 5% life force and lose only that life force.

PvE – In that case might as well remove all active defenses from other professions since they are unnecessary.

PvP – Equally silly to use it against anyone who’s currently blocking/dodging/evading attacks.

You Liadri anecdote doesn’t change the fact that every other profession has choices to avoid 1 hit kills, Necros don’t. A condition Necro build helped you kill her better than other professions, good for you, that option proved more viable for your approach. Did the Necro have less defensive options in that fight than every other profession? Yes, he did.

Necro has more proactive defence – fears, blinds, weakness, in some cases roots, boon stripping / condition management (especially for PvP / WvW). On top of that, arguably easy access to protection. For PvP / small scale WvW, minions offer not only visual noise, but also damage mitigation.
Necro’s problem is not lack of blocks but poor usability of control due to defiance. And that only in PvE, and only on champions+.
No damage spilling over Death Shroud was a broken mechanic in PvP, and not just because of Skyhammer. Instead of reverting to no damage spilling, one of the DS skills could be buffed to offer an aegis-like effect on use.

One of the main reasons I want this ability back, is because it allowed us to really do some interesting things with managing our life force pool. During a boss fight, we could make sure to keep a little bit of spare life force, to block one powerful attack. We’d have to time it right, because going in and out of Death Shroud quickly drains the remaining life force. After blocking the hit, our life force would instantly be down to zero, and we’d have to start building it again to be ready for the next big hit.

Most other classes do not have this problem for their active defenses. They don’t need to build up life force to block an attack. But for necromancers this really added a really nice extra layer of depth to the combat.

Building up enough lf to just get into DS for a cheap ‘block’ was a matter of three hits with autoattack.
When arguing for changes like that, please don’t focus solely on one format of the game, unless you want to see split mechanics for PvE and PvP. The proposed revert was arguably more broken in PvP than useful in PvE, so to weight it this way, and achieving some sort of middle ground would require either a PvP/PvE split people do not like or a revamp of some mechanics rather than going back to something that was bad at its core.

drkn.3429:

Building up enough lf to just get into DS for a cheap ‘block’ was a matter of three hits with autoattack.
When arguing for changes like that, please don’t focus solely on one format of the game, unless you want to see split mechanics for PvE and PvP. The proposed revert was arguably more broken in PvP than useful in PvE, so to weight it this way, and achieving some sort of middle ground would require either a PvP/PvE split people do not like or a revamp of some mechanics rather than going back to something that was bad at its core.

Requires a minimum of 4 hits from Staff, 7 hits from dagger to build up the 10% life force you need to enter death shroud. Scepter and Axe can’t build life force at all on the auto, and Scepter has the hardest time generating life force of any weapon (one skill, 3% per condition on the target, completely worthless if they cleanse at the right time).

As for it being “broken” in PvP, no. It really wasn’t. So it could absorb an Eviscerate, big whoop. Every other class has another button they can press for the same effect, ours just happens to be our class mechanic and doesn’t prevent CC, conditions, or other debuffs (or on-hit triggers). If it was actually broken, a lot more people would have been complaining about it.

When DS absorbed all direct damage from a single hit, it drastically raised the skill cap for fights involving a necro. Is the Necro in Death Shroud/has he not been in it for a while? Don’t use your massive hits. Wait until he leaves it, then immedietly strike. Bait it out, perhaps by doing something to draw his Fear. If you are the necro, do you want to use death shroud to absorb pressure, absorb spikes, or use its skills? Since the overflow introduction (which is buggy), necros can’t use it to block damage (and only damage) from a big hit (relevant in both PvE and PvP) and a necro’s opponent has no reason to worry about the necro negating his big hit. The play/counterplay level dropped significantly.

How is DS damage spilling OP?

Most other classes have a mechanic they can sit in and be completely invincible while they heal up and get ready for the fight again.

DS spilling is nowhere near this. Necros can’t heal at all in DS, and it just means one single attack, even if only 100 damage will be blocked instead of spilling over into the HP pool. And this attack will still take DS away.

on the positive side anet buffed the ds-lifeforce regeneration. so how about actual generate ENOUGH lifeforce to suck up the dmg and not wasting it somewhere else?

^ I guess the key point is that DS spill blocking allowed us to mitigate those epic 50,000 damage hits that PvE bosses love to do. All other classes have a way to do this.

Giving us 50,001 lifeforce is unrealistic and massively unbalanced, so giving us back the ability to block one single hit is much preferred.

hooma.9642:

on the positive side anet buffed the ds-lifeforce regeneration. so how about actual generate ENOUGH lifeforce to suck up the dmg and not wasting it somewhere else?

That is impossible. Several bosses do way more damage than we have life force. Some do enough damage to clear out your life force bar AND a health bar.

Having access to a skill that prevents an unlimited amount of damage and conditions on top of that (like evade or invulnerability), is not equal to a weak mechanic that prevents only a limited amount of damage and not conditions(Death Shroud). It just doesn’t scale up.

^

Also, as a berserker geared character, you should die from every bigger hit. How would you balance out, that every kind of necro has the ability to avoid damage every 2-5 sec? You know, classes get perma vigor from adept minor traits. Only warrior has smiliar bad luck as necro, but they have 2 off hand weapon with blocks, a two hander with an evade and invulnerability on a 60s. Options would be nice.
Or necro should pop spectral armor, pop in full DS and crossfingers to not die if he / she is out of dodge?

To hell with stealth that isnt the topic of discussion here.

The problem is that a necro mechanic was reworked for the sake of pvp whilst completely ignoring pve.
Someone started a post about nerfing skills for the sake of pvp which I encourage people to post in.

+1 necros need this. Our life force should be over (30%?) in order to take a full boss hit or it would be too easy.

Since the devs are now looking at unwarranted pvp nerfs, I sincerly hope they reconsider the change to DS as well. But I’ll post this in that topic as well, since it really belongs there.

What if they made the DS damage overflow only count at a certain health treshold such as 50% and upwards?

Example: Player A has 40,000 life force when their death shroud is fully charged. Player A has 25,000 life force left when the boss throws in an attack for 30,000 damage. (Random numbers i know) Since player A is above the 50% treshold, the overflow damage gets ignored and player A exits his DS at full HP.

Player B has 40,000 life force when their death shroud is fully charged. Player B has 10,000 life force left when the boss attacks for 17,500 damage. Since player B is below the 50% treshold, the overflow damage counts and player B exits his DS at Full HP – 7,500.

Just a random thought

That could work. However, I see no reason why they couldn’t just revert it back to the way it was. As in:

It blocks 1 attack regardless of how much life force you have left, and this damage completely drains all your life force, but does not spill into your actual health pool.

This never was overpowered, and no one ever complained about it. It literally was removed for no reason.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It literally was removed for no reason.

PvP.

I am still suggesting aegis and/or vigor (or a unique effect acting similarly) on one of the DS skills.
It could also be traited – Bountiful Shrouding – each skill used in DS provides a boon to the user. Tweaked accordingly.

Dalanor.5387:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It literally was removed for no reason.

PvP.

The it’s an easy solution. Separate the mechanic into a pve version and a pvp version. They have done such before. They can do such again.

There isn’t any glaring reason why this mechanic shouldn’t be reverted for pve purposes. I can see some of the gripe for pvp, but I feel they are weak gripes. You couldn’t burst down a foe in gw1 pvp either if the monk timed it’s prots right. You needed to regroup and try a different tactic. It’s not really that different here.

Keep in mind that even in pvp all it does is block one attack, if properly timed. It’s not going to stop a burst of multiple attacks.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Keep in mind that even in pvp all it does is block one attack, if properly timed. It’s not going to stop a burst of multiple attacks.

And it will only block the direct damage at that. CC and conditions get applied as normal.

Yup! And it’s important to note that it’s a block in DS – where Necros are limited to 5 skills.

It’s not like Necros can use mobility skills or heals or anything else while in DS.

Dalanor.5387:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It literally was removed for no reason.

PvP.

It actually had nothing to do with PvP- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DeathShroud-is-now-base-100-HP/first#post2539415

The change to having damage spill over to your health pool was indeed to resolve falling damage, but was also how Death Shroud was, from a Design standpoint, intended to function.

The primary reason was the fall damage. It also happened to fit better with the original concept. It did not have to do with balance. They tried to mitigate the effective nerf with some buffs to life force gain, but as was explained at the time – regen is fundamentally different then a full damage block. You can argue whether or not it was op in PvP, but it was not the reason for the change.

Devs were initially really cautious with giving us lifeforce. But it seems to me like over time they’ve recognised that DS isn’t some crazy overpowered form, but just a way to do mid-tier dps.

A key problem with DS-spilling is that not only do large hits take us out of DS, but hit us way into our HP (if not killing us).

Whenever that happens, Necros now have to spend time healing their health, and then spend time “healing” DS by using lifeforce regen skills (and not dps’ing) just to get back into DS to do mid-tier dps.

At this point I’d be happy if the switch was just instant. The delay is what will kill you.