Guild Wars 2

GW2’s combat was developed as an action experience. Active movement should matter, positioning should be important and visual queues/reactions are what separate the great player from the bad. To support this, classes were given dodges as innate abilities and a slew of other active skills that allow them to avoid the big hits from their foes. A party with nothing but offensive equipment is able to complete any content by playing well and timing their abilities correctly. Unless you play a Necromancer.

Necromancer have damage mitigation in the form of DeathShroud and this was deemed such a powerful ability that in exchange for it Necros sacrifice damage immunities/mobility/health recovery. DeathShroud is a very powerful mechanic and would in conjunction with all that be horribly OP, but as it is now DeathShroud goes against everything that the game’s combat was built upon by having the Necro actually tank the big hits. DeathShroud is a skill that would be perfectly in place on other MMO’s holy trinity design, but that sticks out as cumbersome within GW2’s systems. DeathShroud allows the Necro to play recklessly, to a certain point, since it allows Necro to survive more attacks than any other profession, but where is the skillful play in that? Why does such a big part of 1/8 of the professions maintain behavior that the game was designed to have left behind?

When you take DeathShroud into PvP a whole other slew of problems pop up. Necro’s have attrition as their core combat philosophy, but DeathShroud is anything but an attrition mechanic, as any experienced Necro can attest, when you get pulled into combat battle becomes a ticking clock, the longer the fight lasts the less likely the Necro is to win.

Why is that? Because Necro’s sustainability also goes against GW2’s intended combat design. Any other profession will sustain by avoiding the enemy’s attacks and using positioning and skills to mitigate damage while at the same time recovering their HP. The Necro cannot avoid the enemy’s damage and recover HP at the same time. DeathShroud blocks all forms of health recovery- Unholy Sanctuary is not meaningful enough to make a difference- and that means that a Necro’s HP is constantly depleting during combat. But, you might say, DeathShroud also works as HP! The Necro can recover LifeForce in % chunks and has a huge pool of HP! Well, here’s the problem, when DeathShroud is active LF also gets spent as a % for each second and a Necro needs to attack a foe to recover LF!

People generally try their hardest to avoid being attacked. When a Necro and another profession engage in combat and both decide to play defensively and recover their HP the other professions will at the same time avoid being attacked and recover HP, the Necro will use his healing skill and not be able to attack the enemy and recover LF. So the phase of recovery is over and both go back to hitting each other, the Necro is building up LF now right? Well yes, but he’s gone back to losing his health as well! This leads to a cycle of constantly decreasing health for the Necro. Necros are constantly fighting against a clock in combat, we have to go all in burst, even in condition builds, or inevitably lose a fight.

The best strategy against a Necro is to play conservatively, the Necro is always being worn down during a fight. How can that be the reality of the profession with attrition as its combat philosophy?!?

TL;DR – DeathShroud is part of old MMO Holy Trinity design and doesn’t fit nor work with GW2 combat.

Kiriakulos.1690:

…
sleuth of problems
…

hehehe, I’m going to use that. Totally worth reading the wall-o-text for.
I do agree that DS is poorly designed and needs a major rework also.

GreyWraith.8394:

Kiriakulos.1690:

…
sleuth of problems
…

hehehe, I’m going to use that. Totally worth reading the wall-o-text for.
I do agree that DS is poorly designed and needs a major rework also.

How would you suggest reworking it?

Step 1 would be to allow the self-heal traits necros already have to work while in death shroud. Anything else can be re-evaluated and considered after that. May turn out that we really don’t need much more than that.

Oh, and the Regeneration boon. It’s stupid that a boon is a pure liability for anyone, but that’s what Regeneration is while a necro is in death shroud.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Step 1 would be to allow the self-heal traits necros already have to work while in death shroud. Anything else can be re-evaluated and considered after that. May turn out that we really don’t need much more than that.

I completely agree. I stated this is previous threads. In my opinion, there is no reason that any profession should become immune to its own trait point investment.

dancingmonkey.4902:

How would you suggest reworking it?

The trade-off was Immunity/Mobility/Health recovery.
All 3 proved to be too much, so re-introduce 1 first and health recovery looks to be simpler one of the 3. Re-intorducing health recovery within DS also fixes a lot of issues the mechanic presents in a party setting.

Like Drarnor said, first allow our self heals to work within DS and evaluate the result.
If we’re still lacking add some more, if that alone proves too much make it so only a % of healing works.

ANet said they want to take balance in iterations, so, iterate.

GreyWraith.8394:

Kiriakulos.1690:

…
sleuth of problems
…

hehehe, I’m going to use that. Totally worth reading the wall-o-text for.
I do agree that DS is poorly designed and needs a major rework also.

Whoops, that was supposed to be slew.

Kiriakulos.1690:

dancingmonkey.4902:

How would you suggest reworking it?

The trade-off was Immunity/Mobility/Health recovery.
All 3 proved to be too much, so re-introduce 1 first and health recovery looks to be simpler one of the 3. Re-intorducing health recovery within DS also fixes a lot of issues the mechanic presents in a party setting.

Like Drarnor said, first allow our self heals to work within DS and evaluate the result.
If we’re still lacking add some more, if that alone proves too much make it so only a % of healing works.

ANet said they want to take balance in iterations, so, iterate.

At this point though, you are suggesting a straight buff, one that I strongly agree with, but suggest no trade off. Are you suggesting that DS gives nothing up in return?

dancingmonkey.4902:

Kiriakulos.1690:

dancingmonkey.4902:

How would you suggest reworking it?

The trade-off was Immunity/Mobility/Health recovery.
All 3 proved to be too much, so re-introduce 1 first and health recovery looks to be simpler one of the 3. Re-intorducing health recovery within DS also fixes a lot of issues the mechanic presents in a party setting.

Like Drarnor said, first allow our self heals to work within DS and evaluate the result.
If we’re still lacking add some more, if that alone proves too much make it so only a % of healing works.

ANet said they want to take balance in iterations, so, iterate.

At this point though, you are suggesting a straight buff, one that I strongly agree with, but suggest no trade off. Are you suggesting that DS gives nothing up in return?

It should have a trade-off if it was balanced, but it currently isn’t, it is weak.

A lot of people seem to think DS makes Necro OP for 1v1, but that is because too many people play offensive against Necro in 1v1. The Necro will be able to trade straight hits better than any other profession due to DS, but if you play defensively the Necro will always come behind in a fight.

I agree, DS simply is not in that good a spot that warrants any trade-offs.

Allowing life siphons and regeneration through DS is a great start. The heals aren’t that big and requires necro to stay in DS for a fair amount of time before the heals start paying off. Bursting necro out of DS is not that hard especially with our weakness to CC.

I disagree. Personally, I feel if we are permitted to heal in DS, that the base health of DS needs to be lowered.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I disagree. Personally, I feel if we are permitted to heal in DS, that the base health of DS needs to be lowered.

In that case, just remove that weird damage reduction that gets applied while in DS. Total LF pool is already about 2/3 of base health- before applying any bonus from Soul Reaping- damage reduction is applied so it gets to 1/1.

The way you’ve phrased your entire post just makes me disagree with everything you’ve said.

The necro Attrition mechanic is just like the Warriors Attrition mechanic. The Warrior takes hits to the face without the need to dodge using his stances or Block skills or CC to keep the enemy from hitting him. The longer you go without hitting the Warrior’s health directly, the higher the chance that the Warrior will win.

Of course, when all of those are on cooldown, the Warrior has to then focus on evasion and LoS (mind you, this is something the Necro also has the ability to do) but for the most part, the Warrior is able to walk into a fight, sit in the middle of it and absorb a lot of the hits.

A Necro does a similar thing. Take big hits with the Deathshroud mechanic, dodge when Deathshroud is on cooldown, CC people so they can’t hit you or when they do hit you, they do less damage than they would normally (weakness/protection).

A Necro can spec to heal outside of Deathshroud (Regen stacking with Mark of Evasion + Well of Blood, Contagion) as well as inside (Unholy Sanctuary) and they can definitely pull off a similar feat to what Warriors are doing by wearing you out and keeping themselves alive. But the problem, which I think something you failed to touch on, is that these specs aren’t very good at damage like the Warrior speccs are.

The other thing is, Consume Conditions is just an amazing powerful heal and people don’t want to let go of that. If people used Well of Blood instead, the necro could easily heal for over 11k health with the right spec (Well of Blood’s regen scales well with Healing Power).

In conclusion, the Deathshroud mechanic works well with GW2’s combat. Not every class is going to be nimble and quick and it’s not like the Necro lacks the ability to use endurance. The problem is that the speccs that play into the attrition mechanic are worse off because they can’t do enough damage and everyone sees consume conditions as the best heal.

Looks to me like you’re twisting words to make it seem like it’s too much but in reality it’s not. I don’t feel DS is too powerful

Dirame.8521:

The way you’ve phrased your entire post just makes me disagree with everything you’ve said.

The necro Attrition mechanic is just like the Warriors Attrition mechanic. The Warrior takes hits to the face without the need to dodge using his stances or Block skills or CC to keep the enemy from hitting him. The longer you go without hitting the Warrior’s health directly, the higher the chance that the Warrior will win.

Of course, when all of those are on cooldown, the Warrior has to then focus on evasion and LoS (mind you, this is something the Necro also has the ability to do) but for the most part, the Warrior is able to walk into a fight, sit in the middle of it and absorb a lot of the hits.

A Necro does a similar thing. Take big hits with the Deathshroud mechanic, dodge when Deathshroud is on cooldown, CC people so they can’t hit you or when they do hit you, they do less damage than they would normally (weakness/protection).

A Necro can spec to heal outside of Deathshroud (Regen stacking with Mark of Evasion + Well of Blood, Contagion) as well as inside (Unholy Sanctuary) and they can definitely pull off a similar feat to what Warriors are doing by wearing you out and keeping themselves alive. But the problem, which I think something you failed to touch on, is that these specs aren’t very good at damage like the Warrior speccs are.

The other thing is, Consume Conditions is just an amazing powerful heal and people don’t want to let go of that. If people used Well of Blood instead, the necro could easily heal for over 11k health with the right spec (Well of Blood’s regen scales well with Healing Power).

In conclusion, the Deathshroud mechanic works well with GW2’s combat. Not every class is going to be nimble and quick and it’s not like the Necro lacks the ability to use endurance. The problem is that the speccs that play into the attrition mechanic are worse off because they can’t do enough damage and everyone sees consume conditions as the best heal.

In theory it sounds great, im practice it does’t work.
If you put up the numbers game necro is the god walking amongst mear morals. Yet there is no way in heaven or hell the necro could sustain as a healing/support profession in spvp.
CC is the best heal, it’s the quickes it and you can cast it and keep moving. considering 1/2 of the game is movement and positioning especially for necromancer.
The overall idea/theme of the OP is correct, at least it sure feels like it.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Necro’s have attrition as their core combat philosophy, but DeathShroud is anything but an attrition mechanic, as any experienced Necro can attest, when you get pulled into combat battle becomes a ticking clock, the longer the fight lasts the less likely the Necro is to win.

This forum habit of taking class descriptions or words used by devs once in a forum post or video as biblical unchanging statements of design intent drive me nuts. how do you really know what anet wants for necro’s “core combat philosophy”?

In this case, some necros have been clinging to the word “attrition” like rangers were clinging to the phrase “unparalleled archers.”

and how are you defining “attrition?”

suppose you enter a fight as a necro:

• you open with DS for the fearlock and burning proc and immediatly drop out to load condis on the enemy.
• enemy somehow survives, gets you to 60% health, you use your heal to get back to 90% health and pop your DS.
• enemy depletes you down to 20% of your DS bar despite your full condi build nuking him for 2k lifeblasts every second.

(timeout: IF you killed your enemy at this point, how is not because of attrition? your 1.5 healthbars outlasted his healthbar)

• you drop deathshroud, pop spectral armor, and by the time your at 60% health again you heal up 90% and go back into a 100% deathshroud
• enemy depletes you down to 20% of your DS bar despite your full condi build nuking him for 2k lifeblasts every second.

(timeout: IF you kill your enemy anytime up to this point, how is it not because of attrition? your 2.5 healthbars outlasted his healthbar.)

• you drop deathshroud, enemy takes you from ~90% of your health down to 20%. But wait! You had Last Gasp traited! at 50% spectral armor popped automajically so before he can get off that killing blow, you jump back into a nearly 100% DS.

(timeout: IF you kill your enemy anytime up to this point, how is it not because of attrition? your 3.5 healthbars outlasted his healthbar.)

I think you get the point. Often, Necro’s win fights because their innate class mechanic allows them to outlast their opponents innate healing mechanics. Sometimes, enemies will specialize in healing or damage avoidance mechanics, and they can manage to outlast the necro.

Almost every necro fight is a fight of attrition for your enemy, because they have to outlast your DS(s). Sometimes they can and sometimes they cant. What is the problem with that?

Allowing necros to heal too much in deathshroud is a slippery road, and IMO (as someone who plays a necro fairly often), any changes that improve healing in DS should also come with hard nerf to life force totals.

^ that’s a very hyperbolic description of how death shroud works and refills. Blatantly overstating the “ease” at which it refills, on top of how much damage you’re doing while in it. I guess none of those other players in the situation you laid out are dodging, healing, etc.?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

In theory it sounds great, im practice it does’t work.
If you put up the numbers game necro is the god walking amongst mear morals. Yet there is no way in heaven or hell the necro could sustain as a healing/support profession in spvp.
CC is the best heal, it’s the quickes it and you can cast it and keep moving. considering 1/2 of the game is movement and positioning especially for necromancer.
The overall idea/theme of the OP is correct, at least it sure feels like it.

It’s actually not the quickest heal (Well of Blood is) and you can cast all the other heals whilst moving.
Necro has, and can be a bunker. You just have to take a look at some of the old Necro bunker videos on youtube to see that. I can’t remember the name of the guy but he definitely popularized the bunker Necro for a short time because of how long he could sustain in a fight. And all he was using was wells.

The funny thing about the Necro is, the best specc that really encompasses what the Necro can do with attrition/Deathshroud is the most hated specc by “vets” and loved by newbs.

A minion Necro can easily wear you down with his direct health and finish you off with his DS health. Not to mention that at least two of the minions around him feed into the gaining life force on nearby deaths thing.

Roe.3679:

^ that’s a very hyperbolic description of how death shroud works and refills. Blatantly overstating the “ease” at which it refills, on top of how much damage you’re doing while in it. I guess none of those other players in the situation you laid out are dodging, healing, etc.?

Lets not confuse hyperbole with simplification that was needed for the sake of describing a fight with a million possible variations in the short span of a forum post.

in the example i gave, i supposed the heal did around 30% of the necro’s health, that spectral armor would regenerate 70% of the necro’s life force, and that the life blasts hit for about 2k when speccd for condition dmg (much more when spec’d for power). Those numbers can all vary based upon lots of things, but in general they are pretty reasonable estimates.

do you dispute that SA often regenerates 70% of your life force?
do you dispute that life blast often hits for 2k as condi necro?

i felt it was implied that the opponent would be dodging and healing, just as it is implied they would also be actively dps’ing.

regardless, the points remain:

• almost every fight against any type of necro is a fight of attrition for his opponent, because they have to out last death shroud. sometimes the enemies healing and avoidance mechanics outclass deathshroud, and sometimes they dont.
• if significant healing is possible while in deathshroud, significant reductions to life force totals would be needed to balance it. that would probably do a huge disservice to all the necros that then either didn’t specialize in healing or didnt have teammates that could provide that kind of support.

Dirame.8521:

Necro has, and can be a bunker. You just have to take a look at some of the old Necro bunker videos on youtube to see that. I can’t remember the name of the guy but he definitely popularized the bunker Necro for a short time because of how long he could sustain in a fight. And all he was using was wells.

The funny thing about the Necro is, the best specc that really encompasses what the Necro can do with attrition/Deathshroud is the most hated specc by “vets” and loved by newbs.

Most necromancer probably hate that build because it has the problems, that are brought up in this topic. It is really frustrating to go into DS and then all the healing of your siphons doesnt work anymore…

I would even go so far and say if you want to bunker as necro use spectral builds not siphon well builds…

Raven.9603:

do you dispute that SA often regenerates 70% of your life force?

Yes, it has an icd of 1 second. so untraited it can at most generate 48% life force. Traited it can at most generate 79.2% life force.

do you dispute that life blast often hits for 2k as condi necro?

yes.

• almost every fight against any type of necro is a fight of attrition for his opponent, because they have to out last death shroud. sometimes the enemies healing and avoidance mechanics outclass deathshroud, and sometimes they dont.

This is only true if the necro starts with a full life force bar which is not always the case.

Raven.9603:

do you dispute that SA often regenerates 70% of your life force?
do you dispute that life blast often hits for 2k as condi necro?

Actually, I do.

Spectral armor has 6 seconds base cd, so at best it would regen 48%. If traited it goes to 9 seconds and then you can recover 72%, if you got at second 0 since due to icd you’re looking at best at 8 hits, 64% total. If you had DS on you would also have lost some LF or probably broke even, so no LF regen then. If you had DS off, that’s at least 8 hits to your HP, depending on what you’re fighting that could be a hell of a lot of health lost.

As for the lifeblast damage, for that much damage a condi build needs to be within the 600 range cap. Condi builds try very hard to stay further away, so that also is less than likely to happen consistently.

Kiriakulos.1690:

As for the lifeblast damage, for that much damage a condi build needs to be within the 600 range cap. Condi builds try very hard to stay further away, so that also is less than likely to happen consistently.

Where you like to stand , range wise, has nothing to do with whether or not that damage amount is a capability. You specifically stated that yes, you actually do dispute that life blast hits for 2k………………….it either can or it cannot.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Kiriakulos.1690:

As for the lifeblast damage, for that much damage a condi build needs to be within the 600 range cap. Condi builds try very hard to stay further away, so that also is less than likely to happen consistently.

Where you like to stand , range wise, has nothing to do with whether or not that damage amount is a capability. You specifically stated that yes, you actually do dispute that life blast hits for 2k………………….it either can or it cannot.

To be fair a 2k lifeblast is rather unlikely for a condition necromancer to happen. Since it would have to be a crit and the necromancer would have to use a carrion amulet. With rabid amulet you will never get a 2k crit without might stacks/vulnerability stacks. Atleast i didnt on the light golems in the mists…

But i guess the fury proc helps carrion amulet users in that regard.

Tim.6450:

Raven.9603:

do you dispute that life blast often hits for 2k as condi necro?

yes.

I can testify that it does hit for 2k sometimes. Especially when using Carrion.

Dirame.8521:

Tim.6450:

Raven.9603:

do you dispute that life blast often hits for 2k as condi necro?

yes.

I can testify that it does hit for 2k sometimes. Especially when using Carrion.

First he said often, carrion does not imply often since to get those numbers you need to crit. Secondly the moment you get an opponent with more the 2356 armor (celestial medium armor / cleric light armor both with no extra toughness you cannot crit above 2k without outside help (such as boons) with a standard 6/4/0/0/4 spec so I will call that not really often. I will acknowledge the fact that you can crit above 2K with Carrion but I would not really call it often since you have 1/7 chance to crit.

Edit:

First he said often, carrion does not imply often since to get those numbers you need to crit. Secondly the moment you get an opponent with more the 2356 armor (celestial medium armor / cleric light armor both with no extra toughness you cannot crit above 2k without outside help (such as boons) with a standard 6/4/0/0/4 spec so I will call that not really often. I will acknowledge the fact that you can crit above 2K with Carrion but I would not really call it often since you have 1/7 chance to crit.

Jesus.

• It’s 34% crit for the first 5 seconds because you have fury when you go in to DS which is a 1 in 3 chance.
• (imo) I think its fair to say that a many of your opponents arent running toughness amulets, so you will get bonus damage (higher than listed) for anyone below 2600 armor. Even if some are and you only hit some targets for 1.7k, that doesnt magically make 2k example a poor one.

Some of you are killing me.

• You can regen 70% life force with SA.
• You can hit for 2k lifeblasts with a condi build.
• These are reasonable estimates, not ridiculous or exaggerated examples that require the moon to be full or 25 might stacks and you all know that. This thread isn’t about trying to get DS nerfed, so stop defending it by down playing relatively normal capabilities.

Even if I decided to be like many other forum posters and use ridiculous examples, the point would be the same:

DS with significant healing would require a substantial life force reduction to prevent it from becoming OP, and in the process that would make DS worse for necros who didnt invest in that healing potential. Arguing semantics detracts from the main topic of the thread.

Necros are not in a bad place in terms of lasting a long time in a fight. While some classes can be better at lasting a long time, they are not innately better, they have to invest to achieve or surpass the baseline durability of a necro. If you want DS healing, you have to think about how it is most likely to be implemented, because it will most likely come with a DS “rebalancing” (ie be careful what you wish for). They are never going to hand necro’s significant healing in DS without reducing durability in some other way.

Raven.9603:

Even if I decided to be like many other forum posters and use ridiculous examples, the point would be the same:

But you did, the build you describe cannot exist.

DS with significant healing would require a substantial life force reduction to prevent it from becoming OP, and in the process that would make DS worse for necros who didnt invest in that healing potential.

Why would it be? What heals are currently underperforming due death shroud? Siphons, regen, parasitic bond, parastic contagion are relatively weak heals by themselves, the fact that death shroud hinders those heals just make them even more useless and even more unbalancable to boot.

Raven.9603:

Necros are not in a bad place in terms of lasting a long time in a fight. While some classes can be better at lasting a long time, they are not innately better, they have to invest to achieve or surpass the baseline durability of a necro.

Sustain =\= lasting long in a fight. Sustain refers to the amount of damage you can replenish. Also this only applies in a 1v1 situation and with a decent amount of life force (just saying).

Raven.9603:

• It’s 34% crit for the first 5 seconds because you have fury when you go in to DS which is a 1 in 3 chance.

That’s still one crit every 4.5 seconds (which is a bit shorter the your fury duration but don’t foget the cast time so only three casts at most). So often does not describe it.

Raven.9603:

• (imo) I think its fair to say that a many of your opponents arent running toughness amulets, so you will get bonus damage (higher than listed) for anyone below 2600 armor. Even if some are and you only hit some targets for 1.7k, that doesnt magically make 2k example a poor one.

You don’t even have to run toughness in your amulet. Guardians with 6 points in valor is enough (I think there is a zerker build with such setup meditaion guardian if I’m correct but not sure).

Tim.6450:

1…But you did, the build you describe cannot exist.

2…Why would it be? What heals are currently underperforming due death shroud? Siphons, regen, parasitic bond, parastic contagion are relatively weak heals by themselves, the fact that death shroud hinders those heals just make them even more useless and even more unbalancable to boot.

3…Sustain =\= lasting long in a fight. Sustain refers to the amount of damage you can replenish. Also this only applies in a 1v1 situation and with a decent amount of life force (just saying).

4…That’s still one crit every 4.5 seconds (which is a bit shorter the your fury duration but don’t foget the cast time so only three casts at most). So often does not describe it.

5…You don’t even have to run toughness in your amulet. Guardians with 6 points in valor is enough (I think there is a zerker build with such setup meditaion guardian if I’m correct but not sure).

1. Dont be ridiculous. Half Life 3 doesn’t exist. I hit people for 2k LB’s on my terrormancer regularly (in b4 we debate “regularly”). There are other necros in this thread that say they can hit for 2k lifeblasts with their condi builds, and you already admitted it was possible just not “often” but it is when you factor in fury. Also when you factor in the large amount of people who dont run toughness ammies. 2k lifeblasts are not uncommon.

2. This is what the thread is about, at least something is back on topic.

3. lol. In this entire thread, I did not use the word sustain (<— til’ there). The OP was arguing about attrition, and I highlighted that necros are already good at outlasting other classes. while that may or may not be sustain, if you combine that with significant improvements to sustain then you may end up with necros out lasting everyone. Or with all necros being nerfed to compensate for healing improvements (see: all ranger pets being nerfed because BM was too strong, rather than nerfing just BM scaling). I’m not going to bust out “webster’s dictionary of what necros consider sustain to mean in the current meta.” IMO, sustain is any reasonable form of recovering effective HP. For necros, LF generation is a form of sustain.

4. If 1/3 times isn’t “often enough” to mean “often” to Tim, hey, fine.

5. How many thieves, rangers and engies are in pvp that dont run toughness ammies? How many ele’s don’t run more something with toughness than celestial? How many mesmers? How many necros? There are a lot of players in almost every match that you can hit for 2k on a condi build.

I get the feeling you are one of those last word guys, considering that we are on the third reply to what constitutes “often.” So im just going to drop debating nit-picking semantics here and only reply to items that are on topic. Thanks for your time man.

Death Shroud at its core is absolutely fine as a concept. The only reason it has issues is in mid-scale fighting (larger than 4 players but less than zergs) because the AoE scaling doesn’t do very well until you just get showered in LF from death, and because it blocks other Necromancer mechanics.

Increase AoE scaling LF that will give you more LF for hitting multiple targets, and allow self-healing and regen to go through DS and its just fine.

Bhawb.7408:

Death Shroud at its core is absolutely fine as a concept. The only reason it has issues is in mid-scale fighting (larger than 4 players but less than zergs) because the AoE scaling doesn’t do very well until you just get showered in LF from death, and because it blocks other Necromancer mechanics.

Increase AoE scaling LF that will give you more LF for hitting multiple targets, and allow self-healing and regen to go through DS and its just fine.

This.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I disagree. Personally, I feel if we are permitted to heal in DS, that the base health of DS needs to be lowered.

I was just thinking this too!

+1

It could be like poison but w/o the DOT effect.

Sigh…not all heals…just siphon,regen and parasitic contagion. We don’t even have access to utilities in DS…….

All heals allowed is bad,very bad,game breaking bad……

Edit: non single target LF gains needs to be more common, staff AA piercing, dagger AA actually stacking LF,LF on crit as well, no need for scaling based of number of foes.

Sagat.3285:

Sigh…not all heals…just siphon,regen and parasitic contagion. We don’t even have access to utilities in DS…….

All heals allowed is bad,very bad,game breaking bad……

Edit: non single target LF gains needs to be more common, staff AA piercing, dagger AA actually stacking LF,LF on crit as well, no need for scaling based of number of foes.

Indeed. If they allowed all self-traited + regen to work, we’d have:
Parasitic Contagion
Vampiric
Vampiric Master
Vampiric Precision
Vampiric Rituals
Regeneration (and anything related)
Parasitic Bond
Transfusion (note: I think this would and should be changed so it stops trying to heal you through DS, as that would be way too strong for it to give LF, and heal you and allies)

If they allowed all Necromancer-only sources of heal, then we’d have in addition to the above
Blood Fiend’s passive
Signet of Vampirism’s passive and active (you could proc it, but not activate it while in DS)
Well of Blood’s pulsing heal

Also, technically speaking blast finishers on water fields, and some rune/sigil procs like Leeching/Blood sigils might proc with the 2nd effect, if they somehow coded it to be “all heals that are caused by the Necromancer heal”, but not if they added exceptions for each of the specific cases..

Now, something to note is this is likely a very hard change to make. Without knowing how DS is programmed, it means they would most likely need to add in everything as an exception. Obviously it is possible to heal “through” DS, but it would likely be a lot of work to do it for the number of things they’d have to. So while this is a great change that should happen, its probably a lot of work to implement.

Raven.9603

3. lol. In this entire thread, I did not use the word sustain (<— til’ there). The OP was arguing about attrition, and I highlighted that necros are already good at outlasting other classes. while that may or may not be sustain, if you combine that with significant improvements to sustain then you may end up with necros out lasting everyone. Or with all necros being nerfed to compensate for healing improvements (see: all ranger pets being nerfed because BM was too strong, rather than nerfing just BM scaling). I’m not going to bust out “webster’s dictionary of what necros consider sustain to mean in the current meta.” IMO, sustain is any reasonable form of recovering effective HP. For necros, LF generation is a form of sustain.

I am 100% arguing about sustain. Sustain is what we lost in exchange for DS but DS doesn’t work within GW2 combat design due to the reasons I stated. Attrition is our combat design according to the devs- people who are responsible for how the game should work- but since we don’t have sustain, attrition is an impossibility, once again for the reasons I stated.

If your arguments are not about why Necro sustain is lacking or why you believe it isn’t, I have no idea what interest you have in this discussion.

Bhawb.7408:

Now, something to note is this is likely a very hard change to make. Without knowing how DS is programmed, it means they would most likely need to add in everything as an exception. Obviously it is possible to heal “through” DS, but it would likely be a lot of work to do it for the number of things they’d have to. So while this is a great change that should happen, its probably a lot of work to implement.

Considering that feature patches come within 5 months periods of one another, this change can be implemented, tested and judged quite easily in that chronogram. With all the different improvements to DS UI and other parts of it, I’d say DS is closer to a base state than a downed state and healing would not be a very impactful code change. In fact, I’d expect it to be nothing more than a gate – if (DS)- followed by another gate – if(source == self)- to allow this change. They already have the code model for unholy sanctuary to serve as base.

Would this come outside of a big balance/feature patch? No.

For me half the problem is sustain, which bhawbs list would fix perfectly. The other major problem with necros is that without instant cast escapes/invulns that don’t require setup, and bad access to stability they are still ping pong balls in most actual fights. Changing one or two of the bad utilities to includes stability, or giving us more access through traits (which would be easy considering how many traits necros have that are bad or need a merge) would fix the other major problem.

Kiriakulos.1690:

If your arguments are not about why Necro sustain is lacking or why you believe it isn’t, I have no idea what interest you have in this discussion.

I know what you are arguing for, I just happen to disagree with your proposal “as is.” There is no debating that healthbar sustain is absolutely lacking, because necros are not supposed to have it, and if it was allowed would be drastically overpowered if it wasnt also paired with a huge nerf to life force. A nerf that would damage all necros that dont spec for regen.

Think about it this way:

• How long could you spend in deathshroud in a fight against 1 enemy if you really wanted? Depends on the damage of your enemy.
• Lets say 6 seconds per current lifebar of DS. That is probably a pretty conservative estimate for most enemies.
• Now with 2x spectral armor (1 ultilty and 1 trait), you have another 4 seconds of death shroud for each one of those.
• Not even going to factor that maybe your build generates life force well from other sources, like dagger or a well timed feast.
• Thats 14 seconds of deathshroud on very conservative estimates.
• Imagine fighting a warrior who somehow went completely immune to your damage for 14 seconds of a fight, all the while his healing signet tics his health back up (figure the combined regen from your boon with the right gear + siphoning traits could get up to around healing signet levels, or higher with unholy sanctuary but that would mean the loss of either dhuumfire or Last Gasp).
• Of course, warriors already can do this against physical classes (2x endure pain, sure footed and shield master), and its ridiculously OP against any power based opponent.
• DS, unlike Endure Pain, also absorbs condition damage.

It would be over the top OP. And where is the line drawn? Does mango pie count? Do runes? Im scared. Its not like necros arent already very strong.

Dirame.8521:

The way you’ve phrased your entire post just makes me disagree with everything you’ve said.

The necro Attrition mechanic is just like the Warriors Attrition mechanic. The Warrior takes hits to the face without the need to dodge using his stances or Block skills or CC to keep the enemy from hitting him. The longer you go without hitting the Warrior’s health directly, the higher the chance that the Warrior will win.

Of course, when all of those are on cooldown, the Warrior has to then focus on evasion and LoS (mind you, this is something the Necro also has the ability to do) but for the most part, the Warrior is able to walk into a fight, sit in the middle of it and absorb a lot of the hits.

A Necro does a similar thing. Take big hits with the Deathshroud mechanic, dodge when Deathshroud is on cooldown, CC people so they can’t hit you or when they do hit you, they do less damage than they would normally (weakness/protection).

A Necro can spec to heal outside of Deathshroud (Regen stacking with Mark of Evasion + Well of Blood, Contagion) as well as inside (Unholy Sanctuary) and they can definitely pull off a similar feat to what Warriors are doing by wearing you out and keeping themselves alive. But the problem, which I think something you failed to touch on, is that these specs aren’t very good at damage like the Warrior speccs are.

The other thing is, Consume Conditions is just an amazing powerful heal and people don’t want to let go of that. If people used Well of Blood instead, the necro could easily heal for over 11k health with the right spec (Well of Blood’s regen scales well with Healing Power).

In conclusion, the Deathshroud mechanic works well with GW2’s combat. Not every class is going to be nimble and quick and it’s not like the Necro lacks the ability to use endurance. The problem is that the speccs that play into the attrition mechanic are worse off because they can’t do enough damage and everyone sees consume conditions as the best heal.

^^^^This, so much of this. I personally havent used a healing build so i can’t verify the number but it definitely makes sense. This is what necros should be doing in dungeons for the party, healing. Guardians apply the boons and necros heal the party and cleanse with Transfusion and other traits, staff and well of blood . Even otherwells that will keep the party alive like well of darkness are useful. Any necro doing this are the last to die when things go wrong, i know that is the case for me.

Ive been using pretty much only necro in pvp and im now rank 50. I can tell you right now, I don’t feel underpowered against other classes, my survivability, sustainability and mobilty all seem to work out for the most part. I just fought a tanky hambow warrior yesterday for probably 5 minutes in Niflhel, just behind the mid point to keep him from causing havoc in the fight there. During which I had enough sustain to pressure him to 40% hp (the guy just refused to die), had enough mobility and survivability to ignore him and check the mid point fight, get back to him to continue the fight then drag him to my teammates who had finally won the point and were able to finish him off. The entire time, i was in no real danger of dying. So do you still think the necro class is trash? Learn . To . Play . Necro

The pvp matches ive seen from other players in videos and in game are all locked into generally the same build idea, if it isn’t working, try something else, stop trying to do what other classes are doing, like Dirame brilliantly said, copying other classes like warrior’s face tank dps, and dodging when face tanking is on cd, will get you no damage, so don’t do it.

Ragion.2831:

^^^^This, so much of this. I personally havent used a healing build so i can’t verify the number but it definitely makes sense. This is what necros should be doing in dungeons for the party, healing. Guardians apply the boons and necros heal the party and cleanse with Transfusion and other traits, staff and well of blood . Even otherwells that will keep the party alive like well of darkness are useful. Any necro doing this are the last to die when things go wrong, i know that is the case for me.

Or the Guardian can handle the boons, healing, and cleansing simultaneously. Because, you know, he can. Then you can take someone else instead of the necro.

Warriors may be able to go immune to damage for shorter periods of time, but they also are capable of regaining health at a pretty good rate while doing so. Necros may be able to prevent more damage in a duel (less against multiple foes), but their health does not replenish during that time or, for that matter, replenish well when not using death shroud. As such, between a Warrior and a necro both playing an attrition game, the Warrior will always win. This is also true of Guardians, Eles, and Rangers. Engineers, Thieves, and Mesmers don’t typically have high healing builds, but SA thieves can play attrition games with the best of them.

Healing in DS should happen, but it would be unwise to not alter HOW those heals effect them in DS, because I do agree, that it would be a tad OP. For example, multiple necro’s with transfusion, would have a hilarious circlejerk of group healing.

So some abilities might need to be nerfed somewhat/have necro’s only recieve some set fraction/scaling amount of heal from different sources etc to make it balanced.

But no one can honestly say that literally having all these healing effects, including your own abilities and traits, as well as a large part of team support simply not work because of our own class mechanic is good gameplay.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Considering that feature patches come within 5 months periods of one another, this change can be implemented, tested and judged quite easily in that chronogram. With all the different improvements to DS UI and other parts of it, I’d say DS is closer to a base state than a downed state and healing would not be a very impactful code change. In fact, I’d expect it to be nothing more than a gate – if (DS)- followed by another gate – if(source == self)- to allow this change. They already have the code model for unholy sanctuary to serve as base.

Would this come outside of a big balance/feature patch? No.

No, it isn’t that easy. This isn’t a high school programming project where they just have to put a few cute little statements and be done, game coding is far, far more complex than that.

Stick with the self-heal traits and the Regeneration boon to start with, then evaluate from there. Receiving 100% of heals while in death shroud right now would be OP, because the necro has been balanced thus far without it.

Kiriakulos.1690:

I am 100% arguing about sustain. Sustain is what we lost in exchange for DS but DS doesn’t work within GW2 combat design due to the reasons I stated. Attrition is our combat design according to the devs- people who are responsible for how the game should work- but since we don’t have sustain, attrition is an impossibility, once again for the reasons I stated.

If your arguments are not about why Necro sustain is lacking or why you believe it isn’t, I have no idea what interest you have in this discussion.

Gaining/Losing Deathshroud IS the Necro’s attrition mechanic. Instead of gaining health like other classes, they gain DS mostly.

They can generate a lot of healing outside of it but, DS is DS for a reason.

I think the biggest weakness of DS is that it only complements a handful of Necro builds. If I’m running my usual MM build, for example, I only ever go into DS to throw out Tainted Shackles and maaaaybe Life Transfer if there’s a lot of enemies around. (In PvP, I’ll also pop into DS to use Fear.) Other than that, I prefer to stay out of DS since it means I can’t access my minion skills, or get healing from my minions. This means that DS goes completely unused in the majority of fights.

I’d like to see DS get some reworks so it can actually be tapped into to bolster other Necromancer skills. For example, take my MM build. How about, in exchange for “reserving” a portion of the DS bar, it allows us to summon extra minions? I may have my Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Flesh Wurm and Flesh Golem out.

I want some more healing, so I reserve 25% of my DS bar and summon a second Blood Fiend. Then, I want even more Putrid Explosion goodness, so I reserve a further 50% of my DS (25% x 2) for 4 more Bone Minions, a total of 6. Finally, I reserve the last 25% of my DS for a second Flesh Golem for extra tanking and DPS.

This allows me a truly massive undead army, but at the cost of basically having no DS at all.

(For balancing reasons, perhaps the Flesh Golem or Blood Fiend can’t be resummoned, or have a cap of one extra only.)

Zaxares.5419:

I think the biggest weakness of DS is that it only complements a handful of Necro builds. If I’m running my usual MM build, for example, I only ever go into DS to throw out Tainted Shackles and maaaaybe Life Transfer if there’s a lot of enemies around. (In PvP, I’ll also pop into DS to use Fear.) Other than that, I prefer to stay out of DS since it means I can’t access my minion skills, or get healing from my minions. This means that DS goes completely unused in the majority of fights.

I’d like to see DS get some reworks so it can actually be tapped into to bolster other Necromancer skills. For example, take my MM build. How about, in exchange for “reserving” a portion of the DS bar, it allows us to summon extra minions? I may have my Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Flesh Wurm and Flesh Golem out.

I want some more healing, so I reserve 25% of my DS bar and summon a second Blood Fiend. Then, I want even more Putrid Explosion goodness, so I reserve a further 50% of my DS (25% x 2) for 4 more Bone Minions, a total of 6. Finally, I reserve the last 25% of my DS for a second Flesh Golem for extra tanking and DPS.

This allows me a truly massive undead army, but at the cost of basically having no DS at all.

(For balancing reasons, perhaps the Flesh Golem or Blood Fiend can’t be resummoned, or have a cap of one extra only.)

Only in PvE. Also, I’m going to channel the devs by saying “This is too hard to do and isn’t what we want for the Necro.”

Bhawb.7408:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Considering that feature patches come within 5 months periods of one another, this change can be implemented, tested and judged quite easily in that chronogram. With all the different improvements to DS UI and other parts of it, I’d say DS is closer to a base state than a downed state and healing would not be a very impactful code change. In fact, I’d expect it to be nothing more than a gate – if (DS)- followed by another gate – if(source == self)- to allow this change. They already have the code model for unholy sanctuary to serve as base.

Would this come outside of a big balance/feature patch? No.

No, it isn’t that easy. This isn’t a high school programming project where they just have to put a few cute little statements and be done, game coding is far, far more complex than that.

Only when you do it wrong.
Good code is simple and intuitive, easy to adjust and add to it.
Complex systems can be achieved with very simple algorithms and routines, that’s the whole point of software engineering.

Zaxares.5419:

I think the biggest weakness of DS is that it only complements a handful of Necro builds.

I agree, I’ve built around DS I think twice, and that was early on when I first started, but since then only used it in those oh crap moments to stall my death.

Dirame.8521:

I’m going to channel the devs by saying “This is too hard to do and isn’t what we want for the Necro.”

And this is I’ve been thinking since I really took a look at the minor traits on the necromancer, they bit off more than they can chew. Think about it, if they really had some sort of specific vision of a necromancer, why not just give us set skills per level we can or can’t use and if they still want some customization then let us rank up the skill in power or something. Giving us the ability to pick and choose things to make our build means we choose the vision of the class not them, it’s now on their backs to make sure what we pick works well together, a much bigger task than what they seem to be willing to do. Look at the skill builder site; warrior, guardian and thief all have minor traits that flow perfectly together, then mesmer starts slacking a bit engineer gets worse then when you get to the necromancer it becomes wtf.

one interesting way to allow DS to “scale” to multiple enemies could be to have life force function as a timer.

eg, a full bar of life force is X seconds in death shroud regardless of how much damage you take.

to balance this, they would probably have to lower the amount of time you can spend in death shroud per fight compared to now, but it would make DS much stronger in situations where the necro was focused by multiple people.

Bhawb.7408:

Sagat.3285:

Sigh…not all heals…just siphon,regen and parasitic contagion. We don’t even have access to utilities in DS…….

All heals allowed is bad,very bad,game breaking bad……

Edit: non single target LF gains needs to be more common, staff AA piercing, dagger AA actually stacking LF,LF on crit as well, no need for scaling based of number of foes.

Indeed. If they allowed all self-traited + regen to work, we’d have:
Parasitic Contagion
Vampiric
Vampiric Master
Vampiric Precision
Vampiric Rituals
Regeneration (and anything related)
Parasitic Bond
Transfusion (note: I think this would and should be changed so it stops trying to heal you through DS, as that would be way too strong for it to give LF, and heal you and allies)

If they allowed all Necromancer-only sources of heal, then we’d have in addition to the above
Blood Fiend’s passive
Signet of Vampirism’s passive and active (you could proc it, but not activate it while in DS)
Well of Blood’s pulsing heal

Also, technically speaking blast finishers on water fields, and some rune/sigil procs like Leeching/Blood sigils might proc with the 2nd effect, if they somehow coded it to be “all heals that are caused by the Necromancer heal”, but not if they added exceptions for each of the specific cases..

Now, something to note is this is likely a very hard change to make. Without knowing how DS is programmed, it means they would most likely need to add in everything as an exception. Obviously it is possible to heal “through” DS, but it would likely be a lot of work to do it for the number of things they’d have to. So while this is a great change that should happen, its probably a lot of work to implement.

I also would go with that.