Guild Wars 2

yeah, 13 pages of stuff is a lot to skim through in the bugs section, but i was wondering if anyone had seen or reported anything about the soul reaping line. Im pretty sure everyone is aware of the Gluttony trait not adding anything to our life force gain methods, but I have just spent an about an hour testing out if that +30% life force is actually there or not.

I have noticed that the life force bar changes % went you add or take away vitality and I notice that damage does get reduced slighty more while in Deathshroud the more toughness you have. However, when i tested how fast my bar depleted while being beat on by a trash mob with the full trait line i noticed no difference then when I had no points invested in the trait line at all. Is this just me? I am having a hard time testing it exactly because i cant pick and choose a damage source that hits me with steady numbers. The type of damage between crits or a regular hit is random so its pretty hard. But I do notice that I get a few more seconds out of deathshroud with the 25% reduction (trait II), its just that its the same whether I have the regular 100% bar or if i get the extra 30%. (** I do know trait II is working, 10 seconds of DS brings me to 60%, with the trait it brings me down to 70% -tested several times-)

It’s bad enough that I can not fill my lifeforce bar rapidly with that extra 5% applied through Gluttony, but if I also am not getting the extra 30% increase to the actual bar as well, thats just dirty. That really feels like the our main class defining mechanic is broken…. badly broken. That would mean that along with certain broken traits we also have a modifier that is not working when we add points to it. That should be a priority fix as no other class I am aware of gets nothing for using a trait point.

If anyone can test, or find a better way to test this, and confirm… please post something back. And if it’s broken add it to the bug list.

I am really curious to find out if this true. I originally just wanted to see how much extra hp I gained from the DS mechanic and if it was adjustable by stacking high vitality. It seems to add more to the bar by stacking vitality, but I really can’t tell. I do know by looking at the numbers the damage does go down a bit more when i have higher toughness and jump into DS. There was another post talking about this, which is why I started playing with it, but I cant find what thread it was in. So sorry if i missed that place to put this.

TL:DR -

Looking for some people to test out 30 points in Soul Reaping to see if you actually get that extra 30% or not as it seems its just bogus. If you can confirm add your findings to the bugs thread, thanks … really curious about this will check back later.

I remember testing this in the mists, I don’t think it’s working either.

But hey, just another day for a Necro.

You are better off assuming all Necro traits/skills are bugged/not working unless you can PROVE 100% that they are working.

This is how I make my builds. As jaded as that sounds, its just something you have to live with as a necro.

Doesnt sound jaded. I just feel that as a class defining ability that so many people argue about and so many classes point fingers at, it should at least function properly and be effected by its trait line in the same respect. That 5% boost to life force gains would do wonders for all the people complaining about generating life force. Getting an extra 30% tacted on to the bar would also be amazing damage absorbtion. A lot of players ive talked to feel that DS isnt as tanky as it should be when investing so much into that trait line.

Idk, just another broken feature i guess to add to the other bugs. Im just wondering if other classes have broken features regarding their main class mechanic.

It doesnt actually make it into 130%. It makes the 100% Life Force into 130% of your hp instead of just 100%. It will last just as long but it will have more “hp” in it

Not hard to test – go to the training golems in heard of the mists and get full life force. Then go back to the main area and stand on the bonfire to the left of the entrance. Count the ticks until you leave DS.

Respec and put 30 points in Soul Reaping. Refill life bar on golems, then stand on the fire. Count the ticks until you leave DS.

Presto.

It is easier to just report what is working right, it would be a shorter list.

All this confusion would be avoided if Anet had put a numbers overlay on the LF bar. Then people could tell at a glance.

Swadow.6213:

It doesnt actually make it into 130%. It makes the 100% Life Force into 130% of your hp instead of just 100%. It will last just as long but it will have more “hp” in it

Yes but after testing, the same amount of dmg was reducing life force by the same exact amount of % with and w/o Soul Reaping.

For example, pop in and out of DS and take 2k hit, lose 13% Life Force doesn’t change.

^^^ This.

Yeah, so after reading the suggestion to stand in the bonfire I decided I should test my theory again. It is true what the above poster is saying that there is no difference.

With a base health of 24812 and no points in Soul Reaping I took a hit from the bonfire for 2976+342. 2 ticks that gave 3318 in damage in total. I would take that damage and remain in DS for the duration of 10 seconds which with out traits should put me at 60% Lifeforce due to 4% drain a second, then take the difference of what actually remained to find out how much life force was taken by damage.

Now, after testing both with 30 points and without 30 points in Soul Reaping I consistantly would end up with Life Force being at 48%. That is 12% lifeforce lost regardless of 30 points or not. With the baseline hp I had by my calculations I had a total of 27650hp in DS either way I traited.

Just for the sake of double checking. I then removed all vitality gains I had. So with a base health of 18372 I would get 2 ticks from the bonfire with 2204+342 giving me a damage of 2546. Yet again, after 10 seconds and a hit from the fire I was put at 48%… with or without Soul Reaping. By this calculation I should have a total of 21220hp for DS.

However, in reality it seems there is no real hp pool that we can distinguish. We have 2 different damages still putting us at 12% loss. Granted the health pools start at different levels, but for that fact alone I would think there should be some kind of difference in the amount of damage I see absorbed by DS. In both scenarios the result was the same despite the difference of health and fire damage. Ultimately, what matters is if the traits add any benefit per point… answer seems a definite no.

Just a note for those questioning the fire damage. It seems the more hp you have the higher the initial value you get hit for by the bonfire. I think that is kind of weird, but that is how it worked when trying different hp values, although the following ticks all hit for 342 regardless. *

Edit: if anyone would like to verify using the same test, or one of their own I would be very appreciative. Thanks

I remember I once tried to figure out how much health I had in Death Shroud by jumping off the ruined piece of wall in the Mists (behind the golems) and trying to relate the percentage loss to the falling damage taken. (I did this because someone claimed that 100% life force is basically the same amount of health as 100% normal health, I that was totally not how I felt it was in practise at the time.)

From the very rough results I obtained and although I don’t remember all of the details, I see some analogies with what you posted. First of all 100% life force actually seemed to be more than 100% health (even with no points in soul reaping, something you arrive at as well). But there was also a major inconsistency (and I think it’s exactly what you’re describing here) in my data, that made me end up stopping my experiments and shrugging it off on falling damage being % based in some weird way. I might have to re-evaluate that conclusion now…

@XXVI Red – If the bonfire is hitting you for a different amount depending on how much VIT you have, then the damage is percentage based, not flat. If the damage is % based regardless of how much LF you have you will be hit for the exact same percent each time. It’s the test that’s the problem not the result.

I think the only way to truely test it is to get someone who is naked with a steady weapon on to auto attack you with something that doesn’t have any conditions (Such as Necro Dagger 1).. The damage from that should be a fixed amount which will give you a realistc picture of whether or not the 30% gain is actually working.

Bugged until proven working i think is the motto for every aspect of Necromancer.

Dont worry ANet will fix our bugs and make Necromancers a semi-appealing class to roll…. right?

If you guys confirm or deny this let me know, ill probably take my points out of SR line and go for something else. Just another day as a necro it seems

I posted about this a few weeks back in the bug thread, everyone disregarded my evidence and said I was wrong, it wasn’t added as a bug.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-bugs-compilation-NB69-NT15-NP7/page/9

My testing:

chuiu.4985:

Found another one. Soul Reaping does not increase Life Force pool. Both tooltip on life force and actual life force don’t change.

Full SR should show that your Life Force bar has 130% when full. After some testing:

0 SR with full LF bar = 26 seconds of DS
10 SR with full LF bar = 26 seconds of DS
30 SR with full LF bar = 26 seconds of DS

And because there’s a trait, I decided to test with Vital Persistence.

10 SR with full LF bar = 34 seconds
30 SR with full LF bar = 34 seconds

Which actually ends up being roughly 31% increase.

chuiu.4985:

Tested again with the fire pit in the mists:

0 SR -> 14 life force lost per fire tick
15 SR -> 14 life force lost per fire tick
30 SR -> 14 life force lost per fire tick

Tested with falling damage:

30 SR -> 37 LF lost for a fall (~8k damage)
15 SR -> 37 LF lost for a fall (~8k damage)
0 SR -> 37 LF lost for a fall (~8k damage)

And again:

0 SR -> 42 LF lost for a fall (~9k damage)
30 SR -> 41 LF lost for a fall (~9k damage)

I’m going to have to go with my previous conclusions here. Soul Reaping does nothing to our life force.

Someone said it does work:

Andele.1306:

Back from tests! Yes SR seems to increase life force, but the trick is, LF seems sto always hold on as a 100% of your hp value (if you increase it it should be 130%), but how much life force gets removed depends on how much actual hp you would lose in %, not as a special hp bar, probabaly the same reason why falling from hights if you have full ds and full hp from a jump that barely kills you doesnt just eat all DS and part of your hp but plain kills you.

But he completely ignores the fact that the fire pit deals 2 types of damage: the fire pit dot which scales to your health, and the fire condition which scales to your condition damage. So if LF really did give you 30% more you would notice a significant difference between 100% and 130% life force because the damage from the fire condition remains constant no matter how much health you have.

I still maintain that increasing SR by 30% doesn’t do a kitten thing. The only better way to test this would be to go into the mists and test with someone hitting you with a ‘steady’ weapon and as little crit possible for consistent damage.

@Eileithia and @chuiu

Looking at the values XXVI Red posted for scaled vs constant damage from the fire thingies (2976 vs 342 and 2204 vs 342) I would understand if people say that the constant damage is too small compared to the scaled damage, and as such it is rather hard to discern it’s effect (although you’re right that it should in principle be possible, chuiu).

Looking at the scaled part though, there are 2 possibilities: the max health that it is scaled upon is always your ‘normal’ max health, or it is your ‘current’ max health (in other words max lifeforce if you’re in DS). In the first case you should see a difference in percentage lost with and without soul reaping, in the second case you don’t. For the latter though, there should be a 30% increase in that damage instead… So it is always possible to check if soul reaping has any effect.

PS. I tested it out and there is no 30% increase either. Also, since the damage I take in and out of DS are the same (but health is not, see XXVI Red’s calculations), it must be the former case.

Some clarification for the certain above posters regarding the fire. From my calculations my hp pool is less then the lifeforce hp pool. However, if it was % based it does not change initial damage being bare or in DS form. Unless, the fires initial burn is solely based off my actual hp ( which at this point I am pretty sure it is ).

One other thing as some have noted the actual continuous burn (DoT) is 342 regardless of hp value or defense value. I plan on testing the DoT portion only as per taking the initial hit naked and then popping DS and doing a 10 second count after taking between 1 and 3 hits of damage. I am not sure whether I should use the regular 342 and calculate or if it would be easier having a larger base damage amount to do the math with.

Either way I agree with certain posters stating that if the trait bonus line did in fact work, it should definitely state my life force bar as 130%, given that regardless of points or not it drains in the same time. Some will argue that you are supposed to lose 4% a second but I feel that if I am spending 30 points… well the tooltip should be based off 130% and not the same 100%… otherwise whats the point? Either that or like the above posters have mentioned, you “have” to take trait II to feel the approximated 30% longer duration it gives on a flat drain with no damage. As for those stating that its 100% of a increased hp value… the whole point of my research at first was to find out how much vitality effects your total DS hp (scaling/%increase per vitality point)… which in my initial testing was still showing no difference for the extra 30 points i spent.

I will be back shortly with some more results though, I will try to give some more numbers as well. I think that most people here are arriving at the same answers though. As i said before, my results were similar even before the fire testing method. I had a mob just flat out attack me and I tried to use that as a measure but the crit and non crit hits made too much of a variable for a solid answer. Even with a guildie smacking with auto attack the numbers were never exactly the same, not too mention some crits here and there (even with the base 4% crit chance). Everything would be an average which is not as exact as I would want it to be. That could indicate that the gains from these talents are minimal if not non existant, but again… for 30 points there should be some notability in using all those points.

ok… im a little weary to report this feedback.

I did a quick test as I am short on time and wanted to just try something that I thought would be easier then playing with the fire. (which by the way ticks 2x one being the first initial number followed by the 342, then repeats—> ergo completely destroying that test method due to possible % based damage from your amount of hp)

I decided to fill my life bar and use the self bleed we apply through Blood is Power instead. I have no added condition damage aside from the +350 for using the skill and the damage ticks for 60 with the tooltip claiming to give 850 damage total. This means that for the 10s duration of the bleed and while i am in DS i get 1200 damage from the bleed (accounting for the increase in condition damage via the skill). 1200 damage no matter what value hp I have to be more to the point.

For a 10 second duration in DS as with my initial test the % value was the same as before. With 30 points or without 30 points in Soul Reaping I exited DS with a total of 52% life force availabe to me (as my initial tests would give me 48% I am thinking I may have missed my exit exactly allowing an extra 4% decrease due to trying to move my character to see the damage ticks while using a stop watch as well as hitting the F1 key). Keep in mind 1200 damage is substantially less then the 3318 I was getting testing the fire. However, by doing the math (assuming that 8% is 1200 hp) my total DS hp pool would be about 15000. Just a reminder that the 3318 damage I was using for a previous fire test took 12% life force away bring my total DS hp pool estimate at about 27650. My actual total hp is at 24812. That doesnt make much sense in the idea that in one situation your DS hp is more then your actual hp, and then in another it is less.

With this quick test not only am I not seeing a difference in 30% increase. It seems that actual hp values are not being used, and if so they run on a completely different system of calculation. The only hard evidence I have found in my testing thus far is that the more toughness you stack the better DS mitigates damage. (Testing auto attack from a friend and switching between rabid and carrion jewel). The actual % of increase I can not really give exactly although I know it is minimal.

I would like to say good luck to anyone trying to figure out the ratio of hp gain DS achieves through stacking vitality… and as for the 30% increase, at this point im going to say it is not there. Unless someone can show me a difference in lifeforce value of 30% taking the exact same amount of damage between traited and untraited, then this trait line is severely broken for its soul purpose. It is a hard test to accomplish, but again I am open to anyone who would like to try and prove me wrong. I dont require pictures or videos, I am an adult with a brain and if you show me your test methods I will gladly retest them to find the same success or failure for verification.

If anyone else has anything to add, feel free. I would still like to hear more opinions/theory crafting on the idea of how to interpret our lifeforce bar for hp value and how it is effected by damage and such.

Sir I think you tested this more then anyone else has to confirm it doesn’t work so thank you very much for this.

The one indication i have that LF is related to health was while switching between weapon sets. One set had a vitality boost, another did not. With a partially filled LF bar i noticed the endpoint slightly shifted when it swapped back and forth between the sets. But with no real numbered overlay i find it a pain in the behind to keep track of exactly how much of a change that was.

And fall damage is worthless as a test, as it is designed to kill people of all levels after a equal distance fall.

Ok, I tried a somewhat different aproach: I bought all the pvp amulets that have different amounts of vitality on them, removed all points from blood magic, equipped the amulet with 0 vitality and made sure my LF was at 100%. By then equiping amulets with higher vitality, I could record my LF% in function of my health. I then further altered my vitality by adding 10, 20 and 30 point in blood magic and recording LF% for all amulets again. This gave me 20 points ranging from 18972 (100%) to 31202
(61%) health. I then tried to add 30 points in soul reaping to see if there was any effect (there wasn’t).

I could perfectly reproduce all my measurments by just dividing health by initial health (e.g. 31202/18972=61%). So I have to conclude that total LF at least scales liniarly with health. I saw no influence of soul reaping though, while I would normally expect to see one (e.g. 61/100 → 61/130 → renormalized to 100% = 57/100). It is still possible though that your current % is also adjusted by 30% (instead of only your maximum) wich would cancel eachother out, but seeing as it doesn’t work like that when changing your total health, I have my doubts about this.

As to your last findings XXVI Red, that is indeed puzzling. Just something I want to check: how sure are you that DS didn’t actually thick 11 times? Because 1200/24812 is only 4.8%, say that gets rounded down to 4% for some reason (either truly rounded down or mitigated by some DS related modifier), you end up with exactly 1 tick to much damage.

Very interesting stuff. I did almost the same test as XXVI Red but with condition damage so that total damage from self bleed is 2120 just so it might be more visible(and wanted to see this for myself). Instead of using a stopwatch I just counted the “ticks”. You can get more consistent results like that I think. Only the first tick is almost invisible but the rest moves the bar enough to notice it. Results are the same – I exit the DS with the same 46% life force with or without on multiple tries.

It is nice to see that others are following up from what I last posted.

For clarification again, my initial hp was 24812 (thats refering to outside of DS not the actual DS hp itself). I was trying to find what my hp scales to as most of the time I have been told that is higher, if not just slighty higher, then what your actual hp is.

The calculation I did for how much hp my DS has was based off of the damage I would take. 1200 points of damage would equal 8% of life force in my last test. With that number I would divide 100 by 8, the amount of times the percent goes into the full 100, giving me 12.5 and then multiply that answer against 1200, the damage. 1200 × 12.5 being 15000. This of course is where I found a problem. I know that my life force can not be only 15000 hp. Much for the same reasons of the above poster who mentioned changing amulets and dividing against there starting and ending health pool. (this is initially what made me want to find out how much we get considering if I upgrade my vitality the green bar goes down, thus indicating my need to refill “because” I have extended the DS health points).

I would use a 10 count as my base of measuring the damage because i found that if I did not I could often miscalculate how much life force I lost just for being in it (4%/second). It made more sense to start the BiP and DS at the same time. The DoT is 10s so either way I would get a full count regardless. The only problem would be if that last second took an extra 4% or not. I try to be as exact as I can, but I am not some amazing mathematician or perfectionist gamer.

After summing all that up and now knowing all these things it seems that the deathshroud hp does not accrue damage like normal circumstances. It seems obvious at this point that regardless of damage or stats, if you take a given amount of damage with 30 points or without…. you still end up with the same effects and percent based remainders. Thus indicating even if Deathshroud somehow managed to have 50k hp in that form we would still have the same % taken away in any given circumstance.

The above statement may not be true, and I hope it is not, but it seems given my tests that it is in fact working like that. I personally have heard some other mentions as to how the mechanic works and am starting to agree. It was mentioned that perhaps the mechanic is totally based around percentages, even if there is an actual number behind it all. Given that idea, then if one person was to take damage it would be accomodating a percent as the remainder, and not a exact number. If we were to think of it as rounding off by chunks of hp then it could be why we are seeing the same results. This would mean that we need to use a larger base of damage to judge if we are actually getting 30% from traiting or if we have any kind of actual hp gain via stacking vitality.

More directly it would be easier to think of your DS bar much like your hard drive on a computer. When you format it, most people use the 4096 option, it is made to record data in chunks. So if for example you had a file for 383 bytes, it would still use up 4096 because it is the lowest chunk it can use. However if you made a file that was closer to that number it would be better. Now if you think of damage like the files, you could essentially run down space rapidly by using low space files, cause each would use the full 4096. However if a file was 23409, it would be better management of the space, and use it more appropriately.

If you can follow, that example could iron out any discrepancies you may have thinking about if the pool is so low then why can we take chunks of damage from other players and not have it totally disappear (a large file). It would also indicate why when you have multiple foes, who you might be aware do crap damage can burn a hole in your DS so fast (lots of small files). This is all assuming that each % of life force is exactly working like the 4096 slots on a hard drive in relation to damage acting as files being saved. I really hope that this is not how the form actually computes damage and handles variables… but it was suggested in another thread and could make sense if you look at it from this analogy or perspective.

Yeah, thats just some extra food for thought as to how deathshroud could possibly work. I still have no definite way of knowing how much hp the form actually holds. I would assume its a lot seeing as how Lich and Plague offer up a higher hp pool and such. I was thinking of testing the ratio between those two and if they are the same i would like to think that Deathshroud would somewhat match it. Although they are elites so they could possibly be more due to that factor, but DS not falling too far behind.

Let me know what you guys think or if you need more clarification on what my previous posts were about. Like I said I am no math genius, so I can be wrong or off. Im open to any other testing methods or ideas behind what this mechanic and trait line is offering, or rather not offering…

I’m pretty sure at this point that death shroud takes 2x damage from conditions.

I did tests similar to yours with blood is power and corrupt boon (for self conditions). With 18k base hp (naked) my effective hp in death shroud was 10k, and with 27k hp (Knight’s amulet) it was 17k. Considering you did your tests with 24k and got 15k it seems to line up.

However when I did the same tests while taking damage from a non-condition source (the engineer training npc in my case) effective hp in death shroud worked out to 22k while naked and 34k with Knight’s amulet.

Also I did my tests with and without soul reaping and it made no difference on the results.

Hi, just a note to say I also tested.
200 vitality.

~13-14k hp as testing with BiP
~24-25k hp as testing with mobs (spider in event labyrinthe)

Seems to scale fine with vitality. The suggestion that the small condition damage is doing too much damage ( maybe they convert to percent, percent is rounded up??) sounds plausible given how the condition damage disproportionately affects.

Also in the other thread ppl’s results were either no or very little (as compared to vit) scaling with SR. I am testing SR now.

Thanks for testing kisses. If someone has gasp friends they could test it with that would be beneficial. Right now all the tests I’ve seen are self dots.

Considering how many of the games systems seems to get confused with the difference between life force and health while in death shroud it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a need at one point for a special case to make conditions do damage to death shroud and it was never removed.

Anyway, just thinking out loud for my curiosity’s sake.

Vadren.9045:

Thanks for testing kisses. If someone has gasp friends they could test it with that would be beneficial. Right now all the tests I’ve seen are self dots.

Considering how many of the games systems seems to get confused with the difference between life force and health while in death shroud it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a need at one point for a special case to make conditions do damage to death shroud and it was never removed.

Anyway, just thinking out loud for my curiosity’s sake.

Yeah it’s funny, when i was testing the SR (first time I have specced it since beta) I immediately found a hp vs. lifeforce trait bug I hadn’t encountered before: locust swarm surrounding my DS at a random percent. So I had to redo.

I got kind of inconsistent results for the SR, seemed around 27-28k w/ full SR and 200 vit testing vs power damage. Regardless it is not what it should be if it is really giving 30% (should be 31k)

Yep, going into DS with any kind of “on X percent health do Y” trait or rune equipped will lead to strange things.

If it isn’t broken, the description is ambiguous and probably designed it that way to make necros even more useless.

If it is broken, it will be made worse.

Live with it, or rather, die with it.

There is an extremely easy way to test this.

if you can find an incredibly consistent source of flat damage, simply time how long it takes for you to be depleted of life force by the flat damage source with and without the trait. If the trait increases your life force by 30%, then it should take longer for the flat damage source to drain your DS regardless of the natural % ticks. If it takes the same amount of time, then the trait doesn’t work.

If you test it this way, you don’t need to worry about gauging bar sizes or anything like that.

first off, im impressed that these two threads are still going from the other day. I started one and someone else had begun another. Both are full of great info and data on the subject.

But as to respond to striker, there is a problem with finding a consisten source of flat damage. Orginally in my calculations I was using burn damage from a bon fire, it would tick a damage followed by 342 and repeat with those two numbers. However, that first number would tick based off your HP bar. So in essence, if it is ticking at a health based percent of damage it would essentially give you the same damage regardless of what health you were at causeing you to die at the same rate as anyone else.

I then switch to a damage that would tick at intervals of sixty damage for 20 ticks. Some people have debated as this may be a bad source to test with. I may need a higher base number with a steady flow, or perhaps the damage incoming in itself is just a bad source considering it is from a self bleed (Blood is Power). Regardless, in my findings with or with out the traits I would arrive at about 48% life force. It would also be the same number if I added or took away vitality to my health pool. For this reason me, and some others, tend to think DS is entirely % based and works by rounding to the nearest interval (percent) when calculating damage.

Some people also seem to find that vitality will scale up with your life force. With this idea, there are 2 problems I find. The first being that when you adjust your health up your life force bar will go down and the % reading will be at the amount of life you had before you added extra vitality. This indicates that our LF bar is exactly the same amount as our actual health bar. The second problem is that when people test for how much possible health they have in their life force bar they all get different numbers. Some may think that there is a middle ground that they are missing as to being the culprit for the difference in results.

However, I never get this problem when I calculate in the respective manner for health in Plague or Lich form. You get a flat base increase in both. 100% increase to Plague and a lesser amount for each bit of Vitality you stack to up your actual health pool. This meaning that the more health you add to your character the more that 100% will drop (about 4-5% per 1000hp from my calculations). Lich form works the same way as well, although starting at a 50% increase.

Sorry if this is a repeat of information. I just have been posting about this everywhere the past few days. I am at an end for my testing. I recently did some sPvP and ran around with the condition set up (weapons not the traits) with only 30 points in Soul Reaping. First game I made sure to take note of certain burst damage players and keep an eye on my combat log while they beat on me. The second game I went with a completely stock set up (no traits). As I can not do any hard math to back my findings I will just say that it felt to me as though Soul Reaping had no real effect on me lasting longer in DS. The only difference I did note was that using a carrion jewel instead of rabid made me live longer due to the increase in health. This being my actual health and not DS.

From what I have seen, my previous posts about little damage rapidly depleting my DS bar and high burst damage being able to decently mitigate the damage, lead me to believe more in the sense that my original idea (Deathshroud being percent based) is more then likely true. We seem to have 100% life to match our own health bar in the DS. The two other forms we have increase in increments of 50%. This being in a manner likely because if the SR trait would work correctly you could make your DeathShroud to fall in the mid ground by upping it to 130% of your actual HP, making it close to an elite but not exactly. This being extremely helpful to those who would like to use the Elite Pet as opposed to Plague or Lich. The actual problem being though that the incoming damage is rounded around because DS is % based. I feel more that the 30% increase is just not working. But I am trying to be fair and assume there is a glitch or problem with the calculations.

I can make tons of assumptions and theories here, but the truth of the situation is that no matter how many ways I test this Life Force bar I have way too many discrepancies in data and there are also a lot of variables when choosing a damage source to test appropriately. Whether we like it or not the Devs are the only real people who know if this is working “as intended” or if is broke… purposely or not.

Mr XXVI your testing has been far more complete then we could hope for, so thank you for the good work.

thanks gamefreak, I also noted that you referred my post in the other thread I have been following. Thanks for that as well.

I hope that my ramblings have given some peice of mind to the masses trying to “master the Death Shroud.”

In all honesty, if it were to work the way I think it is supposed to… I can see the concern for being considered OP.

If most of our traits work right along with minion AI I doubt they would hear many complaints. Now I still think they need someone to look at all class traits again, Ill use Mesmer as a example to be fair. One trait they haveincrease illusion damage but illusions no longer do damage unlike from beta which to be honest was a horrible move to remove damage, tone it down since it was really high before but still give them some. There are other traits in other class’s like that which should be fixed,

I agree. Personally, as I just stated in a post not 5 seconds ago, I do not understand how arenanet is making balance calls and adjusting classes mechanics when they haven’t seen a proper match up against each other with “full working, non bugged, appropriate class mechanics.” How do you compare utilities,traits, skills when certain ones are broken and others are not?

So for my DS build to be effective, I should be going 30 Blood Magic instead of Soul Reaping. The only problem is I need the traits in SR! “Life blast pierces and causes vulnerability”, must have for WvW, and pretty useful in sPvP. “Life Force drains 25% slower in Death Shroud” is another must have. And I sacrifice my stability in DS as well

XXVI Red.5718:

I agree. Personally, as I just stated in a post not 5 seconds ago, I do not understand how arenanet is making balance calls and adjusting classes mechanics when they haven’t seen a proper match up against each other with “full working, non bugged, appropriate class mechanics.” How do you compare utilities,traits, skills when certain ones are broken and others are not?

Yeah, I’ve been wondering the same thing. It does no good to buff and nerf all these classes when you haven’t even seen what they’re capable of.

I’m pretty sure they’ll fixed it after the halloween event is over, the Christmas event is ready, the new year is done, the valentines event is there, the easter event is finished, the summer festival is in place, the thanks giving event is done, the next halloween event is rolling … I think you get the idea.
But then there are more pressing matters like the army of bots roaming the worlds, oh well ..

It’s sad to see an issue like this buried and forgotten.

This is confusing. Can one be chided for necroing threads in the Necro forums?

Nyorai.1630:

It’s sad to see an issue like this buried and forgotten.

Well we can’t do anything about it and Anet seems not to care. Not sure what else there is to do.

It’s shameful the game mechanics aren’t more transparent and people are spending valuable time trying to figure out whether a feature works or not.

I did read both this and the DS HP Pool thread by Arianna, the full thread for both. But my memory is terrible and I don’t want to sift through everything again so I’ll go ahead and ask.

IF the 30% LF actually worked, what would be better, just speaking for traits. 30 points in Blood Magic for +300 vitality, or 30 points in Soul Reaping for 30% larger LF pool? Just referring to what would make a larger Life Force pool

For survivability Blood would definitely be better. DS would be for a crit/ds build though.

Levian.6742:

I did read both this and the DS HP Pool thread by Arianna, the full thread for both. But my memory is terrible and I don’t want to sift through everything again so I’ll go ahead and ask.

IF the 30% LF actually worked, what would be better, just speaking for traits. 30 points in Blood Magic for +300 vitality, or 30 points in Soul Reaping for 30% larger LF pool? Just referring to what would make a larger Life Force pool

If it worked(which it doesn’t) 30% LF would be better by a land slide. The degradation of LF % while in DS for one isn’t affected by the actual number of your health. It degrades by #%. And if lets say your hp is sitting at 20k… 30% of that isn’t too shabby. And 20k is baraly over glass canon with no vit.
But again…

• You don’t get 30%.
• Your LF # is inconsistent to the point of irritation.

chuiu.4985:

For survivability Blood would definitely be better. DS would be for a crit/ds build though.

He asked about LF pool very specifically… not opinion on spec. Also you can’t heal your main health while in DS so this suggestion is somewhat irrelevant to DS. Only way to increase life force while in DS is from 1% LF on crit trait and LT.

My current build is power/crit, focusing on using DS for heavy damage. It’d be nice to have an increased LF pool to take some big hits in without going into the Blood Magic tree but, as we all know Soul Reaping is broken so no luck there.

I suppose I am glass cannon although even without the 30% LF it doesn’t really feel like it. When I have a full LF bar I find it pretty difficult to be taken down 1v1, and only really drop when there’s 3 or so enemies, or a mesmer + a thief or warrior

To be honest if you want to increase your survive-ability in DS or maximize your DS use you should focus on ways to increase life force generation.

ATM I can generate life force about as fast as I can spend it (mind you this is in PvE where I don’t get hit) with my minion build, so I can’t imagine how fast it would be with a true DS build.

striker.3704:

To be honest if you want to increase your survive-ability in DS or maximize your DS use you should focus on ways to increase life force generation.

ATM I can generate life force about as fast as I can spend it (mind you this is in PvE where I don’t get hit) with my minion build, so I can’t imagine how fast it would be with a true DS build.

The issue is it does not increase it when it says it should. We have base stat in a trait line that does not work.

gamefreak.5673:

striker.3704:

To be honest if you want to increase your survive-ability in DS or maximize your DS use you should focus on ways to increase life force generation.

ATM I can generate life force about as fast as I can spend it (mind you this is in PvE where I don’t get hit) with my minion build, so I can’t imagine how fast it would be with a true DS build.

The issue is it does not increase it when it says it should. We have base stat in a trait line that does not work.

I’m not saying that there isn’t something that needs fixing. I’m saying that as of right now to maximize DS you need to focus on LF generation as it gives you a longer overall up-time on DS.