Guild Wars 2

That would be pretty sweet if it was 400 full time, but way OP. Imagine if Life Transfer traited with Transfusion and Dagger #3 benefiting from more healing. What if Dark Armor gave +400 healing power while channeling? What if you had a regen on you during the channel? I can only wish we’d have something that awesome.

In another game I played once there was a skill called dark armour which was a buff that gave the player a pitiful amount of health back everytime they were hit. I think this as a trait would suit the current GW2 necromancer perfectly.

^The “pitiful amount” really made it sound like a necro trait.

Apart from that Dark Armor should probably be more like for example Nature’s Protection (Ranger/ Nature Magic/ VI), a trait that triggers on x amount of health gone in one hit.
It could be as easy as giving us frost aura in such a case. Fits thematically well with 10% less Damage and chill on getting struck.

Dark Armor can’t win a fight against Greater Marks in pretty much any build as it is right now. For Dark Armor to be useful it would have to be effective for a build that ran MH Dagger and MH Axe (maximize chanelling opportunities). MH axe needs a buff anyway to be viable, and this might be a creative way to do it. Make it an Aura (since necro has none). It would have to function like a dark version of Chaos Armor. Trait would be “Gain Dark Armor While Chanelling”. You could also add dark armor to some of the finishers on dark combo fields.

A few ways to make it viable:

1) Dark Armor – When hit you siphon X health from the attacking foe (scale with healing probably and allow bloodthirst to amplify).

This would would probably be a slightly lesser (in terms of damage) version of Retaliation that also provides a little heal. It would have decent synergy with Spiteful Spirit to really punish bursters that focus a necro.

2)Dark Armor – When hit target foe suffers confusion and is blinded for 3s.

Great synergy with Chilling Darkness (as well as a lesser synergy with Spiteful Spirit) and helps with the lack of diversity in necro condis and since necro stun breakers genrally suck and we wind up eating more burst than pretty much any class it would provide a way to mitigate multi-hit bursts. This might need an ICD to avoid being OP.

3) Dark Armor – When hit you transfer 1 condition to and steal 1 boon from the attacking foe.

Adds to the theme of condition control and boon wrecking, and would allow more diversity in utility skill slots that almost always require either Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption. This would absolutely terrorize a lot of the bunker builds that necro can almost-but-not-quite solo in a decent time frame. I’m looking at you guardian.

Might be tough to implement the code for “While Chanelling” on an aura, so you could make it a “Gain 3s of Dark Armor when initiating a chanelling skill”.

I like the idea of giving necro an aura in this trait slot specifically because everyone knows we have very few ways to get stability and so our channels (which are all long) are easy interrupt targets. These auras would give a little punishment for interrupting and add an interesting element of depth to gameplay.

It would also be awesome if DA proc’d retaliation and stability when hit but the odds of a buff like that are not good. Still, it may convince more people to shelve their staff but I think adding boons to DA could make minionmaster too powerful. Maybe if the trait skill was moved to the master level of Spite so the choice was between an axe buff or DA with boons.

Anchoku.8142:

It would also be awesome if DA proc’d retaliation and stability when hit but the odds of a buff like that are not good. Still, it may convince more people to shelve their staff but I think adding boons to DA could make minionmaster too powerful. Maybe if the trait skill was moved to the master level of Spite so the choice was between an axe buff or DA with boons.

Retaliation + Stability is a pipedream and would be wildly OP. You are talking about almost perma stbility. Necro would be like a better version of Guardian bunker if it went to that extreme.

Don’t you dare take away Close to Death! CtD is infinitely better than Axe Mastery. Furthermore, Dark Armor would pretty much have to be in the Death or Blood trees regardless of how they changed it.

If axe mastery was combined with staff mastery and DA+boons were placed in Spite as a grandmaster trait, you could have Close to Death stay there. Also, though I did not write it out, I assumed the boons proc’d by a hit during channeling would be short lived with at least 30 seconds of CD so it would only proc boons once in a while or on the first hit in a fight.

I agree this is all a pipe dream, though.

That trait should be:

“Gain 5 toughness for each % of life force you current have.”

So at 50% life force you get 250 toughness. At 100% life force you get 500 toughness. etc.

Alternative:

“You and your nearby allies gain 2 toughness for every % of life force you have.”