Guild Wars 2

Edited: newer Version down the Thread!

So yeah, I again rant on about DS being stupid.
I thought a little bit about the Thematic Dynamic of the Necromancer, especially with the Guardian/Paladin Theme and came to this conclusion:
Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some sort of oppsite Version of the Guardians Virtues?
Instead of upholding virtues and sacrificing them for the benefit of others, we could be using the Life Force we stole to enrich ourselves.
I don’t want to make a perfect copy of the virtues system, but would rather do this:
Instead of passive buffs, we would have to activate these Pacts, by going into a state:

• Pact of Rage: Each strike costs LF but deals increases the damage of the next one. That way, the mechanic of “the more LF, the higher the damage” would still be upheld, but instead, the damage would increase over time, like with the “Vulnerability per strike” mechanic.

• Pact of Gluttony: Each strike heals the necromancer for a bit of health, consuming LF. Technically our Vampirism trait. Not much to explain

• Pact of Shadows: The Necromancers gains Distortion but looses LF with each hit taken/time spend with the Pact. A defensive Pact. Would remove our beloved Bubble-Mechanic, but traded in for something better imho.

Maybe a fourth Pact for Conditionmancers or a Trait to accomodate Conditions.
I also know distortion is unique to Mesmers, but a second lifebar seems a bit strong if not locked out of all other skills.
Each Pact could still be traited to accomodate our playstile. Rage could add vulnerability, Gluttony could heal allies, Shadows could blind and chill enemies or increase movementspeed for the Necro.

By seperating the DS abilites, the Necro finally gains some much needed flexibility and the seperate Pacts can be used as needed by anyone without locking us out of all other skills, thus accomodating all playstyles.

I know this Idea is incredibly raw, but I miss it so much to not be able to use DS creatively other than “go into hhhhwwwaaaaaa-bumm mode”

Although this idea is absolutely brilliant and I love to see it implemented lets be honset, they dont care, nothing will be done.

But yeah, I love the pacts idea, especially the Pact of Rage.

Let’s be realistic, they can’t deal with the necro’s basic mechanics (btw we should be renamed buggomancer), what u suggest require computing skill… seems like they lack of dat.
Your idea is nice, really nice even if that sound a lil guardian for me (my opinion)
It would be nice to see necro having something rly special (ok DS is special), i mean, Anet announced that Fear would be a special necro condition but so many classes have it atm (warr and rogues for example).

Completely ignored minions… just like Anet!
good job lol like a true necro dev :P

Agreed with the OP. Necromancers need more originality and uniqueness. DS would better fit a utility/elite skill rather than the center-focus. I love the idea of DS, but it just lacks synergy.

On side note if they just used LF as resource that takes LF% of total LF to “maintain” minions and each minion requiring specific LF%. A couple of flesh wyrms in WvW could go a long way… instead of being forced to pick 1 of terrible each.
But as everyone already said. Not going to happen.

Nah, I love the idea behind DS. It’s not the best thing right now, but it still good.

I don’t want a copy of guardian style.

Really any idea is better then Anet’s walking downed state.

Some alternate ideas, includes minions

• Rage of Balthazar
  • Sustained Life Force drain as long as the Rage is active.
  • Gain 1 stack of Might for 15 seconds every 3 seconds.
  • Minions gain Fury for 15 seconds.

• Dwayna’s Wrath
  • Sustained Life Force drain as long as the Wrath is active.
  • Siphons Health from nearby foes.
  • Minion’s attacks gains Life Siphon (healing themselves).

• Grenth’s Shroud
  • Sustained Life Force drain as long as the Shroud is active.
  • xx% chance when hit to Fear & Chill attacker for x seconds.
  • Minions gain xxx Toughness.

No.

I like DS. I’ll be very unhappy if they remove it. All they need to do is give conditionmancers a reason to use it. I don’t have any problems with it as is for my power builds. In fact, I’m about to change my build to center around DS the way it is now.

Just because you don’t like a mechanic does not mean it is “stupid” or that it needs replaced.

Some people like it, some people hate it. Why is that such a hard concept to comprehend? Move along people. If you want longer lasting minons play mesmer. If you want a different profession mechanic go find one that you like.

Once the bugged skills and traits are fixed Necro will be perfect to me just how it is. Don’t go asking for a complete overhaul where it isn’t needed.

I am going to have to disagree. I like Death Shroud. It would be nice to have some kind of passive from it, but overall, I really like it.

I am going to have to quote Morvian in that it does need to have a benefit for conditionmancers beyond it being a damage absorption.

However, I still really like DS and don’t want to see it go.

Yup same here I like DS too. It would be nice if it would have 1-2 more abilities in it though, something with conditions.

“I like DS… They should change it so [things]”

Yes, I too like a DS that works differently than the one we have now.

So I rethought the System and came up with a possibility that integreates seamlessly into gameplay like the unique Gameplay-Mechanic should!
Instead getting a specific Buff, hitting an enemy while under a Pact now inflicts a specific debuff (not condition) upon that enemy for 5 seconds. The debuff does not stack. Each Instance of that Buff costs extra LF/s.

Pact of Rage — Pain: Increases damage dealt to the enemy by 10%

Pact of Decay — Decay: reduces the maximum health of the enemy by 2% each second (maximum 33%); it, regenerates with 5% per second if not under the effect.

Pact of Vampirism — Healign Blood: Every ally striking the enemy is healed for a small ammount (scales with Healing)

Pact of Shadows — Choking Shadows: Reduces the enemies chance to hit by 25%

Possible Improvements via traits could be:
Spite: Every cast while under Pact of Rage grants Might
Curses: Every second Decay is upheld upon a single enemy grants additional condition damage
Death Magic: Every minion gains a specific boon upon attack while you uphold a pact (Rage: Might, Decay: Swiftness, Va,pirism: Regeneration, Shadows: Aegis)
Blood Magic: You gain LF for every ally healed by you Healing blood Debuff
Soul Reaping: When entering a Pact, you apply the corresponding Debuff on every enemy within a 400 Radius

I would like to see multiple Death Shroud.
They should be based on what you want in that moment, so they will encourage players to wisely spend their Life Force into a specific shroud depending on the situation, shifting up the skill ceiling of the Necromancer (with the overall effectiveness) and giving them more skill variety.

There should be an offensive death shroud which drains life force faster but grants you powerful skills and offensive buffs, than a defensive death shroud which drains your life force slower but gives you powerful damage mitigation spells and defensive skills.

Been voicing similar thoughts in the past. The main issue i have with DS is that is a third skill set you need to consider alongside your equipped weapon sets.

What is funny is that humans have a very DS like elite, Reaper of Grenth. It looks quite a bit like DS, but plays like plague in that it provides a PBAOE of chill and poison for the duration. This while still allowing you access to your other skills.

As it is, DS plays like a mashup between elemental attunements and adrenaline.

sorrow.2364:

I would like to see multiple Death Shroud.
They should be based on what you want in that moment, so they will encourage players to wisely spend their Life Force into a specific shroud depending on the situation, shifting up the skill ceiling of the Necromancer (with the overall effectiveness) and giving them more skill variety.

There should be an offensive death shroud which drains life force faster but grants you powerful skills and offensive buffs, than a defensive death shroud which drains your life force slower but gives you powerful damage mitigation spells and defensive skills.

THIS. I posted my thoughts for a new DS on another thread, so here’s a copy of that -

I wish that ANet would expand the uses we have for LifeForce, right now it’s a resource bar with alot of potential, all of which is wasted on DeathShroud.

The best idea I had up to now was to make a second DeathShroud option, Shroud of Ailments.

What it would do is, when you activate it you keep all your normal skills and gain a different shroud animation on you.
While Shroud of ailments is active LifeForce is slowly drained (50 – 66% the rate of DeathShroud) and all CONDITION based damage is instead dealt to the Necromancer’s LifeForce pool.

This would allow a bunch of different things to click on the Necromancer. We have a bunch of condition transfer skills, but we can’t allow ourselves to tank too many before trying to transfer them without being killed.

Keeping the normal skills would allow us to keep recovering LifeForce, so we would be able to tank alot more of conditions on ourselves, which fits with the design idea of the Necromancer being the attrition profession, WE would be able to deal with condition much better than other professions and win long drawn-out fights.

Having the DeathShroud traits available to us WITH our normal skill set and a way to extend shroud’s active duration for longer would also make many of our traits alot more desirable.

Any of these ideas would be a vast improvement to the current iteration of DS. Just wish that any changes they do to DS also incorporate something useful for Minion masters .. seems Anet is keen on ignoring that particular play style . . we should generally have more weapon skills that involves minions or undeath more . . maybe like summon temporary minions that do x damage to target then disappears .. or heal minions for x amount or grant buffs etc to minions

Venom.6189:

Any of these ideas would be a vast improvement to the current iteration of DS. Just wish that any changes they do to DS also incorporate something useful for Minion masters .. seems Anet is keen on ignoring that particular play style . . we should generally have more weapon skills that involves minions or undeath more . . maybe like summon temporary minions that do x damage to target then disappears .. or heal minions for x amount or grant buffs etc to minions

I’d like to see Jagged Horrors more. They could explode upon deat, dealthing Bleeding and Direct Damage. It would have something for everyone.
Enter Death Shroud: Jagged Horror
Kill an Enemy: jagged Horror
10% of Crits: Jagged Horror
Use healign Skill: Jagged Horror.

It could he a Master Trait so people couldn’t stack it unnecessarily.

If I may, I’d like to expand on this idea, somewhat, in a way that could work in tandem with Death Shroud.

I was thinking about our pets, and the pet system Age of Conan Necro’s Had. I think they could implement that here, where basically you have 10 pet slots (in the form of dots), you can fill them up with an assortment of pets:

Mild melee pets being 1 point.
Mild ranged pets being 2 points.
Beefy melee pet with aoe ability being 3 points.
Ranged pet with cc being 4 points.
Strong ranged nuker pet being 5 points.

Etc. So you fill out your arsenal of minions using this point system. 2 strong nuker pets, or 10 weak melee pets, or 5 weak melee pets 1 strong nuker pet, etc.

NOW, if you don’t want to use pets, you could fill these slots with buffs/passive/procs using your Pact system. In a way, it could work similar to how trait trees do now. Each point commited to a Pact type would give a passive buff/effect per point, and each point benchmark (every 3/5/7/10 or w/e) of the same Pact type could change how Death Shroud or its skills work.

Using that you could modify Death Shroud completely to fit your playstyle, or use the standard death shroud to be a Minion Master, where as Death Shroud is there for survivability and to support your pets instead of being a standalone powerhouse.

They would have to completely create a new UI from scratch for this, similar to the Ranger Pet Menu. But my god if this ever happened it would be incredible.

Knote.2904:

If I may, I’d like to expand on this idea, somewhat, in a way that could work in tandem with Death Shroud.

I was thinking about our pets, and the pet system Age of Conan Necro’s Had. I think they could implement that here, where basically you have 10 pet slots (in the form of dots), you can fill them up with an assortment of pets:

Mild melee pets being 1 point.
Mild ranged pets being 2 points.
Beefy melee pet with aoe ability being 3 points.
Ranged pet with cc being 4 points.
Strong ranged nuker pet being 5 points.

Etc. So you fill out your arsenal of minions using this point system. 2 strong nuker pets, or 10 weak melee pets, or 5 weak melee pets 1 strong nuker pet, etc.

NOW, if you don’t want to use pets, you could increase fill these slots with buffs/passive/procs using your Pact system. In a way, it could work similar to how trait trees do now. Each point commited to a Pact type would give a passive buff/effect per point, and each point benchmark (every 3/5/7/10 or w/e) of the same Pact type could change how Death Shroud or its skills work.

Using that you could modify Death Shroud completely to fit your playstyle, or use the standard death shroud to be a Minion Master, where as Death Shroud is there for survivability and to support your pets instead of being a standalone powerhouse.

They would have to completely create a new UI from scratch for this, similar to the Ranger Pet Menu. But my god if this ever happened it would be incredible.

That…..that sounds amazing

I think Death Shroud would mostly work fine if it was just a weapon swap+healthbar swap. The problem is that it locks you out of your utilities, it isn’t worthwhile for Condition necromancers, and Transform abilities (most notably Plague and Lich, but racial elites as well) lock you out of Death Shroud, and thus, your best survival button.

I’d probably be thinking about attaching a clicky above Death Shroud and allowing you to choose between a few different Shrouds depending on which build you are; Conditionmancer might use, say, Plague Shroud, and maybe add a third one for melee. Let’s call it Spectral Shroud, I don’t know. Not sure if they even need it.

Enable utility/elite skills while in Death Shroud, and maybe give the Spectral abilities an alternate effect while in Death Shroud since they are removed when you enter DS.

I discuss the possibility of not removing DS, but adding different kinds that don’t lock you out of your bar. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Diversify-Add-Death-Shroud-s