Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Deathshroud is a pretty big thing about our class. Many people have some complains about them. Many people like what it is now.

I’d like to see what you guys think. List one or two major issues with DS and how you would fix it. Could be anything. Mobility, offensive, defensive, etc.

Ill start it out for an example

Issue- Its a bid hard to find a variety of unique ways to gain life force.
Possible suggestion- change the 25% increase to speed signent to a CD of 10s or something kind of low and when you activate it, you sacrifice X amount of HP and gain Y amount of life force.

Deathshroud is one of the coolest things in the game for me and a big reason I keep coming back to the class, i’d love to see what people think of it and its problems and some ways to fix them .

don’t even try it. They don’t listen.

I spend alot of my time in WvW with some PVE but mostly I enjoy doing WvW. For me the one thing that annoys me when in DS is the lack of condition management.

More so immobilize as if your in DS when someone does that to you, then you have little to no choice but to exit out of DS to remove this. 10 seconds cooldown may not seem alot but in WvW it does feel like an eternity when your getting hit from all quarters.

So I wouldn’t mind some condition management, the trait upon entering DS to remove 1 condition isnt helpful when you are in DS and get hit with them. I just feel as a class that deals with conditions our main class ability has no way of dealing with them.

Wither this will make us too overpowered or too mobile I do not know but I think it would have been a better addition than torment.

DS damage that does not depend on weapon’s Attack power, so that I don’t feel shafted when I use a dagger. Or give us a different DS depending on the weapon we have while transformed. This way condition or power build will find their F1 useful regardless of the build.

Receving Healing in DS (100% of it, don’t see why we should be healing for less in it, it is our only Damage mitigation tool) and I would even push it that we have access to utilities while in it. Maybe if it was more like a kit from engi, instead of a real transformation.

Removing the automatic lifeforce loss while transformed. I still think it’s a relic from our ancient downed form, where we weren’t supposed to last forever. Again, being our only mitigation tool, I would like to stay in it longer and use it as such.

Mixing and matching DS on land and water skill. I love DS #1 and #4 synergy in water. Would love to be able to do that on land. Make it a trait if need be.

Making it so we can interact while transformed without “glitching” it. I hate timing a crucial rez/stomp and miss it because of lag or finger’s muscle ache.

And last thing, please fix the bug where you get a 1 sec cooldown on #6-0 when exiting DS. I know it’s not all people that are “suffering” from this disease, but it still happens, and it’s not related to lag or zergzillas fighting each others. I’m on a low pop server, and even in small scale fighting with no one around it still happens, and usually means death.

If those things could be done, DS quality of life would be greatly improved IMHO.

WvW is all about AoE. DS does not offer even one AoE ranged attack. DS 4 doesn’t count at all. When is the last time your DS4 don’t get interrupted in a zerg fight?

I had posted a ton of ideas on DS before. Too lazy to repeat what I said.

1) Revert Death Shroud to pre-July 23rd patch so that damage does not overflow from DS to our normal health pool. Don’t allow it to soak up falling damage if the devs are worried about it being used to jump off the edge of the map and see stuff we’re not supposed to see.

2) Some form of counter or mitigation to all the CC thrown at us as soon as we enter Death Shroud and start getting knocked around like a ping pong ball.

3) Dark Path will teleport the necro to the end of the projectile if it doesn’t hit a target (this was a suggestion originally made by Disastro.4086 in this thread)

4) Doom becomes an AoE fear similar to warrior’s “Fear Me!” shout or the thief’s stolen skull skill. To balance it, Doom is reverted back to a 1 second duration across the board and range is perhaps reduced to 900.

5) Tainted Shackles transfers one condition per second from the necro to opponents caught by the tether. If the opponent moves out of range of the tether or dodges, then no condition is transferred during that tick. This may be one solution for countering at least the condition-based CCs (daze, chill, cripple, fear, immobilize, and stun). To balance it, this could replace Torment (which would then be moved somewhere else).

Ds #1(Life blast) may have a damage radius or bounce to make it a ranged aoe spell.

CHIPS.6018:

WvW is all about AoE. DS does not offer even one AoE ranged attack. DS 4 doesn’t count at all. When is the last time your DS4 don’t get interrupted in a zerg fight?

I had posted a ton of ideas on DS before. Too lazy to repeat what I said.

Ds #4 needs to give stability while channeling. (Till casting ends)

6) Eliminate the natural degen of Life Force while in Death Shroud. Replace it with a new mechanic in which all DS skills except #4 (Life Transfer) now have a Life Force cost associated with them. DS #4 continues to function exactly as it does now.

Life Force costs could vary. For example, DS #1 may cost 5% of Life Force per blast while DS #5 may cost 15% of Life Force. These costs are based on the total life force pool, not the remaining Life Force.

With Life Force being the resource that needs to be managed rather than recharge times, perhaps the cool downs on some of the DS skills could be reduced, as well.

Damage taken would still reduce Life Force just as it does now.

The best way to improve Death Shroud is to start by removing all the negative effects that come with using it. First and foremost, bug fixes. Since not receiving heals in DS is most likely an Arenanet feature and not a bug, the only remaining bug associated with DS that I can think of is:

[Necromancer] Death Shroud+Synergy

While weapon Sigil effects appears to work as intended after entering Death Shroud, Signets however do not. Death Shroud cancels Signet passive effects while in this form. We are losing:

• 180 Power
• 25% Speed Boost
• Draw Conditions
• 1%/3sec Life Force gain

whenever we enter Death Shroud.

Once the bugs are fixed, then I’ll think about re-listing my actual steps to improve DS.

I agree with removing the deathshroud decay even if its just in combat that would be a huge improvement. In return give Shroud skills 2, 3 and 5 a lifeforce cost. Since we can be killed through deathshroud now the decay should go. (We still lose shroud if we take a hit which means the trait that reduce’s decay is still relavent and can reduce the life cost).

I would also love to see signets work in shroud since that would be a game changer and actually make signets on a necromancer viable. I would also love to see Life-force used for more skills. As an example take re-animator Instead of summoning a horror when you kill something you store tokens per kill and then for the cost of say 5% life-force per horror you can summon them when you want (To a max of say 3 or 4 Horrors with a range of 600 allowing you to summon them on that pesky thief). Little things like that to tie deathshroud closer to the necromancer and maybe fix dud traits

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

3) Dark Path will teleport the necro to the end of the projectile if it doesn’t hit a target (this was a suggestion originally made by Disastro.4086 in this thread)

i’d love to see the skill being even ground targeted like blink or warrior GS #3. problems with dark path as it is right now, which make it rather unreliable and annoying to use (imho):

- does not connect most of the time (obstructed/oor)
- very easy to dodge
- projectile speed

apart from dark path i like the current state of death shroud.

The darkpath claw goes way too slow for me to catch up on anything with movement speed.

DS 2 is awful. Buff Pls.

Siphons/healing need to work in Death Shroud.

Some sort of defense against ping pong CC. Actually this is a global issue that very class could benefit from… A nerf to chain CC.

Necromancer should be able to stomp, mine, and interact with objects in DS.

I just want Dark Path be a teleport(or maybe similar to ride the lightning) with an AoE chill, useful for both escape and for catching targets.

Would actually be nice if it were just an F2 skill we could use in any form but maybe that’s getting greedy? Necro is so slow getting around the world compared to most of the other classes I’ve played.

- have utilities work (or at the very least have sigil passives work lol)
- some defense against getting gangbanged in death shroud. Right now necros are so easy to train in ds

Anoddhermit.4602:

I just want Dark Path be a teleport(or maybe similar to ride the lightning) with an AoE chill, useful for both escape and for catching targets.

Would actually be nice if it were just an F2 skill we could use in any form but maybe that’s getting greedy? Necro is so slow getting around the world compared to most of the other classes I’ve played.

Yes! Make DS #2 act exactly like ride the lightning, with bleed/chill on connect.

As for the animation, make the player take on the form of the elite “Plague” and rush them toward the target. Would fix this skill feeling clunky as heck and would be a much needed boost to mobility.

DS skill 6: scream launching opponents away from the caster… the distance and effectiveness is based on the number of enemies around the caster.

enemy search radius: 120
1 enemy: knockdown only
2 enemies: launch
3 enemies: bigger launch
…
CD: 50 seconds

Purpose: survivability against focus fire which is not healing, not mobility, not invulnerability or blocks… (ArenaNet: we want necromancer to have DS, that’s his thing…)

PS: it’s our panic button, literally… “scream”… get it ?
Hopefully when 4 people jump the necromancer, he can push 2 of them away far enough to be even remotely equivalent to a elementalist’s mist form, or a guardian block… or a mesmer distort and so on…