Guild Wars 2

The more i play the more i find that our damage profile is grind, not burst.

Our wells are DOT, our main damage source is conditions, and axe is basically built around stacking up weakness with 1 and then grinding the health away with 2.

As such, i propose to convert the current DS into a quickness source.

When F1 is pressed the DS effect would come on, and we would be granted quickness for the duration of DS while it also acted as the current damage absorber (meaning that any damage to us would in effect reduce the duration of our quickness boon).

No more this transformation into a walking down state, instead we would have continued access to our weapon and utility skills but would for the duration put out twice the dps we normally do.

As hilariously great this would be, this would be in a word, overpowered. I would immediately go dagger/horn and axe/focus, heavily invest in crit and soul reaping (and that gain life force on crit+ persistance traits), and proceed to have effectively infinite quickness with the dagger’s auto attack life gain, in addition to the occasional chunk more from axe 2 and focus 4. Doesn’t matter how poor our damage more or may not be, but this would make us awfully powerful. (would be fun to see this for a day, just for fun though)

I would not expect our rate of LF generation, nor the rate of loss while in DS to stay the same after such a change. But at present it feels like i’m better off just ignoring DS altogether, as trying to wrap it into a build just end up a compromise. We either have to build for LB to be our primary damage, or just not bother, as any time we go into DS we leave the majority of our build behind for 4 skills, 3 being on cooldowns. Meaning that we spend the majority of our time in DS watching LB pop off once a second. I would much rather see DS be some kind of boost to our existing weapons and utilities than some cross between a down state and a transformation.

While I agree that DS could be much better, I try and do the best with what we’ve got.
Dark path is an amazing skill, although it would be nice if it was faster; while doom is an invaluable interrupt if nothing else. Life transfer is solid multi-target damage with good range, but yeah, LB needs to fire faster.
Also you say you’re leaving behind your skills when you go into DS, but if you go into DS while your other significant skills are on CD, that’s extra damage you can inflict on your opponent, while taking no ‘true’ health loss, while letting the CD of other skills tick over.

Death Shroud feels like the Mesmer Shatter system – both require alot of Trait input to get anything solid from. Without them they are pretty subpar.

Sure, there are some utility on there. But to access that utility we have to tap dance on the keyboard in a similar fashion to an elementalist. There are 4 keys set aside for the profession mechanic, move dark path and doom to two of them, perhaps put Life Transfer on the third, and put DS minus the mutated down state on the last. Then fold Reaper’s Might into the base DS package so that there is both a offensive and defensive benefit for going into DS. Or leave it as a traitable, but have it grant might over time rather than connected to a specific skill. the out of DS profession skills would have to drain a percentage of LF on each use obviously.

My main issue is that i have to basically change my play style each time i fire up DS. Or i have to build my play style around being in DS as much as possible, meaning that i can just as well ignore what weapons and utilities i have beyond their ability to rebuild LF. I want to see DS as a kind of time limited booster to my main play style, because at present it feels as if i am switching between two different toons mid play.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Death Shroud feels like the Mesmer Shatter system – both require alot of Trait input to get anything solid from. Without them they are pretty subpar.

Except that you do not put aside your whole skillset each time you shatter your illusions. Instead you simply loose what additions they provided, not that different from a thief running out of initiative or warrior spending his adrenaline.

At present there are very few out of DS benefits from LF, and going into DS means loosing access to your weapons and utilities for the duration.

The main design focus of DS seems to be the damage absorption, but for that we trade away our access to weapons and utilities for the duration. IMO that is not a fair trade, as 4 out of 5 trait lines focus on those weapons and utilities.

digiowl.9620:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Death Shroud feels like the Mesmer Shatter system – both require alot of Trait input to get anything solid from. Without them they are pretty subpar.

Except that you do not put aside your whole skillset each time you shatter your illusions. Instead you simply loose what additions they provided, not that different from a thief running out of initiative or warrior spending his adrenaline.

At present there are very few out of DS benefits from LF, and going into DS means loosing access to your weapons and utilities for the duration.

The main design focus of DS seems to be the damage absorption, but for that we trade away our access to weapons and utilities for the duration. IMO that is not a fair trade, as 4 out of 5 trait lines focus on those weapons and utilities.

True that DS is a bit worse, but lets be honest most of the Shatter effects are pretty poor with the Confusion and Distortion ones being the only worth while ones and needing to be specc-ed that way – my Mesmer is a Phantom Mesmer keeping them up as much as possible thus making the whole shatter system pretty poor choice.

Even again – The DS skills arent that great either. Its kinda annoying that the 1st skill in DS barely does any more damage then when not inside it. DS needs a buff the 1st skill needs atleast 50% damage increase, as well as getting its attack speed buffed up abit at the moment i use DS for 3 things which i dont even use all the time that is:

1. Fear
2. AoE damage
3. Meatshield

The 10second cool down on it is VERY annoying as well

Pretty sure that would be OP, since quickness is the most coveted boon in the game and increases output immensely. However, I think the whole Necro community agrees that DS shouldn’t be a slightly buffed Downed state.