Guild Wars 2

Balancing a class around one very powerful ability always leads to the same result: an underpowered class with one gimmick.

Arenanet has shown with necros they haven’t learned from wow’s experience with paladins at all. Wow had tremendous trouble with the paladin class for years because of the paladin’s bubble. The class had to be undertuned in general to make up for the 8 second of complete invulnerability, which left the class very powerful in certain circumstances and very underpowered in others.

DS is basically the same thing. It’s just a bad way to balance a class.

DS needs to be removed or changed to something easier to balance or necros will continue to be underpowered otherwise.

One option would be to change DS to something more like adrenaline for warriors. Instead of granting a new skill bar, just make it an F1 skill. Give it five bars that charge the same way life force charges now. When you active DS, it depletes at the rate of 1 bar per second and grants block during that time. With a full DS bar that means you have 5 seconds of block to use either all are once or split up. Keep the cooldown on use and about the same speed of life force generation.

There’s lots of other options too but the point is DS needs to become more like a normal F1 ability and not like a whole new game state. If it doesn’t Necros will stay lame.

Just so people know where you are coming from. The dev states exactly that DS is powerful and is hard to use, so they are not going to buff them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-play-a-necro-but-I-traid-a-warrior-for-one-play-session/page/2

Which is funny because it shows they recognize the issue but perversely don’t see it as a problem. It isn’t a question of ignorance on their part – they’re actually totally wrong on their balance philosophy. Which is actually worse.

Well put Yukishiro. I think that is exactly the concept I have been trying to pinpoint myself about deathshroud. It is a class mechanic we are built around the does not work for our class in the slightest.
I like your idea of making it more like a regular f1 ability, and having ability use draining the around of deathshroud instead of it making out entire gameplay different.

i agree with you.
they must remove death shroud. and add skeletons and ghosts and zombies and bone dragon and demons and horror magic and real curses magic.

I can currently hit Life Blasts for 4.5k – 5k every second or so… and I should want 5 seconds of block instead? OK.

forice.3165:

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> i agree with you. <———-

they must remove death shroud. and add skeletons and ghosts and zombies and bone dragon and demons and horror magic and real curses magic.

Ignore the rest.

PS: Calm down Forice, calm down.

I’ve been advocating making the pool smaller when it is untraited, and scaling the pool better when it’s traited.

Or making the cooldown longer (12 sec?) but have it break stun. (Our stun breaks are pretty bad atm… cept plague, which is brokennnnnn)

Look, Imma tell it like it is. This DS excuse is simply a bunch of BS. You cannot, cannot justify leaving Necros in the state we are in because of one darn mechanic. Imma say something else that needs to be said too. DS is NOT this all powerful skill that people shutter when it is used. “OMG DEATH SHROUD!” Yet that is how it is being treated. DS life bar gets eaten to nothing by thieves, warriors and mesmers. The most you can hope to stay in DS is maybe 5-8 seconds and then do what, oh yeah, life blast. Pffft. When I am getting ripped to pieces in a matter of seconds by really OP skills from Warriors and Thieves and then getting turned into a freaking Moa that seems to last the duration of the fight, Oh wait, there is no fight in Moa form, youre just freaking dead! Then you can imagine how sick and tired im getting of hearing this myth that DS is this potentially OP skill that could change the game somehow. That is simply laughable. Jon is worried about DS being OP in the hands of GOOD players while other profession are OP in the hands of freaking mediocre ones. I am sick to death of this BS excuse and Jon Peters needs to get his act together and fix this darn class. Ive personally had it up to here (hand over head) with all this BS surrounding DS. Its garbage and not acceptable anymore.

And I have a feeling that it will take a year of complaining before they change their thinking, if they ever do.

I do agree that something needs to change if they ever hope to balance the necro well (without underpowering it in order to make up for the 1 strength). However, none of the classes are really structured all the same, so I don’t think they should make DS too similar to adrenaline. Here is what I mean (I could be wrong with some of these, considering I only really know the thief and necro):

1. Necro – Death shroud
2. Thief – Initiative instead of cooldowns
3. Warriors – adrenaline
4. Guardian – Virtues
5. Engineer – Turret thingys
6. Mesmer – Illusions
7. Ranger – Pets (I guess)
8. Elementalists – Attunements

If they have the ability to balance all of these different skills, why do they not have the ability to make death shroud work as well? Why are they thinking “Well DS is strong, so we will make necros weak?” I don’t know why they think like this. Your proposed change doesn’t really work, but I see what you are getting at and agree that something needs to change.

Monarch.4026:

Look, Imma tell it like it is. This DS excuse is simply a bunch of BS. You cannot, cannot justify leaving Necros in the state we are in because of one darn mechanic. Imma say something else that needs to be said too. DS is NOT this all powerful skill that people shutter when it is used. “OMG DEATH SHROUD!” Yet that is how it is being treated. DS life bar gets eaten to nothing by thieves, warriors and mesmers. The most you can hope to stay in DS is maybe 5-8 seconds and then do what, oh yeah, life blast. Pffft. When I am getting ripped to pieces in a matter of seconds by really OP skills from Warriors and Thieves and then getting turned into a freaking Moa that seems to last the duration of the fight, Oh wait, there is no fight in Moa form, youre just freaking dead! Then you can imagine how sick and tired im getting of hearing this myth that DS is this potentially OP skill that could change the game somehow. That is simply laughable. Jon is worried about DS being OP in the hands of GOOD players while other profession are OP in the hands of freaking mediocre ones. I am sick to death of this BS excuse and Jon Peters needs to get his act together and fix this darn class. Ive personally had it up to here (hand over head) with all this BS surrounding DS. Its garbage and not acceptable anymore.

if you google necromancer and look necromaner at the wiki, necromancer is a death summoner. they must make more minions like a lot of crazy sick skeletons or a bone dragon or evils. there should be summoning skill bar. he just steals life force like vampire.

I like DS as it is now. It is a novel mechanic and gives GW2 necromancers a unique flair.

I am very much against homogenizing them by removing this fun ability.

DS is a great ability and I want it to stay.

If you are really so much against it, play a mesmer or an engineer and see if you like them better. Plenty of people like necromancers now. There is no reason for them to screw up its core mechanic just because you are not in favor of it.

Uh the point isn’t that I don’t like the mechanic. The point is the mechanic is going to continually cripple the class because it is too powerful.

There are lots of other ways to fix it besides the one I suggested but the basic point is DS as it currently stands is like paladin bubble: it is an inherently unbalancable ability. If you give necros something as powerful as DS you are going to have to keep them kitten otherwise. The Dev got that part of his response right.

And it is extremely powerful. It is certainly not always extremely powerful but having a form that as even the whiner in this thread notes is going to give you 5-8 more seconds of life and a new set of skills is always going to be situationally extremely powerful.

DoctorWhy.3847:

And I have a feeling that it will take a year of complaining before they change their thinking, if they ever do.

I do agree that something needs to change if they ever hope to balance the necro well (without underpowering it in order to make up for the 1 strength). However, none of the classes are really structured all the same, so I don’t think they should make DS too similar to adrenaline. Here is what I mean (I could be wrong with some of these, considering I only really know the thief and necro):

1. Necro – Death shroud
2. Thief – Initiative instead of cooldowns
3. Warriors – adrenaline
4. Guardian – Virtues
5. Engineer – Turret thingys
6. Mesmer – Illusions
7. Ranger – Pets (I guess)
8. Elementalists – Attunements

If they have the ability to balance all of these different skills, why do they not have the ability to make death shroud work as well? Why are they thinking “Well DS is strong, so we will make necros weak?” I don’t know why they think like this. Your proposed change doesn’t really work, but I see what you are getting at and agree that something needs to change.

Well I tried to keep my version of DS a bit distinct. It would have 5 levels, not 3, and it would deplete over time, not immediately. When you add in the defensive rather than offensive focus it becomes quite different from adrenaline.

But like I said the solution isn’t the important thing. It’s just one possible solution of many. The point is that DS as it currently stands is always going to make necro balance bad. We’re always going to be kittens who can live a few seconds longer as long as DS remains the type of ability it is.

A Volcano.2510
do you really think most people like death shroud than a lot of crazy sick skeletons???

Yes, i like DS better than skeletons.

On Topic! I feel that because the lack of stability or stun break, DS is not exactly a game changer. A warrior/thief/ele and even ranger can burn through it really quickly.

At least make Doom AOE or something, if im a cloud of death, I should instill fear in the hearts of my enemies around me! not just the one person!

To answer forice: Yeah, I like DS much more than more mindless minions. I don’t like sharing my power.

I do hate the fact that DS has caused to have be permanently weakened, because those few moments in DS are not enough to make up for the low damage, the lack of good crowd controls or other interrupters like, a decent fear on the (supposedly) most feared profession.

It would be great if Life Blast and Plague Blast has 50% cast time it currently have. It’s my main problem with DS, the basic auto attack of it takes way too long to cast and has slow projectile to boot.

DS is fine that is true, it is the rest of the class that needs work, DS is a mechanic all necromancers have, thats like saying that because shields are powerful and can block, that warriors dont need but one spec and then give them two handed weapons that don’t do any damange, hrm,.. what spec will they play, gee.