Guild Wars 2

It seems to me there is very little to no synergy with Death Shroud and the rest of the necromancer.
There are a few traits that add effects to the Death Shroud and its abilitys, but its basicly a stand alone power.

I find my self only using death shroud as an “oh sh*” button or mid combat for the life transfusion power just for the group damage.

Just seems odd that the necro’s class mechanic doesn’t synergy with the rest of his powers.

If you want a more powerful Death Shroud you can get the trait that makes siphoning life 50% more effective (pretty sure it works with the ‘4’ in death shroud – the super drain, because when I set it my dmg increases a lot) and get the piercing shot so your ‘1’ goes through targets / hits multiples. Death Shroud for me I use all the time.

My build is a well cond dmg build so I have 20% reduced CD on wells, ground targeting, etc. And if I’m facing a hard mob I drop both the dmg wells, the bleed skill (forget what it’s called) and go into death shroud and hit 4. All AoE, all ravaging. It wipes most mobs out after that, and it’s a tougher mob and doesn’t die I have plague form for more AoE or I can finish them with death shroud pierce.

I agree, it is definitely a “Not today” button. I hear my Norn saying" I’m dying here" I press “Death shroud” and then I get bored. It’s not exciting at all, It is useful to wait for cooldowns and runaway but using it in your fights as part of your combos is a lost of time, attack rate is too slow. I do agree that the attacks should change depending on your weapons for example, you could enjoy better cause it would fit the way you fight.

But Necro’s Death shroud is mostly used as a invulnerability when you are like 10-20% health anyways. But like hyrdra said you can boost the the super drain.

Rempa.1906:

I agree, it is definitely a “Not today” button. I hear my Norn saying" I’m dying here" I press “Death shroud” and then I get bored. It’s not exciting at all, It is useful to wait for cooldowns and runaway but using it in your fights as part of your combos is a lost of time, attack rate is too slow. I do agree that the attacks should change depending on your weapons for example, you could enjoy better cause it would fit the way you fight.

I disagree. That ‘4’ mega drain is the second strongest move I have, next only to my well of suffering. It has HUGE range and hits multiple targets at the same time.

To each their own I guess but I use death shroud every time I fight a mob. I very rarely die because I do so much dmg so quick I barely get hit unless it’s a champ / elite mob or I get surrounded by other enemies after all my AoE are on cool down.

I also have some traits allowing more life force with skills, so even if I leave DS during combat a lot of the time my LF is almost full or at least full enough to go back and do a second mega drain. I’m telling you if you get familiar with DS as an offensive tactic AND defensive tactic, it will blow your mind.

It makes builds so fun too because I don’t care what weapons I use, my main attacks are both wells, the bleeding skill slot skill, and Plague + DS attacks.

Death Shroud is very useful and powerful.

If your life force bar is sitting and 100% for the length of a fight you’re probably doing it wrong (unless you’re condition Necro, which gets zero bleeds from it).

Firstly, the 1 key. Boom. Your ranged damage. If you stack direct damage for axe/dagger/wells like many, this will do a fair bit of damage with great range.

The 2 key, Dark Path – a gap closer. For PvP this one is so very, very underused. Use it for it’s mobility, use it to get yourself into range of the enemy for your dagger’s root. Even in PvE, if you’re dagger necro, it can get you to the enemy quicker than running. Also consider using it on a foe ahead to escape the enemies chasing you, PvE or PvP.

3. A fear on twenty second cooldown. Tasty. 1 second feared per 20 seconds is locking them out of doing anything for 5% of the fight. What’s more is it interrupts. And it moves them. Oh, and you don’t need to face the enemy to do it. Perfect for escapes. Perfect to send foes running off of cliffs in PvP (especially when first combo’d with your staff’s fear circle). Can go up to 1.5 secs with traits, leading to a 3 second fear combo with your staff.

Then there’s 4, Life Drain I think it’s called? It’s a very powerful AoE with a huge radius. It also keeps you in Death Shroud for longer. Win-win. With support traits it becomes a good heal over it’s insane radius.

Let’s not forget all the bonuses from traits. It can buff you, increase movement and more.

It’s all good stuff.

Did I mention you get an entirely seperate second health bar?

I use it all the time. You can really buff it up nicely if you pick the right traits.

HyDraLiNsK.2470:

Rempa.1906:

I agree, it is definitely a “Not today” button. I hear my Norn saying" I’m dying here" I press “Death shroud” and then I get bored. It’s not exciting at all, It is useful to wait for cooldowns and runaway but using it in your fights as part of your combos is a lost of time, attack rate is too slow. I do agree that the attacks should change depending on your weapons for example, you could enjoy better cause it would fit the way you fight.

I disagree. That ‘4’ mega drain is the second strongest move I have, next only to my well of suffering. It has HUGE range and hits multiple targets at the same time.

To each their own I guess but I use death shroud every time I fight a mob. I very rarely die because I do so much dmg so quick I barely get hit unless it’s a champ / elite mob or I get surrounded by other enemies after all my AoE are on cool down.

I also have some traits allowing more life force with skills, so even if I leave DS during combat a lot of the time my LF is almost full or at least full enough to go back and do a second mega drain. I’m telling you if you get familiar with DS as an offensive tactic AND defensive tactic, it will blow your mind.

It makes builds so fun too because I don’t care what weapons I use, my main attacks are both wells, the bleeding skill slot skill, and Plague + DS attacks.

Mmh, maybe, I will try to reorganize my traits and see if I get a group of mobs down faster with a rotation including DS. For now I use dual daggers and staff maybe because I love the simple fact that they allow you to dual daggers hehe, for me DS was useful when every skills was on CD and you wanna earn time while still DPS-ing, when you’re about to die or even when you jump from a relatively high place. I will give it moar love to see if it beats the speed of the actual skill rotation I’m using

Think we are getting a bit off the topic I ment to be on.
I’m not saying death shroud cant be useful, im saying it has 0 synergy with the rest of your class.
It could easly be given to the thief or guardian and synergy just as well with them as it does for the necro. As the class mechanic it should some how effect the class as something more than just a second health bar.

if that aoe “life” drain isn’t doing it for you, try transfusion so that it heals all your teammates.

though it really is good.
Also it’s important to note that you get not only a chill effect but a teleport out of your 2, and a fear (or aoe fear underwater) out of your 3. the fear doesn’t do much at all unless you’re in a dungeon and need to tick away at those cc immunities that bosses have. you can clear the way for a powerful stun by hitting the fear when the boss has a stack of cc protection shields up.

When you boost it up correctly you can actually have a net gain in life force over 1-15s burst keeping it up for quite a while.

I like it a lot for killing time while important skills, usually your heal and/or utility, are on cooldown. Spite 10 lets you get 15s of might each time you use DS1, meaning you can get 8+ stacks of might from being in DS. Further, DS4 is powerful AoE and fear is an interrupt with no cast delay. Overall I find Death Shroud useful, but not over-centralizing.

Also, it has a lot of synergy with the necromancer’s skills. The necromancer is all about outliving and outlasting the enemy. As your enemies die from conditions and steady (albeit low) dps, your giant health pool, strong healing skills, and DS keep you alive to see out the full extent of your attrition.

I can see death shroud as having a very key role for a axe or dagger based power/precision build. Life blast at a full bar hits very hard and death shroud has a lot of traits that support this type of build. What bugs me is that death shroud has almost no synergy with condition necros. Life blast won’t hit nearly as hard because they can’t invest as many points into power, and the only bleed death shroud gives comes from dark pact, which deposits you right next to the enemy (i.e., not where you want to be if you’re using the scepter or the staff).

What if they just let us use Death Shroud as an engineer’s toolbit, except tied to LF? Main problem I have is that the #1 skill is boring and DS removes access to your healing and utility skills. DS is not very fun at all.

I like Death Shroud but I do have a couple of small gripes with it.

1) I feel as if Life Blast is a bit long of a cast, especially if I need to dodge a big hit to avoid getting knocked out of it entirely. If there were a trait to make it cast faster I wold take it in a heartbeat.

2) While Life Transfer is powerful it often gets me in trouble. I tend to try and use it to boost my life bar some (like a little heal) but the amount that it restores is laughable and is negated almost as fast as it is gained. In addition it usually winds up pullinga mob to the side that I did not see or one that respawned behind me.

3) I NEVER use the grasp ability, since I don’t run with a toughness build (I hate minion management) I never really want the enemy close to me as I just take more damage and I have yet to find a way to “heal” the life bar.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for eating a huge hit that would otherwise kill you, but it lacks some real longevity for me (at level 53) and it doesn’t really feel bursty except fir Life Transfer.

I agree that DS seemingly has no synergy with our regular weapon skills. DS however works very well by itself as an idea. Things i wish they could change about Deathshroud would be:

1: Instead of four skills give us 5 please, make one a stackable dot. Either bleed or poison or burning. Conditionmancers feel very left out here spamming lifeblast and watching the bleeds they just stacked on someone expire.

2:The fear feels very lackluster. I would love to see this either be a point blank AOE style or changed so that the single target becomes movement slowed, or vulnerable while feared.

3: I think giving a passive ability to the Deathshroud would possibly be the best change./addition. Something like Enemies within 600m have -healing or skills take longer to recharge.

Basically as others have said in the thread, the Deathshroud ability feels very lackluster in approach. Most necro’s do not switch to deathshroud until they are almost dead and I always felt it was an ability to be used to sort of weave in and out of combat. Please give us necros more reasons to utilize this ability ArenaNet.

Much love,
Madame Moorshade Teknomancer.

Overall it’s pretty great, but I do have two gripes.

1) Lifesteal and heals don’t work on you while in DS. It feels pretty crappy when using a full blood build where a large focus for you is to steal health. It makes you not want to use DS.

2) The cast and travel time on Dark Path. By the time you’re in range and cast it and it reaches the target you’re pretty well there already. I understand it’s useful if you’re slowed, but I’d love to actually get to my target quicker. Either increase the range, speed up the animation of the hand, or cut the cast time.

I mainly use it as a survivability tool to be honest, but I think the skills there are ok.
To be honest I wish I could have a build that centered around massive DS damage.

So when you are in a boss fight the goal is to get as much life force you can ASAP, then to DS and use the attack there are as a ‘nuke’ with massive single target damage or AoE damage.

The ‘1’ in DS seems so weak always. Too bad because I look awsome in DS!

It definitely feels like it favors Melee Necro over Condition/Support Necros. For the most part, 4 requires you to be in melee range, and 2 puts you in melee range. 1 is great you have good power (melee stat). Only the fear is really useful if you’re playing keep away as a Staff Necro.

I use it to survive or help my minions survive (Minion master spec). Grab the 10 point trait in blood that heals when you use the 4th slot skill and you can keep your minions up a good bit longer. The nice thing about death shroud is that you can use it at any time, even if you are dazed, stunned, falling, doesn’t matter. I use it all the time to mitigate damage when I see it coming.

I’ve tried making a few death shroud builds as a kind of berserk style play. It was underwhelming at best in that regard. However as a survival skill, it’s unbelievable.

they should have got multiple types of shrouds

I’m still a noob necro, but I’ve done nothing really outside of conditionmancer pvp, and I feel the only real uses for DS as this is to quickly get off a fear if needed, or to not let your regular HP pool be effected when having to kite away from something/someone. I’m probably not maximizing potential but it’s fair to say nearly 100% of my use for it is the fear or to run away (strictly speaking sPvP), which does sort of make it feel meh.

the 50% life siphon trait does not boost life drains damage or traited life steal.

if you want to see high damage from it at all you would invest in power and crit and then maybe you could reach the 5-7k aoes it nets with alot of crit procs.

I don’t know how to feel about shroud it punishes you for using it to much becuase it lowers life blast by 50% damage when you get it under 50% and you lost power if you have the lifeforce to damage trait.

Bascially 2800-3k crit in my power build with life blast at full and then really crappy 1kish damage after 50%.

dark path makes chill builds very easy to stack and can set up bleeds with it’s 3 bleed stack but the projectile is very slow moing and easy to dodge. basically only viable in melee range to begin with.

the 1 second fear is ok.

fairly bland but saves me some uneeded damage taken. it could have cooler moves or adapt to your build/weapon selection but maybe that’s asking to much.

I wonder how well it would work in www
1. use spectral walk
2. turn shroud on
3. dark path to enemy middle of enemy group
4. life transfer until spectral walk pulls you back to ‘safety’ , perhaps with flesh wurm to give second jump back

I can 100-0 glass cannon-type builds in PvP if I can get the drop on them with Death Shroud. 1-1-1-2-4-3, drop out and land a few autoattacks. They’re down, and you have a full health bar. This is with a build that focuses almost entirely on using axe to buff life force, while taking any Death Shroud enhancement I can find. Power and Toughness gear. So, it’s good, but you really have to spec into it to show its true potential. Also, it’ll take a lot more work to bring down a Guardian or defensive Warrior, so choose your targets.

you would most likely die in wvwvw if you jumped into a mass of people off a wall in bright green spectral mode. also walk and flesh wurm have a terrible time with the elevation meaning the teleport won’t work almost all of the time except maybe if you glitch it by accident. I’m pretty sure most of the class teleports have been limited like this to avoid jumping puzzle exploits.

Honestly, I kinda like shroud as a conditionmancer. When I see a group and I know my team can handle it, I throw down grasping dead, enfeebling blood, roll in to create a mark of blood (trait), hit shroud to throw down another enfeebling blood (trait), and hit the #4 skill. That’s a large amount of aoe damage, cripples and weakness all around, and a great initiation for my team. Soak up the damage with my life force bar, come out of shroud to consume the immobilizes and cripples they’ve thrown on me, and roll back out (creating another mark of blood to cover my exit).

The projectile speed on the hand is kinda meh. The fear is great, but a bit short. As a conditionmancer, the blast doesn’t do much, but it’s not too bad a source of damage if I’m under heavy fire. If there was a trait for it to cause bleed? I’d be all over that.

I only use death shroud to survive longer. It sucks and I wish I didn’t need to use it.

As Cantspel mentioned, you can spec out DS to be rather helpful for minion masters with a number of aoe heals from the Blood Magic line. Jump into a group of enemies so your minions engage, hop into DS and hit 4 to start healing your minions and spreading damage around. While you’re doing that pick a target for your fear and use it. Drop out of DS and heal your minions again.

Admittedly, considering how much Necros seem to like condition damage, I’d love to see some kind of bleed or poison incorporated with the DS, even if it’s just a trait.

Katai.6240:

It definitely feels like it favors Melee Necro over Condition/Support Necros. For the most part, 4 requires you to be in melee range, and 2 puts you in melee range. 1 is great you have good power (melee stat).

Power is not a melee stat, it’s simply not a Scepter stat. It -is- an Axe, Staff and Focus stat as well as the dagger (which has two rangd abilites anyway).

4 also has a 600 radius starting from you, that’s the same range as the axe. That’s an insanely huge radius and can hit many, many people.

Karther.7481:

Katai.6240:

It definitely feels like it favors Melee Necro over Condition/Support Necros. For the most part, 4 requires you to be in melee range, and 2 puts you in melee range. 1 is great you have good power (melee stat).

Power is not a melee stat, it’s simply not a Scepter stat. It -is- an Axe, Staff and Focus stat as well as the dagger (which has two rangd abilites anyway).

4 also has a 600 radius starting from you, that’s the same range as the axe. That’s an insanely huge radius and can hit many, many people.

then why does it have condition duration?

……………..

Condition Duration = more conditions, more conditions = more condition damage.

Power increases direct damage, that’s it.

If you’re thinking of the trait line of Spite, that’s false. Power alone from gear, jewellery and buffs, does not affect your Conditions in the slightest. That trait line however increases both Power and Condition duration, yet they remain seperate entities.

Only thing that needs to be fixed in DS is the duration of the fear.
Other classes “outfear” us, while we should be known for it.