Guild Wars 2

Death Shrout Battle tank build (sPvP)

Motivation
Having the post of Jon Peters in Mind:

“Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we arent ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him. "

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-play-a-necro-but-I-traid-a-warrior-for-one-play-session/first#post115247
I tried to make a build focusing on utilizing Death Shroud as much as possible.

the build
The builds idea is simple: use Death Shroud to soak up damage as much as posssible.
Since Death Shroud damage scales best with power and crit and critical hits having a lot of proc chances via Sigils and Traits, it also relies on critical chance.
Here is the build: 0/30/10/0/30
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.4.7.13.0.4.37.37.0.107.122.121.123.129.5.3.19.0.0.0.317.325.327.332.0.0.0.0.0.364.370.372.0.30.10.0.30
Weapons are Staff and Axe, because those two have the highest Life Force generation, since you’ll need a lot of Life Force to make the build work.
Items for sPvP are the following:
Rampager’s Amulet ( +569 condition damage, +284 power, +798 precision, +284 vitality)
I changed the jewel in the amulet to gain an extra 125 toughness.
Axe with Superior Sigil of Accuracy http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Perception
Offhand dagger with Superior Sigil of Purity http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Purity
Staff with Superior Sigil of Purity http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Purity
Armor rune 6 times http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Infiltration

• (1): +2%  damage vs. foes below 50% health
• (2): +15  Precision
• (3): +3%  damage vs. foes below 50% health
• (4): +35  Precision
• (5): +5%  damage vs. foes below 50% health
• (6):  Cloak when you fall below 10% health. (Cooldown: 90s)
• Rebreather rune 1 http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Guardian
  +25 tougness

Strength and weaknesses

Strength offense

• 10% extra damage on foes below 50% health
• 2% extra damage per condition on your enemy
• 5% extra damage if Life Force is above 50% (will happen a lot)
• 66% chance for 1 second bleeding on critical hits
• 87% crit chance in Death Shroud for 5 seconds
• 67% crit chance
• 180% extra damage on crit
• high condition damage
• medium direct damage
• 1 second ground targeted fear (staff 4), 1 second singletarget fear (Death Shroud 3) and a knockdown (Flesh Golem)
• 2 sources of Chill (Death Shroud 2 and staff 3)
• 2 sources of Cripple (axe 3 and Flesh Golem)
• 1 source of Retaliation that scales with number of enemys (axe 3)
• 666 DPS Flesh Golem
• 2 sources of vulnerabilty (axe 1 and Spectral Wall)
• 3 sources of bleed (staff 2, Death Shroud 2, 66% chance for a 1 second bleed on critical hit)
  Strength defense
• 130% of health as Life Force
• You gain almost 230% out of vitality, health + 130% health as Life Force
• Toughness worth is doubled since its applied to your Life Force and Health Pool
  highest Life Force generation (Staff Life Force per second 1,304 on all attacks, 4 Life Force per second on Axe 2, 5% Life Force on Spectral Skill use)
• 3 ways of actively removing conditions (offhand dagger 1, staff 4 and Consume Conditions)
• 2 stun breakers (Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk)
• 1 passive stun breaker every 60 seconds at 50% health (Spectral Armor)
• 20% faster Spectral skill recharge
• 2 sources of protection (Spectral Armor and Spectral Wall)
• 5 second Death Shroud cooldown
• 33% chance to gain 1% Life Force on critical hits
• very strong heal if used while having conditions on yourself
• medium AoE regeneration from Staff 2
• emergency stealth at 10% life

Weakness offense

• no burst spikes, damage is rather consistent
• no boon removal
• Jagged Horrors can be used to rally (or did they fix that?)

Weakness defense

• prone to CC in Death Shroud (although you can shift out of it and use one of your stunbreakers)
• prone to conditions in Death Shroud, condition removal is on chance rather than active
• no healing your health pool while in Death Shroud

How to play

Basically you have two states in this build:

• Life Force leech
• Death Shroud

Life Force leech
If you have any conditions on yourself use Consume Conditions, staff 4 and dagger 1 in that order to get rid of them.
If you have any of them up use Spectral Armor and Spectral Wall offensively to gain Life Force while having protetcion up. Try to lure your enemy into crossing the Spectral Wall to apply vulnerability. Save Spectral Walk as an emergency Life Force generator and stun breaker.
If you don’t have those up avoid damage and use Spectral Wall, Axe 2 and Staff skills in that order to Leech Life force. Once you reach 90-100% Life Force switch to…
Death Shroud and fire away until 80% Life Force use Life Transfer to prolong your Death Shroud. Save Doom (Death Shroud 3) for burst attacks, interrupting heal skills and interrupting finishers on downed allies. At 50% Life Force switch back to life leech.

Example fight
You are engaging an enemy with 0% Life Force and your Axe/Dagger. Use Spectral Armor and Spectral Wall offensively to gain Life Force while having protetcion up. Try to lure your enemy into crossing the Spectral Wall to apply vulnerability.
Use Axe 2 to gain 32% additional Life Force then switch to Staff and use all marks except Reaper’s Mark and Putrid Mark.
Heal yourself with Consume Conditions, unless you are on full health that is, and switch into Death Shroud. Immediately start auto attacking (autoattack turns off when switching into Death Shroud) apply Death Shroud 2 and dodge away from your enemy after the teleport.
Use Life Transfer at 80% Life Force and leave Death Shroud at 60% Life Force, remove stuns with Spectral Wall if necessary.
If CCed during the life leech phase use Spectral Walk to break it and kite or switch into Death Shroud to soak the damage regardless of how much Life Force you gathered yet. There is no reason to unneccessary lose your real health during CC.
Priorize sending conditions to your foe over attacking conventionally. Use Consume Conditions, Putrid Mark (staff 3) and Deathly Swarm (offhand dagger 1) to do so.

similar builds

• One could switch out the amulet to Soldiers amulet to get more toughness at the cost of condition damage without losing the high critical chance. Still offensive but with weaker bleeds.
• One could swith out the Sigil on Axe to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Earth to utilize the builds high critical chance for applying bleeds with Axe. NOTE: you need to have the staff equiped in Death Shroud or you’ll be unable to counter conditions while in Death Shroud.
• One could swap Spectral Wall with Spectral Grasp for one extra knockdown.
• One could turn it into a bunker build with the Soldier’s amulet and by changing the traits to: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.4.7.13.0.11.5.5.0.107.122.121.123.129.8.9.29.0.0.0.0.0.0.336.337.0.347.352.0.364.370.372.0.0.20.20.30 . Runes and Sigils would have to be replaced accordingly as well. By my experience this makes you unable to kill someone before other players join the fight or your enemy simply running away. You, on the other hand, will be neigh indestructible as well.

I wonder, do the rune’s cloak effect trigger on DS entry?

I guess you are referring to this bug

Death Shroud

(NB0001) Rune of Svanir “Become a block of ice” will trigger after entering DS and receive foe damage. (Ignores %HP trigger)
(NB0002) Rune of Vampirism “You become mist” will trigger after entering DS and receive foe damage. (Ignores %HP trigger)
(NB0106) Siphones Power “Gain might” will trigger after entering DS and receive foe damage. (Ignores %HP trigger)
(NB0003) Decaying Swarm will trigger after entering DS and receive foe damage. (Ignores %HP trigger)

Can’t say. Currently I’m doing my week of abscene regarding playing computer games. Though feel free to test, interesting question for sure!

Does Rune_of_Infiltration even work? I am testing in the PvP test dummy area and it never triggers…

I’m not super familiar with Necros, although this build seems awfully tempting.

Why do you suggest leaving DS at roughly 60%? Can you only gain ~40% before the cooldown’s off again, or is that to take advantage of all of DS’s cooldowns being blown and to maximize DPS outside DS?

Tried that build weeks ago, you won’t be able to kill anything and with 1k Toughness any well balanced DPS will kill you in seconds DS or not.

’m not super familiar with Necros, although this build seems awfully tempting.

Why do you suggest leaving DS at roughly 60%? Can you only gain ~40% before the cooldown’s off again, or is that to take advantage of all of DS’s cooldowns being blown and to maximize DPS outside DS?

Because

• You’ll want to have leftover Life Force for emergency situations
• Life Blasts damage shrinks with your Life Force
• Even at full Life Force you deall less damage in Death Shroud
• You currently can’t see boons and conditions on yourself in Death Shroud

Cempa.3645:

Tried that build weeks ago, you won’t be able to kill anything and with 1k Toughness any well balanced DPS will kill you in seconds DS or not.

Can’t confirm either of your claims. The only time I’m having real issues using that build is at the beginning of the match with 0% Life Force.
Its crucial to have the Runes and Sigils I mentioned to make this build work. You’ll be too vulnerable to conditions in Death Shroud otherwise.

I’ve recently been looking into a more survivability-based necromancer, instead of the offensive one I currently use. I like the fact that you’re working on this build, but I feel that there are a few things you should consider- But before I do so, I’d like to point out that the description of a “tank” has changed over the years and, from looking at your build, I’m having difficulty determining which one you are intending to build for.

If you’re going for a typical “tank” survivability build, I’d like to point out that there’s a great deal of synergy between percentage based life force generation and increasing the total life force pool. However, (and although I’m unsure whether it provides life force in a 1 to 1 ratio with vitality) you could increase your durability outside of death shroud, and effectiveness while in it, by prioritizing vitality over the extra life force pool in soul reaping.

I noticed that aside from the extra 100 toughness you gain in the death magic tree, and a meager 284 vitality from your amulet, this build is about as much of a “tank” as my purely offensive death-shroud based necromancer at the cost of several thousands of damage you would have gained by otherwise specializing points into power.

From the look of this build, your primary source of damage would be conditions. And although condition based necromancers can still benefit from death shroud as a defensive mechanism, the damage you deal in death shroud (as you already mentioned, yourself) is very low with such a specialization.

My recommendation to you would be that if you’re trying to make a “tank” build that devotes traits and gear into condition damage, focus on increasing your vitality instead of your life force pool. Furthermore, a high crit chance and crit damage means very little without a high base power, and so if you still wish to use conditions I would suggest replacing your axe with a scepter.

I wish you the best of luck with your build.

130% extra damage on crit

- crits are already at base an extra 50% damage so your damage on crit will be 180%

- crits are already at base an extra 50% damage so your damage on crit will be 180%

Whoops… you’re right. I will correct it right away!

@Kayotik

• I use the crit chance mainly to proc the sigils and bleeds. By using Sigil of Earth on my Axe all three weapon sets apply bleeds, so the condition damage is used with every weapon set.
• Another reason to choose the crit chance is the secondary stat bonus of Soul Reaping: critical damage. As a minmaxer it bothers me to have a stat bonus unused.
• I choose Axe over Dagger for its range and superior Life Force generation
  The power based damage of Death Shroud gets low but thats rather a constant. Even with high power, Life Blast pales in comparison to autto attacks, especially from MH-dagger.
• Regarding the tankyness: with Protection reducing damage in leech state and the high Life Force generation I spend most of my time in Death Shroud. The Life Force bar fills up in no time with this build in addition conditions are almost no problem due to the way the build removes conditions. On top of that it has 3 stun breakes with one automatic Spectral Armor, one active Spectral Armor and one active Spectral Walk. Which all recharge 20% faster and last longer.
• Regarding damage: conditions are send back by this build and add to your damage rather than theirs, in addition every condition on your enemy increases your damage by 2%. Together with Rune of Infiltration and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_of_Undeath you deal +20% damage while your enemy is below 50% health

Anyway, would you mind showing me your damage Death Shroud build?

I completely understand why you’d feel as though you’re wasting potential by placing points in the soul reaping tree without benefiting from the crit damage you gain passively. Problem is, crit damage scales exponentially with power- And in a build with a very low amount of power, that stat is largely wasted regardless of trying to incorporate it into your build.

I’m very undecided on whether the extra life force would be better utilized as vitality. Clearly, the more vitality you have the better the additional life force becomes. Even at a base vitality, it’s much easier to acquire 30% extra life force than an additional 30% hit points. Keep in mind, though, that vitality increases your survivability both inside AND outside of death shroud- Meaning that to capitalize on the points spent in soul reaping over blood magic, you’d need to either A) have a very high vitality from gear, or B) benefit from the extra life force multiple times via life force generation in a single encounter. Perhaps you may be able to help shed some light on your decision.

Although your statement about life blast dealing less damage than dagger is correct, you must also realize that life blast provides the highest form of dps at any range above 180 (lol) out of any weapon available to us (if you treat it as such). In a build such as yours, I understand why you’d rather ignore the damage it deals, but please do not neglect it’s usefulness when paired with any additional power.

I’d be more than happy to share my build with you, found here. Keep in mind, however, that this specific build was designed for PvE, and that the one I normally used for pvp (a harder hitting, lower sustained version) is listed further down the page.

I’ve tried doing some Death Shroud tank builds, they’re just not that good. You only have a small window to do some dmg in Death Shroud before you’re really not doing any again, then when you need to come out to re-build Life Force you just fall too far behind and eventually lose.

The fact that Death Shroud/Life Force is not only your best survivability skill but also your best dmg skill is what ultimately makes it fail IMO.