Guild Wars 2

(note: Please leave any gripes about recent offensive changes out of this thread; they’ve already been debated ad nauseam and it is generally accepted that there is going to be some sort of change in that area if not agreement about what and how much.)

It has been identified many times that Necromancers are particularly weak to focus fire and by extension crowd control that leaves them in a position to be focus fired. Reasons for this include to varying degrees:

Low/Limited: mobility tools, high up-time defensive boons like protection, aegis, vigor, stability, stealth, and invulnerability utilities.

Currently Death Shroud functions as a substitute health bar which helps greatly in 1v1 encounters; but is somewhat lacking compared to options other classes get when trying to ablate or avoid focus fire.

The result is an increasing lack of builds that are viewed as viable, especially in a game where the meta tends towards heavy offense + avoidance/mobility being king to begin with.

The purpose of this thread is to bring up ways that Death Shroud can be altered to better address this issue and move the class closer to the attrition ideal that has been stated as the design mandate by the Developers, without making the class an unbeatable monster in small scale encounters.

My suggestion is as follows:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

A hopefully simple way of doing this might include just two different degen rates while making the Necromancer technically invulnerable while in Death Shroud, one for not being attacked during the degen tick period, and one for being attacked during the degen tick period.

Certain effects like fall damage may or may not be allowed to bypass the degen cap in order to keep some behaviors in check if needed.

Alternate suggestions of course welcome; I just ask that they be focused on ways of addressing the class weakness to focus fire.

DS already has access to things like retaliation, aoe weakness and stability which are all pretty strong effects. The one could argue that stability is a tad bit difficult to get since it overlaps some other seemingly essential traits but okay I can live without stability.

I’d love to see more effects necro could get when they enter DS though. Like protection or regen when DS ends etc. Would be useful when you go for tanky stuff. Or maybe even more cc/offensive effects too whatever for more diversity.

Just giving some max this and that/invulnerability would be way too powerful though.

By that logic all the evasion, block, and invulnerability tools other classes get are by definition OP.

And they often get them on far shorter animation times than the effects we get on DS.

Access to a stunbreak in DS would go a very long way to solving this issue really, as would some means of mobility on an instant cast.

The “tankiness” of DS really is effective at sponging substantial amounts of damage, but the problem is the inevitable CC chain that you are forced to eat while in shroud.

If DS #2 was a ground target, instant cast, then this would be a huge help.

If you could use utilities while in shroud, then this would also be a huge help.

If a focused burst couldn’t blow up your whole DS in less than 2s, then this would also be a huge help.

I guess what I’m saying is that there are many ways to skin the particular cat that you have brought to the table. I would suggest that minor traits are a good way to provide whatever tuning they want to do, as Necro minors still pretty much suck.

Candidates for deletion/replacement in the minors:

*Reanimator * – For the love of God get rid of this already

Protection of the Horde – This is garbage too

Gluttony – LF generation is already getting tweaked. Eliminate this variable.

Siphoned Power – Oh noes, I’m going to die in .5 seconds… If only I had some MIGHT! Now I will die with better stats.

Blood to Power-5% damage that will proc roughly never because you will always get focused first? The 5% damage that only helps power builds and is deep in the Vitality/Healing tree… Don’t need that.

Full of Life – More regen when you already have great access to that boon, and it procs at 90% when you need it least. Plus, your profession mechanic completely negates regen if you use it while under the boon’s effects. Why is this here again?

They just made major changes to the trait system, and I think it is fair to expect that some of these will be the path to tweaking the profession more in the future, but they probably need to watch the meta a little bit longer before deciding how to change things up.

Yeah the issue I keep running into isn’t what WILL help a Necromancer survive a CC+lolspikeburstgg, it’s more of what the Devs would be willing to give that isn’t already on the verboten list of mobility/teleport/boons/stability.

Hell, just a trait that gave a passive chance to auto transfer incoming CC onto a nearby enemy target would be a huge help as it would help DS tanking damage be useful instead of being a CC magnet.

maibe drecrease the % of lifeforce draining every second wile in DS to increase its tankyness beacose ur total ammount of lifeforce comes from ur health +% from trait.

This is pretty much the fundamental flaw with necro. For a power necro DS is both offense and defense, but it is depleted extremely quickly when focus fired and you can’t generate it fast enough to use it either defensively or offensively when taking sustained pressure.

Experienced players know this so the necro is typically the primary focus target and this just makes the problem worse. DS, as it is now, is not a good sustain mechanic when compared to what is available to some of the other classes.

jalmari.3906:

DS already has access to things like retaliation, aoe weakness and stability which are all pretty strong effects. The one could argue that stability is a tad bit difficult to get since it overlaps some other seemingly essential traits but okay I can live without stability.

I’d love to see more effects necro could get when they enter DS though. Like protection or regen when DS ends etc. Would be useful when you go for tanky stuff. Or maybe even more cc/offensive effects too whatever for more diversity.

Just giving some max this and that/invulnerability would be way too powerful though.

You won’t be able to use any of that stuff once your lifeforce is depleted from sustained focus fire.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Siphoned Power – Oh noes, I’m going to die in .5 seconds… If only I had some MIGHT! Now I will die with better stats.

Blood to Power-5% damage that will proc roughly never because you will always get focused first? The 5% damage that only helps power builds and is deep in the Vitality/Healing tree… Don’t need that.

These two made me laugh so hard. No one specs in the healing tree anyways, because of horrid scaling, but the Siphoned power trait never made sense to me haha.

What I would personally like to see is a shorter cool-down on the transformation but not on the boons given. That would further encourage quick fingers to use DS to ablate incoming damage. Life Force generation could stay the same.

Anchoku.8142:

What I would personally like to see is a shorter cool-down on the transformation but not on the boons given. That would further encourage quick fingers to use DS to ablate incoming damage. Life Force generation could stay the same.

ds is good at it is you juts need to trait it and spectral skills I get more than enough life force and boosting it eny way would just make my life forece overun atm I cant spend it enough fast enyway and it sometimes feels like I cant take most of my build beacose I basicly just need to stay in death shroud all the time xD just activate spectral walk or armor before you go into death shroud and it stays up during te effect in combat also if you place spectral wall into enemys your life force regain incredebly fast the problem is in ur builds you cant espect to get much life force running condision build and only skill useful for condision is nb5 and if ur power build spec sectral for more suvivability. and I want to point out necromancers have insane mobility if you build for it ds nb 2 to tele to enemy spectral walk to fool them and worm to tele. getting stability is useful and you can spec ds to recharge on 7 sec now easely. sry if I was mean or something but necromancer is in really good place atm dont get greedy.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Spectral Skills (as a “for instance”) having a DS-version. So, if you had them on your utility bar, popping DS would make them flip to a DS-only utility. Or something along those lines…

Or just having regular utilities show up at all would be nice….

Overkillengine.6084:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

I really like this idea. Its like giving death shroud its own version of protection.

Hopefully a version that is only really relevant against focus fire and does almost nothing 1v1 where we don’t usually need the help.

Since I’ve been playing with a new DS build lately, I feel these are few things I’d like to see;
- Damage increases depending on the percentage of DS you have.
- Armour Increase depending on the percentage of DS you have
- Masochist Trait; The next five attacks you take in DS heal your main health instead instead.
- Fear Death Trait; For a duration of 1 second, the next time you enter DS anyone who attacks you within that second is feared for half a second.

And that’s about it.

I only have three gripes-

1) Life Blast doesn’t do enough damage for dagger builds. You’re better of just using the daggers and saving the LF for defensive purposes. The problem being situations where you’re not in danger of dying there’s not much purpose in using DS. The same can be said for the power coefficient on Life Transfer.

2) I agree that capping the amount of LF loss per second would be an interesting way to allow Necros to stand up to focus fire. Maybe it would deplete at a higher rather than it currently does when being attached by one enemy, but if it depleted at the same, or similar rate when being hit by multiples this could open up a lot of survival potential.

3) Healing in DS. For a Blood/Lifesteal build (just like in my gripe #1) this kills anyone wanting to use DS. If I could drop to 50% hp, go into DS and lifesteal my way back to say, 70%, then I could find a great deal more utility in it.

I like your suggestion of:

Overkillengine.6084:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

A hopefully simple way of doing this might include just two different degen rates while making the Necromancer technically invulnerable while in Death Shroud, one for not being attacked during the degen tick period, and one for being attacked during the degen tick period.

PROVIDED that the following addition is made:

The amount of overflow damage from deathshroud to the necro’s regular health will not exceed the max “under attack” degen rate that you are proposing.

To illustrate:

Assume a necro with 20,000 health and no points in Soul Reaping. Their deathshroud will also have 20,000 “health” if I’m correct in assuming that the recent fixes to deathshroud now make it equal 100% of the necro’s regular health.

For the purposes of this example, let’s further assume that the base degen rate of deathshroud is 5% of max per second and 10% of max per second when taking damage (but only for attacks which exceed 10% of the maximum potential life force).

Now picture a necromancer in deathshroud with only 5% life force remaining. They are hit for 10,000 damage. However, per the OP’s suggestion that the necro will have a capped life-force-loss-per-second when under attack and my suggestion that this be set to 10% of maximum life force, the necro will only take 2,000 damage:

Necro takes a 10,000 point hit.

10,000 points exceeds 10% of the necro’s max potential life force pool.

20,000 life force pool x 10% max loss per second from attacks = 2,000.

The original 10,000 damage attack now becomes a 2,000 damage attack.

20,000 × 5% life force remaining = 1,000 points of deathshroud “health”.

The first 1,000 points of this damage will be applied to the life force pool since the necro only had 1,000 points left. This knocks the necro out of deathshroud. The remaining 1,000 points of damage are then applied as “overflow” to the necro’s normal health.

It will NOT be the case that the necro absorbs 1,000 points of that 10,000 damage with their life force and the remaining 9,000 points spills over to damage the necromancer directly.

This is a compromise I’d be willing to live with. The whole “damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.” without any modifications has got to go, though.

TL;DR: Simply make deathshroud function similar to Protective Spirit from GW1; cap life force degen at 10% of max per second when damage taken exceeds this amount. The new damage overflow nerf for deathshroud remains in effect, but the amount of overflow damage taken is only that amount left over after having decreased it to 10% of max life force and subtracted whatever life force was still remaining in the necro’s deathshroud.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I like your suggestion of:

Overkillengine.6084:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

A hopefully simple way of doing this might include just two different degen rates while making the Necromancer technically invulnerable while in Death Shroud, one for not being attacked during the degen tick period, and one for being attacked during the degen tick period.

PROVIDED that the following addition is made:

The amount of overflow damage from deathshroud to the necro’s regular health will not exceed the max “under attack” degen rate that you are proposing.

To illustrate:

Assume a necro with 20,000 health and no points in Soul Reaping. Their deathshroud will also have 20,000 “health” if I’m correct in assuming that the recent fixes to deathshroud now make it equal 100% of the necro’s regular health.

For the purposes of this example, let’s further assume that the base degen rate of deathshroud is 5% of max per second and 10% of max per second when taking damage (but only for attacks which exceed 10% of the maximum potential life force).

Now picture a necromancer in deathshroud with only 5% life force remaining. They are hit for 10,000 damage. However, per the OP’s suggestion that the necro will have a capped life-force-loss-per-second when under attack and my suggestion that this be set to 10% of maximum life force, the necro will only take 2,000 damage:

Necro takes a 10,000 point hit.

10,000 points exceeds 10% of the necro’s max potential life force pool.

20,000 life force pool x 10% max loss per second from attacks = 2,000.

The original 10,000 damage attack now becomes a 2,000 damage attack.

20,000 × 5% life force remaining = 1,000 points of deathshroud “health”.

The first 1,000 points of this damage will be applied to the life force pool since the necro only had 1,000 points left. This knocks the necro out of deathshroud. The remaining 1,000 points of damage are then applied as “overflow” to the necro’s normal health.

It will NOT be the case that the necro absorbs 1,000 points of that 10,000 damage with their life force and the remaining 9,000 points spills over to damage the necromancer directly.

This is a compromise I’d be willing to live with. The whole “damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.” without any modifications has got to go, though.

TL;DR: Simply make deathshroud function similar to Protective Spirit from GW1; cap life force degen at 10% of max per second when damage taken exceeds this amount. The new damage overflow nerf for deathshroud remains in effect, but the amount of overflow damage taken is only that amount left over after having decreased it to 10% of max life force and subtracted whatever life force was still remaining in the necro’s deathshroud.

This makes alot of sense to me. It entirely mitigates being bursted but it is still a limited resource that the necro has to manage. I wonder if it might be OP in situations where the necro is gaining alot of LF passively from dying foes, such that the LF gains keep exceeding the max degen so that wearing down the necro is a very long process. But then again, isn’t that the whole point of us being an attrition class?

TheAgedGnome.7520:

This makes alot of sense to me. It entirely mitigates being bursted but it is still a limited resource that the necro has to manage. I wonder if it might be OP in situations where the necro is gaining alot of LF passively from dying foes, such that the LF gains keep exceeding the max degen so that wearing down the necro is a very long process. But then again, isn’t that the whole point of us being an attrition class?

I was just throwing out some percentages that are easy to work with in hypothetical scenarios. The actual numbers would have to come from testing and balancing. You do bring up a good point, though, that – with enough beings dying around the necro – they could conceivably remain in DS for quite a long time.

Then again – as you state – isn’t that the point of an attrition class? I don’t think it unbalanced that a necro remain in DS longer the more things are dying around them. It IS d-e-a-t-h shroud, afterall. So now we have a built-in scaling mechanic for deathshroud that – potentially – balances our sustain relative to the number of enemies we face; if played skillfully, of course. It won’t be an automatic godmode; the necro and/or their allies still have to kill those opponents.

Keep in mind, too, that the necro is still experiencing their natural life force degen throughout this entire process. In my example I used a 1-to-2 ratio of natural degen-to-attack degen. Let’s assume it takes 3 seconds to kill an enemy. The necro in DS will have lost 15% of their life force to degen while only gaining back 10% life force from the expired foe; a net loss of 5% life force. In another scenario – say a zerg-vs-zerg in WvWvW, for example – where multiple enemies are dying per second, a necro might manage to remain in DS for quite some time; provided they’re hanging back and aren’t taking any damage.

So, yeah, some number tweaking may be in order; maybe a 1-to-3 ratio in which natural degen is 5% per second while the damage cap set to 15% of max life force per second.

Basically what I was going for; and it allows for potentially recovering from a CC+focusfire spike, which would put DS more on par with evade/block/dodge/boonstacking mechanics other classes get.

In large group engagements teams would have to make a choice to try to spike the enemy Necros immediately but potentially take too long to kill them leaving the other enemies free to act; or wait and have to face Necros still at near full strength after focusing their allies.

Not the current state where halfway intelligent opponents will always CC+assist train a Necro before anyone else if possible.

I feel there needs to be some sort of reward for having 100% deathshroud up while at-the sametime giving us access to a decent defensive utility. I mean even after the patch there is still very little reason to fill it right up unless you forget about it. Now necromancers lack decent stun breaks outside of well of power and that has a 50second cooldown and compared to other classes we lack escape options.

The solution If someone has 100% lifeforce apon entering deathshroud they get a stunbreak and 2 seconds of stability regardless of there build. This is the same weather it be 1 v 1 or 1 v X except that when theres more people naturally lifeforce should fill faster meaning you get access to the stunbreak quicker. Doesn’t seem like much but its enough time to move out of that AOE circle, that burst crit or get a dodge off and counter with your own attacks. This alone would solve a lot of our defensive issues and because you need 100% lifeforce to access it stops it becoming spamable.

Any other improvements to deathshroud beyond these (except maybe siphoning whilst in shroud) should be purely Trait based. This is our defensive mechanic which also has offensive potential so any change I feel needs to be careful and balanced.

Longterm I feel our defensive needs will not be met by deathshroud tho but rather fixes to our trait table, new skills and hopefully improvements siphoning.

Is there a reason it has to be limited to deathshroud? And does the solution have to be so convoluted? The main issue is having multiple targets attacking the necro and burning them down while the necro can’t defend itself.

In other games when classes are designed this way, the limited mobility they do have tends to be very good. Why isn’t that the case here? Why isn’t stability and stun breaking more common for this class?

If you want an easy solution outside of shroud, why not just allow necromancers to detonate their wells knocking back targets. Each well could then do something else depending on the one sacrificed. One could chill, another could cause AE damage where they land, etc.

Now while I like a lot of where this thread is going, it seems needlessly complex. Why not just have it so when you leave deathshround you gain protection for 4 seconds?

Why not make it so when deathshroud expires as a result of life force being depleted (meaning you didn’t just turn it off) you gain protection and cast an PBAE knockback where targets are thrown back a distance depending on how much health you have when you leave deathshroud.

If you have 75% or greater, they’re thrown back 300 yards.
If you have 50% or greater, they are thrown back 600 yards.
If you have less than 50% they are thrown back 900 yards.

This in conjunction with better life force generation (bleeds giving life force so you can gain some while in shroud, scepter generating life force on the second attack, etc) so you can use shroud more often would probably have a meaningful impact without being too complex or over-the-top.

Why not while in DS, dodge rolls are deducted from Life Force rather than endurance. It would have to be a high percentage (60-65%) but would solve the problem of vigor and add a bit more mobility and defense to the Necro and DS, which seems to be the long-term intent anyway.

Gnat.9405:

Why not while in DS, dodge rolls are deducted from Life Force rather than endurance. It would have to be a high percentage (60-65%) but would solve the problem of vigor and add a bit more mobility and defense to the Necro and DS, which seems to be the long-term intent anyway.

Would be quite imba unless it took like 30%+ of life force.

Gnat.9405:

Why not while in DS, dodge rolls are deducted from Life Force rather than endurance. It would have to be a high percentage (60-65%) but would solve the problem of vigor and add a bit more mobility and defense to the Necro and DS, which seems to be the long-term intent anyway.

What?

That boggles my mind. Why would I trade even 30% of my DS for one dodge roll? That is like 7000 hit points. Except for some VERY specific burst situations I would likely fail to dodge roll anyhow, I can’t imagine wanting that.

Replace reanimator with a trait that gives you a 3 second buff when you enter DS for a free dodge roll, that persist after leaving DS, and is consumed on dodge roll. 15 second cooldown. Since most other classes get vigor for tier 1 minors, this seems reasonable, especially now that there are few to any good low tier death magic traits.

I wouldn’t mind if DS gave a few seconds of invulnerability when going in and out of Death Shroud.

And yeah, Reanimator needs replacing. But they do need to replace it with something that makes sense considering the low tier and the death magic line.

I would also like to see a change to Signet of Undeath. It doesn’t really improve life force generation much, and reviving up to 3 downed players is pretty much useless with the long cast time. When a player goes down, you want to help them up fast. And simply running over and reviving is actually faster than using this signet.

Signet of Undeath, if improved, could help in making lifeforce easier to replenish. And if it could revive dead allies, I would be more inclined to equip it for boss fights. That, or lower the cast time.

The reason that I bring this up, is that I have been experimenting to see if Signet of Undeath works to make DS a more viable defense…. but so far I was pretty disappointed by the results.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I like your suggestion of:

Overkillengine.6084:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

A hopefully simple way of doing this might include just two different degen rates while making the Necromancer technically invulnerable while in Death Shroud, one for not being attacked during the degen tick period, and one for being attacked during the degen tick period.

PROVIDED that the following addition is made:

The amount of overflow damage from deathshroud to the necro’s regular health will not exceed the max “under attack” degen rate that you are proposing.

To illustrate:

Assume a necro with 20,000 health and no points in Soul Reaping. Their deathshroud will also have 20,000 “health” if I’m correct in assuming that the recent fixes to deathshroud now make it equal 100% of the necro’s regular health.

For the purposes of this example, let’s further assume that the base degen rate of deathshroud is 5% of max per second and 10% of max per second when taking damage (but only for attacks which exceed 10% of the maximum potential life force).

Now picture a necromancer in deathshroud with only 5% life force remaining. They are hit for 10,000 damage. However, per the OP’s suggestion that the necro will have a capped life-force-loss-per-second when under attack and my suggestion that this be set to 10% of maximum life force, the necro will only take 2,000 damage:

Necro takes a 10,000 point hit.

10,000 points exceeds 10% of the necro’s max potential life force pool.

20,000 life force pool x 10% max loss per second from attacks = 2,000.

The original 10,000 damage attack now becomes a 2,000 damage attack.

20,000 × 5% life force remaining = 1,000 points of deathshroud “health”.

The first 1,000 points of this damage will be applied to the life force pool since the necro only had 1,000 points left. This knocks the necro out of deathshroud. The remaining 1,000 points of damage are then applied as “overflow” to the necro’s normal health.

It will NOT be the case that the necro absorbs 1,000 points of that 10,000 damage with their life force and the remaining 9,000 points spills over to damage the necromancer directly.

This is a compromise I’d be willing to live with. The whole “damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.” without any modifications has got to go, though.

TL;DR: Simply make deathshroud function similar to Protective Spirit from GW1; cap life force degen at 10% of max per second when damage taken exceeds this amount. The new damage overflow nerf for deathshroud remains in effect, but the amount of overflow damage taken is only that amount left over after having decreased it to 10% of max life force and subtracted whatever life force was still remaining in the necro’s deathshroud.

necro is possible that we have 20k to 20k hp in deathshroud?
how to calculate life in deathshroud?

What about changing Signet of Undeath to operate similar to Grenth’s Balance in GW1 but with HP and Life Force? Sacrificing HP to fill LF until they are 50/50.

70% HP, 0% LF would turn to 50% HP and 20% LF. Just something simple to give us more access to LF.

Also if my ideas are bad it may be because I’m am strictly a PvE/lite WvW player so don’t flame too hard.

Gnat.9405:

What about changing Signet of Undeath to operate similar to Grenth’s Balance in GW1 but with HP and Life Force? Sacrificing HP to fill LF until they are 50/50.

70% HP, 0% LF would turn to 50% HP and 20% LF. Just something simple to give us more access to LF.

Also if my ideas are bad it may be because I’m am strictly a PvE/lite WvW player so don’t flame too hard.

The problem with this is you’d just drop combat and regen all your health anyway. If you were to do this, you may as well just start with a full life force bar. I doubt people would do this in combat as DS isn’t more valuable than your normal skills. It’s not like lifetap for warlocks in WoW.

Another possible change, is that Signet of Undeath simply doubles life gained from dying enemies. Because currently it just slowly regenerates lifeforce, and you’re just not getting a lot of use out of it during combat.

True enough. See in PvE my biggest problem with DS is the fact that they want it to be the class’s go-to mechanic but they don’t balance it with the Necro’s builds, rather they tack on sub-par condition/power damage (Torment and LB) and next to useless fillers (PvE still – obviously Fear is useful against palyers but much less so elsewhere).

I think they should allow us to adapt Death Shroud depending on our build, but I also know that’s asking too much.

What about this: Life force generation is faster the less life force you have, but slower than currently if around 60~70%. all life force lost to degen during combat heals 33% of its value of your hp.
Also ofc return Sarmor to 3 or 5 pre hit but no cd. Hell id take a 10% damage reduction for 10 seconds with 5 LF pre hit rather than the current setup, since its both cheezy and cheap in 1v1s while being worthless when you actually need to pop spectrals (teamfights/1vx).
Also plz Swalk back and DS overflow block.

Atherakhia.4086:

Is there a reason it has to be limited to deathshroud? And does the solution have to be so convoluted? The main issue is having multiple targets attacking the necro and burning them down while the necro can’t defend itself.

In other games when classes are designed this way, the limited mobility they do have tends to be very good. Why isn’t that the case here? Why isn’t stability and stun breaking more common for this class?

If you want an easy solution outside of shroud, why not just allow necromancers to detonate their wells knocking back targets. Each well could then do something else depending on the one sacrificed. One could chill, another could cause AE damage where they land, etc.

Now while I like a lot of where this thread is going, it seems needlessly complex. Why not just have it so when you leave deathshround you gain protection for 4 seconds?

Why not make it so when deathshroud expires as a result of life force being depleted (meaning you didn’t just turn it off) you gain protection and cast an PBAE knockback where targets are thrown back a distance depending on how much health you have when you leave deathshroud.

If you have 75% or greater, they’re thrown back 300 yards.
If you have 50% or greater, they are thrown back 600 yards.
If you have less than 50% they are thrown back 900 yards.

This in conjunction with better life force generation (bleeds giving life force so you can gain some while in shroud, scepter generating life force on the second attack, etc) so you can use shroud more often would probably have a meaningful impact without being too complex or over-the-top.

Because the Devs have already stated they do not want to give us the same tools other classes get in order to escape/avoid focus fire.

Which leaves us with trying to make something every Necro gets access to regardless of build, a workable shield.

Right now DS is just a poor delay timer; in pvp if you were going to die before using it, you are most likely going to die even when using it, just adding a couple extra seconds because quite frankly the entire game design punishes trying to passively stat-tank incoming damage and effects.

Access to stun brake/combo finisher/condition removal in DS.

Some ‘fair’ heals while in DS. Our Vamp for example, costs traits, and isn’t half as good as other class’s passive from signet. It would be ‘nice’ for us and others wasting heals after burst damage, to get some effect on us while DS. Be it 1/3rd heals, in say PvE only. Or something fair.

NO, no more brainstorming. I am tired of this community doing the DEVs jobs for them, only to see them turn around and not listen. They do exactly the opposite of what we ask, they add more damage but force odd builds, they go COMPLETELY deaf when it comes to defensive additions, and can’t understand why the community is kitten ed about the compelte lack of defense. NO OTHER CLASS GETS RAILROADED IN THE FACE! EVERY CLASS has so many defensive abilities, traits, skills that allow them to either ESCAPE, or mitigate a HUGE damage spike EXCEPT FOR THE NECRO!?!?!?!?!?!

WHAT DO WE GET?! DS that now gets buttslammed down in 2 seconds and bleeds over into our own health pool, THAT CANNOT BENEFIT FROM REGEN or HEALS while we are in DS!!!!!!!!!!! HOW CAN THE DEVS NOT SEE HOW IDIOTIC THEY LOOK!?!?!?!?!!

Forget it, the devs are clueless, and don’t give a crud about what we post, what we say, regarldess of the level of logic employed, or the tactfulness used. I lack tact, its evident, but it does not matter. Even taking a sledgehammer approach in an attempt to get the devs attention to pertinent details is ineffective. Why do we persist in trying to help them only to be spat on.

But we just got an improved Deathshroud….. so…. what are you complaining about?

Dirame.8521:

But we just got an improved Deathshroud….. so…. what are you complaining about?

Not sure if this was meant as sarcasm to help reinforce Gryph’s point or if it was meant seriously. Assuming the latter (or for others reading it who may assume our Deathshroud has actually been improved), the answer is:

Deathshroud has NOT improved. Deathshroud has been bugged since beta in which we have been taking roughly twice the amount of direct damage we should have been taking and it was set to a lower cap than intended. The devs didn’t improve it; they merely fixed what has been broken all this time.

They then turn around and nerf our sole defense mechanic that compensates for our total lack of block/evade/invulnerability by allowing damage to spill over from Deathshroud and eat into our regular health pool. They then rub salt into the wound with condescending statements of, “…I say play it a while and then see how you feel.”

Deathshroud was originally a necromancer’s downed state. After they decided to change it to our profession-specific mechanic, both it AND our downstate have been bugged since launch. They just can’t seem to get it right. When they do try to fix it, they just f*** it up all over again.

ArenaNet, it’s obvious you don’t have anyone over there who really understands the profession inside-and-out and plays one to the exlcusion of all other professions. Quit the theorycrafting and design-by-numbers and hire someone who actually loves the class, knows how it works, knows how it doesn’t work, and will do right by the necro community. Those currently in charge of necro design and balancing are absolutely clueless.

Another option is to simply just allow us to regen/siphon/heal HP while in DS and give access to our slotted utilities. Then going into DS while getting focused and low on health is not quite the death sentence it is now.

Smart play would allow a Necro to ablate damage using either DS or HP as the situation warrants, as well as using their skills and traits to support that synergy in a manner that other classes are able to with their class mechanics, but is currently denied to Necros.