Guild Wars 2

When looking at the Reaper’s shroud it becomes even clearer to me just how bad the skills in Death shroud are. You look at how fluid Reaper’s shroud is and how well all the skills combo with each other then when you look back it death shroud it just seems like death shroud is rather slow and really clunky.

I personally feel that people should have clear incentives not to take an elite specialization. And the necromancer defiantly has that incentive already. The chill on fear along with the melee style of the reaper give the vanilla necromancer a clear and defining space they can fill.

With that said, Death shroud really needs to Combo with itself far better. Each skill should be able to function in multiple build rolls since we are expected to be in Death shroud a large percentage of our play time, we shouldn’t feel like casting one skill over the other is a waste of the valuable time we have in DS.

A few suggestions I have which could help a vanilla necromancer out.

• Life Blast: Reduce cast time to 3/4 and reduce after cast delay. Adjust damage accordingly. Make life blast a projectile finisher.

• Dark Path: My suggestion here is to add a ground targeted aoe field that acts as a dark field and pulses conditions and damage. You can stop the field at any time to activate dark path to move to that location. Give it a 900 range so this provides an escape that a foe can see. This will provide some interesting counter play for both the opponent and the necromancer.

• Life Transfer: Increase life force generation and stop life force decay while its channeling.

• Tainted Shackles: Add a secondary skill to this that pulls foes toward you and ends the skill. The secondary effect would trigger the ending effect of tainted shackles immobilizing your foes. This could prevent people from escaping and also combo with my above suggestions.

What do you guys think? This could give death shroud allot of play to it that makes it valuable to take over Reaper’s shroud besides just as a ranged option. Suddenly we could have useful utility on the shroud for multiple styles of builds.

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

Zefrost.3425:

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

We aren’t getting taunt. Its not in our flavor. Arena Net has already stated that quite a few times. A pull would honestly be better.

I think the current version is perfect.

Your autoattack basically acts like an on-demand lich form and is exactly what you need when you’ve got mainhand dagger and you need to hit something over there but you don’t feel like walking to it, second skill is an amazing chaser and a much needed shadowstep, third skill is an instant fear perfect for ccing people who are just about to stomp your team mates, fourth is one is the best AoE burst and event tagging skills in the game, and fifth is a useful immob and a long lasting condition.

The new reaper shroud looks really good, but I’ll be genuinely missing the old death shroud skills a lot of the time I think.

If there’s anything that needs to be changed, it’s that most of this stuff isn’t really useful to condition builds at all.

DS is good but my suggestions is:
1. Life Blast gain Life Force (2% per foe). Make life blast a projectile finisher.
2. Life Transfer should apply stability to you but you cant move while channeling.
3. Gain health instead Life Force while in DS
+ add some combo fields and finishers to DS abilities.
And make a new animation to Dark Path and make projectile speed a bit faster… something like you release shadow that leap/follow your foe…

Dark Path as it is now is way too unreliable as a gap closer. The main problem is the slow projectile. It’s way too slow. They either need to increase the velocity of the projectile to make it very fast, or just scrap the projectile and make it a blink (like guardian sword 2). The only way to reliably hit someone with it in its current state is if you’re standing in melee range already.

Life Blast could use a shorter cast time, it is incredibly slow.

Other than that I’m quite satisfied with Death Shroud. The buff to Life Transfer would be nice, the Reaper does look like it has better life force sustain while shrouded so brining baseline necro in line with that is probably not a bad idea.

I think Tainted Shackles is okay as it is, I don’t think we need a taunt. If it was going to get buffed I’d rather suggest it applies a movement impeding condition to enemies that leave its range (slow, cripple, or chill). This makes it harder to escape. They can break of out the torment, but they will be crippled so you can close in on them again easier for the final blast.

Adding in some finishers would be nice. The current Death Shroud seems a bit barren in that regard. Leap on Dark Path and a blast finisher on the final blast of Tainted Shackles would fix that.
Life Blast is already a 20% projectile finisher as far as I’m aware, 100% would be nice but could potentially be a bit overpowering. Life Blast is already quite strong, and we’ve already suggested a faster cast time for that.

Lily.1935:

Zefrost.3425:

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

We aren’t getting taunt. Its not in our flavor. Arena Net has already stated that quite a few times. A pull would honestly be better.

Actually, it should chill or cripple them, and the immob should be triggered when the link breaks instead of when the skill ends.

OlliX.1705:

Dark Path as it is now is way too unreliable as a gap closer. The main problem is the slow projectile. It’s way too slow. They either need to increase the velocity of the projectile to make it very fast, or just scrap the projectile and make it a blink (like guardian sword 2). The only way to reliably hit someone with it in its current state is if you’re standing in melee range already.

Life Blast could use a shorter cast time, it is incredibly slow.

Other than that I’m quite satisfied with Death Shroud. The buff to Life Transfer would be nice, the Reaper does look like it has better life force sustain while shrouded so brining baseline necro in line with that is probably not a bad idea.

I think Tainted Shackles is okay as it is, I don’t think we need a taunt. If it was going to get buffed I’d rather suggest it applies a movement impeding condition to enemies that leave its range (slow, cripple, or chill). This makes it harder to escape. They can break of out the torment, but they will be crippled so you can close in on them again easier for the final blast.

Adding in some finishers would be nice. The current Death Shroud seems a bit barren in that regard. Leap on Dark Path and a blast finisher on the final blast of Tainted Shackles would fix that.
Life Blast is already a 20% projectile finisher as far as I’m aware, 100% would be nice but could potentially be a bit overpowering. Life Blast is already quite strong, and we’ve already suggested a faster cast time for that.

I don’t know where people are getting this taunt from. I didn’t suggest that.

Also, Life blast isn’t a projectile finisher. Not currently not ever. It should be though. And I agree with 100% chance.

Lily.1935:

OlliX.1705:

Dark Path as it is now is way too unreliable as a gap closer. The main problem is the slow projectile. It’s way too slow. They either need to increase the velocity of the projectile to make it very fast, or just scrap the projectile and make it a blink (like guardian sword 2). The only way to reliably hit someone with it in its current state is if you’re standing in melee range already.

Life Blast could use a shorter cast time, it is incredibly slow.

Other than that I’m quite satisfied with Death Shroud. The buff to Life Transfer would be nice, the Reaper does look like it has better life force sustain while shrouded so brining baseline necro in line with that is probably not a bad idea.

I think Tainted Shackles is okay as it is, I don’t think we need a taunt. If it was going to get buffed I’d rather suggest it applies a movement impeding condition to enemies that leave its range (slow, cripple, or chill). This makes it harder to escape. They can break of out the torment, but they will be crippled so you can close in on them again easier for the final blast.

Adding in some finishers would be nice. The current Death Shroud seems a bit barren in that regard. Leap on Dark Path and a blast finisher on the final blast of Tainted Shackles would fix that.
Life Blast is already a 20% projectile finisher as far as I’m aware, 100% would be nice but could potentially be a bit overpowering. Life Blast is already quite strong, and we’ve already suggested a faster cast time for that.

I don’t know where people are getting this taunt from. I didn’t suggest that.

Also, Life blast isn’t a projectile finisher. Not currently not ever. It should be though. And I agree with 100% chance.

Oh, right. The 2nd poster was talking about a taunt so I kinda went off from that. I don’t really think it should be a pull either. Tainted Shackles should not be a hard cc, but it should be changed to punish people from leaving its range.

You’re right about Life Blast, it does not have a finisher on it. Thought I had seen that on the tool tip, oh well. Life Blast should at the very least have a 20% chance to combo as a projectile.

Death shroud was always sort of doomed (no pun intended) because it was originally a downed state from way back when. They patched it well enough with traits but it probably was always going to be subpar.

Shroud knight is our revamped death shroud, I think.

Shiki.7148:

Lily.1935:

Zefrost.3425:

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

We aren’t getting taunt. Its not in our flavor. Arena Net has already stated that quite a few times. A pull would honestly be better.

Actually, it should chill or cripple them, and the immob should be triggered when the link breaks instead of when the skill ends.

I agree with this.