Guild Wars 2

Have you guys ever felt that Death Shroud fits wrong with the build you are running?
Take, for instance, a condition Necromancer, Death Shroud is useful only to absorb damage and to cast Fear somethimes, plus building life force with some spec is really really hard, making the core profession mechanic playing a marginal role or not playing at all.
Every profession have their core mechanic match with every build they want to play.
Warriors have bursts which depend on weapon set, Guardians have both offensive that defensive Virtues, Rangers have loads of pets with different abilities, Engineers have their defensive/offensive kits, Thieves can’t be compared because of their weird mechanics, Mesmers have both offensive and defensive shatters and, about Elementalists, it is obvious.

So, in my opinion, Death Shroud abilities should change depending on weapon set, if not every skill, at least 2, this will make Death Shroud a real core mechanic for Necromancer, always well fitted to his builds.

For instance, if you are running Scepter/Dagger, Death Shroud should be similiar as it is now underwater, if you are running Axe/Focus, they should be more power-oriented, if you are running Dagger as MH, they should focus on life stealing and so on.
It would highly increase the build variety on Necros which now is pretty narrow.

What do you Necros think?

It would, imo, give too many options on gameplay and get a bit confusing.

But death shroud could do more conditions :)

think about this: death shroud 4 is basically an heal so it should be moved to “6” button.
regular actions are buttons 1-5 so we would have 2 buttons free, more than enough for a lot of customization-by-weapon without changing 1-3 in any way, button 4 for main hand, button 5 for off hand or 2handed.

Death Shroud skills are fine in general.

1 is probably Necro’s highest ranged direct damage ability, although unfortunately it has little use outside of Power/Crit specs.

The 2 key chills (snare+ability recharge debuff) AND -bleeds- them. Oh snap. Death Shroud sucks for condition Necromancers? Wait, what? There’s two conditions right there on one skill. And it’s a gap closer.

Granted you don’t want to close a gap into an enemy group in WvW or a powerful melee profession (Warr, Thief) for example, but in small scale (sPvP) and one vs ones, as well as PvE, it’s very useful. The bleeding isn’t massive damage, but it’s decent. The Chill however is fantabulous. As in, fantasically fabulous. Stacking conditions you’re going to have say… 8 seconds duration on that Chill. That means eight seconds of them moving at 33% speed instead of 100%. That means eight seconds of their abilities recharging at 33% speed instead of 100%. Tasty.

The 3 skill is a free interrupt you can use whilst stunned/feared/knocked down. Did I mention you don’t even have to be facing your target? And it’s instant. The duration sucks as a fear, but regardless it’s still an extremely useful ability I use all the time.

The 4 skill is not a heal as someone mentioned. Regardless of your spec, it does good AoE damage. It’s one of Necro’s most powerful abilities. Unless you have a crazy high bleed stack going, this will probably do more damage than your conditions whilst you’re channeling it or near enough, while allowing your bleeds to tick too. Take it with a Power/Crit build and it’s really good. Take it with the Transfusion trait box that makes it heal allies and you’ve got a brilliant support ability.

If they need to change anything, they could add a bleed effect onto the 1 skill, but leave it with it’s direct damage too. That way the Power/Crit stackers and Con stackers get decent damage out of it. And both get it buffed too, and after the nerfs I think it does need a general buff.

I’d hate to see all the skills on it change with weapons, I like what we have and constantly use it as it is to great effect.

I like the idea…or just add a bleed to 1 so that it’s not completely useless to condition specs. And number 2 … who uses number 2? Who wants to pull themselves To their foe? That’s insane. And obviously, increase the time that fear lasts on an enemy. It’s currently a joke.

Warriors fear is better. Thieves fear that they STEAL from us is better.

dagger necros really do want to pull themselves to their foe

I think theres better options out there but i’d certainly take this. Anyone complaining its too complicated probably should stray away from elementalist or engineer. A little more access to variety of spells would go a great deal for me….probably make balancing us harder (like engineers f1-f4 skills changing depending on what utility/heal skills they have) But i’d take it for sure.

Karther.7481:

Death Shroud skills are fine in general.

1 is probably Necro’s highest ranged direct damage ability, although unfortunately it has little use outside of Power/Crit specs.

The 2 key chills (snare+ability recharge debuff) AND -bleeds- them. Oh snap. Death Shroud sucks for condition Necromancers? Wait, what? There’s two conditions right there on one skill. And it’s a gap closer.

Granted you don’t want to close a gap into an enemy group in WvW or a powerful melee profession (Warr, Thief) for example, but in small scale (sPvP) and one vs ones, as well as PvE, it’s very useful. The bleeding isn’t massive damage, but it’s decent. The Chill however is fantabulous. As in, fantasically fabulous. Stacking conditions you’re going to have say… 8 seconds duration on that Chill. That means eight seconds of them moving at 33% speed instead of 100%. That means eight seconds of their abilities recharging at 33% speed instead of 100%. Tasty.

The 3 skill is a free interrupt you can use whilst stunned/feared/knocked down. Did I mention you don’t even have to be facing your target? And it’s instant. The duration sucks as a fear, but regardless it’s still an extremely useful ability I use all the time.

The 4 skill is not a heal as someone mentioned. Regardless of your spec, it does good AoE damage. It’s one of Necro’s most powerful abilities. Unless you have a crazy high bleed stack going, this will probably do more damage than your conditions whilst you’re channeling it or near enough, while allowing your bleeds to tick too. Take it with a Power/Crit build and it’s really good. Take it with the Transfusion trait box that makes it heal allies and you’ve got a brilliant support ability.

If they need to change anything, they could add a bleed effect onto the 1 skill, but leave it with it’s direct damage too. That way the Power/Crit stackers and Con stackers get decent damage out of it. And both get it buffed too, and after the nerfs I think it does need a general buff.

I’d hate to see all the skills on it change with weapons, I like what we have and constantly use it as it is to great effect.

I know that skills are good, but probably not everyone wants them in their specific build.
When I’m running conditionmancer, I feel Life Blast a wasted skill, since the damage is ridiculous, the range is low and the casting time high, same with Life Transfer. These skills just don’t feel right with every Necromancer spec.

I want to give you an example.
If you are running scepter, you are most likely running conditions, so your 1 Death Shroud skill become something that inflict bleed and transfer one condition to your enemy, if you are running Dagger, you’re probably running vampiric, so your 1 Death Shroud skill will siphon a specific amount of health/life force. If you are running Axe, it will inflict vulnerability or give you retaliation and do more damage and so on.

Same about 2 skill, it can be binded to your offhand and it can be a gap closer if you’re running Warhorn (most likely you need to be in close range), it can inflict bleeding or weakness if you’re running Dagger, it can Chill or inflict vulnerability/high damage if you are running focus and so on.

Of course these are only ideas, but, in my opinion, if correctly implemented, these changes could give some fresh air to the Necromancer and a bit more variety because, as we are now, we have the least skill variety among all professions.

merch.1026:

dagger necros really do want to pull themselves to their foe

dagger necro could actually just keep ALL the DS abilitys that are in now imo, probably gets the most benefit as it stands.

EDIT: once again i only like this idea because it opens more doors for customization which is why going back to my necro from my engineer (or most the professions tbh) feels like i switched from playing tekken/soulcaliber to smash brothers. (love ssb so no hate) I feel like a lot of variety was robbed from me, so having more variety injected into the profession would be well accepted here.

Sounds like a good plan to me!

@ Zinwrath – DS can be sort of customizable using traits, ok this solution might not be ideal and still does not really help a condtion based necro. still food for thought?

I wrote a lengthy post about it this morning – see : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Art-of-Death-Shroud-complete-overview/first#post396392

I would not mind using #2 on a condition build, if it did not drag me face to face with my target! And it is 3 stacks of bleed on a 5 second timer, with a 15 second cooldown. Not something to maintain a bleed stack with.

Anyways, i think weapon choice has some impact on Life Blast. I could have sworn that the numbers on it changed when i changed weapon set.