Guild Wars 2

So I was looking at the new build planner on dulfy checking out what could potentially be my necro dungeon build in HoT and as I was scrolling through the different traitlines i noticed something odd. The class specialization (DS), instead of sitting quietly in its own line (soulreaping) was splattered all over the traitlines with some of the traits being pathetically weak.

Spite : Reaper’s Might, Death Shiver
Curses: Weakened Shroud, Furious Demise, Path of Corruption
Blood Magic: Transfusion, Unholy Martyr, Deathly Invigoration
Death Magic: Armored Shroud, Shrouded Removal, Beyond the Veil, Unholy Sanctuary

Each trait line is supposed to have their own focus but with DS all over the place the choices are very limited. Spite seems like the only direct damage oriented line.
Curses is conditions and death shroud Blood magic is siphon and deathshroud, death magic is minions and death shroud. Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes) no other profession has the class mechanic taking choices in every single traitline nor do other class professions lock out your utilities and weapon skills. The traits seriously need another look and merging and moving has to happen if necros are to be taken seriously outside of pvp.

I don’t think it is Death Shroud, I think it is ANet’s of what Necromancer has to be: a low mobility, condition-reliant, boon-deficient, profession. I honestly don’t feel Death Shroud itself really lends to any issues, but more that ANet has these ridiculous ideas of how we can somehow exist without so many of the basic things that other professions abuse the hell out of. I actually love that our profession mechanic is so heavily ingrained in how our profession works, and if anything I’d like to see more mechanic like Dhuumfire, Transfusion, and Death Perception which turn DS into a core part of the profession’s play.

DS isn’t the reason we don’t have finishers, or lack useful fields. DS isn’t the reason we have such bad team utility or awful sustain, etc. I really think it is ANet’s lack of ability to make larger-scale changes, and also seemingly massive disconnect from the reality of Necromancer’s problems (why can’t Beyond the Veil be Aegis, which would absolutely help us to mitigate single large hits, for example). Death Shroud just happens to be the scapegoat because ANet focuses in too kitten it. But I guarantee if we had something else they’d just swap from “well they have two health bars” to “well their fears deal damage” or something else.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think it is Death Shroud, I think it is ANet’s of what Necromancer has to be: a low mobility, condition-reliant, boon-deficient, profession. I honestly don’t feel Death Shroud itself really lends to any issues, but more that ANet has these ridiculous ideas of how we can somehow exist without so many of the basic things that other professions abuse the hell out of. I actually love that our profession mechanic is so heavily ingrained in how our profession works, and if anything I’d like to see more mechanic like Dhuumfire, Transfusion, and Death Perception which turn DS into a core part of the profession’s play.

DS isn’t the reason we don’t have finishers, or lack useful fields. DS isn’t the reason we have such bad team utility or awful sustain, etc. I really think it is ANet’s lack of ability to make larger-scale changes, and also seemingly massive disconnect from the reality of Necromancer’s problems (why can’t Beyond the Veil be Aegis, which would absolutely help us to mitigate single large hits, for example). Death Shroud just happens to be the scapegoat because ANet focuses in too kitten it. But I guarantee if we had something else they’d just swap from “well they have two health bars” to “well their fears deal damage” or something else.

Death shroud however is the reason the necro doesn’t have more support as well as things like blocks, evades etc…

And death shroud is a problem when it comes to balance.

1v1 with a full life force bar at the start and necro becomes quite powerful, death shroud however becomes weaker the more enemies your fighting (unlike other defensive skills).

So yes death shroud is a major design problem that holds the class back.

Death Shroud has nothing to do with support. ANet never says we can’t get support because of DS, they just never bring up support really.

And no, Death Shroud and 1v1s vs XvX actually has no problem innately, the difference is LF generation. ANet doesn’t seem to like putting in much LF generation that scales with number of enemies hit, which would make it so that LF generation in 1v1s isn’t very strong since you can only ever hit 1 person, while LF generation in teamfights would be higher since you can generate up to 5x as much LF.

Neros are not lacking in mobility or support they are just lacking in offensive support and the tools at their disposal are clunky. They have 3 blast finishers, but 2/3 are unusable in any scenario and the last one is only useful for pre fight blasting. They have 2 teleports ,but one has a long cooldown and the other requires you to land a slow moving easily avoided projectile. They have decent boons for themselves (signets, blood is power, reaper’s might) they just cant share any offensive ones.
While I agree with you that deathshroud isn’t the only cause, it’s still occupying more space in the traits than it should. If I want to make a warrior that completely ignores burst skills and adrenaline I can come up with several builds using multiple traitlines without having to chose between 2 adrenaline traits for the same slot on the necro you have to tiptoe around every traitline and you still need to make use of deathshroud to receive the benefits of some minor traits outside the deathshroud line.

Necromancers have a different play style than the other classes. Don’t make the mistake of viewing it through the lens of a guardian or ele.

When you build your necro think of death shroud as an always available period of invulnerability. Take the trait lines that allow you to heal while in death shroud and weaken nearby enemies. If you also have a speed buff while in death shroud you can dance around enemies like an invulnerable god.

The rest of the build is up to you. If you like minions, make sure they are weak and are easily killed so death Nova keeps going off. If you wanna go solo, take the trait that let’s wells heal you and you can go toe to toe with a fully specced warrior and win. Also take the trait that automatically drops you into DS when u are low on health… It’s soooo OP!!! I’m always the last survivor in dungeons, open world, and PvP with my necro.

Don’t let the haters spoil the mood. Necromancers, even without the same types of skills as the other classes are still super powerful

Bhawb.7408:

I actually love that our profession mechanic is so heavily ingrained in how our profession works, and if anything I’d like to see more mechanic like Dhuumfire, Transfusion, and Death Perception which turn DS into a core part of the profession’s play.

Death Shroud has nothing to do with support. ANet never says we can’t get support because of DS, they just never bring up support really.

Transfusion is what Anet call support for necromancer. If anything I would like no trait like that specific to 1 skill in DS.

Vizardlorde.8243:

So I was looking at the new build planner on dulfy checking out what could potentially be my necro dungeon build in HoT and as I was scrolling through the different traitlines i noticed something odd. The class specialization (DS), instead of sitting quietly in its own line (soulreaping) was splattered all over the traitlines with some of the traits being pathetically weak.

Spite : Reaper’s Might, Death Shiver
Curses: Weakened Shroud, Furious Demise, Path of Corruption
Blood Magic: Transfusion, Unholy Martyr, Deathly Invigoration
Death Magic: Armored Shroud, Shrouded Removal, Beyond the Veil, Unholy Sanctuary

Each trait line is supposed to have their own focus but with DS all over the place the choices are very limited. Spite seems like the only direct damage oriented line.
Curses is conditions and death shroud Blood magic is siphon and deathshroud, death magic is minions and death shroud. Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes) no other profession has the class mechanic taking choices in every single traitline nor do other class professions lock out your utilities and weapon skills. The traits seriously need another look and merging and moving has to happen if necros are to be taken seriously outside of pvp.

Ele has his class mechanic spread over every line too and now auramancer can t be run fully too. On the Necro topic, I actually rly like to have so much choices for my DS, but yeah I don t know much about PvE, except you have to stack and win.

DS is the root of everything both itself and Anet reasoning around it. If we could use utilities and heals in DS we wouldn’t have trasg traits doing the same thing, the kitten ICD on it, it’s hindrance as a main mechanic, our support and damage is tied to it. @Bhawb.7408 DS is meant to be taken down that’s why we have low mobility,low boons,no active defense or finishers. At this point we should all know that.

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

Exactly DS is not much of real ressource or a stance like mechanic they see it has a strrrooong second HP bar,high HP=must receive hits=easy target. DS is not the problem the problem is the HP attached to it.

Edit: If the HP would have to stay it would have to stay at specific amount low amount,it would have to stop scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

The necro has many problems, and DS is but one.

-We have no invulnerability, blocking, evades or extra endurance. All of these basically translate to extra dodges, which unbalance the game. If the necro is the only class without them, this puts the necro at a very unfair disadvantage.

-Our minion ai is rubbish. This pretty much undermines the feasibility of any minion build. We can’t have our Flesh Golem getting stuck on a doorstep, or our fiends picking their nose in the middle of combat.

-We can’t heal in DS, and it is there for not an extra healthbar. DS actually prevents us from doing a lot of things that other classes can do perfectly well while using their invulnerability, evasion or blocking. Again, a huge unbalance between the classes. It locks us out of our utility skills, unlike the defensive options that all other classes have. DS also doesn’t scale with damage, unlike a skill that renders you completely invulnerable to everything.

-Life stealing is rubbish, and doesn’t heal in DS. Anet took forever to make life stealing even slightly useful in GW1, and they struggle again in GW2. Right now a life stealing build just doesn’t cut it. And I suspect it never will.

-We have poor access to stability. This becomes especially troublesome under focus fire, where any other class can activate their invulnerability, and we get reduced to dust. It allows other classes to stun-lock us with control skills, without any means for us to escape death.

-We lack support skills that boost offense. We really need the sort of Might spamming that the other classes bring to the table. Either that, or they need to dial back how much Might stacking dominates the game. Right now necros don’t bring the group support that a party wants.

-Our strengths are control and conditions; two mechanics that PVE is against. PVE is notoriously anti-conditions, and anti-control skills. There’s the condition cap, and bosses that are immune or resistant to conditions. There’s defiant, and worse, indomitable. This would all be okay, if that third mechanic (DPS) had counter measures as well… but it doesn’t. Which is why DPS dominates the game so much. We excel at the mechanics that PVE does not care about.

-Fear. No one likes you for fearing the enemies away, that your party members are trying to kill. So why do we have fear? Why is it in the game?

-Axe is rubbish. It’s just absolute trash.

-Related to the axe, we lack the ability to cleave (hit multiple foes with one melee attack).

-Our trait lines are filled with trash traits.

-We lack useful combo fields, and we lack combo fields in general.

-We don’t have reflection. Reflection is kind of OP, and ironically the classes that already benefit from some of the a fore mentioned skills that dominate the game, ALSO have access to reflection. That is a very strange design decision.

-Anet is not interested in the necromancer. This is evident by how they have repeatedly quickly skipped over the necro class in just about any podcast. Sure, the guardian gets a lot of the spotlight, but the necro gets little more than a brief mention.

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire.

The block/invuln is key here. Currently all classes have either invulnerability, evasion, blocking, or bonus endurance. This translates to extra dodges, and an ability to escape stun-locking.

Necromancer is the only class that doesn’t have this. That is why we get stun-locked in wvw, and absolutely obliterated.

The healing in DS would be welcome, but what they really need to change is this imbalance. Personally, I HATE invulnerability skills. They are absolutely terrible. In Guild Wars 1 they were the root of many problems, where players would exploit the hell out of them to solo entire chunks of the Underworld. Quickly perma-assassins dominated these areas, as well as obsy-eles. It is almost always a bad idea to add invulnerability skills to a class, while not adding them to other classes. That is equal to introducing a severe class imbalance.

Now in GW2 people can’t keep them up infinitely like in GW1, but it is still a problem when one class does not have access to this skill, when all other classes do.

Sagat.3285:

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

Exactly DS is not much of real ressource or a stance like mechanic they see it has a strrrooong second HP bar,high HP=must receive hits=easy target. DS is not the problem the problem is the HP attached to it.

Edit: If the HP would have to stay it would have to stay at specific amount low amount,it would have to stop scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

We take -50% in DS which makes our lf pool effectively double of what you see on the lf bar, and still our defense is really bad. There’s absolutely no reason to make the pool any lower or change the way it scales even if they added extra skills to make our defense better.
You have to stop thinking: more blocks/invuln/mobility = lower hp. That might be the reason why other classes have lower hp to begin with, but necros are far away from that status quo to even think about trading hp for a different form of defense.

DS missing scaling as a defensive mechanic is kittening easily fixable too, but A-Net just simply doesn’T kittening bother. Its so kitten easy, really… “While in DS, the Necro can take a max. of X damage per second to the LF pool”. Remove the afore mentioned “take 50% less damage” for that if it turns out to be too strong (which it shouldn’t, cause still no stability or blocks in DS).

That it decays is fine imho, otherwise you’d have Necros at the backline of Dungons never having to leave DS if they don’t pull aggro.

I do agree that it should either give us access to our Utilities, or give special utilities to make it a full-blown “stance”… or take away the utilities for all abilities that replace the first 5, too.

The saddest part is, if A-Net would simply bother to read these kittening forums (and not take our ideas and put it on the revenant), they could have fixed this like 6 months after the game came out, but no.

flow.6043:

Sagat.3285:

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire. Basically, if you could heal through DS and had some additional purely defensive skills in DS no one would complain about it ever again.
All other problems like team support are just a matter of changing traits from “gain X boon when…” to “give yourself and allies X boon when..”
And yeah, the passive of signets should always work.

Exactly DS is not much of real ressource or a stance like mechanic they see it has a strrrooong second HP bar,high HP=must receive hits=easy target. DS is not the problem the problem is the HP attached to it.

Edit: If the HP would have to stay it would have to stay at specific amount low amount,it would have to stop scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

We take -50% in DS which makes our lf pool effectively double of what you see on the lf bar, and still our defense is really bad. There’s absolutely no reason to make the pool any lower or change the way it scales even if they added extra skills to make our defense better.
You have to stop thinking: more blocks/invuln/mobility = lower hp. That might be the reason why other classes have lower hp to begin with, but necros are far away from that status quo to even think about trading hp for a different form of defense.

Every time I say reduce or remove DS can we stop implying I don’t want proper compensation!? The closest class to our situation is war they were squishier than us but the Healing Signet+Adrenal Health buff made them viable in the sustain department,added to their stances it allows them attack while being protected that’s proper attrition and good example of “trading hits class”, necro should be like that with siphon,weakness,parasitic contagion etc. but no Anet want us to suffer with DS. It seems they are about to nerf that for warrior they should watch what they’re doing we don’t any or any other class in that boat.

Shiki.7148:

The saddest part is, if A-Net would simply bother to read these kittening forums (and not take our ideas and put it on the revenant), they could have fixed this like 6 months after the game came out, but no.

3 more years to go, I’m taking this from someone who made a comment about GW1 balance.

Sagat.3285:

3 more years to go, I’m taking this from someone who made a comment about GW1 balance.

That is correct. It took them 6 years to fix the mesmer for PVE in GW1, so we have 3 more years to go.

Shiki.7148:

Remove the afore mentioned “take 50% less damage” for that if it turns out to be too strong (which it shouldn’t, cause still no stability or blocks in DS).

Those 50% are not a feature but a bug. So yes of course this should be fixed, but at the same time the lf pool shouldn’t stay at 60% of our regular hp. Even if you currently max out Soul Reaping and effectively make your lf pool be 156% of your regular hp, your defense will still be lower than that of other classes.

Sagat.3285:

Every time I say reduce or remove DS can we stop implying I don’t want proper compensation!?

We get it, but removing DS and getting the same defense as other classes would be pointless because if you really want that you could just play one of the other classes.
Also, like I mentioned above, we deserve some defensive buffs without having to give up anything in return. Even if we got some better sustain there’s absolutely no need to lower our hp or lf pool.

flow.6043:

Shiki.7148:

Remove the afore mentioned “take 50% less damage” for that if it turns out to be too strong (which it shouldn’t, cause still no stability or blocks in DS).

Those 50% are not a feature but a bug. So yes of course this should be fixed, but at the same time the lf pool shouldn’t stay at 60% of our regular hp. Even if you currently max out Soul Reaping and effectively make your lf pool be 156% of your regular hp, your defense will still be lower than that of other classes.

Sagat.3285:

Every time I say reduce or remove DS can we stop implying I don’t want proper compensation!?

We get it, but removing DS and getting the same defense as other classes would be pointless because if you really want that you could just play one of the other classes.
Also, like I mentioned above, we deserve some defensive buffs without having to give up anything in return. Even if we got some better sustain there’s absolutely no need to lower our hp or lf pool.

Necro style sustain…siphons,parasitic contagion,retaliation healing based on damage,weakness,projectile destruction,blindness,protection,condition/boon manipulation etc. nothing that would make us copy of other classes. There is a need to control DS if the HP portion has to stay it should never go above a certain amount no matter what so defense can be properly balanced AKA no scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

Sagat.3285:

Necro style sustain…siphons,parasitic contagion,retaliation healing based on damage,weakness,projectile destruction,blindness,protection,condition/boon manipulation etc. nothing that would make us copy of other classes.

Non of the things you listed are unique to necros. Not even vampiric traits, in fact if you want a better version of it look at Signet of Malice or Signet of Restoration.

Sagat.3285:

no scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

Why? Don’t other classes get ways of improving their class mechanic through traits and gear? Why should necros be limited in this way?

DS is a problem. But it can be left in tact and our problems solved. We have no extra active defence. And we are forced to use DS as an alternative. Which doesnt work in a lot of situations. Theres a simple solution. Give us traits that tie active defence to DS. So you enter DS and you get an aegis. Or you enter DS and you get 2 seconds of reflect/evade.

spoj.9672:

DS is a problem. But it can be left in tact and our problems solved.

I agree.

spoj.9672:

Theres a simple solution. Give us traits that tie active defence to DS. So you enter DS and you get an aegis. Or you enter DS and you get 2 seconds of reflect/evade.

A traited solution would create a new set of problems though.

1. Thematically something like aegis on DS entry would probably have to be placed in Death Magic. Arguably there’s a bigger need for on-demand blocks in PvE than in PvP.
So PvE + Death Magic..?

2. If those traits would be able to solve all of necros problems you’d throw a big chunk of build diversity out the window.
So the only way to really make buffs like these available to everyone is by adding it to Death Shroud, either as a baseline feature or in form of additional skills.
And maybe to some people it would sound outragous to add a skill like block/reflect/evade to DS “for free” but seeing how DS is lacking as a defensive mechanic there’s really no reason to completely withold some buffs like these. Also, it wouldn’t need to be as frequent as an “on entry” trait. It could be a 60 sec cd skill that also consumes half of your life force, something that doesn’t completely change our gameplay but still allows for the occasional protection against big hits or focus fire.

I don’t think DS in and of its self is the problem, it’s a decent mechanic, but isn’t balanced properly. For instance, the on enter/exit DS traits are balanced purely around flashing DS when they should be balanced around spending several seconds in DS. Also, too many skills are balanced around their LF generation, and not enough things scale with number of enemies. Spectral armor is the perfect example. In comparison to armor of earth it doesn’t grant stability, but gives 8% LF on hit with an icd. For one it shouldn’t have an icd (LF gain reduced accordingly), and it shouldn’t be completely inferior just because it gives access to our profession mechanic. I’m not saying SA should be the same as armor of earth, but I don’t think generating LF should be justification for a skill being decent because every other class just gets access to their profession mechanic by default.

Too many skills give up too much just so they can give LF. Another example is feast of corruption, the idea is nice, but it’s a direct damage skill on a condition weapon. It does very little outside of building LF for condition builds, and is otherwise bad for the condition builds that use it. Our skills should be good and generate LF, and considering how many different things other classes skills do I don’t think this would be OP. The last problem is of course that healing doesn’t work in DS, it should work 100%, nothing else makes sense. Then they can balance accordingly.

The thing is. You dont need active defence for group stuff. You can be carried by guards. But having the option to trait for active defence in death magic is a big step forward. It allows solo plays. And with no stats on traits its less of a big deal to go death magic for it in PvE. If we had reflect on DS in deathmagic it would actually be a dps increase to go into death magic for fights like lupi since the auto attack change. :>

flow.6043:

Sagat.3285:

Necro style sustain…siphons,parasitic contagion,retaliation healing based on damage,weakness,projectile destruction,blindness,protection,condition/boon manipulation etc. nothing that would make us copy of other classes.

Non of the things you listed are unique to necros. Not even vampiric traits, in fact if you want a better version of it look at Signet of Malice or Signet of Restoration.
Similar mechanic but necro has greater access to them they just suck, it doesn’t matter if it’s similar there are already there and they would help necro more than DS if they were balanced properly

no scaling with vitality or Soul Reaping.

Why? Don’t other classes get ways of improving their class mechanic through traits and gear? Why should necros be limited in this way?
I proposed that Soul Reaping reduce the drain and Vital Persistence converts vitality in LF, there a still traits like Dhumfire,Deathly Perception,FoTG etc.

If the HP part of DS has to stay it should never go about a certain number that’s how you balance . AoE or increase LF generation doesn’t matter if you’re getting tossed around. I will keep stating that DS is meant to be taken down if we are hard to hit then that much HP(even tough toxic) makes no sense.

Only 2 ways: Removal of the HP part and balance that follows or HP cannot be raised,utilities and heals work in DS and balance follows.

DS is a thorny issue with balance. On one hand, it is an invulnerability mechanic which is very powerful, even with its need to be charged and it’s time decays. On the other hand, the rest of the profession was handicapped to compensate for its inherent OP-ness.

No healing in DS, limited stability and mobility… there are a lot of design themes that are meant to trim Necromancer’s performance just because DS is so OP.

It makes balancing stupid hard.

Except… Death Shroud isn’t really invulnerability. Unlike all other invulnerability skills in the game, which have a set duration, DS’s duration is heavily influenced by how much damage you take during that window. You’re also still vulnerable to hard CC, and conditions can be applied to you.

This is a matter of perspective and I admit it is a blurry one with all the modifiers attached but the fact remains that Necromancer rakes no damage to health while in DS.

For a long time, I thought of DS as a “special” second health bar but could not reconcile that with other professions’ invulnerability mechanics.

DS has a lot of up-time potential so it deserves to decay, be ablated, and require charging like adrenaline.

I felt forced to look at it as a more complex form of invulnerability. Running out of LF does not send Necro to downed state.

Anchoku.8142:

This is a matter of perspective and I admit it is a blurry one with all the modifiers attached but the fact remains that Necromancer rakes no damage to health while in DS.

For a long time, I thought of DS as a “special” second health bar but could not reconcile that with other professions’ invulnerability mechanics.

DS has a lot of up-time potential so it deserves to decay, be ablated, and require charging like adrenaline.

I felt forced to look at it as a more complex form of invulnerability. Running out of LF does not send Necro to downed state.

It doesn’t…not having it at start could,all other sustain sources are weak because of it…because the drain it not enough we have to lose it by hits which are uncontrollable factors and again AoE or faster LF gain doesn’t matter if you are still getting tossed around you might not even have a chance to cast them to start another round.

Sagat.3285:

Only 2 ways: Removal of the HP part and balance that follows or HP cannot be raised,utilities and heals work in DS and balance follows.

Are there any grandmaster traits attractive to non DS power necro outside spite? Vampiric rituals is as close as they come but i cant seem to find another one.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Are there any grandmaster traits attractive to non DS power necro outside spite? Vampiric rituals is as close as they come but i cant seem to find another one.

Sanctuary comes to mind… sort of.

Biggest problem with Death Shroud is that we start with no life force. If they want to make such a big deal about this 2 health pool thing, then they need to give us a full bar to start the fight with. Seriously, marks need to regen life force as baseline already. And some other life force regen methods need to not be so easily evaded.

I don’ tthink DS is the cause of all our problems, i think is the anet dev’s lack of vision and fear that the necro could become a powerful pvp class and upset their meta. Necro enters the fray with more ways to deal with focus fire other than pop shround and pray, and all of a sudden the standards ele, ele, engie, guardian, warrior (or variation thereof) goes away for pvp and they have to worry how esports will welcome it. Right now, anet has the classes it does to appease PVE players. For pvp, they don’t care about the necro. If one finds its way into a tournament, it makes no affect at all.

The problem with the necro is that the devs have this false view that the necro has double the hps and thus “wants to be hit,” and that has not changed since we had the whole “learn to play” fiasco with DS initially. It has been a rampant and utter false viewpoint since this game released, and while every other class got tougher, or more powerful, we are actually weaker, regarfding condi builds, or only slightly better in power builds since release.

I cannot blame this classes utter and obvious weakness on the presense of DS, but rather on the creators who have no vision. This class is a junk yard of traits that lack synergy and never came together.

Death Shroud is hardly the cause of our problems. Lack of proper support for Death Shroud is pretty much the source of most of our problems (still doesn’t help the lack of support).

Necros have only two sustain skills that scale with number of foes: Locust Swarm and Signet of the Locust. They are simply not enough on their own. Vampiric traits (aside from Master) also scale with number of foes, but their numbers are so horridly pitiful as to not matter.

These, plus the clashing of Death Shroud with any other sustain mechanic need to be addressed. Death Shroud itself does not need to change, we just need better ways to support it as a sustain mechanic.

Sagat.3285:

Similar mechanic but necro has greater access to them they just suck, it doesn’t matter if it’s similar there are already there and they would help necro more than DS if they were balanced properly.

First of all, no, the access is much worse for necros. Those signets are healing skills, we on the other hand would have to take Blood Magic. Are you really saying that giving up 1/3 of your trait options is greater access than simply slotting a single utility?
Secondly, if vamp traits were balanced to sustain us without Death Shroud they’d do way too much damage. And if they would do lower damage than their healing amount then guess what, that’s basically a Signet of Malice clone.

Sagat.3285:

Only 2 ways: Removal of the HP part and balance that follows or HP cannot be raised,utilities and heals work in DS and balance follows.

What is “the HP part”?
Also, if you make life force not scale with vitality you must also disable armor in DS, and of course remove all traits that raise your toughness. I don’t know why you think this would be better, in the end you’d create way more problems than you are trying to solve.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros have only two sustain skills that scale with number of foes: Locust Swarm and Signet of the Locust.

Spectral Wall, Necrotic Grasp, Well of Corruption.
And those are just the ones that generate life force. Basically, every aoe skill scales with multiple opponents. But I know what you’re getting at, it’s not enough to have proper sustain.

flow.6043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros have only two sustain skills that scale with number of foes: Locust Swarm and Signet of the Locust.

Spectral Wall, Necrotic Grasp, Well of Corruption.
And those are just the ones that generate life force. Basically, every aoe skill scales with multiple opponents. But I know what you’re getting at, it’s not enough to have proper sustain.

Yeah, you’re right. I don’t count Well of Corruption since it’s not supposed to do that, however. I also don’t count Spectral Wall because it’s output is completely dependent on your opponent’s actions.

Shroud and Life Force are only problems because they feel not fully developed and fleshed out yet. It’s like ANet had a good ideam but stopped somewhere in the middle and relesed beta version.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t count Well of Corruption since it’s not supposed to do that

Or is it? By now who knows really?
It seems rather strange that a single well would accidentally get such a specific amount of lf regen. 1.2% per pulse and hit is not something you find on any other skill. To me it sounds just as plausible that someone patched this in on purpose and then just forgot to add a tooltip.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I also don’t count Spectral Wall because it’s output is completely dependent on your opponent’s actions.

Not entirely, there are ways to make people run into it.
And to some extent every one of those skills depends on your opponents actions. Necrotic Grasp can just be side stepped and Swarm can be kited.

Anyway, I agree, we need more of those skills.

flow.6043:

Sagat.3285:

Similar mechanic but necro has greater access to them they just suck, it doesn’t matter if it’s similar there are already there and they would help necro more than DS if they were balanced properly.

First of all, no, the access is much worse for necros. Those signets are healing skills, we on the other hand would have to take Blood Magic. Are you really saying that giving up 1/3 of your trait options is greater access than simply slotting a single utility?
Secondly, if vamp traits were balanced to sustain us without Death Shroud they’d do way too much damage. And if they would do lower damage than their healing amount then guess what, that’s basically a Signet of Malice clone.
Exactly we have more modifiers for it which means ours should/could be way better than theirs but they suck,parasitic contagion or heal on retaliation damage would be pretty unique to necro.

Sagat.3285:

Only 2 ways: Removal of the HP part and balance that follows or HP cannot be raised,utilities and heals work in DS and balance follows.

What is “the HP part”?
Also, if you make life force not scale with vitality you must also disable armor in DS, and of course remove all traits that raise your toughness. I don’t know why you think this would be better, in the end you’d create way more problems than you are trying to solve.
Toughness is fine and nothing is unnatural about it you keep the same toughness as you was in and out,vitality boost both when it’s supposed to affect just one if you don’t see the problem : the bigger the pool the harsher the fights will be at start and in between,the lower will be other forms of sustain,the harder it is to balance encounters,the lower the recovery will be,the number of forced hits will increase.

Necros have only two sustain skills that scale with number of foes: Locust Swarm and Signet of the Locust.

Spectral Wall, Necrotic Grasp, Well of Corruption.
And those are just the ones that generate life force. Basically, every aoe skill scales with multiple opponents. But I know what you’re getting at, it’s not enough to have proper sustain.
You are still getting beaten down while using those and yes it’s not enough

HP is meant to be taken down the fact that’s it’s attached to the mechanic creates a must permanent facetank class, I see nothing wrong with that as long as I have proper tools to sustain if the HP part of DS(DS is HP+5 skills) has to stay heals,healing skills,utilities,elites should work while in DS,the HP should be capped and balance can follow. The first thing they messed up with DS was allowing it to scale with vitality and soul reaping it creates that fear of necro becoming immortal in 1v1 in some scenarios because those happen from time to time, again if LF gain is buffed both single target and AoE you will still get tossed around and won’t have to time activate them unless we keep putting traits that trigger when we are low health letting them do the work.

Sagat.3285:

first thing they messed up with DS was allowing it to scale with vitality…
…
Toughness is fine and nothing is unnatural about it you keep the same toughness as you was in and out

Vitality is a defensive stat just like toughness and healing power, but you’d exclude the one that makes the number on the lf bar bigger? Sorry, but that makes no sense.
It would be the same if you wanted them to remove power when in DS but keep precision and ferocity.

Death Shroud traits need to span multiple lines or your traits for it would be too limited. It would also mean they’d have to put minions into a single trait line, too, because why should Death Shroud get its own line but nothing else? No profession in the game has an entire trait line devoted to its core mechanic, so let’s just let that idea go. It’s not viable.

Death Shroud itself, its existence or how it works is not a problem. The problems are the lack of any real diversity or synergy in the traits you can select for it, and the lack of desirable group utility.

Group utility traits I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud grants might and resistance (the new boon) to allies.
• Entering Death Shroud casts the new slow condition on enemies in a radius
• Entering Plague form absorbs projectiles in a radius around the caster

Survival trait I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud or Plague causes the caster to evade all attacks for X seconds or grants aegis

Not everything has to be about Death Shroud. Plague and Lich forms could use some love too.

flow.6043:

Sagat.3285:

first thing they messed up with DS was allowing it to scale with vitality…
…
Toughness is fine and nothing is unnatural about it you keep the same toughness as you was in and out

Vitality is a defensive stat just like toughness and healing power, but you’d exclude the one that makes the number on the lf bar bigger? Sorry, but that makes no sense.
It would be the same if you wanted them to remove power when in DS but keep precision and ferocity.

The bigger the pool the harsher the fights will be at start and in between,the lower will be other forms of sustain,the harder it is to balance encounters,the lower the recovery will be,the number of forced hits will increase.(Keep this in your mind at all times)

^I’m going to keep emphasizing that and using war as an example I will bring the war forums here just to show you that more HP is not good and is vastly overrated, DS being a hella of mechanic to balance makes it harder for them, it’s not simple HP vitality has a greater effect on DS than other stats that’s the issue. No matter what happens let’s understand that a great HP pool will only make it worse especially if we are locked to 5 skills. Since most keep saying let’s wait for the specialization…let’s wait I don’t remember them saying much if any about base mesmer in last PoI so let’s praise our future GS ex-necros??

Seems rather redundant to me to argue about damage reduction and sustain in DS when we dont even have active defence. If you have damage avoidance then you do not need as much lifeforce and you do not need it to scale as much.

The ideal way for anet to fix our sustain and defence problems is to actually give us traits that make DS work as a form of defence. And by that i dont just mean give us more damage reduction. I mean actually tie in some damage avoidance negation to it. Currently we only have the base functionally and ways to add a little more toughness or lifeforce generation. But that doesnt solve the issue especially in PvE or in outnumbered fights.

Without avoidance we cant negate big hits. And in PvE you often need to avoid more than a few big hits in succession. No amount of extra sustain or damage reduction will allow you survive in those encounters. Unless you gear full nomads. But last time i checked all gear was supposed to be viable. The base dodges and double energy sigils is simply not enough.

The only way sustain and reduction would be enough is if you buffed it so much it would make us immortal in PvP. But thats clearly not an option and far too difficult to balance. So just give us some active defence in traits please.

biggs.4702:

Death Shroud traits need to span multiple lines or your traits for it would be too limited. It would also mean they’d have to put minions into a single trait line, too, because why should Death Shroud get its own line but nothing else? No profession in the game has an entire trait line devoted to its core mechanic, so let’s just let that idea go. It’s not viable.

Death Shroud itself, its existence or how it works is not a problem. The problems are the lack of any real diversity or synergy in the traits you can select for it, and the lack of desirable group utility.

Group utility traits I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud grants might and resistance (the new boon) to allies.
• Entering Death Shroud casts the new slow condition on enemies in a radius
• Entering Plague form absorbs projectiles in a radius around the caster

Survival trait I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud or Plague causes the caster to evade all attacks for X seconds or grants aegis

Not everything has to be about Death Shroud. Plague and Lich forms could use some love too.

I will remind everyone that if heals and utilities work in DS a lot of our traits would show their true trash selves we just settle down for them that shows how limited we are,that’s the secondary reason the necro section AMA was kitten depressing they didn’t even recognize that on top of other issues.

spoj.9672:

The only way sustain and reduction would be enough is if you buffed it so much it would make us immortal in PvP.

That’s the kitten fear and flaw with DS, for debate masters the kitten fear and flaw because of DS. I keep saying this but even if AoE LF gain is increased you will still get tossed around,if you try to cast you are still slow while doing it, it will drop faster then you can say :“Oh sh…!!”, so what? Boost the pool so it doesn’t drop fast and makes us immortal in solo gameplay mm mm mmm!?

spoj.9672:

DS is a problem. But it can be left in tact and our problems solved. We have no extra active defence. And we are forced to use DS as an alternative. Which doesnt work in a lot of situations. Theres a simple solution. Give us traits that tie active defence to DS. So you enter DS and you get an aegis. Or you enter DS and you get 2 seconds of reflect/evade.

After seeing the mesmer reveal and thinking about gw1 mesmer, I started thinking about necros back then as well. Lifesteal was much stronger back then but so was the sacrifice associated with it. Example: sacrifice 17% of your life but give a life steal aura to all teammates. It lasted 5 seconds.

Translation to gw2 necro elite specialization:
F2-F4 for the GS necro are now auras/sacrifices that default to sacrificing life force. If there is no life force left, drain the necros health.

F2: Aura of the Lich Sacrifice X% of life (force) per second to maintain a vampiric aura. 10% DPS buff that heals allies too.
F3: … something about reflects/blocking.
F4: Shadow form (Assassin skill in gw1): Become immune to damage for Y seconds. When it ends, lose 50% of life (force).

This way the devs don’t need to worry about Necros being too tanky with death shroud while having too much other good stuff because it would be mutually exclusive. Would also help necros a lot with the PvE team buff meta. Don’t think it would be too OP for PvP as random spamming would quickly become suicide.

biggs.4702:

Death Shroud traits need to span multiple lines or your traits for it would be too limited. It would also mean they’d have to put minions into a single trait line, too, because why should Death Shroud get its own line but nothing else? No profession in the game has an entire trait line devoted to its core mechanic, so let’s just let that idea go. It’s not viable.

Death Shroud itself, its existence or how it works is not a problem. The problems are the lack of any real diversity or synergy in the traits you can select for it, and the lack of desirable group utility.

Group utility traits I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud grants might and resistance (the new boon) to allies.
• Entering Death Shroud casts the new slow condition on enemies in a radius
• Entering Plague form absorbs projectiles in a radius around the caster

Survival trait I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud or Plague causes the caster to evade all attacks for X seconds or grants aegis

Not everything has to be about Death Shroud. Plague and Lich forms could use some love too.

Yes but no other profession have their class mechanic as half of every single traitline Guardian just has 3 minor traits outside the virtue line that work and add great utility to virtues. While the rest dont have to choose between class mechanic trait vs class mechanic trait for almost every tier, at most they have a single class mechanic trait per tier while having 2 more general choices unrelated to the class mechanic.

Vizardlorde.8243:

biggs.4702:

Death Shroud traits need to span multiple lines or your traits for it would be too limited. It would also mean they’d have to put minions into a single trait line, too, because why should Death Shroud get its own line but nothing else? No profession in the game has an entire trait line devoted to its core mechanic, so let’s just let that idea go. It’s not viable.

Death Shroud itself, its existence or how it works is not a problem. The problems are the lack of any real diversity or synergy in the traits you can select for it, and the lack of desirable group utility.

Group utility traits I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud grants might and resistance (the new boon) to allies.
• Entering Death Shroud casts the new slow condition on enemies in a radius
• Entering Plague form absorbs projectiles in a radius around the caster

Survival trait I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud or Plague causes the caster to evade all attacks for X seconds or grants aegis

Not everything has to be about Death Shroud. Plague and Lich forms could use some love too.

Yes but no other profession have their class mechanic as half of every single traitline Guardian just has 3 minor traits outside the virtue line that work and add great utility to virtues. While the rest dont have to choose between class mechanic trait vs class mechanic trait for almost every tier, at most they have a single class mechanic trait per tier while having 2 more general choices unrelated to the class mechanic.

You haven’t looked at Rangers or Mesmers, have you? Or heck, Elementalists.

Sagat.3285:

vitality has a greater effect on DS than other stats that’s the issue.

No, you’re wrong.
Every stat has the same effect when you’re in DS as when you’re not. I have no idea why you are trying to single out vitality as the bad guy in all of this. And just to make it clear, this is not a matter of me not comprehending what you’re trying to convey, but you’re simply wrong about this.

Sagat.3285:

No matter what happens let’s understand that a great HP pool will only make it worse especially if we are locked to 5 skills.

Wrong again.
When you compare other classes with each other you’ll notice that the size of their health pool is different and has nothing to do with how durable they are.
And pointing out that you’re “locked to 5 skills” is just as pointless as an elementalist complaining that they can’t use all attunements at the same time. That’s not a matter of defense, it’s how the class mechanic works.

I know what your general message is supposed to be, but Death Shroud is never going to be removed or reduced to nothing but a 3rd weapon set the way that you want.
Also, it’s simply not true that it can’t be balanced to be equally effective as the defensive mechanics of other classes. Yes, there are and always will be scaling issues, but this can all be solved to some extent by providing defesive features that scale in the same way.

flow.6043:

Sagat.3285:

vitality has a greater effect on DS than other stats that’s the issue.

No, you’re wrong.
Every stat has the same effect when you’re in DS as when you’re not. I have no idea why you are trying to single out vitality as the bad guy in all of this. And just to make it clear, this is not a matter of me not comprehending what you’re trying to convey, but you’re simply wrong about this.

Sagat.3285:

No matter what happens let’s understand that a great HP pool will only make it worse especially if we are locked to 5 skills.

Wrong again.
When you compare other classes with each other you’ll notice that the size of their health pool is different and has nothing to do with how durable they are.
And pointing out that you’re “locked to 5 skills” is just as pointless as an elementalist complaining that they can’t use all attunements at the same time. That’s not a matter of defense, it’s how the class mechanic works.

I know what your general message is supposed to be, but Death Shroud is never going to be removed or reduced to nothing but a 3rd weapon set the way that you want.
Also, it’s simply not true that it can’t be balanced to be equally effective as the defensive mechanics of other classes. Yes, there are and always will be scaling issues, but this can all be solved to some extent by providing defesive features that scale in the same way.

Sagat.3285:

The bigger the pool the harsher the fights will be at start and in between,the lower will be other forms of sustain,the harder it is to balance encounters,the lower the recovery will be,the number of forced hits will increase.(Keep this in your mind at all times)

^I’m going to keep emphasizing that and using war as an example I will bring the war forums here just to show you that more HP is not good and is vastly overrated

Sagat.3285:

I keep saying this but even if AoE LF gain is increased you will still get tossed around,if you try to cast you are still slow while doing it, it will drop faster then you can say :“Oh sh…!!”, so what? Boost the pool so it doesn’t drop fast and makes us immortal in solo gameplay mm mm mmm!?

Sagat.3285:

If the HP part of DS has to stay it should never go about a certain number that’s how you balance . AoE or increase LF generation doesn’t matter if you’re getting tossed around. I will keep stating that DS is meant to be taken down if we are hard to hit then that much HP(even tough toxic) makes no sense

I actually don’t want another swap my idea was F1-5 skills that cost LF(and balance that follows) or simply allowing utilities to work in DS and prevent Soul Reaping and vitality(and balance that follows) to affect the max LF pool nothing that’s close to a attunement or a kit unless you wouldn’t like utilities working in DS and rather trait for it I’m pretty sure you stated you wanted heals to work in DS it’s not much different.

A topic I’ve brought up multiple times over the years. Death shroud just doesn’t do what its design to do. From the time I started playing to now, it never has.