Death Shroud viable?
I haven’t tried a build like that.
Still, the answer would depend on your definition of viable. If by viable you mean good, I’d have to say no. If you mean something more like “can I solo quests and PvE while staying in death shroud as long as possible” then I’d say yes.
The thing about Death Shroud is that it is really not designed to be used for lengthy periods. It locks you out of your utilities and healing, and prevents weapon swapping. Plus there are few traits that remain in effect the entire time you are in DS. They either provide a buff for a few seconds on entry, or cause an effect on exit. That’s why “shroud dancing” builds were popular a while back. A build that focused on generating life force and flashing in and out of DS would still be pretty good I’d think. Probably better for PvE than WvW because DS has limited AoE damage, though it might work for roaming.
You’ll want at least 15 in Curses for the fury boon and Enfeebling Shroud. Then I would put 30 in Soul Reaping for either faster DS (PvE) or stability (WvW). The rest would kind of depend on your personal taste. Picking up Terror might not be a bad idea if you went hybrid damage. Soul Marks is a great option too for recovering life force quickly.
If you are going for a 50% CD DS build, then you are going to flash DS essentially every 5 seconds, situation permitting.
That means you have 3 traits in that build that are useless. Drop 10 from Death Magic, put it into Curses and get Spectral Attunement. Swap out the other abilities that require you to stay in DS as well for, honestly, anything else. I’d also highly suggest picking up staff with greater marks instead of shrouded removal, and soul marks. I’d also highly suggest a rune set with precision. You could easily push it up to 40% crit chance with Fury, and that is going to utilize that 30% Crit damage much better.
I actually tried a bunker build in pvp a while back where the idea was to stay in DS as much as possible. It worked surprisingly well even though i was forced out of DS very quickly alot of the time. I had the utilities to get lifeforce back immediately. I focused my traits a bit more on spectral skills though. Give the build a try, it could be quite fun, but it will never be completely viable.