I’ve made the comparison to the mechanics already. Sorta had a tongue in cheek title about it being a second health bar, poking fun at people who think Death shroud is a second health bar when it isn’t. But I thought this would be a better topic for the necromancer community as we have a far better understanding of our profession then the general public of the game.
Now I know at Face value death shroud has far more defensive capabilities then Continuum Split does. While Continuum Split seems to be far more offensive in nature. While its hard to determine how good it’ll be at this moment we can still look at the power comparison between the two mechanics as they both have similar weaknesses and similar strength, though I’ll argue that Continuum Split has far more strengths then Death shroud but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Starting with the Similarities. Both skills prevent you from dying for a short period of time. While DS requires you to build life force which can mean you’re taking quite a bit of damage in the process CS is far easier to generate the clones to fuel itself. Neither of these two mechanics benefit you much if at all from healing making healing skills or party healing useless for you while either of these are going on. Death Shroud lasts longer and has a shorter cool down while Continuum Split has a long cool down it can be argued that it’ll be harder to kick someone out of CS as opposed to DS because of the natural decay of DS.
But this is where the Similarities start to fall apart. Although Both Skills “Cheat death” in a way only one of them actually makes attacks against them useless. And that’s the Mesmer’s Continuum split. Although the necromancer has greater access to DS, they don’t have ways to avoid damage. The mesmer has multiple ways to evade, blink, become invulnerable, stealth and even reflect much of the damage. Already, the mesmer defenses scale up in fights far better then the necromancer currently does. You add Continuum split on top of that and now just on their F skills they have 2 skills to become immune to most damage. Although CS does have the object in the world, which could be easy to destroy. But I doubt a single play will be able to break it within a second.
On the Offensive side of combat CS wins out here. Death shroud has some great options for offense for the necromancer. We have shroud dancing traits, Death Perception, Dhuumfire(once the change hits) along with the few traits that modify its damage making it a very viable option for multiple builds. But the problem is its always the same 5 skills. When you enter death shroud your opponent will always know exactly what you can and can’t do. Even with the traits which help DS out the skills themselves don’t actually change all that much. So your opponent will have perfect or nearly perfect knowledge of what you are going to do or can do once you are in it. CS is far more of a wild card. Entering the fight, right off the bat you can’t be certain how the mesmer will use CS. They could moa you and burst you down then exit and do it again. They could be more supportive and throw down some time warps or throw down reflect. Their options get opened up far wider while using it while Necromancer’s get locked out.
Both the Chronomancer and the Necromancer can exit from their respective abilities at any time they like, or be forced out of them. So any weakness about healing is a weakness we as necromancers have dealt with for years. The difference here is a skilled necromancer who gets their death shroud burned down has little to no options left for them to survive, especially not against focus fire. While a skilled Mesmer player will have just about everything they need to overcome any real disadvantage thrown at them.
When Arena net talks about them wanting necromancer to be an attrition profession much of our community scoffs at the idea because they really haven’t shown us that we are suited for that through the way they balance our mechanics. Then when I look at this new ability given to the mesmer along side a defensive weapon I end up seeing a high potential for an attrition light armored profession and its not the necromancer.
I guess all I’m saying is Arena Net better WOW us with the necromancer specialization because so far what little identity we had is being taken and done better for other professions.
Anyway, enough rambling. What are you guy’s thoughts?