Guild Wars 2

I tend to use daggers as a necro and I find that whenever I enter death shroud, basically my damage goes on holiday and I get some extra life and a few mediocre skills replacing my weapons. Now, some people out there seem to like it, so I’ve got to assume it has some use. That said, I’ve no idea what.

Is there some special way I should be using it? Does it only become good if you specifically trait for it? If so, is the class worth playing if you don’t want to pour traits into DS?

If you’ve gone deep enough into the vitality line you can heal your friends with the aoe. There are people that use it masterfully, or at least claim that they do..

in my opinion it’s an extra chunk of life when boss turns your way, and that’s about it

I dont trait for it at all so for me its basically an extra health bar when I need to survive a focused assault.
If you trait and gear for it, DS can cause a lot of damage and do a bunch of nasty effects on people.

I like to dip into it for fury, retaliation, etc then go back to my normal skills and burst things down with wells and such. The 20% more crit helps alot in my one power build. Its 30/15/0/0/25 if memory serves me off the top of my head.

I found it to be mostly a “oh crap!” tool for the recent event.

Poison on floor that i missed he warning circles for, finding myself on the back after a knockdown, and a number of other situations all had me hit DS and run for the back of the battle lines.

the rest i spent with staff #1 going continually and summoning minions whenever. The mobs were moving about too much for marks or wells to be worth the attempt.

Yeah its a damage nerf for dagger builds, you want to just dip in and out for fury buff damage soak etc…

What I hate about the mechanic is we are the only class that must disable their build for the built in defense. Other classes are balanced around defensive skills that do not remove their bar (sure mist form but thats one situations and eles have other defensive tools).

Remove death shroud 4 attacks let people keep their own bars balance DS according to that as just a second lifebar that activates things like fury etc whatever you build for.

No thanks. Ill keep ds as it is. Atk 1 stacks might for me. Atk2 brings me in well range and hydromancy range. Atk 3 pops fear. Atk 4 aoe hits everyone on the point in capping. I enjoy having 4 other skills i can lean on.

Death shroud is meant to be used constantly, always dipping in to soak up big hits and/or take advantage of the teleport/frost, fear or AoE. Life blast can be useful when above 50% life force and traited.
In short, DS when used properly, makes us VERY hard to kill, which is why have the weakest dps.
Regularly surprises me how many people choose to ignore our mechanic. If you want dps, Necro will not provide. Survivability however? Absolute best in game.

Two things.

First, it’s an extra health bar. Use it to survive incoming big hits. That’s obvious.

Second, you can use DS briefly to get some really powerful skills. For example, if you want an interrupt, you can hit DS, hit Doom, and leave DS. That gives you a near-instant fear (limited only by how fast you can hit buttons) that doesn’t take a utility slot or certain weapon. Dark Path is an excellent gap-closer; it has an AoE chill (hugely powerful!) and AoE bleeding (meh). For a melee Necro, that’s a fantastic skill. Just use Dark Path and spam Life Blast until you teleport, then drop DS and start stabbing. Life Transfer is great AoE damage, which is something that a Dagger necro will be a bit weak on. You pop into DS just for that skill, and you’ll be basically immortal for a few seconds while dealing high AoE damage.

Unless built specifically for it, you’ll usually want to dance in and out of DS. The skills are powerful, but it’s not worth wasting life force to spam Life Blast (which is fairly weak).

DS gets even stronger with traits.

I play DS-centric necro, and for me DS is an amazing ability to self heal. When dealing with multiple targets I can regenerate life force to full in 4.5 seconds and get back to spamming piercing bolts very much on cooldown. This means I only take lifebar damage in managable 4.5 seconds intervals (and can cover it by spectral armor!).

I have more staying power than anything but a bunker guardian/ele while still maintaining ability to deal decent damage.

Feel like sharing that build? Clearly you’re using 30 Soul Reaping, but the rest?

Yes, 30 in soul reaping. 4.5s DS reset being a capper, extra LF from marks for more LF generation.

Greater Marks and 20% staff CD reduction.

Rest are flavor (I use bolt pierce, retaliation when in DS, might from bolts)

Skills are – spectral armor, walk, self bleed for 10x might with elite, based on situation, plague (group) or golem (solo). Use both spectral and walk as a way to generate LF from taking damage.

Gear are all power/vit/toughness.

I run with 2x might duration increase from 2-sets, rest are crests of soldier.

Generally plays as follows – unload marks, slash wrists for might, heal to clear any conditions, go into DS, bolt until 50% LF, AOE. Rinse and repeat.

So in essence a point hold bunker, relying on the marks being the size of the point so everyone stays within them and the spectrals to quickly refill LF. Should have guessed.

So we are back at a core issue with these debates, what works in SPVP does not work in WvW or PVE and so on. And everyone is debating from the vantage point of their preferred game mode.

It holds the necro back from being a good class. Thats what it does.

So in essence a point hold bunker

Not quite. I WvW with my necro. While it is a bunker build, might stacking allows you to ramp up damage.

Its amazing when it adds vulnerability too

Every 10 seconds (5 if you trait for it) you can get a few of the following:

Stability (every 10 seconds only)
Fury
Retaliation
-1 Condition
AoE Weakness/Bleed
AoE Vulnerability pulse

Life Blast hits pretty hard if you’re above 50% LF and have a good weapon in hand (staff is best). You can trait your blast to apply the following:

+1 Might to you
+2 Vulnerability to your target

Of note – Might increases the damage of bleeds that you’ve already applied. That means if you toss a long duration bleed/poison on something, then chain cast Life Blast with the +Might trait (Not necessarily on the same target that has bleeds), the last tick will do more damage than the first one.

Grasp is a pretty good gap closer, though I don’t like the cast time. It applies long duration Chill on your target.

Doom is awesome. Instant fear. Enough said. Trait it to be longer duration if you want. I don’t, but some do. Also, the Terror trait is awful. Don’t use it.

Life Transfer. Again, awesome ability. AoE Life Siphon. Gear/Trait for damage and it hits pretty hard. Gear/Trait for healing and it heals your party members too. Precast Spectral Armor or Walk and use it to mitigate a surprising amount of damage.

I don’t know if Life Transfer counts as a “Channeled Skill” for the purpose of Dark Armor. It seems to work, but I can’t be sure.

I might have missed a few things, but I’m doing this from memory.

TL -> DR Version: Death Shroud gives you a second health bar to manage, 4 very flexible skills to use, and lots of trait options to squeeze even more performance out of it. Master Death Shroud!

@PinCushion, actually it’s +2 Vulnerability on Life Blast

Swadow.6213:

@PinCushion, actually it’s +2 Vulnerability on Life Blast

Ninja Edit. Thanks.

PinCushion.7390:

TL -> DR Version: Death Shroud gives you a second health bar to manage, 4 very flexible skills to use, and lots of trait options to squeeze even more performance out of it. Master Death Shroud!

This is actually a great statement that is only partly true!
The flexibility is somewhat there…..but it doesn’t go far enough.
they should seriously diversify DS.
Dark path and Doom are great but depending on build, 1 and 4 are useless and even Dark Path is really so usefull in PvP outside of emergency gap closer and Bleeding.
I’ve never seen a Mesmer who couldn’t use at least 3 of his or her Shatterings.
Or a Guardian who couldn’t use at least 2 virtues.
DS is just too inflexible, Either they strip it of any special things and add them via traits in bulk or they seriously buff it.

Wayfarer.2051:

PinCushion.7390:

TL -> DR Version: Death Shroud gives you a second health bar to manage, 4 very flexible skills to use, and lots of trait options to squeeze even more performance out of it. Master Death Shroud!

This is actually a great statement that is only partly true!
The flexibility is somewhat there…..but it doesn’t go far enough.
they should seriously diversify DS.
Dark path and Doom are great but depending on build, 1 and 4 are useless and even Dark Path is really so usefull in PvP outside of emergency gap closer and Bleeding.
I’ve never seen a Mesmer who couldn’t use at least 3 of his or her Shatterings.
Or a Guardian who couldn’t use at least 2 virtues.
DS is just too inflexible, Either they strip it of any special things and add them via traits in bulk or they seriously buff it.

You must mean Condition Builds.

Yes, DS skills are heavily weighted toward Power builds. I think it’s because “Condition” builds weren’t really part of the core class concept. Players have just shoe-horned it in because it kinda works. The core concept seems to have been Direct/Condition hybrid.

Look at our offensive trait lines. One gives Power/Condition Duration. Easy to see the idea there. Vulnerability makes you hit harder, so it works with Power pretty well. The other gives you Precision/Condition Damage. That one’s a little weird, but the first minor trait gives you a bleed on 66% of your crits. It seems like the idea was for us to get more bleeds on our targets by critting a lot, and Soul Reaping’s +Crit Damage was supposed to make up for what we lost in Power.

So, either crit hard or crit a lot (with extra bleeds thrown in). I find it pretty balanced, really. That’s actually the big problem. It’s too balanced. We don’t have a cheeze build that gives us enormous crits at the cost of everything else. I don’t mind this by itself, but I do mind it in an environment where other professions DO get this option.

But that’s a totally different conversation. We’re talking about what DS does.

So, yes. I agree. DS is less effective for Condition builds. Life Transfer is only marginally effective because 66% of your crit hits will apply a small amount of bleed. Life Blast is too slow to be good for that purpose.

And FYI, I like Grasp in PvE for the Chill effect more than as a gap closer. It slows down DPS a bit.

Go to youtube type shroudstomp & be prepared 4 a plesant surprise