Guild Wars 2

I saw a player running a build today in SPvP that was very bulky. They used DS and boons to stay alive. I thought it was rather interesting since I hadn’t really seen anyone do that before. Now I’m looking to try out a DS focused build, and this is my rough idea. http://tinyurl.com/anjpko2

The basic point is to make heavy use of DS to deal damage and survive, supplementing my damage through retaliation. Survival is further facilitated by chills on my enemy. I feel like the build may suffer from the relatively low critical rate though. Thoughts?

The problem with a death shroud boon build is you should only go into death shroud for a second to chill/fear and get your boons. Every second extra you spend in deathshroud is boon downtime ~

You can get 100% fury and 66% retaliation uptime(more with boon duration =) with the Near to Death trait, but only if you never stay in deathshroud~ (This works well with Shrouded removal, but honestly the only time I tried this build I got really tired of button mashing >~< F1 F1, wait 4 seconds, F1 F1, lala~ .(_ _ ).

And the other thing to note, if you are going in and out every 5 seconds, your fear is very predictable, and they can just wait to heal for when you drop out of DS, knowing you cannot interrupt it. It is cool in theory, but the elementalist version of boon stacking is much better, and is more or less passive on skill usage.

Not to mention that everytime you go into DS, your autoattack stops, so you have to remash a key to get your chain going again if you are a dagger user etc. Expect your fingers to get tired, and hopefully you rebound F1 to G or something closer to the home row.

I really don’t know why your selected autoattack skill has to stop when you go into DS. It doesn’t even make any logical sense to me. Unless you are right on the money with the swap and skill usage it is just downtime. Also not having your auto attack choices saved from your transformed skills is annoying. Everytime I use lich I have to mash 1 like a crazy person.

Rennoko.5731:

Also not having your auto attack choices saved from your transformed skills is annoying. Everytime I use lich I have to mash 1 like a crazy person.

Ctrl+right click right as you pop into Lich is what I do. If you do that to your 1 it sets it to auto right as you start off (and you can still jam 1 while you set that). It is still stupid that it doesn’t have that already, but at least it saves your fingers.

You can stay in death shroud if you want… life blast is pretty decent damage for a power/crit build. I love getting that cannon going and watching them drop. :p

The problem is in the heat of the moment I never remember if it is left or right click and I am spamming LICH FORM LICH FORM LICH FORM instead of attacking. Good think I use cloud almost exclusively and that is toggle.

You get used to it over time. I do the exact same thing when I use Plague form, right as I’m casting it I get my mouse over the 2 spot and ctrl+right click the blind and let it auto attack for me.

Just FYI on cloud you don’t need to do that. Once click on 2 will lock it in for the duration, as it is a toggle not a cast. (Works like an aura).

Huh… that makes things easier.