Guild Wars 2

For a bit of background, I casually play both GW2 (necro) and WoW(shadowpriest) and have a love / hate relationship with both games.

So I noticed WoW first came out with Shadowform which just passively increased damage and decreased damage taken. Then GW2 came and gave the necro a life force bar and a shroud form with different skills. Now WoW has a cool insanity bar which is similar to the life force bar but a bit faster pace.

The insanity bar builds with each spell used and once it reaches a certain amount, shadowpriests can go into shadowform where they do more damage. While in shadowform insanity drains quickly but is slowed down by using spells still. It’s inevitable that shadowform will end (usually 30-40s) regardless of skill but it’s a fun race to delay it as long as possible.

So my idea was to do similar with life force and shroud form to make it more fun and since it’s a central mechanic for necros anyways. It makes for interesting gameplay cuz it can be strategic to wait for a good time to pop shroud form and let loose a buttload of burst DPS.

Not sure if it could be easily implemented but what do you guys think? Share if you like the idea

You seem new to the game, so before you invest too much time in the Necromancer class let me try to help you understand the design philosophy behind the class.

The Necromancer class is essentially Harry Potter when he’s living with the Dursley family. Uncle Vernon, (Anet), absolutely despises Harry and keeps him locked up in the tiny room below the stairs so he’s out of sight and won’t cause any trouble.

At the start of the HoT expansion, due to an oversight with one the Lich Form abilities, (Uncle Vernon forgot to lock the door), Necromancers finally got to taste the sweet DPS cake after several years of neglect.

Mid october last year, uncle Vernon found the key and once again the door was locked, even the tiny window was barred. All Harry has left now is the fading memory of that sweet, sweet cake.

You can forget all about cake you wretched child, you will not have any!

Demoria.6745:

You seem new to the game, so before you invest too much time in the Necromancer class let me try to help you understand the design philosophy behind the class.

The Necromancer class is essentially Harry Potter when he’s living with the Dursley family. Uncle Vernon, (Anet), absolutely despises Harry and keeps him locked up in the tiny room below the stairs so he’s out of sight and won’t cause any trouble.

At the start of the HoT expansion, due to an oversight with one the Lich Form abilities, (Uncle Vernon forgot to lock the door), Necromancers finally got to taste the sweet DPS cake after several years of neglect.

Mid october last year, uncle Vernon found the key and once again the door was locked, even the tiny window was barred. All Harry has left now is the fading memory of that sweet, sweet cake.

You can forget all about cake you wretched child, you will not have any!

And Harry dreamed up being a Wizard to cope with the neglect, just as us necromancers dream up of balances/buffs to make us more viable.

And Harry found out he was born with with elite wizard genetics, piles of gold, and powerful supporters, like Tarzan and Cinderella did. Necromancer does not have a magical princess story in its future that sees it going from shunned to over-powered.

So far, shroud is a mash-up of second health bar and magical moa transform skills. The miracle I’m waiting for is further integration of shroud with normal skills, utilities, and traits.

Yes, I’m aware any of this is probably a pipe dream. I suppose one can always illogically hope. But yeah, a more fun life force mechanic and more shroud integration like Anchoku suggested would be amazing.

more or less, the necromancer is the only class bounded to it’s design philosophy.
-Guardian had to be a bunker class. From years is the best dps class in sPvP and have a insane dps in PvE.
-Warrior land huge hits, is able to defend himself from direct damage by a lot but is weak to condition damage and unable to use it properly because is a warrior, he don’t play with poisons and this kind of tricks. Now a condi build is melted in few seconds by any good warrior and is the best condi build of the moment.
-Mesmer is the squishy class that make joke of you when you run around hitting his copy but recived a shield that stun and slow you and can protect him for 3(1,5+1,5) sec spamming dangerous phantasms. Also got a lot of really good defensive wells, that now no one use but that are still really good for support and cc.
-Thief got from a full stealth class that burst down low health enemies quickly and stomp them fast, but can’t protect himself outside of stealth to a class that just jump around making joke of everyone, and also have a block. Basicly anet tried to grant him a bunker build…to a full squishy hide and seek class.
-Ranger just got a overall improvement with insanely strong pets and a totally new form of ability: celestial avatar. It’s the class more changed from the HoT release, obtained a lot of things and lost nothing. it was made to make of him a healer, a low dps class with healing ability, a big change from the previous dps state. But now everyone just play it as a common berserker, plus insanely strong minions and huge defensive ability.
-Engineer got from a static class, with turrets and few tricks able to hold a place but unable to leave it, to a class able to inflict the best condition damage of the game with low defence or be able to inflict huge direct damage and have also huge defensive skills while using the hammer, with also a really good movement skills.
-Elementalist got a chance to be always full of heal and immune to conditions, a real god among mere mortals, but also anet seen that it was too much and nerfed it a little, making it appear as a doomed class but making it the best support class of all the times. Also have a huge AoE dps in PvE and can stack a insane amount of might all by himself with tons of fields and blasts. Even more with the warhorn but no one use it.

Guardian: bunker —> dps
Warrior: weak to condi, huge direct damage dps --→ best against condi, insane condi damage
Mesmer: Squichy hide and seek class —→bunker
Ranger: low dps with bad pets --—> Hea——>Healer with tons of heal, insanely strong pets and huge dps.
Engineer: Static class with medium dps and huge cc —-→ condi or melee dps with mobility, stealth and still tons of cc.
Elementalist: good in everything —→ god in everything with huge support and AoE (but doomed to be a support in sPvP, just because it’s really the best one we can find atm)

Necromancer got not any real changes from before HoT and now. He only got a bad direct damage weapon that had to made him able to fight multiple enemies but ended to be useless. With not any changes on his role since ever.

It’s sad that people are so close minded in this game. Bad direct damage weapon? It’s an awesome condi weapon. Reapers onslaught brouht dhuumfire back from the grave. Combined with trailblazers armor and you’ve got nice damage and a great tank with two health bars, a heal skill that’s up every 12 seconds, 33% further reduced damage with rise. People are way too obsessed with meta and what other people think of the classes to actually play different playstyles.

Two health bars… that’s what grant us to have not a single real defensive skill.
The seconds health bar isn’t a health bar. That bar grant us not a defensive stance but our only offensive one. If you use the shroud to defend yourself you will not be able to use it to inflict damage, and dhuumfire and our only viable dps combo are inside the reaper Shroud skills. That force us to chose between use our shroud to survive 2 seconds longer or to inflict our only good damage. Also, that isn’t a second health bar just because we have to fill it any time to use it, spending time using weapons like the staff that don’t inflict any good damage but grant us the only real way to build up LF in a sPvP enviroment.
In sPvP or WvW a single seconds of block in the right moment can save you for over 10k of damage. A second of block in the right moment can also save you from CC and Conditions, a thing that a seconds health bar let you eat at 100% without any chance to avoid them. A 2 seconds defensive skill is a better defensive skill than a full LF bar.

The healing skill recharge every 13 sec if you hit 5 enemies, that is really unusual, but is good, for shure our only good healing skill atm.

Rise! is good but the health of the minions was reduced by a lot, they need to Hit the enemy to active the effect one by one and they can be killed under the AoE pressure, making them a barely good skill in team fights, better on the paper than in a real fight. Good only in a PvE area, not for shure in PvP, that is where you would like to use it.

Yeah I don’t like the idea of 2 life bars. Feels a little boring. That’s why an insanity -esque bar that provides more damage the longer you are in it (along with other things) would be more fun in my opinion.