Guild Wars 2

So i was thinking of ways the necro could offer some unique form of support for other players, and to get me going i asked myself what made the necro stand out. One of those things is being able to absorb a lot of damage through death shroud, but how could that help your team members?

Well, acouple of years ago i played a pvp mmo called Warhammer Online, for those unfamiliar it was a trinity MMO that played very similar to WwW where the tank archetype’s chief role was to prevent or reduce the incoming damage to allies. One tool to do that was a universal ability called “Guard” where the tank could place this on squishy team members re-directing 50% of the damage to them allowing classes too squishy to survive the frontlines to well.. do just that.

I don’t know GW2’s mechanics well enough to know if this is even possible, but i think it would be a nice addition that builds on the necro’s class mechanic and strength while providing a new niche for the necro in the new pve where you can’t just dodge or negatate every harmful ability. Allowing classes like Eles or Thieves to stay zerker and melee when they otherwise couldn’t.
A concern ofcourse is that it would just be a suicide button so the extra incoming damage would have to be mitigated by the necro’s stats rather than the squishy guardee. Or that it just wouldn’t be needed, or on the flipside be too powerful with additional support.

I’m still curious what people think of this, especially PvP and WwW vets on how it could work in those game modes.

Thoughts? Additions? New ideas? Kick kitten cookie recepies?

This wouldn’t really help our support in any situation where we really need support. It would be really difficult to use, since Necromancer is the only profession that relies on tanking damage to the face (and thus Necromancers are simultaneously the ones most wanting someone to take 50% of their damage away, and the worst at taking 50% damage from allies). This means not only would we be quite bad at actually dealing with the damage, especially in PvE, but also other professions are much more likely to just see an attack incoming and negate it somehow rather than see they’ll take 50% and tank it.

It’d work well in really coordinated play, and at the lowest levels of play, but not really in between, which is where most people play.