Guild Wars 2

Original Post
Today they released information on the Ventari legend of Revenant, and it’s accompanied traits and utilities. As is apparent in the build, and the developer confirming himself, healing will slowly become an active and true form of support to be embraced. This is not limited to Revenant of course, Shoutbanner warriors, Engineer’s new medical kit and healing blast finishers, and so forth, all exist to extend this combat medic role. Personally, I adore this idea, I couldn’t be more excited.

However…

This means, more than any other time in the history of Guild Wars 2, needing to be healed by allies in Death and Reaper’s shroud will become a huge importance. With no change working with a Necromancer will become nothing short of a headache for both the Necromancer and the support players and spark unnecessary frustration between allies, especially when communication is limited.

Without stifling developer creativity, I would only suggest instead of reducing life force gains, instead, reduce the amount of total Life Force and reduce our overall Death Shroud sustain, so as to not complicate our mechanic and making Life Force more scarce, which can also be a frustrating experience.

I beg of the developers at this point. Please find a way to make this work so that Necromancers and Healing Support builds (that will be coming in waves) do not butt heads and create a poor environment and design for team game play.

Added Suggestion
After talking with some other necromancers, some of us agree a fun and “Necromancer-like” way to handle it would be to add a new unique mechanic to Shrouds (Death and Reaper’s) that absorbs all healing taken when in Death Shroud (Other than Siphons, Blighter’s Boon and Unholy Sanctuary, which remain unique Shroud healers) that absorbs all healing received in Shroud form, and releases it over time when you exit Shroud.

Death shroud would simply need to add the new text.
Death Shroud: Assume a spectral form and gain new skills, turning your life force into health. Healing received will be absorbed and healed over time among leaving Death shroud.

When receiving healing in death shroud a Shrouded Absorption icon would appear on your buff bar with no duration. When leaving the Shroud, it would count down and heal the full amount of healing you would have otherwise received over the next 10 seconds. (10% per second)

To align with shroud cooldowns, if Speed of Shadows is taken, it also reduces the time it takes to recover with Shrouded Absorption to 7 seconds to match the new Shroud cooldown.

What this would do is allow us to be healed in Shrouds while retaining some amount of counter-play and anticipation. This route would also maintain the uniqueness of death shroud healing abilities.

For Safety measures and preventing exploitation, I suggest this number have a hard cap of maximum Life Force or HP.

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

Your suggestion totally guts ANY build which relies on the shroud mechanic for any long length of time and it would ruin the concept of the reaper. Its clearly mean to stay in its shrouded state. Look at all the life force gain it has even when in RS. Its auto and chilling force for a few.

Sigmoid.7082:

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

Your suggestion totally guts ANY build which relies on the shroud mechanic for any long length of time and it would ruin the concept of the reaper. Its clearly mean to stay in its shrouded state. Look at all the life force gain it has even when in RS. Its auto and chilling force for a few.

It would not ruin those things as degeneration and gain are both percentage based. That means outside of getting hit, nothing would change. And no, a Necromancer being attacked is NOT supposed to “stay in shroud” because that would be called immortality…

But beyond that, imagine, say you build to be tanky with high Shroud uptime. Now place those mechanics in any other similar game that has had a trinity system from conception, such as WoW. A tank (or even a dps) that has a defense that makes them absorb damage for a bit, but a healer trying to save them blows their cooldown a to secure a clutch save comes to realize they wasted cool downs and resources on someone who just negated every bit of support and will now still die soon.

That would never be accepted and is a completely terrible design. Healing for a few hundred hp from leeches here and there or from blighters boon is nothing compared to the AOE 4-6k burst of healing fairly frequently that you risk negating from upcoming actual healing builds, more healing focused than the support we have today. (Similar to a shout warrior, only much more outgoing healing)

It’s not okay.

Yup, i really dont know why ot even has to exist.

Just yesterday my 2 supportbots blew 10k+ heals on me, but seems devs think that with 2k hp and under focus fire is wrong time to enter your only defense mechanic.

its not as big of a deal as you might think. I’m a bit tired so I’m not going to go into it too much at the moment. But just to start us off we’ll have some pretty solid support from allies who care more about applies boons than raw healing.

Sigmoid.7082:

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

The problem is that anything less but completely unrestricted healing through Shroud makes no sense in context of both the class and the entire game.
If they need to rebalance life force or healing traits to make this happen then so be it, but healing through Shrouds simply isn’t a question of “if” but “when..”.

Am I misunderstanding something? I thought that with the trait updates etc we will start to benefit from healing through our DS?

Atra Culpa.5012:

Am I misunderstanding something? I thought that with the trait updates etc we will start to benefit from healing through our DS?

only siphons at the moment.

#BelieveInBlightersBoon

Well blood magic rework might bring supportive healing to allies, but on paper currently, the reaper looks like it has enough healing ron. The lifeforce generation ON PAPER looks amazing and if you couple that with blighters boon and unholy sanctuary and deathly invigoration, and it seems that healing from allies wont be needed as it comes from them giving us boons which is more frequent than their regular blast healing. I feel like we should be alright.

Sigmoid.7082:

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

Your suggestion totally guts ANY build which relies on the shroud mechanic for any long length of time and it would ruin the concept of the reaper. Its clearly mean to stay in its shrouded state. Look at all the life force gain it has even when in RS. Its auto and chilling force for a few.

I don’t know what build does not try to and is actually viable terromancer does and look at it’s state while not the only problem necro spends +70% in DS, not even MM the minions will just die unless that vampiric aura is good enough for them to survive wait even then it won’t be enough it’s all for their deaths, sure they are trying to allow our heals in DS but when it comes to benefiting from allies’ healing it’s not a real thing at least in action.

I’m still waiting for them to make Parasitic Contagion work in DS and not kittening Curses.

I think some of you are completely missing the point. Builds will be focused on sheer healing. If a Necromancer runs over and wastes a Revenants shards for example, or frustrates their support all because their mechanics completely clash, it will create frustration amongst players playing together. It is a frustrating and unfun design. Remember, the impact of negating ally support will mean much more than it previously did, where even now it causes issues (wasting shout heals to save a necro fleeing from a thief and realize he hit shroud at the same time as I tried healing him and he gets finished because my 4k+ healing was wasted).

It will create player-to-player (allies) frustration because of a poor core design. This is a major design flaw, even if you can “learn to live with it”, because this goes beyond the Necromancer. It’s annoying to deal with from the outside too, from experience. Necros design goes well beyond the realm of “selfish” to “anti-team”.

Necromancers already have issues in teams due to a lack of scaling defenses, and they are unnecessarily hard to support. This should have minimal (not nonexistent) affect on 1v1 anyways, as we don’t have full healing capabilities in shroud, but in a team, allowing us to not waste support could make us a better team player and less target priority without homogenizing classes by giving us evades (which isn’t likely to happen anyways).

One more time, this goes well beyond “getting by”. This is a design issue that more than just the Necromancer has to deal with. It’s annoying to play with as well.

There are options.
1. Allow a fraction of a heal through DS
2. Increase base toughness for Necromancer
3. Increase blind, chill, weakness, and boons like protection availability
4. Increase DS LF generation and reduce DS CD.
5. Scale up heal and siphon effectiveness so, for example, a regeneration from anywhere heals more on Necromancer
6. Convert heals to LF

Some of these options should look familiar. The options may be used in combination.

@ Sagat: I think it may be a good idea to attach Parasitic Contagion to the new Deathly Invigoration trait, freeing up a Curses GM trait for a new power oriented GM trait. Also it would give condi necros more of a reason to take BM.
/

As for ally healing in DS, I think this has always been an issue that needs to be addressed, but isn’t easy to solve. Although Necro sustain builds in HoT will probably be able to ignore ally healing, what about the other more common Necro builds? The only balanced way to allow ally healing to DS in its current form, is to reduce the incoming healing considerably or make it effect our life force bar instead.

If we allow full healing in DS, the DS mechanic would need to be changed dramatically. Instead of having DS as it is now, it would need to become a short uptime, spammable ability with a lot more LF gain, a much decreased cooldown and a much smaller life force bar. Why? Because otherwise Necros could easily wait for and abuse incoming healing, which is a lot more effective in DS for many reasons, while covering their 1%-10% health with large LF bars. This could be taken even further with Necros grouping up in say WvW and abusing each others AoE healing/support (Transfusion for example) in addition to lots of LF gain during battles for crazy attrition. The end result would be a nerf bat after all the QQing was over.

Making the DS changes to uptime and LF bar size would definitely counteract this abuse, but cause more issues with our attrition not scaling well with increasing enemy numbers. Not to mention it would be a lot harder to use any DS/RS skills in their current form due to enemies taking out our LF bars much faster.

That’s why I would consider seriously reducing the LF degeneration mechanic or getting rid of it entirely. Also and more importantly, I would add a GW1 Protection Prayers-like mechanic to DS. So while in DS, we can’t take more than a % of our total LF bar in damage per second.

With all these changes we should be:

- Better balanced to receive full healing in DS due to the short spurts of DS uptime.
- Better at attrition since the damage cap per second would allow us to handle large group DPS a lot better, while still being balanced for 1v1 due to the much smaller LF bar and DS uptime. Essentially, the defensive portion of DS becomes an easily applied active defense ability instead of a second healthbar. Such a mechanic would be more worthy of the drawbacks designed into Necros due to shrouds.
- DS builds still remain viable, since they’re not working against so much LF degeneration and due to the damage cap, will always have a guaranteed uptime in DS depending on LF generated. Much greater LF gain and a much shorter shroud cooldown (I’m thinking 5 second base instead of 10 seconds) helps with this too.

The goal is to make Necromancer not completely fight against team mates in combat. The design concept of making it harder for your team to even play with you is dated and needs fixed. Originally, it didn’t matter much. gW2 didn’t really have healers. At least, not in the same magnitude as there will be in HOT. If healing was a dominant role early in GW2 development, this conclusion of not recording heals in DS would have never made it to live.

Obviously, the answer isn’t simple. And I had thought of other means, such as a unique Necromancer mechanic that “absorbs” all of the healing received (baseline) and heals it over 10 seconds when you exit Shroud, or split LF and Health healing 50/50 from incoming heals in Shroud. Either way, the main focus is to allow us to work in teams without causing frustrations of poor mechanics fighting one another.

ronpierce.2760:

…it will create frustration amongst players playing together.

You say it like that isn’t the case already.

ronpierce.2760:

At least, not in the same magnitude as there will be in HOT.

While I agree, this really shouldn’t be an argument for getting healing to work through DS. Even if your team comp doesn’t have any or very little ally support, there’s no reason why that little bit of healing shouldn’t work on necros all the time.

Balekai.6083:

If we allow full healing in DS, the DS mechanic would need to be changed dramatically. Instead of having DS as it is now, it would need to become a short uptime, spammable ability with a lot more LF gain, a much decreased cooldown and a much smaller life force bar. Why? Because otherwise Necros could easily wait for and abuse incoming healing, which is a lot more effective in DS for many reasons, while covering their 1%-10% health with large LF bars. This could be taken even further with Necros grouping up in say WvW and abusing each others AoE healing/support (Transfusion for example) in addition to lots of LF gain during battles for crazy attrition. The end result would be a nerf bat after all the QQing was over.

No to all of that.

First of all, you are totally overestimating the impact unrestricted healing would have. The scenarios you’re thinking of, Transfusion in WvW and such… do you really think a 5-target aoe 3k heal on a 40 sec cd is going to make a bunch of necros any more tanky than the same amount of eles or guardians healing each other?
You’re trying to think of some outliers, but the reality is that all other classes would do even better in those situations. It’s rediculous to think that necros could abuse something that everyone else always had access to.
“But in DS you can’t lose your real hp…”, yeah, I know, you’re still wrong.

Secondly, lower lf pool + better lf regen + lower shroud cd = no change to what we have now. Seriously, it would be exactly the same to have a lower pool that can be used more often. Solves nothing.

Just to mention it here again: there’s the 50% dmg reduction in DS, which is a bug, so if that is fixed our lf pool will be cut in half anyway. With +15% baseline from the new core spec system we’d end up with an effective 57.5% of our current life force pool.

@ Ron

Anet needs to do something patchwork that works with the current DS mechanics, or fix the poor mechanics entirely with full healing and much better attrition vs. groups in mind. I would rather have the latter, but realistically were looking at the former.

So your idea of receiving all healing over 10 seconds on DS exit sounds good. Reminds me of a similar mechanic you can enchant into gear in DA:I. Basically it converts 10-20% of incoming damage into healing over 10 seconds. This worked very well in conjunction with Guard/Barrier mechanics in that game, which act like second health bars similar to DS (actually our LF bar is a combination of Guard and Barrier mechanics wise).

I could definitely see something like that working for GW2 shrouds. It would solve the problem of Necros “hiding” in DS while getting nutty effective healing, while also adding counterplay outside DS with enemies trying to burst you down or limit healing with poisons etc.

For it to work though, the remaining damage from the last hit taken in DS would have to not transfer directly over to health. It would need to be reverted back to not transferring the damage over (back to the times when we could jump off huge cliffs and survive).

Another option would be to script/code DS so healing banked while in DS is calculated before remaining damage is carried over, governing whether we down or not. Then start the healing over 10 seconds with whatever banked healing is left, if any. Hard for Anet to script or code I’m sure.

flow.6043:

No to all of that.

First of all, you are totally overestimating the impact unrestricted healing would have. The scenarios you’re thinking of, Transfusion in WvW and such… do you really think a 5-target aoe 3k heal on a 40 sec cd is going to make a bunch of necros any more tanky than the same amount of eles or guardians healing each other?
You’re trying to think of some outliers, but the reality is that all other classes would do even better in those situations. It’s rediculous to think that necros could abuse something that everyone else always had access to.
“But in DS you can’t lose your real hp…”, yeah, I know, you’re still wrong.

Secondly, lower lf pool + better lf regen + lower shroud cd = no change to what we have now. Seriously, it would be exactly the same to have a lower pool that can be used more often. Solves nothing.

Just to mention it here again: there’s the 50% dmg reduction in DS, which is a bug, so if that is fixed our lf pool will be cut in half anyway. With +15% baseline from the new core spec system we’d end up with an effective 57.5% of our current life force pool.

Yes I do. It’s not hard to see where things could go really wrong with full healing.

Zerg or small group roaming, you could have a whole bunch of necros charge in, DPS, all pop shrouds when they’re health is low. Now imagine 10-20 Necros all using Life Blast with transfusion traited, healing eachother to full health while in DS, doing pretty good AoE damage at the same time, while gaining tons of LF and even more LF from deaths once they exit. Remember, Transfusion on Life Transfer pulses 9 times under 3 seconds, is cast over a 600 radius and selects/prioritizes missing health per pulse. It’s probably one of the most efficient group heals in the game.

They wouldn’t even have to spec for healing. The 2K 600 radius area heals over 3 seconds would be more than enough to give all the necros in the zerg a restart button or two.

On my shroud point you must not have read past that paragraph you quoted. In the next line, I mentioned that such changes not only would fail to change anything, but would make our attrition worse. Thus I believe less LF degeneration and a damage cap % based on you’re total LF bar would be required. See the rest of my post above for further explanation.

I have read all of it the first time, still doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does.

Balekai.6083:

They wouldn’t even have to spec for healing. The 2K 600 radius area heals over 3 seconds would be more than enough to give all the necros in the zerg a restart button or two.

I just have to ask now, how often (or at all) do you participate in wvw zerging?

This “amazing” 20x necro immortal zerg you’re describing would not only have a ton of counterplay but the amount of healing you’re describing is far exceeded by guardians, warriors and eles, with the difference of them actually providing each other perma-every-boon, including stability. Current GWEN zerg compositions are and always will be better than pure necro comps even if those necros could heal each other with Transfusion through Shroud.

So, again, whatever outlier you can come up with, other classes can already do better.

flow.6043:

I have read all of it the first time, still doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does.

Balekai.6083:

They wouldn’t even have to spec for healing. The 2K 600 radius area heals over 3 seconds would be more than enough to give all the necros in the zerg a restart button or two.

I just have to ask now, how often (or at all) do you participate in wvw zerging?

This “amazing” 20x necro immortal zerg you’re describing would not only have a ton of counterplay but the amount of healing you’re describing is far exceeded by guardians, warriors and eles, with the difference of them actually providing each other perma-every-boon, including stability. Current GWEN zerg compositions are and always will be better than pure necro comps even if those necros could heal each other with Transfusion through Shroud.

So, again, whatever outlier you can come up with, other classes can already do better.

You forget a couple things:

Ele, Warrior and Guardian group healing require setup ( waster field combos) or are limited in range or mobility in some way while not actually doing damage at the same time.

Necro Life Transfer healing requires no setup, no disengagement, no mobility penalties, does great AoE damage and also regens LF at the same time. It’s 600 radius and pulses 9 times under 3 seconds, prioritizing those needing healing. We don’t see packs of Necros using Tranfusion on eachother because DS right now only allows Unholy Sanctuary as healing. It would be counter productive for so many DS Necros to be specced that way when we would be wasting those heals mostly on shrouded necros most of the time. Again, the problem of group heals having no effect while in DS.

Change it so all healing goes through DS without changing its current form, and I could easily see GWEN become NEWG. With necros tanking/skirmishing most incoming damage with new DS healing mechanics and other classes supporting with their active defenses and making sure they get off Transfusions, Wells, Deathly Invigorations etc.

Not to mention this wouldn’t be a zerg problem only. It would also work on smaller scale 3v3-10v10 situations as well. Especially if one or two necros were specced with healing power.

A lot of that is changing, actually. If you look at Ventari, many of the engineer healing changes coming, increased ShoutBanner healing and so on, healing will become much less of a dynamic group tool and more of a build-focus. A Ventari healer can literally drop massive amounts of heals constantly through a battle, far beyond any current builds and with no need for supporting or comboing with other players.

ronpierce.2760:

A lot of that is changing, actually. If you look at Ventari, many of the engineer healing changes coming, increased ShoutBanner healing and so on, healing will become much less of a dynamic group tool and more of a build-focus. A Ventari healer can literally drop massive amounts of heals constantly through a battle, far beyond any current builds and with no need for supporting or comboing with other players.

That’s another way to allow full healing or close to in DS. If the rest of the classes get major “healing creep,” the argument becomes far easier to make for full healing while shrouded.

I took the idea of healing over time after shroud and ran with it. I added it to the OP as well, so I just wanted to share that idea, as I think it would be more interesting and fun than simply allowing healing to heal your health bar.

Suggestion
After talking with some other necromancers, some of us agree a fun and “Necromancer-like” way to handle it would be to add a new unique mechanic to Shrouds (Death and Reaper’s) that absorbs all healing taken when in Death Shroud (Other than Siphons, Blighter’s Boon and Unholy Sanctuary, which remain unique Shroud healers) that absorbs all healing received in Shroud form, and releases it over time when you exit Shroud.

Death shroud would simply need to add the new text.
Death Shroud: Assume a spectral form and gain new skills, turning your life force into health. Healing received will be absorbed and healed over time among leaving Death shroud.

When receiving healing in death shroud a Shrouded Absorption icon would appear on your buff bar with no duration. When leaving the Shroud, it would count down and heal the full amount of healing you would have otherwise received over the next 10 seconds. (10% per second)

To align with shroud cooldowns, if Speed of Shadows is taken, it also reduces the time it takes to recover with Shrouded Absorption to 7 seconds to match the new Shroud cooldown.

What this would do is allow us to be healed in Shrouds while retaining some amount of counter-play and anticipation. This route would also maintain the uniqueness of death shroud healing abilities.

For Safety measures and preventing exploitation, I suggest this number have a hard cap of maximum Life Force or HP.

The best idea I can think of regarding DS/RS healing, would be to separate the damage reduction we get from shroud from the abilities we get from shroud. The real reason why they are so reluctant to allow us to be healed while shrouded..or to even access our utilities while shrouded is fear of the combination of these three things.

I propose:
1. DS/RS no longer has any innate damage reduction
2. DS/RS can no longer be cancelled/removed/shortened by attacking us. LF can only be consumed by DS/RS abilities.
3. Utilities, traits, ally support/heals become available at all times like every other class.
4. Our damage mitigation comes from traits, utilities, weapon skills, DS/RS skills.

Peeling off the damage reductions from DS/RS should allow us to be a fully functional profession with access to active defenses at that point. We could have access to utilities to support our group in the form of a reflect or two (spectral wall and death’s charge).

ODB.6891:

1. DS/RS no longer has any innate damage reduction

That should be done anyway because it’s a bug.

ODB.6891:

2. DS/RS can no longer be cancelled/removed/shortened by attacking us. LF can only be consumed by DS/RS abilities.

That would mean that as long as you don’t use any skills you are immune to damage.

Balekai.6083:

Ele, Warrior and Guardian group healing require setup ( waster field combos) or are limited in range or mobility in some way while not actually doing damage at the same time.

Life Transfer being easier to use doesn’t make it more effective.
Also, waterfields aren’t small and some of them are ranged skills, so are blast finishers, additionally they have their own blast radius that can extend beyond the combo field. So in that sense you can actually easily out-range Life Transfer.
And almost every blast finisher does damage, some way more than Life Transfer while also being less susceptible to interrupts.

Balekai.6083:

We don’t see packs of Necros using Tranfusion on eachother because DS right now only allows Unholy Sanctuary as healing.

You are assuming that the only way to use Transfusion in team play is if all necros simultaniously went into DS and Life Transfered each other back to health. Non of this would actually happen in a real battle.
Also, the reason we don’t see it used is because Blood Magic is a garbage trait line. If Transfusion was in a different line we might see it more often.

Balekai.6083:

It would be counter productive for so many DS Necros to be specced that way when we would be wasting those heals mostly on shrouded necros most of the time. Again, the problem of group heals having no effect while in DS.

Hey… you are the opposition in this thread, you were arguing against healing in DS, remember?

Balekai.6083:

I could easily see GWEN become NEWG.

GWEN is just a convenient way of arranging those letters, it doesn’t actually mean G>W>E>N.

Balekai.6083:

Not to mention this wouldn’t be a zerg problem only. It would also work on smaller scale 3v3-10v10 situations as well. Especially if one or two necros were specced with healing power.

You started with the zerg argument, according to you that’s where you could most easily abuse healing through Shroud.
And yes of course this would work in smaller fights as well, and of course it would be more effective with healing power gear. I’m still amazed how you see any problem with this.

That should be done anyway because it’s a bug.

Thought it came from the confusion between exactly how much DS was since until a while ago the number couldn’t be seen. Testing had it either 120% hp but anet said it was base 60%. It just had an innate damage reduction.

Would count it as a feature since if it was a bug it would have been fixed by now.

Sigmoid.7082:

That should be done anyway because it’s a bug.

Thought it came from the confusion between exactly how much DS was since until a while ago the number couldn’t be seen. Testing had it either 120% hp but anet said it was base 60%. It just had an innate damage reduction.

Would count it as a feature since if it was a bug it would have been fixed by now.

It is a bug, and no, some bugs (especially on necro) just aren’t high on anet’s priority list.
The whole thing started almost 2 years ago. They fixed a downedstate -50% hp bug, which somehow seemed to double our lf pool. This had been tested even before we could see a number on our lf bar, so people just assumed 120% rather than a damage reduction, afterall having a damage reduction or a higher effective hp is the same thing. So when we got our actual life force numbers it became apparent that the displayed amount really was 60% of our regular hp, but the damage was still reduced – not in the damage log or on screen numbers but the amount of life force subtracted from our pool, so it’s not an actual damage reduction like you’d get with armor or a protection boon.
The question was: what kind of bug do we have here, reduced damage or just a wrong number on our bar? The bottom line would be the same, except for one thing: damage that overflows to our regular hp is the only case when the correct amount is subtracted from our lf pool. And that makes it more likely that there is a damage reduction in DS rather than a wrongly displayed number.
Either way, it is bugged and needs a fix.

flow.6043:

ODB.6891:

2. DS/RS can no longer be cancelled/removed/shortened by attacking us. LF can only be consumed by DS/RS abilities.

That would mean that as long as you don’t use any skills you are immune to damage.

What I’m referring to is removing the Life force bar altogether. No more second health bar. Just have DS/RS be a cosmetic transform with the second set of abilities. Like the warrior adrenaline bar, only retain the unique abilities that come with DS/RS while it is active. I’m advocating for all damage mitigation/blocks/invulns to come from traits, weapon, DS/RS skills, and utilties…essentially active defenses like all other professions.

I lost hope for removal of the HP bar of DS it would take a while to distribute sustain to the rest of necro as well, DS just needs to be less restrictive especially with heals and utilities, I’m not sure why it’s here yet and we have to wait for trait changes when the power creep is happening.

Edit: not sure why it’s not here

Sagat.3285:

I lost hope for removal of the HP bar of DS it would take a while to distribute sustain to the rest of necro as well, DS just needs to be less restrictive especially with heals and utilities, I’m not sure why it’s here yet and we have to wait for trait changes when the power creep is happening.

It would be such a perfect solution. No more excuses for why we can’t have utilities in DS/RS. No more excuses to not allow incoming allied heals. No more excuses to not allow us active defenses. No excuse to not allow some type of reflect/projectile block. An actual solution to getting trained/focused in pvp environments…since we would then have access to active defenses for an invul/block possibly.

Regarding healing, not really Revenant, but maybe some haven’t seen it already:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38ta2j/some_more_info_about_upcoming_trait_changes/

Tl;dr:

Jon Peters said that Blood Magic got heavy changes and differs since the last time they showed a preview.

flow.6043:

Life Transfer being easier to use doesn’t make it more effective.
Also, waterfields aren’t small and some of them are ranged skills, so are blast finishers, additionally they have their own blast radius that can extend beyond the combo field. So in that sense you can actually easily out-range Life Transfer.
And almost every blast finisher does damage, some way more than Life Transfer while also being less susceptible to interrupts.

Of course the mechanics of skill function matter. It’s just that Necro transfusion isn’t used to large numbers because a) Not too many people play necro b) Grouping up necros to use tranfusion is counter productive, since all of them would be in Death Shroud unable to heal eachother.

However as you say, the real drawback for Life Transfer would be interrupting the channels. Like I said above that’s where other class support would have to come in, making sure Life Transfer and Well combs go off.

flow.6043:

You are assuming that the only way to use Transfusion in team play is if all necros simultaniously went into DS and Life Transfered each other back to health. Non of this would actually happen in a real battle.
Also, the reason we don’t see it used is because Blood Magic is a garbage trait line. If Transfusion was in a different line we might see it more often.

Don’t players use Water Fields on command? Fire Fields on command? Why not popping DS and Life Transfers on command?
Also due to the lack of needing to combo with Life Transfer, the very nature of incomming damage due to pushing or being pushed would like pressure the entire zerg at the same time, thus causing Necros to pop DS more or less the same time. Honestly, it doesn’t matter that they do.

flow.6043:

Hey… you are the opposition in this thread, you were arguing against healing in DS, remember?

No I am not. That’s what you think my position is. My position is against full healing in DS as it is now. My posts have been pretty clear on this. I am not against full healing in addition to a rework of DS, or partial healing in DS, or interesting ideas like an above one about banking healing until exiting DS and having it heal over time. I don’t argue for the sake of arguing. I like to discuss things and find common ground.

To your point more specifically: My point was that allowing full healing in DS would open up such a transfusion strategy (which I think would be OP), because it’s main obstacle (groups of necros unable to be healed in death shroud thus unable to heal eachother), would make it counterproductive. Take off that restriction and abuse arises. I don’t have to agree with full healing with the current DS, to point out that things aren’t used now because we don’t have healing in DS.

flow.6043:

GWEN is just a convenient way of arranging those letters, it doesn’t actually mean G>W>E>N.

It’s an acronym that I reversed as a joke into an opposite initialism, because interestingly enough the GWEN acronym shows profession priority generally over the years in WvW. The reversal was to make a light hearted jest at the new priority of wanted professions if such changes to DS were allowed (full healing in DS). Not sure what your point was here though. That I didn’t know what I was referring too? :P

flow.6043:

You started with the zerg argument, according to you that’s where you could most easily abuse healing through Shroud.
And yes of course this would work in smaller fights as well, and of course it would be more effective with healing power gear. I’m still amazed how you see any problem with this.

And it is, because there’s so many allies. However, it can be abused outside of zergs. Actually in some ways it would be more effective in smaller groups.
The problem is really easy to see. Unholy Sanctuary, which is just a Regeneration boon while in DS, is far more effective than regeneration outside DS in various types of play (basically god mode in PvE sustain wise). All you have to do is look at how it performs sustain wise in any mode than extrapolate to all incoming healing to see the problem. Especially when Unholy Sanctuary builds tend to kitten themselves damage wise. Full Healing while in DS would make it much easier to build offense while experiencing way more sustain than a buffed unholy Sanctuary build ever did (which can be very potent).
Now if group healing and self sustain became really common post HoT and easily acquired by all classes as suggested above, than I would be more ok with full healing in DS as it is now, because the effective healing over time for everyone would be much higher and I would assume, make the advantage of healing while in DS less advantageous overall.

Rym.1469:

Regarding healing, not really Revenant, but maybe some haven’t seen it already:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38ta2j/some_more_info_about_upcoming_trait_changes/

Tl;dr:

Jon Peters said that Blood Magic got heavy changes and differs since the last time they showed a preview.

They don’t see the class like we do anyway meh we’ll prepare both pitchforks and confettis just in case, Blood Magic is one trait line out of a whole class, dhuumfire new animation was a facepalm fest even more than that “mobility buff” a while ago. I’m not trying be overly pessimistic but the way they see necro just irritates me sometimes especially the perfect scenarios balance,necro will be too OP and the feeling that necro came from another game but we’ll see as usual.

Sagat.3285:

Rym.1469:

Regarding healing, not really Revenant, but maybe some haven’t seen it already:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38ta2j/some_more_info_about_upcoming_trait_changes/

Tl;dr:

Jon Peters said that Blood Magic got heavy changes and differs since the last time they showed a preview.

They don’t see the class like we do anyway meh we’ll prepare both pitchforks and confettis just in case, Blood Magic is one trait line out of a whole class, dhuumfire new animation was a facepalm fest even more than that “mobility buff” a while ago. I’m not trying be overly pessimistic but the way they see necro just irritates me sometimes especially the perfect scenarios balance,necro will be too OP and the feeling that necro came from another game but we’ll see as usual.

I think your right to be pessimistic.

However, I think the problem isn’t so much that they notice or see the class the way they do. It’s the way they react to these perfect and unperfected scenarios. Especially when it has been pretty obvious for years that life steals and death shroud haven’t worked well as main attrition mechanics compared to alternatives.

So instead of:

“What Necros have right now isn’t working, but doing X would just lead to Y OP problems. If we rework this and that to make Necros better overall, then we can make that change or not need it at all.”

We get:

“What Necros have right now isn’t working, but doing X would just lead to Y OP problems. Even though what you have isn’t working, we don’t want to rework anything really so there’s nothing we can really do. I guess you can try to play better. Here, have 5% of what you’re asking for or something that doesn’t tackle the problem at all and causes other problems.”

We need a bit more of the former. Some progressive changes that increase the class as a whole. Blood Magic is a good start, but like you say it’s only one trait line. Life steals may be much better, but what about the other core issues with Necro not addressed by trait lines?

ronpierce.2760:

This means, more than any other time in the history of Guild Wars 2, needing to be healed by allies in Death and Reaper’s shroud will become a huge importance.

I solved your problem before you ever really thought of it as one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/A-good-necromancer/first#post5026965.

+1000 to this thread

If healing is supposed to be a play style, then all characters should be able to get heals.

I wanted to bump this thread as there’s no reason to re-make it. My biggest fears are really set in motion with the Raid announcement, this is pretty much what I had in the back of my mind the whole time. This mechanic will really put a damper on the usefulness of having a necromancer in a team if they cannot always be saved due to flashing DS to try to save themselves, negating large team heals…

I miss AoE heals frequently in WvW just because I am in Death Shroud. Thanks for keeping this thread alive, Ron

I like the idea of “pooling” the heal and when exiting shroud getting a HoT that at most heals for 100% (times a multiplier of your Healing Power) of your HP. It could also be possible to have a hybrid solution, where 50% heals directly and 50% is pooled up.

Another idea that I got while reading this thread is that damage taken in shroud heals you for 15% of damage taken, 25% of healing goes through shroud and nearby deaths heal for 10% of the dead units maximum HP.
It would mean that healing works, but is not as effective as it would be if you were outside of shroud. Damage to health gives some base health when you are tanking damage and it will add up, especialy in Reapers shroud, you are very unlikely to ever get more than 15% of your maximum health in a fight that actually matters from this. The last part gives more sustain versus many enemies, assuming that they die.
We could also have self heal values (leech or blighters boon) in Shroud doubled along with letting a part of normal healing through.

Good of you to bump it, as you said, it becomes more important now that raids are around the corner.

So it’s been said that reaper are doing okay internally raid-wise. It’s been noted, so if this does become a major issue/frustration it might get further attention, but that’s better than nothing. Sounds good to me, let’s just hope it really does turn out pretty good.

d(‘-’d)

ronpierce.2760:

So it’s been said that reaper are doing okay internally raid-wise. It’s been noted, so if this does become a major issue/frustration it might get further attention, but that’s better than nothing. Sounds good to me, let’s just hope it really does turn out pretty good.

d(‘-’d)

Anywhere we can read that good sir of sirs?

TheLastNobody.8319:

ronpierce.2760:

So it’s been said that reaper are doing okay internally raid-wise. It’s been noted, so if this does become a major issue/frustration it might get further attention, but that’s better than nothing. Sounds good to me, let’s just hope it really does turn out pretty good.

d(‘-’d)

Anywhere we can read that good sir of sirs?

Erm, mailed some Devs the concern and that’s what I got. I try not to quote any Devs too directly anymore, as I’ve frustrated some in the past if they say things in confidence. Good news is we’re in good hands and it’s a known concern and able to be looked at.

ronpierce.2760:

TheLastNobody.8319:

ronpierce.2760:

So it’s been said that reaper are doing okay internally raid-wise. It’s been noted, so if this does become a major issue/frustration it might get further attention, but that’s better than nothing. Sounds good to me, let’s just hope it really does turn out pretty good.

d(‘-’d)

Anywhere we can read that good sir of sirs?

Erm, mailed some Devs the concern and that’s what I got. I try not to quote any Devs too directly anymore, as I’ve frustrated some in the past if they say things in confidence. Good news is we’re in good hands and it’s a known concern and able to be looked at.

Oh good! Apologies, didn’t know if there was like a statement or something. Well nice to know we’re being kept a watch on. Ty!

I’m pretty curious what metrics are used internally to say that something is doing well.

Dead.5829:

I’m pretty curious what metrics are used internally to say that something is doing well.

I didn’t ask and they didn’t say, didn’t want to overstep my boundaries, I just wanted to make sure this was something considered because I hate the idea of being an anti-team player and frustrating team mates. In wvW it’s already an issue but who cares if a guy dies. In Raids with only 10 people in a bit more skeptical that it’s “okay”. But I trust them to thoroughly test it.

It sounds nice, but I’ve noticed that “ok” does not cut it when it comes to raids and other end game content, be it in GW2 or other MMOs. I will remain sceptical but hopefull. If nothing else I will be able to give feedback in BWE about the Reaper. Which is gonna be good.

Arche.7326:

It sounds nice, but I’ve noticed that “ok” does not cut it when it comes to raids and other end game content, be it in GW2 or other MMOs. I will remain sceptical but hopefull. If nothing else I will be able to give feedback in BWE about the Reaper. Which is gonna be good.

I suggest as it becomes available, try testing any harder PVE content with a support friend and give some two-sided feedback. That would do a huge favor to the developers. I feel part of the issue will be on the side of Supporters having to support someone that negates them. They seem to have ears open though, so all we can do now is wait, test and see what comes of it.

ronpierce.2760:

Arche.7326:

It sounds nice, but I’ve noticed that “ok” does not cut it when it comes to raids and other end game content, be it in GW2 or other MMOs. I will remain sceptical but hopefull. If nothing else I will be able to give feedback in BWE about the Reaper. Which is gonna be good.

I suggest as it becomes available, try testing any harder PVE content with a support friend and give some two-sided feedback. That would do a huge favor to the developers. I feel part of the issue will be on the side of Supporters having to support someone that negates them. They seem to have ears open though, so all we can do now is wait, test and see what comes of it.

I will see if I can get my friend to support me. But what I’m concerned about the most now is that what we lack in support isn’t made up for in damage and survivability, the times where I need a heal I generaly swap to shroud, make sure that the water fields are ready and then jump out of it and get heals. It is an inconvenience but it can be partialy worked around in an organised group even if it is frustrating (don’t get me wrong it certainly needs fixes). But if there is no reason to take us into the content because we are too weak it becomes a non-issue.

On another note I assume that there will be a beta meetup with the top tier necromancers, if that is so, see if you can get spoj to attempt to solo Lupicus with the new Reaper.

Have link to where developers said healing will slowly become more active?

Also I believe we should have a trait that increase toughness while in Shroud, and provides more life force steal on third strike and Skill 4.

Knighthonor.4061:

Also I believe we should have a trait that increase toughness while in Shroud, and provides more life force steal on third strike and Skill 4.

We have a trait that increases toughness in shroud (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armored_Shroud)…

Flumek.9043:

Yup, i really dont know why ot even has to exist.

Just yesterday my 2 supportbots blew 10k+ heals on me, but seems devs think that with 2k hp and under focus fire is wrong time to enter your only defense mechanic.

^This