Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

So if I use regeneration and then go into death shroud, does that regeneration heal my hp and not life force? Same goes for any other boons/conditions.

Boons still apply and tick through: however you cannot receive healing while in death shroud, so regeneration effectively does nothing. Other boons like retaliation, might, protection, etc. still work as usual.

Edit: The only way to increase your life force while in death shroud is using #4 (life transfer).

Edit 2:

iirc a Locust Swarm cast before entering DS persists and continues to fill your Life Force as it hits things.

Yeah I don’t know what I was thinking. You just don’t get life force from deaths. (And things like the spectral armor / walk effects, because you lose them once you go into DS)

As far as I know, it goes to neither.

REgeneration is really the only boon that fails to benefit you while in DS. The same goes for life siphoning and ds. Essentially anything that can heal you doesn’t while you are in DS.

Possibly one of my bigger gripes. They could have scaled back the effects to find a balance, (50% effectiveness, 20% effectiveness, etc). Same with killing a mob while in DS. I can understand why you don’t get the full life force back while in DS, but they could have scaled it back to a managable level.

As it stands right now, if a mob is about to die, you want to drop out of DS before it dies to make sure you actually get life-force for it dying.

Rennoko.5731:

Possibly one of my bigger gripes. They could have scaled back the effects to find a balance, (50% effectiveness, 20% effectiveness, etc). Same with killing a mob while in DS. I can understand why you don’t get the full life force back while in DS, but they could have scaled it back to a managable level.

As it stands right now, if a mob is about to die, you want to drop out of DS before it dies to make sure you actually get life-force for it dying.

I thought killing something in DS did return LF to you. Wow, I didn’t realize that didn’t happen. I am rarely in DS past 50 percent unless I am trying to absorb damage.

Bas.7406:

Rennoko.5731:

Possibly one of my bigger gripes. They could have scaled back the effects to find a balance, (50% effectiveness, 20% effectiveness, etc). Same with killing a mob while in DS. I can understand why you don’t get the full life force back while in DS, but they could have scaled it back to a managable level.

As it stands right now, if a mob is about to die, you want to drop out of DS before it dies to make sure you actually get life-force for it dying.

I thought killing something in DS did return LF to you. Wow, I didn’t realize that didn’t happen. I am rarely in DS past 50 percent unless I am trying to absorb damage.

I’ve tried testing it, but either the gain equals LF degeneration so it balances out and you effectively get nothing, or there is no gain period. One of the bigger complaints I have with DS along with the no-heal thing. Honestly if we could heal while in DS, then yes, everything we’ve been promised about DS being the single key to unlock our “OP-ness” would make sense.

Actually, I have been using a new DS build I made. It is incredibly powerful when you use a vitality tank build. For example, you can get 30k HP using +vit gear and maybe Blood Magic trait line. Now, assuming that Death shroud has equal effective HP to your HP bar, and with 30 SR, you can have 39k HP, or a total of 69k HP. Along with spectral skills, and certain LF building mechanics, you can have ridiculously huge HP bars that refill very easily.

Pair that with certain Death Shroud traits, and you can really turn DS builds into powerhouse tank builds with still very good damage. I’m terrible with my new DS build, but even then I have tanked 4v1, got 3 of them to half HP, and got 1 downed before I died.

I don’t like when its tossed around casually as a 2nd life bar or as above, people saying ‘now you have 69k heatlth’. No you don’t really because of the constant attrition on life force. It’s a second life bar as if there were invisible mobs beating on you constantly.

The natural decay rate strongly encourages you to use LF as a bounce in and out mechanic, which is much different than just having an alternate mode you can hang around in for defense. Of course you can do that, but then its going to drain extremly fast.

How much HP of every Necro LF bar is lost in a fight just due to attrition, well that depends how good you are at absorbing damage, as well as timing battles such that you don’t have to use it as a sponge too often. But no matter how good you are you are always going to lose a not insignificant amount of LF to decay.

Pendragon.8735:

I don’t like when its tossed around casually as a 2nd life bar or as above, people saying ‘now you have 69k heatlth’. No you don’t really because of the constant attrition on life force. It’s a second life bar as if there were invisible mobs beating on you constantly.

The natural decay rate strongly encourages you to use LF as a bounce in and out mechanic, which is much different than just having an alternate mode you can hang around in for defense. Of course you can do that, but then its going to drain extremly fast.

How much HP of every Necro LF bar is lost in a fight just due to attrition, well that depends how good you are at absorbing damage, as well as timing battles such that you don’t have to use it as a sponge too often. But no matter how good you are you are always going to lose a not insignificant amount of LF to decay.

There’s a trait for that. Also, the poster above would be better off focusing on toughness which has a better rate of return on necro than vitality, since it will decrease the damage you take both in and out of DS.

I like to think of the DS decay as a scaling debuff that is always on you when you enter DS. Stack more vitality, and the debuff just hits you harder. At 30k HP, it is similar to having the terror debuff on you constantly dealing damage.

I know this is kind of wandering off the original topic but is still in the DS subject so figured I’d ask, but just how much of our toughness is taken into account when we’re in DS because it sure seems to me like a large chunk of it disappears. Hits I could normally laugh at all day decimate my DS, or am I just getting personal perception illusions? Has anyone tested with numbers to see if our toughness is the same in and out of DS, and by numbers I don’t mean the attributes sheet, I mean combat log and/or physically watching the damage numbers in the air as you get hit (or have a friend record the damage they do to you).

This is why the DS ui needs to be fixed.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I know this is kind of wandering off the original topic but is still in the DS subject so figured I’d ask, but just how much of our toughness is taken into account when we’re in DS because it sure seems to me like a large chunk of it disappears. Hits I could normally laugh at all day decimate my DS, or am I just getting personal perception illusions? Has anyone tested with numbers to see if our toughness is the same in and out of DS, and by numbers I don’t mean the attributes sheet, I mean combat log and/or physically watching the damage numbers in the air as you get hit (or have a friend record the damage they do to you).

Death Shroud works on a percentage basis. None of your stats except Vitality, power, crit, cond damage, and crit damage apply to DS. Essentially it takes the damage done and a percentage of that is applied to your ds removal. If your toughness moved over it could be extremely overpowered because it would take someone almost as long to take out DS as it would to kill you. This would lead to Beta 2 type PVT Necromancers.

Rennoko.5731:

I like to think of the DS decay as a scaling debuff that is always on you when you enter DS. Stack more vitality, and the debuff just hits you harder. At 30k HP, it is similar to having the terror debuff on you constantly dealing damage.

Actually, VIT tank builds for necros are semi-popular. Yes the degen hits fairly hard, but when dagger can get LF back as fast as you degen it in DS, it really doesn’t make a huge difference. You can still have a high amount of DS uptime with the right build.

Bas.7406:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I know this is kind of wandering off the original topic but is still in the DS subject so figured I’d ask, but just how much of our toughness is taken into account when we’re in DS because it sure seems to me like a large chunk of it disappears. Hits I could normally laugh at all day decimate my DS, or am I just getting personal perception illusions? Has anyone tested with numbers to see if our toughness is the same in and out of DS, and by numbers I don’t mean the attributes sheet, I mean combat log and/or physically watching the damage numbers in the air as you get hit (or have a friend record the damage they do to you).

Death Shroud works on a percentage basis. None of your stats except Vitality, power, crit, cond damage, and crit damage apply to DS. Essentially it takes the damage done and a percentage of that is applied to your ds removal. If your toughness moved over it could be extremely overpowered because it would take someone almost as long to take out DS as it would to kill you. This would lead to Beta 2 type PVT Necromancers.

So explain to me exactly how this mechanic works then, because we have wondered into something that is NOT what I expected it to be, though it does not suprise me.

First off, the only stats are: Vitality, Power, Prec, Toughness, Crit Damage, Healing Power, Condition Damage, Condition duration, Boon duration. Assuming the above is true, DS actually makes use out of all of these save for Toughness. Healing power works for DS 4 transfusion (though obviously not on the necro). The others are all very noticably present while in DS. So toughness NOT working in DS would be an anomoly at best.

How does the damage calculation work when you attack someone in DS then? Does it calculate off base toughness? Zero toughness? If a thief hits me with steal for 4k not in DS, what does it hit me for in DS? How does that translate to a percentage?

I really don’t see how DS would work without taking into account toughness of some sort. Also I don’t see how it would be overpowered… you degenerate 4% per second no matter what, so it isn’t like you could sustain forever. Also I THOUGHT toughness did apply in DS….

Lets say that having 30k hp is awesome but that would also require a good amount of healing power and lets assume people spec into the healing line for both heal power and vitality.

Now if you spec into healing you also get the lifesyphon and if you have power you also have the 5point heal from that, none of these things benefit you in death shroud making our class mechanic counter productive.

Anything related to healing doesnt work in death shroud all others work making our class mechanic one of the biggest counterproductive in the game. Guardian trying to heal you in death shroud ? too bad its GONE.

Could go on with lots of examples where necro have to deal with Death shroud being a disadvantage/annoyance. ( no stomp , no heals , no rez , no utility skills , bad ui not showing anything ).

Makes you wonder what they were talking about during the necro design and why these things seemed acceptable.

Bas.7406:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I know this is kind of wandering off the original topic but is still in the DS subject so figured I’d ask, but just how much of our toughness is taken into account when we’re in DS because it sure seems to me like a large chunk of it disappears. Hits I could normally laugh at all day decimate my DS, or am I just getting personal perception illusions? Has anyone tested with numbers to see if our toughness is the same in and out of DS, and by numbers I don’t mean the attributes sheet, I mean combat log and/or physically watching the damage numbers in the air as you get hit (or have a friend record the damage they do to you).

Death Shroud works on a percentage basis. None of your stats except Vitality, power, crit, cond damage, and crit damage apply to DS. Essentially it takes the damage done and a percentage of that is applied to your ds removal. If your toughness moved over it could be extremely overpowered because it would take someone almost as long to take out DS as it would to kill you. This would lead to Beta 2 type PVT Necromancers.

Are you sure about this… how would vitality effect your DS? How would toughness not?

I will do some testing, and find out. How it works in terms of damage taken.. I thought I read that it takes a percentage.

First I’ve heard of toughness not affecting LF. Pretty sure I remember previous tests others did that said they did find toughness affected it.

I do remember seeing that conditions might do more damage against you in LF due to damage being rounded to a percentage or some such. But just because LF is displayed as a percentage, probably for the sake of making the decay easier to manage, doesn’t mean behind the scenes it can’t be working just like normal health.

Pretty sure conditions dont damage you in DS. I often switch to DS to wait for burn to run out if my heal is on cooldown. And it doesnt seem to drain my lifeforce any faster as far as i can tell.

spoj.9672:

Pretty sure conditions dont damage you in DS. I often switch to DS to wait for burn to run out if my heal is on cooldown. And it doesnt seem to drain my lifeforce any faster as far as i can tell.

They do. The self-bleed from BiP boots me out of Death Shroud noticeably sooner than if I just let it drain out from natural degen, especially on a high condition damage, low vitality build.

Softspoken.2410:

Edit: The only way to increase your life force while in death shroud is using #4 (life transfer).

iirc a Locust Swarm cast before entering DS persists and continues to fill your Life Force as it hits things.

LastDay.3524:

Softspoken.2410:

Edit: The only way to increase your life force while in death shroud is using #4 (life transfer).

iirc a Locust Swarm cast before entering DS persists and continues to fill your Life Force as it hits things.

Oop. Yes, yes it does. Only was definitely the wrong word there. After testing, it turns out you can still get life force from spectral grasp if you get into DS before it connects, and I’d bet the life force on crit trait & signet of undeath’s passive all work. So there’s a couple ways.

toughness still applies to you in DS, it’s just that you have much less life force then you do hp. I only discovered this after someone pointed it out, and I found that a 1k something hit did about 10% LF, and this is with 30 in soul reaping, so that’s why it might seem like you’re taking more damage from attacks, it’s because percentage-wise you are.

I really do wonder why ANet bothered with defining LF in terms of percentage rather than straight up health. It seems to cause no end of grief.

It should be both, since damage (other then falling) is done in simple numbers, while Life force gain and degeneration is done in percentages. I would like to think it was merely an oversight, but yeah, it’s hiding basic stats of our character for no real reason, intended or not.

It would be quite easy to calculate gain and drain in percentages, but leave the rest as numbers. As it currently is seems to require them to convert damage into percentage of health before applying (and likely rounding up so that anything less than 1% do 1% of LF damage).

So i did some ad hoc testing on this…. and it is really disturbing.

What I could tell, toughness does have an effect on how much life force you are losing. When you are in DS you still get hit for XXX damage just like not being in DS in the combat log. The smaller hits were taking off less life force than the bigger hits (duh) so it seems to certainly take toughness into account.

The big huge massive problem I was noticing though, was that if you take into account the natural 4% degen per second, take a hit from a mob, and do the math backwards, your health should have come out to be about half of what it actually is if all things are working the same.

I did my testing with 20% in the DS tree, so theoretically 120% life force.

I would go into DS at 100% life force, I would degen 3 ticks and take a mob hit for around 2400 damage or so… (two hits of 1200 each). My DS would be at 70% left.

Going backwards, if I add back in the natural degen, that would be 82% Life force left after taking a 2400 damage hit. Okay no problem going on…

If 2400 damage represents 18% of my life force, it should theoretically represent 18% of my HP right? (In this case, since I have 120% life force base it should be more, but I won’t worry about that right now).

Doing that math, if 2400 damage = 18% life force, then if DS hp = normal HP, I should only have 13300 HP or so. Since I actually have around 19k, this isn’t even close.

As far as I can tell, the DS green bar HP seems to operate and act just like your normal HP bar, only its just much smaller… not 100% of your HP but closer to 50% or less.

I guess I never really put much thought into trying to figure out exactly how much of your HP actually translates to DS form, but surely someone else has figured this out before? Feel free to let me know if anyone has an idea of the actual translation.

Actually looking at it further, it seems you are taking approx. 40% additional damage from attacks while in DS based on the changes in the DS % bar. Assuming 100% DS represents 100% HP (no points in DS this time). So I guess either the DS life bar is a much smaller actual raw HP value than your normal HP bar, or you take extra damage from attacks while in DS.

Something really funny though, if you try to test with fall damage, you actually take REDUCED fall damage while in DS. So a fall that should do 3200 damage will only use up 11% of your DS with HP at 26500, which would seem to indicate a higher HP pool of 29000.

Rennoko.5731:

Actually looking at it further, it seems you are taking approx. 40% additional damage from attacks while in DS based on the changes in the DS % bar. Assuming 100% DS represents 100% HP (no points in DS this time). So I guess either the DS life bar is a much smaller actual raw HP value than your normal HP bar, or you take extra damage from attacks while in DS.

Something really funny though, if you try to test with fall damage, you actually take REDUCED fall damage while in DS. So a fall that should do 3200 damage will only use up 11% of your DS with HP at 26500, which would seem to indicate a higher HP pool of 29000.

I don’t think it’s ever been stated that it matches your health exactly. They said it’s like having another life bar, not that it doubles your effective health. My guess is that it is based on a percentage of your vitality.

I have read a few threads on it. The numbers people have estimated go from anywhere between DS having about 66% of your HP, up to it having 120%.

It definately isn’t 120%…. 60% seems about right though based on what I found. I always assumed it was 100% of your normal out of DS life = 100% of your normal in DS life force… guess that was my bad.

Rennoko.5731:

It definately isn’t 120%…. 60% seems about right though based on what I found. I always assumed it was 100% of your normal out of DS life = 100% of your normal in DS life force… guess that was my bad.

I believe it was initially, but they adjusted it in one of the beta due to necro’s just stacking 30k health and having 30k worth of life force. It was incredibly difficult to kill even with the 25 percent slower trait.