Guild Wars 2

The second health bar is amazing. I would like to talk specifically about the skills you have access to.

For the most part, I find myself going into DS pretty much to use skill 4 for some heavy AoE then canceling it .. the other skills just don’t seem worth it to use.

What do you guys think about the skills?

I use 2 for runners and 3 for ppl chasing me or someone trying to stomp my team.

Well, not just for PvP, actually referring more to PvE

Well 3 u use when u know the mob is about heal to stop it. Atleast I do that in Wvw on sentrys.

I hate the cooldown. Honestly, I find myself often trying to dip full 30 into Soul reaping just to get reduced cooldown so I don’t feel punished for trying to get the fury or retaliation attached to it.

Also, the trait for retaliation in DS is kind of small. 5s would be a little more generous than just 3s.

Besides that, DS isn’t completely horrid but it needs some work. While life blast isn’t a projectile, it would be nice if it at least counted for 20% chance like Staff 1. It also has a pretty long windup considering you lose about 4% of DS a second while inside. The speed of DS 2 isn’t painfully slow, but it would be nice if it had more range or teleported you to the end of the protectile via a secondary skill if pressed 2 again before it ends (this Would be probably OP though, and would merit DS being on a 10s CD) . Fear could have an extra second or half a second.

edit: DS 4 is pretty good, but I admit that I miss the bug that allowed you to continue the channel from outside DS. Now the only way for this to occur is if DS ends due to life force being at 0% .

From a tPvP perspective (I haven’t played anything else in ages) my opinion of the skills in shroud:

1 – Is a total waste in almost every situation (especially on a condition build). If it wasn’t an obsurdly long cast time, then it might be remotely useful. As it stands, currently this skill is only functional to make a kill shot on a running enemy for a Dagger MH necro, or if you traited unyielding blast it can be handy to smack a downed player that someone is trying to rez because of the piercing. Othewise using it is just a waste of LF that would be better used to soak damage.

2 – WAY too slow with bad pathing. It can be reflected as a projectile even after the “unblockableness” was added (don’t know if this is inteded, or even consistent across all reflects, but it does still happen). A good player almost never gets hit with this unless he is already under CC or you are right on top of him (completely negating the funtion of the teleport). If this was turned into a ground target teleport, small AoE chill + bleed it would be a monster, but it isn’t, so it is just a meh skill. The only good thing about it is that it is useful to Condi builds (due to bleed) and Power Builds (due to gap close) and provides sweet utility (due to teleport completely ignoring stuff like Guardian Wards). Overall great when you can make it hit, but too clunky to be considered good.

3 – Doom is one of few bright spots for the necro profession in terms of functionality. The hard CC on 20s cd (17 traited) is completely awesome. Learning to use this skill effectively is one of the very first and most important steps to being remotely viable as a Necro in tPvP.

4 – 3.5 s channel that does meh damage even if you are full GC and doesn’t even pull enough LF to offset the 4%/s LF degen when you are taking any pressure. This skill on a power necro can drive shatter mesmers nuts once every long kitten cd, and if it isn’t interrupted can ruin the day for any of the other passive/ai dependent builds out there, but it is terrible on a condi build. It is a situational skill with very limited use that needs to be saved for just the right time, and when that time comes it will be interrupted at least 50% of the time.

Overall the skills in shroud favor the less popular and more difficult to play power necro builds. The additional health bar, our only access to Stabilty and Fury (both requiring moderate to high trait investment) and the traits for “On Entering Shroud” are really the best things about shroud. Whatever functionality you can weasel out of the skills (other than #3 which is beast) is just a bonus.

Yeah, my feel about it is Death Shroud could be an amazing skill. I feel like it should be affected more strongly by traits and really could provide a creative platform for ANet to do some neat stuff.. but right now it just seems OK.

As a powermancer playing mainly in PvE, I love Death Shroud. Life Blast hits like a truck (+ pierces + applies vulnerablity + gives might if traited), Life Transfer is not that bad for AoE (as far as a glass canon build is concerned) and Doom can be useful even in PvE.

I used to run Nemesis glass canon build for quite a long time : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLt4dD93pU

I find it both effective and fun to play.

Now I run “my own” build : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Another-glass-canon-build/first#post1995211
Death Shroud is very, very useful in my build too for the reasons I explained in the thread.

For a “conditionmancer” Death Shroud can only be useful as a life saver, I think.

Love it as a zerker/power Necro…. hated it when i was a condition Necro.

On my other characters I find myself reaching for the F1 button before realizing that I do not have death shroud to save me from low HP or falling damage.

There’s a lot to love and a lot to hate about death shroud. In its current state, I feel that it’s too loaded with too many little things and deserves a closer look as the necromancer’s source of corpse power. Its damage mitigation is also tied to life blast, an interrupt, a gap closer, and area lifesteal, as well as a source of condition removal, area healing, retaliation, stability, fury, might, weakness/bleed, and/or vulnerability, depending on your build. That’s a lot to put on one button with a shared 10 (sometimes 5) second cooldown that can also run out of life force ala initiative/adrenaline while being harder to recharge.

In PvP, burst builds can destroy my life force bar sometimes in a single hit if I attempt to shield with death shroud, locking out several traits and 4 of my skills. Yes, that means it saved my health, but it also means that I’m much weaker (you can forget about trying to DPS with life blast in PvP). Plus, if I happen to start a fight without high life force, I’m missing that “extra hp” that’s supposed to give necromancer the edge it seems to be balanced around. It’s basically a double-edged sword – very versatile, but tying all of these things into one button can make it easy to lock you out of them, especially if you try to use it as an “extra hp bar” instead of saving it for boons or abilities.

This feels rather counter to necromancers being an attrition profession – they dwindle over time naturally due to life force mechanics. It seems as if, in its current state, life force is meant to be full upon a necromancer engaging in a fight, when it should be the other way around. I can see the theory here, as well as a glimmer of the old GW1 necromancer getting stronger as a battle progresses (due to corpses; in GW2 this being in the form of gaining life force from them). Basically, necromancers SHOULD only be able to use some of their abilities after corpses have been made (ala GW1), but as it stands they need access to those abilities immediately when the fight begins to keep up with other professions.

This theory feels a little better implemented in PvE due to life blast being viable. There, I currently use a death shroud-focused axe/focus|staff build. The “attrition profession” seems to be in effect here even for this power build, as I steadily gain more might and do more vulnerability the longer I life blast (the AoE vulnerability in death shroud trait is also an implementation of this).

TL;DR – To put this into easily digestible points about how I feel about death shroud:

1. Death shroud and life blast are, theoretically, the GW2 version of necromancers using corpses as power. This is fitting with necromancers being an “attrition profession,” i.e., becoming stronger over time and weakening their enemies over time.

2. Stacking might and vulnerability with life blast over time is also an example of necromancers being an “attrition profession” even when using a power build.

3. In the current state of the game, necromancers appear to be balanced around starting with full life force and become weaker as they lose and ultimately run out of life force. This is counter-intuitive to the idea of being an “attrition profession” – it is the necromancer who is suffering attrition.

4. Idea: Perhaps it would be better to make death shroud more powerful, reduce life force generation from some abilities, and make necromancers actually rely on corpses as their profession would imply, instead of marginalizing the importance of corpses and life force. Yes, corpses are still useful in the current state, but it mostly just gives you more shielding. Most, if not all, death shroud abilities/traits, should become more powerful or more useful with more life force, instead of just life blast and shielding. Using life force for abilities and using life force for defense should be split into two different things.

As an addendum, death shroud definitely needs to be made more useful for condition builds, but the upcoming necromancer change will likely address that.

Why in the heck is Dark Path such a slow cast time and speed.

This is an ability that is supposed to be used to help you lockdown, or prevent someone escaping. But by the time it actually casts (3/4 sec) and meanders to its target, they are often outside its range, or it misses due to how slow it is and they can juke or dodge by seeing it come a mile away.

The devs talk up skills that have ‘play’ and being reactive and skill based, but that’s pretty hard to accomplish when so many of our skills take so long to cast, and we can be interrupted, out of range, or otherwise miss our chance by the time they hit, due to how telegraphed they are.

And what is the trade-off benefit we get from so many of our skills being longer casts than other classes? They don’t have more power or hit harder, they don’t have shorter cooldowns. I don’t see we get any trade-off. It’s just as if someone had the bright idea to make the ‘slow puttering’ playstyle for a Necro, due to that they are attrition. Attrition still calls for being able to pull off fast reactions at critical points in the fight, to actually prolong that attrition. But many of the cast times make that quite difficult.

I won’t even get started on Life Blast, another slowbee, which is utterly worthless skill if you aren’t power based. Which probably leads many younger Necros astray and to being worse, because they don’t realize what a waste it is to use till they get much more experience.

Fear and Life Transfer are fine.

DS definitely needs another condition application, so hopefully the new 5th skills can shore it up some.

I’m torn about Death Shroud. In PvE, it’s beautiful. In PvP…it’s alright. My issue lies in its utility. That is, presently it’s basically seen primarily as a second health bar due to its lack of utility in the predominant Condition builds. Now, I’m certainly not saying it’s “useless” in Conditions builds, but it certainly loses its potency since 2 of the 4 skills in Death Shroud are power based.

But I digress — my concern lies in the notion of it being simply a “second health bar”. This bothers me because a “Health Bar” has the purpose of telling you when you are “alive” or “dead”, and by adding a “second” Health Bar, the purpose is to provide more “up” time. Thus its goal is to, essentially, mitigate damage to allow the player to remain in the fight. Unfortunately, most other classes seem to have better ways of mitigating damage than Death Shroud. If the hypotheses are true, then Death Shroud provides ~60% (no investment) of the users maximum health, so if we assume a Necro has 25kHP (Carrion Amulet), then Death Shroud would have 15k “HP”. This, while seeming substantial, may not be the case. Why do I claim this? Because if a Necro enters Death Shroud (at full) and is burst down within 2 seconds, one may think “Ah, so Death Shroud just saved me 15k damage!” This is certainly true, but 2 seconds “Damage Mitigation” is attainable by:

• 2 dodges (doable with classes that have active vigor)
• ~2 seconds of stealth (this is debatable due to AOE’s and such going through stealth)
• 2 seconds of Block (Shield Stance for Warrior, and so on)
• 2 seconds of Invul (achievable by Mist Form and Elixir S)
• 2 seconds of Evade (Thief skills, Ranger skills, Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, etc)
• Any form of Disengagement sufficient to leave the area (RtL, Portal, Thief Shortbow, Warrior’s Rush and Whirling Blade, etc)

Now I do not know other classes well enough to say that there are more of these available, but this what I’m aware of off the top of my head. The point is that if Death Shroud is viewed simply as a Second Health bar, then it literally loses effectiveness the faster it is drained since it is replicable by other classes’ ability to mitigate damage for short durations.

Again, I’m not saying Death Shroud is “bad”, “weak”, or “useless”. I am primarily concerned with its utility and perception of it being a “second health bar”. Also, not mentioned above, is that a HUGE advantage of Death Shroud is its ability to activate while stunned, which many of the bulleted points above cannot do.

And now I need to head out. Anywho, I was thinking of doing a write up at some point about my concerns with Death Shroud as a second health bar (full of tables and numbers and such), but we’ll see. Thank you all for your time and consideration! Enjoy the remainder of your weekend.

I honestly think death shroud is pretty weak in pve. The only skills I see worth using is DS 4 and DS 2 if you use wells. It’s face tanking abilities are mediocre at best since you have to actively restore it before the next wave of attacks. This is all considering you are a power necromancer.

OmegaProject.9831:

• 2 dodges (doable with classes that have active vigor)
• ~2 seconds of stealth (this is debatable due to AOE’s and such going through stealth)
• 2 seconds of Block (Shield Stance for Warrior, and so on)
• 2 seconds of Invul (achievable by Mist Form and Elixir S)
• 2 seconds of Evade (Thief skills, Ranger skills, Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, etc)
• Any form of Disengagement sufficient to leave the area (RtL, Portal, Thief Shortbow, Warrior’s Rush and Whirling Blade, etc)

Now I do not know other classes well enough to say that there are more of these available, but this what I’m aware of off the top of my head. The point is that if Death Shroud is viewed simply as a Second Health bar, then it literally loses effectiveness the faster it is drained since it is replicable by other classes’ ability to mitigate damage for short durations.

Yep. Death Shroud might hold up as a defensive mechanic against the ones above in taking damage 1 to 1, but when you start getting beat on by multiple opponents – which is common because enemies know you can’t do X, Y, Z of the above – suddenly it stars lacking greatly in comparison, because all your survivability gets blasted out in a couple seconds as noted. While for outright mobility escapes, invulnerability, stealth, etc, those are reliable ways to suddenly wipe almost all damage from being focused for a few seconds. And they still have whatever other defensive measures are built into those classes, unlike if you’re LF is totally spent in one blow, you can be left extremely vulnerable.

The coupling blow that we have so little access to stability despite being facetank defense just adds to the Necro’s spike victim woes. The class almost demands active teammates looking out for you, which it should not, because this is not a holy trinity game, and many of the mechanisms listed above make defense on those professions much more self sustaining.

I hate it, it doesnt have a necromancer feel to it at all. Then on top of that its only useful to one built type; power. DS single handedly ruined any potential the necromancer could have had.
I’m fine with collecting life force, but it should be used as a mana bar for death magic to create a swarm of minions (like gw1 did with corpes) or somthing else as long as it feels necromancer-ish. Turning your self into shadow-man and getting some pretty subpar skills was such a major let down that I originally stared my main as a necro at launch and he still isnt max level. I keep going back to him but it never works out.

Then you have the overlaps of concept. If DS is suppose to be death mode, whats that make lich mode? Another death mode? I’m not completely against self transformation skills, I just havent seen GW2 do any of them well enough to bother with. Tho as it stands Lich mode is probably the best out of the plague form, DS, tornadoes, giant mode, golem suit, and any what every other ones i left out.

Then the balance issue. Giving a class something as powerful as a second HP bar can only lead to major imbalances for it to compensate for such a powerful mechanic.
Its one of them things on paper looks almost OP but in play is rubbish.

I like a lot of Death Shroud, but I’ve got problems with it as well. I could go into more detail about why I feel this way but I’ll just spare you some time and give a quick list.

• Death Shroud makes itself out to be a Super Mode, but really isn’t.
  - #2 & 3 are excellent utility, but rarely feel powerful.
  - #1 is useful for a lot of things (900 range safety or might stacking), but is often a lower-damage choice than staying out of Death Shroud. And it becomes strictly Bad at under 50% life force.
  - You can be forced out of Death Shroud without your opponent really changing their strategy in any way (deal damage).
  - Unlike other defensive tools (evasion, stealth, blocking, protection), Death Shroud prevents the Necromancer from really recovering due to the way it prevents healing.
  - Generally, you don’t want to stay in Death Shroud for more than 4 seconds.

• Death Shroud doesn’t feel like it ties to the rest of the Necromancer well enough
  - Life force had the chance to be across the entire Necro, but is only on 1 weapon skill per weapon, (or none, in the case of offhand dagger) and a selection of utilities.
  - Most skills and traits that reference life force just generate more of it. Only two of them are empowered by its presence (Life Blast & 5% damage when above 50%) None of them really play with the idea of consuming it for other benefits than Death Shroud or short term-benefits from ‘over-generating’ life force.

As it is? I’m okay with a lot of the game play that DS provides. It guarantees a few useful skills on your bar, can soak some damage (especially in builds that generate life force well) and can give plenty of nice treats just for tapping in and out of it. I just think the concept should have gone so much further, but didn’t have time to recover from when the original DS As Downed State was removed.

Personally I don’t see DS as particularly super but also as a distinct case of “count our blessings”. We could have gotten stuck with a minion based mechanic. Bottom line, I consider at least the platewearers’ class mechanics to be less interesting and given an extra utility slot I’m not sure I’d trade the DS away for anything. At the very least DS 3 and 4 are almost always useful.

My only real issue with DS is that the traits/effects are still held bipolar to the old DS standards as in either full time transformation or a quick dip (attunement change for ele) in to get terror/interrupt/3bleeds and some shot rime boons.
Like it wants the necro to be in it for most of the fight but punishes you if you go under 50% for no real reason, it might aswell instakick you from DS when LF falls under 50%. No trait that removes life blast damage drop, the SR 25 trait still working by its original (and better) effect increasing power with every 10% LF instead of being a arbitrary damage frop if you go under 50% life force, Underwater skills being the coni necro shroud that they should be able to swap in for, etc.

Great mechanic and idea, medicore execution, kinda like warrior bursts.

As a terrormancer, I actually find that its Doom to be my main go to skill, when in Deathshroud.

Somewhere along the line the ‘idea’ of the necro seemed to get lost in the design and it’s implementation doesn’t have a lot of playstyle synergy. Compared to some other classes abilities which essentially enhance what you’re already doing to a higher degree, necro’s get this lateral expansion of unrelated abilities. A single target short range DD, a short range teleport/chill, single target fear and the cone-aoe damage… which aren’t really similar to anything else we do, so you have to invest time into learning more, but in my experience its not really adding a lot more due to the high-cooldowns of the aforementioned abilities.

Did a bit of dabbling with the Soul Reaping line, but to maximise what DS would do but the elements are scattered through a number of lines which sort of end up a mangled mess.
Life transfer traited with Transfusion and Spectral Mastery are still worthwhile for me to carry and helps at least in enhancing what I do, but most everything else is fairly weak.
As a hit point battery, yeah it will sponge up a bit, but its never really turned a fight for me.

Nice for power builds, weak for condition builds.

In the survivability department, very weak. Life force in DS is depleted by spike very easily and Life Blast does garbage damage below 50% hp LF which you’ll rarely have when pressured.

Deathshroud is a terrible mechanic because Anet is balancing Necros at 100% lifeforce.

Problem is getting to 100% lifeforce and even then if you are focused at any point when in deathshroud you just lost your class mechanic and there is no getting it back, nearly impossible as conditions.

I would like to see deathshroud damage lowered and more defense added with utility skills like boon ripping, cripples, etc for condition builds.

Really would like to see new deathshroud skills based on your build/weapon, or even better a choice on what skills the 1-4 deatshroud buttons will have like an engineers f1-f4.

I don’t like Death Shroud in its current implementation. For the most part, the reasons why have already been covered above, so I’m not going to repeat whats already been said.

Death Shroud used to be something completely different, however. It used to be a down state mechanic. A few months before the game released they completely redesigned the mechanic to what we have now. Then, during the beta weekends, someone found a build that made Death Shroud insanely OP, so they took a jack hammer to the entire class with a fix it later mentality and severely over nerfed several skills and abilities, and even some skills that were completely unrelated to Death Shroud got nerfed. What we have now is the class being balanced around the Death Shroud mechanic, instead of the mechanic being balanced around the class as it should be. As a result, we now have a very bad case of over balancing around a rather lack luster mechanic.

Frankly, I would like to see the mechanic as it is scrapped so that they can give necromancer some real attrition capability. Death Shroud as it is doesn’t work in its current iteration and is nothing more than a glorified Engineer kit. Death Shroud is whats holding this class back, and we are certainly not the masters of attrition that ANet thinks we are.

This is what real attrition combat looks like. We don’t even come close to this.

I feel DS overall is quite good, but it feels like a mechanic that has not been polished/finished.

I looked at the traits and it seems to me that every trait line gives something specific to the DS:

Spite – direct damage bonuses, retaliation
Curses – condition damage and weakness, fury
Death Magic – condition removal, vulnerability
Blood Magic – aoe healing
Soul Reaping – DS and its skills CDR, vulnerability, movement speed, longer lasting DS and stability

it seems to me that spite offers direct damage, curses condition damage, death magic survivability, blood magic support and soul reaping overall DS improvements.

The traits that need improvement IMO are transfusion (blood magic), I think it should heal the users real health bar too to make it worth the points.

In soul reaping I think path of midnight and speed of shadows should be merged at least (cdr beign 5 units lower than usual and ms beign 10 units lower than other passive boosts).

What comes into the skill mechanics, LB should have half the casting time but the same LF cost (making it possible to make a power DS build), a few stacks of bleed for 4 sec should be added into it. Nr 2 projectile speed should be increased by 33%, make it ‘unreflectable’ and increase the tp range so that if you cast it in range you will tp to your target no matter what if it lands.

What comes to DS ‘dancing’ it is not worth it atm, as DS has a short aftercast making you waste 0.5-0.75 sec every time you dance. The internal cooldowns make it also discouraging. The near to death trait should remove the after cast of DS and the internal cooldowns on the DS entering traits (e.g. enfeebling shroud) in addition to the 50% CD on DS

As for now making a GC build with DS is not possible. After you somehow manage to get a full bar and try to bomb someone with LB (which does big dmg) if you get hit by 1 or 2 heart seekers (depending on the thiefs build) your LB damage will fall by 50%

I would like to see a DS tank but as for now there are too much traits you need to grab in soul reaping

Andele.1306:

Great mechanic and idea, medicore execution, kinda like warrior bursts.

This is exactly how i feel about DS.
For our core mechanic it feels very unrefined and rushed.Given that i didn’t play beta to know how the old DS worked in order to have something to compare to.

amiavamp.9785, OmegaProject.9831 and what some of the others say sums it up pretty good.

There is no class mechanic as horrible as death shroud and im pretty sure if anet could go back in time they would have ditched the whole concept.
There simply is to many flaws in it and as people say the necro is balanced around this class mechanic unlike others who have their class mechanic as a strength ontop of their weapon skills utlities elites etc while we have to deal with slow casting utlities, insanely long cd’s on some skills, lack of invuln, block, mobility, short duration fury, stability(barely even have acces to this), No proper acces to endurance regen.
No proper teambuffing(some awesome necro debuffing would be prefered but this is boon wars).

It’s like they realised for death shroud to be fun it would need to be powerfull but to be powerfull it wouldnt be balanced, so they got the largest pile of ducktape before release and got necro into this no fun, lacking but sorta tpvp viable class that instead of going into this powerfull death shroud form you enter DuskTape form.

I use DS quite rarely in PVE, where I find it to be the most lacking. DS is the best in 1 vs 1 PVP, Where that sudden burst of health and extra time on cooldowns can easily make the fight. Against multiple enemies or against enemies that’ll wipe the whole bar in one hit… not so much.

When I use DS, I use it for two things. First, I use it for the abilities that activate once you go into DS. For my specs, this includes retaliation, fury, and a point-blank Enfeebling Blood (bleeding + weakness). Second, I use it to pop the more useful skills whenever I need them, which ends up being life transfer and doom and on rarer occasion Dark Path. This makes DS act ultimately as a burst skill and a sudden defense skill. I almost never use DS underwater.

I encounter many problems with DS as a whole. First, its underwater skills are less than stellar. Second, in PVE it has absolutely no sustainability, dropping in mere moments whenever it is used in a jam. I basically use it to bomb the area with Life Transfer and then Dark Path one enemy if I"m on a condition spec. Third, in sPVP it is never around when I need it, since you start the fight with no Life Force and on conditions builds it is really hard to build Life Force up. This is one of the reasons why I run a power necro in sPVP; the survivability added by the greater life force gaining abilities more than compensates for doing less damage than conditions. Fourth, in WvW it is instantly overwhelmed in a zerg. This makes the defensive utility of Death Shroud useless, and again it is only good for bombing the area with life transfer.

And on to the skills: Life Blast is nigh useless. It is a decent single target ranged damage attack IF and only IF you are using it from a safe area while having a full Life Force bar. If you are engaging in close combat, it’s effectiveness gets cut in half at a moments notice. The slow wind-up makes the skill incredibly painful to use, and it is also not worth the time on a condition spec. If you don’t have a full life force bar, then life blast isn’t even worth considering. Its small bullet size makes the piercing trait ineffective, and it is too slow to meaningfully build up vulnerability and might. All in all, Life Blast is way too inconvenient.

Dark Path is good in theory, but in practice I’ve found it to be lacking. It is the only move that grants conditions, however it’s other abilities make it extremely dangerous to use. On a condition spec necromancers are going to try and maintain distance, but this move instantly pulls the necromancer into melee range while also removing all utilities, making them highly vulnerable. It is because of this that the chill might as well not be on the ability, since its defensive utility is wasted in being a gap closer. Necromancers don’t really have burst damage to take advantage of that gap closer, either. This is true for both PVP and PVE, since pulling yourself into melee range in PVE means that champion is now going to two-shot the necro, or that swarm of enemies is going to aggro and devour the necro. I suppose it’s intended use is to be a chase move, but every single time I’ve ever used it in WvW to try and chase someone, it has never worked. Not a single time. It always misses or is dodged or is reflected or hits a tree or something like that.

Doom is pretty good as a control, but I do wish it was a bit more potent. I’m captain fumble fingers, so I’ve never been able to use it as an interrupt in PVP effectively. The act of having to pop into DS then use Doom just takes up too much time. The cool thing about doom is that it can be used as a counter-stun.

Life Transfer is by far the best move. It hits in a large AoE, can be traited to AoE Heal, and the life force gaining ability makes it good for both stalling and damage.

With so many things tied to DS in this class, I just wish it would be better. I feel like a lot of our traits are being wasted on DS, whereas other classes can get their abilities in more useful places.

Kravick.4906:

I don’t like Death Shroud in its current implementation. For the most part, the reasons why have already been covered above, so I’m not going to repeat whats already been said.

Death Shroud used to be something completely different, however. It used to be a down state mechanic. A few months before the game released they completely redesigned the mechanic to what we have now. Then, during the beta weekends, someone found a build that made Death Shroud insanely OP, so they took a jack hammer to the entire class with a fix it later mentality and severely over nerfed several skills and abilities, and even some skills that were completely unrelated to Death Shroud got nerfed. What we have now is the class being balanced around the Death Shroud mechanic, instead of the mechanic being balanced around the class as it should be. As a result, we now have a very bad case of over balancing around a rather lack luster mechanic.

Frankly, I would like to see the mechanic as it is scrapped so that they can give necromancer some real attrition capability. Death Shroud as it is doesn’t work in its current iteration and is nothing more than a glorified Engineer kit. Death Shroud is whats holding this class back, and we are certainly not the masters of attrition that ANet thinks we are.

This is what real attrition combat looks like. We don’t even come close to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exaYZq5ZmBk

This is for you.

OmegaProject.9831:

This is for you.

This makes me wish I rolled ranger… F it, Ima go roll one.

Loyo.8526:

This makes me wish I rolled ranger… F it, Ima go roll one.

I did. Only been 80 for a week and I’ve already won countless 1vX fights in WvW using this build. I’ve also found rangers to be no where near as bad as the people on the ranger forums make them out to be. I’ve also found ranger pets to be leagues better than necro minions.

Kravick.4906:

Loyo.8526:

This makes me wish I rolled ranger… F it, Ima go roll one.

I did. Only been 80 for a week and I’ve already won countless 1vX fights in WvW using this build. I’ve also found rangers to be no where near as bad as the people on the ranger forums make them out to be. I’ve also found ranger pets to be leagues better than necro minions.

I have won 1vXs on necro, but they are few and far between. I don’t know how fast i will level the ranger as I am still working on a Mesmer that is 46ish.

Thresher.3049:

Somewhere along the line the ‘idea’ of the necro seemed to get lost in the design and it’s implementation doesn’t have a lot of playstyle synergy. Compared to some other classes abilities which essentially enhance what you’re already doing to a higher degree, necro’s get this lateral expansion of unrelated abilities. A single target short range DD, a short range teleport/chill, single target fear and the cone-aoe damage… which aren’t really similar to anything else we do, so you have to invest time into learning more, but in my experience its not really adding a lot more due to the high-cooldowns of the aforementioned abilities.

This is the Necro’s biggest problem and DS falls right into it, at least for condition certainly. Not much synergy. You can’t regain life in DS, so any kind of regen, life steal build suddenly stops being productive, you can’t keep piling up conditions, because you only have one skill that adds them, and it requires you to get in close, which you often don’t want to.

Therefore DS kills pressure and attrition playstyle, which really hurts in winning a long fight. You can dance in and out, but unless you have the one specific build meant to take advantage of all the ‘on enter/exit’ death shroud stuff, there’s nothing specially great about doing that.

A lot of Necro builds feel like 10 trait points shy of being complete. Maybe if they combined a few traits, like was recently done to warrior, it would be easier to help final builds start getting things to work together better.

Make Dark Path faster. That is the one improvemant I would most like to see. After that, I would like cool down shortened on the transformation.

Now, for the pipe dream: I would like a temporary port to a target that will apply the new dot but returns the user to the skill’s origen once Life Force runs out or leaves the player at the ported location if the skill is activated again, kind of like a reverse Spectral Walk. Necromancers do not have much combat mobility or boon access so those two things are at the top of my slot 5 skill desires, not more damage.