Guild Wars 2

Is there anyone running a shroud weave/dance build in pvp? There was some discussion about it during beta and a few months after release but it seems that the discourse has since died down. However, with the change of Near To Death (DS recharge reduction) being moved to Master Tier a couple patches ago and opening up Foot in the Grave (stability,) it seems that the playstyle received a heavy buff.

It seems like one of the harder necro builds to pull off because you need to be able to predict when you can double tap that DS key or not. The particular variant i’ve been experimenting with is a PPV taking the spectral skills and traits for “oh kitten” survivability in case I misread the situation and my DS is on cooldown. I still seem fairly tanky despite not running PVT thanks to lots of enfeebling blood weakness, with lots of damage to boot due to near 100% uptime on fury if i’m not being pressured.

I personally haven’t really gotten the hang of it, but there seems to be some potential with the accessibility to stability now. If I had to summarize the feel/mindset of this build variant, I would say that you are able to be either very tanky or a respectable damage dealer, but not both at once.

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjMaV6ZbibM8JAIF7ibkijVm6B8ofOA-TsAA2CoIUSpkTJjSSlsKNsY9xUBA

I’ve also tried dropping 10 points in dom and picking up the weakness on crit trait in curses; I personally prefer Chill of Death for finishing people off though.

Actually, the build overall got a general nerf because of the nerf to the speed of Near to Death (from 5s to 7s made the flashing weaker), however a single kind of build type for it got a lot stronger, which was a tankier build that used it to keep high stability uptime. So imo, make a tanky build with it and it’ll work best if you want to use it that way now.

What Bhawb said, but there is kinda a problem in design, with the new DS, flashing in and out isnt really a option, not only are you then wasting potential cooldowns from your weapon sets and utilites, but also allowing yourself to be hit by most chip damage (what you didnt want before for ds when it was a absorb) and seeing a necro flash in and out of DS is a giant mark for “please bounce me between 2 hammers and pink butterflies”, i have nothing to stop you from killing me and most reliable fear cannot hit you for at least 5 seconds (so a high risk, low reward build).

That is why I would only use it with the Stability; it prevents that (they have at most a 4 second window, which in a tanky build shouldn’t be enough). Grab defensive stuff, go 15 into Curses (the 15 trait gives you a lot of damage without much investment), and use it as a more tanky power build, if you really want to use it.

Any particular comments on the build that I posted? It’s a 20/20/0/0/30 PPV with the stability trait + weakening shroud and spectral walk/armor. It’s pretty much what Bhawb suggested: a tanky power build.

It looks like a fine build, I just don’t know how well it would actually do in PvP.

DS flashing is ineffective due to the fact DS mechanics had practically total makeover without devs realising the total effect of their “little” changes, it seems… or they just wanted to make it so anyway. I am betting on latter since anyone with half brain spotted the possible horror of these changes long before patch hit live.

Traits themselves work fine and in that sense they are useful, but you won’t be able to use those in a way you used to.

That is one or many things what got a kind of nerfbat in latest patches. Like mentioned above tankier option seems more viable (as in you might beat NPC kind of viable) atm.

jalmari.3906:

DS flashing is ineffective due to the fact DS mechanics had practically total makeover without devs realising the total effect of their “little” changes, it seems… or they just wanted to make it so anyway. I am betting on latter since anyone with half brain spotted the possible horror of these changes long before patch hit live.

Its not the DS mechanics, its the traits that got remade, Foot in the Grave used to be called shade, being permanent stability and immunity to all slows in DS.