Guild Wars 2

Iv been wanting to post some of my ideas on whats wrong with the feel and implementation of the necromancer for a while now -

so ill attempt to sum up the problems and provide solutions

Firstly Lets talk about death shroud – To whoever said (A skill i didn’t ask for forcing all my other build skills to be balanced around it, is so true)

Death shroud is a 4 button attempt to sum up a whole class, and it doesnt work at all

Firstly Death shroud itself has a 10 second cool down by default, so building the skills inside death shroud with cooldowns ontop of that just makes an even clunkier feature forcing your character to simply auto attack most of the time (boring and compleatly removing the players ability to play the character)

Life Blast – is slow and boring the damage is often worse then your normal attacks without death shroud, unless your specced into death shroud – (faster firing is important – make it a flat dammage skill or a dot dammage skill)
Dark Path – is absolutly horrible, and should be removed (why would anyone even a dagger necro ever need to teleport into mele range – replace it with a poision dammage skill with bleed (5 sec cool down max)
Doom, is decent idea, but simply a 1 second fear is stupid, it needs to do damage have a 1/4 second cast time to compensate and it needs to be 3 second fear/ (otherwise remove it)
The Life Drain attack is the only decent one but it needs to be lowered to a 8 second cooldown

further more a 5’th slot skill should be implemented and all 5 skills should be in your 1/5 slot

Now the whole death shroud idea, should be tweaked to utilize more options,

Why necros only get a f1 mechanic vs most all other classes getting a f1- to f4
I would have F1 be a nuking shroud, f2 be a life draining shroud, f3 be a Dotting Shroud, and f4 be a minion summoning shroud

so that going into any of these shrouds can reflect the actual build of the character your specked into, and ALL of the talents would allow you to have a more unlocked uber form of each that would let you play your SPEC not some generic cookie cutter shroud that no one has use for

-Suggestion 1 -

Vampiric Shroud (f2)
———————————————————————————————————————————
Button 1 – Vampiric Gaze
1/2 Second Cast 0 CoolDown (single target X dammage, gain X life Force)
Button 2 – “Vampiric Curse” -A classic version of Life Syphon – Produce a Shadow Dot on target and a Shadow Heal on Necromancer – over 30 seconds small amounts of X health drained from target and leeched to the Necromancer
Button 3 – Shadow Strike
1/2sec cast 0 Cool Down- Deals X damage. Steal up to 1/4 X Health if this foe was above 50% Health.
Button 4 – Order of the Vampire – Channel skill for 5 Seconds
for 5 Seconds Produce a AOE Feild that any allie attacking in Life Drains for a small amount Healing the Player and the Necromancer for small amounts (5 second cooldown)
Button 5 – Soul Leech
3/4 second cast – (10 second debuff.) Steal X Health whenever target foe casts a spell or attack (similar to GW1)

f3 Minion Shroud -
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Button 1 (conjure 3 bone minions to fight for you) Pres 1 to leap launch them and have them explode
Button 2 Conjure 2 Bone Fiend have it attack for you
Button 3 Conjure a Risen Knight to fight for you
button 4 Conjure a atax Fiend to fight for you
Button 5 Conjure a shadow behemoth to fight for you

Shroud Ends all minions expire drawing life force of 2% per minon death replenishing life force causing cooldown to Minion Shroud

Nuking shroud would be very simple 5 different nuke spells -

Summery -

we need multiple shrouds to reflect each style of play for the necromancer, Giving us the versitility of other classes we so desperatly need as a necromancer -

please allow us arena net to spend our Life Force in more Virsitile ways

the current 1through 4 option of death shroud is pathetic

these idea’s could easily be implemented and balanced as most of them are based on guild wars 1 ideas -

Necro fix it thread #128943629871628

did you read my idea

multiple shrouds to fix the shroud bottle neck

Decent post and you put alot of effort into it. I like millions of people have tried to get the devs to fix this class. Please give up and move on. Nothing will happen.

just gonna put one thing on Dark path. My dagger 1# is around 1500 – 3000. So i do need to get in melee range.

I personally like Ds atm [ playing fine with it ] but i like the Idea of having other Ds too.

it’s an interesting idea but a little overwrought IMO

Personally, I like DS in it’s current form ankittenotally happy with it. Yeah #1 could fire a little faster but all in all it’s a pretty powerful class mechanic.

I do like the idea of making it more build friendly. I would go about augmenting for particular builds through traits though. Lord Knows Death Magic and Blood Magic need a rework. DS should have a bit of customization available to it and there’s plenty of redundant/useless traits that could be reworked to that end.

id just like to see more specific shrouds for that reflect each build type, then you could choose what one each player wants to use

more choices ++

I won’t talk about sPvP (Probably meh there), but for PvE Death Shroud works great!

I usually play specced as a Staff+Scepter/Dagger Condition Necro, just instead of crit chance gear I tend to use Power/Condition Damage/Vitality gear.
I use every Death Shroud skill in Dungeons.

Life Blast:
Alright vs Condition immunes like Burrows, Gargoyle Heads, Flame turrets etc.
It does fire too slow, I think.

Dark Pact:
I tele to an enemy, Chill+Bleed them, then evade backwards and my (greater) Mark of Blood from Mark of Evasion either hits them or at least appears very close to them.
3 stacks of Bleed and Chill most of the time.
I don’t know why people are so afraid of getting close as a Necro.
I jump close and back off all the time.
We have as much health as Warriors do, just don’t try to “tank” like they do.
Kite things around in circles if everything starts chasing you, you’ll buy the rest of the party a lot of time.

Doom:
It’s an instant cast interrupt.
You can enter Death Shroud and use Doom while knocked down.
Also for whatever reason Fear seems to work on most bosses even while they have stacks of Defiant.
Yes, this means you can actually interrupt bosses with it.
It’s also great for getting things like Graveling Scavengers off you.

Life Transfer:
Yeah it’s already good.
I’m not sure about the cooldown reduction.
Could be a good idea, could be a bad idea.

Dark Pact:
I tele to an enemy, Chill+Bleed them, then evade backwards and my (greater) Mark of Blood from Mark of Evasion either hits them or at least appears very close to them.
3 stacks of Bleed and Chill most of the time.
I don’t know why people are so afraid of getting close as a Necro.
I jump close and back off all the time.
We have as much health as Warriors do, just don’t try to “tank” like they do.
Kite things around in circles if everything starts chasing you, you’ll buy the rest of the party a lot of time.

So your saying to make the skill viable you need to waste a dodge roll away instantly after using the skill

no thanks,
if necros want a teleport skill for dagger, put it on the DAGGER skill bar not the death shroud skill bar

this is bad game development thinking

I think our biggest issues are:

1. The bugs. This is something that every profession is dealing with at this time.

2. Viability of power-based builds — the axe just doesn’t do enough damage, and there is not enough mobility with the dagger/offhands.

3. Our traits. This is my biggest gripe. When I play my Mesmer or Thief, I’m overwhelmed at times with the options available, and it is truly a difficult decision on which traits to pick. The Necro just has so many uninteresting and dull traits that don’t affect the gameplay nearly as much as other professions.

My rotation:
Dagger/Dagger – Scepter/Focus
Utility – Blood Fiend, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend (level 16 so only 2 utilities)
Stacking condition, toughness, and healing stats
Traits – Death Magic (level 16 again so just imagin how many is in there)

First I use the Bone Fiends immobilize perk. Then use the chill affect of the focus skill. Switch to daggers and use Enfeebling Blood, Dark Pact, then Life Siphon. Switch back to Septer and use Bone Minions exploding ability once. And lasty Feast on Corruption. If I don’t down them by then I just use Grasping Dead, dodging, and Blood Curse until they are finished off.

Special occasions where it is a veteran mob, before I do dagger abilities I will go into Death Shoud and use the teleporting ability to put some conditions on so when I go back to scepter skills, Feast on Corruption will do more damage for veterans. I will always fear the mob right after I teleport to them so they will not take any life force away so I save more just incase.

We’ve got a lot of problems, but Death Shroud is one of the few things that are actually pretty good. If they made it the same underwater as it is on land, and added a curses trait to always have the current underwater version, I’d have no complaints about it.

NecropsY.8649:

Dark Pact:
I tele to an enemy, Chill+Bleed them, then evade backwards and my (greater) Mark of Blood from Mark of Evasion either hits them or at least appears very close to them.
3 stacks of Bleed and Chill most of the time.
I don’t know why people are so afraid of getting close as a Necro.
I jump close and back off all the time.
We have as much health as Warriors do, just don’t try to “tank” like they do.
Kite things around in circles if everything starts chasing you, you’ll buy the rest of the party a lot of time.

---

So your saying to make the skill viable you need to waste a dodge roll away instantly after using the skill

no thanks,
if necros want a teleport skill for dagger, put it on the DAGGER skill bar not the death shroud skill bar

this is bad game development thinking

There are other things u can play with Dark pact bro. u cant use it doest mean other cant use though. same with all the Ds skills

Maskeus.2396:

We’ve got a lot of problems, but Death Shroud is one of the few things that are actually pretty good. If they made it the same underwater as it is on land, and added a curses trait to always have the current underwater version, I’d have no complaints about it.

I’d be happy with just having all the skills from Underwater as 1-4, then adding Life Transfer as the #5 skill.

NecropsY.8649:

So your saying to make the skill viable you need to waste a dodge roll away instantly after using the skill

no thanks,
if necros want a teleport skill for dagger, put it on the DAGGER skill bar not the death shroud skill bar

this is bad game development thinking

Or use Doom.
Or use Well of Darkness.
Or use main-hand Dagger.
Or pick a target that’s dangerous at long range anyway.
Or pick a target that’s beating up a near-death ally and get it to chase you instead.

It’s definitely a skill meant to be comboed with other things.
If it were to be buffed I’d just speed up the projectile it sends or up it’s damage or add Life Force generation to it.

Any revamp of Death Should should as the first step remove the transformation aspects. We have those on the elite skills, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be on a core mechanic.

Death Should would be far better served functioning more like the Guardian abilities, or as Life Force based, no cooldown, abilities.

The existing Death Shroud abilities can be merged/revamped with the Lich form, and a new fresh approach can be applied to designing Death Shroud to be more universal in application.

Aexrael.5918:

Any revamp of Death Should should as the first step remove the transformation aspects. We have those on the elite skills, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be on a core mechanic.

Death Should would be far better served functioning more like the Guardian abilities, or as Life Force based, no cooldown, abilities.

The existing Death Shroud abilities can be merged/revamped with the Lich form, and a new fresh approach can be applied to designing Death Shroud to be more universal in application.

Err, what?
Necro may be underpowered and full of bugs but there’s nothing wrong with Death Shroud’s core idea.
It’s unique, interesting and when used well extremely versatile.

The only big flaws I see:
1. It needs to work better with Condition builds.
That’s easily accomplished just by adding Bleed to Life Blast or tweaking minor traits.

2. That Life Force has the same problem as Soul Reaping’s Mana bonus did in GW1.
It either fills ridiculously fast (PvE swarms dying) or it’s nearly impossible to refill (PvP)
There need to be tweaks to the way Life Force is generated.

Necromancers used to be horribly overpowered in beta.
Reason: Death Shroud.

And it wasn’t even all that different from what I remember.
It just gave more Life Force and Life Force was easier to generate.

That’s why Jon Peters is so careful about tweaking it.
Good players made a mechanic that seemed balanced into something overpowered.

Of course people who only know the underpowered and bugged current Necro just mock the statement now.

Given the near pointlessness of Blood magic 15, perhaps it could provide DS stack or two of bleed pr attack instead? That is assuming that said trait currently operates as intended.