Guild Wars 2

This is perfect.

Hopefully it scares away flavor of the month players and makes my builds even stronger, which it looks like it will. Awesome.

Not sure why anyone is upset about greater marks being moved when they made marks bigger by default, or about the spectral changes. Only terror being changed (which was a bad choice) and the DS damage spillover are even notable to me.

can hopefully take staff mastery instead of greater marks now, which will decrease the recharge on staff skill 5 fear by 8 secs, so that could be a nice buff for fear builds over all

DXIEdge.2789:

I don’t even know what to say to you people.

Those of you saying these nerfs weren’t precedented are stupid.

This has been a month coming and a lot people don’t think this is enough.

We shall see, but those of you complaining that “omg necros are terrible look at these nerfs we were finally awesome QQQQQQQ”

Only mesmers taking signet of domination were interrupt mesmers. Bunker guards were not buffed other than symbols, which is an uncommon dps build.

Seriously. Get a grip.

Gj ANet

You are missing the forest for the trees. Read… They are nerfing things they should buff, and buffing things they should leave alone (see time before burning). Necro didn’t need massive damage spikes, it needed sustain, and reliable healing, if it is going to continue to be forced to live without vigor.

DXIEdge.2789:

I don’t even know what to say to you people.

Those of you saying these nerfs weren’t precedented are stupid.

This has been a month coming and a lot people don’t think this is enough.

We shall see, but those of you complaining that “omg necros are terrible look at these nerfs we were finally awesome QQQQQQQ”

Only mesmers taking signet of domination were interrupt mesmers. Bunker guards were not buffed other than symbols, which is an uncommon dps build.

Seriously. Get a grip.

Gj ANet

Lol, relax, First you’re talking to a wall, you’re not going to get through to anybody. Also its to be expected that when the patch notes hit and its not buff, everyone puts on the tin foil hats and expects the sky to start falling. Then they will go home and test it all out, adjust and be fine. Its just easier to speculate negatives rather the positives.

On that note, this patch is garbage.

I don’t mind the DS nerf, it’s reasonable. Especially since they’re fixing the increased damage bug. I think the internal cooldown on Spectral Armour and Spectral Walk is excessive, since the whole idea of using these skills as escapes is being able to build up your LF and pop into DS quickly to escape. 1" is more than enough for a glass cannon thief to burst you down completely, and the 10% you’ll get from a single hit while in Spectral Armour won’t be enough to save you from it.

However what I’m more unhappy about is the Terror nerf. I fully agree that Dhuumfire+terror is an overpowered combo, but nerfing terror is NOT the way to fix this! They could have decreased the burning duration in Dhuumfire or its internal cooldown, but instead they implement a nerf that affects not only the overpowered Dhuumfire+Terror build, but also most other viable condition builds at our disposal – the 0/30/10/0/30 build, the 0/30/20/20/0 build, everything really!

Arguably the 30/30/10/0/0 build is the one least affected by this, as fire is a lot more damage than terror – the reason the combo is so lethal isn’t so much because of the terror damage but because the fear locks you down and you can’t cleanse the burning and other conditions off you! Now, with terror damage reduced, why would you continue to run 0/30/10/0/30? It will cause even more necros to move to 30/30/10/0/0 because it’s better damage!

Are you people really underestimating the utility of jumping off really high cliffs?

As a thief I would kill to be able to jump from the top of a cliff to escape. At least you still got your spectral walk to do that…

Besides, are you really whining about your survivability nerfs? I mean you were almost tankier than a guardian…I don’t think that was meant to happen. So I would these changes will be good to equalize the OP class (necro) back to fair levels.

How is this a nerf?
Seems like a huge buff to me.

As far as I know Death Shroud took double damage from attacks.
At least it was double damage from Agony if I remember right.
Since Agony always deals the same amount of damage to a certain percentage of Health people noticed that “oh hey it’s dealing double to DS?!”

If I’m right this fix DOUBLES the amount of damage Death Shroud can take.
It’s a pretty crazy change if I’m right.

In addition the change to Marks means that you no longer need to get Greater Marks trait in every build with a Staff.
Minion Masters can now run Minion Cooldown Reduction, Flesh of the Master and Death Nova all at once if they want to.

It’s a pretty useless change if it was directed at Terror builds, though…
Many Tournament team Necros already used 30/20/20/0/0 to get Staff cooldown reduction and Greater Marks.

The only real nerf I see here is the Terror damage reduction, which I was predicting would happen.

As for Spectral Armor… we’ll have to see.
It’ll be less effective vs multi-hit attacks but much more useful when getting hit by slow attacks.

…oh and of course losing cliff jumping is a nerf, too, but you can still do that with Spectral Walk anyway.
I always carried Spectral Walk in WvW to begin with.

DXIEdge.2789:

I don’t even know what to say to you people.

Those of you saying these nerfs weren’t precedented are stupid.

This has been a month coming and a lot people don’t think this is enough.

We shall see, but those of you complaining that “omg necros are terrible look at these nerfs we were finally awesome QQQQQQQ”

Only mesmers taking signet of domination were interrupt mesmers. Bunker guards were not buffed other than symbols, which is an uncommon dps build.

Seriously. Get a grip.

Gj ANet

the impact on PvE is rather extreme though, buffing everything on guardian so people think it’s even MORE needed for everything now, and nerfing the necromancer which is a rare profession and not many think they are usefull in PvE already, now though, guardians gets kittenloads of buffs and necros gets the shaft.

They should just seperate the PvP from PvE skills or just kittening make the guardian into a monk so we have a healer again so people need 1 of those like in gw1.

And no, i do not like healers, i hate healing power in this game as people think it’s oh so godly when in it is not.

Excalibur.9748:

Are you people really underestimating the utility of jumping off really high cliffs?

As a thief I would kill to be able to jump from the top of a cliff to escape. At least you still got your spectral walk to do that…

Besides, are you really whining about your survivability nerfs? I mean you were almost tankier than a guardian…I don’t think that was meant to happen. So I would these changes will be good to equalize the OP class (necro) back to fair levels.

Yeah, cause we have loads of stability, protection, vigor and invulnerabilities already so we’re oh so strong! DS is the only defensive tool we have at all or protection on long cooldowns.

Daemon.4295:

I guess I’ll have to use Spectral Walk to leap off mountains now.

Or maybe this patch is making us leap off mountains with no intention of surviving?

Excalibur.9748:

Are you people really underestimating the utility of jumping off really high cliffs?

As a thief I would kill to be able to jump from the top of a cliff to escape. At least you still got your spectral walk to do that…

Yes, and as Necros, we would love the ability to stealth and teleport away from a zerg, but we can’t do that. We have cliff-jumping instead. Or had.

Excalibur.9748:

Besides, are you really whining about your survivability nerfs? I mean you were almost tankier than a guardian…I don’t think that was meant to happen. So I would these changes will be good to equalize the OP class (necro) back to fair levels.

Do you play a Necro? I play everything except Warrior, and my Necro is actually one of the glassier professions. They can take a few hits but they melt in 1vX situations. Their tankiness is static whereas most other professions have abilities that allow them to block or avoid infinite damage.

A thief comparing yourself to class withou mobility and ways to get in and out of fights… wow… just wow….

Other than that i’m hoping someone could give more info regarding the changes on mecros with this patch.

Excalibur.9748:

Are you people really underestimating the utility of jumping off really high cliffs?

As a thief I would kill to be able to jump from the top of a cliff to escape. At least you still got your spectral walk to do that…

Besides, are you really whining about your survivability nerfs? I mean you were almost tankier than a guardian…I don’t think that was meant to happen. So I would these changes will be good to equalize the OP class (necro) back to fair levels.

Haha, look at this troll.

Tankier than a guardian? Wants even more mobility for thief?
Not the brightest of the bunch, no wonder he plays thief; ehuehueheu one button mash.

Ouch… This patch hurt a lot…

So any burst melee (wich is already massively strong against necromancer, without blocks/invulnerabilities, low protection duration), wil kitten NECROMANCERS apart. RIP THEM TO PIECES. It’s no longer an extension of our hp pool. Basically in best case scenario it gives us now 5k extra (real, not fake hp who takes more damage then usual hitpoints) hp. 23k base hp. WOW. That is our class mechanic? Good job arenanet. You just destroyed my main. You just destroyed hours of investment. You just destroyed my believes in you. You just destroyed credibility. First giving a weak grandmaster trait (engineer got same but ADEPT, so = weak) trait, to then nerf terror, and thus nerf the meta builds that do not use dhuumfire but use terror.

4 nerfs to my current build Anet. I’m utterly useless now.

No longer jump escaping, (woohoo, nerf all leap skills now plz will you? This was our unique ‘vampric themed’ get away function.) It made up for the lack of blocks, invulnerabilities, vigor, and no mobility. No we have NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING to compensate. We are free kills.

On the pluside this will surely mean necros get buffed again next month. Whack-a-mole necro balance should be fun.

Ouch… this patch hurts

spoj.9672:

On the pluside this will surely mean necros get buffed again next month. Whack-a-mole necro balance should be fun.

Yeah Mesmer’s thought that too until the bi-weekly nerfing started. At least this patch they got two small buffs.

LastDay.3524:

How is this a nerf?
Seems like a huge buff to me.

As far as I know Death Shroud took double damage from attacks.
At least it was double damage from Agony if I remember right.
Since Agony always deals the same amount of damage to a certain percentage of Health people noticed that “oh hey it’s dealing double to DS?!”

If I’m right this fix DOUBLES the amount of damage Death Shroud can take.
It’s a pretty crazy change if I’m right.

In addition the change to Marks means that you no longer need to get Greater Marks trait in every build with a Staff.
Minion Masters can now run Minion Cooldown Reduction, Flesh of the Master and Death Nova all at once if they want to.

It’s a pretty useless change if it was directed at Terror builds, though…
Many Tournament team Necros already used 30/20/20/0/0 to get Staff cooldown reduction and Greater Marks.

The only real nerf I see here is the Terror damage reduction, which I was predicting would happen.

As for Spectral Armor… we’ll have to see.
It’ll be less effective vs multi-hit attacks but much more useful when getting hit by slow attacks.

…oh and of course losing cliff jumping is a nerf, too, but you can still do that with Spectral Walk anyway.
I always carried Spectral Walk in WvW to begin with.

uhhh…. what? double damage? Go into pvp right now, get someone with a steady weapon to shoot you. The damage is exactly the same both in and out of DS. Either their is some sort of rounding error going on, or it only happens under certain conditions.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Basically in best case scenario it gives us now 5k extra (real, not fake hp who takes more damage then usual hitpoints) hp. 23k base hp. WOW. That is our class mechanic? Good job arenanet.

To my knowledge according to the old tests Life Force pool is around at 60% of your HP.
That is if you have 20K Health it gives you 12K Life Force.
This is with 0 Soul Reaping.

Dunno where you got that 5K from.

Still dont get why… Maybe its all because of sPvP? Dont see any other reason for those nerfs…

LastDay.3524:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Basically in best case scenario it gives us now 5k extra (real, not fake hp who takes more damage then usual hitpoints) hp. 23k base hp. WOW. That is our class mechanic? Good job arenanet.

To my knowledge according to the old tests Life Force pool is around at 60% of your HP.
That is if you have 20K Health it gives you 12K Life Force.
This is with 0 Soul Reaping.

Dunno where you got that 5K from.

Look if you take life force hp, and a zerg hits you, you will see your hp bar go down WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY faster, then if your NORMAL hp bar is up and you get hit by a zerg. Every long term experienced necromancers knows this. Every damage you take in DS is % damage. Even if a clone hits you for 10 damage (nothing to normal hp), in DS it will probably eat 1% life force per hit, due to bad mechanic. With this epic fail hp bar, taking more then normal damage, i do not rate it higher then 5k extra hp althoget, even with full Soul Reaping. That’s where the 5k comes from. It’s no scientific proof. But normal hp is way more valuable then death shroud hp.

This would all be fine by if they would finally do something about the blood line.

Here’s what I don’t fully understand: the mechanic with DS was such that, if you had low LF, you could trigger your profession mechanic and mitigate part of the damage of the burst ability. In this case, the amount you mitigate is directly related to how close you are to what, 10-11% LF? The further away you are, the less benefit you get, if you consider LF+Health as the Necro’s total health pool. In both cases, you’re using your profession mechanic as a damage block, and you immediately fall out of DS for another 10 seconds.

Is that fun? Sure, you can feel pro by saving 11% and absorbing a Backstab from a Thief, but what about the times you have >30% or <9% LF?

It hardly feels like the kind of mechanic they should balance around. You know what sounds more reliable and fun? If DS triggered a 2s Aegis on use. Call it some aspect of DS like “Death’s Protection”. A low duration will make timing key to avoid burst, and it doesn’t rely on some specific LF range to be viable.

It just seems like there are better mechanical options.

Every Leech trigger now grants 150 hp (both the normal and the crit one). If they dont boost blood line like this, then might as well roll ele/guardian. We have no blocks, a very weak hp extension is now our only survival tool. Basically we are free kills for all passive healers our there, all bursters out there, all mobility out there. This is not fun.

cubed.2853:

Still dont get why… Maybe its all because of sPvP? Dont see any other reason for those nerfs…

Just about everything Anet buffs or nerfs, for any profession, is driven by sPvP balance.

cubed.2853:

Still dont get why… Maybe its all because of sPvP? Dont see any other reason for those nerfs…

Haha I am not an sPvP er but reading through their forums, our forums and talking to people in game, the things that they nerfed this patch were things that people tended to not complain about (other than terror) and the things that everyone thought needed buffed (survivability, mobility) were the things that were (likely, I havent had a chance to play with the patch yet) nerfed

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Look if you take life force hp, and a zerg hits you, you will see your hp bar go down WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY faster, then if your NORMAL hp bar is up and you get hit by a zerg. Every long term experienced necromancers knows this. Every damage you take in DS is % damage. Even if a clone hits you for 10 damage (nothing to normal hp), in DS it will probably eat 1% life force per hit, due to bad mechanic. With this epic fail hp bar, taking more then normal damage, i do not rate it higher then 5k extra hp althoget, even with full Soul Reaping. That’s where the 5k comes from. It’s no scientific proof. But normal hp is way more valuable then death shroud hp.

I’ve played the Necromancer since pre-launch betas and I don’t remember ever hearing this claim before.
I’m pretty sure it just goes down so fast because:
1. It’s only ~60% of your health.
2. It degenerates.
3. It was taking a ton of extra damage due to a bug.

I wouldn’t put it past Anet to have weird rounding on it, but given that it used to be Necromancer’s downed mode it just seems much more likely to me that it has a hidden health bar of it’s own and the percentages are only used to keep the Life Force generation numbers simpler to read.

Terror was nerfed because Dhuumfire+terror was too strong. Except now you need Dhuumfire to be a condi necro.

I normally don’t post my thoughts about patch notes, but I would like to point out how amazing these changes are. I mean think about it guys. We were way too tanky to begin with and with being able to be healed while in Death Shroud and taking so little damage while blowing people up and using DS 2 to escape we were dominating every aspect of the game. Terror was way too op, I mean no one has condition cleanses or a good amount of stun breaks. It’s not like they recently added a new condition that is ridiculously overpowered and could possibly have been removed or nerfed to reduce the damage a bit more.

Wait…hold on….sorry it’s been awhile…um, I can’t be healed in Death Shroud, and now I can’t use it defensively when low on health as well? Wait, you mean the absolute best part of being a necromancer cliff diving is no longer an option. Wait…you mean terror the skill that has been in the game for a long time and no one ever complained about it faced the nerf bat as opposed to the actual skill (dhuumfire) that is so powerful it’s mandatory in every damage necro build.

Well, at least they finally nerfed those ridiculously overpowered spectral skills. Wait…..

Well, at least they either gave us the Greater marks trait because with this DS nerf we will need Greater marks now to stay alive in a fight. Wait…..

Well, at least we can now get more DS so that we can use it defensively more often since it’s based on vitality and so if I run power build I can sit in my 19k health with my 14k DS and not lose it all in one hit thanks to that fix. Wait….you mean there are tons of bosses, classes in wvwvw, and moments when 14k worth of DS will fade away in less than 3 seconds.

So after seeing skyhammer being touted as a great competitive map by their “testers”, I want to know who tested the necro changes before saying, "Yes, we need to nerf the only defensive skill the Necromancers have, because of a map that can’t be used in competitive pvp, because we might be able to live though not climb back up in skyhammer. Did they realize that even if we survived the fall, we couldn’t really do anything once we were stuck down there?

War Mourner.5168:

Damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.

This ruined the game for me.

I rather take 400x the amount of damage in DS than have this change implemented.

Sure we could probably still survive jumping off cliffs in WvW (actual advantage) but reaching the bottom of rata sum (harmless if you ask me) becomes impossible. Yes, necro’s were able to absorb 1 powerful attack but that’s just 1 hit. I don’t see what’s so wrong about that.

“Damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.”

I never get on here to complain about nerfs and whatnot, but Anet you done goofed on this one.

I pop in and out of DS often and many, many times it is because my health is very low and I am waiting for my heal to come off cool down. Getting a large hit from a Thief, or Warrior that is going to down my right out of DS is stupid.

Like others have already said. Anything less than a full DS bar is going to pancake us especially in any zerg battle where the AOE is stacked in heaps.

I can get over not being able to take the fall damage although reluctantly, but this is going to make everyone that recently started to level or play a Necro recently rethink that decision.

I am so glad I had shelved my necro 6 weeks ago. I knew last patch was an anomaly.

Bas.7406:

I normally don’t post my thoughts about patch notes…

I feel like BoC is going to be fun this week

Bhawb.7408:

Terror was nerfed because Dhuumfire+terror was too strong. Except now you need Dhuumfire to be a condi necro.

Pretty much every nerf came as a result of Dumbfire. Our survivability took a hit along with all our other build options – all in the name of combating ONE overpowered combination. They don’t seem to realize just how much they’re hurting other builds here and that is what truly frightens me.

At this point I’m convinced that Dumbfire just needs to go. Burning isn’t worth the destruction of the entire class.

Holy kitten, this is just about on par with the WOW forums at the moment. Class changes and everyone cries a river…

The mark move to 2nd tier sucks. A lot. But whatever, because they buffed the default radius.

Now:
“Damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.”

How did it not ALREADY do this? In fact, I assumed that it DID already do this. You can have 10% lifeforce and swap into deathshroud to eat an entire eviscerate? Is that what is implied without the change? (On live now?) If so,that is EXTREMELY stupid. Lifeforce acts as a second life bar with some utility abilities..why would it NOT pool into your base life bar if it ran out during an attack?

Evagal.2584:

How did it not ALREADY do this? In fact, I assumed that it DID already do this. You can have 10% lifeforce and swap into deathshroud to eat an entire eviscerate? Is that what is implied without the change? (On live now?) If so,that is EXTREMELY stupid. Lifeforce acts as a second life bar with some utility abilities..why would it NOT pool into your base life bar if it ran out during an attack?

How exactly is it stupid to let necromancers block damage when every other class is capable of doing it? We don’t have blocks. We don’t have vigor. We don’t have evades. What are we supposed to do to mitigate damage now?

Bhawb.7408:

Terror was nerfed because Dhuumfire+terror was too strong. Except now you need Dhuumfire to be a condi necro.

Yeah… 1 build to rule them all, but wait you drop like a fly in it…
Take anything else you drop like 3 flies but you can’t even sting… How lovely.

Evagal.2584:

Holy kitten, this is just about on par with the WOW forums at the moment. Class changes and everyone cries a river…

The mark move to 2nd tier sucks. A lot. But whatever, because they buffed the default radius.

Now:
“Damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.”

How did it not ALREADY do this? In fact, I assumed that it DID already do this. You can have 10% lifeforce and swap into deathshroud to eat an entire eviscerate? Is that what is implied without the change? (On live now?) If so,that is EXTREMELY stupid. Lifeforce acts as a second life bar with some utility abilities..why would it NOT pool into your base life bar if it ran out during an attack?

Yes, because we have SO MANY other options for damage mitigation.
As if survivability wasn’t the number 1 thing that every PvP Necro has been asking for since release.

Evagal.2584:

How did it not ALREADY do this? In fact, I assumed that it DID already do this. You can have 10% lifeforce and swap into deathshroud to eat an entire eviscerate? Is that what is implied without the change? (On live now?) If so,that is EXTREMELY stupid. Lifeforce acts as a second life bar with some utility abilities..why would it NOT pool into your base life bar if it ran out during an attack?

Because necro has 0 escape abilities, unlike all the other classes.

Amazing how first all the crybabies come and whine about necro being op and wanting nerfs. Now that we have been nerfed, in all the wrong areas, they come and troll us lol.

Greater Marks: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.

GOD KITTEN KITTEN IT ANET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now i have to spend 20 points…

I think everyone is overlooking that losing the Greater Marks doesn’t mean only the increased radius… but we lose the “unblockable” part of it. We lose the already nerfed condition removal from staff’s Putrid Mark.

Moreover the change in DS just shattered my PvE build (tank build which relied on juggling DS for fury/stability and to get the big boss blows) so… they talk about “you can have any kind of guild size” but basically… you will take months to get challanges if you are not 50+ ppl in guild, you can’t do high level fractals (40+) without guardians/eles and basically you can no longer tank with necro on bosses because things like Maw agony, and many other bosses specials will just oneshot you without any king of vigor/endurance regeneration (talking of fractals 30+). I already started using Sigil of Energy to “play around” our issues… but i suppose this is a way bigger hit.

They want build diversity… but they make us lose a couple of builds just because some whiners where overwhelmed in pvp.

I’m no way a pro in tpvp, really far from that, but with Corrupt Boon nerfed (and missing 90% of times), Dark Path pretty worthless, and the nerf to DS i don’t really know if i can still bunker points as i was used to.

I love the necro, played since gw1 (yet there i played everything in top100 gvg), and played it and just it since open BWEs… i’ll try to make it work again…

BTW i’m happy that with the DS nerf we are finally able to stomp and ress in DS…
…oh wait!

And to illustrate my point.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

Note that every other class in the game is represented while one is conspicuously absent. And now our one way of meaningfully preventing damage is GONE.

Bhawb.7408:

Terror was nerfed because Dhuumfire+terror was too strong. Except now you need Dhuumfire to be a condi necro.

the thing is though it wasn’t too strong, it had great burst but still not the best.

Being the terror dhuumfire ragdoll in a match or wvw still sucked.

It was a burst build with no stability and really bad LF generation and really no other defensive skills.

The build was great against crappy players and passable against anyone using CC or condi cleansing.

I usually don’t reply twice in the same thread, but this has really got my hackles up!

We have multiple topic in these forums about what you (as a NECRO) would like to see changed (axe #1 for example) and what do we get? A complete and utter failure to even look at the necro to see what can be done to make us more viable as an ATTRITION class while taking away the ONE and only ability we have to mitigate 1, count em 1, large damage attack or fall. Ny necro is my main and even though I have spent over 5000 gems in tools etc., 1500+ hours and have over 7000 ap’s I am about to shelf him AND this game. At this point even considering another class sickens me if these are the type of “minor adjustments” they see fit to implement.

BAH, and to anyone that says this change was needed, go play a necro and see how overpowered you feel in open combat; I’m not paying your repair bill I get enough of my own.

From a high-tier tPvP standpoint, none of these changes really do anything to affect how powerful a condition Necromancer still is.

Terror nerf was needed and it’s was very minor.

30/30/10 Wells
Took a hit as unblockable marks in PvP are extremely good and now these players will have to choose between Ground-targetable Wells or Unblockable Marks.

I personally welcome every single change, they’re great. Base mark range increase is what Necro’s have been asking for since ever.

Fixing the bug where we take more damage in deathshroud is amazing, I always had suspicion that I was taking more damage from certain attacks randomly but could never re-create it.

Any nerf this patch was is so ridiculously minor IMO

Fungalfoot.7213:

And to illustrate my point.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

Note that every other class in the game is represented while one is conspicuously absent. And now our one way of meaningfully preventing damage is GONE.

Maybe because it’s an unreliable and unintended means for preventing damage.

Maybe you’re going to receive another means of preventing damage to compensate.

I do love how people are magnets to the negative. One guy makes a claim that prods the sore knee-jerk emotions, and everyone latches onto it like they aren’t just feeding the perpetual negativity machine. I was hoping for at least 1 person to objectively evaluate whether or not DS as a “block” mechanic is actually dumb and should be compensated in other ways via my previous post, but it must be too soon to think logically.

EDIT – Also, it’s possible Death Shroud numbers weren’t necessarily higher, but the LF bar was taking larger hits than it should have from a certain amount of damage. So, if you test in and out of DS while just looking at numbers, they’re the same, but the back-end will be different.

Food for thought. And hopefully not food for more emotions.

Goodbye 20/20/10/20/0 build for wvw, I loved you so but greater marks 20 points I cannot cope.

Smaller marks for my wvw support build isn’t going to work, so need to find 10 points from somewhere and don’t want to lose them from anywhere else as then the build won’t be as balanced.

DS changes are fair enough, hopefully they have fixed the damage problems.

Looks like it might be back to ranger with the 3 second stealth on hunter’s shot- whatever made them think that was a good idea?

Bas.7406:

I normally don’t post my thoughts about patch notes, but I would like to point out how amazing these changes are. I mean think about it guys. We were way too tanky to begin with and with being able to be healed while in Death Shroud and taking so little damage while blowing people up and using DS 2 to escape we were dominating every aspect of the game. Terror was way too op, I mean no one has condition cleanses or a good amount of stun breaks. It’s not like they recently added a new condition that is ridiculously overpowered and could possibly have been removed or nerfed to reduce the damage a bit more.

Wait…hold on….sorry it’s been awhile…um, I can’t be healed in Death Shroud, and now I can’t use it defensively when low on health as well? Wait, you mean the absolute best part of being a necromancer cliff diving is no longer an option. Wait…you mean terror the skill that has been in the game for a long time and no one ever complained about it faced the nerf bat as opposed to the actual skill (dhuumfire) that is so powerful it’s mandatory in every damage necro build.

Well, at least they finally nerfed those ridiculously overpowered spectral skills. Wait…..

Well, at least they either gave us the Greater marks trait because with this DS nerf we will need Greater marks now to stay alive in a fight. Wait…..

Well, at least we can now get more DS so that we can use it defensively more often since it’s based on vitality and so if I run power build I can sit in my 19k health with my 14k DS and not lose it all in one hit thanks to that fix. Wait….you mean there are tons of bosses, classes in wvwvw, and moments when 14k worth of DS will fade away in less than 3 seconds.

So after seeing skyhammer being touted as a great competitive map by their “testers”, I want to know who tested the necro changes before saying, "Yes, we need to nerf the only defensive skill the Necromancers have, because of a map that can’t be used in competitive pvp, because we might be able to live though not climb back up in skyhammer. Did they realize that even if we survived the fall, we couldn’t really do anything once we were stuck down there?

I’ve said this many times before:
I believe that Dhuumfire is not OP, in fact it’s rather balanced for Hybrid builds.
Perhaps even a bit on the weak side… I think many pick Close to Death over it.

It’s only OP on Terror builds.
…And that’s why Terror got a nerf instead of Dhuumfire.

I predict that the next patch change is Terror moving to Curses 30.
This way you can’t get Terror+Dhuumfire+Greater Marks anymore.
30/30/20 = 80 points.
Alternatively Dhuumfire moves to some odd spot in Death Magic, Blood magic or Soul Reaping.
Or perhaps Dhuumfire and Terror both become GM Curses traits and share the same slot?
Eh, that seems unlikely.

Either way Terror still has Spectral Wall, increased Doom Fear duration and Torment from DS5 so it isn’t really that much weaker.

Unless I’m mistaken 30/20/20/0/0 was already ran in tournies by teams like Paradigm so the Greater Marks change did nothing to them.

As for DS survivability:
I still believe that the changed numbers are very significant.
Agony was dealing double damage to DS, downed health was missing two thirds of it.
To me it sounds reasonable to assume that Death Shroud was receiving double or nearly double damage.

I don’t see why else would Anet remove Death Shroud’s damage overflow system.
Necro’s defenses are bad as is, so nerfing that only makes sense if Necro is receiving a ton of extra survivability and Anet is scared that Necros become too hard to kill after the bug fix.

You think it’s because of a sPvP map?
They would have changed Spectral Walk, too, if that was the case.
Plus bottom of Rata Sum has an instant-kill zone, wouldn’t be that hard to make a sPvP map have the same.

Dark.6514:

They want build diversity… but they make us lose a couple of builds just because some whiners where overwhelmed in pvp.

…

BTW i’m happy that with the DS nerf we are finally able to stomp and ress in DS…
…oh wait!

Maybe they’re planning something bigger behind all this, maybe in 6 months we can see another patch note for us.

Maybe not.