Guild Wars 2

Edit: unlisted patch notes.

Dark path moves much faster (50%?)
The life force pool seems to fully match (or according to some people’s tests, exceed ) your hp pool now. (not sure if this was the ‘take more damage from direct damage’ bug they mentioned) This change is extremely significant as it gives a massive buff to all forms of LF generation, so I don’t know why it wasn’t listed/not properly explained.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/july-23-content-release-notes/

for those too lazy to click:

Necromancer:

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.

Fixed a bug that caused the necromancer to take increased damage from direct attacks while in death shroud.

Necromancer—Dark Path: Fixed an issue that caused this skill to strike enemies further than 1200 distance away.

Shadow Fiend—Haunt: When this attack hits an enemy, it will grant the necromancer 10% of their life force.

Ghastly Claws: The total life force granted from this skill has been increased from 10% to 12%.

Spectral Armor: Incoming hits now grant 8% life force; has a 1-second internal cooldown.

Spectral Walk: Incoming hits now grant 2% life force; has a 1-second internal cooldown. This spectral skill now grants life force while Spectral Armor is active.

Spectral Grasp: This skill now grants 15% life force (up from 10%).

Mark of Blood: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Chillblains: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Putrid Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Reaper’s Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.

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

Spiteful Vigor: This trait has been moved to the Adept tier.

Terror: Reduced the damage by 17%. Fixed a bug so this trait now checks for the torment condition as well.

So it seems spectral buffs have been nerfed hard in large fights (where our defensive problems are most significant) but against a slow hitting, single target (hammer warrior? NPC?) spectral armor is better. Spectral walk is worse either way, although stacking with spectral armor is useful (although it should have been in since release.

Also while it’s sad that they removed our GLORIOUS ability to face tank falls with DS, it’s quite hilarious to see that we really were taking more physical damage then we were supposed to in DS, but I wonder how much it is/does it always happen etc. Also wooo, naturally larger circles.

Over all I find this a rather… unexpected set of changes.
Discuss.

RIP in peace Deathshroud.

All these 1 second cool downs make the skills worthless. Where’s my disengage? Wheres my block? Wheres my invuln? Wheres my evade?

I’d go so far as to say spectral armor is worse than before.

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

Daemon.4295:

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

I was about to say the same

That sucks

Guess they want people to play guardians and not necromancers.

look at the guardian buffs, this is it for me though i won’t ever main necro with that Death Shroud change

Everything was needed except the death shroud nerf… One of my favourite things, was jumping of tall places… And i have my incinerator bound to it. Good job anet… wow

Daemon.4295:

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.

:(

Couldn’t have said it better. This was a little cool tool to have vertical mobility and to take a single big attack at the cost of Life Force. A pity it’s gone now.

The nerf to staff is another big hit. I hate the small Marks, but using 20 in Death Magic…

I get the logic behind the DS change, and would almost consider it a fix of the way it should have been all along. What I don’t like it the nerf to terror. What about all of us who aren’t running the fotm glass cannon build? And still no sustain. Are they even listening to the community…apparently all they can hear is the QQ about how necro’s weren’t a free kill for a whole 15 minutes and we can’t have that.

This is exactly what the game needed – more buffs for the guardians. Let’s face it guys, they’ve been the bottom of the pile for too kitten ed long, and it’s only fair we give them a buff. They’re insanely popular, and the future of our game depends on them being buffed to a playable level as a result.

Don’t worry – roll a guardian.

“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.”

Pretty much makes DS useless for absorbing burst damage now unless you have full LF now.

I am just hoping that “Fixed a bug that caused the necromancer to take increased damage from direct attacks while in death shroud.” the bug was like 50% more dmg so that at least we don’t feel the effect that much.

I’ll be trying 20/20/0/0/30 in full knight’s next build btw. 8LF/s is not too bad, it’ll be a very great help in duels etc.

“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.”

No. No no, no, no no, no no. That is <word that would be replaced by “kitten kitten”>. Why?! The only thing that enabled was jumping off things. What was broken about that?!?

Blaine, it was basically our equivalent of vigor. It came in handy when facing Lupicus etc., when you were low on dodge and had 11% LF left you could hit LF and absorb the hit.

I dont mind these changes. At least now hopefully no one going to say that we are so “OP”

Buahahahaha, that was one hell of a short FoTM, glad there wont be any more necros using 5% DS to block my evicerate.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Blaine, it was basically our equivalent of vigor. It came in handy when facing Lupicus etc., when you were low on dodge and had 11% LF left you could hit LF and absorb the hit.

The vast majority of Lupi’s attacks are multi-hit, as are most big hits from similar bosses. Using low amounts of LF to block attacks like that would still require very good dodging, and still wasn’t overpowered. Not when other professions get blocks and invulnerability moves and permavigor.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Why?! The only thing that enabled was jumping off things. What was broken about that?!?

Jumping off cliffs.

stof.9341:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Why?! The only thing that enabled was jumping off things. What was broken about that?!?

Jumping off cliffs.

Jumping off cliffs was not broken! It was an extremely niche strategy mostly useful for clever escapes in WvW (where the Thief still has better escapes). It was also fun.

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.

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

Terror: Reduced the damage by 17%. Fixed a bug so this trait now checks for the torment condition as well.

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

Seriously Anet? We got a little of attention since the game release and thats enough for a nerf.

I don’t know why I keep playing as a necro when all you want from us is play as Thief,Mesmer or Guardian, I’ll reroll.

The biggest nerf is that we now need to have quite a bit of lifeforce to mitigate i high incoming attack.
With 10-25% life force you could negate a big attack if you could see it coming.
We can still jump from the highest of places with spectra walk at least.

I just don’t know what deathshroud clearly is for us Necro’s.
It adds more to dps than defence and/or atrition at the moment.

Blaine Tog.8304:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Blaine, it was basically our equivalent of vigor. It came in handy when facing Lupicus etc., when you were low on dodge and had 11% LF left you could hit LF and absorb the hit.

The vast majority of Lupi’s attacks are multi-hit, as are most big hits from similar bosses. Using low amounts of LF to block attacks like that would still require very good dodging, and still wasn’t overpowered. Not when other professions get blocks and invulnerability moves and permavigor.

Wasn’t saying it was OP – in fact, I believe it was necessary. You were just saying the only thing it affected was cliff diving, whereas it was practical in a number of PVE situations.

Blaine Tog.8304:

stof.9341:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Why?! The only thing that enabled was jumping off things. What was broken about that?!?

Jumping off cliffs.

Jumping off cliffs was not broken! It was an extremely niche strategy mostly useful for clever escapes in WvW (where the Thief still has better escapes). It was also fun.

It breaks map design. It was foolish to think it’ll stay and wasn’t just a bug that would get fixed as soon as it was advertised.

Guess what? Necros jumped down out of the latest sPvP map and found stuff down there outside the normal play area. It was advertised, ANet saw the bug and now fixed it.

The stuff that breaks the game ARE fun yes, problem is they break the game so we cannot have them :/

i no longer need the trait for larger marks 180 large enough for me but why mess with our death shroud? whyyy!!!!!

are you guys crazy? nobody talking about this nerf:
-Greater Marks: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.

This is no good, now i have to go deeper in death for marks? necro getting nerfed and they buff warriors and thief as ever.

Anet just destroy Whole WvW necro community build.

Well that sucks pretty much… After last patch I thought they got the right way, but that patch just ****… Especially the DS nerf was absolutly nothing necessary! One of the best features the nec had was the jumping down from everything.. That was our “get away” ability and now? There is none! A nec stay in fight even more: win or die…!

And all those other changes… Greater Marks to master destroys my current build…

Bad day, very bad day (especially for me as wvw nec)… And this is my birthday, just you know…

I always preferred spectral walk for cliff jumping.. and they did fix a bug that caused increased damage in shroud, meaning we’ll take less. Net buff for me.

Also no way Im going greater marks now, so thats 10 points I can use elsewhere.r

kishter.9578:

are you guys crazy? nobody talking about this nerf:
-Greater Marks: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.

This is no good, now i have to go deeper in death for marks? necro getting nerfed and they buff warriors and thief as ever.

They NERFED the thieves. See? They changed the P/D #3 skill by buffing it. It’s the only gameplay change, the rest is tooltip displays only.

So with that buff, ANet will be luring unsuspecting thieves to use that crappy useless P/D set, thus a nerf !

Also, you are a necro, send back the torment to the thief or better, the P/D #3 skill is a melee escape tool, if you stay at range autoattacking with your scepter and not moving you’ll melt him and he’ll never apply any of that “buffed” skill to you.

Do you guys know how much extra damage did we take just for staying in Death Shroud?

People spend too much time complaining about the nerfs and too little theorycrafting about the what the new buffs might bring to the table.

Nerf the necro, buff the guardian?

This balance team is hilarious.

It was fun while it lasted.

Time to build a ranger and spam 1 even more..

That’s what I want to know before I cry at all. I always felt I was taking too much in DS, so how much WERE we taking additional in DS?

As a condition necro, the only use I have ever had for deathshroud was jumping off cliffs.

…so it makes perfect sense that Anet would nerf it into the ground, as it promotes their policy of sucking every last ounce of fun out of this game.

It’s strange, that I just now realized, that my ex-wife works for Anet.

SO what was so bad in being able to absorb one extra high damage hit? Seems to me that this change will, in one fell swoop, take us from being a slightly viable class without any form of escape to a very easy kill once again.

When facing a glassy anything, I had, before this patch, the ability to absorb one more high hit in hopes of limping along to a friendly in WvW. Now that one 21k hit will not only drain what is left of my life force but in essence remove a good chunk of my normal health pool.

Where is the increased survivability? Where is the healing/ratio change we need? Instead we get increased LF gen?!. News flash ANet, if your escaping a fight you’re usually hurting badly and a 2% increase in LF gen is useless compared to any ability that lets you get away to heal. This chance WAS NOT needed and although i will test out how well I can perform after this change, I feel it may be time to hang up my necro.

wont the death shroud changes completely screw us over in pve? now we have practically no defence against bosses 10-20k hits since we completely lack block/evade skills.

my marks… )’:
20 in DM was bad enough…

what am i meant to do to block a backstab now? We don’t have any evades or invul’s or blocks. Also terror didn’t need a nerf imo. Anet just listening to thieves and their other favored classes crying about stuff again.

The did WHAT ????…

Today i wanted to release a video expressing my faith in this company, with the recent changes to the game (not balance wise), faith for the future…

That’s gone…

Atleast we get360 radius marks if traited……

Well that makes necro’s even more useless in pve. No jade maw DS absorb. No AoE DS absorb on other bosses. Now they have basically nerfed our pve survivability into the ground we definately need vigor. Anet please kittening split pvp and pve already…. This is stupid.

On the plus side atleast marks are larger by default. Means I dont have to retrait for WvW anymore.

ps. We need vigor on crit in a minor trait in spite. Then I will be happy for pve survivability and this will make up for the DS nerf.

Drensky.9567:

Atleast we get360 radius marks if traited……

What if the radius when traited is still 240?

Also, guys, I’d calm down a bit.
We don’t know how much the DS damage fix will affect the actual gameplay, it might be quite good.
We don’t either know how new base marks will perform ingame.

So there is no reason to cry that much until we try those changes out.

The Greater Mark trait doesn’t say stuff like “Marks are 100% bigger” or something. It just says “Marks are bigger”. They could be 181 radius now and the trait would still be worded correctly.

The more likely situation is that they are still 240 radius with the trait.

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.

Sucks So there goes our one and only damage-block…looks like DS’ skill-ceiling gets lower and lower.
i wonder why it was changed…because of the falldamage? cause of crying backstab-thieves? It cant be the PvE… many OHKO-Boss-attacks have hit you multiple times anyway.

*Fixed a bug that caused the necromancer to take increased damage from direct attacks while in death shroud.

Dammit, Anet, is there any part of DS you didnt kitten up completely?
Im curious how the new tankiness of DS turns out. Too bad that Anet is again not able to provide some actual numbers.
Wouldve have preferred it to regenerate, receive heals and lifesteal while in DS tho.

Ghastly Claws: The total life force granted from this skill has been increased from 10% to 12%.

Unnecessary; that skill was already good. if you want to buff axe, start with #1

Spectral Armor: Incoming hits now grant 8% life force; has a 1-second internal cooldown.

Spectral Walk: Incoming hits now grant 2% life force; has a 1-second internal cooldown. This spectral skill now grants life force while Spectral Armor is active.

Aaand it’s dead…one of the few things that helped us to stay alive against multiple enemies. Was a life-saver in WvW

Mark of Blood: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Chillblains: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Putrid Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Reaper’s Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.

YES, finally! No more must-put-10-in-DM…

Terror: Reduced the damage by 17%. Fixed a bug so this trait now checks for the torment condition as well.

Couldve been worse. Still sad that Terror gets nerfed, not Dhuumfire.

Overall some good and bad changes. I agree, that you cant tank fall damage anymore just sucks. I hate that change.
The mark-change is good; i hope they clean up the mark-traits-mess a bit in the next updates. 4 traits are still 2-3 too many.

Death shroud fall damage nerf – lame. Really, really lame.

Death shroud bug fix – good, but who knows how good since Anet didn’t disclose how much extra damage we were taking.

Spectral changes – mixed.

Staff mark sizes and GM – possibly or probably a buff.

Terror damage – really disappointing, Anet made a really bad choice here.

Nemesis.8593:

The did WHAT ????…

Today i wanted to release a video expressing my faith in this company, with the recent changes to the game (not balance wise), faith for the future…

That’s gone…

Yeah i feel you man, i’ve been playing necromancer since release almost, and liked it alot, then they take away the one skill that is actually worth using against anything both in PvE and PvP.

This must be the time to do as in Gw1 and have seperate PvP and PvE skills.

sorrow.2364:

Also, guys, I’d calm down a bit.
We don’t know how much the DS damage fix will affect the actual gameplay, it might be quite good.
We don’t either know how new base marks will perform ingame.

So there is no reason to cry that much until we try those changes out.

Its a fair change for pvp. But in pve necros have no invuln, blocks, vigor or extra evades. And now DS cant be used to absorb boss attacks unless you stack PVT gear….

Excited about:

Fixed a bug that caused the necromancer to take increased damage from direct attacks while in death shroud.

and

Mark of Blood: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Chillblains: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Putrid Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.
Reaper’s Mark: The base radius of this skill has been increased from 120 to 180.

Why?

Build diversity. I never much cared for the unblockable feature on marks except against guardians and occasionally engineers. I can live with a slightly smaller mark, and now I can try some other builds.

For instance you can now do a fairly effective 30/20/0/0/20 and get soul marks, and actually be able to generate life force in a scept/dagger and Staff build.

The change to DS is interesting as well, because i would imgine it makes the DS no longer 60% of your life against direct attacks, but 100%…. all a guess of course, but if it is, that is a huge buff to DS when used defensively.

The loss of overflow on DS should have been targetted at falling damage only. I disagree with that change, and it lowers the skill cap, which is sad.

Have to read the other notes to see what else is up, but the terror nerf did make me sad, since you are further pigeon-holing necros into going 30/20 if they want to run conditions.

Right. I always assumed that with greater marks, it doubles the marks’ radius aa lich form marks doubled in size as well. I guess the reason for this would be the a mount of unblockable aoe’s that necros gained access to…

I am however mourning for the death shroud nerf…. sad sad day.

Time to adapt.

A mixed bag overall. The nerf to death-shroud is completely uneeded and if anything should have been buffed. Now I understand and support removing the fall dmg exploit as no-one should be able to plunge from a mountain and live but in doing so they’ve almost certainly ruined what is our only real escape vice and if anything will make people less inclined to use it at low Health when It should be getting used. If they would allow us to either siphon or regen health while in shroud It would place us on par with stealth and perma evade.

Not all bad news tho At-least we don’t take as much from melee hits now which is a plus, Base mark size has increased and those who invest in greater marks get even larger AOEs and and life force is now easier then ever to get even without investing in soul reaping which is a plus. But its still mixed XD

Since life force gain now has a 1s CD, they actually reduced our survivability vs multiple… instead of increasing it. Necromancer is the best class to be focus fired… not it’s beyond the best class to be focus fired…

I officially quit necromancer PvP, it’s just not worth it… i’ve done high end PvP the past few days, and i’ve seen my fair share of unfairness…

Stun stun stun stun cleans cleans cleans and even so he couldn’t kill me… MY TURN !… oh wait… charge leap rush byebye…

Easiest class to stomp, easiest class to focus fire… any other class in the game has the ability to resist focus fire + break combat except for us.

PvP necromancer is dead to me.