Guild Wars 2

Hi folks,

I think this summs it up : http://www.twitch.tv/choxie808/v/4355929

We don’t have anything new , some traits remain pure poop. We have to deal with à lot of difficult choices, (Having to do a choice between path of midnight and terror master ? Realy ?!). And globaly most of necro issues remain unsolved.

There are a few good changes , but overal … it won’t change much.

Ty for feedback bhawb , Ty spoj. Ty For Ideas Around the Forums. Ty for all the support.
(I Will Edit This Thread Each time I see constructive answers and good ideas.)

Some sugestions :

Death Shroud Improvements

° Make Heal pass trought DS.
° Allow Using Utulities whyle in Death Shroud.
° Use F1 whyle stomping / Res doesn’t interupt stomps
° Make Lifeforce regen / degen to a certain % of Lifeforce out of combat.

Baseline

° Make Soul marks Baseline. (reduce regen on it make it scale.)
° Make Life Blast Pierce and be a projectile finisher 100%

Soul Reaping

° Merge Terror master into Terror.
° Unyielding Blast : Life Blast and Plague Blast cause vulnerability. + 100% vulnerability Duration
° NEW Adept “Death invigoration” : Entring Death Shroud Regen Partialy your endurence.
° Move Unholy Martyr From Death Magic to Soul Reaping Master Tier:
Ad when it takes a condition you briefly get résistence. (the new anti condition buff)
° Give FitG 2-3 stability stacks.

Blood Magic

° Merge Transfusion and Deathly invigoration make it Master tier.
° Merge Bloothirtst intoVampiric precision make it Adept tier.
° Move Unholy sanctuary from Death to Blood magic GM.
“Regenerate health whyle in death Shroud , Each time death shroud Drains (natural degen of DS) it heals Nearby allies for a % of Life Force lost.”
° NEW Master “Vigorous blood” : Dodges cost less endurence.
(Allow necro to dodge more without behing forced to take energy sigils.)
° NEW “Blood transfer” : life transfer , transfer one conditions to opponnen per pulse.

Death Magic
° Minor Beyond the Veil : Whenever you leave Death Shroud you, Allies and your minions gain protection.
° Put death Nova into Master trait.
° Merge Staff mastery and Greater Marks.
° Reaper protection : Add give protection 10 sec ( still 60 CD) And fear wen downed (Remove that from terror/terror Master.)
° Grand Master trait Deathly strenght : Gain 10% power based on your toughness. Power gain doubles while in Death Shroud. Crippling foes Give regen for each foe you cripple.
° NEW Grand Master “Weakening Contagion” : Dodging inflicts weakness
(2 seconds) weakness have increased chances to flume (100%)

Curse

° No ICD on weakning Shroud.
° Merge Reaper’s precision into Furious Demise.
° Merge Terror Master into Terror move it into Master tier.
(Change fear duration from 50% to 30% (you get + 30% from LC).)
° Lingering curse : While wielding a scepter your condition damage +150 and outgoing condition duration is increased by 30%. Feast of corruption Corrupt 2 boons.
° NEW Grand Master “Chilled Death” : Chilled Foes will freeze once chill expires dealing damage based on the time they where chilled (Sacling with power).

Spite
° Minor Siphoned Power: No internal cooldown, reduce the might gain to 1 Might.
° Bitter chill : Chilling a foe inflicts vulnerability and increased chill duration.
° Work out Axe and signets to make them more attractive.(not via traits)
° Spitefull Spirits : Cripple nearby foes and remove a boon. Gain retaliation for each foe you strike. Make it blast finisher and no ICD.

Abimes.

Once I feel It’s OK , i’ll make à File To show the entire trait lines and make it clear for every one

@Vizarlorde : That have been made base line in my list , and yeah i’m pretty sure it’s the way to go with blood magic.

Base Line

° Make regeneration and Siphoned heals (blood magic/signets) pass trought DS.

Abimes.9726:

Make regeneration and Siphoned heals (blood magic/signets) pass trought DS.

Fixed that for you.

Abimes.9726:

Make Soul marks Baseline.

Instead of a flat 3% on trigger, I’d actually prefer marks to generate a smaller hit-based amount (0.5-1%) to give it a scaling effect, as a baseline feature of course.

Abimes.9726:

Curses

° Remove Reaper’s precision

It could stay if it was buffed.
One suggestion in other threads was a merger with Withering Precision: 33% chance to inflict 1 sec of weakness and generate 1% life force on critical hits, no icd.

Abimes.9726:

Merge terror master into Terror GM curse.

I’ve suggested this in other threads already, but my prefered change here would be:
1. Terror becomes the new gm minor in Curses combined with 2% crit chance for condis.
2. The “additional damage for other conditions” part of Terror is moved to Master of Terror in Soul Reaping.

For two reasons:
- Curses needs a proper power trait in the gm tier and Terror is the logical choice to make way for it.
- Master of Terror is rather overshadowed by Spectral Mastery and Vital Persistence, so by moving the bonus damage part you create some insentive to pick it over their more defensive counterparts.

Abimes.9726:

Move Parasitic contagion from curse to blood magic GM.

I disagree, Parasitic Contagion makes more sense in Curses.
Also, moving every healing trait to Blood Magic is bad. If you do that and Blood Magic was viable (which it isn’t) then you’d just limit build diversity because BM becomes a mandatory pick. Of course BM is garbage because all of its traits don’t work in DS, so all you achieve by moving healing traits there is pushing them out of reach for viable builds that could actually use some sutain options in specializations that work.

Abimes.9726:

Death Magic

Remove Deathly strenght.
Put death Nova into Master trait.
2 Grand Master trait TBD.

I agree with moving one of the minion traits down one tier to make both available for MMs, it’s not like they couldn’t use some buffs.
But why not make Deadly Strength take its spot instead and maybe give it a little buff?
And of course, Unholy Sanctuary should stay in Death Magic for the same reason Parasitic Contagion shouldn’t be moved to Blood Magic.

Abimes.9726:

Spitefull Spirits : Cripple nearby foes and remove a boon. Gain retaliation for each foe you strike. Make it blast finisher and no ICD.

I’m fine with the regular Unholy Feast, but just like Weakening Shroud it shouldn’t have a cooldown because it would already be double gated by the cd of DS and life force regeneration.

Really, the icds on those two traits are my biggest issue after the split staff traits and the Curses grandmaster disaster.

Abimes.9726:

Minor Siphoned Power: Decrease the internal cooldown to 1 seconds and reduce the might gain to 1 Might.

I’d rather have it share the might with allies than make it better for necros themselves, same for Beyond the Veil.

Abimes.9726:

Blood Magic

° Merge Transfusion and Deathly invigoration make it Master tier.
° Merge Bloothirtst intoVampiric precision make it Adept tier.

I agree that those changes should happen, but before you even try to balance Blood Magic traits you need to allow healing through DS, until then the entire BM specialization is completely pointless.

@ Flow
The healing throug blood magic have been changed a bit.

(It could become total , but i think that should be given step by step to see how it actualy affect necro survability , to start with “Make Self Heal, regeneration and Siphoned heals (blood magic/signets) pass trought DS” is safer i think.)

I agree Puting all healing factors into BM could be build limiting , I still find Unholy Sanctuary having a better place into BM (especialy with the changes). I’ll try to find a solution for the Parasitic contagion. ( I was thinkig of putting a sustain line into death GM)

I don’t Think the Terror Trait fits into the SR lines to be honest , Terror Build rely on the decreased CD of Doom from path of midnight and if you put terror into SR it will just benefit to much from lingering curse (especialy if it remains 100% with 30% it could be fine (like with the actual dhumfire build.)). ==> I’ll think about it.

Ty btw i just saw they have put ICD on weakening Shroud.

Abimes.9726:

It could become total , but i think that should be given step by step

Full healing through DS should’ve been possible since the game was released.
Any limitation like “only vamp traits” or “only regeneration” does not only make no sense, but a step by step approach will just take another 2.5 years to get us where we should’ve been a long time ago.

Abimes.9726:

I don’t Think the Terror Trait fits into the SR lines to be honest , Terror Build rely on the decreased CD of Doom from path of midnight and if you put terror into SR it will just benefit to much from lingering curse (especialy if it remains 100% with 30% it could be fine (like with the actual dhumfire build.)).

I never said Terror should be in Soul Reaping.
And in case this wasn’t clear, by “Curses grandmaster disaster” I meant the absence of a power trait and the fact that Lingering Curse has this absolutely rediculous duration buff on it.
So yeah, Terror should be moved to gm minor in Curses and this would of course not be an issue because Lingering Curse would lose the +100% duration buff (30% would be reasonable if the base modification remains) that would only end up breaking the balance of every other condition trait and skill.

I know healing throug DS should have been base since realease, but i don’t know if they actualy can do it (coding limitations.) and starting with self heals looks better than nothing to me. (we asked for healing through DS since nearly realease.). I also have a lot of necros telling me having the full heal through DS could possibly be to strong. (If they can beta test it on the servers that would be nice.)

I’m not sure i understood the thing about terror above. globaly you’d see terror merge with terror master take it’s place in SR or behing moved into GM minor curse ?

Isn’t it better to put Terror/ Terror Master ( Fear does damage and longuer fears 25%(we get 30% from lingering curse)). into master over the reaper’s precision and put Reaper P into Gm minor with the 2% condi/precision thing ? (I think Terror probably is to strong to be a minor trait.)

Abimes.9726:

I also have a lot of necros telling me having the full heal through DS could possibly be to strong.

It really wouldn’t. On the contrary, in addition to healing through DS necros need several buffs to survivability to get even close to the sustain of other classes.

Abimes.9726:

Yeah I can see it move to the Gm minor slot and put the Parasitic back to it’s place , with the changes i gave to lingering curse.
I’m not sure i understood the thing about terror above. globaly you’d see terror merge with terror master take it’s place in SR or behing moved into GM minor curse ?

Isn’t it better to put terror into master over the reaper’s precision and put Reaper P into Gm with the 2% condi/precision thing ? (I think Terror probably is to strong to be a minor trait.)

Alright, look at it this way, the biggest problems in Curses are

1. that you have no grandmaster power trait
2. that 2/3 condi traits basically fill the same roll: more damage. LC + Terror, and one of them vastly overshadows the other.
3. Reaper’s Precision is just a waste of space.
4. Target the Weak + increased base stats is only as good as the current 300 precision you get from 6 pts in Curses if your target has 5 conditions on them.

Now, how would you improve this situation?
First of all, Terror is not a strong trait, it really isn’t. Neither is a 2% crit chance buff for every condition on your target. Also, if you look at some of the merged or baseline-to-be traits of other classes there is absolutely no reason why Terror shouldn’t become a merged minor trait or even baseline to the necro class entirely.

Then you have to think about what traits certain builds should be able to combine. You want power builds to have Banshee’s Wail in master and another real power trait in grandmaster, you want condi builds to pick Path of Corruption and either a defensive (PC) or offensive (LC) trait in gm. So Terror is really the least problematic one to move without destroying any builds while also retaining a somewhat neutral option (if combined with Target the Weak) for both condi and power builds in the minor trait slot.

Now, the suggestion I made about Master of Terror getting the extra damage part:
Master of Terror in Soul Reaping is never going to be picked if the specializations stay as they are. First of all, Terror would never be picked over the blatantly overpowered Lingering Curse, and therefore neither would MoT. But let’s just for a moment assume that someone doesn’t wan’t LC and picked Terror instead. Still, they would never go for MoT if they could get Vital Persistance or Spectral Mastery instead.
That is why I made the suggestion that Terror should be split in two parts:
1. fear deals damage,
2. Terror deals additional damage if the target is afflicted with another condition.
Part 1 would merge with the 2% crit chance per condition into the Curses gm minor trait “Terror”. And Part 2 would be merged with Master of Terror in Soul Reaping.
This way you would get a weaker version of Terror in Curses “for free” and still get to have a more meaningful choice for the grandmaster slot between offense and defense: Lingering Curse vs Parasitic Contagion.
Meanwhile Master of Terror in Soul Reaping would be a viable alternative to the other traits in that tier because it can buff the damage of Terror and increase fear duration by a meaningful amount if Lingering Curse was nerfed to not instantly max out everything.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. The only problem with that is that master of terror wouldn’t do anything if you weren’t in curses. This leaves two options. One is to make the damage baseline, and integrate the extra damage into master of terror, thus removing terror entirely. The other is to make terror the GM minor (merged with crit chance or remove the crit chance and make it the gm), and buff master of terror (with for instance, a trait that made interrupts lower cooldowns on fear skills or something).

I’m going to keep spamming the solution to the clunkiness of Necromancers.

Psalm to Necro Internal Synergy:

1. Healing goes through deathshroud.
2. 6-10 useable in deathshroud.
3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

Malchior.1928:

I’m going to keep spamming the solution to the clunkiness of Necromancers.

Psalm to Necro Internal Synergy:

1. Healing goes through deathshroud.
2. 6-10 useable in deathshroud.
3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

Still no answer to being focus-fired or team support.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Malchior.1928:

I’m going to keep spamming the solution to the clunkiness of Necromancers.

Psalm to Necro Internal Synergy:

1. Healing goes through deathshroud.
2. 6-10 useable in deathshroud.
3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

Still no answer to being focus-fired or team support.

Add “take a max of X damage per second in ds” or “get x% of damage resistance per enemy in 1200 range (max of 5) while in DS” to that list.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Malchior.1928:

I’m going to keep spamming the solution to the clunkiness of Necromancers.

Psalm to Necro Internal Synergy:

1. Healing goes through deathshroud.
2. 6-10 useable in deathshroud.
3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

Still no answer to being focus-fired or team support.

I am currently number crunching the max sustain in a 2v5 setting for the necro assuming healing in ds and utilities as well. I plan on posting my findings soon.

As for team support. We can’t even support ourselves. I’m focusing on self sustain before talking groups. Im sure our elite spec will bring more group support with shouts so I’ll leave the support to some other self righteous necro.

zapv.8051:

The only problem with that is that master of terror wouldn’t do anything if you weren’t in curses.

It would still extend your fear durations and you’d get the merged Fear of Death trait.
Also, I don’t really see the synnergy with a different trait as a problem. Sometimes some traits just aren’t an option depending on your build, like you wouldn’t pick minion traits if you aren’t using minions.
Generally I don’t see any problem with Terror keeping its full strength as a minor trait, it’s really not that much in the first place, but the point of a partial shift to MoT would be to make it a viable alternative to Spectral Mastery and Vital Persistance if you have Curses, if you don’t have Curses then you simply won’t choose between 3 traits but just 2 traits.

Malchior.1928:

3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

I think “adjust as needed” is the key part here ;P
And tbh I’d rather have new skills in DS instead of having access to our regular ones.

@ Malchior :

These are already in Death Shroud fixing :

Death Shroud Improvements

° Make Heal pass trought DS.
° Allow Using Utulities whyle in Death Shroud.
° Use F1 whyle stomping / Res doesn’t interupt stomps
° Make Lifeforce regen / degen to a certain % of Lifeforce out of combat.

Please Give your feed back , before Necromancer rappot is sent to devs, Ty

Deaths Embrace – lower the ICD.
Siphoned Power – in addition to whats already been said. Buff the might duration slightly.
New Death Magic Grandmaster – Reflect projectiles for 2 seconds when entering DS.
New Blood Magic Master – Condition transfer on DS skills.
Combine Unyielding blast and Reapers Might.
Make Life Blast a projectile finisher (baseline).
New Blood Magic Grandmaster – Give vigor on hit. 5 second duration, 5 sec ICD. (weak for a grandmaster i know but we need a source for vigor)

Vampiric signet – Change the passive to proc on hit with either high numbers and 1 sec ICD or low numbers and no ICD. Remove the ICD from the active and buff the siphon stacks slightly.

spoj.9672:

Deaths Embrace – lower the ICD.

What icd do you have in mind here? Just a little lower or enough to maintain 10 stacks with a some extra condi duration..?

spoj.9672:

Siphoned Power – in addition to whats already been said. Buff the might duration slightly.

Same question as above, how high do you want this trait to stack by itself?
And how would this be influenced if you had to account for runes, sigils, food buffs or if there was a Curses grandmaster trait that provided some might as well?

spoj.9672:

Make Life Blast a projectile finisher (baseline).

So we can get some extra healing with Life Steal combos through wells! …oh wait :/

On a side note, I think Reaper’s Touch could be made a 100% projectile finisher.

Well the thing with deaths embrace. Is in PvE against bosses its duration is halved. I would personally prefer it to be chance on proc and lower ICD. Otherwise it may aswell be changed to +10% damage under 33% hp. You could argue its slightly better because vuln helps teammates aswell. But in PvE vuln is going to be capped and in PvP a flat boost is going to have almost the exact same effect. I could accept it as it is though. Its certainly better than the old spite master minor.

Siphoned power i feel should be 10 second might if its 1 stack of might on a 1 second ICD. That means the maximum you can get is 10 stacks with no boon duration. If its going to keep its 5 second duration then I feel it should have no ICD (same as forceful greatsword). Forceful greatsword has the advantage of 3 target cleave, works at all health thresholds, rapid multi hitting channel and bonus effects. We would only be able to cap might with this trait when well bursting with locust swarm and dagger on multiple targets. And it would only be brief and only on enemies below 50% health.

I think removing the ICD on siphoned is better , because you actively have to stack it up (make a burst grant more Power than just spaming Lifeblast.). 10 stacks in pvp is a lot basicaly with strenght runes and 1 might sigil you possibly could get 16 might just with that minor trait.

I’ll change that it feels ok for me. (numbers can always be looked at after )

Ok, so you don’t know me, that makes me a worthless contributor and that makes me sad. Also, what makes me sad are these class design simulators. Provide feedback and suggestions, sure, but don’t just try to design the entire class. Leave that to the real developers.
I often disagree with suggestions of others, and am influenced by contructive arguments of others still. However, jabering on about it, I think is pointless.

an example: Terrormancers, The current suggestion is to have Master of Terror with Terror. I think this is a bad idea. If you took this merged trait, I can’t think if any synergies or build options that wouldn’t be the 1 build you will take that for.
I might be wrong and can’t see it, but what I’ve read doesn’t explain it.

However, If you have it like it is, there are options for other builds. Numbers can change to modify the potency of it.

But on the other hand, I too am not fond of the Terror trait where it is. It’s a direct damage trait in the Curses line. I imagine the Curses line to be more condition related.
Maybe scale damage based on number of conditions? or put Mater of Terror there and have its fear length based on number of conditions?

In my opinion, this creates counter play and tactical thinking during play. Make your oponents want to remove the conditions, maybe, you wait for them to blow their condi removal skills by fainting a terrormancer like attack.
Now, your oponents need to think about conditions applied and spend more time dealing with utility actions and less time with straight up DPS, maybe also bring a condition manipulator of their own, a class not speced for DPS but to counter the pressure…

Play and counter play.

Things may need to move, but that’s up to the developers. But then again, maybe my opinion that the curses line is more condition realted isn’t the developers opinion?

You get the idea. Make the suggestions but leave the developing to ArenaNet, that are awsome at it.

Have fun.

(also, Furious Demise is weird in the curses line as I see it as a condition focus line)

Pulsicle.3192:

Ok, so you don’t know me, that makes me a worthless contributor and that makes me sad.

As long as your post is well argued it has value to the discussion.

Pulsicle.3192:

I too am not fond of the Terror trait where it is. It’s a direct damage trait in the Curses line.

The damage of Terror scales with condition damage.

Pulsicle.3192:

Furious Demise is weird in the curses line as I see it as a condition focus line

But it currently gives precision as well and it provides synnergy with Barbed Precision. Also, how is Furious Demise different than the proposed change to Target the Weak?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Malchior.1928:

I’m going to keep spamming the solution to the clunkiness of Necromancers.

Psalm to Necro Internal Synergy:

1. Healing goes through deathshroud.
2. 6-10 useable in deathshroud.
3. Adjust as needed.

SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING. TRY ME.

Still no answer to being focus-fired or team support.

I don’t think this is necessarily true. If you detect focus fire and then go into DS, normally you lose your utilities and heal. Suddenly you don’t. What if you could get a Spectral Wall down while you are absorbing hits into your LF? What if Spectral Armor refreshes while in DS and you can suddenly use it, giving yourself protection and a source of floating LF while taking those hits? What if you could use the other half of Spectral Walk and return to a location while in DS without having to exit? What if you could get your health back via healing instead of having to drop DS and start taking hits on your life just to try to heal?

You suddenly have time to use things while in your damage absorption form that you otherwise couldn’t unless you planned ahead or risked the time it takes to drop a well, etc. Should I really be punished so harshly for forgetting to use a utility before going into DS, potentially serving as the difference between living and dying?

Heck, if you have FitG, suddenly you could pop DS to get a heal off against daze/interrupt spam, because you could heal in DS.

The “SOLVES LITERALLY EVERYTHING” I think might be overstated, but I think it swings a door wide open to possibilities.

And typically the counter to focus fire is peeling. Just because other classes can sneak/port away doesn’t mean cooperation should be discounted or ignored.

@ Pulsicle :

we arent jabbering , we realy have disscused this thread , i have like 80 pm or so and it took nearly a weak to put this up.

It never was designed to be THE TRAIT PAGE , but more a line to folow.

Death Shroud Improvements

° Make Heal pass through DS.

I think this a very needed change to bring som sustain to the profession. We have many healing traits (Full Of Life, Mark Of Evasion, Full Of Life, Vampiric, Vampiric Rituals, Vampiric Master) and abilities (mark of blood, Reapers Touch) that are negated by not being able to get healed in death shroud. One of our trait lines gets punished for this and is therefore seen as one of our worst.

° Allow Using Utilities while in Death Shroud.

I like this idea – the reason why is I think it would bring som needed utility and again sustain. We would be able to use life force generating utilities such as spectral armour, spectral walk, well of corruption. Maybe some of them would need a tone down if activated in death shroud. Another totally different idea could be to make a new set of utilities that can only be used while in ds? Just throwing it out there!

° Use F1 while stomping / Res doesn’t interrupt stomps

This just needs to be done! No reason to why it shouldn’t. Other professions gets to use their utilities/profession mechanics while stomping/resurrection and i dont see why the necromancer should not.

° Make Lifeforce regeneration/degeneration to a certain % of Lifeforce out of combat.

Good idea! I balanced threshold would need to be made. A big problem in PVP right now is the inability to use death shroud in the beginning of a match, which makes us vulnerable against attacks from professions with good mobility especially thief. Death shroud is such a big part of the necromancer and not being able to use it just makes us an easy kill. A necromancer without lf is not a necromancer!!

° Make Soul marks Baseline. (reduce regeneration on it and make it scale/target.)

Yes! We need more ways of generating life force without traiting for it

° Make Life Blast Pierce and be a projectile finisher 100%

It would be a nice quality of life change… Why not make it add vulnerability as well and make a new adept trait in soul reaping instead of unyielding blast? The new trait could be something like this: Reduce the cast time of life blast by X% or life blast removes a condition on hit (only applies on the first target hit).

I will comment on the trait lines later when i get home.

djooceboxblast.9876:

° Use F1 while stomping / Res doesn’t interrupt stomps

This just needs to be done! No reason to why it shouldn’t. Other professions gets to use their utilities/profession mechanics while stomping/resurrection and i dont see why the necromancer should not.

Strangely enough, we had in issue once that would cancel rezzing or stomping if our life force was emptied by either damage or natural degeneration. That was fixed because apparently Anet considered this to be a bug. However, by implication that means that pressing F1 for going into or leaving Death Shroud is actually supposed to cancel the interaction! And that makes this the only case in the entire game of an instant cast ability that behaves this way.
First of all, why? Seriously, can anyone come up with any reasonable explanation for this?
Weapon swap will also cancel interactions (although I’m not sure what the point here is either), but DS is not a weapon swap, it doesn’t trigger swap sigils and Life Blast actually interacts with the weapon strength of the weapon you’re holding.
We also know that DS being a transformation can’t be the reason because you can Plague-stomp or be turned into a moa during rezzes or stomps without canceling the interaction.
So really, Death Shroud fell into some weird exception of the exception crack again, which isn’t just unfair but (again) a testament to how Anet discriminates against the necromancer.

djooceboxblast.9876:

Death Shroud Improvements

Pretty much every above suggestion is widely agreed on to be desirable.

Regarding healing in Death Shroud… I’m not sure. I think that if they allowed us to use our utilities in Death Shroud, opening the possibility to use Wurm port or a condi cleanse from inside DS, it would be enough to increase our survivability to an acceptable level at the same time making DS more appealing and not overbuffing the sustainability.

I can guarantee that with both utilities and healing inside DS, there is a possibility of making an unkillable DS necro that enters DS at 10k hp, then gets cleave-healed by shoutbows/eles/guards while generating excessive amounts of life force (Locust Swarm, Spectrals) that leads the necro to healing himself back up immediatelly after leaving the DS.

djooceboxblast.9876:

° Allow Using Utilities while in Death Shroud.

I like this idea – the reason why is I think it would bring som needed utility and again sustain. We would be able to use life force generating utilities such as spectral armour, spectral walk, well of corruption. Maybe some of them would need a tone down if activated in death shroud. Another totally different idea could be to make a new set of utilities that can only be used while in ds? Just throwing it out there!

I actually had the same thought once, a new set of skills like spectrals or curruptions that are locked outside but are available inside DS. And I’d definitely be in favor of adding skills rather than just unlocking the ones we already have, in that sense I’d actually prefer the addition of entirely new Shroud skills.

Or here’s another idea, how about an adaptation of the engi’s toolbelt, every utility skill could get a counterpart in Death Shroud?
Obviously they would share one cooldown so necros don’t get twice as many utility skills, but it would be a way to solve issues like signet passives not working in DS and to expand DS with new skills at the same time.

leman.7682:

I can guarantee that with both utilities and healing inside DS, there is a possibility of making an unkillable DS necro that enters DS at 10k hp, then gets cleave-healed by shoutbows/eles/guards while generating excessive amounts of life force (Locust Swarm, Spectrals) that leads the necro to healing himself back up immediatelly after leaving the DS.

I’m inclined to agree, but it really isn’t that different from activating Swarm and Spec Armor before going into DS and then getting healed by allies (if it was possible).
Also, what you described is really more of an outlier scenario than your regular team fight. If your team is really that coordinated I’d say that necro deserves to stay alive for a little longer.
Besides, all other classes can use their defensive mechanics while using their skills and getting healed by themselves and allies. So usually the counter argument to one of those best-case-scenario-immortal-necro-thingys is: other classes would do even better.

flow.6043:

djooceboxblast.9876:

° Allow Using Utilities while in Death Shroud.

I like this idea – the reason why is I think it would bring som needed utility and again sustain. We would be able to use life force generating utilities such as spectral armour, spectral walk, well of corruption. Maybe some of them would need a tone down if activated in death shroud. Another totally different idea could be to make a new set of utilities that can only be used while in ds? Just throwing it out there!

I actually had the same thought once, a new set of skills like spectrals or curruptions that are locked outside but are available inside DS. And I’d definitely be in favor of adding skills rather than just unlocking the ones we already have, in that sense I’d actually prefer the addition of entirely new Shroud skills.

Or here’s another idea, how about an adaptation of the engi’s toolbelt, every utility skill could get a counterpart in Death Shroud?
Obviously they would share one cooldown so necros don’t get twice as many utility skills, but it would be a way to solve issues like signet passives not working in DS and to expand DS with new skills at the same time.

I like your suggestion with the counterpart to utils in death shroud! Making them share cd’s would definitely not make it unbalanced and you would have to choose between one of two options depending on the situation.

To give an example – Spectral armor:
Outside ds: When activated gives you life force when hit
Inside ds: When activated gives you hp when hit

The death shroud utilities could also be based around using life force.. Using life force for a defensive/offensive purpose.

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

Wells should have their durations and cool time lowered.

Unholy sanctuary should be %base+healing power scaling.

Life blast needs to be winder or bounce instead of pierce so unyielding blast becomes more useful.

Sigmoid.7082:

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

Will not happen! They would have to balance ds traits and i do not think the cd is a problem

Wells should have their durations and cool time lowered.
Wells are fine as they are apart from WoD and WoB! Well of darkness could use a buff even though it does get some buffs through traits in hot (Can apply vulnerability and chill through chilling darkness and bitter chill). Well of bloods cd is way too long compared to the effectiveness of the heal.

Unholy sanctuary should be %base+healing power scaling.
If healing through death shroud doesnt become baseline then Unholy sanctuary should be changed to do this.

Life blast needs to be winder or bounce instead of pierce so unyielding blast becomes more useful.
Life blast is fine as is.. Could use a reduction in aftercast

djooceboxblast.9876:

Sigmoid.7082:

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

Will not happen! They would have to balance ds traits and i do not think the cd is a problem

Wells should have their durations and cool time lowered.
Wells are fine as they are apart from WoD and WoB! Well of darkness could use a buff even though it does get some buffs through traits in hot (Can apply vulnerability and chill through chilling darkness and bitter chill). Well of bloods cd is way too long compared to the effectiveness of the heal.

Unholy sanctuary should be %base+healing power scaling.
If healing through death shroud doesnt become baseline then Unholy sanctuary should be changed to do this.

Life blast needs to be winder or bounce instead of pierce so unyielding blast becomes more useful.
Life blast is fine as is.. Could use a reduction in aftercast

Fair enough.

True it does get a buff but I do feel they would benefit from being able to be used more. Maybe even having their radius increased via traits. Marks, traps, and symbols all do.

Well at least the same widow of deflecting shot. Since sometimes even if targets are stacked if one is too tall it will center aim that one and miss all the others.

Sigmoid.7082:

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

You’ve identified a very serious problem here. But the right approach to solving it isn’t to change Death Shroud but to remove the icds of the traits.

Originally Weakening Shroud was the full Enfeebling Blood skill but it had a 15 second cd.
1.5 years ago Anet did some restucturing of how well necros should be able to regen life force while also trying to reduce condition pressure of the class (Dhuumfire builds were still a thing back then). They also decided that the weakness duration on Weakening Shroud was too strong and therefore the cd should be raised to match the weapon skill. However, the cummunity argued (devs were actually posting here on the necro forum) that the full cd of Enfeebling Blood would be counterproductive in two ways: 1. when it’s off cd the condi pressure is exactly the same, 2. when we need weakness to defend ourselves in DS we wouldn’t always get it. As it turned out they acutally listened to the players and made the skill weaker instead of adding a coodlown.
Skip forward until today and we’re in the exact same situation, not just with Weakening Shroud but also with Spiteful Spirit. And this was one of the things in the preview that had me face-palming the hardest. A trait that is gated by two different overlapping cooldowns and the regeneration of life force, because “this way there’s synnergy with the traited weapon cd reduction”. I… can’t… even…! -_-
And as a cherry on top, Mark of Evasion still didn’t get the original Mark of Blood but remains with that weaker version with almost twice the cooldown.
Long story short, this is a perfect example to show that non of the devs main a necro.

@flow: Regarding the example you mentioned with Weakning Shroud, don’t people complain about how it’s too weak now with the short duration Weakness/Bleeds? I know ANet listened to feedback before about it, but I thought there was still robble robble, with people thinking it was useless.

That was because people were stuck with the nerf mentality due its weakness duration being reduced. But it having no ICD was much more beneficial and a buff in many other senses without making the individual proc too strong.

Most of us didn’t mind that the effect got reduced, but the weakness got reduced too much. It got balanced around +100% Weakness duration and Near to Death flashing death shroud.

Which makes for a horrid build and playstyle, but that’s how they justified it. 3 seconds of Weakness would have made most Necros happy, and the loss of bleeds was really not an issue for most of us.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Most of us didn’t mind that the effect got reduced, but the weakness got reduced too much. It got balanced around +100% Weakness duration and Near to Death flashing death shroud.

Which makes for a horrid build and playstyle, but that’s how they justified it. 3 seconds of Weakness would have made most Necros happy, and the loss of bleeds was really not an issue for most of us.

That makes sense, and brings us back to the “what if” balancing techniques that define the class’s changes, it seems.

And if someone successfully kept Weakness up 100% of the time by flashing DS and made it work, what with all of the condi clear and the delay between using DS and the Enfeebling Blood effect dropping, more power to that person, I say!

Here’s what they said back then (Nov 2013)

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

So they actually calculated this with +50% condition duration for sPvP, which back then could be done by mixing rune sets and 6 points in Spite.

In case you’re wondering, we actually did point out that completely giving up Death Shroud for some aoe weakness makes no sense, but still they gave us 2 seconds.

A small victory nevertheless considering the full 25 sec icd would’ve been much worse.

Was that particular change to Enfeebling Shroud also around the time that they changed how Weakness worked? (June 2013) It used to not reduce damage from critical hits, but when they changed it to do so they reduced a lot of weakness duration across all professions.

Softspoken.2410:

Was that particular change to Enfeebling Shroud also around the time that they changed how Weakness worked? (June 2013)

See above. It was about 2 weeks before a balance patch that went live in early december 2013.

flow.6043:

Softspoken.2410:

Was that particular change to Enfeebling Shroud also around the time that they changed how Weakness worked? (June 2013)

See above. It was about 2 weeks before a balance patch that went live in early december 2013.

I completely missed your post somehow, whoops. In any case, it seems the change to no ICD wasn’t closely related to the functionality change of weakness. AoE weakness is kind of strong, but it’s frustrating how much the notion of shroud dancing can hold back a trait like that, when shroud dancing comes with its own problems.