Guild Wars 2

Still good in WvW. In large scale fights life force refills quite fast, so it’s fine “oh kitten” button to absorb lots of hits.

Feeling squishy in small fights. Less than 20% life force almost useless against opponents with high burst damage. Sometimes I don’t even have time to trigger DS skills.

Still having random skill delay after exiting DS http://youtu.be/tt-vOnmflJ8

Vampiric trait ignores DS attacks, wonder why.

I’ve experienced this delay as well and its gotten me killed a few times. My skills (6 and onward) don’t show up and are inaccessible for a few seconds meaning I can’t heal or pop a cooldown.

Post your video on the bug list up top on our sticky. That issue where our heal and utilities are locked out for a second or two after leaving DS has been around for an annoying amount of time and the sooner it’s fixed the better.

I am not a fan of how if we take spike damage in DS and it drains, it will spill over to our health. Big nerf since in WvW you can take a LOT of spike damage in a short amount of time and DS was our only salvation from being insta killed by it all. At least until it drained, then we died anyway due to no staying power.

As for new DS feedback, I think the fix where we were taking more damage than intended was pretty great. Definitely feels like our DS can tank a lot more damage than before, I just wonder as to what the specifics of that bug were.

Vampiric and all siphons should work for “healing” us while in DS, but any form of Health healing while in DS seems to be a slippery slope the dev’s dont want to cross into.

ReMortis.4287:

Big nerf since in WvW you can take a LOT of spike damage in a short amount of time and DS was our only salvation from being insta killed by it all.

No it really isn’t a big nerf at all actually.

Say you were taking damage in this sequence

3200
2400
3600
3800
1900
3000
2400
2800 —→ DeathShroud ends and this damage is mitigated
3200
2400
3600
3800

You can mitigate one of those numbers fully before the change.

Taking less damage in DeathShroud now mitigates FAR MORE damage than mitigating 1 of those damage numbers.

Now after the change:

2200
1400
2600
2800
900
2000
1400
1800
DeathShroud ends
3200
2400
3600
3800

Damage numbers aren’t perfect but you see my point. Necros really do take A LOT LESS damage now in Deathshroud. Couple this with using Spectral Armor during that burst and you have a VERY buffed deathshroud. This is why I don’t understand any of the complaints about these deathshroud changes.

I can see in PvE where you can get hit by a 22,000 damage hit. Sure old deathshroud helps better there. But no one should ever be getting hit by something that much because dodges exist for these things.

Tenderly.7019:

ReMortis.4287:

Big nerf since in WvW you can take a LOT of spike damage in a short amount of time and DS was our only salvation from being insta killed by it all.

No it really isn’t a big nerf at all actually.

Say you were taking damage in this sequence

3200
2400
3600
3800
1900
3000
2400
2800 —-> DeathShroud ends and this damage is mitigated
3200
2400
3600
3800

You can mitigate one of those numbers fully before the change.

Taking less damage in DeathShroud now mitigates FAR MORE damage than mitigating 1 of those damage numbers.

Now after the change:

2200
1400
2600
2800
900
2000
1400
1800
DeathShroud ends
3200
2400
3600
3800

Damage numbers aren’t perfect but you see my point. Necros really do take A LOT LESS damage now in Deathshroud. Couple this with using Spectral Armor during that burst and you have a VERY buffed deathshroud. This is why I don’t understand any of the complaints about these deathshroud changes.

I can see in PvE where you can get hit by a 22,000 damage hit. Sure old deathshroud helps better there. But no one should ever be getting hit by something that much because dodges exist for these things.

For some Necros, primarily powermancers the use of Death Shroud was not always at full health.

I for one might hit death shroud right after I build up vulnerability on my enemy and then blast him using the DS 1 skill until about 50% of my Life Force is gone as this is a very effective way to land good damage.

Now with only 50% Life force I would need to regenerate that. If during this point in time I take damage (which I most certainly do) I would build up enough to hit DS again for damage. In a perfect world my enemy is dead or close to it. In reality this does not always happen.

Many times I have used my heal to cleanse whatever conditions I have, my health could be anywhere from 3k up, but usually around the 5k mark because Necros do not have any way to prevent damage other than to avoid it entirely. No blocks just evade.

Most times if I hit Death Shroud at 3k health and have less than 50% Life Force, even less than say 10%, I used to be able to prevent heavy spike damage or even evade and buy time for my heal to come off cool down. Worst case scenario would be Death Shroud ends and I hit my heal. Now is different. If I am at 10% with 3k health, a warrior eviscerate at 10k damage will bust out my Life force and most likely eat that remaining 3k health. I am downed and dead.

When you play you character this way for 11 months or so it is not as simple as “just do….” to change. It is habit and trained play style for some people.

Imagine how thieves would react if Anet suddenly made stealth as detectable within 200 radius. This forum would crash from all the traffic.

While the two are not a direct comparison of related skills they are both primary survival tools that the players have heavily adapted to. A change of this type after such a long time is very hard to just accept.

The additional effective HP of Death Shroud is a pleasant treat, but it is not enough to make people ignore what was once a very effective faux blocking ability that I have practiced using for so long.

chefdiablo.6791:

it is not enough to make people ignore what was once a very effective faux blocking ability that I have practiced using for so long.

Just quoting the conclusion since it’s true, any playstyle change is always hard but that goes along with anything that changes in the game, it’s an MMO and should be expected.

My point is that it’s not a big of a change as many are claiming it to be. In an ideal world, a big hit like an eviscerate should never hit regardless, and if it does during the last 10% of lifeforce remaining, it’s not as big of a deal, that 10% was essentially 20% before the changes.

I’m not saying the faux blocking of the last 10% of lifeforce isn’t a nerf, it just isn’t that big of a deal.

I’m personally very baffled by Necro players who before I thought were very objective and thought-provoking to be complaining about something as trivial as this change.

The amount of buffs received by Necro in the last two patches far outweighs any nerf by an immeasurable amount. And this last patch was an overall huge buff in my opinion.

I dunno, I relied upon that faux block countless times in my PvE and WvW experience. Now, that tactic just doesn’t work, but it is extremely difficult to adapt for what is now a useless reflex.

Tenderly.7019:

chefdiablo.6791:

it is not enough to make people ignore what was once a very effective faux blocking ability that I have practiced using for so long.

Just quoting the conclusion since it’s true, any playstyle change is always hard but that goes along with anything that changes in the game, it’s an MMO and should be expected.

My point is that it’s not a big of a change as many are claiming it to be. In an ideal world, a big hit like an eviscerate should never hit regardless, and if it does during the last 10% of lifeforce remaining, it’s not as big of a deal, that 10% was essentially 20% before the changes.

I’m not saying the faux blocking of the last 10% of lifeforce isn’t a nerf, it just isn’t that big of a deal.

I’m personally very baffled by Necro players who before I thought were very objective and thought-provoking to be complaining about something as trivial as this change.

The amount of buffs received by Necro in the last two patches far outweighs any nerf by an immeasurable amount. And this last patch was an overall huge buff in my opinion.

For me atleast it’s been rather notable in wvw, where I’ve often sponged 9k evis’s and all that jazz while on only a few thousand hp, and 10-30% LF. Already I’ve had a few times where I’ve instinctively tried to do the same thing only to be somewhat surprised as it takes me down anyway. Will take a little bit for the muscle memory to get used to the changes, if nothing else.

Tenderly.7019:

The amount of buffs received by Necro in the last two patches far outweighs any nerf by an immeasurable amount. And this last patch was an overall huge buff in my opinion.

So adding a completely irrelevant condition to a class thus buffing condition damage (which is capped btw – has a limit, while direct damage does not) is considered to be such a boost that anything could happen, it still wouldn’t outweigh it? Woah…

as for the damage mitigation:
Let’s not talk about the jumpy thing, I don’t feel like going into it, explained in several posts in other topics (for example here)
But let me talk about damage mitigation in general in DS

Death Shroud itself melts in zerg fights. It did pre-patch, it does now. I don’t care if you’ve fixed a bug and tanks to that we have more effective HP in DS. Extra HP is only extra HP in the end of the day, not a mitigating/evading mechanic like channeled blocks/aegis/invuln./mist form/etc.
The only valid way for a necro to get his own invuln. or at least something close to that was Spectral Armor/Walk combined with DS.
It still heavily limited our skill cap, since we were stuck in Death Shroud, but at least we could maintain our LF pool, which was decent enough. Bear in mind though, that we had no access to any kind of buff/heal/regen. in this form which made it a bad alternative compared to the aforementioned mitigation methods. But still, an alternative…
Now you even took that away with the implemented internal cooldown on Walk/Armor. The maximum amount of Life Force gaining is 48% with Armor (68% if traited for longer duration). That’s without calculating in the damage taken in Death Shroud.

Now, let’s do a little bit of math here…
(I’ll call LF “effective HP” from now on, it pretty much works that way)

Based on this post, I’ll calculate with 50k effective HP in DS assuming the necro has 25k normally, which is an average value.
In this case 48% LF gain (let’s round it up to 50 for the sake of simplicity) means ~25k effective HP. That is ~25k in 6 seconds >> ~4.2k per second.
Now, add natural degeneration (that’s ~2k effective HP if not traited) which makes it only 2.2k effective HP gain per second.
What it means is, that the moment you take more than 2.2k damage per second this kind of effective HP regen. is as good as nothing and you will keep melting since HP -like I said above- is only HP.

This is the very reason why we don’t see many sPvPers/1v1ers complaining and they don’t get how big this nerf really is. While this scenario in sPvP/1o1 is not likely, it happens quite often in WvW/PvE.

And for those who get stuck at the argument that says “DS’s just got recently buffed by fixing the damage bug, it is OP now” I could only give a bitter laugh.
Try it against multiple opponents under focused fire…

Tenderly.7019:

I can see in PvE where you can get hit by a 22,000 damage hit. Sure old deathshroud helps better there. But no one should ever be getting hit by something that much because dodges exist for these things.

Yes, the 2 dodges that you need to wait for 20 seconds, that is not even close to enough if you ever fought against any real boss.

Also since the engine is still kittened, multihit skills (as in puleses that use overlaping waves for damage tick checks, player example being Burning Speed and Whirlwind) can hit a single enemy multiple times if he is moving. So stuff like earthquakes from the MF blue man group cow/charr could instakill, despite being only 2~3k hit (hitting you 8 to 14 times in the same second) or the alpha spikes/dragon teeth that could stack their damage if you went from direct hit into explosion radius as it fell.
So if we dont have Aegis, Shelter, Distortion, Magnetic Shield, Swirling Winds, etc DS was the only option for a necro to survive a second or third wave of these attacks.