Guild Wars 2

I’m bored at work and thoughts of my necro sprung to mind. In particular, I was wondering how we could solve the conundrum of damage vs survivability in relation to Death Shroud. Lightbulb moment: how about the following additional traits?

1. New Spite Grandmaster trait that increased all direct damage by X% and reduced DS cooldown/effectiveness by Y%

2. New Curses Grandmaster trait that increased all condition damage by X% and reduced DS cooldown/effectiveness by Y%

People could then take 30/30 Spite/Curses and have a severely kittened DS, or just go 30 in either Spite or Curses for a slightly less kittened version. Alternatively, people could choose neither of those traits. For this to work, maybe the base efficacy of DS could be increased slightly so that people who do not choose either of the above suggested traits still feel like they are getting something out of DS (which I feel they currently do not).

I know people think that the skills themselves are the problem with DS, but this might be one way to offset that perceived issue and give people access to solid DD, CondD or Hybrid builds without pigeonholing anyone into any one particular direction.

What do people think? Would this work? If so, what kind of increase in damage would be realistic? How would you reduce DS effectiveness – would you increase the cooldown, increase the natural rate of decay or reduce the total LF pool?

Or is this just a bandaid for a broken mechanic? Tell me your thoughts!

Edit: typo.

And exactly why would it be necessary to do this? Especially considering that DS isnt actually that great of a survival tool anyways with the ridiculous amounts of damage being dealt by all the other classes.e

Or we could just redesign Life Force/DS somewhat to make it not only more interesting/fun and bet you dump Life Force (aka survivability) for burst.

I hate how the developers seems to think the DS is OP… yes it’s a bit of extra health, but unless you go 30SR, we just get knocked around in it = x=

If you get stunned in DS, you better hope it’s not a theif or warrior on your kitten because they blow through DS in less than a second while you are CCed.