Guild Wars 2

I have been thinking about this since BWE1 but as it seemed such a huge flaw in necros design i thought its gonna be changed in first months, but havent heard anything from devs and havent even seen other players talking about it.
So it`s our death shroud, it is so powerful that its much much bigger part of our class than any other class ability out there, we are balanced around it. It is our stun breaker,survibility, cc, mobility, dmg and thats just basic things it gives without traits.
The problem is that we can run out of it, or even not have it in first place. We can die in so many situations just because we have 0 life force when we could have chance in them if we would get in Death Shroud at least for second.
There are different ways to fix this, but imo most simple one would be just letting us have ~10% (or whats the minimum to enter DS) life force at all times (necros prolly must have some life force of their own while their alive). You enter death shroud, if you don`t get more life force, you are kicked out of it after 1 second and you get DS on normal cooldown. 1 second is enough to get off any DS skill.
Jon Peters suggested for us to master Death Shroud cause our class is balanced around it, shouldnt we be able to have it at all times?
So what is your thoughts on this?

the only place I ever get caught without life force is in pvp with a condition build and no spectral skills. so I can kind of see your point, but outside of pvp I wouldn’t benefit from it.

Bull Zooker.1672:

the only place I ever get caught without life force is in pvp with a condition build and no spectral skills. so I can kind of see your point, but outside of pvp I wouldn’t benefit from it.

Very interesting tbh, thats probobly why noone have ever mentioned it, cause noone cares.
Ofcourse i get caught without life force only like once per week but it is still imo a major flaw, why should i cast 4 Necrotic Grasps before engaging in combat just because i didnt kill 2 critters before, or even worse in tPVP when you always start with zero life force.
Its not the biggest issue but probobly one of most ridiculous, theres no reason why necro should die in combat just because he didnt kill some critters or waste some skills before it, and ye imo even 1 second of Death Shroud is life saver.

Our Signet of Undeath passive could instead replace the jagged horror trait. Wouldn’t be lifechanger, but gaining 1% Lifeforce/sec in combat would still be something good and we would get rid of that mandatory useless trait.

I actually posted about it in the pvp forum.

Without spectral skill, you are stuck with 0 life force at the beginning of a game.

A necromancer without lifeforce is starting 2 step behind.

I feel like they should ether make Life force grow over time when out of combat, or add critter in pvp, or make us start with 10-20% life force.

What ever the solution, starting a fight without life force is awful.

Kardiamond.6952:

I actually posted about it in the pvp forum.

Without spectral skill, you are stuck with 0 life force at the beginning of a game.

A necromancer without lifeforce is starting 2 step behind.

I feel like they should ether make Life force grow over time when out of combat, or add critter in pvp, or make us start with 10-20% life force.

What ever the solution, starting a fight without life force is awful.

Only solution I’ve heard is to slot Flesh Wurm. You can use him before a match starts to begin w/ 10% Life Force, but then you’re stuck with him slotted the whole match, so you better like him.

I used to do this long time ago, but I don’t feel like it’s a legit way to be useful at the start of the game. It’s like a mecanism abuse.

Maybe necro could learn to master Genki Dama, using the lifeforce in all living things instead of stealing only from the deads around them. Staying Immobile could make you gain some at a fixed rate.

Kardiamond.6952:

I used to do this long time ago, but I don’t feel like it’s a legit way to be useful at the start of the game. It’s like a mecanism abuse.

You’re playing a Necro. Mechanism abuse is what you gotta do. When 50% of your skills give you a 3% bonus based on 60% of your total health you have to work with what’s there.

Death Shroud. 60% of the time it works every time!

cant agree more with you, leeto.

in most cases its not a big deal, especially in PvE you tend to start every fight with 80+% life force. but starting a fight without any life force on rare occasions and in PvP is a pretty big disadvantage.
i dont think a slow out-of-combat life force generation up to 10-20% wouldnt hurt anyone and certainly wouldnt make the necro too powerful

You mentioned its our stunbreaker. DS doesnt stun break, you can cast it while stunned but you still cant do anything. Would be nice if foot in the grave actually made it a stunbreak aswell as 3 seconds of stability, seeing as we have a lack of decent low cooldown stunbreaks.

spoj.9672:

You mentioned its our stunbreaker. DS doesnt stun break, you can cast it while stunned but you still cant do anything. Would be nice if foot in the grave actually made it a stunbreak aswell as 3 seconds of stability, seeing as we have a lack of decent low cooldown stunbreaks.

Flesh Wurm can be traited down to 32 seconds, which is pretty good for what it does. It does require a modicum of setup, since you have to precast it before you need it. It also has the extra penalty of telegraphing to your opponent that you have a stunbreak off CD (just like the signet). And, lastly, it can be killed.

All in all, it’s a decent option though whether the negatives outweigh the positives is personal preference. Personally, I think it’s one of our strongest skills even if it’s a bit cumbersome to use well. It’s no “Shake it Off,” but it’s decent.

spoj.9672:

You mentioned its our stunbreaker. DS doesnt stun break, you can cast it while stunned but you still cant do anything. Would be nice if foot in the grave actually made it a stunbreak aswell as 3 seconds of stability, seeing as we have a lack of decent low cooldown stunbreaks.

A stun breaker on a 10 second CD that also makes you immune to CC for the next 3 seconds and acts as a second life bar; I can hear the QQing already.

I always bring Flesh Wurm with me to PvP, it lets you get about halfway from mid to back point for decent defense (as long as you are really paying attention), and lets you do objectives in the area while safely being able to make it back to point. It is also on a decent recharge, and gives LF as well as not just breaking stun but getting you all the way out of danger.

Bhawb.7408:

spoj.9672:

You mentioned its our stunbreaker. DS doesnt stun break, you can cast it while stunned but you still cant do anything. Would be nice if foot in the grave actually made it a stunbreak aswell as 3 seconds of stability, seeing as we have a lack of decent low cooldown stunbreaks.

A stun breaker on a 10 second CD that also makes you immune to CC for the next 3 seconds and acts as a second life bar; I can hear the QQing already.

I always bring Flesh Wurm with me to PvP, it lets you get about halfway from mid to back point for decent defense (as long as you are really paying attention), and lets you do objectives in the area while safely being able to make it back to point. It is also on a decent recharge, and gives LF as well as not just breaking stun but getting you all the way out of danger.

To be fair, Immobilize is a CC, and you wouldn’t be immune with a stun break or stability.

how about an F2 skill that that channels building life force at the expense of life or by stacking conditions on you?

this would make it more dangerous to do it in combat but would let us build life force out of combat easier

Panhauramix.2784:

Our Signet of Undeath passive could instead replace the jagged horror trait. Wouldn’t be lifechanger, but gaining 1% Lifeforce/sec in combat would still be something good and we would get rid of that mandatory useless trait.

I think this is an excellent suggestion. Then perhaps change Signet of Undeath’s passive into a health regen per second (with whatever balancing limiters the devs feel are needed).

As for the Death Shroud issue raised by the OP, ArenaNet never giveth without taking away. There would have to be some cost : benefit associated with being able to enter Death Shroud when at 0% Life Force.

My suggestion for balancing this is the necro who has 0% life force can still enter DS by sacrificing health. This accomplishes several things at once:

1) It returns – in a very small way – to the days of the GW1 necro who could sacrifice health to gain a benefit. It opens the door to re-introducing a GW1 class-defining mechanic for the necro that worked and should never have been thrown out in the first place.

2) It maintains that cost : benefit balance I mentioned above. As much as we may secretly wish to gain access to DS even at 0% Life Force with no associated cost, it will never happen. It would be considered OP and unbalanced. So if we’re going to ask for a benefit, we need to come up with a cost. Sacrificing health becomes that cost.

3) It adds depth to the necro by having to make that cost : benefit choice. Facing an enemy, you’re low on health and out of Life Force. Do you sacrifice some of your last remaining health to gain access to DS and hopefully finish off your opponent with a skill or traited effect while in that form? Or do you conserve your hit points and hope you can win the battle without DS?

4) It offers greater opportunity for the necromancer to fill the attrition role ArenaNet had envisioned for this profession by giving us on-demand access to the mechanic which allows us to sustain/survive an encounter.

My pre-emptive counter to some of the potential counter-arguments to this suggestion:

1) What’s the point of sacrificing health to enter DS to absorb an attack? If you’re losing the health from the sacrifice, that’s no different than if you had not made the sacrifice and simply taken the hit to your normal hit point pool.

The answer: “It depends.” It depends on how much health must be sacrificed to gain the Life Force to enter Death Shroud, it depends on how much damage the enemy was going to do to you, and it depends on what you’re using Death Shroud for (sponge to absorb an attack, gaining access to a DS skill, or triggering a trait tied to DS).

For example, if you must sacrifice 500 health to gain the Life Force and the attack would have done 250 damage, it doesn’t make much sense to sacrifice the health. If, on the other hand, the attack would have done 2,000 damage and sent you to defeat, then it makes perfect sense to sacrifice 500 health, enter DS, and absorb the attack.

2) This suggestion is too open to abuse. A Necro could just keep sacrificing health, refill their Life Force to 100%, and then heal up.

This wouldn’t happen in practice as the health sacrifice would only occur when Life Force is at 0%. Anything greater than that – even just 1% Life Force – and the “sacrifice health to gain Life Force” mechanic is not available.

Yes, it would allow a Necromancer to continue to use Death Shroud even in the absence of any other Life Force generation so long as they had health available to sacrifice. However, DS would still be subject to all the limitations it currently has, including the 10 second cooldown (untraited) on leaving the form.

Is this really a bad thing, though? Having more reliable access to our profession-specific mechanic? And with an associated cost of having to sacrifice health to use it? In other words, playing like a necro by making those living-on-the-razor’s-edge-between-life-and-death cost : benefit choices!

(continued)

As for some of the specifics:

1) As mentioned above, sacrificing health to gain Life Force only happens when the Life Force bar is at 0%. It is automatic; there will be no confirmation screen asking, “Do you really want to do this?”

If you kill yourself by sacrificing too much health – either through an accidental key press or because you didn’t think carefully enough about how much health you were sacrificing – tough luck! Nobody said being a necromancer is easy.

2) Currently, a necromancer is prevented from entering DS unless they have a minimum amount of Life Force; I believe it is 10%. So as not to break this current limiter or require re-programming the whole Life Force mechanic, the health sacrifice will give exactly that amount of Life Force needed to reach this limit.

In practice this is what would happen:

- Life Force reaches 0%

- Necromancer presses whatever key they’re using to enter DS.

- Necromancer sacrifices whatever amount of health is settled on as a reasonable balance.

- Life Force bar fills to 10%.

- Carry on with the current mechanics governing Life Force and DS.

3) The amount of health sacrificed would have to be a percentage rather than a flat amount. I had originally considered a flat amount, but what with the down-scaling and up-leveling mechanics in this game, that wouldn’t really work. Furthermore, a flat amount that might represent a decent cost to a necromancer with 20,000 health won’t hurt as much for a necromancer with 30,000+ health.

A percentage isn’t without its own pitfalls. There are so many variables affecting hit points that using a percentage may become difficult to track in the heat of a battle. Is my health really 25,000 or is it 24,000 and currently modified by a consumable? Is my health really 25,000 or is it some amount less than that and being modified by a WvWvW boost? See what I mean. However, when compared to a flat amount, it’s the lesser of two evils.

The question then becomes is the percentage based on total health or current health. I would argue – in the interest of maintaining that cost : benefit paradigm – that the percentage be based on total health. If based on current health, there’s never a risk of the necromancer sacrificing so much health that they may kill themselves. To illustrate (assume a 10% health sacrifice to balance with a 10% Life Force gain):

- Necromancer is at 25,000 health and reaches 0% Life Force.

- Necromancer enters DS and sacrifices 2,500 health to do so.

- Remaining health is 22,500.

- Same Necromancer is at 1,000 health and reaches 0% Life Force.

- Necromancer enters DS and sacrifices 100 health to do so.

- Remaining health is 900.

In this scenario, there’s never a risk that the necromancer is going to kill himself by sacrificing health to enter DS. This breaks the cost : benefit paradigm. Some may argue, “But the cost IS the health sacrifice!”.

My response to that is, “When you can easily heal up that health sacrifice and there’s no risk of dying from it to begin with, then there’s no real cost involved.” The true cost is the risk that you can kill yourself through sacrificing health, keeping track of how much you sacrifice based on your total health, and having to make careful decisions about when to make that sacrifice and when not to. To achieve this, the amount of health sacrificed must be based on a percentage of total health rather than current health.

4) What to do about sacrificing health in excess of your current health? Does the necromancer immediately get sent to the downed state? Do they instead have their health set to 0, but still enter DS, and then get sent to the downed state on exiting DS?

Discuss.

Or they could just not kitten around for once and let you enter DS at 0% for 1 sec

Leeto.1570:

Or they could just not kitten around for once and let you enter DS at 0% for 1 sec

I’d prefer 10% Life Force as it ties in better with our role as an attrition class. One second of DS is not a game changer for an attrition class. However, there’s no way we would ever be given on-demand access to 10% Life Force without some associated cost. Health sacrifice is the cost I came up with.

If LF below 10%, the player should be allowed to sacrifice 10% health for 10% LF. This allows the player to use DS skills.

F2 – Blood is Life……………………………………force

here are some arbitrary numbers to give an idea.

use x% of current HP pool to start channel of 3 seconds for 30% life force over the 3 seconds

or..

start channeling for 3 seconds and apply 3-5 stacks of bleeds for 6 seconds on self and gain 30% life force over the duration of the channel

has good risk vs reward

you can still be interrupted and not get any LF but still lose the health or suffer from the bleeds in the second example

we also have many abilities that would work well with something like this, condition transfer, toughness while channeling, DS stability, wells etc. to reduce the ease of enemy counterplay.

Terrible ideas in the OP. The problem isn’t access to DS, it’s extremely easy to build life force and have it always. The problem is actual HP, once necro is behind in HP their weak life drains as their major healing trait beyond basic heal means that we can never reset our HP to full versus any good opponent that can such as Ele, BM ranger, engie, mesmer that can CC lock us and get a lot of HP back. Thieves that are smart about staying in stealth and avoiding lockdowns can heal up on us too.

Beyond being too weak in the first place, life drains can be blocked, evaded etc. like any other attack so we are putting ourselves at risk of a 2k-8k attack in general anytime we want our tiny tick of heal or a complete waste of time when it gets dodged.

That combined with the worst mobility, evades, and stunbreaks means certain death even though we can stretch our hp out by repeated DS. If fear were a better CC inside DS we might have something but it’s generally just an interrupt.

I’m talking from spvp perspective since that’s mainly what I play. To me if it can’t 1v1 in S, at the core of its gear and build versus equal gear, wrapping it in PVE gear in W3 isn’t going to change things in the end.

Stretching out HP won’t give us much advantage unless we can get ahead of the enemy in HP, which we can’t do. DS is not a very threatening set of moves either so we’re generally just a punching bag when in it, which is a lot. Inside of DS all our life siphon traits don’t even work so our class works against itself in this way. I don’t know of any other class where almost an entire trait line (siphons) is fully negated by use of their special. Any other class can heal inside a true invulnerability mode.

When out of DS, we can build a decent amount of CC, but without real healing access we can chip away at the real attrition classes like boon stacking ele, engie and ranger all day, even with corrupt boon and well of corruption these classes have invulnerabilities to perform a full wipe of conditions and/or strong enough healing to heal to full. (Little iffy in the case of BM ranger but all of them are more survivable than necro builds.)

Between being in a self-cc’d (movement speed is reduced in DS) punching bag mode, and no healing inside DS, those extra ‘bonus hps’ from DS are generally pretty worthless as the enemy is getting near free attacks and only having to dodge or shutdown 1 life transfer and a few life blasts while in this mode and the necro is not gaining any advantage in HP in general. In fact I’d prefer it if DS were harder to get into and more powerful, so seeing a necro in DS would make enemies feel like ‘time to run’ instead of ‘time for free hits’. When you see a thief go into stealth or a ranger camp healing fountain or an engie drop a net turret or a warr stand up in invuln mode, or an ele RTL in and start spamming kds, you have to take notice and change your attack plans. When a necro goes into DS you just turn up the heat on them.

The burst is not good enough to burst like a thief and the conditions are too slow and too easily cleansed. We can give up all survivability and burst about like a 100b warrior with boon breaking on top of that but if one link in the chain is missed we wasted two wells. Condition build can lurk in the background, and pop bad eles with corrupt boon (good ones will mist, heal and start all over again) and spread conditions with a high toughness and low hps due to rabid/carrion and no health trait but as soon as someone wants a corruption build gone, it’s gone because it doesn’t have much survivability from toughness alone.

This class is really only good for being carried by a group or tagging from behind a keep wall. It needs help to play at the level people would like it to play at, which is where you could 1v1 a good ele/mes/engie etc.

Otaking.4675:

Between being in a self-cc’d (movement speed is reduced in DS) punching bag mode, and no healing inside DS, those extra ‘bonus hps’ from DS are generally pretty worthless as the enemy is getting near free attacks and only having to dodge or shutdown 1 life transfer and a few life blasts while in this mode and the necro is not gaining any advantage in HP in general. In fact I’d prefer it if DS were harder to get into and more powerful, so seeing a necro in DS would make enemies feel like ‘time to run’ instead of ‘time for free hits’. When you see a thief go into stealth or a ranger camp healing fountain or an engie drop a net turret or a warr stand up in invuln mode, or an ele RTL in and start spamming kds, you have to take notice and change your attack plans. When a necro goes into DS you just turn up the heat on them.

This class is really only good for being carried by a group or tagging from behind a keep wall. It needs help to play at the level people would like it to play at, which is where you could 1v1 a good ele/mes/engie etc.

all theory crafting aside, this is the sad reality of what happens in practice most of the time.

Otaking.4675:

This class is really only good for being carried by a group or tagging from behind a keep wall.

On the contrary, bunker necros make for great bait. Was roaming around in wvw the other day when my glass thief guildie runs up with a horde of angry invaders on his tail. The thief says “Kys! Take aggro, thanks!” and peaces. Angry horde stops for a few minutes whittling me down. Thief comes back after resetting and executes them. Job complete! ^_^b

On topic:
I think there is a reasonable amount of LF generation available for those who want it, keeping in mind you must wait 5/10 seconds after you get knocked out of 0% LF. If your build does not have access to easy LF generation, then you must resign yourself to not using DS as frequently.

Protip:
Kill rabbits (they’re evil I swear)

It’s certainly odd (being nice, could say bad design) to have a class mechanic that you have to spec for to have it readily available.

There are some builds where you will just flat never generate much life force, outside of things dying and maybe one weapon ability.

You should never have to ‘prepare to have fun’ I think as Anet put it, or get your class ready for combat doing pre-fight tasks like killing random mobs to be fully effective. It’s not as bad, but really reminds me of farming shards in that other game, on my Warlock. Which was an utterly stupid system.

Pendragon.8735:

There are some builds where you will just flat never generate much life force, outside of things dying and maybe one weapon ability.

Yes.
And I don’t mind that at all in pve and wvw because there is always some innocent ambient bunny to drain lf from.
But in pvp -.-
I just don’t get it. Why would you have to start every round with zero lf?
Feels like having one arm tied behind my back. Which of course can lead to a downward spiral, because if you don’t win your first fight because you don’t have any life force then you will start again without any because you didn’t kill anything.

You don’t need to win your first fight, just lead off with a LF generating move (or do one quickly enough).

Bhawb.7408:

You don’t need to win your first fight, just lead off with a LF generating move (or do one quickly enough).

What is this? Sarcasm, joke? Of course you gotta win your first fight. Would be pretty funny if team would send me to take close point and thief shows up and after dying i start dropping excuse that it was my first fight.

Leeto.1570:

Bhawb.7408:

You don’t need to win your first fight, just lead off with a LF generating move (or do one quickly enough).

What is this? Sarcasm, joke? Of course you gotta win your first fight. Would be pretty funny if team would send me to take close point and thief shows up and after dying i start dropping excuse that it was my first fight.

Yeah… even if you run axe or dagger on your condition build, if you land all your 8 Ghastly Claws hits you will get 8% (…not enough). With a dagger you’ll need 2 auto attack rotations.
With the staff you’ll need 4 Necrotic Grasps and Feast of Corruption will give you 2% if you start with it.

Also: if a thief jumps you right at start there’s no “oh, hold on, I’ll use my lf generating moves first, pls don’t dodge or stealth or anything, kthx”

The Soul Marks trait is a great way to gain LF reliably. One mark of blood on a fluffy bunny gives me 14% LF.
In combat, especially if you’re getting focused, a single spectral skill can rocket your LF back up. Even the 15 in Soul Reaping trait will get the job done.

Kyskythyn.6471:

The Soul Marks trait is a great way to gain LF reliably. One mark of blood on a fluffy bunny gives me 14% LF.
In combat, especially if you’re getting focused, a single spectral skill can rocket your LF back up. Even the 15 in Soul Reaping trait will get the job done.

Dont know why your mentioning this, if i would be fine with traiting marks, wasting utility slot or dropping to 50% for trait spectral armor just to unlock 4 important skills then i would be fine with casting necrotic grasp 4 times too. =/
Im not saying its hard to generate that 12% LF to enter shroud im talking about if there really should be such rare occasions when you get catched with 0 LF

Honestly, I feel it would be better if we just started PvP matches with 10% life force. Nobody else has to start without their class mechanic.

For any other game mode, generating life force is stupidly easy before you go into a fight.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Honestly, I feel it would be better if we just started PvP matches with 10% life force. Nobody else has to start without their class mechanic.

For any other game mode, generating life force is stupidly easy before you go into a fight.

Mesmers start without illusions and warriors start without adrenaline, it is just arguable that they have an easier time building those up, or that they have less of an impact to the very start of a fight; whereas not having DS is a big deal to glassier necro builds.

You do have a point, although in both of those cases, they have skills that get them to max instantly (Mesmers have to use two skills, Warriors just one). Necros have no option on that.

10% life force to start would not make a huge difference to survivability, but it would allow the use of an early absorption of a surprise burst or a quick fear.

Alternatively, allow Signet of Undeath’s passive to apply at all times, not just in combat. Most necros run it in PvP anyway.

Our mechanic is also far stronger (innately) than theirs. I do agree we should start with 10%, or have a way to start at 10% just to allow us some small access to DS in fights, I just don’t agree we should start with much more, or be able to.

Leeto.1570:

Kyskythyn.6471:

The Soul Marks trait is a great way to gain LF reliably. One mark of blood on a fluffy bunny gives me 14% LF.
In combat, especially if you’re getting focused, a single spectral skill can rocket your LF back up. Even the 15 in Soul Reaping trait will get the job done.

Dont know why your mentioning this, if i would be fine with traiting marks, wasting utility slot or dropping to 50% for trait spectral armor just to unlock 4 important skills then i would be fine with casting necrotic grasp 4 times too. =/
Im not saying its hard to generate that 12% LF to enter shroud im talking about if there really should be such rare occasions when you get catched with 0 LF

My point is that if you’re not willing to put the traits or utilities into DS, you can’t expect to get much out of it.

What would be nice is a utility similar to every other necro/warlock archetype’s in other games: The ability to exchange health for life force.

We need the option to cast a spell with a short (or none) cooldown that would take away a certain percentage of health for a certain percentage of life force. There’s so many traits designed to buff death shroud but without adequate life force generation they’re not used to their fullest potential except for builds specifically designed for it. As has been said, condition builds fall flat in the LF gen department and this would go a long way toward making the playability of the class with any build more fluid.