Guild Wars 2

Skyro.3108:

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

No.

No it doesn’t.

The Regeneration boon icon just sits there, ticking down.

Taunting you… mocking you… laughing at you….

Skyro.3108:

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

The point of the ui update was not to let us be healed while in DS, it’s to allow us to see endurance and boons/conditions.

Oglaf.1074:

Skyro.3108:

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

No.

No it doesn’t.

The Regeneration boon icon just sits there, ticking down.

Taunting you… mocking you… laughing at you….

The same as it always has. But at least now it’s 100% clear about it from the first time you try it.

Softspoken.2410:

Oglaf.1074:

Skyro.3108:

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

No.

No it doesn’t.

The Regeneration boon icon just sits there, ticking down.

Taunting you… mocking you… laughing at you….

The same as it always has. But at least now it’s 100% clear about it from the first time you try it.

Yeah but at least back then it didn’t give you false hopes… Now it is just mocking you.

“Hah! Wouldn’t it be nice if I actually did something?!” – Regeneration Icon.

Skyro.3108:

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

They don’t. You can just see your health now while in DS. It’s so we can see our boons and conditions on us.

I would prefer to see my healing and utility cooldowns, but seeing boons and conditions will allow us to do even MORE DEATHSHROUD TESTING!!

I look forward to seeing exactly when the boons apply when you are in DS.

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

Skyro.3108:

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

Andele.1306:

They got some pretty major buffs… I mean grenades no longer need LoS.

Joke, right? Cause grenades do need LoS, just the targeting doesn’t.

I wonder if the Epidemic change could be a start to the AoE nerfs by stealth (unannounced). It will certainly hurt my condition manager necro (12 sec epidemics)….and what is “Life Siphon skill: Updated skill facts” other than a filler to make the list look bigger????.

Oldbugga.7029:

I wonder if the Epidemic change could be a start to the AoE nerfs by stealth (unannounced). It will certainly hurt my condition manager necro (12 sec epidemics)….and what is “Life Siphon skill: Updated skill facts” other than a filler to make the list look bigger????.

No idea, but this might be one of those Engrish patch notes the happen.
Remember the one about Dragon dungeon instead of Arah?

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Wait… epidemic originally worked without LoS?

It was great in PVE to be able to kite a bunch of mobs into a tight circle, BiP one and then Epidemic them on the run without facing the mobs.

Ahhhh….those were the days….

The nerf only affects your ability to activate epidemic through walls and objects. You can still cast it while running away. I tested it.

krippler.9826:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Wait… epidemic originally worked without LoS?

It was great in PVE to be able to kite a bunch of mobs into a tight circle, BiP one and then Epidemic them on the run without facing the mobs.

Ahhhh….those were the days….

The nerf only affects your ability to activate epidemic through walls and objects. You can still cast it while running away. I tested it.

So it was a straight wvwvw nerf, which makes sense without culling it would be ridiculously easy to stay hidden and hammer someone with epidemic. So it’s not as bad as we feared.

Oglaf.1074:

“Hah! Wouldn’t it be nice if I actually did something?!” – Regeneration Icon.

I lol’d!

You sir, are a funny one.

What happened to Anet nerfing AoE across the board? We got an epidemic nerf but don’t see Ele or other profs getting hit with any of these AoE reductions.

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

welcome to the happy necro-world of Bhawb n Bas, where necros are on par with eles, guards and mesm

Bas.7406:

Skyro.3108:

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Necro’s healing ability in this game is pretty weak, and healing in general in this game isn’t very strong. The only two classes that have strong heals are Eles and Guards, and in that case it creates more synergy between the classes which is a good thing. I think you are vastly overrating Necro’s healing abilities.

IMO this isn’t a balance issue at all, and right now it only serves as gameplay mechanic that is unintuitive and not fun. DS is not something you stay in for long periods of time because the LF deterioration penalizes it harshly. You’re not going to be getting low on health, switch to DS and tank damage for 30s while you regen all the way back to full health. This is not how it works in reality.

Plus it would indirectly buff the blood line which badly needs some buffing, allowing life siphon and the transfustion trait heal to work while in DS.

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

It’s considered invulnerable because you aren’t taking any damage to your health. Regen even at 200-300 per tick. Which is completely possible with life siphoning traits as well as regen, and 1400 healing power you can get pretty legit.

Well of Blood is incredibly strong.

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

I could essentially become a regen machine, not to mention if you have a guardian or ele next to you keeping regen going. Now do you see what I am saying.

If they reduced it to say 25 percent that would make sense, but full heals in DS would be crazy.

@Skyro, talk with Nay and Del Onasi about our healing abilities. I once felt like you did and then watched their support builds keep three minions alive through an entire dungeon. I no longer disagree with them.

vicious.5683:

welcome to the happy necro-world of Bhawb n Bas, where necros are on par with eles, guards and mesm

Flattery will get you everywhere. Thank you for the compliment.

Guardians wish they were as good as necros.

Andele.1306:

blurps.2340:

Fungalfoot.7213:

Maybe we’ll get proper attention next now that engineers have finally been brought up to par.

You better hope Necros don’t get the same treatment Engineers did, that’s all I’ll say.

They got some pretty major buffs… I mean grenades no longer need LoS.

No, they further pigeonholed Engineers into what was the strongest build already before the patch ( HGH ) and butchered most of the semi viable builds. For specifics check the Engineer sub forum.

Well, at least we’re not Rangers.

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

1. Put 30 points into Soul Reaping.

2. Trait "Near to Death (XII) – Death Shroud recharges 50% faster (can enter Death Shroud every 5 seconds instead of every 10 seconds)

3. Place Staff #2 – Mark of Blood.

4. Enemy triggers the Mark of Blood, granting the Necromancer 5 seconds of regeneration.

5. Activate Death Shroud.

6. Tank the damage using your Life Force while your normal health bar is healed from the Mark of Blood’s regeneration.

7. Exit Death Shroud near the end of the Mark of Blood’s regeneration boon.

8. Rinse and repeat 5 second later when DS has recharged.

On paper it sounds like it would lead to a de facto invulnerability for the Necromancer. In practice, what with losing Life Force to it’s natural degeneration as well as to damage by enemies, being able to perma-dance in and out of Death Shroud every 5 seconds would be the exception and not the rule. Sure, some Necromancers who trait into Soul Reaping to increase their Life Force pool, decrease their Life Force degeneration rate with the Vital Persistence trait, and bring utilities to generate Life Force might pull it off. But they would be a small minority of the Necromancer population.

Also, with regards to PvP anyway, enemy players would adapt. Death Shrouded Necros would get focused hard (or harder than they already are). A Necro using the above techniques might pull it off for a few “dances”, but then would find themselves out of Life Force pretty quickly.

I’m not advocating that Necros be allowed to heal while in Death Shroud, necessarily. But neither would healing in Death Shroud lead to an unkillable Necro; a more difficult to kill Necro, perhaps, but not an unkillable one. A decrease in the Life Force degeneration rate (not through a trait; simply the base degen rate) or even the elimination of the degen altogether might be appropriate. It would certainly help improve our ability to be the attrition class ArenaNet purports us to be.

Keep in mind that Death Shroud was originally a Necromancer’s downed state. Like all downed states, a player’s health naturally degens at a set rate. In the same vein, the Necromancer’s downed state resource – Life Force – degenerated as well. However, they turned Death Shroud into the profession-specific mechanic but didn’t really change it much from its origins as our downed state. So we’re saddled with the legacy of our Life Force naturally degenerating. Maybe it’s time to rethink that.

Bas.7406:

It’s considered invulnerable because you aren’t taking any damage to your health. Regen even at 200-300 per tick. Which is completely possible with life siphoning traits as well as regen, and 1400 healing power you can get pretty legit.

Well of Blood is incredibly strong.

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

I could essentially become a regen machine, not to mention if you have a guardian or ele next to you keeping regen going. Now do you see what I am saying.

implying that you can regularly get enough life force in these 5 seconds to sit in DS for a good amount of time.
i still fail to see how that would be so OP (given a xx% heal reduction while in DS eventually) while other classes with disables and blocks/invulns/(perma)-vigor and similar damage-avoidance-skills can also reg and receive heals while using them.

If anything, at least our own regeneration and the lifesteal should work in DS

Bas.7406:

Skyro.3108:

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

1) A class that plays like “You can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, you are being hurt in the process” is an attrition class. Like necro is supposed to be…

2) You’d have to spend 30 points in Soul Reaping to do a 5 second stance dance like this, so it should be good, and you only get to do it if you’ve got enough life force. Life Transfer is up every 40 seconds (ish, memory fails me). Over 5 seconds you’d get what, 750 HP healing from a regen?

3) If you did this, you’d be forced into a power build so you could actually do damage, you likely wouldn’t have full staff talents, if you went into blood for siphoning and more regen you’d be gimping your damage, etc.

Health regen during death shroud would hardly make us invulnerable. We should have it. It would add just a little bit of additional survivability to what is supposed to be the attrition class.

The trait “Focused Rituals” is now bugged, since it recharge all your well skills “one time” when you swipe in and out of that trait.

Here is how it works. A “well under FR” is considered a “different skill” to a “well not under FR”. So those 2 “different skills” have their own separate independent skill recharge. So when you swipe in and out of FR, you are “changing” your skill to a different one, so the different skill recharge appears.

Of course this usually won’t matter, since once you are in combat you cannot swipt traits anyways. But this is leaving room for abuse.

As awesome as it is to have zero recharge wells, please fix this for game balance.

As for the patch, really loving the new DS. I also love that they fixed the scythe on my Final Rest.

Epidemic is now “useless” in tower siege and tower defence. Epidemic’s major selling point there was that it doesn’t need a line of sight. Now it will miss all the time. Specially for tower defence, where your line of sight would “randomly” gets blocked by your own wall.

Bas.7406:

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

It is now obvious the terribads you play against.

What really would happen…

you drop well of blood and get knocked out of it immediately because you were too stupid to take stability on DS
Now you have no healing from the well and have done no damage to the enemy and your LF is all gone from damage.
To top it off, you try to hit with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud for only a second because you have only built up 6%-21% LF in that 5 seconds. You die shortly after (you feared them for a couple seconds) because for once you are fighting a decent player/team.

Bas your theory crafting is so fail you shouldn’t be misleading the necro community with your garbage.

CHIPS.6018:

As for the patch, really loving the new DS. I also love that they fixed the scythe on my Final Rest.

Epidemic is now “useless” in tower siege and tower defence. Epidemic’s major selling point there was that it doesn’t need a line of sight. Now it will miss all the time. Specially for tower defence, where your line of sight would “randomly” gets blocked by your own wall.

Yeah and I just tried using epidemic in an open area on a downed player and it was obstructed by a tiny stump in the ground. sigh This is gonna get really frustrating guessing when its actually going to hit or miss.

Just to note on epidemic, don’t confuse LOS with facing. You still don’t need facing to cast epidemic. It really only effected casting on people in or on walls, and behind objects. I used it for about an hour and didn’t notice a big difference.

One thing I did notice, however, and I am hoping it was my imagination, is that blind seems to prevent epidemic now, which it never used to. I actually had the epidemic finish casting, and no black nova… so I am guessing they fixed that too when they fixed LOS. Not a huge nerf, but noticable when you are tanking an entire supply camp that is blind spamming you.

Bas.7406:

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

It’s considered invulnerable because you aren’t taking any damage to your health. Regen even at 200-300 per tick. Which is completely possible with life siphoning traits as well as regen, and 1400 healing power you can get pretty legit.

Well of Blood is incredibly strong.

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

I could essentially become a regen machine, not to mention if you have a guardian or ele next to you keeping regen going. Now do you see what I am saying.

If they reduced it to say 25 percent that would make sense, but full heals in DS would be crazy.

@Skyro, talk with Nay and Del Onasi about our healing abilities. I once felt like you did and then watched their support builds keep three minions alive through an entire dungeon. I no longer disagree with them.

You’re living in a fairy tale if you really think that is how it is going to play out in PvP, where nobody has knockbacks for your Well and interrupts for your channeled siphons. And I don’t even know why you bring up dungeon runs.

If you are packing 1400 healing power and 30 SR/blood you’re a bunker, you’ve devoted 60 points and your ammy into defense so yes, I think it is fair that you should be unkillable 1v1, which is not OP and more like a minimum threshold to being a viable bunker. What you fail to realize is that nobody brings Necro bunkers to high level tPvP because it’s not just about surviving 1vX, it’s about support and most importantly node control. The guardian is unmatched in this aspect.

Necro bunkers are not good because they have no stability and no node control. If you wanted an off-bunker there are also many better choices (Ele for instance, who also happens to be better support, mobility, and can still dish out good damage).

And if you’re getting beat on, and you are actually staying in DS for long periods of time, this is bad bad bad. You are going to run out of LF incredibly fast, and will no where near be invulnerable.

I’ll give you a pro-tip on why you want to be in and out of DS quickly whenever possible. For example, the cost of casting one life blast essentially costs you 1 tick. 2 life blasts (which comes in at just under 3 secs of total cast time) costs you 2 ticks. 3 life blasts however will cost you 4 ticks. That last life blast essentially cost you 8% life force.
This example is to illustrate the increasing marginal cost of staying in DS the longer you are in it (e.g. you stay in DS for under 1s there are no ticks, 1.99 secs for 1 tick, 2.99 s for 2 ticks, etc.)

So if you’re staying in DS for 5s (at the cost of 20% LF) as a bunker to somehow take “advantage” of regen while in DS, that is just not efficient at all. You’re much much better off timing DS to prevent huge chunks of spike damage, and then just taking more moderate levels of DPS from your regular health pool.

One of the main reasons the Near Death trait is strong is because it lets you manage your LF deterioration much much better, by continually getting in and out of DS right before a tick would hit and having it available more often to time to negate spike damage. I’d also argue the stability trait is much much more useful in more situations in PvP than Near Death is, even though I think it is a great trait.

@rashandale – If there was a significant reduction to healing while in DS than I could see it being implemented. The problem would be more if they didn’t do it, than the standard build for tournament play would be 30 in DS because it would be too strong to ignore.

@sas
1) You are correct to a degree, but to give us a bit, and the amount of siphons point to their intention to use it in that facet. However giving someone the ability to cancel out all damage while continuing to hurt you and healing themselves every 5- 10 seconds can cause serious balance issues. Examples Thieves with Culling in wvwvw.

2). You mean like 80 percent of the elementalists are speccing 30 arcana because their surivability essentially doubles by doing so. Anytime you have a build that would double survivability it becomes the build to run. There is a reason everyone complains about elementalist outside of their mobility. You would essentially turn us into a slightly less mobile elementalist.

3). Gimping damage for double survivablility is already done all the time see point 2. Rashan has a much more valid way of helping with the reduced healing done in DS, but I could still see that really making you a pain to kill with the amount of small heals we can put out.

@dreadlord – when you have a valid point that doesn’t come with a personal attack, we can talk. Just to help you out Please see Kraag’s post below mine where he pointed out exactly how to do it with relative ease. Thanks for your input though.

Skyro.3108:

You’re living in a fairy tale if you really think that is how it is going to play out in PvP, where nobody has knockbacks for your Well and interrupts for your channeled siphons. And I don’t even know why you bring up dungeon runs.

If you are packing 1400 healing power and 30 SR/blood you’re a bunker, you’ve devoted 60 points and your ammy into defense so yes, I think it is fair that you should be unkillable 1v1, which is not OP and more like a minimum threshold to being a viable bunker. What you fail to realize is that nobody brings Necro bunkers to high level tPvP because it’s not just about surviving 1vX, it’s about support and most importantly node control. The guardian is unmatched in this aspect.

Necro bunkers are not good because they have no stability and no node control. If you wanted an off-bunker there are also many better choices (Ele for instance, who also happens to be better support, mobility, and can still dish out good damage).

And if you’re getting beat on, and you are actually staying in DS for long periods of time, this is bad bad bad. You are going to run out of LF incredibly fast, and will no where near be invulnerable.

I’ll give you a pro-tip on why you want to be in and out of DS quickly whenever possible. For example, the cost of casting one life blast essentially costs you 1 tick. 2 life blasts (which comes in at just under 3 secs of total cast time) costs you 2 ticks. 3 life blasts however will cost you 4 ticks. That last life blast essentially cost you 8% life force. If you’re staying in DS for 5s (at the cost of 20% LF) as a bunker to somehow take “advantage” of regen while in DS is just bad. You’re much much better off timing DS to prevent huge chunks of spike damage, and then just taking more moderate levels of DPS from your regular health pool.

One of the main reasons the Near Death straight is strong is because it lets you manage your LF deterioration much much better, by continually getting in and out of DS right before a tick would hit and having it available more often to time to negate spike damage.

I have no idea why you are directing this at me. Your point was completely outside of the situation described. I simply painted a single scenario where it could be viewed as overpowered. Describing every single possible situation that would come up would create an hours worth of reading.

I completely agree with the rest of what you said, so again, why are you going off on me? I would never take a Necro Bunker over a mesmer, ele, engineer, ranger, or guardian bunker for exactly the reasons you stated. I was simply painting a broad picture.

You are describing using DS in it’s current state – which is a pro way of using it. Again, I have no idea why you are directing your wrath towards me since this wasn’t even the point of the discussion.

From there your conversation goes more into correct tips for using ds offensively and defensively, and again this had nothing to do with the conversation at hand which was pointing out how healing inside of DS can be perceived or used in an OP manner.

I believe you meant the Near To Death Trait, but again, I am a fan of the trait so I am not sure why you are coming at me so aggressively. I was explaining how you could use the trait to keep a consistent healing while reducing a nice bit of damage from hurting you.

Healing plus no life taken plus damage done = Invulnerability which is why people are crying for Cantrips done.

The way DS is currently situated your playstyle and tips are fantastic. I do appreciate the tips.

Bas.7406:

@dreadlord – when you have a valid point that doesn’t come with a personal attack, we can talk. Just to help you out Please see Kraag’s post below mine where he pointed out exactly how to do it with relative ease. Thanks for your input though.

perhaps you should read it too.

nothing he posts conflicts with what I said

take off your fanboi glasses and read both posts again

@Bas

I was directing my post to you because to you painting an unrealistic scenario. If Necro had access to Ele heals while in DS or something I could see that being a bit over the top, but that would have less to do with DS and more to do with Ele’s high healing output. Regen only ticks for a couple hundred even at really high levels of healing power, is no way game breaking and nowhere near invulnerable. Our siphon skills have a HPS rate in the hundreds as well, similar to regen. We do have in any way shape or form a high HPS output in any normal scenario.

The sheer fact that you aren’t taking damage directly to your health pool while being able to heal your health pool is not game breaking in itself, otherwise they would disable healing when using invulnerability skills like mesmer distortion, guardian elite, etc.

TLDR:
1) DS is optimally used in short bursts, making any notion of healing up to full while tanking in DS unrealistic
2) our HPS output is not high like Eles or Guards, and is much easier to countered by another player
3) Nothing else in the game works in such a fashion, where a transformation or game state (e.g. invulnerability) prevents healing
4) I am 99% sure the reason we can’t be healed in DS has to do with ANet’s coding/bugs/whatever than anything to do with balance concerns

Skyro.3108:

@Bas

I was directing my post to you because to you painting an unrealistic scenario.

I think many people here are sick of you blowing rainbows and sunshine up our kitten holes with tales of unrealistic necro situations and your “lists of abilities” (not builds) that try and portray an “everything is fine” necro.

@Skyro While I agree that in most builds we couldn’t completely heal to full all the time, it still isn’t an unrealistic scenario that a high life siphon build could heal itself quite well while in DS.

Also, what happens when you introduce another player into the equation, and they are running a healing support build? It wouldn’t be difficult for a support build to keep our health topped off, and it isn’t that difficult to use the right spectral/DS build to keep very high LF generation.

Bhawb.7408:

@Skyro While I agree that in most builds we couldn’t completely heal to full all the time, it still isn’t an unrealistic scenario that a high life siphon build could heal itself quite well while in DS.

Also, what happens when you introduce another player into the equation, and they are running a healing support build? It wouldn’t be difficult for a support build to keep our health topped off, and it isn’t that difficult to use the right spectral/DS build to keep very high LF generation.

Understandable from a balance pov but in your case of another player using heal support it becomes insanely annoying for both, he cant heal you and you cant benefit from his support “while in death shroud” making it the most counterproductive class mechanic in the entire game.

And im sorry but aslong as to many things work this way this class deserve all the complaining it gets no matter if you can get it to seem barely viable it still doesnt deliver the fun its users deserve.

We are talking about what happens if you can heal in death shroud, in which case, every single bit of his healing support benefits you.

It’s useless debating on the phantoms of “how it would be”, ANET won’t pay attention or care about it all, this forum is just a tool to keep rebels entertained, so that they’ll return to play with their broken game after venting frustration here.

Really, at the moment Gw2 doesn’t deserve all this (wasted) neurons’ activity.

The good thing about this change is that a large amount of players didn’t even know healing didn’t work in DS. Now they will which will cause many “healing in DS threads”.

Spectral skills wouldn’t be a problem. They would actually be useful for once.

If you could heal in DS, what viable options are there to heal with?

• Life Siphon with every hit
• Life Siphon with every critical hit
• Regeneration boon
• Transmutation
• Blood Fiend siphons
• Vampiric Master trait
• Well of Blood

So looking at that list, we conclude that the only decent healing mechanics would be Life Transfer which is on a 40 second cooldown, Well of Blood which would finally be up to par with Consume Conditions and the regeneration boon.

Life siphoning is always weak. Or are you planning on casting 500 life blasts while in DS to recover 20k HP with life siphoning traits?

You could heal around 5,000 HP by entering Deathshroud if you took all of the above and put it all on cooldowns and sacrificed all of your damage to become a bunker.

Guardian, Ele and Engi have bunker builds. So overpowered if a Necro heals ~5,000 health while losing life force every 40 seconds?

Giving examples of other classes healing the Necromancer while in DS isn’t really a good argument. Any class helping The Necromancer in an uneven fight will cause them to win.

Eg. 2v1 Necro/Thief VS Guardian. Guardian loses anyway.
Eg. 2v2 Necro/Guardian VS Engineer/Necro. Even fight even with allied healing.

Not regenrating health while in DS is just a massive balance flaw. Hell, even not regenerating Life Force in DS is stupid as is. So is losing spectral armor when you enter it. GOSH!! Spectral Armor would actually be useful if it didnt remove it!!

@Bhawb

Like I said above, syngery with other classes is a good thing, not a bad one. It promotes teamwork and coordination. Right now the fact that you can’t be healed is both unintuitive and not fun. It’s like this:

Necro: “Help I’m getting focused”
Ele: “Ok tossing my big heals on you!”
Necro: “Crap I had to DS to eat that 100B burst”
Ele: “…”

In regards to balance, I think the my whole argument is just flying over everybody’s heads. Let me explain it in another way. Don’t think about HP and LF as two separate pools, but consider them all one big effective HP pool, except when you’re in DS you lose 600 HP/sec (the amount of EHP you lose in LF assuming 0 SR and 25k HP).

So to even break even in DS, you’d have to be healing 600 HP/sec. In what world are you generating a HPS output of 600 HP/sec on a consistent basis? You maybe hit if you have regen and you trait up all your siphon traits and using life transfer w/ the healing trait, but life transfer is on 40s CD and you’re committing a ton of trait points into a line that is frankly incredibly underpowered in PvP.

What this all means is that staying in DS for long periods of time is deterimental to you EHP. You want to maximize the proportion of damage you take in DS while minimizing your uptime in DS, which essentially means you want to take all the high spike damage in DS while taking all the moderate levels of damage to your normal health bar.

So in reality the whole scenario about being some invulnerable juggernaut simply due to being able to be healed in DS is completly and utterly false because you do not want to be in DS for very long stretches if you care about optimizing your EHP. A Necro optimzing his EHP in this way is probably only going to get a few hundred more EHP (depending on the build of course) if they change it so you can be healed in DS.

I really hope we hear a devs opinion on the subject. This sub-forum hasn’t seen a red post in over a month. Have they ever even tested allowing healing in DS in any of their test servers? Such as how they tested capture the flag and didn’t like it?

Why don’t we ever see dev discussion on the most debated subjects? All we see in the dev tracker is, “Thanks for reporting the bug! We are looking at it! It looks beautiful, thanks!”

Skyro.3108:

@Bhawb

Like I said above, syngery with other classes is a good thing, not a bad one. It promotes teamwork and coordination. Right now the fact that you can’t be healed is both unintuitive and not fun. It’s like this:

Necro: “Help I’m getting focused”
Ele: “Ok tossing my big heals on you!”
Necro: “Crap I had to DS to eat that 100B burst”
Ele: “…”

In regards to balance, I think the my whole argument is just flying over everybody’s heads. Let me explain it in another way. Don’t think about HP and LF as two separate pools, but consider them all one big effective HP pool, except when you’re in DS you lose 600 HP/sec (the amount of EHP you lose in LF assuming 0 SR and 25k HP).

So to even break even in DS, you’d have to be healing 600 HP/sec. In what world are you generating a HPS output of 600 HP/sec on a consistent basis? You maybe hit if you have regen and you trait up all your siphon traits and using life transfer w/ the healing trait, but life transfer is on 40s CD and you’re committing a ton of trait points into a line that is frankly incredibly underpowered in PvP.

What this all means is that staying in DS for long periods of time is deterimental to you EHP. You want to maximize the proportion of damage you take in DS while minimizing your uptime in DS, which essentially means you want to take all the high spike damage in DS while taking all the moderate levels of damage to your normal health bar.

So in reality the whole scenario about being some invulnerable juggernaut simply due to being able to be healed in DS is completly and utterly false because you do not want to be in DS for very long stretches if you care about optimizing your EHP. A Necro optimzing his EHP in this way is probably only going to get a few hundred more EHP (depending on the build of course) if they change it so you can be healed in DS.

This is one reason I always questioned the value of all the traits that require you to hang out in DS to function. Life Blast does ABC. DS causes Vuln. By using these traits I’m hurting myself more than my enemy because I have to burn through X amount of effective health just to use them.

It isn’t really relevant to the patch notes, but it’s bugged me for a while.

CHIPS.6018:

As for the patch, really loving the new DS. I also love that they fixed the scythe on my Final Rest.

Epidemic is now “useless” in tower siege and tower defence. Epidemic’s major selling point there was that it doesn’t need a line of sight. Now it will miss all the time. Specially for tower defence, where your line of sight would “randomly” gets blocked by your own wall.

Yes, there is a strong argument to not even take epidemic to sieges anymore, as there won’t be any open field fighting there outside guards. If you are on defense you can still jump on the wall and try to quickfire one off, but will risk being pulled into a zerg and instant death.

@skyro

The problem here is we are having two different conversations. You are discussing optimal usage of DS which I agree with, and in the strictest sense you are correct. If you use DS to swap in and out then there is no danger of it becoming OP.

Your scenario of the heal situation actually made me laugh because of how often it actually happens, and has happened numerous times in Dungeons with myself and others trying to drop a heal or shout to bring me up a bit.

However, there is a bit of a disconnect where you and I are talking. (Disclaimer: all numbers are subjective because I have no desire to go check the actual numbers so I am rounding)Let’s say I am in a fight and I get hit for 14k, because I forgot to use DS to absorb or didn’t have enough LF to absorb it.

So I use Staff 2 to pop regen healing me for 300 per tick , I picked up siphon on hit which is 33 per hit, than I pick up Life Transfer which is around 2400 for the channel. I also pick up wells siphon 150 per tick (I have heard reports of higher, but I haven’t seen it).

I am sitting at 14k health now, and with most classes (ele’s not included) this is half the battle, you can drop the rest of their health pretty rapidly with another burst knockdown even guardians at 14k have to use their healing ability.

If we could heal at full healing power which is what some of you want. I could realistically drop my wells, hit the marks 2 to regen, than pop into DS keep healing while taking no damage and hit life transfer realistically healing my life most of the way back up without using my actual heal. You don’t see how this could make us incredibly difficult to kill? Not to mention anyone could do this every 10 seconds or every 5 seconds. Let’s not even add that Well of Blood is amazingly powerful. This would make us a less mobile version of the Elementalist that saw a serious nerf to it’s 30 arcana, yet is still called op and ridiculous by most players.

If our healing saw a significant reduction say 50 percent minimum to our heals while in DS than that would at least be worth of discussion.

I’ve worked on builds that utilize them, but outside of a build specifically made to utilize Death Shroud in that way, I would agree they are pretty weak. I think it would be better if they lumped the two together, and turned the other one into a trait that made Life Blast work like the underwater version.

PinCushion.7390:

This is one reason I always questioned the value of all the traits that require you to hang out in DS to function. Life Blast does ABC. DS causes Vuln. By using these traits I’m hurting myself more than my enemy because I have to burn through X amount of effective health just to use them.

It isn’t really relevant to the patch notes, but it’s bugged me for a while.

There is nothing to consider. All the DS traits that require you to stay in DS are complete and utter garbage because of this very fact.

Ruufio.1496:

I really hope we hear a devs opinion on the subject. This sub-forum hasn’t seen a red post in over a month. Have they ever even tested allowing healing in DS in any of their test servers? Such as how they tested capture the flag and didn’t like it?

Why don’t we ever see dev discussion on the most debated subjects? All we see in the dev tracker is, “Thanks for reporting the bug! We are looking at it! It looks beautiful, thanks!”

The last few times a dev posted every angry necro came out of the woodwork and ripped them a new one. This would cause anyone to be wary of peeking their head out, and is why I keep trying to push for a positive outlook and positive spin on our discussions to bring them back in.

Obviously, Jon Peters made the most hilarious statement about necros which was then reinforced that the people looking over necros don’t play it in the State of the Game with the beautiful comment (you should use DS when you are about to die which brought the even better comment from a listener who posted, “and then what you kittens it’s not like we can get away”).

Or my personal favorite comment, because of the Minion master we need to buff Mesmer Greatsword.

So as you can see we don’t have the greatest love for them, but instead of trying for a more positive approach (Chips has done an amazing job in the attrition discussion of keeping it more progressive and positive) than the more common anyone who thinks necros are in a good place are a kitten fanboi who blows rainbows up peoples butts (courtesy of my favorite poster Dreadlord)

Lets talk about signets passive effect and Death Shroud

Skyro.3108:

There is nothing to consider. All the DS traits that require you to stay in DS are complete and utter garbage because of this very fact.

Outside of screwing around, I agree, and it’s one of the reasons I prefer Minions over a DS focus build. Outside of PVE and even in PVE staying in ds longer than halfway through your lf bar is a complete and total waste. If your LF runs out not only are you screwed if you get caught in wvwvw or tournaments, but if you are facing a boss you get jobbed as well.