I understand where many of the posts regarding the addition of vigor or aegis or whatever are coming from. However, the devs have – on more than one occassion – stated that necros are not getting any defensive buffs such as block, evade, invulnerability, stealth, etc.
Of course, devs can always change their minds; but at the current time it does not appear we will be receiving any defensive buffs. Meanwhile, they’ve removed the one de facto burst mitigation we did have without compensating that loss with something to make up for it. In light of this, we have no true burst absorption as the other classes do.
As others have stated, Death Shroud burst absorption was not OP. On paper, it appears we have access to functional invulnerability every 10 seconds. In practice, it doesn’t work this way due to the dependency of needing to have at least 10% Life Force available to enter Death Shroud. Coupled with the natural degen of Life Force while in Death Shroud form as well as that Life Force being depleted from non-burst hits, we’d be lucky to absorb a burst every 10 seconds.
As Afya pointed out, other professions have access to their burst mitigators on the same or nearly the same cool down and without a dependency on a secondary resource (Life Force) like necromancers are forced to contend with. Absorbing bursts required good Life Force management and Death Shroud timing; examples of skillful play and adaptation (i.e. we “learn(ed) to use Death Shroud” as Nay of the Ether pointed out).
If Death Shroud burst absorption was truly OP, we would have heard about it a lot sooner than 10 months into the game. Moreover, Andele cites that – in direct counter-point to the recent statement that Death Shroud was not intended to prevent overflow or absorb fall damage – it was intended to do these very things when the devs patched it in; at the very least the fall damage absorption was intended. If it wasn’t, then that was one hell of an oversight on the devs part.
Regardless, in the 10 months we’ve had this mechanic available to us, it has been a total non-issue. Where, in the course of nearly a year, are the countless posts crying for nerfs to necromancers because of their OP and imbalanced Death Shroud burst absorption capabilities? They don’t exist because it was neither OP nor imbalanced. To the contrary, necros have been considered a joke, an easy kill batted around with CC and focus trained down to defeat.
The calls for nerfs were over the Dhuumfire/Terror combo; not our burst and fall absorption mechanic. Attention was only turned that way when it was discovered that Death Shroud could be used to access areas outside the map. I agree that’s not appropriate, but there are other ways to prevent that without nerfing Death Shroud.
Though it could be argued there are better ways of granting us burst and multi-target absorption, the devs took from us our current version with nothing to replace it (see glorious’ car analogy above). Furthermore, with their statements that necros are not to receive defensive boons such as aegis or invulnerability mechanics like evade, the devs have really painted themselves into a corner. What, exactly, can they give us to replace Death Shroud’s previous burst absorption if not a block, evade, or invulnerability buff?
Though it may open creative possibilities, I’m not willing to wait on a slow development process that may take months before we see a new burst absorption mechanic in the future while bereft of burst absorption here in the the present. Would it really be so game-breaking to revert our Death Shroud with regards to this one area until such time as they’re ready to release our new mechanic (assuming there’s one even in the works)?
They waffle back-and-forth so much with the necro profession, I don’t think it’s asking too much to just leave well enough alone with something that wasn’t really broken nor OP (the issue of falling outside the map aside) until they can finally make up their minds about what exactly they want necros to be in this game.