Guild Wars 2

Please take back the stomp/rez changes to Death Shroud and take this awful mechanic that interrupts any skills I cast in Death Shroud when it ends back with them. It’s not worth it. I would MUCH rather be able to exit DS while still channeling a life blast or a life transfer than to have DS stomp/rez solely under the condition that I don’t get bursted down to 0 Life Force.

I was thinking about jumping back into the game every now and then to do 1v1’s in the Obsidian Sanctum on my power necro, but this change to necro is utterly ridiculous. Yet again, you have convinced me not to bother playing your game.

To clarify, I understand why you would want to end a revive or stomping animation when Death Shroud ends because of the Foot in the Grave trait, but to include all animations in that condition such as Life Blast and Life Transfer, as well as the very brief casting animations on Tainted Shackles and Dark Path, is unreasonable. If you can’t find a way to isolate the revive and stomp animations, I would find removing the ability to stomp/rez while in DS HIGHLY preferable along with the animation interruption when DS ends.

Please please please please please please please please please for the love of Grenth change this asap

Equinox.4195:

To clarify, I understand why you would want to end a revive or stomping animation when Death Shroud ends because of the Foot in the Grave trait

Foot in the Grave? Why?

Equinox.4195:

I would find removing the ability to stomp/rez while in DS HIGHLY preferable along with the animation interruption when DS ends.

Really? Imo DS interaction was the best change we got in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, interrupting channels when lf runs out was yet another unnecessary nerf, but are you really more often in that specific situation than rezzing or stomping someone in DS?

flow.6043:

Equinox.4195:

To clarify, I understand why you would want to end a revive or stomping animation when Death Shroud ends because of the Foot in the Grave trait

Foot in the Grave? Why?

Because Foot in the Grave is an on-demand 3s stability for a guaranteed stomp. It is specifically powerful for stomping because its duration is just long enough to be useful and on a cooldown that’s short enough to essentially always be available when you need it. You essentially can’t stop the necromancer with CC unless you save a boonstrip specifically for that necro when they go for the DS Stomp. They’d have to allow people to burst the necromancer out of the stomp for the sake of balance.

flow.6043:

Equinox.4195:

I would find removing the ability to stomp/rez while in DS HIGHLY preferable along with the animation interruption when DS ends.

Really? Imo DS interaction was the best change we got in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, interrupting channels when lf runs out was yet another unnecessary nerf, but are you really more often in that specific situation than rezzing or stomping someone in DS?

In 1v1 on a power necromancer, yes quite often, but even outside of that, it is a glaring issue. Leaving death shroud with a final life blast or ending it with a Life Transfer so you generate enough life force to already know you can go into Death Shroud again the next time it’s off CD are important. Instead, I’m forced to either drop DS when I think it’s almost ended, or have a full second of my time wasted doing nothing, which is a huge window of time.

It’s a pretty hard nerf to our core class mechanic. It shuts down so many traits centered around our Death Shroud skills. If you’ve ever played around with the Transfusion trait, it used to be possible to heal yourself with it when you get damaged out of Death Shroud because the channel continues. That has been taken away, which is rather sad. I don’t really use that trait anymore, but it was an interesting mechanic. That’s one less might stack from Reaper’s Might than before, and for builds using Unyielding Blast, you just lost a percentage of your piercing DPS and a couple more vulnerability stacks from not being able to land that last life blast. Depending on how much life force you can expect to regen between the times you go into death shroud, the less life force you generate, the larger the impact of the nerf.

It’s a bug, they broke the profession last patch, don’t expect a fix since we are not thives mesmers of playing in ToL etc etc..

maybe next year they will fix this.

Equinox.4195:

Because Foot in the Grave is an on-demand 3s stability …

I know what the trait does, but I don’t see how it is in any way related to channeled skills being interrupted when leaving DS.

Equinox.4195:

It shuts down so many traits centered around our Death Shroud skills.

Transfusion is really the only trait affected by this change. Then again, this trait was only ever used in some MM builds, so I really couldn’t care less.

Equinox.4195:

Depending on how much life force you can expect to regen between the times you go into death shroud, the less life force you generate, the larger the impact of the nerf.

No it isn’t. Regardless of how much lf you have, you’ll always be able to do just one Life Blast less than before the nerf. And btw, are we talking PvE here? Because that’s pretty much the only place where you can free cast Life Blasts until your life force runs out.
Also, a single stack of might and vuln from Reaper’s Might and Unyielding Blast is not a big deal.

i’ve still got to retrain my muscle memory to stop ending deathshroud before a stomp XD
it’s become such a natural thing that i do it automatically and then realize i could have just shroud stomped :P

Liewec.2896:

i’ve still got to retrain my muscle memory to stop ending deathshroud before a stomp XD
it’s become such a natural thing that i do it automatically and then realize i could have just shroud stomped :P

Same, though I usually just burn opponents down instead of stomping.

Equinox.4195:

In 1v1…

I’m just going to stop right there.

This, in my earnest opinion, completely invalidates any argument you make. Until ArenaNet implements a “dueling” mechanic (and subsequently re-balances the entire game), you enter such matches at your own risk and acknowledge they may be grossly unbalanced, for or against your favor.

Sors Immani.8429:

Equinox.4195:

In 1v1…

I’m just going to stop right there.

This, in my earnest opinion, completely invalidates any argument you make. Until ArenaNet implements a “dueling” mechanic (and subsequently re-balances the entire game), you enter such matches at your own risk and acknowledge they may be grossly unbalanced, for or against your favor.

Whenever I read “but there’s no 1v1 balancing…” I feel the urge to facepalm.
People assume there’s no 1v1 balancing because tpvp is always 5v5, but that assumption is totally wrong. It’s THE way anything is balanced in this game, and certain additions are made in concideration of team fights as well. But it’s amazing how many players (especially on the pvp forum) are deluded into thinking that 1v1 balancing is completely disregarded at the cost of team fights. Pretty much like some people think the primary focus of balancing classes is holding points. Not true.

Of course, most players take traits or general build options in PvP that favor team synnergy. Clearly if there was a 1v1 tournament no one would use a bunker guardian who’s only purpose is support. You’d get a different meta perhaps, some builds would be more viable than other builds which are used in team matches all the time. But that’s about it, there wouldn’t be any need to make any rebalancing because guess what: 1v1 balancing already exists!

Speaking of which, there’s an ESL holloween 1v1 tournament today:
http://www.esl.eu/eu/guildwars2/news/249780/

Again, I reiterate my point: until such a time when ANet releases a dueling (read: 1v1) format and balances for such, any player/community-made 1v1’s, however sanctioned, should be at the player’s own risk and accept a lack of balance in these modes.

The fact that the link you posted has a clear “no bunkers” rule credits this: build types should not be prohibited if the game is balanced to accommodate such a platform.

And again, what you said just proves my point: people pretend there’s no 1v1 balancing based on the fact that there is no “game mode” for it.

Also, Limitations like excluding bunker builds is just a means to prevent 2 bunkers from dragging on their duel forever. This is a time issue, not a means to iron out imbalances. And it doesn’t mean that bunker’s are unkillable. Quite the contrary for necros actually.
What is really a balancing precaution is excluding certain elites or limiting the starting amount of life force.

Thanks for targeting small snippets of my overall statements and replying, you guys really caught on to what I was saying perfectly and provided valid and useful feedback.

Just kidding.

flow.6043:

Equinox.4195:

Because Foot in the Grave is an on-demand 3s stability …

I know what the trait does, but I don’t see how it is in any way related to channeled skills being interrupted when leaving DS.

Flow, I explained perfectly why the short duration and cooldown of Foot in the Grave necessitated another method of stopping a necromancer DS stomping for the sake of balance, which is getting them to 0 Life Force to interrupt the stomp. However, this intended balance made it so that all animations are interrupted at the end of Death Shroud, which I think was an awful mistake on their part and not worth the trade-off for necromancers.

flow.6043:

Equinox.4195:

It shuts down so many traits centered around our Death Shroud skills.

Transfusion is really the only trait affected by this change. Then again, this trait was only ever used in some MM builds, so I really couldn’t care less.

That was just an example of how the change imposed limitations on the class and how it could utilize a trait in a unique way. Life Blast traits are affected as well.

flow.6043:

Equinox.4195:

Depending on how much life force you can expect to regen between the times you go into death shroud, the less life force you generate, the larger the impact of the nerf.

No it isn’t. Regardless of how much lf you have, you’ll always be able to do just one Life Blast less than before the nerf. And btw, are we talking PvE here? Because that’s pretty much the only place where you can free cast Life Blasts until your life force runs out.
Also, a single stack of might and vuln from Reaper’s Might and Unyielding Blast is not a big deal.

It is a big deal, and the damage from that Life Blast being lost is also a big deal. 1 Life blast out of how many life blasts you could expect to land during a Death Shroud rotation being lost creates a percentage of DPS lost. If you could expect to land 5 prior to the nerf, then you lost 1/5 of your life blasts, which is 20% of your DPS, after the nerf. If you could expect to land more or less, that percentage changes.

Sors Immani.8429:

Equinox.4195:

In 1v1…

I’m just going to stop right there.

This, in my earnest opinion, completely invalidates any argument you make. Until ArenaNet implements a “dueling” mechanic (and subsequently re-balances the entire game), you enter such matches at your own risk and acknowledge they may be grossly unbalanced, for or against your favor.

I said “In 1v1’s, quite often,” but I also went on to explain that it could happen regularly in any gamemode. I’ve played the class long enough to understand the ramifications of the change. I don’t expect them to balance the game around duels. That just happens to be what I was doing when I noticed the issue after coming back to the game briefly after quitting two months ago.

However, I would like to point out that 5v5 does not mean all fights in sPvP are 5 players vs. 5 players. Often, there are 1v1, 2v2, or 1v2 fights happening in a map, and this nerf made power necros even less noticeable in small skirmishes. The lack of a Life Transfer as your LF runs out is pretty huge since necromancers are often prioritized over other targets for our high threat, low survivability playstyle. Building and maintaining Life Force under pressure is difficult, and the change made the LF you manage to build up far less impactful.

EDIT: Fixed a quotation by Sors Immani

Equinox.4195:

flow.6043:

I know what the trait does, but I don’t see how it is in any way related to channeled skills being interrupted when leaving DS.

Flow, I explained perfectly why the short duration and cooldown of Foot in the Grave necessitated another method of stopping a necromancer DS stomping for the sake of balance, which is getting them to 0 Life Force to interrupt the stomp. However, this intended balance made it so that all animations are interrupted at the end of Death Shroud, which I think was an awful mistake on their part and not worth the trade-off for necromancers.

You’re just explaining the obvious again without actually arguing your point. But I see what you mean now. Just fyi: if you’re that low on life force you can just double tap DS and still make a stability stomp. Problem solved.

And yes, I know the change is annoying and unnecessary and I wish they hadn’t done it, but traits are barely affected by it at all.