Guild Wars 2

Uhmmm, no the thing you “feel frustrated about” is called reliability, something the necro is (in theory if you remove all bugs) showered in. If you want big feel/sounding hits you play a warrior, thief, shatter mesmer, engie or ele, in fact if anything Tshackles should be a instant (feel free to even remove the damage portion from the immob) since it would allow defensive use of it.

It is fine as is. It is a very small amount of guaranteed damage (nothing to warrant a 40s CD), that then brings up a number of play/counterplay decisions for the Necromancer and their affected targets. The point of this entire skill is playing with positioning and movement, something the Necromancer is very much about.

More long cast times are the last thing the class needs.

Tainted shackles doesn’t feel like a spam move to me and I feel like it requires some thought on use.

Myself personally use it before a doom or if I am fighting a healing signet warrior or class with high mobility when I think they will try to escape.

I think the torment stacks are about right when you consider all the other condi’s necro’s can throw on you. P/D thieves really don’t have many condis at all but they have the best/most access to torment in the game and they can drop you quick if you aren’t paying attention to them stacking torment on you.

the torment does very little damage (compared to other untelegraphed damage… ele); the immob and damage is easy to dodge if you time it right (similar to churning earth)

… i particularily like the synergy with wells (time it so they’re immobed inside the well; or place well as soon as they immob) and doom (tainted shackled>wait a second>doom(to fear off of CPs)>immobed off point

a buff that large to tainted shackles would give unneeded power to condition specs.

Well I know this is completely off topic, but wouldn’t it have been awesome if:

Tainted Shackles: all damage dealt to you by shackled player is dealt to them as well.

Make it very easy to tell when a player is shackled. Promotes intelligent gameplay from both sides. Cap damage dealt when used on characters with defiant.

Sepreh.5924:

Well I know this is completely off topic, but wouldn’t it have been awesome if:

Tainted Shackles: all damage dealt to you by shackled player is dealt to them as well.

Make it very easy to tell when a player is shackled. Promotes intelligent gameplay from both sides. Cap damage dealt when used on characters with defiant.

Way too strong.

Bhawb.7408:

Way too strong.

Haha kind of knew that as I was posting but I think as a concept it is pretty cool. Retal just doesnt hit for enough to be worth it on high damage one shot skills (e.g. eviscerate, bs, ect). There would definitely need to be more thought put into it but for all intents and purposes, shackling someone would make them have to think twice before attacking.

For example:
Thief: I am full health but the necro is at around 3k. I am going to spam HS and be fine
Thief: I am at half health and so is the necro. If I attack I will die before he does
Necro: I have this thief shackled and also have a heal. Let me heal while I run into melee and hope he attacks me and kills himself

Now, there are a few problems with a skill like this. One is being in DS while the skill is active which would only eat away at your DS but eat away at their health. The other problem is having someone shackled but still being able to attack them with no punishment to you. There are probably more that I am not thinking of

I think the main benefit of a skill like this would be (1) a reset and (2) potential for skilled play. It seems like anet does not want us to be easily able to escape but a skill like this could indirectly prevent damage done from a target, creating more time for skills to recharge, heal to recharge, etc. If the shackle was obvious, it would create a situation where both the necro and their enemy have to think about cost-benefit of multiple actions.

@OP

Nicely presented arguments. I’d give you a +1 for that alone if I didn’t disagree with the suggestion.

One can come up with various rationales for why this skill was introduced. Mine would be that the Tainted Shackles was added to – among other things – help make up for our lack of mobility.

Devs in a long-ago interview stated that necromancers are the profession that if you don’t get out of their kill zone, you die. Back when that comment was made, it was in the context of their vision for the necromancer. The reality, though, was falling laughably short of that statement; other professions could easily escape us.

Tainted Shackles’ introduction helped move us closer to that vision of being the anti-mobility lock-down profession. As such, it’s fulfilling the role for which it was designed. It doesn’t need a counter as it itself is a counter to the previous situation in which every other profession could just run away and reset the fight.

Furthermore, it already has a counter; simply keep one’s distance when engaging a necromancer. This isn’t perhaps as obvious as the rock-paper-scissors scenario of “player X used skill Y so I must counter by using skill Z”. But this is necros we’re talking about; subtlety, nuance, counter-intuitive, and non-obvious play should be part of how the profession works. The counter to Tainted Shackles isn’t a skill that you activate, but rather where you position yourself relative to the necro. It makes opponents have to think twice about how close they’re willing to get rather than thinking to themselves, “Meh, a necro. I can engage with impunity because I know I can always just run away and reset the fight in my favor.”

Where you state:

“There’s no incentive to get out of leash range, because you can’t avoid the damage anyways. And because there’s little counterplay, the skill isn’t powerful.”

The incentive is to not stray within leash range in the first place. The skill is quite powerful; but in that counter-intuitive way that should be core to necromancy. The skill itself may do little damage (personally, they could remove the Torment portion and I wouldn’t miss it), but it sets up an opponent(s) to be snared within the necromancer’s and his/her allies’ kill zone.

In this regard, it’s working as intended; keep your distance from a necro or be punished for straying too close. If anything, we need more skills like this. With the announcement that ArenaNet will be adding new skills and traits to the game in future, maybe we’ll see them.

@Sepreh, don’t get me wrong, I think it could potentially be a great skill, but it would need to be its own separate skill, probably a utility skill on a longer CD with few other effects (maybe a stability skill? like 5s of stability and damage sharing on a long CD), its just adding it to DS 5 that would be too strong.

Bhawb.7408:

@Sepreh, don’t get me wrong, I think it could potentially be a great skill, but it would need to be its own separate skill, probably a utility skill on a longer CD with few other effects (maybe a stability skill? like 5s of stability and damage sharing on a long CD), its just adding it to DS 5 that would be too strong.

I can definitely see that it would make more sense as a utility skill. Especially in a bunkerish build…. with a greatsword with cleave and life steal