Guild Wars 2

One of the biggest complaints about the necromancer is its inability to deal with focus fire and poor ability to escape or pursue an enemy. Personally, I wouldn’t mind this so much as other people do if we had a few more options for defense. Death Shroud (And by extension reaper’s shroud) is supposed to make up for all the other defensive abilities other professions have in the game. Most of our defensive game play comes from us being aggressive. Which is again, something I don’t personally mind. Weakness, blindness along with soft cc abilities are what make up the majority of our defense outside of Death shroud. The issue with this is that its far more difficult to applies these debuffs when fighting multiple foes. And Death shroud itself doesn’t scale up the more foes you fight. And quite frankly there really isn’t a way it could.

It honestly doesn’t matter how you spin it the necromancer really does need access to some form of scaling defense. easy access to resistance would be an excellent start but I feel it wouldn’t quite be enough. Giving the necromancer that along with a single Projectile block skill could easily push them from being useless in something like PvE to an actual desire profession.

So my Suggestion here would be to have the toxic landing trait also grant Resistance to you and your allies. Currently, the trait is pretty bad. And even with the corruption reduction its not something people are going to want to take. Giving us a way to grant resistance to ourselves and allies could go along way.

In that same Idea. One skill that I’ve always personally liked but felt it was a bit underwhelming was Corrosive poison cloud. A suggestion I heard awhile ago was to have it destroy projectiles. Which could make the skill extremely good. With it comboing with the Toxic landing suggestion you could provide resistance to allies along with protecting them by triggering it, giving some more defensive play to the necromancer which they normally don’t have.

And last, since I’m kinda scatterbrain at the moment, Would be Death’s charge. When I first saw this skill the first question that popped into my head was “Does this block projectiles?” and I was a bit confused when it was revealed to not have this function because of how it looked along with its rather short range. Personally, I think it should block projectiles to add to the necromancer’s defensive and proactive game play.

Would these suggestions be too much? I honestly highly doubt it. Health is no substitute for active defense. And the necromancer is in some desperate need of scaling defenses.

Lily.1935:

And quite frankly there really isn’t a way it could.

There absolutely is, scaling LF generation. Hypothetical situation: if all of our LF generation abilities gained X% per target hit, they would scale linearly with how large the fight was, and accordingly how “dangerous” the situation was. This means you might gain 1% LF per hit 1v1, but Xv5, you gain 5% LF per hit, scaling up evenly with the number of enemies that can hurt you. This works with ICDs so long as they are per-attacker instead of global, and works on all multi-hit abilities, and even could work on traits like Soul Marks. This isn’t the entire picture, as we’d still need better counter-CC options in order to reliably keep up our offensive-defense, and we’d still need at least a few abilities that reflect/block/invuln in order to work in PvE and give us those chances to apply our “defense” even while being trained down.

There is nothing that actually stops our current mechanics from scaling except ANet’s fetish with ICDs and non-scaling LF generation, and lack of a few “necro” styled more traditional defensive options.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

And quite frankly there really isn’t a way it could.

There absolutely is, scaling LF generation. Hypothetical situation: if all of our LF generation abilities gained X% per target hit, they would scale linearly with how large the fight was, and accordingly how “dangerous” the situation was. This means you might gain 1% LF per hit 1v1, but Xv5, you gain 5% LF per hit, scaling up evenly with the number of enemies that can hurt you. This works with ICDs so long as they are per-attacker instead of global, and works on all multi-hit abilities, and even could work on traits like Soul Marks. This isn’t the entire picture, as we’d still need better counter-CC options in order to reliably keep up our offensive-defense, and we’d still need at least a few abilities that reflect/block/invuln in order to work in PvE and give us those chances to apply our “defense” even while being trained down.

There is nothing that actually stops our current mechanics from scaling except ANet’s fetish with ICDs and non-scaling LF generation, and lack of a few “necro” styled more traditional defensive options.

Right. Sorry, I’m a bit tired its late for me. Also, doesn’t change the core suggestions I’m making here.

Not at all, I think most of the changes you suggest are absolutely fine.

I like your suggestions. Personally I think a #6 skill in DS would be a good solution. For example, here’s something I thought of off the top of my head.
Enveloping Shroud: Channeled skill. 1/4 sec Cast Time, 20 sec CD
When channeled, increase LF degen to 8% per second, but gain invulnerability while doing so. This would give 12.5 seconds of invulnerability if used from 100% LF.
The cool down and cast time force you to intelligently use it (don’t pop it for minor attacks, use it for large bursts or when focused). The CD is much lower than other invulnerability skills to make up for the increased LF degen, but you’ll lose much less LF if you use it at the right time.

For Reaper it could be…
Leeching Shroud: 1/2 sec Cast Time, 40(?) CD.
Gain 20% damage reduction for each enemy within 600 units, for 3(?) seconds.
This would encourage getting enemies close to you, force enemies to play smart, and give good damage reduction if used well. At 20% per enemy, that’d be 100% for 5 enemies. Even with only 2 you still have pretty good damage reduction (40%). This would obviously be countered by switching to range weaponry. Unlike the first skill, this is not channeled, meaning you can continue to use skills for the duration of it.

I don’t know whether the CD and/or duration are unbalanced for these. Anyways, it’s more about the concept than the exact numbers.

The Wizland.8435:

I like your suggestions. Personally I think a #6 skill in DS would be a good solution. For example, here’s something I thought of off the top of my head.
Enveloping Shroud: Channeled skill. 1/4 sec Cast Time, 20 sec CD
When channeled, increase LF degen to 8% per second, but gain invulnerability while doing so. This would give 12.5 seconds of invulnerability if used from 100% LF.
The cool down and cast time force you to intelligently use it (don’t pop it for minor attacks, use it for large bursts or when focused). The CD is much lower than other invulnerability skills to make up for the increased LF degen, but you’ll lose much less LF if you use it at the right time.

For Reaper it could be…
Leeching Shroud: 1/2 sec Cast Time, 40(?) CD.
Gain 20% damage reduction for each enemy within 600 units, for 3(?) seconds.
This would encourage getting enemies close to you, force enemies to play smart, and give good damage reduction if used well. At 20% per enemy, that’d be 100% for 5 enemies. Even with only 2 you still have pretty good damage reduction (40%). This would obviously be countered by switching to range weaponry. Unlike the first skill, this is not channeled, meaning you can continue to use skills for the duration of it.

I don’t know whether the CD and/or duration are unbalanced for these. Anyways, it’s more about the concept than the exact numbers.

I’d honestly rather have access to our utility skills than to add more skills to the death shroud bar. Which would include our heal but I feel the heal’s active shouldn’t work in DS. But that’s a different topic all together.

But thanks.

What if they made it so we no longer degen lifebforce while in shroud, and get 6-10 skills. 1-5 would be our normal skills but 6-10 woul be powerful abilities that consumed LF….just a thought.

what if they give us immunity for all the duration on death shroud?

It is much better that we get access to our actual normal utilities while in DS. It lessens the worry of power creep due to so many new things being introduced to the game, and it makes DS feel like less of a “press this button to play a different class” and more like its actually a part of your build.

Bhawb.7408:

It is much better that we get access to our actual normal utilities while in DS. It lessens the worry of power creep due to so many new things being introduced to the game, and it makes DS feel like less of a “press this button to play a different class” and more like its actually a part of your build.

I would +10000 this if I could. This is exactly how I feel. I press F1 and go into a diff class, that sometimes does not even jive with what I am built for, because it is the only defense I can offer to myself. Sometimes it works out, but mostly it is just a temp hold until I can get my utilities back up and make a difference. Makes it not that useful other than a damage soak which is boring after so many years, where other classes have gotten better over time, we have gotten actually weaker.

Don’t get me wrong, I love DS and I think the class is cool, at a conceptual level. That said, adding access to our utilities would make us such a more prominent, and useful class in pvp and wvw, especially if we can get some aspects of self healing added in (i.e. my own kittening trait heals?, and team regen or blasts even.) If a guardian is blocking, and someone blasts a water field, he heals. If a necro is in DS, and someone blasts a water field, he is not healed. How is that appropriate. Sorry, I digress.

Let us have our utilities in DS. two of our elites, and our defense mech does not allow us any access to our abilities, and ends up feeling as if its a more (DO AS MUCH DAMAGE AS POSSIBLE BEFORE I DIE) aspect of play. seriously, like I’m a suicide bomber. I know I’m going to die, but I’m doing as much damage as possible before i go, because i have 0 other options.

Bhawb.7408:

It is much better that we get access to our actual normal utilities while in DS. It lessens the worry of power creep due to so many new things being introduced to the game, and it makes DS feel like less of a “press this button to play a different class” and more like its actually a part of your build.

I would actually prefer to have this, though I’d still really like an invulnerability skill somewhere.

The Wizland.8435:

Bhawb.7408:

It is much better that we get access to our actual normal utilities while in DS. It lessens the worry of power creep due to so many new things being introduced to the game, and it makes DS feel like less of a “press this button to play a different class” and more like its actually a part of your build.

I would actually prefer to have this, though I’d still really like an invulnerability skill somewhere.

Personally, I don’t think we need Invulnerability. A way to break focus fire is important but that isn’t the only solution. Right now their is no risk to targeting us and that doesn’t change with the reaper. As cool as the reaper is. With some way to prevent projectiles and giving us Resistance will force most foes to have to get close to us in order to try and focus us down. Which gives them a way to play around us without just being invulnerable which wouldn’t provide a lot of play or counter play. Professions with that ability generally have to sacrifice something in order to get that. What can we sacrifice? our life force bar? Thats quite a tall sacrifice for a few seconds of invulnerability. What about going the mesmer rout with it and sacrificing summons? Well, minions aren’t as disposable as clones and it seems like it would be harmful in the long run. We could have partial invulnerability like the warrior but thats kinda what death shroud does already, only instead of a time its a bar that slowly gets less effective as time passes.

sorry that was a bit of a rant.