Guild Wars 2

Ok, so it seems pretty obvious that the Druid’s Cele Form was inspired by the Necromancer’s Shroud (just the inverse of it, based on healing rather than hurting). One thing I would like to see come out of it for QoL for Necros is to give us our right half of the skill bar while in Shroud. Druid’s don’t lose their right half of the bar, so let’s get this for necros now.

I expected to see a thread about Celestial form having utilities. I’d like to hear a word on it myself.

Their shroud doesn’t block damage though right?

I don’t know if giving Necros their utility skills in shroud would be overpowered or not. I do know that simply allowing us to see them and their remaining cooldown wouldn’t though. At the very least can you do this…

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

The other part is that DS is a built up absorb which is finite, unlike blocking or a Mesmer’s 4 second invulnerability, where they can receive full ally support.

I’m not going to argue DS potency because numbers can be adjusted, but for the sake of design, DS needs to be looked at from the view point of broken design philosophies.

That said, grey out the heal button in shroud, I really don’t care about that, I’m much more concerned about basic utilities and ally healing.

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

That’s honestly a pretty interesting way to look at it. I honestly didn’t consider that. You will run into the whole ‘overheal’ issue that limits the healing of Druid over the Necro shroud, but you still make a great point.

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

1. You are spending the time healing yourself rather than applying pressure.
2. CC stops you from healing yourself if you get locked down while DS does it passively.

It is a pretty big difference so DS definitely has the advantage there just for the passive nature of its damage mitigation.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

1. You are spending the time healing yourself rather than applying pressure.
2. CC stops you from healing yourself if you get locked down while DS does it passively.

It is a pretty big difference so DS definitely has the advantage there just for the passive nature of its damage mitigation.

Shroud is also more finite, our exchange for most defensive capabilities, and selfish. A druid’s healing is able to keep groups alive, not just themselves, and there are some offensive/defensive split mechanics in the mix, not necessarily all “damage” oriented, but offensive utility/pressure is not direct damage alone.

ronpierce.2760:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

1. You are spending the time healing yourself rather than applying pressure.
2. CC stops you from healing yourself if you get locked down while DS does it passively.

It is a pretty big difference so DS definitely has the advantage there just for the passive nature of its damage mitigation.

Shroud is also more finite, our exchange for most defensive capabilities, and selfish. A druid’s healing is able to keep groups alive, not just themselves, and there are some offensive/defensive split mechanics in the mix, not necessarily all “damage” oriented, but offensive utility/pressure is not direct damage alone.

How is it more finite? Celestial form seems quite short in duration to me, and even if you are going to argue that if a necromancer is attacked by multiple foes then he can be kicked out of shroud really fast, you need to consider that if the same number of foes attack the druid it will not manage to get any healing off either because of the heavy CC spam.

The offensive capabilities of the celestial form are also really, really minute in comparison to shroud, which can be a huge DPS dealer I am not even going to go into its Reaper Shroud version, where it is also an amazing sustain tool.

I really do not believe that what Druid gets even competes with Death Shroud. In raids it might, I can not say anything for this game mode. But for PvE going into healer mode is a massive DPS loss and ultimately useless, in WvW the necromancer has been a dominant class for a long while and the near permanent shroud in zerg fights just further seals the deal, and in PvP the ranger will need to get pretty close into the fight and lock itself out of its evasion-based weapons in the middle of a team fight to be able to get some use out of it that is worth the hassle. It is much easier to be made useless than the HP sponge that is DS.

At the very least we need to be able to see our utility CDs, and we need to be able to receive healing. Make it PvE only if you have to, but we absolutely have to receive allied healing in Raids if we’re ever going to be even considered.

Bhawb.7408:

At the very least we need to be able to see our utility CDs, and we need to be able to receive healing. Make it PvE only if you have to, but we absolutely have to receive allied healing in Raids if we’re ever going to be even considered.

Reduce healing to 20% through shroud or make all healing give 1-5% of LF when in Shroud, with a few other changes should be balanced. I think.

Giving some LF instead of “real” health might also balance out having utilities and thus a heal in DS/RS…

Invictus.1503:

Ok, so it seems pretty obvious that the Druid’s Cele Form was inspired by the Necromancer’s Shroud (just the inverse of it, based on healing rather than hurting). One thing I would like to see come out of it for QoL for Necros is to give us our right half of the skill bar while in Shroud. Druid’s don’t lose their right half of the bar, so let’s get this for necros now.

And also altering the utilities! Now they must give this to us!!!

mazut.4296:

Invictus.1503:

Ok, so it seems pretty obvious that the Druid’s Cele Form was inspired by the Necromancer’s Shroud (just the inverse of it, based on healing rather than hurting). One thing I would like to see come out of it for QoL for Necros is to give us our right half of the skill bar while in Shroud. Druid’s don’t lose their right half of the bar, so let’s get this for necros now.

And also altering the utilities! Now they must give this to us!!!

Technically, it doesn’t alter utilities, it just triggers glyph changes. Shouts etc will be the same.

There’s only a single thing that you’re all missing: Cestial Avatar can still deal damage!!!
Seriously.

Dont’ you see something big, bad and hungry near the Druid? It’s called “Pet” and it can still be used to deal a lot of damage.
Yes, the Druid itself in CA can’t deal good damage (everu 10 sec can use the skill 5 to deal damage) but the damage will be easy dealed by it’s Pet!!!
It’s still there! And it can attack and active skills while the Druid is in CA!!!

That can make the Druid in CA a big and bad enemy why you’re still facing not one but TWO enemies at once still in 1vs1!

And the Druid can still use it’s utility skill in CA, with glyphs powered in a team support variation (and the pet count as an ally).

Then, a Druid in CA can’t inflict good damage by itself but can keep it’s Pet alive while it attack you, killing you still while using not a single offensive skill.
And a Druid can Daze you for 3 seconds every 5+1 seconds! Cleaning all the time every conditions on the pet spamming the seed, healing it with the seed and the skill 1 and 4.
You can still add that the skill 4 generate a Water Field every 8 seconds that last for 4-5 seconds and every single Seed are a Blast Finisher, making tha Druid Heal it’s pet and itself better than with the skill 1.
And the skill 5 inflict a lot of bad conditions and high damage, immobilizing and bleeding you, making the pet able to catch and hit you.

Now, do you still think that the Druid in Celestial Avatar is a pure defensive healer build unable to deal damage and kill you?

Heal, waterfields and condi clean AoE everywhere that make the Pet and the Druid unkillable while the Druid’s Pet kill you and the Druid CC you.
A really nice combination, guys.
(it need a good charge of the Celestial Avatar pool to work in a long fight but if done it will be very powerfull)

I will see a lot of Druid Petmaster (+condition?) kill enemies in 1vs1 in sPvP after the HoT release!

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Question is: is self healing not considered damage absorbtion? Because if yes the biggest difference with death shroud is the focus on healing compared to the focus on “damage”, I would not consider it enough to justify the lack of utilities and ally healling.

1. You are spending the time healing yourself rather than applying pressure.
2. CC stops you from healing yourself if you get locked down while DS does it passively.

It is a pretty big difference so DS definitely has the advantage there just for the passive nature of its damage mitigation.

^This

However I would like to see no interupts on switching to DS when stomping/rezzing.
Every other class has some a access to safe stomp, stability and such, I feel we should at least be able to keep our health from dropping mid stomp/rez.

There are quite a few things on this topic.

1) Deathshroud is pure aggression. Lifeforce is built trough damage and things dying mostly. Deathshroud migates damage to help you maintain that aggression and to an extend replaces our need for blocks or invulnerability. That being said the aggression that i can cause in DS is to lackluster as base necromancer. The skills are too slow, predictable, they lack in potency considering the speed of other classes in terms of execution, and they are sometimes build limiting. To fix this issue, they either need to make the skills stronger by default, make them automaticly change somewhat based on the weapon youre using, or making us able to use our utlility, heal and elite skills to make us able to keep the aggression our build is supposed to do somewhat up.

2. Deathshroud decay is way off. It depletes too quickly without investing into vital persistance. We have so many traits and skill effects that are based around DS to make it good, or useable. Its getting to a point with all the burst, mobility and condi pressure around that i feel i cant play any serious build without using vital persistance, i have to invest in so many traits that make our DS better to make it usefull, and even then im in the clutch that my DS only benefits some of my builds. It has no good baseline synergy with conditions builds, it has 0 baseline synergy with heal, sustain, or supporting. We dont have any synergy with our utility skills, as we cant use them, the only skills that could have synergy are spectral skills due to the maintained effect, and minions in theory, but we do baseline nothing for them in deathshroud.

Druid on the other side gets very potent heals, and CC, overall very strong and reliable base effects baseline, with the traits they showed us making them VERY VERY strong, It feels like what the druid is getting with this form, even if you dont pick traits at all is more solid then our DS is in the majority of our builds. They still can use utility skills. They still have their pet as class mechanic, they can heal the pet very easily, considering the strenght of the new pets this is HUGE. They apply pressure with daze, and roots, as well as being able to fully support their allys, they can cause DPS trough the pets if they wish so, the baseheals seems potent so even when goind on a full berserker or condi build, they can use this form similar to deeathshroud, as forms of raw healing, sustaining, condi cleans and CC pressure.

The ressource generation for druid is vastly different, but once they get their bar full, they know what they can rely on, they dont feel as “in a hurry” as necromancers do, due to lifeforce depleting quickly natural, and lifeforce being removed by damage. Overall the druid form seems much safer for me, without as much trait investment as necromancers shroud, while still retaining the core build a druids want to have. They still can go full condi with traps, or spirits, or use survival skills, this form lets them even heal their spirits or pets, forther increasing their potential abilitys. ofc spirits are bad currently, but from a pure design standpoint, the druids form is much better.

Many classes such as guardian, ele, mez and warrior have access to invulnerability’s or damage nullification.

Necro does not have access to much stability, breakstun, resistance, invulns, etc.
We have a strong defense tool but we are very susceptible to heavy burst or cc.
I don’t feel we should be prevented of healing when it is our profesion mechanic

However, I am aware it might be OP in sPvP and I like the idea of the heal being absorbed and passively heals you.