Hey everyone,
I am a lurker on the necromancer forums, but I have been playing the necromancer since release. I am proud to say that I love the class. However, the one mechanic that angers me most is Death Shroud. I love the idea of the Death Shroud mechanic as a whole; however, I believe that there is a lot left to expand on.
First off, I believe Death Shroud should have skills that are based off the weapons you are holding. This change allows Anet to fix the glaring flaw with Death Shroud: it strictly appeals to power builds. I believe by implementing this change, this glaring weakness would be solved, as Death Shroud would be able to be adjusted to fit the play style involved with each weapon. Also, I believe this change would allow for increased versatility of Death Shroud as the skills could be designed to supplement the play style of the weapon held. For example, the main hand Dagger’s Death Shroud could retain a gap closer, as this increases the original weapons effectiveness. However, the main hand Dagger’s Death Shroud would obviously not retain an AoE skill, as that goes against the effectiveness of the weapon, single target burst. Furthermore, each weapon could be customized to the strength of the weapon… Scepter with conditions/snares, Staff with AoE/CC, etc. This opens up an entirely new realm of possibility to expand the effectiveness of each weapon, as well as give the Necromancer much needed versatility. Also, this would increase the skill cap of the profession, as people would need to become accustomed to timing weapon swaps, as each one would give access to 10 unique skills.
The second and last change to Death Shroud that I propose is adding a fifth skill. It does not make sense to simply limit the versatility of our class mechanic, just because. Please Anet, just give us a fifth Death Shroud skill. Also, I believe this fifth skill should be based on both weapons, allowing additional decisions to be made when forming builds. I believe thief has this implemented already, where the third skill is different if you’re D/D as opposed to D/P. This change to Death Shroud would further increase versatility and viability to weapon sets.
Despite these great benefits, I know even if the developers were to take on this challenge of revamping the class mechanic, it would take incredible effort and time, but the end result would surely be fantastic. Please, Anet consider introducing this mechanic in the future and Necromancers viability, versatility, skill cap, and popularity would surely increase. I know my hopes are way too high, but I love the class and this change needs to come eventually in my opinion. Surprise me devs! Leave any discussion on possible skill suggestions or ideas about this concept in the comments… I’d love to hear what other Necromancers in the community think about this idea! Thanks for reading if you made it this far
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By the way, IGN: Iamanasura if anyone wants to chat with me in game about my idea or the necro in general!
TL;DR: I believe basing Death Shroud on weapons and adding a fifth skill would add incredible versatility to the Necromancer and increase the skill cap of the profession. Also, I believe this would give an increase to viability to Death Shroud’s use in all builds.