Guild Wars 2

currently flashing shroud builds aren’t viable except in low damage situations. See the attachment for what I suggest what I suggest for the discussion.

Death Magic
spectral atunement
When shroud is recharging 50% of damage taken is redirected to you lifeforce. Lose Sprectral Atunement if your Lifeforce drops below the threshold.
Lifeforce Threshold: 30%

Pros
Doesn’t rely on the strength of shroud … shroud can be more utility focused.
major difference in play style to current options
more usage of class mechanic button.
has synergy with current traits
Cons
balance… work
less usage of shroud
may just be directly competing with current build strengths

notes
higher lifeforce and healing available outside of shroud
Has little synergy with vital persistence

feel free to add what you see as pros and cons or you add suggestion and question about how things would work. MOST importantly though please share how you feel about getting a flashing shroud build. scale 1 to 10 10 being best

added trait line I would put my suggestion in

Speed of Shadows, Vital Persistence, and Reaper’s Onslaught seem more productive than flashing right now.

Shroud flashing came to prominence mainly because baseline shroud wasn’t as high dps as dagger, back in the day. Now we have Reaper’s Shroud, it seems a waste to flash shroud.

Lahmia.2193:

Shroud flashing came to prominence mainly because baseline shroud wasn’t as high dps as dagger, back in the day. Now we have Reaper’s Shroud, it seems a waste to flash shroud.

Tadsoul.6951:

currently flashing shroud builds aren’t viable except in low damage situations.

edit incoming damage

the idea of this thread was to discuss the interest of a flashing shroud build, the pros and cons and what it would take for actually making a flashing shroud build work.

hope this has cleared up any misinterpretations that people seem to be having.

I think the biggest danger of the suggested trait is the convergence of life force to health, while they are fundamentally different. Life force has pros and cons over health and this just seems to throw it (for the most part) out of the way. Also it forces a certain amount of life force generation.

Personaly I don’t think that ‘pure shroud’ flashing will be optimal, the utility offered by the shroud is too much. What I think might be viable is minimal shroud flashing. You stay in shroud for very short moments and use some of the utility in that small frame. The only problem is a lack of damage migitation. A trait to counter this would be:

“Rest In Peace: when entering shroud your life force will not decrease for 2 seconds. Exit shroud’s cooldown is increased by 2 seconds.”

Pros:
- anti burst
-connected to the shroud (high shroud uptime means low RiP uptime and vice versa)
-comes with a cost since you can’t leave the shroud
-only damage negation
Cons:
- pure flashing impossible
- long shroud durations started by 2 sec damage immunity frame is possible

Shroud used to be less productive to camp in but new traits make it more worthwhile. With shroud being Necromancer’s primary damage mitigation, especially when soft CCs get cleared more frequently and easily, I am happy to camp shroud.

Halving incoming damage and charging LF while shroud is on CD sounds like s straight-up buff, and an unnecessary one that does not fix one of Necromancer’s limitations.

shroud flashing would need a lot of traits to support it, across multiple trait lines. ive always liked the idea.

I’ve actually looked at shroud flashing a whole lot. The options are there, but due to the spread of traits it’s too difficult to cut things out. By maxing Concentration and JUST popping shroud and for ease assuming dagger aa, assuming 1 traitline only is active at a time (You’ll get dual benefits e.g. +Healing Power or +Life Force Generation by using a combination etc.) Here we go:

Spite:

Rending Shroud = (3 Vuln – 10 Seconds) on Shroud pop
———————————————————————-
Spiteful Spirit = 100% Retal. if more than 1 target

Curses:

Furious Demise = 100% Fury
———————————————————————-
Target The Weak = Min 4%, Usually around 8-10%
– Weakening Shroud = 100% Weakness and Bleeding
– Path of Corruption = Some cheeky corrupts

Death Magic

Shrouded Removal = -1 Condi
--——————————————————————-
Beyond the Vale = 85% Toughness
———————————————————————-
Unholy Sanctuary = Small Heal (130)HP + Safety net

Blood Magic

Mark of Evasion = 100% regen
———————————————————————-
Life From Death = AoE Heal (800) on Exit + 5% Revive
———————————————————————-
Unholy Martyr = Draw 1 Condi from ally +7% LF

Soul Reaping

Speed of Shadows = Shroud recharge is now 7secs (-30% from 10 seconds)
———————————————————————-
Foot in The Grave = 6secs Stability

Reaper

Blighters Boon = Depending on other Traitlines and utilities you’d get a fair amount of stuff here, but really.. I’m not sure it’s worth it for what you give up.

So there’s a whole load of stuff here, and a fair amount of synergy. The issue is getting everything you want in a build. The issues I’ve had trying to get everything into a build is what makes this slightly an issue. You can make a really decent tanky build by doing this though, high uptime protection, stability, still a good crit chance with Commanders gear etc.

Something like this? Or this? I don’t know – It’s certainly not the best. The concept is a nice bit of fun when roaming around though.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBHbhG2IDN0cjV3gXNwejjahCmABQDED7RoEkDRQc2A-TxRCQB4b/hqdCAmoyvBq+DAeAAzT/wYUCSKAvmaB-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBHbhG2IDNUcj12gXNwejjjhK2zbbAQ/hpIIkfQHM0A-TxRCQBDU9H8t/Q1OBAzT/AAeAAjRJ4EV+RKAvmaB-e

@ Tim using skills in shroud
when I talk about flashing shroud I have the intent to still use shroud skill 2-5 as they have really good effects shroud 1 in the current state would rarely be used with the build.
pros and cons of shroud interaction with trait
The pro of lifeforce vs health is the fact it take 2 points of damage to remove one point of lifeforce the con is it decreases over time while in shroud.
this would remove the con but keep the strength which I’m aware of and suggest balance work would need to be done.
using lifeforce with the traits
I like your suggestion, my aim with the trait is to use lifeforce, with yours wouldn’t it consume even less lifeforce?
@ anchoku
I agree shroud based builds are really strong
balance of the trait
I think the trait is really strong and could use some balance work. If the trait doesn’t overshadow shroud based builds I believe it won’t just be a straight up buff. This is because it doesn’t work well together.
limitation of necromancers
the idea of the trait wasn’t to fix the limitation of the necromancer it is to offer another play style.The flashing shroud build should have both advantages and disadvantages compared to a shroud based build. First a flashing shroud build needs to be semi-viable.

I know there are so many flashing shroud traits its part of the reason why think there should be a flashing shroud build. The reason why I believe they don’t work is because you can’t use your lifeforce

Tadsoul.6951:

@ Tim using skills in shroud
when I talk about flashing shroud I have the intent to still use shroud skill 2-5 as they have really good effects shroud 1 in the current state would rarely be used with the build.

Ok, so we are basically on the same line on what is desired/viable just a different interpretation on the meaning on flashing.

Tadsoul.6951:

pros and cons of shroud interaction with trait
The pro of lifeforce vs health is the fact it take 2 points of damage to remove one point of lifeforce the con is it decreases over time while in shroud.
this would remove the con but keep the strength which I’m aware of and suggest balance work would need to be done.

It is more then just health conversion. It is the restriction of not using heals/utilities/weapon skills. It is the limit on certain traits (like soul marks), … .

Tadsoul.6951:

using lifeforce with the traits
I like your suggestion, my aim with the trait is to use lifeforce, with yours wouldn’t it consume even less lifeforce?

Absolutely, it is even intentional. Remember if we are going flashing flashing shroud we are going speed of shadows otherwise we could consider speed of shadows completely useless. So we lose soul marks which is an important life force generation skill for any necro.
On top of that I tested a shroud flashing build back in the day unholy sanctuary was released in hotjoin. My experience was that you need to be offensive. So I think that you can’t really run warhorn which is not another set of life force.
Another thing what I wanted to achieve was shroud to be a last stand kind of thing where you hope to remove the last bit of health of the foe. A place you don’t want to be but have to be.
A last remark can be that if we can make a shroud limited build we can actually use speed of shadows to its full potential by using it out of combat for movement speed.

What does flashing shroud mean?

StickerHappy.8052:

What does flashing shroud mean?

It is where you pop into shroud and out again immediately after. It’s usually to trigger a lot of “upon entering shroud” traits such as Weakening Shroud and Furious Demise. It saw a lot more use pre HoT when our shroud was inferior dps to dagger because it was a ranged attack. Now we have Reaper Shroud, it doesn’t see as much use.

I love your suggestion OP, however…

I feel like it would benefit condition Necromancers, who typically have poor Life Force generation, and that’s one of the few things you can count on when fighting a condi Necro. Is that they won’t be able to re-enter their Shroud over and over and over again.

With how OP condition Reaper currently is, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to give us even better ways to gain soul… I mean Life Force.

I would put my trait suggestion into the death magic trait line for those interested
What if you had a like -20% lifeforce generation when you have the spectral attunement buff. If its tested to be to strong a limitation like this could work I think