The Shroud is a excuse for ANet to don’t give to the Necromancer any single defensive skill.
At our best we can use a Spectral Armor (that grant protection and LF) and Wurm. With the reaper we obtained Rise!, that worked good, the reason why they nerfed it. In sPvP, all the other “defensive” skills are really useless.
What ANet think about the survavibility of the Necromancer explained once for all:
1) Double HP bar.
2) Some bad teleport skill + damage reduction by protection and minions
3) Corrupt the enemy boons to make it weak and kill it without mercy
4) Chill it to keep it in range
But we have the same old problems from years:
1) Life Force is NOT a second HP bar. It’s design upon the necromancer make it both our best defensive and offensive ability, making us chose if we want to survive 2 seconds more under a focus or use it to inflict our damage. Why out of the Shroud our damage is really WEAK compared to all the other classes. Our best chance to inflict damage was Deathly Chill, now nerfed to a barely useless trait, good only for the RS5+RS4 combo, that frequently miss half of it’kitten why the enemy easly move away from our attack range. And that’s our only “burst” skill. Then if we chose to die instead of spend all our LF to survive a little more and keep our best (and sometimes only) damage ability and combo, we have to find the best moment to active it, why a dps build can strip us away from RS in 4 seconds. Sometimes in team Fight I’m not able to end the RS5+4 combo before the enemy strip me away from the RS.
Then, the Shroud is NOT a defensive skill, only a way to make us chose if we want to inflict good damage or survive 2-4 seconds longer. I like that thing, force us to play better, but in the current meta that thing is making us too many problems.
2)With no damage immunuty or blocks, we have only few bad damage reduction and 1 bad teleport (if the work is killed we lost our only way to flee from a fight…).
Then, i will be ok about damage reduction skills. We can’t totally block damage? ok, we have a a traited Spectral Armor that grant us Protection for 9 seconds and a lot of LF. That’s good! But then you see that the majority of the other classes have Passive damage reduction skills and Permanent Protect, that make our few bad defensive options look as what they are: bad try to survive a little longer why all the others can survive five times better without just two block skills.
The HP amount don’t make a class a Bunker or even able to Self Sustain itself. The enemy have to inflict to us up to 40k of damage to kill us if we active all our skills, then why we’re killed by any clas sin the game (and by some of them really really fast) and a class like the Dragonhunter survive ten time better than us? The reason is one: Strong Active Defensive skills. A dps DH build have up to 17 seconds of Block (14 of them by the traited F3, that also make them able to fight using a directional block) and 3 seconds of Immunity that also recharge it’s Virtues. 20 seconds of survavibility. Plus 3 blocks by the Focus 5 and a lot of Blinds.
Then, a build with 17k of hp survive ten time better and longer than a class with 40k of HP+LF.
That’s why a 3 sec of Immunity during a Focus can block up to 18-20k of damage.
The necromancer Need true defensive skills, not only bad defences that any other class can obtain easly and frequently in a permanent way.
3) ANet think that another way to make us survive is to grant us the ability to Corrupt boons. And, guys, that Worked! Incredibly Worked!!!
Until there was a bunker meta, able to inflict only medium damage and with really few classes/builds able to make a Burst or even high damage, and also that builds was truly Berserker builds, with only few defences and easy to kill.
in the previous meta the game granted to some bunkers to inflict similar damage as a dps (celestial tempest) but Now the meta grant to a lot of classes a chance to play Totally Berserker and Survive as a Bunker.
Now corrupt the boons of the enemy don’t make it weaker in damage, not enough to make us survive.
Against the old cele-ele we was the only class able to win why we’re able to corrupt it’s protection and might stack, making it killable like all the other classes and unable to inflict it’s insane direct and condition damage. Now we’re facing classes that are able to strip away half of our hp without even the need of a single buff. And they’re also able to stack might, becoming even more dangerous for us.
Actually a Boon Corruption playstyle don’t even grant the chance to kill anyone, not even to survive to anyone.
4) We’re unable to keep the enemy in range. That’s why Anet made all the movement and teleport skills be unaffected by Chill, don’t reducing they’re movement ability at all, still while under the effect of Chill. Also Chill is lesser spammable than before (but there’s a good reason, at the beginning the Chill was a little too much. Anyway, now that don’t even inflict damage there’s no more reasons to keep it hard spammable, but it’s like it is and ANet will not change that).
Counting that any other class have a lot of movement skills, we’re totally unable to keep the enemy in our range. That’ because a lot of fights ends with the Reaper in Shroud that try to catch the enemy without a single chance to reach him, wasting it’s shroud.
The necromancer lack in more or less anything that make him able to survive under a enemy focus, have not mobility, the corruption ability had been enanched by a lot with the scepter buff but is useless to defend yourself against the insane dps of the actual meta (and sometimes is useless because different classes can spam boons and clean condis so much that all our work last for 2 seconds and then is like nothing happen), our damage is weak out of the Shroud and the Shroud is our only way to attack and defend, forcing us to chose if we want to survive or inflict damage, sometimes making us unable to do both the things, and we have not a single way to force the enemy to stand in melee (unless he want to stay in melee because can kill us in few seconds without mercy).
From the moment the bunker meta has gone, we’re totally a free kill for a large amount of classes and builds and our work is even harder why differetn classes have more boon spam and condi clean than before and others have more survavibility and damage than before.
We’re the last weel of this meta. The only reason we’re still on our feets is why we’re able to corrupt boons instead of only remove it. Nothing more.
