Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the heads up on who made the suggestion. I had forgotten exactly who it was.

While I did present an idea for improving death shroud’s functionality (or, more specifically, gave a specific number to go with Overkillengine’s idea), the real point of this thread is discussing if Death Shroud in its current basic functionality can actually be balanced or if the concept is inherently impossible to do so with without some major changes.

Zikory.6871:

But with torment do you think it would be worthy of being a Grandmaster trait?

Depends how many stacks, really. 5 stacks, I would say yes. 2? Not so much.

@Atherakhia: Your premise, however, is flawed. Death Shroud is indeed balanced along the assumption of a 1v1, but because of that, it is too weak for 1vX where X>1. If they balanced the values for 1vX, it is too strong for 1v1.

And the idea is not to nerf Death Shroud, but rather make it so it is relevant in more situations, but not overpowered in any of them.

Having a Life Force dump is a neat idea, but given Death Shroud is a necros only real defense, I find it highly unlikely that said dump skill would find any use at all outside of the easy PvE content (i.e., not dungeons).

@AkiLeaves: Wouldn’t be horrible, but it would require a lot of very complex programming due to the constant fluctuation of enemies you could have. In addition, it could cause issues in WvW where you tag a ton of people with marks and ground-targeted wells before any of them actually start to hit you (yes, this does happen all the time in WvW). A group of necros doing this would have “health” similar to most Champions in group events. I know you said to have it scale to a cap, but that cap would have to be low to keep things sane and might end up being too low for the scaling to matter at all in numerous situations.

Given that Death Shroud is the Necromancer’s core mechanic and also primary defense (as all other defense are short duration Protection and some Blinds, both on long cooldowns. I don’t count Weakness for this purpose due to the random nature and ease of removal. People don’t usually remove Blind.), it is clear that it needs to be both effective and not overbearing.

However, there is an inherent flaw in Death Shroud. By being a second life bar, it is either too little for multiple enemies, or it is too much for one. There simply cannot be a middle ground on this. (Thanks to BloodRedArachnid for pointing this out so succinctly recently). The end result is that we have a very heavy AoE class that is ironically far better suited to facing one opponent over many. This just doesn’t fit.

The best suggestion I have seen (Thanks to Overkillengine) is to cap the amount of damage that can be taken in a second while in Death Shroud. While I am not sure if this can be programmed well, I do think this is worth looking into. My own personal suggestion is a cap of 6,000 damage per second. In a 1v1, you typically aren’t taking more than that anyway unless your opponent is bursting (but Death Shroud is also supposed to be an anti-burst mechanic, so no real issue). As such, the change would not really affect 1v1 aside from encouraging opponents to not blow their burst when the necro is in Death Shroud (which really should be well known anyway in PvP).

Against multiple foes, however, it really starts to shine as a survival mechanism with this cap. Of course, the question that comes up is why 6,000? First, that number is a pretty reasonable DPS from glassier builds that aren’t bursting. Some damage might be mitigated, but not a whole ton. Second is that the average death shroud of a necro (now) is roughly 20k health, so 6,000 is roughly 30%. Even factoring in the natural 4%/second decay, this gives an average necro with 100% life force a guaranteed 3 seconds of death shroud, enough time to make a difference when outnumbered (though not so much as to flat out change the fight). Those that build for durability will be able to extend the duration even longer (as they should, they built for it!). Spectral Armor would extend Death Shroud’s period by (on average) 1 second.

Can Death Shroud as it currently works ever actually be balanced, or is it inherently flawed? As it is now, it is simply impossible to balance as a mechanic, especially between the three gamemodes.

Really, just making Defiant a boon that can be removed (but not stolen, so no larcenous strike/arcane thievery shenanagins) would go a long way to making necros desirable in PvE content (make it convert to Torment, I guess)

anju.8256:

Super burst ranged? You mean shortbow which has 900 range and the only attack which does decent single target damage is skill number 2 which has probably the slowest projectile speed I’ve ever seen. If you’re so slow that you get hit by that repeatedly you deserve every point of damage it does to you.

More like (from stealth) Basilisk Venom, Pistol 1, Pistol Pistol 3 (repeated as necessary). Tends to chunk you pretty hard with no warning at all, so dodging isn’t an option.

I wonder what would happen if they reverted the change to make Fear affected by Defiant?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I think the balance ideal is fundamentally broken in PVP as well. The idea with necros not having the other tools results in a very difficult balancing problem.

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or suvivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

Other than to drop the design philosophy, I can’t think of a solution to this problem.

You hit the nail on the head and provided a good explanation of why the Necromancer, who is probably the most AoE heavy class in the game, is ironically actually best suited for 1v1 fights. It’s not so much the weapon and utility skills we have, it is how Death Shroud works akittens very core.

As an aside, does anyone else think that Chilling Darkness would be more useful if it was “Blind on Chill” rather than the “Chill on Blind” it is now?

Zelulose.8695:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

PMilkos.9103:

Nobody is gonna “walk through you” if you chain immobilise, chill, cripple, fear and then immobilise them again. In PVE that’s not even necessary.

Look, just admit that necromancer does not fit what you want out of a class and be done with it. It’s not bad – as with every class some like it, some don’t. Some find a way to make it work, some don’t.

So…how exactly do you propose landing any of those snares with the stupidly long cast times and big animations necros have?

Necros are currently only any good in 1v1 fights (ironic for the amount of AoE we have) with the stupid Dhuumfire build because otherwise we can’t get enough damage to matter. Especially when our “tank” builds just get ripped apart anyway due to our lack of defenses.

I really have to question if you even play a necro. I play no sPvP at all, just PvE and WvW. The number of times I have been saved only because of the now-defunct DS-pseudoblock is countless. I am even counting heavy use of the Hidden Pistol skill that most necros don’t get. Since the patch, I have tried to adapt, using Death Shroud between heals. You know what happens? I heal, go into death shroud, get wasted in that, eventually get my heal back up and use it (I need it by that point) and then just die because death shroud isn’t available due to not enough life force. I run full Rabid gear in exotics+ Ascended (trinkets are the Condition damage/Toughness/Vitality ones). I am not squishy at all and use every trick available to me to stay alive (Mark of Blood spam included). I can handle one opponent, but a second means I will just die without even downing either one.

As I said, it is very ironic that such an AoE heavy class is really only good in a 1v1.

Are you… serious?

Let me guess, Engie player?

In PvE, it’s one thing. The non-champ enemies in there (and non-silvers in dungeons) are so easy that any AoE will just mow them all down.

In WvW, it’s easy to solo-cap camps as well.

The problem comes in when you have players to deal with. Necros do not fare well at all when dealing with multiple opponents that can actually dodge and do not have extremely predictable attack patterns. The long cast times and obvious animations mean you pretty much never get to land the important snares (the only thing really worth dodging from a necro). Even diving around a Spectral Wall doesn’t usually help you out much. If I happen to get a lucky snare off, I can usually lock them down until death, but that only happens in the most lucky of circumstances (and usually it’s a Flesh Golem charge that they weren’t keeping track of).

I may be able to last a while in a 2v1 (a second Death Shroud and heal, then Last Gasp is on cooldown and I have no choice but to die), but I always, always end up losing if both opponents aren’t just bad. I don’t pretend to be an expert player, but I am experienced with the class. (882 hours/1,024 total, not including beta weekends)

If we had better defensive options, then I might be able to take them down every so often. Instead I am able to dodge two of the six vital attacks and just delay the inevitable.

PMilkos.9103:

Nobody is gonna “walk through you” if you chain immobilise, chill, cripple, fear and then immobilise them again. In PVE that’s not even necessary.

Look, just admit that necromancer does not fit what you want out of a class and be done with it. It’s not bad – as with every class some like it, some don’t. Some find a way to make it work, some don’t.

So…how exactly do you propose landing any of those snares with the stupidly long cast times and big animations necros have?

Necros are currently only any good in 1v1 fights (ironic for the amount of AoE we have) with the stupid Dhuumfire build because otherwise we can’t get enough damage to matter. Especially when our “tank” builds just get ripped apart anyway due to our lack of defenses.

I really have to question if you even play a necro. I play no sPvP at all, just PvE and WvW. The number of times I have been saved only because of the now-defunct DS-pseudoblock is countless. I am even counting heavy use of the Hidden Pistol skill that most necros don’t get. Since the patch, I have tried to adapt, using Death Shroud between heals. You know what happens? I heal, go into death shroud, get wasted in that, eventually get my heal back up and use it (I need it by that point) and then just die because death shroud isn’t available due to not enough life force. I run full Rabid gear in exotics+ Ascended (trinkets are the Condition damage/Toughness/Vitality ones). I am not squishy at all and use every trick available to me to stay alive (Mark of Blood spam included). I can handle one opponent, but a second means I will just die without even downing either one.

As I said, it is very ironic that such an AoE heavy class is really only good in a 1v1.

Tobbygnome.6793:

Constant chill atm requires many skills to land and a few traits to be taken to make sure constant up-time is achieved. To have 1 trait that achieves all this passively would make it too easy to slow down the enemies pace of combat via constant hard snare and especially recharge time increase.

To be honest, though, isn’t this what the necro needs? A strong way of slowing down combat, drawing it out into an attrition fight where our tools can actually do their work? Chill does nothing to help you reduce burst, but if you survive that burst, well, you punish them greatly for it before they can attempt it again.

Sajuuk.4973:

I like flesh wurm but I would like to see the poison and blast finisher at the necro’s feet as he teleports away. Makes more sense since everyone uses the flesh wurm as a range dps and never throw him in the middle of battle just to pull off the blast finisher and poison. If left at the Necro’s feet at the moment of teleporting it can leave a nice gift to those still standing in his last know position.

This. A thousand times this.

@chiefdiablo: Locust Swarm is better suited as a sticking skill than an escape skill.

I dunno, I relied upon that faux block countless times in my PvE and WvW experience. Now, that tactic just doesn’t work, but it is extremely difficult to adapt for what is now a useless reflex.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Aaand, this video is actually showing nothing other than that Death Shroud is finally absorbing the correct amount of damage and how stupidly squishy glass cannon eles are (hint: lowest armor and lowest health in the game).

If the condi pressure is too much in PvP, why did they do nothing to hit that (no, the Terror nerf isn’t going to fix that, just hurt every condi build that doesn’t use Dhuumfire) and instead hit the necro’s defense vs. spike and 1vX situations where they were already weak?

Power, Precision, Vitality, and Toughness will never, ever be on the same traitline as another. That is because those are the four "primary"stats. Even without any investment, you have a value in those four stats. Condition Duration, Condition Damage, Healing Power, Boon Duration, and Critical Damage are “secondary” stats.

Yeah, even though my necro is my only 80 (and fully geared in Ascended where possible, Exotics where not) and I have done pretty much all the work on getting Frostfang on just him, I sadly am finding the same thing. After I get 3 more skill points (all I need for the Bloodstone Shard), I may not touch my necro for a long time as now I just feel really squishy without the offense to make up for it (never bothered running Dhuumfire and I won’t start now).

Maybe we’re all fine and dandy for tPvP, but I don’t play that and I am REALLY feeling the pain of the death shroud nerf on many champions/legendarys/cliffjumping escapes.

Even so, I really question ANet’s decision to nerf Terror.

If item A (Terror) is in the game and balanced as-is, and then you add Item B (Dhuumfire), then discover that A+B is too powerful, what do you think should happen? Logic says that it is item B causing the problem, so what does ANet do? Nerf A.

They need to remove Dhummfire and replace it with something else (while restoring Terror). I understand they didn’t want to do that before this tournament, due to leaving necro players (like there will be any) with less time to figure things out beforehand.

To be fair with that screenshot, that skill of Kudu’s is supposed to one-shot you. My guess is that your actual health is around 22,408?

That said, there are other bosses that have hit me for 18k+ damage (Champion Abomination, I’m looking at you) and I’m in full Rabid gear. Necros are in dire need of some method of spike avoidance and the two basic Dodges just don’t cut it.

Personally, I feel that restoring Withering Precision to its former self (25% chance on crit, no ICD) would do a bit to help (not enough, though).

But necros REALLY need better access to Blind if they don’t get any defensive mitigations.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Fungalfoot.7213:

And to illustrate my point.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

Note that every other class in the game is represented while one is conspicuously absent. And now our one way of meaningfully preventing damage is GONE.

Maybe because it’s an unreliable and unintended means for preventing damage.

Maybe you’re going to receive another means of preventing damage to compensate.

Then perhaps they could hold off on removing the reliable (there was no question as to if it would work or not, so was definitely not unreliable) damage mitigation method until their method of compensation is ready to go live?

Roe.3679:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

VidurrRedhands.1964:

What skills do thieves have for 100% uptime on weakness?

dagger auto-attack + Lotus Poison trait.

That trait has a 20 second cooldown, unless the ICD was removed.

Now it does, yes. Before the last balance patch, though, thieves had a stupidly easy time making sure you didn’t dodge much.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

What skills do thieves have for 100% uptime on weakness?

dagger auto-attack + Lotus Poison trait.

I will definitely choose to support Gnashblade due to his Fractal choice. While those of us who were lucky enough to play GW1 saw Abbadon’s death, we did not witness his actual fall from the pantheon. The Fall of Abbadon fractal would go further back in time than any other fractal and would show us one of the most defining events in Tyrian history: what led to the Exodus.

Thaumanova Reactor, however, is both very recent and very localized. The closest fractal at first seems to be the Ascalon Fractal, but the Searing was a far more defining event than the Reactor. If anything, the Reactor’s scale is probably closer to, say, the underwater or swamp fractal in story significance. Because it was so recent, we already have a decent idea of what happened just by walking through the NW corner of Metrica Province.

I’m just kind of throwing this one out to you guys for suggestions. The one class I don’t have a character for is Engineer, and it seems like the perfect candidate for using that Experience Scroll I got. My current characters are a Charr Necromancer (main), Ausra Guardian, Charr Ranger, Sylvari Warrior, Human Mesmer, Charr Elementalist, and Norn Thief.

For the Charr, each one is in a different legion, hence the number of them.

So, what race would you guys suggest for my Engie?

Perhaps make it stack across the party instead of average, then? Would this end up with ludicrous MF? Yes, but only for those parties who went entirely MF, who I feel should be rewarded for their extra difficulty.

Also, the same people that say “it’s not fair that my party members are benefitting from my MF” are strangely quiet on, say, party members benefiting from their Healing Power or Boon Duration stat. Yes, MF can’t be traited, but it is still a stat on gear. It’s the same deal: You make the investment, others benefit. But so do you. Funny thing about it being a team game.

If other games tried to average MF stats for party-wide, then I can easily understand why the implementation was hated there. In order to get decent MF, the whole party had to have it which was the exact same as when it is individual. By making it stack, you only need one person to have it and everyone benefits. more than they would have otherwise. Alternatively, farming runs could run all MF on all members and be more lucrative.

However, I would suggest that consumeable and account MF boosts do not contribute to the party MF stat. The reason why is that there is no tradeoff for using those as opposed to another boost and it would also rein in the effects on the economy some.

How is it not fair for those who have not invested in MF to be benefiting from someone who has in a dungeon? It’s not fair for the person who did bring MF gear to be benefiting only himself when the detriment of him having lower stats is put upon the whole party.

Seriously, I do not understand this argument. The whole team benefits if you bring Beserker armor because you drop enemies faster. Why should the whole team not benefit if you bring Traveller’s gear? You’re doing the same damage that you would be if you wore Knights (which benefits by you worrying less about dodging and being rezzed/healed, though not in damage).

The whole issue with MF currently is that the lower stats hurts everyone in the party, but only benefits one person. If it dropped the damage dealt with the tradeoff of better loot drops for everyone, people would complain less. If the content is easy enough that you don’t need the max stats to do it reliably, then why not work to get some better rewards? Alternatively, why not have a party challenge themselves for greater rewards?

I have never played a Diablo game, so quoting “Oh, D3 tried that and it didn’t work” means nothing. Blizzard screwed up a hell of a lot more than magic find in D3 from what I’ve heard.

I still don’t see why they didn’t make Magic Find a party-wide stat. The main issue with it as it is now is that you are making yourself weaker for greater reward. This idea is actually perfectly fine. The problem is that making yourself weaker also means your entire party has a harder time, but Magic Find currently does not make their rewards any better to compensate.

Making it a party-wide stat means that everyone gets better rewards for choosing to make the content more difficult. Everyone in a dungeon would benefit from anyone who did decide to go MF. In the open world, it doesn’t matter if someone is in magic find gear as the content is easy enough. In WvW, it likewise doesn’t usually matter as in zerg v zerg, an individuals stats rarely matter in the outcome. The ONLY place it is really a concern is in dungeons where you are automatically in a party with everyone else in it anyhow. If everyone was wearing Magic Find gear, they would have a more difficult time with the content, but their rewards for making it harder on themselves are vastly improved.

If the people who are running magic find don’t want the others to benefit from their gear…they need to go play a different game. Making the content harder without any compensation is just unfair and isn’t playing the team game that GW2 was designed to be.

TLDR: Making Magic Find a party-wide stat should be a good idea and would also disrupt existing magic find gear the least. If anyone thinks otherwise, please post why this idea doesn’t work.

New Spite Adept Major:

Forstbite. Deals damage to the target when you inflict Chill. (scales off Power)

Makes for an interesting synergy with something the necro is already very good at. Damage wouldn’t have to be high, due to the ease for necros to cause Chill, but on the upside, it’s something every necro can make some use of. It’s also not a DoT, so the damage can’t be cleansed off.

AntiGw.9367:

Crossplay.2067:

You guys seem to have missed what was stated. Magic find isn’t completely being dumped into achievement rewards. It’s being taken off armor (hopefully weapons too) and focused more on consumables. From what I understand, these consumables will stack but you will need more to achieve higher stacks.

tl;dr: You get to have your cake and eat it too.

Don’t even begin to think I’m a fanboy. These days I am highly skeptical of anet’s actions, especially the devs in charge of class balancing and the idiots that keep putting rare skins in rng chests. That being said, I’m not going to start whining or jumping to conclusions until I see what they replace magic find stats with and how these new magic find consumables will actually work.

It’ll actually work more like infusions. You eat a consumable, and it adds 1% mf to your account bonus.

And more than that, blues and green have a chance to drop these consumables when salvaged, making them more than just merchant trash.

Mattargul.9235:

The sucky part is that you did not get experience for any discoveries after you hit 400. If you are a lvl400 weapons smith and already discovered all your exotic weapons…, gratz, you could have had 10-15 levels right there.

I hope that they take this into account and reward an amount of crafting experience based on the discovered recipies you have for level 400.

Bring back the Orders. I’m with Bhawb on that.

Also happens on Mesmer phantasms.

Do you have a Sigil of Earth or Barbed Precision? Either of those could be messing with the bleed numbers.

You can acutually have a Flesh Wurm underwater by targetting the seafloor. However, if you go underwater, the wurm does instantly die.

Can still be handy, though, as the Flesh Wurm does have a strong attack (albeit slow-firing one) and nobody ever looks underwater. It also makes for an unexpected escape in that situation.

However, I would argue that Flesh Wurm doesn’t need ooc regen. Why? Because you have to sacrifice it anyway to move it. Only times when I feel it might be helpful are during WvW when you’re trying to hold a tower/keep through multiple waves, but even then, it almost never actually survives a fight.

If their pet is dead, it’s actually harder to stop them getting ressed because you can’t do anything to the pet.

If their pet is still up, fearing it off the heal (Reaper’s Mark is wonderful) can give you valuable time in stomping them. Poisoning the Ranger always works to buy yourself extra time for a stomp.

Other alternative is to just keep downing them over and over until they skip downed state entirely.

Blaine Tog.8304:

azuzephyr.7280:

@ the shared proc idea, that would make it more powerful if anything and reduce almost none of the damage, right now 1 condition cleanse will remove both effects, giving them a shared cooldown means that a condition cleanse can remove only one of the two strong conditions, meaning it would be impossible to bait a terror/dhuumfire combo

The idea is basically this: Terror de-activates for 10 seconds if Dhuumfire procs, and Dhuumfire de-activates for 10 seconds if Terror deals damage. Either way, you can only ever hit them with one big damaging condition at a time.

Net result would be that Terror becomes a trash trait not ever taken with Dhuumfire (you will almost always crit before a fear between cooldowns).

It would definitely work to bring the combo into line, but I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. No other traits in the game fight each other and really, this idea, while it would be effective, just screams poor design.

^ Lion’s Arch behind the bank

“It’s Holler…hallo..it’s candy day!”

I do love ANet and Halloween.

If you have a necro, take them in instead of your main. Death Shroud will save you from a fall of any height and good timing of Spectral Walk can do the same (start Spectral Walk before you try a jump, reactivate it if you miss for instant do-over, or activate it twice in rapid succession when you are close to the ground).

Life force isn’t an issue because of other people falling to their deaths.

I highly doubt that Terror will get another nerf (yes, another one. Moving it to Master Tier was a nerf, though a very justified one). When you have one thing that is quite safe in the game already, then add something else and now you have an overpowering combo, what does that tell you?

It tells you the new thing is the problem in the combination. I fully expect the change to be with Dhuumfire rather than nerfing Terror. No idea what said change will be, but that is my expectation.

Scepter is good because it has good damage and range (most 900 range weapons are projectiles, scepter has no travel time for any skills and ignores projectile-hate) and still has decent AoE presence. It is equally effective at any range you choose (or are forced to) to engage at.

Off-hand dagger is also excellent. One can never have too many condition transfers and AoE Weakness is always good. Main-hand is only any help for roamers, but that is still WvW.

Yes they are. Unmentioned in the patch notes was that minions are now very responsive (though they still have occasional issues in large group battles when it’s tough for the game to tell who you want them to dogpile)

You know that ANet would manage to screw that up so that ANY burning caused by the necro would make it so Terror couldn’t proc (such as a friendly Guardian’s Virtue of Justice or a Charrzoka).

While I do feel that changing it to Torment would be good, I think that there might be a better way to take it. What if a necro with the trait (would need to be renamed) took less damage from foes with conditions on them? That would still play to the Condition Duration the line gives us, boost the attrition capabilities of necros, and also provide an interesting choice. Do I go all-out on offense, or do I want to make sure I survive the fight?

mtl.5921:

I wasn’t really giving this much thought, but it seems to be pretty important.

Just started a necro, first time every play gw2, so wondering what conditions are?

Are they like the buffs and debuffs I can gain from staff spells?

What kind of builds allows me to cast conditions?

For necros, every build gives you condition access, but exactly which ones vary. Every necro has access to Fear, Bleeding, Chill, Torment, and Immobilize through Death Shroud on land (replacing the bleeding and chill with poison, blindness, and weakness underwater)

I’m going for Frostfang, personally. The underwater legendaries, Meterorlogicus, and Frostfang are the only ones I have never seen in-game (and I may have seen the scepter, but didn’t really notice).

My guess is that when they went to change the Sigil, they also looked at the Melandru runes. However, instead of making it so that Fear was only reduced by 25%, they messed up and made it so it was only 25% as long.

Only explanation I can think of that explains the values.

Well of Power is astounding against the Shaman (made even better now with a reduced cooldown). Stand still in it for pulsing aegis. Life Transfer is good for breaking down his shield too.