As someone who used the three second recharge reduction quite frequently, I’m saddened to see it go. I fancy myself as somewhat of a build experimenter, originating since the Guild Wars 1 days, and loved to create unique-yet-effective things just to keep my interests going. Admittedly, it has been a bit of a struggle to keep that trend going strong in Guild Wars 2, for reasons I’m sure you all know, but it seems that update after update, the opportunity for variety is getting smaller and smaller.
One note on the new Speed of Shadows skill is that its functionality change has, from what I’m reading, reduced the value of the trait Relentless Pursuit significantly. Movement mitigation conditions reduced versus just removing them completely, I’d go with the latter option, and then just let my blinds, fear, and freezes do the rest for me in terms of preventing said conditions coming back on me while I’m fighting. Perhaps Shroud cooldown reduction could go there instead, which in turn would have it compete with Augury of Death and Chilling Nova. Removing it from the game entirely really hurt the value of Shroud, the necromancer’s primary mechanic (and as demonstrated from certain angrier threads involving Vital Persistence, made the entire Soul Reaping trait line lackluster).
Another thing was that it worked quite well with Foot in the Grave, a grandmaster trait. I felt it was a necessary synergy there given the lack of Stability the necromancer has, and when you have hardly any Stability, you’ll want as many stun breaks as you can get! Using those two traits with each other was just another way to survive, especially in things like WvW, and on the PvE scene, the absurd amount of knockbacks Fractal 100 CM presents.
Life From Death, a skill that’s received a buff lately, benefits from flashing Shroud. To be quite frank, this was one of the traits I’ve been using for a long time and had thoroughly enjoyed. And although it received a 25% healing buff, since you can no longer use it every seven seconds, but ten, it’s actually a 30% nerf, resulting in a 5% overall nerf which will, unfortunately and very likely, still see it seldom used with builds. Unless you spec to a healing build, and quite literally minmax it, it seems this doesn’t help the survivability of the necromancer terribly well, and with nerfs to condition damage, all in all, the necromancer is beginning to feel like a sitting duck in most scenarios—PvP and WvW, anyway. PvE, what they’re best at support-wise doesn’t work on bosses (Understandable, but I could see it being fit into the system in the way that they’d work on a boss whose breakbar is orange and recharging as opposed to blue.)
Anyway, that’s my two cents. I only hope that the balance team would see this post and perhaps reconsider adding in the Shroud cooldown reduction back into the game. There’s always hope!
