Guild Wars 2

jalmari.3906:

Most breaking thing with recent changes was this activation/deactivation delay. It makes DS flashing consume more of you LF (minimum 1 second in DS + every kind of lag + reaction times) plus it is really really deadly once you deactivate DS and cannot use heal or utility. I have really hard time figuring out why the kitten. That flashing mechanic was there almost a year and hardly no one even mentioned it. Now there just isn’t anything to make up for losses. Why it’s bad? Because it makes that tiny bit of difference between getting downed or surviving.

DS flashing still works for me, and doesn’t lock out my skills. Not sure why it’s not functioning for you.

Getting knocked out of DS (running out of LF through degen or damage) still gives a delay on your skills popping up though, which is (still) incredibly annoying.

Edit:

Focusing LF gain on main hand skills means that you cannot gain LF if you cannot hit anything. That again leads into a fact that many times you are either out of range to hit, stunned, dazed, knocked down or target is plain invisible to you.

I don’t know if you’ve heard the “In the pocket” metaphor yet or not for necromancers, but this aspect of life force generation is almost certainly intentional. A necromancer gets a lot of survivability (life force generation) for being able to stick to the target / stay in the fight. It’s the reward for aggressive play, and I seriously doubt they’re going to shift the focus to passive LF gain.

Valderro.6389:

One idea for CoE, haven’t tested it on my necro, but it’s that Well of Power gives Vigor when it converts a bleed, so you could use Blood is Power, then the well and get about 10 sec of vigor, also Well of Power converts burning to Aegis, so you could wait til Alpha uses his flame attack and get both vigor and aegis from the well. Not much but every little helps.

Unless you have a helpful teammate that uses prompt AoE condition clear. XD

I’ve been in situations where I want to type “No, stop helping people so that I can help people!” but that’s a little insane, I think.

Streets.2705:

So who is the person in charge of overseeing the necromancer forums? And how do we get ahold of said person?

There isn’t one, and you don’t.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Softspoken.2410:

It doesn’t, but realize exactly how crippling chill would be on a thief if it did: unlike other professions where it would slow down the recharge only of skills they’ve already used, it would slow down the ‘recharge’ of every weapon skill (besides 1) for a thief.

Plus it also has the movement speed reduction which is quite punishing for any mobility based thief, which is most of them.

Please elaborate on how chill affects teleports. Because that is the thief atm

Heh, it doesn’t, but ‘leaping’ skills like Flanking Strike and especially Heartseeker have reduced range (and don’t tell me that nobody uses heartseeker as a gap closer). As well, if you chill a thief, and they vanish into stealth as their ‘escape’ but the chill sticks to them, it’s not very difficult to find where they went.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Cogbyrn.7283:

My minions attack consistently in PvE.

Really? Are you using different minions than I am?

I had this same sort of thing with Lich Form’s jagged horrors and Giganticus Lupicus. The jagged horrors tended to run back and forth between me and him instead of just sticking to a target. I think they might have been getting confused by my hitting both Lupi and his grubs / locusts at the same time. Maybe it’s the same thing with Bloomhunger’s spirits? Or maybe Lich Form just interferes with the minion target system.

It doesn’t, but realize exactly how crippling chill would be on a thief if it did: unlike other professions where it would slow down the recharge only of skills they’ve already used, it would slow down the ‘recharge’ of every weapon skill (besides 1) for a thief.

Plus it also has the movement speed reduction which is quite punishing for any mobility based thief, which is most of them.

maddoctor.2738:

There are two MAIN reasons NOT to res someone:

a) A nearby mob is almost dead so he can rally, sometimes you might miscalculate and the mob dies a split second after the player is defeated, it can happen unfortunately

This is a poor reason to not revive someone. Giving someone a manual revive grants them more health than an on-kill rally, which can be important for letting them use that heal skill they desperately need. Additionally, if you really want them to rally off a kill instead of having to sit there that long, just stop reviving when they’re at half health or something. Letting someone drop below 1/4th of their downed health is exceptionally dangerous no matter what, and having to revive someone from defeated (or fight without them) is far worse than spending 10 seconds healing them from downed state.

maddoctor.2738:

b) There are aoe red circles where you dropped, trying to res someone and get downed won’t help anyone.

This however, is a very good reason to not revive someone. If you’re not going to be able to survive the damage associated with being on top of that person’s dead body, you’re just throwing yourself away too. If you see red circles, don’t try and heal through them! Just get out, and come back when they’re gone to try and revive the person past the health loss at that point. I used to get myself killed all the time trying to revive people under heavy AoE pressure, and you’re right: it’s just not helping anyone.

Travlane.5948:

Softspoken.2410:

I can actually think of a pretty good way to tell / guess if someone’s using steady weapons based on the damage log, but I don’t want to state it unless I think someone’s actually cheating so that people don’t try to cheese my countermeasure.

i can do almost 24k backstabs in wvw. idk about these wierd wepaons. never used one.

iirc, Steady Weapons have a weapon strength around 1/4th that of level 80 exotics, but have zero variation in their damage ranges. This makes them useful for getting data values from skills and such or for comparing the relative DPS of various tactics / rotations, since the random variation of a standard weapon has been removed. So you don’t need to take 10 trials and average the results or anything: three trials giving the exact same number proves the concept thoroughly.

Again, you’d never use a steady weapon in actual combat. Knowing exactly how much damage you will do isn’t possibly worth reducing said damage by around 75%.

I can actually think of a pretty good way to tell / guess if someone’s using steady weapons based on the damage log, but I don’t want to state it unless I think someone’s actually cheating so that people don’t try to cheese my countermeasure.

Because most of the time thief has a better gap closer than DD, I suppose it’s more of an escape skill. Especially since it can / will cripple multiple enemies.

Edit: Body Shot is a projectile finisher and spike vulnerability. Whether either of those are useful is for you to decide.

For PvE, there’s one major question: Power, or Conditions?
If you enjoy condition damage, scepter is mandatory, and it pairs well with offhand dagger and staff.
For power, if you want the most damage possible, you need mainhand dagger, and it works well with focus or warhorn. For a little more safety, take axe, but be aware you’ll be losing damage.

Draehl.2681:

Not to mention further exacerbating stealth thieves… you cant hit them to generate LF to survive their hits…

On the bright side, Necros have some really good skills to hit thieves in stealth. Marks, unholy feast, life transfer, tainted shackles…

Engels.8537:

Bhawb.7408:

Stop comparing to Engis. We are absolutely different classes. The problem isn’t Dhuumfire alone, it always has been dhuumfire + fears + huge condi output.

explain the huge condition output please, i want to build that class,

5 seconds of burning, (outside Spvp) with bleed (stacking slow as hell) and a little bit of poison, and fear each 12 seconds at best case,

Spectral wall and corrupt boon, both with high cooldowns, spectral wall is way too easy to avoid and corrupt boon does not assure that you will apply fear,

Now you have zero stun breakers, (if you equip epidemic), you have almost zero LF regeneration, you loose 100 condition damage, and your staff now is much less reliable,

And you got 1 major trait and three minor traits completly useless on spite, (and chill of death is not that good),

On top of LF overflow, no blocks, no protection, no vigor and no stability and being the first target in all fights I would not say that your condition output is that high, in fact is pretty close to zero,

The trick is, a necromancer can also be throwing chill, cripple and weakness in there simultaneously to make it harder to cleanse the correct conditions. Don’t ignore the value of this! A skill that cleanses two conditions goes from saving one’s life (if all that’s there is the 23 bleeds & one other condition) to possibly pointless. (five conditions and you just want that bleed stack gone now) Plus, previously the damage from Terror could make up for not having any access to burning, even before considering how it disabled your opponent. The nerfs to Terror & Dhuumfire may have resolved this, but it feels like zero progress was made overall.

And frankly? I can’t really agree with the “The Terror Dhuumfire Build was too vulnerable” argument seeing how PvP basically worked itself into an unholy frenzy over its capabilities.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makai.3429:

Chase.8415:

Play world of warcraft with the basic interface and then compare it to this game.

Well, we were just kicked in the shins, but we weren’t shot, so there’s nothing to complain about!

As for the UI topic: It would be nice if Anet could at least allow us to disable personal story and living story menus. The only reason I want to finish personal story is to remove that obstruction.

LOL, this is probably why they WON’T make the UI adjustable so as to force people into doing them. I hope this isn’t the case but you just don’t know.

They’ve practically said as much before. Having those quest prompts up 24/7 pushes people into areas and zones they simply wouldn’t go into otherwise. See: regional dailies.

Absolutely bizarre. You should at the least be seeing a big difference when using / not using SotL. Can you tell me what your full trait set-up is, in case there’s a hidden conflict somewhere?

Fungalfoot.7213:

And yes, most necromancers would agree that Dumbfire was a dumb, dumb trait to begin with. We never asked for this.

Now all I can think of are necromancers with sunglasses riveted to their faces to match the other robot / trait implants.

Edit: Which is kind of engineer-y, really. Most bizarre crossover?

Alright, added the spectral attunement trait not making spectral grasp give life force on use, as well as the inaccurate tooltip for Spectral Armor / the description on Death Shroud about ‘ending spectral effects’. I may remove that one though if I run low on space in the OP, since while it’s a full disagreement between tooltip and behavior, the patch notes make the intended behavior unambiguous.

I removed the bit about Doom putting chillblains on full cooldown: this is related to a larger game bug where switching skill bars to an instant attack while using a ground targeted attack makes the game use the attack with the original ground-targeted attack’s location as a target, which often fails. (See this, I can’t explain it all that well.)

Also removed

• Spectral Attunement: The ethereal combo field from Spectral Wall does not have its (9s) duration increased to match the new duration (15s?) of the wall: the field expires before the wall does. (30 May, 2013)
  Since the new wall actually keeps its ethereal field for the full duration. Yaaaay!

I’m seriously not seeing it in my tests: I move noticeably faster in DS than without, even while in combat. Are you making sure to do these tests without Signet of the Locust or swiftness active?

The only reduction I know of based on Shroud is that you lose SotL’s passive. I’ll do some testing myself, since I’m curious now if it’s just never worked and went unnoticed due to lack of usage.

As a strict comparison? Mass Invisibility requires more investment and has a longer recharge, but it’s also less conditional: it has a huge range and your allies can move entirely freely through the cast / duration. But people have been pointing this out for the entire thread.

Mass Invis could probably stand to apply boons to allies or something for the benefit of PvE formats though, where group stealth is more about running past enemies and dropping aggression. Just strictly on a “This is a group support elite but in too many situations the stealth isn’t actually that helpful” basis. Again, more for PvE: stealth applied tactically against other players can be pretty powerful, and giving it freely to your entire team can be a winning move.

Have you accounted for the global speed decrease that happens when you enter combat?

Pendragon.8735:

The way to make scaling mechanics is actually the way the Spectral skills worked before. By scaling them based on hits, they naturally generated more life force when you were focused, but less against one person. By now putting a 1 second cooldown and fixing the LF% per that one hit, it’s no better or worse vs one person or five people pretty much. They went the exact wrong way.

I was about to post something along this line: instead of making Death Shroud change relative to the number of targets, make Life Force generation change to suit the targets. Locust Swarm and Life Transfer both already do this: the more targets, the more LF generated. I suggest adding this functionality to a few of the other weapons, such as on Grasping Dead for the scepter (two skills that generate LF on one weapon??? Clearly I have gone mad) or making Soul Marks actually give its LF per enemy struck. Unholy Feast on the axe could also generate LF for each enemy hit, and possibly a bonus for actually consuming boons. Or axe could actually change into a multi-target weapon, but I suspect it is very intentionally not.

Dagger I think could stay as single target if it maintains its edge on LF generation per second, but that edge would probably need a slight increase.

As for the spectral effects: if they just want to keep them from punishing multi-hit attacks like unload or pistol whip or whatever, just change the 1s cooldown from a global cooldown to a ‘per attacker’, sort of like how Chaos Armor now applies its conditions to enemies. They may need to nerf the LF gains on Spectral Armor though.

The lock-out on skills when a player is forced out of DS has been around for a while, but I agree that it’s very annoying. Is it happening when you leave DS voluntarily as well?

The change kind of annoys me, because it just feels like at this point they’re edging closer to removing Dhuumfire without just removing it already.

Jack of Blades.2153:

Trait ‘’Venomous Aura’’ does not share venoms with every ally within range circle when applying venoms in WvW, Trait ’’Improvisation’’ sometimes(almost allways) does not reset utilities, while having 3 sigils or 3 venoms on utilitiy slots on cooldown. Both traits have an word ’’ALL’’ on their description.

AoEs are always limited to 5 targets or possibly 5 targets plus the caster. Stacking 20 people on one spot so they can all get double basilisk venom is just cheese.

Improvisation’s description reads
Stealing recharges all skills of one type (venoms, signets, traps, tricks, or deceptions). Deal 10% more damage while wielding a bundle.
(via wiki)

The important part here is “All skills of one type”. The trick is that the skill type is chosen at random, not based on what you have equipped.

Bweaty.9187:

Transfusion (DS #4 heals group) Well of Blood. Both get very good +heal power co-efficient.

Unless that was changed in the last patch or two, transfusion doesn’t have a healing power coefficient.

As for group support, I think there’s a lot of potential in Plague Signet and Well of Power for group condition control.

Nile.9563:

I’ve tried that already and unfortuantly, you will have no weapons. Only the person who starts the instance can fight. So i need someone who is on that story missions and is lvl 19+ so that they can start it

Will the other person have utility skills and traits?

Edit: Or even their profession mechanic? I’m curious now, send me a mail in-game and I’ll see if I can’t get online at the right time. I don’t have the quest available (I actually did it about a week ago on a new character) but I’m still curious about how locked-out the other party members are.

yanchoy.9176:

Detritus.5863:

yanchoy.9176:

BUMP!

How much damage is being reduced with retaliation? I’m pretty sure it’s not 100% damage reduction ’cause I can be HB to downed state to death even if I have this boon.

Retaliation does not prevent or reflect damage, it just punishes someone for attacking you, by dealing an amount of damage based on your power (I think) back to them. You still take the hit.

uhm…
Retaliation – Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.

It’s a very misleading tooltip. Detritus is correct: retaliation doesn’t prevent any damage anywhere, it just hurts people hurting you. Spiteful little boon.

Healing builds are really helpful when nobody in your group is playing the way that this forum plays dungeons.

I only bring this up because I have been in PUGs where a single healing character has been incredibly beneficial, since poor access to condition removal / dodging would have worn down teammates otherwise. But this forum generally focuses on high-skill play when discussing builds, and at that level people are responsible enough for their own life bars that they no longer need that kind of heal support.

Enundr.9305:

Softspoken.2410:

Enundr.9305:

Softspoken.2410:

rager.4963:

Took a break since release, came back to see what is up. Was in the mood for a necro. Use to love them in EQ and other games.. Come to the forum to check out pet builds and stuff.

Holy kittens batman. The aura in this forum makes me want to cry. Is necromacers really that bad?

How bad are pets? I mean I see people saying they are bugged, but they got to be useful for something right? I don’t see them leaving them worthless for this long.

In the forum’s defense, the most recent patch had a few nerfs in it that were pretty unexpected, so there’s a lot of recent upheaval.

In my opinion, the only major bug with minions right now is that Flesh Golem despawns if it enters deep water. They’ve actually gotten downright snappy in their response times with recent updates: I urge you to try them yourself and see how well they do or don’t react to your commands.

its not necesarily a bug , due to that the water skill set doesnt allow flesh golem to live , only got plague form in underwater combat (aka deep water) , so the flesh golem cant chase anything underwater.

It sort of is? All other minions, regardless of if they are equipped on the underwater bar, are capable of crossing water as long as the necromancer is not submerged. They don’t do anything once they’re in there, to my knowledge, but they don’t self-despawn. Flesh Golem can actually run itself into deep water without the necromancer even entering swim mode, and sacrifice itself for no apparent reason.

To be clear, it isn’t about actively using Flesh Golem underwater, since that’s clearly marked by the game as impossible. It’s the way a deep enough puddle to trigger ‘swimming’ mode is a sort of landmine that will instantly kill Flesh Golem, even if nobody else in the fight is underwater.

all other minions are able to be used under water normally…..as in their skills can be equipped in the utility slots…..the flesh golem cannot be equipped in the underwater elite skill slot XD

Yeah, I don’t think you’re reading what I’m saying. It shouldn’t matter if the flesh golem can be equipped underwater, since it’s not about using it underwater, but about making it go across / over water.

Edit: VVV Infinite loop detected, aborting conversational path. VVV

If given two players of high skill, when there is a tactic that has no appropriate response from the other player and as such results in that tactic winning every time, the tactic is OP.

As a corollary, if the only appropriate (non-losing) responses are so niche or require such a high investment that they are deeply punishing for the responding player to carry, the tactic is still OP.

The trick here is that a ‘tactic’ is more than just a skill: it involves the opportunity costs of taking and using that skill effectively, as well as the time a skill may be on cooldown. Probably other things too, but I can’t think of them all just yet.

Re: Title- Yes. When it’s paired with offhand dagger.

Enundr.9305:

Softspoken.2410:

rager.4963:

Took a break since release, came back to see what is up. Was in the mood for a necro. Use to love them in EQ and other games.. Come to the forum to check out pet builds and stuff.

Holy kittens batman. The aura in this forum makes me want to cry. Is necromacers really that bad?

How bad are pets? I mean I see people saying they are bugged, but they got to be useful for something right? I don’t see them leaving them worthless for this long.

In the forum’s defense, the most recent patch had a few nerfs in it that were pretty unexpected, so there’s a lot of recent upheaval.

In my opinion, the only major bug with minions right now is that Flesh Golem despawns if it enters deep water. They’ve actually gotten downright snappy in their response times with recent updates: I urge you to try them yourself and see how well they do or don’t react to your commands.

its not necesarily a bug , due to that the water skill set doesnt allow flesh golem to live , only got plague form in underwater combat (aka deep water) , so the flesh golem cant chase anything underwater.

It sort of is? All other minions, regardless of if they are equipped on the underwater bar, are capable of crossing water as long as the necromancer is not submerged. They don’t do anything once they’re in there, to my knowledge, but they don’t self-despawn. Flesh Golem can actually run itself into deep water without the necromancer even entering swim mode, and sacrifice itself for no apparent reason.

To be clear, it isn’t about actively using Flesh Golem underwater, since that’s clearly marked by the game as impossible. It’s the way a deep enough puddle to trigger ‘swimming’ mode is a sort of landmine that will instantly kill Flesh Golem, even if nobody else in the fight is underwater.

You guys. I think that sword’s active skill (Command) doesn’t actually work right now.

Anyone else seeing this or is there just something wrong with my set-up?

Wukunlin.8461:

isn’t there a trait that doesn’t destroy the weapon when you use command?

Yes. It’s a master trait in Zeal. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eternal_Spirit

Edit: Ninja’d, but being a master level in Zeal just means that it’s leading up to
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wrathful_Spirits

rager.4963:

Took a break since release, came back to see what is up. Was in the mood for a necro. Use to love them in EQ and other games.. Come to the forum to check out pet builds and stuff.

Holy kittens batman. The aura in this forum makes me want to cry. Is necromacers really that bad?

How bad are pets? I mean I see people saying they are bugged, but they got to be useful for something right? I don’t see them leaving them worthless for this long.

In the forum’s defense, the most recent patch had a few nerfs in it that were pretty unexpected, so there’s a lot of recent upheaval.

In my opinion, the only major bug with minions right now is that Flesh Golem despawns if it enters deep water. They’ve actually gotten downright snappy in their response times with recent updates: I urge you to try them yourself and see how well they do or don’t react to your commands.

Barbed precision was changed lately, I think in the June patch. It’s now a 2 second bleed, which was a pretty surprising stealth buff, imo.

Even more to the point, that means with 50% bleed duration you’re guaranteed (Enemies with -Condition Duration excluded) 3 ticks of bleeding from every crit.

Just one per pulse. Personal favourite usages include auto-attacks that inflict vulnerability and pulsing blind fields.

I’d say take Foot in the Grave. Your build is (probably) going to be focused more on flipping into / out of death shroud than sitting in it for prolonged periods, so you’ll have good periodic stability to ensure you’re the one controlling the fight rather than a bit more life force to tank hits.

Something to note -
When Axe Training got moved down to master tier, its damage bonus was reduced from 15% to 10%. This means that using an axe + Axe Training will give about the same damage as using a staff, assuming the axe and staff are of equal level & rarity, since the axe’s weapon strength range is about 90% of that of a staff.

So if you want max damage life blasts, you can take axe + Axe Training or you can just take a staff, and make sure to be using your staff while in DS.
(Dagger and scepter will both do less damage, of course.)

Tenderly.7019:

The bread and butter of any Bunker Necro build which utilizes the Vampiric trait and perma regen.

At the same time, a ranged attack and sustain ability for Power Necros.

This skill just screams attrition and that’s what Necros are good at. It’s one of my favorites.

So while I somewhat agree, I have to ask, if it’s such a good sustain / bunker skill…

Why is it on dagger? It seems like you wouldn’t put that skill on the weapon with the best single target DPS.

You can! Roll a new thief, choose the hood as their item, then transmute it to a white / blue / whatever item. It should become account bound: at that point just put it in the bank and take it out on the correct character.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Really? http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/c/2622702

Post patch – 32% life force gained. Pre patch – about 36% gained. Not sure how many hits there actually were there, because I can’t see the damage log.

Really it’s just the buff to death shroud’s damage resistance that’s showing through in that video. Although it’s worth noting that had anyone else been attacking him at the time as well, he would have received no extra life force unlike before the patch. Again, still plays well against a single target, but has probably lost its 1vX niche.

Cufufalating.8479:

As someone whos never played necro before, could someone explain in simple terms why these patch notes are so bad?

I an genuinely curious, because to an outsider they dont look too bad (but like I said, I dont really know how necro builds work).

A couple major things, especially relating to death shroud-

First off, skills (1 on each weapon) can generate life force (LF). When a necro goes into death shroud (DS), the profession mechanic, damage taken reduces their life force instead of their health. When they run out of LF, they’re pushed out of DS into regular mode.

Now the changes -
Damage overflowing from LF to health:
Necromancers have generally poor access to ‘temporary invulnerability’ skills / effects. There is no mist form, obsidian flesh, vigor (for more dodges), skills with long evasion windows, or skills that block the next X attacks or attacks for X seconds. Hell, they don’t even have a projectile invulnerability skill anywhere, which I believe is an exception among all professions.
To cope with this, necromancers tended to use LF as that temporary invulnerability. Burning your entire LF bar (whether it be 50%, 30%, or a fortunate 10%) to block a one-shot wasn’t just a good response to big single-hit skills, it was practically the only response. Again, dodges / evades are available to Necromancers, as they are to every class, but there is no way to really invest in dodging / evading or any skill to take for brief windows of invulnerability.
Now however, using your hastily acquired 15% LF to tank a thief’s backstab isn’t a block / dodge roll, it’s just a bit of extra health to take the edge off.
So there’s been some complaints about how that was removed.

Secondly: Spectral Armor / Walk internal cooldowns.
Previously, both of these effects gave 3% LF every time you were hit, and briefly were allowed to persist through DS. This made them excellent for soaking damage in chaotic XvX situations where there was a lot of minor chip damage flying around. Instead of getting worn down, a necro could coast through on the generated LF while sticking to DS.
With the internal cooldown / LF per hit changes, the focus is put back to 1v1. The skills won’t scale nearly as well against multiple opponents as they used to, though spectral armor will probably still feel very workable against single opponents. There’s a non-trivial contingent that holds necromancers can’t handle 1vX situations, so having an ability that fit that niche removed stings.

That’s how I see it anyways. Personally I’m going to wait a few days and see how it plays out: the ‘bug fix’ for how much damage a necromancer could soak with Death Shroud is actually far more significant than I originally anticipated. If I’m correct in my observations and theories, post-patch DS can tank about 66% more damage than pre-patch DS. Which means that generating life force has become a significantly better way to soak damage than it was previously.

Jzaku.9765:

Softspoken.2410:

I think that screenshot is hilarious, but I don’t get why I’m supposed to be all “BAD DESIGN ALERT” about it. The only thing I can think of is the 5 target limit for AoEs interfering?

Visual and targeting noise
Inordinate amounts of body blocking
AI that does your targeting, chasing, and damage for you while you do something else entirely

That kind of thing.

Given that Mesmers were designed with visual / targeting noise in mind, I can’t really see that as a negative. Body blocking could be a problem, for sure, but it’s also a tactical application to try and swarm your opponent, and the opponent has to figure out how to cut through the clutter. The only AI thing I find problematic is chasing – I’d agree that summoned allies probably need a shorter leash, especially when the summoner isn’t focusing on a target.

Jansy.8463:

I remember a skill in Guild Wars called Grenth’s Balance. Oh the irony!

Ahem.

Rennoko.5731:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Yeah, Nay of the Ether is absolutely right. This has pretty much decimated our defensive abilities against insane burst damage, both in WvW and in PVE. And we got nothing in return for it.

Seriously you need to go try it. For the purposes of damage soaking, my DS now has the potential to absorb 24,704 damage points. Yes it degenerates, but before it was only soaking 14,000 – 15,000 damage in the same gear in the same build.

I like it…. and since I don’t have to put 10 points in death magic ( I can live with blocked marks), I get spectral armor now too, at 50%.

So I was just playing with DS, and while I’m not certain how much damage it can take, I think the previous number of 60% of your standing health was the bug that got fixed. I say this because by my estimate, my Death Shroud could resist about 120% my standing health. There doesn’t appear to be any bonus toughness involved, just more health.

No word yet on if conditions do differently proportioned damage.

Edit: Facepalm, I think I was doing it with 30 in Soul Reaping. Still, that’d make it (once adjusted) about 95% of my standing health at base, which is a pretty significant boost.

Azraeel.1238:

Softspoken.2410:

Amun Ra.6435:

As the title states. What was the reasoning behind the death shroud nerf? Necro have no real escapes outside dodge…I don’t see the reasoning with this…

They didn’t want a Necromancer to counter a one-shot style attack with the last dregs of their life force.

Well, aren’t they a little late to decide that? This has been the case forever. It was one of the few things that kept us alive in the front lines for more than few seconds.

Apparently not. ArenaNet has repeatedly said that they’d iterate / change anything they felt the need to.

Amun Ra.6435:

As the title states. What was the reasoning behind the death shroud nerf? Necro have no real escapes outside dodge…I don’t see the reasoning with this…

They didn’t want a Necromancer to counter a one-shot style attack with the last dregs of their life force.

esrilk.8971:

Well that makes me a sad panda.

You aren’t the only one. :c