In this post I'll be going over a few suggestions to help core shroud have a bit more utility and use than it currently does. Nothing ground breaking but hopefully enough to diversify its use a bit more. Even with my suggested changes I doubt core necromancer would be able to stand up to reaper or scourge in PvE but this might help ease it along that path. These changes shouldn't harm PvP balance either but if you have specific issues let me know and we can discuss further. This is a general look at the skills and one trait in particular so I will not be discussing every minor detail right now.

Dark Path

This is a fairly unremarkable skill as it is right now. What it could use is both longer duration of bleeding and another stack on top of it. Its projectile is quite slow and its a clunky skill to use, not to mention its pathing especially in action cam can be a bit wonky. Some Quality of life changes and upped damage would be nice to implement here. As for the second half, Dark pursuit, it should have its activation window upped to at least 5 seconds if not as high as 12 seconds due to just how clunky this skill is.

Doom

Once praised as the only good skill core shroud had it now has an activation time stripping much of the necromancer's defensive utility make this skill even more clunky. Because Arena net doesn't seem to want to revert the change I'd suggest just replacing it with Wave of Fear as this would be far more useful to core necromancer and far less clunky to use. Doom as a Skill could be given to Focus on focus 4 if we really want to keep the skill, but as a piece of core necromancer's kit it is just a bit too clunky.

Life Transfer + Tainted Shackles

I would very much like to see these skills merged into one skill that would torment on each pulse with an end effect of applying immobilize. One of the conflicts of core necromancer is you don't want to really be in shroud for condi builds unless you're camping dhuumfire which is an uninteresting way to play. Having some other means of applying conditions in a more active way than the passive chains from shackles would be nice in conjunction with everything else.

Gathering Plague as skill 5

Since my suggestion wants to fuse shackles and transfer as one skill I would like to see Gathering Plague available to the necromancer on land as the 5th slot. This would give necromancer a means to support allies in their core shroud which could be valuable in different situations but I have an addition to this where I'd have it gain a transfer effect from yourself to foes per condition you pull from allies while you're striking with life blast. This way you get the effect of plague blast without replacing life blast on land which is already a powerful skill.

Dhuumfire

Dhuumfire I'd have modify Life blast to no longer pierce but strike and explode for core shroud only. It would remain the same on the elite specs but for core shroud this would allow for dhuumfire to strike twice as opposed to its normal once. The damage could be reduced slightly for Dhuumfire blast. So this would trigger shroud skill one skills twice as opposed to once to double the burning output and give and further incentivize a condi death shroud necromancer.

Merge Land and underwater death shroud as one

As you can tell, the changes are mostly focused on the land version of death shroud but with these changes I feel the different version should be merged into one version to keep the gameplay similar.

And that's all I've really got for right now. let me know what you think.

Your suggestion to merge life transfer and tainted shackles seem to quite overload that ability, doesn't it?

If traited, then this ability would pulse power damage, heal allies around (and heal allies in downstate), grant you life force per tick, teleport allies in downstate to you, apply torment with every tick and apply immobilize at the end.That's alot going on for just one single ability.

@Kodama.6453 said:Your suggestion to merge life transfer and tainted shackles seem to quite overload that ability, doesn't it?

If traited, then this ability would pulse power damage, heal allies around (and heal allies in downstate), grant you life force per tick, teleport allies in downstate to you, apply torment with every tick and apply immobilize at the end.That's alot going on for just one single ability.

its a long channel skill and its DPS is fairly low for the duration of the channel. Its a High dedication skill with low reward as it doesn't grant the lifeforce needed to sustain it. But The life force gain could be moved to Gathering plague.

Edit: I should be a bit clearer. Its a low reward skill in its current form. Not this updated version. Updated its high reward for the dedication.

I want Doom reworked, that's all I personally care.

Though I appreciate the thought behind your frequent balancing and rework suggestions, I don't think everything needs to be good in every area of the game. Some things have their niche. Core Necro is a strong 1v1/X in PvP and a good small scale boon hate tank. It doesn't need to have good DPS because it has other utility that makes it worth taking over the elites in the right circumstances.

Also in regard to Tainted Shackles, this skill has a high Power co-efficient so it works nicely as a burst if timed properly with a Life Blast. It is a hybrid skill that works with either type of build and can be used in a variety of ways.

As a long time core Necro player I couldn't disagree that it has its share of problems. To an extent I agree with the people that say it is a poorly designed mechanic, but I don't think it is entirely bad either. As balance patches have come and gone it has become a lot more viable and for the most part continues to improve. My only complaint about any changes to core in recent times is Doom, and I'm still mad about it. Otherwise I think core Shroud is plenty strong and useful, just not in all content.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:I want Doom reworked, that's all I personally care.

Though I appreciate the thought behind your frequent balancing and rework suggestions, I don't think everything needs to be good in every area of the game. Some things have their niche. Core Necro is a strong 1v1/X in PvP and a good small scale boon hate tank. It doesn't need to have good DPS because it has other utility that makes it worth taking over the elites in the right circumstances.

Also in regard to Tainted Shackles, this skill has a high Power co-efficient so it works nicely as a burst if timed properly with a Life Blast. It is a hybrid skill that works with either type of build and can be used in a variety of ways.

As a long time core Necro player I couldn't disagree that it has its share of problems. To an extent I agree with the people that say it is a poorly designed mechanic, but I don't think it is entirely bad either. As balance patches have come and gone it has become a lot more viable and for the most part continues to improve. My only complaint about any changes to core in recent times is Doom, and I'm still mad about it. Otherwise I think core Shroud is plenty strong and useful, just not in all content.

I personally feel that Expansion content shouldn't be required to run in group content like fractals or dungeons and although core necromancer is viable in PvP and WvW it isn't just unviable in fractals and dungeons, its detrimental to run for your group because of how little it provides you or your allies. If it was an elite spec I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but its core.

I do agree its gotten more useful but I wouldn't go as far as to say its gotten better. The balance patch that reduced all the damage in PvP directly impacted Death shroud. its better in the meta because everything is weaker and that's the sort of place DS can thrive.

But that's my perspective on it. I'd like Everything to have viability in PvE at least, especially on some level the core shroud. I'm not really interested in the shroud flashing builds we used to have before HoT where you would only spend a second in shroud to get the shroud enter ability and instantly drop out. But that's the most viable use of Core shroud I could build in pve.

Personally, I'd say that the AA is still the main issue of the death shroud.The fact that the core traitlines overload the AA with various effects make it even worse.

That said I'm not against the idea of merging DS and US as long as it doesn't generate broken OP skills/skillset.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Personally, I'd say that the AA is still the main issue of the death shroud.The fact that the core traitlines overload the AA with various effects make it even worse.

That said I'm not against the idea of merging DS and US as long as it doesn't generate broken OP skills/skillset.

Underwater shroud is more fun to use imo. But I do think Plague Blast is just much too powerful on land. I'd like to merge the best of both as one, which would be mostly underwater imo.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Personally, I'd say that the AA is still the main issue of the death shroud.The fact that the core traitlines overload the AA with various effects make it even worse.

That said I'm not against the idea of merging DS and US as long as it doesn't generate broken OP skills/skillset.Reworking the AA would indeed be a good start.

A different animation and a lower cast time at the cost of a lower base damage would improve core necro, because it would feel more dynamic, actually be more dynamic and core necro could benefit more from the AA improving traits.

The horrible AA is the main reason I don't play core necro - even more than core's limited mobility and the terrible core elite skills.

@Lily.1935 said:Underwater shroud is more fun to use imo. But I do think Plague Blast is just much too powerful on land. I'd like to merge the best of both as one, which would be mostly underwater imo.Correct. It is a completely broken skill. A condi transfer on every auto attack at 900 range at half a second cast time. =) Just think about that for one moment.

I think instead of merging life transfer and tainted shackles skill. You can let the tainted shackles skill be as it is and add the "condi fetching from allies on each pulse" effect on life transfer.

I would also love wave of fear instead of the doom but the functionality changes, it becomes aoe which can be bad for the balance but on the other hand it becomes visible and small range hence can be avoided so idk.

Your suggestions is what everyone wants but it will make the build very oppressive. Another thing is that anet will never do it because they dont have time to change what already works semi decently.

@"XECOR.2814" said:I think instead of merging life transfer and tainted shackles skill. You can let the tainted shackles skill be as it is and add the "condi fetching from allies on each pulse" effect on life transfer.

I would also love wave of fear instead of the doom but the functionality changes, it becomes aoe which can be bad for the balance but on the other hand it becomes visible and small range hence can be avoided so idk.

Your suggestions is what everyone wants but it will make the build very oppressive. Another thing is that anet will never do it because they dont have time to change what already works semi decently.

Merging Transfusion and the condi transfer and condition transfer isn't a bad idea actually.

@Lily.1935 said:

@"XECOR.2814" said:I think instead of merging life transfer and tainted shackles skill. You can let the tainted shackles skill be as it is and add the "condi fetching from allies on each pulse" effect on life transfer.

I would also love wave of fear instead of the doom but the functionality changes, it becomes aoe which can be bad for the balance but on the other hand it becomes visible and small range hence can be avoided so idk.

Your suggestions is what everyone wants but it will make the build very oppressive. Another thing is that anet will never do it because they dont have time to change what already works semi decently.

I meant Life transfer which is the name on #4 skill in shroud not transfusion which is a blood magic trait.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:I want Doom reworked, that's all I personally care.

Though I appreciate the thought behind your frequent balancing and rework suggestions, I don't think everything needs to be good in every area of the game. Some things have their niche. Core Necro is a strong 1v1/X in PvP and a good small scale boon hate tank. It doesn't need to have good DPS because it has other utility that makes it worth taking over the elites in the right circumstances.

Also in regard to Tainted Shackles, this skill has a high Power co-efficient so it works nicely as a burst if timed properly with a Life Blast. It is a hybrid skill that works with either type of build and can be used in a variety of ways.

As a long time core Necro player I couldn't disagree that it has its share of problems. To an extent I agree with the people that say it is a poorly designed mechanic, but I don't think it is entirely bad either. As balance patches have come and gone it has become a lot more viable and for the most part continues to improve. My only complaint about any changes to core in recent times is Doom, and I'm still mad about it. Otherwise I think core Shroud is plenty strong and useful, just not in all content.

I do agree that not everything needs to be good everywhere, but Core Necro really is exceptionally lacklustre in PvE. Being decent in PvP is an increasingly small niche, and even there it's frequently outperformed by either Reaper or Scourge or both, depending on Anet's random patch cycles.Going into limited resource Shroud and blasting out all your abilities shouldn't do less damage than literally just Auto Attacking on almost every other spec/profession/weapon set.

Also, personally I always found Life Blast really fun, reminding me a lot of DnD's Warlock with Eldritch Blast spamming, and it's imo a shame that it's just so downright terrible, because it's actually fun running around in Shroud blasting things.. if it just did anything.

Core AA ofc shouldn't have the damage of Reaper AA, due to multiple reasons (ranged, lower Shroud decay etc.), but the fact that it's less than 50% of the damage of Reaper is imo silly. And that's only if we consider perma Quickness on both, which Reaper gets for "free" and Core only has limited access to with Dread (giving up another damage modifier in Close to Death).

Even if Core Necro won't ever be meta for anything (outside of some PvP presence now and then), it imo shouldn't be over 50% behind Reaper, which has also cleave going for it.

Even if they don't rework anything at all, even a literally 100% damage buff/50% cast time reduction to Life Blast, at least in PvE only, would still leave Core Necro in a fairly lacklustre/awful place, so I don't see why not.

That said, Lily's idea of at least partially merging Life Transfer and Tainted Shackles isn't a bad idea, and the Direct Damage + Torment wouldn't necessarily be out of line compared to Reaper's (almost double) Direct Damage + Poison on Soul Spiral, with the Life Force Generation and Immob at the end as tradeoff for the still much lower damage.

Plus having two very similar AoE Channel(like) Abilities in Core Shroud, both of which don't really do all too much always felt a little bit lacklustre. Merging them into one proper Skill and giving it another 5 imo would be a pretty solid move.

Doom is actually the only Core Shroud Ability I like as is (and Doom + Dread + Fear of Death - Blaster would probably be my favourite silly OW build, if Life Blast just wasn't so terrible).One thing they could do to Doom as compromise between the current and old version though would be to make it instant cast again, but instead make it apply a Pulmonary Impact like debuff on the enemy (say, Impending Doom), which triggers the Fear after ~0.75 seconds, still giving enemies a chance to react upon seeing the animation, without the skill having to be clunky to get off, especially as defensive mechanic.

Life Blast seems okSometimes I think Dark Path should be a ground-targeted leapDoom is clunky. Ty, Anet, for the molasses of interrupts.Life Transfer might be better if its pulses were also blast finishersTainted Shackles is fine. I actually do not think all players understand it but I do like your condition transfer suggestion. Necro could use more strength in managing conditions.

I really like the idea of merging land and water shroud as one

You could merge both versions of shroud 4, so that you steal life force from enemies and absorb conditions from allies. Then we'd have the water version of life blast that transfers conditions to foes in addition to its regular damage, and also has a 1/2 sec cast time. Either way, it damage would need some buff or you would never use anyway.

Shroud 2 is kinda weird, in that all your kit is ranged (even if close range), but then this skill sends you straight into melee. Couldn't it be more similar to skills like warrior's GS 3, where ti dashes a short distance? It wouldn't need to be a long dash, mainly just a small tool for repositioning during a fight

Lastly, I think the biggest problem of core shroud is that it's half condi and half power, and neither builds really want to stay in it a lot anyway. Condi as you said gets almost nothing, and even power doesn't find much use because life blast doesn't hit as hard as it should, given its long cast time. One thing core shroud could use is a reduced duration like reaper shroud, to encourage a gameplay where you constantly weave in and out of shroud; secondly there could be a trait in spite and curses that change the overall shroud into a power kit or a condi kit respectively.