Making more traits to trigger from shroud

So they changed Plague Sending to trigger on shroud usage, following the pattern on Awaken the Pain, Spiteful Spirit, and so on.

Great decision, simply because the old trigger was too random, and now it triggers from a player action. So, this not only gives more control, but also get rid of awkward internal cooldowns, and also empowers shroud. I remember some players were against the change, and this is fair, but from a game design perspective it's great design.

Anyway, what I propose is simply to keep these changes coming, i.e., change all other traits with random, lazy, uncontrollable, untrackable, or just bad triggers to actually proc on shroud (enter or exit). The goal would be to get rid of random triggers and internal cooldowns as much as possible, as well as giving full control on activations.

It would be like this:

• Death's Embrace: Inflict vulnerability on NEARBY FOES when entering shroud.(currently triggers from very low health, wasted in many cases)
• Chill of Death: Casts spinal shivers on YOUR TARGET when entering shroud.(currently activates automatically against a foe at low health, no control and untrackable)
• Mark of Evasion: Leave a mark when EXITING shroud.(currently triggers from dodging, which is not that bad, but sometimes is awkward due to internal cooldown)
• Blood Bond: Casts signet of vampirism on YOUR TARGET when entering shroud.(currently triggers from bleed, with big cooldown, and casts on a random foe instead of the target you want)
• Chilling Nova: NEARBY FOES that are already chilled explode to chill other foes when entering shroud.(currently triggers from hit, with awkward internal cooldown)

EDIT: As some have pointed, I agree adding too much power to shroud is also a problem. But anyway, I hope this kind of discussion motivates the devs to come with better trait activators, and eventually get rid of all uncontrollable/untrackable triggers and internal cooldowns.

I'm affraid that entering the shroud would become quite overpowered at this point.With chilling nova, chill of death, spiteful spirit and maybe weakening shroud alongside furious demise, I'm pretty sure that there would be quite a lot of complaints pouring out on necromancer in PvP/WvW.

I don't want to become a one-trick-pony. Dodge/Block or kite shroud-enter and kill 90% of a necros impact.

Shroud cooldown should be lowered to improve the impact of the traits we already have and in general improve our defense as we would not be a freekill for 10s after we leave shroud.

But yes, I also don't like random- and cooldown-traits. I like control over my abilities and not to guess if sth. might proc now or not.

I think that more traits triggering on shroud is a bit of a mistake ... unless Anet made a cooldown on LEAVING shroud as well.

Have to agree with the others here, would make the simple act of getting into/out of shroud too strong.

Hey guys. I understand the concern of making shroud too powerful.Any other way to remove randomness and internal cooldowns from traits?

You don't want to overload single button. I'd argue that even now you can stack too many significant trait procs on Shroud activation, including sigils.

At some point you'll either be annihilating people with just entering Shroud (see procmancer) or waste a ton of additional effects from activating Shroud and feel bad about it.

The way this game works, traits can't sadly add more abilities, they can just buff the existing ones. It creates a situation where most traits are bound to a crit, weapon swap, profession mechanic usage or are easy procs confined by hidden internal cooldowns. ArenaNet has to resolve it by exploring more elaborate "activators", which is possible, but for now they don't seem to be there quite yet. An example of such new activator could be "After using three unique skills within X seconds, add Y to your next attack".

@Rym.1469 said:ArenaNet has to resolve it by exploring more elaborate "activators", which is possible, but for now they don't seem to be there quite yet. An example of such new activator could be "After using three unique skills within X seconds, add Y to your next attack".

Yes, that would be the best approach. Having random activators is lazy design, and I just hope this kind of discussion motivates them to come with better options.

Blood Bond is the worst example of a bad activator IMO: If you play a power build you can't even activate it. And if you play condi, you trigger it all the time on random targets, simply wasting the proc.

Current activators aren't lazy per se, but with balance patches we get more and more of those - developers want players to make decisions, not hope some hidden trait cooldown we can't track is ready. Hidden cooldowns have to accompany powerful trait effects currently.However, they don't have to. Elaborate, harder activators can be used to bring more powerful effects without a need for a big ICD.

Or, make traits with activating conditions that are powerful enough to shape skill rotations on their own. To give an example of that, Windwalker in Legion has a passive talent that increases your ability damage as long as that ability is not a repeat of the previous ability. Simple activator like this moves the entire rotation from using only the best DPS skills to using almost all skills never to lose out on the bonus damage.