I think by now most people who've been on the forums for a few years who frequent the necromancer side know of my opinion on death shroud and life force. For those who are new, welcome! I'm Lily. One of those old fogies who played and mained necromancer back in gw1. Anyway. There is no doubt in my mind that life force and shroud are very problematic mechanics. And absolutely need a complete overhaul to fix the countless issues the necromancer has. So I'm going to suggest something I have been putting off for years for the sake of flavor. But it needs to be done.

Life force needs to regenerate over time. How much? OK not sure. I'm not sure if it should be based on a fixed number or a percentage. My guess would be 1 to 2 percent each second. Although I wouldn't remove the on death trigger but limit the life force gain possible from deaths around you much like it was in gw1. And that gain could be more drastically modified with death magic in some way.

I'll make a longer post at a later date but for now this should get the idea out into there.

I dont think, that that would be nice.That would result in even more nerfs because its a guaranteed mechanic then.

I like it how it is right now. But i think, that lf from deaths should be tweaked, so you only get a decent amount with deathmagic.

Also, attacks that need lf should be much stronger.If you look at power reaper for example. Shroud 4 is really weak if you compare it with a guardian greatsword 2.Guard 8 sec cd. 7x1232 dmg with no equip or traits.Nec 30 sec cd. 12×1870 dmg with no equip + a little bit of poison.

So you can use gs 2 of guard almost 4 times in the same time, necro uses his whirl once.Thats 4×7×1232= 34.5k dmgCompared to necro: 12×1870= 22.5k dmg + maybe another 1.5k from poison.

And it isnt even guaranteed to get that whirl as a necro.If you only poorly generate lf you might not even get into shroud or the cast will be interrupted, because you ran out of lf in the middle of it.Pretty sad to see

I could see a new elite spec that's far more focused on risk/reward could have that as part of their first minor trait, guaranteeing at least some life force to work with.

Seriously, I'd love to see a future Elite Spec go balls to the walls aggro for best results. Similar to Kled or Aatrox in League of Legends where the proper answer to being in a tight spot is usually to dive deeper. Would need frequent gap-closing ability not gated behind Shroud, though.

@Nimon.7840 said:

Also, attacks that need lf should be much stronger.If you look at power reaper for example. Shroud 4 is really weak if you compare it with a guardian greatsword 2.Guard 8 sec cd. 7x1232 dmg with no equip or traits.Nec 30 sec cd. 12×1870 dmg with no equip + a little bit of poison.

The power values of power reaper skills are already way too high.Soul Spiral has 300 range compared to guard gs 2´s 130 and guard is heavily slowed while casting it compared to the reaper moving freely.Guard can barely hit 2 People with it compared to necro easily hitting 5.

Seriously stop complaining about reaper already, Soul spiral is one of the strongest skills necro has.

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

Also, attacks that need lf should be much stronger.If you look at power reaper for example. Shroud 4 is really weak if you compare it with a guardian greatsword 2.Guard 8 sec cd. 7x1232 dmg with no equip or traits.Nec 30 sec cd. 12×1870 dmg with no equip + a little bit of poison.

No. They are good. But definetly not too high. Very slow attacks, high cooldowns.

For pve endgame, dmg is too low.

For pvp its okay. Since we dont have any good defense or mobility it could rlly hit a bit harder.

Even in pvp guard can hit that gs2 much easier than a reaper can.Why? Because guard does his 7 hits in 3/4 second, reaper needs 2 and 3/4 seconds to do his 12 hits.And guard even can teleport, which reaper cant. And they have better cc options to hit that thing.

@Nimon.7840 said:

No. They are good. But definetly not too high. Very slow attacks, high cooldowns.

For pve endgame, dmg is too low.Well power reaper is a huge meme in pve so w/eFor pvp its okay. Since we dont have any good defense or mobility it could rlly hit a bit harder.Even in pvp guard can hit that gs2 much easier than a reaper can.Why? Because guard does his 7 hits in 3/4 second, reaper needs 2 and 3/4 seconds to do his 12 hits.And guard even can teleport, which reaper cant. And they have better cc options to hit that thing.guard gs 2 is ALOT harder to hit, also have u heard of sth called agility sigil ?

@Nimon.7840 said:I dont think, that that would be nice.That would result in even more nerfs because its a guaranteed mechanic then.

I like it how it is right now. But i think, that lf from deaths should be tweaked, so you only get a decent amount with deathmagic.

Also, attacks that need lf should be much stronger.If you look at power reaper for example. Shroud 4 is really weak if you compare it with a guardian greatsword 2.Guard 8 sec cd. 7x1232 dmg with no equip or traits.Nec 30 sec cd. 12×1870 dmg with no equip + a little bit of poison.

So you can use gs 2 of guard almost 4 times in the same time, necro uses his whirl once.Thats 4×7×1232= 34.5k dmgCompared to necro: 12×1870= 22.5k dmg + maybe another 1.5k from poison.

And it isnt even guaranteed to get that whirl as a necro.If you only poorly generate lf you might not even get into shroud or the cast will be interrupted, because you ran out of lf in the middle of it.Pretty sad to see

I will say this. I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. The mechanic is wildly inconsistent. And part of the inconsistency is in the way its generated. So its generation needs to be more consistent. I think much of the necromancer needs to be changed. And I wouldn't suggest just this. Its a short and simple post to get the idea out there. I've mentioned the necromancer needs about a 90% change to the entire profession and I feel that life force may very well need to be the launching point in those changes.

The Damage reduction from Shroud is something else that needs to go and healing needs to work even when we have shroud up. We shouldn't be locked out of our skills in shroud. So I'm not considering this in a vacuum. I am simply putting the idea out there at this time. I'll go into much greater detail at a later date. And I'll justify it in that post far better. But it does need to be done.

@Lily.1935 said:The Damage reduction from Shroud is something else that needs to go and healing needs to work even when we have shroud up. We shouldn't be locked out of our skills in shroud. So I'm not considering this in a vacuum. I am simply putting the idea out there at this time. I'll go into much greater detail at a later date. And I'll justify it in that post far better. But it does need to be done.

Instead of reworking a whole class which will 100% never happen - they could just reduce shroud cd to help with the healing/utility issues.But im still looking forward to ur proposal :b

@Lily.1935 said:I think by now most people who've been on the forums for a few years who frequent the necromancer side know of my opinion on death shroud and life force. For those who are new, welcome! I'm Lily. One of those old fogies who played and mained necromancer back in gw1. Anyway. There is no doubt in my mind that life force and shroud are very problematic mechanics. And absolutely need a complete overhaul to fix the countless issues the necromancer has. So I'm going to suggest something I have been putting off for years for the sake of flavor. But it needs to be done.

Life force needs to regenerate over time. How much? OK not sure. I'm not sure if it should be based on a fixed number or a percentage. My guess would be 1 to 2 percent each second. Although I wouldn't remove the on death trigger but limit the life force gain possible from deaths around you much like it was in gw1. And that gain could be more drastically modified with death magic in some way.

^ not a bad idea honestly

Ideally a system that functions similar to backwards holosmiths heat gauge or revs energy bar would have been best its clear that death shroud was the first iteration of both of those systems as they work much better.While life force and the way you gain/lose it does need a overhaulI dont think all the shroud skills needs a full overhaul mostly just need some numbers tweeks on various things like cast time, cooldowns, and or damage and it would be fine maybe 2 of the 5 skills need a complete overhaul those being core skills more than reaper skills.What they could do is allow life force to naturally generate up to a %. When you activate shroud it drains very slowly if you dont use any skills much like holo builds heat very slowly. When you start using these re numbered powerful skills it drains a fixed amount from your life force. Damage taken also reduces life force. Its numeric value would still scale with vitality how ever the percent over time and percent on skill use will always eat a % chunk from the stock while damage taken only removes the fixed number as it does now.

If they ever plan to make all counts of necomancer hp damageable while in shroud thats going to require a much bigger rework because core and reaper cant run in and risk their own hp to use shroud skills right now.

Natural regeneration of life force up to a certain point would be nice though it might also give them some room to rework things like soul comprehension which would increase or maximize the total amount you could regen without using any extra skills todo it.

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:

@Lily.1935 said:The Damage reduction from Shroud is something else that needs to go and healing needs to work even when we have shroud up. We shouldn't be locked out of our skills in shroud. So I'm not considering this in a vacuum. I am simply putting the idea out there at this time. I'll go into much greater detail at a later date. And I'll justify it in that post far better. But it does need to be done.

We could hope I guess, since they reworked mesmer quite a bit.

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:

guard gs 2 is ALOT harder to hit, also have u heard of sth called agility sigil ?

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:The power values of power reaper skills are already way too high.Soul Spiral has 300 range compared to guard gs 2´s 130 and guard is heavily slowed while casting it compared to the reaper moving freely.Guard can barely hit 2 People with it compared to necro easily hitting 5.

Thats comparing a profession mechanic to a weapon skill which not really a good way to look at it. But ill humor you both.

Almost every other skill on all of guards weapons do considerably more damage and provide more utility and mobility though. the gs 2 was just 1 easy example.So have you considered the ranges on that necro skill is higher because necro has near 0 kite potential near 0 hard chase potential and lacks the utility that guard has on the majority of its weapons before even considering utility. This is true for necro vs any other professions weapon skills honestly.

DH Bow can push 5-6k shots on 1 skillScepter is slow but hits hard af + instant immoblizeSword has a blink small aoe zone control that grants offensive boons and a burst skill that block projectiles while dealing considerably high damage.Firebrand axe is out of the question. Its auto attack is still ridiculous + a quick pullTorch can burn extremely hard and has a throwable flame that push 5k+ on average all of which these skillsShield can be used offensively and defensively at the same time as well as focus for very strong utility.Even with GS you get a possible pull, leap with a blind and aoe zone that grants boons and deals moderately decent damage along with that spin which has much lower cd.

And its not hard to hit people with GS2 you start the attack and teleport onto them with judges intervention. If you baited dodges before hand or not thats on your own skill.

If anything it shows how under performing the profession mechanic is the fact that most profession simple weapons outperform the majority the skills you have to build a resource for

@"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:I could see a new elite spec that's far more focused on risk/reward could have that as part of their first minor trait, guaranteeing at least some life force to work with.

Seriously, I'd love to see a future Elite Spec go balls to the walls aggro for best results. Similar to Kled or Aatrox in League of Legends where the proper answer to being in a tight spot is usually to dive deeper. Would need frequent gap-closing ability not gated behind Shroud, though.

Thats ideally what scourge was I dont want anymore things based on high risk / high reward because they end up getting the risk increased and the reward decreased. Anet is known for doing this with necro just variously through weapons skills and traits they just need to stop. Give us something well designed short sweet and to the point. Reaper was pretty well designed with minimal risk/reward. Its was a simple brawler that was not fixed on if "this" then "that". Yes its countered by ranged and kite but thats not risk vs reward.

Scourge giving up shroud which makes you pretty squish for strong zone control and whats still considered higher damage for the current moment is risk/reward.

First of all we gotta look at necromancer's history and thematic. Collecting life force from death is both and historical trait of the necromancer (GW1 soul reaping mechanic) and a key of it's thematic which is to manipulate life force from surrounding death to extend it's own life. While it's right to be concerned by the fact that this mechanic work better in area where there are tons of death (WvW) we can't deny it's purpose.

If we look at what we got these past years, a complaint about life force gains consistency from surrounding death by the necromancer community could very well be adressed by anet by simply adding a bothersome ICD and a ridiculously low increase in LF gain per death. That's a very dangerous subject to tackle. (And if you don't believe me, look at vampiric presence)

The main issue of the necromancer, from my point of view, is and will always be the "2nd life bar". The necromancer's kit would most likely work way better if it's defense was taken care through utility skills rather than the "shroud" and it would even be "easy" to make the changes. But that's my opinion and I understand that other don't share my point of view.

NB.: Kudo to guys (or girls) that are trying to compare the blessed child to the cursed child!

Necromancers can regain life force easily by killing the many critters that appear all over the place. As you leave from a WvW base, there's always a healthy amount of them. They are basically like FPS ammo packs for necromancers.

But in PvP there's no critters to kill for life force. You are limited to what you get from enemies.

Personally, I'd give core necromancer an F2 skill that can use to sacrifice their own health for life force, but Reaper and Scourge would lose it.

Then, maybe make it so when out of combat necromancer always recovers a minimum life force, something like 20%. Maybe make Vital Persistence increase that minimum to 30 or 40%.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:First of all we gotta look at necromancer's history and thematic. Collecting life force from death is both and historical trait of the necromancer (GW1 soul reaping mechanic) and a key of it's thematic which is to manipulate life force from surrounding death to extend it's own life. While it's right to be concerned by the fact that this mechanic work better in area where there are tons of death (WvW) we can't deny it's purpose.

If we look at what we got these past years, a complaint about life force gains consistency from surrounding death by the necromancer community could very well be adressed by anet by simply adding a bothersome ICD and a ridiculously low increase in LF gain per death. That's a very dangerous subject to tackle. (And if you don't believe me, look at vampiric presence)

The main issue of the necromancer, from my point of view, is and will always be the "2nd life bar". The necromancer's kit would most likely work way better if it's defense was taken care through utility skills rather than the "shroud" and it would even be "easy" to make the changes. But that's my opinion and I understand that other don't share my point of view.

NB.: Kudo to guys (or girls) that are trying to compare the blessed child to the cursed child!

I kinda can feels you on this point to some extent especially on fixing its defensive problems though utility rather than shroud.

We could slot SoU and get 0.67% passive LF/s right now along with an active that takes 3s to cast and is trapped in 2012.;-)

There's the signet which gives overtime life force.Maybe rework the signet and put instead a trait ( 1% life force every 3 sec ).

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:I could see a new elite spec that's far more focused on risk/reward could have that as part of their first minor trait, guaranteeing at least some life force to work with.

Seriously, I'd love to see a future Elite Spec go balls to the walls aggro for best results. Similar to Kled or Aatrox in League of Legends where the proper answer to being in a tight spot is usually to dive deeper. Would need frequent gap-closing ability not gated behind Shroud, though.

Scourge was never intended to be a high-risk/high reward spec, though. It was intended to be condition damage+support spec, trading personal survivability for improved ability to aid allies.

I can't be the only one who likes the shroud/life force game play.

Regenerate your damage shield by attacking, get bonus shield when something on screeen dies...

@"Justine.6351" said:I can't be the only one who likes the shroud/life force game play.

Regenerate your damage shield by attacking, get bonus shield when something on screeen dies...

That's a fine principle, but the problem is that necro has no standardized or consistent means of generating life force. LF gen is just sprinkled in random amounts onto arbitrary skills across all weapons (which is why some weapons are "good" at LF gen while others are "bad"; there is no reason or justification for this, it's just part of a short-sighted design). I'd rather advocate for a globally standardized means of LF generation independent from weapons and one which didn't just passively regenerate (so that there would be incentives to using skills at various LF thresholds). Making it passively regenerate would only cater to "play passive and buy time for BONUS X" or "spam hard and drain LF for BONUS Y" paradigms when a no-regen builder could have a lot more resource-juggling play since the player would have to manually manage LF totals, making it that much more mechanically complex (not necesarily in a player-operation way but in a way with how such a system might interact with skills and traits).

I drew something up (along with a bunch of trait and skill re-works) ages ago to illustrate what a decent, standardized (non-weapon-dependent) LF generation system might look like (the name is just a placeholder):

Force Generation Re-work

Necromancers no longer gain life force from the deaths of ambient enemies.

All skill-specific instances of life force gain are removed (Death Shroud skills and some traits will still generate flat, percentage-based amounts of life force).

Soulreap (3s): For each stack, gain 0.5% life force every second.

Whenever a Necromancer successfully strikes a foe in combat, that player gains a stack of Soulreap (always a 3-second duration; stacks in intensity up to 5 times baseline). Whenever a player enters into shroud, that player immediately loses all active Soulreap stacks. Players cannot gain Soulreap stacks while in shroud.

Certain skills (i.e. spectrals) and power-leaning traits or traitlines can temporarily increase the maximum amount of Soulreap stacks that one can have at a single time. Condition-leaning lines and traits will have minors and some majors embedded with trade-offs which passively (always in effect) reduce (typically by 1 stack per respective trait) the amount of baseline Soulreap stacks that a player can have at once.

Should a player have a Soulreap stack total that is above that player's respective baseline maximum at the point at which a stack limit increase buff ends, that player's Soulreap stack is immediately reduced to that player's next highest stack limit atural maximum stack limit (i.e. if a player has 8 Soulreap stacks when Spectral Armor ends, and had no other Soulreap stack increase buffs active at the time, that player's stack limit is immediately reset to 5).

• Power builds will retain high LF generation through attacking with potential ways to temporarily further increase LF generation by means of conditional triggers or specific actions. Condition builds will still steadily generate LF but at a slower baseline rate than power builds.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:

guard gs 2 is ALOT harder to hit, also have u heard of sth called agility sigil ?

@ZombieSlayeR.8702 said:The power values of power reaper skills are already way too high.Soul Spiral has 300 range compared to guard gs 2´s 130 and guard is heavily slowed while casting it compared to the reaper moving freely.Guard can barely hit 2 People with it compared to necro easily hitting 5.

Thats almost exactly what i think

@Justine.6351 said:I can't be the only one who likes the shroud/life force game play.

Regenerate your damage shield by attacking, get bonus shield when something on screeen dies...

The problem with that: how are you killing your opponents? Or is this just from pve perspective?

For pvp you need that shroud for dmg on reaper.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:I could see a new elite spec that's far more focused on risk/reward could have that as part of their first minor trait, guaranteeing at least some life force to work with.

Seriously, I'd love to see a future Elite Spec go balls to the walls aggro for best results. Similar to Kled or Aatrox in League of Legends where the proper answer to being in a tight spot is usually to dive deeper. Would need frequent gap-closing ability not gated behind Shroud, though.

But it kind of came off that way when arenanet left it bugged for 3 weeks and even once the bug was fixed people were mostly not using it for support just the damage. Or support via Zone control damage in the case of wvw.

Even now ideally if you run it its very high risk as it still has naturally the least survivability in the game but can still make plays that can rock a whole enemy team when played right.If thats not high risk/reward i dont know what is.

The fact people are still using Scourge for damage instead of support is primarily because Scourge support really isn't very good: just some weak condi clearing and good healing (yes, I'm counting barrier as healing, since both are extra hit points). Ventari Revenant does a better job on the support side, both in higher numbers and extra supportive utility.

In team settings, Scourge is fairly low-risk so long as you have support. It's bombs are pretty easy to pull off, too with low chance of failure.

Also, I do feel I need to make the point that intent=/= results. Scourge was never intended to be high-risk high-reward.

LF from nearby deaths MUST be eliminated. Only then can Shroud be balanced.

Right now, you nerf shroud, LF degen, active LF generation, wahtever you want, and you will still potentially end up with the situation where the Necro becomes unstoppable. If they are in a battle and lots of things are dying around them, they become very hard to take down. There is no way to target balance adjustments to this because it's completely situational. A justified shroud/lf nerf in one context becomes debilitating to the entire class in others. Balance is like a blind man throwing darts. THIS is why shroud is so hard to balance. Not because it's a second HP bar, but because it's performance profile is uncontrolled.

For the lemon juice in the cut, none if this is under the player's control either. Skill plays very little part.

So, if you eliminate it, then the only LF generation is the active part. This means first that it's 100% under player control, and second that it becomes much easier to target balance patches. A certain build has too much LF? You can now target that build, and only that build. After this is done, and only after this is done, will other LF balance techniques become possible.