Lifeforce and DS Rework suggestion

Some thoughts of what would be my "dream" rework of the necromancers core class mechanics: Numbers and effects are placeholder and ofc can and most likely have to be changed

Lifeforce:

• Every attack that hits an enemy generates 1% LF. (Attacks that do not technical hit like corrupt boon would generate 3 % for example, according to the amount of boons corrupted, if the attack is not dodged, this has to be made on a per skill basis based on what makes the most sense)
• LF re- and degenerates when out of combat to the value of 50%. Like OOC healing the lifeforce would fill / drain to 50%
• Certain skills generate additional lifeforce, just like they do now.

Shroud:

• Baseshroud value is reduced by 50%. Vitality Scaling is also reduced by 50%
• DR in Shroud is set to 33% for both, condi damage and direct damage.
• LF does not drain in shroud
• Shroud does not have an cooldown. All shroud traits that currently have no cooldown will get an ICD.
• Shroud does still count as weapon swap for the sake of traits
• Incoming Healing while in shroud from outside sources is reduced by 50%. Healing caused by the necromancers own sources is 100%
• Shroud does not interrupt skills, actions, channels, etc but replaces skills 1- 5 like it does now.
• All utility and elite skills are useable while in shroud.

Shroud attunement called "pact":

• Players can choose one of three attunements that modify shroud in a passive way.
• These "pacts" could be based on the starting masks used at character creation, to be in lore.
• Pacts can be swapped freely while OOC.
• Effects should vary and be rather dramatic in effect: e.g. "Become immune to hard CC, when this effect triggers you loose 25% LF" or "When you are critically hit above the health treshold you dodge incoming attacks for 1.5 seconds and loose 25% LF"
• These pacts allow for better trait distribution, traits could not only affect shroud entry / exit only but also modify or improve the pacts, allowing for much greater and focused trait choices. If Trait A modifies all pacts in a defensive manner you can still choose what kind of pact you wanna use, while greatly improving build variety.

Shroud skills:

• Shroud skills are based on your weapons and pact choice. The general idea for each skill should be
• Skill 1 (AA) is based on your MAINHAND weapon.
• Skill 2 (Mobility skill) is based on your PACT
• Skill 3 (CC Skill) is based on your MAINHAND weapon
• Skill 4 (AOE Skill) is based on your OFFHAND weapon (mainhead weapon if staff / twohanded)
• Skill 5 (Wildcard skill) is based on your PACT
• of course these skills could vary greatly. Skill 3 for example being the current fear when wielding a staff, when wielding a dagger it instead is a immob that caused vulnerability and good damage, etc.

Outcome:

• Traits could be converted to a more active gameplay. When traits are not gated behind the shroud cooldown and being such a hard to get resource you have a greater variety to play around with. For example Shroud entry could apply an AOE blind, or aegis, allowing for more skilled ways. You could turn into a living bomb that explodes after entering shroud and staying in it for 4 seconds, dealing damage and loosing all lifeforce in the process, etc.
• Skills and traits dont always have to focus around lifeforce. Lifeforce is aquired naturally by playing and hitting your skills - promoting the "aggressive" gameplay a necromancer is suppodes to do. This allows for much greater skill variety as there are more possible effects or empty slots.
• Shroud can be adapted to the playstyle. Currently, shroud is a sitting duck and a one trick pony. No matter the trait choices, you always know whats to come and how to counter it. Stunlock with core Shroud, Doding and kiting while RS, etc. It creates better build variety, more tactical choices for PvP and WvW and keeps the fight as and against the necromancer more interesting.
• Shroud and LF can be scaled better. Naturally, with many skills that are supposed to hit more targets, that shine in bigger fights you are crippled by the shroud cooldown, being an easy target. With these changes You are not a sitting duck in big fights are shroud is more accessible and not gated behind the current 10 second cooldown. In smaller fights shroud is not so overwhelmingly high and still tied to playing successfull.
• Pacts can be used to fix the current class specific problems. And could be altered by traits to promote different playstyles. A GM Trait for pacts could modify one of them to be healing allies and applying boons. etc.

Thoughts on this ideas?

@Brujeria.7536 said:

• LF re- and degenerates when out of combat to the value of 50%. Like OOC healing the lifeforce would fill / drain to 50%

Ive wished and advocated for this since 2013, even before we saw revenants energy.

But if it didnt happen in power necro meta, where snowballing and extreme unreliability were admitted as problems, i have little hope. Even the respawn bug is still around, which makes us lose 20% lifeforce everytime we die, and just yesterday i got the ulity lock bug. Shroud is just horribly coded and they wont dare to poke at it.

I like a lot of these ideas. Thank you for sharing, Brujeria.A 1 sec cool-down may be more realistic than removing it entirely.

I like your ideas especailly the LF gain/degen and pacts that customise shroud. An issue with your idea is the shroud CD removal. It is counted as a wepon swap and is treated as such. Therefore like all wepon swaps shroud needs a CD that matches this action. Perhaps an idea is to have a pact or trait that lowers the 10 sec CD on shroud by x and not remove it entirely.

@"Brujeria.7536" said:Some thoughts of what would be my "dream" rework of the necromancers core class mechanics: Numbers and effects are placeholder and ofc can and most likely have to be changed

Lifeforce:

• Every attack that hits an enemy generates 1% LF. (Attacks that do not technical hit like corrupt boon would generate 3 % for example, according to the amount of boons corrupted, if the attack is not dodged, this has to be made on a per skill basis based on what makes the most sense)
• LF re- and degenerates when out of combat to the value of 50%. Like OOC healing the lifeforce would fill / drain to 50%
• Certain skills generate additional lifeforce, just like they do now.

Hmmm this idea could be ok ish....

Shroud:

• Baseshroud value is reduced by 50%. Vitality Scaling is also reduced by 50%i dont agree with this Vitality should remain as is no real reason to change vitality stats even with your other changes just make lf not scaled on vitality instead its just 0 to 100% value in which soul reaping traits boost the max value to 120% like holo heat trait boost it from 100 to 150.
• DR in Shroud is set to 33% for both, condi damage and direct damage.especially if you do this part
• LF does not drain in shroudFair enough, but then what causes it to drain will it simply drain when you perform attacks? You have to be careful when you look at things like this.
• Shroud does not have an cooldown. All shroud traits that currently have no cooldown will get an ICD.I dont agree with this shroud will still need to have a cool down even if its a reduced one. (Leave those traits alone lol)
• Shroud does still count as weapon swap for the sake of traits
• Incoming Healing while in shroud from outside sources is reduced by 50%. Healing caused by the necromancers own sources is 100%I agree with this change
• Shroud does not interrupt skills, actions, channels, etc but replaces skills 1- 5 like it does now.That might not work because its a weapon swap which conflicts no class can currently continue to channel a skill that is not interupted by weapon swap.
• All utility and elite skills are useable while in shroud.Yup nice

Shroud attunement called "pact":

• Players can choose one of three attunements that modify shroud in a passive way.
• These "pacts" could be based on the starting masks used at character creation, to be in lore.
• Pacts can be swapped freely while OOC.
• Effects should vary and be rather dramatic in effect: e.g. "Become immune to hard CC, when this effect triggers you loose 25% LF" or "When you are critically hit above the health treshold you dodge incoming attacks for 1.5 seconds and loose 25% LF"
• These pacts allow for better trait distribution, traits could not only affect shroud entry / exit only but also modify or improve the pacts, allowing for much greater and focused trait choices. If Trait A modifies all pacts in a defensive manner you can still choose what kind of pact you wanna use, while greatly improving build variety.

Ok (this idea would be GREAT FOR CORE) Something like this could give core its own identiy without directly buffing reaper or scourge so I think this idea is neat but you need to make sure its a core necormancer thing only

Shroud skills:

• Shroud skills are based on your weapons and pact choice. The general idea for each skill should be
• Skill 1 (AA) is based on your MAINHAND weapon.
• Skill 2 (Mobility skill) is based on your PACT
• Skill 3 (CC Skill) is based on your MAINHAND weapon
• Skill 4 (AOE Skill) is based on your OFFHAND weapon (mainhead weapon if staff / twohanded)
• Skill 5 (Wildcard skill) is based on your PACT
• of course these skills could vary greatly. Skill 3 for example being the current fear when wielding a staff, when wielding a dagger it instead is a immob that caused vulnerability and good damage, etc.

I only agree partly with this because i have written this suggestion before myself.I think only the AA should be based on your main hand weapon every other skill should remain close to the same as they are now but with bonus effects based on your PACT some of them could at some what differently but we dont need to make 20 new skills. Anet has already addressed how they feel about making tons of new skills. Especially ones that sit under the profession mechanic code of the game cause that code is hard to mess with. Basically the more skills they have to make the less likely of a chance that this will happen. Frankly doing it for every shroud skill just seems like over kill to me.Staff in main hand (life blast)Axe in main hand ( ranged fast none projectile deals bonus damage based on vuln)Dagger in main hand (fast melee attack shorter range than reaper not as high damage as reaper either)

Do do it for that many weapon and pact combinations requires a full scale rework and i don't see that in necros future.

Most importantly like i said something like this needs to effect core only. Reaper and scourge already have their identities so to speak. Core needs more help than the other two specs and your ideas particularly the Pacts and shroud attacks changing based on weapon would be excellent ways to address core issues without buffing reaper and scourge at the same time. Reaper could possibly benefit from some of the things you listed up till you get to the Pacts and attacks change based on weapons at that point reaper and scourge should not be included.

@James.1065 said:I like your ideas especailly the LF gain/degen and pacts that customise shroud. An issue with your idea is the shroud CD removal. It is counted as a wepon swap and is treated as such. Therefore like all wepon swaps shroud needs a CD that matches this action. Perhaps an idea is to have a pact or trait that lowers the 10 sec CD on shroud by x and not remove it entirely.

Well i thought about this, but all effects that trigger on weapon swap i can think of already have a CD of 8/9 seconds. Its not meant as way to make swap effects OP or triggered more often, just to increase flexibility for the sake of certain possible traits (these traits should ofc also have an ICD)

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"Brujeria.7536" said:Some thoughts of what would be my "dream" rework of the necromancers core class mechanics: Numbers and effects are placeholder and ofc can and most likely have to be changed

Lifeforce:

• Every attack that hits an enemy generates 1% LF. (Attacks that do not technical hit like corrupt boon would generate 3 % for example, according to the amount of boons corrupted, if the attack is not dodged, this has to be made on a per skill basis based on what makes the most sense)
• LF re- and degenerates when out of combat to the value of 50%. Like OOC healing the lifeforce would fill / drain to 50%
• Certain skills generate additional lifeforce, just like they do now.

Hmmm this idea could be ok ish....

Shroud:

• Baseshroud value is reduced by 50%. Vitality Scaling is also reduced by 50%i dont agree with this Vitality should remain as is no real reason to change vitality stats even with your other changes just make lf not scaled on vitality instead its just 0 to 100% value in which soul reaping traits boost the max value to 120% like holo heat trait boost it from 100 to 150.
• DR in Shroud is set to 33% for both, condi damage and direct damage.especially if you do this part
• LF does not drain in shroudFair enough, but then what causes it to drain will it simply drain when you perform attacks? You have to be careful when you look at things like this.
• Shroud does not have an cooldown. All shroud traits that currently have no cooldown will get an ICD.I dont agree with this shroud will still need to have a cool down even if its a reduced one. (Leave those traits alone lol)

Thanks for your feedback. My intention is to switch the power of DS from passive to active. If you take away the potential effective health you can get trough a full bar of shroud you can give that defense back in more active ways. For example you could block a high damage skill by entering shroud. Your shroud will not be as strong, but you can use it on demand to reduce the damage of the skills you want to.

If you camp shroud your opponent most likely will not burst you. He will kite or pressure you with AAs and saves the burst for when you leave shroud, a very "boring" gameplay for both, the necro, because he cant do things against it and also for the enemy because well, he has to burn trough a wall of health which no real active part.

The defense should be given back in the form of traits and the pacts. If you for example add a trait that grants aegis / aoe blind / prot + weakness / 1 sec of evade / additional damage reduction for 1 second you can switch the passive defense to a more active one. (These traits would of course need to have an ICD)

I agree this is a drastic change and it would require a lot of rework to the existing traits, and its also not everyones cup of tea because it changes the flow of the class but you cant add active defenses while shroud is that "big" in numbers.

Regarding the lifeforce decay / drain - there should not be one. You should not be punished for using your class mechanic in such a way in my opinion. Furthermore if you would build your shroud to deal for example ranged power damage this gives additional layers, your foe might want to burst you out of shroud, just for the sake of you not dealing long ranged power damage.

At the bottomline if you lose 3% lifeforce each second as it is now, you will have 15% less lifeforce within 5 seconds. You might as well have a reduced cap instead and no drain to not pressure yourself.