Is there a way to recharge life force more quickly?

[DoRi Silvia.4159]

Hi guys after long long time of playing my berserker only, I have decided to give the reaper a go

I noticed I lose life force quite quickly in the shroud form and it takes a bit of time to regain life force especially if you are fighting small groups.Is there a way to improve efficiency of recharging life force? Or maybe even perhaps extending the uptime of the shroud?(Currently running metabattle power dps reaper build )

[LucianDK.8615]

Shroud is extended by gaining life force while its active. Theres the reaper trait that makes you gain lf the more targets you hit with shouts. I use axe/focus as offset in pve. Focus 4 gives a nice chunk of lf with 2 charges that goes well with axe2. f4,a2,f4.

[Dadnir.5038]

There is quite a few tricks related to life force management.Among them, using spectral armor before going into shroud when you know that your going to take a beating is a good one. Using spectral walk when you face foes that studbornly put conditions on you is also a good alternative.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

The thing to know about shroud and sustain on necromancer is that while you have life force in shroud you can not die. In a sense you are invincible as long as you are in shroud. It’s one reason why anet is “so careful” at balancing it.

By proxy, having as many utilities and abilities dedicated to life force generation balanced with the fact that you have a 10 second window to build up the life force, means that you sustain by having as many sources of life force generation as necessary for this 10 second window. This is also a reason why speed of shadows was changed from it former trait which reduced shroud cooldown to 7 seconds. The window for gaining max life force was shorter and thus vastly improved necro sustain...which anet didn’t like.

Spectral armor and spectral grasp are almost essential in my lineup of builds because I can gain max life force on a whim with the press of a button. You may also want to take spectral walk for even more life force gainz plus condo cleanse (although I choose flesh wurm personally)

I also personally use death magic in nearly every build setup with unholy Sanctuary. The thing that makes this trait strong is that it acts as a reset in which if you die within the 10 second window of the cooldown on shroud, but have life force at your disposal, you can reset a fight by staying in shroud and waiting in shroud to wait for your cooldown a to come off cooldown. You then have to just wait a mere 30 seconds to get this reset back, and can vastly improve your sustain when used in this manner.

In other words, the second your shroud is depleted you should be using skills that can get you to max life force as fast as possible and survive for 10 seconds before entering shroud again. If you fail to survive for 10 seconds sanctuary should give you a second chance to resustain.

Another thing about shroud is that negating damage is more important than out HPing and tanking damage in shroud, because regardless you only have a maximum of 20 seconds in reaper shroud (longer in certain scenarios and longer on core shroud) and so taking any additional damage in shroud than is necessary will reduce your sustain. For example if you have a stack of burning ticking on you for 1.5k damage per second, your sustain that shroud is providing you is basically cut in half. Removing conditions in shroud and negating damage in shroud increases the time you can stay in shroud and in the big picture gives your skills out of shroud more time to go off cooldown.

These things have helped me able to fight in outnumbered fights in WVW. The most possible outnumbered fight I’ve fought on reaper I’ve ever had was an 8v1 in home bl against some roamers funneling in from enemy spawn to the close camp, using a build with these concepts.

[Methuselah.4376]

In PvE, GS auto, GS 3 and GS 5, generate decent amount of life force and they scale up with the amount of enemies you hit. Axe 2 is good, focus 4 is also excellent for pre shroud lf. Warhorn 5 is a good thing to use right before you enter shroud so you buy yourself a bit more life force. And all this is not taking into account the skills others have mentioned; Spectral skills and traited shouts.

But honestly in general PvE, you should be fine with life force generation. If you are in RS and you auto a group of enemies, you will significantly increase your RS duration.

[LucianDK.8615]

I find Warhorn 5 to be pretty bad and unreliable for life force generation, compared to Focus 4.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Shroud is extended by gaining life force while its active. Theres the reaper trait that makes you gain lf the more targets you hit with shouts. I use axe/focus as offset in pve. Focus 4 gives a nice chunk of lf with 2 charges that goes well with axe2. f4,a2,f4.

Only from skills and traits. Deaths do not affect life force when Shroud is active, and most sources of LF gain (all examples mentioned above like weapon skills) cannot be used while in Death/Reaper shroud. Fear of Death (SR) and CV ®, as well as persistent effects like Spectral Armor/Walk/Ring, are really the only ways to get LF while in D/S shroud without getting into some obscure combos like Grasp->Midair F1

[Famine.7915]

The new trait that gives 15% when you fear can nearly keep you 100% by itself. It's a soul reaping master trait. Forgot name.