[suggestion]Shroud/spectral skills.

[Dadnir.5038]

That's probably a stupid idea but, in the context of all this negativity, I thought that maybe throwig out some new ideas might divert a bit the mood.

 

So... The shroud. The shroud, good or bad it's often a relationship of love/hate that we all got with this mechanism and that's valid or both the necromancer and the other professions. From the point of view of other professions, it's an abusive skill that prevent them to kill their foe and last "way to long". From the necromancer point of view, that's their main mechanism and Anet tried to put everything onto it and failed at make any of those things worth of of interest at the same time, it come at a huge cost and still fail at achieving anything.

 

Onto the point, the suggestion. Let's change the shroud (both death shroud and reaper shroud) into a F1 weapon swap that consume life force over time to maintain. No more locking out of utilities, no more 2nd life bar, the shroud is now only a mean of damage and support with an uptime that depend on the shroud decay and is not hastened when you are struck.

 

Now, You'll say that the necromancer have no mean of defense and such a change is suicidal. Well... You are right! :) And that's why there is a need to touch a bit spectral skills. The idea here is that spectral skills become our main way to survive and the change to achieve that is curiously extremly simple. The idea is to simply replace the life force gained through spectral skills by a barrier. This way:

- _Spectral walk_ give us 2% worth of life force as barrier each time we are struck while under the effect of the skill (1s ICD).

- _Spectral armor_ give us 8% worth of life force as barrier each time we are struck while under the effect of the skill (1s ICD).

- _Spectral wall_ grant us 5% worth of life force as barrier each time a foe try to pass through the wall.

- _Spectral grasp_ grant us 15% worth of life force as barrier for each foe struck.

- _Lich form_ is remov... oups sorry... is change to an effect that work similarly to the previous effects and grant us a %age worth of life force as barrier as well.

- The trait _spectral mastery_ just see a minor change and grant us barrier instead of life force on skill use.

 

This would probably need some testing and we would most likely lose quite a bit of survivability in the process but the synergy with scourge would end up being awesome, the shroud wouldn't be impeded by the incoming damages, we would be able to build glassy without earing complaint about "necro doing to much damage for the survivability they have... etc.

 

Give it a though guys and girls! This is the solution to all the issues that plague the world. With this nobody will ever starve, there will be no more wars... Oups... Maybe not ;)

[Meetshield.1756]

I'm not sure i'm ready to take away shroud without resolving the mobility issues Necro has.

 

Lets clarify the issue some. Defenses listed by Class:

Necro - Shroud / Barrier / Life Leech.

Engi - Mobility / Invuln / Invis

Thief - Invis / Mobility / Evade

Ele - Cantrips (Mobility / Invuln / Evade)

Guardian - Blocks / Boons / Passive Healing / Heavy armor / Some Mobility

Mesmer - Distortion / Mobility / Misdirection

Warrior - High Vit/Armor / Mobility / Invulns / Blocks / Evades

Rev - Invulns / Mobility / High Armor / Evades / Blocks / Damage Mitigation (Dwarf Elite / Resistance)

Ranger - Pet / Invis / Range / Mobility / Knockback.

 

Granted some of these classes have less mobility than others, but none of them are as limited as Necro in Mobility and Counter CC. Core Necro has a Trait for 1 stack of stab on entering shroud, a 40 second well that provide a single stack, and an Elite that makes them a Huge Awkward Target but pulses stab.

 

Shroud is likely the most tanky state in the game, with a reasonable duration. I would be willing to give up this state for a change like you suggest if we added mobility and stability improvements across the board.

 

Spectral Walk - Grants Super Speed to you and your group for 8 seconds.

Staff 5 becomes a teleport that also AOE 240 fears.

Flesh Golem teleport grants 3 seconds of invis and a smoke cloud that is blasted after you arrive.

Spectral Armor generates a clone that shares damage with you for 8 seconds, and provides a barrier at the end equal to how much damage it absorbed (Like an Invuln sort of).

 

well of power pulses stability and grants 3 stacks for 8 seconds on initial use, making it a viable alternative to Guardian stability.

 

And the list goes on. Everwhere over the years that Necro has been shafted in the mobility department would have to be addressed. In vulnerabilities added, Life Leech abilities re-addressed as viable sustain options.

 

I really don't think that Anet wants to open that Can of Worms. What is confusing about the changes to Reaper is that they have the largest impact on PVP, where full zerker reapers will now just waltz into you and burst you down to zero, then leave shroud and flesh worm back to some hole to hide in for 24 seconds. The Effect on PVE is just another power class with issues sustaining its DPS against large raid bosses, and unable to have healing prevent it from falling out of shroud. Sure Barrier can mitigate damage on the Reaper, but he will still have an issue with decay.

 

We are focused on the shroud, and damage because of PVE, making reaper viable in PVE is a simple matter of going back to the 33.6k Condi Reaper dps benchmark and adding back whatever was changed. Changes were made to make way for Scourge, so adjust thing so that both are viable. Adjusting the survival of Necro shroud without addressing the mobility issues creates a very PVE only class.

 

On the other side of things however, Anet has a large player base to make happy and until Scourge is not dominant class in WvW and PvP, there are probably other classes which need a closer look, like Deadeye for example. Completely useless in all game modes.

[Anchoku.8142]

Shroud pretty much replaces hard CC, mobility, and block/invuln skills on weapons and utilities. Messing with shroud means re-visiting a lot of skills and traits so small tweaks each quarter is enough work for the balance team.

 

I am amazed they could get Scourge working at all. Just changing decay rate forced a large increase in dps while in RS.

[Dadnir.5038]

@meetshield

But I do not take away the shroud, I take away the 2nd life bar you get while in shroud. The idea is that you keep the F1 skill and all the skills that goes along, still have the pseudo enhancement due to traits, still tie it to life force with it's decay but I'm shifting all the defensive stuff to the spectral skills.

 

In practice, the necromancer end up being pretty bad against hard hitting guys and super resistant against guys that hit like wet noddle. In fact, what I propose is the exact same thing that you need to do to survive as a necromancer except that I remove shroud from the equation: relying on the spectral skills.

 

The reaper shroud? Now you can use the gap closing skill without bothering wether you'll have to save your shroud for defense or not. Now you get a free 2nd heal skill on shroud#4 if you trait for it.

 

The death shroud? It become part of your rotation without locking you out of your defense. Shroud#4 again can be used as a 2nd heal skill.

 

Spectral skills become your 2nd life bar. Well not quite but you get to chose the level of mitigation you want to use. Think that there will be a lot of incoming damage? Build your vitality and use _spectral armor_ and _spectral walk_ at the same time for 10% of your life force pool as barrier (without eating at your LF pool) and then 12% every second as long as you take some hits for up to 9 seconds. With no vitality, sure you'll mitigate 2k damage/second but with vitality you quickly rise to 4k/seconds. It won't help you survive a 25k hit but you keep your tools, you have more sustain... etc.

 

And as a scourge? Trait correctly and you each second while you take your beating, you gain 4 might stacks and cure 2 conditions.

 

The idea is to have spectral skill acting as health barrier skills that don't have a huge mitigation but still hinder quite a bit incoming damages. And above all, a shroud that's free from it's defensive duty and serve as utility or damage boost without any hindrance.

 

NB: you give credit to the necromancer by giving him life leech as defensive tool. Excuse me but that's sustain not defense. you can put sustain that top this life leeching on all other professions as defense if you want some "equality".