Necro elitespecialization concept: The Equalizer

[ErikViking.2754]

As a longtime necromancer main, I've been pondering for quite a while now on how a new elite specialization for the necromancer might look like, adding new facets and ideas without changing the entire core concept of the necromancer. After a few reflections, I settled on the following concept which, in my opinion, would make for a great and fun elite specialization. I'm writing it down here mostly to get feedback and the offchance of a bored A-net employee stumbling on this post and perhaps taking inspiration from some of the ideas featured here :smile: .

 

#Lore background:

 

The life force, a force that is intimate with all living things and represents their time left alive. A capable necromancer knows how to suck it out of its victims and use it for its own dark schemes.

The death force, the absolute opposite, the ying to the yang, indicates the proximity of a creature towards its end. The higher the death force, the nearer its bearer stands at deaths door. Even this invisible power, unrecognizable to the untrained eye, can be manipulated.

The Equalizer has dedicated his life to this art. His goal is to create an absolute balance between these two forces ... a balance that benefits him. So he uses his destructive powers to suck the life force from the bodies of his enemies to feed them his allies deemed worthy. By extending these lives their death force is released which the Equalizer in turn uses to rain down even more death upon his enemies thus giving him more life force for his deadly plans.

 

#Main concept

 

The Equalizer gets, next to the well known life force which mainly fills by death and damage to enemies, access to a new resource called "death force", in contrast fillingt through healing and resurrecting allies. In logical conclusion he also gains a second shroud adding to the offensive death shroud with a supportive life shroud filled with healing and boons for him to support himself and his allies. The gameplay would now boil down to the Equalizer using the strong heals in the life shroud to gain enough death force to enter the death shroud where he in turn would do enough damage and the killing needed to fill the life force and swap back to the life shroud. A good equalizer player would be able to juggle between these two shrouds (with a 9 second CD) while one still lacking experience or one getting pressured by damage will have to use the normal necro weapons, aswell as the new one (the shortbow), therefore making that content relevant aswell.

 

#Traits

 

**Minor Expert**

Allows the necromancer the use of Pact-abilities both inside and outside of the shrouds and exchanges the death shroud with the life shroud, providing him with supportive abilities. Also gives him access to a new resource, the death force, filling up through healing done while in the life shroud (x% of healing done while in life shroud as death force), which in turn can now be used to enter the death shroud. While in death shroud, gain life force based on damage dealt (x% of damage done while in death shroud as life force). While in death shroud 100% of the additional Healing Power and Concentration gets converted to Power and Ferocity respectively. While in life shroud 100% of the additional Power and Ferocity gets converted to Healing Power and Concentration respectively. 50% of the damage and healing taken while in a shroud additionaly gets applied towards the Equalizers health pool.

 

**Expert Majors**

1: You gain life force through applied conditions instead of damage dealt (1% per condition). You gain death force through applied boons instead of healing done (1% per boon on self, 0.25% per boon on ally)

 

2: You deal 1% more extra damage to enemies with vulnerability per stack. Healing on allies with regeneration is increased by 20%

 

3: Your abilites in death shroud steal life. damage taken in life shroud is decreased by 20%

 

**Minor Master**

While in death shroud, damage to the Equalizers health pool is decreased to 40% (instead of 50%)

 

**Master Major**

1: While in a shroud the attribute conversion aplies to condition damage and expertise instead of power and ferocity respectively. The boons and condition done by shroud abilities last 50% longer.

 

2: Damage dealt and Healing done is increased by 5% when when either life force or death force is over 50% and increased by 15% when both are over 50%

 

3: While in death shroud you gain 20% of your ferocity as toughness. While in life shroud gain 20% of your concentration as vitality.

 

**Minor Grandmaster**

Your healing has a chance, depending on your prescision, to critically heal for 150% of its original value.

 

**Grandmaster Major**

1: Every death shroud skill applies a random damaging condition on each hit. Every life shroud skill applies a random boon on each heal. Applying a condition to an enemy removes a boon (5 second interal cooldown per enemy). Applying a boon to an ally cleanses a condition (5 seconds internal cooldown per ally),

 

2: When changing directly from one shroud into the other gain 10% increased damage and healing for 12 seconds stacking up to 5 times. Duration refreshes on each stack but all stacks are lost at once.

 

3: Damage taken while in a shroud fills up life force aswell as death force (x% of the damage taken for other shroud, x/5% of the damage taken for own shroud)

 

####Comment

In the traits I tried to follow A-nets approach as in the PoF specializations and thus the upper, middle and lower traitlines have each been given a clear identity. The numbers for the % figures are, of course, tweakable depending on game balance and should mainly just represent the rough concept i was going for with the specific trait. Furthermore, I tried to emphasize strengths for this specialization in all game areas, so that this class would be playable in PvP (through something like Boonstrip, Stabi, Survivability) as well as in PvE (Raids, Fractals etc). The damage values of the normal death shroud are relatively low, which is why I've considered such strong damage multipliers. In addition, I took the holo-smith's approach and its individualization of the photon forge through its traits as a model to shape the traits of the Equalizer with regard to the individualization of his shrouds.

 

#Skills

 

####Healing Skill

Healing bond:

**Pact**. Heal for a small amount. Bind yourself to the nearest opponent (900 range) for 5 seconds. Whenever you take damage steal 200 life from your connected enemy (internal CD 0.5 seconds). 25 sec CD

 

####Utility Skills

Decaying bond:

**Pact**. Bind yourself to the targeted enemy (900 range) for 9 seconds. Whenever it gets a condition, you gain the appropriate converted boon. Whenever you receive a boon, your target gains the appropriate corrupted condition (0.5 seconds of internal CD in both directions). 30 sec CD

 

Strengthening bond:

**Pact**. Bind yourself to 5 allies near you (600 range) for 9 seconds. Whenever you grant yourself a boon during this time, all bound allies also receive a copy of it and you receive the corresponding corrupted condition for each boon that is shared this way. 36 sec CD

 

Shattering bond:

**Pact**. Bind yourself and 4 allies near you (600 range) to the targeted enemy (900 range) for 3 seconds. Whenever you heal a bound ally, you inflict 50% of the healing done as damage to the target. Whenever you deal damage to the target, all bound allies are healed for 20% of the damage. 35 sec CD

 

Protective bond:

**Pact**. Bind yourself to up to 5 nearby allies (600 range) for 4 seconds. You receive less 10% damage from all sources for each bound ally. Whenever one of the bound allies takes damage you transfer 50% of the damage to yourself. At the end of the duration you deal 50% of the damage taken by this ability to nearby enemies (180 Radius). 40 sec CD

 

####Elite Skill

Binding Remorse

**Pakt**. Bin yourself and 10 nearby allies to eachother (600 range) for 3 seconds. Each bound ally deals 2500 damage with each strike as extra damage. This damage heals each bound ally for 500 (20%) and grants a stack of might for 7 seconds to each nound ally aswell (internal CD per person 1 sec each). 120 sec CD

 

####Comment:

Of course, as with the traits, the numbers in these skills are of course not perfect in terms of balance and are again mostly for representing the concept of the skill in question. A goal while making these Skills was always to balance the positive aspects for allies with the negative aspects for enemies so creating an equal amount of conditions or damage on one hand aswell as boons and heal on the other, just distributed in a way that would be beneficial for the Equalizer and detremental for his enemies. Another design choice was the importance of having atleast one skill which synergizes well with each one of the trailtlines so that every player has atleast one skill that suits his playstyle.

 

####Skill while in the life shroud

1: **Projectile**. Heals allies it passes through. Splashes a heal around its hit target instead of damage. (like water-staff autohits on elementalist without the damage)

 

2: **Targeted Area**. Shadowstep to the targeted Location (600 range). Heal 5 allies in the area and give them Regeneration for 8 seconds aswell as alacrity for 3 seconds (180 radius)

 

3: **Area**. You stunbreak 5 nearby allies and grant them boons. Nearer enemies get more boons. (600 radius for 3seconds of stab and protection, 360 Radius for 6 seconds of 2 stab and protection)

 

4: **Area Channelung**. Heal 5 nearby allies strongly over 9 pulses (600 radius), Gain 0.5% extra death force for each ally per pulse.

 

5: **Area**. Bind yourself to 5 Allies (600 range) for 4 seconds. Pulse healing and might (2 stacks for 12 seconds) 4 times to bound allies. At the end every bound ally gains 6 seconds of protection.

 

####Comment

The skills in the life shroud are not that different from the ones we know from the death shroud. Instead of causing damage to enemies, allies are healed and instead of afflicting condition, you gain and distribute boons. But the main concept of each of the abilities remains the same. The strong synergies then occur in conjunction with the traits, which then either grant greatly enhanced healing, much higher boon application or longer survivability.

 

####Shortbow skills (900 range mostly)

1: **Projectile**. A shot which deals damage to the first enemy hit and splashes a small amount of healing to allies at impact (180 radius).

 

2: **Targeted Area**. Shoot an arrow to the targeted area which explodes into a field lasting 3 seconds and pulsing once every second (180 radius). Enemies in the field get 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds per puls. Allies get 5 seconds of retaliation per puls. (5 target limit)

 

3: **Area Projectile**. Shoot 12 arrows in a circle around you (360 radius) which on hitting an ally heal them and grant you death force for each arrow hit (2%).

 

4: **Projectile**. After a short time of aiming fire a fast arrow which hits enemies near the target (360 Radius) for high damage. Grants life force for each enemy hit (5%).

 

5: **Projectile**. A strong shot which stuns the hit target briefly (2 seconds). After hitting the arrow shatters into 5 parts which when picked up grant 3 second of stability to an ally.

 

####Comment

With these skills, it was important to me to offer each of the playstyles a good skill without all the others feeling completly useless. Furthermore i made sure that this weapon, like most other weapons, had increasingly stronger abilities and longer cooldowns from skill 1 to 5. In addition, when playing with the shortbow, you should have the ability to choose which one of the shrouds you enter first. Thats why the shortbow needed to have an ability to create life force aswell as one to create death force. Overall the shortbow should be an alternative to the Staff without directly replacing it and reflect the general themes, feeling and concept of the rest of the elite specialization.

 

#Important Stats

Healing Power and Power/Condition damage

Concentration and Ferocity/Expertise

Prescision

 

#Conclusion

If you've made it this far through this Novel i can just say: Thanks :smile: . Ofcourse i know that the chance that A-net is going to make this class into an actual elite specialization is extremly low and thats totally fine. I just wanted to make this public because it was a little passion project of mine and because i love playing necro so much. I would love to read your opinions and critizism and if by chance an A-net employee stumbles over this i would love to hear from him how my concept compares to A-nets design philosophies when creating new elite specs (just out of curiousity :wink: ). All in all i tried to make an Elite Spec which uses the main concept of the necromancer, the death shroud, and give my unique spin on it while still giving us a reason to keep using the old death shroud skills and setting a strong contrast to the shroudless Scourge in PoF. It was important to me that the class, while playable as Power DPS, Condi DPS and Support would not invalidate any of the other Necro elite specializations. With being half support-half damage it doesnt compete with heal scourge as a full support or the DPS specs as a full dps but can exist beside them letting all elite specs stay relevant.

The numbers being mostly placeholders I leave the balancing to A-net :wink: . Even if the elite spec doesnt get released, perhaps I gave someone at arenanet some idea or maybe i just gave you a good time reading this. all in all i just hope that you enjoyed and if you have tips and ideas or questions, feel free to ask.

I hope you liked this elite specialization:

**The Equalizer**

 

Thx A-net for your great game

 

Erik aka. Shen Deathbringer

 

 

[Stand The Wall.6987]

I just watched that movie with denzel washington

you should have a skill dedicated to him imo

[dceptaconroy.7928]

Specs collection reward being a chair that comes with a cuppa tea and hard bound book.

[Avigrus.2871]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> I just watched that movie with denzel washington

> you should have a skill dedicated to him imo

 

Right? They could call it Robert McCall shroud.

 

Like we get Rev's ability to summon Legends and we get to summon Robert McCall with a Nailgun and various hardware tools to attack foes.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

> @"dceptaconroy.7928" said:

> Specs collection reward being a chair that comes with a cuppa tea and hard bound book.

 

> @"Avigrus.2871" said:

> > @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> > I just watched that movie with denzel washington

> > you should have a skill dedicated to him imo

>

> Right? They could call it Robert McCall shroud.

>

> Like we get Rev's ability to summon Legends and we get to summon Robert McCall with a Nailgun and various hardware tools to attack foes.

 

love you guys lol.

 

not to take away from your idea OP it seems cool.