Desert Shroud

Shade. Enter the desert shroud, gaining a powerful barrier and pulsing necrotic energy around your sand shades. Targets affected by this ability can only be affected once per pulse. — In-game description

Desert Shroud

Profession

Necromancer (skill list)

Specialization

Scourge

Slot

Profession mechanic

Type

Shade, Shroud

Game link

API

44663

“

20

30

30

 

Desert Shroud

Shade. Enter the desert shroud, gaining a powerful barrier and pulsing necrotic energy around your sand shades.
Targets affected by this ability can only be affected once per pulse.

 Life Force Cost: 4,606

 Damage (7x): 840 (3.15)^?

 Damage (7x): 560 (2.1)^?

 Barrier: 2,188 (1.25)^?

 Barrier: 2,028 (1.25)^?

 Torment (5s): 110 Damage, 159 Damage if Foe Is Stationary

 Number of Targets: 3

 Number of Targets: 2

 Pulses: 7

 Duration: 6 seconds

 Interval: 1 second

 Radius: 180

— In-game description

Related traits

Spite

• Awaken the Pain — Might grants you more power and less condition damage. Gain might when entering shroud.
• Spiteful Spirit — Strike around you when entering shroud.

Curses

• Plague Sending — Your first attack after entering shroud transfers conditions. Only activates if you have conditions.
• Furious Demise — Gain fury when entering shroud. Gain additional precision.
• Parasitic Contagion — A percentage of your condition damage heals you. Healing will not occur while life force replaces health.
• Target the Weak — Increases critical-hit chance for each condition on the foe. Gain condition damage based on your precision.
• Weakening Shroud — Cast Lesser Enfeeble when entering shroud. Critical hits inflict weakness.

Death Magic

• Armored Shroud — Gain carapace when entering shroud.
• Shrouded Removal — Lose a condition when you enter shroud and every few seconds while you remain in shroud. Gain carapace when removing conditions from yourself.
• Corrupter's Fervor — Inflicting a condition on a foe grants carapace. Gain pulsing protection while at or above the carapace threshold.
• Unholy Sanctuary — Regenerate health while in shroud. If your life force is above the threshold, your shroud will activate if you would take a lethal blow.

Blood Magic

• Life from Death — Heal allies in an area when you exit shroud. Increase healing to other allies.
• Vampiric Presence — You and your nearby allies siphon health with attacks. This effect increases while in Shroud.
• Unholy Martyr — Entering shroud transfers conditions from allies to you. Exiting shroud consumes conditions currently on you and converts them to life force.

Soul Reaping

• Speed of Shadows — Entering shroud grants swiftness and removes movement-impairing conditions.
• Sinister Shroud — Shroud skills gain reduced recharge.
• Soul Barbs — Entering or exiting shroud increases all damage you deal for a duration.
• Eternal Life — Gain life force every interval up to the threshold when not in shroud. Gain protection when you enter shroud.
• Death Perception — Gain increased critical-strike chance. Gain increased critical-strike damage while in shroud.

Scourge

• Abrasive Grit — Granting an ally a barrier removes conditions afflicting them and grants might. This effect only occurs with barrier from scourge skills and traits.
• Herald of Sorrow — Desert Shroud becomes Sandstorm Shroud.
• Sand Savant — Summon only one shade at a time. This greater shade has a modified recharge. Influence a larger area with shade skills. A greater shade counts as three shades for related traits.
• Demonic Lore — Torment you inflict deals increased damage and causes your foes to burn. This trait can only inflict burning on a particular target once every three seconds.
• Desert Empowerment — Manifest Sand Shade grants a barrier to allies near it. When you apply barrier, grant boons to the affected target. This effect only occurs with barrier from scourge skills and traits.

Notes

• Weapon strength from equipped weapons only affects the tooltip. This skill has its own weapon strength.

Bug:

Barrier amount has not been increased with the December 12, 2017 update.^{[verification requested]}

• The Scourge may occasionally shout one of these lines when entering Desert Shroud:

Know pain!

Mantled in death.

May the sands take you!

Torment is my ally!

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
September 26, 2023	Reduced torment duration from 10 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only.
February 28, 2022	End of Dragons release: The base barrier granted by the skills Sand Cascade, Sand Flare, Desert Empowerment, Desert Shroud, and Sandstorm Shroud has been reduced. The contribution of healing power on these skills has been increased.
September 01, 2021	Fixed an issue that granted an unintended damage reduction.
August 17, 2021	Reduced base barrier from 5,016 to 4,013 in PvP only.
July 09, 2020	Fixed a bug that caused this skill to strike more targets than intended.
July 08, 2020	Reduced the target cap of shades from 3 to 2 in WvW only. Reduced the target cap of greater shades from 5 to 2 in WvW only.
July 07, 2020	Shade skills have been changed back to triggering at both the necromancer's location and their shade locations with each use. (Undocumented) Target cap reduced to 3.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.45 to 0.3.
October 01, 2019	Shade skills no longer affect the area around the scourge while they have a shade present in the world. Increased the number of targets affected by shade skills from 3 to 5.
March 05, 2019	Fixed a bug in which Desert Shroud would not break stuns if the Foot in the Grave trait was equipped.
July 10, 2018	The effects for this skill have been changed to better differentiate it from other scourge profession skills.
March 28, 2018	Fixed a bug in which this trait had the incorrect cooldown in PvP and WvW.
March 27, 2018	Scourge (Profession): Fixed an issue that caused an obstruction error when there wasn't a line of sight to a target, but there was a line of sight to the shade. Enemies in range of the shade will now be struck if the shade is visible to the necromancer. Fixed an issue in which this skill could still hit downed enemies multiple times. Increased the cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW.
February 06, 2018	Added a 0.5-second warning to enemy players on each shade and on the player when activating a shade skill.
December 12, 2017	All skills that grant barrier now give 15% more barrier. Torment stacks per hit have been adjusted from 2 stacks for 4 seconds to 1 stack for 10 seconds in PvE.
November 07, 2017	Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge. Increased the damage inflicted per strike of this skill by 25%. Increased the duration of torment inflicted on each pulse of this skill from 2 seconds to 4 seconds in PvE.
October 17, 2017	Fixed a bug that was preventing this skill from processing Manifest Sand Shade upon casting.
September 22, 2017	Path of Fire release: Desert Shroud has been added to the game.