In the real world...barrier spam counts as shroud, additional health..whatever semantic diatribe you wanna use. Professions getting stealth/block don't have access to additional health bar or condi uptime/boon rip etc etc etc Except its not though its no where near close enough to the raw defense that shroud generally offers on any given build and if that were the case we would see possibly other profession who dont use barrier as much. Because then i have to ask why those professions have barrier along side evades, blocks, etc while the necromancer still is not allowed to have such things. Other professions that have stealth certainly do have condi uptime and boon rip to say they dont is falseBoth the Mesmer and Theif have stealth access and both have access to boon rips and condi up time thats more than good enough to be viable and thats only two examples ill put to keep things short. So yes when you remove the second health bar (if you can really call it that because its also a resource) and try to count barrier counts as shroud we then have to ask why other professions have access to barrier while keeping their other defensive tools. Barrier is by far not equal to shrouds. The barrier is not equal to shroud and the cost of giving up shroud is still generally not worth what you get in exchange the only time its decently worth it is in wvw where more aoe is king and in pve where scourge still has decent condi damage output (which is still heavily overshadowed by other options in many situations) Lets also not forget how minor boon rip is in open world as the majority of open world content still has no major need for a ton of boon rip. 95% of the content = boonless foes. Strange..because the professions with access with evades, barrier or stealth are not as numerous as necro in the competitive environment ...where does signet core necro exactly sit in all this? The last thing necros needs is something even more tanky than thatLol comp environment, have u seen any rank 55 or team USA fights at all? The only viable spec for top tournie play necro is blood magic power reaper from boycerino, meanwhile sind and toker spams daredevil or core thief since launch of HoT (stealth and evades). The only barrier gameplay is from scrapper barriers from r55 bruv because NA doesn't even run scrapper. The only core necro is really only nos b/c he plays condi and even then ppl like boyce destroys him now. Honestly, teams have gotten up to grand finals w/o a reaper (see french worms).