Guild Wars 2

The purpose of this thread is to make the case that the movement speed modifiers on Chilled and Crippled should be changed to 33% and 66%, respectively.

For reference:

• Chilled – Movement speed decreased by 66%; skill cooldown increased by 66%; stacks duration.
• Crippled – Movement speed decreased by 50%; stacks duration.
• Immobile – Unable to move; stacks duration.

With the introduction of Heart of Thorns there has been a vast increase in the number of ways to apply Chilled and traits that improve or benefit from a target having Chilled, making a once rare condition nearly ubiquitous to both PvP and WvW environments. For many classes, there is little counter-play to the duration-stacking Chilled spam other than a full disengage or rapid and constant cleanses. These methods and traits disproportionately affect the Reaper elite specialization, which makes any balance suggestions particularly volatile for the positioning of Reaper in the game. Necromancers are notorious for having fewer gap closers and being able to be “range-kited” by astute foes is a fine line that can make a viable class unviable. For that reason I am hesitant to suggest a complete removal of the movement speed modifier. I urge the developers to center the design goal of Chilled to its focus on increasing skill cooldowns, as a counterpart to Alacrity (ref: Well of Recall)

The only elite specialization introduced with HoT that works with Crippled in a significant manner is Dragonhunter. Aside from the damage modifier on Zealot’s Aggression, which itself is almost never taken over the other two grandmasters, I cannot think of a single situation in the game, across all game modes, where Crippled could be applied and Chilled not be more advantageous. Not only does Chilled debilitate your opponent’s moving speed more than Crippled, it will also increase his skill cooldowns and potentially damage him. This is a serious design flaw. Changing Crippled’s movement speed modifier to 66% alongside the change to Chilled would emphasize its role as a crowd control skill, increase build diversity, and increase tactical depth.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

expandas.7051:

I cannot think of a single situation in the game, across all game modes, where Crippled could be applied and Chilled not be more advantageous.

Sons of Svanir Runes do a pretty meaty Chilled reduction.

Also there’s uh, Stop Drop and Roll which removes Chilled I think.

That’s it lol. I don’t know if Chilled needs to be changed or Crippled needs to be changed. I think if Crippled possibly had more trait support it could be interesting?

I think if we want to nerf chill, maybe look at Sigil of Ice/Freezing/Hydromancy. Idk if we want to though.

This is perhaps another one of those situations in which it’s difficult to balance the needs of PvE against those in PvP|WvW. I think one way to deal with that is changing intensity & duration for conditions — confusion set the precedent (in fact, it’s still too weak in PvE).

The 66% reduction in movement speed in cripple is probably too much because there are a lot of traits that applies it for many seconds and 66% is huge.
I think that 50% it’s ok for cripple, but i agree to reduce the movement reduction of chill from 66% to 33% because it is a strong debuff even just having the skill cooldown increased by 66%.

I’d suggest a buff and a nerf.

A buff so that Cripple isn’t so plain. A buff to normalize Chill with Cripple.

Scale back Chill to the same speed reduction as Cripple and make it so if both Cripple and Chill are present together, you accomplish the 66% movement reduction that Chill gets now. Separately, each would only be 50%.

Give Cripple more synergy with traits as well as a secondary effect like “adds duration to immobilize and CC”? Like adding .5sec to any CC and 20% duration to immobilize?