Guild Wars 2

As stated in the title, alacrity received a needed nerf from 66% to 33% reduced recharge on skills. However, this is now inconsistent with Chill, which still increases recharge on skills by 66%. To make matters worse, Chill also reduces movement speed by 66%. Then we have the Reaper, who can not only endlessly spam it, but can take a GM trait allowing it to inflict significant sustained condi damage in addition to all its other effects!

People have been asking for a nerf to Reaper chill, well seems to me that giving it the same treatment as alacrity would be the obvious choice, rather than nerfing the condi damage or screwing up the trait line.

DrMatt.9408:

As stated in the title, alacrity received a needed nerf from 66% to 33% reduced recharge on skills. However, this is now inconsistent with Chill, which still increases recharge on skills by 66%. To make matters worse, Chill also reduces movement speed by 66%. Then we have the Reaper, who can not only endlessly spam it, but can take a GM trait allowing it to inflict significant sustained condi damage in addition to all its other effects!

People have been asking for a nerf to Reaper chill, well seems to me that giving it the same treatment as alacrity would be the obvious choice, rather than nerfing the condi damage or screwing up the trait line.

I support this. Chill is just ridiculous right now.

I support this partly! Yes chill is totally broken!
Chill should be buffed to at least a 100% skill recharge increase and a 99% reduced movement speed!

Especially on necros it should at least have 500-1000 dmg increase too! That way chill would be at least for some cases a little helpful support!

Yes, nerf it for PvP so it becomes useless in PvE again.

Split balancing anyone?

Sourde Noire.5286:

Yes, nerf it for PvP so it becomes useless in PvE again.

Split balancing anyone?

You mean like in Guild wars 1? Sorry they don’t do that anymore. Too much effort.

Alacrity got hit harder than it should have been, imo. It was a knee jerk reaction on Anet’s part.

I don’t disagree that chill needs some tweaking as well, but let’s not do another knee jerk smiter’s boon nerf.

Nerf chill to 33% in PvP
Buff Alacrity to 66% in PvE
(Return Quickness to +100% speed…. in PvE)

Done….

Don’t fix which isn’t broken, don’t break what needs fixing.

Oh wow, is nerf chill the new mount thread. It seems there’s constantly a new one being moved off to another location by moderators.

I agree chill needs fixed. There is no reason for it not to stack like burn damage. It is totally broken.

Deedrick.4372:

Oh wow, is nerf chill the new mount thread. It seems there’s constantly a new one being moved off to another location by moderators.

I agree chill needs fixed. There is no reason for it not to stack like burn damage. It is totally broken.

The reason it shouldn’t stack intensity is because Reapers are not the only ones that use Chill. Every profession but Warrior does to some extent, and nerfing the Chill condition would also be a hefty nerf to base Necro and Power Reaper, which need no nerfs.

Make it stack intensity and…only Reapers can stack it. That doesn’t make sense.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Alacrity got hit harder than it should have been, imo. It was a knee jerk reaction on Anet’s part.

I don’t disagree that chill needs some tweaking as well, but let’s not do another knee jerk smiter’s boon nerf.

Alacrity seemed to have been nerfed due to Spirit Vale. Which is weird because they have said they balance around PvP. Alacrity is fine as it is now, it trivialized PvE content much like 100% Quickness used to

Chill well as I am 14-1in ranked this season all on necro, I’ll leave that one up to the masses

Warcry.1596:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Alacrity got hit harder than it should have been, imo. It was a knee jerk reaction on Anet’s part.

I don’t disagree that chill needs some tweaking as well, but let’s not do another knee jerk smiter’s boon nerf.

Alacrity seemed to have been needed due to Spirit Vale. Which is weird because they have said they balance around PvP. Alacrity is fine as it is now, it trivialized PvE content much like 100% Quickness used to

If you take a look at what was said about that, they stated that the group dps was much higher than intended because of how much alacrity was shared out from the mesmer. When they were first talking about alacrity before HoT, they made it sound like the shared alacrity would be much more limited than what it ended up being. What they should have done was curbed that component of the boon. Would have achieved the same effect without breaking other things.

Oh okay! Then change it from 33% —> 50% but reduce number of ways to apply it. This may result in more groups taking more mesmers though

Thought they could do that now? So would it really be that different? Or they could just not make it stack from multiple sources.

The OP raises three interesting ideas:

1. Should Alacrity and Chill be balanced as two sides of the same coin?
2. Should Chill (and perhaps Alacrity) be scaled differently in PvE versus PvP+WvW?
3. Is chill overpowered in any/all of the game modes?

My personal opinion is that ‘true’ balance doesn’t require that each buff have an equal and opposite debuff — that’s a rule for Newtonian mechanics, not fun games. That said, both Alacrity & Chill offer similar balance issues that differ across game modes, so I think they probably ought to be tuned separately.

As to whether Chill is outright OP’d… I think it’s on par with how OP’d many other mechanics are right now. I’d prefer that ANet reduce the efficacy of a bunch of things at once, rather than doing one at a time.

I don’t see the problem with stacking chill. Its the same problem we used to have with condi’s. When I am specced to bleed and some one overwrote my condi... there when my build. I don’t think a stack of chill should increase the base effect. If there are 5 necros hitting the same target though, why don’t we all get the benefit of our chill stacking and doing damage, like burning? I think the nerf on alacrity was overboard and uncalled for as well. All I am saying is if burning, poison, bleeding can all stack to do the damage, why cant chill.

Deedrick.4372:

I don’t see the problem with stacking chill. Its the same problem we used to have with condi’s. When I am specced to bleed and some one overwrote my condi… there when my build. I don’t think a stack of chill should increase the base effect. If there are 5 necros hitting the same target though, why don’t we all get the benefit of our chill stacking and doing damage, like burning? I think the nerf on alacrity was overboard and uncalled for as well. All I am saying is if burning, poison, bleeding can all stack to do the damage, why cant chill.

Because Chill is used by more than just Reapers that picked Deathly Chill. Changing Chill to stack intensity instead of damage might be a buff for those times when you have multiple Reapers all maintaining perma-chill anyway on a target, but for literally everything else, it’s a hard nerf because it effectively won’t stack at all anymore.

Burning functions the same for everyone. Chill and Fear do not.

Chill is a condition that can be removed or transfered, alacrity is a powerful effect that can buff allies and has no counter, cannot be removed etc. You cannot compare the two, simply because one that had a somewhat similar effect was changed.

Chill is not the problem
If there is a problem, it is Reapers