Guild Wars 2

Necromancer

Dhuumfire:
Fixed a bug with this trait that caused the skill facts on shroud skill 1 to omit the damage within a range of 600.
Corrected an issue in which the Dhuumfire version of shroud skill 1 would deal less damage than intended.
Fixed a bug in which Dhuumfire was a shorter range than shroud skill 1.

Unholy Martyr: Fixed the description of this trait to specify that it draws conditions instead of removing them.

Chilling Darkness: Added a 5-second internal cooldown to this trait.

Plague: This skill no longer inflicts bleeding every second while it is active. Instead, it inflicts 10 seconds of bleeding when it is first activated. When traited with Master of Corruption, it inflicts 4 seconds of poison.

*Mark of Evasion: *This trait now only activates if you are in combat.

Last Rites: The portion of this trait that prevents allies from bleeding out now only applies to allies while you are not downed. The bonus healing power is applied regardless of state.

*Consume Conditions: *Lowered the number of self-applied vulnerability stacks from 10 to 5.

Vampiric Presence: Fixed a bug in which the Vampiric Aura effect applied by this trait allowed it to steal life on skills that did not actually hit.

More nerfs. I guess the lifesteal bug had to go, and the Consume Conditions, Mark of Evasion, Plague, and Last Rites were sensible fixes of broken stuff.

But why do we get even more chill nerfs?

First anet introduced chill stacking, which does nothing except remove chill duration stacking. The stacking has no extra effect! It’s just a flat out nerf to a condition that already doesn’t do much.

In the future, Reapers will get damaging chill, but even this stinks because chill has no effect after 5 stacks.

Then there’s chilling darkness. The trait was very niche, because the necromancer hardly has any access to blind. The main use for it was training your plague blinds and running in the Zerg hoping that your chills would stick long enough for the chilled players to fall behind their guardians and get picked off.

Putting a five second internal cool down just kills the trait. Imagine trying to use well of darkness now and only getting one tiny chill on the whole long cool down.

Why Why Why? Is the class suddenly going to get good access to blind? The previewed reaper skills show hardly any blind. I’m imagining that there are nerfs to reaper chill access incoming, making this trait a trait tax.

But if that didn’t happen, perhaps the trait should just be removed.

I am having a hard time justifying reaper now before it even came out? Between the change to movement impairment (ie chill and cripple dont work on people leaping away from you.)

Only allowing five stacks of chill..

ICD on Chilling darkness…

Why would I want to play a class that has a main staple of giving out chill?

I mean, is the damage going to be really amazing? I am so lost. Even for my normal necro I hate that chill has been affected it is one of the few things I had in my kitten nal.

I just want to know, who was complaining about Necromancers and chill! Of all the conditions! Why was it our chill!

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. Before, it was an unknown number of applications that would stack duration. Now it is 5. A nerf? yes, but not a massive one that will have a big impact on the game.

Chilling Darkness, though… I am at a loss for words.

I don’t get what warranted the changes to chill.
At least CC got a bit better. Plague too, I think?

kitten alert → a condition that already doesn’t do much.

I get that it always stacked but why, would they reduce the number of stacks that could be applied?

Reapers not even out yet. Who was complaining about chill?

Putting an ICD on Chilling darkness, they might as well remove the trait.

In the meantime, the broken mesmers saw zero changes, tweaks, or nerfs. GG Anet.

The outcry over, burning damage, mesmers stunlock/daze/confusion, stealth lacking counterplay, and warrior rampage has been resounding and constant.

No one has been yelling about necro chill. I am always taken by surprise with these things, I guess I really shouldnt be.

Yay! Well of Darkness is finally a complete useless garbage (if already not was before). Thanks ANET.

You guys haven’t been playing Necromancer for very long if you don’t expect nerfs.

Adapt or reroll.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

You guys haven’t been playing Necromancer for very long if you don’t expect nerfs.

Adapt or reroll.

True but I though there was nothing else to nerf they got me good.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. .

I can’t get in the game right now, but these notes seem like a huge nerf. They seem to read that chill is being changed from a duration stacking condition (like immobilize) to an intensity stacking condition (like bleed).

This is a huge nerf because the extra stacks don’t do anything and because targets will be chilled for less time (and reapers need to hit chilled targets in order for their traits to work).

Chilling Darkness was fine. The biggest use I got from it was to turn well of darkness into a chill effect as well. Now my necro won’t even use the curses line unless im going condi cause 1 chill every 5 seconds is worthless.

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. .

I can’t get in the game right now, but these notes seem like a huge nerf. They seem to read that chill is being changed from a duration stacking condition (like immobilize) to an intensity stacking condition (like poison).

This is a huge nerf because the extra stacks don’t do anything and because targets will be chilled for less time (and reapers need to hit chilled targets in order for their traits to work).

Exactly what I am upset about. You can only stack five, which means all extra chill is a complete waste. However its okay to have unlimited stacks of burn put on people…

Explain this to me.

Also I have been playing necro a long time I know they do these things, however! This one honestly caught me off guard, I never expected them to zero in on chill. It makes no sense.

Evenna.2519:

The outcry over, burning damage, mesmers stunlock/daze/confusion, stealth lacking counterplay, and warrior rampage has been resounding and constant.

No one has been yelling about necro chill. I am always taken by surprise with these things, I guess I really shouldnt be.

I know right? Consume conditions was fine before, nobody cried about it being overpowered, yet they tagged extra recharge time and condition to it. Axe was our weakest weapon choice, nobody in the world even complained about it, yet they nerfed the Axe trait by gating its measly 10% added damage behind vulnerability.

And here we are, nobody complained about chill, there are a lot of condi’s people actually are crying about. Yet we’re here with more adjustments.

I don’t understand why they have to take 1 step forward, then 2 steps back with necros. While other classes saw giant leaps, and people actually do complain about mesmers, lack of stealth counters, yet they saw zero tweaks.

It’s just frustrating.

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. .

I can’t get in the game right now, but these notes seem like a huge nerf. They seem to read that chill is being changed from a duration stacking condition (like immobilize) to an intensity stacking condition (like bleed).

This is a huge nerf because the extra stacks don’t do anything and because targets will be chilled for less time (and reapers need to hit chilled targets in order for their traits to work).

It’s not a nerf to constant application, but it does nerf burst-stacking, then letting the Chill run its course. If you spread your chills out (which you should, given cleansing), you won’t notice a difference.

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. .

I can’t get in the game right now, but these notes seem like a huge nerf. They seem to read that chill is being changed from a duration stacking condition (like immobilize) to an intensity stacking condition (like bleed).

This is a huge nerf because the extra stacks don’t do anything and because targets will be chilled for less time (and reapers need to hit chilled targets in order for their traits to work).

I havent played the patch yet but doesnt 5 stacks simply mean that chill became like weakness which also only stacks 5 times (in duration)?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CHILL HAS ALWAYS STACKED.

This patch changes nothing with the behavior of multiple applications of Chill, rather it reduces the number of applications that can be set to run in order. .

I can’t get in the game right now, but these notes seem like a huge nerf. They seem to read that chill is being changed from a duration stacking condition (like immobilize) to an intensity stacking condition (like bleed).

This is a huge nerf because the extra stacks don’t do anything and because targets will be chilled for less time (and reapers need to hit chilled targets in order for their traits to work).

It’s not a nerf to constant application, but it does nerf burst-stacking, then letting the Chill run its course. If you spread your chills out (which you should, given cleansing), you won’t notice a difference.

I get what you are saying but I am looking at all the chill changes as a whole. Lets start with movement skills. They were changed so that chill and cripple no longer affect them. They even said this will impact the reaper.

Next, lets look at a nerf to how much you can stack chill. They wouldnt be reducing it to five unless it was consistently being stacked above five.

Now lets move on to chilling darkness with affects not just well of darkness but plague (which already has new issues of its own). So now theres an ICD of 5 seconds.

Put them together and no your right overall its minor tweaks to Necro (unless you are like me and really liked chill because my enemies stayed in hitting range and my slow skills would actually HIT them).

But all together this adds up to a larger nerf, that you will really begin to feel when the reaper specialization, which revolves around CHILL comes out. LOL

Oh, Chilling Darkness nerf was 100% uncalled for and is horrendous. Curses now has only one Adept level trait.

I also agree that the nerfs to Chill in general are not necessary, as really, nobody was complaining about it. All I disagree with is how big of a nerf the chill stacking change actually is. That one really isn’t a big deal at all.

Ehhhhh, it’s not that bad, I’m scratching my head though at chilling darkness though, as for chill changing to stacks….not that bad really because we don’t stack that much chill, a healthy amount, but still not much. The chilling darkness change though just made well of darkness worthless.

I’m guessing someone at Anet went “Fine, we’ll change CC and Plague so they don’t kill you! But just for that were beefing a very gimmicky trait hardly anyone took!” And walked off. But plague and CC were changed to not kill us, so I’m happy.

Just a side note, can we please get rid of the falling traits? They are worthless I think to any class really, and replace them with something actually useful?

Dhuumfire: Fixed in the buff direction
Mark of Evasion: Fixed in the QoL direction
Unholy Martyr: Unchanged (clarification)
Plague: Buffed so Condi players won’t kill themselves anymore (seems significant)
Consume Conditions: Buffed
Vampiric Presence: Fixed in the nerf direction (probably not a big deal)
Last Rites: Nerfed
Chilling Darkness: Nerfed confusingly

The change to Chilling Darkness is really weird to me, but otherwise it looks like mostly buffs.

Are we really going to sit around blind to the positive changes that were made, because we lost a couple extra ticks of chill on Well of Darkness? I tried to get more than 5 sources of chill into a single build and had difficulty, because I wanted to test if it keeps track of individual “stacks” of duration dropping off to allow more on for continuous chill. I don’t see how this was an issue anywhere ever, but I also don’t see how it’s a real problem.

With Grenth runes, I just stacked chill up to 20 seconds on a Heavy golem, cycling through a bunch of Chill abilities. Every time I used a Chill, it applied successfully.

I really don’t know how much affect the chill mechanic change is going to have. If any.

Ever.

First, stacks that did something are being replaced with stacks that do nothing. This is a nerf.

Second, I used path of corruption to remove a Resistence yesterday (there isn’t a lot of Resistence now but there will be soon). Today, I’ll get two stacks of chill (the extra stack does nothing) instead of an extra 2 seconds of chill. That’s a nerf.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Snip

I’m with you on this one, unnecessary nerfs, yes. But we did get a lot of nice things this patch. Just wish burning would’ve been fixed but hey, just makes our transfers all the stronger right? Haha.

nekretaal.6485:

Putting a five second internal cool down just kills the trait. Imagine trying to use well of darkness now and only getting one tiny chill on the whole long cool down.

I agree that it now makes Well of Darkness worthless. The reason for that though isn’t because Chilling Darkness is now too weak, it’s because BLIND (and by extension well of darkness!) is too weak.

nekretaal.6485:

First, stacks that did something are being replaced with stacks that do nothing. This is a nerf.

Second, I used path of corruption to remove a Resistence yesterday (there isn’t a lot of Resistence now but there will be soon). Today, I’ll get two stacks of chill (the extra stack does nothing) instead of an extra 2 seconds of chill. That’s a nerf.

No, you get the extra 2 seconds of Chill. I have no clue how people are reading that as “Chill stacks intensity now and only goes to 5” instead of “Chill caps at 5 stacks for duration.”

Seriously, why the hell does everyone forget how condition stacking actually works just because Burning and Poison changed?

Chilling Darkness nerf is stupid, no clue who came up with it but they should be fired.

Consume conditions should never have been changed. They can try to be cute with “buffs”, but until they revert the nerf it is still stupid.

Plague change is good, if they made Master of Corruption not bad then it’d be much nicer.

Dhuumfire, Unholy Martyr, Mark of Evasion, Last Rites, and Vampiric Presense bug fixes are nice.

But still, what idiot thought “all these people are complaining about Burning, but you know what’s REALLY OP? Chilling Darkness”.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nekretaal.6485:

First, stacks that did something are being replaced with stacks that do nothing. This is a nerf.

Second, I used path of corruption to remove a Resistence yesterday (there isn’t a lot of Resistence now but there will be soon). Today, I’ll get two stacks of chill (the extra stack does nothing) instead of an extra 2 seconds of chill. That’s a nerf.

No, you get the extra 2 seconds of Chill. I have no clue how people are reading that as “Chill stacks intensity now and only goes to 5” instead of “Chill caps at 5 stacks for duration.”

Seriously, why the hell does everyone forget how condition stacking actually works just because Burning and Poison changed?

Do you remember when Ferocity was introduced, and no one anywhere could do math? This is kind of like that, I think.

I don’t think any Necro’s ability to stack Chill is going to be noticeably affected, based on a quick test I ran on a golem.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Seriously, why the hell does everyone forget how condition stacking actually works just because Burning and Poison changed?

Yeah, I think I read it wrong.

But a lot of people expect chill (and maybe even terror) to switchover at some point to work like burning does now, so players can get damage when they apply damaging conditions.

Bhawb.7408:

Chilling Darkness nerf is stupid, no clue who came up with it but they should be fired.

Consume conditions should never have been changed. They can try to be cute with “buffs”, but until they revert the nerf it is still stupid.

Plague change is good, if they made Master of Corruption not bad then it’d be much nicer.

Dhuumfire, Unholy Martyr, Mark of Evasion, Last Rites, and Vampiric Presense bug fixes are nice.

But still, what idiot thought “all these people are complaining about Burning, but you know what’s REALLY OP? Chilling Darkness”.

Yep thats really what it comes down to. Why Chill changes? Why change anything having to do with Chill. All I can figure is that they think it will be to strong when reaper comes out.

I got home today and couldnt stop laughing when i saw the chilling darkness nerf.

That trait was only good on WoD and Plague. And in the future it could have been decent on reaper GS. Now its totally useless. Seriously. What? Someone explain to me why this nerf happened. Lol.

Yeah to clarify: when they say that conditions like Chill or Cripple or Immobilise “stack”, it means the duration of the new condition gets added on to the existing duration.

In fact we really don’t know what the old stacking limit was! It might have been more than 5, but it might have been less too: Immobilize only stacks to 3!

Moreover, as far as I know applications over the stacking limit STILL stack duration, they just overwrite the oldest application (which would have nearly expired by that point anyway). So you’re not “wasting” chills – it’s a short duration effect anyway, a 5-limit duration stack is effectively an infinite limit duration stack.

Seriously, the Chill nerf is nothing to worry about, not even if you’re a Reaper (which isn’t even out yet, come on guys)! In any real world situation, no human opponent will let Chill stack to 5 on them anyway, there’s too much cleansing around.

The nerf to Chilling Darkness, otoh, is something to be sad about, as it makes skills like Plague and Well of Darkness much weaker, but, like I said above, I don’t see how they could have balanced Deathly Chill otherwise, and, also, it’s those skills that are weak in the first place.

Deathly chill already cripples, Adding a chill to it does almost nothing. It wasn’t Op even Traited. Now your Traited deathly chill will only chill one person. Garbage.

The stacking chill duration cap is enough to balance any chill issues. The chilling darkness nerf is totally unnecessary. The trait is now worthless. Previously it was only good with plague and WoD. Even then it was difficult to justify a trait which only effected too long cool down abilities.

For the most part, these all seem like minor changes and bug fixes and good for the profession.

The changes to chill look like preparation for Reaper. Right now, chill stacks in duration. If a target ever gets un-chilled, just apply it, again.

Frost damage, though… Will it stack in intensity or be a flat damage using duration?

PS. I am inclined to think chill may, one day, work like burning does, now, but it may be too soon for that.

Burning has high dps but no movement or CD impairment. Chill does but has no damage, yet.

Regardless, changing chill to stack like burning may mean changing how much movement and CD are kittened based on stack size.

Great changes to us but the chilling stuff. Still happy with it.

nekretaal.6485:

Deathly chill already cripples, Adding a chill to it does almost nothing. It wasn’t Op even Traited. Now your Traited deathly chill will only chill one person. Garbage.

Deathly chill cripples? What the hell are you talking about?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deathly_Chill that trait isnt even out yet…

Lmfao this team has no idea what they are doing.

I guess I will have to wait for changes to Parasitic Contagion and Dhuumfire and….other condition-related problems.

I just hope that they will do some re-balancing after the WTS and we won’t eat too many nerfs in the process.

Just to point out, Blood Bond is still bugged.

Bhawb.7408:

Chilling Darkness nerf is stupid, no clue who came up with it but they should be fired.

I didn’t expect this one, Bhawb.

The thing that bugs me the most is we KNOW that these changes are being made by someone who does not understand how a necro is played across the field. I think this is unquestionable at this point. Chilling darkness is a mainstay trait for wvw and the change was made with not one accommodation for it, without one heads up to the community, without any consideration that we are being pigeon holed and constricted even further into some mist of a idea of what we are because what we are was defined and never followed. I have played necro since GW2 beta, even GW1 beta, and I have to say the choices and options we have to fit our play styles and thematic play are complete out of balance with what they should be and continue to be due to not having an ambassador on the team that can steer, guide, reform or reject changes that impact us because its understood how we play in our current form (not matter how lackluster it is) and understand the mission statement and ROADMAP for the class.
I don’t expect minions to ever get better, they sucked in gw1, they will suck here until the end of time unless someone has a roadmap for AI improvement. Corruptions had a way better implementation in GW1 that did not make us feel on deaths door, so if its our mission statement to have them whats the road map to getting there without making wild changes to core skills that hinder us everywhere else? Again the road map should be for improvement. I understand we have no escapes and no snares, our mission statement should have been attrition play requiring it and our road map should for getting there. I do expect what was working for us to be built upon and SOME ambassador to our changes to exist there somewhere who knows the class. This twice nerf of chill, this removal of team play out of wvw, this half step on consume conditions that we are only happy with because we can’t ever get full steps, this <insert here> are flags to no leadership.
Stop making adhoc mission statement decisions, follow through on your core ideology of what a necro is, be guided by a road map and have an ambassador on the team that knows how we play today so what we play tomorrow doesn’t eradicate what you have already built on. That includes changes for reaper that mutilate the rest of a necro. PLEASE?

I just want to hear what ANet’s justification is for Corruption skills having any negative impact on the player is. Not one is powerful enough to warrant any kind of negative impact. Let alone a second one when traiting for them.

Corruption skills should apply conditions to opponents (or at the very least apply them in an AE around the user so enemies get hit too). Not the other way around.

Atherakhia.4086:

I just want to hear what ANet’s justification is for Corruption skills having any negative impact on the player is. Not one is powerful enough to warrant any kind of negative impact. Let alone a second one when traiting for them.

Corruption skills should apply conditions to opponents (or at the very least apply them in an AE around the user so enemies get hit too). Not the other way around.

In GW1 we had a skill sets that did take life as a sacrifice for the added power of the skill, but that was it. The trade off really was how much life are you going to take versus how much life you are stealing and sometimes at even the time because we had dot steals that could be giving you x amount point in time versus the tick off for the skill. It was another form of management yes but it was in balance with the life steal capability you had so it really became ‘resource management’. If I were to smash someones head together over there in AN and generate the thought, I would have them all look back at GW1, apply it to death shroud, but apply it out of death shroud as well. If I choose to use this skill then part of it is requiring life force whether I’m in shroud or not for the overall power (and it was added power) of the skill. That would be a balanced idea that would pay homage to GW1’s implementation.

Someone pointed out that this also nerfs our vulnerability. If you took the trait that causes chill to add vulnerability. Sigh.

Pretty obvious that they changed chilling darkness because if reaper chill traits and plague form.

do these devs even play a Necromancer? and i don’t mean conceptually in their heads but actually in any competitive fashion in the game. Robert and Jon seriously wtf? how can we even take you guys seriously as devs for necromancer when you do kitten like this to us, let allow other profession which waaaaaay more egregious issues persist?

you should be kittening ashamed and yes your work sucks kitten

I was using this for a fun build – but now I’m going to have to go back to the meta build…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAoYWjk0QLNWUD20AHOOwFqZR0EVB8qDgWIuB57HA-TVCBABsfIAq4BAU+RAoS1fOTJIWK/A4EAU0+D5pPAA-w

Evenna.2519:

Someone pointed out that this also nerfs our vulnerability. If you took the trait that causes chill to add vulnerability. Sigh.

That’s right it’s a nerf there too, forgot about that. Like I said, 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

And no I’m not going to turn a blind eye just because they gave us some token positive changes to things they messed up royally. Things like increased CC recharge + vulnerability stacking or self bleed while using plague should’ve never happened. I’m not gonna be happy just because they adjusted the stacks down a bit with these stupid changes that should never have happened.

I feel like they also nerfed this due to Reaper gs skill: Nightfall, a pulsing blind+cripple(aka another well of darkness). Maybe they though its synergy was too good? Honestly i don’t think it was warranted especially because with reaper being focused around chill, the reaper only brought 5 new ways of applying chill: gs auto 3rd hit, elite shout, normal shout, reaper shroud #5, and chilling nova trait.

Now while that might sound like a lot of new ways to apply chill, i’m sure most of u know how often in pvp we will be able to land a full auto chain(every now and then but not reliable in any way for chill), and the two shouts have very long cast times and long cooldowns. The reaper shroud #5 skill lays down a nice ice field which can be combo-ed with for more chill, but i feel using it just for chill is a waste as its a very nice executioner skill that also has a cc on it while having a long cd(so even if used for chill not that often). Lastly is the chilling nova trait, which in pvp will most likely get overshadowed by Relentless Pursuit due to us needing to not be kited to be effective as a reaper.

The elite shout is debatable whether itll be worth always takign or not, and the other chill shout seems lackluster for its long cast+cd and only a 3s duration chill and single condition transferred on each target hit. So i feel like they are taking away a trait with good synergy with reaper before reaper has even had a chance to use it because they fear it will be “too good”.

just my 2cents sorry for long rant. edit: spelling+had non elite shout wrong.

Plague form + chilling dark + bitter chill stacked high amounts of vulnerability but again anet didn’t adjust for well of darkness. Only reason that skill has a high cooldown was because of the trait. No other reason to have it now unless they drop the cooldown loads!!!

I would be happy if they
A) upped the duration of he chill caused and
B) lowered the cooldown on well of darkness so its not useless.

The chilling darkness nerf was so plague form could not stack 25 vulnerability through the two trait combo Blind > chill > vulnerability.

That was clearly done because the self damage from plague form was reduced.

Heaven forbid our Elite actually be worthy of the slot.