Guild Wars 2

Chilling Darkness now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds.

What the hell was the rationale behind this change? Was this trait causing that much problem that justifies such a big nerf?

It was sometimes useful with Plague and made Well of Darkness half-good!

Also, we have more pulsing blind coming in with Nightall.

it would mean necro’s could fill the cap with ease with this trait.

Tim.6450:

it would mean necro’s could fill the cap with ease with this trait.

So instead of trying to find a work around (perhaps saying "so what? It’s short chill stacks anyway?), they decided to make it worthless, since the only blinds Necros have that are worth using for the blind are those that are AoE pulsing.

The cap is only five stacks.. not much to speak of.. they changed that with patch to.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Tim.6450:

it would mean necro’s could fill the cap with ease with this trait.

So instead of trying to find a work around (perhaps saying "so what? It’s short chill stacks anyway?), they decided to make it worthless, since the only blinds Necros have that are worth using for the blind are those that are AoE pulsing.

I do not justify the change, I’m merely trying to enter their thought process. I do not like it, let that be clear.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It was sometimes useful with Plague and made Well of Darkness half-good!

Also, we have more pulsing blind coming in with Nightall.

The tooltip on the wiki indicates that nightfall will blind once at the end of the skill (which is on a 20s cool down)

Plus if you’re using greatsword, your probably not using offhand dagger (mobility & range concerns), so nightfall doesn’t really increase blind access.

nekretaal.6485:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It was sometimes useful with Plague and made Well of Darkness half-good!

Also, we have more pulsing blind coming in with Nightall.

The tooltip on the wiki indicates that nightfall will blind once at the end of the skill (which is on a 20s cool down)

Plus if you’re using greatsword, your probably not using offhand dagger (mobility & range concerns), so nightfall doesn’t really increase blind access.

The tooltip was taken from the Reaper stream where the devs stated that the tooltip wasn’t accurate anymore as the skill now pulses Blind and Cripple.

Used to yell darkness when I drop the well in wvw so guildies will bomb that place. Not sure if it still worth the slot anymore.

Why would you nerf a specialization before its even been released. How do they know how necro reaper will stack up against the new class and the other specializations. They really don’t.

This trait went from good to crap. Even if they add more access to blind with reaper, this trait wouldn’t be that powerful. This trait was good to use with Plague, now its gone…

The class need buffs in some aspects, not nerfs.

At least, increase the duration to 5 seconds.

The nerf is not showing for me…this may be a typing error.

Not much thought going into this nerf. Terrible change.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Not much thought going into this nerf. Terrible change.

Did they put the elementalist dev in charge of necromancer balance? This nerf had to have been made by somebody who doesn’t understand that the necromancer has almost no blind access.

nekretaal.6485:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Not much thought going into this nerf. Terrible change.

Did they put the elementalist dev in charge of necromancer balance? This nerf had to have been made by somebody who doesn’t understand that the necromancer has almost no blind access.

“but, but Necros have a lot of Dark fields, which blind when blasted!”

So yeah, you’re probably right.

Did not see one kittening complaint on kittening chill, or chilling darkness but I sure as hell saw some complaining about how kittening stupid mesmer burst was and how bad burning was, but did anet change that? kitten no. Anet, you are terrible.

Burjis.3087:

Chilling Darkness now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds.

What the hell was the rationale behind this change? Was this trait causing that much problem that justifies such a big nerf?

They disliked it was more useful than Terrifying Descent.

Yeah this was, of course, intended to balance the Reaper trait that causes Chill to deal condition damage. Deathly Chill iirc? I doln’t know how high that damage is going to be, but presumably they felt it would make condition reapers too strong when paired with Plague and Well of Darkness, especially in zerg fights.

Of course, a sensible question could be why put an ICD on Chilling Darkness and not on Deathly Chill? Well, I guess with Reaper being able to inflict Chill in an AoE with so many different skills, putting an ICD on Deathly Chill itself means that, in group fights, Deathly Chill would often proc on something OTHER than your primary target (a mesmer clone, a ranger pet, a different opponent than the one you’re focussing, whatever) and go on cooldown. Then, when you threw a single-target chill at your primary target, Deathly Chill woudln’t proc again as it would be on cooldown.

I feel sad too, I was kinda looking forward to Chilling Darkness being OP, but it’s hard to see how they couldn’t have balanced Deathly Chill in any other way.

I just lost all faith in their ability to balance this class completely. I had begun second guessing my decision to delete my necro and was about to make another- in fact I just put together a sustainable chill build using just core specs- but now I know I made the right choice. I will not be coming back here again.

Surely though your chill build didn’t rely on Chilling Darkness that much? We really don’t have that many reliable and consistent blinds outside Plague: Deathly Swarm’s projectile is so slow an old lady with a walker could sidestep it, and Well of Darkness was on a monstrous cooldown.

manveruppd.7601:

Surely though your chill build didn’t rely on Chilling Darkness that much? We really don’t have that many reliable and consistent blinds outside Plague: Deathly Swarm’s projectile is so slow an old lady with a walker could sidestep it, and Well of Darkness was on a monstrous cooldown.

You use the dark fields to blast into, you don’t rely on the darkness well alone but it was a strong staple of the build yes. It set up for the rest of the rotation. Also with this nerf you can no longer blast for the aoe chill, you get 1 target, then realize you wasted a trait spot because it’s worthless

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

Balanced for an elite spec that might not even come out this year. This trait will never see play again in its current state, great job.

What did you blast with? Your one 20" blast finisher on staff?

Druss.6917:

manveruppd.7601:

Surely though your chill build didn’t rely on Chilling Darkness that much? We really don’t have that many reliable and consistent blinds outside Plague: Deathly Swarm’s projectile is so slow an old lady with a walker could sidestep it, and Well of Darkness was on a monstrous cooldown.

You use the dark fields to blast into, you don’t rely on the darkness well alone but it was a strong staple of the build yes. It set up for the rest of the rotation. Also with this nerf you can no longer blast for the aoe chill, you get 1 target, then realize you wasted a trait spot because it’s worthless

We have blast finisher?

Yeah ok the minions and staff 4 but the minions are hardly used in a chill build…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

staff 4, bone minions, then you have shroud 3, duration food and runes to sustain the chill for a time. Not 100% uptime, but it wasn’t meant to be anyway. It’s a part of the build. Without it though it becomes pointless. Might as well just run a cripple spam, or terrormancer… would be more effective

Druss.6917:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

staff 4, bone minions, then you have shroud 3, duration food and runes to sustain the chill for a time. Not 100% uptime, but it wasn’t meant to be anyway. It’s a part of the build. Without it though it becomes pointless. Might as well just run a cripple spam, or terrormancer… would be more effective

Since when is shroud 3 (or any shroud skill) a blast finisher?

Doesn’t really matter how you feel about the build anyway, it’s borked now. And reaper is going to feel the lasting effects of this. They had already nerfed the dog kitten out of reaper’s chills this was just icing on the cake. Done with necro for good because I don’t forsee it getting better in the future, only worse from here. Btw those “buffs” we got today were really just fixes that never should have been broken to begin with. You can’t break someone’s tools then glue them back together and tell them you bought them shiny new ones.

Muchacho.2390:

Druss.6917:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

staff 4, bone minions, then you have shroud 3, duration food and runes to sustain the chill for a time. Not 100% uptime, but it wasn’t meant to be anyway. It’s a part of the build. Without it though it becomes pointless. Might as well just run a cripple spam, or terrormancer… would be more effective

Since when is shroud 3 (or any shroud skill) a blast finisher?

I did not say shroud 3 was a blast
was a mistype anyway meant 2 (dark path)

Reaper shroud 3 will chill

plague skill 2 and well of darkness are now useless with that 5 sec ICD …. this trait was played without any complain since the beginning and was a nice CC for necro in WvW zerg….
Anet found a nice way to reduce the nercromancer build versatility… while supposed to do the opposite with HoT annoucement … sad …

nekretaal.6485:

Reaper shroud 3 will chill

It isnt a blast finisher though, something he did imply with his words, which he probably didnt intend to.

Druss.6917:

Muchacho.2390:

Druss.6917:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

staff 4, bone minions, then you have shroud 3, duration food and runes to sustain the chill for a time. Not 100% uptime, but it wasn’t meant to be anyway. It’s a part of the build. Without it though it becomes pointless. Might as well just run a cripple spam, or terrormancer… would be more effective

Since when is shroud 3 (or any shroud skill) a blast finisher?

I did not say shroud 3 was a blast
was a mistype anyway meant 2 (dark path)

Since when does any decent player save staff 4 to use it as a blast finisher?
Why would you ever use bone minions outside of MM builds?

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This shows that the Necro design team has absolutely no idea what they are doing with Necro. Lmfao

This change makes very little sense. The class has very limited access to blind and already has enormous problems with mobility and its ability to maintain range on opponents. I mean this trait is now 100% useless. Before it was only marginally useful if you ran tripple well. But now? I don’t know what they were thinking…

I’m also curious how much damage this new chill trait is going to do. Perhaps ANets design goal is to make chill our ‘burn’ since Dhuumfire is such crap and the class has little/no burst condi pressure. But seeing as how burn doesn’t have a 5 stack cap, and there are classes capable of maintaining 10-15 stacks of burn with ease, I wonder what this means for chill’s damage.

People took Chilling Darkness? Over Plague Sending?

Wahoo! Bye frands!

The only conceivable reason I can concoct for this madness is that some dev thought that Chilling Darkness and Bitter Chill made Necros Vuln stacking “OP”. Were people even doing this in PvP? Was this even a thing?

Oh well. We still have Plague Sending at least (at least until they nerf that into oblivion too).

Oh gosh I didnt even think about the Vulnerability… wow it nerfed that to. Good catch..

It only nerfed vuln stacking through chilling darkness. The stack cap has no effect on bitter chill.

Ratphink.4751:

The only conceivable reason I can concoct for this madness is that some dev thought that Chilling Darkness and Bitter Chill made Necros Vuln stacking “OP”. Were people even doing this in PvP? Was this even a thing?

Oh well. We still have Plague Sending at least (at least until they nerf that into oblivion too).

I was just thinking this, even though i only just recently discovered that trait really. This change saddens me though. Well of Darkness and Plague were the only reasons i even used the Chilling Darkness trait in PvP. We shall have to see if this really makes a BIG change for it or not.

spoj.9672:

It only nerfed vuln stacking through chilling darkness. The stack cap has no effect on bitter chill.

I can’t get on to test it but have you? Can you stack more then five stacks of Vuln? With bitter chill?

Evenna.2519:

spoj.9672:

It only nerfed vuln stacking through chilling darkness. The stack cap has no effect on bitter chill.

I can’t get on to test it but have you? Can you stack more then five stacks of Vuln? With bitter chill?

You can.

I would much rather ArenaNet adjust deathly chill from the reaper specialization instead of an internal cooldown on chilling darkness.

Can we all just agree that this trait got hit by Isaiah’s Balance?

Geez, I was just having fun with my build that use Well of Darkness and Plague…

I had thought this trait was interesting that when Reaper is out I can make a chill build with it, now that’s clearly not possible, pft.

ellesee.8297:

People took Chilling Darkness? Over Plague Sending?

Wahoo! Bye frands!

they did on power builds pre patch when plague sending did not exist and after until now. turning plague and well of darkness to a chill pulsing machine helps bomb people in large scale fight in wvw. curses now doesnt enhance the powermancer much aside from defensive gimmicks

Chilling Darkness had a niche in WvW, now they probably should just remove the trait and give us something else useful as a selection.

ellesee.8297:

People took Chilling Darkness? Over Plague Sending?

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Sometimes when I want to try a defensive build. well of darkness, master of corruption, withering precision (only for the shroud one). Plague sending without precision wouldn’t proc so much.

Ratphink.4751:

Can we all just agree that this trait got hit by Isaiah’s Balance?

Isaiah’s Balance can only hit something that was ACTUALLY overpowered before it was nerfed! :p

Evenna.2519:

Why would you nerf a specialization before its even been released. How do they know how necro reaper will stack up against the new class and the other specializations. They really don’t.

Um … I think out of all people, Anet will know this best. You have realize they have the most access to trying out their new ideas, even in the most elementary testing environments.