So in light of the recent change to Deathly Chill, I would like to try to start a discussion on ways the trait to be reworked to be a nerf to what it was, but not as serious as the current iteration.
As of now, Deathly Chill was reworked to apply 1 stack of bleed whenever Chill is applied to a target. As a note, this includes all applications, such as standing inside of the Chill field from Executioner’s Scythe. The issue is that the rework nerfed Deathly Chill, in an average good scenario of applying Chill 3 times, by more than 70% of its former damage. For a Grandmaster trait, I believe this is too much of a downgrade, and it doesn’t really adjust the original and still present issue of why Chill is too strong: Because it’s too punishing of a single condition.
What I would like to talk about here, while there’s still time to hopefully catch some dev’s eyes and cause a change, is how we could work things out to balance out both Deathly Chill’s standing as a build-defining Grandmaster trait, and Chill as a condition in general.
Personally, I believe that the real issue lies in Chill being too punishing of a single condition. I think a more appropriate nerf would have been altering Chill to reduce movement speed and cooldown recharge by only 33% each. This makes Chill less oppressive by itself, and also puts Cripple in its appropriate place as the go-to movement impairing condition. Alongside this, I think Reaper-side Chill durations should be reduced. This could be done by toning down the individual Reaper skills, or simply taking away the free 20% duration increase gotten from Cold Shoulder. Touching baseline Necro Chill durations, such as Chillblains, would punish the core class a little too much for the strength of Reaper, and would just maintain the hierarchy of power creep between elite specs and core classes.
With the above changes, the previous iteration of Deathly Chill could be appropriate, if not decreased by some percentage in scaling. It could also maintain it’s current functionality of dealing damage when first applied, however I don’t believe bleeding is the correct way to implement such damage, as bleeds scale too poorly and don’t make up for the damage lost, at least not with the current 1 stack.
TL;DR – Deathly Chill got axed almost entirely. What are some ways we could try to make it balanced while we still have time to try to give devs input for the patch?
“Reaper’s only big weakness will be that you have to play Necromancer to use it”
~Bhawb.7409