Guild Wars 2

Currently, Deathly Chill is in kind of a weird place. For any build not focused on condition damage, it’s worthless; the damage is going to be way too low for it to be even tempting. For builds that do focus on conditions, the damage is “okay”, roughly comparable to one stack of burning…but a condition necro is probably going to be using scepter, which provides no chill source, and the rest of what Reaper offers doesn’t have much to do with conditions.

While it’s easy to just say “buff it more”, numbers are only part of the issue. In PvP, condition removal is everywhere and even if you can land the hits to apply constant chill, few battles are going to let you keep any sort of damage pressure. In PvE, break bars nullify the trait entirely, and for less mobile NPC enemies pretty much any other damage source available to the necromancer is going to be stronger and more effective than constant chill.

I would suggest giving the trait an additional effect along with the damage, to give it some appeal for reaper builds with lots of chill but low condition damage, and make it more worthy as a grandmaster for condi builds. Some suggestions:
-Applying Chill to an enemy that’s already Chilled causes a burst of damage on impact
-Applying Chill to an enemy that’s already Chilled also Slows them briefly
-You siphon more life and/or life force from Chilled enemies
-Whenever you inflict Poison, you also inflict Chill
-More tiers to the damage; mild damage at high health and lethal at low health

This like this would go a long way to allowing the trait to really “weaponize” Chill over simply giving it some moderate damage. In addition, if Chill will continue to be eaten by break bars, I would recommend giving Deathly Chill higher damage to those bars, so it doesn’t feel wasted against such enemies.

This is a condition trait, if you are a power user you aren’t supposed to take it, it is not for you. It doesn’t need to be changed to accommodate someone it isn’t meant for. It needs to be changed to be useful for condition specs that want to take it.

Power users should always take either of the power options, and condition users should take either the condition option or the hybrid option.

Deathly chill needs to be made useful for condition users. The break bar sillyness needs to be fixed, and the scaling needs to be improved. Condition necros have access to multiple chills through RS5, RS5+4 combo, Staff 4, dagger 4 blind, boon corruption, blind well, sigils, and runes. Even just staff 4 + RS 5 can keep almost perma chill on the target if they removed the stupid cap.

SO to recap:

1. Fix chill
2. Remove stupid cap
3. increase scaling

= winner trait for condition builds.

Specializations are restrictive enough without insisting each grandmaster only be relevant to one build type. Reaper’s Onslaught seems like a power trait, but combines very effectively with Dhuumfire, for example. Doing something like making Chill also cause poison in addition to damage would keep it a very strong condition trait while also allowing for appeal to other builds who want more access to heal-reducing poison. It can still be a condition trait without further forcing players into set paths. Simply making the trait stronger also doesn’t do anything to solve other issues like lack of condition stacking .

I think Deathly Chill should be changed so that it would allow for GS to be used as a condi weapon. Some suggestions:

- Chill deals damage, with additional damage to foes below the health threshold. GS skills 1 and 2 chill and bleed.

- Chill deals damage. Damage from GS attacks are based from condition damage instead of power.

- Constantly apply chill to nearby enemies when GS is equipped. Damaging a chilled opponent applies torment.

ExtraCosmic.9082:

Specializations are restrictive enough without insisting each grandmaster only be relevant to one build type. Reaper’s Onslaught seems like a power trait, but combines very effectively with Dhuumfire, for example. Doing something like making Chill also cause poison in addition to damage would keep it a very strong condition trait while also allowing for appeal to other builds who want more access to heal-reducing poison. It can still be a condition trait without further forcing players into set paths. Simply making the trait stronger also doesn’t do anything to solve other issues like lack of condition stacking .

There are certainly hybrid traits, but they need to be carefully balanced. Generally hybrid traits are balanced for one type of build and are then fairly terrible for other types of builds. I think the best solution is actually what you mentioned, let chill apply a different condition on each chill application. Either burn, poison, or torment come to mind as good candidates. one stack of burn for 3s per chill, 2 stacks of torment for 5s per chill, or 1-2 stacks of poison for 5s per chill. Unfortunately since the devs refuse properly balance the game for both PvE and PvP we will probably have to nix burning. It would give us meta quality dps in PvE, but would be stupidly OP in PvP. Which is unfortunate since condition necros could actually be wanted if we could get it in PvE.

Of course they still need to fix the underlying problems with chill, the 5 cap, and the immunity bosses have. Otherwise the trait still won’t work 90% of the time.

Chill duration from almost every source is 1-2 seconds too short. Chills don’t stick.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Either burn, poison, or torment come to mind as good candidates. one stack of burn for 3s per chill, 2 stacks of torment for 5s per chill, or 1-2 stacks of poison for 5s per chill.

Of course they still need to fix the underlying problems with chill, the 5 cap, and the immunity bosses have. Otherwise the trait still won’t work 90% of the time.

Torment would be a good fit; the theme of the Reaper is supposed to be slow melee, and they’ve stated that its focus on Chill is to make it harder for enemies to run away. An opponent who’s both chilled and tormented is definitely going to have trouble moving out of your range

As another option, I recall an update mentioning a change to condition damage tracking in that it would now apply damage from the last fraction of a second instead of needing a whole second to apply an additional tick of damage. If they did that in reverse, so that a Chill with 0 duration would apply all its damage instantly, it would allow Deathly Chill to move past the 5 stack barrier.

nekretaal.6485:

Chill duration from almost every source is 1-2 seconds too short. Chills don’t stick.

It’s true that most chill durations are very short, but it’s entirely possible for a reaper geared toward it to apply chill perpetually.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think the best solution is actually what you mentioned, let chill apply a different condition on each chill application. Either burn, poison, or torment come to mind as good candidates.

This won’t ever happen because it would make each Fear we land cause Fear, Chill, 3 Vuln+X effectively turning each Fear into a condi bomb. Which would mean that loading up on both Terror and Deathly Chill suddenly front loads opponents with 3 different damaging conditions with one skill, and with the changes to vuln, every chill you’re landing is also increasing the damage those Condi’s are doing. It’s a recipe to get us Dumbfire nerfed all over again.

Ratphink.4751:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think the best solution is actually what you mentioned, let chill apply a different condition on each chill application. Either burn, poison, or torment come to mind as good candidates.

This won’t ever happen because it would make each Fear we land cause Fear, Chill, 3 Vuln+X effectively turning each Fear into a condi bomb. Which would mean that loading up on both Terror and Deathly Chill suddenly front loads opponents with 3 different damaging conditions with one skill, and with the changes to vuln, every chill you’re landing is also increasing the damage those Condi’s are doing. It’s a recipe to get us Dumbfire nerfed all over again.

I’m not seeing the problem. Engineer can apply burn, poison, bleed, confusion, vuln, and chill, all at once with high stacks in less than 1s. This is in addition to high direct damage and low CD’s.

Necro only has 3 fears, each on a fairly long CD. Letting them do a little bit of burst damage would allow condition specs to be viable instead of everyone just running cele signet. In addtion all of those conditions have a very short duration, amounting to a total damage of only 3-4k. I get hit for more than that from stealth with no possible defense or condition clear all the time.

I was able to keep chill up for about 50% of the time during 1v1 fights. Chill was ticking for about 800 when they dropped below 50% health, which isn’t bad. Not sure I’d have won these fights without chill doing damage.

Perpetual Chill isn’t OP. Thieves completely ignore chill, and the chill only variously affects other enemies. Some are hit harder (elementalists) some basically ignore chill due to movement buffs and skill options (engineer) or low cooldowns and leaps (warrior) or both (ranger).

I played a long time with a permanant chill Ranger and the chill effect had far less effect on gameplay than you’d think (and this was pre chill nerf).

Meanwhile anti immobilize traits affect chill, which means that real chill duration is only 85% of tooltip duration.

And in an actual game, a chill that doesn’t last long enough for you to run over to melee range and hit an enemy with a slow casting skill doesn’t count for much.