Guild Wars 2

Hey all, just wanted to start a topic to discuss a potential change I have been thinking about recently. For disclaimer purposes, I am not a high level PvPer, I am not great in WvW and I am only fair in PvE (you can ask my guild). Despite not having that much skill, when I am on my walk to work in the morning I read the forums and have been thinking about the trait Dhuumfire.

I though we could start off with some assumptions:

1. Dhuumfire is one of the reasons 30,30,10,0,0 / 30,20,0,0,20 necros are now being called OP – it is not the only possible reason. The patach that added dhuumfire also added Torment which is another condition which may block the condi cleanse of a high bleed stack. There have also been other necro buffs. This point is not made to bash dhuumfire but rather to say that it likely contributes to certain necro builds being called vs. actually being over powered
2. Dhuumfire is not the most useful trait for power builds – it puts out a lot of pressure on condition builds but in a power or zerker build, it is only fair compared to close to death
3. Many of the forum necromancers have not been huge fans of dhuumfire – this is a mild point and limited sample but there have been many well thought out posts here about the problems with dhuumfire
4. Many of the forum non-necromancers have not been a huge fan of dhuumfire – again, mild point
5. Dhuumfire causes burning which does not fit the lore of GW – I have been told by others who played GW1 and are into lore. Not sure if this is accurate
6. Necros can currently put out a lot of damage pressure but defense needs to be tweaked and perhaps damage lowered

Again, I know not everyone will agree with every point here but they are the assumptions I will be working with.

One potential idea to help with the current high condition pressure of necros would be to change the trait Dhuumfire to Dhuumfreeze. Rather than having a 100% chance to cause burning for 4 seconds on critical hit, there would be a 100% chance to cause chill for 4 seconds on critical hit.

Lets think about the ramifications of this change.

1. The condition pressure of necromancers would be lowered somewhat – I think this is good
2. Non condition necromancers would have a decent 30point trait in spite. For berserkers, this would help to limit the escapability of other classes when you are going in for the kill. For power/tanky necromancers, the skill cooldown increase would act more defensively – I think this is good
3. The trait still contains a condition and still adds something which could potentially block the cleanse of a high bleed stack – not sure what to think about this
4. This would make it easier to get 100% chill duration – this may be overpowered but I am not sure and it would need testing
5. In PvE, this would be a nerf to necromancers – currently, chill does not have enough effect on enemies, mainly bosses and it would take away some of the condition pressure necromancers have been able to add to bosses. One of the problems with bringing necros into dungeons is the bleed cap and adding burning helps to add condition pressure making condition necros more useful in dungeons. This would take that advantage away

I am sure that there are more things that I have not thought of but I have to run to a meeting at work Just wanted to make this an explicit topic because I know I have seen people toy around with the idea and I think that it could be a great solution to stop this “NECRO IS OP!” “NO NECRO IS UP!” arguement.

tl;dr: What would be the pros/cons of changing dhuumfire from a trait that causes burning to a trait that causes chill

Power Necros would still probably pick Close to Death.
At least in PvE… but probably in PvP too.

Hybrid Necros using Dhuumfire are already worse than Pure Condi and Power are.
Losing Dhuumfire would drop their damage by quite a bit.
They might become better in PvP though, I dunno.
Certainly worse in PvE, making Power builds stand even more over them.

Terror builds in PvP could now keep their opponents Chilled for a high portion of the time, but would kill slower.
Eh, I have little idea of what would happen to them.

Of course this is all theorycrafting and it’s easy to get it completely wrong. :P

No, that idea is awful.
you copied the concept and the name from this forum and modified to make it worse.

necros can perma chill already, so no one would take that trait.

The main reason I don’t use Dhuumfire, is because it only affects one target, has a 10 sec cooldown, and requires a lot of points invested in the Spite line. Because I want to use Greater Marks, my points are already heavily invested in different trait lines. And there’s not much along the lower tier spite line that I want to use. I would purely be investing a ton of points into one trait line, just to get Dhuumfire. And that’s simply not worth the points. I’d pretty much have to completely overturn my build to use Dhuumfire at all. It’s just not worth it.

The burning I have no issue with. Just make the flames green and you’re done.

Change the burning condition to deal the same damage as poison and make it apply the revealed debuff for the same duration as the burn.

Atherakhia.4086:

Change the burning condition to deal the same damage as poison and make it apply the revealed debuff for the same duration as the burn.

what would be the kittening point of having a Burning-condition then, if it does exactly the same thing as poison does bar the reduced healing?

Constant chill atm requires many skills to land and a few traits to be taken to make sure constant up-time is achieved. To have 1 trait that achieves all this passively would make it too easy to slow down the enemies pace of combat via constant hard snare and especially recharge time increase.

RashanDale.3609:

Atherakhia.4086:

Change the burning condition to deal the same damage as poison and make it apply the revealed debuff for the same duration as the burn.

what would be the kittening point of having a Burning-condition then, if it does exactly the same thing as poison does bar the reduced healing?

to put revealed on the target?

Tobbygnome.6793:

Constant chill atm requires many skills to land and a few traits to be taken to make sure constant up-time is achieved. To have 1 trait that achieves all this passively would make it too easy to slow down the enemies pace of combat via constant hard snare and especially recharge time increase.

To be honest, though, isn’t this what the necro needs? A strong way of slowing down combat, drawing it out into an attrition fight where our tools can actually do their work? Chill does nothing to help you reduce burst, but if you survive that burst, well, you punish them greatly for it before they can attempt it again.

vicious.5683:

No, that idea is awful.
you copied the concept and the name from this forum and modified to make it worse.

necros can perma chill already, so no one would take that trait.

Haha, I did not realize that I took the name from the forum. It seemed like a logical name to pick. What was the concept that was originally proposed that worked better. I really am interested because I think that it could work well.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be honest, though, isn’t this what the necro needs? A strong way of slowing down combat, drawing it out into an attrition fight where our tools can actually do their work? Chill does nothing to help you reduce burst, but if you survive that burst, well, you punish them greatly for it before they can attempt it again.

The thing is, we do have it, but it requires a specific setup of runes/sigils/traits/weapon sets. My point was that achieving the same thing with just 1 trait would be too cheap, and i doubt Anet would give us such passive access to almost constant chill.

Tobbygnome.6793:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be honest, though, isn’t this what the necro needs? A strong way of slowing down combat, drawing it out into an attrition fight where our tools can actually do their work? Chill does nothing to help you reduce burst, but if you survive that burst, well, you punish them greatly for it before they can attempt it again.

The thing is, we do have it, but it requires a specific setup of runes/sigils/traits/weapon sets. My point was that achieving the same thing with just 1 trait would be too cheap, and i doubt Anet would give us such passive access to almost constant chill.

What if they reduced the % chance to proc in order to still allow for somewhat reliable chill uptime without having to completely trait/equip for it?

Apply chill on crit (1s, 4s cooldown). Foes already chilled are burned instead (4s, 10s cooldown)
cooldowns are per target affected

Sepreh.5924:

What if they reduced the % chance to proc in order to still allow for somewhat reliable chill uptime without having to completely trait/equip for it?

That would seem logical, but then it would seem like more of a curses trait and might not be worth getting as a condy, as well as it may be too similar to the Chill on Blind trait that’s already in the curses tree.

That’s just my opinion, i see it being a very hard trait to fit in there properly.

As an aside, does anyone else think that Chilling Darkness would be more useful if it was “Blind on Chill” rather than the “Chill on Blind” it is now?

Tobbygnome.6793:

Sepreh.5924:

What if they reduced the % chance to proc in order to still allow for somewhat reliable chill uptime without having to completely trait/equip for it?

That would seem logical, but then it would seem like more of a curses trait and might not be worth getting as a condy, as well as it may be too similar to the Chill on Blind trait that’s already in the curses tree.

That’s just my opinion, i see it being a very hard trait to fit in there properly.

Another option would be to decrease the base duration so that with 30 points in spite the total chill duration would be 4s taking into account the additional condition duration from spite. That way you might be able to keep the 100% chance to proc on crit.

High precision build would have very good passive uptime on chill this way but generally high precision builds are going to take close to death for the additional damage. This way they would have to chose more damage or reliable chill. For builds with lower precision (generally tanky builds), chill would provide some damage mitigation in the form of increased skill cooldowns and an increased ability to lock extremely mobile enemies down. This, however, would come at the cost of balancing how much you want to invest in precision vs. other attributes that may help the build (toughness, vitality, etc)

Sorry to keep going back and forth but I appreciate the input and enjoy the discussion

Chill of Death already does something very similar. Also what is it with the attitude “It would ruin necro in pve, but who cares?” Most people play pve, they all care.
The trait needs to stay as a duration stacking damage condition. And those are Burning, Poison and Fear with Terror. Thats why they made it Burning even if it doesnt fit thematically for necros.

Ye, i actually didn’t intend to discuss it this much, i’ve said all i can say i think.

@Drarnor Kunoram, chill on blind is a niche tactic to keep people snared inside Wells with Well of Darkness, switching it around like that may ruin that niche for some.

phoenix.3465:

Chill of Death already does something very similar. Also what is it with the attitude “It would ruin necro in pve, but who cares?” Most people play pve, they all care.
The trait needs to stay as a duration stacking damage condition. And those are Burning, Poison and Fear with Terror. Thats why they made it Burning even if it doesnt fit thematically for necros.

Oh, dont get me wrong. I am sorry I gave the impression that I dont care about necro viability in PvE. I actually do more PvE than PvP or WvW. That is exactly why I brought up the point that it would effect PvE – so that it is not ignored.

Maybe chill could overall be made more useful in PvE. Maybe this is not feasable and changing burning with chill just sucks. Both arguements could be made and I am interested in it. Thanks for the input!

Ichishi.9613:

Apply chill on crit (1s, 4s cooldown). Foes already chilled are burned instead (4s, 10s cooldown)
cooldowns are per target affected

I think that Trait would be titled, “FreezorBurn”

Atherakhia.4086:

RashanDale.3609:

Atherakhia.4086:

Change the burning condition to deal the same damage as poison and make it apply the revealed debuff for the same duration as the burn.

what would be the kittening point of having a Burning-condition then, if it does exactly the same thing as poison does bar the reduced healing?

to put revealed on the target?

You said this was part of the trait, not part of Burning.