Guild Wars 2

Chilling Force: Striking a chilled foe grants lifeforce and might

• Might Duration (5s)
• Life Force gain (1%)

On the livestream itself it was said that this trait was likely to recieve a nerf. My personal opinion is that it is justified, because the Might you can get from it is obscene. Yesterday in the stream, there was a small discussion as to how this trait could be changed. Important to note is that pretty much everyone agreed that the Lifeforce is needed, and pretty much everyone agreed that a global internal cooldown would ruin the trait completely.

Suggestions that have been made were:

• Cooldown per target – much more reasonable than a global cooldown
• Might Duration nerf (2-3s)

I do want to ask what the opinion is about the trait, and how you think this could be positively reworked

I would think it was fair if it was on a “so-many-procs-during-a-specific-time-period” like chilling nova will be (3 times in 10 sec). It would allow might to proc 5 times in 5 seconds but let the life force flow without cool down. That way we can still benefit from a near constant 5 stacks of might and life force generation, but it caps at 5 stacks keeping us from generating insane stacks. I would prefer it be 10 procs in 10 sec with 10 sec duration, but I think that’s wishful thinking.

I think youre being way too optimistic of things just because of how they sound on paper. I don’t need to remind you of how bad a position necro is currently in now and anet certainly dont need the necro communities help in nerfing till its not viable again.

The trait on its own might sound powerful but as a whole the class has a few glaring issues to overcome.

That is a neat suggestion, capping the amount of might procs per “X” seconds, but letting the Lifeforce flow

The best part about this trait competitively is that you can get Lifeforce without feeling like a dummy AA the crates/windows on Khylo, so I would certainly have peace with it

Zetsumei.4975:

I think youre being way too optimistic of things just because of how they sound on paper. I don’t need to remind you of how bad a position necro is currently in now and anet certainly dont need the necro communities help in nerfing till its not viable again.

The trait on its own might sound powerful but as a whole the class has a few glaring issues to overcome.

Yes and yes, however, it was already confirmed that this trait is going to be reworked… So why not discuss it so that it will be reworked in the benefits to the profession?

I agree that there are many other hurdles, but I did not open a thread for that

The problem with X procs per X seconds is that it is still a global ICD, it only shifts the CD from an equally spread over time ICD to a front-loaded one that will be used up very quickly and then put on a longer CD. So instead of getting 1 proc per second, you can get 10 procs per 10 seconds, but that still works out to being the same as a 1s ICD, but front loaded.

A 1s ICD per enemy allows you to still scale into teamfights and larger fights like they want, but it doesn’t run into issues where single skills can grant full LF from one use. I would say keep the might duration, it isn’t overbearing at all, simply add a 1s ICD per target to limit it a little bit, and that is fair.

Zetsumei.4975:

I think youre being way too optimistic of things just because of how they sound on paper. I don’t need to remind you of how bad a position necro is currently in now and anet certainly dont need the necro communities help in nerfing till its not viable again.

The trait on its own might sound powerful but as a whole the class has a few glaring issues to overcome.

This trait, paired with Blighter’s Boon, gives 2% LF per hit on a chilled enemy. It is just too much when you consider how many abilities we have that hit a lot of times very quickly, and Blighter’s Boon itself is fine, it is Chilling Force that is a bit strong.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword

Perma chill is not going to be as easy as everyone is making it out to be in PvP. In PvE this might generation is fair. A warrior can generate perma 25 might and share it when using phalanx. Necro is a selfish class. I feel we should atleast be able to self buff ourselves effectively. In a group we probably wont use the trait because warrior will stack might for us. But it finally gives us a good solo might trait that isnt dependant on camping DS which forces us out of using DS for defence.

This is finally a trait that allows us to become strong self sufficient self buffers. But we have to make sure we can produce perma chill to pull it off. Which means spamming auto attack (weak). Or relying on high cooldown chill abilities.

Making it cooldown per target just means you nerf it in the place its not as strong. Its only over the top strong because of all the AOE. Against a single target its balanced. Any kind of ICD will make it terrible for single targets and we will get another ruined trait on the same level as empowering might.

And again the place where it might be too strong is when cleaving large groups of mobs that are chilled. But how likely is that scenario in gametypes that it causes balance problems in (sPvP and WvW)? Not very likely. Unless you just popped your 120 second cooldown elite shout or your 30 second cooldown RS #5.

They said they are probably toning down the chill duration on various skills. That would probably be enough of an indirect nerf for it to never be a problem in PvP. And in the cases where its strong it would probably be justified due to the setup. If you are lucky you can GS #5 pull a group into some chill field and AOE for 25 might. But thats going to drop off after 5 seconds during the burst and then your enemies will escape, cleanse and avoid the damage. Its a burst option in PvP. Nothing more.

tl;dr
You guys are focusing too much on the theoretical potential. And ignoring the realistic power of it in average situations. You have to chill your foes and then get lots of good hits in. But the class is still slow.

If anything its the might that is fine. But the lifeforce is too much in optimal situations.

I’m really scared by what they will do with this trait, because I found it wonderful from the first time I saw it, even if yes, it can be a little bit too strong depending on the situation.
I completly agree with you, on both propositions, and as long as there isn’t internal cooldown (which would ruin the trait, as you said), I’ll be happy with it no matter the modification.

It is true that Forceful GS has no ICD as well, and there are but a handful who complain about that… Sadly, it was now the Anet devs concluding that Chillinf Force in it’s current itteration is too strong

I agree with you Spoj that it is still quite a task to keep perma chill up (and attacking in the meanwhile), and when I first saw the trait it blew my mind how simple, yet stunning such a trait could be, a trait that allowed the NecroReaper to gain lifeforce and might without critting – sadly, compensations are going to be made whether we want it or not

I think we are all still on board as to how an ICD would destroy it – I agree, it literally destroyed a Healing Skill before it was even in the game. So if anything, I want the trait to be safe from that and come to a clean solution to the issue

And yea, the Lifeforce might be the issue, but it is trying to solve the issue of the profession having terrible scaling Lifeforce generators… This trait would be a perfect solution to it

@Bhawb

My opinion is that Chilling Force is fine. But Blighters Boon is too strong under ideal situations. You could easily just remove the life force from Chilling force if the lifeforce synergy is too much. But im certain the might generation itself is fine as long as chill is sufficiently difficult to maintain on groups of enemies in PvP.

They also said chill durations are too strong at the time of the stream. Nerfing those will be an indirect nerf to the trait. And probably fix most of the issues.

I’m just worried too many people including the devs are theorycrafting for situations with 3-5 enemies and not thinking about how we’re able to perform in a 1v1 effectively.

Zetsumei.4975:

I’m just worried too many people including the devs are theorycrafting for situations with 3-5 enemies and not thinking about how we’re able to perform in a 1v1 effectively.

This is my big worry aswell. I would much rather we actually get to experience the class before it gets overnerfed internally. Because its realistic situations that will determine whether a trait or skill is too strong or not.

Zetsumei.4975:

I’m just worried too many people including the devs are theorycrafting for situations with 3-5 enemies and not thinking about how we’re able to perform in a 1v1 effectively.

Valid concern, and certainly one to be looked at.

Opening up to the discussion however helps trying to find an ample solution… I am not saying I got the perfect one, hence why I want to hear people’s opinions so that we can gather good feedback. Spoj gave very good critique that the trait is already situational, and if the Chill does get toned down, you might even have a trait that was not to be feared at all

spoj.9672:

@Bhawb

My opinion is that Chilling Force is fine. But Blighters Boon is too strong under ideal situations. You could easily just remove the life force from Chilling force if the lifeforce synergy is too much. But im certain the might generation itself is fine as long as chill is sufficiently difficult to maintain on groups of enemies in PvP.

I agree, removing the life force gain, would be the best choice.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Zetsumei.4975:

I’m just worried too many people including the devs are theorycrafting for situations with 3-5 enemies and not thinking about how we’re able to perform in a 1v1 effectively.

Valid concern, and certainly one to be looked at.

Opening up to the discussion however helps trying to find an ample solution… I am not saying I got the perfect one, hence why I want to hear people’s opinions so that we can gather good feedback. Spoj gave very good critique that the trait is already situational, and if the Chill does get toned down, you might even have a trait that was not to be feared at all

Yeah wasn’t bashing your idea, actually i haven’t read it through completely yet, was just addressing the current atmosphere as a whole.

As much as I’d love to be able to solo generate 25 might with greater ease than a Warrior while on my Necromancer, I’m not sure I’m sold that this is really an appropriate trait given what we already have. It’s already sort of redundant with Reaper’s Might, so here’s what I propose.

Reaper’s Might: Gain 1 stack of might for 15 seconds for each foe you hit with Life Blast or Plague Blast.

Chilling Force: Deal 10% bonus damage to foes suffering from chill. When you strike a foe suffering from chill, you gain 1% life force.

Here’s the logic. Currently with Reaper’s Might you can just autoattack the floor and generate might, which is fairly silly. Additionally, even if you manage to line it up and cleave people with Life Blast, you still only get 1 stack of might. This change would make it so you’d get 1 stack of might for each foe you hit, which would scale really well into Reaper’s Shroud. This would give us a reliable way to self-buff when surrounded by multiple enemies, and then we could simultaneously dial back Chilling Force so we get an extra damage modifier (something Necromancer needs) and retain the life force generation without it being over the top.

As far as I can tell, this balances the issue out and gives us all of what we want out of these two traits. If you want might, you’d go for Reaper’s Might, and if you want the damage modifier and life force management, you’d go for Chilling Force.

Only downside to this is that Reaper’s Might competes with Bitter Chill, so in an organized group that is blasting might or has a PS Warrior you would take Bitter Chill, and in a solo scenario you’d opt to take the trait that provides a lot more personal might and try to manage vulnerability with other traits and skills.

Thoughts?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Here’s the logic. Currently with Reaper’s Might you can just autoattack the floor and generate might, which is fairly silly.

However this is rather nice in combiniation with blighter boon and gives us something like a signet of restoration in RS (mostly spamming auto to gain health).

We dont know how Reaper’s Might will change. It might only generate might on the final attack of the chain in RS. Having both these traits gives us different choices on how to get our might.

If we can take Chilling Force then we can take Bitter Chill at the same time and get our vuln and might. Meaning we have a free 3rd spec for anything we like. Whereas the other option means we need Soul Reaping for unyielding blast to get vuln. Reapers Might to get might and then we can take decimate defences. But we no longer have the 3rd spec available to choose anything else.

That said I would not mind Chilling force becoming a 10% trait if Reaper’s Might generates might on every hit of the auto attack chain.

If the might absolutely must be nerfed. Then the only nerf i would accept is duration nerfs. But even that is bordering on making the trait worthless for sustained might generation.

Muchacho.2390:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Here’s the logic. Currently with Reaper’s Might you can just autoattack the floor and generate might, which is fairly silly.

However this is rather nice in combiniation with blighter boon and gives us something like a signet of restoration in RS.

Which is okay to me personally – Blighter’s Boon is a small heal comparable to SoR, buuuut, the Necromancer still has a Burst Heal available, while the Elementalist lacks this
Not saying it is not nice to have, but the trade-off is neglectable imho

I also agree to the 10% damage trait… Damage modifiers are really lacking on Necromancer, and for a “selfish profession”, this is a clean fix as it helps the power at all times (even at 25 might stacks)

Rising Dusk.2408:

As much as I’d love to be able to solo generate 25 might with greater ease than a Warrior while on my Necromancer, I’m not sure I’m sold that this is really an appropriate trait given what we already have. It’s already sort of redundant with Reaper’s Might, so here’s what I propose.

Reaper’s Might: Gain 1 stack of might for 15 seconds for each foe you hit with Life Blast or Plague Blast.

Chilling Force: Deal 10% bonus damage to foes suffering from chill. When you strike a foe suffering from chill, you gain 1% life force.

Here’s the logic. Currently with Reaper’s Might you can just autoattack the floor and generate might, which is fairly silly. Additionally, even if you manage to line it up and cleave people with Life Blast, you still only get 1 stack of might. This change would make it so you’d get 1 stack of might for each foe you hit, which would scale really well into Reaper’s Shroud. This would give us a reliable way to self-buff when surrounded by multiple enemies, and then we could simultaneously dial back Chilling Force so we get an extra damage modifier (something Necromancer needs) and retain the life force generation without it being over the top.

As far as I can tell, this balances the issue out and gives us all of what we want out of these two traits. If you want might, you’d go for Reaper’s Might, and if you want the damage modifier and life force management, you’d go for Chilling Force.

Only downside to this is that Reaper’s Might competes with Bitter Chill, so in an organized group that is blasting might or has a PS Warrior you would take Bitter Chill, and in a solo scenario you’d opt to take the trait that provides a lot more personal might and try to manage vulnerability with other traits and skills.

Thoughts?

Problem them also becomes with damage potential and multiplier stacking, in zerk, noone will take DD over Chilling Force, if its too weak of a multiplier (or if the person wanted to take blighters for the previous synergy), noone will take Chilling over DD AND both cases make Soul Eater worthless by comparison, thus the 3 traits need to properly compete in both synergy and how strong they are. Life force is essential for necro and if nerfed, should be only a slight nerf. Also remember that Chilling force is a universal if enemy is chilled might generator, not just a in DS one, thus the change would destroy all builds that want to generate might, but dont want to rely on DS for the heavy offense/still want a more flash in for a second or two playstyle.
However a different version of the trait couldsolve most issues, a pre second cap on max might… OR a improved Reapers might that would also benefit the non Reaper Necro, thus instead of giving might doing something like cutting the cast time or causing the damage of each successive Life blast (and thus finished Reaper 1 chains) to gain bonus damage.

TLDR: I honestly think the bigger issue is why is Shout CDR a adept while Soul Eater is a Major, despite their power potentials being reverse (13s cd 20% life force + 78s cd aoe stun VS 50 more damage on hit and 15% cdr of skills that you wont use since your main one, which also triggers the cdr, doesnt have a CD if the enemy is under 50%)

Good points Anubis. I would rather not lose might stacking outside of DS now that we are finally getting the option for it.

But i also really dont want to see it become an Empowering Might clone in 1v1’s and boss fights.

The only type of ICD i would accept is one that allows 5 procs per seconds maximum (almost the same as having an ICD of 0.2 seconds). That way on a single target you can still gain 5 procs if you use fast hits (which requires effort and management of fast hit attacks). But you dont get an over abundance of might against groups for ridiculous Blighters Boon procs.

spoj.9672:

The only type of ICD i would accept is one that allows 5 procs per seconds maximum (almost the same as having an ICD of 0.2 seconds). That way on a single target you can still gain 5 procs if you use fast hits (which requires effort and management of fast hit attacks). But you dont get an over abundance of might against groups for ridiculous Blighters Boon procs.

The emphasis on your story is the scaling, and likely while a simpleton as me could not come with such a solution

Considering the fast hitting attacks/skills are already far from common on the profession, this would not destroy the capability of triggering it in 1v1’s, while in bigger group fights it will indeed remove the possibility to trigger it too quickly (say with Locust’s Swarm)

What do you think of trading might for 2 sec vigor and 2 sec retal for each target?

Just nerf might duration. I care only for current synergy with Blighter’s Boon.

1s cooldown, 8s duration on might.

It would sure be nice to be able to self-stack 25 might and 25 vulnerability permanently regardless of whether we attack in DS or not and maintain 100% critical hit chance with basically no precision, but I genuinely think we’re being naive if we don’t acknowledge that we can’t have all of these things. It’s just too much.

So the real key is to decide what you want more. I personally think my suggestion would enable us to build to do things with different playstyles in each manner, while still giving us the strength we need to be effective and manage life force effectively.

I think in general we’ll opt for Spite/SR/Reaper like in this build: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAVoBqw~. Downside to this is that we lose out on Fury on entering DS and we lose out on Target the Weak which I think ANet will move back to a damage modifier instead of a critical chance modifier (hopefully).

The alternative to this build is to use Curses and opt out of SR, which would look like this http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB2AL8Brw~. Here we go with Decimate Defenses for the crit chance and focus on maintaining 25 stacks of vulnerability in order to keep ourselves at 100% crit chance. The big loss here is that our DS is fairly weak so we’d just flash it for Fury and we’re going to struggle getting most mobs under 50%. The other big issue here is that it has no personal might generation, so even if it’s stronger than the other build in raw numbers I don’t think it’ll be as good for general open world PVE. That said I’m personally glad that the build that doesn’t properly use DS is weaker.

Rym.1469:

Just nerf might duration. I care only for current synergy with Blighter’s Boon.

Generating a boon just to heal yourself or generate LF is a pretty poor design decision. The might duration is already really low, and any lower and you may as well not even get might. I’d much rather Chilling Force be a reasonable trait that has value on its own and isn’t strictly useful only when coupled with Blighter’s Boon.

We haven’t seen most of the classes specs yet – it’s better to er on the side of “too powerful” then adjust it from there after release, rather then releasing a useless trait and hope Anet ever buffs it to viability – a bit like what’s happened with the necro class in beta/at release, hm?

As it stands, chilling force is the only consistent way for a necro to spam boons onto themselves outside of shroud. If it loses the ability to stack might, the life force gain part of Blighter’s Boon will feel really weak, and an “ideal” scenario has so many variables actually at work in it that I can’t really believe the Reaper will be an overpowered killing machine even in it. I could see the might dropping to 3 or 4 seconds, but any lower and even strength runes wouldn’t help it.

I think the trait is balanced. Why? because it requires to hit a foe with a condition, more importantly, a mobility reducing condition. Meaning there will be alot of traits that either reduce it’s duration (I mean in RS the reaper can lose 66% of the duration) or their are traits/skills that remove such type of conditions automatically and that’s just on top of standard condition removal. Another thing that is to say is that you have to hit the enemy so if he uses his invulnerabilty/evade/teleport, the trait has no meaning.
That’s why I think it is balanced for pvp.For pve I think we can say that with status of lowest of the low, it wouldn’t be a problem if we could generate our own might, especial since you have to chill your foe, which is something we don’t get by doing an optimal damage rotation.

Essentially it comes down to not chill duration (although that of course helps), but how frequently we can apply chill.

And the answer to that is ‘not that often’.
GS auto chain is 3s or so long, and the final hit is highly telegraphed and very much worth avoiding.

RS doesn’t have chill on it’s auto – it relies on 3 and 5. While both these are rather good at giving chill (especially the ice field) it is based on semi long CD’s.

Suffer and CttB both have long kitten cast time, and long CD’s.

Sigils, runes, traits and base necro chills all help, but essentially it’s extremely unrealistic to expect anything near ‘constant’ chill, with the sheer frequency of condi clears in the meta – which will can only go up when things like rev and reaper start kittenting out conditions everywhere.

I don’t know why everyone’s in a rush to nerf everything well before release, when that’s exactly what happened to base necro and we’re still sufferin for it today.

Even though I suggested a change earlier, it was because we were asked to suggest a change.
I personally agree with those who say its fine, and this is why. The Reaper is supposed to be an unstoppable force. The synergy of these skills only really shines when hitting multiple targets. It’s easy to see that Anet wants it to do well while fighting multiple enemies. So if 3-5 other players engage on a Reaper, they should fight with the thought in mind to not stack on the reaper, otherwise it will be a lot harder (too hard?) to take down and they could get wrecked. So I think it should just become a L2P issue. Much like you‘d deserve to get wrecked if you sit in one place while fighting a thief, or not bringing poison to fight a warrior, or are unable to follow a Mesmer, or burst before a Celestial ele attunes to water, or drop your CC before the other team has run out of stability. The new L2P will be, don’t engage a Reaper with multiple people.

Rising Dusk.2408:

It would sure be nice to be able to self-stack 25 might and 25 vulnerability permanently regardless of whether we attack in DS or not and maintain 100% critical hit chance with basically no precision, but I genuinely think we’re being naive if we don’t acknowledge that we can’t have all of these things. It’s just too much.

So the real key is to decide what you want more. I personally think my suggestion would enable us to build to do things with different playstyles in each manner, while still giving us the strength we need to be effective and manage life force effectively.

I think in general we’ll opt for Spite/SR/Reaper like in this build: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAVoBqw~. Downside to this is that we lose out on Fury on entering DS and we lose out on Target the Weak which I think ANet will move back to a damage modifier instead of a critical chance modifier (hopefully).

The alternative to this build is to use Curses and opt out of SR, which would look like this http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB2AL8Brw~. Here we go with Decimate Defenses for the crit chance and focus on maintaining 25 stacks of vulnerability in order to keep ourselves at 100% crit chance. The big loss here is that our DS is fairly weak so we’d just flash it for Fury and we’re going to struggle getting most mobs under 50%. The other big issue here is that it has no personal might generation, so even if it’s stronger than the other build in raw numbers I don’t think it’ll be as good for general open world PVE. That said I’m personally glad that the build that doesn’t properly use DS is weaker.

Rym.1469:

Just nerf might duration. I care only for current synergy with Blighter’s Boon.

Generating a boon just to heal yourself or generate LF is a pretty poor design decision. The might duration is already really low, and any lower and you may as well not even get might. I’d much rather Chilling Force be a reasonable trait that has value on its own and isn’t strictly useful only when coupled with Blighter’s Boon.

Important notes tho: Deathly Shivers – its a trait that not only has no sense in terms of naming, but also in overall build options and synergy till DD, IF it instead applied a 1s chill every 5 seconds, it would cause a totally different spin on build options, improve base necro/non reaper stickyness (and its name would actually be relevant to the effect).

Siphoned Power and Deaths Embrace – While powerhouse reaper effects and triggers on enemies under 50/33% hp, they are worthless by themselves and have quite uninspired effects (perma 5 vuln and 2 might) in the current versions of the traits, yet still a passive/not very interactive or otherwise build influencing way reapers would have bonus vuln/might triggers. Other/more fun effects like “gain power when you strike a enemy with less %HP than your current Life Force % *like 150 or something *” and “the lower your hp, the shorter damaging conditions applied to you last *like 1% for every 4% hp *” respectively, or kitten y fun things like every time you weapon swap to your main weapons (first/upper slot ones) cast chillblains or grasping dead under your feet; would be way more interesting and not as influential on reaper might/vuln procs.

As for the concerns for Curses setups, unless they make DS cooldown start on entry, especially with the currently shown new version of Spiteful spirit, keeping it as condi only line seems reasonable enough and with Death Perception (and/or Decimate Defenses) it matters little if its crit or damage boost since it doesnt directly compete with em.

Last but not least, Engie (potentially not depending on traits), Ele (again, possibly not if air gets dropped for tempest, but thats unlikely) and Warrior can all solo keep 25 vuln and 25 might with proper rotations for a very reasonable amount of time by making very slight variations from meta. Guards will too with symbol changes. Even more so with Frailty and Strength as options. So… by sheer track record, its not very unreasonable to let necros have same power level in that aspect (but just solo instead for entire team) under the condition that they a) pick 4 traits specifically for that role b) keep all enemies chilled 100% of the time c) sacrifice higher crit chance, stronger life force generation, vuln burst via chill dump (which is far easier than constantly working to keep the enemies chilled while doing respectable damage/not sitting on GS1) and shorter cooldowns on said burst.

TLDR: IF nerfed it should take the spoj example of something like, max 7~10 charges, gain 5 charges every second, limiting max procs enough to not be insane in mass aoe, but not worthless in 1v1 and useful outside of DS.

I still think its the other stuff that needs tweaks tho.

Too long; almost did not read.
Now, confused. What do you want to suggest for chilling force?

Hes agreeing with my solution. Which basically means it cannot proc more than 5 times within a second. So it has an ICD of 5 procs per second. Kind of like how Chilling Nova is limited. Only instead of 3 procs every 10 seconds. Its 5 procs every 1 second.

spoj.9672:

Hes agreeing with my solution. Which basically means it cannot proc more than 5 times within a second. So it has an ICD of 5 procs per second. Kind of like how Chilling Nova is limited. Only instead of 3 procs every 10 seconds. Its 5 procs every 1 second.

I think this would be a reasonable change.

Oh, well that is fine, then, provided some other professions cannot mitigate the proposed “Op-ness” of what was shown in the preview.

We are assuming other professions use their current meta-builds.

another option-chilling force: grants might if struck foes are suffering from chill plus one other condition.

Muchacho.2390:

spoj.9672:

@Bhawb

My opinion is that Chilling Force is fine. But Blighters Boon is too strong under ideal situations. You could easily just remove the life force from Chilling force if the lifeforce synergy is too much. But im certain the might generation itself is fine as long as chill is sufficiently difficult to maintain on groups of enemies in PvP.

I agree, removing the life force gain, would be the best choice.

i think this would hit reaper’s sustain too hard.

I think the “too strong” comment about Chilling Force was about the Life force, not the might.

Nevermind what a warrior can do with Forceful Greatsword, a Necromancer today can hit the might cap pretty easily using Blood Is Power and Reaper’s Might, with the help of boon duration buffs and/or Signet Mastery. All these things will still be around when specializations come out, and this combo would only get better with the Reaper, who’s AA chain pulls of more attacks per second than vanilla necros can do with Life Blast (in fact, a Reaper should be able to hit and maintain max might in Reaper’s Shroud with Reaper’s Might alone, even if they’re hitting a single target the entire time) Personal might stacks has never been something Necromancers lacked in, and I doubt an extra source that makes hitting and maintaining max or near max might easier would push them over the edge.

Life Force, on the other hand… Life force degenerates at 4% a second in DS, half that with Vital Persistence. VP will show up in specializations as well. Reaper’s Shroud AA speed as it is, a Reaper with Chilling Force attacking a single chilled opponent will gain about 2% life force per second, or 5% Life force every cycle through the AA chain, counting the LF they get on the final hit. Sigil of Ice chills for 2 seconds on proc on a 10 second cooldown Chilling Nova can proc 3 times in ten seconds for 1 1/2 seconds each, or 3 1/2 seconds total, and the new Lingering Curse trait (seen here)will boost all Condition duration by 100% while wielding a Scepter, an effect that should persist into Reaper’s Shroud (just like Axe Mastery boosts DS damage currently) for 10 1/2 seconds of Chill every 10 seconds, (that’s right, a Reaper with Curses will be able to maintain 100% chill uptime without actually using a skill that inflicts chill!) barring any other condition duration boosting gear or buffs… though some more might be recommended to help counter Sigil of Ice’s 30% proc chance.

This means that a Reaper, using the traits and upgrades mentioned above, probably with a build like This with decent crit gear can use the Life Force from Chilling Force and Reaper’s Precision to maintain Reaper’s Shroud on just a single target…. Forever… Unless burst down… and even then, one could probably swap to Dagger/Focus in this build and use the AA to max Life force before Reaper’s Shroud is off cooldown.

As awesome as that sounds, I don’t think Anet ever planned for Necromancers to be able to maintain Death Shroud 24/7 in combat.

EDIT: Actually, it would be about 13 seconds of chill every 10 seconds, forgot that Cold Shoulder increased Chill duration by 20%

I don’t think nerfing the might is the way to go, may be have it give 0.8% LF per hit or something…..imho I would like to see it tested by the players first to deem it unsuitable.

Have to consider PvE/WvW when balancing traits, so lets all remember that.

War Mourner.5168:

We haven’t seen most of the classes specs yet – it’s better to er on the side of “too powerful” then adjust it from there after release, rather then releasing a useless trait and hope Anet ever buffs it to viability – a bit like what’s happened with the necro class in beta/at release, hm?

Were it up to me, sure – you need to chill the enemy (enemies) to even get the benefit anyway, so it is not like you will spam it without any thought

But it was not up to me, so I decided to make a thread discussing a trait with a lot of potential which might end up being butchered – after all, the best way to stop this from happening is to stand up and open to discussion so that good feedback can be made

As it stands, a very reasonable change was suggested by Spoj at this moment; it helps in 1v1’s and isn’t that overpowering in anything above… The scaling is important, which he kept in mind very well

Honestly people, we’ve been asking for scaling defense for like forever and the first thing you want to do is to butcher one of our few scaling defenses. Let’s say you do Spoj’s idea, you can’t autoack 3 people in reaper shroud without losing procs somewhere (assuming a reaper shroud autoattack takes 3/4 second) .

First off, I do not want to butcher anything , I, as many others try to find the best way out of a nerf that is more than likely to come since the devs themselves stated it will be nerfed. But okay, well since math is not my forté for a game since I tend to do numbers during the day (and I do not feel like putting in more), let’s grab this one by the nuts:

Reaper’s Shroud full Auto-attack chain does indeed last 3/4 second according to the wiki. Let’s say all attacks are 3 targets (the final one is blank)

Without any changes this means:

• Life Rend: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 9% Lifeforce
  So in less than a second you managed to get 9 stacks of Might for somewhat more than 14s and 15% Lifeforce ~ you will lose 4% if not traited, means you can maybe call it 11% Lifeforce… Neat, if the enemy does not attack at all, this literally means permanent sustain. Of course, that is highly situational, and you could add up Protection and whatnot but w/e
  11% of Lifeforce on a Zerker spec with say Runes of the Vampirism in PvP translates to about 1870 Lifeforce. This in a full autoattack chain. Now I do not know the exact numbers as to how much Lifeforce decreases the attacks, but it is fairly substantial for an autoattack per chain.
  And do not forget about the synergy with Blighter’s Boon, which heals you for 133*3=399HP/s (if we say that 3 stacks of might translates to one boon) – which is higher than Healing Signet, which will get nerfed (currently at 362HP/s)
  Meanwhile, you are at 9 stacks of might, while you are able to repeat this chain at least 3 times before they wear off, potentially capping at 27 potential stacks without any other traits or utilities within 4 seconds of simply Autoattacking
  Caveat to this is of course that the enemy needs to be chilled. So balanced? Maybe, I honestly cannot tell how difficult it will be to actually perma chill a target

Now let’s say it was capped at five hits per second. First for both the Might and Lifeforce

• Life Rend: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 2 stacks of Might for 5s, 2% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 0 stacks of Might for 5s, 6% Lifeforce
  5 stacks of might for about 4 seconds, 11% Lifeforce, of which 4% might be lost so 7% Lifeforce. Capped might will be about 15 stacks after 4 chains (roughly four seconds). Lifeforce is about 1190 Lifeforce per second. Blighter’s Boon purely from this trait gives 266HP/s.
  Is this really this bad? Honestly, I personally do not think so, but then again, numbers are but a rough estimate of what happens during the fight.
  If no Lifeforce is lost and we purely look at losing might, we will have the previous numbers for Lifeforce, while capping 15 stacks of Might. I say, fund it

Again, I know the caveat to the story is that the enemy needs to be chilled, but I find this one of the least threatening “nerfs” than what other ICD’s can do (1 second global would literally destroy this)

I don’t know where you got this 3/4s thing from, each one has a cast time of 1/2s.
If you watch the video, it’s about 2s to run the full autochain.

In the ideal circumstance, you get the following:
4 stacks of might and 7% LF for each of the first 2 attacks.
6 stacks of might for the last hit and 21% LF for the final attack.

Total of 10 might and 35% LF per auto chain, which is about 17% LF/s

That of course assumes perma chill (aka: utter lack of condi cleanse) and targets basically runnng screaming into youfor no particular reason, which is utterly improbable.

I really don’t see the need for any nerf, considering how hard it will be to keep perma chill on 5 targets, when the RS auto doesn’t naturall cause chill, and our most reliable method of AOE chill, Chilling Nova, already has its own cap, as well as a very short duration.

Honestly the best way to figure this out is throw a reaper against an ele or warrior and see how well the chill sticks.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

First off, I do not want to butcher anything , I, as many others try to find the best way out of a nerf that is more than likely to come since the devs themselves stated it will be nerfed. But okay, well since math is not my forté for a game since I tend to do numbers during the day (and I do not feel like putting in more), let’s grab this one by the nuts:

Reaper’s Shroud full Auto-attack chain does indeed last 3/4 second according to the wiki. Let’s say all attacks are 3 targets (the final one is blank)

Without any changes this means:

• Life Rend: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 9% Lifeforce
  So in less than a second you managed to get 9 stacks of Might for somewhat more than 14s and 15% Lifeforce ~ you will lose 4% if not traited, means you can maybe call it 11% Lifeforce… Neat, if the enemy does not attack at all, this literally means permanent sustain. Of course, that is highly situational, and you could add up Protection and whatnot but w/e
  11% of Lifeforce on a Zerker spec with say Runes of the Vampirism in PvP translates to about 1870 Lifeforce. This in a full autoattack chain. Now I do not know the exact numbers as to how much Lifeforce decreases the attacks, but it is fairly substantial for an autoattack per chain.
  And do not forget about the synergy with Blighter’s Boon, which heals you for 133*3=399HP/s (if we say that 3 stacks of might translates to one boon) – which is higher than Healing Signet, which will get nerfed (currently at 362HP/s)
  Meanwhile, you are at 9 stacks of might, while you are able to repeat this chain at least 3 times before they wear off, potentially capping at 27 potential stacks without any other traits or utilities within 4 seconds of simply Autoattacking
  Caveat to this is of course that the enemy needs to be chilled. So balanced? Maybe, I honestly cannot tell how difficult it will be to actually perma chill a target

Now let’s say it was capped at five hits per second. First for both the Might and Lifeforce

• Life Rend: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 2 stacks of Might for 5s, 2% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 0 stacks of Might for 5s, 2% Lifeforce
  5 stacks of might for about 4 seconds, 7% Lifeforce, of which 4% might be lost so 3% Lifeforce. Capped might will be about 15 stacks after 4 chains (roughly four seconds). Lifeforce is about 680 Lifeforce per second. Blighter’s Boon purely from this trait gives 266HP/s.
  Is this really this bad? Honestly, I personally do not think so, but then again, numbers are but a rough estimate of what happens during the fight.
  If no Lifeforce is lost and we purely look at losing might, we will have the previous numbers for Lifeforce, while capping 15 stacks of Might. I say, fund it

Again, I know the caveat to the story is that the enemy needs to be chilled, but I find this one of the least threatening “nerfs” than what other ICD’s can do (1 second global would literally destroy this)

First it’s at least 3/2 seconds to do a full auto attack chain an autoattack has a cast time of 1/2 seconds (I consider an after cast of 1/4 second). So an auto attack generates 9 might and 15 (9 from chilling force) life force in about 2,25 seconds in best case scenario, the might last 5 seconds which means in a best case scenario you hover between 18 and 21 might, 15% life force in 2.25 seconds translate in 6% net gain in soldier to 2067 damage you cant take but remember you’re in cleave range so you will be hit by those foes as well so if they each damage you for 690 damage it’s a net loss.

Now let’s assumme the five hits per second at most means that 2 chains result in:

• Life Rend: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 2 stacks of Might for 5s, 2% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 9% Lifeforce
• Life Rend: 2 stacks of Might for 5s, 2% Lifeforce
• Life Slash: 3 stacks of Might for 5s, 3% Lifeforce
• Life Reap: 2 stacks of Might for 5s, 8% Lifeforce

15 stacks of might and 27 life force in 4,5 seconds mean your stacks of might will hover between 15~18 and you have a net gain of net 4,5% life force generation in 1 chain. That’s like a 25% loss on net life force generation and 15%~17% in might generation in a non op scenario (especially since this based on a weapon auto attack that generates life force on it’s own).

This is all assuming perfect hits and chill uptime and chill is the second most easy removable condition (the first one is fear).

War Mourner.5168:

I don’t know where you got this 3/4s thing from, each one has a cast time of 1/2s.
If you watch the video, it’s about 2s to run the full autochain.

I considered an after cast of 1/4seconds meaning a chain would take 2.25 seconds which is about what you measured.

War Mourner.5168:

I don’t know where you got this 3/4s thing from, each one has a cast time of 1/2s.
If you watch the video, it’s about 2s to run the full autochain.

Lack of coffee, that is where

@Tim, you are right, no worries – I screwed up

That said, it is hard to tell just by numbers and pure theory how it plays out… Again, and let me be perfectly clear: I do not want to butcher anything – but given that the trait will be looked at , we might as well give the best solution to the issue before it will recieve a global ICD of a second

GoogleBrandon.5073:

@Tim, you are right, no worries – I screwed up

That said, it is hard to tell just by numbers and pure theory how it plays out… Again, and let me be perfectly clear: I do not want to butcher anything – but given that the trait will be looked at , we might as well give the best solution to the issue before it will recieve a global ICD of a second

I know you don’t intend to butcher it but i want to point out that the trait is not op while that sounds like the assumption of this thread and even if it were that the current solutions would seriously hinder it’s scaling. The “best solution” to maintain scaling with foes and limit “abuse” is to combine two concepts icd per foe and and hits over time. If chilling force can proc at most 3 times in one second on the same foe, I would consider it a good limiter while still maintaing scaling. I’m not sure if this kind of system can be safely implemented though.

The thing is, the trait on it’s own is not OP – the synergy is… And it is all about max. potential, something that will rarely be reached, if ever by “the average player”. Sadly, I was not the one making a call, else I would say “See how it works out, balance it after”, but it was already stated it will be looked at

And I do not think the system is incapable of doing so… Didn’t Chilling Nova have a restricted ICD? I thought it was three procs per ten seconds. I figure that a line “per target” would not be that hard to implement