Guild Wars 2

I know I’m displaying my ignorance but I have no idea why people like Terror. It gets mentioned constantly on these forums as some sort of burst damage for condition necros but I don’t understand how. I’ve tried out all sorts of things in the mists to figure out how to get damage out of this thing but the results are pathetic. At best, with a plethora of conditions on the heavy golem, I get ~185 damage out of Reaper’s Mark. I’ve checked the wiki and it suggests the damage should be something like 1,200 at level 80 with 1,600 condition damage, so why on Earth do I get 185 damage?

Terror is a trait in the Curses tree that makes Fear have a secondary damage component, along with its CC, that has the highest ticking damage of any condition in the game. It is not the same as the Reaper’s Mark damage.

So it ticks damage that you can’t actually see unless you pick it out of the flurry of numbers jumping out of your enemy? How do we have any idea how much damage it’s doing?

I also noticed it gives damage for Doom (~64) which doesn’t normally have a damage component at all. Is that how much it’s ticking for? Is that just a direct damage component that’s also added on top of a ticking damage component that I can’t see?

Go to the golem and hit staff #2 then #5, not that many numbers to look through to see the terror damage tick.

It pops up very obviously just like any other condition, and it is a bit hard to miss the one condition hitting for 4 digits when the rest are hitting 3. Do you actually have Terror (the trait) traited?

Josh, you can actually figure out how much damage it is by just multiplying it via numbers given by wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Terror .

So say you have about 1300 condi damage. Fear as the only condition will tick for about 362 + 390 (basically 30% of your condi damage added). With another conditon also on the target, it will be 752 + an extra 376, giving you about 1128 damage about a tick (If my math is wrong, sorry)

Outside of that… its the strangly large number flying out of your target’s face that has alot of digits.

Ok, that makes more sense. I tried maxing out condition damage and traiting to make fear last as long as possible. I saw ~3 ticks at ~1000-1100. Still not very exciting but a lot better than 185. Alternatively, it seems like you’d get similar results just using Life Blast for burst or, hell, even my auto attack on staff was critting for ~700 without being traited for that at all. Not that anyone needs to defend their choice to focus on Fear, but I’m certainly not convinced that Terror is worth a dime. It seems like you have to create a build entirely focused on that one thing and then you get ~3000 damage over 3 seconds or so. (Without focusing on increasing the duration of Fear, I only saw 1 tick.) Do many people actually use this type of build?

Fear alone isn’t big, but when its added to everything else on the roster, the damage really is amazing. People do use strict condi builds with terror and they work well. I myself usually stay towards Power builds, but found myself having a hard time against mesmers and thieves.

That said, I recently switched to a D/D staff hybrid build, which makes terror shine. Root, Dagger 5 + weakening shroud into fear+ lifeblast and end with auto attacks. first time i did the combo on a 100% hp ele, they dropped before I got to the last auto in the dagger mainhand chain. Trust me, when combined with other skills, Terror is worth it.

It is pretty good actually, in a high cond dmg build it can hit as x2 burn, and in any cond build you have at least 2 fears(terror,reapers mark, terror on 20s cd).It is a pretty good addition to the condi-burst.

I actually like using terror on my power builds also(I usually go 10 into the curses for +prec), it will deal 588 damage(with 1 condi on the enemy) on a power build(with 100 cond dmg from curse tree), which is not bad at all if you consider the only valuable choice in 10 points of curses, in a power build.

If you have some mights on you it will go even higher,making it a small instant burst ontop of your fear.

I like it.

The damage from Terror alone might not seem like a lot but keep in mind that the enemy, in general, can’t do anything while he’s feared. Trait and build towards fear/condition duration and that damage (2 ticks from Terror) + cc effect + any additional damage you do while he’s cc’d can add up, especially at the right moment (eg. somebody trying to heal). Plus you can chain into another fear and/or warhorn daze.

It’s nicer outside of s/tpvp where you don’t have to sacrifice so much since food gives 40% condi duration, add in lich rune set (10%) and +50% from traits is all you need. Sigil of Paralyzation and investment in Spite trait line also works.

with 25 stacks of corruption sigil, blood is power, and a full condi gear set you can reach probably 2400 max, 1700 base condi damage. This has a damage of 1300-1600 per second. Giving most of your fears 2600-3200 damage relatively instantly.

Corrupt boon (stability) fears also benefit as do traits like Reaper’s Protection (4s fear when you’re cc’d !) almost always forcing a stun break or crippling their health with 4-6k damage. Your two downed and on-downed fears also benefit .. it all adds up.

Nevertheless it’s a risky build as high stability/high anti-condition duration builds render it much much weaker ..

Terror is the single highest damaging condition in the game. 1 Stack of bleeds isn’t that impressive either, but when you combine it with all the other dots you can put on top of it, all of a sudden it makes a difference; and becomes the reason that condition removal is absolutely necessary in PvP or you get instantly melted by any condi comp.

Terror helps make up for sakitten ’s generally lame performance on a longish CD.

A 1 second Fear by itself is a tough sell for Necromancer. Fear is our only gap opener and can be foiled by stability, defiant, and stun breaks. For escape, Fear is almost useless so the dev’s increased damage rather than shorten CD on the staff, DS, and trait skills. Choosing to lengthen Fear through traiting and food involves deliberate sacrifices to get another whole second of duration. Without the buff to Terror damage, I doubt anyone would even consider it.

Anchoku.8142:

Terror helps make up for sakitten ’s generally lame performance on a longish CD.

A 1 second Fear by itself is a tough sell for Necromancer. Fear is our only gap opener and can be foiled by stability, defiant, and stun breaks. For escape, Fear is almost useless so the dev’s increased damage rather than shorten CD on the staff, DS, and trait skills. Choosing to lengthen Fear through traiting and food involves deliberate sacrifices to get another whole second of duration. Without the buff to Terror damage, I doubt anyone would even consider it.

I used terror before the buffed damage… though admittedly at the time I focused on bleed durations, and considered the 1 tick of terror a bonus.

I often ran Terror, too, for lack of anything else in that first tier to support staff. The CD and smaller damage felt lame but dungeon bosses could be interrupted, then, making Fear more useful.

Running a Terror/Chill build and it works pretty amazingly. 1.2k+ Terror ticks and nearly perma chill. It’s pretty lawlz.

Can someone link a WvW terror build & gear setup?\
Thank you.

This is what I have used for a while in WvW

exotic version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNBLhZakRLTvdTZjfPBIp45rjeQcwDTpo80B-jEyAINBRaBIVJQ5wioxWNLiGrmBTlSEV7RKiWtQAKmDA-w

ascended version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNBLhZakRLTvdTZjfPBIp45rjeQcwDTpo80B-jUyAINBRaBIVJQ5wioxWNLiGrSORqbMdsQt9uIa1CBoYOA-w

I have actually 2 staves, 1 with sigil of earth and 1 with corruption for the stacking, as I use staff as my primary weapon.

I use the 2nd best food buffs as I think it is just a waste of money to use the best ones ( I do not have a legendary yet and all my alts are not geared up )