Guild Wars 2

I remember when Arenanet told us that fear is going to be a necro specific condition and I was happy like really happy, because I always liked fear. However Fear is not only available to other professions but they are actually outperforming the necro in that regard. Every fear on every other profession has a longer duration than the fear of the necro sometimes even 3 second duration. WE would have to trait for that and then chain ALL our available fears together! How is fear necromancer specific when it actually isn’t?

Yea “Fear” has always been a Necro Skill in any MMO game (Except Warlock in WoW, but WoW made about 39432984y728397423 classes so..)

Tbh, fml A Net.

Even if they need blood to do this, I will donate mine with a smile in the face. No joke.

Necromancers deserve to have a unique mechanic (apart from DS) that fits with the profession and that’s fear. It’s a shame that warriors have an utility with AoE fear and we don’t have a single utility to make fear and our AoE fear lasts less than warriors one and have similar CD being a weapon skill…. really gg ANet

The only thing that I genuinely hate is the fact thieves get a much longer fear by stealing from us, I’d like to know what they stole so we could use it, I mean 4 second fear is niceeeee.

Maybe because we have multiple sources of Fear?

Warriors “Fear Me” is on an 80 second CD.
Thief’s “Steal” is on a 45 second CD.

Reaper’s Mark – 40 second CD
Doom – 20 second CD
Reaper’s Protection – 90 second internal CD; Hands Free Reactive

All can be traited to extend duration, and (iirc) +Condition Duration increases the duration as well. Add to that, we can trait to lower the cool downs of Reaper’s Mark and Doom.

Also, we have Fear as a downed skill which I didn’t include above because I hate it.

You can actually get a 6 second fear on necro :-)

Mark/Doom = 1s fear every 30 seconds on average. (one is a small aoe)
Fear me = 1s fear every 26 seconds on average (moderate aoe)
Steal = 1s fear every 15 seconds on average (huge aoe “600”)

Throw traits into the mix and they’re still beating us, we just have the edge with doom being slightly better for interupting because it’s a shorter cooldown. You’ll rarely interupt someone on purpose with reaper mark because of the cast time.

I would like Thief Steal (Necro) be turned into some condition overload skill or boon strip instead of the broken 600 ranged 3 second fear(BASE) that necro’s could only dream of having (if we could use UW death shroud on land maybe =p).

Warrior’s Fear Me should be turned into an aoe “taunt”, basically just a reverse fear, make people run to you slowly.

You have to go out of your way to achieve the same level of aoe fear with necro, full blown fear duration set up with runes/traits and land a (larger marks) reaper mark with an immediate doom folllowed by epidemic for only a 3-4 second aoe fear. It’s satisfying but we have to jump through some major hoops for that.

I agree. Just doing a Wiki skill comparison can be misleading, but that comparison makes it look like Fear is a Warrior skill that Necros share, rather than being a speciality of Necros.

Once traits, cooldowns, etc, are factored in, I’d say that Necros need to be able to use Fear twice as effectively as the next-most-fearing class in order to be called the specialists. Maybe it’s already true, but if not, I’d vote for a buff.

The problem is that Fear is the most-hated CC in most PvP I’ve seen, and long-running fears eventually get nerfed into the ground because of all of the hate from other players about it.

Perhaps they do need to add an uber-fear that’s unique to Necros and call it Terror. It works lore-wise in that you may well fear a Warrior who comes whirling at you with a long sword, but Necros/Warlocks inflict a supernatural terror on you that has little to do with what you see. So lore-wise, perhaps Mesmers could also do Terror, but not as well as Necros, too.

Just a thought.

I think a CC longer then 2 sec is too much, because nobodies like loosing control of their character. And this is a long time to get dpsed.

If you get base fear of necro to 2 sec, I would have 2 fear of 4 sec each. Thats way too much CC. Not counting my pet stun, my daze from warhorn, and my 5% fear on hit chance.

But I agree that our fear are UP compared to warrior and thief, since we are supose to be the fear master.

Maybe a shorter cooldown? Especially reaper mark?

I don’t get it: do you really think that our fear may really be a problem for anyone?
Please: in every match is a much an engineer/elementalist whatsoever that treat you like a ping-pong ball knocking you around the battlefield with little effort and the security to keep you down since we lack any reliable form of stability.

When a normal knock-back is 5s long how can it be kitten possible that our fear is just 1s?

Don’t forget the rangers Pet fear! i know it have a long cast but come on, a necro can’t be outfeared by a kitten Pet!!

@Arcades

Never saw a 5 second knockback? Who does that?

Engi/Elem main knockback also knock them to the ground. And most KB only last about 2 sec.

Our fear would be a problem for most people if it lasted 2 sec untraited. we have more then one source of fear.

People hate losing the control of their char, just like you hate being used like a ping pong ball by Ele/Engi. That’s why I would prefer a lower cooldown over a longer CC.

People would cry too much about it. Like they cried about Warlock fear in WoW.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Arcades

Never saw a 5 second knockback? Who does that?

Engi/Elem main knockback also knock them to the ground. And most KB only last about 2 sec.

Our fear would be a problem for most people if it lasted 2 sec untraited. we have more then one source of fear.

People hate losing the control of their char, just like you hate being used like a ping pong ball by Ele/Engi. That’s why I would prefer a lower cooldown over a longer CC.

People would cry too much about it. Like they cried about Warlock fear in WoW.

I was exagerating, too few for being sarcast. Anyway I feel the knockdowns are much better the fear.

They are, but having fear last too long wouldn’t be good for us ether. People would complain.

lower the cooldown, people wouldn’t rage over it.

I am not too bothered about fears other classes have, but I see it as a problem that we need to use traits for fear to be remotely useful. I think by default fear durations are too short, probably because it is expected everyone would have 100% condition duration bonus, which is not the case, thanks to trait system which sort of prevents it. At this point we’re probably back at the problem with traits spread out so it’s difficult to find useful build.

Also downed fear is still bugged, geez. Most of other classes have very strong downed state defences like thief can stay invisible and teleport around and mesmer can easily kill you while downed and keeps teleporting around before you can finish him. Why I can’t have even couple seconds of more lifetime being necro if I take a trait???

@Kardiamon
You know, I wasn’t really sure about the 5 seconds. When you are in the middle of battle even 2 secons seems really long. I was exagerating but today I faces an engineer and an elementalist. I was not exagerating at all: knock-back/down is at least 3 seconds, and in few occasion I was down for full 5 seconds.
I was counting in my mind so it may be not accurate. But 3 seconds is for sure.

I think removing the 50% fear trait and just making our 1 second fears 1.5 seconds baseline would be good.

Then replace it with something that does something interesting with fear or something.

However, alot of traits need that treatment lol.

Knote.2904:

I think removing the 50% fear trait and just making our 1 second fears 1.5 seconds baseline would be good.

Then replace it with something that does something interesting with fear or something.

However, alot of traits need that treatment lol.

I agree with this. It’s silly to trait for that .5 seconds more when there are other better things that could fill that same slot.

striker.3704:

Knote.2904:

I think removing the 50% fear trait and just making our 1 second fears 1.5 seconds baseline would be good.

Then replace it with something that does something interesting with fear or something.

However, alot of traits need that treatment lol.

I agree with this. It’s silly to trait for that .5 seconds more when there are other better things that could fill that same slot.

Don’t ask for changes, they won’t change anything, ask for buffs or nerfs, that might happen.

No class is gonna have new sills or traits, no class is gonna have new weapons, thats the kind of thing that only came in expansions! maybe on GW2 2.0 we get to use a new weapon and new set of traits, but this won’t be any time soon. focus on the possible things: buffs/nerfs on the skills/taits that exist today.

They should have put in chain fearing in this game. e.g. a la spiritmaster in aion.
That’s always fun.
They put in an OP stealth/mobility/burst class, don’t see why they couldn’t put this (or massive nukes etc.. seem like they just hate casters)

Kisses.1054:

They should have put in chain fearing in this game. e.g. a la spiritmaster in aion.
That’s always fun.
They put in an OP stealth/mobility/burst class, don’t see why they couldn’t put this (or massive nukes etc.. seem like they just hate casters)

They have massive nukes. They’re called Burst Skills and they belong to the Warrior…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Kisses.1054:

They should have put in chain fearing in this game. e.g. a la spiritmaster in aion.
That’s always fun.
They put in an OP stealth/mobility/burst class, don’t see why they couldn’t put this (or massive nukes etc.. seem like they just hate casters)

They have massive nukes. They’re called Burst Skills and they belong to the Warrior…

Don’t forget shatter Mesmers!

I dont agree that fear should be Necro only. Realy dont think we should start putting boons/cons into class only abilites (more then it is). But i do think that necro should be the class that have the most/best fear spells.

MysticoN.5068:

I dont agree that fear should be Necro only. Realy dont think we should start putting boons/cons into class only abilites (more then it is). But i do think that necro should be the class that have the most/best fear spells.

I think they did a good job with confusion.

It is nearly exclusive to Mesmers with some classes getting a tiny bit of it.

Engy Pistol 15 sec cd attack only x2 confusion on 2 people.

Warrior trait x3 confusion on interupt.

Necro convert retaliation = x3 confusion.

None come close to the Mesmer’s ability to apply confusion.

Fear on the other hand, Thief can actually have the most overall “uptime” on fear with warrior being 2nd. Our’s is just better for interupting instead of locking.

Really it should be Necro you see with 3s+ fears and Thief/Warrior or w/e getting 1s fear from somewhere.

If there are many skills with a 2s knockback/knockdown/launch (which is worse than those 2 put together) on multiple weapon skills, shouldn’t we have something similar with fear?

@Kardia- if you can be knocked back twice from weapon skills and again from a utility, how is us having a 6s fear (the equivalent loss of char control time) bad, even if it took us 3 button-presses to do it, and not this half-arsed 2s fear from 4 button-presses? Why should it take us twice as much effort for a third of the result?

I would love it if focus #1 (reapers touch) gave a 1s or even 2s fear as it is supposed to be our kiting offhand.

I agree. Do not necessarily to do fear only necromancer’s cond. But obviously it is necessary to make necro best of it. The increase of base duration to 2 seconds at least – would be quite fine.

Fear is great i love it, howver, it does need to be a tad bit longer. If it was like 1.75 seconds that would awesome and realistic in a devs eyes. with 70% increase to fear with necro runes and specced into it with soul reaping that would make it just shy of 3s fear. and with a rare veggie pizza which adds an additional 40% to condition duration that would be a total of 110% condition duration, which would bring the fear duration to 3.66 seconds of fear. stacked fear that would be a nice 7.32 fear duration now that would feel like forever and looking at the numbers, i just contradicted myself and it would appear, and deemed by the community, to be overpowered haha but hey i would love a 7s+ FEAR XD

but as of now with our 1s fear with the 110% additional duration our fear is only 2.1s stacked twice it would be a 4.2s fear which is nice but it would be great if we could get it to 4.75 or even 5s

not to mention we can also go 30 in spite and get an additional 30% condition duration bringing it to 140% fear duration bringing the fear duration to 4.8s. thats a long time to not be able to do a kitten thing!

did i miss anything that adds to condition duration? is my math right-ish lol?
but would it be viable to spec into something like that? 30 in spite and 20 in soul reaping, i see a new build for me ^^ utilizing an axe and staff btw i love axe

Funky.4861:

@Kardia- if you can be knocked back twice from weapon skills and again from a utility, how is us having a 6s fear (the equivalent loss of char control time) bad, even if it took us 3 button-presses to do it, and not this half-arsed 2s fear from 4 button-presses? Why should it take us twice as much effort for a third of the result?

For one thing, you can’t use a stunbreak ability to end Fear. The double knockback combo can be cut short by a stunbreak, and many of those make it so the second half of the combo whiffs since you’re now out of range.

I want the basic fear to be longer, but edge cases like the one Dylninja just outlined are what make me nervous. The Fear duration of any skill can be doubled by Necromancers in game already, and they probably have to be balanced around that possibility.

@Softspoken, yes you can. Fear is both a condition and a “stun.” You can remove fear from ally with condition removal or a feared target can use a stunbreaker to get out of it. Fear is much weaker than any other stun because of it.

Also, Necros can only increase the duration of fear by 50% with 20 pointer in Soul Reaping.

Knote.2904:

MysticoN.5068:

I dont agree that fear should be Necro only. Realy dont think we should start putting boons/cons into class only abilites (more then it is). But i do think that necro should be the class that have the most/best fear spells.

I think they did a good job with confusion.

It is nearly exclusive to Mesmers with some classes getting a tiny bit of it.

Engy Pistol 15 sec cd attack only x2 confusion on 2 people.

Warrior trait x3 confusion on interupt.

Necro convert retaliation = x3 confusion.

None come close to the Mesmer’s ability to apply confusion.

Fear on the other hand, Thief can actually have the most overall “uptime” on fear with warrior being 2nd. Our’s is just better for interupting instead of locking.

Really it should be Necro you see with 3s+ fears and Thief/Warrior or w/e getting 1s fear from somewhere.

Looks like we agree then. Like i said Fear should not be a Necro only condition, but Necro should be the best class to fear its enemy.

Dylninja.4216:

Fear is great i love it, howver, it does need to be a tad bit longer. If it was like 1.75 seconds that would awesome and realistic in a devs eyes. with 70% increase to fear with necro runes and specced into it with soul reaping that would make it just shy of 3s fear. and with a rare veggie pizza which adds an additional 40% to condition duration that would be a total of 110% condition duration, which would bring the fear duration to 3.66 seconds of fear. stacked fear that would be a nice 7.32 fear duration now that would feel like forever and looking at the numbers, i just contradicted myself and it would appear, and deemed by the community, to be overpowered haha but hey i would love a 7s+ FEAR XD

but as of now with our 1s fear with the 110% additional duration our fear is only 2.1s stacked twice it would be a 4.2s fear which is nice but it would be great if we could get it to 4.75 or even 5s

not to mention we can also go 30 in spite and get an additional 30% condition duration bringing it to 140% fear duration bringing the fear duration to 4.8s. thats a long time to not be able to do a kitten thing!

did i miss anything that adds to condition duration? is my math right-ish lol?
but would it be viable to spec into something like that? 30 in spite and 20 in soul reaping, i see a new build for me ^^ utilizing an axe and staff btw i love axe

But dont forget all those condition removers that removes fear. Even if fear lasted 10s it whould not last the entire duration in most cases. Same with a hammer warrior, he CAN cc a target for quit a while if the target dont have any form of CC break or dont dodge in time.

Softspoken.2410:

Funky.4861:

@Kardia- if you can be knocked back twice from weapon skills and again from a utility, how is us having a 6s fear (the equivalent loss of char control time) bad, even if it took us 3 button-presses to do it, and not this half-arsed 2s fear from 4 button-presses? Why should it take us twice as much effort for a third of the result?

For one thing, you can’t use a stunbreak ability to end Fear. The double knockback combo can be cut short by a stunbreak, and many of those make it so the second half of the combo whiffs since you’re now out of range.

I want the basic fear to be longer, but edge cases like the one Dylninja just outlined are what make me nervous. The Fear duration of any skill can be doubled by Necromancers in game already, and they probably have to be balanced around that possibility.

Stunbreaks end fear lol. So does condition removal, so really there’s 2 ways to remove this CC.

This is why Immobilize is actually pretty broken. Completely ignores stun breaks and stability, only can be removed with condition removal, but can still be increased with cond duration to extreme levels and could effectively prevent someone from hitting you back if you get behind em.

My warrior can nearly perma immobilize people with his cond duration build.

Swadow.6213:

@Softspoken, yes you can. Fear is both a condition and a “stun.” You can remove fear from ally with condition removal or a feared target can use a stunbreaker to get out of it. Fear is much weaker than any other stun because of it.

Also, Necros can only increase the duration of fear by 50% with 20 pointer in Soul Reaping.

Whoops. Reading comprehension fail from when I checked the wiki.

Doesn’t the generic condition duration stat extend how long Fear lasts for though? After all, we just established how it counts as a condition and a control effect. The 50% bonus in Soul Reaping is a foundation, but not the entire build to make it be at least twice as long.

To be clear, doubling Fear duration is quite possible for necros with 30 in Spite, 6 Runes of the Nightmare, and Master of Terror trait. (30+20+50=100)

Sure its posible to double it, but at what cost? We dont have that many spells that apply fear. Our fear last 1 sec and specking 30 points into spite and going for master of terror trait its going to last 1 3/4 sec.

And the cd on those spells are 40sec and 20 sec without speccing for reduced CD.

Other clases have no problem CC for longer then this without going all out for increase duration.

I never said it was a good idea, just that it was definitely possible.

I agree with this post, not really sure why other classes have better fears.

Do to the Fear-Necro what you did with Confusion-Mesmer

(Also, “Fear Me” really suits Necros a lot better:P)

i’ve been playing around with the fear. 6 necromancer runes for 20% fear duration, 30 spite for 30% condition duration, and Master of Terror for 50% fear duration. I have played WvW and PVP with it. I am not doing too bad at all.

I run 30/0/20/0/20.
I’ve switched between 30/10/10/0/20 and 20/10/20/0/20 however as well.
Staff main and axe/warhorn alt.
Spite i have reapers might and i switch between singet power and spiteful marks.
if i have 10 in curse i have terror so fear does damage,
death magic i have greater marks and staff regen. altho when i only have 10 in death magic i use staff regen.
and 20 for soul reaping with DS skills regen and fear lasts 50% longer
for pvp i use the carrion amulet and jewel to make up for lost condition damage.

utilities i use BiP, signet of spite, and epidemic.
elite i have plague but sometimes use lich.

Any ideas or opinions on my build would be great ^^
basically i roll up throw down BiP. signet of spite, then depending on if its solo target or multiple i use epidemic then i let the fear fest begin! sit in ds build up some might throw some more marks use my axe when viable to build up ds. i also go DS build up might then go plague if its a bunch of targets.

if i dont have BiP on utility i use signet power and sit in ds to stack might then use signet of spite still gets you about 10 stacks of might just takes a little longer

Necromancer needs something unique that sets them appart from other professions beside DS and epidimic. And fear should be one of them.

Poplolita.2638:

Necromancer needs something unique that sets them appart from other professions beside DS and epidimic. And fear should be one of them.

Grenth says:

Do not practice Necromancy on forum threads! I can’t allow every pointless resurrection you can dream up!

It would be nice if fear was a Necromancer only condition like it was promised so many months ago but it just wont happen this late into the game.

Just annoying that Warriors, Thiefs, Rangers even Fiddlesticks and Volibear has a longer fear then Necromancers the Masters of Death.

In early development, Necros were the only profession with access to fear. Obviously, that changed and I know there’s no going back; they aren’t going to remove fear from the other professions at this point. Even so, I think more could be done to re-instate Necros as the undisputed masters of fear.

To counter by saying Necros have greater access to fear is tenuous at best. If the Necro in question is not carrying a staff, then their only access to fear – on land – is via Doom while in Death Shroud (assuming the Necro in question has not traited into Reaper’s Protection). A 1-second, single-target fear skill with a 20 second recharge that relies on having sufficient life force to activate Death Shroud in the first place? Hardly what I would call “greater access” in comparison to the other professions with access to fear. Especially in light of those other professions’ longer fear durations and/or AoE capability. Doom’s comparatively shorter cool down is poor compensation in light of its dependency on having sufficient life force available to enter Death Shroud.

Some suggestions (only ONE of the following; not all of them together):

1) Increase Necros fear duration to 2 seconds across the board. Master of Terror remains at 50%, giving Terrormancers 3 seconds of fear. The Terror formula might need a little tweaking if the damage proves to be too much.

2) Increase Necros fear duration to 3 seconds across the board. Master of Terror is decreased to 33%, giving Terromancers 4 seconds of fear. The damage from Terror would very likely need to be scaled back a bit.

3) Fear durations remain as-is but make Doom an AoE fear affecting up to 5 nearby enemies.

4) Add a 1-second fear to one or more utility skills. For example, every signet on activation causes fear or every corruption skill causes fear.

5) Give Necros access to fear with every offhand weapon (these suggestions are in addition to the offhand skills’ current effects):

a) Dagger offhand’s Enfeebling Blood would add a 1-second fear to its AoE target area.

b) Either Focus’ Spinal Shivers – being single target – would cause a 2-second fear OR Reaper’s Touch would cause a 1-second fear to each enemy it hits (but not both).

c) Warhorn’s Wail of Doom would cause a 1-second fear to up to five foes in the AoE cone.

The above would balance nicely with the offhand weapons’ current recharges and cast times:

At 30 seconds, Wail of Doom has the longest recharge but is compensated by having the shortest cast time and a more-or-less guaranteed “hit” of fear on the targets within the cone’s AoE.

Enfeebling Blood is in the middle of the pack with a 25 second recharge. You could potentially fear opponents more often than Wail of Doom, but that assumes you succeed in accurately placing the AoE targeting reticle. Combined with it’s longer cast time when compared to Wail of Doom, this balances the more frequent casting.

Spinal Shivers’ 20 second recharge comes close to being the shortest recharge. However, this is balanced by the fact that it would hit only a single target. To then achieve parity with the other fear-inducing offhand skills, it’s fear would last 2 seconds instead of 1 second.

Lastly, if Reaper’s Touch were settled upon as the Focus’ fear-inducing skill, it benefits from the shortest recharge of all at 18 seconds. This is not unbalanced in comparison to the other offhands’ recharge times, though, because Reaper’s Touch bounces between foes and allies. With only 5 bounces, it’s unlikely Reaper’s Touch would ever effect more than three enemies; and that’s under ideal conditions. By contrast, Wail of Doom and Enfeebling Blood would have the potential to effect up to 5 opponents caught within their AoE.

Each of these offhand weapons benefits from a trait which reduces recharge times for that weapon; so none have an advantage over the other in that regard.

The Staff’s Reaper’s Mark becomes problematic. To balance it with the suggested introduction of fear to the offhand weapons, Reaper’s Mark could have its recharge time reduced (30 seconds seems about right) or it’s fear duration increased to 2 seconds.

Before anyone screams that suggestion #5 would be OP because then Necros would have access to three sources of fear (staff, an offhand, and DS’ Doom), keep in mind they already have access to two of these (staff and DS’ Doom). Adding the third source of fear would not be OP given the restrictions I’ve outlined above combined with the cast times and recharge times of those skills.

The biggest reason our fear is so short is epidemic.

I would prefer if they just made epidemic not effect fear and give us a reasonable duration on it.

I would also prefer if condition duration didn’t effect it either and every necro got a 2 second fear on the mark and 3 on the DS fear

It’s ridiculous having to devote so much (runes, traits, food) to get our fear to last a bit more than 2 seconds.

I also think that fear do not need to be a Necro only skill, but it should be much more effective for Necros.

It make me nervous when I see a thief steal my fear and it lasts more than our regular one. We should not need to invets so much in runes to make fear effective.

Wow! I know this is the Necro forums, but we don’t have to raise every shambling corpse of a thread from the bowels of the forum’s history! Let it die!

I have no problem with there being other classes with access to fear. you could say the same about pets being ranger specific (terrible example I know).

when you get used to using your fears when they’ll matter rather than spamming them off cool down I think you’ll grow to appreciate what we have.

until then get yourself some necromancer runes rare veggie pizza and the 50% fear duration trait in soul reaping and enjoy your fears. (reapers protection is great with fear duration)

albothelo. we can make our fear hurt. alot. that aline makes it more effective than anyone else’s fears.

:/ Fear isn’t even a threat.

Knockback/down last for longer, is more spammable, and completely makes you innactive in a single spot for a longer time.
—————-

Thiefs can steal fear, warriors get an aoe-longer fear, and we get a measily 1second stafff-40s cooldown fear, a DS fear(meh), and a downed state fear that takes a long cast and everyone already knows to put stability or blind up.

have you used a condition terror build empiren?

PinCushion.7390:

Wow! I know this is the Necro forums, but we don’t have to raise every shambling corpse of a thread from the bowels of the forum’s history! Let it die!

Did you want me to make a new thread about the same subject instead? I still don’t feel fear is where it should be for necromancer, this is why I felt the need to revive this thread. The debate is still not done yet just by looking the recent responses it just got.