Guild Wars 2

One or two skills/traits with fear and it will be ok.

Necromancers have more access to fear than any other profession, in overwhelming fashion. Granted, a lot of it is conditional and situational…but just look at the wiki page.

Quarktastic.1027:

Necromancers have more access to fear than any other profession, in overwhelming fashion. Granted, a lot of it is conditional and situational…but just look at the wiki page.

I know all skills and traits with fear,but i think fear is very weak now.Fear is almost useless in pve and you need lot of condi damage/might stacks for some high damage ticks in wvw/pvp.Its hard inflict fear on somebody now,everybody has lot of stability and imunities and converting stability inflicts only one sec of fear.Pulsing stability from elit skills is not good too for make fear useable.

Quarktastic.1027:

Necromancers have more access to fear than any other profession, in overwhelming fashion. Granted, a lot of it is conditional and situational…but just look at the wiki page.

That’s like saying Thief has the most access to stealth, or Chronomancer has the most access to alacrity… of course they do, because it was designed for them, like Fear was designed for Necromancer.

Stealth and Alacrity works for pvp/pve/wvw those are great mechanics, lot of utility.

Fear only works for pvp, very limited access to it, very long cd’s and short duration.

Fear is actually not too shabby against breakbars, so it is much less disruptive/useless in PvE now.

In the NCSY thread the suggestion to put fear on that shout is being discussed right now. I’m not entirely sure how I personally feel about that, but I guess it would be the kind of change you are looking for OP.

I get the sense devs don’t really like fear and probably don’t want to add more fear into the game. So I doubt they’ll really give necros/reapers more fear.

I don’t agree Fear is useless in PvE. First of all you grind breakbars like no one, also the damage via Terror is not bad at all which you can synergize with Deathly Chill: this way you have a 1,4k damage from Terror and 900 from Chill (with medium values of Malice).

At the contrary of what most people say I think we have a decent access to Fear. I agree, though, that it’s usefulness is binded on specific build and situation while Alacrity or Quickness of other classes are more universally useful.

Reaper is meant to keep people near him, not making them fleeing away…
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Kulvar.1239:

Reaper is meant to keep people near him, not making them fleeing away…
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…and for this very reason we have Shivers of Dread built-in.

Ive never understood why warhorn 4 wasnt a fear. I know everyone loves the daze but I just find it unthematic for Necromancer and have never used warhorn.

Skoigoth.9238:

…and for this very reason we have Shivers of Dread built-in.

Precisely to prevent fear to dispatch foes away from the reaper. Exactly my point!

Apollo.7583:

Ive never understood why warhorn 4 wasnt a fear. I know everyone loves the daze but I just find it unthematic for Necromancer and have never used warhorn.

What? The daze isn’t just far better for a ton of reasons, a daze fits the skill.

Bhawb.7408:

Apollo.7583:

Ive never understood why warhorn 4 wasnt a fear. I know everyone loves the daze but I just find it unthematic for Necromancer and have never used warhorn.

What? The daze isn’t just far better for a ton of reasons, a daze fits the skill.

We have access to one daze is all I mean (if Im missing others, its been awhile and just restarted playing after 2 years). I understand a wail and daze makes sense, I would just prefer more fears so that maybe terror would be worth a slot in a condition build. Luckily they added chill damage so Im relatively happy with condition builds after returning.

Kulvar.1239:

Skoigoth.9238:

…and for this very reason we have Shivers of Dread built-in.

Precisely to prevent fear to dispatch foes away from the reaper. Exactly my point!

Yup, exactly, so what’s the problem then? It’s a minor trait, so you’ll have it anyways if you go reaper.
Maybe I just misread your post, but to me it sounded like you don’t like the idea of getting more fear.

PvE Fear is in weird spot right now. Break Bars don’t negate the hitpoint damage, and Fear actually does respectable damage to Break Bars, too, so we’re better off than we were under the old Defiant situation. However, there are two real problems with Fear in PvE:

1) It’s really hard to cheese out the duration these days, so most of the time you’re only looking at 1 to 2 full ticks of damage per Fear application. That’s not great. Viper gear may help alleviate this problem, though. Gearing up in Viper is quite difficult and expensive, though, so this isn’t going to be a good solution for everyone.

2) The displacement against trash mobs is a serious deterrent to Fear use. Most content still involves a lot of stack fights, which means anything that causes mobs to scatter is going to miss off your teammates.

I think Anet is aware of the problems they created by removing so much Condi duration from the game, which is why Viper is a thing now and hopefully they will introduce a few more options along those lines. Shivers of Dread neatly solves #2 for Reapers but base Necromancers still have to be careful with how they use their Fear effects. I’m not sure there’s a great solution to it.

Apollo.7583:

We have access to one daze is all I mean (if Im missing others, its been awhile and just restarted playing after 2 years). I understand a wail and daze makes sense, I would just prefer more fears so that maybe terror would be worth a slot in a condition build. Luckily they added chill damage so Im relatively happy with condition builds after returning.

Terror is bad for a whole variety of reasons, but fear access isn’t a big one.

Personally, I would like more short fear proc’s for the potential interrupt, loss of target lock, and a bit of terror damage.

Anchoku.8142:

Personally, I would like more short fear proc’s for the potential interrupt, loss of target lock, and a bit of terror damage.

Yes,i agree,i though something like this.

I feel like the root of fear’s problems lies in how spread out the traits are. Terror and Fear of Death are in different lines, and they have other traits that are almost always better than them (and previously compatible with them) sitting next to them. Without Fear of Death, Terror will will not get as many ticks as it would like to. These two traits have always wanted to be together, and I ship it.

On top of that, terror has a condition that has to be met for increased damage that isn’t even that good. Deathly Chill outperforms Terror simply because there is much more than twice as much chill as fear on Necro (Fear even adds more Chill). The damage inflicted by Terror just is almost forgettable. It only ticks a little over 1k with each Fear only being about 1 second without investment into condi duration. The average build will get 1 tick from Reaper’s Mark and 1 tick from the Shroud Fear (as well as potential Corrupt Boon Fears). This trait only gives about 2.3k bonus damage, and it asks you to give up massive CD reductions on Corruption skills and (somewhat weak) boon corruption on shroud 2.