Guild Wars 2

As everyone here knows, chilling darkness in the curses line has received a 5 second icd. This change was most likely put in to nurf the amount of chill a reaper can put out, but how much chill does this effect? Keep in mind i’m coming from a WvW mindset

Lets go over all of the blinds that a reaper has access to:

-Dagger 4
So this attack bounces 3 times and transfers conditions once. Right now this skill is useful for duels or PvP, but off-hand dagger is just not that much of an option for WvW

-Well of Darkness
With the icd added to chilling darkness, this skill got hit the hardest. Its a base 50 second CD well that only pulses blind to 5 targets for 4 seconds. With the ICD added to this trait, it ONLY CHILLS ONE PERSON. I thought maybe it would at least chill the initial 5, but it only hits one target now.

-Shroud 2
Dark Path with shroud 2 only hits one person anyway, but RS 2 hits multiple people (which is why path of corruption is so nice on reaper). The leap is already so short, chilling all foes hit wouldnt make the skill insanely overpowered, just very strong

-Signet of Spite
Single Target, not really effected except for the amount of chill application

-Shadow Fiend
Never used, but again, single target so not really effected.

-Plague Form
When you are in plague form you trade offensive damage for nice support. I never thought that chilling darkness made plague form OP, just a really nice elite to take instead of the alternatives.

AND out of all of these, the ones people will actually see in WvW are Well of Darkness, Plague form, and shroud 2. In PvP some of the single target chills would be used, but again, this trait is not overpowered, its just strong.

Well of Darkness and Plague form are hurt the hardest by an icd, because it makes the chill only hit one person, and for Well of Darkness, it only lasts for 4 seconds anyways. Adding an ICD, especially at 5 seconds makes it not even worth picking up.

I suggest removing the ICD for the next beta weekend to see how exactly the chill effects gameplay from all aspects, and then making a decision from there. I wouldn’t mind Chilling Darkness moving up a tier in traits. It doesn’t HAVE to be an adept trait.

Well, those are my thoughts. If anyone wants to add anything that I missed, or give alternative possible solutions, please do so!

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

Tim.6450:

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

Excellent points! If they reduced the ICD by 1-2 seconds but made it so aoe blinds chilled everyone hit, it would be a LOT better. Honestly though, I like your idea of swapping the icd’s betteer. We have access to less fear, so the ICD would hurt less vs the blinds. It would really only hurt spectral wall chills, but again, thats only one skill

Tim.6450:

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

That’s what I said. They should merge them, allowing either blind or fear to cause a 2 second chill, 4 sec icd per target. This would be perfect as long as they don’t balance around 100% ideal world logic like they tend to do. As it stands, if you don’t run staff, that trait is like a 2 second chill every 20 seconds IF you use the flip skill in Reapers shroud. It’s very very bad. But of course, that’s what happens when you make a specialization ALL about one thing that you don’t want TOO much access to. It ends up being stripped of anything special. Reaper needs to be release of this chill stigma and five them something more than just chill gimmicks that get ruined by massive condi removal.

ronpierce.2760:

That’s what I said. They should merge them, allowing either blind or fear to cause a 2 second fear, 4 sec icd per target.

I assume you mean 2 second chill?

Steelxsoldier.6512:

ronpierce.2760:

That’s what I said. They should merge them, allowing either blind or fear to cause a 2 second fear, 4 sec icd per target.

I assume you mean 2 second chill?

Yeah, 2 seconds chill 4 sec ICD (per target) triggerable by either fear or blind**.

Y the ICD was such a hard nerf for my plague form and espacially with the reaper i really want the old trait back :/

Steelxsoldier.6512:

Tim.6450:

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

Excellent points! If they reduced the ICD by 1-2 seconds but made it so aoe blinds chilled everyone hit, it would be a LOT better. Honestly though, I like your idea of swapping the icd’s betteer. We have access to less fear, so the ICD would hurt less vs the blinds. It would really only hurt spectral wall chills, but again, thats only one skill

AoE blinds do apply chill on all targets hit, they changed that with the last patch.

…and I’m not sure if base Necros necessarily have more fears than Reaper does. The only skill or trait that base Necromancer has that Reaper doesn’t is DS 3, and RS 3 is an AoE fear.

That being said, all the non-Reaper fear traits are across 3 different masteries, so a Reaper can’t get all the ways to improve fear at the same time that base Necro does, and I would accept the argument that condi reapers might actually take Path of Corruption over Terror since Reaper’s Shroud 2 is a multi-hit skill, unlike the Death Shroud version.

ronpierce.2760:

Tim.6450:

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

That’s what I said. They should merge them, allowing either blind or fear to cause a 2 second chill, 4 sec icd per target. This would be perfect as long as they don’t balance around 100% ideal world logic like they tend to do. As it stands, if you don’t run staff, that trait is like a 2 second chill every 20 seconds IF you use the flip skill in Reapers shroud. It’s very very bad. But of course, that’s what happens when you make a specialization ALL about one thing that you don’t want TOO much access to. It ends up being stripped of anything special. Reaper needs to be release of this chill stigma and five them something more than just chill gimmicks that get ruined by massive condi removal.

I actually prefer merging the traits as they are now(so fear still have no icd and blind an icd of 5 seconds). I hope it can make the trait a bit more controllable since our fear application can be a bit unpredictable (on stun, rune, corrupted, mark walking). For reaper it mould mean they can follow up their terrify with death’s charge without losing any proc.

Tim.6450:

ronpierce.2760:

Tim.6450:

Chilling Darkness: This trait now activates on all targets that are blinded by a single area-of-effect blinding strike before it goes on cooldown.

That being said I would prefer if this trait with shiver of dread or at least swapped places since the necromancer has inherently more fears while reaper has more blinds.

That’s what I said. They should merge them, allowing either blind or fear to cause a 2 second chill, 4 sec icd per target. This would be perfect as long as they don’t balance around 100% ideal world logic like they tend to do. As it stands, if you don’t run staff, that trait is like a 2 second chill every 20 seconds IF you use the flip skill in Reapers shroud. It’s very very bad. But of course, that’s what happens when you make a specialization ALL about one thing that you don’t want TOO much access to. It ends up being stripped of anything special. Reaper needs to be release of this chill stigma and five them something more than just chill gimmicks that get ruined by massive condi removal.

I actually prefer merging the traits as they are now(so fear still have no icd and blind an icd of 5 seconds). I hope it can make the trait a bit more controllable since our fear application can be a bit unpredictable (on stun, rune, corrupted, mark walking). For reaper it mould mean they can follow up their terrify with death’s charge without losing any proc.

That’d be fine except two different chill effects on different rule sets felt a bit confusing, and just seemed like a route they would be more likely to take.

Steelxsoldier.6512:

As everyone here knows, chilling darkness in the curses line has received a 5 second icd. This change was most likely put in to nurf the amount of chill a reaper can put out, but how much chill does this effect? Keep in mind i’m coming from a WvW mindset

Lets go over all of the blinds that a reaper has access to:

-Dagger 4
So this attack bounces 3 times and transfers conditions once. Right now this skill is useful for duels or PvP, but off-hand dagger is just not that much of an option for WvW

-Well of Darkness
With the icd added to chilling darkness, this skill got hit the hardest. Its a base 50 second CD well that only pulses blind to 5 targets for 4 seconds. With the ICD added to this trait, it ONLY CHILLS ONE PERSON. I thought maybe it would at least chill the initial 5, but it only hits one target now.

-Shroud 2
Dark Path with shroud 2 only hits one person anyway, but RS 2 hits multiple people (which is why path of corruption is so nice on reaper). The leap is already so short, chilling all foes hit wouldnt make the skill insanely overpowered, just very strong

-Signet of Spite
Single Target, not really effected except for the amount of chill application

-Shadow Fiend
Never used, but again, single target so not really effected.

-Plague Form
When you are in plague form you trade offensive damage for nice support. I never thought that chilling darkness made plague form OP, just a really nice elite to take instead of the alternatives.

AND out of all of these, the ones people will actually see in WvW are Well of Darkness, Plague form, and shroud 2. In PvP some of the single target chills would be used, but again, this trait is not overpowered, its just strong.

Well of Darkness and Plague form are hurt the hardest by an icd, because it makes the chill only hit one person, and for Well of Darkness, it only lasts for 4 seconds anyways. Adding an ICD, especially at 5 seconds makes it not even worth picking up.

I suggest removing the ICD for the next beta weekend to see how exactly the chill effects gameplay from all aspects, and then making a decision from there. I wouldn’t mind Chilling Darkness moving up a tier in traits. It doesn’t HAVE to be an adept trait.

Well, those are my thoughts. If anyone wants to add anything that I missed, or give alternative possible solutions, please do so!

Don’t forget nightfall on GS4, but you won’t catch me using GS in WvW anymore. Learned my lesson lol. I really thing the GS was the reason they nerfed the crap out of chilling darkness. Which was a knee jerk reaction considering we hadn’t even properly tested it yet….(and no I do not consider closed testing servers as accurate data, simply baselines).

Thanks Raziel for reminding me about greatsword! Yeah, thats why I suggest that they remove the icd for the next beta weekend to see what happens. I dont think it will be as big of an issue as Anet thinks it will