Guild Wars 2

Right now, the Reaper’s two strongest conditions are Vulnerability and Poison. When the Reaper was originally revealed, it was meant to be a master of chill, with a huge chill application on its auto attack, and chaining chill explosions from Chilling Nova. But now, our GS1 chill dropped from kitten to 1.75s, and Chilling Nova went from 3 procs per 15s down to once per 15s. And, of course, Chilling Darkness got its huge nerf a few weeks ago, presumably in anticipation of the Reaper. I find myself not even bothering to try to chill my targets when playing as Reaper, since we have such poor access to it now. The middle line of our specialization is basically useless, because we have such lousy chill application now.

I think the worst part about the Reaper is actually the fact that it’s so kitten fun to play. Every single ability and trait is cool and I want to use it, it’s just, aside from Reaper’s Shroud, not actually fulfilling the fantasy that it was designed with. If it weren’t fun to play, I wouldn’t care that it wasn’t good, but it is really fun, and that makes it hurt.

Please, let me have fun without being a burden on my group. It’s all I ask.

Robert Gee.9246:

Sigmoid.7082:

I gathered they would nerf chill duration on some things because the way it stands with runes, sigil, and food along with the cold shoulder trait you can hit 100% chill duration or 60% in PvP.

This was indeed a big reason for the reduction in chill. It was pretty easy to make a build with the previous version that kept an enemy chilled 90-100% of the time (even in PvP without food). The current iteration is shooting for something in the area of 50-70% in order to provide windows for counterplay.

You forgot chill not impacting movement skills, nerfs to chill in general and that they are basicly adding traits that reduce chill duration to almost every elite spec.

Pride.1734:

You forgot chill not impacting movement skills, nerfs to chill in general and that they are basicly adding traits that reduce chill duration to almost every elite spec.

This right here is bigger than underwhelming reaper as soon as the spec was announced it started happening but it follows the necro rules of balance sigh. Even before that chill doesn’t really feel used you either die or it gets cleansed it might affect ele more than others but not as strong vs them as boon hate. I would highly recommend that chill works every 2 sec instead of 3, asking them to make movement conditions affect movement skills’ travelling might a dream but I guess an improvement to reaper would suffice.

Sigmoid.7082:

Robert Gee.9246:

Sigmoid.7082:

I gathered they would nerf chill duration on some things because the way it stands with runes, sigil, and food along with the cold shoulder trait you can hit 100% chill duration or 60% in PvP.

This was indeed a big reason for the reduction in chill. It was pretty easy to make a build with the previous version that kept an enemy chilled 90-100% of the time (even in PvP without food). The current iteration is shooting for something in the area of 50-70% in order to provide windows for counterplay.

I have a huge problem with this, while it is true that the chill duration could reach some amazing numbers with the old numbers, running runes and sigils to make the chill worth it comes at an opportunity cost. I belive that the cost was pretty fair, even though it might have been hard to fight against. I’ve tried running a chill build in PvP in the beta and it was not good at all, not only because of that Greatsword is close to unusable (dear god it is bad, hits like a wet noodle and chills as effectivly as a snowflake), but also because even with dots on chill it just wasn’t enough to make the investment into chill worth it. Now I don’t claim to be a master at PvP, but I had far more success going for the traditional builds and just disregarding the chill. With the current design, reapers strongest conditions are Vulnerability and Poison and Burning if you picked Dhuumfire and yet it was advertised as the master of chilling, 100% uptime on chill is not completly unreasonable when you invest heavily into it.

I figured this would happen: Design a strong CC elite spec, nerf it to the ground, and leave the elite spec without a purpose. Cannot wait to try it.

I’m pretty sure chill was nerfed based on hitting test dummies with every single chill option equipped. If you remember that dodges, cleanses, and vital traits exist, you would not even get 100% chill uptime with that. As it stands right now, chill on a reaper is bad enough to make it more worthwhile to avoid on a condi spec.