Terror improvement through Fear of death

Terror is completely unused in PvE.I don't know if someone uses it in PvP or WvW, but since fear is the only condition in the game that can be removed by both a stun break and a condi removal, I can't see anyone getting much value out of it. (apart from taunt , so rare I almost forgot it existed)When you think about it, if you get a lot of value out of terror in competitive game modes it means you've successfully cc'd your target for a long period of time, and they should probably be dead anyway, so terror is just a win more trait.Things are made even worse since it competes with Master of Corruption, which is a must for damage in PvE, and reduces the cooldown of Consume conditions, the most used competitive heal.The trait itself isn't bad at all, but as it was noticed in a previous thread about fear : "The problem is that Necro has A LOT of traits to enhance fear, yet has very few ways to apply it."

I thought of 3 ways to improve this trait and make it usable :

1) Make Fear of Death improve the base duration of fear on skills rather than the duration of the condition itself, obviously with the same competitive split of 100/50%.Nontargeted condition duration increases are almost nonexistent in PvP, and such the change would at most increase the fear duration from 50% to 61% on condi builds (from 1.5 seconds to 1.61 seconds), and not affect power builds at all.In WvW purity of purpose engineers will laugh in your face with endless stability if you ever try to run a fear based zerg, and roamers have ways to deal with fear.But in PvE this change would almost double the duration of fear on condi necro, making Terror a feasible alternative to Master of Corruption, opening up different build paths for condi necromancers.

2) Rework the trait. Just change it into something else, maybe something more interactive even, like blood bond.

3) Make Terror a minor trait . In my opinion this would be the safest and best change, as Terror is a noninteractive win more stat boost type of trait, and as such it will never be able to compete with traits that might actually change the outcome of a fight (Master of Corruption).

I would love to hear what opinions or other possible changes the rest of the necro community has.

The main issue of the necromancer in PvE (and fear) isn't the strength of it's traits but the fact that defiance replace stability, resistance and vigor. The necromancer's traitline put to much emphasys on fear indeed but, overall, ANet tend to put to much emphasys on specific mechanisms for each profession. Over these past 8 years ANet continuously used this strategy and it always end up breaking balance, I doubt it's a good thing to encourage them on this path.

Personally, I'd just agree with number 2 (I don't mind fear of death being change to something very different as long as it's not another source of fear which could be a source of complains from other professions). Terror is to strong in competitive modes to be a minor trait while fear of death increasing fear's base duration is a very dangerous prospect.

I've been thinking about trying to make a PvE build that uses Terror but the lack of fear access is an issue to really make the trait viable as a desired choice.It can be a settle choice though if you avoid corruption skills which is what i've done in this build.

So far this is what i've come up with.(just a concept, not built or tested yet)http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSxEsEWoMBGD7ilxKxS/qvlC-zRRYfR3YG+RpQBELCCnAlCBfngw8Xh3A-e

It's a hybrid Dhuumfire Reaper with a mix of Viper and Sinister stats.The main thing with it is trying to get as much condition damage/stacks out of different sources.

I'm going to build this at some point in Gw2 and see how it goes, I don't expect it to be anything amazing but it might be enjoyable enough to play which is enough for me :)

Anyhow i'll go into more detail below about certain traits and build choices and why I made them.No need to read on unless you really want to hear my reasons for why I chose the traits, weapons runes and skills that I did.

Insidious DisruptionMakes all hard CC's apply a small bit of Torment damage.Warhorn 4, Chilled to the Bone!, Shroud 3 and Shroud 5 now all apply some Torment damage when they hit.Greatsword 5 should also apply torment on pull but i'm not 100% on this, will have to test it to see if it triggers Insidious Disruption.

Furious Demise and Target the WeakGrants us Fury after entering shroud (buffs us to 70% crit chance) and an additional 2% crit chance per condition on foes.This is why we want as many different conditions as possible, Signet of spite can give us an additional 12% crit chance alone another 2% from any of our chills.Torment can be sustained via any of our various CC's as well as Scepter 3 allowing us to maintain good condition stacks for damage and extra crits.

Chilling Victory and Deathly Chill.These work together to give us might on hitting chilled targets and bleed when inflicting chill on foes

The combo of Shivers of Dread, Insidious Disruption, Fear of Death and Terror transforms our shroud 3 Terrify skill into a pretty nice AoE Chill, Bleed and Torment attack with additional damage from terror and it gives us 15% of our lifeforce back which overall isn't all that bad, kinda makes the skill live up to it's name for once.

Superior Runes of the Krait.I choose this largely because it works with Chilled to the Bone and the upgrades it already has from traits etc.Chilled to the Bone will now apply Chill, Bleed, Poison and Torment at fairly decent duration's as well as remain a 2 second daze.

Rise!Never knock this skill, it's basically 25 seconds of free easy protection!As long as you have one minion alive and attacking from this skill then you've got 33% damage reduction from Dark Bond.This also stacks with Protect as well to give you around 50% diminished damage reduction..Rise! is awesome and is one of the best Necro skills in PvE imo.

Your Soul is Mine! + Plague SignetThis is mostly for the short CD, we're going to be in shroud a lot with this build anyway so we want something that cools down fast so I choose this, plus extra life force.Consume Conditions has too big a CD untraited for my tastes which combined with the lack of Dagger off hand leaves us absent our usual means of condi removal.I decided to adopt Plague Signet to cover for this giving us an emergency transfer should we need it, plus it can help buff our overall damage and crit chance.

Greatsword.Well it is a hybrid so... damage.With bleed on chills we're also going to get some extra bleeds on this weapon now too, Death spiral is also going to work pretty nice with Chilling victory for some quick might gain while applying a nice bit of Vun and giving us a good bit of life force.Grasping Claws is also a nice Chill and adds Bleed now and should also apply Torment too although i'm still not 100% sure about that until I or someone else tests it.

Reaper Shroud.Thanks to Unyielding blast and Dhuumfire our Shroud 1 auto will stack Vun and burn damage.Terrify as said above becomes a nice AoE Fear+damage, Chill, Bleed and Torment attack and gives us 15% life force back.Soul Spiral gets some additional poison damage from our hybrid stats.Executioners Scythe now applies some Bleed and Torment on top of it's usual damage and daze.

Last time I used Terror was on condi dps Scourge before multiple nerfs in PvE (for PvP and WvW balance) left it in such a poor state that Scourge was only useful as a barrier-slave with condi being second priority.

Edit:It is frustrating how competitive play balance has gotten attention outside of Living World's free content while PvE core and elite professions have to wait for an expac.

Why provide so much free PvE content and ignore its issues when players could pay a fraction of an expansion's cost in real money for better PvE? I have never understood Arenanet's utopian business model.

I don't know if someone uses it in PvP or WvW=)Take a look into the pvp forum and you will see that it's one of the main targets for core necro nerf demands.

There will always be traits that fit more into one game mode than into another. And esp. for pve your best pick is usually the one that grants you the most damage. Variety in pve comes less from different buffs, debuffs or control effects but more from your class and weapon choice. The rest is just damage.

We could say in pve you are experiencing just half of what the game offers mechanically because the other half is not needed (and looks to be useless to a pve player) when fighting dumb npcs.

you know what i'd like to see... is fear giving the target movement speed the equivalent of superspeed. not the effect on the status bar, no no. this is so that we can create more distance in between the necro and their enemy. idk kind of a small change but i think it would be cool. same goes for taunt too i guess, to pull the enemy closer to you.

The problem with Terror is the fact that it works off Fear.

While this is extremely strong in Competitive where yu can Corrupt sources of Stability into Fear, PvE does not have many mobs which generates Stability.This makes it less worthwhile for PvE usage because yu may as well slot more Condi utilities than slotting Fear utilities.

The only way to make Terror better for PvE is to not restrict it to Fear, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Alternatively, Terror can be made to apply Vulnerability to Feared targets, allowing Condi Necromancers, more specifically Condi Scourges, to have a source of Vulnerability due to them usually not running Spite.

@Yasai.3549 said:The problem with Terror is the fact that it works off Fear.

While this is extremely strong in Competitive where yu can Corrupt sources of Stability into Fear, PvE does not have many mobs which generates Stability.This makes it less worthwhile for PvE usage because yu may as well slot more Condi utilities than slotting Fear utilities.

The only way to make Terror better for PvE is to not restrict it to Fear, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Alternatively, Terror can be made to apply Vulnerability to Feared targets, allowing Condi Necromancers, more specifically Condi Scourges, to have a source of Vulnerability due to them usually not running Spite.

Pretty much why I went with the Hybrid Reaper spec over Scourge in the build I shared, more Vun access plus the GS and shroud damage.Terrify only plays a role on shroud 3 but it becomes a AoE damage attack with additional Torment, chill and bleed application so overall it kinda becomes a sort of not awful damage attack (you'll get a good 7k+ out of it per target overall) but yeah, only one skill in the whole build making use of the trait is pretty bad, even if it is an AoE.

@KrHome.1920 said:

I don't know if someone uses it in PvP or WvW=)Take a look into the pvp forum and you will see that it's one of the main targets for core necro nerf demands.

guess someone can't read more than 2 sentences