So ANet did exacty what people were asking for....

Chill of Death—Lesser Spinal Shivers: The damage of this trait has been reduced by 30% in PvP and WvW.Spinal Shivers: The base damage and bonus damage of this skill have been increased by 50%.

People asked for more active gameplay: "Nerf Chill of Death and remove the damage to sth. that needs a button press".

I like it. And I am looking forward to read the complaints about the 8 to 10k Spinal Shivers hits from 1200 range. You asked for it guys!

We got a nice ranged pressure improvement today. I really like it.

i think its an okayish Change for necromancer. good patch. congratz to all core necro. i will test it next weeks for sure :D.

lol 50% is bananas.I am scared to walk around with boons now.

It'd be better if they actually reworked focus #4

ANet's devs seem scarily clueless about their own game sometime.

Chill of Death was nerfed, slightly, to keep it from being over-buffed from Spinal Shivers, or am I reading that wrong?

Deathshroud aa Is nice DS4 too pretty good patch to necro

@Anchoku.8142 said:Chill of Death was nerfed, slightly, to keep it from being over-buffed from Spinal Shivers, or am I reading that wrong?The skill and the trait are not linked. Changes have to be made separately.

@Dadnir.5038 said:ANet's devs seem scarily clueless about their own game sometime.

I don't get it ... weren't you the one that started a discussion about how the implementation of these things was backwards? Anet simply flipped it around, like what seemed reasonable to do.

Just an FYI it applies chill first ;on a reaper the damage bonus is guaranteed do it has an effective damage coeff of just under 2.9 at 3 boons. Its not a small amount of damage at all. Comparatively its about as strong as death spiral. in PvP.

Only been a few times I literlly "lol"d when reading patch notes and this was one of them. Was so shocked to see such an increase on Spinal Shivers.

I like these changes very much but I did not at all expect to get a buff to this skill. I was near certain Chill of Death was going to get nerfed but I figured Spinal Shivers would either be untouched or they'd both get a slight nerf.

EDITSo after like 10 minutes of play, I already hit someone for a 10k Spinal Shivers. He wasn't even below 50% health at this point but obviously was full glass.https://imgur.com/a/y10VqidI was floating around the edge of our zerg poking at roamers and managed to get these two hits on people within a few minutes of each other.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:ANet's devs seem scarily clueless about their own game sometime.

Spinal shiver in itself didn't need an increase in damage, in fact this increase in damage is even stupidly OP. So yes I said that lesser spinal shiver didn't look like a "lesser" thing, but never, just never, did I said that spinal shiver did need an increase of damage. It was already strong but extremly clumsy due to an excessive cast time, now it's still clumsy and 50% stronger. This is not what I call a "reasonable" change.

Don't get me wrong, my thread was about whether or not chill of death was dealing an amount of damage that was intended, I didn't have any claim for nerf or not, I just wanted the objective opinion of my fellow necromancer and maybe even some clarification from ANet staff. I didn't claim that there was a need for a nerf or a buff. Now, you can maybe deduce from that patch that for ANet the proc was somehow 30% to strong but that's not what I disagree with here. I disagree with spinal shiver getting a damage increase where a reduced cast time would have kept this skill in check in regard of damage and introduce some more welcome QoL.

Yeah I'm tired to see that ANet just buf or nerf damage mindlessly without adressing the real balance issue and that's why I say they are clueless about their own game.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:ANet's devs seem scarily clueless about their own game sometime.

Given it's cast time, Necro's general vulnerability to CC and ranged attacks and that it requires the target to have Boons to do significant damage, I think it's okay.

The damage buff is pretty absurd and even unnecessary, I absolutely agree, but I wouldn't call it OP. It just means it's a skill you really want to dodge or interrupt now. Which shouldn't be terribly difficult for the reasons I've listed above. Can't tell you how many times someone gets out of range or dodges before I can actually hit them with this skill. And even after the buff today, I've found that I rarely hit higher than 2k on someone who has no Boons. It's only when they have multiple Boons and I have a bunch of Might that this skill gets really scary.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

Given it's cast time, Necro's general vulnerability to CC and ranged attacks and that it requires the target to have Boons to do significant damage, I think it's okay.

The damage buff is pretty absurd and even unnecessary, I absolutely agree, but I wouldn't call it OP. It just means it's a skill you really want to dodge or interrupt now. Which shouldn't be terribly difficult for the reasons I've listed above. Can't tell you how many times someone gets out of range or dodges before I can actually hit them with this skill. And even after the buff today, I've found that I rarely hit higher than 2k on someone who has no Boons. It's only when they have multiple Boons and I have a bunch of Might that this skill gets really scary.

That doesn't change my opinion that the "buffs" are misplaced. Buffing unnecessarily things and leaving other things that need buff in the drought will never make things better, in fact it can even end up making these things toxic. The way ANet balance is incredibly aweful and this patch as a whole is a perfect example of that. We've been introduced to a "new" system team and we end up with the same old toxic balance, what good can we expect from this? More crappy balance patchs that don't answer properly the issues?

Spinal shiver didn't need these 50% increased damage, life transfer didn't need either it's 70% increased damage, tainted shackle increased condi duration and damage... Pointless changes that can lead these skills to be toxic. Seriously, most of the necromancer's skills that are underused aren't underused because they lack damage or condition duration but because they are aweful to use, piling up effect and damage on them only lead to them being toxic for the game as a whole. Seriously, what's the next step? Making spinal shiver corrupt boon so that it's more in line with the necromancer way to deal with boons? I'm sure everyone would react like: "yeah, that's a logical change, it's fine!" ANet avoid the real problems and make things toxic, it's to the point that it creep me to no end.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

That doesn't change my opinion that the "buffs" are misplaced. Buffing unnecessarily things and leaving other things that need buff in the drought will never make things better, in fact it can even end up making these things toxic. The way ANet balance is incredibly aweful and this patch as a whole is a perfect example of that. We've been introduced to a "new" system team and we end up with the same old toxic balance, what good can we expect from this? More crappy balance patchs that don't answer properly the issues?

Spinal shiver didn't need these 50% increased damage, life transfer didn't need either it's 70% increased damage, tainted shackle increased condi duration and damage... Pointless changes that can lead these skills to be toxic. Seriously, most of the necromancer's skills that are underused aren't underused because they lack damage or condition duration but because they are aweful to use, piling up effect and damage on them only lead to them being toxic for the game as a whole. Seriously, what's the next step? Making spinal shiver corrupt boon so that it's more in line with the necromancer way to deal with boons? I'm sure everyone would react like: "yeah, that's a logical change, it's fine!" ANet avoid the real problems and make things toxic, it's to the point that it creep me to no end.

I dont completely agree with thisIts not that the skills are awful to use because of how they mechanically work. The skill felt unrewarding to use. Shroud skills having super high cast times and super long cool downs and while dealing sub-par damage. You can ideally make the right reads and the right plays and not properly be rewarded for skills that have super obvious tells because they are so slow or have very long cool downs that you can only use once in a fight. Its simply not fun when you are not rewarded for making good reads and great plays. The easiest way to fix this is before doing a mechanical change is to increase the potential reward for landing the skills as they currently are aka increasing the damage/ conditions or making them easier to use with a speed increase.

You mention "Toxic" as if that any buff necormancer gets will make it more instantly broken on mirage mechanic levels. This is simply not the case and it likely never will be the case. You really should not throw out such a word so carelessly as it often invites people to start calling things by that when they realistically are not. Do not invite negativity because the changes are not what you see fit. Instead you should be providing critical feed back on what you think should have been changed, in what way, and why. I dont agree with every change myself but I'll take a bone here or there if it means that its a chance to push things to a better place.

Now the part I do agree with is that some buffs are often misplaced on necromancer spinal shivers on focus did not realistically need a buff although its not that major and nothing about the buff to it will make it in your words "toxic". Ideally we should take any weapon buffs or changes that are not on axe only with a grain of salt. Anet is trying new things give them some time.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

That doesn't change my opinion that the "buffs" are misplaced. Buffing unnecessarily things and leaving other things that need buff in the drought will never make things better, in fact it can even end up making these things toxic. The way ANet balance is incredibly aweful and this patch as a whole is a perfect example of that. We've been introduced to a "new" system team and we end up with the same old toxic balance, what good can we expect from this? More crappy balance patchs that don't answer properly the issues?

Spinal shiver didn't need these 50% increased damage, life transfer didn't need either it's 70% increased damage, tainted shackle increased condi duration and damage... Pointless changes that can lead these skills to be toxic. Seriously, most of the necromancer's skills that are underused aren't underused because they lack damage or condition duration but because they are aweful to use, piling up effect and damage on them only lead to them being toxic for the game as a whole. Seriously, what's the next step? Making spinal shiver corrupt boon so that it's more in line with the necromancer way to deal with boons? I'm sure everyone would react like: "yeah, that's a logical change, it's fine!" ANet avoid the real problems and make things toxic, it's to the point that it creep me to no end.

I gave them 6 years...

No seriously, how is it not toxic to add boon corruption everywhere? How is it not toxic to pile up 4-6 effects on single skills? Toxic don't necessarily mean very effective, toxic mean that to much of the same thing become a poison for the profession. Like taking a high amount of medecine can kill someone.

The necromancer (core) before HoT had a balanced amount of boon corruption and boon rip, now boon corruption have become the cheap thing that you find everywhere on the necromancer and I say it: It have become toxic!

Spinal shiver had a decent burst of damage before the last patch, increasing it by 50% is toxic maybe not for other profession but at least from a necromancer point of view. As it is, skills like spinal shiver that have long cast time for either stupid amount of effect or stupid amount of damage based on how many boon the foe have are skills that have absolutely no value in PvE and bothersome to use in PvP/WvW. People complain that the necromancer is no brain and such skills that pile up effects contribute a lot to that, not because they don't require skill to use but because the issue is not the reward but the fact that they are bothersome to use and thus aren't used! The fact that the reward are pretty much always the same (godd**n boon hate) don't make the skill really attractive neither nor does it make it require a lot of brain matter to use it.

I'm not saying that the way boons are as cheap for other professions as boon hate is cheap for the necromancer isn't also toxic. I'm saying that I'd rather see the necromancer move in a different direction than the same bad direction they've been moving for already way to long. Devs need to stop always banging their head on the same iron plate and developpe the necromancer in a different direction. Boon hate and stupid damage increase aren't going to fix the core of the issue of the necromancer, in fact it won't even begin to help fixing these issues.

You can see this as a weapon buff, I see this as a waste of their time that will only benefit a single gimmicky build that didn't need help from the very beginning.

So much wrong with OP.

The problem with lesser spinal shivers is not the damage, but that it triggers at 50%, the same threshold that all sorts of auto-immunities proc. Most of the time it does nothing. The community has often said "if you think we are too powerful, nerf us here and buff something else," but that didn't happen here.

The problem with Spinal Shivers is that the spell takes too damn long to cast (and has too long of a recharge). It's also on Necromancer focus, paired with focus #4, which is mechanically the most unusable & frustrating skill to use in the game and is a skill that should be scrapped. Also, the conditional bonus damage for having boons does not reliably proc outside of WvW, leaving the mainhand/focus combination without a good big damage skill for short damage windows.

The community wants focus #4 scrapped or reworked (a clone of recently reworked Guardian focus 4 would be fantastic) and wants a focus #5 with lower cast/lower cooldown, corrupts instead of strips, and no bonus damage.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

That doesn't change my opinion that the "buffs" are misplaced. Buffing unnecessarily things and leaving other things that need buff in the drought will never make things better, in fact it can even end up making these things toxic. The way ANet balance is incredibly aweful and this patch as a whole is a perfect example of that. We've been introduced to a "new" system team and we end up with the same old toxic balance, what good can we expect from this? More crappy balance patchs that don't answer properly the issues?

Spinal shiver didn't need these 50% increased damage, life transfer didn't need either it's 70% increased damage, tainted shackle increased condi duration and damage... Pointless changes that can lead these skills to be toxic. Seriously, most of the necromancer's skills that are underused aren't underused because they lack damage or condition duration but because they are aweful to use, piling up effect and damage on them only lead to them being toxic for the game as a whole. Seriously, what's the next step? Making spinal shiver corrupt boon so that it's more in line with the necromancer way to deal with boons? I'm sure everyone would react like: "yeah, that's a logical change, it's fine!" ANet avoid the real problems and make things toxic, it's to the point that it creep me to no end.

Ok first here a few key points to look at. (A balanced amount of boon corruption and boon rip.) Do you know why that was?

Because its not..... ideally boon corrupt is a direct response to adding boon spam everywhere so perhaps thats the problem not the necros boon corrupt. There was a point (Pre HoT) where it was actually difficult to keep a large number of boons on yourself at one time for a long period of time or keep might at high intensity. Necro is currently acting as the solution to all the boon spam in the game. The more boon spam we have the more corrupts we need to combat it. Its also why necro is such a big threat in team fights because every other profession is so drowned and dependent on boons and the only profession that punishes having boons in great deal is necromancer. Fix the boon spam and all the boon corrupt wont be needed as a result. If you want to be upset on this topic look too boon spam not to boon corrupts. I would love for anet to cull boons across the board and would be fine if the reduced corrupts as a result. How ever do not call the necromancer toxic because of this.

Spinal shiver had a decent burst of damage before the last patch, increasing it by 50% is toxic maybe not for other profession but at least from a necromancer point of view. As it is, skills like spinal shiver that have long cast time for either stupid amount of effect or stupid amount of damage based on how many boon the foe have are skills that have absolutely no value in PvE and bothersome to use in PvP/WvW. People complain that the necromancer is no brain and such skills that pile up effects contribute a lot to that, not because they don't require skill to use but because the issue is not the reward but the fact that they are bothersome to use and thus aren't used! The fact that the reward are pretty much always the same (godd**n boon hate) don't make the skill really attractive neither nor does it make it require a lot of brain matter to use it.

Actually no i dont agree to be perfectly honest with you (and this is just my personal experience im not saying that its not he case for you) Lesser spinal shivers 80% of the time dealt considerably more damage consistently under the same situations than the active skill (I DONT KNOW WHY) but in most cases using the active skill on a foe who has 3 boons would cirt about 2-3k while the lesser would often crit for up to 7k consistently. Every once in a while the active skill for me would hit above 4k.I dont agree that it was (decent burst damage) I do agree that it was decent damage but it was a far cry from "Burst" damage. Even so the increase is not going to make it "Toxic" I wish you would stop using that word its overly dramatic and makes you sound a lot less serious than i usually take you for.

Its not till the end of this second statement that you say something that makes some sense. The skills being rewarding when used as boon hate. To which i reply with my above statement. (Boons need to be culled across the game.) Once that happens necro can start to lose some boon hate and have skills focused on boon hate improved in other ways.Not every skill needs to be hard and over complicated to use so that it can be rewarding. I dont know why people think this way some skills are made to be simplistic some professions as a whole are made to be this way. ACCEPT IT! I personally favor necros ease of play I don't often enjoy playing other professions for long periods of time as i do with my necro because its focus draining. I don't come home from work focus drained to wear my brain out playing something which should be entertainment and relaxing.

That said Necromancer does require some skill to play, even more so in player vs player environments anyone who thinks other wise is dead wrong out right and simple. Sure your skills are easy to use and you can stack chill into bleed and vuln on hit. But can you catch a foe who kites you, can you handle hard cc users, do you know how to manage your very limited mobility and dodging potential. Can you manage your shroud cooldown properly. Do you know how to handle ranged attackers. Do not sit here and say that necormancer is toxic now and requires no skill when it has so many flaws it makes the other professions look like perfection.

I'm not saying that the way boons are as cheap for other professions as boon hate is cheap for the necromancer isn't also toxic. I'm saying that I'd rather see the necromancer move in a different direction than the same bad direction they've been moving for already way to long. Devs need to stop always banging their head on the same iron plate and developpe the necromancer in a different direction. Boon hate and stupid damage increase aren't going to fix the core of the issue of the necromancer, in fact it won't even begin to help fixing these issues.

If thats the case then then couldn't you start pointing to said issues or what you see are the issues.Its pretty clear cut that necro is currently acting as the solution to the plethora of boons entering the game right now look at scepter and how its changed, Axe 3, dagger 3, spiteful spirit trait... HELL scourge it self and all its existence. All good examples of things that literally only are fitting for boon hate. BUT YOU HAVE TO VOICE IT in the right way. No one is going to understand "Its toxic"

Secondly damage boost are not bad for the current way the game is developing. Damage boost is healthy in the right areas. Damage boost has ideally nothing to do with what im picking up is your biggest issue (the boon hate bandaid that necro has become) Your issue keeps pointing back to boon hate and how its not effective in pve.

You can see this as a weapon buff, I see this as a waste of their time that will only benefit a single gimmicky build that didn't need help from the very beginning.

Look you are clearly passionate about necro and im with you. I would much rather have other mechanics than act as boon hate bot too. ;)So why not talk about why either why we cant stupid crazy levels of boon spam in pve or why we can drop boon hate for boon spam like every other profession (necro is the most limited profession when it comes to generating its own wide range of boons consistently)Or why boons cant be culled down across the game in general removing the need for as many corrupts.

@"nekretaal.6485" said:So much wrong with OP.

The problem with lesser spinal shivers is not the damage, but that it triggers at 50%, the same threshold that all sorts of auto-immunities proc. Most of the time it does nothing. The community has often said "if you think we are too powerful, nerf us here and buff something else," but that didn't happen here.

The problem with Spinal Shivers is that the spell takes too kitten long to cast (and has too long of a recharge). It's also on Necromancer focus, paired with focus #4, which is mechanically the most unusable & frustrating skill to use in the game and is a skill that should be scrapped. Also, the conditional bonus damage for having boons does not reliably proc outside of WvW, leaving the mainhand/focus combination without a good big damage skill for short damage windows.

The community wants focus #4 scrapped or reworked (a clone of recently reworked Guardian focus 4 would be fantastic) and wants a focus #5 with lower cast/lower cooldown, corrupts instead of strips, and no bonus damage.

I agree. Spinal Shivers is agonizingly slow and has an obvious tell like Dark Path but worse. Its only saving grace is that there is no "boon clear" skill.

Edit: Oh, snap, did I just suggest a "consume boons" skill? Talk about OP Mes skill...

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:So after like 10 minutes of play, I already hit someone for a 10k Spinal Shivers. He wasn't even below 50% health at this point but obviously was full glass.https://imgur.com/a/y10VqidI was floating around the edge of our zerg poking at roamers and managed to get these two hits on people within a few minutes of each other.Keep in mind we currently have a WvW event where everything is buffed by up to 30%. You are under the effect of that buff in your screens. Your screens just don't tell whether it's 5, 15 or 30%.

With the 30% buff I instakilled several oneshot-deadeyes these days with 13k Spinal Shivers -> Chilling Nova proc -> Lesser Spinal Shivers proc = 20k damage (I was in full marauder gear) and well I have to admit it feels great for obvious reaons (no one likes these cheesy deadeyes).

But there were also plenty of situations where Spinal Shivers just dealt 4k critical damage @ 3 boons - e.g. on minstrel firebrands, which barely noticed the impact.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:So after like 10 minutes of play, I already hit someone for a 10k Spinal Shivers. He wasn't even below 50% health at this point but obviously was full glass.

https://imgur.com/a/y10Vqid

I was floating around the edge of our zerg poking at roamers and managed to get these two hits on people within a few minutes of each other.Keep in mind we currently have a WvW event where everything is buffed by up to 30%. You are under the effect of that buff in your screens. Your screens just don't tell whether it's 5, 15 or 30%.

It was the 5% buff. I'm on Kaineng and any time I've been on this week we've pretty much never had anything above Minor Bloodlust. So although I did have slightly more stats, the numbers I achieved in the screenshots could still be done without it.

I look forward to playing with this skill to see what kind of crits I can land. Both before and after the event. I'm a sucker for big numbers, that's why I pretty much always play full glass builds.

@"nekretaal.6485" said:So much wrong with OP.

The problem with lesser spinal shivers is not the damage, but that it triggers at 50%, the same threshold that all sorts of auto-immunities proc. Most of the time it does nothing.

Then you play the class wrong. The trait is (or was before the nerf) a game changer.

The community has often said "if you think we are too powerful, nerf us here and buff something else," but that didn't happen here.I know what I read in the nerf trait in the pvp section. Don't speak for "the community". You are not the community. And did you notice that I never said "the community asked for"? I said people asked for (= several people in the nerf trait). That's not the community.

The problem with Spinal Shivers is that the spell takes too kitten long to cast (and has too long of a recharge).20s on a class that is designed to sit out cooldowns in shroud is not a long cooldown. You have 3 weaponsets (2 + shroud) on necro. That's why ou have long cooldowns. You think that's underpowered? Then don't blame Spinal Shivers but the class mechanic for it!

It's also on Necromancer focus, paired with focus #4, which is mechanically the most unusable & frustrating skill to use in the game and is a skill that should be scrapped. Also, the conditional bonus damage for having boons does not reliably proc outside of WvW, leaving the mainhand/focus combination without a good big damage skill for short damage windows.Personal problems don't prove me wrong.

The community wants focus #4 scrapped or reworked (a clone of recently reworked Guardian focus 4 would be fantastic) and wants a focus #5 with lower cast/lower cooldown, corrupts instead of strips, and no bonus damage.This thread is about Spinal Shivers and not focus 4. Why are you mixing that up? It doesn't make sense! Focus 4 deserves its own topic as it's a trash skill.

Instead of the class, the community itself became toxic while arguing about toxicity.Or rather, they're frustrated due certain, unexplainable changes but it's the same either way.