WvW Player Engage: Spinal Shivers needs to be toned down

[KrHome.1920]

Spinal Shivers is the one and only skill that gives necromancer somewhat like half a chance in beating hit and run encounters IF (!) he goes full glass. And if he does so, he has absolutely no sustain to kill anything that has a 3s invulnerability or block to avoid the necro burst before counterbursting by itself. All you need is to go melee to bait shroud, disengage when he pops shroud and re-engage to melee when he leaves shroud to have a 100% chance of killing him.

Spinal Shivers on a viable roaming build (that is not eaten alive by warriors, soulbeasts, revenants, holos, guardians...) deals between 2 and 5k damage (depending whether it crits or not) and the encounters you are facing do usually have a health pool around 15 to 20k HP.

If I roam on pve power reaper traits and gear (full berserk, all offensive traits), I get 9k Spinal Shiver numbers on berserker deadeyes. You can imagine how viable that build is against anyting else. A soulbeast knockback into rapidfire or warrior stunlock or power shiro phase traversal into staff5 instakills it. A guardian burst does kill it too during the focus block uptime.

@God.2708 said:

Hm I guess we should nerf rev hammer instead.

Spinal Shivers has a 2.625 power mod when removing three boons. CoR has a 1.5 power mod. On top of that CoR has to fight with terrain to hit on top of being fairly visible and easy to dodge especially at max range.

Not a very good comparison IMO.Power mods are irrelevant because you can trait damage multipliers which necro can't without giving up all his sustain while you simply have evades and blocks on your weapons no matter what you trait. A glassy hammer rev (glint+shiro) beats a glassy necro on equal skill levels all day.

@RedShark.9548 said:Id be with you if you said that the trait should be toned down, because that thing does way too much dmg for a mere trait.2k damage at best (a necro with 3k power on a glass target with 3 boons and it hopefully removes protection), no crits possible, below 50% hp, 20s cooldown

What are you talking about?

@"Justine.6351" said:Rofl I didn't know they increased its damage by 50% last year, that's crazy.They did that because they removed the crit ability of every single (!) necro auto proc (chill of death, spiteful spirit, chilling nova) and even reduced their base damage to promote active gameplay.

I was the first one who said: "You asked for it!" after that change, because everyone was complaining about necro procs but at the end of the day obviously no one wanted compensations.

[Shroud.2307]

@Justine.6351 said:

@"XenesisII.1540" said:It's only been buffed a lot since release, might be time for a slight nerf in 2022. Lets not forget there's also the auto proc trait version too.But anyways that's how they want this game to be, ttk near 0, shrug.

Rofl I didn't know they increased its damage by 50% last year, that's crazy.

It was something a lot of people were confused about because, at least in the Necro sub, most people agreed it was unnecessary. What they did was nerf the passive trait then basically gave the damage they removed from the passive to the manual skill.

On topic of the thread, I do honestly agree the skill hits absurdly hard. I have a small folder of screenshots for my bigger crits in WvW and a lot of those are from Spinal Shivers. That said, I also agree with many others here ( and I'm seriously glad to see people defending it ) that it isn't the right thing to be nerfing if we're going to be talking about Necro nerfs. I think there are other skills that could be classified as problematic, but I also think over all, Necro is in a really good place right now. There are far greater issues in other professions that could stand to see some adjustments before Necro gets smacked around some more.

Some info about Spinal Shivers;

It has a long cast time and an after cast unless stowed, which is easy to punish with interrupts for trait or sigil benefits.

It's animation is similar to Mesmer's Meditations wherein they make a small circle with their hand in front of them. It is the only skill Necro has with this specific animation.

It does more damage the more Boons you have. That can be difficult to avoid, but in the case of fighting a Necro, literally everything has more mobility than it. Just stay at range if you expect to be hit by it.

Most ( if not all ) professions have a skill that increases damage on targets below 50% health. Necro has a trait like this as well, "Close To Death". If the Necro is using this trait, this skill is going to hurt a lot.

It isn't Gun Flame, Death's Judgement, True Shot or Winter's Bite. All of which ( with the exception of Winter's Bite ) have the same, or greater range and frequently do more damage. All of which also have lower cooldowns on classes with higher mobility, better active defense and faster burst potential. I don't like to compare classes like this because it's apples and oranges, but in this case I think it helps to put things in perspective.

[DaVid Darksoul.4985]

I would be in favor of a huge damage nerf and removal of chill, in exchange for corrupting all boons and a cooldown reduction for each boon corrupted. Boon removal and chill are the reasons I use it , it counters all these roam builds which rely on spamming boons.

[Riba.3271]

Spinal Shivers is okay, the spite trait is not. WvW ends at 50% hp because thats when you lose all your boons from all the necros that have the trait.

[Impling.4170]

@DaVid Darksoul.4985 said:I would be in favor of a huge damage nerf and removal of chill, in exchange for corrupting all boons and a cooldown reduction for each boon corrupted. Boon removal and chill are the reasons I use it , it counters all these roam builds which rely on spamming boons.

It's a power version of a pseudo-boon corrupt, the only of its type. It is a great benefit to power builds and should stay as such. Necro already has access to enough boon corrupts for Spinal Shivers to keep its niche.

[schokelmei.8271]

I'd start nerfing boons first and mobility and stealth and invuln, etc. But hey, I'm the one who likes having a fair 1v1 - so ignore me, please.

[Nimon.7840]

@Threather.9354 said:Spinal Shivers is okay, the spite trait is not. WvW ends at 50% hp because thats when you lose all your boons from all the necros that have the trait.

So basically 5% of the necros?Spite traitline isn't meta!

Therefore it should be really hard to loose all your boons by the traited version -when noone is playing it xD

[Ok I Did It.2854]

@Tao.5096 said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

How many people run power reaper in WvW though, i very rarely see reaper at all when in WvW, maybe some solo classes, in which case its fine, given that some other classes have skills that can spike you for way higher than 7-9k, and have the ability to do it was faster than every 20 seconds, and some of them from invis at that.

[XECOR.2814]

Lol. What class do you play. I can literally tell you 3 skills that are more op than spinal shivers on any class.

[Sovereign.1093]

gonna command on my scourge this week. i know u thieves and rangers and warriors are gunning for us.

i mean every minute thers a dead eye mark. hahaha

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:

@Tao.5096 said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

How many people run power reaper in WvW though, i very rarely see reaper at all when in WvW, maybe some solo classes, in which case its fine, given that some other classes have skills that can spike you for way higher than 7-9k, and have the ability to do it was faster than every 20 seconds, and some of them from invis at that.

2 of my guildies do and it hits super hard. Makes a good meat shield for me to do my thing however (as people flock to necros to attack lol)

[Nimon.7840]

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:

@"Tao.5096" said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

How many people run power reaper in WvW though, i very rarely see reaper at all when in WvW, maybe some solo classes, in which case its fine, given that some other classes have skills that can spike you for way higher than 7-9k, and have the ability to do it was faster than every 20 seconds, and some of them from invis at that.

To be honest. People should change their mind a bit.I think right now it could be worth, dropping the scourges and go for melee ball reapers instead.

I played last reset like 5 hours on my reaper. Every fight we went melee, I outdps'd everyone while having similar amount of corrupted boons, like the scourges had.And even in drawn out pirate ship tactics I was still in top ten.

I played a staff/gs build there. Because I knew that I'd have to bring some ranged dmg.If melee ball would establish once more, you could bring axe/x instead of staff to get more corrupts

Also gs pull is really damn powerfully. We had a fight in the ruins. Near bay, at the "jumping puzzle" spot. I pulled 5 people 2 times out of the ruin and they were killed after that. Imagine having more unblockable pulls...

(Well. Was a pretty " glassy build" only defense coming from the gear, no stunbreak on the utility bar)

[schokelmei.8271]

Reaper is all fun and games when your zerg really babysits you and by babysit I mean that your FB is constantly keeping both eyes on you before you get deleted by a Rev or Ele. It's great if that works but I'd rather bring a Staff Thief - it lacks the pull but the damage is similar and you don't have to hold his hand over every fight.

edited: Or you could bring any other melee of course that has the ability to cleave. I'd personally take Scrappers over Reaper

What really annoys me beside the really stupid meta is that the change mostly destroyed any condi build in a zerg. Less corrupts means more boons, more resistance uptime, more time for cleanses. And that scales down into smaller groups.

[Voltekka.2375]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:

@"Tao.5096" said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

How many people run power reaper in WvW though, i very rarely see reaper at all when in WvW, maybe some solo classes, in which case its fine, given that some other classes have skills that can spike you for way higher than 7-9k, and have the ability to do it was faster than every 20 seconds, and some of them from invis at that.

To be honest. People should change their mind a bit.I think right now it could be worth, dropping the scourges and go for melee ball reapers instead.

I played last reset like 5 hours on my reaper. Every fight we went melee, I outdps'd everyone while having similar amount of corrupted boons, like the scourges had.And even in drawn out pirate ship tactics I was still in top ten.

I played a staff/gs build there. Because I knew that I'd have to bring some ranged dmg.If melee ball would establish once more, you could bring axe/x instead of staff to get more corrupts

Also gs pull is really kitten powerfully. We had a fight in the ruins. Near bay, at the "jumping puzzle" spot. I pulled 5 people 2 times out of the ruin and they were killed after that. Imagine having more unblockable pulls...

(Well. Was a pretty " glassy build" only defense coming from the gear, no stunbreak on the utility bar)

For unblockable pulls, combo "Nothing can save you!" with GS 5. For the lolz.

[lodjur.1284]

The active version is fine, the proc version should get removed like every single other offensive proc in the game

[Nimon.7840]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:

@"Tao.5096" said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

How many people run power reaper in WvW though, i very rarely see reaper at all when in WvW, maybe some solo classes, in which case its fine, given that some other classes have skills that can spike you for way higher than 7-9k, and have the ability to do it was faster than every 20 seconds, and some of them from invis at that.

To be honest. People should change their mind a bit.I think right now it could be worth, dropping the scourges and go for melee ball reapers instead.

I played last reset like 5 hours on my reaper. Every fight we went melee, I outdps'd everyone while having similar amount of corrupted boons, like the scourges had.And even in drawn out pirate ship tactics I was still in top ten.

I played a staff/gs build there. Because I knew that I'd have to bring some ranged dmg.If melee ball would establish once more, you could bring axe/x instead of staff to get more corrupts

Also gs pull is really kitten powerfully. We had a fight in the ruins. Near bay, at the "jumping puzzle" spot. I pulled 5 people 2 times out of the ruin and they were killed after that. Imagine having more unblockable pulls...

(Well. Was a pretty " glassy build" only defense coming from the gear, no stunbreak on the utility bar)

For unblockable pulls, combo "Nothing can save you!" with GS 5. For the lolz.

Exactly. Pretty nice to get people from higher grounds down to your level :)

[Edu.6984]

The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

[Voltekka.2375]

@"xDudisx.5914" said:The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Spinal_Shivers

As you can clearly see, damage in competitive modes has been cut by 30%. I wouldnt really mind removing ALL passive traits, including warr autoproc stances, ele stone resonance autoproc, ancient seeds and the list goes on. But, seriously. Is lesser spinal shivers THAT much of a problem? Necros on blobs dont run it. Core necros are condi in their vast majority. The occasional roaming reaper is honestly giving you THAT much of a hard time due to this?Personally, I believe other things are in more dire need of attention. Stealth, mass and constant CC, skills that cc you for many secs and do tons of damage, that kind of stuff

[L A T I O N.8923]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@"xDudisx.5914" said:The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Spinal_Shivers

As you can clearly see, damage in competitive modes has been cut by 30%. I wouldnt really mind removing ALL passive traits, including warr autoproc stances, ele stone resonance autoproc, ancient seeds and the list goes on. But, seriously. Is lesser spinal shivers THAT much of a problem? Necros on blobs dont run it. Core necros are condi in their vast majority. The occasional roaming reaper is honestly giving you THAT much of a hard time due to this?Personally, I believe other things are in more dire need of attention. Stealth, mass and constant CC, skills that cc you for many secs and do tons of damage, that kind of stuff

I mean IT depends what you run. IT triggers on the hit that gets you Below 50% not the hit when you Below 50%. If it rips 3 Boons...which is most likely in An AVG fight with this meta IT Will (crit)hit about 6k-30% =>4.2k

Now take the base health of a low class...approx 11k that's means the hit that makes Them fall Below the treshhold could also kill Them with this combination

I believe, for a starter passives should exist to a certain extend...but let me explains:'lesser Smite condition' on guard:Its a meditation (means IT Will proc and share cooldown with meditation traitline)<remove thatSecondly IT does damage i mostly run 80-85% berserk and IT can CRIT up 2 3k (seen bigger numbers as well) please cut the damage its silly..and remove the crit chance

For other passive procs i disagree they should be removed Just for the sake of making people learn the class and be a little more.forgiving...i mean its a gamemode which i (5yrs XP) can face someone compeletely new...

i do agree IT from the perspective of fighting a 'very low Risk build with high Risk gear. Its basicly what gets me twisting

[Helly.2597]

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@"xDudisx.5914" said:The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Spinal_Shivers

As you can clearly see, damage in competitive modes has been cut by 30%. I wouldnt really mind removing ALL passive traits, including warr autoproc stances, ele stone resonance autoproc, ancient seeds and the list goes on. But, seriously. Is lesser spinal shivers THAT much of a problem? Necros on blobs dont run it. Core necros are condi in their vast majority. The occasional roaming reaper is honestly giving you THAT much of a hard time due to this?Personally, I believe other things are in more dire need of attention. Stealth, mass and constant CC, skills that cc you for many secs and do tons of damage, that kind of stuff

I mean IT depends what you run. IT triggers on the hit that gets you Below 50% not the hit when you Below 50%. If it rips 3 Boons...which is most likely in An AVG fight with this meta IT Will (crit)hit about 6k-30% =>4.2k

Spinal shivers proc can't crit. So it certainly isn't doing more than 3k.

This thread overall is amusing. Let's keep snagging traits/utilities necro has cause they're the only things that counter boon meta.

[Swagger.1459]

@Tao.5096 said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

Never mind all the potentially crazy high damage being pumped out by all professions, 1 shot builds and being able to kill another player in seconds... No no, this one skill is such a problem that you needed to post about it... Pretty silly.

[Junkpile.7439]

I don't get this. Spinal shivers probably isn't even my top 20 skill list that need nerf. :D

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Tao.5096 said:Spinal Shivers is a 5th skill upon equiping focus on Necromancer.In Power Reaper build this skill can hit up easily 7~9k damage to a player which roughly equals to in many cases ~50% of HP pool.Skill has minimalist animation during cast time, 1200 range and hits out of the box (only line of sight).Additionally it removes up to 3 boons, applies 6 seconds of Chill and has only 20 seconds of cooldown.

It needs to be toned down - too much packed into one single skill.

Rush is a 5th skill upon equipping a greatsword on warrior.I'm not even playing a glass build and got hit for 17.5k last night.This is more than 100% of the HP of a lot of builds out there.

So, does OP think this should be toned down too?

[Voltekka.2375]

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@"xDudisx.5914" said:The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Spinal_Shivers

As you can clearly see, damage in competitive modes has been cut by 30%. I wouldnt really mind removing ALL passive traits, including warr autoproc stances, ele stone resonance autoproc, ancient seeds and the list goes on. But, seriously. Is lesser spinal shivers THAT much of a problem? Necros on blobs dont run it. Core necros are condi in their vast majority. The occasional roaming reaper is honestly giving you THAT much of a hard time due to this?Personally, I believe other things are in more dire need of attention. Stealth, mass and constant CC, skills that cc you for many secs and do tons of damage, that kind of stuff

I mean IT depends what you run. IT triggers on the hit that gets you Below 50% not the hit when you Below 50%. If it rips 3 Boons...which is most likely in An AVG fight with this meta IT Will (crit)hit about 6k-30% =>4.2k

Now take the base health of a low class...approx 11k that's means the hit that makes Them fall Below the treshhold could also kill Them with this combination

I believe, for a starter passives should exist to a certain extend...but let me explains:'lesser Smite condition' on guard:Its a meditation (means IT Will proc and share cooldown with meditation traitline)<remove thatSecondly IT does damage i mostly run 80-85% berserk and IT can CRIT up 2 3k (seen bigger numbers as well) please cut the damage its silly..and remove the crit chance

For other passive procs i disagree they should be removed Just for the sake of making people learn the class and be a little more.forgiving...i mean its a gamemode which i (5yrs XP) can face someone compeletely new...

i do agree IT from the perspective of fighting a 'very low Risk build with high Risk gear. Its basicly what gets me twisting

Meanwhile lesser spinal shivers CANNOT crit. Its even in the description. Plus, if a class has "11k hp", lesser spinal shivers is the LEAST of the problems. Virtually a sneeze from a thief mesmer ranger warr will instadown that. And no, passive defensive procs are just as bad, if not worse, cause they carry people.

[Shroud.2307]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@"xDudisx.5914" said:The active skill is OK, the passive needs to be reworked. Passive and/or instant high dmg skills are bad for the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Spinal_Shivers

As you can clearly see, damage in competitive modes has been cut by 30%. I wouldnt really mind removing ALL passive traits, including warr autoproc stances, ele stone resonance autoproc, ancient seeds and the list goes on. But, seriously. Is lesser spinal shivers THAT much of a problem? Necros on blobs dont run it. Core necros are condi in their vast majority. The occasional roaming reaper is honestly giving you THAT much of a hard time due to this?Personally, I believe other things are in more dire need of attention. Stealth, mass and constant CC, skills that cc you for many secs and do tons of damage, that kind of stuff

I mean IT depends what you run. IT triggers on the hit that gets you Below 50% not the hit when you Below 50%. If it rips 3 Boons...which is most likely in An AVG fight with this meta IT Will (crit)hit about 6k-30% =>4.2k

Now take the base health of a low class...approx 11k that's means the hit that makes Them fall Below the treshhold could also kill Them with this combination

I believe, for a starter passives should exist to a certain extend...but let me explains:'lesser Smite condition' on guard:Its a meditation (means IT Will proc and share cooldown with meditation traitline)<remove thatSecondly IT does damage i mostly run 80-85% berserk and IT can CRIT up 2 3k (seen bigger numbers as well) please cut the damage its silly..and remove the crit chance

For other passive procs i disagree they should be removed Just for the sake of making people learn the class and be a little more.forgiving...i mean its a gamemode which i (5yrs XP) can face someone compeletely new...

i do agree IT from the perspective of fighting a 'very low Risk build with high Risk gear. Its basicly what gets me twisting

Meanwhile lesser spinal shivers CANNOT crit. Its even in the description. Plus, if a class has "11k hp", lesser spinal shivers is the LEAST of the problems. Virtually a sneeze from a thief mesmer ranger warr will instadown that. And no, passive defensive procs are just as bad, if not worse, cause they carry people.

To add to this, Necro has almost 0 defensive passives. Last Grasp was even removed.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chill_of_Deathhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiteful_Spirithttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakening_Shroud

All classes have numerous passives, but most are insignificant things like "gain x amount of Might when using y skill". These are 3 of the stronger passives Necro has, all of which are offensive and all of which have been nerfed and cannot critically hit.

The nerfs to Chill of Death and Spiteful Spirit were deserved. They did a lot of damage for passive proc skills.

But then we have things like thishttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reckless_ImpactAn unblockable attack during an iframe that can crit as high as 6k. I would honestly not be surprised if people have gotten higher crits than that with it too, and it's a freaking DODGE.

I don't know why I'm indulging in this thread when most people are defending Spinal Shivers as being okay, but this has to be one of the more ridiculous requests I've seen in a while. There are so many other things that are so much worse yet OP has a problem with an actual well designed skill that can be easily punished and has requirements to reach it's maximum damage. I agree in a group setting it's gonna be hard to see that coming, but let's be real... In a zerg, if anyone is targeting you, there are a lot worse things that could be coming your way. And you do have to be targeted for this skill to hit because it isn't an AOE.