Fear Me!

I am not sure how many of you are aware of this, but let's start here. The description for the skill reads: "All adjacent foes lose 1-3 energy." This skill costs 4 adrenal, and 0 recharge time.

Now, from the description, this skill doesn't seem overpowered at all, however, the description doesn't really show truth either. The range of this skill is actually "nearby", ie. 25 feet, or in other words, the white bubble around you on the radar. With this skill being so spammable, and the range on it being broken, there is no reason not to use it on all your wars. We (iQ) even fit it on every char possible (3-4 wars and 2-3 mo/wars), just because it's that effective and simple. I'm sure Fi (thanks black ) KOR, WAR, nO (?) etc. run this build and take advantage of this broken skill aswell. Basically, with this skill running nonstop on your warriors and occassionally on your monks, this is massive energy denial and leaves very little room for the opposing team. You can even be creative and throw channeling on some of your casters or monks, and after a few bursts of energy denial, the match becomes rather uninteresting and one sided unless the opposition has prepared for this.

I've done a search on this subject and cannot find anything regarding this matter, and if it has been discussed, I apologize. I just hope to inform those not aware of this abuse, and hopefully it will get A.net's attention. If it already has, and they fixed this in the newest update (that I haven't tried out due to being at school), again I apologize and ask for you to ignore this post.

I just want to say that Fear Me! is staggeringly powerful. Just one Warrior swinging an unaided sword or axe can chip off roughly .5 energy per second, denying their enemy close to a full two pips worth of regeneration. Stack that up with three or four people casting it and the huge area of effect and you're talking about crushingly effective energy denial. Then, consider the fact that you can gain that four adrenaline faster than the 5.33 seconds it takes an unaided weapon swinger to build it up. Personally, I like Life Bonding the Monks and self-casting Balthazar's but even something as simple as Frenzy lets you build adren faster and therefore deny more regeneration. Best of all, it doesn't require a huge investment into Tactics to get to that 3 energy draining. It's something like 7 or 8 ranks, not a full 12.

Of course, could be worse. Fear Me! used to drain up to 6 energy...

Oh, and for those wondering you can buy Fear Me at Droknar's Forge or complete the quest "Into the Unknown" given by John Kudebeh in Augury Rock.

Fi often run at least 1 warrior with echoed Fear Me, plus another with a single copy. Many top guilds run multiple copies as well. The skill puts mesmers to shame in terms of energy denial. The devs are well aware of the situation of the range of the skill, but wether they are looking at it as a balance issue, I'm not sure.

I hope so, because spammable AoE energy denial doesn't make for a terribly exciting game. It's a good tactic, I just find it doesn't promote exciting gameplay.

If you tried that against me, it wouldn't work. I'm an elemenalists and I use attunement spells and ether renewal to keep my energy at an all-time high. It would'nt be at all effective against me.

Does Bonetti's Defense with it's 5 energy per successive block aid in countering this, or is the loss that fast that you can't get it up?

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Im running a E/R for no reason whatsoever.