Dread

This article is about the necromancer trait. For the effect, see Dread (effect). For the effect in story instances, see Dread (story effect).

Inflicting fear on a foe gives you boons and increases your strike damage for a short time. — In-game description

Dread

Specialization

Spite (trait list)

Tier

Grandmaster

Type

Major

Training cost

8 Hero points

Game link

API

API

“

1

Dread

Inflicting fear on a foe gives you boons and increases your strike damage for a short time.

 Quickness (5s): Skills and actions are faster.

 Fury (10s): +25% Critical Chance

 Fury (10s): +20% Critical Chance

 Dread (2s): +20% Damage

 Dread (2s): +15% Damage

— In-game description

Related skills

Weapon skills that are improved by this trait

•   Devouring Visage — Sword
•   Wail of Doom — Warhorn
•   Reaper's Mark — Staff

Transform skills that are improved by this trait

•   Doom — Death Shroud
•   Wave of Fear — Death Shroud
•   Ripple of Horror — Lich Form
•   Terrify — Reaper's Shroud

Utility skills that are improved by this trait

•   Spectral Ring — Spectral

Profession mechanic skills that are improved by this trait

•   Garish Pillar — Shade
•   Innervate Wanderlust

Version history

For a detailed trait history, see here.

Patch	Changes
January 13, 2026	This trait now grants a short bonus to outgoing strike damage when inflicting fear on an enemy and no longer reduces the recharge of the third death shroud skill when killing an enemy.
August 20, 2024	Janthir Wilds release: Reduced the internal cooldown from 3 seconds to 1 second.
June 28, 2022	Fury: Critical chance bonus increased from 20% to 25% in PvE only.
August 17, 2021	Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to fail to properly reduce the cooldown on shroud skill 3 when killing enemies in certain content types or locations.
July 07, 2020	This trait has been moved to the grandmaster slot previously occupied by Signets of Suffering, and it has been reworked. It now grants 5 seconds of quickness and 10 seconds of fury whenever the necromancer applies fear to an enemy, with a 3-second internal cooldown. Additionally, it reduces the recharge of Shroud skill 3 by 50% whenever an enemy is killed in PvE and PvP, and by 5% in WvW.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Reduced bonus damage from 33% to 15%.
August 28, 2018	The damage received by enemies inflicted with fear has been increased from 20% to 33%.
December 12, 2017	Dread has been added to the game and replaced Unholy Fervor.