Grasping Darkness

Conjure claws of darkness from the shadows to attack foes, applying a condition to them and pulling them to you. Gain life force for each struck foe. — In-game description

Grasping Darkness

Profession

Necromancer (skill list)

Specialization

Reaper

Weapon

Greatsword

Game link

API

29740

“

0.75¾  

25

30

20

 

Grasping Darkness

Conjure claws of darkness from the shadows to attack foes, applying a condition to them and pulling them to you. Gain life force for each struck foe.

 Damage: 524 (1.3)^?

 Damage: 4 (0.01)^?

 Chilled (4s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed

 Life Force: 10%

 Life Force: 4%

 Number of Targets: 5

 Range: 900

— In-game description

Related traits

Spite

• Bitter Chill — Chilling a foe inflicts vulnerability.

Curses

• Insidious Disruption — Disabling a foe inflicts torment on them. Disables include stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, launch, taunt, and fear.
• Target the Weak — Increases critical-hit chance for each condition on the foe. Gain condition damage based on your precision.

Death Magic

• Corrupter's Fervor — Inflicting a condition on a foe grants carapace. Gain pulsing protection while at or above the carapace threshold.

Reaper

• Chilling Nova — Critical hits against chilled foes cause an explosion that chills adjacent foes.
• Chilling Victory — Striking a chilled foe grants might and life force. Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging.
• Cold Shoulder — Chill lasts longer, and chilled foes take increased strike damage from your attacks.
• Deathly Chill — Chill deals damage over time.

Notes

Bug:

If an enemy is targeted, this skill may fail to activate due to being obstructed, despite no apparent obstruction, and no difficulty hitting the same enemy if the skill was used without a target.

• The activation time includes a long aftercast delay that can be cancelled to no detriment. The actual cast time is much shorter.
• Other weapon skills with life force gain per hit: Chilling Scythe, Death Spiral, and Necrotic Grasp.
• The maximum possible life force gain for one attack in PvE is 50% untraited, and 55% with Gluttony. The maximum possible life force gain for one attack in PvP and WvW is 20% untraited, and 22% with Gluttony.
• Though not listed on the tooltip, the Pull effect does 150 Defiance Break

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
August 22, 2023	Secrets of the Obscure release: Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in WvW only.
November 29, 2022	Increased life force gain per hit from 4% to 10% in PvE only.
June 28, 2022	Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient from 1.3 to 0.01.
October 01, 2019	Fixed an issue that could cause the claw effect to pop out of existence before the skill completed. Removed misleading legendary projectile effects from this skill due to it not being a projectile.
September 17, 2019	This skill will now attempt to make the player face the target when activated instead of immediately failing when used on targets behind the player.
April 23, 2019	Increased the range from 750 to 900 to make the range a standard multiple of 60. Fixed issues that caused this skill to unexpectedly fail when hitting some objects. This skill will no longer be stopped by projectile blocking or reflecting.
February 22, 2017	The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. Increased damage by 30%.
October 23, 2015	Heart of Thorns release: Grasping Darkness has been added to the game.

Trivia

• This skill may appear when holding a Seneschal's Keystaff.

The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Grasping Darkness.