Balance with a Sledge Hammer

Now I'm going to criticize the balance team because they, once again, went over board with the necromancer. Balance with something like this requires an elegant touch. Not a sledge hammer to solve the issues presented. If the solutions were put in place that I'm going to present this could at least solve their dominance in PvP. WvW is a different beast entirely and honestly could get its own month long debate just on necromancer. But lets stick with this topic for a moment.

• The first thing you should have done is Given each of the shade abilities an Aftercast delay. Half a second would have been enough. This gives opponents enough time to walk our of its aoe or dodge. As long as they're paying attention. Nerfing shouldn't feel like getting run over by a truck. The touch should be subtle but effective.
• The second thing you should have done is made the skill tells much easier to read. As it stands when a shade pulses I can hardly see them. Is a shade pulsing damage? the only way to tell is if you're getting hurt. And because of how much redundancy of condition application the scourge has, that isn't easy to see that this is happening around the necromancer or the shades. That little pulse they do, isn't going to cut it. They need to be much more pronounced.
• If after these changes are tested and used by the community and it proves to be too much then and only then should you increase the recharge rate of some of the skills and reduce the Duration of the shades. And at the least the shades recharge should be a parody with its recharge. So 15 seconds should be the lowest it should go. 10 seconds reduces the potential of creating choke points since top players will just be able to shoot an arrow through the throat of the necromancer as they try to set up, preventing it from ever happening.
• Make Dhuumfire trigger on each pulse from all shade abilities. It was like this before. Intentional or not, it was required to have competitive DPS. You know what else was unintentional? Reaper's shroud triggering sigils when entering or leaving it. But you guys decided to make that a feature. And than gave it to core necromancer. Why not here too? As someone else said. If the player decides to just stand in desert shroud as its pulsing its their own fault. We can't and shouldn't be penalized for the poor playing habits of others. They should learn. You don't stick your hand in a fire ants colony and you don't stand within 180 distance of a scourge.

I'm probably going to make a more in depth post about the problems that arise from this balance patch more and straight up link to my Old post on Reddit and the 'Necromancer's Depth" post as a means to express all of the things I was worried would happen but I'm so beyond upset right now, I can't be objective right now.

I agree absolutely why can't we have a good dps spec in pvp and pve?

Load up time (or tells) on shade skills won't work because of how small the AoE radius is on small shades. By the time you cast a small shade, and give it a tell, everyone will be long gone. The whole issue is that small shades and large shade are inherently too different to each other in terms of gameplay for them to balance each and every skill across.

As much as I want more 'counterplay' against shade skills, I think Arenanet shot themselves in the foot with the two different shade sizes. You give the proper 'tell' and charge up time for a shade, and it becomes useless on the small shades, but properly balanced for the large shades.

I don't agree with the Dhuumfire suggestion at all, but a reduction in Demonic Lore's ICD could help. Maybe 2 seconds instead of 3. Sadistic Searing should apply to the next strike of MSS, rather than MSS summon.

I agree with aftercast delay though. No-one should be able to faceroll F2-F5 when they are disabled and down whoever is attacking you.

It was a bug fix, not a balance pass. Wait til the balance pass to decide whether it works.

@mygamingid.5816 said:It was a bug fix, not a balance pass. Wait til the balance pass to decide whether it works.

Actually, there was a balance added to PvP. And it was a sledge hammer.

Lily I don't know why you invest so much time in feedback they don't care about or, at best, are too arrogant to take into account.

@mygamingid.5816 said:It was a bug fix, not a balance pass. Wait til the balance pass to decide whether it works.And yet they managed to increase F2's CD by 60% and reduce shades' duration by 50% on top of actual bug fix.

When in doubt, nerf necro.

@kKagari.6804 said:I agree with aftercast delay though. No-one should be able to faceroll F2-F5 when they are disabled and down whoever is attacking you.Alright, then scourge should have access to sizable stability. One stack on Trail of Anguish is laughable.

Though Power Reaper need it even more. Halved uptime of RS3's stability (from 8/20 to 5/25) on a slow melee class with long cast time was profoundly insulting, especially when it's almost exclusively while in Shroud, not outside. Power Reaper can't disengage NOR stick to its target. They failed so hard I have murderous intents since then.

I shouldn't even talk about it because I start thinking at all the AWFUL balance choices they made.

@Karl McLain.5604 said:Manifest Sand Shade is not expected to activate on each pulse of Desert Shroud, but instead activate on each activation of a shade ability. The previous functionality, while strong, was unintentional. We'll be looking to add some power back into the kit in the next balance iteration (which was not today :P ), but needed to fix this bug as soon as possible. We'll also probably remove the 'spend some of your life force' from the description of MSS.Thanks for the well-worded question!

-Karl

Don't worry they'll un-nerf you and make you OP again, they just had to fix bugs first.

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

@Karl McLain.5604 said:Manifest Sand Shade is not expected to activate on each pulse of Desert Shroud, but instead activate on each activation of a shade ability. The previous functionality, while strong, was unintentional. We'll be looking to add some power back into the kit in the next balance iteration (which was

not

today :P ), but needed to fix this bug as soon as possible. We'll also probably remove the 'spend some of your life force' from the description of MSS.Thanks for the well-worded question!

-Karl

Excuse my skepticism. But they also said we wouldn't get all the power we lost back which means that we'll still under preform for how difficult we are to use. Scourge is a high risk play style and it needs that extra bit of reward to be worth it. Scourge DPS spec also doesn't overlap with support. added to that fact that the support skills aside from Sand flare under preforms as support skills. Although I should distinguish between sustain support, offensive support and Utility support. Our utility support works quite well, but our Sustain support needs a lot of work and our offensive support might as well not exist.

You don't fix bugs, you squash them. Now the game is infested by happy fixed bugs.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

@Karl McLain.5604 said:Manifest Sand Shade is not expected to activate on each pulse of Desert Shroud, but instead activate on each activation of a shade ability. The previous functionality, while strong, was unintentional. We'll be looking to add some power back into the kit in the next balance iteration (which was

not

today :P ), but needed to fix this bug as soon as possible. We'll also probably remove the 'spend some of your life force' from the description of MSS.Thanks for the well-worded question!

-Karl

Yes it was very difficult to drop all your shades at your feet and watch things melt(taken from a guildie that mains necro on how he said that he was dealing with mele classes).

@mygamingid.5816 said:It was a bug fix, not a balance pass. Wait til the balance pass to decide whether it works.And yet they managed to increase F2's CD by 60% and reduce shades' duration by 50% on top of actual bug fix.

This, unfortunately. They did nerfing and bugfixes at the same time without apparently considering that perhaps the bug was a large portion of the outrage.

At any rate, at least I can use scourge now without feeling like I have a handicap.

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

@Karl McLain.5604 said:Manifest Sand Shade is not expected to activate on each pulse of Desert Shroud, but instead activate on each activation of a shade ability. The previous functionality, while strong, was unintentional. We'll be looking to add some power back into the kit in the next balance iteration (which was

not

today :P ), but needed to fix this bug as soon as possible. We'll also probably remove the 'spend some of your life force' from the description of MSS.Thanks for the well-worded question!

-Karl

The difficult aspect was the life force part, not the damage part. As you could quickly burn yourself out and find yourself in the ground. The balancing act was extremely fun to play with, being aware of far more than the reaper and I loved the micromanagement of my energy and shade placement. The reduction of duration from 20 seconds to 10 seconds increases that micromanagement with no pay off for the necromancer. In fact we lost DPS. The stacking bug was something I wasn't aware of until later and even without it our DPS was decent. However, we lost more than just that in this patch and the impact is heavy. Like a hammer... You know... A sledge.... You get the point.

Lily, keep posting despite the negative feedback. The ideas and discussions that have come from your posts are worthwhile regardless of whether this current team decides to act on them. I have no doubt somebody at Anet will come to realize these issues cannot continue with the Necro class before it starts to have negative impact on the game. Realistically if MMO history has shown anything it's that people do react more to negative then to positive publicly so all the ground that is gained due to positive PR around this expansion will get negated by poor balance and over the top adjustments like these. How can anyone justify ruining an entire gameplay type for the sake of a bug fix? I would advise that you seek out someone at a higher level and send a PM as your feedback is generally of a constructive nature, maybe Mo needs to be made aware if he isn't?

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:Lily, keep posting despite the negative feedback. The ideas and discussions that have come from your posts are worthwhile regardless of whether this current team decides to act on them. I have no doubt somebody at Anet will come to realize these issues cannot continue with the Necro class before it starts to have negative impact on the game. Realistically if MMO history has shown anything it's that people do react more to negative then to positive publicly so all the ground that is gained due to positive PR around this expansion will get negated by poor balance and over the top adjustments like these. How can anyone justify ruining an entire gameplay type for the sake of a bug fix? I would advise that you seek out someone at a higher level and send a PM as your feedback is generally of a constructive nature, maybe Mo needs to be made aware if he isn't?

Lets just hope your right, because Blizzard in all their wisdom haven't.In fact:World of Warcraft is a mess, and almost everyone is complaining about extreme changes and lack of feedback.

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

@"Karl McLain.5604" said:Manifest Sand Shade is not expected to activate on each pulse of Desert Shroud, but instead activate on each activation of a shade ability. The previous functionality, while strong, was unintentional. We'll be looking to add some power back into the kit in the next balance iteration (which was

not

today :P ), but needed to fix this bug as soon as possible. We'll also probably remove the 'spend some of your life force' from the description of MSS.Thanks for the well-worded question!

-Karl

The funny part about this comment is that you can tell it's directed at PvP but the changes most effected PvE where basically no one was complaining about them being "OP".

@Ara.4569 said:You don't fix bugs, you squash them. Now the game is infested by happy fixed bugs.

I know when try and "fix bugs" I just tear down a house around them to make sure I really killed em dead gud. It's the only reasonable thing to do.

Come on, they could have been a little more subtle a little more deft in the way they did this.

The thing here is a bug fix is fine and all if it breaks wvw or pvp.

But they could easily keep it the way it was for PvE. I mean, if they go that route fine, but then they also should heavily cripple all the power creep classes in PvE. Ele, Warrior, Mesmer, Guard.

Necros are getting nerfed in every corner and aspect for no reason at all, while other classes are never hit, the outcry was outragous when they nerfed Tempest air overload by 10 %, (10% nerf on ONE skill, while on the same patch buffing different things so the overall DPS went UP), and thats all they do. For necro they basicly nerf the ENTIRE possible DPS by 30%.

Now lets compare these things from a neutral standpoint. Alone the numbers are insane. Now add on top that ele, for example, still has other weapons and builds that are all rather fine. If they nerf anything, it will still be top DPS, because you have so much possibilities, yeah, different builds and rotations, maybe a slight dps decrease but in the end you are still there. Same goes for Warrior and Chrono. If they nerf Warriors support it still got insane dps and vice versa.

And the worst part is: its for no reason. Nobody cares about ANY of the complaints in PvE, its not hard to have all classes equally good there. DPS wise, or support wise. Seeing these decisions and balancing just hurts my brain, the complete lack of every logic behind these actions is beyond me. Numbers can easily be fixed, but its the sheer refusal to do things right. Shoehorning classes into directions while refusing to create a holy trinity is outright a big mistake. At least in PvE every class should be equally good, and thats really easy to achieve.

@Axl.8924 said:Lets just hope your right, because Blizzard in all their wisdom haven't.In fact:World of Warcraft is a mess, and almost everyone is complaining about extreme changes and lack of feedback.

Well they also dropped more than 50% of the player base in the last couple years so yes it does have an impact. I'm not saying that was the only cause for people leaving but lets not be so naive to think people don't walk away from games to to frustration over balance issues, it happens everyday.

It's the problem of playing a PvP game in PvE, while in 2017, and refusing to do a complete skill split. Shall we nerf/buff a class because of PvP? Then, because of PvP, PvE will be hit. This created insane roaring in WoW when I played it and it happened. But 'lo, they introduced templates and nowadays patch notes have a PvP and a PvE section and never do the two cross paths again.

Apparently, a difficult thing to obtain in GW2. Just like having a night option for the forums, very complicated, can't be done. Players done it. Apparently it wasn't that complicated after all?

@Axl.8924 said:

@"Vlad Morbius.1759" said:Lily, keep posting despite the negative feedback. The ideas and discussions that have come from your posts are worthwhile regardless of whether this current team decides to act on them. I have no doubt somebody at Anet will come to realize these issues cannot continue with the Necro class before it starts to have negative impact on the game. Realistically if MMO history has shown anything it's that people do react more to negative then to positive publicly so all the ground that is gained due to positive PR around this expansion will get negated by poor balance and over the top adjustments like these. How can anyone justify ruining an entire gameplay type for the sake of a bug fix? I would advise that you seek out someone at a higher level and send a PM as your feedback is generally of a constructive nature, maybe Mo needs to be made aware if he isn't?

The sad part is, even that huge mess is nothing compared to how badly GW2 is balanced.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13#boss=2032

That's lightyears ahead of GW2.

@Robert Gee.9246 , I feel like we could fix the PvE dmg side of things by removing the 3 second internal cooldown on Demonic Lore. That would solve the stacking issue, but would create a scenario in which the Scourge would be able to get close to its previous DPS, making it viable and desirable in raids. Some might argue that this would be too strong, but I would point to the existence of condition firebrand (which can provide superior support and DPS compared to Scourge) and say otherwise. If the Scourge is not getting a DPS buff to make it competitive in high-end PvE, can we at least get some confirmation if others are getting nerfed to make them more in line with Scourge?

@Robert Gee.9246 said:

@Lily.1935 said:Now I'm going to criticize the balance team because they, once again, went over board with the necromancer.

Criticism is a fine thing and it's one of the reason these forums exist. I don't mind responding to criticism, but I don't like responding to toxic threads, so I hope we can keep this one civil.

• Shade Aftercast - This isn't a bad idea and we've done similar things with Mesmer shatters in the past to prevent them all from activating at once.
• Shade FX Readability - Art requests can take a little time to make since they have to go through a different team and we have a pretty strict budget for them as well. I agree that this is an issue though that I hope we can get some time for.
• Shade Recharge vs Duration - I'm going to have to disagree about the recharge needing to stay in lockstep with the duration. Changing those values is how we adjust uptime and uptime was the area we intended to target with PvP and WvW splits.
• Bug or Feature - Some bugs become can become features, others don't. The Desert Shroud repeatedly proccing Dhuumfire wasn't something we felt should be kept. If Scourge needed to rely on buggy behavior to be competitive then we need to fix the bug before we figure out what needs to be improved to make it competitive. If the bug is causing blowouts in other areas of the game then we need to fix it even sooner.

@Lily.1935 said:I'm so beyond upset right now, I can't be objective right now.As a developer I don't expect players to be objective. We expect players to be passionate, involved and subjective when it comes to their chosen profession(s). So if you're upset about something, then by all means let us know you are upset. However as developers,

it is

our job to be objective when it comes to choosing what changes to make (and what bugs to fix). Although even if your criticism is subjective, it's still helpful to give us reasons and context behind your thoughts. ;)

This is related to PvE.

Do you plan to buff Scourge more as an offensive or defensive support?

Right now people only want offensive support, and three Professions already rule that support world.

If you buff Scourge damage, will it get better support as well? I just don't really know what to expect. I think removing the ICD on Demonic Lore would be a good DPS buff. If we are to truly be a support Profession with Scourge we need a unique offensive buff, or give us what other support can do, like a mechanic similar to Grace of the Land, Alacrity, or Warrior Banners.

Random thoughts of buffs to support. What if you add a stat bonus to Shades similar to Warrior banners, and add a Necro specific debuff on the target that increases damage done for everyone by 5% to that target.

The Shades could get Condition Damage, and Ferocity added to their Shades for a group wide buff when stacking near them. You could up the Shade buff Radius to 600, but keep the damage radius as it is. Also you could add Alacrity on every Shade attack as a buff to support.

This makes it so Life Force isn't required to do support like it is currently. Unless the Scepter gets Life Force on its auto attack, then our Support in PvE will be forever limited. If you add Life Force to Scepter auto, then we would be able to use the intended support of Scourge better.

These are just random thoughts for offensive support.

I'm happy devs are at least replying to threads, but we don't really have an idea on what the planned direction for Scourge is.

@Robert Gee.9246 said:

@Lily.1935 said:Now I'm going to criticize the balance team because they, once again, went over board with the necromancer.

Criticism is a fine thing and it's one of the reason these forums exist. I don't mind responding to criticism, but I don't like responding to toxic threads, so I hope we can keep this one civil.

• Shade Aftercast - This isn't a bad idea and we've done similar things with Mesmer shatters in the past to prevent them all from activating at once.
• Shade FX Readability - Art requests can take a little time to make since they have to go through a different team and we have a pretty strict budget for them as well. I agree that this is an issue though that I hope we can get some time for.
• Shade Recharge vs Duration - I'm going to have to disagree about the recharge needing to stay in lockstep with the duration. Changing those values is how we adjust uptime and uptime was the area we intended to target with PvP and WvW splits.
• Bug or Feature - Some bugs become can become features, others don't. The Desert Shroud repeatedly proccing Dhuumfire wasn't something we felt should be kept. If Scourge needed to rely on buggy behavior to be competitive then we need to fix the bug before we figure out what needs to be improved to make it competitive. If the bug is causing blowouts in other areas of the game then we need to fix it even sooner.

@Lily.1935 said:I'm so beyond upset right now, I can't be objective right now.As a developer I don't expect players to be objective. We expect players to be passionate, involved and subjective when it comes to their chosen profession(s). So if you're upset about something, then by all means let us know you are upset. However as developers,

it is

our job to be objective when it comes to choosing what changes to make (and what bugs to fix). Although even if your criticism is subjective, it's still helpful to give us reasons and context behind your thoughts. ;)

I can't see the graphical effects thing work though. Shade skills having instantaneous effects is paramount to their function, so the moment you actually give them something visual, the effect would have completed already. If you give them a casting effect you're essentially giving them a cast time, no? Summoning the shade takes time and that seems like the 'warning' you're supposed to give to your opponents. I actually agree that the skills need to be better visually, but as I said above, if shade skills had cast times, the smaller shades would effectively be useless.

Somewhere on the topic of aftercast, is it intended that you can use all your shade skills even while disabled? F3 or F4 I understand, but prior to yesterdays bug fix, there were players dying left and right even while the scourge was disabled thanks to how the shade skills can be activated.

@Robert Gee.9246 I think the main thing Necro players want from the developers right now is a road map for what sorts of things you are really aiming for the Scourge to accomplish. Reaper too, for that matter, but this is primarily about Scourge right now. How do you want the spec to be used? Once we know that, I'm sure we're all willing to come up with potential ideas to get it there. If you're not looking for ideas, at least we have context for any future changes.

We don't necessarily need to know all the stops right now, but the planned destination is kind of important.

@"Robert Gee.9246" said:

• Bug or Feature - Some bugs become can become features, others don't. The Desert Shroud repeatedly proccing Dhuumfire wasn't something we felt should be kept. If Scourge needed to rely on buggy behavior to be competitive then we need to fix the bug before we figure out what needs to be improved to make it competitive. If the bug is causing blowouts in other areas of the game then we need to fix it even sooner.

I'm just confused as to how Desert Shroud proccing Dhuumfire is now classified as a "bug". Nobody noticed in internal testing or beta weekend??? What about DPS parses that show where the damage comes from??? Nobody did that analysis???

I'm also perplexed as to why you would rush to fix something that a month later is called a "bug", but not have the appropriate fix yet to get dps back up to snuff. This just leaves the profession hanging out to dry via an intentional decision. Makes zero sense to me.