Balance Patch: Sand Savant mistake?

So...the Scourge's Sand Savant, as a Grandmaster trait, hits the same number of targets as the smaller, non-traited shades? And has a longer recharge time? Other than the larger area (a whopping 120 radius), can someone explain why you would take this trait at all? Is it simply for the ever so slightly larger area?

I mean, as a Grandmaster trait, it's a pretty sad one. In fact, without it, a Scourge can drop three shades quickly, cover an effectively larger area, and hit 2 targets per shade. It makes no sense at all to take Sand Savant.

Where's the sense in it? Just remove it already or move it down to the Adept trait line.

Rip scourge in WVW too now.

Only reason I can see to take it is to hit things further back on walls. Otherwise its a dead trait.

It is not even worth to be Adept, it is a handicap that players can choose to put on their character (probably an oversight from the ArenaNet balance team).

In PvE is different and useful, so I’d not ask to remove it nor to move it. They just need to balance it. I propose 1 target increase in WvW, and the removal of the 100% cooldown increase in PvP and WvW.

@Black Storm.6974 said:It is not even worth to be Adept, it is a handicap that players can choose to put on their character (probably an oversight from the ArenaNet balance team).

In PvE is different and useful, so I’d not ask to remove it nor to move it. They just need to balance it. I propose 1 target increase in WvW, and the removal of the 100% cooldown increase in PvP and WvW.

I would even accept the cooldown increase if they added a damage or condition increase. As in: 10% more damage from shades. Something. Anything.

Scourge players will try hard for some time yet but core and Reaper will take this place.

Anyway, at least Sand Savant was not destroyed in PvE like Vampyric Rituals. There was no excuse for that. The WvW balance team should have simply disabled VR in WvW but it was too tempting to overwrite a trait that had been used since 2012. That was a huge loss of personal and party support in all game modes with little value in return.

I think there is no WvW balance team at all or they never played necro or WvW at all. Grandmaster trait and you can hit 2 people with it. How ridiculous.

One thing that annnoys me is that multiple shades cannot hit more than 1 target. So even if you manage to land 3 shades under a target, still only one shade will hit them. So while the Sand Savant 2 target cap is useless in wvw, playing multiple shades is only useful when you face a zerg and then you hope that your 2 or 3 landed shades will manage to hit 6 different targets.

On the other hand if you have one target ahead of you, small shades are useless, unless someone thinks you can catch a moving target with them. Only chance you have is to wait for him to come close to you, and maybe Sand Savant becomes usefull so that you have a bigger range around you. And all of this to remove 1 boon and do some 1,5k dmg... truly dangerous elite skills!

And forget the offensive, even defensively it would be cool if you could drop 2 shades on your feet and have a bigger personal barrier cleansing. It would make the small shades even more interesting to play.

In general the whole thing is just a joke. I still enjoy playing scourge in zerg fights and try to hit as many targets as possible with shades but we will all probably reroll to Reapers sooner or later. Boon strip is similar and damage is the highest of all other classes.

@misterman.1530 said:So...the Scourge's Sand Savant, as a Grandmaster trait, hits the same number of targets as the smaller, non-traited shades? And has a longer recharge time? Other than the larger area (a whopping 120 radius), can someone explain why you would take this trait at all? Is it simply for the ever so slightly larger area?

It will also give you max DR from Blood as Sand (9%) and max Concentration + Expertise from Sand Sage (+135 each).

That's it.

Like someone in a discord said. Sand Savant is an intelligence check. If you take it you're dumb, if you don't you're just playing a gutted elite spec.

Sand Savant has Increased targets: 5, this is what allows you to apply barrier to 10 allies in raids/strikes when using Desert Empowerment (5 targets default). Without it you only target 5

@YtseJam.9784 said:Sand Savant has Increased targets: 5, this is what allows you to apply barrier to 10 allies in raids/strikes when using Desert Empowerment (5 targets default). Without it you only target 5

In WvW Sand Savant only hits 2 targets. I assume they wanted to turn Scourge into a barrier bot since Desert Empowerment is the only trait that still applies to 5 targets in WvW or they simply forgot about it. Every other Shade related thing only applies to 2 targets.

Did anyone really believe this was going to fly? I ll wait to see if anyone will use support Scourges in WvW.

It's a major fail from ANet, to make the GM trait do literally nothing...

Like, sure, I get why they wanted to tone back Shades ability to hit multiple targets, but they dun goofed with the change to Sand Savant.

It should get its hit cap increased to at least 5. So that it has an actual reason to be used over literally not even picking a trait on the tier...

I don't think a 5 target cap will cause Scourge to be as oppressive as it was before the target cap nerfs, where they could hit like 15 targets (10 from Sand Savant plus 5 from self cast), but it would provide it something over default Shades (Which have a 2 target cap each, meaning that having all 3 shades out = 6 targets can be hit)

Like, literally the only benefit Sand Savant has over base Shades in WvW right now, is having an easier time maintaining maximum stacks of the Minor traits (The 45 Conc/Expertise x3 and 3% damage reduction x3) and the larger AoE...

Yeah, this change atleast for WvW makes that trait totally useless, the only thing is that Anet wanted to nerf it for now and then rework it in the next balance patch, I think they did this with Mesmer some time ago except totally disable it from working in PvP? can't remember what trait it was though.

Thats another class bias anet so seems to love. Its completly fine for random guardian skills to apply 10+ boons in total across several allies, all with 0 risk or skill involved. But if a damage spell from scourge - god beware - corrupts 5 boons and that only with proper placement its way to strong. Its completly fine for a rev to deal more reliable damage on a criminally low cooldown with CoR than an entire scourge rotation could ever do - yet scourge gets nerfed. Its completly fine for 3 eles to completely destroy a zerg with fire staff 5 - a single coordinated skill, but if 10+ scourges do the same thing with a setup time, a much lower range and radius, and a quarter of the damage it needs to get nerfed. God bless the day the devs will actually start playing and properly balancing this game.

@Brujeria.7536 said:Thats another class bias anet so seems to love. Its completly fine for random guardian skills to apply 10+ boons in total across several allies, all with 0 risk or skill involved. But if a damage spell from scourge - god beware - corrupts 5 boons and that only with proper placement its way to strong. Its completly fine for a rev to deal more reliable damage on a criminally low cooldown with CoR than an entire scourge rotation could ever do - yet scourge gets nerfed. Its completly fine for 3 eles to completely destroy a zerg with fire staff 5 - a single coordinated skill, but if 10+ scourges do the same thing with a setup time, a much lower range and radius, and a quarter of the damage it needs to get nerfed. God bless the day the devs will actually start playing and properly balancing this game.

This statement is completely false lol, Well of Darkness does more than double the damage of Meteor Shower, Pulses Blind and Chil, isn't RNG and Doesn't req standing still for 3.75 seconds.

CoR is Fair imo doesn't really need any changes, Jalis on the other hand, is another topic

as for everything else, Scourge wasn't meant to do big deeps, its a hybrid/support spec.. that gives barrier to allies, area denial with shades (they are still good) and massive damage and corrupts with wells and Weapon skills.

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:This statement is completely false lol, Well of Darkness does more than double the damage of Meteor Shower, Pulses Blind and Chil, isn't RNG and Doesn't req standing still for 3.75 seconds.

Why you think well of darkness deals more than double the damage of meteor shower?According to the wiki, meteor shower will hit in total with a power coefficient of 9,24 minimum.Well of darkness will hit over the entire duration with a coefficient of 4,3.

As long as both are casting their skills into a zerg, meteor shower will deal more damage than well of darkness.It is the other way around, meteor shower will hit for double the damage of well of darkness.

The target cap of Sand Savant in WvW should be at least 3 targets..

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:This statement is completely false lol, Well of Darkness does more than double the damage of Meteor Shower, Pulses Blind and Chil, isn't RNG and Doesn't req standing still for 3.75 seconds.

@Hannelore.8153 said:The target cap of Sand Savant in WvW should be at least 3 targets..

Would you believe me if I were to say that some players argued that Sand savant should hit a single foe and support 5 allies? That was before they removed the self shade.

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:This statement is completely false lol, Well of Darkness does more than double the damage of Meteor Shower, Pulses Blind and Chil, isn't RNG and Doesn't req standing still for 3.75 seconds.

Both skills are very different in nature, I'm not sure it's worth both your time to argue about which one is the best.

• Meteor shower: large radius (360), 24 impacts, each impact hitting up to 3 foes on a 180 radius, channeled skill (or at least semi-channeled). It's a weapon skill.
• Well of darkness: "standard" radius (240), 6 pulses hitting up to 5 foes. Utility skill.

Those skills have absolutely nothing in common, there is little to no value in comparing them. One is extemly valuable against large foe that don't move much while the other is just another standard aoe (albeit overloaded with effects, but overloading skills is ANet's favourite balance answer to uselessness).

Edit: if you really want to compare well of darkness to an elementalist skill, compare it to glyph of storm.

Overall, I think Necro will still be an integral part of zergs. Core, Reaper, and Scourge can still place multiple, large AoE to put an enemy blob or defenders into combat and start the battle between condi-pressure and cleansing when it hits the boon-ball.

Yes, I expect more nerfing in the future to core Necro.

NecromancerManifest Sand Shade: Increased ammo recharge time from 8 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.Signet of the Locust: Reduced base healing per target struck from 1,500 to 500 in PvP and WvW.Desert Empowerment: Reduced base barrier from 1,207 to 966 in PvP only.

So they nerfed Manifest Sand shade, but haven't touched Sand Savant in this latest patch. gg.

@CrimsonNeonite.1048 said:

So they nerfed Manifest Sand shade, but haven't touched Sand Savant in this latest patch. gg.

They broke Sand Savant on purpose, I would be very surprised to see them fix it anytime soon. I don't think they know exactly what they want to do with that trait. It seems pretty clear they are slowly killing off the shades mechanic, which I always looked at as just more wells, sure they have a different animation and you can control when the go off, but in the end, its just another circle to avoid.

If you think about it, they probably did this to indirectly increase Sand savant's value in sPvP/WvW by decreasing the minor trait's synergy/value for the other 2 GM traits since the CD increase it make it harder to maintain the little shades. It's rule #2 in GW2's balancing: "Don't touch broken things, try to tweak number around them, maybe it will fix them". (Rule #1 is: "Always leave a broken tooltip for the next patch note")