I've been trying to write a few new discussions for the past couple of days but I've been at a blank since I tend to go off in a million directions. So I'm going to focus on something about the necromancer I feel needs the least amount of work. I'll try to get around to Reaper and core necromancer though the tweaks they need are far greater than the scourge. My focus for this will be PvE since I've already stated what I feel about PvP and how to improve that, so without further delay, lets begin.

Support

To start us off the support of the scourge is actually pretty good, but its really missing a bit of something to really push it to something that the party wants. And I feel it should have some uniqueness to its uses beyond just the barrier. So lets see just how the support could be improved.

• Serpent Siphon: Of the new utility skills this one is probably one of out weakest. However I feel that we could improve it to be more in line with a supportive skill. So to improve it I'd mae it so the serpents would also pass through allies granting barrier as well as the barrier pick ups. Alternatively we could change it to an aoe skill that grants barrier to allies and strikes foes, poisoning them and dropping barrier pick ups as a bonus. What this skill needs is consistency which at the moment it lacks. As such it is strictly worse than Corrosive poison cloud and this should play more heavily into the barrier support build.
• Dessicate: Now i'm no English major.. But I think this skill might be spelled wrong.. Desiccate seems to be the correct spelling unless its a different word that I can't find. But its meaning is to dehydrate or dry out. Which sounds like a necro thing. But I don't think the skill actually does something like that.. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. The Major change I'd like to see here is to have its cast time dropped by half. It takes a while to cast and it should be good on a might stacking build it just feels a bit too slow to use. Its radius on providing might is also quite low. Increasing this could go a long way in helping its use.
• Sand Swell: This skill has a few pathing issues which makes it a bit difficult to use. On platforms I could normally jump up to with blink or shadow step with I have trouble finding a way to do this with sand swell. I like doing those tricks to get up to higher platforms I'd have to spend an extra minute of time walking up to and i'd be nice if this wasn't so restrictive in this regard. This would see more use in things like the Underground facility fractal where getting up to the oils quickly can be extremely helpful to your group's DPS. Other applications exist too, but if this was improved it would mean that if you become the target an ally could take the portal while you go off and lure the boss. Another improvement I'd like to see is have it apply its barrier as soon as an ally walks across the portal but doesn't have to enter it to gain it. This could help in its application so even if an ally is ignoring it or doesn't realize what it does they can gain the benefits from it. Helping to bridge the gap between experienced players and new players.
• Ghastly Breach: Although most people will tell you that they want this to have improved damage, I honestly don't think it needs it. However, I do feel it could use some improvement to compete with Plaguelands in a different way. Already, this skill grants might and has a shorter cool down. However I think its cool down should be dropped even further than it is now. Perhaps down from 75 seconds to 50 seconds. Traited this would be 40 seconds which Plaguelands would still far out damage it while traiteded. But our focus is on the support aspect of this trait so its DPS will remain the same. However I feel its Might duration should be improved. The stacks it gives are great and it should also provide fury. I don't think it'll become meta in something like raids even with this change, however in fractals this could see quite a bit of use or while roaming with friends.
• Oppressive collapse: Much like Dessicate this skill doesn't need much. Its radius for the might gain should be improved though. I don't feel its knock down range needs to be improved but one of the major weaknesses of might gen necros is just how short their radius is.
• Desert empowerment: This might not be the correct place to put this, however its something that people have been requesting for, in one form or another. Add the function to this trait that stats "Allies steal life while under the influence of barrier you apply. Life steal scales exclusively off of healing power". I've been an advocate for life stealing scaling exclusively off of healing power for a while now and this could help to push a scourge support a bit more. We give our allies a damage boost while helping to heal up some of the damage they have taken. I don't feel it needs to be super high. Although it should be a noticeable increase. Something around 150-200 health at max healing power. It would also be nice if this was impacted by something like monk runes to further increase its DPS and healing. This unique buff could be what we need to really push a healer scourge into the lime light. Even with this it wouldn't replace a druid because the druid is just too good, however it could be a suitable substitute for it in some situations.

Damage

Damage is something that the Scourge should do rather well, however there is very little I can suggest on this end since most of their damage issues actually come from core necromancer. So i'll try to get into that in the future. Although i feel that damage shouldn't overlap too heavily with support, there will be overlap in some cases. This shouldn't discourage the devs from improving it though since in no way will it overlap perfectly and other professions do have high damage and support. With these suggestions though, the overlap will be very minor and will likely do nothing to put a scourge support over something like a revenant healer.

• Manifest Sand Shade: In terms of Torment, this should be our biggest source of damage coming from the shades. Yet, Dhuumfire is. Even with the nerf, Dhuumfire is still the biggest source of damage. And a lot of that has to do with how short the duration of torment on the shades is. I would almost say that its duration in PvE needs to be doubled. 2 seconds is extremely short considering the difficulty of application and maintaining these stacks. Crippling can stay the same since its still a good duration.
• Sadistic Searing: This trait already has some power behind it with the reduced recharge. However its active effect is pretty mediocre. The burning is nice but the charges on the shades can often be a bit too valuable to give up while using this. A minor change to have this cause the next shade skill to inflict burning on foes could go along way. Weather that be manifest sand shade or nefarious favor.
• Desert shroud: Since this isn't supposed to proc your skill one each time the same change should occur with this. Increase the torment duration of this skill, most likely double which would improve its DPS. Since Anet seems hellbent on not letting Dhuumfire proc for each pulse than this change should might be needed. I'm not interested in making Demonic lore proc each time we strike with torment, although that could be an alternative to this, but that seems like it would become a stronger Dhuumfire. Personally, i'd be okay with either approach as the later does really split the support and DPS a bit more.

Overall the biggest changes are going to have to come from core necromancer. This is about as much of a buff I felt comfortable giving the scourge without it being overwhelming. Since some of the gaps in its support and DPS are things I want improved at the core as well. And in combination with both I could have just loaded this to the brim with heavy buffs, but this would mean that Necromancer would be relying on scourge a bit too much. WIth this, I hope this sounds good for everyone. Later on I'll take a look at reaper and core necromancer to really dive into a few areas those could be improved.

• Desert shroud: Since this isn't supposed to proc your skill one each time the same change should occur with this. Increase the torment duration of this skill, most likely double which would improve its DPS. Since Anet seems hellbent on not letting Dhuumfire proc for each pulse than this change should might be needed. I'm not interested in making Demonic lore proc each time we strike with torment, although that could be an alternative to this, but that seems like it would become a stronger Dhuumfire. Personally, i'd be okay with either approach as the later does really split the support and DPS a bit more.

The latter is what i want to happen too. Torment stacks are well and fine but a lot of times in PvE bosses don't move much.

@Aravind.9610 said:

• Desert shroud:
  Since this isn't supposed to proc your skill one each time the same change should occur with this. Increase the torment duration of this skill, most likely double which would improve its DPS. Since Anet seems hellbent on not letting Dhuumfire proc for each pulse than this change should might be needed. I'm not interested in making Demonic lore proc each time we strike with torment, although that could be an alternative to this, but that seems like it would become a stronger Dhuumfire. Personally, i'd be okay with either approach as the later does really split the support and DPS a bit more.

Either is fine for me. Torment is still stronger than bleeding in PvE thanks to its buff not to long ago. Now its DPS while not moving is the same as bleeding, same with confusion. Plus that 25% boost from demonic lore. So either way, I'd be happy.

I definitely agree with increasing torment duration. I did not realize how much I relied on burn damage before I was faced with destroyers. I do believe they should make the bugged shades baseline in PvE. It felt nice to be top dps for once....but that's not gonna happen. They said they will increase our dps from its current state but not to reach it's previous state since we're a support class. Honestly this pisses me off as other classes deal out great support and do very respectable damage (Warrior/Guardian/Tempest). And I do definitely agree making Demonic Lore proc on every Torment application, now that we have been "fixed" (fixed more like you would fix a dog).

The problem is, while the support Scourge provides is indeed handy and can extend a group's survivability, it is not wanted. Or rather, not wanted in raids. We were just getting used to being viable in raids with our high dps but now we're subpar again. And any support we bring is useless to a raid. A group is not gonna waste another dps spot on a support necro. A necro will never replace chrono/druid/cPS war because the support we have does not reach anywhere near the holy trinity. Support is not just about damage mitigation, it's also about party damage increase. Yes we can dish out a lot of might but cPS war can do that while providing other buffs AND deal very good damage. This is also why druid is far more favourable than healing tempest; both can heal a party fantastically well but druid can also increase party damage through unique buffs like Grace of the Land, Spotter and Sun Spirit (to name a few).

I think the devs should scrap this idea that Scourge is a support class. At best it should be the dps class it was before the bug fix that can mitigate damage. See this way, this is an extra boon we would bring as a dps class; dealing great damage while also taking some of the pressure off the group with barriers (a pure viper scourge dps build is not going to have very good might generation). I hope the damage increase the dev's promised us would put condi scourge in the 35k zone, and I also hope they do something about barrier degen if they really wanna focus on our support. I mean, imagine splitting barriers from PvP and WvW and having them not decay at all in PvE....now that's good support as a group's healer is insanely more relieved to do something else/keep up with the healing/use only one healer. But even with that we still need to bring great damage in order to earn our place in raiding.

I know this was mostly about raiding, which is funny because I do not raid but I hate the fact that there is a game mode where necros are looked down upon. I do not know how people are saying that necros aren't welcomed in T4 Fractals, however, because I have never encountered such an attitude and actually we still do very good damage for fracs.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Aravind.9610 said:

• Desert shroud:
  Since this isn't supposed to proc your skill one each time the same change should occur with this. Increase the torment duration of this skill, most likely double which would improve its DPS. Since Anet seems hellbent on not letting Dhuumfire proc for each pulse than this change should might be needed. I'm not interested in making Demonic lore proc each time we strike with torment, although that could be an alternative to this, but that seems like it would become a stronger Dhuumfire. Personally, i'd be okay with either approach as the later does really split the support and DPS a bit more.

I think you mean 33% not 25%? But still if they increase torment duration instead of reducing ICD on demonic lore then once again people will complain about Sand Savant being too OP. By reducing cooldown on demonic lore we can separate support and dps builds.

Also note that torment and confusion were buffed for all classes in PvE. As such other classes can still out dps us without our burn stacks leaving no reason once again to take necros.

@Aravind.9610 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Aravind.9610 said:

• Desert shroud:
  Since this isn't supposed to proc your skill one each time the same change should occur with this. Increase the torment duration of this skill, most likely double which would improve its DPS. Since Anet seems hellbent on not letting Dhuumfire proc for each pulse than this change should might be needed. I'm not interested in making Demonic lore proc each time we strike with torment, although that could be an alternative to this, but that seems like it would become a stronger Dhuumfire. Personally, i'd be okay with either approach as the later does really split the support and DPS a bit more.

You are correct. I got confused with most other condition damage boosts.

I'm going to disagree with you here Lily. Simply put what should define scourge support or scourge damage is our choice of traits in the scourge traitline. It's not that I would be against changes on the utility skills but I think our traits need to be more impactfull so that we can clearly say:

• "Here I traited for support! Guys don't expect huge dps from me but be sure that you'll be super resilient when I'm around!"or
• "Alright! I traited full dps don't expect huge support from me but be sure that I won't be left behind on the dps meter!"

As for the support changes themself, I'd:

• switch the condition conversion and condition removal between nefarious favor and abrasing gift. Yes it's a slight nerf to scourge overall but it make the trait more valuable.
• reduce the barrier value on F3 and improve the barrier value on desert empowerement. Again a slight nerf on base scourge but a buff on scourges that trait for support.
• make it so sand savant also grant to allies in range 1/3rd of the bonus given to you from your minor traits.

Damage changes would be like:

• Sadistic searing directly add burn on hit to punishement skills.
• demonic lore also let your manifest sand shade apply 1 extra stack of torment.

That done with the unavoidable delay on shroud skills triggering manifest sand shade, the scourge should end up in a pretty balanced shape where you have to chose whether you want to support your allies or deal damage (or take advantage of your ability to corrupt boons).

NB.: all other "power" boost should come from core necro.

@Dadnir.5038 said:I'm going to disagree with you here Lily. Simply put what should define scourge support or scourge damage is our choice of traits in the scourge traitline. It's not that I would be against changes on the utility skills but I think our traits need to be more impactfull so that we can clearly say:

• "Here I traited for support! Guys don't expect huge dps from me but be sure that you'll be super resilient when I'm around!"or
• "Alright! I traited full dps don't expect huge support from me but be sure that I won't be left behind on the dps meter!"

As for the support changes themself, I'd:

• switch the condition conversion and condition removal between nefarious favor and abrasing gift. Yes it's a slight nerf to scourge overall but it make the trait more valuable.
• reduce the barrier value on F3 and improve the barrier value on desert empowerement. Again a slight nerf on base scourge but a buff on scourges that trait for support.
• make it so sand savant also grant to allies in range 1/3rd of the bonus given to you from your minor traits.

Damage changes would be like:

• Sadistic searing directly add burn on hit to punishement skills.
• demonic lore also let your manifest sand shade apply 1 extra stack of torment.

That done with the unavoidable delay on shroud skills triggering manifest sand shade, the scourge should end up in a pretty balanced shape where you have to chose whether you want to support your allies or deal damage (or take advantage of your ability to corrupt boons).

The way you describe this sounds like a direct nerf to everything. Doesn't sound like a buff at all.

I nerf the base (shroud skills) but buff the traits. It's a necessary thing, I'm just relocating the power of the scourge into it's traits instead of in the easily accessible F skill.

@Dadnir.5038 said:I nerf the base (shroud skills) but buff the traits. It's a necessary thing, I'm just relocating the power of the scourge into it's traits instead of in the easily accessible F skill.

Your trait change only really affects support builds(and not very good changes there either) not dps. Who cares about an extra stack of torment on F1? And also the change to Sadistic Searing you proposed means we would have to fill utility slots with punishment skills in order to be effective especially when most of them are meh compared to skills like "Blood is Power" or "Epidemic" (in PvE at least).

@Aravind.9610 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:I nerf the base (shroud skills) but buff the traits. It's a necessary thing, I'm just relocating the power of the scourge into it's traits instead of in the easily accessible F skill.

But, unless you are not aware, you need to use a punishement skill to gain the buff that trigger a burn on shroud skill use at the moment... In fact what I suggest buff all the punishement skills that were used on the scourge build and make the elite worthwhile even if there is no boon to corrupt. As for the extra torment on manifest sand shade something that trigger each time you use a shroud skill, you are free to disdain it but it's still a substancial increase in dps.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Aravind.9610 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:I nerf the base (shroud skills) but buff the traits. It's a necessary thing, I'm just relocating the power of the scourge into it's traits instead of in the easily accessible F skill.

I'd much rather have the burning on Torment application and the change would make punishment skills worse not better because it would mean that their reach would be limited by the change. So if you're in basically melee, its fine, but at range you lose all that DPS.

Maybe u should have a Title labled Defence aswell, since you have damage and support. Barrier is Scourge defence aswell as Support, and imho its clearly lacking in that department.

When it comes to support Scourge I'd settle for any kind of interaction between the traits and barrier (more than just might & condi removal). The life stealing idea sounds interesting and fits rather well. Something else that could also be interesting would be a trait that makes our barrier decay slower and heal for a % of the amount of barrier a person has left whilst it decays. I'm sure some people are going to disagree but I whole heartily believe that for scourge to be a true 'Support' it needs some kind of access to reliable heals outside of Transfusion, though not the amounts druid have since we also have barrier which should also be the source of healing through traits.

I'd settle for 'Outgoing Healing %' affecting barrier because from my tests it doesn't which means the 6th bonus from something like Monk runes are wasted on our main 'niche'. Druid has such interesting trait interactions outside of even Grace of the Land for example Verdant Etching allowing your Glyphs to cast Lesser Seeds of Life not only increasing your HPS but then also playing off from the Grace of the Land trait. Whilst we have some condi removal and might.. which isn't bad but isn't great.

But sadly scourge isn't the only problem, like it's already been mentioned Base Necro is a mess and needs a serious look at from the ground up and not some pointless Axe buffs.

Problem is that barrier is a flat out inferior version of healing. It will never be desirable support unless Scourge provides a unique group buff.

Barriers are essentially really short lived borrowed health that requires taking damage. Healing permanently recovers previous damage and doesn't require that the target receive damage at the moment healing is activated.

What's more, the values for barrier are clearly balanced for the pitiful PvP. A 4k barrier is a single mob autoattack on T4 fractals, it's virtually worthless. It won't save you on eating a ball on fractal or raid challenge motes, and it won't help you recover from pressure like real healing does.

The other problem is that the multiple shades are now obsolete as in PvE the area coverage is meaningless/ They should have left the multiple strikes in in PvE to give having multiple sand shades out meaning.

Now they might as well make sand savant baseline and balance around the assumption that the single shade is being used in PvE.

@Autumn.8043 said:When it comes to support Scourge I'd settle for any kind of interaction between the traits and barrier (more than just might & condi removal). The life stealing idea sounds interesting and fits rather well. Something else that could also be interesting would be a trait that makes our barrier decay slower and heal for a % of the amount of barrier a person has left whilst it decays. I'm sure some people are going to disagree but I whole heartily believe that for scourge to be a true 'Support' it needs some kind of access to reliable heals outside of Transfusion, though not the amounts druid have since we also have barrier which should also be the source of healing through traits.

I'd settle for 'Outgoing Healing %' affecting barrier because from my tests it doesn't which means the 6th bonus from something like Monk runes are wasted on our main 'niche'. Druid has such interesting trait interactions outside of even Grace of the Land for example Verdant Etching allowing your Glyphs to cast Lesser Seeds of Life not only increasing your HPS but then also playing off from the Grace of the Land trait. Whilst we have some condi removal and might.. which isn't bad but isn't great.

But sadly scourge isn't the only problem, like it's already been mentioned Base Necro is a mess and needs a serious look at from the ground up and not some pointless Axe buffs.

In terms of raw "Healing" I'll be focusing on that for blood magic. Since scourge isn't really about raw healing but protection, I want to make sure that blood magic has its place in a support build. So I don't feel our healing needs to be that high since protection monks in GW1 healing honestly wasn't that high either. And gaining healing from barrier from its decay actually isn't a good idea. Barrier is supposed to be proactive support not reactive defense. Which healing is reactive and that would just make it a bit too good in that department. The decay rate is another thing that is perfect as it is. Although i realize that this stance is an unpopular one.

@Zenith.7301 said:Problem is that barrier is a flat out inferior version of healing. It will never be desirable support unless Scourge provides a unique group buff.

Barriers are essentially really short lived borrowed health that requires taking damage. Healing permanently recovers previous damage and doesn't require that the target receive damage at the moment healing is activated.

What's more, the values for barrier are clearly balanced for the pitiful PvP. A 4k barrier is a single mob autoattack on T4 fractals, it's virtually worthless. It won't save you on eating a ball on fractal or raid challenge motes, and it won't help you recover from pressure like real healing does.

The other problem is that the multiple shades are now obsolete as in PvE the area coverage is meaningless/ They should have left the multiple strikes in in PvE to give having multiple sand shades out meaning.

Now they might as well make sand savant baseline and balance around the assumption that the single shade is being used in PvE.

Barrier can be really good when its used correctly. Although mentioning fractals, Agony shouldn't impact barrier as much or at all. That was something that was majorly disappointing since that is my game mode.

As for its strength? Barrier is quite strong, it has some pretty amazing benefits over raw healing, but it requires good knowledge of an encounter some times as well as good timing. But it can prevent allies from losing the benefit of scholar runes far better than healing can. I rather like the design of barrier. Though I know my feelings on it are not entirely popular with the rest of the community. I personally feel its powerful, even in PvE. It just needs to be more consistent in its application and if that happens people will start to see just how good it is.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Problem is that barrier is a flat out inferior version of healing. It will never be desirable support unless Scourge provides a unique group buff.

Barriers are essentially really short lived borrowed health that requires taking damage. Healing permanently recovers previous damage and doesn't require that the target receive damage at the moment healing is activated.

What's more, the values for barrier are clearly balanced for the pitiful PvP. A 4k barrier is a single mob autoattack on T4 fractals, it's virtually worthless. It won't save you on eating a ball on fractal or raid challenge motes, and it won't help you recover from pressure like real healing does.

The other problem is that the multiple shades are now obsolete as in PvE the area coverage is meaningless/ They should have left the multiple strikes in in PvE to give having multiple sand shades out meaning.

Now they might as well make sand savant baseline and balance around the assumption that the single shade is being used in PvE.

A regen druid can make chip damage never make allies fall below 90% health, and anything that would overwhelm that regen would overwhelm barriers as well.

For big hits, the guardian grants aegis and the crhono distortion, and most importantly that's what dodges are for.

Nobody will bring a scourge over a druid or heal ele for barriers.

And since you already have staff weavers -- the most fragile class in the game--- doing fine in 100 challenge mote with only a viper druid doing minimal healing, scourge barriers aren't even desired if it means a cost in DPS.

Scourge was only good prior to the nerfs because it offered supplemental buffers while having strong DPS.

Now it has abysmal DPS and even if it were bumped to say 33-34k DPS, it'd still be trash because necro condi ramp up time is almost as bad as mesmer (the other worst condi PvE spec in the game), so necromancer offers zero burst whatsoever unlike a Firebrand or condi ele or any burning based class, and its output is heavily reliant on stationary shades with a pitiful radius.

Scourge needed that 38k benchmark DPS to be competitive in real PvE scenarios with moving opponents.

Virtually none of the "bug fixes" were necessary in PvE. They should have kept those changes for pvp only.

But as usual, PvP balance completely ruins PvE builds as collateral in this game, because that's what these developers truly bother to balance around.

Barrier as a mechanic is fine and well balanced. Barrier as the primary mechanic, i.e. Sand Cascade is not fine, as it is too weak. If like to see more barriers offered as biproduct effects, rather than simple fire and forget skills. In combat there's no reason not to constantly pop your barrier skills, since it essentially is a poor man's healing, and we don't need secondary sustain mechanics like that.

If much prefer if barrier we rewarded based on a response situation; gain barrier when corrupting a boon, or gain barrier when meeting a might threshold. That way we improve in sustain actively for accomplishing this in combat rather than just have it as cooldown management

My 2c:

Serpent Siphon isn't just weak - it looks weak. Use it on a single enemy and.. a little snakey wriggles towards them. It doesn't look menacing or dangerous. It looks ..kind of feeble. At the very least, it should send a couple of snakes to each enemy, with maybe a cap of 10 snakes.

Oppressive Collapse - I'd like this one to not have to lock on to an enemy, but rather be ground based. An increased radius wouldn't hurt.

How much of a DPS boost would it be if in PVE only they reduced the cool down on Demonic Lore's to 2 secs (inflict burning when you inflict torment: cool down 3 secs) ?Given that there is about 9 ways a Scourge can apply torment in PVE before cool downs, it would only be a boost of about 3 to 4 more burning stacks applied in ur rotation.On that other trait that reduces cooldown of Torch skills, they could add a "burning damage is increased by 15%"Thus it would be boosting Condi Scourge but you have to take the Condi traits for it.Splitting the traits into seperate PVE & WVW versions.

While I do agree mostly with Lily regarding barrier, I do think that it should be a solid 2 seconds before Barrier starts to decay, and we also need stronger barriers (both base and scaling) in PvE. I would argue in PvP as well, but not WvW.

@"Ritualist Essence.9285" said:How much of a DPS boost would it be if in PVE only they reduced the cool down on Demonic Lore's to 2 secs (inflict burning when you inflict torment: cool down 3 secs) ?Given that there is about 9 ways a Scourge can apply torment in PVE before cool downs, it would only be a boost of about 3 to 4 more burning stacks applied in ur rotation.On that other trait that reduces cooldown of Torch skills, they could add a "burning damage is increased by 15%"Thus it would be boosting Condi Scourge but you have to take the Condi traits for it.Splitting the traits into seperate PVE & WVW versions.

Like I said. I wanted to put a few buffs in DPS on scourge but most of it I wanted to go on Core necromancer. The minor changes here should be fine as long as the core changes are significant. Core is going to need a lot of work. And I'd really like to see traits trigger off of life force spending which also means my suggestion for Utility in shroud but they use life force is likely to be a part of that suggestion.

Though I know my feelings on it are not entirely popular with the rest of the community. I personally feel its powerful, even in PvE. It just needs to be more consistent in its application and if that happens people will start to see just how good it is.

I think you'd be surprised. If Scourge had at least one other damage buff of equal power to what druid offers, then I feel that Scourge would be a serious consideration already. Pre-nerf, a support scourge had slightly better group protection than a druid, and could also add personal damage.

Post-nerf, our damage sadly went the way of the dodo, and we have no group buff, and THAT is why we will never be brought in anything but the fringe groups. Barrier itself is strong, and certainly has merit, it's just not enough. We could likely make a case for a support scourge if we had a bit more to offer for the group.

I feel that all "heal" specs should get some offensive buffs as well, weaker than druid, but some.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Problem is that barrier is a flat out inferior version of healing. It will never be desirable support unless Scourge provides a unique group buff.

Barriers are essentially really short lived borrowed health that requires taking damage. Healing permanently recovers previous damage and doesn't require that the target receive damage at the moment healing is activated.

What's more, the values for barrier are clearly balanced for the pitiful PvP. A 4k barrier is a single mob autoattack on T4 fractals, it's virtually worthless. It won't save you on eating a ball on fractal or raid challenge motes, and it won't help you recover from pressure like real healing does.

The other problem is that the multiple shades are now obsolete as in PvE the area coverage is meaningless/ They should have left the multiple strikes in in PvE to give having multiple sand shades out meaning.

Now they might as well make sand savant baseline and balance around the assumption that the single shade is being used in PvE.

What i realy don't understand is why agony reduces barrier, while poison doesn't. Either both should reduce barrier or none.