Scourge, the Guildwars equivelant to Bastion

I assume a lot of you are familiar with the game Overwatch. Particularly, a hero called Bastion. But for you that aren't familiar with him, Ill give a brief introduction.Bastion is a slow-moving (almost stationary) turret that deals an incredible amount of damage if he's left alone. He can literally burn through entire teams in a matter of seconds if left un-checked.This made Bastion into a polarized character that forced 11 (9 in Guildwars) to play around this 1 Hero. The enemy teams full focus was to either avoid Bastion or kill him as soon as possible, while the enemy team had to protect their Bastion or play 5v6.

This translates pretty perfectly into gw2 and more specifically, Scourge.

Blizzard made changes to Bastion because forcing everyone to play around your pick wasn't fun and interactive for the majority of the players. I feel Guildwars is in the same boat right now.

Enemy team has a Scourge + Firebrand while your team doesn't? Well, back luck. Guess you're avoiding teamfights for the next 12 minutes. Your team has 2 Scourges + FB vs the enemies 1 Scourge? Fantastic, try getting as many teamfights as humanly possible.

This forces Everyone that's not playing Scourge to completely alter their playstyles because of 1 player. That is not healthy for the game.

This is more of a wish than anything that is actually likely to happen. Give Scourges an alternative playstyle, or give them actual ramp-up or downtime on their condi applications.

Example one: For each second you stand in a Scourge shade you get 1 stack of "SCOURGE SICKNESS" upon reaching 3 stacks of "SCOURGE SICKNESS" you are inflicted with 3 stacks of burning, 5 stacks of bleeding, 2 stacks of poison yata yata, you get it. Have the ticks ramp up with a reset timer of 10 seconds from leaving the shade until the stacks go away.

Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

Lovely, lovely carcinogens. I still think, though, that the boon corrupt is the real issue. I don't mind them doing a lot of damage via bleeding, torment, and burning (hell, it's certainly a welcome change for necro players in PvE); I do, however, mind them doing that while completely negating stability and giving you four cover conditions for good measure. Make it boon rip or even boon steal.

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

I think they wanted to not make a full support build and gave it some form of damage. Problem is: They gave Scourge way too much damage. I wouldn't mind it being able to put some light pressure, but when a Scourge look funny at me and I get 10+ stacks of torments along with 6 other conditions, somenthing is not right... Taking the Overwatch comparision the OP made: letting a support to do this kind of damage is like giving Mercy's gun Tracer's Damage.

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

I don't mind since, as implemented, it sucks at support (plus, necros needed damage to be relevant in PvE). The problem is the ridiculous number of cover conditions.

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

They gave it little to no support. The only useful support scourge does is the f2 condi clear, which is meaningless if the opposing team is primarily running power, and is inadequate if the opposing team is primarily running condi. ArenaNet enormously overvalues barrier as a defensive mechanic. Being able to share a 3k barrier means nothing when most meta builds can autoattack for that much damage.

Also the boonrip aspect of scourge makes no sense, they just added boonrips to utility skills that otherwise having nothing to with boonhate. Like why does Sand Swell and Sand Flare even boonrip? You'd never cast those skills for the boonrip aspect, so it's just random collateral boonrip. I honestly don't even understand why scourge has boonrip - we have plenty already from core skills - it's like they put boonrip on scourge because they can't envision anything for the class other than more boonrip.

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

Well, Quaggan thinks there should be one dmg trait line for PvE (mid trait line?), which should be nerfed into oblivion in PvP (separated), and two support traitlines. In Quaggan dreams Abrasive Grit wouldn't give might to allies, but weakness to enemies, so it could be used against power builds; Desert Empowerment should have better scalling with Healing Power and could give Protection. Boon corruption line (3rd trait line) should focus on transfering boons from foes to allies. So, instead of dealing loads of damage Scrouge could actualy support his team with Barriers and boons, while still controling enemy boons.

@Morwath.9817 said:

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

Scourge is already applying weakness to enemies via boon corruptions from scepter and F2. Also Abrasive Grit is the closest thing necro has to offensive support, and I see no reason for that to be changed.

What should happen is Boonrip should be removed from all punishment skills except for Serpent and Ghastly Breach, and Scourge's barriers should be given dramatically higher Healing power scaling than the currently do.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Morwath.9817 said:

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

Ooo...but Quaggan doesn't think every Necro build should be focused on Scepter and Staff (Terrormancer - Scepter/Staff, ChillReaper - Scepter/Staff, Scrouge - Scepter/Staff)... Wouldn't it be nice for a change, to play without condi "spam" and see some other weapons used, like dagger for self sustain (could get little buff imho). Also, Quaggan would rather steal might away from enemies and give it to allies rather than corrupt it, like he used to do with each old build. That would be a nice change of gameplay.

The problem with necromancer as a whole has always been boon corrupt spam and unblockable ability spam, both in some cases, this ramped the issue to hell

@Rezzet.3614 said:The problem with necromancer as a whole has always been boon corrupt spam and unblockable ability spam, both in some cases, this ramped the issue to hell

Except it hasn't? The whole "boon corrupt spam" didn't happen until the January 2016 patch dumped boon corrupts on every necro weapon. Before that boon corruption was very limited on necro and was something that had to be specifically built for. Also idk why you are bringing unblockables into this. Scourge doesn't have any unblockable skills other than what necro already has from core.

@Morwath.9817 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Morwath.9817 said:

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Scourge never should have been a offensive spec, it should have been a support spec like it was originally billed as. Sand Shades as a support mechanic create engaging gameplay. Sand Shades as a offensive mechanic creates cancer.

Boonshare built on sharing corrupted boons is by it's very nature, subpar to traditional boonshare, since it's unreliable, not to mention boonsteal is worthless outside of PvP because PvE mobs don't have boons. Which is another reason why Scourge should lose the boon converts on punishment skills as it's just a balance nightmare trying to keep scourge viable in PvE where it doesn't get free torment from boon converts without making it OP in PvP where scourge does get free torment from boon converts.

OP's description of Bastion is wrong.

Bastion's original problem was that he could completely lock down one or two paths, but was exceptionally easy to flank. This made him frustrating for average, uncoordinated players, but a joke to better players. It had nothing to do with teams forming to support or counter him.

If you wanted to use an OW analogy, you would've been better off with the tank meta from several seasons ago.

Scourge is mechanically flawed for PVP. I sure hope when they finally get to nerfing their damage to a reasonable level, they give them some nice support options.

Scourges are more like Pharmacy (Phara + Mercy).

Really strong against average players, require lots of coordination to bring down, forces the enemy to build around what you're doing, and really only countered by high skill cap options outplaying them (in the case of OW, the hitscan heroes like Widow and McCree).

@Rezzet.3614 said:The problem with necromancer as a whole has always been boon corrupt spam and unblockable ability spam, both in some cases, this ramped the issue to hell

Didn't this all start because of the sheer amount of boons a single class can output, so that needed a counter through boon corrupt...but now we have this?