Get rid of Obstruction with shades, Scourge have earned that......

I've seen similar posts going on about what I'm about to say, I'm hoping with enough voices something might change.

Scourge was the best thing to happen to me for PvP; it was fun, it was awesome, and it was broken as hell when the spec first came out. Sure it was a blast to blow people to kingdom come and feel like a bad ass to the point that even you thought the spec was too over powered. This is why I expected the nerfs to come rolling in and was not surprised when they did, one after another, ranging from "bug fixes" to flat out nerfs. All the while I did not really care that much, did my over powered god like experience go away? Yes, but honestly you can be over powered for so long before you get bored. Mind you I do play other classes in PvP all of which have their pros and cons, however it seems that scourge in particular just keep getting beat down, still I did not mind that much.

This last patch just broke the entire feel of how the spec plays and I'm not even going to demand you take away the cast time on shade skills (though it really messed with how you play the class) I do understand the rational of giving players a chance to dodge shade abilities which then requires some lag time between an event that the other player can react to, I personally think having the half second cast on the shade itself is good enough but fine...that's the easy obvious solution and you went with it. (I'd think having a full second cast time on the shade itself would of been a fair compromise) Will the Scourge players of PvP learn to adjust, I'm guessing they will, but with all the beat downs can we change ONE major issue with Scourge plaguing it since the start of PoF???

Anet, can we please get rid of obstructed when using shade skills? Our low mobility, lack of escapes, and now near full second cast time to use the core features of this spec should then not demand you have perfect line of sight on your target on top of it to have it do anything.

It's intended. Necromancer theme is death and since the beginning of the game this class is pretty dead.

Don't have any hope buddy. Check this post year later. Nothing will change for us to have fun and be widely accepted.

@"hazethetiger.4806" said:I've seen similar posts going on about what I'm about to say, I'm hoping with enough voices something might change.

Scourge was the best thing to happen to me for PvP; it was fun, it was awesome, and it was broken as hell when the spec first came out (and it still is). Sure it was a blast to blow people to kingdom come (ruined months of pvp) and feel like a bad kitten to the point that even you thought the spec was too over powered (no one "thought" is was overpowered, it was and still is fact that it is gamebreaking overpowered). This is why I expected the nerfs to come rolling in and was not surprised when they did, one after another, ranging from "bug fixes" to flat out nerfs . All the while I did not really care that much, did my over powered god like experience go away? Yes, (what? i think you need some glasses , it never left) but honestly you can be over powered for so long before you get bored(The PvP farmer who plays the broken class of the month wont get bored of it , believe me). Mind you I do play other classes in PvP all of which have their pros and cons, however it seems that scourge in particular just keep getting beat down(needs more nerfs to be honest , you guys only got hit by the nerf feather), still I did not mind that much.

This last patch just broke the entire feel of how the spec plays and I'm not even going to demand you take away the cast time on shade skills (though it really messed with how you play the class) (ohh but "messing up" every other class by facerolling is ok?) im I do understand the rational of giving players a chance to dodge shade abilities which then requires some lag time between an event that the other player can react to( very strong low cd powerfull aoe spells with INSTANT cast time. WHAT COULD GO WRONG!?), I personally think having the half second cast on the shade itself is good enough but fine...that's the easy obvious solution and you went with it. (I'd think having a full second cast time on the shade itself would of been a fair compromise) Will the Scourge players of PvP learn to adjust(99% of scourge player just played it because is was broken , they will "adjust" by playing the next mosr broken class), I'm guessing they will, but with all the beat downs can we change ONE major issue with Scourge plaguing it since the start of PoF???

Anet, can we please get rid of obstructed when using shade skills? Our low mobility, lack of escapes, and now near full second cast time to use the core features of this spec( add LONG list of stuff scourge has thats (too) good) should then not demand you have perfect line of sight on your target on top of it to have it do anything.

The issue is that anet prefer to keep broken things in their game over admiting that they made a mistake.

Shades will most likely stay as they are with all their actual flaws and overpowered strengths because it would be way to much work to fix their design.

Anet just won't fix the obstructed issue because it's a safe way for them. It reduce the potency of a mechanism that they didn't get a clue how strong it would be. The fact is that if you don't take into account the manifest sand shade proc and core shroud traits, the original skill F2 to F4 would have been perfectly balanced. (I'm not statuing on F5)

The issue is there: the manifest sand shade proc. It's a necessary proc to make the numerous core traits relevant and at the same time it overload the shroud skills with so many effects that these skills end up breaking the game as a whole.

Thus, it leave anet with 2 choices:

• Leaving shades as they are and make some small changes once in a while, with the moto that when most profession don't complain about it then that mean it's balanced.
• Rework shades from the ground with a new way to express core traits throught it.

Anet's known strategy is to do the former while the later would obviously be better for the game as a whole but would need as much work as creating a new elite spec from the ground.

Scourge shades have long been a pain point in PvP and WvW with their rapid corruption and few tells for players to spot. In this update, we're introducing better tells for shade actions, reducing the more oppressive condition applications, and easing up on the punishing boon corruptions. On the other side of things, we improved the effects of Vampiric Presence to make it competitive with the auras of other professions.

That introducing from anet to nerf scourges said all about them.

WHILE Mesmers and thiefes one shotting you without any warning out of INVIS and didnt get nerfed, while necros are not allowed to have instant casts is a joke.A Balance patch where the patchnotes of YOUR class get introduced with a textblock that is send obvious to all other classes ( i have never seen that in 6 years before) Shows that anet dont Support that class anymore.

WHILE Warrior get AGAIN dmg buffs, the reaper that perform bad in comparison to warrior didnt get any buffs.

mesmers are completely overpowered, but anet didnt nerfed Mirage AND buffed chrono heavily...

-Heal of necromancers is worse... watch to mesmer (1000 heal frome each shatter, 2000 heal for each Mantra, 4500 heal every 12 seconds from heal skill -> necro only have 4500 maybe every 20-30 seconds in relation which healskill he used)-mobility is worse...every class has leaps and ports on weapon skills, didnt find any mobile skill on necro weapons)-buffs of necromancers are worse... while many other classes completely escalated in casting boons (perma fury,swiftness, reg, prot, stabi,retal., 25 might stacks and more... and necros have what? protection and might. that are all boons he can seriously cast...

anet said in the past everytime we asked for buffs in sustain , that shroud is already enough. than they tooked away shroud from scourge and added nothing...so they betrayed us.

anet said in the past, if there is a bug, they firstly will fix it and THAN Research a way to make a class balanced (because Bugs are Bugs and deserved to get fixed). but than they had obstructed bug and didnt fixed it to nerf him and lied to us that that was intended ( but why there was never a patch note that described that new functionality?).so they finally betrayed us again...

and now we have to wait 3 month until the next Balance patch Comes, were warrior and thiefes and mesmers get buffed, while scourge get nerfed and reaper stay in the terrible state he has.

@Dragoth.7153 said:It's intended. Necromancer theme is death and since the beginning of the game this class is pretty dead.

Don't have any hope buddy. Check this post year later. Nothing will change for us to have fun and be widely accepted.

This sounds like QQ, considering necros have pretty much always been meta since the birth of GW2.

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Dragoth.7153 said:It's intended. Necromancer theme is death and since the beginning of the game this class is pretty dead.

Don't have any hope buddy. Check this post year later. Nothing will change for us to have fun and be widely accepted.

You probably never played the game until HoT if you think like that.

• Core necromancer never got to be meta in PvE. It took core necro 6 month to become meta in WvW and core necromancer wasn't really a thing in PvP until HoT.
• Out of 2 year of HoT, reaper had very few moment where he was meta in PvE. In WvW, yes he was strong until PoF and in PvP well... it was more a rally bot than anything.
• Now, scourge dominated PvP and WvW since PoF launch but yet again, in PvE scourge didn't stay meta for more than a month.

The problem of the forum is that most of the time players that write here only look at their favourite gamemode, leading to argument where one consider it's view point from his gamemode while the other consider it from a totally different gamemode.

The fact is that on this subforum the PvE necromancer's community is incredibly frustrated by the fact that the necromancer have almost never been meta in PvE. So you are bound to see comment that does not reflect your experience if you are a PvP/WvW player. Yet those comment are justifyed. In fact, like Dragoth said, the necromancer have been a dead profession in PvE since launch, only usefull to tag mobs in open PvE while other do the killing.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

You probably never played the game until HoT if you think like that.

• Core necromancer never got to be meta in PvE. It took core necro 6 month to become meta in WvW and core necromancer wasn't really a thing in PvP until HoT.
• Out of 2 year of HoT, reaper had very few moment where he was meta in PvE. In WvW, yes he was strong until PoF and in PvP well... it was more a rally bot than anything.
• Now, scourge dominated PvP and WvW since PoF launch but yet again, in PvE scourge didn't stay meta for more than a month.

The problem of the forum is that most of the time players that write here only look at their favourite gamemode, leading to argument where one consider it's view point from his gamemode while the other consider it from a totally different gamemode.

The fact is that on this subforum the PvE necromancer's community is incredibly frustrated by the fact that the necromancer have almost never been meta in PvE. So you are bound to see comment that does not reflect your experience if you are a PvP/WvW player. Yet those comment are justifyed. In fact, like Dragoth said, the necromancer have been a dead profession in PvE since launch, only usefull to tag mobs in open PvE while other do the killing.

I always seen necros in pve content, and raids, due to epi. so yeah. Also, I've been playing this game since launch. -winkwink-

@Ghos.1326 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

You probably never played the game until HoT if you think like that.

• Core necromancer never got to be meta in PvE. It took core necro 6 month to become meta in WvW and core necromancer wasn't really a thing in PvP until HoT.
• Out of 2 year of HoT, reaper had very few moment where he was meta in PvE. In WvW, yes he was strong until PoF and in PvP well... it was more a rally bot than anything.
• Now, scourge dominated PvP and WvW since PoF launch but yet again, in PvE scourge didn't stay meta for more than a month.

The problem of the forum is that most of the time players that write here only look at their favourite gamemode, leading to argument where one consider it's view point from his gamemode while the other consider it from a totally different gamemode.

The fact is that on this subforum the PvE necromancer's community is incredibly frustrated by the fact that the necromancer have almost never been meta in PvE. So you are bound to see comment that does not reflect your experience if you are a PvP/WvW player. Yet those comment are justifyed. In fact, like Dragoth said, the necromancer have been a dead profession in PvE since launch, only usefull to tag mobs in open PvE while other do the killing.

I've seen 1k DPS condi mirages in PvE content as well, including T4 fractals. Does that make that build ok or meta?I've seen Guardians trying to play "minion-mancer" with spirit weapons. Was that any good?I could go on. Just because "you've seen it" or it has a gimmick that makes it useful in a couple raids (epi), doesn't make it relevant, meta or anything. Necro never enjoyed a good position in PvE because arena net failed at one of its "core development philosophies": purity of purpose, they never had a clear role for necro, and they still don't. And whenever they tried to give it a purpose (like how Reaper was supposed to be a Fighter type power build) they failed.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

You probably never played the game until HoT if you think like that.

• Core necromancer never got to be meta in PvE. It took core necro 6 month to become meta in WvW and core necromancer wasn't really a thing in PvP until HoT.
• Out of 2 year of HoT, reaper had very few moment where he was meta in PvE. In WvW, yes he was strong until PoF and in PvP well... it was more a rally bot than anything.
• Now, scourge dominated PvP and WvW since PoF launch but yet again, in PvE scourge didn't stay meta for more than a month.

The problem of the forum is that most of the time players that write here only look at their favourite gamemode, leading to argument where one consider it's view point from his gamemode while the other consider it from a totally different gamemode.

The fact is that on this subforum the PvE necromancer's community is incredibly frustrated by the fact that the necromancer have almost never been meta in PvE. So you are bound to see comment that does not reflect your experience if you are a PvP/WvW player. Yet those comment are justifyed. In fact, like Dragoth said, the necromancer have been a dead profession in PvE since launch, only usefull to tag mobs in open PvE while other do the killing.

Ah but you see I never not said that I have seen them dishing out nice DPS now did I? All I am reading is more QQ. Fact of the matter is, Necros have always been desired in content, whether it was PvE or PvP.

@"Ghos.1326" said:Ah but you see I never not said that I have seen them dishing out nice DPS now did I? All I am reading is more QQ. Fact of the matter is, Necros have always been desired in content, whether it was PvE or PvP.

Nope, fact is necromancer have never been desired in PvE. We can return on countless complaint over the 5 first years of the game on the previous forum. Nothing have changed since. However, necromancer's player greatly desired to do the PvE content.

Now, to be exact, You first qualified necromancer as "meta" and that's even farther off the reality in PvE than saying that he was desired. Meta PvE professions in the core game were: Elementalists, thiefs and warriors/ Semi meta you had guardians, engineers and mesmers/ Banned from PvE you had necromancers and rangers.

With Hot, the PvE meta changed slightly to Elementalists, warriors, mesmers and rangers. Semi meta you had guardians, engineer and thieves. Necromancers and revenant being anecdotics.

Not so strong in PvE but massively so in PvP/WvW to a point where they get focused because if you let one live, your team loses fights straight up.

Maybe if they didn't make bosses immune to control conditions leading up to HoT and then have break bars cause immunity to sustained control conditions while rewarding CC-spam, the class would have be better off. This is even the problem in PvP because the answer to everyone else's CC-paintrain wasn't to give necros stab or better defenses but just make them even more oppressive if left alive, making them get focused harder/shut down more.

People keep asking for DPS buffs but that's just not what the necromancer is supposed to do. It's supposed to disable things, manage conditions, and soak hits. It just can't do that in PvE because of break bars, bossing mechanics being DPS-focused, condition powercreep/cleanse powercreep for everything else, and damage powercreep from PvE one-shotting through shroud due to immunity/mitigation powercreep on players mandating more incoming damage to keep things "threatening."

Maybe if they didn't make bosses immune to control conditions leading up to HoT and then have break bars cause immunity to sustained control conditions while rewarding CC-spam, the class would have be better off. This is even the problem in PvP because the answer to everyone else's CC-paintrain wasn't to give necros stab or better defenses but just make them even more oppressive if left alive, making them get focused harder/shut down more.

Are you implying that anet deemed that necros should dish out more damage in pvp because ccs is a thing and necros can't handle as well as classes with blocks/invulnerability/stab spam/invisibility?

People keep asking for DPS buffs but that's just not what the necromancer is supposed to do. It's supposed to disable things, manage conditions, and soak hits. It just can't do that in PvE because of break bars, bossing mechanics being DPS-focused, condition powercreep/cleanse powercreep for everything else, and damage powercreep from PvE one-shotting through shroud due to immunity/mitigation powercreep on players mandating more incoming damage to keep things "threatening."

So are you saying that necros would be more welcomed in pve groups if bosses could be affected by condis such as chill, blind, weakness? If so, I'm inclined to disagree with you. Other classes can put out any of those conditions (except maybe chill) more reliably, while still doing better dps than a necro. Also, you kept mentioning 1 shot mechanics without specifying which one. Most of those 1 shot mechanics have pretty obvious tells and huge wind ups, and falling victim to those is usually due to the either group's failure to do mechanics, or the person's inability to dodge, and/or move out of the giant red circles.

@Sephylon.4938 said:So are you saying that necros would be more welcomed in pve groups if bosses could be affected by condis such as chill, blind, weakness? If so, I'm inclined to disagree with you. Other classes can put out any of those conditions (except maybe chill) more reliably,

Nope, elementalists are really good at applying chill, way better than necromancers. That's to the point that I'd love to have _deathly chill as an elementalist. An elementalist with deathly chill would be so OP that it would break the game even more than scourge.

Otherwise I agree with you, there is no need for a necromancer to apply all possible conditions of the game on a boss. What the necromancer is good at is applying a lot of differents conditions at the same time, leading your foe to feel that the necromancer's gameplay is easy, since you just have to press a button to load 5-7 differents conditions. Is this something that would impact end game PvE? No, simply because 10 players can easily cap those condition without needed one to be dedicated to applying them.

@"Sephylon.4938" said:

Maybe if they didn't make bosses immune to control conditions leading up to HoT and then have break bars cause immunity to sustained control conditions while rewarding CC-spam, the class would have be better off. This is even the problem in PvP because the answer to everyone else's CC-paintrain wasn't to give necros stab or better defenses but just make them even more oppressive if left alive, making them get focused harder/shut down more.

No. Necros are oppressive in PvP formats because boons are now what define strength and conditions in PvP environments are extremely potent. It's not that they're the best at strictly applying conditions, but the best at while doing so, making the opponent weaker. Necros are top-end damage dealers in larger fights because they can just completely obliterate their foes' defenses and turn all of their strengths into weaknesses and incoming damage. The weakness of necros is their lack of capacity to be engaged by people with hard CC, which has had a huge influx since the addition of Break Bars due to PvE demands (which is what ANet designs around). Instead of giving necros more means of dealing with this, they just kept buffing what they were already good at: controlling fights. That's the reasoning behind why the class is top-tier in the PvP formats, and has been since close to when the game released. The most broken build in sPvP in the game was cele ele and it was completely and totally obliterated by just running one necro on a team.

So long as PvE does not reflect this, necros will never be good unless the entirety of necromancer is redesigned from the ground up. What makes them amazing in PvP is what makes them useless in PvE. And if ANet just slams huge DPS numbers on them, they become massively overtuned in the PvP formats and very un-fun to fight against, just like Scourge.

People keep asking for DPS buffs but that's just not what the necromancer is supposed to do. It's supposed to disable things, manage conditions, and soak hits. It just can't do that in PvE because of break bars, bossing mechanics being DPS-focused, condition powercreep/cleanse powercreep for everything else, and damage powercreep from PvE one-shotting through shroud due to immunity/mitigation powercreep on players mandating more incoming damage to keep things "threatening."

Not really; I should have specified incoming conditions.

Those mechanics have tells which can be dodged, but that's my point; necro is supposed to be able to just take major damage with the design of shroud. It's why they don't have a million blocks and active defenses. Whether or not that's a good thing is a different story, but my point is that the PvE encounters are designed to allow everyone to just use some active defenses to negate all those major attacks, and the other attacks are negligible enough to be out-sustained. And an immunity is way better than just some extra health; and everyone since the expansions is basically just running around immune half the time. That's problematic design and makes the necromancer less useful because it's not supposed to be vested in that kind of defense. Defensive powercreep and sustain needs to be toned down alongside the major nukes and so on, such that groups need to start ending up taking more damage over time. This gives a purpose to shroud's defense in PvE just like it has in PvP; the amount of mitigation in terms of soaked hits that shroud provides is very high from power builds due to the innate 50% damage reduction it provides to power-oriented attacks.

Giving the necro more damage will not fix it in a balanced way because it just contributes more to the problem and phases out another profession or still just won't be enough. The encounters are the problem. If the necro was actually weak as a class/concept, it wouldn't be the most-demanded profession in WvW and a consistent top-performer in sPvP over the years. Make PvE reflect these environments (boon dependence, inability to immune all hits, lots of downed players, massive enemy corrupts/condi bombs, randomized enemy mob tactics, etc.) and it can easily see a lot more identity and purpose.

I play Necro in PvE.... explain WHAT PvE you are talking about. Necros seems wanted in almost all content for PvE (I run t4 fractals on my reaper and do just fine). And in raids they might not be top tier dps, but websites like qT (not really updated) and snowcrows wouldn't have builds for them if they weren't viable in the content. So the concept that "Necros are bad in pve" doesn't exactly sound true, and more like opinion.

Which is what I said; anything can complete a raid fine. It's just elitism that's taken over and made people pretend like only what's optimal is worth bringing along.

Same thing with berserker gear meta in dungeons.

Which is why if people are so insistent the necro needs to be better, encounter design is the true problem because otherwise the profession is strong and serves its purpose well.

It's just that purpose isn't served in most PvE/raid encounters.

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

You probably never played the game until HoT if you think like that.

• Core necromancer never got to be meta in PvE. It took core necro 6 month to become meta in WvW and core necromancer wasn't really a thing in PvP until HoT.
• Out of 2 year of HoT, reaper had very few moment where he was meta in PvE. In WvW, yes he was strong until PoF and in PvP well... it was more a rally bot than anything.
• Now, scourge dominated PvP and WvW since PoF launch but yet again, in PvE scourge didn't stay meta for more than a month.

The problem of the forum is that most of the time players that write here only look at their favourite gamemode, leading to argument where one consider it's view point from his gamemode while the other consider it from a totally different gamemode.

The fact is that on this subforum the PvE necromancer's community is incredibly frustrated by the fact that the necromancer have almost never been meta in PvE. So you are bound to see comment that does not reflect your experience if you are a PvP/WvW player. Yet those comment are justifyed. In fact, like Dragoth said, the necromancer have been a dead profession in PvE since launch, only usefull to tag mobs in open PvE while other do the killing.

You haven't been paying attention then. Raids didn't come out until HoT. Core necro was meta in WvW, but that's it, and only if you played power wells. Since then Necro has been part of the WvW meta. There are classes that have been meta in all three game modes since game launched. Necro isn't one of them.