Hi, I'm a returning player, and stumbled into a guide on metabattle about scourge healing (https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scourge_-_Support_Healer). So, I have some question about it! ☺️

(Notes : I havent played since the last expansion, and am quite casual, but I want to step up and try the "high lvl" content this game have to offerAlso, english is not my native language so sorry if I make some mistakes)

So :1- Is scourge healer viable and accepted in HL fractals? (I don't really care if it's the meta or the best, but I whant to know if it works and if I will stugle to find/make a groupe to play with)

2- And in raids?

3- What about the build? The meta battle build about scourge heal looks fine, but I'd like to be tankier with ministrel gear. My reasonning is that I will probably play in lfg and I'd like to be abnle to "carry", or at least correct mistake of other player as well as abble to be abble to have more room for errors on my side. Would it be ok, or is the loss of dps will be a burden in fractals/raids?

Thanks ☺️

this build will be as welcome as any other of meta build.

as for vaiability: obviously still in it's testing fase and looks a bit unfinished.

the healing should be enough sustain to not run minstrel

If your group cant find a healer druid, ele, fb, or rev, sure. It can work. Will you struggle to find a group that will accept you as a healer scourge? Most likely. You offer sup par healing, a pre-emptive defence that has to be casted pre-emptively, and your main "heal" causes fear which disperses the mobs that your teammates groupped to xrop aoes on.

Raids, depends if your pugging or going with a guild.

The build relies on f4 spam to heal which will spam fear on the mobs whic your team won't like. The regen from staff is barely a factor, you're completely dependent on how much lf you can generate, and your barriers have a cast time, requiring you to predict when ot will be needed and cast it atleast .5 seconds before that, while hoping all your team mates are on yoir shade or right next to you. Honestly the only thing that build can do is be a rally bot.

Scourge healer is one of the best builds in the game for helping people to learn content because it by far has the greatest rez potential in the game. That said, as the group gets better at the content, the Scourge will be less and less useful as people go down less. Once you get past more than 1 down per run, Scourge is best replaced with Druid, Tempest, or Ventari Rev.

Scourge heal is pure awesomeness.

Not only does it heal you.. but gives a few seconds of ..4-5k barrier to the party close by...Now put other scourges together... and imagine :D

@"Bellius.8713" said:Hi, I'm a returning player, and stumbled into a guide on metabattle about scourge healing (https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scourge_-_Support_Healer). So, I have some question about it! ☺️

(Notes : I havent played since the last expansion, and am quite casual, but I want to step up and try the "high lvl" content this game have to offerAlso, english is not my native language so sorry if I make some mistakes)

So :1- Is scourge healer viable and accepted in HL fractals? (I don't really care if it's the meta or the best, but I whant to know if it works and if I will stugle to find/make a groupe to play with)

Not rlly. For pugs its bad and for organised groups, druid is better, because more partybuffs.

2- And in raids?

No. Same as fracs. Druid has better party buffs, and ele and rev and guard have wayyyyy better healing.

3- What about the build? The meta battle build about scourge heal looks fine, but I'd like to be tankier with ministrel gear. My reasonning is that I will probably play in lfg and I'd like to be abnle to "carry", or at least correct mistake of other player as well as abble to be abble to have more room for errors on my side. Would it be ok, or is the loss of dps will be a burden in fractals/raids?

Thanks ☺️

The only thing necro support is really good for is ressing downed people. But why would i take a scourge, when i can get a ele, that just keeps everyone at full health all the time?

That's not true at all , the only reason druid is sought after because its broken ( Over powered) in the first place.But talking about viability of scourge healers , yes its actually very good if your party is getting hit a lot because it offers no healer can do which is barrier.What is there to heal when your party takes no damage with barrier up?Half of your healing is just barrier and keeping up those scholar runes up hence more dps.You can even get might stack up if u build it right.

I main scourge healer in fractals(t4) and raid and its even possible to solo heal if the druid died , been there done that.So saying scourge cant even heal enough is absurd...i would appreciate if u actually play a scourge healer or partied with a good one to comment on something like this...Just dont take vampiric pressence its actually garbage for heals(to me).I prefer taking Life from death to have that 5k burst heal when needed and life transfusion heals 9.9k+ over 9 seconds with 12 second cooldown (9sec with alacrity uptime aka permanent 1.1k+ heal every sec over 600 aoe).The build uses up a lot of life force but u gain them easily when u use staff and other utilities that give them back , i even got signet of undeath for the life force regen because it helps in the long run.

Thanks for your answers.☺️

Ok so what I unferstand is it works (and quite well accoring to some) but is not meta. And as such I may cross path with people who wont want to play with me.

I'm okay with that! I like my necro too much and the other support classes don't appeal to me.And I don't really like narrow minded elitist meta guys anyways, so good riddance!

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:That's not true at all , the only reason druid is sought after because its broken ( Over powered) in the first place.But talking about viability of scourge healers , yes its actually very good if your party is getting hit a lot because it offers no healer can do which is barrier.What is there to heal when your party takes no damage with barrier up?Half of your healing is just barrier and keeping up those scholar runes up hence more dps.You can even get might stack up if u build it right.

I main scourge healer in fractals(t4) and raid and its even possible to solo heal if the druid died , been there done that.So saying scourge cant even heal enough is absurd...i would appreciate if u actually play a scourge healer or partied with a good one to comment on something like this...Just dont take vampiric pressence its actually garbage for heals(to me).I prefer taking Life from death to have that 5k burst heal when needed and life transfusion heals 9.9k+ over 9 seconds with 12 second cooldown (9sec with alacrity uptime aka permanent 1.1k+ heal every sec over 600 aoe).The build uses up a lot of life force but u gain them easily when u use staff and other utilities that give them back , i even got signet of undeath for the life force regen because it helps in the long run.

Would you be ok to share your build? I will probably spend a lot of time in the build editor anyway (I love making/testing builds in this game, so much possibility compared to other MMO!) but it's always cool to have some references/comparisons. ☺️

for scourge to be an actual "healer" then it would need a few thingsThe ability for transfusion to proc around you as well as your shade to actually "heal" a separate group, this would also allow the necro to heal 10 targetsthe shade and barrier skills to actually work on 10 people when your stacked on top of your shade to put out barrier to a whole raid group.more healing skills other than transfusion and regen from staff and mark of blood.

a 2 man druid and scourge healing team could potentially work with spirits hitting 10 people and the scourge being a "prot monk" or damage preventer with barrier but it would take a competent group of 2 to actually make work.

the vamp aura changes were interesting, but still the necro can't heal like a druid can, and nothing really can, but can't even heal like an elle can. If there was a rune that gave healing when barrier was applied then maybe a necro could be a healer, but as for now, necro's are beter at damage, and even then not the best.

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:That's not true at all , the only reason druid is sought after because its broken ( Over powered) in the first place.

Might be. And why? Because it has the most (offensive) party buffs

But talking about viability of scourge healers , yes its actually very good if your party is getting hit a lot because it offers no healer can do which is barrier.

No its not. Better take a guard heal, that can dish out aegis. And aegis block the dmg entirely, instead of just a small portion.

What is there to heal when your party takes no damage with barrier up?

Yeah aegis ftw.

Half of your healing is just barrier and keeping up those scholar runes up hence more dps.You can even get might stack up if u build it right.

But not for 10 people.

I main scourge healer in fractals(t4) and raid and its even possible to solo heal if the druid died , been there done that.

No its not if you are running with pugs. Oh wait. They wont even take you with them.

So saying scourge cant even heal enough is absurd...i would appreciate if u actually play a scourge healer or partied with a good one to comment on something like this...

I did. It was pretty bad. I played it myself.

Just dont take vampiric pressence its actually garbage for heals(to me).

Its almost the same value than life from death. And VP even adds a pretty small dmg buff. (Yeah i was using lfd as well)

I prefer taking Life from death to have that 5k burst heal when needed

So you know like 5 seconds before you need the heal, that your allies will take so much dmg in 5 seconds, that its worth. Its just a nice addition.

and life transfusion heals 9.9k+ over 9 seconds with 12 second cooldown (9sec with alacrity uptime aka permanent 1.1k+ heal every sec over 600 aoe).

Well. Guard and rev and ele do the same thing. And they dont even have to do anything for that. They heal, just because they are there.

Its almost not possible to spam f3-5, even if you take dagger/focus +staff. You will run out of lifeforce pretty fast.

The build uses up a lot of life force but u gain them easily when u use staff and other utilities that give them back , i even got signet of undeath for the life force regen because it helps in the long run.

To summ things up:You are not able to have a 100% barrier uptime with a barrier value of 3k or higher.If your party takes a huge hit, it takes pretty long to heal them back up.And they will take huge hits, because healkill has pretty long cd and the other barrier values arent that high.Lf is really a big problem.You cant rlly react to a boss attack. You really need to know, that he is doing that attack, before the animation starts, because of casttime on healskill, delay on f3

U cant expect to able to do the same things are other healers could , barrier are heals in a way and yes it takes more effort to learn how to barrier because u need to know when to barrier the most (inevitable hits or u know that same person totally gonna get hit again by the same move).

So far i have never run out of life force(never ever )and dont have a problem with healing , unless that said person taking things that will kill him in 2 hits( or 1 hit over and over) which is dumb in the first place(no amount of heals can save stupidity). No , i dont just run with guilds i run pugs too most of the time but i do get laughed at or "wait scourge can heal?" remarks even before given the chance to prove what i can do.

It's not gonna be easy to be welcome in pugs as a scourge healer but i can say that with certain it is viable to me just that people dont accept it because its not broken, and btw aegis buff only give out same as barrier which is limit 5(1 sneeze its gone too but not for barriers) and the aoe is a lot more puny than barrier aoe as well(like A LOT of class buffs/heals that exist in the game). So i dont know why are u nit picking over things that barrier cant do.But sometimes i do make it work with pugs i do give them my best , no problems there and we can still clear it normally ( better actually than just 2 druid for no reason which is dumb).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJAWWnE9Ct1gV9Cm2As3gluBj6DMCOUTPgNWAQvnOUTqA-jxhXAB2dJAiRJIA7Pgk6Ph+EAWRXQCK/CAcA8+75+7Be/93f/93b73f/93f/93f/93DA-eThats my build and u can swap some utilities and stats to harrier if u ever wanna might stack/etc quite flexible there.

@"StillSeijiro.8756" said:U cant expect to able to do the same things are other healers could , barrier are heals in a way and yes it takes more effort to learn how to barrier because u need to know when to barrier the most (inevitable hits or u know that same person totally gonna get hit again by the same move).

So far i have never run out of life force and never have a problem with healing , unless that said person taking things that will kill him in 2 hits( or 1 hit over and over) which is dumb in the first place. No , i dont just run with guilds i run pugs too most of the time but i do get laughed at or "wait scourge can heal?" remarks even before given the chance to prove what i can do.

It's not gonna be easy to be welcome in pugs as a scourge healer but i can say that with certain it is viable to me just that people dont accept it because its not broken, and btw aegis buff only give out same as barrier which is limit 5(1 sneeze its gone too but not for barriers) and the aoe is a lot more puny than barrier aoe as well(like A LOT of class buffs/heals that exist in the game).So i dont know why are u nit picking over things that barrier cant do.

But sometimes i do make it work with pugs i do give them my best , no problems there and we can still clear it normally ( better actually than just 2 druid for no reason which is dumb).

Yeah double druid definetly is dumb.But the thing is: sometimes you can make it work.But not always. So other healers are way more consistent.

Thats the same thing: saying that healscourge is good in wvw large zergs.

Well it can work. Porting people to you and rezz them.But: if enemy sees that, and has at leadt a bit of a brain, next time they will insta focus the position, where downed people get pulled to. And you are basically insta killing 6 people. The 5 you ported towards you and yourself.

Sorry but rev healer is way better. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAW5snXMnNSumzJRZzNlst5oSY38UJ4bOskFglaNAOgE4v+2vAktC2gRA-j1xGQB3U3AAuIAKS9nhs/A5eCALV5HUVCSKA/GsB-w

Or you go the herold variant. Which will give massive protection. Both are easy able to just keep your group alive by autoattacking.

If you need a burstheal, switch legends.Use natural harmony on ventari and the healskill from renegade. Also renegade elite is almost 700 healing per hit for every partymember.

And you can provide alacrity uptime for the group with orders from above

Thanks for the build StillSeijiro.8756 =)

Ah, yes, I see your point Nimon.7840, revenant seems to have maybe more heal, but defenitivly more buffs diversity.However, I like the idea to be abble to prevent incoming damages with the barriers...

Well, I guess I'll wait a bit more to see how this thread go while I catch up with all the content I missed with my thief, and then decide if I go scourge as planed or something else.

Why are u talking about wvw(the moment u got downed in wvw u alrdy dead anyway)......hes asking about viability of scourge as a healer(in raids/fractal) and as i said it is viable. Please stop derailing the thread :/This is the reason why ppl do not want anything new in their runs, people like you who thinks everything is better what u said it is.Stop being toxic and provide something useful for once( all i see is consuela's face from family guy saying no over and over from u), fyi why do u need alacrity anyway chrono/off chrono provide enough alacrity for the whole team its pointless there. Fyi herald protection means u lose all your legend charges gain by the time u spam everything to 0 that protection barely last 15 second while holding that legend down(there are other ways to get protection already not only revenant). Sure renegade healer works but its not scourge healer u cant compare the two as they do different things to heal.For who is wondering what im talking about family guy.

@"StillSeijiro.8756" said:Why are u talking about wvw(the moment u got downed in wvw u alrdy dead anyway)......hes asking about viability of scourge as a healer(in raids/fractal) and as i said it is viable.

That was just a example of stupid folks. And no. Its not viable in raids. Didnt play much fracs recently, but in raids, this build is the worst healer build out there.

Please stop derailing the thread :/

This is the reason why ppl do not want anything new in their runs, people like you who thinks everything is better what u said it is.

Nope thats not the reason. The reason is, that this build is just bad and people try to force their way in by saying, that its good. So ppl try. And they are disappointed. Then they will never ever let this build be played again, even if it gets heavily buffed. But as long as the known groups dont use it, even though it is decent after some patch, noone will play it or take a scourge heal with them.

Stop being toxic and provide something useful for once( all i see is consuela's face from family guy saying no over and over from u),

Because i tried multiple healer scourge builds a long time. And all of them were just not so good. Because other healers just do better.

fyi why do u need alacrity anyway chrono/off chrono provide enough alacrity for the whole team its pointless there. Fyi herald protection means u lose all your legend charges gain by the time u spam everything to 0 that protection barely last 15 second while holding that legend down(there are other ways to get protection already not only revenant).

Yeah right. And not right. There are other ways to get protection sure. But there is no need to spam everything.

Sure renegade healer works but its not scourge healer u cant compare the two as they do different things to heal.

Yeah thats right. They do different things. But first of all:Rev is way easier to play. Because you can play reactive.As scourge you need to be proactive.You need to know, that some stupid guy will get hit in the next second. Which is possible.

Lets take desmina attack pattern as an example.

She does this donut ae attack. Well the first circle spawns, you press healskill, and block all dmg for your group.But lets move on in the fight:Tank switches, but he still stood inside of the group. Desmina turns around and cleaves the group.Well you didnt see that one coming. So your group is below 90% health.

Omg dmg loss.

Now the next problem. You dont have enough burstheal, to heal them back up, fast. So they get their dmg modifier back.Even more dmg loss.

Its just not possible to have around 4-5k barrier on the whole team, the whole time to prevent such unforseeable dmg.And thats exactly why scourge healer isnt good or viable, maybe if you have a really good other healer in your team, that is able to heal your other teammates back up.

U will still have the problem: might you provide is only for 5 people. Same goes for the barrier from your healskill.

Other classes have dmg prevention as well. Well the teammates will still get some dmg, but they will be way faster at full health with one of the other healers, than with a scourge.

For who is wondering what im talking about family guy.

Scourge healer isnt for beginners , it gets easier the more u play and get used to the mechanics/etc.Viability is there i dont know why u just cant accept that, sure its not the best healer but to be viable its enough for me ( doin well so far).Actually my f3 gives 4k barrier without invoking f1 , i can go all the way to max barrier which is 11k for emergencies so saying weird stuff like its not possible is really triggering me somehow i feel that u dont even play scourge healer......dont know why u are adamant about it being not viable/etc.Anyway its up to OP whether he wants to play it or not ive given my experience and feedback about being one (o ya prepare for discrimination/ridiculed).

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:Scourge healer isnt for beginners , it gets easier the more u play and get used to the mechanics/etc.Viability is there i dont know why u just cant accept that, sure its not the best healer but to be viable its enough for me ( doin well so far).Actually my f3 gives 4k barrier without invoking f1 , i can go all the way to max barrier which is 11k for emergencies so saying weird stuff like its not possible is really triggering me somehow i feel that u dont even play scourge healer......dont know why u are adamant about it being not viable/etc.Anyway its up to OP whether he wants to play it or not ive given my experience and feedback about being one (o ya prepare for discrimination/ridiculed).

Nice 11k. Noone will profit from that.Ok. Necromancers do. But anything over 6k barrier on the highest barrier value is bad.Else you overheal way to much.Ok maybe its viable. But its nowhere near being good or accepted. Sure play it. But dont be surprised if you get kicked by 90% of the groups and the groups that accept you may be playing weird stuff like heal-shout warrior.Have fun!

Yeah. I dont play it right now. Why? Because other healers do their job way better.Or i play dps. Which is much better than healer. And you can save allies lifes with your healskill as well.

Its a really bad experience playung scourge healer, especially if your group isnt good. Then barrier wont do anything. You will need a second healer. If they are getting hit all the time.But why take two healers, if the other one can do it alone? And in good groups, that dont get hit often, they will always take a druid. Because of offensive buffs.

Am i reading this right.... did u just compare a healing warrior that uses shouts with scourge healers?It is way better than warrior shouts thats gated over cooldowns and only heal once per use.Transfusion alone beat the heal out of their heal with shouts all spammed up combined within two rotations(wic is over 12 seconds) so no i hope thats a joke....You keep denying the fact about scourge can only heal/barrier 5 at once (wow like any other buffs/heals arent but ok lets just say scourge only has that problem).

Scourge especially excel at higher fractal, in fact it even beat the hell out of tempest healers, u know why? Its because of agony.Any heals will be 70% less on the recipient with the agony debuff, while barrier maintain the full amount and does not get reduced by anything at all.It can even do challenge mote ez pz mode which have 80% heal reduction. I rest my case u seemed to be denying it because u just compared scourge to a druid (everyone knows druid is broken). But pls dont ever compare it to a class that cant even heal periodically every second , which scourge can do.

I love my heal scourge using harrier set.Some guildies ask me to raid as Condi instead of heals, because Condi is the only raid option for Necro. Other guildies ask me not to use it, because it makes raid bosses too easy while some are still learning mechanics.It depends who you group with.

I would personally run healing scourge every chance I get, but as mentioned many times already, it's not always accepted, understood, or wanted by others.

I found that with harrier set I can either transfusion or apply permanant protection to 5 people depending on needs. I can also spam might and condition cleanse.

I use a Staff all the time, only swapping to Dagger/Warhorn for CC phases and swiftness.

Vampiric Presence is affected by both Harrier's Power and Healing Power.

Remember that Transfusion pulses instead of being a 1 time activation. Use Sand Swell combined with Transfusion to port the dead to you in multiple places (or double ported out of danger. Transfusion pulse 1, Sand Swell, Transfusion pulse 2 or 3). The 600 range for transfusion instantly becomes much larger with Sand Swell.

All of the posts above talk about barrier and minor heals as if that's all scourge has. Healing Scourge is more of a Jack-of-all-trades than a healer; I prefer to think of it as support or off-heals. I love it.

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:Scourge especially excel at higher fractal, in fact it even beat the hell out of tempest healers, u know why? Its because of agony.Any heals will be 70% less on the recipient with the agony debuff, while barrier maintain the full amount and does not get reduced by anything at all.Unfortunately, you're incorrect on this one. Barrier does get cut by Agony.

Thats not true at all ( unless you're talking about the 1% hp damage per second that still persist until agony is over) barrier had that problem(reduced effectiveness) when pof launched but not anymore.

Any healing done will have to face 2 things

1. 70% reduced healing effectiveness (puny heals)
2. agony damage 1% hp per secondWhile barrier gives the full amount that 1% agony damage is pitiful( good luck on healing them normally with agony on)

Instead of saying stuff that isnt true why dont u take any barrier character go to fractal and stand in the agony circle while spamming barrier , it gives the same amount regardless.

I would especially appreciate it if people stop talking about things they've never even tried before(or update themselves) about barrier itself ( all i hear is barrier useless cant save people, its not enough , bla bla bla all the same thing, its tiring really)

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:Thats not true at all ( unless you're talking about the 1% hp damage per second that still persist until agony is over) barrier had that problem(reduced effectiveness) when pof launched but not anymore.

It was indeed true when PoF launched. I don't recall any patch notes saying it changed. If it actually did, I withdraw my statement.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:Thats not true at all ( unless you're talking about the 1% hp damage per second that still persist until agony is over) barrier had that problem(reduced effectiveness) when pof launched but not anymore.

I just tested this, and Barrier seems to be unaffected by Agony.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@StillSeijiro.8756 said:Thats not true at all ( unless you're talking about the 1% hp damage per second that still persist until agony is over) barrier had that problem(reduced effectiveness) when pof launched but not anymore.

Late notes from the 11/28/2017 patch

Agony will no longer reduce barrier application.

Scourge Support is a wildly misunderstood creature, and is frequently the target of scorn. I wanted to clear up some misconceptions and lay out the case for "Heavy Support Scourge".

What does it do:

Scourge is an excellent Area Healer, with great condi-clear, reasonable DPS (For a healer), and second-to-none revive capability. It makes any other healer more effective by allowing them to heal the people who need it more effectively. It also is very effective at providing heals "across groups" in the squad due to the unique nature of barrier and also the Shades themselves.

What it does NOT do:

Scourge has really terrible capability to heal A person. Everything you do is effectively large scale heal over time. You have a few tools to handle burst healing, but once those tools are spent, you pretty much need additional heals from the target being healed, or some other support provider.

Where does scourge healing come from?

(All #'s assume 1600 healing power, 20% healing mod, and Permanent Alacrity)

"Passive" heals:

Sand Cascade - Generates a 3826 Barrier every 6.4s. This is the tool that really makes scourge tick as a healer. It isn't the highest throughput item in the kit, but it is what allows the healing to be so effective. Also worth noting is that the Sand Cascade that originates from the shade isn't considered to come from a member of your party, and can frequently hit people in other groups as a result. (598 HP/s)

Transfusion - 926 HP/tick for 9 ticks on a 9.6s CD. This is the heavy lifter in terms of throughput. This has a 94% uptime and also helps to rez downed allies and pull them out of trouble. (869 HP/s)

Manifest Sand Shade - Generates 2122 Barrier every 8s. This is another great tool for barrier application. It allows you to locate a portion of your support in multiple locations simultaneously. (265 HP/s)

Regeneration - 396 HP/s - This is easily maintained using your staff mark on CD. If you prefer to use the dagger, you can still get Regen by using a focus Offhand and Dodge Rolls to proc the mark on dodge trait. This combined with Transfusion keeps targets topped off underneath the barrier spam. (396 HP/s)

Vampiric Aura - between 85 and 170 per proc. This averages out to something close to 200 hp/s in normal circumstances. This is another passive healing source that helps to top people off under the barrier so your transfusion can really go where it is needed. Some people suggest that you take Life From Death in this slot, but I find that a 3700 HP heal with a 6s lead time is not nearly as useful as a steady 200 hp/s when combined with the barrier. (200 HP/s)

That is a total of 2328 HP/s in effectively passive healing. Because barrier is going to be used up before any healing is applied and raids typically have passive damage pulsing constantly, the vast majority of the barrier application will end up being effective healing.

Active Heals:

This list is pretty short. You basically have 2 options for active healing here. Sand Flare (Which I recommend) or Well of Blood.

Well of Blood heals for 6624 over 5s every 24s. It also revives allies when traited. If you include the Water Rune Proc (1866), that is a total of 8490 HP.

Sand Flare provides a 6628 barrier (This would be limited to just under 6k on a full glass ele/guard/thief) on a 20s CD. This also procs the water rune for a total of 8494 HP worth of healing/barrier.

I prefer the Sand Flare because you can pre-cast it and catch big nukes before they happen (stuff like the VG green blast or Hadoken on Matthias), which allows you to maintain high scholar uptimes rather than trying to funnel 8k worth of heals into a target after they have taken damage.

Barrier Implications

The main thing that makes scourge a powerful support force is barrier, and the way barrier interacts with other healing is what allows Scourge to really shine. To understand why barrier is so strong, it is important to note how healing works typically.

Healing effects, like buffing effects, work on a target priority system as follows:

• Self
• In-Group Players
• In-Squad Players
• Other Players
• Self Pets
• In-Group NPCs
• In-Squad NPCs
• Other NPCs

Following this hierarchy, targets are selected by proximity to the center of the skill effect. This priority often makes it very difficult to push boons and heals outside of your party under normal circumstances.

There is one major difference between healing and boon targeting though: healing will not try to apply to targets at 100% health. What this means is if you have a 5 target heal, and 3 people in your group are already at 100%, you will expand your list of potential targets to include 3 people in the squad and so on, until the target cap of sub-100% health targets is reached.

Under normal circumstances, the priority does not differentiate between a target at 9% and a target at 99%. They will both be valid healing targets, and will be prioritized per the normal rules above.

This is where barrier becomes EXTREMELY Powerful. In an environment where there is a nearly constant stream of damage, applying barrier regularly (every 6.4s for example) allows the majority of the passive incoming damage to be eaten by barrier rather than applying damage that needs to be healed. What this means is that targets who have high barrier uptime are frequently pegged at 100% HP instead of fluttering between 90-100% every few seconds. This in turn allows any additional heals being thrown out to zero in on the targets who are not at 100%.

This interaction, combined with the large "passive" AoE healing ticks from transfusion make the scourge an extremely effective group healer. Transfusion heals for slightly more than a traited Soothing Mist for elementalists. The huge difference is that Soothing Mist (and Battle Presence and Regen) is a buff, which is applied under normal buff application rules. This allows it to be applied to targets even if they already have the buff. Transfusion is a pulsing area heal, where each pulse is targeted independently as per the healing guidelines above. It will not be 'wasted' on a full health target. Combined with high levels of barrier uptime, which keeps people at 100% HP for large portions of the fight, transfusion healing tends to be very effective.

By spamming barrier consistently, the scourge becomes a force multiplier for other healing. Preventing heals from being wasted on nearly full targets and allowing it to be laser focused on the people who really need the heals.

Rezzing:

Transfusion turns your F4 into a Mini-Search and Rescue on a 9.6s CD. You pull allies to you, revive them for 2% HP per pulse, and can also actively revive them at the same time.

Ritual of Life - This works similar to the geyser revive trait for heal Ele. Starting a revive casts Well of Blood, which pulses 7% revive per second for a total of 42% revive. This also pulses 1100 HP/s in healing from the well of blood itself.

Last Rites - This prevents allies from bleeding out while downed. This effectively prevents 2.5% worth of revive bar damage per second. They have to actively take damage to get finished off. This often allows you enough time to get to them and begin rezzing or get in range for transfusion to tick on them.

If you add all of that together, a blood necro can effectively revive at a clip of 11.5% HP per second above and beyond the actual revive action.

Signet of Undeath - The scourge healer is very resource-hungry. To feed that engine, I recommend grabbing as much Life Force generation as possible. One of the tools for that is Signet of Undeath. This also doubles as a 3 person AoE rez that functions like a mini-Warbanner. Using this reduces your Life force generation, so you may need to take it easy on F5 casts while it is recharging, but that depends on the fight and how much Life Force you are getting from any enemy deaths in the area.

Utiltiy:

Above and beyond the healing and barrier application and rezzing power, Scourge healer provides some additional utility to the group. If running Desiccate and Abrasive Grit, you can do some steady might generation for the group. Abrasive Grit is worth a pretty steady 4-5 might on the group, and Desiccate adds to that for more burst might. You can also opt to take Blood is Power to increase the might generation, but in my experience, this isn't typically needed. I do find it useful on fights where the might generation is split at times (VG doing greens or xera as an example). Additionally, you can run the Scourge Portal, which can be extremely valuable on some encounters.

Conditions are laughably easy to manage on this build. You effectively passively pull off 1 condition every 4s or so, and if you want to spend additional life force, you can pull off another condition on top of that on a 3.2s CD. If needed, you can also run Plague Signet for additional condition control.

CC:

As part of my standard loadout, I have Flesh Golem Charge (432) + Garish Pillar (F4) (1.15s @ 100/s) + Staff 5 (1.15s @ 100/s) + Warhorn 4 (200) for CC on medium cooldowns.

That is a total of 862 Breakbar on a 40s CD (32s with alacrity)

DPS:

With my current setup, in normal boons, I can manage right at 9500 DPS on a golem using Dagger + WH. If I am forced to camp staff (for more regen or needing range), I am pushing out right around 7500 DPS.

In addition to that, Vamp Aura adds somewhere around 300 DPS per target. This adds on a little over 1k DPS to the golem numbers in group damage. (Note that arcDPS does not track any of the vamp procs for damage. Your own personal DPS, because of Vampiric and Vamp aura, and anyone else who gets Vamp Aura will be under-reported in arc.) The in-game message from the DPS golem will accurately track your damage including the procs.

Examples:

Here are a few logs from my various pugventures over the last few weeks testing this. I started off just stealing the minstrel gear from my chrono, and gradually evolved from there into something more appropriate for Scourge Healing.

I'm listing a link to each log and listing my personal healing done from ARC, barrier absorbed damage from the log, and % of incoming damage covered between the two. Please keep in mind that some of these were from LFGs for casual runs or training groups and the play in general was not great, but provides enough data to evaluate the effectiveness of the build. Also note that any healing from Vampiric sources is not included in these numbers.

Boss	Barrier/s	Heal/s	%Healing
Cairn	1413/s	1876/s	68.76%
Mursaat Overseer	3317/s	2134/s	82.54%
Samarog	2355/s	1816/s	72.99%
Vale Guardian	1864/s	2965/s	75.39%
Gorseval	1795/s	1980/s	84.78%
Slothasor	2390/s	2706/s	66.34%
Matthias	1579/s	3649/s	65.18%

And for a better idea of how it scales with better play, I ran a W4 with a group of quite good players, who may or may not have been at various stages of inebriation.

Boss	Barrier/s	Heal/s	%Healing
Cairn	2545/s	2361/s	70.88%
MO	3074/s	1197/s	78.82%
Sam	2405/s	1643/s	78.89%
Deimos	2569/s	2256/s	71.65%

One thing you should notice when looking at the logs is the level of damage shielding happening by group. The group I am in gets the majority of the shielding, but the other group gets a pretty significant portion as well. Another item to note is the scholar uptime. Many of these groups were training runs or "all welcome" runs because those were the groups who would let me bring a scourge healer. As a result, a lot of them were pretty weak, and in most cases the incoming damage per second is significantly higher than the average value for the encounter. Despite that, the group scholar uptimes are generally higher than the average for the fight. Also, you'll notice that the % of total damage absorbed goes up in the group of better players as they tend to just take less damage in general.

Build

My current build looks like this.

My initial attempts at this were in a mix of Minstrel/Harrier gear that I stole from my Chrono, and that worked fine on fights without a toughness tank. Any fight where you have adds to provide Life Force would allow you some additional flexibility in your utility choices. You can basically use anything utilities you need situationally there, but you'll just need to pay more attention to your Life Force before you spam F5 if you dial back the LF generation. I have found that around 26k HP, I have enough life force to spam my F2-F5 pretty regularly, which ended up adding more damage than I gained by trying to run more aggressive gear with less vitality.

Anything with 'enough' life to support the cost of chaining F3-F5 together with a bunch of healing power should produce similar support results. In an ideal world, I'd pile a ton of Mender's gear on this guy instead of the Marshall stuff, but that stat set isn't avaialable in PvE.

Feel free to ping with questions or comments.

TL;DR

Scourge Support isn't a joke. It makes a really strong second healer for raids and provides a lot of unique benefits.

note: I am aware that this isn't going to be a great option for any group who routinely runs 1 single healer on most encounters, but for anyone who is regularly running 2 healers in their raids, this is something that is worth taking a look at.

Discussion on Reddit:https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/87nvhu/scourge_heavy_support_aka_scourgeheals/