Balance the scourge now, not when next expansion comes

It's honestly an embarassment to the games design. Let's pretend GW2 was just releasing today and was surrounded by hype and EoTM existed and all maps were queued, all servers were seperate and full of life, dungeons were a thing, we had all these new fractals and raids etc.

You would nerf the scourge.

Because you would lose players because of it. Players would complain about how ridiculously overpowered the scourge is and going back to a time when the forums were active, the entire forum would be full of complaints about scourge - and you would nerf it and redesign it. Being able to murder everyone in sight every 10 seconds compared to every 8 seconds (just an example) LITERALLY doesn't make a difference AT ALL EVER. I used to main necromancer for almost 4 years so I can very well tell you how to balance the scourge. Players complaining about nerfs shouldn't even be a factor in the decision because there's more people complaining about how overpowered scourge is - which is totally justified.

This is how to balance the scourge properly. If a game dev from a game such as league of legends saw how ridiculous scourge is in this game, he would also agree due to the consideration of counterplay. And no, PvE is not being taken into consideration because it doesn't matter if you kill something in 5:46 or 5:14 - it still dies very fast. (Oh, and we're going to consider the scourge a condition damage class with support. (Since making it just support would be too off the end for many players) Reaper is the power class - scourge is the condition class):

1. The scourge itself no longer counts as a sand shade.2. Sand shade skills cannot be used unless a sand shade is active (makes no difference, though, after change #1)3. Manifest sand shade now actually uses life force and no longer deals physical damage.4. Garish pillar inflicts 2s of fear instead of 1s and no longer deals physical damage.5. Desert shroud is reworked entirely; no longer inflicts physical damage, grants barrier, or inflicts torment, etc.Desert shroud now causes any currently active sand shades to pulse their effects and associated traits (eg. Reaper's might grants might to allies with manifest sand shade) as well as causing any currently active sand shades to pulse shroud skill 5 associated traits (eg. Active sand shades granting AOE stability with foot in the grave when using desert shroud) This means pulsing barrier near sand shades etc. etc. Traits and abilities may need to be reworded a bit to make coherent sense.7. Sand flare no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple. Instead, this skill inflicts AOE blind near any currently active sand shades.8. Sand swell no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple and no longer inflicts physical damage.9. Trail of anguish no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple; simply inflicts torment and cripple. Also no longer inflicts burning or physical damage.10. Dessicate now draws in any currently active sand shades to the player character, exploding the shades and dealing devastating damage, granting life force per shade exploded.11. Serpent siphon now sends all currently active sand shades to the target area and activates all manifest sand shade and shroud skill 1 traits.

It's not my job to balance everything, but there are some ideas for you. That is a class with more counterplay and better design concept than the current iteration of the scourge. Kind of like ventari revenant, only with more tablets and... better.

Nice a complete neutering of Scourge. Sounds awesome /s

Yep. Everything in this game needs neutering for the sake of counterplay. Think warrior earthshaker or bulls charge > hundred blades. No spam.

Just watched WP and Boots Balance Update Vid, they discussed how they even buffed the Nourishing Ashes trait to now it even adds more life force when you ALSO inflict burning. Like seriously? more buffs? Scourge in WvW is already insane. Point-Blank AOE with condi and boon corrupt. >.>

But selling the counter to scourge even with more aoe spam feels more profitable!

@"Aeolus.3615" said:But selling the counter to scourge even with more aoe spam feels more profitable!

And that counter is really....the counter to everything in the game, wvw zergs will swap stackable scourge to stackable scourge counter ...been there seen that. We all know the formula now : "each expansion release 2 easy to play super effective condi aoe bomb specs to attract casual and make them feel good about themselves = more copies sold =profit "

If they just make the scourge pay a life foces upkeep for having out shades i think you would balances the class out. Right now the shades are too free to spam.

OR you need to nerf what they can pull off with there f2-f5 (the way anet seems to be doing with the scourge problem up to this point).

@Zefrost.3425 said:1. The scourge itself no longer counts as a sand shade.2. Sand shade skills cannot be used unless a sand shade is active (makes no difference, though, after change #1)3. Manifest sand shade now actually uses life force and no longer deals physical damage.4. Garish pillar inflicts 2s of fear instead of 1s and no longer deals physical damage.5. Desert shroud is reworked entirely; no longer inflicts physical damage, grants barrier, or inflicts torment, etc.Desert shroud now causes any currently active sand shades to pulse their effects and associated traits (eg. Reaper's might grants might to allies with manifest sand shade) as well as causing any currently active sand shades to pulse shroud skill 5 associated traits (eg. Active sand shades granting AOE stability with foot in the grave when using desert shroud) This means pulsing barrier near sand shades etc. etc. Traits and abilities may need to be reworded a bit to make coherent sense.7. Sand flare no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple. Instead, this skill inflicts AOE blind near any currently active sand shades.8. Sand swell no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple and no longer inflicts physical damage.9. Trail of anguish no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple; simply inflicts torment and cripple. Also no longer inflicts burning or physical damage.10. Dessicate now draws in any currently active sand shades to the player character, exploding the shades and dealing devastating damage, granting life force per shade exploded.11. Serpent siphon now sends all currently active sand shades to the target area and activates all manifest sand shade and shroud skill 1 traits.

These are very nice suggestions. I also think it would be better if they added cast time on shade skills. Being able to use those skills while CCed is just annoying. Scourge isn't as annoying as it used to be, but it's still annoying. Engineers get hard countered by Scourges due to the fact that the rifles' damage is very mediocre and you have no other option to out range the Scourge other than the Mortar Kit.

If ArenaNets' goal was to create a support specialization for the necromancer, one that focuses on pulling allies out of the fight and resurrecting them, I'd be fine with it. Instead it's a support specialization with a condition specialization hidden underneath it. So few Scourges play support and most of them just want easy kills with condition damage.

as a mainly thief and roamer i think scourge is super weak, still wonder why i run into so many of them while roaming. they become annoying if they got a babysitter because downstate + rez trait is a little OP when you outnumber your opponent, but thats for any class.they got low chance to win a fight while roaming so i am ok with them dealing half as much damage as my ele in a zerg fight, while stripping boons to boost my damage.

Almost making me wish they'd adopt a proper Rock/Scissor/Paper format instead.... and I hate that system.

The only thing I would seriously look at with scourge is putting a cast time or gcd on shade skills, but that's only because I disagree with classes being able to have so many instant cast abilities than anything specific to scourge. The skills themselves would probably end up with buffs to compensate.

Maybe doing something with punishments too because 6 skills all having the exact same tacked-on boon to torment+cripple is lazy.

Players devoid of any skill will always find a scapegoat. I do wonder what it'll be after Scourge is gutted and rendered unplayable.

scourge is ok. pls buff. we need bigger ae cap

Scourge, and core necro is strong because it hits stuff. No projectiles, no 1 second arm times, just lots of ranged aoe without tell.

Scourge is fine and anet has done a great job with balancing them out over the months. Remember how strong they were 6 months ago? how about 3 months ago? Yeah they been getting nerfed since then constantly and rightly so. Anet has bigger problems right now, like making ALL classes viable in raids and make them feel just as important as others with a role to fill.

@Hanth.2978 said:Scourge is fine and anet has done a great job with balancing them out over the months. Remember how strong they were 6 months ago? how about 3 months ago? Yeah they been getting nerfed since then constantly and rightly so. Anet has bigger problems right now, like making ALL classes viable in raids and make them feel just as important as others with a role to fill.

That is a way on to view the classes makign players strong rahter than be players making classes strong...And pve balance and class design is the HUGE CRIME on this game, that it is broking up all other gamemode with a vry LAME balance.

when 60-70% of small groups or zerg gameplay is relying on the spam and barrier of 1 class alone...

@joneirikb.7506 said:Almost making me wish they'd adopt a proper Rock/Scissor/Paper format instead.... and I hate that system.

I think the ideal is mages > assistant > soldier > mages but classes like scourge acts like a mages and soldier at the same time.

Agree it needs to be nerfed OP, however if all of your changes were implemented might as well delete the spec.

Trimming numbers or touching 1-2 mechanics is fine, totally gutting a spec should never be the answer.

Scourge might be strong, but w/o it we go back to HoT style boonball meta, and....kitten that crap.

bullshit! Scourge is fine! Neither OP nor too weak. Learn the game mechanics! And understand that you just can't conder everything with one-sided builds.

@Silver.2076 said:kitten! Scourge is fine! Neither OP nor too weak. Learn the game mechanics! And understand that you just can't conder everything with one-sided builds.

Its really not that hard to counter a Scourge, its mostly a problem with large numbers of Scourges in groups. And even then if you have a proper group setup its not hard at all to counter.

Shade AOE spam is the problem IMO. I also don't believe the Scourge should count as a shade. I'd welcome any changes that address those two issues.

@X T D.6458 said:

@"Silver.2076" said:kitten! Scourge is fine! Neither OP nor too weak. Learn the game mechanics! And understand that you just can't conder everything with one-sided builds.

And if the scourges are built proper which isnt hard at all, they can counter your counter.

Either way, that doesnt really matter. The scourge has what I would call... "secondary issues". Not so much issues with the basic idea and strength of things, but for example duration. We had a simple situation today, a scourge was standing on top of a wall and dumped a shade on a ram we had below. Just as he did that, we noticed him, bursted and scared him away at around 20%. All well and fine, he didnt do much damage at all. But then you look at the ground. 2s pass. Yeah the shade is still there. 4s pass. Oh the shade is still there. Where is the necro? He ran out the back of the tower. We think. We dont know. 6s pass. Of course the shade is still there. 10s pass. Can the shade please stop, the necro is nowhere to be seen.

It's a completely different beast compared to marks and wells and fucking annoying as fucking hell. And if the actual necro is there too, the annoyment doubles since the same fucking shade is moving around with him as well.

That's whats stupid with scourges.

Yeah, the issue isn't so much balancing it, they are going to have to redesign it, in order to eliminate how broken it is for competitive play (especially in small spaces where we have to fight all the time).

@Ubi.4136 said:Yeah, the issue isn't so much balancing it, they are going to have to redesign it, in order to eliminate how broken it is for competitive play (especially in small spaces where we have to fight all the time).

anet dont have time to rework necro, cause they have to do a lot reworks of DE and mesmer to make them more OP.