Sand Savant nerf

Todays update.NecromancerSand Savant: This trait has been split between game modes. In WvW and PvE modes, it will continue to reduce cooldown by 33%. In PvP it will increase sand shade recharge by 100%.

It is actually in wvw too.

it makes sense kinda as now its bad to spam them, but its still a pretty huge nerf. im thinking ppl will opt for demonic lore.i think blood support is gonna die.

Very good nerf. This trait should be deleted in general but it’s a start.

@Evolute.6239 said:Very good nerf. This trait should be deleted in general but it’s a start.

Actually, this will make WvW worse until the next patch/nerf. All this does is force Scourges to go pure DPS, which from savant to DL, which is a pretty big dps increase.

@Evolute.6239 said:Very good nerf. This trait should be deleted in general but it’s a start.

Yet another player who doesn't understand the class.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it makes sense kinda as now its bad to spam them, but its still a pretty huge nerf. im thinking ppl will opt for demonic lore.i think blood support is gonna die.

Yup. What's the point of Blood (healing) scourge now. Once again, the Necro class has little to no support capabilities.

Why did you make the most important trait Scourge has so useless now? This was such a must have in WvW because of the target/radius increase and the lower cd allowed for much greater Syngergy with other traits like those for converting boons and for supporting allies. Scourge is the only counter we have to boonspam which will now once again become the dominant meta. Combined with the damage delay, tiny radius, 3 target limit, its going to be completely useless in small scale/roaming, and will make it extremely difficult to fight larger groups. What an incredibly stupid change...

@misterman.1530 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it makes sense kinda as now its bad to spam them, but its still a pretty huge nerf. im thinking ppl will opt for demonic lore.i think blood support is gonna die.

Maybe if they got rid of the asinine amount of AoE corruption/damage this spec could do, its support capabilities would make more sense.But if they tone down its AoE damage capabilities the PvE community would complain the spec is beyond useless.

The scourge is fundamentally broken by design because it's direct support + boon support + tank + AoE condi damage + AoE boon negation all in one. There's no feasible way everyone will be happy unless they completely redo it because it just does too many things.

Until then, this change is absolutely necessary. I don't really care if the class can do more theoretical damage if there are larger windows of counterplay and it requires more skill to play. Because if damage was the issue people would be complaining about powerwells dive reaper or even core necro.

I feel like with this change, they can look into returning some duration to shades in pvP/WvW. May not get back to 20 seconds, but maybe 15?

@mulzi.8273 said:

@Evolute.6239 said:Very good nerf. This trait should be deleted in general but it’s a start.

Just played some matches changing sand savant in favour of demonic lore and this is completely unplayable. Getting wrecked very fast especially by deadeyes. 15% dmg reduction is completely necessary nowadays with that much deadeyes, core guardians, power shatters, etc

@misterman.1530 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it makes sense kinda as now its bad to spam them, but its still a pretty huge nerf. im thinking ppl will opt for demonic lore.i think blood support is gonna die.

This change does not affect Scourge's power rez abilities, nor does it affect Transfusion, nor does it make Vampiric Rituals worse.

Blood Magic is still going to be the most common Scourge build.

@Karl McLain.5604 said:Corrected Update Note -- Sand Savant: This trait has been split between game modes. In PvE it will continue to reduce cooldown by 33%. In PvP and WvW modes it will increase sand shade recharge by 100%.

expected nerf, but scourge will be still OP in Zergfights. and now more or less useless in roaming.

i think Problem is still bad class design, couse scourge is only aoe dmg skills. if there would be other skilltypes (for mobility, Sustain, ….) and less aoe dmg it would work better. i also dont know why thiefs and mesmers get reworks while scourges stay like they are. i am necro main, but in zergs i already only Play hammer herald, cause herald has more Sustain, mobility and better burst dmg. way more fun.

in roaming now the reaper is the way to go. but with that high lf Decay and the reaper-cant-get-healed-while-in-shroud-mechanic (its like warriors couldnt get healed while endure pain is active) its hard to stay alive in a fight when you get focused by 3+ enemies. reaper is still to slow and has no good Access to stability.everyone is faster, has more Sustain (cause more heal and boons, blocks, invuls, invis). some classes like druid on apothecary stats are unkillabble even if you Play full Berserker stats on reaper.

Another heavy handed nerf that doesn’t really fix the core issue that the AoE itself was too big making it oppressive to fight amongst other things.

@"DeceiverX.8361" PvE didn’t use sand savant as far as I can tell.

Source: https://snowcrows.com/raids/necromancer/

Seems like removing ammo, when taking sand savant, would have been a better way to fix it.

@misterman.1530 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it makes sense kinda as now its bad to spam them, but its still a pretty huge nerf. im thinking ppl will opt for demonic lore.i think blood support is gonna die.

Which is what the scourge was touted as!

Thematically this is a very good change.

Or would be if combined with increasing the shade duration and reducing the ammo count to 2. Scourge is supposed to be zone control, and this makes you commit to your shade placement, instead of shades just being like every other AoE in the game.

The only problem is that a lot of the ally barrier is tied up in the act of placing the shade. That's a design mistake imo.

When u weaken Scourge in one area, please consider strengthening them in other areas so that it remains decently viable in the multifaceted mode that is WvW.

in my opinion - and I'm actively playing this class in the wvw - this adjustment is great crap!

I think it's gonna hit the wrong people! Zergs and servers that manage to have 70-80% Scourges in their zerg and are already fighting hard will continue to be, because they usually only need the 3-4 shades per fight anyway - one push!

Only zergs and players who were uncoordinated and unorganized will now have a harder time being effective together. Because this change brings only one thing, it makes inaccurate placement of shadows less forgiving!

The only ones who profit may, be the individual players who step out of a zerg and don't get a shade for them alone. But exactly this clouding nobody wants!

Sand Savant definitely needed a nerf, but this is the incorrect nerf. This is a perfect example of nerfing random numbers instead of nerfing what is actually causing problems.

The problem with Sand Savant is that the extra ranged radius it provides is too large. Which allows a scourge+FB to contest an entire point while being unkillable. All this nerf does is cause the scourge to lose their shade spam after 40 seconds. Problem 1: 40 seconds is plenty long enough for any competent duo to take the point. Problem 2: The other OP thing about Sand Savant isn't just the shade but the fact that it also buffs the range of shade skills on the player. So even if they cant spam their shade, they can still cover the entire point simply by standing on it themselves.

The correct nerf is to reduce the range by roughly 10-25% so that it can actually be avoided / cannot full cover a point. Alternatively, just simply smiters boon it out of existence since this trait is bad for the game and should have never existed anyways.

As it stands this change will do absolutely nothing to the meta.

I think sand savant was too strong. But that is definetly the wrong nerf.Instead go for only half of the radius increase.

How it is right now, the corruption trait from placing F1 is almost useless because of such long recharge time.Corrupt 1 boon from 5 players... On 30 seconds cd. Is like a worse we'll of corruption.

But then, what is scourge supposed to do? At beginning it was all about corrupting. Now f2 corrupts got nerfed, f1 corrupts got nerfed.Scourge specific skills are all melee except for the never ever used serpent skill, because it's soooo bad.

I played wvw yesterday and scourge feels really clumsy to play right now.I never tried deadeye, but all other classes feel way more satisfying.They don't have internal lag in wvw (that delay on shade abilities) and their class mechanics are feeling fine to play.But scourge feels awful right now.

It feels like you have to go like full grieving now to do dmg.

Eles have been really strong, same goes for revs, even though they got nerfed.And with scourges having to go full offensive is pretty bad.There are already so many burst classes.

If coreguard jumps at you while being full grieving scourge you will die. Same goes for thief and mesmer and pewpew ranger.

Eles can almost kill you with just 2 autoattacks.

Sand savant was a must have because with this low radius without sand savant you couldn't hit anyone.For big zergs with 2 scourges per group this change won't change anything.It just nerfed small groups and solo action (where necro already sucked)

Maybe in PvP this change is ok. Because you don't have to replace your shade that often. But for wvw it's definitely too much. Because the area's you fight in are way bigger and you have to replace your shade more often.Since shades already have a huge tell that even blind people can see, this really wasn't necessary.

You should have just decreased the radius from this trait or make it only hit 3 people like small shades do.

But best would have been if you made it more rewarding to not spam those f-abilities.

Scourge really needs better support. This Nerf doesn't help that. It fixes a problem in the short term but makes support scourge harder in the long run. Which isn't good as others have stated. However, a solution could be that sand savant could lose its conditions applied by skill 1. So no torment and crippling. But now applies healing, barrier or some helpful boon like protection, might, or alacrity in its place. Having it still cause the damage like so dhuumfire and unyielding blast can still trigger. But the big issue with the trait aside from its massive radius was how many cover conditions it had with soul reaping. Vulnerability, burning, torment and crippling. And sometimes bleeding and weakness on top of that. It was just overwhelming in combination with its cover field. Stripping much of its offensive potential for more support would be a fantastic change to really distinguish it from the other two traits.

Ok, so I don’t usually write on these forums. And I doubt that Anet will choose out of 150k post and read mine, but I just have to say it. I will mainly speak from pvp perspective, since I don’t play that much wvw to be somewhat objective.So as a first point I would like to look at some numbers here:

• This is how it was: 10 seconds recharge - 10 seconds duration(100% uptime)
• This is after the change: 30 seconds recharge - 10 seconds duration(30% uptime)This change means, that scourge is staying more than a half of the time without the shade. That means, that necro has to come close to the enemies. And I would like to remind you, that it has practically no defenses. Of course there is barrier, which gets destroyed in less than a second and 8! Seconds of protection on half of the hp and/or if you take spectral armor. And on top of that we have no shroud.

My second point would be: why do you think people took sand savant in the first place? I mean Demonic Lore provides more damage(quite a good amount of it). Imo, its because the normal shade radius is too small to be somewhat useful in terms of defense/offense.

• Small shades are so easily avoided
• The delay on shade skills make it even worse
• If the enemy comes close you have to practically hug him to make any damage by shade skills. And I already mentioned what are the relationship between any necro really and melee

But that was about offense, lets look at defense. Cuz those 8 seconds of protection is going to save your life.I do not say, that sand savant didn’t need to be changed. But I actually believe that the normal shade itself has to be changed as well. It has to be bigger: not as big as Sand Savants’one - that is a little too much(tho my friend who plays dh doesn’t have any problem with it covering the entire point), but just a little bit so it can be a little more useful. Cuz Sand Savant(even without the recharge reduction which was 33%) was better than taking Demonic Lore.Sorry if my english was bad, i’m not a native speaker.

it's a bad nerf :((( scourge is so bad now omg anet :(((When the huge majority of WvW plays scourge, something needs to change. It's probably not the kind of nerf scourge players wanted, but at least anet did something about it.boon spam is meta now D: scourju was our saviour ;-;Scourge isn't dead because of this, it's just harder to play. We also have Spellbreaker.

IMHO the way the nerf was done is kinda in the wrong direction and refers to devs that have minimal knowledge of the class and the way it is played. Sand Savant is scourge's primary utility and procs so many things. This dramatic increase in the cooldown now makes scourge even less flexible with a lot less options especially in PvP where the pace is higher. Now scourge it's going to have lesser influence in the game as it is forced to utilize his shades in a more restricted manner.

What would be proper is that they should compensate by making the shades procs a bit stronger. So yes scourge would have to think twice before placing a shade but that shade would be stronger in effect. Really disappointed.