Nothing about Scourges?

I'm really surprised, astonished really that the pretty massive nerf to Scourges has gone un-noticed.Having the shade cooldown go from 10 seconds up to 30 is indeed a pretty big deal, but is it enough to push it out of the meta and even viability?

I didn't see how it changed facing a scourge.

Is it relevant nerf? If yes it was about time, and maybe now scourges will use the tiny cicles shades for a more balanced gameplay.

I'll admit its not the direction I would've taken with pulling Scourges back into line. This is a pretty big nerf. That said, forcing scourges to think about when to use their shades can be a good thing. They can still utilize their f2-f5 even without the shade while in melee.Honestly its more of a (well needed) nerf for wvw than pvp. Don't expect them to be winning any 1v1's soon, but I guess that's not what they're there for.

~ Kovu

This means scourges are hard-countered by anything ranged now.

I think the nerf can be best summed up as not ideal but better than the status quo. Overall I am satisfied with this nerf but would like to see a Sand Savant rework whenever they have the time.

This nerf is such a simplistic decision. As a scourge main it feels like people behind this have very little knowledge about the class and the way it is actually played. Shades are the bread and butter of the scourge's gameplay. Now with this massive nerf the scourge will lose a lot of flexibility and options especially in PvP where the pace is a lot faster. I can imagine scourge becoming a lot more static as without his shade is almost naked.

A more fair approach would be to compensate the shades procs effects for this dramatic cooldown increase. So if the intention was for scourge to be more tactical (which in higher divs it's forced to) at least the outcome should be stronger. This reminds me a lot the situation with reaper and the LF drain in shroud.

PS1 - as it has been stated by others it would be great if we have some notes from the devs related to 'balance adjustments' so we players understand better the reasoning behind such decisions.

I'm sat here waiting for the complaints about the burning since a lot of scourges will change from SS to DL

@Sigmoid.7082 said:I'm sat here waiting for the complaints about the burning since a lot of scourges will change from SS to DL

When I ran scourge for a bit, I ran DL over SS. Better DoT and took a bit of skill to land it over SS. DL was good but SS is like tutorial ez mode

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:I'm really surprised, astonished really that the pretty massive nerf to Scourges has gone un-noticed.Having the shade cooldown go from 10 seconds up to 30 is indeed a pretty big deal, but is it enough to push it out of the meta and even viability?

While it's true that this was somewhat of a big change, unfortunately the builds to suffer the most might actually be the blood/support orientated Necros which I don't think was the intent here.Personally I play but don't main scourge and was more or less OK with how things were prior to this change.As mentioned in a few other threads regarding this topic, changing Sand Savant encourages players to pick a different trait so potentially Demonic Lore is going to the the choice for offensive builds. This means that even though there are now fewer targets per shade, we are also increasing condi damage output (which was a source of complaint in the 1st place).On the other hand, support/blood Scourge players, now have to consider more carefully when to drop a shade (if using SS) and provide barrier which impacts their support capabilities.If we're taking PVP into consideration, it's even less of an impact since we still have 3 charges with half second CD before the full 30 sec CD is reached. During any single encounter, dropping 3 large AOE condi-pulsing shades is still going to have a lot of impact.

Is it a massive nerf? I feel for WvW, absolutely - but for sPvP, slightly less impact.I think it may have been more effective to slightly reduce the condi application (perhaps anything that applies 3 stacks to apply only 2) on 1 or 2 main skills.

Nobody in their right mind is gonna play scourge in YoloQ next season. (ATs?, perhaps)

As scourge I kinda like this nerf. There is no reason to go sand savant in pvp or wvw. DL is strong trait but less braindead.

It is a shame tho, that they didn't manage to rework trait instead of destroing it. Some more support oriented trait would be very welcome.

Demonic Lore isn't as strong as it may sound because of:This trait can only inflict burning on a particular target once every three seconds.

It's a nice trait for PvE where factors are quite different but not so much for PvP. Only useful thing for going DL is Blood as Sand which reduces incoming damage for 5% per shade. But still the cooldown will be an issue.

Scourge was fine before. Unneeded nerf in wrong place.

@Kovu.7560 said:I'll admit its not the direction I would've taken with pulling Scourges back into line. This is a pretty big nerf. That said, forcing scourges to think about when to use their shades can be a good thing. They can still utilize their f2-f5 even without the shade while in melee.Honestly its more of a (well needed) nerf for wvw than pvp. Don't expect them to be winning any 1v1's soon, but I guess that's not what they're there for.

~ Kovu

Except that I believe it is for pvp only.Edit: My bad didn’t see they added a correction.

For people who actually know how to play scourge properly, this nerf does absolutely nothing.

@Rufo.3716 said:For people who actually know how to play scourge properly, this nerf does absolutely nothing.

Still seeing good scourges work people

@Badcat.7320 said:Scourge was fine before. Unneeded nerf in wrong place.

Except in WvW where the ground itself becomes one giant AoE of insanely hard hitting condi because of the scaling there. At least this change will help balance that.

I think they nerfed it in the wrong place but such is usually the case. Hate that this elite is/was a thing, reaper was a much better design.

@Abelisk.4527 said:This means scourges are hard-countered by anything ranged now.That's nothing new. Anything with 1,200+ range is pro at fighting any and all necromancer build. This nerf to shades doesn't really change that.

~ Kovu

@Kovu.7560 said:

@Abelisk.4527 said:This means scourges are hard-countered by anything ranged now.That's nothing new. Anything with 1,200+ range is pro at fighting any and all necromancer build. This nerf to shades doesn't really change that.

Well... before, Scourge could deal with ranged by activating F2-F5 while casting F1. Now, the F1 is out of the question. Scourges are no longer able to do significant damage on larger points/roads.

i approve of this nerf :open_mouth:

I dont know why no else talks about this but, the biggest part of the nerf to sand savant is the poor design of the minor trait, it counted as 3 shades which gave 75x3 boonduration and condi duration And most importantly 5%x3 damage reduction. There will be alot more down time where necro is going to take up to 15% more than usual. Its the combination of SS 15% dmg reduction AND barrier that allows scourge to sustain dmg taken.

@Abelisk.4527 said:

@Kovu.7560 said:

@Abelisk.4527 said:This means scourges are hard-countered by anything ranged now.That's nothing new. Anything with 1,200+ range is pro at fighting any and all necromancer build. This nerf to shades doesn't really change that.

They really couldn't. Those shades are super easy to kite out, even before the nerf. Reapers posed more of a threat, and even then really only so much so.I don't know why Anet wants necromancers to feel so sluggish compared to every single other profession.

~ Kovu

@Rufo.3716 said:For people who actually know how to play scourge properly, this nerf does absolutely nothing.

Pretty much this. Beforehand, shades had no real cooldown and could be placed poorly with little punishment for bad decision making.

Now that it has an effective cooldown ( You will run out after 40 seconds ) it just makes shade placement like any other skill that can't be upkept 100% of the time: You have to know when to use it. So the nerf really only affects bad scourge players who were silvers skill-spamming their way to gold. It seems like they are mainly going for the lesser skilled crowd rather than nerfing it for platinum/legendary/competitive play. This nerf will have little impact on necros that understand where their shade should go and when they don't need it.

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:

@Rufo.3716 said:For people who actually know how to play scourge properly, this nerf does absolutely nothing.

I would disagree, this is fairly significant. It didn’t kill the spec but it made it a whole lot worse.