Scourge and Spellbreaker are the true heroes of PoF

Reaching out to the devs.....Scourge and Spellbreaker are absolutely essential to the game

All that boon ripping/corruption/punishment keeps at bay all the cancerous builds created post PoF, that would be let free to join the other cancerous builds from HoT meta in case Scourge and Spellbreaker ar taken out:

-condition mirage/chrono-dragonhunter/ bunker firebrand/ burning burst firebrand-tanky holosmith/tanky scrapper-staff mender druid

The specs above require very little effort to stay alive and perform extremely well even when you have multiple version of them in a team, they make the game boring, slow, unenjoyable. Scourge and Spellbreaker are the heroes of this expansion because they've brought a so much needed change of gameplay , a gameplay that has remained static for the last 3 years, boonbot stealthing/block spammers bunkers with plethora of CC/aoe trap crap.

Both these specs are devastating no doubt but the amount of counterplay they offer is unparalleled , truly a great job on the devs part: in case they both get nerfed....we will need massive nerfs to HoT specs and some PoF ones ( holosmith-mirage-firebrand), that's what I think.

-Scourge has only barrier as defense, virtually no stability, no charge...just loads of zoning and that makes them extremely vulnerable to ranged burst dmg ( no like pre-nerf reapers)-Spellbreakers...90% of what they are is "full counter", very visible , enough to bait and dodge and after that spellbreaker is even weaker than core war

So...why that hate about Scourge and Spellbreaker?.....they are anti-cheese builds: that's what I love about them, that's what many like me wanted for years - a direct hardcounter to all cheese in game ( and we still need even more hardcounrters to stealth cheesers and boonbot bunkers)

how to counter cheese builds? By cheese king builds (aka scourge spellbreaker) :)

About spellbreaker I agree completely and I would not change it, about scourge I think the mechanic is wrong, they SHOULD have given more mobility to the Necro and some defenses (other than facepalm) and have lower burst damage (the only thing that prevents scourge to melt down is the high damage)... some blocks in GS for reaper are also needed... maybe some punishing melee like FC, that puniches the button spam... As it is it's bounded to fail...

Now you can add some PoF builds to your button spam...

I'm really not looking forward to the Holosmith/Daredevil/Mirage meta that will form when Scourge and Spellbreaker get gutted.

But I'm biased because I love power reaper, and Holosmith/Mirage/Daredevil just dunk all over reaper, while reaper can at least fight scourge.

@Crinn.7864 said:I'm really not looking forward to the Holosmith/Daredevil/Mirage meta that will form when Scourge and Spellbreaker get gutted.

But I'm biased because I love power reaper, and Holosmith/Mirage/Daredevil just dunk all over reaper, while reaper can at least fight scourge.

I agree... They nerf a class that press 3 buttons to give place to another who has to press 4 instead of 3... Mirage is still ridiculus, DD - always have been, chrono is still strong as hell... I rather have this players thinking than goes back to spam buttons...

Spellbreaker makes the game slow and unenjoyable (and also requires very little skill to stay alive). Passive healing, a strong defense mechanic that can be used every 8 seconds...they can be outplayed and killed, but it takes far too long even if you know what you're doing (unless you're playing something that can rip their boons, but you shouldn't need to play a specific profession in order to counter a particular build).

I honestly don't see how they're any better or more skillfull (or less toxic) than the builds they're holding back. I can beat Chronos, I can beat Scrappers, and I don't have to leave the point or die while doing so. Also, tank Holo? Most of them run Marauder, and those that don't are still easier to kill than Scrapper.

Full counter is good design and brings much needed punishment to spamming skills, but scourge isn't. Scourge is just another AoE spam build that is able to get away with it due to the sheer amount of DPS it dishes out.

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:Full counter is good design and brings much needed punishment to spamming skills, but scourge isn't. Scourge is just another AoE spam build that is able to get away with it due to the sheer amount of DPS it dishes out.

That is its strength and it's time people learn to accept the strength of each profession, eventually each profession should have the tools to kill your chosen class, not all in the same build but spread out and that's called : build variety.

Scourge is easier to counter than reaper, it's less mobile and tanky ...so the dps is justified in my opinion

glad that im not the only person that hates how the game turned into a Boon spam fest..... where everyone have everything up 24/7......

now that they cant rely on these Boon cheesy builds because Scourge they suddenly think the sky is falling lol... instead of trying new builds that are not reliant on 6+ different boons Uptime that is instantly turned againts them by scourge....

the funny part is necros were the only class that never was able to join the Boon spam meta because devs never gived us anything lolinstead they turned us into the Anti boon monsters we are now....

Calling Condi mirage cancerous is being stupid, there's no other word. It's litterally the only way a mirage can do decent damage, if you have any issue with how Mirage plays GW2 isn't for you, Mesmers are meant to be annoying to fight against they designed the class only around that, get used to it.

Also spellbreakers and scourge are not needed to counter the builds you mention, first of all many balanced builds counter them heavily and secondly you feel they are needed simply because the game is awfully balanced to begin with. It's way too easy to have an army of boon on yourself at all time for many classes (if not all), way too easy for necromancers in general to bounce way too much conditions and overall the power creep went way too far (and shouldn't have been a thing in the first place, newly introduced classes in GW1 never felt like a huge power creep and the game was overall pretty balanced, and whenever an op build was born it was quickly nerfed to an at least counterable state).

The problem is that the devs have decided since 2012 to completely ignore the community and take forever to "balance" and the balance patches are quite often really underwhelming and change very few details. There has been something like 2 significant balance patches in 5 years so far and weirdly enough nothing really relevant for PoF launch when it was the most needed since basically ever. Scourge and Spellbreakers conceptually are good niche builds/ideas, the numbers they carry on their skills is way too high that's the issue.

You do know staff/lb druid is a popular counter to SB/Scourge right?

Buy stars you mean over powered right and by meta you mean balanced right?Cause scourge is absolutely broken atm, you cannot give area deny in an game that is based on point control. Necromancers don't only counter multiple roles, but they also counter the ENTIRE FUCKING GAME MODE.

I can deal with spell breakers but fuck necro's they need to be nerfed those ghosts need to be killable or something.

So instead of a mirage/holo/druid/firebrand/spellbreaker/scourge/daredevil meta...it is better if the meta is just scourge/spellbreaker/daredevil only?

@Crinn.7864 said:I'm really not looking forward to the Holosmith/Daredevil/Mirage meta that will form when Scourge and Spellbreaker get gutted.

But I'm biased because I love power reaper, and Holosmith/Mirage/Daredevil just dunk all over reaper, while reaper can at least fight scourge.

Except:

• Holosmith can be killed and has massive counterplay, it's not a godlike spec and is squishy though it does have good 1up and downstate cleave potential
• Moa is still better than mirage as a class, but mirage is better if chrono misses a moa
• Daredevil has always and will always be meta except daredevil d/p gets destroyed by core s/d (katsumi is a good example)

Considering that most of the player base isn't having fun with the new meta, there should be a better way to balance then leave it as is. It just isn't fun and has moved even further away from vanilla pvp where diversity, communication, counters, and reactions were all much more important.

Scourge's biggest problem is that it just invalidates downstate, both stomping and ressing. Nothing has been as oppressive next to a downed body as a scourge spamming condi bomb in the history of GW2, not even pre-nerfed full trap glass DHs at HoT launch.

I haven't used scourge yet in PvP, but when I am in WvW and running around and get attacked solo, after I dump my condi burst if they don't die I am easily killed. Getting life force back is really hard in 1v1(Scepter--Torch/OHdagger). When I go reaper I find scourges an easy kill if they are solo.

In PvP how is everyone finding the LF?

At least daredevil and mirage take skills to play well, you will never get queues flooded with them even if they are strong.

@Vallenous.2179 said:Considering that most of the player base isn't having fun with the new meta, there should be a better way to balance then leave it as is. It just isn't fun and has moved even further away from vanilla pvp where diversity, communication, counters, and reactions were all much more important.

Whats that based on? If you talk in map chat in the mists, talk about how OP necros are most are going to agree.

Scourges can be kited pretty easy. And if they dont got shades anymore u can even jump meele if u have decent cleanse + dodge uptime.Spellbreaker is pure meele too right now so ....

Guess u see where im going too right?

@Zoltreez.6435 said:glad that im not the only person that hates how the game turned into a Boon spam fest..... where everyone have everything up 24/7......

now that they cant rely on these Boon cheesy builds because Scourge they suddenly think the sky is falling lol... instead of trying new builds that are not reliant on 6+ different boons Uptime that is instantly turned againts them by scourge....

the funny part is necros were the only class that never was able to join the Boon spam meta because devs never gived us anything lolinstead they turned us into the Anti boon monsters we are now....

You're joking, right? Cele Signet Necro was the counter to Cele Eles at their peak. It was pretty solidly the second most important build in sPvP at the time, and it countered the first place contender. Then, after HoT dropped, sPvP was for a while dominated by Scrappers and condi Reapers with ludicrous amounts of chill (which I honestly can't complain about; I main Engineer and my brother mains Necromancer, so we had it easy in that meta).

What bothers me most about Scourge is how tiny the telegraphs are for those lethal corruptions. When a Spellbreaker strips a boon, you know how it happened. You either got hit with a CC, dagger burst, or Winds of Disenchantment. When a Scourge hits you with a corruption it's generally not obvious what happened.

In addition, boon corruption is just flat out superior to stripping. You get rid of the boon and get free damage. Unless you take a fairly underwhelming trait on Spellbreaker you gain nothing extra. So if everything else remains the same on Scourge the amount of corruption overall should be reduced, because as it is it is easier to land corruptions and it happens more frequently. This isn't just Scourge vs Spellbreaker but most classes that remove boons. Scourge tends to just do better at it than the alternatives.

I'm all for having counters to boons, just not with it being clearly superior on one spec.

@Exciton.8942 said:At least daredevil and mirage take skills to play well, you will never get queues flooded with them even if they are strong.

Every class takes skill to play well, even bad mesmers and thieves can reset fights or run from better players depending on class. It's just a matter of play style, if you don't like actually fighting play a mes or a thief and you can run away when things go poorly, since apparently some people die a little bit inside every time they are killed on a game.

I'd rather fight a scourge or spell breaker to the death than fight a thief or Mesmer any day.

@Unholy Pillager.3791 said:

@Zoltreez.6435 said:glad that im not the only person that hates how the game turned into a Boon spam fest..... where everyone have everything up 24/7......

now that they cant rely on these Boon cheesy builds because Scourge they suddenly think the sky is falling lol... instead of trying new builds that are not reliant on 6+ different boons Uptime that is instantly turned againts them by scourge....

the funny part is necros were the only class that never was able to join the Boon spam meta because devs never gived us anything lolinstead they turned us into the Anti boon monsters we are now....

all the necro builds needed to be baby sited to be effective..... they were not a counter only after someone was looking their backs..

Scourge now is a real counter because others don't need to baby sit them to do their job...

@hurrado.2346 said:

@Exciton.8942 said:At least daredevil and mirage take skills to play well, you will never get queues flooded with them even if they are strong.

Start playing spellbreaker since yesterday, haven't touched pvp for 6 months.Got to platinum division 2, finished last tier of pvp season track within 20 hrs :)

Well Scourge and Spellbreaker seems to have a low skill cap.