Can someone do DPS tests with one Shade?

The devs said Shades shouldn't work stacked. I was wondering what we'd do with 1 Shade up mainly.

The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

Easy to test... cast the scourges out of range of the target then just have the shade skills coming from yourself doing damage

@Drekor.5217 said:

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

Except dhuumfire only procs around the shades

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

Not possible. Unless you go Sant Savant, there's no way you can maintain 3 shades all the time for maximum concentration and expertise bonus. The recharge on them is too long and duration too short to make having 3 shades up all the time possible.

This completely changes if you trait Sand Savant - then you get full durations bonus 24/7 easy. But you lose major damage from Demonic Lore.On the other hand in real combat situations Sand Savant allows you to place shades much more often (10s recharge vs base 15s) and gives them bigger radius, giving you major reliability bonus, especially vs enemies that like to move outta your circles.

So in terms of which is the better trait, it'll probably boil down to "per case" scenarios.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:

This completely changes if you trait Sand Savant - then you get full durations bonus 24/7 easy. But you lose major damage from Demonic Lore.

I'm curious if Demonic Lore is really a major damage after the fix...

using some napkin math this bugfix ends up being about a 2k dps loss.

some testing shows that only the torment is being stacked, dhuumfire is being applied once properly.

Also desert shroud pulses 2 stacks of torment around the player and the shade pulse one stack of torment. That means that the bugfix should reduce the torment of desert shroud by half.

explanation: according to the dps report from qt benchmark

Of the torment about 45% is from desert shroud (actually the numbers a bit lower because I didn't take into account self torment from bip and plague torment).

So halfing the torment from desert shroud leads to about a 2k torment dps loss.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

@Amerikajinn.4635 said:The issue with doing this is that builds will likely still take having multiple shades out into account, because they provide more than just raw damage, they also prvoide expertise and concentration, and the expertise is why Scourge can get away with using Renegade runes.

I doubt anyone is going to be taking Sand Savant in a raid scenario unless a support based focus is needed when the damage from Demonic Lore is a thing you'd be giving up just to make shade management easier. Also, currently while 3 shades is intentionally not possible to maintain by design, with a steady source of alacrity two is doable, and is what the usage of renegade runes is based off of.

@Drekor.5217 said:Easy to test... cast the scourges out of range of the target then just have the shade skills coming from yourself doing damage

I did some initial testing of my own, and unless I missed something the results are listed here:

1. 4 mill hp golems
2. did burst rotation to 75% hp

Current rotation: averaged at 30k without food over 3 attempts(still placing shades on target)

Projected rotation : averaged 24k without food over 3 attempts(still maintaining 2 shades for Sand Sage and Sadistic Searing, just off of the target to simulate the "fix" for shades)

If they do this, they need to make a minor in curses increase the damage of either bleeds/torment/poison by 33%.

I'm not sure why the class that's supposed to be the master of conditions doesn't have a single 30%+ increase to a condition whereas ranger gets 33% increased damage to bleed and 25% to poison, and revenant gets 33% increased torment damage. Guardian gets 15% increased burning trait.

@Zenith.7301 said:If they do this, they need to make a minor in curses increase the damage of either bleeds/torment/poison by 33%.

I'm not sure why the class that's supposed to be the master of conditions doesn't have a single 30%+ increase to a condition whereas ranger gets 33% increased damage to bleed and 25% to poison, and revenant gets 33% increased torment damage. Guardian gets 15% increased burning trait.

Ranger gets Hidden Barbs and Sharpened Edges, two major traits when combined are only 13% better than the minor trait Barbed Precision. Poison Master is a GM trait we would gladly trade for something like Lingering Curse, a 50% base duration increase and +150 Condi damage! Or Demonic Lore for a 33% increase on Torment and a burn application. Plus you get the Expertise from Sand Sage and Fell Beacon. Ranger cannot even cap duration.

@Aceofsppades.6873 said:So halfing the torment from desert shroud leads to about a 2k torment dps loss.

It's probably more 3k-4k on benchmark, and a similar number in a real raiding scenario. The reason for that is that outside of the benchmark here, the contribution of Desert shroud is actually higher than on a benchmark. Quite significantly higher, in fact. Cutting that in half is pretty big.

So as expecting the bug fix will nerf our damage quite abit.. and considering their recent talk about elite...we can expect to go down futher to Reaper level of damage and becoming useless again.. cos barrier in its current place is also useless for support.

Hoping they remove the ICD on Demonic Lore maybe to compensate. It would make our DPS a bit better on heavy movement fights, while nerfing our stationary DPS.

Either way I don't think this nerf will be a drastic nerf equaling the death of Scourge. People need to chill as always.

@Aceofsppades.6873 said:using some napkin math this bugfix ends up being about a 2k dps loss.

You forgot the power damage loss. And the damage is actually going to be cut to 1/3 probably.When you have two shades up, desert shroud actually deals 3 instances of damage per tick. Also manifest sand shade itself does 3 instances of damage when cast with another shade already up.

@reikken.4961 said:

@Aceofsppades.6873 said:using some napkin math this bugfix ends up being about a 2k dps loss.

the power damage is negligible. Desert shroud when used with 2 shades up deals 4 stacks of torment. 2 from the player and 1 from each shade. okay I did miss the manifest sand shade thing. oh well unlikely to more than 3k loss.

@reikken.4961 said:

@Aceofsppades.6873 said:using some napkin math this bugfix ends up being about a 2k dps loss.

How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

The 1/3 is only for the F1-5 abilities, not all damage. Still this seems like the worst case scenario.

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

Idk, I mean I personally think Scourge needs to be tuned down for stationary single target, and buffed in a way to compensate, like removing the ICD on Demonic Lore. I hate playing a Build that is crippled on movement fights. Removing the ICD on Demonic Lore would be a good start. Either way, I also Main a Firebrand as a second main character. I think Firebrand needs to be nerfed too.

Doing insane DPS is fun, but it's a bit silly at the moment.

Maybe they could make Desert Shroud more character focused, nerf the DPS of Shade stacking, but buff the ability pulse on our characters to compensate. I mean nerfs suck, but I don't think we will be discarded. It's not like this will be as big as the Horror nerf. Scourge has a lot of DPS outside of Shade stacking.

@Kam.4092 said:

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

You should know very well this is not how it works. Despite not being what players sometimes want WoW has at least an history of trying to take but give back. 'We made X skill do its damage over 10 seconds instead of 15. The damage was buffed by X%'. This is what a 'normal' tweak looks like (not to say they aren't capable of doing 50% nerfs to a skill, which makes everyone question what sort of people do they have that do math on their team).

GW2 is strictly on the side of just taking when tweaking something. GW2 has the unfortunate effect of being PvP-centric at its core. It's why we have sooooo many skills that do a 5 second effect with a 30-45 second CD.

@Kanto.1659 said:

@Kam.4092 said:

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

I know what you mean. I'm just hoping they are learning as devs. When it comes to Path of Fire they did a lot right. Compared to Heart of Thorns, PoF is amazing.

The past year their attention to Raids and Fractals was great too, the Challenges Modes, etc. I do think the GW2 devs are getting better. I just hope the balance team learns at the same rate. During the course of HoT, they made so many confusing decisions and nerfs. I'm just hoping they keep a good flow of content along with good balance. Maybe we'll have a different experience this time. We just have to wait and see :D

Also I mained a Hunter for 7 years in WoW, and raided for 6 of those years. I do agree they do balance well most of the time. Their quick bandaid fixes saved classes during Raid tiers. There were several times where Hunters were doing lower DPS than others by a far amount, then the next day there was a hotfix, which fixed them. This happened to pretty much all classes at one point. Their balance devs communicated with players though, where GW2 balance devs do not.

@Kam.4092 said:

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

Care to explain why you want something that has zero ingame applications nerfed? It's "overtuned" on something that doesn't actually matter, even the fights that are mostly stationary do not end up with scourges overshooting on the meter. If scourge DPS was a major OP issue, you'd think that scourges were dominating these fights and you'd only bring scourges, yet that isn't the case.

My suggestion: Keep the stacking, balance the pulse/CD's and/or stacks of torment applied from them. Easier fix.

@Maunzi.3764 said:

@Kam.4092 said:

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

The DPS charts on fights I've seen have Scourge super high above other DPS.

I'd prefer for Scourge to have stationary DPS nerfed, and have its DPS increased when moving. I wish they'd make Plaguelands a skill that stuck to the target for instance, instead of being a Well basically. If they removed the Demonic Lore ICD it would be great too. They could do several things to help DPS on movement heavy fights.

@Maunzi.3764 said:

@Kam.4092 said:

@Demoria.6745 said:

@Kam.4092 said:How would this fix nerf Scourge DPS down to 25k? 1/3 of 38k is 25k. A 13k DPS loss would make no sense over just a bug fix. That would be nerfing more, there's no way in hell that we'd have this much nerfed.

scourge, renegade, firebrand, staff weaver and soulbeast are all op. They outclass the hot specs and male the raid fight even more trivial as the bring much higher dps to them.

"we dont want to encourage stacking shades"

"gain bonus expertise for each shade you have active"

yeah right