The Elephant in the room, Scourge Changes

So, thoughts?

Personally after tonights raids it was absolutely cancer being able to 1 shot groups with shade spikes only.Imo a bad chamgeAlso felt like wvw is back to its old pirate ship because of how strong the shade is, making it a snooze fest

o.o;; shade is weaker now. so is scourge. but if many drop ae in 1 spot even if damage only 1k it will kill.

I wonder why this is happening? who could have known? if only someone had laid out the math!

@"Sovereign.1093" said:o.o;; shade is weaker now. so is scourge. but if many drop ae in 1 spot even if damage only 1k it will kill.

Which is exactly what I (and others) kept telling people. You aren't dying to shade, the previous shade on it's own sucked for damage. You're dying to multiple shades; so now we have a case of a shade spike that hits double the amount of targets, which means it makes it even harder now to run through chokes.

But of course, many players couldn't see the forest for the trees. They're too tunnel visioned on "shades and the necro cover too much area" to understand what was coming down the pipe because Anet has to be able to balance out the damage.. which again, on one single shade is pathetic. So Anet condensed a 10 target hit onto 1 shade, which in reality will see at least 5 shades on engage clumped together. Then because players love to run in a melee ball will get decimated whenever running into anything resembling a choke point.

So what becomes of this? Well 1 of 2 things, groups are going to try and draw each into choke points, but likely after the first insta shade death, won't fall for it again. They'll try to lure people into open field, and groups will either just not engage at all, jump them when they aren't looking, or just sit in towers. So I wonder if all those players who complained about scourge shades saw this coming.... lol.

All I can say is.. enjoy it, it's here to stay. The only adjustments they can make on it is increasing the cooldowns of each F skill, but it won't matter anyway, because players will be disintegrated on the first push.

How is this in terms of smaller groups against bigger ones atm?

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:

@"Sovereign.1093" said:o.o;; shade is weaker now. so is scourge. but if many drop ae in 1 spot even if damage only 1k it will kill.

dodging on the shade bombs will keep your team alive if they have the right combination of classes. i mean, my team runs mostly zerkers and we do fine. :/ i suppose not many players like to use stun breaks/dodges.

stealth or bust

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:stealth or bust

this too. and mesmer portal helps

But but...

They nerfed hammer rev so now no pirate ship right?

my team mostly downs enemies not by our scourge but by our guardians. i mean i haven't seen a team if fully hit survive our gs 42 or hammer 2 spikes. or our warrior's hammer 2 and gs f1 3. we rarely have scourges now anyway, there's a way for players to have fun if they truly pay attention. but that's something guys will have to figure out. :pensive:

a setup players can do is this2 - water provider/cleanse (fb/tempest/scrap)1 - stealth (thief/ranger/mesmer/engineer)7 - damage but has blast finishers (all classes)

easy to figure out. :)

Feels better now.

You actually can go melee against scourge.

Bait the bomb and they are free food.

Also the radius isnt that big.

Dont stack in one tiny spot and its not so bad.

Add the fact that this is the first time scourges have to play with a mechanic instead of facerolling.

Most of them are not good enough to use it effectivly.

Well doubling the targets is just a tiny little taste of what no target cap would be like and all the super hardcore true WvWer has hailed that as what would make GW2 the eqvivalent of the second coming of Christ since they would be able to zergbust like there is no tomorrow so... no problem?

@Dawdler.8521 said:Well doubling the targets is just a tiny little taste of what no target cap would be like and all the super hardcore true WvWer has hailed that as what would make GW2 the eqvivalent of the second coming of Christ since they would be able to zergbust like there is no tomorrow so... no problem?

its fine to allow some skills to hit more, as long as it isn't a low cd multi effect skill like shades.

scourge then hits 10 now hits 10. if you use sand savant.

if you use f1, the bombs are on the place you sesignated. if yiu dont use f1, its where you stand.

many scourge dont recognize this yet. hence they get killed, but those who do, will probably f1 on the target.and.then on self and then on self as you move. costing you all the shades or, you ignore f1 and go melee scourge x mid range wells.

i thought u could use 20 with sand but no. :/

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:stealth or bust+@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:stealth or bust

With the difference that one doesn't even have to push the enemy, but place a devastating surprise bomb from stealth at 900 range now.

@enkidu.5937 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:stealth or bust+@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:stealth or bust

that has always been a thing if pirate ship. and prior to patch. =p

now if a scourge does f1, where he is if not on that f1 is a sitting duck

@Justine.6351 said:But but...

They nerfed hammer rev so now no pirate ship right?

Phase smash still does 8k.

meteor slide still a thing too =p

Dont run full glass, get some supports, dodge once through shade, cc and bombs on those defenseless necros (they cant even barrier on themselfs, since their shade is infront of them.

Scourge i a zerg was one of the most braindead classes, lets be real, now that they have to think atleast a tiny bit about where and when to place that shade, its gonna require abit more skill to play it, and many dont even have that amount of skill

@RedShark.9548 said:Dont run full glass, get some supports, dodge once through shade, cc and bombs on those defenseless necros (they cant even barrier on themselfs, since their shade is infront of them.

Scourge i a zerg was one of the most braindead classes, lets be real, now that they have to think atleast a tiny bit about where and when to place that shade, its gonna require abit more skill to play it, and many dont even have that amount of skill

They have to think nothing... Any random zergling clouding around any guild fights will play scourge for that 10 man cap bag leech. Blob fights will be lergely determined by who enters the shade range first.. This change wont encourage melee pushing, if your melee can't cross 900 range to engage. Stealth? Reveal, kite... Smaller vs Larger groups? Nop. anet keeps taking steps backwards when it comes to diversify WvW playstyle. 3 scourges can cover 30 targets now, imagine pushing into 18 scourges...

@Fat Disgrace.4275 said:

@Justine.6351 said:But but...

They nerfed hammer rev so now no pirate ship right?

13.8k, on 2.5k toughness with 10% damage reduction last night =/

I think the jury is still out on how the changes will play out.

We've known the general outline of the changes since the first pre-post here on the forums - making Scourges more volatile by 10 targets at range but no melee damage (or support). We also know that irritated the sPvP and PvE communities (and presumably smaller scales in WvW but Reaper has seemingly remained more popular there anyway and I've not seen the players be as vocal about that). That means they have further encouraged a situation where ranged tactics requires you to dominate range and melee tactics require you to risk everything to crush distance (not a rock-paper-scissor scenario even, rather a risk-reward dimension of doing all you can to kite or crush and a battle of pressure). Who wins that we are yet to see after a single day. There have no been enough even matchups and friday may be the first proper test of how things hold up in peak presence.

However, and I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't come across as too bitter (because I am more curious, albeit from cautiously critical perspective, than bitter or disappointed), I think most of us can agree with that the general approach to things that is being taken comes with issues. Not only cross-mode issues but also volatility issues and possible future balance issues. To me, it feels like they have looked at classes more so than the mechanical prerequesites for the meta. Ie., instead of adressing the range-melee balance and the offensive-defensive balance they have poked at things like conditions-power in specific large scale settings and they have looked at classes that represent one tactical aspect and then built around them (eg., the 50% dmg Warrior trait that people are rightfully both exploring and questioning). So Warriors now represent the crush-distance approach and something drastic had to be done if they are to crush a meta without directly adressing the cause of that meta yet at the same time, the issues that have caused the meta are still around and Warriors now simply just risk being well different then other melee options leading to even more eye-catching future class-balance issues - because they used class balance to bridge fundamental meta-creating mechanics.

I would maintain to this day that the reason for the long-range power meta was not because of overpowered ranged power damage (even if that was overpowered). The meta rather came to be because PoF threw the balances of control. The same goes for conditions. The problem wasn't that conditions were falling behind (even if that could also have been a case to make) but rather that defenses were falling behind offenses. So we have not really raised TTK or the appeal of fighting at different ranges with these changes, we have brought back condi bombs and created a very volatile balance between pirateships and meleetrains that is yet to be decided and may risk ushering in either no new meta at all or another rather single-facetted and one-dimensional meta ruled by new crazy traits. At this point I'm really hoping that the hammer train wins but I also see quite alot of unexplored balance here given how there are so many melee builds. It feels half finished so even if a new Warrior-centric era is ushered in, they will have alot of loose ends to come back to tie in. Will they have the resources for that kind of work?

@subversiontwo.7501 said:I think the jury is still out on how the changes will play out.It will take weeks before we truly know and any new meta has changed.

I only engaged a 30ish zerg twice today (not much playtime) and us winning with a smaller cloud was actually rather surprising. They seemed to have a considerable lack of melee pressure yet it wasnt really for the lack of AoE classes. It just wasnt the normal train of pulsing red death as they ran. We could easily get in deep and do alot of damage.

Then again that zerg may have been filled with kittens too.

@subversiontwo.7501 said:I think the jury is still out on how the changes will play out.

The jury is in... get caught and insta-ded. They do way too much spike damage now. The old design was easier to manage and it was horribly imbalanced. I really dislike that the vast majority of a zerg is comprised of two sub-classes.

Firebrand needed serious nerfs, as did scourge. That did not happen, so the meta will remain the same for the next 4 months.