Scourge Traits and Shades - Call for Rethink

We all know that with the rework, scourge has become a little bit clunky, not just in playstyle but also in the traits. I want to propose a few fixes of my own idea that would help to not only make traits synergize better with the new shade style (note, change from shades being placed area denial to a "tradeoff" of whether to place or not) but also help put more direction back into classic shades and sand savant shades. I'll begin with some proposals for traits, because I want those to be the forefront of my proposition, but then place some other ideas into play that may help fix scourge's awkwardness not just with classic shades and the new tradeoff, but also with target numbers and radii. I will bold the key phrases that I want to be taken away from each change, but encourage you to read through the entire explanation of each one. Without further ado, the traits:

When considering the new "tradeoff" idea of considering whether or not to place shades at the cost of personal retaliatory damage and defense, a few traits seem a little awkward in application, traits that revolve around having shades, or placing shades, eventually become a little clunky when you can't always rely on such mechanic to activate their benefits, or else you risk losing other mechanics. These traits include: Sand Sage, Blood As Sand, Sadistic Searing, and Desert Empowerment. Below, I will explain what these traits used to do, and what I believe would make them better and more streamlined with scourge's style:

• Sand Sage: This trait used to give extra concentration and expertise per shade out, and would grant all benefits from having one sand savant shade out. What I propose is to not just change how the effects apply, but also what they grant. I suggest a new style, where instead of granting benefits for having shades out, Sand Sage would instead grant benefits for casting shade skills, such as the F2-F5 abilities. The benefits would be long lasting, but would have long duration and stack, so as to benefit long duration fights without instantly buffing or benefitting scourge for spamming. Furthermore, I propose the removal of the concentration to instead grant condition damage. My proposal: make casting a shade skill grant a +30 condition damage and +30 expertise benefit that stacks up to 10 times, stronger than the previous possible total of +225 stat increase, so as to increase shade damage for raid environments. Such an effect would last maybe 30 seconds to a minute, depending on how one wishes to implement it into the game: it's ultimately not my decision.
• Blood As Sand: Blood as sand used to grant an incoming damage decrease per shade out, 5% per, for a total of 15% damage reduction. Instead, what I propose is to rework the function of this skill. A few ideas come to mind, one being to rework it in the same method as Sand Sage and grant a stacking damage reduction benefit each time a shade skill is casted. However, I feel like scourge should have a more active trait: I propose that casting a shade skill grants a unique weak, stacking regeneration effect, akin to adrenal health on warrior, perhaps to all affected allies of the shade skill, or only to the scourge itself (or just grant regen, since after focus changes, scourge has a dire lack of such boon). Such an idea would be difficult to implement, but I feel would benefit support scourge to be more than simply barriers and revives, seeing as their mainstay is literally gimmick damage sponging or picking up downed players, even when geared like a true support. Perhaps this could (and if implemented, should) come at a cost to transfusion (seeing as scourge transfusion is a VERY strong revive/heal skill that gains a much lower cooldown than the core life transfer when taking scourge) or maybe at a cost to barrier. The idea is up in the air, but that's what I feel would benefit scourge as a support and defensive playstyle, seeing as gaining the shade tradeoff reduced its offensive adaptability.
• Sadistic Searing: This trait used to grant a buff that would apply burning the next time a shade was cast after using a punishment skill. It was rather clunky from the start, in my opinion. and I feel like an easy fix to it is to simply move the burning from placement to the next shade skill cast. It would allow a little more streamlining of offensive buffs into offensive playstyles, instead of having to revolve a damage increase around a placement ability that near every player knows to dodge out of and stay away from, or any monster that ends up inside a cast already dies rather quickly.
• Desert Empowerment: This trait used to grant barrier at the location where a shade was placed. Obviously, this trait has been overshadowed by Harbinger Shroud as a barrier applying ability, and seeing the tradeoff of placing shades has made this trait a little less favorable for mobile fights. I propose, since Harbinger Shroud seems to be more an offensive functionality rework instead of what would be considered a raw barrier benefitting skill, I see a new idea for this trait that would put a little bit more shine towards it against Harbinger Shroud. I propose this skill should split all barrier gained by 50%, half applied immediately, and the second half applied after a three second delay, akin to scrapper's Damage Dampener, and then increase all barrier applied to allies (but not to scourge) by a small static amount, perhaps 10-20%. Such a change would greatly change barrier's functionality to scourge, seeing as most of their barrier is instant, hard numbers instead of gradual stacking numbers, and would offer more barrier viability not only in PvP, but would also strengthen barrier in PvE content during prolonged fights with consistent, medium damage or the likes.

Here's where I move to some ideas for scourge shade changes. The trait changes alone would, in my opinion, do scourge very well, but some shade mechanics could benefit. These are largely suggestions, but I believe they'd benefit scourge greatly towards adaptability and combat relocation.

• Return point blank AoE effects to ONLY the classic shade skills, and ONLY when less than 3 shades were cast. Returning the point blank benefits to classic shades only would make a proper tradeoff in Sand Savant, making a legitimate choice between the large, focused area denial of a single upscaled shade, or the personal defense and adaptability of multiple smaller shades and personal effects.
• Increase the radius of all shades (Sand Savant and classic) by 60 each. We all knew from the start that the classic shades were rather awkwardly small, especially in PvP content, which funneled scourges into picking Sand Savant. Sand Savant will remain larger, at 360 radius, but the classic shades will increase to 240 radius (AKA about the size of a necromancer staff mark (not the explosion/blast radius though)). Such a change would help make a little more sense of the scourge's target limit increases despite lack of radius increase. For comparison, a Sand Savant shade would become the size of a renegade spirit aura, and a classic shade would become the size of a necromancer staff mark. Sand Savant would still be better in area denial, but classic shades would benefit in holding multiple strategic points at once without being near completely avoidable given their small size.
• This one's a little bit rough in my eyes, but adding a threshold to the shades where they would despawn when out of a given radius at the benefit of slightly recharging shade cooldowns would likely benefit scourge's ability to roam a map, especially with the classic shades. If they perhaps recharged 3 seconds of shade cooldown when the scourge is longer than 1800 radius from their shade (given shade skills only work at 900 radius), it would allow better combat cooldown recovery of a scourge in consistent mobile combat.

tl;dr - rework old scourge traits to remove emphasis from casting/having shades out, and possibly rework shade area, mechanics, and despawning to better streamline scourges in prolonged combatThanks for reading all that if you actually did read it! If you have any ideas or contributions, feel free to add on. I know a few other scourge traits are rather lackluster, like Nourishing Ashes, so if you have any ideas, add away!

Oh yeah, also, when I mentioned splitting barrier in half and applying the second half after a 3 second delay, I forgot to mention I wanted that to synergize with abrasive grit to grant the extra might and second cleanse in order to up the scourge's defensive and buffing capabilities. I do know scourge has strong capabilities in such fields, but I feel that's largely at the feet of transfusion, which, although I do love transfusion with all my heart, I must admit is a little overtuned on scourge, and should have its support pulled back a little (akin to how the curses corruption on F2 was nerfed) to allow other scourge mechanics to shine with unique support and consistent healing.

@"FalsePromises.6398" said:We all know that with the rework, scourge has become a little bit clunky, not just in playstyle but also in the traits. I want to propose a few fixes of my own idea that would help to not only make traits synergize better with the new shade style (note, change from shades being placed area denial to a "tradeoff" of whether to place or not) but also help put more direction back into classic shades and sand savant shades. I'll begin with some proposals for traits, because I want those to be the forefront of my proposition, but then place some other ideas into play that may help fix scourge's awkwardness not just with classic shades and the new tradeoff, but also with target numbers and radii. I will bold the key phrases that I want to be taken away from each change, but encourage you to read through the entire explanation of each one. Without further ado, the traits:

When considering the new "tradeoff" idea of considering whether or not to place shades at the cost of personal retaliatory damage and defense, a few traits seem a little awkward in application, traits that revolve around having shades, or placing shades, eventually become a little clunky when you can't always rely on such mechanic to activate their benefits, or else you risk losing other mechanics. These traits include: Sand Sage, Blood As Sand, Sadistic Searing, and Desert Empowerment. Below, I will explain what these traits used to do, and what I believe would make them better and more streamlined with scourge's style:

• Sand Sage: This trait used to give extra concentration and expertise per shade out, and would grant all benefits from having one sand savant shade out. What I propose is to not just change how the effects apply, but also what they grant. I suggest a new style, where instead of granting benefits for having shades out, Sand Sage would instead grant benefits for casting shade skills, such as the F2-F5 abilities. The benefits would be long lasting, but would have long duration and stack, so as to benefit long duration fights without instantly buffing or benefitting scourge for spamming. Furthermore, I propose the removal of the concentration to instead grant condition damage. My proposal: make casting a shade skill grant a +30 condition damage and +30 expertise benefit that stacks up to 10 times, stronger than the previous possible total of +225 stat increase, so as to increase shade damage for raid environments. Such an effect would last maybe 30 seconds to a minute, depending on how one wishes to implement it into the game: it's ultimately not my decision.

I understand the reasoning here, but no, this is a bad idea. The scourge shouldn't benefit from spamming it's F skills. This promote a brainless gameplay and this change objectively buff scourge mainly in WvW where he will be flooded by LF.

So again, your idea isn't bad in itself but it promote a terrible gameplay that mainly benefit a gamemode where the scourge don't need help (especially in term of damage).

• Blood As Sand: Blood as sand used to grant an incoming damage decrease per shade out, 5% per, for a total of 15% damage reduction. Instead, what I propose is to rework the function of this skill. A few ideas come to mind, one being to rework it in the same method as Sand Sage and grant a stacking damage reduction benefit each time a shade skill is casted. However, I feel like scourge should have a more active trait: I propose that casting a shade skill grants a unique weak, stacking regeneration effect, akin to adrenal health on warrior, perhaps to all affected allies of the shade skill, or only to the scourge itself (or just grant regen, since after focus changes, scourge has a dire lack of such boon). Such an idea would be difficult to implement, but I feel would benefit support scourge to be more than simply barriers and revives, seeing as their mainstay is literally gimmick damage sponging or picking up downed players, even when geared like a true support. Perhaps this could (and if implemented, should) come at a cost to transfusion (seeing as scourge transfusion is a VERY strong revive/heal skill that gains a much lower cooldown than the core life transfer when taking scourge) or maybe at a cost to barrier. The idea is up in the air, but that's what I feel would benefit scourge as a support and defensive playstyle, seeing as gaining the shade tradeoff reduced its offensive adaptability.

Same as for sand sage, linking the ability to F skill spamming isn't a good thing for the game.

• Sadistic Searing: This trait used to grant a buff that would apply burning the next time a shade was cast after using a punishment skill. It was rather clunky from the start, in my opinion. and I feel like an easy fix to it is to simply move the burning from placement to the next shade skill cast. It would allow a little more streamlining of offensive buffs into offensive playstyles, instead of having to revolve a damage increase around a placement ability that near every player knows to dodge out of and stay away from, or any monster that ends up inside a cast already dies rather quickly.

I tend to agree with you here, but it come at the expense of the non- sand savant builds which in itself make this change something that shouldn't be done.

• Desert Empowerment: This trait used to grant barrier at the location where a shade was placed. Obviously, this trait has been overshadowed by Harbinger Shroud as a barrier applying ability, and seeing the tradeoff of placing shades has made this trait a little less favorable for mobile fights. I propose, since Harbinger Shroud seems to be more an offensive functionality rework instead of what would be considered a raw barrier benefitting skill, I see a new idea for this trait that would put a little bit more shine towards it against Harbinger Shroud. I propose this skill should split all barrier gained by 50%, half applied immediately, and the second half applied after a three second delay, akin to scrapper's Damage Dampener, and then increase all barrier applied to allies (but not to scourge) by a small static amount, perhaps 10-20%. Such a change would greatly change barrier's functionality to scourge, seeing as most of their barrier is instant, hard numbers instead of gradual stacking numbers, and would offer more barrier viability not only in PvP, but would also strengthen barrier in PvE content during prolonged fights with consistent, medium damage or the likes.

Again, here, I'd tend to say "no". The previous change were done with WvW in mind (Yeah! that's a stupid thing to do) and in WvW the barrier output of the scourge is already seen as problematic. Players would rather see the scourge nerfed in it's ability to grant barrier to other players, not in it's ability to grant himself barrier.

Here's where I move to some ideas for scourge shade changes. The trait changes alone would, in my opinion, do scourge very well, but some shade mechanics could benefit. These are largely suggestions, but I believe they'd benefit scourge greatly towards adaptability and combat relocation.

• Return point blank AoE effects to ONLY the classic shade skills, and ONLY when less than 3 shades were cast. Returning the point blank benefits to classic shades only would make a proper tradeoff in Sand Savant, making a legitimate choice between the large, focused area denial of a single upscaled shade, or the personal defense and adaptability of multiple smaller shades and personal effects.

You are mistaken in one thing, sand savant isn't the reason why shades need to be nerfed. Within those wrong basis you are tailoring some change to "nerf" sand savant and that's the wrong way to do things. Sand savant is and was an issue because shades deal damage. Ultimately, sand savant is/was perfectly balanced if there weren't that much damage packed onto the F skills.

• Increase the radius of all shades (Sand Savant and classic) by 60 each. We all knew from the start that the classic shades were rather awkwardly small, especially in PvP content, which funneled scourges into picking Sand Savant. Sand Savant will remain larger, at 360 radius, but the classic shades will increase to 240 radius (AKA about the size of a necromancer staff mark (not the explosion/blast radius though)). Such a change would help make a little more sense of the scourge's target limit increases despite lack of radius increase. For comparison, a Sand Savant shade would become the size of a renegade spirit aura, and a classic shade would become the size of a necromancer staff mark. Sand Savant would still be better in area denial, but classic shades would benefit in holding multiple strategic points at once without being near completely avoidable given their small size.

That would make things worse than they already are. Not for the scourge but for both WvW and PvP.

• This one's a little bit rough in my eyes, but adding a threshold to the shades where they would despawn when out of a given radius at the benefit of slightly recharging shade cooldowns would likely benefit scourge's ability to roam a map, especially with the classic shades. If they perhaps recharged 3 seconds of shade cooldown when the scourge is longer than 1800 radius from their shade (given shade skills only work at 900 radius), it would allow better combat cooldown recovery of a scourge in consistent mobile combat.

That's the best idea out there. In most case the effect will be minute but it would be good for fights were movement is needed.

tl;dr - rework old scourge traits to remove emphasis from casting/having shades out, and possibly rework shade area, mechanics, and despawning to better streamline scourges in prolonged combatThanks for reading all that if you actually did read it! If you have any ideas or contributions, feel free to add on. I know a few other scourge traits are rather lackluster, like Nourishing Ashes, so if you have any ideas, add away!

I'll give my opinion here. To "fix" scourge ANet need to:

• Change the way barriers work. Barrier should not stack! ANet need to make it so that only a larger barrier can replace a barrier on someone. This is the only way to counter scourge stacking related to barrier. It will both promote the use of healing power gear and reduce the skill spamming.
• Rethink shades. The core necromancer already give more than enough area denial to it's elite spec, to add shades as another layer of area denial is overkill. ANet need to remove the manifest sand shade proc on the F skills.
• Rework desert shroud. Remove the damage of this skill, just make it pulse 1 second of weakness every second instead of the damage. (Also remove harbringer shroud damage)
• Modify demonic lore. Make it so that demonic lore remove manifest sand shades CD at the cost of shades no longer staying after dealing their initial damage. It will allow to spam F1 but you'll no longer have the extra area to apply other F skills effects. It make both sadistic searing and desert empowerment a lot more interesting. (Maybe add a LF cost to manifest sand shade when this trait is equiped)
• Sand sage and Blood as sand. Remove the shade number restriction, just make them apply their effect when you are under the effect of desert shroud.

These 5 changes done, ANet can bring back the old way shades work and it will be "balanced" with quite a few different gameplay available to the scourge.

hi, nice to see another try to explain to them that they did a "fail"...... I still wonder who proposed, who made the changes and who approved the release of such bad changes … obvious nothing good was made and they place effort in it... "really ? ! ??"I am not a fan of your ideas upper, but strongly agree that they need to fix their own mess somehow and soon !

Desert empowerment: pls no. Leave it as it is.

This trait got way better with the change to 10 target big shade.

If you want more barrier output harbingers shroud is better. But for barrier uptime, desert empowerment is much better.

Also it's much easier to play with. Harbingers shroud almost only works on vale guard, where you have a clear telegraphed attack (green explode) coming and the 3,5 seconds casttime don't matter.But if you need on demand barrier, desert empowerment is just so much better!

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"FalsePromises.6398" said:We all know that with the rework, scourge has become a little bit clunky, not just in playstyle but also in the traits. I want to propose a few fixes of my own idea that would help to not only make traits synergize better with the new shade style (note, change from shades being placed area denial to a "tradeoff" of whether to place or not) but also help put more direction back into classic shades and sand savant shades. I'll begin with some proposals for traits, because I want those to be the forefront of my proposition, but then place some other ideas into play that may help fix scourge's awkwardness not just with classic shades and the new tradeoff, but also with target numbers and radii.

I will bold the key phrases that I want to be taken away from each change, but encourage you to read through the entire explanation of each one

. Without further ado, the traits:

When considering the new "tradeoff" idea of considering whether or not to place shades at the cost of personal retaliatory damage and defense, a few traits seem a little awkward in application, traits that revolve around having shades, or placing shades, eventually become a little clunky when you can't always rely on such mechanic to activate their benefits, or else you risk losing other mechanics. These traits include: Sand Sage, Blood As Sand, Sadistic Searing, and Desert Empowerment. Below, I will explain what these traits used to do, and what I believe would make them better and more streamlined with scourge's style:

• Sand Sage: This trait used to give extra concentration and expertise per shade out, and would grant all benefits from having one sand savant shade out. What I propose is to not just change how the effects apply, but also what they grant. I suggest a new style, where
  instead of granting benefits for having shades out, Sand Sage would instead grant benefits for casting shade skills
  , such as the F2-F5 abilities. The benefits would be long lasting, but would have long duration and stack, so as to benefit long duration fights without instantly buffing or benefitting scourge for spamming. Furthermore, I propose the
  removal of the concentration to instead grant condition damage
  . My proposal: make casting a shade skill grant a +30 condition damage and +30 expertise benefit that stacks up to 10 times, stronger than the previous possible total of +225 stat increase, so as to increase shade damage for raid environments. Such an effect would last maybe 30 seconds to a minute, depending on how one wishes to implement it into the game: it's ultimately not my decision.

• Blood As Sand: Blood as sand used to grant an incoming damage decrease per shade out, 5% per, for a total of 15% damage reduction. Instead, what I propose is to rework the function of this skill. A few ideas come to mind, one being to rework it in the same method as Sand Sage and grant a stacking damage reduction benefit each time a shade skill is casted. However, I feel like scourge should have a more active trait: I propose that
  casting a shade skill grants a unique weak, stacking regeneration effect, akin to adrenal health on warrior, perhaps to all affected allies of the shade skill, or only to the scourge itself (or just grant regen, since after focus changes, scourge has a dire lack of such boon)
  . Such an idea would be difficult to implement, but I feel would benefit support scourge to be more than simply barriers and revives,
  seeing as their mainstay is literally gimmick damage sponging or picking up downed players, even when geared like a true support
  . Perhaps this could (and if implemented, should)
  come at a cost to transfusion
  (seeing as scourge transfusion is a VERY strong revive/heal skill that gains a much lower cooldown than the core life transfer when taking scourge) or maybe at a cost to barrier. The idea is up in the air, but that's what I feel would benefit scourge as a support and defensive playstyle, seeing as gaining the shade tradeoff reduced its offensive adaptability.

• Sadistic Searing: This trait used to grant a buff that would apply burning the next time a shade was cast after using a punishment skill. It was rather clunky from the start, in my opinion. and I feel like an easy fix to it is to
  simply move the burning from placement to the next shade skill cast
  . It would allow a little
  more streamlining of offensive buffs into offensive playstyles, instead of having to revolve a damage increase around a placement ability that near every player knows to dodge out of and stay away from, or any monster that ends up inside a cast already dies rather quickly
  .

• Desert Empowerment: This trait used to grant barrier at the location where a shade was placed. Obviously, this trait has been overshadowed by Harbinger Shroud as a barrier applying ability, and seeing the tradeoff of placing shades has made this trait a little less favorable for mobile fights. I propose, since Harbinger Shroud seems to be more an offensive functionality rework instead of what would be considered a raw barrier benefitting skill, I see a new idea for this trait that would put a little bit more shine towards it against Harbinger Shroud. I propose this skill should
  split all barrier gained by 50%, half applied immediately, and the second half applied after a three second delay, akin to scrapper's Damage Dampener, and then increase all barrier applied to allies (but not to scourge) by a small static amount, perhaps 10-20%
  . Such a change would greatly change barrier's functionality to scourge,
  seeing as most of their barrier is instant, hard numbers instead of gradual stacking numbers, and would offer more barrier viability not only in PvP, but would also strengthen barrier in PvE content during prolonged fights
  with consistent, medium damage or the likes.

Here's where I move to some ideas for scourge shade changes. The trait changes alone would, in my opinion, do scourge very well, but some shade mechanics could benefit. These are largely suggestions, but I believe they'd benefit scourge greatly towards adaptability and combat relocation.

• Return point blank AoE effects to ONLY the classic shade skills, and ONLY when less than 3 shades were cast. Returning the point blank benefits to classic shades only would make a proper tradeoff in Sand Savant, making a legitimate choice between the large, focused area denial of a single upscaled shade, or the personal defense and adaptability of multiple smaller shades and personal effects.

• Increase the radius of all shades (Sand Savant and classic) by 60 each
  . We all knew from the start that the
  classic shades were rather awkwardly small
  , especially in PvP content,
  which funneled scourges into picking Sand Savant
  . Sand Savant will remain larger, at 360 radius, but the classic shades will increase to 240 radius (AKA about the size of a necromancer staff mark (not the explosion/blast radius though)).
  Such a change would help make a little more sense of the scourge's target limit increases despite lack of radius increase
  . For comparison,
  a Sand Savant shade would become the size of a renegade spirit aura, and a classic shade would become the size of a necromancer staff mark
  . Sand Savant would still be better in area denial, but classic shades would benefit in holding multiple strategic points at once without being near completely avoidable given their small size.

• This one's a little bit rough in my eyes, but
  adding a threshold to the shades where they would despawn when out of a given radius at the benefit of slightly recharging shade cooldowns would likely benefit scourge's ability to roam a map, especially with the classic shades
  . If they perhaps
  recharged 3 seconds of shade cooldown when the scourge is longer than 1800 radius from their shade
  (given shade skills only work at 900 radius), it would
  allow better combat cooldown recovery of a scourge in consistent mobile combat
  .

• Change the way barriers work.
  Barrier should not stack! ANet need to make it so that only a larger barrier can replace a barrier on someone. This is the only way to counter scourge stacking related to barrier. It will both promote the use of healing power gear and reduce the skill spamming.I don't know how that'd roll over with abilities like weaver has where their barrier strength lies in stacking, but if implemented properly and having skills changed accordingly, I could get behind that, so long as it doesn't mean that old pulsing barrier abilities suddenly become much stronger instant barrier that refreshes itself each second. One way I could see this being implemented, though, is to make barrier able to stack in value, but they can only apply themselves at a specific speed. For instance, say I gain 3000 barrier from one source, and 6000 from another. With what I was thinking, you would gain all 9000 barrier, but would only gain it all at, say 1000 barrier per second, and as a result they could cut down barrier lifetime duration to 3 seconds instead of 5. It would remove the capability of stacking up massive barrier instantly and would make barrier become a counterplay to low damage whittling builds, and would then allow high burst builds to counter, so long as they don't relent and let the barrier stack up, for they could still hit through the barrier with enough damage so long as it wasn't getting out of hand. That idea however, has other issues with it, so I'll leave that open to debate.

• Rethink shades.
  The core necromancer already give more than enough area denial to it's elite spec, to add shades as another layer of area denial is overkill. ANet need to remove the
  manifest sand shade
  proc on the F skills.I disagree with removing the damage. I don't think that could really be viable, to remove the damage proc on casting a shade skill, because there's really only one purely offensive oriented shade skill, being Garish Pillar, and it only applies fear alone. With scourge, necromancer lost it's extra damage skills in shroud, which returned as the shade damage pulses when activating each one, much how the original shroud skills could be traited to have extra effects, but would still deal original damage. As for reworking the shades altogether, only way I could see that is to completely change them entirely to instead be casted effects akin to guardian tomes, but without having to draw the tome. However, to do that, they'd have to not only add some sort of new method of affecting areas with the skills, but also add more offensively capable casts.

• Rework
  desert shroud
  .
  Remove the damage of this skill, just make it pulse 1 second of weakness every second instead of the damage. (Also remove
  harbringer shroud
  damage)I really don't know what to say to this other than that's a strong no from me dawg.

• Modify
  demonic lore
  .
  Make it so that
  demonic lore
  remove
  manifest sand shades
  CD at the cost of shades no longer staying after dealing their initial damage. It will allow to spam F1 but you'll no longer have the extra area to apply other F skills effects. It make both
  sadistic searing
  and
  desert empowerment
  a lot more interesting. (Maybe add a LF cost to
  manifest sand shade
  when this trait is equiped)I'm a little confused on this... you want to simply remove the ability to cast any of the shade skills at range with Demonic Lore? Because the persisting shade field is how scourges apply their effects at range. That would require at the very least some sort of buff or mechanical rework to shade skills if they could only be cast at point blank. I could maybe see this work if, as mentioned in my response to the "rethink shades" point, they removed the shades completely and changed all the shade skills to instead be casted effects, but that would in my honest opinion still have to be ground targeted (and highly likely ammo based) skills.

• Sand sage
  and
  Blood as sand
  .
  Remove the shade number restriction, just make them apply their effect when you are under the effect of
  desert shroud
  .Sorry, but that has to be a solid no from me without a HUGE desert shroud buff. Desert Shroud lasts... five seconds, if I'm not mistaken? To put benefits only obtainable to a five second window that doesn't have any way of increasing duration? I could see this being implemented if Desert Shroud instead stacked/pulsed barrier and could be toggled instead of activated for a short duration, but scourge's trademark quality was to remove the toggled shroud. Furthermore, it would only put more emphasis on shroud, which in my opinion takes away from necromancer as a whole. I personally dislike necromancer's optimal routes of simply gathering up as much life force as possible and entering a shroud for a majority of their raw damage, unique effects, and damage bonuses. Scourge was a breath of fresh air from that kind of playstyle, where a necromancer was almost a damsel in distress with some spare debilitation until it got shroud up. If scourge was them trying to pull away from shroud, they can't add more buffs to shroud in the line itself.

They tried to "fix" scourge and make it stronger. People got exactly what they asked for: reduce the coverage... and they did, then increased the shade bomb to 10 (because remember they have to balance things out). People could see this coming a mile away but of course for people who constantly call for nerfs or thinks the class needs adjustments, can't see the forest for the trees.

Here is the problem, the real problem:

• Many people like to play scourge because scourge is an AoE hitting class and does so in melee range (which also appeals to people who like to play in melee range). The shade bomb in and itself absolutely positively sucks on it's own for damage, this is unarguable, end of story. So what's the problem then? Players are being hit by many shades at once, which is no different than being hit by many people spamming 1 at once. You'll die and die quickly; this is not a class problem. Maybe more people would play Ele for AoE if they weren't killing themselves due to the Guardians retaliation. Maybe more people would play Dragonhunter if their own traps didn't kill them due to the Guardians retaliation. Maybe more people would play rangers if people stopped asking for nerfs and their shots actually penetrated a zerg instead of being met by volumes of guardian's wall of reflect.
• The other problem, players who play melee, aka the old school guardian warrior combos that plagued the game at the beginning (when many people started leaving due to the stale game play and alienation of many classes), don't like the fact they get obliterated by so many shades in melee range. They don't like to lose their boons. Ultimately they can't go in brainlessly and spam 1. This is the crux of the issue. They scream "pirate ship meta" and missing the glory days of melee trains, aka the 1 spamming trains that started the exodus of WvW. Melee players, you don't have the right to simply walk in and start swinging, you need to work for it. Scourges aren't bothering Revs, Ele's, Thieves, Mesmers, Dragonhunters, or even scrappers; they are exclusively bothering support guardians/firebrands and warriors. These are where the WvW complaints are originating from. But since we know that warriors aren't exactly desired in parties like they once were, the bulk of complaints are coming from guardian/firebrand players. Which is ironic considering just how bad those classes need to be gutted.