Scourge viabilty

I tend to play the "support" role in MMO's. I have a druid, firebrand and now looking at scourge. How do scourge's measure up to druid or firebrand? This is mainly from a PvE standpoint, mostly fractals as we haven't gotten a raid team together yet.

I would pick another light armor class. Scourge if useful if you've got a group that just wants to clear the content and is after a bit of a cushion if they make mistakes - scourge's barrier is good for that. However, it ultimately falls short compared to other easily accessible options.

Also, they were recently nerfed pretty hard and will struggle to deal with moving targets a lot more now - to what extent, I'm not sure yet (perhaps someone who does higher up fracs with scourge can weigh in)

I didn't dislike the changes that much, it's just harder to manage (a bit more cerebral). But i'm far from a "pro", i tend to play in a relaxed way. People don't usually complain either, but who knows. I'm not support though, and I honestly believe that other classes are better at that particular role.

I agree with Curennos; both mesmer and ele have much better support options than scourge in terms of boon output and healing. If you look at metabattle or snowcrows websites, you will find builds for healing and support on ele and mes but maybe only one for scourge. I mean, yes, barrier is great, transfusion is great, vampiric is meh and scourge really doesn't bring much else to the party in terms of boons/healing and is tied to wherever they place their shade/s.

Necro's Scourge is useful for groups that struggle to avoid boss AoE and for WvW AoE condi pressure but Necromancer as a whole does not bring much else for cooperative play. Between core, Reaper and Scourge, it is flexible in providing a wide variety of marginally adequate builds.

I love playing heal scrg in fractals. It does give off a good bit of healing and you can use blood is power, for giving might, if you wanted.I actually find it easier to keep pugs alive with scrg than druid.

I also quite like it raids, Its excellent for pprting downs back to the team and quick rezzes.

I think people worry too much about best in slot, rather than easiestto actually play and amd play with others in your team.

Unfortunately I don't get to use scrg often as fractal players want only healbrand.

Also the nerf isn't a big deal. You have to be a lil careful of your number one skill, but with traited, it recharges pretty darn fast, and its not been much problem...except in Aetherblade.

With splits from pve and pvp/wvwScourge barrier traits should be improved in pve only heck barrier in itself in pve only should be improved.Make barrier last considerably longer or until damage removes it while in combat in pve only. That alone would make support scourge very very VERY strong in terms of support. Support does not always have to be boons and raw healing. I think the current constraints on barrier only exists from the fact that all modes were tied together. Now is the change to make Scourge barrier application in pve only very viable in terms of supportive strength.

@ZDragon.3046 said:With splits from pve and pvp/wvwScourge barrier traits should be improved in pve only heck barrier in itself in pve only should be improved.Make barrier last considerably longer or until damage removes it while in combat in pve only. That alone would make support scourge very very VERY strong in terms of support. Support does not always have to be boons and raw healing. I think the current constraints on barrier only exists from the fact that all modes were tied together. Now is the change to make Scourge barrier application in pve only very viable in terms of supportive strength.

The dev's said they would roll barrier out to more professions but we both know applying barriers from multiple sources makes content face-rollingly easy. For that reason, I think Scourge barriers may actually be nerfed harder in the future as more professions are allowed to bring it.

Consider the (de)-evolution of Druid healing and boon generation over time. Scourge is, and will be, the main barrier-slave but Arenanet will probably make it so that if a group needs barrier because of excessive derping, a group or squad can reconfigure other professions to get it without requiring a Scourge.

In PvE...scourge is one of the best classes at keeping people alive. it puts out hilarious amounts of barrier, has plenty of condition clear, and generally has enough healing to fill up whatever damage gets through the barriers.Also, it's one of the best at doing damage while keeping people alive.So it's amazing for casual play. phenomenal at carrying a group through even high level fractals

however, it's not good at giving people boons. It can give out ok levels of might, and that's about it. pretty poor at amplifying ally damage output. other than by way of keeping them alive

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:With splits from pve and pvp/wvwScourge barrier traits should be improved in pve only heck barrier in itself in pve only should be improved.Make barrier last considerably longer or until damage removes it while in combat in pve only. That alone would make support scourge very very VERY strong in terms of support. Support does not always have to be boons and raw healing. I think the current constraints on barrier only exists from the fact that all modes were tied together. Now is the change to make Scourge barrier application in pve only very viable in terms of supportive strength.

EDIT: This got taken down because apparently putting it in feedback was a mistake somehow? I got a mod warning too which means I know someone has read this but I'm leaving it unchanged just reposted somewhere I believe it won't get taken down again.

I'm uncertain if this will ever be read let alone addressed but when are you going to fix scourge? After the loss of functionality that it's suffered from the blunder at the beginning of October, it's almost completely unplayable in the open world now along with the fact that the increase in target limit is in no way an equal gain to the loss of the area you could affect before the nerf.

There are next to none if any situations in the open world where you can find 10 monsters that will ever group up in the small area of the large shade, let alone 5 in the tiny area of the small shade to actually even out the loss of activation upon self and the lack of any kind of pull or way to draw or force creatures or opponents into the small area of the shade. Such a change is definitely a big boon for World V World players as they can now more effectively bomb a zerg. I am unsure as to how it fairs in PVP though I imagine it's rather poorly as the necromancer, in general, has very little stun breaks or stability so I'm quite sure that placing a shade simply sees the scourge displaced from his supposed safe zone with little effort from the opponent rendering the entire profession mechanic as null and void as the chances of being able to summon another shade before their burst down is very unlikely.

I do know that scourge will not see much if any open-world use after this nerf if the decrease hasn't already become apparent. While the fact that most high-end group content like raids and the fractal bosses are mostly unaffected by the nerf with a few notable exceptions that move more often. So as there won't be a big DPS loss with such immobility due to this nerf it will most likely continue to be used in such content.

Open world monsters and the players themselves move much too frequently for even smartly placed shades to truly equal the same effectiveness that the activation upon self has. I understand one of the original points of this change was to make using the shades into a gamble however while I can accept the intent easily enough you implemented this poorly as the gamble between placing a shade and keeping the skills centered upon oneself should be much more equal then they are as is placing a shade is going to nearly every time be the superior option. The minor traits of the scourge line all deal with the presence of and amount of shades the scourge has present in order to give their effects and heavily affect things. This isn't even touching on the problems with necromancer as a profession overall where all the corruption abilities are essentially useless in the open world as there are no boons. The near uselessness of the punishment skills also shine through as outside the sadistic searing proc they have little to no gain in taking them.

I refrained from posting this after the patch as I wanted to see how it would work out and I have tried desperately to make what was once my favorite spec work in the open world as well as even a basic necromancer and it simply cannot perform adequately now unless you rework the minor traits and boost the scourge's ability without the presence of shades and make the options much more equal which would require a lot of thought regarding how to balance the two and make it more of a gamble like it should be then the loss of functionality and nerf that it is now. I would honestly recommend reverting the lack of self-activation at the very least in PVE. Otherwise, the trait line as a whole needs to be tweaked around the idea of shade gambling instead of the current setup which gives bonuses for shades. Another possibility would be to expand the area that the shade skills affect so that the increase in target number would actually be useful and would be a good trade-off to the loss of the on self-activation. On another note about your changes in October, I really like the death magic changes though I feel necromantic corruption could use a carapace mechanic.

@Taiza.4965First of all, the announced change are WvW only.Second, It's a wonder whether you ever played open world. Shade is a perfect tool to farm event mobs. There is plenty of packs of mobs that fit into the shade area, all core map have chain event with pack of mobs that spawn at the same area in numbers between 5 and 10. Even some HoT map have event that show this kind of behavior.

The shade change was certainly a huge hit to the quality of life in high end PvE (fractal/raid/dungeon) and sPvP, but not in open world PvE.

IMOwith last update, scourge become deprecated,and there is a chance in future, with new "balancing", to become obsolete.ppl who don't play Scg just don't understand what it means for scg to not have a Shade on character while having placed one.

Someone said: "don't place shades"first: In that case [blood as Sand] is uselesssecond: you must stay near main target, so you become immobilized, or you loose dps dancing around.you have scepter radius 900, and must stay on knife radius whole time. IT IS INSANE.

for PvEscourge can't do support from afar, bcs at moment the shade is put on team mates, scg is probably killed by ads.also, radius of shade (around scg, not placed one) is too narrow, to support whole team, ppl must stack. so either... or...

@Dadnir.5038 said:...but not in open world PvE.

Yeah, in Kryta.Take a walk trough Orr...Champions in Cursed shore were beatable by solo scg, now you need group.Champion's ads are nightmare. even grubs are melting your health.Shade 20sec duration is too much (when you put shade near you, you become immobilized, few steps left/right and that's it)

Heal Scourge is good at certain raid encounters to hard carry people (Slothasor for example), but it's trash tier in fractals (just scourge in general when it comes to fractals). The issue in fractals is that it doesn't offer much in the form of boon utility, unlike Firebrand which provides quickness, fury, might, stability, aegis, regen etc... Stick to Firebrand if you want to play support in fractals, and perhaps Druid if you are playing with a Boon Chronomancer. To clarify though, it is "viable" in the sense that you could play Power Scrapper in fractals and still complete the encounter with relative ease, but it's extremely inefficient compared to other support options.