Scourge AoE tells

Hey everyone,

This is something that came to me while I was playing my 300th or something ranked game. Like everyone in sPvP right now it seems (or a majority at the very least), I have a problem with scourge, but not one that I found voiced for the moment in this forum. As far as the usual criticisms raised to scourge and spellbreaker, I think we all know that these two classes will get nerfed... and looking at previous patches, will get unfortunately but probably, nerfed to dirt, which is a shame.

The problem I have with scourge is 1) the pure amount of AoE that they can put down - which is not really a problem in itself... unless there are no clear cues to differentiate between the different kinds of AoE (with the exception of the bubble). I don't know if more people feel this way, but this could be a potentially non-class-breaking fix, if you applied more visual tells to the different AoEs.

Don't know what you guys think about this, but it's been bugging me.

For the context, I play d/p daredevil mainly, so it's quite frustrating to drop into the scourges AoE in the middle of the fight - akin to playing Russian roulette.

I was going to post a big long contructive post on how to anticipate shade skill usage, but then I saw this:

@Ysmir.4986 said:For the context, I play d/p daredevil mainly,

Sorry, no sympathy at all.

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

You don't have to have sympathy (even though I find your remark strange), I was just leveling criticism at the visuals, potentially affecting plays, and was wondering if others feel the same.

@Ysmir.4986 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

You mean like how Steal has no visual tells?

d/p daredevil has a winning matchup against scourge, while also having a advantageous matchup against every other class in the meta. L2P.

In every "I hate scourge" post I've read there is always at least 1 person saying scourge abilites needs visual tells. So I don't think your being unreasonable. It might actually be worth trying, instead of just blindly nerfing.

My dollar says there needs to be some kind of aftercast for shade spells. Remove the ability to drop all the swirlies instantly and that's already huge progress. Just like how being able to actually see the deadeye sniping ( after a week and the stealth glitch removed) turned out to be real helpful. Baby steps!

The tells are very subtle or sometimes they even get culled if you have that option on, which makes them nothing but a red circle. Necro in general has many similar or identical animations.

Even if you hate Spellbreaker you have to at least admit that everything has a very clear tell and animation. You aren't going to mistake Full Counter for anything else in the game. Warrior in general has the most obvious tells in the game, Guard is probably second and in many situations just as good. Many of the spellcasters on the other hand lack that level of clarity. Sure once the spell is used you know what it is but knowing which one is being casted is way harder.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Ysmir.4986 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

This is why these forums tend to be pretty useless, people have a really hard time getting over their personal bias.

Going by your logic nothing you can ever say has any value because your quite obvious Scourge main counters my Scrapper?

Also if D/P DD is the flawless juggernaut you pretend, why isn't played more? Why isn't there 2 on both sides almost every game like its happening with Scourge and Bunker Firebrand?

Why aren't you playing it yourself if its a straight guarantee to easily stroll into Plat and beyond?

While I do agree with what you're saying Im scared this will bring even more visual clutter into the game. Firebrand, Scourge, weaver and even Spellbreaker to some degree makes it almost impossible to see anything of importance in teamfights these days.

@Loop.8106 said:While I do agree with what you're saying Im scared this will bring even more visual clutter into the game. Firebrand, Scourge, weaver and even Spellbreaker to some degree makes it almost impossible to see anything of importance in teamfights these days.

Not sure why you would include spellbreaker and weaver into that list while neglecting holosmith.

@Griever.8150 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Ysmir.4986 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

I've actually seen people running double thief duos in platinum this season.

I'll quote sindrener on the subject:"If the other team does not have a thief, then I can do whatever I want without having to worry"

The only class that kills a thief is a thief. Nobody whines about thief though because thief has been meta for literally years now, and most people simply have accepted thief as the status quo.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Griever.8150 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Ysmir.4986 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

Double Thief is a gamble, it either works extremely well depending on the enemy comp and how they react to it, or not at all.

But yes having at least one thief is meta because the only other Proff that shares their role is Mesmer. Was watching an high plat Mes the other day do just fine without Thieves on his team most of the time.

If you want to see less Thieves, start campaigning to see more professions being given the tools to roam and harass far nodes. Ranger would be a prime candidate for that.

@Griever.8150 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Griever.8150 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Ysmir.4986 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Sorry, no sympathy at all.

Mobility is not the only reason thief is the meta roamer.

Roamers are not just about mobility, the entire point of roamers is to end fights via +1, and no class is even half as good at ending fights as d/p daredevil is. D/p daredevil is unparalleled in it's alpha damage, target control, and fight dictation. D/p daredevil is only class in the game that can consistently kill opponents regardless of how skilled that opponent is.

Look at D/p daredevil's toolkit. It's got alpha damage, stealth, poison access, unbloackable CC, boon rip, blinds, strong interrupt power, stunbreaks, immob breaks, blast finishers, and since the shortbow buffs it's even got a passable amount of AoE damage. D/p daredevil even has group utility in the form of being able to provide group stealth, group basilisk venom, and even some AoE condi clear.

Oh and we haven't even started in on what they can do with Stolen skills.

Double Thief is a gamble, it either works extremely well depending on the enemy comp and how they react to it, or not at all.You do not understand why double thief is considered suboptimal. Double thief is bad because you don't need multiple +1s when a single +1 does the job just as well. A single thief can easily cover the entire map by themselves, having a second thief just gets in the first thief's way.

@Griever.8150

You have to realize a certain player(s) is extremely biased and only want to see a certain class nerfed into non existence, and no amount of compromise or facts will change that. Even when every Balance patch has seen hefty nerfs to that class in PvP.

A simple perusing of the new/old forums will show that.

Waouh, never would have thought that my "simple" suggestion would turn this discussion to daredevil being op.

Don't get this wrong, I do think that daredevil is strong. I think it's the best class at what it does : mobility. In the same way that necro should be and is, the best class for condi pressure. I do not think it's op, thief can be shutdown in 1v1 and is worthless if the rest of the team does not rotate properly.

I do agree with the point that visual clutter might increase with the reworking of scourge tells. It's unsavory for people who do not run end game rigs, and I understand that argument. However, I'm concerned that necro might be just unnecessarily nerfed to oblivion, as one person mentioned it on the forum. Visual aids might be the kind of addition that will help to counter the class without it being too nerfed.

@Ysmir.4986 said:Waouh, never would have thought that my "simple" suggestion would turn this discussion to daredevil being op.

Don't get this wrong, I do think that daredevil is strong. I think it's the best class at what it does : mobility. In the same way that necro should be and is, the best class for condi pressure. I do not think it's op, thief can be shutdown in 1v1 and is worthless if the rest of the team does not rotate properly.

I do agree with the point that visual clutter might increase with the reworking of scourge tells. It's unsavory for people who do not run end game rigs, and I understand that argument. However, I'm concerned that necro might be just unnecessarily nerfed to oblivion, as one person mentioned it on the forum. Visual aids might be the kind of addition that will help to counter the class without it being too nerfed.

There is a certain player that will attempt to turn any discussion into a nerf Thief discussion, post histories show this, some players can’t get over bias’ so easily.

Your request was simple to add better identification on the AoE tells, since a lot of this games Pvp is about Reaction/planning based on enemy Animations.

@ArthurDent.9538 said:

@Loop.8106 said:While I do agree with what you're saying Im scared this will bring even more visual clutter into the game. Firebrand, Scourge, weaver and even Spellbreaker to some degree makes it almost impossible to see anything of importance in teamfights these days.

You're right, completly blanked on Holosmith. Break Enchantments adds to the clutter though, thankfully not a lot of people still running it.

The problem with scourge is this is a point holding game and they are extremely powerful on point. I don't think its fair to say part of the way to deal with them is to concede a point capping until you can kill them. Running away even partially is not really an effective strategy in conquest. If you play a melee range class and don't have access to a lot of condition cleanse and cc you won't ever beat a scourge one versus one unless there awful.