You are just ripping it. You're nerfing Scourge for a reason that won't even work.

Do you people even play Necro? Do you realize we're an utter joke ever since, EVER? The Shade nerf isn't gonna do what you think it's going to do. It's not a single Scourge affecting an entire zergs with it's shade, it's over 50 of Scourges that is spamming Shade like it's no tomorrow. It's not going affect a zergling. I guarantee it. If you think this is enough to stop scourges, You don't know the numbers of the game. Sure, you can only affect 5 people now, and you can only corrupt up to 1 boon now. But that doesn't mean a god damn thing when you have an organized zerg of Scourges Melting you with their onslaught of condi and boon corrupt. Affecting 5 people means nothing to a zergling. This nerf does nothing, but screw over people who uses this outside of wvw. Seriously man, It isn't right, nerfing Scourge like this, Nerfing Necromancer like this. And yes, Scourges needed a nerf, but clearly this isn't the way to go.

But, shades hitting 10 targets was too much imo, they just reverting the changes in wvw ONLY. Outside wvw, boon corruption is not that big, so I don't think that instead of corrupting 2 boons to 1 boon will have a huge impact.

@len.7809 said:But, shades hitting 10 targets was too much imo, they just reverting the changes in wvw ONLY. Outside wvw, boon corruption is not that big, so I don't think that instead of corrupting 2 boons to 1 boon will have a huge impact.

This all is from my experience, but nerfing the target cap will do just one thing: Commanders will require more scourges in the game.

So other classes which before may have some space like warriors or revenants, scrappers or eles, now they will be bullied into scourges to fill the quota. And this is because the root problem of the shades is not tackled properly: One shade does too many things at the same time.

Personally I feel strongly if there would be some shuffle in the numbers instead nerfing the target cap which I find fine right now it would actually improve the balance in a long term.

• reduce the damage done by F1 to 0.1 and F5 to 0.666 (or alike but very low)

• Dhummfire remove the split between pve and wvw to keep the pve values.

• Path of corruption: Remove the split when used scourge. Corrupt 2 boons in any case.

• Reduce all base barrier by 60%

• Increase barrier multiplier by 50%.

• Increase sand flare base healing in a 30%.

• to add 2-3 seconds stealth to utility Desecate would make that skill desirable to scouges, potentially removing one slot for Wells.

The expected result of this changes will be:

• necro move back to condi builds.
• Necro finds barrier application is not good now without healing power, so now it has to use healing power stats.
• Available stats with high condi-heal are : Plaguedoctor (vitality, boon), Sherpa (precision, boon), Apothecary (toughtness).

So scourge has 2 options: Go full condi with low self-sustain or go in a more balanced build but leaving something behind. Either way damage (except in the case of F5) will be provided by external traits, which means the scourge has to sacrifice something.This will derive in scourge gets 3 functional builds in squad:

• full Yolo condi bomb: Trailblazers, Soulreaping, Curses with demonic lore (more burst than sand savant as barrier is not good with this build) full wells and condi dps. when Firebrand and Heralds are balanced this build won't be that desirable in organized groups as it takes the slots of other dps classes which could perform better in that department.
• heal scourge squad full support : Healing gear, with blood, deathmagic\soulreaping with wells and desecate. This may be required for some small squads.
• Squad scourge for average pug: Plagedoctor or apothecary, with curses\spite , soulreaping and sand savant with desecate. The most common build probably.

Those are just with a change numbers which should very easy and safe to apply. And because the scourge won't be able to provide as much of everything at the same time it will open to other dps classes. In this case more hammer revs, but at least we moved that point.

If this doesn't work and still the scourge is still a very oppressive presence by itself then they always can nerf the target cap. But that I would do the last as we need the scourge presence to balance the squad boon spam FBs And revenants bring into play.

@anduriell.6280 said:

@len.7809 said:But, shades hitting 10 targets was too much imo, they just reverting the changes in wvw ONLY. Outside wvw, boon corruption is not that big, so I don't think that instead of corrupting 2 boons to 1 boon will have a huge impact.

• reduce the damage done by F1 to 0.1 and F5 to 0.666 (or alike but very low)

• Dhummfire remove the split between pve and wvw to keep the pve values.

• Path of corruption: Remove the split when used scourge. Corrupt 2 boons in any case.

• Reduce all base barrier by 60%

• Increase barrier multiplier by 50%.

• Increase sand flare base healing in a 30%.

• to add 2-3 seconds stealth to utility Desecate would make that skill desirable to scouges, potentially removing one slot for Wells.

Desecrate is fine in my opinion. Not the best skill, but it seems uses in pve (even though I would like to see it giving might to 10 allies)I'd rather change serpent siphon which is completely useless in any gamemode.Make it a blast finisher and give stealth. Boom, instant good skill.Oh and while we're at it, add at least one blast finisher to necro warhorn as well. Necro warhorn is the only warhorn in the game, that doesn't have a blast finisher.

The expected result of this changes will be:

• necro move back to condi builds.
• Necro finds barrier application is not good now without healing power, so now it has to use healing power stats.
• Available stats with high condi-heal are : Plaguedoctor (vitality, boon), Sherpa (precision, boon), Apothecary (toughtness).

So scourge has 2 options: Go full condi with low self-sustain or go in a more balanced build but leaving something behind. Either way damage (except in the case of F5) will be provided by external traits, which means the scourge has to sacrifice something.This will derive in scourge gets 3 functional builds in squad:

• full Yolo condi bomb: Trailblazers, Soulreaping, Curses with demonic lore (more burst than sand savant as barrier is not good with this build) full wells and condi dps. when Firebrand and Heralds are balanced this build won't be that desirable in organized groups as it takes the slots of other dps classes which could perform better in that department.
• heal scourge squad full support : Healing gear, with blood, deathmagic\soulreaping with wells and desecate. This may be required for some small squads.
• Squad scourge for average pug: Plagedoctor or apothecary, with curses\spite , soulreaping and sand savant with desecate. The most common build probably.

Those are just with a change numbers which should very easy and safe to apply. And because the scourge won't be able to provide as much of everything at the same time it will open to other dps classes. In this case more hammer revs, but at least we moved that point.

If this doesn't work and still the scourge is still a very oppressive presence by itself then they always can nerf the target cap. But that I would do the last as we need the scourge presence to balance the squad boon spam FBs And revenants bring into play.

@"anduriell.6280" said:This all is from my experience, but nerfing the target cap will do just one thing: Commanders will require more scourges in the game.

So other classes which before may have some space like warriors or revenants, scrappers or eles, now they will be bullied into scourges to fill the quota. And this is because the root problem of the shades is not tackled properly: One shade does too many things at the same time.

Personally I feel strongly if there would be some shuffle in the numbers instead nerfing the target cap which I find fine right now it would actually improve the balance in a long term.

• reduce the damage done by F1 to 0.1 and F5 to 0.666 (or alike but very low)

• Dhummfire remove the split between pve and wvw to keep the pve values.

• Path of corruption: Remove the split when used scourge. Corrupt 2 boons in any case.

• Reduce all base barrier by 60%

• Increase barrier multiplier by 50%.

• Increase sand flare base healing in a 30%.

• to add 2-3 seconds stealth to utility Desecate would make that skill desirable to scouges, potentially removing one slot for Wells.

The expected result of this changes will be:

• necro move back to condi builds.
• Necro finds barrier application is not good now without healing power, so now it has to use healing power stats.
• Available stats with high condi-heal are : Plaguedoctor (vitality, boon), Sherpa (precision, boon), Apothecary (toughtness).

It's all about AoE and boon corrupt. The root of the problem are the boons(source and duration), anet intentionally buffed them after HoT, till it became an issue. The way to "Balance" it was to corrupt it or removing it.

I personally think, after making the changes you mentioned, it will be celestial meta, not condi or heal meta.

we should all put necro items in bank and delete our necros. maybe if there are 0 necros on the game they might noticed something is wrong

I said it before but Scourge and in turn Necro as a whole, should be balanced around the choice of EITHER support or damage. Change Scourge traits to be either one or the other, then make them do exclusively that which they chose. Sand Savant could simply be "you now hit enemies instead of allies" or the other way around and then all you'd have to do is tweak some numbers. Barrier in that case could be personal only. Base line should hit both, but capped at 2 (2 allies including self, 2 enemies), then you get the choice to spec into support only, increasing target cap on allies at the cost of more enemy targets.

@"Blocki.4931" said:I said it before but Scourge and in turn Necro as a whole, should be balanced around the choice of EITHER support or damage. Change Scourge traits to be either one or the other, then make them do exclusively that which they chose. Sand Savant could simply be "you now hit enemies instead of allies" or the other way around and then all you'd have to do is tweak some numbers. Barrier in that case could be personal only. Base line should hit both, but capped at 2 (2 allies including self, 2 enemies), then you get the choice to spec into support only, increasing target cap on allies at the cost of more enemy targets.

problem is.. the PVE group doesnt exist .. they dont check forum they do not communicate. our suggetions are all in vain !unlike the PVP and WvW Groups and Cal who is actually chcecking comments and suggestion and communicate with players .. if you ask for WvW cahnges your opinion might be heard.. but lets face it.. the PVE future of Scourge isnt bright.. because the nerf to how shades work was already done .. in both wvw and pve..and even if now theres a split and Scourge pve is ruined by that.. the pve team just dont care.. this wont be fixed and we wont get buffs to be worth anything in PVE..and WvW future doesnt seem bright aswell.. im so disapppointed .. enough to start considering quitting the game or at the very least stop supporting the game with money. we need a PVE group that communicate with us just like the WvW no class deserve or should ever be in the situation Scourge is now were its just bad in any game mode..

once people make the switch to reaper the real qq will begin.

I think this is working backwards boons are the cause for the need of corrupts and there are far more sources of boon generation in the game then there are corrupts that said i personally would have tried toning down boons first before lowering corrupts.

I can understand the target reduction on the shades though 1 person effecting 10 people is too much.I really cant understand the choice to hit devouring darkness 2 times in a row with the nerf like that back to back. Just remove boon corruption from it all together and lode up its damage application at this point. corrupt 1 boon thats just gonna immediately be replaced by 3-4 cover boons.

If people stop playing scourge because its not effective enough (prob wont happen) but if it does happen and complaints stop then i can totally see scourge left in its garbage state like "its ok now" because complaints stopped. Which is not ok...

I dont even like scourge but i dont support the nerf of the core necromancer weapon when there are other tools that on scourge that could have been looked at to reduce wvw effectiveness instead of taking the core necromancer weapon which effects core, reaper, and scourge.

@len.7809 said:I personally think, after making the changes you mentioned, it will be celestial meta, not condi or heal meta.Definitely you'll see ppl try the celestial build.As i said, because barriers will be highly dependient from healing power now 626 heling power wont be enough, scourges wouldn't be able to get as much barrier as they do now as base barrier (not counting the extra coming from healing power) .Damage won't be that good either, shades wont do enough damage. I did the math and the results with celestial aren't that great. Celestial is only good with busted multipliers and high base effects.

They would try celestial a couple of days. After that most would move to other more specialized stats.

@Nimon.7840 said:Desecrate is fine in my opinion. Not the best skill, but it seems uses in pve (even though I would like to see it giving might to 10 allies)I'd rather change serpent siphon which is completely useless in any gamemode.Make it a blast finisher and give stealth. Boom, instant good skill.Oh and while we're at it, add at least one blast finisher to necro warhorn as well. Necro warhorn is the only warhorn in the game, that doesn't have a blast finisher.I agree, desecate or serpent siphon, one of those skills which don't see any use in WvW would be very grateful if they get the stealth. Whatever works best and it would be a very welcomed addition to scourge.

Scourge needed a nerf to balance out how low effort it was to be incredible effective in shutting down large groups of enemy players. I’m sorry if people wanted to be OP with little effort but this change was needed.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Scourge needed a nerf to balance out how low effort it was to be incredible effective in shutting down large groups of enemy players. I’m sorry if people wanted to be OP with little effort but this change was needed.

Scourge has received a Nerf to survivability only as far as I can see, The limit is still 10 with sand savant, but now they cannot use F2-3-4 to Help themselves should they be outside of the area of their shade,

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Scourge needed a nerf to balance out how low effort it was to be incredible effective in shutting down large groups of enemy players. I’m sorry if people wanted to be OP with little effort but this change was needed.

The last I heard was that scourge shades were being reworked again which was what I assumed was a part of this discussion.

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Scourge needed a nerf to balance out how low effort it was to be incredible effective in shutting down large groups of enemy players. I’m sorry if people wanted to be OP with little effort but this change was needed.

The problem was not the increase to 10 targets but the number of corruptions, their duration, and the life force cost. Arenanet could have split PvE and WvW giving WvW Scourge a proper and thorough nerf but that did not happen. There are a lot of options but the ones they picked were easy to implement and did the opposite of what they should have.

Much of core Necro's, Reaper's and Scourge's ranged AoE is weaksauce + condi. Regardless of the number of targets, it is the condi output rate that defines Necromancer's ranged dps. Arenanet somehow missed that in the October balance update and messed with the wrong things.

@noiwk.2760 said:we should all put necro items in bank and delete our necros. maybe if there are 0 necros on the game they might noticed something is wrong

Not going to work. People will still let the game play for them as afk minion mancers