My Take on the Update (Necromancer, but mostly scourge)

This update is a bit of a mixed bag, some good things and some bad things. There are major ramifications of this update which was apparently minor. This update actually changes up the play style of the scourge quite a bit and we'll get into why that is later. But I'm here to give you my perspective on these changes. You're welcome to comment as always if I miss something.

Terrifying Descent: This trait has been reworked. It has been renamed Insidious Disruption. It now causes control effects to inflict torment on foes.

Terrifying Descent was an underwhelming trait even in locations where it was good. Considering necromancer could use shroud or barrier while jumping to blunt fall damage in the jumping puzzles that this would be taken, the removal of the fall damage shouldn't impact the necromancer all too much. The niche situation where players felt it was needed it really wasn't.On the other hand it now applies torment on any hard CC. Which is interesting to say the least. However, I'll have to still say that this trait is still mediocre when compared to the utility of the other two.. I say other two but really I mean plague sending as it provides a greater damage buff in PvE as well as some needed defense in PvP. This trait doesn't save Condi scourge in WvW either. Its just too minor. Perhaps in the future it'll be given some more utility, but for now it stands to reason that this will remain a forgotten trait.

Signet of Undeath: Reduced recharge to 75 seconds in all game modes. Reduced casting time from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Reduced the number of allies revived from 3 to 1. Added an additional health cost of 50% of base health to this skill. Increased the passive life force gain by 100%.

I was honestly skeptical about this change at first. Part of that was my assumption was that it would take 50% of your maximum life pool no matter what. This was a gross misunderstand of the wording on my part. In truth the life cost for this trait is around 9.6k-10k roughly. This is regardless of your Vitality investment which is some good news for the activation which could be quite good in a pinch. However in places like PvE I feel the activation might be a bit underwhelming, but further testing will be required. In PvP this skill could be quite good. Its hard to honestly judge for myself as I don't PvP all that much.As for the passive of this skill, the passive is actually extremely good. Over 9 seconds it gives you 12% life force which is a marked improvement over Shadow Fiend which would offer 10% over 20 seconds. quite a bit better than Shadow fiend in places like Raids and fractals, even if we take alacrity into the equation. And in Situations were Bone minions are taken it'll likely be paired with shadow fiend since neither of them require the player to stop and summon new minions in order to maintain life force. This is a major quality of life change for the scourge in Raids and makes this skill a requirement.

Sand Swell: Once activated, this skill can no longer be canceled by movement.

A fairly minor change. Over all its good they finally fixed this issue. The major issue this skill still has is its long activation time. I'd like to see this go down slightly in order to make it a real escape option and even its range increased. But that's a topic for another time. Overall not much to say here.

Plaguelands: Reduced recharge from 120 seconds to 90 seconds in PvE only.

Plaguelands already outclassed Ghastly Breach in almost every way and this change only increases the disparity between these skills. its a real shame on Ghastly breach's part, as it would be nice if that skill got some improvements to it, but again a topic for another day. As for plaguelands being buffed. This is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. There are plenty of raiding situations where you just can't afford to take plaguelands because you need the hard CC from flesh golem. This is due to a combination of factors. The first being that the necromancer's CC is fairly poor without flesh golem. The other is that plaguelands is a melee ranged aoe which can make it unusable by a backline fighter like the necromancer and scourge. This buff might be enough to push Scourge damage to a decent spot in raids, but the major issue is the DPS for scourge needs to be good enough without the reliance on this elite. Places like its torment duration, torch damage, proper utility that improve their overall damage and other aspects. As it stands this update doesn't change much for the condi necromancer which is a real shame. I love plaguelands, but we need improvements in other areas in our DPS aside from this.

Unholy Sanctuary: This trait now heals a percentage of your maximum health each second while in shroud. This value is 2% in PvE and 1% in competitive modes.

This trait is what we call noob bait. Its not good and will only become good if it becomes absurd. When comparing it to the other traits in death it just under preforms. If this granted life force and put you in shroud when you would die then we could see it have some serious utility. Or if we took foot in the grave and fused it with Unholy Sanctuary we could start to see this being used. As it stands now, this trait is bait. you absolutely shouldn't be taking death for this trait and if you run death you should consider something else.

Manifest Sand Shade: This skill no longer inflicts cripple in all game modes. Reduced ammunition recharge for the untraited version of this skill from 15 seconds to 8 seconds in PvE only.

when I spoke of major changes to how scourge plays, this is what I was talking about. Both of these changes right here have extreme consequences for the scourge. First we have the crippling in all game modes. This is absolutely an over nerf. Considering how much of the scourge's defenses were stripped from them last patch, this is honestly one of the few things they could rely on in order to protect themselves and keep foes inside the shades. Without it the muscle memory of the scourge players needs to change regardless of what you're doing. This also highly limits options for the scourge player since the small shades will be even more difficult to use. since even if the enemy gets hit by the shade they can just power through to smash your face in. In my testing, this is exactly what happened. The chunkiness of shades now is just almost too much. Scourge already has an issue with over reliance on Sand Savant and this change actually increases that reliance and reduces the change that the scourge player will place their large shade at all. Since they can't use it to keep enemies away, having the pulse defense of the other skills is just far too valuable to give up for a mediocre aoe. This change is devastating and without proper compensation will prove to be too much removal of the scourge's abilities when combined with the other nerfs the scourge has suffered over the past couple of years.

The other change we see is the reduced recharge rate of the Manifest skill. This is a net positive for PvE as it improves the scourge quite a bit in raids. The ability to reliably maintain 3 shades as opposed to 2 or sometimes 1 makes a big difference. This is 75 to 150 extra expertise for the scourge players. This also punishes the scourge less for shade placement which could be back breaking for their DPS in a few raids where the boss moves often and frequently. This change isn't enough to put the scourge's DPS on the map, but it is a step in the right direction. For my guild at least, we'll notice a slight increase in my personal DPS so there is that.

Sand Savant: This trait no longer increases the target cap of shade skills in WvW only.

Honestly, Anet should just disable this trait in WvW until they have a good replacement for it. If the removal of crippling doesn't turn out to be enough this change wont be either. The large AoE of Savant is overwhelming on its own and should have been the first thing to go years ago. The fact we're still playing this game with a trait that stifles build creativity is just baffling to me. The normal Sades are not oppressive even if scourge had the old version of Dhuumfire back so the fact that we're still playing with this trait is just backards.

Devouring Darkness (from Lingering Curse): Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

The fact that this has been reduced once again is problematic. Honestly, the correct change imo was to reduce the number of people hit with the aoe from 5 to 3 as to not harm the 1v1 or 2v1 potential of this trait. But Arena net doesn't seem to think so. This change is a nerf that will further negatively impact the scourge in all the wrong placers where it isn't viable in the first place. This change will not do anything to reduce the number of scourges but in fact could have forced the increase of scourges because of how powerful boons honestly are. Combine this with the removal of crippling on Manifest though and only with that change is it possible that the scourge might be removed entirely from WvW zergs which will see the sharp decline of them from WvW entirely. Which the boon spam meta might rain supreme. I could be mistaken on this part, but from what I've seen from the changes to scourge each nerf seemed to make the meta in WvW more centralized around the scourge. Which is a strange reaction, but Anet might have finally removed them from the game mode to protect Sand Savant.

Overall I'm not a fan of this patch. The positives are far outweighed by the negatives and build diversity hasn't been increased but decreased because of these haphazard changes. This is just my perspective though so give your thoughts below. Am I wrong? For PvP and WvW players, your perspective is wanted because you'll have a better experience with this than me.

Edit: Minor correction. I made a mistake on shadow fiend's haunt cool down.

Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

@LucianDK.8615 said:Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

Possibly. Last time we had nerfs this heavy handed (Condi reaper) the scourge was over the horizons. I'll choose my delusional and believe they're working on new elite specs. cries in denial

@Lily.1935 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

But Im kind of wondering, if neither Reaper or Scourge is allowed to have viable condispecs, could a hypotetical third espec be condi oriented from the beginning?I think Reaper lost viable condi because it proved too difficult to balance together with a power spec. Also because of promoting the scourge as condi master.

And in scourge they crammed far too much into the package. Scourges was gods at the beginning of Pof. now only pale shadows of what they once were.

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

True. Although I feel if they return some of the defenses they had and better distinguished their support from their offense then the spec could be quite balanced. But that would almost require the scourge's grandmaster traits having dramatic changes to the shades. Shades at the moment is what really pushes them in this precarious situation. but it honestly doesn't have to. I don't want to make an off hand suggestion in case the devs are listening...

I tried to test around for a few minutes with Insidious Disruption + Fear of Death + Signet of Undeath, but I have to say it's an ungodly amount of skill spamming you have to do, putting even Weaver at it's worst to shame in terms of piano play, while seemingly still not really performing well enough damage wise by quite a bit.Keeping most of the Shade skills on CD by spamming them constantly, coupled with the constant Shade resummon and everything else, you barely even get to AA with all the skills to spam.Now I don't quite remember my golem numbers for Scourge pre patch since it's been ages, but it doesn't seem like a big enough increase to make it worth playing Scourge still, especially with how much of a hassle it is now.

Insidious Disruption's one stack of Torment with a 3 sec base duration just isn't really enough, especially considering it has to compete with Plague Sending, which is not only a utility tool, but also a DPS tool in combination with Blood is Power, which we probably still will have to take as it just does too much.

I'm also personally not a fan a specs that constantly spam extremely low impact low cooldown skills, layering them to eventually do something worthwhile with enough skill spam, but I suppose aside from that it's an overall buff when considering PvE.But there are plenty of condi specs that are both much less clunky without Shade mechanic as well as being much more pleasant and easier to play (while doing a lot more damage), so aside from the existing tiny Epi niche, I'm not sure Scourge will have much use still.

Spec is still dead in PvP as well ofc.

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

Then removal of 10 targets big shade makes absolutely no sense. Also then you should just remove the dmg from f1 procs and give actual meaningful support (in form of some boons)

But then you also might have to nerf barriers a bit.Making them override.

So if you have 1k barrier, and get 3k incoming barrier, the 1k barrier gets "deleted" and you end up with 3k barrier. However, if you get a lower amount this will only add 1 second of duration to the bigger barrier, that's currently on you.

And yes I know, that this would need other classes as well, but that's only classes, that rent particularly weak right now

@"Asum.4960" said:I tried to test around for a few minutes with Insidious Disruption + Fear of Death + Signet of Undeath, but I have to say it's an ungodly amount of skill spamming you have to do, putting even Weaver at it's worst to shame in terms of piano play, while seemingly still not really performing well enough damage wise by quite a bit.Keeping most of the Shade skills on CD by spamming them constantly, coupled with the constant Shade resummon and everything else, you barely even get to AA with all the skills to spam.Now I don't quite remember my golem numbers for Scourge pre patch since it's been ages, but it doesn't seem like a big enough increase to make it worth playing Scourge still, especially with how much of a hassle it is now.

Insidious Disruption's one stack of Torment with a 3 sec base duration just isn't really enough, especially considering it has to compete with Plague Sending, which is not only a utility tool, but also a DPS tool in combination with Blood is Power, which we probably still will have to take as it just does too much.

I'm also personally not a fan a specs that constantly spam extremely low impact low cooldown skills, layering them to eventually do something worthwhile with enough skill spam, but I suppose aside from that it's an overall buff when considering PvE.But there are plenty of condi specs that are both much less clunky without Shade mechanic as well as being much more pleasant and easier to play (while doing a lot more damage), so aside from the existing tiny Epi niche, I'm not sure Scourge will have much use still.

Spec is still dead in PvP as well ofc.

I tried two builds. I'm aware I'm over capped on bleeding and my infusions in game are not complete either. However this is what I had for ease of use for me personally. Both these builds are assuming max DPS potential on the necromancer's part. These are not realistic numbers but lets get into it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSgAs+lNwAZVMNGJWsX1PVA-zRJYmRzfZEXC0RBo5FJI6tsovF-e

This is more my standard build. Signet of Undeath proved its worth and I will be running it over Shadow Fiend in the future. This build for me reached 24.8k and could potentially hit that 25k mark. However this is assuming you can take shadow fiend, which you likely wont be able to so we can lower this DPS slightly, so think more accurately 23k. Which is standard.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSgAs+lNwAZXMNGJOqK2PVA-zRJYmRzfZEXC0RBo5FJI6tsovF-e

This second one I tested was around 23k. Slightly lower than the other set and can't take epidemic without losing major DPS. It just doesn't have the quality to do so. It was close enough to be extremely interesting but unfortunately just doesn't offer the utility that my standard build provides. Its fun for a lark and if you know what you're doing you can out DPS most pugs for sure. But I wouldn't recommend it over the standard.

With my testing, YES! You absolutely can maintain 3 shades. Its quite a lot to keep track of though. From your Life force, to shade duration to your cool downs and not accidentally killing yourself with BiP, the condi scourge absolutely is one of the most skill intensive builds out there. There is absolutely no question about that, anyone who thinks otherwise really needs to test it for themselves. it is much more difficult than Condi Engineer another favorite of mine.

I didn't bother testing Insidious Disruption on either build because it just wont provide the same DPS boost as Plague sending. As strange as that sounds, the ability to transfer the full duration from Blood is power. If you were to run Insidious Disruption you would need to run Dagger offhand to transfer those conditions which takes time to swap to, disrupts your attack flow, causes you to take damage, risks the conditions being cleansed by allies as well as the options for the DPS from it are on rarely used skills such as oppressive collapse, Garish Pillar or Wail of Doom and on Flesh Golem which its charge is something you want to save, not spam. In this case its application is just too rare to justify and even if it had "Torment lasts 10% longer" I still wouldn't recommend it over Plague sending.

To further the Insidious Disruption discussion there could be an argument for it in the future. However that would require some pretty major changes. First the necromancer would need another reliable source of fear outside of Garish Pillar as well as Signet of Spite's cooldown being dropped, probably to 45 seconds in PvE. If this happened we could see an argument for it using scourge. It would give you access to Terror as well as dread. This could be extremely interesting. I personally would love a terror variant of Condi scourge or necromancer, but at the moment its just a fantasy.

@Lily.1935 said:

Unholy Sanctuary: This trait now heals a percentage of your maximum health each second while in shroud. This value is 2% in PvE and 1% in competitive modes.

Trait is good (in PvE, the absurd reduction to 1% in pvp modes leaves me speechless).It's the implementation of whole death magic that's making it look bad. Long story short - if we could stack 30 carapace regardless of Grandmaster chosen - then Unholy Sanctuary would be a worthy grandmaster.

You pick DM with unholy sanct and get 600 tougness, 300 power (if you trait for it), plus vitality based healing. That's a great package for high Vit necro that needs his defenses in one place.

And as for how to fix it - i'll adress that in my own thread.

Apart from the crusade on sand savant, I do agree on everything.

The effects of sand savant were never the issue. The issue have always been the damages packed into the scourge F2 to F5 skills. You can modify, nerf or remove sand savant it won't change the things people complains about when they point at the scourge. It just make thing worse for the spec as a whole.

You can argue that the manifest sand shade proc on those skills is necessary to the viability of the traits that enhance the Shrd#1 skill, and you'd have a point. However, from the very begining, traits that give a proc on shrd#1 are unhealthy for the game and scourge already proved this point which led to a nerf on dhuumfire.

Poor choices of balance in order to support poor design is the reason why the necromancer is in a dire place and yet, ironically, still need nerfs.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Apart from the crusade on sand savant, I do agree on everything.

The effects of sand savant were never the issue. The issue have always been the damages packed into the scourge F2 to F5 skills. You can modify, nerf or remove sand savant it won't change the things people complains about when they point at the scourge. It just make thing worse for the spec as a whole.

You can argue that the manifest sand shade proc on those skills is necessary to the viability of the traits that enhance the Shrd#1 skill, and you'd have a point. However, from the very begining, traits that give a proc on shrd#1 are unhealthy for the game and scourge already proved this point which led to a nerf on dhuumfire.

Poor choices of balance in order to support poor design is the reason why the necromancer is in a dire place and yet, ironically, still need nerfs.

Considering you could cover an entire point with a single shade using Sand Savant, cripple foes, burn them and protect the cap without near perfect coverage and do it with a skill that effectively has 1,200 range due to the extra reach of sand Savant, I say it absolutely is. Also considering in WvW you and other scourges can cover large swaths of the battlefield with shades making it a sea of Pulsing aoe with near perfect coverage along with beneficial buffs, cleans and control it absolutely was. Sand Savant Is what put those things over the top and there isn't a question in mine or many other's mind that this isn't the case. Even if we take the previous version of Dhuumfire, not the bugged version where it pulsed for each tick of desert shroud, the area of effect would be good but not so overwhelming that the scourge couldn't be defeated. If we take into the consideration current implementation shade placement is extremely dangerous for the scourge still and without the protection provided even if those Shades were warheads the lack of defenses of the scourge would still require them to have a babysitter. Combine this with the 15 second cool down of shade counts and a smart kiter can easily maneuver around the scourge. With Sand Savant, not so much.

Sand Savant takes what the scourge does best and pushes the other options out the window. Its too much coverage, too much distance. I've made proposals in the past to convert it into a pure support trait. The removal of Crippling on it as well as torment and even its damage in favor of boons to give incentive the scourge using it as a support while Demonic lore and Feed from corruption can be used for more damage or control focused builds. Sand Savant was never intended as a DPS trait but it has always been used as one while also increasing the scourge's support.

Now I'm not saying that the other nerfs that happened weren't justified. They might have been but we can't know that because the core of the issue, Sand Savant, wasn't addressed first. If you ask me, Dhuumfire should probably be 3 seconds in PvP and WvW. With the shades placed afar Garish Pillar should pulse on the scourge still without the damage and Sand Cascade and Nefarious Favor both should apply their benefits to the Scourge only as well as the people standing around the shades. I don't necessarily need the pulsing damage around me back. But the loss of those minor defenses is major.

Tbh the best parts of this whole patch in general were

• weapons can now be hidden
• Unholy buff to heal based on max hp its much better than it was even if you still call it noob bait im alwasy up for changing things that are not used at all vs just leaving them alone. Death magic has many other issues than just this trait and even as it stands right now i would class the other issues like Soul comp over Unholy.
• Undeath passive increase which is not big for me but a nice change. Its better than shadow for scourge but not for reaper but as you said you are mostly looking at scourge.

Literally everything else is questionable as heck.

Lilly ive said it before and ill say it again.

Scourge in its current form wont ever be balanced right or accepted it was doomed from the moment anet left it jacked up for 2 months on its release. You cant wash away the bad taste this elite has put in players mouths and anet has been doing damage control with scourge since it was released. Especially since then any change for pvp or wvw directly effected pve.

At this point scourge literally needs to be scrapped and given a fresh start there wont be a version of these shades that are effective but also don't violently infuriate anyone that has to stand against them especially in competitive modes. In pve the shades likely wont ever be more effective than they are right now based on the track record of changes that they keep getting.

They honestly should have just reworked scourge ages ago into just a whole new elite instead of trying to keep up this track record where its basically trying to act as its own profession all in 1 line.

I totally agree with you. @Dadnir.5038 and @"Lily.1935"I would add two things

Sand Swell: Once activated, this skill can no longer be canceled by movement.

This skill is often too slow to get started, reducing the time of animation + reducing the cast time.2nd in group almost nobody takes the tp especially necro because we don't know where we will arrive.Either do something clear by indicating the entrance and the arrival.3rd increased the range and removed boon conversion + damage on the input and output.This skill makes me think of the road to "Dwarf", too slow too short.

Signet of Undeath: Reduced recharge to 75 seconds in all game modes. Reduced casting time from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Reduced the number of allies revived from 3 to 1. Added an additional health cost of 50% of base health to this skill. Increased the passive life force gain by 100%.

For the active, reduce the cost by the percentage and take the life only at the resolution of the animation of signet (it would do like a transfer of life to the dead target)Here, if we are interrupted you are on CD + you have 50% less life.This skill makes me think of the tactical warrior trait "Warrior's Cunning" , will need a change to next patch

@ZDragon.3046 said:Tbh the best parts of this whole patch in general were

• weapons can now be hidden
• Unholy buff to heal based on max hp its much better than it was even if you still call it noob bait im alwasy up for changing things that are not used at all vs just leaving them alone. Death magic has many other issues than just this trait and even as it stands right now i would class the other issues like Soul comp over Unholy.
• Undeath passive increase which is not big for me but a nice change. Its better than shadow for scourge but not for reaper but as you said you are mostly looking at scourge.

Literally everything else is questionable as heck.

Lilly ive said it before and ill say it again.

Scourge in its current form wont ever be balanced right or accepted it was doomed from the moment anet left it jacked up for 2 months on its release. You cant wash away the bad taste this elite has put in players mouths and anet has been doing damage control with scourge since it was released. Especially since then any change for pvp or wvw directly effected pve.

At this point scourge literally needs to be scrapped and given a fresh start there wont be a version of these shades that are effective but also don't violently infuriate anyone that has to stand against them especially in competitive modes. In pve the shades likely wont ever be more effective than they are right now based on the track record of changes that they keep getting.

They honestly should have just reworked scourge ages ago into just a whole new elite instead of trying to keep up this track record where its basically trying to act as its own profession all in 1 line.

Necromancer has always been a grind of a class to fight. The scourge didn't change that. I'll use an example from outside the game. Control decks in Magic the gathering tend to be a grind to fight against. They can be difficult and frustrating because they just remove all your stuff and counter all your spells. But they're a pillar of Magic: the gathering. They're required to keep other decks in check. Necromancer fills a similar role. They're designed to keep other builds in check and scourge is no different. The WvW players are worried that without the Scourge the meta will shift to the boon meta which will result in the removal of condition builds and may even reduce the number of used stat combinations since Conditions wont be viable at all and it'll be more important to build into your battle cruiser meta. Necromancer is a stop gap to keep the game balanced. And I do agree that that job shouldn't solely rest on the necromancer's shoulders, however it very clearly does.

If the scourge drops entirely from WvW zergs the future nerfs wont be to the necromancer. It'll be to everyone else. They'll lose a lot of nice tools and everyone else will be worse off because of it. The same is true in Magic the Gathering. When control doesn't have a place in the meta, when it just isn't good enough to compete large numbers of cards get banned. We've seen a lot of this in the past year and we can expect similar results from GW2.

Agree or disagree, the Reaper and Core necromancer are not up to the Scourge's role. And neither is the Spellbreaker or Mesmer.

One note that I'd like to include in this discussion: Signet of Undeath consumes health immediately upon casting the skill. I understand why it does this because it requires a sufficient amount of health in order to even cast the skill, but what I find issue in this is that stowing the skill or getting interrupted mid-cast means you still lose the health without successfully executing the skill; it is not refunded. As somebody who was actually excited to try out the skill, this completely kills my interest in it. Get interrupted and have to cast it again? That's a cost of 19,212 health. Necro isn't a class that can just cover skill casts with blocks or stability, so even though the cast time is just at 1.5 seconds, the animation leaves a huge target on the user's back.

@Lily.1935 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:Tbh the best parts of this whole patch in general were

• weapons can now be hidden
• Unholy buff to heal based on max hp its much better than it was even if you still call it noob bait im alwasy up for changing things that are not used at all vs just leaving them alone. Death magic has many other issues than just this trait and even as it stands right now i would class the other issues like Soul comp over Unholy.
• Undeath passive increase which is not big for me but a nice change. Its better than shadow for scourge but not for reaper but as you said you are mostly looking at scourge.

Literally everything else is questionable as heck.

Lilly ive said it before and ill say it again.

Scourge in its current form wont ever be balanced right or accepted it was doomed from the moment anet left it jacked up for 2 months on its release. You cant wash away the bad taste this elite has put in players mouths and anet has been doing damage control with scourge since it was released. Especially since then any change for pvp or wvw directly effected pve.

At this point scourge literally needs to be scrapped and given a fresh start there wont be a version of these shades that are effective but also don't violently infuriate anyone that has to stand against them especially in competitive modes. In pve the shades likely wont ever be more effective than they are right now based on the track record of changes that they keep getting.

They honestly should have just reworked scourge ages ago into just a whole new elite instead of trying to keep up this track record where its basically trying to act as its own profession all in 1 line.

This is a good example actually im very impressed you came up with this. But yes i agree that job should not only be on the necormancer i always at first thought of boon corruption as a Tool to lower other professions potential down to a similar level as the necro in the early days as other professions had a wider spread of boons still and necro was mostly just might. IT felt optional as a nice to take in your build if you wanted it but not totally required. Today its almost always required especially against some builds that rangers, firebrand, and warriors have which can be very rough to compete against so long as they are dripping in boons.

If the scourge drops entirely from WvW zergs the future nerfs wont be to the necromancer. It'll be to everyone else. They'll lose a lot of nice tools and everyone else will be worse off because of it. The same is true in Magic the Gathering. When control doesn't have a place in the meta, when it just isn't good enough to compete large numbers of cards get banned. We've seen a lot of this in the past year and we can expect similar results from GW2.

Hmmm well im just not so sure how to handle it because scourge is in such a hard place right now that its basically just acting as a balance tool while at the same time its design is never going to be accepted by a none scourge player even more so when they have to combat it.

Agree or disagree, the Reaper and Core necromancer are not up to the Scourge's role. And neither is the Spellbreaker or Mesmer.I agree they are not up to the same role in terms of large scale fights where its 40v40 in smaller scaled fights though core and reaper can be closer in comparison to the same role that scourge takes up with lesser effectiveness as they are more effective in other characteristics like dealing direct damage or being able to take more damage.

I really would argue though that the state of wvw should have never reached what it is today to even require scourge to be forced into such a role as 8 other professions boon manager. No 1 class should be doing that to the extent that scourge does it. I get the concept of offensive support instead of direct support like healing but i meant this is a really tough and nasty spot scourge has gotten itself into and i think before scourge can have a chance at keeping its current design everyone else needs to undergo some changes as well. Starting with cutting boons back heavily across the board which is something that has not been done yet in gw2 history. It was done with conditions once before but not boons.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:Tbh the best parts of this whole patch in general were

• weapons can now be hidden
• Unholy buff to heal based on max hp its much better than it was even if you still call it noob bait im alwasy up for changing things that are not used at all vs just leaving them alone. Death magic has many other issues than just this trait and even as it stands right now i would class the other issues like Soul comp over Unholy.
• Undeath passive increase which is not big for me but a nice change. Its better than shadow for scourge but not for reaper but as you said you are mostly looking at scourge.

Literally everything else is questionable as heck.

Lilly ive said it before and ill say it again.

Scourge in its current form wont ever be balanced right or accepted it was doomed from the moment anet left it jacked up for 2 months on its release. You cant wash away the bad taste this elite has put in players mouths and anet has been doing damage control with scourge since it was released. Especially since then any change for pvp or wvw directly effected pve.

At this point scourge literally needs to be scrapped and given a fresh start there wont be a version of these shades that are effective but also don't violently infuriate anyone that has to stand against them especially in competitive modes. In pve the shades likely wont ever be more effective than they are right now based on the track record of changes that they keep getting.

They honestly should have just reworked scourge ages ago into just a whole new elite instead of trying to keep up this track record where its basically trying to act as its own profession all in 1 line.

If the scourge drops entirely from WvW zergs the future nerfs wont be to the necromancer. It'll be to everyone else. They'll lose a lot of nice tools and everyone else will be worse off because of it. The same is true in Magic the Gathering. When control doesn't have a place in the meta, when it just isn't good enough to compete large numbers of cards get banned. We've seen a lot of this in the past year and we can expect similar results from GW2.

Agree or disagree, the Reaper and Core necromancer are not up to the Scourge's role. And neither is the Spellbreaker or Mesmer.I agree they are not up to the same role in terms of large scale fights where its 40v40 in smaller scaled fights though core and reaper can be closer in comparison to the same role that scourge takes up with lesser effectiveness as they are more effective in other characteristics like dealing direct damage or being able to take more damage.

I Think that the scourge's ability to provide such potent area coverage in combination with its control and its support was the real issue. It was doing too much at once. The dedication of scourge builds is still possible with its design, its just going to have to take time balancing and more thought in this regard. The argument of it not being a bit of a grindy or unfun matchup was never an argument I enjoyed as it missed the point.

I would like to see more dedication in these different directions from the scourge. High DPS from Center, Support from Top and Boon control and abuse from bottom. These shouldn't overlap so heavily as they did. This is why Sand Savant became so potent in the first place. As for other classes. There boon removal does need to be improved. Honestly, the scourge as it was before the update was ill equipped to handle it which is part of the reason so many of them were roaming WvW.

But yeah, this topic is complex... We'll see what happens in the future. I'm confident about my predictions, but I could be wrong and I'm willing to be wrong.

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Seems like they want to force out dps scourges from WvW, they being too over represented. It feels like they are trying to push scourges wholly into a support role, ie barrier bot.

Core is underpowered (almost trash) on power gear, good on carrion amulet in pvp and totally broken/overpowered on trailblazer gear in wvw.

In general lots of classes have broken trailblazer builds. After all these years anet is still not capable of balancing their condi mechanic. It scales too well with trailblazer.

@Mogwai.4015 said:One note that I'd like to include in this discussion: Signet of Undeath consumes health immediately upon casting the skill. I understand why it does this because it requires a sufficient amount of health in order to even cast the skill, but what I find issue in this is that stowing the skill or getting interrupted mid-cast means you still lose the health without successfully executing the skill; it is not refunded. As somebody who was actually excited to try out the skill, this completely kills my interest in it. Get interrupted and have to cast it again? That's a cost of 19,212 health. Necro isn't a class that can just cover skill casts with blocks or stability, so even though the cast time is just at 1.5 seconds, the animation leaves a huge target on the user's back.

absolutelythis is a big issue. the skill is otherwise excellent, but this problem is huge

Yeah its basicly just a sad attempt to "fix" balance. Scourge really isnt the Problem, the problem lies much deeper. The entire game is too power damage centric. WvW zergs cry about boon corrupt and condis yet its just a natural part of the game. If you get spiked by power damage you are instantly dead this is fine. If you get condi bombed you arent allowed to die for whatever reason.

Its just natural, if you have 2 damage types, being power damage in all of its variances and condi damage in all of its variances that each one of these should be able to kill your foe. This simple point wont get into Anets head it seems, its completly fine for engineers to cure like 3 condi stacks a second to your entire group, but if a necro causes 3 condis each second its broken. Its okay for Firebrands to spill boons like candy, yet if a skill can potentially corrupt 10 boons in 10 seconds its completly over the top.

The overall balance between these combat aspects is off across the board. We have food that reduces condition duration or damage by 20%. We have condi clears. We have condition immunity in the form of resistance. Where are the counterparts for power damage? You cant undo a power spike with a "dps cleanse", you dont have a boon to completly ignore all power damage like resistance is to conditions.

It also wont work to shift scourge into the "support" role, the necro base class simply does not allow it. They can only add so much power into a set of traits and utility skills. Core necro does not benefit a support aspect. It literally has not even a single support weapon.

They should shift the meta the other way arround, create a fine balance between condi damage and power damage, and let both of these things allow to kill you. Naturally, there should be MORE condition application than there is condi removal. There should be MORE boon corrupts than there is boon application. If the current state of the interplay between conditions and corrupts and boons and condi cleanses would be applied to power damage nobody would ever die in a fight.

@"Brujeria.7536" said:Yeah its basicly just a sad attempt to "fix" balance. Scourge really isnt the Problem, the problem lies much deeper. The entire game is too power damage centric. WvW zergs cry about boon corrupt and condis yet its just a natural part of the game. If you get spiked by power damage you are instantly dead this is fine. If you get condi bombed you arent allowed to die for whatever reason.

Its just natural, if you have 2 damage types, being power damage in all of its variances and condi damage in all of its variances that each one of these should be able to kill your foe. This simple point wont get into Anets head it seems, its completly fine for engineers to cure like 3 condi stacks a second to your entire group, but if a necro causes 3 condis each second its broken. Its okay for Firebrands to spill boons like candy, yet if a skill can potentially corrupt 10 boons in 10 seconds its completly over the top.

The overall balance between these combat aspects is off across the board. We have food that reduces condition duration or damage by 20%. We have condi clears. We have condition immunity in the form of resistance. Where are the counterparts for power damage? You cant undo a power spike with a "dps cleanse", you dont have a boon to completly ignore all power damage like resistance is to conditions.

It also wont work to shift scourge into the "support" role, the necro base class simply does not allow it. They can only add so much power into a set of traits and utility skills. Core necro does not benefit a support aspect. It literally has not even a single support weapon.

They should shift the meta the other way arround, create a fine balance between condi damage and power damage, and let both of these things allow to kill you. Naturally, there should be MORE condition application than there is condi removal. There should be MORE boon corrupts than there is boon application. If the current state of the interplay between conditions and corrupts and boons and condi cleanses would be applied to power damage nobody would ever die in a fight.

Interesting perspective. I'll have to think on this a bit more as I don't quite view balance in this way.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Apart from the crusade on

sand savant

, I do agree on everything.

The effects of

sand savant

were never the issue. The issue have always been the damages packed into the scourge F2 to F5 skills. You can modify, nerf or remove

sand savant

it won't change the things people complains about when they point at the scourge. It just make thing worse for the spec as a whole.

You can argue that the

manifest sand shade

proc on those skills is necessary to the viability of the traits that enhance the Shrd#1 skill, and you'd have a point. However, from the very begining, traits that give a proc on shrd#1 are unhealthy for the game and scourge already proved this point which led to a nerf on

dhuumfire

.

Poor choices of balance in order to support poor design is the reason why the necromancer is in a dire place and yet, ironically, still need nerfs.

It would make absolutely 0 sense to make Scourge into a support spec when it has the weakest defenses and the lowest mobility (coupled with no access to reflects). The only way that works is Anet has to completely redesign the necro class as a whole with all new skills which will never happen. Because they are so easy to kill, their defense is their offence. That is the way they are built and that is the way they have to stay; players will have to just deal with it. Deal with it meaning, some of the melee players will have to forego their beloved jump in and spam 1 class in favor of ranged to actually take the scourges out.

What's going to happen is what myself and many others said is going to happen. They will slowly get pushed out of WvW as a whole, meaning build or meta diversity shrunk even further. It will be established at some point (after comp's try loading up on more scourges), that the actual boon corrupts cannot keep up with boon spam (they couldn't already), but now it will be even more prominent. They will essentially become dead weight, even if people try using them as pure support (which many won't bother as it's an atrociously boring play style), will fail because they are too easy to kill. It will make more sense for groups to either:

A ) Run with more firebrands than before because they basically do everything, except this time maybe a few may spec into dpsB ) Run with more Revs as the new meta shifts to ending battles ASAP so boons and healing don't ramp upC ) Shift back to pure melee trains of warriors and guardians which some players cluelessly want, which will then in turn accelerate decline of WvW as a whole.

I'm pretty sure what's going to pan out here over the next 2-4 months... any guesses?

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:

It would make absolutely 0 sense to make Scourge into a support spec when it has the weakest defenses and the lowest mobility (coupled with no access to reflects). The only way that works is Anet has to completely redesign the necro class as a whole with all new skills which will never happen. Because they are so easy to kill, their defense is their offence. That is the way they are built and that is the way they have to stay; players will have to just deal with it. Deal with it meaning, some of the melee players will have to forego their beloved jump in and spam 1 class in favor of ranged to actually take the scourges out.

What's going to happen is what myself and many others said is going to happen. They will slowly get pushed out of WvW as a whole, meaning build or meta diversity shrunk even further. It will be established at some point (after comp's try loading up on more scourges), that the actual boon corrupts cannot keep up with boon spam (they couldn't already), but now it will be even more prominent. They will essentially become dead weight, even if people try using them as pure support (which many won't bother as it's an atrociously boring play style), will fail because they are too easy to kill. It will make more sense for groups to either:

A ) Run with more firebrands than before because they basically do everything, except this time maybe a few may spec into dpsB ) Run with more Revs as the new meta shifts to ending battles ASAP so boons and healing don't ramp upC ) Shift back to pure melee trains of warriors and guardians which some players cluelessly want, which will then in turn accelerate decline of WvW as a whole.

I'm pretty sure what's going to pan out here over the next 2-4 months... any guesses?

Something has to give, it can't go on like this forever. At some point they will have to nerf boonspam coverage. People are already complaining about boonspam coverage and about firebrands double firebrand double revs.

I also i said in the past we should nerf boonspams first before nerfing corrupts further into obscurity, and anet didn't listen, they never listen.

What you described with firebrands and metashift of melee trains is what i expected to happen..

Exactly this^. I've felt it cancerous from a necro point of view. Boons are out of control and have been for ages.

Perhaps its boonshare that is out of control, not boons themselves per say. If theres too many whom can constantly pulse boons onto each other, then you can never purge or corrupt them all.