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Latest Scourge upcoming changes (finalized)


EremiteAngel.9765

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@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Hey again all,

Thanks for the feedback on the proposed Balance Changes over the last three weeks - as a result several notes have been altered and re-visited.This post isn't a request for more feedback, but a heads-up that we're going to be getting the changes tested and vetted internally while we get stuff ready.

It has been excellent to see that many of the conclusions we have reached internally are the same ones that you're having regarding the proposed changes. It has also been great to see your counterpoints and suggestions to some of the changes we proposed, as they've raised discussions on what the best course of action may be. I look forward to getting your feedback for the next set of potential changes once we’ve released the results from this set and others not discussed here.

Below are the current changes that we're looking at from the proposed set:

Items

  • Superior Rune of Antitoxin: Change it so that instead of increasing outgoing condition cleanses by one it instead increases incoming condition cleanses by one, thus only affecting the wielder, but allowing it to scale up with external cleanses.

Necromancer

  • Scourge: For a long time, Scourge has been a strong elite specialization on the basis of its area coverage. With some of these changes we're looking to re-focus their gameplay around their unique elite spec mechanic, shades. These changes also open up space for improvements to the Scourge's kit in the future as the conversation has been dominated by Scourge's coverage.
  • Scourge: Shade abilities only affect the area around you while you do not have a shade active in the world. This creates a choice of whether to be the focal point for your shade abilities by not summoning a shade or to place a shade at a distance and focus on your shade's positioning relying on distance as your safety. It also offers more distinct styles of gameplay where you may want to close with enemies and avoid having to place shades while being exposed in melee or placing a shade farther away to gain ranged offensive options at the risk of not having shade defensive benefits at your location (unless you place another shade beside you). To address the loss of some of the target cap, the number of targets affected by shade abilities will be increased from 3 to 5.
  • Manifest Sand Shade: The duration of sand shades in WvW & PvP has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Sand Savant: Increase the number of targets sand shade affect from 2 to 5, so that when traited you either affect up to 10 targets around you or have a single shade which affects up to 10 targets rather than the current incarnation where you've got a shade that affects 5 targets and you affect 5 targets near you.
  • Oppressive Collapse: This skill will require line of sight on the activation.
  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP, increase the healing power contribution by 20%, as the healing coefficient is already pretty strong.
  • Sand Flare: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW, increase the healing power contribution by 33%.
  • Desert Shroud: Increase the base barrier granted by this skill by 10%, increase the healing power contribution by 15% and reduce the damage inflicted by this ability by 20% in WvW.
  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
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Personally I think this makes small scale harder.Shade abilities no longer generate around the scourge as long as there is 1 active shade out there.Which means at least 1 shade has to be casted on the Scourge itself.And I don't like that they made this change without removing the cast time or increasing the shade radius or increasing the ammo count.

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I can't pretend that I am an experienced Necro player, but these changes just seem like they will make Scourge extremely clunky. Not having access to instant shade skills seems like a huge hit and would create a huge risk to even place a shade, especially for small-scale like @EremiteAngel.9765 listed. It seems like it would make Scourges waaaaay too vulnerable because of how easy it could be to bait out a shade, kite it, and then cc-lock them while they don't have the time to cast another shade at their feet.

The big part of what makes the changes seem awkward to me is that you have to wait out a 15-second natural duration in order to gain access to point-blank shade skills again. It just sounds so incredibly clunky because you can't force a duration expiration to get quick access to point-blank shade skills in a pinch.

I don't really think the current iteration of Scourge is particularly healthy for the game, but at least in small-scale, my impressions of the changes are that they would make the Scourge even easier focus targets than they already are. To be honest, they sound terrible.

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@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Hey again all,

Thanks for the feedback on the proposed Balance Changes over the last three weeks - as a result several notes have been altered and re-visited.This post isn't a request for more feedback, but a heads-up that we're going to be getting the changes tested and vetted internally while we get stuff ready.

It has been excellent to see that many of the conclusions we have reached internally are the same ones that you're having regarding the proposed changes. It has also been great to see your counterpoints and suggestions to some of the changes we proposed, as they've raised discussions on what the best course of action may be. I look forward to getting your feedback for the next set of potential changes once we’ve released the results from this set
and others not discussed here
.

Below are the current changes that we're looking at from the proposed set:

Items
  • Superior Rune of Antitoxin: Change it so that instead of increasing outgoing condition cleanses by one it instead increases incoming condition cleanses by one, thus only affecting the wielder, but allowing it to scale up with external cleanses.

Necromancer
  • Scourge: For a long time, Scourge has been a strong elite specialization on the basis of its area coverage. With some of these changes we're looking to re-focus their gameplay around their unique elite spec mechanic, shades. These changes also open up space for improvements to the Scourge's kit in the future as the conversation has been dominated by Scourge's coverage.
  • Scourge: Shade abilities only affect the area around you while you do not have a shade active in the world. This creates a choice of whether to be the focal point for your shade abilities by not summoning a shade or to place a shade at a distance and focus on your shade's positioning relying on distance as your safety. It also offers more distinct styles of gameplay where you may want to close with enemies and avoid having to place shades while being exposed in melee or placing a shade farther away to gain ranged offensive options at the risk of not having shade defensive benefits at your location (unless you place another shade beside you). To address the loss of some of the target cap, the number of targets affected by shade abilities will be increased from 3 to 5.

This doesn't really make sense. Shades only affect around scourge while no shade active? That's already in the game.So if I read between the lines, if I have a shade active, f-abilities will only affect the shade, and not me?

  • Manifest Sand Shade: The duration of sand shades in WvW & PvP has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.

Seems like a buffnerf. But makes it harder to play for players that arent already good at scourge. Cause as soon as you place a shade, you won't be able to use support shade abilities around you for the next 15 seconds!!!

  • Sand Savant: Increase the number of targets sand shade affect from 2 to 5, so that when traited you either affect up to 10 targets around you or have a single shade which affects up to 10 targets rather than the current incarnation where you've got a shade that affects 5 targets and you affect 5 targets near you.

From 2 to 5 hidden nerf? Guess it's just a typo.But shouldn't this be from 5 to 10?

  • Oppressive Collapse: This skill will require line of sight on the activation.

Don't think this is needed.

  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP, increase the healing power contribution by 20%, as the healing coefficient is already pretty strong.
  • Sand Flare: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW, increase the healing power contribution by 33%.
  • Desert Shroud: Increase the base barrier granted by this skill by 10%, increase the healing power contribution by 15% and reduce the damage inflicted by this ability by 20% in WvW.
  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.

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@Nimon.7840 said:

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Hey again all,

Thanks for the feedback on the proposed Balance Changes over the last three weeks - as a result several notes have been altered and re-visited.This post isn't a request for more feedback, but a heads-up that we're going to be getting the changes tested and vetted internally while we get stuff ready.

It has been excellent to see that many of the conclusions we have reached internally are the same ones that you're having regarding the proposed changes. It has also been great to see your counterpoints and suggestions to some of the changes we proposed, as they've raised discussions on what the best course of action may be. I look forward to getting your feedback for the next set of potential changes once we’ve released the results from this set
and others not discussed here
.

Below are the current changes that we're looking at from the proposed set:

Items
  • Superior Rune of Antitoxin: Change it so that instead of increasing outgoing condition cleanses by one it instead increases incoming condition cleanses by one, thus only affecting the wielder, but allowing it to scale up with external cleanses.

Necromancer
  • Scourge: For a long time, Scourge has been a strong elite specialization on the basis of its area coverage. With some of these changes we're looking to re-focus their gameplay around their unique elite spec mechanic, shades. These changes also open up space for improvements to the Scourge's kit in the future as the conversation has been dominated by Scourge's coverage.
  • Scourge: Shade abilities only affect the area around you while you do not have a shade active in the world. This creates a choice of whether to be the focal point for your shade abilities by not summoning a shade or to place a shade at a distance and focus on your shade's positioning relying on distance as your safety. It also offers more distinct styles of gameplay where you may want to close with enemies and avoid having to place shades while being exposed in melee or placing a shade farther away to gain ranged offensive options at the risk of not having shade defensive benefits at your location (unless you place another shade beside you). To address the loss of some of the target cap, the number of targets affected by shade abilities will be increased from 3 to 5.

This doesn't really make sense. Shades only affect around scourge while no shade active? That's already in the game.So if I read between the lines, if I have a shade active, f-abilities will only affect the shade, and not me?

Yes.

  • Manifest Sand Shade: The duration of sand shades in WvW & PvP has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.

Seems like a buffnerf. But makes it harder to play for players that arent already good at scourge. Cause as soon as you place a shade, you won't be able to use support shade abilities around you for the next 15 seconds!!!

It's actually a revert on shade duration nerf in competitive game modes. On release it lasted 15s but was deemed too long.

  • Sand Savant: Increase the number of targets sand shade affect from 2 to 5, so that when traited you either affect up to 10 targets around you or have a single shade which affects up to 10 targets rather than the current incarnation where you've got a shade that affects 5 targets and you affect 5 targets near you.

From 2 to 5 hidden nerf? Guess it's just a typo.But shouldn't this be from 5 to 10?

The
increase
. Currently shade affect 3 people and sand savant bumps that to 5. It's around you and the shade so the max is 10. Now base shades hit 5 people and sand savant adds 5 more for again a total of 10. Once more this is a revert on a nerf on shade target caps at release.

For me all these changes do is encourage people not to use the mechanic. The problem is sand savant not being a support trait but being used for damage. It should change the MSS proc to do boons/healing/[any supportive effect. That would have solved the problem around what people are complaining about, solidify it as a support trait and add strong support options to the class that don't revolve around going down.

This change actually strengthens the playstyle people were complaining about! I feel they missed the mark on this one and just make scourge very difficult/clunky to play going forward.

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The change, that shade abilities won't affect around you when shade is placed will highly impact dmg scourge in pve. Makes it harder on heavy movement bosses.And the only boss where Necro (dmg scourge) is meta, is a heavy movement boss (soulless horror).Also this will kinda nerf healing scourge.Casting a shade will now prevent support around you for the next 15 seconds, unless you drop another shade

I don't feel like these are good changes. Just when Necro was on the brink of being accepted (as healer) it has to take huge hits?I hope they have some huge pve changes up their sleeves as well in order to compensate.Or they should just make an official statement, that they don't want to see Necro in endgame pve content.

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Changes for pve are disastrous.

For heal scg:

You had the flexibility of putting barrier and cleanse on allies by adjusting your position to get all 9 players even if they are not completely stacked. Now your support capabilites have been changed to a circle. Be it on you(if you didnt cast f1) or on shade(if you did cast f1).

For dps scg:

You are rip. Dont play scg on any encounter where tank needs to move boss which is 90% of them. You cant maintain 2 shade for 100% condi duration while having an active shade dps the current location of boss. Managing 2 shades cd before was already challenging enough now we need to manage the location too and to do that you need to be a hyper big brain that you know every encounter and tanking position by heart and you know when to save your f1's with time while your tank needs to be hyper big brain too that he tanks absolutely perfectly while there are no random mechanics like walls in sh. Also all of the support capabilities that scg was used for while doing okish dps are now completely removed with these changes. You and your allies are 99% of the time never going to be standing exactly in the small shade and you dont have the resource and cds to spare another f1 just to support because without f1 your dps is 0.

Too much effort for too little dps while i can just press 1 on daredevil and do more dps.

Its a bad day for scg players in pve and pvp.

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Awesome, they truly manage to make things even worse, previously people complained because shades with sand savant were wrecking 5 players at once in their zerg and now they will complain that shades with sand savant wreck 10 players at once in their zerg... Truly, the devs never cease to amaze me...

Truth be told, dps scourge will probably just give up on using shades, from a dps point of view, it will merely be a loss of condition duration, no more no less and since you can probably already overcap condition duration, it should be fine. It's not like condi scourge have an impressive dps anyway, so a bit less won't even be registered in the players minds.

Overall, I'm really wondering how anet could come up with such changes based on what I've read on the feedback thread. It's like they didn't even understood that the problem of the sand savant scourge is it's ability to deal damage with shades. If we weren't in september I'd suspect those notes to be a bad april fool's joke.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:I can't pretend that I am an experienced Necro player, but these changes just seem like they will make Scourge extremely clunky. Not having access to instant shade skills seems like a huge hit and would create a huge risk to even place a shade, especially for small-scale like @EremiteAngel.9765 listed. It seems like it would make Scourges waaaaay too vulnerable because of how easy it could be to bait out a shade, kite it, and then cc-lock them while they don't have the time to cast another shade at their feet.

The big part of what makes the changes seem awkward to me is that you have to wait out a 15-second natural duration in order to gain access to point-blank shade skills again. It just sounds so incredibly clunky because you can't force a duration expiration to get quick access to point-blank shade skills in a pinch.

I don't really think the current iteration of Scourge is particularly healthy for the game, but at least in small-scale, my impressions of the changes are that they would make the Scourge even easier focus targets than they already are. To be honest, they sound terrible.

They made those change with a WvW centric mindset where people were complaining that shades were dealing damage to too many people, making it impossible to push through and fight in melee. Their idea was probably to concentrate more this fire power and support in order to force players to duck it out into the shade area of effect or use the shade as an area denial tool in order to control the movement of the ennemy zerg. Which is a very very stupid way to address the issue.

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Something that just came to my mind:

Most people will just use the shades in a pirate ship kind of way.But there will also be a Playstyle, that's called "healing ball, no shades"

Back to hot meta. Where you don't place any shades, and try to get into the enemy group (invis) then spam shade abilities.

So you have 10 man shade abilities while moving, also supporting your group with barrier and Condi cleanses

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I am ok this this as long as some sort of trade off to increase some damage in pve. Currently necro is dead last on dps, and epi is the only good thing that it is brought for. I am sick of necro only getting nerf while ever other class get buff/nerfs. The best example of how broken pve balance is banner warrior, insanely high personal dps with insane increasing squad dps with 10 person banners.

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@SLOTH.5231 said:Everyone is blowing this way out of proportion. Let’s see what the update brings in real world and go from there.

You see the issue is that ANet seldom go back on a mechanism change even if it's absolutely terrible like warhorn#5 changes for example. So when such an unattractive change like this one which won't resolve the problem at hand in any way is announced, it's only natural for players to voice their worries.

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@"Nimon.7840" said:Something that just came to my mind:

Most people will just use the shades in a pirate ship kind of way.But there will also be a Playstyle, that's called "healing ball, no shades"

Back to hot meta. Where you don't place any shades, and try to get into the enemy group (invis) then spam shade abilities.

So you have 10 man shade abilities while moving, also supporting your group with barrier and Condi cleanses

that sound interesting

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:I can't pretend that I am an experienced Necro player, but these changes just seem like they will make Scourge extremely clunky. Not having access to instant shade skills seems like a huge hit and would create a huge risk to even place a shade, especially for small-scale like @EremiteAngel.9765 listed. It seems like it would make Scourges waaaaay too vulnerable because of how easy it could be to bait out a shade, kite it, and then cc-lock them while they don't have the time to cast another shade at their feet.

The big part of what makes the changes seem awkward to me is that you have to wait out a 15-second natural duration in order to gain access to point-blank shade skills again. It just sounds so incredibly clunky because you can't force a duration expiration to get quick access to point-blank shade skills in a pinch.

I don't really think the current iteration of Scourge is particularly healthy for the game, but at least in small-scale, my impressions of the changes are that they would make the Scourge even easier focus targets than they already are. To be honest, they sound terrible.

So maybe people stop playing it and meta shift ? that would be good.Scourge has dominated WvW for tooooooooo long.

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my thoughts on what shade rework should be:

make shade cd 10s and radius increase baseline across all modes. defense/ support effects centered on necro, offense effects centered on shade. only 5 targets per offense/ defense stuff.sand savant: just rework it to something else. maybe a barrier increase to all scourge skills since there is no support orientated gm trait.

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