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New Shade Mechanic


Saracen.2691

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This change is insane. Please revert it. Scourge is almost consistently gimped in terms of damage potential with every patch but this one is just way too severe specifically because of ruining synergy with Sand Sage and Sadistic Searing. Mobs aren't static in this game, especially in use cases where it remotely matters like T4 Fractals. Having less than as many shades up as possible constantly is hamstringing your DPS as scourge. Now you are punished for trying to pursue that synergy - mob moves out of your shades? Congratulations, you're screwed and a gigantic chunk of your damage just evaporated. We need the ability to act as an additional shade for the purpose of pursuing mobs and even if you want to argue the support focus angle, great, hope you enjoy denying your allies that condi cleanse or little bit of barrier that would've helped them because they're a metre away from your shade.

It feels like you intrinsically gave the ability for Scourge to deal DPS and now you're trying to hammer it into those of us who like the playstyle that we're wrong. It sucks, taking away the little flexibility we have is excessively punishing. We can't even destroy shades so if we're out of them and the mob runs off we can potentially be waiting twelve or more seconds contributing next to nothing to our teammates. What the hell am I supposed to do in Snowblind now? Shaman leaps so I get to spend a quarter of a minute twiddling my thumbs saying 'sorry I'm dead weight again guys'? Situations like that aren't at all the exception either - that isn't even taking into account how many people obliviously knock mobs out of your shades. This is the most damaging update in a single patch Scourge has ever received, worse than the bug on launch, nerf to compensate or the bug being fixed and nerf never reverted.

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Yeah, no, I really can't stomach this one. This is just infuriating. I skimmed the advance notes thread and it didn't take a genius to realise there it was a terrible idea either. Some fun highlights off the top of my head Scourge players are going to get to look forward to now:Golems moved in Aetherblade? Sorry, can't do anything.Mai Trin teleported or chased after someone? Guess who's useless now?Gladiator charged in Chaos? Wow how unfortunate!Diviner bolted for that guy hanging around in the back in Cliffside? So much fun to be invalidated by a mechanic as basic as movement.The Voice switched position in Deepstone? Yeah just go wait in a corner or whatever.Nothing to worry about in Molten Boss, it's not like anything ever moves in that Fractal!What's that, we made changes to Molten Furnace that added some mobs with high mobility? You're gonna love what we do to Scourge next.MAMA and Ensolyss never move in Nightmare, nope, not at all.What do Skorvald and Viirastra do in Shattered Observatory again? Have teleport phases? Oh good.There's absolutely nothing in Siren's Reef that will be a problem. Yeah, oh wait, that Stonehead moves almost constantly, Black Peter forces you to move and thus move him or die instantly and Crowe teleports.I can keep doing this for Snowblind, Swampland, Twilight Oasis, Underground, Urban and Volcanic (which is kind of vital since you need to get as many attacks as you can in on the Shaman for a specific phase) but I don't really think it needs the obvious statement. Four Fractals. Four out of twenty where Scourges aren't disadvantaged by the very nature of the mechanics. Fantastic. Please, God, don't leave this the way it is. I doubt my criticism will get anywhere because of the manner it's delivered in but it's hard to keep being unbothered by having your throat stomped in patch after patch because of concerns that probably only exist in of WvW and PvP anyway. At least you split more changes this time. That's the only positive thing I can say.

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@crepuscular.9047 said:the change is mainly targeting the WvW pirate ship meta, while I agree the meta needs to be nerfed as it makes WvW rather stale, but i feel the dev approached the nerf in the wrong direction, perhaps we scourage mains feels too entitled cos of the existing mechanic since PoF day 1 ?

What is there to feel entitled about? Nerf after nerf after nerf inflicted unilaterally because of specific issues in WvW? The only people who play Scourge now are the tourists to whom this doesn't matter at all or dedicated players who are used to getting smashed into the dirt because of ANet's balancing and heal Scourges who are already playing the worst build the spec has so what's a little less usefulness to them? None of the other PoF specs have gotten this kind of harsh and destructive treatment applied with the elegance of a mailed fist.

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Was this change really needed? Necromancers are one of the most underrated classes in the game yet they are facing constant nerfs.This kills the scourge mechanic as a whole, shades were meant to replicate your character hence they are named "shades".Now they are doing stuff instead of replicating the character. Instead of being buffed for raids,it gets nerfed even more. I can't really get the point. Please revert it back along with the infamous epidemic nerf which wasn't needed at all for the open world.

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Well from PvP point of view, i take scouge bloodmagic and deathmagic and i placed shade only if i knew i have friends around and it was decent(btw thanks to dearh magic you are conditank 30% reduction while have protection). Best performance i had on scourge.

But i understand how frastrating have to be this in PvE

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The mechanical change itself is good. It should have been this way since day 1. Either the scourge or the shade should deal damage.

ANet already mentioned that buffs might follow now and the most important thing is that now it's actually possible to buff the spec as its insane area coverage got crippled.

Scourges should be thankful that it's now possible to develop the spec to something better than an aoe bomber with 500 buttons to press and each of these having only a minor impact.

Additionally: Curses, DM Condi Scourges on condi + vita gear might be broken in PvP and smallscale now as they got a huge amount of sustain.

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This change completely ruined the sand shade mechanic for much of PvE. Casting them in any situation where you or a boss are frequently moving feels like it's too much of a liability given that It's super easy to run out of charges with the current 15 second count cooldown and once out you're essentially locked out of your shade abilities. Tough luck if you place your last charge and the mob immediately runs out of it! It's like they don't want us to even bother placing sand shades at all which would be an outright dps loss given that we rely on them for ~10% condi duration. I'm probably just going to equip a malice sigil and forgo sand shades entirely on bosses like matthias and soulless horror and save myself the frustration (or just play a different build...). Scourge was already bottom tier in PvE and now it no longer has the versatility that made it special to begin with.

Even on bosses that don't move in raids, we are now forced to place all of our shades on the boss now rather than spread them out to help take care of add's or a seperate mini-boss which defeats the original purpose of sand shades ("play the field"). Sand shades in raids now feel like their only purpose is to just boost your expertise on stationary bosses and not much else. They could still be usable on moving bosses, but they would have to be rationed rather than used to their full potential for utility and the expertise bonus.

They could mitigate this nerf to PvE scourge by significantly lowering the cooldown to manifest sandshade, but it would still be annoying and overly restrictive compared to just reverting this awful change. Giving up your mobile PBAoE field (for 20s!) feels like too much of a trade-off for placing sand shades in much of PvE. Even with the reduced cooldown with sand savant traited it is still easy to run out of charges and be screwed over. RIP using my scourge with sand savant to farm labyrinth this Halloween.

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@KrHome.1920 said:The mechanical change itself is good. It should have been this way since day 1. Either the scourge or the shade should deal damage.

ANet already mentioned that buffs might follow now and the most important thing is that now it's actually possible to buff the spec as its insane area coverage got crippled.

Scourges should be thankful that it's now possible to develop the spec to something better than an aoe bomber with 500 buttons to press and each of these having only a minor impact.

Additionally: Curses, DM Condi Scourges on condi + vita gear might be broken in PvP and smallscale now as they got a huge amount of sustain.

Wrong, completely wrong on every level. The mechanical change is strictly horrendous. Scourge's trade off from day one was always supposed to be you forgo a second health bar you can use as a panic button for ally support, which wasn't ever very good and still isn't, or increased aggression with affecting more mobs at once, which ANet has continually walked back on since launch. It was never intended to work the way they have it now. The class flavour fundamentally disagrees with it, the Scourge traits fundamentally disagree with it - and no, the solution isn't just to change the traits. How much time has ANet wasted fiddling with traits on necro and it never accomplishes anything? Whatever other changes they made are fine, whatever, that's not the issue. This one change to Scourge guts the spec.

What a joke, you think we should be thankful. Why? For ANet to make these wide sweeping changes to our class with no rhyme or reason as it pertains to the individual PvE, WvW and PvP metas? For posts like yours which are happy to see necro slip even further down the viability ladder into the pits of worthlessness outside of hyperspecific use examples nobody asked for? It's irrelevant whether they claim this will open things up to buffs or not. This change is a fundamental mistake and all that statement is is PR dressing to try and take the sting out of the change. Sorry, volunteer to have yourself slapped in the face and be told afterwards 'well maybe later I won't slap you so hard if I feel like it I dunno' and see how you feel. More class variety, yeah right, like being forced to run nothing but heal scourge in fights where anything moves at all which automatically makes you dead weight since the druid you almost definitely have anyway does the job far better? No. Ridiculous. Scourge wasn't top of anything a month after PoF released, it probably wasn't even the best at anything ON launch, but now we're not even allowed to have this? Considerate.

And the most insulting part of all of this is ANet isn't going to respond to any of this criticism. They sure didn't when the notes got published ahead of time and nobody wanted them. Take our changes you never wanted and be happy. Feels just like the past seven years combined into one patch note.

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@Saracen.2691 said:I doubt my criticism will get anywhere because of the manner it's delivered in but it's hard to keep being unbothered by having your throat stomped in patch after patch because of concerns that probably only exist in of WvW and PvP anyway. At least you split more changes this time. That's the only positive thing I can say.

Don't worry, the change killed Scourge in PvP as well.I also try to be productive in my criticism, and have been so plenty in the past, but eventually it just gets to you.

@KrHome.1920 said:The mechanical change itself is good. It should have been this way since day 1. Either the scourge or the shade should deal damage.

ANet already mentioned that buffs might follow now and the most important thing is that now it's actually possible to buff the spec as its insane area coverage got crippled.

Scourges should be thankful that it's now possible to develop the spec to something better than an aoe bomber with 500 buttons to press and each of these having only a minor impact.

I agree, but those mythical buffs should come in the same patch, especially since Anet have done this hundreds of times over the 7 years by now. Break Necro, which is already struggling to find any relevance in especially PvE, say it's to make room for future improvements, and then nothing comes for months, or rather usually years, leaving Necro in that busted state, until the Next Elite spec with a even more broken profession mechanic that has to compensate for how lacklustre the core design of Necro is arrives, which then causes all sorts of problems, until it's cause for half baked and badly thought out nerfes again, to repeat the cycle over the next 2+ years of uselessness.

Additionally: Curses, DM Condi Scourges on condi + vita gear might be broken in PvP and smallscale now as they got a huge amount of sustain.

I find that hard to imagine, as I see it getting bursted and chain CC'ed pretty hard without any ability to counter pressure after the Shade change in melee, and the stacks being impossible to maintain well without constant massive cleave without getting focused or cc'ed.

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How does this change ruined PvE? Just play melee! You are the class with the highest health pool and tons of barrier. It's ridiculous to complain for PvE if all you got was buffs (more targets and more sustain options via Death Magic). The nerfs have only an impact in WvW. Even in PvP in capture point fights they are irrelevant.

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@KrHome.1920 said:How does this change ruined PvE? Just play melee!Without any shades? Do you play scourge at all? Half our damage modifier traits rely on shades being placed.Reaper is far better in melee, especially compared to shade-less scourge.

In open world PvE it's still playable, of course. Yes, it's a nerf, but farming still works. However, I won't even try to enter PvP with this change. And I can imagine the effects on raids and higher fractals are far more noticable than, say, open world.

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Moved to reaper already - there is no point in struggling with heavy-handedly crippled e-spec. Ab the mobs - the stationary ones consist mostly of the ones in core Tyria and few bosses in instances. But, you know, they promote sKiLfUL aNd DyNaMiC gAmEpLaY.

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@Fenella.2634 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:How does this change ruined PvE? Just play melee!Without any shades? Do you play scourge at all? Half our damage modifier traits rely on shades being placed.Reaper is far better in melee, especially compared to shade-less scourge.

In open world PvE it's still playable, of course. Yes, it's a nerf, but farming still works. However, I won't even try to enter PvP with this change. And I can imagine the effects on raids and higher fractals are far more noticable than, say, open world.

This!

Scourge's minor increasing both"defense" and condi duration require you to lay shades. However shades are statics so they are a bad match for encounters where the foes move. Additionaly the punishment trait basically ask you to summon your shade otherwise you don't apply the burn.

The mechanical change on shades was smart, very smart, because it introduce a notion of choice in what you do, however the traitline itself wasn't tweeked to support this mechanical change, which, in the end, leave the scourge with a lose/lose choice in front of him. A lose/lose choice that don't really matter in the microcosm of the WvW zerg, but impact heavily small scale encounters and solo gameplay.

To clumsily nerf scourge in WvW zerg, ANet basically sacrificed scourge in other area of the game.

If stacking scourge for barrier was an issue, they should just had make it so that a barrier can only replace a barrier of lower value instead of making barrier cumulative.If area denial was an issue they should just have removed damage from shades, the necromancer weapon and utilities already give more than enough area denial without the need of another layer in the form of the shades.

Instead of wise changes, we've got hasty smart changes. It's nice to be smart, but without wisdom, smarts are a tool of massive destruction in the hands of idiots.

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@KrHome.1920 said:The mechanical change itself is good. It should have been this way since day 1. Either the scourge or the shade should deal damage.

Not really. I mean it would be as you say if Scourge was compensated with sustain or dps buffs which never happened. All that actually happened is scourge being nerfed since day 1 with the exception of Soul Barbs which isn't really something big (compared to dps output from other classes). PvE wise scourge was out of meta from every mode due to low damage output. PvP wise scourge was 'shining' in low tiers but was food if played carelessly or not being babysitted by a sustain class. So these are the facts.

Only place scourge was naturally played was in WvW but that has always been like that since long ago - i mean necros have always been the core backline bombing in GvG fights, so scourge was nothing different and in the melee phase it had to follow the group and being protected either by fellow barriers, boons of group or his own barrier when getting sniped by deadeyes or bows lurking in the perimeter.

In general necro life is hard and all the balance team does is doing it unecessarily harder. We had mirage trolling PvP modes for ages and even still does to a degree. Condi thieves carrying PvP games with absurd dps output, holosmiths sustaining like gods, deadeyes and Soulbeasts cheesing in WvW. Do they see those things? Because these are the real problems and the reasons players leave the game and not the scourge pulsing some poo dps on himself along with his shade.

Overall very disappointed.

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@Saracen.2691 said:Yeah, no, I really can't stomach this one. This is just infuriating. I skimmed the advance notes thread and it didn't take a genius to realise there it was a terrible idea either. Some fun highlights off the top of my head Scourge players are going to get to look forward to now:Golems moved in Aetherblade? Sorry, can't do anything.Mai Trin teleported or chased after someone? Guess who's useless now?Gladiator charged in Chaos? Wow how unfortunate!Diviner bolted for that guy hanging around in the back in Cliffside? So much fun to be invalidated by a mechanic as basic as movement.The Voice switched position in Deepstone? Yeah just go wait in a corner or whatever.Nothing to worry about in Molten Boss, it's not like anything ever moves in that Fractal!What's that, we made changes to Molten Furnace that added some mobs with high mobility? You're gonna love what we do to Scourge next.MAMA and Ensolyss never move in Nightmare, nope, not at all.What do Skorvald and Viirastra do in Shattered Observatory again? Have teleport phases? Oh good.There's absolutely nothing in Siren's Reef that will be a problem. Yeah, oh wait, that Stonehead moves almost constantly, Black Peter forces you to move and thus move him or die instantly and Crowe teleports.I can keep doing this for Snowblind, Swampland, Twilight Oasis, Underground, Urban and Volcanic (which is kind of vital since you need to get as many attacks as you can in on the Shaman for a specific phase) but I don't really think it needs the obvious statement. Four Fractals. Four out of twenty where Scourges aren't disadvantaged by the very nature of the mechanics. Fantastic. Please, God, don't leave this the way it is. I doubt my criticism will get anywhere because of the manner it's delivered in but it's hard to keep being unbothered by having your throat stomped in patch after patch because of concerns that probably only exist in of WvW and PvP anyway. At least you split more changes this time. That's the only positive thing I can say.

This is why you can place three shades. You dont need three shades at one target, because every single mob can be attacked only by 1 shade, so if you place 3 shades on a boss and hit F5, the boss will be take damage only from 1 shade, not from all three. Same thing with allies.

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@Antycypator.9874 said:

This is why you can place three shades. You dont need three shades at one target, because every single mob can be attacked only by 1 shade, so if you place 3 shades on a boss and hit F5, the boss will be take damage only from 1 shade, not from all three. Same thing with allies.

Except that you can't maintain having three shades out at once.

The old goal for shade maintenance is to try to keep up two at a time for 10% condi duration and you want to place one after you cast a punishment skill for the sadistic searing burn. Now it's place one every time the enemy leaves the shade and hope it doesn't leave before you get skills off (6 seconds for Desert shroud to do all the ticks, so good luck with that) and your next shade comes off cool down.

Also you want the enemy to move because torment does more damage on moving targets...

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@KrHome.1920 said:How does this change ruined PvE? Just play melee! You are the class with the highest health pool and tons of barrier. It's ridiculous to complain for PvE if all you got was buffs (more targets and more sustain options via Death Magic). The nerfs have only an impact in WvW. Even in PvP in capture point fights they are irrelevant.

Scourge gets bonuses for having as many shades up as possible at all times regardless of whether you're playing defensively or offensively. 'Just play melee' is ridiculous, that's not what the spec is designed around at all. It is strictly a gigantic nerf to everything intended for Scourge. Just sitting there mindlessly 'tanking damage' which doesn't matter since everything in PvE has cleave and aggro doesn't work isn't just depressingly boring and symbolic of the dismissive attitude it feels like ANet has towards necro, it's downright insulting that other players would be so blind as to think it's an acceptable answer. More targets is worthless when A: death magic isn't a spec Scourge even uses and B: everything can just walk out of your shades or get knocked out anyway - it doesn't matter if we can hit one or a trillion targets (for severely diminished DPS with death magic by the way) when nothing is there.

@Antycypator.9874 said:

This is why you can place three shades. You dont need three shades at one target, because every single mob can be attacked only by 1 shade, so if you place 3 shades on a boss and hit F5, the boss will be take damage only from 1 shade, not from all three. Same thing with allies.

Wrong. Did you read my OP at all? I specifically mentioned Sand Sage and Sadistic Searing. You either don't play Scourge much or you play it in a way inefficient enough to make a nerf like this seem palatable. If you have Sadistic Searing, you are incentivised to stack shades where it will do the most damage and even if for some reason you don't i.e. heal scourge you don't have any choice about Sand Sage, you want as many shades up as possible at once. If a fight lasts any time at all, and since this has been done to Scourge that's a given if one is present, you are going to run out of shades even at a pace of only using them when Sand Flare and Trail of Anguish are off CD. And that isn't a fun cooldown to balance, you will be often waiting 10+ seconds for a shade to recharge - what exactly are you supposed to do during that time when the boss runs out of your shade?

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@Saracen.2691 said:This change is insane. Please revert it. Scourge is almost consistently kitten in terms of damage potential with every patch but this one is just way too severe specifically because of ruining synergy with Sand Sage and Sadistic Searing. Mobs aren't static in this game, especially in use cases where it remotely matters like T4 Fractals. Having less than as many shades up as possible constantly is hamstringing your DPS as scourge. Now you are punished for trying to pursue that synergy - mob moves out of your shades? Congratulations, you're screwed and a gigantic chunk of your damage just evaporated. We need the ability to act as an additional shade for the purpose of pursuing mobs and even if you want to argue the support focus angle, great, hope you enjoy denying your allies that condi cleanse or little bit of barrier that would've helped them because they're a metre away from your shade.

It feels like you intrinsically gave the ability for Scourge to deal DPS and now you're trying to hammer it into those of us who like the playstyle that we're wrong. It sucks, taking away the little flexibility we have is excessively punishing. We can't even destroy shades so if we're out of them and the mob runs off we can potentially be waiting twelve or more seconds contributing next to nothing to our teammates. What the hell am I supposed to do in Snowblind now? Shaman leaps so I get to spend a quarter of a minute twiddling my thumbs saying 'sorry I'm dead weight again guys'? Situations like that aren't at all the exception either - that isn't even taking into account how many people obliviously knock mobs out of your shades. This is the most damaging update in a single patch Scourge has ever received, worse than the bug on launch, nerf to compensate or the bug being fixed and nerf never reverted.

This is the same as chrono wells. Instead of fixing the chrono wells, they copied the mechanics to necro, rip chrono, rip necro.

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I'll sign the revert petition. I played about 5 hours last night as a scourge in WvW and it did not feel like I was even playing the same class/spec. Here was what was going through my mind all night:

Keep track of your shade, keep track of your shade, keep track Oh crap i need to evade, evade, switch weapon, and evade again. Where the hell did my shade go... I guess ill drop another wait a minute its on cool down and I have to wait 15 seconds before I can place again. I wish I could find my shade but I give up to much spam screen clutter to see where it was placed. Guess I will try and stay alive while I wait. I really miss the old way...

The ridiculousness of increasing the shade duration to 15 sec. is really just salt in the wound. If anything it should have been reduced so we can use the shades off of our character sooner... I am not sure who mentioned it but someplace I read the recommendation of shades working similar to the Revnants ventari's tablet. That is a better Idea than what we got last patch.

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