Jump to content
  • Sign Up

[PvE] How good is Healer Scourge for Fractals?


Turkeyspit.3965

Recommended Posts

I originally made my Necro as a WvW character, but I find I just don't enjoy her in that game mode, and since then, she has just been someone to run around open world, etc. She is currently geared/built as a Power Scourge, but am thinking about re-tasking her.

I'm looking at https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scourge_-_Support_Healer , but specifically the Marshal/Shaman variant. I have all the ascended gear I would need, but I would have to re-forge a lot of it to get the right stats, and that will cost a fair amount of resources, so I want to make sure before I do.

How good is this build for a typical T4 pug?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And if you have the "lower health instability"Scourge can be good but looses a lot of effective heal. Because your barriers are too big and some of the amount gets wasted.For fractals I think you have to go, play a boonduration build. With pack rune, to get higher uptime on might, and get fury uptime. But that only works, if you can get another source of fury.

Don't get me wrong. It's not super bad, but it's not super good as well.Wanna be meta (most effective)? Run firebrigade. No scourge needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've used the Magi variant and it absolutely saves PUGs from just about anything, as long as they stay within range of shades. It's not good for speeding through; it's great for moving "fast enough" for anyone else. And it's almost faceroll in its "rotation."

I think it's a good option for the instabilities that wreck PUGs normally, such as Siren's Reef with Sugar Rush or We Bleed Fire. It's also useful for when you're feeling lazy or if you have someone trying a new build or a friend new to fractals.

One of my guildies who is much more skilled than I uses it to all-but-guarantee LNHB. It's impressive to watch.

tl;dr low skill, hard carry; meant for mixed ability groups, not efficient clears.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:tl;dr low skill, hard carry; meant for mixed ability groups, not efficient clears.

So a good choice for random pugs, not so good for a good comp / static group. Makes sense.

Do you think I could get away with running Axe over Dagger? The LF generation difference between Dagger 1 and Axe 2 is pretty significant, but I like the idea of applying vuln and having an AoE boon strip with Axe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:tl;dr low skill, hard carry; meant for mixed ability groups, not efficient clears.

So a good choice for random pugs, not so good for a good comp / static group. Makes sense.Well, depends on your static, too. It's nice for an "easy mode" run.

Do you think I could get away with running Axe over Dagger? The LF generation difference between Dagger 1 and Axe 2 is pretty significant, but I like the idea of applying vuln and having an AoE boon strip with Axe.Honestly? You should just try it. The variations all have the same basic approach, core traits & utilities. I think each will work best for different people, depending on preference and I don't think there's a good way to predict which is yours until you try. Same goes for whether Magi or Shaman or Plaguedoctor.

Since you have some reforging to do, start with which ever stat/gear set you can come closest to with the least effort. If it doesn't feel quite right to you, start adjusting.

And let us know what you find when you start using it. It's easier to recommend tweaks once you're practicing, because you'll have questions specific to your approach.

Put another way: a lot of builds are very sensitive to tweaks; this one isn't. It's the player who makes it decent or stellar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW4fnE9Cl2g90AW3As9iluBb6BsxCA690haSl6DsBOUA-jxxGQBkV53Q2fosKBFr6PgV3AAuIAk7JAsOYAgR3d3d3dLFgfD2A-eThis is the build I use everywhere, from Fractals to Raids. I love it! It's a jack of all trades sort of build. Gives good barrier (enough to top off most professions), 25 stacks of might pre-fight, boon corruption, power rezzing, regeneration, some CC, high health which in turn means a high lf bar (as you know, Scourge F skills are a fixed amount so this DOES translate into more "mana"), and a LOT of condi cleanse. As many will notice (and probably call me a noob for it), I have Life from Death not Vampiric Presence traited. This is because I fire off Desert Shroud off cooldown anyways to "help" with damage, and ultimately the healing from it is superior to Vampiric Presence and it's actually not too bad of a heal. Well of Power is the first skill to be replaced if you need to switch to, say, Epidemic or Sand Swell. While Desert Empowerment wins out every time in condi heavy fights or party fights, in fights with no condis and 10 people switch it for Herald of Sorrow as it can give a large barrier up to 10 people. The timing requires some getting used to; it officially takes 3 seconds, but it still has the 1 second "warning" all shade skills have before firing off so it actually comes to 4 seconds.

All in all, I have mountains of fun playing this build and it's amazing as off healer in raids and quite good as main healer in fracs if your team mates don't face tank everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Methuselah.4376" said:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW4fnE9Cl2g90AW3As9iluBb6BsxCA690haSl6DsBOUA-jxxGQBkV53Q2fosKBFr6PgV3AAuIAk7JAsOYAgR3d3d3dLFgfD2A-eThis is the build I use everywhere, from Fractals to Raids. I love it! It's a jack of all trades sort of build. Gives good barrier (enough to top off most professions), 25 stacks of might pre-fight, boon corruption, power rezzing, regeneration, some CC, high health which in turn means a high lf bar (as you know, Scourge F skills are a fixed amount so this DOES translate into more "mana"), and a LOT of condi cleanse. As many will notice (and probably call me a noob for it), I have Life from Death not Vampiric Presence traited. This is because I fire off Desert Shroud off cooldown anyways to "help" with damage, and ultimately the healing from it is superior to Vampiric Presence and it's actually not too bad of a heal. Well of Power is the first skill to be replaced if you need to switch to, say, Epidemic or Sand Swell. While Desert Empowerment wins out every time in condi heavy fights or party fights, in fights with no condis and 10 people switch it for Herald of Sorrow as it can give a large barrier up to 10 people. The timing requires some getting used to; it officially takes 3 seconds, but it still has the 1 second "warning" all shade skills have before firing off so it actually comes to 4 seconds.

All in all, I have mountains of fun playing this build and it's amazing as off healer in raids and quite good as main healer in fracs if your team mates don't face tank everything.

Way too much lifeforce gain in my opinion...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Nimon.7840 said:

@"Methuselah.4376" said:
This is the build I use everywhere, from Fractals to Raids. I love it! It's a jack of all trades sort of build. Gives good barrier (enough to top off most professions), 25 stacks of might pre-fight, boon corruption, power rezzing, regeneration, some CC, high health which in turn means a high lf bar (as you know, Scourge F skills are a fixed amount so this DOES translate into more "mana"), and a LOT of condi cleanse. As many will notice (and probably call me a noob for it), I have Life from Death not Vampiric Presence traited. This is because I fire off Desert Shroud off cooldown anyways to "help" with damage, and ultimately the healing from it is superior to Vampiric Presence and it's actually not too bad of a heal. Well of Power is the first skill to be replaced if you need to switch to, say, Epidemic or Sand Swell. While Desert Empowerment wins out every time in condi heavy fights or party fights, in fights with no condis and 10 people switch it for Herald of Sorrow as it can give a large barrier up to 10 people. The timing requires some getting used to; it officially takes 3 seconds, but it still has the 1 second "warning" all shade skills have before firing off so it actually comes to 4 seconds.

All in all, I have mountains of fun playing this build and it's amazing as off healer in raids and quite good as main healer in fracs if your team mates don't face tank everything.

Way too much lifeforce gain in my opinion...

Is this really a complaint for Scourge? Yes, there's a lot of lf gain and as such I do not have to worry about running out of lf.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Methuselah.4376 said:

This is the build I use everywhere, from Fractals to Raids. I love it! It's a jack of all trades sort of build. Gives good barrier (enough to top off most professions), 25 stacks of might pre-fight, boon corruption, power rezzing, regeneration, some CC, high health which in turn means a high lf bar (as you know, Scourge F skills are a fixed amount so this DOES translate into more "mana"), and a LOT of condi cleanse. As many will notice (and probably call me a noob for it), I have Life from Death not Vampiric Presence traited. This is because I fire off Desert Shroud off cooldown anyways to "help" with damage, and ultimately the healing from it is superior to Vampiric Presence and it's actually not too bad of a heal. Well of Power is the first skill to be replaced if you need to switch to, say, Epidemic or Sand Swell. While Desert Empowerment wins out every time in condi heavy fights or party fights, in fights with no condis and 10 people switch it for Herald of Sorrow as it can give a large barrier up to 10 people. The timing requires some getting used to; it officially takes 3 seconds, but it still has the 1 second "warning" all shade skills have before firing off so it actually comes to 4 seconds.

All in all, I have mountains of fun playing this build and it's amazing as off healer in raids and quite good as main healer in fracs if your team mates don't face tank everything.

Way too much lifeforce gain in my opinion...

Is this really a complaint for Scourge? Yes, there's a lot of lf gain and as such I do not have to worry about running out of lf.

Not a complaint. Just some optimizing suggestions:

with that build you should be at 100% lf all the time anywaysSo why bother taking signet of undeath? Dessicate generates lf as well, + gives might and potentially corrupts.The well can then be switched freely to what is best for the situation.Like: grasp, CPC, trail, epi,...Also I don't like breach in this build. The might it generates is insignificant because it's a way to big cd to use just for might. For dmg u use plaguelands, for cc golem, because it's instant cc.

Scepter fits the build better than dagger: you have condition dmg and use oppressive collapse to generate might. Oppressive collapse gives more might, the more condis on enemy. And scepter does more condis than dagger. (Scepter/torch + traited staff + dessicate should be more than enough lf gain, so you can spam your abilities.

And as a question: do you always take someone else to generate fury?for 100% fury uptime?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Nimon.7840 said:

This is the build I use everywhere, from Fractals to Raids. I love it! It's a jack of all trades sort of build. Gives good barrier (enough to top off most professions), 25 stacks of might pre-fight, boon corruption, power rezzing, regeneration, some CC, high health which in turn means a high lf bar (as you know, Scourge F skills are a fixed amount so this DOES translate into more "mana"), and a LOT of condi cleanse. As many will notice (and probably call me a noob for it), I have Life from Death not Vampiric Presence traited. This is because I fire off Desert Shroud off cooldown anyways to "help" with damage, and ultimately the healing from it is superior to Vampiric Presence and it's actually not too bad of a heal. Well of Power is the first skill to be replaced if you need to switch to, say, Epidemic or Sand Swell. While Desert Empowerment wins out every time in condi heavy fights or party fights, in fights with no condis and 10 people switch it for Herald of Sorrow as it can give a large barrier up to 10 people. The timing requires some getting used to; it officially takes 3 seconds, but it still has the 1 second "warning" all shade skills have before firing off so it actually comes to 4 seconds.

All in all, I have mountains of fun playing this build and it's amazing as off healer in raids and quite good as main healer in fracs if your team mates don't face tank everything.

Way too much lifeforce gain in my opinion...

Is this really a complaint for Scourge? Yes, there's a lot of lf gain and as such I do not have to worry about running out of lf.

Not a complaint. Just some optimizing suggestions:

with that build you should be at 100% lf all the time anywaysSo why bother taking signet of undeath? Dessicate generates lf as well, + gives might and potentially corrupts.The well can then be switched freely to what is best for the situation.Like: grasp, CPC, trail, epi,...Also I don't like breach in this build. The might it generates is insignificant because it's a way to big cd to use just for might. For dmg u use plaguelands, for cc golem, because it's instant cc.

Scepter fits the build better than dagger: you have condition dmg and use oppressive collapse to generate might. Oppressive collapse gives more might, the more condis on enemy. And scepter does more condis than dagger. (Scepter/torch + traited staff + dessicate should be more than enough lf gain, so you can spam your abilities.

And as a question: do you always take someone else to generate fury?for 100% fury uptime?

Ye build has no fury uptime. I take Signet of Undeath as an emergency distance rez, especially in raids. I do actually run a similar build to what you suggested in WvW, but damage is not a focus in PvE for this build. Ghastly Breach is the default for my build. I switch it to golem when heavy CC is needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

So as requested, thought I would return with some feedback. There will not be a TLDR, so if you don't want to read, just go to another post :tongue:

In short though, I really like this build. It doesn't play like a dedicated healer build, but rather plays just like a DPS but with lower DPS and higher healing/barrier uptime.

Using Axe/Focus + Torch was perfectly fine, and in several instances, I was able to maintain DPS and LF generation (via Axe 2) from range, be it during phase shifts in TO, SO, or when having to move out of melee range to avoid damage pools / move where the party members are moving, Nightmare, Swamp, Thaum, etc., all of which wouldn't work with main hand dagger. Had zero problems with LF, I was spamming shades and F1-F5 and rarely if ever dropped below 50% LF.

Probably the hardest encounters I had all weekend were TO with Afflicted (that was rough) and Volcanic with We Bleed Fire was bumpy, but I had some marginal DPSers in my group, so if I had been grouped with better players, would have gone smoother.

I'm using pretty much the same build as listed on Meta, but am running Unyielding Blast over Soul Marks (as I don't use Staff) and instead of Shadow Fiend, am running Well of Power for condi heavy fights, or Trail of Anguish for stun break / stability. I'm going to try and run Blood is Power with Dessicate as I found it hard to consistently keep 25stacks of might, but then I have to figure most DPS builds generate might of their own, so I'll experiment a bit

The only downside compared to Firebrigade is you need a Power Quickbrand for quickness uptime, which doesn't leave room for an Alacrigade. So this is good for pugs where you get random classes showing up, but any static would be better served with a Healbrand + Alacrigade.

Still, very fun build, and in a way, revitalized fractals for me as they were getting a bit stale with me always running the same build/profession.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...