FalsePromises.6398

Reading these and seeing lots of "the new shatters are just the same old same old" or "was hoping for a fanservice bard"... the only legitimate criticism I could somewhat agree with of virtuoso is that it should have gotten two daggers (and I guess that it doesn't get more cleanses, but we haven't even seen the traits yet). I think a lot of people aren't REALLY looking into this. It's not just removing clones... you get a FIFTH shatter ammo and (I'm pretty sure) none of them dissipate when your target dies prematurely, which has TONS of implications. For instance, traits that apply bonus conditions or effects per shatter that lands or per clone shattered will become notably more potent when 1. you won't lose out your fourth shatter proc by not being in point blank range of your target, 2. you'll have a bonus shatter hit proc with your fifth blade for trait purposes, and 3. you won't lose your shatter ammo if your target dies, which will make for a lot better multi target handling. With these bonuses in mind, some things to benefit from this will be Shattered Concentration (boon removed per shatter hit landed), Cry of Pain (bonus confusion on F2 per hit), Maim the Disillusioned (Torment on EVERY shatter per clone, may uniquely affect virtuoso's bladeturn requiem pulsing blade field so keep an eye on that), Blinding Dissipation (blindness on each F2 shatter instance, synergy with Ineptitude for more confusion), Restorative Illusions (heal per clone or blade used in a shatter, may go SERIOUSLY nuts given you'll now have five blades instead of three clones to interact with that), and my personal favorite glow-up will be Ether Feast (5k heal on 20s cooldown with 600 bonus healing per clone active, or blade stored in this case) which will become a WICKED 8k heal on 20s cooldown with 5 blades up, which will be far easier to achieve than 3 clones alive at the same time. Now, just looking at these is enough to give it some cool synergy with the original traitlines, but the new shatters themselves are rather interesting, especially Bladeturn Requiem, which is a 3 second block so long as you have one blade, no matter one or five blades, on 30 second cooldown. You basically get a warrior shield stance that doesn't require a full channel (only 1.5 second cast time), which also creates an aoe whirlwind of blades. This will be pretty gnarly in pvp where previously distortion would remove your point capture contribution and would have twice the cooldown and conditional uptime based on how many clones you shattered with it. The sheer amount of area damage on top of that new block that virtuoso will have will make it rather gnarly in conquest I imagine. If you miss that invulnerability though, you'll still be able to take that new utility skill which will regenerate your ammo instead of eating it. You'll lose that freecast invuln window, yeah, but it's a worthy sacrifice imo, and at least isn't as bad as chronomancer's removal of distortion completely. All in all, virtuoso looks rough at first but is secretly a gold mine. You'll have more reliable defenses, more reliable aoe (away with thee, wells!) and more potent shatters with improved shatter synergies from traits, which could create some pretty gnarly effects if you play your cards right. This is all speculation based on what we've seen and doesn't even glance at the traits yet, there could be more to come, and who knows, maybe anet will cave and give em a second dagger? We're still nearly half a year out, just about. They've got time and multiple betas. They gave revenant weapon swap after player demand, so it's not like they CAN'T do big things based on player feedback. Regardless, I'll still be using focus offhand for roundups into those psionic skills, so I'm fine either way. Mesmer still has quite the arsenal of purposeful and powerful offhanders anyway, which is more than can be said for other classes. I am concerned though about bladesongs having cast times, but I'll wait to see how that pans out.

What bums me out the most about that patch is that you won't be able to take Medic's Feedback and Restorative Mantras at the same time since they're both in the same column of Inspiration, both two powerful support options that together could make core mesmer and mirage a very potent offheal, but debatably not with only one at a time. I'd love it if they swapped the placements of Warden's Feedback and Medic's Feedback so that you could take both Medic's Feedback and Restorative Mantras at the same time, because otherwise it feels like a painstaking tradeoff to pick one or the other when core mesmer and mirage already have VERY few support options in terms of healing/reviving: giving up your only reliable area revive or your only reliable area heal (other than wells (most needing traits)) doesn't sit right.

Honestly the torment change reducing the synergy with fear is really annoying, but I feel like it would be PERFECTLY remedied if they added a bonus effect to Insidious Disruption that made torment deal bonus damage against feared enemies, or made it so that trait made torment tick its higher value against feared enemies. That would put a trait in that trio selection column of curses that could actually compete with plague sending in an offensive manner, and while one might say that would mess up the rotation a bit since Blood is Power would lose one of its easiest and cheapest transfers, one might ALSO say that since bosses in raids are standing still more often than not, you wouldn't need to give up plague sending in a meta dps build to make your torment reliable.

I don't disagree that soulbeast has some ground to retain the ability to revive pet in such fashion, but I would never dream of comparing it to mesmer clones or thief stealth. That's just nonsensical. Clones were made to die, and stealth was made to be broken by reveal due to hitting enemies applying reveal onto you. I would not argue rangers are punished for taking on condi classes if they run wilderness survival, that's only an issue if you're purposely giving up defenses for more boonage or damage. WIlderness survival's monopoly on ranger cleanses is a different beast.Anywho I totally sympathize with druid, used to main it before they gutted the healing countless times over instead of addressing the actual broken traits that were making it the cheese unkillable sidenode duelist it was. Don't shortsell ranger pets though, they may not be strong in direct combat but in duels they're great for keeping pressure when enemies move behind cover or using their command (or sometimes even normal skills) to really dish out some pain, debilitation, pressure, or control.Anyway I'm not saying ranger's top tier but don't act like it's the weakest or most handicapped class in the game (there's not a real correct answer to that but there are many more possibly correct answers and ranger never strikes me as the biggest victim in that category). i see countless people saying 1v1 balance is irrelevant but at the same time call for ranger nerfs. anyways, try dueling a condi herald or any type of renegade and see how long your pet stays alive. even mesmer shatters will end up nuking your pet in 1v1. reaper, necro. pet is completely useless most of the time. and yes ofc i’m talking about with WS, only soulbeast can survive without WS. druid needs it for CA charge and core needs it for condi cleanse. i started playing druid again last week cus of nostalgia, and oh boy have i realized how amazing it is not having to worry about pets dying on soulbeast. it’s such a stupid and pointless hazzle constantly having to micromanage your dying and crippled pets. and its not even like enemies are target them deliberately. they just die to aoe and cleave. even when i dodge all the condi and aoe myself my pet just facetanks all of it and dies eventually. in melee its not even like i can avoid it because if my pet is on passive it still follows me. but if its on attack mode it’s on enemy and will still get hit by aoe. Fair enough. I won't lie, the main reason I even discovered this whole thing and started playing soulbeast again to see if it was legitimate was because an evade-heavy condi soulbeast dueled my rather condi-resistant scourge for what must've been 20 minutes straight, and in the process he revived his pet at LEAST 15 times, which was painful as hell given it was a snow owl applying chill and dealing persistent 1-2.5k hits every two seconds it wasn't dead. i can see that being annoying yea. scourge tends to be somewhat countered by soulbeast in general though, i’m not sure the pet was necessarily the main reason for that. but if he revived his pet 15 times, that goes to show how easily it would’ve died on druid or core lol. Ehhhhh, condi soulbeasts are usually less problematic for necromancers than power ones (especially scourges, and especially especially my particular scourge build). This guy wasn't a powerhouse or CC train like the usual soulbeast. Matter of fact the only reason he won was due to his near endless on-demand mobility-escapes, powerful heals from snow owl merge and troll unguent alone, and constant poison to an extent that could rival the constant reapplication of a burnguard's burning. The owl npc itself definitely wasn't the defining factor, but it made up a huge aspect of his mobility and healing in merge and a solid amount of chill-pressure and curveball power damage when unmerged, both of which faced no drawbacks from the owl's usually limiting healthpool due to its endless free revivals.

I don't disagree that soulbeast has some ground to retain the ability to revive pet in such fashion, but I would never dream of comparing it to mesmer clones or thief stealth. That's just nonsensical. Clones were made to die, and stealth was made to be broken by reveal due to hitting enemies applying reveal onto you. I would not argue rangers are punished for taking on condi classes if they run wilderness survival, that's only an issue if you're purposely giving up defenses for more boonage or damage. WIlderness survival's monopoly on ranger cleanses is a different beast.Anywho I totally sympathize with druid, used to main it before they gutted the healing countless times over instead of addressing the actual broken traits that were making it the cheese unkillable sidenode duelist it was. Don't shortsell ranger pets though, they may not be strong in direct combat but in duels they're great for keeping pressure when enemies move behind cover or using their command (or sometimes even normal skills) to really dish out some pain, debilitation, pressure, or control.Anyway I'm not saying ranger's top tier but don't act like it's the weakest or most handicapped class in the game (there's not a real correct answer to that but there are many more possibly correct answers and ranger never strikes me as the biggest victim in that category). i see countless people saying 1v1 balance is irrelevant but at the same time call for ranger nerfs. anyways, try dueling a condi herald or any type of renegade and see how long your pet stays alive. even mesmer shatters will end up nuking your pet in 1v1. reaper, necro. pet is completely useless most of the time. and yes ofc i’m talking about with WS, only soulbeast can survive without WS. druid needs it for CA charge and core needs it for condi cleanse. i started playing druid again last week cus of nostalgia, and oh boy have i realized how amazing it is not having to worry about pets dying on soulbeast. it’s such a stupid and pointless hazzle constantly having to micromanage your dying and crippled pets. and its not even like enemies are target them deliberately. they just die to aoe and cleave. even when i dodge all the condi and aoe myself my pet just facetanks all of it and dies eventually. in melee its not even like i can avoid it because if my pet is on passive it still follows me. but if its on attack mode it’s on enemy and will still get hit by aoe. Fair enough. I won't lie, the main reason I even discovered this whole thing and started playing soulbeast again to see if it was legitimate was because an evade-heavy condi soulbeast dueled my rather condi-resistant scourge for what must've been 20 minutes straight, and in the process he revived his pet at LEAST 15 times, which was painful as hell given it was a snow owl applying chill and dealing persistent 1-2.5k hits every two seconds it wasn't dead.

I don't disagree that soulbeast has some ground to retain the ability to revive pet in such fashion, but I would never dream of comparing it to mesmer clones or thief stealth. That's just nonsensical. Clones were made to die, and stealth was made to be broken by reveal due to hitting enemies applying reveal onto you. I would not argue rangers are punished for taking on condi classes if they run wilderness survival, that's only an issue if you're purposely giving up defenses for more boonage or damage. WIlderness survival's monopoly on ranger cleanses is a different beast.Anywho I totally sympathize with druid, used to main it before they gutted the healing countless times over instead of addressing the actual broken traits that were making it the cheese unkillable sidenode duelist it was. Don't shortsell ranger pets though, they may not be strong in direct combat but in duels they're great for keeping pressure when enemies move behind cover or using their command (or sometimes even normal skills) to really dish out some pain, debilitation, pressure, or control.Anyway I'm not saying ranger's top tier but don't act like it's the weakest or most handicapped class in the game (there's not a real correct answer to that but there are many more possibly correct answers and ranger never strikes me as the biggest victim in that category).

Before I get into this topic, I want to say this: I am not trying to judge this in relativity to other classes, how ranger stands in the pvp meta, or any other external factors. I don't need a compiled argument on why ranger is in an awkward spot and deserves to have near-abusable mechanics. I'm merely questioning whether or not soulbeast's ability to fully revive their pet every 10 seconds using beastmode is fair or legitimate in comparison to the other ranger specs or in combat against other classes, especially when killing some pets and/or taking even a few key hits from them is quite a pain in the posterior. That said, is it intended, fair, or legitimate for soulbeast to be able to revive and/or full reset their pet without any consequences by entering beastmode and then leaving it? As far as I know, there's no cooldown or lockout penalties to at least the more troublesome part of reviving a pet in doing so, such as adding a penalty skill lockout and/or extending the period of time before being able to leave beastmode when merging with a dead pet, or extending the cooldown of re-entering beastmode after merging and unmerging with a dead pet to rally it. I would certainly not argue that killing a soulbeast's pet should bar them from using beastmode until it's revived by other means (that'd be extremely cruel given some pet healthpools and refusal to avoid area spells), but some penalty on the constant ability to revive a dead pet using beastmode to balance the cost other classes pay to kill said pet would seem fair. However, that's just my opinion, which I try to balance since I myself am not a ranger main any more: what do you all think of this beastmode revive trick? Is it fair to have, given they cannot juggle pets or heal pets constantly like druids and cores can to avoid pet death, or rather is it legitimate since it's only a duelist trick and they should excel in dueling environments, or does it still deserve some drawbacks to it since it's still a powerful capability? I haven't seen anyone else address this, so I figured I'd at least see what others think of it.

I haven't seen anything in forums yet about this directly, so I'll try to describe what goes on best I can. This is just my PvE testing of the trait: I don't think its possible to have issues with it in PvP (given max of 5 allies and whatnot), and WvW has its own post about it and its unique target caps. The issue in PvE relates directly to target caps of shades changing on July 7th alongside Desert Empowerment's target cap remaining unchanged. Desert Empowerment, previous to the change to shades that returned the point blank effects around the caster at the expense of reducing each shade's target cap, would affect 5 allies with a classic shade and 10 allies with a sand savant shade, granting them barrier. With the change, the number of targets affected by the trait in the tooltip did not change, and the smart move I liked from the dev team was to move some of the affected allies target cap to the personal manifest shade effects around the caster, but it seemed to have adverse effects. I noticed my sand shade manifest wasn't granting full ten man squad barrier in strikes when stacked: only my subsquad of five allies (or the closest allies from the next subsquad if my own subsquad was not near me) would get the barrier from it, despite having traited sand savant with the tooltip stating 10 target cap for allies to gain barrier. However, when I tested it outside of a squad, I was met with different results: I could barrier 10 allies at a time, but only with the right conditions met: akin to the old unintended effects of shades being able to affect the same target multiple times, the desert empowerment effects can target the same ally more than once as if it were going to give them double effects, but will still grant any double-affected ally the effects of a single trigger. This becomes an issue with subsquads, stacked/coordinated fights, and similar situations with clusters of allies stacked near you. When you place a shade near yourself to barrier ten tightly stacked allies, you will only affect either your subsquad of five allies (if they are inside both your personal radius and your shade's radius) or the allies standing between your shade and you in a non-subsquaded fight (where a target inside both radii of your personal trigger and shade trigger can count as a target for both but only receive the single benefits). This issue reduces the number of targets affected for every ally prioritized by both effects: despite being already covered with either one or the other, they get counted as targets for both the personal area trigger and the manifested trigger, and although they only receive the benefit once, they consume the twice the target cap, resulting in a huge drawback to desert empowerment in group content in terms of supporting crowds. If the squad is spread out into two groups of five, the desert empowerment with sand savant can affect them all, but any stacking causes double counting of players in the same subsquad, or if you place the shade directly on top of yourself, it will double count every single affected ally your personal effects affect. This seems to be an overlapping target prioritization issue met with the old restraints on double-effects from a single shade trigger (of which the former creates the issue and the latter is in place and should remain so for good reason), and the solution (while probably having some scary coding behind it) is to find a way to ensure both desert empowerment triggers do not overlap targets.

I was trying to figure out how to get the empowered version of the Boneskinner's Spine, and I figured it was a Mystic Forge recipe, seeing as other boneskinner weapons are usable in the mystic forge with amalgamated draconic lodestones (and I have not figured out any further reagents). I found I could use the Boneskinner's Spine with 10 amalgamated draconic lodestones, 10 globs of ectoplasm, and 50 eitrite ingots, and I tried it. Unfortunately, it just returned the Boneskinner's Spine, but account bound and with sigils removed, and also ate all the other reagents in the process. I imagine this was due to the Boneskinner's Spine registering as the exotic staff reagent for its own creation recipe, and resultantly created itself from itself. I've already submitted a support ticket about it, seeing as I lost nearly 180g from that, but I wanted other players trying to find the recipe to beware about this. Furthermore, if anyone does know the recipe, I'd love it if they could share, seeing as the wiki isn't updated to have it last I checked. tl;dr don't use the boneskinner's spine in the same recipe used to create it, for it'll just recreate it and not upgrade it to the empowered version

That's a respectable take on it. I've always known, and won't hesitate from saying it again, that scourge was designed from the start to be broken beyond belief and get nerfed into oblivion by its innate qualities (which leaves me bitter because some specializations were created similarly but haven't gotten their due). Niche support abilities, spare might, extra corrupts, focused on two of the most oppressive conditions in the game (burn/torment), and specialized all around lingering area denial. I completely agree with you when you say that the spec needs an overhaul, my goal is largely just to propose some changes that wouldn't need an overhaul, seeing as ArenaNet mentioned they were trying to sit back on PvP balance for the time being after the huge rework and few following adjustments to focus on other content. I personally think with the damage rollbacks, the area denial wouldn't be as problematic damage-wise, but that's simply me. If you feel these changes would simply reopen old wounds, I'll accept your judgement on it, but I also am eager to hear what others think of it.

I appreciate your input, but I also respectfully disagree. I know the point blank area removal was a WvW related issue: people in WvW were getting angry at scourges being untethered by shade placements and being able to cast freely with no drawbacks, and also essentially being walking natural disasters. There was no rational reason related to PvP to do that, especially and specifically without redress: scourges needed the mobile shade effects to maintain pressure against mobile targets. If there really was that big of an issue, they HORRIBLY overdid the nerfing on it, turning a highly debateably little too strong spec into nothing in one nerf alone. If shades aren't buffed for greater radius, scourge will forever remain incapable of proper area coverage in PvP unless they just up and revert the PBAoE rework that took away their ability to use shades for covering ground and their personal shade radius for defense, support, and chase. The most important detail to consider in that respect is that shade skills nowadays cannot do high damage like they used to. When I tested on carrion amulet with as much stacked condition damage as possible, there was no way I was getting a dhuumfire, demonic lore traited shade pulse over 700 damage maximum (excluding terror), being a little generous on that number. The torment hits about 100 or so damage, burning ticks 400, can bump that burning up to 600 damage by stacking up on burning duration bonuses (smoldering sigil, balthazar rune) at the expense of some of the damage and durations of other conditions. Consider that alongside nefarious favor rework, aka the shade skill you used to be able to cast freely because it was so low cooldown, being given a bonus 140% cooldown? You're no longer using shade skills buckwild for offensive power like the scourge of the old days used to, and even if dhuumfire gets reverted it, I think it was already in a state that was legitimate: 3 second burning over 3 second ICD was perfectly rational, and nerfing that further was unfair when the other necromancer specializations retained the full 3 second burning on their far more rapid attacks. Scourge's dhuumfire across five players (like a PvP match) from one shade pulse amounts to 5 applications of one second burning every 5 seconds, cumulative average 1 burning tick's damage per second. Reaper given free reign autoattack against ONE target can maintain six stacks of burning. That's not accounting cleave at all. Accounting cleave, it's 22 cumulative maintained stacks of burning (accounting 3 targets on the first two strikes of auto chain and 5 on the third). MAINTAINED stacks. Not burst. If we account for maximum target limit on scourge's dhuumfire procs which isn't possible in PvP anyway, we see 10 stacks of burning every 5 seconds bursted 1 second across ten targets, averaging to 2 stacks maintained against them all, assuming the scourge magically times all of their shade procs to make no downtime in their dhuumfire casting. Classic shades go up to 3 averaged stacks maintained, spread 1 stack for 1 second across 15 targets. if this was upgraded to merely return the 3 second duration, that goes up to 9 cumulative stacks maintained on classic and 6 cumulative average maintained on savant, return the ICD and it goes up to 15 and 10 cumulative stacks respectively, still assuming impossible amounts of targets being hit for PvP, and a strict limit at one stack maintained indefinitely in a perfect situation on one player. Do you get what I'm going at here? Dhuumfire isn't something to worry about: it's extremely limited and I don't even think a scourge could get that perfect 100% uptime of 3 second burning reapplied every 3 seconds by casting another shade skill magically at the perfect frame (nor would or should they, if they know how important saving shade abilities for defensive purposes are). Nerfing dhuumfire on scourge was a kick in the ribs to offensive scourge styles and was unnecessary, especially considered in retrospect to the other specs capabilities with the trait. Dhuumfire was perfectly fine at 3 second burn per 3 seconds before scourge got hit with that PBAoE nerf that deleted them from PvP. When we look at the final idea, the shroud cooldown, that was nerfed way back in early 2018, March 27th to be exact. I think it's fair to say the meta's shifted enough not just between then and February 25th, but also accounting February 25th, to at the very least give that idea a look over. When I find myself playing scourge on my builds, largely on my hybrid damage oriented build which I've been playing the most as of late, I find myself constantly pressed on the cooldown of that skill in all aspects. Maybe I'm dated, but I still try to play scourge like a necromancer from before February 25th: namely corrupt heavy and pressuring on the damage. I use harbinger shroud and spite/curses shroud entry traits for heavy corruption as well as a discount on the life force cost on the skill, but in using shroud like this I've come to the realization that shroud cooldown is one of the most integral parts of a non-bunker scourge's kit: my BM/DM wellomancer doesn't use shroud a lot because I use desert empowerment instead and the desert shroud is barely worth the life force for the barrier or the damage when it doesn't even deal as much base power damage as well of corruption. Offensive scourges don't excel because shroud is such a long cooldown skill, and their normal shade attacks (as proven before) can't deal the damage that makes up for not having shroud like the shroud itself can. Bunker scourges made it for that little while probably because they weren't pressed to pressure enemies with the shroud, they merely stayed alive. When I'm playing to press an enemy, I find myself needing my shroud to cripple them (because they removed all the cripple from shade skills and warhorn offhand, something else to note when talking about scourge nowadays), to reverse pressure them, to corrupt and punish heavy booners, and more. Sometimes I find myself at odds against targets I SHOULD be beating or rather should be losing to me because they eat all my hits, yet I remain restrained by this constant dependency on shroud and its long cooldown reducing the frequency of my offense and allowing them undeserved reprieve they wouldn't have against other classes that have fully rounded offensive power, if that makes sense. Sorry if this is wordy, but my goal is to get my point across as clear as possible. I feel like these are important and necessary changes, not based on a whim or random thought, but by continuous testing from my own time.

Before I begin, if you don't like reading, there's a tl;dr at the bottom, and if you read that and disagree with one, please read its rationale. Three Fixes for a Roughly Shaved SpecializationI’m a bit of a scourge fan, love playing it in PvE (open world and raids/strikes), and have been trying to make it work in PvP, the main place where scourge seems for the most part inadequate (and also is the gamemode I find to be the best judgement of a specialization's independent, holistic capability), for quite some time now. Scourge took many hits since its release, what with the loss of point blank shade effects, dhuumfire restraints, transfusion shaving, barrier nerfing, torment dispersions, and more. When the February 25th balance patch dropped though, I must say I was one of the first to jump back on scourge and give it a shot, seeing as some barrier values weren’t proportionally scaled and nefarious favor saw a QoL buff (which was actually mathematically a nerf anyway) and have been working away at scourge's viability ever since. I’ve come across a handful of scourge builds since, but few have widely applicable results. I’ve seen six different scourge styles floating around in my time doing so, and found one simply inefficient in the long term (minionmancer), another two rather weak given the input skill required (pure condi and pure power), another gimmick that died out once 3v3 ended (barrier healer), and I’ve personally made two that I find excel or hold their own in a legitimate way (a tanky wellomancer and a hybrid boonstripper). However, across all builds I played I found three consistent mechanical shortcomings, either results of nerfs from before the competitive split which, due to PvP being tied to WvW, crippled the class in PvP where it intended to put proper restraint on the class in WvW, or one change on February 25 that made one traitline nearly useless to scourge. 1. Reduce Desert/Harbinger shroud from 30 second cooldown in PvP to 20 second cooldown (PvE value).PvP scourge uses its shroud differently from WvW, where its nerf (increasing desert shroud cooldown to 30 seconds) was necessary to reduce the frequency of their bursts and pulsing damage. In PvP, shroud on necromancer is their mainstay defense, which leaves scourge rather stunted in this respect as their shroud goes from instantly replacing all their health with a second lifebar with innate damage reduction to instead granting a five thousand health barrier with (currently) three times the cooldown of the normal shroud (30 seconds) and can’t be activated without a hefty chunk of life force available. This shroud is one of the scourge’s most important defensive and offensive skills for PvP seeing the sheer number of potent and rather vital traited effects tied to shroud entry, exit, and duration, on top of the strong barrier independent of healing power. Allowing the cooldown to be reduced to 20 seconds in PvP would allow scourge to provide better pressure (seeing as shroud is just about the only shade skill that can do north of maybe fully traited 1600 damage or 600 damage if we exclude terror) and have a little more reliable baseline sustain independent of healing power, seeing as almost all of their barrier needs healing power to be useful (which although is a welcome change of playstyle to necromancer, is also considerable towards damage). The most important part of reducing the cooldown of this skill, however, is allowing better access to their strongest reactive barrier to allow the scourge to better react to frequent high pressure assaults like other necromancers can. 2. Increase the radius of shades by 60 across the board, both savant and classic, to counterbalance the loss of point blank AoE and grant stronger area coverage.This one's bound to be met with the most opposition, but also is one of the most important changes needed, so hear me out on this. Losing the point blank shade effects when a shade is planted greatly reduced not just the area coverage but also the sheer versatility of the shades. Now, scourges in PvP for the most part make do without casting shades most of the time because they can’t afford to give up mobile shade effects, and the shades that exist aren't truly large enough or refreshable enough to grant any more than spotty coverage, given a necromancer needs to be constantly moving and can’t sit on three small shades or one medium sized shade. Furthermore, placing three classic shades cannot cover even a normal sized capture point in PvP, and sand savant remains unable to cover the larger capture points, and this necessitates scourges to not cast shades for area denial purposes because they’re insufficient and often completely avoidable if casted and no longer mobile. In PvE, a necromancer doesn't need to be constantly moving, but even then the classic shades are very small and unreliable to grant personal defenses and cover enemy formations at the same time, only successful in covering ground against enemies that refuse to move predictably (or don't at all) OR covering ally ground to provide support. PvE scourges using sand savant very much know they can't do both, but even then the sand savant shade remains rather small if it's designed to cover one side of a battlefield better than three more versatile shades. Increasing the classic shades from 180 to 240 and the savant from 300 to 360 would fix these issues, making classic shades suddenly just as potent as staff marks in terms of area coverage, and making the sand savant shade as large as renegade spirits (which are situationally more potent anyway), both seeming to be fitting returns for giving up their shroud. PvE scourges would be able to rely better on their placed shades for covering ground for defensive effects and area denial, and PvP scourges would sufficiently cover ground and not remain crippled by their loss of positional coverage. The biggest counter arguments against buffing shades usually revolve around their damage compared to area coverage, which doesn't hold up given their changes and how shades have panned out over time. The only legitimate issues this change might create is either WvW concerns (which are well thought but also not as bad as one may think, seeing as the target caps won’t change if this should happen) or the comparison of sand savant to classic shades, no longer being of equal area coverage (based on circular area calculations, there is a notable increase in classic over savant where they would previously be near equal). To this I say sand savant could provide something additional, perhaps akin to stronger shade effects, seeing as the scourge can no longer maintain 100% long term shade uptime taking that trait (16 second cooldown on a 15 second lifetime savant shade). As such, I find such change sensible seeing as (should the change occur) lower area coverage, cleave power, and versatility should grant better focused effects (which don’t have to happen in WvW given the split balance, eh?). Back to the main issue though, scourges need larger shade effects to properly reap the results of their shade skills both offensively and defensively. 3. Dhuumfire needs adjustment of its nerfed effects when taking the scourge specialization in PvP.Ever since the patch on February 25th, dhuumfire has been abhorrently weak on scourge: a quick recap on its history shows its change from 3s burning per shade attack with no internal cooldown (aka ICD) (which was awful and deserved the nerf), to a 3s internal cooldown in competitive modes, to being shaved by 66% duration burning down to one second duration and having the internal cooldown increased to 5 seconds on February 25th, despite no other necromancer specialization seeing similar changes to the trait. That's comparable to, say, looking at death perception and removing the ferocity bonus and reducing the critical chance bonus to 10% when taking the reaper specialization. Dhuumfire either needs its internal cooldown removed and the 1 second burning kept, or needs the 3 second burning returned and either the internal cooldown returned to 3 seconds or kept at 5 seconds to be safe. BOTH other specializations can output far more burning from the trait, both in single target and multi target cumulative terms as of right now. I personally support returning its old form, 3 second burning per 3 seconds internal cooldown, because it allows the trait to function like a condition should: a reactable duration that gives time for cleansing, instead of a spammable second-long condition that basically becomes bonus instant damage like power, just scaling from a different stat. TL:DRReturn scourge’s desert/harbinger shroud cooldown back to 20 seconds in PvP, increase all shade (classic and savant) radius by 60, and buff scourge's dhuumfire variant in PvP to either return to an older state of the original burning duration with less (than the current five second) ICD or lose the ICD with its new one second burning duration. If you’re only reading this and any of these seem like a slap in the face, please read their rationales above before making judgements. Knowing the state of Arenanet's laid back balance team position to manage the icebrood saga and an imminent expansion, I tried to simplify the changes needed for rounding scourge to concepts that wouldn't necessitate full on reworks and likely wouldn't affect the status quo in an adverse way. These three problems are probably the most important ones to be addressed when looking at scourge, largely PvP oriented where they remain barely substantial and certainly not optimal, but also pertain relevance to PvE to improve the utility of shades. I don’t want to water this down with a myriad of other tiny detail issues, so I’ll leave it there and implore you all to share your thoughts on it and expand if you wish to.

As of February 25, Nefarious Favor, scourge's second "shroud" skill as per traits, was reworked. It was increased in both condition to boon conversion AND increased in cooldown, over double the cooldown of what it used to be. Previously, it was one condition conversion at a 5 second cooldown, and is now 2 condition conversion at 12 second cooldown. With this in mind, Path of Corruption used to be taken as a trait to enhance this skill to corrupt 2 enemy boons, but was nerfed specifically for scourge after people realized the sheer cooldown and accessibility difference between Nefarious Favor and other necromancer second shroud skills such as Dark Path and Death's Charge, and it became one boon corrupted per cast. With that rework previously mentioned in mind, and given Nefarious Favor is now a longer cooldown than either Dark Path or Death's Charge (literally double Death's Charge's cooldown and 1.5x the cooldown of Dark Path), would it be too much to ask for the second boon corrupted to be returned when using scourge specialization and Nefarious Favor? Scourge in PvP in particular is in a tight spot, and, among other things, would greatly benefit from the return of that corruption ability. However, I feel this change wouldn't even be related to its weak spots or needs, rather just something that should be done merely to make sense across the necromancer specializations and seem fair. tl;dr revert path of corruption to 2 boons corrupted when you cast nefarious favor, given it's been reworked to be higher cooldown with matching effects in other manners that would imply inconsistency with its current bonuses from the trait What are yall's thoughts on this? Any concerns about the area coverage of scourge's nefarious favor compared to the other two shroud two skills? Or would it be warranted despite that due to its loss of shroud and cooldown increase? (Do note, this is only referring to PvP. I don't know enough about WvW to make a judgement in that sense, and PvE scourge's Nefarious Favor wasn't affected by the Feb 25 patch.)

As we look at the power changes, we notice some weapons had more damage shaves than others and some deal less consistent damage than others, if we compare things like warrior hammer to, say, revenant swords. Power definitely took far more of a toll than condition oriented weapons, and that's largely at the feet of removing power damage from CC abilities after already shaving damage of power weapons equal to condition damage, resulting in more punishment on power weapons that had CC than condition weapons. One fix to this I believe would work is to buff the ambient damage of power weapons that had high CC or CC abilities that were a big portion of the weapon sets' burst damage or sustain damage, such as warrior hammer. If we look at warrior hammer, the adrenaline attack, four, and five had damage removed, resulting in a rather painful damage reduction as the weapon sacrifices consistent damage for disruption/debilitation, which is majority of what the weapon is intended to do. If one were to buff the non-CC and non-burst abilities of the weapon, such as the autoattack and the shockwave and NOT the heavy hitting two skill (further), these weapons would retain their disruption while still having reliable sustained damage that may not match dedicated damage kits but still have relevance. With the loss of Prime Light Beam's initial damage could be a buff on the pulsing damage field's power coefficient and possibly strike frequency. The elevation of passive and/or followup damage on kits and abilities that suffered greatly to CC damage removal could help them become more useful and worthwhile in PvP. To clarify, this is for weapons that lost a lot of power from CC damage removals: this doesn't apply to things like ranger greatsword/longbow or mesmer pistol or firebrand axe or warrior shield that didn't have any noteworthy power damage tied to their CC abilities that got shaved.

Do note, I'm talking about splitting the nerfs for PvP and PvE. Eternal life in PvP isn't anything to write home about. Eternal Life in PvE may be strong though. That's anet's intent I think. Signet of Undeath isn't as high powered of a tank utility in PvE, but it sure as hell is in PvP. Eternal Life is split between modes, and I definitely think they could do the same with other hard trait LF generators. PHAT no brodie.

One of my worst fears for necromancer is that they nerf life force generation across the board, which will just serve to REALLY shave the class. What needs to be done is address the problem by the horns: attack Signet of Undeath and Fear of Death, the two sole perpetrators of permashroud on necromancer. Coming from a necro main, given this patch, those two need to be halved. Signet of Undeath needs to be 2% and 3% generation respectively when not traited and when traited, and Fear of Death needs to be shaved from 15% (a HUGE amount right now!) to 5-8%. Fear comes from SO many sources for a necromancer that uses their cards right that 15% is WAY too big of a value. Fear of Death was an issue even before this patch. Those two are the issues with necromancer: please do not nerf ALL of the life force generation on necromancer, or you'll hurt the elite specs of necromancer too much indirectly.

Necro for the most part needs a shaving on life force generation that will for the most part affect core. Reaper's life force generation isn't anything worth writing home about, and resultantly they're not end all be all tank kites. Scourge alone still has life force balanced, and has barrier instead of shroud pools to lean on. Nerfing life force generation across the board would hurt the specs badly. I think the best route for anet is to nerf signet of undeath and fear of death's life force generation on fear, and maybe LF generation on staff marks. Maybe. Signet of undeath is an unhealthily high amount now that damage has been shaved so, and fear of death is still a pretty hard generator if I'm not mistaken. Fear of death is still a HUGE ASS 15% generator, stronger than focus 4, on ANY fear you apply, be it from stability converting, reaper's mark, or doom. If anet's smart, they'll nerf Signet of Undeath and Fear of Death, those two being the biggest culprits of necromancer's absurd LF generation even before the patch.

Oh and also apparently unyielding anguish still deals damage as a CC ability? I think anet glossed over that skill.

I'll cut straight to the chase. Axe 5 and Mallyx 9 (the leap and pull) are overperforming right now, given they ignore line of sight, cover wide areas, have incredible disruption, AND apply conditions in the process. Mallyx 9 in particular is a VERY strong skill when you consider a roundup pull on top of a chill on top of a 600 range leap that's also 360 radius area effect, which can be traited to apply torment, and for some more perspective is the same range with 50% larger radius than warrior's adrenaline hammer burst ability. Axe 5 also covers quite the area (300 width by 900 range) with another interrupt that applies torment in the process. This skill may have been balanced in the past, but now that CC is largely nerfed, these two are highly overperforming in their areas, allowing wide area disruption and oppressive mobility on top of the fact, without costing from power damage as they compound torment and burning from quick casting passives and pulsing fields (often which the skills are used to pull into). tl:dr, Mallyx's leap pull and axe's rift are oppressively strong right now because of their wide area coverage and the sheer weight of the entirety of unyielding anguish as a gap closer, interrupt, roundup, and chill.

Soul marks are traited for the attacks themselves to be unblockable, not for them to grant unblockable buff, therefore no change to them. They'll still be unblockable like dragonhunter spear of justice or mesmer mirror blade.

To be fully honest, not a lot of what happened to necromancer sits well with me. I heard "big ominous balance patch, 800 skills changed" and thought "oh boy, maybe they'll touch some of the weak capabilities of necromancer's weapon sets globally! Maybe scepter won't just be autoattacks and 3 for obligatory boon corrupts! Maybe axe won't be super weighted on 2 for damage with 3 as the obligatory boon corrupt! Maybe dagger will have its autoattack changed to a midrange spell so as to match the rest of its kit (referring to 2-5 of dagger skills), maybe staff will get a rework, maybe core shroud will see some touchups and get a baseline stunbreak so as to not be a ragdoll chewtoy once that initial stability wears off!" When you look at necromancer weapons, the only weapon they have where the damage isn't weighted towards one skill is greatsword, because it's good damage on every skill. That's not true of any other weapon. Scepter 2 is too slow and clunky to really be used as a pinning or outright damaging ability. Axe auto feels lackluster (maybe unless you're reaper and really make use of that vulnerability, but even then, the entire axe kit feels eclipsed by the 2 skill alone). When a necromancer uses dagger at all, majority of the time they're casting the 2-3 and running around, because they don't have the momentum to make use of the melee autoattack outside of a few situations such as a locked down enemy or cleaving downstates that won't fight back. Soul Reaping will still dominate necromancer as a second traitline choice in ANY build because of its sheer universality and complementary strength towards every line, having offensive, defensive, utility, regenerative, and other buffs in it that could VERY well be redistributed into the other lines that complement each trait choice, funneling necromancer more than discipline funnels warrior. Scourge will still be tethered to shades if they want any defensive benefits from their skills at all, and the shades, if I'm not mistaken, weren't strictly nerfed but likely still won't be able to suffice against the raw lingering damage capabilities of other classes being able to force a necromancer out of a laughably small shade. Necromancer does NOT have the capability to stand in a single spot and cast off all their stuff, against almost ANY class. Constant movement is necromancer's ONLY remedy once you get matches of high enough skill. Necromancer utilities will still be juggled around the few obligatory niche corrupts and stunbreaks. When I heard about this patch, I was expecting CHANGE. Instead, nothing changed aside from the universal damage shaving and evened out corrupt rates to match boon shaving, and then they slapped on nerfs. Foot in the grave being completely trashed? On one of the classes with the most channeled/slow casted/ramping abilities? And nerfing doom too? Doom is just about the only reverse pressure a necromancer has in shroud. Period. You can cast tainted shackles, but that torment won't scare off a brawler. Life transfer doesn't hit hard enough to make people back off like soul spiral. Dark path is worse than scepter 2 in regards to cast speed and effect traveling, and only works as a compounding ability (which doesn't mean jack if you can't land an initial lockdown to begin with). Autoattack isn't sufficient pressure. All of these, now having slow casts and being 2x as vulnerable to interrupts, and that multiplier is only that low because necromancer was already super prone to interrupts. The ONLY way I'd EVER be able to reconcile Doom being casted is if it became a ground targeted ability and gave necromancer group disruption while in shroud. Otherwise it seems absurd to give it a cast with little to no buffs to its actual effects. And this new "eternal life"? That's the most stupid thing I've seen, at the expense of one of the necromancer's strongest defensive skills. You get 20% shroud slowly returned? And it stops there? That might work, had necromancer not already had unholy martyr doing near exact same thing except with a better specific function of cleansing to it. Unholy martyr, last I checked, can cleanse 3 conditions at 7% LF each to give 21% LF back after leaving shroud. That makes eternal life absolutely useless, and on top of that? Core necromancer, foot in the grave's primary customer, already has LF generation out the wazoo. Like, woah boy, I'll be able to have 20% LF back? No, not even 20% LF back, whatever remains of the threshold below 20% LF back. One of the most laughable things necromancer has is having a full bar of shroud health but having shroud cooldown still up, and getting bonked because of it. Losing foot in the grave for that is a big slap in the face. If they REALLY wanted to up stunbreaks in order to make up for loss of stability, they should give shroud a stunbreak in its 1-5 bar too, and then I'll be 100% complacent with that change. People made fun of me for having high hopes for this patch and now I get why. Shame on me for believing balance could ever spell change. Negativity aside though, this patch does seem to look good for wellomancers, given how every corrupt got nerfed except for well of corruption. On top of that, wide scale damage changes and no nerf to the well's protection trait do catch my eye. A similar concern of that is that the weakness nerfs will no longer give necromancer and other classes any upper hand against dodge roll based classes or any similar styles. My hope though is that with condition nerfs and corrupt nerfs, cleanses would see similar adjustments, but I don't have a full feel for the entirety of this patch yet, so I won't press that.

As someone who recently procured a celestial blue infusion for myself, I must say I do agree with this. Sometimes my character just looks like a portal into the blue screen of death realm. One thing that bugs me but is bearable anyway is the eyes lacking any texture changes, resulting in some weird contrast. Regardless, that can always be fixed with a warbeast cowl, and I do like it that way. Anyway, something I seem to disagree with is comparing starborn outfit textures to celestial infusion overlay: starborn outfit has other particle effects laid over the underlying texture, and the underlying texture itself moves, but I think that more says something about the difference in quality between the two and the amount of skill that exists and could be put toward upgrading the latter.

Do be sure to check the really far back crevaces of the cliffsides of the east side. I know there's one really far back on top of a cliffside over the Bear Shrine. There's also another one on a cliff over the raven locked nook in the southeast corner in a small forest... I forgot if it was west or north of that nook though, but you do need to press back a little far to be able to see it. Bear Shrine's my best guess for whichever one you're lacking though. It's really high up, has nothing else near it, and is obscured by trees.

Update: found the very last one I needed in the dead center of the middle of the east side, atop the mountain that shelters two of the camps in its crevaces. Still, can't find out how to get to that event.

So, as I was doing Idolatry, I'd been searching for the 35th totem for about maybe 8 hours across the last 3 days, I had stumbled on this strange occurrence: an event to disrupt a svanir ritual or something similarly named appears, and has an orange circle designating an area that's by all I know inaccessible. It's North-Northwest of Cavern of Lost Sons and Northeast of Den of Whispers. Imagine creating a line between Sifhalla Ruins and Cavern of Lost Sons points of interest, and it's right about at a point where if you made another line perpendicular to the designated line that went perfectly diagonal from Den of Whispers to intersect, you'd hit the circle. In a little less mathematical or confusing terms, it's about maybe 25% down the line if you started at Cavern of Lost Sons. I've scoured the area for the last... hour or so? Trying to find a way into that region, but to no avail. Strike tunnel doesn't go north, the light puzzle doesn't go north of the Den of Whispers nor Cavern of Lost Sons, so I'm at a complete loss on how to get into that area, and based on how I always see the event at 0% progress, I assume others can't get into it either. Anyone know how to get into that area? Or has anyone finished Idolatry and know if there's a totem in there at all or not? Is anyone else stuck at 34/35 idols with absolutely no clue where the last one is despite scouring the entire map endlessly?