Gaeb.2837

The main pull of the expansion to me was the expanded flying on Griffon, and having read about the ley line bs on here and reddit it does make it hard to want to get the masteries to begin with. Weird to make one of your best, most unique features WORSE on expansion launch.

RE Post title... that's just not been my experience. Could be that it released after BG3 (which is an OUTSTANDING game) and before Starfield (which will also drain my time) but I'm not finding it compelling and have struggled to find the motivation to finish the story. The maps added are ok (done both the metas and unlocked all the waypoints), it seems weird that the most effort by the maps team seems to be put into the wizard's palace where you spend the least of your time (asset design vs usage decision boggles). I'm chugging through the story simply because I want more flying masteries for the Griffon, but not enjoying it. Various changes at rollout (runes/relics, dailies/wvault) haven't appealed to me for the same reasons as others have said (I do like that you have to work for WV rewards rather than just log in and collect things on 10+ alt accounts as some people did, but lack of choice and co-op vs old system sucks). I can use other weapons now, but that just feels like it's breaking a bunch of old paradigms for the sake of being edgy (woot, pistol scourge, I am an edgelord!). Generally speaking while it's not DOA it doesn't feel like a great expansion at this point, even keeping in mind this is the first of four installments on it - the maps/story aren't really grabbing me the way, say, mounts in POF did and the negative changes in runes/dailies at launch aren't balanced out leaving the overall experience subpar. I'll probably check back in a few months, I was hoping to at least finish the story before Starfield but I just can't find any motivation to do so.

Just as a note, I really enjoyed my qdps scrapper. It was intuitive & fast (quick on a few abilities that all radiated from me and all sped me up), I could fire them all off quickly and focus on doing damage for 15s or so before refreshing. Boon duration mattered (take more = fewer gyros, take less = more gyros). Used it in T4's, strikes, raids, worked fine. I have two main beefs with the current QDPS scrapper: A- Leap finishers (give us whirl instead - makes more sense, synergizes better w/scrapper kit (Hammer 5->2, Heal->Shredder Gyro), and being forced to use movement skills in a rotation is awful) and B- The high duration w/o any concentration (bad design). I gather qheal is a bit more flexible, I didn't play a lot of it so I don't have a strong opinion.

This is my take as well. The new QDPS herald is easy and effective, but not fun (or terribly flexible, although if you add some boondur you do get some leeway to push more buttons). I think they managed to screw over the QHeal heralds in the process.

Yerp. I preordered then hopped back into the game and found out they'd massively changed Scourge, Scrapper, and Herald playstyles for the worse (from my POV). Worry a good bit about the rune/relic rework (nightmare runes, traveler runes top of my list for probably going to get nerfed somehow).

Yep. On paper this all works, and I've done heal-scourge, alac-dps, and dps-scourge in the new world... but to your point (echoed by many) it FEELS bad. Shade every 8s is a chore. Can we do it? Sure. Does it feel like a massive and unwelcome gameplay change vs. pre-patch? Yep. Before we had the luxury before of placing shades in clumps or at odd intervals because 20s duration >>> 8s charge. Old style was more relaxed, gave us flexibility to save charges for a phase change or movement, or spend them in a cluster to give us a long window to focus on other skills, etc etc. I get that Anet felt backed into a corner with the multiple shades -> too much alac, and I guess they decided multiple shades had to remain as scourge identity, which I do question (especially since the current design limits us to very few opportunities to have 3 shades down anyway!). Alternative option-wise, I'd be fine w/1 shade, with the same 20s duration/8s charge - it's a bit weird to be so strong AOE-wise and also have solid ST parse, and even tuned down to one shade the AOE potential would remain strong. As you said, the design is muddy and FEELS bad. The new roles are all effective, but they're clunky and annoying to play.

Yep, kind of frustrating. I see a lot of non-scourge players trying to say this isn't any different than before based on youtube videos of dummy parses, but a- They don't play scourge and b- Dummy parses aren't reflective of how raids, strikes, fractals, and open world events go (phases, movement, target changes, etc) ... they're dummy parses.

For me they're usually arguing in bad faith and ignoring counterpoints to keep shouting their ungrounded opinions despite repeated rebuttals (eg: trolling). From the 'Shade Duration makes Scourge a chore to play thread', below poster hit the nail on the head in response to 'em.

Yerp. Will play around with it, but highly disappointed in the change.

You don't dispute that it's not a healthy playstyle, but you don't view it as a chore, and you ignore everyone else's opinion on the matter to say over and over "well of course it makes sense the devs had to code it this way" ignoring the fact we've as a community proposed several alternatives that are less of a smack in the face gameplay wise. No one's unhappy on the whole to be getting a 'heal / alac' scourge, but they rushed it out half-baked and asked for feedback. We're giving it. Case in point? Thread title.

You're in a thread titled "Shade duration makes the scourge a chore to play." I don't know how you entered or why you are spamming your ungrounded opinion over and over at the top of your lungs, but take a look around.

Ironically one of the suggestions is simply to have the barrier generate from the scourge, not the shades. Poof, all issues with over-targeting solved and scourge-alac become even more intuitive since barriers only fire from the scourge. A heck of a lot of people find it completely ODD that you think spamming every 8s is a healthy playstyle after having shade durations of 30s and then 20s. I'd be happy with one shade at at time (20s/8cd) because we certainly don't need help in the AOE department whereas the 8s requirement is just onerous. See? Options. You're vigorously defending this change as if it's the only option. For some reason, most people don't agree with you.

One other note, this goes into the general issue of rotation vs reaction - I wouldn't use the word 'passive', I don't think that's what you mean at all. Healers, for the most part, are actually reactive - they don't sit there spamming a rotation (ed: They work to keep their boons up, but you react/time an aegis, big heal, etc). Many of the patch changes are pushing classes toward strict rotations, taking the reactiveness (and one could argue, skill) out of the game and replacing it with basic piano rotations. The shade change is an example of a forced rotation, and a pretty tight one at that. Ed: In fairness, tight rotations are easier to balance, and Anet has a massive number of things to balance.

You're assuming several things are true at the same time: Anet fully understands how their game works and is completely on top of balance changes (patently false, it's a very complex game) Anet had strong rationale for why they made this 8s change (true in my eyes, the rationale is logical even if the outcome is suboptimal) Players must* hold both of the above opinions at the same time or they're wrong (fixed) Really what are you crusading for here? The change was made, there's logic to it, it resulted in several other illogical issues/questions about Scourge traits, it was rushed out half-baked, and the feedback is we'd like a better solution.

You're probably in the wrong thread then? (checks title)