Szatko.8132

Scourge already has access to enormous amounts of barrier that go beyond the barrier cap in most PvE situations. There's absolutely no need for more. If gw2 developers will ever want to rework one of the necro's weapons into a support weapon, that would certainly be a dagger, since that's what healing scourge builds use already. Also, why would you need resolution on a build with so much free condi cleanse? xd

They could make Eternal Life give aoe prot instead of self protection 😝

The problem is, you're seeing only black and white and no shades in-between. Knowing basic mechanics of an encounter =/= being a hard-core raider. Especially since normal mode raids and strikes are extremely easy and simple to do and if somebody keeps on dying on these, I'm sorry, but it's just pure laziness. I've seen people absolutely refusing to even watch a short video or read about mechanics 😅 If anet developers create something with a purpose of being a challenge, I guess they want to keep it challenging. Also, heal scourge's cc is definitely not terrible xd

And that's 1 out of 2 (the other one being well of blood) sources of on-demand healing for scourges. Your comment lacks context.

But the problem is, we're not really getting anything in return and if there won't be any compensation in the next balance patch, we'll have to wait months for changes (in case we will actually get anything ofc)

I mean, there is a reason and I completely understand devs responsible for balance in their decision. Current transfusion promotes "lazy gameplay" in PvE and is very problematic to balance in WvW. The problem is, like you said in your comment, the fact that there is nothing else that scourge excels at other than barriers without transfusion. The amount of different boons that scourge can provide is the lowest among support-oriented specialisations with some of them being very sloppy to upkeep, like regen or swiftness, reactive healing is fully dependent on well of blood. Healing Specter is actually a perfect example that being unpopular =/= bad, since healing Specter has all the tools needed to be a good healer, with all the boons, very good barrier and healing. Support Specter is just not really comfortable to play, so many people just choose Scourge, Druid or Mechanist.

As someone who's been playing a lot of heal scourge, especially after the "alacrity rework", I feel like I should share my thoughts about this change. As we all here probably know, Transfusion is a very iconic trait for healing scourge builds. People have a lot of fun with it, especially when carrying a "noob squad" in strikes or raids. I understand the logic behind this change - so many people in instanced PvE content just refuse to do boss mechanics and instead rely on healing scourges to ressurect them every time they fail. The best example would be how people refuse to just move slightly aside when doing Boneskinner, even if it doesn't interfere with their dps rotation. With that being said, I think that PvE heal scourge should receive a compensation buff of some kind to help the build perform, as without transfusion's teleportation it won't be able to compete with other healing builds, like healing chrono, druid or firebrand. Perhaps a source of vigor and/or better swiftness uptime?

Some condition builds are dependent on critical hits, such as condi Virtuoso (critical hits apply bleeding). There's really no reason to change it.

Well, every thief uses shadow magic in order to grant themselves invisibility and other utilities. An idea of specter elite spec was to delve deeper into that part of thief's identity and I wouldn't really say it breaks the class fantasy, it's just something different than a typical "assassin" archetype of deadeye and daredevil. Also the fact that anet devs really wanted to make every profession in the game able to fill a support role. And it's good, if someone doesn't like it, they can as well just play other elite specializations that they like 🤷‍♂️

Every profession is supposed to be able to fill many different roles and playstyles. If you want to play a "stealthy assassin" as a thief you can as well play as that, but you can as well do that with some other classes.

Honestly I think they should change how invisibility works, so it doesn't disrupt auto-attacks, as well as move away from ally-target specific abilities. People don't want to play healing Specter or Revenant, because everyone hates swapping between enemy and ally targets. One of the major traits that support Specter always wants to take could be changed to also allow scepter to provide its ally-target specific effects in a 360 around the enemy target or something like that.

Yee, in my opinion the only thing we really need for a support scourge is to: - give dagger 2 a small aoe heal for allies (very similar to ranger's staff 2 ability but even lower) that will also grant regen. - perhaps make warhorn 5 grant swiftness to allies as well, so we're not forced to run Febe's relic to provide swiftness or make Eternal Life provide aoe swiftness instead of self protection. - give more stab on Trail of Anguish (from 1 to 2 stacks), but hotfix it, so you can't proc it two times per ally per ability.

- I don't think Specter's scepter is a good example in this situation tho, as for its supporting capabilities it's extremely clunky with constantly swapping the target between your allies and an enemy while in shroud. I honestly haven't seen a support Specter in any PvE content for more than a year and that's for a reason. - Giving dagger 2 a very small ally healing with regen application would allow Well of Blood to be used more consistently as a burst healing option or even allow heal builds to utilize Sand Flare for more barrier and boon removal. If anything, that'd be a great quality of life change without breaking the balance of the game. - I don't really understand how your personal preferences have to do anything with the conversation. If you hate playing as a support, then simply don't play it. There are so many power dps weapons for a necromancer to choose and apparently everything needs to be addressing only your needs?

Well of Power is kinda underutilised. I personally use it only when playing heal scourge on W2 Sloth for even more cleansing, although the build itself provides an enormous amount of condi cleansing and you never need more might share on a supporting scourge as well. Would be very lovely if we had an option for an aoe well for stability in PvE (but I can imagine it being very problematic in WvW). At the very least Trail of Anguish could have stab stacks increased from 1 to 2 and increased swiftness uptime in PvE only and make it so its effects can't proc on allies more than once per cast.

Scourge's design as a support is all about providing barriers. Scourge's healing output is not as great, since their barriers mitigate most of the damage pressure that happens during encounters. They simply don't need a lot of healing in their kit and that's completely fine. Personally, the only thing I'd change would be to make dagger 2 grant tiny healing pulses to allies (kinda similar to ranger's staff 2) and regeneration + remove regen from Well of Blood, so you don't have to use it as a regen uptime buffer.