Saracen.2691
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Everything posted by Saracen.2691
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Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
You're supporting an extremely short-sighted punishment for an entire class based on an issue in a single gamemode where this change isn't a nerf. With minor adjustment to playstyle it's a buff in WvW and from your previous post it's obvious you aren't looking for any kind of genuine balance or fairness. You'd be happy to let an entire class be butchered in significant chunks of the game where Necromancer is already the worst and cannot in any universe be described as 'overperforming' because of WvW where what you hate about Scourge has only gotten stronger. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
The issue is Necromancer is increasingly worthless everywhere else. This patch hasn't made Necromancer worse in WvW, obviously the presence of them isn't going to dry up there. The point is that isn't an excuse for destroying the spec outside of WvW where it hasn't received the nerf at all ANet wanted. In PvE we had the illustrious position of being an unenviable alternative to better classes before this patch. Now we're just wastes of slots. Imagine if it was your favourite class that happened to. Would you be satisfied? -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
That's never going to happen. People are too impulsive and forgiving. If they announced new elite specs tomorrow Necromancer would be good again for three or four days and then it'd be another 1-2 years of being made increasingly redundant before this point was reached again. The only way I can think of this mistake ever being addressed is refusing to allow it to fade from relevance, not letting any of the threads fall off Necromancer's main page until ANet works up the courtesy to recognise their flawed decision. If they lock the threads then it perfectly sets the tone for the kind of enthusiasm we should have for the indefinite future of how much the modern ANet really cares about interacting with its community. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
Not more so than other classes on the average. Being good in an arbitrary category where the concept of viability doesn't enter the equation isn't an argument for anything, you could extrapolate absolutely everything in the game is fantastic if you have such a low qualifier for value. What was the only thing Scourge could do with a measure of superiority before the patch? Piling on AoE damage in WvW zergs so much so it's the driving factor of why anyone thinks Necromancer is a strong class. All this patch accomplished is making that use case stronger and Scourge incomprehensibly bad in every other regard. I think any Scourge player who wasn't dedicated purely to WvW would much, much prefer the lower DPS we already cope with if we got to keep what should be a bare minimum quality of life standard that lets us exist as something more substantial than the player equivalent of an Engineer's rocket turret. It's not just 'a lot weaker' though. It's downright punishing to use and discordant with both Scourge's best traits, one of which you have zero choice in taking, and synergies with core specialisations that kept Scourge barely afloat. We don't need big changes like this unless the intent is to make it clear people should stop playing Scourge completely outside of a gamemode that every non-Scourge hates us for and single-handedly garners a reputation of needing nerfs direly despite how painfully untrue that is in gigantic chunks of the game. Do you think that makes anyone happy and should be considered healthy balancing? I don't, and I am in full confidence that no number tweaking with this mistake will ever allow Scourge to recover from this - that isn't even taking into consideration your optimism that ANet will make good on their supposed interest in caring about Necromancer whatsoever. At this point, believing they will is frankly naive. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
Dead on post. Wish I could pin it. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
The issue with your arbitrary categorisation is there are raw values you can use to contrast classes. In a PvE DPS role everything dedicated to DPS outclasses Necro and especially now Scourge in comparisons using optimal statlines and identical quality gear. Your example of three healers and raids makes little sense. Necromancer is meta for only a single raid boss and in the vast majority it's suboptimal. Obviously in a party of three healers Necromancer is going to appear to be overperforming in a DPS role, after all with three babysitters allowing you to keep chipping away indefinitely it would be hard for anything to not find success. The reality is a player would be better off learning any other class over Necromancer where their usefulness is on par and not capped because of fundamental issues irrelevant to personal execution. Maybe I'm just mental but I wouldn't describe aspiring towards getting close to average DPS for a dedicated DPS role using one of the best DPS builds available to your class in the most significant part of the entire game as a 'corner case.' Worst part is - I'm not even arguing for that, though it seems to be the impression you have. I just want Scourge's mechanic to not be completely invalid and more of an encumbrance than anything else. I could tolerate lower DPS - and I did - if we at least still had that. Instead, we're now trailing in every aspect with nothing redeeming in sight. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
Shades are Scourge-specific. The present issue is the Shade mechanic and Shade trait interactions. Why Scourge then is the focus should be perfectly clear, I would hope. So by all logic you should be completely against this mechanic change too. You're saying boon corruption and area control are too good in WvW and PvP (which are the only things Necromancer can do at all anymore) so what did this patch do? It certainly didn't make boon corruption worse. It made area control in the context of WvW as strong as on launch with how many targets Shades can affect now. So all the problems you have with the class are emphasised with this change, and everyone who wants a bare minimum of viability in PvE doesn't get what they want either. I have a suspicion a large number of people would disagree with this, all evidence I've observed certainly lends to that presumption, but I again don't interact enough with the PvP elements of the game to say more than this: Then make changes there. The solution was never in any case doing what they did to Shades with this patch. Again, Shades contribute next to nothing to either of these two things you've highlighted. Because this isn't strictly a matter of success rate. It concerns two other key factors; viability when contrasted to playing anything else and class efficiency. Yeah, you can do anything with just about anything providing everyone is good enough, but is it reasonable to expend disproportionate amounts of time and effort at the expense of everyone else you're forcing yourself upon? Should you selfishly take up a slot someone more useful could fill? Is it decent to make everyone else suffer unnecessarily because you made the terrible mistake of enjoying playing a certain class? Necromancer has nothing in PvE anymore. Even Chrono can boonstrip while providing unreservedly better boon support. Every other class can output better DPS, every other class with support-aimed utilities can perform that role better. PvE is where the vast majority of their development goes, to pretend like it's incomprehensible why there is a concern for PvE balance is preposterous no matter how dedicated to PvP and WvW you are. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
Precisely what I did. This thread is primarily in relation to the Scourge change, ergo I am going to address everything through a Scourge lens foremost as the subject matter intends. Even so, I then continued immediately afterwards towards Necromancer as a whole specifically to satisfy your points. Don't pretend like I ignored the meat of your post because I didn't summarily engage it within the first sentence. Necromancer's might stacking is hardly leaps and bounds better than the capabilities of any other class. The fundamental problem with your point is these stat bonuses might look impressive on paper but practicality tears them apart. What use is turning Necromancer into a tank when your mobility is the worst in the game and your baseline damage is so bad you require inflated stat boosts to have your damage even register on a consequential scale? So you can die the same death more slowly? Death Perception, by the way, isn't strictly a raw increase. It only functions when in Shroud which if we keep on topic with Scourge means you're never going to take it over Dhuumfire, or rather you can't because it's outright worse than Dhuumfire. That's not true, though. Everything Necromancer should be able to do is useful in, say, Fractals, which in my opinion is what should define PvE balance. Boon corruption has a use there, condition cleansing/management has a massive and only increasingly gigantic use with Fractal reworks, DPS is useful in every gamemode and even the Barrier mechanic pre-patch could mitigate some worst case scenarios that can crush you and then your entire party otherwise. It's ridiculous to suggest balancing for one gamemode should have free rein to destroy a class or even just a singular spec in another. Then the 'balance' change is utterly indefensible. Scourge's greatest impact is in WvW. This mechanic change just worsened Scourge's WvW problem and did nothing to fix the actual issues people complained about. Anything Necromancer can theoretically do in PvP is a waste of time, another class and spec will always do it better by one means or another. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
Scourge generates might mostly from Oppressive Collapse, an easily evaded ability with a long cooldown. Siphoned Power is a minor contribution. How does Scourge generate quickness outside of boon cleansing? That's hardly 'self-sufficient.' Scourge doesn't benefit from Reaper's traits and the issue of this thread is how heavily Scourge has suffered from a change made without any consideration for its consequences, not something Reaper can do that can be done better anyway by other classes. You mention it later but yes, most every other class can self-generate might now so your point is somewhat moot. A 'huge gain of raw stats' by what metric? Extra expertise when using a torch? Any other stat increase from the Scourge trait line relies on having shades out which you are now punished for attempting to upkeep. Spite grants additional condition damage when using a Sceptre, still not enough to put it on par with anything else. Death Magic's changes are the opposite of active defence. Soul Reaping gives some vitality. Meanwhile, let's compare that to a class you don't have to look far to see: Warrior. Forceful Greatsword, Great Fortitude, Pinnacle of Strength all give easy stat bonuses. Berserker's Power does too with a requirement you'd be fulfilling anyway. Wounding Precision, Deep Strikes and Blademaster all give stat bonuses. Thick Skin, Armoured Attack and Rousing Resilience give stat bonuses. Roaring Reveille, Empowered, Empower Allies and Vigorous Shouts increase stats. Axe Mastery is a stat boost. Blood Reaction and Heat The Soul are stat bonuses. For Guardian, Zealous Blade, Kindled Zeal, Right-Hand Strength, Stalwart Defender, Honourable Staff, Force of Will and Power of the Virtuous will give you additional stats. Ranger gets Farsighted, Spotter, Taste for Danger, Ambidexterity, Instinctive Reaction, Lingering Magic, Pack Alpha and Honed Axes. Most of these also have a swath of benefits easily triggered by what you'd be doing anyway and it just goes on and on for every class. So, really, Necromancer doesn't actually have a huge gain of raw stats from a few traits - if anything, it has less than average when compared to other classes. I cannot understand why problems in PvP, which Scourge definitely isn't contributing to anymore, should dictate the balance in PvE so heavily as to make the class useless. Same goes for WvW. The only problem with Necromancer in PvE is it's gutted and useless. How can the answer ever be, then, more nerfs because of issues in a different game mode when ANet has demonstrated they are capable of splitting changes? -
The more I play with this change the more it makes my blood boil. A massive amount of our damage was in torment. What does torment incentivise? Movement for the extra damage. What does this change smash you over the head with? Mobility destroys you. Scourge isn't allowed to have it, you're meant to be useless hiding in your Shade where you contribute nothing. Scourge has no use anymore. A berserker is more valuable than any Scourge, they can provide better support with banners, more single target DPS, more AoE DPS and they aren't crippled the moment anything does something as basic as walking. Nothing about this change makes sense, all it serves to demonstrate is it was implemented with an abject disregard of care or practical thought. The change is at odds with the very fabric of what Scourge is supposed to do by its most intrinsic condition. Why was this ever even considered for implementation? And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that Scourge still has bugs which have been in the game since PoF launch, like Oppressive Collapse not always granting you might if you dodge, or Sadistic Searing procs getting stolen by Shades which didn't actually deploy and outright Shade charges getting eaten because of bugged interactions again with dodging. The core principles of Scourge can be crushed any time but fixing legitimate bugs is just too much, apparently.
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Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
But no necro will ever acknowledge that I guess. Do you think butchering a specialisation in 2/3 gamemodes for balancing issues in one is fair revenge for the consequences of a different spec entirely? If so, every class in the game should be brought down to Scourge's level because of dominating various metas for [x] amount of time [y] number of years ago. If you ask me, enthusiasm for retaliatory balancing is a recipe for what you enjoy getting destroyed too. Walk a mile in our shoes before you celebrate the death of a class - again. -
Open Letter to ANet Regarding Latest Patch
Saracen.2691 replied to Saracen.2691's topic in Necromancer
There's a lot I could say in response to this. None of it is kind. I'll leave it at this: The topic's subject is Scourge. Core Necro and a build with no relevance to any consequential aspect of the game irregardless of your personal experience has nothing to do with the issue at hand. -
There is no new meta for Necromancer. The meta has only deepened its accents; Necromancer belongs on the bottom of the pile and you should play anything else. A week or month of 'testing' is only going to reveal how unable Necromancer is to keep up with any other class and Scourge any other spec.
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Totally disagree. This change is more impactful than two years of number changes could ever be. How good your numbers are doesn't much matter when you can't reliably apply them to anything. I would say play Scourge for a week of Fractal dailies but at this point it's more suffering than I'd want to wish on my worst enemy. ANet's attitude towards Necromancer has been passive disregard for years - this time it's a lot closer to conscious spite. It's engineering failure, the only fix this has is a revert.
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Siren's Reef, Molten Furnace and Deepstone exceeded my worst expectations. I am dead weight. I'm worthlessly and selfishly taking up a slot, forced to rely entirely on teammates. Nothing stays in your Shades. GW2's design revolves around mobility and Scourge has had it all plus adaptability taken away, you can't do anything about the massive duration chills and slows applied to you in Siren's Reef without taking even more conditions and straight up damage in the process, or getting blown off the deck of the ship or knocked back or CC'd into the dirt. You can't do anything to keep the dozens of mobs the game throws your way off yourself or your allies and contribute meaningfully to boss DPS at all. With the new emphasis on using minions with Necromancer too there are even more things mobs will chase after out of your shades without using them yourself at all, and that's if you're lucky and an ally doesn't just knock mobs out anyway. I got to enjoy watching the Minotaur in Deepstone jump back and forth between another Necromancer's bone fiend hiding in the corner and the centre of the room as imps crowded and there's nothing I can do about it except refuse to use my shades at all and take such a significant hit to DPS my performance is irredeemable when contrasted to the absolute minimum reasonable expectation for T4s. The Broodmothers move relentlessly and the Brood Queen has a dash built into her attacks. You can't do anything to hold the dredge suits in Molten Furnace in place unless they're aggro'd on you, which is 1/5, outside of relying on the goodwill of an ally. None of the instabilities were bad today and the writing is already painfully clear on the wall. What's the point in bothering to engage with anything in this game as a Scourge when so much of it has just been ripped out from under us? Doesn't matter. WvW problems should have WvW solutions. Nerf Sand Savant into the ground in WvW if it truly is necessary but these sweeping changes are irredeemably ill-conceived. This isn't at all how Scourge should have ever worked unless the intention was to make Scourge an unbearable handicap to yourself and to everyone around you. It's absolutely untenable and miserable to experience. Giving shade abilities built-in delay was bad enough. This? Vindictive insanity.
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There is no two ways about it - you're outright wrong. Do you know what Trail of Anguish does? Do you know what Desiccate does? Do you know what Sand Swell does? Do you know what Sand Flare does? Do you know what Ghastly Breach does? Do you know how limited the range of Serpent's Siphon is? All of these abilities are Scourge only, all of these abilities benefit from being close to enemies and allies, who are almost always close to enemies, and none of them interact with your shades. Scourge by design isn't meant to perpetually hide in the back and Scourge certainly isn't meant to cower statically in decaying shades waiting for our turn to do a few seconds of noticeable damage; if ANet has suddenly decided to change their mind on that philosophy it is an unmitigated mistake. Shades have such a limited range their justification as 'backline support' is intolerable. so now the question as scourage players is, do you summon shade and hit from a safe range, or do you go kamikaze into the middle of the pack without shade You still aren't understanding the core problem. It doesn't MATTER what you do or think, what matters ALWAYS is what your opponent does and how you can react. You cannot react anymore, you cannot be flexible, you can't mitigate, compensate, blunt or deflect - you are committed instantly and you are always going to lose now if any degree of player competency or mob mobility has a whim against you. And sure, 'just don't use Shades' right? Why do you think it's reasonable to throw out at least one of your traits and likely more just so you can use a weakened version of a major facet of your spec? No other spec has to suffer this kind of an insane restriction and it gives us no beneficial trade-off.
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Define your parameters. That's true for literally everything in open world PvE. This mentality in Fractals is the exact one which creates unbearable, oblivious players you hope know to stay in T3s instead of wandering into T4. Worthless. Absolutely worthless example. Tagging doesn't mean anything. Killing power does. Are you going to argue the virtues of Guardian based on its staff 1 before that got nerfed too? This guts the killing and defensive power of Scourge, that's exactly the problem. Sorry how are you going to do that in boss fights where you're dealing with break bars and mobile mobs? Scenarios where DPS and individual performance actually matters? Please go do a T4 Chaos and realise how irrelevant everything you're saying is. You're talking in idealism and mitigating nonsense, not practicality. You're completely off base and missing the point. Yeah, it would be labelled a 'quality of life' change overdue and Necro players would have something to be happy about for once. That's what going about this the other way would have done. The fact they didn't demonstrates this is a betrayal of the philosophy they built Scourge with leaving us with a disgustingly diminished spec that no number changes hence are ever going to fix. If you think this change is good I have a hard time believing Necro is a class you've ever genuinely cared about or invested enough time in to consider your main. There is no playstyle change which fixes this save one - pick a different class. Play Firebrand so you can be useful, they both use condi, basically the same, right? I refuse to agree that that is remotely acceptable. Pretending like this is an improvement is precisely how ANet is going to justify shutting out an entire swath of their playerbase without a care. Just like every other time.
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EDIT: So they had the time to move my thread from Game Discussion to here but not the decency to recognise anything ANYONE is saying. Should that be interpreted as this being the official box things are put in when you want them to go away and not engage with your community? It's highly fortunate I wrote the text beneath before something like this happened. I'm leaving the main body unedited, but yeah, outstanding. I want to preface this by saying I'm aware this belongs more appropriately in the subforum for Necromancer - which already has plenty of threads dedicated similarly - but my reasoning for not doing so is as follows: There is such a pittance of interaction between the community and staff on the forums these days that it consistently feels like as a player we're left out in the cold without a means to influence anything about a game a lot of us have invested thousands upon thousands of hours into. I'm starting to doubt anyone at ANet reads class subforums. Maybe they check this once in a blue moon. From my perspective it appears you announced a change ahead of its implementation, which as a concept I can only commend and asked for quite a long time ago, and then utterly disregarded all of the feedback you received. By majority it was negative. What was the point of telling us if you weren't ever going to take what we thought into consideration? ANet historically has made a lot of decisions that aggravated a lot of people, by and large the expectation is to just quit or weather it. This time I can't simply ignore it as that former option grows increasingly tempting. I want, if at all possible, some kind of dialogue with an official representative of ANet to explain this in a way that allows me to experience something other than abject anger. That done, I'll outline the catalyst for all of this. My issue pertains to the update Necromancer received, specifically Scourge. It's only been a couple of days since the last patch and I'm already at wits end, and going by the forum reception for both the advance patch notes and the post-patch reaction it's hard to find a single person who wanted this. Most everyone vocal is firmly against the change - the few who aren't are at best neutral or demonstrate little understanding of the issue. Across all my Necromancers I have nearly two thousand hours poured into a single class and Scourge is far and away my favourite, as a specialisation and Necromancer a class versus all others. The new Shade mechanic is horrific. It is, in a single patch without exaggeration, the most damaging thing I've ever seen inflicted on a profession in this game. It disagrees fundamentally with everything Scourge was designed to do, from its lore flavour to even the intrinsic traits embedded within it. The synergy of Sand Sage and Sadistic Searing naturally encourages you to maintain as many Shades as possible, ordinarily this is two at best and then one depending on the duration of an encounter as a result of cooldowns, with stacking Shades for the additional Sadistic Searing proc obviously beneficial. All of that is now gone. This change forces you to conserve Shades wherever possible and thus be an active detriment to yourself and your allies, irregardless of whether your angle is pushing raw damage or supporting teammates. Instead of the flexibility counting as an additional shade yourself granted you, with the ability to chase down an extra enemy while your Shades continue doing their job or getting that last second support to an ally, your only variety is mired in a single decision: Do you help yourself and harm your allies by wasting a Shade at your feet? Or do you expose yourself to an amount of danger Scourge now severely struggles to deal with for the benefit of other people? The latter also comes with no guarantee of your choice mattering in the least either. Next to nothing in this game is static. An inevitable quarter of a minute cooldown for Shades means for a quarter of a minute you have an infuriating chance to be dead weight because a mob or player stepped a millimetre outside your Shade, or just as likely someone knocked them out of it. Even worse, your team now has to effectively play around your Shades if they want any benefit from them at all and you cannot influence making that easier for them in any way. It locks everyone into a situation where reactive movement - invaluable almost always - can only be a punishment in degrees. Scourge on launch had the charm of controlling a wide swath of an encounter or a smaller area much more intensely. That's been walked back ever since but the core of it was still there, if something evaded your Shades you could follow after it yourself, manipulate its positioning with your fear or keep some of the pressure on. Now, frequently by necessity, your F2, F3 and F4 are going to provide you no value unless you cower inside your Shades. Again, I can't stress enough, this crippling reliance is brutally unfair. It is tantamount to foolishness to suggest that's a viable scenario on average, mobility is a principle trait of almost everything in GW2 and you can't compensate by just throwing more Shades at it or you'll run out immediately and waste Sadistic Searing. The alternative is, of course, to just stop using Shades. Is that really an alternative to be considered? Is that reasonable? To take away everything that made Scourge unique? I don't think so. I think that's far, far too punishing for anything Necromancer deserves. In what world is 75% of our specialisation being rendered useless in a sizeable chunk of scenarios decent or healthy? Every time I'm hamstrung by the change I'm left knowing a week ago it didn't exist and I'd still be able to contribute as opposed to standing around waiting for cooldowns. Scourge is going to be trapped in that shadow forever if it stays the way it is now. On a more personal note I can't help but feel like this is a culmination of the disdain and sheer neglect ANet has expressed for Necromancers over the years. Inevitably, everything Necromancer excels at is undermined in one patch or another eventually and the most tragic part of it is from a high-end PvE perspective Necromancer hasn't excelled at anything for a significant stretch of time in its history. I can't say much on PvP, but public reaction seems to be it was gutted there too. At core, people had issues with the vanilla specialisations. In HoT, Reaper was great for a month before being brought down by nerfs. It still hasn't and never will recover. Scourge fared the same as Reaper for approximately a week until Necromancer again slipped down from dominating anything. I'm not asking for Scourge or Necromancer as a whole to be outstanding or devastating in any scenario. I just want one of the few areas of the game I can unreservedly say I adore be bearable, or optimistically competitive. This change is a knife in the gut and suggesting that it opens up new opportunities for buffs is only twisting it in the guise of an attempt at blunting outcry, which means you knew this wasn't something we wanted. What should be taken from that off-handed dismissal, if not disregard, of an entire section of your playerbase? It doesn't matter how much you buff uselessness, this fundamentally breaks what made Scourge valuable and for myself worthwhile in any capacity. It feels like you're trying to tell us playing Scourge as anything other than a passive hanger-on taking up the slot of its betters is wrong. The cynic and paranoid in me wonders if you're not aiming to deliberately wreck Necromancer so none of us want to play it anymore and you won't have to worry about dealing with us. I took a break from the game when Scourge's F2 was nerfed because it frustrated me so much and came in the wake of too many nerfs. If I knew then what you'd do now I'm not sure I would have come back. That then pales in comparison to how vehemently I consider this a mistake and misstep of such large proportion it disinclines me from bothering to stick it out any longer. I don't want to hate this game, I don't want to hold its developers in genuine contempt, especially not after all this time; I just want the option of playing a specialisation I enjoy without feeling guilty of being a waste to any party I'm in knowing in the back of my mind I could be playing absolutely anything else and it would be more useful. Ultimately, after this, I don't care what you think you have to do to Necromancer. Slash our damage by 20%+ across the board, remove our ability to cleanse conditions or corrupt boons. I don't care anymore, as long as it isn't this. I have no problem with alterations made to Death Magic. I don't want changes to Scourge's traits, I don't want nerfs to our skills, but I could accept them if the trade-off was reverting this awful change. Above all, I want someone to ANet to at least acknowledge that they've heard how universally disliked this change to Scourge is and consider, with everything else taken away from Necromancer over the years, that something just once can be switched back to help it. Please give us the courtesy of discussing it at a minimum. If not, I don't know. This one might be too much for me and I'll have to seriously consider again seeing myself out. I've tried to remain as civil as I can in this post, but it's quickly becoming extraordinarily difficult. Smile and nod is the frequent modus operandi for ANet's bulk updates. I can't do that this time.
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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. 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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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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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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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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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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This is discounting the fact that underwater your means of gauging positioning and ability range are severely diminished. It's not just a matter of depth perception hampered by a lack of anything to compare against, anything AoE based is lamed when you can't see its radius defined anymore. That's just it though. There isn't any, underwater content is a dead-end neglected meaningfully since launch which makes this change all the more boggling. Aquatic should have been a fractal to be phased out the moment they ran out of duplicate slots, not something made longer without any worthwhile mechanical change or engaging challenge to the player. Tossing more HP, less ways to mitigate it and invulnerability phases into a fractal because there's nothing else you can do to make underwater combat mechanically interesting isn't a decent excuse or a feat to be lauded - it's grounds for demonstrating the concept is flawed to its very core.
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I'd argue that's not true in the least. Annoying =/= challenged. Naturally, this depends on mindset to some an extent, but as someone who advocates for fractals being made more difficult through mechanics that actually require your attention or can be affected by your personal participation I can only think Aquatic is a bad example for both cases. 99CM and 100CM I'd consider legitimate challenges and a perfect implementation of what I'd want and I've never been annoyed or even frustrated with the fractals themselves - the players I'm grouped with, certainly, but that doesn't mean anything mechanically is off with those fractals. Annoyance only comes from repeated failure or letting yourself down when knowing you're not performing as well as you should be when an encounter is done properly. For Aquatic, it comes in the form of things like being subjected to a pulsing condi field with the range of a solar system, having to avoid melee if you don't want to spend five seconds CC into oblivion every half a minute, grinding through a neverending supply of health bars which throw things at you allowing no counter-play including the bare minimum of CC phases. None of those are things which plague 99CM or 100CM despite a significantly higher difficulty. Key difference as I see it is one's underwater and thus its problems I'm left believing are symptomatic, and the other two are in the vein of what ANet had gotten good at designing.