Nimon.7840

Lol no. People had -How long has it been? - 5 years to learn raids with heal scourge. And dps tremendously increased so they got even easier. If you still can't do them without a scourge don't even try to tell me "but it's good for players to learn" cause you clearly learned nothing, or didn't even bother to learn, because a build like scourge existed. Which is a very clear indicator of this build being absolutely broken good. And shows that the build should go. Also if you only used F4 to pull people and never used it to actually prevent people from going down, then I have bad news for you: you played healscourge the wrong way. Or you don't understand the concept of a healer. It's to PREVENT people from going down. Also a healer like scourge doesn't exist in any MMO I've seen or played. And there's a good reason for that: it trivializes most content - which is kinda sad. Also with the current development we got more or less introduced to the bosses and their mechanics in the story, then we got the normal mode encounter. So anet is already handing everyone the tools to learn the mechanics. And they even reuse mechanics in open world for players to learn. Asking to keep the current iteration of transfusion in the game is like asking to put golden sprinkles on the already served silver tablet. BUT With only this change, I have so many questions. For example: why doesn't druid get nerfed as well? It still has search and rescue. Yes that has a rather high cool down (48s). But druid has the elite glyph or spirit as well, which are both AOE rezzes for 5 players. glyph has 60s base cool down in PvE and spirit 90s. With the transfusion change the only great way to revive people on necro will be signet of undeath with 75s cd. But it only revives one player and costs almost 10k health. But druids rezzes seem to be fine. So why go the lazy approach and only remove the pull (10s cool down btw with alac). And not give something back? Compensation is needed! And if there are plans to rework scourge or improving it, why not communicate them? Or at least tell us that there's light at the end of the tunnel (next patch)? Or why not implement them in the same patch you are deleting the transfusion pull? This is the main thing I am "mad" about.

Spear has big issues in all game modes. PvE: while the dmg is pretty high, it has other problems. The after cast of skill 2 is extremely annoying. Did you ever use the combo 3-4-5-2-4-2? It doesn't really work. If you cast the second 4 while the after cast of 2 happens, you won't get the cd refund of 2. So you have to build in another cast for example some harbinger elixir to cancel the after cast. The second problem is the 3 skill. This skill has prio over every other skill of spears kit. So if you press 5>3 for example, the 5 will go on a short cool down and only 3 will cast. You can build the rotation around that, but it's still annoying. For pvp modes this makes sense. Since the 3 skill punishes enemies that use skills - which makes you think this is a weapon designed for pvp modes. But in pvp modes this weapon has other problems. Skill 4 is easily dodgable. If you miss the 4, you are basically stuck on a useless weapon, since you have no other gap closers in necros kit. And even if you get into melee range, you won't be doing much, unless the enemy is bad. Necro's kit doesn't really allow you to go and stay in melee range. The main problem is not having aegis, stability or other means to negate incoming damage. While right now it's extremely easy to one shot people with a full spear combo (especially on harbinger) it's also extremely easy to counter. In my opinion the key skill for the one shot is the 5 skill. Since it removes opponents boons and negates new boons. But the new skill 5 will allow enemies to get boons again, so just save your protection for after the boon rip. If someone uses necro spear 4 on you, most necro players will follow up with spear 5 into 4>3. But the 5 skill has a pretty big telegraph. Countering necro spear is extremely easy. Dodge the 4>5 combo, which will also leave you out of range of spear 3 and just use a cc skill. Which brings me to my next point why spear isn't very good in pvp: the range. 5 and especially 3 have an way too small range. While I think that 5 range was justified with the extirpation effect on it, without it the range should at least be increased to 300, same with the 3 skill.

And also kills the spear in its only viable build: a meme one shot build. That uses everything to try to one shot the enemy or dies if it fails. Now the one shots get even harder - which kills the build for me. I'd say: back to the drawing board again anet

I agree that it kinda needs to go in order for scourge to get better things (boons/more heal...) But why don't these things happen in the same patch? If anet continues at this pace they showed for necro in the last few patches we will have a good heal necro build again in 5 years... And that's not acceptable

first we got swords, that were bad in any game mode, and now an already meme build. spear necro in pvp modes gets deleted? so necro once again got only a niche weapon for pve this time? when will we get a weapon, that is actually usable in multiple gamemodes? - pistol: mainly pve (because projectiles are bad in pvp modes) - spear: only pve after this patch - sword mainhand: wvw - sword offhand: probably the only weapon that can be played in multiple gamemodes - dagger mainhand: pve on healscourge - dagger offhand: pve - focus: pvp modes - axe: pvp modes - staff: mainly pvp modes, niche situations in pve - torch: mainly pve (and on condi builds in pvp modes) - scepter: mainley pvp modes (just inferior to pistol in pve) - greatsword: mainly pve, and wvw zergs - warhorn: mainly pve, and wvw zergs where is our support weapon? it doesnt matter what weapon(combination) you pick. you at most have one support skill on both weapon set. i guess it's nice that axe now gets buffed in pve. but to be honest. that doesn't really do much. at this point we are just juggeling around, what second weapon set power necro plays in pve in addition to the set greatsword. whatever, i don't think this will do much. buffs to core necro? probably nice change to make new players stronger. sorry but why don't you want to understand, that as long as deathly chill and reapers onslaught are in the same tier as blighter's boon, nobody will ever play that trait? - unless you buff it to the moon. also you almost have to play the spite traitline, to get value out of blighters boon. i absolutely understand where this is coming from (and i said it for to years now, that this ability has to go), but it's also basically the only reason, that made support scourge better in some situations than any other healer. it's extremely hard to balance. but i believe, that because transfusion existed, scourge wasn't allowed to get more/ better boons. And just taking away such a core and deeply rooted mechanic without giving compensation doesnt feel right. Its just deleting scourges identity with nothing in return. there will be no good reason, to play scourge over something like healmech, or healdruid. both got way better stability and overall boon access. while druid still has a single target downstate pull and a range multitarget rezz. i dont think it will kill scourge completely, since the healing stays the same. but still a very big hit to the kit. this will make scourge just an inferior build compared to chrono or druid. The only thing scourge will then excell at will be barrier, but to be honst, barrier isn't as important anymore as it used to be. many of the "deal more dmg above a certain health threshhold" got removed. which barrier was good at keeping up. the way scourge can apply stability is extremely bad. the overall boon coverage is bad. the range of boons is bad. and most boons are tied to utility skills, which makes it very hard to bring actual utility skills like poison cloud or spectral grasp. I can only hope this prepares the path for finally a rework to scourge ind the next patch, or lets say, rework to necro overall (with reworks to weapons and other utility skills, and traits) to actually allow support harbinger as well. But why can't you do the rework and removal in the same patch. It feels like necro always needs to wait and only very slowly gets buffed to the point where it's playable. So we just need to wait another 5 years to get our healing spec back. And that's a big problem. Since for the following reasons: - we don't have a power alac build, only condi and even that is on the lower end of condi alacs and doesn't give many boons and only in a small radius - we got condi and power quickness harbinger that are worse than herald and firebrand in every aspect (dmg wise, boon variety and boon range wise). So while we could play quickness, why would anyone ever take a harbinger with them as a quickness source, if they can get a firebrand or herald. other than that: very nice. finally. but i don't understand how some classes are still allowed to give alacrtiy in wvw to allies, with very high uptimes. the reason why alac got removed from scourge, tempest, druid was: "it destroys the balancing of certain skills". so how come, chrono, mech, willbender are still allowed to give alac to allies? and no nerfs to willbender dmg or mobility/survivabilty in wvw is kinda ridicoulus as well

Like I already wrote in the actual feedback thread. The biggest problem is, that necrom has no good power build for pvp/wvw. The main reason for that is, that power necro's sustain is severely lacking. 1. Boons: Power necro is lacking boon wise. With harbinger this issue gets somewhat covered m, but not entirely. offensive boons: crit capping is kinda essential for every power build. Because if you don't crit, you "wasted" all points invested in ferocity. Even with death's perception from the soulreaping trait line you need to go full marauder to reach 75% crit chance in wvw, which isn't even enough to go to 100% since fury only gives 20% in that gamemode. But then there isn't even any reliable source of fury on any power or defensive trait line (I kinda don't want to count dread in spite, because spear doesn't have a way to fear). Even might is kinda hard to get. And often requires you to hit an enemy. And don't even try to mention blood is power. Wasting a utility slot for 15stacks of might for 6 seconds just isn't worth it. Defensive boons: Even harder to get. There's no good way to self apply regeneration, even protection is not easy to come by, not to mention vigor, Aegis is scourge exclusive, and stability is another problem. You can get stability, (reaper shroud 3 - 3 seconds duration and it's in shroud; reaper elite shout - hard to hit and requires you to hit it; harbinger on shroud entry from trait - 2,5 seconds duration; harbinger elite elixir - 5s duration). You need some defensive boons if none of your skills provide any other defensive utility like invulns or evades if you want to introduce a power melee style to necro. Sure we have shroud to protect our health, but if we are in shroud, we can't use our weapon skills. Overall harbinger covers those weaknesses the best, but it's not amazing at it and still needs improvements for it to work as a proper power build option in competitive modes. (I know that it would probably buff cele harb in wvw, which would be a problem, but anet doesn't care about roaming builds anyways). Especially protection on harbinger is much easier to obtain, since it's easier to build corrupters fervor (because of shroud). But at the same time it's not because for some reason, most necro power weapons don't really inflict conditions (not even vulnerability). And last point is sustain: Sustain can be achieved by boons. But through other mechanics as well. For necro the main form of sustain would be gaining life force and soaking damage with your shroud. The other main source would be life stealing. But both of those forms of sustain have the same problem: they require you to hit the enemy. Which can be very hard if every other class is zooming around with their mobility skills, blocks, invulns, evades on weapon and utility skills... Until some of those problems get fixed I don't see power necro creeping into the meta. And especially not in wvw. Since it seems to be anets goal for everyone to run cele.

I do have a lot of thoughts. It's all from a wvw and pve perspective. First of all: What is this weapon intended to do? Is it a pve weapon? is it a pvp weapon? i can't really identify it. PVE: the dmg is solid in pve, could maybe use a bit of uptuning. but the lifeforce generation is simply on the wrong skill(s). powerreaper as well as powerharbinger both have a very solid rotation. but autoattack doesn't really fit in this rotation. and then you only have skill 3 which provides nowhere near enough lifeforce, to sustain your rotation with liveforce. Also for pve, it's horrible, that the number 3 skill can interrupt every single skill on your bar. since it seems to have priority. the health sustain is definetly strong. i went solo for icebrood construct in the shiverpeaks pass strike. together with dagger i could easily sustain myself. On the kitty golem in the test area: (I played berserker/assassin, without food or infusions.) if the enemy was below 50% health the perforate (2) was doing 6x3047 soulshard dmg, + 7x 4090 from crits. the only complaint here is, that the number just doesn't look big. even though it's doing 56k dmg. It's cool but doesn't work as replacement for GS, only to replace the second weapon set. WvW: In wvw i had a lot of fun at first, when i hit pve mobs trying out combos. as soon as i engaged in real fights, i was immensly disappointed. The dmg was rather low, even on a full glass cannon build and on a more defensive build the dmg was even more disappointing, especially above 50% enemy health. also it felt like i never probably hit enemies with the perforate, as soon as they started moving sideways. also it felt like you could never actually go in with the isolate, if you didn't have either spectral walk or wurm up to immediatly port out again. if you didn't either hit real hard, so people had to focus on defense or ported out immediatly, you would just get stunlocked in melee range. Overall this might be a good weapon. but currently there is just no good power necro wvw/pvp build (wrote with naru about that in his stream and we both agree). The biggest problem is necros sustain and not having a good source of stability. if those problems don't get fixed. the weapon will be dead on arrival, unless the dmg gets omega buffed to be able to oneshot people. sustain that's tied to hitting the enemy is usually inferior to sustain that "just happens"/ doesn't have a hit condition. Very strange as well: why does the 5 skill give 1 might per target hit, but the 4 skill gives benefits on isolated targets? shouldn't the 5 give some bonus as well when only hitting one target? for example gain 1 might per enemy struck, if you only hit one enemy gain fury instead or something like that? cause fury is very hard to get on power necro. either you take curses - a condi traitline, or dread in spite, but spear doesn't have a fear, or you play harbinger. PS: and i don't want to see another blighters boon buff. as long as it competes with reapers onslaught, it will never be taken on any power build.

Yes, it was the idea to swap out the dagger/sword set for spear. And I was going for a build that tries to get more healing in Form of barrier from blood bank. Though that all depends on the amount of healing the spear offers. If it's not good enough I am going to switch to unholy martyr. And overflowing thirst will change to blood bond since the thirst trait will be useless without a dagger and with mark of evasion and barbed precision you are very likely to apply enough bleeds for blood bond to trigger, giving you more healing and some dmg, when you hit an enemy

To be honest. Swords and dagger both offer quite some "defense". I already made a wvw roaming build for the spear to test with even though we don't know 2/5 skills. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAUWBbh5xyYlYRL512B-e With sword/focus, dagger/sword. Right now. And I have to say, I might even keep it as it is, instead of swapping to spear. But we will see after testing the spear. It's even capable of fighting cele builds (not all of them, but quite a few)

I'm kinda torn after that preview. And I want to wait making judgements until we know all skills and till I have played necro spear. But muly first thoughts: It's great that we finally seem to get another power weapon. Should it have been a melee weapon? I'm not a fan of it (yet), because there's already greatsword. And to an extend dagger. Pve: But I won't complain about that if the spear is a weapon, that can finally compete with gs in pve. Imagine playing mainly spear above 50% enemy health and switching to gravedigger spam below. That would make power necro feel refreshing imo. Pvp/wvw: I'm mainly talking from a wvw roaming perspective here, so keep that in mind for the following. For pvp purposes it's great that we get another mobility skill. But it is a skill that requires you to hit the initial spear throw. Which is already a problem. I don't know if the animation of the throw (travel time) got slowed down but is a lot faster in reality, but it seemed to be a rather slow projectile. The problem of slow projectiles: you can often outrun them (with superspeed, blinks,...) so they don't hit you. You can block them via blocks/projectile blocks/ reflects and dodge them. The second point for doubt if this is a good weapon is, that melee gameplay isn't really supported for necro. What do I mean by that? If you go melee you have to be able to mitigate incoming dmg by any sort of mechanic, and necro doesn't really have that mechanic. Sure we got some protection from spectral armor, the elixir trait in harbinger and to some extend the death magic trait line, though death magic requires you get those carapace stacks up first, so it's not as reliable. The there's two other mechanics on necro that let you mitigate dmg: shroud, but then you can't use the spear at the same time as you are in shroud, and life steal, which requires you to be able to hit the enemy. And finally the third point of doubt: power necro builds have build issues. What do I mean by that you might ask again. 1. In wvw celestial builds are dominating right now. So you will always need good ways to cleanse conditions. There's several ways to cleanse conditions on necro, but many of them don't remove a bunch of conditions at once. Which is a big issue, if you the rng isn't in your favour and doesn't cleanse the immobilize or the 10 stacks of burning, that get covered by 1 stack of poison or vulnerability. 2. Trait line choices - dmg/boons/condition cleanse and sustain. As a power build you want your key skills to crit. and deal the most possible dmg. There's the intelligence sigil which guarantees you critical hits after weapon swaps and the other way to guarantee the crits would be crit capping, which is kinda hard to do on necro. You can't reach 100% crit from gear alone, so you need to reach 80% and somehow get fury. And both of these things are hard to do. Go full marauder, use soulreaping and you will get to 80% but you already loose quite some ferocity from full marauder. And then there's the problem of fury. In wvw there's realistically only two sources of fury: the dread trait in spite, and the furious demise trait in curses. And both have problems of their own, and both trait lines don't really provide any good means of sustain. You could also go another route: playing a more sustain focused build using death magic/ blood magic + x to slowly whittle down the enemy, which can work against other power builds, but you won't really be killing the good celestial builds with that either. As you can see. I see a lot of problems but I do see a chance for necro as well. We don't know what the other two skills of spear do yet. We only saw an great looking animation, with the symbol on the ground an the spear swirling, and we saw barrier on the necro, which could be caused by other skills/ traits. But there a chance, that for example one of those spear skills has a passive that gives you a small amount of barrier permanent, or also long as that skill isn't on cool down.

Yes. But I think they only once lowered the boon duration of boons? Not quite sure. Maybe they lowered boon durations for single skills. But if you are still able to upkeep 5-6 boons on yourself in a longer fight, then this nerf wasn't anywhere near, where it should have been. Either there should be counterplay by removing the boons from your opponents, or they should naturally drop because the boon duration isn't long enough. to create times frames for counterplay. But if you keep nerfing the boon removal but don't touch the uptime of boons, that creates an imbalance. And that's just boon wise. There's also the problem of dmg in wvw. There's roaming build that get/got buffed to oblivion, trying to make them viable for zergplay, where they still don't really see play. for example willbender that is somehow able to almost one shot a barriered up heal scourge, even if the scourge dodges the first hit immobilize. Or ranger that keeps getting longbow buffs. Hell even harbinger though the harbinger problem is a different one called celestial stats - which tbf is a problem on a lot of builds. And that you definitely notice by more and more people playing cele even in zergs.

I know. That's why I put it in quotation marks

For everyone living under a stone: Yesterday was the expansion drop. And the speculations that spears will be available on land got confirmed to be true. I think we didn't see any necro skills in the trailer. Since there's 3 Charakters performing spear skills. One has a very guard like blue animation. The other one is very likely to be elemental ist, throwing it's exploding fire spear. And the last one with a little bit of a weird lynx jump animation is pretty likely to be ranger. Even though the green colour looked a little bit more necro like, since it was on the darker green side, instead of light green, which ranger normally has. Well then there's untamed with pretty dark green/muddy green colours. But what are your wishes for necro land spear? I personally think, that we either need a long range dps or a dedicated support weapon on necro. With Soto we got swords, which filled two niches: sustain/mobility for pvp. Power dps offhand for pve. Spear could definitely be a boon support, maybe even healing support weapon, to maybe make harbinger a healer. But I also think, that a support/healing weapon could cause some problems since scourge exists. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get another healing build option for necro. A lot of classes already have viable or semi viable alac and quickness heal builds: - firebrand/ willbender - untamed/ druid - berserker/ blades worn - scrapper/ mech - Chrono/ Chrono / mirage - herald/ renegade The only three classes that are extremely lacking or just non existent are: - healquickness deadeye - healquickness catalyst - healquickness harbinger Right now, scourge is kinda lacking in the boon department, or boons being tied to utility skills. Better sources for stability, swiftness and fury would be very much appreciated. While harbinger straight up needs skills to heal with, and maybe some stability/aegis outside of the big cool down elite. And even then I don't know if it would be good, since there aren't any methods you could heal allies, while in harbinger shroud, apart from regeneration and transfusion. The other thing necro is missing in my opinion is a long range dps weapon. Maybe something that can compete with greatsword in the power department. Cause since HoT necro is basically stuck on gs for power builds. Or even a long range condi weapon "like mesmer's dagger". Guess we will soon find out and I kinda hope, that there will be a weapon beta before the expansion.

Well there's two alac scourge builds that don't provide 100% prot uptime: condi alac scourge and cele alac scourge. But I don't think that anet should balance protection on scourge around those builds. That would just lead to something like herald 2.0. and I don't think that we want that. Though they definitely could improve various boons on scourge. Might: there's plenty of might with torch, abrasive grit and blood is power (or dessicate). Fury: already a "problem" nowadays many dps classes provide 50% fury uptime for a group. But the problem is, that not all of them do so. Regeneration: no problem here, healing well, dodge, serpent siphon all provide regeneration. But it can still be a problem sometimes. I wonder if you could just make furious demise from the curses traitline group wide, but I think it would be better on either a support traitline or a power traitline, best imo would be a weapon. Cause often it feels like a waste to bring dessicate. Aegis: we do have serpent siphon which is a rather decent skill, the only problem I have with it, is that it's not an instant (no casttime) skill. Btw same as warrior which makes it sometimes a lot harder to actually block the right attack. Swiftness: huge problem, that needs to be addressed imo. There's only the febe relic, which can give you almost 100% uptime if you use the healing well on cooldown, but that's not something you want to do with your main direct healing ability. And there's trail of anguish which leads me to stability and the overall problem of this skill. This skill can basically not be used to prevent a cc in a lot of fights unless you know them extremely well, because you first need to know, that some cc is incoming and then you also have to run through all your allies to actually provide stability, which takes a lot of time. So adding some of the "missing" boons to weapons or maybe even shift some healing on a weapon would be nice.

So with the introduction of the new weapons, a lot of classes got some kind of support weapon. Mesmer rifle, warrior staff, engi short bow (even though it's not that good). And two more classes got one handed weapons to compliment their offhand choice for the second weapon set: ranger mace and rev scepter. So all of those classes now have at least one weapon set, with more than just one support skill on it. If we look at necros support skill options on weapons that either heal or provide boons: Torch 5, warhorn 5, staff 2 - that's it. And necro has 12 weapons it can equip, but the most number of support skills a weapon set can provide is one? Don't get me wrong. Heal scourge is very good as a healer, especially for groups/fights in which people tend to go downstate often. And it's also good as a celestial build if you feel like you don't need 2 full healers, but one wouldn't be enough either. For it's pretty annoying that on full heal scourge you only have one support skill on every weapon set. That makes the weapon choice kinda redundant. Imo there should be at least one more skill on something like dagger. And dagger 2 would be the perfect candidate for that. The life steal could just be changed, that it heals allies as well. And if the values are too high, make it heal allies by 20% of the value you are healed, and if you are full health that value gets increased to 50% or something like that. Which could in some distant future make heal harbinger a thing. And there have been several other ideas in the forum, for example giving warhorn a blast finisher and group swiftness just to slightly improve necro support builds.