Radina.6057

Swords are not even close to the "old" Staff, or Dagger rotations dps wise. People pull roughly 38k on the Golem. The current mark is 41+k. If they do not bump the damage another notch, they wont see much play in PvE instance content. The animations and Icons look pretty. The jump feels good and will be nice in open world, but that all achieves nothing if you just wanna do your job. Kill bosses fast. Or if you check the new Strike CM, Kill bosses at all. I am kind of annoyed how Necro got the short stick of the deal. Again. Necro needs better Power weapons desperately. Now we finally get two new ones, and pressing any button on the offhand sword is an automatic dps loss. Might as well continue bringing a Torch for the CC. Still. Stuff has to get touched again anyway. Some of the new weapons allow some classes to pull ridiculous numbers. Maybe the swords at least get touched enough so that they at least pull the same numbers as the dagger rotation.

Dont fool yourself. Before this patch, it was impossible to maintain three shades simultaneously, especially in open world scenarios. Even in instanced content, you were not able to keep all three shades up consistently. With 100% alacrity uptime, it was more like having two and a half shades, and without alacrity, it was bearly two. You had to click F1 persistently to upkeep those two. With the current patch, we can expect approximately 1.3 shades in instanced content and one shade in open world encounters. We already got the notes for the coming Update. Sand Sage gets changed to be fully active even with just one Shade out. In PvE, instanced content or not, you want to spam F1 as often as possible anyway to active Dhuumfire. When that patch goes live, we lost uptime for one shade and gain the full stat benefits of having three out all the time.

You want to use F1 as often as possible anyway to trigger Dhuumfire. How often we use Manifest Shade did not change one bit between the patches. The lost cleave is a low price to pay for 20 second cd Aegis and a soon to be overall good dps output. Scourge is going to be in a great spot and it is even going to be easier to upkeep Sand Sage, since we only ever have to have one Shade alive. The only negative about those Necro changes is that we have to wait 3 weeks for them to go live. They are amazing.

You hardly have 2 up at all. Six seconds CD on a Shade with full alac uptime. Eight seconds duration. So less than 33% uptime on the second shade. The third stack will only be reached at the first couple of seconds at the start of a fight. To be clear. You wont get anywhere near 33%. Manifest Shade got cast time and incase you don't mindlessly spam, or macro F1 to autospam, you will need a tad moment to press the button. The actual uptime of the second shade is less than 20%. The last two balance patches were rather great considering all the nonsense the prior balance team pulled off. This one is a clown fiesta.

It all depends on how Serpant Siphon, aka the Aegis skill, performs, how much boon duration we need, and the reduces shade life is gonna play out. I did not see anything that would allow you to place three shades at one time when they just cut a shades life from 20 to 8 seconds. If there is nothing that does, the condi dps alac Scourge route will get denied, since the already lackluster Scrouge damage wont magically get better from picking alac instead of Demonic Lore, nor will it take a bump if we lose Expertise/Concentration for every moment we don't have three shades alive on the field. A Scourge alac condi dps with a decent bench, and a usable 20s aegis/stabi would be great. Gonna be interesting if we get either of both, since the patchnotes could get interpreted both ways. I don't see how a heal scourge would work in any way atm. There is nothing in the notes about extra base barrier, or a better modifier for barrier. So all we would have is a kitten healer with a weird downstate pull mechanic that doesnt help you pick people up anymore with a pinch of alac on top. Gonna see how that is supposed to work out and not be straight worse than the god Druid is about to be.

Not Barrier. Ever since that last nerf, forever ago, even with full Plaguedoc you don't build as much Barrier as before the nerf with no heal power at all. Go check how long and much you can stack Barrier with Scourge and how long it takes to get there. To have your team at a decent enough Barrier at the right time to do its job you need to have a tightly stacked team and an on-point F5. Herald of Sorrow takes some seconds to trigger after all. Mech is the Barrier class for a long time now. Any other healer will not only help "crutch" better than a rez bot, but also help the inexperienced team with the extra buffs they provide. Since we apparently talk about noob parties, they will need those. There is no reason to ever pick heal Scourge right now, unless you wanna make a show out of it.

I already mentioned the "confusion". Any healer will do the job better than Scourge. Aegis, tools like Rebound, or Revive Spirit, actual heal, or simply more barrier. The only thing Tempest, Mech, FB, and the other good support/heal specs are lacking is the "haha they so bad. I have to play scourge to carry." content. Scourge heal is, in the best case, a meme. In the worst case, you just troll the group.

Anet doesnt know either. I still dont know how they pulled off the Soulbeast rework. That one was majestic.

Watching someone picking noobs up non stop for hours and having viewers talk about how horrible they are and how useful the streamer is for being a pickup bot must be so fun. Having the gal to call that build top and people believing their Idol is the most fun thing about it. But lets get back to topic, right? Scourge as an Alacrity source would be questionable at best. All you have is one Stability source which you have to spread by walking through people. Scourge does not have Aeigs, no group stun breaks, and wonky healing. Scourge also doesnt have something handy like "Rebound!". Sucking up corpses and reviving them sounds and looks fun, but in the end you could have played anything that just did not let that happen in the first place.

What did we expect? The whole "buff shout damage" idea is silly. You need the mobility from other skills to play PvP and WvW properly. In instance content you want damage. They would have to buff the damage by what? Six to ten times to come close to a well? I dont know what the gentleman that is doing the Reaper changes is thinking, but some hours in each of those game modes would instantly show whats wrong about the "shout buff" idea. We are soon at the point where the "buffed axe 2 damage by 3%" meme will get reborn as "buffed shout damage by some random number we dont wanna list".

Scourge lost his barriar months ago. The bits and bobs we get right now are not even worth mentioning. Just in case people didnt notice, even in full heal gear the barriar is worse than with no heal stat before the nerf. In terms of damage Scourge also lacks miles behind the top of the line, where a lot of them dont have much more complicated rotations than Scourge. Specter and Virtu both share the trait of not careing alot what the boss does. And to add cream ontop of that, QFB, the boon master 4ooo, is about to deal as much damage as the full dps Scourge. So all in all, Scourge is obviously fair and balanced, if you ignore every other career above him and those below him. Total META pick.

Imagine using that logic on all the specs. "What do you mean with Iam not a Quickness support! I had 33% uptime on myself!"

The Reaper changes are pathetic. They didnt even bother to get rid of the animation canceling. Harbinger looks fine if you just check the Benchmark list, but is infested with bugs. None of those got touched. Why would you have a working Blight mechanic after all? Its just the specs specialty.

Those Elixir bugs are just dumb and as old as Harbinger. Imagine pressing the merge button on SB and suddenly getting kicked out, or BS building up his charges and randomly not gaining any at some point. Imagine pressing Advance and no Aegis popping up on anyone. That's Harbinger right now and always has been. Such a clown fiesta.

Your Alacrity Reaper would be so dead. You gotta compete with "can provide anything while afk" HAM, "Rebound" Tempest, or "wanna get something pushed?" Druid. All of them provide all the relevant boons, plus enough healing, plus stab/stunbreak/aegis, plus unique utility. Reaper wouldn't be able to provide stunbreaks, Aegis, or stab in his group. The way you set it up you are not even able to play "pick me up" while providing boons. I don't see it. You wont be able to compete with damage alac Specter either.