harbinger does huge damage

[Puck.3697]

20 minutes ago, Nimon.7840 said:

revs suffer?
where?
they are basically mandatory in every single gamemode

No one said they currently suffer. 

But identifying one problem doesn't justify the other problem. Renegade needs nerfing too correct if that's what Ur getting at here. 

If your talking about suffering as in my statement, I am talking about the fact revenant is currently completely Condi based with no power options. 

The same as if they hard nerf necros Condi to hit scourge we would end up left with only power speccs. 

[Infusion.7149]

10 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

I honestly think DPS Scourge (bc of DPS uptime, cleanses and Barriers), Firebrand (bc of Aegis, Stab, cleanses, Projectile hate etc.) and Renegade (bc of insane self-sustain, and both offensive and defense unique group buffs) would be fine at ~35k DPS. 

 

Would they technically be "balanced" at ~30k and still bring enough value to groups in many cases? Yes, sure, but anyone who even remotely knows the GW2 community (see Scourge being shunned in endgame content for years before the damage buffs, despite technically being pretty good already) understands these specs would be shunned and forgotten at that level, with players defaulting to specs they see doing 10k more DPS on benchmarks - lacking the game knowledge to make informed decisions about what increases group success rate the most.

 

Imo 32-35k DPS is a good level for specs which offer various Utility, and 35-38k DPS (at the absolute most) for specs which primarily just contribute DPS (with Boon Hybrids somewhere around 25k DPS). 

 

That way you don't fundamentally cripple specs everywhere else just because they provide some Utility in group content (and making them high value picks for people with enough game knowledge to understand the value of group success rate increases), while still allowing players to measure their.. bragging rights via almost entirely DPS focused builds. 

 

Making the gap too big just gets ugly due to lack of game knowledge in the community at large.

 

Ideally though, rather than globally nerfing the damage of certain specs with some innate support, I'd much rather see the Trait system reworked from largely passive modifiers to making these aspects not innate, and instead providing Trait choices centered around picking between support, sustain/tankyness and damage options to add to any given spec.

As in, Shade skills are almost entirely offensive with Demonic Lore selected, while picking Sand Savant makes them largely or entirely supportive. Make FB Mantras and Tomes innately much worse, and return current effects like the ability to spam out Aegis via a Trait that directly competes with a strong DPS Trait. Don't make Traits like Battlescars which both provide one of the biggest DPS increase as well as broken levels of sustain in one mechanic. One should come at the expense of the other, not provide peak performance in both at once. 

I find it hard to believe that more than maybe 0.01% of players stack Scourges/Necros while playing in voice chat and coordinating Epi bounces effectively - which imo is far from grounds to balance the entire Spec around that extremely niche possibility, esp. since Epi bouncing was already nerfed by 75%.

 

The major culprit on CFB is Mantra of Solace which also happens to be broken (not in a good way) in PVP/WVW due to ~200 base heal after mantra reworks so that ought to be a priority for fixing in general. Firebrand is actually about 34K solo in PVE right now, so it comes down to Ashes of Just scaling wildly similar to thief venoms and to a lesser extent soulbeast stance sharing (which lowers their personal DPS). I don't think renegade was a major issue when it was 37K full cDPS and 33K RR however the torment changes skewed it to 37K running RR.

If Sand Cascade and Desert Empowerment had lower base barrier and higher scaling such that 1000+ healing power is more meaningful in PVE then maybe it would be fine to have 33K cDPS on scourge honestly. That's more or less what you get on banner berserker right now.

I'm not sure if you have been paying attention but Hardstuck was running a scourge stack for their full clear (even on Adina , reaper on KC/CA) and currently hold the full clear record at just over 2 hours.
https://www.speedrun.com/gw2/run/y8jqj4dz

Also it doesn't factor in poor boon uptimes, weaver suffers heavily for this.

[Asum.4960]

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The major culprit on CFB is Mantra of Solace which also happens to be broken (not in a good way) in PVP/WVW due to ~200 base heal after mantra reworks so that ought to be a priority for fixing in general. Firebrand is actually about 34K solo in PVE right now, so it comes down to Ashes of Just scaling wildly similar to thief venoms and to a lesser extent soulbeast stance sharing (which lowers their personal DPS). I don't think renegade was a major issue when it was 37K full cDPS and 33K RR however the torment changes skewed it to 37K running RR.

"Solo" DPS with Group buffs is kind of a pointless metric, but yes, I think Mantras should have their CD's increased (along with a proportional increase in effect/boon durations), which in the case of Mantra of Solace with it's Aegis not benefitting from that much would be an appropriate nerf (along with reduced player Carpal tunnel syndrome risk). With a higher CD and less Aegis (and mandatory Trait interaction) abuse, it's healing values could then also be restored somewhat in competitive.

As for Renegade, it just wasn't pushed into the limelight by certain people in the community, it's imo actually quite a bit more egregious than Scourge. 

If it's left unchecked and alternatives are nerfed, it's just a matter of time before more people discover how brokenly OP the spec is, becoming the next flavour of the year problem class.

 

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If Sand Cascade and Desert Empowerment had lower base barrier and higher scaling such that 1000+ healing power is more meaningful in PVE then maybe it would be fine to have 33K cDPS on scourge honestly. That's more or less what you get on banner berserker right now.

While I do agree on making Scourge support and DPS Scourge more separated through various means (Trait redesign, more value through Healing Power and less base value, etc.), I don't think what a DPS Scourge offers in terms of group benefit is comparable to the 6000 Squad stats increase of a Banner Warrior (which itself sit's at almost 35k DPS). We are talking a what, 15%? group damage increase - meaning a Banner Warrior potentially adds >60000 DPS to a 10 player squad, including it's own.

BS has always been an insane outlier protected by the fact that it's insanity is obfuscated by it's DPS increase not counting/being tracked as it's own DPS, unlike say Venoms or Ashes of the Just, or being highly visible via UI like Barrier is.

The only issue with Scourge is the stackable nature of Barrier, while banners are a unique buff. But if you punish a class for being stackable, you either ruin it on an individual basis - or just encourage players to stack it even harder to compensate for the losses on the individual. 

I'd also be more lenient on slightly overperforming defensive support (like DPS Scourge providing Barriers and Cleanses) than offensive support (like condi Ren and especially BS) - or even support that allows for mechanic skipping, even if defensive in nature, as FB. 

Out of those four (cScourge, cRen, cFB and BS), I genuinely think Scourge to be the least problematic/overperforming, it's simply the most popularized as of late.

 

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

I'm not sure if you have been paying attention but Hardstuck was running a scourge stack for their full clear (even on Adina , reaper on KC/CA) and currently hold the full clear record at just over 2 hours.
https://www.speedrun.com/gw2/run/y8jqj4dz

Also it doesn't factor in poor boon uptimes, weaver suffers heavily for this.

I'am aware, but again, I'm not entirely behind nerfing classes around 0.01% player speedrun strategies, unless they are just utterly egregious with a high risk of catching on across the game as far and wide ahead strategy. But especially Epi bouncing has a fairly good safeguard there - since the heavy Epi nerfs it's not egregiously ahead anymore, while requiring a relatively "high" level of communication/coordination. 

In a community where it's sheer impossible to teach pugs to take a step to the left with the group around the boss on Boneskinner to not instantly die to a clearly telegraphed mechanic, I think we are utterly safe from perfectly timed Epi bounces taking the game by storm any time soon. 

 

And let's be entirely honest here, if Anet entirely symbolically nerfed Scourge tomorrow and Tpot started a video campaign telling everybody that Scourge was bad now, while hosting video after video about how great FB or Renegade are, making (likely even stronger) speed runs with those specs etc., Scourge would be forgotten and largely back in the bin in less than 3 months again - even if nothing actually changed balance wise. 

Is Scourge fantastic and strong right now? Without a doubt. Is it as crazy as it's pushed popularity is leading some to believe? No. 

It's not like 6 stacked 37k cScourges sharing Barriers can achieve anything that 6 or even 7 stacked cRens doing 40k DPS and self-healing 3k HP/s can't (2 of which can also do Perma AoE Prot with All for One, Perma 25 Might and Alac with Heroic and Orders, all get perma Fury and Vigor anyway - rotate Breakrazor's Bastion for perma -50% inc. condition damage reduction and further AoE Healing - with 2qFB's/qChronos etc. and a BS not requiring any support at all for a sheer immortal group, shred just about any breakbar with combined Darkrazor's alone, pulls galore with Call to Anguish etc.).

Edited December 13, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Dadnir.5038]

13 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

I find it hard to believe that more than maybe 0.01% of players stack Scourges/Necros while playing in voice chat and coordinating Epi bounces effectively - which imo is far from grounds to balance the entire Spec around that extremely niche possibility, esp. since Epi bouncing was already nerfed by 75%.

It's not a matter of bouncing it's a matter of cleaving potential. You don't need a voice chat to make use of epidemic in order to simply wipe adds or, better, spread immobilize to a few mobs that you need to keep far away from an objective. Epidemic as a tool is crap against a single target but it's still a very very strong tool against some of the encounter mechanics. Fractals are full of adds and it's awesome there, some raid boss are full of adds and epi can wipe them clean, some raid encounter (for example Gorseval) ask you to keep adds far from the boss and epi rock for that due to it's wide range... etc.

Epi bouncing is a thing of the past but it doesn't invalidate the fact that epi as it is designed is overpowered. 90% of the reason teapot managed to make scourge popular in the end game is due to epidemic, when he truly want to increase group survivability he goes for tempest as it is superior at increasing group survivability (even when playing with the devs to do val guardian, he start with scourge only to give up and take his tempest in order to carry the group to victory. If the few bit of barrier really mattered he wouldn't have had to do that).

[Asum.4960]

25 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

It's not a matter of bouncing it's a matter of cleaving potential. You don't need a voice chat to make use of epidemic in order to simply wipe adds or, better, spread immobilize to a few mobs that you need to keep far away from an objective. Epidemic as a tool is crap against a single target but it's still a very very strong tool against some of the encounter mechanics. Fractals are full of adds and it's awesome there, some raid boss are full of adds and epi can wipe them clean, some raid encounter (for example Gorseval) ask you to keep adds far from the boss and epi rock for that due to it's wide range... etc.

Epi bouncing is a thing of the past but it doesn't invalidate the fact that epi as it is designed is overpowered. 90% of the reason teapot managed to make scourge popular in the end game is due to epidemic, when he truly want to increase group survivability he goes for tempest as it is superior at increasing group survivability (even when playing with the devs to do val guardian, he start with scourge only to give up and take his tempest in order to carry the group to victory. If the few bit of barrier really mattered he wouldn't have had to do that).

Again, I'm not denying it's usefulness in the least. And yes, like Renewed Justice, Portal, etc. it's kind of inherently overpowered in some scenarios - but I don't think it's a major problem point at this stage. 

 

It's not like you can't just 4 split at Gorse or just immob the last 1-2 Spirits/Entangle, it's not like there aren't plentiful pulls available that in most scenarios have essentially the same effect of add clear - worst case, someone needs to step away from something like MO for 3 seconds to DPS a Scout, or place a reflect/step away in Snowblind for Ice Crystals, for things that can't be pulled. It's not like some professions don't have such potent cleave that they can out DPS Scourge even with Epi even on things like Voice&Claw.

 

Nobody is saying it's bad - but if anything Necro kind of needs it. Without Epi many other classes would outcleave Necro to an significant degree in turn. 

 

As for group survivability, yea, sure, support Tempest is king, but we are talking about DPS's here - and there it's great to be able to stack Barrier on top of all the support elements that the actual support provides (which also means being able to combine a support Tempest or other with DPS Scourges, or soon Specter's). That compounding effect of DPS+Barrier + main Support is the thing that spikes group success rates and made it popular. 

 

Epi is a great tool which you also get with the spec, yes, but it's not been the absolutely defining factor. 

But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the game impact of Epi. 

 

I think it's a cool and unique mechanic, and personally I don't think it's problematic enough to warrant major balancing around or the loss to the game should it be removed.

 

(also get ready for DPS+Barrier+Shadow Step/Portal skipping Specter's)

[Dadnir.5038]

@Asum.4960 And I'm just saying that without epidemic as it is, the scourge wouldn't even be popular in PvE. Both damage wise and support wise, scourge is "fine" (and in fact, not that great), the thing that tilt the scale is epidemic. So like I said, if you remove epidemic from the equation, scourge lose it's popularity in PvE (outside of that you were the one asuming that it was a matter of dps and arguing about epi bounce, which is a thing of the past).

[Asum.4960]

3 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

@Asum.4960 And I'm just saying that without epidemic as it is, the scourge wouldn't even be popular in PvE. Both damage wise and support wise, scourge is "fine" (and in fact, not that great), the thing that tilt the scale is epidemic. So like I said, if you remove epidemic from the equation, scourge lose it's popularity in PvE (outside of that you were the one asuming that it was a matter of dps and arguing about epi bounce, which is a thing of the past).

Well, Infusion just referred to a new speedrun full Raid clear record by Hardstuck which was achieved with Epi bouncing, which while imo doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things or is balance relevant,  is what I was responding to, but, alright.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/3/2021 at 10:48 PM, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

I'll legit ask for a refund and quit gw2 if they pull that bs balancing act. I hate that balance... let's make something good, nerf it, and nerf the only other good option to drive expac sales. Gtfo of here with that.... (aimed at anet not you)

Scourge was to much for the game when appeared, problem is that companies release something broken and then start nerfing  rather than see what is the issue or redirect the class concept to a more game fit concept which i believe that will hapen after EoD (End of Dodges ) gets released, actually most HoT and PoF specs will be  touched since they obliterate in pvp most EoD specs.

Issue with  Anet was they have been pleasing with broken stuff  rather than try to fit stable specializations, remember Revenant hammer skill 2 20k-30k  AOE every 2 secs, DH traps could wipe a entire group that players would not even notice down state?

Scourge can be easilly buffed and become quite broken, imo Anet needs to write on paper what they want with the class mainly to do wich i think was barrier support, in wich i would love that  would not come alone to the support spec of the spec but also the boon control that scrapper does should be removed from that class and added within the scourge that would make scourge fit for its name IMO, and would be the control support experties of the scourge, manipulate the flow of conditions and boons while providing barrier mainly.

Scrapper also does to much atm, reaper damage and surviability can be tricky with its damage output capabilities,  reaper should be designed to do not need boons but would rather consume boons for healing itself and conditions to empower the specialization, their second life should trigger when they loose their health rather something that can even be shortened on team gameplay with alacrity.. oh well... gw2 is the only game i cant touch necro toons wich is basicvly my main class in every other game that has necros :S...  

Edited December 13, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[anbujackson.9564]

10 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

Well, Infusion just referred to a new speedrun full Raid clear record by Hardstuck which was achieved with Epi bouncing, which while imo doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things or is balance relevant,  is what I was responding to, but, alright.

I have been reading a lot that epidemic is the reason necro is considered so much.

I disagree partly. It can cleave in different positions with shades alone while targeting the boss. A single bip+f5 sure is big effort damage. Also your shade skills apply vulnerability, one of the biggest dps increases which helps with the cleave. Its single target damage is anything but bad. Check the video on stuff like Matthias and try to do the same damage on another class. The damage increase from epidemic bouncing isnt really that great (anymore, thankfully) since in the end you only get 25% of the original duration (20s to 10s to 5s for example). 

It still has the best pull in the game with extreme cc capability, barrier and condi removal for free on barely no cd with no cast time, another no brain cc source in flesh golem which has basically no cast time also since you can keep attacking yourself. 

But yeah no epidemic would still hurt its cleave a lot. Better a more balanced cleave than breaking any multiple mob encounters though. Then again you have firebrand which uses like 5 skills which reks any tight enemy mob since it has the strongest fire applications for whatever reason while the king of fire looks like a little boy.

Edited December 13, 2021 by anbujackson.9564

[AlCapwnd.7834]

Scourge in PVE is fine. Scourge in WvW is fine. I dont play sPvP so i cant comment there. The more i read these threads the more I think people just want a character tuned to their specific points and not to what the devs have made. Play with what you have. Its a fun game. Enjoy it 😃

[Aktium.9506]

On 12/7/2021 at 10:11 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

On another hand, it's unrealistic number since he would have to nerf core to drop to this level of cDPS with scourge which would drop the cDPS of all spec and make a 38k DPS harbinger a sweet dream.

That's not hard to do. You can add a negative modifier to one of the Scourge minor traits that gives -33% condition damage and expertise just for slotting the traitline kinda like the GM minor for Berserker does with toughness. Or they could buff core Shroud damage in PvE. Make Dhuumfire on core Life Blast slap a big honking 10 burning per shot or just make Life Blast rapid fire.

[Infusion.7149]

5 hours ago, Aktium.9506 said:

That's not hard to do. You can add a negative modifier to one of the Scourge minor traits that gives -33% condition damage and expertise just for slotting the traitline kinda like the GM minor for Berserker does with toughness. Or they could buff core Shroud damage in PvE. Make Dhuumfire on core Life Blast slap a big honking 10 burning per shot or just make Life Blast rapid fire.

Why would they do that?

They can just readjust Demonic Lore in PVE to be +10% (15% less torment DPS) or 15% (10% less torment DPS) instead seeing how Septic Corruption on Harbinger has max 12.5% bonus now and no burning.

Torment makes up ~ 40% of scourge benchmark so that means a reduction in Demonic Lore to 12-15% would drop it to 36K DPS already.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Dadnir.5038]

6 hours ago, Aktium.9506 said:

That's not hard to do. You can add a negative modifier to one of the Scourge minor traits that gives -33% condition damage and expertise just for slotting the traitline kinda like the GM minor for Berserker does with toughness. Or they could buff core Shroud damage in PvE. Make Dhuumfire on core Life Blast slap a big honking 10 burning per shot or just make Life Blast rapid fire.

I must say that it would make me laugh to see such a trait. Also, core already make more out of dhuumfire than scourge does so I don't see the "need" for your suggestion (There is to many "on shrd#1" traits like dhuumfire, it's unhealthy and I'm tired to say it).

[Aktium.9506]

18 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Torment makes up ~ 40% of scourge benchmark so that means a reduction in Demonic Lore to 12-15% would drop it to 36K DPS already.

That's not enough. I am fully on board with Teapot's goal of 25k. So a 30-35% decrease in total DPS overall of Scourge is exactly what I do want

[Infusion.7149]

5 hours ago, Aktium.9506 said:

That's not enough. I am fully on board with Teapot's goal of 25k. So a 30-35% decrease in total DPS overall of Scourge is exactly what I do want

Dropping scourge to 25K is insane for something that doesn't put out major boons such as quickness or alacrity , not even protection. Before the torment changes scourge was ~28K DPS already. Arenanet should not listen to such extreme views.

33K is a realistic number if the support is kept intact. There's multiple reasons I feel this is the ideal target in the current situation:
1) Soulbeast with single shortbow is of the same level of complexity without the barrier output and has been 32-33K DPS for years
2) Banner berserker warrior is a "support" that does this kind of damage , with less range if you go power variant
3) Power reaper is at 34K and is a full DPS spec so it should do more than scourge
4) Power scrapper is also around 34K as full DPS , before buffs it was more akin to 32K
5) Staff mirage puts out ~31K DPS  on golem and puts out might in bulk along with alacrity, fury