Scourge Question

[Ya Ya Yeah.7381]

I'm confused about the elite scourge spec. 

Is it supposed to be a support spec only?

If not, where does the damage come from? I can see damage coming from the wells which are utilities but where is the actual damage from the spec. It seems like it is gutted out so condi isn't very strong with the limited torment stacks, because I don't see condi scourge around really. I do see a power spec sometimes but I'm not seeing a lot of weapon damage or power traits to support it really without just stacking power and dropping wells. so...the shades don't seem to do much damage but they do offer conversion and bubbles...I'm guessing it is a support spec only.

 It seems weak for condi damage and power damage comes from wells, so , I guess it is only a support spec, but if that is the case why does it have so many underperforming condi traits.

I'm just confused about it.

 

[Asum.4960]

I'd say it's primarily a condition damage spec with support elements (Barrier, Cleanse) - which also was it's initial sales pitch (minus boon support, which ended up just being some Might, which was then mostly stripped out too in the wave of nerfs). 

 

It's damage in PvE largely comes from Manifest Sand Shade and Desert Shroud's Torment traited with Demonic Lore, as well as Scepter traited with Lingering Curse and Torch (as well as Blood is Power + Plague Sending). 

In WvW it's primary role is boon removal.

 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Infusion.7149]

In PVE It's a condi spec with condi cleanse , boon corrupt, and barrier output. The top condition is torment and that comes from manifest sand shade with Dhuumfire for burning, scepter 3 (devouring darkness), torch 4 (harrowing wave), and F5 desert shroud. In openworld some people will run tankier trailblazer or plaguedoctor (healing power gives more barrier) setups.

In WVW you often see it as a boon corrupt with power weapons because the condi isn't as effective. That is opposed to what I have in PVE , exactly one power scourge within instanced content and they were being ridiculed for being bad DPS (for obvious reasons).

In the past in PVP you saw some scourges as a support with sage amulet or something of that nature because condis don't get cleansed as easily as in WVW.

Just remember that WVW/PVP have severely cut down aspects in terms of condition output , barrier, and damage. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

9 hours ago, Crazy.6029 said:

I'm confused about the elite scourge spec. 

Is it supposed to be a support spec only?

If not, where does the damage come from? I can see damage coming from the wells which are utilities but where is the actual damage from the spec. It seems like it is gutted out so condi isn't very strong with the limited torment stacks, because I don't see condi scourge around really. I do see a power spec sometimes but I'm not seeing a lot of weapon damage or power traits to support it really without just stacking power and dropping wells. so...the shades don't seem to do much damage but they do offer conversion and bubbles...I'm guessing it is a support spec only.

 It seems weak for condi damage and power damage comes from wells, so , I guess it is only a support spec, but if that is the case why does it have so many underperforming condi traits.

I'm just confused about it.

 

Its usually a hybrid support, but it can go pure damage by utilising the fear>torment>burning synergy.

 

With all three traitlines set up correctly, you inflict torment when you inflict fear (or other CC), and you inflict burning when you inflict torment. This along with some other sources of burning and torment (Demonic Lore, punishment skills, etc.), creates one of the highest DPS condition builds in the game, perhaps the highest.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Dadnir.5038]

Scourge is an e-spec with 2 roles (support and dps) and a gameplay revolving around area denial/control. Based on the gamemode you'll build it with focus on different things.

In PvE, it will usually be built either as a condi dps or as a barrier support.

In sPvP, you'll mostly build it around area denial and, by extension for a necromancer, condition damage (not really in a great spot atm)

In WvW (zerg), it's there for boon corruption but with a focus on power due to how quickly conditions are cleansed in the gamemode. 

 

 

[Lily.1935]

On 11/5/2022 at 3:33 PM, Crazy.6029 said:

I'm confused about the elite scourge spec. 

Is it supposed to be a support spec only?

If not, where does the damage come from? I can see damage coming from the wells which are utilities but where is the actual damage from the spec. It seems like it is gutted out so condi isn't very strong with the limited torment stacks, because I don't see condi scourge around really. I do see a power spec sometimes but I'm not seeing a lot of weapon damage or power traits to support it really without just stacking power and dropping wells. so...the shades don't seem to do much damage but they do offer conversion and bubbles...I'm guessing it is a support spec only.

 It seems weak for condi damage and power damage comes from wells, so , I guess it is only a support spec, but if that is the case why does it have so many underperforming condi traits.

I'm just confused about it.

 

This highly depends on the game modes you're looking at. For PvP from what I understand it under preforms although its party role would be a Support with DoT DPS. They're going to pressure the enemies by using battlefield control, boon removal and stacking multiple types of conditions to make cleansing difficult.

For WvW you see power specs or support specs mostly to stack a lot of aoe pressure and strip boons along with being able to heal somewhat. They're better in multiples here since their damage isn't all that impressive here. But when you cover such a large area with so many scourges is where the power comes in.

For PvE scourge is a Mid tier DPS class which its advantages by being one of the only full ranged specs in the game make it a premium pick for most fights. In PvE you are unlikely to see a support scourge although they are around because you just have far superior options since scourge provides very little utility as a support. But the support they do provide does make them valuable in groups because they're capable of granting 12 people barrier which is well above the normal cap of 5. This makes them quite effective in multiples.

So where is the damage coming from? I think you're missing some things about the spec and how it functions. Scourge has really low power damage since necromancer is starved for damage modifiers for strike damage but the scourge has a lot of fantastic modifiers for condition damage as well as traits which increase our condition output. Scourge is gaining a lot of extra expertise and condition damage from traits through curses, soul reaping and scourge along with specific modifiers like Lingering curse which increases scepter condition duration by 50% that actually does stack with 100% condition duration since the 50% is added to the base duration of scepter. You have barbed precision which gives us additional bleed procs, Dhuumfire which triggers on manifest sand shade, demonic lore which triggers when you apply torment and the potent interaction with instant transfer of the conditions from Blood is power using plague sending.

There is a point of confusion I do see sometimes with scourge people don't always realize. Manifest sand shade, the F1 skill on scourge has a damage trigger which activates when you activate any other shade ability. So when you look at the other skills and see no damage that's why. You need to look at the damage from manifest sand shade. Since this triggers every skill use that also means that Dhuumfire, Unyielding blast and the torment from Manifest all also trigger when you activate any of your other skills.

Scourge is the absolute strongest Elite specialization for Necromancer in PvE. You just need to understand the tools that it has and how they work and how to weave them together for your benefit. If you want a build I can give you one. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFs81aYZEMQmGGJWsX1PTA-zRJYmxfZkbF0RKI80IjzKA-e

That build is typically what I use in everything. it has a flex slot you can put in what you like. Spectral graps, Sand swell, trail of anguish, well of darkness, Shadow Fiend, corrosive poison cloud are all fantastic options in that slot you can take. I typically choose whichever is best for a given situation. For Raids and strikes spectral grasp or Shadow fiend depending on the fight, for Open world I like Sand Swell for the quick movement around bosses allowing me to kite around. If being in melee is too much of an issue Blood Fiend and Flesh golem are good choices as well.

I'm rambling a bit, Scourge is my favorite elite spec and the spec is something like a 35k DPS spec, very respectable as a ranged DPS for sure. And I think you might just have a misunderstanding of how the mechanics work is all. Once you understand how it functions and what armor is good for it it will over preform for you.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Lily.1935 said:

necromancer is starved for damage modifiers for strike damage

I'd argue that it's not true anymore. Nowadays, both Spite and Soul reaping offer more than enough strike damage modifiers to not be jealous of any other profession. What the necromancer lack in term of strike damage is good core weapons skills as only Axe is somewhat "ok" in regard of strike damage. This situation lead strike damage builds to lean heavily on the shroud which have a limited uptime by design.

[Lily.1935]

10 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'd argue that it's not true anymore. Nowadays, both Spite and Soul reaping offer more than enough strike damage modifiers to not be jealous of any other profession. What the necromancer lack in term of strike damage is good core weapons skills as only Axe is somewhat "ok" in regard of strike damage. This situation lead strike damage builds to lean heavily on the shroud which have a limited uptime by design.

When half of their damage modifiers only function 50% of the time they are starved for it. The damage output of weapons isn't as bad as you think.

[Dadnir.5038]

17 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

When half of their damage modifiers only function 50% of the time they are starved for it. The damage output of weapons isn't as bad as you think.

So you'll tell me that dagger, staff, scepter and all the core off-hand weapons have good strike damage output?

[Ya Ya Yeah.7381]

Sorry, I should have posted in the OP, I was looking at scourge from WvW pvp perspective. Thank you for all the responses. 

[Lily.1935]

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

So you'll tell me that dagger, staff, scepter and all the core off-hand weapons have good strike damage output?

Staff damage isn't too far behind engineer rifle, something better modifiers could fix. Dagger is a bit stronger in auto attacking but lacks positive skills to benefit, but again it would highly benefit from a another trait modifier. Scepter isn't a power weapon so bringing that up is extremely strange. Its not supposed to be a strike weapon. Axe has a bad auto attack but its damage is on par with staff it lacks the slight bump from an appropriate modifier like fragility.

I have an issue with core weapons. A lot of there skills are outdated and clunky. But as far as damage goes? there damage multiplier is fairly standard when it comes to weapon damage.

 

[Dadnir.5038]

8 hours ago, Lily.1935 said:

Staff damage isn't too far behind engineer rifle, something better modifiers could fix. Dagger is a bit stronger in auto attacking but lacks positive skills to benefit, but again it would highly benefit from a another trait modifier. Scepter isn't a power weapon so bringing that up is extremely strange. Its not supposed to be a strike weapon. Axe has a bad auto attack but its damage is on par with staff it lacks the slight bump from an appropriate modifier like fragility.

I have an issue with core weapons. A lot of there skills are outdated and clunky. But as far as damage goes? there damage multiplier is fairly standard when it comes to weapon damage.

I'm sorry but if you look at things objectively, necromancer do have as much trait modifier with as much restrictions as other professions. For example, elementalist's modifiers tend to be tied to specific attunment (which is no different from any modifier being tied to shroud specifically), 20% damage modifier while hitting a foe below 50% health can be found on many professions. Which leave us with modifiers that can affect the necromancer permanently with the right rotation.

Well, the only thing I can concede is that warrior, specifically, can build for higher damage modifier... It doesn't do him much good thought...

One of the major issue of the necromancer's core weapons is that they are "utility weapons" more than anything. All the off-hands deal little to no strike damage making their skillsets dead for "power builds", as for the off-hand, they tend to lack skills that are cost effective (damage/hit rate) when considering strike damage output. The lack of proper complementary weapon skillset cemente a poor rotational potential which lead to a low damage potential.

Necromancer isn't thief that can lean on an AA and launch a big attack every 3s. Neither is it an elementalist that have high potential weapon skill that he can and feel the need to rotate through. Fact is that, strike damage wise, most necromancer's weapon skills aren't worth using at all due to either cast time/after cast, CD or coefficient.

[Lily.1935]

14 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'm sorry but if you look at things objectively, necromancer do have as much trait modifier with as much restrictions as other professions. For example, elementalist's modifiers tend to be tied to specific attunment (which is no different from any modifier being tied to shroud specifically), 20% damage modifier while hitting a foe below 50% health can be found on many professions. Which leave us with modifiers that can affect the necromancer permanently with the right rotation.

Well, the only thing I can concede is that warrior, specifically, can build for higher damage modifier... It doesn't do him much good thought...

One of the major issue of the necromancer's core weapons is that they are "utility weapons" more than anything. All the off-hands deal little to no strike damage making their skillsets dead for "power builds", as for the off-hand, they tend to lack skills that are cost effective (damage/hit rate) when considering strike damage output. The lack of proper complementary weapon skillset cemente a poor rotational potential which lead to a low damage potential.

Necromancer isn't thief that can lean on an AA and launch a big attack every 3s. Neither is it an elementalist that have high potential weapon skill that he can and feel the need to rotate through. Fact is that, strike damage wise, most necromancer's weapon skills aren't worth using at all due to either cast time/after cast, CD or coefficient.

You're  wrong here. 3 of the most important damage modifiers the necromancer and reaper has are only active 50% of the time. That's far more that can't be active all the time than other professions and there is no level of planning that can get around this. Look at engineer for example. Glass cannon has a 10% damage boost while you're above 75% health, +200 ferocity from explosions which is easy to maintain, Big bomber which cares about health precentages and gives a 15%, Shaped charge which gives 1/2% for each stack of vuln equaling an extra 12.5% boost. Then we have firearms which grats Hematic focus giving us a 15% crit chance bonus against bleeding foes, high caliber which is another 15% crit chance, no scope which is 150 more ferocity, and Modified ammunition which is an additional 8-12% damage boost on average. All of these have extremely easy conditions to meet and conditions which can be maintained 100% of the time. This also means they can gear into stronger armor than the necromancer can because they're not starved for crit chance. And I didn't even get into the elite specs which have more strong modifiers like holosmith with lazer's edge which gives 15 to 22.5% additional damage or Scrapper with applied force. And I'm not even mentioning all of them either of those get.

What does necromancer get in comparison? Spiteful Talisman 10% probably the easiest to achieve in the game, awaken the pain an extra 250 power, soul barbs 10% while shroud dancing and deadly strength in death magic with 300 extra power. And that's all of the easy conditions to meet traits necromancer gets before we account for elite specializations. When we go into elite specs Reaper starts to compare to the modifiers core engineer has. Just between Explosives and firearms Engineer has 8 easy to achieve modifiers. Core necromancer has 5 between Soul reaping and spite. Add Reaper into the mix we have an additional 3. So 8 in total including the conditional modifiers like reaper's onslaught, Death perception and close to death. How many does Holosmith have? 11 with only 1 of those you can't maintain the entire fight. What about scrapper? 10 with easier conditions to meet than holosmith.

Now reaper has 8 in total it can have access to at any time. But only 5 of those can be active 100% of the time. or near 100% of the time. ironically Revenant has had similar strike damage problems necromancer has had in the past and they're way better positioned with their traits with only 2 extremely conditional traits.

Now, I don't have an issue with these sorts of traits. I don't. But its clear that way too much stock is put into these sub par traits to carry the damage of the necromancer when they just can't. In practice we can see the disparity between in shroud damage and out of shroud damage. IN shroud Reaper's damage is very respectable. It actually compares to the DPS of any other class for that 10 seconds you want to be in shroud... Sadly this doesn't hold up outside of shroud where their damage is between 20-30% lower than everything else.

I've done so much testing with this and it always comes out the same. Necromancer just doesn't have the quantity or quality of damage modifiers to make up for the that time they're out of shroud.