What Sources of Healing does Necromancer Even Have? (Specifically Scourge)

[August Valek.9368]

maybe tie a healing pool to your bleeding damage dealt to be released with your well of blood or taste of death, making taste of death and AoE heal around your pet, making it explode in a shower of healing blood

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Let's focus on stuff that matters - barriers.
Scourge has strongest healing power coefficients when it comes to those and he invests into that stats, they get thick and juicy.

So the nr 1 question is: Will they still be thick and juice post patch?

[Swan.9815]

The lack of healing sources is going become a pretty glaring issue since all the barrier skills are going to be used off cooldown to keep up alacrity and not being used for damage mitigation.

[Nimon.7840]

On 6/10/2023 at 5:45 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

That is what you think. Truth is that healscourge only lost a bit of rallying power and damage output in exchange for a bit more barrier output and strategic boons.

Group that needed a nanny to pick them up the ground often will certainly lose interest in scourge but it doesn't mean that "organized end game content teams" won't (after all, with such a name, players from those team must be good enough at the game to only realy need the boon, not the heal).

Objectively, after the patch the healing output will be high enough (around 1500 hp/s in harrier) while the boons will be attractive in boss encounters (Might, fury, regen, alacrity and aegis). At this level, the only thing that would make it lose out against a druid would be a lower breakbar potential (raid/strike), but, on another hand, Scourge got a higher boon hate potential (fractal). Even, if at release of the patch the "numbers" aren't there yet, futur patchs can still beef those numbers up anyway.

I think there needs to be further improvements.

We didn't see any numbers yet. So all this is kinda vague. But if we take current numbers in account, the alac application will be 180radius around the shade, which is way to small.

Also scourge doesn't have a good way to provide stability. Yes technically can provide stability, but it's a super bad type of application compared to literally any other stability source in the game. Having to run through you whole party for giving stab is just bad. Meanwhile guardian can press a button that gives 5 stacks of stability with 600range, and no need to set up that stability.

Also I don't understand, why scourge got even more regeneration. You could already provide Perma regen by camping and spamming staff2.

As a defensive healer, there's definetly protection missing in the kit.

Fury on dessicate is also kinda pointless. Most builds provide fury anyways. And having a single source of fury that we don't know the duration, is bad. Also theres much better scourge/Necro utility for that slot than dessicate:

Serpent siphon is almost set in stone, same with signet of undeath. And I doubt that you want to waste that last slot for dessicate, if you can get: spectral grasp, poison cloud, portal, trail of anguish (even tho it sucks imo), maybe even well if power.

Then we don't know the alacrity values, and the barrier values from new sandstorm shroud or if sandstorm shroud still damages enemies.

I really hope you aren't forced into sandstorm shroud to keep up alacrity in a dps-alac build. Cause most builds nowadays only require one trait to provide the crucial boon.

We don't know if feed from corruption is moved to master tier, or if we get a new trait. But if it's moved to master tier, there won't really be a good trait choice there for dps scourge.

Then I really ask myself, why the shade uptime reduction isn't tied to the alacrity trait instead of making it baseline.

Honestly, even though we don't know a lot of the values, I feel like those changes are a bit rushed and not thought through.

I sounds a lot like scourge will just be a worse druid or heal mech. Because scourge can't really choose their utility skills, or you are always missing one or two good ones. And it will have worse healing, worse boons, and worse freedom to choose utility skills than those other two healers.

The only good thing scourge excel at might be might generation.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Nimon.7840

[Dadnir.5038]

11 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

I really hope you aren't forced into sandstorm shroud to keep up alacrity in a dps-alac build.

Unlikely. Keep in mind that you have Sand flare/Serpent siphon that will each be on a 16s CD (thank's to alacrity), Sand cascade that could go down go down to 6s CD and 3 charges of manifest sand shade. Unless the base alacrity gained from the trait is inferior to 2.5s Sandstorm shroud won't be something that will be needed (obviously concentration will most likely be a stat that will be needed).

11 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

We don't know if feed from corruption is moved to master tier, or if we get a new trait.

We do know. Feed from corruption replace desert empowerment and will grant barrier to the scourge instead of the boon removed (with an ICD). In other words:

• Nourishing ashes, feed from corruption and Sand savant will act as self sustain trait.
• Fell beacon, Sadistic searing and Demonic lore will stay the dps traits.
• Abrasive grit, Herald of sorrow and Desert empowerment are the support traits.

12 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

Then I really ask myself, why the shade uptime reduction isn't tied to the alacrity trait instead of making it baseline.

It's simple really, it's to make dps builds and support build more punishing in term of survivability than self sustain builds.

12 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

I feel like those changes are a bit rushed and not thought through.

For me it's the opposite, I do feel like that, for once, they've thought through those tweaks. They are establishing for the scourge 3 distincts gameplays each rewarding in their own right (even if people only see it as the end of their world right now). Though, It's a bit of a bummer that they don't do the same for harbinger which is probably the specialization that needed such treatment the most.

12 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

I sounds a lot like scourge will just be a worse druid or heal mech.

Not really, I'd say that it will have it's own pros and cons. Scourge is bound to be the better option when you need burst of might stacks, Heal mech is more of a slow and steady ramp up of might stack while Druid will most likely find himself in a newfound struggle to provide might as it will now need to channel rejuvenating tide (the fact that using rejuvenating tide for might prevent him to provide alacrity for a few second will most likely make druid cry a bit).

[Swan.9815]

I'm curious about why you think Sand Savant is a self sustain trait? The only thing I can think of is that Blood as Sand will give it's full reduction with the trait since maintaining 3 shades will be impossible after the duration nerf, but I think a GM self sustain trait should be more impactful than improving a minor trait.

[Nimon.7840]

9 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Unlikely. Keep in mind that you have Sand flare/Serpent siphon that will each be on a 16s CD (thank's to alacrity), Sand cascade that could go down go down to 6s CD and 3 charges of manifest sand shade. Unless the base alacrity gained from the trait is inferior to 2.5s Sandstorm shroud won't be something that will be needed (obviously concentration will most likely be a stat that will be needed).

We do know. Feed from corruption replace desert empowerment and will grant barrier to the scourge instead of the boon removed (with an ICD). In other words:

• Nourishing ashes, feed from corruption and Sand savant will act as self sustain trait.
• Fell beacon, Sadistic searing and Demonic lore will stay the dps traits.
• Abrasive grit, Herald of sorrow and Desert empowerment are the support traits.

It's simple really, it's to make dps builds and support build more punishing in term of survivability than self sustain builds.

For me it's the opposite, I do feel like that, for once, they've thought through those tweaks. They are establishing for the scourge 3 distincts gameplays each rewarding in their own right (even if people only see it as the end of their world right now). Though, It's a bit of a bummer that they don't do the same for harbinger which is probably the specialization that needed such treatment the most.

Not really, I'd say that it will have it's own pros and cons. Scourge is bound to be the better option when you need burst of might stacks, Heal mech is more of a slow and steady ramp up of might stack while Druid will most likely find himself in a newfound struggle to provide might as it will now need to channel rejuvenating tide (the fact that using rejuvenating tide for might prevent him to provide alacrity for a few second will most likely make druid cry a bit).

I don't know where that comes from, but feed from corruption doing barrier on boon remove? Where did anet say that? Some dev discord?

And their reason for nerfing shade uptime was, that they don't want scourge to be able to provide Perma 10 man alac -> with that reason in mind, nerfing the whole of scourge is questionable and feels rushed/not thought through.

Then PvE dps scourge is in a weird spot, where it still doesn't have a master tier trait that increases its dps. Sure if bosses had Perma boons you could corrupt into torment from punishment skills, sadistic searing is a dps option. But right now, most bosses don't have boons. So you can play the current setup. New feed from corruption wouldn't do anything in PvE . And sandstorm shroud might be DPS loss. So we are struck with sadistic searing. So you probably want to play sand flare and dessicate to get some extent of benefit. But: I'm not a fan of having to use your heal skill for dps reasons. Sure in PvE environment you normally have a healer with you, but I still don't like it.

And for desert empowerment there needs to be a proper slack duration. One that needs you to spam F3 and sandflare off cooldown on a dps alac build (around 40% boondurations) and that doesn't need you to spam your barriers on a heal build, in order for you to be able to actually use those barriers to prevent incoming damage.