Scourge changes.

[Powerfat.7294]

So you made the entire class feel awful to play, and the only playable way to do heal scourge is to take big shade, so it still doesn't give alac. Nice.

Also, in a patch that is meant to be be about removing ability spam, you implement alac on scourge in a way that requires you to spam all abilities to upkeep it. Nice. It's actually insane how under-tuned the alac duration on desert empowerment is.

It doesn't matter how much you buff dps scourge numbers, 8 second duration shades make it feel horrible to play.

[Custodio.6134]

yeah, i was even experimenting with alac-scourge. not that much, but i think it was enough to get a conclusion: 

It doesn´t work. 

Even with full harrier (so a potential heal-alac-scourge), monk-runes and concentration-sigil (a gear-setup any heal-quickness firebrand would use basically), i was not even able to keep up alacrity 100%. 

Sure, i´m not a build-expert, but with how fast you burn through your life-force, and with spamming all alacrity-generating skills, i was NOT able to keep it up. 

With a setup like this, i would expect to completely overcap on duration, yet i wasn´t even able to keep it up (not even close). And that with an extremely unsatisfying gameplay (and this comes from an engineer-main that is used to spamming skills on CD)

Edited June 27, 2023 by Custodio.6134

[Sias.4592]

I was able to upkeep alac in plague doctor's, but with two Punishment skills (the two that grant barrier). It feels weird, you have to be constantly spaming your shade, shade skill 2, 4 and both Punishment to get around 15s alac.

[crepuscular.9047]

so kittenen stupid, mechs can do massive dps and upkeep 100% alac by pressing 1, while scourges you needs to use your hands feet and face roll the keyboard to do decent dps or maintain mediocre alac uptime

Edited June 27, 2023 by crepuscular.9047

[timochka.3148]

This version of scourge is just to painful to play for the extreme little that it gives in return. I personally am failing to see how it is viable while other specs that do much more with less effort. Have always had a necro as a main and it saddens me to retire my scourge and hope they actually fix what they has destroyed, least I can still play my harbi and mesmer. Good bye my poor scourge

[AlchemistRai.7596]

i've done some testing with the alac scourge, it's not good. you have such a hard time just keeping 3 shades up let alone keeping alac up. Did the balance team think we would just run pure barrier giving skills? i can't even run normal heal scourge with no alac because of how you moved shade giving barrier to the grandmaster trait, every other support change doesn't feel that bad, but scourge feels like a punishment to play now, i can't even pay attention to mechanics because i need to  press each key the moment it lights up to keep any HOPE of having 100% alac up time.

can the balance team just take the alac back? scourge was a fun way to do "healing" that no other MMO did, and you ruined it. You ruined any enjoyment from playing scourge as a healer because one too many people thought scourge was too strong on boneskinner, the strike where you just need to go left to win. 

[IOA.7815]

I tried various builds with 100% boon duration and can't upkeep Alac if I have to do anything else, like heal. Tied using Feed from Corruption but you don't get barrier when you've removed all the boons so after 30 seconds that trait is pretty much useless. Then tried Sandstorm Shroud and that was a bit better because you get an extra 2 seconds of Alac out of it but still not enough to keep it up 100% without spamming all your skills. So you made it so Alac is generated when scourge gives barrier and then took all the barrier generation away. You left manifest sand shade which you have to spam every 8 seconds and only gives 3 seconds of Alac with 100% boon duration, sand cascade which you have to spam every 8.5 seconds and only gives 3 seconds of Alac with 100% boon duration, Sandstorm shroud which you have to spam every 17 seconds and only gives 6 seconds of Alac with 100% boon duration. Then you have a total of 2 punishment skills that give barrier, Serpent Siphon which gives you a whopping 3 seconds of Alac on a 20 second cooldown with 100% boon duration and lastly Sand Swell, a teleport on a 35 second cooldown for another whopping 3 seconds of Alac with 100% boon duration. There are no weapons that give barrier for any Necro spec. So if you time everything right and don't tried to do mechanics or heal you can probably get 100% Alac uptime but just don't try to do anything else.

Now let's talk about healing. All you have is regeneration. Not actual heals for your squad like Ele, Mech, Druid, Scapper, etc. And the regeneration you do have is substandard compared to Druid and Ele. Part of the reason Scourge didn't need direct heals is because it had barrier for mitigation but that was taken away.

Ele gets 10 seconds or more of Alac with overloads and the duration stacks so you can build it up pretty quickly. Mechanist gives Alac on barrier but the duration for crisis zone is 10.5 seconds and then you have barrier signet, barrier burst, and mace 2, which is part of the normal rotation, to fill in the gaps with barrier to keep it going pretty easily. Both Ele and Mech can also either heal or do DPS when giving out Alac.

It would have been nice if you actually tried to use the spec in actual gameplay before releasing changes like this. Scourge is useless for end game content. Can't do DPS, can't heal, and can't provide Alac. It would have been better if you just told everyone that you are removing the spec instead of just destroying it and leaving it in the game.

If there was a test build that shows these changes actually are viable, I'd like to see what your QA team and testers came up with because I'm at a loss to find anything that works at this point.