Sand Shades

[Rose.2593]

Just did a strike, and constantly had to keep pressing F1 to make a new shade, 4 second cool down, and up for 8 seconds so one was pretty much going away the whole time, hardly had 3 up at all 😞 

Also when choosing Desert Empowerment, how does alacrity for 1 second help? You have to wait 4 seconds to make a new shade to apply it again, unless you have a stack of 3 to apply all at once

[Radina.6057]

6 minutes ago, Rose.2593 said:

hardly had 3 up at all

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.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

37 minutes ago, Rose.2593 said:

Just did a strike, and constantly had to keep pressing F1 to make a new shade, 4 second cool down, and up for 8 seconds so one was pretty much going away the whole time, hardly had 3 up at all 😞 

Also when choosing Desert Empowerment, how does alacrity for 1 second help? You have to wait 4 seconds to make a new shade to apply it again, unless you have a stack of 3 to apply all at once

You grant Quickness anytime you grant Barrier. Not just when you Manifest Sandshades.

There are tons of ways Scourge provides barrier. It looked to me like they added more this patch.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

4 minutes ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

You grant Quickness anytime you grant Barrier. Not just when you Manifest Sandshades.

There are tons of ways Scourge provides barrier. It looked to me like they added more this patch.

They added 2 pulses on Sandstorm Shroud and that was it.  I guess by making Serpent Siphon actually usable instead of totally worthless, they sort of did add that too.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Tiviana.2650]

I wonder whats going to happen to pylon kite scourge now! Is this going to wreck it, why break something that was working, no scourge player asked for alac. But anet just has to give every build an alac or quick. 

[Shaogin.2679]

As far as Heal Alac Scourge goes, it does work. I am running full Harrier, Monk Runes, and a Concentration Sigil. With one shade up (because that is all you will have most of the time) that puts me at 94% Boon Duration. With that, I can maintain permanent alacrity by only casting F1, F3, and traited F5 off cooldown. That means I can pick whatever I want for my heal, utility, and elite skills.

If you are trying to make a condi alac Scourge or a Plaguedoctor Alac Scourge, it will likely not work due to the amount of Boon Duration required.

On my Heal Alac Scourge, I can maintain permanent alacrity, 25 might, fury, and regeneration. Between barriers and healing, it provides excellent sustain. As for the utility, it is pretty decent,  but I do still need to test out how useful the revives are now. Other than that, though, it only really lacks reflects. It has options for stability, projectile defense, aegis, massive condi cleanse, boon rip, short-range portal, aoe stun break, and crowd control. Since your utility slots are free, you can choose what you need for the encounter. 

So overall, Anet needs to fix Scourge, but Heal Scourge is doing all right.

 

Edit: For the people who need clarification or disagree with this, I would love to hear what you do not agree with or understand. To be clear, DPS Scourge is horrible right now and the Shade CD changes make no sense when they could have simply tacked the Alacrity on to Sand Savant. My point was in response to the OP's remark and how only having 1 second of Alacrity proc from the trait helps. I understand most people are in a negative mind set right now, but Heal Alac Scourge is actually good right now.

Follow-up: Ah, I see now. Some people just want to be negative and whine over something they haven't even tried. 🤣

Edited June 30, 2023 by Shaogin.2679

[LordMagus.3279]

It took me only 10 minutes of benching my DPS scourge on the golem to hate it, pull out all my sigils, and change to harbinger.

Why even allow a maximum of 3 sand shades if it's impossible to reach that many after the opening? The actual impact on damage isn't massive, but you end up spamming F1 so much and your weapon skills feel a lot more disjointed. It's just chaotic and unfun now. 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

3 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

I wonder whats going to happen to pylon kite scourge now! Is this going to wreck it, why break something that was working, no scourge player asked for alac. But anet just has to give every build an alac or quick. 

It won't kill pylon kite Scourge.  Just need to be more on top of the ball with placing shades as they come off cooldown.  Also will take a bit of a DPS hit from losing expertise. Pylon kite Scourge was one of the few instances where losing Desert Empowerment at Master tier isn't actually a loss, since you were running Sadistic Searing anyway.

While it will be worse than pre-patch, it will still be fully capable.  At least provided the Sand cascade nerf doesn't tip the scales into needing more sustain.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Rather large bird.3108]

3 hours ago, LordMagus.3279 said:

Why even allow a maximum of 3 sand shades if it's impossible to reach that many after the opening? The actual impact on damage isn't massive, but you end up spamming F1 so much and your weapon skills feel a lot more disjointed. It's just chaotic and unfun now. 

This really is it - trying to keep shades up is UNFUN.   Having all shade charges used and none out is crazy. This makes "Sand shade" and "Blood as sand"   into nothing little buffs that are hard to maintain.

Why are we even giving alacrity? Turning a death and decay class to a might and alacrity bot makes no sense. 

This change really feels spiteful, perhaps it was addressing some specific aspect but the impact is HUGE. I would like my 20 seconds back.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Rather large bird.3108

[Taloc.5843]

I don't know who asked for alacrity, but the trade-off was not worth it!  The cool down on the sand shard combined with the 8-second time means you never have more than 1-2 shards up at a time.  It makes the class unplayable.  Previously you could drop three shards and get through a five-key rotation; now, you are lucky to get two keys in before you have to lay down another shard. 

Good job ANet thanks for screwing my main! All for the sake of giving a minority group something the majority never asked for a useless alacrity boon. 

[Anthony.8056]

The first class I logged into after the patch was my scourge and the shade nerf is terrible and ineffective. What is the point of having three shades when you can only summon one or two before they disappear. 

[Zex Anthon.8673]

3 hours ago, Anthony.8056 said:

The first class I logged into after the patch was my scourge and the shade nerf is terrible and ineffective. What is the point of having three shades when you can only summon one or two before they disappear. 

Been like this in competitive for years.

[Asum.4960]

4 hours ago, Taloc.5843 said:

Good job ANet thanks for screwing my main! All for the sake of giving a minority group something the majority never asked for a useless alacrity boon. 

Let's not needlessly blame some unnamed "minority group". Nobody asked for this to be done in such an utterly incompetent way - and there were plenty easier and more obvious options to accomplish the goal of Scourge as Alacrity provider, without touching the DPS, or even the Ress Carry build, while assuring no problematic overlap between the three via exclusive, competing Trait picks (replacing and adjusting Traits which have been dead since many years at this point). 

 

This change wasn't for anyone - I don't think anyone is happy with this.

[Ghertu.7096]

Oh, that explains a lot. Today was the first time I tried Scourge and I didn't know this patch reduced the shades uptime and I didn't know what it was before hence I never played the spec before. So I was like "People really enjoy this? I mean, the forums made it seem like the spec is pretty popular. Must be a vocal minority."

By the way, I thought the whole idea behind "pre-place an AoE then choose what it does later" was, well, that you can choose later. If you need to hit F2-F5 instantly after hitting F1 they as well could be just  normal AoE skills with separate targeting.

 

[Rose.2593]

Can someone explain how you keep 3 shades up when duration is 8 seconds, and cool down 4 seconds? Everytime you put one up after the initial opening one vanishes? 

So if someone could explain what you do instead to keep all 3 up?? Afterall keeping up 3 shades is one of the points of the build?

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

4 hours ago, Rose.2593 said:

Can someone explain how you keep 3 shades up when duration is 8 seconds, and cool down 4 seconds? Everytime you put one up after the initial opening one vanishes? 

So if someone could explain what you do instead to keep all 3 up?? Afterall keeping up 3 shades is one of the points of the build?

That's the neat part!  You don't!

[Rose.2593]

Seems like the duration should be at least 12 seconds for Scourge to work how its supposed to. 

[Gaeb.2837]

26 minutes ago, Rose.2593 said:

Seems like the duration should be at least 12 seconds for Scourge to work how its supposed to. 

Yep. It's great that one shade will give the effect of three (+15% duration condi/boons) but there's so little wiggle room - and missing putting a shade down on time instantly cuts down your dps or buffing potential because there's no margin for error. They should have at least a 25% margin for error, and I'd prefer more like 50% ergo the 12s request. Frankly if they wanted to up both the recast and duration I'd be fine, say 10s to charge and 15s duration - it's not fun to constantly be plopping the things down just to maintain the duration buff (and a little more damage), it should be more of a tactical decision.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Gaeb.2837

[Rose.2593]

Yes, and your constantly putting down shades cutting in to time to use the other skills, and then if you miss putting down the shades, like 20 seconds later there all gone.

Was expecting them to address the duration in the last mini balance patch but nothing was even mentioned regarding reasons why it was reduced so much. 20 seconds to 8 seconds is a massive reduction.

[MJxD.4251]

On 7/26/2023 at 6:11 AM, Rose.2593 said:

Yes, and your constantly putting down shades cutting in to time to use the other skills, and then if you miss putting down the shades, like 20 seconds later there all gone.

Was expecting them to address the duration in the last mini balance patch but nothing was even mentioned regarding reasons why it was reduced so much. 20 seconds to 8 seconds is a massive reduction.

its the devs sneaky way of trying to nerf the class from hitting to many targets and or allys. The dev that did this most likely knew the feedback would be negative which is why radio silence mode was activated on this. and its also the reason they over buffed the damage on the last update to distract that the duration didn't change(it also did need more dps from what it lost). There trying to force this to work!
to me they effectively destroyed the class that used to be my main with this change. there are also other players going around saying scourge is balance now which is like umm no but what ever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited July 27, 2023 by MJxD.4251
meep

[Shadowmoon.7986]

You do know sandstorm, f2, sand flare, serpent and f1 all proc desert empowerment? There really no reason to just spam f1.

[Kulvar.1239]

I think it would be better for everyone (players and ArenaNet when balancing Scourge) if Sand Savant was baseline.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

4 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

I think it would be better for everyone (players and ArenaNet when balancing Scourge) if Sand Savant was baseline.

Agreed.  Time to make the Sand Savant radius baseline and rework the grandmaster trait to something else.

[Acyk.9671]

10 minutes ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Agreed.  Time to make the Sand Savant radius baseline and rework the grandmaster trait to something else.

too large for pvp and WvW unfortunately

[bruakumfd.4817]

I've been waiting for this! In all seriousness, I've been wondering when somebody was going to complain about this. I was really disappointed to log on the 18th and see that if I wanted the full duration, I'd have to run PvP or WvW. Bonus points since I did see some people arguing that alacrity could've just been attached to Sand Savant.

That said, as somebody who's only played Scourge a few times, I wasn't about to do that. As I read this thread, I wonder if we were supposed to just run the aforementioned trait and call it a day.