Balance Follow-Up Thread

[Acanthus.8120]

  

5 hours ago, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Hi everyone, 

As always, thank you for all the feedback you’ve shared over the past few weeks. We’ve been keeping a close eye on the discussion and it’s clear that some of the changes in Tuesday’s update didn’t land as we’d intended. Today I’ll be sharing our current plan for the next update on July 18, much of which is intended to address the most pressing issues that have been raised. 

Leading up to that release we’ll be watching your feedback to this post, this week’s beta test, and the June 27 update, and may make additional changes as needed. 

 

Thanks, 

Cal “cmc” Cohen 

Skills and Balance Lead 

Scourge 

Alacrity scourge is a build that we were pretty cautious with during development; we were concerned about the potential power level that could result from giving the existing heal scourge build easy access to alacrity, and to mitigate this we reduced the strength of some of its key defensive support skills. Now that the release has been live for a few days, we agree that the changes were too heavy handed, and we’ll be pulling back the reductions to Sand Cascade’s barrier as well as the barrier component of Desert Empowerment. We’ll also be giving scourge a reliable source of group protection through Sandstorm Shroud, and increasing the base alacrity duration to make it a bit easier to maintain. 

Damage scourge builds were negatively impacted by some of the changes made for alacrity scourge, and the July 18 release will include some larger adjustments to bring them back up.  

Sand Cascade: Increased base barrier from 996 to 1188 in PvE only. Increased barrier attribute scaling from 1.25 to 2 in PvE only. 

• Desert Empowerment: Increased alacrity duration from 1 second to 1.5 seconds in PvE only. Increased base barrier from 385 to 572 in PvE only. Increased barrier attribute scaling from 0.75 to 1.0 in PvE only. 
• Sandstorm Shroud: This skill now grants 1.5 seconds of protection to nearby allies each pulse, and 3 seconds of protection to nearby allies on detonation. 
• Fell Beacon: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of torch skills, and now also increases the damage of burning you inflict by 10%. 
• Harrowing Wave: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 16 seconds in PvE only. Increased the life force per target from 3% to 5% in PvE only. 
• Oppressive Collapse: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE only. Increased might radius from 240 to 360. Might application per condition is now capped at 7 condtions in PvE only. 
• Sadistic Searing: This trait has been reworked, and causes Nefarious Favor to burn nearby enemy targets (2 stacks, 5 seconds in PvE, 1 stack, 4 seconds in PvP/WvW).  
• Demonic Lore: Increased torment damage bonus from 25% to 33% in PvE only.  
• Sand Sage: This trait has been reworked. Gain expertise and concentration while you have an active sand shade (225 in PvE, 150 in PvP/WvW). 
• Blood as Sand: This trait has been reworked. Reduce all incoming damage while you have an active sand shade (15% in PvE, 7% in PvP/WvW). 
   

Druid 

Druid is in a similar situation to scourge in that we were overly conservative with its alacrity, so it is also getting an increase to its base duration. We’ve also seen feedback regarding druid’s might generation, and we’re bumping up both the stacks and duration on Spirited Arrival to address this.

• Grace of the Land: Increased alacrity duration from 0.75 seconds to 1 second in PvE only. 
• Spirited Arrival: Increased might stacks from 3 to 6 in PvE only. Increased might duration from 9 seconds to 12 seconds in PvE only. 
   

Untamed 

Quickness untamed has a few issues that we’re tackling in the July 18 release. The first being a usability improvement for Let Loose’s ambush-reset component: triggering the ambush reset while in the unleashed state will now immediately grant access to the ambush skill instead of requiring a transition out of and back into the unleashed state. We’re also making a slight increase to the quickness duration to make it easier to maintain.

• Let Loose: Increased quickness duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds in PvE only. This trait will now immediately grant access to unleashed ambush skills when swapping weapons while in the unleashed state. 
   

Herald 

The new implementation for quickness herald is another case that we’re looking to improve. The current timing around its quickness application can be clunky and hard to track due to the 3 second pulse interval. To address this, we’ll be rebalancing the duration around a 1 second pulse interval to make it a bit more responsive. We’ve also seen concerns around the reduction in boon uptimes due to the loss of extra facet pulses from Draconic Echo, and are giving additional sources of concentration to help mitigate this. Our hope is that these changes will improve the overall gameplay feel of quickness herald, but if we’re still seeing issues with the general implementation after the July 18 update, we will evaluate whether a larger rework is needed. 

• Elevated Compassion: Reduced quickness pulse interval from 3 seconds to 1 second. Reduced quickness duration from 3 seconds to 1.25 seconds. This trait now converts 13% of the herald’s power into concentration in addition to its other effects. 
• Reinforced Potency: Increased concentration from 120 to 240 in PvE only. 
• Shared Empowerment: Increased might duration from 8 seconds to 12 seconds in PvE only.
   

Deadeye 

Quickness deadeye is significantly overperforming where it should be damage-wise. This was partially due to a bug that caused Malicious Intent to be active when not equipped, but looking beyond that fix it’s clear that additional reductions will be needed. We’re still discussing exactly what changes will be made, but they will be finalized in time for the July release and will likely include a reduction to One in the Chamber’s damage bonus. 

 

Specter 

Alacrity specter is another build that is overperforming in terms of damage. This is partially due to the base alacrity duration being long enough to require minimal investment into concentration, but also due to the lack of a significant damage tradeoff in the grandmaster trait slot. We’ll be tuning up Strength of Shadows while bringing down some of specter’s other damage sources to bring the alacrity build more in line without negatively affecting the damage builds. 

Lastly, we’re increasing the protection duration of Shadow Sap to ensure that healing-focused specter builds have a reliable source of group protection. 

• Shadestep: Reduced alacrity duration from 2 seconds to 1.25 seconds in PvE only. 
• Strength of Shadows: This trait no longer reduces incoming damage and no longer increases the duration of torment inflicted by Rot Wallow Venom, but instead increases torment damage by 25% in addition to converting vitality to expertise. 
• Larcenous Torment: This trait no longer increases torment damage, and instead steals health from an enemy when you apply torment to them. 
• Shadow Sap: Increased protection duration from 2.5 seconds to 4 seconds in PvE only. 
   

Alacrity Willbender 

A big pain point with alacrity willbender is its inability to provide alacrity during phase transitions or other times where it can’t strike an enemy. We’re hoping to mitigate this by updating Phoenix Protocol to grant some alacrity on the activation of resolve, which can also be shared via Battle Presence. We’ve also cleaned up some aftercasts and made general improvements to animations for a few key damage skills with the goal of making the overall gameplay feel a bit more fluid. 

• Phoenix Protocol: this trait now grants alacrity to the willbender when activating Flowing Resolve (5 seconds in PvE, 3 seconds in PvP/WvW), which can be shared to allies with Battle Presence. Reduced the alacrity duration when resolve triggers from 1.5 seconds to 1 second in PvE only.  
• Restorative Virtues: This trait now grants vigor instead of alacrity. 
• Symbol of Resolution: This skill can now be interrupted by other skills.  
• Ray of Judgment: Reduced aftercast  
• Binding Blade: This skill will now use a different animation with less aftercast. 
   

Alacrity Mirage 

Last up is a rework to how mirage grants alacrity. We want there to be a better distinction between alacrity and non-alacrity builds, which is something that can be a bit blurry at times due to Chaos Vortex granting alacrity with no investment. This alacrity is being rolled into a rework of Mirage Mantle that improves all ambush skills in various ways, which can be seen in the patch note below. 

• Mirage Mantle: This trait has been reworked. Ambush skills are improved. 
• Axes of Symmetry: Also inflicts cripple 
• Mirage Thrust: Removes a boon from struck foes 
• Ether Barrage:  Grants quickness to self (1.5 seconds)  
• Split Surge: Deals increased damage (25% in PvE, 10 in PvP/WvW) 
• Chaos Vortex: AoE Alacrity (2.5 seconds for the player, 0.5 seconds for clones) 
• Ambush Assault: Grants might to self 
• Wave of Panic : Also inflicts torment 

Well, we made enough noise that we forced a response, but it sounds like they've already locked in changes for the next patch even though it's 3 weeks out, and it's not even close to undoing or compensating the damage done to our playstyles. I'm not about to spend my time trying to get attention from a team that doesn't respect our time, input (wouldn't care if they didn't literally request that part), or effort put into the game. I'm out guys. Good luck to the rest of you.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

It brings DPS Scourge back pretty well, and quite likely stronger than before.  It's still annoying placing shades every 8 seconds, but the actual damage output on paper is quite high (people are calculating it to be around 40k benchmark).

What it doesn't do so well is address the fact alac Scourge is bad because it requires such a tight stack to even share boons, nor does it help bring back the identity of Necros being able to be that "healer that doesn't give up just because you died."  Doesn't help Necro's poor actual group healing numbers either.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Acanthus.8120]

1 minute ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

It brings DPS Scourge back pretty well, and quite likely stronger than before.  It's still annoying placing shades every 8 seconds, but the actual damage output on paper is quite high (people are calculating it to be around 40k benchmark).

What it doesn't do so well is address the fact alac Scourge is bad because it requires such a tight stack to even share boons, nor does it help bring back the identity of Necros being able to be that "healer that doesn't give up just because you died."  Doesn't help Necro's poor actual group healing numbers either.

It doesn't change that they made everyone's builds less fun. The thing we pay them for. Also, corruption abilities and signets?

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Yes, corruption abilities and signets are a significant loss for us, but since ANet was quite explicit about their intent with those nerfs, I don't think we're going to see them return for a while.  DPS Scourge just died because they completely forgot it was a thing in their zeal for nerfing everything to make sure we can't upkeep 5 man alacrity.

[XECOR.2814]

I think the Pure-Dps and Alac-Dps-Scg builds will be great.

The Pure Heal Scg will be mediocre or kinda good but extremely replaceable because of qol nerfs to transfusion but no green numbers adjust hence not fitting into role compression as per current gw2 standard.

Heal-Alac-Scg will probably not be good but can't say for sure. Using small shade is very inconvenient unless the barriers would be so strong that you take that tradeoff. Have to see in game to determine.

For the time being we have to give up on signet effects, corruptions and resurrection it seems like. A big flavor loss for the core class.

[AlchemistRai.7596]

I like that they said something, but they just didn't listen again. none of the changes fix the problem, the shade timer is still garbage, scourge doesn't have enough heals to make up for how much they GUTTED the revive power (i understand 70% being too much but druids have AOE RES that's 72%! why are druids a better reviver then scourge??) and they still don't want to put the alac on sand savant!

[Birdie.3869]

Yeah, so nothing about corrupts/boon rips being increased in wvw and nothing about fixing necro signets. Great. So kill 2 core aspects of necro and then just ignore any feedback on why that's a bad idea.

Glad scourge isn't going to be dead forever, sad the rest of necro is.

[Nimon.7840]

I like the changes. 

Yes shade uptime is an issue, but I don't think that 20 second shade should return, as long as we are still able to put down 3 shades.

But I can see a future, in which sand savant gets reworked, and made baseline. That we are only able to control one shade at a time, then increase target caps to 5 for all shade abilities.

Why do I say that? Because of the minor trait changes. 

[lovemghool.7613]

Can I have my corruptions on my weapons and traits back please Anet? The abundance of cleanses especially in AoE did not need a buff by the removal of corruptions from almost everything with zero compensation.

[Lctl.6198]

This solves nothing for HScourge......... 

 

What is wrong with you Anet? Literally the entire feedback concerning HScourge is "REVERT IT" - because there's nothing positive about playing HScourge for alac. NOTHING.

 

Just put it back. People who played it before were already aware that the spec was niche, we knew that and accepted it. We don't need you to keep pretending you're fixing it, when you obviously aren't even paying attention to what people loved about HScourge

[Asum.4960]

9 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

It brings DPS Scourge back pretty well, and quite likely stronger than before.  It's still annoying placing shades every 8 seconds, but the actual damage output on paper is quite high (people are calculating it to be around 40k benchmark).

What it doesn't do so well is address the fact alac Scourge is bad because it requires such a tight stack to even share boons, nor does it help bring back the identity of Necros being able to be that "healer that doesn't give up just because you died."  Doesn't help Necro's poor actual group healing numbers either.

For one, cScourge doesn't need 40k Benchmark DPS to be competitive. A slight bump, sure, but otherwise it overperforms due to it's fantastic real fight DPS-uptime. 

What bothers me also is their utter lack of foresight with this - next expansion Scourge get's access to Pistol, and if it is anywhere near close to 40k DPS already without, it's going to be busted and require another nerf wave then. 

And knowing Anet, the way they will do that is by further reducing the playability of the spec, making it once more not just weaker, but also even less fun to play - and they probably will also wreck cHarbinger in the process by messing up Pistol. 

Meanwhile Alac Scourge has such a blatantly obvious solution (more than one, actually) to make it both work better and be more fun - without touching cScourge whatsoever in the first place. 

The changes they made, their communication about them, as well as the onboarding of feedback has always been lacklustre at best, but we've genuinely reached just straight up critical levels of incompetence at this point. 

 

Don't be placated by fancy damage numbers for the next patch cycle to distract from the problem of the perpetually declining quality of game design. They can't band-aid over bad design with powercreep forever. 

It's not going to end well.

[AlchemistRai.7596]

1 hour ago, Lctl.6198 said:

This solves nothing for HScourge......... 

 

What is wrong with you Anet? Literally the entire feedback concerning HScourge is "REVERT IT" - because there's nothing positive about playing HScourge for alac. NOTHING.

 

Just put it back. People who played it before were already aware that the spec was niche, we knew that and accepted it. We don't need you to keep pretending you're fixing it, when you obviously aren't even paying attention to what people loved about HScourge

This is a good point and i hope you don't mind if i expand on it, 

Heal scourge was my favorite spec in the game because of the way it aproched encounters, the reactive gameplay with trying to midigate as much damage as you could was really enjoyable and felt like a EMT instead of the same generic MMO healer. The reason people went to Heal scourge was for something that was niche and the changes have done nothing for the class identity that people want to play. We don't want to play a barrier healer with spamming a tinny tower to keep up a boon that we didn't want.

If you want to fix what you broke with heal scourge I see a couple things you could do:

give us alac on sand savant instead/ blend the alac trait into sand savant. everyone liked the size of sand savant not the fact it activated the minor trait passive and the changes you proposed miss the reason why heal scourges where taking it. It's for giving barrier in a larger area with less worry because we wanted to watch to see if somone was going down and it is clear you are worried about DPS scourge getting too strong, so limit them to one shade if they want to give alac instead of making sand savant a useless grand master trait.

return some reviving power. I know scourge had a meme of "scourge hard carry" and you wanted to nerf it's revive power but the amount you removed is WAY WAY too much, i mean people where asking for you to juse not give us alacrity instead of taking away the amount of reviving power you did, and if you are worried about WvW kill denial then just keep scourges revive power how it is right now for WvW and buff it only for PvE. I know the revival power shouldn't be at like90% or whatever but druid now has better revival power then the necromancer does, and that's kind of all we had.

Return the signet trait to what it was.

If you do these three things i can almost garentee that people will be MUCH more happy with how scourge is. The problem was never that you nerfed it or that alac isn't nice, it's that you took away the one thing we LIKED doing for some generic boon.

If people who liked scourge wanted to be a pure boon healer they would play another spec, we want the revive gameplay, it's fun and fits the theme of the class. All the changes on the 27th did was remove the way people wanted to play the class and replace it with a sub par barrier healer. Give us some reviving power back and put the alac on sand savant and we will be happy.

[GetFoxxed.9478]

BRING BACK SIGNETS

[Rather large bird.3108]

5 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

Yes shade uptime is an issue, but I don't think that 20 second shade should return, as long as we are still able to put down 3 shades.

Just Why? Why not? We could away put 3 out. Don't get your point. I want my old duration. (OR maybe 2 times the charges?)

[Lctl.6198]

18 minutes ago, AlchemistRai.7596 said:

This is a good point and i hope you don't mind if i expand on it, 

Heal scourge was my favorite spec in the game because of the way it aproched encounters, the reactive gameplay with trying to midigate as much damage as you could was really enjoyable and felt like a EMT instead of the same generic MMO healer. The reason people went to Heal scourge was for something that was niche and the changes have done nothing for the class identity that people want to play. We don't want to play a barrier healer with spamming a tinny tower to keep up a boon that we didn't want.

If you want to fix what you broke with heal scourge I see a couple things you could do:

give us alac on sand savant instead/ blend the alac trait into sand savant. everyone liked the size of sand savant not the fact it activated the minor trait passive and the changes you proposed miss the reason why heal scourges where taking it. It's for giving barrier in a larger area with less worry because we wanted to watch to see if somone was going down and it is clear you are worried about DPS scourge getting too strong, so limit them to one shade if they want to give alac instead of making sand savant a useless grand master trait.

return some reviving power. I know scourge had a meme of "scourge hard carry" and you wanted to nerf it's revive power but the amount you removed is WAY WAY too much, i mean people where asking for you to juse not give us alacrity instead of taking away the amount of reviving power you did, and if you are worried about WvW kill denial then just keep scourges revive power how it is right now for WvW and buff it only for PvE. I know the revival power shouldn't be at like90% or whatever but druid now has better revival power then the necromancer does, and that's kind of all we had.

Return the signet trait to what it was.

If you do these three things i can almost garentee that people will be MUCH more happy with how scourge is. The problem was never that you nerfed it or that alac isn't nice, it's that you took away the one thing we LIKED doing for some generic boon.

If people who liked scourge wanted to be a pure boon healer they would play another spec, we want the revive gameplay, it's fun and fits the theme of the class. All the changes on the 27th did was remove the way people wanted to play the class and replace it with a sub par barrier healer. Give us some reviving power back and put the alac on sand savant and we will be happy.

This. Well expanded.

 

The complete destruction of class identity on a specc that was already niche, feels forced and uncalled for.

I loved the rezzing and barrier as you said - I know that for competitive PVE gameplay it wasn't enough to take a Boon provider spot, but I was OK with it. most HScourges were.

I loved going into Events and feeling like a Medic with shock pads. 

Some will argue we can still do that, but no. Sand Savant is a big reason the specc was fun, thats what most HSCourges were using anyway - and right now, just because of a single stupid BOON, it's like it doesnt exist.

You nerfed core skills and Scourge skills, all for one boon - and worse of all, if an HScourge doesnt take it, it's nerfing itself even further.


HScourge was *FINE* - that's what Anet needs to come to terms with. HS was a FINE NICHE SPECC.
If I wanted to be a boon bot, I would play a guardian or whatever

PLEASE, revert HS to what it was and if you TRULY want to try something POSITIVE - go back to the lab and think how to approach this differently. You took way too much for the sake of a single, stupid, ridiculous boon that shouldn't even exist in it's current form.

It was too much, and even the follow up (that will take half a month to arrive) is not enough to replace what we lost.
 

[Necrovore.4712]

Well, first of all, I’m glad our feedback DID work and ANet is adjusting. So it wasn’t for nothing, they do listen, and we can continue debating this up until 18 July. Scourge may still come back from the dead!

My 2 cents as a PvE condi scourge dps main:

- it’s nice that we get more dps on existing abilities… even if that wasn’t what we asked for. It may make condi scourge more feasible  in endgame PvE content.
- but: the 20 to 8 second shade duration nerf is what will still make me switch to other classes. cScourge with 8 sec shade duration is just too spammy and boring to play because you need 3 shades up for the +expertise. I don’t want to spam F1 every 8 seconds on top of the rest of my rotation - especially because it interrupts auto attack chains. 

Three concrete options on how to fix this:

1. Reset duration back to 20 sec (aka: “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”). 

2. Reduce duration to, say, 12 or 16 sec but make sure f1 doesn’t interrupt auto attack chains (so you can spam shades while auto attacking, which is ok);

3. be creative with talents. For example if the alac generation is the main reason sand shade duration was reduced, then you could make shade duration for those who pick up that talent different from that of condi dps scourge. 

[Fend.4956]

Signets in PvE will still be a bad pick after this patch. Boon removal has very little effect on PvE fights, and I'm sure Anet knows this.

On the other hand, the previous version of the trait enabled many niche builds that were fun and effective, such as power signet reaper and open world solo cele reaper. Those builds are now unusable.

There have been multiple suggestions to bring back signets, here are my thoughts on potential solutions:

- Make the effects other than the recharge modifier of the trait baseline (enhanced passive effects in shroud), or at least allow the normal passive effects to work in shroud. No other profession loses signet passives without using their active effect.

- Split the trait for PvE and competitive modes, but take out the recharge modifier. This allows the trait to give boon strips in the modes they're most effective in, while preserving the build diversity the old version created in PvE.

This is my last post on the matter. I've been playing GW2 since beta and rarely criticize the devs on their decisions, but even though they say they're listening to our feedback, I don't see anything in their follow-up that the player base has suggested. The reasoning for gutting the signet trait stated in the steam was that it was "kinda bad", but when presented with feedback to the contrary, we have received no response or acknowledgement. The lack of communication here is alarming, and my trust in the company once again is shaken.

 

[Asum.4960]

9 minutes ago, Necrovore.4712 said:

cScourge with 8 sec shade duration is just too spammy and boring to play because you need 3 shades up for the +expertise. I don’t want to spam F1 every 8 seconds on top of the rest of my rotation - especially because it interrupts auto attack chains. 

The incentive for having multiple Shades up will actually be removed in 3 weeks through: 

Quote

Sand Sage: This trait has been reworked. Gain expertise and concentration while you have an active sand shade (225 in PvE, 150 in PvP/WvW). 

Blood as Sand: This trait has been reworked. Reduce all incoming damage while you have an active sand shade (15% in PvE, 7% in PvP/WvW). 

But the gameplay loop of spamming out Manifest Sand Shade every ~6 seconds (with Alacrity), which tbf isn't really related to this last patch and has made for bad gameplay since it was changed to an 8 second base Cooldown in December of 2019, will remain. 

 

That does beg the question though - why do we have 3 charges and a maximum Shade count of 3 to begin with? And what is the matter with Sand Savant? That GM has been dead since that very same patch in 2019, and it's just gotten even more so now. 

Maybe they should just get rid of the multiple Shade concept at this point, I've honestly always felt that Sand Savant, with the one focused area of extended influence, made for better gameplay anyway. It's just slightly too large which was problematic esp. in PvP, provided too many targets which was problematic in WvW, and didn't offer anything else which was problematic in PvE.

Find a compromise between the 180 default and 300 savant radius, something like 240 as are Wells is probably a good spot for it, and then implement a shared 5 target cap between the Shade and the Scourge for it's effects, and then just run with that as baseline. 

Then increase the CD and duration of Manifest Sand Shade to something along the lines of 12-15 seconds (maybe with 2 charges, for repositioning purposes), so it's at least somewhat less spammy - and the DPS loss from less Manifest and Dhuumfire procs will be more than compensated for with the upcoming Fell Beacon buff, Sadistic Searing rework and changing Demonic Lore back to it's original 33% Torment Damage increase. 

That just seems like a far more comfortable, fun and functional gameplay loop, for Condi Scourge and Alac Scourge alike. 

The only problem would be having to come up with another GM Trait - but since they are fine with leaving Traits dead and dysfunctional for years at a time, it's not like there is much pressure or big shoes to fill there.

[loregnum.3619]

I'm not a scourge player so I can't comment on that situation. What I can comment on is the signet of suffering change. My main build before was a power signet reaper one (I only play open world) and it was fun to play and it sucks that they killed it. The crazy thing to me with the change is if you wanted to just dump the perks signet of suffering gave while in shroud along with the recharge perk because you felt they were somehow too powerful (were they for other specs?) then why not at least make the base passives of the signets work in shroud? As it stands now, these are pretty much useless skills for a profession that can't use them a lot of the time so what logic is there in making things in your game be completely useless? It defies logic to me. Perhaps this is something they will change and let the base passives work while in shroud.

I will say that having to go change to more of the "meta" build hasn't been too big an issue or change and still pretty fun yet I'd prefer to have my signet build back, regardless if I'm doing more dps now.

[mezuzel.4987]

4 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

The incentive for having multiple Shades up will actually be removed in 3 weeks through: 

But the gameplay loop of spamming out Manifest Sand Shade every ~6 seconds (with Alacrity), which tbf isn't really related to this last patch and has made for bad gameplay since it was changed to an 8 second base Cooldown in December of 2019, will remain. 

 

That does beg the question though - why do we have 3 charges and a maximum Shade count of 3 to begin with? And what is the matter with Sand Savant? That GM has been dead since that very same patch in 2019, and it's just gotten even more so now. 

Maybe they should just get rid of the multiple Shade concept at this point, I've honestly always felt that Sand Savant, with the one focused area of extended influence, made for better gameplay anyway. It's just slightly too large which was problematic esp. in PvP, provided too many targets which was problematic in WvW, and didn't offer anything else which was problematic in PvE.

Find a compromise between the 180 default and 300 savant radius, something like 240 as are Wells is probably a good spot for it, and then implement a shared 5 target cap between the Shade and the Scourge for it's effects, and then just run with that as baseline. 

Then increase the CD and duration of Manifest Sand Shade to something along the lines of 12-15 seconds (maybe with 2 charges, for repositioning purposes), so it's at least somewhat less spammy - and the DPS loss from less Manifest and Dhuumfire procs will be more than compensated for with the upcoming Fell Beacon buff, Sadistic Searing rework and changing Demonic Lore back to it's original 33% Torment Damage increase. 

That just seems like a far more comfortable, fun and functional gameplay loop, for Condi Scourge and Alac Scourge alike. 

The only problem would be having to come up with another GM Trait - but since they are fine with leaving Traits dead and dysfunctional for years at a time, it's not like there is much pressure or big shoes to fill there.

I completely agree. I love playing scourge, but I do not love having to maintain multiple shades. If Anet does not want to revert the changes we all object to, then I vote we go farther and limit the total possible shades to 1, or at most 2, with appropriate numbers updates.

[Asumita.2174]

4 hours ago, Fend.4956 said:

Signets in PvE will still be a bad pick after this patch. Boon removal has very little effect on PvE fights, and I'm sure Anet knows this.

On the other hand, the previous version of the trait enabled many niche builds that were fun and effective, such as power signet reaper and open world solo cele reaper. Those builds are now unusable.

There have been multiple suggestions to bring back signets, here are my thoughts on potential solutions:

- Make the effects other than the recharge modifier of the trait baseline (enhanced passive effects in shroud), or at least allow the normal passive effects to work in shroud. No other profession loses signet passives without using their active effect.

- Split the trait for PvE and competitive modes, but take out the recharge modifier. This allows the trait to give boon strips in the modes they're most effective in, while preserving the build diversity the old version created in PvE.

This is my last post on the matter. I've been playing GW2 since beta and rarely criticize the devs on their decisions, but even though they say they're listening to our feedback, I don't see anything in their follow-up that the player base has suggested. The reasoning for gutting the signet trait stated in the steam was that it was "kinda bad", but when presented with feedback to the contrary, we have received no response or acknowledgement. The lack of communication here is alarming, and my trust in the company once again is shaken.

 

You hit the nail on the head. 

Anet, please read and consider this.
Please don't waste a master trait that no one will ever use in PVE
There should be other options to build necros other than the meta.