Shade Duration makes the scourge a chore to play.

[Gaeb.2837]

26 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I get it's not flexible like 20 seconds. Honestly, I think that's the POINT of the change because having the 'flexibility' to play Scourge in an effectively PASSIVE style to heal, etc ... is highly likely to be something Anet is NOT cool with. 

One other note, this goes into the general issue of rotation vs reaction - I wouldn't use the word 'passive', I don't think that's what you mean at all.

Healers, for the most part, are actually reactive - they don't sit there spamming a rotation (ed: They work to keep their boons up, but you react/time an aegis, big heal, etc). Many of the patch changes are pushing classes toward strict rotations, taking the reactiveness (and one could argue, skill) out of the game and replacing it with basic piano rotations. The shade change is an example of a forced rotation, and a pretty tight one at that. Ed: In fairness, tight rotations are easier to balance, and Anet has a massive number of things to balance.

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Gaeb.2837

[Obtena.7952]

28 minutes ago, Gaeb.2837 said:

Healers, for the most part, are actually reactive - they don't sit there spamming a rotation. 

Well, seems to me that if you want to be effective as a Scourge Alac Healer, that's exactly how you will play it because barriers CAN be played as a damage prevention mitigation vs. a direct heal. But that shouldn't really be a problem right? Rotations are a fundamental part of how to optimally play GW2 since team content existed. It's a non-starter to suddenly object to having to play a rotation to do something at it's highest performance potential in this game. 

The real question is how a duration change from 20 to 8 seconds affects how people actually play the spec and from where I sit, it's completely ODD to pretend that many people weren't already spamming shades on CD to get the most performance from them in the first place. 

And no, I didn't mis-speak when I said passive because that's a significant impact with the duration change. No longer can someone lay down numerous shades for a 20 second fire and forget effect. That IS a very passive way to play the game as a Scourge and Anet has stated multiple times they are not big fans of passive effects. 

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gaeb.2837]

9 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Well, seems to me that if you want to be effective as a Scourge Alac Healer, that's exactly how you will play it because barriers CAN be played as a damage prevention mitigation vs. a direct heal.

The real question is how a duration change from 20 to 8 seconds affects how people actually play the spec and from where I sit, it's completely ODD to pretend that many people weren't already spamming shades on CD to get the most performance from them in the first place. 

And no, I didn't mis-speak when I said passive because that's a significant impact with the duration change. No longer can someone lay down numerous shades for a 20 second fire and forget effect. That IS a very passive way to play the game as a Scourge and Anet has stated multiple times they are not big fans of passive effects. 

Ironically one of the suggestions is simply to have the barrier generate from the scourge, not the shades. Poof, all issues with over-targeting solved and scourge-alac become even more intuitive since barriers only fire from the scourge.

A heck of a lot of people find it completely ODD that you think spamming every 8s is a healthy playstyle after having shade durations of 30s and then 20s. I'd be happy with one shade at at time (20s/8cd) because we certainly don't need help in the AOE department whereas the 8s requirement is just onerous.

See? Options. You're vigorously defending this change as if it's the only option. For some reason, most people don't agree with you.

[Obtena.7952]

58 minutes ago, Gaeb.2837 said:

Ironically one of the suggestions is simply to have the barrier generate from the scourge, not the shades. Poof, all issues with over-targeting solved and scourge-alac become even more intuitive since barriers only fire from the scourge.

Maybe ... but I'm not debating people's ideas about what would be a better implementation. I don't see the relevance because that's not how Anet designs the game. 

58 minutes ago, Gaeb.2837 said:

A heck of a lot of people find it completely ODD that you think spamming every 8s is a healthy playstyle after having shade durations of 30s and then 20s. I'd be happy with one shade at at time (20s/8cd) because we certainly don't need help in the AOE department whereas the 8s requirement is just onerous.

I find that completely odd to because I NEVER claimed spamming shades every 8 seconds was a healthy playstyle. It's simply the playstyle we have and it's not unreasonable to see that playstyle emerge given the way the game has worked since forever. 

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gaeb.2837]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

I find that completely odd to because I NEVER claimed spamming shades every 8 seconds was a healthy playstyle. It's simply the playstyle we have and it's not unreasonable to see that playstyle emerge given the way the game has worked since forever. 

You're in a thread titled "Shade duration makes the scourge a chore to play." 

I don't know how you entered or why you are spamming your ungrounded opinion over and over at the top of your lungs, but take a look around.

[Obtena.7952]

Just now, Gaeb.2837 said:

You're in a thread titled "Shade duration makes the scourge a chore to play." 

Right ... I know. And I dispute the 'chore' aspect of the claim here because the rotation isn't affected by duration. It's affected by CD.

The only aspect of the shade play that is affected by duration change is when someone stacks them with the intention of affecting an area PASSIVELY for 20 seconds. 

[Drizzly.4562]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... I know. And I dispute the 'chore' aspect of the claim here because the rotation isn't affected by duration. It's affected by CD.

The only aspect of the shade play that is affected by duration change is when someone stacks them with the intention of affecting an area PASSIVELY for 20 seconds. 

Do you think the shades passively do something while they're sitting there?

[Gaeb.2837]

4 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... I know. And I dispute the 'chore' aspect of the claim here

You don't dispute that it's not a healthy playstyle, but you don't view it as a chore, and you ignore everyone else's opinion on the matter to say over and over "well of course it makes sense the devs had to code it this way" ignoring the fact we've as a community proposed several alternatives that are less of a smack in the face gameplay wise. 

No one's unhappy on the whole to be getting a 'heal / alac' scourge, but they rushed it out half-baked and asked for feedback. We're giving it. Case in point? Thread title.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Gaeb.2837

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

The optimal way to play the class was never to spam all the shades on cooldown.  It was to keep one in reserve at all times.

Now, if we want to take this from a heal-alac scourge perspective, the profession suffers in that role due to such a tiny area being covered.  "short range boon share" has traditionally been 240 radius.  Scourge is at 180.  It needs longer duration shades just so that it can continue to perform its role with adequacy when mechanics pop up and squad members can't stay stacked in the Scourge's hitbox.

DPS Scourge needs a longer duration to not necessitate placing a shade immedietly before hitting Desert Shroud just to get the full duration off before the shade expires.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Obtena.7952]

39 minutes ago, Gaeb.2837 said:

You don't dispute that it's not a healthy playstyle, but you don't view it as a chore, and you ignore everyone else's opinion on the matter to say over and over "well of course it makes sense the devs had to code it this way" ignoring the fact we've as a community proposed several alternatives that are less of a smack in the face gameplay wise. 

No one's unhappy on the whole to be getting a 'heal / alac' scourge, but they rushed it out half-baked and asked for feedback. We're giving it.

I don't dispute it's not a healthy playstyle because what I think about it's healthiness does not impact the fact that it's in the game. I don't view it as a chore because I'm already using shades in some kind of rotation to play optimally. I don't ignore people's opinion ... if I did, I wouldn't be replying and NO WHERE did I ever say "well of course it makes sense the devs had to code it this way". What I'm saying is that I can see reasons why Anet choose to reduce duration to 8 seconds. You can propose all the alternatives you like and I won't debate them. They just aren't relevant because Anet isn't going to cater to people's individual ideas about how the game should work. Maybe they change how this works in the future because of the ideas ... OK. I don't have a problem with that. That doesn't need my stamp of approval so I'm not going comment on those ideas. 

Again, you can give all the feedback you like. I didn't say you shouldn't. I'm simply asking provocative questions and challenging some of the ideas being presented in the thread because lots of them don't make sense. Shade duration is a VERY strange hill to choose to die on. I get that shade spam is not that fun but ... it's NEVER been fun. That's not a new problem because of duration changes so for me the bottomline here is that it's a kick at the can to complain about spamming shades based on something that has NOTHING to do with spamming shades. 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Swan.9815]

3 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Shade duration is a VERY strange hill to choose to die on. I get that shade spam is not that fun but ... it's NEVER been fun. That's not a new problem because of duration changes so for me the bottomline here is that it's a kick at the can to complain about spamming shades based on something that has NOTHING to do with spamming shades. 

You're doing a great job at ignoring the fact that you didn't have to cast the shade every 6-8 seconds before, even though you've been told multiple times that you could keep up three shades without doing so, keep up the good work!

[Lily.1935]

So Something that needs to be said here as I see a lot of responses back and forth between a couple of people.

1. Saying arena net had a reason for what they did isn't a response and isn't constructive to the conversation. Its a non-starter. There are always reasons behind actions, and we may understand those reasons, I certainly do, however this isn't to say I agree with their reasoning. In fact I find their reasoning to be extremely flawed.
2. Communication is something Arena net has been working on but are still floundering. I, and others here don't expect arena net to address specific threads or people because that's unreasonable to assume. But common concerns should come up when they do address it and when they're making these sort of updates and giving us 3 weeks of advanced notice they should be far more active with their updates and explaining their positioning. Which they're very bad at doing.
3. The community doesn't like the way Alacrity was introduced to scourge, there were quite a few better methods to introduce alacrity but the method they decided to go with, through barrier was the most volatile solution they could have chosen. The method they should have gone with should have been one which impacts other builds as little as possible but instead they went with a method which absolutely devastates existing ways to play.
4. Scourge has an extremely unique play style you don't get from other professions in guild wars 2. In fact I'd say Scourge is the only spec in the game which feels genuinely like a full spell caster, mind you this is a subjective opinion but its hard to argue that the play style can't be replicated elsewhere. By changing that formula of play they have essentially removed a play style. The opposite of their projected goal.

So lets go over some other options Arena net had available to them.

1. The option I posted here, with Sand Savant having a 5 target limit with its function matching how shades functioned during the October 1st 2019 balance update. This solves the target cap issue 100% without having any impact on the DPS build. This doesn't solve the duration of alacrity issue we saw earlier, however the playability of scourge wouldn't be significantly harmed by this.
2. Desert empowerment has a summon effect which only occurs on the most recent shade summoned. It has a 300 radius around it. Arena net could have used the same method with activation of shade skills to give barrier. Having it trigger around the most recent active shade on 5 targets, independent of how many shades you have active and its not linked to Barrier.
3. Having the reduced shade Duration linked Specifically to Desert empowerment. Not a great solution all things considered, however its far better than devastating other builds which can't apply alacrity.

There are other solutions but these are the only ones I personally would be alright with. But arena net decided to go with the most destructive option. Now, in my opinion before this update I considered scourge to be the best designed elite specialization of all time. its not even close. it was unique, completely changed how you play the class, opened up new synergies, all around it was great. It had the strongest Mechanically, it was nearly perfect. But now it takes the flaws it did have and hyper exacerbates those flaws making them front and center.

Arena net's method to implement this was lazy and thoughtless. They had a reason for it, but that reasoning doesn't take into consideration enjoyment, just what's the easiest way to implement Alacrity to a heavy AoE Elite spec that wasn't built with Alacrity in mind. It is extremely clear to me that if Arena net did play test this, they didn't do it long enough, or more likely, I don't think they playtested it at all. And with their response as a "Solution" to the issue, they clearly are not listening to the overwhelming feedback from the community.

The community said scourge's DPS was a little bit behind where it needed to be before the patch. It gets nuked by this, but that's only part of the issue its DPS didn't make Scourge unfun to play. Their usability and DPS gets nuked so their solution is to essentially to go "Okay, the fire for this profession has gone out, lets rekindle that fire with Dynamite!" Scourge is my main. I love scourge. Scourge doesn't need to be a 44k DPS SPEC! 38-39k would be perfectly fine for a spec like scourge.

It blows my mind at how short sighted arena net is being with necromancer design and we've seen this across all 3 of their elite specs. Harbinger has some absolutely horrendous design which goes against this skill spam philosophy they're currently pushing and we see this short sighted balance with Reaper too where they just keep buffing the reaper's numbers rather than looking at Spite which is seriously under powered as a specialization so now Arena net are going to have to buff Harbinger's base damage as well which will just throw off all of harbinger's balancing as it is all because rather than putting some of reaper's strike damage boosts into spite they decided to double down into reaper.

I DON'T think Arena net quite knows what to do with necromancer and they really never have known what to do with it and because they refuse to have more open communication with the community in any meaningful way we're going to continue to see these extremely weird and broken design choices around necromancer which don't support a healthy play pattern or a healthy community.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Lily.1935