July 18th Necromancer Changes

[Apokriphos.7042]

Necromancer

• Well of Blood: Reduced initial base self-heal from 5,140 to 2,936 in PvE only. Increased base pulse heal from 280 to 664 in PvE only. Increased the pulse heal attribute scaling from 0.4 to 0.5 in PvE only.

Scourge

• 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)

My perspective is completely from a Wvw lens. No changes to signets, no changes to minions, Core necromancer will still be absent in Wvw. Ultimately a small amount of fire damage is added to the scourge kit. I don't expect any changes to the meta from players suffering under the scourge apocalypse. What are everyone's thoughts?

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Wonder if they actually increased the pulse heal coefficient on Well of Blood to 0.5 or 0.05?  It's a good improvement to group healing, at least.

[Ruddeck.3792]

Just waiting for the hero guys to test if is possible maintaned the alac as condi scourge. Looking the changes still hard to keep +90% alac uptime.

[Lctl.6198]

So....ignored the 25+ pages feedback *again* 

GOT IT.

I truly give up at this point

[SailorCat.6032]

Garbage.

[Nanoir.2315]

Idk much about pve builds but why do they have to add unnecessary changes to wvw? What am I going to do with an alac scourge there? Make rams and catas go faster?

[GetFoxxed.9478]

8 minutes ago, SailorCat.6032 said:

Garbage.

You just summed up state of the game.

[Requiem.9648]

is that just me or sadistic searing (using sandflare) does not trigger or any punishement. Shade are still feel terrible there is 0 point to have 3 shade when you cannot have more than 1.5 uptimes.

[Necrovore.4712]

Well, as a PvE condi scourge main I’m still sad about the shade duration nerf (they could at least have put it at 12 secs to make it less debilitating and boring to play) but still excited to try the build on the golem and see what dps it can do now. 

[Obtena.7952]

8 hours ago, Requiem.9648 said:

is that just me or sadistic searing (using sandflare) does not trigger or any punishement. Shade are still feel terrible there is 0 point to have 3 shade when you cannot have more than 1.5 uptimes.

The point of having 3 shades is that you can cast one after another for a high initial burst or bad placement. Cast time is 0.5 seconds, CD is 1 second ... that means you can get three shades out within 3 seconds and a 4th quickly @ 8 seconds, excluding Alacrity effects. Duration change didn't affect that. That may be a contributing factor for  Anet choosing an 8 second shade count recharge. 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Aurora.9347]

I thought the fix was to bring scourge back to its ok dps not the support bit of it... the support side of the scourge has always been a freaking meme, powerfull, but barely anyone used it because aside from barrier it did not do that much, it gave barrier but not much of any other boons, or even heal just dmg prevention, but now it feels like they sacrificed the dps aspect of scourge to boost it as a support... i loved dps scourge, i dont like scourge as a support if i cant dps with it too... and harbringer sucks cuz we are literally locked with elixirs on the utility slots...

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Requiem.9648 said:

Shade are still feel terrible there is 0 point to have 3 shade when you cannot have more than 1.5 uptimes.

The general point is "repositioning". It actually help in fights where there is some movement involved. In case you go for desert empowerment, it also allow you to occasionally break away from the strict rotation to pump up some barrier.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Dadnir.5038

[Lily.1935]

I'm going to give myself time to process the differences before I make a post on it, so far, it feels god awful to play, but so did it feel awful to play when shades lost crippling on pulse. So I want to make my response when my head is a bit more level.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Minor point, but they did actually fix Well of Blood's pulse scaling.  I tested it.  Pretty solid group heal skill now.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

meh.

[Necrovore.4712]

11 minutes ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

meh.

This, exactly. I just ran the rotation quite a few times on the golem and it’s marginally 0,5k dps more than it was before the June nerf - and only on 4m health or more with perfect sandshade uptime, perfectly timed f2 spam and maximum use of the new lower cooldowns on torch 4 and 5. But the 8sec shade is extremely clunky to cast so often, and overall compared to June it feels like a TON more effort for an extremely marginal increase in dmg with a very long ramp up. 

so yes, Anet fixed the dmg nerf on condi scourge  but it made it *much* less fun and much more APM-demanding to play. Overall I think I’m better off investing my time in the condi virtuoso. 
 

If they really don’t want to give heal scourge longer shades, then what I think they could do to fix the condi scourge problem without is adding 100% shade duration increase on the dmg-oriented grandmaster traits. Brings the total to 16sec and just makes it much more playable without actually increasing its dps (because you still get the same bonus whether or not you have 1, 2 or 3 shades up). 

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

7 minutes ago, Necrovore.4712 said:

This, exactly. I just ran the rotation quite a few times on the golem and it’s marginally 0,5k dps more than it was before the June nerf - and only on 4m health or more with perfect sandshade uptime, perfectly timed f2 spam and maximum use of the new lower cooldowns on torch 4 and 5. But the 8sec shade is extremely clunky to cast so often, and overall compared to June it feels like a TON more effort for an extremely marginal increase in dmg with a very long ramp up. 

so yes, Anet fixed the dmg nerf on condi scourge  but it made it *much* less fun and much more APM-demanding to play. Overall I think I’m better off investing my time in the condi virtuoso. 
 

If they really don’t want to give heal scourge longer shades, then what I think they could do to fix the condi scourge problem without is adding 100% shade duration increase on the dmg-oriented grandmaster traits. Brings the total to 16sec and just makes it much more playable without actually increasing its dps (because you still get the same bonus whether or not you have 1, 2 or 3 shades up). 

so disappointing... I asked them to fix Reaper's rotation not because it's weak, but because is boring (RS #1 spam) but they already canned it and what they do instead? They destroyed Scourge and when people asked them to fix it, what they do? They ignore all feedback and do whatever they want...

if anyone here play Harbinger, my condolences in advance... You're next O_O

[Aurora.9347]

I quited necro for warrior already, don't think im going to bother going back, specially now that berserker condi works.

[Gaeb.2837]

2 hours ago, Necrovore.4712 said:

This, exactly. I just ran the rotation quite a few times on the golem and it’s marginally 0,5k dps more than it was before the June nerf - and only on 4m health or more with perfect sandshade uptime, perfectly timed f2 spam and maximum use of the new lower cooldowns on torch 4 and 5. But the 8sec shade is extremely clunky to cast so often, and overall compared to June it feels like a TON more effort for an extremely marginal increase in dmg with a very long ramp up. 

so yes, Anet fixed the dmg nerf on condi scourge  but it made it *much* less fun and much more APM-demanding to play.

Yerp. Will play around with it, but highly disappointed in the change.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

3 hours ago, Necrovore.4712 said:

This, exactly. I just ran the rotation quite a few times on the golem and it’s marginally 0,5k dps more than it was before the June nerf - and only on 4m health or more with perfect sandshade uptime, perfectly timed f2 spam and maximum use of the new lower cooldowns on torch 4 and 5. But the 8sec shade is extremely clunky to cast so often, and overall compared to June it feels like a TON more effort for an extremely marginal increase in dmg with a very long ramp up. 

so yes, Anet fixed the dmg nerf on condi scourge  but it made it *much* less fun and much more APM-demanding to play. Overall I think I’m better off investing my time in the condi virtuoso. 
 

If they really don’t want to give heal scourge longer shades, then what I think they could do to fix the condi scourge problem without is adding 100% shade duration increase on the dmg-oriented grandmaster traits. Brings the total to 16sec and just makes it much more playable without actually increasing its dps (because you still get the same bonus whether or not you have 1, 2 or 3 shades up). 

Sound like user error, people are reporting condi scourge is doing 41k dps on a 4mil golem. That alot higher than 500 more.

[Shaogin.2679]

Well, for those wanting to know, I normally always hit about 5-10k under whatever the established benchmark is. With that said, I was able to easily do 33k dps on Condi Scourge and 23k dps on Condi Alac Scourge. With 42.33% boon duration (some Ritualist gear plus a Shade) I was able to effortlessly maintain perma alac on a condi dps Scourge. And again, I always fall pretty short on benchmarks and I hit these numbers with minimal effort. I feel like people are being a bit over-dramatic here.

Also, I was playing Heal Alac Scourge prior to today's patch, and it is even better now. I would still like them to clean up our sand shades mechanic ( I honestly just feel like making Sand Savant the default shade without the recharge increase and giving us a new trait there) but Scourge feels like it is in a pretty decent spot right now.

 

Edit: Just dropped my boon duration to 28.53%, still maintained perma alac on Condi Alac Scourge and bumped dps to 24k. Still doable, but I prefer to just sac that 1k dps to ensure my alac does not drop.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Shaogin.2679

[Tiviana.2650]

7 hours ago, Lctl.6198 said:

So....ignored the 25+ pages feedback *again* 

GOT IT.

I truly give up at this point

So true, utterly deaf to the problems at this point.  ITS NOT FUN PLAYING SHADE SPAM ANET! Do you even play the class?

 

57 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Sound like user error, people are reporting condi scourge is doing 41k dps on a 4mil golem. That alot higher than 500 more.

Who cares if the spec is disgusting to play, it dont feel good.

[Mell.4873]

Be careful what you ask for, if you say you don't want shade spam them maybe they just straight up yonk a shade so now you only have 2.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

1 hour ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

people are reporting condi scourge is doing 41k dps on a 4mil golem. That alot higher than 500 more.

2 patches ago, my Reaper was doing 55k, then 38k then 45k then 37k... All with the exact same rotation.

[Aktium.9506]

These complaints about "shade spam" are absolutely clueless. Any Necro who has complained about it should feel ashamed. Prior to the patch you dunked out 3 shades at the fight start and pressed it off cooldown when it wouldn't interrupt a higher priority skill until the end. With alac, uptime was 100% on 3 shades. Now you do the exact same thing for less shades with the same bonus.

Rotionally, almost nothing changed for Condi Scourge in PvE. Making sure Nefarious Favor gets pressed off cooldown is way more important now than it was before, but that's it. But you already did press it off cd for the Dhuumfire procc so that's not really a big difference.

The one legitimate complaint is that less shades means less cleave, and this in a world where Epidemic is a shadow of its former self.