Scourge might be a bit too strong (49k dps)

[Dadnir.5038]

@Nephalem.8921

I won't go over all your arguments as it's pointless, I'll just remind you the basic rule in PvE group content: "Unless there are specific mechanics to do for which you need to split, stick to the group!". It mean that for 90% of the PvE group content you'll be at melee range no matter how good of an advantage the skills of whatever profession have at range.

 

[Asum.4960]

9 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Define "utility".

Every single dps in this game provide "utility" that most players don't even register. These utilities come in various form: boons, conditions, heal, rally, barrier and cleanse, of course, but also combo fields, blast finishers, projectile hate, boon hate, block and some "exotic" form of support like vampiric presence, venom, aura, the ability to ignore a lethal blow, damage transfert, condition transfert, party wide stun break, teleport, stealth, stance share, arcane power, boon duration extension (Herald's true nature, elementalist's warhorn heat sinc) or additional source of damage (firebrand's ashes of the just)... etc.

Among those, some appeal more to players while other are often thought as useless or simply granted.

The truth is that DPS Scourge don't have a greater amount of support than any other profession. All the build offer is a 260 barrier per/s (at most since there is still a need to manage life force), some might and cleanse. Objectively, It's an amount of support that nobody would look at if scourge didn't have excessive dps. Now, the build itself is open to support utilities but with each support utility you take, the damage output drop a bit like it does on any other profession.

Just to make a point:

• Specter dps offer: Area heal, might, fury, swiftness, combo field, venom, cleanse, blast finisher, barrier... etc.
• Catalyst dps offer: fire field, lightning field, water field, poison field, prot, swiftness, resolution, fury, might, regen, boon extension, heal, blast... etc.
• Holo dps is compartively low with: Swiftness, might, blast, fire field and smoke field (useful for stealth)
• Druid dps: fire field, water field, light field, blast, heal (lot of heal), cleanse, might... etc.
• ... etc.

Yea, I honestly don't get why people are still so hung up on Scourge support or ease of play (besides parroting influencers). 

Scourge has long moved on to be one of the highest APM specs in the game, while the (often fun) complexity of most other professions/builds has largely willfully been dismantled over the last few years. Like I never understood why for example cRen is described as "High Learning Curve" while Scourge is described as "Easy to learn"on SC, like swapping legends at below 10 Energy is some high skill sorcery - while Scourge has similar complexities with BiP transfers and Dhuumfire Fx staggers, while featuring much higher APM. 

Likewise in terms of support as DPS, you got cDPS Guards essentially removing incoming conditions as a game mechanic just doing the DPS rota, via things like Cleansing Flame, Purging Flames and Light fields, getting free boon support on their weapon kits such as group Fury via Symbols, all while easily being able to slot in invaluable Utility such as StyG, Hollowed Ground, Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection, Bow of Truth, or whatever else any encounter might demand, for nearly free over a Signet passive. 

 

Yes, Scourge's DPS especially is massively inflated right now - everyone with a modicum of game knowledge warned Anet about that with the pre-Soto patch, feedback they ignored as usual ofc. 

Idk what they were thinking with putting Demonic Lore back to 33% (with Pistol access on the horizon), as well as putting 2 Burn Stacks at 5s base duration on a 3 second CD skill with Soul Reaping and Alacity - on top of a 10% Burn Damage mod on Fell Beacon. 

Well, scratch that, I know exactly what they were thinking, they screwed up the specs design and made it play worse, got player complains, and rather than putting in the work to fix it, inflated it's DPS numbers with massive buffs in an attempt to placate the community, which on top of Soto's powercreep with weapon mastery and the Rune/Relic rework is now predictably biting them in the kitten. 

We knew this was coming:

 

Regardless, Utility or long past ease of play of Scourge really isn't the issue. But rather that Anet seemingly can only read Data and turn balance and design knobs based on past data, rather than actually having Game Design knowhow as well as game knowledge to make remotely accurate predictions for their changes, while also not listening to community feedback. 

Now I can't wait for next patch when they will likely nerf Pistol into the ground in an attempt to nerf Scourge, and with that destroy Harbinger, while Scourge will likely still be overperforming,  - rather than addressing Scourge's outstanding playability issues or rethinking past buffs (or just completely Smiter's Booning the spec).

[Methuselah.4376]

Everyone complaining about dps Scourge's barrier being a thing and how it is throwing off balance because dps Scourge has so much utility is being ridiculous. F3 provides 1188 barrier with no healing power and a dps scourge will rarely use it in a raid scenario in order to conserve life force. Sand flare? Again on dps Scourge is only provides 1220 barrier on a 25s cool down. 

And who cares if the dps is at range: as others have pointed out, in a raid scenario 90% + of the time you will still be in melee because otherwise you will get no boons or healing. 

[anbujackson.9564]

14 hours ago, Methuselah.4376 said:

 

And who cares if the dps is at range: as others have pointed out, in a raid scenario 90% + of the time you will still be in melee because otherwise you will get no boons or healing. 

? Modern bosses tend to move a lot or have mechanics that force you to move out of the zerg.

Not being able to dps then is a massive loss. Even its just for a few seconds for every mechanic. Those few seconds DO stack up.

[Nephalem.8921]

21 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

@Nephalem.8921

I won't go over all your arguments as it's pointless, I'll just remind you the basic rule in PvE group content: "Unless there are specific mechanics to do for which you need to split, stick to the group!". It mean that for 90% of the PvE group content you'll be at melee range no matter how good of an advantage the skills of whatever profession have at range.

 

Have you done any of the fights designed within the last 5 years? All of them have some ranged force mechanic which prevents melee builds from doing benchmark dps. These mechanics do not bother scourge at all.

Ankka cm quaggans for example. Do that boss on a dps cata please and then tell me what you do when you get that mechanic 4 times in a row. Or when the add choses you and you have to move away to not kill the squad. Again scourge does not cares.

Or the worst designed instanced fight in the game besides escort, 100cm. Or olc during 2nd knight which kills you in melee. They even prevented melee builds like bladesworn from doing it melee by giving it a dmg buff each time someone touches the ring.

You could still do that in a static but try that in a pug and people will kick you. They do not like +200% outgoing damage on the boss.

Both new strikes have move out of melee mechanics in normal mode. Sure in 8 year old content you can stack melee all the time but that content is so power creeped it does not matter anyways.

[Nephalem.8921]

15 hours ago, Methuselah.4376 said:

Everyone complaining about dps Scourge's barrier being a thing and how it is throwing off balance because dps Scourge has so much utility is being ridiculous. F3 provides 1188 barrier with no healing power and a dps scourge will rarely use it in a raid scenario in order to conserve life force. Sand flare? Again on dps Scourge is only provides 1220 barrier on a 25s cool down. 

And who cares if the dps is at range: as others have pointed out, in a raid scenario 90% + of the time you will still be in melee because otherwise you will get no boons or healing. 

The opposite is the case. You rarely use f3 on golem because lf is limited there but on real encounters and with allies you have plenty of extra lf sources allowing you to spam everything.

Also dadnir has no kp.me account which means he is either NA or does not do endgame pve stuff on eu. Both disqualify him from having a relevant opinion on endgame pve stuff. I saw 2 qfbs in an na ht cm static last week on twitch. The pve scene there is a giant clown fiesta.

You forget that the barrier stacks if you stack scourges. Also personal barrier from f5 and suddenly you replaced a healer with barrier generation alone. Just stack 5-7 of them.

@Asum.4960

Specs can be high apm and extremely simple to play. No real rotation, instant casts without animations coming to mind. No self roots or channels. Also scourge is not even that high apm. Simplified condi mech with 1 kit has higher apm. Sure it has higher apm than old scourge but it is now an average apm spec and not an Li spec anymore. The scourge mains are not used to pressing buttons though. They still complain about the f1 duration.

Cren follows a strict rotation and you have to be careful with energy to not mess up the swap. Any interruption due to phases or other things needs adaptation. You also have to deactivate mallyx elite in each loop now in order to not run out of energy. Scourge has no resource management whatsoever. F4 is the only high lf free dmg skill and you wont suffer any consequences from not using it at all.

 

[rotten.9753]

On 9/16/2023 at 10:01 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Define "utility".

Every single dps in this game provide "utility" that most players don't even register. These utilities come in various form: boons, conditions, heal, rally, barrier and cleanse, of course, but also combo fields, blast finishers, projectile hate, boon hate, block and some "exotic" form of support like vampiric presence, venom, aura, the ability to ignore a lethal blow, damage transfert, condition transfert, party wide stun break, teleport, stealth, stance share, arcane power, boon duration extension (Herald's true nature, elementalist's warhorn heat sinc) or additional source of damage (firebrand's ashes of the just)... etc.

Among those, some appeal more to players while other are often thought as useless or simply granted.

The truth is that DPS Scourge don't have a greater amount of support than any other profession. All the build offer is a 260 barrier per/s (at most since there is still a need to manage life force), some might and cleanse. Objectively, It's an amount of support that nobody would look at if scourge didn't have excessive dps. Now, the build itself is open to support utilities but with each support utility you take, the damage output drop a bit like it does on any other profession.

Just to make a point:

• Specter dps offer: Area heal, might, fury, swiftness, combo field, venom, cleanse, blast finisher, barrier... etc.
• Catalyst dps offer: fire field, lightning field, water field, poison field, prot, swiftness, resolution, fury, might, regen, boon extension, heal, blast... etc.
• Holo dps is compartively low with: Swiftness, might, blast, fire field and smoke field (useful for stealth)
• Druid dps: fire field, water field, light field, blast, heal (lot of heal), cleanse, might... etc.
• ... etc.

What's weaver utility?

On 9/16/2023 at 6:31 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

@Nephalem.8921

I won't go over all your arguments as it's pointless, I'll just remind you the basic rule in PvE group content: "Unless there are specific mechanics to do for which you need to split, stick to the group!". It mean that for 90% of the PvE group content you'll be at melee range no matter how good of an advantage the skills of whatever profession have at range.

 

I don't think you played any new content, you wouldn't say that otherwise. I don't know why people still use golem-like bosses from 8 years old raids as an argument, those raids are deprecated.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

9 hours ago, rotten.9753 said:

I don't think you played any new content, you wouldn't say that otherwise. I don't know why people still use golem-like bosses from 8 years old raids as an argument, those raids are deprecated.

Have you played SotO?  Those bosses are little more than golems.

[Nephalem.8921]

8 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Have you played SotO?  Those bosses are little more than golems.

Both still force you out of melee range in normal mode. Probably more in upcoming cm.

[rotten.9753]

On 9/18/2023 at 7:00 AM, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Have you played SotO?  Those bosses are little more than golems.

I wouldn't really consider NM strikes as anything worth mentioning, but they still force you often to leave melee range. We'll see how worse it is in CMs soon enough. Scourge doesn't care about that anyway though.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

On 9/18/2023 at 9:48 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Both still force you out of melee range in normal mode. Probably more in upcoming cm.

CO is invulnerable when you're forced out of melee, so it's more like only Cerus where this is even relevant.

[rotten.9753]

3 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

CO is invulnerable when you're forced out of melee, so it's more like only Cerus where this is even relevant.

She often teleports around and uses a whirling attack, not only you have to run to her, she might kill you if you stand close to her. Ranged classes meanwhile ask what this mechanic is about cause nothing changes for them.

[Passerbye.6291]

Guys, guys hold up, maybe scourge players are right, just because their class benches 49k with a fairly easy rotation, is almost entirely ranged, has boon rip/corruption, cleanses, barriers, massive CC with an elite skill swap while also sharing the highest base HP in the game with warrior surely doesn't mean they are OP.

Oh wait, it does. I can't believe how people are throwing in arguments like "Most combat is melee anyway huehue" or "Bro I can't do much barrier because I'm too busy reaching dps numbers that shouldn't be in the game in the first place". And then someone throws in the argument "The problem isn't scourge's DPS, it is how little boon duration boon supports need!" In a thread about a dps build *facepalm*. 

First, anet needs to determine where they want the average dps for each class, and I sure hope it isn't 44-46k which seems to be where quite a few dps builds are, and I'd definitely hate to see everyone going up to 48-50k. Once they determine this, they need to account for utility provided by classes, as well as account for their dps uptime, ease of execution (this one not necessarily being a linear approach, but one that simply makes the easiest to play builds not do the same damage as builds that make you break your wrists).
Before people spam the usual, utility doesn't matter bro comments, yes it does, just because you don't know how to take advantage of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the first place. People have been scourge stacking to ignore entire mechanics like sloth's poison long before 49k dps ever became a thing, it was OP for pugs then, it is way worse now. 

If you do not account for these things in your balancing, harder to play classes like axe mirage or condi weaver will simply never be played by anyone other than people who play those builds solely for their love of the build, because at the end of the day, dps numbers being equal, what would you rather have as your dps, a 0 group support build, or one that can give you some form of utility, however small it may be, or all things being equal, one that is simply easier to play, making it more foolproof?
You don't need to answer this question, as it was proven repeatedly over time, one of the biggest examples being the play rate of mechanist.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Boh.4568]

buff reaper to 50k and I'm fine

[Obtena.7952]

Anticipating absolutely PHAT nerfs on Scourge today. If not, Anet has lost the farm here. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 8/26/2023 at 7:42 PM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Ok.

https://dps.report/y9hD-20230827-010340_sab
https://dps.report/slWM-20230827-005604_gors
https://dps.report/0eYc-20230827-002220_boss
https://dps.report/fwh5-20230827-003903_olc
https://dps.report/bIdd-20230826-214757_kana
https://dps.report/AU0h-20230825-204711_li
https://dps.report/vfNP-20230825-203040_ankka
https://dps.report/8X0Z-20230825-202325_trin

Scourge is the king of dps uptime. If anything scourge having high benchmark is double bad because this means that in an actual fight it has the advantage of high uptime and a high bench. Scourge should bench the lowest among all dps builds because of this. Golem testing does not suck. Good players can do golem dps on most of the bosses unless they force range like ankka.

 

 

 

It's this guy again from the necro forums. This person is literally in the top 1% percentile of players...hence why he won't show statistics just his own performance.

The truth is, that if people don't think playing scourge is easy, then presenting only the top 1 percentiles performance metrics, is not a reflection of the game state.

I just saw a video the other week of some Weaver doing 60k dps...because they pre-casted the fight with hammer to pop orbs, before swapping into their actual weapon set that they play with. The kind of gameplay that arises from "top percentile" gaming is far beyond ridiculous in most scenarios. Showing only this kind of information, is harmful to the state of the game (if such information influences balance descisions) because it doesn't reflect, everyone's experiences.

Btw i don't even disagree with the argument or consensus (to nerf easy mode builds) I'm just here pointing out the sneaky bias in evidence procurement.

Edited September 26, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Seuchenherbst.2746]

anybody benchmark post-nerf yet? how much dps loss is it gonna be? 5k?

[Aktium.9506]

lol

lmao

[Obtena.7952]

13 minutes ago, Aktium.9506 said:

lol

lmao

@ everyone that didn't see these changes coming? Yes. LMAO indeed. 

[Tammuz.7361]

16 minutes ago, Seuchenherbst.2746 said:

anybody benchmark post-nerf yet? how much dps loss is it gonna be? 5k?

Probably a lot more than that, 50% duration reduction on torment from shades = big ouchy

[Methuselah.4376]

53 minutes ago, Seuchenherbst.2746 said:

anybody benchmark post-nerf yet? how much dps loss is it gonna be? 5k?

Seems to be 9-10k nerf

[Asum.4960]

The fact that they chose to nerf Scepter and Dhuumfire as part of this is absolutely hilarious to me.

 

Literally the previous patch:

Quote

Fell Beacon: This trait now also increases the damage of burning you inflict by 10%.

Demonic Lore: Increased torment damage bonus from 25% to 33% in PvE only.

Sadistic Searing: This trait has been reworked, and causes Nefarious Favor to burn nearby enemy targets (2 stacks, 5 seconds)

Only one of those got targeted for nerfs, Sadistic Searing, which while weak now remains annoying to play with since it involves spamming a 3 second Cooldown Ability off Cooldown, while instead a Core Weapon and a Core Trait, both of which are barely holding on to relevance, are cut into. 

Imagine getting paid for clowning around randomly shuffling things back and forth like this.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Asum.4960

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

The fact that they chose to nerf Scepter and Dhuumfire as part of this is absolutely hilarious to me.

 

Literally the previous patch:

Only one of those got targeted for nerfs, Sadistic Searing, which while weak now remains annoying to play with since it involves spamming a 3 second Cooldown Ability off Cooldown, while instead a Core Weapon and a Core Trait, both of which are barely holding on to relevance, are cut into. 

Imagine getting paid for clowning around randomly shuffling things back and forth like this.

Yeah, I would have nerfed Demonic Lore's torment bonus rather than nerfing Lingering Curse and Dhuumfire.

 

Still, people are reporting 39k benchmarks which is perfectly acceptable for DPS scourge.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Asum.4960]

26 minutes ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Yeah, I would have nerfed Demonic Lore's torment bonus rather than nerfing Lingering Curse and Dhuumfire.

 

Still, people are reporting 39k benchmarks which is perfectly acceptable for DPS scourge.

Yea, I mean it's always relative. Benching below plenty Power DPS's last bench tick, which is generally the lowest point for power DPS's and the highest for Condi DPS's, as the slowest ramping Condi DPS in the game is somewhat rough - but in any encounter where DPS-Uptime is king, Scourge is always going to be just fine, unless completely obliterated ofc. 

It's just a strange way of going about it. Frankly, even before this nerf I started skipping on Scepter almost completely and started to just camp Pistol unless bored since I noticed it benching barely lower while providing much more ease of play. So nerfing Scepter is just weird with all these nerf targets from just the last Patch (and Soto additions/changes) around. 

You'd think if you literally just massively buffed a Spec, against the warnings of the community that it's going to be way too much together with the upcoming expansion features and changes, and then had to nerf it because it turned out to be way too much.. you'd look at those buffs.

 

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

Yea, I mean it's always relative. Benching below plenty Power DPS's last bench tick, which is generally the lowest point for power DPS's and the highest for Condi DPS's, as the slowest ramping Condi DPS in the game is somewhat rough - but in any encounter where DPS-Uptime is king, Scourge is always going to be just fine, unless completely obliterated ofc. 

It's just a strange way of going about it. Frankly, even before this nerf I started skipping on Scepter almost completely and started to just camp Pistol unless bored since I noticed it benching barely lower while providing much more ease of play. So nerfing Scepter is just weird with all these nerf targets from just the last Patch (and Soto additions/changes) around. 

You'd think if you literally just massively buffed a Spec, against the warnings of the community that it's going to be way too much together with the upcoming expansion features and changes, and then had to nerf it because it turned out to be way too much.. you'd look at those buffs.

 

 

Don't forget that everyone got nerfed pretty significantly.  We're really not far behind the top performers, so I wouldn't be surprised if in actual combat scenarios, Scourge still tops the damage charts.