The Alacrity Scourge Rant

[wisprr.4612]

O.O Really?

The latest update for WvW....... le'sigh, It was decided to both nerf barriers and completely remove all alacrity from WvW and PvP? >.>

I really sincerely hope I am not the only one wondering what the Devs are doing.

How about this instead, give me back my 20 sec shades, and just change Scourge back to before they had Alacrity all together? Ever since that update I have detested Alacrity, all the non-necros telling me i should run with Alac cause it increases everyone's DPS, nevermind the fact if I switch to a DPS build I put out Far more damage then the alacrity gives!

Oh my goddess, what possessed anyone ever to give necros alac?! As a Necro main, i have never needed or cared about alac, ever, you can keep it, especially if it means necro and scourge in particular does not keep getting nerfed. Not once did I feel like getting alac was a buff, in my play it just felt like another nerf to me.

Am I the only necromancer main that feels this way? Are there other necros out there that have similar thoughts? Are there Scourges out there that would trade every single drop of the dwindling alac to get back what we had? Please someone, anyone, tell me I am not insane here! Or at least that I am insane, but some peeps agree?

[misterman.1530]

I agree with you. And, like you, I have no idea if the Devs even have any sort of long term vision for WvW.

[mirage.8046]

I mean it would be pretty fair to give back everything scourge prior to alacrity for WvW especially. Heck, even if alacrity stayed, I would make sand savant grant alacrity, as it really is dumb to have two traits with a 360 radius, BUT one of them doesn't make your shades large. As it is, you want your allies to be pretty close for manifest sand shade, sand casade, and desert shroud. They already think scourge was overperforming in WvW, so why not revert all of the nerfs then by removing alacrity in this mode??

[frenchguy.6547]

I am totally agree.

Quote

I really sincerely hope I am not the only one wondering what the Devs are doing.

Don't worry, ton of ppl did not understand.

The question is why they continue to kill the scourge ?
- They understood they can't do the amazing job which POF team have done : well designed specialization like Scourge, FB
- They still need to sell expansion. it involves killing the old spe to make the news worth.
- They want to manage a new metagame too, but metagame by definition is made by the player.
- They still need to sell expansion. It involves to overframe/cheat the last specialization. Even with that, WVW squad players don't want to play those badly designed spe like Harbinger #KillScourgeMore.
- Have you ever seen a WVW Anet squad ? i mean an opti squad not random necromancer pets. Answer is no. How to balance a thing that you have never practiced ?
- PVE is the only main concern for Anet. If they really want to balance WvW, they can, spell have now a dedicated effect according to game mode, but they don't.
It's like make a nice 'Guild Wars 2 Balance Philosophy document' where each player with opposite philosophy will find what they like. In practice(actual game state), it's not the same.
- The main goal is to reduce the WVW charge cost/fees. (Chineese meta, kill the movement, kill the cd, kill the skill and encourage the spam, kill the average distance, reduce the fight duration, reduce player by map, working on queue but has been just to implement it in PVE, worst state in 3 factions fight).

- So yes Alacrity allows the player(squad) to spam more, so calculation cost was increased so they remove it.
- But we remove alacrity for balance .. balance what ? zerg/blob spamming their spell totally random at 300 range ? Let me laught ...  

- It may anet take reference, ideas, advice from some skilled ppl. Either they listen so bad guys, either they don't care about what they heard.
- Finally, it relies the History. Anet peoples that design POF spe have done the best job they never done. Now, it's a fact they can't do better and they have to destroy for business reasons.
- Get this team back, listen the oldest dev, let them save this competitive mode. For current manager put them on legacy code and let's see what they can proof before listen them.

Like i am not totally salty, i will give my opinion:
- Stick to your balance philosophy: "Most support builds bring more than one tool to the table, but it's important that a single build can't excel at too many things. "
- So, let the scourge excel in strip and let him to be good for barrier. Remove alacrity from all class if you want.

- Stick to your balance philosophy: "Most support builds bring more than one tool to the table, but it's important that a single build can't excel at too many things. "
- So, let class like scourge excel in strip but don't overboon the meta, else 'the notion of excelling' must be adjusted.

- Stick to your balance philosophy: "Most support builds bring more than one tool to the table, but it's important that a single build can't excel at too many things. "
- Don't take minimal and maximal metric like the only real proof to define 'the notion of excelling'! Play your game, practice and see how it can be difficult for a scourge to apply barrier face to another specialization. Play the case when*.

- Stick to your balance philosophy: "Most support builds bring more than one tool to the table, but it's important that a single build can't excel at too many things. "
- Don't take minimal and maximal metric like the only proof to define 'the notion of excelling'! play your game, practice and see the difference/nuance between specialization to apply barrier for example.

Compare Bareer vs Overboon and take into account the current strip chain vs old ~LIFO corrupt chain

So now Anet, prove me we are wrong. Get this message in your bi monthly kick review and gain time by reverse to previous state :
Firebrand Mantra loads ?
Immo/corrupt Resistance ?
And more ...

[wisprr.4612]

A lot of good points here, thank you all. And I am reminded multiple times of something I hold dear to my heart, "If it is not broken, then don't fix it".

To me as a long-time player it feels like ANet (and other companies too) struggle with proper balance, oh oops that's to powerful, then massive nerf, opps again have to fix that. So I really do not get it, why not get things to a nice balance and then just call it good from then on? Because it feels like they waste a Lot of time and effort changing things and then trying to balance the changes, time and effort that can be spent on other things? Or hell, give some employees payed vacation for a good job lol!

Similarly, I can not count the number of times I have stepped away for a bit, and return to find every single last one of my builds completely broken, sure bringing in new players is important, but is that not a deterrent for old players to return?

I wonder, how long did we go with no big changes to Scourge and everything worked just fine? Then all of a sudden, lets nerf Scourge and give them alacrity that I never wanted as a necro, breaking some of the Scourge's core mechanics in the process, then a few months later, alright, changing Alac to Vigor?! Vigor!! WHAT? So I got nerfed in order to get Alacrity i did not want, and then they slap me in the face by changing Alac to Vigor in WvW and PvP. It just feels like a massive insult to me, as if someone asked what is the most useless boon we can give Scourge in competitive play to replace Alac with.

So I'm going to ask, hey Anet? Can you PLEASE find a nice balance for Scourge (Necromancer too really, and all the other classes while you are at it) and Just Leave It Be? It just feels like my chain is getting jerked around much more often then is needed. And it is understandably frustrating to me and apparently many others. So please? I don't need Necro to be the most powerful, just for it to be in a good place and left alone. Ahhhh, what a dream would that be?

[XECOR.2814]

From wvw perspective:
- Self barrier should be higher on F3, F5 and Scourge Heal skill, remove shared barrier by default.
It only becomes sharable if you take Sandstorm Shroud or Desert Empowerment but then it makes the number -50% or so .
- Desert Shroud (Base Scourge Shroud, Not Sandstorm Shroud) should pulse barrier rather all at once throughout its active duration so we can use abrasive grit and have better self cleanse and not forced to take support shroud trait like Sandstorm Shroud. Since its a selfish skill in all aspects barrier and cleanse it shouldn't be a problem.
- Hence Desert Shroud can have less Life Force cost, comes up more often(like 25secs Cooldown) and does more condition damage from torment(more durations)

This way you don't break the game cause conditions are already irrelevant in zerg and gvg but you may give some people dmg builds to play on small scale with enough cleanse and damage to pull it off.

Side note: The vigor duration is very short on the grandmaster trait. The boon duration made sense because it was a powerful boon like Alacrity but it doesn't make sense for irrelevant boon like Vigor for necromancer.

Edited March 24 by XECOR.2814

[Kyon.4810]

Scourge atm totally unplayable at wvw, because it does only half job or even less which does Scrapper (scrappers gives way more barrier, way more cleanses, way more boons, even superspeed for group, and also scrappers able to heal which scourges can not).

Thx anet for killing unique spec for wvw. It was not strong with alacrity and barrier - it was decent.

Scourges were strong when there was trait Feed From Corruptions when scourges could get corrupted or removed boons from enemies, but atm as scourge your shades are useless, your barrier is weak and low, your courruptions still ok, but no one need it (because boon application is about 20 boons/sec, and corruptions only about 2 boons/sec).

Thats why you don`t need to play scourge anymore - it is totally destroyed by anet, and better to play overperformed classes and specs like Firebrand/Vindicators/Berserkers/Scrappers and Holos.

And if you don`t like to play with group you have to play overpowered deadeye with 150% invis uptime with 12-16k damage per shoot, or even broken condi thief with axe (full invis and milliards of condi).

Just play with overpowered specs and maybe someday it will be changed (but not soon).

Edited March 27 by Kyon.4810

[Lctl.6198]

Most of us saw this coming. But streamers and few vocal minority said "it was fine".

 

Destroying the whole premise of how a class/job/spec works when no one asked for it, could only lead to disaster.
And remember, they only did the initial "buffs" when the whole Scourge community ( apart from said vocal minority and streamers) said it was absolute garbage. Otherwise Scourge would be even worse.

 

I have had no desire to play the spec or the game ever since - and I know it sounds stupid - but I loved pre nerf Scourge , it was hitching that support and solo playstyle I was looking for in an MMO. Then it became another meta chasing slave with horrid gameplay - just to have "number go up".. I must've spent around 300-400€ in 4 months just in glam/costumes, 'cause I was having fun. 

 

Then someone decided "it was too OP" when there wasn't even content to justify it being "OP".

Rant over. just like my desire to play GW2.

Edited April 3 by Lctl.6198

[Dadnir.5038]

19 hours ago, Lctl.6198 said:

Then someone decided "it was too OP" when there wasn't even content to justify it being "OP".

Scourge was mechanically broken OP in competitive modes from PoF beta to EoD. Once the "full dps" meta mentality was broken in PvE, Scourge even start to take over the gamemode. The truth is that, when EoD was released, the majority of the community was sick tired of scourge (and firebrand). It definitely isn't a minority that thought that "it was too OP".

While EoD brought Scourge down a notch to fit the new standard, it also made it significantly more attractive as a support. A new appeal that broke WvW which is the reason it got nerfed in this specific gamemode. I do think the devs want Scourges to focus on boon hate capitalizing on their current amount of boon hate but the current boon output in WvW make such a job kind of wasteful so the meta isn't developping toward this specific direction.

SotO made it a whole new beast with weapon proficiency. Simply put, giving Scourge an additional source of torment was a huge mistake. That said, nerfing Scourge's traitline instead of the new source of torment wasn't exactly the most brilliant move the devs could make, however, since that's usually how they do things this outcome shouldn't have surprised anybody.

[Lctl.6198]

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Scourge was mechanically broken OP in competitive modes from PoF beta to EoD. Once the "full dps" meta mentality was broken in PvE, Scourge even start to take over the gamemode. The truth is that, when EoD was released, the majority of the community was sick tired of scourge (and firebrand). It definitely isn't a minority that thought that "it was too OP".

While EoD brought Scourge down a notch to fit the new standard, it also made it significantly more attractive as a support. A new appeal that broke WvW which is the reason it got nerfed in this specific gamemode. I do think the devs want Scourges to focus on boon hate capitalizing on their current amount of boon hate but the current boon output in WvW make such a job kind of wasteful so the meta isn't developping toward this specific direction.

SotO made it a whole new beast with weapon proficiency. Simply put, giving Scourge an additional source of torment was a huge mistake. That said, nerfing Scourge's traitline instead of the new source of torment wasn't exactly the most brilliant move the devs could make, however, since that's usually how they do things this outcome shouldn't have surprised anybody.

I won't pretend to know about PVP, as I care little about it in this game, and my reference about that specific part was more about killing the spec's identity as a whole.

However, in PVE it was universally agreed that while Progressing, Scourge was indeed "OP", due to allowing mechanics to be "bypassed" entirely and thus people not "learning" said mechanics - once prog was done, and the fight studied, it was detrimental to bring a scourge at all, as kill speed would be significantly lower.

This, in my own view, speaks volumes not against scourge per se ( as you pointed out, Firebrand was on the same track ) - but Anet inability to actually put out proper Boss fights, and worse, their refusal to admit people can outsmart them by using the tools at their disposal. ( which they themselves created ).

Boon meta was, is and will always be a mistake. Instead of creating a balanced playfield where people can experiment a lot more and bring more options to the table, most fights/groups are bound to bringing XYZ class for specific Boons. Most don't even look at specs for their "fun factor" anymore, they just look at boons and if a spec can do it or not ( and uptime ).

And this for me is what I cannot forgive Anet for. They gave up and decided to nuke an entirely playstyle, treating the symptom, while ignoring the disease. (which they constantly keep doing - Im only using Scourge as an example, since it's the only class I used to actually enjoy playing. And that's on me, I admit ).

 

I never played scourge for big numbers. I played scourge for the comfortable support playstyle and Frontline combat medic it allowed me to be. Before the nerf ( re-work ) I rarely saw anyone wanting a Scourge for end game activities, and when they did was more out of pity or resignation that no one else was available (speaking about PuG's , not premade groups/guild groups ). And I accepted that. I wasn't mad at people for it. They wanted their time to be used efficiently and Scourge output wasn't *it* .  And that was *fine*. 

Considering the lack of PVE content and quality of said content, Anet focused on Scourge like it committed a cardinal sin, since it was easier to do so, than step up their own game.

TLDR : In my eyes, it was never Scourge that was OP - It was PVE's (quality)  content that sucked  

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Lctl.6198 said:

However, in PVE it was universally agreed that while Progressing, Scourge was indeed "OP", due to allowing mechanics to be "bypassed" entirely and thus people not "learning" said mechanics - once prog was done, and the fight studied, it was detrimental to bring a scourge at all, as kill speed would be significantly lower.

That's how peoples thought 4 years ago, until a "raids completion competition" showed that the Full dps teams weren't more effective with their "higher kill speed" than more balanced teams.

1 hour ago, Lctl.6198 said:

In my eyes, it was never Scourge that was OP - It was PVE's (quality)  content that sucked 

You're not wrong and at the same time you're not right.

In general, barrier is the mechanic which is OP. The way barrier work make it possible to ignore the need for any investment just by stacking barrier sources and that's a design flaw that players easily exploit. 

Instead of working on the faulty barrier mechanism, the devs choose to "limit" the barrier builds. Scourge as the leading figure of the barrier buisiness ended up being on the receiving end of the nerf bat many time. Note that the devs like to repeat their mistakes again and again as they released mechanist which quickly replaced scourge as the leading figure of the barrier buisiness and the new weapons like Revenant's scepter.

Still, you should take note of the fact that this thread is about WvW, the only gamemode where scourge lost it's "newfound" ability to provide Alacrity, not PvE.

[Lctl.6198]

6 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

That's how peoples thought 4 years ago, until a "raids completion competition" showed that the Full dps teams weren't more effective with their "higher kill speed" than more balanced teams.

You're not wrong and at the same time you're not right.

In general, barrier is the mechanic which is OP. The way barrier work make it possible to ignore the need for any investment just by stacking barrier sources and that's a design flaw that players easily exploit. 

Instead of working on the faulty barrier mechanism, the devs choose to "limit" the barrier builds. Scourge as the leading figure of the barrier buisiness ended up being on the receiving end of the nerf bat many time. Note that the devs like to repeat their mistakes again and again as they released mechanist which quickly replaced scourge as the leading figure of the barrier buisiness and the new weapons like Revenant's scepter.

Still, you should take note of the fact that this thread is about WvW, the only gamemode where scourge lost it's "newfound" ability to provide Alacrity, not PvE.

You are right, 100% on all you said, specially me bringing PVE ranting into this thread, my apologies

[wisprr.4612]

I would not call this a strictly WvW thread, since as I originally posted I never wanted Alacrity for any game mode, and I consider that update as a whole a nerf to Scourge capabilities, I would love nothing more if Scourge simply did not have Alac and things went back to the way they were before it.

And thank you everyone, a lot of really good points and discussion here, and I have to say I agree with the entire Boons flavor of the month, Necro as a whole has always been weak when it comes to boons, and I'm good with that, even with Harbinger which is boon-centric there is FAR better classes when it comes to boons. Then we talk about Scourge, after all the changes to it, wasn't it at a good place? Why can't we find a good place for Any class and leave it well enough alone, just making minor adjustments as needed? Instead of having massive changes and saying "oops", then completely gut something because it was over-done? I mean, Scourge Alac is far from the first time this has occurred, it is just really recent and a really good example of it.

I've also heard that Scourge is dead in WvW because of this, AND they did it right at the start of a WvW week? The hell! Really hard to not feel singled out by something like that. I even completely scrapped my Scourge Alac build that I had tailored for WvW and said forget it all together, I'm just done with AlacScourge. Then I turned around and made a Core Necro WvW build because I was sick of all the changes, even slotted my Sylvari Plant Turret ultimate which is always fun, and has not been changed since release to boot. I think I might be seeing more Race Skills being used in PvE these days too maybe, probably because people are sick of things changing and having to fix broken builds.

 

As for Scourge Barrier, I don't think it was ever broken personally, though maybe lessen how much it affects other players? The thing is, Scourge does not have a second health bar like Core Necro and Reaper does, so it helps to compensate for the lack of that, and is capped at 50% max health but can also be used outside of shroud. The other downside to barrier, is it is based off Healing stat instead of just vitality like Shroud, so to be effective you want 2 stats instead of 1.

 

Anywise, thank you for all of the insightful and very valid posts!

Edited April 11 by wisprr.4612

[Echostorm.9143]

For PVE Heal Alac Scourge is my fav build please don't mess with it except for buffs.

For WvW I don't know why anyone would use it.