Necro scourge heal : questions about it's viability and acceptation

[Shaogin.2679]

If it is what you like, then play it, but it is definitely not optimal. I have taken heal Scourges in my training raids before and I have also played one as well. The might uptime is subpar and not worth speccing for. Though LF management isn't really an issue, barrier is inferior to the healing output that other support specs out there, especially when you factor in the buffs they provide. All in all it is a decent build, but provides no real benefit over simply bringing one of the other support specs.

[felincyriac.5981]

It's a fine build, as a secondary healer.

[foste.3098]

I'm just gonna link teapot's heal scourge guide:

It was used to beat the challenge mode of the last boss in the new riad, so yes the build is extremely good in the right setup.

[MrMouser.6583]

Its the most busted healing spec in the game, only downside is you can't target heal as easily as druid, besides that, busted brier spam, busted proximity healing and best of all, busted rez.

[Warscythes.9307]

Let me clarify a bit why heal scourge is suddenly in the spotlight right now.

1) Teapot promoted itThere's no way around it. His video encouraged a lot more heal scourges. Doesn't matter if is good or bad but if a fairly popular video content producer made a video then it will be on the spotlight.

2) W6 came outHere is the thing with the current rendition of magi heal scourge. It is terrible at actually recovering hp, it offers poor offensive buffs such as might, fury etc. While it can be specced to do offer boons, it is at best mediocre. So why take it?

W6 right now have very lenient timers. So offensive buffs are not as important. Now while yes pushing fight so mistakes happen less is a valid point, the damage difference does not seem to be big of an effect judging from past runs and other people's videos.

W6 also has very very high burst damage. Often times you either don't get hit. Or you get hit very high damage in a short amount of time and then bit of a gap.

KC2.0's slam attack, Largos dashes/bubbles, literally everything Qtidem does half your hp in a few seconds and then there's a recovery gap. So it has this interesting effect where scourge's slow recovery time does not have a huge penalty as you have enough time to recover. You can also predict damage via barrier much more easily as everything is telegraphed well. If KC start to rise his fist then bust out barrier cause somebody is going to face tank it. If Largos start to dash then start barrier because somebody won't be able to move out in time. If any adds in Qtidem looks at people funny such as the hydra then start barrier because they are going to take a huge hit. What barrier does is that it prevents a player from going down where as traditional healers need to reactively heal and it takes time to do so. However if the gap between damage are slow enough that scourge's healing can keep up then the poor actual healing is no longer a big downside.

Of course the biggest reason is the rezzing potential. Yes people go down, especially in W6 where mechanics are new and the damage is usually very high. Doesn't matter how good you are chances are you will screw up occasionally when things are new. That's where heal scourge start to truly shine. It has the unique ability to not only fast rez like heal tempest but also pull them out of aoes and that's make the spec invaluable at times.

So really once W6 settles down and people understand the rotations/mechanics then I am sure heal scourge will be passing its spot to healers with more offensive buffs. Until then it is currently the best safety net for progression groups to prevent wipes.

[Nimon.7840]

Hey. On some encounters scourge is good, but on some it's not.

Last week my group looked for a second healer (yeah we always play 2, we may take 30 seconds longer to kill a boss but better safe than sorry, especially if a lot of the times, half of your group is pugs)We took the necro heal (yeah I play it sometimes as well)

But

He was very bad. He constantly feared adds away, that our chronos pulled towards us. I told him to watch out for his f4s, to not fear away adds. He just told me: "but I have to keep transfusion ticking"And that's how 95% of scourge healers play. Even if the group is at full health.

We were glad, when he left the squad.

That's why I will keep telling you, that necro isn't very good. It's good in certain circumstances, but it's not the godlike healer/support, that everybody thinks it is, after teapots video.Just watch the next video and see how devastating it can be to have a scourge healer.

I told my guildies I'd make a video of bad healscourge plays. One day after that, teapot uploaded his video where he alone kills the whole dhuum group, by pulling them in the boonrip/soulsplit field.

[Safandula.8723]

Heal scourge is good in dew things: keeping scholar runes uptime, resing ppl, blocking bursts(vg green or few others), and it provides barier and F4 healing to 10 target. It lacks spirits and spoter, but if going harrier variant u can easilly Maintain 25 might.The fact its good at resing means its fking OP (with rly big letters) in pug groups below 250 Li. This build is fking carrying tons of ppl and its good in raids with 1 druid which provides might. In this setup 1 subgroup only loose 100 precision (untill u dont need to split like on w6b2).On 1 try on w6b1 Our team didnt have shields for clap so i Just precasted F4 and healing well which ressed everyone in 2 seconds.IMO this build will become meta in a lot of pug groups soon.

[Obtena.7952]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@"Knox.8962" said:Scourge Support is a wildly misunderstood creature, and is frequently the target of scorn. I wanted to clear up some misconceptions and lay out the case for "Heavy Support Scourge".

What does it do:

Scourge is an excellent Area Healer, with great condi-clear, reasonable DPS (For a healer), and second-to-none revive capability. It makes any other healer more effective by allowing them to heal the people who need it more effectively. It also is very effective at providing heals "across groups" in the squad due to the unique nature of barrier and also the Shades themselves.

What it does NOT do:

Scourge has really terrible capability to heal

A

person. Everything you do is effectively large scale heal over time. You have a few tools to handle burst healing, but once those tools are spent, you pretty much need additional heals from the target being healed, or some other support provider.

This one is exactly the reason, why scourge healer isnt good

" you pretty much need additional heals from the target veing healed, or some other support provider"

So you are giving up a dps spot for a second healer in your group. That healer can also heal the group alone, so the scourge healer gets useless and its better to bring a dps instead.

I don't think that's fair ... you are giving up a DPS slot, but it's not for a healer, it's for something else and I think people miss that point. Scourge is not the best healer ... but it's an excellent profession as an assistant. Sure, in the most optimized, highly capable groups, an assistant seems extraneous ... but most of us don't play at that level. If you have a average healer ... or you have a team of average non-healers, a Scourge outfitted for support is a highly desirable team member that can fill those gaps from non-optimal performance over a wide number of people and area.

It continues to astound me how readily people set the baseline for the highest performing team compositions and class builds. That's simply not indicative of how this game is designed, how most people play it or even how Anet thinks when they balance classes; it's simply not a relevant baseline. This is one the great things that separates this game from many others and it works because no average player wants to struggle to succeed because success threshold is based off a very narrow band of choices available to them. That "small threshold recipe for success" is an old, tired and frankly, really stupid way for an game company to present content to people who just want a casual experience.

As an afterthought, I think it's funny that people don't mind getting offensive assistants that may have a smaller self-DPS level, especially when they aren't needed to succeed... but grab their pitchforks when the idea of teaming a defensive or support assistant is even considered, especially when they can REALLY make the difference between success or not. Whatever ... people will carry their baggage from old, tired MMOs with them I guess, even if it's really heavy.

[Anchoku.8142]

Some of the biggest buffs for Scourge and Reaper are the nerfs to other professions.

[Nimon.7840]

@Safandula.8723 said:Heal scourge is good in dew things: keeping scholar runes uptime, resing ppl, blocking bursts(vg green or few others), and it provides barier and F4 healing to 10 target. It lacks spirits and spoter, but if going harrier variant u can easilly Maintain 25 might.Harrier is more restricted when it comes to using your shade abilities. It's not impossible though. But f4 transfusion healing only counts for 5 people, not for 10.The fact its good at resing means its kitten OP (with rly big letters) in pug groups below 250 Li. This build is kitten carrying tons of ppl and its good in raids with 1 druid which provides might. In this setup 1 subgroup only loose 100 precision (untill u dont need to split like on w6b2).On 1 try on w6b1 Our team didnt have shields for clap so i Just precasted F4 and healing well which ressed everyone in 2 seconds.IMO this build will become meta in a lot of pug groups soon.

[Jimbru.6014]

I think part of the problem here is terminology.

When most people think of a "healer", they think in the traditional MMO sense, of a class whose primary role is to directly target other players and heal them. Scourge doesn't do so much of that, so most people don't see them as healers, and they're not really wrong for that.

So if you asked me to describe my Scourge, I would call him "support" or "hybrid support". He's in full Marshal gear with Altruism runes for extra offensive buffs. In the open world, he is mostly invincible unless I do something dumb, and in five-person groups, he rocks. I was running daily fractals with him last night, constantly moving my shade to spam barriers, adding buffs, adding some DPS, keeping up the little healing ticks all over, and generally helping all over the battlefield. In fact, I think that might be the best way to describe it: with all the different things I do, I'm not a healer, I'm a "helper". Supplemental healing is just one thing I do...

EDIT: In fact, now that I think of it, I would say that support Scourge falls back to an older MMO paradigm. In EverQuest, there were the traditional three roles-- tank, healer, DPS. But there were also dedicated support classes -- Shamans had buffs, debuffs, and secondary healing. Enchanters were CC specialists. And so on. And you needed those classes in groups and raids because they were force multipliers. I think that our support Scourge falls into that "force multiplier" group.

[Nimon.7840]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:I think part of the problem here is terminology.

When most people think of a "healer", they think in the traditional MMO sense, of a class whose primary role is to directly target other players and heal them. Scourge doesn't do so much of that, so most people don't see them as healers, and they're not really wrong for that.

So if you asked me to describe my Scourge, I would call him "support" or "hybrid support". He's in full Marshal gear with Altruism runes for extra offensive buffs. In the open world, he is mostly invincible unless I do something dumb, and in five-person groups, he rocks. I was running daily fractals with him last night, constantly moving my shade to spam barriers, adding buffs, adding some DPS, keeping up the little healing ticks all over, and generally helping all over the battlefield. In fact, I think that might be the best way to describe it: with all the different things I do, I'm not a healer, I'm a "helper". Supplemental healing is just one thing I do...

EDIT: In fact, now that I think of it, I would say that support Scourge falls back to an older MMO paradigm. In EverQuest, there were the traditional three roles-- tank, healer, DPS. But there were also dedicated support classes -- Shamans had buffs, debuffs, and secondary healing. Enchanters were CC specialists. And so on. And you needed those classes in groups and raids because they were force multipliers. I think that our support Scourge falls into that "force multiplier" group.

The problem here is, while the other supporters also give offensive boons, scourge doesn't.And most bosses are also pretty easy to kill with just one healer.

So now. Whom would you pick?The druid that has enough healing but insane dmg multipliersOr the scourge that has one defensive temporary health?

That's the real issue here.

If I go to benchmarks. Full Condi scourge does 28k DPS on golem.Without boons you will reach a maximum of 10-11k.So druid, warrior and chrono add 18k DPS.

When I last tested it, scourge couldn't even keep up 25 stacks of might on five targets, while druid easily can on 10.

Compared to other supports, the other supports are just way too overpowered.

Sure in some niche things, heal/support scourge is pretty good. (Mathias for portaling people back into the group after removing the poison in the waters)

But let's take w6 boss 1 as example.

The clap will always do 100% health dmg.

So a 10k health target will receive 10k dmg.But if the target has now 10k health +2k barrier, the clap will do 12k dmg.

Which is pretty damn stupid.

[Sephylon.4938]

What I really don't like about barriers is its cap. You can only give barrier up to 50% of receiver's max hp, but considering in pve all if not most of them are in glass, you over cap very easily making healing power not a good investment.