Balance the scourge now, not when next expansion comes

Brujeria.7536 · May 24, 2018

@DragonSlayer.1087 said:
@Rezzet.3614 said:
@X T D.6458 said:
@morrolan.9608 said:
@X T D.6458 said:Scourge is a necessary evil in WvW because it serves a purpose, it counters the natural desire every group has to be carried by boons and try to one push everyone.

Spellbreakers serve that purpose and in a way that is far more easily counterable than large groups composed of 70% scourges.

Spellbreakers are part of it, but Warriors do not provide aoe or range damage. WoD can make or break a fight, but it is an elite skill. Nobody is going to stack their zerg with warriors because they dont provide support, ranged/aoe damage. Scourge is not just there for boon corruption, it is there to enforce area control and punish groups for making mistakes and using bad positioning.

If its not Scourge, it will be something else. People will always use what is most effective and try to maximize its usefulness. Necro has always been part of the meta in WvW because of its burst damage ability.

you just unironically pointed out what is wrong with Scourge , they are doing Every Role At Once , Support,Offense,Anti Boon, Heal

if you trait for it and equip Blood wellyes if its not scourge it will be something else but at least it will be something counterable by something else other than stacking more scourges ,

if we remove scourges people will most likely shift to whatever else has access to non projectile aoe so most likely firebrand,eles,revs all wich are perfectly counterable by other professions, heck even good ol regular necro or reaper would still be powerful but counterable

does not help that scourge deals hybrid damage, I personally run Marauder's and land easy 8k+ damage on scourge 5,the elite and well of suffering all non projectile ranged aoe , then i negate healing via condi bomb and fear

This.People makes it sound so easy to just say "oh, just stay out of the red circle." Yeah, good luck with Fear and Torment Spam.

You cant stay out of the red circle all the time. And eventually you will die sooner or later. But its the same for ANY class in the entire game. You cant avoid all Ele AOE fields, you cant evade all Revenant hammer damage or bombs by zerg classes. You will get hit, just like with every other class. A single scourge wont kill you faster than an ele or hammer rev potentially could, you are complaining about a stack of scourges. A stack of the same size with revs is far more deadly, same goes for eles or any meele zerg. You die in a different fashion, but ultimately you SHOULD die against zerg effort by multiple players, regardles of class.

Brujeria.7536 · May 24, 2018

@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Zefrost.3425 said:It's honestly an embarassment to the games design. Let's pretend GW2 was just releasing today and was surrounded by hype and EoTM existed and all maps were queued, all servers were seperate and full of life, dungeons were a thing, we had all these new fractals and raids etc.
You would nerf the scourge.
Because you would lose players because of it. Players would complain about how ridiculously overpowered the scourge is and going back to a time when the forums were active, the entire forum would be full of complaints about scourge - and you would nerf it and redesign it. Being able to murder everyone in sight every 10 seconds compared to every 8 seconds (just an example)
LITERALLY
doesn't make a difference
AT ALL

EVER
. I used to main necromancer for almost 4 years so I can very well tell you how to balance the scourge. Players complaining about nerfs shouldn't even be a factor in the decision because there's more people complaining about how overpowered scourge is - which is totally justified.
This is how to balance the scourge properly. If a game dev from a game such as league of legends saw how ridiculous scourge is in this game, he would also agree due to the consideration of counterplay. And no, PvE is not being taken into consideration because it doesn't matter if you kill something in 5:46 or 5:14 - it still dies very fast. (Oh, and we're going to consider the scourge a condition damage class with support. (Since making it just support would be too off the end for many players) Reaper is the power class - scourge is the condition class):
1.
The scourge itself no longer counts as a sand shade.
2.
Sand shade skills cannot be used unless a sand shade is active (makes no difference, though, after change #1)
3.
Manifest sand shade now
actually
uses life force and no longer deals physical damage.
4.
Garish pillar inflicts 2s of fear instead of 1s and no longer deals physical damage.
5.
Desert shroud is reworked entirely; no longer inflicts physical damage, grants barrier, or inflicts torment, etc.Desert shroud now causes any currently active sand shades to pulse their effects and associated traits (eg. Reaper's might grants might to allies with manifest sand shade) as well as causing any currently active sand shades to pulse shroud skill 5 associated traits (eg. Active sand shades granting AOE stability with foot in the grave when using desert shroud) This means pulsing barrier near sand shades etc. etc. Traits and abilities may need to be reworded a bit to make coherent sense.
7.
Sand flare no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple. Instead, this skill inflicts AOE blind near any currently active sand shades.
8.
Sand swell no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple and no longer inflicts physical damage.
9.
Trail of anguish no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple; simply inflicts torment and cripple. Also no longer inflicts burning or physical damage.
10.
Dessicate now draws in any currently active sand shades to the player character, exploding the shades and dealing devastating damage, granting life force per shade exploded.
11.
Serpent siphon now sends all currently active sand shades to the target area and activates all manifest sand shade and shroud skill 1 traits.
It's not my job to balance everything, but there are some ideas for you. That is a class with more counterplay and better design concept than the current iteration of the scourge. Kind of like ventari revenant, only with more tablets and... better.

Simply put no.

Scourge is the only espec in the game that sacrifices some aspect of the base class, to get a benefit. The skills and mechanics it gets SHOULD be strong in exchange. Imagine a Warrior loosing weapon swap, an Ele loosing 2 attunements, an engi loosing kits and toolkit skills. The skills and benefits these especs would get in exchange would be insane. Warrior, mesmer, thief, ranger, engi or ele for comparison. None of these classes have to sacrifice anything, yet they are getting powerecreeped more and more with each espec.

This isn't even close to true. If you compare shades to any sort of death shroud, even reaper shroud, they are way better. You get barrier that you can be healed through unlike life force in death shroud. All your shade skills can be cast without going into death shroud and disabling your utilities and they are instant so that interrupts and being disabled doesn't mean kitten.

Technically

they do sacrifice machanics, but you are incredibly biased if you think that they are the only spec that does so. Warrior sacrifices 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreaker, so they can't use full power burst skills. Thief sacrifices steal for marking, like mentioning thief makes me think that you don't even play other professions. Ranger and engi technically don't sacrifice anything but I don't think I've seen many in zergs lately. I wonder why. Also if you haven't noticed ele sacrifices instant full attunement swap, which makes accessing support and survivability skills built into the core class inaccessible without waiting for an extra 4 seconds or without gimping your damage.

Shades aren't better than shroud, they are just different in a manner that benefits WvW zerg gameplay. There is a reason you dont stack scourges in PvP. Scourges are fragile on their own, even more so than reaper or corenecro. Shade skills have rather high costs in lifeforce and cooldown, you arent as flexible. If you use Desert Shroud you are a sitting duck, defense wise for a much longer time than you would be with a regular shroud, just as a example.

Well you complain about only having 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreakers. Why do spellbreakers need to have adrenaline at all? Why isnt fullcounter a complete replacement for burst skills with the adrenaline associated? Then you would sacrifice something, and then the power fullcounter had at release would be justified. Thief also retains all of the feats from stealing, even the item AND they get new stolen skills on top of it. You basicly loose only the shadowstep from stealing - trading it for an 1500 range skill that can CC with a lot of effects if traited is a PRETTY good substitution. Same goes for ele, you have utility skills to retain that effect. You CAN gain the same effect, timegated and with another flow of skills, but ultimately you can. In comparison to scourge: Why doenst it have the option to CHOOSE between the traditional shround and shades? Shades could disappear if you enter your traditional shroud, even all of the cooldowns could be shared between shade and shroud skills.

Emberheart.8426 · May 24, 2018

@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Zefrost.3425 said:It's honestly an embarassment to the games design. Let's pretend GW2 was just releasing today and was surrounded by hype and EoTM existed and all maps were queued, all servers were seperate and full of life, dungeons were a thing, we had all these new fractals and raids etc.
You would nerf the scourge.
Because you would lose players because of it. Players would complain about how ridiculously overpowered the scourge is and going back to a time when the forums were active, the entire forum would be full of complaints about scourge - and you would nerf it and redesign it. Being able to murder everyone in sight every 10 seconds compared to every 8 seconds (just an example)
LITERALLY
doesn't make a difference
AT ALL

EVER
. I used to main necromancer for almost 4 years so I can very well tell you how to balance the scourge. Players complaining about nerfs shouldn't even be a factor in the decision because there's more people complaining about how overpowered scourge is - which is totally justified.
This is how to balance the scourge properly. If a game dev from a game such as league of legends saw how ridiculous scourge is in this game, he would also agree due to the consideration of counterplay. And no, PvE is not being taken into consideration because it doesn't matter if you kill something in 5:46 or 5:14 - it still dies very fast. (Oh, and we're going to consider the scourge a condition damage class with support. (Since making it just support would be too off the end for many players) Reaper is the power class - scourge is the condition class):
1.
The scourge itself no longer counts as a sand shade.
2.
Sand shade skills cannot be used unless a sand shade is active (makes no difference, though, after change #1)
3.
Manifest sand shade now
actually
uses life force and no longer deals physical damage.
4.
Garish pillar inflicts 2s of fear instead of 1s and no longer deals physical damage.
5.
Desert shroud is reworked entirely; no longer inflicts physical damage, grants barrier, or inflicts torment, etc.Desert shroud now causes any currently active sand shades to pulse their effects and associated traits (eg. Reaper's might grants might to allies with manifest sand shade) as well as causing any currently active sand shades to pulse shroud skill 5 associated traits (eg. Active sand shades granting AOE stability with foot in the grave when using desert shroud) This means pulsing barrier near sand shades etc. etc. Traits and abilities may need to be reworded a bit to make coherent sense.
7.
Sand flare no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple. Instead, this skill inflicts AOE blind near any currently active sand shades.
8.
Sand swell no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple and no longer inflicts physical damage.
9.
Trail of anguish no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple; simply inflicts torment and cripple. Also no longer inflicts burning or physical damage.
10.
Dessicate now draws in any currently active sand shades to the player character, exploding the shades and dealing devastating damage, granting life force per shade exploded.
11.
Serpent siphon now sends all currently active sand shades to the target area and activates all manifest sand shade and shroud skill 1 traits.
It's not my job to balance everything, but there are some ideas for you. That is a class with more counterplay and better design concept than the current iteration of the scourge. Kind of like ventari revenant, only with more tablets and... better.

Simply put no.

Scourge is the only espec in the game that sacrifices some aspect of the base class, to get a benefit. The skills and mechanics it gets SHOULD be strong in exchange. Imagine a Warrior loosing weapon swap, an Ele loosing 2 attunements, an engi loosing kits and toolkit skills. The skills and benefits these especs would get in exchange would be insane. Warrior, mesmer, thief, ranger, engi or ele for comparison. None of these classes have to sacrifice anything, yet they are getting powerecreeped more and more with each espec.

This isn't even close to true. If you compare shades to any sort of death shroud, even reaper shroud, they are way better. You get barrier that you can be healed through unlike life force in death shroud. All your shade skills can be cast without going into death shroud and disabling your utilities and they are instant so that interrupts and being disabled doesn't mean kitten.

Technically

they do sacrifice machanics, but you are incredibly biased if you think that they are the only spec that does so. Warrior sacrifices 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreaker, so they can't use full power burst skills. Thief sacrifices steal for marking, like mentioning thief makes me think that you don't even play other professions. Ranger and engi technically don't sacrifice anything but I don't think I've seen many in zergs lately. I wonder why. Also if you haven't noticed ele sacrifices instant full attunement swap, which makes accessing support and survivability skills built into the core class inaccessible without waiting for an extra 4 seconds or without gimping your damage.

Shades aren't better than shroud, they are just different in a manner that benefits WvW zerg gameplay. There is a reason you dont stack scourges in PvP. Scourges are fragile on their own, even more so than reaper or corenecro. Shade skills have rather high costs in lifeforce and cooldown, you arent as flexible. If you use Desert Shroud you are a sitting duck, defense wise for a much longer time than you would be with a regular shroud, just as a example.

Well you complain about only having 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreakers. Why do spellbreakers need to have adrenaline at all? Why isnt fullcounter a complete replacement for burst skills with the adrenaline associated? Then you would sacrifice something, and then the power fullcounter had at release would be justified. Thief also retains all of the feats from stealing, even the item AND they get new stolen skills on top of it. You basicly loose only the shadowstep from stealing - trading it for an 1500 range skill that can CC with a lot of effects if traited is a PRETTY good substitution. Same goes for ele, you have utility skills to retain that effect. You CAN gain the same effect, timegated and with another flow of skills, but ultimately you can. In comparison to scourge: Why doenst it have the option to CHOOSE between the traditional shround and shades? Shades could disappear if you enter your traditional shroud, even all of the cooldowns could be shared between shade and shroud skills.

Shades are better than shroud. Yeah, you don't stack scourges in PvP but so what? What would you choose in PvP? Would you choose to play a reaper or a scourge? I bet it's scourge. Do you know why scourge is better than reaper everywhere? Because shades are superior to shroud. They don't only give you barrier, but they also enable you to corrupt all might to weakness much more consistently, which is a defence mechanism that is always conveniently ignored.

Also, I'm not complaining about the other professions. I'm just pointing out that they sacrifice something too. The stolen skills on deadeye are completely different to standard stolen skills, so you are sacrificing the old ones, plus a 1200 range instant teleport, for the new ones and deadeye's mark. It's a complete trade just like with your shades and shroud. When warriors have less adrenaline it means that their burst skills are weaker. They may as well actually not exist at that point because it's better to just use full counter. As for elementalist, you can say that they have access to their old skills all you want, but it's a class with the lowest armor and HP that defends by sustaining. This means that if you have to wait for 4 seconds to get to your heal you are already dead. So yeah, it's a massive tradeoff, maybe even the biggest one out of any PoF specs.

Besides, trading one mechanic for another in your elite spec has no bearing on if the spec is OP or not. If that was the case, then you would be able to argue for ridiculous stuff. Like for example, mesmer getting a button that one-shots the entire enemy zerg if it gives up all of its shatters. Anyway, I really shouldn't continue this because at the end of the day it's all semantics. You can see how strong scourge is just by the state of WvW and PvP. Nothing really needs to be said to prove that it's overperforming.

Brujeria.7536 · May 24, 2018

@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@"Zefrost.3425" said:It's honestly an embarassment to the games design. Let's pretend GW2 was just releasing today and was surrounded by hype and EoTM existed and all maps were queued, all servers were seperate and full of life, dungeons were a thing, we had all these new fractals and raids etc.
You would nerf the scourge.
Because you would lose players because of it. Players would complain about how ridiculously overpowered the scourge is and going back to a time when the forums were active, the entire forum would be full of complaints about scourge - and you would nerf it and redesign it. Being able to murder everyone in sight every 10 seconds compared to every 8 seconds (just an example)
LITERALLY
doesn't make a difference
AT ALL

EVER
. I used to main necromancer for almost 4 years so I can very well tell you how to balance the scourge. Players complaining about nerfs shouldn't even be a factor in the decision because there's more people complaining about how overpowered scourge is - which is totally justified.
This is how to balance the scourge properly. If a game dev from a game such as league of legends saw how ridiculous scourge is in this game, he would also agree due to the consideration of counterplay. And no, PvE is not being taken into consideration because it doesn't matter if you kill something in 5:46 or 5:14 - it still dies very fast. (Oh, and we're going to consider the scourge a condition damage class with support. (Since making it just support would be too off the end for many players) Reaper is the power class - scourge is the condition class):
1.
The scourge itself no longer counts as a sand shade.
2.
Sand shade skills cannot be used unless a sand shade is active (makes no difference, though, after change #1)
3.
Manifest sand shade now
actually
uses life force and no longer deals physical damage.
4.
Garish pillar inflicts 2s of fear instead of 1s and no longer deals physical damage.
5.
Desert shroud is reworked entirely; no longer inflicts physical damage, grants barrier, or inflicts torment, etc.Desert shroud now causes any currently active sand shades to pulse their effects and associated traits (eg. Reaper's might grants might to allies with manifest sand shade) as well as causing any currently active sand shades to pulse shroud skill 5 associated traits (eg. Active sand shades granting AOE stability with foot in the grave when using desert shroud) This means pulsing barrier near sand shades etc. etc. Traits and abilities may need to be reworded a bit to make coherent sense.
7.
Sand flare no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple. Instead, this skill inflicts AOE blind near any currently active sand shades.
8.
Sand swell no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple and no longer inflicts physical damage.
9.
Trail of anguish no longer corrupts boons into torment and cripple; simply inflicts torment and cripple. Also no longer inflicts burning or physical damage.
10.
Dessicate now draws in any currently active sand shades to the player character, exploding the shades and dealing devastating damage, granting life force per shade exploded.
11.
Serpent siphon now sends all currently active sand shades to the target area and activates all manifest sand shade and shroud skill 1 traits.
It's not my job to balance everything, but there are some ideas for you. That is a class with more counterplay and better design concept than the current iteration of the scourge. Kind of like ventari revenant, only with more tablets and... better.

Simply put no.

Scourge is the only espec in the game that sacrifices some aspect of the base class, to get a benefit. The skills and mechanics it gets SHOULD be strong in exchange. Imagine a Warrior loosing weapon swap, an Ele loosing 2 attunements, an engi loosing kits and toolkit skills. The skills and benefits these especs would get in exchange would be insane. Warrior, mesmer, thief, ranger, engi or ele for comparison. None of these classes have to sacrifice anything, yet they are getting powerecreeped more and more with each espec.

This isn't even close to true. If you compare shades to any sort of death shroud, even reaper shroud, they are way better. You get barrier that you can be healed through unlike life force in death shroud. All your shade skills can be cast without going into death shroud and disabling your utilities and they are instant so that interrupts and being disabled doesn't mean kitten.

Technically

they do sacrifice machanics, but you are incredibly biased if you think that they are the only spec that does so. Warrior sacrifices 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreaker, so they can't use full power burst skills. Thief sacrifices steal for marking, like mentioning thief makes me think that you don't even play other professions. Ranger and engi technically don't sacrifice anything but I don't think I've seen many in zergs lately. I wonder why. Also if you haven't noticed ele sacrifices instant full attunement swap, which makes accessing support and survivability skills built into the core class inaccessible without waiting for an extra 4 seconds or without gimping your damage.

Shades aren't better than shroud, they are just different in a manner that benefits WvW zerg gameplay. There is a reason you dont stack scourges in PvP. Scourges are fragile on their own, even more so than reaper or corenecro. Shade skills have rather high costs in lifeforce and cooldown, you arent as flexible. If you use Desert Shroud you are a sitting duck, defense wise for a much longer time than you would be with a regular shroud, just as a example.

Well you complain about only having 1 adrenaline bar for spellbreakers. Why do spellbreakers need to have adrenaline at all? Why isnt fullcounter a complete replacement for burst skills with the adrenaline associated? Then you would sacrifice something, and then the power fullcounter had at release would be justified. Thief also retains all of the feats from stealing, even the item AND they get new stolen skills on top of it. You basicly loose only the shadowstep from stealing - trading it for an 1500 range skill that can CC with a lot of effects if traited is a PRETTY good substitution. Same goes for ele, you have utility skills to retain that effect. You CAN gain the same effect, timegated and with another flow of skills, but ultimately you can. In comparison to scourge: Why doenst it have the option to CHOOSE between the traditional shround and shades? Shades could disappear if you enter your traditional shroud, even all of the cooldowns could be shared between shade and shroud skills.

Shades are better than shroud. Yeah, you don't stack scourges in PvP but so what? What would you choose in PvP? Would you choose to play a reaper or a scourge? I bet it's scourge. Do you know why scourge is better than reaper everywhere? Because shades are superior to shroud. They don't only give you barrier, but they also enable you to corrupt all might to weakness much more consistently, which is a defence mechanism that is always conveniently ignored.

Also, I'm not complaining about the other professions. I'm just pointing out that they sacrifice something too. The stolen skills on deadeye are completely different to standard stolen skills, so you are sacrificing the old ones, plus a 1200 range instant teleport, for the new ones and deadeye's mark. It's a complete trade just like with your shades and shroud. When warriors have less adrenaline it means that their burst skills are weaker. They may as well actually not exist at that point because it's better to just use full counter. As for elementalist, you can say that they have access to their old skills all you want, but it's a class with the lowest armor and HP that defends by sustaining. This means that if you have to wait for 4 seconds to get to your heal you are already dead. So yeah, it's a massive tradeoff, maybe even the biggest one out of any PoF specs.

Besides, trading one mechanic for another in your elite spec has no bearing on if the spec is OP or not. If that was the case, then you would be able to argue for ridiculous stuff. Like for example, mesmer getting a button that one-shots the entire enemy zerg if it gives up all of its shatters. Anyway, I really shouldn't continue this because at the end of the day it's all semantics. You can see how strong scourge is just by the state of WvW and PvP. Nothing really needs to be said to prove that it's overperforming.

Strongly depends on what you wanna do in PvP. Generally reaper. There are some tradoffs and major design flaws here that affect many decisions in the game, but overall against concentrated spike damage in WvW and PvP baseshroud is FAR superior. Barrier applications as well as healing is gated behind a long cooldown making base shroud better in this area. You can argue that scourge can corrupt more boons, potentially, but thats not reliable at all. With a cluster of scourges it is reliable, sure, but if there is a cluster of scourges there is a cluster of other classes on the enemies side that remove conditions and apply new boons faster and far more reliable. Weakness on 3 enemies does not save you against organized pushes as a scourge. The on demand stability and deathshroud of reaper is far more valuable, scourges will just melt in such scenarios.

The new stolen skills are argueably stronger - but again this depends of the goal you want to achieve. After all there really was no reason to give deadeye stolen skills at all, they are just getting these as an added bonus. Same for the ele - even if you need to wait 4 seconds for your heal and you die in these 4 seconds - you would most likely die to being zerg rushed like a scourge would too in the same scenario. You can argue that scourges can support each other - but so can eles, another amount of eles in the group/zerg can be in water and ready to heal, or even fully specced around it - a decision that a scourge cant do without gutting all it does.

You are right that a replaced mechanic does not define wether a espec is OP or not - but if your spec is sacrificing a vital part of a kit to achieve a certain goal, that goal should be strong. Like with scourge you sacrifice your shroud, your personal safety for zone controll and good AOE effects. In that regard Scourge isnt op at all - it does what its supposed to do and what its loosing stuff for. Loosing is something completly different than changing, as with ele attunements. You get to the things you prior had a in a different way - which is fine. The old "weakest armor and hp argument" doenst quite cut it here. At the end of the day its not that scourge is op - its just that people dont adapt or think about builds and teamplay and instead complain and cry to get back the old stale gameplay they are used to - leaving the meta in WvW in the same boring state it has been since years.

Bunny.9834 · May 24, 2018

@Brujeria.7536 said:
@DragonSlayer.1087 said:
@Rezzet.3614 said:
@X T D.6458 said:
@morrolan.9608 said:
@X T D.6458 said:Scourge is a necessary evil in WvW because it serves a purpose, it counters the natural desire every group has to be carried by boons and try to one push everyone.