Sand Savant and Support

[Lily.1935]

With the nerfs to sand savant the scourge's support capability in WvW and PvP have been buried six feet under. Not that their support was strong enough anyway, but this solidifies that it wont be possible in the competitive game modes. Now I'm not saying that Arena net made the wrong decision given the time they have now. However, its clear that the scourge needs some serious work done to it in order to make it a competitive support spec. So I'm going to make some suggestions in order to make it more support and keep it as far away from the most optimal damage dealing grandmaster trait as possible.

1. The first thing I'd do is to make it so that if take Sand Savant your Manifest Sand Shade will no longer cause crippling or torment. This change would cut its ability to spam large numbers of conditions on foes with ease. I found it so easy to just trap people in the Shade because of Crippling and with the high number of conditions, Sand Savant could just keep enemies from really cleansing themselves with so many unique conditions. With Soul reaping giving you Vulnerability and burning on top of it and Curses giving you Weakening shroud you could potentially give 6 unique conditions. 4 at minimum. So cutting this down would be the first step. Removing the crippling is especially important for the greater shade because of how large of the area it covers.
2. Manifest Sand Shade grants healing to allies around you and your greater shade when you use their abilities. Minor healing is really all that's needed. A bit of a buffer for allies to help ease the damage while providing healing. Rather than causing damage it would become more selfless to use. I wouldn't mind it also providing a short duration of a powerful boon as well, but that's up for debate. Max healing I feel it shouldn't do more than 400-500.
3. Desert shroud no longer pulses torment to enemies but barrier to allies. Barrier applied to yourself is reduced. When I say strip its ability to cause damage, I really mean it. Taking Sand Savant should be an absolute dedication to the support aspect of the scourge. It would still pulse damage, but it wouldn't be an effective source of it. Reducing the barrier on yourself is also important as we wouldn't want it to gain even more barrier then before with the investment of healing. Selflessness should be the name of the game when using this.
4. Return its cooldown to its previous form. With all these change to Sand Savant, I see no reason not to return it to its previous cool down. It shouldn't be the king of area denial and crowd control, but it should be a strong option for support. And that is what it was intended for. So this is how I'd change it.

What are your guys's thoughts? Would this be good for Sand Savant? I'd want this in All game modes, not just in PvP and WvW. Support scourge is struggling while damage scourge has been dominant. I'd love to see the necromancer shine as a support. And I feel sacrificing the damage for the support is a fair trade. Have any other suggestions? leave them in the comments. But do tell me what you think. Would you like this sort of change of direction too?

[Sephylon.4938]

Would be a nice step forward imo. Though blood magic would also need some tweaking: less of rezing, more of preventing downs in the first place. Honestly though, am entire rework is needed for necro. The class is too swingy: snowballs when in the right environment, below average anywhere else.

[Dadnir.5038]

I'd do things in a slightly different manner but with similar effects:

• I wouldn't change manifest sand shade but I'd remove the ability of the other F skills to proc it.
• I'd change desert shroud so that instead of it's current effects it pulse every second a buff that share the effects of scourge's master and grandmaster minors.
• I'd change demonic lore so that instead of dealing a burn on torment, it make the new desert shroud proc manifest sand shade when it pulse.
• I'd make desert empowerment and unending corruption proc on F skills that cost life force instead of manifest sand shade.

This way sand savant become pur support and demonic lore pur dps

[Brujeria.7536]

Well the thing is the supporting aspect isnt built deep into core necromancer at all. We have not a single weapon skill that supports allies in a common way. Thats why they intended it to be a condi and support spec. Crippling / fearing your enemies and the general application of condis and boon corrupt IS part of the support a scourge wants to offer.

The amount of things they can add as a profession mechanic, in the elite trait line and the attached skillset is very limited and the "support" aspect doenst go that well with the core necro. If you invest HEAVILY in healingpower none of your weapon skills really have any benefit, supporting wise, for your allies, and weapon skills for the most part are the most defining part of a class and a build.

Why should a grandmaster CRIPPLE a part of your skill? This negative side isnt a thing in the game - no matter how broken a class or certain spec it, grandmaster traits ALWAYS add on top of it.

Furthermore, shade skills are already heavily limited - long cooldowns AND lifeforce cost AND the loss of your base shroud for personal defense. - Its pretty much impossible to tune the vast majority of the supporting aspects of a class into just 4 F-Skills - they are either too strong or too weak and by investing into boon duration and healingpower heavily to make it work you would cripple everything else you do.

While i like your idea here i dont think the profession is made to choose in that state of the game - the damage scourge deals is very low, pure dps wise. All of its damage can be negated by not standing in the field -> Pure dps does not work out. All of its skills have long cooldowns and high costs + you have no support options from weapon skills -> very limited ability to do things or to reliable heal / support allies, the possibilities are simply not in the kit compared to other classes.

The only possible way (without a full rework from scrap) is if these things synergize with each other like they do now -> Offensive style support and damage the necromancer class as a whole brings to the table with some minor healing / barrier and good AOE aspects scourge brings.

And this also, is JUST from the view in a group fight, there is a reason a scourge cant bunker - and a reason scourge sucks in 1v1 with an offensive build, by tearing the gap between what a necromancer is supposed to do, and what a scourge adds to it, even more you destroy both purposes in a group / zerg fight and turn the class into something useless in 1v1 situations, across all game modes

[Lily.1935]

@"Brujeria.7536" said:Well the thing is the supporting aspect isnt built deep into core necromancer at all. We have not a single weapon skill that supports allies in a common way. Thats why they intended it to be a condi and support spec. Crippling / fearing your enemies and the general application of condis and boon corrupt IS part of the support a scourge wants to offer.

The amount of things they can add as a profession mechanic, in the elite trait line and the attached skillset is very limited and the "support" aspect doenst go that well with the core necro. If you invest HEAVILY in healingpower none of your weapon skills really have any benefit, supporting wise, for your allies, and weapon skills for the most part are the most defining part of a class and a build.

Why should a grandmaster CRIPPLE a part of your skill? This negative side isnt a thing in the game - no matter how broken a class or certain spec it, grandmaster traits ALWAYS add on top of it.

Furthermore, shade skills are already heavily limited - long cooldowns AND lifeforce cost AND the loss of your base shroud for personal defense. - Its pretty much impossible to tune the vast majority of the supporting aspects of a class into just 4 F-Skills - they are either too strong or too weak and by investing into boon duration and healingpower heavily to make it work you would cripple everything else you do.

While i like your idea here i dont think the profession is made to choose in that state of the game - the damage scourge deals is very low, pure dps wise. All of its damage can be negated by not standing in the field -> Pure dps does not work out. All of its skills have long cooldowns and high costs + you have no support options from weapon skills -> very limited ability to do things or to reliable heal / support allies, the possibilities are simply not in the kit compared to other classes.

The only possible way (without a full rework from scrap) is if these things synergize with each other like they do now -> Offensive style support and damage the necromancer class as a whole brings to the table with some minor healing / barrier and good AOE aspects scourge brings.

And this also, is JUST from the view in a group fight, there is a reason a scourge cant bunker - and a reason scourge sucks in 1v1 with an offensive build, by tearing the gap between what a necromancer is supposed to do, and what a scourge adds to it, even more you destroy both purposes in a group / zerg fight and turn the class into something useless in 1v1 situations, across all game modes

I have more suggestions in the future. It isn't as drastic of an Issue as you think. And I don't personally feel that Scourge is that bad in 1v1 and I don't feel that should be its focus regardless. I'd like to see more support options in Death magic for example and I plan on making a post about that later. I personally have no problem with 1v1 on scourge even without Sand Savant. I can hit people just fine.

[Lily.1935]

@Sephylon.4938 said:Would be a nice step forward imo. Though blood magic would also need some tweaking: less of rezing, more of preventing downs in the first place. Honestly though, am entire rework is needed for necro. The class is too swingy: snowballs when in the right environment, below average anywhere else.

Blood magic and Death magic. Both should have support elements to them.

[Lily.1935]

@Dadnir.5038 said:I'd do things in a slightly different manner but with similar effects:

• I wouldn't change manifest sand shade but I'd remove the ability of the other F skills to proc it.
• I'd change desert shroud so that instead of it's current effects it pulse every second a buff that share the effects of scourge's master and grandmaster minors.
• I'd change demonic lore so that instead of dealing a burn on torment, it make the new desert shroud proc manifest sand shade when it pulse.
• I'd make desert empowerment and unending corruption proc on F skills that cost life force instead of manifest sand shade.

This way sand savant become pur support and demonic lore pur dps

What you're suggesting does actually change Manifest sand shade since its ability to proc on other shade skills is linked to Manifest sand shade. Also i'm not a fan of that idea since it strips synergy from scourge when scourge is already starved for synergy with the core specs. As for the other ideas, I'm also not a fan of them either. I like how the two traits function, they are quite fun to use. I think scourge needs a bit more Damage in PvE, but not in PvP and WvW. They're pretty solid there with how many cover conditions they have. So it would be a matter of tweaking a few numbers. Longer duration conditions in PvE could work wonders as opposed to the other game modes. It doesn't need that much help, Scourge is close to its DPS mark.

[Lily.1935]

BTW. Out of the boons Sand Savant could apply I have a few ideas. First is protection. Makes sense, it's a useful boon with barrier. Makes it that much stronger. The next is Alacrity. Perhaps a controversial pick, but necromancer couldn't be a primary healer even with it and they don't have the boon support to really replace chronomancer but might form an alternative core with support firebrand. Who knows. Last is regeneration. We should have have easier access to regeneration but I feel it should be in blood magic.

[Rym.1469]

Majority of the shade damage in spvp isn't really torment it applies - outside of f5 - but the burning from dhuumfire interaction. Just a quick heads up.

At this point I wouldn't want scourge to be, well, anything. It's a pretty bad design with little interaction. It fails as a damage dealer in PvP and WvW because it's either plainly boring to fight against or is a freekill. It brought nothing to the PvE for a damage role and shade mechanic is even less interesting in there than in competitive gamemodes - as a condition elite spec it's losing to condition Reaper in funfactor, because a condition reaper (a dedicated power elite) requires some thought.

If you went fully blown barrier spam support with it, it'd just turn into a bubblespam Discipline priest from WoD, making other healers worthless, because absorb is always better than heal. Why heal damage if you just don't take it in the first place? Developers were careful with giving a lot of AoE barrier and rightfully so, because even now stacking barrier can be and is abused.

I don't want Scourge to take away the slot from dedicated condition elite specialization and I don't want this sorry excuse of a design to be Necromancer's dedicated support option we get instead of something more...interesting, with skill floor higher than ocean's bottom.

Better luck next expansion. Sorry for mild rant.

[Lily.1935]

@Rym.1469 said:Majority of the shade damage in spvp isn't really torment it applies - outside of f5 - but the burning from dhuumfire interaction. Just a quick heads up.

At this point I wouldn't want scourge to be, well, anything. It's a pretty bad design with little interaction. It fails as a damage dealer in PvP and WvW because it's either plainly boring to fight against or is a freekill. It brought nothing to the PvE for a damage role and shade mechanic is even less interesting in there than in competitive gamemodes - as a condition elite spec it's losing to condition Reaper in funfactor, because a condition reaper (a dedicated power elite) requires some thought.

If you went fully blown barrier spam support with it, it'd just turn into a bubblespam Discipline priest from WoD, making other healers worthless, because absorb is always better than heal. Why heal damage if you just don't take it in the first place? Developers were careful with giving a lot of AoE barrier and rightfully so, because even now stacking barrier can be and is abused.

I don't want Scourge to take away the slot from dedicated condition elite specialization and I don't want this sorry excuse of a design to be Necromancer's dedicated support option we get instead of something more...interesting, with skill floor higher than ocean's bottom.

Better luck next expansion. Sorry for mild rant.

Actually the torment and crippling are major. Very major. Even just removing crippling would heavily Nerf the shades. The Sand Savant with it'd massive radius kept people in it longer with crippling and the torment damage isn't much lower than burning while moving. On top of that you have the pulsing from desert shroud. 4 unique conditions are much harder to cleanse than 2. Especially when one of those conditions is a soft cc. You'd be surprised. It would be about a 25% loss in damage from the loss of torment on the manifest trigger and an additional something like 6k dps loss from desert shroud. It's much lower than you think. Again you also can't underestimate crippling. Especially when it's radius is so large.

Also. This isn't the place to complain about scourge. I happen to love it's design and absolutely despise the shroud mechanic. Shroud in my opinion is the worst designed mechanic I've ever seen in a mmo. I'd be happy if they did away with it entirely. But people like it for some reason. Even though it's the cause of all of our problems in this game. But this isn't the place for that.

This post is about support. Not the condi scourge which is pretty close to the same dps as condi reaper in PvE only it's more reliable and fun to use.

[Catchyfx.5768]

it will be nice see some "support, Healers" necros.Staff2 and Focus4 are only things we can give our teamates(regeneration)+Wells or signet of vampirism(PvE), only traitline that is supportive is Blood Magic. I would like to see if in death magic will be choice to shield, allies instead of minions(meh).Death Magic is sadly, to nothing right now.

But we can't be buffing stations like firebrand or mesmer. It is out of concept.EDIT:I mean it will be nice, have "full support" option.

[Zero.3871]

I absolutely agree. instead of reaping scourge with every balance patch more and more anet should rework that class. support shades would be great and like some comments said, anet should also creating synergies with blood magic and death magic traitlines (traitlines that are the worst since a Long time). necro Needs that rework more than mesmer or thief ever did. core is a dead class, no one uses because core necro is low mobility, no dmg, high cd's, no boons. reaper is just a Little better.

i like your idea!

[Lily.1935]

@"Catchyfx.5768" said:it will be nice see some "support, Healers" necros.Staff2 and Focus4 are only things we can give our teamates(regeneration)+Wells or signet of vampirism(PvE), only traitline that is supportive is Blood Magic. I would like to see if in death magic will be choice to shield, allies instead of minions(meh).Death Magic is sadly, to nothing right now.

But we can't be buffing stations like firebrand or mesmer. It is out of concept.EDIT:I mean it will be nice, have "full support" option.

We don't need full boons. A hand full would be nice. I don't think we should have access to quickness or aegis for example. I feel it should be limited within our theme. Alacrity would be nice, but I think it should have an internal cool down on it so you can't get 100% uptime with it since scourge could hit 10 targets. But protection and regeneration would work well for us for sure.

[Anchoku.8142]

Could Feed from Corruption become an AoE boon-share to compensate? Have it also duplicate boons generated on the Scourge on up to 10 allies in a 240 radius.

Another option for FfC might have it convert 1 condition on each ally into a boon within the AoE. (Rate TBD)

[Nimon.7840]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Would be a nice step forward imo. Though blood magic would also need some tweaking: less of rezing, more of preventing downs in the first place. Honestly though, am entire rework is needed for necro. The class is too swingy: snowballs when in the right environment, below average anywhere else.

Blood magic and Death magic. Both should have support elements to them.

Necro just needs that rework. Especially with no downs in wvw blood magic gets even more useless than it was before xD

[Lily.1935]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Would be a nice step forward imo. Though blood magic would also need some tweaking: less of rezing, more of preventing downs in the first place. Honestly though, am entire rework is needed for necro. The class is too swingy: snowballs when in the right environment, below average anywhere else.

Blood magic and Death magic. Both should have support elements to them.

Necro just needs that rework. Especially with no downs in wvw blood magic gets even more useless than it was before xD

The no downs thing isn't going to last forever. But yeah, that kinda bugs me about it. I'd like those res skills to res the dead players now across all classes.

[SunTzu.4513]

I like your idea. I would like to have an proper suppport build for the scourge but honestly i don't think this will never happened. Imo the way ANet is balancing the necro seems for me they don't understand their own implemented/designed mechaniks and their impact into the (group) game. Also i don't see a clear line or path where they want to go with the necro. I will play my necro main on till i stop playing GW2, don't care about the odds, but sometimes i can only wonder about what ANet is doing. I mean pre PoF they came up with this fancy class trailers, saying ''necro is getting a support spec'' . Shortly after release we got an other medicore DPS spec. Corenecro is dead and should also get a rework, to get competitive in all gamemodes. Don't need something like mesmer wich was a little bit over the top. Just give us a something usefull, so not the whole guild ts is laughing applicable and thinking you are trolling if you're anouncing you want to bring a support scourge into todays group game.

[Anchoku.8142]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Would be a nice step forward imo. Though blood magic would also need some tweaking: less of rezing, more of preventing downs in the first place. Honestly though, am entire rework is needed for necro. The class is too swingy: snowballs when in the right environment, below average anywhere else.

Blood magic and Death magic. Both should have support elements to them.

Necro just needs that rework. Especially with no downs in wvw blood magic gets even more useless than it was before xD

The no downs thing isn't going to last forever. But yeah, that kinda bugs me about it. I'd like those res skills to res the dead players now across all classes.

You reminded me of a personal beef with SoU. Signet of Undeath should outright res' dead players. The 3 sec cast time, long CD, and small ground target area deserve that power.