How's scourge compared to Reaper for open world?

[Lily.1935]

@otto.5684 said:Reaper is better in open world. Scourge is one of the slowest condi classes (too long for damage to ramp up), while reaper is one of the brustiest power builds. Scourge is ranged. That is really the only advantage here.

You're clearly playing scourge wrong. There are plenty of enemies in higher end content such as in HoT and PoF that the reaper struggles with by the very nature of how it fights in comparison to scourge. If you know what you're doing with scourge, dispatching large groups of enemies takes half the time than it does on reaper. Trust me, I've played over 1k hours on both to know which one is good where.

In core Reaper is better. This isn't a question at all. The enemies in core are just too fragile to really challenge you and they do very little in the way of debuffing and boons. Reapers thus can cleave them down uncontested. That said, scourge is still very solid in core maps as it is only slightly slower as long as its life force is full or close to.

In More difficult maps like Dragon's Stand, Dragonfall, the desolation, tangled depths, The scourge shines bright. Very difficult for your enemies to kill and lots of field control. Even if the reaper is using Spectral grasp they lack the same ability to dispatch many enemies with their AoE, especially considering control immune enemies become much more common forcing travel time. Not to mention enemies that spam barrier. Reapers damage is consistent most the time but not all the time. Scourge's doesn't require you to sacrifice one aspect of your build to ramp its dps. Reaper is much stronger in shroud than out for open world which means there is half the time where they are not dealing their full potential. Which scourge has no such problem, able to accept everything at once allowing them to waste no time with these barrier enemies.

This is something I need to note. The Monks in dragonfall are much more difficult to kill with the reaper than the scourge. I've tested both optimized dps builds on them and reaper struggles with them. It's nothing major but you do lose a lot of time fighting them when the monks are hard pressed to handle the constant stream of conditions the scourge dishes out.

[Lily.1935]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I've come to despise the scourge. First, because all of the skills are spammed when off cooldown, this class requires me to float my hands. It's quite painful to play. Second, it is high maintenance. A lot of your damage comes from having 3 shades up. Third, the ramp up is terrible. All of the conditions take awhile to tick away, and because of this it is a lot harder to survive in. Fourth, the scourge has very little healing, so it is easy to be whittled away.

Overall, the scourge is higher maintenance, lower damaging, slower, and more frail than the Reaper. The only advantage that scourge gets is Epidemic, which is only good in very select scenarios. Overall I've found it to be quite terrible in the overworld, as well as fractals.

Shroud is such a massive hindrance to you and your group. Barrier takes more time to learn how to use properly, but it is absolutely much stronger as a defensive tool in tandem with access to all utility at all times. I can't go back to reaper that often because it just feels way too limiting and vulnerable in comparison.

[Lily.1935]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I've come to despise the scourge. First, because all of the skills are spammed when off cooldown, this class requires me to float my hands. It's quite painful to play. Second, it is high maintenance. A lot of your damage comes from having 3 shades up. Third, the ramp up is terrible. All of the conditions take awhile to tick away, and because of this it is a lot harder to survive in. Fourth, the scourge has very little healing, so it is easy to be whittled away.

Overall, the scourge is higher maintenance, lower damaging, slower, and more frail than the Reaper. The only advantage that scourge gets is Epidemic, which is only good in very select scenarios. Overall I've found it to be quite terrible in the overworld, as well as fractals.

The hand floating I can get, but having all 3 shades out is a really bad idea and all scourge players will tell you that is wrong. You so don't just spam skills either. It's no wonder your damage is low if you're crippling yourself by burning your life force and putting all your shades on cooldown.

I know how to play Proactively. Healing is reactive not proactive. And if you are applying barriers reactively you will die. You need to be proactive. Be aware of your enemies' patterns and prepare yourself before being struck. If you can do that your defenses will be more than enough in most situations to keep you healthy.

Most people in open world do under 4k. And considering I'm constantly at the top with 11-14k with no food on scourge and saying we're low damage tells me that you are playing them very very wrong.

Scourge is high maintenance, sure. But honestly, so is engineer and elementalist. This isn't a bad thing. Once you learn the basics of scourge and begin to master it the scourge is extremely fluid in its combat and you can drop groups of enemies extremely quickly.

[Nimon.7840]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I've come to despise the scourge. First, because all of the skills are spammed when off cooldown, this class requires me to float my hands. It's quite painful to play. Second, it is high maintenance. A lot of your damage comes from having 3 shades up. Third, the ramp up is terrible. All of the conditions take awhile to tick away, and because of this it is a lot harder to survive in. Fourth, the scourge has very little healing, so it is easy to be whittled away.

Overall, the scourge is higher maintenance, lower damaging, slower, and more frail than the Reaper. The only advantage that scourge gets is Epidemic, which is only good in very select scenarios. Overall I've found it to be quite terrible in the overworld, as well as fractals.

Shroud is such a massive hindrance to you and your group. Barrier takes more time to learn how to use properly, but it is absolutely much stronger as a defensive tool in tandem with access to all utility at all times. I can't go back to reaper that often because it just feels way too limiting and vulnerable in comparison.

There's one thing that I'd want anet to keep in mind.You can see even a full Condi scourge as supporter, but I don't think that should be the way to look at Condi scourge.Sure Condi scourge benches at around 29k, but that's going full dmg rotation, not looking for any support skillsOr better to say, just spamming everything of cooldown.For example If you only use barrier skills, only when your team needs the barrier, your dmg will drop significantly.But then there's condition banner berserker, that just spamms his banners then go DPS.

I think this needs to change.

I'm torn between both specialisations as well. I was playing a lot of reaper lately, but it gets as much annyoing as playing scourge the whole time.So switching around is the most fun.Going power reaper for fractals and always be top DPS, or going scourge for cleave in open world.

I think here, that anet made a pretty good job, in providing such different playstyles.

Now there's just one spec missing: a spec that doesn't need a babysitter and is more focussed on single target dmg for PvP modes.Then necro would be a very good allrounder. (He already is a good allrounder but a lot of the times a very niche allrounder...)

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Lily.1935 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:I've come to despise the scourge. First, because all of the skills are spammed when off cooldown, this class requires me to float my hands. It's quite painful to play. Second, it is high maintenance. A lot of your damage comes from having 3 shades up. Third, the ramp up is terrible. All of the conditions take awhile to tick away, and because of this it is a lot harder to survive in. Fourth, the scourge has very little healing, so it is easy to be whittled away.

Overall, the scourge is higher maintenance, lower damaging, slower, and more frail than the Reaper. The only advantage that scourge gets is Epidemic, which is only good in very select scenarios. Overall I've found it to be quite terrible in the overworld, as well as fractals.

The hand floating I can get, but having all 3 shades out is a really bad idea and all scourge players will tell you that is wrong. You so don't just spam skills either. It's no wonder your damage is low if you're crippling yourself by burning your life force and putting all your shades on cooldown.

I know how to play Proactively. Healing is reactive not proactive. And if you are applying barriers reactively you will die. You need to be proactive. Be aware of your enemies' patterns and prepare yourself before being struck. If you can do that your defenses will be more than enough in most situations to keep you healthy.

Most people in open world do under 4k. And considering I'm constantly at the top with 11-14k with no food on scourge and saying we're low damage tells me that you are playing them very very wrong.

Scourge is high maintenance, sure. But honestly, so is engineer and elementalist. This isn't a bad thing. Once you learn the basics of scourge and begin to master it the scourge is extremely fluid in its combat and you can drop groups of enemies extremely quickly.

No. I'm playing it right. It's just terrible at anything but specific raid bosses. Let me explain why:

Snowcrows/ has no definitive rotation. Just a loose priority of skills. This means that you... spam skills. Everything but the heal and shadow fiend in that setup is a DPS skill that you use whenever they are off cooldown, or when convenient for the fight. Aside from extremely generic advice like "stack might before using desert shroud" and "complete auto chains," there is no further guidance. Of course, all that is common sense for any profession.

Being low damage isn't up for debate, either. Snowcrows has it sitting at 28.5k DPS, which is really low. The only thing lower than it is core banner warrior, which is a support spec, and solo condi daredevil, which I would argue vehemently is also terrible. That's not all. You're maliciously twisting my words. The biggest problem is ramp up. With condition duration considered, skills like Blood is Power and Desert Shroud having 20-30 second long conditions means it takes at least that long for the conditions to ramp up. This is not atypical, as the necro has a lot of long-duration but weak condition skills. Considering that power build can kill vets + lower in under 5 seconds, it means that enemies take prohibitively long to kill, and while with a group you're effectively contributing nothing. In the time it takes to use Manifest -> Desert Shroud -> Blood is Power, the enemies are already dead. When solo, this ramp up can be incredibly painful to wade through. Barrier doesn't help, either, because it only lasts for 5 seconds, and the condi scourge ramp up can take a full minute. I have to blow cooldowns on enemies already condemned to death, just to kill them faster. It's such a waste.

I did my own experiments awhile ago to find the base damage of different builds, assuming full buffs. If you scroll down to the scourge section, you'll find that it is pitifully weak. The scepter auto only hits for 12.7k, and using all weapon skills hits only for 17k. Considering that power reaper hits for 17.9k with the greatsword auto attack, it means that the power reaper does more damage by accident than the condi scourge does on purpose. There are two things that carry condi scourge: Plagueland and Desert Shroud. 35% of damage output comes form those two skills. If an enemy happens to walk outside of those skills while they slowly pulse their skills, then you're out of luck.. You'll throw all your energy and might, struggling to be as good as an incompetent reaper. Compared to a competent one? Oh, that is a different story. I'm hitting enemies in the overworld for 80k damage with Soul Spiral, in all of about 3 seconds.

The reason for keeping 3 shades up is Sand Sage. At 3 shades, you'll get 225 expertise, which comes to 15% condition duration. That's not an insignificant amount. Unless you're fighting something that will take an inordinate amount of time, you'll want to throw 3 shades up for every encounter. Since I don't raid, there's little reason for me not to have 3 shades up, because the fight is over by the time the shade cooldown would matter.

As always, there is but one saving grace for the condi scourge: epidemic. Of course it is terribly unwieldy, enemies can (and will) die before you put a meaningful amount of conditions on them, or before the projectiles of epidemic hit their mark. The skill is also reliant on your teammates also bring conditions. But, in those select circumstances, epidemic is good.

The moral of all this is this: don't write a post just to make somebody else look bad.

[Lily.1935]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I've come to despise the scourge. First, because all of the skills are spammed when off cooldown, this class requires me to float my hands. It's quite painful to play. Second, it is high maintenance. A lot of your damage comes from having 3 shades up. Third, the ramp up is terrible. All of the conditions take awhile to tick away, and because of this it is a lot harder to survive in. Fourth, the scourge has very little healing, so it is easy to be whittled away.

Overall, the scourge is higher maintenance, lower damaging, slower, and more frail than the Reaper. The only advantage that scourge gets is Epidemic, which is only good in very select scenarios. Overall I've found it to be quite terrible in the overworld, as well as fractals.

The hand floating I can get, but having all 3 shades out is a really bad idea and all scourge players will tell you that is wrong. You so don't just spam skills either. It's no wonder your damage is low if you're crippling yourself by burning your life force and putting all your shades on cooldown.

I know how to play Proactively. Healing is reactive not proactive. And if you are applying barriers reactively you will die. You need to be proactive. Be aware of your enemies' patterns and prepare yourself before being struck. If you can do that your defenses will be more than enough in most situations to keep you healthy.

Most people in open world do under 4k. And considering I'm constantly at the top with 11-14k with no food on scourge and saying we're low damage tells me that you are playing them very very wrong.

Scourge is high maintenance, sure. But honestly, so is engineer and elementalist. This isn't a bad thing. Once you learn the basics of scourge and begin to master it the scourge is extremely fluid in its combat and you can drop groups of enemies extremely quickly.

No. I'm playing it right. It's just terrible at anything but specific raid bosses. Let me explain why:

Snowcrows/

has no definitive rotation. Just a loose priority of skills. This means that you... spam skills. Everything but the heal and shadow fiend in that setup is a DPS skill that you use whenever they are off cooldown, or when convenient for the fight. Aside from extremely generic advice like "stack might before using desert shroud" and "complete auto chains," there is no further guidance. Of course, all that is common sense for any profession.

Being low damage isn't up for debate, either. Snowcrows has it sitting at 28.5k DPS, which is really low. The only thing lower than it is core banner warrior, which is a support spec, and solo condi daredevil, which I would argue vehemently is also terrible. That's not all. You're maliciously twisting my words. The biggest problem is ramp up. With condition duration considered, skills like Blood is Power and Desert Shroud having 20-30 second long conditions means it takes

at least

that long for the conditions to ramp up. This is not atypical, as the necro has a lot of long-duration but weak condition skills. Considering that power build can kill vets + lower in under 5 seconds, it means that enemies take prohibitively long to kill, and while with a group you're effectively contributing nothing. In the time it takes to use Manifest -> Desert Shroud -> Blood is Power, the enemies are already dead. When solo, this ramp up can be incredibly painful to wade through. Barrier doesn't help, either, because it only lasts for 5 seconds, and the condi scourge ramp up can take a full minute. I have to blow cooldowns on enemies already condemned to death, just to kill them faster. It's such a waste.

I did

my own experiments

awhile ago to find the base damage of different builds, assuming full buffs. If you scroll down to the scourge section, you'll find that it is pitifully weak. The scepter auto only hits for 12.7k, and using all weapon skills hits only for 17k. Considering that power reaper hits for 17.9k with the greatsword auto attack, it means that the power reaper does more damage by accident than the condi scourge does on purpose. There are two things that carry condi scourge: Plagueland and Desert Shroud. 35% of damage output comes form those two skills. If an enemy happens to walk outside of those skills while they slowly pulse their skills, then you're out of luck.. You'll throw all your energy and might, struggling to be as good as an incompetent reaper. Compared to a competent one? Oh, that is a different story. I'm hitting enemies in the overworld for 80k damage with Soul Spiral, in all of about 3 seconds.

The reason for keeping 3 shades up is Sand Sage. At 3 shades, you'll get 225 expertise, which comes to 15% condition duration. That's not an insignificant amount. Unless you're fighting something that will take an inordinate amount of time, you'll want to throw 3 shades up for every encounter. Since I don't raid, there's little reason for me

not

to have 3 shades up, because the fight is over by the time the shade cooldown would matter.

As always, there is but one saving grace for the condi scourge: epidemic. Of course it is terribly unwieldy, enemies can (and will) die before you put a meaningful amount of conditions on them, or before the projectiles of epidemic hit their mark. The skill is also reliant on your teammates also bring conditions. But, in those select circumstances, epidemic is good.

The moral of all this is this: don't write a post just to make somebody else look bad.

Most people in open world are not going to be hitting for 28k. Most people in raids are not going to be hitting for 28k. These are optimal situations that require perfection that do not normally occur. While in open world, scourge is still very strong and your example works only in a vaccume which open world is not. Also, Yeah 80k with soul spiral can happen sometimes, but this isn't DPS, that's burst. Which is why my statement still stands. As I didn't say Reaper was bad, just not as good in specific situations that the Scourge shines in.

Also the reason you don't keep 3 shades up, its 2, max, is because of the cool down. And duration isn't as important in open world since enemies are more likely to drop before that extra duration would matter. If you're using raiding gear, such as I am, you Cap your Condi duration with consumables with 2 shades, not 3. 3 is superfluous and actually does straight up hinder your DPS. This is widely known to be the case and the fact that you're trying to maintain all 3 is a serious problem. The shades share a cooldown, they don't each have an individual cool down. The shades can't be maintained indefinably with 2, let alone 3. But the laps with 2 is usually close enough that it shouldn't matter in a raid.

I've been playing this game for a long time, hun. I have 6k hours on my necromancer alone and I've played scourge and reaper extensively. I know the ins and outs of them and their quarks. I wont say one is definitively better, because they do very different things. My preference is scourge because it functions much better. Snowcrows also said that Condi Renegade is hard to learn while Scourge isn't. Which I laugh at that idea since Condi renegade was one of the easiest builds to learn and use I've had the pleasure of using. Its honestly one of my favorites too. its relaxing when compared to Scourge. Much easier to pull off and I don't have to concern myself with energy management to quite the extent scourge does. But hey, I also think Condi Holosmith and Condi Engi are easy to use, but that's just me. I love condition builds and I know their General DPS potential.

Does a 28k benchmark honestly matter in open world? No. On no map in the game does that matter. You aren't going to be in extremely long fights like you are in raids. Even the most difficult world boss doesn't pressure you to hit these benchmarks. Most players don't get above 8k. I know, I've had DPS meters viewing them. You'd see maybe 1-4 in a hundred doing more than 10k. Also, the raid armor on Snowcrows is optimized for 2 shades, not 3 btw...

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They're both good.

The big difference is that Reaper is better at melee, tanking and CC, while Scourge is better at range and somewhat glassy damage. So it comes down to whether you want to be a bruiser or a bomber, and the gear you will wear.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Lily.1935 said:This is something I need to note. The Monks in dragonfall are much more difficult to kill with the reaper than the scourge. I've tested both optimized dps builds on them and reaper struggles with them. It's nothing major but you do lose a lot of time fighting them when the monks are hard pressed to handle the constant stream of conditions the scourge dishes out.Are those the buggers that heal? But those arent difficult at all to kill, just annoying. I run my reaper on a far from optimised dps build and they are just a roadbump you barely notice, neither a threat nor a struggle.

[Anchoku.8142]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:To be fair, Sourge seems designed to carry PUGs and it does well at that. I find myself happier if I limit expectations to just that one use and accept whatever else I get out of Scourge.

[Lily.1935]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Lily.1935 said:This is something I need to note. The Monks in dragonfall are much more difficult to kill with the reaper than the scourge. I've tested both optimized dps builds on them and reaper struggles with them. It's nothing major but you do lose a lot of time fighting them when the monks are hard pressed to handle the constant stream of conditions the scourge dishes out.Are those the buggers that heal? But those arent difficult at all to kill, just annoying. I run my reaper on a far from optimised dps build and they are just a roadbump you barely notice, neither a threat nor a struggle.

They aren't much of a problem until there are more than one of them and they maintain each other from a distance from each other. Which has happened to me multiple times. Its time consuming enough that I abandoned reaper in that map because of how much of a slog it made the experience. But the monks aren't even a road bump for scourge. They die just as quickly as everything else, I didn't even notice them until I tried running the map on a reaper.

Scourge just works better for me because its strengths line up extremely well with my strengths. Reaper's strengths don't. I know how to use its strengths, don't get me wrong. I still out DPS 95% of everyone in Open world and maintain top DPS for raiding and fractals for my guild on either build. Scourge just feels so much better for my play style. Is scourge slower? Depends on the enemy and their placement. Is it more enjoyable? For me, absolutely is. Is the damage difference enough in open world? Not even close. Their damage is fairly comparable in more difficult maps and reaper isn't much faster in lower level maps for me to really care to switch to reaper when I personally find reaper far less enjoyable.

I personally play Scourge because its the style of necromancer gameplay that I wanted when GW2 first released. I didn't want to be a martial profession. If I did I would have made a warrior, theif or guardian at the time. But that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted a caster. Reaper does not feel like a caster which is not what I ever wanted to play with Necromancer. I understand necromancer and know how to optimize it. During this I have never once said that the scourge was a better than reaper or vis versa. I made it extremely clear to point out the strengths and weaknesses of both when it comes to open world. Then I gave my preference.

[Gamble.4580]

Reaper > scourge pvp :smile: :neutral:

[GummiBear.4397]

I dragged ass trying out Scourge with any real effort. I loved my Reaper since it came out. Going from OEM Necro to Reaper was a pretty easy transition at the time. When I did try Scourge in Open World, I'd get chewed up pretty quick, and the trait line just didn't sit well with me. And it didn't help I run all Berserkers, so anything to keep my glass ass alive, while letting me still spill out the pain, is key to keeping me engaged. It wasn't until I came across this build -https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scourge_-_Power_Scourge that I figured out how to maneuver with Scourge enough to make an impact. Once you get accustomed to boon/condition stripping, it's hard to go back. I still carry a greatsword, just for those times I want to tinker with Reaper again, but end result is I still move back to Scourge. And if you're a frequent meta player in groups (i.e Dragonfall), swap in Blood Magic w/vampirism traits to help keep you (and those around you) going a bit longer. You drop a shade, you drop some wells, you wack wack through some weapon skills, and repeat. It's a really easy build to run, and gives you a good platform to start moving into other Scourge builds. You'll wonder how you lived/tolorated with all those conditions in the past. haha.