Scourge is not fun.

[Kanto.1659]

To counter that. I like Scourge. It is a better experience than Reaper was. I feel very tanky, the damage is great, but the details like, oh, look, three ranged mobs far from each other. Do I need to kill them one by one? Nonsense. Drop a shade under each and kill all three at the same time despite being spread apart.

[Zietlogik.6208]

@logan.5846 said:Diving into a pile of enemies and hacking them up with a giant scythe is way more satisfying than crapping out sand.

But the sand gets everywhere, in all the places you don't want it to...no wonder there is so much torment and burning attached to it >.>

[Aplethoraof.2643]

Its clearly not for everyone, as this thread is showing. Some like it, some don't. That is good. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, use reaper or even use core. That is a choice, yes? Rather than forcing us to use just shroud and having the shroud mechanic hanging over us and its supposed "tankiness" (during which you can still be shot down with relative ease, because i-frames are much better for face-tanking than a large HP pool in this game) preventing us from getting other much needed mechanics (some of which we still don't really have, like reliable mobility). We aren't forced to use the new elite spec. If we enjoy playing it, we can use it. If you don't enjoy playing it, don't use it.

This isn't about scourge being optimized for specific trees, again. This is about curses, soul reaping, and arguably spite (I've used spite to good effect on scourge AND reaper, but curses is better for a condi build which the two are naturally built for) being our most optimized core trees, and death magic and blood magic being poorly optimized at best. You wouldn't use either of those on a reaper build, or even a core build. If anything, core builds have the least amount of choice: we only have 3 good core specs! And if death magic and blood magic remain the same as they are, unless minions suddenly become REALLY good or we start getting some OP passives that bounce of life steal, you will never see any serious use out of them. THAT is the true issue with the "seems like there is no choice" argument.(Also, yeah. I realize that its unlikely the trees will be optimized to work better with what necromancer does. But, I have hope.)

[bluff.8962]

Agreed OP! Especially VS

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

When I play scourge, I end up floating my hands. What I mean by this is, normally whenever I do anything on the keyboard, I have most of my hands anchored on either homerow or WASD. The only time I ever take my hands fully off of the keyboard is if I am forced to press a series of keys that can't be operated normally. There are two classes that force me to do this: the scourge, and the engineer.

To do maximum damage I have to alternate between my keybinds for corruptions and placing shades/activating them, as to take advantage of the "burn after corruptions" trait. I am forced to move while using the function skills constantly, which forces me to float my hands in order to hit all of the complex keys in a reasonable order.

I do not like floating my hands. My fingers get lost, and I end up mashing random keys after awhile. Playing the scourge is a frantic struggle to maximize DPS while also maintaining my hand so I don't end up lost on my own keyboard. This playstyle is generally not fun. In spite of being the strongest PVE spec, I rarely play it because of this fact.

[Unholy Pillager.3791]

@Aplethoraof.2643 said:Its clearly not for everyone, as this thread is showing. Some like it, some don't. That is good. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, use reaper or even use core. That is a choice, yes? Rather than forcing us to use just shroud and having the shroud mechanic hanging over us and its supposed "tankiness" (during which you can still be shot down with relative ease, because i-frames are much better for face-tanking than a large HP pool in this game) preventing us from getting other much needed mechanics (some of which we still don't really have, like reliable mobility). We aren't forced to use the new elite spec. If we enjoy playing it, we can use it. If you don't enjoy playing it, don't use it.

This isn't about scourge being optimized for specific trees, again. This is about curses, soul reaping, and arguably spite (I've used spite to good effect on scourge AND reaper, but curses is better for a condi build which the two are naturally built for) being our most optimized core trees, and death magic and blood magic being poorly optimized at best. You wouldn't use either of those on a reaper build, or even a core build. If anything, core builds have the least amount of choice: we only have 3 good core specs! And if death magic and blood magic remain the same as they are, unless minions suddenly become REALLY good or we start getting some OP passives that bounce of life steal, you will never see any serious use out of them. THAT is the true issue with the "seems like there is no choice" argument.(Also, yeah. I realize that its unlikely the trees will be optimized to work better with what necromancer does. But, I have hope.)

The problem is that scourge is objectively the superior choice in all situations (or at least, very nearly so). There needs to be variety without losing significant efficacy.

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:When I play scourge, I end up floating my hands. What I mean by this is, normally whenever I do anything on the keyboard, I have most of my hands anchored on either homerow or WASD. The only time I ever take my hands fully off of the keyboard is if I am forced to press a series of keys that can't be operated normally. There are two classes that force me to do this: the scourge, and the engineer.

To do maximum damage I have to alternate between my keybinds for corruptions and placing shades/activating them, as to take advantage of the "burn after corruptions" trait. I am forced to move while using the function skills constantly, which forces me to float my hands in order to hit all of the complex keys in a reasonable order.

I do not like floating my hands. My fingers get lost, and I end up mashing random keys after awhile. Playing the scourge is a frantic struggle to maximize DPS while also maintaining my hand so I don't end up lost on my own keyboard. This playstyle is generally not fun. In spite of being the strongest PVE spec, I rarely play it because of this fact.

That's a keybind problem you have there. It's easiest to solve with a gaming mouse that has a lot of buttons, but you don't absolutely need that. Try this:

Bind weapon skills to Q, E, R, F, and TBind 'Interact' to GBind your healing skill to ZBind utilities to X, C, and VBind your elite to middle mouseBind your f1-f5 to numbers 1-5Bind all of the junk you don't need in combat (guild window, for example) to somewhere in the the right side of the keyboardIf you have a couple of extra mouse buttons, they're perfect for call/take target, look behind, about face...whichever of those you can fit and prefer to have easy access to. Edit: Dodge is also a good option for your extra mouse keys, if you have enough.

This setup takes practice to get used to, but once you do it is most definitely worth it. It allows you to use any skill on your bar without picking up your hand.

[Kam.4092]

I'd like Traits that can be changed per fight, and weapons. Scourge and Necro overall is very strict with Traits and weapons. You can't do anything different. Unlike a Profession like Guardian, that can swap a whole Trait tree for some fights, and weapons, also the number of good utility options.

I just want core Necro changes. Other professions have gotten them, but we seem like we will never get them.

I was hoping Scourge would be more engaging, but it's kind of braindead easy. I have the most fun seeing the extreme damage with Epidemic mostly.

I hope we get some core changes to base Necro Traits on Tuesday. :/

[Maunzi.3764]

I was hoping Scourge would be more engaging, but it's kind of braindead easy.

In raids, it's actually not. Your positioning matters a lot more than even whirl dancing did, and you can do a lot for your group with proper shade placement and barrier timing.

No, not for QT groups, but I don't play with perfect QT groups, and it just feels great knowing you just prevented a wipe with good timing of your barriers. There's quite a lot of things you can do with scourge if you dive into it, it's almost mesmery.

[Mina Ion.7852]

While my main is Necro, I started with other professions in PoF because Scourge looked boring. Then I actually tried Scourge and I'm having more fun on my Necro than I ever have. I LOVE Scourge, personally. I don't even stack Shades. A single Shade + F5 Shroud melts everything. I also LOVE having an easy and quick recharging condi cleanse on my F2 :)

[FaboBabo.3581]

And then comes desert shroud. Literally most of our damage is sunk into desert shroud, which revolves the delay of summoning 2-3 shades before activating it. So all of the necromancer playstyle seems like a huge waiting game.

Dont take my comment as serious for the discussions.

Have u ever played Condi Mesmer :DDDDDD ?

Sharper Images/Duelist's Discipline[Desert Shroud] + Pistol Phantasm[shades]

[Sieghilde.7632]

I've been loving Scourge in open world. I take Sand Savant for convenience and just melt enemies.

[FallenSentinel.9065]

@Kanto.1659 said:To counter that. I like Scourge. It is a better experience than Reaper was. I feel very tanky, the damage is great, but the details like, oh, look, three ranged mobs far from each other. Do I need to kill them one by one? Nonsense. Drop a shade under each and kill all three at the same time despite being spread apart.

I'm relatively new to Scourge and not really getting how to make the best use of Shades and dropping those big PvE DPS bursts. How are you best making use of the Shades?

@Sieghilde.7632 said:I've been loving Scourge in open world. I take Sand Savant for convenience and just melt enemies.

I don't feel much benefit from Scourge so far so much as it's "new". I've been using Scepter+Torch/Dagger and, aside from hating my MH wep, it's okay but I don't feel super strong and I barely notice any barriers while I'm playing, given that at best I usually see a 2k barrier that's either knocked out or fades within seconds. It's been okay for open world but I haven't seen why people love it so far.

Granted, I've already stated I'm new to it so far and probably not using it super well so that could be part of it.

[Druitt.7629]

@"FallenSentinel.9065" When you say "don't feel much benefit from Scourge so far" do you mean compared to other professions or compared to base Necro or Reaper? I'm enjoying Scourge more than Reaper, and I enjoyed Reaper more than base Necro.

Scourge has several advantages. First, you have the four "toolbelt" skills available at all times, and they emanate from you and your shade(s), so you can use them even if you don't have a shade up or if the shade's at some distance. (Of course, subject to having sufficient LF.) Second, you don't literally switch to a shroud mode, which is liberating in two ways: a) you're not forced to work in a different way in order to take advantage of shroud, and b) you don't have the "oh crap" button of shifting to shroud to soak damage so you have to be a bit more creative. (And, I feel like you have the tools to be more creative -- I'm not being euphemistic here and meaning you have to rise up to overcome a handicap.)

Third, you have options for having an effect at a distance -- with the tradeoff that things can move out of your shade(s). You can also trade off whether you want to have multiple shades and additional fire damage, a single shade with larger AoE, or no shades and only yourself as a source for toolbelt skills. Right now, I'm going with Sand Savant so I only have to manage one shade, and it's always an advantage to throw it down, even if you don't manage it (you take 15% less damage and have longer-lasting boons and conditions due to minors, just by having the Sand Savant shade deployed).

Also, I like the offhand torch skills a lot. I'm currently experimenting with dagger-dagger as my secondary weapon set for LF generation, if necessary, though axe or traited staff might be nice. (I happen to be okay with scepter with torch, though a lot of folks don't like it. I happen to like the axe a bit due to it's unique ranged non-projectile nature, which is again not a popular opinion.) I'm not sure that Scourge will be powerful enough once the next balance patch hits, but I feel like it has most everything I like about Reaper with more options and fewer constraints.

[FallenSentinel.9065]

So how are you making use of your Shades? Dropping the 1 every fight and then F5 and spamming F3 whenever it's available and F2 as needed?

[Druitt.7629]

Sort of. I've traited Sadistic Searing, so I'd first use an appropriate Punishment, then quickly drop the the shade on something so I get the additional burning. (Sadistic Searing has a fairly short timer during which the additional burn will be added, so you have to sequence things.) You can do this each time you re-drop the shade: either because it expired, or pre-emptively when you're able, or when you want to reposition it. An "appropriate" Punishment depends on the task at hand: you could use enter the fight via Trail of Anguish, or you could use Sand Flare as the beginning of a raid rotation, and so on. I haven't run all the numbers to see when pre-emptively dropping a shade on the same target -- not repositioning it -- is worth the pre-emptive F1 cost because, say, I happened to use Sand Flare to heal myself and now I have a window where I can trigger some additional burning, but that's the kind of option the Scourge has.

I wouldn't spam F3, since barriers decay so you want to try to time it such that it's fresh when you're about to take a bigger hit. Which you might choose to dodge instead, of course, but I think that's a nice decision: dodge or barrier? Maybe I'm a bit slow, but I'm only now finally at the point where other things are instinctive enough that I can focus on the dodge/barrier choice and timing my barriers for maximum impact.

Then you have to manage Life Force. Traits, skills, and environment all influence this, as well as the option to swap to the second weapon set to pump up LF. And you can't just blindly spam F5 because it pulses and if you're depending on its effect at your shade (as opposed to on you), you don't want your shade despawning part-way through.

I'm also beginning to pay more attention to mob boons to see what I can corrupt. (I ignored boon hate at first, assuming it's mainly for PvP, but as I'm looking more closely, I see more mobs -- even in older areas -- with boons and I'm going to have to experiment on what boons are corruptible and what boons might be special.

You can also choose whether to keep your shade (I say "shade" because I trait Sand Savant for 1 big shade) up or not. You might be involved in a fight and have a certain level of LF whereby you choose to concentrate on F2-F5's effect emanating from you and not the shade. That was intriguing to me and I developed a couple of bad habits considering the Savant shade gives 15% less damage and increased boon/condition duration simply by being out. Maybe the shadeless play is more of a PvP thing since players will jump out of it and you may be moving so much there's not much benefit to it, but it's an option.

Maybe it's still too simple for some, but it feels to me as decision-ful as Reaper was, with some added thought required since you can't "oh kitten" hit shroud, and you can make choices on how you use shades (3 small, 1 big, none) which is a bit more nuanced than but similar to Reaper (flash shroud, camp shroud, or only "oh kitten" shroud).

[Tongku.5326]

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Scourge is much like whole PoF for me - extremely practical and efficient...but the fun is not there.

The power of the spec is amazing, the cool things i can do also (portal, self condies being useful with F2, sick bursts), but i feel variety is not there.Both core and reaper feature a lot of hard, yet meaninful choices. Starting with how much love will your shrouded form get from traits vs baseform.Ways to build around that are numerous, and many very fun and unusual.

But with scourge it seems like everything is layed out for you - Curses, Soul Reaping + Scourge condi is the default "go to" build, no need to even check metabattle - the synergies and result are so obvious everyone who gave it a try gets it. There is no shroud, so no duality that struggles over which form will be your main one and which "is on it's own".

When i play scourge i feel that in terms of functionality (easy, low cd aoe condi conversion, proper aoe condi application, easy condi bombs, portal) this is what necro was lacking and should have. But in terms of fun i just wanna go HoT hop on my reaper or core necro and test numerous builds unlike the scourge where "numerous" is the last expression you'd think of when someone mentions it's builds.

I think I liked the necro and reaper shroud mechanics much better then the shades. Both shade versions (the 3 and the 1) are kinda clunky to use and overall bad design.

I think biggest problem is that the scourge F2 through F5 skills all need internal CDs, but the problem with that is that the shades themselves are so clunky that if you put CDs on their abilities it will completely destroy the class because now you will have shades that are too clunky + crap for defense + crap for offense.

Barrier is also bad and also very bad design. It is extremely difficult to balance. If scourge offense gets nerfed or CDs implemented, they need to literally at least double the barrier generation / effectiveness / duration. But if they do that then mid-large scale groups rotating their barriers will become unkillable.

So A-net really painted themselves into a corner and shot themselves in the foot here, not sure what they will do as currently scourge is pure offense, even its few defenses are offensive in nature. If they nerf the offense, no idea what or how they can compensate the defenses.

[Sylvari.2953]

I don't care about Scourge, never did and never will, I love the Shroud as a defence mechanic and I refuse to play my Necro without it! I want my Power Reaper back with an extra 25% slower LF decay and -30% cd on Shroud (in other words, revert the August 8 trait nerfs). If this won't happen, then I'll just stick with my Engineer forever.

[Svarty.8019]

@Tongku.5326 said:

I think I liked the necro and reaper shroud mechanics much better then the shades. Both shade versions (the 3 and the 1) are kinda clunky to use and overall bad design.

DRINK!

POFClunkyDrinkgGame

[Maunzi.3764]

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

And then comes desert shroud. Literally most of our damage is sunk into desert shroud, which revolves the delay of summoning 2-3 shades before activating it. So all of the necromancer playstyle seems like a huge waiting game.

Dont take my comment as serious for the discussions.

Have u ever played Condi Mesmer :DDDDDD ?

Sharper Images/Duelist's Discipline[Desert Shroud] + Pistol Phantasm[shades]

Yep, it's literally like mesmer, it's hilarious. I feel like my Chrono on my scourge.

I think I liked the necro and reaper shroud mechanics much better then the shades. Both shade versions (the 3 and the 1) are kinda clunky to use and overall bad design.

I disagree entirely. The design is great. Or rather it would be great if shade stacking wasn't forcing us to deploy all shades on a target to do dps. This is a bug, not a feature.

Barrier is also bad and also very bad design.

In PVP, maybe, but in PVE, no, it's not bad design at all. It shines when you can predict spikes. With a good scourge, you can even do "no green" strategies while the chronos do whatever. Or protect people at a bad KC whiteorange phase (yeah, I know, scourges aren't allowed to fight KC because it's bad damage, but again, not everyone is QT and some of us don't have perfect groups)

Of course, the common denominator here is "bad". Barrier is not great if your group has it all nailed down and only wants lightning-fast clears. But that's not the position most of us are in.

[kKagari.6804]

I was actually a bit sad my 'main' is my scourge for PvE. Its so functional it seems silly to go back to Reaper or Core, but it is also so monotonous. Get on raptor, raptor spin, drop a shade, press F5. Sigh.

[mazut.4296]

Scourge is very fun. I WANT to be able to have 3 shades up, not only 1... I also would like to have even more F skills like F6-F10 with additional utilities!

[Zenith.7301]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:When I play scourge, I end up floating my hands. What I mean by this is, normally whenever I do anything on the keyboard, I have most of my hands anchored on either homerow or WASD. The only time I ever take my hands fully off of the keyboard is if I am forced to press a series of keys that can't be operated normally. There are two classes that force me to do this: the scourge, and the engineer.

To do maximum damage I have to alternate between my keybinds for corruptions and placing shades/activating them, as to take advantage of the "burn after corruptions" trait. I am forced to move while using the function skills constantly, which forces me to float my hands in order to hit all of the complex keys in a reasonable order.

I do not like floating my hands. My fingers get lost, and I end up mashing random keys after awhile. Playing the scourge is a frantic struggle to maximize DPS while also maintaining my hand so I don't end up lost on my own keyboard. This playstyle is generally not fun. In spite of being the strongest PVE spec, I rarely play it because of this fact.

https://www2.razerzone.com/au-en/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer-nostromo

The thimbstick condenses all movement into one button you manipulate with your thumb, freeing your hand to use all other skills on the nearby buttons and you pair it with a gaming mice with side buttons.