Don't Nerf Scourge, Change it to Support.

[Nightshade.2570]

Okay, first off thankyou. I think Scourge is so awesome. We can melt the walls right now off keeps. Two scourges can destroy 2-3 times thier numbers. Its something I have always wanted to see in my career here as a necro main and it has finally happened. This isnt sarcastic this is honest. Necro players that know how to use Scourge are literally in heaven right now. However my guilt is starting to take over, as I see my friends get frustrated and die around me. Because I am the only combat against other scourges. They won't go out without me often as they know if you don't have a scourge with you, your going to melt.

So, That before you read this and go okay even necros are saying this overtuned I have a proposal. Make a different dream of mine come true. This dream involves me being useful to a team other then conditions, or dps... This dream involves a true support class. So I am asking you to go look at this release and realize that you have put out a crazy amount of DPS into the game as a whole and left no support classes. Firebrands are literally the only spec that can bring good team support right now. People want to play the new elite specializations and I question whether an old elite support spec can even compete with things at the moment.

Shift necros back to being a team player not a team demolisher. Make the support spec that I was excited to try. Don't get me wrong, Scourge pleasantly surprised me, however, it is clear that a shift need to happen here. Instead of blotting Necromancer classes off the face of the game which is super easy to do with a few minor tweaks, please increase our actually ability to buff support and keep our teammates alive.

Barrier far underperforms what it should. Its degen is way to fast and honestly most Scourges barely use it as a buff to thier team. It is obvious that I out DPS every other spec in the game and that makes people want you for only that. So please BALANCE this time, instead of overreacting and just nerfing us into the ground, give us at long last that tanky low damage support class that we were meant to get.

1. Keep our high corrupt up-time (or no one will ever kill another heavy armored class again)
2. Give us better scaling healing power, as currently I have compared them and healing power is laughable and a waste of time.
3. Improve the Blood Traitline so it actually is an option thats powerful, that way curses will not be a better option.
4. Down the amount of torment and burning we put out, specifically in the scourge traitline make items that encourage supporting yourself and others more optimal and not competing with each other. (Your change to sand shades made the bottom trait elite in scourge not optimal). Untie torment adding burning, please don't give us more bleed we are sick of bleed. Just make support skills better.
5. Slow down the degen on Barrier or give us a trait to spec into that slows this down so it is worth buffing our teammates with this.
6. Give us more stacks of stability on Trail of anguish and take the burning out of it.
7. Do more of the above ^^ so that we are supporting and buffing and only doing a bit of torment and corrupt so we still have some defense to back people away from us.I promise you if I can buff and support my class as well as a firebrand does, and you down the amount of conditions namely burning that we give out, we will switch and start being a support class.

[Muchacho.2390]

To be fair that what it should have been from the start.

[Flumek.9043]

Necro:2nd attempt at support linegiving up main mechaninc for a resource based mana bar0 heals, 2x might for 5s and 1x cleanse

Guard:support line which somehow makes double the previous max dpsgive up 1 skill , get 5 for freeno resource can even precharge, no cast timesmillion heals, half million resistance, and a few thousand boons and other goodies

dont do balance trades with anet, its all a scam

[Crinn.7864]

Yeah I would love to play a support scourge in pvp and pve. However support scourge doesn't exist. Nobody gives a crap about 3k barriers. The only nice thing about scourge is how good transfusion power rezzing is. Except for the slight problem that the first person that needs a rez is usually the scourge.

[Vitali.5039]

@Crinn.7864 said:Yeah I would love to play a support scourge in pvp and pve. However support scourge doesn't exist. Nobody gives a crap about 3k barriers. The only nice thing about scourge is how good transfusion power rezzing is. Except for the slight problem that the first person that needs a rez is usually the scourge.

If only Sand Savant could give a 10 sec ammoless Sand Shroud wich could give x3 Desert Empowerment's barrier and proc Abrasive Gift 3 times..But sadly we have a broken low CD Sand Savant/Shade with only dps in mind.

[Dadnir.5038]

I wouldn't mind a support spec if it's support was usefull in all gamemodes and competitive against other support spec. But let's be realist you can't pack enough support in just one e-spec to become suddenly competitive in all gamemodes. The support given by the scourge is valuable in WvW which is probably the only gamemode where the necromancer and it's previous e-spec, the reaper, happen to shine.

[Professor Sprout.1560]

Chiming in as someone who plays support scourge for fractals (build if interested, sigils and runes are placeholder as I'm still gearing up http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBHfhG2JRvQVvYTvgbNA7NYpbw07pD1k60DYAEAo6AjgDFA-jBiAABQcQAWU/gpq/AwTAIhTAAkKBRT5Hg7PAA-e)

1. Sure, why not. Path of Corruption as a core trait is fine in my view, if anything needs tweaking I'd recommend doing it in the Scourge skills and traits.

2. Barrier is I feel in a pretty good place right now, since even with only 640 healing power I can hit the barrier cap on allies by chaining skills together. I would be hesitant therefore to raise healing power scaling across the board - a specific exception would perhaps be to adjust how Serpent Siphon works to refocus it as a large barrier skill for support builds. Instead I would recommend tweaking the code so that barrier skills benefit from +X% outgoing healing buffs, so that builds that choose healing runes enjoy the benefits of their choice on more than just transfusion.

3. Blood Magic is already powerful. Transfusion is an effective sustained heal, rescue and revive skill; Vampiric Presence is strong in all compositions and very helpful to certain allies; Ritual of Life is a near-instant revive that with Transfusion stacks; Blood Bond gives more sustained healing against bosses and the minors are all good. Quickening Thirst and Vampiric Rituals are strong skills, but perhaps better on a core or Reaper build.

4. I couldn't quite follow this point in its entirely, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding something. I know that right now due to a bug you can stack multiple shades on top of each other to do more damage than intended, and it sounds like you want some other DPS nerfs as well. @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" in the reddit AMA has said both "it is NOT intended that stacking multiple shades compounds their effects. We’re going to make changes while keeping a close eye on the power of the Scourge across game modes and adjust it over time accordingly. Frankly, the Sand Shades were one of the most controversial (and dangerous!) mechanics we added with the Path of Fire Elite Specs." and "Scourge is an outlier with high value both defensively and offensively. I’d like to separate those options a bit more.". It's possible therefore that this part of what you want is coming.

5. I would be surprised if this were to happen, given that the decay delay for barriers was already reduced once. And again because barriers feel pretty strong right now.

6. Might happen as part of 4 or as part of the potential upcoming PvP split balance pass.

[Zero Solstice.9754]

Support Scourge already exists and has a strong use case, being low CD consistent Condition conversion with moderate healing output and damage mitigation, but I wouldn't mind seeing the role get some more value as replacement for some of the damage that's about to disappear. Support is one of my favorite and strongest roles to play, but Necromancer has never had a decent path for it until Scourge.

[Lahmia.2193]

They missed a real opportunity in doing something like Druid's Grace of the Land, whereby whenever you grant allies Barrier they gain a non stacking damage buff of like +5% condi/direct damage.

[Exqq.7451]

No attempt to change Scourge to a support will exist while PS spams so much Might, Chrono have class specific buffs, and Druids have class specific buffs.

[nekretaal.6485]

Hell Naw. The scourge needs at least one damage spec just like any other class. It already has a support spec called reaper which is good against breakbars.

The damage numbers should not be touched.

The class needs to give out some sort of tell when the damage is coming, as well as a tiny, 0.25 second delay so that players can react or counter play the damage. The Shade on the ground is not enough of a tell.

That fixes the Pvp problem.

[Lahmia.2193]

@nekretaal.6485 said:Hell Naw. The scourge needs at least one damage spec just like any other class. It already has a support spec called reaper which is good against breakbars.

The damage numbers should not be touched.

The class needs to give out some sort of tell when the damage is coming, as well as a tiny, 0.25 second delay so that players can react or counter play the damage. The Shade on the ground is not enough of a tell.

That fixes the Pvp problem.

Support means granting buffs to allies. How in the world is Reaper a support spec?!

[minion.1987]

actually wouldn't support scourge be worse? it'd probably play like prenerf tempest which would allow more nerfing. still sad how most class skills are getting nerfed though. no love for normal necro.

[Crinn.7864]

They could just make the minors apply to allies standing in the shades. That would make Scourge whorthwhile as a support for PvE.

For PvP though they would have to fix scourge's survivability problems, since in PvP a support that is squishier than the people he is supporting is not viable.

[Zephar.4519]

It really feels like the community don't know what the word 'Necromancer' means. Why are we not asking for more death related skills? Dark magic? Oh no you want golden shields and shiny buffs...A 'support' Necro should be confined to Blood is Power providing a UNIQUE dmg buff for the group, and perhaps a Sigil change that absorbs some % of dmg from the group per sec until you hit <20% hp.Blood needs to remove shroud related traits and have a creative reshuffle (Parasitic Contagion belongs there for example.) Blood should be the 'support' line, for both self and others.

[Lahmia.2193]

@Zephar.4519 said:It really feels like the community don't know what the word 'Necromancer' means. Why are we not asking for more death related skills? Dark magic? Oh no you want golden shields and shiny buffs...A 'support' Necro should be confined to Blood is Power providing a UNIQUE dmg buff for the group, and perhaps a Sigil change that absorbs some % of dmg from the group per sec until you hit <20% hp.Blood needs to remove shroud related traits and have a creative reshuffle (Parasitic Contagion belongs there for example.) Blood should be the 'support' line, for both self and others.

And clearly you don't know what Scourge is or what it means.

[UnDeadFunToo.8409]

I wouldn't mind seeing core necro be condi spec, reaper be a true power spec(that slow moving, heavy cleaving pyramid head they sold us on) and like you said, scourge can be support(what it was billed as).

[Dadnir.5038]

@Zephar.4519 said:It really feels like the community don't know what the word 'Necromancer' means. Why are we not asking for more death related skills? Dark magic? Oh no you want golden shields and shiny buffs...A 'support' Necro should be confined to Blood is Power providing a UNIQUE dmg buff for the group, and perhaps a Sigil change that absorbs some % of dmg from the group per sec until you hit <20% hp.Blood needs to remove shroud related traits and have a creative reshuffle (Parasitic Contagion belongs there for example.) Blood should be the 'support' line, for both self and others.

I kinda disagree with you. In gw2 blood magic is like you say a support traitline, however if we associate thematics to blood magic we have the idea of vampirism. Vampire are not supporty creature, they are incredibly resilient creatures. The same way, death magic is all about minions and defense. Why? It should be a support spec associated to the lich which is basically a minion king supporting it's minions from behind.

I believe that blood should be the defense traitline and death the support traitline, this would mesh a lot better and it would suit the fact that minions are part of the death magic traitline. Come on, you summon minion to do the job for you, you don't summon minions so that you will tank damage and they will be behind you doing nothing interesting.

There is a lot of case where things are illogical in gw2 and the necromancer tend to be a pro at being nonsensical by it's design.

[Lexan.5930]

i would love to play a support scourge in raids. I think that the healing from blood needs some work. I have a full st of harrier gear and the transfusion tick is nice, but still kind of lack luster.

Especially in fractals the high burst of enemies means that an on demand burst heal would be nice, but i know thats basicly the druids job. I would like to see the healing numbers for life from death removed and the numbers for transfusion upped.

Life from death has a really weird timing, especially for scourge. Scourge has to hit f5, then wait for it to end before the benefit of the healing, vs say a reaper can pop in and out of shroud for a quick emergency heal. Life from death change to something more consistent across all necro specs would be nice.have half the benefit happen when entering and half at the end. This gives us a nice heal and timing mechanic for scourge.

transfusion needs better scaling, not crazy, but maybe with full harriers i could see 900 heals instead of the mostly wimpy 700 or so.

[pah.4931]

As long as they buff power reaper first :D

[Lexan.5930]

@pah.4931 said:As long as they buff power reaper first :D

Yea, power reaper buffs would be nice. The extra ferocity and bonus dmg is nice but it still doesnt stack well in big team fights.

[Artyport.2084]

I'm in for this..I'm all for the dark healer aesthetic..and its currently just an obnoxious mess.

[Nightshade.2570]

I really value all your input, I appreciate that there are pro's and con's, and normally, my posts get overlooked. I don't post here often unless I am super passionate about something. I know this is complicated as it is Mostly WvW(pvp some to) that has major scourge issues. Unfortunately, unless there is some splitting with scourge my proposition may or may not impact other areas. In any case I still pleadwith them to buff our support if they decide to take a chunk out of the conditions. I just hope more of you will come forward and speak up and tell your views so we have a balanced happy class of Necro's. Or in Necro terms, Dead and lovin it!

[Saracen.2691]

Unfortunately the problem with threads like these is they aren't actually going to affect anything. Even if it did and you got what you want it's nothing but a pipe dream that would kill necromancer again. As primarily a PvE player I hate seeing these threads because ANet tends to make nerfs with a broad brush. Scourge may have issues in WvW and PvP but where it is in PvE right now is something the class desperately needed. In a perfect world these things would be split, PvE would stay as it is and WvW/PvP would have appropriate changes made, but the reality is more likely to be Scourge will get a nerf to damage, no buff and back necromancer will go to being the worst PvE class in the game.

Every long time necro player knows the joke that ANet hates necro, but it really hasn't felt like a joke these past few months with the reaper nerf and some viability finally came back into the class with Scourge. When I use the term 'viability' I specifically mean in terms of raids, which is actually a decent benchmark for the rest of PvE that matters balancing-wise, ie fractals. Every other class in this game has at least two viable raiding builds. Necro had one, Reaper, which wasn't in fact viable for raiding. Necro still has one, Scourge, but it's now actually viable. Nerfing Scourge is going to make it second (at least, depending on how zealous ANet is) to Soulbeast and therefore undesirable. Changing Scourge to lose its damage and replace it with healing/damage buffs makes the class laughable compared to just having a druid, PS warrior and Chrono. I hope none of you have forgotten what just happened a few weeks ago to Tempest, when ANet tried to implement the exact kind of changes you're suggesting and it failed catastrophically.

[Crinn.7864]

@pah.4931 said:As long as they buff power reaper first :D

I think you mean "core necro"

Necro is too overdependant on our elite specs. A lot of our problems would be solved if our core traitlines didn't all suck.