Unwritten Patch Note Changes

[savacli.8172]

@Justine.6351 said:Lets be real, still going to see >30% participation of the necromancer profession in wvw zerging.

WvW should have been untouched for the most part unless for some reason you tried to "shade bomb" and stack all your shades in one spot for an F5 cast. Same thing with PvP.

PvE is where it's hurting the most as their not as much field play since you mostly have stationary fights outside of open world mobs; even open world champs tend to stay put

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@savacli.8172 said:

@Justine.6351 said:Lets be real, still going to see >30% participation of the necromancer profession in wvw zerging.

WvW should have been untouched for the most part unless for some reason you tried to "shade bomb" and stack all your shades in one spot for an F5 cast. Same thing with PvP.

PvE is where it's hurting the most as their not as much field play since you mostly have stationary fights outside of open world mobs; even open world champs tend to stay put

WvW still gets hit by the shade duration nerf and the Desert Shroud/Dhuumfire nerf.

[savacli.8172]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:WvW still gets hit by the shade duration nerf and the Desert Shroud/Dhuumfire nerf.

Ah, that's right. I forgot that since it wasn't in the published patch notes >_>

[Horan.7013]

Someone from reddit is saying that Shade strike is disabled completely.

This is just getting better!

[Harry Foud.1935]

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@Harry Foud.1935 said:

@Robert Gee.9246 said:

@Zero Solstice.9754 said:Hey guys, here's a list of changes that were not included in the patch notes:

Manifest Sand Shade: Sand shade duration was reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds in PvP and WvW only.Nefarious Favor: The cooldown of this skill was increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW only.

Edit: Sand Flare now also properly functions as a heal skill for related runes and traits.

Update notes have various cutoff points for our localization/editing team so sometimes even though an update will make it into the final build the notes will be delayed a bit due to the localization being processed in batches. Balance adjustments and important bugfixes sometimes come in after this cutoff point so please be sure to check the release notes once they are updated.

Hello Robert, take a look.Mirage Problems:

Skills

Axe 2: doesn't always spawn a clone especially if the target is not immobile. It seems to suffer from some huge desync or skill queuing issue that presents itself as forcing large delays before the skill activates. Using the skill often feels like you're playing with 250ms ping, and it's really odd and problematic. It results in getting hit by attacks due to the animation lock, using it twice due to skill queuing, and just generally feeling completely awful.Axe 3: low range after the shadowstep, breaks Mirage's target also and is rng targeting other enemies than the one u want. Best it will land your dmg as intended , worst it will lead to a team wipe in raid . In pvp , the long cast time or animation is also the problem . In pvp a skill which is supposed to give mesmer mobility and a way to avoid being targeted , it makes him a huge pink fly in mid air. And it will still fail to hit the intended target. Also sometimes it moves you to places that cause camera issues, unable to move from invsible walls etc. Using it outside of 550 range + will most likely result in a shadowstep further Away from ur Target, then dashing back to ur starting location, effectively doing nothing.Axe anbush: Doesn't work if you dont look face to face with the enemy even if you have targeted him. Axe ambush on clones does not trigger axe trait, usual clone attacks do trigger axe trait.Staff ambush: Orb that goes in a straight line, extremely easy to avoid even without dodge.

Traits

Riddle of sand + infinite horizon no synergy.Evasive Mirror + infinite horizon counter each other.1,5 sec protection every 10 seconds is a master trait.Dune cloak bug/tooltip. 3 stacks bleed for 4 seconds, not 2 for 6.Speed of sand should be added to Mirage clock trait and be replaced with smething else.

Utility Skills

Sand though glass: Makes no sense to spawn the mirror at the starting point. Now I have to go back to the place I was trying to evade?!

Core problems

The only thing he is suppose to do, single target dmg, is being done better than other classes.Much dmg is suppose to come from illusions but the fact that they have very low health makes them very vulnerable to all kinds of dmg.Theoritically the idea behind Mirage is to fool your foes no knowing which one you are. Well no decent player will be ever fooled from that.It has the pick up mecanism (mirrors), something the community hated already from Rev's healing and Guardian's aegis.He doesn't have a 25% movement speed buff (This is a problem to core Mesmer too).For a class so mobile he doesn't have the proper damage to take advantage of it. That's why most of us play power MirageFeels like it does not belong to the game. It has no utility to offer and it's the worst thing in the world to play a class and have people telling you to change in order to raid or do fractals with them.

Thanks for not caring.

To all the Necros: Sorry for posting this here but it's the only one that got an answer from someone

we will never get answers. Just quit until things are done.

@Horan.7013 said:Someone from

reddit

is saying that Shade strike is disabled completely.

This is just getting better!

I'm done.

[Rym.1469]

It's not disabled completly. Just F5.

[Exqq.7451]

@Horan.7013 said:Someone from reddit is saying that Shade strike is disabled completely.

This is just getting better!

Not "disabled"... fixed. Traits and skills were never intended to provide viability to Necromancer. All bugs have been corrected. Happy holidays!

[Professor Sprout.1560]

@SidewayS.3789 Were those insults intended for me or for someone else in this thread? Either way it's not appropriate, and has been reported as such.

@Zefiris.8297 I do T4s every few days, at the moment with Scourge, Reaper and other classes. I mostly do pugs so I tend to see a good variety of builds and what they bring to a team. PS allies can be useful, but their utility does tend to drop off a bit if the party has builds that can self buff with might, or for mobile situations where the party can't stay in the radius of the banners. To each their own and all that: I would not for a moment consider pressuring a cPS to play scourge instead or argue that one is categorically better than the other - they have different niches.

@Lexan.5930 To address each of your arguments in turn:Barrier & Healing: some people may have not caught on yet to the power of barrier, but from my experience it is an effective mechanic. The skill ceiling is higher for barrier than conventional healing since you have to be be proactive rather than just react to damage taken, but once you get the hang of it barrier is a good companion to the conventional healing that a scourge can also put out. I prefer the playstyle to druid healing - druids have higher healing numbers but the smaller AoEs on Celestial Avatar means you can run into problems in split phases or situations where an ally has been CC'd out of the stacking point. You say in your last paragraph that scourge heals are self-AoEs only but remember that Transfusion and Shade barriers all work at range out of your shade.Boonstrip: well obviously, other classes and specs have access to it as well. You mention chrono and that spec certainly provides good buffs to some compositions, but it does lose value if your group already has a Firebrand for quickness/aegis, or has Revenants or other builds that don't get much from Alacrity.Allies can self-heal: well yes every build will have some limited ability to heal themselves, but that doesn't mean that they should spend their time doing so. Every second that a DPS ally spends avoiding damage, scrubbing conditions, using heals or being in downstate is time not spent DPSing, and so having a support can allow allies to slot more DPS skills and focus on their rotations.Harrier: I wouldn't recommend that stat actually, or at least would not recommend it as the only benchmark by which to review support scourge performance. Consider instead gear that mixes vitality and damage stats so you can DPS whilst having enough lifeforce to fuel your shade skills, or Celestial if you want something with toughness and healing power as well.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Transfusion has never worked from Shades. Only the Necro himself.

[Ashyri.5426]

Reaper was weak but at least it had amazing visual effects, it was just too damn beautiful. Now scourge is ugly af AND weak.

[Lexan.5930]

@Exqq.7451 said:

@Horan.7013 said:Someone from

reddit

is saying that Shade strike is disabled completely.

This is just getting better!

Not "disabled"... fixed. Traits and skills were never intended to provide viability to Necromancer. All bugs have been corrected. Happy holidays!

Why even have traits that work all the time when we can reduce their efective up time and thus reduce the class to "as intended". Which feel just middle of the like meh for all of gw2

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@Exqq.7451 said:

"BUG" fixes that cause such massive swings in performance should not be released until balance fixes are implemented at the same time to add some kind of stability instead of this constant swing of GOOD kitten GOOD kitten... While Soulbeast may have bugs, this discussion is around Scourge.

No. You fix bugs FIRST. Then you do the balance. It was an unintended bug. Therefore it needed to be fixed before they could do any sort of balance changes. I know Anet arent exactly the best at balancing their games (they are dreadful!) but even they knew you dont balance a class knowing it has bugs that are making it over perform to what its design was intended to be for.

Now that the bug, which was a SERIOUS issue in PvP and WvW has been fixed. They can now look at making changes, hopefully none that make it insanely overpowered in PvP and WvW again but its still insanely strong. Those saying its now a dead spec. Its unusable and everything were a little too reliant on a bug.

[savacli.8172]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:Transfusion has never worked from Shades. Only the Necro himself.

That one makes sense. The intended mechanic being that you get pulled to the necro and healed/rez'd and that the Necro heals in an area around him. Bonus points since Transfusion can actually heal a Necro since Death/Reaper are stuck behind life force. So making transfusion work with Shades would mean that either each shade is capable of rez-ing and/or aoe healing. Either way with the allied target cap being a possible 20 with shades involved it just makes sense to keep it centered around just the Necro. Though the duration on that is way too long given how other shroud forms cast their heal in about 2 seconds with the trait.

[Ziggityzog.7389]

The only change I have to complain about is whats the deal with the 10 second shade compared to 20??? Can we get 4 ammo instead of 3 for manifest sand shade? That's kind of Bs to do that to the main source of damage.

[Lexan.5930]

@Ziggityzog.7389 said:The only change I have to complain about is whats the deal with the 10 second shade compared to 20??? Can we get 4 ammo instead of 3 for manifest sand shade? That's kind of Bs to do that to the main source of damage.

Yea there's like no way to maintain even a single greater shade. Combined with our low mobility already,Ah well back to power scourge and running away from everyone in pvp I suppose

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@savacli.8172 said:

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:Transfusion has never worked from Shades. Only the Necro himself.

That one makes sense. The intended mechanic being that you get pulled to the necro and healed/rez'd and that the Necro heals in an area around him. Bonus points since Transfusion can actually heal a Necro since Death/Reaper are stuck behind life force. So making transfusion work with Shades would mean that either each shade is capable of rez-ing and/or aoe healing. Either way with the allied target cap being a possible 20 with shades involved it just makes sense to keep it centered around just the Necro. Though the duration on that is way too long given how other shroud forms cast their heal in about 2 seconds with the trait.

I agree it makes perfect sense, but so many people (including Professor Sprout) think it pulses from Shades, too. It doesn't and never has.

[Saiyan.1704]

So FB > Scourge now? Because Anet completely made FB unviable waayy before the Scourge bug fixes.So... am I relevant now? Is game finally balanced?

My tears on FB is already dried so, I do feel ya'lls pain for sure.

[Lexan.5930]

@Professor Sprout.1560 said:@SidewayS.3789 Were those insults intended for me or for someone else in this thread? Either way it's not appropriate, and has been reported as such.

@Zefiris.8297 I do T4s every few days, at the moment with Scourge, Reaper and other classes. I mostly do pugs so I tend to see a good variety of builds and what they bring to a team. PS allies can be useful, but their utility does tend to drop off a bit if the party has builds that can self buff with might, or for mobile situations where the party can't stay in the radius of the banners. To each their own and all that: I would not for a moment consider pressuring a cPS to play scourge instead or argue that one is categorically better than the other - they have different niches.

@Lexan.5930 To address each of your arguments in turn:Barrier & Healing: some people may have not caught on yet to the power of barrier, but from my experience it is an effective mechanic. The skill ceiling is higher for barrier than conventional healing since you have to be be proactive rather than just react to damage taken, but once you get the hang of it barrier is a good companion to the conventional healing that a scourge can also put out. I prefer the playstyle to druid healing - druids have higher healing numbers but the smaller AoEs on Celestial Avatar means you can run into problems in split phases or situations where an ally has been CC'd out of the stacking point. You say in your last paragraph that scourge heals are self-AoEs only but remember that Transfusion and Shade barriers all work at range out of your shade.Boonstrip: well obviously, other classes and specs have access to it as well. You mention chrono and that spec certainly provides good buffs to some compositions, but it does lose value if your group already has a Firebrand for quickness/aegis, or has Revenants or other builds that don't get much from Alacrity.Allies can self-heal: well yes every build will have some limited ability to heal themselves, but that doesn't mean that they should spend their time doing so. Every second that a DPS ally spends avoiding damage, scrubbing conditions, using heals or being in downstate is time not spent DPSing, and so having a support can allow allies to slot more DPS skills and focus on their rotations.Harrier: I wouldn't recommend that stat actually, or at least would not recommend it as the only benchmark by which to review support scourge performance. Consider instead gear that mixes vitality and damage stats so you can DPS whilst having enough lifeforce to fuel your shade skills, or Celestial if you want something with toughness and healing power as well.

That's why I said I hope, there's definatly a lot of hope for barrier but right now people mostly don't care about it.

Especially in fractals where agony goes right through it since it doesnt scale with AR at all

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Saiyan.1704 said:So FB > Scourge now? Because Anet completely made FB unviable waayy before the Scourge bug fixes.So... am I relevant now? Is game finally balanced?

My tears on FB is already dried so, I do feel ya'lls pain for sure.

You do realize Bunker Firebrand could literally facetank Scourge shades before today's patch?

@Lexan.5930 said:Especially in fractals where agony goes right through it since it doesnt scale with AR at allAgony cuts Barrier strength by 70%, just like it cuts healing. This is before dealing any damage.

[kKagari.6804]

@Saiyan.1704 said:So FB > Scourge now? Because Anet completely made FB unviable waayy before the Scourge bug fixes.So... am I relevant now? Is game finally balanced?

My tears on FB is already dried so, I do feel ya'lls pain for sure.

Yeah, cmon buddy, FB is in a above viable spot right now.

[folk.8190]

It feels like the arena is forcing us to play only ele and warrior. Because The fewer classes the fewer problems with balance. Applause Anet

[Jitterboy.3709]

Scourge is dead. Using reaper as an example for how anet nerfed it to shit and never touched it again necro will be the outcast class for raids for another 3 years. Until we get 2 weeks instead of a month to enjoy being able to raid with it before its nerfed to a point of being unplayable.

[Ordin.9047]

I'm getting so tired of these nerfs. Its time for me to stop buying gems again it seems.

[Atticus.7194]

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Saiyan.1704 said:So FB > Scourge now? Because Anet completely made FB unviable waayy before the Scourge bug fixes.So... am I relevant now? Is game finally balanced?

My tears on FB is already dried so, I do feel ya'lls pain for sure.

Yeah, cmon buddy, FB is in a above viable spot right now.

Please don't mention FB, they'll find something to "fix" and destroy that class too. Oh wait at least they've got power DH to go back to, without scourges necros are just out of all PvE

[Professor Sprout.1560]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 @savacli.8172 Huh. I checked that just now and you're right - I had assumed that although the pull was necro-only the heal would pulse from the shade as well, but it seems that neither effect from Transfusion works that way. My apologies, and thanks for the correction.