Demonic Lore PvE nerf

[Xeon.5768]

22 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

All in all, it's not the end of the world, the loss of dps is abysmal.

 

The patch still look like a bad joke, especially for revenant, elementalist and warrior. And imo, I'm glad the necromancer don't get any little paragraphe to justify the change, just reading the engineer's one was enough to not want to read any of the other.

They still need more tweaking, maybe at the next patch.

 

A quick glance,

Firebrand's traitline got buffed further again.... given that it has close to 40k benchmark (with-allies ) right after May 11th patch

Condition soulbeast got no change, given its one of the bottom condition dps pick in raids (only except quite a few with stacking condi soulbeast on Cairn for example)

Condition holosmith got no change at all. Ppl playing condition holosmith has been struggling for quite a long time. It absolutely makes no sense to encourage ppl to play one of the hardest condi class in the game while still not being able (or at least very struggling) to pull the same number as other condi classes that are far easier to learn. It is just not rewarding to do so.

 

Will have to wait for a few days to comment on condition DE/mirage/renegade. Very soon should ppl be uploading new benchmarks.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Xeon.5768

[KrHome.1920]

Expected nerf. I am even suprised it's just about 1k less dps.

 

I would have expected they bring scourge to 32k.

 

I feel sorry for the feelings of the players ANet hurt with that nerf.

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[Axl.8924]

52 minutes ago, Xeon.5768 said:

They still need more tweaking, maybe at the next patch.

 

A quick glance,

Firebrand's traitline got buffed further again.... given that it has close to 40k benchmark (with-allies ) right after May 11th patch

Condition soulbeast got no change, given its one of the bottom condition dps pick in raids (only except quite a few with stacking condi soulbeast on Cairn for example)

Condition holosmith got no change at all. Ppl playing condition holosmith has been struggling for quite a long time. It absolutely makes no sense to encourage ppl to play one of the hardest condi class in the game while still not being able (or at least very struggling) to pull the same number as other condi classes that are far easier to learn. It is just not rewarding to do so.

 

Will have to wait for a few days to comment on condition DE/mirage/renegade. Very soon should ppl be uploading new benchmarks.

 

Honestly i dunno if harder or easier to play should influence dps but yes it should have high enough dps to compete for a spot in raids.

I think all classes should have at least 1 or more dps specs 

I think hard classes should offer good dps but i think the reward for playing a piano type thing in difficulty successfully is praise from fellow raiders and  good numbers.

 

I think this is a derail of a comment though and prob bad idea to talk about holosmith in necro areas.

 

The mods might get angry with derailing.

 

 

[Infusion.7149]

2 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

Everyone can solo in open world, it just requires knowledge and Everyone has at least some builds meta for fractals possibly more and some have had builds viable for years.

 

Some builds offer good support and dps.

 

Also: Mesmers used to be the love childs of ANET. 

Consider how in the past alacricity was desired more than anything.

 

Sure guardians were op with boon spam but consider just how nuts mesmers were

 

Right now, scourge is necros highest condi dps, if it gets deleted, then necro has no condi spec.

 

I've played mesmer since pre-launch and that is blatantly untrue.

For the longest time you had two options: work twice as hard for mediocre power DPS using sword + focus and/or greatsword (which was a joke weapon unless you are tagging things) OR use scepter/staff on condi fights which basically were more or less non-existent. The phantasms took up your clone spots so essentially if you wanted to use any clone shatter build it had to compete with keeping phantasms up (naturally, power clones were/are more or less useless except boon ripping from sword clones). Keep in mind core game was balanced around power so structures did not take condition damage and conditions did not stack either , only adding duration. The power disadvantage is still felt even with all the powercreep, bring a mesmer against any trash mobs and see it for yourself.

When conditions were changed and more instanced content was added :
Early game it was elementalists + warriors as meta. Before raiding literally nobody cared about mesmers. Firstly, the majority of mesmers had terrible boon uptime as chronos. Secondly, it was by no means easy compared to firebrand or renegade to upkeep said boons. Back then there was no diviner's stats, people ran commander's stacks + leadership runes.

 Even with this minor nerf , scourge will still be in a solid spot. That is especially true in cases you need to range things such as in QtP as pylon.
 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[anbujackson.9564]

It would be great if people actually test or math out changes themself before going to the forums and instantly cry about it.

 

So what, you loose at most 1,5k dps. You don't loose squadwide barrier, low CD condi remove and all the other utility necros have (epidemic, IMO the best pull in the game, projectile destruction, shitload of corrupt,...). 

 

Also why the hell should every class do the same damage like the highest performer? The high performer should be toned down, not everyone else up. Like I'm not even sure if people are aware how dull PVE is getting. With powercreep being at an all time high, everything besides scaled open world bosses will die in seconds. How's that fun? 

[Axl.8924]

4 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

I've played mesmer since pre-launch and that is blatantly untrue.

For the longest time you had two options: work twice as hard for mediocre power DPS using sword + focus and/or greatsword (which was a joke weapon unless you are tagging things) OR use scepter/staff on condi fights which basically were more or less non-existent. The phantasms took up your clone spots so essentially if you want to use any clone shatter build it had to compete with keeping phantasms up (naturally, power clones were/are more or less useless except boon ripping from sword clones). Keep in mind core game was balanced around power so structures did not take condition damage and conditions did not stack either , only adding duration. The power disadvantage is still felt even with all the powercreep, bring a mesmer against any trash mobs and see it for yourself.

When conditions were changed and more instanced content was added :
Early game it was elementalists + warriors as meta. Before raiding literally nobody cared about mesmers. Firstly, the majority of mesmers had terrible boon uptime as chronos. Secondly, it was by no means easy compared to firebrand or renegade to upkeep said boons. Back then there was no diviner's stats, people ran commander's stacks + leadership runes.
 

 

UH i'm refering to the fact that boonspam and tank mesmers were outright required for raids, something that got changed and it was broken.

 

I mentioned support comparing eles for instance who were complaining before about trying to keep up.

 

I prob shouldn't get into that here anyways and it sounds more like looking into the past and i realize mesmers have issues and many of them are deep in and i won't realize because i lack the experience with mesmer compared to ele or nec.

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Axl.8924

[anbujackson.9564]

1 minute ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

UH i'm refering to the fact that boonspam and tank mesmers were outright required for raids, something that got changed and it was broken.

 

I mentioned support comparing eles for instance who were complaining before about trying to keep up. 

 

 

To be honest, two chaos chronos were more balanced than what we have right now. At least they didnt do almost as much damage as a DPS while providing the same boons.

[Xeon.5768]

25 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

For the longest time you had two options: work twice as hard for mediocre power DPS using sword + focus and/or greatsword (which was a joke weapon unless you are tagging things) OR use scepter/staff on condi fights which basically were more or less non-existent. The phantasms took up your clone spots so essentially if you wanted to use any clone shatter build it had to compete with keeping phantasms up (naturally, power clones were/are more or less useless except boon ripping from sword clones). Keep in mind core game was balanced around power so structures did not take condition damage and conditions did not stack either , only adding duration. The power disadvantage is still felt even with all the powercreep, bring a mesmer against any trash mobs and see it for yourself.

When conditions were changed and more instanced content was added :
Early game it was elementalists + warriors as meta. Before raiding literally nobody cared about mesmers. Firstly, the majority of mesmers had terrible boon uptime as chronos. Secondly, it was by no means easy compared to firebrand or renegade to upkeep said boons. Back then there was no diviner's stats, people ran commander's stacks + leadership runes.
 

This is so true. Pwr chrono only received a good dps spot until raids were announced with a series of patches that followed. As you mentioned, its performance greatly depends on the comp of the squad any time. Even till today, due to its slow dps ramp-up and long rotation, pwr chrono, which is the only playable pwr dps build of mesmer, is underperforming quite significantly to other pwr classes in fractals, including the pwr reaper which ppl have been crying about for a very long time in the past.

I wish these ppl could try other classes to figure out how many efforts are needed to achieve a good result in different scenarios. I also wish nerds could actually test it out before making a post about a class losing 1k ish dps on golem benchmark, and more importantly receiving almost NO IMPACTS in real fights (compared to the state right after May 11th patch).

For me, no dps nerf is needed on this class or you can even buff it to some extent, if all the mechanics-broken aspects are reworked or deleted.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Xeon.5768

[Infusion.7149]

1 minute ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

UH i'm refering to the fact that boonspam and tank mesmers were outright required for raids, something that got changed and it was broken.

 

I mentioned support comparing eles for instance who were complaining before about trying to keep up. 

 

 

It was a problem because it was not a "press X skill off cooldown" class , you'd be lucky to get 50% boon uptime on an average chrono. Even recently on discretize someone had a speedclear video back when druid/chrono was meta and the comments were something along the lines of "remember when 50% alac uptime was considered good?". The problem was not the boons, the problem was that people could not play it well and mesmer wasn't a popular class before raiding so the amount of people that could play it decently was low. That was on top of the request for 2 chronos per squad. Firebrand provides more or less the same boon output but with even more safety due to lower cooldowns and less chance of messing things up (the only boon it really lacks is alacrity , whereas chrono relied heavily on druid for both might and healing).

Simplifying classes is for the better due to the nature of the game, but scourge is not as simple as people hating on it put it out to be. Yes, you can put everything off cooldown. However, if you just autoattack (i.e. 1 spam gameplay) on it the damage is ~30% of the benchmark unlike some other classes where the damage is basically half autoattacks. All in all this nerf was very reserved, it could have been far worse.

[Xeon.5768]

4 hours ago, Aktium.9506 said:

Nah. Scourge, Mirage and Renegade are/were busted af

 

Scourge also shouldn't ever have higher DPS than Reaper as a ranged spec with a bunch of support and utility tools. That's just bad design.

 

The Torment change was also beyond dumb and should be reverted to how it was.

Brief and straight to the point.

[Anchoku.8142]

1 hour ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

UH i'm refering to the fact that boonspam and tank mesmers were outright required for raids, something that got changed and it was broken.

 

I mentioned support comparing eles for instance who were complaining before about trying to keep up. 

 

 

Thinking back far enough, Mesmer was, "That JP hobby profession." It ranked 7th out of 8 and needed buffing badly. Chrono and Reaper were huge enablers. Good riddance to the days of stubborn dev's and balancing for all three game modes at once.

[Hobyrimvrahms.6910]

Would've wish the nerf didn't happen, but fortunately that barely scratched it.

[mindcircus.1506]

If you weren't expecting this nerf you were living in a dream world.

[Lily.1935]

I don't like the nerf, but it was expected and it's not as big as it looks at first glance.

 

Hopefully this is it for touching our DPS at least. The Support elements of the spec should still be looked at.

[Nephalem.8921]

10 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

"Scourge with it's extremely slow damage ramp as well as it's peak numbers on static DPS golems only isn't really overperforming, but heh, kitten it, it's Necro." 

 

Was missing as justification blip in the patch notes.

 

But seriously, if Barrier, somehow, is such a massive problem to provide while doing decent DPS (like other comparable or much better DPS's don't provide anything else, in a game where you are borderline immortal with a support anyway), just add to for example the underwhelming Sadistic Searing an effect that reduces or removes Barrier from Sand Cascade and maybe even Desert Shroud, but instead doubles their Torment Application via Manifest Sand Shade. 

 

Wow, optionally more damage, less support/self sustain. Amazing.

Yes then it could be allowed to do lots of damage. but it doesnt. 15% perma dmg reduction aswell. can take huge team utility at a minor loss aswell. Play other classes like weaver. you wont feel as immortal even with a healer.

As others pointed out the nerf was very minor. meanwhile thief got butchered and is in trash tier again. scourges turn content into a joke. so much passive mitigation on top of full ranged and basically a free utility slot. Scourge does still as much damage as slb.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Nephalem.8921

[LittleYoshi.2548]

MajesticNoodle made a good summary on why Scourge is decent atm on the SC discord (even after the nerf yesterday)

 

"Okay so Scourge is in a pretty great spot and hell was already pretty good when it was 29k. Bunch of random reasons below:
-A mostly ranged rotation with no roots/low amounts of static AoEs and a bunch of instant cast skills greatly increase how much damage you do realistically. Running back from a mechanic, hitting Dhuum during succ, rezzing an ally, etc etc
-Barrier and cleanse are amazing. A single Scourge can do a lot to mitigate mechanics less skilled players like to eat. And overall barrier just makes your healer's life a lot better
-Great cleave, I mean Epi is bonkers but even just placing a shade where you need damage -Good CC, and if you need more you have insane CC options at your disposal (Spectral Grasp/Flesh Golem)
-Good utility set for a bunch of scenarios. Portals, stability, pulls, projectile blocks, etc that all don't come at a huge dps loss
-The ability to take Tormenting Runes for insane sustain at very little cost
-LF generation in real encounters increases your damage more than the golem room
-Great synergy with other Scourges (Epi bouncing/LF sharing)
-Having a rez skill (Undeath) usually on your bar. And I guess the ability to take Blood Magic but that's less a thing now
-Random Might generation is also neat I guess

These things make Scourge good. Yes it's not hyper meta for high level players (though it does make lowmans a cake walk), but it's good for the vast majority of the playerbase."

Edited May 26, 2021 by LittleYoshi.2548

[Apokriphos.7042]

This nonsense concept that necromancer is an easy class and thus undeserving of high level play/balancing by development needs to stop. Its not productive for forum discussion and directly opposes Arenanets stance of 'Play how you want' with any class.

 

Necromancer cDPS cut on scourge came directly due to the reduction in complexity forced upon torment usage. The game is currently moving in that direction. Hopefully the expac brings back much needed complexity, and thus the opportunity for the risky player to achieve top tier competitive damage in every gamemode regardless of class, which is part of the original appeal of both GW1 and 2.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Apokriphos.7042

[Axl.8924]

1 hour ago, LittleYoshi.2548 said:

MajesticNoodle made a good summary on why Scourge is decent atm on the SC discord (even after the nerf yesterday)

 

"Okay so Scourge is in a pretty great spot and hell was already pretty good when it was 29k. Bunch of random reasons below:
-A mostly ranged rotation with no roots/low amounts of static AoEs and a bunch of instant cast skills greatly increase how much damage you do realistically. Running back from a mechanic, hitting Dhuum during succ, rezzing an ally, etc etc
-Barrier and cleanse are amazing. A single Scourge can do a lot to mitigate mechanics less skilled players like to eat. And overall barrier just makes your healer's life a lot better
-Great cleave, I mean Epi is bonkers but even just placing a shade where you need damage -Good CC, and if you need more you have insane CC options at your disposal (Spectral Grasp/Flesh Golem)
-Good utility set for a bunch of scenarios. Portals, stability, pulls, projectile blocks, etc that all don't come at a huge dps loss
-The ability to take Tormenting Runes for insane sustain at very little cost
-LF generation in real encounters increases your damage more than the golem room
-Great synergy with other Scourges (Epi bouncing/LF sharing)
-Having a rez skill (Undeath) usually on your bar. And I guess the ability to take Blood Magic but that's less a thing now
-Random Might generation is also neat I guess

These things make Scourge good. Yes it's not hyper meta for high level players (though it does make lowmans a cake walk), but it's good for the vast majority of the playerbase."

 29k woulda been acceptable only if other classes get nerfed hard to bring them down as well, bercause huge differences in dps creates a inbalance in classes and creates a reason not to bring them and sunwelling them.

 

Sunwell is a raid in wow and its legendary because paladins were not being brought because they were underpowered.Other classes bring a lot of utility and dmg, so why bring scourge if he is 29k and for instance mirage condi can do 37k plus also utility?

 

Its extremely terrible.

 

Plus there was also a sentiment against necromancer for 5+ years and they weren't allowed to be good or raid.

This sentiment made them bitter, its time for ANET to not do that anymore, and instead bring classes closer to another and fix support in pve. This game is mainly a PVE game and locking people out of raids because they are so badly designed is not a choice. Its better not to sunwell anyone.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Axl.8924

[Dadnir.5038]

10 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

When conditions were changed and more instanced content was added :
Early game it was elementalists + warriors as meta. Before raiding literally nobody cared about mesmers.
 

 

You should add thief on the early game meta profession list. However, mesmer was very useful in a few dungeons: Twilight Arbor, Citadel of flame (It was/is essential to carry some players through tricky mechanisms. I include myself in the list of players that need to be carried through those mechanisms 😅, it's one of the reason I hate this dungeon so much) and Arah. I'll even add Sorrow embrace because while it suck on some parts of the different paths, it could be game changer on some mechanisms that you find in these paths (a good example being the 3 golems on path1).

 

As for fractal, mesmer was very strong in aquatic and very useful in most of the other. I've never been disappointed in playing a mesmer in fractals. It's utilities were enough to carry players as hard as a scourge can carry with barrier. Traited focus + portal were enough to make you a boon in all fractals.

 

On another hand, the necromancer was just a burden in early game meta. Not that it couldn't be used successfully but it's support was inexistent and it's dps was either tied to unwanted field or tied to very slow ramping conditions in a gamemode were boss were killed in 5 to 10 seconds. Imo, it is impressive how much the necromancer gained over the years and yet despite that still fail to really be part of the "meta", it's design is just unsuited to the "meta".

[Black Storm.6974]

The changes I’d propose to make the gameplay of Scourge less frenetic and to get rid of annoying internal cooldowns:

1. Change Manifest Sand Shade to no longer add Torment application to the other Shade skills (F2, 3, 4, 5).

2. Change the interaction between Shade skills and Traits so that only Manifest Sand Shade count as Shroud skill 1. Set related traits to give different duration or number of stacks to Scourge (compared to core Necro and Reaper), changing the description of the traits accordingly.

3. Remove the internal cooldowns from Dhumfire and Demonic Lore. They will no longer be “needed”, since they will be tied to skills which have both a casting time and a cooldown.

 

Not having any reason to spam F2 and F3 (instant cast skills) every few seconds and to pay attention to internal cooldowns all the time will make the gameplay much more enjoyable for almost everyone. Support skills will be used to support instead of being spammed to damage enemies while casting other skills.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Black Storm.6974

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Black Storm.6974 said:

3. Remove the internal cooldowns from Dhumfire and Demonic Lore. They will no longer be “needed”, since they will be tied to skills which have both a casting time and a cooldown.

 

Demonic lore's ICD is tied to a proc on applying torment. Whatever you do it would end up being broken OP without ICD, which mean that even with all the change you suggest it would remain "needed".

 

It's an old fashion idea but Dhuumfire could grant an aura (6s) upon entering shroud (Core: Fire aura, Reaper: Frost aura, Scourge: Dark aura). Demonic lore could add a fire/dark field onto desert shroud instead of a burn proc or give manifest sand shade (F1 only like desert empowerment)  a whirl finisher.

 

If the lack of condition application in shroud really is a bother, Barbed precision can probably be adjust to have it's bleed proc on critical hit raised to 100% while in shroud.

[Nimon.7840]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:33 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

What a dramatic overreaction. People were benching 36.5K on condi scourge after May 11 patch. About 40% of that was torment damage, so ~14.5K DPS from torment.

Going from 33 to 25% modifier is ~6% difference as 1.25/1.33 ~ 94%. The net loss should be a roughly 1K DPS.

Yep. Even without a perfect rotation you can still easily get 33k DPS.

I didn't go for the perfect benchmark (in real raids you won't ever be able to do a perfect rotation anyways) -> interrupted the third Autoattack, accidentally pressed F2 after using BiP.