Scourge Specialization Updates for the Path of Fire Launch

[Crinn.7864]

> @FaboBabo.3581 said:

> > @Crinn.7864 said:

> > > @FaboBabo.3581 said:

> > > "Life force costs for Scourge abilities have always been a percentage of your BASE vitality (pre-equipment). Which means that packing on more vitality lets you cast more skills and regain larger absolute values when things die or you use life force generating abilities since you gain life force as a percentage of MAX."

> > > Yeah nothing to add here , I read some replies (:

> > Which pigeonholes the entire class into stacking vitality, despite the fact that nothing about scourge actually synergizes with vitality.

> >

> > I mean honestly Rabid would be the best amulet for scourge in sPvP, except oh right we have to stack vitality.

> >

> > And then there is PvE, where stacking vitality will just hurt your DPS more than just not have life force will.

> >

>

> Well ; full damage = burstbuild, should not be able to throw out barriers and CC like it's christmas

> More vitality = sustained build , is allowed to pull out barriers and CC like it's christmas.

>

> Out of the PvP / WvW perspective.

> In Pve i'd suggest there are enough dying ads to give u the life force u need for spamming off cooldown...

>

 

Vitality isn't sustain. Vitality does not reduce incoming damage, nor does vitality increase your healing.

 

Scourge does not have the necessary self-healing to maintain it's health pool. Scourge needs to run toughness in order to reduce incoming damage enough to survive.

 

And yeah sure that doesn't matter in WvW where you can just take Dire gear and get the best of both worlds, but in the competitive PvP mode there are no condi amulets with both vitality and toughness, which results in Scourge having trash tier self sustain.

 

And of course in PvE sustain is irrelevant and you only care about DPS, and scourge's DPS makes power warrior look good.

[Sephylon.4938]

to be fair, scourge's dps, as it stands now, is starting to make anything look better in comparison

[Kam.4092]

> @Sephylon.4938 said:

> to be fair, scourge's dps, as it stands now, is starting to make anything look better in comparison

 

We won't know it's real DPS potential until we go to the Golems, and see what new Runes, Sigils, and Gear Stats are added. Going have to wait 12 hours.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

> @Kam.4092 said:

> > @Sephylon.4938 said:

> > to be fair, scourge's dps, as it stands now, is starting to make anything look better in comparison

>

> We won't know it's real DPS potential until we go to the Golems, and see what new Runes, Sigils, and Gear Stats are added. Going have to wait 12 hours.

 

Of the stats we know (and we know 3/4), no new stats will be relevant to Scourge. Scourge runes would be good in PvP, perhaps, but they're not getting added there.

[kKagari.6804]

> @Lily.1935 said:

> I'm having a feeling Anet took my "Necromancer Depth" post and corrupted it a bit. Even though I explicitly said multiple times that the scourge was already a high skill high reward elite spec already. So asking for more skill from the players? Eh... Fine, I guess but you shouldn't punish PvE players. This change seems fine from a WvW perspective, and maybe a PvP one. At least pertaining to the nerfs. I still think Mystic snake is too weak even with that. I'd rather them go in the direction of a heavy barrier skill than more condi damage, but that's just me. As it stands now I still will heavily favor Corrosive poison cloud over Mystic snakes.

>

> But core necromancer and Reaper are the ones with skilled play problems, not Scourge.

 

It could simply be that they don't agree with your suggested changes. Robert Gee said something to this effect on the deadeye changes thread.

[Sigmoid.7082]

> @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

> > @Kam.4092 said:

> > > @Sephylon.4938 said:

> > > to be fair, scourge's dps, as it stands now, is starting to make anything look better in comparison

> >

> > We won't know it's real DPS potential until we go to the Golems, and see what new Runes, Sigils, and Gear Stats are added. Going have to wait 12 hours.

>

>no new stats will be relevant to Scourge.

 

This is something I wouldn't be to sure on just yet.

[SPESHAL.9106]

I can almost guarantee the base range on Shades is going to have to be increased if they keep these changes. You can't make them that pitiful now PLUS keep such small range compared to banners, spirits, and all other aoe. How on earth did they even come up with these dinky ranges? It's smaller than a mark by 25%!!!

 

Totally insane when no other support style pillar in the game is that ridiculously small in range.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

"> @kKagari.6804 said:> It could simply be that they don't agree with your suggested changes. Robert Gee said something to this effect on the deadeye changes thread. "Sorry, but what bearing does that have with what's happened? No amount of opinion can change the fact that all of this stems from a group trying to balance a class that has been developed over an extended period of time based on 2 weekends consisting of nothing but WvW. Necros are doomed to mediocrity because they won't split skills.

I'm sorry but how do any of these changes gives hope that we are not still destined to be a forgotten class? A dozen examples have been cited to prove this was not only too harsh for PvE but most everyone playing different classes recognizes the pain.

 

As i said I'll wait and see what tomorrow brings but if there are no significant buffs to power reaper and scourge's baseline, consider me jaded, and I guarantee i won't be the only one feeling that way.

 

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Well, I'm no longer looking forward to the scourge.

[Zefiris.8297]

> @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > @Eburte.9813 said:

> > Welp, looks like it's time to get a new main. I've heard Anet likes Elementalist, might try one of those.

>

> I wouldn't bother, according to the eles , ANet hates them too. Actually, according to the forums, ANet hates every class.

 

And yet Eles are consistently the best damage dealers.

And yet, warriors have MULTIPLE unique buffs while also being top DPS and even get their damage *buffed*

 

>@FaboBabo.3581 said:

>u have 33% double shard uptime in a long term fight when beeing alone, which is argueable bad. spawn 1 - spawn second after 15 seconds , 5 second double time, 10 second solo time , 5 second double time ...etc

>Thanks to chrono and revs, ur sand shards recharge in 10 seconds and u got 100% 2 shards uptime. , spawn 1 , spawn another after 10 seconds , 10 second double time , spawn one as ur first one runs out.

 

This is false. Alacrity does not work the way you think it does, it does not reduce the cooldown by 33%, it makes 1 second that passes count for 1.33 seconds, which comes down to a cooldown reduction of 25%.

 

100% uptime for two shades is **completely impossible** thanks to these nerfs.

 

>cause u dont need to dodge when u have 50k health.

 

This, too, is false, and not how barrier works. Barrier decays within one second of application. Reaching "50k health" won't happen.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

Found this to be very fitting when it comes to Necromancers feelings after this news, if anything this is a testament to the loyalty and longing this class has to be respectable, kudos to the artist who put it together.;

 

Hello darkness my old friend

The necros have been nerfed again.

With PoF their appeal was peaking.

Getting raid invites they were seeking.

But the illusion of favor was only in their brain

Feel the pain

Once again, removed from relevance

 

In their dreams Anet did atone

So that necros no longer walked alone

Beneath the gaze of the fiery god

They would finally not be downtrod

But then with a wrathful change of code

Necros felt so cold

Once again, removed from relevance

 

And in the morn' it was revealed

Despite all they had appealed

The new elite had them weeping

For it was no better than reaping

And Reddit yelled to the developer void

They were annoyed

Once again, removed from relevance

 

We fools, we did not know

That Anet does not like necros

Hears our requests without speaking

No replies to our class ailing

Our words with silent keystrokes fell

As once again, there was no relevance

 

And as other classes stand and wait

The poor necros took the bait

We should have remembered the past

For this class will always be last

The signs say that we're more than just a lost cause

Our skills have flaws

So once again, removed from relevance.

 

 

[evadrepus.1280]

Glad you enjoyed it. Wrote it during a dull meeting early today.

 

I'm still maining necro. I hope at some point it gets the love.

[Josh.4016]

Trying to be level headed till tomorrow. This is souring my PoF experience and it may be time for a refund. I enjoy raiding and pve. I play games to have fun and being asked to change professions is not acceptable design. I'll stress that waiting to see the big picture tomorrow may relieve some tension.

 

One thing that perplexes me is, why even bother limiting shade to 3 if you can only have two active?

[Drekor.5217]

Well I suppose this makes it easy to not play scourge.

 

The only real nerf that was even remotely necessary was the target cap but it would have been better to leave it at 5 each but just hard cap things at 10 so if you have just yourself you can hit 5. If you 1 shade then 10 if you have 2 or 3 it's still only 10. Makes more sense.

 

Reducing the duration on shades? Now even with 100% alacrity uptime we can't even maintain 2 of them. You guys do realize there are 2 minor traits that are based around having as many shades up as possible right? You apparently forgot otherwise you would have retooled them to likely just give their full effects if any shade was present so they were actually worth anything at all without having a grandmaster trait.

 

Giving torch some life force gain is good except you jacked up the life force cost of abilities and now we're even further back then what we started at. Speaking of that why would you increase life force costs? THey needed to be brought down or major buffs to increase generation but you literally did the complete opposite? What?

 

And we still have silly ICDs on noursihing rot and demonic lore... why? The class is nowhere near the best DPS and desperately needs life force... removing theses ICDs would be a great start and make things play nicely instead of having to keep a count going in your head when you can actually use abilities and not have them be wasted.

 

You guys seriously need to sit down decide on what you actually want necromancers to be. Seems like you have 20 different people with 30 different directions they want to take the class.

 

 

[Lexan.5930]

still going to main necro, still going to keep up with dps in raids like i already do, still going to rep necro as a good class. Still going to get shammed into playing an alt because "PLAY THE META" is what most people want, especially for raids.

[akenoyuki.8210]

Seriously, They need to split WvW and PvE :'(

Now that scourge is going to be like this... I see some people changing their main from necro to other classes

Their purpose is now only as a character bank for them.

 

And then this happen:

Necromancer inventory is going to be nerfed by reducing it's capacity by 20% because some complain that they can carry more than 10 items is way too OP and game-breaking

[grave of hearts.7830]

Instead of complaining about biased nerfs and the mediocrity of the class how bout we start talking refunds instead?

 

 

 

 

[Jethro.9376]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

 

> * Trail of Anguish: Now grants stability in addition to swiftness.

 

Are we talking about 1 stack for 1 second?

 

 

[kKagari.6804]

> @"Vlad Morbius.1759" said:

> "> @kKagari.6804 said:> It could simply be that they don't agree with your suggested changes. Robert Gee said something to this effect on the deadeye changes thread. "Sorry, but what bearing does that have with what's happened? No amount of opinion can change the fact that all of this stems from a group trying to balance a class that has been developed over an extended period of time based on 2 weekends consisting of nothing but WvW. Necros are doomed to mediocrity because they won't split skills.

> I'm sorry but how do any of these changes gives hope that we are not still destined to be a forgotten class? A dozen examples have been cited to prove this was not only too harsh for PvE but most everyone playing different classes recognizes the pain.

>

> As i said I'll wait and see what tomorrow brings but if there are no significant buffs to power reaper and scourge's baseline, consider me jaded, and I guarantee i won't be the only one feeling that way.

>

>

 

Well, i was replying dirrctly to lily so i have no idea why you chose to take my reply or of context and write a wall of text that put me to sleep.

[folk.8190]

so necro dead again ? nerfed by 50% ?

[Nyel.1843]

Man, this thread is awful. So much whine. PoF hasn't been released yet! You can whine in 4 weeks if we're still the same. Right now you should try to leave the meta and come up with new builds and just TRY instead of whine and clinge to Reaper or whatever. I'm a sceptic as well but what's going on in here is ridiculous.

[Shiki.7148]

> @Yuyuske.7182 said:

> I kind of suspect that a lot of necromancer "balance" is based around extremely casual, open-world PvE. Necromancer is a very friendly class for new players; the mechanics are straightforward, it can take a decent amount of punishment, and it can kill ordinary enemies rather quickly. Compare that to "squishier" classes like Elementalist, Mesmer, or Thief, and casual, inexperienced players can get the impression that Necromancer is a very powerful class compared to most other classes...and **that's** the perception that Anet bases its class balance off of.

>

> So when a Scourge pops some Sand kitten and burns down a whole bunch of open-world trash mobs in seconds, then gets all their life force back from those deaths and does it again, they think, "Holy kitten, this class is **really powerful!** We need to nerf that!" Never mind that it's trash mobs, and for actual challenging content where people care about balance and abilities - y'know, where it **actually matters** - they've been crippled.

 

Yeah well...you forget that Warrior has an even easier time and a lot more DPS AND is not slow as a turtle because it has leaps/charges/forward whirls. Or Ranger that kills most low trash before it can even hit him. Or that thief can stealth an blink and does enough dps to kill most stuff without being hit, at which point being more squishy doesn't really matter. Etc. Those do not eat nerfs every single effing time. Besides, you only get Scourge once you already are level 80, so I doubt they are balanced around Queensdale mobs.

 

> @FaboBabo.3581 said:

> > @Vorgryn.9145 said:

> > > @FaboBabo.3581 said:

> > > wth... are peoply complaining that scourge can "only" hit 12 Targets at once? Guys d'you know there are classes which can only hit 5 targets at once?

> > > Asking for 20 is literally insane. Sure it has some sort of ramp up, but cmon, other guys in ur raid need some work too dont they? Nerfing barrier was needed, can remember "several perma barrier i won't die even if u hit me with 10 man" - scourges...

> >

> > You're putting yourself in the WvW boat, and nobody is saying that the nerf shouldn't have been in WvW. The problem is that for PvE players, where encounters last significantly longer, the lower duration and long charge time means that at steady state you'll have usually one, maybe two, sh@des out at a time. At that point the minors are weak(er) and you can't use the sh@de skills to cover everyone in a raid with barriers, etc. Pretty much everyone who is irritated about that portion of the nerf are suggesting a WvW/PvE split.

>

> I get the point about dealing damage in PvE ; ok. But really ; "and you can't use the sh@de skills to cover everyone in a raid with barriers"

> No class should be allowed to "buff" 10 players at the same time. There is a reason we usually got 2 of every buffclass in Raids. Are u sad cause scourge won't break this ? With the old duration of 25 seconds scourge wasn't able to mantain three shards in long turn fights, so in fact not a lot is changing here.

>

 

"No class should be allowed to buff 10 players"... Explain this to me then : https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Peripheral_Vision. This is a Deadeye Master Trait. It has not been changed. It applies all the buffs you get from stealing with the Mark to 5 allies around the target, and 5 allies around the Deadeye. Weird huh? That thing wasn't nerfed to 3 and 3... because it wasn't that WvW breaking, or there simply were no WvW thiefs playing it yet cause "lul oneshots". These buffs are pretty much always more useful than the might Scourge can put out, and do not even depend on the buffs the enemy has, but the type of enemy stolen from. And it is not a Grandmaster trait and competes with the only trait they have to make their dps viable.

 

[OnyX.9027]

tbh I don't really know why people are surprised or upset

 

They do not know how to balance necro, they don't seem to play the game, they don't seem to understand the mechanics they put in place for the class

 

However what they see to be able to do is look for any thread that might whine about possible viability of a necro spec, take out the balancing sledgehammer and beat the cr@p out of it until it is either a former shadow of what people were expecting or it is completely dead in the water, only this time they did it before the expac even released lmao

 

progression is a great thing ;)

[ironcore.6839]

This is why we cant have nice things.

[Shiki.7148]

I really should not have looked at the Firebrand changes again, because now this whole mess pisses me off even more. That thing can stack 45+ burns. FORTY. FIVE. PLUS. And they got buffed to hell in this round of changes. Like, WTF Anet, do your devs even talk to each other, or are they just doing whatever the fuck they want because there is no one that oversees these kinds of things?

 

I mean, look at this bull- crap :

 

 

And THAT got buffs out the whazoo? Instead of nerfing the burn output? But Scourge absolutely needs and ICD on Demonic Lore am I right?! *sigh*