PvE Scourge Shroud Nerf

[GlassRain.4610]

I'm a pretty casual player who doesn't Raid or PvP very often. That out of the way I wanted to say that the targeting change from the shrouds feels terrible. Enemies move out of the shrouds constantly, the rings aren't large enough to tag monsters if my minions are doing what minions do (run around like lemmings), and god forbid I accidentally drop a shroud... that's 20 seconds of waiting for it to clear or I have to be forced into a shroud placement loop to regain use.

 

It is a terrible idea to force you to pick where to AoE, either on yourself or your shroud, without a means to recall the shades. It's just not a good or rewarding mechanic and forces melee playstyle to be useful. We already have reaper... please revert these changes.

 

That being said, I'm not sure what the thing is about all the WvW stuff. Sounds like boons are the problem and necro's are built to strip them. Seems like necro is fine, the game is just playing to their strengths right now? I don't know enough to have a dog in that fight.

 

 

[Dadnir.5038]

For PvE, I can only give you a tip which is the "lesser evil": Don't use F1, play at melee range.

 

As for the issue in WvW (and previously sPvP) with scourge, it's a bit more complicated than what you make it. The issue there is mainly the high stacking potential leading to exponential area denial threat. ANet simply packed to much damage/conditions/crowd control into a single utility with little to no restrictions. The combination of a very high LF regen (due to "deaths") and high stacking ability (aoe that you can stack on top of each other and support via barrier that you can also stack on top of each other) led scourge to be the absolute most effective e-spec in WvW zerg fights, doing both support and damage (melee and ranged) at the same time.

 

This is to the point that it just push most other professions/specializations out of WvW zerg fight, killing diversity.

 

I totally agree with you that butchering scourge's quality of life as a "fix" is not the wisest thing they've done, however, objectively from an sPvP point of view (small scale fight) it was a smart way to address the area denial issue. It even show how critically weak scourge is without it's area denial to the point that scourges lost to much power in this gamemode. Objectively, from a WvW point of view it wasn't a good way to address the issue, which is why ANet go on a second round of meaningless nerf in this gamemode. From a PvE point of view, there was no issue, it just ended being a free nerf to something that wasn't even strong.

 

ANet seldom go back on change they've made, so I wouln't have my hopes high if I were you, just adapt your PvE gameplay like I suggest if you really want to stick to the scourge there. You totally lose the power of your minor traits but it's a "viable" casual gameplay.

[Axl.8924]

Dadnir but scourge was mostly strong in WVW after the other nerfs and small scale was not as much an issue since you won't have as much stacking of necromancers in SPVP.

 

It's not good design to leave a class broken beyond belief after a set of huge nerfs.

 

Sure scourge was part of the problem but so was the buffs other classes can have, because now as others have said the boon spammers are going to win with whoever has the most boons to spam, which solves nothing in the end but show the problem was more complex.

 

Personally, I think scourge shouldn't have been nerfed again and they should have nerfed boon spam to see how powerful scourge was after that.

 

[GlassRain.4610]

Well if the current change is staying I'd love to see them add a means to recall your shrouds. Can't imagine the balancing nightmare that Anet deals with but this class feels like a beta test.

[Dadnir.5038]

> @"Axl.8924" said:

> Dadnir but scourge was mostly strong in WVW after the other nerfs and small scale was not as much an issue since you won't have as much stacking of necromancers in SPVP.

>

> It's not good design to leave a class broken beyond belief after a set of huge nerfs.

>

> Sure scourge was part of the problem but so was the buffs other classes can have, because now as others have said the boon spammers are going to win with whoever has the most boons to spam, which solves nothing in the end but show the problem was more complex.

>

> Personally, I think scourge shouldn't have been nerfed again and they should have nerfed boon spam to see how powerful scourge was after that.

>

 

I do agree with you, but I believe that this change that they did to shades was something that they considered and somehow rejected for something else when scourge was strong in sPvP. What happened after that is simply that they hurriedly implemented the idea when they saw that most people weren't happy that their list of change for WvW wasn't adressing the scourge's area denial issue.

 

Personnally I think scourge need a lot of changes. And amongst those changes there is obviously a lot of them that would be perceived as "nerfs". My main issue with how ANet balance things is that it always seem that they always avoid to make the proper change and instead break everything around beyond fixing.

 

I'll say it again but the problems with the scourge isn't complexe. There is 2 things to adress: barrier and area denial. Both of those problems come from the fact that stacking scourge increase exponentially their effectivness. The solutions to the scourge's issue have always been very simple:

- prevent barriers from stacking in order to make stacking barrier source stacking meaningless and favor healing power builds.

- remove the _manifest sand shade proc_ from F2-5 and rework F5 into a skills that don't inflict torment and damage.

 

If this had been done from the very beginning, F5 wouldn't have needed an increase in CD, making the shroud entry trait more interesting than they are right now. There also wouldn't have been a need for this horrendous delay and orange circle on shade skill effects (less visual pollution). There wouldn't have been a need for dhuumfire trait exception. There wouldn't have been a need either for this change on how shades works.

 

The biggest mistake ANet do is that they cling to the principle that the shades should do damage, support, control and defense all at the same time. It's "fine" for the shroud to have a wide range of role because it lock you out of both your utilities and weapon skills. However, shades don't lock you out of anything, from the very beginning, there is no reason for them to do everything at the same time like the traditional shroud. They should have made a choice and removing the damage from the shade is the choice that make the most sense because the only thing that the necromancer don't lack out of shroud is damage and conditions. Now, yes I know that even in what the necromancer don't lack, it's not really sufficient to compete with other professions but shades is a broken mechanism and it's not by giving a broken mechanism to a profession that you fix what's inherently wrong in it. You just create the need to nerf this mechanism up to the point that it become such a pain in the kitten to use that people stop using it. Which in itself solve nothing.

[Anchoku.8142]

The Shade that Scourge drops acts like a persistent well. As such, it was originally much stronger and was meant to proc' its effects quickly.

 

Well-type skills are fixes AoE meant for allies to stand inside and enemies to escape from, thus the effects on enemies is substantial. Arenanet probably thought Shades would behave like wells. After all, wells on core Necro were (are?) a staple skill used across all game modes. What they may not have fully appreciated is how much an effect access to additional wells with very long persistence that can be used more than once can do to WvW and PvP balance.

 

Their assessment of Shades was flawed and they ended up nerfing its offensive potency until condi dps Scourge died. So, yeah, they broke one of their primary design goals for Scourge.

 

From pre-PoF release beta, Arenanet grossly overvalued barrier and it ended up buffed several times and is now causing them pain in WvW while still being not as useful in end-game PvE as expected.

 

Necromancer continues to be huge problem for their game design.

[Bellefon.1259]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> For PvE, I can only give you a tip which is the "lesser evil": Don't use F1, play at melee range.

 

I’ve been trying this. I agree that casting shades makes little to no sense now, except maybe casual open world in specific cases where you can predict npc behavior. However, It’s hobbled and clunky to play as “melee” without melee capabilities.

 

> ANet seldom go back on change they've made, so I wouln't have my hopes high if I were you, just adapt your PvE gameplay like I suggest if you really want to stick to the scourge there. You totally lose the power of your minor traits but it's a "viable" casual gameplay.

 

When adopting the no-F1-melee method, you don’t just lose the benefit of both Scourge minors. Two major traits aren’t worth taking as they depend on casting F1 (Desert Empowerment & Sadistic Searing.) And both one minor and one major are less effective as side effects (less Abrasive Grit barrier application, less Demonic Lore torment application.)

 

Also kiss goodbye to the use-shroud-skill-1 in other trait lines. And in-shroud traits are blunted due to scourge-shroud’s short 3.5/6s set duration (e.g. less Shrouded Removal condition removal, less Unholy Sanctuary health regen, less effective Vampiric Presence). These in-shroud traits were true before the shroud change, they just seem more glaring now, and are worth pointing out as built-in trade-offs scourges had already.

 

It was disingenuous of ANet to perform a major change on the mechanic, rather than just shaving numbers if a quick fix was direly needed before their future big balance, without also adjusting the Scourge trait line at the same time (while instead introducing a major update to Death Magic traits.)

 

Yeah, we’re probably stuck with this now, but then they should have leaned into their concept. I’d rather we were all discussing a coherent change rather than a poorly conceived, unintegrated change that conflicts with it’s own elite line.

[LucianDK.8615]

I am curious, dont you get more applications of effects with having 2-3 shades out at once? Or even the sand savant?