I had my worries about Scourge pretty much since it was unveiled and I have to say most of them unfortunately have come to pass, immediately upon trying out the Specialisation and still after testing it for some hours.
Now the point of this Thread is to provide a list of my complaints and gather some feedback from the community, to see if you have the same problems I have or actually love the things I hate and so on.
So here we go and the big one first:
Manifest Sand Shade
With this skill I feel Sand Savant should be baseline, with Savant being reworked.
I just don’t see any justifiably frequent situations in the game coming up where having 4 (3 Shades + Scourge) extremely tiny zones “of control” for a very short time justifies the clunkiness of having 3 Shades. Especially considering on average you will only be able to keep up 1-2 anyway.
In PvE Mobs are being pulled together, or 2 big zones more than suffice.
In WvW Zergs long have repositioned before a Scourge is done summoning 3 Shades, and for roaming Shades are beyond useless and will never catch a player in a 180 Radius.
I don’t play much sPvP, but I can’t see 3 Shades with bad uptime feeling good to play there either.
The biggest drawback, again, it feels clunky and unfun to play with the constant summoning of shades that even simple PvE mobs would constantly run out of with 3 steps.
All the while, a DPS build won’t be able to pass on Demonic Lore, so the Trait choice, for me, is between fun and effectiveness.
Let me know if you had a vastly different experience with this skill.
Serpent Siphon
What is this skill? What is it supposed to do? What is it’s role?
Please let me know, because I’m clueless about this one.
(Mediocre Healing Power Support skill?)
Sand Swell
All my fears came true with this skill, even though that still doesn’t make it the worst of all by far, I’m not sure how to fix the problems.
It’s a Shadowstep, aka “No valid path to the target” 90% of the time, unless you might as well walk to that location in nearly the same time.
For in combat use, it has a slow cast time and animation attached to it and seems therefore very easy to fallow. Considering the mobility pretty much all other classes have, this is going to get us out of no situation with 900 range.
Those 10% of locations you can actually Shadowstep to, yay, I guess.
For reference, this is basically Thiefs Shortbow 5 Infiltrator’s Arrow, just with long cast time, slow travel animation, long cooldown, but leaving behind a portal for around 5 seconds (despite claiming a 20 second duration).
All in all it won’t substitute Death’s Charge for me personally.
Trail of Anguish feels slightly weird being the stunbreak, but I guess they realised that, like Serpent Siphon, it wouldn’t have any role whatsoever without it.
Dessicate weirdly enough is my favourite so far, even if it is just for the fact that Scourge is severely Life Force starved for a spec that uses Life Force more as a resource than ever before.
This skill can also be used out of combat (for example in roaming) to slowly fill up lifeforce and makes a good trigger for Sadistic Searing.
Quite frankly, if I had been lead design on this, I would make Dessicate the stunbreak in addition to it’s current effect (or buff the Life Force gain), and send Trail of Anguish and Serpent Siphon back to the designers with firm headshake.
The Minor Traits, although kind of boring and lacking flavour seem fine, aside from the mentioned clunkiness of playing without Sand Savant.
The Shade Skills, aside from Desert Shroud, which will require Soul Reaping for Vital Persistence and Dhuumfire in any DPS build, and Nefarious Favor as nice little condi clear, seem kind of lackluster or overpriced.
Torch seems fine tbh, let me know if you disagree/what you think is missing here.
The Heal Sand Flare seems alright as well.
The Elite Ghastly Breach maybe has a place in WvW, although with the addition of all the Boonhate on other classes (and the rest of Scourge) we will have to see.
Much like the Ultility skills, I would have liked to see more creativity here.
Have I missed anything you think is terrible (be it design or functionality/effectivity), or did you love something I dismissed as bad?
Let me know!
(edited by Asum.4960)