Guild Wars 2

I’ve pored over the traits and skills for Scourge as well as reading into possible builds, and I just cannot see Scourge being any good at sustained damage, nor having any unique selling points when it comes to group utility.

While WvW and SPvP veterans might ‘make it work’, strong-arming the class into specially tailored groups, the truth is it’s all extremely poorly put together. The Traits are shocking, often giving with one hand and taking with the other, every remotely interesting mechanic is shackled with ICD.
Then there are cooldowns; long, long cooldowns for extremely sub-par effects. The Utility section looks like a child wrote it. Torment and Cripple this Torment and Cripple that, all reliant on the enemy having Boons. The same Boons Warriors will be stripping every 1/2 sec with daggers? Torment and Cripple; two extremely underwhelming conditions.

I never wanted to come to a gloomy conclusion, but I just cannot see how this ‘Elite’ spec made it past testing.
When you compare the Traits to things like Potent Poison, Incendiary Powder, Modified Ammunition, Light on Your Feet… to draw from the new specs… Oppressive Superiority, Elemental Polyphony, Attacker’s Insight… It’s quite clear that Necromancer has once again been spat on.

The crushing truth is that Necromancer is a beloved class by those who play it a lot, and that would include me, it’s my favourite by a long shot; but it feels almost clear by now that the developers wish they had never bothered bringing it over from GW1. After 4 years of near abuse, Necromancer seems no closer to being uniquely ‘valuable’, and it genuinely seems it’ll be a snowy day in Hell before you ever read the words ‘Yeah get your Necro, we need the DPS’ in game chat.

Well, from a PvE point of view :

- The Scourge shouldn’t be far from the reaper’s power dps, perhaps even a bit ahead with the help of alacrity.
- From the condi side, due to a lack of boon to corrupt, the reaper should be ahead by a small margin in regard of dps.
- For survivability, it shouldn’t really matter since the 2 spec should have a very different playstyle. (Not that it really matter in PvE, after all 12k hp ele survive there why would a Scourge die?)
- For support, there sure should more than what the reaper dish out, however, I doubt that there is any room for that kind of support… maybe at PoF release because of the novelty, like the rezzing trait at HoT release.

The Scourge should be welcome in WvW, well that’s probably where it’s playstyle can shine the most. It’s tools couldn’t be more fitting.

- Crippling and tormenting enemies zergs.
- Dispelling allies conditions.
- Tons of boonhate.
- Ability to stay afar.
- Ability to port your allies over a short distance to avoid bothersome aoe.

As for PvP, I think the scourge shouldn’t be to lost. There will be boons to corrupt and condition to cure so it shouldn’t be a dry desert for him to have some use. But what I think should be it’s greatest strenght will be it’s ability to aoe “burst” (both for power and condi) with the help of desert shroud. The survivability shouldn’t be to shabby either after being accustomed to the new playstyle which should be less “straightforward”.

Dadnir.5038:

Well, from a PvE point of view :

- The Scourge shouldn’t be far from the reaper’s power dps, perhaps even a bit ahead with the help of alacrity.
- From the condi side, due to a lack of boon to corrupt, the reaper should be ahead by a small margin in regard of dps.
- For survivability, it shouldn’t really matter since the 2 spec should have a very different playstyle. (Not that it really matter in PvE, after all 12k hp ele survive there why would a Scourge die?)
- For support, there sure should more than what the reaper dish out, however, I doubt that there is any room for that kind of support… maybe at PoF release because of the novelty, like the rezzing trait at HoT release.

The Scourge should be welcome in WvW, well that’s probably where it’s playstyle can shine the most. It’s tools couldn’t be more fitting.

- Crippling and tormenting enemies zergs.
- Dispelling allies conditions.
- Tons of boonhate.
- Ability to stay afar.
- Ability to port your allies over a short distance to avoid bothersome aoe.

As for PvP, I think the scourge shouldn’t be to lost. There will be boons to corrupt and condition to cure so it shouldn’t be a dry desert for him to have some use. But what I think should be it’s greatest strenght will be it’s ability to aoe “burst” (both for power and condi) with the help of desert shroud. The survivability shouldn’t be to shabby either after being accustomed to the new playstyle which should be less “straightforward”.

I don’t get what you’re saying. You’re saying it will be near Power Reaper DPS, then saying it will be behind Condition Reaper by a small margin.

That’s like saying it will do 25k DPS, then saying it will do 32k.

Scourge will not do more than the current cancer Chill spam build, but it will even out greatly, and will end up doing more overall simply because hitting Ice Fields 100% is impossible in group settings. It crippled us, and it being gone will make Scourge a more reliable, and consistent DPS. Without Chill spam, Condition Necro can do around 26k. With Scourge adding more access to Burning and Torment, a Torment 33% Damage buff Trait, and a Torch. I see it making up the 6k DPS gap between Condi Reaper easy, and then probably a bit more. Add in the support side, and it will be awesome.

For WvW Scourge will be insane. I don’t PvP enough to know how it’ll be. I just know in WvW with mass Boon Corrupt, and Torment combined with Barrier, it will be a great midline support DPS.

Again for the hundredth time, we haven’t even seen how Scourge performs in the new Raids, and in general. Automatically assuming the worst is silly. Every profession is doing this, and saying their next Elite Spec will suck for no reason.

Also next weekend, when it’s the Elite Spec preview. I expect everyone to freak out for no reason, and act like testing Elites on PvP Golems, and WvW enemies proves something.

Zephar.4519:

I’ve pored over the traits and skills for Scourge as well as reading into possible builds, and I just cannot see Scourge being any good at sustained damage, nor having any unique selling points when it comes to group utility.

While WvW and SPvP veterans might ‘make it work’, strong-arming the class into specially tailored groups, the truth is it’s all extremely poorly put together. The Traits are shocking, often giving with one hand and taking with the other, every remotely interesting mechanic is shackled with ICD.
Then there are cooldowns; long, long cooldowns for extremely sub-par effects. The Utility section looks like a child wrote it. Torment and Cripple this Torment and Cripple that, all reliant on the enemy having Boons. The same Boons Warriors will be stripping every 1/2 sec with daggers? Torment and Cripple; two extremely underwhelming conditions.

I never wanted to come to a gloomy conclusion, but I just cannot see how this ‘Elite’ spec made it past testing.
When you compare the Traits to things like Potent Poison, Incendiary Powder, Modified Ammunition, Light on Your Feet… to draw from the new specs… Oppressive Superiority, Elemental Polyphony, Attacker’s Insight… It’s quite clear that Necromancer has once again been spat on.

The crushing truth is that Necromancer is a beloved class by those who play it a lot, and that would include me, it’s my favourite by a long shot; but it feels almost clear by now that the developers wish they had never bothered bringing it over from GW1. After 4 years of near abuse, Necromancer seems no closer to being uniquely ‘valuable’, and it genuinely seems it’ll be a snowy day in Hell before you ever read the words ‘Yeah get your Necro, we need the DPS’ in game chat.

Posts like these really don’t do anything, but make things seem worse than they are. Torment got buffed recently to match Bleeding, and when Scourge has a Trait that buffs it by 33% it will help a lot. Scepter 3 already does an instant 10 stacks of Torment when a lot of Conditions are on the target. With Scourge abilities and Traits I see us maintaining around 26-30 stacks of Torment easy. This paired with Bleeding, Burning, and Poison will be great in the end.

Of course with Boons to Corrupt, the stacks of Torment would be ridiculous though. I do think Raids in PoF will have Boons and Conditions to Corrupt and remove. Scourge and Spellbreaker will be needed for said mechanics.

Please cheer up. Gloom and doom isn’t good.

Scourge will be fine.

Having mulled the scourge over for a while, I am presently of the opinion that it is something of a mixed bag. Here’s how I’d break it down:

Sand Shade core mechanic: good design and good balance. The four extra shade skills look like strong, thematic, instant-cast skills with very competitive cooldowns, balanced by the need for lifeforce to fuel them.
I could imagine this fuel system supporting healthy build diversity, with some setups making build sacrifices to increase their life force supply and others choosing not to.
What’s more at an aesthetic level I know some people like the idea of trading away death shroud, and this is an inventive way to do it that meshes well with the existing class design.

Torch: Numbers look okay, but I’m not sure how well the meshes with the rest of the class or stands as an interesting weapon in its own right.
The scourge can cast shades out to 900 range, needs plenty of life force and is very good at clearing conditions off of allies – why then do we have a weapon with only 600 range on one skill, no life force generation and which gets stronger when allies are conditioned? If the torch actually did something interesting or unique I’d make some allowances, but since it’s all over the place right now I’m struggling to figure out what was intended.
I’m also not a fan of pidgeon-holing elite specs into either power or condition only. I view that split as being one of damage vs damage, i.e. no split at all.

Traits: Some of these traits looks fine when looked at individually, but I taken as a whole I think the tree looks to be in bad shape, with minors that don’t do enough to support the core build and majors that ask the builder to make the wrong choices.
The Sand Soul and Blood in the Sand minors are along the right lines, giving the player an incentive to get their sand shades out and some basic stat bonuses to help cover the fact that the Scourge is MAD (multi-attribute dependent), needing healing power, vitality, condition duration and boon duration, plus either condition damage or (if it was better supported) power. But I think that giving small buffs to condition duration, boon duration and direct damage reduction was the wrong package to give. Boons (esp. might) are a sideshow in the Scourge, something that players should invest in themselves if they want to focus on that part of the build; and that token direct damage reduction just feels completely out of place. If it were up to me for the minors I’d zero in on just one of the required scourge stats and take it off the table, e.g. by offering +100% condition duration between the two minor traits (perhaps +20% per active shade for trait 1 and +40% when you have a barrier for trait 2) so that we can get some better gearing variety between builds.
As for the major traits I think it was a bad move to make the player choose between DPS or barrier or corruption traits – the elite spec should I feel support all three within a single build, and the traits should instead allow the player to fine tune how each one works. So if I were overhauling majors I’d devote a separate tier to each strand of the class (e.g. have all the barrier traits in the master tier) and give the player a choice of direction for how to improve that strand (e.g. for the barrier tier they could either get more barriers, or bigger barriers or boons when barrier granting). As things stand there are far too many necessary traits that are mutually exclusive, leaving most theoretical builds feeling incomplete.

Punishments: Despite how long I’ve been ragging on the traits, above, these are actually the most unsatisfactory parts of the Scourge. As many on this forum have already pointed out boon corruption was already our thing, so giving us more of it (of an arguably worse flavour) does nothing to create a unique appeal for this skill type; and without day one split balancing these skills are severly underpowered for their cooldowns in PvE as compared with PvP/WvW. Moreover with the exception of the portal skill the non-corruption sides of these skills are an uninspired grab bag of low damage and minor boon effects. The lack of any new minion skill is particularly egregious.

Conclusion: To the OP, I share your concern when it comes to this class. There is definitely enough working here for a solid necromancer spec to come out of this expansion, but I think various parts of the scourge need various levels of tweaking first.

I may be the odd duck in this flock, but I like the look of scourge.

I typically play healers and necro didn’t have much in that department pre Scourge. AOE swiftness is one of the most useful buffs to help others and necro didn’t have that either. PoF gives necros healing and with mounts, swiftness is much less important.

So necro is back on the table. And both elite specs actually look like something I might use. I can’t say that for other profs. Took one for a spin in the free trial this weekend. They’re better than I thought.

Professor Sprout.1560:

Having mulled the scourge over for a while, I am presently of the opinion that it is something of a mixed bag. Here’s how I’d break it down:

I think DPS wise Scourge is fine, but it does have a lot of confusing abilities. There’s only one Punishment that can do a bit of DPS, but even its biggest part relies on removing a Boon. It does Torment, but also Torment on removing Boons, the Trait Demonic Lore adds Burning to Torment though.

Punishments are done sloppy. For PvE it will still be always bring Blood is Power, Epidemic, and now Corrosive Poison Cloud instead of Bone Fiend since no more Chill spam. Maybe the Punishment Heal will be ok, but probably not better than Bone Fiend for DPS and Heals.

I really don’t see Punishments being a part of DPS builds.

I see them being more for Support builds, which isn’t that bad, because Necromancer has a lot of good Condition skills already.

I am happy that there is an obvious DPS Trait set, and Support Trait set though.

I think the best thing about Scourge will no doubt be its DPS, but also the niche support it brings that no other class can.

For gear, if they added a Condition/Healing Power major, then Expertise/Precision minor set, then it’d be awesome for support. I just still see Viper being best unless they add like Condition Damage/Expertise major, then Power/Precision minor.

I love the Traits, and Torch. Torment is a huge plus from me, and the Expertise Trait, etc. I just am meh over Punishments. Even with Reaper we didn’t use Shouts really in PvE, I mean “Suffer!” Had its uses, but it never really shined. In WvW Shouts are amazing though. I just would like to use these Punishments for DPS, but they are all pretty much Support.

If Life Force is an issue, then Dessicate will be great. It looks to have a potential of restoring 50% Life Force. It also has a short CD traited with Sadistic Searing, and gives a bit of DPS Support. With Blood is Power and Dessicate it’s 15 stacks of Might.

The Torch’s 600 Range skill doesn’t really bother me too much. I mean in group content, etc you are usually stacking for buffs, and will always be able to hit that skill.

I mean using Trail of Anguish for the Burning on next Sand Shade summon with the Sadistic Searing Trait seems ok, it’s not huge though.

I’m still extremely hyped for Scourge though. Chill just has to go. The support potential of Scourge looks nice, and I look forward to having two builds to play for PvE(DPS and Support)

In Arenanet’s preview, Scouge was demonstrated with dagger/warhorn, not scepter/warhorn. I suspect that means something but am not sure how significant it is.

Something tells me that Scourge was meant to be a melee condi/support build rather than compete with scepter for mid-range kiting. If I had to guess, play style should be something like this:

Use scepter to kite when needed but close whenever possible, swap to dagger/horn, stack. share boons and barriers, then initiate dps burn – portal group as necessary.

This is kind of like stacking and well-bombing but should be much more flexible. The portal is probably meant to work smoother in combat than Mesmer’s port and add combat mobility to professions without ways to jump behind targets.

Barriers could be spammed taking some burden away from a dedicated healer. With shroud being little more than a thick personal barrier it should be used less often so regular healing AoE is effective more often. The addition of Blood Magic healing traits seem almost certain to make Scourge useful as an alternative healer.

I have no idea whether a toughness build might also enable Scourge to function as a secondary tank using Death Magic, provided there is a primary one, too. Minions draw plenty of aggro but are horrible versus AoE and I do not see much else in Death Magic to justify a build without them: Putrid Defense, Deadly Strength, and Corruptor’s Fever?

Anchoku.8142:

In Arenanet’s preview, Scouge was demonstrated with dagger/warhorn, not scepter/warhorn. I suspect that means something but am not sure how significant it is.

Something tells me that Scourge was meant to be a melee condi/support build rather than compete with scepter for mid-range kiting. If I had to guess, play style should be something like this:

Use scepter to kite when needed but close whenever possible, swap to dagger/horn, stack. share boons and barriers, then initiate dps burn – portal group as necessary.

This is kind of like stacking and well-bombing but should be much more flexible. The portal is probably meant to work smoother in combat than Mesmer’s port and add combat mobility to professions without ways to jump behind targets.

Barriers could be spammed taking some burden away from a dedicated healer. With shroud being little more than a thick personal barrier it should be used less often so regular healing AoE is effective more often. The addition of Blood Magic healing traits seem almost certain to make Scourge useful as an alternative healer.

I have no idea whether a toughness build might also enable Scourge to function as a secondary tank using Death Magic, provided there is a primary one, too. Minions draw plenty of aggro but are horrible versus AoE and I do not see much else in Death Magic to justify a build without them: Putrid Defense, Deadly Strength, and Corruptor’s Fever?

All classes use random non meta sets in previews, I just think they thought Dagger looked cool. Don’t read too into it lol

how to troll and kill a scourge…

Avoid shades dance arround them while jumping in on the necro for insane burst…

GZ its has the same weakness that Power Reapers have… just stay away from the stationary Shades and kill the necro lol

Zephar.4519:

snip

The concern I have for Scourge is going to be the abysmal trait synergy it would have currently in the game. The lack of having shroud and having traits be linked to a single 20 second cool down skill makes the build struggle to find use for about 20 traits on the necromancer. Without this they lack the diversity of builds which could lead to any one build that functions being on the edge of play ability. Any one nerf could send the scourges builds into the dumpster with no hope for recovery.

With that said, I honestly think you aren’t looking too deep into it because the Scourge’s DPS is going to be pretty Bonkers if my hypothesis is correct.

Curses, Soul Reaping and Scourge will be the best DPS build you can achieve while Curses, Blood Magic and Scourge has wonky synergy that Might make for some decent Support if the trait synergy is correctly balanced. Spite and Death have minimal use, nothing in their traits offers any real value to the scourge.

For Weapons we want to take Scepter/Dagger and Dagger/torch. Which set has dagger and which has torch shouldn’t matter too much. You can also forget about the Dagger and just run Scepter/torch and dagger/torch if you so desire. The only reason you want the dagger is if you need to transfer conditions. Although that might not be an issue since Nefarious Favor converts 2 conditions on you into boons.

For our heal you are going to want Sand Flair. And I’ll explain that more later. As it stands, its a good heal that provides barrier which will be important since you will be in Melee range half the time of the fight.

For Utility we are going to be looking at a few Punishment skills. Serpent Siphon looks interesting, though we don’t have an in game preview of it which gives me only speculation on how useful it might be. So it is an option, as it does provide barrier and inflicts poison. However, its usefulness will be competing with corrosive poison cloud which can offer potentially grater defense with its projectile block. But if there are no projectiles to worry about serpent siphon could edge it out. But we’ll have to wait and see.

Trail of Anguish doesn’t actually require boons to inflict torment with the trait. So it will offer you a stunbreak that also lays damage on the ground. This will be important later for traits.

For the last Utility we can always take Epidemic or Sand Swell depending on what you need. Sand Swell gives the necromancer access to quite a bit of movement, allowing them to close the gap really quickly while also granting them barrier. Keep this in mind as we don’t have the use of Shroud anymore. So this will be important.

For the Elite since we are going full on damage Plaguelands is the only real choice here. Even with the punishment elite, I feel that this will be superior damage in the long run. Though my thoughts could change as testing goes on.

For the traits, we are going to go fairly Simple. Terrifying decent will give us a very minor damage boost. Its not the best, but it does provide a little bit more torment, so there’s that. Next in Curses we want Master of corruption. Even if we only take it for our elite, its still a massive cut to the cooldown and if we’re using epidemic that is all the more important. And As always, Lingering Curse.

For Soul Reaping we’ll be taking Speed of Shadows as our Adept. There really isn’t a good option for the minor. Speed of shadows can help with Corrosive poison cloud if we decide to take that when we trigger Desert shroud, but ultimately its benefit is minor. Next we Want Vital persistence. If my hypothesis about the shades is correct Vital will reduce the cool down of our shade abilities by 20% while giving us a minor vitality boost as well, improving our life force pool and increasing our max barrier. There is absolutely no comparison between the 3, Vital will be Vital in this build as we’ll explore more.

Zephar.4519:

snip

Dhuumfire is the grandmaster we Want in soul reaping. Which i’ll explain why. If Dhuumfire ends up triggering on auto attack, switching to dagger will be the fastest stacking burning we can get in the game. With a cap of 6 seconds per burn we’ll max out the duration of this and be sure to use this while Desert shroud is up. With Vital Persistence we’ll have a 16 second cool down on the trait, leaving us 6 seconds to strike as hard with the daggers as possible.

For Scourge we’ll be taking Fell Beacon, Sadistic Searing and Demonic lore. Fell Beacon will provide a decent buff to our condition duration as well as improve our torch. Because we’ll be using so many Punishment skills Sadistic Searing grants burning on the next Shade Skill we use. And we will be using those frequently. This will require a bit of Micromanagement from our part, something we aren’t too used to on the necromancer, but we’ll need to learn. Demonic Lore is just the best damage trait we’ve got, and should be great in this build.

The Sand Shades are going to be important. We want those up in the heat of the fight. Though how many is hard to say, since I don’t believe their cool down will be impacted by Vital Persistence. If that’s the case once they go on cool down we’ll need to switch to Scepter/torch to sustain our DPS. While Dagger will offer us powerful bursts with Desert Shroud and cycling though the shade abilities with the punishments, we’ll be having potentially 3 shades pulsing conditions out to foes at once as well as cleansing us of conditions we’ve self applied, if we go that rout.

From what I can tell we will have quite a bit of Burst using this build but the scepter will always provide us with sustain that we need. The Shade Abilities do seem to stack with each other and using those will cause torment and crippling along with damaging your foes. The Shade’s Fear, according to the wiki says it does stack so each fear in theory should Trigger your Terrifying decent trait. This all leads into quite a decent amount of torment without the need for boon corruption. How good it’ll be is hard to say, but from what I can see the Scourge has far more damage options than the Reaper does.

Unless Serpent Siphon gets a massive buff, you do not want to be using it for damage. 1 stack of Poison for 2 seconds is never worth a skill slot.

I’m assuming you’re talking for raids, in which case, I would say your trait selection is correct, but I think weapons will be Scepter-Torch/Scepter-Warhorn. You absolutely 100% need the life force generation, but Dagger mainhand hurts your DPS too much in a condition build. Warhorn provides decent generation and also good breakbar damage. For utilities, the only one I see maybe making it in is Dessicate because it provides life force.

For Condi Scourge, LIFE FORCE IS DAMAGE. If you can spam F2-F5 on cooldown, you have good damage. If you can’t, I don’t see it being anything spectacular.

Also, it appears Dhuumfire will proc on the attack from sand shades (and yourself) whenever you use a Shade skill. 2 Torment and 1 Burning any time you use an instant-cast ability.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unless Serpent Siphon gets a massive buff, you do not want to be using it for damage. 1 stack of Poison for 2 seconds is never worth a skill slot.

I’m assuming you’re talking for raids, in which case, I would say your trait selection is correct, but I think weapons will be Scepter-Torch/Scepter-Warhorn. You absolutely 100% need the life force generation, but Dagger mainhand hurts your DPS too much in a condition build. Warhorn provides decent generation and also good breakbar damage. For utilities, the only one I see maybe making it in is Dessicate because it provides life force.

For Condi Scourge, LIFE FORCE IS DAMAGE. If you can spam F2-F5 on cooldown, you have good damage. If you can’t, I don’t see it being anything spectacular.

Also, it appears Dhuumfire will proc on the attack from sand shades (and yourself) whenever you use a Shade skill. 2 Torment and 1 Burning any time you use an instant-cast ability.

dagger is speculative on my part. It isn’t a garentee. If Dhuumfire functions to make your auto work, it could be quite good. 4 strikes in about a second… 4 burn stacks in a second without quickness…. I think its worth trying. If it doesn’t work like that, I’d agree with you. Dagger wont be good.

Although I agree with you on the life force generation.. we do need that.

PS: I’d like to know where you’re getting this information because I’ve been looking for something and can’t find anything about how Dhuumfire functions with it.

Zoltreez.6435:

how to troll and kill a scourge…

Avoid shades dance arround them while jumping in on the necro for insane burst…

GZ its has the same weakness that Power Reapers have… just stay away from the stationary Shades and kill the necro lol

Doesnt matter if you avoid the shades or not the F skills all read “You and your shades”. Ranged abilities would be the only true way to avoid being hit by any of the shade mechanic.

Sigmoid.7082:

Zoltreez.6435:

how to troll and kill a scourge…

Avoid shades dance arround them while jumping in on the necro for insane burst…

GZ its has the same weakness that Power Reapers have… just stay away from the stationary Shades and kill the necro lol

Doesnt matter if you avoid the shades or not the F skills all read “You and your shades”. Ranged abilities would be the only true way to avoid being hit by any of the shade mechanic.

well good players nonstop jump in and out for burst to kill a necro so……. you Arround your abilities wont help when the enemy is only in your face for a sec to instantly take down like 70% of your HP….. as i said the same issue Power reaper has….

the only difference is that you will have some group utility atleast….
and most of your DMG is condi so atleast if you can hit them just a few times you allready doing SOME dmg …..

my humble opinion on scourge.
It looks like crap to me both mechanic and build wise,theres so much conflict between skills and traits that it gives me migranes.
If you go condi and condi duration,you still have a conflict on enhancing burning and torment and boons given by it are really short duration.
If you go seraph you are a glass support with no condi durations,and the low base boons dont get exactly better with boon durations.
If you go minstrel (which tbh you need to be pointed and laughed at if you do) you got litteraly no dmg and the support again is behind other support specs including a raw healing necro.
Then theres the shades radius,180 radius is outright laughable and when you add the 120 with trait it becomes even more silly because you are forced to use it instead of another trait.
On wvw situations be it offencive or defencive you need radius for wall and gate plays.
Next is survivability and mobility…..
The portal skill range is a cause for pitchfork and torch raid on anet offices,900 range portal is too low for a portal skill.
I get more range and utility on pve out of portal guns and portal stones,why the actual heck they had to make a 15 step away portal is beyond me.
No shroud to absorb dmg or reliable escape on enviroments that will be filled with deadeyes and quad invul soulbeasts it is pretty much a good reason to question the balance team’s effectiveness and ask for your money back.
And last but not least,it still doesnt add anything to raids to deserve a slot.
Mobs in pve dont have boons,and in the rare cases they do they wont move enough for you to get the most ouf torment.
I hope i will be proven wrong next weekend,but as things are with the information we already have i think this spec deserves the golden potato award for beeing the most subpar thing ever created.
And all that while they removed boonstrips from core necro so they can sell scourge.

The reason why the preview of scourge was with dagger/WH setup is simple… That’s the best set to grow some life force quickly.

Kam.4092:

Zephar.4519:

I’ve pored over the traits and skills for Scourge as well as reading into possible builds, and I just cannot see Scourge being any good at sustained damage, nor having any unique selling points when it comes to group utility.

While WvW and SPvP veterans might ‘make it work’, strong-arming the class into specially tailored groups, the truth is it’s all extremely poorly put together. The Traits are shocking, often giving with one hand and taking with the other, every remotely interesting mechanic is shackled with ICD.
Then there are cooldowns; long, long cooldowns for extremely sub-par effects. The Utility section looks like a child wrote it. Torment and Cripple this Torment and Cripple that, all reliant on the enemy having Boons. The same Boons Warriors will be stripping every 1/2 sec with daggers? Torment and Cripple; two extremely underwhelming conditions.

I never wanted to come to a gloomy conclusion, but I just cannot see how this ‘Elite’ spec made it past testing.
When you compare the Traits to things like Potent Poison, Incendiary Powder, Modified Ammunition, Light on Your Feet… to draw from the new specs… Oppressive Superiority, Elemental Polyphony, Attacker’s Insight… It’s quite clear that Necromancer has once again been spat on.

The crushing truth is that Necromancer is a beloved class by those who play it a lot, and that would include me, it’s my favourite by a long shot; but it feels almost clear by now that the developers wish they had never bothered bringing it over from GW1. After 4 years of near abuse, Necromancer seems no closer to being uniquely ‘valuable’, and it genuinely seems it’ll be a snowy day in Hell before you ever read the words ‘Yeah get your Necro, we need the DPS’ in game chat.

Posts like these really don’t do anything, but make things seem worse than they are. Torment got buffed recently to match Bleeding, and when Scourge has a Trait that buffs it by 33% it will help a lot. Scepter 3 already does an instant 10 stacks of Torment when a lot of Conditions are on the target. With Scourge abilities and Traits I see us maintaining around 26-30 stacks of Torment easy. This paired with Bleeding, Burning, and Poison will be great in the end.

Of course with Boons to Corrupt, the stacks of Torment would be ridiculous though. I do think Raids in PoF will have Boons and Conditions to Corrupt and remove. Scourge and Spellbreaker will be needed for said mechanics.

Please cheer up. Gloom and doom isn’t good.

Scourge will be fine.

It’s not 10 stacks of torment. Its 2+1 stack for each condi, which caps at 5 stacks.

There is no guarantee there will be boons to corrupt. You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.

If the last 4 years have taught us anything. It’s that you should never expect necro to be in ‘good standing’, especially when it comes to damage, from corruptions. Even with 30 stacks of torment, what about the other conditions? Condi reaper, has bleed, torment, poison, and burning. Scourge only has torment and burning, and poison if you take scepter. Condi reaper can maintain 30 stacks of bleeds in addition to those other condi’s.

You are looking at less damage over all, especially when bleed and torment now have the same base damage mods.

Lily.1935:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unless Serpent Siphon gets a massive buff, you do not want to be using it for damage. 1 stack of Poison for 2 seconds is never worth a skill slot.

I’m assuming you’re talking for raids, in which case, I would say your trait selection is correct, but I think weapons will be Scepter-Torch/Scepter-Warhorn. You absolutely 100% need the life force generation, but Dagger mainhand hurts your DPS too much in a condition build. Warhorn provides decent generation and also good breakbar damage. For utilities, the only one I see maybe making it in is Dessicate because it provides life force.

For Condi Scourge, LIFE FORCE IS DAMAGE. If you can spam F2-F5 on cooldown, you have good damage. If you can’t, I don’t see it being anything spectacular.

Also, it appears Dhuumfire will proc on the attack from sand shades (and yourself) whenever you use a Shade skill. 2 Torment and 1 Burning any time you use an instant-cast ability.

dagger is speculative on my part. It isn’t a garentee. If Dhuumfire functions to make your auto work, it could be quite good. 4 strikes in about a second… 4 burn stacks in a second without quickness…. I think its worth trying. If it doesn’t work like that, I’d agree with you. Dagger wont be good.

Although I agree with you on the life force generation.. we do need that.

PS: I’d like to know where you’re getting this information because I’ve been looking for something and can’t find anything about how Dhuumfire functions with it.

Sigmoid.7082:

Decided to make a new post for this since Im half way through.
Chat links are on the wiki pages. Should be ok now.
Some interesting things.

Manifest Sand Shade works with all shroud 1 traits for when it does its strikes like we thought ( dhuumfire, reapers might, unyielding blast ) It doesn’t seem to be affected by VP for its count recharge though.

Nefarious Favour appear to work with path of corruption according to the tool-tip when traited. This one works with VP to have a 4s cooldown. Interesting thins is no-matter what my vitality the LF costs seems to be a fixed 1382.

Sand Cascade has a base of 2111 and a scaling of approx 0.76with a cost of 2478. Same as above I cant get the costs to change. VP works though.

Garish Pillar just works with VP. Fixed cost again of 4606. Nothing too special. Doesnt seemt o work with transfuse.

Desert Shroud works with on entering shroud traits as we thought. The chat link for this one for me with 0 HP has a base of 5016 and a scaling of ~0.63. Again Fixed costs of 3685. VP also works here.

Sand Flare has a base of 4208 and a scaling of ~1.51 for the barrier.

Sand Swell has a base of 1618 and a scaling of about 0.75

Serpent Siphon has been done in the op and it all checks out.

Basically, Reddit found chat codes for skills.

A big downer for me is the GM traits, in wvw at least theres no option but to take Sand Savant to have any reasonable use out of that mechanic. There’s no way you’d ever get 3 little sandies going effectively, so the burn on torment and boon steal are DoA there.

But I guess that’s good in that it keeps reaper relavent in groups for pure dps.

Nah, WvW you probably want Feed from Corruption.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unless Serpent Siphon gets a massive buff, you do not want to be using it for damage. 1 stack of Poison for 2 seconds is never worth a skill slot.

I’m assuming you’re talking for raids, in which case, I would say your trait selection is correct, but I think weapons will be Scepter-Torch/Scepter-Warhorn. You absolutely 100% need the life force generation, but Dagger mainhand hurts your DPS too much in a condition build. Warhorn provides decent generation and also good breakbar damage. For utilities, the only one I see maybe making it in is Dessicate because it provides life force.

For Condi Scourge, LIFE FORCE IS DAMAGE. If you can spam F2-F5 on cooldown, you have good damage. If you can’t, I don’t see it being anything spectacular.

Also, it appears Dhuumfire will proc on the attack from sand shades (and yourself) whenever you use a Shade skill. 2 Torment and 1 Burning any time you use an instant-cast ability.

^^
This

I could see dropping both Curses and Soul Reaping using Spite for CtD, and Blood Magic for group utility. Axe-dagger / dagger-torch.

The build would be supportive but also generate tons of LF for condition bursting or high barrier up-time.

With boon support from other professions, those could be… Not bad.

I still have some big question marks

• finishers
• crit chance
• shroud traits

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unless Serpent Siphon gets a massive buff, you do not want to be using it for damage. 1 stack of Poison for 2 seconds is never worth a skill slot.

I’m assuming you’re talking for raids, in which case, I would say your trait selection is correct, but I think weapons will be Scepter-Torch/Scepter-Warhorn. You absolutely 100% need the life force generation, but Dagger mainhand hurts your DPS too much in a condition build. Warhorn provides decent generation and also good breakbar damage. For utilities, the only one I see maybe making it in is Dessicate because it provides life force.

For Condi Scourge, LIFE FORCE IS DAMAGE. If you can spam F2-F5 on cooldown, you have good damage. If you can’t, I don’t see it being anything spectacular.

Also, it appears Dhuumfire will proc on the attack from sand shades (and yourself) whenever you use a Shade skill. 2 Torment and 1 Burning any time you use an instant-cast ability.

dagger is speculative on my part. It isn’t a garentee. If Dhuumfire functions to make your auto work, it could be quite good. 4 strikes in about a second… 4 burn stacks in a second without quickness…. I think its worth trying. If it doesn’t work like that, I’d agree with you. Dagger wont be good.

Although I agree with you on the life force generation.. we do need that.

PS: I’d like to know where you’re getting this information because I’ve been looking for something and can’t find anything about how Dhuumfire functions with it.

Sigmoid.7082:

Decided to make a new post for this since Im half way through.
Chat links are on the wiki pages. Should be ok now.
Some interesting things.

Manifest Sand Shade works with all shroud 1 traits for when it does its strikes like we thought ( dhuumfire, reapers might, unyielding blast ) It doesn’t seem to be affected by VP for its count recharge though.

Nefarious Favour appear to work with path of corruption according to the tool-tip when traited. This one works with VP to have a 4s cooldown. Interesting thins is no-matter what my vitality the LF costs seems to be a fixed 1382.

Sand Cascade has a base of 2111 and a scaling of approx 0.76with a cost of 2478. Same as above I cant get the costs to change. VP works though.

Garish Pillar just works with VP. Fixed cost again of 4606. Nothing too special. Doesnt seemt o work with transfuse.

Desert Shroud works with on entering shroud traits as we thought. The chat link for this one for me with 0 HP has a base of 5016 and a scaling of ~0.63. Again Fixed costs of 3685. VP also works here.

Sand Flare has a base of 4208 and a scaling of ~1.51 for the barrier.

Sand Swell has a base of 1618 and a scaling of about 0.75

Serpent Siphon has been done in the op and it all checks out.

Basically, Reddit found chat codes for skills.

That sounds even worse than I originally thought it would be.

Pretty sure that the necromancer goes back on the shelf.

Sorry.

The Necromancer Shroud was replaced with turrets. The pvp community in this game loathes turrets. There have been more complaints from pvpers about turrets (and minions and spirit weapons and anything else similar) than anything else.

The Scourge is just wrong on a conceptual level. The class can’t be good if the community hates the mechanic/playing against the unfun mechanic.

So the new necromancer shroud cannot be allowed to be good in pvp. Sorry. This just is a fact of life. The core design is a play style that pvpers in this game will hate to play against and will be super nerf hammered just to keep it out of pvp.

Barrier appears to be one of the worst scaling effects in the game.

Without a shroud or a great sword, what’s going to pick up the slack? Torch has no life force and bad range, dagger has no synergy with the traits, scepter is slow, anet’s already stated that they will not allow axe to ever be good, and offhand torch/dagger are obsolete weapons that no longer matter due to game power creep. Anet could even increase numbers on these offhands weapons and they still wouldn’t matter.

Even if the numbers were tweaked so that the damage was at least Ok, there’s little or no utility (even breakbar utility) or AoE On weapons, just the turret. And the gameplay is boring 1-spam.

Scourge Rotations look like an unholy disaster. After years of incorporating shroud skills into DPS rotations, not because they were good but because necromancers have no “Burst damage” skills and cool downs are 3x longer that they should be, that’s been taken away in the new class, which looks like spamming auto attack plus placing and firing a turret only once every half minute.

Your AoE damage/CC/and life force generation are poor without Reaper, so people are just going to stick with that (even though Reaper will probably get nerfed to get people to try scourge).

Across the board 25% power damage or the class sits on the shelf.

nekretaal.6485:

The class can’t be good if the community hates the mechanic/playing against the unfun mechanic.

Thiefs…… anyone having fun fighting one ? still the king of 1v1 nuking anyone down and trolling half the other classes with broken mobility…….

but yeah scourge WILL be bad… its too stationary…. means its too easily avoidable… means everyone with a brain will massacre the scourge necros left and right….

As a support build, Scourge has me worried because I do not see much that will prevent dps from cratering if condition and power damage are not maximized. What I would like to see is a trait that converts sustain stat’s to offensive stat’s or healing power so support gear does not destroy competitiveness. Arenanet has already explained that barriers will scale strongly with vitality and healing.

Using support stat’s like vitality, toughness, or healing could end badly. Barriers do not seem potent enough to allow a low dps build to be competitive. So, here I am considering viper’s, sinister, and berserker with Spite rather than Curses, which loses some appeal if sceptre bleeds are not most of the dps, or Soul Reaping if traits are not adjusted enough.

Necro might have significant raid team value if the expansion features boon-heavy opponents, as expected? It’d be like in WvW. That’s my hope anyway, but it kind of assumes that PS Spellbreaker boonstrip won’t be enough.

mygamingid.5816:

Necro might have significant raid team value if the expansion features boon-heavy opponents, as expected? It’d be like in WvW. That’s my hope anyway, but it kind of assumes that PS Spellbreaker boonstrip won’t be enough.

And Mesmers.

Honestly, between the current meta for Chronomancers and the possibility of Phalanx Strength Spellbreakers, I don’t see Necros ever getting a slot for their boon rip ability. Not without major overhauls to the support ability or damage output.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

mygamingid.5816:

Necro might have significant raid team value if the expansion features boon-heavy opponents, as expected? It’d be like in WvW. That’s my hope anyway, but it kind of assumes that PS Spellbreaker boonstrip won’t be enough.

And Mesmers.

Honestly, between the current meta for Chronomancers and the possibility of Phalanx Strength Spellbreakers, I don’t see Necros ever getting a slot for their boon rip ability. Not without major overhauls to the support ability or damage output.

At which range can Spellbreaker and Chronomancer reliably strip or corrupt boons? 600, 900 or even 1200?

Belenwyn.8674:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

mygamingid.5816:

Necro might have significant raid team value if the expansion features boon-heavy opponents, as expected? It’d be like in WvW. That’s my hope anyway, but it kind of assumes that PS Spellbreaker boonstrip won’t be enough.

And Mesmers.

Honestly, between the current meta for Chronomancers and the possibility of Phalanx Strength Spellbreakers, I don’t see Necros ever getting a slot for their boon rip ability. Not without major overhauls to the support ability or damage output.

At which range can Spellbreaker and Chronomancer reliably strip or corrupt boons? 600, 900 or even 1200?

And when does said range even matter? There is no raid encounter that you can’t have people in melee range.

Chronomancer can do it at long range anyway, if absolutely necessary.

Yes, barriers and boon strips/corruptions do not sound valuable enough,
if so,
Scourge will have to bring top class dps,
and,
Will a dps-Scourge have enough sustain using only barriers?

Scourge will have to bring top class dps,
and,
Will a dps-Scourge have enough sustain using only barriers?

If it does bring to tier DPS in pve I dont see why sustain is relevant. for that role.

I think you’re overlooking that while the punishment skills won’t be amazing, they will probably be better then the godkitten minions that are currently our best skills for most fights, and will be our main way of proccing Demonic Lore since the only other way we have to apply torment is on a 10 second cooldown.

No mobility, blocks, shroud, or other damage immunity could make scourge very glassy if barriers are thin due to equipment stats

If Scourge is using all of its LF for dps, will Scourge shroud, which is a fraction of core and Reaper shroud, be a useful defensive mechanic. The question is whether a dps Scourge will be downed a lot having only dodges and thin barriers.

I understand where Zephar is coming from with his thoughts. I echoed those same thoughts in my video about the Holosmith’s traits being subpar.

Of course when it comes to straight up DeePS, the Scourge could be played by anyone, but when it comes to making anything that requires some level of brain power, the Scourge doesn’t offer that. It is built as the easy spec with trait choices that don’t have much depth.