Guild Wars 2

This thread is to hold feedback from the demo weekend for Scourge.

Holy kitten. Dhuumfire+Sandshades if gonna be op

SrebX.6498:

Holy kitten. Dhuumfire+Sandshades if gonna be op

acting like you can do any meaningfull dmg before getting bursted down with like 0 real meaningful defenses

SrebX.6498:

Holy kitten. Dhuumfire+Sandshades if gonna be op

If compared to reaper AA? Not at all.
You need to active Fx skills to make shades do something and active Dhuumfire, then that trait will be barely good.
I don’t see any real reasons to use Soul Reaping trait with the scourge. At best for a 20 sec cd breakstun+stability, nothing more, expecially after the Huge nerf to Vital Persistence and SoS.
Dhuumfire will add a little damage, but nothing more.

Better make a more support oriented build.

Silv.9207:

SrebX.6498:

Holy kitten. Dhuumfire+Sandshades if gonna be op

If compared to reaper AA? Not at all.
You need to active Fx skills to make shades do something and active Dhuumfire, then that trait will be barely good.
I don’t see any real reasons to use Soul Reaping trait with the scourge. At best for a 20 sec cd breakstun+stability, nothing more, expecially after the Huge nerf to Vital Persistence and SoS.
Dhuumfire will add a little damage, but nothing more.

Better make a more support oriented build.

I may have misunderstood, but the way that I heard it on the stream was the weapon skill #1 is what inherits Dhuumfire.

the live stream just killed any hopes for being a relevant condi dps lol

From what I see in the stream (the only i’m able to see) the streamer AA the golem but he’s not using soul reaping and there’s no way to see how Dhuumfire work.

Make it act on Every AA will be too much, granting too much damage to the necromancer. It’s a trait that work while in Shroud and is balanced around that.
Be able to use it even outside the shroud will make that trait OP and at best we’ll obtain a huge nerf of it making it bad even for the core class and the reaper.

The scourge concept is Not to be a DPS but a Support. That will cut our dps more than increase it.

A class like the Druid was able to fight at high level of damage even with a little more defensive statistics because HoT pets are Insane and the ranger survavibility is not chained to it’s Mechanic but to Active Skills.
With Barriers as the Only defensive ability (because we lose the Shroud meatshield to obtain a weaker but AoE version of it), we are Forced in a Lot of scenarios (expecially sPvP) to chose more defensive equipment, weapons and traits, obtaining more or less Nothing new to increase our dps.
No damage combos (we can waste all our Fx skills to spam stacks of 2 sec of torment, but is Nothing if compared to the Reaper 5+4 combo that can inflict more than 35k of damage in PvE), no Fields, No Combo Finisher.

The Scourge is more like a Weak version of the Tempest than a dps elite.

https://youtu.be/ZhBf1Q6gTnY#t=35m

You can see Dhuumfire in action here, first with Demonic Lore active and then with Sand Savant. The extra fire damage seems to apply when you cast a shade using F1, or when you cause a shade to pulse damage using the other shade skills. Having Sand Savant active does not seem to increase the number of burn stacks applied per target per cast, but does increase the number of targets per cast.

With Terrifying Descent, Terror, Vital Persistence, Dhuumfire and either Demonic Lore or Sand Savant a scourge is going to be really, really good at bursting down trash mobs.

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

Brujeria.7536:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

The only decent size barrier was on F5. The others we saw were all under 2k.

Even without healing power, that is insultingly low to replace Shroud with.

Brujeria.7536:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

He has no healing power beyond last rights. So 150. Some of the barrier skills scale well with healing power.

Barrier scaling will probably see pvp scaling splits since in WvW hitting 1~3 skills and granting 20 people 5~12k barrier is fairly decent. Considering the 20 target cap and always being out of shroud parasitic Parasitic Contagion will see some decent use as well as transfusion and life from death.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Brujeria.7536:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

The only decent size barrier was on F5. The others we saw were all under 2k.

Even without healing power, that is insultingly low to replace Shroud with.

That’s the core problem of scourge. The shroud skills lack a secondary effect that is usefull without healing power. It’s the same with druid, the heals and stuff are okayish even without healing power, but also provide valuable secondary support. AOE Daze, AOE immob and slow, are strong defensive tools without healingpower.

What scourge would need to fix the defensive aspect is something like:

F3 (the barrier skill) also applies blind or weakness. A 6ish second cooldown instant blind is a good defensive tool even without healing power.
F4 (the fear) should be a stunbreak and maybe give protection or stability.
The heal skill could be a ground targeted port to a shade within 900 range.

The traits dont seem to make this better, either. We would need some reliable access to fitting conditions and boons (blind, weakness, protection, stab) to make it work.

Sigmoid.7082:

Brujeria.7536:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

He has no healing power beyond last rights. So 150. Some of the barrier skills scale well with healing power.

Barrier scaling will probably see pvp scaling splits since in WvW hitting 1~3 skills and granting 20 people 5~12k barrier is fairly decent. Considering the 20 target cap and always being out of shroud parasitic Parasitic Contagion will see some decent use as well as transfusion and life from death.

Even the vampiric traits will be usefull with the amount of hits from F5 in WvW. But the problem will persist, if you get jumped by a focus group in WvW or getting hit with harsh focus in PvP you’re dead. Chances are, if you play a support scourge as it is intended, you won’t have a second support spec to help you out. A support spec that can’t keep itself alive can’t keep allies alive either.

Sigmoid.7082:

Brujeria.7536:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

To be fair he did not have much healingpower at all. From the bleeding ticks he had around 1300ish condition damage. That means he had a Condition damage main stat amulet, and there currently is no such amulet in pvp that also provides healing power at all. But yeah, i agree, the rate the barrier seems to decay is rather harsh.

He has no healing power beyond last rights. So 150. Some of the barrier skills scale well with healing power.

Barrier scaling will probably see pvp scaling splits since in WvW hitting 1~3 skills and granting 20 people 5~12k barrier is fairly decent. Considering the 20 target cap and always being out of shroud parasitic Parasitic Contagion will see some decent use as well as transfusion and life from death.

Having Necromancer’s survivability be tied to Healing Power is not gonna work very well. It will also be incredibly restricting. Either base values for barriers or decays values will have to be adjusted. I suppose that would make it a choice between either burst defence to equal traditional iframes or a form of sustain from low barrier decay values.

It will have to be changed for PvP for sure. I can’t see it working out in the current from. Balancing it for WvW when WvW balance is mostly completely irrelevant unless something is outlandishly overpowered or broken is ridiculous.

PVP looked garbage to me.

The biggest problem is lifeforce.
I always encouraged a normaliazation of extreme min/max LF scenarios , like always 50% OOC. Not counting the losing LF on respawn bugs and it being such a snowball system.

Im am legit worried they tried to scam us:

• they used a power weapon on condi build to allow the unrealistic low CD spam
• the power weapon of dagger is trash, since HOTcreep you can barely land a single hit – OUR ENTIRE LIFEFORCE DEPENDS ON SHOUT HEAL, GREATSWORD COMBO AND TRAIT PROCS
• THEY USED LIFEFORCE FROM DYING GOLEMS, AGAIN UNICORN FANTASY

Considering arenanets extremistic casualist views,

they need to design another “unkillable monster brawler” in order to produce a barely viable glass canon.

Flumek.9043:

PVP looked garbage to me.

The biggest problem is lifeforce.
I always encouraged a normaliazation of extreme min/max LF scenarios , like always 50% OOC. Not counting the losing LF on respawn bugs and it being such a snowball system.

Im am legit worried they tried to scam us:

• they used a power weapon on condi build to allow the unrealistic low CD spam
• the power weapon of dagger is trash, since HOTcreep you can barely land a single hit – OUR ENTIRE LIFEFORCE DEPENDS ON SHOUT HEAL, GREATSWORD COMBO AND TRAIT PROCS
• THEY USED LIFEFORCE FROM DYING GOLEMS, AGAIN UNICORN FANTASY

Dessicate is a cool 10% per enemy hit. 300 radius isn’t too bad.

Ramoth.9064:

Flumek.9043:

PVP looked garbage to me.

The biggest problem is lifeforce.
I always encouraged a normaliazation of extreme min/max LF scenarios , like always 50% OOC. Not counting the losing LF on respawn bugs and it being such a snowball system.

Im am legit worried they tried to scam us:

• they used a power weapon on condi build to allow the unrealistic low CD spam
• the power weapon of dagger is trash, since HOTcreep you can barely land a single hit – OUR ENTIRE LIFEFORCE DEPENDS ON SHOUT HEAL, GREATSWORD COMBO AND TRAIT PROCS
• THEY USED LIFEFORCE FROM DYING GOLEMS, AGAIN UNICORN FANTASY

Dessicate is a cool 10% per enemy hit. 300 radius isn’t too bad.

I wouldn’t be too sure on that. It could very easily be 10% period.

The stream did nothing to show for sure.

@Flumek That concerned me as well. If the scourge had as much synergy with the staff as the reaper does then maybe that weapon could have been the answer, but now we know the full trait list for scourge I’m not seeing anything there that buffs staff. Maintaining melee range with the scourge to use the dagger might be a death sentence though without stability or shroud.

There is a trait that grants life force when you corrupt a boon, but that’s going to be unreliable at best and has a 3-second ICD. Plus you’d have to give up an important DPS or support trait to take it.

There is also the new Dessicate utility that grants lifeforce, but that is likely to be really awkward and weak to use with its long cast time and tiny radius.

We’ll see soon enough how bad the problem is, but I share your concern that lifeforce problems could cripple the scourge.

We tell that to ANet since the first look to Barriers amount and the statistics required to make them work.

Without high Healing Power you will never be able to survive. The necromancer still have Huge problems to survive by defoult, now that can’t even use the Shroud as a meatshield there’s nothing that stop an enemy to kill a necromancer. Barriers are the Weak version of the Shroud Meatshield and nothing more.

Also, do you see the decacy of that barriers???
That means that you DON’T have 5k of Barrier for 6 seconds but 5k for 2 seconds, then it will drasticly reduce by itself, as the same way the Shroud LF do or even faster.
That’s a HUGE problem for the necromancer because that mean that you don’t have Barriers that adsorb “2-5k” of damage but much Lesser. The “big” barrier of the F5 that grant 4.5k for 6 seconds last 2 sec then fall to 0 in 4 seconds. That mean that you “inflict to yourself” more than 1k/sec after 2 seconds from the activation of your Best Barrier. Even More if you have Healing Power.

That’s lesser than with the shroud, but also the barriers are weaker than it.

To make a Scourge survive you Need Another Support Build because don’t have Any defensive skill and the Barriers Dye by themselves.
If barriers disappears after X seconds should be ok, but make them reduce so quickly if compared to they’re amount is ridiculous.
The Only Scourge defensive skill is the Teleport, that last 20 seconds, grant a weak barrier and have a cast. Also to see if you can active it More time than once to go and once to turn back. I hope that it’s like the portal and you can use it to go and come back more times, but the streaming don’t let us know that.
Then there’s the Old defensive skills that are Weak and only Reduce damage, without grant Any Real way to escape from a danger. Only the Wurm grant safety, but 75% of times there’s something between you and the wurm or the difference of layers make impossible for you to teleport to the worm position.
Not even our old Spectral Armor + Shroud will work to save us because the new mechanic make us unable to use that trick to survive a little more.

In WvW that elite will be good, in PvE will be ignorated because don’t grant a real power up in our dps and only a sub-par defensive mechanic and in sPvP will be totally bursted down by any dps that run around, easy and fast.

The Trait Sinergy is just Bad, there’s no stability in any king of scourge skill, there’s no Combo Finishers and as CC there’s only a Fear with a huge LF cost on the F4 and a Knockdown with casting on the torch 5 (good Only to spam Might in PvE)

I just come here to tell everyone that i TOLD YOU SO !……

The damages look… well… not that good. Feel like having more sand shade is better than having sand savant but i could be wrong.

The support look… hum… almost inexistent.

The barrier… I’d give them to the guardian without any after thought in exchange for some aegis that last longer than this thing.

The teleport skill… It look like if you come back it disapear, what a huge let down.

The torch look powerfull.

It might be me but it feel like they emphazised about wvw when they spoke about the spec. Which come with no surprise since the spec really look tailored for this gamemode (except the survivability part). And I agree with the comment of some here, there is no way this thing will find a reliable place in PvP and PvE.

Maybe next raids wing will showcase boonjunky monsters wave attacks that the raid will need to overcome instead of large healthpool single boss fight. The scourge could find a place if it was the case.

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

Kam.4092:

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

a person needs to be blind to not see the issues with the spec…
and yes those tests are enough to see majority of the probs…
and ALSO we have clear infos with numbers on abilities to make a comparison with and againts other stuff…….

just because you personaly presses the ability the Numbers on it wont be better or change lol….. Logic….

Zoltreez.6435:

Kam.4092:

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

a person needs to be blind to not see the issues with the spec…
and yes those tests are enough to see majority of the probs…
and ALSO we have clear infos with numbers on abilities to make a comparison with and againts other stuff…….

just because you personaly presses the ability the Numbers on it wont be better or change lol….. Logic….

I can’t wait for the massive rage fest later today then. Necromancer players are the most emo and dramatic base in game. I play one happily.

I will be looking at the following:

can the scourge handle conditions or is it a sitting duck against them? Without shroud, the cooldowns of existing condition control look too long. Is our traits and skill bar forced into condition removal/stunbreak?

Is the scourge fun? Or is gameplay a bunch of 1-spam and waiting for super long cool downs on weapons skills and F1.

I urge the posters in this thread to hive feedback on old weapons, e.g. Focus, and how they interact with the scourge too.

Kam.4092:

Zoltreez.6435:

Kam.4092:

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

a person needs to be blind to not see the issues with the spec…
and yes those tests are enough to see majority of the probs…
and ALSO we have clear infos with numbers on abilities to make a comparison with and againts other stuff…….

just because you personaly presses the ability the Numbers on it wont be better or change lol….. Logic….

I can’t wait for the massive rage fest later today then. Necromancer players are the most emo and dramatic base in game. I play one happily.

we would not be if Necros would not miss soooo many Utilities….
utilities that are the core of nowdays PvP….

if we would have Reaper as a core spec with no expansions againts OTHER core specs it would be ALMOST fine in PvP …….
then every class got bloated with utilities and Reaper is just a joke compared to other classes…..
and it seems like Scourge will have almost exactly the same issues…. they not fixed ANYTHING on the new elite spec that the NEcromancer players asking for Years now….

of course we are all dramatic and Emo at this point….

we are SICK of being cannon fodder while being needed to be babysitted by other classes….

i can allready tell you

Scourge will be the Number one target for a free kill in PvP
for exactly the same reasons all the other Necro Specs are…

Zoltreez.6435:

Kam.4092:

Zoltreez.6435:

Kam.4092:

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

a person needs to be blind to not see the issues with the spec…
and yes those tests are enough to see majority of the probs…
and ALSO we have clear infos with numbers on abilities to make a comparison with and againts other stuff…….

just because you personaly presses the ability the Numbers on it wont be better or change lol….. Logic….

I can’t wait for the massive rage fest later today then. Necromancer players are the most emo and dramatic base in game. I play one happily.

we would not be if Necros would not miss soooo many Utilities….
utilities that are the core of nowdays PvP….

if we would have Reaper as a core spec with no expansions againts OTHER core specs it would be ALMOST fine in PvP …….
then every class got bloated with utilities and Reaper is just a joke compared to other classes…..
and it seems like Scourge will have almost exactly the same issues…. they not fixed ANYTHING on the new elite spec that the NEcromancer players asking for Years now….

of course we are all dramatic and Emo at this point….

we are SICK of being cannon fodder while being needed to be babysitted by other classes….

Makes me think of my 8 years as a Hunter in WoW. All Hunters acted like abused children by the devs.

If it bothers people so much, there are other classes.

Kam.4092:

Durhurhur gonna judge an Elite’s Damage based on squishy golems, and survivability with no one hitting it hurhur. Man I know this Elite already having never played it, but I know it’s 100% bad. It will forever suck, and Anet scammed us. Hurhur I’m such an expert.

This is all I hear on this forum.

Kam, first of all, if the devs showcase something it’s in order for the community to have a good idea of what they will get. Experienced player can thus look at it and start to picture how this would impact their gameplay.

With experience, players can more or less see if the damages will be lacking or if there is some concerning point in what they see. And no, there is no need to be an expert to arrive to such conclusion, just long hours of use of the profession.

Let’s talk about direct damage. The scourge in this area seem surprisingly interesting since the shroud skills does not need any cast time and will be directly adding themselve to the core necromancer direct damage out of shroud. This might end up at a higher level than what the reaper struggle to achieve.

When it come to condi damage, the spec seem to offer a lot but the main concern is the condition duration. Short condi duration is perfect for players versus players fight where conditions are not meant to last. However, for PvE, it’s all about duration. One can easily see that scourge conditions damage will alternate between short burst and low sustain damage. This kind of damage shouldn’t be able to overthrow the reaper’s good sustain condi damage in PvE environment.

A look at the support show that the spec is heavily oriented toward this role. Condi clear, might application, boon corruption, barrier, all of this is considered support. And sure, this is pretty good support for wvw. But outside of wvw it won’t really help the necromancer.

Defense wise, the barrier are lacking. Health point are good at soaking condition damage however the barrier don’t last long which is contradictory with the role of soaking the longlasting mean of damage. On the other hand, short lasting mean of defense are meant to prevent burst of power damage, but health points have never been good at doing such a thing and the barrier value are ridiculously low. We can see that anet tried to find a middle point but it end up feeling like a defense mean that is already nerfed for every threatening situation.

What player see are those good and bad points and forseeing what’s easily forseeable. The spec will be incredibly good in wvw zerg v zerg fight, will be lacking defense and mobility in the short scale fights that you find in pvp or roaming and will be lacking the necessary offensive support and damage to be welcome in PvE group content.

In the end, the scourge will change nothing for the necromancer which was already in a good place in wvw but was struggling in PvP and PvE group content.

Well, in all honesty, the problem is not the scourge. The problem is the core necromancer which is a bit dull when it come to direct damage, weak when it come to scaling defence and lacking when it come to support. Solutions have been proposed over and over again on this forum but none of those issues have been adressed by anet which prefer adding more and more sustain when it come to defense, focus on condition damage when it come to damage and chose over-corrupting when it come to offensive support. The choice are just bad and resolve none of the issues.

nekretaal.6485:

I will be looking at the following:

can the scourge handle conditions or is it a sitting duck against them? Without shroud, the cooldowns of existing condition control look too long. Is our traits and skill bar forced into condition removal/stunbreak?

Is the scourge fun? Or is gameplay a bunch of 1-spam and waiting for super long cool downs on weapons skills and F1.

I urge the posters in this thread to hive feedback on old weapons, e.g. Focus, and how they interact with the scourge too.

In shroud we don’t have any condi clean skill, then we’ll not suffer from conditions. We’ll have more chances to manage them, but also lesser shroud to adsorb them, if that’s your problem.

We’ll have more chances to manage conditions and fight better condi builds with even more condi clean scourge traits (clean a condition every time you apply a barrier to yourself).

I hope to find that elite funny, but I’m also looking for elites of other classes that seems more funny than the scourge and more strong or balanced.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given what we’ve seen from today’s stream, Scourge barriers need MASSIVE buffs if they are going to survive at all in PvP.

Agreed. I suppose we’ll see in a few hours when the beta goes live but after watching the demos, I got very nervous.

Barrier sounds like a more properly thought out Shroud but it’s rate of decay and how much you can apply without investment seem borderline novelty.

I understand that Anet want you to invest in something to get good usage out of Barrier but they can’t have it so that with no investment, your Barrier is effectively useless. I say that because Necromancer (and Scourge) lack what it takes to survive without Shroud/Barrier. They can’t just make us naked of defences with 2 dodges if we choose to go for an offensive Scourge build… It would be like a Berserker Reaper with no Shroud. We don’t have the tools to survive like that.

So I seriously hope that Barrier is better than what it looks or that, as you’ve said, sees some huge buffs.

I absolutely dislike Scourge because of the lack of Shroud as a 2nd health bar but this was expected, it’s far from my preferred playstyle. This barrier thing just doesn’t feel comfortable to me. I don’t care what Anet does with Scourge but I want my Power Reaper back with -50% lf decay and 7sec cd on Shroud, please.

After one hour of scourge testing, reaper feels like a pretty strong profession.

The most ridiculous thing is that the scourge damage isn’t even higher compared to reaper. Less sustain, more clunkiness, comparable damage… so much fiddling around with sand shades and skills that barely do anything (I am talking about F1 – F4). It’s just bad. The spec has no flow at all. Only F5 has a noticable impact and feels actually strong.

Punishment skills with the 3/4 cast time are to long for such little reward. Sand Well for example, 3/4 sec cast time with only 900 range. The range is to close if you get up that close then you are subject to heavy damage, the barrier mechanic is just plane garbage in its current state. It needs some stab w/ it or at least an increase to its base health increase, in an ever creeping damage increase that this game has a 1-4k barrier nothing really. Its a horrible trade off for shroud. Needs a lot of work or just scrap it. It might have some situational uses and could be good for spvp but with the limited mobility and broken/weak barrier mechanic its still gonna be a quick kill on scourge. 1.5 Thumbs down.
I suggest reducing punishment cast times, increasing the range on them and shades and buffing or rethinking the barrier mechanic.

You guys are missing the worst parts of Scourge for PvP.

The ONLY gap closer is a cast time port on a THIRTY SECOND COOLDOWN and only 900 range. That’s beyond insulting. It’s actually far LESS mobility than a reaper with RS2, wurm, or walk.

Plus, there is ZERO stability. Even if you trait FitG, it now has a much longer cooldown AND huge life force cost.

You can’t have a cloth wearing class with no stability, no gap closer, no scaling defenses like blocks, immunities, evades, etc. and give them nothing more than 900 range.

You literally can be cc’d 100-0 or range killed 100-0. There is nothing to counter cc or close the gap.

You also have only ONE unblockable in the entire new stuff provided and it’s on a 30 second cooldown with a cast time…insane.

This is a pure PvE spec for niche comps. Barrier is a complete joke. It lasts 5 seconds even with the Punishment heal which means it’s already half gone and meaningless in 2.5 seconds. Wow!

This is even scarier than the Vital Persistence nerf. This is totally wasted programming for PvP unless stability and gap closing is added with much more barrier/less decay. It’s just stupid boon corruption everything with burning and torment added to everything.

They just repackaged a core corruption necro with even LESS diversity in how to deal with boons/curses. The irony is that a full scourge necro will die easily to curses unlike a corruption necro with consume conditions or signet necro with plague.

I’m not impressed… though I should have known better.

Would look way better on the Golem in the Raid training area. It’s really annoying we can’t test there.

I hate it. All I have to say.

I love it, but I’m a PvE player. I see how it’d lack in PvP.

I like it, but I think the support part needs a buff to be usefull.

Kaladel.1670:

I like it, but I think the support part needs a buff to be usefull.

Seconding this. Maybe I’m just used to how long you can camp in Shroud on Reaper/base necro, but I feel like Barrier degenerated way too fast to be very useful/the skills didn’t give enough of it in the first place.

I also think some of the wording for traits could be clarified a bit, specifically the base traits about entering/exiting Shroud. Since the F skills are still called Shroud skills even though you don’t enter Shroud to use them, it was confusing to me (and other people, it sounds like) whether the traits would work when placing Shades, using any of the new skills, or just on Desert Shroud.

Pretty sure shade skills are bugged, they are stacking per shade right now. You can easily hit 40+ stacks of torment with expertise one shot the blue lord for example :/

Actually with sand savant the dmg output in pvp is redicoulous. Feels like you can oneshot ppl with condis and sustain is also quite fine.

He´s perfect i love the scourge pls dont nerf it thanks anet

The condiburst is pretty strong in PvP. Might also be the fact that people don’t know the telegraphs yet.

As for the rest, barriers are too weak, shroud skills are too costly, not using Sand Savant makes the mechanic feel bad, Punishment skills feel pretty lackluster, ICD on Demonic Lore will probably make the build do less DPS than the current Reaper build in raids.

I really like torch though.

So far from playing the Scourge, I have no desire to change from Reaper, I was hoping that we’d finally get a place in the game, but alas we seem to be left a drift for along time to come,

Some other classes got a massive boost with their new elites, but we will be left behind again sadly, there are key things we have been asking for, for years on the necro and we still don’t have them.

It looks like im going to be forced to play another class, just so I can get into higher end PvE content, to sad Anet to sad.

Shade summoning seems somewhat … complex? It seems odd that at times you can pop 3 out and at other times, it’s cooldowns galore.

I guess it doesn’t really matter, they are so situational it’s not really that good a mechanic.

Sand Swell is amazing and should be baseline for necro. That’s the mother of all movement abilities!

Trail of Anguish is also fantastic, and is what the Warhorn #5 should have been instead of bees that aggro everything, putting you in combat and making the swiftness pointless.

Having played it for a couple of hours now I have come to a few conclusions;

- Shades are so situational that you can forget them for regular play
- Demonic Lore ICD needs to go. The ICD makes the trait kittenrdly.
- Serpent Siphon could be good. 4 stacks of poison @ 4 sec would fix it.
- Garish Pillar (Small Mass Fear) and Desert Shroud do in fact shine. Good job.
- Harrowing Wave; 900 range or nothing I’m afraid.
- Oppressive Collapse; nice utility, but hardly unique. Pitiful offensive component.
- Sand Swell; useless, genuinely.
- Dessicate; why would you choose this over Blood is Power?
- Trail of Anguish; lazy, gimmicky, can see no reason to use it.
- Barrier; the decay rate plus the average NPC swing timer makes them about 60% effective at absolute best. A joke, a poor joke. Fix your kitten mess.

You need to give us a hell of a LOT more reason to give up 50% crit (Vuln = 2% crit) and Chill = Bleed with no ICD on Reaper.

Overall? D-
Not terrible, but needs a lot more effort.

PS. I had a lot more fun and got a lot more excited playing Weaver. But I don’t want to play Weaver.

Svarty.8019:

Trail of Anguish is also fantastic, and is what the Warhorn #5 should have been instead of bees that aggro everything, putting you in combat and making the swiftness pointless.

Can’t agree more. I hate that fact about Warhorn#5.