Guild Wars 2

New Scourge information? Let’s dive in! Here are a lot of my initial thoughts, reactions, and ideas regarding all of the Scourge details and numbers as they exist currently:

As always, feel free to chat with me, share your thoughts and opinions, leave a like if you enjoyed, and have a wonderful day!

I’ll watch it!
But making a summary can be a good thing

Sorry to burst your bubble here. But the wiki didn’t put it in, the F2 and F3 skill are also limited to “target affect once per cast”. (Shown in tooltips in videos)

This link here might help provide a slightly fuller picture than the wiki currently.

https://i.redd.it/uwg4kdtj7cdz.jpg

Other than that, very insightful hearing your thoughts on the Scourge.

Vitali.5039:

I’ll watch it!
But making a summary can be a good thing

I might try to find the time to write that up for this video, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind for next time. I know a good amount of people like to be able to read everything, but plenty of other people also like the “podcast” style of delivery, so I tend to go more for the talking method :P

Barucyl.5493:

Sorry to burst your bubble here. But the wiki didn’t put it in, the F2 and F3 skill are also limited to “target affect once per cast”. (Shown in tooltips in videos)

Ultimately this is for the best, but it feels pretty bad since it reduces some amount of the ambiguity that could have been possible in how you use your shades and other class mechanics. For balancing purposes though I 100% agree with keeping it consistent.

EremiteAngel.9765:

This link here might help provide a slightly fuller picture than the wiki currently.

https://i.redd.it/uwg4kdtj7cdz.jpg

Other than that, very insightful hearing your thoughts on the Scourge.

I’d say this definitely clears up some minor things, like the blue color of the 300 range in Desert Empowerment leads me to believe they took the route of dynamically adjusting the range of traits and abilities to match Sand Savant, something I noted is important to do in the video. It appears they also decided to make it so that the Desert Shroud skill counts as the entering shroud synergy for traits like Spiteful Spirit. There are still some things to monitor, such as how Path of Corruption interacts with Nefarious Favor (which is what I assume is considered Shroud 2), but it seems a decent amount of the potentially problematic core stuff is accounted for.

Hopefully my thoughts were of some use to you, and thanks for watching!

Edited the Wiki

I wonder how this will interact with minions actually. Applying barriers to your minions. having reliable aoe cleanse. Could be a good boon to the MM playstyle.

Shadelang.3012:

I wonder how this will interact with minions actually. Applying barriers to your minions. having reliable aoe cleanse. Could be a good boon to the MM playstyle.

There can definitely be some interesting synergy between player-to-minion condition transfer in Death Magic layered with the AoE cleanse capacity of Scourge; there’s tons of unexplored territory that I’ll be diving in to on the beta weekend to try and get the largest perspective possible.

There’s a lot of support possible. All this torment and cripple follow’s reaper’s concept of preventing enemy movement. Should be interesting in wvw.

One of those utilities reads like a modified portal.

Yea want to see the last Utility Skill, the one none has revealed yet. Atleast i cant find it

Hesacon.8735:

There’s a lot of support possible. All this torment and cripple follow’s reaper’s concept of preventing enemy movement. Should be interesting in wvw.

One of those utilities reads like a modified portal.

I believe the portal functions where you ground-target the destination, then a portal opens from where you were to where you went, and allies can use the portal for 20 seconds and get barrier from it. Pretty nifty. As for the torment and cripple, it seems the design for Scourge is to be anti-mobility to make up for the lack of actual mobility on the spec, but I expect it to be totally workable.

Ravezaar.4951:

Yea want to see the last Utility Skill, the one none has revealed yet. Atleast i cant find it

Yeah, I believe there is still one more utility skill that we haven’t seen yet, plus we also don’t know what our two other minor traits are, so there’s a lot of room in there for things like “Fear applies Torment”, “Applying barrier causes your next attack to inflict Torment”, etc. etc.

After thinking about Scourge for a while, I feel confident making some predictions.

1. Condi Necros in PvP will still be Reapers. Scourge just doesn’t have any way to deal with focus fire, and Reaper’s Shroud gives better opportunities. Even without Deathly Chill, Reaper is still the best option for PvP, regardless of if you’re Power or Condition. Precisely how it gets played will change (for example, condi builds will change to Blighter’s Boon for more sustain or Reaper’s Onslaught for a faster stun), but it will definitely still be used.

2. Scourges are going to thrive in WvW zergs. Their Sand Shades allowing up to 20 targets hit (15 with Greater Shade, albeit more consistently) for F2 and F3 are huge (technically, all of the Shade skills have that, but you’re much more likely to get 20 allies than 20 enemies).

3. Scourges will do well against foes that use 1-3 conditions constantly. F2 is an instant cast AoE 2 condi conversion every 5 seconds if you keep life force flowing. Traiting for Barriers to remove conditions can easily net you 5 conditions removed AoE every 10 seconds on instant cast. This is in addition to the resilience the Barrier itself will give. More importantly, they can easily cover 10-20 people with this same effectiveness.

3.2: As an expansion of the above point, there will be places in PvE where a Scourge is vastly tougher than normal. Because it’s a condition-to-boon conversion, it will be especially effective against Branded (current ones put out good amounts of bleed) and Forged (almost certainly causing lots of Burning). Having an Aegis every 5 seconds sounds pretty good, no? There will most likely be cooldown reductions possible from Soul Reaping line.

4. People (including Scourges) will often forget that every F skill will have all of your Sand Shades pulse out Cripple and Torment. Even when Desert Shroud and Garish Pillar are down, those sand shades are not necessarily safe to be around.

5. Rune of the Scourge will be Primary in Condition Damage and have a 6 piece bonus that either does something with Barrier or boon removal. I will bet 5 gold on this with anyone who wants to take the bet.

I do have a couple of questions about how the spec works, though.

1. Does Garish Pillar cause foes to run from the sand shade that they were hit by, or from you, the Scourge? I’m betting the latter, but the former would be extremely interesting.

2. Does the Greater Shade provide one or three pulses of the F2-5?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

After thinking about Scourge for a while, I feel confident making some predictions.

1. Condi Necros in PvP will still be Reapers. Scourge just doesn’t have any way to deal with focus fire, and Reaper’s Shroud gives better opportunities. Even without Deathly Chill, Reaper is still the best option for PvP, regardless of if you’re Power or Condition. Precisely how it gets played will change (for example, condi builds will change to Blighter’s Boon for more sustain or Reaper’s Onslaught for a faster stun), but it will definitely still be used.

2. Scourges are going to thrive in WvW zergs. Their Sand Shades allowing up to 20 targets hit (15 with Greater Shade, albeit more consistently) for F2 and F3 are huge (technically, all of the Shade skills have that, but you’re much more likely to get 20 allies than 20 enemies).

3. Scourges will do well against foes that use 1-3 conditions constantly. F2 is an instant cast AoE 2 condi conversion every 5 seconds if you keep life force flowing. Traiting for Barriers to remove conditions can easily net you 5 conditions removed AoE every 10 seconds on instant cast. This is in addition to the resilience the Barrier itself will give. More importantly, they can easily cover 10-20 people with this same effectiveness.

3.2: As an expansion of the above point, there will be places in PvE where a Scourge is vastly tougher than normal. Because it’s a condition-to-boon conversion, it will be especially effective against Branded (current ones put out good amounts of bleed) and Forged (almost certainly causing lots of Burning). Having an Aegis every 5 seconds sounds pretty good, no? There will most likely be cooldown reductions possible from Soul Reaping line.

4. People (including Scourges) will often forget that every F skill will have all of your Sand Shades pulse out Cripple and Torment. Even when Desert Shroud and Garish Pillar are down, those sand shades are not necessarily safe to be around.

5. Rune of the Scourge will be Primary in Condition Damage and have a 6 piece bonus that either does something with Barrier or boon removal. I will bet 5 gold on this with anyone who wants to take the bet.

I do have a couple of questions about how the spec works, though.

1. Does Garish Pillar cause foes to run from the sand shade that they were hit by, or from you, the Scourge? I’m betting the latter, but the former would be extremely interesting.

2. Does the Greater Shade provide one or three pulses of the F2-5?

Very nice predictions. All seems likely to happen.

PvP spectral armor to shroud combo will prob be too strong to give up at higher tiers when the focus fire on necros would likely be too strong for Barriers to work. The portal that lasts 20 seconds might help immensely though and still make scourge viable.

WvW I agree wholeheartedly with your predictions. Scourge will be even more effective than core wells necro now at exceling as the backline Dps and boon strip and crowd control. Reapers will still have a place though for solo roaming as the lack of stab and mobility on scourge will make it even worse at handling Long range kiting classes.

Except the scourge runes could easily buff torment or the new punishment utility class. Not betting though as your predictions are just as possible.

Runes buffing Punishment skills are right out, as Scourges are the only class to get those. If Expansion Pack 3 rolls around with a new specialization getting Punishment skills, we might see a rune for them then. Until it’s possible for at least 2 classes to benefit fully from the runes, you won’t see them.

The whole concept feels so close to the revenant support line, but done right, don’t you think!? Or will it turn to be as useless as Ventari…
I like it as a whole, but need to test it. Also, as everybody already commented, will this make us more vulnerable or will it be enough to replace the shroud hp bar!?

- Garish Pillar is trash. Need longer duration and unblockable fear. Or additional effects like Infusing Terror.
- Sand Savant. Unless you want to support your whole raid(10 ppl) it seems weaker in almost any way. wtf am I missing something here?!?!
- CC, again our greatest enemy with this spec…

mazut.4296:

The whole concept feels so close to the revenant support line, but done right, don’t you think!? Or will it turn to be as useless as Ventari…
I like it as a whole, but need to test it. Also, as everybody already commented, will this make us more vulnerable or will it be enough to replace the shroud hp bar!?

- Garish Pillar is trash. Need longer duration and unblockable fear. Or additional effects like Infusing Terror.
- Sand Savant. Unless you want to support your whole raid(10 ppl) it seems weaker in almost any way. wtf am I missing something here?!?!
- CC, again our greatest enemy with this spec…

I feel there are some interesting possibilities in it all. Garish Pillar could gain some additional utility like “Allies affected gain a stack of Stability”. Something similar could even be one of the minor traits we haven’t been able to see yet, such as gaining Stability whenever we Fear someone.
Sand Savant has some interesting implications in bunkering and stacking, such as what happens in raids, on nodes in PvP, and in large scale WvW. There’s definitely a playspace for the trait, and I think it will be just fine.
CC will be a problem, but like I said here with Garish Pillar, and considering we haven’t seen one of our utilities and our two minor traits yet, there’s still plenty of potential and possibility to get better self-defenses by the time of release. Just try to find the major issues during the beta, and be vocal about them.

So, I just had a crazy thought: how does Feed from Corruption interact with Aegis? Do you get an Aegis any time you attack someone with the boon (with blockable attacks)?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, I just had a crazy thought: how does Feed from Corruption interact with Aegis? Do you get an Aegis any time you attack someone with the boon (with blockable attacks)?

Guess we’ll have to find out

scourge will be useless for solo roaming. hope they give us some way to stay at reaper for roaming. PLZ anet, pllllllllzzzzzz. dont kill reaper for roaming.

Zero.3871:

scourge will be useless for solo roaming. hope they give us some way to stay at reaper for roaming. PLZ anet, pllllllllzzzzzz. dont kill reaper for roaming.

I have to agree with this one. Scourge cannot solo. No stab, no gap closers.
New specs like Deadeye is going to eat Scourge alive.

EremiteAngel.9765:

.no gap closers.

I don’t see how this is overly an issue.

Sigmoid.7082:

EremiteAngel.9765:

.no gap closers.

I don’t see how this is overly an issue.

Reaper had one gap closer, and base necro you could call it one-half of one because of how finicky it is; both with shroud 2. So if you needed to close a gap, you almost never could as necro before.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Zero.3871:

scourge will be useless for solo roaming. hope they give us some way to stay at reaper for roaming. PLZ anet, pllllllllzzzzzz. dont kill reaper for roaming.

I have to agree with this one. Scourge cannot solo. No stab, no gap closers.
New specs like Deadeye is going to eat Scourge alive.

We don’t know the range on the portal but thats a 20s cd utility that is a gap closer.

It is simply too soon to be hype or be disappointed guys/gals. It might be great it might not, but right now its all guesses and conjecture. Let’s all just wait a bit and we’ll see once the xpac comes out if what we’re guessing at is true or not.

Helly.2597:

EremiteAngel.9765:

Zero.3871:

scourge will be useless for solo roaming. hope they give us some way to stay at reaper for roaming. PLZ anet, pllllllllzzzzzz. dont kill reaper for roaming.

I have to agree with this one. Scourge cannot solo. No stab, no gap closers.
New specs like Deadeye is going to eat Scourge alive.

We don’t know the range on the portal but thats a 20s cd utility that is a gap closer.

It is simply too soon to be hype or be disappointed guys/gals. It might be great it might not, but right now its all guesses and conjecture. Let’s all just wait a bit and we’ll see once the xpac comes out if what we’re guessing at is true or not.

We do now, actually. It’s 900 range.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s not bad if it’s reliable. Plus you can bring allies with you. Granted it isn’t a ton of mobility but you do have options.

I’d take a 20s mobility that doesn’t have deaths charges issues with actually going to it’s target any day.

Helly.2597:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s not bad if it’s reliable. Plus you can bring allies with you. Granted it isn’t a ton of mobility but you do have options.

I’d take a 20s mobility that doesn’t have deaths charges issues with actually going to it’s target any day.

Its a ground targeted shadow step that leaves a portal. Being able to move in the z-axis like never before is very useful. If you use it to leave combat you can re-enter combat with a reasonable amount of barrier.