Guild Wars 2

Siphon Damage will always suck. It’s a broken idea that is either underpowered or overpowered in every game.

The moment anet releases a specialization with a Shield offhand, that will be the choice of every necromancer in pvp/WvW and even pvE (until weapon damage is increased to a realistic competitive level)

A short range condition weapon (mace) would fill gaps in the necromancer’s skill set, as would a ranged weapon that can do AoE damage and make fields and finish them (short bow)

I always wanted a weapon with a minion skill on its skill bar, but that looks like it can’t happen on an offhand now.

How about a specialization where skills just work 100% of the time?

Not getting fear damage from a trait because a warrior used a fear sucks. Not getting torment, because the enemy didn’t have boons, or had boons that expired or were ripped first sucks. Not getting power damage on your power damage focus weapon, because nobody is standing next too the enemy (or because two or more people are standing next to the enemy) sucks.

If you notice, most of the build defining grandmaster shroud traits are weaker/much weaker.

Scourge is going to have a super limited build diversity.

Edit: the new speed of shadows gives the class very badly needed extra protection against immobilize. The recharge is longer, but it’s available all the time. Will need testing to see if this is worse now for the scourge than the reaper.

If you have blinds, you can usually predict and bait out the guardian / engineer / revinant / warrior / necromancer downed 2 skill.

You’ve got nothing to secure a stomp in a contested team fight.

Power Reaper could get a 40% across the board damage increase and still not be in the top half of classes.

The problem is, and always has been, that weapon damage is too low or scales badly with power. Focus, an alleged power weapon that does poor damage on long cooldowns, ought to be reworked first.

You can get living world amulets and rings without spending your laurels. They aren’t too bad either: get all of the daily gathering nodes and you will get 1 a month, and they have selectable stats.

Of course, there’s not all that much stuff to spend laurels on either, so don’t feel the need to hoard those.

“Selfish Class” just means that the blast finishers that do exist on the class don’t work in real game conditions when they are needed.

Just turn staff one into a projectile finisher (it’s already 20% there), and you have your condition swap weapon.

I feel pigeonholed on traits. Some traits are clearly meant for core necromancer/reaper and are super underwhelming on scourge, some are really strong on scourge.

The problem isn’t numbers, numbers can be adjusted.

The problem is the rotations are sluggish and boring.
You can place a F1 every once in a while, and you can use your long cooldown dps-loss skills every once in a while. But, most of the time you are just sitting there autoattacking.

If you had a melee condition weapon with higher damage, or a ranged condition weapon that could generate lifeforce*** then things would at least be interesting.

• You actually do have a ranged weapon that can generate lifeforce in the staff, but the game has been power creeped so much that it’s an obsolete weapon with no real purpose anymore. Maybe Staff (and especially focus and offhand dagger) should be fixed so they are usable.

The scourge feels slow and clunky.

This is probably due to the bad cast times on all of the weapons and the lack of mobility. Its not fun.

Also I am having trouble reaching my finger to hit F5. Advice on a control setup for anybody else having this issue?

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.

I also don’t like this convert stuff.

Just give the class the torment or whatever other condition, don’t make it conditional. That seems like gimping the class for kitten flavor reasons.

Is the scourge going to be a sitting duck against condition users?

The necromancer doesn’t have a lot of condition removal, tanking a lot of condition damage with shroud. There’s nothing anti condition here, and the barriers will be of little help since they don’t last long.

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.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

STIHL.2489:

zealex.9410:

Like anet ever forget about the casual.

It did.. very much so, with HoT. Which is why I am asking if they decided to remember us with this upcoming expansion.

If you don’t think Anet forgot about the casuals when making HoT.. then.. simply put.. you’re not a casual so would not notice it. No shame in that.

Most people would simply define “casual” as someone who plays on an irregular basis or less than X hours per day.

HoT can be super casual, the events are on all the time, you can literally do one within 30mins anytime of the day, the maps hardly need any of the masteries to get around, I didn’t unlock much of them for weeks or months after launch and played through HoT no worries, casual as.

Hot is super casual unfriendly.

Literally all of the maps are on timers, requiring you to show up at a specific time and commit an hour (verdant brink) or more (Dragons stand) if you want any rewards.

We’ll see today, but, if the living story maps are any indication, anet is going to deliver. Bloodstone Fen was a super casual friendly map. Ember Bay and Lake Doric brought the fun factor, and the last two maps are giant jumping puzzles (and casual friendly because of the play as you want factor). This is a big improvement from Dry Top which was on a timer.

You are misremembering history. Necromancer was awful at release because of interest in the class at beta. It took more than two years to get out of the garbage can.

Then one week Dhuumfire came along and a lot of people flocked to the class for the new style. It still wasn’t OP even then.

But it was nerfed back into the garbage can.

Then people were really interested in well designed Reaper skills during the HOT beta, and the class got nerfed hard again at release.

This time, I don’t think people are interested in a turret spec with extra F keys to press (more than elementalist) and boring non greatsword weapons with long cool downs and “1-spam”.

So, the class will not get nerfed due to beta excitement. Instead, the Scourge will get nerfed because somebody will play with both minions and the turrets and pvpers, who hate both on a conceptual level, will loudly demand nerfs (not to fix stuff that’s broken, but to take unwanted fight play styles out the game).

So something new will happen September 22.

The fun factor is there, but that’s about it.

Reaper is trash in PvP. The raw landspeed is too slow, and pvp is about rotations even more than combat capabilities. Reaper is too slow without z-axis port.

Reaper is decent in WvW.

Reaper lacks damage in pvE. The damage is too low. Epidemic is a gimmick that keeps things competitive on about two encounters, but otherwise condition damage is basement tier even on a condition build if the enemy moves.

To be fair to Anet, pure power specs may be a thing of the past with the new pof stat options, and the necromancer’s wonky hybrid weapons may be better off in the future for this.

Before HOT, the devs told us on these forums why axe will always be trash (they don’t like the fact that it hits without counter play/a tell). But if axe is trash, then power ranged damage is trash too. And the rest of the non greatsword weapon sets are lacking in cast speed/cooldowns/utilities/cleaving.

Basically the damage is too low on all weapon sets. It could be increased 40% across the board and still not be top tier.

Hopefully we will get reworks to weapon skills with scourge, otherwise the class will be all “1 spam” with the rest of the weapon skills on long cool downs.

HoT is only $20 if you bought POF. I guarantee you that if anet ever sold what you’re asking for it would cost more than $20.

Lahmia.2193:

To say scourge will be a power based spec is laughable. Everything we know about it suggests it is a condi/support boon rip spec, specializing in dealing torment and burning.

Except for life force generation, which is pretty awful if you aren’t on the dagger.

Spectral Grasp is bugged right now and goes on full cooldown if cancelled.

It’s not usable.

This will never hit a moving target (except maybe in a zergfight due to masses of players and visual noise).

At least in PvE it was something that could hit a break bar every 20 seconds. I was looking at it for break bar utility when I noticed how poor the scourge is against breakbars without Reaper shroud 5.

Both versions are terrible. New version is worse.

Before HOT there were threads on the forums where we could interact with developers. That’s missing here. Things are much worse now.

Some core issues were resolved, and we got input on why, for example, the developers will never allow axe to be a “good” weapon.

Second, people were excited for reaper. It solved the problem of not having a dash, having poor access to CC, having poor access to AoE, and having no stability. Who is excited for scourge? It’s got all of the issues of base necromancer, turrets that nobody wants, and 5 new buttons on the keyboard that existing necromancers don’t have muscle memory for (making the necromancer have more buttons in the rotation than elementalist & the new more complicated rotations with these buttons doesn’t do anything new).

25-60% across the board damage buff to weapon skills, including reduced casting time and recharges for the offhand weapons.

I’ve been throwing T5 orbs into the forge for a random chance at a T6 orb or a gemstone.

Mechanically, you lost shroud for essentially tool kits that you can’t customize and turrets (but at least you can weapon swap.)

Everybody’s excited about barrier, but it looks like many classes have barrier and that that Scourge might not even be the best at barrier/barrier sharing.

I don’t see extra damage and unique damage buffs that you can share, so that means raids are out.

I think losing that shroud skills kills a lot of what made the class advantageous in fractals. The class was never close to the best there, but it was a safe pick to take a pug there.

I think losing the shroud will kill a lot of your ability to survive mistakes in general pvE and story mode. Doubly so, without any protections or extra dodges.

Depending on the cast time and range of that teleport, the Scourge could be competitive in high level pvp in a way that the no z-Axis ports reaper and necromancer never was. This is just an observation that the landspeed travel time of rotating is so bad on the class that it isn’t viable. On the other hand, the scourge looks worse in actual combat than both the necromancer and reaper.

In WvW, the minute you venture away from the Zerg you are toast.

I’m not sold on the class. Same low damage. Same low stability and no extra dodges. Same stunbreaks glued to the bar. Same no group buffs that anybody wants.

What nobody else has talked about yet is that the Scorge F1 is basically a turret and pvpers in this game hate hate hate turrets. I expect that all abilities tied to turret like activation will be nerfed into uselessness. Don’t count on them.

Will I get to raid in this? I don’t see big damage numbers and I don’t see group buffs (to damage) that people want.

Even if future raid bosses are full of boons, that woo the help with the existing bosses.

Also, I am disappointed that I will have to buy some sort of 20 button mouse in order to play this specialization.

Those bosses were only ever considered hardcore because of their timers.

Timers are bad design. No more timers pls.

It would be great for me if the T3 karma weapons and Guild Weapons (rares and exotics) weren’t included.

I want better odds on getting gemstore stuff!

The necromancer needs at least an additional 3k DPS someplace now that the Jaggeds are gone, or else it goes to the scrap heap.

The Jaggeds were great because they didn’t unbalance PvP.

Cynova.7406:

Why only raids? If we can get legendary weps in a variety of regular pve content why not the legendary armor? Not everyone likes raids and a top tier of equipment shouldn’t be exclusive only to those who want to raid.

Will there be other options and ways to acquire legendary armor is this the only way?

There are 2 legendary backpacks (soon to be a third?). Would like a way to get legendary armor without raiding. (WvW or PvP or Achievements for example).

This was a good change.

Next year, however, found you put back the center door that, in 2012, had the “Champion Family Sized Camdy Corn Elemental?” (People who weren’t around then, look it up on YouTube… There was a champion on top of the hill in the center).

The map, for years, feels like it is missing something. All of the other doors get finished and there is this boring time period of waiting for doors to respawn.

If the resources exist, update that boss to something fun and challenging and uses the newer Halloween skins (bloody prince, candy corn ghoul, hellfire skeleton, wraith, w/e).

But the flow of the map badly needs that HP sponge.

The two expensive minis exist to suck excess candy corn (from maize balm farm 2 years ago) off the market.

They aren’t for normal players, but if mini Gwenefred returned this year then he and the Raven will probably return again. If you really want him, you can farm him over several Halloweens.

Probably gemstore & released on Tuesday

Robert Gee said, before HoT launch right here on these forums, that anet will never allow axe to be good because it is ranged but does have a dodge able/avoidable projectile.

So, OP, Axe will never be good.

Best part of the patch will be if New Spiteful Spirt now corrupts 2 boons. That could be really nice.

Rip condition necromancer in raids.

They said around HoT launch that they will never buff axe 1-2 to “good,” because they don’t like how it is ranged but not a projectile.

So ignoring axe as a distraction, this was a 100% nerf to the only one gimmick keeping necromancer viable in raids. Raid DPS drops to 30% below every other DPS profession, and without utility other than non top tier Breakbar breaking.

Does the lich form nerf take necromancers out of the raid meta?

Necromancers were barely keeping up, and that one skill was a dramatic part of total dps. Will necromancers be banned from non guild raid groups outside of the 1-2 epidemic bosses?

If anet is going to go ahead and make solo Q/duo Q the default for ranked season….

Then “necromancers are good of they have a babysitter,” no longer holds water. The profession’s damage and defense need a looking at.

Runes need to be look at.

major/minor runes and most Superior Runes sit at vendor value and the most valuable runes are not much more valuable than that.

The problem is that no new rune since after the game launched was ever added to the random mystic forge loot table. If they were, then account bound runes like rune of the trapper would make the other runes more rare, and expensive crafted runes would drive people to buying up and forging.

Since this never happened, there is a glut and there needs to be a sink.

And this is such a fixable problem too. Just make the next new runes to be added mystic forge exclusive at first.

These should be permanent and they should add similar achieves for stronghold and the other maps.

Don’t like the advantages of the teleports.

The teleport spot to the shield/sword is obnoxious. Even if the easy ledge teleport was removed and you had to teleport up to the stairs, that would be a lot better.

I don’t like how it’s hard to tell which spot the shield and which spot the sword are spawning at. Because the sword is a lot better than the shield.

What’s the point of the crowd buff that you can click and get some free stats for? It’s like you get a stat bonus for wiping the other team which makes wiping them again easier/encourages snowballing. I think that’s poorly thought out.

The wood design does seem bland. Some more color somewhere would be nice.

Hopefully this map and Capricorn can make it to ranked pvp before January.

Hopefully, it got updated a little bit since last year.

Last year prices for everything were so high — designed to suck all of the maize balm trick or treat bags out of the market. Trick or treat bags sit at almost 20s today.

So I finally finished the achievement. It was awful and took me two months, failing at least 70% of the time. I stand by my opinion that the events are overturned and unrewarding.

The commander tag and lfg helped find the people, and was invaluable.

The mechanics trick with the event seems to be that the Inquest Golemancers have to be immediately killed when they spawn, as they channel Aegis to golems, or the event will fail. (The golems can’t be quickly killed under this protection) Unfortunately, the Inquest Golemancers are tiny Asturias hiding behind giant Golems (hard to spot, and pugs seem to go after the big golems first), and the Golemancers have giant amounts of HP and a giant Breakbar (even though they are just veterans).

I would suggest that this event be tuned so that in low population scaling situations, the Golemancers had HP appropriate for a veteran asura, not the elite/boss multiple rotations amount of HP they seem to have now.

Maybe Axe could be buffed by buffing focus or offhand dagger. (Warhorn doesn’t have much synergy with axe since it isn’t ranged).

I’m talking about the priory and consortium events in Mt Maelstrom, Snowden drifts, and Blazeridge Steppes.

These events are overturned. They .failed a lot when zeros were around to do them. Now that zergs are no longer around to slow the golems and return the orbs, they nearly always fail.

And the maps are empty. These events are seemingly tuned for over 20 people, but a commander tag might draw 4-5 people to the event. Plus the events are long and don’t give much of a reward.

Am I doing it wrong, or are these events in dire need of scaling?

Inb4: “I did the events when they just came out and people were around, so you should do them like me”

Supply and demand. Lots of demand, little supply (they’re new).

Last year, you could get regular (not gemstore) dyes from the kit and sell them. The best one you could sell was 10 gold ish. That was a good bonus yo those of us dye collectors who have supported anet through the gem store.

However, that did get patched. Now all you can do is salvage the due for some pigments. It’s pretty crappy.

My bet for this birthday gift is an immortal weapon skin. Nobody has a full set of them the most you could have do far is like 5 & they are gemstore skins with no associated achievement.

This would break trebuchets. I vote no.

Also, presumably it wouldn’t work on golems?

I vote this suggestion as ok, only if it is limited to Oils and Cannons and other tower/keep siege. Then it’s probably actually a good and strategic addition.

OP, I can’t help you for the rest of this season but I can give you great advice for next season.

Skip the first two weeks of the season. Play unranked or WvW instead.

When you finally arrive to the party, you will be matched up against the worst of the worst and you will go on a long easy winning streak until you find your proper level.

By grinding out this season from the start you created trouble for yourself first by going up against the better players starting in the lower division. Not only losses but future matchmaking starts to bias against you too.

Lahmia.2193:

They nerfed it because it was a kittenty idea to begin with. It was completely unreliable because it was constantly being overridden when anyone else applied chill (which was all too common). I can only think you’re talking from a pvp perspective. From a pve perspective, it is the best thing ever.

Honestly, they need to do this chill nerf to Fear and change fear into something that can’t just be condition removed, like taunt.