Guild Wars 2

Some suggestions for the Punishment skills:

• Sand Flare : Ground targeted, 900 range. If you cast this on a shade you teleport to that shade, or switch positions with it. If you have not targeted a shade it behaves like it does now.

• Snakes: Upon impact they immobilize and weaken foes. They then create an AOE field and leash to the target hit, causing each second for 10 seconds. The poison ticks each second increase in duration, 3 sec , 4 sec, etc. Each 3rd tick the healing sands spawn per enemy still in the leash. The effect ends for each foe if they move out of the AOE, the leash will not be reapplied to any foe after it expires.

• Portal: Should be instant cast.

• Trail of Anguish: Now drops a beacon upon activating and gains a flip over skill. If you use the flip over skill you drop another beacon, if these overlap you create a massive torment rift. Dealing huge burn and torment damage, as well as giving a barrier to allies. You basicly set the size of the AOE yourself by drawing a path, if the enemy manages to cleverly root /cc / disable or displace you they can prevent all of this.

• Dissicate: Should actually dissicate. Debuffs enemies with something like: Incoming conditions are increased by 20% duration, or burning and torment on the foe is 33% more effective for 5 seconds or so.

• Sand Savant should share the minor traits with allies, providing 15% increased condition duration for your team, this costs you the personal dps increase with “demonic lore”

The overall theme they want to achieve is good that feel of a kinda battlefield controller does work out. The effects are also really nice.

However the spec doenst quite cut it for me. The shade skills are really weak, and rather useless without healing power. And by that i mean heavy healing power investment. Where a druid for example can go full condi, or full power and still get a benefit from his celestial avatar the scourge shade skills seem heavily limited. In detail:

Shade:

• Shade skills cost a hefty amount of lifeforce. Lifeforce is hard to build with this spec.
• Shade skills effects are very weak. They can hit up tp 20 targets, yeah, but the individual effect are weak.
• Shade skills are way too shoehorned into one direction. The damage is low, you cant “spam” the skills for the damaging effect because of the absurd lifeforce cost. You get almost no “survivability” without healing power. No active defense like blinds, protection, stability or weakness.
• The overall “exchange” for loosing deathshroud feels awfull in PvP and PvE. You dont get personal survivability in a clutch and you don’t get dps, even if you fully spec for any of these aspects.

Torch

• Barely any snyergy with the rest of the kit. Low damage.
• Skill 5 is bugged, it doenst grant might at all most of the times,.
• Skill 4 would be great with a sequence skill, where you call the flamewall back to cause the conditions again, including yourself. That way you get some nice synergy with either a condi transfer for more damage, or the shade skill 2 for some on demand aegis trough the burning.

• Traits

• Dhuumfire interacts weirdly. It does NOT proc with each shade. It does proc with each shade summon ONCE. It works when using f2-f5. However, it seems to have a hidden cooldown. If you spam all the shade skills you dont get instant 4 stacks of burn (despite that this costs you almost all lifeforce)

• We have no synergy with the blind traits, and the chill traits from blind

• Foot in the Grave, Speed of Shadows, etc. are all too weak and wont really help you much because of the increased cooldown.

Shade Traits:

• The first line feels good and like a perfect fit for the support theme.
• The second line is okay. “Sadistic Searing” doenst work well. This line is basicly the heavy condi line. If you wanna do condition damage, you wont pick the new utilities because they suck in terms of condi damage. So the synergy with summoning a shade is useless. The ICD on Demonic Lore kills the trait for pure PvE scenarios.

• The third line has a synergy, but the cooldown on Nourishing Rot is way too high given how incredibly hard it is to gain and manage lifeforce.

• The Punishment Skillset:

Is bad. The heal is okayish, nothing special. The “Snakes” are very weak. Even with healing power the barrier is incredibly low for its cooldown. The poison and condi component of it is a joke. 2 seconds of poison? Like, really??? Trail of Anguish is boring as well.. Its just swiftness and an unstackable burn.. What is this for? Swiftness is nothing in times of 20 gapclosers, superspeed and similar effects. The portal is kinda cool. It feels sluggish and shouldnt have a cast time. The duration should be like 2 seconds longer, to get a better opportunity for plays. Dissicate is also outright bad.. i mean its good as it can generate a lot of lifeforce – but this should be somewhat deeper included into the kit. I mean without at least 2 heavy lifeforce generating utilities or traitlines you feel so incredible crippled.. The Elite is also meh.. it does a little bit of everything. It doenst deal much damage. It wont save you in a pinch.. Overall there is no theme in these skills, the only thing that connects them is the boon corrupt. And that is a lot of wasted potential.

Combining Scourge with the Base necro:

It doenst work well. Unlike Guardian, or Ranger or even revenant the base necro does not have the tools for a valuable condi spec in terms of damage. Its damage is too low, its condition application is bad, it doenst have a second weaponset for condi to supplement that playstyle. The core necros survivability in group scenarios was bad to begin with. The scourge does make this way worse. You can survive for a decently long time under “soft focus” and do you job well, but as soon as you get focused youre dead.

Overall what is missing is: Reliable mobility. A working condi build in terms of damage. Unique support, you have no unique offensive buffs at all. Might is overused and doenst bring much to the table. Interesting mechanics and combinations for the utility skills. Additional, usefull, skill effects, blind, protection, weakness, stability somewhere baseline for the f2-f5 skills.

LastDay.3524:

Sand Swell looked almost like a way faster Ride the Lightning when I first saw that jump off the bridge.

After re-watching it I think that it’s just a shadowstep with a neat camera effect.
Like some Revenant skills.

I, too, am surprised that it worked off that bridge if it uses Shadowstep mechanics.

Haven’t tried Shadowstep off it on my Thief, so I dunno if it works.

Probably not a leap as there was no fall damage.

I bet that people will also come up with all kinds of ridiculous shenanigans in various forms of PvE.

Shadowsteps and Mesmer portals allow people to “cheat” so much in Dungeons and Fractals, having a skill that does a bit of both (even with a cast time) is bound to have it’s uses.
It should help carry people through floor trap sections etc.

In WvW you can teleport 20 people forward, AND give them barriers.
I’m very surprised if it doesn’t see use, given how often people stack up before a push.

I don’t play much sPvP, so take this with a grain of salt:
I feel like Sand Swell might work as a tool to “poke in” or juke people.

It gives movement both forwards and back, whereas Spectral Walk and Bone Wyrm don’t.
(Unless you count the Swiftness as forwards movement…)

Might also be funny to run Sand Swell + Spectral Walk + Flesh Wurm in unranked and pretend that you are a Thief.
Everyone targets Necros first, just get people chasing you and run! See how long you last.

It’s like a real shadowstep. He can reach that same bridge spot with any blink as well, so yeah, we can basicly use all the shortcuts within 900 range that mesmer and thieves can.

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.

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.

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.

Recursivision.2367:

Just copying a reply I made on reddit:

it would seem to be f4 but that just seems counterintuitive, right? It’s typically attached to a pulsing AoE. f4 on scourge is the instant fear, whereas f5 has the pulsing Aoe.

Other questions:

- Will it self heal now? Could be a significant self-heal every 12-16 seconds

- Will it heal for the same amount as reaper / base? decked out in healing gear I think that could be 10k+ outgoing

- 4 × 5 Targets? We could be talking a potential couple hundred thousand in outgoing AoE heals + rez and tele.

Could be crazy, or it could have been gutted somehow. Let’s hope there’s some sort of fun to be had there.

From the video it does self heal, but the pulses are a slower than with the reaper or base necro f4 skill. So yeah, it might be very good in WvW for the very least.

Sigmoid.7082:

Seems to carry one after the fear has cast. Watch the bit where he fears the target golem and constantly heals the 2 self bleeds from dagger 2.

Yeah you’re right, i missed that. It seems like it heals for at least 5 ticks or so and it cant be a vampiric trait from the heal amount. So it might be really good then, given the cooldown of the fear.. This justifies the high life force cost a bit too.

Lily.1935:

Lily.1935:

Brujeria.7536:

There is no way they can possibly balance this. They obviously had problems balancing these traits with the 30% cooldown of speed of shadows, yet alone balancing it around an ammo mechanic that also has a possible cooldown reduction trait :P.

Actually, It doesn’t look like the cool down traits effect the shades.

Wait, let me check……. Nope, cool down traits don’t effect the shades. Baring Sand Savant.

Yeah and that is the problem, with sand savant you can have all the on enter / exit shroud skills preloaded 3 times, as sand savant still has charges. That means you could burst with all of these effects 3 times, which is crazy.

I mean it could potentially work, but i really doubt they gonna take the risk, balance wise.. Just imagine you can corrupt 9 boons, in an aoe, + damage + weakness and bleeding and cripple and get an insane amount of retaliation at demand and at range.

It sounds cool, but i dont see it happen.

So from the stream it seems like this grandmaster will be tied to the scourges f4, this would be the fear?

I really hope they made a mistake there, as the grandmaster would be completly crippled that way. I mean, the fear is just one hit, and will trigger the heal one time, compared to core necro with 9 pulses and reaper with 11 pulses that is just bad.. Even if this effect is per shade and per necro you would need to slap all the shades on top of each other to get just a quarter of the effect.

I really hope this is tied to the f5.

There is no way they can possibly balance this. They obviously had problems balancing these traits with the 30% cooldown of speed of shadows, yet alone balancing it around an ammo mechanic that also has a possible cooldown reduction trait :P.

I think it has a 2-3 second period before you can use the portal for the “first time”, or at least so it seems from the “press f to interact interact” popup. Also i think the duration is around 6 seconds, before it disappears.

I thought about general healing, you heal for 5% of your damage from crits. So if you deal 10k damage, you would heal for 500 health. If the target you hit has 25 stacks of vuln, the heal would increase to 750. The numbers can be adjusted of course, the intention is that vulnerability increases the healing amount by up to 50% of the base percentage.

The Scaling is actually okay, it are the skills themself. Where a dragonhunter gets a good use out of his F2 for the jump, as gapcloser and decent heal values even without healing, it adds possibilities. Same thing for the druids celestial avatar. The heal there is not the best if you dont invest into healing power. But you still get a very strong Daze, CC, condi cleans and interesting trait mechanics, that like add completly new aspects. AOE stealth and superspeed.

For Scourge its just: you can pick traits to do the same things just a bit better. I mean, Sand Savant. it gives nothing unique. It has a use only because the count as 3 shades, for the sake of the minor traits. These are wonky because of the shade duration and recharges.. it isnt “good” to pick a grandmaster trait only to make the minors work.. Thats just not rewarding, the minors should be good by default. And that basicly sums the traits up. If you pick all of the above, the supporting gets good. If you pick all the middle ones, your damage is better.. Shouldnt a class be good by its own? Traits and Grandmaster traits in particular, should make the chosen aspect awesome, not working.

Its sadly true that other classes are rather overbloated. I cant think of many ele skills that do just “one thing” on its own, despite ele having much more skills to begin with. I mean the shade skills for example, you have a skill doing JUST a barrier. Another skill that does JUST a fear, and a third one that JUST cures conditions. The F1 does nothing on its own. Also the Utility skills are soooo boring.. i mean leaving a trail that gives speed and burning? A skill that does nothing but gives a bit of might and lifeforce? Either its just me, or these skills have a lot of wasted potential compared to other classes.. i dont know if they value the “corrupt a boon into cripple and torment” so high but man. That feels SO wasted. I know Scourge has a higher target cap with the shade skills, but come on.. we loose our entire deathshroud for these 5 skills.. they feel lackluster. The utilities feel lackluster too. Its like WTF?

I think one of the biggest flaws with reaper is the lack of identity within the trait lines. They have a theme, but they dont achieve that theme very well. You got 3 sustain traits, but you cant sustain well. You got damage traits, but, well you dont really do a lot of damage. I think the traits should ultimately defin how you want to build your reaper.

For me, the 3 themes im aiming for are:

• Damage – Being a slow and deadly killer machine with good recovery
• Chill – Being a master of debilitating conditions to deny escape and heavily hinder your enemies.
• Tank – Being an unstoppable and sturdy danger to enemies.

Damage

• Adept: Augury of Death – Reduce the cooldowns of your shouts. Your critical hits heal you for 5% of the damage done. This heal is increased by 2% for each vulnerability stack.
• Master: Decimate Defenses: Striking a foe with vulnerability increases your critical hit chance. Applying vulnerability steals health – 150, power scaling.
• Grandmaster: Reapers Onslaught: Increases your crit damage by 20%. Increases your attackspeed by 25% when wielding a Greatsword or while you are in reaper shroud. Hitting an enemy below 33% health with Executioners Scythe is aguaranteed crit and deals double damage. If Gravedigger hits an enemy that is downed execute him.

Chill:

• Adept: Chilling Nova: Now roots targets hit by this skill if they are already chilled.
• Master: Chilling an enemy also causes 1,5 seconds of slow and weakness
• Grandmaster: Bitter Chill: Chilled enemies deal 15% reduced damage. Chilled enemies are knocked down and take power damage (scaling) when they dodge.

Tank

• Adept: Deathly Advance: Reduces Shroud cooldown by 30%. Death’s Charge now casts 33% faster and has 3 charges
• Master: Reapers Bullwark: Hitting a chilled foe generates 1% lifeforce. Overcapped Lifeforce is gained as a barrier. Lifeforce lost by natural decay in shroud is gained as barrier when you leave shroud.
• Grandmaster: Unstoppable Abomination: Increases your thougness by 500. Reduces incoming stuns and dazes by 50%. Incoming movement impairing conditions are converted to boons: Cripple = Swiftness, Root = Superspeed, Chill = Quickness, Slow =Alacrity

Feedback much appreciated.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Scourge with current values is going to fail as a support spec because Barrier just isn’t strong enough and it will fail as a condi spec because it is far too reliant on boon corruption to do damage.

On a full support build the barriers are somewhat decent, the reason why it will fail is because it lacks the unique support.

IF barriers can step up to druid heals, druid still has spotter, grace of the land and spirits for good support and damage increase.

IF might for allies can step up to warriors PS, warrior still has banners and +150 power for allies, as well as dealing good damage.

IF Scourge can step up to both of these aspects the other classes are still superior, you will always pick at least one druid for grace of the land and spotter, better two. Team is still missing might then you pick a warrior, for the unique support and banners and because of the higher dps. Warrior does not even have to heavily invest in terms of gear to provide superb support.

So the solution here is really to give some means of unique buffs to necros. Solutions to this problem:

• Give Curses a +150 expertise buff for allies, as well as a %chance on crit to cause bleed or torment

• Give Bloodmagic’s Vampiric Presence a strong buff

• Give Spite the possibility to stack vulnerability or might up to 35 stacks.

• Give Scourge’s Sand Savant GM the additional effect that it shares the Minor Adept Buff with allies near the shade (15% boon duration and 15% condi duration)

That being said, i dont think Scourge is generally unplayable. It just wont get used in any decent scenario because it brings nothing unique to the table in PVE, and because it will turn PvP fights into a instant 4vs5.

Well if i trait with Transfusion it does not change the tooltip of desert shroud to include any healing. Im wondering what will happen with this, as transfusion is just fitting the support theme perfect.

Silv.9207:

Punishmet skills have to punish you if you spam boons and that’s ok. But there’s also other ways ti punish you, other reasons.
Also, if I corrupt stability or might I want to inflict Fear or Wekness, not Tormento+Cripple.

That punishment skills are good but chained to that design that force us to don’t be able to do anything good if the enemy don’t have anything ti corrupt.
And that make this skills bad

Yeah. if they add the boon corrupt as an extra im totally fine with it. But the skills should be somewhat interesting and strong even without the boon corrupt.

I mean the portal aside, that one is cool and most likely will be strong we get:

Swiftness for ourself or allies, 6 seconds, and we leave a trail that burns a bit.

Lifeforce lulz and might.

AOE skill with barrier and a marginal poison (most likely only for cosmetic reasons to make the “snake” work)

And our elite is basicly a 5 second pulse of slow and some boon corrupt, that, again, gives an absurdly low duration and low stack might.

I dont know man, maybe these skills would have be interesting if the game was newly released, but at the current state these seem so unbelievable boring and blunt that i dont think i will ever use any one of them, maybe i will use the portal in wvw roaming, but other than that no, thank you.

All of the utilities really feel underwhelming. They just slapped a boon corrupt on all of them to make the traits work and to create some kind of connecting theme.

Has been posted on reddit:

https://dd.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6tdz4v/soulbeast_and_renegade_traits/dlk09x6/

Chatcode:
[&Bo+iAAA=]

Was hoping for a nice condi skill, but 2 seconds of poison is rather underwhelming.

Barrier in the tooltip is with 155 healing power, with 0 healing power it is 1293, so scaling with healing power is 1,2389709677 ~ 1,24

Maxzero.4032:

Brujeria.7536:

Fully agree with Subli here. This build most likely will be meta, i strongly feel that the missing utillity skill will be the “dps” skill.

Necros should have LF gain on every AA.
Every one-handed weapon should have an additional skill that generates LF, with a increasing requirement like scepter 3.
Every offhand weapon should have a skill that generates LF.
Every two-handed weapon should have LF gain on AA and 2 weapon skills as well.
Restricting a classmechanic thats so crucial for the design further by limiting them to certain skill is a bad design. Picking utilities and traits to boost the natural class resource should be an option to make it better, not to make it work, regardless of build.

Imagine the outcry if a mesmer would not have clones or phantasm on his condi set. Or a thief would have only a quarter of initiative gain on his power sets.
Or a warrior getting half of the adrenaline on weapon X.

Why is it suddenly an issue now? Because Scourge uses a large amount of lifeforce?

We will see if you get your wish and camp Scepter/Torch.

Well its generally an issue because its limiting some wepaon sets more than others. With scourge especially because these shade skills cost a lot of lifeforce, for the most part. And to get the best dps out of these shades you use as many shade skills as possible. The fear alone will cost like 30% of your lifeforce, if you compare the cost with the max hp, at least what we know from now. These has a 15 second cooldown, means to keep this skill on CD you need 2% Lifeforce each second. The other skills have shorter cooldown, and lower cost, but i guess we will have massive lifeforce problems if it stays that way.

mazut.4296:

Wiki says up to 900 vitality. 5×6×30=900 up to 20sec, per stack

Yeah, my bad, that makes it even better, though :P

Fully agree with Subli here. This build most likely will be meta, i strongly feel that the missing utillity skill will be the “dps” skill.

Necros should have LF gain on every AA.
Every one-handed weapon should have an additional skill that generates LF, with a increasing requirement like scepter 3.
Every offhand weapon should have a skill that generates LF.
Every two-handed weapon should have LF gain on AA and 2 weapon skills as well.
Restricting a classmechanic thats so crucial for the design further by limiting them to certain skill is a bad design. Picking utilities and traits to boost the natural class resource should be an option to make it better, not to make it work, regardless of build.

Imagine the outcry if a mesmer would not have clones or phantasm on his condi set. Or a thief would have only a quarter of initiative gain on his power sets.
Or a warrior getting half of the adrenaline on weapon X.

I think what they where aiming for is keeping the damage as main purpose, you only need skill 1 to do that, really. But i like it. I like it a lot.

Skill 2 is awesome for eating blinds and aegis, to ensure skill 1 hits.

Skill 3 is an unblockable fear with an actually decent base duration.

Skill 4 is for some aoe carnage, kinda forcing the enemy to cleave, combos well with reaper, the chill on fear for some damage.

Skill 5 is a general survivability AOE skill wih quite a nice offensive touch. It heals for 800 per tick, per enemy, deals damage, and further increases your vitality. IF you hit 5 targets with it you get: 4k heal each second for 5 seconds = 20k heal, + 650 vitality (equals another 6500 heal) and you deal a lot of damage in the process.

I really like it, it has everything a necro would need, fear, lifedrain, minions, damage, and a neat weakening effect.

BUT it has some problems. Skill 2 is supposed to start with 5 charges, as all other skills with charges if you have not used them. It just does not most of the time. Also skill 3 feels way to clumsy. It should be castable while moving, and it should travel faster / further, if you cast the skill and keep moving afterwards you barely gain any distance due to the cast time. Its meant for small in combat mobility, but it doenst achieve that goal. Its not even the distance of a dodgeroll if you wanna go forward.

Just some numbers: The minions deal damage as much as 4 lich form AAs if all detonate successfully. On a zerker build the Skill 5 deals around 6k armor ignoring damage to each target. Given the fact that you also reduce the enemies vitality by up to 150 points you deal 7500 true damage over 5 seconds, and youre free to bombard the enemy with the other skills as well.

Lahmia.2193:

Brujeria.7536:

Most of the time you will only have up 1 – 2 shades up, due to the cooldowns.

You’ve misread how ammo works. There’s no cooldown until you reach the ammo cap for Sand Shade (which is 3). So you can cast all 3, then it has a 15s cooldown and each Shade lasts for 25s. And the sand scourge torment effect comes from you too, so that’s 4 torments max (people will be capping torment duration) for 4s.

It doesn’t work like that. Watch WPs Video starting at 1hour46min, he casts one shade, then talks, and during this time you can see the border of the F1 fill up and when its full he gets his 3rd ammo back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOr-LO38Mts&t=6694s

Doubling the base values of vampiric presence would help a lot, especially for scourge.

If they would just give the curses line an AOE 150 expertise buff like other classes have it would help a huge amount, and even that alone makes condi necro a reasonable choice in every aspect of PVE.

If they would add a 10% or 15% damage to enemies standing inside our wells via trait, this would increase the viability of power necro a lot.

All we would need than are some base number modifiers on certain power skills, or % modifiers in traits and everything would be fine, really. These PVE aspects are the most easy ones to fix, the “harder” problems to fix like shroud scaling in different scenarios, lack of stunbreak, mobility and stab are harder to come by though.

Yeah scourge actually doens’t cause much condis at all.

Sand Shades: Cause at maximum 3x Torment for 2 seconds. so total of 6 seconds torment, in the best scenario. Most of the time you will only have up 1 – 2 shades up, due to the cooldowns. With alacrity, you have 2 perma up. Makes an average of 4 ticks of torment damage, per skill cast.

Lets take the skills that cause this attack in consideration. Cooldowns of the shade skills are traited 4 6 12 and 16 seconds So lets assume you cast this skills all on cooldown, and line them up perfectly.
4 sec cooldown = 1 perma stack of torment
6 sec cooldown = 0,67 stacks of torment
12 sec cooldown = 0,33 stacks
16 seconds coolddown = 0,25 stacks
Total, assume you can spam all shroud skills on cooldown (Lifeforce will be a huge problem here) = 2,25 permanent stacks of torment from shade

Shroud skill 5 causes conditions by itself, 2 stacks, for 2 seconds for 7 seconds, each 16 seconds = 1,75 permanent stacks of torment from shroud 5

Torch 4 : 16 second cooldown,traited, 3×3 torment, 3×3,75 burn = 0,56 torment stacks and 0,70 burning stacks
Torch 5: 20 second cooldown traited, 3×6 torment = *0,9 torment

Utilities:

Ghastly Breach, elite skill. Causes in PVE scenarios (no boons here) at least 1×2 burn, 5 times = 10 seconds of burn, thats right, the offensive ultimate, of our condi spec, deals 10 seconds of burn. Cooldown 60 seconds traited equals a mighty 0,17 stacks of permaburn per seconds Lets just “assume” we can corrupt a boon each pulse, 2×4 torment, 5 times = 40 ticks of torment, each 60 seconds equals 0,67 perma torment stacks

Traits: increase our condi duration a bit. The only noteworthy grandmaster trait is * Demonic lore, increasing torment damage by 33% and basicly adds 1 perma stack of burn, if you can trigger it on cooldown.*

Now lets count that all together: 6,13 permanent torment stacks, increased by Demonic Lore equals 8,15 permanent stacks of torment and 1,87 stacks of burn each second.

Of course, these durations get increased by condi duration, alacrity, etc, but these are the baselines. Also we dont know how Dhuumfre interacts.

Just as a comparison base, Revenants mace 3, traited, has a base of
9 stacks torment per second and mace 2 a base of 5,33 burning stacks per second
and that with just 2 skills of their condi weapon, excluded are all utility skills. the rev is yet to receive his condi spec, and his second weapon, but to put this into perspective, i think the damage numbers are WAY off if 2 weapon skills of a core class exceed the entire added damage potential of our so called condition elite spec.

Compare the numbers, these are the base condi values, that all classes can potentialy increase by the same factor (condi duration, condi damage):

Scourge adds 8,15 perma torment and 1,87 perma burn

Revenant adds 9 perma torment and 5,33 perma burn with 2 skills.

Just for fun: Necro Scepter 5,4 perma bleed and 4,2 perma torment with skills 2 and 3, traits considered.

If you have really low power values the signet would be better. The more power you have, the better % modifiers get. So, for all normal scenarios with full ascended gear and full might stacks Close to Death is much better.

Spite:

• Siphoned Power -> Minor Master replacing Death’s Embrace
• New Minor Grandmaster: Increases the effects of might on you, +10 power and +5 ferocity per might stack. [Straight up damage buff in raids, harder to keep up in open world scenarios or WvW for periods of time]
• Unholy Fervor -> changed to 20% reduced axe cooldowns, deal 5% more damage to vulnerable foes, this modifier is doubled while having an axe equiped. [Overall damage increase, working better in shrouds]
• Close to Death -> Increases damage dealt by 10%. Further damage increase of 5% for every treshold: 75%, 50% 25%. [Buff Maximum of 25%, 10% increase at all times makes this trait much more reliable against full life foes]

Curses:

• Furios Demise changed to -> Order of Grenth, increases Expertise of yourself and nearby allies by 150 points. [Group support]
• Terrifying Descent -> Merged with Terror [Merged to create space for a meaningful trait]
• New Major Adept: Spectral Cuts -> Barbed precision now randomly causes a longer duration bleed, poison or torment (with icd per condi). Gain a stacking condition damage when this happens (max. 150 raw condi damage) [Offensive option in trait tier]
• Lingering Curse -> Additional effect: Share barbed precision with allies [Group support, only share the caused conditions, GM trait only weapon based is bad design]

Death Magic:

• Armored Shroud: Now lingers for up to 3 seconds. [Compensate reduced shroud uptime]
• Putrid Defense -> changed: take 3% reduced damage for each non damaging condition on the target. [Higher effect, harder to gain]
• Soul Comprehension -> reworked to Close to Grenth: Gain up to 450 thougness the lower your life is. [Making the defensive line devensive]
• Beyond the Veil -> reworked to: Shedding Shroud: Stunbreak and cause conditions upon reaching certain health tresholds, icd per treshold. 75% Blind and Weakness, 50% additional Imob, 25% additional protection to yourself. [Making the defensive line strong and more exciting]
• Reapers Protection -> Changed to: When CCed ignore all damage for up to 2 seconds and fear nearby foes. 30 Sec ICD [Making the defensive line a considerable option]
• Unholy Sanctuary -> When this triggers you ignore all incoming damage for 3 seconds and Soul Comprehension ICDs are reseted. [Ensured second wind mechanic in case of heavy bursts]

Blood Magic:

• Mark of Evasion: Removed ICD
• Quickening Thirst: Added Gain 3s of quickness when you hit an bleeding enemy with your dagger, 15s icd. [Some offensive power]
• Vampiric Presence: doubled values [To make this a valuable support trait]
• Vampiric Rituals: Added: Deal 20% increased damage to enemies standing inside your wells. This applies to your allies for half that amount. [Group DPS increase for power builds]
• Unholy Martyr -> renamed to: Spill the Blood, added cause bleeding in an area around you each time you draw a condition in any way [More blood in Bloodmagic, better option for condi builds]

Soul Reaping:

• Gluttony -> Swapped with Strenght of Undeath
• Strenght of Undeath: Damage increase is now 10% [Straight up needed modifier]
• Gluttony: Shroud can be overfilled by up to 9%. The next time you enter shroud you are immune to damage other than natural decay untill the Overfill is gone. ICD 45, can’t overfill during this time. [Most useless trait made exciting]
• Unyielding Blast: Added: Reduce the cast time of shroud skills by 25% [ Overall a dps increase, makes base shroud skills feel less sluggish]
• Foot in the Grave: Added: Natural shroud decay is gained as health while in shroud. [Nerfed Shrouddancing compensated]

Silv.9207:

You can be hit by all the 3 shades using the F2 or an ally can be hit by you and all your shades, but the effect is granted only Once. You will obtain only a 2k barrier, nothing more (with zero healing power).

For the other things, I agree.[/quote]

Umm no. Desert Empowerment and Sand Savage work together. Desert Empowerement has no cooldown, and Sand Savant makes your shade count as 3, so you get 6k barrier every 10 seconds for spawning it, and 2k every 8 second with shade skill 3, equals to 8k AOE barrier every 10 seconds. We dont know if the barrier numbers are baseline though, or with invested healing power, but that is the intention behind the trait.

Same thing with Sadistic Searing and Unending Corruption, if you pick either of these traits and sand savant you cause 3 stacks of burning AOE or corrupt 3 boons AOE every 10 seconds.

I think what we get for loosing shroud isn’t good enough at the current state. The fear is kinda boring and weak, yeah it has a high target cap and is instant, but its a very short duration on a mediocre cooldown. The defensive side is.. yeah it depends on how low you can get the CD on skill 5. The shield is decent, especially if you trait for the big sand shade, that alone is a 8k shield every 10 seconds alone. But yeah, the condi remove is superb, the “shade attack” on using a skill is very weak, even if you stack them.

The punishment skills are weak and boring too. We get slickshoes that give us a whooping 6 seconds of swiftness and a small burn on foes? Really? Thats just boring in every aspect. The Lifeforce skill is okay, it has a purpose. The portal seems fun too. The Ultimate is.. weird. Its a bit of everything, boon corrupt, damage, debuffs, offensive buffs via might.. but it doenst feel ulti worthy..

I hope we get a gear set with these Stats:

Mainstat Condi
Mainstat Healing
Substat Expertise
Substat Concentration

That would be near perfect.

Zoltreez.6435:

Brujeria.7536:

Ravezaar.4951:

We also may get Sigil barriers tho so have to see on them

Yeah, Sigils, Spite line will get a rework, and what i have seen from the core warrior changes i hope that we get many more stuff changed. Hopefully DM to include barrier.

What rework ?

who said that ?

INFOS LINKS NOW !!!!!!! pleeeeeeease….

WP mentioned it in his post show footage where he shows off the necro.

Also for reference some things warriors get:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6ruxy8/upcoming_warrior_strength_trait_changes_ripped/

+ they get major buffs to core skills (kick getting charges, bulls charge getting an evade, axe throw is getting 3 charges) That could mean we get a lot of new stuff as well.

If in doubt always choose vitality. Tougness is useless against condis, your ability to remove condis in shroud is very limited.

I would expect it to be something with heavy condi damage. We have barrier, might and corruptions already, the missing utility will most likely be a short duration skill with a lot of condition application. Also, because scourge is about battlefield controll i think it will be AOE of some sorts.

I have my fingers crossed for a stat set with +Condi, +Healing, +Expertise +Concentration. That would be perfect.

Ravezaar.4951:

We also may get Sigil barriers tho so have to see on them

Yeah, Sigils, Spite line will get a rework, and what i have seen from the core warrior changes i hope that we get many more stuff changed. Hopefully DM to include barrier.

Yeah, for this cooldown i would expect it to be max barrier. (50% of maxlife) Anyway, no condi love.

Just a quick heads up from WPs recent video, Stats for the Rune are:

1: 25 Healing
2: 35 Condi
3: 50 Healing
4: 65 Condi
5: 100 Healing
6: Gain barrier wenn struck below the 50% health threshold (75s CD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evfZKG7GiKQ right at the start.

Zero Solstice.9754:

The ICD is for scaling and balance. In general, the greater the variance that something can have from its low point to its high point, the harder it is to balance. This is because balance is typically based around average performance, so if the peaks are too low and too high, then that means when the item in question is balanced to be bad on average, it’s really bad for the bottom 50% of the time, but when it’s balanced to be good on average, it’s really good for the upper 50% of use cases.

The ICD here means that the greatest level of variance in the burn performance comes from Expertise: The ability to shift how long the burns last for drastically modifies their floor and their ceiling. I think the ICD is necessary because it minimizes how far-reaching the variance in performance of the burns will be, and in fact depending on total access to Torment that the class has, I think Demonic Lore in general might honestly be too strong.

You are generally right with your explanation. However in GW2 its all about the base values, really. Gear is the same for all classes, so the max. amount of additional condition duration and condition power is pretty even between all classes. And with this trait, under perfect circumstances, you can have 1 burn stack up permanent. Which is not strong at all, especially when you compare how much conditions a necromancer can cause baseline to other classes. Necro DPS is way lower in the current meta.. and this is because the skills from the condition set just dont deal as much nor as frequent conditions as for other classes. Of course, having super strong traits and weaker weapon skills isn’t optimal design, but we have yet to see any top dps with our baseline of skills.

Yeah, the ICD is too high for its effect. Either the burn effect needs to be more stacks or a longer duration, or a ICD of 1 second.

Still, the damage potential shouldn’t be locked behind a single trait as it is with reaper currently. Thats bad design, the base damage should be good, if you gear for it, and awesome if you trait and optimize for it.

starlinvf.1358:

Here the problem I see with all this discussion…….. how much of it is only considering the mechanics of existing raids? Why has so many ruled out the fact that new raid wings will very likely be designed around the new Especs, in order to take advantage of gameplay mechanics?

Why are we so sure the Druid is irreplaceable when it only does 1-2 thing? And is only relevant because the Raids are specifically designed around them being there.

Well because druid does it the best, while still providing offensive support. The same for Condi PS Berserker, might is important. Warrior does keep it up easily, while still providing unique offensive support with banners and traits, while still dealing good dps. Same for Mesmer, Alacrity and Quickness are key for dps.

Raids will always be based around killing things, and for killing things the fastest way these classes are pretty much core, for every raid an boss. Of course they can add a very boon heavy or condi heavy encounter where scourge will shine, but this is just a niche role on a specific encounter. The bread and butter for raids are pretty much carved in stone.

You can tackle raids differently, of course, you can clear raids without a mesmer or a ps, etc. But it’s the most simple way of achieving your goal.

That being sayed, we might be able to replace a second druid, if we bring more dps than the offhealer and more utility, same for PS, we can replace one, IF we can keep up the mightstacks and do at least the same dps.

Maybe in some odd cases. If they nerf PS anytime soon, we could maybe replace the offhealer. I don’t see enough damage for a DPS spot, the base durations, condi applications and the eoffensive support are all way too weak.

I still hope this spec (or core necro) gains a 10 people +150 expertise buff of some sorts.

Maxzero.4032:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t think it opens up many new possibilities, really. Guaranteed full crit channel on Axe 2, I guess, which wouldn’t be bad burst.

For all of the other “in shroud” traits, though, this is a massive nerf. Plus, Vital Persistence is only a 15% reduction, so it’s a 17 second cooldown if it works that way.

Speed Shroud can also give you an extra 30% reduction for 45% total or 11 sec CD.

Also heard about some of the minor traits. The adept minor is just access to Scourge. The grandmaster is 5% damage reduction per shade out. The major is still unknown.

I highly doubt that. The #5 skill is the only skill that makes sense for transfusion, they wont give us transfusion on a 11 second cooldown if the same skill gives a big barrier, especially when both of these effects scale with healing power. that just wont happen. Well, maybe they change transfusion in the upcoming balance patch? We will see.

nekretaal.6485:

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.

I still have a glimmer of hope that they add a group buff like 150/300 expertise to 10 targets just like for the other classes to further justify the spot in raids.

They actually look very very necromancerish. Some tormented faces getting constantly swallowed from the sand like an eternal struggle for staying out of the grasp of Palawa Joko. I think the design is really nice, its kinda grim, not dark grim, but sand grim.

Utility 3:
Plunge into the ground, creating a portal through Tyria for allied use. Grant allies using this passage a health barrier. + convert 1 boon into torment and cripple. 28 sec cooldown.

Torch 1:
Unleash a wave of corrupted fire, burn and torment for enemies, 16 sec cd

Torch 2
Corrupt the ground under your foe, if the foe remains in the area they are knocked down(2s) +torment. Allies gain might based on the # of conditions on the target. 20 sec cd.

Also to note: The shade skills inherit the DS traits, but in a weird way. For example the 5th skill gives the fury from the curses line. Most likely they swap these around a bit.

Yeah he was in PVP. Also Spite Line, Signets and Reaper will get reworked to push it out of the condi side and into power. Or at least thats what they hope to achieve.

Yeah anet has a very strange way to judge their game balance. For a necromancer, a sustain tool that is strong against 1v1 fights gets held down to not overpower the 1v1 scenario, even though it gets naturally balanced by teamfights already, thats the case of most traits and deathshorud in general.

Yet in the same turn, ele skills most likely affect 5 targets (friend or foe doenst matter) while not loosing any power, and even being strong in 1v1 scenarios.

Same for Warrior stances, if endure pain would be a necro skill for example, it would automaticly stop working once it prevented 100% of your max life as health. The list could go on and on here.

That kinda uninsightfull decisions will hold the overall balance down forever.