Guild Wars 2

You buff dagger direct damage and now you have a big problem with Greatsword: one will always be better than the other if you try to solve its issues that way.

By only increasing Power coefficients, you either kill Greatsword or you leave Dagger irrelevant. This will continue to be the case until yet another Power-based Elite Spec comes along.

However, by tweaking Dagger’s identity to that of a sustain-focused weapon for all damage types, you now have something attractive to many builds without trying to directly compete with other options. Adding short duration bleeds means condi builds now have an option to rapidly replenish life force without totally murdering their damage output. It means Life Siphon actually has synergy with both of the other skills on the weapon. It means Power builds still get a DPS boost (which they need).

It’s not without tradeoffs, though. For condition builds, you will still lose DPS and be at higher risk due to melee range. For Power builds, Axe is much safer. Only Life Siphon useage doesn’t have a tradeoff, and honestly, that skill is hard enough to actually use that a direct buff through self-synergy won’t hurt anything.

Axe is actually a decent weapon now due to self-synergy and a focused theme of execution. Vulnerability increases the Axe 2 damage, which subsequently makes it easier to get the target low on health to stack Vuln faster and get them in range for the second hit on Axe 3. Each skill feeds into the others and now it’s actually a good weapon. Dagger, they went halfway on the synergy, and they chose the bad half to start with.

Oh for crying…

At this point, it’s obvious you’re just a troll. Or President of the US. Nobody else can be this obtuse.

Because if you’re not balancing around anything remotely competitive, what point is there in balancing?

The difference between you and other dissenters is that the others have given some actual backing for their dissent. You just keep waving things around that are unrelated and, when asked to give backing, just wave something totally different around instead.

For example, you claim that there needs to be an opportunity cost when the initial suggestion included the opportunity cost.

Obtena.7952:

You’re going to wait a long time; my argument isn’t about camping dagger, it’s about how dagger doesn’t actually need more versatility (because we have that through swapping) or how simply stating adding condition is an improvement isn’t a reason to buff it.

I mean, we can wax on academic all we want about what condition and how many … soujnds good until someone asks you why it’s necessary.

But you just said that it won’t get added because ANet doesn’t want people camping a weapon. The only reason you would bring that up is if you thought that such a change would encourage that.

So, why do you think it would? You have got to have an answer here or you wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.

We’ve explained why we think doing so is necessary, as it increases the DPS, adds synergy to the weapon (After all, Dagger 2 has synergy with bleeding on the target, but no way of causing said bleeding), and increases the number of builds that would consider using it. All three of these things are things that dagger mainhand needs. The fact you are sticking your fingers in your ears without any actual points doesn’t change that.

And how would adding bleeds in low amounts encourage anyone to camp Dagger?

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Translation: I don’t actually have any points, so I’m just going to pretend that I know what ANet wants and just hate the idea of any more condition application being added.

Adding bleeds on dagger auto does many things to help the weapon. It ups the damage (which it needs, It gives synergy to its own skills (which is always good), and it opens up the number of options for various builds (namely condition and hybrid builds).

So, what language is “Obtena” anyway? Has to be some Greek offshoot, given the similarity to “Obtuse.”

Ramoth.9064:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ramoth.9064:

Lol tablets vs shades, i wonder who will come out on top

Since the knockback means they have to swap legends or have no energy for cleansing (I’m aware said knockback provides some cleansing)?

It will be interesting, but if they’re honestly trying for knockback spam, I can’t see the Rev coming out on top.

Well, my question was said in sarcasm, I don’t think the tablet will win at all

Fair. In my defense, sarcasm is not well translated through text alone.

Ramoth.9064:

Lol tablets vs shades, i wonder who will come out on top

Since the knockback means they have to swap legends or have no energy for cleansing (I’m aware said knockback provides some cleansing)?

It will be interesting, but if they’re honestly trying for knockback spam, I can’t see the Rev coming out on top.

I do know Mender’s amulet Scourge was working pretty well in the first preview weekend.

Lahmia.2193:

Obtena.7952:

Lahmia.2193:

Kam.4092:

Lahmia.2193:

Crinn.7864:

tbh while I believe putting a condi on dagger would be great, chill is not the one.

Putting chill on dagger only really synergizes with Reaper, it does nothing for scourge and little for core necro.

The dagger AA should apply bleeding on the 2nd and 3rd auto chain, and dagger #3 should have a lower cast time to make it more reliable to land.

I’d still opt for torment, just because its pretty much the main scourge condition (and burning would be a bit much).

I can’t really picture a weapon that does Immobilize having Torment.

I would rather have a mix of Bleeding and Poison on Mainhand Dagger.

The arguing in this thread has really done nothing, and seems to mainly be from one person now. I don’t know if Obtena is trolling again or what. They have had a long presence of doing things like this in threads in the past. I just ignore them now.

This thread is just a game suggestion that makes sense. Arguing back and forth attacking other people’s ideas does nothing. At least I see more agreement in the thread.

The reason I want a mix of Bleeding and Poison is because I don’t want Mainhand Dagger to be the most powerful Condition weapon. I’d be fine with just Poison.

The only problem I could see from suggesting this, is making camping Mainhand Dagger more powerful than Scepter. I don’t want it to be stronger. I just want it to do a bit more damage, so the loss of switching to it for Life Force isn’t as big of a loss. I think Mainhand Dagger is also the best weapon to add a Condition to for us.

Even if they never do this, I’d want Life Force on Scepter auto at least. I’m just hoping they add a Condition to Mainhand Dagger because the playstyle when testing was so fun. It was the most fun I’ve had in a while on Necromancer. I loved switching from Scepter/Dagger to Dagger/Torch. It was actually using a weapon instead of just abusing it for Combo Fields like with the Greatsword.

I just hope Devs read threads like these.

It’s in anet’s interests to be honest, since they aren’t a fan of camping a single weapon set.

That doesn’t make sense … increasing the versatility of dagger with conditions PROMOTES camping a single weapon set. So no, I don’t see it being in Anet’s interest.

Well if sceptre is still the superior condi dealer, you’ll be switching from dagger mh after your life force is high enough then back to dagger mh again when it is low. Sceptre/dagger, dagger/torch seems like the way to go for a meta build.

This. Again, nobody is asking for Dagger to become the condition weapon. All they’re asking for is less of a drop in damage when they go into life force gain mode on a condition build and a buff to dagger’s damage output on Power builds.

Low duration bleeds (or Torment, or Poison, but Bleeding fits best thematically) means dagger will never be the superior condition damage weapon, but you won’t feel as awful about using it when you need to.

In addition, some bleeds added on will improve its damage output in Power builds as well, many of which are decent at stacking Might (which also improves condition damage).

Hmm, I should make a reaction folder…

But while I do appreciate what you’re looking at here, the highly restrictive radius on most group Might skills just means they really can’t compete. It will be fine in dungeons where Stack&smack is how you do everything, but raids are significantly more punishing if you stand in a single spot as a group.

Well, I was just told by my boss that I have tomorrow off, so, I guess I know what I will be doing from 3-5 PM!

Yes, I am EST.

Scourge seems pretty suited to breaking a Ventari bunker, since shades can’t be knocked back.

One thing you’re missing regarding Phalanx Strength compared to a Scourge’s might sharing: Range.

Oppressive Collapse has a tiny radius of 240. That means your allies have to all be in the area of a staff mark to get the benefit. Many bosses have hitboxes this size, so good luck! Blood is Power has the same radius, although that’s not centered on the massive boss.

Dessicate does a little better at 300 radius, but Phalanx Strength is double that!

Bleeding stacks would need to last at least 3 seconds so that it’s conceivable to get an entire Life Siphon off onto a bleeding target. Honestly, I think 1 stack of bleeding for 3 seconds is plenty on any given strike.

How many strikes in the chain should apply said bleeding is another matter.

I wouldn’t count minions out yet. Shadow Fiend is our highest DPS life force generation utility and bone fiend still combos well with fire fields.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I am going to look into a solution for this.

Would a possible solution be to disable the “join squad” feature while you are in an instance?

Do you only want EU players to respond?

The only reason I can see the Barrier mattering is that it will let Druids drop a bit of healing power. I imagine that F3 will get used in raid situations, since it will still add a bit of DPS, so that will be a bit of healing that doesn’t have to happen.

It’s A. Barrier is just temporary HP.

Josh.4016:

Seems like barriers are being dismissed, which seems odd to me. Unlike a healer you get to preemptively mitigate damage that could otherwise result in a death. Rift had a similar mechanic in the Oracle class and it was highly wanted in raids.

I like the idea of blood being reworked it’s always seemed mediocre to me.

Providing some buffs other than might seems great. Making the barriers scale off of precision, power, or condition DMG.

Barrier is being ignored because you already have to take a Druid or two and they do fine at keeping you topped off. The only way they wouldn’t succeed, but Barrier would is if raid bosses are given an unavoidable attack that deals % max health of the target. And even then, the % has to be very close to 100.

If future raid bosses like their Burning, I can see Scourge support being wanted just from that.

santenal.1054:

What if they gave the “damage on skill use” part of the confusion damage an internal cooldown of 1s, that would tone down its potential damage quite a bit. (against high actions per minute builds mainly)

Those are the exact kinds of builds Confusion was designed to punish.

I’m not sure Scourge’s support is desirable in raids, so they would have to get in based on DPS. While Scourges have great burst, nobody knows what their sustained DPS is like yet.

I’ve been in a lot of situations where the disorganized zerg, even with siege, made no noticeable impact on the organized one. It happens literally every day.

So, no, these videos show nothing other than organization trumps disorganization.

Perhaps those trait auras need to be improved to 10 players? That would make it less necessary to dedicate 2 slots to any particular class.

Might stacking is easy enough to do with a group, even without Phalanx Strength. For example, I don’t think there’s any doubt that any meta Scourge build will run Torch and Blood is Power (the later is currently in the meta Necro build), both of which provide a substantial amount of group might. It’s probably not enough alone, but there are enough other sources scattered throughout the classes that Phalanx Strength is probably going to be superfluous.

Ramoth.9064:

If you were running a condi reaper build, you wouldn’t use dagger. End of story, theres no debate necessary for that.

If dagger applied chill, you COULD use dagger, thanks to deathly chill, and the fast attack speed. There, you would have a supplementary weapon that applies condition damage, and has the added advantage of faster LF. You could run scepter and dagger,

But…but…I can already run Scepter and dagger mainhands… See! You’re not making any new builds!

And thank you for proving my point.

Okay, we can all ignore Obtena now, since he clearly is not going to actually contribute to a debate.

Obtena.7952:

I’m simply asking you to show what builds open up by adding conditions to dagger since you support the idea to add them because of this reason … certainly it’s not the builds I can already make.

1. You still haven’t given any sort of qualification.

2. Clearly, nothing will convince you because you can already equip a dagger in any build you like. Doesn’t mean it will be any good, but you are capable of doing it, so you will just say “I can do that already.” That’s called a heaping pile of bull.

At least attempt to do something balanced?

Simply changing the 6 piece bonus of the actual rune to something like “gain Barrier on Heal Skill use” would make it a pretty good rune. The only real issue with it is that a barrier when struck below 50% health really needs a shorter cooldown than 75 seconds.

Daharahj.1325:

Confusion used to be like that at launch, it got reworked because it became virtually useless if your opponent looked at his conditions every once in a while.

And confusion/torment isn’t nearly as prevalent as poison, bleed and burning.

Confusion got the rework more so it had a use in PvE where an enemy usually uses a single skill once every 3-5 seconds.

Power was never nerfed, actually (aside from the very recent Vital Persistence/Speed of Shadows, neither of which really affected PvE). It just wasn’t really that good to begin with.

PBAoE Fear around you when you are disabled.

Dawdler.8521:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

insanemaniac.2456:

f1 cant be reflected, so take mug and have everyone push f1 to pin snipe and boon strip without kneeling. take the refresh on kill trait. you prolly only need 20 deadeyes to down someone instantly, so the rest of the group can be a scourge turtle or something.

You don’t even need anyone else, since you can all focus single targets down and gain stealth afterwards too. If you had 15 deadeyes, you could perma stealth and kill one by one without attacking at all, with just the F1.

Something like this with the elite being Shadow Meld and the other utility skill being a venom.
Deadeye traits would be Revealed Malice, Unforgiving for a chained CC that lasts forever and Be Quick or Be Killed so when you F1 the next target, you have the additional Power for Mug.

As that is, with just 15 deadeyes pressing F1, they will do 22155 direct damage on a target with 2600 armor and 30 stacks of Poison for 20s, which is 4897.5 per second, not counting any venom effects. You’d have to be pretty unlucky for them to live through that and the F1 gives you stealth and refreshes instantly if you kill. This could be stealth trapper all over again. Then they could actually use rifle skills.

Takes serious co-ordination, but it’s a massive troll.

Well if you had 15 vanilla mesmers you would probably do 50,000+ instant direct damage on a target by pushing 1 skill button. Pretty hard to survive that. And they can do while running. And they would kill the 4 guys around the target too. And they can repeat it 1 second later if the first hit wasnt effective (got to kill the ressers).

Tell me why exactly the deadeyes F1 should sound threatening compared to this?

1500 range adds a lot to it. As well as the fact it can be chained indefinitely.

Not saying it’s a great strategy, but it’s certainly not one to ignore the possibility of.

Axl.8924:

WHY?!!! it was so useful.I could get life force and remove condies from my team in exchange for life force.Where is it?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unholy_Martyr

Yeah, if you have 500 life force left and you take 1200 damage, you lose all life force and take 700 damage to health.

If you had 1500 life force before taking that same hit, you go down to 900 life force.

Bone Fiend is nice in that its attacks are two projectile finishers. Actually adds quite a bit of DPS with fire fields. It’s not too bad with Dark fields either.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Spurnshadow.3678:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

It was a bug and lasted like 2 weeks. Fun as hell while it lasted. Only affected Chaos Storm from the falling trait.

That lasted for 2 weeks??

Holy crap, I really must be on a different wave length from the developers of this game.

That would’ve received an immediate response of disabling the chaos storm part of the trait from me. Wow….

Here’s a video of a 1 Warrior, 4 Mesmer team clearing Lupicus in about 5 seconds with the bug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf_L16XMl3Y

I just can’t agree with Privateer runes. There’s nothing good on them for Scourge, really. Better to use Aristocracy Runes if you want to be a wannabe PS Warrior.

However, I do think Shadow Fiend is a very strong contender for a utility slot. It’s our highest DPS non-Elite minion already, and the life force gain isn’t awful. Definitely better than Dessicate for the slot in raids.

What if Spectral Wall got charges? Use the current functionality for this thought.

Are the Scourges putting out 3k Barriers? Then they’re pure Healing Power. They’re not killing you.

See, there’s this thing called “Power damage.” You might have heard of it? Dragonhunters, Deadeyes, Revenants, Rangers, and Eles are very competent at dishing it out at 1200 range or more. At 1200 range, you know how much damage Scourges can deal? A few hundred DPS. Maybe 1k. If nobody is dying, their life force drains when they try to keep themselves alive. You’re not focused on conditions, so their condition flips and transfers are pretty worthless.

You know what all of those listed classes also have? Mobility greater than Scourges. You control the combat against an all-Scourge zerg. They have the portal, but it’s nowhere near enough to let them control the combat location.

Yes, you go Pirate Ship against an all-Scourge zerg. If you do, you basically auto-win.

Hana.8143:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

An all Scourge zerg is easy to kill. Plink at it from range (Scourges can’t do anything notable outside of 900 range) and run them out of life force, then dive in for the kill. Their damage and defense is super tied to life force, so it should be a pretty easy sweep.

Well, I never had problem with life force, cause staff marks unblockable and spam 1, F1 doesn’t require a lot of life force, so basically spamming 1 one or 2 times on the ennemy zerg results in me have 20% life force, plenty of…

Wanna cross a scourge zerg ? well have fun, they’ll all put F1 under their feets, will have 14k barrier stack 25 might, you won’t be able to do damage, nor applying conditions, you’ll lose stab instantly and melt cause conditions, but nice try
Does anyone want to play the game “imagine a way to defeat 40 scourges” ? Or will we be able to see how ridiculous it actually is before everyone is bored of this little game ?

If they’re stacking all that might and barrier, they’re blowing through their life force pretty fast. Let them. Then kill them when they’re out and the barrier runs out.

Staff marks only provide 3% life force no matter how many people they hit, so that’s really not a great way to rapidly build it up again, and staff does incredibly low damage. Staff auto works well in zergs, I agree. But it’s also a projectile. What zerg doesn’t run projectile reflects?

Considering Staff is their only option for above 900 range, I don’t see this as too bad. Long range pressure until they’re starved because nothing is dying, then charge in for a quick wipe.

An all Scourge zerg is easy to kill. Plink at it from range (Scourges can’t do anything notable outside of 900 range) and run them out of life force, then dive in for the kill. Their damage and defense is super tied to life force, so it should be a pretty easy sweep.

Basically, any replacement that doesn’t actively harm you is preferable to Soul Comprehension. Saying it’s “somewhat inefficient” is like saying the ocean is somewhat humid.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stress-Test-and-Elite-Specializations

Looks like there won’t be any balance changes to see. We’re playing on the same build as the demo weekend.

Ravezaar.4951:

Heard it was only in PvE (the Oasis) ? Maybe that Includes WvW but I doubt it.

May only be the Oasis, but since we have the elite specs to play with this time, we’ll get to see if any balance changes have already been made.

Time to see if anything has already changed with the elite specs. Keep an eye out!

Personally, I’d like to see Decaying Swarm come back, and replacing Soul Comprehension seems like a good place for it.

Ramoth.9064:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ramoth.9064:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shade 2, but you will also be using Shade 3 and 5 frequently, with Shade 5 being on-cooldown.

How do your numbers look now?

How do your numbers look when you get smashed in the face while in shroud, while a scourge can still gather LF and use shade skills?

Since there’s a 30 second interval before I’m in Shroud again for PvE, things are rather different. In PvP, I’m not aiming for spamming my Shade skills off cooldown.

Then what’s your argument? That in a realistic situation any number of things can happen? I’m just saying in response to Lahmia, the idea that Scourge has a larger sink when using LF is misleading, its relatively the same, with pros and cons afforded to shades and shrouds in terms of utility and LF gain.

I believe the main focus here is raid scenarios regarding Scourge life force. With Condi Reaper, even if you take damage in Shroud, it doesn’t matter much because you only enter once every 20-30 seconds. With Scourge, spending life force constantly is a large amount of damage in a condi build. Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Torch just can’t produce enough life force to fuel the Shade skills, and no utility skills are sufficient for generating life force either, due to long cooldowns and/or low gains.

Ramoth.9064:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shade 2, but you will also be using Shade 3 and 5 frequently, with Shade 5 being on-cooldown.

How do your numbers look now?

How do your numbers look when you get smashed in the face while in shroud, while a scourge can still gather LF and use shade skills?

Since there’s a 30 second interval before I’m in Shroud again for PvE, things are rather different. In PvP, I’m not aiming for spamming my Shade skills off cooldown.