A whopping 12k heal, 7 boons & 7 condi’s removed..
Even warrior’s heal can counter our heal in 2 ways: either no boons to corrupt or easy condi removal..
Yeah, shafted
Why did you specifically pick this heal to compare it to?
First of all, Scourge’s heal is a supportive one, as it gives barrier to nearby allies, while the warrior one is selfish. So, compare it to Wash the Pain Away and stuff.
Second, Natural Healing removes boons from warrior himself, which is a pretty big drawback.
Mostly because that 1 skill renders our entire boon corrupt useless…
Just imagine that heal skill in PvP…
Happy scourge watching warrior arrive and sees all those glorious boons to corrupt.. But before the warrior is in reach: BOOM, boons gone…
Nothing to corrupt… We’re rendered pretty useless due to 1 warrior skill.. Just 1 to counter all our boon corrupt.. Just 1!
Good thing we have barrier though
I know I am exaggerating a bit here but you get the point…
So warrior now has no boons and his heal skill is down. Why is that threatening again?
Scourge hardly relies on boon corruption, Necro in general is more than capable of generating conditions and scourge only adds to that.
Then warrior uses dagger 2 to leap to us, we get slowed
Then warrior hits with dagger 3 to daze and stun (which gives added damage)
Followed by dagger 4 (because he has 100% damage increase on that skills since we’re dazed)
In the mean time his traits trigger:
- No Escape: Dazes and stuns inflict immobilize.
- Dispelling Force: Dazes, stuns, pulls, knockdowns, knockbacks, and launches remove boons.
- Loss Aversion: Removing boons from a foe deals damage and gives you adrenaline.
By the time this attack chain is over I reckon the Scourge will be dead…
We can’t transfer condi’s in this chain because we will be dazed and stunned.. Meanwhile Warrior has managed to rip our boons away and inflict damage for each one ripped.. If we do manage to transfer condi’s, then warrior can use Full Counter with trait Revenge Counter trait to just copy them right back on us…
Warrior will be better at removing boons than Necros are.. He can now even copy condi’s to others…
Warrior now has access to what made Necro’s currently quite unique: boon hate and condi transfer (we transfer, he copies but similar effect in the sense that your enemy now gets all the condi’s you’re suffering from)…
This is incredibly cherry picked.
I’m sorry but I just don’t see Scourge being anywhere near a decent spec… I like the idea of the sand shades but they are stationary and foes need to be in range for them to actually do anything… Stay clear from the stationary shades and you’re fine..
F2~5 all read “you and your sand shades” doesnt matter if you are near shades or not all the effects happen around the necromancer as well. Shades are more of an area multiplier than a force multiplier.
It doesn’t have any on demand but via traits it still has some.
Also in WvW unless Feed from Corruption is nerfed you will have boons, inlcuding stab, for days.
-no defensive skills (unless a portal that we still have to see)
This depends on what you class as defensive.
-no Stun (we lose the RS5 and the Elite of the reaper, then we have only the warhorn as a Cc different then Fear or Immobilize)
-no movement skills? (we lose the leap but obtain the Portal. To see it’s range, casting time and more in a real fight)
You cant leap but you should be able to z-axis since its a ground targeted shadow step which at times is far more useful. Also super useful due to some trait synergy with Abrasive Gift . Considering it lasts 20s and we dont know how many charges it has or its range ti could turn out to be insane.
-worst Lf generation (compared to the Reaper the Scourge lose a lot of LF generation, also becoming chained to boon corruption)
Scourge arguably doesn’t need as much LF as a reaper since its not using it as temp health.
-Chained to the area, can’t play freely moving all around because need to stay near his Shades to obtain a good effect, more or less as the old Turret engi, only a little mobile. That is seriously a Big problem for a class without any kind of defensive skill unless Spectral armor and a Portal (that also strip him away from his controlled area…)
-Mechanic damage output chained to Static Shades (that may grant a lot of damage in a static fight like a PvE boss but a really low damage in a common PvP fight. But for shure will be good in WvW zergs as a long range build using Shades and Punishment while in shorter range)
Shades only really extend your area of effect. Since allies/enemies can only be effected once per ability/pulse and the shades skills all read “you and your sand shades” bar the first one. They do provide huge area denial/control though. Between you and the 3 of them you cover an area roughly the size of meteor shower.
-weaker mechanic offensive “combo” than the Reaper (in sPvP with the RS4+RS5 and Deathly Chill a reaper can spam up to 25k of damage over 9 seconds, while in PvE and WvW the damage can grow up to 65k over 9 seconds. The Scourge inflict lesser than 19k of damage on a Moving target with Powered Torment and few Burn over 7 seconds
Would love to see the math you used to get this one.
The cap looks to be generous, WP said it scales with vitality (or max heath, it’s not clear), but in his video he had about 24k HP and the cap was a bit more than 11k.
Max barrier is half of your maximum health. Its strength scales from healing power and the scaling seem to work the same way healing power works on heals. As in it has. Different base and different multiplier per skill.
If we really get an desired amulet like condition dmg, healing power, vitality and expertise i can see it work in pvp to be honest
I’m pretty sure this stat set used to exist and have been removed. Thought it still exist in PvE, named “shaman”.
I’m sure there was but it had toughness instead of but or both and because they had a sweep and removed pretty much everything with toughness and healing power, rip clerics, it got..got..
Did anyone notice whether or not WP was in combat when he used to barriers?
Could it be that the short duration was caused by not being in combat and the quick decay functioned like the warrior’s adrenaline?
Already had that thought and watched him when he is playing weaver, it still decays over 8 seconds over all.
Based on that image, Scourge’s portal will last for 20 seconds as opposed to our 10 seconds, will give allies that use it a HUGE barrier of around 1,300, as well as convert boons on any enemies that are near it when its placed, as well as it actually dealing damage.
This is kitten. This isn’t sharing portal with another class, this is flat out giving portal 2.0 to another class and not giving mesmer anything in return for it. I mean hell, our own portal isn’t even updated to match this. Not to mention a 28 kittening second CD on this, instead of the 72 seconds on portal for mesmers.
It would be fine if other classes were given portal. Its kitten that they are given something that is way better than portal is. Especially for a PvP environment this is kitten.
What the skill actually does is it’s a ground targeted teleport with a short range that creates a portal between the two points that you and your allies can move through to gain barrier and reposition. It’s also 28s with the trait..it’s 35s without.
You can’t cast and wait a minute before dropping it somewhere useful. You can’t move huge distances with it. Presumably you can’t skip certain terrain with it since it’s a teleport/shadow step. It also has a 0.75s cast time so can be interrupted.
It won’t be anywhere near as versitile or strong as portal. Simmer down.
I hope it’s not limited to shadowstep/teleport rules as that’s one of the main and only advantages of portals. Still it does feel very much overburdened with goodies for what it is, boon corruption, barrier for allies, escape for allies or a jump in to attack/burst down then leave.
I will definitely wait to see how it plays out but it could stand to lose the boon corruption and/or damage and stay a very useful utility skill bringing an alternative to portal and map control.
Still I’m really excited to see a portal like mechanic on another class, necro no less which has needed some support for a while now.
Watching peachys video the range is small and it vanishes if you move to far away from the portals location. It won’t really be a huge alternative.
It can also be seen that’s it’s ground targeted. Pretty much every ground targeted teleport in the game requires a valid path so I don’t see why it won’t have the same limitation.
It’s closer to lightning flash/infaltraitors strike / judges intervention type skills than anything else.
Peachy’s video didn’t seem to demonstrate it very well. She cut off the ranged skill fact while recording and she casted the teleport at her feet rather than in the distance. No helpful info on her video at all regarding the teleport skill.
You can clearly take that she moved too far away and it vanished. May be a bug with the skill though.She does have an annoying recording style of cutting off loads of the screen….
Going to hold further judgement on it till the 18th.
@Sigmoid – Like apharma said, its way overtuned. This was a problem with HoT where skills were doing too many things at once, and now its just worse in PoF so far. It shouldn’t be boon corrupting or damaging enemies. It should only be porting allies, and the barrier it gives them should be much lower as well.
That would actually allow them to increase the range of it as well. This is just kitten design.
Maybe they actually want the range of it to be short and havig a range that’s roughly 10x shorter is what allows them to design it to have other features that fit the design of the spec. It’s not supposed to be a carbon copy of the ability but on another class. Looking at the skill in a vacuum is also not a good idea.
The range is not 10x less it’s 4-5x less as portal is 5000 range (6000 in PvP because /shrug) so I don’t think you can justify how much it does, barrier, damage, corruption and shorter cool down from what we’ve seen. However I do agree we need to actually play it so we know how it works before screaming fowl.
It does an aweful lot for a single skill depending on how it was traited. If the corrupt and cool down reduction are from a trait then that would be fine, it needs investment but if this is mostly baseline it does 3 things all at the same time which is why everyone hated HoT.
Anyway this is definitely one of the skills I’ll be playing with to see the limitations of it and just how it works, same with deadeye and just how stupid this will be with SA sniping.
Peachy runs no more than 600 units away and the skill vanishes way before 20s are up. Wonder what causes that interaction but if the skill has a range and larger than 600 it will be over powered. It does have a 0.75 cast time and a very obvious animation. It has a damage coefficient of about 1 considering she has 2050 power from her amulet. It’s ground targeted and should obey shadow step rules that portal doesn’t. Barrier…well I want to know how this mechanic truly plays out since as of now we know that it’s capped at 50% of max go and scales off of healing power based on an individual ratio per skill. It starts to decay after 2s and will full decay in 6 second after regardless of how much you have.
I will be playing it a bunch but I can see it being taken by pretty much everyone since it would be one of the only decent mobility skills on a class that has incredibly low mobility.
I will laugh if the skill turns out to be awekittenhough. I really will.
@Sigmoid – Like apharma said, its way overtuned. This was a problem with HoT where skills were doing too many things at once, and now its just worse in PoF so far. It shouldn’t be boon corrupting or damaging enemies. It should only be porting allies, and the barrier it gives them should be much lower as well.
That would actually allow them to increase the range of it as well. This is just kitten design.
Maybe they actually want the range of it to be short and havig a range that’s roughly 10x shorter is what allows them to design it to have other features that fit the design of the spec. It’s not supposed to be a carbon copy of the ability but on another class. Looking at the skill in a vacuum is also not a good idea.
You can literally go through all the pros and cons of the two and they aren’t that bad.
Which probably mean that desert shroud is also a skill that can be interrupt… I the end this can’t even count as a defense skill, that’s sad.
.
How the skill is instant..you cast it, it does 7 ticks over 6s and you gain barrier which will decay over 8s because that’s how barrier as a mechanic seems to work. It won’t end if you lose the barrier you granted yourself.
What interest me more is whether the barrier is refreshed once per pulse. If that’s the case, it make this “desert shroud” no so bad.
Watch WPs video. It doesn’t. The barrier would have just about finished decaying before the skill stops pulsing.
The skill will still apply 14 stacks of torment to up to 20 targets.
5 around you and 5 around each shade. That’s if it works that way else it’s just 5 over all but still it’s not a bad amount of torment. Also tested torment is as strong as beled while still or twice as strong while moving. 14-28 stacks of ‘bleed’ isn’t a small amount to snuff at if you can get all the pulses to land.
Based on that image, Scourge’s portal will last for 20 seconds as opposed to our 10 seconds, will give allies that use it a HUGE barrier of around 1,300, as well as convert boons on any enemies that are near it when its placed, as well as it actually dealing damage.
This is kitten. This isn’t sharing portal with another class, this is flat out giving portal 2.0 to another class and not giving mesmer anything in return for it. I mean hell, our own portal isn’t even updated to match this. Not to mention a 28 kittening second CD on this, instead of the 72 seconds on portal for mesmers.
It would be fine if other classes were given portal. Its kitten that they are given something that is way better than portal is. Especially for a PvP environment this is kitten.
What the skill actually does is it’s a ground targeted teleport with a short range that creates a portal between the two points that you and your allies can move through to gain barrier and reposition. It’s also 28s with the trait..it’s 35s without.
You can’t cast and wait a minute before dropping it somewhere useful. You can’t move huge distances with it. Presumably you can’t skip certain terrain with it since it’s a teleport/shadow step. It also has a 0.75s cast time so can be interrupted.
It won’t be anywhere near as versitile or strong as portal. Simmer down.
I hope it’s not limited to shadowstep/teleport rules as that’s one of the main and only advantages of portals. Still it does feel very much overburdened with goodies for what it is, boon corruption, barrier for allies, escape for allies or a jump in to attack/burst down then leave.
I will definitely wait to see how it plays out but it could stand to lose the boon corruption and/or damage and stay a very useful utility skill bringing an alternative to portal and map control.
Still I’m really excited to see a portal like mechanic on another class, necro no less which has needed some support for a while now.
Watching peachys video the range is small and it vanishes if you move to far away from the portals location. It won’t really be a huge alternative.
It can also be seen that’s it’s ground targeted. Pretty much every ground targeted teleport in the game requires a valid path so I don’t see why it won’t have the same limitation.
It’s closer to lightning flash/infaltraitors strike / judges intervention type skills than anything else.
I re-watched the official Scourge introduction material and noticed something that might suggest teleporting to Shade locations, if it’s not the new Portal.
Here, go frame by frame. Clearly teleporting behind the mob to the second Shade location. Can’t say if it’s the new utility or not, since I don’t recognize animations yet.
Thats sand swell the teleport skill. It doesn’t involve moving to shades or anything it just teleports you to target location and creates a portal between the two that when used grants barrier.
The “mobility” theme we heard of is strangely…not here. We have the portal-lite utility and the thorn-walk, but is that it? I hoped that aspect wouldn’t be just on utility skills we might not even use, but possibly on traits or baseline.
With the portal I wish we could see the range tooltip and potentially how many hanged it has for people to move through it. But it does last 20s and it is a teleport so you can Z-axis with it.
One way it could be used is to prevent barrier for decaying to far. Barrier seems to tart decaying after 2s and is gone 6s after that. You could hop every few seconds to prevent the decay and gain even more barrier.
It can be traited to grant your next shade burning and remove condition because it grants barrier. Looks like a very very useful skill and far more mobility than we had before. I know everyone will try a build with this, flesh wurm and spectral walk to do some odd jukes.
Based on that image, Scourge’s portal will last for 20 seconds as opposed to our 10 seconds, will give allies that use it a HUGE barrier of around 1,300, as well as convert boons on any enemies that are near it when its placed, as well as it actually dealing damage.
This is kitten. This isn’t sharing portal with another class, this is flat out giving portal 2.0 to another class and not giving mesmer anything in return for it. I mean hell, our own portal isn’t even updated to match this. Not to mention a 28 kittening second CD on this, instead of the 72 seconds on portal for mesmers.
It would be fine if other classes were given portal. Its kitten that they are given something that is way better than portal is. Especially for a PvP environment this is kitten.
What the skill actually does is it’s a ground targeted teleport with a short range that creates a portal between the two points that you and your allies can move through to gain barrier and reposition. It’s also 28s with the trait..it’s 35s without.
You can’t cast and wait a minute before dropping it somewhere useful. You can’t move huge distances with it. Presumably you can’t skip certain terrain with it since it’s a teleport/shadow step. It also has a 0.75s cast time so can be interrupted.
It won’t be anywhere near as versitile or strong as portal. Simmer down.
Only the teleport seems to be good, but you can’t compare a single teleport to all the teleports and leaps the other classes have.
Its not sure on its mechanics but it has a duration of 20s. Im assuming the range is short but you can freely move between the two points and every time you do you will gain barrier.
That mean that if you don’t active any Fx skill your shades don’t cast any kind of skill, doing no damage.
But you will be using f skills all the time. Its going to be very similar to playing a mesmer in the way that you will always be ‘shattering’ you shade skills.
The other problem is: 3 shades activated with Desert Shroud will inflict up to 21 stacks of Torment over 6 seconds (still if not ticking at the same time because they last only 2 sec, it’s still 21 stacks of -trait powred- Torment).
Not usre how you are getting 21 stacks here.
One thing though its that scourges will have an insane amount of boons and a bunch of area denial.
Im also eger to see the skill changes they will make to the other traitlines since they all have to be changed to work differently. You cant have abilites that work when enterign or exiting shroud or while staying in shroud presumably. Also at least transfusion will be able to heal us now.
only a single portal to move that seems to teleport TO the target and Not away from it
Its a ground targeted skill. You can move in any direction you like including the z-axis. Sure it may have a small range but it lasts 20s and grants barrier every time someone uses it.
Watch this from the official GW guys at after 22 seconds or this at 01:01:29 .It looks like this ability will teleport you to the target location dealing damage and corrupting a boon into torment and cripple. Allies passing through the tunnel will be granted barrier. This ability has a 35(28)s cooldown. Portal lasts 20s. Range seems small though and the portal seems to vanish if you move too far away.
More info from watching WP when he is attacking as a weaver ( traited so dual skills grant barrier ) and as a scourge. Barrier looks like it will start to decay after 2 seconds of not being used and no matter how much you have it will decay over 6 seconds. Gaining more barrier resets the timer.
So a tanky necro with 25k hp will get a 20k health bar via Reaper + Soul Reaping, but only a 12.5k hp bar via Scourge? But Scourge can share that barrier health bar with your whole team? Interesting. As WP hinted at in passing on his video, that makes the combo of a front-rank vitality reaper and a back-rank healing power scourge pretty durable. Assuming of course that the Scourge’s barrier effects scale enough with healing power that you can actually maintain barrier levels close to the cap value. That might depend on whether there are runes/sigils/food out there that can spread additional barrier.
Keep in mind that the max at one time. You don’t have to use all your Barrier at once.
There is some really interesting combos. For example the grandmaster trait that lets you summon 1 Shade every 10 counts as 3 shades for trait purposes. So that major trait that gives 2000 Barrier when summoning a Shade will give you 6000 Barrier at base.
6000 Barrier every 10 seconds is pretty decent.
The heal is like 4.5k healing and 4k barrier on a 20 sec CD (can be traited to 16). Throw in F3 for about 2.6 Barrier on a 8 sec CD (Soul Reaping trait to 6.8) and F5 fkr 4.5k Barrier at 20 sec CD (traited to 17).
Sure it may not be as tanking as old Necro but I think it is better offensively.
Bare in mind every barrier number you have quoted is with a healing power of 1.2k. The numbers wont be anywhere near as high without healing power. For instance the heal skill sand flare has a base of about 2.7k with a scaling on healing power of 1.2. Shade 2 has a base of about 1700 with a scaling on 0.77 on healing power.
Wasnt there a big barrier on our New heal skill aswell ? think I saw a 4k+ Heal and a 4k+ barrier
Yep it’s there.
4k on heal
2.6k on f2
4.5k on f5
2k on F1 of teaited when summoning.
Some more from one of the other utilities.
Only wondering if your super shade counts as 3 for summon traits so grants 3x the barrier.
Also if F1 has no target cap then you can do about 2.0 coeffa of damage every few seconds. Pretty strong damage. Grevious stats has power and conditions main and precision and ferocity secondary. Should be good for this stuff.
Just a thought. The torment damage increase means that it’s as strong as bleed on a non moving target but on a moving target 1 stack of tomrent is essentially 2 stacks of bleed.
I was going to go full details but would be too much typing or screen capping.
Things I noticed. One thing to not though is the mechanic skill number 1 doesnt stats that targets can only be effected once. He was using a sage amulet so the damage does is about 0.5coeffs so 2 in all. None of the other shade skills have any cast time so you should be able to get some interesting burst out of it if it works this way. Also, Dhuumfire burst with this and other burn skills.
Secondly…WTH is with the grievous stat set? POWER/CONDI/perc/fero…jesus. Hybrid Damage Wars 2: Path of Hyrbid incoming.
The elite spec looks interesting, but removal of Shroud has to be compensated in some way. Shroud is not only bland hitpoints, it’s also 50% built-in direct damage reduction.
Wonder how well barrier works as a mechanic since it goes upto 50% of your hp and how fast we can generate it. Also feast from corruption as a trait seems insane. Gain boons you remove or corrupt.
Looking at the traits there is some interesting synergy there already.
Heal: Barrer and heal. Criple and torment enemies. 20s cooldown
Utility 1: Leave burning trait thats grants swiftness to allies.1 Boon converted to torment and cripple. stun break. 20s cooldown.
Utility 2: Gain lf ( its 10% but its 5 targets, unsure if its per target struck..). Grant might and convert boon 1 to condi and torment
Elite: 5 pulses. Convert boon to torment and cripple. Grant might and slow enemies. 60s cooldown.
Mechanic skill 1: Summon shade. Using shade skill strikes foes around you and the shades doing torment and cripple.
Mechanic skill 2: Use LF. Convert 2 condi to boons. Targets affected one once per cast. 5s cooldown
Mechanic skill 3: Use LF. Grant barrier to allies. Targets affected one once per cast. 8s cooldown
Mechanic skill 4: Use LF. Fear targets around you and shades. Targets affected one once per cast. 15s cooldown
Mechanic skill5 5: Lasts 6s, pulses 7 times. Does damage and 2 stacks of torment around you and shades. Targets affected one once per pulse. 20s cooldown.
yeah but then we’re reliant on having boons to strip, and we don’t know if it’s based on stacks, ie 5 stacks of torment from sc3 = 5 burn stacks or 1 burn stack for the single application of torment, guess we’ll have to wait for the skills, not sure if what we’ve been given makes us raid viable?
No we aren’t … Scepter 3 applies torment. Last time I checked anyways. And yes, we have other ways to do so.
Shade skill #1 also put out torment as well so its going to be everywhere
I’m just wondering what they will do with all the core traits that only works in shroud or on activation… Almost half of all the traits have to do with shroud in some way or another. Will they be changed or will they be worthless?
WP has shown on his current stream that we get 5 skills above the bar that will work with shroud skills. Keep an eye on reddit and dulfy will sure enough ahve all the screen caps from all the streams son enough
The expac should include an extensive balance update.
In WP’s thing they have something about an amunition system that some skills now use. Since the new stuff is in next weekend I am going to assume they will drop the balance next week before the weekend
It was obvious we would never get movement or other support / defence as long as we had shroud. I’m more interested in exactly what the new class mechanic is
That elite will be at 100% Condi based, while the reaper will totally converted in pure Power damage
this is something i highly doubt will happen.
As I know, wasn’t Reaper supposed to be a pure DPS spec ?
I wouldnt say dps, more melee bruiser/cleave master. Most traits are extra survivability, more area damage or letting you do more damage while being tankier. Shroud has stab and lots of cleave too.
