Love the rotation tips and blocks. Every other guide is just "use everything off cd" but I appreciate a little more insight into how and why. Great guide!
Thanks! I'm glad you found it useful. I always much preferred having rotations broken down like that, rather than having to watch a benchmark video on half speed haha.
Absolutely love your guides. My Necro hit 80 today, and I was juuuust thinking about what Spec to play. Gonna go with Reaper first, but this one is high on my list as well. Thank you! :)
Reaper is a fantastic shout (and is going to be even better after this week's patch). Reaper is great for open world and has a super fun rotation. Scourge has carried me through so much sketchy content as well haha.
Quick Mention: Blood Magic got nerfed into the ground recently, but will be fixed, or re-balanced in an upcoming patch. Meanwhile, you can still use Death Magic (the one with the scales and +pet damage) on 1 - 1 - 1 or 1 - 1 - 2 for some extra toughness.
this looks really good, assuming its still good? I have noticed that the traits are slight different, desert empowerment seems to have moved until the end with demonic lore. You got an updated or tweaked version?
Yep Scourge is still incredible. In terms of traits you can just run all the middle traits in Scourge (Sadistic Searing instead of Feed from Corruption). Run the Relic of the Fractal with Trapper Runes and you're good to go.
Great build and indepth video! Def looking forward to more content from you! Helped me get into Scourge to prep for harder stuff after being a long time Reaper Open World main. Though, Is there a certain timing you go by for when you should resummon more shades between shade skills?
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the guide! Ideally you'd want to summon another Sand Shade when you have no other skills to cast and you're not in the middle of an auto attack chain. I generally just keep an eye on the Sand Shade charges and as soon as I get more than zero, I summon a Sand Shade at the next opportunity. Keeping the charges at zero when you have Alacrity will basically always result in you having 3 up.
Could you clarify what you mean by "grouping" skills, like grouping Scepter 3 & 2 together? Afaik I can't cast these skills simultaneously, so do you mean using the skills right after each other?
Great videos. The only issue I have is when running Blood trait line for easy rez you can't add Garish Pillar to your rotation, or it won't be available to actually rez people when it is needed.
Oh what the hell I wasn't using soul barbs because i thought it didn't work. Does the shade have to hit enemies to trigger these "on enter/leave" shroud effects?
@@connorconcarne tyvm, I now learned that F5 triggers "Enter shroud" effects, which made me rethink some of my traits. I'm assuming it also triggers exit shroud effects? With this in mind, some traits I gloosed over like "Life from Death" may not be as useless as I first thought, maybe not as good as vampiric presence, but not useless
Scourge got a bit of a nerf in the last update and it's DPS Benchmark is around 35k iirc. The patch this week should have some huge buffs from Scourge which will push its DPS past 40k apparently.
Harbinger will give you higher damage (39k benchmark vs 35k for Scourge), but will generally offer less group support (no baked in Condi Cleanse and Signet of Undeath). Harbinger is also much less survivable due to how Blight lowers their HP. So, Harbinger is more aggressive and Scourge is more supportive.
for a month now im trying to find some "hard numbers" for condition/expertise but *EVERY* info text & video out there is like this.... blabla about the basics& usage, but no numbers.... idk why
Scourge is excellent in open world when it comes to survivability. You can always swap out Lingering Curse for Parasitic Contagion to give yourself a ton of extra healing based on your condition damage. Reaper is outstanding in open world as well.
Unfortunately there isn't really a good alternative to Blood is Power, it's a very large percentage of your damage especially when paired with Desert Shroud/Plague Sending. Best thing you can do is activate Desert Shroud just as Blood is Power is about to finish the cast.
@@gartner654 my question exactly... snowcrows' build/guide kind of implies that you cast desert shroud first and blood is power second, so i assumed it works.
You can buy the Ice Golem Headpiece and Ebon Shoulders from the trading post for a few gold and these are stat selectable. You can also get stat selectable Bladed Armor from Verdant Brink for very cheap if you have the map currency.
the worst thing about scourge is that the constant access to the shroud skills makes you want those skills on somethign else then f1-f4 which is fine but since gw2 doesnt allow for character specific keybindings i find myself always in the options menus reconfiring stuff when i played my scourge
You get nightmare runes by completing dungeons and purchasing them with the Tales of Dungeon delving. They originally came from Twilight Arbor so you'd likely need to complete this path at least once to unlock the ability to buy them. If you want a cheap alternative feel free to use Rune of the Lich. It's a slight DPS loss but they are uber cheap on the trading post.
fair but epidemic means that quite often the actual damage is HIGHER than the benchmark where other classes practically always end up lower than their benchmark that being said id probably describe scourge builds as hybrids or outright as supporter and you are right that ultimate dps is quite the claim
