This is absolutely the best scourge guide I have ever seen. I was looking for a decent guide for newer players to send to friends and this is just perfect! Thanks! 🥰 I have been playing this for years and always loved it. Back in the days I quit raiding because I hated mashing rotations which killed all the fun for me. It was scourge which brought me back since it's so reactive and reliable while having more of a priority list and all the flexibilty I could wish for.
Scourge is still my favorite profession to play. It carried me through all Open/Raid/PVP/WVW content. I hope it doesnt get discarded. I really want to play it more. But the Dev team seem to be obsessed with mechs atm
To Scourge's benefit, I would add. No one is talking about Scourge being OP anymore with all the mechs out and about! As yes, it got clapped pretty hard in PvP, but it is still an absolute monster in PvE. I've still yet to try the full viper build, as Plaguedoctor is just so much fun!
Very nice. You've jammed all the most important parts of Scourge into one not-too-long video. I agree strongly about shade placement. It's an annoyance. I don't know all fights well enough to know where every mob might be programmed to run. I also don't know where someone else on landscape might end up pulling my foe away. The easy placement trick for any necro and especially the scourge is to have at least one minion to send at your foe first. Where they collide is frequently a "sticky" spot on the landscape that will last long enough for me to get several skills piled onto the foe as long as I let the minion actually start the fight on my behalf. (Same thing rangers can do with their pets and now mechanists with their mech.) Shadow Fiend is my favorite for this because Haunt ports him to the enemy with a blind, chill and weakness I can take advantage of. So he can start the fight and grab aggro while I'm still closing into my best range. His Haunt skill has usually recharged by the time I might want to cast Haunt again and grab some Life Force. Most necro players know this but it's also simple enough that I think a lot of people overlook mentioning it for new players.
True, I have played scourge for years but didn't think of this use fo rthe shadowfiend. I always took it only for some extra dmg when I didn't need another utility skill.😅
Great video and clear explanation. One of the best guides I found so far for scourge. Thanks you One question: you said that to master the class, the shade positioning is important, but what are some examples for that?
Thank you!! I really wanna try this spec since i've been playing Reaper for quite a long time now. Eventually, i wanna have two builds: this one for condi and a full healer with Magi and Mercy runes.
IDK if I'm missing something, but I'm in full viper ascended gear and nightmare runes. When I put down 3 shades and use meaty asparagus, I'm only at 98.3% torment duration. Am I missing something? :(
idk what i'm doing wrong here. i can only do 25k max against golem with full ascended gears -boots and warhorn and with foods. 16-25k on ibs strikes, and 8-15k on EoD strikes. my virtuoso out dps my scourge with exotic gears and no food.
always use shade f2 off cooldown to proc burn and torment,use blood of power+dersert shorud > now use Plaguelands ,for food use koi cake+ tunning ice easy to hit 30-33K dont focus on chain attack skill 1 to my much
@@Benz49421 i did the exact same rotation, build, foods from Hardstuck website. i kinda fix the problem, i do use shade F2, blood is power+desert shroud+plaguelands off cd, i think the problem was i keep canceling my AA chain by using the weapon skills off cd. i improve my dps ( kinda ) now i do 15-30k on EoD strikes and 25k-33k on IBS strikes. but i still struggle doing more than 9k on AH and more than 16k on fraenir i don't know what is the problem in those two strikes i keep thinking maybe because scourge/condi is bad in certain fight like AH and fraenir or maybe because i play with 250ms++ ping.
@@Benz49421 wow really? 700+ ping? i can't even play the game if i get more than 350ms, everything is so delayed it's hard to dodge the boss mechanics. i don't think i'm missing my rotation, because i've seen other scourge in my squad doing the same damage as me in AH/fraenir. but now i think it doesn't really matter, i stopped playing scourge ( unless they need blood magic scourge to ress people ), i'm maining vindicator now. my vindicator is so consistent than my scourge. doing top 2 dps on every strikes/open world.
With full viper do you have any difficulties in maintaining life force? As I'm using plaguedoctor with tormenting runes I can smash buttons without thinking gonna be out of life force. And in most T1 -T2 fracs I can get mostly 2nd in dps. However I don't know about higher content like T4 or even raids with plaguedoctor builds gonna be esp about some group demands high dps. My PD scourge gets around 18K in golem. I wish maybe you can do a comparison viper vs PD scourge set.
In fractals I never have life force issues because there are always things doing around me, so the pool usually falls up faster than I can actually use it... I don't really see much value in plaguedoctor these days
Very nice video ! Ty It look's like your F1 and scepter 2 are instantly cast on your target, we can't even see the green area. How do you do that ? Because when i play scourge i have to 2x press F1 or scepter 2 on my target, or left click on it, i may loose a lil' bit of time doing so.
In your builds, you are using Insidius Disruption instead of Plague Sending for some reason? I see the explanation in your video that Plague Sending is used for condition transfer. Thanks a lot for your great and useful video!
That is an outcome of UA-cam cutting short the links... if I open the links through UA-cam studio, it shows the correct traits. I'll post the links in a pinned comment again to hopefully fix that
@@MaselMMO Hi, thanks for your guide and I had the same question. I've had tormenting runes in my ascended Viper gear for a while and can't remove them without upgrade extractors which are too expensive, so I'm trying to make do with the tormenting runes. You said it was fine in the replies which is good news but I'd just like to understand why, because the absence of the 6th rune effect in the nightmare runes seems to be messing up my Plaguelands ability and it's hard to transfer all conditions. Could you please possibly advise how you'd handle Plaguelands with tormenting runes?
Hello, nice video, i play scourge as my main. Build close to your build (except no Nightmare runes, I use lich as long as i have no nightmare). However, something i must do in general wrong, i can't get beyond low 20k dps on golem (with condi on golems, bones on me and condi food / utility)
I am also not able to get much over 20k. I have the nightmare runes. I do need to get better rings but not sure where I am going wrong. I would like to play this but can not get the DPS high enough.
@@thaddeusgames9951 Hi ... i found some additional potential. A lot is in rotation / skill use. went up to 26+k now. With more optimization to 28+ k (different food, and nightmare runes) - do the festival, generic currency bag can give you dungeon currency - easy to get the runes. Other tips: work on maintaining your shades. Open wit Blood is Power plus F5, use it when ever possible. (thats not easy). don't cast shades to fast and don't use shade skills too fast. You lose the Dhumfire effect when below 1 second in between. ... I'm still far away from 34k, but much better.
You're the first to complain about that in over a year and close to 1 million views of all my build guides. The video wouldn't have the same atmosphere without it.
I disagree as a new player. I did this build -and she died a lot. I had a minion build that I survived everything with.... I switched to this after getting all the points - and it was the worst mistake. I looked online and everyone says the same - scourge, I found it to be a lot of clocks, a lot of dying.
If you watched the video closely you should have all the information you need to survive. The death magic build uses minions, I'm not really sure why you're assuming that the build I suggest for solo gameplay does not. Death magic, paired with parasitic contagion you get a lot of toughness, condition cleanses, healing, barrier. And statements like "everyone says the same" always make me sceptical.
@@MaselMMO its a slight one and can be only noticed by others that speaks German. I was thinking to play Gw2 and start with scourge is it for beginners and is it good in endgame?
I darken the screen sometimes so that the tooltips/skill decriptions have better visibility while i explain them. Never had someone complain about it before tbh
becuase of you applying conditions to yourself for buffing it makes staying alive hard for new player, i suggest using offhand dagger for that condi transfer
I speak english without any problems, i really know this language pretty good. But i cant understand what tf are u talking about. U speak so fast and so incomprehensible.. Please try to speak the way everyone can understand you :P
It's quite rare that I get comments like this. If it's too fast for you: play the video at 0.75 speed If you don't understand what im saying: I'm no native speaker, but English with a German accent is usually fairly simple to understand... not really anything I can do about that. As I said, I think this is only the second comment under all of my videos that said something like this :(
@@MaselMMO Hey, dont get me wrong. I know my comment sounded harsh, but i didnt mean it. Sometimes u just speak too fast, which makes u pronounce some words really hard to understand. Try to speak a little bit slower, cuz i feel like watching video with 2xspeed. Ur english is not bad, i bet every British will understand u cuz they speak like that, which is not good for people that are not native speakers. Also its hard to understand cuz the things u are talking about. Most people who learn languages, they dont really learn words and colloquial speech from games, so they need few seconds to ''think'' what u meant. I hope u know what i meant, keep up good work :)
@@TheHydra122 hah when i watched this i thought i had left the speed on 1.25 but it was on normal. Im native english and he does talk hella fast, slowing it down just a little bit would be great otherwise great video :)
@@TheHydra122 idk, I am no native speaker but I understood what Masel said. I watch a bunch of videos at 1.5x speed and also I watch a bunch of English speaking streamer who talk hella fast ( and I even know a bunch of people who in real life talk way faster in my native language).
This is absolutely the best scourge guide I have ever seen. I was looking for a decent guide for newer players to send to friends and this is just perfect! Thanks! 🥰
I have been playing this for years and always loved it. Back in the days I quit raiding because I hated mashing rotations which killed all the fun for me. It was scourge which brought me back since it's so reactive and reliable while having more of a priority list and all the flexibilty I could wish for.
Scourge is still my favorite profession to play. It carried me through all Open/Raid/PVP/WVW content. I hope it doesnt get discarded. I really want to play it more. But the Dev team seem to be obsessed with mechs atm
To Scourge's benefit, I would add. No one is talking about Scourge being OP anymore with all the mechs out and about! As yes, it got clapped pretty hard in PvP, but it is still an absolute monster in PvE. I've still yet to try the full viper build, as Plaguedoctor is just so much fun!
As an ex WoW player those mechs seem like the death knights at the start of WotLK, every man and his dog has them and they're all up in your face !
Best way to scare a mechanist is to charge at his mech and destroy it the not so skilled ones don’t know what to do ☠️
what s up
Very nice. You've jammed all the most important parts of Scourge into one not-too-long video.
I agree strongly about shade placement. It's an annoyance. I don't know all fights well enough to know where every mob might be programmed to run. I also don't know where someone else on landscape might end up pulling my foe away.
The easy placement trick for any necro and especially the scourge is to have at least one minion to send at your foe first. Where they collide is frequently a "sticky" spot on the landscape that will last long enough for me to get several skills piled onto the foe as long as I let the minion actually start the fight on my behalf. (Same thing rangers can do with their pets and now mechanists with their mech.) Shadow Fiend is my favorite for this because Haunt ports him to the enemy with a blind, chill and weakness I can take advantage of. So he can start the fight and grab aggro while I'm still closing into my best range. His Haunt skill has usually recharged by the time I might want to cast Haunt again and grab some Life Force. Most necro players know this but it's also simple enough that I think a lot of people overlook mentioning it for new players.
True, I have played scourge for years but didn't think of this use fo rthe shadowfiend. I always took it only for some extra dmg when I didn't need another utility skill.😅
Great video and clear explanation. One of the best guides I found so far for scourge. Thanks you
One question: you said that to master the class, the shade positioning is important, but what are some examples for that?
Thank you!! I really wanna try this spec since i've been playing Reaper for quite a long time now. Eventually, i wanna have two builds: this one for condi and a full healer with Magi and Mercy runes.
Personally I prefer reaper but thanks for the guide I've been meaning to play scourge for a little while now
i started reaper but he just sucks in group content ;/
@@icata12345 reaper's not that bad I mean I main reaper on fractals and I get about an average of 29k damage
@@shawnrelevo9534 29k is support damage
@@BlackSkyZ2 BS 29k in fractals and overall is totaly finde
@@Basti203 for t4 fractals sure
Hi Masel. Thx for great guide. BTW do you remember what music track is at 09:38 ?
IDK if I'm missing something, but I'm in full viper ascended gear and nightmare runes. When I put down 3 shades and use meaty asparagus, I'm only at 98.3% torment duration. Am I missing something? :(
idk what i'm doing wrong here. i can only do 25k max against golem with full ascended gears -boots and warhorn and with foods. 16-25k on ibs strikes, and 8-15k on EoD strikes.
my virtuoso out dps my scourge with exotic gears and no food.
always use shade f2 off cooldown to proc burn and torment,use blood of power+dersert shorud > now use Plaguelands ,for food use koi cake+ tunning ice easy to hit 30-33K dont focus on chain attack skill 1 to my much
@@Benz49421 i did the exact same rotation, build, foods from Hardstuck website.
i kinda fix the problem, i do use shade F2, blood is power+desert shroud+plaguelands off cd, i think the problem was i keep canceling my AA chain by using the weapon skills off cd.
i improve my dps ( kinda ) now i do 15-30k on EoD strikes and 25k-33k on IBS strikes. but i still struggle doing more than 9k on AH and more than 16k on fraenir i don't know what is the problem in those two strikes i keep thinking maybe because scourge/condi is bad in certain fight like AH and fraenir or maybe because i play with 250ms++ ping.
@@PanjolArt my ping is 700+,i play ibs strike and eod,raid and old fractal cm i get hit around 30k, 9 k sound like you miss some rotation
@@Benz49421 wow really? 700+ ping?
i can't even play the game if i get more than 350ms, everything is so delayed it's hard to dodge the boss mechanics.
i don't think i'm missing my rotation, because i've seen other scourge in my squad doing the same damage as me in AH/fraenir.
but now i think it doesn't really matter, i stopped playing scourge ( unless they need blood magic scourge to ress people ), i'm maining vindicator now. my vindicator is so consistent than my scourge. doing top 2 dps on every strikes/open world.
@@Benz49421 how do you have 700+ ping? I live on the other side of the planet (Aisa) and have ping of 280 witch is considered high
i suggest using alt+a, alt+s, alt+d, alt+f .... instead of alt+1 etc as the numbers will be too far for your fingers
With full viper do you have any difficulties in maintaining life force? As I'm using plaguedoctor with tormenting runes I can smash buttons without thinking gonna be out of life force. And in most T1 -T2 fracs I can get mostly 2nd in dps.
However I don't know about higher content like T4 or even raids with plaguedoctor builds gonna be esp about some group demands high dps.
My PD scourge gets around 18K in golem.
I wish maybe you can do a comparison viper vs PD scourge set.
In fractals I never have life force issues because there are always things doing around me, so the pool usually falls up faster than I can actually use it... I don't really see much value in plaguedoctor these days
this guide is perfect for me, not that guy who spam z in his every words
Very good explanation, thx a lot!^^
Very nice video ! Ty
It look's like your F1 and scepter 2 are instantly cast on your target, we can't even see the green area. How do you do that ? Because when i play scourge i have to 2x press F1 or scepter 2 on my target, or left click on it, i may loose a lil' bit of time doing so.
go to options -> general tab -> scroll down the combat/movement section and set Ground Targeting: Fast with Range indicator
@@Rafsaurus Thanks for answering :)
also enabling 'Lock ground target at maximum skill range' is a must have
@@Rafsaurus ty very much :D
If you don't have nightmare sigil's, what's a good alternative until you get them?
I believe 5 Trapper runes and 1 black diamond is commonly used as an alternative for nightmare.
This seems nice, but does anyone know if plaguedoctor is still viable. :I
In your builds, you are using Insidius Disruption instead of Plague Sending for some reason? I see the explanation in your video that Plague Sending is used for condition transfer. Thanks a lot for your great and useful video!
That is an outcome of UA-cam cutting short the links... if I open the links through UA-cam studio, it shows the correct traits.
I'll post the links in a pinned comment again to hopefully fix that
Thoughts on using minions with lich runes?
Tried this my max DPS is 26.5k on golem idk why.
Is this build still up to date?
Yes :)
If you were taking staff on off-hand what sigils would you put in?
I personally would use torment and bursting as well
I have a viper gear but with tormenting runes instead. Will the build still work?
Yes, absolutely
@@MaselMMO Thank you!
@@MaselMMO Hi, thanks for your guide and I had the same question. I've had tormenting runes in my ascended Viper gear for a while and can't remove them without upgrade extractors which are too expensive, so I'm trying to make do with the tormenting runes. You said it was fine in the replies which is good news but I'd just like to understand why, because the absence of the 6th rune effect in the nightmare runes seems to be messing up my Plaguelands ability and it's hard to transfer all conditions. Could you please possibly advise how you'd handle Plaguelands with tormenting runes?
how are u achieving 30k DPS/s, i don't know what i am doing wrong maximum i am able to hit is 23k DPS /s .
Its hard to say without having "video evidence". Any chance you coudl record a golem parse or record a log with arcdps?
staff build ?
Can Celestial work with this ?
celes is good for open world and wvw in raid strike fractal viper sc is more dps easy to bump dps to 30 k
i just can't get more than 29.5k dps on the golem how the hell are you getting ABOVE 30k???
Do you have all Ascended/Legendary equip? Also, are you putting the boons on yourself and the conditions on the Golem for the testing?
what addon do you use to show total damage?
Arcdps :) Google it, the site tells you how to install it
this is soo overwhelming :/ i wanna play this but iam dying alot xD iam new to the game
Hello, nice video, i play scourge as my main. Build close to your build (except no Nightmare runes, I use lich as long as i have no nightmare). However, something i must do in general wrong, i can't get beyond low 20k dps on golem (with condi on golems, bones on me and condi food / utility)
I am also not able to get much over 20k. I have the nightmare runes. I do need to get better rings but not sure where I am going wrong. I would like to play this but can not get the DPS high enough.
@@thaddeusgames9951 Hi ... i found some additional potential. A lot is in rotation / skill use. went up to 26+k now. With more optimization to 28+ k (different food, and nightmare runes) - do the festival, generic currency bag can give you dungeon currency - easy to get the runes. Other tips: work on maintaining your shades. Open wit Blood is Power plus F5, use it when ever possible. (thats not easy). don't cast shades to fast and don't use shade skills too fast. You lose the Dhumfire effect when below 1 second in between. ... I'm still far away from 34k, but much better.
How do you manage to have 44k HP in the first fight after the intro?😧
5 stacks of emboldened
@@TheLightningpenguin oh okay😅
Nice guide, but i will stay with my condi-alac specter.
Okay, have fun then :P
Why the background music? It makes it harder to hear the commentary and it's bloody distracting!
You're the first to complain about that in over a year and close to 1 million views of all my build guides. The video wouldn't have the same atmosphere without it.
I disagree as a new player. I did this build -and she died a lot. I had a minion build that I survived everything with.... I switched to this after getting all the points - and it was the worst mistake. I looked online and everyone says the same - scourge, I found it to be a lot of clocks, a lot of dying.
If you watched the video closely you should have all the information you need to survive.
The death magic build uses minions, I'm not really sure why you're assuming that the build I suggest for solo gameplay does not.
Death magic, paired with parasitic contagion you get a lot of toughness, condition cleanses, healing, barrier.
And statements like "everyone says the same" always make me sceptical.
ofc you cant just survive fractals with no support if you meaning that,cause scourge only dying there :D
nice video.But let me guess your German?you couldnt get rid of that german accent when you speaking english haha.
I am, yes. I'd say that in comparison to some other fellow germans, my accent is not that strong :P
@@MaselMMO its a slight one and can be only noticed by others that speaks German.
I was thinking to play Gw2 and start with scourge is it for beginners and is it good in endgame?
@@skillforce3483 scourge is a great beginner spec, yes :) Necromancer in general is one of the easiest entry classes
@@MaselMMO how is it in endgame is it owning the game?
WTF why this video is so dark....
I darken the screen sometimes so that the tooltips/skill decriptions have better visibility while i explain them. Never had someone complain about it before tbh
cant't play scourge, even with all this videos im dead in seconds, its just not my playstyle i guess
becuase of you applying conditions to yourself for buffing it makes staying alive hard for new player, i suggest using offhand dagger for that condi transfer
I speak english without any problems, i really know this language pretty good. But i cant understand what tf are u talking about. U speak so fast and so incomprehensible.. Please try to speak the way everyone can understand you :P
It's quite rare that I get comments like this.
If it's too fast for you: play the video at 0.75 speed
If you don't understand what im saying: I'm no native speaker, but English with a German accent is usually fairly simple to understand... not really anything I can do about that. As I said, I think this is only the second comment under all of my videos that said something like this :(
@@MaselMMO Hey, dont get me wrong. I know my comment sounded harsh, but i didnt mean it. Sometimes u just speak too fast, which makes u pronounce some words really hard to understand. Try to speak a little bit slower, cuz i feel like watching video with 2xspeed. Ur english is not bad, i bet every British will understand u cuz they speak like that, which is not good for people that are not native speakers. Also its hard to understand cuz the things u are talking about. Most people who learn languages, they dont really learn words and colloquial speech from games, so they need few seconds to ''think'' what u meant. I hope u know what i meant, keep up good work :)
@@TheHydra122 hah when i watched this i thought i had left the speed on 1.25 but it was on normal. Im native english and he does talk hella fast, slowing it down just a little bit would be great otherwise great video :)
@@TheHydra122 idk, I am no native speaker but I understood what Masel said. I watch a bunch of videos at 1.5x speed and also I watch a bunch of English speaking streamer who talk hella fast ( and I even know a bunch of people who in real life talk way faster in my native language).
You can also turn on Closed Captions on the youtube video to help you understand.
can you stop doing skill presentations with 50 monsters in the screen ? I see nothing of what any class can do, thats so boring
Learn it