Scourge - Blood Sage
The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good
Focused on: Condition damage, Support and Boon removal
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Overview
A hybrid PvP bunker Scourge build with a mix of condition pressure, barrier sharing and hightened rez power via Blood Magic.
Skill Bar
Slot Changes
Utility
There are plenty of viable options for the remaining slot:
- - lowest CD Punishment skill with boon corruption synergy, great at building Life Force even out of combat.
- - low CD barrier/boon application and damage.
- - vertical mobility, trait synergy.
- - stun break, kiting potential, cleansing and LF generation.
- - stun break and vertical mobility.
- - boon corruption/condi burst.
Weakness while doing respectable damage.
- great option against projectile-heavy comps, and it's even good in melee because it shuts down Power-based specs with
- - protects against strike damage, breaks stun, helps with resource management.
Heal
Vigor. Sometimes it's also harder to support allies with this because they might not stay in the ring for long.
- this focuses on restoring health for you and your allies rather than mitigating damage, but giving up barrier synergy is going to cost you some condition cleansing and
Weapons
- Scepter over Pistol - Scepter remains a viable option especially for people who don't own the Secrets of the Obscure expansion. You lose a CC but gain a boon corrupt, however Scepter is a slower weapon and the damage requires some setup which makes it less ideal under pressure. Take offhand Dagger too if you don't have SotO.
Template Code
Specializations
Equipment
Equipment Variants
Runes
Lynx is taken for its passive mobility which should make it easier for you to rotate around the map, especially if you and your team don't have a high Swiftness uptime. It could also help you kite enemies a bit better. If you don't need the mobility then there are other runes with better stats:
- - makes the build more tanky if you can afford to give up some passive mobility.
- - a solid choice if you want to focus more on damage.
Sigils
- - could replace one of the sigils on Pistol/Torch for improved group healing, but most of your healing is tied to Staff so it's not mandatory.
Relics
- - better endurance regen for you and your team, pushes the support angle a bit more.
Alacrity to the build, allowing you to spam your support skills more often. Using over Lynx could be considered for slightly higher boon duration.
- adds a significant amount of
Poison you apply while adding more poison procs to the build.
- offensive option, improves the healing reduction effect of
- - another source of AoE barrier sharing, but the barrier from this doesn't interact with your Scourge traits.
- - boosts your condition removal.
Usage
Elite specialization basics
- is replaced by shade skills, but shroud related traits still work. Life force (LF) is no longer drained passively or upon taking damage, but instead serves as a resource used by F2-5 skills (F1, which places the shade, is free).
Vigor that doesn't cost anything.
adds a bit of range to the build and acts as a somewhat spammable source of barrier/cleansing/
- F2-5 skills go off around both the caster and active shades.
General
- Playstyle: your role is to aid your team in larger fights by providing barrier, cleansing and boons to allies while keeping the enemy team pressured through condition damage, CC and boon corruption.
- Do not spam your staff marks on the ground while out of combat, as a single dodge can undo them all. Placing on chokes to detect enemies crossing in stealth is fine however, as it's a rather short CD and weak one.
- Using near the start of every fight and aiming to maintain at least 1 active shade is highly recommended. Having an active shade gives you damage reduction and allows you to cover a larger area with your shade skills.
- Necromancer mobility is rather bad, so try to make use of the terrain with proper positioning. Make it hard for enemies to reach you especially ranged ones - pillars are your friend.
- The build only has 1 mass cleanse by default: .
- Consider using
Stability while under heavy pressure.
before your heal for the
- is a rather powerful skill, but also easily avoidable. Don't just drop it randomly at the start of the fight, wait for the right moment - look for a situation where you can make your opponent overcommit. Place it on enemies trying to revive their downed teammate, or under yourself on low HP to scare them off.
- If taken
Stability and
Might stacks? Turn their boons against them, right into
Fear and
Weakness! It's also unblockable.
is not only a great spike skill, but also a defensive one - thanks to the low cast time CB can be used to counterpressure targets. Someone's chasing you with
Support
- Blood Magic makes you better at reviving allies:
- procs a Well that heals and revives.
- cancels the regular downstate HP degeneration.
- Applying a barrier cleanses conditions and grants
Vigor.
- , , and are your main sources of barrier sharing.
- Transfusion's effects also apply to trait procs, like the you create after dodging.
- To get the most out of the marks, aim to hit both friend and foe with the same skill.
- There's a minor downside to this trait: you can no longer place marks beneath your feet preemptively! For example on other builds you could place a under yourself right before a Revenant or Thief would jump you with a teleport, interrupting their burst attempts. With Transfusion however the mark would be triggered by you the moment it's placed, leaving you open to attacks.
adds a support element to all of your Staff marks. Allies can now trigger the marks, and each mark has a unique positive effect on top of some healing.
Protection to nearby allies for a couple of seconds, followed by a detonation that applies a larger amount of barrier while also corrupting boons on enemies. This skill only goes off around yourself and shades that were placed before the activation of this skill, so try to set up multiple shades in advance in order to cover a larger area. It's one of the strongest skills in the build both for defensive and offensive purposes so try to hit as many targets as possible, both friendly and hostile.
- Try to share as many pulses with allies as possible, but enemies only really need to be in range of this skill for the final detonation.
pulses barrier and
- adds yet another group cleanse to the build.
Life Force management
- As your shade skills cost LF, being efficient at managing this resource will be crucial for both your damage and sustain. We're going to list all the sources and provide a few tips for getting the most out of them.
- All staff skills generate life force:
- bleeding out the enemy. is a rather weak skill and there's no way you'll be able to use it much under any pressure. It does however generate 4% LF per target hit, and you should use it for the occasional ranged poking. Alternatively, right after you won a fight (and no enemies are nearby who could rez their downed allies) you can use the downed bodies as batteries and just spam staff autos on them for a substantial amount of free Life Force while
- Marks are unblockable and generate 3% LF each. and can be used freely for just pressure and LF building, while and are more powerful and should be kept for the proper occasion (Putrid for mass cleansing and Reaper's for interrupting).
- On scepter/torch you have 2 such skills:
- should be used with at least ~4 conditions on the target, both your burst damage and LF stacking benefits from the higher number of conditions on the target. Make sure that this skill lands by CCing the target with either or .
- is rather straightforward, just try to hit as many targets as possible including Ranger pets and Mesmer illusions.
- passively stacks LF for you up to the 10% threshold except for when is active.
- If taken should be used on CD even outside combat for free LF generation.
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