Scourge doesn’t have to worry about keeping track of cooldowns due to them all being visible at all times. As such, you want to use your abilities with the following prioritization in mind:
There are three key parts of your arsenal that you need to keep in mind whilst in a fight:
Shade uptime.
Punishment skills ( and /).
The / skill combination.
If you continue to maintain these, you can use the rest of your abilities off cooldown with the above skill prioritization in mind. Furthermore, without a formal rotation you are "punished" less for retaining skills that are needed for a given situation, for instance like saving for CC.
Shades:
With the amount of expertise/condition duration you get from your build, you need to maintain two shades to ensure your conditions exceed 100% bonus duration. As such, a major part of playing Scourge is maintaining two shades as much as possbile.
After the recent Alacrity changes, this is more difficult to do due to the expected amount of time spent with two shades (10 seconds, half of the total duration of 1 shade) no longer synchronizing with the recharge rate for Shade charges (12 seconds with Alacrity). This leads to one of two outcomes (with perfect Alacrity/Shade placement timing):
After 120 seconds in a fight of creating a new shade as the oldest one expires you run out of shades to cast, leading to a drop from 2 shades up at all times to 1.
You create a new shade everytime you return to 2 charges of , leading to a downtime where you only have 1 shade for 4 seconds out of every 12, leading to a 1.6 shade uptime average over the course of a fight.
To deal with this, you can either maintain 2 shades at all times and use key parts of encounters to recharge your shades (parts like the charged soul phase at Goreseval or the 50% phase at Xera); or you can account for the loss of expertise on average overall by utilizing additional .
Punishment Skills:
Somewhat directly linked to Shade usage, you should aim to always have a Punishment skill up when you need to place a new shade to ensure you procc on each placed shade. As such, avoid using your punishment skills unless your team requires the barrier from or in the case of fights like Souless Horror need your secondary Punishment skill.
-> Combo.
With Dagger removed from the build, Scourge uses the Curses minor trait
to transfer the self-inflicted conditions from to a target without having to wait for a length transfer via that is vulnerable to allies cleansing the conditions from you before they transfer.
While and have slighlty different cooldowns allow them both to come off cooldown before using either.
Finally, be aware that
will potentially transfer the less harmful self-inflicted conditions from /, so be sure to avoid using these immediately before using the / combo.
Trail of Anguish vs Shadow Fiend:
These two skills are remarkebly close in damage output, and as such the decision to take either depends on what is required on an encounter by encounter basis.
pulls slighlty ahead in potential damage, but only if you can utilize how it works properly. If you begin casting whilst on top of a target, move off of the target and then move back on them you will apply double the "effect" of (it also works this way for applying extra Swiftness/ Stability to allies). As such, you want to use when you are able to constantly be in melee range and also can pull off the stacking effect. Additionally, also offers the utility benefits of a stun break, and Stability/ Swiftness for allies. Finally, should an encounter have a boon corrupt mechanic you should never run due to the Stability it offers being prone to corruption into fear.
is slightly behind in damage potential, but only if you're in melee all the time. Should you take on a role that requires you stay at range for a singificant period of time (circle team at VG, Kiter at Sabetha, etc.) will pull ahead in damage potential. Note that this is partly due to not being able to hit with from range, but also due to granting extra Life Force; which in turn translates into being able to use more shroud skills to procc .
Of course, if you don't need to take for an encounter you would just take both.
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For a single target, Condi Reaper has three different ways to apply Blinds: , and Haunt. The main advantage of Blinds for Reaper is using them in tandem with which grants extra Bleedings via .
However, has an internal cooldown of 3 seconds, so it’s important you spread out the different applications of Bleeding in your rotation (which is why you wait to use after you perform your Scepter Auto attack chains, and you wait till you're about to swap back to Greatsword before using ).
Combo Field Attunementd
The largest difficulty of playing Condi Reaper is ensuring you use all of your whirl finishers inside of combo fields, and also making sure the specific combo fields you "hit" are ice fields (mainly the one created by ).
Practicing and improving your combo field attunement is essential as a significant portion of your damage come from your "Shroud Combo", pushing to the limit and using whirl finishers in ice fields to apply a large number of short Chilled to in turn inflict lots of Bleeding.
However, while it may seem difficult you can generally attune to ice field successfully with careful positioning and achieve a 90%+ "accuracy" rating for doing so.
A good mental checklist to go through when you approach the Shroud Combo portion of your rotation is as follows:
Before starting an encounter, try to get an idea of what kinds of fields your allies will be using. Do you have a Tempest/Chrono? Are they using skills like , , , etc?
These large fields can be difficult to “Shroud Dance” around, but keep in mind that in most cases they will be centered on a target, and as such while you only need to keep the radius of these large combo fields in mind you can make use of the full diameter of the ice field from due to being able to more freely position it.
As you swap into start paying attention to what fields are currently placed, and if possible listen/look for the channeling tells for large combo fields (for example, the sounds of lightning that indicate the channelling effect for or a to indicate a potential usage).
When you begin channelling , you can begin moving to position yourself outside of allied combo fields. Keep in mind that you only need the created ice field to extend slightly outside of other combo fields to ensure you can get the correct field attunement. You also have plenty of time to reposition due to the large channel on (About 1 second with Quickness).
Be sure once you have attuned to the correct field to move back on to your player stack quickly. Doing so allows you to position inside of a target to ensure all created Whirling Bolts hit, and also ensures that you don’t miss essential buffs like Might from or Alacrity from your Chrono’s Wells. With better execution you will rarely if ever miss out on important buffs whilst still attuning to your ice field.
Also be aware that as long as your created ice field exists and you stay within it you will use it for all whirl finishers, so your casts will also interact with the ice field.
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Status
Raid builds: Builds are up to date. Updating the guides atm. Benchmark page: Benchmarks are up to date. Updating the teamcomps atm.
Stability/
Swiftness/stun break/extra boon clear for utility.
Lucky Noobs - Farbstoff for allowing us to use their video.
Scourge
Alacrity
Blinds
Bleedings
Chilled
Tempest
Chrono
Quickness
Might