Scourge - Blood Sage - MetaBattle

Elite specialization basics

死亡之幕 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).
显形沙影 adds a bit of range to the build and acts as a somewhat spammable source of barrier/cleansing/ 活力 that doesn't cost anything.
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 鲜血印记 on chokes to detect enemies crossing in stealth is fine however, as it's a rather short CD and weak one.
Using 显形沙影 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: 腐烂印记.
Consider using 痛苦路径 before your heal for the 稳固 while under heavy pressure.
恐怖吐息 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 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 and stacks? Turn their boons against them, right into and ! It's also unblockable.

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 .
, , and (if taken) are your main sources of barrier sharing.
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.
- 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.
pulses barrier and 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.
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:
- 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 bleeding out the enemy.
- 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.