New Elite Spec Idea: Gheist

I know there's been a lot of suggestions for a musical themed mesmer elite spec. There's some cool ideas, but I thought I'd throw this ghost-themed concept into the hat. Mainly I would love a ranged main-hand power weapon: pistol. Enjoy.Traits

• Gheist (Adept Minor) - Gain access to main hand Pistol and Trap skills. When you create a clone, it immediately dissipates and inflicts its target with Haunt. The Gheist can only maintain a maximum of 3 Haunts
  • Haunt: [Effect] (10 sec duration) The Gheist's Shatter skills affect this target. This target counts as a Clone for purposes of Trait and Skill effects. Additional stacks count as additional Clones.
• Hemorrhage (Adept Major) - Mind Wrack inflicts Bleeding, but deals less direct damage
• Haunting Traps (Adept Major) - Trap skills apply Haunt when triggered. Trap skill CDs reduced by 20%
• Furious Apparition (Adept Major) - Attacking from stealth grants you Fury
• Scare (Master Minor) - Apply Weakness when you inflict a target with Haunt
• Lingering Haunt (Master Major) - Increase the duration of Haunt
• Paranoia (Master Major) - Haunt deals damage over time (this damage does not cause Revealed)
• Dream Eater (Master Major) - Heal over time for each Haunt currently active
• Crippling Fear (Grandmaster Minor) - Haunt inflicts pulsing Cripple (ex. 1 sec Cripple, 3 sec ICD)
• Hemophobia (Grandmaster Major) - Inflict Fear when you apply Bleeding above a threshold (ex. 1 sec Fear at 10 stacks Bleed; 20 sec ICD)
• Legendary Haunting (Grandmaster Major) - Increase maximum number of Haunts by one
• Figment of the Imagination (Grandmaster Major) - Gain Distortion when attacking from stealth

Main Hand Pistol

• Pew (Skill 1) - Fire your Pistol and inflict Bleeding (short bleed, primary direct dmg)
• Pew Pew (Skill 2) - Fire yourself through your Pistol in a line, evading and inflicting Haunt on foes that are passed through. Gain Might for each foe struck. Leap Finisher.
  • The idea here is a point arrow like shield 5, mesmer turns into projectile effect and evades while traveling, then turns back into mesmer at destination; range ~450
• Pew Pew Pew (Skill 3) - Fire three shots with your pistol, inflicting bleeding and generating a smoke cloud at your location. Smoke Field.
  • Smoke cloud is a small (~180) radius Smoke combo field (w/ purple smoke particle effect visual?), and appears at your location after the last shot is fired

Utilities (Traps)

• Haunting Grounds - Place a Trap that damages foes who enter. When the first foe enters, enable Apparate
  • Apparate - Teleport to your Haunting Grounds trap location, dealing damage in a small radius when you appear
• Torturous Ground - Place a Trap that applies pulsing Cripple, Bleeding, and Torment
• Trap Door - Place a trap that inflicts Blind on foes who enter. When the first foe enters, enable Dungeon.
  • Dungeon - Teleport the foe that triggered Trap Door to your location. Once Dungeon’s duration ends, they are teleported back to the location of your Trap Door
• Haunted House - [stun Break] Place a Trap that captures foes when triggered, Knocking Back foes who try to leave its radius.

Elite (Trap)

• Chaos Trap - Place a trap that generates a Chaos Tornado when triggered
  • Chaos Tornado - basically a lesser Chaos Storm with a Tornado (Whirls, Knocks Back) effect in it; maybe launch or pull instead of KB for Tornado effect since it is stationary

Obviously traits that improve "Illusions" do not apply to targets inflicted with Haunt, and would now only be applicable to your Phantasms.

Without getting into skills or traits, 'cause I'm just too lazy to form an opinion (other than the overall idea seems fun), the thing I like most about your idea is that without any clones running around as distraction/agro it has a built in tradeoff already compared to other specs.

Also, the Main hand skill names are perfect as is, do not revise ever.

Why do you think a Death-themed elite spec would go well with Mesmer?Furious Apparition (Adept Major) - Why does this generate Fury, when nothing else in that idea interacts with critical hits?

You want Traps for Mesmer on a spec that favours condition builds and interacts with Stealth.To me, it feels like you simply want to have Mesmers make use of the dreadful Rune of the Trapper, which should have lost its Stealth portion months ago.

And where is the Heal Trap?

@Fueki.4753 said:Why do you think a Death-themed elite spec would go well with Mesmer?Furious Apparition (Adept Major) - Why does this generate Fury, when nothing else in that idea interacts with critical hits?

You want Traps for Mesmer on a spec that favours condition builds and interacts with Stealth.To me, it feels like you simply want to have Mesmers make use of the dreadful Rune of the Trapper, which should have lost its Stealth portion months ago.

And where is the Heal Trap?

Good catch: forgot a heal trap. Furious apparition interacts with dueling's pistol skills bleed on crit, which loops back to bleed synergy within the Gheist spec. I guess I didn't think death-themed with ghost. Ghost is more a spooky, not-quite-physical essence to me, which feels fairly in line with general mesmer concept. You're correct that I like trapper synergy here, but sounds like you probably just generally hate stealth?Do note this build is intended to favor power, not condis. The bleeds are small, and mainly intended to coordinate with 1) Pistol bleeds from dueling (since that pistol trait exists, I assumed we're stuck with that as THE pistol trait), and 2) the Gheist grandmaster Hemophobia trait for CC.Thanks for comment! :D

Heal Trap:Dream Eater - Heal yourself and place a Trap that steals life from foes when triggered. Life steal scales with the number of Haunt stacks on the foe who triggers this Trap.Rename current Trait "Dream Eater" to something else... Fueled by Fear? Anet wouldn't copy that closely so name and such don't matter. Main idea here is the Haunt stack concept replacing clones.

You sold me on the name.

@mortrialus.3062 said:You sold me on the name.

Concept and overall idea are quite nice. But as a German speaker the spelling of the name is actually pretty cringy :# :)

Change it to a short bow and you got me sold.

@phokus.8934 said:Change it to a short bow and you got me sold.

spooky scary unicorn shortbow user, where do I sign up?

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@phokus.8934 said:Change it to a short bow and you got me sold.

Chuka collecting dust.

@phokus.8934 said:Chuka collecting dust.

In my opinion, Chuka and Champawat fits best with Charr Renegades.Both have a reddish theme and feature kitties.