Ashgar.3024

Prior to EoD not a lot of people played Engineer. Scrapper was a weird mess that only really worked in SPvP for the longest time and while Holo used to be very good it was harder to play than a lot of builds that fit in its niche (namely Dragon Hunter, Reaper and Daredevil) so not as many people bothered. Even nowadays Scrapper is still completely eclipsed by Firebrand pretty much accross game modes, except maybe in WvW and Holo is left to rot in the dump as it wasn't really looked at by the devs despite the fact some recent mechanical changes to the game wrecked it, namely the heavy exposed nerf and also the spotter rework. Meanwhile Guardian was always a top tier choice in every game modes since the inception of the game and doubt that will ever change both due to the nature of the class and the nature of the game. But yeah, despite the "Mecanist effect", you can't exactly shift nearly a decade of data in 8 months. Would be interesting to be able to parses the data within the timeline though.

People feeling entitled is what's currently ruining the game's atmosphere more than anything else atm. Voicing an opinion is fine, but its just that, an opinion. Forums aren'tmeant to be work orders for Anet Devs. If they started to worry about everyone's little individual pet peeves the game would just go nowhere fast.

Please no. I've been playing almost exclusively Charrs for like 5 years I know where their contact box is better than on normal characters lol. This would screw me over. Either unsheath your weapons if you wanna run on 2 legs or just roll an alt for JPs if you can't handle them on a Charr.

Trying to max out achievements in an MMO is a completely futile thing. Trust me on that one. Hunt whatever is fun to you and forget the rest. There's no such thing as 100%ing an MMO anyway.

Monster and midget races are always the least played in every MMO. The casual MMO enjoyer just wants to cosplay as Legolas,Aragorn or an anime Waifu cause that's what they know and that's fine. I'm a massive Charr fan (most my characters are Charrs with a few Sylvaris/Norns) so I don't disagree more (and less silly) customization would be nice but i'm not unhappy with what we got.

Make a new one. Takes about 30 minutes flat on a well progressed account to go from level 1 to max level with all elites unlocked and full ascended gear.

That's not something That's actively supported by communities like Snowcrows/Discretize/Hardstuck. I don't even hate the idea of Plaguedoc Specter but there's a reason its not currently encouraged. Its trash compared to existing alternatives. I mean give me a single argument for running that build over something like Mec, Druid or even Tempest? Heck even If you just want a rez bot, just bring a full DPS Scourge with Blood traitline (transfusion) and signet of undeath instead.

Yeah a full rework/rebrand of Acro is something i've been wanting for a long time as well. Its literally the Wish version of Daredevil.

Alac radius was buffed to 360 a while ago. For the rest i'm kinda over fighting the whining at this point. Still crushing it doing fractal cms+ Full 7 wing clears every weeks despite the patch playing the elite. By all means force the devs to overbuff it again.

The builds just need multiple ways within their kits to maintain their boons when running high concentration, not really more complicated than that. I think its something Anet devs are starting to realize, example is the change to Well of Bounty on Specter. It technically heavily overlaps with Thrill of the Crime if you just mindlessly mash your keys but at the same time open opportunities to hold either of these abilities to keep them for more thoughtful uses, in Siphon's case it means more opportunity to boonrip or it even gives a currently underused trait that turns it into a rez signet more useability. On the other hand if the Siphon can safely be used on CD it means it easier to delay Well of Bounty in order to use it at a time where Stab might be crucial. I think more changes along these lines would do wonders to make boon supports more reactive and thoughtful and less just whack-a-mole builds.

Its a great useability change though, means you can hold on Siphon to boonrip, particularily useful in Fractals or on Dhuum. Also makes the rez on Siphon trait more useable. Also means you can hold WoB for moments where Stab would be crucial without dropping boons. Or heck if none of these situations apply just drop Bountiful Theft and get the Torment trait. One of the main community complaint atm as far as supports are concerned is the fact a lot of them tend to have to spam their abilities on CD to maintain boons, Specter is def part of that. Changes like this giving us back some leeway to play more reactively is actually a step in the right direction if you stop 2 seconds to think about it.

Heal Specter doesn't even exist. Its not a thing. Part of that is the half-botched attempt at support traits Specter is stuck with, the other part was pre-barrier nerf there wasn't any point to even consider playing Specter as a real support. Pre-nerf Specter could keep a sub alive on its own through pretty much all raid content except the last 2 CMs (HT and the weeb dude i forgot the name of), just needed full Ritualist gear alongside a full DPS build. I mean heck its how most groups met the DPS check on Ankha for Gazed into the Void. If they ever wanted to make support specter a real thing they needed to change Consume Shadow either way and that's my main criticism of the change, they did half the job. The change should had came alongside a support Specter rework. But it was still needed.

Realistically you want a set of Ritualist gear anyway if you want to use the spec to its full potential as its arguably more useful as a Boon DPS build than a pure DPS one, patch hasn't changed that much. Carrion gear is also not very hard to come by. Besides the difference between Vipers and Ritualist/Carrion has always been marginal. I heavily suspect Specter was never meant to function with Vipers gear in the first place. Literally ALL the power damage on a FULL Viper setup is worth 2k BENCH dps flat. And people complain Vitality is a wasted stat. Figure it out.

Idk, sure feels a bit more interesting than just running Vipers/Zerker on everything. Why shouldn't new elite designs actually make use to different gear sets than the ones that came before. Vipers make sense on Daredevil since D/D is an hybrid weapon set and the build has inherently a ton of evade frames, its part of its core design. On a clearly more defensive design like Specter, not so much. Otherwise they would had given Scepter skills Power scaling. I don't see why they'd nerf Shroud again because of that either since at least its a tradeoff now. Its not like you can't run vipers if you're convinced you're hot stuff and above the "peasants" running Ritualist, just better time your dodges right if you want to stay in shroud now ;). Still benches higher than Daredevil and in realistic scenarios i expect them to be about equal, varying per encounter ofc as they're inherently different designs. Not sure in which universe Deadeye is worth using anywhere besides both Qadims and maybe HT CM as far as PvE is concerned. 40k bench on a static golem != useability.

Calm down, its really not. Alac Specter is still great, arguably better than it was pre-patch in some scenarios like fractals due to the changes to WoB. On Demand Stab is nothing to scoff at. For the DPS build, just stop running full vipers and run a mix of Ritualist and Carrion gear instead, 2k BENCH DPS loss but still a 36500 bench which is a far cry from "unplayable" specially since you still provide a decent chunk of barrier. Yes the solo barrier build is dead but that was honestly a bit degen, i prefer seeing that axed to give some dev space for Anet to hopefully fix the actual support traits in the Specter line. Stop with the hyperbolic bs, its not helping anything. Edit : your boo's mean nothing, i've seen what makes you cheer.