Jugglemonkey.8741

I don't play PvP, but just looking at the patch notes it looks like they overnerfed it as a kneejerk reaction. The damage nerf to Sc/D 3 was fair if they want it to bunker and provide team support, the cleanse nerf on the middle grandmaster trait was fair if they want it to roam and decap, but doing both makes it worse than daredevil in pretty much every way.

If you mount the thing with an asura cannon, then yes. Edit: I don't mean a cannon made by asuras. I want explosive propelled goblins.

I usually run twin fangs for the extra crit chance, as ASP said above a lot depends on build tho. If you are going for a prolonged fight and you don't have other might sources then assassin's fury is nice, but usually i take CS for ganky type builds so the extra crit damage and crit chance is better.

Ahh, yep. I didn't do the numbers tbh, was just pretty sure it would max it with all that haha.

Was gonna say this. Pretty sure specter could easily get 100% condi duration on everything with nightmare runes, condi gear, top grandmaster trait, a malice sigil and a couple of expertise infusions.

Is he a mesmer? Maybe he forgot which was the real player and thinks he is a clone.

Don't know if this has been posted, but if you discover a new area in a map while playing Specter it resets your shadow force to zero. Kinda annoying.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-april-2022/ Jade Bot Scavenging In the March 29 update, we made a change to Jade Bot Scavenger Protocols that makes them no longer grant materials or trophies for player kills. This change was intended to address an exploit elsewhere in the game, but WvW players took splash damage in the process and were unfairly nerfed. We’ll revert this change for WvW in the April 19 update. Happy scavenging! Thank you for this ANet, much appreciated. Now we can get back to doing what we were doing: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/892664af-87b1-4460-8ee5-ef6982a1114a

Tbh I think that WvW in general is the mode that should (in theory) see the least changes assuming the base mechanics & rewards etc are sound. The reasoning being that the content is generated by other players, not ANet themselves. That said, that approach does mean ANet should be doubling down on fixing bugs & addressing balance as their priority for the mode, and we all know how that went.

I've mostly been running Sc/P with shortbow in WvW for roaming, usually on full cele because I want a build that takes advantage of as many of specter's strengths in one kit as possible. Shortbow sneak attack or thousand needles plus daze/pull well and torment on interrupt provides a very nice CC chain to set up the damage from shroud, I'm mostly liking cele gear for this since then I get the power damage off the shroud skills too. I've chosen pistol offhand as the 3 is better to support allies with the barrier, it is a beam not a projectile which lets me force cleanses on stuff that otherwise would be reflecting or blocking me & it can't be body blocked, it adds even more immob & slow on top of thousand needles and the smoke field from pistol is nice with shroud 2,3 and 5 for extra stealth access. I think most of the utility a power build would get out of scepter mainhand is currently found in Sc/D 3 which is why a lot of the PvP players in this thread are recommending that set. ANet recently nerfed that skill so you'd have to look into how much impact that has on spike damage etc, most PvP streamers I've seen using Sc/D are using either D/P or Sw/P in the offhand for the smoke field. It's a good build, I played P/D & rifle on deadeye for a long time though so for the time being I am happier exploring options that aren't so reliant on projectiles for their main damage.

😛

So, what did the person you thought was cheating do? What class was he on? Is it possible you just never saw someone doing that before? I've been reported for cheating because while playing my deadeye I "had no cooldowns", so kinda have to ask.

I sometimes forget my wells are mine and instinctively dodge out of them lol

Meanwhile guild groups stealth push single players and consider themselves skillful. I'm just waiting for someone to blame that on thief too tbh.

The behaviour of people interrupting duels for the sake of doing so is a bit like if a roamer deliberately ran alongside a tag that is stealth pushing while the roamer is not stealthed. WvW is a sandbox mode with unwritten rules based on the scale of combat, if the latter example would annoy you because you're screwing up another player's gameplay then don't do the former, and if you do do it just expect people to mess with you for it.

The fact that there was no comment for three weeks before your comment means this thread likely wasn't on the first page of the forum, which in turn means you actively sought out a thread about this specific topic. Behaviour like that might explain why there is always a thread like this.

Definitely. Tbh I main thief so when I play cele it's because I'm looking for something different to the usual twitch reflex gameplay, sometimes I just want to chill and not think hard about stuff lol. Different isn't necessarily bad as long as it has counterplay and as long as optimised builds outperform the jack of all trades, which generally speaking it does.

To be honest I'd sooner see more boonrips and corrupts added into the game. Instead of nerfing something, add more counterplay.

Kinda waiting for the compilation video set to Purple Rain now.

Well yes, but that is kinda stating the obvious. Celestial obviously tanks more damage than berserker, but saying that the guy would have been dead on berserker is the exact reason that nobody solo roams on full berserker outside of the occasional thief or mesmer. Anyone that runs full berserker ought to understand that they are a one trick pony by choice. Berserker brings nothing but damage and so only really works in situations where you aim to take no damage; be it because you use active defences to mitigate damage, you have a support to carry you or because the enemy is dead before he realises you're there. Every berserker build works this way by necessity; scrapper's outgoing damage to barrier trait allows it to be the notable exception but there is a reason that build is problematic. Celestial's advantage lies in the fact that it is not a condi build; the fact that it is hybrid allows you to pressure your enemy with both power and condi at once which is generally harder to defend against than either type of damage on it's own. This actually means it plays the exact way that a condition build should play - not huge damage spikes, just wears you down while being sustainable. So yeah, I don't see something being tanky while still doing damage as a bad thing as long as it is killable by a power spike, and the video proves that it is (see 2:42 when the DH manages to land something). You can take most celestial builds and put them on trailblazer gear and they'd function just as well if not better. If it is still OP on a different stat set then it's the build doing that, not the stats.

The condis that are applied to the DH in that first clip never rise above 1k damage per second and it took 20s for the DH to go down. Are you saying that this is an unacceptable level of damage coming from condis applied by the celestial build? Meanwhile, the same DH doesn't try to use his traps intelligently, doesn't use shield, doesn't cleanse the condis, doesn't try to tether the opponent and didn't use his virtues to try to defend himself, instead walking around in circles pressing 1 for most of the fight. Are you telling us that what the DH did is a standard of skill that should be aspired to for small scale fights?

I've been playing celestial armor with fireworks runes, viality infusions and grieving weapons & trinkets in WvW for roaming and it does fine survivability wise. Given you get more vitality from the jade bot I have no doubt you could make full grieving or vipers work in PvE.

There is one in raids called detonate plasma, which is basically consume plasma on an AoE. But even then that means that thief is strong in the same way mesmer was strong in vanilla because it had portal, without really having a use outside of that niche. Most players would like more than just a niche use for their chosen class.

Your suggestion is much more likely to limit builds than you think it is. You can currently make a roaming condi build work with just bleeds and trickery or with just poison and deadly arts but it will be difficult to kill opponents quickly without taking both lines. All the traits you are discussing are grandmaster tier traits though, so you can't currently take both potent poison and deadly ambush without either sacrificing stealth access in SA or an elite spec to do it. That is a fair tradeoff for the offensive power gained and was the reasoning behind the core P/D condi build seen recently in PvP. Your suggestion would mean you could not take both traits no matter what you sacrificed as they are now both grandmaster traits in the same line, but it would also indirectly nerf non meta builds like every S/D build and kitten D/P builds even further by stopping them from taking improv and sleight of hand in one build. It would not affect meta SA D/P daredevil at all, and it would nerf PvE specter condi dps for basically no reason. Not a single build in existence would benefit from this change, it would nerf every build except the current PvP meta build, and it would remove all benefit from taking kitten over SA, further forcing you into SA. So no. Not a good change for build diversity.

Celestial has the same boon duration and condi duration as ritualist btw. So the main difference is the reliance on might stacking to do damage and the lesser vitality.