Vismooth.4128

Overall, agreed. Though I think it could've been better as barrier instead of healing, or maybe have it split 50/50 with extra barrier if it manages to flow over. Or a set value barrier with or without scaling. That is, for rot wallow venom application consistency, if anything else. Any of these, including just your original suggestion would be far more functional than what we have right now.

Ally targeting is dysfunctional, poorly implemented, clunky as all hell, antithetical to encounter design in this game (as in it goes against the way that the encounters are played by the community) and quite frankly - can die in a fire. If Anet ever wanted to implement single-ally focused skills, it's been 10 years - they missed their mark. It's far too late to even try. Single ally alac application will not make Specter more valuable for group content or anything else for that matter. It simply needs to go. And on the topic of making staying in shroud more desirable. It can't really be either, at least not without giving it a way to make use of initiative while inside of it. If you were to shift most of the damage and utility that Specter provides over to shadow shroud to make it more worthwhile, what would be the incentive to stay out of it then? It would almost invalidate the rest of the core kit, since unlike Necro, Specter doesn't have a need to keep up a periodic damage buff (Soul Barbs) from entering/exiting their shroud. This is one of the bigger flaws of Specter's design that I personally see, that Shroud can't be better than initiative skills (to not make them obsolete), but has to be better than just auto attacking with your scepter. Those systems are working against one another, which also makes it really hard to balance as a whole.

There's another way you could do it. Keep alac on wells, but add pulsing alacrity while in shroud (like harb does). I know this isn't very sophisticated as a solution and very much a band-aid for a sore wound that is base Specter design. Despite that, it'd solve both alacrity application and cluttered headspace within utility selection for dps alac builds. And on another note, I would very much prefer if we had something completely different in place of what there is now as F1 and F2. More like an array of shroud skills, to which you could then tie alacrity and barrier application. Kind of like scourge. But that'd probably require a lot of effort.

it's not the tooltip on the shroud bar, it's on F2's description

Oh wow Just checked, enter shadow shroud tooltip It's real LMAO At least you got a point of comparison to how it was supposed to be before

I also see no reason why they can't make boons on WoB apply in groups, like Stab+Prot+Regen, Might+Fury+Quick or w/e. Making it provide only 5 different boons (some of which already covered somewhere else) kind of goes against the well being "bountiful".

Don't forget about celestial gear as well. While not as good numerically on stats as carrion or ritualist, it still provides all of the stats relevant for a specter.

Oh man, where to begin. To me, roughly speaking, Specter has been walking on a set of crutches to begin with. Though I really liked how its base design was executed, there is no denying that after a while the rougher parts of the spec crept up on me. The core issue that I see is shroud's relation to the initiative system. In its current implementation, shroud does not provide a way to use initiative and staying in that state for extended periods of time results in a dps loss. That, compounded with the gameplay style of consume shadows promotes the kind of experience inverse of what it was based on - necromancer, which usually has its bulk of burst dps in shroud. So, to sum up - staying longer in shadow shroud compounds loss of dps on two fronts - from it not providing enough and not making use of active initiative. The changes that were made before to increase Specter's ability to maintain better dps on its own (if I remember correctly, it was specifically on shroud AAs and scepter AAs) have completely missed their mark - as those tools are not relevant in specter's rotation. A few other things I'd like to note down while we're at it: 1. Allied targeting, as was stated so many times already, is clunky and with how often it gets in the way of you doing what you want to do makes the experience quite unfun. 2. Rot Wallow Venom. Though interesting, it probably shouldn't be a part of specter's core kit. This is because it only works in group scenarios. You could, theoretically, compound it with consume shadows as base part of that playstyle functionality to facilitate a supportive playstyle and give us something more selfish in return as a base mechanic. 3. Consume Shadows has too much impact on specter's playstyle. In addition, the other traits in the same line as consume shadows don't make as much of an impact on gameplay to even consider picking either of them instead of CS, there is simply no competition, no choice. And if we're to take an honest look at shadow shroud without CS, most of its already prominent issues become more exacerbated and apparent. There are two ways out of it (or one, if we're to combine the solutions) - either redesigning the other traits in the same line to provide similarly impactful gameplay alterations, or making CS part of the base kit, along with Dark Sentry and Panaku's Ambition, or compounding them all together and redesigning how core specter behaves in the first place. Which one of these would be more difficult - I do not know, as any of these solutions would require a rework. I don't want to believe that all hope is lost. However, there have been so many threads out there providing extremely valuable feedback on Specter. And seeing how nothing has come of that yet really makes me not want to invest any more passion in this spec than I already have.

I think it's terribly funny that, out of all possible solutions, they've chosen to move ahead with the one that affects every possible variation of Specter in existence (effectively deleting one of them entirely and severely crippling the rest). Like, there are so many ways to do what they wanted without completely destroying the class, making it even more of a mess design-wise. With what we have right now, I wouldn't hope for much. Most of the feedback that had been provided since even the beta of EoD had been promptly discarded. Anet either don't have enough people to collect the data or simply don't care to go over it, as continuous prominence of specter's bugs suggests - and you don't even have to go far to replicate them, just move diagonally while casting twilight combo. Saying this, if we're to ponder hypothetical ways out of this putrid pit we've been placed into, what I think could work, is: First and probably the easiest, bring the shroud health coeff to 0.85. That'd make the health about 18-22k on average depending on the build. BUT, in addition to this change, rework Consume Shadows to take 10-50% (based on stacks) WITHOUT wiping the entirety of the shroud pool, healing exactly for the amount consumed. In addition to this, it would be great if the healing ALWAYS came out as 50% health healing (with overhealing translating into more barrier, like previous functionality) and 50% barrier to ENSURE rot wallow stacks are always applied and DPS is not affected. Second, more questionable from my perspective, is buffing Specter's personal torment application in the relevant places (which means not on the AAs, thanks🙂), while making a significant change to how rot wallow venom is applied. Instead of providing additional stacks of relatively low-duration torment, make it provide a small, albeit scalable with healing power, heal. This solves reliance on allies for damage and provides extra healing tools at the same time. My perspective is purely PvE based, so feel free to chime in where needed.

And after that long, there would certainly be no more specter players to "enjoy" that "buff" either. Positively thrilled to see the next playrate numbers update on wingman.

17.9k shroud health from 39k before 8k heal at max stacks T H A N K S A G A I N

Hilarious. They really did push it out, no changes at all, despite saying they'd make some. Thanks for nothing, I guess.

This is specifically in relation to "Specter's cache" step of the collection, which requires you to explore Seitung Province as a thief. It is currently impossible to complete this step if you had explored the area without unlocking specter first, that is unless the player is willing to make a whole new character and follow through with leveling, unlocking and exploring again. I'm assuming similar can happen with other specs as well. This is extremely unpleasant, as it blocks you not only from an ascended scepter, but a few extra ascended trinkets as well. Should be changed to exploring any of the EoD's maps on any character(class) once the collection is unlocked.

Jolly. Maybe when specter playrate numbers in meaningful content drops to or below the rate of reaper, that'll make them scratch their heads a little.

The kit itself doesn't necessarily need to change as is, but something I personally would like to see at least *tried* is changing kneeling into a stance that, instead of completely immobilizing you for access to better abilities, severely lowers your movement speed, while still allowing you to jump and commit other maneuvers.

Don't know about doing an animation pass for the entire spec, but a few things could use a more unique animation. Shadow Sap (beating a dead horse, I know) still uses one of the AA animations, and the effect is mostly the same as that, just bigger size. Shroud 1 is just basic necro shroud 1, with the visual effect looking worse than what it's based on. At least in my personal opinion. It should have its own unique animation and better fx. Twilight Combo, while mostly ok, is still way too broken to remain in its current implementation. That's about it, off the top of my head.

Don't misunderstand my posts, I really like the way thief was designed originally, it's what made me stick with the class for the longest time so far playing this game. All I'm meaning to say is that I, personally am, ready for more radical solutions in case there's even a faint chance of thief's position getting better. Of course I would like it even more if Anet started paying attention to what we currently have and started fixing things that need fixing (*ahem* specter bugs from EoD release are still there *ahem*). I wasn't really talking about things that are OP or not. I know the state of mechanist and the reason it's so overrepresented in the community. It takes something being good to be popular. Which is probably why so few people dedicate themselves to playing thief in the first place.

There was a reddit thread already for heal specter not too long ago. Nothing came of it. If you persist with it now you'll most likely get piled on or get too little support and visibility. As it was said, there are far fewer people who care about thief, rather than those who want to see it in the gutter.

And I still don't really see that it'd be such a bad idea. But it's alright, we can agree to disagree on this. I like current thief in any case and have had plenty of fun across all of its specs, but at this point I just want Anet to do something with it other than bringing it even lower down. Doesn't really seem like they either care or understand what to do with the mess they created, especially considering the first things specter is to receive are nerfs and not fixes for the bugs that had existed since its release.

If Thief was changed to be a cd-based class, flanking strike wouldn't exist in the same iteration it is now, that's the whole point. No one's saying "move initiative to cds and keep the skills the same", it would necessitate a complete rework of every weapon skill and trait that had to do with it, like I stated in my original message. Which is also why it'll never happen. Thing is, even if you moved thief to cds, kept it mostly the same, but gave it, like, multiple ammo stacks for certain relevant skills, it still would've worked better this way, at least I think so. And correct me if I'm wrong on this, but Alacrity boon doesn't affect initiative gain in any way either.

As cool and unique initiative system is, I really don't mind if it was scrapped for cooldowns instead. But scrapping that means reworking every weapon and every trait that interacts with it currently. It'd simply be way too much work for current Anet to justify pouring dev cycles into. A shame, really. I feel like cooldown-based thief would've been far more cohesive and functional than what we have now.

They absolutely could pass that regen onto the well of gloom. Even further, pass on all of the lost boons onto the other wells to make them more worthwhile to use in general. Like, look at the well of tears. Still has nothing but pathetic amount of strike damage. Now compare it to Necro's well of suffering. The difference in quality of life and effect is massive. Mobility doesn't solely make up for that difference. Well of Tears could have stacking power and fury for allies and vulnerability for enemies. Strike damage doesn't even need to be changed in this case, but it'd be nice to have a little more to make it a more dedicated cleave tool, which is also something Specter lacks. Then let well of bounty keep Stability, Aegis, Protection, Quickness and Swiftness. 5 boons, the order can be changed. Resistance to Well of Silence. Resolution to Well of Sorrow. Applied to the caster by default, shared with 5 people with Traversing Dusk along with Alac application. And change all of the specter's wells (save for the healing one) to be 1/2 on cast time, fancy casting animations be damned. And would also be nice if any of the wells got boon rip/corrupt, as that's also a bit of a struggle as well.

With a nerf looming over the horizon, thought I'd go ahead and voice a few of my personal grievances, in case anyone a floor above might be listening. This is coming from someone with experience in mostly low level pve, being open world and strikes, so keep that in mind. It has been a good while since I'd made the post here, but you still cannot properly finish the specter collection if you had fully explored Seitung Province without first unlocking the specialization. Scepter 2 is still completely worthless. Outside of pistol dual skill, dagger 4 and shroud skills, Specter still has very little convenient cleave. Shroud skills are nice in that regard I guess, but you don't really sit around in your shroud pressing buttons for a while. Besides that we're still way too dependent on having allies to deal more damage. It'd be nice if we had more temporary or even persistent minions to use venoms and rwv with, at least in the open world while solo. Or I don't know, maybe something else entirely. Speaking of, Twilight Combo still breaks half the time if the target you're using it on is moving a certain way, or even if you as a player are. Why is it even conceived as a two-part ability? Why didn't you make it a single projectile that comes out at the end of the animation? It's one of the main dps tools of the spec and having it break so often is seriously troubling. Measured Shot + Endless Night is still impossibly clunky to use. The former makes it feel like you're rubber banding on 400 ping, the latter fails to build up Lead Attacks stacks before they start falling off. Also either get rid of the shadowstep part of measured shot or let us deliberately choose where to teleport to, so we could at least have the option of staying in the stack and not have to run around back and forth. All 3 first tier traits are still healing-related. There is still a discrepancy between the wells' casting times. I understand the healing skill being a little bit longer, but why are they still so wildly different between one other? In addition, Shadowfall doesn't do NEARLY enough to justify being 75 seconds in cooldown. The other thing with the wells is that they're simply not competitive enough with the other options for damage and/or healing. The way I can see to at least mitigate it a bit is to give each well a single (or multiple, depending on the well) pulse of barrier on cast, giving us another way to generate rot wallow venom stacks without having to sacrifice dps (just change panaku's ambition trait to do what it does with wells and/or shadowsteps, there is very little interaction with stealth to justify this as a core trait). Also make rwv work on the caster, thx :). We still have relatively pathetic strike damage across our weapon skills and spec utilities. Seriously, why does well of tears even exist at this point? Just to reminding us of its infinite worthlessness? Ally targeting is still a thing. I don't even know if it's used in any other case in this game. It only gets in the way. It is the reason you can't use action cam or autotargeting in serious scenarios or instanced encounters. With it the game chooses for you what you didn't want to do. Get rid of it and instead, make the abilities proc the beneficial effects around the target you're attacking. Having played Harbinger for a little while, I'm not finding many reasons to continue playing Specter, other than familiarity, sunk cost and just generally liking the spec.

Not gameplay feedback, but here's something I wanted to leave here in case it gets noticed. There is currently a possibility to completely block off completion progress for elite spec "Possession" collection if you manage to explore Seitung Province before unlocking the elite spec itself, as no other "Specter's Cache" grants you that progress. This is really bad, as it not only locks you out of a free Ascended weapon, but an ascended amulet, accessory and a ring. This is even worse if you're a new player. And the only way to deal with this right now is to create a new burner thief character, level again to 80, unlock Spectre and only then go re-explore Seitung on that new character. This is a huge waste of time and an enormous punishment for something a player could not have known beforehand when playing the game organically. I implore this be changed to any Specter's Cache or something else that doesn't rely on overworld exploration completion. Or if you still decide to stick by that requirement, give us a way to gain those outside of EoD full map exploration (like in the Arborstone for prophet shards or something).