RagingRube.2540

Very annoying and makes healspecter more unreliable than it should be.

Specter scepter skills are currently prioritising by proximity to the main target rather than subgroup.

So, my main point is that heal specter feels pretty good. I've healed a ton of fights so far, and have found the build to have certain advantages, and also a pretty surprising amount of flexibility. However, I have found it struggles a bit on some of the higher-pressure fights in the game. Dark phase Ai, skipping greens on VG (at least while tanking) and boneskinner have been doable, but quite sweaty. I think a huge part of this is the unreliable protection uptime (I literally use Durability runes to help smooth it out), as well as the clunkiness of ally-targeted skills. Prot uptime: This could easily be fixed by simply making the boon portion of ally-targeted skills not be halved, or just not half the effect at all for the splash (which tbh I don't think would break anything - hell nerf the base barrier and buff the heal scaling if you have to). This would help counter the 'I have to click on each member of my subgroup to give them prot' scramble that attempting to upkeep prot is on this class. Another solution could be adding it to a well. Well of Tears currently does absolutely nothing interesting, so it could go there, though I would prefer to see it somewhere like Well of Gloom (heal well), as well as perhaps a shroud skill or pulsing effect. Ally targeting: The main issue with ally targeting currently is the boon application. It's very unfun to try to click on your squadmates, or click on them via the UI (which is different for squads vs parties) rapidly to spread boons appropriately. I would love to see the reduced boon duration for the aoe removed (to be honest I would love to see the aoe effect reduction removed entirely), and this all of a sudden becomes a very smooth and fun class to play. Very 'meh' skills: Well of Tears and Shadowfall are both very underwhelming skills - one (Well of Tears) is not synergistic with any specter build in any way (ok maybe wvw), and the other (Shadowfall) is generally not as good as Basilisk Venom for CC, and has a 75sec cooldown, so isn't super appealing for the shadowstep (healing and shadow force generation). Other than that, skills like Shadow Refuge (and tbh we don't really want to stealth) have poor scaling with inflated cooldowns, and most skills are not super useful to us - it would be cool if all five wells were able to help fill these gaps. Well of Tears could be a prot source, or simply could have a more interesting supportive effect. Shadowfall I am unsure of what to do with, but I would love to see specter get its revive power back (rip old shadestep zaps), so it would be cool to see this have an aoe rez when Traversing Dusk is traited (this is pure cope I know). Regardless both of these skills are very underwhelming, and are generally just long/very long cooldown 1-2k heals (depending on build) with some shadow force generation and minimal mobility too. 3rd Trait line?: Your choices for the third trait line after Specter and Trickery (which are both pretty great at the moment) are basically Shadow Arts or Deadly Arts. Shadow arts is extremely feels-bad to take - you literally only benefit from 2 traits in the whole line because it revolves around stealth, which specter doesn't really do (not that a healer wants to mess with stealth, that's a great way to annoy your teammates). The other choice is deadly arts, which most healspecter builds at the moment synergise well with, due to most people opting for plaguedoctor stats. This line is a pretty significant damage increase because you synergise with all the traits. You only lose out on a 1-2k additonal aoe healing on shadowstep and about 2k barrier on your healing skill, as well as several stealth-relate traits which are hard (and often counterproductive) to leverage. Obviously this is all my opinon, but I do think healspecter is in a strong place at the moment, it's just monumentally mechanically punishing to play on the higher pressure fights, and could perhaps do with some more options and QoL improvements.

I think the main painpoint for playing healspecter at the moment is the way your boons from scepter have halved duration. It's extremely finicky and unfun to play. Half the barrier, sure, but the boons just make it annoying. Also choosing stats is a headache, and the third trait line is such a bad choice. Deadly arts for some extra damage? Or Shadow arts for a pitiful barrier and the healing on shadowstep - literally none of the other traits are useful/useable on Specter

DPS Specter and alacrity/DPS Specter are both honestly in pretty good places as far as I am concerned. The changes in the patch today seem like they were aimed at heal Specter, but unfortunately they really didn't change much. Shadow Sap: The enemy-targeted version of this skill now grants might in an area around the specter. The ally-targeted version of this skill now grants protection. -Cool, the enemy-targeted version of this skill isn't totally worthless to a support now, and it rounds out Specter to very easily upkeep 25 might. -The ally targeted version, however just seems plain bad. Single-target protection for 2 & 1/2 seconds (with no bd, so assume that's 5sec with 100%bd) is honestly just pretty worthless, and you'd be better off just running a quickdps Herald in your sub to give permanent protection, and never using the ally-target version of this skill. Well of Silence: This skill has been reworked. It now dazes enemies on the initial strike, then removes conditions from allies in the area on each pulse. Gain shadow force for each condition removed. Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP and WvW. -This would be a pretty awesome skill for heal specter now. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to be reactive with your wells, and utility slots are in very high demand on specter builds due to the nature of the alacrity generation, and the Shadestep trait, which encourages you to use your wells in a timely manner too, to share barrier. -Seems good in PvP and WvW Well of Bounty: Increased might stacks from 6 to 8 in PvE only. -With the Shadow Sap change, this is only really relevant to alacrityDPS Specter, as a healing focused build on Specter will easily upkeep 25 might. Overall, heal Specter got very, very slightly buffed. 25 might is nice on paper, but most classes naturally bring enough these days that you were already well capped on might before the patch. The protection, as mentioned, is not particularly impactful, and you'd be better off saving your 3 initiative for your Scepter/Dagger 3. Well of Silence is kinda nice, but until Specter alacrity application gets reworked, it's going to be more of an incidental condi cleanse sometimes than the big condi cleanse button it should be. Well of Bounty changes doesn't really matter for heal Specter for the same reasons as the might on Shadow Sap (though you will definitely get value from this change, whereas the Shadow Sap change could potentially never get used). It really seems like Specter has a bit of an identity crisis as a healer. It has only a couple of strengths, one of which is the ability to Siphon downstates awake at a *very* high pace due to the Shadestep trait - but only if you're quick enough and they don't get bonked down below 66% of their downstate health. It also can do decent healing and barrier to a subgroup whilst dealing very high damage for the healer slot. It's weaknesses are pretty glaring ones for a healer -No regen -Very bad protection, maybe the worst of the healers -Your one stability-sharing skill needs to be spammed off cd for boon upkeep -Your biggest heal (Consume Shadows) doesn't scale off healing power, but vitality (this isn't the worst thing, but it does definitely mean harrier is an even worse/less synergistic option) -Very restricted on utility slots -No good elite option, just a couple of flavours of CC -Terrible tank due to wells, additionally has no means of tanking certain mechanics like Mind Crush A few things that would help a lot: -A better way to apply alacrity. Something similar to Mechanist's applying on barrier would be far more fun and interactive. -Aoe Protection, and if we're feeling spicy, Regen. Though I'm kinda ok with no regen being one of Specter's weaknesses if the protection is addressed -Wells need a useability pass. At minimum they should all have the same cast time, except for maybe the elite to keep with its punchy animation, though it's not a particularly compelling skill function-wise. Range should be increased to 900 in all cases (at least in PvE), it's ridiculous that I can shadowstep backwards because these ranges are so short I run past where I initially targeted them. Additionally, a way to perfectly drop them on yourself without needing to skillclick would be nice for tanking purposes. -Buff Shallow Grave cooldown to 40sec in PvE so Specter can tank Deimos. This would be a huge trade off because you'd be losing Consume Shadows, so I'm not even sure this would be something you'd want anywhere else outside PvP. Thanks if you read this, I tried to be fairly thorough without being exhaustive. Let's talk about this!

Just found out via the Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scarlet's_Secret_Lair That the chapter is The Battle For Lion's Arch, and I now have my bottle.

You used to be able to enter it whenever you wanted. I just restarted that story chapter, and I still cannot gain access. No purple stars to be seen. Not interested in playing through basically an entire episode just for this bottle.

I simply get a dialogue box saying "This door resists all attempts to open it." With a response, "This must be some Priory secret. I'll leave it alone". Have completed S1, but I currently have no active story. Hope this can be fixed soon

Ranger players had been using the same 3 hotkeys to command their pets for 9 years. Then Untamed comes out, and moves these commands to different keys for no good reason, and the new pet subclass, Mechanist has them on the same buttons. This makes no sense, and is horrible from a UX perspective. The keys these are associated with should be normalised across all of these classes, otherwise people will keep not playing untamed. It's less of an issue for mechanist, but for consistency's sake, these keys should be the same.

Anyone who's played one of the less-loved support builds (the ones that spam their utilities off cooldown to provide a vital boon) knows that it's not a fun playstyle, and definitely feels like a bandaid fix to allow more classes to function as supports while better options are devised (we hope). Anyway, spirits on ranger are not fun to use for Alacrity in their current state, and I propose the following mechanical change; Spirits could provide alacrity when hit by a burst heal (ie any heal that's not regen ticks), with a cooldown per spirit. This would cover the same design space (spirits providing alacrity) while playing more into druid's typical healer role, and providing a sort of minigame for them to upkeep alacrity (seems like it would be fun with the new ally-target skills, and give you good reason to use them), whilst leaving the flip skill available for its intended utility or for repositioning the spirits (the other part of the minigame which can be fun to manage, which is lost when you have to spam these skills). I think this fits the class well mechanically, and could be made to work on Soulbeast as well with a change to make Eternal Bond heal your spirits. Things to consider: -I have no idea how hard this would be to code, probably a nightmare -There may need to be some UI element for each spirit so they can be easily targeted (would suck trying to click them in a stack of 10 or even 5 players)