Nomad.4301

That's the thing, actual total heal output (HPS) doesn't really matter in real content, there's very few fights in which the entire group is taking a pounding enough to require constant healing, boneskinner is the only one that comes to mind atm. Most groups I've been in since... PoF? have no idea what "self-buffing" is these days and bringing a class specifically for might application is rarely seen anymore (can't recall the last time I've had a group look for a PS Warrior). Look, I'm not saying it can't spam healing as well as other "healers", initiative is well suited to spamming after all.. it's just that without the boon application/cc/unique buffs there's no reason to currently use it over my other... 4 support builds. You also have very little flexibility in your traits and utilities compared to other supports (aside from rev obv), there's a reason why 7/9 specter traits are support oriented and yet only 3 of those are actually used. As for getting others to bring the boons, good luck getting the gw2 community to change after 6 years of "healers bring 25 might + 4 other boons" and then bring one other guy with quickness/alac + 3 DPS per group, not saying I wouldn't like for that to happen it just seems unlikely at this point.

Sure if you run sword and spam the shadow step you can heal AoE, but then you give up barrier on scepter and consequently the majority of your RW venom application which means your DPS would drop to 2-4k, also I've used almost that same build but it still preforms significantly worse than my heal-renegade (which isn't even a very popular build) which can spam 10k heals to 5 targets, keep up perma alacrity with 1 button, 25 might, perma-protection, and perma vigor, all while providing projectile block and a boat-load of cc. Also my problem with support specter is that you're forced to run 4/5 wells just to keep up alacrity (AND you're forced to take a specific trait, since the alacrity isn't actually baked into specter as a profession) and without well of bounty your boon application is still nothing, which btw bounty is really unreliable as it depends on what boons are active at the exact moment you place it, so you might just end up getting like swiftness, regen and 2 stacks of might from it.. All this is aside from the fact that you're forced to run shadow arts and that forced mobility to heal just sucks in general.

I just feel like they nerfed the DPS because specter can also be support, it reminds me of the archaic MMO design philosophy that was the "hybrid tax" where a class would be balanced to do less damage because it had to potential of also being a support class in the same spec. Not saying specter wasn't doing a lot of damage (even though it was very specifically single target stationary mobs with enough health to last more than 10 seconds and 4+ allies nearby) but just they seem to believe that a supposed "support" SHOULD do less DPS just listen to this statement they made about catalyst "...as our other professions require a damage tradeoff in trait selection to bring a strong boon support role while the catalyst currently does not, leading to the catalyst dealing about a third more damage than other quickness support options.". Also all these nerfs hit PvP/WvW condi builds even harder than PvE where a nerf was definitely NOT needed.

It's a shame they decided to nerf the DPS (of course they did) instead of actually looking at the support side of the spec which is still very lackluster especially compared to competing support specs, specter gives barely any useful boons outside of alacrity and maybe fury(with steal), hardly scales with healing power and has to focus on 1 target at a time instead of the 5 that ALL other support specs can do. Barrier is fine and all but it lasts all of 5 seconds and then *poof* all your stacked barrier is gone, so there's no value in preemptively "healing" anyone, specter still struggles to top off a group after a big hit, which WILL happen and you can't maintain barrier on more than 1 person. Guess it could be worse, we could be stuck with catalyst as our elite spec 😂.

Going to re-post my DPS experience from another thread: I've since tried Specter as a Condi DPS and dear lord is it terrible, can someone who has figured out a build for this please elaborate on how you get more than 10-15k DPS, because even with food/full vipers and full leg gear I struggle to break 15k on a target golem with self boons only. Most of the traits are trash for DPS (minor tier is literally only support, one of which is a worthless 60-300s CD passive) I am aware that DPS goes up slightly with venom share but even post-nerf solo condi Deadeye or daredevil is doubling specter's golem DPS and those elite aren't even "condi focused". Your weapon skills on scepter are very poorly optimized for PvE damage thanks to the massive aftercasts and pointless shadowsteps and due to the specter's "trade-off" of having 3 less initiative, you're basically locked into trickery again and you still end up running out of ini constantly just trying to keep condis up. I literally do more DPS with just auto attacks on Power DD than I do going full ham on specter. As for the "shroud", entering it is a huge DPS LOSS as none of the abilities on it are worth clicking on, even once, in terms of DPS. I'm genuinely asking if anyone has found out a way to make this spec work for DPS (not some lame support hybrid) as I'm struggling to even find a reason to use specter at all. Going to be honest, as a thief main with way too many hours of experience on this profession, this is giving me serious buyers remorse for EoD. At least Harbinger is fun, Harbinger shroud is how a GOOD shroud mechanic should look, it makes specter shroud look like a joke.

It's pretty stupid, and probably unintentional, but you can target your mini with siphon to activate Thrill of the Crime / Hidden Thief without an enemy target, I've been forced into doing this to upkeep swiftness out of combat...

Played specter as both a roamer and an attempt at small scale support in beta1 and had fun with it, beta2 completely destroyed the spec and I haven't touched it since. Given the launch of EoD has done literally nothing to address any of the outstanding issues present at the end of beta2 with all of the new specs it doesn't surprise me at all that 60% of people aren't even touching the new specs, they really are that bad right now.

I unlocked it as I already had 404 hero points leftover, probably not going to use it, possibly ever. They changed nothing from beta2 based on feedback. Outside of a trollish roaming build in WvW I generally can't see much use for it in other game modes as it is now, I was excited to try a fractal support build till they nerfed it after Beta1, now I've lost much of my interest. I agreed with the direction to push a support/condi thief over yet another power build however I cannot get behind their push to make it a useless single-target focused support build. This is Gw2 not WoW, single target does-not-work, period. As it stands right now I'd rather use my renegade for alacrity+healing support as it's MUCH more durable and capable of providing more boons and healing overall. Here's hoping the REAL EoD launch patch is coming soon and this isn't it. *Edit few days later - I've since tried Specter as a Condi DPS and dear lord is it terrible, can someone who has figured out a build for this please elaborate on how you get more than 10-15k DPS, because even with food/full vipers and full leg gear I struggle to break 15k on a target golem with self boons only. Most of the traits are trash for DPS (minor tier is literally only support, one of which is a worthless 60-300s CD passive) I am aware that DPS goes up slightly with venom share but even post-nerf solo condi Deadeye or daredevil is doubling specter's golem DPS and those elite aren't even "condi focused". Your weapon skills on scepter are very poorly optimized for PvE damage thanks to the massive aftercasts and pointless shadowsteps and due to the specter's "trade-off" of having 3 less initiative, you're basically locked into trickery again and you still end up running out of ini constantly just trying to keep condis up. I literally do more DPS with just auto attacks on Power DD than I do going full ham on specter. As for the "shroud", entering it is a huge DPS LOSS as none of the abilities on it are worth clicking on, even once, in terms of DPS. I'm genuinely asking if anyone has found out a way to make this spec work for DPS (not some lame support hybrid) as I'm struggling to even find a reason to use specter at all.

I do really wish Anet would just replace traits like this instead of nerfing them into uselessness, this is how we ended up having probably the least build variety of any profession, hell our entire acrobatics line is still mostly unusable thanks to nerfs it received 2+ years ago (hello 300s CD traits), each time they "smiter's boon" a trait or skill like this it just narrows build variety even further, now the only trait anyone will ever run in CS is No Quarter, as if this wasn't already run in 90% of CS builds anyways, now it'll just be 100%.

Well RIP my open world Pistol/Pistol sustain build, guess that's what they were targeting because that's the only legitimate use for this trait (open world QOL), just more proof that not a single dev plays thief. 🙃

Eh.. The way I see it - focusing on guilds means that for about ~2 hours a day your servers randomly assigned "guild/s" logs on, caps some random towers/keeps (or just randomly wanders around 10v1'ing PuGs), then logs off and all that's left is a few dozen randoms with little direction or reason to care about the rest of the "server" because ultimately everything will be randomized again in a week. Being in a guild is one thing but ultimately WvW is a 24/7 game-mode and even the most dedicated guilds only run for about 2 hours a day and when none of the other people you see on the battlefield are from guilds or are player names you recognize, apathy starts to set in, this same thing happened in EotM and that devolved into XP farming after a month (not saying this necessarily will, but it's possible). And God forbid you don't have a guild or your guild disbands, then you are just a leaf in the wind and will never see any form of meaningful group play again, since nobody seems to recruit outside of discord anymore. Sorry just venting a bit since now the vast majority of my friends and people I often ran with are scattered to the wind and yet I'm seeing no actual benefit from the reshuffling of players apart from an attempt to curb the dreaded 'bandwagon'.

Honestly, single target healing in Gw2 just feels bad, having to frantically click around after a boss drops a big AoE and trying to pick everyone else back up one-at-a-time is more stressful than fun, so as far as full-support specter goes right now I'm going to have to give it a hard pass. Even with the little AoE healing you get from the ports and wells, it just isn't enough to sustain alone in most cases (at least in the higher-tier fractals). I have a full-healing renegade and as clunky as it is - it's just better in EVERY way, more healing, better AoE, more boons, better CC, AoE cleanse, superior boon uptime; and it doesn't require you to take a specific trait and run specific utilities in order to supply it's MAIN boon: alacrity. Seriously, why does the specter have to take a trait AND run 3/4 wells just to maintain the one boon Anet apparently wants us to all be putting out?? If alacrity is suppose to be a core part of specter then they need to make it part of your BASE shroud abilities or something, at least that would give us a reason to actually USE shroud, because atm spending any time in shroud is a waste for both healing and DPS. As for the Endless Night nerf, it feels about as bad as everyone thought it would, reduced healing capacity and DPS is not good, especially when it's a trade-off to keep a redundant boon (it's redundant because you will still need to take a FB/scrapper/whatever to fill the role of party quickness now anyways). The better option IMO would be for endless night to give quickness to the Thief casting it instead, if it's only going to be single-target i think it would be more beneficial for it to be given to the thief so that you can single-target top people off faster at least with more consistency. Or hell make endless night just give alacrity to 3 targets and get rid of the well trait.. Sorry for the wall of what feels like complaints, it's just frustrating to see such a major step back after what felt like a promising first look after the last beta.

I thought the idea was for them to rework all the existing 300s CD traits into something else (which they still haven't done btw)? I see no reason why they are actually adding a new one to a brand new spec, because this trait will literally be DoA in every single gamemode, you don't need that kind of CD in PvE 99% of the time and no-one in their right mind would ever take a 300s CD trait in a competitive PvP setting.

It's hard to understate my disappointment at the Specter changes, it's like they completely ignored all the feedback from the 17(?) page thread and the multiple other threads made in the profession forum, and decided to jump straight to nerfing things. To review: Specter is now a spec that can only heal a single target and provides minimal boons outside of alacrity which it will only provide to a single subgroup and is of minimal usefulness to the thief itself; It's overall DPS will drop by something like 50% due to a 66% reduction in the application of Rot Wallow Venom; It still has to deal with the clunky mess that is trying to target single allies one-at-a-time; Shadow shroud abilities are still absolutely worthless and clunky; Only 2/6 of the wells will ever see any use (why is there even a power well on specter?); As far as i can tell Siphon still requires a target to use, which means you won't be able to use it like steal to gain boons/stealth on demand like vanilla thief and DD. I genuinely cannot see a use for specter if it goes live like this as the only thing it will be good for are literally the two things they stated in the notes (Open world healing a friend, and 2v2s 🤣). I think basically every single other support spec including things like heal scrapper and heal scourge will outperform specter in every way if things stay as they are. It's a shame because I was actually pretty excited to see what this eSpec could've become after playing it but all of these changes look like they're going in the opposite direction of what will actually make me want to use this. Starting to look a lot like Deadeye 2.0 unfortunately 😢 (e.g a meme of a spec that only sees play in open world and maybe WvW roaming).

it's actually 50% weaker than it was before (used to be 100% of consumed SF was converted to healing instantly) now you have to wait 5 seconds for half the effect, problem is even spending 1 second in shroud is a waste of time unless you're using it to absorb a few hits.

It shocks me how they managed to ignore almost ALL the feedback that was given and instead elected to nerf specter's multi-target healing capabilities even MORE 🤣 The reason why people were leaving shroud immediately with Consume Shadows was because shroud skills suck, there is literally no reason to be in shroud longer than you absolutely need to be because the damage and utility of it is non-existent and the healing is limited to a single target, thus everyone just burned the "shadow force" for a large AoE heal since the spec lacked any meaningful AoE healing, which they also made worse (why?). In addition making Endless Night only affect 1 person is also going to cut the specter's DPS output to 1/3rd of what it was since now you're getting 66% less stacks of rot wallow venom. Also limiting the healing/quickness output to a single target is just going to force you to play favorites with party members even MORE. At this point the better option would be to apply the quickness to the thief instead of your target because at least then you will have quickness to help you heal everyone individually since that's apparently all they ever want you to do because according to this line: "This may maintain a strong all-around support role for a focused target in certain gameplay, such as 2v2 PvP or playing with a friend in the open world.." all specter is meant to be used for is open world and 2v2's which no-one really takes seriously anyways 😂. PLEASE let this not be the last of the changes as this leaves me with basically no confidence that they even play their own class.

I think no downstate is great, and I'd be down for one a month actually. It's great as a roamer and it actually makes support feel even more valuable, the only ones I find who dislike it are those who are prone to playing glass builds and rely on zergs and towers to save them from any mistakes they make. NDS also helps groups fight outnumbered more evenly since groups can't rely on 10 zerglings picking up downs the moment you create them so in a way it makes people more accountable for their actions and forces them to have more situational awareness. Sorry to say, if you die, it usually means you messed up and need to evaluate why it happened (did I overextend? Was I not on the tag? was full zerkers REALLY the best choice for this?), rather than rely on sheer numbers to cover for your mistakes. Also when i do die I actually prefer to skip the downstate since 90% of the time you aren't getting rezzed, and it allows you to respawn and return to the fight quicker, rather than sitting on the ground being worthless for 20 seconds.

Scepter Skills 3 [Triple Threat] (with no offhand weapon equipped) is bugged and only hits once instead of 3 times, no-one will ever use this skill but it should still be fixed. 🙃 [Endless Night] (Sc/p skill 3) breaks target if you strafe away from your target after shadowstepping in VERY easily wasting all 3 initiative, if you even look slightly in another direction while channeling it will cancel the skill, often before even getting 1 tick off. *edit this specifically occurs when using it on an ally.

This is just a few of the things I've noticed after playing around with the specter in PvE and WvW for around 3~ hours, so take it with a grain of salt. Overall the spec feels unique and like something that the thief needed after getting power-based elites for the last 2 expansions, my one gripe is that you are pretty much locked into taking trickery (again) this time in both PvP and PvE because of the reduced ini, as well as it being the only line with pre-exisiting support abilities (TotC, Bountiful Theft), the third line is a bit more flexible but i still found myself locked into SA when trying to support because of Shadow Savior and Concealing Restoration (for stealth access after heal well). 1. Scepter 2- This skill feels pretty much like a waste of initiative as it is currently, it's basically a stronger AA in terms of Barrier application, but costs as much Ini as Sc/P 3, the might it gives is single target only and you need to use ALL your Ini to maintain a 25 stack on a single target, this skill would do better as a ground targeted AoE that gives might to all allies in an area, perhaps lowering the stacks but increasing the duration at the same time (from 10 to 12 seconds). Oh and also Scepter 3 "Triple Threat" (with no offhand weapon equipped) is bugged and only hits once instead of 3 times, no-one will ever use this skill but it should still be fixed. 2. Well of Tears- Why does this exist? It's clearly a Power DPS ability but there is no conceivable way to run a power build on Specter without severely gimping yourself in the process (i've tried) Because every ability on shroud and every trait is purely focused on condi/support. This ability would be better off as an Cleansing well that pulses out condi cleanse to allies in the impact area, as specter, despite being a support build, lacks any meaningful way to cleanse from more than just your Siphon target. 3. The focus on single target- while unique limits the Thief when it comes to boon application in groups, Alacrity application is good, but it feels really bad to use endless night and have ALL the quickness dumped onto a single target and get none yourself or on other allies, possible fix could be to give the thief and the other 2 allies endless night gives barrier to half the amount of quickness as the main target, hell even a third would be good. The alternative I suppose is endlessly Shift+tabbing around to allies and spamming endless night, trying to keep everyone topped off 😓. Perhaps this is asking too much as Traversing Dusk already allows you to maintain alacrity on a group, in which case the Quickness is just a treat for the thief's favorite party member. Edit*- It appears that Endless Night is actually a beam attack that will hit up to 2 additional targets between you and your main target giving them the quickness as well, this is.. something, but it really should just be 2 other targets within 200-300 radius of your main instead, it's way to hard to try and "line-up" random players just to use this skill optimally. 4. Siphon and Trickery- I don't like how you are no longer able to cast "steal" with no target to gain the boons from trickery and stealth from Hidden Thief, though this is also a problem on DE. It would also be nice if when using Siphon on allies you got the boons from Bountiful Theft and Thrill of the Crime at half duration to match the half CD you get, this would make boon upkeep easier as a support as it would stop you from being forced to use Siphon on enemies constantly just for boons, this would also synergize better with well of bounty, making it easier to keep up more unique boons. Also, Siphon requires a "Valid Path" to use, why? It clearly isn't a shadowstep anymore 🤔 5. Target Ally hotkey- This needs work, it currently seems to either target the nearest "friendly" entity or a completely random one, like a ranger pet, since this spec is all about single-target healing it would be nice if this seen a rework to target the lowest HP ally in your squad before some random ranger pet or friendly NPC 30 feet away. 6. Shadow Shroud- It feels really bad to enter shroud and suddenly you're only supporting your single siphon target (which often bugs out and you tether to nothing) Imagine in a fractal when your whole group gets hit by an AoE and you are only able to efficiently bring 1 target back up without spamming all your wells and shadowsteps, this creates a situation where you end up "playing favorites" and all your healing and boons go to 1 person in your party, It would be nice if there was a trait that tethered you to 3-4 allies in a 400-600 radius around you and split all the healing between your nearby allies instead of overloading it on a single target, since Siphon only allows you to swap target every ~5 seconds (with trickery). Perhaps this is just wishful thinking 🙃. Oh and Eternal Night (shroud 4) could really use an AoE indicator cone so we can see if it will actually hit anything, I've had it hit nothing WAY too many times. One last minor thing is there currently is no gear set that really works with what Specter is trying to do, closest I've found is Plaguedoctors. The dream set for this class would be something like ++Condi damage ++Healing +concentration +expertise, though this might be too good, here's hoping for some new stat combos in EoD!

The way I see Specter before having actually played it is an attempt at doing what the old support Chronomancer builds used to do in fractals, back when you would run Chrono + Druid. In other words the Specter would be there for alacrity and a smattering of other boons + a little quickness but mainly it would be a hybrid condi DPS, unfortunately the only gear set that currently exists that gives condi and Boon Duration is Plaguedoctors, which is less-than ideal for DPS, hopefully there will be a new stat set in EoD that will help with this something like ++Condi Damage, +Expertise, +Boon Duration. Unfortunately the Druid + Chrono meta died a long time ago in fractals, being replaced by the more efficient FB + Renegade, so at BEST I would expect Specter to be an alternative to DPS alacrity renegade rather than actually being a full healer, at least as long as Anet expects us to be a single-target healer, which just really doesn't work in Guild Wars 2.

I would say no, mostly all the trait were focused on condi or support or both, very little power or reason to run a Berserker build on specter. Things like Rot Wallow Venom make it pretty clear they want it to be condi.

The main problem I see with running full support on specter is that you will basically be forced into trickery and possibly even SA because those are the only traitlines that have any sort of existing group support functionality, which will limit your options even more than we are used to. Also the scaling on the existing 2 (really only 1) healing trait Shadow Savior is an abysmal 0.4 coefficient meaning the only base thief AoE support will need a significant buff before it's actually usable, I believe it was healing for around 1.1k per shadowstep on allies in full heal gear, by comparison I can get 16k heal on Rev tablet heal skill, and that's more spammable. I will wait till the wiki is updated with the new traits so that i can take a closer look but i only recall one trait for boosting healing output by 20%, for any sort of AoE healing, especially with bad coefficients that won't be enough, even after adding in runes. I assume the design here is to play like a Disc priest from WoW, where the idea is to prevent damage through barrier rather than heal it, which would only really work if you can upkeep barrier on more than 1 target, or tanks suddenly became a thing..

So.. it IS a support spec but it's almost entirely focused on single target support, barrier, boons, healing is all focused on a single ally target which is.... an interesting direction to go in this game. I'm not sure how this will feel or work in the actual game but it sounds pretty bad to focus on a single target in a game where tanks don't exist and literally EVERYTHING is a cleave or an AoE, not to mention the game's UI doesn't really make it easy to target allies especially if you are un-grouped such as in a PuG setting or WvW. Guess we'll find out on Tuesday. *Edit Looks like the quickness/boons application is single-target focused also, Imagine being in a fractal group with a specter and he only focuses on giving quickness to one guy 😆

Ah cool, hopefully we'll actually get a hands-on test next week then.

So are we actually going to get an elite spec live-stream tomorrow? They seemed to rush out the reveals of all the remaining specs this week prior to Friday, yet I've not been able to find an announcement of an actual stream. Would be odd to shotgun all 3 specs like this then have silence till the 29th (next Friday).