zetherin.8372

Catalyst went through a phase during the EoD beta where it didn't have energy and that was the best phase. Then they re-added it back for launch and that was, IMHO, the biggest mistake for the class. I don't think energy serves any purpose other than being an annoyance. It's a large QoL detriment and the only reason I currently get turned off the spec. I absolutely love cata overall, annoyance of energy though is like water drip torture. After a little while I can't take it anymore.

Another minor bug is that the ambush tooltip for scepter doesn't show under the rest of the #1 skills like the other weapons

The patch for action camera and the toggle for swapping targeting are amazing. The only other bug I notice is that when you don't have anyone targeted and you try to steal, instead of it not working and the game telling you that you need a target, it actually goes on a short cooldown as if you'd targeted an ally. I think it's a bug as I'd expect it to work the same as base, DD, and DE steals where if you have no target, you can't use the ability and it doesn't go on cooldown since there's no benefit to being able to cast it with no target

You're wrong. A significant portion of the population plays exclusively via action camera. Many have no choice due to disabilities. Completely disregarding them because you don't like it is not the way

I do find it hard to survive. I was fighting some frogs and beetles by the giant tree waypoint in TD and I was near constantly poisoned. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have 1 heal skill and a singular block (F4) unless we talent more. I found I was doing lots of damage and it was fun, but my health was constantly going down and I had no way to bring it back up. Lots of other classes at this point have some sort of "vamp" or "lifesteal" talents/skills. I feel like Virtuoso needs something small to offer a little more sustain

Why are you referring to yourself in the 3rd person? Also, the 6.3k expertise is awesome and should totally be a feature. The blade generation is wicked when you have high crit and slightly longer bleed duration Also, fighting chak has become a whole new level of hell with their ranged damage reflection. Earth eles as well.

Has anyone else noticed that the #1 skills on the hammer seem backwards with regards to execution time? Fire and Water are each 1/2 cast time but they have such a long after-cast delay that they're actually more like 3/4+ and on the flip side, air and earth both have 3/4 with almost no after-cast delay which makes them feel faster. Doing a side-by-side comparison, air/earth execute objectively faster than fire/water. I don't think air/earth should be nerfed if their value is incorrect because it's not overpowered at all at the current rate, but fire/water should have their after-cast delays reduced in my opinion or at least the tooltips updated because they are not accurate. Edit: Out of curiosity, I pulled out my phone and timed the duration from the start of 1 auto-attack to the start of the next. I only compared earth and fire but earth was taking about 1 second for the full loop while fire was taking 1.25 seconds on average for the full loop. I'm not sure if earth is actually extra fast or fire half a second too slow

These are some great points in the entire post (most of it cut for brevity). I also really like what you're suggesting as a path forward. I'm glad it wasn't just me that found shadow shroud to be unimpactful and weak. It seemed like people were generally saying it did a lot of damage, but I didn't feel it. It was kinda spammy on a small AoE but I'm not sure why, it just felt weak. Also, I like the #5 shroud skill with the big CC, but the channel time is insane. I pop off to go get some hot chocolate and when I come back, I'm still channeling.

One of the few things that actually disappointed me about the class was that there was no way to grant quickness to yourself. It's like, 'Sweet! We got this new toy but we're not allowed to play with it, we can only give it to other people and watch them have fun with it'. I think it would be amazing if the quickness would apply like half duration to yourself or something as extra incentive to use the skill in random PvE buffing random players rather than it only seeing use in fractals or group settings

I'm so excited for the last beta event at the end of this month so we can see what all changed. I'm hopeful that at least the action cam targeting and duplicated 3rd step of the autoattack are fixed so I can get a real feel for what it'll be like

Sound like everyone is complaining about the SFX. Perhaps I'm alone but I actually liked it 😅. I liked that it wasn't some super quiet "swoosh" or other insignificant sound but one that felt impactful

I will agree that I do absolutely love the spec. Unlike some of the others, it felt fundamentally awesome. That said, I don't agree with "Do not change the Specter in any way" because there are definitely QoL and bug fixes that would take the class from mediocre to amazing. But when I compare and contrast this spec to the others like Virtuoso, I'm so excited to play this. I also think it's hilarious and awesome that the thief of all classes gets the spec closest to OG Monk which is my all-time favorite class.

I haven't read through to see if anyone else suggested this but I had an idea pop about how to make this spec feel better with the action camera. I think as of yet, this spec by far will have the worst synergy with the camera because of how the new ally targeting works. But, I think that's only because of the way that action camera currently handles targeting. Current State Action camera will target enemies over allies. If there is a hostile and a friendly character close together, e.g. melee fighting, then action camera will automatically prefer the hostile character over friendly when you place your reticle over that general location. Even if the reticle is strictly over the friendly. In my experience, it takes several right clicks and re-targets to get the ally selected. Proposal Add a toggle in the targeting block of controls to swap the preference of action camera from hostile to friendly and vice versa. It would be exceptionally helpful to be able to press a button and start focusing on allies over enemies without having to either pop out of action camera and click on them directly or re-target and re-target and re-target until it blesses us with a green target instead of a red one. Being able to bind this to a key and hot-swap targeting on demand would significantly improve QoL for action camera specters. Without an option such as this or alternative method of targeting allies over enemies when the need arises, I fear that I will have to relearn how to play this game without action camera for this and only this spec.

The Shadow Arts first bottom trait, Hidden Thief, grants stealth when you steal. The problem is, it doesn't grant stealth until 2 seconds after you've used siphon. You have to manually stop yourself from pushing any buttons after you siphon if you plan to use the scepter's stealth attack otherwise you'll instantly knock yourself out of stealth. Basically the same problem the deadeye originally had where the travel time on its bullets could cause them to hit after you stealthed thus immediately dropping it off you. I hope the delay can be removed because the manual stop is very disruptive to the rest of the flow

I do agree that the scepter 2 skill feels lacking. The barrier provided to allies is wrong - what is applied is about 3x what's on the tooltip - however, it still doesn't add anything. Perhaps a large quick barrier for allies is good, maybe it could be a bit bigger to see value over just auto-ing allies, but against foes it adds nothing. It barely does any extra damage, gives you a few stacks of might and them weakness but that does not feel impactful, especially since weakness is probably the worst and least effective condition in existence - at least for PvE.

The scepter feels unresponsive since it locks you in animations for so long. Part of the problem is that the 3rd step of the auto attack lasts 1.5 seconds and can't be overridden by other skills AND it casts twice if you spam the 1 key or hold it down (bug). As a result, your normal auto attack chain locks you into 2x 1.5 second cast time uninterruptible skills and that just feels bad. I have a feeling it won't be so bad once it only casts once, but I would like it to either be interruptible with other skills or reduce the animation/cast time.

I'm seeing a weird bug where when you hold down the 1 button to auto attack, your character actually does the 3rd step twice. Instead of 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 1, it's 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 3 -> 1 which I think is really adding to the unresponsive feel I'm having since the 3rd auto is a 1.5 second cast time that can't be overridden by another skill. Edit: The same applies if you just spam 1, you don't need to hold it down. Also, it feels like the 3rd step has a 0.25-0.5 second aftercast animation lock that is unnecessary and feels bad