Rellyk.9467

You guys are worried about Thief having too strong a support spec? You are aware Firebrands exist, right? I don't want to see FB nerfed, I'd just like for Specter to be viable choice for support instead. Some notes on your changes: 1) Making the shroud less powerful will not solve the problem. The main reason that people would dip out of it right away is that for the most part, it's weaker than what you can provide while out of it. It's also not very fun with the new changes. Now it feels like you're being punished by having to stay in shroud to get Consume powered up. If you want people to use the shroud, then it needs to be worth using for itself, not just as something you have to sit through to get what you want. 2) Endless Night. Let me be very clear. 2v2 is maybe 1% of game modes. Specter needs strong support if it's going to be a viable alternative for raids/fractals/wvw/pvp etc. As it stands, there is no reason to bring one over any other support. They're not even remotely close to firebrands for literally every game mode. For pve, druids bring healing, cc, loads of might, and the unique spirits. Healscourges have tons of barrier, superb res utility, and lots of other specials. In pve, Alacrens will still be kings of alacrity. WvW, this doesn't come close to the utility a support scrapper brings, with gyros, healing, cleansing, stealth and more. Even in a 2v2 situation, you could bring just about any other class and do just as well, if not better, than a Specter. TLDR - Thief support needs to be strong, otherwise there will continue to be little to no reason to bring a Thief. Stop being afraid of letting this class actually do something well.

Much the same for me. Our alliance matchup is horridly unbalanced in terms of numbers who actually play. Most nights so far during prime hours we've had the outnumbered buff on at least half our BLs, and the blue team meanwhile can just take whatever they want. So glad this BS ends on Friday. Can't wait for it to go away.

I have, and this is worse than any link I've experienced. Little to no communication, no open tags, and as I said we've been outnumbered to the point of having the buff on most BLs, even during peak hours. One objective of this was to even the numbers, and I'm reporting what is actually happening. Stop blindly defending this, and accept that some of us are having horrid experiences with this system and want to report on the problems.

I agree with this. So far, this has created far more problems than it has solved.

Same here. Routinely outnumbered on 3 out of 4 BLs. Same group just rolling maps and taking all our stuff. No one bothers to help defend, and we have far less coverage than the others. This week has been miserable, and if this is what the future of WvW looks like, it's not good.

Thank you for posting this. Lots of thoughts on these changes, I'll go spec by spec for the ones I focus on. Catalyst The orb changes are better, but still not great. It seems like you're heading more in the direction of Scourge Shades, and while that's not bad, that doesn't work with Eles. We'll only be able to combo the top field if stacked, and if not, it's easy to lose track of them in the visual noise. Suggestion - Instead of Scourge, why not go in the direction of the revenant Ventari tablet? Movable on a short cooldown, but only one and changes attunements with you. Hammer changes are better, but it's still punishing to spam attunement swaps to keep the orbs going. Also, the variable ranges on the elements adds unnecessary complexity. Especially condi, which goes between fire and earth. It still needs survivability if it's going to be melee. The other specs have options for baked in survival skills. Catalyst needs the same. It has a theme but no strong role. Catalyst is teased as focusing on auras and combos, yet it still lacks easy access to both. You want auras? Tempest can do that with overlords easily, and all eles have access on their various weapons. Same with combo fields. Eles can put out lots of combo fields, and can even self combo already. There needs to be a reason to take this elite when other specs can do the same thing without the fickleness of the orb/energy/hammer. The traits are too restrictive. If you want auras, you take these three. Combos, take these. Buffs, take these. There is little incentive to mix and match, and indeed you hurt your performance if you do so. I like the changes, but they're still not enough. This elite needs a strong role and traits, and needs serious improvements to its survivability. Mechanist One of engineer's core mechanics is the toolbelt. Indeed, our utilities are balanced around having toolbelt options. Losing all our toolbelt skills just for some mech commands is a horrid tradeoff. Maybe automate the mech skills or have them trigger along with the regular toolbelt skills? Tying us to the mace is a horrid choice. We shouldn't be punished if we want to use a different weapon. It also makes kits less useful. Reversing this change would open up build choices. If you're going to make the mech integral to the spec, it needs a cooldown on par with ranger pet swap. Even at 50 sec, that's too long to wait for the main part of your elite. The mech needs to work underwater. Self-explanatory. Virtuoso The blades need to be unblockable or pierce or be instant. There has to be an improvement to them to make them better. Power needs a boost. Lowering the power damage when it's already underwhelming is just depressing. Like Catalyst, it needs some stronger survivability. Something to help it last. Coming from 3, stop pushing condi for this so hard. Right now this is starting to feel like a weaker, less mobile, less survivable mirage. Untamed The unleashed skills on the pet still feel weak and gimmicky. The baseline pet skills usually offer more damage or more CC. Unleashing should increase the potential, based on the pet's family. You had a brilliant design with the various pet families for the Soulbeast, maybe apply similar buffs when unleashing? Likewise, all the unleashed pet skills being the same is too boring. Every pet, regardless of family, gets the same three skills. The skills should change based on the pet family. Vindicator The vast majority of the traits are tied to the focus on dodging. It does little to improve anything besides the dodge. Like Catalyst, the trait lines are very restrictive. If you want dps, you take the same three traits, likewise for tanking and healing. Most of the skills on greatsword feel like copies of other classes' skills. It would be nice to give it more of an identity of its own. The Alliance legend. Hoo boy, where to start? First of all, this hybrid legend thing is just too clunky. In addition to our normal legend swap and our energy bar, we also have to keep track of the individual red/blue state of each skill is excessive. Next, it suffers from the same issue that ele does. It's punished for having the option for either dps or support on the same thing. Yet, most players will stick with either the blue or the red and use the Alliance Tactics to keep themselves in that stance, ignoring half of the legend. Finally, because each skill has 2 parts, they're weaker than other comparable skills. The elite. The Urn is still garbage, and the spear is underwhelming. These elites didn't feel good to use in the last beta, and the proposed changes don't do enough to fix this. Specter The change to single target buffing is terrible. Nothing else in this game does that, why punish thieves? It needs to at least buff/heal the party. Why alacrity? Alacrity only really helps the utilities, not the weaponskills for thieves. Quickness as a group boon would be a much better choice. Not to mention, alacrity is already covered by mesmers and revenants, and they can do it far better than Specter. If we have to choose one buff, I'd much rather have Quickness. Overall, some of the changes seem like a step in the right direction, but others are just baffling or fixing the wrong problem.