Eleandra.4859

Reaper - I recently switched from thief to necro after nearly 11 years of maining thief. Gave up on "Thief is in a good spot! - CMC It is like playing a completely different game. Where thief struggles to reach more than 12k sustained dps solo on single target, reaper easily sustains around 20k+ dps and goes up to *a lot more* as soon as you hit multiple targets. In addition to that you have loads more survivability and have to sacrifice nothing. Reaper shroud, self heal on GS + healing skill, HUGE aoe damage (both the dmg and the aoe radius is huge), an aoe pull, enough cc to break a champion cc bar without even switching from the max dps setup, perma 25 stack of self might. And on top of that: I have done fractals, raids, strikes, all the challenging content on my thief including Dhuum and EVERYTHING is easier with Necro. So much so, that I start to lose my reflexes because with the Necro health pool + shroud one can simply ignore many mechanics. Also, with thief you often have to play around/against yourself: Want to to get the M7 bonus with staff? Better pack some stealth utilities, Want to get max dmg out of the DrD trait line: Say goodbye to your endurance bar or lose dmg. Whereas Necro (and more specifically Reaper) traits and mechanics beautifully enhance each other.

Just from trying to heal Galaya Delve meta today (albeit using the Harrier Variant, that might have been a mistake: 1. The approach to heal around the target is...not necessarily bad but it feels again as if one has to play (against) the UI and not so much the game. Want to find and select the target in need....have fun getting that done before your target is dead. 2. Even though I got a lot of low key barrier on targets, I had a hard time to heal the people I wanted to heal. I would very much prefer if Anet finally bit the bullet and introduced a grand master trait that would create 5 tethers instead of one. That way I would at least see whom I am healing in shroud. This would not fix open world healing but it would have the effect that my group in raids and strikes does not have to huddle all the time to receive heals (and it would be a pretty cool game play + visual change befitting a grand master trait, I think). Also, if the tethers would not be random but target the avatar's with the lowest health around the specter, it would give access to a kind of emergency aoe healing. For that, the healing effects of shroud skills would probably have to be stronger though. 3. This is probably due to me being bad at Specter healing, (I only dabbled in it a few times and giving up after a few hours) but burst healing seemed mediocre outside of "Consume Shadows". One one hand it is easy to heal the kind of random aoe damage that flies around the fight but as soon as someone made an error (like stepping into a black puddles etc.) neither Sc/D 3 nor Sc/P 3 gave enough healing to help the target survive and shroud + "Consume Shadows" was out of the question because of the 5 second shroud waiting timer. This was true even when I was able to target the other player's avatar fast enough to get heals in. At the same time "Consume Shadows" still suffers from the changes to shroud from 2022 making it significantly weaker than nearly all druid celestial avatar skills due to shroud attrition and the 5 second build up. I definitely agree that applying heal to those avatars around the main target is a step in the right direction and had it been taken 1 or 2 weeks after EoD release, I would be hopeful for a happy end. This same improvement after 16 months is a bit little a bit late. Regarding this whole protect the king theme Specter has going: I also saw the stream where this was explained. Obviously Anet is free to base their design decisions on whatever they want. This, however, was a pretty bad decision in my opinion. On a fresh game where this concept fits the play style, it can work. On a 10+ year old game where everything is an AOE and several strong AOE healers exist, it is simply put: A bad idea.

I would like to chime in as a (very unhappy) Thief/Specter player: DISCLAIMER: This is obviously a highly subjective post and I do not claim to speak for everyone. Last years balance patches were so... wrong and also badly executed that it actually drove me away from the game for several months. From Specter I was hoping and still hope to get: 1. A strong and competitive cDPS build that does not cannibalize on its own concepts, is able to stand with the best of the cDPS specs and that feels powerful. Make it feel powerful like Reaper (I am not saying it should feel like reaper but it should feel as powerful as reaper). 2. A healer build that performs on par with other healers without having to use lackluster and unfun petri dish mechanics (I am looking at you 1 target tether and ally targeting as it is working right now). Please put some effort into this spec, make it work and at the same time fun. Think about a flow for the spec. That flow can make use of ally targeting but from my point of view should abandon the need to switch between enemies and allies all the time. Initially I thought that your idea was that Specter targets allies outside of shroud and enemies when in shroud but this never materialized, perhaps that could be an idea to clean up the concept? 3. A strong and rewarding offensive support build that performs as well as other, similar builds. When I read the patch notes I assumed you were (again) not only missing the mark but moving in the completely wrong direction. ------ I liked Ritualist support specter, it could have been stronger (or atrocities like Mechanist could have been nerfed perhaps) but it was okay. Creating a full dps + support specter was NOT the way to address the class's shortcomings, it was (again) lazy and incompetently done. PLEASE focus on making the spec and the whole class FUN while tweaking numbers. Your game uses combat as its main problem solving mechanism. Combat should therefore be the most fun thing to do. The balance and the elite spec design team do not currently achieve that in my opinion. Concretely: Revert the shroud nerf from last year (or fix it in a different way, getting pulled out of shroud in a second is really unfun. Redesign the Specter trait line. I already proposed during the Specter beta test that one of the grand-master traits could increase the tether from one to five targets (which would be similar to what you did with the June 27 patch) and build a flow around ally targeting. Many complaints from the Necromancer and Druid players are to some extend what plagues the Thief community for years: - Do not create class/elite spec mechanics that use reactive concepts in a rotation. This includes but is not limited to: - Alacrity application; You moved away from putting alac on wells, this was good. However, you put it on shroud skills, which means I will rotate through shroud for alac. This is way less bad than what you did to Druid but it is still not good. - Daredevil having to dodge for a significant damage buff. Worst offender is not even "Bounding Dodger" but "Havoc Specialist". Just do not do this, it is bad design. Keep reactive defenses to be reactive and defensive. During the EoD beta event one of the main complaints for shroud was, that it did not feel impactful, that it lacked identity and that the best use of it was to enter it and leave it directly for the (traited) big heal. Your reaction was to install a 5 second timer to force players to stay in shroud and later to nearly kill shroud with a heavy handed nerf ...way to fail. Now you can take a step back and re-evaluate your design and your approach. Also: Start taking back changes that are obviously bad. One cannot fix bad decisions with more bad decisions, at least this should be clear by the community's reaction to your work.

"Thief is in a good spot." - CMC, 2023 🤡

Quick test but so far the new options do nothing for me. The new weapon combinations do not change the trait line feeling, they do not add anything interesting. Specter seems to not work well without scepter, DE is a power spec that relies on high damage stealth attacks which both scepter and staff do not offer. Perhaps I will try again but I am not sure. I think I will check out more passionate tester's results and reserve my judgement but if this "beta test" was meant to generate pre-orders, Anet will not get one from me.

Thief feedback: 1. Please stop doing half-assed things and and then spread out the other half over a time frame of months. Example: The Specter shroud nerf was incompetently (hastily?) done and I am sure you knew of its impact. The necessity of a compensation was evident from the start and should have been part of the patch in October. The 33% damage reduction in shroud may somehow prop the damage Specter up but it does not fix the lazy execution of the (Support) Specter concept. I appreciate that you, at least on the voice track, acknowledged that you need to take a deeper look at support specter but how long shall that take in a 10 year old game? You know about this flaw since the first Specter beta phase (because you read the forum and you were given this feedback) and have not done anything to fix it yet. Can I expect to enjoy your game again in two weeks or in a year? 2. What is Specter supposed to be? You do not state your design goals of especs and people have to make up their own mind. In my case I thought that the shroud mechanics was meant to be a sort of sustain mechanic. Your current implementation makes it into something else (for pvp a means for condi cleanse or stealth) . For me at least that leads to frustration because I have to guess what an espec should do or what I can expect to not work anymore in the near future. I can also not foresee what you are going to nerf. I was pretty sure for Specter you would separate access to sustain and damage by locking both behind conflicting traits (eg. introducing a support, tank and damage trait line for specter). 3. I can only speak for the thief class but your balance decision seem to often make me fight against my own class mechanics. Instead fighting a boss/enemy, I feel I am trying to compensate for the fact that I play thief. As an example: You design the Daredevil to use dodges as their main means of defense and sustain. In raids I am however forced to dodge on cooldown in order to keep my damage up instead of using it for its intended purpose. This is not game breaking but at least for me the sum of such decisions taken is fun-breaking. With Specter you provide shroud mechanics but take away a large part of the sustain aspect (not debating the overpowered-ness of shroud here). It is not about that you decide to change a situation but that the WAY you do it is often unnecessarily invasive and fun-breaking for me. Please stop HOW you do these things. 4. Please stop hitting Deadeye it already lies bleeding and suffering before you. A great example for this situation is how you plan to change the Deadeye espec. I mean, honestly, if this spec is in need of anything it is a buff or a deep change to its core identity, speaking about flawed and incompetent class design here. But for some reason your internal decision processes lead you to this mind-bogglingly bad idea? Please stop doing this, put effort into what you do. You have a great game. It is high-time the espec design and balance teams become added value instead of being detrimental to the game's success. You made me quit this beautiful game after over 10 years where for me the negative impact of your balancing activities started outweighing the good all the other teams do (and that is to say something after I stayed through the former "balancing team". I am still sad about this and passionate and I hope these lines reach someone at Anet in a positive way. Closing notes: I do not mean to offend or attack any of the espec design or balance teams but I want to make it clear that the results of these team's work is,in my opinion, less than sufficient. This has no implication for the personal value of any of these team's members, I am sure you are all great and very valuable people. And on this, hopefully conciliatory tone: Peace out. I would be happy to come back to a better game compared to how it is today sometime in the future.

And shroud for Reaper has been higher in all scenarios even before the nerf. If you feel that Reaper shroud is removed too fast, this would even have been true for Specter BEFORE the nerf, now the difference is only more pronounced (leaving out all the other aspects of these two different classes though).

You are absolutely right, thank you for pointing it out. I will amend my napkin math with the correct scaling.

EDIT: Hopefully corrected the calculation taking into account @DarkstarChimaera.5120's and @draxynnic.3719's remarks and corrections: Putting some text passages into spoiler tags to shorten the post. EDIT2: Checked again what @DarkstarChimaera.5120 wrote and realized I forgot to add Strength of Shadow. I will keep it out for now as it does noct change the genereal direction of the effective health pools. It should also be mentioned again that the shroud pool for Specter is relevant for several different things (see original post) that all scale with the shroud pool. @DarkstarChimaera.5120 and @draxynnic.3719 corrected me on: Scaling of damage reduction value + additional traits + effects/buffs affecting the health or shroud pool. Thank you for this! Example of the corrections: ------------------------- 1. Necromancer: BERSERKER Stats (0 vitality) PVE: Effective hp in shroud: 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 18.367/(1-0.33) = 27,413 effective shroud health pool in PVE (with soul battery). 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 15.306/(1-0.33) = 22,845 effective shroud health pool in PVE (without soul battery). PVP: 50% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 15.908/(1-0.5) = 31,816 effective shroud health pool in PVP with soul battery. 50% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 13.256/(1-0.5) = 26,512 effective shroud health pool in PVP without soul battery. RITUALIST Stats (just to provide a high vitality data point) PVE: (28,782 + 2350) * 1.05 = 32,689 hp Death-/Reaper-Shroud 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 27,066/(1-0.33) = 40.397 effective shroud health pool in PVE (with soul battery). 33% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 22,555/(1-0.33) = 33.664 effective shroud health pool in PVE (without soul battery). PVP: Death-/Reaper-Shroud 50% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 23,831/(1-0.5) = 47,662 effective shroud health pool in PVP with soul battery. 50% damage reduction in shroud which effectively means 19,860/(1-0.5) = 39,720 effective shroud health pool in PVP without soul battery. /* --- End of Ritualist hp math --- */ 2. Specter: BERSERKER Stats (0 vitality) PVE: Pre-Nerf Specter-Shroud (* 1.5): Base shroud pool : 14,695 * 1.5 = 22,043 base shroud pool Post-Nerf Specter-Shroud (* 0.69): Base shroud pool : 14,695 * 0.69 = 10,140 base shroud pool Effective hp in shroud: Effective hp in shroud = base shroud pool (0% damage reduction in shroud) PVP: Specter PVP base hp pool: 11,645 Pre-Nerf Specter-Shroud (* 1.5): Base shroud pool : 11,645 * 1.5 = 17,468 base shroud pool Post-Nerf Specter-Shroud (* 0.69): Base shroud pool : 11,645 * .69 = 8,035 base shroud pool Effective hp in shroud: Effective hp in shroud = base shroud pool (0% damage reduction in shroud) RITUALIST stats (just to provide a high vitality data point) PVE: (21,215 + 2350) * 1.05 = 24,743 hp Pre-Nerf Specter-Shroud: 24,743 * 1.5 = 37,115 base shroud pool Post-Nerf Specter-Shroud: 24,743 * 0,69 = 17,073 base shroud pool PVP: Specter-Shroud: Pre-Nerf Specter-Shroud: 21,215 * 1.5 = 31,823 base shroud pool Post-Nerf Specter-Shroud: 21,215 * 0,69 = 14,638 base shroud pool /* --- End of Ritualist hp math --- */ Comparison: Total effective life pool of Necromancer and Specter: PVE: Zero Vitality Stats: Necro: 22,182 + 27,413 = 49,595 (with soul battery) PRE-NERF Specter: 14,695 + 22,043 = 36,738 POST-NERF Specter: 14,695 + 10,140 = 24,835 Ritualist Stats: Necro: 32,689 + 40.397 = 73,086 PRE-NERF Specter: 24,743 + 37,115 = 61,858 POST-NERF Specter: 24,743 + 17,073 = 41,816 PVP: Zero Vitality Stats: Necro: 19,212 + 31,816 = 51,028 (with soul battery) PRE-NERF Specter: 11,645 + 17,468 = 29,113 POST-NERF Specter: 11,645 + 8,035 = 19,680 Ritualist Stats: Necro: 28,782 + 47,662 = 76.444 (with soul battery) PRE-NERF Specter: 21,215 + 31,823 = 53,038 POST-NERF Specter: 21,215 + 14,638 = 35,835 I hope I got it right now.

I could answer you by dissecting your post and trying to counter your individual arguments, but I think given the quality of your post that would be a waste of time. Following your general thought, it would be prudent to change thief's health to 1 hp, damage to 0 dps and give it absolutely no utility. This would qualify as a "change" and should be okay because you could still come together and overcome a challenge. On a more serious note (in case you are, despite the content of your post, interested in a conversation): People in this thread are not against change, or afraid of changes, or feeling that "change" ruins PVE. Actions have the capacity to lead to something good or bad depending on HOW they are executed, the general consensus seems to be that the specific set of changes introduced in the October 4th patch was done in a very poor way, and indeed did to some extend ruin certain game experiences. On an additional note: Statistically speaking the probability that most other players in this game are roughly on your skill level is higher than the other way around. That means that everyone of us should dial down the arrogance towards their fellow gamers as long as they do not have objective evidence of their own superiority. And before you embarrass yourself: Watch streams of people playing this game at the highest level and check out their verdict and see if it might differ from your own. This does not mean you have to abandon your opinion but it might hint at the fact that your opinion is actually not in line with the objective truth.

I am not sure that this is a question that needs to be asked, not because it is not a valid question but because it is not valid in a game that lets specs like Support Guardian, some Necro Specs (>Scourge in particular) and Mechanist exist in game. A pure support Specter would automatically be invalidated by their existence.

I should have perhaps elaborated on the Mercy reference, sorry: Regarding the single target heal mechanics paling against group healing: I did not want to imply that buffing single target healing would change its value (I believe this is a qualitative problem, not a quantitative). I agree that the mechanism is meaningless in a game that 1. does not support it and 2. has been built on multiple other classes providing full group heal all the time. I tried to bring my train of thought back to the original topic of the thread: What is shroud designed to do? The idea was: From here on speculation:

I have to disagree here, there is a stark difference between nerfing a spec in pvp and removing it from the game mode. I am not good enough to decide what constitutes a reasonable nerf but I believe Sindrener and MightyTeapot are. Watch MightyTeapot's stream from October4th where he reads messages from Sindrener to him about the patch and comments on the effect of the patch himself. And Dr. Meta's comment already implies that the nerf was not well done. Having "no thiefs and mesmers in matches" implies that more than 20% of the classes are not represented in matches they encounter. @Dr Meta.3158: Not attacking you, I am aware that you just express your personal feelings and that is valid. I for example hate warriors in pvp and Guardians but I am never happy to not see them because that means the pvp player base is bereft of players who would play these classes in pvp. I want to see a well balanced gameplay against these classes but I never want any one class to be absent from a game mode.

You are right, I did not think this through/did not chose the correct wording. Specter does not support through damage but it supports while damaging and damages while supporting, is that more on point? Rot wallow venom enables to do damage while casting on allies. I assume this was to ensure that dps does not go down to 0 while targeting allies. I like what you wrote: specter values vitality - vitality converts to shroud health, it converts to healing (via consume shadows). It converts to damage (via overhealing --> barrier application + rot wallow venom). Just stubbornly trying to save a bit of face: Going off topic a bit in reaction to the rest of your post: Already during beta I asked the elite spec design team in the appropriate feedback thread what their idea for the Specter's "flow" is. I was unable to really find an identity of either out of shroud and in shroud. I proposed at that time to explicitly design each of the specter trait lines for healing/support. Damage (buffing condi and power, the distinction will come through stat set anyways) tanking I believed that a similar design to Mercy from Overwatch (for healing) could be interesting where the grand master healing trait makes the 1-target-tether into a 5-target tether. This could create a flow where non-shroud game play would focus on doing damage to enemies/mediocre 1-target heal and shroud game play would enable burst healing, buff support. Maximizing the shroud uptime would be the way to play a strong healer and supporting mechanisms could be introduced to enable not depleting shroud. By putting dps potential in competing trait lines to healing or tanking traits over-performance could be easier managed by reducing base coefficients and buffing traits to compensate in one role if other roles were too strong in a certain aspect (e.g. nerfing damage for heal spec but giving it back via the trait for dps spec). What I would also like to bring up: Single target healing pales in comparison to every other group heal Specter has at its disposal. Looking at Sc/D or Sc/P 3, both are nearly meaningless compared to the non targeting healing capabilities (shadow step/consume shadows). Could it be that single target heal was actually meant to be mainly a pvp mechanic? Designing the class such that they use shroud as single target heal for pvp where the damage is much lower compared to pve (therefore making the relatively anemic heals of the Scepter weapon set more meaningful) Consume shadows and wells to bring relevant support in group/strike oriented game play, sustain for single play?

I do not think that the concept of initiative is spammy at all, I have read this statement from some sources but I believe that people following that narrative do not really think this through: It introduces a global cool down on all skills with a step size < 1. What you activate at t_n affects what you can activate at t_n+1. This is a much more challenging and skill intensive game play compared to all other classes. (example: If I want to be able to head shot someone in 3 seconds to prevent a cast, I have to plan the damage I do NOW such that I will have the necessary initiative and therefore I have to NOT spam skills). This is much easier in CD based classes, For them I can use all my skills independently from each other. All classes always have "the most efficient skill for any given time" for CD based classes this is reflected by the order of skills cast. It is simply the order of efficiency in a descending order (with some side constraints), I do not see any difference between casting Thief skill 2 *2 and pressing two different keys for e.g. Necromancer, especially because of 1. Thief shares initiative between weapon sets, that makes thief a class that does put weapon swap into its rotation simply to access to another set of cool downs (because it makes no sense to swap to a weapon set if you cannot executes skills due to an empty initiative pool). This is an extremely personal reason because I HATE the way other classes, in the middle of the fight just sheath their weapon and pull out another one, this makes no sense to me. Thief uses their weapons for specific reasons and switches based on the scenario they encounter. Weapon switch for thief is MEANINGFUL, for most other classes it is just a second resource pool. All this makes thief the least spammy class in the game, because you have to be aware what you will have to do in a few seconds, you have to be aware if you want to be stuck with another weapon set with different characteristics for the next 9 seconds (I am aware that some builds use weapon swatch to gain initiative but my point stands generally), because you will not be able to simply go on casting by switching, you have to make sure you actively manage your resources which no other class dopes (not even Revenant I believe - most just cast until empty then switch legends rinse and repeat - but I have to admit that I cannot play Revenant so this might be utter bullkitten). If Arenanet finds the initiative system hard to balance they should start working at their competence to balance the game instead of us discussing how the game can be dumbed down to a level of their incompetence.