Lucinellia.9247

A further advantage to making these changes is that points 4 and 5 also improve the QoL situation for DPS Alacrity Specter, who cannot as easily overcap on Alacrity due to lower boon duration.

Hello! I'm one of the few people who really want to see Heal Alacrity Specter as a more viable choice in endgame PvE. I've contributed to some guides, and while I am far from the best player at this, I do feel I have a reasonable grasp on what is needed to make Heal Alacrity Specter be in a slightly better place. With the upcoming balance patch, and hopefully feedback being considered after the preview on Friday 27th October, I thought it might be worthwhile outlining some minor changes that can be made that would substantially improve the QoL and viability of Heal Alacrity Specter in endgame PvE. I remain of the firm opinion that healing and providing boons via single ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 is a mistake, but given the pace at which major design problems with Thief are rectified, I don't see an overhaul anytime soon. Therefore, my suggestions are on the basis that we will continue to use ally targeted abilities. Currently, Heal Alacrity Specter is arguably the hardest healer to play mechanically. Heal Alacrity Specter is not held back by a lack of raw healing or barrier output (such as Mesmer and Warrior heal variants) but rather due to the complex combination of providing healing, barrier and boons through spending initiative with allies targeted, the tether elite profession mechanic, targeted area of effect abilities with forced movement, and spending initiative with enemies targeted. Of these, targeting allies and the tether mechanic are particularly punishing since they necessitate a chosen ally behaving in a manner that is both predictable and conducive to boon uptime and distribution. This is not always the case and it is highly possible that an ally who otherwise stacks and positions well may need to handle a randomly selected mechanic in Strikes, Raids and Fractals. My suggested changes therefore look to alleviate these issues. Another major problem that currently faces Heal Alacrity Specter is Protection uptime, especially after losing the 6-piece Rune bonus associated with either Superior Rune of Durability or Superior Rune of the Herald. Without a viable Relic to replace these, changes are needed to ally Shadow Sap and the decreased effectiveness on allies to allow for better Protection uptime. With that in mind, I suggest the following changes that will retain the current identity of Heal Alacrity Specter and also improve coherency of boon support mechanics on Thief: 1. Ally Shadow Sap Protection increased from a baseline of 4 seconds to 5 seconds. 2. Reduced effectiveness for non-targeted allies from Scepter abilities of 25%, instead of 50%. This would mean that the new splash baseline Protection on allies would be 3.75 seconds when considering the change suggested above. This also improves group barrier, Regeneration, Vigor and Swiftness (the latter if a player is running a Scepter/Dagger offset). 3. Increased range of ally targeted boon application via Scepter abilities to 480 units because you can't control where other players go and, with a smaller radius, boons are typically splashing to other subgroups. 4. Increased range of Alacrity and boon application from Shadestep to 480 units around the tether. Similar reasoning to the above - we can't control what other players do and this is a unique constraint for Specter. 5. Alacrity application around the Specter and the tethered target. The application around the Specter can likely get away with being smaller in area (even down to 240 to prioritise the tether as the main source), as it is mainly to compensate for the tether needing to leave the group. This would also improve consistency for boon application between Specter and Deadeye, affording better coherent identity to Thief boon supports. These changes are primarily QoL improvements. They do not fix issues such as the ally target cap on Shadow Squall and Shadow Sap, nor do they help with Specter self-boons when there are no allies nearby (for example, kiting the Sniper shot on Kaineng Overlook Challenge Mode). These are aspects that should be considered too for future updates. Similarly, the "Nearest Ally", "Next Ally" and "Previous Ally" hotkeys still require attention to be useful for Heal Alacrity Specter as "Nearest Ally" can still select fully dead players, Mesmer clones and phantasms while "Next Ally" and "Previous Ally" extend this to issue to also selecting mini pets, NPCs and gizmos. Thank you for considering this post.

Thanks for the kind comments! The main document hasn't been updated in a while and I was initially hoping for a balance patch during October before adding some more details. With the stream preview on Friday we should hopefully get an idea if anything is changing substantially for Heal Specter and I do hope that we get a better Relic for supplemental boons. In case there are any Anet employees lurking about, these are the major changes we need (short of an entire rework that realises ally targeting is not functional in Guild Wars 2): 1. Ally Shadow Sap Protection increased from a baseline of 4 seconds to 5 seconds. 2. Reduced effectiveness for non-targeted allies from Scepter abilities of 25%, instead of 50%. This would mean that the new splash baseline Protection on allies would be 3.75 seconds. 3. Increased range of ally targeted boon application via Scepter abilities to at least 360 units. I would prefer 480 units personally because you can't control where other players go. 4. Increased range of Alacrity and boon application from Shadestep to at least 480 units around the tether. Similar reasoning to the above - we can't control what other players do and this is a unique constraint for Specter. 5. Alacrity application around the Specter and the tethered target. The application around the Specter can likely get away with being smaller in area (even down to 240 to prioritise the tether as the main source), as it is mainly to compensate for the tether going for a wander. This would also improve consistency for boon application between Specter and Deadeye, affording better coherent identity to Thief boon supports. There are some other bug fixes like increasing the number of ally targets that ally Shadow Sap and ally Shadow Squall can travel through before missing, but if the above happens then Heal Specter is in a very strong place and doesn't need any major changes (outside of a rework that recognises ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 is a very silly idea). As an aside, I still see some misconceptions crop up from time to time with Heal Specter, especially outside of HT CM where skill usage varies more, so I am planning on making a video overview when time is kind. I also owe Iskarel a boss encounter write up for the Snow Crows site but NaNoWriMo is breathing down my neck...

Measured Shot and Endless Night are healing skills. Measured Shot isn't the greatest, but it is still reasonable healing due to the base output and then Traversing Dusk and Shadow Savior impacting the shadowstep portion. Endless Night is an incredibly powerful sub-group Barrier generation tool which has a clear place on fights like Vale Guardian, Boneskinner and Old Lion's Court CM. It can also be used to aid with Vigor and Regen upkeep. Specter is in a bit of a weird spot - it was clearly intended to be our PvE support elite spec, but it didn't really reach that point until recently and even then it is hindered by the asinine decision to make it ally-targeted in a game that really doesn't support that properly.

Obligatory comment asking you to please stop trying to make ally targeting happen. The UI isn't there for it and neither is the UX. Specter changes look good and sensible aside from this and it is nice that heal alacrity Specter should remain in a good spot.

Leaving this up in case it helps others - it appears to be related to a Windows 11 update. A solution is here: Applications muted when running a game - Microsoft Community Go to System > Sound > All sound devices and then click on the device where this is a problem. Then, under "Enhance audio" select "Advanced". In the pop-up Window, go to the Advanced tab then under "Signal Enhancements", untick the option box for "Enable audio enhancements"

Hello all, I have recently noticed that Guild Wars 2 will mute the sound from any other application I have running on my PC. For example, if I have a YouTube video open then it will mute as soon as Guild Wars 2 starts playing music after loading up. System sounds and those from other programs such as Discord are also muted. This only seems to happen when using the 3.5mm output. It doesn't happen when using headphones connected via USB. This certainly wasn't the case in the past - has anyone else had this issue or is aware of a potential solution? Thank you in advance any thoughts and ideas!

Damage should be good, and it isn't as cumbersome as old FfE Might Share, but the lack of utility will really place this at the level of Catalyst for how often you see it in endgame PvE.

You'll need to use daggers anyway since Fire for Effect competes with Maleficent Seven and the latter is needed to make the damage loop of rifle possible. Regardless, being able to do ranged boons at 1500 range isn't a good idea and professions that can do ranged boons, such as Mechanist, are very dominant in a lot of situations because of the ranged boon generation.

Eh. I mean, I have an entire post about the issues with single target healing in Guild Wars 2. You are welcome to read it, since it is a good comparison with what happens in other MMOs to enable single target healing. I have some other posts and comments, which you are welcome to read up on. In short, the game design doesn't support single target healing (we have no fights where it is needed). The game also doesn't support ally targeting - we have no mouseover macros, we have no quick targeting for different people, our hotkeys for cycling allied targets include downed people(!) and also mini pets(!!). We also can't move the raid frames, meaning if we did want to do single target ally healing, our mouse needs to travel a lot! The experience is entirely miserable, since Guild Wars 2 isn't designed for it, and picking through targets to heal is in direct contradiction to how the rest of the game plays. It is a slow and deliberate action in a game that doesn't have slow, single target damage patterns or limitations such as mana to encourage conservative healing. Siphon works for a bit of Shadow Force in theory, but then we need to ensure that small amount of SF is enough to get through sufficient skills for putting out enough alacrity so that it stays up until we can enter shroud and cast spells again. This doesn't apply to Strikes or Raids, where we are given SF on entry, but it is an issue for Fractals.

Please stop trying to make ally targeted healing happen with Specter. It is bad, not enjoyable and nothing in the game supports it, be that UX, UI or encounters. Decoupling Alacrity from Wells sounds good for Specter, but there doesn't seem to be much thought here if it is while in Shroud. How are we supposed to provide Alacrity at the start of an encounter?

Yip, the SSD is a Samsung SSD PM981a and hasn't had any issues in the past. Textures also tend not to be an issue when a map is loaded, but rather once I've been in a map for a while and a new texture is called, for example entering underwater.

Hello all, I am experiencing an issue with textures not loading in, which becomes particularly more pronounced when I have been switching maps with meta trains. Examples are below and here. So far, I have tried repairing the client, clearing the cache, updating my drivers and also downgrading my drivers in addition to changing in-game graphics settings. Switching maps can resolve the texture issues, as does restarting the game. My hardware should be sufficient for the game - a Ryzen 5900HX, 8GB 3080 and 16 GB of RAM. Has anyone else experienced this issue and have any fixes? I am considering a full reinstallation, but would ideally like to avoid this out of laziness. Thank you! https://imgur.com/bxngBLL https://imgur.com/l6Vh5EG https://imgur.com/cHXiU4D

I do like the contradiction between "Thief is generally in a good spot" and "goal of significantly improving specter support builds". Which is it Anet? Hopefully the Thief changes for June can be good. Deadeye has been crying out for Fire for Effect to provide Quickness since inception and heal Specter desperately needs proper Protection and Regen application.

This issue is now fixed, kind of. However, there is a new bug related to the terrain problem and Shadow Steps. While in combat, the player character is no longer moved beneath the floor / out of bounds and therefore doesn't die. Instead, they are displaced correctly onto safe terrain. Sadly, a new bug emerges as a result of this where abilities that are not instant cast cannot be used. This remains for as long as the player character is on the main combat platform but is removed by taking the zipline (perhaps not removed and instead it simply doesn't happen on the higher elevation?) or dying. Editing in for clarity: This might be a main platform issue related to where the currently in combat enemy is located.

Does this mean that the balance team and encounter design team will start interfacing with each other more in order to avoid situations like the current Strike CMs, wherein a normally "good" choice can be made into a "bad" choice just by virtue of encounter design that seems to be devoid of awareness with respect to profession design aspects and balance? Harvest Temple CM is a good example of this where mechanics, enemy toughness, enemy distribution and hit boxes work together to make entire swathes of "good" choices for many other fights into terrible choices.

Just a clarification here - Specters are not split up because of the passive barrier generation. Specters are split because venoms do not stack and are overwritten, with any additional applications being attributed to the Thief that initially cast the venom. This impacts all condition Thief builds that use venoms (so, all of them) and also Alacrity Specter to a lesser degree. Venom overwriting is a substantial DPS loss so condition Thieves are placed in different subgroups and most raid groups do not take more than two as a result. There is something of a place for one or two Specters on the first three EoD Strike CMs as a result of CC capabilities through Basilisk Venom and Headshot but they are not as impactful as many other options. When considering PvE, the problem is not that Specter performs reasonably compared with other Thief builds, it is that Specter performs very poorly compared with other professions. Guild Wars 2 does not have a high barrier of entry to additional alts, it has very little to no gear grind and there are no locks or secondary power systems that encourage people to stick with a main. The issue, therefore, is not that Specter is a reasonable choice against Daredevil, but is a very poor choice against options such as Condition Virtuoso which offers range, no limitations, a high degree of utility, safer gameplay with reintroduced Distortion, mobility and a ridiculously high amount of piercing.

To add a point that was raised on the Snow Crows discord by Left, perhaps some of the problems facing the DPS Specter variant come from using Consume Shadows because it provides a degree of support, some additional DPS via Rot Wallow Venom but also results in losing Shadow Force. While I think it would not be a sole fix for healing Specter, as a lot more work is needed with tethering and Shadow Shroud abilities, would the current issue with Shroud be resolved simply by the trait options for the Major Adept tear offering something more for DPS and being less focused on the single ally target fantasy?

I see absolutely no issue if Specter was designed as, or eventually became, a pure support profession. I'd ideally like to see Specter be able to do at least Alacrity DPS and heal Alacrity. I do think Specter was used as an attempt to try and rectify the issues with DPSing on a Thief. It was clear from some of the patches in 2021, that options such as condition Deadeye were nerfed to try and make room for Specter. I think this was the wrong thing to do. Thief always had a space for a support role - we simply didn't have that in PvE outside of Detonate Plasma - but we have a plethora of DPS options. Even now, so long as you don't mind something that has been neglected, we have staff Daredevil, D/D condition Daredevil, Rifle Deadeye, two different variants of D/D Deadeye and condition Deadeye. For some odd reason, Specter was perhaps seen as something to fix the woes of DPS Thief, allow Thief to support and introduce an entirely untested gameplay style that the game UI and UX can't really support. Thief players would have had a more positive experience if Anet had limited this only to support. We would have been perfectly fine only adding DPS Alacrity and healing Alacrity to that. There isn't anything wrong with elite specialisations focusing wholly on support, such as Druid, when Thief already has two that focus only on DPS. And this again comes back to one of the major issues with Specter that this thread is about. Shadow Shroud needs to fulfill many purposes due to the range of builds that Specter has. It certainly didn't do very well at the boon support aspect but prior to this most recent patch it was pretty okay for something to do while waiting for initiative to Regenerate and could heal via Consume Shadows. The alternative DPS method is much more risky and the latter is now incredibly diminished.

The new Well of Bounty giving an increased amount of Might is really nice from a PvE perspective. This is a good change since it means running Alacrity Specter in PvE is more versatile in terms of the quickness pairing and group composition. The Stability is also nice! Fury and Vigor being present on Well of Bounty is very strange though. As you point out, we have Siphon for that, and Well of Bounty not being able to give at least some Regen and Protection really hurts heal Alacrity Specter - which was already in a pretty terrible place and has been further nerfed, unfairly, by the Shadow Shroud health scaling changes.

Apologies for the lack of clarity. My point is less about whether or not the nerfs are appropriate and reasonable, but rather that they make sense within the context of the mode and what was happening. However, even if they were reasonable for sPvP, the impact on PvE should also have been considered and, from the discussion that has been happening on the forums after the livestream and implementation of the balance patch, I am not of the opinion that it was. A number of players raised concerns with the nerf on the forums, on Reddit, in Discord channels that we know devs consider and also by tagging developers into conversations on social media. Sadly, our concerns don't seem to have been picked up on, despite there being a willingness to better address the situation for Mirage previously (it still does an incredibly overtuned amount of Might!) and Scrapper more recently. Broadly speaking, PvE Thief has suffered heavily due to changes made as a result of competitive game modes and because of PvP-first design. We can see this in Daredevil (Swipe), Deadeye (the entire state of the elite spec), the recent Shadow Arts rework (which made PvE healing Specter worse!), the recent Acrobatics changes, the Well of Bounty alterations not considering the loss of Regen and Protection and, well, the utter entirely of the mess that is single target healing in a game that lacks a UI and UX, and broader encounter and gameplay design, to support it!

You are quite right @Eleandra.4859 - we do have some single target healing, which is given from DPS abilities on the basis of number of targets hit. I think this is very good thematically, is a nice part of the Specter identity and is also utterly bereft of purpose in instanced PvE because it only applies to ourselves and one ally! I would very, very much like to see this apply to more allies, perhaps via a trait that allows for tethering to multiple allies. Our Major Grandmaster traits are ripe for this. Adding this in would give more purpose to Shadow Shroud for support Specters, and would help to answer the initial question post by @DarkstarChimaera.5120. I guess this is very much similar to your Mercy (from Overwatch, not of Deadeye fame) point, though I do not play Overwatch. Shadow Shroud should be accessed when Initiative is low. For DPS, it should allow another means to DPS. For DPS Alacrity, it should allow for DPS and some boons. For healing Alacrity Specter, it should allow for healing and some boons. I would personally really like to see the efficacy of the healing from Shadow Shroud tethers remain activated on hitting enemies, but scale for both healing and Barrier with Healing Power. This would strengthen Plaugedoctor quite nicely as a legitimate stat option and could even allow for running Second Opinion over Consume Shadows. Single target allied healing indeed pales massively, which narrows the design space two-fold. @DarkstarChimaera.5120 mentions some of this in the original post however, even if single target was massively buffed, it is still limited by the very nature of the game as I outlined many months ago here. It may well have a bit more of a use in PvP, it certain feels that way from the little that I have played it, but this is again a game mode that already has a spec devoted to it, via Deadeye, dictating the design of Thief's only group support option which is something that it sorely lacked prior to EoD. The amount of work needed to resolve the problems with single target healing and Specter is quite immense so I would implore Arenanet to consider devaluing this aspect of Specter considerably and investing more in enabling Shadow Shroud to be a strong, cohesive and engaging healing option for group content. Doing so would also limit the awkwardness of Specter relying firmly on Sword for healing too!

I think this is an interesting point to look at further, and it does relate to what the purpose of Shadow Shroud is, and should be. Specter doesn't support through damage - we don't invest in damaging stats in order to support. Consume Shadows meant that we valued Vitality to support, the single target support within Shadow Shroud is not based on damage that we do, but targets we hit. The point with regards to Rot Wallow Venom is an interesting one. I personally would much prefer if this was more prominent for our support options but Leeching Venoms has a very strange interaction with Rot Wallow Venom. Which kind of exemplifies one of the biggest issues with Specter - the design is really unclear and a massive mishmash of different directions. My personal feeling is that a lot of this stems from the single target healing via both ally targeting and Shroud tethering. This feels very shoehorned into the design, UI, UX and encounters of Guild Wars 2 while the few things that do work somewhat on support Specter - barrier via Vitality from Consume Shadows, healing from Shadowsteps and Wells, boons from offensive Siphon - are those that avoid single target aspects and we are weaker as a result of that. Other healers and supports tend to have weapon skills which can provide group-wide boons and healing but, due to the nonsensical profession identity of Thief as "single target" and the lumbering of Specter with allied targeting for awkward thematic reasons, we sorely lack this on our elite specialisation weapon and our major elite specialisation mechanic, Shadow Shroud. This means that when changes are made to one of the narrow aspects we rely on - Wells, Shadowsteps and Consume Shadows - they have an oversized impact. Specter is also very vulnerable to wide reaching nerfs due to how these are coupled.* Our direct healing is contained within Wells and Shadowsteps, our burst healing and Barrier from Consume Shadows via Shadow Force via Shroud health pool so a change targeted at Shroud health pool can have very broad implications and this doesn't seem to have been considered thoroughly with the most recent changes. As noted in this Discussion, a change to Shroud health pool impacts our ability to DPS, our durability, the barrier we provide and our raw healing output, not just the durability which was the reason given for the nerf. It is a messy design where pulling the wrong balance lever can result in very large nerfs because we can't compensate as so much of Specter, including support elements of Shadow Shroud, are locked up in being limited to single targets or require ally targeting. *I think it is also worth noting that for support Specter this also very much applies to changes to Well of Bounty as the alterations mean we have no access to permanent group-wide Regen and Protection now. It exemplifies that certain areas of Specter are being overstuffed in what they provide purely because of single ally targeting, which is a very poor mechanic in PvE, occupying far too much of the elite specialisation's design space.

Oh, for sure. I don't begrudge the PvP nerfs at all. They make sense. It is just beyond tiring having major changes to PvE Thief because of PvP, especially when they are poorly thought out and very heavy handed.

The comments on this so far have been excellent and I very much appreciated the detailed write-up. I've been talking about Specter since early beta - raising points with the myriad of issues that single target healing has in Guild Wars 2. We will soon be approaching a year since I made the post here and single target healing within PvE remains a miserable, and poorly implemented, experience. Although I was primarily a condi Deadeye player in PvE prior to EoD, I have almost entirely moved over to Alacrity Specter support. The initiative system has always struck me as being something that can allow for a semblance of the more involved healing styles within games such as FFXIV and WoW and, while DPS Alacrity Specter is arguably in an okay spot (sadly, outclassed by other choices though), the healing variant of Alacrity Specter is in a very poor state. Much of this relates to Iskarel's initial question of "What is Shroud supposed to do?" My feeling on this is that Shadow Shroud is the method by which Specter is given something to do while Initiative regenerates. Daredevil has rotational dodges, which introduces extra time into the rotation, to allow for initiative ticks. Deadeye has Maleficent Seven, which allows for a replenishment of Initiative by gaining Malice. Specter has Shadow Shroud to offer other abilities to be used while waiting for Initiative. As I see it, Shadow Shroud therefore needs to perform some core functionality in PvE if it wishes to fulfill this purpose. 1. It needs to last long enough to allow Initiative to regenerate. 2. It needs to supplement DPS while initiative is regenerating if playing DPS. 3. It should supplement boon support and healing support for support Specter as the Specter cannot access Wells during Shadow Shroud. With the nerf to the scaling, Shadow Shroud is now very often not able to fulfill 1. A Viper Specter will be torn from Shadow Shroud regularly by splash damage and damage that is not avoidable within instanced PvE. The Carrion/Ritualist build fares somewhat better, but this comes at a DPS loss, and being removed early from Shadow Shroud is still very common. Shadow Shroud fulfills 2, so long as condition 1 is met. There is clearly sufficient DPS by using some of the Shadow Shroud skills. Shadow Shroud does not fulfill 3 in any meaningful manner in PvE. This, to me, is the most glaring issue. It was a problem prior to the October changes, and it is more pronounced now. As noted by Iskarel, Shadow Shroud does not allow for boon support. We are locked out of our Wells for the application of Alacrity, Stability and additional Might and our only boon access is via a cumbersome blast finisher that would involve switching to Pistol prior to entering Shroud so that Black Powder can provide a Smoke Field for the application of a small amount of Protection via Cover of Shadows in the Shadow Arts traitline. This is a lot of hoops to jump through for a paltry amount of Protection! Healing from Shadow Shroud is very poor in PvE. There is so much potential here too, and it is wholly limited by only being able to tether to one ally. Grasping Shadows has real potential to be an inverted form of Druid's Seed of Life, by cleansing after a small delay if an enemy is struck. The same applies for Eternal Night being a darker mimic of Rejuvenating Tides - healing and applying Barrier to allies for enemies struck - and also Mind Shock as this applies CC after channeling, paralleling Natural Convergence. Dawn's Repose is also a thematic inversion of Lunar Impact (even the names play nicely together!) but needs the Specter to move to the location. All of this is very, very cool! There is a beautiful parity here within the design space. It is just sadly useless within a PvE context as these abilities being restricted to the Specter and one other target is a major issue when you play in groups of 5 or 10. Shadow Shroud used to be able to fulfill 3, via Consume Shadows, but this has now been heavily nerfed and, alongside losing Regen and Protection from Well of Bounty, leaves heal Alacrity Specter in a very poor place. 3 is also challenging to fulfill for much the same reason as 2, given that 1 may not be met due to the vastly reduced Shadow Force as a result of health pool conversion. So what can be done from a PvE perspective? It is clear that Arenaet does not want Specter to be as bulky within PvP as prior to the October patch. Consume Shadows is also likely seen to be a problem via the healing that is possible from Alacrity DPS and Carrion/Ritualist DPS builds. I'd suggest the following changes: A. Consider Shadow Shroud giving an innate damage reduction in PvE only. This can be tuned without heavy nerfs to other aspects of the game if required. The purpose of this is solely to make receiving damage less punishing and allow for the fulfillment of Shroud stipulation 1, which then allows for meeting criteria 2 better. B. Add useful group-wide boons to Shroud abilities. Healing Alacrity Specter lost access to Regen and Protection and adding these back to Shroud skills seems like a quick fix as this allows for both support variants of Specter to provide these. This partially fulfills stipulation 3. C. Consider a trait rework to allow AoE tethering with subgroup preference. This can be PvE only if required. There is likely the design space in both Hungering Darkness and Shadestep, both of which are lackluster in PvE, to allow for AoE tethering. AoE tethering allows a PvE heal Specter to bypass single target healing, which as noted earlier is not an enjoyable playstyle in GW2, and also overcomes a number of weaknesses with the current healing variant of Specter by simply allowing the supportive aspects of Shadow Shroud skills to apply to more players. This helps fulfill stipulation 3 and has the added benefit of making Specter healing much more engaging, thoughtful and interactive. Such design also has implications for the dominance of Consume Shadows within the Major Adept options. Change C, especially, means that with more healing options, Second Opinion could become a more attractive choice for healing Alacrity Specter. In short: Allow for a degree of damage reduction when within Shadow Shroud in PvE to allow for Shadow Force to be maintained sufficiently during Initiative regeneration. Add supplemental group-wide boons to Shroud abilities to compensate those lost from Well of Bounty, primarily Regen and Protection. Introduce a trait that allows for four targets to be tethered, enabling Shroud abilities to act as a mirror of Druid's Celestial Avatar skills.