Lucinellia.9247

For PvE, especially Fractal CMs, you want Viper. For T4 trash mobs you probably want to switch to a power DD build with going back to condi for any bosses.

I could see Siphon being changed to being X nearest allies or subgroup priority, the allied target portion being removed and healing / boons being applied to those with Siphon by DPSing / adding conditions to the boss. Throw in the alacrity and wells and then you have a decent DPS, heal and boon spec without the terrible UI issues.

One of the problems with what you are suggesting is that it seems to presume that Guild Wars 2 is an environment that supports triage healing where you are given sufficient time of people being at depleted health to gradually heal with abilities like the new Consume Shadows and repeated Infiltrator Strikes. Current damage patterns, and healing output from other healers, means the environment is one that favours quick spam healing (further compounded by the lack of resource-based healing, we don't need to manage mana, compounded yet again by health-based DPS modifiers and then yet again by passive / strike-triggered health restoration traits, signets, ascended food etc). In such an environment, effective HP heals (absorbs, barrier, however you want to call it) are better if you require healing as the "healing" applied via barrier will always be consumed prior to the healing provided by topping up health pools and it is possible to heal entirely with eHP increases before any direct healing can take action. With such scenarios of damage patterns, a heal of 22k is incredibly niche. Instead, Endless Night is still your most valuable tool due to the barrier, which means you are still going to be targeting through different allies to apply it. For examples of this see WoW 3.3.5, the majority of WoW Mists of Pandaria due to the smart heal and absorb design of Discipline Priest and training / progress groups in GW2 preferring Scourge over Tempest for support. Effective HP is always more valuable in scenarios that are not triage based, and I don't see GW2 ever becoming triage based without a limited resource for accessing heals on all professions that can heal.

I still really struggle to see what makes Anet think that single target healing is viable in Guild Wars 2. At best, we are going to end up with a spec where we click through the raid UI in order to do healing and barrier while applying alacrity via wells. This is, apparently, what they didn't want given their comments on Endless Night quickness yet it is bound to happen if they focus on single target. And that is the best case scenario. This is of course in content such as Raids, Fractals and Strikes which have never needed single target healing. There just aren't the damage and aggro patterns to necessitate it. In a 5 person party, you are clicking character portraits, which are even further from where you want to play your cursor for wells and and alacrity share. In any emergent content, such as open world meta events, it is even worse as you will instead be clicking through the world to try and select different people. This is absolutely terrible gameplay and it is clear that Arenanet either don't really understand how single target healing works in other games (doesn't happen in open world equivalents, is supported by addons and macros in instanced or party settings) or are so utterly consumed by the theme of Thief being known for "single target", which is an issue in of itself given that, currently, AoE DPS options are stronger at single target than Thief is. I really hope that the developers entirely reconsider the single target healing design. The game doesn't support it in UI, design or in content and it is going to be an utter drag to play with one of the interesting position-based requirements of Endless Night removed.

My partner occasionally backs up for my fractal static however as they have photophobia (light sensitivity causing pain) they really struggle with the Dark Ai phase of Sunqua Peak CM and the fight induces migraines and nausea. As it seems like Arenanet do not wish to tackle this accessibility issue with the fight design, it has been constantly noted on social media and forums since release, I was wondering if anyone had Reshade (or similar) settings that can reduce the intensity and brightness of the white light effects from Ai while ensuring that other aspects of the fight remain visible? This is something I will be looking into anyway, but if someone else has already found a solution that would make things a touch easier! Thanks!

The other great irony is that you can still cycle Endless Night fully over 4 targets in a sub group at 100% boon duration to provide quickness with the new changes. If it is now simply a single target ability that goes to the person you select, you just click through each person in your sub group one by one casting Measured Shot then Endless Night and filling with Wells. Now you've covered Alacrity and Quickness and the gameplay still feels incredibly unfun and not supported by the UI. It is nice that TBC Restoration Druid raiding without addons has been independently created, but there is a reason that design is now pretty antiquated. It isn't fun to play and it is even less fun to play with a game where the UI does not support it in the slightest and encounters are not designed with people clicking raid frames and party members in mind. It really seems like the feedback has not been understood and the state of the game not fully considered (certainly for PvE at least) when implementing the Specter changes. Specter has a lot of promise, but it is going to end up messy and underplayed like Deadeye and Scrapper are/were if this direction is maintained.

And absolutely no mention of the most glaring bug for support Specter - Measured Shot occasionally porting us absolutely miles away. It would be good to see this fixed since with this bug, no quickness and the awful UI, support Specter is an appallingly bad proposition.

It is a massive shame that this is the solution you opted for from the feedback that was provided with respect to support Specter. Without quickness, PvE support Specter has no real use because the 10 person alacrity provided by Renegade and Mirage in 10 person content is too strong and Renegade remains far, far too useful in Fractals. Support Specter needed to offer both quickness and alacrity in order to see a degree of play in either of these game modes because it does not provide sufficient other boons. This is a hugely disappointing change that really feels like you didn't bother to consider the changes of Specter in relation to what other elite specs can offer. Worryingly, you've also not addressed the concerns people have expressed with single targeting of allies at all. Absolutely no mention of UI changes or such or even an acknowledgement that this is the most awkward part of support Specter. Couching the changes in the language of 2v2 gameplay is also very odd - this is an off-season gameplay mode in one area of the game. How does this single target healing supposedly work now in raids or Fractals? A Specter is still going to be wanting to target allies and apply Endless Night due to the strength relative to other (single target) heal skills. If you want builds such as Willbender, Specter and Mechanist to see any play with alacrity sharing, you need to remove 10 person alacrity from both Mirage and Renegade if Willbender, Specter and Mechanist cannot also provide quickness, as per current Chronomancer (which already doesn't see much play as alacrity and quickness because 10 person alacrity is that good) .

I didn't see a lot of people providing PvE specific support Specter feedback so I took a Celestial / Leadership / Concentration Sigil build to fractals with my casual static. The aim of these runs was to have the Specter provide alacrity, quickness, healing and barrier as well as other boons such as Fury and Vigor while one of our Firebrands covered stability and our Renegade covered Might. If you wish to see these runs, or nosy at logs, you can check out some videos here, here and here. There are further videos on the linked YouTube channel. We did a full clear of CMs with Specter support. The group is relatively experienced with 3 fractal goddesses and members with 10k to 30k+ UFE. There are a number of things that need to be looked into if support Specter is to be played at all in high end instanced PvE. 1. Guild Wars 2 is not designed for single target healing This is one of the most glaring issues with playing PvE Specter support. Thief specs normally have a high degree of hindrance that is, arguably, not well justified given what they bring to groups. This has spanned everything from forced movement (condi Deadeye, condi Daredevil), restricted movement (rifle Deadeye) through to lacking crowd control and having single target DPS that is not competitive with other professions that can cleave (condi Deadeye, rifle Deadeye). This example of thief being limited for reasons that are not clear, or based wholly on a thematic objective, is very prominent with PvE Specter support and the push for allied targeting healing. Most glaringly, it results in a cumbersome and awkward playstyle, as much of the time is spent fighting the UI. There will need to be a high degree of iteration and improvement of the Guild Wars 2 UI if Specter remains single target in its support. There was a degree of this during the beta, where the "Target Next Ally" keybind was improved from previously only focusing NPCs to now including NPCs and players. This keybind needs to be further improved to target only players and also ignore players that are fully dead. This would remain cumbersome, but could allow for quick targeting with appropriate keybinds and good player awareness. Additionally, raid frames should be allowed to be customised and, particularly, moved closer to the player character model to reduce mouse movement. It would be good if these could allow tracking of select boons, perhaps via corner indicators like with the WoW addons Grid and Vuhdo. Furthermore, the allied targeting reduces the amount of information available to the Specter. For example, while targeting an ally for Measured Shot and Endless Night, it is not possible to see if an enemy has a break bar. This is a hindrance that will only impact Specter healers and support and will need to be resolved if single target healing is taken further as it feels like a limitation that has not been considered as it is not an issue for any other healer or support option. 2. Allied Endless Night needs to have player prioritisation This is the main ability that support Specters will need to single target allies for and is one of the most crucial abilities to be fixed if support Specter is to see a degree of usage in instanced PvE because it allows for sharing of quickness. Endless Night currently suffers from the issue that made Fire for Effect in Deadeye useless in PvE for just over four years(!) before it was finally fixed. Endless Night is based on proximity prioritisation, which results in quickness, barrier, Rot Wallow Venom and regeneration being dumped onto targets where it is not useful such as minions, spirits and clones. Allied Endless Night should instead prioritise players. Quickness is essential for the support Specter, as it will not see prominent use unless it is possible to provide alacrity and quickness for 5 players. This is because existing alacrity sources are applied to 10 players (Renegade and Mirage) and therefore it is more beneficial to take one of these options if something is being brought solely for alacrity. 3. Allied Endless Night requires a high degree of repositioning This results in a strange gameplay style where the Specter is constantly moving around the group. There will be times where this is not possible, and therefore Endless Night being a wider beam would be useful, unless it is reworked to avoid single target healing. 4. Allied Siphon is not useful Allied Siphon does not gain benefits from Thrill of the Crime. At the minimum, Thrill of the Crime should work with allied Siphon, ideally Bountiful Theft should also share vigor. Allied Siphon not sharing these boons leads to a cumbersome playstyle where a support Specter not only needs to change ally targets, but needs to target the enemy in order to apply enemy-targeted Siphon before retargeting an ally. This is an awkward gameplay loop and makes the single target healing aspects even more unwieldy. This should be iterated upon, ideally by improving Allied Siphon, if single target healing is pursued further. Allied Siphon gaining these effects could be worked into Shadestep as both Shadestep, which felt lacking as a PvE support trait. 5. Well of Tears is quite useless Well of Tears is a power DPS ability which is present on a condition damage or healing / support spec. It does not serve any useful purpose and should probably be reconsidered and reworked. Specter does not offer a high degree of condition cleanse, needing to rely wholly on Signet of Agility. A straightforward solution would be to make Well of Tears a well focused on support by removing conditions, or converting conditions to boons. 6. There is no incentive to stay in Shadow Shroud Remaining in Shadow Shroud has no advantages for the PvE Support Specter. Instead, it only serves a purpose to quickly regenerate initiative via Quick Pockets before it is left for a large degree of burst healing via Consume Shadows. Shadow Shroud should be made more appealing for support, for example by including five-ally boon share. An obvious target for this would be to change the Grandmaster trait Hungering Darkness to allow tethering to four nearby allies at random when Shroud is accessed. With this, Mind Shock would be useful as it would apply stability to five allies (including self). Similarly, Grasping Shadows would give a useful option for healing and condition removal. 7. Lack of self-quickness is frustrating Endless Night should probably also apply quickness to the Specter. Having quickness only occasionally is relatively cumbersome for being aware of the speed of the Measured Shot / Endless Night loop. 8. Shadow Sap is pointless There are no good reasons to use allied Shadow Sap. A way to improve this would be to improve the amount of Might granted (perhaps up to 8), and allow it to splash to multiple allies near to the targeted ally. This would mean that Shadow Sap and Measured Shot / Endless Night could be switched between to upkeep either Might or Quickness, giving a choice of what initiative is spent on, instead of Endless Night being the only reasonable choice for initiative when supporting. 9. Tethering to a target is not impactful due to the design of the GW2 PvE content. Tethering lacks impact because Guild Wars 2, and the PvE encounters, have never been designed around single target healing. No existing PvE content in GW2 has required a high degree of single target healing that could not have been brought by the existing AoE healers, otherwise it would not have been completed! The idea of tethering and babysitting an ally, such as a tank, does not have an established place in GW2, unlike WoW or FFXIV, and therefore the usefulness of Specter for PvE groups will be judged on the ability of the Specter to AoE heal and provide AoE boons, particularly quickness and alacrity. Thankfully, Specter has good AoE healing currently (and needs improvements in the area of boons), but this minimises the impactfulness of tethering. Please do not take this as an indication that tethering should be made more impactful in PvE - quite the opposite. I do not feel it is a good mechanic for Specter PvE healing. I am sure it has a place in sPvP, but PvE support Specter needs to remain such that tethering can be broadly ignored if it remains single ally focused. Tethering could be more impactful without adding further unwieldiness, if it was possible to tether multiple allies, perhaps via a Grandmaster trait (Hungering Darkness may be a good choice here, it has no use in instanced PvE). Even if this was limited to being in Shroud and applied randomly, that could then be paired with more boon share and condition removal in Shroud in order to encourage Support Specters to use Shroud beyond Quick Pockets and Consume Shadows. In general, I feel that Specter most pressingly needs better targeting and a fix to Endless Night. These two alone will make Support Specter playable, but incredibly cumbersome. Single target healing needs rethought, or the UI massively improved, if it is to be made as fluid to play as any other profession in Guild Wars 2. Awkward bugs: Many sources of Specter healing, such as Consume Shadows and Measured Shot, apply healing to a downed target, which does not seem intended. Measured Shot can send the Specter to the moon, if it is used just outside of an ally's hitbox. This does not seem intended. General tuning: If the prioritisation is not fixed on allied Endless Night, it needs to give even more quickness! Please don't actually do this, please instead improve the prioritisation of allied Endless Night on allies. Healing feels slightly too high currently. Barrier feels slightly too high currently. These should probably be reduced a little. Support Specter could be a lot of fun, but the single target aspects, limitations with boon sharing, the clunkiness of the GW2 UI and prioritisation issues with allied Endless Night severely limit it currently.

The AoE healing in PvE is great, but groups do not work with something that only brings raw healing, or is limited to alacrity for 5 people. I feel the healing combos being discussed are somewhat overkill. Simply changing Endless Night targets, using Wells and then dropping out of Shroud is more than enough healing for all of the instanced PvE encounters I've tried. Due to this, it is pretty important that Endless Night is made more workable. It is certainly okay on a number of encounters - I maintained 60 to 80% quickness on others on Boneskinner as the soul source of Quickness - but heavy stacking, a very spread out group and additional NPCs really hinder Endless Night due to the proximity based prioritisation. Endless Night really needs to prioritise players, and not NPCs like clones and Spirits. This is the exact same issue that Fire for Effect Deadeye had for years so it is a little worrying to see it be so prominent with Specter. If Endless Night prioritisation is fixed, Specter will be in very good place but I don't think it will see much play. The UI is beyond awful for single target focused healing so all but the most dedicated players won't bother with Specter. If Arenanet really wish to continue with the single target healing niche, they need to allow the raid frames to be moved and fix the target next ally keybinds to cycle over players.

It will be a workable support if the UI is made a little kinder for it and Endless Night priority is fixed. The UI is very cumbersome. Having the target ally keybind target players instead of minis, clones etc would be a very positive step. I would also like to see the ability to move the raid frames to the side of the character model, so that the mouse doesn't need to be moved so much. Currently, it doesn't work very well in raids for Quickness due to the limitations of Endless Night having proximity priority application. This needs to be fixed to prioritising players first. I think the amount of barrier and healing, and the amount of quickness and alacrity, will be fine with these changes given the difficulty maintaining other boons and the forced movement.

Can we please stop with the idea of targeting allies with a keybind being a solution that is already present in the game? It isn't. The "Target ally" keybinds, all three of them, do not cycle between players but instead "allies" such as minis, NPCs, clones and Druid spirits. As such, target ally keybinds are not a solution. Fixing the ally targeting keybinds to actually do what a lot of people here think they do would be a good start, but Specter needs a lot of additional thought and if there are actually any advantages in terms of gameplay to having allied targeting be such a focus. OP is entirely correct that the current implementation of Specter is beyond terrible from an accessibility point of view.

I have wanted a support Thief for absolutely years so I took Specter to some raids tonight - a semi-experienced group clearing wing 1, 4 and a bit of 6. Some points: 1. I would have loved to play Specter in WoW. Maybe FFXIV. It does not work well at all with the current GW2 UI. Either we need to have customisable raid frames (including hot corners and being able to track select boons) or Specter PvE support needs a rework. It is absolutely nightmarish trying to click through the UI to select different players to try and get Quickness out. Either rework the UI, or rework the entire thought of how you want Specter to play in PvE. Things that could be done to alleviate this issue: a) Next ally keybindings actual cycle between players, not mini pets. (this is the path of least resistance probably) b) Allow the raid frames to be moved. (harder) c) Rethink the need for ally targeting for Endless Night. (hardest, but might eventually be needed) I think I would prefer a) or c) of the above. 2. Endless Night needs rethought priorities. I was, alongside a chronomancer, able to do between 70 to 95% quickness on 10 players (full Celestial, leadership runes, conc sigil, conc food and utilities). The Endless Night Quickness looks like it would be workable but pets, turrets, clones and minions take priority! This is utterly strange to have the skill be entirely based on proximity, especially as the Specter needs to move about due to Measured Shot and to pierce with Endless Night. I would suggest that players are made priority. This would resolve some of the issues but the terribly unfun gameplay of clicking allies would still be present. 3. The healing and barrier is incredibly strong. This is offset quite a bit by the lack of boons (Siphon is pretty hard to use when you need to fish out the correct ally so often), poor condi cleanse (only Signet of Agility for multiple players) and the general difficulty of play. This is probably in the right sort of place. 4. Shroud feels pretty pointless as support. I would enter and leave for the burst healing and Quick Pockets. It didn't seem to have any other purpose. 5. Alacrity is fine. It is just a bit insipid. 6. Siphon feels a bit pointless in PvE. There are better buttons to press and it is really awkward having to target the boss and then an allied target in order to get boons. Allied Siphon should work with the boons from Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft. Ending points: Rethink everything about pushing for single target allies gameplay. GW2 is not well suited to it at all. If you want to stick with single target allies, it needs to work beyond a point and click scheme with information poor raid frames that are cemented in an awkward place. Fix the target ally bindings to work with players. Make Endless Night prioritise players within the pierce, increase pierce width. Healing and alacrity are generally fine, if dull to execute. Bugs: If you are standing in front of your allied target and about 80 units away, Measure Shot ports you to 900 range, as though it is triggering the enemy effect. Endless Night prioritising proximity only. Fire for Effect was just fixed for this. Endless Night needs to be too. Things that feel like bugs but are design issues: Needing to interact with the UI so much.

Targeting allies with Specter might prove to be pretty cumbersome, especially in instanced PvE where the party bar or the raid frames may need to be clicked on. This is especially true for sharing Quickness and building Rot Wallow with Endless Night, where to maximise piercing, you will want your Endless Night target to be different from that of Measured Shot. An easy fix to alleviate this would be to change the settings associated with targeting allies. These options currently cycle over NPCs, mini pets, clones and similar. If, instead, these were to cycle over players then Specter ally targeting would not need to resort to clicking the UI.

Sure love being a Thief main. We definitely get a fair amount of attention and focus and our intended roles aren't dropped as soon as they are slightly awkward to implement (still waiting for Deadeye to be a premier PvE might share and DPS option).

20 tournament wins is not a pretty light requirement sadly!

Yes, that is correct. It would be nice to get reassurance from @Catmander Neko.5643 that we can at least keep using our slumbering legendary trinkets as we do now - one character, multiple equipment templates.

Yes, that should work.

This is really disappointing to hear. While I understand that other systems may take precedence, there have been multiple years in which to work on a solution. It is clear that you are aware that always showing visual effects like these is not good from a player experience since we have the slumbering variants of Conflux and Transcendence. Many areas of the game are going to be harder to play simply due to the visual noise from so many of these trinkets now that they will be available on all characters on an account. Hopefully the fix can come sooner rather than later. There are many of us who made the PvE legendary trinkets for the QoL benefit and just have to grit our teeth whenever we see the horrible legendary effect. It would be wonderful even to have an NPC where we can speak to toggle the stacking buff mentioned to a permanent value of 0 to 3.

What does that mean for people that currently use a slumbering trinket? Will we at least be able to keep using the slumbering trinket as now with multiple equipment templates on one character? It would be really useful to have this clarified as if it is being downgraded to only work on one equipment template on one character, many of us will need to prepare back-up trinkets.

Stating that someone is "new to games" or that their opinion is a "screech" is attacking the person, not the argument being put forward. These are ad hominen attacks. Given that your most recent post contains a number of straw arguments and putting words into the mouths of others, you can edit those too if you want a discussion. Please find where in my post I stated that Weaver is "bad". You'll note that I said no such thing - simply that it performs worse than other easier options and is underplayed as a result. That isn't an opinion. That is a fact which can be seen in the statistics on https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/. Please also note that a request for Weaver to be buffed is not stated anywhere in my post - that is entirely an argument created by yourself. You should consider that you are basing your opinion regarding PvE balance on what happens in other games such as WoW and FFXIV. In those games, the entire balance scenario is different due to the presence of progressively more powerful gear and secondary systems. Comparatively, GW2 has a static (with the caveat of new gear types) and highly accessible best-in-slot and no break points from gearing or additional power systems. Guild Wars 2 also has incredibly easy access to best-in-slot alts. WoW and FFXIV also have progressive raid tiers where the bosses are different, the challenges are different and how the fights are approached is different. In Guild Wars 2, we've been fighting the same bosses for between two and five and a half years. Contrasting balance in WoW or FFXIV or Wildstar or really any other gear progression MMO against GW2 is an apples to porcupines comparison. The systems are so different and the ramifications are also different as a result. Anyway, I am very happy to have a larger discussion but that won't happen until you remove your ad hominen arguments and avoid straw arguments. It is a pity. I am sure we could eventually have quite a few agreements on reducing difficulties, fair distribution of utility and improving accessibility. Have a lovely day.

If you would like a discussion, I am very happy to do so! First, edit your post for the ad hominem attacks and apologise. Until then, all you are doing is attempting to shout people down without addressing their arguments and incorrectly trying to compare balance in a game with no secondary systems, permanent BiS and easy alts to games with gear grind elements and additional power systems.

Amazing. Enjoy your ad hominems.

What an odd concept. You should provide some strong reasoning if you want to make a claim as bold as difficulty not impacting balancing in a game with no secondary system or additional power sources. Using Wildstar as an example for why things that are easier should do the highest DPS is really odd given that the issue with that game was not related to balance in the slightest but rather accessibility to the content via deliberate attunement requirements. Wildstar's demise has nothing to do with sensible class design (or otherwise). If the difficult class can barely do much more on a golem, while performing worse in actual encounters while lacking CC and utility, what is the purpose of that class being more difficult? No one is seriously going to play it as something that is challenging needs a reasonable reward. There is evidence for this being an issue too if you look at the Profession distribution on https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/. People are not playing Weaver because it is too difficult for far too little. There should be rewards for doing something more difficult - that isn't catering to the hardcore when easy and accessible specs remain at DPS levels that are much, much more than viable.

Lots of people are talking about PvP here. I won't comment on that. However cDD should not be doing more damage than cDE in PvE. cDD has a rotation that makes Scourge look challenging to play, does more damage, brings CC, can switch targets and brings utility. Given the limitations of cDE and pDE, both should be around 40k DPS (with allies) on the golem while cDD should be closer to 35k (with allies). However, I don't think that balance would be achieved by removing dodges!