[Specter Bug Thread]

The circle for Shroud 5 "Mind Shock" is not appearing for me anymore after June 28 patch

[Power Specter - PvE/WvW Options]

Acro is also one of these traitlines that's kind of dead in pvp. You would only take it for Swindler's equilibrium, but that's not really worth it. Damage boost isn't high enough and as specter you don't get as much value out of the steal reset. Other than that, acro offers mostly defensive utility which you don't really need as specter.

[Power Specter - PvE/WvW Options]

26 minutes ago, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

Thanks for posting that. I’m going to try it out. You think CS is better than kitten for damage purposes?

yes, way better in terms of damage. D A got overnerfed 2 years ago and doesn't really do anything anymore, unless you play condi.

[Power Specter - PvE/WvW Options]

6 minutes ago, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

Well I’m mostly curious about the traits. 

There you go: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABsixrlhy2YpMVWLW2WnxWA-zVRYBxIG+DJMhQbqgOlAqcA-w

[Power Specter - PvE/WvW Options]

On 3/5/2022 at 6:33 AM, grx.8714 said:

For WvW roaming I think we might see a variant of the sPvP version, Sc/D + Sw/P or D/P if you really wanna rely on stealth over mobility.

 

For PvE I have no idea, for open world I think Specter is stronger than Daredevil due to IP nerfs on sustain, but we will see.

@Lonewolf Kai.3682

If you need a full build, i can set it up in gw2skills later.

[Power Specter - PvE/WvW Options]

Sorry to burst your bubble about large scale WvW, but specter is simply not good at that. Neither as a damage dealer nor as support.

In Smallscale however, you can play the pvp power build (see post from @grx.8714  , traits would be CS and Trickery) to good success.

[2/28 PvP Balance]

1 hour ago, saerni.2584 said:

No, and people need to understand. Thief stealth durations are *not* significantly/unfairly increased by being able to gain stealth on Steal/Swipe/Mark/Siphon. The reasons you don't have a cooldown on the trait is because the cooldowns on Steal vs Swipe vs Mark vs Siphon are all quite different (and then there are the cooldown reduction traits or utilities). Changing/nerfing this trait (1) won't significantly reduce the stealth durations (it's a 3 second stealth application) and (2) make using Steal to initiate a stealth attack—a core gameplay component of thief—unreliable on any build/elite specialization that can lower it's cooldown. 
 

I've tried to explain what underlies complaints about SA repeatedly—namely the long durations of stealth. Shadow's Rejuvenation passively gives a thief initiative while in stealth. This means that a thief running SR will regenerate a lot of the initiative used to gain or maintain stealth. Without it, long stealth durations matter much less because either the thief will have initiative but less utilities (using those to gain stealth) or they will have utilities but much less initiative to maintain any stealth duration of significance. Shadow's Rejuvenation, not Hidden Thief, is the trait that needs to be adjusted. 
 

The bulk of these proposed changes are nerfing core utilities (not SA like some people are claiming lol). The only SA nerf is a reduction in SR's *heal* which is not primarily why thieves take the trait. SR could literally not heal at all and it would be worth taking for the passive initiative regeneration in stealth. 

I just want to reiterate as well that nerfing Hide in Shadows, an important cleanse for thief, and forcing any thief who wants to take it into SA just to get a decent cooldown on a burst cleanse, is not well thought out. There are plenty of heals on a 15-20 second cooldown. HiS at 30 seconds gets to stealth/cleanse, so the effects are mitigated by the cooldown time. If the concern is the duration of stealth with Concealing Restoration then that trait should be looked at. It isn't hard to just target the source of the thing you are trying to fix. This is another example of nerfing core utilities to mitigate the actually problematic trait interaction.

You seem to have missed, that I specifically talked about the CD reduction part of Hidden Thief, which should be nerfed or removed. You are right that the 1.25s (in pvp) stealth application on steal does not add much the overall stealth duration and survivability of thiefs, but the 20% CD reduction on Deception skills definitely does.

[2/28 PvP Balance]

These Thief changes are really mind boggling again. They say one thing, and then proceed doing the opposite. Meanwhile the actual solution is so obvious: nerf/remove CD reduction from Hidden Thief trait instead of nerfing the CDs of Core skills.

Aside from these short term changes, the prevailing problem is that thiefs have no real alternative to playing SA if they wanted to. kitten isn't doing any damage, while Improv is not good enough anymore to carry the entire traitline, and Acro is simply in a pityfull state, doing basically nothing. Crit strikes offers no defensive ulility (no, IP is not good with current thief builds), which btw becomes even more of a problem when you nerf defensive core skills.

[Utilities reordering themselves bug]

Just encountered this issue again when switching to rev for a pvp match, realized it too late and had to play the entire match handicapped. Was super fun, obviously...

[It is vital that we get more build templates with EoD]

We had Arc templates before, which were simply better than the ingame system. Disallowing that made the game effectively worse.

Holy cow, I'm still getting mad when I think of this template cashgrab story.

Anet should not only increase the max templates per char, but also increase the amount of free ones to at least 6 each.

[Oh Gods! "Blade Runner" Kaineng City is real :(]

I'm absolutely devasted over what Anet did to Cantha and especially Kaineng. This whole Jade Tech thing can go to hell if you asked me.

When i wanted Anet to make Cantha in GW2, i hoped for the total opposite than what we've seen today.

[WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds]

47 minutes ago, jul.7602 said:

Alliances are too controversial to be of any use to WvW in the long run. The Alliance rework grossly misunderstands the fundamental building blocks of WvW. The fundamental building blocks are neither guilds, nor servers, but the everyday casual pug. The vast majority of the people you see in WvW do not belong to a dedicated WvW guild

I'm in total disagreement with your base assumption here. The fundamental building blocks of wvw are the players that play often and identify with their guilds/communities, be it large or small. They make out the vast amount of contributing playtime in WvW, keeping the game mode alive.

I don't want to be mean and deny the casual pug players of their fun in wvw, but I have to say they are not as important as you make them out to be.

What I get from my surrounding people in WvW is that the alliance system is eagerly awaited, to finally get rid of this heavily flawed server/link system. Never have I heard somebody being against alliances as much I see a few people here in the forums, but I've explained in an earlier post on why I think that is.

[Alliances make me not want to play WvW]

The game still lacks a proper ingame explanation, that's true. But instead of complaining in the forums you could also do a quick Google search and get an explanation of the system in half of the time.

[Alliances make me not want to play WvW]

1 minute ago, Chrysaliss.8720 said:

What I am saying is that the choice of server didnt matter. Becase no matter which server you chose, you would have somewhat balanced WvW experience once the server ratings stabilized.

And why shouldn't it be the same with the new system? It's impossible to judge this when we only have a week long beta and team ratings won't stabilise over a period of time.

[Alliances make me not want to play WvW]

7 minutes ago, Chrysaliss.8720 said:

2. Just because guild join the group wont guarantee it being the most optimal.

That's called matchmaking 😄. It's entire point is to prevent all players from just choosing the best team. Instead, you are now a part of the equation.

Besides, you stated that you just joined a bg. Why would you care about the "optimal group" all of a sudden? Did you transfer to the optimal team after every relink?

[Alliances make me not want to play WvW]

You can ask the players in your guilds if and for which guild they intend to play. that already gives you plenty of information.

[WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds]

2 hours ago, Mazdan.2071 said:

Some folks have legitimate gripes and concerns and have voiced them very clearly only to be rebutted by "trolls" saying "You need to click the button" or "this is not alliances" or some other lefty kitten debate tactic putting the blame onto the person making the complaint.

I see very few "legitimate concerns" here but mostly people displaying one of the following:

- not understanding the alliance system

- not understanding what a beta is

- not understanding the system's state right now compared to what it is supposed to be when all features are implemented

- refusing to put in a least bit of effort or to make a decision to play with the people they want to keep playing with

The new system gives player's a lot of agency. Only 2 or 3 posts here have stated some extreme cases where it is not able to fully maintain the status quo.

All in all, the notion that alliances will be "killing all social interactions" is nothing but an exaggeration in my eyes.

[WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds]

19 minutes ago, Gilderin.4763 said:

also there are very very different kind of players in wvw. lets say you want to raid with your wvw guild. you did this for years, twice a week, but the rest of the week your with your spread roaming buddies from dirrerent guilds. you got to know each other by playing along over the years and you did built friendships.

Couldn't this be solved by forming an alliance?

[WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds]

You can be in 5 guilds, only one of them has to be selected as your wvw guild and it doesn't have to be the same you represent. Is it really that much of a problem to form a guild with friends to simply solve this problem?

[WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds]

Just form a guild with your friends and select that as your wvw guild. Problem solved.

Just a little bit of organising yourselfes goes a long way.

[WVW alliance is dead before out of beta due to ultra stacking alliance guild.]

You obviously didnt understand the system.

Worlds are created by the matchnaker based on wvw participation.

If one large guild/alliance stacks many many active players, they will in turn get very few allies. Not too mention that there will be limits on how many active players can be in one Alliance (as their selected WvW alliance).

In turn other worlds may consist of smaller alliances, but way more of them, hence balancing things out.

[EU Beta Reset broken]

Looks like the game wasn't able to put every player on teams properly.

The team name of our selected guild is "12,204" and we can't get into WvW at all. activating a portal, or opening the first tab in wvw panel only yield errors messsages. Match overview only shows "blue", "red", and "green" as team names.

[Single targeting allies is a design mistake and Guild Wars 2 does not support it]

100% agree. It feels like ArenaNet desperately wanted to bring in something new, but it simply doesn't fit into this game for all the reasons you said.

Especially this explanation: "This may maintain a strong all-around support role for a focused target in certain gameplay, such as 2v2 PvP or playing with a friend in the open world, while allowing Specter to still fill healing and alacrity support roles for group play." is very telling. It sounds like they just now realized that there is not much need for any kind of single target support in this game. While on the other hand, your effective group heal and alacrity abilities are build on wells and leaving shroud, so circumvent the single target aspect entirely.

In the end, Anet "mechanic creeped" Specter a lot to somehow hamfist support into the thief class, but all of this simply doesn't add up to something that's desirable in the way that Guild Wars 2 plays out.

[World Linking 11/26/2021]

Miller is dying only because it gets relinked with Elona over and over and over again. Why, Anet? Why?

[End of Dragons Elite Specialization Updates]

Very dissapointed in the fact that Specter still has a 300cd trait. I thought we were past that, but apparently Anet does not even acknowledge this as a problem.