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Za Shaloc.3908

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  1. IMO Specter is the closest thing you will get to being viable in zergs (though I am pretty biased as it's my fav elite spec). But I think when talking about viability it's important to be clear and realistic that although it is viable, it still cannot replace the primary support role of stab-bot or the secondary support role of cleanser. You do provide stab and you do cleanse, but it is not frequent or reliable enough (both stab sources have a cast time with no group stunbreak component; cleanses are too conditional). With that said, you do provide a LOT of barrier/healing, quickness, and pretty decent uptime on resistance. You also have a gravity well copycat skill (much riskier to use mind you) and some other nice boons (regen, vigor, prot, fury). Like, it's not bad at all and does very well at things like countering pin-sniping. I think it does have value in large-scale, but to what degree I think can be up for debate. With other supports getting nerfed, i think it helps Specter's optics. I myself am a huge WvW player, but I am not big on organized large-scale fights, so I try not to pretend I know everything about that playstyle. If you are on NA I would suggest reaching out to BANE (Nightmare's Bane is the actual guild name I think? Not sure what server they are on). To my knowledge they are the only large-scale guild that regularly incorporates multiple Specters in their groups. I see Specters in other groups on occasion, but I think BANE comps and strategizes around having multiple.
  2. Yeah the LoS thing is really odd. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume it's a bug or unintended mechanic. If it's intentional, well idk what to say. The pulsing mechanic is kinda interesting. It's an easy IO proc-er for some annoying DoT damage, and I'd say the ability to instant cast it mid any sort of animation is pretty neat. Not to say I think the weapon is good as a whole, but the pulsing/detonating aspect feels more beneficial for damage than it does for support and has some merit.
  3. Thoughts are that I swapped back to mace after about 20 minutes into a small-scale guild run in WvW last night (me as support Vindi). Clunky af and still feels like it's in beta. Lots of waiting to activate the flipover skills, piddling barrier from skill 2 on full Minstrel, easy to accidentally cancel skills or have them fail due to LoS/facing requirements, window for the port for skill 3 is too short. Most of my guildmates seemed at least mildly annoyed at me when placing skill 2 on them, lol. It's not FUBAR, but it could use some serious polishing in terms of its design. Has potential for sure. Please do more work beyond simple numerical adjustments. It seems like y'all (Anet) felt the need to make overly complicated mechanics for the new weapons to make them feel more special, but really I think a lot of that stuff across the weapons feels overdesigned, unpolished, and unnecessarily superfluous. MEH. (Did not test on a power build)
  4. The nerfs to Energy Expulsion and Serene Rejuvenation are really brutal for WvW. On one hand I can agree that spamming the skill is most definitely too powerful. On the other hand, a 15 second cooldown really messes with the flow of the legend and the accessibility to the empower mechanic. It basically means you *have* to use the elite on legend swap in order to give out any stab per Ventari rotation (unless on core/Herald). Otherwise what are you gonna do, use the elite and then wait a whole 15 seconds without using any other Ventari skills so you can sit on your empower charge for more stab? I understand the logic but don't agree with the severity of the nerfs. I'd like to make some suggestions as to help reach a better halfway point between these nerfs and maintaining the integrity of the empower mechanic/flow of the legend. -Revert or lessen the duration nerfs to the stability and resistance. The increased CD will already significantly reduce the uptime on these boons as you cannot continually spam the elite over and over. -Reduce the Energy Expulsion CD nerf to be somewhere between 8 and 12 seconds. -Either through a minor Salvation trait or simply baseline, make it so using your F2 skill gives you a stack of Empowered. This is already a thing for core and Herald, but would then allow it to extend into both Renegade and Vindicator. Compensate for core/Herald in some way.
  5. The nerfs to Energy Expulsion and Serene Rejuvenation are really brutal for WvW. On one hand I can agree that spamming the skill was most definitely too powerful. On the other hand, a 15 second cooldown really messes with the flow of the legend and the accessibility to the empower mechanic. It basically means you *have* to use the elite on legend swap in order to give out any stab per Ventari rotation (unless on core/Herald). Otherwise what are you gonna do, use the elite and then wait a whole 15 seconds without using any other Ventari skills so you can sit on your empower charge for more stab? I understand the logic but don't agree with the severity of the nerfs. Edit: I'd like to make some suggestions as to help reach a better halfway point between these nerfs and maintaining the integrity of the empower mechanic/flow of the legend. -Revert or lessen the duration nerfs to the stability and resistance. The increased CD will already significantly reduce the uptime on these boons as you cannot continually spam the elite over and over. -Reduce the Energy Expulsion CD nerf to be somewhere between 8 and 12 seconds. -Either through a minor Salvation trait or simply baseline, make it so using your F2 skill gives you a stack of Empowered. This is already a thing for core and Herald, but would then allow it to extend into both Renegade and Vindicator. Compensate for core/Herald in some way.
  6. Honestly I'm pretty stoked about the changes. My own personal issues with the weapon were addressed. Autoattacking to build stacks was clunky and unreliable in WvW. While I do agree that ally targeting is janky and horribly accommodated/optimized, I have been maining Specter for a while now and am very much used to it. Being able to place scepter 2 on allies means you can actually make it reliably hit people, which is a huge improvement from having it centered on just the enemy. With more ally targeting being added to the game, I really do hope ANet puts some more effort into optimizing the UI and actually bug-testing and fixing the keybind options that they've implemented for it. Cycling through minis, clones, dead clones, pets, siege, objects, etc. is just ridiculous.
  7. How do you arrive at the idea that it is always hybrid? Is it because in shroud you have to land your shroud skills on enemies in order to heal? Because of rot wallow venom causing passive torment application? You can very much make Specter to be a dedicated healer despite there being a bit of an inherent hybridity to it. It just means that if you are using stats like Minstrels, the significance of that hybridity is decreased since you are sacrificing potential damage stats in favor of tank/healing stats. But I wouldn't say that is a unique thing to Specter. Take Tempest, for example. You will still be rotating through plenty of skills that do damage due to the supportive/secondary effects on them. The relevance and impact of that hybridity is determined by your stats, traits, etc. Are you of the opinion that Anet should rework shroud and scepter to be purely supportive? I don't think that will ever happen, nor do I think it needs to. That is just not how ANet designs elite specs. Not to mention that a strictly supportive elite spec on Thief doesn't fit in super nicely to the core class itself.
  8. I agree that the bugginess of the skill can be annoying (hello supply depots, sentry poles), but I disagree that the solution is to make it function like Soulbeast's merge Smoke Assault. I think that having the windup is very important to the counterplay and that it'd be a mistake to ever remove it.
  9. Yeah I am bummed about this change. I love the whole combo/finisher mechanic and this just feels like they are trying to nerf mace so scepter becomes the default mainhand support option on release. Karakosa has been a lot of fun and I do think it needs adjustments regardless of Rev mace 3, but I would have much preferred that they leave mace 3 alone and made its so you can only get 1 Karakosa proc per skill use. One of the joys of Echoing Eruption is sending it into a bunch of allies in a large-scale fight and seeing which finishers you'd proc. And stuff like the Ventari bubble trick like you mentioned. I don't think these changes kill the skill by any means, it's just moreso sad that we're losing a fun and unique interaction. Like when Warrior lost its double finisher trait. Oh well. After reading your post again I realize I basically repeated everything you said. Whoops. Needless to say I agree lol.
  10. 2 charges of Barrage in WvW? Hahahah this is one of the most random changes ever. I really don't know why you felt the need to do this but I look forward to playing with it. I get why Karakosa was nerfed. I wish instead of nerfing Echoing Eruption's number of blast finishers, you just made it so Karakosa could only trigger once per skill use. The 3-finisher aspect of this skill was such a fun thing to play and was very unique to the skil. The only reasons I can see these changes happening are because of Karakosa and the upcoming scepter. Really big bummer. Hope the scepter has some good changes coming because I absolutely hated it during the beta. Making on-heal relics with low ICDs and balancing the numbers around these low ICDs makes it a lot less flexible for classes that don't have access to low-CD heals. This basically limits it to FB, Mes, and Rev. Not pretending to know the solution but I still find it a bit annoying. Looking forward to playing with mantra heals some more now. Thank you for allowing MoP to be used without a target again!
  11. I love the resistance on the trait but am biased since it's such a high value boon in WvW. I can see why it is less exciting in PvE but I do think the rest of the trait helps make it still pretty good. But yeah wells as a whole are sorta weird. The cripple on Gloom seems kinda random/unimpactful and would have better value as a supportive feature, the daze on Silence is nice but...like Gloom it makes it harder to fully maximize because a daze and pulsing cleanse have such different applications so it often just feels like it's just used for one aspect of the skill. Bounty is really nice but it could be argued that some of the boon choices could be a little better, and the delay on stab application is killer. Elite well is super strong but the poet on all of the offensive wells feels like more of a liability when used in competitive modes. Sorrow and Tears...yeah I guess I said enough about those lol.
  12. I didn't realize it proc'd from all of that, thanks for the info! Pretty neat.
  13. Heal Specter is my fav build to play. Very fun and mechanically demanding. Definitely not close to a meta pick but still very undervalued. I think it shines the most in small-scale and as you mentioned to help protect against pin-sniping pug tags. I personally make some different choices in the builds I run, but out of curiosity why signet heal? I guess from my perspective I consider Well of Gloom to be unmatched (largely due to the resistance from Traversing Dusk) but maybe I'm just not understanding something since I've never actually tested the signet heal before on heal Specter.
  14. This. The delay is fine and a non-issue with the tablet movement having such a miniscule ICD now. Get a convenient keybind that allows you to mash the button with ease (aka not the default 6 key) and get into the habit of spamming it constantly. The delay time is there to help mimic a cast time considering it is instant cast and usable while CC'd.
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