Za Shaloc.3908

I am praying that Thief gets an offhand weapon. Truly I don't think it's too important *what* it is, but we need more combos for the already existing weapons, especially for the mainhand weapons that have had the same 2 options since the game launched. I'd personally love torch, focus, or sword. Beyond that I don't care too much. I think ANet should continue to try to fill missing niches, except for where it would give a class a second support weapon in a row as there are a lot of players who don't enjoy or play the support role.

I've run Kalla for a bit in WvW and overall I much prefer this iteration over the previous, but I admit I was a huge hater of the dumb killable AI mechanic. My biggest complaints are that the Band Together mechanic is slightly clunkily implemented and could use a small bit of refining, and that the spirits still need a valid path, which I'd hope to see corrected in the future. I've run it a bit in roaming and in smallscale (5-7) comped stuff with my guild and it felt pretty good. In comp I was playin it on Cele with Jalis for alac/stab-slaving, and it felt pretty good (but hard to compare because I generally play heal Vindi when comped). The damage felt pretty decent and the AoE resistance is fantastic on top of everything else Rene offers. I think a Diviner variant would be good too but I haven't gotten around to trying. Hard to really make any conclusions after just one night of running it seriously, but what I do know for sure is that I like this version much better.

Undocumented change or bug? The skill certainly has never felt OP enough to really warrant a change like this.

I'm a little confused by the extra healing and damage packets that occur from summoning a warband member while Soulcleave is out. When I tested it last night with Icerazor, it seemed like I would get multiple (x3 per target?) packets of extra Soulcleave damage hits (not counting the Siphon procs), whereas I would just get one healing proc. So, I suspect the damage procs have something to do with how many packets of damage the warband member inflicts, whereas the heal is just a flat amount? Arguable whether this should be considered a bug, but I'd at least consider it a weird inconsistency that holds back the potential viability of heal Rene.

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.

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.

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)

Big agree.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

I didn't realize it proc'd from all of that, thanks for the info! Pretty neat.

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.

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.

Specter is my favorite elite spec to play across all classes, but in a lot of respects the individual pieces of the spec do feel quite...messy, for lack of a better word. You play something like Reaper and all of the shroud skills feel incredibly weighty and impactful, but Specter's shroud is so different and it makes it feel less satisfying in a lot of respects, at least at a surface level. I don't think it (or Specter as a whole) needs a full rework by any means, but I do believe there are a handful of individual pieces that could for sure be polished up and re-evaluated. Regarding the visuals though? Yes. I agree. Some of them are just fine but man...the animation/VFX team really went wild in PoF and it makes me envious of the sheer quality and level of detail of it all when seeing stuff like Holo/Scourge/Firebrand. I want that for Specter. Not to mention the quality of sounds too. The scepter auto and shroud auto sound effects are both so horrible.

I dunno about y'all but both of these wells feel really lackluster to me. Sorrow is just boring (and a little weak), but Tears seems like such a mismatch for an elite spec based around condi/support. I know some power Specters take Tears in competitive, but I don't think it would ever be taken if it wasn't for the sword 2 well port capability and for being a vehicle for Chrono relic. I'd like to see both of them spiced up a bit to make them more compelling options. Something I find interesting about Specter wells is that 2 of them have a help/harm duality to them: Gloom cripples enemies and heals allies while Silence dazes enemies and cleanses allies. While I think it could be argued whether or not that's actually "good" (or practical) design and a direction other wells should be taken, it is at the very least a way both Sorrow and Tears could be modified to become more dynamic and interesting. Additionally, I think the "on impact" effect from Well of Silence is a cool design approach that I could see being successfully carried over into other wells. Here are some spitballed ideas both with and without those design approaches, but I'd love to hear your ideas as well because I'm struggling to think of anything too outside of the box. Specter has a really unique theme to it and I'm sure there are a lot more thoughtful design ideas than these. Well of Sorrow (Theme: Torment and Boon Removal) 1. Apply barrier to allies on impact. Pulsing effect would convert boons to torment. 2. Apply dark aura to allies on impact. Pulsing effect would convert boons to torment. While standing in your well, your torment damage will tick as if all enemies are not moving. 3. No initial impact effect. Pulsing effect would convert boons to torment. Apply additional/longer torment to foes with no boons. Well of Tears (Theme: Downstate Control) 1. Revives allies (X%) on impact. Pulsing effect would damage foes. Deal increased damage to defiant, CC'd, and downstate foes. Prevents ally health drain while downed. 2. No initial impact effect. Pulsing effect would deal damage to foes and revive allies. Deal increased damage to defiant, CC'd, and downstate foes. Prevents ally health drain while downed. 2. Applies poison on impact. Pulsing effect would damage and weaken foes. Deal increased damage to defiant, CC'd, and downstate foes. Beyond Sorrow and Tears, I'd like to see one well (likely Bounty or Silence) get a stunbreak added to it.

Nobody likes getting moa'd, but your post exaggerates the effectiveness and brokenness of magnet and Toss Elixir X. If you've ever played magnet/moa Engi, you'd know how many random variables can completely negate your combo. Random stab, mag aura, blinds, aegis procs, etc. The real problem with combos like this is that you can hide the animation of magnet by pre-casting it without a target and then targeting your enemy right before the cast completes. There's honestly a conversation to be had about skill retargeting and animation hiding as a whole, including being able to hide really high-impact skills like Mesmer moa behind stealth. But for the core Engi meme combo, just know that if they are running a oneshot moa nade build, they can only be running one stunbreak max. If there is one harassing you in a group setting, they are an easy focus target. If they catch you with your pants down, them wrecking you is not a capability unique to that build. It just feels more annoying to die against since you lose access to your normal skills. Personally I just consider it one of the necessary evils to the game mode to help counter all the broken stuff that exists.

Seems like you are talking about WvW? If scepter were to be implemented into the live game as it currently is, I don't think it would see much use there honestly. I'd take mace/shield over scepter/shield any day of the week so long as Karakosa remains a thing. Scepter could easily become really good if they make the proper functionality changes, but as it currently stands I really don't care for the weapon whatsoever and would only use it in endgame PvE group content. I could be wrong though.

Being able to provide pretty fair on-demand healing/barrier to allies through both scepter and Specter without any sort of healing power investment is very underrated. I personally believe that alac dps Specter is Thief at its max potential value in terms of group play in PvE. You output good dps and provide a lot of passive support just by performing your normal rotation, and you still have the option of further supporting in a pinch with scepter on allies if need be. It's certainly not something that is exclusively unique to Specter, but whenever I play it in groups (it's my go-to build in PvE) I always feel like I'm bringing big value.

Yeah there is definitely a bug there. Haven't actually tested it to get a proper number, but it generally seems to occur when there are ~5 or more allies between you and your ally target. Really big bummer.