Specter Feedback Thread

[MatyrGustav.6210]

25 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

@MatyrGustav.6210

Five seconds isn't a long time, and so long as you have the HP the heal is going to be big after a few seconds anyway. You shouldn't have to use it as a clutch heal in the first place since Shadow Shroud is an instant second HP bar. If you are low on HP, hit it and wait a bit before leaving. Deal some damage while your at it.

Clutch heal for allies, not myself. I want to be reliable. The changes are a nerf to AOE healer thieve builds

[Zacchary.6183]

Just now, MatyrGustav.6210 said:

Clutch heal for allies, not myself. I want to be reliable. The changes are a nerf to AOE healer thieve builds

You shouldn't be clutch healing anyway. You have plenty of options to build Shadow Force and let you pop it once every 10-15s on top of the large barriers you'll be outputting. Your heal should be large assuming you're not running full glass, and even if you only wait 2-3 seconds which is nothing, because it is based off of Shroud HP. And your Shroud HP is 1.5x your Max HP. It says so on the tooltip. You do the math.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

It's always a good sign when as time goes on the spec gets less fun and less effective as the betas move ahead. Good job anet, very dependable but not in a good way.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Psycoprophet.8107

[RyuDragnier.9476]

7 hours ago, BobbyT.7192 said:

I wouldn't use it even if the CD was 60s. This spec allows you to revive an ally pretty easily. (If you can actually select them) Why is this trait needed?

Agreed. They may as well make Shallow Grave work like Necro's Eternal Life, where it automatically fills up Shroud to a set amount when not in Shroud. With that and a buff to Shroud's damage, it becomes an option to get into Shroud much faster for more DPS. Because as much as I like support, right now the choices are between more healing, auto-shroud at death, or emergency shroud dump heal. There isn't exactly anything there for DPS.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

49 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

You shouldn't be clutch healing anyway. You have plenty of options to build Shadow Force and let you pop it once every 10-15s on top of the large barriers you'll be outputting. Your heal should be large assuming you're not running full glass, and even if you only wait 2-3 seconds which is nothing, because it is based off of Shroud HP. And your Shroud HP is 1.5x your Max HP. It says so on the tooltip. You do the math.

You don't raid or do strikes, do you? Spike damage tends to happen quite a bit and the clutch heal helped deal with those emergencies. A lot of raids or strikes are often saved by the backup healer throwing up an emergency barrier or heal that brings people out of the brink. Those same spikes are the reason why 5 seconds in Shroud cannot work.

[Zacchary.6183]

Just now, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

You don't raid or do strikes, do you? Spike damage tends to happen quite a bit and the clutch heal helped deal with those emergencies. A lot of raids or strikes are often saved by the backup healer throwing up an emergency barrier or heal that brings people out of the brink. Those same spikes are the reason why 5 seconds in Shroud cannot work.

Is it clutch if you've prepped for it beforehand? No. That's called a heal check. Secondly, Specter's barrier output let's it keep barrier maxed on the party for extended periods of time. Spamming CS with Shadestep and any barrier you get from Siphon does this consistently.

[MatyrGustav.6210]

On 12/1/2021 at 1:27 PM, Zacchary.6183 said:

You shouldn't be clutch healing anyway. You have plenty of options to build Shadow Force and let you pop it once every 10-15s on top of the large barriers you'll be outputting. Your heal should be large assuming you're not running full glass, and even if you only wait 2-3 seconds which is nothing, because it is based off of Shroud HP. And your Shroud HP is 1.5x your Max HP. It says so on the tooltip. You do the math.

 

The build setup i had, focused on Shadow force generation. I would deal damage building shadow force, then double tapping to heal. I would cycle back to dealing damage again to build shadow force. 

You cant build life force in shroud, so i had more healng potential when i can build shadow force outside of shroud.

I had the option to stay in shroud for damage/defense, or teather an ally for single target support, Whatever the current situation called for.  The choice is taken away from me, and less heals overall is a nerf

I get what youre saying  but id prefer it the way it was.

Edited December 4, 2021 by MatyrGustav.6210

[Zacchary.6183]

1 minute ago, MatyrGustav.6210 said:

 

The build setup i had focused on Shadow force generation. I would deal damage building shadow force then double tapping to heal. Going back to dealing damage again to build shadow force. 

 

I get what youre saying  but id prefer it the way it was.

That's entirely fair. I'm just saying you still have those options, but you'll have to change how you use the spec a bit.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

4 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Is it clutch if you've prepped for it beforehand? No. That's called a heal check. Secondly, Specter's barrier output let's it keep barrier maxed on the party for extended periods of time. Spamming CS with Shadestep and any barrier you get from Siphon does this consistently.

If somebody went down beforehand and you had to waste a Siphon to bring them up, you've lost whatever gauge it would have gained if it had instead been used on the enemy. That is not something you can control, and don't even give me that kitten commentary about "well they need to play better." This is a support build with access to healing, it needs to be able to adapt to things going wrong, something it cannot do with Consume Shadows if it has to meticulously wait to use instead of throwing out when it can.

[Zacchary.6183]

17 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

If somebody went down beforehand and you had to waste a Siphon to bring them up, you've lost whatever gauge it would have gained if it had instead been used on the enemy. That is not something you can control, and don't even give me that kitten commentary about "well they need to play better." This is a support build with access to healing, it needs to be able to adapt to things going wrong, something it cannot do with Consume Shadows if it has to meticulously wait to use instead of throwing out when it can.

By all rights I should say git gud, because if you are using it as much as possible and using shadestep to keep 4 digit barriers up, you won't need to use it as a clutch almost ever. It heals you too and will provide you barrier almost all of the time if you are aggressive with healing. Shadestep will then take that barrier and grant your party even more barrier when you shadowstep. And all you have to do is build for HP and then land as many shadow steps on your allies as possible.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Zacchary.6183

[Aavataris.5720]

I loved this new Elite, but despite being a tree for support, I don't think it's right that it has a trait that is useless when going solo:

The Dark Sentry trait does nothing when soloed, and is the same issue the Illusionist has had with Inspiring Distortion.

The greatest grace of this game is the great variety of weapons, game modes and classes ... do not limit the options, please.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

18 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

By all rights I should say git gud, because if you are using it as much as possible and using shadestep to keep 4 digit barriers up, you won't need to use it as a clutch almost ever. It heals you too and will provide you barrier almost all of the time if you are aggressive with healing. Shadestep will then take that barrier and grant your party even more barrier when you shadowstep. And all you have to do is build for HP and then land as many shadow steps on your allies as possible.

Tell me you don't raid without telling me you don't raid.

[Zacchary.6183]

19 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Tell me you don't raid without telling me you don't raid.

Tell me Healbrand HPS.

[Yid.3024]

I healed so many bone minions today!

[Burial.1958]

So after testing i have to say that this is the badest spec in Beta 2. Clunky, No Direction (what Role?) and a stupid mechanic where we do not have an UI for it. It can work in a smallscale setting as Condi/DPS but that we have since RLS.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Grebcol.5984

[BobbyT.7192]

Behave children,

[Zacchary.6183]

@RyuDragnier.9476 Btw take your time figuring healbrand's HPS out, seriously. Specter can pump out over 10k/s healing in a group with very little downtime (on a pure power build with a braindead rotation), and that's not even considering all the barrier it applies all the time. Imagine if the build was dedicated towards healing.

As for Raids, GW2 is fairly tame when it comes to mechanics. The trinity is optional, aggro mechanics are unsophisticated. You just need enough damage, cleanse and healing. FFXIV raids are much worse and more strict in this respect and I do them plenty. So no, Specter is more than fine with healing. But if players can't (or don't want to use it properly) that's their fault and they should stick with meta.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Zacchary.6183

[ixon.2496]

Wells feel so slow to cast and are easily interrupted, for very little reward

[RyuDragnier.9476]

43 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

As for Raids, GW2 is fairly tame when it comes to mechanics. The trinity is optional, aggro mechanics are unsophisticated. You just need enough damage, cleanse and healing. FFXIV raids are much worse and more strict in this respect and I do them plenty. So no, Specter is more than fine with healing. But if players can't (or don't want to use it properly) that's their fault and they should stick with meta.

Yep, you definitely do not raid. Over half of the raid fights in this game are made so the trinity is not optional. You need tanks for Vale Guardian, Gorseval, Prison Camp, Matthias, Keep Construct, Xera, Deimos, Soulless Horror, at least one of the Statues of Grenth, Dhuum, Twin Largos, Qadim 1.0, Cardinal Sabir, Cardinal Adina, and Qadim 2.0. That's over half of the Raid Bosses. Every single one of those you also need at least 1 dedicated healer, several supports for boons to speed things up and avoid enrages, and a handkite for several of them for mechanics that need to be kept away from the party. The unavoidable damage in several of those bosses takes off a set HP percentage, and damage tends to come hard and fast in quite a few of them.

It's very common even for skilled groups to go down to mistakes and unexpected issues, something that Consume Shadows in its previous form would have helped cover quickly thanks to its instant nature. The current Consume Shadows would be absolute trash in raids.

And since you're talking about FFXIV, the difference between here and there is that fights and classes are not made like in FFXIV. In FFXIV Savage fights and raids have mechanics that everybody has to learn, everybody has to deal with, and come out at the same times and patterns or in set patterns that are "randomized" in a sense (see Alphascape V1 fight for an example). When current content boss phases are often rarely or cannot be skipped, leading to everybody having skills up around the same time. Skills come off cooldown at set timers to where you always know when something is going to pop up, you know when everybody's burst windows are ready, you have the tools to deal with issues because a number of things are homogenized among tanks and healers making it so every healer and tank has the tools to deal with the job. Tank Swaps are common, it's very easy to plan ahead, and mistakes can be easily adjusted because every healer has access to instant heals to help get players out of danger. People tend to not care as much about meta and take what they want, because they know every DPS, healer, and tank can do the job by design, so they don't need an excuse to take anything.

In GW2 it's possible for mechanics to be done by 1-2 players and nobody else so they don't have to learn or worry about it. In GW2 attacks tend to hit random areas even when they can come out on a schedule. In GW2 it's possible to speed up phases all the time depending on team DPS and thus result in odd skill timings. In GW2 Skills are not all set on similar cooldowns and often come out at inopportune times. In GW2 not every class has the tools to do the same boons or DPS. In GW2 mistakes are often not easily adjusted for and can snowball out of control, unless you take the healers able to apply instant barriers and heals to quickly try to salvage. In GW2 people live and die by the meta because unfortunately not all classes are created equal, and thus need to be given reasons to take classes and specs.

[kash.9213]

11 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Yep, you definitely do not raid. Over half of the raid fights in this game are made so the trinity is not optional. You need tanks for Vale Guardian, Gorseval, Prison Camp, Matthias, Keep Construct, Xera, Deimos, Soulless Horror, at least one of the Statues of Grenth, Dhuum, Twin Largos, Qadim 1.0, Cardinal Sabir, Cardinal Adina, and Qadim 2.0. That's over half of the Raid Bosses. Every single one of those you also need at least 1 dedicated healer, several supports for boons to speed things up and avoid enrages, and a handkite for several of them for mechanics that need to be kept away from the party. The unavoidable damage in several of those bosses takes off a set HP percentage, and damage tends to come hard and fast in quite a few of them.

It's very common even for skilled groups to go down to mistakes and unexpected issues, something that Consume Shadows in its previous form would have helped cover quickly thanks to its instant nature. The current Consume Shadows would be absolute trash in raids.

And since you're talking about FFXIV, the difference between here and there is that fights and classes are not made like in FFXIV. In FFXIV Savage fights and raids have mechanics that everybody has to learn, everybody has to deal with, and come out at the same times and patterns or in set patterns that are "randomized" in a sense (see Alphascape V1 fight for an example). When current content boss phases are often rarely or cannot be skipped, leading to everybody having skills up around the same time. Skills come off cooldown at set timers to where you always know when something is going to pop up, you know when everybody's burst windows are ready, you have the tools to deal with issues because a number of things are homogenized among tanks and healers making it so every healer and tank has the tools to deal with the job. Tank Swaps are common, it's very easy to plan ahead, and mistakes can be easily adjusted because every healer has access to instant heals to help get players out of danger. People tend to not care as much about meta and take what they want, because they know every DPS, healer, and tank can do the job by design, so they don't need an excuse to take anything.

In GW2 it's possible for mechanics to be done by 1-2 players and nobody else so they don't have to learn or worry about it. In GW2 attacks tend to hit random areas even when they can come out on a schedule. In GW2 it's possible to speed up phases all the time depending on team DPS and thus result in odd skill timings. In GW2 Skills are not all set on similar cooldowns and often come out at inopportune times. In GW2 not every class has the tools to do the same boons or DPS. In GW2 mistakes are often not easily adjusted for and can snowball out of control, unless you take the healers able to apply instant barriers and heals to quickly try to salvage. In GW2 people live and die by the meta because unfortunately not all classes are created equal, and thus need to be given reasons to take classes and specs.

Hopefully with some build crafting and hands on you'll adjust for all that. 

I'm not sure where you were going with all that but you mention it was easier on other games where all of the skills were on a timer and you could set your watches to that, and here we are with a 5 second timer if you want to sync up with your squad. Sounds like everything worked out.

[Vidit.7108]

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Btw take your time figuring healbrand's HPS out, seriously. Specter can pump out over 10k/s healing in a group with very little downtime (on a pure power build with a braindead rotation), and that's not even considering all the barrier it applies all the time. Imagine if the build was dedicated towards healing.

If one skill usage is all it takes to count as heals persecond then the Firebrand's healing per second is infinite because it has a skill that is a 100% restore. Just about every one of firebrand's main heals are on a shorter cooldown than wells and do almost twice as much healing even with Shadow Savior. The Firebrand I want to stress though is not the best healer in the game. 

I did take two healing gear sets (harrier and plague doctor) into Tier 4 Fractals to test the Specter's changes in healing. With a high amount of healing power the heals are anemic because they suffer from bad coeficients.  Barrier application doesn't make up for this because there still isn't any passive healing availble to the Specter. The Specter just couldn't match or exceed any fractal healer I've played with anymore. 

Raids in FFXIV aren't similar enough nor is it useful to compare them. So the answer it seems is no.

This dicussion isn't feedback so I'm leaving it there.

[Zacchary.6183]

4 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Yep, you definitely do not raid. Over half of the raid fights in this game are made so the trinity is not optional. You need tanks for Vale Guardian, Gorseval, Prison Camp, Matthias, Keep Construct, Xera, Deimos, Soulless Horror, at least one of the Statues of Grenth, Dhuum, Twin Largos, Qadim 1.0, Cardinal Sabir, Cardinal Adina, and Qadim 2.0. That's over half of the Raid Bosses. Every single one of those you also need at least 1 dedicated healer, several supports for boons to speed things up and avoid enrages, and a handkite for several of them for mechanics that need to be kept away from the party. The unavoidable damage in several of those bosses takes off a set HP percentage, and damage tends to come hard and fast in quite a few of them.

It's very common even for skilled groups to go down to mistakes and unexpected issues, something that Consume Shadows in its previous form would have helped cover quickly thanks to its instant nature. The current Consume Shadows would be absolute trash in raids.

And since you're talking about FFXIV, the difference between here and there is that fights and classes are not made like in FFXIV. In FFXIV Savage fights and raids have mechanics that everybody has to learn, everybody has to deal with, and come out at the same times and patterns or in set patterns that are "randomized" in a sense (see Alphascape V1 fight for an example). When current content boss phases are often rarely or cannot be skipped, leading to everybody having skills up around the same time. Skills come off cooldown at set timers to where you always know when something is going to pop up, you know when everybody's burst windows are ready, you have the tools to deal with issues because a number of things are homogenized among tanks and healers making it so every healer and tank has the tools to deal with the job. Tank Swaps are common, it's very easy to plan ahead, and mistakes can be easily adjusted because every healer has access to instant heals to help get players out of danger. People tend to not care as much about meta and take what they want, because they know every DPS, healer, and tank can do the job by design, so they don't need an excuse to take anything.

In GW2 it's possible for mechanics to be done by 1-2 players and nobody else so they don't have to learn or worry about it. In GW2 attacks tend to hit random areas even when they can come out on a schedule. In GW2 it's possible to speed up phases all the time depending on team DPS and thus result in odd skill timings. In GW2 Skills are not all set on similar cooldowns and often come out at inopportune times. In GW2 not every class has the tools to do the same boons or DPS. In GW2 mistakes are often not easily adjusted for and can snowball out of control, unless you take the healers able to apply instant barriers and heals to quickly try to salvage. In GW2 people live and die by the meta because unfortunately not all classes are created equal, and thus need to be given reasons to take classes and specs.

None of those bosses chunk off half of the entire squad's HP every few seconds, so I do not see how the current Consume Shadows cannot keep up. FFXIV is built for dedication and optimization and it requires the trinity and minimum item levels. But it also has those elements that you'll never know you'll need until you need it, like Red Mage and VerRaise. Otherwise, RDM is a magic DPS. GW2 does not in almost all content, but Raids try to force it through numbers. Try. That's why the "dedicated tank" is there to draw hard hitting attacks away or soak it up through self-healing. That's why the "dedicated healer" only does well with AoE and group healing rather than single target. That's why you only need a few people to do mechanics rather than the entire group. This game was designed for self-sufficiency, which is why GW2 content is ultimately a numbers game with dodging, and Raids alone were designed for coordination within this realm of self-sufficiency. This is why I genuinely asked you for Healbrand HPS, considering it is meta.

A specter is entirely capable of "applying instant barriers and heals to quickly try to salvage" by numbers alone. Although it isn't Healbrand or Scourge, it has the most potent heal in the game and plenty of thick barriers on very low cooldowns. With Traversing Dusk/Shadow Savior/Shadestep and the arsenal of shadowsteps at its disposal, it will most likely be able to keep the group well afloat until the next CS. You can't convince me otherwise, because I was doing this throughout the entire fight during a dragonstorm session yesterday when I was trying to get numbers again. Those numbers came with around three seconds of shroud which is almost nothing in terms of wait. The beauty of it was I was running a somewhat glassy build with +10% HP, using shroud in my haphazard rotation to see if shroud skills drain force (it doesn't), and then pop for burst healing and barrier. Current dedicated healing builds cannot do that. 

The original Consume Shadows was the definition of OP. Nobody needs instant 35k+ overheals on very glassy builds. It was bound to be nerfed regardless and even post-nerf it still remains the most powerful burst heal in the game. That said, if you don't like waiting 4-5s for a big heal, then don't. Get more vitality and a rune with +10% HP so you only have to wait 2-3s. I've screwed around in PvP and WvW a little to try to see its support capabilities with the reduced healing and overall nobody goes down so long as I keep healing up and stick with allies. Between the barriers and 645 heals you get through shadowstepping, you have enough in your toolkit to keep your party up until you hit the next CS ~13 seconds later.

In the end, the math has been done on the Specter and all that is left to question is the player's skill. But the modern thief community has a very hard time trying new things and has a penchant for drama. Once gw2skills adds specter, I will be posting the build with full details for the thief community to mess with. But after that, any gripes and complaints are going to be met with l2p and snark because the math is done, the equation is there and all anyone has to do is solve for x. Easy peasy.

[Zacchary.6183]

2 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

If one skill usage is all it takes to count as heals persecond then the Firebrand's healing per second is infinite because it has a skill that is a 100% restore. Just about every one of firebrand's main heals are on a shorter cooldown than wells and do almost twice as much healing even with Shadow Savior. The Firebrand I want to stress though is not the best healer in the game.

It isn't just one skill usage or just wells because the healing from traversing dusk affects all shadowsteps.

2 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

I did take two healing gear sets (harrier and plague doctor) into Tier 4 Fractals to test the Specter's changes in healing. With a high amount of healing power the heals are anemic because they suffer from bad coeficients.  Barrier application doesn't make up for this because there still isn't any passive healing availble to the Specter. The Specter just couldn't match or exceed any fractal healer I've played with anymore. 

Then I have a few questions for you. What was your build? Did you go in by yourself? What did you test it on exactly? Did you tweak anything at all?

[Noctosis.3786]

My issues with Specter may be just frustration based but I'm going to try to keep it tame on it:

Under the effects of quickness, Eternal Night doesn't speed up. This ends up causing a strange feeling while in shroud where all skills are quick except this one move and feels like a punishment for using it under quickness.

I understand Specter's usages of wells are Shadowstep first to the spot, then blast the area with magic. However the cast time and how the order of things goes(Shadow Step first, then drop bomb) ends up making them almost not usable inside of PvP without stealth(which may be intended). The issue I keep finding myself hitting in PvP is not only do I cast the well, I'll end up being downed in the process, but the Shadowstep occurs causing you to go to a diff location without the magic bomb occurring either. It feels somewhat unintended if you are downed before the shadowstep to be moved when you are still casting. Or maybe there is that split second that I seem to hit in PvP matches where I get downed without getting the well off.

Shadow Shroud's Bar doesn't have any indicators on it...and I dont recall but I think Necro's does? There isn't really a way to gauge how much 'HP' one has left. Everything seems % based in tool tips as well, but it does act as a separate hp bar

Rot Wallow Venom suffers from the Untamed's old situation. To explicitly use this on any weapon outside of Scepter, you MUST take Shadestep to be able to burst your barrier. There is some dynamics to this that leads to the Specter needing to have Barrier applied, to be able to apply barrier, and if the Specter is getting barrier from someone else, they are probably providing barrier to the party already. So for other weapons(Daggers, Pistols, Shortbow, Sword) it feels as though you will apply stealth to the team in mid-combat just to apply the Rot Venom. Only traits I can think of for this are Blinding Powder and Stealth Refuge, and if I recall the healing from Stealth refuge is pretty small. The only other way that seems more in line with Specter is to be forced into taking Shadestep, removing the ability to be a bruiser from the top trait, or to consume conditions for heals with the other trait. It feels like other weapons are punished for being played with Specter. In the Guild Wars 2 Partner Discord Community, I'm getting the feeling most users are unanimously saying Scepter is strictly the only weapon to use, which seems to be the untamed's old issue.
 

[Fomivee.3065]

My only gripe with this spec is that when I'm going for condi build shroud is completely useless - weapons apply conditions better.

 

First column of traits could use a little buff as well.