Specter/Spectre Elite Specialization Beta 4 Preview Thread

[AikijinX.6258]

I’m putting this thread out here for people to submit their (beta 4) feedback. There’s absolutely no way Arenanet are sifting through 17 pages of feedback on their own Specter/Spectre  feedback thread that’s pinned above on the forum accurately. We want them to actually see our feedback and not exhaustively half- effortlessly try to read the abundant amount of feedback that’ll come after playing Beta 4

So use this thread when you’ve got Beta 4 feedback 😊

[Zodryn.4216]

Siphon still doesn't do anything with steal traits when used on allies. 

 

Consume shadows draining all SF for small heals at 1, 2, and 3s feels as bad as I thought it would. Repeating my suggestion to make the SF drain proportional to heal rather than always 100%.

 

Shadestep also has issues. I have no good way to generate significant barrier on myself, so how does breaking my barrier to share with allies help? Consume shadows was the only decent barrier gen on self, but besides being nerfed hard it also already gives allies barrier so sacrificing the one decent self barrier to give friends more is a bit silly. It should just grant barrier on shadowstep, not take mine to redistribute. 

 

Amplified siphoning is extremely lacking. The 100% extra barrier effectiveness only applies on siphon (~2k for one target) and not on anything else you do that applies barrier. I think it needs to do something more interactive with siphon or give a smaller boost to all barrier gen as well.

 

Animations/cast delays:

* Endless night wind up before the channel feels way too long, as does the first hit in the auto chain. Endless night also stops if anything breaks your line of sight. Most scepter animations are still spawning well above my head.

 

* Shroud auto animation is incredibly lame. Dawn's repose feels much better than before but range feels too short especially being at 900 range constantly with measured shot. Shroud skills generally lack a feeling of impact.

 

* Wells all having different cast times also feels weird.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Zodryn.4216
Formatting

[AikijinX.6258]

Initiative Generation was nerfed, looks like.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

The nerf to Endless Night luckily kept Quickness, but the drop in targets to 1 inadvertently (or perhaps purposefully?) resulted in a DPS drop for Specter, as 1 target instead of 3 means 2 people not getting all that Rot Wallow Venom.

The change to Consume Shadows has made it a dead trait and will sit with Shroud, unused. 5s is far too long a time, and doesn't actually deal with the problem of Shroud being underwhelming both in damage and support. The attacks are slower than all of Scepter's moves. Keep in mind that I can just use Endless Night or Scepter AA and give BETTER support to an ally, who can then hit for me with the Rot Wallow Venom stacks...which ironically does more damage than Shroud, seeing the problem with Shroud yet?

Hidden Thief is thankfully instant now, thanks for that, sincerely.

 

[Tails.9372]

22 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Keep in mind that I can just use Endless Night or Scepter AA and give BETTER support to an ally, who can then hit for me with the Rot Wallow Venom stacks...which ironically does more damage than Shroud, seeing the problem with Shroud yet?

I can see A-Net reading this feedback and going: "No, we don't see the issue with shroud but it sounds like that scepter is a bit overturned so let's nerf that one next."

[RyuDragnier.9476]

1 minute ago, Tails.9372 said:

I can see A-Net reading this feedback and going: "No, we don't see the issue with shroud but it sounds like that scepter is a bit overturned so let's nerf that one next."

Sadly so can I...

[Zodryn.4216]

1 minute ago, Tails.9372 said:

I can see A-Net reading this feedback and going: "No, we don't see the issue with shroud but it sounds like that scepter is a bit overturned so let's nerf that one next."

That's basically what they did to Consume Shadows making you stay in shroud. "Oh people don't want to stay in shroud because it's not good? Let's just force them to."

[BobbyT.7192]

Guess its second opinion as the default trait for the adept line. Shallow grave and the nerf consume shadows just feels bad.

Why does CS have to consume all shadow force after the nerf? How is that fair?

Making a 300 trait after the fact is pretty rude, how about turning into an offensive support trait? Like give your tether ally a damage buff or something like that. 

Maybe if spectres leave the adept line untrained like willbenders did in their first beta, anet will actually do something.

Give back the 3 target endless night and replace the quickness with something like fury (would be a good source of  ally fury we have outside of trickery we could give). If you don't want spectre to be both alacrity and quickness source. Then get rid of quickness altogether.

On alacrity, why do spectres need to spam a bunch of wells to achieve 1/2 of what a renegade could do with one button?

The well trait should just be a longer duration alacrity with a 10 ICD, so you only need to use one well to the job. Little mini teleports to just to upkeep one boon is silly, even with the teleport healing SA trait.

Better yet, make well of bounty give alacrity as base along with boon your allies don't have. Throw thieves a bone here.

 

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

i love how we can provide alacrity but it does nothing for initiative regen 

[Graeaw.6329]

1 minute ago, ArcanistSeven.8720 said:

i love how we can provide alacrity but it does nothing for initiative regen 

If alacrity was to buff ini regen, chill should hinder it. It is only fair game.

[BobbyT.7192]

3 minutes ago, ArcanistSeven.8720 said:

i love how we can provide alacrity but it does nothing for initiative regen 

You do not want initiative to be effect by alacrity. Devs stated it would be require a lot of effect to balance around, and it would cause alot more headaches for both them and the player base then it worth at the moment. Plus there's alot more chill sources out there then alacrity. There is no value in this trade.

[AikijinX.6258]

I would love for them to revert the hidden initiative generation change they did for beta 4. I have plenty of video evidence to prove in beta 3 the initiative generated faster. I know this because I was able to do a certain combo, and was able to upkeep that combo permanently with just weapon skills alone, but now I need to use utility to be able to upkeep the combo. I compared the speed of the initiative generation in my video's I took in beta 3, and compared them to beta 4. I hope it's a bug. Because we already lose 3 initiative choosing this spec. On top of that we've been asking for initiative QoL changes for a while now.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Shroud feels clunky and ineffective on full marauder besides just to tank hits. 1 is nice to have but honestly shortbow auto does more damage, 2 never hits anything, 3 is nice but could use a little more range, 4 is nice but short range and the damage feels low, 5 is decent enough. I feel like it could use more range on most of the abilities as half the time you just don't hit anything unless you're stood directly on top of it and it's too dumb to move. 

[Sons.5493]

I think my biggest gripe is how bad Shroud 1 and 2 are, if consume shadows is gonna "reward us for staying in shroud" then shroud in general should be our big button moment. Make it tether to more targets, make it pulse healing (which would make it wvw viable), make it do more damage and drain a bit faster. Right now we can stay in shroud for really long but there's just no point.

Also as others have mentioned, why do we need to sacriface 3 utilitites to achive what renegade can do with 1 button.

I think it's fine that scepter has the niche solo target healing but Shroud should be able to pump better numbers than it currently is.

[Lucinellia.9247]

Support Specter is miserable to play following the changes to Endless Night and the UI elements added do nothing to help things. It really feels like the game simply doesn't support this style of play, as I outlined in this post (it is long, sorry, but I really do believe Anet are making a terrible mistake with support Specter design).

[Okaerin.3145]

There is a bug with the mounts, if you are in "Shadow Shroud" and use the "Consume Shadows" Trait what happens is that you always consume all of your remaining energy while leavnig Shadow Shroud for healing, etc, BUT if you instead of leaving it simply "Mount" after a battle you exit Shadow Shroud while keeping all the remaining Energy.

 

I wish you could exit while OUT OF COMBAT and keep your energy, so the Trait only activates when engaged in combat and it could work like the actual bug with the mounts but I know it is not gonna happen =/
 

Already reported this in the Bug Thread tho...

[AikijinX.6258]

Twilight Combo needs a velocity increase. It misses so many times. It’s tough to land but when landed it’s super clutch. 

[DemonSeed.3528]

Is there a list of what changes were done on Specter? It feels weird now on shadow shroud 2/3, not as fluid as previous, at least on 3. The leap really messed me up now lol. (I actually felt the combat/movement was fluid in the initial iteration -  I felt like only numbers and stuff needed tweaking mostly)

Edited December 1, 2021 by DemonSeed.3528

[RyuDragnier.9476]

9 minutes ago, DemonSeed.3528 said:

Is there a list of what changes were done on Specter? It feels weird now on shadow shroud 2/3, not as fluid as previous, at least on 3. The leap really messed me up now lol. (I actually felt the combat/movement was fluid in the initial iteration -  I felt like only numbers and stuff needed tweaking mostly)

Yes, in this thread posted on the 23rd of November.

[DemonSeed.3528]

9 minutes ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Yes, in this thread posted on the 23rd of November.

lol thanks i literally just clickedf on that thread

 

Quote

Dawn's Repose: This ability is now a ground-targeted ability instead of a ground-targeted dash. Range has been reduced from 600 to 450, with the affected radius being reduced from 240 to 180 and Fear being reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5. This ability is now a leap finisher.

This is the change that really felt bad for me, both in terms of now being a ground target as well as the range reduction. The 3/4 makes it feel much worse on top of it.

PS - what has been the reasoning for changing the way the skill behaves?

"to make it easier to target a specific location"

Feels weird as hell now.

Edited December 1, 2021 by DemonSeed.3528

[Sons.5493]

35 minutes ago, DemonSeed.3528 said:

 

 

This is the change that really felt bad for me, both in terms of now being a ground target as well as the range reduction. The 3/4 makes it feel much worse on top of it.

PS - what has been the reasoning for changing the way the skill behaves?

"to make it easier to target a specific location"

Feels weird as hell now.

Imo this is the only good change, feels a lot more useable now

 

[DemonSeed.3528]

2 minutes ago, Sons.5493 said:

Imo this is the only good change, feels a lot more useable now

 

Ahh, then it's good on your end, but not mine haha. I am still training it in but I still prefer the older one. It ends up being a little iffy in WvW.

[saerni.2584]

The issue was that you needed to know where you had to stand to hit a specific (and possibly moving) target. The change makes it easier to just target a spot and deliver the AoE fear and with it a lot of barrier. 
 

I don't know if reducing the range to 450 was necessary but I understand why they reduced the duration on a more usable AoE fear. 
 

My bigger concern is that shroud 5 remains very very clunky. And shroud 2's delay makes it hard to actually hit anyone with it. 

[DemonSeed.3528]

Ahh. I actually had pretty good luck with it the way I used it which would always hit or use as a disengage.  I didn't have an issue with the direction it would go and it felt really good. I didn't really care much about the duration of the fear changes, just the way it went from a kind of dash to a g.target leap just feels clunky with the gameplay, especially with 3/4 cast time for only a 450 range movement. Shroud 2 reminds me of shadow flare, which as we know doesn't get a whole much of usage - at least I imagine it won't be a mainstay for use in wvw but I suppose we'll see. I didn't really give much thought about ss5 because it worked for the use case scenario I used it in the previous beta, but I'd accept any changes to that, given it went in the right direction lol.

[Eleandra.4859]

- Make Sc/P 3 hit 5 targets and let it grant Alacrity instead of Quickness
- Make x wells grant y sec of quickness

--> This change makes Spectre a good source of group alac and an optional source of quickness (can easily be balanced by changing the number of wells that grant quickness and amount of quickness per well).
It also reverts the (in my opinion bad) design to force support Spectre into speccing heavily into wells for alacrity and instead opens up build diversity without jeopardizing Spectre's main buff.