Specter/Spectre Elite Specialization Beta 4 Preview Thread

[Vidit.7108]

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I've done a little bit of testing today, and I feel as though Specter took a big step back. The healing feels worse.

While I understaand the idea behind the new allied targeting mode, the problem with it is the vlass depends on being able to hit an enemy with Siphon to get Shadow Force and to activate stealing traits to provide the party with further boon support. This creates bizzare gear shifting style game play where I want to turn it on and off and I have to mentally now keep track of whether or not it is on. It just doesn't work.

Unless i have 5 seconds in the middle of combat to spare, I'm finding myself just not using Shadow Shroud anymore, it's just useless in the heal build especially since I still want to get rot wallow venom out where i can.

Endless night's loss of 3 person barrier application feels like a huge shift. It's one of the reasons that healing now feels very weak. Cast it on one person and by the time you cast it again the original barrier is already gone.

Overall, I think the heal build/alac support build became more stressful to use. My patience for casting the wells to give the party alacrity has really dropped. I went into beta 4 not all that discourged though I was disappointed by the changes. Now I'm feeling pretty down about ever using Specter to heal or give alacrity.

Quoting myself from the other topic.
I want to add that endless night change seems to have killed the optional healing mode where you used venom leeeching to heal allies from their rot wallow venom. I don't think there is a way to put out that much rot wallow venom anymore. The build kind of relied on being able to send out a lot to multiple allies to make up for it being a very small heal.

On another note it seems rot walllow's torment uses your allies stats, or it picks whoever's is higher, either way making you the scourge's new best friend.

[RyuDragnier.9476]

4 hours ago, Eleandra.4859 said:

- 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.

They said they didn't want us to have access to both Quickness and Alac, and had nerfed Endless Night's targets because of the Quickness. So they may as well take your suggestion for the 5 man alac on Endless Night and just roll with that and the Alac Wells. If we can't have quickness, fine...then make our Alac access powerful as hell to make up for it.

[Nomad.4301]

Honestly, single target healing in Gw2 just feels bad, having to frantically click around after a boss drops a big AoE and trying to pick everyone else back up one-at-a-time is more stressful than fun, so as far as full-support specter goes right now I'm going to have to give it a hard pass. Even with the little AoE healing you get from the ports and wells, it just isn't enough to sustain alone in most cases (at least in the higher-tier fractals). I have a full-healing renegade and as clunky as it is - it's just better in EVERY way, more healing, better AoE, more boons, better CC, AoE cleanse, superior boon uptime; and it doesn't require you to take a specific trait and run specific utilities in order to supply it's MAIN boon: alacrity. Seriously, why does the specter have to take a trait AND run 3/4 wells just to maintain the one boon Anet apparently wants us to all be putting out?? If alacrity is suppose to be a core part of specter then they need to make it part of your BASE shroud abilities or something, at least that would give us a reason to actually USE shroud, because atm spending any time in shroud is a waste for both healing and DPS.

As for the Endless Night nerf, it feels about as bad as everyone thought it would, reduced healing capacity and DPS is not good, especially when it's a trade-off to keep a redundant boon (it's redundant because you will still need to take a FB/scrapper/whatever to fill the role of party quickness now anyways). The better option IMO would be for endless night to give quickness to the Thief casting it instead, if it's only going to be single-target i think it would be more beneficial for it to be given to the thief so that you can single-target top people off faster at least with more consistency. Or hell make endless night just give alacrity to 3 targets and get rid of the well trait..

Sorry for the wall of what feels like complaints, it's just frustrating to see such a major step back after what felt like a promising first look after the last beta.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Nomad.4301
Spacing bug

[AikijinX.6258]

I think a possible way to make more use out of shroud in terms of supporting allies could be something like.

Upon tethering to ally, for every second in Shroud gain 1 stack of might and fury like (10s), max might stack 10. Since Shroud skills  themselves are all damage oriented and have big damage numbers associated with them and offer nothing really support oriented but Barrier/Heals and like Combo finishing blast skills. (Not saying that this alone isn’t enough.. kinda isn’t)
 

So while out of shroud you can defensively Support your allies with your Wells, Scepter or S/X (via traversing dusk) and while in Shroud alternatively since it’s more damage focused the offensive support can distribute 1 stack of might every second in shroud (max stack 10) and fury (10s) to a surrounding ally. (The might and fury stacks  apply to yourself as well)
 

I will also add that. I feel like one of the skills in shroud should rip boons and offer some type of tether to enemy ability and every second tethered boons are ripped and transferred to surrounding ally and if no surrounding ally then boons just get destroyed. ( I would suggest transferring boons to yourself opposed to getting destroyed, but maybe that’ll be busted) and that alone would make Shroud a monster. (But really though.. Spectre’s are Thieves, we SHOULD be stealing boons)

Edited December 4, 2021 by AikijinX.6258