Is Siphon only procing trait lines on enemies working as intended?

[IamTimothy.4627]

Makes a semi clunky spec, even clunkier. 

Hidden Thief
Thrill of the crime
Bountiful Theft

Just the main ones. Just says steal in the tooltips, which in theory would mean only enemies but still doesn't really make any sense.

[Zacchary.6183]

Pretty sure its working as intended. Ally steal has half the CD so it might have been done on purpose so people use it as a healing tool rather than a source to abuse steal traits.

[nopoet.2960]

Also does siphon turn off auto attack for everyone?  Is that intended?

[Doggie.3184]

Intended or not, idc. It needs to be changed to work on allies even if effectiveness is reduced. It also needs to work when there's no target for Thrill of the Crime. 

Just to obtain Swiftness at all on the build I wanna use I gotta target my mini-pet and Siphon to trigger Thrill of the Crime. I'm sure they'll patch that and not allow us to use it at all outa combat though. u.u So I probably shouldn't of mentioned it.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Doggie.3184]

9 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

Also does siphon turn off auto attack for everyone?  Is that intended?

It is, I recall seeing Anet mention it at some point.

[Nomad.4301]

2 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

It also needs to work when there's no target for Thrill of the Crime.

It's pretty stupid, and probably unintentional, but you can target your mini with siphon to activate Thrill of the Crime / Hidden Thief without an enemy target, I've been forced into doing this to upkeep swiftness out of combat...

[Curennos.9307]

Why would anyone use Siphon on an ally though. It gives...I think barely under a 2k barrier w/sage amulet and monk runes, and just under 4k with the middle trait that doubles the barrier. While almost 4k barrier on a ~9 sec CD isn't something to sneeze at, making it ALMOST worth using but requiring a middle tier trait to do so just isn't worth it, and even when I do take the trait it's mostly for the increased resource gain when using it on an enemy.

 

Particularly with how many traits interact with it and the power of Trickery's boonrip + interrupt, with no equivalent to that why would anyone use it on an ally unless it was an extremely niche scenario where, for whatever reason, using Siphon on an ally managed to edge out the other option? Maybe no enemies are targettable or something? Because fury/swiftness/might/vigor/boonrip/interrupt on an enemy, plus weakness/poison if deadly arts or a quick stealth up if shadow arts is basically always more valuable than a few auto attacks worth of barrier when untraited. It just isn't worth it, even traited.

 

I don't understand why they had to make the traits not work with steal on ally and give steal on ally a reduced cooldown. Just make the traits work and give it the same cooldown? 

 

I say this as someone who wants to play a more support oriented specter build - even when taking sage amulet, monk runes, sigil of transference I don't find it worth using.

[Steelpusher.1684]

26 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Why would anyone use Siphon on an ally though. It gives...I think barely under a 2k barrier w/sage amulet and monk runes, and just under 4k with the middle trait that doubles the barrier. While almost 4k barrier on a ~9 sec CD isn't something to sneeze at, making it ALMOST worth using but requiring a middle tier trait to do so just isn't worth it, and even when I do take the trait it's mostly for the increased resource gain when using it on an enemy.

 

Particularly with how many traits interact with it and the power of Trickery's boonrip + interrupt, with no equivalent to that why would anyone use it on an ally unless it was an extremely niche scenario where, for whatever reason, using Siphon on an ally managed to edge out the other option? Maybe no enemies are targettable or something? Because fury/swiftness/might/vigor/boonrip/interrupt on an enemy, plus weakness/poison if deadly arts or a quick stealth up if shadow arts is basically always more valuable than a few auto attacks worth of barrier when untraited. It just isn't worth it, even traited.

 

I don't understand why they had to make the traits not work with steal on ally and give steal on ally a reduced cooldown. Just make the traits work and give it the same cooldown? 

 

I say this as someone who wants to play a more support oriented specter build - even when taking sage amulet, monk runes, sigil of transference I don't find it worth using.

Honestly, I found out how siphon is on an ally is just last night. The biggest sell of it is the 33% revive. I was rezzing people every 8 seconds, instant cast, at range, even though they were not in my party/quad (made it harder), and I was not built for support at all. It is crazy good at helping downed characters (Looking at you, ele players), and can imagine it being HUGE in raids and strikes. It gives an extra life to that little kittenup that no-one else can rescue asides necro downed tp (which I think causes deaths as much as it actually helps).

[Za Shaloc.3908]

13 minutes ago, Steelpusher.1684 said:

Honestly, I found out how siphon is on an ally is just last night. The biggest sell of it is the 33% revive. I was rezzing people every 8 seconds, instant cast, at range, even though they were not in my party/quad (made it harder), and I was not built for support at all. It is crazy good at helping downed characters (Looking at you, ele players), and can imagine it being HUGE in raids and strikes. It gives an extra life to that little kittenup that no-one else can rescue asides necro downed tp (which I think causes deaths as much as it actually helps).

 

Yeah, I agree that rezzing is its biggest benefit, but unfortunately it's hard to justify otherwise. At this point if they don't want to give it any interactions due to the cooldown being too short, I'd prefer they just decouple the ally portion from Siphon and make it into another F button. That way, the Specter has more control of *who* they want to tether in order to better manage shroud interactions, rather than holding onto it and have it tether someone at random due to wanting to use it on an enemy.

[Curennos.9307]

38 minutes ago, Steelpusher.1684 said:

Honestly, I found out how siphon is on an ally is just last night. The biggest sell of it is the 33% revive. I was rezzing people every 8 seconds, instant cast, at range, even though they were not in my party/quad (made it harder), and I was not built for support at all. It is crazy good at helping downed characters (Looking at you, ele players), and can imagine it being HUGE in raids and strikes. It gives an extra life to that little kittenup that no-one else can rescue asides necro downed tp (which I think causes deaths as much as it actually helps).

Fair. I should clarify, I'm mostly an sPvP player and the trait is 15% in sPvP - which is still good, but is a GM trait and my build takes Hungering Darkness atm. 

 

I think specter feels less clunky in raids than it does in spvp, as people will end up dying, there's more wiggle room, swiftness is probably already perma'd by someone else, you're probably not taking shadow arts, etc.

 

In spvp though, Hidden Thief not working on ally steal is quite bad for example. Except in specific fights, I doubt raids will care about the heal on scepter stealth attack, but in smaller scale pvp stuff it becomes more important. I may actually need swiftness, fury, and those stacks of might become more valuable. The boonrip and interrupt from using Siphon on an enemy player is extremely valuable, for ex interrupting resurrects, either manual or casted insta-rez skills, or even just using it as an interrupt to give me some breathing room (maybe they have 25 might, prot, stab, etc - it's very useful in dealing with Lich, reaper in general, and other such high impact casts).

 

In my current setup, steal on enemy gives me:

Swiftness, Might, Fury, ini return (not sure if the ini gain works on ally cast or not, I assume it doesn't but may be wrong), boonrip (prioritizes stab on enemies), vigor (important), interrupt (boonrip makes it an unstoppable interrupt), stealth (->stealth attack, either damage or support, and on a support build this is a 10k heal, plus any in-stealth benefits such as the SA GM trait that blinds on stealth).

 

If I use siphon on an ally, they get...a few AA's worth of barrier and I get none of the above.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Curennos.9307

[Doggie.3184]

On 3/3/2022 at 7:58 PM, Nomad.4301 said:

It's pretty stupid, and probably unintentional, but you can target your mini with siphon to activate Thrill of the Crime / Hidden Thief without an enemy target, I've been forced into doing this to upkeep swiftness out of combat...

Weird that you say that when I literally mentioned it but I guess you hit quote the moment you read that line in your period of "this is my moment!"

Also I coulda sworn it worked after launch without any target as I even said in Teef guild something like "I can't live without Trickery" cuz I hated having no swiftness so I slotted it and played that day triggering it ooc with Siphon. Then after the first patch it stopped working. I have no idea unless I just happened to be accidentally clicking my mini a lot.

Acrobatics is still garbage btw Anet despite being the only Swiftness access. Especially in PvP, kitten hell is that 300 cd?

I wouldn't even mind if Scepter/Dagger 3 proc'd swiftness on myself at same time as allies/enemies. It'd still be annoying since the skill forces me to pause movement to use it (all the more reason to do self swiftness) but it'd be something. So much support yet can't use most of it on myself.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Doggie.3184