Ally Targeting on Support Specter Feels Like a Failed Mechanic

[Noe.8032]

Right now the ally targeting aspect of Specter feels completely obsolete, at least as a support. A questionable support by the way, due to the lack of stable boon application; which I think largely comes from having so much of that support tied up in ally targeting.

 

Most of my healing comes from shadowsteps, stealth barriers and consume shadows. There's virtually no reason to deliberately target an ally with the scepter or shadow shroud when I can more easily heal them with AOEs. Scepter/pistol 3 is the only exception and it's not even that impressive of an ability, you can also manually shadowstep with a shortbow or double shadowstep with a sword for weapon-based heals. Meanwhile other classes can apply might, stability and fury with one or two AOEs, Specter has to spam multiple attacks on one ally to give them decent singular support.

The whole system just seems half-baked and short-sighted, this is a game largely about group based activities yet they made this mechanic for supporting individual allies like they expect you to be healing a tank in raids or your friend in open world. Okay that's great but I'd really like it to be viable in the ninety nine percent of gameplay I experience which isn't that. I could understand ally targeting if every shot maxed out fury and might while applying eight thousand barrier or something. But even that would be exhausting and tedious to play. There's so little time to react and so much more convenience in using AOEs that most of the time ally targeting seems better off ignored. Or it's impossible to use because of multiple players overlapping each other; obstructing revivals with siphon, which I feel is the only ally targeting ability that's genuinely balanced at the moment. Since at least it has a significant impact and doesn't need to be used exhaustingly often.

The bottom line is playing Specter as a support I'm capable of functioning entirely without purposely using what is supposed to be an identifying element of the specialization. And even if I tried to use it, I don't think it'd improve my performance much. Since in the time I spend manually buffing each ally I could be putting down wells or charging consume shadows. I think it'd make more sense for them to just take the ally targeting off the scepter and shroud and give shroud two different versions. One dps and one support, with the version switching based on whether you're tethered to an ally or enemy. Or make it so that the benefits of ally targeting are projected in an AOE from whoever you're targeting. Or something. Honestly anything other than having to manually click or cycle through allies for superficial benefits as they run around the screen would be preferable. Maybe give each well some might and fury, and add brief aegis and protection application onto each shadowstep. Or something, anything to make the class more competitive with other supports.

...Also I think some of the animation choices for Specter are awful, at least on Asura. Scepter 1 and 2 are a bunch of goofy jumpy arm swinging recycled from other abilities, meanwhile Necromancer's scepter has a completely fine attack animation they could of used. Well of Silence and Bounty both have a generic hand wave animation that makes no sense as something you'd do while shadowstepping, even though multiple animations like Harbinger Shroud 5 or Virtuoso's Blade Renewal could have been used instead.

 

TLDR I've been playing support Specter, I find the ally targeting to heal and apply boons to be completely inefficient, tedious and largely obsolete compared to the capabilities of other support classes who don't need to target individuals. Even if it were buffed having to individually target each ally would be tedious, so I think the mechanic should just be reworked and Specter's boon application given a significant overhaul to compete with other supports.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Noe.8032

[Zacchary.6183]

I only ever use scepter on condi. It sucks for practically everything else sept maybe covering the tank.

[Curennos.9307]

There could definitely be some more need for single target/focused healing or mitigation in PvE. That said, I've played support specter in sPvP and it is very prevalent there - I'm still fiddling with the build, and I doubt it'll ever be top tier meta by any means, but I use it all the time. Harbringers, those squishy suckers, love it. Unfortunately, I don't think the single target part will ever be useful in PvE much outside niche mechanics...*maybe* - because literally everyone else vomits out their support to the entire group, designing something to make specter's single target support useful is unlikely. And, personally, I would prefer specter keep its current design even if it isn't terrible relevant - it's a new way of doing things and has its uses in a few areas. If I want to play a support based condi spec with shroud skills I can just swap to scourge.

 

That said, one possible way anet could go about it is to buff the hell out of specter's damage-through support, ie rot wallow venom. Or heck, give 'em a 'applying barrier to a single target gives them a 5% damage buff' or w/e. Some form of this would let specter have some more accessible role hybridization in its single target support skills.

[Infusion.7149]

Best QoL would be automatic tether to the lowest unless you manually selected someone. Locking to a tank player in a raid scenario would also be helpful.

I would not run a heal specter for the simple reason that the scaling with healing power isn't that amazing. The condi version already has hefty healing when you end shroud while the alacrity variant has heals on the wells.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Xarrontas.7948]

I think specter will never be viable in any game mode, I have tried multiple builds for specter from support to dps in pve/high end pve/wvw/pvp.

In pvp it might be good, but for wvw (anet claimed it was support to protect the king) it is horrid. For PVE its not even a support but rather an insane dps build as long you have an allied to share Rot passive with. Its very clunky in term of support/dps, the playstyle is wierd af. One benefit is that its very easy, spam all buttons. I hope they will rework this spec by june as most of the eod specs are mediocre at best.

 

Edit : I honestly think reworking it to be able to support 5 man (4 man leech) would make specter support instantly viable, ofc it would need some changes. I think siphon should keep its usage, the instant revive sihpon is super epic.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Xarrontas.7948

[kash.9213]

I could use a more prominent highlight of whichever character the game is registering as my rollover at least with Scepter so I'd know who I'm on better at a glance, or who the game would target anyway, through crowds.

Maybe Rot Wallow Venom could work a positive spin on ally friendly circles and heals, like slapping some Barrier on top of it or something.  I'm doing alright with the targeting right now but I get how it's problematic in instance encounter designs. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by kash.9213

[yiksing.9432]

What the developers need to learn is from Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning. Holding Alt makes skills self target when possible, when ally is selected, it stays in target all the time until ally portrait is deselected. Enemies tab targeting works as normal and doesn’t deselect ally. 

[Dadnir.5038]

20 hours ago, Noe.8032 said:

Meanwhile other classes can apply might, stability and fury with one or two AOEs, Specter has to spam multiple attacks on one ally to give them decent singular support.

There are more professions that don't have AoE stab than professions that have it.

Specter can give aoe perma 3 might, fury, swiftness and vigor with just 1 button. You won't be a dedicated might stacker but providing reliably fury, swiftness, vigor and alacrity to your party is done pretty easily.

[Puck.3697]

10 hours ago, Xarrontas.7948 said:

Edit : I honestly think reworking it to be able to support 5 man (4 man leech) would make specter support instantly viable, ofc it would need some changes. I think siphon should keep its usage, the instant revive sihpon is super epic

It'd also require drastic nerfing to every section of thief. 

2/3 traitlines to be dps focused even in a support build is the problem. We have nothing to synergise with a proper supportive build. Over bulking spectre will mean every core trait line would need nerfing to balance it against other support builds. 

I think the 1x target support is to effectively balance this out. Let's not forget what happened last time they tried to give a assassin style proffession a dominant support option (chronomancer) 

Trying to give thief a support specc was crazy to begin with as it actively conflicts with every design choice they made with the proffession as they have gutted all thieves core support it did have. 

[Vidit.7108]

There have been a lot of topics on the subject of ally targeting already. So I'm just going to reiterate that I think this feature should have been tested on other skills in the game before being thrown to us as a major feature. It seems like a missed opportunity to not have had druid staff auto ally target as an option.

I'm also not really interested in changing it, I think Specter is pretty good as it is and I'm worried based on what's happened in the past that if we complain about this much more that anet's classic monkey's paw of fixes will be to make the single target healing much better and nerf the aoe healing significantly. I'd rather the heal scaling being improved on shadowsteps.

The boon coverage is a different story, that should absolutely be fixed.
 

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

There are more professions that don't have AoE stab than professions that have it.

That's not really true. Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer, Elementalist, and Rev all have stability they can grant to nearby allies or in a targetable area. Then you have Druid/Soulbeast but not core Ranger or Untamed, and also Scourge and Harbinger have a utility though Scourge's stability is not really what people think of when they think aoe. If you mean a place able AOE I think that's splitting hairs and not what OP really meant.

[Dadnir.5038]

5 minutes ago, Vidit.7108 said:

That's not really true. Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer, Elementalist, and Rev all have stability they can grant to nearby allies or in a targetable area. Then you have Druid/Soulbeast but not core Ranger or Untamed, and also Scourge and Harbinger have a utility though Scourge's stability is not really what people think of when they think aoe. If you mean a place able AOE I think that's splitting hairs and not what OP really meant.

Well, ok all professions, thief and specter included can do it (except for warrior)... Not sure this bring us anywhere healthy. (You know the infamous detonate plasma and well of bounty.)

NB.: Core ranger can with traited Spirit of nature. And good luck converting fear and taunt into stab.

 

Point was more that when you think stability you go look for a guardian and ignore the others. If the others happen to grant stab, that's merely a bonus that nobody will realize.

Specter can easily provide a few might stacks, fury, swiftness, vigor and alacrity. I'm pretty sure that the devs are satisfied with this much. I mean, siphon's CD is very very low and it's especially true if you target an ally.

 

So what I meant was more something usable and impactful. Something that don't screw your whole build and gameplay just to take with you.

[Vidit.7108]

8 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

So what I meant was more something usable and impactful. Something that don't screw your whole build and gameplay just to take with you.

Rev's Inspiring Reinforcement is a major utility skill that a lot of players expect more over Guardian upkeeping stab especially in certain encounters. Mantra of Concentration is not a big loss on mesmer over most of it's other utilities. Same with Trail of Anguish on Scourge but there is obviously a lot of competition on it's utilities. Druid's stability is mostly incidental to using a druid. 

I wouldn't maybe describe the stability of Druid and Engy as impactful, though it could be timed to work well enough, it's still a viable option they bring over Specter. With well of bounty, you even can't be certain by looking at your boons that by the time it ticks down it will actually give the group stability. Mesmer, Rev, and Guard can save their stability for when it is needed but Well of Bounty must be cast within a certain time frame to be able to upkeep alacrity. While the duration is fine unlike most of those other applications you only get one stack. 

When you try to pair Specter with something else they need to do quickness, most of 25 might, maybe regen, and protection. The other alac providers cover Scrapper and Harb's weaknesses better than Specter can, and everyone pairs well with Guardian.

[Doggie.3184]

It feels like it is a failed mechanic because it is a failed mechanic~ especially with the dual attacks that force you to shadowstep or get line of sighted; destroying all purpose. Support Specter is design-disaster entirely and needs redone. I only play it as Condi DPS for now and sometimes throw on Alacrity just to get into groups, even though it sucks compared to all other providers. Healing builds do nothing but reduce your damage for no reason. I'm tired of them being so stubborn about giving us AoE. It was bad enough with attacks but then they do it with support too.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Puck.3697]

1 minute ago, Doggie.3184 said:

It feels like it is a failed mechanic because it is a failed mechanic~ especially with the dual attacks that force you to shadowstep or get line of sighted; destroying all purpose. Support Specter is design-disaster entirely and needs redone. I only play it as Condi DPS for now and sometimes throw on Alacrity just to get into groups, even though it sucks compared to all other providers. Healing builds do nothing but reduce your damage for no reason. I'm tired of them being so stubborn about giving us AoE. It was bad enough with attacks but then they do it with support too.

i disagree

Spectre has 0 Synergy and thats the entire problem. the single target healing isnt worth it because we have Litterally nothing to synergise with it.

Support Specer isnt a Design Disaster.

Giving Thief Support after gutting all its core Support was a Design-Disaster.

Spectre should have been a Alacrity / DPS. not a Healing / Alacrity / DPS. they shoulda Just gone with the greatsword Idea, i dunno allow us to tear Shadow Portals open with Swings and Dart around. Given us Visually Identifable Shadow Magic. Instead we have a Auto attack and a useless 2 that Show any sight of Shadow magic.. and a Deep purple on our Wells.

Spectres too split in what it is and Support was never gonna work unless they drastically bloated it. I Said this from the inital announcement of the new Expansion when people started talking about thief getting a Support option. no one beleived me when i said it'd not be great. and here we are lol.

Spectres fine. thiefs Never gonna be this primary Healingg support players seem to think anet should make happen. People didnt choose Thief 10 years ago to eventually be boiled down to a Healer. Espically not one that in current circumstance would likely cause all core traits to get nerfed around it to control the DPS its capable of due to the fact its still going to run 2 DPS Traitlines.

 

 

[Doggie.3184]

17 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

i disagree

Spectre has 0 Synergy and thats the entire problem. the single target healing isnt worth it because we have Litterally nothing to synergise with it.

Support Specer isnt a Design Disaster.

Giving Thief Support after gutting all its core Support was a Design-Disaster.

Spectre should have been a Alacrity / DPS. not a Healing / Alacrity / DPS. they shoulda Just gone with the greatsword Idea, i dunno allow us to tear Shadow Portals open with Swings and Dart around. Given us Visually Identifable Shadow Magic. Instead we have a Auto attack and a useless 2 that Show any sight of Shadow magic.. and a Deep purple on our Wells.

Spectres too split in what it is and Support was never gonna work unless they drastically bloated it. I Said this from the inital announcement of the new Expansion when people started talking about thief getting a Support option. no one beleived me when i said it'd not be great. and here we are lol.

Spectres fine. thiefs Never gonna be this primary Healingg support players seem to think anet should make happen. People didnt choose Thief 10 years ago to eventually be boiled down to a Healer. Espically not one that in current circumstance would likely cause all core traits to get nerfed around it to control the DPS its capable of due to the fact its still going to run 2 DPS Traitlines.

 

 

I'm disappointed there's no giant cool looking Shadow-Ball/Orb-like nuke more than anything like Shadowmancers in literally anything else receive. They had the common sense to add an attack like that to Reaper at Lv.90 in FFXIV which is void/dark magic based~ kudos to them, it looks extremely awesome. They really need to replace 2 with something cooler (AoE) and different looking than the auto attack, and replace Sc/p 3 to something not annoying. Otherwise DPS is fine, weapon choice is fine (no focus to go with it though ;_; ), Alacrity over Quickness for a class about speed and ini is kinda weird, but fine... Wells need some work but otherwise the concept is fine. It's the Healing Mechanics (every aspect of it) and the single-target-everything that is total garbage.

The only real powerful support tool we have over all is the instant Siphon revive~ if it's actually up at least. In messy groups I end up having to save Siphon CD for it and losing damage but it's the only thing I can say is super useful and reliable. Which means it may be nerfed (again?).

Edited April 26, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[ASP.8093]

I use ally targeting a lot… when not fighting.

When we're all standing around waiting for the last party member to press "ready?" Yeah, I'm spamming Rot Wallow stacks obsessively.

Then we start the actual fight and, unless there's an invuln phase or a "run over here now" phase, I never target an ally again. Whenever anyone's in trouble, it's always just Consume Shadows to save the day.

[Roche.7491]

Single Target Heal Specter is pretty fine on high level or CM fractals because the main goal there is to survive boss & to keep allies alive as every single one counts.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Roche.7491

[Bunny.9834]

The single target thing in GW2 has always been on the iffy side. Like the OP said, this game has AoE combat in mind when it comes to skills/traits. 

Anything the thief touches, especially single target anything (hello Deadeye) will eventually turn into a nerfed goat. They can't make anything single target in this game "too" strong.

Which makes me ask myself, why would you wanna use a spec that's good at supporting ONE person in a mediocre way where you can use a spec that can you support 5 people in a much better way. 

Good thing they gave the Specter AoE Alacrity otherwise it would be a totally useless niche spec. 

[Xarrontas.7948]

On 4/26/2022 at 10:55 PM, DragonSlayer.1087 said:

The single target thing in GW2 has always been on the iffy side. Like the OP said, this game has AoE combat in mind when it comes to skills/traits. 

Anything the thief touches, especially single target anything (hello Deadeye) will eventually turn into a nerfed goat. They can't make anything single target in this game "too" strong.

Which makes me ask myself, why would you wanna use a spec that's good at supporting ONE person in a mediocre way where you can use a spec that can you support 5 people in a much better way. 

Good thing they gave the Specter AoE Alacrity otherwise it would be a totally useless niche spec. 

I agree with everything in this post, hoping for a some rework in june! (this goes for most classes that has issues)

[SlayerXX.7138]

I agree. It feels really clunky and non impact full for stopping your dps. Since I first read shadow savior I hoped to be able to heal people with porting. But i run some test against golem with environment damage and the heal numbers are just not there. Specter feels like a healers healer. Someone who keeps the heal alive. I am sure people gonna abuse consume shadow in a very specific situation and the spec will suffer as a result of it. 50% heal without healing power seems pretty broken.

[crosknight.3041]

would like to see some aoe application to the ally targeting stuff. like when you use an ally targeting skill it effects 3-5 allies around your target. siphon should be an aoe around the target ally, shadow form tether should be up to 5 allies (with subgroup taking priority, also change the ally bonuses away from "enemies hit by shadowform attack" since that's probably not going to be very useful in single enemy encounters).

basically make the ally that is being targeted the center-point of aoes

[Leon.6839]

On 4/26/2022 at 3:56 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

Spectre should have been a Alacrity / DPS. not a Healing / Alacrity / DPS.

I think people are misunderstanding Specter for pve a little. At betas I though that it was pretty broken because you were able to spam quickness, alacrity, healings and dps with many other residual boons all at once as none other class could do.

GW2 Specter Fractal Gameplay (Beta) - YouTube

I felt both relieved and sad at launch when I noticed that Sc/P 3 was nerferd and you couldn't give AoE quickness anymore and it initiative cost was too high to keep the boon on your team 1 by 1, but it felt more balanced for me and after some tinkering I noticed that specter in PvE is more or less though to be played in three styles: [Pure healing with quickness and alacrity], [Low Condi damage with alacrity or quickness + barrier] and [High Condi dps]. Most of the people have figured out already how to get the last two and you can go SnowCrows to take a look to them, but the full support build is harder to see as you need a crazy amount of initiative to be able to single target Sc/P 3 to keep quickness up, and in fact, you can't, at least without the help of the Well of Bounty.

This skill looks like a very random useless thing at first sight, but when I tested it I noticed that it gave me the boons in a set order, being quickness the sixth one and the well pulsing five times so if I managed to skip at least one boon I would be granting my team 8 seconds of quickness (with 100% boon duration) within a 16 seconds cooldown for the well (expecting a 100% alacrity uptime) and you know what? Trickery allows you to give to your team 100% uptime of fury, swifftness, vigor and some might when stealing, more than enough to reach quickness with Well of Bounty. 

So, we have half quickness uptime covered, what about the other half? Well, it's very suspicious that with 100% boon duration Sc/P allows you to give up to 7 seconds of quickness to a single target, that would be 15/16 seconds covered, just 94% of the time, but hey, it's very hard to miss due to ally targeting. But here comes the problem I mentioned early, the initiative.

As you'll be taking Trickery, you'll have 12 initiative points, which are enough for two uses of Sc/P 3 skill, you need twelve initiative more and you need them fast because you need your team quickness to end just before your Well of Bounty is recharged so quickness isn't skipped by it. 

By having trickery you'll get 2 initiative when using siphon on an enemy, so that's easy. Also you can pick Quick Pockets trait to get 3 more points by swapping weapons  or entering Shadow Shroud. That's surely another Sc/P 3 use taking into acount that you regain initiative by the time you are spaming the skill, so we just need 6 more points.

Maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but when targeting an ally many skills don't take off your stealth and Well of Bounty and Well of Gloom don't do any damage and with 100% boon duration they are enough to keep alacrity up. So if you pick Shadow Arts and Shadow's Rejuvenation as long as you are able to keep stealth up you'll be able to keep a good income of initiative. Notice that you need to deactivate auto atack or you will lose stealth by autoatacking your allies after using any skill on them.

I think this is too prepared to work like this to be just coincidence and it works pretty nice. Here you have what I've been using if you want to try it out. You can change many things, lately I've been trying Rune of the Sanctuary for more AoE barrier, it's up to you. The same principle of this build can be aplied to a Low condi dps quickness focused build if you pick Ritualist stats and Rune of the Firebrand focusing on Rot Wallow Venom instead of healing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PagAsqlhySZZsQ2JeOXXxfA-zRJYqRzfZUdCkeB47sg8wG-e

What I don't like of this build is that my positioning relies on allies a lot and your self sustain is kind of low at the same time you are so squishy. Also the condi cleanse is very bad and you have to keep an eye on many things that you may become crazy so I wouldn't recomend it to newby people.

 

On 4/23/2022 at 3:32 PM, Noe.8032 said:

Right now the ally targeting aspect of Specter feels completely obsolete, at least as a support. A questionable support by the way, due to the lack of stable boon application; which I think largely comes from having so much of that support tied up in ally targeting.

Specter is said to be a single target support, but that isn't true at all. It has a lot of AoE healing with a strong single target barrier and some AoE boons mixed with single target ones. For me it feels balanced this way because the initiative cost should be very different to support your team single targeting as I stated before.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Leon.6839

[Caedmon.6798]

There has to be this kind of targeting though otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of one skill able to heal allies Or damage enemies. I agree it feels clunky, but i see no way how they can properly adjust this to make it less clunky without changing how the entire spec works.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

its so bad i want an option to turn ally targeting off. i tried support spectre and every time time i do i switch to heal Alac Renegade because it does the same thing spectre does but can give 20 stacks of might and doesnt feel like kitten.

[Burial.1958]

As Healer/support in WvWvW this Spec is a complete failure. Maybe works for some Smallscale but yeah you have other classes who can do the job better and more effective.