Well of Bounty changes are objectively bad, contributing to the ruin of specter

[Bladezephyr.5714]

You already have heard from many sources that the changes to shadowforce scaling have ruined specter.  But no one has really focused on why the WoB changes also make the class worse. This isn't a popular take, most people seem to think this skill wasn't very good to begin with, so first I have to explain why it actually was.  When are you going to use WoB?  In a group, on a support build... or possibly solo, for your own durability.  It was quite good in both cases.  You won't use it on pure DPS in a well-organized group, because it just doesn't provide that much utility.

 

Group Support

When you take WoB on a group support, you're almost certainly taking Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft along with it, which together provide permanent fury, swiftness, vigor, and 5 stacks of might. This means, in practice, if your specter has +100% boon duration, that WoB would give, in this order:

1. alacrity - 100% uptime (due to traits, automatically)
2. regeneration - 100% uptime
3. protection - 62.5%
4. Resistance - 50%
5. quickness - 50%
6. resolution - 50%

If you already had one of these covered by another group member (extremely likely), it would also provide stability already, with (potentially) 62.5% uptime (same as it currently does). If you had an additional boon covered by any other group member, it also would provide aegis, 100% uptime.  After that, any additional boons that were already covered will grant extra stacks of might.  The power of this is that in the typical group scenario, it provides exactly the boons that a defensive support should.  One could argue that it still needed more uptime on a few of those key boons, but it gave them.

 

Solo PvE

For solo PvE, one of the biggest weaknesses of specter (IMO) is that the scepter rate of attack feels sluggish.  WoB, when used after siphon (again with TotC and Bountiful Theft) easily provides you with some quickness, which you can then augment with Haste, making the spec feel much more pleasant to use.  In the short fights typical in open world, for example, this gives you a nice boost to burst damage that makes fights faster.

 

The Current Version is Objectively Worse

Now, WoB provides the same static list of 5 boons, instead of being capable of filling in the gaps left by other supports. This is considerably worse because:

• NO regen
  NO prot
  NO quickness
  NO resolution
• NO flexibility to fill in gaps
• 3 of the 5 boons it gives, you are already providing 100% uptime on via siphon
• In the typical scenario, it was already giving stability, so that's not an improvement

So in summary, it's a drastic reduction to durability for both you and your group, and does nothing to enable quickened solo play (you can still take Haste, but quickness uptime is substantially less).

 

Not only that, but the change to apply stability first isn't really that useful to begin with.  It's nice as an extra, but since you're going to spam this skill off cooldown to maintain your quickness uptime, you can't really apply it on demand--you get it when you get it, which is fairly unlikely to be when you actually need it  The only way to be able to use it that way, while still maintaining alacrity uptime, would be to drop a venom and replace it with Well of Silence, which would be a substantial DPS loss for the group.  In a group where you already have all of the boons covered, the old version would apply 5 stacks of might, which would be a single stack less than the new one does.  In one where you're the only might provider it does give you an extra 6 stacks, but come on, that's not very likely.  In that one way the new version is objectively "better" but the difference is not very interesting, in practice.

 

This change should be completely reverted.  If you're dead set that stability should be applied first, at the very least you need to increase the stacks so that it's actually useful.  Stand Your Ground gives 5 stacks.  Then you should change the order from the original to provide regeneration, protection, resolution, quickness, and resistance.  That still enables solo play to get some quickness uptime from it, and let's be honest, resistance is probably the least useful boon out of the entire set.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Bladezephyr.5714
Siphon gives 100% boon uptime on THREE of WoB's boons, not two... and clarity.

[Bladezephyr.5714]

Oh and by the way, specter is already weaker as a support than most of the other support builds, in part because the radius of wells is a mere 240, whereas most other supports give boons in at least 300, and usually 360 or even more.  Some offer boons or heals in a 600 radius...

If you truly want to enable build diversity, you have to actually provide parity.  Please consider increasing the radius of wells to 360.  And by the way, even that isn't enough to enable actual ranged play.  Why do we even have ranged classes? 😄

Edited October 12, 2022 by Bladezephyr.5714

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Not to mention prepatch wob could stack with other wobbers and give all boons 100%. They NEED to add ALL boons to WoB by making each boon 50/50% chance to apply 1 or the other boon out of choices...protection OR Regeneration, resistance OR resilience, might OR fury ETC ETC.

 

This could work.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Ashgar.3024]

6 hours ago, Bladezephyr.5714 said:

Oh and by the way, specter is already weaker as a support than most of the other support builds, in part because the radius of wells is a mere 240, whereas most other supports give boons in at least 300, and usually 360 or even more.  Some offer boons or heals in a 600 radius...

Alac radius was buffed to 360 a while ago.

 

For the rest i'm kinda over fighting the whining at this point. Still crushing it doing fractal cms+ Full 7 wing clears every weeks despite the patch playing the elite.

By all means force the devs to overbuff it again.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Ashgar.3024

[Loboling.5293]

It's a very disappointing change. I get they wanted to make it more consistently useful, but it lacks flavor. And most of all, the stability granted is bad. I'd like to see this returned to it's old self, maybe with a small guaranteed stability buff. 

Side note: Specter also needs more shroud health in pve, and the return of it's missing initiative. 

[Bladezephyr.5714]

3 hours ago, Ashgar.3024 said:

Alac radius was buffed to 360 a while ago.

Yeah it is, but all boons from WoB are 240.  It's pretty inconsistent across the skills & traits, TBH.  CS is 600, which is quite good.  TotC is 360, BT is 240, Shielding Restoration is 360, Shadow Savior is 360, Shadestep is 240...  The overall effect is you want to be within 240 otherwise things will be missed.  So it doesn't matter... effectively the range is 240.

[ASP.8093]

11 hours ago, Bladezephyr.5714 said:

This means, in practice, if your specter has +100% boon duration

I recommend redoing the math with ~42% boon duration. Full Ritualist gear caps you at 42% and support Specters don't usually take +BoonDuration food or weapon sigils because they're still trying to keep their personal DPS fairly high.

I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you — just trying to get a more realistic picture of what gear people have.

[Bladezephyr.5714]

12 minutes ago, ASP.8093 said:

I recommend redoing the math with ~42% boon duration. Full Ritualist gear caps you at 42% and support Specters don't usually take +BoonDuration food or weapon sigils because they're still trying to keep their personal DPS fairly high.

I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you — just trying to get a more realistic picture of what gear people have.

It's a fair point, but with the current set of boons WoB gives it doesn't really matter... none of them are worth sacrificing DPS for boon uptime anyway.  FWIW I posted a build in a different thread that actually does exactly that--it's meant to be a full-on heal/boon support spec.  In fact, here:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaBBsitjlhyYZpsVWLeqWnxfA-zRRYjRPXAcQ+nSOChqVApLB6QE4xp5AfaAA-e

AFAICT, pre-patch, the only real reason heal specter wasn't a thing is because it didn't give 25 stacks of might--the healing it provides is more than adequate.  But with buffs to other classes, that's much less relevant.  Of course with the latest changes, it's much worse, so...

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Bladezephyr.5714

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The new Well of Bounty seems like a passive-aggressive dig at the players who had a problem with the old one.  See, I didn't like the old well of Bounty because it was unreliable.  All of the good boons (alacrity, quickness, fury, protection, swiftness, regeneration, vigor, stability when needed, aegis when needed) were all covered by the other professions in a group.  In any practical sense, Well of Bounty gave my teammates resolution (not that useful in PVE), resistance (same as resolution), aegis out of place, stability out of place, and might.  This... was not good.  If my teammates were periodically dropping and re-gaining the more useful boons, WoB had a scant chance of actually giving out those useful boons.  More often than not, it wouldn't shore up any holes at all, instead opting to dole out the less useful boons.  In the overworld, the Jade Tech Overcharges rendered them as little more than alacrity bonuses.

The new one is slightly better, but only slightly.  The stability is good in theory, but in practice it is only valuable if your teammates are willing to lose alacrity while you wait for the big stability-demanding attack.  At least then it is a reliable option.  Might is good.  Fury and Vigor are useless due to the Trickery line being mandatory on all Specter builds.  The final pulse is resistance, which is made completely useless due to its placement alone.  If you were in a situation where the group needed resistance, waiting 5 seconds to get it is way too long.  In a more ideal scenario, the well would give the boons in the order of Stability, Protection, Resolution, Might, Regeneration.  But, well, thieves can't have good things.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Vismooth.4128]

1 hour ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

The new Well of Bounty seems like a passive-aggressive dig at the players who had ab problem with the old one.  See, I didn't like the old well of Bounty because it was unreliable.  All of the good boons (alacrity, quickness, fury, protection, swiftness, regeneration, vigor, stability when needed, aegis when needed) where all covered by the other professions in a group.  In any practical sense, Well of Bounty gave my teammates resolution (not that useful in PVE), resistance (same as resolution), aegis out of place, stability out of place, and might.  This... was not good.  If my teammates were periodically dropping and re-gaining the more useful boons, WoB had a scant chance of actually giving out those useful boons.  More often than not, it wouldn't shore up any holes at all, instead opting to dole out the less useful boons.  In the overworld, the Jade Tech Overcharges rendered them as little more than alacrity bonuses.

The new one is slightly better, but only slight.  The stability is good in theory, but in practice it is only valuable if your teammates are willing to lose alacrity while you wait for the big stability-demanding attack.  At least then it is a reliable option.  Might is good.  Fury and Vigor are useless due to the Trickery line being mandatory on all Specter builds.  The final pulse is resistance, which is made completely useless due to its placement alone.  If you were in a situation where the group needed resistance, waiting 5 seconds to get it is way too long.  In a more ideal scenario, the well would give the boons in the order of Stability, Protection, Resolution, Might, Regeneration.  But, well, thieves can't have good things.

I also see no reason why they can't make boons on WoB apply in groups, like Stab+Prot+Regen, Might+Fury+Quick or w/e. Making it provide only 5 different boons (some of which already covered somewhere else) kind of goes against the well being "bountiful".

[nopoet.2960]

I'm never going to stop asking them to put 1 sec of stealth on WoB to trigger Panaku's Ambition and Cover of Shadow in SA.

[Bladezephyr.5714]

On 10/12/2022 at 10:42 PM, ASP.8093 said:

I recommend redoing the math with ~42% boon duration. Full Ritualist gear caps you at 42% and support Specters don't usually take +BoonDuration food or weapon sigils

BTW it's a really small point, but the snowcrows build does actually indicate concentration food and utility buffs, bringing you to 57%.  One reason why that's at least somewhat interesting is that enables you to substitute Well of Silence for Well of Bounty, which at this point probably gives you a lot more utility (CC and breakbar), and still maintain 100% uptime.  It's a lot less comfortable of a buffer though (104% for WoS vs. 117% for WoB).

[Wolfshade.9251]

I saw the change as an improvement. Finally a reliable way to give stability as specter and they increased the might stacks. It's now possible to give around 17-22 might to your subgroup as an alac-heal specter (10 from stealing, 5 from well, 5 from pack runes, 2 from charr racial shout skill- yes I'm really reaching to outdo healmech with heal specter).

Sadly the shroud nerfs completely destroyed its burst healing potential.

[Bladezephyr.5714]

On 10/16/2022 at 5:24 AM, Wolfshade.9251 said:

I saw the change as an improvement. Finally a reliable way to give stability as specter and they increased the might stacks. It's now possible to give around 17-22 might to your subgroup as an alac-heal specter (10 from stealing, 5 from well, 5 from pack runes, 2 from charr racial shout skill- yes I'm really reaching to outdo healmech with heal specter).

Sadly the shroud nerfs completely destroyed its burst healing potential.

But it objectively is not, for the reasons I already stated, and most importantly that the reliability of when it applies comes at the cost of (typically) 3 additional boons.  It's a very poor trade given several other specs can apply stab way more easily and more frequently with way less tradeoff (any guardian, any mesmer, any revenant, etc.), and you most likely already have one of them in your group.  Same deal for might... so many specs give might now you just don't need to.  If you're in even a half-competent group you're probably already getting 25 stacks of might from somewhere without anyone giving up much to make it happen.  Whereas regen, prot, and resolution are all a bit harder to come by, especially if you're taking the healer role.  The nature of the skill means that sure, in some limited scenarios, it's possible to get more out of the new version; but in far more cases the old version provides much more value.

Pack runes?  You're sacrificing condi damage & duration, and vitality to feed your heal/barrier/survivability--everything the build is good at, for something it's not and is easily replaceable.  And again the fury and swiftness are wasted because you're already providing them permanently.  10 stacks from stealing?  Not sure how you're doing that... I can see getting 8 if you take Critical Strikes for Assassin's fury, but at the cost of either deadly arts for damage (typically), or shadow arts for healing/barrier.  Again, giving up what you're good at for something you're not.  With a normal build it's 5 stacks.  I'd need to see the build, but this seems like a whole lot of bad trades.  It's all moot though because as you say, with the shroud nerf there's no way the average player can make use of this as a heal spec, and exceptional players generally wouldn't try.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Bladezephyr.5714

[Bladezephyr.5714]

On 10/13/2022 at 1:00 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

 I didn't like the old well of Bounty because it was unreliable.  All of the good boons (alacrity, quickness, fury, protection, swiftness, regeneration, vigor, stability when needed, aegis when needed) were all covered by the other professions in a group.

It did depend on who you're with and how they play...   I find pugs almost always have the offensive boons covered, since most players are playing selfish DPS specs in pugs, and more of those have might now--so I would provide the defensive boons, usually including up to stab.  The placement isn't great but it was fairly long lasting so if it was going to be relevant at all, it was fine.  When I play with my regulars it's either the same story, or we have all the boons covered so it did nothing useful anyway (aside from maintaining alac uptime).  Depends on what people feel like playing.  But there's almost always a firebrand covering stab, and it's just generally more available lately so it's not been a consideration.

Playing solo, the might is fine but TBH I don't really notice it--the quickness and the survivability boons were much more impactful.  If it takes me 8s instead of 9s to kill something it just doesn't matter.  Having ~60% quickness uptime (with haste) made things a lot smoother.

[Wolfshade.9251]

On 10/21/2022 at 6:10 AM, Bladezephyr.5714 said:

But it objectively is not, for the reasons I already stated, and most importantly that the reliability of when it applies comes at the cost of (typically) 3 additional boons.  It's a very poor trade given several other specs can apply stab way more easily and more frequently with way less tradeoff (any guardian, any mesmer, any revenant, etc.), and you most likely already have one of them in your group.  Same deal for might... so many specs give might now you just don't need to.  If you're in even a half-competent group you're probably already getting 25 stacks of might from somewhere without anyone giving up much to make it happen.  Whereas regen, prot, and resolution are all a bit harder to come by, especially if you're taking the healer role.  The nature of the skill means that sure, in some limited scenarios, it's possible to get more out of the new version; but in far more cases the old version provides much more value.

Pack runes?  You're sacrificing condi damage & duration, and vitality to feed your heal/barrier/survivability--everything the build is good at, for something it's not and is easily replaceable.  And again the fury and swiftness are wasted because you're already providing them permanently.  10 stacks from stealing?  Not sure how you're doing that... I can see getting 8 if you take Critical Strikes for Assassin's fury, but at the cost of either deadly arts for damage (typically), or shadow arts for healing/barrier.  Again, giving up what you're good at for something you're not.  With a normal build it's 5 stacks.  I'd need to see the build, but this seems like a whole lot of bad trades.  It's all moot though because as you say, with the shroud nerf there's no way the average player can make use of this as a heal spec, and exceptional players generally wouldn't try.

I was talking about off-meta full healing Specter build designed for hard-carrying groups. This isn't alac-dps-specter or full-dps-specter or that one carrior-dps build for barrier spam - it's pure healer.

SA (2,1,1) on condi-heavy fights (1,1,1) on all others/Trickery (3,1,2) and Specter (3,3,2).

Its purpose is to replace healmechanist in groups where additional barrier and insane amount of CC is more useful than range and aegis. Fury and swiftness are overcapped, but I was focusing on might generation here. Technically it can be run with minstrel instead of harrier for additional vitality, and I've been doing that more often since the last patch. You say that might is usually covered by other builds anyway... I wish that were the case, but it isn't in every group so I had to get creative. As soon as you play with anything else than braindead pew-pew mechanists and condi necros you start to see might issues in groups. Sure, most quickness-dps builds can provide some might but people *expect* the heal-alac to give 25 stacks, so getting my average above 20 is the bare minimum of what I can work with - and the well rework helped with that.