Is everybody okay with Specter being garbage?

[Sahne.6950]

While i am glad, that I am no longer getting loaded with 4 diffrent condis, just because they spam "3" all day long.... i still think its sad that Anet completly deleted the spec.

 

Cutting the Shroud hp to roughly 1/3 while simultaneously increasing the CD on the Well, aka. nerfing the mobility of the spec, completly kicked the Specter out of viability.

 

Good thing? Bad thing?

Edited November 3, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Terrorhuz.4695]

I think specter is one of the coolest ideas from EoD, so yeah, not a fan of the current situation

[Kodama.6453]

An elite spec made unviable is always a bad thing.

Unfortunately, Anet tends to approach balance problems with "kill it for now, try to find the sweet spot later", instead of initially trying to find that sweet spot for balance. We have seen it repeatedly in recent balance updates.

So no, I am not fine with that. I guess we have to wait for them to come back to specter and try to balance it properly.

[Ragnar.4257]

Going from S-tier to B-tier isn't the same as being "deleted" or "unviable" or "garbage". Plenty of specs in C/D-tier still pretty envious of Specter.

[Khalisto.5780]

38 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

An elite spec made unviable is always a bad thing.

Unfortunately, Anet tends to approach balance problems with "kill it for now, try to find the sweet spot later", instead of initially trying to find that sweet spot for balance. We have seen it repeatedly in recent balance updates.

So no, I am not fine with that. I guess we have to wait for them to come back to specter and try to balance it properly.

i think they never know when the next patch will drop, it could be in 6 weeks or 6 months (6 month always happens when they start something big for pve) so they rather kill it then risk getting all community shouting at them cuz they failed to nerf x spec.

[Sahne.6950]

personally i believe that the real problem we were seeing with Specter is not solely the Shroud. So its a shame they only tackle the shroud to keep the "beamspecter" in check, while completly butchering every other specterbuild.

Yes, the shroud hp was too much, no doubt. But at the same time... power specter was never overperforming.... and it had the same shroud mechanics.... so i believe the problem is something else.

Personally i believe that the one thing that made specter so obnoxious to fight is, that the same skill could be used over and over again, while providing everything that you need and at the same time completly overwhelming the enemy. I am obviously talking about the scepter/pistol 3.

The skill included a shadowstep, so it has build in kiting, which does also heal you, because you heal from shadowsteps. It included poison and torment for insane damagepressure, a root, so the torment would be more potent, and to top it off it also applied slow, so a enemy that is casting a 1 second cast, is suddenly stuck in it.  Why does a single skill provide Mobility/Healing/2 Damaging conditions/Root/Slow...... that is SOOO OVERLOADED.

The biggest problem tho, is the sheer conditionvomit. A single skill shouldnt apply 4 diffrent conditions over and over again, making any attempt of cleansing it complete nonsense, because just a very few cleanses can actually cleanse all 4 conditions. And the second you cleansed all of them, they are applied right back, because the skill itself didnt cost alot of ini and could be spammed over and over again.

 

How do we fix this mess?

The devs were speaking about giving skills a distinct function. Skills shouldnt do too much things at once. The sc/p skill is the epitome of this. So that is probably what they shoudl tackle.

!CLEAN UP THE 3!   Get rid of the slow, get rid of the root. get rid of the double activation of the skill. Increase the Initiative cost to 5 initiative.

Clicking the 3 button will have you jump backwards AND fire the beam after that. This will also nerf Deadly ambition paired with the skill, as it is now just 1 skill instead of 2 activations, so its less poison from the trait.

Now we bump up the damage from the Torment and decreas the casttime to make it less clunky.

The skill is now less clunky and will only apply 2 conditions instead of 4, but it will also hurt more and it will be a WAYY bigger initiative investment. You can barely use it 2 times in a row now, but should you hit it, it will MELT the enemy.

 

Now we slap the lost functionality on the "2" skill. This skill will no longer give might, instead it will apply weakness, root and slow your enemy, but only for 2 seconds so you dont have to cleanse that and the root is 1 second, so exactly 1 tick of extra tormentdamage.

This way the "go to combo" would be to try and load up your enemy with the 3 two times and then use the remaining few ini to apply constant coverconditions with the 2. As cleansing the poison and Torment become really hard when you apply 3 fresh conditions over it, again and again.  This way specter still technically can do everything that it could do previously, but it needs to invest more ini and it requires the use of multiple skills instead of just spamming the 3 over and over again for maximum efficiency. Using this combo will completly burn the initiative in a few seconds. This way the Shroud becomes more important as you need to bridge the time where you ini is regenerating.

 

These changes should hopefully make fighting a "beamspecter" less obnoxious.

A good player could still make specter work close to the level it was before, while the people that just spam the same skill over and over again will find them selves running out of ressources VERY fast.

Now they could raise the Shroudhp up to be ~70% of the prenerf value to give powerspecter some room, because right now, powerspecter is nonexistent, because the Beamspecter was completly broken and they nerfed the spec as a whole instead of dealing with the actual problems.... and thats just sadge.

Thoughts on that? it doesnt have to be precisely this... but i think something along those lines should be done. They need to clean up the "Beam" BIGTIME and then give some power back to specter as a whole.

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Stalima.5490]

isn't it supposed to be a support, maybe people just aren't approaching it correctly.

[xblankk.4207]

1 hour ago, Stalima.5490 said:

isn't it supposed to be a support, maybe people just aren't approaching it correctly.

This, but I've been playing Specter as support since it released, and with the changes to Shadow Arts and Specter - support Specter has also been getting worse and worse.

 

Like, I don't care if they nerf Condi Specter to the ground. I want to play it as a support, but that's getting nerf right along with DPS.

Edited November 3, 2022 by xblankk.4207

[Bazsi.2734]

I know I shouldn't be just on principle... but I am. That thing is not a thief. Bring it back with a rework that makes it into one!

[Kuma.1503]

8 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

personally i believe that the real problem we were seeing with Specter is not solely the Shroud. So its a shame they only tackle the shroud to keep the "beamspecter" in check, while completly butchering every other specterbuild.

Yes, the shroud hp was too much, no doubt. But at the same time... power specter was never overperforming.... and it had the same shroud mechanics.... so i believe the problem is something else.

Personally i believe that the one thing that made specter so obnoxious to fight is, that the same skill could be used over and over again, while providing everything that you need and at the same time completly overwhelming the enemy. I am obviously talking about the scepter/pistol 3.

The skill included a shadowstep, so it has build in kiting, which does also heal you, because you heal from shadowsteps. It included poison and torment for insane damagepressure, a root, so the torment would be more potent, and to top it off it also applied slow, so a enemy that is casting a 1 second cast, is suddenly stuck in it.  Why does a single skill provide Mobility/Healing/2 Damaging conditions/Root/Slow...... that is SOOO OVERLOADED.

The biggest problem tho, is the sheer conditionvomit. A single skill shouldnt apply 4 diffrent conditions over and over again, making any attempt of cleansing it complete nonsense, because just a very few cleanses can actually cleanse all 4 conditions. And the second you cleansed all of them, they are applied right back, because the skill itself didnt cost alot of ini and could be spammed over and over again.

 

How do we fix this mess?

The devs were speaking about giving skills a distinct function. Skills shouldnt do too much things at once. The sc/p skill is the epitome of this. So that is probably what they shoudl tackle.

!CLEAN UP THE 3!   Get rid of the slow, get rid of the root. get rid of the double activation of the skill. Increase the Initiative cost to 5 initiative.

Clicking the 3 button will have you jump backwards AND fire the beam after that. This will also nerf Deadly ambition paired with the skill, as it is now just 1 skill instead of 2 activations, so its less poison from the trait.

Now we bump up the damage from the Torment and decreas the casttime to make it less clunky.

The skill is now less clunky and will only apply 2 conditions instead of 4, but it will also hurt more and it will be a WAYY bigger initiative investment. You can barely use it 2 times in a row now, but should you hit it, it will MELT the enemy.

 

Now we slap the lost functionality on the "2" skill. This skill will no longer give might, instead it will apply weakness, root and slow your enemy, but only for 2 seconds so you dont have to cleanse that and the root is 1 second, so exactly 1 tick of extra tormentdamage.

This way the "go to combo" would be to try and load up your enemy with the 3 two times and then use the remaining few ini to apply constant coverconditions with the 2. As cleansing the poison and Torment become really hard when you apply 3 fresh conditions over it, again and again.  This way specter still technically can do everything that it could do previously, but it needs to invest more ini and it requires the use of multiple skills instead of just spamming the 3 over and over again for maximum efficiency. Using this combo will completly burn the initiative in a few seconds. This way the Shroud becomes more important as you need to bridge the time where you ini is regenerating.

 

These changes should hopefully make fighting a "beamspecter" less obnoxious.

A good player could still make specter work close to the level it was before, while the people that just spam the same skill over and over again will find them selves running out of ressources VERY fast.

Now they could raise the Shroudhp up to be ~70% of the prenerf value to give powerspecter some room, because right now, powerspecter is nonexistent, because the Beamspecter was completly broken and they nerfed the spec as a whole instead of dealing with the actual problems.... and thats just sadge.

Thoughts on that? it doesnt have to be precisely this... but i think something along those lines should be done. They need to clean up the "Beam" BIGTIME and then give some power back to specter as a whole.

 

I like the idea of removing some functionality from the 3 and adding it to the 2. The 3 should be the button you press for damage and the 2 should be the button you press for debilitating conditions. 

Only thing I don't like is bloating the initiative cost. If anything thief could stand to have some of their ini costs lowered. Some of these skills are getting ridiculous, and the over reliance on trickery needs to be addressed at some point. 

[RedAvenged.5217]

You may not have realized- but anets balancing is garbage and the community associated with it is garbage.

 

they had to ban their own Balancer from doing what they promised cuz he was elitist garbage and even communities like metabattle are garbage-

 

i literally got banned from metabattle for saying “your wrong here’s rank based evidence the community agrees on”

their response was “yeah well I think you are a racist” and Ban you from responding so they could delete their own messages

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Some specs shouldnt exist in pvp

[Crab Fear.8623]

I'm happy it is gone. 

Never wanted it, told ya so, no healer thief would ever work.

[Downstate.4697]

Spectre as a support i think was always intended for pve. It could also maybe work in certain wvw comps.

For pvp supports are never just about healing and thats about all it can provide with scepter. Granted, you could maybe build a reliable res bot using deception skills

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

The peace and quiet from people crying about thief breathing is refreshing now that it isn't breathing anymore. 

[Crab Fear.8623]

29 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

The peace and quiet from people crying about thief breathing is refreshing now that it isn't breathing anymore. 

Who decided that!

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Just now, Crab Fear.8623 said:

Who decided that!

 

E-Escanor?!

[Tycura.1982]

Yes

[Ragnar.4257]

A single-target support was always going to be impossible to balance against the various multi-target supports already existing.

If a multi-target support is supporting 3+ team-mates, then a single-target support is going to have to provide significantly higher value to the one team-mate they are supporting, in order to bring the same overall value as a multi-target support. But if you do that, then it becomes brokenly powerful in 1v1/2v2 scenarios. And if you balance it for 1v1/2v2 scenarios, then it becomes useless in 3+vs3+ scenarios.

[felix.2386]

well, depends who you comparing it with

if it's daredevil, yea i want specter back

but it's anything else, no i don't.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

12 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

E-Escanor?!

I missed my chance to comment with one of my alt accounts...

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I tried.......as a long time gw2 pvp'r to explain to all the thief players before EoD why a support spec would end up in long run to be a waste of a spec and of a chance to have a new and long term viable option. Spector could have been a cool selfish, flashy and interesting shadow mage like assassin that could have easily integrated with thief's core design. Considering every support trait thief had had at the time was useless and never used due to being underpowered because of thief's strengths elsewhere present in its core design,  I knew anet would never allow a viable and effective support build to exists while still having access to teefs core rogue design. Specter is another spec that has fallen victim to the now newly dropped balance philosophy of all classes being viable at every role. Anet needs to redesign specter with their current philosophy or future one they planned to use to be a shadow mage assassin type class utilizing its core design and mechanics while integrating the idea of a more mage like playstle, example would be blood magic etc.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Gibson.4036]

What ANet says: "We're adjusting this overperforming spec to bring it in line with others."

What ANet means: "We're putting this spec on a time out for an indefinite amount of time."

[Leonidrex.5649]

I feel like they didnt even try with specter, idea of the spec was to make it a support, but as usual they bloated it to kitten and made it hyper-mobile tank dps dog kitten.
they they overnerfed it to kitten and back and here we are. The moment I saw that every utility skill is a well with a built in teleport I already knew this spec is going to be either OP or kitten and nothing in between.

[Crab Fear.8623]

F specter

Now, bring back og daredevil