Power Specter for general PVE?

[TristanTzara.4628]

Hello. I am toying with a potentially crazy and / or useless idea. I am not a fan of sceptre on specter in general PVE situations and so had this thought for a power build using sword / pistol as it's main weapon set. I have seen that there is a sword / dagger build used in WvW but off hand pistol seems to work better in PVE. I am aware that this would be far from meta and that if I turned up for a raid group they would just all look at me like I was bonkers and then ignore me in the hopes I would just go away. Here is the build I propose:

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABwqprlhySZrMPWLW2XnRXA-zRJYixfZEYqGRVp2BIMMAA-e

 

What I am hoping from you lovely people is not "this is just crap" or even "if you're having fun with it then just play it - anything works in open world" but maybe some ideas to improve the idea and even make it work. Details like sigils, utilities and traits are, of course, negotiable. Any thoughts would be gratefully received. 

[TwiceDead.1963]

What you don't want to hear:
 

Spoiler

It will work, in the sense that putting a left-shoe on your right foot will still cover your foot.

I've done exactly what you are trying to do much because of the same reason with weeks of varying experimentation from traits to to runes to stats, and the short of it is that what you are expecting is exactly what is going to happen.. you'll fall behind in damage by turning yourself into an alacrity bot with some minor heals going on. There's simply nothing for power-builds in the specter tree.

Mechanically S/P power specter feels fun to play, since you are zipping all over the place with alacrity some heals and what-not, but numbers wise.. I could never shake that feeling.

Anyway 2 cents:

Just ditch Marauder. You don't need the extra health because you have a second health-bar. If you need health just give your jade-bot a rank 10 core, should give you ample health for open-world.

Since you are using Critical strikes you can drop some precision in favor of more power/ferocity. Currently Fury only gives you 10% when it can give you 25%, and since Fury more or less permanent on thieves it seems like a waste. I know 7% of that is from flanks which are not always optimal, do what you will.

I'd swap in Consume Shadows because anything else is frankly worthless unless you are playing with 1 friend. You build lifeforce instantly in many cases so it's total consumption is no loss, and the AoE heal goes into the support angle, no?

Just use No Quarter for the damage and fury. Specter has no survivability problems and you get enough heals from your wells, shadow-steps and Consume Shadows (it heals you too), or you can just camp Shadow.

I like to drop well of Silence for well of tears. You get enough cleanses from merely popping into shadow, and you are sacrificing enough damage as is, and keeping Alacrity uptime gets easier. Unless your explicit goal is to cleanse someone else.

Maybe stick with Chronomancer runes unless you can deal with the long cast-times of the wells, or cast them in your haste-window.

You can get pretty good Quickness uptime with Chrono runes, if you get your boon duration to around the 30%-40% mark. You sacrifice damage but you spend less time casting wells, and your alacrity lasts longer.

 

There is a kind of interesting tagging build though that takes advantage of runes, regen-food and shadow-steps with the trait Shadestep to give people Rot-Wallow-Venom constantly.

I'm forgetting details and who mentioned it though, think it might've been @Jugglemonkey.8741 who mentioned it somewhere.

[TristanTzara.4628]

Wow. Thank you so much for this. Really helpful in both a positive and negative way.

 

My reason for choosing Well of Silence was more for the daze. I'm having so much fun with my Untamed just dazing and disabling foes and then bashing them to bits that I thought to try a similar approach with thief (probably unwise!).

 

Chronomancer runes do rather make more sense. I notice the WvW build uses those.

 

By the "negative" helpful I was of course referring to your "hidden" paragraph. I did pretty much have the same idea that it might be fun to be jumping all over the place, but then I can do that really effectively with my Daredevil so I might just stick with that.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the really detailed reply. It was a nice idea but probably not that practical. As I said, Daredevil does more or less what I was trying to achieve (apart from the dazing) but so much better.

 

One last thought..... what about condition specter but ditch the sceptre all together and use double daggers spamming Deathblossom? Ok.... Daredevil does it better once again....... 

[TwiceDead.1963]

If you can swap gear without too much trouble I'd give it a whirl just to satisfy your curiosity, sometimes a change of pace is neat, but sadly there's no secret sauce to Power Specter for PvE. Hopefully that gets remedied and they wake up at some point.

As for Condi D/D Sp, I have no idea. Never tried it. I believe you when you say Daredevil does it better.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

Have not read the above yet, but here is Iskarel's stab at a power specter bench a while back. Yeah, it's outdated, but still thought I would share :D.

 

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

On 4/3/2023 at 5:32 PM, TwiceDead.1963 said:

What you don't want to hear:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

It will work, in the sense that putting a left-shoe on your right foot will still cover your foot.

I've done exactly what you are trying to do much because of the same reason with weeks of varying experimentation from traits to to runes to stats, and the short of it is that what you are expecting is exactly what is going to happen.. you'll fall behind in damage by turning yourself into an alacrity bot with some minor heals going on. There's simply nothing for power-builds in the specter tree.

Mechanically S/P power specter feels fun to play, since you are zipping all over the place with alacrity some heals and what-not, but numbers wise.. I could never shake that feeling.

Anyway 2 cents:

Just ditch Marauder. You don't need the extra health because you have a second health-bar. If you need health just give your jade-bot a rank 10 core, should give you ample health for open-world.

Since you are using Critical strikes you can drop some precision in favor of more power/ferocity. Currently Fury only gives you 10% when it can give you 25%, and since Fury more or less permanent on thieves it seems like a waste. I know 7% of that is from flanks which are not always optimal, do what you will.

I'd swap in Consume Shadows because anything else is frankly worthless unless you are playing with 1 friend. You build lifeforce instantly in many cases so it's total consumption is no loss, and the AoE heal goes into the support angle, no?

Just use No Quarter for the damage and fury. Specter has no survivability problems and you get enough heals from your wells, shadow-steps and Consume Shadows (it heals you too), or you can just camp Shadow.

I like to drop well of Silence for well of tears. You get enough cleanses from merely popping into shadow, and you are sacrificing enough damage as is, and keeping Alacrity uptime gets easier. Unless your explicit goal is to cleanse someone else.

Maybe stick with Chronomancer runes unless you can deal with the long cast-times of the wells, or cast them in your haste-window.

You can get pretty good Quickness uptime with Chrono runes, if you get your boon duration to around the 30%-40% mark. You sacrifice damage but you spend less time casting wells, and your alacrity lasts longer.

 

There is a kind of interesting tagging build though that takes advantage of runes, regen-food and shadow-steps with the trait Shadestep to give people Rot-Wallow-Venom constantly.

I'm forgetting details and who mentioned it though, think it might've been @Jugglemonkey.8741 who mentioned it somewhere.

Yeah, it was probably me haha. The build idea came from a discussion on the Eck/Thief forum guild discord, I found that the heal per second food has insane synergy with the traits but the original idea for the shadestep/sanctuary rune/sword 2 spam comes from there. 

Here's my version of the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABwitrlhyOYssU2JeqWXxfA-zRJYyxfhkTIEZCUdV58BJE+7w8GfA-e

The original idea was to run plaguedoctor gear and go for the healing on port with sword dagger. You could run the build with sword pistol pretty happily, the original build actually was experimenting with P/D. The main reason for me running S/D was that Sc/P is a better single target heal and the offhand dagger gives you some stealth and therefore protection access, but if you're avoiding scepter then S/P is probably a better choice overall. I'm actually using S/D 90% of the time, just using Sc/P for niche situations or when I really want one particular guy to not die. 

I like the analogy the post above me used of putting the left shoe on the right foot: sadly this is exactly how I felt after trying to be a hybrid healer too. Unfortunately a lot of consumables and sigils that increase torment duration do not increase the duration of the torment applied by rot wallow venom, which leaves you with very few options if you want to make that tick for any meaningful amount. Hence the ritualist gear. There's always going to be a tradeoff for taking more utility, but it feels so drastic on specter for some reason. 

Frankly, this build is *severely* held back by the forced choice of trickery. Dropping deadly arts for shadow arts will tank your personal DPS, and the damage supplied by the extra heal on port for rot wallow venom was always meant to be supplementary DPS while you paused to heal someone, not a main source. If you could take deadly arts AND shadow arts though, this build could actually be something. Keep an eye out for it if they ever decide to revert the specter -3 initiative tradeoff. 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Jugglemonkey.8741

[xellink.7568]

If the group absolutely cannot find a healer, the basics are this.

 

Spectre has four heal mechanics:

1. Shadow step healing which scales w healing power

2. Shadestep and barrier generation

3. Consume shadows, no healing power needed but relies heavily on vitality

4. Single target healing via sceptre. This scales w healing power.

 

Most healing builds utilizes option 1 or 3. Unfortunately the two healing mechanics cannot be combined as they rely on different attributes.

 

Trying to make it work would mean compromise. It won't be as good as a healbrand, druid or mechanist. 

 

A support that wants to heal must therefore contribute in other ways.

 

That's where Alac DPS shines while doing a bit of off heals and this merges well with HB and condi fits well. 

 

That doesn't mean sword 2 spam and going power doesnt work. It's just that the perfect attribute combination isn't available and sword is a low damage weapon.  If sword can have its power coefficients increased in PvE and shadowstep healing upscaled then this is a space worth watching.

 

That said if you play all thief like ECK, then green numbers wise shadow step healing is your only option.

[nopoet.2960]

On 4/7/2023 at 9:35 AM, xellink.7568 said:

If the group absolutely cannot find a healer, the basics are this.

 

Spectre has four heal mechanics:

1. Shadow step healing which scales w healing power

2. Shadestep and barrier generation

3. Consume shadows, no healing power needed but relies heavily on vitality

4. Single target healing via sceptre. This scales w healing power.

...

I just "discovered" #2 this week and it's pretty fun.  If you use an offhand dagger (I've been using main hand pistol) your rotation is something like Cloak and Dagger > Stealth Attack (both generate barrier) > (siphon if you can get it in quickly) > some well > then for me Shadow Strike > Repeater.  The big ahHA was realizing that, even if you are using scepter or pistol, this is a melee spec.  You can't stay at range to make it work.

[Iskarel.7240]

On 4/3/2023 at 9:56 PM, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

Have not read the above yet, but here is Iskarel's stab at a power specter bench a while back. Yeah, it's outdated, but still thought I would share :D.

Updated version. Rotation unchanged, number accidentally inflated by ~300 DPS cause I put wrong conditions.