Elite Spec Speculation: Ether Phantom

[Crey.5263]

TraitsMinor Proficiency

• Dagger Proficiency- You can wield Main Hand Dagger

Minor Adept

• Auspicious Incantations- Gain access to Cantrips. Your Shatters are replaced with Fragility, Extend Conditions, Stolen Speed, Inspired Enchantment

Major Adept

• Spirit of Failure- Weakness you apply lasts 33% longer. Take 10% less damage from weakened foes.
• Hex Eater Vortex- Conditions are converted into 2s Vigor ( 1 condition, 10 s cool down)
• Enchanter's Conundrum- Attacks deal 1% more damage for each enchantment on the target.

Minor Master

• Ether Absorb- Gain health when vigor is applied to you

Major Master

• Sympathetic Visage- Gain Expertise based on your Vitality (5% of vitality is converted to expertise). When you strike a blinded foe, inflict 3 seconds of weakness.
• Power Return- Reduce the cool down of cantrips by 20%. Gain 10 energy whenever you use a cantrip.
• Overload- While duel wielding, your critical hits have a 33% chance of inflicting a random debilitating condition (chill, slow, cripple, weakness, blind). Your daggers skills gain Expertise equal to your concentration.

Minor Grandmaster

• Energy Leak- When you dodge roll, inflict blind around you (5s cool down)

Major Grandmaster

• Power Block- When you would be downed, and have at least 25 energy. Lose all energy, break stun, and gain 25% of your maximum health. (90s cool down)
• Ether Lord- Your dodge roll cost 10 energy less.
• Enchanter's Balance- When you strike a foe with more boons, copy one random boon (3 s)and gain (3 s) fury (6s cool down)

Main Hand Dagger1) Calculated Risk - 900 range piercing projectile - Give the target might (3s), weakness (6s){chain} Illusion of Haste - 900 range piercing projectile - Give the target swiftness (2s), cripple (4s){chain} Reckless Greed- 900 range piercing projectile - Give the target quickness (1s), slow (2s){chain} Price of Power- 900 range projectile- Daggers explode from the target dealing bonus damage in the area for each boon on the target.2) Shrinking Armor- Throw a dagger into the ground (900 range). Dagger pulses vulnerability for 4 s.
-->Drain Delusions-Reactivate to shadow step to the dagger, leaving a clone behind and gaining protection.3) Shatter storm- Throw a fan of 5 daggers, each inflicts a debilitating condition (weakness, blind, vulnerability, chill, slow)

Cantrips

Heal Skill

• Ether Feast becomes a Cantrip.And to make up for not getting a new heal skill, this class would get 5 utility skills.

Utilities

• Drain Enchantment- Heal and grant vigor (3 s) to yourself and allied targets (max 5) for each enchantment on the target.
• Hypochondria - Target gains a single copy (duration varies) of all conditions on 5 enemies near the target
• Spirit Shackles- {Break Stun}- Inflict weakness and blind on 5 targets around you, gain vigor for each target hit.
• Shatter Hex- Lose all enchantments; Inflict bonus damage and lose one condition for each enchantment lost.
• Web of Disruption - Your next 3 critical hits, inflict .25 s of daze.

Elite

• Channeling- channel for 1.5 seconds, grant 25 energy and 1.5 seconds of vigor to allies in range (max 5 targets, 3 pulses)

ShattersShatters have relatively shorter cool downs.

• F1) Fragility- AOE Damage. Cleanses conditions on target ( max 5 stacks, and 10s duration), does bonus damage for each condition cleansed.
• F2) Extend Condition- AOE Damage. Inflicts vulnerability. Adds duration of conditions on targets hit.
• F3) Stolen Speed- AOE Inflict Slow, Chill, Cripple, Blind, and Weakness. Gain Quickness, Alacrity, Swiftness, Aegis, and Fury.
• F4) Inspired Enchantment- Single Target. Grants allies (max 5) aegis. Shares a copy of each boon on target to allies (max 5)

[Crey.5263]

I was going for a spec that could function as a mid range power or an effective dodge tank. I also wanted to pay homage to the energy skills of the gw1 inspiration mesmer.

I'd love feedback: I thought it might be interesting to see a power build that basically stacks up either conditions or boons on the target then exploits them for big damage. It makes for interesting counter play, because to play against it you'd basically want to avoid giving yourself boons while trying to keep your conditions low to avoid the big Fragility Shatter or the 4th hit on the attack chain. But I wanted to avoid this being a condition damage spec so I focused on the debilitating conditions.

[OriOri.8724]

Turning ether feast into a cantrip would make it unusable with core mesmer, mirage, and chrono. Unless it was only classified as a cantrip when you equip the new elite spec (which is an interesing idea). That said, drain enchantment sounds a lot like a heal skill to me.

I don't know if I agree with giving boons to the target and cleansing conditions on them. I don't thnk that fits too well with GW2, but perhaps you could modify this idea to be similar-ish to spellbreaker. What I mean is that ether phantom is boon averse with its skills/traits, say stuff like certain skills ripping a boon off of you when used and having greater effects if a boon was available to be stripped. That would generate some interesting playstyles, wherein boon stripping (from the enemy's perspective) is even more important since if you are allowed to strip them yourself you will be more effective in the fight. Or even traits that activate when a boon is stripped from you. Could be some pretty nasty combos with arcane thievery.

I'm also not a fan of powerblock, because I hate traits that allow you to cheat death.

[Crey.5263]

@"OriOri.8724" said:Turning ether feast into a cantrip would make it unusable with core mesmer, mirage, and chrono. Unless it was only classified as a cantrip when you equip the new elite spec (which is an interesing idea). That said, drain enchantment sounds a lot like a heal skill to me.

I don't know if I agree with giving boons to the target and cleansing conditions on them. I don't thnk that fits too well with GW2, but perhaps you could modify this idea to be similar-ish to spellbreaker. What I mean is that ether phantom is boon averse with its skills/traits, say stuff like certain skills ripping a boon off of you when used and having greater effects if a boon was available to be stripped. That would generate some interesting playstyles, wherein boon stripping (from the enemy's perspective) is even more important since if you are allowed to strip them yourself you will be more effective in the fight. Or even traits that activate when a boon is stripped from you. Could be some pretty nasty combos with arcane thievery.

I'm also not a fan of powerblock, because I hate traits that allow you to cheat death.

You bring up a good point with reclassifying Ether feast, I hadn't considered that implication. I think it could still be classified, just considered a core skill. Similar to ward skills which are classified, but don't naturally have a full set of skills or a trait in the core. Drain enchantment could be a suitable replacement if that's the case, I just wasn't sure about a heal skill dependent on your opponents boons, but i suppose it's no different than skills such as consume conditions, skelk venom, A.E.D, arcane brilliance which are heal skills with low base healing and ratio, that have conditions that can cause them to surpass average heals.

One note to your concerns is that I didn't do much developing of scaling which is really important in power builds (think Spellbreaker Daggers vs Thief Daggers), but the general concept was for it to be an exploit, and exploit mechanics usually need to consume the charges otherwise it gets too powerful to be spammable; like a Rogue Class in other games (but no one want's the Deadeye's Malice Mechanic). The goal would be that using F1) Fragility would do comparable if not more damage than letting the conditions expire naturally; skillful players would wait until the conditions were about to expire anyways and use them as a finishing nuke. It's basically the Crystal Wave skill from Gw1, which when combined with Fragility did massive burst damage.

I considered suggesting the class as boon averse, but the unique concept that I was going for was that instead of removing boons from your target and bringing them down to your boon level, the player uses the targets boons to even the playing field or surpassing their damage. That was the feel I was going for with skills/traits like Price of Power (Meant basically a spam-able exploit based on their enchantments similar to Defile or Desecrate Enchantment from gw1), Drain Enchantment, Inspired Enchantment, Enchanter's Conundrum, and Enchanter's Balance. I also was considering that this specialization will still have access to core trait lines and skills for combinations. I absolutely would run arcane thievery to boost myself with this build. It also combos particularly well with a necromancer teammate who is corrupting boons.

In terms of fitting with Gw2, mechanically I would definitely want design limits on fragility to limit the number of instances that it can remove to avoid throwing off condition damage based builds because one person using F1) Fragility on Tequatl isn't going to do nearly as much as a stack of 50 instances of burning... But as an example if it removed a maximum of 5 instances of each condition(maybe gaining 125% bonus damage), it's not really going to affect my Mirage who by himself can generate upwards of 40 stacks of torment in a matter of seconds. Could also consider limiting Fragility to affect non-volatile conditions to not eliminate the damage contributions of other players or alternatively, only allow you to remove conditions that you have inflicted. Mechanically, condition instance ownership is already tracked since player traits only affect the conditions that they apply ex. ranger's potent poison trait.

Looking at powerblock, i would suggest lots of classes have cheat death skill, Theif's Instant Reflexes, Revenant's Soothing Bastion, Engineer's Self-Regulating Defenses, Ranger's Eternal Bond to name a few. If anything, mine is weaker because it additionally requires you to have energy...But I wanted to have a Grandmaster trait that added some survivabilty that wasn't focused solely on more dodges.

[derd.6413]

energy is the rev mechanic, dodging uses endurance.