Guild Wars 2

Sup.

Normally SW lasts 9s and SW lasts 8s, however with this trait it increases the duration to 15s and 13s respectively, making this quite an awesomely powerful trait. This piqued my interest, so I started mucking about with it a bit more.

SW doesn’t refresh the protection buff until the last one expires, but it can and will stack 10 more vuln if your opponent crosses over it repeatedly. At 15s, this is a pretty reliable way of sustaining protection – assuming you cross over it three times in 15s, that should be 15s+ of prot from a single cast on a 40s cooldown, as well as being a combo field, applying 10x vuln per enemy crossing AND it’s an ethereal combo field.

If only we had some blast finishers… it could give our conditionmancers some seriously powerful protection in the form of chaos armour and prot… staff 4 and Bone Minions only though

SA is very, very interesting indeed. In the case of SW, SW and SG, there was no change to the duration of the conditions or boons applied. Assuming a base of 6s, I was expecting SA to grant 7.2s of protection when cast (20 points DM). Imagine my surprise when it was actually 9s, and ignored my additional duration from DM.

Sadly, the SA trait at 15pts in Soul Reaping is not affected by SA at 20pts in Curses.

(abbreviations deliberately unclear – it amused me)

EDIT: SG lists a 5.25s chill with 30 points in Spite, yet it chilled for 7s(ish) when I cast it with SA. Seems it benefits too.

Talentless uses this trait to great effect, but he avoids the forums because they’re full of bad ideas and faulty information.

There’s his video, and the most recent But of Corpse podcast featured him as a guest speaker. I don’t think he took it too seriously, since he didn’t even log out of WvW for it. Still, he’s a solid player and good with the class.

Haha, actually Talentless was our third guest. It just took us this long to get gameplay videos from him. He is notoriously lazy about recording since he got blasted for his gameplay previously haha

The trait isn’t actually that bad.

I pick it up in a Chill focused build purely for the increase on the Chill on Spectral Grasp

Going from 4 second duration base to 6 second duration may not seem like much (Only an additional 2 seconds) but since it affects the base duration, it means with the 100% Chill duration I ran with, the trait allowed me to gain an additional 4 seconds of Chill

Which when combined with other sources does allow for easy application of Perma-Chill. 12 seconds per 24 with fully traited Spectral Grasp, 10 seconds per 12 with traited Dark Path and 10 seconds per 16 with traited Spinal Shivers

Can really lock someone down with that.

Yeah, I can see him crossing back/forth over that field to get the warrior vuln plus prot for himself. Did people criticise based on his ground casting? Pity really. He’s got some really neat ideas but I can imagine people will get kitten y if he’s not got fast ground casting on.

I use this in some of my minion/staff builds now (because, we DO have blast finishers on both minions and staff :P) not to mention the vul on enemies and prots on minions like you mentioned. It’s not the best for a competitive format and I’ve been getting lots of grief for even suggesting it, but it does work trust me. Chaos armor and confusion, 2 things that were previously denied us as a class, are now in your reach. If you practice enough with it, it works pretty smoothly. I won’t post the specific build because my setup might not work for everyone, but you know where the trait is so just work it into your build. The minions I use are bone fiend and bone minions (bone fiend does constant confusion projectile finishers and bone minions do the blast finishers, you can also throw in flesh wurm for another confusion finisher if you want). The staff acts as your personal blast finisher and an if-y projectile finisher (doesn’t work reliably but the effect is there). I use this for a bit more of a tanky setup than a raw damage one like some of the minion builds, but the minions still dish out tons of dmg and the extra combos really bring it all together. You just have to get used to reminding yourself to use the wall yourself for the prots and as bait to drag them through it. It takes a lot of practice, I won’t lie.

Used this for months in my spectral power/crit build. Tried to defend it on the forums a few times :P glad to see others using it! It’s really great for both offense and defense.

SA does increase the base time of the protection from Spectral Wall. In my tests it went from 5s to 7s base, even though the tooltip doesn’t update. So one can still only run through the wall twice before it expires. If you were getting 9s with your build, that’s awesome I was getting 7.7s because of only 10 points in Death Magic. 16s of protection on a 32s cooldown is amazing (18s for you), plus Last Gasp means you can have Protection on for over half the fight.

Then I come to the forum and see people complaining that necromancer doesn’t have good access to boons like protection :P

lettucemode.3789:

Used this for months in my spectral power/crit build. Tried to defend it on the forums a few times :P glad to see others using it! It’s really great for both offense and defense.

SA does increase the base time of the protection from Spectral Wall. In my tests it went from 5s to 7s base, even though the tooltip doesn’t update. So one can still only run through the wall twice before it expires. If you were getting 9s with your build, that’s awesome I was getting 7.7s because of only 10 points in Death Magic. 16s of protection on a 32s cooldown is amazing (18s for you), plus Last Gasp means you can have Protection on for over half the fight.

Then I come to the forum and see people complaining that necromancer doesn’t have good access to boons like protection :P

When I read complaints like that I always mentally insert the words “Compared to Guardians.” We have bad damage (compared to GS Warriors). We have bad boon stacking (compared Guardian). We have bad mobility (compared to Thieves). We have bad bleed stacking (compared to Rangers). Basically, we’re a hybrid class that isn’t as good at any other class’s specialty. We have OK everything, an obscene amount of hitpoints, and a variety of debuffs at our disposal.

I found our access to Protection pretty good, supposing you actually build for it.

Yep I use a spectral power build in WvW when I’m not condition/terror. I’ve settled on 1 well and 2 spectral utilities which I swap around but 3 spectral is ok too. The build again is:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IjWoe3m1GDnCY+Q2QFyNSRxKTzwc4B

I don’t read this forum diligently but it sounds close to what Talentless does – the only other person I’ve seen doing something like this.

I think the SW/WoD is a potent combo vs melee who are forced to engage, and engage immediately – warriors for example. Less significant against thieves, who can stealth and wait out the duration, then re-engage.

I always go in with SW, but I may take SW as well in future. My only concern is that SW doesn’t tag like WoS/WoC, and while I can see its power in winning engagements it most definitely does not help grab loot bags.

Solo roaming, SW/WoC(WoD?)/SW, but for ZvZ I think WoC/WoS/SW for permaswift.

lettucemode.3789:

Used this for months in my spectral power/crit build. Tried to defend it on the forums a few times :P glad to see others using it! It’s really great for both offense and defense.

SA does increase the base time of the protection from Spectral Wall. In my tests it went from 5s to 7s base, even though the tooltip doesn’t update. So one can still only run through the wall twice before it expires. If you were getting 9s with your build, that’s awesome I was getting 7.7s because of only 10 points in Death Magic. 16s of protection on a 32s cooldown is amazing (18s for you), plus Last Gasp means you can have Protection on for over half the fight.

Then I come to the forum and see people complaining that necromancer doesn’t have good access to boons like protection :P

It is more of a problem of access to those boons on demand. A wall that cannot move with you is completely useless in WvW if the fight moves 3 clicks to the east. Protection everytime you get regeneration, on a 15 second cooldown, is up pretty much any time you need it…. and that is a mesmer MINOR trait.

It is clunky to use in WvW to say the least, but it has uses there and is very strong in either case. Again, I don’t like wall skills like that because of how fluid the fights are. It can be useful, but taking it over so many other, better choices is a tough call. You are giving up both a major trait and a utility slot for that arrangement. I would rather just take another well, or BIP, or nerfed epidemic.

Personal choice I guess, but definately for SPVP, where you know that protection from the wall is right there on demand and you can use the wall to zone someone out.

dueling guys who are enouth stupid to go through a spectral wall more than once in a fight is not WvW.

Silverthorn.8576:

dueling guys who are enouth stupid to go through a spectral wall more than once in a fight is not WvW.

Maybe you haven’t spent as much time in wvw as you think then lol. I see people far more stupid than that all the time. Ever seen the lemmings throw themselves to the BL gate defenders and pile up the bodies? Or seen 5 or more run directly into the wells you just set down in front of you or get feared off cliffs or just chewed up by siege? Yeah plenty of lemmings out there.

Spectrals are very underrated, I agree OP. You’re even leaving out another really cool part of attunement, 5% LF, or an eHP “heal” of 3%-3.9% (depending on SR investment), which is a really nice side benefit for an already nice trait.

I ran a pretty glassy build using runes to increase protection duration an if i remember it was something around 9 sec from s.wall each time you passed through and i think SA gt up to 12. As for people in wvw, most are pretty stupid. Not uncommon to just walk around a zerg that is too lazy to pan a camera or find someone dumb enough to walk through a wall that doesnt directly do any damage to them.

I always found players who picked up spectral based utils and traits to be more duelists than brawler type players. in many cases, going against an experienced player will kill a spectral player. sw I think is one of those matches made in heaven with the axe since the protection and mental throw off from a player moving around the wall helps cover the player while channeling or getting in position to use axe3.

overall imo axe still needs damage improvement to be used for higher competitive play.

I don’t think axe needs a huge buff, if anything it just needs a little tweaking on the auto attack, which may or may not lead to a dmg buff, and definitely a better retaliation duration (a split for pvp, because you’ll hardly ever hit enough people at once in pvp to get any substantial retal buff but in pve you can upkeep it nearly permanently)but the thing about axe is it’s not your conventional weapon. Your auto attack is not your main attack, it is a prepper for your main (#2 skill). the other thing about axe is the visual effect it has on the opponent. Most people know by now that axe is a semi-ranged weapon whether they play necro or not. And while dagger may lay down consistent dmg when it is landing hits, how much time is spent trying to make sure those hits land? The reason is that with daggers they are trying to avoid you, with axe, they try to close in on you more, which does nothing to help them, but they don’t know that. They just see you kiting with the ranged weapon and so they don’t dodge as much, don’t kite as much, or block, ect. I see this alot. I’m no pvp expert though, I’m only just now getting serious about it and just hit my rank 20 this week, so I’m sure others will argue with me, but I know what I have observed. I think axe is nearing a good place for the necro, and recently I was an advocate for getting a cleave on #1 skill, but honestly I don’t think it needs it anymore now that I’ve spent more time using it and gotten to know it better. I still stand by the LF generation from it and nearly all necro weapons though. Needs to be fixed for sure. And I will champion that cause for as long as they insist DS is our core mechanic. And that’s something I can say with 100% certainty. Wow….I went so far off topic on this thread I won’t be surprised if they move me or delete it lol.

Rennoko.5731:

It is more of a problem of access to those boons on demand. A wall that cannot move with you is completely useless in WvW if the fight moves 3 clicks to the east. Protection everytime you get regeneration, on a 15 second cooldown, is up pretty much any time you need it…. and that is a mesmer MINOR trait.

Pretty much this. I find that if I use it in a more mobile fight, it’s just to get the 6+ seconds of protection and then I leave it behind. Sometimes I find it to be detrimental to even bother putting it down if my opponents got the jump on me or realize I essentially just set up a base.

I used it for awhile, but ultimately I went back to minion master for sPVP. The biggest problem with Wall is that, once it is put down, your opponent knows exactly where you intend to prolong the fight. Lava fonts and grenades will rain from the sky around that location. It is rare for me to ever have a player run through it and not cleanse their conditions, let alone run through it twice or more. Teammates usually have a habit of not realizing it is a gigantic simmering protection boon, so they’ll not run through it and instead try to combo off of it.

Spectral Armor is great… when it’s around. But that 72 second recharge when traited is painful.

Spectral walk I’ve never really bothered using. I mostly use spectral skills on power builds, since on condition builds I end up dedicating my resources to other things like Corrupt Boon and Epidemic and stuff. On power and hybrid builds, I almost always have the warhorn for swiftness, and so Walk is almost always left out of any spectral build I make.

Spectral grasp is meh in sPVP. I tried to use it for a chill build, but the biggest problem was that a chill only works at a distance, and with SG that distance was always closed rather quickly. I’d end up running away to get some range, and then they’d snipe my back or just cleanse and chase after me. The best use of SG IMO is to yank an enemy from the enemy crowd to the friendly crowd, where he can be focused and killed quickly. It is for this reason that SG is incredibly useful in WvW.

All in all, I’d have to say that spectrals aren’t half bad. They’re a bit awkward to use and I find them lacking sometimes, but overall they’re alright. Wall, in particular, can make or break a fight depending on if teammates will recognize it as a standing protection boon.

I’m currently using d/d 30/0/10/0/30 picking up 20% lower spectral cd + SA at 50% hp. My utilities are SArmor, SWall, and SWalk. I’m using runes of Earth for a chance to gain protection on hit, as well as projectile protection at 20% hp. I’m thinking about switching from d/d to a/f, but ill have to do some testing on that. I really like having many sources of protection. I can’t burst people down in a Dark Pact + Well combo, but I still have good damage output when the target drops below 50%, as well as some survivability. I really like the trait that increases Spectral duration + grants LF, but I don’t want to sacrifice points anywhere else to get there. I have yet to try this build in a tournament. I’ve been using Khalifa’s build for tournies, and that works for me, but I feel too squishy with low LF gain and only protection at 50% hp.

I had this one idea floating around, making SArmor a passive… plain a passive 10% (15% while Attunement) damage reduction and 1% LF when hit for more than 5% (3% while Attunement) of hp that then instead turns into additional 5% reduction while in DS.
Each of the other “attrition/hp survival” classes have one of the reduction signets or effects (and all 3 have a 6 second immortality to damage pre 90 seconds, but that would be op in combo of DS).

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=74317

My first thought when reading all the SW, SW, SA and SA stuff…

Not tried it, but last grasp 15 in soulreaping is a key trait in my builds, making it better would be nice.

Step 1: Stack staff marks on your feet
Step 2: Put spectral wall between you and your target
Step 3: Spectral grasp target through spectral wall into your staff marks (with blast finisher)

Hanzo.9624:

Step 1: Stack staff marks on your feet
Step 2: Put spectral wall between you and your target
Step 3: Spectral grasp target through spectral wall into your staff marks (with blast finisher)

exactly this. blast finisher from putrid mark combined with chill of death and the chill on blindness proc can also add chill+cripple on proper execution of this tactic. then you drop your wells, kite, and add more chills so they can’t hobble out of the edge before they get the ticks from the wells.

Acronym-induced brain meltdown!

Sheobix.8796:

Hanzo.9624:

Step 1: Stack staff marks on your feet
Step 2: Put spectral wall between you and your target
Step 3: Spectral grasp target through spectral wall into your staff marks (with blast finisher)

exactly this. blast finisher from putrid mark combined with chill of death and the chill on blindness proc can also add chill+cripple on proper execution of this tactic. then you drop your wells, kite, and add more chills so they can’t hobble out of the edge before they get the ticks from the wells.

Or…. right at step 3 your spectral grasp fails or gets dodged, and you are standing on the wall/marks with your hands in your pockets, while they are attacking you from range. Not to mention it took 2 utilities just to get them to you and in that damage if it works.

If you can force someone to be near the wall, like in Spvp, sure…. but otherwise its way too much risk because you are telegraphing where you want the fight to take place, and all they have to do is not fight there.

Reminds me of the Dev post where he said he likes to chain dagger 3 casting it as the DS2 projectile is in flight for an instant port/immobilize/chill. When you completely ignore the very likely chances that they have a way to avoid one of a long chain events, the likelyhood of that chain of events failing horribly goes up. (this is easier to pull off now since path can’t be blocked, but the point stands)

Severe lack of immobilize, makes landing these fancy combos a matter of lack of skill on the opponent. The reason sword 3 into shatter is so strong for mesmer is because it can’t be dodged once you are rooted. The reason dagger 3 into wells is so strong, is because it can’t be dodged once you are rooted.

Yes there are other ways to get out, but much less than if they have dodge available. These fancy combos with wall suppose they don’t dodge a very telegraphed attack, and very telegraphed setup of marks and walls.

Personally if I saw someone marking their feet and putting down a spectral wall…. I would just walk out of range, and drop my marks on top of them. Or if I was any other class I would go OOR and just wait for the wall to go down. The success people have with this skill is around people being stupid enough to ignore the wall. That is a comment on their lack of skill, not the overall effectiveness of the ability.

Rennoko – it all depends, doesn’t it?

If you drop it mid-fight vs a melee opponent and can outrange them, then they either engage at your location and risk vuln, or let you mince about picking up prot 3 times.

If you drop it mid-fight vs a ranged player, you may struggle to get them to cross it once, let alone twice.

You can also drop it at the front of your zerg and let everyone pick up prot or the entire enemy team pick up vuln.

It might be easily avoided by the enemy, but armed with axe or staff you’re able to control the field. Sure a longbow ranger might not give two kittens, but worst case scenario you’re picking up prot equal to 2 well casts or Spectral Armour.

I’m not sure if it’s better than WoS (root + WoS = easy kill quite often) but I’m gonna try it before I rule it out.

Rennoko.5731:

Sheobix.8796:

Hanzo.9624:

Step 1: Stack staff marks on your feet
Step 2: Put spectral wall between you and your target
Step 3: Spectral grasp target through spectral wall into your staff marks (with blast finisher)

exactly this. blast finisher from putrid mark combined with chill of death and the chill on blindness proc can also add chill+cripple on proper execution of this tactic. then you drop your wells, kite, and add more chills so they can’t hobble out of the edge before they get the ticks from the wells.

Or…. right at step 3 your spectral grasp fails or gets dodged, and you are standing on the wall/marks with your hands in your pockets, while they are attacking you from range. Not to mention it took 2 utilities just to get them to you and in that damage if it works.

If you can force someone to be near the wall, like in Spvp, sure…. but otherwise its way too much risk because you are telegraphing where you want the fight to take place, and all they have to do is not fight there.

Reminds me of the Dev post where he said he likes to chain dagger 3 casting it as the DS2 projectile is in flight for an instant port/immobilize/chill. When you completely ignore the very likely chances that they have a way to avoid one of a long chain events, the likelyhood of that chain of events failing horribly goes up. (this is easier to pull off now since path can’t be blocked, but the point stands)

Severe lack of immobilize, makes landing these fancy combos a matter of lack of skill on the opponent. The reason sword 3 into shatter is so strong for mesmer is because it can’t be dodged once you are rooted. The reason dagger 3 into wells is so strong, is because it can’t be dodged once you are rooted.

Yes there are other ways to get out, but much less than if they have dodge available. These fancy combos with wall suppose they don’t dodge a very telegraphed attack, and very telegraphed setup of marks and walls.

Personally if I saw someone marking their feet and putting down a spectral wall…. I would just walk out of range, and drop my marks on top of them. Or if I was any other class I would go OOR and just wait for the wall to go down. The success people have with this skill is around people being stupid enough to ignore the wall. That is a comment on their lack of skill, not the overall effectiveness of the ability.

So, the short version is that Area Denial tools are of limited value in WvW because there’s always somewhere else to stand.

I wonder how long they’re going to take to include “Bigger AoE Fields” in their WvW Ranking abilities.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Rennoko – it all depends, doesn’t it?

If you drop it mid-fight vs a melee opponent and can outrange them, then they either engage at your location and risk vuln, or let you mince about picking up prot 3 times.

That’s what it comes down to though. Spectral wall only shines against melee classes when you are on the defense, otherwise they will just walk away. I’de glady swap it out for another spectral ability but one requires me to pray first while the other requires me to pray after.

If someone’s mid-fight and wanting to win, then they’ll stay and fight even if you skip back and forth in SW. IT’s only once they start to lose that you’re likely to see them change behaviour.

If you’re a ranged player vs melee, then SW is great, because the fight dynamic will force the melee player into your SW area.

If you’re ranged vs ranged, then load up the bleeds and go back/forth to get prot. 3 lots of 5s (plus whatever duration you’ve got) is massively better than the wells prot trait, and as it’s applied whenever it’s absent you can get boon stripped/corrupted numerous times and still hold onto it.

It’s a control ability. All control abilities can be mitigated to some extent – this is the nature of a game. The art is in forcing your opponent to choose between a disadvantage and running away, and non thief/elementalists suffer when running.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

It’s a control ability. All control abilities can be mitigated to some extent – this is the nature of a game. The art is in forcing your opponent to choose between a disadvantage and running away, and non thief/elementalists suffer when running.

The disadvantage is only apparent if you are fighting someone who has no option to go ranged. Aside from a few thief S/P D/P builds, I can’t think of anyone in WvW who doesn’t have some kind of ranged option.

You don’t suffer any ill effects running away from the wall either. Just backing off for a few seconds and then coming back in is the nature of WvW encounters. Think about glamour fields and confusion on entry. Those effects are basically the same thing; they are about zone control. I throw down a glamour, and you know that being in that glamour field is BAD.

But glamours have HUGE area of effect, and can be dropped right on top of people very easily. If the skill was called spectral FIELD, and it was an area similar to a buffed up mark, it would be a better skill. It would be able to zone out much better, and would punish enemy movement much more broadly.

I do agree it is much better than the well protection trait by far, but that is a trait vs. a skill. I would attest that the well protection major trait is worse than the protection trait mesmers get at minor 15.

The other side of this coin is that the vuln doesn’t even really help out condition based heros. The effect is minimal, when your base damage is so low. And for me personally comparing it to the potential BIP (guaranteed signifcant extra damage), any well, corruption boon, I would put it behind all that.

I would ask the potential zoning of well of darkness vs. spectral wall. They are both designed to zone out, but one does it much better than the other. (advocating for Spectral Field!)

Hmm… well assuming your opponent doesn’t run heavy stun breakers/condi removal, i can think of a (pvp) build that would be pretty amusing. Would basically be a spectral fearomancer. Put this together really quick: http://en.gw2codex.com/build/25053-fear-of-the-spectre

Edit: Btw, the above is a terrible build, or I am a terrible player with it. ( long cast times )

I noticed Spectral Walk port goes up to like 12-14 seconds with attunement and some points in DM, you could pull off some really nifty jukes and escapes with that much space to work with. With only 8 seconds to port back, most enemies can keep you in line of sight and close enough to chase you down if there isn’t a cliff or obstacles around to hide behind. Still I don’t like the wall and armor nearly well enough to take the trait.

The problem I see with Spectral skills, even traited, is that they do not cut incoming damage enough. They need more up-time and, in the case of Wall which is good only if you can force someone or something to use it, to be broadened into a dome. Traited wells and a blind/chill build do more, I think, to reduce incoming damage than spectral skills and have outgoing damage where spectral does not.

The Death Magic tree is crammed with too many useful traits for me to burn them on a tank build that has only 25% incoming damage reduction without 100% up-time and no outgoing damage in exchange. Dodges, blinds, and chills along with DS do more to avoid damage than all of the spectral skills. Walk has the juke/teleport/parachute and Grasp is a dicey tele-pull that I use when the situation calls for it but that is about it, for me.

I find spectral skills to be awesome but that’s just my opinion. Ive always ran with the 20% cd reduction trait ad lately have now started also using SA. I use walk because with walk+warhorn I have perma swift easily, a very nice juke in combat, great use for jumping off cliffs and taking no dmg, and also popping it in combat to get that little more life force buildup as you get hit. I have also always used grasp because of the position control it allows, the chill, and also very nice is the life force generation. A lot of ppl tend to think you should only use grasp if your opponent is running away from you or already at a distance. Unless you know your opponent is about to dart away from you then it is perfectly fine to use it when you are in melee range or very close tot hem because chill makes it easier to land everything and it also increases their cd. Lastly, while traited with SA it gives 15% life force when you hit some1 with it(16.5%) if you also have 5 pts in soul reaping. Idk about most ppl but that is a good chunk of life force especially when coupled with focus #4 which if your close and getting all bounces will give you 12%(13.2% traited), both of those together would net you 19.7% life force if traited in a very short amount of time.

thank you for reading my wall of text sorry im to lazy to format it better.

Pendragon.8735:

I noticed Spectral Walk port goes up to like 12-14 seconds with attunement and some points in DM, you could pull off some really nifty jukes and escapes with that much space to work with. With only 8 seconds to port back, most enemies can keep you in line of sight and close enough to chase you down if there isn’t a cliff or obstacles around to hide behind. Still I don’t like the wall and armor nearly well enough to take the trait.

Yeah, I’ve outran sword thieves who were smart enough to leave their port starting point at mine, but still couldn’t handle the maximum range. Spectral walk is awesome as a stun breaker and for building life force, but as soon as I use it in a fight, I have no choice but to finish it (which is a pain as a necro). I honestly wish SA had some sort of secondary activation ability like walk to be a double stun breaker and to bring it up to speed (with a lower cd). Storing and returning damage while breaking stun on activation + removing any left over protection would be pretty fun.

Rennoko.5731:

But glamours have HUGE area of effect, and can be dropped right on top of people very easily. If the skill was called spectral FIELD, and it was an area similar to a buffed up mark, it would be a better skill. It would be able to zone out much better, and would punish enemy movement much more broadly.

I do agree it is much better than the well protection trait by far, but that is a trait vs. a skill. I would attest that the well protection major trait is worse than the protection trait mesmers get at minor 15.

I would ask the potential zoning of well of darkness vs. spectral wall. They are both designed to zone out, but one does it much better than the other. (advocating for Spectral Field!)

This would be a welcome change at least for me and it goes extremely well with the duelist play style of powermancers (especially the well bombing fellows). This change is less about how oblivious your opponent can be and more about how they will respond to the changing situation. The protection and vulnerability would need some hefty nerfing, but I would like to see this change.

“Or…. right at step 3 your spectral grasp fails or gets dodged, and you are standing on the wall/marks with your hands in your pockets, while they are attacking you from range. Not to mention it took 2 utilities just to get them to you and in that damage if it works.”

Not everything works all of the time. Dagger 3 into wells doesn’t always work either but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth using. It’s more for fun than anything.

Tip: To make sure spectral grasp hits the target more often, cast it then immediately DS fear them so they can’t avoid it. Then you pull them into your trap with fury up, build depending.

I also recommend in a D/W setup to use warhorn 5 when spectral grasp or dark path is in the air. That way when you do end up closing the gap to your opponent they’re immediately crippled and stuck to you. I’ve seen warhorn 5 bring me from 0% life force to %100 in group fights, it’s a great skill when used offensively and not wasted every time it’s off cool down just for swiftness.

Good tips, Hanzo. A Spectral build has always had potential but, for me, has never quite been good enough to run as an all-purpose build, which is kind of what I like to have when going from one situation to another. I need to try out ways to make spectral work in situations that are not good matches for it.

e-famous ftw.

Spectral attunement is well worth it if you’re a WvW roamer who prefers 100% swiftness (and plan to have at least 10 in SR) with a skill that can save your life over 25% movement speed signet that is otherwise a wasted slot.

However, it is also something I would drop if I were a tpvp player. Wouldnt need it. So as with all builds and traits, completely depends on your playstyle and what you need.

Went into the mists to decide on an endgame build, spectral attunement + blood & lifesteal is very scary.

ekemeister – deciding on an end game build is fine, except there will always be something else to try with necro. I have spent well over 500g on armor and trinkets for necro. and im not done yet!
I guess what im trying to say is theres not just 1 build I use (closer to 5 or 6 actually) and I would imagine alot of necros are the same.

I have been playing with a spectral high dps build over the last few days and am blasting the hell out of people, its very fun to play as when my LF hits empty, its normally full again within 10s so I can sit in a decent amount of DS every time I enter.

I love Spectral Attunement but I can’t wrap my head around how to make it useful for zerg busting. Obviously I would take 20 in Curses for longer duration and at least 10 in Soul Reaping for cooldown reduction. Anyone have an idea where the remaining points wold work best? I’d hate to drop staff, I need to have some badges you know

haha staff is our badge harvester! if using a power build/play style you could go 10/20/10/0/30 or 30/20/10/0/10.

I currently use 20/20/0/0/30 and love it, but I have not got staff equipped. maybe give those ^^ a go and see how you like it. you can adapt/change things to fit your play style of course

I’ll give it a shot. Right now I’ve been using a chill duration build with blind well and plague, which is fun but gets boring sometimes. I feel like a traited SWall alone is more useful sometimes.

I’ve never tried a FULL chill build because I don’t really enjoy the half hearted chill build I use to bunker sometimes. but I see what you mean, spectral wall is very strong. I dont use it though. Maybe I will in future but I don’t like having things like running back through the wall after protection expires to distract me/hold me back while fighting. I use SArmor, SGrasp and SWalk and love the style it brings.

I have a few interupts, boon strippers, snares and big DPS attacks at all times which is great for unsettling and Messing up your opponents ‘flow’ . not to mention the amazing LF regen this build uses as its survivability.

I don’t like raising old threads from the dead…but I figure this is probably the place to post my Q…

Does anyone know what amount of LF is gained with this trait when a spectral skill is used?

Kitedyou.1720:

I don’t like raising old threads from the dead…but I figure this is probably the place to post my Q…

Does anyone know what amount of LF is gained with this trait when a spectral skill is used?

Honestly I think you could have just made a new thread about it?

But it’s an additional 5% for each of them on being cast, with the exception of Spectral Grasp which only gives an additional 5% if it hits a target.

Edit for below: Fair enough, and glad to help.

Yeah, I could have probably done that (new thread) but then this one now has the answer to many questions about this trait.

Thanks for the input Softspoken.