Guild Wars 2

Spectral Mastery is completely outclasses by Vital Persistence unless you take a full Spectral build. As it is, Lich is way behind where Rampage is due to weak defense and easy counterplay. Spectral Walk lost its most fun advantage of free-fall negation. Spectral Armor is decent.

Why not add a 10% damage bonus while under the effect of a Spectral Skill for Spectral Mastery?

No it isn’t. People seem to forget that spectral mastery also grants a 50% increased duration on what spectrals give, on top of the 5% LF on use and CDR.

This means 50% longer protection and SA effect, which is much stronger in combat than 50% degeneration. It means Grasp is now a 6s chill 20% LF on a 24s CD. The only problem with Spectral Mastery right now is it doesn’t work properly on everything. Spectral Wall doesn’t get 50% longer protection or 50% longer fears, and the swiftness on Spectral Walk also isn’t increased. If those were true, SM would absolutely compete with VP, you would choose between high potential DS uptime when not under fire, or high in-combat DS uptime.

But the issues with SM aren’t what it is supposed to do, it is the discrepancy between what it should do and what it does, and then any weaknesses in Spectral skills themselves.

Just allow utilities to be used in death shroud. I don’t get the silly limitation.

I don’t think spectral mastery granting a damage bonus would do much good as it would encourage necromancers to pop spectrals even when they don’t need them to do extra damage.

I had some hope that Spectral Mastery would see more use with HoT, seeing as GS users can really make use of those skills.
Spectral Grasp for gap closing, Spectral Armor for sustain, Spectral Wall for CC/sustain. And on top of that they all get a pretty hefty LF bonus on top.
They all quite fit with the GS quite well.

Vital Persistence felt semi-mandatory though for Reaper Shroud. If that wasn’t as much the case, it would actually make that line interesting.
I also hope they fix it so Spectral Wall and Spectral Walk fully benefit from the duration bonus.

Bhawb.7408:

No it isn’t. People seem to forget that spectral mastery also grants a 50% increased duration on what spectrals give, on top of the 5% LF on use and CDR.

This means 50% longer protection and SA effect, which is much stronger in combat than 50% degeneration. It means Grasp is now a 6s chill 20% LF on a 24s CD. The only problem with Spectral Mastery right now is it doesn’t work properly on everything. Spectral Wall doesn’t get 50% longer protection or 50% longer fears, and the swiftness on Spectral Walk also isn’t increased. If those were true, SM would absolutely compete with VP, you would choose between high potential DS uptime when not under fire, or high in-combat DS uptime.

But the issues with SM aren’t what it is supposed to do, it is the discrepancy between what it should do and what it does, and then any weaknesses in Spectral skills themselves.

Saying, “people forget,” implies I forgot. I didn’t. With Vampiric Rituals I get more damage, healing, and more or less Protection uptime.

meow one twenty.4376:

Saying, “people forget,” implies I forgot. I didn’t. With Vampiric Rituals I get more damage, healing, and more or less Protection uptime.

You don’t get even close to the protection uptime on a skill for skill basis. 66% Protection uptime with 2 skills plus the minor trait using Spectral Mastery (if they fixed Spectral Wall), you get 37% if you fill all 4 utility/heal skills with the lowest CD wells. So it isn’t even close. And they don’t compete as traits, one is a GM, one is master, different trait lines, one is damage/healing, the other is LF/increased effectiveness.

I consider spectral mastery the better trait. Its only held back by the weakness of certain spectral skills. But lich alone makes spectral mastery a top tier trait.

spoj.9672:

I consider spectral mastery the better trait. Its only held back by the weakness of certain spectral skills. But lich alone makes spectral mastery a top tier trait.

Who actually uses Lich? If they aren’t downed immediately in PvP then something is wrong.

Bhawb.7408:

meow one twenty.4376:

Saying, “people forget,” implies I forgot. I didn’t. With Vampiric Rituals I get more damage, healing, and more or less Protection uptime.

You don’t get even close to the protection uptime on a skill for skill basis. 66% Protection uptime with 2 skills plus the minor trait using Spectral Mastery (if they fixed Spectral Wall), you get 37% if you fill all 4 utility/heal skills with the lowest CD wells. So it isn’t even close. And they don’t compete as traits, one is a GM, one is master, different trait lines, one is damage/healing, the other is LF/increased effectiveness.

I would like to point out that I already said Spectral Armor was decent. Spectral Mastery and Vampiric Wells don’t compete in traits, but with the exception of Spectral Armor they do compete on your utility bar.

Going back to your Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp, you can’t be considering bugged/broken skills as not being bugged/broken for the sake of your argument. Things are or they are not. We can play the, “If they fixed ‘X’,” game all day long and get nowhere.

I was talking about PvE. Traits and skills dont have to be useful in every gametype.

@meow one twenty I’ve seen a lot of Necros in ranked sPvP use Lich… Not saying if the skill is good or bad (I dislike it… and I think it should also be able to stomp like Rampage can) but people still use it.

Spectral Mastery can be very good, but imo you need two spectral skills to make it worth it. If I take Spectral Wall and Spectral Walk, and Spectral Attunement, I’d say I have a lot more survivalbility than if I took Corrupt Boon, Spectral Walk and Vital Persistence … but you’d have less damage with the former.

Too bad there aren’t really any offensive spectrals (besides lich)… but maybe that will change with Reaper. Fear —> chill —> damage. Spectral Wall will do fear+chill —> damage.

meow one twenty.4376:

Going back to your Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp, you can’t be considering bugged/broken skills as not being bugged/broken for the sake of your argument. Things are or they are not. We can play the, “If they fixed ‘X’,” game all day long and get nowhere.

You can never make a trait work if the skills it affects are fundamentally broken. Nothing you will do to the trait will fix that.

Just to say, if you happen to do some WvW zergling, Spectral mastery outclass by far the defense you can achieve with Vital persistence.

Vital persistence is meant for the fight where you will unlikely have to take a lot of hit. It’s a very good choice for shroud DPS build that does not expect to be ganked on.

Spectral mastery is the exact opposite in regard of philosophy. You will usually take this one to max out your LF generation and thus survive longer in large fight where you will take a lot of hits.

So no. No need for damage bonus on Spectral mastery.

Definitely not a need.

The idea is if we start getting damage modifiers from traited sources we can start being more useful in PvE. Give us back our 10% bonus for weilding Axe, a 10% bonus for Spectral Mastery, and all of a sudden we start doing pretty decent damage with Ice Bow and Lich. Pvp-wise nothing really changes, axe is useless for much of anything else so TTK with Lich would be the same (it’s mostly 2-3 hits for a down anyway), and WvW balance is pretty much an oxymoron.

For literally years I complained that Spectral skills needed something extra to make a full Spectral build viable. Now, it is. I am satisfied with its state.

The only outstanding improvements on my list are better Grasp connection rates, revisit Lich skills, and a Spectral heal.

I actually like the spectral skills and the trait. Could it use some quality of life improvements sure. I would love to get my 20 life force back even if spectral grasp doesn’t land considering all pull skills in game are iffy.

Bhawb.7408:

No it isn’t. People seem to forget that spectral mastery also grants a 50% increased duration on what spectrals give, on top of the 5% LF on use and CDR.

This means 50% longer protection and SA effect, which is much stronger in combat than 50% degeneration. It means Grasp is now a 6s chill 20% LF on a 24s CD. The only problem with Spectral Mastery right now is it doesn’t work properly on everything. Spectral Wall doesn’t get 50% longer protection or 50% longer fears, and the swiftness on Spectral Walk also isn’t increased. If those were true, SM would absolutely compete with VP, you would choose between high potential DS uptime when not under fire, or high in-combat DS uptime.

But the issues with SM aren’t what it is supposed to do, it is the discrepancy between what it should do and what it does, and then any weaknesses in Spectral skills themselves.

Pretty much what Bhawb said.

Also that Spectral mastery is a lot better for a condi build while Vital Persistence is better for power. It’s difficult to gain and maintain Life Force as a condition build and Spectral’s really help with this. I always run SArmor and SWalk on my conditionmancer and the third utility is one of 4 things depending on the situation; SGrasp, SWall, Plague Signet or Corrupt Boon.

With Spectral mastery Spectral Grasp gives you 20% Life Force every 24 seconds assuming you hit with it every time. On a condition build that’s freaking huge… Can’t tell you how many times that skill has changed the outcome of a fight for me.