Guild Wars 2

Just wondering,
AFAIK It and spectral walk are our only utility stun breakers. Spectral walk has other uses so i think perhaps 60 seconds is fair but
Spectral armor, stun breaker, short duration protection and possibly some life force gain. 90 second cooldown is too much. It feels like a wasted slot due to it taking so long.
Other classes get stun breakers on ~30 seconds cooldown UNTRAITED. That also come with other effects.
Other classes get strong stun breaker + immunity abilitys on ~60 seconds cooldown UNTRAITED.

It feels like necro is the most vulnerable class without traiting 30 into soul reaping i have no reliable stun breaker/stability. Also necromancers are the only class that cant generate vigor.
I find in PVE as i start doing higher levels, death shroud is becoming worthless as survivability tool due to taking 20k+ dmg if you take a hit. So immunes/blocks and dodges are the only survivability in this game. And areas with lots of stun its not even worth taking a 90 sec cooldown ability.

The wurm and plague sig are also stun breaks, the wurm being rather useful as a stun break, in the right situations.

Anet seems to think the spectral buff itself is very strong, but this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you outright lose the buff merely by using our class mechanic.

Well i dont think it is strong when compared to ignore pain and elixir S which provide full dmg immunity with 60 sec cooldown(untraited)
I forgot about the wurm, but the places i need the stun breaks it would die in a few seconds to aoe effects so i guess its pointless and not really an ability you can use when you get stunned.

the wurm active will activate at any range (I haven’t actually tested massive ranges but I don’t see why not), you’ll just get teleported towards it instead of to it when you’re out of range. But yeah, as I said, it’s only great in certain situations, such as in tpvp where you can put it somewhere out of the way like half way up a cliff or invisible wall by the point you’re contesting, then people can feel free to waste time killing it.

Also yes, Anet greatly overestimate spectral armor compared to what you mentioned, I’m just telling you what their logic probably is behind it.

the CD for spectral armor is excessive, as is the CD on many wells. Get your spectral armor from the traitline and be happy.

Yeah it is rather terrible. I would imagine in development they figured since it was giving protection AND life force back, they were afraid to give it a shorter cooldown in conjunction with the passive version of this from the DS tree. Comparing it to just about any immunity (tiny/ignore pain/shatter 4) the cooldown is vastly excessive, aside from the fact it doesn’t actually give immunity.

Afraid? Thinking? More like nobody could be bothered to even spend time to think about it. That’s purely my theory though.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Afraid? Thinking? More like nobody could be bothered to even spend time to think about it. That’s purely my theory though.

Well, you can blame the Spvp community then if you want. The general opinion from that world is necro is fine and balanced and working well (even overplayed). As long as that remains the case, it is unlikely there are going to be many if any buffs to the class. Why would they buff a defensive spell on a class already doing very well with survival?

Unfortunately, I wish they had said from day one they would look at WvW/PVE and Spvp through a different set of glasses. The environments are so different, that they require that. Trying the two together at the hip is always going to cause issues on one side or the other.

After playing an elementalist and having the same thing but with stability instead of LF regen, just seems like half a skill. Like it in last gasp however,, works well with plague if I am doing some zerg tanking.

Spectral armor is incredibly strong, when you are traited for it. It completely negates what happens in most fights against thief, you pop it the second they come in and stun you, and you have protection to reduce the damage, and spectral armor will give you pretty huge amounts of life force.

Not to say that it could really use some seconds shaved off its CD, but it still has some uses in bunker necro builds.

If Spectral Armor had its CD significantly shortened, I would consider traiting for it. Not sure about Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp. Both are good as stand-alone utilities to select when the situation merits it but a fully traited Spectral build is just not there yet for me.

Because it’s extremely op

On a serious note, not all spectral skills suck, just this one. Once you learn to master spectral wall you’ll be very very happy with spectral skills. Even untraited it’s an amazing skill and now we actually have a proper combo field position with it (although the field is pretty tiny, so only blast finishers hit it reliably, projectiles still are finnicky).

Very few reasons to consider this skill at all unless it’s cd is reduced significantly.

Well, I think for the same reason we have minor traits like Reanimator.
Nothing special.

Rennoko.5731:

HiSaZuL.2843:

Afraid? Thinking? More like nobody could be bothered to even spend time to think about it. That’s purely my theory though.

Well, you can blame the Spvp community then if you want. The general opinion from that world is necro is fine and balanced and working well (even overplayed). As long as that remains the case, it is unlikely there are going to be many if any buffs to the class. Why would they buff a defensive spell on a class already doing very well with survival?

Unfortunately, I wish they had said from day one they would look at WvW/PVE and Spvp through a different set of glasses. The environments are so different, that they require that. Trying the two together at the hip is always going to cause issues on one side or the other.

Would have to agree with this.

They did it in GW1 that some (not all) skills differed in the varying pvp/pve environments.

So why not here?

Isnt it the same here, just they have made slow progress splitting skills PVE/PVP.

Atleast from memory im sure the guardian skill save yourselves is totally different pvp/pve. The boons have half duration in spvp. Im trying to think of others that are split but forgot right now.
They certainly have the capability to split skills.

Bhawb.7408:

Spectral armor is incredibly strong, when you are traited for it. It completely negates what happens in most fights against thief, you pop it the second they come in and stun you, and you have protection to reduce the damage, and spectral armor will give you pretty huge amounts of life force.

Not to say that it could really use some seconds shaved off its CD, but it still has some uses in bunker necro builds.

As long as you didn’t have full lf to begin with… then what? Pop your failshroud and have it melted off?… You didn’t save yourself from anything, you were forced to use one thing instead of another simply because they are mutually exclusive or if you did pop it anyway… you broke stun… great… you gained 0 lf because u were maxed and you got a short prot which is not ment to save you from a burst spec its ment to mitigate a portion while you try to do the same. And that’s the problem with this class half the blasted mechanics/skills are mutually exclusive you can only do it this way and no other way.
You can’t do it like most other classes and roll any weapons/traits you want together and rely simply on your ability to read and comprehend what you red and then apply new found enlightenment in practice.. The day you can take any 2 aspects and have them fully working at the same time… I’ll tip mah tiny hat to anet. Until then… meh.. broken with “working as intended” tag.
The very fact that this is the only class that can never have a dev response or support or anything past some clown with l2deathshroud is a testament to how abandoned this class is.
And spectral armor is subpar in comparison with its equivalents on other classes. Both in terms of utility and application and time frames. Its worthless in some situation and in other situations its cooldown simply makes it not worth bothering with. In spvp you need defenses that can be used more then once per match. A stun break that you will use 2 times per match? Might as well not take it.

Don’t know man why it’s on a 90 sec cooldown, it feels a trash skill to me. I think i’ve used it only once to see what it looked like, never touched it again.

Sazgo.9842:

Isnt it the same here, just they have made slow progress splitting skills PVE/PVP.

Atleast from memory im sure the guardian skill save yourselves is totally different pvp/pve. The boons have half duration in spvp. Im trying to think of others that are split but forgot right now.
They certainly have the capability to split skills.

They stated in an interview that they don’t want to split them for pve/pvp because it would require players to “relearn” how to play their class and stop pve people from experienceing pvp, which is crap of course, but whatever.