I may be in agreement with Ogor on Spectral Touch, in relation to Shadow vs. War, taking into account it's based on my experience, and a good portion of the shadows are HOL's from well established Stables, and that we only have one shadow in Blood Gods for endgame comparison and Zyn doesn't use that skill.

I tend to run my war's fairly aggressively and they still struggle against Spectral builds. Having your endurance cut down 35% in the first round really limits the ability of a war glad to leverage his endurance in his fight strategy. War's take a little longer to get going and take an opponent down (by attacking health) - add in that damage mitigation that the shadows have and they are incredibly difficult to take down. I can appreciate that there are various rock-paper-scissor elements at play in the game, but at this point war's seem to be very limited on options against functioning Spectral builds.

I mentioned previously that I think a worthwhile option to look at would be if the effectiveness of Spectral Touch was somehow linked in to the length of the battle (such as maybe a certain percent times the round number). That would give the slower builds some time to get going, but still penalise the really, really slow builds that just sit around. At the same time though, I have seen Spectral Touch hit and do next to nothing, but whether that's from being defensive at the right time, a natural chance to fail in the skill, or a low training level in it, I can't say.

Nate - if you're around, would you mind sharing your thoughts on the balancing? I'm curious how a Spectral build fares against, say, defensive war, offensive war (maybe faster dual wield and a slower 2H or sword-n-board), the rage builds, the theatrics builds...