Guild Wars 2

Currently the Spirits does not fare too well in WvW. The changes done to Spirits Unbound, moving it from Grandmaster to Master tier, was a good start. However to truly make them viable, the way the spirits work must drastically change. The way spirits work outside of WvW is for the time being, very well thought through. Their supportive role, effect and mechanics are solid. However due to the sheer amount of AOE, movement, map size and not to mention, the massive number of enemies found in WvW, the system as is, simply do not function at all.

There is two options on how to work around this issue;
A = Remove the healthbar and increase the time of which the spirit is summoned
“B = Remove the time, allowing spirits to live indefinitely, but restrict them to a healthbar. This would make them similar in function, and balancing, as pets. Naturally, the toughness and vitality stats of the spirits would have to be buffed for this to work*

System A would favor tactical play. Choosing this would help in zerg’s. As the spirits would not die, and rangers would be able to provide a solid supportive role.
System B would favor casual play. The time or place as where to summon would be unimportant, however using proper movement and positioning would be crucial to allow spirits to live longer. Mindless zerging would put your spirits in the path of high damage AOE attacks, which again would destroy them, eventually. The armor and HP buff should make spirits even tougher then the Bear pet(s) is in PvE.

Storm Spirit, while having a strong active attack, the passive effect is quite pointless. While having swiftness in combat is not bad, it is not worth wasting a utility slot for it. After the damage reduction on both Storm and Sun spirit, following the 10.12.2013 patch, the storm spirit has been below par. Infact, the nerf was perhaps over the top, seeing as you moved a otherwise adept tier (in terms of effect) trait from master to grandmaster, in addition to reducing the damage. This meant that the primary function of the storm spirit (use active, do 2-5k crit, let it die and do another 2-5k crit) is both nerfed in terms of damage, but also in terms of functionality.
The passive buff for storm spirit should be 3 seconds of quickness, with an ICD of 15 seconds. Or 5 seconds Vigor, with an ICD of 15 seconds.

Spirits should also affect more people. The ability to affect only 5 players is fine in PvE, PvP and Dungeons. However in WvW, it is too little. Especially considering how spirits work. Raising the AOE limit for spirits to 10 persons should make them more desirable in general. At most, this would allow for a general damage boost of 10%/10 seconds/10 players in a 50 player blob, gives you somewhere around 0.75% increase in DPS. Overall.

Pet’s in WvW need three buffs, immediately.
A: Give them 100% more health
B: Reduce the “Dead Pet” cooldown by 20 seconds. Pet Swap (untraited and traited) stay the same
C: Allow Search and Rescue to once more revive defeated players. Given the decreased pet leash, a cooldown of 85(68) seconds and the conditions for the shout to work (pet and downed/defeated player must be within 600 range) makes this shout very hard to use, borderline impractical and without the ability to revive defeated players. Completely and utterly useless. Seeing as no pet, even with quickness (due to reduction in action speed from 100% to 50%) are able to resurrect a player within the time it takes to stomp him or her.

If the development team find it out of question to revert back to the old Search and Rescue. Then for the love of Lyssa. Remove the shout and redesign it into something that actually benefits the pet and the ranger (and preferably allies too)

I’d rather just have the spirit effects be 100% chance from the get-go and Vigorous Spirits to increase the range of their effects and health. I do agree Storm Spirit is lacking, however, seeing how lightning is used in this game I would probably rework and alter somethings around with Sun and Storm Spirit.

Perhaps change Storm Spirit to buff players with a chance to inflict 3 seconds of blindness on hit, while giving Storm Spirit’s “Call Lightning” and additional AOE Blind and changing Sun Spirit’s “Solar Flare” AOE Blind into an AOE Burn.

My 2 copper. (suggested for all modes tho, not just WvW)

Personally I’d just do away with spirits entirely the way they are. Instead just make the utility skills buff the normal ranger pet. Activating the ability simply makes a mini spirit spawn wherever your pet is currently and activate in .5 seconds. This has a couple advantages to the current system. For starters it makes the PvP crowd happy because it removes clutter. It also reinforces the idea that the current ranger pet is a real part of the class and not some random dot we stick to our opponent. Could even make the spirits still work even if the pet is dead at your side so they act more like banners at that point and remain mobile.

Best of all is spirits no longer require trait points before they’re worth slotting on your bar, which is a problem with the majority of ranger utility these days.

Atherakhia.4086:

It also reinforces the idea that the current ranger pet is a real part of the class and not some random dot we stick to our opponent.

But… they aren’t a real part of the class as they are currently just band-aided to work and are just a dot we stick the opponent whether it is NPC or Player.