Guild Wars 2

I like Spirits as a concept.
Spirits seem to be these glass cannon buffers whose placement on the field is more about ensuring the longevity of the buff by ensuring the survival of the Spirit, and less about making sure you encompass all your allies in the effect range (like banners and turrets). There also seems to be a bit of risk/reward at play with their glass cannon nature and the buff range being larger than the activated effect range; you have a choice to endanger the duration of the buff in order to allow additional functionality.

That all sounds great on paper, and putting it into practice I feel clever finding a new hidey hole and executing map awareness. But there’s alot of little hang-ups in the execution that cut down on my enjoyment of the process.

1) The buff range is a bit on the small side (900-ish).
It’s making me feel less like I’m operating a mechanic that has an alternative emphasis on the placement, and more like I’m suffering under two restrictions; not only can my buff die, but I have to get it within midrange of people. It limits my options for clever hidey holes in a way I find more limiting than challenging. It can’t be infinite, obviously, but at least 1200.

2) (As far as I can tell) Line of sight counts for the activated effect. It’s a bit of a skill-ceiling when using spirits, I can’t use cover to get a mob within the astoundingly small range of the spirit’s activated effect.

3) Spirits aren’t consistently summoned at a particular location relative to character making utilizing cover intelligently difficult. I think they should appear in the same manner traps do, exactly where my character is, and less in the manner pets do which is randomly somewhere to the left or right.

Spirit Traits are kind of lackluster.
The additional proc-rates trait seems dissonant with the internal cooldown on procs, and Spirits following you seems more like a work-around to combat the high summoning cooldown and meh range and less something I actually want my glass cannon buffs to be doing. Don’t follow me, I’m dangerous, godkittenit.

Since we are a pet class, I think our ‘additional ally’ mechanic would be better served trait-wise by being included in some of the options we have for Pets. For example; the ‘Training’ traits such as ‘Speed Training’ and ‘Malice Training’ could be changed to affect Spirits as well. Other traits could also be looked into like; Natural Healing, Beastmaster’s Bond, Enlargement, Fortifying Bond, Companion’s Defense. Not only would this make the Spirit mechanic better in a way that’s kind of ‘pet-class-y’, but there’s also an opportunity to improve under-performing traits.

Well that was a bit of thesis. TL:DR; I think spirits would be improved if they felt more like pets and I was rewarded more for clever placement and using cover.