Guild Wars 2

" Remember I’m only trying to get the ball rolling, these just idea’s I’ve come up with and I’m not saying they are perfect but they idea’s to talk about and improve on"

Hi, I’m going to start off with little history. I main ranger I have over 2300 hours which is mostly PvP, I’m not going to claim I’m a pro ranger but I know the builds well. I love playing my spirit ranger build.

I’ve been trying to think of way’s to make the Spirit build to be on par with our Beastmaster and Trap ranger builds while keeping the Spirit build viable. Here is list of idea’s which I think would greatly improve the game as a hole.

Trait Vigorous Spirits – Rework the trait so it only gives a 15% better chance of providing their benefits. That brings it down to 50% chance across the team rather then 70%. (Condition heavy team’s really shine with the bonus that Sun Spirit offers, this will also help balance the condition meta)

Trait Nature’s Vengeance – Rework so when a spirit is killed it has 50% chance of triggering its active skill. Currently Storm Spirit (Call Lightning) and Spirit of Nature (Nature’s Renewal) are rather strong when they are killed vs some builds. Rather then removing the effect from play just make it chance based.

Elite Skill Spirit of Nature – Nature’s Renewal should have cool down of 60 seconds, this would make the game more tactical. Would force the ranger to pick between using it as team condition remove or team revive.

Spirit AI Improvement – Make Spirit’s sit behind the ranger within 180 radius, this would be major improvement, it will stop the spirits from behind able to body block, it will also help the ranger with placement of the active skill and improve the general mitigation of damage spirit’s normally take.

There really isn’t many improvement’s you could do without breaking the Spirit ranger as hole making build no longer viable.

I hope this help’s and I hope the Dev’s take time to read my post and maybe add these improvement’s.

This is not a rework it is a nerf.

Spirits need 30 points in a traitline to be any good, and because a particular bunker spec is using them to their advantage you’re advocating these spirits be nerfed even though other specs don’t run spirits to the same effect, and wouldn’t even consider running the spirits if you nerfed them into this.

I don’t ever see my glass ranger sacrificing any stunbreaker utilities for a 50% chance at an effect when the encounter is do or die. I don’t even see power builds currently using spirits because the spirits provide more to the group than they actually provide for the ranger outside the sun spirit.

The spirits are also pretty garbage in WvW or against any team with cleave.

Zenith.7301:

This is not a rework it is a nerf.

Spirits need 30 points in a traitline to be any good, and because a particular bunker spec is using them to their advantage you’re advocating these spirits be nerfed even though other specs don’t run spirits to the same effect, and wouldn’t even consider running the spirits if you nerfed them into this.

I don’t ever see my glass ranger sacrificing any stunbreaker utilities for a 50% chance at an effect when the encounter is do or die. I don’t even see power builds currently using spirits because the spirits provide more to the group than they actually provide for the ranger outside the sun spirit.

The spirits are also pretty garbage in WvW or against any team with cleave.

Something allot of player’s seem to forget and half reason I say bring it down to 50%. There based on HIT and not on CRITICAL. This is why we can bunker up so much, currently we can run Rabid/Shaman/Carrion/Knight’s with the 10/0/30/30/0 – 0/10/30/30/0 – 0/0/30/30/10 Spirit Build.

It’s the main reason spirit’s are so powerful and used as team support. It’s currently the strongest team support build with viable damage. So yes it needs to be reworked, rather then everyone saying it’s easy spec to play it will become spec which has higher skill cap and requires more skill then your avg FOTM ranger.

And don’t bring up WvW in SPvP forum’s.

Also how badly do you think this will effect the build, it’s rather small it will still be one of our most viable builds. Every time I read anything you say its all QQ your forum warrior now kitten off.

I like the changes, particularly the Elite change since it currently is really (almost, if not gamebreakingly) strong to have so many instant rezzes available in teamfights.

I just don’t think that RNG reductions (or introductions) are enough of a change (though they could be, its an opinion after all). Personally, I would really love to see the lifespan of the spirits be shorter than the cooldown (45s lifespan, 60s cooldown, 15s downtime minimum. That’s my suggestion).

While at higher level play, teams are much more coordinated at taking out targets, so that they can keep the spirits down, as a match progresses, without a reliable way to count recharge other than stopwatching, the spirit build has the potential to get focused, have the spirits killed, proc all the actives on an opponent, and then have them ready to summon again instantly.

Having something that has permanent uptime like that (to me) really keeps the skillfloor low. You don’t have to think about when to use the spirits, you don’t have to have good timing (bringing them out in a teamfight for the upperhand as a good player, versus bringing them out too soon on a sidepoint and not having them available for your team at mid and losing that pressure/help). That’s the part that I really think makes them so mindless, they are fire and forget, and with the exception of the elite spirit (who has a shorter lifespan than recharge), you don’t even have to think about when you fire.

That’s just me though. I could be being too kitten the build lol.

jcbroe.4329:

I like the changes, particularly the Elite change since it currently is really (almost, if not gamebreakingly) strong to have so many instant rezzes available in teamfights.

I just don’t think that RNG reductions (or introductions) are enough of a change (though they could be, its an opinion after all). Personally, I would really love to see the lifespan of the spirits be shorter than the cooldown (45s lifespan, 60s cooldown, 15s downtime minimum. That’s my suggestion).

While at higher level play, teams are much more coordinated at taking out targets, so that they can keep the spirits down, as a match progresses, without a reliable way to count recharge other than stopwatching, the spirit build has the potential to get focused, have the spirits killed, proc all the actives on an opponent, and then have them ready to summon again instantly.

Having something that has permanent uptime like that (to me) really keeps the skillfloor low. You don’t have to think about when to use the spirits, you don’t have to have good timing (bringing them out in a teamfight for the upperhand as a good player, versus bringing them out too soon on a sidepoint and not having them available for your team at mid and losing that pressure/help). That’s the part that I really think makes them so mindless, they are fire and forget, and with the exception of the elite spirit (who has a shorter lifespan than recharge), you don’t even have to think about when you fire.

That’s just me though. I could be being too kitten the build lol.

There some really valid point’s, the Elite is game breaking i’ll admit that.

There are option’s that’s for sure, I do like the idea of the lifespan of spirit vs cool down. But they need to pick an option, go with something but don’t over do it.

I really want them to improve the AI placement of Spirit, benefits the defender and the attacker.

Sol.4310:

Zenith.7301:

This is not a rework it is a nerf.

Spirits need 30 points in a traitline to be any good, and because a particular bunker spec is using them to their advantage you’re advocating these spirits be nerfed even though other specs don’t run spirits to the same effect, and wouldn’t even consider running the spirits if you nerfed them into this.

I don’t ever see my glass ranger sacrificing any stunbreaker utilities for a 50% chance at an effect when the encounter is do or die. I don’t even see power builds currently using spirits because the spirits provide more to the group than they actually provide for the ranger outside the sun spirit.

The spirits are also pretty garbage in WvW or against any team with cleave.

Something allot of player’s seem to forget and half reason I say bring it down to 50%. There based on HIT and not on CRITICAL. This is why we can bunker up so much, currently we can run Rabid/Shaman/Carrion/Knight’s with the 10/0/30/30/0 – 0/10/30/30/0 – 0/0/30/30/10 Spirit Build.

It’s the main reason spirit’s are so powerful and used as team support. It’s currently the strongest team support build with viable damage. So yes it needs to be reworked, rather then everyone saying it’s easy spec to play it will become spec which has higher skill cap and requires more skill then your avg FOTM ranger.

And don’t bring up WvW in SPvP forum’s.

Also how badly do you think this will effect the build, it’s rather small it will still be one of our most viable builds. Every time I read anything you say its all QQ your forum warrior now kitten off.

And why do you think people run 30 in wilderness survival, because they have a choice?

Empathetic Bond and Signet of Renewal are your only source of condi removal outside healing spring.

If the other traitline or the ranger himself had better condi removal options you’d see points invested in skirmishing for the bleed on crit trait, and we’d see builds with the spirit even then if spirits worked with crit instead of hit.

And yes I bring WvW in sPvP forums because your pretty little changes, just like pet damage changes spilled over to WvW and screwed over people.

You don’t get to screw over the other formats just so people can stop complaining about sun spirit giving burning to people.

Because the real issue here isn’t stone spirit or storm. It’s sun on top of condi spec players so don’t suddenly turn the spirits into an issue.

And the nature spirit is a 240 sec cd, 1.25 second cast elite. It better be stupidly strong. It’s not a 45 sec cd basilisk venom or an equally low signet of rage with lyssa runes that does full condi clear plus all boons on a low cd on top of its actual effect. It’s an easily killed/cleaved spirit.

That rez is pretty much the only reason you use the spirit as the healing is negligible.

Don’t kill a player before killing the spirit. Or CC the spirit when the rez is going to happen.

Of course if you nerf spirits, we all know that nobody will use them. You might as well just get rid of them and add more damage to the SB or LB so rangers can be somewhat competitive with other classes.

Wombat.3510:

Of course if you nerf spirits, we all know that nobody will use them. You might as well just get rid of them and add more damage to the SB or LB so rangers can be somewhat competitive with other classes.

I think you’d still see spirit builds over Survival or Shout builds for the ranger. Both of those lines are just all over the place with their effects, with some pretty mediocre effectiveness across the board and no real reason to build heavy for them since they have little to no synergy with each other, and are barely effective mixed in with other utilities aside from Lightning Reflexes (whose only use is a stunbreaker).

But I personally don’t think that anything suggested in this thread would knock the spirit build out of the meta. If anything, some build versatility is needed in order to give options to shift the meta. Improve some lesser used utilities, add/move some defensive utilities out of the condition damage tree etc.

What I think we’re seeing is a result of how strong conditions currently are and the evolved need of versatility from builds (instead of just sitting on side point all game with nothing to contribute to team fights, for instance). Rangers particularly just have no need to build for power, and aren’t the best choice for a power build (especially since more damage is sustain damage than burst, which is more easily countered). Until power builds are brought up to par, spirit rangers are here to stay, and other viable/semi viable condition builds will continue to be overshadowed regardless (BM is still perfectly viable, as well as traps, although what traps do can be accomplished by engis/necros).

@Zenith.7301, I’m talking about spirit’s not the other trait line’s.

I’m only talking about SPvP cause this is where SPvP skills get balanced. Or I would of made this post in ranger forum’s or WvW.

Elite is to strong. I can get 3x res from my elite and that’s team wide as well as team wide condition remove. That is strong as it get’s. But yes only reason Sun Spirit is so strong cause of the current meta.

I just want to be able to play BM or Trapper knowing I’m on same playing field as Spirit ranger.

Traps are garbage. You are pretty much investing 30 points into a crit damage and precision tree and 3 utilities for a build that focuses on conditions, except it can be done so much better by a necro or engineer.

BM is not even viable anymore. How can you possibly say that when pet damage was pretty much gutted and the BM line of traits is outright horrendous. The only reason people invested in BM was to give pets stats and now that pets don’t even do the damage they used to there’s no use anymore.

Spirit build is the only build rangers have.

Zenith.7301:

Traps are garbage. You are pretty much investing 30 points into a crit damage and precision tree and 3 utilities for a build that focuses on conditions, except it can be done so much better by a necro or engineer.

That’s what I always thought was odd about rangers. I used to run a trap Zerker build for the laugh of it. Was the only build that I could actually beat my friend Staff ele with in 1v1

And the engineer and necro don’t need the crazy trait investment to make their aoe condi bombs work. Sure, larger bomb radius is good but that’s on the condi duration line not on some useless line that grants stats completely irrelevant to a condition build and then the only tiers of usefulness are on the second and third tier. The first tier has worthless traits for a condi build in skirmishing.

Zenith.7301:

Traps are garbage. You are pretty much investing 30 points into a crit damage and precision tree and 3 utilities for a build that focuses on conditions, except it can be done so much better by a necro or engineer.

BM is not even viable anymore. How can you possibly say that when pet damage was pretty much gutted and the BM line of traits is outright horrendous. The only reason people invested in BM was to give pets stats and now that pets don’t even do the damage they used to there’s no use anymore.

Spirit build is the only build rangers have.

Go complain some where else, I made this post to get idea’s and how to rework the Spirit ranger, not listen to you QQ about anything and everything.

Sol.4310:

Zenith.7301:

Traps are garbage. You are pretty much investing 30 points into a crit damage and precision tree and 3 utilities for a build that focuses on conditions, except it can be done so much better by a necro or engineer.

BM is not even viable anymore. How can you possibly say that when pet damage was pretty much gutted and the BM line of traits is outright horrendous. The only reason people invested in BM was to give pets stats and now that pets don’t even do the damage they used to there’s no use anymore.

Spirit build is the only build rangers have.

Go complain some where else, I made this post to get idea’s and how to nerf the Spirit ranger, not listen to you QQ about my kitten y ideas.

ftfy

Oh, another honest problem is how much storm spirit is capable doing doing on proc. Sometimes it seems a little too much like free big damage, and it isn’t necessarily thakittens hard to see, but that if all spirits actives are used at once, it kinda just throws crap all over the screen and makes it that much harder to avoid.

It’s a 3k aoe, basically a cleave melee autoattack crit. I don’t think people would ever choose storm spirit if it didn’t have that active as wasting a utility slot for a swiftness proc would be pointless and nobody would grab that.

The storm spirit also means sacrificing a stunbreaker. A good warrior will land a skull crusher on you and pull off a 100b>whirlwind after you’ve used solar flare already.

Its not the Spirits,Anet did a lot of work in trying to bringing em up,in beta they were strong,they nerf em to the ground and now they brought em up again step by step..
Its the current meta and how well it is combined with the support the spirits have to offer..Sun Spirit since day 1 had the same buff,gives you 4 sec of burning on hit,nothing changed exept that now procs better,even before with the less proc change used to proc every time wasnt on ICD…So ask yourselves what did changed?

Spirits got some vitality love,got some love in actives aoe,got some love in proc change and a merged trait to benefit em…So Spirits became harder to kill and more reliable in active and passive effect,they do the same thing since day 1,Nature Spirit had this aoe rez-cleanse condition since the beginning,why ppl never used to call it OP then and now suddenly it is..
Its the current heavy condition meta,its that pretty much every class do condition dmg right now,its the Empathetic Bond being so far in a condition/toughness traitline,its more but ITS NOT THE SPIRITS

The funny thing about spirits is that they aren’t really that different now than they have been for about, what, 4 or 6 months? It’s just now people are using them. The biggest difference is the combination of vigorous spirits and spiritual knowledge—but that change makes sense.

Another issue with people complaining about the “meta” is a lack of vitality being ran. I’m not the most advanced player but so far it seems like no one really runs builds with vitality.

At the end of the day, the community laughed and laughed about spirits. They made fun of rangers. Little did they know how good spirits were.

I’ve been a long time lurker and I remember a thread on the ranger forums a long time ago where some guy was trying to show the benefits of a longbow/carrion/sun spirit build. I’m pretty sure he got laughed out of the forums.

Who’s laughing now?

The problem with this game is too many people with too much time on their hands to complain about a game design they know nothing about, really. Because everyone thinks they are “pro”. Well, you’re not.

Sol, you’re not a pro. Either are you, Zenith.

Just saying because it’s easy to criticize designers when you’re not on the other side of the desk actually making the game—designers not only have to make their customers happy, they have to meet deadlines, meet the expectations of their superiors, and manage all the normal day to day stuff we manage.

Cut them some slack.

Spirit definitely needs a rework and i was wondering when the first ranger would complain about it because the build itself is pretty kitten boring to play i guess.

AoE Prot alone makes it completely broken in teamfights.

I`d rather have the old BM back even if they kicked my kitten .

HotCocoa.3625:

The funny thing about spirits is that they aren’t really that different now than they have been for about, what, 4 or 6 months? It’s just now people are using them. The biggest difference is the combination of vigorous spirits and spiritual knowledge—but that change makes sense.

Another issue with people complaining about the “meta” is a lack of vitality being ran. I’m not the most advanced player but so far it seems like no one really runs builds with vitality.

At the end of the day, the community laughed and laughed about spirits. They made fun of rangers. Little did they know how good spirits were.

I’ve been a long time lurker and I remember a thread on the ranger forums a long time ago where some guy was trying to show the benefits of a longbow/carrion/sun spirit build. I’m pretty sure he got laughed out of the forums.

Who’s laughing now?

The problem with this game is too many people with too much time on their hands to complain about a game design they know nothing about, really. Because everyone thinks they are “pro”. Well, you’re not.

Sol, you’re not a pro. Either are you, Zenith.

Just saying because it’s easy to criticize designers when you’re not on the other side of the desk actually making the game—designers not only have to make their customers happy, they have to meet deadlines, meet the expectations of their superiors, and manage all the normal day to day stuff we manage.

Cut them some slack.

Pretty much all of this.

think i’ve said it quite a few times already, one change that would adress a lot of the issues currently occuring in the meta with condition providing too much pressure with little to no counter play to procc related traits and abilities ( such as dhuumfire, sun spirit procc, incendiary powder) would be to change the procc chance to 100% with the following conditions being met :
- add a skill icon to the affected players health bar that informs opposing players that his next attack will apply burning ( just like doom sigil f.e. )
- if the attack misses due to blind,block or dodge or some other circumstance the internal cooldown is triggered

this would allow for actual counter play, spam would be less effective and you’d actually need to put some thought behind your actions and count dodges, defensive skills etc. to apply the same pressure you did before.
it’d also help people to see who is actually doing it right – it’s really hard to gauge any skill in this current meta unfortunately.

furthermore – controllable pet skills, make it happen!

Battosai.5620:

think i’ve said it quite a few times already, one change that would adress a lot of the issues currently occuring in the meta with condition providing too much pressure with little to no counter play to procc related traits and abilities ( such as dhuumfire, sun spirit procc, incendiary powder) would be to change the procc chance to 100% with the following conditions being met :
- add a skill icon to the affected players health bar that informs opposing players that his next attack will apply burning ( just like doom sigil f.e. )
- if the attack misses due to blind,block or dodge or some other circumstance the internal cooldown is triggered

this would allow for actual counter play, spam would be less effective and you’d actually need to put some thought behind your actions and count dodges, defensive skills etc. to apply the same pressure you did before.
it’d also help people to see who is actually doing it right – it’s really hard to gauge any skill in this current meta unfortunately.

furthermore – controllable pet skills, make it happen!

omg need controllable pet skills naoooooooooooo. my gw2 life will be complete when it happens.plzzzzzzzzz

Seems like just another reason to just nerf burn.

Spirits, just like Signets, for the Ranger require a 30 point investment before they’re even worth considering, let alone bringing. Any nerf to anything for the ranger must first come with signets no longer needing 30 points in marks to be useful and spirits no longer needing 30 points in Nature.

Secondly, I don’t see how making something like a combat res being tied to RNG is remotely fair. On crit stuff is one thing, those effects tend to be quite minor and crits quite common. But a 50% failure rate on an elite skill is just stupid.

I say just nerf burn across the board. Make it deal the same damage as poison (since it has a duration increase on reapplication as opposed to a stacking increase) which is 2x bleed (iirc?) and have it provide some valuable form of utility instead (revealed while burning).

As powerful as the ranger is, it’s still no where near the level of necromancers and engineers. It’s all single target burst aside from the AE burn field. It has a lot of CC, but there’s a lot of stability going around too. The ranger is barely competing currently because it’s all niche based and only works in this one narrow little way. Any adjustments will need enormous changes in other areas.

Battosai.5620:

think i’ve said it quite a few times already, one change that would adress a lot of the issues currently occuring in the meta with condition providing too much pressure with little to no counter play to procc related traits and abilities ( such as dhuumfire, sun spirit procc, incendiary powder) would be to change the procc chance to 100% with the following conditions being met :
- add a skill icon to the affected players health bar that informs opposing players that his next attack will apply burning ( just like doom sigil f.e. )
- if the attack misses due to blind,block or dodge or some other circumstance the internal cooldown is triggered

this would allow for actual counter play, spam would be less effective and you’d actually need to put some thought behind your actions and count dodges, defensive skills etc. to apply the same pressure you did before.
it’d also help people to see who is actually doing it right – it’s really hard to gauge any skill in this current meta unfortunately.

furthermore – controllable pet skills, make it happen!

I’ve been wishing for a change like that since like last october lol. If we have a game that is so heavily invested into passive abilities and procs, there still needs to be an active way to counter passive plays in order to retain skill vs skill matchups where counterplay is a possibility.

Just having a UI change to show off passive procs would be amazing.

For pets, I think the first step would be to merge F1 and F3 into a toggle (F1 says attack, then toggles to a return. To switch targets, you can just juggle the key to tab target, hit return, then hit attack again). Opening up that F3 to a new control function for the pet would be a great first step towards an improved pet mechanic.

it’s already nerfed (spirit of nature not healing other spirits) and you want to nerf it some more?

Your nerf to Natures Vengeance makes no sense, you want to add even more RNG to the combat? Drop that one

HotCocoa.3625:

The funny thing about spirits is that they aren’t really that different now than they have been for about, what, 4 or 6 months? It’s just now people are using them. The biggest difference is the combination of vigorous spirits and spiritual knowledge—but that change makes sense.

Another issue with people complaining about the “meta” is a lack of vitality being ran. I’m not the most advanced player but so far it seems like no one really runs builds with vitality.

At the end of the day, the community laughed and laughed about spirits. They made fun of rangers. Little did they know how good spirits were.

I’ve been a long time lurker and I remember a thread on the ranger forums a long time ago where some guy was trying to show the benefits of a longbow/carrion/sun spirit build. I’m pretty sure he got laughed out of the forums.

Who’s laughing now?

The problem with this game is too many people with too much time on their hands to complain about a game design they know nothing about, really. Because everyone thinks they are “pro”. Well, you’re not.

Sol, you’re not a pro. Either are you, Zenith.

Just saying because it’s easy to criticize designers when you’re not on the other side of the desk actually making the game—designers not only have to make their customers happy, they have to meet deadlines, meet the expectations of their superiors, and manage all the normal day to day stuff we manage.

Cut them some slack.

This is just different format of QQ. I wasn’t directing anything toward’s the dev’s. Also if you want to continue thinking they won’t nerf spirit’s you do that.

Next time take the time to read my post and reply. Seems you missed what I was trying to do.

Right at the top of my post "I’ve been trying to think of way’s to make the Spirit build to be on par with our Beastmaster and Trap ranger builds while keeping the Spirit build viable. "

Just so you know I’m one of the best ranger’s in this game. I’ll claim it why, cause Spirit’s make it so easy for me to kill anyone.

There are allot good idea’s and reason we voice them on the forum’s is to help dev’s come up with logical idea’s to improve the game, we aren’t saying do my idea we giving them options and way’s to look the problem player’s are seeing in game.

Like most people we all get blind sided, so putting all the information out there just make’s there life easier.

Now few thing’s I’ve found it’s very easy to win 1v1 as a spirit ranger, there are few builds that give us problem’s but once learn’t on how to counter we kill them 1v1. Now we shouldn’t be this strong something is broken and it’s the Spirit’s.

Sol.4310:

Trait Vigorous Spirits – Rework the trait so it only gives a 15% better chance of providing their benefits. That brings it down to 50% chance across the team rather then 70%. (Condition heavy team’s really shine with the bonus that Sun Spirit offers, this will also help balance the condition meta)

The percentage is irrelevant next to the 10s CD for example 35% on hit gives around a usual 12s recycle time whereas 70% is about an 11s recycle time. Meaning that any nerf/buff to it is very meaningless as you are literally being given 1 second of free time. Frost Spirit being the exception of course.

Sol.4310:

Trait Nature’s Vengeance – Rework so when a spirit is killed it has 50% chance of triggering its active skill. Currently Storm Spirit (Call Lightning) and Spirit of Nature (Nature’s Renewal) are rather strong when they are killed vs some builds. Rather then removing the effect from play just make it chance based.

Randomness is not what I want in the game, keep it in how it is and modify the call lightning damage to scale with ranger power and then it will be in a good place. Also fix storm spirits passive to be somewhat useful. Chance based things are not good for gameplay (reword all the random procs you can get from engie as well) Perhaps you can make it so that it requires and uses the charge of the active ability instead of being separate from it, this way it mitigates the amount of times it can be used.

Sol.4310:

Elite Skill Spirit of Nature – Nature’s Renewal should have cool down of 60 seconds, this would make the game more tactical. Would force the ranger to pick between using it as team condition remove or team revive.

30s already requires you to decide between the two already. the active ability is a 4 min cooldown which is on the highest end of the available rez utilities, if your spirit lasts the 30 seconds to throw off a second active then it deserves to have a shot at it.

Sol.4310:

Spirit AI Improvement – Make Spirit’s sit behind the ranger within 180 radius, this would be major improvement, it will stop the spirits from behind able to body block, it will also help the ranger with placement of the active skill and improve the general mitigation of damage spirit’s normally take.

How about we just have the ability to tell specific spirits to “stay”, for example each spirit will have to use “stay” before their active ability can be used. In this way they can be planted out of harms way and still be useful. This would also have a negative effect that if you told one to stay it would not follow you again until it’s active has been used, but I figure that will help more skilled play. (perhaps even have a trait for ranged casted spirit actives)

The Approach you mentioned will make actually landing a spirit active horrible as they filter behind you making them much harder to land than a bomb especially with their 2s activation time (normal spirits). Through all the ideas though it would also require an inspection of the active cast times. With this feature as well spirits health pool can be lowered to a reasonable amount making them much more reasonable to kill in small engagements.

Anyway those are my thoughts on … your thoughts.

Arenanet should just nerf the cooldown ticking while the spirits are still alive. Thus making spirits having a 35s cooldown instead of a 60s cooldown. I have played as a spirit ranger and it is pretty easy to faceroll people with this build because you can literally have spirits up 24/7. But even with the spirit build being as strong as it is now it can still be beat when used by new players or even mediocre players but then requires usually an experienced players that knows how they work to take them down.

Like some player’s have stated a different option would be to change the life span of the spirit’s so they don’t have 24/7 upkeep.

You could also remove the when the spirit dies it triggers it active effect. But in saying that it would almost make the Trait you use to make it trigger rather sub par.

I think if we keep working on idea’s and ways to look at spirit’s we can help the dev’s .

Cause we know Spirit’s will get a nerf, just I don’t want them hit so hard they useless again.

Here’s a couple things to consider:
1. Abilities that don’t proc often are annoying for players. It’s part of “bad randomness”. You don’t want to reduce the proc chance too much.
2. Spirits seem weak as a base and Spiritual Knowledge seems very strong as it doubles the proc chance. Should the base chance increase and the trait bonus decrease?
3. Should the effects of each spirit be toned down but the proc chance remain high? For example, 1 or 2 seconds of burning on the Sun Spirit proc instead of 3?
4. Would it be interesting or useful to have a trait split where you can get stronger stationary spirits maybe with a lower cooldown (bunker) or weaker mobile spirits maybe with slightly better effects (damage)?
5. Are spirits the sole problem? Or is the problem partly due to the ranger’s multitude of evades and dodges?

5. Are spirits the sole problem? Or is the problem partly due to the ranger’s multitude of evades and dodges?

Do you see anyone complain about Marksman/trap rangers? no. There is a reason for that.