Guild Wars 2

The nerf to the food was coming =). Sadly, I am one of the ones whose builds depended on it.

Ironically, I’ve run something entirely new for the past few weeks and testing it before this patch hit and it hasn’t hurt that build too much. Good thing too, now I can tweak it accordingly.

However considering how much other professions are affetected by the food nerf, it’s pretty much a buff for us!

khefka.2804:

Since when did soldier runes fail to wipe a condition? Never seen that occur.

If i am correct it will now affect 5 allies around you;)

Lifesteal food and Dagger Storm was ridiculous. I could heal myself from 10% to 100% HP in a few short seconds.

The nerf to heal on crit food is big but the healing is still noticeable. If they were to double the heal or reduce the CD from 1 sec to .5 sec this would be able to support the builds that need it quite well. As it stands right now its lacking, but I agree that refilling 90% of your health with a non healing skill may have been a bit too much.

I don’t want to run AH but it looks like its again the strongest option. Sword crit healing with food is still workable but the lack of support and buffs with the weapon is making it tough to offset the increased dps of the weapon IMHO.

Just sad to lose viable options.

Blood~

Phoenix the One.4071:

Hmm symbol of wrath gets larger.. But we will not visual see the different since it didn’t cover all of the visual? Still think symbols are toooo small:b I mean you can just fit two persons in there at max.. Be they azuras xD

I think it wasnt the symbol that got larger, just the combofield. but i might be mistaken but i cant see any difference in radius on the damage.

Brutaly.6257:

Phoenix the One.4071:

Hmm symbol of wrath gets larger.. But we will not visual see the different since it didn’t cover all of the visual? Still think symbols are toooo small:b I mean you can just fit two persons in there at max.. Be they azuras xD

I think it wasnt the symbol that got larger, just the combofield. but i might be mistaken but i cant see any difference in radius on the damage.

I beleave your right. From my testing before and after the combo field does indeed seem to be larger. The damage field on the other hand seem’s the same.

Obtena.7952:

Alarox.4590:

So basically Spirit Weapons get nerfed into oblivion, ArenaNet buffs them very slightly, we eat it up and forget about how useless they are?

Called it.

Actually, to be fair, we said they would need more HP after the nerf, Anet listened and did it. That exceeds my expectation. Are they useful? They weren’t much use BEFORE the nerf.

What you are seeing here is the best way any developer can make a change; nerf THEN adjust for missing capability to ensure no period of time ingame where something in transition might be OPed or bugged. They aren’t going to avoid QQ anyways, so might as well the do the change from the bottom up. Thank you Anet.

Yeah, my point exactly. They had some usefulness before, they got nerfed into oblivion, ArenaNet makes a small adjustment that satisfies people like you without actually fixing them, and we all live happily ever after.

While it’s simply a matter of semantics, I’m calling the food thing a fix, rather than a nerf.

While spirit weapons are now good enough for my purposes ( I never had a build around them ), it reinforces my main gripe.

If all of our skills are situational ( which I’m fine with ) – please let us be able to switch utilities that are on CD. ( the CD can be transferred to the new utility ).

Those staff buffs are like “<3”. Imo, one of the best updates for Guardians.

I’m certainly trying to work staff into my build again.

Spirit Weapons are still terrible even after the patch. It doesn’t do anything to address their uselessness in dungeons.

foofad.5162:

Spirit Weapons are still terrible even after the patch. It doesn’t do anything to address their uselessness in dungeons.

For what it’s worth, I’m finding the Hammer to be a decent option again in S/TPvP, particularly now that it can be affected by my Virtues, and I hear that the Shield is still a good choice for high level Fractals. Overall, though, I agree that Spirit Weapons still need more love to make up for what they lost with the nerf. They are likely the worst pets in the game at the moment (I would rank them below Ranger spirits), since they can not only be killed normally, but are also on a timer and can also be destroyed by activating their abilities. Necro minions still get a lot of complaints for their poor AI and lack of out-of-combat health regen, but Spirit Weapons suffer from those same issues in addition to the aforementioned ones. Their fragility isn’t helped by the fact that their cooldown timers don’t start until after they die.

As for what to do, there are a lot of different approaches. One nice change would be to start their cooldown timers from the time they’re summoned, giving them better uptime to compensate for their reduced durability. I also wouldn’t mind it if they just reverted them to their former state, since as far as I know, Spirit Weapons weren’t overpowered in any game mode, with the possible exception of the Shield in Fractals. On the contrary, they were a fairly unpopular choice in regular PvE, most dungeons, PvP, and WvW (which is why the nerf was so baffling). If that isn’t on the table, though, I might suggest letting the weapons inherently use their commands without being destroyed, and changing Eternal Spirit into a trait that makes the weapons invulnerable, or at least one that doubles (triples?) their current health. And then maybe clean up Spirit Weapon traits by merging a couple of the others – 50% duration, burning on hit, 10% more damage, and 20% CD reduction are the types of traits begging to be fused. As it stands, if you want to make a Spirit Weapon build, you’re probably giving up a lot to do it – at least 2 of your utility slots (a massive sacrifice for a Guardian) and a minimum of 30 traits points (likely more if you want A Fire Inside).

Overall, the prominent issues with Spirit Weapons are how much you have to invest to make them effective and the difficulty in keeping them around once you pull them out. They have some cool and useful abilities, particularly the Shield and Hammer, but it’s hard to get the most out of these when the rest of the design feels broken.

Hicci.8761:

Xhyros.1340:

KCS Lefty.4521:

+1 for “upgrading” Soldier Runes!!

Now remove a condition of all your allys affected by your shout

Isn’t that a nerf?

At least from what I’ve observed, they CONVERTED conditions into boons. Does this mean now they’ll work as advertised and only REMOVE conditions instead?

That’s pure of voice.

I guess you didn’t use soldier runes prepatch. They DID remove conditions on you AND YOUR ALLIES. They also had the unlisted benefit of converting those conditions into their corresponding boons (i.e. using any shout while crippled added swiftness). Now they just remove conditions. This is a nerf, though it is just a nerf to make the runes perform as intended.

And no, I was not using Pure of Voice.