Guild Wars 2

Hi I’d like to make a bunch of threads to sort suggestions for future readers and Devs.
If you have a better suggestion or would like to discuss suggestions feel free but keep it polite and constructive not defensive so people find it interesting to read.

Spirit Weapons have never had any love in any particular builds even though they are the most uniquely guardian skills visually. I think solutions to this are threefold:

1. AI fixes, Scrapper Gyro AI has to be brought to Spirit weapons soon, and consider cooldown on summon let me explain why. A scrapper has a lot of synergy with Gyros dying so he doesn’t mind the spike in value that comes with them dying while we have nothing like that, instead we pump boons and Aegis to them to keep them alive.
We would be massively rewarded if the longer we keep them alive the faster they are resummoned.

2. Fixing the fact that the trait only works with half of the current summons. Deal burn on hit only works with Sword and Hammer. Keeping the burning theme I suggest Bow cleanses burn + one other condi from Allies it hits, while shield pulses burn to enemies in range. This will be extended in point 3.

3. I hate unfilled spots in the skill types, in my opinion it makes the related traits and builds way weaker and hence very detrimental to the skill type as a whole. So we need a SW heal and Elite. And what are the weapons, well staff and armour/companion.
SW staff would heal over time in an area, apporximately 2 shelter worth of heal over 10 seconds in AoE(can be killed) and clense condis on effect, and clense burn when traited.
While SW elite would need more interesting behaviour my suggestion is it either copies your skills (ie. You use whirl it uses whirl) or plays as an NPC guardian pulsing out virtues and charging at the target using some pre coded skills, traited pulses burn in AoE.

Looking forward to other people’s suggestions.

to 1: I actually think the CD is not an issue at the moment for all SW. Hammer and GS are fine imo. Shield and Bow are a little lackluster because of their longer cooldowns and ability recharges. A cahnge would be good but a reduced CD would work well also.

to 2: The CD recution benfits all SW, yet you point is valid and seeing no.1 just the reduction on still very long cds is very weak and not worth taking.

to 3: we are actually not in a special spot. not all utilites catagories have a heal and warrior and mesmer have an unclassified heal as well. Teher are alos only 4 elites on all classes so I am afraid this will not happen.

So in short:
yes to 1+2

Personally I see some mechanic changes as far more important.

A) Summon on target
If you have a target GS and Hammer are summoned at location. If you dont they behave like it is.

B) GS Command blink
The command of GS should feature a blink since its animation and delay will never hit a moving target. Hammer travels a short distance fast so its okay.

C) Bow: Pulsing condi cleanse
The way the condi cleanse works now is just not reliable. for a purely defensiv spell it should pulse condi cleanse on a 5 sec pulse.

*D) Shield instant and no delay
The command is stin break which is absolutely worthless because its locked behind a castime. so it is only effective if you have the shield out. doule tapping the shield would mean that you have a stunbreak + aegis. Imo the bubble should appear immediately on activation. pre casting it when you expect projectiles just lowers the uptime and efficiency of the utility.

Suggestion on trait:
Personally I would like to see a trait that rewards using multiple weapons.

Suggestion on builds:
SW would be a cool if you could trait them and use Shatterd aegis. it could create a build that focuses on tending the SW through virtues and weapon skills while they deal the damage.

Great suggestions and I agree that getting SW heal and elite is not a small thing to ask but I think it is a great thing to look forward to in future mid expansion feature patches so why not suggest and refine now.

Now to try to convince you using your own words:

Suggestion on builds:
SW would be a cool if you could trait them and use Shatterd aegis. it could create a build that focuses on tending the SW through virtues and weapon skills while they deal the damage.

Wouldn’t it also be rewarding if the longer you kept them alive the shorter your resulting cooldown was. Didn’t get that block out in time, 1minute cooldown, kept it alive through blocks and heals, 10 seconds cooldown. More skill translates to less cool downs.

My main problem of Spirit Weapons are:

• The cooldown are too high for their effects. Like all summon skills they already have high cast time, but lowest duration compared to other summons. They also die very easy. The cooldown should be reduced to 20 for sword, 30 for hammer and 45 for shield and bow at least.
• The command of the sword miss too often and takes a long delay. It should “jump” to your target before casting and the delay should be reduced a bit.
• The 3rd hit of auto hammer should be a knockdown instead a knockback. This really keep me way from this skill because of that. This only disrupt yourself and allies.
• The command cooldown of the Bow should be reduced to 14~15 seconds (down from 20). In that way if you trait Expeditious Spirit (11~12 seconds of CD for the command) you’ll able to use the command one extra time, right now you can only use twice regardless. With 14~15 seconds you’ll still only able to command twice.
• The auto “attack” of the bow is really weak. In my opinion, it should be changed to attack a enemy (does damage, can be very low – this will make the burning of Expeditious Spirit more viable) and heal and remove one condition in an area around the target, could have a ~5 second delay from attacks. Also make this heal scales with healing power.
• The command of the Shield should be redesigned in my opinion, it is really hard to control where it activates. It should have something like 5~10 seconds of cooldown and be AoE. Any allies in the AoE would get Aegis and enemies get Weakness (or just one or even none) and the activation should be instant for the Stun Breaker be realiable. The Shield would stay at that place untill a new the Shield is commanded again or if Guardian moves away too much from the shield. Right now you have no control of the shield and it often bubbles were shouldn’t (that helps to it get killed very easy). For that reason plus indestructible and reflects, Wall of Reflection will always be better than this skill.

The spirit weapons are the utilities that need more help right now in the game. They are too weak.

Since spirit weapons are traited through zeal, change the trait to cause them to drop symbols when the command ability is used (remove “spirit weapon attacks cause burning”). It would have good synergy with the rest of the zeal line. Example:

• Sword – Wrath
• Hammer – Protection
• Bow – Vigor (at location of command cast)
• Shield – Faith

Spirit weapons also need to either not take damage or be given more HP (amount needed varies by weapon).

Not sure what can be done to make them stick to players better. Maybe make all the command abilities targeted (or ground targeted) and give it a speed boost for a few seconds.

we have been trying to change the spirit weapons for 3 years now and all Anet did was take all those suggestions and made the scrapper. I don’t even bother with the spirit weapons anymore.

They need to consider making them permanent until death (like the Necromancer minions). Maybe as a trial period between major balance patches. As it stands now they are almost pointless. They have similar cooldowns to the Necro minions but only a ~50% (or less if they are individually targeted) up time.

Necromancer minions bring (when fully traited) a lot of Toughness meaning you can go full Berserker and still have decent defenses, a lot of condition removal/transfer, not insubstantial healing if you have Blood Magic, poison fields and explosions on death, and if you go into Reaper and take the right traits you can have a flat -50% damage on a nearly 100% up time with the right conditions.

The spirit weapons are clunky to use, glitchy and unclear about whether they are supposed to be offensive, defensive or support as a whole. They also have traits to make them burn on hit but that doesn’t work well enough to fit them into a burning build when you have Meditations and Consecrations that do the job much better.

Spirit Weapons don’t really need a lot.

• Instead of inflicting Burn on attack, have them pulse a very short duration burn.
• The cooldowns need to be lowered drastically. 15-20s uptime, 15-20s cooldown.

I don’t know what Gyro survivability is like, but once SW are at a similar level they should be golden.

Really there are two ways they could make them useful.

1: Adjust their health levels, make their cool downs start as soon as they are summoned (IE the fix gyro’s got when engineer players complained they would suck like spirit weapons) and adjust some of the base cool downs to be lower.

This would be the easy fix & would still leave them reliant on AI.

or

2: Redesign them to be more akin to a cross between ranger spirits & warrior banners.
By this I mean they would give either a static stat buff to nearby allies or a special effect once every few seconds then could be commanded to give the guardian a special effect.

The later would be my vote but it would require allot more work.

Lastly the trait in zeal effecting spirit weapons could stand a bit of a tune up.
Instead of burning the target it would be nice if it burned the area around them when they effect an enemy.
It would also be nice if it caused them to do something when killed.