Guild Wars 2

1. They can die too easily
2. They are inactive longer then they are active

All other Classes Summons(Banners, spirits, turrets, tthieves, elementals, minions, and illusions) have one thing in common, their Uptime is longer then their downtime. The ONLY Spirit weapon where this applies is the Sword, the others all have longer CD’s then durations. Now the other summons with longer recharges have something in common. They all last forever out of combat.

Now the most logical reason for this is that spirit weapons active times are so OP that they can be the only summons that have longer recharges the durations. Now this is possible due to the fact that you could possibly make an entirely spirit weapon build. They have damage, Crowd Control, Condition Damage, Condition Removal, Healing, Projectile defense, a Stun Break and Healing. Possibly a good point there. However you can’t utilize these. Why put so much awesome utility into something that might not be there? You will rely on a stun break if the object giving you it may not even survive long enough to be used. So let’s fix this

1. Give Spirit weapons enough health or toughness to survive long enough that you can actually use the activation skills, or use the base skills for longer then 5s

2. Reduce Recharges so that you can have them up for longer or back up quicker when they go down. Maybe so the duration is actually longer then the recharge

3. Give activated skills guarantees. IE you can use this skill twice before the weapon dies and the skill goes back on cooldown (bit like mantras) even if the weapon dies the activated skills last until their charges are used up

4. Redesign Weapons entirely.

Redesign Ideas

Get rid of physical weapons. Let them act as a buff effecting auto attacks that last for X amount of hits and grant an activated ability that must be used before the weapon can be “summoned” again

Exps

Sword of Justice(Instant Cast)
Next 10 autoattacks do extra damage(effected by current trait for burning)
Activated skill- Ghostly blue sword drops on target area causing vulnerabily and x damage. Blast finisher 5 Targets 25s CD

Hammer of Wisdom
Next 3 Autoattacks daze your target
Activated Skill- Ghostly Blue hammer drops on target area Knocking down up to 3 enemies. Blast finisher. 32s CD

Shield of the Avenger
Next 5 Autoattacks give retaliation and Stability
Activated Skill – Ghostly Blue Shield circles you, granting aegis and breaking stun 15s CD
Alternative- Ghostly Blue Shield creates a dome that blocks projectiles for 10s and breaks stun for everyone inside the dome Light Field 35s CD

Bow Of Truth
Next 5 Autoattacks cure a condition
Activated ability – Same as current, creates Light field

What do you guys think. Have any ideas for better Spirit Weapons? Want to see them actually become useful? Lets get Spirit Weapons useful again for more then just that blue shield projectile thing in that one dungeon….

Don’t mess with my Shield of the Avenger, other than that I like it.

They need a better A.I and reduce cooldowns when traited…..

SoA once in awhile still runs from combat location or stays behind no accompanying the guardian or ally.

Let’s just clear the air here and recognize that we don’t use spirit weapons for their auto attacks. I’ts the active that serves any real purpose for using them. I’d say that instead of summoning a weapon and then commanding them to do a spell we would simply create the spell that is enacted out by a weapon. Removes a second button press and a global cooldown. Any more than that and your pretending to be a necro (which suffers from the same, if not worse minion AI).

Bacon.1835:

Let’s just clear the air here and recognize that we don’t use spirit weapons for their auto attacks. I’ts the active that serves any real purpose for using them. I’d say that instead of summoning a weapon and then commanding them to do a spell we would simply create the spell that is enacted out by a weapon. Removes a second button press and a global cooldown. Any more than that and your pretending to be a necro (which suffers from the same, if not worse minion AI).

This ^

Between bad AI and low health that cannot be improved the game would be much better off if they simply redesigned them.

Personally I would like to see them made more akin to invulnerable banners with a very high up time & with a passive AOE buff and a second command skill very similar to what they have now.

Sword could passively boost precision & be commanded to do damage and apply vulnerability to enemies near the guardian.

Hammer could passively boost power and be commanded to cause the guardians next attack to be a knock down.

Shield could passively boost health and be commanded to create a bubble at the guardians position which stops projectiles & knocks enemies back.

Bow could Passively cure a condition for nearby allies every 10 seconds & be commanded to create a water field that heals allies around the guardian.

Do you guys remmembers how we used to controll heroes in GW1 ?

Imo it would be nice that control back with the SW, give lesser area so they cant get away near the guardian but also give a option to flag the SW, make bow a good range and start removing condis from targeted area, atacch SW hammer and GS to allies or defend where flag is settled.

I liked someone else’s idea of making them like modified Rit weapon spells, except they manifest attached to the Guardian (floating behind them, and invulnerable), and will follow auto-attacks similar to what we now see with Rit’s Jade Dagger’s skill.

But this is where it gets epic. Guards will be limited to one Summoned weapon at a time. However, when they activate the weapon’s command skill, they physically grab the weapon to execute(channel) an attack and its effects, then switches back to his original weapon. An alternative version was having it turn into a bundle on Command, with one charge to execute from a choice of attacks, before swapping back to their weapon set.

They could make an entire Specialization around this concept, as it allows an ultra high level of utility to any existing weapon set.

There crap they need to be invulnerable or close to it like they were at the beginning.

Spirit weapons should be like stances or just replace the weaponskills. pets and ai sucks.

Lets say you have your GS out and activate he spirit bow. Either this should (an example) reduce incoming damage from ranged abilities to you and 5 allies or
your skill bar should be changed to 5 new skills that are available to you during a limited time.

Brutaly.6257:

Spirit weapons should be like stances or just replace the weaponskills. pets and ai sucks.

Lets say you have your GS out and activate he spirit bow. Either this should (an example) reduce incoming damage from ranged abilities to you and 5 allies or
your skill bar should be changed to 5 new skills that are available to you during a limited time.

Sorry, not gonna happen. Engineers have 4 weapons due to them already having Kit abilities. Ele’s have 5 but they have numerous attunement abilities and conjure weapon abilities. Guards have 9 different weapons to pick from… they’re not going to give us a kit-like-equipment.
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I’d like the Sword’s auto slash to reach out, just like Hammer, rather than slash in place and miss 80% of the time.

I want Hammer to return to the Guardian after every auto attack. When it’s time to auto, it goes out and attacks again.

There’s absolutely NO reason for the spirit weapons to stay in high AoE damage areas. They need to return to the Guardian after every attack considering they can melt very, very, easily.

If I were to redesign these things I’d simply drop any passive effect at all. Having the skill makes them form, the skills simply trigger effects which are done by the weapons at a targetted spot. So you’d not have to cast them to be able to use their activated, they wouldn’t take damage or be targetable, they’d simply be an awesome looking thing that telegraphs the attacks that are all controlled by the player.

Your hammer would still slam, sword still stab. Shield would change a bit in that the activate would also put up a like 6-8s dome for projectiles as well as dropping an Aegis. That would actually be a small nerf for PVE in that no more 44s projectile safety rotation, but I think that’s a good thing, that rotation is a bit silly. You’d still have amazing up time. And of course the Bow would be the same, though I’d give it a bit more oomph in that it wouldn’t just heal but also have some damaging projectiles in there which with the trait could/would trigger burning to make it a bit more versatile and useful.

That’d be the way I’d do it. They’d be useful, not have the big drawbacks, and look awesome because you’d always have these spirit weapons following you but wouldn’t cause the chaos pets usually do in PVP where it’s a struggle just to get the player targetted.

I only like shield, myself.

I wish they would of gone a different route with them. I’d rather it pulse out a buff at my side and never do any damage than go around whacking things and dying so I can summon it later to rinse and repeat. xD

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Personally I would like to see them made more akin to invulnerable banners with a very high up time & with a passive AOE buff and a second command skill very similar to what they have now.

I was thinking they should keep the SW’s away from the passive AoE buff, firstly so that you could have a more dynamic playstyle adnsecondly signets already provide Passive boosts. with that and the group wide traits from rangers,guards and warrs i dont think we need another set doing that

Belarorn.9062:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Personally I would like to see them made more akin to invulnerable banners with a very high up time & with a passive AOE buff and a second command skill very similar to what they have now.

I was thinking they should keep the SW’s away from the passive AoE buff, firstly so that you could have a more dynamic playstyle adnsecondly signets already provide Passive boosts. with that and the group wide traits from rangers,guards and warrs i dont think we need another set doing that

Well it would be like a signet for any ally that stays nearby.

The guardian could then command them for an effect similar to what they already provide.

This way you wouldn’t have to rely on a crappy AI or something that could easily die.

The fact that they would be immobile unless you pick them up and manually move them provides a bit of counter play.

i just laughted when saw this page…

Special weapons , mace shield…..

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/

So, I like Shield of the Avenger. It is pretty useful for me. It helps me a lot in PVE. Its shield and commad are just very useful abilities. And Hammer of Wisdom is fine too. Its chain and cc command can help sometimes. Hammer and Shield work well if they dont have Expeditious Spirit.
But I can’t say that about other weapons. And I dont think i would like to use them if they have better AI.

Sword of Justice… Well, i have other good utilites for dps (in pve). May be Sword can be good for condi builds. Expeditious Spirit and sword’s commad help to do more burst damage. But Sword is very weak and it can be broken very easily. I guess pvp players have problem to control Sword and sword’s advantages are not so good.

And Bow of Truth… Okay. Its a weapon. Why does Bow shoot at me and my allies? I can’t accept this idea. A weapon which shoots at its owner… Okay, okay… I know Bow’s arrows clean conditions and heal. But we have a lot of ways to clean them. Light fields, utilites, traits and weapon skills. And it cleans 4 condition in 80(68) seconds only. I dont know, may be the idea of this weapon is that bow is “weapon” against condition threats. Like you have to take Bow (and some other traits to clean conditions) if you know exactly that condi damage/control will be your main frequent troble.
Is Bow a good weapon against condi mesmer/necro? I don’t think so. Bow is too slow for them.
I often think what should be happed and i will say “Yeah it works fine. It is not too powerful and it helps me in pve and pvp”. Of course, I sometimes think about radical solutions. For example remake all weapon completely. Yeah, it is easy to say… But i dont want to destroy the idea of developers.

May be i will be glad if Bow shoots at enemies once every 5 seconds, does some damage and remove one boon. It doesn’t matter how many damage Bow does, but Expeditious Spirit wil work with Bow!!! And Bow’s commad cleans one codition once every 3 seconds up to 5 allies in addional to aoe healing. Bow will save defensive capabilities and be a threat for enemies.

As I said on other post. The main issues for me are:

ALL Summons

• They die too easly. All summon related of any class.
• Too bad AI.

Sword

• The Command takes too long to activate and have a long after cast delay (before it can atk again by itself). I belive you lose DPS on command? Not so sure.
• The command is bugged when traited and considering how long ANET takes to fix bugs, we’ll wait for at least one year to be fixed.
• It activates the command where it is. I need to wait it goes near, if not, it will always trigger without any targets nearby. It should be able to target the command skill. Either makes it walk to the place before activating (after you targeted) or make it leap or teleport to the target location to activates.

Hammer

• The auto atk is a knockback. It often punish you or allies instead of helping. It should be a Knockdown.
• The cooldown could be reduced a little bit, maybe 40~35 seconds.

Bow

• The Cooldown is too long. IT should be ~45 seconds.
• The “normal” atks are too weak. It should at least apply in area and scales with healing power.
• The command takes a really long cooldown, the CD should be reduced to 15 seconds at least. You’ll still be able to Command only twice, but it could command at least 3 times when traited (now is just 2 even traited).

Shield

• The biggest problem that I have is it often activates in the wrong place and “roots” in that place when there is no one to protect. The Command skill should be a reposition with 5~10 sec of cooldown. Maybe give Aegis/Weakness in the area of reposition. Also, it should stay in place, unless the guardian moves away too far (1200~2000 range?).
• I also feel the cooldown too long for this skill, considering that the uptime of Wall of Reflection is a lot higher and have a stronger effect. This should be a mobile antiprojectile, while wall of reflection is static. That is why I suggest the reposition on command.

All summons already suffers from a long cast time. So the long cooldown is just another punishment.

Overall, I don’t thing they will ever even try to balance weak things, even more considering how long they take to fix bugs. One example is “Hold the line” that they take 3 years to fix.