Guild Wars 2

Since my experience with spirit weapons has been quite a bit different than many people are reporting, I took some time to examine what is happeneing with them.

First off, my main guardian (level 80) has Battle Presence in her build, the 46, 16, and 8 do not. I’ve been using the Spirit weapons on all of them and the higher level ones have ventured back into lower level areas so I can compare performance of on-level vs. down-scaled.

Lots of interesting-bits discovered, but here’ the improtant one up front:

The Biggie: The sword & hammer both forced-taunt their targets. I can beat a target half-to-death at melee range, pause to summon a sword, and the target turns on the spirit-sword the instant it is summoned – before the sword has even attacked. Hammers seem to force-taunt on their first hit. The mob will typcally get one more attack off directed at me before changing targets to the hammer. Bows will also pull aggro, but seem to do so much more slowly and not always obviously associated with their shooting animation. The shield did not show any obvious signs of auto-taunting. It rarely took aggro from me. So… it not surprising that some of the weapons get pulped- they jump to the top of the aggro list and soak all available damage until dead. I’ve seen signs that these forced-taunts are AoE – the hammer or sword swings once and everything in the area turns on it. This explains why it’s frequently possible (at lower levels) to self-heal from downed while a sword is out – you stop getting hit by anything in the immediate area until the sword is dead.

Weapons are people too: Weapons draw buffs like party menmbers. They gain the benefits of battle presence (which can dramtically change their longevity) and benefit from the buffs propegated by cashing in virtues via inspired vitue and for standing in symbols. I suspect some people’s main weapon choice greatly affects how long their spirit weapons last (hammer users dropping symbols of protection and their weapons naturally gravitating into the area to be buffed). Weapons hovering in a greatsword user’s symbol of wrath are getting the retaliation effect, etc.

Scaling is not favorable: Whatever scaling is used to set either hit points or armor values for spirit weapons (possibly both) it does not keep up with with the damage being pushed by mobs. At level 6 a spirit sword is an unstoppable tank – summoning one is near automatic victory against low-level events. At the other end of the spectrum level 80 standard mobs are killing them in 3-4 auto-attacks unless buffed.
If nothing else, we need to get the Developers to re-examine their choice of curves for these two values. I doubt either of the extremes is producing the desired outcome.

Using what we’ve got: the new weapons interact with a lot of our trait choices in ways they didn’t before. They benefit from our group-friendly buff options, meaning that a “Spirit Weapon master” now has far more potential choices to enhance their little friends. Strength in Numbers may be a very useful compliment to them, as the hp/armor ratios are so poor at higher levels. On the down side the sprit weapons are probably a poor choice for group play – they almost certainly count towards the 5 target limit on most area buffs, which means in a worst case scenario a sword or shield could soak up a much needed light of deliverance because the weapon was closer than the person you were trying to heal.

Thank you for the notes, very easy to understand.

I’m not so sure the last part is quite accurate. Didn’t the game get patched so that Players get priority over NPC types when it comes to heals and buffs? If the weapon does get healed/buffed over a player that means the player wouldn’t have gotten the benefit anyways since he wasn’t close enough to begin with.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I’m not so sure the last part is quite accurate. Didn’t the game get patched so that Players get priority over NPC types when it comes to heals and buffs? If the weapon does get healed/buffed over a player that means the player wouldn’t have gotten the benefit anyways since he wasn’t close enough to begin with.

I’m still looking into this. I think in a dungeon you are correct – player characters in a party are supposed to get priority over pets. But in WvWvW, the weapons are always “in your party” while players around you often are not – I’m not certain how Player vs Pet prioritization works in that cricumstance. I may be able to test it with volunteers in Lion’s Arch (less chaos than a real battle).

Yeah, I’m not too sure on that overall. I just remember the notes from a while back about it in regards to ranger pets.

Interesting post.

What I take away from it is that it became even harder to get the proper trait support for Spirit Weapons, since now you also have to put some effort into keeping them alive.

I also can’t help but think that the aggro thing was unintended.

So to sum up the Spirit Weapons now suck at 80.

Gj Anet

Ynna.8769:

Interesting post.

What I take away from it is that it became even harder to get the proper trait support for Spirit Weapons, since now you also have to put some effort into keeping them alive.

I also can’t help but think that the aggro thing was unintended.

Well, this game’s aggro mechanics are a little peculiar, but I don’t think an AoE forced-taunt is an accident. That feels a lot more like a bit that has to be deliberately flipped to me. Given how well the swords tank even up to level 43, I think the devs meant to make them more intersting and useful as buckets of extra hit points to help the guardian’s smaller bucket, but the math for the spirit weapons is boogered for maximum level play.

Relentliss.2170:

So to sum up the Spirit Weapons now suck at 80.

Simplistic and unproductive. The spirit weapons are ridculously over-powered at the low levels – that points to an error in design execution, not a Machievellian plot to screw us. Someone forgot to carry the 3 somewhere. The sooner we can get their hit points & armor reviewed as bugged rather than shrieking at a deliberate nerf, the sooner we can look forward to spirit weapons being useful at all levels instead of plummeting from game-breaking to little more than visual chaff.

Its my belief that if the Devs coded the weapons to have force taunts, then they expected them to act a front line fighters, getting in there and mixing it up along side their owners. At low levels they do this brillintly. You can see the core of a good and fun gameplay option in the switch to them having HP. It just doesn’t carry through to the highest levels. At 80th level they need a lot higher armor value to be front line fighters that pull all aggro to themselves.

the devs need to hurry up and grind their test guardians above level 40.

Nike.2631:

Relentliss.2170:

So to sum up the Spirit Weapons now suck at 80.

Simplistic and unproductive. The spirit weapons are ridculously over-powered at the low levels – that points to an error in design execution, not a Machievellian plot to screw us. Someone forgot to carry the 3 somewhere. The sooner we can get their hit points & armor reviewed as bugged rather than shrieking at a deliberate nerf, the sooner we can look forward to spirit weapons being useful at all levels instead of plummeting from game-breaking to little more than visual chaff.

Its my belief that if the Devs coded the weapons to have force taunts, then they expected them to act a front line fighters, getting in there and mixing it up along side their owners. At low levels they do this brillintly. You can see the core of a good and fun gameplay option in the switch to them having HP. It just doesn’t carry through to the highest levels. At 80th level they need a lot higher armor value to be front line fighters that pull all aggro to themselves.

I think I worded correctly in 1 sentence what it took you several paragraphs.

Nike.2631:

Since my experience with spirit weapons has been quite a bit different than many people are reporting, I took some time to examine what is happeneing with them.

First off, my main guardian (level 80) has Battle Presence in her build, the 46, 16, and 8 do not. I’ve been using the Spirit weapons on all of them and the higher level ones have ventured back into lower level areas so I can compare performance of on-level vs. down-scaled.

Lots of interesting-bits discovered, but here’ the improtant one up front:

The Biggie: The sword & hammer both forced-taunt their targets. I can beat a target half-to-death at melee range, pause to summon a sword, and the target turns on the spirit-sword the instant it is summoned – before the sword has even attacked. Hammers seem to force-taunt on their first hit. The mob will typcally get one more attack off directed at me before changing targets to the hammer. Bows will also pull aggro, but seem to do so much more slowly and not always obviously associated with their shooting animation. The shield did not show any obvious signs of auto-taunting. It rarely took aggro from me. So… it not surprising that some of the weapons get pulped- they jump to the top of the aggro list and soak all available damage until dead. I’ve seen signs that these forced-taunts are AoE – the hammer or sword swings once and everything in the area turns on it. This explains why it’s frequently possible (at lower levels) to self-heal from downed while a sword is out – you stop getting hit by anything in the immediate area until the sword is dead.

Weapons are people too: Weapons draw buffs like party menmbers. They gain the benefits of battle presence (which can dramtically change their longevity) and benefit from the buffs propegated by cashing in virtues via inspired vitue and for standing in symbols. I suspect some people’s main weapon choice greatly affects how long their spirit weapons last (hammer users dropping symbols of protection and their weapons naturally gravitating into the area to be buffed). Weapons hovering in a greatsword user’s symbol of wrath are getting the retaliation effect, etc.

Scaling is not favorable: Whatever scaling is used to set either hit points or armor values for spirit weapons (possibly both) it does not keep up with with the damage being pushed by mobs. At level 6 a spirit sword is an unstoppable tank – summoning one is near automatic victory against low-level events. At the other end of the spectrum level 80 standard mobs are killing them in 3-4 auto-attacks unless buffed.
If nothing else, we need to get the Developers to re-examine their choice of curves for these two values. I doubt either of the extremes is producing the desired outcome.

Using what we’ve got: the new weapons interact with a lot of our trait choices in ways they didn’t before. They benefit from our group-friendly buff options, meaning that a “Spirit Weapon master” now has far more potential choices to enhance their little friends. Strength in Numbers may be a very useful compliment to them, as the hp/armor ratios are so poor at higher levels. On the down side the sprit weapons are probably a poor choice for group play – they almost certainly count towards the 5 target limit on most area buffs, which means in a worst case scenario a sword or shield could soak up a much needed light of deliverance because the weapon was closer than the person you were trying to heal.

Thank you for the informative post. I also mainly play with spirit weapons, mostly for pvp.

An added utility of the spirit weapons is since you can now apply boons to them they work well with altruistic healing. You will automatically get healed for any buff you provide to them. Even if you are only using two of them you will help your survivability as well as theirs. I use a 25/0/30/0/15 build for this. Very high dps combined with altruistic healing.

I was also thinking that maybe the spirit weapons should provide some sort of boon since they are now a lot easier to take down and still replace any useful shouts you could have instead. Would that be overpowered? I’m thinking retaliation for the sword, protection from shield, regeneration from bow,.stability from hammer.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I really miss how they were before when they were unkillable. Yeah i know, not really balanced considering summons of other professions are killable. But it was still fun while it lasted.

I think all pet mechanic type… mechanics could inherit buffs (and ar if needed) from their respective masters. It might make any things (spirit weapons, minions, ranger pets, etc) a bit more wieldly to use. Any traits providing buffs to those pets would just be icing, as every boon stacks in duration, and only might stacks intensity. I wouldn’t expect might to tip any scales on pets. This might not be doable with how Anet tracks boons and conditions though, as that’s part of the condition builds problem (it takes a lot of server bandwidth to track the stacks and durations of all those boons and conditions, and they’d have to track those boons for however many “new people”).

Does buffing them proc altruistic healing?

As per scaling, its the same with our own health. When your lvl 3 fighting lvl 3 enemys, you will only be hit for small amounts due to low difficulty. When you reach lvl 80 and face 80 mobs, if your careless you could easily lose 1/4 or more of your health in a single attack, depending on the enemy your facing.

Relentliss.2170:

I think I worded correctly in 1 sentence what it took you several paragraphs.

You spelled “relentless” wrong.

Failcakes.9208:

Does buffing them proc altruistic healing?

Yes. As well as the rock dog you can summon from armor runes when you are being hit.