Guild Wars 2

Hello guys, what do you think about Spirit Weapons in general when it comes to PVP?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQJAWRl8ApKoFBxOI8DNhkpglQwqH7j8kPYKqIAA-TwAgzCoIKSVkrITRyisFNaY9x5j3HA
Is the build I’ve slapped together for myself. I’m feeling quite confident with it, dominating everything. Reached a decent rank(300-400 for Solo Arena) and I think I could push a little further with it.
Can’t really decide whether to use Writ of the Merciful or 2-H mastery, though.

Spirit weapon is a choice. You like it? You can play it :-)
But in Tournaments that can be bad. Spirit weapons can do good damage, expecially if hammer Command skill do a critical hit. But if you find an enemy that play whit AoE you’re in trouble. If you be a roamer, that go around stealing bases, that can be good, but to hold a base or ,expecially, to fight for the mid, your spirit weapons fall quickly.
No one use spirit weapons because of that: everyone, actually, play whit some AoE skills, or when see a spirit weapon destroy the SW before attack you. Because players know that if they destroy your SW you’re whitout protection, expecially if you use 3 SW. And SW fall quickly…
But that build grant some good point: passive “pets” that attack enemy, knock down and protect you from arrows (if you don’t move away from shield range). And whit the trait you can deal good damage whit hammer and sword Command skill.
And 3 questions:
1) Why do you use Cleric Amulet? You’r only healing skill is Empowering and Healing Breeze isn’t the best skill to heal your ally. Whit your build, isn’t better a Barbarian or a Soldier?
2) Healing Breeze? I’ve never see a player in spvp usine Healing Breeze. I’ve never try that skill in spvp, but isn’t better a Shelter? 4.5k hp in 1 sec and 2 sec of block.
3) How do you fight against a condition damage dealer if you have only Virtue of Resolve to remove conditions? Actually the problem about the game is that there’s too much conditions in spvp and you need to kill the enemy before you fall because of condition damage (catually OP).

That can be a good build, or the worst one (because is really hard find a spot in spvp where spirit weapons do a better work than shouts or meditations or consecrations) but I need to see how you play before say something about it’s effectiveness.

Silv.9207:

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Healing Breeze is a must because of Spirit Weapons. You need to keep them alive at any cost. As for cleric, healing power is exceptional for this build because of amount of healing I’m pumping out. But if I’d go full cleric I’d be left with unsatisfactory health pool and be unable to proc Vigor, hence the Barbarian jewel.
I also have lyssa runes to remove conditions 3 times total if required. That’s enough for most cases unless you are against a dedicated condition player, and even in that case it’s going to cause lots of problems for him.
About Healing Power:
“Only” heals include:
Healing Breeze -1.0 scaling AOE
Virtue Of Resolve – 0.75 scaling AOE, 0.075/second passive. In a fight, active goes twice, and passive is up literally 100% of the time before the 2nd usage(due to RFocus)
Orb Of Light – 0.2/0.6 AOE
Empower – 1.0 AOE
Selfless Daring – 0.5 AOE,
Regeneration – 0.125/second
Writ of Merciful – 0.075 AOE/second/symbol.
The only other choice here is to go for vitality instead of healing power by going soldier’s, really. But Vitality won’t be doing anything for spirit weapons at all, and if you go ahead and add up co-efficients(for 15-20 second fight), you’ll be struck with a realisation that you are going to receive a co-efficient of near 10, which equals to what vitality does for you. For yourself, but you also have spirit weapons and allies around benefitting from your healing.
I find your post to be amusing, because you have decided that AOE damage is indeed trouble for my spirit weapon’s health bar, and then you critique use of healing power and AOE healing. In fact, it’s either one-by-one or focus me, because they are not going down from petty AOE’s.

My guardian has been a Spirit Weapon pvper and it is pretty dominating. Con is that it has pretty long cooldown times across the utility slots, so you can’t really finish a battle and jump into the next one. Pro is that it doesn’t rely on your stats, so you can stack on toughness, vitality, and healing all you want for survivability and have the SW still hit like an 18-wheeler.

My build is similar to yours, except I have the full 30 Honor with all the Writ traits for symbols (heals, larger, duration). You’ll want contant symbols to fully utilize the Zeal traits (apply Vuln, +10% dmg). Since SW don’t pick up boons like Might from Empower, the Vuln will make a huge difference for SW damage output. Not only that, you’ll constantly be healing your SW. Because of this, I picked up a mace which pretty much has constant symbol uptime with all Writ traits taken.

For condi removal and more area heal, I have the Bow instead of the Shield. You’d be surprised how many times the Bow has saved me while I’m down to my last sliver of health trying to do a final healing Empower inside its rain of healing arrows. It definitely helps buy that few extra seconds healing. Con is that I don’t have a nice shield bubble for those heavy condi bow warriors, but then again with being constantly cleansed by the spirit bow, their damage is basically nullified.

For your own damage output, you have lots of power from Cleric, but no crit chance. So this is where I use Sigil of Intelligence (100% crit chance on swap) on the mace. Just swap and mace #3 for block and massive crit damage. The trick is to not have any symbols down when you swap or else the symbol gets the crit tick. The other trick is to also stack Empower before swapping. 100% crit Protector’s Strike + Empower is just wow.

I’ve actually never tried Healing Breeze, but I probably wouldn’t be using to save my SW as I would do to save myself. I’d probably need to micro-manage a whole lot to know if my SW is low and if myself is low, and then pop my Healing Breeze to use its full potential. I think it’s just too much for me, and possibly risky.

I’d also like to add that SW build underwater is just way way powerful. Sure you lose synergy with symbols, but with constant Vuln stacking auto-attack spear to constant bouncing heals on auto-attack trident, SW is probably the deadliest build for underwater. And along with spirit shield which would nullify probably 80% of all underwater attacks, it’s just insane.

mambastik.8735:

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Thank you for a very detailed post! Everything made a lot of sense for me, but you’ve made a single tiny mistake – Spirit weapons DO benefit from Empower healing and Might, and that makes a staff a wanted weapon together with them.
After April 15th, the sigil of intelligence is going to be an even better choice than now, however.
I’ll be joining the fray to check out the staff/mace build together. I wonder how it goes.

I don’t think you can go cleric, since the way this game works, you either want to kill fast or be a condition build or you want to have a lot of condition removal. Also, let’s face it, spirit weapons are pretty squishy, no amount of support is really going to keep them alive for a significant amount of time. All you can really do is make the most out of them while they are alive by trying to get a kill before or as they expire. You also don’t want to go full glass, though, so you can survive a bit while they are on cooldown. Try soldier amulet out and go from there. There is no top level competitive sw build but there is something reasonably playable that you can make out of it, enjoy