Guild Wars 2

Sorry to bother if there’s already a similar thread (the search function hates me >>) but had a quick questions for some of the veteran guardians on here. I’ve noticed recently since the big patch that there have been a few more guardians running around using spirit weapons now in pvp and most of them have been fairly decent so I was wondering if there was some reason for this. Similar to how minion master is now a good build for necro’s are spirit weapons now applicable in pvp for guardians? I’ve never really been able to get the hang of the profession so I’ll admit when I saw this it made me kind of curious. Are spirit weapons viable now? And if so does anyone have a good build for one because it seems like something that could be fun lol.

~Thanks

What happened was that earlier the spirit weapon traits were scattered all around different trait lines and after the patch they merged them (think they removed the +damage one though) to the Zeal line, giving you more options to trait for some survivability or damage yourself. Spirit weapons still suffer from low health, bad AI, short duration with semilong cooldown and having you give up important utilities for them. But they can be decent in holding points in PvP, so if you enjoy them give them a try (don’t have any builds, sorry)

Just whipped up a quick build as a point of reference. This one is a burning focused spirit weapon build. I will be trying to make a power one work at another time but I don’t think those are as viable right now. Again this was made in like 2 minutes but it should give you a solid point of reference when making your own.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR8flsAhqgYRQwOIQQEHxDVeFbxY0GCvwjWDgtcAA-TZhAABws/A0XAgOOIAA8EAErMAA

Edit: An alternative to running Celestial would be to use Carrion, but I have not tested it out yet. Would give more damage potentially at the cost of survivability.

The traits for spirit weapons got streamlined but they are still very bad to use in a general solo queue sense. Unless your team is going to be helping you survive with a bunker guard or staff ele, you have very low access to condition clear and no defensive boons. You will heavily rely on CCing your enemies and your virtues for survival.

/2 cents

Vikkela.7261:

What happened was that earlier the spirit weapon traits were scattered all around different trait lines and after the patch they merged them (think they removed the +damage one though) to the Zeal line, giving you more options to trait for some survivability or damage yourself. Spirit weapons still suffer from low health, bad AI, short duration with semilong cooldown and having you give up important utilities for them. But they can be decent in holding points in PvP, so if you enjoy them give them a try (don’t have any builds, sorry)

This except the holding points part.

Anyone with any decent cleave or AOE will hit you and your spirit weapons killing them rather quickly & leaving your with a rather long wasted CD.

Frankly I think they should all be redesigned into invulnerable banner type summons that passively give stats and can be commanded to let the guardian do a similar effect to what their commands are now.

That would more or less keep their effect for people who liked them, make them more useful & get rid of the reliance on something with crappy AI that dies way to easily.

They probably won’t buff them. Due to the myriad of complaints about A.I. builds, spirit weapons are probably going to be a second-class utility forever.

I would imagine they’re being used more primarily due to the changes to burning, so the damage they inflict is actually quite significant.