Guild Wars 2

The spirit weapons seem incredibly weak.. having major problems hitting even near-stationary mobs, oozing along at an incredibly slow speed, and when they do connect, they do negligable damage, with a really slow attack rate, while not even pursuing the target when recharging for the next hit. When I kite a monster, my spirit sword just never lands a single hit on the moving target.

You can activate them, but right now the activation of sword for example, does less damage than one swing from my sword chain, and when you do activate them when traited, it takes ages before they get back at their target.

There are a lot of traits you can take to “improve” spirit weapons, but it just seems that the basis of them is too weak for it to ever be worth spending utility slots, let alone traits, on them. Right now I wouldn’t even use them if they remained with me permanent and never had to be resummoned, any other utility seems better.

My question is: Are spirit weapons as weak, even outright useless, as they seem to me right now, or am I just looking at it wrong, what are your experiences with them? I love the concept of spirit weapons, but I don’t see them actually doing anything in a fight, at all.. am I doing something wrong?

You are not doing anything wrong. Spirit weapons are really that subpar. They have the same problems Ranger pets and Necro minions have, they have an incredibly hard time hitting moving targets, are sometimes unrespnsive and their effects (AND uptime) are not worth all that trait investment.
The hammer can be situationally useful in PvP traited with two three seconds duration knockdowns.
The shield can be situationally useful in WvW as well but it has LOTS of problems following you.
I don’t even know what the internal CD on condition cleanse the bow has or what is its priority, but you will most likely summon it to cleanse conditions from you and sometimes you don’t know where it’s shotting at, the AoE heal it provides is pitiful at best, it should have a stronger effect such as removing several conditions too.
The Sword with all the AI problems and low damage is just a no go.

To make spirit weapon builds viable:
-The AI needs to get vastly improved, the spirits should be able to hit moving targets just like any player.
-Damage needs to get improved for hammer and specially for sword.
-Command effects need to be stronger and more effective on sword and bow.
-The casting time should be much shorter. Spirit weapons need to be casted time and time again and with such a long cast time, it becomes a chore to do so, specially if you go with more than one spirit weapon on you bar.
-Nerfing the stupidly overpowered Altruistic Healing builds and toning down Pure of Voice+Soldier Runes shout builds would make people play something else (or just nerfing shouts to not overshadow everything else except consecrations would be a start).
-The most important one: The uptime of the spirit weapons. When these are on CD you feel like you are that much weaker becouse you spent so many trait points on them. The only spirit weapon that feels reasonably good with its uptime is the Sword with 24 secs CD traited, all the other weapons should have roughly the same uptime as well.
-Edit: Also, one of the weapons should be instant cast and break stuns, I vote for the shield or the bow. You can’t enter PvP without a stun breaker right now, so if you want to go with three spirit weapons, you’re simply screwed.

The only place I use sword and hammer are to make underwater combat less tiresome.

Shield as noted can be situationally handy in WvW, but quite often I switch to it in dungeons ( along with WoR ) if I know I’m facing several ranged mobs, since you can gather them all up nice and cosy inside the bubble and basically not worry about them for 30 seconds.

Khenzy.9348:

You are not doing anything wrong. Spirit weapons are really that subpar. They have the same problems Ranger pets and Necro minions have, they have an incredibly hard time hitting moving targets, are sometimes unrespnsive and their effects (AND uptime) are not worth all that trait investment.

Exactly right, but at least rangers have more commands for their pets. I would love for a simple “keep attacking this guy” F4 skill.

Khenzy.9348:

I don’t even know what the internal CD on condition cleanse the bow has or what is its priority, but you will most likely summon it to cleanse conditions from you and sometimes you don’t know where it’s shotting at, the AoE heal it provides is pitiful at best, it should have a stronger effect such as removing several conditions too.

It’s little over 5 secs, which means that it’ll only remove 3 conditions without traits and only if you don’t use the command. If you want to make most of the 8 sec long command then it’ll only remove 2 conditions. I also agree on the healing part, it just isn’t enough. Also, it doesn’t scale with Healing Power either if I remember correctly. It’s cool to look at, but it really just sucks all around.

You can have a 100% up time alternating between the sword and hammer with traits, but it’s like you said, the damage from the sword can easily be made up elsewhere with more reliability.

However, I use the hammer in PvP all the time, and it has saved me while in downed state many times. Although it is frustrating that one of the coolest aspects of the guardian is under powered.

Spirit weapon are quite good if you trait for them – but that’s the problem. Hammer is excellent control, sword is good damage, and shield is good defense, but the shield is the only one that I have found to be usable in a vanilla condition. The traits are also scattering in a bunch of different places, making spirit weapon builds extremely rigid. Either you are a spirit weapon build or you are not.

I’ve specced for Spirit Weapons and Burning Damage. It’s pretty fun, but I’m so squishy, it’s ridiculous. I’m considering switching to a tankier build, but mah sword and hammer are just too cool!

But yeah, seriously. Spirit Weapons need a buff. In exchange for giving up so many good stats in order to buff our Spirit Weapons, we should be near-broken when they’re all up at once, in exchange for being so useless when they’re down.

Khenzy.9348:

-Nerfing the stupidly overpowered Altruistic Healing builds and toning down Pure of Voice+Soldier Runes shout builds would make people play something else (or just nerfing shouts to not overshadow everything else except consecrations would be a start).

I see what you did there.

Ok, a real response:

It’s not just that we have two or three builds that are or are arguably OP, it’s that we only have those builds if we want to truly be competitive or contribute to the team. I would not be disappointed if they reworked Altruistic Healing to have a cap of healing per boon per ally, or something else to control its healing as long as we get the other 50 or so traits that are just plain bad buffed.

First of all: Don’t use the “Question-format” if you’re not asking a question which has a single, factual question.

@Khenzy: I don’t think Pure of Voice or Altruistic Healing builds are actually overpowered (small aspects of them, such as using Retaliation to kill people, are). It’s just that the meta makes them really strong, which makes other (more offensive) builds harder to pull off (especially since those builds have a tendency to die at burst).

TLDR: It’s not really a problem with this profession.

I have tried the hammer in spvp and turn out kinda wired, Instead of taking hammer you should just take the signet of power, winch is the same idea of knock down but with a 900 or 1200 range i think

With so many other great utility skills, I see no reason why any Guardian would use spirit weapons.

Like signets, they seem boring and lacking in utility. Even if they were buffed I would never use them.

I find spirit weapons the best utility set underwater.