Guild Wars 2

Spirit Weapons were supposed to be a key part of Guardian playstyle, acting as our “pets” and giving us the rather cool choice of keeping them, or putting them on cooldown for a more powerful effect. Great! The problem is, the weapons are dumb as bricks. I had two summoned yesterday as I ran through the northern portions of Mount Maelstrom, and they didn’t do a single thing to help me. Instead, they spent all their time fighting a Risen Hand that I had simply avoided (because I’m done that Heart).

I figured I would pull them off by Commanding them (I was 100% set up for Spirit Weapons, and so had the Command-doesn’t-destroy trait). Nope. They just do it wherever they are, rather than on my target. So that Risen Hand got a walloping it’d never experienced even before it got disembodied, but the pair of Risen Brutes beating on me just kept on truckin’.

So… yeah. I’m back to my old build, and no longer using Spirit Weapons at all, until they’re drastically improved.

Suggestions:

1. Make them only attack your target, while you’re attacking.

Or, at the very least:

2. Make Command cause them to use the skill on your target (can be different for Bow of Truth/Shield of whatever it is, but perhaps those should be party-targetable?).

It did that to me a few times. If I don’t have anything targeted and something is coming at me, they turn their attention to it. I haven’t had a real problem with that so far because I usually pull them out before starting my attack on NPCs, but I can see how that could be a problem if you brought them out and started to run with them. That’s happened to me before and this is partly the reason why I don’t bring them out in PvE unless I’m about to attack something.

They’ve been good to me in both PvE and WvW since they attack my target even when I’m down and I manage to rally from their kill.

I use and love a Spirit Weapons build. I agree that the AI is a bit sluggish and there should definitely be a way to have them stop attacking your target and follow you if commanded.

However, your first suggestion would actually weaken the Spirit Weapons a lot. One of the great reasons to play a Spirit Weapon build is that they’ll attack your target even if you’re dodging, running away, Downed, reviving someone else or doing something else. So they keep damage going while you’re tending to the rest of the battlefield, or whatever.