Guild Wars 2

1. Kindled zeal(trait) change to Unbeatable spirits(new trait) – spirit weapons are immune to damage. So, guardians will have choice between Wrathful spirits(50% damage, for PvP or PvE) and Unbeatable spirits(immune, for WvW) in grandmaster.
2. Spirit weapon Mastery and Expeditious spirit – merge in one master trait.
3. Spirits area(new adept trait) – all spirit weapons skills use ground targeting.

I really believe that such changes will make from spirit weapons a solid and competitive(to shouts or meditations) choice for guardian.
Please, support this topic. Thank you!

Spirit skills still need rework, as much i would love to use SoA on combat is not that efective at all.

Aeolus.3615:

Spirit skills still need rework, as much i would love to use SoA on combat is not that efective at all.

This ^ really.

As is you have to invest far to many traits to make spirit weapons do viable damage & even after that they die extremely easily.

+ there is the fact that investing to make spirit weapons viable leaves you personally much weaker, especially to conditions & bursty damage.

I have talked to allot of friends & most have said they would like psirit weapons changed in 1 of 3 ways.

1: Consolidate the traits down to a maximum of 3, & make one of said traits double the spirit weapons base health while making them do their command upon death (similar to ranger spirit traits)

2: Make spirit weapons more like bundles/conjured weapons. (they last for a set amount of time & give you 5 new weapon abilities while active)

3: Make them a bit more like banners, albeit ones that could be commanded for a special effect (they would be stationary, give every ally in a set radius a positive effect & every enemy in the area a negative effect, they could be commanded for a special effect)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Aeolus.3615:

Spirit skills still need rework, as much i would love to use SoA on combat is not that efective at all.

This ^ really.

As is you have to invest far to many traits to make spirit weapons do viable damage & even after that they die extremely easily.

+ there is the fact that investing to make spirit weapons viable leaves you personally much weaker, especially to conditions & bursty damage.

I have talked to allot of friends & most have said they would like psirit weapons changed in 1 of 3 ways.

1: Consolidate the traits down to a maximum of 3, & make one of said traits double the spirit weapons base health while making them do their command upon death (similar to ranger spirit traits)

2: Make spirit weapons more like bundles/conjured weapons. (they last for a set amount of time & give you 5 new weapon abilities while active)

3: Make them a bit more like banners, albeit ones that could be commanded for a special effect (they would be stationary, give every ally in a set radius a positive effect & every enemy in the area a negative effect, they could be commanded for a special effect)

3: Absolutely not, the last thing this game needs and guardians even more so, are fixed static skills that dont work in WvW.

1 and 2: suffer the same problem that Necro and current spirit weapons suffers, which is at its core a design flaw in the skill categorization. What i mean is, currently the game is designed (or at least wanted to be) around your weapon giving you your combat/offensive skills and your 5 pickable skills giving your your heal, 3 utility skills and 1 elite. That is what they wanted to do, in reality what ended up happening is that almost every class out there breaks this rule, being summons the Major offenders.
For the guardian in particular, most builds rely on your utilities to double as your healing skills due to the lack of sustain and base “toughness”. Lets take a look at spirit weapons. Sword and Hammer flat out do not work as utility skills, they work as extra damage and a combat move in the case of the hammer. Shield works more like a defensive combat skill with the option to do burst damage, than a real utility skill. The bow is the only one that actually works as a utility skill but also doubles as a healing.
In general what happens is you end up using utility skills as combat moves or double tasking, which breaks the basic design of the game, on top of that 3 out of 4 of your spirits work as combat skills instead of utility skills, and the remaining one is weak at best. Yet on top of that you have to invest an insane amount of points, basically going all or nothing into to it to make it worth it, and given the nature of their long cooldown and the traits points investment you can not mix and match other skills either.

As i said, this happens with all classes, what was intended to be particular for the engi, ends up happening with every class out there, it just happens that this breaking with design at every corner, crashes the loudest on the guardian.

Apolo.5942:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Aeolus.3615:

Spirit skills still need rework, as much i would love to use SoA on combat is not that efective at all.

This ^ really.

As is you have to invest far to many traits to make spirit weapons do viable damage & even after that they die extremely easily.

+ there is the fact that investing to make spirit weapons viable leaves you personally much weaker, especially to conditions & bursty damage.

I have talked to allot of friends & most have said they would like psirit weapons changed in 1 of 3 ways.

1: Consolidate the traits down to a maximum of 3, & make one of said traits double the spirit weapons base health while making them do their command upon death (similar to ranger spirit traits)

2: Make spirit weapons more like bundles/conjured weapons. (they last for a set amount of time & give you 5 new weapon abilities while active)

3: Make them a bit more like banners, albeit ones that could be commanded for a special effect (they would be stationary, give every ally in a set radius a positive effect & every enemy in the area a negative effect, they could be commanded for a special effect)

3: Absolutely not, the last thing this game needs and guardians even more so, are fixed static skills that dont work in WvW.

1 and 2: suffer the same problem that Necro and current spirit weapons suffers, which is at its core a design flaw in the skill categorization. What i mean is, currently the game is designed (or at least wanted to be) around your weapon giving you your combat/offensive skills and your 5 pickable skills giving your your heal, 3 utility skills and 1 elite. That is what they wanted to do, in reality what ended up happening is that almost every class out there breaks this rule, being summons the Major offenders.
For the guardian in particular, most builds rely on your utilities to double as your healing skills due to the lack of sustain and base “toughness”. Lets take a look at spirit weapons. Sword and Hammer flat out do not work as utility skills, they work as extra damage and a combat move in the case of the hammer. Shield works more like a defensive combat skill with the option to do burst damage, than a real utility skill. The bow is the only one that actually works as a utility skill but also doubles as a healing.
In general what happens is you end up using utility skills as combat moves or double tasking, which breaks the basic design of the game, on top of that 3 out of 4 of your spirits work as combat skills instead of utility skills, and the remaining one is weak at best. Yet on top of that you have to invest an insane amount of points, basically going all or nothing into to it to make it worth it, and given the nature of their long cooldown and the traits points investment you can not mix and match other skills either.

As i said, this happens with all classes, what was intended to be particular for the engi, ends up happening with every class out there, it just happens that this breaking with design at every corner, crashes the loudest on the guardian.

I kind of agree with you on some things. Whatever they do there will be problems though because no build should ever be “perfect”

As far as my suggestions go

Number 3, could actually be nice in PvP & PvE where area control is much more of a thing.

Suggestion number 1, it would actually alleviate allot of the problems & make the spirit weapons better.
Your right though it would not get rid of their problems completely. Only a completely redesign of them from the ground up could do that.

Personally I would like my second suggestion though, as it would get rid of the problem of when a spirit weapon dies it becomes useless (and they die quite easily) & it would put much more control in the players hands instead of being reliant on AI.

Kinda given up on spirit weapons. I am not a huge fan of AI summons anyway. And spirit weapons are to cumbersome with all the needed trait investments.

Whatever they migh change in the future, spirit weapons shouldn’t be any stronger in PvP. AI carries players way too hard in this game, even if most of it can be countered they offer too much reward for 0 effort.

yes, static spirits would kitten the minor work dev’s had trying to make them more apelative, for static domes guardian already has the useless shield 5 and the non elite sanctuary, and these 2 are already easy countered/avoided, spirits weapons are in a worse state.

Seems, Anet still don`t care about it…

I wish they would just take all the spirit weapons and throw them into one elite.