Guild Wars 2

These skills need some more love. As of right now they are definitely better than they used to be but other skills still trump them. (Plz no political jokes). So my proposed idea was treating them in a similar fashion to turrets as well as a few minor changes. Here’s my ideas!

Hammer of Wisdom:
-Damage 200
-No longer knocks back but dazes on 3rd hit for 0.5 seconds
-Command stuns target for 1 second
-Grants 1 stack of stability for 3 seconds. 400 range, 5 targets. Pulses once every 10 seconds.
-Duration 30 seconds
-Cooldown 50 seconds

Sword of Justice:
-Damage 600
-Every hit causes 1 stack of vulnerability for 2 seconds
-Command causes sword to be engulfed in flames causing 2 stacks of burning for 2 seconds on next hit
-Grants fury for 5 seconds. 400 range, 5 targets. Pulses once every 15 seconds
-Duration 45 seconds
-Cooldown 30 seconds

Bow of Truth:
-No damage
-Fires arrows that ricochet once between players healing them for 500 and curing 1 condition
-Command creates a healing chain between bow and 3 players healing them for 1000 for 3 seconds as long as they stay in range of the bow. Range 600
-Grants regen for 3 seconds once every 10 seconds. 400 range, 5 targets
-Duration 20 seconds
-Cooldown 40 seconds

Shield of the Avenger:
-No damage
-Creates a bubble that lasts for 4 seconds and now stays close to player while bubbling instead of staying in 1 spot and can move while bubbling as well
-Command releases a burst of energy, 600 radius, granting 8 seconds of vigor
-Grants 4 seconds of protection. Pulses every 8 seconds. 400 range, 5 targets
-Duration 24 seconds
-Cooldown 30 seconds

Limiting the weapons close to the caster is something that ive been asking for quite some years, ANet never cared(blame the awfull balance crew) or must have a plan for later stuff.

I would wait for the next spec :\ Guardian traits are a mess at the momment.

That solves nothing. Spirit weapons have very low uptime, and you are not fixing that. You are just adding some boons that do nothing to help, when all of them can be permanently maintained in an organized environment.

RabbitUp.8294:

That solves nothing. Spirit weapons have very low uptime, and you are not fixing that. You are just adding some boons that do nothing to help, when all of them can be permanently maintained in an organized environment.

Sure in an event with lots of people everyone is going to have multiple stacks of all boons. But even if you’re with just a party of 5 these could actually be useful then. Or if you’re solo the extra help from the spirit weapons would be nice. Not unlike how Engi’s turrets currently are. True the uptime for these weapons are not as long as turrets but honestly 30-45 seconds is pretty good cause they continually do their thing while active. But they can also move too, unlike turrets. Thing is they need to simply do more and that’s why I had the idea of an Engi Turret perspective. Certainly would give people an incentive to try them out again.

In a party of 5, all of those boon are permanent. Protection might be a little harder to maintain, but if necessary, you only need a Ranger with Stone Spirit.

If you are solo, the only boon between these that matters is fury. In which case, we have sword #2 and Procession of Blades.

Spirit weapons don’t need a bandaid, not after we had to wait 4 years for devs to take a look at them. They need an overhaul. Either they have as much uptime as ranger spirits, or they become real pets like Necro. As it is, we get the worst of both worlds.

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Just let them die, man.

I think the only issue with spirit weapons is that they do not function as proper minions, and have underwhelming effects.

What I mean by this?

Firstly, they have a huge downtime. Recharge does not start until after a spirit dies. For the effects they provide, it is very whelming.

Second, only one of our spirit weapons function as genuine minion. Shield of Courage is more of a PBAoE projectile block, while Bow of Truth is a heal. Hammer is nothing more than a knockback machine, and does poor damage. Leaving us with Sword of Wrath, but that deals only slightly less damage than Hammer but not high enough to justify the requirements.

There may be use of spirit weapons in a Burn condition build. However, they are weak in current state. Furthermore, Hammer would need its passive knockback removed or replaced with knockdown.

I can agree with the active of Bow of Truth needing a change (among other things). It’s basically a really crappy version of Sanctuary right now. No ally is gonna sit in a healing field for that long unless the healing it provides is absurd or the field provides some sort of protective effect. At the very least they should half the duration and double the healing (in regards to the active effect specifically).

Glue the spirit Hammer to the left waist of the Guardian.
Glue the spirit Sword to the right waist of the Guardian.
Glue the spirit shield to the back of the Guardian.

They hit in melee range with the exception of Shield able to fly out to damage and land aegis; as well as, hammer having a longer range to wack people. They no longer chase.

And we hold the bow with our teeth?

RabbitUp.8294:

And we hold the bow with our teeth?

No, you wear it as a necklace silly.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I can agree with the active of Bow of Truth needing a change (among other things). It’s basically a really crappy version of Sanctuary right now. No ally is gonna sit in a healing field for that long unless the healing it provides is absurd or the field provides some sort of protective effect. At the very least they should half the duration and double the healing (in regards to the active effect specifically).

Actually, Bow of Truth is great in a healing build. It’s one of the few ranged healing options in the game that can keep a whole group of 10 people alive for 9 second intervals, twice during the bow’s uptime.

The main problem is that Bow of Truth has such a huge cooldown. Again it’s a common problem with Spirit Weapons. But the effect itself is great, and it would be severely missed.

The reason why Bow of Truth is an issue (besides recharge) isn’t because of the effect, but the fact that it replaces a potential offensive spirit weapon, limiting us to only Hammer and Sword when we want offensive spirit weapons.

I guess if I wanted to nitpick, the trait to improve Bow of Truth is in Zeal, despite being exclusively a Healing skill. Perhaps Bow of Truth shouldn’t have been a Spirit Weapon in the first place, but its active a Consecration.

Similarly, Shield of Courage should’ve also been a consecration.

Support Spirit Weapons honestly have no business being Spirit Weapons in the first place.

Or maybe there wouldn’t be a trait that works with 2 weapons only. Make burning on hit an innate effect of Sword.

Burning should be an innate effect on Weapon and Hammer, in my personal opinion. Spirit weapons are too weak to have a “build-defining” grandmaster trait dedicated to it.

RabbitUp.8294:

And we hold the bow with our teeth?

Groin.

Spirit Weapons don’t need a ton of changes to have a niche.

• Spirit Weapons should stay alive until killed like most Necro minions (i.e. not dying on a timer).
• Swap the knockdown and knockback effects on Hammer so that the knockback is the active.
• Swap the active and passive actions on Shield so that the bubble is the active and the bouncing projectile is the auto attack.
• Have the Bow target enemies and deal at least a small amount of damage+a defensive condition. Let the arrows either bounce or pierce targets while retaining the current functionality when the arrows pass through an ally. The Shield could instead get the piercing projectile if the Bow bounces.

Really that’s it, and Spirit Weapons will not only have a niche, but multiple builds that could revolve around the skill type. Power, Condi, AH, Support and any permutation of those would be potential routes. Such a SW Guardian could function just like an MM necro currently does, which isn’t to say that MM necro is necessarily optimal, but they at least have a purpose unlike Spirit Weapons.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Spirit Weapons don’t need a ton of changes to have a niche.

• Spirit Weapons should stay alive until killed like most Necro minions (i.e. not dying on a timer).
• Swap the knockdown and knockback effects on Hammer so that the knockback is the active.
• Swap the active and passive actions on Shield so that the bubble is the active and the bouncing projectile is the auto attack.
• Have the Bow target enemies and deal at least a small amount of damage+a defensive condition. Let the arrows either bounce or pierce targets while retaining the current functionality when the arrows pass through an ally. The Shield could instead get the piercing projectile if the Bow bounces.

Really that’s it, and Spirit Weapons will not only have a niche, but multiple builds that could revolve around the skill type. Power, Condi, AH, Support and any permutation of those would be potential routes. Such a SW Guardian could function just like an MM necro currently does, which isn’t to say that MM necro is necessarily optimal, but they at least have a purpose unlike Spirit Weapons.

They’ve had no changes in the past 4 years, apart from making some old traits baseline and meging some orthers into their new trait, which kept their overall functionality and potential the same.

So, really any change is a big change.

I think that logical balancing calls that something weak gets buffed first before being completely reworked. There’s really no reason as of yet that they should be reworked when the last time ANet even touched them was two or more years ago.

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

I would really like it if they changed how Spirit Weapons work. They would be infinitely more useful and functional if they worked a bit like Venoms do.

CptAurellian.9537:

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

Translation: I want to buff skills that are already fine and leave underpowered skills in the dust. #powercreep

Fashion Mage.3712:

CptAurellian.9537:

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

Translation: I want to buff skills that are already fine and leave underpowered skills in the dust. #powercreep

kitten. As if signets, shouts and consecrations didn’t contain big problems. Fixing them should always be a priority over fixing stupid AI skills that would require a total rework to become remotely useful.

The same mentality that led to the removal of tomes, nothing new.

Spirit weapon need to SPIRITS so no damage or cc to them at all. Plus they should not disapear till the comand ability is used. Also they need faster movement speed to catch up to moving targets

Ghotistyx.6942:

Spirit Weapons don’t need a ton of changes to have a niche.

• Spirit Weapons should stay alive until killed like most Necro minions (i.e. not dying on a timer).
• Swap the knockdown and knockback effects on Hammer so that the knockback is the active.
• Swap the active and passive actions on Shield so that the bubble is the active and the bouncing projectile is the auto attack.
• Have the Bow target enemies and deal at least a small amount of damage+a defensive condition. Let the arrows either bounce or pierce targets while retaining the current functionality when the arrows pass through an ally. The Shield could instead get the piercing projectile if the Bow bounces.

Really that’s it, and Spirit Weapons will not only have a niche, but multiple builds that could revolve around the skill type. Power, Condi, AH, Support and any permutation of those would be potential routes. Such a SW Guardian could function just like an MM necro currently does, which isn’t to say that MM necro is necessarily optimal, but they at least have a purpose unlike Spirit Weapons.

I’m not sure about swapping the active and passive on the Shield, since the main drawcard for it historically has been projectile hate for as long as the shield lasts. Although I guess that ‘for as long as the shield lasts’ is the problem – if it doesn’t run out of time, it’ll just keep generating that bubble until the enemy manages to kill it.

Possibly the bubble could have a roughly 50% uptime if activated on recharge? This would give it roughly the same uptime as traited Wall of Reflection, but in shorter bursts. You also get a regular knockback, but this is balanced against the shield being destroyable.

draxynnic.3719:

I’m not sure about swapping the active and passive on the Shield, since the main drawcard for it historically has been projectile hate for as long as the shield lasts. Although I guess that ‘for as long as the shield lasts’ is the problem – if it doesn’t run out of time, it’ll just keep generating that bubble until the enemy manages to kill it.

Possibly the bubble could have a roughly 50% uptime if activated on recharge? This would give it roughly the same uptime as traited Wall of Reflection, but in shorter bursts. You also get a regular knockback, but this is balanced against the shield being destroyable.

Its about having control over when the shield is popped so that you have uptime when you need it. Same reasoning for Hammer’s change. You want to choose when the knockback/blowout happens, and keep the target in place otherwise. You want control over the stronger aspects of the skills and allow the weaker ones to happen automatically. You also want an auto-attack on the Shield and Bow so they can finally interact with the Spirit Weapon trait.

Ghost that AA on bow and shield makes issues since they are defensive SW, the SW will get out of the combat scene to run after target while they should be used in defense and support.

Guardian is a mess overall, they removed tomes where tomes could be tweaked to better things that we have now, SW probably will continue trash or be removed to add something even worse than SW… so i would prefer to stay with SW.

What SW really need is besides decent traits, they need to stay closer or tied to the caster imo that is important, at melee range that would fix the run away or lost SW…issues, players would use the command for weapon to leap to zone for an atack/suuport, still for the AA, shield would be a 100 defensive weapon but i can see it twewaked on the longow SW.

Besides the close to caster changes:

SW GS (25sec CD)
(1/2 sec CD)SW GreatSword : Auto Cleaves melee range atacks and apply vulnerability to hitted targets (Zealous blade would effect this SW as well).

(27sec CD ) SW GS command: SW leap to targetted zone crippling hitted targets and aoe vulnerability.

—//—

SW hammer (30 sec CD )
(1/4 sec CD ) SW Hammer: Melee range as well, KB every 3rd atack.
(27 sec CD )SW Hammer command: leap to targetted zone ,AOE knocdown and protection or stability to teamates.. lol

—//—

SW LongBow (45 sec CD)
( 2 sec AA CD as ) SW Bow: single atack autos, 1200 range, targets targeted, receive more X% fire damage next 2 seconds when marked with bow, allies that cast fire damage on marked target would get on condi cleansed, every time Bow hits a target has a 50/50 chance to clean 1 condition from caster.

(60sec CD) SW command Bow: 1000 range AOE purging conditions with small heals.

—//—

SW Shield (40 sec CD)
(1 sec CD)SW Shield: every time caster suffers form ranged atacks shield dome is aplied arround the caster, giving % armor (based on vit+armor) + “%outgoing heal other guardians”??

(45sec CD) SW command Shield : Overload your dome aplying aegis and stunbreaking to allies inside, players that got “stunbreaked” receive 1 second of resistance.

—//—

For the trait Expeditious spirit, i would sugest SW when killed explodes aplying fire stacks + damage to closest targets, and makk then get X% less damage on phisical skills.

(EDIT)
We could have a healing skill and a elite as well:

Healing, heal yourself for X and your SW, for each SW healed, player gains more X heal and <insert somethign here> with 25 seconds recharge.

Elite, Makes your SW burn targets,for every hit on burning targets, player gains 2sec of MIght. ; would have 20 seconds of recharge.

EDIT 2

SW get damage x% more from certain condis, but are imune to fire, since would be a fire and ghost themre.

on GW1 fire would make double damage to spirits but this are fire based.. so oterh condis would have to do more damage as trade off.

I would love for the Spirit Weapon to have an Elite Utility that summons a spiritual army or ghost army of Ascalon spirits that storm the battle field in front of you providing a boon on allies or cause you to gain alacrity on all cool downs on utilities?

If Spirit weapons weren’t in this state, we could see new ones in elite specs. Like, we are getting mantras, so imagine a mantra that summons a spirit dagger with each charge.

hourglass.2486:

I would love for the Spirit Weapon to have an Elite Utility that summons a spiritual army or ghost army of Ascalon spirits that storm the battle field in front of you providing a boon on allies or cause you to gain alacrity on all cool downs on utilities?

Spiritweapons are easy to rework. I would say scrap the minion aspect and make them like a bonus weaponskill without any summoning component.
You just get the active ones and you cast them yourself.

Hammer: Spirit hammer materializes in your hand and you leap to the target and knock him down. Like hammer 2.

Sword: Ram a spirit greatsword into the ground to burn enemies in the target area. Works like mindstab.

Shield: Throw your shield to the target area dmg foes. The shield applies protection and aegis to allies. Works like phoenix from ele.

Bow: Heal and cleanse at area. Like bow 5.

They are like a bonus weaponskill and get a cd similar to normal weaponskills.

InsaneQR.7412, shield dome is mandatory. :P still needs to happen when i take the damage.

CptAurellian.9537:

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

That’s overly pessimistic. There have been plenty of pretty awesome suggestions regarding spirit weapon overhauls that would make them viable and possibly fan favorites. It probably wouldn’t take as much development time to fix them as we all think, it’s just a matter of when Anet gets around to a major underused skill reworking for multiple classes. I’m willing to bet they have at least a couple different spirit weapon buffs in the pipeline but aren’t implementing them due to them needing more testing and whatnot. We definitely need an overhaul and not just a buff though so the more threads like this one, the better. Keep it up!

Aeolus.3615:

InsaneQR.7412, shield dome is mandatory. :P still needs to happen when i take the damage.

You basically have a dome on shield. Something like a ranged version would be nice. You throw the shield on a target location and produce a dome tgat applies aegis and morphs projectiles into healing projectiles.

Shield has some niche uses, because it’s basically a 30 second block, with very few gaps. I use it in Uncategorized Fractal to block the projectiles of the asura boss and it usually lasts the whole fight while we kill the golems.

InsaneQR.7412:

Aeolus.3615:

InsaneQR.7412, shield dome is mandatory. :P still needs to happen when i take the damage.

You basically have a dome on shield. Something like a ranged version would be nice. You throw the shield on a target location and produce a dome tgat applies aegis and morphs projectiles into healing projectiles.

to fight druids, and some range spammers i really need both…. since i dont play damage gimmicks on my guard.
Guard cant loose the SW dome, not my fault if people dont know how to use it, and its a stun break and a block, that can be traited to heal and remove condi as well.

RabbitUp.8294, its a an abosrb, if was a blocks it would make use loose condis with the DH trait :P, the pve players alredy QQ with the blcoks guard has since they cant spam lol…

And in WvW is a anti omega golem weapon in pair with WoR, and the off hand shield dome.

Aeolus.3615:

InsaneQR.7412:

Aeolus.3615:

InsaneQR.7412, shield dome is mandatory. :P still needs to happen when i take the damage.

You basically have a dome on shield. Something like a ranged version would be nice. You throw the shield on a target location and produce a dome tgat applies aegis and morphs projectiles into healing projectiles.

to fight druids, and some range spammers i really need both…. since i dont play damage gimmicks on my guard.
Guard cant loose the SW dome, not my fault if people dont know how to use it, and its a stun break and a block, that can be traited to heal and remove condi as well.

RabbitUp.8294, its a an abosrb, if was a blocks it would make use loose condis with the DH trait :P, the pve players alredy QQ with the blcoks guard has since they cant spam lol…

And in WvW is a anti omega golem weapon in pair with WoR, and the off hand shield dome.

But rethink again my suggestion. It would be a dome that can be ranged (so it can be used either defensive or supportive). It is against projectiles and can be used with every weaponset. Together with shield and sword you shouldnt have any problems against projectiles AND you could control the dome at will without the risk of your SW to die.

I don’t see the point in removing the summoning aspect. Then, they become standard spells, and in a lot of ways, very similar to our existing utilities, like Wall of Reflection.

The problem with them is their extremely low uptime.

@InsaneQR.7412, well in that case, sounds like a sanctuary but w/o the kB and the heal, still like RabbitUp said, to similiar with some skills.

Could be interesting if we could move it like the ventari tablets, but aoe’ing aegis+stunbreaker when moved.

But ANet dont like strong defensive stuff(only offensive for players look kewl in the dps burst race), it would make the game harder for most gw2, so i doubt any changes might occurr.

Spirit Weapons were in a pretty poor state from the very beginning. Their traits were all over the place and I think I was the ONLY person on my server actually using a Spirit Guardian because I liked the concept. The first character I made on August 25th 2012 (during the 3 day Headstart) was a Guardian because of the Spirit Weapons.

Then ANet destroyed them completely during the January 2013 patch by making the Spirit Weapons killable while still keeping the short duration, long cooldown and traits all over the place.

Personally I would like to see Spirit Weapons either return to being unkillable while they are active or persistent (until killed) similar to Necromancer minions.

Just my opinion.