Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I was thinking about how many skills guardians have that are actually used in builds and it hit me. Only 50% of our utility skills are actually viable as part of an effective build. Therefore i put together a few suggestions on how to improve spirit weapons.

I wanted to bring in some GW1 influance here from the ritualist since this is what spirit weapons were based on.

Sword of Justice – the next 3 attacks for you and your allies steal health (300 hp base + scales at 0.2 ratio with healing power)

Hammer of Wisdom – the next 3 attacks for you and your allies deal 10% more damage.

Bow of Truth – Your next 3 attacks remove a condition from you and your allies.

Master trait – your spirit weapons have increased effectiveness (2 additional strikes)

Here is where i drew some of my inspiration from:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_spell

I want these to basically be a buff, keep the same animations but while the weapon is active the players get the buff, once the charges are used the wepon disappears. Also all weps have a cap of 5 players

Im sure similar suggestions have been put out there before but I would love to hear your thoughts

It wouldn’t make them viable, they would still instantly get killed by a drop of aoe or cleave before doing anything useful. Also, sword is supposed to be damage centric right? why the hell give it healing.. maybe if the sword increased damage by 30% or something for everyone in a 600 radius I might use it.

I was thinking about this the other day.

Could dropping their HP, making them immune to conditions, and giving them like a 10 block shield upon summon make them worthwhile? Sure they’d splat after the 10 blocks, but that should last quite a while outside of fighting an army of things, where really they should splat aye?

And with that, while I like the OP’s ideas of effects, personally I was thinking just add the guardian symbol from hammer to the hammer, and gs to the gs. Then Bow… /shrug make it actually consistent and useable sustained condition removal. Just make it pulse a condition removal every 5s for the duration or something like that, 10s if 5 is too good.

Shield IMO is solid in it’s effect as long as it doesn’t poof. It’s fickle and not my preference for projectile walls, but it’s helpful.

I was thinking more along the lines of them being invulnerable. With this idea theyre a buff, the weapon itself doesnt do damage, its just there as a symbol that the player has the effect on and is destroyed when the charges are used. Think of it like Icebow or FGS without changing the weapon skills. I agree if they were destructable it doesnt matter what you do with them theyre not viable. Thanks for the comment!

it’s true they get melted by champions and higher very fast, but the glory is when your against anything lower than that, they can suck up all the damage for you, so soloing veterans is much easier, and if you have a ranger or necromancer your party you could take down a dungeon boss without taking any damage. If you build guardian right, you could essentially have a tanky necromancer

if they are invulnerable, they will be OP in sPVP. ( I don’t really care about sPVP but an outcry will rise)

maybe add another trait that put perma protection on them, or make the weapons take 20% damage from AOE. ( full damage when they are targeted though)

Lalangamena.3694:

if they are invulnerable, they will be OP in sPVP. ( I don’t really care about sPVP but an outcry will rise)

maybe add another trait that put perma protection on them, or make the weapons take 20% damage from AOE. ( full damage when they are targeted though)

I only remember one complaint back when they were invulnerable, and that was in WvW when spirit weapons could follow you half way across a map.

Just give them really high HP. This way they can still get hit with control effects and conditions, but not disappear when from passive attacks. Make it so that they need to be focused to be killed.

that would pretty much destroy the spirit weapon builds out there atm and TBH those are still pretty viable (in PvP at least) personally i think they are fin the way they are.

Sooooooo the reason I say invulnetable is that the weapons themselves do not do anything withis suggestion. They do not attack, they simply follow you as an indicator that you have the buff on. Thats it. It would be pointless if you were able to remove the buff by destroying the weapon. Think of it like the charges on FGS. Once theyre 0 the weapon disappears, utilizing the same principle here. Its a new way of applying different buffs and more interesting gameplay.

As of right now if you run a spirit weapon build in pve or wvw you have virtually 0 condi cleanse, not much damage and not much health. On top of that your only source of damage can be destroyed very easily. Going this route provides more utility and support which is what the guardian was built for.

Give Spirit Weapons immunity to direct damage and let them be damaged by condition damage and CC.
That let you be able to use it against almost all the pve situations and make them not unkillable because almost all the player in spvp play a condition meta build or do condition damage like a secondary damage effect.
From the release of GW2 Guardian is good why of spirit weapons. But in spvp that can make some problems to other classes (can make the guardian viable to other roles than bunker…). That’s because they’re immune to damage. Low duration and damage and high cooldown, but good effect.
If you let the enemy damage your SW whit conditions and CC you can balance that problem.
Then I want to see the Shield that follow you all the time and don’t stop every moment in a place, and activation skill Ground Target. And the activation skill of Spirit Bow… make it a Ground Target Skill.

Three changes to make Spirit Weapons viable:
1) Immune to direct damage (not immune to Conditions and CC)
2) Shield that follow you and GT skill
3) Activation skill of Spirit Bow a GT skill.

Spirit Weapon is the guardian’s most expensive utility skill set, trait wise; yet the reward is not as great the investment. They are viable, only to certain weak classes who don’t do much AoE damage; like thief, ranger, etc. Hammer wrecks them up.

I love the rit weapon spell idea, but from what I can gather from their traits they were meant to be more akin to spirit summons from gw1 like:

Spirit sword= pain spirit
Spirit hammer=wonderlust spirit
Spirit shield= modified form of shelter spirit

If the theme were to hold I would love to see Anet make a more fundamental decision with regards to spirit weapons:

A)Their Nature:

1.Are they timed summoned weapons-i.e. should be invulnerable to damage, conditions and boons while they are summoned, given that they expire. Effectively a very visual damage skill and yes they need to be range leashed.Why should they be susceptible to any counter play except dodge like all other damage based utility skills…

OR

2.Are they pets/minions with hp which don’t expire unless killed and affected by damage,conditions and boons.

Why do they have to have the worst of both worlds…

3.(Alternative)Keep them as is, but make them follow the guardian like ranger spirits and give them ranged attacks(weapons thrown on chains)-easier to passively counter with AoE on the guardian but dangerous if ignored given the difficulty to kite their new ranged attacks. Survivability dependant on the guardians positioning.

B)Traits: buffing their abilities (why all the focus on damage)

-Regen and/or protection to all allies within range of spirit X-i.e. while spirit remains alive and spirit affects itself with the trait making it more survivable
-Spirit creates X symbol every X seconds- maybe to traits a restoration effect with symbols cause healing, given the spirit weapon & symbol focus in the zeal line?
-Spirit hammer attack causes aoe knockdown when attacking burning foes
-Spirit X causes 500 damage times the amount of seconds it was alive on death/expiration in an AoE of radius x
-etc

Just my 2 cents.

Part of the problem remains a quirk/bug/oversight in their stats scaling. Below level 40 they are amazingly effective. It’s like their stats are based on “green” gear scales and they don’t migrate into yellow/orange/red scales properly as you level up.

spirit weapons dont need an hp bar since they all have limited durations. i remember the day they got nerfed, i honestly dont remember hearing anyone ever complaining about them prior to the nerf, and surely no one has been complaining since