Guild Wars 2

Hi im curious about making a guardian that focuses around spiritweapons but i wonder how viable they are.

What’s your opinion on spiritweapons?

In PvE I’m not sure, but I guess they could be good.
But in Structured PvP in my opinion, they shred, they’re your extra fighting forces in the battlefield that give you that extra boost to get the kill, you should try it ^^ (The Sword and Hammer spirit weapons)

I’m also trying to find a good spirit weapon build.

The Sword seems good with all traits. I think the hammer is better if you’re at range (scepter or staff) since the knockback throws the target out of melee range.

However, I’m dissapointed by Bow and Shield. They don’t really help with damage (not all spirit weapon traits improve them). Both have periodic/random effects and are thus a bit unreliable. Sometimes they don’t follow me (bug?) in combat.

Concentrating your traits for spirit weapons will restrict your choices: 30 Zeal, 20 Radiance (so you may freely chose the major adept trait) and 10 Virtues. Especially, Valor (survival) and Honor (support) are lacking.

The sword and hammer are amazing. I run this and I love it. Buring from them is great.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQNAsfRlYgCBnCSJEm4ERWBWa94f9LgVPin8yHA

Spirit weapons need to just attack stuff instead of waiting for us to be “in range”. Too often they’re out but not doing anything because the enemy are too far away. Plus, they need to be able to attack people on ramparts.

I am a major fan of the spirit weapons and have observed and tested them out a bit.

The spirit weapons are utility skills that add an outside source of utility that’s not you.
-Sword does damage and commanded for aoe damage. Straight forward

-Hammer does less damage than the sword but has a 3 hit combo with final hit adding knockback, can be commanded for a knock down. This one is a life saver if you’re downed in combat it can knock people away from you still buying more time to get up. The knockdown helps you destroy those squishies that can annihilate you but if they’re stopped their health goes bye bye. The command of this has easily hit for 2k + knockdown.

-Shield spawns and emits a projectile blocking bubble when you’re attacked, this is one of the more buggy ones as sometimes it will stop following you, but I think it tries to defend other people as well is why. You can command it to fly and bounce between multiple enemies applying weakness. Sometimes when it does this it ports back to your location afterwards but I’ve seen it stay at the last target it hit before.. I would like to see it return to your location every time and in general just follow you and only you.

-Bow I consider buggy too in a sense. It’s a ranged weapon that shoots conditions off of you and allies. You can command it for an aoe barrage of arrows that heals anyone in the aoe. This is a pretty powerful heal, but what I don’t like about it, is it does the heal at its location. I have countless times had to search for the bow in the heat of combat run to it then command it if i wanted the heal, otherwise it floats in the back shooting conditions as you run away from it eventually having a max distance between you and the bow. I would like to see this bow attached to me. Not literal, but I would like that it at least keeps me in range that when i command it i’m in the aoe, or it barrages my location not its location.

Now traits. I myself go with this http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQNApdRlYgCBnCSGEmIFRWBWapgg9rSx+kHmCN+RA;TsAA1CtoMyYkwIrROjkGtAZAycDA

I honestly don’t get the 10% damage on spirit weapons because I feel it just doesn’t do much for the amount of time they stay out and how buggy they are sometimes, So i opt to have 20 point in honor cause I’m a huge symbol fan. With the 50% last longer trait the sword lasts 45 sec, hammer 30, and bow 30,

Spiritmaster build is pretty decent in the sense that you will destroy a single target. You generally are taking both the sword and hammer, both provide a decent amount of damage. The hammer is constantly providing knockback and knockdowns if you’re commanding it off cooldowns. That single target won’t get much of a chance to touch you with the weapons constantly attacking them. The bow can then be brought out for an heal if you need it. I normally don’t use it til i’m getting close to dying I then immediately command it for the heal before it has a chance to gain distance away from me.

I could go alot more in depth but I won’t for now. Just keep this in mind, the spirit weapons will usually attack your target, the last person you hit. Which is why it’s a great 1v1 build, but when more people come into the picture it’s hard to deal with that many people cause the weapons will only target 1 of them. I have never had any issue getting the spirit weapons to attack my target if they’re in range of my scepter(if i’m using it) the weapons go for that target.

I would love to see some improvements on their AI and the defensive ones sticking to the guardian more but outside of that I love them and use the hammer almost all the time. I’m still praying and hoping for a spirit weapon elite.. xD

Thanks for all the great answers, very informative.
I wonder would the spiritweapons make up for the lack of damage if i choose to mainly use a staff as weapon?

Probably not, since the weapons don’t scale with any of our stats they have pretty much a base damage set which isn’t too high because we would be op building pure damage and having spirits with high damage output. Doing a spiritmaster build means relying on your weapons to damage/knockdown/defend you while you damage. If you want to use the staff, go for it, I recommend using sword, hammer, and your choice of bow or shield. They will not cover damage you’re losing due to they have cooldowns meaning they’re not always out dishing out damage that your auto attacks can with a stronger weapon.

I actually just recently started using Scepter/Shield which is amazing with spirit weapons because it gives you max range on getting your weapons to attack someone. The weapons make it a pain in the rear to get to you, and you also have an immobilize.. xD

I find spirit weapons very good on all setting except WvW

Theyre extra damage on top of what you have on your own, not to mention the hammer even has good control.

The only reason theyre bad in WvW is cuz they always wander off to attack some random person, it would be better if theres a way to call them back like pets.

I agree, The spirit weapons chase… and they chase hard.. In all honesty there needs to be a distance cap set for them the hammer and sword can have like 1500(little longer than our ranged attack), While bow and shield have like a range of 300 because in all honesty I hate these two leaving my side especially since their utility is to keep me alive.

It may sound selfish but when it starts out I put myself in the middle of a group anyway to shield or remove conditions from my allies. So I feel it should be up to the guardian whether they want to share the spirits or not..

Not my cup of tea. You will find some downtime between your spirit weapons, and I like consistency.

I like the bow in dungeon settings, the command for the AoE heal is rather helpful I find. Not sure how well this going to scale, as I’m only about level 43 right now, and have yet to use it in PvP.