Guild Wars 2

I think it’s past due time to evaluate the spirit weapons on a serious level. Most of the discussions about it thus far, that I have seen anyway, have been mostly raw complaints with little constructive ideas. So I will start off and add things as I come across them:

• The non-combat weapons run into melee range and get obliterated by aoe as soon as you summon them. Also both the bow and shield refuse to perform their jobs outside of combat (I know it’s not as important that the shield bubble-up, but it is worth noting since even if you enter combat it sometimes won’t bubble unless you are already being hit- although it would be nice for it to begin bubbling after summon, but out of combat condition removal should be priority of the bow)
• Sometimes both the sword and hammer will fail to activate their command skills even when a target is selected ( and even less often often when a target is not selected)
• Summoning time is not an appropriate ratio to upkeep time, meaning the risk/reward ratio for how long it takes to summon them does not reflect the reward of having them out doing the damage. Especially for the defensive ones. I can see keeping the longer summon time for the offensive ones, but you need those defensive ones at your command when you call, not having to wait for a long cast before they even appear, then again wait for them to recognize you’re in combat before their effects even take place. Pre-summoning isn’t really a viable option because of their short duration and long recharge. They may very well expire before they can even perform a single action.

I think it is worth noting that guardian spirit weapons follow the typical pet AI in the game, so it is a common problem with all classes, but our are more squishy and short termed causing more problems for usage.

By same AI, I mean in order for them to get “IN” combat and start doing the combat AI pet thingy, you have to attack a target with a direct action skill.

I watched a video showing the issues with necro pets and noticed this is the same with guardian spirit weapons.

Also being attacked yourself will not immediately trigger the pet, but the pet being hit, will.

So if you want better control of your spirit weapons, hit the target from a distance before running in.

You don’t have to actually physically strike a target to send in your weapons. Merely swinging with your 1 skill while having an enemy targeted will send them in, even if that swing is from your sword and you’re fifty feet away.

oh, good to know. nice one foofad, even if I don’t use spirit weapons

Spirit Weapons are “OK” in PvP… that’s about it.

They basically are 2 shotted anywhere else. Dev’s really overnerf’d them.

I will ~never~ use Spirit Weapons until they are changed. They’re a joke.

I always found it funny how the art work of guardian shows them with spirit weapons floating around. Yet no one really uses them.

If you ask me, two things get in the way of spirit weapons being good. The first being how they are temporal. This makes building around spirit weapons undependable and not very smart. Because once they die, the entire build dies with them until they are resummoned. If they didn’t die until they were killed then they would be much more valuable to players.

The second is how cooldowns start after they die. If cooldowns started after they were summoned like ranger spirits. This could make the interval between them being up and down much less.

Spirit weapons have a lot of problems.

1- health is very low
2- traits for spirit weapons are spread across 3 trees and 5 traits.
3- AI is poor.
4- Cooldowns are long and begin when the weapon dies. SW build has absolutely no sustainability for a long fight because you have all your weapons for the first 30 seconds or so if you are lucky and then none of them for the next 30 seconds. You sarcifice way too much in terms of boons and condi removal/overall utility when you use them. Cast times are also quite long which makes it troublesome to summon them during a fight.

Spirit weapons should not be destroyed when they use their special ability by default. HP needs a significant boost. Casting time should start after cast. If they made those 3 things they might become somewhat useable.

CMF.5461:

I think it is worth noting that guardian spirit weapons follow the typical pet AI in the game, so it is a common problem with all classes, but our are more squishy and short termed causing more problems for usage.

By same AI, I mean in order for them to get “IN” combat and start doing the combat AI pet thingy, you have to attack a target with a direct action skill.
Ii
I watched a video showing the issues with necro pets and noticed this is the same with guardian spirit weapons.

Also being attacked yourself will not immediately trigger the pet, but the pet being hit, will.

So if you want better control of your spirit weapons, hit the target from a distance before running in.

I used to play necro as main so I know all too well pet AI limits. I wasn’t necessarily referring to them initiating combat though. I know they will have a delay no matter what. I guess I should have been more specific in thakittens a bigger problem with the defensive ones. There’s times when I have clearly been in combat and even the offensive weapons know it and are attacking but the defensive ones are off chasing butterflies or something. No bow condition cleanses, no shield bubble. They’ll usually kick in after three worst of their fight is over. The offensive ones though, actually have a pretty good response time compared to most other summons in the game, minus their command skills going buggy sometimes.

Spirit Weapons are ok in pvp, you just need my super secret Mighty Spirits build to make it work.. They recently buffed their damage quite a bit, they do die to heavy cleave but remember, most of the time utilities don’t do much damage, so having them live a long time is kinda gravy.

That’s fine, but what you sacrifice to obtain the extra damage is sometimes not worth it. If you are just running around randomly and getting a kill here and there fine, but if you are trying to do team fights, bunker a point, or handle the heavy condition meta the game is right now, then spirit weapons are just lack luster.

They were “ok” before, but horrible now.

On the other side of the equation with pve, spirit shield is invaluable in many dungeons and when soloing the sword and hammer contribute a lot to your solo damage. I was able to push some events that had timers on them solo by going full pet spec with elite and spirit weapons.

I still contest they need some more flair to make them useful. As it stands now, they are still gimicky.

Right, Spirit Weapons are more for a roamer build. Best in small fights and by no means should be used in a bunker spec.

I’ve mentioned this before when the change to being destructible happened, but it bears repeating here:

Its not that the “have poor health”… its that something is SERIOUSLY WRONG with the health and armor scaling on these. They get obliterated by random AoEs at level 80, but below level 40 a single spirit sword can hold two veterans by itself until the weapon expires. Somewhere either the health or the armor curve breaks down.

They also force-taunt. I’ve beaten a veteran half to death by myself (no other characters anywhere on the agro list) summoned a spirit sword and before its even taken a single swing it’s pulled agro – and doesn’t give it back until its dead. The hammer seems to pause a little before force-taunting, but then it does it too. So its not surprising their lifespan is measured in seconds once the health/armor curve is skewed. They don’t just get AoE’d, they tend to take the next single target attack the opponent is throwing, and if its a big foe, its a one-shot.

Its also worth noting that they’ll take all buffs as if they were real characters. For this reason, Battle Presence is an excellent trait to have if you are running spirit weapons and nearly any of our boon tools carry over to them.

Well, there is no “taunt” in gw2, but there are agro mechanics that change from mob to mob. It may be that the spirit weapons have such little armor/health that they pull agro from being the weakest target in the area.

Also range from the target increases agro. Some mobs prefer ranged targets other prefer melee targets.

Overall the agro mechanics are sketchy in this game and inconsistent, which is why you always hear, “there are no tanks”.

Still, I do notice spirit weapons pull agro really quick for some deficiency in it or another. Either health, armor, range, or damage are the typical factors that encourage targets to lock on to a target.

Enemy Ai has always favored going after the summoned targets over the player unless some extenuating circumstances dictate otherwise. This holds true for necro minons, ele summons, ect. Why do you think the earth elemental summon is so valuable to eles? It can grab that agro super fast off the ele and the thing is actually pretty resilient (well the elite version, the regular one isn’t bad for tanking trash), same for the necro’s flesh golem (although the enemy likes to target the ranged minions first a lot too because they’re so squishy).

This is a fact of life for this game and i doubt it’s going to change soon. This wouldn’t be a problem for the spirit weapons if they didn’t get chewed up so fast or have such a limited lifespan. The way their trait lines are laid out, you’re pretty limited as to which weapons you can effectively use with them and still have a strong summon build and the ones you can use are mostly offensive and offer little in the way of supporting the weapons themselves (which I suspect the original plan of giving them health bars was that the guardian can buff them directly to help keep them alive, but the traits offer very little to make that possible).

Now yes you can use a support weapon(s) while using the spirit ones, but you won’t have the traits to devote to making those weapons proficient enough to warrant bringing along. So now you’re back to square one: bring support weapons and be able to upkeep the summons a tad longer but have horribad dps yourself, or bring the weapons designed to be used within the alloted trait lines for the summons and have good dps yourself, but have paper summons. Either way you look at it, it’s only half a build. Now some might argue they were meant to just be mixed in to builds, not run full spirit weapon builds, but the traits indicate otherwise (with one trait line having summon weapon specific traits in each major category- that usually points to a build-type) and anyway, if you’re using it in a build as a tacked on utility, then you sure aren’t going to waste numerous traits on a single spirit weapon when it servs you better to just use traits that benefit yourself. This is the conundrum of the spirit weapons. There’s no tradeoff.

With many other classes you have a trait or two that can improve your summons in some way in a semi-summon build but usually also affects other parts of a build too that is reflected directly in you the player (glyph cooldown reduction for eles, trap reduction for thief as well as traps causing vulnerability, – not going to count mesmer because that’s their class mechanic more or less- the only exception being necro which can succesfully run a full minion build and still gain benefits from it (increased toughness per minion, death nova, vampiric healing from minions, ect). Spirit weapons get none such benefits for using them that can be reflected in other parts of the guardian’s build. you get some cooldown reduction, slightly longer idle life, little damage boost, and burning (which is redundant because you can just use virtue of justice (yes it affects them now regardless of what the wiki said, I updated the wiki and provided visual proof of it happening). Now if they caused bleeding or heck even torment on commanded skill activation or something, that would be prime.

I tried spirit weapons briefly in WvW and found them wildly ineffective. They felt like the turrets of guardians, and like turrets, badly in need of a buff and a reworking.

Entropy.4732:

I tried spirit weapons briefly in WvW and found them wildly ineffective. They felt like the turrets of guardians, and like turrets, badly in need of a buff and a reworking.

well since they nerfed spirit weapons they are really only good in spvp. so.. i would expect as much ive made a spirit wep build for the guardian that was actually verry effective but.. when they were on cooldown.. yea.. ur nothing but a guardian without utilitys.. its pretty funny.. yet a spirit ranger.. can have theres out.. and keep bringing them out everytime their time expires.. -_- Good balance anet. good balance.

Lordryux.9785:

Entropy.4732:

I tried spirit weapons briefly in WvW and found them wildly ineffective. They felt like the turrets of guardians, and like turrets, badly in need of a buff and a reworking.

well since they nerfed spirit weapons they are really only good in spvp. so.. i would expect as much ive made a spirit wep build for the guardian that was actually verry effective but.. when they were on cooldown.. yea.. ur nothing but a guardian without utilitys.. its pretty funny.. yet a spirit ranger.. can have theres out.. and keep bringing them out everytime their time expires.. -_- Good balance anet. good balance.

Well ranger spirits are more in line with guardian spirit weapons now. Well sort of.

My suggestion for spirit weapons is:

1. Increase the duration of them.
2. Re-evaluate bow of truth, I never see anyone use it. And I can understand why.
3. Consolidate spirit weapon traits to one tree. Maybe zeal could become the spirit weapon tree.
4. To elaborate on the above, merge improved spirit duration with spirit weapon mastery and a fire inside with eternal spirit.
5. Increase the amount of health spirit weapons have.

With those changes I think spirit weapons would be in a ok spot.

the spirit shield should also passively block aoe imo….if u are within a certain radius of it (the passive radius would be a faint moonlight blue glow)

From my topic (to bring together):

Mikau.6920:

So, the spirit weapons… the last time I’ve tried they lost 1/2 of their health in a single blow and died in seconds… They’re useless and I’m going to point some suggestions to “fix” them.

• 1. Low durability – low health of low toughness?: I dunno why they die so easly, but they either need a health buff or toughness buff. This buff must happen with or without the other suggestions.
• 2. The Bow: It is just insignificant to use their “atk” becouse it’s heals nothing, only heals one per time and “atk” very, very slowly. And to make everything worse, their “atks” don’t scales with healing power at all. The only good is cond removal, but not worh. The command is worthless becouse they always dies before finishing its channeling, even if you summon and immediately commands them. To fix: Makes it’s atks AoE and able to scale with healing, also some improvements with it’s base heals would be necessary. Also, make the command scales with the healing power.
• 3. The Shield: They should be a anti-range mobile, but instead, when you go in combat, they keep stationary activationing their bubble. To be stationary I’ll go Wall of Reflection instead, at least, it don’t dies and reflects instead of absolve (Their uptime is almost the same, and I can control the wall better than the shield). They should always keep closer to the guardian.
• 4. The Sword: The command should make its go to the enemy before activating, instead, it activates where it is, even if theres no enemy nearby.
• 5. The Hammer: In my opinion the hammer is in the best spot compared to th other spirits (both normal and the command), but it still dies with 2 blows.

Aside that their health or toughness must be buffed, they must have its cooldown reduced, compared to other summons, ranger spirits and necromancer minions, our spirits cooldowns are just insane.

Someone know if arenanet will buff or remake spirit weapons in the next big upcoming patch?

These changes are needed NOW. Bump

Since spirit weapons are attributed to our class, how about if they act like Virtues?

• All are automatically up and cannot be removed / destroyed.
• They give out a small assist automatically every so often.
• Each can be Commanded separately for a greater effect and then disperse until their independent cooldown is over.

They may have to stay “sheathed” until you are in combat for the sake of not making a Guardian overly visible in WvW.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I think it’s past due time to evaluate the spirit weapons on a serious level. Most of the discussions about it thus far, that I have seen anyway, have been mostly raw complaints with little constructive ideas. So I will start off and add things as I come across them:

• The non-combat weapons run into melee range and get obliterated by aoe as soon as you summon them. Also both the bow and shield refuse to perform their jobs outside of combat (I know it’s not as important that the shield bubble-up, but it is worth noting since even if you enter combat it sometimes won’t bubble unless you are already being hit- although it would be nice for it to begin bubbling after summon, but out of combat condition removal should be priority of the bow)
• Sometimes both the sword and hammer will fail to activate their command skills even when a target is selected ( and even less often often when a target is not selected)
• Summoning time is not an appropriate ratio to upkeep time, meaning the risk/reward ratio for how long it takes to summon them does not reflect the reward of having them out doing the damage. Especially for the defensive ones. I can see keeping the longer summon time for the offensive ones, but you need those defensive ones at your command when you call, not having to wait for a long cast before they even appear, then again wait for them to recognize you’re in combat before their effects even take place. Pre-summoning isn’t really a viable option because of their short duration and long recharge. They may very well expire before they can even perform a single action.

These are som solid suggestions. They need o fix spiritweapons for PvE and wvw. They are totaly usless right now. I rather take CoP instead of bow for conditions and the heal is totaly usless, it need to scale. The shield as stated are so muche worse than WoR. The sword command is so bad should seek up enemy like hammer does.
Then also the spiritweapons need to have the same speed as the user and if you use speed buffsthey get far behind you….

Spirit weapon guardian is the best build in the game.

spirit weapons are good for fighting things solo and with the scepter. the bow when commanded offers a fairly nice heal but cannot be targeted to an area .. instead you have to be stacked with the bow – which is so situational.

my biggest issue is why the duration is hidden down in virtues where as the other bonus traits are up in power.

i think some of the benefits guardian gets should just be there instead of how they are worked into the tree – they should add them to the adept – master – and grand master passive bonuses because the passive ones for a lot of trees are usually not for solo play or so weak they aren’t worth having.

people might consider them when deciding what to put on their action bar without having to sacrifice a better choice.

the actual extension time on them – 50% duration still really doesn’t allow them to be used more than once – it will still cause burning w/ trait and not destroyed when commanded…

yea definitely should have a choice in the trait line for them being instant
or readied like a mantra is

- maybe even to work without being commanded

the bow would heal if less than 50% health or 5% of duration to end if not commanded

the hammer would knock down whoever was targeted and chill them
like the actual hammer

the sword .. to work like the actual sword does and cast Sword Wave
the shield would break a stun and cause weakness when stunned

the shield would break stuns and weaken people without being commanded
(anyone stunned in the group- somewhat like the trait for Virtue of Courage)

these are just simple suggestions that would make them nice for situations where you cant swap out traits or its just needed that one time

instant cast might just be too much – and a shield smart enough to break out the player then the intended person to break out – if it had to be one .. prob impossible

making them actually useful in group content and not solo content prob wasn’t the specific design for them – rather just a way to solo multiple mobs or offer a diversion for when a guardian might want to avoid fighting something

id like to see an addition to the slot skills for some of these utility type abilities or a better way to swap them between fights. if you will a second line selection of skills you could alternate between without manually picking them – so when you were ooc ..
you could just pick selection 1, 2, 3, from a hot key.

especially when some skills are used only to get passed trash mobs and don’t really allow for being used to any real effect during an actual fight.

WonderfulCT.6278:

Spirit weapon guardian is the best build in the game.

Ohh look a thief… troooolling trolling trolling….

It’s the problem with all the summoned/pet things. They die instantly be cause of the super strong AoEs in this game. They tried to mitigate this with more HP which is a bad idea. Most other MMOs just make them immune to AoE (or maybe almost immune, let’s say taking 10% of the damage).

As long as they don’t get that it there won’t be a solution. Since the beginning all the pet classes complain about this. It is especially annoying in dungeons. The issue isn’t as big in open world PvE, but that’s easy mode anyway.

So, Anet for God’s sake: make them immune to AoE or at least give them a massive damage reduction in PvE – otherwise these complaints will go on forever.

New Suggestions:

• Remove the “Improved Spirit-Weapon Duration” trait and adds its effect permanently.
• New trait (In place of duration trait?): “Put a name here” – Whenever you dodges your spirit weapons evades (become immune to hits – but not conds that are already applied). In this way, if we dodge the spirit weapons would dodge too.

I like the idé of a permanent spiritweapon.

1. The bigest problem for me is that it cant last aoe damage and is there for usless in pve/wvw.
2. The other one is the summoning time. If they don´t make them permanent atleast make the summoning instant.
3. The mecanic are not that smoth. Hammer command works nice but sword should chase the target before use its command. It can be raly hard to hit with.
4. The power of them Shield and bow are so suless. WoR are better than shield and i would take alot of other skills to use bow.
Bow should target guardian imo with heal and heal for more to make up for the fact you dont have AH or med healing on the build

Idea:

1. Remove duration, give them more HP, make them dodge when you do (really all pets/minions should do this except for Mesmer’s).
2a. For Sword/Hammer: reduce their DPS.
2b. For Shield: increase the time the Shield of Absorbtion activates between each activation.
2c. For Bow: remove aoe condi-removal/heal and heal Command and replace with aoe DPS around targeted, similar activation time as Shield. Command skill now applies a aoe 4s chill.
2d. Increase Command skill CD slightly for each. Command skills still destory weapons.
3. Each spirit weapon provides a boon to the Guardian every 10 seconds (similar to Mesmer’s Signet of Inspiration). Sword gives Fury for 4s, Hammer gives Might for 5s, Shield gives Protection for 4s, and Bow gives Swiftness for 5s.
4. Remove Eternal Spirit trait and replace with Spirited Presence: allies gain Spirit Weapon boons.

It would be nice if we could use them more. And have them be viable beyond being a gimic. You can use them against bosses as a zerg dps down. I used them that way in harder bosses, for the Queens Pavillion.