Guild Wars 2

The idea of pets on a guardian seemed silly to me, but the idea of empowering your weapon, like an enchant seemed to fit the theme of guardian.

The idea is to add strategy on when to use the active or when to waste it and use the passive. the original idea was to borrow from the thief’s venom abilities, and heralds facets, with a twist of a guardian flavor. so, this is a rough idea of what i came up with.

edit: now the cool-down effect could only last half the cool-down duration or the whole thing. totally up for debate

SPIRIT WEAPONS: (spirit enchantments)

spirit blade: 25 sec cool-down
sends 3 spirit swords out and impales an enemy, pulls them in (like sword 5), causes cripple 5 sec. while on cooldown pulses fury and might for 3 sec, each 3 sec.

Spirit maul: 30 sec cool-down
slams the ground causing a pbaoe shock wave that causes knockdown to nearby enemies for 1 sec and cause cripple for 5. while on cool-down: crits have a 33% to daze for .5 sec

spirit shield:40 sec cool-down
creates a symbol on the ground pulses aegis for 5 sec each 2 seconds. grants resistance and stability for 5 sec. while on cool-down 7% of the damage taken heals near by allies

spirit bow:40 sec cool-down
sends a ray of light (like focus 1) transferring conditions on allies to foes, and boons from foes to allies, in the order they make contact. bounces 5 times. while on cool-down pulses protection for 4 seconds each 5 seconds.

paired trait:
strength of spirit: spirit enchant cool-downs are reduced, but cd effects linger for an extra 3 seconds.

Feel free to add ideas, suggestions, tweak or twerk, (if that’s your thing) even flame. If you do flame, please list the spelling mistakes first, than the grammar. Then any concept criticisms after that in an neatly formatted flowchart with nonsensical reasons in italics, and legit reasons in bold (preferably in a colored font)

The problem I see with this is that carrying 2 or 3 of this modified utility skills would sinergyze so greatly with symbols that it would leave no other option viable.
You would be throwing pbAoE skills on top of a cap (in pvp) which, when traited occupy almost all the cap dealing huge amounts of passive cc and damage (mainly the spirit hammer passive skill you proposed). It wouldn’t leave much to imagination.
Also, the idea of a skill pulsing boons when on cooldown is ridiculously overpowering, at least imo.

The main modifications I’d propose for spirit weapons (SW from now on) would be:
Modifying the grandmaster trait: SW now are not time gated and can only be destroyed by pew pewing them, apply burning and add 1 extra boon depending on which SW you have summoned (sword: might/fury, hammer: chill/might), bow: resistance/regen, shield: aegis/protect)

Increasing SW artifical intelligence
Increase SW mobility
Increase SW active skill
Tweaking active skills either in terms of damage, functionality, both or adding a different mechanic.

For spirit weapons I would go with something like this.

You summon them as items but on pickup they add a passive effect.

For Sword it would be your basic attacks burn (every third attack?). For Hammer it would be your critical strikes cause a combo field blast. For Shield it would be gain resistance at a set interval and for bow it would be something worthy of an elite skill such as increase the range of all your attacks to 900 or 1200….because as guardians we have a bad selection of elites….or heals the targets with the lowest hp within a 600 radious of the buff holder.

So, let me elaborate a bit here, the concept of the skills is the opposite in function to a heralds facets even our own virtues. with Herald, it constantly pulses, might, fury, protection, swiftness and protection, then triggered to create an attack. With this, it creates the attack (or effect) then the pulsing. so, unlike the herald, who can run around giving EVERYONE massive buffs just by standing there, we have to use up an attack that could save our lives, to earn the associated buffs.

while my ideas can combo well, it will be at a cost, and you have to be strategic to use it. personally, i always found spirit weapons out of character for the guardian, it doesnt really fit and should be used more like an attack or a buff .

While they would make great kit skills like engineer or elementalist, our tomes did that instead, which i am assuming we will get back in the next elite spec. at least make spirit weapons provide a flavored effect like a thiefs venoms or daredevils physical attacks, but “magic-ish”.

I think it would be cool if all weapons were permanent summons (like pets) and just stayed with the Guardian at all times. Still did what they do now.
It would be hilarious and cool seeing a Guardian running around with 3 weapons following them around. Maybe even make an elite weapon that is temporary but really cool.

Obviously the skills would have to be nerfed to some degree due to them being permanent (not the active commands, but the passive damage/support they do), but it’s hard to suggest changes that will ever make them more useful than other skills.

Or leave them as they are and simply change the trait to make them permanent summons on top of what it does now. I mean they can’t be that powerful to begin with right? No one uses them.

Even then they still might not be more useful then other skills but at least they’d be more fun.