Guild Wars 2

Can anybody explain the reasoning behind the Elite Spirit nerf?

I thought the stationary aspect of spirits would only apply to the utility spirits like old times and not the Elite Spirit.

I still dont feel the buff to them makes up for the nerf aspect.

But for the Elite Spirit, the buff doesn’t come close to the nerf. Why was this done?

Spirit ranger was my thing. Always like support roles. But man this was a crushing blow. I cant find justification for the nerf like this.

not a personal attack on anybody. Dont want it to come off as such.

I think there is a better support build than spirits floating around out there. Something like…: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnEqANsg9rA2CCctghMhqT2A4A+aIVfcPxTgZ+iNeqC-TpBBABQt/AAXAAMOCAxXGIjDBQDPAAA

I haven’t refined it AT ALL, and a LOATH the fern wolf. That being said, we have a pet… that can taunt an enemy WHILE healing your team for 4.3k (2.9k from trait, 1.4k from F2)… We can AoE regen with our shouts… and condi clear with SoR… The damage isn’t terrible either. Hopefully someone can run with this idea.

I also tried just doing dps with pure shouts: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqAtCiNsA2CCctgh9gabiA4s5BOgHhPOOil/iVaqC-TpBFwACuAAF3fIxhAYxRAoaZAAPAAA

Eurantien.4632:

I think there is a better support build than spirits floating around out there. Something like…: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnEqANsg9rA2CCctghMhqT2A4A+aIVfcPxTgZ+iNeqC-TpBBABQt/AAXAAMOCAxXGIjDBQDPAAA

I haven’t refined it AT ALL, and a LOATH the fern wolf. That being said, we have a pet… that can taunt an enemy WHILE healing your team for 4.3k (2.9k from trait, 1.4k from F2)… We can AoE regen with our shouts… and condi clear with SoR… The damage isn’t terrible either. Hopefully someone can run with this idea.

I also tried just doing dps with pure shouts: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqAtCiNsA2CCctgh9gabiA4s5BOgHhPOOil/iVaqC-TpBFwACuAAF3fIxhAYxRAoaZAAPAAA

It doesn’t work and has NOTHING to do with the topic. WTF dude?
Invigorating bond is trash it will heal everyone but the ranger
Natural Healing is trash too I tried it.

The thing is they thought it was ok to add more radius and remove the mobility, but they didn’t fix anything else they just removed their best trait mobility, and told us to like the change period.
The animation and slow cast time of active make them irrelevant and the passive are bad effects that triggers once only every 8 seconds. complete trash
With all the bursty players around and the necessity to drop your spirit in the middle of a point they have 99% of dying before smash the ground animation ends.
Coupled with a terrible trait that pulse terrible boons but only a fraction of the time if you’re in range just another joke, oh wait nature spirit pulse stability? yea forget it nature spirit has 240 passive kittening radius.
Last but not least spirits don’t scale at all with the ranger stats like power crit chance, healing power and so on. The only that does is sun spirit which also has a much faster active animation, because it’s the ony that was updated, accordingly to the trait change.
That alone shows the level at which Anet gives 0 kitten about rangers, updating just 1 skill in a set and making it behaves differently for no reason.

As someone said in another thread, they could just delete ranger class and start over, there would be the same amount of work to do.

No idea. All I can say is that until Anet stops being stubborn with old design choices such as the % chance of passives and internal cooldowns, Spirits will never become viable as a whole and will remain niche or situational.

They didn’t increase the radius, they made them die on activation and gave them a trait so they could passively throw out some kitten boons. Spirit ranger was only a good build when eles and warriors were non existant. After they got buffed there was no reason to play spirits anymore, and still isn’t. If you want to play a support ranger you have to do it differently now. Hence my attempt to help.

Eurantien.4632:

I think there is a better support build than spirits floating around out there. Something like…: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnEqANsg9rA2CCctghMhqT2A4A+aIVfcPxTgZ+iNeqC-TpBBABQt/AAXAAMOCAxXGIjDBQDPAAA

I haven’t refined it AT ALL, and a LOATH the fern wolf. That being said, we have a pet… that can taunt an enemy WHILE healing your team for 4.3k (2.9k from trait, 1.4k from F2)… We can AoE regen with our shouts… and condi clear with SoR… The damage isn’t terrible either. Hopefully someone can run with this idea.

I like this because its similar to what I’ve been testing. My setup is a little different than yours but close enough: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA9Ci1CCOsActgBMhqX2CPA+bYVrYfxXga+i1eqC-TZBHABF8AAA4IA0z+DZXGIgLBAA

What I’ve been testing is Soldier Runes for the condi clear on shout. I also chose the moa because it can proc Harmonic Cry in a 1500 radius which is huge. I also like to choose pets that help me time manage the cooldown of Invigorating Bond which is 20 seconds. That way, no matter which pet I’m using when I hit my pets F2, I know Invigorating Bond will proc and not be on cooldown.

Also, I believe with Fern Hound since it’s F2 is supportive in nature, it will run to the Ranger now and get within 600 Radius so that the heal hits the Ranger. Not sure what it will do when taunts slotted. Which is why I slotted Zephyrs Speed.

Careful how you use Fern Hound though. The regen provided from pets ticks for 2 hp per second if the pet is swapped. (Still surprised Anet hasn’t fixed that yet)

I’m still sour about how our spirits changed dramatically. Only redeeming factor I think is Sun Spirits’ buff; the 8s cooldown proc and 2 stacks of 3s burn feels pretty nice for group utility.

Yeah, ANet somehow took spirits, which were a functional necessity (as in, every class needs some sort of support role gap filler) but a hated competitive build for skillcap and passive issues, then buffed actives which was a good idea to alleviate some of those concerns, but then simultaneously nerfed their ability to move and removed triggering on death, which both indirectly hurt the only active play spirits had.

Now? The Elite Spirit is awful, and somehow the spirits ended up being even more fire and forget passive play than before for the majority of their actual effectiveness.

So… GG ANet I guess.

jcbroe.4329:

Yeah, ANet somehow took spirits, which were a functional necessity (as in, every class needs some sort of support role gap filler) but a hated competitive build for skillcap and passive issues, then buffed actives which was a good idea to alleviate some of those concerns, but then simultaneously nerfed their ability to move and removed triggering on death, which both indirectly hurt the only active play spirits had.

Now? The Elite Spirit is awful, and somehow the spirits ended up being even more fire and forget passive play than before for the majority of their actual effectiveness.

So… GG ANet I guess.

i’d like it better if anet made it so the nature spirit when activated summoned a Pale tree + a large Water field or a Protective Field that converted any in comming projectile condis into boons keeping the Revival on cast active then the ward is applied.

atleast this way its a focus point summon revive rally buff up against projectile attacks.

the only support we rangers have so far is regen+swiftness not so much of a epic support but its did its job tonight speeding up the slow revs in wvw.

if they did this Qol change on nature spirit i could see it getting play and use in Spvp + WvW a lot more often acting like a Tree of life and a Safe haven for the injured which would be Mid to Back lines , as it only clears condis and revives a few people when a zerg passes through the spirit doesn’t do anything you’d get back up and go back down.

this ward will give you the buffs to survive after rallying.

the animation could be a healing spring animation+(the theifs seed tree) summons after the spirit dies.

and rename it Nature of Life as in its nature is to give Life .

well its a idea even if the Ward is time limited atleast then we can use Lingering magic with this to apply some real boon support , maybe it could be a trait for the Druid trait line improving Nature spirits functionality.

Realistically, clever rangers could use it three times to save themselves from a downstate. Also, since there are now more passive ways to remove conditions, using the Big Spirit for that seems moot. But, if I had to guess, the change came because opposing players kittened because they couldn’t kill the ranger who knew how to use the Big Spirit.

And yes, they were too stupid to kill it.

Even so, I still use it as my ‘Oh kitten’ button when myself or others are in danger of dying. The other options, especially in PvP, aren’t that spectacular for my build.

Even from the beginning I never liked how spirits were incorporated in this game. In gw1 they were utility, here they are boon/condition applicators. Nothing really spectacular not to mention they had much larger AoE before and in here they don’t really reach the necessary areas being they cannot move anymore. I’d rather take a flat stat increase than an occasional bonus that can die really easily anyways.

Spirits just aren’t interesting or powerful enough.

I really just want storm spirit to scale his stats with my crit chance and power so I can hide him in a corner and if a thief attacks me I run to the spirit and explode it in its face for potentially 10k dmg with 6 sec daze
And if they could fix the health pool and the animation speed while at it and improve the trait from nature magic as well…

RevanCorana.8942:

And if they could fix the health pool and the animation speed while at it and improve the trait from nature magic as well…

Not so sure about adjusting the health pool. It’s been adjusted three times since launch and Spirits still fold like paper. Would be better for Anet to add some toughness to them at this point and have the health boost from Nature’s Vengeance become baseline while replacing it with a -X% damage reduction bonus.

NinjaEd.3946:

Even from the beginning I never liked how spirits were incorporated in this game. In gw1 they were utility, here they are boon/condition applicators. Nothing really spectacular not to mention they had much larger AoE before and in here they don’t really reach the necessary areas being they cannot move anymore..

I really liked spirits in GW1. They could completely change the combat mechanics. If you were geared for physical damage, and the enemy was geared for physical defense, one spirit could change all physical damage to elemental thus bypassing their physical defense.

Not only did this make spirits useful, it was one of the only times I’ve seen the “ignore the pet, kill the player” PvP rule was countermanded. If you’re taking a ton of damage because an enemy spirit is allowing their attacks to bypass your defense, you’d better kill that spirit ASAP.