Guild Wars 2

Yes, I know, they suck. Yes I know, they aren’t viable and still useless. However, I still like using them and can you believe it, when I joined my guild for a Fractal lvl 1 run my friends responses were: “Wow, these buffs are cool, we gotta bring a ranger more often!” gasp

Anyway, my question is with the frost spirit (blue one, +10% bonus damage on hits). Before the update I’m sure the +10% effect was shown with a Might buff on my team. Now I don’t see this at all, I see the protections, swiftness-er-ess and burning from the other spirits but not this might. And also, is the proc chance based around when my friends are hit by enemies, or when they hit enemies?

And lastly Spirit of Nature. I love the revive command ability, I rezzed so many people for the world event when those Veteran Karka’s did their roll move. But where is the regen boon? Does it worked like the others, with a proc chance? I sometimes get it and others it just sits there doing nothing. Seems random to me. Anyone know?

I highly doubt I’ll get an official reply since the devs love visiting us here, but if you guys can shed some intel on this, I’ll be very grateful. Cheers.

The regen is definitely there. When I use it to rez people, it immediately start healing them for a bunch.

It doesnt actually apply a regen boon like healing spring, It directly heals people in the area every second (maybe a bit faster).

spirit buff chances show below the boon line. This means they can’t be removed. The protection boon when it procs can be as can the flame condition from sun.

Spirit of natures healing method was already covered.

Frost spirits proc chance is not on a 10 second ICD it’s every attack roughly a 900 radius of the spirit to get the below boon line proc chance which cycles over 5 seconds.

Ok, I think I’m starting to understand this.

The “effect chance buffs” (below the boon line) last for 6 seconds, starts for 6 secs – 3 secs and then restarts again at 6 seconds. While these icons are active you have a 35% chance (50% traited) to activated the buffs.

The Buffs:
Sun Spirit – Applies a 4 second burn condition to your target. Has a minimum downtime of 6 second, assuming you proc straight away. Unsure if it stacks with multiple team members.

Stone Spirit – Applies a 3 second protection boon to yourself. Has a minimum downtime of 7 second, assuming you proc straight away.

Storm Spirit – Applies a 8 second swiftness boon to yourself. Has a minimum downtime of 2 second, assuming you proc straight away.

Frost Spirit – Applies a (unknown) to yourself. Has a minimum downtime of (unknown) second(s), assuming you proc straight away.

So it looks like to me that storm spirit is the best with pretty much a constant swiftness buff, assuming you proc straight away. The sun spirit looks cool as well, as if it stacks with team members then that could be a constant burn condition on your enemy, which is great for boss fights.

But what about Frost spirit, what does it provide? Is it as simple as a straight up +10% damage numbers from your attacks, that you won’t really notice? I really can’t see any boon or condition effect, or a visual aide to show me its working.

The frost spirit can proc on any attack, and that attack will do 10% more damage. It never gives you a buff icon except for the standard type of buff icon while in range of a spirit.

There is no internal cooldown, allowing it to proc on consecutive attacks. Traited to 50% proc rate, the frost spirit now gives an averaged 5% damage boost to all affected allies. However, I haven’t checked if condition damage is modified (I kind of doubt it, but have done no tests). This makes the frost spirit a solid choice for longbow use. They are perhaps too fragile to seriously consider using it with melee weapons.

You can verify all of this by going to the heart of the mists, getting a steady weapon, and attacking a target dummy with and without the frost spirit.

Unfortunately, the other spirits still have internal cooldowns, making their fragility too big of a drawback to consider using them in most environments.

You essentially have 2 choices for the second major trait in the nature line. This is because the third major trait might as well be hard set to allowing spirits to follow you. For the second trait you can choose between increased proc rate or spirits activating abilities on death. Increased proc rate is betting on your spirits staying alive while having allies in range of your spirits – so that the buff’s value outweighs the fragility you have to play around. The trait that improves the spirits activated abilities and makes them trigger on death helps when you are forced to be in close range of your target, and expects your spirits to die. The problem here is that it reduces most strategic use of your spirits to simply how quickly your target does a single aoe.

I have been using the frost spirit in a longbow/greatsword build since the patch and I have to say its not horrible. 20/20/0/30/0. I acutely feel the loss of 5 points in beastmastery. It is a shame that 5 on beastmastery feels mandatory. However, I still feel like having to go 30 points in the nature line to make spirits viable is something of an albatross. The spirits being stationary is just a liability and feels like a punishment. The inability to unsummon a spirit while moving progressively through an area can be a real problem. Not to mention having to endure the cast time at the start of combat, rather than being able to cast between combats and not have further positional disadvantages to the class.

Sun spirit is I believe a 3.25 second condition. 3 ticks of flame damage. This modifies by your condition damage, your pet procs it at a flat damage. If you consider your pets proc plus yours an unimproved sun spirit procs the flame damage of an unimproved flame trap for you plus 3 tics at like (220ish or 320ish) forget which or if pet condition damage improved (250ish 350ish).

Stone spirit – roughly 3 seconds with my experience with boon icon delay it may be 4. You essentially get 7 for the full duration of the spirit or roughly 35% protection uptime over 60 seconds. Sometimes only 6 when at 35% proc chance.

Storm spirit – My testing with this is you essentially have 100% swiftness uptime due to 10 second boon duration. 70 seconds at 50% proc rate consistently 60 seconds at 35% proc rate consistently. Essentially the buff hangover and weapon attack rates let you get 1 more proc after the spirit dies.

Frost spirit – 10% additional damage potential on every attack which is a flat +5% damage improved(I tested with a balnced SB and was getting multiple proc strings with the damage increase in a row). If you like me stack to +damage in going for a DPS build having this out can put my base damage at +45% on a hit it triggers on. +10% from skirmishing line(Behind beside), +10% thief armorings(Behing flanking), +10% endurance full(marksmanship) +5% longbow, + 10% frost spirit. I like improving baseline to proc larger crits. Likewise because it’s a flat 10% it isn’t modified by the weapon modifiers and skill modifiers on weapon attacks. AKA a warriors power banner will give my warrior just over 6% plus damage every hit on the bow but it was like +4% on GS and +2% on some specific skills.