Guild Wars 2

I want to talk about spirits. I don’t think they should move, traited or untraited. Spirits unbound is too strong a trait. It effects the gameplay of spirit skills more than it should, more than any other trait in the game I feel. This also causes the balance of the skills to be impractical. With such a strong trait, trying to have a balance between traited and untraited would be too varied. That’s why many people feel that spirit skills are an all in or not at all type of skills. Moving the trait to master tier has made it more accessible for more builds but also ignores the problem.

Change the effect of spirits unbound to something that doesn’t allow spirits to move. Then balance spirit skills around it’s stationary form.

This change would cause spirit skills to be more widely used in various builds, it would make spirit rangers much less annoying to look at, and I also think it would make spirit rangers funner to play. Instead of mindlessly walking around with spirits chasing you, the player has to be the one staying within spirit range.

You never see spirit builds outside of sPvP though, and I only just recently have seen Rangers try spirit builds in WvW. The only change needed IMO is that all ethereal summons (ranger spirits, spirit weapons, phatasms/clones, etc) no longer body block.

Wow you’ve never used spirits in wvw have you…

Hammerguard… How does it feel to be the only one in a niche?

Secondly, I think they shouldn’t have “unbound” either. I think they should be exactly like warrior banners. Unkillable, reliable, and have a much greater range thus useful. Hammerguard, if you really wanted to see spirits used, you’d be in the same camp as I am when it comes to spirits… then you wouldn’t be alone either lol.

“Change the effect of spirits unbound to something that doesn’t allow spirits to move. Then balance spirit skills around it’s stationary form.”

If you make spirits static and stronger then you get a classic broken skill. Absolutely useless once you’ve moved away from it and overpowered when you’re near it. Broken both ways.

While we’re at it, we should just make banners, turrets, spirits, and spirit weapons (they follow and do damage with NO trait) all the same thing, and then merge engineers, warriors, rangers, and guardians all together since we aren’t giving anything unique functionality anymore.

Oh boy, I hope they make my suggestion. I can’t wait to play my ranguariorineer. GW2 so innovative. Too innovative. Remove unique stuff. Too stronk.

Spirit Unbound is . . . “unique”?

The suggestion is better for rangers and the game.

Hammerguard.9834:

Spirit Unbound is . . . “unique”?

The suggestion is better for rangers and the game.

Taking a top tier apex predator build and nerfing it isn’t better for the game when the rest of the power creep in the game doesn’t get nerfed down to it’s level.

I would love to see AI removed from the game entirely, except for mesmers clones (but yes remove phantasms, but keep clones, but the clones only serve the purpose of body blocking and shattering).

The problem is that with the game in the state that it is in, your suggestion only hurts what rangers can bring for a team, because the pacing of the combat indicates that you would literally need to be able to reset your spirits in a different location every 10-20 seconds or so, and outside of spirits, none of rangers options have been balanced enough for the class to make a build that keeps up with the metagame (for pvp anyhow), and would literally eliminate them entirely from the metagame.

There is a reason spirits really weren’t used in Guild Wars 1 GvG either, because they couldn’t move and had long cooldowns and lifespans, so they really weren’t forgiving /useful enough compared to other options that could be brought.

I really really hate spirits, I do. But nobody would even use the build to begin with if there were other builds that could even compete with the effectiveness of spirits, so do keep in mind that while I find nothing wrong with what you’re suggesting, I’m just highlighting that you don’t present such a heavy handed change to class to that classes only build, which even if meant to be good intentioned, has the possibility of backfiring, without making sure any of their other options are competitive options at the same time.

Before spirits are ever even touched again, traps need to be better, survival skills need to be better, and shouts need to be better.

Why are you even bringing balance into the discussion? I’m talking about making a better gameplay experience and you’re talking about how ineffective the skills will become…

Give spirits a 2400 effect radius, lower the cooldown, and increase max ally targets effected to 10… does that make you feel better?

It doesn’t matter what they do as long as it’s balanced around a non-kinect form of spirits.

Spirits Unbound shouldn’t be the determinant of a whole class of utility skills.

Hammerguard.9834:

Why are you even bringing balance into the discussion? I’m talking about making a better gameplay experience and you’re talking about how ineffective the skills will become…

Give spirits a 2400 effect radius, lower the cooldown, and increase max ally targets effected to 10… does that make you feel better?

It doesn’t matter what they do as long as it’s balanced around a non-kinect form of spirits.

I bring balance into it because you can’t change the functionality of something without shifting the balance of the game. Not just against other players, but against the content.

What you’re suggesting is a complete and total rework for 6 utilities now that would be more extensive than reworking the single class mechanic, the pet system, which Jon Peters has already told the ranger community is a very large project that will take lots of resources and has to be relegated to the backburner because of it.

There are A LOT of things that need to be changed to make a better gameplay experience. So really, I do agree with you, but no matter how adamant you are, the likelihood in which anything will be done within the next year even is so miniscule that it isn’t even worth stressing over.

But yes, I would love to see my Guild Wars 1 style ranger make a return.

I was just thinking how spirits should move with you even untraited… wierd.

I’m fine with spirits being invulnerable…i mean, they are spirits, no form so in a sense…mist form = invulnerable!! the passive effects of spirits being on par with banners, awesome! I’ll take that trade any day cause i’ll be effective for as long as spirits are active because you can’t just AoE them to death.

So is the suggestion to treat spirits like Banners? Larger radius and improved effect? Does this mean we gotta pick up our spirits like an unruly child and place them somewhere else each time we want to change the battlefield landscape? LOL!

Is this seriously being discussed? I think someone forgets to kill the spirits and is frustrated. Ask me how frustrated I am when a banner warrior stays up because of the constant stream of regen and their banners can’t be destroyed (movable now).

The way you talk of spirits is as if they didn’t even exist without spirits unbound, and that’s exactly the problem.

Hammerguard.9834:

The way you talk of spirits is as if they didn’t even exist without spirits unbound, and that’s exactly the problem.

Not that is not the problem part of the problem is the fact they a the majority of rangers utility skills were not truly designed around working ‘out of the box’ and have 20-30 point investments to bring them closer in line with the utilities of other profession.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, I still think spirits unbound should make the active skill of spirits a ground target (and around the spirit themselves) instead of allowing movement, make it so that as long as the ground target is within the spirits effect radius it’s in range, bam much more useful and interesting trait.