Guild Wars 2

Played around with a spirit build all day yesterday. This morning, specced back out of it.

Totally and completely useless.

The spirits have some really nice utility, the effects themselves are good…
But a spirit will not last in any combat situation longer than 10 seconds. Everything ever uses AoE and they have NO health.

What about the double health trait? What about it. You get 3 of them and I’m not taking Nature Magic and NOT taking the protection on incoming burst trait. Leaving me with 2 slots to fit spirits can follow you, spirits use their effects more often and… wait. Oh I guess there’s no room for double health.

Not that it would even matter. What’s 2 times a sneeze… A strong cough? A gentle summer’s breeze?

Spirits need to be completely reworked. They either need to have their health drastically increased or changed to not being able to be damaged at all. I’ve had (many) instances where I summon a spirit and it dies.. the very next second.

What I’d really love, is if someone at Arenanet sat down and actually played a Nature Magic Spirit spec Ranger for a day, like I did. And just count how many times you actually got to use your spirit for the full duration. For half of its duration, even.

Fix our horde of glowy treebeasts!

Nature Magic trait is as useless as killing rabbits ingame to try and level up.

GASP Implying that spirits work in the same way that Warrior banners work and provide sustained bonuses with decent range and no health bar? Surely you jest good sir!

Well if they’re spirits they already died once right? Maybe we shouldn’t expect exceptional feats of survivability from something like that.

On the other hand, ghosts are supposed to be a little more resilient. And spooky.

I’m confused on why Warriors were even given banners. They’re just a non-crappy version of spirits that do exactly what spirits should have. But oh no, you can’t make spirits work the same way as banners, because that would be boring. So now spirits do crap for the sake of diversity.
Warriors already have Shouts for group support…

Spirits should be immortal, u can’t kill baner.

I will preface by saying do NOT take this post as a vote that spirits are fine, they are not.

I will say that I ran a spirit build for a while (3 days) in cursed shore. I picked up the traits that gave double health, mobile and proc 15% more often and I was happy with them. Sun one burned people, stone one gave reliable prot buffs and storm I only used when I was in DE’s and needed to tag something.

I found sending my pet in ahead of me would keep aggro off my spirits. If they pulled aggro I focused on crippling and CC to keep them off while I kited. Sun spirit AOE blind and stone actives were good at keeping enemies off.

The double health would allow my spirits to survive up to 2 encounters. By that time, if they died they were instant re-summon anyway.

So in summary, you can use them and the double health trait is useful. That said, I specced out of spirits because I found traps worked faster and I was just not a huge fan of the passive gameplay. If not for a matter of taste I would still be specced in my spirit build.

Hope this helps a little.

it doesnt help. no one cares about spirits in pve. theyre more or less useless in pve, and an insult to all gamers in pvp.

I think spirits need to be buffed in several ways as well, but you can make a workable spvp build with them.

Go for 30 NM, high toughness, stack runes with +% boon duration. You’ll also need rune of hydromancy for chill on weapon swap to help against rogues. Unfortunately this build worked well with SB, so the damage output is going to be even worse now.

Please don’t take this as a “spirits are fine” post, they are clearly rooted. I’m just suggesting a build you can try in spvp that works ok given the materials you have to work with.

I’ve found that the only way I can play my ranger these days is with spirits… Vodka and Rum work particularly well.

i agree with the idea, that spirits should be unkillable

spirit weapon of guardians can be damaged

so should our spirits.

For lulz, I ran a Spirit build for awhile. A guildmate invited me to Twilight Arbor a few nights ago. Guess how that went?

The Nightmare Blossoms alone destroyed my poor ethereal minions. The first encounter with the Nightmare Vines was quite literally a nightmare. I already have pet issues alone on those fights (never mind myself dodging and rolling every chance I get) but those poor spirits never had a chance.

Meanwhile, the warrior in our group – who first TA this was – was merrily smacking away at the champion with his banners. And not a single kitten was given. I envy warriors.