Guild Wars 2

This skill serves absolutely 0 purpose in the game. If you dedicate every possible point towards buffing spirits, it still heals yourself less than all the other abilities and provides less group healing than Healing Spring (which also removes conditions). The scaling on the “passive” and the active ability are absolutely horrid, not that most rangers use healing attributes anyways, but the base healing is also abysmal. The 10 second cooldown on the “passive” ability makes it absolutely worthless. I use the quotation marks, because the spirit can be killed, it usually is stationary in most builds, and the 10 second cooldown makes it more of an activated ability than an passive ability like signets.

Why is this ability so kittenty? Was it overpowered in the past and nerfed into the ground? You can usually find uses for every ability in the game, but when you put all your points towards buffing spirits and it is STILL worse than the other options in every scenario, then something needs to be changed, or the skill will only be used by people that don’t know any better.

Until you brought it up, I didn’t even remember there was a skill with such a name. So yeah, in my head it’s already gone. :p Apart from that, agreed, but don’t expect anything to be done about it. Consider it a racial skill, perhaps. If we start discussing inferior Ranger skills, this may never end.

I personally would alter the title to “Just remove Spirits already”. That would solve a lot of issues in my book.

I would hope that it gets a good look with HoT.

If they make water spirit viable they could change spirit of nature into some other sort of unique buff too. No need for two healing spirits…

Oh and it was never nerfed…it was this bad when it was released.

Sube Dai.8496:

I would hope that it gets a good look with HoT.

If they make water spirit viable they could change spirit of nature into some other sort of unique buff too. No need for two healing spirits…

Oh and it was never nerfed…it was this bad when it was released.

As bad as the water spirit is it needs all the help it can get.

Spirits in general just need a re-think. You occasionally still see Spirit Rangers in in PvP, and they can be OK, but it’s mainly thanks to the Spirit of Nature. The fact that this spirit is actually quite good isnt enough to mask the fact that their entire design is horribly flawed and frankly boring.

So many suggestions have been made over the year about what to do with them… But I still favour of the spirit characters themselves being removed, turning the skills into some sort of Aura on the Ranger themselves, and having the active effects eminate a wave out from the Ranger which then provides the buff to allies in the radius and whatever effect the currect actives have to enemies.

This prevents the Spirits being killed, but more importantly seperates the Rangers buff from the team buff (thus meaning their usefullness to the Ranger can be buffed, making them better for solo use, without them becoming OP in group settings) and frankly is much more elegant than turning your character into a walking zoo.

But whatever… These things will always be nothing but fantasies.

In pvp sun and stone spirit are pretty good for condition tank builds so spirit themselves are fine, it’s just the water spirit that sucks big time, and maybe also storm spirit which is pretty much useless with the other swiftness options the rangers offer.

Vizardlorde.8243:

In pvp sun and stone spirit are pretty good for condition tank builds so spirit themselves are fine, it’s just the water spirit that sucks big time, and maybe also storm spirit which is pretty much useless with the other swiftness options the rangers offer.

I wouldn’t call them fine. They suffered the same over-nerfs that all spirits did which is long cast times, long cooldowns, and short active effect times.

If you try to run a support build of 2 spirits + guard(natures voice) you literally spend the entire fight trying to cast.

Also the increase of aoe spam has just totally destroyed spirits IMO. It wasn’t like this when spirits were meta.

Maybe the Druid spec will give them some awesome buffs. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen a spirit build let alone the water spirit

The spirits are fine.
…
But overrated. If you compare then to any other mechanic that other classes posses – they are abysmal if anything.
They don’t deal damage by themselves unlike Engie turrets, they have internal cooldowns unlike Engie effects, have less HP than engie turrets, and can be targeted by conditions. They also require a whole trait line full of Spirit-only dedicated traits just to be somewhat functional – and even that way they die in a teamfight straight ahead (teamfight is where they are suppose to be – that’s the support way of ranger)

Also – their skills can be interrupted unlike engie turrets – which is crucial especially for Spirit of Nature.

Spirits as a whole need a total overhaul, sure they work, but they’re the most passive and least interesting skills in the game and an overhaul of how they work sure as hell wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Also, Water Spirit -technically- heals for more than Healing Spring when you include the passive and the active, but it doesn’t heal for much more, and the utility that healing spring brings far outweighs the like 10-20hps that water spirit brings over it

Water Spirit heal less than Healing spring can, but it has wider range and also heals your party members. I only use it in Cliffside Fractal because the party is scattered (boss fight). It heals ~1000/10 sec. My regeneration heals ~350/s (from Healing spring). Spirit has 0,1 healing power multiplier. triggering every 10 sec => it has 0,01 multiplier / sec. Regeneration has 0,125 multiplier. This is a very serious problem for this skill.
The other problem is: no condition remove. If you want support your party, you must use healing spring. Signet of renewal has too long recast time.

Spirits need major work so their group utility is worth it or just change them to preparations like what GW1 had for rangers.

Xinoxlx.5831:

Spirits need major work so their group utility is worth it or just change them to preparations like what GW1 had for rangers.

That’s what thief venoms do.

When they added water spirit, that was when I knew they were clueless about their own game. At the time, the most major complaints we had in PvP were revolving around ai spam. We had the spirit meta in full swing, along with plenty of minion masters and turret engi’s.

Then in PvE there was the fact that, although spirits had more health, they still died easily in any large fight. So what did arenanet do? They added another god kitten spirit. The one thing we didn’t need, they added. And not only that, but the skill, which was intended for group support, was already far outclassed by healing spring.

I’ll say that, recently, a-net has done well balancing the class and putting things where they need to be, but that water spirit was a low point for how I felt about them.

Instead of removing a skill, we need suggestions to buff or rebuild the spirits. I’ve done some suggestions , but no feedback. Maybe the thread title wasn’t well translated. I will fix that.

I don’t think it’s worth the effort to fix/buff the spirits, as they’re already bad by design. The flaw is deep within the roots of this mechanic and I don’t see how this is ever going to be something useful in PvE and PvP, unless you do away with the spirits and replace them with something else entirely.

The 2 main options that have been discussed over time, can also be found in this thread. Either make them Auras stuck to the Ranger or make them preparations and bring back some GW1 nostalgia. Yes, Thief already has venoms that function somehwat like preparations did, but I don’t see why this would exclude a similar mechanic for Rangers. Afterall, traps aren’t exclusive either.

Anyone remember Ingnite Arrows from GW1? Have it affect the next couple of outgoing attacks, add a trait to share this preparation with allies and you suddenly have something useful. Or Choking Gas. lol, that would be awesome. Inflict a 1 second daze with your next 3 attacks.

Choking Gas already in the game: thief/short bow/#4
1 more use for water spirit: underwater (sometimes I use antitoxic spray, but spirit is better) , but hardly in water anyway…
Ranger was better than any other class in water: WvW borderland change: no water, tPvP: delete the map with water, make the underwater fractal switch avoidable…

I remember watching this “new heals” stream on twitch. Ive heard rummors that the rangers heal will be a spirit and i didnt believe it cause i thought thats too stupid to be true. When i confirmed that it was indeed a spirit i facepalm so hard that i still have a mark on my face