(edited by Laurence.6751)
On Spirits, Bird, and Shortbow
Spirits do need addressed, I think they should be invulnerable since they are temporary and static drops. This would not make them op but usable.
And Shortbow lord, I am in Awe that since I left guildwars shortly after the range nerf it still hasn’t been given the ability through trait to extend its range. Heck I can throw my torch farther than I can shoot an arrow. And I agree with the bleed, as it too has been pleeded for since launch of this game. Imo I should feel more of an archer class with ranger than a warrior, thief or dragonhunter.
As for birds statistics Im fine with that as the birds smaller size and ability to cast swiftness ; to me gives it advantage over felines.
I would like to see pigs forage ability work like thief steal and be instantly applied instead of picking it up, unless that changed and don’t know about it since I have only tried a boar once.
theres no reason why spirits should not be invulnerable. They Are Spirits for pete’s sake! They should have a set duration of life
The argument is that they will become too much like banners if you do that. No, they wont. Have them do different things, different kinds of buffs. Banners you can pick up and move, and blast and dash with them. Spirits have activated attacks. they are different enough in those regards
I really wanted to try a spirit heavy ranger build but I only recently found out they don’t move anymore after returning from my GW2 break. Anybody have experience with making a post-stationary spirit build work? I appreciate any advice given, even if it’s just to forget the idea of using spirits.
theres no reason why spirits should not be invulnerable. They Are Spirits for pete’s sake! They should have a set duration of life
The argument is that they will become too much like banners if you do that. No, they wont. Have them do different things, different kinds of buffs. Banners you can pick up and move, and blast and dash with them. Spirits have activated attacks. they are different enough in those regards
I don’t want to be that guy, but I hope they can make spirits usable without making them invulnerable. One of the fun synergies between Druid and Spirits right now is that you can heal your spirits, and by doing so generate a massive amount of Live Vicariously procs to sustain yourself. My build would be a lot less fun if they became outright invulnerable, but I do think they need to take significantly reduced damage from AOE damage so long as they aren’t the only one affected by it. Making them mobile would help a bit as well I suppose, and that would be a respectable trade off. Unlike warrior banners, these have health bars, but as compensation they can move freely by themselves.
theres no reason why spirits should not be invulnerable. They Are Spirits for pete’s sake! They should have a set duration of life
The argument is that they will become too much like banners if you do that. No, they wont. Have them do different things, different kinds of buffs. Banners you can pick up and move, and blast and dash with them. Spirits have activated attacks. they are different enough in those regards
I don’t want to be that guy, but I hope they can make spirits usable without making them invulnerable. One of the fun synergies between Druid and Spirits right now is that you can heal your spirits, and by doing so generate a massive amount of Live Vicariously procs to sustain yourself. My build would be a lot less fun if they became outright invulnerable, but I do think they need to take significantly reduced damage from AOE damage so long as they aren’t the only one affected by it. Making them mobile would help a bit as well I suppose, and that would be a respectable trade off. Unlike warrior banners, these have health bars, but as compensation they can move freely by themselves.
thing is, spirits are not a druid skill but a core ranger skill. making them usefull only having the druid spec makes them useless for a normal ranger, and I don’t see many other ways of making spirits more usefull than making them invulnerable honestly
You could just double their health pool. Traited that would be about 28,000 health. Enough to take a while to put down unless you focus them specifically but not so huge as to make them impossible to destroy.
Then add more damage to their active effects so that approaching them in melee is a sizable risk. That way they are less likely to go down to random cleave. Still vulnerable to ranged attacks, which can be countered by intelligent positioning of the spirits to begin with.
And add a larger effective range for their passive effects so they can cover a whole team fight without being in the fray. That way they can be safely positioned without being in direct line of sight.
If spirits are to keep their active, they need to be movable one way or another.
I would rather have the active dropped, and buff the passive effect, as well as their range so that they can be placed in tactical good spots.
If nothing else, bing back the activation of their active effect when they die.
Anet said it didn’t feel right having them move around, so now they’re more useless than ever, considering you also sacrifice them the moment you use their active ability. The devs messed spirits up big time. They weren’t great before, and they’re even worse now. Priceless.
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Spirits should first be bug fixed before discussing changes. I’ve posted bug reports here and here
After this, since spirits are now made to be static I believe that they should no longer be made affected to knockback+launch. One of the reasons they made this change was because of Spirits Unbound, with this trait now removed they should also undo this.
1. Spirits Unbound (“Spirits can move and follow you.”) should have absolutely been made baseline, and still should. The nerf to spirits made no sense to begin with, anyway.
No way anyone would want Spirits Unbound for dungeon running, about the only place in PvE where spirits are actually used. They would be dead with the bosses 1st attack. So, no ty on baseline movement.
For PvP, I just think they need a bigger (2000) range for the passive and to trigger their effects on death. That would solve their issues for me really.
1. Spirits Unbound (“Spirits can move and follow you.”) should have absolutely been made baseline, and still should. The nerf to spirits made no sense to begin with, anyway.
No way anyone would want Spirits Unbound for dungeon running, about the only place in PvE where spirits are actually used. They would be dead with the bosses 1st attack. So, no ty on baseline movement.
For PvP, I just think they need a bigger (2000) range for the passive and to trigger their effects on death. That would solve their issues for me really.
Yet equally no-one in PvP would want to be forced into stationary spirits, binding you to one place. At the least, the trait should be re-added or incorporated into another.
You don’t really want them to move in PvP either if they do not activate on death, because they will just die to splash damage. If you had actually read my entire post you’d have seen the answer to that. The range just needs to be increased. Then you can place them tactically out of the way for the passive buff, or drop them and pop the active immediately if you want it.
Spirits are solid in PvE. In PvP or WvW I would stay away from them for the time being.
I read your suggestion and it’s still inefficient. 2,000 range is still small considering bunker Ranger isn’t a thing and you’ll want to be actually moving between points.
spirits don’t need map mobility – they can be a ‘stationary’ skill. it’s only 20s from when you don’t need them to when you can recast. but you do need to be able to be in a slightly mobile fight without moving outside their range all the time.
even in a lot of pve content, the encounters either move around too much or have too much aoe for spirits to live. if you could put them further away it wouldnt be a problem.
however, the most important buff for spirits is to not look like oakhearts. Dolphin spirits are about a thousand times better. i’d prefer flying dolphins to oakhearts.
p.s. has anyone else had trouble with the sun spirit burn procs not working at all?
Suggestion:
- Spirits are stationary
- Passive range increased to 2000
- Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there
(Possibly add to Nature’s Vengeance: Killing a spirit will make it use its active ability)
Also, Spirit of Nature… what’s the range of this skill (the passive effect)? Is it only 240 like the tooltip says? That’s a bloody joke if that’s correct. Spirit of Nature could very well scale with healing power.
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
(edited by OGDeadHead.8326)
1. Spirits Unbound (“Spirits can move and follow you.”) should have absolutely been made baseline, and still should. The nerf to spirits made no sense to begin with, anyway.
No way anyone would want Spirits Unbound for dungeon running, about the only place in PvE where spirits are actually used. They would be dead with the bosses 1st attack. So, no ty on baseline movement.
For PvP, I just think they need a bigger (2000) range for the passive and to trigger their effects on death. That would solve their issues for me really.
Yet equally no-one in PvP would want to be forced into stationary spirits, binding you to one place. At the least, the trait should be re-added or incorporated into another.
You don’t really want them to move in PvP either if they do not activate on death, because they will just die to splash damage. If you had actually read my entire post you’d have seen the answer to that. The range just needs to be increased. Then you can place them tactically out of the way for the passive buff, or drop them and pop the active immediately if you want it.
Let’s get hostile and passive aggressive, yeah?
I read your suggestion and it’s still inefficient. 2,000 range is still small considering bunker Ranger isn’t a thing and you’ll want to be actually moving between points.
Further, mobile spirits is still preferable to stationary, considering any competent player is going to go straight for your low-health immobile spirits when they arrive at the point, (even with them “tactically” placed offside) making you essentially useless once they’re dead. At least if they’re following you, it becomes less simple for them.
You can’t be hostile and passive aggressive at the same time, so I’m not sure how you will go about doing that. I certainly will not be joining you with it.
We have differing opinions. You want moving spirits, I say it is not necessary. A 2000 range on them would be immense, meaning you can apply the passive effect to someone 3500 range from the spirit with a LB. Meaning you can place the spirit a long way away from the node you want to camp (if that is how you want to play them), you would just place it tactically on the opposite side that is the most likely approach, so they need to go past you to get to it… You obviously would not place it in the incoming path towards the node, no idea how anyone would think to do that.
With a 20s CD, its as mobile as they need to be, imo. When following you, they just die whenever someone drops some AoE. If you want to move, you just destroy it so its off CD when you get to where you are going, its a short CD.
It is ok to have a difference of opinion.
1. Comparing to Warrior’s Battles Standard, spirits should either be invulnerable or have the ability to move with Ranger (moving is better since it will not overlap with Battle Standard IMHO);
2. Birds have the same statistics as Feline family and two of them (Hawk, Eagle) have conditional F2 skill; it seems reasonable to give them 1000 condition damage as Feline;
3. Shortbow skill 1 should apply bleeding regardless of Ranger’s position to his/her enemy.
I would love it even if they were only invulnerable 5 seconds after they were out. In the middle of a fight and AOE everywhere, spirits just melt too fast.
On birds, they hit with the f2 quite hard. I think it’s fine as it is now but I wouldn’t mind more.
Shortbow auto applying bleed without having to hit from side / flank has been constantly asked for but one of the arguments was that it has good physical dmg. I don’t like or play the shortbow so I won’t know if people will be happy if the base dmg gets reduced to balance it after giving auto attack bleeds.
HoT = Grind Wars 2
HoT = WvW players forced to PVE
HoT = WvW players forced to PVE
As Heimskarl said mobile spirits aren’t any better off than stationary when it comes to survival. Worse off really, because then the enemy can just focus you and kill your pets with cleave. It also makes it much harder to hold a point that’s being bombarded with AoE, forcing the spirit ranger off-point to keep their spirits alive.
Stationary spirits with a 2,000 range can be placed off point where they aren’t in danger of cleave and can still apply their boons and benefits to the ranger on point who is in the fray. The enemy then has to either take their focus off the ranger to destroy the spirits at range or leave the point completely to melee them down. Either way the ranger gets the advantage.
The passive effect of spirits also persist for something like 10 seconds after the spirit dies, which means even after they are gone you’re still benefiting from their effects for a while. After the effect fades you only have 10 seconds more until you can summon a new batch.
Increasing the range is the best option to give the ranger more maneuverability without stepping too far away from the spirits. It would also be nice if placing the spirits was ground targeted and had, say, 600 range so we can place them off-point without leaving the point.
Increasing their health pool also wouldn’t be a terrible idea, but I’d like to see how effective they are with the increased range first.
No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?
:(
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?
:(
Yup. I’ve said the same thing earlier. Teleport and instant activation on their active skill would be great.
I don’t get people who demands spirits unbound baseline. It would be incredibly annoying NOT having the option to leave the spirit in one place. Making them good as stationary would be way better than any incarnation of the previous spirit traits.
Evidently no-one pushing for stationary spirit viability in PvP is actually familiar with high level PvP. An immobile spirit is a spirit that’s going to be destroyed before the fight over a point even begins, thus defeating the whole point of the spirit build and rendering the Ranger useless and without 2-4/5 utilities on their bar. It takes a single Mirror Blade from my Mesmer on the way to the point to eliminate a spirit, a MW on another, and there goes 50% of the Ranger’s utility and the whole point of the spec.
There’s nothing about this argument that favors mobile spirits. They’re far more vulnerable to your single mirror blade or mind wrack when theyre following the ranger.
Long buff aura range may not be a perfect solution, and may not be enough. However, it is a straightforward useability/QOL improvement widely applicable to both pvp and pve problems without significant dangers of breaking them.
Defend their PvE viability and oppose baseline mobility, but don’t try rationalize stationary spirit viability in PvP. It’s simply an uninformed argument.
What’s uninformed is thinking that spirits in their current state would be any more viable if you tagged on mobility to them. They wouldn’t.
They don’t activate on death and the condi update made them weaker to conditions than what they used to, meaning anything hitting the ranger would melt the spirits aswell. Nothing about your argument favors mobile spirits.
Spirit health from the trait should be baseline, the trait itself should be buffed. All the spirits should have ground targeted summoning AND activation portions, meaning you wouldn’t have to position yourself to summon them or activate them. Passive effects from the spirits need their raidus increased.
That’s a proper spirit fix, and unfortunately a better fix than anything we will see from Anet anytime soon.
(edited by Lazze.9870)
Evidently no-one pushing for stationary spirit viability in PvP is actually familiar with high level PvP. An immobile spirit is a spirit that’s going to be destroyed before the fight over a point even begins, thus defeating the whole point of the spirit build and rendering the Ranger useless and without 2-4/5 utilities on their bar. It takes a single Mirror Blade from my Mesmer on the way to the point to eliminate a spirit, a MW on another, and there goes 50% of the Ranger’s utility and the whole point of the spec.
Further, this is all ignoring that fights don’t begin and end when you want them to. Having to constantly leave the point to go and place your spirits in their “tactical” location, whether on path to the point or in the opposite direction (again, not a well thought-out strategy), is valuable time you’re leaving the point open. The alternative? Summon them on/near the point where they’re going to be unmoving targets.
For tPvP viability, the spirits are either going to need to be immune to damage (a la banners) or have the ability for mobility via a trait.
Defend their PvE viability and oppose baseline mobility, but don’t try rationalize stationary spirit viability in PvP. It’s simply an uninformed argument.
Well, in that instance, you at least had to target the spirit and cast, if its following the ranger, you kill it without even targeting it. With incedental splash AoE. Same result. This is assuming the Ranger placed the spirit in the worst possible position, tactically.
It’s not ignoring that fact at all, you can still cast the spirits in combat you know. Even though, you could cast one, leave it 1999 range behind you to fight on, or just drop it in the middle of everyone and pop the active. Once every 60s is hardly constantly, if you are smart with your placement, if you are using it for the active, you don’t really have to worry about the placement.
The only way moving spirits are better than large range stationary ones is if they activate their skills on death, which they don’t, because they will die near instantly whenever anyone with AoE looks at you. At least with stationary and large range you can place them tactically and then move away from them.
…Spirit health from the trait should be baseline, the trait itself should be buffed. All the spirits should have a ground targeted summoning AND activation portions, meaning you wouldn’t have to position yourself to summon them or activate them. Passive effects from the spirits need their raidus increased.
That’s a proper spirit fix, and unfortunately a better fix than anything we will see from Anet anytime soon.
This I agree with, the ground targeting would be great.
(edited by Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582)
How about a skill chain of 3 to allow for static/follow behaviour without an extra F key:
Summon Spirit: summon the spirit, it follows you, skill becomes Place Spirit.
Place Spirit: spirit stops following you. Skill becomes Sacrifice Spirit.
Sacrifice Spirit: spirit is destroyed, triggering its on-death effect, skill becomes Summon Spirit and goes on cooldown.
Olaf Oakmane [KA]
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Chain of three is better than nothing, but just overall inferior, less viable and more clunky than an easy ground targeted version.
Chain of three is better than nothing, but just overall inferior, less viable and more clunky than an easy ground targeted version.
Clunky indeed, but it’d have the benefit of catering to both the static and follow crowd. It could be a good excuse for a neat animation too, with the second skill showing the spirit ‘take root’.
Olaf Oakmane [KA]
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Chain of three is better than nothing, but just overall inferior, less viable and more clunky than an easy ground targeted version.
Clunky indeed, but it’d have the benefit of catering to both the static and follow crowd. It could be a good excuse for a neat animation too, with the second skill showing the spirit ‘take root’.
It wouldn’t cater to anyone if its clunky, and the ranger doesn’t need more clunky and subpar stuff. If making spirits actually viable and good comes at the cost of catering to both view points, that should be an easy pick. Your version wouldn’t solve the issue of having pointless activation skill to activate if you placed your spirit in a safe place.
Ground targeted activation solves the problems of having to position to place them and all the other problems that comes with that, aswell as making the activated portion of the skills meaningful because you would be able to port your spirit and detonate it.
Anet wanted stationary spirits, and this is the way to make them viable without completely altering the mechanics.
I would guess the reason Birds don’t have 1000 condition damage is because by default, they don’t all actually have damaging conditions.
Cats have a family skill that applies bleeds, which means every single cat benefits from that high condition damage. For birds, only a select couple actually get damage conditions via their F2.
That seems to be the pattern with condition damage on pets, anyway. All of the ones with 1000 have a shared skill that inflicts a damaging condition.
You can’t be hostile and passive aggressive at the same time, so I’m not sure how you will go about doing that. I certainly will not be joining you with it.
Pedantic note:
Both Active and Passive-aggressiveness are forms of hostility, so every time you are being passive-aggressive you are also being hostile.
Server: Devona’s Rest
You can’t be hostile and passive aggressive at the same time, so I’m not sure how you will go about doing that. I certainly will not be joining you with it.
Pedantic note:
Both Active and Passive-aggressiveness are forms of hostility, so every time you are being passive-aggressive you are also being hostile.
Yeah, true, I was thinking it wasn’t because it is in-direct, but yeah, it is heh.
No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?
:(
I honestly like it. Different, but I like it, nice little surprise “gotcha kitten!”
I think the spirits should get back he traits they had: the mobility and the trigguer on dead. I made a thread where here
Also the spirits need some fixed in how the apply the boons. All except frost has the recharge time that can go up to 10 seconds for 3 seconds boon/condition plus the 75% trigger chance.
Here just pointed out that they should apply the boons/conditions every 6 seconds..
The spirits already have too many conditionals : you have to attack and hit, then you have a 75% chance to trigger and also the recharge time.
I think change the spirits to be something the enemies have to kill before forcusing in the ranger would be nice. Right now the enemies can just ignore them because of a very weak boons.
(edited by anduriell.6280)
No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?
:(
This is something I’ve suggested before and, combined with the larger passive range, would allow rangers to place their spirits in a safe location, fight a little under their influence, then call the spirit to explode in the enemy’s face at a tactical time.
Storm Spirit especially would be substantially better as it has some control and decent damage on self destruct.