Guild Wars 2

I have been running a 0/0/20/30/20 Spirit-based build for some time before this patch, and after today I wanted to give my thoughts on the changes made to Spirits.

First, the health increase. In my opinion, this is only noticeable when the trait for increased Spirit health is also taken. In my few runs of the new dungeon I ran with the trait off and on to compare, and without the trait Spirits still pretty much fold at the first sign of trouble. 60% health sounds like a lot until you remember they only had a few thousand health to begin with.

The change to the trait that increases proc chance was more noticeable to me. Earth and Sun felt more consistent since they were generally hitting right off GCD, and doubling Frost’s group output is obviously nice. Good change and I think makes the trait a reasonable choice at the moment.

Overall survivability is still not where it needs to be for Spirits, though. Especially on dungeon bosses, even carting them around with me it’s incredibly hard to make any Spirit live for the duration unless it is totally trivial to avoid damage in the encounter (which is certainly not the case for the design of their latest dungeon). The biggest problem is ground-targeted AoE; I have to either choose to park them somewhere and risk their guaranteed death of they wind up within a red circle at some point, or cart them around and pray their AI does not path them through various ground-based damage as I’m running around avoiding it.

In my opinion this is still largely pets’ problem as well. Even when pets are called back to your side (so they’re in a state much like carted Spirits) their movement is still pretty wild and they’re often just standing around in horrible death because you’re not able to move the 10+ meters away from the red circle you’re not even standing in so that they decide to get the hell out of it.

Unfortunately I’m probably going to stop playing the build for now since I don’t expect them to revisit Spirits anytime soon. Even though I feel the build is a pretty strong group member when things are rolling (6/6 Altruism runes, Red/Blue Moas, Earth/Sun/Frost, SB + GS or A/T for a lot of group buffs and conditions) I’m a little fed up trying to deal with the Spirits’ weaknesses in the current PvE dungeon design. I’ll likely revisit them again as soon as ArenaNet does, hopefully sooner than later.

Spirits should be invulnerable.

A flimsy piece of colored cloth on a stick is invulnerable and provides multiple utilities.

Why not a metaphysical spirit of nature?

Duh, its a ranger some where in the design portion of the development somebody got the bright idea of "let’s have a profession that has a mechanic that can be killed and (possibly someone else said) utilities that can be killed as well.

I liked running spirits a lot too before people started kicking me out of groups for doing it (despite me keeping Fury, Might, and Swiftness on basically 100% uptime and Protection about half the time.)

What I don’t like, though, is that I have to pick the “improved chance” thing for them to be remotely worthwhile. I preferred my “spirits explode on death” thing, and with having them move, I’m either torn between having my spirits be ineffectual at buffing or status-bombing.

I was kind of hoping the base proc chance would improve, not the traited one. The nontraited one itself needs to shoot up some, and traited should be 100%. After all, warrior banners do their job better in almost every way.

I suppose its born of the same mentality of how I can put bleeds on Ghosts in Ascalon. Sense; it makes none.

In my opinion, Spirits aren’t fixed until I can safely put them on my bar without a single point in Nature Magic.

Yeah, it really isn’t all that tough to see how to make them work….
Actually coding it might take time but what kills me is that Anet’s patches aren’t even on track to make spirits more viable in the slightest…

After 5 mins of brainstorming to make the ‘killable spirits’ work…

Then vuala, well made, decent and entertaining spirits…
Spirits that work better with traits yet are perfectly viable without…

It doesn’t take flaming 8 months to come up with that.
kitten Anet…

Vox Hollow.2736:

In my opinion, Spirits aren’t fixed until I can safely put them on my bar without a single point in Nature Magic.

^
This post.

This post right here sums it up.

I don’t have to be a skirmisher to put Quickening Zephyr on my bar and find use from it.

Why should spirits be any different?

@ Wallach: Great post that sums up the state of spirits very well.

They should increase the range of spirits passive effects
Range is too small so you want to generally have them traited for movement instead of having them as powerful totems. This doubles in making them basically get in harms way because you need them to be so close relatively to get under their effects. Instead of being able to say “If you want to counter this effect, go Find my spirit.”

Just tried spirit herder build in Molten Facility.

• We’re forced to trait Spirit Unbound because the range of spirits are simply too short and we have to play mobile the entire time.

• Spirits still get destroyed by Boss AoE’s in one hit even if traited with Vigorous Spirits, hell, they can’t even take vet and elite attacks for over 5 hits. And even with Spirit Unbound, they don’t exactly stand right next to you but wander around you like pet on Avoid Combat, so you can’t control where they go and AoE’s can hit them very easily.

• The proc chance is surprisingly quite nice with Spiritual Knowledge, you can tell that the effects are proc’d much more often.

In my opinion, spirit build is still no where near viable in AoE heavy dungeons like Molten Facility. The only thing that would make me want to use a spirit build is either

• Make spirits invulnerable
• Let them have the extremely large range like they used to in GW1, or
• Make them follow ranger’s movement exactly and stand as close to ranger as possible when traited with Spirit Unbound.

I agree with OP’s assessment. The changes were not enough, especially for spirits. One other thing that bothers me about spirits is, for having to recast them every 60 seconds, their cast time is too long. I would maybe like to see what they did with mantras and shave 0.5 seconds off the cast time at least.

I agree, i just posted a thread about storm spirit specifically. But spirit build right now is not viable. Specially for our fellow melee rangers who have limited utilities to bring like signet build or spirit. But then again, spirits die too quickly even with this buff that ANet provided, its no where near feasible. Spirits shouldnt even have a health bar on them cause they’re spirits what the kitten ANet? AT LEAST make them invulnerable to conditions for kitten’s sake to mitigate some damage. AND please… change storm spirits benefit. Swiftness really?

Vox Hollow.2736:

In my opinion, Spirits aren’t fixed until I can safely put them on my bar without a single point in Nature Magic.

+1

You cannot possibly create build diversity when you’re forced to take certain traits with utilities. Traits, should enhance your skills, and not be a requisite for your skills. This goes the same for signets. Good buffs in the last patch, but I still have 0 reasons to take them because I don’t want to be pigeon holed into taking signets for going so deep in MS for Beastmastery.

I don’t normally use spirits, but I’ve found them to be nice where you’re fighting alongside several npc:s, since as far as I can tell, the spirits will work on them as well.
For example during the “defend the pact staging area” in Malchor’s leap.

Kojiden.8405:

I agree with OP’s assessment. The changes were not enough, especially for spirits. One other thing that bothers me about spirits is, for having to recast them every 60 seconds, their cast time is too long. I would maybe like to see what they did with mantras and shave 0.5 seconds off the cast time at least.

The funny part is that the cast time of Spirits underwater is much faster and feels great. Something I’d very much like to see happen for land Spirits.

I am not sure why you guys complain about this. What you have with Spirit pets is the same thing Necro’s have with Minions, Elementalist have with elementals, and Guardians have with Spirit Weapons.

You can put them on your bar without traiting for them, but then they are significantly less effective. That’s the way it should be, and it’s the way every other “pet” style utility works. It’s so they aren’t always taken unless traited.

Traited they become effective, untraited they are very ineffective.

As for the guy who thinks they should be invulnerable. Seriously, that would be one of the worst ideas I have ever heard.

This perception that pet type utilities should be treated like actual pets is incorrect. If they were buffed to the degree you want them to be, they would be mandatory. This same argument is being made ad nauseum in the Necro forums regarding Minions. Spirit pets are utilities designed around the fact that they will go down, and they will die, and there will be fights they are ineffective.

This is a good change they made. Do they still need a bit of work? Yes. Are they worthless until you can use them without traiting? Absolutely not, and any argument in that direction is flawed severely, by a lack of critical thinking.

Vox Hollow.2736:

In my opinion, Spirits aren’t fixed until I can safely put them on my bar without a single point in Nature Magic.

+1 Very well said. Utilities should be of some ‘use’ whether traited or not.

I have been using spirits with the full 30 trait pts for awhile now. Spirits unbound, in PvE situations, can be quite useful to run in towards the enemy and proc the spirit’s active skill as soon as you’re on the enemy. Unfortunately when doing this the little buggers have decided to wander too far and one of the three ‘may’ have hit it’s mark before being killed.
I have traited them to have a higher chance to apply their passive & to have more health. When at range I try to keep them in the Healing spring but have found that it won’t help to keep them alive under AoE attacks (especially in a dungeon or WvW).

And comparing the spirits to minions isn’t totally fair. The only minion on a timer is the jagged horror that spawns. The rest do not need to be summoned constantly unless they are killed.
I’d be happy if spirits acted like minions. Instead I am managing my pet plus it’s F2 ability, and 3 spirits plus their abilities and making sure none have dropped dead from their incredibly short lifespan.
The patch was a step in the right direction, I just don’t believe it went far enough.

You can use them sparingly in dungeons with or without traits. Good observation can spot some places where they can give a damage boost without being at risk. The spirits will presumably add more dps than quickness or sharpening stones over a sustained fight.

Took Spirit of Frost into CoF p1+p2. Went asplat whenever we fought the silver Flame Legion charr.

Basically the conclussion is +60% of an HP pool made of paper isn’t worth it.

I was hoping for a bigger spirit buff given how they were mentioned in the Sotg instead of boring and nearly useless HP increase. I want to make spirit herder builds with my norn because thematically it goes with him, but I also want to be as optimal and competitive as possible so I can’t really use them.

Here is something I’ve think that would change them a bit, to see what Rangers with more experience than me think:

- Make them ground targeted skills, selecting a spot where they will appear in a short range (like Thief Shadow Refuge that has a small range but you can pick where to place it).

- Make their activate skills more powerful to be used in an strategic way (with spirits being ground targeted some of the current ones would be enough), but destroy them on use (like overloading a Turret for increased effect at the cost of the turret or Guardian weapns) and make them instant cast. When they die because of damage the active skill is used automatically (probably only when traited as it might get powerful by default).

- Have some more original/effective passive effects. At least good enough for your teamates to realize the help those spirits are giving them. Some of the passive effects are nice, but others are just meh.

This way you can plant them closer to who you want to help, and at least you could use them as bombs with more effective and strategic actives and when traited and dying from big damage AoEs at least you got to hit with the active effect (in some strategies you would even want to instantly use the active, like stone using the paralyze in a ground targeted AoE to stop a charge while sacrificing the passive defense.

Would this be too OP (or still not worth it?) or you think this might get Spirits a bit more interesting and strategical?

Warrior Banners have a CONSTANT UBER-BUFF, are indestructable, untraited mobile, can be wielded by everyone, and have a super long up time. So why the kitten they don’t just make totally broken spirits not kittening better? I really don’t get it. Just make them invulnerable!

Bas.7406:

I am not sure why you guys complain about this. What you have with Spirit pets is the same thing Necro’s have with Minions, Elementalist have with elementals, and Guardians have with Spirit Weapons.

Someone that is so quick to judge other peoples’ critical thinking skills putting Spirits into a category alongside skills grouped together by a function that they do not share with Spirits whatsoever is kind of comical.