So I’m a ranger main, have been since my first day playing. And I love it, I really do, but a lot of the time I feel like I’m having to abuse mechanics. And perhaps that’s a bit of a loaded way of saying what I’m about to say, but I’ve played as other classes (I have a guardian, thief, and mesmer at 80, and have played around with warriors and eles in the past), and a lot of playing those classes just feels like playing as a strong and cohesive class (I admit the guardian has some ridiculous cooldowns, and really low vitality, but moving on).
So anyway, I’m a ranger main, and I agree with soooo much on this board:
- losing placeable traps was poop, give it back please
- the sword auto shouldn’t root us (a good suggestion i saw was only having the leap animation if you actually have to gap close)
- spirits unbound was great
- breaking 25% of projectiles is weird
- Most dangerous game is really strange … why is it there
- WHaO was a mess, and while it needed the post buff-nerf, it was the wrong nerf
BUT what I aim to specifically talk about in this is spirits. They feel bugged. SOOOO bugged. What I am talking about specifically is that when they die, they hang around as corpses for 10 seconds~, pulsing away with their buffs all the while. And that’s great (it makes frost spirit 10 billion times better than that new glyph), and I have a rather tanky soldiers pvp build that abuses that quite heavily. But that’s the thing, it feels like the only way to make these little tree guys work is to abuse what at first glance looks like a bug. But, I’m not here to complain, I’m here to make a suggestion, several suggestions in fact.
Suggestion 1
Have spirits become untargetable. With the 10 second corpse delay, we’re essentailly running 10 second cooldowns on 10-70 second aoe buffs. Having spirits last the full 60 seconds (until killed with their active), but disappear immediately not only puts control of our abilities back in our hands, but also makes it a more realistic cooldown (10 seconds on a 7.5% dps boost + 3 might is great, but silly).
Suggestion 2
Have spirits spawn with ~4-6 seconds of ‘determination’ (or whatever damage immunity is called on bosses). It gives us time to use their actives, gives them a chance to pulse their ‘spirit effect’ a second time, and leaves them killable so that enemies can actually counter us in some way. (I would like to see the return of active-on-death if they leave spirits targetable. We still lose functionality because we don’t get to control our own skill, but it means, especially for water spirit, that we aren’t sacrificing a huge component of our utility skill, and it punishes enemies for being rude)
Suggestion 3
Have spirits function aesthetically, following the ranger around, but being untargetable. Even reducing their duration to 30 seconds with a 20% cooldown reduction available on trait (replacing the bonus health) to stop them being OP. The cast times on their actives could remain the same, with a similar visual tell, perhaps causing the spirit’s fist-slam animation to appear above the ranger’s head like signet activations do, to give people an opportunity to avoid or counter the immobilise, chill and SIX SECOND DAZE that some spirits are capable of. Even incorporating the new wisp visual on the druid staff-2, so a ranger has rotating, coloured wisps indicating any spirits they have active.
Questions
What do people think? Do people have other suggestions for spirit functionality? Does anyone actually use the water spirit? What are peoples thoughts on making the bleed on shortbow the default, but having a different bonus (torment, cripple, poison, weakness) for flanking?