Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

So the recent spirit buff is nice and all, but can we please have MORE PRECISE SPIRIT PLACEMENT?

What I mean is that currently when summoned, Spirits “slide” a bit in a seemingly random (not sure if completely random or if there’s a pattern) direction before coming to rest.

This is annoying because damage mitigation through positioning is a hallmark of GW2’s combat system. HP and defense mean little when a player can use smart positioning to avoid damage in the first place.

The same logic apply to spirits. Yes, you can buff their HP, but the best way to protect a Spirit is placing it out of harm’s way. And to do that, you need precise control of where your Spirits are being placed.

To give an example, in Grawl Fractal, I use my Elite Spirit whenever an ally dies in the boss’s AoE. I try to summon my Elite Spirit at the edge of the AoE so that it doesn’t die to the AoE itself, but half the time it slides directly into the AoE, dying instantly (I’m not traited for Spirits).

If, say, I could precisely place my Spirits, this will never happen.

Two proposed solutions:

1. Make them target-able, just like Warrior Banners.
2. Make Spirits stay right on top of you when summoned, instead of sliding in a random direction.

Or you could ask for what’s logical and make them invulnerable so they can consolidate the crap traits like they did with the Warrior’s….

Ursan.7846:

1. Make them target-able, just like Warrior Banners.
2. Make Spirits stay right on top of you when summoned, instead of sliding in a random direction.

Hush now… both of you, what you suggest might make actually give ANet a clue about the “right” way to go with spirits.

Aridia.3042:

Or you could ask for what’s logical and make them invulnerable so they can consolidate the crap traits like they did with the Warrior’s….

I disagree with that. I’m fine with Spirits being killable. I don’t want banners named Spirits.

That said however, I would sure appreciate it if these changes go through, because it’ll empower the player in being active in protecting these spirits.

Well right now spirits have several problems…
1) they die if you sneeze at them
2) you cant place them
3) their effects are random, unreliable, internal cooldown / whatever

at least 2 of those issues need to go away for me to even think of using them.

Ursan.7846:

Aridia.3042:

Or you could ask for what’s logical and make them invulnerable so they can consolidate the crap traits like they did with the Warrior’s….

I disagree with that. I’m fine with Spirits being killable. I don’t want banners named Spirits.

That said however, I would sure appreciate it if these changes go through, because it’ll empower the player in being active in protecting these spirits.

That’s just silly. If you add too much HP, they become meat shields Not enough HP, then they die like they do right now. There’s a reason why they’re having such a hard time with this because spirits with HP is just a terrible idea. The quicker we call them out on this kind of “balancing” the better.

Saying you don’t want invulnerable spirits because it makes them like banners is like saying I don’t want SOS to give me invulnerability because i don’t want another Endure Pain.

Banners burn people? Blind? Chill? I don’t think so. It’s not a valid argument.

Aridia.3042:

Saying you don’t want invulnerable spirits because it makes them like banners is like saying I don’t want SOS to give me invulnerability because i don’t want another Endure Pain.

Banners burn people? Blind? Chill? I don’t think so. It’s not a valid argument.

I probably didn’t word it the best way, but you misunderstand me. I personally don’t want that it to be invulnerable like Banners are, because I don’t want them to be invulnerable, not because I think they’ll be similar to Banners (I do hope you see the distinction). I want them to have HP, so I actually have to think about carefully placing them. It’s more interesting to me.

That’s me personally though. And it’ll empower me to do this more efficiently if I can more precisely place my spirits.

Ursan.7846:

Aridia.3042:

Saying you don’t want invulnerable spirits because it makes them like banners is like saying I don’t want SOS to give me invulnerability because i don’t want another Endure Pain.

Banners burn people? Blind? Chill? I don’t think so. It’s not a valid argument.

I probably didn’t word it the best way, but you misunderstand me. I personally don’t want that it to be invulnerable like Banners are, because I don’t want them to be invulnerable, not because I think they’ll be similar to Banners (I do hope you see the distinction). I want them to have HP, so I actually have to think about carefully placing them. It’s more interesting to me.

That’s me personally though. And it’ll empower me to do this more efficiently if I can more precisely place my spirits.

If placement is more interesting for the game, then Anet got it backwards. Mobility should’ve came standard with the spirits and traiting it should let you make it stop and guard instead.

That way, the secondary status/blown up effects actually makes sense and you can drop them off in areas designated by you as quasi traps as the enemies advance to the position. That said, the HP problem is still there.

IMO, they’re doing it wrong either way. These utilities need help, badly, and the route they’re taking is not helping.

Aridia.3042:

If placement is more interesting for the game, then Anet got it backwards. Mobility should’ve came standard with the spirits and traiting it should let you make it stop and guard instead.

That’s a pretty interesting thought. But if Spirits are mobile,

1. you can’t put them out of harm’s way then return to the action
2. You can make them invulnerable…but they’ll just be visual decorations at that point. Might as well replace them with an aura.

The reason why I bring this up is I played a Ritualist in GW1. I’d frequently put spirits out of harm’s way, but close enough so that it still affected me and my heroes. It worked out great for me, because in GW1 a summoned spirit summons right on top of me, so I could put them around corners and such without worrying it sliding out.

In the end, IMO I think Spirits with HP is fine. GW1 is a great blueprint, I think. Which is why I think we should go back to how it handled spirits (summon on top of the summoner, please.)

Only way to make spirits worth a kitten is to make them move around with you by default, without needing to burn a grandmaster trait, and removing the idiotic internal cooldown (or lowering it to like…1 second at most…?).

Anything else is just token. Just band aids on a severed limb.

If you want to have vulnerable spirits with placement that their range needs to be 2x-3x what it is now, that way tactical placement is meaningful and still helpful. Similar to the old Rit/Ra spirits of GW1.

Until Spirits are made invulnerable like they should be (never happen,) they will always be worthless.

I did some testing with them today and the 60% HP increase did absolutely nothing. They now die in 3 hits instead of 2 and AOE kills them flat out just like it always did.

Warriors get Banners that cannot be targeted or destroyed, but the already weaker Ranger Class gets spirits that die in a sneeze. You’ll be much less frustrated if you just give up on spirits all together. Warriors are ANet’s chosen ones and we are barely an after thought.

It will never change.

don’t waste an utility slot

Spirits need new good actives along with good aoe dmg reduction, 10~k life base, 250~ life per second regen, 2s of endure pain/sig of stone while using the active skill and targeted casting of where they spawn (since they are on flaming 1.5s casts). Toss the trait that makes spirits fallow you, instead let it make the actives ground targeted within a 600~ radius of the guy. Spirit passives probably should work at half effect on anyone who isn’t the ranger (possibly a trait to change that to 3/4). Make spirit passives proc after so many hits excluding only hits on a secondary/tertiary/exc. target with the same attack, multiple hits on the same target is fine, (6~ is roughly a good number), the internal CD should be dropped to roughly 6~ seconds, those two numbers should differ a bit per spirit. The increased proc trait should be reworked to cause the spirit passive to proc on the first hit after summoning the guy and getting in combat, it should also lower the internal CD by 30~% (so high hit/sec builds can work well with spirits, the downside of course is that you actually have to keep landing your blows to keep the spirit procs rolling in). Cut the ‘double vitality’ to 30~% and combine it with the ‘increase active effect radius (that part literally doesn’t do anything to any spirit) and they trigger active on death’.
The passives should be something like, for the fire… weakness for 3~s and 15 stacks of vulnerability for 2~s on a 5~s internal CD and triggering after 5~ hits while the internal CD is down. Only 7 stacks of vulnerability for 2s for anyone who isn’t the ranger and 1.5s of weakness.
That along with a lil showy UI buff that ticks away hits/proc…
Vuala, decent and entertaining spirits…

Anyways, odds say with what Anet does they will be glass pug passive buff bots never seriously worth a utility slot because of the trait requirements and mediocre survivability/active/passives even then.