Guild Wars 2

When looking at spirits I can’t help but feel their contradictory design is their downfall. They have close range AoE effects and can follow the character around, yet are also killable. This makes you want to keep spirits away from the enemy, but when you do this you can’t get the most out of them as their AoE won’t hit anything.

Due to their killable state players only use spirits for their passive buffs with aren’t tremendously helpful alone. The closest thing they can compare to is the banners, but without using their AoE effects spirits pale in comparison.

In order for spirits to be truly effective they need to use both their support effects and AoE. Simple things like better proc rates or survivability increases (unless it grants them near invincibility) will not address this issue. What we need are some larger changes, not just small numerical tweaks, so I suggest one of the two following changes:

1. Change the spirits manual use AoE effects to a 1,200 range (1,500 when traited) effect that buffs allies within range.

Example:
Frost spirit: Allies cause 4 seconds of frost and weakness with their next attack.
Stone spirit: Allies gain aegis for 1 minute.
Storm spirit: Allies gain 6 seconds of vigor.
Sun spirit: Allies cause 8 seconds of blind with their next attack.
Spirit of Renewal: Allies are cured of all conditions and gain regeneration for each one removed.

In addition, the elite spirit should also have the radius on its passive healing increased to 900-1,200 range with a possible decrease in the healing amount. At the moment it only heals allies right next to it which doesn’t fit in well with this design and generally makes it weak.

What this would do is make spirits something you have to be mindful of and protect while they provide strong support to the team from a distance.

2. Make spirits invincible.

What this would do is allow players to bring spirits up into melee range and effectively use their AoE while providing buffs to the team.

Give them another 6 months, they don’t want to play whack a mole. (But these things need a serious rework to be anything near viable.)