Guild Wars 2

I hate everything that includes “a chance”! Either give it or don’t tease!

I really don’t want to make a Ranger built on “chances”! This is not Las Vegas! I want something reliable and something I can count on.

Imo, spirits should be re-made. Maybe make them like some kind of signet.

eg.:

• When a certain spirit is chosen in the skill slot, it is automatically summoned.

• As default spirits can move and follow.

• They don’t agro NPCs ( they are spirits after all!) but can be targeted and killed when ranger in battle. Non-NPCs can target and kill spirits anytime.

• Spirits have passive and active effects.

• Spirit gives a passive effect as long as it is alive and active is not chosen.

• Spirit gives active effect when chosen and it has a cooldown.

• Can be traited to have shorter cooldown, more health, and better effects (like traps and so on)

This way, you know what you deal with. No more “chance of …”.

My idea might not be the best, but I think we all agree that the current state of spirits are awful and something needs to be done.

I though that the active effects could be something group oriented. Something that would make rangers attractive in groups. Something uniqe and beneficial for the group.

Chance is fine with me. Its a chance per attack, so even untraited its got pretty good odds of proc’ing.

I just want the internal cooldown to be decreased. Thats whats really keeping the effects from being seen more often, not the fact that its only a chance of happening. If it can only happen every 10 seconds, its not going to seem like something thats happening very often, chance or no.

That said, I do agree with one of your points. I would like it if they changed the active effect of spirits to a buff skill as opposed to the current “CC / damage ability on something thats not meant to be in combat” situation we have going right now. The active abilities right now are largely pointless, I find. Even getting a chance to use them means the spirit is probably going to die (or is already dying, if you trait for the effect on death) and thats not something to aim for.

I mean, I guess if you trait for on-death effects, it can be a “Oh, you killed my spirit so here’s a revenge debuff” type of thing. Which is OK I guess. But the active ability, the ability you CHOOSE to use, should be something you ever have a reason to actually use, and something you can actually use on a regular basis.

Take Engineer turrets for example. They have a trait that makes them explode and cause damage / knockback on death. Or you can even choose to blow them up manually via toolbar skill. But thats a secondary thing. Each turret has a completely different active ability thats actually useful in addition to the “revenge hit” type thing. They vary, but in general they give the turret a stronger attack for a bit and usually apply other status effects as well. The active abilities of turrets are extremely useful, and as a heavy turret user I trigger them constantly.

Spirit abilities, though? I almost never trigger them. Spirits should have useful activated effects too. If you want to keep the trait for on-death AoE debuffs, fine, keep it and have it work exactly like it does now. If you have the trait, the spirit dies and triggers an AoE when it does. But have that seperate from their active ability, and make the actives actually useful and desirable to activate on a regular basis.

Doesn’t even have to be the same buff, if they don’t want to double up. Frost spirit could give a buff that lets your next attack inflict chill. Stone Spirit could give stability (Ranger is pretty lacking in that right now). Storm Spirit could give Fury or a buff that makes your next attack inflict Weakness. Sun Spirit could give might or cleanse a condition. Or have each spirit grant its respective aura even, though that might be a bit too powerful as a group buff (or maybe not, Elementalists can distribute auras with traits). Stone Spirit gives Magnetic Aura, Sun gives Flame Aura, Storm gives Shocking Aura, and Frost gives Frost.

yea 10secs CD and then the rng chance on top of that..