Guild Wars 2

Ok, this is my theory. With Nature’s Vengeance, a Spirit Druid would be vastly better party support than a Herald, so it was removed to keep Herald as the shiny new thing. Should I make myself a new tinfoil hat? Speculate.

Interesting theory. I have a slightly less conspiratorial one.

Unbound Spirits was removed because it was impossible to balance spirits with it around. Think about it. Spirits were baseline immobile, and that is the state in which they were originally balanced. Spirits Unbound makes the immobile spirits mobile, which completely changes how they are used.

So you have a situation where if you balance spirits around being immobile they are overpowered when made mobile (Such as when spirit ranger was the flavor of the month OP build) and if you balance spirits around being mobile they become completely useless without the trait.

I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence that when they removed Spirits Unbound they also pushed 70% proc chance to be baseline so that spirits could be useful untraited.

But now they have the issue where spirits are good enough untraited and the spirit trait isn’t strong enough to convince people to take it. With the recent buff to this trait we’ll see if they’ve found that sweet spot beteen usable untraited spirits and balanced traited spirits.

Personally I feel they still need a bigger passive radius. Spirit of Nature especially as it’s crazy small radius just isn’t practical now that it can’t move.

Yeah, if they doubled the passive and boon radius they would be a lot more useful, and bring SoN into line, it is elite afterall.

Iam sad about this. Somebody pointed this out to me in another thread and made so much sense.

smh

Ehecatl.9172:

Unbound Spirits was removed because it was impossible to balance spirits with it around.

You might need a new tinfoil hat, too.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Ok, this is my theory. With Nature’s Vengeance, a Spirit Druid would be vastly better party support than a Herald, so it was removed to keep Herald as the shiny new thing. Should I make myself a new tinfoil hat? Speculate.

Theory is flawed on multiple fronts.

With spirits unbound, they still did not have the survivability they would need to be viable in Raids or WvW. Dungeons, maybe, but only because the fights are so short. At no point in the history of the game has spirit health been high enough to be good anywhere besides pvp or roaming, and they were only good there because you could count on them to die, thus giving you an extra death activation.

Suppose they become the damage immune banners they deserve to be, but instead radiate on the ranger or the pet so they can move instead of being useless…:

spirits would bring:

• 7% party damage
• 3 stacks of might
• some burning
• ~40% vigor uptime
• ~70% prot uptime
• decent stab, heals on a long cooldown
  (no one is going to take water spirit)

while glint brings…

• perma prot
• perma fury
• perma swift
• ~8 stacks of might
• perma regen

It’s way off to call one much better than the other. glint flat out wins in buff uptime and magnitude, but glint buffs are also more likely to be redundant with other party members.

Ehecatl.9172:

Interesting theory. I have a slightly less conspiratorial one.

Unbound Spirits was removed because it was impossible to balance spirits with it around. Think about it. Spirits were baseline immobile, and that is the state in which they were originally balanced. Spirits Unbound makes the immobile spirits mobile, which completely changes how they are used.

So you have a situation where if you balance spirits around being immobile they are overpowered when made mobile (Such as when spirit ranger was the flavor of the month OP build) and if you balance spirits around being mobile they become completely useless without the trait.

I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence that when they removed Spirits Unbound they also pushed 70% proc chance to be baseline so that spirits could be useful untraited.

But now they have the issue where spirits are good enough untraited and the spirit trait isn’t strong enough to convince people to take it. With the recent buff to this trait we’ll see if they’ve found that sweet spot beteen usable untraited spirits and balanced traited spirits.

Personally I feel they still need a bigger passive radius. Spirit of Nature especially as it’s crazy small radius just isn’t practical now that it can’t move.

Whether they move or not, they’re largely useless in PVP / WvW even before the patch, because they’re just killable banners. Making them immobile makes them PVE exclusive, because they’re utterly useless in PVP and WvW now.

Raven.9603:

Spirits would bring:

• 7% party damage
• 3 stacks of might
• some burning
• ~40% vigor uptime
• ~70% prot uptime
• decent stab, heals on a long cooldown
  (no one is going to take water spirit)

while glint brings…

• perma prot
• perma fury
• perma swift
• ~8 stacks of might
• perma regen

It’s way off to call one much better than the other. glint flat out wins in buff uptime and magnitude, but glint buffs are also more likely to be redundant with other party members.

Take a look at this build, its far superior to Glint. Don’t forget that Herald will not be able to swap legends to upkeep the boons, nor will it be able to use weapon skills much with all the upkeeps. The protection alone takes all of Heralds energy regeneration, so more than just that and its only going down.

With Druid being a backliner, Spirits Unbound would add so much to the support capability. But I can’t see it returning, which will leave Spirits in a useless state.