Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing around with a spirit build for 8vs8 spvp to try and get some more survivability and group utility. It seems to work ok-I can get right into the action, beat most classes 1vs1 depending on how good they are and I think the spirits are helping the group.

However, there are a few things I don’t understand about how the spirits work.

1) When it says 20% chance to apply buff, does that mean every second there is a 1 in 5 chance for the buff to apply? Or is it every 5 secs or something else?
2) What damage does the burning buff do from Sun spirit? I can’t see any info on burning damage when I try to run tests on golems; the combat log just says “cross fire did xxxdamage” and is the fire damage affected by my condition damage stat?
3) The elite spirit has a great passive group heal, mine ticks for about 480. Is the healing amount affected by my healing skill? Also, how do you work the active skill to revive allies? I press the button but nothing happens, the skill just goes on cooldown.
4) Am I actually helping my team with these buffs? At first the 33% protection sounds fantastic, but it says for 1sec? Does that mean I have a 1 in 5 chance (if untraited) to provide 1 sec of 33% protection every second?

Is that really worth it? I give up a lot to have these spirits out, no stun breaks, no traps, little damage (I have ok condition damage but it only stacks about 6 times). I love the extra survivability and the elite skill really can help the team but its on a huge CD-longer even than the Mesmer “I win button” (as if they needed one).

I know no one likes spirits, but does anyone know the answer at least to question 3- how do you get the elite spirit skill to res your allies?

1) Haven’t tested to be sure, but it seems to be 20% chance on attack, like storm spirit.
2) According to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sun_Spirit it does base 328 damage. This damage is affected by someone’s condition damage, but I’m not sure if it’s the ranger’s or the attacker’s.
3) The spirit’s aoe heal is definitely affected by your healing stat. To activate its res click the ability again – you should see the spirit raise its arm and slam it on the ground. It has a pretty short range and only hits downed players, not defeated, but it will hit up to 5 allied players/NPCs.
4) The team buffs are actually pretty powerful in a prolonged or large-scale fight, but their range and the spirits’ health got nerfed hard from BWE because they were too good. In sPvP many players won’t have many AoE skills, so the spirits have a lot more staying power and can prove useful if placed right or if they’re mobile.

Thanks Angela, that’s a big help. I must have been out of range of downed players or something.

From what you say though I can’t see that the Earth spirit is much use- a 20% chance to apply 1 sec of protection on attack; and I have heard people say the abilities have a 5 sec cd.

I’ll have to keep testing sun spirit, but I just can’t seem to see it prock anything.