Guild Wars 2

Chopps.5047:

KrisHQ.4719:

Spirits are still incredibly bad.
Yesterday i noticed a guy in tPvP using the Sun Spirit, and my first thought was “Why would he do that?”
Then i remembered a build recently posted on the ranger forum using LB and Sun Spirit.

He had absolutely no chance. I run a BM Sword/Dagger x GS build, and i basically evaded everything and killed him with full hp. Dont think he even got me burning once.
And then i thought to myself “Why… Just.. Why would he do that?”
So yeah. Might be a fun build to run in PvE or Hot-joins, but i dont really think Spirits can be viable in any way competitively.

Though, the elite can be good if timed correctly but due to its insanely long casting time it is difficult.

The best tpvp team in the game ran a powernecro focused build where they protected a glass cannon necro who got their kills. GW2 is a team game. Power necro would never work in hotjoin. But with a great team, they were unstoppable.

Also, for another counterexample, a berserker thief should never lose to me, right? As a hybrid/ranged ranger you should always lose that fight 1v1. But I have beaten theives before. That doesn’t make me conclude, based on a victory, that theives are useless. Maybe you played someone who was still learning the profession. If it was me, I would have blocked you silly cat, knocked it back, condition damaged it to death, and the. i would have went toe to toe with you.

This really makes no sense… Necros dont work in hotjoins? What does that even mean?

" If it was me, I would have blocked you silly cat, knocked it back, condition damaged it to death, and the. i would have went toe to toe with you."

This right here, alone, shows how much you have no clue about rangers and dueling / combat in general. There’s no way you would be able to do that as I would just swap pets,, making all the burst you just did on my pet null. See? Good players have counters for your kittenty setups and it’s not even a counter it’s just something I would do already anyway.

Chopps, like many of your other posts showing how much you have absolutely no clue how to fight good people this one is no different.

Sun spirits? really bro?

I think you’re honestly just trolling at this point and throwing random kitten out there hoping someone will do it just to get a good laugh, but that’s just me.

Ok here is my idea for Spirits.

Spirits have 2 modes, Offensive and Defensive that you can switch back and forth between.

Defensive Causes the Ranger to admit an Aura around him
Offensive Causes his pet to gain an offensive ability.

Stone Spirit – Defensive : Every 10 Seconds Gives everyone around him 3 Seconds of Protection in a 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 second your pet will cause the ground to tremble in a 300 radius around him and immobilize targets for 2 seconds

Frost Spirit – Defensive : Grants an Aura that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 seconds of Chilled, 300 Radius 5 second ICD.
– Offensive : Every 10 Seconds the pet will sent a splash of water out granting 4 seconds of Regen to all allies within 600 Radius.

Sun Spirit – Defensive : Grants and Aura around the player that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 Seconds of Burning Damage – 6 second ICD 300 radius
– Offensive : Gives the players pet an ability that does a 300 Radius blind every 10 seconds

Storm Spirit – Defensive: Gives the player an aura that causes attacks against the player to grant 5 Seconds of Vigor – 8 Second ICD – 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 Seconds, the Pet Gains the ability to Daze for 2 seconds on his next attack.

naphack.9346:

Just give every spirit an individual ICD.
Stone Spirit – stays 10 sec
Frost Spirit – no icd at all
Fire Spirit – 2 sec
Storm Spirit(the most annoying mofo in DotA) – hm… This one actually needs a rework… maybe make it give a chance to get a stack of might too, then it might be worth considering.

Storm spirit should give either quickness, aegis (make a buff called stormshield, that does the same thing) or retaliation…

I think the spirit proc chance is fairly good. Just like Durzlla said, the proc effect is per player, not per spirit, so it adds up pretty well in a dungeon fight. However, their range is too small to be able to provide reasonable chance in a mobile boss fight and they die too fast if any boss has large range AoEs (Searing Cauldron Effigy/Subject Alpha/Lupicus). Stone spirit’s protection duration is too short to be efficient, storm spirit’s swiftness has little use in dungeons(and will die in seconds in a WvW zerg fight). In my opinion they need to either tweak the proc chance even higher or make spirits near invulnerable.

I would love to see spirits more viable for wvw.. i am a 100% melee player and What i Think could be a solution is this:

1: make spirits move by default.
2: Give spirits more toughnes and vitality.
3: Change spirits trait to be able to move with Each spirit giving a certain buff. For example one giving 10% less damage taken. And one could Give a damage increase by maybe 5-10%.
4: Make spirit activation skills either like traps that can be traited For ground targeting or so you can send them on your target. .

And 1 Off-topic thing since John Might read this: Give us a trait that gives a damage bonus of 5-10% for stowing your pet.

This way you have a chance to choose from alot of other builds then we Currently have.. spirits would be used as buffers and with a reasonable cd on their skills you would need to choose wisely about when to use them. .

I like your idea Xsorus. I think the numbers need to be tweaked for balance/consistency a bit (either yours or the equivalents for other classes/skills), but overall it seems like a decent idea. Surely better than the garbage we currently have (including our useless shouts and UP signets).

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

P.S. People, you could give spirits the toughness of a full pvt or cleric guardian with tough/vit traitlines and they will still die quickly. Lupicus aoe bombs and lv40+ fractal aoe is not something high toughness units live through. You HAVE TO dodge them. And minions/pets can’t dodge and they don’t have vigor to dodge as often if they got a standard dodge.

The main form of mitigation in pve is dodging and reflection. Minions/pets have neither, so they die. Nothing short of passive resistance/mitigation of damage+regen will keep up with the amount of aoe sprayed in pve and wvw.

Hjulstad.6317:

I would love to see spirits more viable for wvw.. i am a 100% melee player and What i Think could be a solution is this:

1: make spirits move by default.
2: Give spirits more toughnes and vitality.
3: Change spirits trait to be able to move with Each spirit giving a certain buff. For example one giving 10% less damage taken. And one could Give a damage increase by maybe 5-10%.
4: Make spirit activation skills either like traps that can be traited For ground targeting or so you can send them on your target. .

And 1 Off-topic thing since John Might read this: Give us a trait that gives a damage bonus of 5-10% for stowing your pet.

This way you have a chance to choose from alot of other builds then we Currently have.. spirits would be used as buffers and with a reasonable cd on their skills you would need to choose wisely about when to use them. .

about the trait which replaces spirits unbound:
How about giving the bonus to the SPIRIT?
basically
Spirit of Nature: AoE heal, whenever damaged, 10 sec ICD
Stone Spirit: Spirit gains aegis every 10 seconds
Storm Spirit: Spirit gains Retaliation for 4 seconds when struck, 10 sec ICD
Frost Spirit: Chills attackers
Sun Spirit: Burns attackers

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

It actually gives 3-second burn, with the effective proc of up to 5 party members, resulting in a 15-second burn with a 10 second internal cool down. If the spirit can be kept alive for the whole duration of a fight, it could provide perma-burn on 1 target.

Recycle.5493:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

It actually gives 3-second burn, with the effective proc of up to 5 party members, resulting in a 15-second burn with a 10 second internal cool down. If the spirit can be kept alive for the whole duration of a fight, it could provide perma-burn on 1 target.

Is the value of the burn renewed by the player with the highest condition damage, or does the value change to a lower one if someone with no condition damage proc it. And without focusing a target, what’s the actual uptime of the burning? 3/10 seconds, assuming perfectly timed procs?

You don’t need 5 people to keep something permaburned. An elementalist and a guardian can pretty much keep a target burning as well, and an engineer should be able to as well.

Or a staff mesmer could do this with clones while providing might and fury to the group.
A flamethrower engineer could do this as well.
I’m pretty confident a Guardian could as well.
Elementalist too.

Sebrent.3625:

I’m pretty confident a Guardian could as well.

only if using the signed that grants burning on crit in addition to insanely high crit chance.

if not, yes the burning would last for a long time, but not “permanently”

I was just imagining what ‘Spirits Unbound’ could do besides make them walk (which, like mentioned, is kind of sabotaging your spirits to die).

Spirits Unbound – Spirits teleport to target location.

Basically, all the secondary skills the spirit casts become ground targeted and wherever you direct it, the spirit will begin casting then end up at the target location + the effect. It’d actually give them a sort of auxiliary use in that, before a fight, you can summon a spirit in a safe spot then call it in to create its field/effect. Also, with the other trait that gives their effect upon being destroyed, you can use them sort of like minion bombs, dropping their effect twice from being called and from being destroyed. It’d also work by being able to move them to desired spots out of danger when a battle shifts and you want to keep their passive effects.

Prysin.8542:

Sebrent.3625:

I’m pretty confident a Guardian could as well.

only if using the signed that grants burning on crit in addition to insanely high crit chance.

if not, yes the burning would last for a long time, but not “permanently”

Considering a guardian would never run alone and the other standard classes in pve are mesmer, warrior, and elementalist, keeping burning up at 100% uptime is no issue.

Plus, it’s pretty sad if a guardian with all their abundance of utility and greatsword damage could also happen to keep up burning 100%.

Zenith.7301:

Recycle.5493:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

It actually gives 3-second burn, with the effective proc of up to 5 party members, resulting in a 15-second burn with a 10 second internal cool down. If the spirit can be kept alive for the whole duration of a fight, it could provide perma-burn on 1 target.

Is the value of the burn renewed by the player with the highest condition damage, or does the value change to a lower one if someone with no condition damage proc it. And without focusing a target, what’s the actual uptime of the burning? 3/10 seconds, assuming perfectly timed procs?

You don’t need 5 people to keep something permaburned. An elementalist and a guardian can pretty much keep a target burning as well, and an engineer should be able to as well.

I’m not arguing the effectiveness of the spirit itself, I’m only correcting your mistake in numbers and stating the optimal effect you can get from it.

My point is that others can do it, often without using a utility slot, some to more than one target simultaneously, and without requiring their entire group to focus fire the same target and hope for procs.

Even if the spirit was invulnerable, I don’t think I’d take sun spirit in its current incarnation.

Leo G.4501:

I was just imagining what ‘Spirits Unbound’ could do besides make them walk (which, like mentioned, is kind of sabotaging your spirits to die).

Spirits Unbound – Spirits teleport to target location.

Basically, all the secondary skills the spirit casts become ground targeted and wherever you direct it, the spirit will begin casting then end up at the target location + the effect. It’d actually give them a sort of auxiliary use in that, before a fight, you can summon a spirit in a safe spot then call it in to create its field/effect. Also, with the other trait that gives their effect upon being destroyed, you can use them sort of like minion bombs, dropping their effect twice from being called and from being destroyed. It’d also work by being able to move them to desired spots out of danger when a battle shifts and you want to keep their passive effects.

This is great.
Really.
Drop this into the suggestions forum and I will give you free bumps for the rest of the month!

Heh, well I could just drop it in the new Spirit suggestion thread in the ranger section. Honestly, I don’t know what else you could do to spirits to help them though. That was just a suggestion for a specific trait that isn’t sabotaging itself

Xsorus.2507:

Ok here is my idea for Spirits.

Spirits have 2 modes, Offensive and Defensive that you can switch back and forth between.

Defensive Causes the Ranger to admit an Aura around him
Offensive Causes his pet to gain an offensive ability.

Stone Spirit – Defensive : Every 10 Seconds Gives everyone around him 3 Seconds of Protection in a 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 second your pet will cause the ground to tremble in a 300 radius around him and immobilize targets for 2 seconds

Frost Spirit – Defensive : Grants an Aura that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 seconds of Chilled, 300 Radius 5 second ICD.
– Offensive : Every 10 Seconds the pet will sent a splash of water out granting 4 seconds of Regen to all allies within 600 Radius.

Sun Spirit – Defensive : Grants and Aura around the player that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 Seconds of Burning Damage – 6 second ICD 300 radius
– Offensive : Gives the players pet an ability that does a 300 Radius blind every 10 seconds

Storm Spirit – Defensive: Gives the player an aura that causes attacks against the player to grant 5 Seconds of Vigor – 8 Second ICD – 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 Seconds, the Pet Gains the ability to Daze for 2 seconds on his next attack.

Xsourus I like your proposal for the following reasons:
1. Many rangers express the desire to provide greater benefit to a group, whether in dungeons or PvE/WvWvW world settings. This suggestion gives them more utilities to provide boons or conditions.
2. By splitting the ability between the pet and the Ranger a player can use two different effects depending on what is needed. For example, send the pet in to daze a monster or opponent going for a stomp or keep protection up due to incoming pressure.
3. Defensive and offensive settings provide players a choice between play styles. They can turtle for sniper and defense, they can remain in the vicinity and melee, they can extend their reach/support via the pet.
4. It follows along ANets desire to keep the pet a part of the Ranger’s arsenal and gives it more utility.

Areas of concern:
1. Managing cooldowns and switching between defensive/offensive mode for three spirits.
2. Visually representing def/off states to the player.
3. Are the defesive auras combo field?
4. Can the pet use all offensive mode skills at once?
5. Adding a base set of skills usable by all pets plus their “F2” skill would be rather potent, even potentially over-powered.

Thoughts?

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

P.S. People, you could give spirits the toughness of a full pvt or cleric guardian with tough/vit traitlines and they will still die quickly. Lupicus aoe bombs and lv40+ fractal aoe is not something high toughness units live through. You HAVE TO dodge them. And minions/pets can’t dodge and they don’t have vigor to dodge as often if they got a standard dodge.

The main form of mitigation in pve is dodging and reflection. Minions/pets have neither, so they die. Nothing short of passive resistance/mitigation of damage+regen will keep up with the amount of aoe sprayed in pve and wvw.

You do realize that my build was designed for tPvP right? I’ve said this in every post i’ve ever commented on for it and EVERY SINGLE TIME someone brings up about how “Well prof X can do it better on the <insert random PVE boss fight with AoEs here>!”, yes that’s nice and all, but that’s not where i use the condi longbow build…

And btw… if i’m in a group with an ele or a guardian WHY would i bring my sun spirit? I’d swap it over to frost spirit or stone spirit because they’d be A LOT more useful in an instance where someone else is applying the burning..

God i swear half the people who make arguments about my build don’t even read the “It was designed for tPvP” part…

@Xsorus, Not gonna lie i like your idea a lot more than mine…

Expiatus.4210:

Xsorus.2507:

Ok here is my idea for Spirits.

Spirits have 2 modes, Offensive and Defensive that you can switch back and forth between.

Defensive Causes the Ranger to admit an Aura around him
Offensive Causes his pet to gain an offensive ability.

Stone Spirit – Defensive : Every 10 Seconds Gives everyone around him 3 Seconds of Protection in a 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 second your pet will cause the ground to tremble in a 300 radius around him and immobilize targets for 2 seconds

Frost Spirit – Defensive : Grants an Aura that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 seconds of Chilled, 300 Radius 5 second ICD.
– Offensive : Every 10 Seconds the pet will sent a splash of water out granting 4 seconds of Regen to all allies within 600 Radius.

Sun Spirit – Defensive : Grants and Aura around the player that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 Seconds of Burning Damage – 6 second ICD 300 radius
– Offensive : Gives the players pet an ability that does a 300 Radius blind every 10 seconds

Storm Spirit – Defensive: Gives the player an aura that causes attacks against the player to grant 5 Seconds of Vigor – 8 Second ICD – 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 Seconds, the Pet Gains the ability to Daze for 2 seconds on his next attack.

Xsourus I like your proposal for the following reasons:
1. Many rangers express the desire to provide greater benefit to a group, whether in dungeons or PvE/WvWvW world settings. This suggestion gives them more utilities to provide boons or conditions.
2. By splitting the ability between the pet and the Ranger a player can use two different effects depending on what is needed. For example, send the pet in to daze a monster or opponent going for a stomp or keep protection up due to incoming pressure.
3. Defensive and offensive settings provide players a choice between play styles. They can turtle for sniper and defense, they can remain in the vicinity and melee, they can extend their reach/support via the pet.
4. It follows along ANets desire to keep the pet a part of the Ranger’s arsenal and gives it more utility.

Areas of concern:
1. Managing cooldowns and switching between defensive/offensive mode for three spirits.
2. Visually representing def/off states to the player.
3. Are the defesive auras combo field?
4. Can the pet use all offensive mode skills at once?
5. Adding a base set of skills usable by all pets plus their “F2” skill would be rather potent, even potentially over-powered.

Thoughts?

1. I was thinking Maybe have a cooldown on switching between Offensive and Defensive (Say 20 seconds). The idea would be to allow you to Switch to a Group Utility Row when you needed to, and switch to a More Offensive Role for your pet when it wasn’t needed.
2. Glow Maybe, I’m not completely certain on this, I do think we should remove the Spirit Pet models though as that is such more clutter in PvP for no reason.
3. They’re just Aura’s, not Combo Fields.. though some of the abilities could grant combo fields (Maybe the pet offensive version, I just tried to come up with a new mechanic for spirits that’s different from what we got)
4. Abilities for the pet could be different from what I listed, Idea was just a Defensive Aura Based Mechanic that doesn’t work on the Ranger and would effect people near him (including his pet for example) and an Offensive Version designed around making his Pet more powerful.
5. I think Spirit idea like this wouldn’t be as powerful as most would think…Remember we’re allowed just 3 Utilities, We could make our pets more powerful via these Spirits but at the same time we’d be giving up things like Speed/Health Regen/Lightning Reflex. What would probably happen is people would end up using at most 1 or 2 Spirits instead of all 3. However this would give us much needed Group utility and make Spirits useful in something besides Group Fights with the Offensive Nature.

on the Offensive Abilities from the pet…I think It’d probably be better to move the Daze up to 15 Seconds instead of 10…Having a Daze+Blind go off every 10 seconds would be pretty useless combined. This would allow the pet to Daze for 2 seconds, then Blind on his next hit afterward I think.

So in Offensive Mode what you have is 2 Aura’s (Regen/Immobilize) and 2 Next hit Attacks (Blind/Daze)

This would give people the ability to mix and Match i think. You could go more CC heavy with Immobilize and Daze for example, or more defensive with regen/blind.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

P.S. People, you could give spirits the toughness of a full pvt or cleric guardian with tough/vit traitlines and they will still die quickly. Lupicus aoe bombs and lv40+ fractal aoe is not something high toughness units live through. You HAVE TO dodge them. And minions/pets can’t dodge and they don’t have vigor to dodge as often if they got a standard dodge.

The main form of mitigation in pve is dodging and reflection. Minions/pets have neither, so they die. Nothing short of passive resistance/mitigation of damage+regen will keep up with the amount of aoe sprayed in pve and wvw.

You do realize that my build was designed for tPvP right? I’ve said this in every post i’ve ever commented on for it and EVERY SINGLE TIME someone brings up about how “Well prof X can do it better on the <insert random PVE boss fight with AoEs here>!”, yes that’s nice and all, but that’s not where i use the condi longbow build…

And btw… if i’m in a group with an ele or a guardian WHY would i bring my sun spirit? I’d swap it over to frost spirit or stone spirit because they’d be A LOT more useful in an instance where someone else is applying the burning..

God i swear half the people who make arguments about my build don’t even read the “It was designed for tPvP” part…

I wonder how useful It’d be to make a Rampager Armor SB/LB build for zerging…Since Barrage like you said would do 5 Stacks of bleed on everyone you hit with it.

Xsorus.2507:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

@Zenith, oh, I don’t know how the ICD works? Please tell me more about how I don’t understand such a simple system!!

PS: it’s per player bro, not spirit.

Group effect, duh. The problem is how you exaggerate the ffect of a 1 sec burn proc on a 10 sec ICD.

I’m glad you+your hyenas can stack 4 secs of burning every 10 seconds. Too bad a condi engineer can do that even better and more reliably.

P.S. People, you could give spirits the toughness of a full pvt or cleric guardian with tough/vit traitlines and they will still die quickly. Lupicus aoe bombs and lv40+ fractal aoe is not something high toughness units live through. You HAVE TO dodge them. And minions/pets can’t dodge and they don’t have vigor to dodge as often if they got a standard dodge.

The main form of mitigation in pve is dodging and reflection. Minions/pets have neither, so they die. Nothing short of passive resistance/mitigation of damage+regen will keep up with the amount of aoe sprayed in pve and wvw.

You do realize that my build was designed for tPvP right? I’ve said this in every post i’ve ever commented on for it and EVERY SINGLE TIME someone brings up about how “Well prof X can do it better on the <insert random PVE boss fight with AoEs here>!”, yes that’s nice and all, but that’s not where i use the condi longbow build…

And btw… if i’m in a group with an ele or a guardian WHY would i bring my sun spirit? I’d swap it over to frost spirit or stone spirit because they’d be A LOT more useful in an instance where someone else is applying the burning..

God i swear half the people who make arguments about my build don’t even read the “It was designed for tPvP” part…

I wonder how useful It’d be to make a Rampager Armor SB/LB build for zerging…Since Barrage like you said would do 5 Stacks of bleed on everyone you hit with it.

If i were wearing rampagers i’d absolutely want to alter my build a bit, if it’s for WvW i’d probably take out the 20 points in BM and throw that in skirmishing and take the crits apply bleeding as well… it’d likely be pretty strong.

Yea, you’d want 30 in Skirmishing, probably 30 in power tree as well, for Longbow Increase with with Pierce Arrows also.

Food wise, I’m guessing what? Rare Veggie Pizza?

Xsorus.2507:

Yea, you’d want 30 in Skirmishing, probably 30 in power tree as well, for Longbow Increase with with Pierce Arrows also.

Food wise, I’m guessing what? Rare Veggie Pizza?

Yeah, that’d probably make up for the condi damage you’d be losing out on from wilderness, well that and the whole stats are higher in PvE thing.

EDIT: Ikittenerg fight you could always use Saffron Stuffed Mushrooms instead because there will be PLENTY of people dying.

So in essence, a very high power/condition and perhaps healing build for long range AoE+DPS via the use of spirits is a viable option in supporting zergs or groups in WvW? Well I ought to check that out, it has been a while since I pull my dusty old longbow out in WvW.

Xsorus.2507:

Ok here is my idea for Spirits.

Spirits have 2 modes, Offensive and Defensive that you can switch back and forth between.

Defensive Causes the Ranger to admit an Aura around him
Offensive Causes his pet to gain an offensive ability.

Stone Spirit – Defensive : Every 10 Seconds Gives everyone around him 3 Seconds of Protection in a 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 second your pet will cause the ground to tremble in a 300 radius around him and immobilize targets for 2 seconds

Frost Spirit – Defensive : Grants an Aura that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 seconds of Chilled, 300 Radius 5 second ICD.
– Offensive : Every 10 Seconds the pet will sent a splash of water out granting 4 seconds of Regen to all allies within 600 Radius.

Sun Spirit – Defensive : Grants and Aura around the player that causes attacks against the player to cause 2 Seconds of Burning Damage – 6 second ICD 300 radius
– Offensive : Gives the players pet an ability that does a 300 Radius blind every 10 seconds

Storm Spirit – Defensive: Gives the player an aura that causes attacks against the player to grant 5 Seconds of Vigor – 8 Second ICD – 600 Radius
– Offensive: Every 10 Seconds, the Pet Gains the ability to Daze for 2 seconds on his next attack.

+1
Played a little more WvW today with the build. I am no number cruncher and no expert at playing the Ranger class.
IMHO it is a fun build to experiment with.
I was playing Ranged to mid distance with very large groups on both teams. I survived for 30minutes of back and forth between the two keeps. I tried to control the small groups trying to flank our melee. It was the longest I have stayed alive in such a situation and it was due to a lot of people using good strategy. I was never more surprised that I could actually put enough pressure on a group to turn away when they tried to flank.
The spirits would die immediately anytime more than two people came within melee range. If anything when I was in melee range they served as proper meat shields and because I have Nature’s Vengeance that helped me out a lot.
When confronted by multiple AoE red rings of death I tried to get myself and them out in time but they were dead quickly. So doubling their hp through traits may have helped a little but they are still very squishy.
I wonder about Spiritual Knowledge and what the numbers actually are on that trait. Would it be more beneficial in WvW to act as support or should I keep Nature’s Vengeance.

Ryan…sigh. I’ll put your angriness in quotes.

“This really makes no sense… Necros dont work in hotjoins? What does that even mean?”

Listen to Sitting on a Couch’s But of Corpse episode…what? Seven? They have someone there who played power necro in a high level tpvp environment. Power necro means glass cannon necro. The entire team supported him in killing his foes. My point was that glass cannon doesn’t work so well in hotjoin (for most professions). There’s not enough team work to make it viable—glass cannons need support— so you have to start thinking hybrid/bunker to work on a PUG.

GW2 is a team oriented and balanced game. You’d be surprised what is and isn’t viable at the highest levels. At the time, that particular player was the only person (he knew of and it’s a small community) who played power necro in tpvp (most others played condition/bunker necro).

“This right here, alone, shows how much you have no clue about rangers and dueling / combat in general.”

“Good players have counters for your kittenty setups and it’s not even a counter it’s just something I would do already anyway.”

“Chopps, like many of your other posts showing how much you have absolutely no clue how to fight good people this one is no different”

I’m not going to respond to that. I just felt it was mean and nasty enough to re-post so everyone could see who you really are deep down: an angry, nasty person cutting down whoever you can. Well you’re not going to ruin my day. Go dump your crap off on someone else, maybe you’ll ruin theirs.

Chopps, please just stop and go elsewhere until you can spout only real information and stop picking fights with people.

You misquoted Ryan in that you left out he was saying that this quote from you

If it was me, I would have blocked you silly cat, knocked it back, condition damaged it to death, and the. i would have went toe to toe with you.

Was what indicated to him that:

This right here, alone, shows how much you have no clue about rangers and dueling / combat in general.

I’m inclined to agree.
If someone’s answer is to condition my pet down, I’m going to laugh since I can swap out the pet before it dies. Someone targeting my ranger’s pet is like someone targeting my mesmer’s illusions … someone that is doinkittenage to me while I’m damaging them.

I will leave, Sebrent, but you guys picked a fight with me. You don’t like me, right? I can tell by the way you talk. That’s cool. You’re all mathy and sciency and I’m not. I’m just a casual player, etc, was wrong about how spirits and spiders worked. Look man, I’m just a hairless chimp with a game he plays for fun. I had a question about spirits. And I had some success with a build Durz was brave enough to share with me and the community.

You know, Durz and I talked about him posting that original thread and we were really nervous about it. We knew most people would probably come on here and try to start some static or whatever and that’s fine. You can do that. It is a free forum, post your thoughts, etc.

At that time I had played this build to defeat a couple players in my guild I struggled beating 1v1 and I won. I was a little excited and just got the idea to use spiders moments before posting this thread. Spiders are squishy and I’m a dungeon head so I never really ran them much. And I misread the tooltip…but in battle I always saw that weakness up so I just assumed which is wrong. I admit that.

Oh, and get over yourself. Just my 2 cents

I find it funny how a lot of the forum posters pick to argue with someone who has little to no experience in the category they’re arguing in…

The PvPers argue with Chopps (a PvE ranger) and al the PvE players argue with me (a tPvP ranger, god i hate hot joins…), i mean seriously, it’s like me, a biology major, deciding i should go pick on my english major friend because he just referred to a mushroom as a plant instead of a fungus…

Yeah. And Chopps still didn’t notice that your nick is Durzlla and not Durzilla xDD

I don’t get it.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This is a great thread! Glad to see the discussions being had.

I’m noticing a lot of people wondering and estimating the size of attacks, durations, and things like that… I will talk with our balance team to see how they feel about adding more detailed skill facts to the spirits.
We’re aware that spirits need more than just skill facts – we’re working on resolving that as well.

Thanks Robert.

I hope that some care is taken when changes to spirits are being approached. There are a lot of issues with spirits but with how underrepresented they are I’m concerned some changes are going to be made that undermine the goal of actually improving them if the end result is a drastic change in functionality. As someone that is actually using these skills, I don’t consider their base functionality a core issue with spirits whatsoever; where they fail is in the general balance of their effects and the player’s ability to rely on them due to their health/toughness.

Here’s what I think about them after spending some time actually using them:

Sun and Stone spirits’ aura effects are good. I don’t think either of these needs to be significantly changed; if no changes are made to the general spirit ICD I could see the base duration on these going up to 4s instead of 3s. The active abilities are a little less useful – I think Sun Spirit could stand to apply a small burn as well as blind when activated, and Stone Spirit could add a 3-stack Bleed or just leave a longer-lasting Cripple field when used.

Frost and Storm spirit have the opposite problem; their activated effects are pretty decent but their auras are very poor. Frost adding 10% damage to a single strike no more than every 10s (and in reality more like 12s) amounts to peanuts. You’d need a 10,000 damage attack just to get an equivalent bonus to Sun’s proc even assuming no condition damage or duration bonuses, and while it is front-loaded and cannot be removed like Burning, the vast majority of procs will not land on hits anywhere near this value. It’s weak enough that at a minimum I think this value should be doubled unless the ICD is modified. Storm is another that has a questionable value, since Swiftness is the kind of boon where the value is dependent on the player’s need for it; an uncontrolled proc severely damages the overall value of Swiftness, and I would prefer this to simply be removed in favor of a different effect, moving the Swiftness to the active ability on top of the damage.

What’s really hurting spirits’ usefulness aside from the above considerations is their ability to survive, and to a lesser extent the long activation/cooldown time on their abilities. They’re simply too easy to lose no matter what type of content you’re doing. The risk of losing them at all to damage is a significant consideration compared to something like a Warrior’s banner, and by itself should be enough to warrant them having substantial health. Something like 10,000 base health would be enough to make them vulnerable to targeted attack while not making them so trivial to neutralize. The value of the 2x spirit health trait is totally undermined by their pitiful base health right now, to the point where doubling it has too small of an effect on extending their average lifespan.

The ICD is also another thing that needs to be examined as it essentially removes almost all of the value from the 15% proc chance trait. A trait like this doesn’t even really make sense with such a long ICD; the trait should instead lower the ICD which will then result in an appropriate gain in average effect uptime. I would also consider lowering the base ICD of all spirits by 2 seconds.

My last suggestion would be to add a 20% cooldown reduction to one of the current spirit-related traits in Nature Magic, probably to the Grandmaster trait Spirits Unbound since that trait is not necessarily a net gain in power and would make the trait more interesting (since it would no longer be a strict functionality decision on the player’s part).

Frost spirit does not have a cooldown like it claims. You can try it yourself with steady weapons in the mists.

When balancing the spirit proc effects, they probably balance them with sigils in mind, because these passive effects are essentially virtual sigils that you share with your allies with the difference that those trigger on crits and spirits trigger on hits. Many sigils have 10s cooldowns, some 5, some 45, some 2. Some trigger each time you kill a foe. So there is probably significant wiggle room in the cooldown department.

Geshque.1326:

Yeah. And Chopps still didn’t notice that your nick is Durzlla and not Durzilla xDD

lol i know a TON of people that call me Durzilla instead of Durzlla xD, like just about every guild i’ve been in xD

Durzlla.6295:

Geshque.1326:

Yeah. And Chopps still didn’t notice that your nick is Durzlla and not Durzilla xDD

lol i know a TON of people that call me Durzilla instead of Durzlla xD, like just about every guild i’ve been in xD

I’m just bad at typoing. :P I shall call you Sir Durz of the Longbow

Only suggestion I really feel that could help spirits is to increase their overall effect power, and make it so they CAN become invulnerable by making it so their last trait in the Nature Magic traitline gives them it. However, that Invulnerability comes with a 5% increase in cooldown time and a 5% decrease in amount of time it’s allowed to stay out on the field. Well, the percentages would need to be played with, but you get what I mean.

I hope to see GW2 spirits more like GW1 spirits, with powerful effects to justify their fragility.

Firstly, I suggest increasing their maximum targets to 10 instead of 5 because oftentimes our pet or dungeon NPCs steal buffs better used on and vice versa.

Secondly, give their secondary effects (Cold Snap, Quicksand, etc…) blast finishers to make up for the Ranger’s lack of blasts.

Overall however, if ANET does not intend Ranger to match the raw damage of other classes, then give them a comfy role on the team as a buffbot like the GW1 ritualist.

One effect I believe will be very useful for Stone Spirit is rather than 3s protection every 10 seconds, instead it pulses every 5 seconds a buff which reduces damage taken to 10% of your max HP (Like GW1 PROTECTIVE SPIRIT!) This both makes Ranger an excellent ally for bosses, but also resolves the issue of pets dying too easily to telegraphed attacks (It’s balanced by the fact aoes would hit the spirit.)

Another effect I believe would make ranger spirits more useful is to give Storm Spirit a chance to apply 2s Quickness instead of Swiftness. With the recent nerf to Quickness, it allows a more lenient distribution of the buff, and when compared to Time Warp it still doesn’t overpower it against bosses.

Sun Spirit is also something which could be modified because Burning does not stack like Bleed does, making it totally useless in groups. My suggestion is to give it an effect like Sigil of Fire, where every 10 seconds all allies affected by Sun Spirit perform an AoE attack with their next strike.

Just a sidenote here – the sun spirit buff can be triggered by non-damage skills too.

In other words, the activated skills of the other 3 spirits can trigger the burning proc.
Except the sun spirit’s own blind active.

In fact, even traps and muddy terrain do too.

I tried spirits last night with extra hp trait and lots of toughness on me (maybe it gives it to them) and they still died in what seemed like 1 stray auto-attack from another player.

One thing I think that would SEVERELY increase the utility and support of the Ranger spirits is if we could:

1.) Ground Target Select the area they would be summoned to (when not Traited).

2.) Ground Target Select the area they would run to an “activate” their unique skills, and make their activation instant upon reaching the location.

3.) If each spirit’s unique active attack left a rather large (think Frozen Ground from Elementalist or warrior’s Longbow Burst skill radius) Combo Field for each spirit that lasts for a generous time (say 10 seconds) even if they arent actually producing any other effects during that time.

Honestly I’d love to see a combo field / finisher overhaul to make more fields actually useful, and I think having spirits as an excellent source of fields for your team would make Support Rangers suddenly shoot up from “moderately ok” to “a unique niche” of being one of the best “Field” providers, along side elementalists.

This could be the best change I’d imagine to making rangers less “selfish” with their utilities, and would free up different weapon combinations. Sun Spirit + Fire Trap could replace Torch offhand or vice verse depending on if you are a condition or power build or raw support.

Storm Spirit would be our third only lightning field in the game, a huge asset at 10 seconds making it the longest.

Frost Spirit would be a 10 second Ice field, would provide a ton of in class-between class synergy, and bring in another under-represented field.

Flame Spirit would be a 10 second Fire field, increasing our options for providing an already amazing field. I think other fields need to be brought up to Fire’s efficacy.

Stone Spirit could be one of the new “earth” combo fields, with Cripple and Bleed effects tossed in with the various Finishers (along with Warrior’s Stomp, Elementalist’s dagger Earthquake and Staff’s Unsteady Ground).

I think 10 second, wide area fields on like 30 second or 45 second recharge with each spirit would really go a long way towards making them increasingly useful, and I think it makes a LOAD of thematic sense based on the idea of ranger’s bending their natural surroundings to their favor.

That would be a pretty fun idea, Swiftwynd.

Although seems a bit redundant with the traps which also create field effects. The only thing I’d change is making Sun Spirit a Light Field instead of a Fire Field.

Traps arent ideal because they cant be used as fields on demand, only when triggered by foes, where as with the spirits you could order them to stand in specific locations for their fields to be immediately available. If more fields become actually useful, this could be a huge benefit.

A light field would be awesome though, but i’d understand if they dont want rangers to have access it if its a necro/guardian specific field

I always thought it would be better if spirits were Wisp like with them govering like little balls around you , and not being killable .

Chokolata.1870:

I always thought it would be better if spirits were Wisp like with them govering like little balls around you , and not being killable .

While I agree, dont you dare suggest that we lose our dolphin and whale friends while underwater!!

In all seriousness though, they would probably be better suited as little balls of different colored energy that could be “sent” to a location like in my suggestion, like the ranger’s way of manipulating their natural environment to suite their needs.

Two main changes I would make to spirits:

1. Balance their buffs with how survivable they are. Atm they are far to squishy when compared to how powerful their passive abilities are.

Either:
-Buff the passives (longer boon durations or shorter internal cool downs) and keep them as squishy as they are now.
-Keep the passives the same strength they are now but increase the spirits survivability.

2. Change the way their activated skills work. Right now they are very hard to intentionally land on something and are risky because the spirit has to be in melee range where it will most likely get insta gibed by random aoe or cleave damage.

I think the best change would be to make them ground targetable like how Muddy terrain works. This alone would be an awesome buff to spirits and would greatly improve their effectiveness.

Not wanting to touch upon spirits, I would like to add something for ranger’s group utility for boons.

1. in Nature’s Magic should be changed to something along the lines of:
   Boons gained through traits are shared with nearby allies.

In one swipe of the pen, Ranger’s have some group and wvw use.

I really like the fact they come with you when traited. Just a preference not a priority because as I noted before in melee range they are squishy. And then again when hit even traited for the extra hp they are still very squishy (AoE or Melee).
I don’t know what their base health is but maybe if it’s not ridiculously low, to double their base health, lower ICD’s, and cut the cast time in half.
I tried using Spiritual Knowledge in place of Nature’s Vengeance and it ‘seemed’ to proc far more often. Just wish I had time for formal testing in Mysts to give you guys real numbers.
We almost need a group of 5 to test out how often each person gets a buff/boon with a spirit up to know for sure.

EDIT: Also without Nature’s Vengeance making the activated skill larger, it’s very hard to tell (visually) how large the storm spirit’s skill reaches. At least with the stone spirit you can see the muddy ground but as far as the electrical field it seems to only reach as far as a few units from the spirit. Any confirmation about what range these are with/without the trait? (tool tips help but are not always accurate.)