Guild Wars 2

I don’t post often, perhaps that should change.

1: Spirits have a limited up time. This is fine as long as they move with the ranger, but because they do not it requires the ranger to wait an exceedingly long time to summon them again when they inevitably die quickly.

2: Spirits are susceptible to any form of damage. Again this would be fine if the spirits could move with he ranger out of fields. As it stands one good AOE kills them. The death effect is nice, but is hampered by the fact that it A: requires a lengthy cast time to summon them, and B: has a long cool down.

3: Spirits cannot help the team if they are stationary. As it stands spirits have a limited use in holding points in PVP, but because of their exceedingly low health and stationary positions, are far to easily dealt with. People will tell you that spirits just need to be placed properly, but here we run into yet another problem.

4: if you place a spirit out of the way as people suggest, they may apply their boons and however their secondary ability becomes useless.

Long story short. All spirits should follow the player just like minions. The code already exists, just make it attached to the spirit, no trait needed.

I’m not going to say that Anet was wrong for removing this. I can absolutely understand why they may have been worried about spirits with the creation of the druid. In fact, when I heard about druid my plan was to make a spirit build based on druid that would act as bunker support for the zerg/team. I can understand that Anet was likely worried that the combination of spirit boons and druid heals may have unbalanced the game in some way. I my self was worried about this.

I will say that the change to spirits may have bean a bit to zealous.had Anet waited to change spirits, I’m sure they would have seen a better solution than removing the one aspect of druid that make them viable.

I’m not alone in this thinking, but i’d like to open this topic up for discussion. Maybe i am missing some other information that other players can point out that would support Anet in the change, and maybe there will be more reasons to change it back. That’s why I am posting here; Not to ague with Anet, but to create a discussion on how this can be resolved in a way that players and Anet can be happy with.

My vote is to return spirit movement, but i may change my mind as the discussion progresses.

emkelly.2371:

I don’t post often, perhaps that should change.

2: Spirits are susceptible to any form of damage. Again this would be fine if the spirits could move with he ranger out of fields. As it stands one good AOE kills them. The death effect is nice, but is hampered by the fact that it A: requires a lengthy cast time to summon them, and B: has a long cool down.

You are aware that Spirits now take 95% LESS damage unless they are directly targeted.
Meaning AoE and Cleave do pretty much nothing.

I’ve been using the spirits since the change and had no problems, they are great.
Just remember if you’re going to move on, kill the spirits so by the next fight they have CDed

You are aware that Spirits now take 95% LESS damage unless they are directly targeted.
Meaning AoE and Cleave do pretty much nothing.
I’ve been using the spirits since the change and had no problems, they are great.
Just remember if you’re going to move on, kill the spirits so by the next fight they have CDed

after reading this I went into pvp and tested it. Spirits take the same amount of damage from wells, traps, rain of arrows, etc. in fact the only protection they gain is from stone spirit which provides a short duration protection. also, spirits’s cool downs are 20 seconds as opposed to minion’s 16 seconds. not a complaint, just pointing it out.

Minions only have the damage reduction in PvE. They are still made of tissue paper in pvp and wvw.

thanks substance

I’m bumping this thread because i want more discussion about spirits. maybe if i can dredge up enough interest int he matter we can get them fixed.

emkelly.2371:

I don’t post often, perhaps that should change.

1: Spirits have a limited up time. This is fine as long as they move with the ranger, but because they do not it requires the ranger to wait an exceedingly long time to summon them again when they inevitably die quickly.

2: Spirits are susceptible to any form of damage. Again this would be fine if the spirits could move with he ranger out of fields. As it stands one good AOE kills them. The death effect is nice, but is hampered by the fact that it A: requires a lengthy cast time to summon them, and B: has a long cool down.

3: Spirits cannot help the team if they are stationary. As it stands spirits have a limited use in holding points in PVP, but because of their exceedingly low health and stationary positions, are far to easily dealt with. People will tell you that spirits just need to be placed properly, but here we run into yet another problem.

4: if you place a spirit out of the way as people suggest, they may apply their boons and however their secondary ability becomes useless.

Long story short. All spirits should follow the player just like minions. The code already exists, just make it attached to the spirit, no trait needed.

I’m not going to say that Anet was wrong for removing this. I can absolutely understand why they may have been worried about spirits with the creation of the druid. In fact, when I heard about druid my plan was to make a spirit build based on druid that would act as bunker support for the zerg/team. I can understand that Anet was likely worried that the combination of spirit boons and druid heals may have unbalanced the game in some way. I my self was worried about this.

I will say that the change to spirits may have bean a bit to zealous.had Anet waited to change spirits, I’m sure they would have seen a better solution than removing the one aspect of druid that make them viable.

I’m not alone in this thinking, but i’d like to open this topic up for discussion. Maybe i am missing some other information that other players can point out that would support Anet in the change, and maybe there will be more reasons to change it back. That’s why I am posting here; Not to ague with Anet, but to create a discussion on how this can be resolved in a way that players and Anet can be happy with.

My vote is to return spirit movement, but i may change my mind as the discussion progresses.

emkelly +1

Spirits as they are right now need to follow the ranger to really be viable.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the that aoe and cleave damage reduction for pets and minions only work in a pve environment. I’ve had my frost spirit just sit in a wyvern’s flames like it was nothing. So I feel like spirits are in a decent place in PvE, although it would make things SOOO much better if they followed the ranger or if their cd was reduced if picked up or recalled or w/e so they can be re-summoned more often. But if they are killed then they should have the full cd. (something similar to engineer turrets).

But I don’t think the damage reduction is applied in PvP so in that sense they are still extremely useless. 1. you need to be in the area you want them to stand, 2. they will still get killed by players who don’t even notice they are there, 3. there is no punishment for people killing them (like turret explosions), 4. it’s a nuisance to have to kill them and re-summon them if you have to relocate, and 5. their active ability takes too long to activate.

So PvE wise, they are ok. PvP/WvW wise, they are still not worth using imo.

In PvE they’re great with the minion mitigation. I rarely unslot Sun Spirit these days.

In wvw they’re still useless.

They are still a weak support for PvP.
For PvE they are amazing. Most builds use minimum of 1 spirit and I personally keep using 2.

6sec AoE daze for thrash mobs every 25 seconds (MoC+Lightning Spirit)?
A life-changer for Fractals.

Okay, here’s the question. would having the spirit follow the ranger unbalance PVE in any way? I strongly doubt it.

emkelly.2371:

Okay, here’s the question. would having the spirit follow the ranger unbalance PVE in any way? I strongly doubt it.

Agreed. But another thing is:
Is there a way to make spirits viable without making them follow the ranger?
That’s also a yes.

I believe that having them “stationary” but worthwhile is a solution too. After all, I had a very powerful bunker build of spirits. But that build has replacements.
2 solutions how to make them good for PvP is to make them activate abilities on death or turn around the abilities and make them Actives only that spawn the spirits for stationary bonuses afterwards.

Agreed. But another thing is:
Is there a way to make spirits viable without making them follow the ranger?
That’s also a yes.
I believe that having them “stationary” but worthwhile is a solution too. After all, I had a very powerful bunker build of spirits. But that build has replacements.
2 solutions how to make them good for PvP is to make them activate abilities on death or turn around the abilities and make them Actives only that spawn the spirits for stationary bonuses afterwards.

spirits can activate their abilities on death, but the cool-downs for the skills are too long. if you are going to make the spirits stationary, you need to reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds (15 seconds with trait) and the cast time also needs to be reduced. it makes sense for a minion master to have long cool downs because their minions are powerful allies that support AND attack AND move. but the ranger spirits are not minions. if they are going to be stationary they need to be able to be re-summoned quickly.

emkelly.2371:

Agreed. But another thing is:
Is there a way to make spirits viable without making them follow the ranger?
That’s also a yes.
I believe that having them “stationary” but worthwhile is a solution too. After all, I had a very powerful bunker build of spirits. But that build has replacements.
2 solutions how to make them good for PvP is to make them activate abilities on death or turn around the abilities and make them Actives only that spawn the spirits for stationary bonuses afterwards.

spirits can activate their abilities on death, but the cool-downs for the skills are too long. if you are going to make the spirits stationary, you need to reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds (15 seconds with trait) and the cast time also needs to be reduced. it makes sense for a minion master to have long cool downs because their minions are powerful allies that support AND attack AND move. but the ranger spirits are not minions. if they are going to be stationary they need to be able to be re-summoned quickly.

No, I meant…
… being able to activate them, BUT, if they are killed without using actives they trigger them anyway.

Being punished by 6sec AoE daze/ Blind and 6Kburn / 12sec chill / Root and cripple / AoE ress.
Those are all powerful tools. But currently the enemies are not punished when killing the spirits. If this feature got back, I wouldn’t mind them being stationary.

I’d love to see Spirits gain 2 features:
1. Death triggers active
2. Active changed to 1200 range ground target skill.

For example, Sun Spirit. Summon it like you do now, on your location. There it will pulse the passive like it does now. Active would become usable, using it makes the Spirit rush to a target location within 1200 range and afflict AoE blind instantly upon landing (animation could be like Ancestral Grace). Then the Spirit would continue to apply it’s passive around the new location.

Active could be used ONCE during the duration of the Spirit. Killing the Spirit activates the active immediately at that location. Spirit dying to duration running out won’t activate the active effect.

This would IMO make Spirits unique and differentiate them from other player summoned AI/Banner.

ah i see what your saying.

Them removing the activate on death makes no sense to me. It was really only a problem because of PvP. Rangers would just have all the spirits up, following them, and get into melee with anyone who did cleave damage and the person would nuke themselves with the spirit actives as they would have no choice but to kill the spirits if they wanted to damage the Ranger. Since they do not move at all anymore, they should get that part back.

or the movement. it’s not like the actives would actually do anything significant. and with the long cool downs it was a one off. all that did was make the spirit druid a viable option.
out of curiosity how is that any worse than a minion master. to fight one you have to get in melee as a cleave class. to do that you have to take the damage from the minions and of course minions can go boom too. and its not like rangers have marks.

emkelly.2371:

I’m bumping this thread because i want more discussion about spirits. maybe if i can dredge up enough interest int he matter we can get them fixed.

By ‘fixed’ do you mean the actual bugs that plague spirits at the moment? With no confirmation by anyone and no one looking into it, I doubt these will ever by fixed. They were introduced in the September patch.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-spirits-do-not-prioritize-characters/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-spirits-not-affected-by-boon-duration/

thanks i did not know about this.