Guild Wars 2

With 30 points in Nature Magic (for Nature’s Voice), I’ve been experimenting lately with utilizing spirits more often in WvW. I find that smart placement and the Vigorous Spirits trait enhances their survival quite a bit.

Since I run with an organized guild group on the front line, I really like Stone Spirit for the Protection boon. Occasionally, I also swap in Spirit of Nature.

However, after all this time I am still unclear as to the particulars of how spirits work.

Some questions:
— Spirits’ affect a maximum of 5 players at any given time, correct?
— When is it determined which players are affected – when the spirit is placed?
— Are they based on proximity? That is, near prioritized over far.

It would be nice if the way spirits work is dynamic, such that more than 5 players can actually benefit due to effect recharge being unique to the player affected.

I would probably stop using them in WvW, save for small scale roaming, if benefits extend only to the initial 5 players and that’s it.

Q#1: Yes a Maximum of 5 player’s.

Q#2: Currently it’s any 5 player’s, upcoming patch is meant to change it so it will effect your party first.

Q#3: This will change with the next patch but honestly, I couldn’t tell you as it’s so random, its like taking Shout guardian into a zerg and hoping it gets your team mate’s.

Next patch is meant to make Spirit’s more viable in WvW. So I would start looking at builds that deal allot of damage using LB from ranger while maintaining your Spirit’s for team support.

I’ll add that proximity doesn’t matter – it will choose any 5 players within the 1000 AoE. In gigantic zergs I’ve literally stood on top of my own spirits and still receive no buffs much of the time.

Still a very, very strong build in small to mid size group scenarios. I play in low-tier WvW so 1v1 2v2 5v5 10v10 happens quite often.

I hope so. I like spirits. I use them a lot in sPVP. Doesn’t work so well for me in wvw so I’ve been skipping out on my ranger for quite a while.

Could also be my terrible build.

Thanks for the replies. It’s disappointing to me that the effects are applied randomly within the AoE, and then to only those 5 players for the duration of the spirit. I mean, what if some of those players die while the spirit is still active? It should choose new targets at least.

I really hope they buff spirits for large scale WvW. Prioritizing party members would be a good start…

- One warrior hammer stomp and your spirits are dead
- One meteoric shower and your spirits are dead
- One barrage (lol) and your spirits are dead

In fact, any aoe, even if YOU dodge it, your spirits are nearly dead, like your pet, even with the traits.

Don’t see any real interest on those build in WvWvW, i better use regen/swiftness of shouts than this for a small group support (perma speed/regen).

BTW the buffs of spirits are on a internal cooldown of 10 sec so even if you proc the buff, it have to wait 10 seconds before it can proc again (75% chance traited) so basically, with chance, it can proc 6 times (60 sec stay) so with nof buffs in boons duration except the trait line, it proc prot for 3~3/4 sec…

The only interest i found in spirits are in Spvp and for the elite one, who can make a less interesting warrior banner

Gorwald: Are you talking about zerging? Because soloing I feel like spirits have a place. All those things you said are true. Spirits can die very easily. But a lot of those skills are interruptible as well.

I only run Frost Spirit… but yeah I’ve been running it a lot more often lately.
(instead of any of the signets which let’s be honest, are beginner mode once you’ve figured out Nature’s Voice and manage to still not die very often in big Guild clashes).

I could see sun spirit being pretty useful too for anyone with high Cond stats. (though really redundant in teams with multiple Guardians … wish Anet would look into that).

I imagine it will be competing for a slot on my bar with Sic Em soon… but luckily with good scouting, you’ll already know ahead of time if you’re facing a large group where Frost is better, or some chickenkitten thieves who never evolved past that Glass+Stealth crutch.

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For better details: … My guild tends to do a lot of the Back-Crashing into larger zergs right as they engage a gate or another smaller zerg. Most logic tells me It shouldn’t really work … that your average human being is smarter than that and wouldn’t panic so much in that situation and fall back further over a little oakheart with the words “Frost” on it while attempting to scatter. ….Or they’d atleast dodge roll….

I like to think the extra 7 or 10% or w/e it is damage partly explains why they all die so fast …. either that or they’re all pure Glass which gives me even less hope for the future of WvW competency…