Guild Wars 2

If some people want to have stationary spirits and play with them, go ahead. Spirits were already stationary without the trait. Just give the rest of us the option of having them move again…

Personally, I like stationary Spirits, as they do indeed allow for tactical placement involving the use of their actives or the range of the passives, along with positional vulnerability. Unfortunately, personally moving to where you want them to be is extremely problematic. I like the suggestion that they be ground-targeted, giving them extra value in that you can place them in safety for their passive effects or place them beside your target for their active effects.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of value in their active effects so long as the activation time is so long. Some of the active effects themselves are pretty lacking, too, even if they were instantaneous.

As far as passives go, it’s sort of half and half. Frost Spirit’s not too shabby, and Stone Spirit is quite nice when defense is the goal. Sun Spirit is fairly decent, though I think it could use a little bit of numerical tweaking. Water Spirit absolutely needs improving, and Nature Spirit is pretty much what Water Spirit should be in the first place in regards to passive effect, so it’d likely be a good idea to rework its passive overall so that they don’t fill the same purpose. Storm Spirit most certainly needs a different effect altogether given the rooted nature of it. Super Speed could work out, though, giving improved combat mobility while in its area of effect.

The fact that the Spirit’s corpses (and thus passive effects) remain for ten seconds after their death is a huge asset, and something that could mesh extremely well with their active effects were said active effects to be made more worthwhile and/or usable. I definitely would not want to see this part leave. It also makes me approve of the active effect killing the Spirit, as you don’t lose the passive effect for long, and the on-command death makes it easy to reposition the Spirit when needed.

Nature’s Vengeance is a nice concept, but most of the numbers (and boons, in some cases) definitely need tweaking.

Stone Spirit’s duration and boon are fantastic for their purpose, giving a substantial 33% uptime on Protection in addition to the theoretical 30% on its natural functionality, not including any Boon Duration (which is granted by the very specialization tree that contains the trait).

Water Spirit’s Regeneration is quite lackluster, particularly given the minuscule duration as well as the myriad other sources of Regeneration available. I saw someone mention pulsing Resistance, instead, and I feel that’d be an excellent idea. Resistance is in pretty low supply overall, right now, and 33-ish% uptime on it would give Water Spirit a definite role to fill. With the fragility of Spirits (which I feel should remain, though with ground-targeting to allow for strategic placement), there is some definite counterplay available. Granted, the fact that Spirit corpses remain after death could make said counterplay a bit ineffective. A Resistance duration lower than 1 second base or an application interval higher than 3 seconds might be in order to ensure that Water Spirit doesn’t jump into overpowered territory.

Sun Spirit’s Vigor boon doesn’t mesh terribly well with its base functionality. A better choice might be to give it Frost Spirit’s Might, instead, though at a much higher duration that would allow the Might to build up and actually be impactful, say 12-15 seconds at base. With Might being the only boon that really affects Conditions offensively, it’s honestly the only boon that makes sense from a synergy standpoint.

Storm Spirit’s Swiftness really isn’t a big help in combat, particularly at that duration. Were the base functionality of Storm Spirit switched to Super Speed, the Swiftness would be rendered even more pointless. Transferring the current Sun Spirit’s Vigor over would make more sense thematically, and mesh overall with being a Spirit tailored to improving in-combat mobility. It wouldn’t even necessarily need to be given a duration increase, though 1 second of Vigor is still admittedly a little bit underwhelming.

Frost Spirit’s Might is a total joke in its current state. There’s the minor synergy with the Fortifying Bond trait, but that’s hardly enough to give the pet any sort of real power. And were the Sun Spirit to receive Might, Frost’s boon would need to change, anyway. Fury’s probably the only boon that’d really match up at this point, being in the same realm of simple direct damage increase as the Frost Spirit’s natural functionality. With a duration and application interval that doesn’t give 100% uptime, it could pair well with Ranger’s Warhorn for providing 100% Fury uptime to allies. Granted, you can already reach that point when traited for it, but it could potentially free up some options.

Lastly, Nature Spirit’s Stability could certainly be useful… Were it not for the 30% base uptime. That window of time without Stability makes it very unreliable, turning its effectiveness into a game of chance. I don’t think it’d be overpowered to give it 100% uptime, given the potential for a one-two crowd-control combo or the possibility of simply killing the Nature Spirit and triggering its long cooldown.

As far as the active effects go…

Overall, the activation times need to be faster. By the time their effects trigger, your target has long since moved from the Spirit’s location. The active effects lose their potential as strategic decisions, and essentially become panic buttons for when you think the Spirit is about to die, where you hope that something happens to be in the radius when it finally goes off. A little activation time isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but being able to escape its area of effect by simply backing away regardless of your original position makes it near-impossible to get any real use out of the active effects.

Water Spirit would probably be fine, if it were to receive Nature Spirit’s passive functionality. Triggering the active effect would essentially be a tradeoff of ten seconds worth of passive healing (given the lasting corpse) for nearly the same amount of healing there-and-now.

With ground-targeting and a faster activation time, Frost Spirit’s active would probably be alright, too. It doesn’t really mesh with the overall role of direct damage dealing, but a lasting Chill zone could certainly have its uses. It could perhaps apply Vulnerability so as to have better synergy with its natural passive effect and suggested Nature’s Vengeance effect, but it could function fine on its own.

Stone Spirit’s active could work out alright with the base Spirit changes suggested, too, though admittedly it’d be similar to Frost Spirit in that it slows the enemy down. Giving it Weakness could perhaps mesh well with its inherent role of assisting survivability.

Storm Spirit’s active effect’s Daze wouldn’t be too shabby at all with the suggested changes, though I admit I’m quite fond of the idea I heard for making it cast Elementalist’s Swirling Winds as an active effect instead.

Sun Spirit’s active effect isn’t inherently bad, but it is admittedly a little bit boring. Frost and Stone Spirit’s actives both create lasting danger zones against opponents; it might be interesting to make Sun Spirit’s active create a Burn and Blind zone, as well.

Nature Spirit’s active effect would also be just fine with the suggested changes of ground-targeting and faster activation, really. It’s a good effect, it’s simply hampered currently by how abhorrently long it takes.

My thoughts kind of went all over the place in this post, I apologize. :P I realize I’m no more qualified to give my input than anyone else here, but I thought I’d voice my thoughts. I really do like the idea behind Spirits as they are, as well as a large amount of their implementation, I just feel they could use some tweaks to give them more strategic value.

One last thing, since I don’t recall mentioning it earlier in… It’d be fantastic if the ground-targeting could follow the same system as Engineer’s old Deployable Turrets trait, allowing the Spirits to be placed on walls and the like. :P The models may need to change simply to avoid the funky appearance of having an Oakheart half-embedded in the side of a cliff, but it could be something as simple as a glowing ball while still getting the point across of what it is.

Calanthe.3857:

If some people want to have stationary spirits and play with them, go ahead. Spirits were already stationary without the trait. Just give the rest of us the option of having them move again…

Haven’t chimed in on the thread but this is pretty much my stance. I could really care less above moving Spirits or not, but the optional trait was fine because, well, it was an option.

Justine.6351:

Why do people want them to move?

Because i want to swim with dolphins again.

They should make the spirit grandmaster trait baseline. Everything on it baseline. Then a new GM trait that makes spirits mobile.

Actually, switch the new GM trait with Bountiful Hunter. So the mobile spirit trait is in the adept slot and Bountiful Hunter is GM. Then make Bountiful Hunter +20% damage while you have a boon.

If they wanna keep the idea about stationary spirits, they should make both the summoning skill ground targeted aswell as making the active portion of the skill teleport the spirit to a ground targeted area before it detonates itself. And it needs to be somewhat close instant, otherwise it would just be a waste.

The increased health and active radius from the GM needs to be baseline. Storm Spirit, Frost Spirit and Water spirit need their boons from the trait to be changed. Water Spirit needs an overhaul. The elite needs its passive radius MASSIVELY increased.

I wouldn’t mind if they made spirits immune to all AoE and cleave (unless directly targeted by the cleave attack. Basically, swinging your sword through a pile of spirits should only harm the spirit you have targeted. It is a spirit after all, it should be ethereal and require a lot of focus to harm with our meager worldly weapons).

Of course, they should also do the same with pets…

Holland.9351:

They should make the spirit grandmaster trait baseline. Everything on it baseline. Then a new GM trait that makes spirits mobile.

Actually, switch the new GM trait with Bountiful Hunter. So the mobile spirit trait is in the adept slot and Bountiful Hunter is GM. Then make Bountiful Hunter +20% damage while you have a boon.

This i’d find acceptable, it’s not like spirits as is can really be used without their trait anyway, all our other utilities are perfectly fine without a trait, but spirits still REQUIRE their trait to be good.

Holland.9351:

They should make the spirit grandmaster trait baseline. Everything on it baseline. Then a new GM trait that makes spirits mobile.

Actually, switch the new GM trait with Bountiful Hunter. So the mobile spirit trait is in the adept slot and Bountiful Hunter is GM. Then make Bountiful Hunter +20% damage while you have a boon.

More baseline stuff.
Gimme + 20% dmg for having boon.

Are we even trying anymore?

Here let me try one,
+10% more crit chance and dmg per stack of bleeding on foe.

Justine.6351:

Holland.9351:

They should make the spirit grandmaster trait baseline. Everything on it baseline. Then a new GM trait that makes spirits mobile.

Actually, switch the new GM trait with Bountiful Hunter. So the mobile spirit trait is in the adept slot and Bountiful Hunter is GM. Then make Bountiful Hunter +20% damage while you have a boon.

More baseline stuff.
Gimme + 20% dmg for having boon.

Are we even trying anymore?

Here let me try one,
+10% more crit chance and dmg per stack of bleeding on foe.

That idea of yours would never make it into Nature Magic, Nature Magic is all about boons and supporting/healing your allies. And 20% damage for having A boon is highly unlikely, but a GM trait that gives you and your pet 10% damage bonus for having 3 boons on both of you, or something like that isn’t too farfetched.

I think a drastic increase in spirit active range could help.

They said they wanted them to be area denial. Well sun spirit and storm spirit would actually do a decent job of that, if you couldn’t kill them so easily from range.

I was thinking of the trait on several other classes that gives +20% damage, but they require the opponent to be below 50% health. So I guess this one would be a bit more OP.

How about +10% damage and +10% boon duration to up to 5 allies in a 600 range AoE (think Spotter).

People are overreacting. It isn’t that spirits are bad, but that people feel slighted because they can no longer move. Everyone seems to bypass the fact that the sacrifice skills on the spirits are crazy powerful. If you build properly, you can get sun spirit to solar flare for 10.4 k, and then Bonfire for 5k while also having like 30k health.

I also find it ironic that people HATE pets(for a few valid reasons) but then turn around and want more ai companions that run with you.

Also, the fact that spirits can’t move doesn’t effect dungeon play too much anyways, seeing as either people will stack on one point, and your spirits are useful, or you will be on the back lines anyways, in which case spirits that move wouldn’t help your team anyways.

Been playing a lot of Guild Wars 1 since my main computer is down. My main was a Ritualist/Ranger with a heavy focus on spirits. It makes me very sad that such powerful, game changing, albeit very niche, skills aren’t very compatible with GW2’s combat system.

Right now I am setting up a team comp revolving around Winter to convert all damage to cold damage so I have an edge over the destroyers I’ll be fighting. Destroyers take extra damage to cold and I can set up my team to protect against cold and elemental damage, dramatically shifting the balance of power. Much more powerful and interesting than our Frost Spirit.

At any rate, it got me thinking of the ritualist spirits and how our GW2 Ranger spirits behave more like them. Some of our less useful spirits could do with a ritualist style revamp.

The spirits I’d most like to see changed would be Storm, Water, and Frost.

Storm has a great active but a poor passive. Swiftness is not useful to an area denial specialist, and rangers produce a TON of swiftness in other, more mobile support builds anyway. The passive could be changed to produce Sigil of Air style lightning bolts, albeit properly balanced, for direct damage, turning it into a high damage spirit all around. It’d potentially be overpowered when a team coordinates their attacks as each player has a chance to trigger it, but the counterplay is pretty clear. Kill the easily killed and defenseless spirit.

Water Spirit could be more like the Ritualist spirit Life where the longer it persists the more health it stores up. Then when triggered the heal does a big burst AoE heal to all allies in the area that is stronger the longer the spirit persisted. Counterplay would involve popping the spirit early or at a bad time. Leaving a water field when activated wouldn’t hurt either.

Dunno what to do with Frost. I just feel a flat 10% damage boost on a proc is really, really boring for a skill mechanic. Maybe if the Storm spirit change happened Frost could be changed to trigger chill. Storm would become the DPS spirit and Frost could find a more thematically fitting passive effect.

Just some thoughts.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

People are overreacting. It isn’t that spirits are bad, but that people feel slighted because they can no longer move. Everyone seems to bypass the fact that the sacrifice skills on the spirits are crazy powerful. If you build properly, you can get sun spirit to solar flare for 10.4 k, and then Bonfire for 5k while also having like 30k health.

I also find it ironic that people HATE pets(for a few valid reasons) but then turn around and want more ai companions that run with you.

Also, the fact that spirits can’t move doesn’t effect dungeon play too much anyways, seeing as either people will stack on one point, and your spirits are useful, or you will be on the back lines anyways, in which case spirits that move wouldn’t help your team anyways.

Except that the radius is like 360 traited. So people can just nuke them from range and they have no effect.

Sube Dai.8496:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

People are overreacting. It isn’t that spirits are bad, but that people feel slighted because they can no longer move. Everyone seems to bypass the fact that the sacrifice skills on the spirits are crazy powerful. If you build properly, you can get sun spirit to solar flare for 10.4 k, and then Bonfire for 5k while also having like 30k health.

I also find it ironic that people HATE pets(for a few valid reasons) but then turn around and want more ai companions that run with you.

Also, the fact that spirits can’t move doesn’t effect dungeon play too much anyways, seeing as either people will stack on one point, and your spirits are useful, or you will be on the back lines anyways, in which case spirits that move wouldn’t help your team anyways.

Except that the radius is like 360 traited. So people can just nuke them from range and they have no effect.

That’s why you root them with entangle and then drop both bonfire and solar flare

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

Sube Dai.8496:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

People are overreacting. It isn’t that spirits are bad, but that people feel slighted because they can no longer move. Everyone seems to bypass the fact that the sacrifice skills on the spirits are crazy powerful. If you build properly, you can get sun spirit to solar flare for 10.4 k, and then Bonfire for 5k while also having like 30k health.

I also find it ironic that people HATE pets(for a few valid reasons) but then turn around and want more ai companions that run with you.

Also, the fact that spirits can’t move doesn’t effect dungeon play too much anyways, seeing as either people will stack on one point, and your spirits are useful, or you will be on the back lines anyways, in which case spirits that move wouldn’t help your team anyways.

Except that the radius is like 360 traited. So people can just nuke them from range and they have no effect.

That’s why you root them with entangle and then drop both bonfire and solar flare

ive been doing this with a rabid/dire burst burn build lately in pvp. eagle taunt (with blind and weakness) → entangle → bonfire → flame trap → sun spirit (solar flare). pretty powerful on point if you can get it off. Sometimes ill switch to wolf mid combo for the knockdown too.

Ehecatl.9172:

Been playing a lot of Guild Wars 1 since my main computer is down. My main was a Ritualist/Ranger with a heavy focus on spirits. It makes me very sad that such powerful, game changing, albeit very niche, skills aren’t very compatible with GW2’s combat system.

Right now I am setting up a team comp revolving around Winter to convert all damage to cold damage so I have an edge over the destroyers I’ll be fighting. Destroyers take extra damage to cold and I can set up my team to protect against cold and elemental damage, dramatically shifting the balance of power. Much more powerful and interesting than our Frost Spirit.

At any rate, it got me thinking of the ritualist spirits and how our GW2 Ranger spirits behave more like them. Some of our less useful spirits could do with a ritualist style revamp.

The spirits I’d most like to see changed would be Storm, Water, and Frost.

Storm has a great active but a poor passive. Swiftness is not useful to an area denial specialist, and rangers produce a TON of swiftness in other, more mobile support builds anyway. The passive could be changed to produce Sigil of Air style lightning bolts, albeit properly balanced, for direct damage, turning it into a high damage spirit all around. It’d potentially be overpowered when a team coordinates their attacks as each player has a chance to trigger it, but the counterplay is pretty clear. Kill the easily killed and defenseless spirit.

Water Spirit could be more like the Ritualist spirit Life where the longer it persists the more health it stores up. Then when triggered the heal does a big burst AoE heal to all allies in the area that is stronger the longer the spirit persisted. Counterplay would involve popping the spirit early or at a bad time. Leaving a water field when activated wouldn’t hurt either.

Dunno what to do with Frost. I just feel a flat 10% damage boost on a proc is really, really boring for a skill mechanic. Maybe if the Storm spirit change happened Frost could be changed to trigger chill. Storm would become the DPS spirit and Frost could find a more thematically fitting passive effect.

Just some thoughts.

I really like the frost and storm idea, been feeling like they are having a bit of an identity crisis since launch… I also wouldn’t mind seeing Storm Spirits passive trigger Quickness.

As for Water, what i’d like to see it do is either have the pulse boon be resistance, or have the proc ALSO remove a condi, atm it’s very lack luster because it’s a healing spring, with just a tiny bit more healing, and no condi removal, or water field, so in other words it’s just flat out weaker in every way.

And one thing to point out with Storm Spirit losing swiftness is that then we would have very little swiftness access in our spirit builds, which would make moving around the battlefield a little bit worse for us.

Durzlla.6295:

As for Water, what i’d like to see it do is either have the pulse boon be resistance, or have the proc ALSO remove a condi, atm it’s very lack luster because it’s a healing spring, with just a tiny bit more healing, and no condi removal, or water field, so in other words it’s just flat out weaker in every way.

It’s decently strong from a party perspective. That’s how we have to look at the water spirit.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Durzlla.6295:

As for Water, what i’d like to see it do is either have the pulse boon be resistance, or have the proc ALSO remove a condi, atm it’s very lack luster because it’s a healing spring, with just a tiny bit more healing, and no condi removal, or water field, so in other words it’s just flat out weaker in every way.

It’s decently strong from a party perspective. That’s how we have to look at the water spirit.

Idk if it is though, it’s only 80healing per second, if it had a lower ICD i’d agree that it’d be pretty strong, but it’s barely over an 800 health heal.

The active on the other hand is a really strong burst heal (nearly 2k), but is also not the easiest to land.

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Kodama.6453:

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Anet did say that they wanted spirits to be the buff version of turrets…

Durzlla.6295:

Kodama.6453:

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Anet did say that they wanted spirits to be the buff version of turrets…

I doubt they meant that spirits will have the exact same traits, they meant them to be stationary buff machines, turrets are stationary damage machines, that’s all. ^^

Why not let Spirits have the same traits as Experimental Turrets? There’s already a multitude of copy/paste traits already. When they try to be creative with traits, we get the current Nature’s Vengeance x)

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

I recommended aoe ele auras on active skills but that got buried by people’s babbling walls of text.

Sun- fire aura
Frost- frost aura
Earth- magnetic aura
Air- shocking aura
Water- light aura?

Or possibly spirit only but always on the spirit. Could help get value out of it if it is cleaved from ranged attacks.

Kodama.6453:

Durzlla.6295:

Kodama.6453:

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Anet did say that they wanted spirits to be the buff version of turrets…

I doubt they meant that spirits will have the exact same traits, they meant them to be stationary buff machines, turrets are stationary damage machines, that’s all. ^^

Lol oh I know, I was just making a joke

Kodama.6453:

Durzlla.6295:

Kodama.6453:

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Anet did say that they wanted spirits to be the buff version of turrets…

I doubt they meant that spirits will have the exact same traits, they meant them to be stationary buff machines, turrets are stationary damage machines, that’s all. ^^

Oh, no… If Spirits are supposed to be as adept at supporting as Turrets are at dealing damage, they need a LOT of nerfing.

The active skill should teleport the spirit to your location. So you don’t need to recall all 5 spirits in a full spirit build. In addition the active skill should be supportive too. Some boons or healing after teleport would be fine, instead of the useless blind, damage or whatever stuff that didn’t hurt anybody.

For spirits to become even slightly viable, their health needs to be increased massively so they don’t get one shotted by everything, they need to be able to move and their passive effects need to be buffed pretty significantly (mainly the first two).

Spirit health is fine, if people were actually afraid of killing them. Which is how area denial is supposed to work. But everyone knows they can just aoe them from range and they are dead.

For spirits to work as intended they need to be immune to everything other than melee damage.

Sube Dai.8496:

Spirit health is fine, if people were actually afraid of killing them. Which is how area denial is supposed to work. But everyone knows they can just aoe them from range and they are dead.

For spirits to work as intended they need to be immune to everything other than melee damage.

Which makes them useless still in PvE and WvW large scale since the ranger’s spirits will expire and they won’t stop doing damage to run out of melee range and place the spirits at range while doing 0 DPS.

Zenith.7301:

Sube Dai.8496:

Spirit health is fine, if people were actually afraid of killing them. Which is how area denial is supposed to work. But everyone knows they can just aoe them from range and they are dead.

For spirits to work as intended they need to be immune to everything other than melee damage.

Which makes them useless still in PvE and WvW large scale since the ranger’s spirits will expire and they won’t stop doing damage to run out of melee range and place the spirits at range while doing 0 DPS.

They’re also useless in PvP.

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

Sube Dai.8496:

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

…..Because they’re the only group utility a ranger brings outside the spotter trait?

It’s not like ranger brings top DPS so why else would they bring you if not for the spirits.

Zenith.7301:

Sube Dai.8496:

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

…..Because they’re the only group utility a ranger brings outside the spotter trait?

It’s not like ranger brings top DPS so why else would they bring you if not for the spirits.

For the pet shenanigans!

Toolbox.9375:

Zenith.7301:

Sube Dai.8496:

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

…..Because they’re the only group utility a ranger brings outside the spotter trait?

It’s not like ranger brings top DPS so why else would they bring you if not for the spirits.

For the pet shenanigans!

Earth elemental says hi ;(

really the spirits and the traps changes….no comment

One small step that could have a huge impact on Spirits is if they just removed the RNG from the passive effects. I’d rather have my Spirit’s passive be like a banner, not a slightly-higher chance sigil.

Sube Dai.8496:

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

For PvE, Both condi and power ranger have spirits in the dps build, both frost and sun spirit is huge dps gains for the party (for both builds), though a power ranger sometimes drop the sun spirit for another utility.

From a PvE perspective, the other spirits are kinda useless and I dont think I have ever had a place/situration where 1 of them was worth it.

ohh and in PvE we dont trait our spirits, no reason to give them more hp (placement) and we do not want them to be following us either (then we cant melee without having spirits die’ing around us). A shorhter cd when the active is used, that be nice. So you are sure to have both spirits ready for the next fight.