Guild Wars 2

General >> Changed all non-copper karma gathering tools to have a level restriction.
Personal Story
“The Steel Tide”: Reduced the number of giants you need to defeat to progress.
Profession Skills >> Elementalist >>Magnetic Grasp: This ability now immobilizes the target that it strikes. It is now a large Projectile finisher, and damage is now split between this ability and Magnetic Leap.
New skill – Magnetic Leap (Earth Skill 3): Activate this ability to leap to an enemy that’s been struck by Magnetic Grasp.

Ranger

Spirit health increased by 25%.

That’s nice and I hate to burst the bubble of joy, but the spirits needed at least a 100% increase. A 25% increase still leaves them incredibly fragile.

what spirits need:

- a reason to be slotted
- need to be a on a shorter CD, or have about 100% more HP
- actives need to be instant
- boons need to either last longer or internal cd needs to be 5s
- they need to follow ranger by default

those are the minimum requirements that would sort of intrigue me. utilities have to make a difference and results have to be demonstrable

it’s really sad that theyre leaving entire trait trees and utilities broken since realease (i.e. necro minions, spirits, etc.).

And now they went and broke Guardian’s spirits as well.

Anet: destroying their own game one patch at a time.

Spirits with the double HP trait only had ~5k health prepatch. ~6.25k really isn’t going to make a lick of difference to anything.

they are still worthless with their 10 second cds on their buffs.

Just went into Spvp with them on and a thief comes in to hit me and kills 2 of them in 2 hits on me. 30 nature magic and all.

Well, they just don’t get it do they?

:(

LOL. Try again A-net.

To be honest, these spirits design never works since day1, for the 1st month I can still see some spirit ranger (mainly for the curiosity) here and there, but recently I just can’t see any spirit.
Unlike guardians, their spirits weapon at least has some places among all builds until yesterday, but our ranger’s just never ever works.

I will state straight off, yes spirits are quite weak yes. but useless not completely.

In all honesty, in their current state with internal cooldowns hps and the like there is no point to invest any traits into them. 30% proc chance is quite easy to pull off consistently with the rate of attack on almost all rangers skills.

HP, again boost is laughable. Making spirits able to follow the ranger… absurb, that is just asking for them to be AoE nuked.

But as I said, useless no. The stone spirit in particular I have gotten into the habit of always having on me. 30% damage mitigation 30% uptime for all party members zerg members is awesome and can really turn the tide in battle.

The key is to take a step back, place safely (range on buffs is epic) and then move back up so that any AoE targetting you won’t nuke the spirit to boot. I usually always have it in my utilities.

Now other spirits, sun spirit kind of meh, the extra condition damage is pretty awesome, you can keep burn up 100% uptime, negated though in effectiveness if you have a party member who stacks burns effectively.

Frost spirit, kind of nice for extra damage, but unpredictable, I would personally rather have it grant might stacks instead.

Storm spirit, garbage, you have to bring it into AoE range to get any good effect out of it.

My final analysis. Many of the passive buffs are sweet to for the party or raid group you are fighting with. Actives, pure garbage and limited in effectiveness. Survivability, garbage, unless you are really aware of where you are placing it.

Biggest fix would be to grant it an automatic damage reduction to itself. Usefulness and flexibility of spirits would increase 10 fold if it had automatic reduction.

^ You forget the resurrection spirit, THE most useful spirit IMO.

The hp increase is nice, but I really wish you could place your spirits a lot more precisely….That will go a LONG way in helping spirit survival.

/jawdrop. i honestly thought this was a troll or an out of touch suggestion by the OP. but this is an actual, official buff, which i missed in the patch notes.

i think this is a good time for me to take a break from the game. and i can only hope that this isnt the end of the spirit rework. currently, there’s no reason to slot anything in utilities other than traps and signets. maybe LR for pvp. what a cruel joke =(

Ursan.7846:

^ You forget the resurrection spirit, THE most useful spirit IMO.

The hp increase is nice, but I really wish you could place your spirits a lot more precisely….That will go a LONG way in helping spirit survival.

I figured it was a given just how epic that spirit was lol. And that one can chew on AoE for a time.

Honestly, I think ground-targeting would do so much more for Spirit survivability than HP increases. Working with Engi turrets has taught me there’s all sorts of creative places to fling something, especially when nearly vertical surfaces are valid placement options.

I think the buff range is kinda short on them. In order to keep them out of aoe you have to place them far enough back that you don’t buff anyone. And the follow you trait is just asking for them to be killed.

Anet just needs to make the effort and redesign Spirits, because the current Design just isn’t worth while.

Minions are actually in a nice place right now outside of them randomly freezing and not attacking anything. Spirit Pets and Spirit Weapons are essentially useless with their current health being brutally low, and with the follow trait and 15 percent chance to buff being really weak for high end talents.

The only good thing about Spirit Pets is that Frost Spirit’s buff Stacks so If you have two rangers who both carry it into a dungeon and drop it and then use your other utilities for useful skills (I think you can find two useful utilities) than you can essentially have a 10-20 percent damage buff going a majority of the time.

I think Spirits are great in the support role of a longbow ranger. And I was untouchable in PvE with Storm, Stone and Frost

Matt H.6142:

I think Spirits are great in the support role of a longbow ranger. And I was untouchable in PvE with Storm, Stone and Frost

Why would you waste a utility skill on Storm? QZ is significantly better in terms of every step as well as the pet utility rez being way better as well. Stone and Frost I could see, but Storm is so bad.

I said in PvE. I was running from target to target nice and quick. I had also been using a shortbow at the time.

I tried a Longbow / Spirit Support build once. Then I realized I was too far away for my team to receive my Buffs (because the range is horrible). Then they got one shot by God know’s what.

I prefer to NOT trait for Spirit’s to follow me in PVE. Whenever my pet is on passive during an intense AOE fight, chances are that pet is going to die. I’d rather go old-school GW1 style and stick it in the back, deep in a corner, and pray to the RNG God’s that nothing touches it.

But yeah, no matter how many times I’ve tried to make it work, they’re just too gimped through and through. I’d never take those poor innocent Spirits into a Fractal, I’d be guaranteeing their deaths.

They need to be like the Guardian’s Spirit Weapons. Invincible. Why? Because they’re SPIRITS!

Ahah 25% hp buff. Are you serious anet?
Btw i have just tried this out with a friend of mine on his thief. One ds=dead spirits. Lol imagine in wvw or even instances with aoe dmg everywhere. Do the devs even play this game? If you want the spirits to be at least playable (not strong or op or awesome, just playable) make them invulnerable. It seems is too hard to understand….

We may as well replace spirits with a viable support set of utilities if they insist the current design is fine. It’s not fine, it’s passive and boring, weak and unreliable and it doesn’t give you interesting or particularly useful strategic tools to use, build or play around.

Make their actives more support oriented, this lets the spirits do what they were designed to do (support) and gives the ranger access to more ways to tap into mechanics they are sorely missing. The passives are also boring and far too weak. Compare them to the vanilla effects of shouts and banners (never mind how they can be traited and built around) and remember that spirits can also be killed.

I’d like to see something more like this:

Storm Spirit: Summon a storm spirit that grants nearby allies a chance to gain fury when attacking.
Storm Spirit (6s): 35% chance to grant 5 seconds of fury on hit. (1m) +50 precision and +10% critical damage.
Effective radius: 600
Effect recharge: 10 seconds
Duration: 60 s
Call Winds: Create a swirling wind that destroys projectiles. Doing this will disable the chance to gain fury.
Duration: 6 s
Radius: 400
Recharge: 20 s

Giving rangers access to mechanics like swirling winds allows them to contribute to groups the same way other classes can (making them more useful during fights like Kholer where Feedback, Wall of Reflection and Swirling Winds save people from his pull, rangers can also help out if they bring this skill). It makes the active more interesting and it makes the spirit more support oriented (these are our support skills, they should be powerful interesting and supportive, not pseudo AoE damage spells). Losing the chance to gain an effect when the active is on cooldowns creates interesting decisions and discourages mindless spamming. The passive bonus which is always active means the spirit will always be helping out in a small way, regardless of which decision you make.

Frost Spirit: Summon a frost spirit that grants nearby allies a chance to chill their foe when attacking.
Frost Spirit (6s): 35% chance to cause chill (1s) on hit. (1m) +50 healing and regenerate health.
Effective radius: 600
Effect recharge: 10 seconds
Duration: 60 s
Cold Snap: Your frost spirit releases a freezing blast of arctic air, chilling nearby foes. Doing this will disable the chance to cause chill.
Chilled: 5 s every second
Duration: 5 s
Radius: 400
Recharge: 40 s

Stone Spirit: Summon a stone spirit that gives nearby allies a chance to gain protection.
Stone Spirit (6s): 35% chance to apply protection on hit. (1m) +50 toughness and conditions on you expire 25% faster.
Protection: 3 s
Effect recharge: 10 seconds
Duration: 60 s
Quicksand: Your stone spirit softens the earth around it, crippling and blinding foes. This disables the chance to gain protection.
Crippled: 2 s (each second)
Blind: 3 s (each second)
Duration: 5 s
Radius: 400
Recharge: 40 seconds

Quicksand currently overlaps with Muddy Terrain. Changing the immobilise to blind brings back some of the ranger abilities from GW1 where we could get blind from throw dirt and dust trap. It also fits in with the defensive nature of the spirit and would be a powerful strategic active to justify losing protection.

Even auras would be better than their current actives.

Change a few of their traits:
Spiritual Knowledge – Spirit bonuses have a 15% better chance of providing their benefits and an increased radius of effect.
Spirits Unbound – Spirits can move and follow you and their activated abilities are ground targeted.
Vigorous Spirits – Spirits have twice as much health and toughness.

Increasing the range of their bassive bonus allows spirits to stay out of harms way (unless harm comes to it) while continuing to buff the party. This will help them be useful and survive longer. Ground targeting for their active abilities will allow them to be strategic ans useful, without ground targeting their actives are very difficult to reliably use. Allow us to select where we summon them when initially casting them. Randomly appearing somewhere in front of us can be really annoying, they would live a lot longer if we could summon them behind some terrain like a pillar, a wall, up on a rock or something like that. Without the ability to survive hits through higher toughness and vitality (or AoE damage reduction), even following the ranger around isn’t going to be enough to keep them alive, especially during a boss fight.

Currently, spirits don’t provide enough benefits for the sacrifices you have to make to bring them. Their passive effects are weak and their actives are boring and too difficult to use effectively. Compared with the utilities other professions have, spirits offer weaker and unreliable buffs, boring and forgettable actives AND they are easily destroyed and put on a long cooldown.

If you ask me, GW2 spirits should run on the same design as the guild wars 1 spirits, and then get their stats tweeked.

This would entail the following:

• Range of their benefits extended. (GW1 spirits could reach something like half the compass range or something. I’m not saying that far, but definitely farther than they are now.) Only problem is, if you extend their range too far, active effects (mentioned below) could become quite the problem in PvE.

• Constant effects. The proc effects and how often they happen are generally the main reason why I myself do not use them, they are in reliable.

• (Debatable) Affect enemies and allies. This was truly a great thing that GW1 did well. It made it so that spirits could be powerful but had a draw back: they could also benefit your enemies or hinder yourself.

As for their effects, I like the fact each spirit has a passive and an active affect, but I feel the current ones do not really suit how spirits are right now. I believe their actives have a cast time and only affect an area around them. This is fine, but the thing is, if your spirit is casting a blind to hit the enemies around it…there is a good chance it’ll be dead before the cast ends.

A tweek i would like to see to spirits would be this:

(all these could potentially affect allies/enemies too, if that function of old spirit design was to be brought in)

• Frost Spirit: Passive: Enemies move X% slower while in range of the spirit. Active: The spirit intensifies its aura causing the slow to be increased to Y% for an amount of time.

• Stone Spirit: Passive: Allies in range have X amount of extra health (going off the idea that stone elementals generally have more HP) Active: Allies gain X% damage reduction for a certain amount of time.

• Storm Spirit: Passive: Allies move X% faster while in range. Active: Allies inflict Daze on their next attack (or stun if hit from the side or behind?)

• Sun Spirit: Passive: conditions inflicted by allies lasts X amount of time longer or deal X% more damage. Active: Inflicts a random condition(excluding Daze Stun and Immobilize) to all enemies in range of the spirit/on an allies next attack.

• Nature Spirit: I think the way this spirit works is actually pretty OK.

These ideas could possibly make spirits much more useful and fun to have around.

Also, active effects could cause 1 of 2 things to happen to the spirit:
*All actives cause spirits to be weakened, causing the passive effect to be in-active while their ability is on cooldown

*Activating a spirits ability will cause it to forfeit its life in order to strengthen/add additional effects.