I left the game a while back and recently came back a few months ago and I’m curious as to why Anet removed the ability to trait for your spirits to move and follow you. I’m enjoying the game but wondering why this was taken away.
Did they do it to simplify gameplay or was it simply too strong in PvP?
It was considered strong in PvP because of the zoo effect it would cause, so they removed the mobile aspect from spirits and gave us nothing to compensate for it ever since.
It was considered strong in PvP because of the zoo effect it would cause, so they removed the mobile aspect from spirits and gave us nothing to compensate for it ever since.
Thanks for the response. It’s a pity they removed that ability as it seemed a way to mitigate our complaints about having lower DPS as well as a fun way to add condition damage to weapons that are normally weak for applying it like longbows.
Looks like the MMO curse of weakening PvE because of PvP struck again. =(
It was considered strong in PvP because of the zoo effect it would cause, so they removed the mobile aspect from spirits and gave us nothing to compensate for it ever since.
Thanks for the response. It’s a pity they removed that ability as it seemed a way to mitigate our complaints about having lower DPS as well as a fun way to add condition damage to weapons that are normally weak for applying it like longbows.
Looks like the MMO curse of weakening PvE because of PvP struck again. =(
Spirits, particularly, Frost and Sun, and sometimes Stone, are optimal utility slots in PvE builds.
You may have missed the patch where ANet took all AI creatures and gave them a huge AoE damage reduction if enemies aren’t directly targeting them, PvE only. You can basically summon spirits on top of bosses with virtually no risk of them dying now. Also, using their active skill kills them but puts them on a 20 second cooldown, so if the fight ends, you can simply “move” your spirits by killing them with the active and having them ready again within 20 seconds.
It was considered strong in PvP because of the zoo effect it would cause, so they removed the mobile aspect from spirits and gave us nothing to compensate for it ever since.
This is not quite right…
What was considered to strong was the trait that let the spirit use their active skill on death. It was to strong of a spike for the poor PvP community. (The fact that the active skills of the spirit are just for show now do not affect the survivability of the PvP glass canon so it seem that it’s alright for Anet)
The reason why they removed the spirit’s ability to move is different and directly inherent to the spirit’s survivability. Simply put spirits live longer if they do not follow you. The removal of this ability also came with an enhancement of the effective radius of the spirit’s passive which basically allow you to cover most of the battlefield in PvE.
Note that the active skill did not gain this effective radius enhancement… Well… Who except me care about these active skills? Anet probably don’t even give a kitten about them, like the core pet skill and a few other thing that feel out of place in the game.
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
Oh, if it was for the purpose of Survivability, then I’m a little more okay with the change. Having buffs is no good if the source of them is constantly out of commission. It stinks a bit but the huge range and low cooldown of the spirits now does mitigate being unable to have them follow you around. It was still pretty cool when we could trait it though. =)
I don’t think it’s been mentioned in this thread yet so I’ll add it. The spirit passive effect lasts for 10 sec or so after the spirit itself dies. That keeps the uptime on their buff a lot higher than most players seem to think.
The reason why they removed the spirit’s ability to move is different and directly inherent to the spirit’s survivability. Simply put spirits live longer if they do not follow you. The removal of this ability also came with an enhancement of the effective radius of the spirit’s passive which basically allow you to cover most of the battlefield in PvE.
As for this, Spirits never received a radius boost on their passives and Spirit Unbound’s removal had nothing to due with survivability. It has always been 1000 radius and the developers (specifically Roy) stated it was to make Spirits like Turrets in the sense of an on-point boon rather than mobile.
The only changes that happened during 9/15 was the 100% health bonus and 35% increased proc chance traits were made baseline, then an additional 5% proc chance increase from 70% to 75%, and replacing active on-death with boons on Nature’s Vengeance.
If anything, removal of Spirit Unbound had Rangers lose the ability to cover the battlefield in all modes without any increase to the radius. Doesn’t matter now though, as a player can just role a Herald if they feel like playing the old Spirit Ranger.
Imho, the whole mechanics with spirits are flawed. How many players do you think honestly use the active of their spirit? Don’t most just place them for their boons? A stationary, small radius active skill sucks so bad it’s not even funny.
Rework spirits completely, they truly feels like a leftover from beta – an idea they never got around to finish and figure out exactly what they wanted spirits to be.
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
PLz its pretty wack i never ever get to use the pretty cool looking spirits in wvw, ANet give ranger spirits a rework!! like you did with the shouts!!!
[Snky] FC don’t worry I’m just a scrub until I’m OP
I fell in love with the spirit ranger as a support class when there were still free ranging spirits. When they changed them to stationary I didn’t have the heart to continue playing as ranger =/
The reason why they removed the spirit’s ability to move is different and directly inherent to the spirit’s survivability. Simply put spirits live longer if they do not follow you. The removal of this ability also came with an enhancement of the effective radius of the spirit’s passive which basically allow you to cover most of the battlefield in PvE.
As for this, Spirits never received a radius boost on their passives and Spirit Unbound’s removal had nothing to due with survivability. It has always been 1000 radius and the developers (specifically Roy) stated it was to make Spirits like Turrets in the sense of an on-point boon rather than mobile.
The only changes that happened during 9/15 was the 100% health bonus and 35% increased proc chance traits were made baseline, then an additional 5% proc chance increase from 70% to 75%, and replacing active on-death with boons on Nature’s Vengeance.
If anything, removal of Spirit Unbound had Rangers lose the ability to cover the battlefield in all modes without any increase to the radius. Doesn’t matter now though, as a player can just role a Herald if they feel like playing the old Spirit Ranger.
You forgot to mention that they also reduced the cooldown from 25 to 20 seconds at that time.
Edit: I do think there should be a trait that allows the spirits to be unbound, but I hope they don’t take away Nature’s Vengeance to do it. While moving spirits can be useful in WvW and maybe some other instances, I have found the stationary spirits to work great in fractals, raids (the few times I did them lol), dungeons, and anywhere else where you aren’t engaged in running battles. Most fights I’ve been in I was able to drop them in the middle of the area, complete the fight, and have them ready again by the time we got to the next big fight. I can see how having them follow me around would be bad, even with the AoE damage reduction, as currently they only die if I kill them or the duration is up.
While the trait would be pretty cool, I’m used to things changing often and frequently. Nothing is forever, and learning to adapt is a part of life. Evolve or die, as they say…
What I forgot to mention and that you also left out was before the 25s → 20s cooldown adjustment, it was planned to increase Spirit cooldowns from 25s → 40s before Rangers flipped out about it on the livestream and everywhere else.
Our boy, Irenio, had our back and made sure that didn’t happen and gave us additional minor buffs after it was all said and done.
And as I said suggested before: If Spirits Unbound can return and replace Instinctive Reaction, that would be swell. Doesn’t have to remain in adept. I’d prefer it to be in a Master tier competing with Windborne Notes and the now sweet Evasive Purity instead.
Vigorous Training and be dropped in Adept as a second boon on-pet swap trait along with Clarion Bond. Instinctive Reaction is not a trait many will miss and is statistically inferior to Bountiful Hunter, anyway.
No reason to lose Nature’s Vengeance, though, it could use a rename to “Nature’s Bounty” for thematic purposes – which was also a former trait Rangers had that increased regeneration by +33%.
What I forgot to mention and that you also left out was before the 25s -> 20s cooldown adjustment, it was planned to increase Spirit cooldowns from 25s -> 40s before Rangers flipped out about it on the livestream and everywhere else.
Our boy, Irenio, had our back and made sure that didn’t happen and gave us additional minor buffs after it was all said and done.
And as I said suggested before: If Spirits Unbound can return and replace Instinctive Reaction, that would be swell. Doesn’t have to remain in adept. I’d prefer it to be in a Master tier competing with Windborne Notes and the now sweet Evasive Purity instead.
Vigorous Training and be dropped in Adept as a second boon on-pet swap trait along with Clarion Bond. Instinctive Reaction is not a trait many will miss and is statistically inferior to Bountiful Hunter, anyway.
No reason to lose Nature’s Vengeance, though, it could use a rename to “Nature’s Bounty” for thematic purposes – which was also a former trait Rangers had that increased regeneration by +33%.
I could get behind this. Also, didn’t know about the cooldown drama, I had just started playing a month or two before the specialization massive change.
I fell in love with the spirit ranger as a support class when there were still free ranging spirits. When they changed them to stationary I didn’t have the heart to continue playing as ranger =/
which actually i don’t really get as the ranger is supposed to have to keep moving all the time with the line type attacks and completely lack of aoe
I TOLD YOU SO
Inverse to Apple: SBeast is the worst yet.. jurl jurl
I’m all in for Team Irenio!
I want to love spirits so much. They are easily the most druid-like abilities we have.
Glyphs? Bugger them!
I really don’t mind spirit being immobile but the 20 second cooldown makes them useless most of the time. I’d just love to be able to summon them more often. I couldn’t care less about the completely useless (to a ranged character) active abilities.
So I want to play my druid using these all the time cos they look so cool. But instead I equip our array of entirely defensive signets and use a DPS heavy pet. And combat is 1, 2, F2….. wait a while, another 2 / F2, etc. etc. etkittenil I get so bored that I go play another prof.
