Guild Wars 2

Comparison:
Bloomhugger’s Spirits

Key Idea:
Spirits now channel their buffs to the ranger who will then spread the buffs to allies within the radius. The channeling radius should be quite long (I’m thinking of 2k) in order to allow good positioning gameplay as the ranger’s spirits only provide passive buffs and it makes no sense for them to be deployed in combat areas in the first place. The effective radius should be smaller since the buffing now gains some mobility (it moves where the ranger goes). Maybe something around 900. Active skills are centered on the ranger.

Pros:
1. Create an actual uniqueness in term of functionality for Spirits in comparison to Banners/Turrets/Illusions/Minions. Spirits as of now still feel like subpar versions of turrets.

1.1 To clarfiy: Spirits will become the “Altars” that give out buff to allies. And in order to remove those buffs (supposed that the ranger is your enemy), the players must seek out and destroy the source of the buffs to weaken the ranger (and his allies). This will differentiate spirits from Illusions (Full offensive high burst summons), Turrets (Semi-offensive, semi-defensive summons), Minions (Mostly defensive summons), i.e. Spirits will be full defensive summons.

2. Retaining spirits’ limitation i.e. being immobile while still giving mobility to the functionality i.e. movable buffs in order better align the playstyle with GW2’s mobile combat.

Cons:
1. This might be OP given its current passive/active effects. But that’s the point of balancing. And the I think the change to mechanics will improve spirits overall.

What do you guys think?

The idea sounds fine.
But that’s a bunch of work for developers and it didn’t really take my breath by reading through it. If devs won’t be amazed by it – this is probably not going to happen.

I really think that all the Spirits need are better survivability, faster response on active casts and buffed our Trait for Spirits (Nature’s Vengeance it is called – I think).

Tragic Positive.9356:

The idea sounds fine.
But that’s a bunch of work for developers and it didn’t really take my breath by reading through it. If devs won’t be amazed by it – this is probably not going to happen.

I really think that all the Spirits need are better survivability, faster response on active casts and buffed our Trait for Spirits (Nature’s Vengeance it is called – I think).

The way I see it, spirits are bad at surviving atm because they are forced to be deployed in combat heavy area due to their limited range. I think separating the “deploy range” and “effective range” will help boost their survivability by a lot. It also creates a more intelligent counter instead of just adding HP. And if the active skills are centered on the ranger, the skills don’t have to go through spirits’ animation. Instead, the ranger will be the one using them i.e. there’s no need to normalize spirits’ castime according to the animation and each skill has a cast amination/time of its own since it’s the ranger who’s using the skills.

@DavyMcB
That’s true – but as I already said, I doubt developers would risk another change like that.
The 1st idea of spirits was to buff them, but as you can see – nothing but actual game-play nerfs were the result.

You still have to stay a realist and see that if we got a change like this – they’d nerf us elsewhere.
Because “Invigirating Bond is a strong trait”.

It’s a change of mechanic. I’d actually like to see our current form being useful and user-friendly. Not seeing the HP of our spirits (in order to activate the spell before they die) is quite toxic. I have no idea why the activate on death was removed in the 1st place.

Honestly, I think they can totally fix Spirits by making them ground targeted with a 600 range and making the passive range 2000.

Then fix NV and we have a good setup.

Spirits are almost decent enough that you could fit one or two into a build (I like sun), but I think the GM trait needs to be tweaked so that a full spirit build can be viable. Something like “having the effect of 3 or more spirits grants a stack of pulsing stability (like Juggernaut for Engie), for each active spirit effect conditions have -20% duration on you”.

They simply should make them indestructible and following by default. I see myself so often without the spirit be cause I casted it and I can’t destroy it, moving to the next place with the skill still in followup mode. This sucks. It’s not that those spirits are super OP. Banners are stronger, are mobile and indestructible. All the benefits – no downside… Explain, please.

That is a good idea, so they are greater than the sum of their parts when you play more than one. -% Condi duration per and maybe some sort of stunbreak too, as it would help with solving the “I have no utilities” issue when using spirits.

I think having the bonus while the spirit skill is on your bar would be enough, otherwise it would be totally countered by killing the spirits. They should be countered by killing them, but not things like that.

Perhaps something like…

Nature’s Vengeance; “Spirits pulse boons, have 100% larger passive range, 50% larger active range and 100% more health. Spirit skills activate instantly and on their death. Every spirit skill you have grants you -10% condition duration and every spirit skill you activate breaks stuns.”

If the boons were good, and Water Spirit had a decent heal, then we have a quite good PvP build there.

If Spirits stay immobilized then they need boost to their passives to make more threatening. Their health can be low still as a counter. But the passives make them unique from turret. But right now the passives are too weak and they have weak health and cant move. Making them useless.