Guild Wars 2

This heal has a lot of downsides and does not receive much use other than a very small niche in raids. Even then, that’s a maybe. Due to its internal cooldown, its heals are somewhat weaker than life-steal foods and sigils within a 10s time frame (not to mention its bugged like crazy).

However, it shifts from being horrid to somewhat mediocre when traited with Nature’s Vengeance, due to its ability to provide allies with permanent regeneration up to 1000 units away. This, being most helpful of the Druid’s Astral Force generation, but on core Ranger, offers no additional benefits other than providing regeneration to allies.

That said, I propose a very small but strong tweak that could have Water Spirit hold a tighter niche as a heal. These changes will mostly benefit certain – and maybe upcoming – raid wings, as well as very low tier (unranked) conquest matches. It doesn’t sound promising or the least bit appealing to read that, but hear me out!

[Suggestion]

• Water Spirit has a 75% to grant 6s of regeneration to allies on hit.
• Water Spirit active, Aqua Surge, remains the same.
• Water Spirit pulses 1s of Resistance when traited with Nature’s Vengeance.

Remember, this is a minor tweak suggestion that can (imo) have a large impact on the effectiveness for Water Spirit. It’s rather realistic while encompassing all the themes of Spirits and the Nature Magic traitline. Thoughts?

I think it just needs bigger numbers with bug fixes. I like the idea of resistance being added, though.

Perma-Resistance on pets through Fortifying Bond sounds broken as heck and would probably end up getting the Resistance aspect of FB nerfed to oblivion. You can’t even corrupt it at that point either, because it’ll just get reapplied a couple seconds later.

Plus, looking at how limited Resistance has been given out so far, I’m guessing the devs wouldn’t want to give it to a passive skill like a Spirit on an automatic proc, even with a very short duration.

The only place I could reasonably see Resistance getting added is to the active ability of the spirit. Gives some Resistance while still having counterplay and requiring active application as opposed to just passivity. Which would actually be a pretty nice buff to the active, which isn’t that impressive.

Keep in mind that said perma resistance can be removed by killing the spirit, and spirits aren’t exactly known for being tanky. Anything the spirit can do can be easily countered, often on accident, by dropping an AoE on it.

Yup. Spirits can be easily killed. In fact, that’s why I even stated this will be something that would strengthen its niche. In PvP and WvW, Spirits die pretty quick. In fact, if people were trying to corrupt it rather than killing the spirit, that’s completely on them.

Changing the default effect to regeneration would be a terrible idea unless they made Regeneration stack intensity. Changing the boon from Regeneration would also be a bad idea.

How Spirits Work:
Killing spirits does not stop them from giving their buffs… their corpses continue to grant buffs and boons for up to 9 seconds after they die. If you sacrifice your spirit immediately after summoning it, players in the area will still have the buffs on them for more than half the 20s cooldown period, and people keep the frost spirit damage buff for 15s into the 20s cooldown. Most of the time it makes sense to kill your spirits.

The key to using spirits is understanding all of the invisible mechanics. Every 3 seconds the spirit grants a 6 second buff to the 5 nearest allies (players prioritized) which grants them a 70% chance to trigger an effect, that effect has a 10s cooldown per player. If lots of players are moving in and out of the area, the spirits will put their buffs on different players every 3 seconds… but if the same 5 players sit on top of the spirit they will get the buff over and over even though they can’t use it again right away.

Lingering Light also has a per-ally cooldown which is great when healing many people a little bit over a large area for awhile. I can confidently throw out spirits in a WvW zerg and blow them up, because I know they will still be healing, protecting, boosting, and blinding for awhile.

Most Rangers know how Spirits work. You also forgot it’s 75% chance not 70%. While what you state for how Spirits work may apply to other Spirits, what makes killing Water Spirit over others more dampening is that Rangers lose access to our actual heal when done so.

Even though you stated that changing it would be bad, you never stated why. Not to mention, this Spirit is underused as is. This would be fine within its niche – which I feel like I have to continuously stress – as Water Spirit rarely sees play. And what little play it does receive, other heals can do better.

I misread the title as “Suggestion: Water Spirit Twerk” and got excited about the skill for the first time in years.

Why not change default effect to regen: The proc direct heal works even if other allies are using perma-regeneration. Replacing the triggered effect with a short regeneration would also be bad because… see below.

Why not remove Regeneration as the continuous boon: Regeneration scales much better with healing power than most heals, so for many healing builds perma-regeneration is a significant source of healing. The water spirit can grant perma-regen over a very wide area with very little effort… which is pretty nice. The perma-regen boon works even when you are rezzing, running, or after the enemy is dead. Requiring you to hit foes to get a less than perma-regen would be a serious downgrade.

Spirit builds are support builds, and should work with healing power. Losing perma-regen and an extra heal that works in addition to regen would be… terrible.

misterdevious.6482:

Spirit builds are support builds, and should work with healing power. Losing perma-regen and an extra heal that works in addition to regen would be… terrible.

Not quite so. 6s of Regeneration every 10s is not a bad up-time; 7.2s when traited with NM. It’s far from short, not to mention abundant.

Regeneration on hit and Resistance pulse adds more and unique combinations with traits and utilities, on top of being flexible with people who choose a Water Spirit over the other heals (which out perform it).

Keeping it the same is more terrible than what I am proposing. Losing permanent regeneration from Water Spirit alone is a very minor loss. At the moment, it seems to work for you when you WvW, but that doesn’t mean to resist changing it so it can expand into other modes and hold a stronger niche.

That is, unless you have something to suggest other than keeping it as is.

I would gladly lose perma regen for having the thing pulse resistance, if I wanted to have perma regen i would just take shouts anyway, water spirit needs something else to make it useful, and resistance when traited would certainly give it a niche in our heal skill selections.