The Spirit Challenge

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Posted by: Asthalon.6875

Asthalon.6875

I think most of us can agree to the statement “Spirits need improvement” (the majority of that most might also flat out agree “they suck”, but that’s not the point here). So I’d like to just accept that fact and move on. Let’s also accept that we probably won’t see adjustments on these for a month, two, maybe more.

This thread is not for “They suck so bad” comments – go find a complaint thread and put those there.

So given all that, the question I pose is:

How can we use Spirits right now, in their present form?

I’d like to see a commentary that ranges across:
- Usefulness (Which Spirit buffs/abilities do you like? Why?)
- Synergy (What other skills/traits really help to make a Spirit a bit more viable? Think outside the box, not just the more health/movement/etc.)
- Strategy (What kind of placement/timing/purpose might you use a Spirit for?)
- Context (Second to strategy, different uses for PvE, WvW, sPvP?)

Personally, I don’t use them, but I’d kind of like to try it out (at work through the week, and just moved, so I don’t really have a lot of time to do so atm), and I thought that a number of the smart people around here might have some ideas to toss around about how to do so.

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Posted by: Jay.3284

Jay.3284

You can fully utilize them by not putting them on your utility bar at all.

Dungeon Master 8/8 | Fractal 50
80Rng – 80Wa – 80Thief – 80Grd – 80Ele – 80Engi – 80Necro

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Posted by: Asthalon.6875

Asthalon.6875

Sure, and we can solve world hunger by letting famine pick off all the people in need, but it’s not ultimately a helpful concept, is it?

Thanks for sticking to the letter of ‘not for “They suck so bad”’ comments, if not the spirit, anyway.

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Posted by: Agadar.4931

Agadar.4931

Let me be brutally honest.

- Usefulness (Which Spirit buffs/abilities do you like? Why?)

All spirits are pretty much a waste of a utility slot, with the exception of the elite spirit which has its rare uses in PvE.

- Synergy (What other skills/traits really help to make a Spirit a bit more viable? Think outside the box, not just the more health/movement/etc.)

None besides the ones in the NM tree which directly improve it.

- Strategy (What kind of placement/timing/purpose might you use a Spirit for?)

For when I’m bored and feel like playing an ever more gimped ranger.

- Context (Second to strategy, different uses for PvE, WvW, sPvP?)

In PvE they can sometimes get one of their mediocre procs off before getting killed by AoE or trash.

In PvP or WvW they either die because of some random AoE or accidental swing of a greatsword, or they get focussed down within a split second.

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Posted by: Kalas.6743

Kalas.6743

If your going to use spirts then the best thing to do is to try to hide them from mobs or other people. Any time I use one in dungeons I ty to find a spot where I can hide it at. In any kind of pvp the best thing to do is to get in out as fast as possible and then be as far away as possible from it.

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Posted by: MaRko.3165

MaRko.3165

If you wander into an area swimming in down NPC’s place yourself in aprox the center of them and SoN will revive the entire lot of em at once.

“I was playing Farmville and a kitten MMO GW2 broke out of it…”
I cut my gaming teeth on Adventure&ZorkI,II,III.
i7-2600K/8G/GTX570SLI/WIN7/Stereoscopic_3D

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Posted by: Malin.2490

Malin.2490

The only place I’ve felt like the spirits actually worked, was running in Orr as the healer/protector with two friends. Mobile spirits, greatsword for tanking, and my friends were running a damage warrior and a thief. It actually worked okay, it was great in events , because events in Orr usually means a ton of dead npcs, and with my elite spirits I can wake a whole bunch of them at once making things go much faster. I didn’t feel like my spirits got targeted very much, but since we were two close combat people, and I use a movement control, the undead usually have other things on their mind.

Jamail Saoud [Nice], the man with the Drake

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Posted by: Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082

Hey, we all know that spirits definitely need work. But there are instances in which they are useful, even in their current state. For example, in cof p1 I slot frost spirit, QZ, and Sick em. The extra damage is greater than you could get from putting another utility there, such as sharpening stone, and if you place it right it won’t die. Sun spirit and storm spirit I don’t really find uses for, but stone spirit can also be useful if well placed. As this is not a thread for talking about problems with spirits, I will leave that out.

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Posted by: Asthalon.6875

Asthalon.6875

My intention was just to weed out the blatant “They suck” thoughts – specific ideas for improvement would tie in nicely to the same vein of thought, maybe along the lines of “This might be viable in this situation if…”.

Ultimately I just feel like we’re going to have the Spirits around as is for an indefinite period of time. GW2 proficiency ties back a lot to situational skill selection, and I disbelieve that the Ranger community can’t establish some situations where they’re useful (which clearly we can, above so far) and worth being on the bar, even in their present poor state.

Obviously they’ll never see permanent use until being reworked, but that doesn’t mean useless.

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Posted by: Lunchbox.9543

Lunchbox.9543

In instances where you fight underwater but are able to get out of the water, or on land near water, it can be very useful to plant them in a safe spot with your alternate skill bar and then return to the action. Does it really help? No, but it doesn’t hurt either.

“I’m doing good in the game, so I’m doing good in life!”
Charlie

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Posted by: loopi.7913

loopi.7913

I set down all my spirit buffs in one corner of the tower we were defending in our borderlands. It made a beautiful garden that really added to the feng shui Of the keep. Being from an RP server the defenders got a slight morale boost from it so I would say the spirits added somewhat to the fight…. I’ll see if I can post pics later

Vexinia – Squishee animal wrangler of TC

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Posted by: arrownin.3128

arrownin.3128

Oh my god, there have been way too many of these posts. This question has already been answered on multiple threads, please stop making threads on topics that have already been answered.
Challenge to all those defending the ranger
Nobody Slots Spirits
Boost to spirits update

I have used spirits extensively and there is nothing wrong with them. They are simply good for passive boons/buffs for the team. They can be placed fairly far away whilst still be able to affect your team, making it key to put spirits in safe locations just out of reach for combat. That’s it. They’re just passive buffs, they don’t suck and there’s not really many ways for you to “use” them. Here’s a video of me using a build that I made up in an hour, and having spirits support my team.

I wasn’t good at managing my spirits during this video so it’s not the best example, but you can see the healing numbers pop up for allies, and boons pop up for them as well by looking at the team bar.

(edited by arrownin.3128)

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Posted by: kaltastic.3146

kaltastic.3146

Spirits seem like another example of where the profession takes a hit for nothing more than poor implementation in fulling the Ranger paradigm.

Ranger classes usually have pets so Arenanet takes a portion of our dmg and builds it into a pet mechanic that works poorly in many situations. Result is that we suffer.

Ranger classes are supposed to be ‘one with nature’ so Arenanet takes our support utility and builds it into a nature spirit mechanic that works even more poorly than pets. Result is that we suffer.

At this point I’d gladly sacrifice some of the ranger-esque mechanics and just take dmg and utility which wasn’t gimped.

We share apocalyptic views, how comforting that we see it too.

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Posted by: Velkyn.5168

Velkyn.5168

I have a spirits/beastmaster build for PvP that I use for defending points and I think I am doing pretty well with it? Can take down two attackers if i am lucky and the only thing that completely blasted me away so far was an engineer who just dumped his turrets etc and knocked me dead in three seconds.

I’ve only just reached the deer PvP rank, so maybe it’s due to general noobishness in that tier, but.. I really like playing this ranger so far and I think the spirits are fine.

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Posted by: Serraphin Storm.2369

Serraphin Storm.2369

The key to spirits is placement. Spirits in Gw1 were alot weaker yet they were still viable. Postioning is a key element for rangers. This extends to spirits.
I would like to see more spirits. The problem isnt the spirits themselves its the role they play its support and very few people enjoy playing support. Even now you have gs rangers running spirits (charging straight of into battle)

While you will have limited sucess. I think is not the intent for spirits even if you have the moving trait. You would never put seige equipent on the front line. Unless you wanted it to get destroyed. The burning affect is great so is the protection and healing.

So the real problem is the implimentaion of the spirit which we a community need to understand.

Yes most of you think that spirits are garbage. But at one time most of the world thought that the world was flat.

In order to properly understand the big picture,
everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.

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Posted by: arrownin.3128

arrownin.3128

The key to spirits is placement. Spirits in Gw1 were alot weaker yet they were still viable. Postioning is a key element for rangers. This extends to spirits.
I would like to see more spirits. The problem isnt the spirits themselves its the role they play its support and very few people enjoy playing support. Even now you have gs rangers running spirits (charging straight of into battle)

While you will have limited sucess. I think is not the intent for spirits even if you have the moving trait. You would never put seige equipent on the front line. Unless you wanted it to get destroyed. The burning affect is great so is the protection and healing.

So the real problem is the implimentaion of the spirit which we a community need to understand.

Yes most of you think that spirits are garbage. But at one time most of the world thought that the world was flat.

Wow very beautiful and well spoken there!

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Posted by: Chopps.5047

Chopps.5047

Yeah, I was so happy our guild used spirits before the comminuty tried. I was literally the only person I knew of in T1 running them until recently. I’m at the point where I let misperceptions fly and just use “common knowledge” against others. You can’t argue with people who are in factnot debating, rather, they lost a battle, blame it on the ranger instead of taking personal responsibility for messing up, then they come here expecting sympathy from successful rangers who are, by and large, hardcore players who don’t have an ounce of mercy in their soul.

Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”

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Posted by: Haudruff.7804

Haudruff.7804

Ppl mentalities seem to be the biggest problem. In wow e.g., u had no problem joining a random dungeon-grp as healer or tank. As dps sometimes it took an hour. But still -did ppl rolled more healers/tanks? No! They stayed on their dps-classes. Sadly, most players want to see big numbers and do mindless bashing. That excludes any skill for most, but thats how the majority of players seem to be like.
In guild wars 2, where there is no “holy trinity” -thank God this artifitial c*** for “less skilled gamers” wasnt implemented here- there is still a wide range in any profession between pure dmg/classcanon over balanced builds to more support/healish/less dmg. And guess what most ppl roll? They want big numbers, they want mindless playing. And so they come and cry that “their” class, which was never designed to be on the burst-site of this game, doesnt give em big numbers. And ranger is one of such class. It is more balanced, even a bit more on the defensive site. That applys especially for spirits. One has to think a lot where and how to place them, where to position yourself and so on. Running mindless into a mob/zerg and then wondering why they die just like yourself doesnt work.
But learning how to manage spirits (and pets) is not that easy, but rewarding, though. Learn, try, find out, trial&error. And again, thats good. Ranger in gw2 is and should never be an easymode pet/spirit-class for the mindless.

(edited by Haudruff.7804)

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Posted by: Peter.9406

Peter.9406

The key to spirits is placement. Spirits in Gw1 were alot weaker yet they were still viable. Postioning is a key element for rangers. This extends to spirits.
I would like to see more spirits. The problem isnt the spirits themselves its the role they play its support and very few people enjoy playing support. Even now you have gs rangers running spirits (charging straight of into battle)

While you will have limited sucess. I think is not the intent for spirits even if you have the moving trait. You would never put seige equipent on the front line. Unless you wanted it to get destroyed. The burning affect is great so is the protection and healing.

So the real problem is the implimentaion of the spirit which we a community need to understand.

Yes most of you think that spirits are garbage. But at one time most of the world thought that the world was flat.

Except in GW1 spirits had a larger radius so you could do that, in GW2 they have a smaller radius so it won’t work. Also, this wasn’t how ANet intended them to play because they have a Grandmaster trait which allows spirits to follow you around which is the complete opposite.

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Posted by: Nurse.1085

Nurse.1085

People are defending Spirits?

Attachments:

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Posted by: Solandri.9640

Solandri.9640

The problem isnt the spirits themselves its the role they play its support and very few people enjoy playing support. Even now you have gs rangers running spirits (charging straight of into battle)
[…]
Yes most of you think that spirits are garbage. But at one time most of the world thought that the world was flat.

These aren’t contradictory things. Spirits can be great support, and they can also be garbage.

The buff you alone get from a spirit is garbage. You’re almost always better off with a different skill if you’re soloing. The damage buff from frost spirit is only 2%-3% extra damage depending on exactly how it works. That’s garbage.

Where spirits shine is when you’re in a group. Because all people in range will get the buffs, the cumulative effect is much better than any of your other skills. If you’re running a dungeon and everyone is in range of frost spirit, that’s a cumulative 10%-15% extra damage that “you” are doing with the spirit. That’s a huge boost.

Unfortunately, roughly half my gameplay is solo or duo. So I can’t justify traiting for a spirit build. If you’re always running dungeons or PvPing in a group, then I can see traiting for spirits. But for a general multipurpose play, I feel a spirit build cripples you when you’re not with a full party or a huge group.

(edited by Solandri.9640)

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Posted by: nerva.7940

nerva.7940

stone spirit + 75% boon duration = almost perma protection for the group.
sun spirit is ridiculous with condition damage. 2k burning every 10 seconds, works best with SB
the other two spirits i find next to useless. i mean perma swiftness in combat is ok but most people have swiftness up all the time. signet of renewal for my third utility.

Ikiro – 80 Ranger
Umie – 80 Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgLbWtvtzdU0Ho0zto6VnTQ

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Posted by: DaisyRogers.6837

DaisyRogers.6837

How can we use Spirits right now, in their present form?

I’d like to see a commentary that ranges across:
- Usefulness (Which Spirit buffs/abilities do you like? Why?)
- Synergy (What other skills/traits really help to make a Spirit a bit more viable? Think outside the box, not just the more health/movement/etc.)
- Strategy (What kind of placement/timing/purpose might you use a Spirit for?)
- Context (Second to strategy, different uses for PvE, WvW, sPvP?)
_______________________________________________
I have taken great pleasure in running specs that people hate, which has brought me into my BM tank support build that of course to maximize the buffs that i can share, uses spirits.

Usefulness:
- There are only three spirits I have found useful to my hybrid tank support play style.
-Stone Spirit, this thing rarely ever leaves my bar now. 33% damage mitigation 30% of the time is a game changer no matter what context you are fighting in. Combined with protection from 15 pts in wilderness survival you get extremely heavy mitigation, combined with the mitigation from 30 pts in survival and it becomes a real pain to knock the last sliver of health off the ranger. I am typically the last man standing in my dungeons runs making the difference between wipe and rally.
-Sun Spirit, I use under water because fire trap can’t be. Gets best debute in organized parties, you can keep burn up 100% uptime (heavy condition damage) on enemies your group focuses on.
-Ice Spirit, rarely makes it onto my skill bar. It depends on the party make up. If there is an elementalist or engi who can keep up burn by themselves, then sun spirit becomes pointless. Get a little damage spike for your party. Overall kind of meh, since you can’t control which of your attacks proc it, it often gets wasted on auto chains or some other lesser hitting skill.
-Ultra Spirit, Huge game changer in dungeon runs and I have used it often to keep wipes from occurring. Great to Pop out when you find yourselves pulling way more than you can chew. Best part, because he heals himself it boasts pretty good survival in and of itself.

Synergy:
-I actually don’t use any of the spirit traits. Health doesn’t provide enough except lets it survive one extra hit, and movement, the grand master trait I am convinced is the worst trait you could ever pick. The biggest downfall of spirits is AoE, they rarely get targeted alone. You are only asking them to get targeted. Because of the internal cooldown there is no point in picking up the increased proc chance, 30% is default and will proc reliably every 10s alone. Save your traits for other things.
-Now, boosting surivability: it all comes down to placement. I fight with GS predominantly, I’ll dodge roll back begin summon while running backwards diagonally, once the spirit is down I will swoop back in. Typically this will place it far enough away from non Dungeon AoE.
-Make sure you instruct your group not to fight ontop of the spirits, again this is why I hate spirits walking. You doom the spirits. The proc range on the passives is pretty large.
-Because of survival issues I rarely use the active skills (barring elite). the passive far outways anything the active puff brings. And the active range is pretty meak unless traited, and even then its meh. I play them for the passive party buffs.

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Posted by: DaisyRogers.6837

DaisyRogers.6837

Strategy:
-Place them behind your party, whenever you use them this is key. And then move away from them. The more you can keep them out of AoE the more bang for buck you will get.
-PvE: You also get more bang for buck the more drawn out the fight will be. Don’t summon if you are facing a trash mob. If you are going to charge down 7+, a group of Vets, champs etc. excellent time to drop, you will be buffed the duration of the fight (protection is awesome).
-Dungeons: Placement is more important here. Again it is wise to place it behind your party and make sure you party doesn’t stand on them. The stone spirit has been my best friend on all my dungeon runs, and there is very few party support skills that can trump elite spirit (IMO). Also use pillars and other obstacles to place behind for a little extra layer of defense.
PvP: Spirits are much more limited in usefulness due to the fluidity of combat. Again, Spirits really start to pay off the longer drawn out your battle is going to be. I’ve yet to get great use out of them here.
WvWvW: Awesome, most of my fights have been small group v small group or zerg v zerg. Stone spirit makes a huge difference in survivability for your party. Place the spirits behind your line and watch the magic unfold. The more fluid the battle is the less effect you will get out of it (this is where walking spirits probably is the most useful). I fricken love my stone spirit, Its a good day when you see your whole party rocking protection.

This is my insight in my current Tank Support Hybrid build 0/0/30/10/30 completely untraited in spirits but still finding them highly useful to play.

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Posted by: nerva.7940

nerva.7940

in wvw, i use 0/0/20/30/20 build with apothecary gear and altruism runes. with food, i have 65% to boon duration. i use stalker and blue moa for might and protection, sword/horn and shortbow (for proccing sun spirit). my utilites are Healing Spring, Stone Spirit, Signet of Renewal, Sun Spirit and SoN.

on myself i have perma protection, between stone, rolls and the moa. everyone around me has protection more than 50% of the time. horn with my boon duration gives perma fury and perma swiftness. stalker + Healing Spring gives 8 stacks of might.

i pop SoN when we’re pushing forward against a zerg. it can live for a long time. spirit + HS = about 700 HPS for your group (as long as they stack on you). walking spirits is absolutely essential. spirits just dont work without it.

i see the guardian as a defensive boonbot, while the ranger is a much more offensive boonbot.

on paper it sounds amazing. in practice, it’s decent but with many flaws. stone spirit will die quite a bit. you dont have many escapes so youre kinda restricted to very organized groups or zergs. for some idiotic reason, pets give boons on a very small radius, and you cant ask people to stack on your pet when theyre fighting or running away.

reason why eles and guardians are infinitely better support profs is because their boons and heals are fairly mobile and on a low CD. rangers do have some interesting things to offer, like long protection, perma fury and swiftness, and slightly better condition clearance on a longer CD.

Ikiro – 80 Ranger
Umie – 80 Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgLbWtvtzdU0Ho0zto6VnTQ

(edited by nerva.7940)

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Posted by: Chopps.5047

Chopps.5047

in wvw, i use 0/0/20/30/20 build with apothecary gear and altruism runes. with food, i have 65% to boon duration. i use stalker and blue moa for might and protection, sword/horn and shortbow (for proccing sun spirit). my utilites are Healing Spring, Stone Spirit, Signet of Renewal, Sun Spirit and SoN.

on myself i have perma protection, between stone, rolls and the moa. everyone around me has protection more than 50% of the time. horn with my boon duration gives perma fury and perma swiftness. stalker + Healing Spring gives 8 stacks of might.

i pop SoN when we’re pushing forward against a zerg. it can live for a long time. spirit + HS = about 700 HPS for your group (as long as they stack on you). walking spirits is absolutely essential. spirits just dont work without it.

i see the guardian as a defensive boonbot, while the ranger is a much more offensive boonbot.

on paper it sounds amazing. in practice, it’s decent but with many flaws. stone spirit will die quite a bit. you dont have many escapes so youre kinda restricted to very organized groups or zergs. for some idiotic reason, pets give boons on a very small radius, and you cant ask people to stack on your pet when theyre fighting or running away.

reason why eles and guardians are infinitely better support profs is because their boons and heals are fairly mobile and on a low CD. rangers do have some interesting things to offer, like long protection, perma fury and swiftness, and slightly better condition clearance on a longer CD.

The boon sticks for a while so if you sweep around lots of people will get it. I only think the +15% chance is any good in dungeons. What you want to do is trait large aoe on death instead (also comes with larger buff radius). The rune of altruism might not be the best rune for the build, bu it makes sense. You should run warhorn too if you’re not. It’s fun to trait more into beastmaster so then you still get good DPS from the pet while you safely buff the team.

Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”

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Posted by: Wanderer.5471

Wanderer.5471

i haven’t tested it, only theory-crafted, but couldn’t the active of sun spirit (5 second blind) help prevent stomps on allies, and even yourself if you click it before going down.

i’ve been theorycrafting a spirit build today and was something i planned to try to use at opportune moments when i finally get around to playtesting it, i’m sure others could confirm or deny this though, can’t see why it wouldn’t work – although the long activation time would likely make it useless against quickness stomps on allies unless you kept a really close eye on health bars and activated it before an ally went down.