Guild Wars 2

It has no internal CD.

It gives a constant 10% damage boost to 5 people while it is summoned and alive.

NO INTERNAL CD

Uhm, I always see you around the forums supporting rangers. In fact in your post history you talk about useful group utility rangers bring in PvE including frost spirit.

How thoroughly did you test this?
Did you film a certain duration of play with and without spirit?
Was all your shots consitently 10% stronger or just some of them?

I did some testing and it’s as the tooltip says. It’s 10% bigger damage but at a given chance for all hits.
Went to heart of the mists, equipped pvp steady shortbow, and i let auto attack do the testing.

It’s base damage was 54 damage hit. When i popped untraited frost spirit it occasionally hit 59 damage (so said 10% more).
When i traited it for 70% success rate it was inteed hitting for 59 for more then for 54, but it wasn’t 59 all the time when spirit was up. So in general it’s less then 7% given how spirit dies and goes on small cd. Also while it leaves it’s effect for a bit when it dies, i also notice there are few secs from it’s spawning to giving the first stack of the effect to you.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Wait a moment…

Hah! But you have to manually move the Banner around, while the Spirit is… inherently immobile without a trait…

Well, in the end it’s all about the uptime, and banner can only get a 100% uptime with an adept trait, whereas the Spirit can be up 66% of the time… with a 70% proc chance… when traited…

Ok, so the Banner is stronger, but at least it can’t die. Take that OP Spirit!

I love posts like this.

For the ranger: 10% more base damage still doesn’t really get you to par.

For the group: Rangers are not adding layers of group utility.

For the opponent: Killing spirits is pretty darn easy the way most rangers run with them constantly on.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Wait a moment…

Hah! But you have to manually move the Banner around, while the Spirit is… inherently immobile without a trait…

Well, in the end it’s all about the uptime, and banner can only get a 100% uptime with an adept trait, whereas the Spirit can be up 66% of the time… with a 70% proc chance… when traited…

Ok, so the Banner is stronger, but at least it can’t die. Take that OP Spirit!

^ Win

man, you just uncovered another fig leaf of Anet.
I am expecting another “AMAZING change” (nerf) come to ranger next patch.

The main point was that it has no ICD.

But if you want to calculate damage…

Saying that it is less than 7% is wrong. The bonus is less than 7% only if you are constantly attacking something without pause.

It lives for 60s and a 60s fight is a very long one to be honest.

As a plus, one is more likely to use damaging skills while there is a damage buff instead of when there isn’t any.

The banner thing is correct but it also has (or can have) 80% fury up-time and 66% swiftness up-time. It can neither die or vanish by doing from other players.

I only created this thread to tell the people that there isn’t any ICD on FS. Some of them have been discussing about how bad it is because of ICD.

In my opinion, none of the spirits should have an ICD (or a very short ICD around 1 second) and their effects should be shorter. Another problem is that FS favors people with high rate of fire. Same for the other spirits but they aren’t that noticable

solrik.6028:

Another problem is that FS favors people with high rate of fire. Same for the other spirits but they aren’t that noticable

Because FS gives a % damage increase, it doesnt matter how fast your attack rate is. It doesnt favour any speed.

If it gave a flat damage increase (like +100 damage on each attack) it would favour high attack rate, but not with a percentage increase.

solrik.6028:

The main point was that it has no ICD.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Wait a moment…

Hah! But you have to manually move the Banner around, while the Spirit is… inherently immobile without a trait…

Well, in the end it’s all about the uptime, and banner can only get a 100% uptime with an adept trait, whereas the Spirit can be up 66% of the time… with a 70% proc chance… when traited…

Ok, so the Banner is stronger, but at least it can’t die. Take that OP Spirit!

No more should have even needed to be said after this. You know what has better uptime than “having no global cooldown”? Applying a consistent buff no matter what that’s stronger… The fact that it has a proc at all is a DOWN side compared to the banner, let alone needing a kitten icd… (I don’t play ranger) this is just a stupid argument. I’ve never heard anyone complain over frost spirit before..

ronpierce.2760:

I’ve never heard anyone complain over frost spirit before..

Oh, people use to complain about spirits from a capture point pvp point of view. Then spirits got nerfed across the board making them useless again outside of t/sPVP. Now only the extremely niche fringes of the Ranger community run spirit builds outside of spvp. I mean, I see one or two in a three week period in PVE (anywhere from 2 to 10 hours in a day depending)… and when I pm them about it they are running it because they are either just trying it out (post buff/nerf patches) or just bored of running DPS builds.

thefantasticg.3984:

ronpierce.2760:

I’ve never heard anyone complain over frost spirit before..

Oh, people use to complain about spirits from a capture point pvp point of view. Then spirits got nerfed across the board making them useless again outside of t/sPVP. Now only the extremely niche fringes of the Ranger community run spirit builds outside of spvp. I mean, I see one or two in a three week period in PVE (anywhere from 2 to 10 hours in a day depending)… and when I pm them about it they are running it because they are either just trying it out (post buff/nerf patches) or just bored of running DPS builds.

Ehm, spirits recently got a 70% hp boost in PvE; let’s not forget that. And only two spirits were nerfed, sun spirit and storm spirit. As far as I can recall, the only spirits taken in the ranger PvE meta were frost and occasionally stone spirit.

So the skill is bugged? Don’t think so. Maybe the buff is seen on the character but thats just an indicator that the spirit is within range.

I’ve never seen a ranger in spvp or wvw running frost spirit (storm is way better for the rediculous burst damage, especially considering spirit is a condi build), and I don’t think anyone complains about rangers being OP in PvE. What are you saying with this thread?

If that’s changed then the alternative is 10% extra damage on ONE attack every 10 seconds… yeah, nah.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Wait a moment…

Hah! But you have to manually move the Banner around, while the Spirit is… inherently immobile without a trait…

Well, in the end it’s all about the uptime, and banner can only get a 100% uptime with an adept trait, whereas the Spirit can be up 66% of the time… with a 70% proc chance… when traited…

Ok, so the Banner is stronger, but at least it can’t die. Take that OP Spirit!

Lol, quality post right here.

Soilder.3607:

thefantasticg.3984:

ronpierce.2760:

I’ve never heard anyone complain over frost spirit before..

Oh, people use to complain about spirits from a capture point pvp point of view. Then spirits got nerfed across the board making them useless again outside of t/sPVP. Now only the extremely niche fringes of the Ranger community run spirit builds outside of spvp. I mean, I see one or two in a three week period in PVE (anywhere from 2 to 10 hours in a day depending)… and when I pm them about it they are running it because they are either just trying it out (post buff/nerf patches) or just bored of running DPS builds.

Ehm, spirits recently got a 70% hp boost in PvE; let’s not forget that. And only two spirits were nerfed, sun spirit and storm spirit. As far as I can recall, the only spirits taken in the ranger PvE meta were frost and occasionally stone spirit.

Storm spirit was nerfed due to WvW and PvP where they were used as suicide bombs dealing 2×4-8k damage. That darn spirit could litterally kill off the frontline of a hammer train in an instant.

solrik.6028:

The main point was that it has no ICD.

But if you want to calculate damage…

Saying that it is less than 7% is wrong. The bonus is less than 7% only if you are constantly attacking something without pause.

It lives for 60s and a 60s fight is a very long one to be honest.

As a plus, one is more likely to use damaging skills while there is a damage buff instead of when there isn’t any.

The banner thing is correct but it also has (or can have) 80% fury up-time and 66% swiftness up-time. It can neither die or vanish by doing from other players.

I only created this thread to tell the people that there isn’t any ICD on FS. Some of them have been discussing about how bad it is because of ICD.

In my opinion, none of the spirits should have an ICD (or a very short ICD around 1 second) and their effects should be shorter. Another problem is that FS favors people with high rate of fire. Same for the other spirits but they aren’t that noticable

The ICD is to normalize benefit between weapons. Storm spirit doesn’t need one because it’s a percentage chance every attack of receiving the benefit and weapon damage to delay is already normalized to set weapon style damage ratios. It doesn’t overly benefit anything. One could argue that + base damage with how rangers work in glass builds crit and +crit damage is important to bigger hits with the slower weapons.

However at 35% proc chance in 100% combat uptime you notice at most 1 extra fire proc swiftness proc etc and it comes from a slower weapon getting a real bad RNG phase. At 70% chance every weapon will proc the benefit within their window of opportunity set by the ICD. At 35% the faster weapons in a 100% up combat scenario will get on occasion an extra swiftness or flame proc over a slower during the spirits duration. At 70% that change in data goes away and the ICD is having an even impact on slow and fast weapons.

If there was no ICD fire spirits and speed would be very stackable by the fast weapons.

Granted in the real world there isn’t 100% combat uptime so the difference between a 35% proc chance and 70% is noticable but total procs per cast…..You have to be bad to not get those off regardless of weapon.

In terms of reducing say the duration of the fire proc. No it’s about right otherwise it would be overly penalized by minus condition duration.

No ICD would create a large benefit for fast weapons one both swiftness and fire procs and protection proc uptime.

Writetyper.1985:

I’ve never seen a ranger in spvp or wvw running frost spirit (storm is way better for the rediculous burst damage, especially considering spirit is a condi build), and I don’t think anyone complains about rangers being OP in PvE. What are you saying with this thread?

If that’s changed then the alternative is 10% extra damage on ONE attack every 10 seconds… yeah, nah.

What burst damage? I have tested it a few times recently and it seems a little underwhelming (wvw) …and the proc is a joke.

I have to admit I am missing the spirit bandwagon. The only one i have ever found useful was Stone Spirit

Prysin.8542:

Storm spirit was nerfed due to WvW and PvP where they were used as suicide bombs dealing 2×4-8k damage. That darn spirit could litterally kill off the frontline of a hammer train in an instant.

I never really saw a problem with that. It’s not like the spirits blend in – they’re pretty obvious to spot. The game needs more tactical area control skills, and dragging around a suicide bomb spirit was a pretty good way to do that. People need to scurry away and kill it from range. If you don’t get away in time and keep spamming your cleaving melee autoattack, well it’s your own kitten fault. e.g. During the Lupi fight, there are stages where you stack together, stages where you scatter apart. If you just allow everyone to mindlessly stay together all the time, you really are promoting the zerg mentality over tactical thinking and the need to observe what’s going on.

And if you make it so ranged attacks do less DPS than melee, it makes perfect sense to give a ranged attacker skills to discourage opponents from closing to melee range (thus keeping it a ranged vs ranged confrontation).

The problem as I understood it was the damage didn’t scale with your power/condition damage. It was a flat 8k damage even if you were a bunker build. That allowed a spirit ranger to be a high-defense / high-offense (burst) build, which was definitely a problem.

Forzani.2584:

Writetyper.1985:

I’ve never seen a ranger in spvp or wvw running frost spirit (storm is way better for the rediculous burst damage, especially considering spirit is a condi build), and I don’t think anyone complains about rangers being OP in PvE. What are you saying with this thread?

If that’s changed then the alternative is 10% extra damage on ONE attack every 10 seconds… yeah, nah.

What burst damage? I have tested it a few times recently and it seems a little underwhelming (wvw) …and the proc is a joke.

I have to admit I am missing the spirit bandwagon. The only one i have ever found useful was Stone Spirit

http://www.twitch.tv/ostricheggs/c/3023189

Storm spirit doesn’t provide or aid DPS at all. What are you guys smoking? It procs swiftness, that is all.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Storm_Spirit

Lexandro.1456:

Storm spirit doesn’t provide or aid DPS at all. What are you guys smoking? It procs swiftness, that is all.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Storm_Spirit

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Call_Lightning

My bad forgot about active. Even so, that’s crappy damage. One barrage does more. And its a waste of a slot.

Lexandro.1456:

My bad forgot about active. Even so, that’s crappy damage. One barrage does more. And its a waste of a slot.

It can do that twice or even three times. See the twitch link above where an ele dies while a spirit ranger is completely CC’d from burn procs, the pet, and storm spirit.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Your calculation is wrong. It´s not more then a 15% dmg increase. Probably less.

[cools down internally]