Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to ask why it is that like 1% of rangers run spirits expecially in pvp. I know that that they have there downside but what build doesnt. I have found Amazing success with them fully traited in tpvp,spvp, and even amazing duel 1v1 success. I’ve heard alot of bad things in other forum posts and this last patch to me i can really feel a difference in them being even better. just wanted to kow if someone could point there finger on why there not so popular O.o? cause its by far my most survivable build ive been able to run along with about 2900 power which is respectable so its not like im not putting out damage on my bunker. (looking for real answers so if i know if im wasting my time or not not insults or trolling lol ^^ thnx for any help)

Abraxius.6429:

Just wanted to ask why it is that like 1% of rangers run spirits expecially in pvp. I know that that they have there downside but what build doesnt. I have found Amazing success with them fully traited in tpvp,spvp, and even amazing duel 1v1 success. I’ve heard alot of bad things in other forum posts and this last patch to me i can really feel a difference in them being even better. just wanted to kow if someone could point there finger on why there not so popular O.o? cause its by far my most survivable build ive been able to run along with about 2900 power which is respectable so its not like im not putting out damage on my bunker. (looking for real answers so if i know if im wasting my time or not not insults or trolling lol ^^ thnx for any help)

i cant talk on sPvP basis… but for me who usually does the WvW, for that environment the spirits are way too out of my control / too immobile / to squishy

i can not compare having them to not having them as they usually get disintegrated so fast

This game is all about position. The fact is, most people are scared to practice running spirits. They really aren’t that bad, thank you for inspiring me to use them more. Fyi, I’ve been using frost spirit in molten facility and arah with success. Just don’t use them during a big aoe boss fight and they do fine, untraited, so long as you place them well.

A good place for a spirit is out of LoS of enemy and, if possible, on elevated ground.

They just dont bring enough to the field, especially compared to the Warrior banners.

• Frost Spirit – 35% (70% traited) for +10% Damage
  3.5% (7% traited) overall increase in damage

• Banner of Discipline – 170 Precision (~8% Crit Chance), 15% Crit Damage
  ~13% increase in damage for players without extra Crit Damage
  ~21% increase in damage for players with 100% extra Crit Damage

Also banners can not die, are mobile without traiting for it and can be traited to apply permanent regeneration.

Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

Chopps.5047:

This game is all about position. The fact is, most people are scared to practice running spirits. They really aren’t that bad, thank you for inspiring me to use them more. Fyi, I’ve been using frost spirit in molten facility and arah with success. Just don’t use them during a big aoe boss fight and they do fine, untraited, so long as you place them well.

A good place for a spirit is out of LoS of enemy and, if possible, on elevated ground.

agreed, but all of which you said is undoable if you are mainly doing large group WvW… on the other hand they can be viable in instances with careful application as you have stated…

Chopps.5047:

Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

Your comment is useless.

What excactly does this change about the fact that Warrior banners are innately better (by factor 4-6) and even traited Spirits are worse (by factor 2-3).

The issues with the spirits when comparing them to banners are:

• Their bonuses are less
• They are harder to make use of

When something is harder to use, it should give a better reward than the easier thing to use. This is not the case. We are currently given a harder to use skill that gives less reward.

Can spirits be useful? Yes. It’s just harder to make them so and their usefulness is lackluster compared to easier to use skills of other classes.

Rengaru.4730:

Chopps.5047:

Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

Your comment is useless.

What excactly does this change about the fact that Warrior banners are innately better (by factor 4-6) and even traited Spirits are worse (by factor 2-3).

I just thought pointing it out in the first place was sort of irrelevant. Few warriors run healing power, in my experience.

But you want to debate so let’s debate. You forgot to include banner of discipline CD because spirits are 100% uptime. The ball’s in your court.

Seyyah.6135:

Chopps.5047:

This game is all about position. The fact is, most people are scared to practice running spirits. They really aren’t that bad, thank you for inspiring me to use them more. Fyi, I’ve been using frost spirit in molten facility and arah with success. Just don’t use them during a big aoe boss fight and they do fine, untraited, so long as you place them well.

A good place for a spirit is out of LoS of enemy and, if possible, on elevated ground.

agreed, but all of which you said is undoable if you are mainly doing large group WvW… on the other hand they can be viable in instances with careful application as you have stated…

Yeah I hear that a lot and rarely test so I’ll try it tonight and get back to you.

I can tell you why I don’t use them. While some of them could seem beneficial to a team of 5, the individual bonuses they provide are downright terrible. Assuming you run stone, sun, and frost spirits, you give yourself a chance to burn on hit, a >10% damage increase, and a chance to gain protection on hit. I know rangers other skills aren’t amazing, but you are trading stun breakers, condi removal (something the ranger terribly lacks, especially without a pet), escape mechanisms, and cc for this lack luster team presence. If anyone decides they want you dead, you are pretty much at their mercy (not saying you will lose every fight, but a skilled player will prove difficult). Then you have to look at their team bonuses. A low duration random protection. A moderate duration burn (only good on condi builds). A percent damage increase (no icd). The only ones I would ever consider bringing anywhere are frost spirit and sun spirit (I use sun spirit on my trap ranger for underwater combat, untraited of course). Then you have to consider the bonuses up time as it is impossible to proc them every 10s (or in frost spirits case, do you want 35% chance or 70% per attack) and this essentially forces your build 30 deep into a traitline that again provides almost no defense or offense for you.

tl;dr: A good ranger is an alive ranger.

The reason spirits are used so little is that the ranger has a certain set of “correct” utility choices and a large assortment of “wrong” ones relative to their build. Spirits are unwieldy, squishy, and without being traited not very potent. The passive effects aren’t stronger than the Signet passives (25% movement, 10 second condition remover, etc.) and it’s activated ability isn’t as potent as traps which can be traited for shorter cooldowns, ground targeting, and double condition duration. Hence if you’re building a ranger for conditions you’re better off with traps, and for survivability better off with signets and survival skills, spirits are simply a “wrong” choice for the vast majority of builds who aren’t sinking points into the vitality trait line to gain access to spirit traits that are going to be situationally viable. Now perhaps if spirit activated skills created long lasting combo fields it’d be a different story, but as is they need a lot more work than the recent +60% health and +20% buff chance from the trait to be a “correct” utility choice for 99% of ranger builds.

Chopps.5047:

But you want to debate so let’s debate. You forgot to include banner of discipline CD because spirits are 100% uptime. The ball’s in your court.

Sure, let’s debate…

…but first, this is just for the sake of argument.
We both agree that banners outclass spirits, right?

Untraited

• Warrior banners last 95/120 seconds untraited.
  Ignoring factors such as out of combat travel time, the overall damage increase for Warrior Banners untraited is around 10% for non-crit players and 17% for crit players

• Ranger spirits last 60/60 seconds.
  Ignoring the fact Ranger spirits can die reducing their uptime to under 100% and the requirement for a Grandmaster trait for them to be moveable to a different battlefield, they still increase the damage by 3.5% untraited or 7% traited.

Introducing adept traits

• The Adept level trait “Inspiring Banners” for warrior increases Warrior banners uptime to 100% bringing the damage increase back to 13% – 21%

• The Rangers adept trait “Vigorous Spirits” doubles the spirits health, merely increasing the chance for a 100% uptime (still no guaranteed uptime)

So with both classes investing 10 points for their skills we are at

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 3.5%, immobile, killable

Moving on to master traits

• None for Warrior

• “Spiritual Knowledge” doubles the proc chance for Spirits

So for 20 points (optional for the warrior if he doesnt want to use the Grandmaster trait) we have

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 7%, immobile, killable

And finally Grandmaster traits

• Warriors with “Inspiring Battle Standard” will provide permanent regeneration.

• “Spirits Unbound” is the only way to make Spirits mobile, but increases the risk of them getting killed by the enemy.

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable, permanent AoE regeneration

• Ranger : 7%, mobile, easy killable

Your move :P

Derive the math on the banner including non-crit hits and CD because without that, it’s hard to make a fair comparison.

I’d like to add one more thing to Rengaru’s points …

The buffs given by Warrior banners are UNIQUE. There has to be another warrior with the same banner in the group for them to be useless.

The buffs given by 3 of the 4 Ranger spirits are NOT UNIQUE. Other classes already applying plenty of burning, swiftness, and/or protection can make the bonuses from 3 of the 4 spirits much less beneficial if not completely useless.

Chopps.5047:

Derive the math on the banner including non-crit hits and CD because without that, it’s hard to make a fair comparison.

That makes no sense at all…

You can’t just ignore the chance of ever critting, thats not how math works.

(Its like saying “Rangers Frost Spirit does nothing, cause there is a chance of it never procing”)

And I even calculated the damage increase with cooldown in the worst case (for Warrior) scenario.

Please just ignore Chopps, he does this in every thread he can.

Chopps.5047:

I just thought pointing it out in the first place was sort of irrelevant. Few warriors run healing power, in my experience.

A free lunch is still a free lunch even if it’s just a cheese sandwich.

Spirits largely have Passives that are Support and the Actives that are Control.

So inevitably you make comparisons with Banners and find the Support lacking, or our other Control-base utilities and find the Control lacking. It’s easy to not think that much of something, when you’re only thinking of half of it! And normally I’d just kind of chock that up to people being people, comparing apples and oranges in the vacuum of forum theory….

But the way the HP mechanic is working out in practice, these are fair comparisons.
You use Spirits for one effect or the other, not both at the same time. If you want to maximize the Support, you take Spiritual Knowledge and stuff it away in some hidey hole and limit the Control applications. If you want to use it as Control you take Nature’s Vengeance and kamikaze the poor things before their Support has much of a chance to do any good.

So at the end of the day; using Spirits is a choice between having a pale imitation of your utilities or having a pale imitation of other people’s utilities.

And that sucks.

Rengaru.4730:

Chopps.5047:

Derive the math on the banner including non-crit hits and CD because without that, it’s hard to make a fair comparison.

That makes no sense at all…

You can’t just ignore the chance of ever critting, thats not how math works.

(Its like saying “Rangers Frost Spirit does nothing, cause there is a chance of it never procing”)

And I even calculated the damage increase with cooldown in the worst case (for Warrior) scenario.

It makes perfect sense because you don’t crit every time. You can’t directly compare the banner to the spirit for this reason (spirit is a flat increase, the other is an increase on crit and one does not crit every time except for 100% crit chance builds).

I have no source on your numbers because you never give one.

Go ahead and talk kitten but if you are going to make claims without proof, go home. I got slammed for pulling that before now it’s your turn.

Ryuujin.8236:

Chopps.5047:

I just thought pointing it out in the first place was sort of irrelevant. Few warriors run healing power, in my experience.

A free lunch is still a free lunch even if it’s just a cheese sandwich.

I want math not analogies. He could be right but until I see a DPS to DPS comparison, your analogy doesn’t even apply.

Straegen.2938:

Spirits cannot dodge, get AoE’d to death, absolutely no control of them and the player has to take an entire trait line to make them remotely useful. They are also on a class that needs every good trait to be competitive.

Even with the recent patch buffs they still kitten a ranger in solo and WvW fights. Maybe they are good in PvE, but the Ranger already excels in solo PvE without them.

Warriors die too! I can’t tell you how many I’ve rezzed. Spirits can be positioned to not die. It’s really easy.

Go watch the live stream (prerecorded) of molten facility we ran (sitting on a couch gaming) where I test spirits. I had one spirit death from testing it in a poor position (I announced I would purposefully put it in a bad place to see how it did). Some players in the group went down more than once. Banners aren’t so great when downed, are they?

Rengaru.4730:

Sure, let’s debate…

…but first, this is just for the sake of argument.
We both agree that banners outclass spirits, right?

Untraited

• Warrior banners last 95/120 seconds untraited.
  Ignoring factors such as out of combat travel time, the overall damage increase for Warrior Banners untraited is around 10% for non-crit players and 17% for crit players

• Ranger spirits last 60/60 seconds.
  Ignoring the fact Ranger spirits can die reducing their uptime to under 100% and the requirement for a Grandmaster trait for them to be moveable to a different battlefield, they still increase the damage by 3.5% untraited or 7% traited.

Introducing adept traits

• The Adept level trait “Inspiring Banners” for warrior increases Warrior banners uptime to 100% bringing the damage increase back to 13% – 21%

• The Rangers adept trait “Vigorous Spirits” doubles the spirits health, merely increasing the chance for a 100% uptime (still no guaranteed uptime)

So with both classes investing 10 points for their skills we are at

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 3.5%, immobile, killable

Moving on to master traits

• None for Warrior

• “Spiritual Knowledge” doubles the proc chance for Spirits

So for 20 points (optional for the warrior if he doesnt want to use the Grandmaster trait) we have

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 7%, immobile, killable

And finally Grandmaster traits

• Warriors with “Inspiring Battle Standard” will provide permanent regeneration.

• “Spirits Unbound” is the only way to make Spirits mobile, but increases the risk of them getting killed by the enemy.

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable, permanent AoE regeneration

• Ranger : 7%, mobile, easy killable

Your move :P

You forgot the best part. Banners have a blast finisher for water fields.

Aridia.3042:

Rengaru.4730:

Sure, let’s debate…

…but first, this is just for the sake of argument.
We both agree that banners outclass spirits, right?

Untraited

• Warrior banners last 95/120 seconds untraited.
  Ignoring factors such as out of combat travel time, the overall damage increase for Warrior Banners untraited is around 10% for non-crit players and 17% for crit players

• Ranger spirits last 60/60 seconds.
  Ignoring the fact Ranger spirits can die reducing their uptime to under 100% and the requirement for a Grandmaster trait for them to be moveable to a different battlefield, they still increase the damage by 3.5% untraited or 7% traited.

Introducing adept traits

• The Adept level trait “Inspiring Banners” for warrior increases Warrior banners uptime to 100% bringing the damage increase back to 13% – 21%

• The Rangers adept trait “Vigorous Spirits” doubles the spirits health, merely increasing the chance for a 100% uptime (still no guaranteed uptime)

So with both classes investing 10 points for their skills we are at

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 3.5%, immobile, killable

Moving on to master traits

• None for Warrior

• “Spiritual Knowledge” doubles the proc chance for Spirits

So for 20 points (optional for the warrior if he doesnt want to use the Grandmaster trait) we have

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable

• Ranger : 7%, immobile, killable

And finally Grandmaster traits

• Warriors with “Inspiring Battle Standard” will provide permanent regeneration.

• “Spirits Unbound” is the only way to make Spirits mobile, but increases the risk of them getting killed by the enemy.

• Warrior: 13% – 21%, mobile, unkillable, permanent AoE regeneration

• Ranger : 7%, mobile, easy killable

Your move :P

You forgot the best part. Banners have a blast finisher for water fields.

True and that’s one of the best things about banners. But did you not notice that he starts the premise with the conclusion with no proof? “We agree banners outclass spirits (in terms of pure DPS)”. All I asked for was the math.

Also, I added the stuff in parenthesis because it’s important to point out what you’re actually trying to compare. I mean, you say “outclassed” and I say “for what build”. The reason I say that is because just like neglecting blasts, we should acknowledge there exists a secondary on spirits.

Another good thing about spirits is that you can heal them and they can stack buffs, although I am not familiar with studies on this. I will check in mists and report back but I’ve definitely seen might proc on a spirit before.

Chopps.5047:

I want math not analogies. He could be right but until I see a DPS to DPS comparison, your analogy doesn’t even apply.

You’re welcome to do the math yourself, but it doesn’t take algebra to see the benefits of spirits do not even remotely contend with the benefits of banners. They are junk utilities that have no place on 99% of ranger skill bars. In literally every way they are under powered and it would appear you are the only one claiming otherwise, thus the burden to provide proof is placed on your unaccepted and dismissive claims.

Guy makes claim

People ask for proof

Guy says “You’re welcome to do math yourself but it doesn’t take algebra to…blah blah blah I’m right you’re wrong”

Good one; I’m done here.

Chopps.5047:

I have no source on your numbers because you never give one.

Go ahead and talk kitten but if you are going to make claims without proof, go home. I got slammed for pulling that before now it’s your turn.

Its called math, try to use it some times.

I have given all the numbers

• Frost Spirit – 35% (70% traited) for +10% Damage
• Banner of Discipline – 170 Precision (~8% Crit Chance), 15% Crit Damage

And even calculated the overall damage increase for you.

3.5% (7% traited) overall increase in damage

~13% increase in damage for players without extra Crit Damage
~21% increase in damage for players with 100% extra Crit Damage

I could continue this battle of wits… but you came unarmed, so I’ll leave it at that.

+8% crit chance with +15% crit damage.

Crit damage is 150% + crit damage stat.

.08 * (1.5+0.15) = 0.132 = 13.2%

The math has now been done for you. Continue to discuss. I still agree that spirits are lackluster compared to banners.

Keep fighting Chopps! Show these heathens that spirits are superior to banners. Almost every ranger I know of run spirits. Warriors don’t use banners at all. They are useless and takes time to cast, time that could’ve been used for 100b!

13.2% untraited banner versus 3.5% untraited spirit and 7.5% trait spirit … the untraited banner is giving almost twice as much as the traited spirit, can’t be killed, and can be moved without traits.

and banners take 1 second to cast while spirits 1.5 seconds the list goes on and on.
=P

I only play on 2 classes, my warrior and ranger, and from my personal experiences banners are far superior to spirits.

On my warrior I run a full banner build in places like CoE. I use banner of strength, banner of discipline, banner of tactics, and the elite. This essentially provides the team with 170 strength, condition damage, precision, healing power, 10% boon duration, 15% critical damage, and regeneration that stacks upwards of 30 seconds throughout the entire fight.

When the elite is used it provides fury, swiftness, and might stacks to the entire party at a 40% duration increase thanks to 30% boon duration from traits and 10% from banner of tactics. You can also use this to easily revive allies.

Spirits on the other hand provide some burning (which does not stack intensity), protection 33% of the time, and 7.5% damage. The elite spirit is much harder to revive allies with than the banner and you practically need to be right next to it to receive the healing which puts it at great risk from attacks and isn’t that useful to your team unless everyone stands right next to it.

But if spirits were indestructible they could easily be able to to compete with banners. If you used melee weapons and got in the enemies face with the spirits following you, used their active skills, and the elite was healing you and your allies, they could be awesome!

The biggest thing I find as a downer for spirits is the trait support for them (sPvP wise).
3/4 of them have a 10 second CD after use, meaning that your master trait for increased proc chance maybe saves 1 second in their overall reuse time. Pretty much making it a worthless trait (however the argument can be made that it saves 5s because 1s per player affected). The increased health is not a large deal because you can place it at a rather large distance and still have it be effectively applying it’s passive. Taking the GM trait or the additional master trait are both horrible as they get your spirits killed easily, and the second one increases the radius of their active ability, which… does it around the spirit.

• If the spirits could throw their active ability after aquiring a trait it could be useful if the pet CD was also lowered (only for utilities not for elite).
• If Spirits Unbound was able to be used similar to the turret pickup (CD Reduction, while still keeping the cd ticking while the spirit is alive) for engies it would allow more mobility for rangers while still allowing them to be placed in strategic areas.
• The proc chance trait should be reworked to add duration to sun(condi)/stone(boon)/storm(boon) and increased damage to Frost spirit. An Overpowered bonus idea would be that the conditions/boons added by spirits would proc from the ranger’s attribute’s instead of the character that procs it (you should not do this its OP).

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Thnx for the answers guys ive read pretty much all of them all the way through and seems that spirit’s are not that great maybe im just a little better skilled with em then some others cause i do good in all phases but, math and science has been presented thats leaning me to something else lol. in PvP i will prob never change caus im all support/bunker/regen and theyre just to helpful. But PvE i actually think of going maybe rabid i always like the idea of cons over dmg.^^ But please keep the info coming even the random warrior banner over spirits debate XD which makes no sense cause i have no control over what banners can do sense i dont play warrior but its still helpful. I do have one defence though when in pvp ppl says they can be 1 or 2 shotted with aoe’s, ur forgetting they move with you and if u just dont stand in the aoe neither will they.

They often will run through an AOE that you avoided. Their movement is random as they follow you … similar to your pet.

Sebrent.3625:

+8% crit chance with +15% crit damage.

Crit damage is 150% + crit damage stat.

.08 * (1.5+0.15) = 0.132 = 13.2%

The math has now been done for you. Continue to discuss. I still agree that spirits are lackluster compared to banners.

0.08 * (1.5 + 0.15) * (95/120) = 0.1045 FTFY Sebrent :P

*I never said one was better than the other. Remember, this kitten all started with

Chopps.5047:
Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

followed by this gem from Rengaru:
“Your comment is useless…What excactly does this change about the fact that Warrior banners are innately better (by factor 4-6) and even traited Spirits are worse (by factor 2-3).”

You warriors got you jimmies rustled and attacked me for pointing out a tiny fact that you broke a neck vain over. I mean, this guy said 3 to 4 times better and NO ONE attacks him for being off by a large margin—not even a correction from Sebrent. Why? Hmm…maybe it’s just easier to bandwagon and pick on Chopps?

I wrote a big long post rehashing all the issues raised with spirits in the past and explaining them again but I’m sure several people in this thread have read them.

Spirits can work, and by work I mean you can get the boost from them in some situations and they can live through almost any fight in the game. They can as in it’s possible. The reality of spirits is that they usually won’t live and even if they did the things they do to help are pretty bad compared to support skills from other classes (shouts, banners etc). Spirits need a redesign, not vitality buffs and less RNG in their proc chance. Their current design has too many significant issues and it’s not rewarding enough to deal with them.

Spirits really need some quality of life tweaks. For something so squishy (even when traited – personally, I think they need a 50% base HP boost, and the trait will double this new, larger HP pool), why don’t they function as necromancer minions? They should persist until killed, when you must then re-summon. For most normal PvE circumstances, this means that spirits will always be around. For dungeons and WvW, you’ll have to be more cautious.

I actually think the spirit’s active abilities should be completely reworked. My proposal is that they all have their own ground-targeted fields. Stone spirit places a poison field, sun spirit places a fire field, frost spirit places a frost field, and storm spirit places a lightning field. How I envision it is this: you summon a spirit, get the passive effect, order it to place a combo field at X location, it does so, and then returns to your side. Simple, effective, but not without risk.

You may notice that I failed to mention the spirit of nature. “A persistent spirit with that constantly heals and can revive allies and remove conditions on a 30 second cooldown? OP!”

Some more changes need to be made to this particular elite skill, IMO. Reduce the cooldown to 120 seconds. The passive effect – the health regen – should remain. To keep the skill balanced for the lower cooldown and persistent nature of the spirit, the new active skill is on a 25 second cooldown. It will remove a condition from all party members (including pets/minions) and also act as a stun breaker for the ranger. The revive was the big lure for this particular skill, but its functionality was already rather broken. This gives a spirit build much needed tools to combat conditions and stuns.

As has been mentioned, the current actives of the spirits simply fill no role – they are inferior traps. If you want traps, roll with some traps. Spirits should allow the ranger to fulfill a support roll. Right now, spirits are just a poor man’s signet combined with a poor-man’s trap, with all the worst aspects of a minion thrown in for good measure.

IMO, spirits (non-elites) are getting close to “just OK” in dungeons. I tried it out because I was excited about frost spirit now giving a 7% damage boost to the group. And 10% damage reduction from stone spirit is decent, too. While they do hold up better to damage, their actives are still ridiculously slow and not even all that useful. I was also bothered by the cast time. I can’t do damage during the time that I’m re-casting the spirits. I also don’t like that their benefits only extend for the standard 500 (or is it 600?) range. There was no way I could buff my whole group and position correctly to maximize longbow damage at the same time. Ultimately, I felt like I was still contributing more to the group with a 30/30/10/0/0 build just to maximize damage.

Spirits are still complete garbage in tPvP. Their benefits are no where near good enough for how fast they’ll get eaten by massive AoE. The same arguments about slow activation and cast time apply to an even greater extent in tPvP. And since tPvP often consists of battles with less than 4v4, your spirits will rarely benefit even the majority of your group (the buff range exacerbates this further). I feel that for spirits to be sufficiently beneficial in tPvP, they would have to be downright awesome in a PvE dungeon setting.

Chopps.5047:

0.08 * (1.5 + 0.15) * (95/120) = 0.1045 FTFY Sebrent :P

*I never said one was better than the other. Remember, this kitten all started with

Chopps.5047:
Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

followed by this gem from Rengaru:
“Your comment is useless…What excactly does this change about the fact that Warrior banners are innately better (by factor 4-6) and even traited Spirits are worse (by factor 2-3).”

You warriors got you jimmies rustled and attacked me for pointing out a tiny fact that you broke a neck vain over. I mean, this guy said 3 to 4 times better and NO ONE attacks him for being off by a large margin—not even a correction from Sebrent. Why? Hmm…maybe it’s just easier to bandwagon and pick on Chopps?

Dude…
…at this point I think you are just a troll.

If you really want to continue this conversation, I sugest you read my posts first, cause I already did all the math for you (including the calculation in your post).

If you don’t understand a specific part you could even ask me to explain, but don’t assume im wrong just cause you can’t read/understand what I wrote.

Ah, you’re correct, I forgot to factor in the up-time of the banner.

It still stands that for 10 points you get almost double what you get for 20 points though. For 10 points, it’s 100% up-time on the non-elite banners, which brings us back to my earlier math. For 20 points, spirits proc 35% more (total 70%).

Additionally, the up-time of spirits is not guaranteed to be 100%. They can die.

Rengaru.4730:

Chopps.5047:

0.08 * (1.5 + 0.15) * (95/120) = 0.1045 FTFY Sebrent :P

*I never said one was better than the other. Remember, this kitten all started with

Chopps.5047:
Warrior regen without healing power is useless.

followed by this gem from Rengaru:
“Your comment is useless…What excactly does this change about the fact that Warrior banners are innately better (by factor 4-6) and even traited Spirits are worse (by factor 2-3).”

You warriors got you jimmies rustled and attacked me for pointing out a tiny fact that you broke a neck vain over. I mean, this guy said 3 to 4 times better and NO ONE attacks him for being off by a large margin—not even a correction from Sebrent. Why? Hmm…maybe it’s just easier to bandwagon and pick on Chopps?

Dude…
…at this point I think you are just a troll.

If you really want to continue this conversation, I sugest you read my posts first, cause I already did all the math for you (including the calculation in your post).

If you don’t understand a specific part you could even ask me to explain, but don’t assume im wrong just cause you can’t read/understand what I wrote.

I read just fine, thank you (summa kitten laude BSME). I challenged you to show the math because you were wrong about your 4x better statement and I wanted to slam you for it. But we had to wait for Sebrent to ruin it for me.

You are the troll. Who comes in a ranger forum question on spirits in PVP, derails it with a banner discussion, then insults my intelligence? You.

You both are out of line and violating the code of conduct. Shape up fellas and get back on topic. Hint: the topic isn’t either of you.

As it stands with looking at spirits by themselves:

• Untraited you have an immobile pet that can die fairly easily and provides some boon/condition that may be redundant with those provided by others in your group
• Traited w/ 10 Nature Magic, it is less likely to die due to an HP increase, though I haven’t noticed it being all that great
• Traited w/ 20 Nature Magic, you have a higher proc chance. This is nice for the one spirit without an internal cooldown, but not really needed for the others.
• Traited w/ 30 Nature Magic, it is now a mobile pet. This can be a blessing or a curse depending on the content. It makes it easier to keep them in range of you and you’re group but now you can’t park spirits in a safe spot and their random movement when following you can get them killed even if you avoid damage

Now, looking at the spirits in comparison with banners:

• Banners with 0 traits provide more than Spirits with 30 trait points.
• Banners with 0 traits can be moved, while only Spirits with 30 trait points can move.
• Banners are indestructible so their up-time is guaranteed, while Spirits are destructibe so their up-time is not guaranteed.
• Banners provide unique buffs that no other class can provide, while Spirist provide boons/conditions that several class can provide (Frost Spirit being the exception).

One thing… according to the wiki, banners can be destroyed:

“Banners are a warrior skill type that apply buffs to their allies. Once summoned, banners function as an environmental weapon. They can then be replanted to a different location to follow the flow of the battle. Once planted in the ground the banner can be targeted and destroyed.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banner

Eh people don’t like AI movement too. People say that MM Necros aren’t viable, (pvp/tpvp) but I find huge success with a build I put together. 1v1 I only struggle with mass aoe like HB warriors/Elementalists, other than that people are often awed by how ridiculous it is. People will tell you x doesn’t work all the time, you just have to prove them wrong.

Eh, idk why people hate spirits, my spirit build runs 2 MB Hyenas, a Rock Dog, Sword + Warhorn, healing spring, 4 spirits with the traits Vigorous Spirits, Natures Vengeance, and Spiritual Knowledge, i -also- play it more like i do my engi AKA DONT BUNCH YOUR SPIRITS UP ON THE kittenING POINT the sooner people learn to position spirits the sooner they’ll figure out they’re not NEARLY as bad as people think…

Do spirits need work? Yes, yes they do need work, their actives aren’t that great due to how it’s bloody impossible to hit anyone with the kittening things without killing the spirit (give us a ground target on where the skills cast PLEASE anet), but the bonuses are great. Perma Swiftness? ~50% uptime on protection? Perma Burning? Sounds like some pretty great buffs to me!

Not to mention that they can also be used as a portable meat shield, which has saved my sorry green kitten more times than i can count (IE: “I’ll stun him with concussion shot!” hits spirit), which you can’t even say a banner does…

PS: I’m not saying spirits don’t need buffs, they certainly do, however people seem to gloss over the fact that you can’t carry all 4 of your kittening banners around with you without multiple trips/people, banners can’t be used to protect the herd, banners do not buff structures (engi turrets ftw?) and banners can only affect up to 5 people MAX, where a spirit applies its 6s buff every 3s and will throw it on people not affected by their ICD first, which is 10s which means they will apply it to 15 people every 9s, that’s triple what your stupid banners can do.

Sebrent.3625:

Now, looking at the spirits in comparison with banners:

But can you really straight compare all of the banners?

I can see that Discipline is going to be the hallmark non-elite banner, but how effective is Tactics and Defense? Granted banner of Strength is almost 5 stacks of might that doesn’t count to the stack limit so for offensive buffs, Warrior will beat Ranger always…but Warrior pretty much beats EVERY profession when it comes to offensive buffs.

How about defensive support? While I wouldn’t categorize Storm Spirit as defensive (honestly, who designed that thing?), Stone Spirit is going to beat out Tactics and Defense banner combined. Even if the team has Protection, Stone Spirit will be passively increasing uptime of Protection so long as your party hits something.

Tactics banner can’t do as much with just 10% boon duration which would increase a 6sec protection boon to 6 and a half seconds whereas adding 3 seconds of protection stacked is 50% protection duration.

Leo G.4501:

Sebrent.3625:

Now, looking at the spirits in comparison with banners:

But can you really straight compare all of the banners?

I can see that Discipline is going to be the hallmark non-elite banner, but how effective is Tactics and Defense? Granted banner of Strength is almost 5 stacks of might that doesn’t count to the stack limit so for offensive buffs, Warrior will beat Ranger always…but Warrior pretty much beats EVERY profession when it comes to offensive buffs.

How about defensive support? While I wouldn’t categorize Storm Spirit as defensive (honestly, who designed that thing?), Stone Spirit is going to beat out Tactics and Defense banner combined. Even if the team has Protection, Stone Spirit will be passively increasing uptime of Protection so long as your party hits something.

Tactics banner can’t do as much with just 10% boon duration which would increase a 6sec protection boon to 6 and a half seconds whereas adding 3 seconds of protection stacked is 50% protection duration.

Just adding onto this, Storm Spirit only -appears- lack luster (it’s active flat out sucks don’t get me wrong) but that swiftness with 30pts in NM is kitten near perma (if not -is- perm) which makes closing/opening gaps extremely easy as well as getting out of AoEs without using your dodge, making it so you can use your endurance for more useful things.

Oh yeah, PRO TIP: The way ranged attacks “track” their target is based on how fast they’re going in one direction it assumes they will keep heading in that way so if you have perma swiftness it’s going to be aiming the attack ~33% further from where you’d go without swiftness making it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to dodge ranged attacks by simply strafing back and forth as you run essentially making you unhittable until you get into melee range.

The issue isn’t really about Spirits vs Banners, but spirits vs other utilities, to which they do not measure up. Among Ranger utilities the signets have stronger passives and potentially game changing activated skills, and with an equivalent investment in traits traps have huge ground targetable radius’ that create combo fields, recharge faster, and double inflicted condition duration. Now this is not to say spirits should be on par with both, quite the contrary, spirits are seemingly meant to be the middle ground between these utilities which in lies their underwhelming performance. The game rewards optimizing a build to do one thing better than another, and since spirits don’t allow for that meta they are a wrong choice for most builds. If not built specifically to be used, they are outmatched by other options as they have little to no untraited allure.

The issue that compounds their un-usability is they do not provide condition management, stun-breaking, or combo finishers. Now if they instantly dropped a combo field when you activate their skill and that little animation delayed ground slam delivered a blast finisher in that field then we’d be talking about some of the best utilities you could get on a ranger (especially since Rangers do not have blast finishers outside of an AI controlled pet skill).

In basic terms there are just better skills for Rangers to use that have more synergy with their build and more benefit to party/zerg/tourney groups.

Storm Spirit’s buff has decent uptime, but honestly I think the real satisfaction from the thing comes when you get warhorn in on action.

All by itself the swiftness is in fits and spurts, and it dies off after combat which is partially when you’d want swiftness. But with warhorn providing a swiftness that closes the gap between applications the buff starts to build as it stacks duration. You not only get smooth perma swiftness in combat, but you can end it with a minute plus still on the timer whose rate of decay can be made slower still with additional warhorn applications outside of combat.

Storm Spirit gets alot of flak for it’s passive, but honestly I think it’s up there with Frost Spirit on how well it works. It’s rewarding to pull off in a way that’s highly visual to not only yourself but others. It synergizes well with other obvious support-related build options. It has clear feedback when you’re doing it right and clear feedback when you’re doing it wrong. It performs well in fights that require kiting movement, and of course that isn’t every fight but where it is relevant it has a solid handle.

Then you get Storm Spirit popped in an instant when you inched it five centimeters closer to the epic AOE beatdown the boss is giving, because you want to be sure you’re hitting everybody or you’d like to make some use of the world’s most vanilla active effect ever. And suddenly you want beat your head against a wall all over again.