Guild Wars 2

Don’t get me wrong. I see the benefits of spirits. I just feel they they don’t have as good of a risk/reward in their use as other utilities … both those of Rangers and of other classes.

The problem, like you have already said yourself is with the limited range on the Spirit of Storm it has to either be close to the center of kiting (where the boss is) or you won’t recieve the buff.

And then other classes will probably provide enough swiftness to make the Spirit completely useless to begin with.

(To add insult to injury, every single warrior banner can provide swiftness in addition to their passive effect if you pick them up.)

Don’t get me wrong. I see the benefits of spirits. I just feel they they don’t have as good of a risk/reward in their use as other utilities … both those of Rangers and of other classes.

Indeed, and I agree.
I’m pretty much saying that last line myself in my previous post on the first page.

And then other classes will probably provide enough swiftness to make the Spirit completely useless to begin with.

I’m sure you didn’t mean that how I’m taking it.
But that sounds like…just because you’re a Ranger any contribution you may have to offer gets counted ‘last’. I mean, I get where the general note of caution is coming from; the Bleed Cap. But buffs don’t have any amplification stats that can cause inferior instances to block superior instances from having an effect, all instances of swiftness are indistinguishable from eachother.

Sorry if I have been unclear.

What i meant is:
Your other party members will probably provide enough swiftness themselves to reach 100% uptime with their weapon/utility skills, so any additional swiftnes is pretty much wasted.

Rengaru.4730:

Sorry if I have been unclear.

What i meant is:
Your other party members will probably provide enough swiftness themselves to reach 100% uptime with their weapon/utility skills, so any additional swiftnes is pretty much wasted.

And that’s just not true.

I guess mesmer’s little problem of low swiftness uptime is a myth? There’s other examples too like elementalist burning auras or a heal to keep swiftness up in which case more team swiftness helps alleviate those skills for other purposes.

While Mesmer’s low access to swiftness (except for Temporal Curtain) might be true, I can’t follow you with Elementalist (Updraft/Windborne Speed/Elemental Attunement)

Also you have to look at this as a team.
Any two of these can apply 100% (or very close to it) party wide swiftness in a somewhat organized group.

• Ranger with Bird-family Pet or Warhorn
• Warrior with Banner or Warhorn
• Guardians with Staff or “Retreat!”
• Mesmers with Focus
• Elementalist with Elemental Attunement or Windborne Speed

At which point any additional swiftness becomes merely a buffer, but it’s just not worth the utility slot.

I don’t think responding to that last one is going to lead to a very productive line of discussion. Now we’re getting levels of coordination and it’s relationship to the theoretical impact of small ground targeted area of effects, there’s no way that’s going to end pretty. But, that’s fine. Because, ultimately, that’s not quite where I was I was going with that train of thought anyway.

The value of contributing swiftness being lesser once you’ve hit permanent up-time is one thing, what I’m calling attention to is the way it seemed as though the value of contributing swiftness was considered lesser simply by virtue of it being applied by a Ranger. It’s like Ranger swiftness options are terrible not because of any particular limitation but just because we should be permanently operating on the assumption Joe Groupmate already called dibbs.

Hi,

Warrior Here.

I’ve read this entire post. I can tell that most of you look at spirits and banners through a vacuum and not at how effective they can be outside of just damage.

I am NOT here to say which is better. They each have their own uses and are used differently. I think we can agree that both banners and spirits are not as useful in spvp/tpvp…so i’m only gonna speak about them in a pve/wvw sense.

1 – Mobility

Banners are definitely not as mobile as you guys make it seem. Nearly 90% of the time in dungeons or wvw, the only one that picks up a banner to run with it is the warrior himself, regardless of if they are 4 banners or not. In a stationary fight, banners probably have the upper hand as the buffs are constant. In a mobile fight, banners will be left behind all the time (rather have my weapon skills than banner skill). Spirits (traited) will follow you. So they are always there.

2 – Ability to die

Banners CANNOT die. Spirits CAN. To many of you, this automatically makes banners better in that department right? Not necessarily. Spirits can be killed…but that also means they can take dmg (body block) for you as well. In pve, this is mildly beneficial. In pvp, however, this is a HUGE plus. Four spirits + pet + ranger = 6 targets. Thats 1 more than the aoe limit. As a warrior, ranger pets already are annoying as they sometimes take the eviscerate meant for the ranger and my killshot is almost guaranteed never to hit even without dodging as the pet is always in my face. Add in 4 more targets and the ranger than is Bulls charged HB’ed is probably not even gonna take that much damage as the spirits take the brunt of the force. Is this ideal for pvp? heck no…but neither are banners.

3 – Lastly, buffs

Damage wise, banners give out more damage (debatable) than spirits. But what about defense? Utility? Banners give stats. If we were to compare banners and spirits 1 by 1 (wrong thing to do btw). We would see that they level out in effectiveness over time. For example…banner of defense give 170 toughness and vitality. Signet of Stone give 3 seconds of protection every 10 seconds. How can you even begin to compare those. Protection is 1300+ toughness IIRC. And not only that, it can cripple and immobolize your foe periodically. How do you factor in the fact that the enemy is physically not capable of walking up to you and hitting you to the effectiveness of spirits. So as you can see the utility and defense are different on both, but still useful.

Ofc we will also compare damage. And Yes…warriors banners probably provide more damage than spirits. But why is this shocking? Warriors are all about damage. Just from looking at some of their utilities you can tell we were supposed to buff the damage of the group. From group might to group fury, we make you hit harder. Just like a guardian buffs the defenses of the group. That is the warriors niche. A rangers niche is more utility driven than just straight forward damage. So it should come as no surprise that banners provide more dmg than spirits. Spirits however, can blind, cripple, immobilize, and chill. Not to mention you can still use your weapon skills while doing all of that. So comparing just the dmg boost from banners and spirits doesn’t account for the entire usability of the two sets of utilities.

Again, i am not saying one is better than the other. Just letting you know to take into account ALL aspects before writing one set or the other as less effective.

Rengaru.4730:

(Updraft/Windborne Speed/Elemental Attunement)

Can’t have Updraft and Windborne speed at the same time. But with 100% boon duration (yeah right…) you can get it perma by swapping in and out of Air with Windborn speed, but Updraft has too long a cooldown.

I mainly speak of Elementalist though because of the professions, that’s one that I know more about. If you want to build for any semblance of offense in PvE, sacrificing speed is one way so less boon duration, and longer cooldowns on attunement swaps and swiftness isn’t going to be up permanantly. I tend to get around that with a glyph build though…

As for the other stackable swiftness, it’s all circumstantial. Such as Symbol of Swiftness, it will grant swiftness if you can run over it before it expires which isn’t always going to happen, or simply saving Windborn Speed to remove immobilize/chill/cripple when that effect is prevalent…or the fact no warrior wants to pick up a banner in mid-fight (which has a ‘cast’ to pick up) to use a 1sec cast for swiftness…

I’m not particularly defending Storm Spirit (I still hold my previous opinion on it from my first post: who designed this skill and for what?) just saying, if the utility for it is there, it’s not a particularly intrusive way to provide swiftness to your party while in combat.

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Can banners not die? By the way, has anyone tested spirit range?

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Priceless.

Daemon.4295:

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Priceless.

:p I didn’t derail it with banners but I did make it worse. This isn’t about Sebrent either, who was instigating just as much. Sebrent…pot calling kettle black much?

Seriously though, anyone know spirit range? Been wondering that.

Chopps.5047:

Daemon.4295:

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Priceless.

:p I didn’t derail it with banners but I did make it worse. This isn’t about Sebrent either, who was instigating just as much. Sebrent…pot calling kettle black much?

Seriously though, anyone know spirit range? Been wondering that.

I’m pretty sure it’s ~900 but I can double check…

Durzlla.6295:

Chopps.5047:

Daemon.4295:

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Priceless.

:p I didn’t derail it with banners but I did make it worse. This isn’t about Sebrent either, who was instigating just as much. Sebrent…pot calling kettle black much?

Seriously though, anyone know spirit range? Been wondering that.

I’m pretty sure it’s ~900 but I can double check…

Video or at least a pic would be appreciated if you and your rig can handle it. Video always being the best in my opinion, though.

Sebrent.3625:

Durzlla.6295:

Chopps.5047:

Daemon.4295:

Sebrent.3625:

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.

Priceless.

:p I didn’t derail it with banners but I did make it worse. This isn’t about Sebrent either, who was instigating just as much. Sebrent…pot calling kettle black much?

Seriously though, anyone know spirit range? Been wondering that.

I’m pretty sure it’s ~900 but I can double check…

Video or at least a pic would be appreciated if you and your rig can handle it. Video always being the best in my opinion, though.

Pic would work well for this, just gotta go drop spirit under a golem in the mists and dodge roll until I no longer have the buff xD.

Actually, I have found that line of columns near the golems to be a great place for testing distance. Drop it at one end and move from one set of columns to the next until the buff is no longer present.

I’d prefer video as you don’t immediately lose the buff from spirits when you run out of range of them.

Sebrent.3625:

Actually, I have found that line of columns near the golems to be a great place for testing distance. Drop it at one end and move from one set of columns to the next until the buff is no longer present.

I’d prefer video as you don’t immediately lose the buff from spirits when you run out of range of them.

No you do not which is why i made sure to take a picture showing that i have 5s remaining on the buff instead of only 2 or 3s.

The range is just a few steps back from a triple dodge roll, so a tiny bit over 900yds

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.

Incorrect math. I responded with more incorrect math.

Spirit AOE Actives (in the case of Frost, Sun, and Stone) need to be 200% larger area.

Stone is fine. But a blind that only hits things within two feet of it is fairly useless (without GM trait, even worse).

Ugh, in tPvP….

Warrior banners are bad…
No one runs them ever, I mean that I have ever seen in the past 2~ months.

Spirits are worse utilities, ranger is just a better base class so can get away with throwing away utilities.
Spirit buffs are mildly better than the banner ones* but spirits have about 8~k health… and eat up a number of traits just to be mediocre…
That’s not worthwhile.

Like most anything OP, you can make a spec work in pug PvP.
There is just a matter of how much of a handicap you have to play through…
In competitive play, such extreme handicaps (like from a spirit build) isn’t acceptable short of being pretty much the best player this game has right now.
———————————————-
*-a traited frost spirit is pretty much always a lil worse than the precision banner though, the guy doing math on the front page is just bad at math.

Annoyingly, even the guy two posts above me…. is doing it wrong.
A 10% dmg bump from spirits, makes your attack do 10% more dmg…
A 10% more crit dmg bump on a spec with 100% crit chance IS NOT A 10% DMG BUMP.
Crits do a base of 50% bonus dmg so doing 10% more crit dmg makes you do 60% bonus dmg on crit, which is actually just a 6.6% dmg bump.

At near any crit chance and dmg, the banner ends up giving roughly 9-11% more dmg.

For anyone interested, you have to calculate the total before dmg (crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) then divide the total after buff (new crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) by it to get the real % dmg buff.

Chrone.6809:

Spirit AOE Actives (in the case of Frost, Sun, and Stone) need to be 200% larger area.

Stone is fine. But a blind that only hits things within two feet of it is fairly useless (without GM trait, even worse).

Agree. Activated effects of spirits are only really semi-useful if you have them follow you around, but that may be intended. However, their activated effects needs shorter cd and they need to bring more bang for the buck – in short, be more useful.

Passive effect of spirits needs to be extended A LOT.

I tend to think it’s the HP mechanic that’s killing the range, not that the range itself that is lacking. I’m pretty sure 900 is the biggest range AOE buffs have.

garethh.3518:

Annoyingly, even the guy two posts above me…. is doing it wrong.
A 10% dmg bump from spirits, makes your attack do 10% more dmg…
A 10% more crit dmg bump on a spec with 100% crit chance IS NOT A 10% DMG BUMP.
Crits do a base of 50% bonus dmg so doing 10% more crit dmg makes you do 60% bonus dmg on crit, which is actually just a 6.6% dmg bump.

At near any crit chance and dmg, the banner ends up giving roughly 9-11% more dmg.

For anyone interested, you have to calculate the total before dmg (crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) then divide the total after buff (new crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) by it to get the real % dmg buff.

Let’s just go ahead using your simple formula with the easiest one. No crit chance, no crit damage.

Spirit: (0 + 1.07) / (0 + 1) = 1.07 = 7%
Banner: (0.08*1.65 + 0.92*1)/(0 + 1) = 1.052 = 5.2%

So, spirits do win out sometimes – It’s not 9-11% better all the time

EDIT: But you’re right, I was doing it a bit wrong. Looks like the spirit is only better if you have around 15% or less crit chance base.

I’d rather see spirits have the range they had in GW1, or close to that range anyhow.

Yes, I’ve been a little bit off with my math.

So I gave excel a little workout and came up with the following results:

• In the best case an untraited Spirit of Frost provides 2.3% less extra damage than Banner of Discipline.
• In the worst case an untraited Spirit of Frost provides 28% less extra damage than Banner of Discipline.
• In the best case a traited Spirit of Frost provides 1.2 more extra damage than Banner of Discipline.
• In the worst case a traited Spirit of Frost provides 25% less extra damage than Banner of Discipline.

Some things to consider:

• The lowest Crit Chance you can get at level 80 is 4%
• The increase in damage from the Spirit is not affected by Crit Chance or Crit Damage, it’s a static multiplicator (x1.035 / x1.07) that can be aplied at any point in the damage calculation.
• At above 100% chance to crit, the usefulness of the Banner drops considerably (but it is still better than the traited spirit)

Vox Hollow.2736:

I tend to think it’s the HP mechanic that’s killing the range, not that the range itself that is lacking. I’m pretty sure 900 is the biggest range AOE buffs have.

I think the Passive Buffs are fine range-wise.

It’s about those active effects that have terrible AoE range. Perhaps the actives should just hit the Ranger’s Target, à la pet mechanics.

How about that?

Obscure One.4357:

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).

I would say that the combo field on deploy is perhaps too much paired with a blast finisher, and not entirely practical in the field since the spirits should be placed away from mobs…but I totally support the idea of giving us blast finishers on spirit skills, most of them are ‘blast’ effects anyway and this wouldn’t all of a sudden make spirits OP (although the mobile trait would greatly increase their utility).

Twiista.1689:

Hi,

Warrior Here.

I’ve read this entire post. I can tell that most of you look at spirits and banners through a vacuum and not at how effective they can be outside of just damage.

2 – Ability to die

Banners CANNOT die. Spirits CAN. To many of you, this automatically makes banners better in that department right? Not necessarily. Spirits can be killed…but that also means they can take dmg (body block) for you as well. In pve, this is mildly beneficial. In pvp, however, this is a HUGE plus. Four spirits + pet + ranger = 6 targets. Thats 1 more than the aoe limit. As a warrior, ranger pets already are annoying as they sometimes take the eviscerate meant for the ranger and my killshot is almost guaranteed never to hit even without dodging as the pet is always in my face. Add in 4 more targets and the ranger than is Bulls charged HB’ed is probably not even gonna take that much damage as the spirits take the brunt of the force. Is this ideal for pvp? heck no…but neither are banners.

This is something I noticed yesterday in EB. EBay was attacking Anza with a large group. I was the westward side flanking the EBay mass. I noticed a ranger with three spirits out, all moving together. I zeroed in on him but as I attacked with Axe/Torch, S/D the spirits were getting in the way of splitblade or absorbing a ricochet. Granted I was trying to kill the lil buggers but to a small extent they acted like a mini shield. Granted they can take only a few hits but that maybe what prevents the ranger from being killed before they can retreat and heal up/reset fight.

Just sharing something I observed.