Guild Wars 2

Those all sound like good ideas, especially the pet AoE damage and spirit changes.
I’ve never had any PvE survival problems that didn’t stem from my own sloppy mistakes but the lack of group utility is something that always stood out. Healing Spring is certainly good, but it isn’t enough.

Chopps.5047:

Richard.1498:

This is an excellent update for us, especially with the signets and pet stats/skills/ai changes. The only ‘nerf’ with S&R is pretty well justified too.

Spirits still seem a bit on the neglected side with no ICD changes, but I’ll give them a test around various places to see how the hp/proc% buffs play out.

Frost spirit has no CD

I was referring to the others, should have mentioned that.

This is an excellent update for us, especially with the signets and pet stats/skills/ai changes. The only ‘nerf’ with S&R is pretty well justified too.

Spirits still seem a bit on the neglected side with no ICD changes, but I’ll give them a test around various places to see how the hp/proc% buffs play out.

Shh, no tears. Only dreams now.

Had a few thoughts on how to improve spirits/general ranger group utility lately after testing out what we already have (or lack, technically) .

• Make spirits undamageable
• 60s cooldown
• Ends after 40s passive or on active use

Sun Spirit
Passive = 35% chance to gain might and apply burning on crit
Active = creates fire field and blinds foes in range
Frost Spirit
Passive = 35% chance to inflict vulnerability on crit
Active = creates ice field, chills foes and gives protection to allies in range
Storm Spirit:
Passive = 25% chance to interupt and gain quickness on crit (might need an ICD on that)
Active = creates lightning field and dazes foes in range.
Benevolent Spirit (my naming conventions are unrivalled)
Passive = boons gain 15% duration and allies gain 10% more healing,
Active = creates water field, gives retaliation and restores 50% endurance
Spiteful Spirit (because screw necros)
Passive = conditions gain 15% duration and allies gain 10% more condi dmg
Active = creates poison field and inflicts weakness on foes in range

Assuming spirits couldn’t be targeted (and they shouldn’t be if banners aren’t breakable), traits would be fine as they are if Vigorous Spirits was changed to increase effect range. Maybe even change them to spirit ‘totems’ that can be moved around in a similar manner. Banners buff stats, spirits give boons/conditions. A Grandmaster trait to extend duration/reduce cooldown would be good. Should only effect 5 allies in range in addition to the player (or 6 if pets count as allies, I forget) to avoid WvWvW abuse.

I already had this typed up and am a little tired right now to properly consider the numbers, but on paper it looks like using a spirit would be handy, and actually traiting a build around them would be great. Spirits as they are just don’t work; they die from a funny look and in any PvP they are targetted on sight.

It’d be nice if somebody could point out any obvious flaws in this that I’m not thinking about , but as much as I don’t like the idea I feel like it’s a waste of time speculating. An entire profession with this many problems isn’t getting fixed any time soon (not when there are new backpacks to be thinking about designing).