Spirit of Nature should pulse Stability

[Canidae Canis.2861]

With the rework of Ranger Spirits to passively pulse boons, I find it extremely disappointing that Spirit of Nature does not pulse stability. Prior to the patch it would pulse Stability when the grandmaster NM trait Nature's Vengeance was taken - exactly in-line with all of the other spirits. With the change to make the Nature's Vengeance boons baseline on utility and healing spirits it is odd to have the elite without a boon. This is a straight nerf to the utility of this elite. The passive healing is moderate and the 40 second cooldown on the active means it's not part of the normal alacrity rotation, so why not give it stability? It would allow us to compete with Firebrand for stability coverage and healing, which should be a good thing.

[Sebrent.3625]

I think this has two parts to it:

(1) Do they want to continue to allow parties to continue to ignore CC mechanics with stability coverage?

(2) If they did add stability to the Spirit of Nature, what should the min/max uptime be for the stability be?

 

Side notes:

(a) The trait also makes the spirits last longer.

(b) The non-elite spirits are providing a pulsing boon already independent of the trait. It allows for alacrity on the active.

[Baseleader.4128]

I agree with the desire to have stability on druid, that would be very good for the spec, I disagree with your idea of implementation. A boon of the strength of stab should not come through a pulsing effect on having a spirit up. I'd prefer it if they either gave it to one of the pets and their skills (make it an EoD pet so they actually see play). Or otherwise I think putting in on a glyph would make a lot of sense. Just make one of the glyphs basically be SYG, that'd be great. Would also make druid more fun to play as a support in PvP.

[Rysdude.3824]

So, can it still be considered an elite skill when its not elite at all?

[anduriell.6280]

the OP isn’t asking for something new, the request is to bring back something it was there before.

there should not be a problem for pulsing stability in a utility  with a 120 second CD. 
 

[Krispera.5087]

None shall compete Firebrand. It's how they killed Druid in Fractals to make place for FB and Ren. They removed pulsing stability from the elite spirit in the spirit rework. 

[Canidae Canis.2861]

1 hour ago, Sebrent.3625 said:

I think this has two parts to it:

(1) Do they want to continue to allow parties to continue to ignore CC mechanics with stability coverage?

(2) If they did add stability to the Spirit of Nature, what should the min/max uptime be for the stability be?

 

Side notes:

(a) The trait also makes the spirits last longer.

(b) The non-elite spirits are providing a pulsing boon already independent of the trait. It allows for alacrity on the active.

The entire purpose of Stability is to ignore CC mechanics, the boon has no other use. I assume since they left the boon in the game they do want people to have this capability.

While I agree it shouldn't have perma-stability uptime, 3s every 10s or something akin to other passive traits would be better than nothing. Even with 100% boon duration it's still not complete coverage. Or, since the cooldown on the elite is longer than the utilities just add stability to the elite active.

Either way, I think removing a stability source from a class with poor stability access is a big disservice. 

[Sebrent.3625]

That's a fair point on the stability unless they simply haven't gotten around to it for PvE, but that's just a theory and I have nothing else to support it.

If it were to provide stability, do you think it might be better to have it provide it on spirit activation instead of on pulse? 30% uptime has a pretty high chance to not be there when the party truly needs it. Even with 100% boon duration it's 60% which still leaves a sizeable window.

[Canidae Canis.2861]

Yeah, the more we chat about it I think it may be better to have it on activation. Pulse would basically be "oh crap" coverage instead of requiring active input when you know CC is incoming.

[InsaneQR.7412]

Yes

[Teratus.2859]

I agree.

If you're going to make me wait 120 seconds per use on a skill then that skill better be outstanding.

 

I can personally say that almost every Elite skill in that 120-240 second CD category however is laughably bad and I for one refuse to use them in any serious builds.

With exception to Mesmers Time Warp, which isn't bad.

 

The only ones I use are Norn Racial Elites in gimmick builds..

90 second CD is my limit on elite skills, if it goes over that it's not worth taking.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Dadnir.5038]

18 hours ago, Rysdude.3824 said:

So, can it still be considered an elite skill when its not elite at all?

It does have a long CD and it does have very marginal usefulness... I believe it's GW2 definition of an elite skill.

[Lazze.9870]

6 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

It does have a long CD and it does have very marginal usefulness... I believe it's GW2 definition of an elite skill.

Hi Elixir of Ambition. Hi Lich. Hi, buffed Chilled to the Bone. Hi Ghastly Breach.

Oh, I forgot. That's Anet's favorite green class. Not this one, after all they managed to nerf THREE ranger elite skills in one patch. While doing the bare minimum to put down the harb elite a notch.

Let's see. GW2's definition of a non-guardian/necro elite skill. Fixed that for you.

Edit: Imagine if anyone would try to argue this instead of putting down that confused emoji while pretending I'm not 100 % on point 🙂

Edited June 30, 2022 by Lazze.9870

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Would be great, but they won't even add stability to Glyph of Stars let alone a spirit elite.  

They could have done something with it though--the fact it's the only unchanged one (outside of the stab removal) is kind of funny in a bad way.  

[enkeny.6937]

I don't think we need pulsing stability.
They just put the stability back when activating the skill. 
1 group stability not game breaking, but sometimes it is enough. And it is 40 sec cd (30 with alacrity)

[Strider.7849]

I wouldn't mind is Celestial avatar #5 was group stability. I can agree that permanent pulsing stability would be overpowered.. but druid desperately needs access to group stability. Try doing harvest temple for example on a healbrand or alac mech, then do it again on a druid. Even if you manage to perfectly avoid all attacks and never miss your heals at critical moments, your DPS players in subgroup get flopped around everywhere leading to lower overall DPS. I also think returning the stun break on entering CA is pretty much a necessity given that if you have to run full spirits to compete with other supports, you have no stun break and rely on CA#5 for stability.

[anduriell.6280]

You mean it should get their  pulsing stability back, right?

Edited July 14, 2022 by anduriell.6280

[MajinSoul.4512]

On 7/7/2022 at 2:37 PM, Strider.7849 said:

I wouldn't mind is Celestial avatar #5 was group stability. 

That definitely should be a thing

[Erkki.9145]

Hello! I'm just passing by saying that the spirits are terrible and should be replaced by something else asap!

(same goes to warrior's banners)

For example celestial avatar skills could provide alac and stabi. Also some pets could provide some alac or stabi...

And keep in mind that for example revenant has one separate button for full alacricity. Ranger has to sacrifice 3 skill slots for those bad spirits in order to provide full alac

I think it would be great if celestial avatar abilities could provide enough alac and stability for the group, or combined with pet skills. (Thats a way for pets to become more useful)

😊

[enkeny.6937]

On 7/14/2022 at 11:33 PM, Erkki.9145 said:

Hello! I'm just passing by saying that the spirits are terrible and should be replaced by something else asap!

(same goes to warrior's banners)

For example celestial avatar skills could provide alac and stabi. Also some pets could provide some alac or stabi...

And keep in mind that for example revenant has one separate button for full alacricity. Ranger has to sacrifice 3 skill slots for those bad spirits in order to provide full alac

I think it would be great if celestial avatar abilities could provide enough alac and stability for the group, or combined with pet skills. (Thats a way for pets to become more useful)

😊

Why do you feel they are terrible?

Renegade has a button, yes, but they always has to change a full utility line for only 1 skill every time. 

If we can do alacrity with more source, I fear it will like: use all your source to provide the boons in 100% up-time. 
And I don't want the pet doing the boons: If it die, 1 minute cd to use your pet skill again (unless it provide with trait for beast skills), and we can't positions our pets, (because "guard!" was reworked). Like when I tried to give Aegis with white tiger, but for some reason, it was playing with some random mob in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't useful... 

[Erkki.9145]

26 minutes ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Why do you feel they are terrible?

Renegade has a button, yes, but they always has to change a full utility line for only 1 skill every time. 

If we can do alacrity with more source, I fear it will like: use all your source to provide the boons in 100% up-time. 
And I don't want the pet doing the boons: If it die, 1 minute cd to use your pet skill again (unless it provide with trait for beast skills), and we can't positions our pets, (because "guard!" was reworked). Like when I tried to give Aegis with white tiger, but for some reason, it was playing with some random mob in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't useful... 

umm ranger has to sacrifice an entire trait line and skill slots for alacricity... thats a huge dps loss...  Is it great for druids? Yes! But not so for the dps specs.

And again, the ranger pets are useless atm. Thats why I thought it would be better if they provided these essential boon such as alac and stability.

Also the penalty for a dead pet should be taken away (60 secs cd) since the untamed suffers from that so much.

[enkeny.6937]

12 minutes ago, Erkki.9145 said:

umm ranger has to sacrifice an entire trait line and skill slots for alacricity... thats a huge dps loss...  Is it great for druids? Yes! But not so for the dps specs.

And that is what Anet wanted. Look at catalyst quickness. 
 

[anduriell.6280]

On 7/21/2022 at 1:22 PM, enkeny.6937 said:

And that is what Anet wanted. Look at catalyst quickness. 

That's probably a design choice because "NM traitline is a druid one"  mentality from some class designer. 

Nobody asked for Core to get alacrity. Ranger is spammy enough as it is.  Only the raid peeps asked for that but they only use Druid, that new boon should have been shoehorned into the specialization. 

Now Alacrity will impact also the Unplayed and that means Fervent Force trait will eventually be nerfed because of interactions. Same issue as we had with damage multipliers with the Soulbeast and how other classes were negatively impacted by this.