My proposed solution for Alacrity generation

[RagingRube.2540]

Anyone who's played one of the less-loved support builds (the ones that spam their utilities off cooldown to provide a vital boon) knows that it's not a fun playstyle, and definitely feels like a bandaid fix to allow more classes to function as supports while better options are devised (we hope).

 

Anyway, spirits on ranger are not fun to use for Alacrity in their current state, and I propose the following mechanical change;

Spirits could provide alacrity when hit by a burst heal (ie any heal that's not regen ticks), with a cooldown per spirit. This would cover the same design space (spirits providing alacrity) while playing more into druid's typical healer role, and providing a sort of minigame for them to upkeep alacrity (seems like it would be fun with the new ally-target skills, and give you good reason to use them), whilst leaving the flip skill available for its intended utility or for repositioning the spirits (the other part of the minigame which can be fun to manage, which is lost when you have to spam these skills). I think this fits the class well mechanically, and could be made to work on Soulbeast as well with a change to make Eternal Bond heal your spirits.

 

Things to consider:

-I have no idea how hard this would be to code, probably a nightmare

-There may need to be some UI element for each spirit so they can be easily targeted (would suck trying to click them in a stack of 10 or even 5 players)

[Beddo.1907]

This idea doesn't really do that much. You basically exchange one mechanic for another to get a fraction of control over spirit positioning, which in not a lot for the coding that would need to be done.
Spirits need a full rework at this point, because they got old after many years, while new better and simpler skills were added.

[Jonas.2079]

I'd prefer it to be something like this; 

Spirits follow you by default, with all boons (including alac) pulsing from the spirit at the 3s interval we currently have.  This lends itself more to the style of running around with your army of pets and spirits and would feel much less clunky as you won't constantly have to use the actives for the spirits to "keep up". I'd say that the base alac duration should be 1 second, meaning that with 50% BD you just barely make it with 2 spirits. 

 

Spirit active abilities are now ground targeted and warp the spirit to the selected location, applying their active effect (heal for water spirit, daze for storm spirit, etc.). The spirits remain in this location and no longer follow you. However, the utility skill flips over to a skill that functions just like "return to me" does for pets, and upon usage the spirit will follow you again. This flipover skill is available for as long as the spirit active is on CD, so you always have the option to return the pet to follow mode. 

This system would give Druid back the ability to deal with mechanics while still providing its core effects to the group. It would give you the ultimate control of the spirits, while also having the ultimate convenience of them autofollowing you if you want. You wouldn't have to waste the spirit active abilities to provide alac, and as such you won't have to deal with the long and clunky cast animations (which should probably be quickened even with this solution) . 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Jonas.2079

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

I honestly would just rather have a skill that casts a "boon burst" for each spirit, get rid of the summoned spirit stuff. It holds spirit skills back in every mode to at least some degree, whether it's small with pve just having them be clunky or large where they're basically unusable in pvp and wvw.

[anduriell.6280]

There is a lot of problems with having Alac on core utilities:

• Ranger does not need or really benefit from Alac. Aside from elites the rest of the skills don't have long cooldowns.
• While the generation is on Core utilities the boon duration will be total garbage. 
• UnFun forced to use Alac to have some real use means the elite spec needs a full rework. 
• Druid should have Alac in one of the normal glyphs. That is the only real solution here, doing anything else is just beating the bush around and doing more harm than good. 

And yeah everybody already knew this alac was just total garbage. Tempest got 6 seconds baseline Alac in a 8s cooldown attunement swap if i am not mistaken. Compete with that. 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

6 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

 

And yeah everybody already knew this alac was just total garbage. Tempest got 6 seconds baseline Alac in a 8s cooldown attunement swap if i am not mistaken. Compete with that. 

Tempest gets it on overload. Attunement swap+Singularity timing (overload "pre-cooldown")+overload cast.