Spirit rework

[Cytoplasma.8216]

Spirit's need to be changed.

They are currently only useful during raid's. On many fractal's they just die before they reach the boss. The alactrity app is too long.

In my opinion, it is burdensome and sometimes even unbearable. Once the spirit dies, I cannot apply alacrity.

Why didn't Dev make the same changes it made to the warrior banners?

All in all, I think spirits should be changed - to be useful in wvw, pvp, open world and closed instances - just like warrior. 

[Jonas.2079]

Resposting my suggestion from another thread;

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) . 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, Jonas.2079 said:

 

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) . 

Spirits have 7k HP at level 80. This solution does not fix spirits in pvp and wvw scenarios

 

As boring as it is, just make spirits into something like the Guardian spirit weapons. You drop the spirit on cast, it drops a bunch of boons (i.e. frost spirit drops 12 might for 12s baseline and then alacrity for 12s baseline, with an alac increase to help fix the issue we currently have of "same skill spam for boons"), and then it leaves and goes on CD. 900 range, 360-600 radius.

[Jonas.2079]

3 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Spirits have 7k HP at level 80. This solution does not fix spirits in pvp and wvw scenarios

 

As boring as it is, just make spirits into something like the Guardian spirit weapons. You drop the spirit on cast, it drops a bunch of boons (i.e. frost spirit drops 12 might for 12s baseline and then alacrity for 12s baseline, with an alac increase to help fix the issue we currently have of "same skill spam for boons"), and then it leaves and goes on CD. 900 range, 360-600 radius.

 

I disagree that this would fix the issue; youre still forced to waste the active part of the skill (heal, daze, etc.) in order to provide alacrity. As you say it would also be boring and remove spirits' uniqueness. 

 

I do agree that the health is an issue though. One way to fix it would be to say that spirits should not take damage from any other source than the health they lose per interval. After all, how can a spirit be struck? But it does make sense that a spirit has a limited time in the physical world. Healing your spirits should be able to keep them around though, and it makes sense that Druid has the best synergy with spirits from a flavor standpoint. Anyone can heal them so they can be made to stay alive forever even if you arent a healer yourself. You could also just say that spirits cant die at all but just follow you forever, but i kind of like the flavor of needing to heal them and think it adds to the uniqueness of the spirit skill type. 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

5 hours ago, Jonas.2079 said:

 

I disagree that this would fix the issue; youre still forced to waste the active part of the skill (heal, daze, etc.) in order to provide alacrity. As you say it would also be boring and remove spirits' uniqueness. 

 

I do agree that the health is an issue though. One way to fix it would be to say that spirits should not take damage from any other source than the health they lose per interval. After all, how can a spirit be struck? But it does make sense that a spirit has a limited time in the physical world. Healing your spirits should be able to keep them around though, and it makes sense that Druid has the best synergy with spirits from a flavor standpoint. Anyone can heal them so they can be made to stay alive forever even if you arent a healer yourself. You could also just say that spirits cant die at all but just follow you forever, but i kind of like the flavor of needing to heal them and think it adds to the uniqueness of the spirit skill type. 

There would still be use in pvp and wvw though. You might not hit yourself with the alacrity, but if you've got anyone in the fray that you want to help out you can still hinder their target while helping them out with alacrity.

 

Having them still be summons makes the main issue  that completely reworking the skill would solve stick around- "spirit/utility" spam. With Druid, the issue is something that was there (Astral Power filling before fights, since you used to need to have someone /gg to get your Druid Fluids), was fixed (since AP now fills when you start an encounter), and now it's back (pre summon spirits, which stalls encounter starts, and then use the skill). It also solves the issue of encounters randomly having specific attacks that hurt player AI completely screwing up your alacrity generation, since your healing won't spill over to the spirits nearly fast enough on your burst heal skills while you're healing your subgroup.

 

I'd rather have skills be easier to use by fixing some outdated mechanic related to them (in this case, being a stationary summon that was a relic of balancing their moving unique buffs, as they're now just boons and them being a summon isn't really that useful for boons. Making them moving means that you take your boon generation off the group for mechanics, making it effectively a well means at the very least you can give your group that's on the boss (i.e. sabetha, flak kiting druid needs to give alacrity at specific points in the fight and you can't work around that need) boons.

 

Yes, it would be a bit more boring. But at the very least it wouldn't have clunky changes to deal with.

[Mell.4873]

How about Spirits are like Turrets, were you can pick them for a reduced cooldown. Along with this mounting triggers this pick-up ability aswell.

The active ability should be instance cast but have a longer delay or maybe just leave it the same. 

[Jonas.2079]

9 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

There would still be use in pvp and wvw though. You might not hit yourself with the alacrity, but if you've got anyone in the fray that you want to help out you can still hinder their target while helping them out with alacrity.

 

Having them still be summons makes the main issue  that completely reworking the skill would solve stick around- "spirit/utility" spam. With Druid, the issue is something that was there (Astral Power filling before fights, since you used to need to have someone /gg to get your Druid Fluids), was fixed (since AP now fills when you start an encounter), and now it's back (pre summon spirits, which stalls encounter starts, and then use the skill). It also solves the issue of encounters randomly having specific attacks that hurt player AI completely screwing up your alacrity generation, since your healing won't spill over to the spirits nearly fast enough on your burst heal skills while you're healing your subgroup.

 

I'd rather have skills be easier to use by fixing some outdated mechanic related to them (in this case, being a stationary summon that was a relic of balancing their moving unique buffs, as they're now just boons and them being a summon isn't really that useful for boons. Making them moving means that you take your boon generation off the group for mechanics, making it effectively a well means at the very least you can give your group that's on the boss (i.e. sabetha, flak kiting druid needs to give alacrity at specific points in the fight and you can't work around that need) boons.

 

Yes, it would be a bit more boring. But at the very least it wouldn't have clunky changes to deal with.

 

I'm not sure if you read my suggestion thorougly; I've suggested that the spirits follow you and pulse all the boons including alacrity, but using the active ability would place them in a location to pulse their boons there instead, in addition to using the active portion of the skill. The active then flips over to a "return to me" skill that you can activate if you want them to follow you again. This solves the issues of requiring us to spam our utilities to provide alacrity, which your solution doesn't as you would need to use the active off CD to give alac. What I suggested lets you use your heal, cc, etc. when you need to but still provide alac without requiring animations. It also lets you provide boons from a distance when needed. 

I also suggested that the spirits would be completely invulnerable to all damage, cc, everything except the health they naturally lose per interval, which can still be healed in order to maintain the spirits indefinetely. Since they also follow you they wouldn't die easily. Summoning a couple of spirits at the start of the fight isn't a big deal to me, especially now that they move with you. 

 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

3 hours ago, Jonas.2079 said:

 

I'm not sure if you read my suggestion thorougly; I've suggested that the spirits follow you and pulse all the boons including alacrity, but using the active ability would place them in a location to pulse their  boons there instead, (cut for conciseness)

I also suggested that the spirits would be completely invulnerable to all damage, cc, everything except the health they naturally lose per interval, which can still be healed in order to maintain the spirits indefinetely. Since they also follow you they wouldn't die easily. Summoning a couple of spirits at the start of the fight isn't a big deal to me, especially now that they move with you. 

 

In their current state as boon giving utilities, spirits are as barebones as anet could get them without killing druid. Having more leeway with the boon duration would be great, and they're not going to let that happen with them pulsing boons. Making them into one and done casts allows anet to fiddle with their boons rather than leave them completely static. Having to precast spirits is one of my least favorite parts about playing druid, which is my pve main- it's the CA generation issue all over again, and it's worse this time since if you do it too early they just die because someone went afk without telling you. It's be a massive QoL change to just not have to do this in the first place.

 

Making them completely invulnerable would just add a massive level of power creep, since they still have hindering capabilities that would be annoying at best in pvp and wvw. I don't think I need to mention how much people hate playing against AI in pvp and wvw, imagine how mad people would be if an invulnerable spirit killed them.

[Yogurt Goblin.5934]

Spirits or Alac should just be moved to Druid. Either make glyphs grant alacrity, or replace glyphs with spirits.

Obviously they'll still need fixing, but I would like to see Soulbeast be able to grant quickness with stances and it can't do that till core loses alacrity.

[Kilometal.6495]

Spirits feel weak and clunky to use. I don't know if there is an ideal solution, but I will just list my problems with them.

1. They die way to fast, even in the context of pve. And that is with the trait equipped. Without it, they die even faster.
2. They are immobile as the active skill that moves them has 20s CD, which has to be spammed for alacrity. Coupled with point 1, this means you can't get them out of hostile aoes. I think they might benefit from responding to your F3, the one that calls your pet to your location.
3. Boons are pulsed around spirits rather than you. This may be just me, but a while back when they were pulsed around the ranger, it allowed some degree of mobility as I could cast them aside and do my own things instead of hogging around the spirits, which was a very nice excuse for enemies to throw aoe at me and hit spirits as collateral damage.
4. The boons they pulse are rather inconsequential. Protection is nice, and fury interacts with remorseless, but the rest just doesn't cut it. I suspect there is a discrepancy between how devs and player value boons.
5. Spirits without the trait are terrible. I guess I am just repeating point 4, but how many of us equip spirits without the trait? Spirits need to be useful as a stand alone utility. It doesn't help the recent design trend seems to be "spam utility skills of category INSERT THE BLANK to grant alacrity/quickness" while removing everything else from said category.  Yes chronomancer wells, I am talking about you.
6. Spirit summon has 20s CD and 1s cast time. Before the rework, spirits passively gave unique and highly valued buffs, so the CD and the cast time were justified. But now, spirits only give common boons. It raises the question if we still need them given all the budgets have been moved from passive pulse to active skills. I think either cast time or CD need to be reduced, preferably both.

[Levetty.1279]

On 11/2/2022 at 11:26 AM, Jonas.2079 said:

Spirits follow you by default

I wish you wouldn't repost it because this idea is terrible and would still result in clunky unfun skills that will still be terrible in most places. Only marginally better then the current set.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

29 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

I wish you wouldn't repost it because this idea is terrible and would still result in clunky unfun skills that will still be terrible in most places. Only marginally better then the current set.

And even then it'd only really arguably be better.

 

If you ever have to leave stack with this as druid, you could just end up dropping prot and vigor.

[Jonas.2079]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:55 PM, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

And even then it'd only really arguably be better.

 

If you ever have to leave stack with this as druid, you could just end up dropping prot and vigor.

 

I mean don't you still need to do this in the current setup? Your spirits need to stay with the group to provide buffs, and alac requires yourself to stay with the group. I preferred the "follow by default but can be placed where you want if needed" version because at least most of the time you don't have to even think about them and you could save the actives for when they are needed rather than spamming them off CD to maintain alac.

Your suggestion to make them simple ground-targeted abilities that give you everything at once is not only boring and arbitrarily removes a unique ability tyoe, but it also does not change the basic gameplay loop that currently feels bad; Sure, you won't have to precast which is nice, but you will be forced to spam your spirit actives off cooldown to maintain boons. No-thought, clunky cast time, wasted potential of the active ability. Utility skill actives should by and large be reactive abilities that you use for utility. I want to use CC for breakbars, not randomly to upkeep alac. 

A diffrent idea I had was that instead of spirits following you, you could make a sort of "move em when you want" version that is kind of a mix of our suggestions. The spirits dont need to be summoned, they are just always available if you have spirits slotted. They are now flipover skills. The first skill summons/repositions the spirit to a ground target where it stays and pulses all its boons until otherwise commanded. This skill would have a very short or instant cast time. The flipover skill is the active part, like CC on storm spirit. It stays available for ~3 seconds, at which point the repositioning skill takes over again. The actives have their own internal ICD similar to what we have today. 

This would let you reposition spirits so frequently that you shouldn't have big problems, while not requiring you to recast them if you don't neeed to. We don't waste the actives either. The repositioning being instant means that you can still quickly use your active heal or CC when needed, even if it is a flipover skill. 

 

Spirits could have health or they could not; like i said, the minigame of healing them is kind of cool but honestly it probably would not be OP if spirits were just invulnerable and the health mechanic is removed. If need be you could just get rid of their damage if getting killed by invulnarable spirits really is a thing people fear, but really the actives are just like any other utility skill. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Spirits should follow you, but not like before where they walked (although that's my favorite visual in the game).  With today's game it'd make more sense if they were wisps around you like Staff #2.

Then, they pulse boons around the ranger instead of some random area you set them in, and also should just pulse 4s of alacrity by default every 15-20s.  

Color code them so the enemy knows what spirits you are using, and not only do you have a cool looking theme'd idea, but you also have mobile spirits that can't die and have useful pulsing of alacrity.  

EDIT: Since the spirits pulse alacrity no matter what now, could always rework the NM GM so that if you take it, you can have more than one spirit active at a time.  Otherwise, you'd have to choose one to use (on a 20s CD or whatever it is now).  

Edited November 9, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Spirits should follow you, but not like before where they walked (although that's my favorite visual in the game).  With today's game it'd make more sense if they were wisps around you like Staff #2.

Then, they pulse boons around the ranger instead of some random area you set them in, and also should just pulse 4s of alacrity by default every 15-20s.  

Color code them so the enemy knows what spirits you are using, and not only do you have a cool looking theme'd idea, but you also have mobile spirits that can't die and have useful pulsing of alacrity.  

EDIT: Since the spirits pulse alacrity no matter what now, could always rework the NM GM so that if you take it, you can have more than one spirit active at a time.  Otherwise, you'd have to choose one to use (on a 20s CD or whatever it is now).  

Having them be ground targeted imo would be better. A lot of people seem to think that having it pulse around the ranger would help when doing mechanics, but plenty of the things a druid would do (dhuum kite, greens on dhuum, flak kite, and more) that take you off stack. While it would be nice to have them follow, having them flash pulse and be gone would be better since you can dump your boons and be back off stack quickly.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Having them be ground targeted imo would be better. A lot of people seem to think that having it pulse around the ranger would help when doing mechanics, but plenty of the things a druid would do (dhuum kite, greens on dhuum, flak kite, and more) that take you off stack. While it would be nice to have them follow, having them flash pulse and be gone would be better since you can dump your boons and be back off stack quickly.

 

That's just Druid though and only in Raids.  Pulsing around the ranger would be better in: sPVP, WvW, Open World Metas, Fractals, Strikes...

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

That's just Druid though and only in Raids.  Pulsing around the ranger would be better in: sPVP, WvW, Open World Metas, Fractals, Strikes...

If you picked a ground target and then dumped out your boons it would benefit every mode, just saying.

 

Think about it. Max boon duration, drop your 9 might+alac, protection+alac, and regen+alac, along with those spirit's normal active effects, and then not worry about it for ~20s. Wouldn't alleviate "utility spam" that ranger has to deal with, but its not like there's no other specs/profs that have to deal with utility spam.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

50 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

If you picked a ground target and then dumped out your boons it would benefit every mode, just saying.

 

Think about it. Max boon duration, drop your 9 might+alac, protection+alac, and regen+alac, along with those spirit's normal active effects, and then not worry about it for ~20s. Wouldn't alleviate "utility spam" that ranger has to deal with, but its not like there's no other specs/profs that have to deal with utility spam.

 

Spirits pulse though.  

Take healing spring for example, you have to stand in it to get any meaningful regen or cleanse and that a lot of times isn't possible.

This is what I imagine 'ground targeted' spirits are like.

It's way more thoughtful play to activate the 'spirit effect' when you need to and then either use it selfishly, or stand by allies.  Not to mention with the abundance of well/AoE/field spam, ground targeting would be super muddy compared to seeing actual color-coded wisps to know what's going on.  

In short, we aren't mechanists, we don't need 'boon spam' off one button press, it's not a healthy design route by any means.  

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

9 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Spirits pulse though.  

Take healing spring for example, you have to stand in it to get any meaningful regen or cleanse and that a lot of times isn't possible.

This is what I imagine 'ground targeted' spirits are like.

It's way more thoughtful play to activate the 'spirit effect' when you need to and then either use it selfishly, or stand by allies.  Not to mention with the abundance of well/AoE/field spam, ground targeting would be super muddy compared to seeing actual color-coded wisps to know what's going on.  

In short, we aren't mechanists, we don't need 'boon spam' off one button press, it's not a healthy design route by any means.  

Make it a single burst, not a pulse. Spirits need a major rework, and not having to deal with a heavy might ramp up would help. You cast the spirit, it does its thing with the active and whatever boons it provides, and then it leaves, similarly to spirit weapons from guardians (they do their thing and then they're gone).

 

When I specified might+alac, prot+alac, etc, I was referring to having each spirit cast, not 1 spirit with all those boons.

[nucklepuckk.1805]

On 11/3/2022 at 7:31 AM, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

 it's the CA generation issue all over again, and it's worse this time since if you do it too early they just die because someone went afk without telling you. It's be a massive QoL change to just not have to do this in the first place.

Pre summon them, use their 2nd abilities to pile them up, put staff 5 under them. If you need more time than that, target one and staff 1. Literally not a problem.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, nucklepuckk.1805 said:

Pre summon them, use their 2nd abilities to pile them up, put staff 5 under them. If you need more time than that, target one and staff 1. Literally not a problem.

It's the EXACT SAME ISSUE as CA generation pre-encounter- you waste time by having to specifically work around one mechanic in your kit. It used to happen when AP didn't fill when you started an encounter, and it happens now with spirits.