What I want to happen to spirits.

[Beddo.1907]

Currently spirits are simply a badly designed skill type for a few reasons:
-Spirits don't do much, except for a single boon per spirit.
-Boon duration is covered 1:1, meaning you will have downtime when spirits are gone and if you miss a tick, you lose the boon for 3s.
-Spirits can die or despawn, stopping you from doing your job as support.
-You can move spirits only every 15-20s, but since Alacrity is also bound to it, relocating spirits can't be saved up for when you need it.

This makes it only usable in PvE and even then, there are some places where they don't perform well. 
Now this is what I want spirits to be.

Global mechanical changes
-Spirits no longer receive damage from enemy attacks and environment, are immune to condi/CC, can't be healed and can't be targeted.
-When ranger enters stealth, all spirits will also gain stealth, until it expires or ranger loses it first.
-All non elite spirits lose 3.33% hp every second, for total of 30s duration. Elite spirit loses 2.22% hp, for 45s duration.
-When forcefully despawned or out of range, reduce the CD by 50%. (No forced despawn should be better, but I have no trust in that being done perfectly)
-Spirits will move towards the player at 100 speed until within close range, making it easier for them to stay close to group and reducing the need to move them small distances. (the big spirits are slow so, that's why it's only 100 as is).
-Secondary "slam" skills are instant cast, since spirits themselves have cast animation, allowing you to move the spirits instantly without disabling you from doing anything else and reducing the stupidly long time before the effect.
-All spirits boon radius is changed to 1000.

Spirit changes

Water
-Regen increased to 2s.

Frost
-Might increased to 10s and 3 stacks.

Sun
-Vigor increased to 2s.

Stone
-Protection increased to 2s.

Storm
-Fury increased to 2s.

Nature
-Interval increased to every 3s instead of 1s.
-Interval healing increased to 250+(0.1 Healing power).
-Active CD reduced to 20s.
-Loses -40% hp per revive on active. (Allows for one 1 player revive and one unlimited player revive or one unlimited player revive)

Nature's Vengeance
-Spirit active skills aoe increased by 50%.
-Spirit movement speed increased by 50%.
-No longer reduces hp drain.
-No longer gives Alacrity. Group Alacrity (and Quickness) should not be in core and should be added onto an espec together with the changes. I'm sure a lot of ppl would disagree, but that's just unhealthy for Ranger since we will never get Quickness dps/support role this way.

*Updated to mechanical and numerical changes only.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Beddo.1907

[Abyssisis.3971]

I had a write up on spirits awhile back but never posted due to stop caring about spirits/pve, tho the ideas was pretty much the same with the whole pulsing conditions as well as boons to give spirits a bit more use.

Water spirit - pulses small amount of aoe healing and regen, active aoe healing

frost spirit - pulses might and aoe chill, active aoe freezes/stuns (similar to reapers elite)

Stone spirit - pulses aoe protection and cripple, active aoe immobilise

Storm spirit - pulses aoe fury and vulnerability, active aoe weakness

Sun spirit - pulses aoe vigor and burn, active aoe blind

Nature spirit - pulses aoe conditions to boons, active aoe stability

Any sort of change to spirits, especially making them follow the ranger again is a good one in my book.

[Kodama.6453]

This seems like a bit much.

Pulsing conditions every 3 seconds... among them 2 stacks of burning , which you can keep up permanently if you take the trait. And they last for 30 seconds and you can't attack them to kill them.

Sounds like it would be really problematic in PvP. Just sit on a node, spirits are constantly pressuring the node for fricking 30 seconds without the enemy being able to do anything against them. They just have to either eat the constant condition reapplication or stay the hell away from the node.

Additionally you are able to keep up protection permanently just by taking the stone spirit with the trait... and boon removal doesn't help much, because it will just get reapplied 3 seconds later. While you still can't do anything against the spirit that is causing it.

It feels like you are overbuffing them alot here. Improving them by making them mobile and untargetable is already pretty big, do they really need to pulse condis every 3 seconds as well?

Also you want the elite spirit follow up skill to have 20 seconds cooldown... 20 seconds cooldown on a team wide revive skill? For real? And you can't kill the spirit? How the hell is anyone in PvP supposed to win against that in a team fight, lmao.

[Beddo.1907]

4 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Also you want the elite spirit follow up skill to have 20 seconds cooldown... 20 seconds cooldown on a team wide revive skill? For real? And you can't kill the spirit? How the hell is anyone in PvP supposed to win against that in a team fight, lmao.

Probably should have included it, it still has the -30% hp per revive loss.
Basically you sacrifice the duration, in return for revives, while the skill CD itself is not too high for the effect without revives.

Also I didn't add PvP/WvW split for the numbers yet, so there only thing there that matters is the mechanic itself.
Probably will add split soon.
And yeah 2 burning is overall too much, this is what happens when you "do the obvious part of the change" with the same base numbers.

[Kodama.6453]

6 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Probably should have included it, it still has the -30% hp per revive loss.
Basically you sacrifice the duration, in return for revives, while the skill CD itself is not too high for the effect without revives.

Also I didn't add PvP/WvW split for the numbers yet, so there only thing there that matters is the mechanic itself.
Probably will add split soon.
And yeah 2 burning is overall too much, this is what happens when you "do the obvious part of the change" with the same base numbers.

I still think you are just overloading the skills for no reason, tho.

That you can't kill them anymore is already a huge change for them, additionally you give a massive buff to their boon uptime. Which seems exaggerated, btw. The current stone spirit has 50% protection uptime with the trait, so investing into boon duration is still useful and can bring you to 100% uptime of that (really powerful) boon. You suggest to buff this by 100%.... to double the boon duration and make 100% uptime baseline.

And then on top of these already major changes, you also think they need to pulse conditions? Why? They are already boon distributors with active skills added to them for further utility, so why is it needed that they also passively pulse conditions?

Also that the elite spirit still loses health when using the active skill doesn't really mean that much. You still have a revive skills which you can use 2-3 times in a single team fight. If you want the skill to just have 20 seconds cooldown for repositioning reasons, then make it do something else than reviving an entire team. Skills with this effect have very long cooldowns for a reason.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Kodama.6453

[Dadnir.5038]

On 3/4/2023 at 4:01 PM, Beddo.1907 said:

-Spirits no longer receive damage from enemy attacks and environment, are immune to condi/CC, can't be healed and can't be targeted.
-When ranger enters stealth, all spirits will also gain stealth, until it expires or ranger loses it first.
-All non elite spirits lose 3.33% hp every second, for total of 30s duration. Elite spirit loses 2.22% hp, for 45s duration.
-When forcefully despawned or out of range, reduce the CD by 50%. (No forced despawn should be better, but I have no trust in that being done perfectly)
-Spirits will move towards the player at 100 speed, making it easier for them to stay close to group and reducing the need to move them small distances. (the big spirits are slow so, that's why it's only 100 as is).
-Secondary "slam" skills are instant cast, since spirits themselves have cast animation, allowing you to move the spirits instantly without disabling you from doing anything else and reducing the stupidly long time before the effect.
-Each normal spirit also applies a condition to enemies.
-All spirits boon radius is changed to 1000, while condi radius is 500. Half the radius in PvP and WvW.

All in all it seem like you change them into an hybrid between signets, mantras and minions. Isn't this a bit to complicated?

Why not just change them into mantras. Nature's vengeance would increase base duration of the boons granted by the charges and provide alacrity for allies when the spell fully charge. For example:

- Mantra of storm: Meditate, charging a spell that will grant fury to nearby allies. Generate a powerful blast of electricity that deal damage and daze foes around you when this spell fully charge.

 

[Kodama.6453]

3 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

All in all it seem like you change them into an hybrid between signets, mantras and minions. Isn't this a bit to complicated?

Why not just change them into mantras. Nature's vengeance would increase base duration of the boons granted by the charges and provide alacrity for allies when the spell fully charge. For example:

- Mantra of storm: Meditate, charging a spell that will grant fury to nearby allies. Generate a powerful blast of electricity that deal damage and daze foes around you when this spell fully charge.

 

I would personally turn the stationary minion types (so: spirits and turrets) into spirit weapon skills.

No longer attackable units, not staying on the field for prolonged times anymore. Instead, you summon the unit which performs their associated attack (can include the active effects of the spirit, on top of boon application like protection, aegis and alacrity for stone spirit for example), then disappear after they finished it.

Basically, they just become fancy animations for AoE attacks. This would also keep the thematical appeal of the spirits alive for me.... I like the summoned spirits, so I want them to stay around visually. Turning the skills into mantras would change their whole thematic too much, probably.

[Beddo.1907]

29 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I still think you are just overloading the skills for no reason, tho.

The main reason why I also want to add condi, is to just make them stronger than 1 boon for an entire utility slot.
In my opinion, spirits are just a bit underwhelming. Perhaps after you are not forced to either spam or camp the actives, it might be better, in which case the condi part wouldn't be needed.
Honestly splitting the mechanical and condi parts of the changes, is a better idea. Basically if the 1st part is lacking, the 2nd part would be added as well. Hard to tell since it's all on paper.

47 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Also that the elite spirit still loses health when using the active skill doesn't really mean that much. You still have a revive skills which you can use 2-3 times in a single team fight. If you want the skill to just have 20 seconds cooldown for repositioning reasons, then make it do something else than reviving an entire team. Skills with this effect have very long cooldowns for a reason.

Ah I did one thing wrong with my calculation, I didn't include Alacrity CD reduction, which does allow 3rd revive. I'll correct this.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I would personally turn the stationary minion types (so: spirits and turrets) into spirit weapon skills.

No longer attackable units, not staying on the field for prolonged times anymore. Instead, you summon the unit which performs their associated attack (can include the active effects of the spirit, on top of boon application like protection, aegis and alacrity for stone spirit for example), then disappear after they finished it.

Basically, they just become fancy animations for AoE attacks. This would also keep the thematical appeal of the spirits alive for me.... I like the summoned spirits, so I want them to stay around visually. Turning the skills into mantras would change their whole thematic too much, probably.

But I'm not against this kind of animation and I don't think it's incompatible with what I'm suggesting.

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

But I'm not against this kind of animation and I don't think it's incompatible with what I'm suggesting.

Eh, I prefer the spirit weapon approach mostly for the reason that it requires way less workload for animation and sound from the devs.

If they make them mantras, they have to design alot of new fluff for them. Like a nature themed mantra symbol that shows up during the chant (trademark of the current mantras visually). They would also have to record new voice lines for the player characters which are fitting for the thematic of the mantra in question. If they don't do that, then there will be backlash that they did a half-assed job... and rightfully so.

Meanwhile turning them into spirit weapons requires literally 0 work from these departments. All the animations needed are already there. The ranger gestures towards the target location, a spirit is summoned and does it's slam animation with the elemental visual effect (fire for sun, ice for frost, etc.), maybe let the effect linger for a bit if you want to go for a prolonged effect to give ranger finally some ranged AoEs and you are good.

I don't see mantras being way too different and bringing much more to the table gameplaywise to justify the increased work for the animations.

 

[InsaneQR.7412]

Keep it simple.

Give each spirit a fixed duration and make them untargetable. They should behave more like herald aspects. When activated they walk besides you and pulse boons.

When you use their active let them teleport to the targeted location (ground target) which deals damage, applies condis and generates a field.

The GM trait then should do this: When you use the active of your spirits grant allies alacrity in the area. When you heal an ally, prolong the spirits duration by a small amount.

This would make it better overall but still keep dedicated supports at the top of spirit usage.

Edited March 6, 2023 by InsaneQR.7412

[Krispera.5087]

Spirits should be Druid pets and work like Renegade's spirits.

 

Just make it simple, but I guess ANet loves it complicated with the whole HP reduction and all that casting time and button pressings. 🙄

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

21 hours ago, Krispera.5087 said:

Spirits should be Druid pets and work like Renegade's spirits.

 

Just make it simple, but I guess ANet loves it complicated with the whole HP reduction and all that casting time and button pressings. 🙄

The problem is spirits are core, not druid. Glyphs are druid only.

[Krispera.5087]

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

The problem is spirits are core, not druid. Glyphs are druid only.

 

If they can rework Tomes, they can rework Spirits. Oops, forgot Ranger wasn't ANet favourite child. 🤭

[Beddo.1907]

11 hours ago, Krispera.5087 said:

 

If they can rework Tomes, they can rework Spirits. Oops, forgot Ranger wasn't ANet favourite child. 🤭

They said spirits are not elite and your argument is basically "they reworked elite, so they can rework spirits".

Can you run me through your thinking process?

[draxynnic.3719]

16 hours ago, Krispera.5087 said:

 

If they can rework Tomes, they can rework Spirits. Oops, forgot Ranger wasn't ANet favourite child. 🤭

...say that to DH and WB players. Or sPvP FB players, if you can find any.

Context there is that tomes were outright removed, had skills created to replace them, and FB was created later to bring the general concept of tomes back (they're basically nothing like those that were removed, except that there is a damage tome and a healing tome). Critically, there were only 2 tomes to do this with. Shunting spirits would require creating 6 replacement core skills, while also removing a major ranger feature that goes back to Prophecies. Plus, druid already has its own stuff. Your proposal's chances are somewhere between none and Buckley's.

Making the spirits behave like renegade spirits while remaining core might have legs.

[Kodama.6453]

On 3/6/2023 at 7:20 AM, InsaneQR.7412 said:

Keep it simple.

[...]

Keep it simple, then follow up with a rework suggestion that is definitely not simple. Whut? xD

[InsaneQR.7412]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:12 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

Keep it simple, then follow up with a rework suggestion that is definitely not simple. Whut? xD

Its freaking simple. Make them like herald aspects with a fixed duration instead of upkeep. The active is then a ground target with the field. Thats as streamlined as it can get.