Please at least touch communing with balance

I know this has been beaten to death, and these suggestions may be redundant, but communing currently sucks. In pve it is time consuming to layout, and ultimately underwhelming with it's damage/effects. Even if spirits had decent damage, few if any pugs are willing to wait for a rit to set up, they'd rather just steamroll. However, spirits are incredibly imba one on one (provided there's prep time like in Magni's tournament) because it's like having your own mini party/army. And yet, summoning a spirit in pvp practically begs for interruption or knockdown or death. Add to that the fact that spirits do just about squat to blocking foes (just try to take out a R/d) and communing feels pretty useless as a skill line.

Here's my two-step plan to fix this:

Step one: Remove all damage from spirits and painful bond (we need to nerf if we ever expect to receive a buff).
Step two: Buff spirits immensely. And I mean like a 2s casting Dissonance with 25s recharge kind of buff.

In my opinion, the danger and imbalance of spirits comes from their ability to pwn single targets in like 2-3 hits. Painful bond is a terrible skill in that way, in that it adds imbalance to an already overpowered ability.

Thus, part one of "Step one" is to kill Painful bond. My suggestion:

Painful Bond: 10e 1c 8r - Enchantment. For 2...12 seconds, whenever a spirit you control attacks, if it has less health than you then you sacrifice 2% max health and it gains 10...55 health. If you have less health than it, you gain 5...50 health. (maybe move this to another line too)

Part two is, as stated, to remove all damage from spirit attacks. Now begin buffing. Here are some suggestions:

1. Remove 1-3 seconds casting time from all communing spirits and shorten their recharge.
2. Make ritual lord further shorten summon time in addition to recharge.
3. Modify an elite to give spirits the ability to hit adaject foes. Like Signet of Ghostly Might. "For 1...15 seconds target spirits attacks hit one additional foe adjacent to its target for each spirit you control."
4. Give Pain and Anguish new effects. Perhaps pain can cause bleeding, and maybe one conditional condition (deep wound if suffering from 3 or more conditions perhaps). And Anguish could maybe cause cripple to stationary foes?
5. Make Shelter and Union offensive spirits. Decent party-wide protection, while sometimes nice, ultimately holds us back by making us too intimidating to buff. Not sure what they should do yet, though...suggestions?

What do you think? I know I for one have always liked spirits for their crazy effects more than their damage, and would much rather see summoners as a mobile shutdown platform than as decent damage dealers. And I think it would be balanced as smart foes can always stay out of range, pack blocking skills, or just kill spirits.

Spirit Spammer

Communing is pretty strong, I don't think it should be buffed. A spirit spammer can easily take out most bosses no problem. The problem is being targeted.

i find spirits are just as useful as minions, for pve and pvp

Communing does not suck. I find that it is fairly balanced in both PvE in PvP.

Saying it's not means you're jut not doing something right. :P

communing dost need anything done to it, Spawning power is what is in need of a buff for the most part going necro primary and then rit secondary is a better set up because of energy management.

Mending does not suck. I find it is fairy balanced in both PvE and PvP.

As much as I agree this is a pretty shitty attribute (most of this relies in the durability and life of the spirits, though), I'm going to have to go with a no until at least half of the broken stuff we've got today is gone.

I don't really see where you are coming from and heading too with this. Okay communing sucks but why would more random interrupt/ condition pressure (like the buffs you suggested for dissonance and pain) do this game any good?

I admit communing is due to its spirit load a fairly bad attribute as has been since the start ... it's one of the least defined attributes out there. But changing spirits to more random pressure is not gonna help it. Stationary Area effects like the ranger spirits are more a way to go ... on the other hand that's not gonna solve any problem as well. There really is no way to go with this attribute I can think off.