Should spirits be tweaked just a tad?

Lately I've been seeing spirit-spammers abroad in Tombs/GvG matches, and while the present system for spirits can be usually countered easily by just killing the spirits, a few things have made killing massive groups of them off, at least for my groups, damn near impossible. With fertile season, symbiosis, and some seed spells on or near the spirits, it can give the spirit nearly two or three time's its original health and armor, as well as utterly delaying it's death for up to 30 seconds (and every second counts in an altar map like HoH). Take that in account with each spirit having around 3-4 other duplicates due to oath-shotting then re-laying etc, it can be an almost impossible task, even when dropping and edge of extinction.

I love what they've done with spirits, dont get me wrong. They provide an essential role with rangers, and its a great system. However, I feel that maybe spirits being affected by other spirits and enchantments (which strikes me as a little odd, because in all lore-intensive purposes, I dont think Melandru was a big fan of enchantments in the first place) is a bit much, and that spirits should possibly be unaffected by outside spirits/enchants. I wont go as far as saying they should be un-healable from direct heals/healing springs etc, but the current spirit-gridlock system seems unbeatable, even with AoEs running rampant. If spirits werent affected by any outside help other than direct-healing, they would drop as a level 6-8ish spirit was intended to drop, IE, in a few focus-fire hits.

On an ending note, as a ranger myself I love the idea of spirits, and dont wish for a nerf to come crashing down on the system anytime soon. I just feel that, in all fairness of other groups, that spirit spamming shouldnt become the only means to success in large-scale pvp. Thus far, I've found a reasonable counter for mostly everything in the game except for enchanted/fertile seasoned spirits in mass number. If for some reason I've missed something along the way, and there is a good counter out there for it, then by all means please feel free to share it, I dont want to try and promote something constructive if theres already an answer for it out there. Thanks.

You can't put enchantments on spirits.

Oh hmm... didnt know that. In that case, perhaps stripping enchantments like seed off of the monks could work (because from what I've seen, the group will clump around the hero in altar maps and put the spirits around them to get the benefit from the seed-healing.) Still, I feel fertile affecting other spirits is a tad off-balance. Any thoughts on that?

Wait a second... aha! Mesmer's diversion skill, why the hell didnt I think of that before! Ok scratch this thread, found a perfect counter.

Signet of humility disables Oath shot (I think its Signet of Humility). Maybe 2 mesmers can bring them and spirit spamming gets harder all of a sudden.

While dangerous, Edge of Extinction is a great way to do a global wipe of spirts.

People will continue to mass ranger spirit builds till they find something better to defeat it with... Guild wars has been basicly a "build of the month" sort of game... Where people only follow the crowd untill they get their asses handed to them on a silver platter.

There are plenty of easy ways to take them out, and if you havent seen any possibilities yet, then i encourage you to broaden your thoughts.

Just nerf NR, that's all I want!!!!

Me along with other IWs need enchants and hexs to be of any use at all,
DOWN WITH NATURES RENEWAL!

Hmm, i think spirits should stay just the way they are, not saying this just because i am a ranger and play in spirit groups, but simply because over half the spirit groups out there simply don't know how to use them properly and are easily taken down by a good smiting build which im seeing more and more the past few days.

Mass smiting groups seems to be the way its heading next, these can be very strong which is why i think many will stop using ranger spirit teams as much and they will go down. Only the best ones will stay around who think they know how to deal with it But true, the good ranger groups will probably remain unbeatable and stay around..

If they improved natures renewals recast time I'd say it's definatly elite worthy... But it DOES effect your team too limiting your stratagy somewhat.... I'm still in debate over this.

My main complaint is that spirits shouldn't block players of the enemy team. It makes the HoH relay race maps virtually impossible to win against a spirit team when they block off the narrow routes with spirits.

Umm, hold on. Lets revert back to the thread about body blocking in the HoH. So, its ok to body block, but its not ok to spirit block. Hmm....

^^ firstly thanks for that como.

Secondly,
>>On this map there are ways around, ranger teams spam spirits to let one person through to force you around the other way. I think this is just good strategy from ranger teams and it shouldnt be changed as counters can be made for this and after all there is and alternative route around.