[zericosmic]

Grinding spirits can be miserable, it's very easy to drain the whole world of white or black pages as a single person, in fact it happens pretty often when I go spirit hunting, unless i'm unlucky and someone ate them all before me, and the drought gets especially bad days after difficult events, black pages take potentially months to grind (but that's not the only issue black pages have, and that talk is not why I gathered you all here today.)

Spirit entertainer is a lovely solution to this problem, however outside of saving you hours of graveyard/crypt sitting it is not worthwhile to invest in from any point of build optimization, outside of for a select few builds, and as SAN can be beneficial to quite a few races whereas FAI can be difficult to fit in to a large number of builds, it's a lot easier to get as a FAI build..

From a lore perspective I don't think faith on korvara has anything to do with spirits, SAN at least fits the whole Entertainer part, given it's a core stat for a bard and scales sound damage, but you'd be hard pressed to find any bard picking the trait up due to bards generally having very little desire to invest in Faith.

On top of that I sort of want to bring up my primary problem..

A lot of people, just sit and wait for mental stam/ spirits to recharge/reappear, (me included) it is time that is just spent not interacting with the rest of the community and SL2 is a very social orientated game, it's not fun nor do I think it's productive for the community to spend time just sitting somewhere out of place and not interacting with anyone. To top it off, losing spirits is a very frustrating experience, to the point that some players will get actively angered at potential party members if they wind up in a situation which their actions cost another player their spirits, which I don't think is a healthy thing.

TL;DR: I would just like to propose the removal of the FAI requirement when it comes to spirit entertainer, I believe it's a stat requirement that is difficult to fill for most class combos, and I believe that Faith is a stat that lorewise doesn't really apply to things spirit related on Korvara. And lastly I believe making the trait more accessible, is more healthy for the social aspect of the game.

Now before any of you say white spirits are already strong, I don't oppose the idea of making more way to punish spirit users, I just don't think losing spirits is it chief.

[MothEnthusiast]

Drop the SAN requirement as well, if you ask me. There's a whole host of issues with Spirits in general (and there was a suggestion somewhere, I forget where) to rework spirits into something else and making the skill overcaps or damage bonuses just something you pick elsewhere.

Given that probably will (sadly) never happen, I think making a borderline mandatory trait not require stats that not everyone can / benefits from building would be QUITE nice. I really feel for Corrupteds that have to build the SAN to get this trait, and for FAIless people that have to sink the points in for very little benefit. Both SAN and FAI are far from premium stats, so having not one, but BOTH as a req is very silly.

[Slydria]

I think a big problem with traits like this with low requirements as a whole is just that APT doesn't help you out. So for a lot of builds, that means sinking 20 points that wouldn't do a whole lot for you otherwise. Whereas if the ask were only about ~6 points with APT counting, it'd be a lot more reasonable and something you wouldn't feel too bad going out for.

[Kameron8]

At minimum, it'd be nice if we could bypass the niche stat requirements via putting a bunch of points in the Spiritualism talent line. Getting San is an active detriment to some races.

[MegaBlues]

I thought the whole point of the Trait rework was removing ones that were deemed "mandatory".

Spirits in their current form are pretty misaligned with the balance direction I thought we were taking, so I'd really like their power to be toned down to something where choosing to use them or not them is an actual decision.

[MothEnthusiast]

I disagree with the idea of making spirits as a whole 'weaker', mostly because there are so many traits in the game that seem so situational and borderline useless that I never feel like taking them. I often have 3 or so trait points to spare because nothing appeals to me in any fashion. If anything, I'd like to see more traits be actually valuable, and let the opportunity cost of only having X number of trait points be the deciding factor.

Buuut, that's getting off-topic. Again, in regards to spirits, I'm still highly in favor of making the current 'spirit' effects something everyone gets by default, and making spirits do something else.

[polly]

Personally, I'd rather the trait keeps some semblance of a requirement. Dropping both stat requirements not just makes it a mandatory trait (losing spirits is always awful), but also invalidates Amalgama's ability to keep spirits regardless of build. A way to basically rid the race of one of it's already lacking benefits.

On the other hand, I think making Last Rites lack a stat requirement would be a much better alternative. It makes spirits more common and gives a better alternative to waiting every server reset to ransack every location that spawns spirits. Buffing it wouldn't be so bad, either.

I agree with the initial suggestion of just removing the FAI requirement on Spirit Entertainer, though. Removing SAN as well is a bit silly, considering the "primary" point of the trait is to play instruments near spirits to entertain them. Spirits not leaving you on defeat is an added bonus.

[MothEnthusiast]

Problem is, it's still hell in a hand-basket to actually get spirits, even with Last Rites. And SAN is an active detriment, as stated above, to certain races... It'd make more sense to remove it and keep FAI if you absolutely had to keep a stat requirement. The problem of it being a mandatory trait isn't fixed by giving it requirements, it just makes the fact that it IS mandatory even more annoying, IMO.