To Improve the Utility of the Ritualist

OK, many of you may have noticed that, unlike other classes, having 2 Rt's in a party is almost useless. Rt's are primarily Spirit-casters... Yes, there are Healing Rt's (the best of which still use spirits), but most parties would rather have a monk than a healing Rt (and not without some reason)... and there's the Channeling Rt (who, frankly, doesn't deal damage as well as an El).

The problem is, that when a spirit that already exists is cast (even by a second Rt) the first is destroyed. I believe that this was done by ANet to prevent stacking of damage-restance by multiple Unions, etc. (which would be horribly unbalancing). So what I have is a suggestion for them that will make multiple Rts in a party usefull, but no more unbalancing than multiple Els (or Trappers, for instance).

With regards to the damaging spirits like pain/bloodsong/etc, allow multiple spirits to exist without restriction (just like a Trapper group can set several coppies of each type of trap), though they might want to limit it to one of each type PER Rt.

Now for the potentially worrisome/unbalancing protective/defensive spirits (Union/Shelter/Displacement)... These are almost easier to handle without going overboard than the others... Simply allow all allied spirits of a given type to share the damage taken in the performance of their purpose (ie - every time the spirit prevents damage, it takes damage... but this damage could be shared by the multiple identical spirits so increase their effective duration [rarely do they last to their timed duration]).

Thus two Unions would likely last twice as long as one (though still limited to their timed duration if not destroyed before hand), but would not give the party 30 points of damage resistance (a Union provides 15 points of DR). Note that the spirit that provides health regen would not stack (any more than two "well of blood"s stack), but could increase the covered area or provide a backup regen in case one spirit is hunted down and slain.

I think that this would encourage more players to try out this class, and would make a new type of trapper-group (an artillery group?)... a mixed Trapper and Spirit-Spammer group could be a fun and effective alternative to current party builds.

I genuinely belive that this could be implemented in such a way as to be not at all unbalancing, yet still provide a much-needed boost to the Usefullness of the Ritualist.

What, no opinions from ANYone? Wow, that's surprising. Well, here's hoping that someone from ANet sees this and thnks it's a good idea.

/signed for usefulness, might need some tweaking.

That bugs me too. I hate when I see another rit in the party, b/c I know one of us has to go.

/not signed

they're already defensive enough now your making them more useful for a team to defend itself.... no way jose

From my experience 2 rits are ok, but a monk and a rit would be 3 times better.

I think Rits need better upkeep spells for spirits, so they can heal and even protect their spirits effectively so they will last longer, if you had one rit which was good at summoning spirits and another which was good at keeping them alive for longer periods of time, it would be somewhat more useful.

Either way, 2 monks is still nearly neccessary, and having more than 1 rit with 2 monks is overkill on the support department. IMO a defensive elementist is better than a 2nd rit, and I don't think any amount of change is going to help that. Once we get Paragon, having 2 monks, a paragon and a rit will be all the support one could ask for, and anything else will be weak, even if you made some good rit support skills, a rit secondary would be better than another rit.

How about Assassins, it seems one isn't even acceptable in most parties, they would rather have 5 warriors and no Assassins.

The channeling and restoration lines would need a commplete overhaul to be made anywhere near useful. They sound good on paper but in practice just don't work. There are not enough good skills in either line to bother to spec into them. With Nightfalls on the way I don't expect rits to get an overhaul.

First off, the only Rit line that might need buffing is channeling, and I'd imagine the reason it hasn't been buffed already is because there's a spike combo in there somewhere that no one's found yet but will take HoH by storm one day. Healing rits trade off pure, unadulterated healing for the ability to bestow the entire party with mending, protective spirit and shielding hands. That's a fair compromise. Communing rits comprise the vast majority of the population, and judging from their use in many HA builds they aren't suffering there, either.

Think about the potential builds your suggestion could create. Imagine a team of 6 communing rit lords, one channeling rit, and a monk. The six communing rits drop six shelters and six unions. They ain't coming down, ever, so suddenly the rit team is made entirely of tanks. The six communing rits drop six shadowsongs, six bloodsongs, and six assorted damage spirits. That's 360 armor-ignoring damage per second. Damage that also blinds, interrupts, strips enchantments, and knocks down. The channeling rit echos painful bond (making 720 dps) and provides spot spiking. The monk stands next to a shadowsong and /dances.

Do I want to fight that? Hell no.

I don't understand what the OP is saying here. The rits seem very useful to me. A good restoration rit is a reasonable replacement for a monk. Honestly, most parties only need 1 monk and 1 rit. Communing is extremely useful, as most everyone recognizes. Channeling... meh.

Now, 2 rits aren't useful? That all depends on the skills they bring. Just for starters, they can have 2 different specialties. They can even both be communing and still be quite useful, if they bring skills that aren't redundent, or they time their spirits for recharge. And even if all that fails, like in Unwaking Waters, properly prepair ritualists can make themselves useful simply by taking advantage of multiple spirits. I was a rit in a party with 2 rits. The extra spirits became useful with my Feast of Souls. Rupture Soul is also more useful with more spirits to draw from. I was even using our ranger's spirits when she was done with them. Spirit Transfer, Spirit Burn, Gaze From Beyond, etc. All useful skills the more spirits become plentiful.

If your ally on the other side of Unwaking brought a duplicate spirit, why not do something useful with it while destroying it and then creating your own?

Thats not the reason they did it, spiritstacking was already not possible before factions and ritualist, the same thing happens with ranger spirits.All these spirits belong in the same "species" so if they changed the ritualist ones the ranger ones would also get changed evem if that was not the intention.

Triple EOE bomb WooHoo!

As soon as a second sprit is cast the first one dies. Yoiu can not have more than one at any given time, within range of each other.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was proper forum etiquette 'round these parts to not read a goddamn thing and instead spout the first ill-conceived opinion that manages to reach your mouth without hitting your brain. Let me rephrase my former post, for the voluntarily illiterate:

*snip*(If spirits worked as you suggest, it would be overpowered, good sir.)*snip*
(Now now, don't be naughty, Beelzebuddy. - your friendly moderator)

Xenex: you can't say "Ranger spirits would change too" unless you could look at the code itself. After all, Vampiric touch is not reduced by protective spirit while touch of agony is. Implementing the OP's suggestion could be as simple as appending an "&&(~ritSpiritNames)" to the if statement that checks if a potential spirit to be destroyed should be.

It's still not likely to happen - like you said, ranger spirits once worked as the op described, and if there was incentive to change them to one per area, the far more effective rit spirits would certainly be unbalanced if they were stackable.

I run a restoration rit in PvE and can more than easily replace a monk. Rit's with their weapon spells excel at protection, but fall short in healing. The party become much more efficient when the monk focuses entirely on healing and the rit focuses entirely on conditions and damage mitigation. Recuperation by itself is a good reason to let a rit in your party. As for multiple rit, seems simple enough to have one be a weapon spell spammer with wielder's boon and the other be a spirit spammer.

Actually, yes i would like to. It sounds somewhat creative and different from all the normal builds that run in HA atm.

You can still degen though spirits.