so what the heck do i do now ARENANET!!???

As I follow this thread, I think the overall message to Anet is the following:

seperate pvp skill sets and pve skills.

This seems the best solution to cater to both side of the market. The pvper's could get the nerfs they need without crippling the pve players.

The nerf of the ritualist pretty much removes the fun of playing pve. I am a heavy pve player and am feeling the change. Although I rarely Ritual Lord, I did like other area control builds. The loss of this ability has hurt the ritualist severely. I enjoy playing as a restorationalist, but currently that is the only way I can get into a group. I dislike playing only one effective build in groups. Channeling, despite the buff, is not effective in pve.

While a change in skill effects from pvp and pve would be annoying to some players, a simple warning displayed in the skill dialog would offset this. As pvp continues to evolve, other classes will experience a crippling in pve abilities.

I am not sure how difficult this seperation would be to achieve in the engine. However, seperating pvp and pve skill sets would be the best course of action to correct pvp Vs pve class differences.

This seperation would allow Anet to create pvp specific skills that counter builds instead of just nerfing current skillsets. Perhaps these skill sets could even be offered as special add-on pvp packages for players to purchase.

I really do not understand why everyone is saying that the ritualist was the only profession that did not have any energy problems. I have four different characters and out of all of them (an ele, ranger, monk, and rit) the only one that ever has energy issues is my monk if she's bombarded too heavily in higher lvl missions. My ele is a Nuker, constantly casting 25 pt skills, and the only time she Ever runs out of energy is if her enchants get removed or she racks up too much exhaustion (which is easily handled if you alternate the spells cast). Same thing for the rit. Remove boon = automatic energy shortage. So this shouldn't even be something to consider when deciding what to nerf, what needs "balanced" or what is overpowering. If it needed cut back a bit then do so only in one area, not all skills.

And Uncle Timmy made a very good point, with the release of Nightfall, you have to make the new classes look good or else no one will want to play them. Which means fewer sales, etc, etc or whatever.. Some poor profession has to go on the chopping block to compensate for that. I just think that it overall was taken a little too far. This is by far the most extreme nerf I've ever seen. And I thought the touch ranger would be next instead of the rit, considering the only thing ever said about touchers is that they are cheap, cookie-cutter builds played by noobs.

"40 Maps total. Most of which are about a tenth of the size of the average PVE map. PVP gets the balances, this is true (although there are some notable exceptions), but to complain that PVP takes content development away from PVE is false"

Oh dgb, I don't mean to suggest that PvP is taking away from PvE. Not at all. I meant to say that this game was designed with PvP in mind FIRST, with elements of PvE to bolster that. There's no real game that can be both; you cant be half-in, half-out and be a really good game, so all the activities are really geared towards building you into a PvPer here. That is why you can buy this game, open it and play a PvP character right out of the box. And I stand by that point.

What I was saying about PvE, was that after you do the missions/quests... what do you do? There is Urgoz, The Deep, and the other Elite mission (FoW?). That is all. Over and out. If you are a PvE person, you are now consigned to just doing that, over/over/over. And since most PvE ppl are STORY driven personalities, that only goes so far. The "average" PvP is pretty basic, and not to insult anyone btw. They really want to know two things: Where are we killing, and WHO are we killing there. Thats about it.

There does not have to be any story wrapped around that, the intelligence used here is geared toward the challenge of defeating real ppl using skills/builds that they made. Very admirable, but it is rather mundane to the "average" PvE. Basically, PvPers want Quake/Doom/Unreal stuff but in different type settings using weapons other than guns and lasers. Content is not really necessary. I doubt the average PvP really looked around his enviroments in there much, lest he get ganked by another human Touch Ranger.

So, PvP ppl have many outlets in Guild Wars which to quench their desire to kill, burst, immolate, burn, freeze, rend, smolder, poison, hack, sever and bash other real people. PvE, once you kill Shiro, thats pretty much it; thank you for playing. And these Elite areas could really USE a non nerfed Rit lord type build. Even before the nerfs, those places were about the only spots where pre-nerf Shelter got knocked down fast, due to the sheer number of mobs, and all the condition laden areas.

Again, with that in mind, of course Rits had to fall on the sword. Not that Im complaining... I just parked my Rit and play Monk, Rng, and Necro now.^^

Four skills that are almost always on my rit's skill bar are Boon of Creation, Ritual Lord, Shelter and Union.

3 of them got nerfed. A very nice move from Anet =/

I agree with the people who say that A.Net may have wanted to promote build variety and/or originality. I, for one, admire that. It also sounds great...on paper.

The fact of the matter is that it comes down to the players. On the one hand, you have those who whine about how a build (Ritual Lord, in this case) is overpowered...and then those who - after said build has been nerfed - whine because the build is useless.

I know this might get complicated, but bear with me. The latter group (the post-whiners) splits into two subgroups. In this case, I'll take the ritualist as the example class. There are those who say the class is absolutely useless now, because they seem to have the misconception that it revolved solely around the Ritual Lord build. On the other hand, you have those that say it is useless because they realize that although there are other things you can do with a ritualist, especially with the recent buffs to Channeling and Restoration, the other subgroup (read: the ones who think it's completely useless because of the lack of RL) simply won't give them a chance to spice things up.

This brings me back to saying that promoting variety does sound good in theory, but if people are not willing to give ritualists (and I say ritualists, because most other classes have been able to cope through using different builds that are generally accepted; the ritualist sort of only had one build that people wanted) a chance, then it is all for naught.

I'm just hoping people will become more open-minded about ritualists and realize that they can do more than just spam spirits non-stop.