The State of the Ritualist

As I play the game, the overall feeling toward the ritualist is discontent. The ritualist is my favorite class, but as I frequent towns and play with other ritualists I get a sense of overall disappointment - that the ritualist has been screwed over. This is especially true now that VwK farming is viewed as unworkable with the current update. (Although I have had few problems when I tested the areas I ocassionally farm.)

The ritualist is still felt to be subpar in everything to all other classes. I do not believe it to be so. I prefer the word handicapped

But what do you think? Are my observations concerning the state of the ritualist your view?

Well, they really get on my nerves in RA. Other than that, I don't see very many of them. Perhaps this is indicative of something...

Quote: Originally Posted by Xeupo

THey are really in the "sucks at everything" catigory right now. Long precast times of spirits and lack of mobility is required to get anything done. and items take away weapon mods, jsut general small things that make the ritulist not as fast an effective as its counter part classes.

Quote: THey are really in the "sucks at everything" catigory right now. Long precast times of spirits and lack of mobility is required to get anything done. and items take away weapon mods, jsut general small things that make the ritulist not as fast an effective as its counter part classes. I was thinking of trying Soul Twisting as a means of becoming more mobile. Do you think if a build was designed it would help the rit move around more in PvE?

Its not hte moving around in PvE. Its that rits are very positional control in a game that rewards mobility. (you'd think in the new hero battles rits would own) but they don't because they can cover anythign but one area, therefore the simple solution to rits is to simply avoid them. they can't chase you and they can't provok combat.

Soul Twisting does improve mobility in pve. Better than draw spirit does imo.

I have tried pvping with my rit recently and well, things just dont go that well. In the right teams, the rit can dominate, but it also requires a team that is interconnected to the point that if one person goes down the rit is crippled.

Spirits also have minion-like ai and do not follow the ritualist's calls or attacks, which also reduces effectiveness.

Channeling is extemely lackluster and can be shrugged off by even a moderately skilled squishy.

Boon of Creation still hurts from the nerf as well even after adapting to the change.

Ritualists would be more effective if the entire spirit mechanic was reworked. I enjoy the idea of control areas but at the same time in the current state of the game the lack of mobility is almost unworkable.

Spirits that perhaps would follow the ritualist but not wander like minions. Changing Draw Spirit to Draw Spirits such that it draws All the ritualist's spirits to a general area (and not position stack them) would help this problem.

If the spirit moved the way it should, then the effects would move with it. Unless this has been fixed, it doesn't matter whether you change the way DS works or not, spirit effects stay put.

Besides, you may not want to move ALL of your spirits to one place. There should be a different spell that would draw ALL allied spirits to you. After all, some spirits are better in the back, than right where you are.

I doubt you'll be able to get a faster way to create spirits other than Soul Twisting or maybe Weapon of Quickness. Oh well.

i love to play my Rit but i do agree they seem somewhat overlooked especially by anet, well either anet got the skills for Rits right in the 1st place (by there opion) or theyve just totally ignored the rit during some of the big skill updates such as the last 1

I haven't added a Nightfall key to my account with the ritualist on it, but once I do I'll bring her over to Elona first. There will always be room for a healer, and if playing a restorationalist means I can move my character through the game, then I'll stick with it.

I think people get too caught up on Spirit Spamming. And Rits don't really need to have 5 Spirits around them to be effective. This only rly works in PvP. And even then I prefer to use Wep of Quickening and supplement the Spirits with spells. 1-2 Spirits is more than enough tho. And Soul Twisting is an amazing elite for such situations. Works great with Spirits that take damage when providing a benefit or that provide a benefit when they die.

To be honest, Rit works best when you take a little bit of everything. Weapon spells don't stack, so taking more than a few seems counterproductive, esp. if you wanna use em on the same target. Item spells don't stack either, so no point in having more than 1-2.

Once you take 1-2 Item Spells, 1-2 Wep Spells, 1-2 Spirits, and a few other skills, you have a nice skill bar to work with. And btw Rit + Mo is always better than 2 Mo for healing purposes.

Rits are wonderful and extremely powerful. Part of it tho is that they are largely underestimated, and the other part of it is all the people who don't know how to play them (I must say it's one of the toughest prof to play). Bottom line is: everyone can click skills in a sequence, not everyone can pull a Destruction + Draw Spirit + Spirit Rift + Rapture Soul + Ancestor's Rage, and do so that all the damage is dealt in 2s.

EDIT:
I was just playing a mixed build today:

1- Mend B and S
2- Spirit L
3- Res wep
4- Mighty was Vorizun
5- Pain
6- Union
7- Soul Twisting (E)
8- Flesh

Renewing Surge + Attuned was Songkai has been a lot of fun in Nightfall.

With all the heroes running around it seems a bit sad for my Rit. She used to enjoy going restoration when there wasn't a monk available. Now that most people have 2 hero monks it's hard to see the point in going restoration.

its sad that heros have killed the need for ritulists, most people are happy to say goodbye to rits and hello to hero monks. Still rits remain a very unique class in GW.

I've gotten my rit to Sunspear Sanctuary and obtained Sunspear General (7), and I haven't really had a hard time finding groups for quests and such. I'm going to assume this will end as people level up their hero monks, which is why I plan on getting my 2 monks to level 20 soon. Then I should be able to progress through the game on my own if need be.

Anyone else frustrated because their guild refuses to even consider rits for GvG. XoO is a very cookie cutter guild to begin with, so rits and necromancers are lost immediatly, our noob division gets schooled by almost everyone when using WM, IQ, top of the line builds. It should tell us something... Even though we're expected to lose because its a training division, we lost to badly planned builds with 4 balthazzar devrishes that didnt even really spam conditions well.

TO get back to topic, is there anythign that Anet can do to improve the ritulist's uses in GvG/ High level play, right now they're PvP use is restricted to RA and RA teams in TA.

I think that giving spirits some form of command ability, to focus fire or something would be excellent. right now they're bugged to not attack after your die in somecases or untill you or some member of you party is attacked.

also if you run around the spirits they won't attack while you kite in many cases.

These small things make a world of difference in how useful the Ritulist is in PvP.

also other things like items taking away weapon mods,weapon spells not stacking eve nto a small degree, an enchant that lets 2 weapons stack would be great. other small lthings like that. also the rit has no emergency/preprot skills in restoration. some weapons should work for this. IN other words the rit can't react to or pre-empt a spike.

channeling is ok on PvP, in PvE it is rediculous how little dmg is does. spirit rift at 142 dgm gets reduced to 63 on level 22 CASTERS, making rit dmg in PvE not really goodto try and do with channeling.

I agree with Hella Good, Rits are wonderful and powerful. The problem is that other people still don't understand what the rit can do for their party. I will continue to enjoy my Rit and I actually don't care what other people think of my favourite class.

How do you think the rit would fair if channeling was moved to armor ignoring shadow damage? This would allow them to be on par with the elementalist in spiking ability.

Channeling is rather lame in pvp unless you are in a coordinated team.


Spirits, as mentioned in other threads, could use ai changes. As it stand now, they do not follow targets well and often fail to attack at all. The ability to stack at least 2 weapons spells would be nice (as other threads again have mentioned). This also is logical if the stacking is keyed to how many weapons and offhands the character holds - for instance : only 1 weapon spell for a 2 handed weapon/item, 2 spells for a weapon and an offhand.

Many of the rit's skill recharge and cast times need to be shortened. I often have my entire skill bar recharging with some of my builds (builds that are limited to 1 or 2 spirits).

I just hope we do not see Attuned nerfed. Considering boon of creation was nerfed because of the enormous energy return, Attuned would soon be next on the list. Rits are like mesmers and do not have energy deficiencies. Such a nerf (which I hope will not occur) would remove much of what makes the rit powerful as another healing class.

Although the ritualist is extemely powerful if one knows how to play it, it does need some fine tuning.

If not armor ignoring shadow damage, at least 25% armor penetration like some of the elementalists air spells.

Armour Ignoring? 25% ap?

No. Way...

What you have to do is look at the actual damage numbers. Then you start to understand how close the damage can be to that of an elementalist Air pusher (in some cases it floors mediocre Air players). I did a damage comparison a while ago. Can't remember where it is.

Take this as an example off the top of my head...

on 60 armour:
-Channeling Strike hits for 138 damage when the condition is met. (Not hard really).
-Lightning Orb hits for 140 with ap calculated.

-Channeling cost's 10 energy and recharges in 6 seconds.
-Orb cost's 15 energy and recharges in 5 seconds.

Orb is a projectile which most experienced idle players can easily avoid with frequent success. Channeling is not.
From what I remember from my tests, the damage of Channeling does begin to drop off quicker than Orb's as the opponents AL rises (thanks to ap) but at 100 AL I don't think the difference was over 10.

You'd be surprised the kind of damage you can dish out in pvp. In pve... Well. Have a talk with Mr. elementalist.

I personally think the damage of channeling has been buffed enough. Remeber that Rit's don't just pump out damage spells. There's a lot of other crap they can do aswell. I think that's the point. Try taking some healing or damage spirits along with your damage spells. Something Elementalist's can't do.

(ps: Anet, reduce the recharge on Lamentation pls! 30 is too long to be useful. Especially considering how conditional the damage is. ^_^).

frojack. I do agree the pure numbers are comparable. However, in "real world" application channeling is much easier to out heal than a proper air spike because ritualists are extremely obvious about setting up spikes. (hence the need for a coordinated team). Granted Destruction - Rupture Soul - etc does massive damage it is much easier to stop than an ele.


Now, every class has a specialty. Ritualists as it stand now are the most versatile class - on par with rangers. However, they do not have a role that they excel at above all else. Spirits, perhaps, but in pve they are almost useless because of mobility issues.

Channeling should be similar to the necro's death magic than the ele lightning considering the descriptions of the rit channeling energy from the world of the dead to use these spells. Armor ignoring damage may be extreme considering how the ritualist can spam their spells very well. However, this would make it similar to spirit damage, death magic damage, and make pvp that much more interesting.

At the least, such a change would make channeling in pve more viable. At the most it would make pvp strategies change with such a new type of damage producing class. Also such a change would perhaps revoke the nerf on shelter and the old ritual lord build and make both balanced. A ritualist to counter a ritualist much like a mesmer can counter a mesmer etc.