The State of the Ritualist

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.

I understand your concerns. Better than you may think as I used to share your views. However, after using Channeling offensively in Pvp for some time now, I have come to understand why it is as it should be. The last round of buffs is more or less all that is required. A few things need tweaking here an there (Lamentation, Signet of Spirits, Wailing Weapon, Spirit Siphon) but that's about it. Channeling may suffer inferiority to Air Spikers (undoubtably as I play both. I know for a fact it does) but that's the way it 'should' be.

Spiking is just one set-up of many which the Ritualist can use for combat. When used together, these forms of attack and defence can be quite devastating. Fair enough, spirit damage is rather problematic since they don't follow targets (this seriously needs addressing) but it certainly isn't forgettable either. Then there's interruption. Warmongers Weapon now makes any confrontation with an enemy caster an interesting experience. Combining all these abilities makes the Ritualist very strong. Strong enough to justify a weaker Spiking ability than that of an Elementalist.

The mobility thing is the 'rub' as it were. However, mastering the Ritualist really boils down to making the enemy move how you want them to. Force them to come to you (control their movements) and you have won half the battle. How you do that... Well. I haven't mastered the class either .



Note: One thing I always try to remind myself of is this; Enemy spell casters need to be well in range of my 'artillery' before I can be the target of spells...

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Thank you for your view, frojack.

As you can most likely tell, I do not pvp much with rits despite them being my favorite class. I need to start experimenting more to see what potential the class can have in "strange" skill set ups. One problem, as other rit players have come across, is often your attributes are so widely distributed that is is difficult to effectively utilize each.

Often one thing or another is far too weak to be helpful or damage dealing.

Weapon spell based rits look promising with nightfall skills. It would be purely a supportive role, however.

PvP is unwelcoming to Rits, despite the sometims seen eccentric builds. Me are too dangerous with SPain and Unnatural. Interrupts and KD are frequent. Spirits are easily targeted and destroyed. PvE is good though. But buffs to Rits are definitely needed.

someone previously posted that Rts are the most versatile class, on par with rangers.

this is far from true!! The reasons rangers are awesome
1. expertise can affect many skills
2. expertise skill line is phenominal
3. mid armor lvl

The reason Rts have a hard time
1. spawning power? i don't know how this works, but my spirits having +++health doesn't do much for me. they still expire a certain time
2. holding an item, weapon bonuses out the window.
3. caaaaaaassssssssttttttttttting time. they should make allow +faster cast rate and spell recharge to work with rituals

Spawning Power itself doesnt effect too many things, but it has several very strong and versatile skills that really need 14+ in it to be effective.

Also, expertise is all good and well, but having only 12 in an attribute line, even fueled by expertise, isnt going to cut it. A Ranger is as versatile with secondary classes as a Necromancer with 1 less energy reg.

IMO the Ritualist has more potential due to one thing: you usually dont need more than 1 attribute at 12 to make an effective build, as you pretty much have a full healer in the restoration line, a full nuker in channeling etc.
THAT is what makes them versatile, and you cant match 16 channeling with 16 expertise+12 channeling, simply cause energy-managment, which is all expertise offers, doesnt matter enough to outweigh 4 more attribute points.

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rits are a great class but as said by others in this thread their use is not understood by most even alot of users of this class.and again speed is not always their strong suit,but when given time a spirits based rit(damage and prot)can be invaluable in a high difficulty situations.

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that may be somewhat true for defensive spirits, but offensive spirits with 12 communing instead of 15 or 16 last noticably shorter, AND do less damage. I tried both versions, and vastly prefer the Ritualist version, as I am usually not short on energy, stand back far enough not to catch interrupts, and more damage on spirits just matters a lot more than less energy once in 2 minutes.

But I guess that also depends on the rest of your teams build.

In order to save the rit and change the "slow only used build " spirit bomber/spammer,... Arenet must change the rit primary attribute !! and make it global to all skill (rest, chan,...) like other prof !!

Ideas :
- fast reload to rit only skill
- add heal bonus (like divine favor)
- add armor penetration to chan skill (a % each point,...)
- etc.

So many people say "they just don't know how to use the Rit". I say, "show people how to use a Rit then".

Speaking from a GvG point of view, there is a reason why the top teams do not run Rits, because they have not found any use for them that cannot be done by other classes in a better way.

I have to agree that the Rit is unwieldy at times. My main character is a Rit. Spirits are all but unusable in PvE pugs because of their mobility issues and slow casting times. Overall, I just fill any niche a team needs- through limited tanking (119 armor excluding a shield is nice despite being conditional), limited nuking, support, etc.

I rather dislike PvP but have had some fun in RA backing other teams in the corner using spirits.

I have to agree, however, that ritualists tend to be a lackluster class in many regards. Since the game seems to be pushing toward melee rits (which are decent although they are lacking in damage) perhaps Anet should allow rits to be inherently faster attacking than warriors to allow the damage to be more even.

Overall, the interdependence on item spells, spirits, etc is interesting but also impractical in many regards with its current implementation. The ritualist often requires 15 or 16 in one area to be adequately effective; however, because of the interconnection, on the skills often a ritualist needs 3 attributes to take full advantage of their abilities.

Imo Rts are not nearly as lacking as people make them out to be. Problem is mostly that no one tries much to use Rts and make use of their strong points.

Imo their strongest point IS their versatility in ONE build. Maybe you can argue that pure Resto is a poor monk, that pure Channeling is a poor Ele (btw i don't agree), but there is something those classes can't do and is be both at once.

Here's an example of a build we use in GvG:

Rt/X

15 Channeling
14 Restoration

Caretaker's Charge (emanagement, light nuke, light self heal)
Channeled Strike
Gaze from Beyond
Warmonger's Weapon (could be replaced depending on what you do, but this is imo the strongest utility Rts can bring to the table that no other class can)
Life (party support heal)
Mend Body and Soul (solid direct heal, if there's other spirits condition control)
Generous was Tsungrai (strong self-heal)
Flesh of my Flesh

This Rt can put 40 DPS of nuking when using his skills on recharge without running into emanagement trouble. He can do Warmonger's on a warrior to give him extreme interrupt ability. Life is a good party heal and an extra spirit (we use a second Rt along that has Pain-Blood-Shadow). MB&S is a nice heal that you can use to help saving someone low, etc. GwT allows you to safely use 2 major runes and use your hard rez without any risk since you self-heal to full right after by dropping it.

It's extremely strong to go handle gank in GvG with his ability to heal NPCs and nuke gankers from afar with non-LoS spells. If they jump on you, you have such huge self-healing ability that usually 1-2 gankers can't actually take you down. I soloed YAAhoos with this and they simply have to run from you once they've taken enough nukes in the face as you heal through all they do.

You can assist spike for 250 with Channeled-Gaze (ofc this can be reduced by armor, but even on 100AL it's still 125, and LOrb-LStrike assist from an ele doesn't do more). You can buff a warrior with arguably the best buff available in the game for a melee class (imo it is). There is a LOT you can do with that, and it's all energy efficient overall, the only costy spell being Warmonger but it's still pretty easily manageable with Caretaker's spam.

And note that the build is very mobile overall and even with no spirits at all a majority of your skills are still very good.


Imo, being hybrid is the strength of the class atm. Defensive spirits are simply inferior to Paragon defense so there's no point at all using them. Offensive Spirits are nice, and they go very well along with Channeling or Restoration. Note that Offensive spirit DO NOT need any point in spawning power. If people target them, Spawning Power will at best give them 1-2 more second of life. If they don't target them, Spawning Power does nothing. So honestly i just stopped using any kind of Spawning Power now unless i need a spell in there. I stopped using AwS and switched for Channeling emanagement most of the time (Essence Strike is awesome for a Communing/Channeling mix for example) since there's more useful spells in there than in Spawning. Weapon of Quickening is my usual elite for Communing/Channeling mix since it lowers Essence Strike to 6s recharge which turns it into a very good emanagement that also helps on damage. An example of Channeling/Communing build:

13-15 Channeling
14 Communing
3 Spawning

Weapon of Quickening
Essence Strike
Gaze from Beyond
Wielder's Strike / Warmonger's Weapon / Gaze of Fury
Pain
Bloodsong
Shadowsong
Rez Signet

You can buff other casters in your team with WoQ too which is a very good buff for some classes, emanagement is fine with Essence spam, your spirits recharge fast enough in case they die and you can nuke decently from range. Again it's a good mix of ally buffs, pressure damage and even some defense (Shadowsong spam blinds and people can't go as deep in your backline when there's spirits there).

Imo it's not really the skills that need an update (though some are definitely horrible, but hell all classes have a majority of horrible skills), more the way Ritualists are played. Simple spirit spamming builds doesn't cut it anymore and destroy your mobility. Simple nuking lacks utility. Resto healing isn't as mobile as a monk and at least in GvG that's a big drawback. Taking advantage of the hybrid aspect of the class is really the best you can do atm imo.

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We use it in GvG, and i'd much rather get that monk back up now than running over his corpse hoping to get a spirit on his back in 5s and then maybe managing to destroy it without being interrupted.

rits can't pvp? O.o

I just did a 2v1, and I am a restoration rit

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