ritualist skill changes...

While he does balance mainly for PvP, your flamebait insulting PvE Players is not required. I could go off on a rant about how PvP Players constantly whine about powerful skills because they refuse to alter their "ubar pwning builds" to counter them, but we both know that's not true at all. So why use a PvE Generalization that is not true for the majority of the players who take the time to post on forums?

Believe it or not, a lot of PvE Players care about balance in their preferred game type, they're just sick and tired of having their characters KILLED because of PvP Changes. That's another discussion entirely though.

I can understand the addition of exhaustion to some of the skills... but adding it to the spirits was completely RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing retarded. Especially as some of these spirits will all exist within the same build! Getting 90 seconds worth of exhaustion for casting 3 spirits, 1 of which lasts *25* seconds is completely ott.

the exhaustion bit was a bit over the top. Some skills like ancestor's rage aren't that bad with it given the similarity to chain lightning

A skill like wielder's strike does not need exhaustion...

Spirits on the other hand...you cannot use glyph of energy so they are basically relegated to 30 second pseudo recharges


The two elites that were hardly used before will probably not get used now, mainly because they rely on the opponent(s) targetting even when the spells are active sort of like Vengeful was Khanhei:
"Defiant Was Xinrae: decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased recharge time to 5 seconds; increased duration to 5..15 seconds; this Skill now causes Exhaustion."

"Xinrae's Weapon: decreased Energy cost to 10; decreased recharge time to 10 seconds; this skill now causes Exhaustion."

Well then if you put it that way; then all warriors should do about one, damage per hit and all skills take 10 minute recharge. Once that happens we can call it fair game. I mean seriously if your going to make an argument; don’t straddle in and say, “I think it always should be one sided instead of being well rounded.”

It come full circle you know, and it’s not always just about the PvP’ers opinion.

I for one welcome the changes, for the most part. Some of the skills really needed the nerf (Vital Weapon, anyone?). Some weren't badly hurt anyway (Splinter Weapon). The spirits especially add an interesting choice (I can keep up Anguish, or Disenchantment, or Dissonance on a Painful Bond build now). Some I disagree with (Wanderlust didn't need Exhaustion unless they remove the damage it takes when it works). All in all, I think it was a good thing, and I'm certainly not passing out pitchforks like some people are suggesting.

For what it's worth, I've been playing a ritualist since there have been ritualists to play, so weigh my opinions as you will.

This update for rits seems rather silly. I just look at every updated skill with "This skill now causes exhaustion." at the end of it, and I just laugh.

I guess I'll spend some time tomorrow trying to work around it. My favorite channeling build I use in PvE is now crap, so that has me upset. I always thought exhaustion was good staying as a side-effect for eles only, but now it seems all spellcasters are susceptible to it now. Everyone I've talked to so far seems to be in an uproar about this update.

I almost pissed myself laughing when i saw that they had actually nerfed the shit out of the 2 most useless and unused rit elites in the whole skill set...

Don't liek this part either, exhaustion is lousy for rits for 2 reasons:

)rits don't have as high mana as eles and will be hit hard with exhaustion
)Some spirits now cause exhaustion and glyph of energy can't even prevent that :/

In every online game I ever played (America's Army, Soldat..), people always hated campers (those who sit in one place and don't move at all). When Factions came out, Guild Wars was introduced to its type of campers: Spirit Campers (I cal them Spirit Campers, not Spirit Spammers). Having to play against someone who just likes to spam Spirits and camp in one place is about as much fun as playing against someone who packs nothing but running skills.

I hated them from day 1, and although it took them a long while, Anet finally did something about them.

The only thing I could argue about is how Anet decided to stop them. Instead of adding exhaustion, I would have thought to limit the number of spirits a player can have active, or perhaps after casting a spirit, all other spirit spells are disabled for 15 seconds..

None the less, I'm so glad they're gone- back to the arenas for me..

Take less exhaustion skills.

Anet, Please F'ing understand that WE DO NOT WANT TO BE MELEE !

*points at all the highly suspect Spirits Strengths related Buffs, then points to Nerfing of everything NOT spirits strength*

Ffs we have warriors for a reason.

It's not been nerfed THAT much...what do you do with splinter weapon? Cast Splinter Weapon...Use Barrage, rinse and repeat? I don't know of anyone who used Splinter Weapon so they could sit with it on them for 40+seconds before they used it..

Well this is the reason I can't really understand why they decided to "balance" the game by introducing exhaustion. You're right, Eles have a high energy pool to soak up exhaustion, as well as Glyph of Energy and Second Wind. Rits have no way of countering exhaustion which I think is wrong. From my suggestion from another thread:

I feel if Rits have to cope with exhaustion they need some mechanism which can help them.

Personally I find the offensive binding ritual exhaustion addition to not matter that much. The Luxon/Kurzick PvE skill Summon Spirits means you don't *have* to keep recasting spirits if you don't leave them where they will get hit.

The only change that saddens me so far is Ancestor's Rage, but it's something we need to learn to live with.

Rit > Warrior anyway...

The exhaustion changes look like a *buff* to me as far as spirits go. They all hit 25e spirits which you couldn't have more than one on your bar anyway, and it isn't like you could resummon said spirits before exhaustion. Now you have more energy left on your bar when you use them since they've been cheapened. Plus pure spirit spammers using wanderlust + 25e offense spirit were kinda overpowered in 4v4 and way boring everywhere.

I'll agree that exhaustion on ancestor's rage seems like overkill. Yes, the spike needs to die, but that basically kills it on channeling weapon rits too.

Splinter weapon nerf is to cut down on vod issues, before you could weapon the entire party up and go to town on archers, thats become a bit harder to do now.

you might be able to get away with 1 exhaustion coursing spell., exhaustion is 10 energy taken from the top of your bar...and takes 30seconds to wear off i think.

exhaustion related skills are also quiet bad.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Second_Wind

QFT

its totally horrible to have 2-3 skills on ur bar casuing exaustion while u dont have the same energy bar eles have. i see no reason why anet decided to ruin channeling AoE - forming a team in desolation in beyong f/ex u cant just take a rit who will spam ancestors rage anymore, anet makes u to choose diff damage dealer, channeling was heavily nerfed for no obvious reason...

It does seem like a lot of exhaustion has been handed out. Admittedly, I don't play rit, but one suggestion is to link number of spirits to spawning power, or whatever the main spirit att is, so that more in that attribute = more spirits, but possibly have a lower cap. Not perfect, but may work

What annoys me is that they nerfed channeling which is pretty much one of the only viable things a rit can do at high level pve right now without fixing or looking at the other problems.

Arcane echoed spiritrift/ancestors rage build is one of the few builds that could get you into a group in one of the elementalists place, but this is ofc now useless. Cant really take a monks spot because simply you cant prevent damage like one and resto lacks the heal party/lod, condition and hex removal. There is many overlooked problems right now.

The defensive spirits on hardmode for example. Its pretty disgusting when using 2 sup runes and casting a 5 second casttime 25 energy 45 recharge spell to watch the spirit disappear 1-2 later before its coming out of ground animation is even complete. Its totally broken and they need to be reworked so they dont scale so much with amount of enemys/attack speed like this. Switching the game to hardmode just totally makes that aspect of the ritualist so much more worse and almost useless.

Alot of playing the ritualist in pve right now is about trying to convince people and persuade them to let you into their group. It shouldnt be like this.

They should be nerfing the more cookie cutter pve builds and classes sometimes instead of just turning the unused ones into more useless crap.

I really hope rits get some crazy pve skills in GWEN.

There goes the days of me reading about nerfs with blissful ignorance...

Yes, I am slow to warm to new professions and possibly even slower to really experiment with the range of skills. It was to my pleasant surprise when I came up with a combo of skills that satisfied my PvE cravings for the Rit. I started ploughing through the campaigns with renewed vigour. Switching on the PC for some Friday-night escapism, I watched with growing dread the grey creeping its way across my mana bar. Only 2 skills out of the set nerfed, but I guess that's like saying only one tyre is flat.

I realise the nerfs are needed for balance and the overall benefit of the game, but thought I'd add my own small experience in case the developers take a peek. The combination of exhaustion and low total mana effectively removes the use of a number of Rit skills.

</carebear whinge>

You mean Party Heals like, umm, [wiki]Life[/wiki], [wiki]Protective was Kaolai[/wiki], [wiki]Feast of Souls[/wiki] and soon the new rit skill Rejuvenation? Oh look...they're all non-elite as well. A Rit can't remove hexes, which is their only downfall, but what's why we go /Mo or /Me to fix that problem. I've never had a problem getting into a group as a restoration ritualist and they are generally regarded as being superior to Monk healers due to a Ritualist's built-in superior energy management skills.

I rarely go into Hard Mode without Razah, at the very least. Shelter isn't the only defensive Binding Ritual, however, in Hard Mode the most dangerous part of a battle is the beginning imo. When you engage with an enemy, the enemy has full energy and they tend to try to spike people off fast. If shelter is down before a mob is engaged it neutralises that first spike...so since you have no idea who they will target first, it's far more effective than using Protective Spirit on everyone.

The update isn't about nerfing PvE builds, it's about "Balancing" PvP. PvP will always be more important than PvE...nothing can change that...not even writing a harshly worded letter to ANet. In PvE you just need to learn to adapt your builds. I know it's annoying and sometimes hard to do but we have to...I know what it's like to have a loved build you've played for along time torn to pieces by "PvP Balance".

By the way, anyone who wont let you in their party because you're a Rit isn't worth PuGing with.

To PvErs going about the balances.

There once was a thing called Rit Spike in PvP, it had 1 Rit smack Vital Weapon on the whole team. The whole team then went out and spiked with Wielders Strike for stupid amounts of damage. For everything else, there was Spirit Burn, and Spirit Rift and god knows what else because I usually slaughtered them before letting them goto town.

Another variant involved a N/A with Shadow Prison that would go in, snare someone and then everyone would cast Ancestor's Rage on their Ally Necro, destroying the unlucky target (Sometimes two or more if they were bunched up).

In amongest all this there was tons of very annoying spirits to deal with, most of which got exhaustion.

This is why it had to be nerfed, it was a cancer in PvP.