Ritualists. Energy free nukers?

The idea behind this build is using *gasp* the spawning power elite Attuned Was Songkai in conjunction with an elemental attunement of your choice (Fire Attunement/Air Attunement etc) to provide perfect energy management.

Attuned was Songkai:
Hold Songkai's ashes for up to 45 seconds. While you hold her ashes, your spells and binding rituals cost -5...41% of the base Energy to cast.

Just for reference: So at 15 spawning power, your spells cost -50% energy to cast. And an attunement gives you back 1 Energy plus 30% of the Energy cost when you use a skill from that attribute line.

Example 1
Lets say you have 15 spawning power and you cast AwS and Fire attunement. Holding AwS, you have 30 energy.
You cast fireball, a 10 energy skill. Under AwS, that cost is reduced to 5 energy. With Fire attunement, it gives you back 33% of 10e = 3 e + 1 energy = 4 energy.
Basically your attunement triggers on the base energy cost of the spell, and not the cost reduced by Attuned was Songkai.

So from the above example, your fireball costs 1 energy.

And if that wasnt enough. Quoted from Guildwiki: Each "pip" (of energy regeneration) indicates 1 point every 3 seconds of energy recovery. So being a ritualist, you will have 4 pips of energy regeneration. Meaning 4 energy per 3 seconds or 1.3 energy per second.

Because fireball is a 2 second cast time spell, your energy regeneration will give you back 2.6 repeating energy back while your in the middle of casting. By the time fire attunement triggeres (at the end of your cast) you will be back to full energy.

The result: No energy lost.

Example 2
So again with 15 spawning power.
Under Attuned was Songkai and Air Attunement

Test skill: Lightning HammerLightning Hammer has a base cost of 25 energy. Under AwS, that is reduced to 12.5 energy, lets round up to 13. Air Attunement will give you back 8.3 +1 energy. We shall round this to 9 energy. 13-9 = 4 energy. The cast time of Lightning Hammer = 2 seconds. Within those 2 seconds, you get 2.66 energy back. Even rounding that down down, 4-2 = 2 energy.
The result: A 25 energy spell now costs only 2 energy.


Conclusions
The idea about this combination of skills (AwS and an attunement) is to give perfect energy management, or basically the ability to spam high energy cost spells with no impact on your energy bar.

So at the very end, what do we get?

Pros
-Better energy management than mind blast
-Energy never goes low

Cons
-Cannot deal with exhaustion. While it shall make skills such as Meteor Shower free (because of the 5s cast time), exhaustion will kill your ability to spam skills.
-This build replies on you having at least 15 spawning power to achieve maximum effectiveness. This will mean a major rune of spawning power or a superior rune (if you have no headpiece). When holding the Ashes of Attuned Songkai, you will NOT get the health benefits of your weapon. This will further decrease your health to approximately the high 500s if you are using survivor and vitae runes.
-The 15 seconds of downtime while AwS is recharging will not allow you use use your more 'expensive' spells in terms of energy cost.

Skills to Consider

Some skills worth bringing may be:
[SKILL]Empowerment[/skill]
[SKILL]Ghostly Haste[/skill]
[Skill]Mindbender[/skill]


Example Builds

This is a really really general nuking build. The idea is similar to a Mind Blast Rodgorts Invocation Spammer. By using glowing gaze and mark of rodgort, you shall run into ZERO energy problems. While AwS is recharging (the 15 seconds of downtime), use skills that cost less energy such as fireball and liquid flame.

[build prof=Ri/E name="AwS Rit Nuker" Spa=12+1+2 Fi=12 Res=3][Attuned was Songkai][Fire Attunement][Rodgort's Invocation][Mark of Rodgort][Glowing Gaze][Liquid Flame][Fireball][Death Pact Signet][/build]


The is a build based of a dual attunement air spiking build.
[build prof=Ri/E name="AwS Rit Nuker" Spa=12+1+2 Ai=12 Res=3][Attuned was Songkai][Air Attunement][Lightning Hammer][Lightning Orb][Enervating Charge][Blinding Flash][Ghostly Haste][Death Pact Signet][/build]


Hero Usage

Time to dust off Xandra and Razah? Honestly I have no idea. In my experience, heroes use item skills on recharge and also use attunements on recharge. So basically they should have the attunement on them always and should be holding AwS as much as possible. Spamming offensive spells should also be a pretty simple task.

In theory, this might make a pretty good hero build but yeah, I have NOT tested this so maybe someone could give it a try.


The Final Word

In the end, keep in mind that the idea and purpose of this concept is the spam spells regardless of energy cost with very minimal or no impact on your energy bar. How useful you find this, and how effective it is will be your opinion.

If this idea has been suggested before, pardon me haha. I have checked the discussion pages on AwS as well as browsed through the builds on PvX before creating this thread.

Feel free to point out any calculation errors, spelling errors or factors i have not considered. (A note about my calculations: I rounded down on all the energy regain calculations (like 8.3 to 8) and rounded up on all the energy costs calculations (12.5e to 13e).

All constructive feedback is welcome.

So. Discuss. =)

I have no idea why you wouldn't run [elemental attunement] instead. Spawning power is a worse primary attribute than energy storage, you can't use a useful secondary with this build, you do less damage than a primary ele with runes, and attuned was songkai just isn't as strong as elemental attunement.

Attuned was Songkai is unstrippable? xD

Thats true tho, getting 50% of the base energy cost back is simply the same as AwS at 15 spawning power. A complete oversight on my part? Haha

1. Cute.

2. Your methodology is wrong in removing the energy regenerated while a spell is casting from the cost of the spell for one side of the comparison but not the other. Both elementalists and ritualists regain energy while casting. So, discount it for both or ignore it for both.

3. So you can make a ritualist use elementalist skills very effectively... The only problem is that most of the elementalist skills aren't very great. To paraphrase Ensign, auto-attacking warriors and other physicals do better single-target damage. And curse necromancers do better AoE damage, especially in PvE where monster armor really hurts the damage output for elementalist spells.
The only way this is going to pay off is if you can spam something very potent that couldn't otherwise be spammed before. Just spamming RI isn't enough -- the MB/RI ele build works because MB powers pve-only skills and RI does passable damage. Perhaps spamming lightning hammer... I suggest you go digging into the pool of expensive-but-quick-recharge ele skills and see if there's anything truly fantastic in there.

I can see it work, now I wouldnt take that over a proper dual attunment ele or a Channeler, but I tested it quickly and it works.
However Ghostly haste + *insert spirit* (I took empowerment when testing) is needed to have a 100% upkeep on AwS

This is basically what you can do by bringing GoLE and Attunement on an actual Ele.

They also have a useful primary attribute, and they have access to runes.

This is just a sub-par nuker. Use it if you want by any means, though...

(Plus you're cut off from weapon use, such as 40/40 sets...)

Dual attune is the same thing without completely wasting your primary. Also an ele has MUCH better e-management with mind blast.

A human player would be better off using an Elementalist with Elemental Attunement. As for heroes using these bars; they fail at using Attuned Was Songkai too often, so their bar would soon leave you with corpse or a meat shield, and minions do that better.

I don't like it.

You should play a Rit like a Rit....not an Ele.

Attuned was Songkai means no weapon bonuses...... X.X

Your builds offer no utility...which is bad for a mid-liner. (not to mention, the second build has no spirit for Ghostly Haste)

An ele can still do it better, and more efficiently. Not only that, theres so much more you could be doing as Ritualist that would actually assist your party.

It's a cute idea, but that's about it.

Why are you using [Ghostly haste] without a spirit?

If you want energy efficient nukes, use [Ancestors rage] and [spirit rift].

This just blew my fragile little mind!
Why?
Because I LOVE Air magic!
Channeling has NOTHING on the pretty light show that Air offers! Watch me not care that I do shit damage when I can call up on the powers of the storm to strike down my foes!
Well ... gently caress them.

dude you can totally spam [renewing surge]

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Ritualist.

Why would you ever use Elementalist spells when you could run Rt/R Splinter Barrage?

I strongly doubt [Attuned Was Songkai] > [Elemental Attunement]

as others here mentioned Dual Attunemenet solves your problem...
and Eles have more efficient builds such as Mind Blast and Assassin's Promise nukers...
also, while holding an item spell you dont receive weapon bonuses...
and you're stuck with useless rit runes.

[elemental attunement]>[attuned was songkai] for all Elementalist purposes.

Other than fun, I don't see why you would run this.

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It's a fun little concept you got there.

Agreeing with most people that [Elemental Attunement] is better than [Attuned Was Songkai]. However, in places where enchant strips are abundant, it might be worthwhile taking a Rt/E with your build in place of the elementalist; then again, the Rt/E relies on an attunement as well.

Partially off topic, but while we're speaking about Elementalist skills; I think it'd be nice to see a few air skills take a slight change in PvE. for example
[Lightning Strike] - could also hit one nearby foe
[Chain Lightning] - could lose exhaustion and up to 15s cooldown for PvE
[Lightning Hammer] - could hit adjacent foes in PvE (it does the same damage as Rodgort's anyway, considering the burning on that and the AP on this)

Back onto the subject of [Attuned Was Songkai] I've found it useful for simply spamming, as another said, [Renewing Surge].

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no...Renewing Surge sucks no matter what.

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i do use splinter & ancestors; just wanted to use some underused skills but i suppose they won't really be viable until izzy fixes them

If you want to turn your rit into a nuker, this is the way to go (or you can just use elemental attunement). However, using dual attune or ether renewal on an ele is by far superior than this type of nuker.

^
You left out Mind Blast!!!

Mind blast isn't nearly as fun when you can spam spells under ether renewal

IMO, with the new ether renewal mind blast is underpowered in comparison, unless in a high enchant stripping area. Not saying that mind blast doesn't still work, its just not imba like ether renewal.

You guys are a bit retarded...
They asked for constructive criticism.. not to be told that Ele's do it better.
It's pretty obvious Ele's are going to be stronger with it as they can use runes...
The heading was 'Energy Free Nukers', not 'Rits are better than Ele's.'

And as for the two builds, the first one looks alright, but the air one is missing a spirit.
Might want to try something like Vampirism for a somewhat useful self-heal.

nice builds,to bad the dmg is near to crap if u try it in hm,also for nm just stick to attuned was songkai+channeling spells ,but than i would just use a restoration/channeler hybrid cause all i would want from channeling is splinter weapon and ancestor rage.

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