Buff to Spawning Power

i would also like to see rts get kinda buffed as i also agree that their primary attribute is kinda useless at the moment and unless they buff the rts skills themselves then i think they should change the rts primary attribute.

First buff suggestion- I liked the buff to wep spells when anet last buffed Spawning power to make it increase all wep spells by 2% per rank...
however this doesn't really make much of a difference as that, at rank 12, the buff is only 24% which doesn't rlly make too much of a difference to most wep spells as they are kind of short like weapon of warding. At rank 12 Spawning power, the buff would only make weapon of warding last an extra 2 secs approximately. So maybe making it 3-4% would be better.

Second buff suggestion-Maybe since in the rts introduction it says-
"They hood their eyes to better commune with spirits that grant great power and protection"the idea of having an increase in armor wouldn't be too bad...
so my suggestion is maybe to have Spawning power read-

"For each rank of Spawning Power you have, creatures you create (or animate) have 4% more Health, and things you create (excluding animated creatures) lasts 2% longer as well as having or granting +1 armor . Some Ritualist skills, especially those related to Spirit creatures, become more effective with higher Spawning Power. "

This means that if you create a spirit at rank 12 Spawning power, that spirit gains +12 armor and if you use, say...weapon of warding at rank 12, whoever you use it on has +12 armor. This +armor should also not count towards the +20 (i think?) armor cap.

Third and final suggestion-I know we have boon of creation already...but since its an enchant and easily stripped with a rather long recharge, maybe we should give rts another form of energy management?
My suggestion would be something like changing spawning power to read...

"For each rank of Spawning Power you have, creatures you create (or animate) have 4% more Health, and weapon Spells you cast last 2% longer. Whenever something you create dies or ends, you gain half (or maybe all?) the energy used to create it. Some Ritualist skills, especially those related to Spirit creatures, become more effective with higher Spawning Power. "

This could fit in with what ritualists are supposed to be in concept as the energy management could be the ritualists reclaiming some of the energy it used to create thus creating a circle of give and take between the ritualist and the spirits.

Anyways those are just some of the suggestions i could come up with that would buff rts whilst still staying within the concept of rts.

Bargh's opinion:
-Make SP combination of [Boon of Creation] and [Wielders Zeal] with reduced power for balance, remove previous bonuses.
-Rework [Boon of Creation] to give minions more health.
-Rework [Wielders Zeal] to make weapon smith rits' builds useful(maybe elite version of Wielders Boon).

I strongly think Boon should be a skill, not an enchantment. Keep the casting time, but it would be much better if were to work like Troll

Like I said a biljoen times. Don't make SP related to energy:
1) Rit's don't have energy problems.
2) It will result in nerfs to rebalance.

Curious. You need a more expierenced point of view. Sorry joseph, dont give your worthless opinion please. This thread is indeed pointless but not because people dont think but because people dont use the skills provided.

-Rit <3

I am kinda over the buff to Spawning.
We have a good thing going on right now - the ability to max out two lines that are actually decent. Just buff (and by "buff" I mean overpower) a bunch of skills in those two lines - and I'll be quite happy.

[splinter weapon (PvE)@22]


...Please?

How bout this for OP: Double the damage, make it last the full 20 seconds without ending after X amount of hits, thus making it more like [great dwarf weapon] without the KD but with the addition of AoE. (That's just begging for abuse in PVE)

Splinter and AR are good. Sure Splinter would be better if they removed the whole "3 foes only"-clause, but even without that, it's very worth the skillslot. What is not good is that out of the whole line, those two skills are the ONLY two skills worth the skillslot.

And it's the same with resto - you have just enough good skills to put together a SINGLE build WITH AR and SW.
And that on top of the fact that Communing and SP are completely and utterly shitty! That just shows that the ritualist problem goes beyond a crappy primary.

eh, no. channeling and restoration are fine. theres plenty of worthwhile skills. buff spawning power skills to sync with these 2 lines (turn weapon of renewal into a slightly better vengeful weapon, etc) and maybe ill start playing again.

I would love something to be done with this attribute, but from what i can tell there will be nothing done to this attribute line. Ritualists, and Paragons for that matter have been altered so their original visions no longer apply, and the designers have swept them under the carpet and forgotten about them. These 2 professions do need a second (3rd,4th) look at. But as they have not been looked at in awhile now (years?), and with the lack of resources given to this game for skill updates (only a few skills updated each month) leads one to believe that nothing will happen, I hope I am wrong!
It annoys me that for a game that has so many skills, instead of improving them. Some get quick fixed and most other skills never get looked at that need fixing. Ritualists aren't the only profession that needs a revamp, but they are one of the most needed ones.
Ok im done ranting and QQ'ing now i need a box of tissues.

I think rits need help more than any profession right now. Dervs have 2 good avatars and the wounding strike/reaper's sweep builds. Paragons have Imbagon. But do rits really have anything that a monk can't do better?

The easiest way I can see to buff spawning power is to just increase all it's durations. Instead of +4% and +2% increases per point of SP, make them +10% and +5%. And make it a +5% duration for item spells, too. It might not be the best way, but it is the simplest, and I think it gets the job done.

The key is to make rits the best at using their own skills. If you don't do that, then any buffs to the profession's skills become meaningless, because people will just play N/Rts and E/Rts. First you make the rits the best at using their own stuff, THEN you make that stuff useful.

There's been some talk on the boards that Spawning Power should get a buff because it's a comparatively weak attribute. I believe the solution is not to improve the attribute itself, but to improve a healthy number of skills in the attribute that would help Rit healers do their job better.

This would be similar to Strength. The warrior primary has many good skills that define the class, like Bull's Strike, Body Blow, Enraging Charge, Flail, Rush, and Sprint.

On a PvP side of things, many people think secondary Rit healers (like SR Necro/Rits, or Ether Prism Elementalists/Rits) are kinda lame. A change to improve the Rit primary gives opportunity to push these builds aside, or tone them down by tweaking the power of certain Restoration spells.

Here are several examples:

Spirit Channeling - New Functionality: For 30 seconds, each time you cast a non-weapon Ritualist Spell on an ally, one spirit in earshot loses 5..20 health, that ally is healed for three times that amount.
Wielder's Zeal - For 10..30 seconds, you gain 0..2 energy whenever you cast a weapon spell, and that target ally is healed for 15..60 Health.
Feast of Souls - New Functionality : 5/1/10 "Destroy target spirit. All allies in earshot lose 0..2 conditions and gain 10..55 health"
Spirit's Gift - Increase range to earshot
Explosive Growth - Increase range to area
Ghostly Haste, Renewing Memories - Increase duration to 10..25 seconds
Signet of Spirits - Moved to Spawning Power - New Functionality : 0/1/20 You gain 3..12 energy and 30..150 health. If you are in earshot of a spirit, this skill recharges 5..35% faster.

Completely agree with the changes,i cant see much of a use to spawning power skills besides attuned and explosive growth,the others really need a buff.

Sugesstions to buff the skills are alrdy made Like here by me.
And a lot peeps there agree that a skill buff would really help.
The problem is most idea's alrdy have been suggested.

ritualists have always been the "jack of all trades" so maybe you could rework spawning power, to give +1 to all (other) attributes for every 8 ranks of spawning power, or something similar. (in addition to current effects of course)

that would allow you to spec 12 - 10 - 8 and actually get 13 - 11 - 8. Similar to how elemental lord works.

problem I see for the item spell buff is vengeful was in PvE. 16 spawn 14~15 resto would allow you to have 20 second vengeful was, only down for 3/4ths of a second. Really though, I would like to see ritualist's elites reworked to be more effective... particularly in PvE. In PvP, some of them are fairly decent, but in PvE... Caretaker's is lame, needs to give energy instead of just being free. clamor of souls is lame, too low damage to bother. Destructive was glaive is lame, 10% Armor penetration isn't really worth an elite; heroes refuse to pre-cast. Grasping was Kurrong is lame, too long recharge to be effective really, too high energy too. offering of spirit is lame, you gain nearly as much energy from essence strike as offering... but it's better than nothing. signet of spirits is just plain stupid. I mean seriously. summon spirits anyone? weapon of fury is lame because splinter weapon is far better to have on any physical attacker.

And that's just listing channeling. To be honest...

Signet of Ghostly Might, attuned was songkai, and spirit's strength are the only decent rit elites available to rit primaries. (Not counting vengeful was, as that's purely a farming skill)

And what about speed increase when activating creation or summoning skills?
At least in PvE, characters could use something in the lines of this:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Accelerated_Growth

Why to choose a ritualist instead of a necromancer when bringing spirits or minions when more health is not enough good reason (i.e.: bomber builds)? Because interrupting you would be harder, since you could cast 3 second creation spells and rituals in 2 seconds.

My ideas, which probably suck , are...

1) Lower Binding Ritual spirit level progression based on the attribute it's under, then add 1 level to the BR spirit for every rank in Spawning Power. Most (all?) spirits currently go to 8 at 15 in its attribute, so perhaps max it at 4 without Spawning Power. You want BR spirits that're vaguely durable, you gotta be a Rit.

2) Reduce the base duration of BR spirits to a maximum of 60 seconds at rank 12 for the longest-lived ones and have Spawning Power add 5 seconds per rank. Probably have to have a few BR spirits with a "Lifespan does not benefit from Spawning Power" tacked on, though.

3) Increase modifier to Weapon Spell duration to +5% per rank (eg, at rank 12 SP, a weapon spell normally lasting 30s would be 48s - a significant improvement that might actually be worth investing in SP, compared to the old 37.2s duration the spell has now at rank 12).

4) Dunno about Item Spells. Perhaps +1 effective rank in its governing attribute for every 5 ranks in Spawning Power...

Those who watch Linsey's talk page may recall my mentioning that I had an idea that I was going to wait until I had time to hit the forum before presenting (to avoid it being caught up in the wiki licensing issue). For those who don't, my inspiration came from this comment:

In the comparison between Mind Blast and Caretaker's Charge, Shmutt has missed an important consideration here. The latter actually gives back more energy than it uses - using Shmutt's numbers, Mind Blast gives a profit of 2 energy, and if Fire Attunement is also being used (which it almost always will be) then the profit goes up to 4. Extra investment in Fire or use of Aura of Restoration or Elemental Lord increases the profit even more.

Meanwhile, Caretaker's Charge (and its cousin Clamor of Souls) only ever give back the energy they use - you can't use them for energy management, just as regular (and not particularly good) attack spells that don't cost energy if you fulfill the condition. This means that the gap between the two are actually considerably greater than Shmutt's analysis suggests, as indicated by Mind Blast being one of the favoured elites while Caretaker's is almost unused. The only advantage Caretaker's has is the steady healing, but with Aura of Restoration or Elemental Lord, even that advantage shifts to the Elementalist's court.

That analysis complete, what really caught my eye was the last sentence - Shock Arrow, Glowing Ice, and their cousins, each of which actually uses Energy Storage to determine the energy return. Why? Because another class - specifically, fast-casting Mesmers - were getting more use out of the skills than primary Elementalists.

Sound familiar? Not directly - after all, N/Rts aren't running around abusing Channeled Strike, and, indeed, don't need to because they already have enough energy. But it's an interesting principle - can we make Spawning Power more attractive by making some of the Ritualist's energy-gain-on-condition skills rely on Spawning Power for the energy gain component? It wouldn't be a complete solution to the SP problem, but it may well prove to be part of the solution.

So, with that in mind, here are some suggested skill changes:

Caretaker's Charge
Conditional energy gain increased to 5 plus 1 for every 2 ranks in Spawning Power

Clamor of Souls
Conditional energy gain increased to 10 plus 1 for every 2 ranks in Spawning Power

Essence Strike
Conditional energy gain changed to 5 plus 1 for every 2 ranks in Spawning Power

Soothing Memories
Recharge increased to 8s. Conditional energy gain increased to 5 plus 1 for every 2 ranks in Spawning Power

Pretty much all of these apart from Soothing Memories (and Essence Strike at high Channeling and low SP) are pure buffs. Soothing Memories is probably the most controversial of the four - however, I think Ritualists have enough short-recharge healing skills that the old version of Soothing Memories won't be missed if the new version serves as effective energy management... and clearly it can't have it's old recharge if it's potentially giving back 6-8 energy a pop. However, the ability to heal and gain energy simultaneously, in the same attribute as regular healing spells, may prove to be a little too powerful - although this may be addressable by further increasing the recharge.

Thoughts?

While I'm on this topic, one concept that keeps coming up is that Ritualists are bad compared to Monks because they lack hex removal... but is this really the case, or is it that hex removal on non-Monk professions just isn't good enough? Looking at the professions available when Factions was released, it seems clear that the Monk wasn't actually intended to be the default hex-remover, but that the job was supposed to be split between the Monk and the Mesmer. Thus, in a hypothetical Factions-era party with one member of each profession, the Monk and Mesmer can share hex removal while the Monk and Ritualist can split protection, healing, and condition removal, with the end result being roughly equivalent to the two Monks that were seen as virtually required for success by the time Factions was released.

In practise, however, the Mesmer's hex removal is saddled with so many extras that it just isn't viable. Shatter Hex's incidental damage is balanced by an exhorbitant energy cost on a class whose energy management has been gutted, ironically because it was being abused by Monks. Inspired Hex is effectively disabled for twenty seconds when used. Expel Hexes is elite and only superior to the elegance of Remove Hex (let alone Monk elite hex removal spells) when the target has multiple hexes... and even then, it lacks the benefit of Divine Favour. And so on.

What this means in practise is that if you need heavy hex removal, you take Monks. And once you've got the two (or more!) Monks needed to control the hexes flying at you, why bring a Ritualist?

But what if Mesmers could remove Hexes as well as they could remove enchantments? It may not be possible for this iteration of Guild Wars, but if Mesmers could have a hex-removal equivalent to Mirror of Disenchantment or Air of Disenchantment for mass hex removal, it might serve to improve the desirability of both professions in hex-heavy areas.

Thanks for clearing that up draxynnic, everything you just said was what I was thinking about but didn't put in such a clear way.

...and I do know that my skill analysis didn't go that deep, there are way more factors that should be considered, eles enchantments being one of them. Sometimes I wounder what goes through their minds when they skillbalance, if they even care about all the profs.

No problem.

Having read over my post again, there was one thing I was planning to mention as an aside but forgot to do so - that the closest thing the Ritualist has to an attunement is elite, non-maintainable, prevents use of other (item) skills, and generally isn't as effective as any of the non-elite attunements, let alone Elemental Attunement. However, forgetting to mention that doesn't really hurt the point I was trying to make, as it's basically just a 'to add insult to injury' comment.

On balancing - it's something I've lamented before I even knew about GW - there's a tendency in balancing to nerf the powerful stuff and buff the stuff that's almost competitive, but the things that are just too weak to consider using often drop below the radar and are forgotten by the balancers.

First of all - the whole ele vs ritu comparison is quite flawed.
What Channelling does is able to support Resto. To achieve that on a ele - you need to waste your secondary on going rit. You have damage and healing on one guy. By default.
That's not pretty to balance.

Second of all - by linking Channelling/Resto skills to Spawning, you are making them weaker. The reason why this works for an ele is because EVERY ele goes Energy Storage. No ritualist goes Spawning. So by linking skills to Spawn - players need to make their Resto and Chan skills weaker.


The problem is that we are dealing with a hybrid. What this means is that this a Chan guy will never be as good as an ele, and a Resto guy will never be as good as a monk. To achieve something good you need to combine both lines. But then you are dealing with a guy that has it all.
So you can't really do anything with Spawning in regard to Chan/Resto without making him weaker or making him overpowered.
And nobody wants spirits in PvP.



So seriously, the only thing I see working is a PvE-only Communing-spirit related buff. In PvP, you roll the guy that is the best at the job you want to do. In PvE , you play with the guy with the cutest outfits.

How did you even come up with this idea? It's so out of left field.

Obviously that skillchange draxynnic suggested would require a buff to spawning power too. What this does is making Ritualists the primary way to use their skills, currently they're not. Nothing that a Rit does (with rit skills) can't be done better with another proffession, except few, very few builds. It aims at making ritualist the ritualist.

Splinter @ 14.
The reason why we don't run this on Razzy is because Razzy is dumb.
So is Livia - but she has unlimited energy.

Since people are complaining about weapon spell running out of uses before the duration is up (and I didn't see this anywhere else in the thread), add one use per 4 ranks of Spawning Power for weapon spells. This might actually overpower some skills, though.

Spawning Power has a lot of non-elite skills in it, but they're all over the place in terms of functionality. There are damage spells, quite a lot of energy management skills (not necessarily limited to the Ritualist), healing spells, and various enchantments. I'd say Spawning Power was intended to be used for its active abilities, which mostly become passive once you cast them, but they're mostly superfluous given the existing Ritualist skills. As people have said before, Ritualist skills are good enough on their own that Spawning Power is unnecessary. Buffing Spawning Power skills to godly levels is not the way to go, but if they can be made more attractive than the Restoration or Channeling alternatives, Ritualist primaries might be more favored. I'm not sure how to go about changing the skills, but I saw some interesting suggestions above. It might be better to just parcel the skills out to their respective lines and just keep the more unique ones in Spawning Power while focusing on the passive bonus.

What I'd like to see for Spawning Power:

I'm not sure if I would rather have one more level for summoned creatures or just having one-fourth of your Spawning Power attribute added onto whatever summoning skill you use, be it a spirit or minion skill.

I'll just add some kind of bonus to all skills that create, summon, animates or spawns something.

For example, Meteor shower says 'create' on its description, so it would be affected.
Same for deadly swarm.
Same for all weapon and item spells, that create items that appear in the player's hands.

Except that the objective of the changes is to give Ritualists a reason to use their own primary. Plus, as I'd stated in my original post and Shmutt reinforced:

Emphasis added. I never claimed that this was the be-all-and-end-all change, just something else to add to the proverbial melting pot.

As for making them weaker... look at the maths before making such assumptions. The proposed changes to Caretaker's Charge and Clamor of Souls are pure buffs (to, I point out, underused skills) - with nothing in SP, they'd be the same as they are now. Essence Strike with the change would only require a 6-point investment in Spawning Power to match the energy gain of a 14-channeling Essence Strike now. Sure, it'd mean dropping Resto from 12 to 11 before runes, but I don't know of any important breakpoints offhand that that will remove... and wouldn't it be a good thing for ritualists to actually, you know, invest something in their primary attribute?

That will be hard to say what is created. is a avatar created/summoned?
Depends on how you look at it, but almost every elemental spell is "created"
Quite hard to balance.

It would be things that are not the player itself.

A Form turn the user into something, not creates something separate. A weapon is on his hands, bundles can be dropped, meteors, swarms... they are separate tangible stuff going around, not just 'cold', 'dust' or 'forces'. Things that are animate, alive or bigger than a fist, that can exist separately I mean.

Still sound tricky. Is flare included? what about Searing Flames? Wards are created to...
I don't know what the effect should be, but I smell /E abuse.

I agree with the posts that any spawning power change should really enhance the idea of the profession - ie interacting with the spirit world, be it through summoning spirits, weapon spells (presumably spirit energy focuses into weapons) or bundles (a foci that channels the relevant named spirit).

Looking over all the ideas, perhaps something along these lines?

Spawning Power - For every 4 points in spawning power, binding rituals, weapon spells, and item spells are cast at +1 of the governing attribute.

Eg, with Channeling 12 and SP 8, a rit would cast Splinter Weapon as if having Chan 14. However, spells like Spirit Rift, Ancestor's Rage, etc, would see no increase in casting level.

May be a bit overpowered. I thought maybe +1 per 5, but that doesn't seem worth it (might as well dump directly into the attribute and have it affect all that attributes skills).

I wonder how bad could it be abused? If Chan 12 + 1 + 3 and Sp 11 + 1. Would yield Chan of 19 for affected skills. Spinter Weapon could deal 321 more damage (divided amongst 3 or more foes) than with Chan 16. Tho, its fairly spammable, so maybe a crazy 2 man farm build for some areas?

Maybe cap it at 16 or 17 (ie the SP bonus would not let you go over this level).


On the skill side, it seems odd to me OoS is in Channeling. Seems like it should be in SP. Or perhaps a non-elite version in SP (6..12..14 energy gain, 20 sec recharge).

I've also found spirits to be like so much tissue in hardmode. Two things I can think of:

Make summon spirits spread the spirits out a bit more. Or, add a new SP skill called "Scatter Spirits" which can disperse your spirits in a wider area (eg if they're getting hit with AoE). Perhaps as a signet.

"Spirit of Exchange" (SP) - Create a level 1...7...8 Spirit (30 second lifespan). When the next spirit you control would die from damage, this spirit becomes that spirit with full health and remaining lifespan. Energy 5?, Recharge 20sec?

I think Mysticism needs a buff more then Spawning Power lolz

Fire is not solid. Wards are 'put'.

It would be ironic to have all those E/Rts fuelling heals with Ether Renewal while Rt/Es drop the nukes...

The biggest snag I see with Mithran's idea is that I doubt the range of skills he has in mind actually have a type in the game - Meteor, for instance, probably doesn't have a 'summons a physical object' tag but is just another instantaneous AoE spell that causes knockdown and has a particular animation. Also, while it fits the Ritualist's summoning theme, it doesn't really fit the 'summoning from beyond the veil' theme. (Although one could argue that Ritualistic experience with things beyond the veil could be applied to physical summonings as long as the Ritualist takes the appropriate secondary profession.)

One possible resolution could be to apply the bonus to anything that creates a lasting zone on the battlefield - this includes wards and area of effect damage-over-time skills (including Meteor Shower). The justification could then be that the Ritualist is siphoning additional power from the Mists to support the effect. The simplest resolution could simply be to increase the duration of those effects by a value according to the Ritualist's Spawning Power.

...in fact, taking that concept, you could go further and apply a Spawning Power bonus to anything with a duration.

spirits also aren't solid.....
and wards description says create, like a lot other ele spell's.
I still say it's to hard to make the line, what's effected and what's not.

Actually, spirits are solid. Like demons, they are the 'solidification' of spiritual energy. Something like globs ectoplasm.


And what abut armor penetration for spells that deal elemental damage? No profession does that. And all that would be left is balancing the amount of armor penetration. 5% or 10% shouldn't be too much.

That's how you look at it.

No, that's how you hit them with a sword that deals PHYSICAL damage.