The new Spirit Spam - just the other extreme?

Could the new FOTM be "Team Spiritwall"?

Lots of Ritualist Spirits? Funnily, channeling 12 is possible on all chars, not only Ritualists, and thus the Signet can be used by other classes as well.

They felt the need to nerf Cryway groups to roughly half damage from CoP. Spirits do not have the spike potential of the old or new CoP, but they generate even MORE damage plus also serve as minions/distractions/meat shields. If they moved Signet of Spirits to spawning power, I wouldn't complain. However, like all spirits, you can only have one of a particular type up at a time. So if your plan is to make a spirit wall, the group would have to decide who is bringing what. That could be pretty interesting, but meh, not so easy to organize.

Regarding Cry of Pain: Yes, for most people it is certainly a nerf. However, I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out with my assassin using Shadow Form. Cry of Pain now has a degen component. Degen is not discounted while in SF the way damage is. So maybe the sin can replace Radiation Field with something less costly, and use Cry of Pain for the degen.

Signet of Spirits summons 3 spirits sure, but having more than one signet doesn't let you summon more copies of these. Still, my rit's now a 5 minion MM (and what minions they are!) for all intents and purposes. My Rit Minion Bomber takes [Consume Soul], destroys your Spirit "wall," steals some Health, and pours melee-range minions into the breach. If you kill them, they explode. If you leave them alone, they keep pinging away at you. I could always compound that with a Weapon Spell that has 3 (or more, depending on Runes) Ranks in it's Attribute, for my choice of effects. And needless to say, my Weapon Spells are at max duration, because I always run max Spawning anyways.

To me, this update is a buff, because I almost never play a Spirit build, even though I almost always run max Spawning. I feel bad for the Channeling/Resto guys, though.

PS: Master of Damage fails at figuring out AOE damage, so I can't put up any impressive pics. 30K damage, though, that's pretty nice.

My Rit Minion Bomber takes [Consume Soul], destroys your Spirit "wall," steals some Health, and pours melee-range minions into the breach. coolface.jpg

We're discussing PvE here.

Here are a few screen shots that I wanted to show you guys. The first one is myself and my bud Chris using two Spirit Spammers to deal close to 30k in damage to the Master of Whispers in about 2mins. You also have 3 eles, 1 assassin and 1 monk (may be a RoJ user so I counted him in).

Btw, what is the purpose of this thread anyway? (not sarcasm)

We're discussing PvE here. Oh, my bad. In that case, do whatever you like, then.

I will now explain why overbuffing is not the same as making a class viable. Why the changes to spirits had a good intention but went over the top. I hope I am not preaching to mindless zombies.

1. PvE needs balance, too. I do not cheer to overpowered crap.
2. They are turning GW into a dumb game for dumbasses. Basically, a farmer's game.

Consumables were apparently not enough. They add more and more "PvE" versions and PvE skills that make the game boring. It also promotes dumb gameplay and dumb players, creating a downward spiral, who feels the need to improve or play smart if your assortment of overpowered skills can do everything for you.

People have played naked just with henchmen through this game.

Ritualists can now use their spirits in PvE due to shorter cast times. As if this would not be enough, they also get a Signet for adding 3 very strong spirits at once every 20 seconds.


Does this have any balance? Is this reasonably balanced?
Every idiot can overbuff or destroy skills. So much about that. I do cheer for overpowered crap in PvE when a certain class is clearly unwanted, in this case it's ritualist. There was no reason to take a ritualist over other classes except from special cases. This is obviously not the optimal solution but considering Anet situation at the moment it's all they can manage, barely.

Have a glance at the update from a designer prospective and lets see what happened in this update:

1. The first PvP oriented update since a long time (meaning it's an important update).
2. Big split in skills (bad).
3. New overpowered skills (bad).
4. Unused classes get a very much needed attention (good).
5. Script bugs (bad).
6. A server bug (very bad).
7. Dupe skill (very bad + new).
8. *Might be more*.

You can clearly see that the update didn't take the right turn. It keeps getting worse from time to time. So we should be thankful that something good came out.

Moreover, the other classes aren't balanced so making the ritualist balanced actually puts them in disadvantage. That said, Weapon Spells should be re-buffed, while keeping the new buff to the duration for primary ritualists.