New Rt/ hero healer vs the N/Rt

Does they really use it well? I would think they'd have trouble since it now targets the nearest spirit, rather than the hero being able to target. I've also noticed that heroes don't ever use Ancestor's Rage effectively. They don't ever cast it, from my experience. Hmm you seem to be right on the first point, as I just tested it out in the Great temple of Balthazar. I think the reason it must be working well for me on the vanquishes I did today (I was monitoring his energy level) is because of all the random kiting around that heroes do when the fighting starts puts different spirits in closest range.

As far as Ancestors' Rage goes, it definitely uses it on me as a Warrior, when I am in a clump of enemies.

After the RoJ nerf, I'm trying to find a replacement for my sin. I'm thinking something like the following will do nicely.

[Signet of Spirits][Bloodsong][Agony][Splinter Weapon][Ancestor's Rage][Siphon Spirit][Strength of Honor][Flesh of My Flesh]

What do you guys think? I think I've been running almost that exact bar on a rit hero for my sin. Agony was probably swapped out for something else (maybe smite hex, I don't remember). It definitely seems to work pretty well, I love having a high spec splinter weapon.

The rit is setup as 14 channeling and 13 resto, so there is no room to invest in the otherwise useless spawning attribute line just for energy management. That is why Spirit Siphon was so appealing.

I was not at all impressed with boon of creation at 8 (+4e) and especially don't want to put 14 (+6e) in it. At that point might as well be a N/ primary instead.

I really don't see how a primary rit hero is going to handle energy problems without boon of creation. Spirit Siphon (at 15 channeling, I like the even 50 damage on Splinter) + Signet of Spirits + Bloodsong will net 10 energy per cast (I think). Spirits regenerate full energy in about 20 seconds. With 4 spirits, that means you can use spirit siphon about every 5 seconds to get 10 energy.

SR averages out to about that much as well (can only trigger 3 times every 15 seconds).

If the hero knows which spirit to siphon from, sure. I haven't seen that they're very good at it, and if they siphon from the same spirit twice, they're not going to get much energy out of the second shot. I dunno, my experience has been that they're generally pretty good with it. I pretty much run the bar posted by traversc and I've never noticed my hero to have energy issues.

I'll try it. I know there have been some bug reports about spirit siphon.

I don't mind putting points into spawning because there are some skills in there that have become awfully useful all of a sudden. Like feast of souls, which, if heroes could ever be convinced to USE it, would give each member of the party 97 points of healing PER SPIRIT. With multiple spirits around, that's tremendous. But I always have to manual it; for whatever reason, they're morons about using it. Another spawning skill I like is spirit's gift, which just oh-by-the-way heals each party member for 47 points and removes one condition every time you create a spirit. Throw on those two skills, and you really have to wonder whether you need a resto at all. I've been using this guy instead of the Sabway N/Rt resto:

boon of creation
spirit's gift
painful bond
signet of spirits
bloodsong
splinter weapon
gaze of fury
feast of souls

At 12+1+1 spawning and 12+2 channeling, I hardly miss my resto. As a warrior, when I need condition removal, I usually need it right away, not as a side effect of when the hero happens to create spirits next, so I'm somewhat addicted to Mend Body & Soul with 3-4 spirits out. I'm also unlikely to be in the vicinity of the spirits that got created. I think the party heal from Spirit's Gift is the big win here, with Signet of Spirits, but heroes will not re-cast Spirit's Gift if the spirits haven't died yet. I think that when hero AI is fixed to use Feast of Souls automatically, this will result in frequent spirit killing, at which point your build above will be quite slick.

Heroes definitely used to not keep Spirit's Gift up very well from when I last tried it out (on a N/Rt minion master). I don't know if this is still true, but there was a bug about it on one of the hero skill usage wiki pages.

I am definitely looking for alternatives to the sabway N/Rt, so keep the builds coming everyone. Right now in my hero setup I now have a paragon (other thread here), a N/Mo minion bomber smiter, and the N/Rt. I'd like to experiment with the last two characters, but I'd really like to ensure I keep Strength of Honor and Splinter Weapon (even if at only 10 channeling) if possible, as they are very good skills.

The trick is to come up with a good Rt/Mo or Mo/Rt guy with splinter weapon and strength of honor. Anyone have anything that works really well? I saw traversc's one build above so far, interesting, haven`t tried it yet; I'm thinking maybe make that but make it a Rt/P to add an attack skill to benefit from other paragon shouts. Wearying Spear might work well on that guy at even low levels of spear mastery for the large amount of +damage, given +damage and spirit's strength aren't affected by weakness.

The trick is to come up with a good Rt/Mo or Mo/Rt guy with splinter weapon and strength of honor. Anyone have anything that works really well? I saw traversc's one build above so far, interesting, haven`t tried it yet; I'm thinking maybe make that but make it a Rt/P to add an attack skill to benefit from other paragon shouts. Wearying Spear might work well on that guy at even low levels of spear mastery for the large amount of +damage, given +damage and spirit's strength aren't affected by weakness. Instead of wearying spear, Find Their Weakness! You also get access to other command goodies and a shield. Hmm... I'll try that later as well

The concept I was thinking of looked like this:

Signet of Spirits {E}
Splinter Weapon
Rupture Soul
Boon of Creation
Ancestor's Rage
Spirit to Flesh/Spirit's Gift/Feast of Souls
Destruction
Mantra of Inscriptions

Spawning Power: 10 + 1
Channeling Magic: 12 + 1 + 1
Inspiration Magic: 8

The biggest issue though is how well the AI will use the spirit killing skills. Interesting, I'm looking at something very similar. Specifically, I find [spirit to flesh][destruction] potentially OP, given the identical semi-short 15s recharge times. What I envision is the usual MOB overrunning the group, with the Rt hero coming to the rescue healing all allies (spirits/summons too!) for 180 while doing massive AOE damage. However, I suspect it will pick a random (closest?) spirit, so it's most likely (~75% of the time) to choose 1 of the 3 signet spirits (with 13s recharge). Along these same MOB lines, [agony] looks somewhat interesting. I assume [painful bond] doesn't synergize with either of these spirits, tho...

With [boon of creation] and your two spirit skills, you're looking at a net of ~6 energy gain every 5 seconds. Add one or two more spirit skills, and you're at ~8 energy every 5 seconds. These numbers assume the Rt hero will recast both spirit skills every time they recharge (not too sure this is true - do they bother if spirits are still at full health?).

ATM I'm leaning more toward [spirit siphon] and 3-4 spirit skills myself. I hate to think what happens if your boon enchant gets interrupted or removed, when siphon is so much more spammable. Also, siphon doesn't rely on them wasting time to recast spirit skills for spirits that are still alive with plenty of health and time remaining.

Assume you have typically ~4 of 6 offensive spirits up, with each at ~80% energy (25/31), on average. With 4 pips, total recovery should be ~20 seconds, allowing you to siphon one every 5 seconds or so. This should net you ~7 energy every 5 seconds. I figure this is conservative enough...

I'm sitting on the following build ATM:
[build=OAWjMgiMpOXTMX5saixscMzHAA]

Instead of wearying spear, Find Their Weakness! You also get access to other command goodies and a shield. Hmm... I'll try that later as well Instead of a hybrid Rt/Mo to get both Splinter and Strength of Honor, I decided to try ditching SoH entirely and experiment with Nightmare Weapon on my 14 channeling Rt. I was quite impressed with it, and in fact I think I might prefer it to SoH. It's noticeably more damage, a ~150 heal, unshatterable, and in an attribute line I'm already heavily invested in. The Rt hero keeps it on me like glue. Try it out!

The main downside I am now trying to overcome is that my 14 channeling/13 resto ritualist cannot keep up with energy any more due to Nightmare Weapon spamming. Spirit Siphon is very unpredictable energy management if he doesn't move around a lot now, and generally is not good enough with the bar as it is. So I might be forced to go back to Strength of Honor (on another character) to give the poor guy a break.

With [boon of creation] and your two spirit skills, you're looking at a net of ~6 energy gain every 5 seconds. Add one or two more spirit skills, and you're at ~8 energy every 5 seconds. These numbers assume the Rt hero will recast both spirit skills every time they recharge (not too sure this is true - do they bother if spirits are still at full health?).

They CAN'T recast spirits until the spirits are dead. That's why skills like gaze of fury and feast of souls are just about essential on a spirit hero. Can't or don't?

Can't or don't? Both most likely.

Can't or don't? I imagine he means don't....if you were to force them to cast it by clicking it I'm pretty sure they still would, but they won't do it on their own as long as the spirit is still up.