Introducing ArkFenway - New 1/2 Man PvE Destruction

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I should amend what I wrote. Spiritual Pain destroys this build when it is caught off-guard. When you're ready, when you've flagged heroes / henchmen apart and pre-cast all your spirits, when you're aggro'ing / triggering popups properly with Prot Spirit on you, then the danger from Spiritual Pain is greatly reduced, and this build will roll through the Oozes like any other mob. You don't need to change the build on the player, you can just adapt tactics and beat the Oozes. Especially since Shimmering Oozes tend to be pretty rare, like 1-2 of them in a full mob of Oozes.

On the other hand, if caught by surprise - and Ooze popups are fairly common in dungeons - red bars will not only fall they will fall alarmingly fast. Spiritual Pain, Energy Surge and HM + Fast Casting is a deadly combination, and even one Shimmering Ooze can wipe your party if you leave him alone long enough. It's not long too; I'd give him ~15 seconds before some people start dying. If you trigger unexpected Ooze popups then unless you are so fast as to flag heroes apart ASAP, you really have to lock on to the Shimmering Ooze(s) and kill them first ...

That's why I mentioned Spiritual Pain. The skill is a hard counter to this build. It still works alright, you just need to be more careful. It's rather like fighting Burning Spirits + Flowstone Elementals. If you're ready for them, they're not that bad. If you're not ready for them, then you will suffer.

As for Bogroot Growths, I'd say that standard Sab / Discordway is faster. That's because there're oodles of bodies in the dungeon. With 20, perhaps even 30 minions about as a mobile destructive force, kill speed increases accordingly. At the other end of the spectrum is a place like Oola's Lab. This time there're few bodies so massing spirits will be faster, although of course any thinking player will not bring standard Sab / Discordway into Oola's Lab.

Just some thoughts.

Haven't tested it out, but since I got back on my ritualist I made the standard spirit spammer type builds, and have xandra on with that guy, haven't gotten to razah yet on him but have razah and xendra on my ranger. So I have fooled around with a few things. A couple spirit spammers and hybrid discord/MM builds and they all seem to work well in most situations. Hell, even with ROJ monks spirit spamming worksbe cause by the time they get away from the wall they are half dead (in hardmode) and 3/4 (dead in NM)

But on the ritual lord one in particular, you have a high channeling, with only one channeling skill, which from what can tell (again not tested deeply) doesn't give all that much energy back to begin with. Then ritual lord itself, is it really that good or even necessary? Because with a 13 communing those spirits will last 56 seconds anyway, and since they are semi defensive they really shouldn't be dying before then, even in a hard mode situation, especially with armor of unfeeling going.

Unless I am missing soemthing that is. Again haven't played too deeply into it and haven't really tested it. I assume that replaced reclaim essence, which you talked about on the first couple pages (I haven't read every page here). But if there is an issue with that one and them casting it out of combat, what about clamour of souls (if youre lloking for energy help) it doesn't really give any energy back, but it is free to cast and is't a half bad AOE, or if you want to have some channeling and are really having power issues, keep channeling at 13 and keep spirit siphon and throw in offering of spirit. Obviously all these skills are predicated on how well heroes cast them in and out of combat, but ritual lord to me doesn't seem to fit for soem reason.

Ahh I guess because of the Minions, these spirits die pretty fast, depending on your spawning power level, and even then they can go fast. Seems to be a slight conflict there, so I would either go full spawning/communing with no channeling to max out the spirits health and armor, and figure out another power source, or hope the minions don't counteract the build too much.

I vanquished Tahnnakai (sp?) Temple with a non-MM version of this build with myself as the Communing Defensive Rit.

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Done a bit of testing on the one man build, run it through the recent z-quests on HM and it worked extremely well every time, don't think I or any of the party died once. I personally prefer it too sabway and discordway. Tried it out against Master of Damage and compared it too sabway and discordway and it came out on top by a mile and my best damage in a second was only 3 under the 2 man build at 651. So in my opinion the one man build works just as well and better than the other favoured hero teams out there.

Ive tested this build yesterday in Tahnnakai Temple mission HM and I actually liked it. Cant compare to discord thou as I never did that mission in HM before.
But after this one, Ive tried Thirsty River and failed miserably there. Main issue was priest+boss pairs standing in small room-like areas. As soon as combat started, heros summon all the spirits and since you cant pull priest off the shrine, spirits stay out of range and dont dps the priest. Also, its common that spirits may be summoned so they are LoS to the target.
In other words, if you have stationary, non-moving foes or those who drop agro and tend to run to their initial spots, you may have big issue with spirit build. Or its just me? Maybe I was doing something wrong?

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I've been playing with my rit char and 2 rit heroes the last few days and then I found this thread/teambuild. I just have a few observations based on my experience and looking at the build on pvx.

Heroes don't seem to know when to use Boon of Creation and Armor of Unfeeling. I use a communing hero similar the the one on the pvx page, and he often casts armor of unfeeling before casting any spirits and boon of creation after he finishes casting all his spirits. Also, Reclaim Essence is bugged in that the hero activates it upon recharge whenever any party member's spirit is in range. The only good thing is that in battle, he uses it only when the battle is over, thankfully.

I put Spirit to Flesh on the resto hero's bar, but I have never seen him use it by himself. I don't think heroes use it.

Also, the Restoration Rit #2 on the pvx page has spirit siphon with [email protected], which would only net him a gain of 1 energy upon casting. Not very handy.

Sadly, heroes don't seem to know how to use many rit skills. They let Mighty was Vorizun wear off before recasting, often losing all energy and not being able to cast anything. They don't know when to use Signet of Ghostly Might, similar to Armor of Unfeeling.

Rit heroes are fun, but before such usage bugs are fixed, we are better off running our trusty old sab/discord builds. The energy management of rits not speccing into channeling just isn't very good. Heroes don't have spirit mobility aside from using Reclaim Essence, which takes up an elite slot and heroes don't even use it properly. In my opinion heroes should regard Boon of Creation the same way as the attunements from the ele lines, they should keep it up constantly.

In conclusion, running spiritway builds is fun, but it's not very effective (unless you like a lot of microing).


Edit: I've been trying Ritual Lord instead of Reclaim Essence on my communing rit now. Mobility is very good now (67% faster recharge is a lot), but energy management still has issues.


Edit2: I've been tinkering and tinkering some more and I think I might have judged too soon. My spiritway is running pretty good now. I'm a rit myself and I'm using 2 rit heroes and a necro. The communing hero still has a little trouble managing his energy, but the resto hero is doing great.

My friend not having the two rit heroes yet (I know, inexcusable XD), we took the one man team along with three discord necros (myself an imbagon, my buddy running earthshaker) into Vloxen Excavations HM. I cannot believe how smoothly it went! Aside from a wipe on the necro boss, which was completely the minions fault I swear XD, we completely steamrolled it. So, I'll have to give my seal of approval on that one man/three hero version.

Later down the line, I tried the six hero/two player version with me playing my rit and a friend on his dragon slash warrior. To be completely honest, it works, but I can't help but think it could work even better. In my opinion, there needs to be something that sets the ritualist restos apart from the more "traditional" necromancer restos. There's nothing on either of those bars that a necro with infinite energy (and you definitely supply that with the two minion bombers) can't do better. I hate recommending things in the meta because I want more people to break out of it, so I guess the rits should be fine if they spam spirit siphon. Sort of difficult to tell with a constant SY! up, as the rits won't have to heal that much anyway. Most of the time I haven't found recuperation worth it while you're packing rejuvenation, maybe try PwK or even vengeful weapon in that slot? That'd also save your elite slot on that resto, because the only skill with a long enough recharge to warrant reclaim essence would be out of the picture. Just thinking outloud.

Thanks for putting the idea out there, I know a bunch of my friends have had fun with your build ^_^

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