Signet of Spirits - Worth it?

Reading comp ftw.



No need to lecture me on how great MoP is.



I like Anguish, but it's got two problems that often force me away from it: First, it's got bad uptime even if it doesn't get killed before it expires. Second, bar decompression. At this point, an offensive spirit spammer is going to have Painful Bond, Spirit Siphon, Armor of Unfeeling, and Summon Spirits all stapled to the bar. If you want to go the Anguish+SoGM route, you're left with room for 3 spirits (Anguish + 2 others). With SoS you can fit 6 spirits into those same skillslots (or 5 spirits plus GDW). I did that exactly because I wanted to highlight your selective thinking.
You say SOS is a great elite but from the comparison you exclude leveraged damage while almost every skill in this game is conditional (warriors need adrenaline to spike, ancestor's rage requires a frontliner etc) without mentioning the fact that even SOS is conditional. It works when spirits are not killed within 5 seconds, if spirits decide to attack and the player must always bring support. In this mechanic SoS is so tied to the single character that build sinergies are cut if you don't count the typical spirit spam party.

I did that exactly because I wanted to highlight your selective thinking.
You say SOS is a great elite but from the comparison you exclude leveraged damage while almost every skill in this game is conditional (warriors need adrenaline to spike, ancestor's rage requires a frontliner etc) without mentioning the fact that even SOS is conditional. I'm getting the impression that you don't understand what the term "leveraged" means. Let's start there.

"Leveraged" does not mean "subject to a precondition," which is what you seem to think it means. "Leveraged" means "subject to multiplication in proportion to a certain condition." Like a lever arm that multiplies force in proportion to its length, a leveraged skill in GW gets its damage multiplied in proportion with a certain condition.



GW offers a handful of leverage mechanics. The most basic is simple AoE (damage is multiplied by how many monsters you can make clump up). Others include +damage buffs like Orders (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do within the time limit), +damage hexes like Barbs (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit), reactive hexes like Empathy (damage is multiplied by how many times the monster tries to attack). There's even a small handful of doubly-leveraged skills like Mark of Pain (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit, and then multiplied again by how many monsters you can make clump up).

Now, that I've defined leverage what's so special about it? It's how you win at PvE in GW, that's what. All excellent damage sources in GW PvE share two things in common: First, they ignore armor. Second, they are leveraged. A less-fundamental, but very important, third criterion is that the condition on the leverage is something that your party controls and can arbitrarily increase (see Moloch's epic post Why Reactive Hexes Are Bad).

So, if leverage is so damned great, why was I specifically excluding it from the discussion? And why am I saying SoS is a good skill if it's not leveraged at all? Two points:

First, Ritualists are sorely lacking in armor-ignoring leveraged damage options. With a couple exceptions, it's just not possible to build a rit damage build around armor-ignoring leveraged damage. So, to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, I narrowed the topic of discussion to exclude leveraged damage. Yeah, SoS is not even in the same league as MoP; but neither is anything else ritualists have; so it's not a fair comparison. Among the children-of-a-lesser-god non-leveraged damage skills available to rits, SoS is pretty good. That was my point.

In case you were curious what those exceptions are, the totality of armor-ignoring leveraged damage available to ritualists includes: Destruction (too slow), GwK (too slow), Brutal Weapon (nasty restriction), SpiritLeech Aura (only for spirits that did low damage to start with), VwK (only for farming), Painful Bond, and SoGM. Even without my comments, you can probably tell that Painful Bond and SoGM are the only ones with any promise.

(Before anyone mentions it, no, Splinter Weapon is not leveraged. Since it was nerfed, it does a fixed amount of damage, reduced if you fail to meet the conditions. What makes it remain a passable skill is that the fixed amount of damage is quite high.)

(Also, while it's not a ritualist skill, GDW is a superb source of armor-ignoring leveraged damage that rits are well suited for. A 30-sec GDW is really quite a lot. It's probably better than anything in the native rit skillset.)

And that brings me to the second point: SoS has an interplay with Painful Bond. Painful Bond's damage is multiplied by how many spirit attacks your party can generate. Fitting 3 spirits into one skillslot has a big effect on your ability to generate spirit attacks.

Sum: Leverage is great. Rits don't really have any. SoS is a very strong choice out of what rits do have.

I'm getting the impression that you don't understand what the term "leveraged" means. Let's start there.

"Leveraged" does not mean "subject to a precondition," which is what you seem to think it means. "Leveraged" means "subject to multiplication in proportion to a certain condition." Like a lever arm that multiplies force in proportion to its length, a leveraged skill in GW gets its damage multiplied in proportion with a certain condition.



GW offers a handful of leverage mechanics. The most basic is simple AoE (damage is multiplied by how many monsters you can make clump up). Others include +damage buffs like Orders (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do within the time limit), +damage hexes like Barbs (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit), reactive hexes like Empathy (damage is multiplied by how many times the monster tries to attack). There's even a small handful of doubly-leveraged skills like Mark of Pain (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit, and then multiplied again by how many monsters you can make clump up).

Now, that I've defined leverage what's so special about it? It's how you win at PvE in GW, that's what. All excellent damage sources in GW PvE share two things in common: First, they ignore armor. Second, they are leveraged. A less-fundamental, but very important, third criterion is that the condition on the leverage is something that your party controls and can arbitrarily increase (see Moloch's epic post Why Reactive Hexes Are Bad).

So, if leverage is so damned great, why was I specifically excluding it from the discussion? And why am I saying SoS is a good skill if it's not leveraged at all? Two points:

First, Ritualists are sorely lacking in armor-ignoring leveraged damage options. With a couple exceptions, it's just not possible to build a rit damage build around armor-ignoring leveraged damage. So, to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, I narrowed the topic of discussion to exclude leveraged damage. Yeah, SoS is not even in the same league as MoP; but neither is anything else ritualists have; so it's not a fair comparison. Among the children-of-a-lesser-god non-leveraged damage skills available to rits, SoS is pretty good. That was my point.

In case you were curious what those exceptions are, the totality of armor-ignoring leveraged damage available to ritualists includes: Destruction (too slow), GwK (too slow), Brutal Weapon (nasty restriction), SpiritLeech Aura (only for spirits that did low damage to start with), VwK (only for farming), Painful Bond, and SoGM. Even without my comments, you can probably tell that Painful Bond and SoGM are the only ones with any promise.

(Before anyone mentions it, no, Splinter Weapon is not leveraged. Since it was nerfed, it does a fixed amount of damage, reduced if you fail to meet the conditions. What makes it remain a passable skill is that the fixed amount of damage is quite high.)

(Also, while it's not a ritualist skill, GDW is a superb source of armor-ignoring leveraged damage that rits are well suited for. A 30-sec GDW is really quite a lot. It's probably better than anything in the native rit skillset.)

And that brings me to the second point: SoS has an interplay with Painful Bond. Painful Bond's damage is multiplied by how many spirit attacks your party can generate. Fitting 3 spirits into one skillslot has a big effect on your ability to generate spirit attacks.

Sum: Leverage is great. Rits don't really have any. SoS is a very strong choice out of what rits do have. It's nice how splinter weapon fits your own description of leveraged damage but you exclude it. In terms of skill balance splinter's weapon "uses" limit is the counterpart of MoP being an hex with 20seconds damage (oh, and MoP can be removed, the hexed foe can die before the others or flee, etc). Splinter weapon is less "leveraged" I'll give you that, but it's still one of the most reliable aoe sources.


P.S. exponential

Now in terms of uselfusness, we are discussing SoS, you said AoE is the way to win in pve and yet you defend this elite, forgive me but I see a contradiction, the thread is called "signet ofs pirits, worth it?" you agree on AoE being the best choice and yet you think SoS is worthy? Even with painful bond you still won't achieve an AoE effect. Now I'd agree on your discussion about how unreliable nerfs made ritualist skills but there is a reason why we got subclasses, you're not forced to run a rit elite at all, why would you bring SoS over OoS or MoP (non elite heh) or Promise, unless you want to gimp yourself.

So the question is easy. We got SoS, is this great? If you like spirits you will love it, if you want to be fast and reliable you better take a sub elite or OoS. I'm not comparing SoS to the rest of ritualist skills but to the other elites you should be running instead of it and it's why it sucks.

Allow me this last point. You speak about "bar compression" as if a ritualist was obliged to carry spirits at all. The bar compression becomes useful when you want to carry offensive spirits and it's only a single build out of how many combinations? I for example find spirits useless at best, therefore this compression you seem so fond of matters very little, especially when It's faster to spam splinter and ancestor and let heroes do their job instead of waiting for 10-15 spirits to pickup the correct target.