Ritualist in PvP

Now I've been very happily playing my rit over the last couple days, running around Cantha, however when I brought him into my guild hall I saw that half my skill bar had changed. And I realized that the build I thought would be decent in AB is terrible for this one simple reason.

3 seconds to cast a single spirit is not friggin worth it. I have 5 spirits on my bar. One being shadowsong which is a 5 second cast. Shadowsong only lives for 30 seconds. Most of those spirits don't live very long.

Which brings me to my point. PvP rits are way nerfed and their spirits need a buff. The PvE version may be a little overpowered, but given the lack of spirits in PvP I think the GW community speaks for itself on the matter. Buff the spirits please.

Imagine a situation where you have an assassin charging towards you so you cast shadowsong. By the time it's been laid down you're already 80% gone and have degen. I would know this since it only takes 6.5-7 seconds to kill a softie with my sin.

And the point I'm trying to make is that you can't use spirits effectively in PvP. They are at BEST purely defensive since as soon as you are in range of an enemy it will take 15 seconds to bring out all your spirits (minimum 15). Who has that time in pvp? Additionally you can't cap with spirits because you'll get rocked as soon as you are in range.

My suggestion is simple. Either expand the life of these spirits to be more like pain which has a lifespan that goes past two minutes at 12 communing, or decrease the cast time. In shadowsong's case it should be both.

I love my ritualist, but I know that I can't really use him in PvP which is kind of sad for me. About the only thing I can use my ritualist for in PvP is resto, which just isn't my play style.

I guess the only other thing that bothers me about the rit is channeling. While a good skill set exists there, most of the boons you get from channeling require that you have a spirit in earshot, which again means the build is lacking viability.

Yes, PvP rits are severely lacking.
The problem is that the concept of spirits is something that is REALLY looked down upon in PvP. So, if a PvP rit buff is desired, you NEED to look at options that don't have anything to do with spirits.

LOL are you kidding? go through the rit skills. Actually hold on a moment...I'm going to count through all the ones in my skill set that are spirits, and all the ones that need spirits in earshot to work to their fullest potential...11 of 17 in channeling....14 of 19 in communing...and 4 of 16 in restoration...and then there is spawning which is centered entirely around spirits.

Granted I don't have all the skills out there, but I do have all the canthan skills. This should be a pretty clear indication that I CANNOT use a ritualist without spirits unless I wish to play a gimped character with a very limited skill set.

EDIT: I don't have all the elites in Cantha yet and I am missing one normal skill. Other than that I think I have all the factions skills.

i run healer on my rit, in pvp i run no more than 2 or 3 spirits. i agree, the casting times need adjusted, i think 2 sec for spirits with 3 sec and 3 sec for 5 sec casting times would be great. or better yet, have spawning power decrease casting time of spirits much like fast casting does for spells.

Don't do spirit spam in pvp.

There are lots of good pvp rit builds, most are based around either healing or support/ damage via the channeling and restoration lines.
I pvp quite a bit and would be happy to have a good rit in my party, a good healing rit even works instead of a monk and support builds can boost party damage by a lot while assisting the healer.... just don't try to be a spirit spammer in AB.

Caretaker's charge
Ancestor's rage
Resilient weapon
Protective was Kaolai
Mend body and soul
Spirit Light
Life
Fall Back

^ That kind of thing, look on wiki if you can't find anything modify a GvG flag running build for AB.

AB and JQ are actually the two PvP areas where Spirit Spamming actually works.

Painful Bond, Binding Chains, Feigned Neutrality, Bloodsong, Pain, Wanderlust, Shadowsong, Dash.

Bloodsong and Pain get placed at shrines or key locations to serve as damage. Wanderlust set up for defense when an enemy needs to get shut down. Shadowsong to shut down an enemy physical character. Painful Bond to guide spirit attacks and boost damage. Feigned Neutrality for healing and pressure survival, Dash for movement boost, and Binding Chains to lock down physical characters who are alone and unlikely to take damage.

weapon of shadow and blind was mingson?

Also, I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that Ritualist is on Izzy's hated profession list, so if I survive a while and occasionally kill a player, I consider it a good Ritualist build.

The problem is that you don't remember (or know) why the PvP spirits are in such sad shape.
They are so insanely underpowered because they are really hated. Nobody that plays PvP on a non-crappy level wants them around.
So if you want to see changes to the ritualist in PvP, you NEED to take that into account and propose changes that have nothing to do with spirits.
Because anything that has to do with buffing spirits does not have a chance to work.

Offensive spirits essentially add one member to your team. True, that member can't move or select targets, but it provides damage/conditions that benefit your team. Because of thise, they need to be easy to interrupt and easy to kill, otherwise they make PvP turn from 4-v-4 into 4-v-8/10/18/etc.

These people are a minority, though; why should the majority of player base suffer to make them happy?

HA and GvG are all good and well, but RA and AB and the like are where most of PvP players are at (due to rampant elitism and hostility in HA) and when most of your paying customers are skewed to one particular area it's best to cater to them.

Same reason Anet finally implemented PvE/PvP split, so the majority would no longer suffer from the bitchy PvP players.

Yeah, but unless the guy proposes a RA and an AB-PvP version of a skill, they won't buff them back to their old glory because of the effect that they had on the highest level of play.
Spirits won't see a return in PvP, so it doesn't make sense to build on that.

After a few weeks with overpowered spirits even most casual players would not like to see them anymore.

what is with all the "everyone hates spirits in pvp" crap? First off, that has nothing to do with whether or not rits should be buffed. Second, prove it. Since you can't take a random sample of 1200 people in guild wars (1200 is the number needed to create a survey that is 95% accurate in a random sample), you have no evidence to support your claim, which is likely to be erroneous.

Spirits are a ritualist's main skill. It's their lifeblood. You nerf the hell out of a rit's main skill and they're left with either restoration or you can gtfo because every other skill sucks.

Channeling I take issue with because mostly it's inferior to an elementalist's damage output and doesn't really add much. If you want those skills to be more versatile you have to use...guess what, a spirit, in conjunction.

Examples: Spirit Burn, Spirit Siphon (can't be used without a spirit), Essence Strike, Gaze from Beyond (can't be used without a spirit), Painful Bond (can't be used without a spirit), Lamentation (can't be used without a spirit)

Those are all channeling and no that's not all of them. Evidence has been laid down and it's clear that spirits need a boost. For those of you believing that this would be too OP because it adds another member to your team, I need only to say two words: Minion Master.

And before some idiot tries to make a point about the MM being too OP and that's why spirits shouldn't be allowed, I'll say that the two biggest differences are that spirits can't move (1 AOE = death for spirits) and there aren't any mass heals for spirits apart from 1 channeling skill.

Just search the PvP-part of this forum for posts from the time of Factions release where spirits didn't suck.

you obviously didn't read my post. In order to gather information like that you need a random sample of 1200 people to be 95% accurate. Ten people spamming a forum with rit hate does not constitute an accurate poll.

Rit's have always been broken in PvP, it's just the way they were designed. Back before rit lord nerf spirits were broken as ever, creating huge damage mitigation with skills that were fustrating to interrupt (mesmers can't interrupt rituals with most of their spells, displacement shut down rangers.) Sure it was easy to kill the spirits, but the rit would just put another one up. Anet nerfed the spirits but avoided reworking rit skills. Rits then moved to channeling with the channeling spike, but anet nerfed that too. Now the only thing rits can do is channel/resto hybrid, but anet has been hitting resto now (PwK/WoW) due to the n/rt abuse.

There isn't much Anet can do without making skills broken again; although in this meta many of the builds are broken as it is. It would be nice if they reworked Rits, but I doubt they will.

Spirits were nerfed for a reason. They were an unfair advantage that (when every team had 1 rit spirit spammer) required your offense to be on spirit duty because of the fact they provided such a team benefit with a ridiculous respawning time.

[GvG ~ RtW ;OAGjUlhMZODz4Z0MjNxIsdlqHA]
[rt/e;OAajsshMpNDzqX0MjNxcHrOkBA]

You should enjoy the fact that rits have imbalanced concepts such as un-removable weapons. Being able to snare, provide buffed defense, solo split, and party heals all on one character is a pretty signicant ability.

Also, look at the power-creep and increasing pace of this game. Spirits just don't have any room in the game (except for recup and life).

A nerf isn't needed, just balance. There are several skills out there that can interrupt rituals. Cry of frustration is a prime example. And decreasing the cast time to two seconds will not destroy pvp as we know it.

I just can't see this being an issue. I've had this game for over four years now, I played through factions happily, and PvP has always been my forte. Honestly, look at the minion master. Sure I can kill the minions, but another one pops up as soon as I do. Same basic concept, except it's easier to keep minions alive since you can actually do a powerful mass heal. And it's not like you have to go toe to toe with a rit's spirits, you can avoid them until you do a coordinated attack. I know that's what I've had to do with defy pain warriors lately.

I'm not looking to make rits godly. I'm looking to see the ritualist reintroduced as a viable option for pvp. a two second cast time isn't unreasonable for a spirit. Or at least put in some skills that speed up rituals.

A ritualist is an essential segment of GvG these days. How can say you say PvP is your forte and you not notice that?

Almost every single team has a ritualist on their team.

You can't go around buffing skills. You will only re-enter what this game has experienced since Nightfall was introduced. Random buffing has only caused this game problems.