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.

If this statement was true, we would not be having this conversation.

Almost every single team has a ritualist on their team.

No one wants them overpowered, we just want them balanced.

As matters stand right now, they are underpowered.

Sounds like you've never actually seen the old spirit spammer back in the days when factions was introduced. They were so overpowered, hence Anet took the easy route and simply nerfed them to hell.

And a MM is stronger than a spirit spammer? Not unless you play stuff like AB/FA/JQ where corpses are everywhere. Play any other arena, and MM's are useless. A spirit spammer can summon stuff out of thin air that allows for stuff like damage mitigration, enchant removal, blindness, knockdowns, and damage.

While I agree that rits have been receiving the paragon treatment for a while now, rebuffing them now will probably make things worse.

Balance = equilibrium between effort and reward.
Laying spirits is very easy, so spirits must be weak. If they are as powerful as other options that are harder to pull off they are overpowered.
With the current design of spirits they are either overpowered or underpowered, and without a complete revision never something in between.

I've found two more detailed posts why spirits got nerfed:

I agree. I will go as far to say that rits are the ULTIMATE multitaskers of GW.

Further has anyone here who is beset by woe about the ritualist's pvp condition tried playing rit on something as simple as FA kurz side for instance? I am surprised that a rit has not become standard for the kurzicks in this arena. A single rit can pretty much hold everything together provided his/her teammates are not sitting idle.

Spirits as they stand now are disproportionately easy to eliminate in comparison to the cost, recharge, cast time, etc, of the skills required to create them.

This is not balanced.

Now to address some things directly.

"And I realized that the build I thought would be decent in AB is terrible for this one simple reason."

-no one guarantees that you will be able to use a pve build in pvp obviously. We are all in the same boat on this one.

"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."

From GuildWiki.

"Create a level 1...8 spirit. The spirit's attacks cause Blindness for 1...5 seconds. This spirit dies after 30 seconds. "

-right five second cast. This is subjective of course, but when put to good use this skill is quite powerful and a very effective thorn in the side of anyone using melee or projectile weapons. It offers a little bit of offense, but significant defense by blinding classes which have some serious damage out put.

"Imagine a situation where you have an assassin charging towards you so you cast shadowsong......"

- i hate to say this, but no one in their right mind would try casting shadowsong with an assassin charging them even at a three second cast. Firstly, it may be a caster assassin in which case shadowsong is a waste of time. Secondly, assassins are notoriously quick, and have good interrupt potential (argh not too mention they can teleport to you.) Shadowsong is a good skill. But, this is not a good way to use it.

"And the point I'm trying to make is that you can't use spirits effectively in PvP...."

-Spirits are very effective as pointed out before in previous posts. there is enough time if you use them properly (very effective). They are useful in RA TA AB protecting shrines etc etc... anywhere it takes time for your opponent to get to you. this is not to say they are simply defensive. I have seen many a good rit put spirits to use in pressuring the enemy. This is in blinding melee, interrupting skills, or simply making an ally live longer than the enemy expects (resto)......

pain is a week spirit that is why it lasts so long

As for you last section.

"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."

If you are in a crush for a spirit think outside the box, or in this case perhaps in it. One suggestion, ever here of the spirit in the box spell? drop it ...and POOF instant spirit. (i suppose this skill still exists) Not to mention alot of the benefits for which you need a spirit present are quite powerful. I feel this is an excellent way to balance those benefits.

End

Keep playing
learning
living
Guild Wars


BTW spirits are not so easy to eliminate with a good player breathing down your neck. They are worth the time, energy, effort, and cleverness needed to employ them well.

GvG does not equal PvP. I do JQ, RA, AB, FA, TA, etc. etc.

And I highly doubt that the rit is a crucial component of every team and is using spirits. Likely you're referring to resto rits, which is by and large the least affected by whether or not they use spirits.

And I do believe that this isn't random buffing. It's calling for balance, not OP spirits nor nerfed catastrophes. The a rit using spirits is nearly useless right now in PvP. I seek to change that is all.

Desert Rose, those quotes seem to be lacking knowledge of a spirit's lifespan and recharge. You cannot sit away from a battle, lay down your spirits, and wait for your enemies to run into your very visible trap. It doesn't work like that.

Introspective Pirate, you cannot honestly be trying to say in one moment that shadowsong is good, and the next that shadowsong is a skill that no one in their right mind would use it when being attacked.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see any valid points being made here. You try to tell me that spirits are effective, yet I don't see them being used. The recharge and cast time is ridiculous. The lifespan is ridiculous. Their defense doesn't exist. It can't even run out of an aoe for crying out loud. Yet there are complaints that you can't kill em?

Sorry, but my point still stands, spirits are useless in PvP right now, and saying "omg resto rits and weapons are just fine" has nothing to do with this conversation. Go play some JQ using spirits and try telling me it's balanced.

it's called GUILDWARS....GvG is the highest form of pvp in the game. second to that, HA. Old days, HA gained favor = UW+FoW riches.

HA still leads to a nice high end chest...and having your team advertised to everybody online.

RA and AB are the lowest forms of PvP....therefore, those are lower on Anet's skill balance priority list. Spirits work well enough in PvP, they're not completely gimped. Spawning power is the only thing that needs to be fixed...not necessarily cast times of spirits.

You seem to be lacking knowledge how players played spirit spammers when they were useable.
In the case of defensive spirits like Union, Shelter and Displacement it's was exactly like Reverend Dr desribed; people were standing one to two aggro circles behind thier own team, spamming these spirits and doing nothing else.
In the case of offensive spirits like bloodsong it's exactly how you desribed. You cast your spirits outside of the battle and wait until your opponent rushes into them. Of course your opponent will most likely don't be stupid enough to rush into your spirits but waits outside of the range of your spirits until you come out. So in the end you have two teams that stand before each other doing... nothing.
Most players doesn't want either of these playstyles back into the game.

Trying to cast a five-second skill while likely being interrupted, heavily damaged or even death before the skill goes off is something noone on their right mind would do regardless how effective the skill is.

On shadowsong, I agree. No one in their right mind would use it. Which only proves my point. And any player with a brain would wait for it to die before rushing in. Given the short lifespan of this spirit it is impossible to use for defense because it is only a short wait for it to die. Impossible to use offensively due to a long cast time.

Now I think some people are assuming that I want a blanket buff for all spirits and to this I have to say is my own fault for not being clear. By balance I mean that each skill should be reworked. For example, reduce the cast time for an offensive skill like pain. But for a defensive skill like union, perhaps increase the lifespan. The play style would then shift so that defensive spirits are able to be played defensively while offensive spirits can actually be cast and used in the midst of combat.

A misnomer. It's named after a period in the setting's history called The Guild Wars, a series of wars between powerful guilds that controlled most of Tyria at the time. Not after the GvG gametype. Check your manual if you like

It does seem as though the people protesting any sort of buff are all GvG fanatics or complaining that the old way was too OP. Funny that that's the main argument considering that I never said I wanted a return to the old spirit spammer build.

No, i was talking about skills with a "high" casting time in general, i didn't make a statement about a single skill.

Actually, you did:
Spirits are broken and can't be balanced by modifying their numbers alone, they need a complete overhaul, but that's very unlikely to happen because ANet pleased the PvE-crowd by buffing spirits to insane levels in PvE and PvP-players never missed them.

Anyway, a possible idea for defensive spirits: Greatly decrease range (less than shout range), decrease casting time to 2 or 3 seconds, increase level by 1 or 2, greatly decrease life loss.
Offensive spirits need to have more player input in order to be effective, for example activate the special blind attack of Shadowsong manually.

Your argument is weak.

First of all: GvG is the epitome of PvP. If Anet kept ONE format of PvP that exists in this game, they would keep GvG. Keep in mind most of the skill balances (notice I said most not all) have centered around GvG.

Someone with a "forte" in PvP should know that fact.

If your reasoning in arguing FOR spirit rits is that they are useless... Lets take a look at the other professions...

Warrior... I don't see many tactics warriors, we should buff tactics!
Rangers... I don't see anymore trappers... Trappers need buff!
Monks... I don't see any more smiters! wtf! fix please!
Assassin... I can no longer easily kill anything that has terrible position... BUFF!

Do you see where I am going?

There are somethings that have existed in the game (i.g. spirit rits).
But those things have caused a meta and a game to become worse than intended, Anet had enough sense to take them out of the game.

Be glad you have a ritualist class at all.

Tactics does need a buff, because currently it is useless and there should not be useless attribute lines. Smiting ought to be looked at eventually, rather than simply be killed off. And I assume you're one of those people who think there's a problem with shadow steps.

Gladiator, you are so full of fail I don't even know where to start. Assassin's can't kill? Wtf? Smiters aren't around? Ever hear of RoJ? Trappers are definitely still around, not as prolific as before, but they're definitely still around. I've seen them many times playing a primarily defensive role in JQ and AB protecting shrines. And as for warriors, I haven't used my war in awhile so I can't say for sure, but based on your previous statements it's likely that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

I really couldn't give a damn about GvG or HA. I played in HA up until the introduction of IWAY, got my deer and quit. HA is primarily elitists playing, and GvG is much of the same. Hardcore players love these two arenas but guess what? A-Net's main customer base is casual players who don't focus on these two aspects of the game, primarily because they are CASUAL PLAYERS. So stop humping the metaphorical leg of GvG and open your eyes to the possibility that people do other things with the game than just that, and there are many more forms of PvP that are widely loved.

Desert Rose: your suggestion for defensive spirits are just even more nerfing. Decrease range and effectiveness, but increase the level by one and decrease casting time? That would actually nerf them further. I would agree that decreasing the range could bring defensive spirits into a balanced format, but if we do that then they should remain just as effective as before. Especially since decreasing the range would force defensive spirits to cluster together to protect a target area and would make them vulnerable to any sort of aoe.

However I do like the general direction this is going. How about this: decrease range, increase lifespan, effectiveness of skill remains the same, cast time remains the same, level increases by 1 or 2? For a defensive spirit this would be good as it would force players to setup defense ahead of time strategically, yet it would limit those spirits in such a way that people couldn't use them for blanket protection of a wide area, nor could they easily cast these spirits during a battle as group wide protection. It would force them to protect key areas, choke points, etc. and it would force players to plan for it.

I would consider that to be more balanced than the current system only because for a defensive spirit, lifespan is crucial. To be useful they need the extra lifespan so that you can set them up ahead of the battle to provide some protection. Otherwise, other team just waits for them to die and then it's GG, your skill set is useless.

ritualists are fine, spirits are too. they are the profession they used to be, a hybrid of monk and ele and should heal less and deal less damage (both is decent, though), which they do. ritus are still useful and have a long history in gvg, which speaks for themselves.

mindless buffing of ritu spirits in general would shift the meta back to spikes with at least two ritus in the main team. i can't say i would greet them with respect.

since ritu spirits only count towards the own team, i'd suggest to allow only two active (one offensive and one defensive spirit) spirits in the same area in pvp.

then izzy could slightly buff spirits in general, while keeping their vulnerability.