So, I've been toying around with ritualist heroes to find the optimal setup for a hero spiritway. My findings include:
1. Heroes are terrible at optimizing their use of the newly buffed skills Ritual Lord and Soul Twisting.
2. Boon of Creation is difficult to maintain for heroes, and is often casted after the spirits, limiting effectiveness.
3. Ritualist healers are prone to depleting their energy in battles involving degeneration, or battles against larger groups of monsters that take longer to kill.
4. 16 spec in Channeling does not significantly increase damage or duration of Signet of Spirits, making a Ritualist primary unnecessary. On the other hand, Communing Binding Rituals benefit greatly from a high spec.
Taking these factors into consideration, I've designed a hero team designed to be run with any profession. Currently, I'm running this team on my imbagon, my Dragon Slash Warrior, and my Scythe Ranger. You might notice the lack of minions on these bars. This is for a few reasons:
1. I don't want this build to be a gimped copy of discordway or sabway.
2. The spirits hold up fine in both normal mode and hard mode in 4 and 8 man areas, dealing more than enough damage.
3. The included healers are often more than capable of keeping an entire 8-man party alive, without a minion master or second healer. Including in hard mode.
4. A minion master does not seamlessly fit into the purpose of this build, and synergy is very important.
4. Most people already have access to minion master heroes, but do not have access to the skills included in these builds. This is designed to also provide maximum utility when playing in parties, meaning that it provides things that many people lack in their party.
Here is a basic rundown of the pros and cons of this setup:
Pros:
- Powerful healing and protection means that most enemies will be a joke.
- Spirits provide great support, inflicting many conditions, interrupting, dealing respectable damage, and fueling many spirit-based ritualist skills.
- Players are not limited to a certain build to optimize the efficiency of this build.
- Spirits provide a small buffer between your frontline and your backline, making healer's jobs slightly easier.
Cons:
- Lack of minions means more damage done to the party, even with spirits drawing some aggro. This also makes spirits more prone to death, which I personally do not find much of a problem, seeing as good energy management allows heroes to instantly recast dead spirits.
- No hex removal is included; generally not a problem in PvE.
- Due to the nature of spirits, only one person in a party may run this team build.
With all that said, let's move on to the builds:
Ritualist Communing Support:
[build prof=Ritualist communing=12+3+1 channeling=10+1 spawning=8][signet of ghostly might][pain][shadowsong][anguish][disenchantment][dissonance][spirit siphon][signet of creation][/build]
This build is a bunch of high-utility communing spirits stuffed onto a bar, along with an IAS and +damage for amazing damage output. Protective communing spirits were not including, due to a lack of energy and bad AI.
Weaponsets: High energy, casting spear/shield
Armor: Superior Vigor, Survivor, Vitae
Set this hero on Guard.
Necromancer/Ritualist Channeling Healer:
[build prof=Necromancer/Ritualist channeling=12 resto=11 soul=6+3+1][signet of spirits][bloodsong][spirit light][mend body and soul][spirit transfer][painful bond][splinter weapon][signet of lost souls][/build]
Variants:
Replace Spirit Transfer with Vengeful Weapon, Protective was Kaolai, or Ancestor's Rage.
Replace Splinter Weapon with Vengeful Weapon or Ancestor's Rage.
This build utilizes Necromancer Soul Reaping for immense energy benefits, along with ritualist healing spells that gain benefits from spirits. Powerful spirits, red-bars-go-up skills, along with splinter weapon/painful bond damage support makes this synergize extremely well with the Communing Ritualist.
Weaponsets: 40/40 Restoration Magic
Armor: Superior Vigor, Survivor, Vitae
Set this hero on Guard.
Elementalist Ether Protection
[build prof=Elementalist/Monk energy=12+3+1 prot=12][ether renewal][aura of restoration][spirit bond][protective spirit][reversal of fortune][shield of absorption][shielding hands][aegis][/build]
Variants:
Replace Shielding Hands with Guardian.
Replace Shielding Hands with a Resurrection Skill.
With a party full of squishy casters, some damage mitigation is mandatory. Heroes run this protter very effectively, and rarely run out of energy. Infuse Health is inefficiently used by heroes, and therefore not included.
Weaponsets: +20% Enchanting Staff, 20% enchanting caster weapon/shield
Armor: Superior Vigor, Survivor, Vitae
Set this hero on Flee.
Rate, comment, discuss.
Optimized Spiritway
Faye Aeris
Life Bringing
Ehh, if you're running splinter, you might as well go rt to hit the 14 spec breakpoint.
Edit:Also lacks partyheals. Probably want life/pwk>spirit transfer.
Edit:Also lacks partyheals. Probably want life/pwk>spirit transfer.
Faye Aeris
Necromancer primarily for energy management and build compression; ritualists run out of energy far too often, and waste space with extra energy management skills, meaning reduced utility. Willing to sacrifice 1 hit of splinter to keep a party alive and allow for more things such as painful bond on the bar.
AtomicMew
Very similar to a build I posted earlier. (This was before the update, so I probably wouldnt take RL now).
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/m...t10413318.html
1) Spirit Siphon is extremely strong energy management for the channeling rt. Rt primary is fine.
2) For general purposes, a MM in the third slot is still the best option hands down. ER works, certainly, but is not as fast.
3) Imbagon is not the best option with s-way. SY! doesn't prot spirits,which are you damage source; you'd probably mitigate more damage with an AP caller and spiking down targets quickly.
3) S-way DOES have a slight weakness to AoE, relative to how much other builds are affected. But s-way is so good that it won't matter most of the time and it'll still be better than other options.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/m...t10413318.html
1) Spirit Siphon is extremely strong energy management for the channeling rt. Rt primary is fine.
2) For general purposes, a MM in the third slot is still the best option hands down. ER works, certainly, but is not as fast.
3) Imbagon is not the best option with s-way. SY! doesn't prot spirits,which are you damage source; you'd probably mitigate more damage with an AP caller and spiking down targets quickly.
3) S-way DOES have a slight weakness to AoE, relative to how much other builds are affected. But s-way is so good that it won't matter most of the time and it'll still be better than other options.
Faye Aeris
Quote:
Originally Posted by trcvrs
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/m...t10413318.html
1) Spirit Siphon is extremely strong energy management for the channeling rt. Rt primary is fine.
2) For general purposes, a MM in the third slot is still the best option hands down. ER works, certainly, but is not as fast.
3) Imbagon is not the best option with s-way. SY! doesn't prot spirits,which are you damage source; you'd probably mitigate more damage with an AP caller and spiking down targets quickly.
3) S-way DOES have a slight weakness to AoE, relative to how much other builds are affected. But s-way is so good that it won't matter most of the time and it'll still be better than other options.
Minion Masters are an amazing addition to any team; that's why I decided not to bring one. While Ether Protters also provide good support, they are also less common. This means that people generally don't bring them, and protection prayers is one of the best methods available to prevent wipes in Hard Mode. If I can survive without the MM while also bringing an amazing asset to a party, I'd go with the Ether Elementalist. Since minion masters are so common, someone else can bring one. Plus, minion masters tend to lag behind the party due to their need to create minions after a battle.
Of course, imbagon isn't the best way to run this build. I use spiritway as more of a general hero team that can be run with anyone. It just so happens that my mains are a ranger, paragon, and warrior, and that my paragon is specifically set up to be an imbagon, with no other skills.
AoE does pose somewhat of a problem to me, especially without Armor of Unfeeling. However, my ritualists tend to move out of AoE and simply recast the spirits, resulting in a new, full-health, full-energy set of spirits; perfect for Spirit Transfer and Spirit Siphon.
Quote:
Quote: Hexes in PvE are hardly a threat, at least in most areas of the game. I generally don't bring hex removal for any area of the game. If hexes are bad enough to warrant removal, I'd prefer to bring a hero dedicated to removal, seeing as mobs in these areas stack a ridiculous amount of hexes on top of each other. In these cases, I would bring PnH or Empathic Removal somewhere in my team. Also, I already mentioned lack of hex removal as a potential weakness. Discordway and Sabway also lack hex removal, yet still wreak havoc in PvE. That is because Discordway and Sabway both have a minion bomber to fuel SR, while you don't. If you don't have one, that just means your ability to spam heals through hexes, instead of removing them, is more limited than either of them.
Even with a minion bomber, you would do better to bring hex removal in certain areas with dangerous hexes, especially when playing a physical. You may want to provide these as variants in hex heavy areas, similar to what Racway provides.
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I don't bring SoH because only 1/4 of this team is a physical, and even that depends on the player's build, which can be anything. If I wanted physicalway, I wouldn't bring 3 casters.
1/4 of the team? I didn't know this is suppose to be a 4-man team. Otherwise you still have your henchies don't you? But that is another minor point. Quote:
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