Signet of Spirits vs. Signet of Ghostly Might Number Crunch

Signet of Ghostly Might
Communing
1s, 15r
Elite Signet. (5...17...20 seconds.) All spirits you control within earshot attack 33% faster and deal + 5...9...10 damage.

Basically, SoGM is a force multiplier, it multiplies the effectiveness of your other spirits. The damage bonus will increase the average spirits damage output by 30-50%, while the attack rate bonus will increase all spirits damage output and bonus damage from painful bond by exactly 50%.


Signet of Spirits
Channeling Magic
1s, 30r
Elite Signet. Creates three level 1...10...12 Spirits (60 seconds lifespan). These Spirits deal 5...21...25 with attacks.

Unlike signet of ghostly might which depends on having other skills to provide several spirits for you, signet of spirits just lays a down 3 average damage spirits and does not rely on outside skills except painful bond to create powerful damage output. You cannot do much to increase it's power but you do not have to in the first place.

Brainstorming:

- SoGM will take 2-5 spirits and give you the offensive power of about 3-9 spirits. Whereas SoS will take 0-5 spirits and give you the power of 3-8 spirits. SoGM should start to pull ahead once you have 4 offensive spirits on your bar.

- A communing rit just needs communing to be a solid spirit spammer, It provides 4 good general purpose damage spirits and they have access to vampirism. If they team up with a channeling rit, the channeling rit can take painful bond duty and that leaves the communing rit a lot of free att points and a free skill slot. They can't get e-management from communing though.

- A channeling rit really should put a lot of points into either communing or restoration magic to be a solid dedicated spammer. They can either use communing to get more spirits on their bar, or restoration magic (if teaming with a communing rit) to get spiritleech aura which will pretty much double the damage of vampirism and bloodsong.

- Signet of spirits is still good damage as long as you have high channeling even if the rest of your bar isn't dedicated to spirit spamming.

Whatever, let's just get to the builds.

For these builds I will assume that the ritualist is going to be using it for general purpose PvE play. This means they shouldn't rely on outside help for synergy, e-management, etc... and will have to take summon spirits because you can't afford not to be able to move your spirits in a normal PvE group.

I'm also gonna go ahead and give each build 2 superior runes because it's not hard to avoid aggro as a spirit spammer, just get some nice hp gear and learn good positioning.

SoGM
16 Communing, 15 Channeling
Signet of Ghostly Might, Pain, Anguish, Disenchantment, Shadowsong, Painful Bond, Summon Spirits, Spirit Siphon

Spirit damage after SoGM: 42, 31, 31, 31
After the addition of painful bond: 42+20, 62+20, 31+20, 31+20
Total: 246
Account for attack rate after IAS: 246 / 1.34 = 183.6 DPS
Without painful bond: 100.7 DPS (123.9 if anguish is hitting a hexed foe)

vs.

SoS
16 Channeling, 15 Communing
Signet of Spirits, Pain, Bloodsong, Anguish, Disenchantment/Shadowsong, Painful Bond, Summon Spirits, Spirit Siphon

Spirit damage: 26, 26, 26, 30, 26, 20, 20
After painful bond: 26+21, 26+21, 26+21, 30+21, 26+21, 40+21, 20+21
Total: 341
Accont for attack rate: 341 / 2 = 170.5 DPS
Without painful bond: 87 DPS (97 if anguish is hitting a hexed foe)

Actual DPS will be somewhere between the without painful bond DPS and the max DPS because you can't really assume all targets will have painful bond on them all the time. Either way the SoGM rit does pull ahead a little.

But what if you combine them?

SoS
16 Channeling, 15 Restoration
Signet of Spirits, Bloodsong, Vampirism, Spiritleech Aura, Painful Bond, Great Dwarf Weapon, Summon Spirits, Spirit Siphon

Spirit damage: 26, 26, 26, 26, 20
After spiritleech: 26, 26, 26, 46, 40
After painful bond: 26+21, 26+21, 26+21, 46+21, 40+21
Total: 269
Accont for attack rate: 134.5 DPS
Without painful: 82 DPS

Less raw damage than either of the above builds, but can maintain GDW on several allies pretty easily. Could take plenty of other skills instead of GDW, maybe gaze of fury if you make sure to only use it on spirits that have already recharged or enemy spirits.

With...

SoGM
16 Communing, ?
Signet of Ghostly Might, Pain, Anguish, Disenchantment, Shadowsong, Optional, Optional, Summon Spirits, Spirit Siphon

Spirit damage after SoGM: 42, 31, 31, 31
After the addition of painful bond: 42+21, 62+21, 31+21, 31+21
Total: 250
Account for attack rate after IAS: 250 / 1.34 = 186.6 DPS
Without painful: 100.8 DPS (123.9 if anguish hits a hexed foe)

Pretty much the same damage as the solo SoGM build, but has room to play around with the two optional slots and the remaining attribute points. One of the optionals should be e-management so probably do high channeling or high spawning power and take boon of creation or spirit siphon. The other can be a PvE skill or anything in the attributes you chose.

Conclusion:

If you have 1 spammer in your pug, either is great, but the SoGM does technically have more potential.

If you have 2 spammers in your pug, both are great. They can't reach double the spirit damage of 1 rit but they can have room to make up for it with things like great dwarf weapon.

I feel like I just wasted a lot of free time over-thinking this. Oh well, at least I didn't decide to do something like write a comprehensive report on water magic snares, that would take forever.

While SoGM may increase the damage pass SoS, SoS provides more body block and mroe targets AI can attack before they target players/henchys/heros

If so much as one or two of your spirits bite it somehow, SoGM is going to fall behind SoS damage. Another annoying thing to manage is the timing of when you apply SoGM, between the time to summon spirits and them expiring at different times, meaning it won't be on all spirits 100% of the time. SoGM is still very good, but if you only have room for one and can handle the att split, SoS is far more reliable.

I've been hard mode-ing and squishing on my rit, just 16 channeling and 13 spawning and been doing fine. Thing is, SoS isn't just there for the damage, it's there to put 3 bodies on the field you can screw with, like with spirit's gift or explosive growth. With SoS and focusing on channeling you can bring other stuff that will outdamage the communing spirits or spirit leech. A-rage, rift, splinter, pain inverter, ect. Channeling's still got the edge in damage. Communing is for defense. With soul twisting you can make your party damn near invincible

I do have a neat trick where I take a second rit, a 16/13 communer hero, give it SoGM and the communing offense, with light resto stuff, then I go Rt/Me with arcane mimicry, a few points in communing and resto, the 2 life stealing spirits with leech, SoS, and siphon, maybe Air of Superiority to help with the recharge, then borrow my hero's SoGM and use it on my SoS guys and the life stealers.

Now if you're just farming, the most useful communing spirit is shadow song, and since it attacks faster then the blind it inflicts run out and has a fixed lifespan, you don't need that much in communing to make it work if you position it right, at about the breakpoint where you can maintain armor of unfeeling is where you want communing. basically:

SoS
Bloodsong
Shadowsong
Vampire
Painful Bond/spiritleech(it depends on weather you want killing power or tanking for the non-life stealers)
Armor of unfeeling
Pain Inverter/spirit leech(if what you're attacking has AoE pain inverter will 1 shot it, even if you have armor on them. It's how I farmed island guardians and certain AoE foes)
Summon Spirits/spirit leech/rift/run skill/self heal/disenchant/siphon/whatever(it's flexible)

Would just like to point out that your damage calculation is a bit off on the SOGM calculation (by itself).

Including Bloodsong isn't the greatest idea, and is where your calculation went wrong, as Bloodsong doesn't actually do damage and doesn't get the SoGM damage increase (the same holds true for Vampirism). Its damage should be 25 in your calculation, not 35, meaning Shadowsong/Disenchantment (whichever you didn't bring in favor of Bloodsong) outdamage it. For that reason, I prefer to just bring Pain, Shadowsong, Disenchantment, and Anguish if I'm a communing spammer. Enchant removal and Blind are more useful than a slightly more hardy spirit if you're only interested in damage, anyway. You also don't have to attribute split unless you really want Painful Bond, which would be wiser to take on another party member (someone who would be taking Splinter anyway, for example).

Also, you didn't factor in other hexes for triggering Anguish - this'll tip things a bit farther in SoGM's favor due to SoGM adding damage before Anguish multiplies it and Anguish getting more triggers under SoGM.

Overall, if you can manage your spirits well and keep them safely behind the lines and just within their longbow range, SoGM is superior. This is especially true if you're wanting to take advantage of Paragon anthems, like Anthem of Disruption, Anthem of Weariness, or Anthem of Envy (HUGE numbers with Anguish on a hexed foe over 50%!), as faster attacks mean more triggers.

If you want your spirits to take some hits and be in the midline while still applying some good damage, or if you want to bring more team utility (Splinter, Ancestor's, etc.) SoS is easily better. From a purely damage or tanking perspective, it falls behind the options in communing.

If you want your spirits to be mainly focused on taking the brunt of inital aggro damage (spirits make good lures anyway), Rit Lord is probably best:

-Pain on a 16 communing/13 spawning Rit with Rit Lord has 98 armor and 538 health.
-Same with Disenchantment.
-Anguish is slightly lower (86 armor, 470 health) and Shadowsong slightly lower yet (70 armor, 437 health).
-Compared to SoGM or SoS, these spirits can take a real beating, and you can easily respawn them shortly after with the reduced recharge from Rit Lord.
-Add in Air of Superiority and Signet of Creation for energy management, and you've got an army of mini-tanks that still do respectable damage, remove enchants, and blind.
-Armor of Unfeeling makes them take a real pounding before going down.

Really, you may as well just take SoS and Painful Bond (and Bloodsong/Vampirism if desired) on one player or a Hero, and SoGM or Rit Lord on another player (depending on how many/how effective your tanks are). If you can only have 1 spirit player, SoS suits the 'a little of this, a little of that' role best, and adds Splinter and Ancestor's with more bar compression than the other options.

Wow, this ended up a lot longer than I thought it would.

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