Best Spirit Spammer Elite?

I've had great success in PvE with my Spirit Spammer (finished my first campaign with her), but as I've collected more Elite skills, I've wondered if there's a better Elite than Signet of Spirits, or at least one which helps me kill things faster.

My current build:
Gaze from Beyond
Spirit Burn
Signet of Spirits
Agony
Bloodsong
Vampirism
Weapon of Warding (emergency heal)
Flesh of my Flesh

Channeling Magic: 13
Spawning Power: 10
Restoration Magic: 6

Using Ritual Lord kept me more focused on making sure it instantly recharged rather than actually doing damage.

Using Clamor of Souls seemed redundant with Gaze and Spirit Burn, plus didn't give the bonus conditions, and I had a harder time with the initial spirit swarm.

The minimum cost (10 Energy) on Soul Twisting basically makes it useless to my current build.

Signet of Spirits is the best skill for me, but Signet of Ghostly Might is a good elite skill for offensive spirit spammer (of course, you will need to increase communing).

The biggest thing you are missing is Painful bond IMO.

Quote: Originally Posted by Essence Snow

The biggest thing you are missing is Painful bond IMO. Agree. You are missing alot of damage now.

Quote: Originally Posted by Just.nl

Agree. You are missing alot of damage now. What would you prefer I replace with Painful Bond, and to what other forms of damage are you referring?

I used Painful Bond to blow through the Norn Fighting Tournament and a few other solo quests, btw.

Don't think so much about to respawn your spirits as they usually have relatively high armor and health

SoS is therefore the choice. And yeah, remember to bring Painful Bond - perhabs instead of agony, spirit or Gaze from Beyond =)

Quote: Originally Posted by Essence Snow

The biggest thing you are missing is Painful bond IMO. And Summon Spirits.

For offensive spirits you won't need ritual lord for the recharge bonus. Add Summon Spirits and that's not a problem anyway.

And as Nosgoth already said: SoGM is a good elite skill as well.

Signet of Spirits is hard to get around for an offensive spiritcaster.

1: Its free, giving more casts of Painful Bond and other skills.

2: It summons 3 persistent attack spirits, which is superb bar compression on a limited skillbar. Compared to use of Signet of Ghostly Might which puts out similar levels of damage, but requiring more slots used for attack spirits. SoS gives you more room to be flexible in your build.

3: The SoS spirits is more bodies on the field between you and the opposition, which doesn't require the existence of corpses like for the Necromancer. Signet of Ghostly Might suffers a lot more when you loose a spirit or two, as a lot more damage potential is packed into each spirit and you become at a definite disadvantage when they start to die.

4: SoS have high immediate and sustained armor ignoring damage. Which goes through the roof when coupled with Painful Bond. Easier to get started on dealing damage with a SoS build as you only have to place spirits and buff them with Painful Bond. A ghostly might build requires you to juggle two buffs and make sure your present spirits benefits from them both at all times. Plus if you loose a spirit midbattle and have to remake it after buffing, then your damage is far lower if it can't benefit from buffs given your smaller number of spirits on the bar.

5: SoS is also useful for skills that destroys or depends on the existence of spirits for a big bonus. Like Feast of Souls or Boon of Creation. Plus synergizing extremely well with Spirit Siphon for a big energy boost.


SoS and Signet of Ghostly Might is pretty much the two main choices for an offensive spiritualist. You shouldn't need a spirit recharging skill as they don't kill themselves and you get the E you need from spirit siphon. And I think SoS is the clear winner of the two.

I'd agree that the best course of action would be to stick with Signet of Spirits and bring Painful Bond. However, I would recommend trying to shoehorn Great Dwarf Weapon in there; it's stupidly powerful, and Spawning Power extends its duration an incredible amount.

With your points in Channeling, Siphon Spirit would be superb energy management, especially in combination with the multiple free spirits from SoS.

Do you play mostly with Guildies, or H&H? If the latter, I can't imagine you gaining much from that copy of Flesh of My Flesh. You should really leave the resurrection duties to the AI; you won't need it often enough to be worth wasting a skill slot on a human player.

Dont forget Spirit Leach Aura. The damage gained isnt anything, but it makes your spirits much more survivable and the Life stealing also bypasses many Protection defences such as Shielding hands for example.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rushin Roulette

Dont forget Spirit Leach Aura. The damage gained isnt anything, but it makes your spirits much more survivable and the Life stealing also bypasses many Protection defences such as Shielding hands for example. The problem with Spiritleech Aura is that its a resto skill. Becomes a nasty points split. SA would work much better if it was placed in Channeling.

If you want to keep your spirits alive, its better to rely on Armor of Unfeeling. Especially since many ritualists dips into Communing to grab a few more attack spirits.

Great Dwarf Weapon is stupidly good and its a shame not to have a decent amount of Spawning Power to back it up, as well strenghtening your spirit wall.

if you want a REAL "spirit spammer" use this i use it for pretty much everything hero hench related. if you need another pve skill for something area specific like pi for retarded bosses replace gaze. it always helps to have blood ritual on a hero if you cant manage energy replace gaze for boon. i dont have a link but i remember seeing a pretty indepth experiment between sos and ghostly as elites. i personally dont like ghostly unless theres another rit in the party with sos then i go full comm with ghostly. i always use this in discord builds instead of ap to btw its really nice all around damage and defense using them to block shit you dont want on your casters

OACjAqiMJSlTfTRb+gXTGbVT0gA

Quote: Originally Posted by skervy

if you want a REAL "spirit spammer" use this i use it for pretty much everything hero hench related. if you need another pve skill for something area specific like pi for retarded bosses replace gaze. it always helps to have blood ritual on a hero if you cant manage energy replace gaze for boon. i dont have a link but i remember seeing a pretty indepth experiment between sos and ghostly as elites. i personally dont like ghostly unless theres another rit in the party with sos then i go full comm with ghostly

OACjAqiMJSlTfTRb+gXTGbVT0gA A channeling spiritcaster should NEVER need Blood ritual! Spirit siphon gives all the energy you need. Especially since you can drain the free Signet of spirits 3 times with careful movements.

why would you take a shitty skill like spirit siphon for yourself when you can have 1 hero use blood ritual. useful for the whole party plus have a free spot for another damage spirit. i thought this topic was for spirit spammer which is what i posted :P plus if your using them right you dont need to recast spirits very often plenty of time to regen. the only real energy burners are pb and anguish. oh and lastly boon would be better then spirit any day unless your going against heavy enchant removal. it makes your energy basically unlimited with a REAL spirit spammer

Quote: Originally Posted by skervy

why would you take a shitty skill like spirit siphon for yourself when you can have 1 hero use blood ritual. useful for the whole party plus have a free spot for another damage spirit. i thought this topic was for spirit spammer which is what i posted :P plus if your using them right you dont need to recast spirits very often plenty of time to regen. the only real energy burners are pb and anguish Then you havent really tried Spirit Siphon, or using it well. It can fuel a lot of interesting spells with the massive e-return it can provide. Plus the value of Spirit siphon increases dramatically the faster you recycle your spirits, because they will have fresh and full e-bars to suck out.

Especially if you take a role of spamming Splinter Weapon or Great Dwarf Weapon on recharge together with Painful Bond and casting your spirits. Spirit Siphon can easilly handle that.

once again spirit spammer ^^ i dont know what you guys perception of the words spirit spammer is but to me it means a shitload of spirits+summon+pb. not running running around to make sure you siphon diff spirits and worrying about weapon spells. just a army of spirits cast pb and start hopping them around to use them as walls or put them in range of targets you want them hittin then watch numbers

Well if going by the meta tagged spiritspammer build on pvx, its:

Painful Bond
Signet of Spirits
Pain
Vampirism
Bloodsong
Anguish
Summon Spirits
Spirit Siphon

Plenty of spirits to suck the juice from and keeping up your legion of spirits and laying down Painful Bonds.

Quote: Originally Posted by skervy

once again spirit spammer ^^ i dont know what you guys perception of the words spirit spammer is but to me it means a shitload of spirits+summon+pb. not running running around to make sure you siphon diff spirits and worrying about weapon spells. just a army of spirits cast pb and start hopping them around to use them as walls or put them in range of targets you want them hittin then watch numbers Yeah, but you can't just mindlessly think 'omg I'm a spirit spammer, need moar spirits! moar spirits! moar spirits!'. If you're running 14/16 Channeling, there really isn't much reason not to take Splinter. It's quite possibly the single strongest offensive ability the Rit has.

Chan - SoS Com - SoGM

The best is a Rit hero duo. human goos communing with SOGM and the hero takes SOS ans PB

But even as a solo human SOGM is better the SOS+PB.
SOGM makes spirits asttack 50% faster. I did the mach it does more damage.