More involved Spirit Spamming

Hey everyone. For the longest time now, I have considered Offensive Spirit spamming to be one of the most overpowered (when it comes to damage) builds in the game. Whether you use SoS or SoGM, you're going to be able to pump out a ton of damage with minimal to no effort.

I always assumed that the reason why so many rits (myself excluded - I rarely use offensive spirit builds) use offensive spirit spam builds is because they are OP. I dont think anyone would disagree that they can do a ton of damage, and being able to do all that damage with easy-peasy energy management, while creating a bunch of bodies (which aids immensely in party defense)... It just always seemed OP to me. However, today, in alliance chat, someone brought up a comparison of spirit spammers to minion masters, and Iv got to say... their comparison was pretty good. Both MM (minion masters) and SS (spirit spammers) can do a lot of armor ignoring damage. They both require no effort when it comes to energy management. They both create more bodies, which will make the monk's job so much easier. So why, in my mind, did I think that SS were so OP when I didnt think that about MM? I came to the conclusion that it was because ALMOST EVERY SINGLE RITUALIST AND THEIR BROTHER runs an offensive spirit spamming build, while this is not the case with necromancers. I always assumed that they were so common because SS were OP, but now, after this comparison has been made, I can see that the amount of effort and involvement may be the factor behind this.

Well this is obviously a problem. Besides paragons, Rits are the only class that has one build that dominates usage so thoroughly over the other builds/playstyles available to them. Paragons have an entirely different situation - as they don't realy have any other effective options available to them. Rits, however, can do a bunch of stuff effectively besides spirit spamming, and I would like to see other builds being played than just SS (and the odd resto rit or defensive spirit rit for when a party doesnt have enough monks). I would love to be able to go into a pug for a zmission, or go into a group for w/e, and have people ask me what kind of build im running rather than automatically assuming that I am an SoS (which is what always happens).

I am sure that anyone out there who plays a spirit spammer will admit (if they're being honest) that Spirit Spamming requires practically no skill or effort. You lay down the spirits, you cast painful bond on recharge, and you dominate. I know that effective SS bring splinter or gdw, but im talking about the meta right now, and the meta offensive spirit spammer is a bunch of spirits with painful bond, summon spirits, and siphon spirit. A good minion master on the other hand takes some skill and timing to use effectively, as you have to cast death nova on your minions, cast jagged bones, use OoU and not kill yourself in the process, etc. This, I think, is the reason why you don't see nearly as many necros running minion masters as you see rits running spirit spammers.

Now on to my suggestion: Rather than nerfing spirit spammers, I would like to see the role of a spirit spammer become more involved.

Painful bond: 5 en, 2 sec cast time, 0 recharge
For 10...18 seconds, target spirit deals an additional 8...18 damage with their attacks.

Idea is based off of Death Nova. Identical functionality in terms of duration/damage increase.

Siphon Spirit: 5 en, 1/4 cast, 3 sec recharge
If target spirit is the closes spirit to you, that spirit loses all energy and you gain 15...43% of that energy.

Although I do think that this skill needs a slight recharge nerf (8 sec maybe?), iv decided to keep it as with its original functionality for now.

Summon Spirits: 5 en, 1 sec cast, 2 sec recharge
Target Spirit shadowsteps to your location and gains 80...112 health.

I raised the health gain and lowered the recharge to compensate for it only summoning 1 spirit at a time.

Anyway, I think that these suggestions would be a good start toward making spirit spamming less brainless (and therefore less common compared to the other ritualist offensive options). If you have any suggestions on how to make offensive spirit spamming require more effort/skill and be less pure brainless button-mashing, then feel free to post.

I like these suggestions. An idea I would like to add is to make Sig of Spirits fail unless you have a certain amount of Spawning Power. While that doesn't really nerf the skill, it nerfs secondaries from using it, which I think is a problem.

Another idea I have is about Armor of Unfeeling. This skill is really strong, and I think that making it reflect similar to your Painful Bond suggestion is a good idea.

Something like:

Armor of Unfeeling
Spawning Power
5 Energy
3/4 Second Cast
5 Recharge

Skill: For (3...12....15) seconds, target spirit takes (5...42...48)% less damage and is immune to critical hits.

Notice I moved it to Spawning Power. I feel this makes sense because Spawning Power increases spirit health, so skills that modify spirits survivability should be placed here, the exception being Spiritleech Aura, since that follows the theme of Restoration Magic with life stealing.

/notsigned

I do think spirit spamming should be harder to play given how powerful it is, but I don't think this is the right solution. It just seems like you're changing a lot of skills from affect all spirits to single target. That's just annoying, not challenging. Heroes are better at that kind of thing anyway.

That is exactly what im proposing is changed. Unfortunately, I am not very innovative, so I look at existing models that work, and the model that I looked at was that of a minion master. While they arn't particularly challenging, they do require timing and targeting. That's one way to make a playstyle slightly more challenging, so that is what I have suggested. Maybe its annoying to you but it does require the ability to prioritize the order of targets and determine when which skill should be used. That requires more practice/skill than what spirit spamming currently is. If you have a different idea, feel free to tell us .

I never did feel as though heroes were better at minion mastering/bombing than humans. With practice, it really isnt tought at all to death nova your minion army. Plus, even if heroes were "better at that kind of thing"... what would it matter? Human minion masters are plenty powerful.

i agree with marty.
rits already have a single summon skill anyways.
and the reason people dont run mm on their necs is b/c a hero can minion bomb so much more effectively... and run discord... while the player is free to act as ap caller.

Perma sin says hi!

As for your suggestion for Spirit Siphon, what's the point? If you have to use something other than Boon of Creation + Signet of Spirits for energy management, you're doing something wrong. I even manage to get by using Mantra of Inscriptions every time before I cast SoS, and I never have any energy problems.

If you arent trolling but i hope you are turning spirits into immoble minions will cause rits to fall back into their useless stage

*shrugs* If I want to get involved with my spirits, I usually swap out a skill with splinter weapon and equip myself a long bow. It's also great working with melee classes.

But I hate rolling spirit spamming, and I prefer protting/resto, but every pug I join wants me to be one. >_>

agreed... the main reason heros are more effective as minion bombers is that they can EASILY select a minion on which to cast Death Nova. Forcing a human to mouse-select a "friendly target" on the battle field is sub-optimal imo. I already find it annoying during battle to have to mouse-select a spirit on which to use gaze of fury - even if there's only ONE friendly spirit on the radar!!!

As an aside, I enjoy playing MM as Rt (without the bombing) as an alternate build to SoS or resto. It's just unfortunate that you can only have up to 8 lvl 10 minions with 420 HP as an Rt/N (12 death 13 spawning) but explosive growth adds to the fun...

still... dwg is effective in PvE (other than DoA)... Rt/P or Rt/A with Spirits strength + asura scan + I am the strongest has a place in PvE. Even a lame-surger can fit in to a typical HM team (as long as there's a spirit in range). Actually, there really are are several options. They just aren't part of the meta.

I still believe an ALL Rt team actually has alot of options to fill MOST needed roles in many areas in both HM & NM (but secondaries are widely needed for prot, armor, & hex remove)

Maybe instead they could increase the amount of damage spirits take so that they die more quickly, but also decrease the energy and recharge of spirit skills. This would at least force the spirit spammer to be much more active as they would constantly need to be moving around planting spirits in strategic positions.

The problem with spirit spammers is that they are currently designed for people who hate playing Ritualist and just want to wiki a farming build to either solo or get in a speed clear. When they originally designed the class, there was a spirit summoning Ritual Lord where you maintained 3 buffs and summoned 5 spirits (There was a Wanderlust Communing spammer too). All feedback indicated that the Rit Lord was played for it's power, but it was boring and a majority of people wanted it to die in PvP for something more interesting and less powerful (which I agree with). As someone who has played Rit before SoS, it's more fun supporting while using 2 spirits, and throwing splinter/ancestor's rage on things and spiking, or healing, and the 5 spirit builds were always passive and tedious. Pure spirit spamming was just a novelty that wore off when the class was no longer new to me.

Spirit Summoning suffers as long as the Signet of Spirits solo build remains a 'balancing anchor'. This means, as long as that build is considered fine, other skills are going to be skewed towards trying to fit in a meta with it. Of course, SoS is one of the skills trying to fit in a meta with permanent Shadow Form + consumables... But I doubt that SoS build is going to change, because you can run it on any class for poorly thought out single character titles (Drunkard, Sweet Tooth) and poorly designed new content (Nicholas the Traveler asking for obscure trophy farming).

I agree with the assessment that you are making the build tedious (it's related to interface issues). Spirit summoning times were originally long when they were 3 and 5 seconds, which is one of the primary factors that limited people from running multiple spirit builds in the first place. Unfortunately, they butchered what I liked about playing rit to make the spirit spammer: the flow of needing to time longer casts (2-3 seconds), needing to watch positioning, needing to anticipate better, and picking best of both worlds spirit/spell hybrids. They really should have taken the advice of people who actually played Ritualist early on (and who liked the different concepts in the first place), instead of creating an overpowered minion master clone that gets people to instantly reroll. Look at how content balanced around the Imbagon is a disaster, because no one wants to play that despite what it can do. Meanwhile there are at least 10 people on Elementalist/Ranger mains trying to get a group based on their own class skills, who get passed by for Rit alts. I've been in alot of pugs where they turn another 'worthless SoS' into a healer, because it's needed more, but obviously it's different with a speed clear.

I run into the problem with Minion Masters being uninvolved, but I run Necrosis/Putrid Bile/Signet of Lost Souls and Curse/Blood combinations to keep from getting bored. Aura of the Lich (exploiting all corpses is bad, the corpseless summoning aspect is fine) and Death Nova (kill bombing) are the main two skills that I would nerf in that line for harming the playstyle the most. With the spirit spammer, unfortunately, optimal skills are very passive and you need 4-5 summons to make a wall.

But they already made the mistake of making an overpowered spirit lord years ago, so it's a shame really that they made it again and decided to keep it.

Yea... I miss the old days before the crap was buffed out of spirit spamming. However, Iv always encounted quite a bit of resistence when Iv suggested nerfing SoS/spirit spam. Thats why Im trying to make due with what I apparently am expected to be using in pugs/general PvE as a whole, and am instead trying to find away to make spirit spamming actually require skill to be effective. Not only would this make it less boring, it would decrease the amount of spirit spammers and hopefully allow people to see what other options are available to rits and try them out (DwG/channeling dmg, minion bombing, spirit strength, weapon support, healing, or hybrids incorporating elements from several playstyles).

I can see that this suggestion is rather unpopular. I would hope, however, that everyone can realize a poorly designed playstyle when there is one. Therefore... what would you guys like to see to make spirit spamming require more involvement/skill to be used effectively?

As a quick afterthought, I am also curious what the community would think about changing the status of spirits back to how they used to be (no SoS, different functionalities for SoGM and Ritlord, in other words, getting rid of the PvE split and having the PvP functionalities for all of the spirits), except with no spirit's casting time exceeding 3 seconds and with the change that spirits will follow your targets rather than attacking more or less randomly. I guess this is a different idea for a different thread, but if i could get short responses to this idea, then i dont have to clutter up Sardelac with an entirely new thread.

The spirit spam build works very well in fact too well in many game areas and can also fail totally in others.

I find Raptors in hard mode esp good at destroying the spirits quickly as does roj and other area effect spells especially Earth ones.
Even if I move and heal the spirits constantly they are still tremendously vulnerable.
Then there are the skills that totally destroy spirits or turn them to fight for the other side.

I would improve some of the healing and defensive spirits a little, some of them are especially weak.
Keep the attacking ones pretty much as is but link their effectiveness to spawning power, signet of spirits especially should go into spawning power not channeling.

The final result of these adjustments should be a reduction in the number and power of spirits available as a secondary rit and a slight overall improvement for a primary Ritualist.

A good rit wil have a weapon spell/ancestors in their build to keep them busy when not casting apirits/pb. If they do not have a weapon spell/ancestors chances are they are a lazy rit or using some solo farming build. Always ask your rits to carry a weapon spell if melee is in your group.

As people have already pointed out, for group PvEing, a SoS/Communing split pure Spirit Spammer is inferior to a SoS rit who takes a more involved approach with Splinter, Ancestor's etc.

Thus the skills such as they are now already encourages more active playstyle. The only things holding people back are laziness and ignorance.

The problem is not that the current skills don't encourage more active playstyle; it resides in the fact that poor playstyle also works, and works well. A bit in a Ursan/Discord kind of way: suboptimal, but foolproof and more functional than anything an average PuG will come up with.

As it stands now, a SoS hero in my party usually performs better than a human SoS due to skill choice. The changes suggested in the OP will only make this even more true, in a Death Nova kind of way (I can already see a TeaseMachine with Painful Bond, Ancestor's, Splinter and Spirit Rift). Yes, it would be more complicated to play as a Spirit Spammer, but no, it would probably not be more fun. (Not that it was much fun to begin with beyond the pretty yellow numbers, imho)

As for suggestions, I can see SoGM changed in functionality to resemble OoU, which awards skillful play and prevents AI from being better than a real human (same reason why we don't use OoU heroes). Killing SoS would give PvE a step towards what it should be, whatever it is (not the joke it is now), but it would probably make most people stop playing rits.

Don't play it if you don't like it !
Since as you say everybody is playing a spirit spammer it must be because people like it.
So why do you wanna take that away ? I would never take a skillbar that contains skills where I have to choose a person in the party list before applying, so splinter weapon would never make it on to my bar. Neither would Death Nova when I go as MM. Perhaps that make me a bad player but I'm not the one whining about overpowered builds.
Go ahead and make yourself a rit without SoS and enjoy it, but stop screaming OP and nerf everytime something fun comes along.

Dunno about you guys but I'd much rather make sure I have a panic mesmer anyday. Spirit spamming is pretty new and is kind of a novelty, giving people a chance to play as a rit and have fun on it like we haven't really been able to do before. And like Essence said, it's not just about the spirits but the support they provide too and frankly they're no more OP/Powerful than an MM bomber who essentially achieves the same thing.

Note that there is a difference between 'active' and 'involved', and passive doesn't always imply the opposite of active (it also means you have your role completely pre-defined externally). I wouldn't say there's big problems with builds not being 'active' enough, because a shallow definition for active would more closely refer to pushing buttons alot (true definition of physically active doesn't apply in this case). There are some problems with these builds not being 'active' in a speed clear though, where the aggro baller does most of the work, and you spend more time waiting and moving because things go *poof* so fast. However, phsyical activity is a shallow definition; since the pvp Searing Flames ele is more 'active' than the pvp Prot monk because of hitting SF and his energy management skills, does that make the Prot monk flawed? Of course not. Beyond a shallow world, we keep more than our fingers active. The correct word that applies to these builds is something along the lines of 'overactive'.

But the title, as well as the discussion, refers to 'involvement' anyway. It's about being mentally and emotionally activated, not occupying your fingers with constant mashing. More 'involved' builds (spirit spamming included) isn't going to happen, because 'involvement' is a product of team power and capability. All of our builds become progressively less involving the faster and the easier the kills happen (or the more someone else takes on the slack). But rephrasing what I said earlier, the fast activation in succession concept (spamming, which also gets combined with low recharge) is part of the general overpoweredness that has done the worst things to the playstyle, by making it less involved than it ever was.

I'm singling this out because the guy before it pointed out the value of Ancestor/Splinter which I agree with, but didn't call it optimal with Signet of Spirits in a general sense. PuGs run Armor of Unfeeling version to tank, in places where they cannot get Shadow Form sins or experienced Warriors (those two only speedclear). But is Signet of Spirits optimal on a build that balls things for adjacent range aoe over Destructive Was Glaive variants? I understand using SoS with AI, because no one wants to micro heroes to DwG bomb over and over to maximize half recharge gear. But doesn't DwG exceed the DPS and the targetting reliability of Signet of Spirits/Painful Bond with 3+ foes in the area? I often hit 1-2 with Ancestors, and more reliably get 2-3 when Splinter is on an adjacent aoe physical attack like barrage, but DwG is almost always 3+ because of it's range. I'll note the exception though: certain hybrids that can use the energy management (like Convert hexes in DoA taken on the SoS).

Completely missed reference.
Not really.
The biggest problem with spiritmancers, besides any/Rt combination capable of doing it, is the sheer damage/protection output in the light of doing nothing after putting up the spirits. Just use a few skills, wait till the spirits are up, spam summon spirits to heal/move them, spam syphon for nearly infinite e-management, spam bond to dish out even more damage... and that's all. A build that can do that much damage and provide that much mitigation - and tactical advantage - should require more from the player. If it means making spiritmancers mash more buttons - fine.

huh? my suggestions weren't nerfs, they would just require the rit to be more involved rather than just being able to sit on the sidelines doing nothing. Besides, what is fun about setting up spirits, casting painful bond, and sitting there?

While I am aware that adding splinter + arage to an SoS build is the way to go, that doesn't change the fact that pure spirit spirit spammers are very powerful, hence why I think they need to be doing something in order to obtain ideal results from their spirits. At least minions require death nova, targeting, and OoU or Jagged Bones management to be as good as they can be. Spirits... well they don't. Like I said, Im not necessarily saying that my suggestions in the OP are the way to go (after all, i came up with those in like 2 minutes, lol), but there needs to be something about a pure spirit spammer that gets the rit more involved, because even if the SoS + splinter + arage build is better, a pure spirit spammer is still very powerful and should not be able to pump out the sheer amount of damage (and provide all of the other benefits that dkrn outlined) without being involved in the process in some way.

Nothing in PvE requires a player to be involved. Ironically, the most broken shit (speedclears and similar stuff) is usually the only thing that comes close to being slightly challenging. This whole thread is the pot calling the kettle black. Also, your analogy is flawed. MM builds aren't the only Necromancer builds that see use because those other builds are much stronger in a balanced setup. Nerfs to spirit spam builds wouldn't make other Ritualist builds (with the exception of channeling rits that already are played) see use because these builds outright suck.

Arguments are like advanced math problems, if you don't show your work, you obviously didn't do any and you just cited a memorized answer. What is the response to something with no reasoning, no inclusion of context, and more importantly, no counter definitions? If none of those things are included in an argument, a person really only said some form of: Wrong, NO U, or O RLY. Your first sentence says Wrong; the second sentence says O RLY. This is a now a form of NO U.

You complain about a reference, that's based around a definition of active; in context, the word active was starting to pop up like it's a synonym for involved. To some people, involvement is only physical. To other people, involvement is only emotional and mental. In the real world, involvement is all 3. I never said involvement is *only* mental and emotional. If I knew I was going to be quoted out of context, I would have said involvement is *also* mental and emotional. 'Involved' can also mean 'needlessly complicated', but that's a stupid definition, because if I wanted to say needlessly complicated I would say that. I wouldn't refer to involved, which most typically refers to human relationships, as being something people want to get into because they are needlessly complicated. Marty was the first to say that he was making things the wrong definition of involved.

You can be more active in a spirit spam build by wanding. You can wand when you run out of energy. You can wand when it isn't necessary to heal. The original problem is not solved by telling the guy to wand instead of standing around. Retargetting things, like the suggestions in the first post, are involvement and not plain activity. You're thinking about what DPS or skills they do. You're thinking about their positioning and likelihood of being killed/crowd controlled. Skills that you have to think about using on a particular summoned minion/spirit are more involved than a skill that you always use on the same physical on recharge.


On what Morphy is saying, the most complicated things left in the game are the tactics designed to speed clear something (pulling/tanking role), and having to give success to a bunch of newbs/noobs who don't listen. DPS is less involved the more organized the group is, and healing is less involved when you have more defense than you need. I wouldn't go as far as to say nothing is involving, because all things are certain degrees of involving.

No offense, but your posts are starting to look like the small print on contracts......no one will read b/c it's making things entirely too complicated.

The whole thing can be condensed into strategy>implementation=active?

I've debated w/ Lanier in the 6 other threads about Rits....no point in creating same arguements repeatedly in new/dif threads.

You have?

I rarely discuss rits nowadays (mainly because im playing my paragon more and more and my rit less and less) but if i makes you feel better, I do agree that splinter + a-rage on a SoS rit is better than a pure channeling + communing spirit spam.

I'm really not concerned about a newly minted rank 3 Lanier slaying title (1 win=rank 1, 3 win=rank 2, 6 win=rank 3, 10 win=rank 4...), especially not when the join date says November 2009 under their name, which is after the patch that made forum arguing titles easier to farm. In order to command surrender from people, you still need Ensign Walking Amongst Mere Gurus. If you don't know what that means, it means honesty, quality arguing experience, and a put up or shut up attitude of demonstration with mathematical and in game evidence (no offense to the good posters I left out for not remembering names).

That's not a good equation you have there. Using mathematical symbols to make your point even less clear is not logical. Vague terms are meaningless in an equation. I write alot sometimes, it makes dumb people leave the room and it makes their heads hurt, but it's better than repeatedly saying nothing across hundreds of forum posts, and having the same arguments again and again.

But regardless of that, it's clear your intent is to truncate instead of estimate, eliminate a point of view instead of combining it, and overide instead of convince. Apparently you don't like 'involvement', which now we have an 'involved' argument. Trust me when I say I don't mind involved arguments, perhaps just as much as I don't mind an involving build in an involving game (Blind/snare ele with spike assist and party heal). You'll find that argument activity isn't the same as argument involvement if you know what I mean.

You're posts are staring to look like the guy who invented hiding the important stuff in the fine print while keeping the contract terminology as misleading as possible. Maybe what you should have said is this: "Lanier, I don't like your idea, because I don't want to be involved with this game. I just want my 50/50 HoM, and things to make my character look accomplished. And I don't want to think about playing the game when I put it down, and I don't want to have to think about playing the game too much when I pick it up. I don't want my runs to take near an hour either, and I don't want to train people to have to run every build in the game". That would be a complete winning argument that no one could debate the principles of. It's not beating around the bush and pretending to be logical to win. It's not picking a fight you aren't ready for. It's just simple honesty and clarity, and being like that typically results in better usage of time for everyone.

But if you are still too confused and want it simplified, I agree with the proposed concept request, but not the exact suggestions. An argument would speak for itself based on whoever played the Ritualist prior to it being overpowered, and whatever they played. Let's face it, designers can make many different concepts into the new overpowered meta if they weaken some of the current ones.

Come on, it takes more to land Panic and other mes hexes than spam spirits. It takes more to even be a fire ele than spam spirits. Nearly anything requires more attention and player input if it's viable. Spiritmancers are powerful.

Have you even tried to read the remaining part of my post or were there too many letters for you?

If you can't think yourself why the reference is missed, you probably never really played a spiritmancer without treating it like a serious shit. I vanquished most of the game with my girlfriend, me primairy mes or para, with her on a spiritmancer. She could just summon spirits and literally go afk for a while, before she needed to use Summon Spirits or set the new ones. She could do something in the meantime, being FULLY operational spiritmancer.
Prot monk has to, at least, pay attention to what's happening. His activity isn't based on mashing buttons, but awareness of the battlefield. What a spiritmancer has to do? Summon the spirits out of AoE and put the spirit up after it expires, period. This is where something's wrong.

A spiritmancer never runs out of energy.

Not only complicated, but totally unnecessary and out of the game context; Fuhon's part about me complaining on the reference and how activity can be divided got too philosophical in the matter, lacking merithorical content in terms of GW.
Just to note, some Guru users might wish to improve their basics of English as their posts might be annoying to read, especially with long paragraphs.

My bad it was only in 3 threads...here,here, and here.

It wasn't a mathematical equation, the ">" was suggesting "implementing said strategy" and the "= and the ?" were asking you a question. Basically I was asking what your definition meant....the short of the long if you will.


Actually, I was confused (hence the ?)and simplifying it would be nice of ya. As long as its in a non-douche context ofc

I read the rest of what you wrote, you changed the subject in it, but now you're making up things to argue with. At least you elaborated this time. You've agreed with what I was saying on the Protection monk statement, despite still telling me my reference is wrong. It's not like I mind arguing with anyone who wants to attack people over the internet without comprehending what they write, but I would rather be discussing good ideas in my spare time. People who like to talk trash, I've given that a go too, but I rarely meet people good at it. Choosing to attack someone's intelligence and claim they have poor grasp of language makes for an interesting debate strategy, especially if you got the 'confidence' to think you pull off those things well.

Telling me I've never played spiritmancer casually is news to me, and saying that I'm also denying it's ease of effectiveness makes it clear I'm not the one having literacy difficulities. When I use it most, it's to farm Nicholas the Traveler, when I am watching TV, and under the blurry vision of Drunkard while on a Ranger (I don't uncheck effects). I've deleted my PvE Ritualist before recreating my current one.

Your girlfriend's playstyle, and even worse, is in pugs if you think I don't know how to 'screw it up right'. I've seen rushing ahead into patrols with spirit teleports have success. I've said I don't like the cast times being like that for any of the spirits, which encourages the horrid team playstyle (lack of overall concern for spirit resources). But there are actually people out there, most of them new players, who think this build is demanding and underpowered, because they are running face first into it's strongest counters (banishing strike, spiritual pain, aoe without teleports, not kiting as spirits die, etc).

Aside from that, a spiritmancer can place spirits distances apart based on the AoE radius he is facing, luring enemies first onto the more durable Vampirism/Bloodsong. When he keeps them in a heap though, for some reason single target mobs aren't intelligent enough to focus fire perfectly, and they spread damage that can be healed with Summon Spirits. Summon Spirits can be used to kite for survival, or retarget specific problem enemies after the teleport. You can also put spirits in body block patterns, and obstruct mobs that try to chase things. You recast Armor of Unfeeling to waste even more mob time while the spirits tank.

Those are some of the 'tactical' things that can be done with the build, but aren't always necessary in team play. The build is very preparation based, and so the combat gameplay is poorer. Putting up elementalist attunements on 45 second recharges isn't exciting, and they never 'fixed' that for being a boring/fragile preparation. But a better question would be, have the know-it-alls actually played a spirit build with longer cast times? Did they face a PvP meta based on an introduced Ritaulist class, while at the same time playing with PvE groups where players ran the Ritualist skills? Non-healing Ritualists were underplayed compared to the assassin, and it was because the Ritualist would have encroached on the niche that people select another damage dealer for (elementalist/necromancer are the most common caster archetypes). Rits could vengeful farm. But designers changed their minds about class overlap issues, as they did when they decided they wanted smite monk viability. It appears to be usage determined design among DPS classes. Elementalist/Necromancer are two DPS caster classes that people will probably play even if they were weak.

You pointed me to a your/you're page... and I get told I have a literacy problem because of impatient people who lack multiple reading and comprehension skills? There's supplemental material for those who have reading endurance problems, but I'd have to show it to your mother because it's too advanced. How about you have your parent sign your comments to confirm you read and understood the material you respond to. And don't argue with statements you agree with, because it makes it more obvious the difference between an attack (which lacks content) and proper criticism. I hope this was annoying enough for you.

Well, I waited to see if this was going to get deleted, but since it's appropriate to forum conversation, I'll bite.

You're promoting me to douche status? A douche, an unintelligent guy that gets discarded by a growing up (cleansing) process by people he knows, but remains overly concerned with upkeeping his status/appearance through it all, but who also annoys without malicious intent? Great! At least this means I'm no longer long-winded, I don't do things with calculated deviancy, and I have a status to worry about upkeeping. Well, I did start fist bumping before 2000, because we did sports and running makes your hands sweaty... but now I'm going to have to go all out by hitting the gym, getting a high maintenance haircut and tan, and start calling people something impersonal like bro/dude. Then I'll have to make my online profile a picture of myself blowing a kiss at a camera, with two girls on my arms, wearing a pink polo shirt with the collar popped, while standing around at a club where people should be dancing. But you know us douches, we can't be seen talking with stunted rejects who bring everyone down with their impaired mental faculties (paragraph reading is learned in a very early grade).

While I agree spirit spammers are OP and require zero effort, I fail understand how any of the suggested changes will change anything. That is, besides summon spirits, which probably deserves a nerf. Then again, so does SY and so on.

In my personal opinion, the concept of offensive spirits such as pain is simply retarded. It has proven incredibly hard to fix these professions (Ritualists, Assassins, Paragons and Dervishes) without making them inferior to core professions. This is why they aren't in GW2 and I'm happy about that.

I do not understand why they changed spirits to their incredibly short casting time for PvE and I would like to see it reverted. In PvE, I do not see a problem with regular Ritualist who heal or deal channeling damage, or even defense spirits. In PvP however, there is. This is because there is no way to counter (defensive) weapon spells.


QFT


Did you just say necromancers are balanced? Haha, you made a funny!


It would, these builds (e.g. healers) are inferior to running the same build on a necro. It is a simple truth. And channeling Ritualist are terrible.

Balanced team setup= 1-3 frontliners, 3-5 casters/spikers, 2 monks

OT

The reason there are not a lot of MMs out there is because of death nova, and the asinine point+click mentality it promotes. Your suggestion only makes bad rit walls more tedious to maintain, while doing nothing to fix the inherent problem with spirits: there's no active synergy between a ritualist and their spirits that can be used with the powercreep today. Instead of spirits having a passive effect that promotes the rit to shit them out, spirits should have effects that add keep rits active. For example:

Rejuvination
: 10e 3/4s 60r
For 30-45 seconds non-spirit allies gain 1..5 health per second while not moving. Ritualist spells that target non-spirit allies heal for 15...25 health.

In this situation, there's a passive effect for the spirit existing and a secondary effect for the rit buffing/healing the rest of the team. Of course, spirit survivability would need to be reverted (which I doubt will ever happen) to keep things from being too broken.

/notsigned

I want to make some points that this alliance member of yours may have missed when comparing:

First, activation times for minions. You need to run a Bloodstained Insignia and even then it still takes time to animate one corpse. Spirit spamming is instant and unconditional.

Second, durability. AoU turns all spirits into tanks while minions are unprotected, suffer degen and get wiped by holy damage. In addition, rits don't sac health for summon spirits, while necros are punished for BotM and other useful skills.

Add to the above that unless you run fiends, minions have to melee, meaning it's slower and snaring wrecks them. Spirits can be moved around the battlefield and attack from very long distances.

I don't agree with your suggestions so much, but I would be happy to see longer activation times, health sac and higher costs/recharges in some areas.

Well, sure.

And then there's the fact that there are no PvE-only MM skills, whereas two of the central skills to most spirit spamming builds (vampirism and summon) are, in fact, PvE-only.

Hence there's no loss (and significant gain, from timing and targeting ability) to running a hero MM, but a fairly significant loss to running a hero spirit spammer, and a significant advantage to running that on your own bar.

Otherwise I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with your suggestions here, because I generally only use SS builds for solo farming, MQSC, and occasionally when requested (but I rarely pug with my rit). However, I think you should bear in mind that your changes will make spirit farming significantly less viable for /rits, and while many of you may LOVE if that were to happen, I think it would be a terrible move.

Fixed that for you. I don't run AP caller on any of my characters but I do prefer MM to be run by heroes.

Painful Bond would be a good change. But it would make them more powerful. Maybe just making them the old SoGM (where the spirit does more damage, but dies at the end).

Your Spirit Siphon is just annoyance for the purpose of annoyance. Having to select a spirit from a probably tightly clumped group is just artificial difficulty.

And Summon Spirits needs to summon them all. It allows groups to have a Rit and not be slowed down a lot.

edit: Now that I have more time to write more fully...

Your Painful Bond is a cool idea, but would end up making spirit spammers more powerful. Right now you can't always get all the extra damage from the spell. If you gave the +dmg to the spirits themselves, it'd be a lot more powerful.

The problem doesn't lie with Spirit Siphon, so I'd vote to keep that the same.

Your Summon Spirits completely kills the point of the spell. It's just Draw Spirit + a heal. As I mentioned above, it would greatlyslow down the party's movement through a zone. A MM's extra bodies follow him around, and the rit needs to take a spell to make that the case.

One thing that could be done is put a limit on the number of spirits you can have in play, similar to the Necro's limit of minions. The problem is how to implement this. The most obvious solution, tying it to Spawning Power, doesn't work out so well. Even if you allowed 1 spirit per 2 points of Spawning Power, a ritualist would need 6 points in it just to field Signet of Spirits.

I would disagree. In my opinion a balanced team set-up is a build with a balance in melee and caster damage with balanced offensive and defensive capabillities. Not what everyone thinks is most honorable.