Spirits, spirits and more spirits.

Just curious if anyone else out there has tried a Mercenary hero build with three ritualist.

My first Rit uses the standard ST bar with only Shelter(to insure it is almost always up). The rest of his bar consists of Resilient Weapon - Protective was Kaolai - Boon of Creation - Signet of Creation - Spirit Light - Power Drain
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My second rit uses a communing build made up of Signet of Ghostly Might - Pain - Anguish - Disenchantment - Shadowsong - Signet of Creation - Boon of Creation - Flesh of my flesh.
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My third rit uses a Standard SoS hero build consisting of SoS - Bloodsong - Painful Bond - Spirit Siphon - Spiritleech Aura - Mend Body and Soul - Spirit Light - and Protective was Kaolai.
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So far it can do FoWHM fairly Easily and Frostmaw HM with usually no wipes unless it is a triple aggro. The build is based around these three heroes, but my other heroes are as follows.

I use a monk/mesmer as my primary healer. He is set up as a UA mainly for the quick rez. Since the build revolves around having as many spirits up at once if a rit get spiked out it is important to have them up and running quite quickly.
The monks bar consists of UA - Dwanya's Kiss - Signet of Rejuvenation - Cure Hex - Divine Healing - Heaven's Delight - Power Drain and Waste Not Want Not.
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I also run an MM bomber for added damage and free tanks. The elite skill on this hero is Blood is Power, just to keep my monk, rits, and mesmers at full energy during longer fights. The Bomber consists of BiP - Animate Minions - Animate Shambling Horrors - Death Nova - Putrid Bile - Masochism - Spirit Light - and Flesh of my Flesh
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Then I run two mesmers to shutdown casters and interupt monks.

The first mesmer is a domination/inspiration hybrid with E-surge for an aoe spike and E denial. The bar consists of E-surge - Mistrust - Unnatural Signet - Cry of Frustration - Shatter Hex - Overload - Power Drain - and Waste not Want Not.
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The Second mesmer is basically an Illusion mesmer with a Fast casting elite. The bar consists of Psychic Instability - Clumsiness - Wandering Eye - Signet of Clumsiness - Accumulated Pain - Arcane Conundrum - Power Drain - and Flesh of my Flesh.
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Psych Instability provides an aoe 3 second knockdown which is quite nice. Stops a good amount of damage and gives the rits time to spawn their spirits and the minions time to swarm the group.

Ill post template codes in a bit. Would love to hear what everyone thinks. And i am VERY open to suggestions. These builds were mostly home made with some help from pvx, but i am well aware that they still have room to improve, especially in terms of synergy.

My ST Rit has a few wasted skill spots (boon of creation and signet of creation) because he only spawns one spirit so these skills are marginal. But I have not found any alternatives to fit his build

Thanks for reading

I almost never use Rt heroes, the AI is terrible, especially with weapon/item spells and other things, besides they have zero idea about being tactical.

ST works fine, with a tiny bit of micro at times.

Thanks for your ideas

Quote:

I often find myself using 2 or 3 rits with my Dagger Spammer sin, but I've grown a little tired of the old SoS/SoGM combo, so I usually run two ST rits to deal with all the damage mitigation and heal that I need. This is how I set them up:

Rit 1
Rit 2
(note that I just took that from my Templates folder so the runes don't show up - add them to your taste!)

The second rit feels a little sub-par, but I've been having great results with those two so I just stick with it. Granted, I am not well versed in the arts of FoW-HM or elite areas in general, but I've gone through all the rest of the HM content with great ease with those two. I sometimes use a third rit as my 7th hero, with some melee love and party wide heal. It is very useful to map the first 4-6 skills of the rits on your keyboard so you can quickly set up spirits before engaging a risky mob. I use "tyuiop" and "ghjkl;" for that so I can just go TG-YH-UJ-IK et voilà, you've got all your spirits up. The rest of the team is then pure damage / shutdown and I sometimes enjoy a Motigon on the side to support all those casters.

As for criticism, I'd say two things: first, there are way too many heals for me. Now that you said you usually afk during that, it makes a little more sense, but still, I'd drop a few heals in favor of more damage and see if it still works well. I don't see Boon of Creation and Signet of Creation being too cost effective on your ST rit, so maybe drop them in favor of Mend Body and Soul and Leech Signet or something similar so you can free up a skill slot on another char?

The second thing is that, in my book, defensive spirits + minions = big no no. Those minions no doubt eat through Shelter in no time which might be why you feel like having to make sure it is up 110% of the time. When I use the aforementioned rits, I want them to keep my party alive, not expendable cannon fodder. Then again, you going afk means the minions are pretty useful to keep the mobs at bay, but still, I'd strongly suggest to choose either minions or defensive spirits. If you decide to stick with minions, you could use something like Dwayna's Sorrow on your necro to keep them alive longer in battle and set your former ST rit to pack more of a punch. If you drop the minions, then PI becomes that more important to keep the melees away for as long as possible. You could also consider some AoE snares.

Props for getting a little creative though, keep it up! Don't give up no matter what kind of criticism you get; too often I see posts suggesting changes and in the end it means "load up a meta bar and go play". Don't do that! Keep on trying new stuff!