Is The Signet of Spirits Ritualist Hero Really Worth Bringing?

The true strenght of the SoS hero is flexibility and usefulness in loooots of situations and for different purposes.

Extra bodies(with all BBlock/mob targetting derivations), plain and great Dmg(a-rage+ spirits auto attacks), support(splinter + 3x pools for spirit siphon/triggering skill extra benefit relying on spirit-MbaS/Spirit light....), enough att. points to spec quite high in any other line, expecialy stuff ilke Prot, Resto/Heal, Command, Smite.

Is good for almost any team, and unvaluable for meeles (meeles love channel/smite rit).
That said, there's no problem dropping it for something else (expecially after 7H update), but you should always remember what you're dropping.

The only real reasons I'm hearing as to why someone would want to bring an SoS is for splinter weapon, arage, and they're somewhat defensive and offensive "powers."

Honestly, if you're taking an SoS for only two skills, than the hero proves to be inefficient in any area since the rest of the skills are just fillers.

For offensive, I've only seen the spirits offer 20-35 damage at most usually which is pathetic.

For defensive, so what if the spirits hold the mob back for an extra 5 seconds? That makes no difference when you're trying to fall back and re-gain composure.

Splinter, Arage and anything from 3-5 optional slots with enough free attributes and energy management to cover most things you could possibly want or need in a team?

People can't see why that's good?
Flexibility is the key.

And have people really not figured out that you set the spirits down and then lure the mobs onto them? Not to mention the hero won't even come close to lagging behind if you set the spirits as you pull.

The moral of the story... SoS rit is powerful due to it being a Swiss army knife build but you don't need it to survive. Use it if you like it or have a physical. Because a 16 Channeling Magic Splinter Weapon is too good to pass up.

I think in a lot of areas (and with the introduction of 7 heroes parties) you don't have to run an SOS rit, you could get by with something else provided you have that balance between offense and defense.

I tend to play caster characters and I do bring an SOS (without splinter weapon unless there is a physical or minions in the team). I do like the defense the spirits add plus you can add some powerful heals or support to the bar. With the SOS/resto I usually add one other healer - usually a bip resto and that's all I need.

These days out of the common bars/meta you see it's the MM or MB I have dropped. Unless I am doing a mission or quest that requires a defensive stand e.g. Vizunah, Battle for lions arc, eternal grove etc then I don't bring an MM or MB.

Even for my melee, I bring a SoS rit because it is one of the best choice of elite skills when you bring SW and AR. I don't bring RoJ at times, if I don't feel like grouping mobs before each encounter and without grouping mobs RoJ is just not very effective. With the current OP skills, I have the choice of playing style.

The other point about calculating the SoS DPS is that it is damage over time that allows you to cast other skills after casting your SoS and your SoS is still causing damage over time. This fact was not considered.

In my experience, heroes like to cast SoS too early, so 50% of the time the spirits can't reach the mob.
If you can spirit spam yourself, that would be ideal. Take advantage of Vampirism and the almost-essential Summon Spirits.

I'm a bit dissapointed but it seems as if almost everyone in this thread has disregarded the logistics of SoS that make it such an incredible skill. What makes SoS so good is TIME.

Consider this: a discord necro with a bunch of restoration skills, and an SoS rit with a bunch of restoration skills. It appears at first that the builds are similar in that a Discord necromancer can cast 1 discord per 3 seconds dealing about 35 dps single target. The skill SoS summons spirits which deal 25*3 damage with attacks every 2 seconds, so the dps is completely comparable.

Why then is the SoS rit so much more effective? Well the SoS rit simply goes into battle and takes 1.75 seconds to cast SoS. The entire rest of the battle it can spam heals, splinters, painful bonds, whatever. Sure the dps is comparable or even significantly worse than other builds but it is the fact that the ritualist has so much free time to cast other spells that makes SoS so good.

If you want to examine the discord nec more closely look at some numbers. Discord casts in 1 second with a .75sec aftercast and a 2 sec recharge. Let's say the necro alternates spirit lights and discords. Discord takes 1.75 seconds, spirit light takes 1.75 seconds so every 3.5 seconds the necro can pump out 110 dmg and 140 heal. That's a little over 30 dps which is worse than what SoS does alone. Furthermore the ritualist could've casted 2 spirit lights in that time healing for 280 whilst still doing more damage passively from the spirits.

IMO that's what makes SoS worth bringing. The fact that it allows you to get up a bunch of damage soakers with decent dps quickly and allows the rit the time to actually get the most out of it's utility skills, something that few other characters can boast. Not to mention splinter is OP as fuark with human melee.