Is The Signet of Spirits Ritualist Hero Really Worth Bringing?

Wenspire

Wenspire

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Mar 2008

USA - W.Coast

HiME

Mo/

If you are having problems with your SoS Hero using the skill, sometimes they will not resummon the spirits if an existing one is still within their spirit range. In this case, I usually just manually make them use the skill. Though, that's just an occasional occurance but I think worth mentioning.

I also feel an SoS hero is worth bringing. Extra bodies for agro along with their Splinter Weapon is very useful for me since I usually have at least one Ranger hero or a Sin hero (yes, I'm weird like that).

AndrewSX

AndrewSX

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2010

Italy, Turin

Lake

E/

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.

Gladiator Steven

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2010

United States

R/Mo

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.

Pew

Pew

Academy Page

Join Date: Jul 2011

R/

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.

Marty Silverblade

Marty Silverblade

Administrator

Join Date: Jun 2006

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladiator Steven
View Post
Yes, but the three discord heroes do a wonderful job abusing the soul reaping attribute to spam ritualist heals thus serving as an excellent damage dealer and healer. Actually no, they don't. Discord isn't 'excellent damage'. It's not even remotely close to it. One copy of Splinter Weapon does more damage than all three of your Discords put together. Furthermore, Discord teams are stuck with three+ (four in your case) characters specced with really high Death Magic, which offers nothing interesting other than minions (which is probably why everyone fills the rest of the bars with completely redundant resto heals), whereas Splinter/ARage/etc only require one character and one attribute, making it more of a toolbox character.

You're thinking inside the square. Stop saying 'it's an SoS Rit' - it's a Rit with Channeling Magic. As I mentioned in my previous post, SoS is neither super powerful nor required. All physicals (should) run Splinter Weapon on a primary Rit because it's (almost definitely) the single most powerful offensive skill available for them. It's over 100DPS in ideal circumstances. As everyone else has been saying, flexibility is key... you can easily split your attributes another two ways, have a free elite, and have excellent energy management already specced through Spirit Siphon (you'll probably have at least one spirit somewhere, whether on this bar or on another). Running SoS is certainly the most common elite option, but it does not and should not define the build (perhaps this is less true for non-physicals whose interest in channeling is purely about spirits but nonetheless the principle holds for all builds).

Gladiator Steven

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2010

United States

R/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty Silverblade
View Post
Actually no, they don't. Discord isn't 'excellent damage'. It's not even remotely close to it. One copy of Splinter Weapon does more damage than all three of your Discords put together. Furthermore, Discord teams are stuck with three+ (four in your case) characters specced with really high Death Magic, which offers nothing interesting other than minions (which is probably why everyone fills the rest of the bars with completely redundant resto heals), whereas Splinter/ARage/etc only require one character and one attribute, making it more of a toolbox character.

You're thinking inside the square. Stop saying 'it's an SoS Rit' - it's a Rit with Channeling Magic. As I mentioned in my previous post, SoS is neither super powerful nor required. All physicals (should) run Splinter Weapon on a primary Rit because it's (almost definitely) the single most powerful offensive skill available for them. It's over 100DPS in ideal circumstances. As everyone else has been saying, flexibility is key... you can easily split your attributes another two ways, have a free elite, and have excellent energy management already specced through Spirit Siphon (you'll probably have at least one spirit somewhere, whether on this bar or on another). Running SoS is certainly the most common elite option, but it does not and should not define the build (perhaps this is less true for non-physicals whose interest in channeling is purely about spirits but nonetheless the principle holds for all builds). I'm done, you won me over.
Never again will I dare to underestimate the ritualist.

Swingline

Swingline

Forge Runner

Join Date: Sep 2010

Somewhere far away from you

The Mirror of Reason[SNOW]

W/

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.

Lodar Aric

Academy Page

Join Date: Oct 2006

Blackburn, UK

The League of Friends [LoF]

E/

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.

Daesu

Daesu

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Oct 2008

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.

Fia

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Dec 2011

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.

Melissa Is HOT

Academy Page

Join Date: May 2005

America

W/E

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.

Amy Awien

Amy Awien

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jul 2006

R/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladiator Steven View Post
...
Signet of Spirits: No energy, 30 second recharge time. Livia and Olias take their time making babies minions anyway. Soul Reaping limiting energy-gain to 3 times every 15 second slows progress also.

Daesu

Daesu

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Oct 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladiator Steven View Post
Signet of Spirits: No energy, 30 second recharge time.

Blood Song: 5e, 30 second recharge time

The core and key skills of any SoS build.

Hopefully, we all know heroes can't have summon spirits equipped on them which would make this build a heck of a lot more powerful if they could so how is this skill bar viable when the recharge times are long and you breeze through enemies with the rest of your heroes?

Personally, I run three discord heroes, AoTL MM, 2 e-surge mesmers, and Invoking Lightning. Don't know why you keep complaining about 30 second recharge time when AoTL itself needs 15e, 45 second recharge time! Furthermore heroes would wait until AoTL expires before recasting it so they don't optimize the effect of AoTL unless micro-ed, so effectively it is a 48 second recharge time at level 16.

That said, with the coming ele update, SoS would be nerfed and it may not be worth bringing SoS anymore when that happens.

AndrewSX

AndrewSX

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2010

Italy, Turin

Lake

E/

Toning down a bit the dmg of SoS itself doesn't take away anything from all the already listed utility and sinergies.

Doing that A-Rage and Spirit Rift is the problem that i'd point out...but is just a small drop in dmg output, that's all.