Ritualist Skill List

And you are still missing the point that you are giving Up those 20% fastcast/Fastrecharge stats on your weapon AND offhand, ALL of your weapon mods, AND the ability to attack for a +15 armor buff and a +8 energy *err* scratch that. +3 energy because it took you 5 energy to cast it in the first place.

You loose 5 energy that will be recharged very quickly, and for someone who only plays a casting role, such as a healing monk the skill is still better than you would expect, +8 energy comes in handy in a pinch, and most skills are workable without fast cast or quick recharge, so still I wouldn't be surprised if I saw them add a longer recharge time or a shorter duration.

I love the skills and all that, but aren't the "hold ________ ashes's up for..." pissing you off? I mean...After reading that list, I was thinking, jeeze, are they obsessed with ashes?

>>
Cruel Was Daoshen
Grasping Was Kuurong
Anguished Was Lingwah
Defiante Was Xinrae
Mighty Was Vorizun
Blind Was Mingson
Generous Was Tsungrai
Lively Was Naomei
Protective Was Kaolai
Resilient Was Xiko
Tranquil Was Tanasen
Vengeful Was Khanhei
Attuned Was Songkai
>>

Seriously.

The thing with this skill is that the addition to you max energy doesn't effect your current energy. So the only way the energy bonus (all 8) will help is if you can get above your normal max energy while the skill is in effect. It's like reverse exhaustion, it won't effect you unless you hit it.

Quick Note:

The Skill: Boon of Creatation works on minions as well as spirts.

The primary attruibute also increases the health of minions as well as spirts. (not 100% sure on pets but pretty sure).

Now combine the 2 get spirts and you got a nice build .

Yeah, strange thing is that when it happened today I noticed I took 0 dmg from PS and 0 energy loss from PD. But it DID interrupt my spirit summoning.

Signet of Creation = Minion Factory's Nerf

The damage listed for Cruel was Daoshen is massive. I havent had a computer that can actually play Gw so im running on these descriptions.

Firstly, you can hold the ashes for longer than the recharge, and the description of 'up to' implies you can drop them whenever you want. So, you get 5 Rt, all pick up Daoshens ashes before the battle, then rambo in, drop them, recast, drop them again, and youve nuked the aoe in the space of 2/3 seconds for around a 1250 damage? Get an As/N with spirit walk, rend, strip, and expunge to rape any shelters and prot spirits, and then finsish anyone whos left with channelled strike and ancestor's rage? Meanwhile, get some points in Communing, and all take vital weapon, making you all dam hard to spike out by sheer amount of health. And thats not using any elites.
Thats not right is it?

Weapon of Warding is niiiiiice. In a team where people are intelligent enough to focus fire, you're unlikely to lose with a restoration ritualist on your team... possibly if the ritualist uses nothing but the preset, but just change two skills or so and you get one damn good build.

I only works on your own minions and spirits if i am correct (correct me if i am wrong)

so the MM isnt nerfed.

I was thinking the same thing...I haven't tried any off the ashes spells so I'm not entirely sure how they work...but if they work like holding any other heavy object you get a speed reduction making it hard to rambo in...but still...and disenchants as far as I know wouldn't work, since they don't count as enchantments...

also does knockdowns normally make people drop items or was that just for the wintersday pvp arena, if knockdown does make people drop items this would work as a counter aswell....just makes sure you use a ranged knockdown :P

it says all spirits/minions so it will work on enemy aswell...

Hmmm ok thanks for correcting me :3

I was considering the same thing last night, however, it does say all nearby foes. So, it has range a bit smaller than ward size. Unless the enemy team balls up a lot (or is playing iway ) you should only kill two or three of them. Now, two or three people dead in 3 seconds is great, but the skill has a 45 second recharge. You can try to spike kill other members, but you are all soft targets and will take a lot of damage. Unless your spike killed all the other monks, they will probably be able to out heal any damage you toss out after the ashes drop, and the other team will have plenty of time to res up the people you killed before you can even cast CwD again. You would also have to time it very well to get two of them, as you will only have a 6 second window in which you are holding them and the skill is recharged (going by the description here). I don't think I know enough people with the skill unlocked to go and try this however, so I could be wrong about the amount of people you will kill.

You do not drop relics when you are knocked down, and while I have not tested it with ashes I assume it works the same way.

the recharge time doesn't matter since you can hold the ashes for up to 51 seconds...by the time you drop it you can put another one up.

with cruel was daoshen and saccer necros=uber eoe bomb

I've unlocked Cruel was Daoshen and its pretty good, especially against enemy Rits who tend to clump all their spirits together.

anyone know if it's possible to shadow step while holding ashes or will you drop them then?

As I tried to point out, if the spike does not kill everyone (the spike you mentiond, cast, wait, drop, then cast and drop again) you won't be spiking again for some time. And while 51 seconds is certainly more than the recharge time, you should look more closely at that recharge time. A 6 second window is small, even smaller when your entire build depends on using that window. One mistake, a few snares, and you are not killing anyone.

I assume you drop them, like you drop flags and relics, when you shadow step.

what the hell 6 seconds window are you talking about???

there will pass 2 seconds(the cast time) before you can drop it again...

Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but I took your spike idea to go like this:

1) Cast the spell.
2) Wait until the spell is recharged.
3) Zerg the enemy, drop ashes.
4) Cast ashes.
5) Drop Ashes.

Correct?

At step one, you cast the ashes (clock time 0:00). Now, you will hold these ashes for 51 seconds, and then they will vanish at clock time 0:51. But, you need to wait to zerg the enemy until the skill is recharged. The skill takes 45 seconds to recharge (clock time 0:45). so you have from clock time 0:45 to 0:51 to drop the first set without missing out on a key part of the spike (the first drop). You can zerg the enemy at, say, clock time 0:35, but you risk dropping the ashes and then having nothing to do. The 6 second window I spoke of was the time between clock time 0:45 and clock time 0:51 in which the ashes spell was recharged and you still held the first batch. Drop to early and you risk not killing anyone, wait to long and you don't get to drop the first batch.

The ritualist is the centre of my attention.Union and Shelter, Shadow Song and Disenchant and soothing are amazing. The real killer on these skills seems to be their recharge time. So, u use the elite Ritual Lord, which almost cuts your recharge time on rituals down by 2/3. Combine this with boon of creation, so u will never be down on nrg and ‘Lively Was Naomei’. With Naomei, as long as your close to the Ritualist, they can instantly revive you, or if they die when holding the ashes they will drop them, bringing themselves back up to life (I have not tested this yet, but I do know that dieing with the ashes does result in them being dropped. Whether the effect is evoked, I don’t know.)

A big prob with ritualists seems to be that there power is sapped once their spirits are destroyed. Destroying spirits is easy. They cant be healed by monks. And they are weak. Signet of creation will help dampen the blow, even if spirits are destroyed after 30 secs, just cast it so that it makes little difference. With Ritual lord, which u can have on constantly, your rituals almost always recharge before the current one expires. For a more specialised approach Soothing would play havoc with warriors adrenaline.10 nrg skill which effectively doubles adrenaline skills adrenal cost across the board is really powerful. Combine that with shadow song, which keeps a good proportion of the enemy blinded, and disenchant which utterly guts bonding monks or paladins, and u have a great build.

Why use this over your normal Prot Monk? Well for starters the disadvantages are clear. Spirits are weak and easily destroyed, especially with spirit walk. On top of that Spirits take a good long time to cast, and are easily interrupted by rangers and the like. In addition recharge time on spirits is long, though this is minimized by Ritual Lord (adding Serpents quickness into the mix would make it even more effective). The advantages are great though. When testing this build I never had any energy probs thanks to boon of creation, which is a common problem among monks. In a 4 man team, the advantage of the spirits affecting the entire team was noticeable, so in a 8 man team it would truly be amazing. A constant Shielding hands on all nearby allies has great potential against ranger spikers, and Shelter knocks earth spikers down a notch. The other great thing about ritualists is that rituals are not spells, and as such are not affected by anti spell specific casters. Backfire has no affect on rituals. The only way to really shutdown a ritualist is with interrupt rangers (tho this can be countered with various mesmer mantras), Hammer warriors (who will have probs with soothing if u get it up) or nrg denial mesmer.

The other thing I played with as a ritualist was destruction and rupture soul combo. The trick is to time the rupture till the last moment, resulting in about 120dmg (I never timed it quite perfectly enough) plus blinding and doing dmg to any nearby enemies. Using life the same way is quite effective, if u need to quickly kill that spirit in order to get the health your team needs, and dmg and blind nearby enemies. Another spell I fell in love with was vengeful weapon. U can get it above 60dmg with a rune or 2, and its 5 nrg and 3 sec neat spamable instant cast ability is awesome. Combine it with some skill recharge boosters (serpents quickness or QZ) and not only will u keep a urself or a allies health at about neutral (in my experience average attack dmg is about 50-60 for each spell/strike) combine it with union, which will reduce dmg and u could easily get a net gain of health from it, while damaging the attacker for a not inconsiderable amount. Whats even better is that unlike monk spells, weapon spells can target spirits, and they do work. That means not only can your protect allies and yourself, but also your spirits, to some degree. Wow, I wrote a lot there

somebody has a originality problem :P. I am probably double posting :S, but..

I love the ritualist. B4 the weekend i was convinced that the assassin would be my class, that it would be my next pve (and probably last) character. Now i am not so sure.

Like the ranger, my primary profession, i think the ritualist is on danger of getting itself a bad name due to ppl not playing them properly. I think assassins are likely to start getting on my nerves as i dont know how many times i have seen one rush in, do a lot of dmg (not enough) b4 realising that they cant tank, and quickly die.

Basically, i am likely to have the same loathing for assassins as i do for warriors. However, ritualist seems to be the class most dependant on the players skill, rather than the players ability to press skills in the right order. That makes them particularly attractive to me, i love a good challenge, and i love thinking up uses for skills nobody else has.

To me Ritualist is very much designed for pvp. 2 ritualists spamming different spirits b4 exploiting the number of them on the battlefield will soon be the norm, as will a load of guys carrying pots around and dropping them at their feet. (i wonder if we can load the ashes into the catapult :P )

Ritualist takes no player skill only builder skill. Assassin takes a lot of player skill to play properly.

Just because you see no player skill doesn't mean its not needed.

Most Stupid Ritualists are just picking a spot and clumping a few spirits up at it.

1 good AoE spell = gg to that ritualist. Also 4 outta every 5 ritualists I faced were so easy to beat because I just pounded on them while they were casting their long rituals.

The ashes spike isnt the only thing going for ritualist spike.
Ancestor's Rage: 82 damage... thats plenty to spike with a pp/shatter combo, and look at the recharge/casting time/energy cost. Spammable as hell.
Channelled Strike: I assume an item means ashes, but maybe not. If so, spam whilst your waiting for the recharge and thats 102 damage at 12 attribute, which means even secondaries do massive damage. At 16 attribute, (my calculator just broke) but it will be somewhere around 120 damage. 4 Rt could spike out with that kind of damage. Shelter just got made the metagame if this stays as it is -.-

In terms of squishiness, its no worse than ele spike nowadays. However, there are a fair few weapon spells and other buffs that really toughen up Rt's. Not to mention the irrelevant spirit spam that will inevitably occur.
I have a feeling this might need looking at (and btw I would say that ward range is pretty dam good )

Thats not to mention things like destruction, eoe, weapon ranger spikes, and so on. There is so much potential for so much abuse ^.^

I have to admit though playing ritualist is a lot slower-paced than playing an assasin. There's probably not much timing involved so you don't necessrily need a "twitch" skill in playing one.

Now, if only we have a key to cycle through our spirits so we can easily cast Rupture Soul...

I definetly like the idea of another support healer rather then just the monk by itself however how would ritualist combine with monk??? Uber healing?

More like uber protection. He has spirits that act like shielding hands and protective spirit, in addition to ones that interupt and cause blindness. The ritualist is designed for long term combat, while the monk is better at short term reaction. Even so, the ritualist does have comparable reaction skills like the weapon of vengence.

The Rt prot skills are powerful, but I would like to have seen how long they last against large pressure (e.g. how long does shelter last taking what can be 35ish damage every second?) Thats the only real thing that i can see as the problem. That, and the seemingly random aspect. Ok, so it blinds. Ty for the blindlock on the nearby monk -.- and the spell interrupts on the ranger trapper.
I suppose I'll find out :/

I went into the weekend wanting to switch my Main to a Shadow Stepping Trapper once Chapter 2 released. Now I am thinking Rit will be the way to go. Barrage with Splinter Weapon and, Brutal Weapon. Then mix in Whirling D, Troll Unguent and other various skills and things get real fun.

I enjoyed this build the most out of the weekend.

*thinking of farming builds*

It says is the operating phrase here. Descriptions have been both misleading and corrected in the past. Based on the way so many other skills work, I think it's safe to assume the word 'allied' was just left out.

I look forward to playing with Rt a heck of a lot. I too have been theorycrafting with Ashes and Spirits and the benifits of holding items. This will be fun. And different. And different is good.

Is it too early to start posting possible builds?

I'm working on a Rit/Rang variant on the Earthbinder build from the preview, but am having trouble narrowing down the skills.

The ones I think I want are Grasping Was Kuurong (E), Brambles, (a new Ranger skill that damages Knocked down opponents), and Earthbinder.

But then I want to include Rupture, Cruel Was Daoshen and Destruction.

I think these would be best as two seperate builds.

destruction + eoe?

while in random arenas testing out the 2 new classes last weekend, i noticed that 2 ritualists on the same team were using the same spirits, thus overlapping them.

if this holds true for the release of this new chapter, in theory you could run a desxtruction spike.

for a full 30 seconds life they would deal 120 damage each, this would destroy iway teams in pvp.

but the real kicker if this holds true is when you get down to the last 2 minutes of HoH. slap a few of these down after the other 2 teams have fully engaged after the 2 minute marker and have all but one of your teamates run away, that guy who stuck around uses eoe 20 seconds later and follow it up with dust trap right on top just incase or something like that. if the other two teams dont react properly during this time, they are both gonners.

1 destruction dealing 120 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
2 destructions dealing 240 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
3 destructions dealing 360 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
4 destructions dealing 480 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
5 destructions dealing 600 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
6 destructions dealing 720 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
7 destructions dealing 840 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)
8 destructions dealing 960 dmg (if spirit gets a full life)

in reality you would only need about 3 to get the job done with eoe added in
or possibly 4....

but im sure they will not have these spirits over lapping like this after faction is released.

even then destruction is a damn good eoe skill when used correctly.

I think would be cool a quick key to target only spirits, or an option to do this, in pvp event i was annoyed with so much targets, and was on 4vs4. On gvg or tombs must be hard to target what you want at time (poor warriors that mark, hard work vs 2 ritualists).
Do you know if there's a limit to spirits that can spawn, i know that spirits don't stack between ritualists, but there's a limit to spirits in field? I think ranger spirits were limited, are these limited also?

Nice forum btw.

AH! and other thing, please don't make so much body block to spirits, is annoying. Can they be real ghosts that can be walked through? Perhaps then would be a probelm to target them...

My apologies in advance, but I'm getting sick of this 'Spirits Shouldn't Body Block' argument. Okay, I'm cool with that, they are incorporial. You can walk right through them. You also can't shoot at them, and your sword/axe passes straight through them without damage. How do you like 'dem spirits? Edge of Extinction lasts the full duration? Creepy. No thanks, I'll take the spirits we've got now -- with all their strengths and weaknesses.

a question about weapon spells..

does weapons spells count as enchantments? judging by the skill description they don't...this also means at current there's no way to remove weapon spells once they've been cast.

does weapon spells stack or are they like preps?

I'm not sure if they stack, but you're correct: currently, no way to remove them.

But I'd bet a set of FoW armor that some of the new skills being released will...