Ritual Lord needs to be an enchantment

Don't get me wrong, some enchantment-like skills (Critical Eye, Troll Unguent, etc) should stay how they are, as a skill only. However, I don't feel Ritual Lord should be one of them.

Ritual Lord is much to powerful to stay in the "passive skill" category. Unlike Troll Unguent, it has no cast time and therefore there is no way to remove or prevent it aside from the obvious, such as blackout.

This skill is simply too powerful not be removable or preventable. At the VERY LEAST, it should be a stance.

Uh no.... Ritual lord does nothing on it's own so it isn't like troll unguent.

You can counter ritual lord by interupting the 3-5 second casting time spirits....

I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this one, Every class has there passive skills, some are good and some are ELITE. The fact that this skill is an Elite provides an explanation for why it is so good. If it wasnt a passive skill, and an enchantment instead, It would not be worthy of the Elite status. This skill is perfect as it is. Every class has to have a good elite or 2, and this is the ritualists.

Not a very good arguement. Should Divine Boon, Matra of Recall, and all Elemental Attunements not be an enchantment because they do not work without other skills to power them?

Even going by your arguement, you're spending more energy/interrupts because of Ritual Lord with no counter.

I disagree. Everyone would still run it if it were an Enchantment, there would just be more counters to the skill.

Just because it's an Elite doesn't mean it shouldn't be an Enchantment. Just look at Locust Fury and Dark Apostacy.

/not signed

Not overpowered at all, and easily countered by simply interrupting the ritual castings that follow it.

If this was not an elite skill then i'd say make it an enchantment, but its so easy to remove enchantments, and considering its a half a minute recast, and you could remove it before the first spirit is cast, then there would be no point to the skill. Its like defy pain not being a stance. If it WAS it'd be useless because wild blow would OWN YOU and you wouldnt be able to use anything else with it besides shouts.
Thats a fairly big generalization, it depends on the skill.

EDIT: thought of something, since this will be spammed every 30 seconds, Diverting it may not be a bad idea either however that may require some timing.

Even with Draw Spirit and Ritual Lord, Ritualists can be slow and immobile.

The more a Ritualist takes to compensate for the weaknesses of Rituals, the less you have to worry about a small army of Rituals and the more he becomes a one trick pony.

Now, one trick ponies can win, but there are still situations where the inflexible nature of such a build will haunt the player.

Warrior's Cunning is a skill, it makes the warrior unstoppable unless he's blind, so? Should it be a stance? hardly.

Warriors Cunning is justified as a 'skill' because it has a long recharge.

Ritual Lord however lasts for as long as its recharge meaning you can always keep it up unless Diversioned or Signet of Humiliated.

Ignorant comments like this do not help your arguement. Since when has skill balancing suggestions (which A.Net themselves encourage) become the equivelant of crying (and exactly how does one suggestion = crying about everything?)? I was suggesting a reasonable change to a skill. It's not like I'm asking for it to have a 15 second duration or a 60 second recharge or anything else ridiculous like that. I'm asking for a counter for the skill itself, not the after-effects.

Right, with a 60 second recharge and roughly a 10 second duration. Bringing up a single skill as an arguement for a counter never works well. However, Warrior's Cunning has nothing to do with countering Ritual Lord, unless you're trying to argue that it's a skill, not an enchantment so Ritual Lord should not be an enchantment, in which case I'll just point out that Warrior's Cunning is underpowered, Ritual Lord is not. Or are you agreeing with me?

Yeah, Ritual Lord shouldn't be an enchantment. Look at Mantra of Inscriptions, it's a stance that recharges signets faster. Ritual Lord is a skill that recharges binding rituals quicker, which are not spells. It's probably not an enchantment because it does not affect spells. I suppose, if anything, Ritual Lord should be a stance.

That's certainly a more reasonable suggestion, this way you can't use Ritual Lord and Mantra of Resolve.

It would be the same as Mantra of Recovery, recharges spells faster and is a stance.

ritual lord is fine. The only time you can't counter ritual lord spirit spam by splitting and using positional pressure is when the opponent is turtled, and even then it just stalls like mad. At VoD if you have NPCs you should be able to take care of opposing NPCs as they run out of spirit range, if you don't have NPCs left you can split and make progress on whatever side doesn't have the spirit spammer. Realistically, I'm more worried about a soul twisting spirit spammer because of the greater mobility and the abusiveness of permashelter.

Because of the mechanics of ritual lord, interrupts own the spirit spammer - an interrupted spirit doesn't get the recharge bonus. And because of the huge cast times on in, even an ele with gale camping him is GG, let alone a ranger. And a warrior overextending sucessfully and forcing the spirit spammer to kite, thats even more GG, especially because if a spirit is drop the warrior is in perfect position to kill it.

Ritual Lord is OK, but soul twisting is superior IMO, especially on a R/Rt spamming something like EoE or NR (when you really, really, reallly gotta edge bomb all the NPCs at VoD).

Hmm, I didn't think of it that way. My spirit spamming builds for my Ritualist would be really hurt if I couldn't stop interrupts. This is probably why ArenaNet made it a skill instead of a stance. It's bad enough that these spirits take so long to cast, if I couldn't stop interrupts, spirit spamming would be useless.

When you think about it, Ritual Lord (or Soul Twisting if you're only focusing on one spirit) is essential for communing magic. The ritualist is fairly ineffective without it. Although spirits are great, the ritualist can only really use them every other fight in PvE. In PvP they are easily interrupted, need a lot of time to set up, and are highly ineffective if they are force to move away from their spirits.

I don't think Ritual Lord needs any kind of nerf. I don't think it even needs to be countered.