Flame Burst > Clamor of Souls [Elite] ---> Petition Please

Just saw a random topic about Clamor of Souls being very underated. Also having a Channeling Ritualist, I see this being a somewhat decent? skill... no, this skill is horrible, sorry... Look at the numbers...

Clamor of Souls [Elite]
10 Energy
1 Second Cast
12 Second Recharge

Does 94 Damage at 12 Channeling, and 122 Damage at 16 Channeling...

Description: For each nearby ally, one nearby foe is struck for 10...94 lightning damage.
(Note: The same target cannot be struck more than once)

This is a conditional elite meaning you can only deal damage if a spirit or ally is standing nearby, and also you can only attack the number of foes equivalent to spirits/allies... "Nearby" remember that term.... Now read this


Flame Burst [NOT Elite]
15 Energy
3/4 Second Cast
5 Second Recharge

Does 99! Damage at 12 Fire and 127! Damage at 16 Fire... Hmmm?

Description: All "nearby" foes are struck for 15...99 fire damage.

Ok, please understand this skill is stronger than Clamor of Souls... also this skill will hit ALL nearby foes... There is no condition to which hitting these foes will be effected if not fulfilled...

Yes I understand there is 5 more energy required to run this skill, however run an attunement, your problem is solved... also Elementalists have Energy storage. I understand that Ritualists are not to be as strong towards the "Nuking" end as Elementalists, however if you ask me this skill is highly underated as an elite. Please do something to fix this problem, I would like to see channeling for ritualists to have atleast somewhat a better elite for a damage spell... Thanks ANet if you decide to fix this issue. And thanks in advance to those who can see the problem here.



Got this information from

Clamor of Souls off Wiki.org
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Clamor_of_Souls

Flame Burst off Wiki.org
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Flame_Burst

Original Post by 'Insert Cool Name Here'
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3055762

Why is everyone complaining about skills being to good? they are not overpowerde!!

Ritualist are not elementalist... so what's your point?

No, hes complaining that the elite is WEAK compared to a regular spell.

Ie: he wants an elite buff.

/signed

It's one of those craptacular Elites from Factions...

Yes I am looking for a bit of an Elite Buff... Im not saying that Flame Burst is overpowered, in a sense yes, but I am using Flame Burst as an example as to why Clamor of Souls needs to be a bit stronger... Why everybody has to flame every thread should be the question here, If you disagree with the thread say so in a valid arguement... Do not just drop by to p*** on it... TY

Ritualists are not a damage heavy class by default like elementalists are, so it makes sense that ele skills would do more damage. Take a look at the Channeling line, most skills in there are relatively low damage, high cost, have long recharges and are situational. Rits are not nukers...

And if you still don't get my point, stop comparing apples and oranges and go look at necro and mesmer elites... most do less immediate damage than Flame Burst, and are situational.

Ok, you were right about one thing and one thing only, Rit's channeling spells are situational. Look up what channeling really is, another form of "Flame Slinging" It adds another component to Nuking if played correct, and understood correctly, which you are not doing. You 'B Ephekt' are not looking at the situation at hand... I'm sorry but unless you really understand the idea behind an elite skill maybe you shouldnt be posting here?

Haha, I like how you complain about people flaming, then reply with condescending garbage. gg

OK, first off, I play a rit in both pve and high level pvp. Channeling is absolutely horrible for sustained damage, due to the long recharges and cast times. And, no, it's nowhere near comparable to ele nuking. But that wasn't my point...

Since you apparently missed my point, let me simplify it for you. Elementalists are primarily a damage dealing class; almost all of their damage is direct and unsituational. Every other caster class is different, however. Look at necro, mesmer and monk (smiting) elites. Most, if not all, of them pale in comparison to Flame Burst when taking direct damage capabilites and context into account.


Let's see. Just a few elites off the top of my head.

FoC = 84 base damage, requires hexes to deal additional damage. Conditional.
SS = 37 damage, but only if the target attacks or uses a skill. Conditional and DoT hex.
Icy Veins = 95 damage, but requires the target to die in order to deal additional damage. Conditional, and relies on a hex for additional damage.

Energy Surge = Requires the target to have enough energy to deal damage. Conditional.
Panic = Requires a signet to be used to deal damage. Conditional.
IW = requires melee attacks to trigger. Conditional, and a DoT enchantment.

SoJ = 54 damage, but only if attacked. Conditional and DoT enchantment.
Signet of judgement = Only 79 damage.
Ray of judgement = 110 damage but disables all other smiting prayer skills for 10 seconds. Situational, and not very useful outside of a spike.


Are you finally starting to see my point? Other casters simply do less damage than elementalists, IF you look at short-term direct unconditional damage. Does that mean that all the above elite skills (which I apparently have no grasp of lol ) are garbage? Please.

Also, when in pve or pvp will you not be around enough allies or spirits to do a decent amount of damage with Clamor? It seems like a nice elite for a Channeling rit to me...

I'm sorry, but I see no reason for a buff.

You still don't get it.

In short:
Clamor does less damage, to as many targets as there are allies in the NEARBY range.
Burst does more damage to ALL of the targets in the NEARBY - clamor can only hit all enemies in this range conditionally.

Clamor is much different from the skills you posted - most of them are punishment skills. Or they have valuable effects, like KNOCKDOWN which clamor lacks. Most of the *low damage* skills you brought up either have a long duration or extraordinary added bonues. Clamor is a direct damage skill.

Basically:
Why should a normal spell have more damage, less recharge, and guarenteed hit to everyone nearby when compared to an elite spell?

Clamor doesn't have the aftercast of suck as far as I know. It's a bit worse than Star Burst. Given the professions and attributes involved...eh.

Peace,
-CxE

TGgold, you are the one who doesn't get it.
Clamor is a ritualist spell.
Burst is an elementalist spell.

By design your elementalist skills will be more powerful. You can't compare elite versus standard skills across classes. Would it make any sense to give ritualists direct damage comparable to elementalists, when this is where elementalists are designed to be strong?

Yes situational, but some have have higher perks and are worth being elites than simply being spike/DOT Aoe. Some just suck.

FoC: Armor ignoring damage, Self Heal.
SS: Also functions as shutdown. Armor ignoring damage. Moving AOE.
Icy Veins: Armor ignoring damage. Moving AOE. But who uses this?

ESurge: Energy denial (albeit nerfed). Requires no line of sight.
Panic: <---Does anyone actually use this shit?
IW: read panic.

SoJ: Two words: knockdown.
Signet of Judgement: Knockdown. But mostly useless
Ray of judgement: Armor ignoring (IIRC)

/not signed

/not sighned

ugg i mispell signed all the time, but w\e

if you boost rits power to nuke.. they become >ele and, really the eles job to do just shoot and blow the freaken crap outta stuff, they dont heal or migiate damage like the rit can, rit pull sstrengh from many sources, but shouldn't overpower really anything that is was based on. Except like monk protect seems kinda less than a rit for team support, still though. Give it more power than necros and its the new mm, more power than ele, new nuker, more healing and team support than monk, new monk

then rit is > god > chuck norris

you might as well be using attuned was ____ because if your a channeling rit you need energy badly since you don't have attunements

Yes, that is exactly my point. I'm sure NCSoft intentionally avoided making the ritualist a comparable damage dealer to an elementalist, because they have different roles.

I agree, I was just poiting out that most elites are situational and deal less direct damage than Flame Burst (which was what his argument was based around). I think the perk for Clamor would be the possibility of doing 122 damage to all nearby enemies, though.

Ok, with Flame attribut you can just...deliver damage - A lot, in Aoe and even DoT.

With Channeling attribute you can boost yer spawns, use a LOT of different support skills AND Deliver a quite good amount of damage. That is why it is Elite, because with support attribute you can deliver AoE damage. It will be just like a PROT monk deals DMG with his PROT attribute - quite distrubing aye?

ritualists can heal, rez, protect themselves, eles are helpless little creatures who turn over and die when hit hard. Well sure they can go E/Mo, but why should an ele have to go E/Mo to match a ritualist when a rit can go Rt/? whatever they feel like.

Because of Elite Status and conditional random hits based on enemies around you rather than just anyone in your area, I would agree that it should either be stronger or cheaper.

People rag on Elementist because he is a focal nuker, yet his damage isn't the best as it claims, and No Elementist is worth his wile if he isn't mixing defensive skills in his build to support the team rather then just attack. As a Ritualist Elite I think it should be more "effective" in one way or another.

Personally I would suggest that it have a much wider radius of effect, simular to the range of a spirit, allowing it to encompass more allies and more enemies, at either a higher energy cost or lower damage. Ritualist shouldn't be the same as Elementist, but balance is balance, and he shouldn't be using an elite skill for a weaker effect than elementist. 5 more energy granted, Elementist has more energy and energy management, Flame Burst has a shorter recast, and it isn't a circumstancial hit number, it hits any and all nearby foes.

That being said, the effectiveness of that attribute as a whole comes into question, Fire Mastery only improves the power of offensive spells, there are nearly no defensive or support skills in Fire Mastery, wile Channelling includes some spirits, many skills which deal extra damage with spirits for low cost, and spirit healin + damage combination skills, the overall usefullness of an empowered attribute, not just on skill in that attribute vs one from another attribute, this compliments advanced balancing issues.

Balance is realy complicated, I'm sure Anet knows their game better then we do. I dislike the way alot of things work, some of them I don't agree are balanced, but that doesn't mean they arn't balanced, they may suck, but that doesn't make them unbalanced......... I don't see the point of having sucky skills though.........

Agreed 100%

Making Rit skills comparable to ele skills is like making wand attacks comparable to warrior hammer attacks. It doesnt make any sense at all!

Yes, as stated above, most of the Mesmer, Necro and Monk damage effects ignore armour. This is a big advantage in high-end PvE, where I have a tendency to have a higher mesmer/elementalist ratio with Aeron as the average enemy level rises (in fact, lately I've been experimenting with a Necro secondary instead of the Ele secondary, and branching into Monk as well may also be on the cards).

While the Ritualist is a different class, comparing Channelling to elementalist lines does seem more like an oranges and lemons comparison than apples to oranges - yes, they're different, but they are at least similar. In fact, I think I've seen people commenting in the 'Elementalists need a buff' threads that the Ritualist is muscling in on one of the areas where the Elementalists had been surviving - that of laying wards to protect an area - and looking with some jealousy at the Ritualist skills that allow a synergy to be built with the laying of area defenses (wards and spirits) with spiking.

In the case of Clamor of Souls... meh. I've heard it said that one of the functions of elites is to allow a profession to get a taste of something they wouldn't normally in a given attribute line. In the case of the Ritualist and Clamor, that seems to be the ability to nuke an area without a short response time (as opposed to Spirit Rift) or a long recharge (Cruel Was Daoshen). For that function, it seems to do it's job, in a manner that fits with the general flavour of the Ritualist.

Simply put, how is it balanced? It's balanced because it gives an effective PBAOE to the Ritualist without having to take an Elementalist secondary and invest points in Fire. A direct comparison would indicate you're better off with Flame Burst, but there may well be builds where the ability to have another secondary - or simply to have spare attribute points not required to go into Fire - may well be worth an elite slot and a few conditions to its use.

Gold you brought a very good point up, and I can completely understand what you mean... However I dont want to get any further in to this topic as I could bring up my good points, you could bring up more good points and it would get nowhere, as ANet would do nothing about it in the end of this...

/signed

...currently there is no place in PvE for ritualists...

their healing is not as good as monk and nuking is not as good as elementists

I honestly don't think it matters how you tweak the skill as long as the profession needs Ritual Lord or Soul Twisting to function near maximum efficiency. It would basically need to be so good that you could make a character for it alone, and that isn't going to happen...so who cares.

Peace,
-CxE

Well, if you take that out (since many elites won't see good days in pvp), lets continue the debate :P

Compare flame burst to many Ele spells, including elites. You're probably picking one of the only good fire spells to compare with.

So, don't use them for healing or nuking...

Spirits all the way, baby!

If there is room for ritualists in PvP, I would expect that intellegent pve players would find space. That said their is no room for Clamor on any serious ritualists bar, so this discussion is really moot.

However this is an elite, we should put that in mind.

I wouldn't mind nurfing Clamor just a bit so it doesn't look so pathetic.

Hmmmm...... lol

There actually is a very good role for ritualists as well in pve... Just have to play the cards right, however for a channeling rit in pve is kindof like using a pure inspiration mesmer in pve? in a sense... however in pvp i still feel that if used correctly a channeling rit is a very very deadly aoe master... if used correctly, you can spike a target for more than 600 damage in a mere second... 250 of that damage is unconditional... find any other class to do that kind of damage, regardless it has conditions and a lengthy recharge, however if used correctly in pvp that damage may be all you need to change the tides of a gvg.... reason I dislike this skill is because for the kind of damage you can deal as a channeling rit, this is rather weak and yes there are a select few useless elites... and clamor is now one of them, which is the only damage dealing elite for channeling rits.... aside from grasping which is the same skill for other classes that are however a normal skill, haha...

That's because 1) Ritualists are not Monks 2) Ritualists are are not Elementalists. It's nobody's fault but your own if you don't understand the role a ritualist plays.

I had no problem getting my pve Ritualist through Factions, I simply advertised myself as a protection Ritualist. Smart players always welcomed a spirit Ritualist, because they knew how much damage they can negate. The people who hated on them were just ignored, because I'd rather not play with dumb people in the first place.

Ritualists are better than a 3rd monk in many situations, and could be better than the 2nd monk as well if the build is right for it. Monk + Rit would be more than enough backline for a competent team in most 8 man PvE instances.

None of which has anything to do with Clamor of Souls, but just getting that out there.

Oh noes!!! Earthshaker doesn't do as much damage as Meteor!!! Buff Earthshaker!!!/end sarcasm

o rly?

try Minion bomber i cleared out almost anything i encountered with it

ANet give professions certain skills based on their background and what they are expected to specialise in. Giving a class that is seen to be non-offensive an offensive elite but then gimping it's effectiveness is like giving an Elementalist a Sword but then making it 4 inches long to account for the fact it's not their speciality. My point is you either make it worthwhile or DON'T give them the skill full stop.

By your logic monks shouldn't complain about their smiting skills not matching up to an Ele's but anyone who has played dual smite knows they have the potential to vasty outclass an Eles damage.

OMGzorz a healer can outdamage an ele!!!1111 and they're not even damage heavy by default

Yes, all because of one pvp build. Nice logic, lol.

GG missing my point.

You're entering into the world of "buff useless elites" or even "buff useless skills" which is a whole different kettle of fish to just "buff clamour to be better than flame burst".

Besides, if we're talking pve, not all classes are available at all times, so sometimes you have to make do with what you have. Perhaps on a particular mission you just happen to have 4 rits and no eles. You could wait until an ele comes along, or you can spec a rit or two to be sub-par nukers just to boost the party's damage output a little. Since it's pve, being "optimal" doesnt matter all that much. Having the rit be a nuker that's inferior to an Ele might be better in that situation than having another spirit rit, so in that case something like clamour might see play. Besides, Clamour is not strictly a bad skill, just worse than most of the alternatives. Dont forget about the many elites and skills that are just plain useless no matter what

I imagine if nobody uses it, it might get buffed. On the other hand if a lot of people do, forget it. It won't happen.
I capped it the other day. It's a nice elite. You can get your energy to about 72 with 2 +15 items. with such a high pool of energy you can go for the that huge damage spike. On a softie, this is scary...

Channeling Strike 138
Clomor 122 (Clamour: Dodgy american english. Meh...)
Daoshen 122
Ancestors 106

Total is about 488. That is in an ideal world though. Channeling takes 2 seconds to cast, and Clamour (and impressive) 1 second extra. They will probably start to mitigate after Channeling. Best bet is to use Clamour to start the spike. Damage is only 350, but you could always try dropping further suppressive fire afterwards with Channeling Strike, Spirit Boon Strike, etc. Or even use Nightmare Weapon (in your face RoF ).
After all that however, you'll be a bit useless becauseof the -2 energy regen. If you pre-cast Daoshen pretty early, I suppose you could use a normal equipment set. Then switch in emergencies or something. Perhaps even run back to your spirit ally (or fellow 'spirited' Rit) and steal energy with Spirit Siphon .

Clamour is an ok skill. It's elite argument I guess is the 1 second cast time and the Daoshen class damage (to a single enemy). If it's recharge was dropped (5-8 seconds) and/or it's energy cost was dropped to 5, it would be more worthy of elite status. It is currently just ok I suppose.

Now Signet of Spirits on the other hand, is a bit rubbish. Conditional energy recharge every 20 seconds AND a 1 second cast? Great idea! If Channeling magic had more than 1 spirit _-_. I'd actually like my cap sig back please, so I can get Grasping Was Kuurong instead.
The condition should be applied to 'extra' energy, after it has returned a base amount to you. Something like 1....10 energy, +1...4 per spirit or something. Then it could keep it's crappy 20 second recharge and it's 1 second cast. As just like a lot of cast time signets, it get's ambushed by Rust and destryed by Ignorance.

What he said.

So what your saying is no-one should use the new classes? Ritualists aren't monks? No shit. Ritualists aren't eles, whered you come up with this stuff!?

Just because they're not meant to be dealing tons of damage doesn't mean they shouldn't be aload to with the odd spell, specially when the spell in question is elite. I guess we should just ignore Assassins too. They're not Warriors (tanks/damage dealers) and they're not Rangers either (ignoring Critical Barragers).

Why do you seem to think we should be comparing the new professions to the old ones and instantly dismissing them as shit in anything that even remotely comes close to there roles? We all know Eles suck as damage dealers in the long run, are you more scared that the Ritualist might actually beat them in terms of damage?