Curse

Thurston Killgore · Jul 24, 2006, 03:06 AM // 03:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenn_rolfe

A gale spam/distortion mesmer is also a very common build that can pressure down a rit.
.

i hope you mean Diversion rather than distortion... anyways Spirit Walk->Assassin Other...Unnatural Signet...AOE DMG Earth/Fire Eles..plenty of counters to the spirits; split and strain out Rit to kill ...

glenn_rolfe · Jul 24, 2006, 03:11 AM // 03:11

no i mean distortion because to get within gale range of a rit you'll need it. Diversion is wasted on a rit usually.

shardfenix · Jul 24, 2006, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Arenanet has to shorten the range on rit spirits (and order of apostasy).
Ritual lord has to be a removable skill (enchantment or stance)
Then rits won't be wtf overpowered.

Maagus · Jul 24, 2006, 04:01 PM // 16:01

We are using mesmer with psychic distraction and distortion. It works quite well because teams using ritualist often rely heavily on him and are unable to hold against pressure with only two monk backline.

ump · Jul 24, 2006, 04:02 PM // 16:02

I was going to make a post in my own team's forum about this, but I might as well put a summary of my argument here. In my opinion, a ritualist does not deserve a slot in the typical GvG balanced build.

First, warriors essentially have infinite adrenaline and adrenaline is much better than limited energy for sustained DPS. There is not really a compelling reason not to run 2 warriors considering how easily it is to counter just 1.

Second, monks are very powerful because they can negate the damage of at least 2-3 attackers unless they are heavily pressured. There is no reason not to run 2 monks.

Then, you have your flag runner who you really shouldn't be considering for the purposes of this discussion.

That leaves 3 other supporting members. If you put a ritualist into the build, you essentially have a third monk (an AoE protection monk). That leaves only 4 damage dealers and rarely will you have enough offense to break through the other team's two monk backline. About the only tactic you can resort to is turtling and waiting for VoD.

In my opinion, a 3-2-2 or a 2-3-2 formation works out better than a 2-2-3 or 3-1-3 with a ritualist and 2 monks. This way, you can have enough offense to break through and if you put a couple defensive skills in your midline to help out the monks (namely Draw Conditions as a fast, efficient condition removal and a fast recharging hex removal), you should have enough defense to hold out long enough to break through.

remmeh · Jul 24, 2006, 05:12 PM // 17:12

ritualists are indeed extremely frustrating to play against. i recall playing against a team with FOUR ritualists, with TWO ritual lords and two communing wanderlust/shadowsong/pain/bloodsong/dissonance/disenchantment spammers. they also had 2 monks, a cripshot runner, and a single assassin.

we couldn't do any damage to anything. ofc it came to VoD and their NPCs owned ours.

Wasteland Squidget · Jul 24, 2006, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by ump

That leaves 3 other supporting members. If you put a ritualist into the build, you essentially have a third monk (an AoE protection monk). That leaves only 4 damage dealers and rarely will you have enough offense to break through the other team's two monk backline. About the only tactic you can resort to is turtling and waiting for VoD.

I would tend to disagree. A competent 4-man offense will eventually break through a two-monk backline, with warrior spikes if nothing else. The Ritualist makes for longer battles and both teams will probably die slower, but one team will still break eventually unless the builds are really hyper-defensive.

audioaxes · Jul 24, 2006, 05:53 PM // 17:53

union+shelter seems way too powerful of a defensive combo

they really need to make tweaks from the recharge, energy cost, damage it takes when it prots, and/or range conditions
out of most i like range condition, maybe make another condition some distance larger than "in the area" in which the spirit is in effect. The ritualist can still be powerful in reducing damage but then cant hide way back and be nearly impossible to pressure, let alone kill.
But then this still leaves the problem of teams hiding behind their npcs with ritualist.

Amity and Truth · Jul 24, 2006, 06:21 PM // 18:21

The problem is, as soon as you reduce the range on Spirits, the ritualist will be a dead class. The extremely long casting times with the added sacrifice of insane Recharge Times would simply lead to an absolutely worthless Ritualist.

The problem is that even a drugged and breinless monkey, playing with a blindfold could interrupt those spirits easily. Once they're interrupted, the ritualist has to suffer from the insane long recharge. That basically boils down to two interrupts every minute and the ritualist will be taken out of the game completely.

If you're asking to move them midrange, you're killing the class completely as it is now. The ritualist could use an overall buff on skills to make other options viable, but this sadly reminds me of the Elementalist, a class i've lost all hope for.

Well, maybe some new skills could help in dealing with them. Something like:

Afterlife
Hex Spell
For xx-xx seconds target foe and adjacent foes can't be under the influence of Ritualist Spells.

As some way to temporarily remove the influence of spirits. This way the Ritualist can still do his job, but his power isn't as omnipresent anymore and you can force gaps into the defense.

Or maybe:
Grenth's Grim [E]
Elite Spell
Destroy nearest spirit and up to x1 near by spirits. For each spirit killed, the next x1 binding rituals take 10% longer to cast.

Another skill, specifically tailored to cause a breach which people could use to break through the turtle shell. Well, basically i'd love to see an overall Ritualist Buff, but that won't happen -> See Elementalist. But reducing the range of the Spirits makes them useless to start with. We just need some kind of a scalpel to cut our way through.

/edit:
Another suggestion:
Binding Rituals simply don't affect Allies (but still the team of course, d'oh :P) anymore.

rii · Jul 24, 2006, 07:32 PM // 19:32

Maybe they could just make it so the spirits don't last as long...

JR · Jul 24, 2006, 07:42 PM // 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maagus

We are using mesmer with psychic distraction and distortion. It works quite well because teams using ritualist often rely heavily on him and are unable to hold against pressure with only two monk backline.

See, I'm not really a huge fan of this approach. It is like you are swapping one character of yours for their rit, equally gimping yourself and not really getting anywhere.

Wasteland Squidget · Jul 24, 2006, 07:59 PM // 19:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

See, I'm not really a huge fan of this approach. It is like you are swapping one character of yours for their rit, equally gimping yourself and not really getting anywhere.

I don't even mind this so much - after all, you're doing pretty much the same thing when you sit a Dom mesmer on a monk's face. The problem is, you really can't even trade 1-1, because in order to shutdown the Rit you have to be past the opponent's backline. Distortion or not, any good team is going to snare and spike you if you're a soft target in aggro range of their Ritualist.

JR · Jul 24, 2006, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I don't even mind this so much - after all, you're doing pretty much the same thing when you sit a Dom mesmer on a monk's face.

If you lose one Monk, you lose half of your healing. If you lose a Ritualist you are just swapping one utility character for another.

Maagus · Jul 24, 2006, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

See, I'm not really a huge fan of this approach. It is like you are swapping one character of yours for their rit, equally gimping yourself and not really getting anywhere.

That is not what I meant of course. I wrote it very briefly it is my fault. That mesmer is based on several tests and his purpose is varied. The only "anti-ritualist" skill is psychic distraction which is used as basic interrupt and can be used against various character. The rest of his skillbar is classical (e burn, shatter ench, drain ench, diversion, convert hexes).

The point is that enemy monks are so used to work with ritualist (it can be interpreted that the monks became lazy

) that it is difficult for them to suddenly heal without any spirit. So instead of destroying spirit every time we simply won´t allow enemy ritualist to put the important spirits for his defence. Then enemy has one completely useless character and their monks because of the reason stated above are not able to hold the team against heavy pressure.

Van Goghs Ear · Jul 24, 2006, 10:56 PM // 22:56

personally I wouldn't want my mesmer or any soft target overextending to destroy a rit's combo of spirits, any half decent team will punnish you for that move, and any half decent rit knows that he/she can sit back about 2 aggro bubbles behind his/her own midline to allow the team to reap the full benefits of the spirits. That means your mesmer against a rit who knows anything about positioning has to extend to the other team's back line. Distortion won't save you from everything, and your mesmer will be blacked out for 8 seconds after pdistract is cast leaving you fully vulnerable to a shatter/adren spike for at least 3 seconds...at least.

Personally when we see a rit on the opposing team, we immediately split. We've never had many problems cleaning up on teams with a rit on the split. Problem is they can end up camping the guild lord till VoD making it a very difficult fortress to penetrate. And I've also noticed that displacement seems to effect NPCs because I was reading evades while attacking npc characters not moving with no enchants on them of any sort and attacking with a recurve bow. Anyways, once this happens you pretty much have to wait till VoD and at times the second VoD in order to win, forcing the lord out of the base and into a barrage of your npcs. It's just annoying more than anything else.

What they need to do to rits IMO is to break up the attribute distributions. Things like shadowsong, soothing, and earthbind have no business being in the same att class as skills like union, shelter, and displacement. IMO it gives the ritlord an unfair advantage in only having to spec in one area for maximum effect spirits. Also Displacement is a real drag, at least make a prep like seeking arrows actually viable to counter skills like this.

Think of it like this, an ele has to spec into air and earth magic to get wards and be able to blind targets. And even then those wards are very small. A rit only specs into 1 attribute to achieve virtually the same affect in much greater success and with much longer times on the skills. At the same time they can achieve a mesmer effect on warriors with soothing, a ranger/mesmer effect on all targets with dissonense, a warrior effect on kd with earthbind all from the same attribute class...I dunno, I kind of see that as being a problem. A ritualist can do what 3 classes can do for a team in 1 package.

As much as I'd love to see ritualists burned at the stake and thrown out of the game entirely, I'm not saying to nerf them out of existence, but at least balance them.

Synthetic · Jul 25, 2006, 04:25 AM // 04:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealth Rider

Yes, but your interrupter would have to be in their backlines and (if a ranger) the rit would need to be in LOS to interrupt them, *if* Shadowsong doesnt hit you, and Displacement isnt already up. These are things you cant exactly count on. i say make Rit Lord an enchantment, then you just need a char to move in and remove it every ~30 seconds.

I think making RL an enchant would make it too easy to counter. Without that skill rits are practically useless, so special consideration should be figured into your GvG build to combat them. Every gvg build has some enchant removal but not many have stance busters. I really think that wild blow makes a good counter. It is not a single use skill for a warrior to have on their bar, however, it is not really a staple of warriors in the current meta.

Asrial · Jul 25, 2006, 07:49 AM // 07:49

The problem is not that a Ritualist can easily force a game into VoD, but that GvG is so focused on quick battles (to the point of resignation if you're losing).

Some teams are more defensive than others and may be relying on a VoD gank as part of their tactics.

Fr_3_aK · Jul 25, 2006, 08:08 AM // 08:08

My main problem as a rit is energy. Even with Boon.
Shatter enchantment screws a rit.
Problem solved.

IF you want to nerf something how about R/Ns.

Stealth Rider · Jul 25, 2006, 08:23 AM // 08:23

Quote:

I think making RL an enchant would make it too easy to counter.

Not really, because as weve been saying, you would need to move a mesmer or caster with enchant removal into their backlines to get to their rit, and that caster *will* be punished for it.

Nightwish · Jul 25, 2006, 08:32 AM // 08:32

Again, making RL an enchantment is too much of a nerf. Spirit Ritualists rely too much on RL for it to be so easily removed/countered. Spirits have large radius of effect because they are static. It would be hard to use them if they are static and have small effect radius at the same time.

Whatever nerfs suggested, I would say let the changes be minimal, or else risking the ritualists become ineffective instead.