Curse

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jun 22, 2006, 07:12 AM // 07:12

My question:

In PvP, HA and GvG, the ritualist is a great character for preventing or slowing the damage you suffer. In most balanced builds you always try to have some damage on every character like orb on eles and energy burn/shatter on mesmers, but the ritualist does not feature as much damage. For those who run Rits in GvG and HA what would you do:

A.) Sacrifice damage and go pure defensive skills.

B.) Bring spirits like Pain who deal some damage, though not much.

C.) Spec into another attribute and get a channeled strike into the build.

Zinger314 · Jun 22, 2006, 07:17 AM // 07:17

Who cares about damage when you are the defense king?

Patrograd · Jun 22, 2006, 08:22 AM // 08:22

In GvG there are basically two kinds of ritualists that i have seen

One is the backline ritualist, who will use ritual lord to constantly spam a sequence of 4 spirits, shelter and union are always 2 of these, with the other two being some combination of shadowsong, displacement and soothing. The rest of his bar is made up of skills like boon of creation. This guy is a very defensive character in nature, and sits way back out of harms way

Then you have your midline rit, who will typically use soul twisting as his elite. This guy is a mix of defence and attack. He will typically only bring two or three spirits, and he will aim to maintain one of these spirits 100% of the time (usually shelter, but against some builds he will focus on union or even soothing). He will typically pack at least 2 damage skills, most usually gaze from beyond, doom and/or essence strike. This is a much harder character to play than the backline ritualist, but for GvG purposes he is imo a much stronger character with good damage and good defensive utility.

A couple of sample builds as an illustration:

midline ritualist:

Ritualist/Monk
Level: 20

Spawning Power: 11 (10+1)
Channeling Magic: 13 (10+3)
Communing: 12 (11+1)

- Soul Twisting [Elite] (Ritualist None)
- Shelter (Communing)
- Union (Communing)
- Soothing (Communing)
- Gaze from Beyond (Channeling Magic)
- Essence Strike (Channeling Magic)
- Boon of Creation (Spawning Power)
- Resurrection Signet ()

For more utility you might put draw conditions or remove hex on this guy somewhere, and you might rearrange his attribs to give more channeling magic

Example backline Ritualist

Ritualist/Monk
Level: 20

Spawning Power: 13 (12+1)
Communing: 15 (12+3)

- Shadowsong (Communing)
- Displacement (Communing)
- Shelter (Communing)
- Soothing (Communing)
- Union (Communing)
- Ritual Lord [Elite] (Spawning Power)
- Boon of Creation (Spawning Power)
- Resurrection Signet ()

this guy in truth needs some form of anti-kd skill, as despite soul twisting enemy warriors will shock everything they see

Byron · Jun 22, 2006, 08:44 AM // 08:44

I'll /sign Patrograd's builds, but I'm not exactly an expert on ritualists.

Greedy Gus · Jun 22, 2006, 02:52 PM // 14:52

My take on ritualists is that they really help in devastating enemy gimmick and spike teams, but actually turn into a bit of a liability against good balanced teams.

Schorny · Jun 22, 2006, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

My take on ritualists is that they really help in devastating enemy gimmick and spike teams, but actually turn into a bit of a liability against good balanced teams.

actually there are 3 spirits that are key:
Shelter, Union and Soothing.

No matter what you run (despite maybe a life stealing spike like blood or foc) every build has problems with atleast one of this spirits.

shelter is king against any kind of caster spike
soothing is king against any kind of adrenaline spike
union is king against pure pressure like for example bunnies

so, a ritualist, is not really weak against good balanced teams. due his great strength is against spikes.

that doesn't make ritualist the strongest defense char or whatever. he has his drawbacks beeing it that he is easy to interrupt or not beeing mobile.

JR · Jun 22, 2006, 03:26 PM // 15:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

actually there are 3 spirits that are key:
Shelter, Union and Soothing.

He never questioned the effectiveness of Spirits themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

No matter what you run (despite maybe a life stealing spike like blood or foc) every build has problems with atleast one of this spirits.

FoC spike is not life stealing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

so, a ritualist, is not really weak against good balanced teams. due his great strength is against spikes.

The difference is that against good balanced builds you are merely an annoyance. You definately have an effect, but the drawbacks of having to rely on spirits also comes into play.

Against something like FC Air, Shelter will just tear them apart if you can keep it up. It is pretty much as complete a skill based counter as you can get, barring possibly every character having Mantra of Lightning.

There is no position where you will look at a balanced build facing a Rit and think "Damn, they have no chance now!", but that is the case with a lot of 'gimmicks.'

So basicly what Gus was saying (I think) is that given the drawbacks of having to rely on spirits, and with that being basicly all a spirit Rit can do, they are far weaker characters against a balanced build.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jun 22, 2006, 04:15 PM // 16:15

Thanks Patrograd, I think I might have to try the mid-line ritualist.

Greedy Gus · Jun 22, 2006, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Yeah, JR nailed it. I don't think spirits are bad at all, they're pretty awesome defensively. The problem is that against good balanced teams, you're forced to take up precious skill slots to save from interruption, or spend a lot of effort coordinating with your blinds/blackouts to get a spirit down. After that, spirits still are ridiculously easy to kill. Overall, be it enchant removal, interruption, knockdowns, energy denial, or even pressure as a threat, rits are easy to shutdown and aren't as flexible as other types of defensive chars. I've rarely seen a good balanced team be really owned by spirits, barring some really sweet map-dependant spirit placement.

To compound the problem, rits are quite immobile. Whether on a retreat, a split situation, or even a hard push forward on a roll, if your team at all is relying on the defensive power of the rit, things crumble very quickly when they need to move quickly. These are the types of situations where e/mo defensive chars shine, as they're extremely mobile (evidenced by mass use as flag runners) and provide a huge energy engine without being very susceptible to shutdown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

midline ritualist:

Ritualist/Monk
Level: 20

Spawning Power: 11 (10+1)
Channeling Magic: 13 (10+3)
Communing: 12 (11+1)

- Soul Twisting [Elite] (Ritualist None)
- Shelter (Communing)
- Union (Communing)
- Soothing (Communing)
- Gaze from Beyond (Channeling Magic)
- Essence Strike (Channeling Magic)
- Boon of Creation (Spawning Power)
- Resurrection Signet ()

I'm actually not a fan of soul twisting on a guy with no good throwaway spirit to use as backup soul twisting fodder. Stuff like a pain (doubles as something like 10 DPS) or a frozen soil (excellent synergy with soul twisting). But really, if you're running a high spawning power anyway, rit lord is generally almost just as good on this type of guy (especially after soul twisting rebalance)

I've also run a 3-spirit "midline" gaze from beyond spiker without boon of creation and felt I was fine with just essense strike spam as energy management (also a good follow-up spike skill). Might be more susceptible to energy denial, less to enchant harassment though.

Wasteland Squidget · Jun 22, 2006, 09:40 PM // 21:40

I think Rits can be pretty effective against a balanced build in an 8v8 setting. Having a Rit sitting in the backline spamming their spirits is a pretty effective deterrent against warrior spikes and pressure. Running a three-warrior build, there isn't any one character who deters our 8v8 offense quite as much as a backline ritualist properly defended by his team.

Rits are vulnerable to movement control and splits, which is the balanced team's real strength against them. Sure, a Rit can do a pretty good job defending NPCs at the base supported by another squad, but if you have one split running the flag and the other split harrasing their runner the Rit isn't very useful. Once you've forced morale you can start annihilating their split squads that are away from the Rit, and gradually get them in a situation where they're turtling. It's still hard to break a turtling team with a defensive rit, but you have morale can always wait for VoD and force them to move around the map again to defend their guild lord and NPCs.

With all this though, I wouldn't say that the Rit is bad against balanced teams. Counterable sure, but it allows you to control the match by forcing the other team not to fight you 8v8. The Rit creates a threat that no other individual character creates, and the other team is forced to react to that threat.

Thom · Jun 22, 2006, 11:17 PM // 23:17

I know this sounds a bit obvious, but the ritualist skills you use really depend on the needs of your team. There is enough breth in ritualist skills that you can potentially fill many pure and hybrid roles. While mobility can be a problem, I find that soul twister works wonders for getting your most important spirit in the position it needs to be in without delay.

I feel that your ritualist can be your classic "toolbox" character, filling gaps on offence or defence according to need. While the ritualist is a tool box, it isn't a utility character since it lacks the snares, knockdowns, interrupts and speed buffs I normally associate with utility. While a ritualist can be designed to have excellent flexiblity across 8 skills, it is hard justify putting a ritualist in the utility slot in a build. I also have a hard time justifying putting the ritualist in a monk slot unless you are already running three monks. Since most top gvg teams play a two monk defensive line with a utility third guy, I don't see much room for ritualists without completely changing strategy.

Schorny · Jun 23, 2006, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

There is no position where you will look at a balanced build facing a Rit and think "Damn, they have no chance now!", but that is the case with a lot of 'gimmicks.'

Though I'd say a balanced build that breaks on 1 char or 2-3 skills isn't really good... So there is no real reason why a ritualist should be able to break them so easily.