Curse

Lishy · Jul 04, 2009, 07:45 PM // 19:45

Anguish's dps is an average of 58 damage at 14 channeling and 14 communing on a well co-ordinated team with AoE hexes and Signet of Ghostly Might.
Especially due to your IAS and due to the fact you can cast painful bond, you actually deal 77 damage with it, combined with the damage of each spirit.

Now, this isn't even with other spirit's damage taken into account.

It tops the damage of SoS, yes?
Both are still viable options though. I recommend everyone to try out the Anguish spirit. It's insane..

Keira Nightgale · Jul 04, 2009, 07:50 PM // 19:50

It's fun in low end pvp (RA,FA,JQ) with signet of ghostly might and painful bond it hits in the 140s.

Chthon · Jul 05, 2009, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keira Nightgale

Mark of pain...Spiteful spirit... Vor

Reading comp ftw.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

That stomps all over any other source of non-leveraged damage in the game.

No need to lecture me on how great MoP is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kain Fz

I recommend everyone to try out the Anguish spirit. It's insane..

I like Anguish, but it's got two problems that often force me away from it: First, it's got bad uptime even if it doesn't get killed before it expires. Second, bar decompression. At this point, an offensive spirit spammer is going to have Painful Bond, Spirit Siphon, Armor of Unfeeling, and Summon Spirits all stapled to the bar. If you want to go the Anguish+SoGM route, you're left with room for 3 spirits (Anguish + 2 others). With SoS you can fit 6 spirits into those same skillslots (or 5 spirits plus GDW).

Lishy · Jul 05, 2009, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Anguish is still a great spirit overall, IMO ^^

Keira Nightgale · Jul 05, 2009, 08:01 AM // 08:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Reading comp ftw.

No need to lecture me on how great MoP is.

I like Anguish, but it's got two problems that often force me away from it: First, it's got bad uptime even if it doesn't get killed before it expires. Second, bar decompression. At this point, an offensive spirit spammer is going to have Painful Bond, Spirit Siphon, Armor of Unfeeling, and Summon Spirits all stapled to the bar. If you want to go the Anguish+SoGM route, you're left with room for 3 spirits (Anguish + 2 others). With SoS you can fit 6 spirits into those same skillslots (or 5 spirits plus GDW).

I did that exactly because I wanted to highlight your selective thinking.
You say SOS is a great elite but from the comparison you exclude leveraged damage while almost every skill in this game is conditional (warriors need adrenaline to spike, ancestor's rage requires a frontliner etc) without mentioning the fact that even SOS is conditional. It works when spirits are not killed within 5 seconds, if spirits decide to attack and the player must always bring support. In this mechanic SoS is so tied to the single character that build sinergies are cut if you don't count the typical spirit spam party.

draxynnic · Jul 05, 2009, 02:17 PM // 14:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keira Nightgale

HB is a good pve skill, Ether renewal is a good pve skill, SS, VoR, Assasin Promise, Earth shaker, Shadow Form.

You consider VoR to still be a good PvE elite now that it antisynergises in some fashion with practically the entire Mesmer line? Throw another hex? VoR does half damage (less per activation than Empathy, in fact). Throw an interrupt? Whatever skill you just interrupted didn't trigger VoR. Build a bar around not interfering with it? At that point you probably might as well be a curses necro instead.

Back on topic... personally, I like SoS on hero Ritualists - since they don't get Summon Spirits, being able to generate three spirits on short notice with a skill that has a reasonably short recharge is a big plus. For my own use... to be honest, I haven't really used the Ritualist much since the update, so I haven't settled into a preference yet. However, Cthon does make a good point - SoS is good for bar compression (and for a player Ritualist, you want a compressed bar to fit PvE skills in), while SoGM pretty much forces you to squeeze in as many spirits as you can. Furthermore, SoGM requires speccing Communing, while as mentioned earlier in the thread, a SoS Ritualist can go hybrid between Channeling and Restoration.

So, all things considered, I'm probably inclined to go the SoS route for the added versatility, although SoGM is probably still a better option when you just want single-target damage. Even then, though, the fact that Anguish has downtime on all but the highest levels of Communing is... unfortunate.

Chthon · Jul 05, 2009, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keira Nightgale

I did that exactly because I wanted to highlight your selective thinking.
You say SOS is a great elite but from the comparison you exclude leveraged damage while almost every skill in this game is conditional (warriors need adrenaline to spike, ancestor's rage requires a frontliner etc) without mentioning the fact that even SOS is conditional.

I'm getting the impression that you don't understand what the term "leveraged" means. Let's start there.

"Leveraged" does not mean "subject to a precondition," which is what you seem to think it means. "Leveraged" means "subject to multiplication in proportion to a certain condition." Like a lever arm that multiplies force in proportion to its length, a leveraged skill in GW gets its damage multiplied in proportion with a certain condition.

GW offers a handful of leverage mechanics. The most basic is simple AoE (damage is multiplied by how many monsters you can make clump up). Others include +damage buffs like Orders (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do within the time limit), +damage hexes like Barbs (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit), reactive hexes like Empathy (damage is multiplied by how many times the monster tries to attack). There's even a small handful of doubly-leveraged skills like Mark of Pain (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit, and then multiplied again by how many monsters you can make clump up).

Now, that I've defined leverage what's so special about it? It's how you win at PvE in GW, that's what. All excellent damage sources in GW PvE share two things in common: First, they ignore armor. Second, they are leveraged. A less-fundamental, but very important, third criterion is that the condition on the leverage is something that your party controls and can arbitrarily increase (see Moloch's epic post Why Reactive Hexes Are Bad).

So, if leverage is so damned great, why was I specifically excluding it from the discussion? And why am I saying SoS is a good skill if it's not leveraged at all? Two points:

First, Ritualists are sorely lacking in armor-ignoring leveraged damage options. With a couple exceptions, it's just not possible to build a rit damage build around armor-ignoring leveraged damage. So, to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, I narrowed the topic of discussion to exclude leveraged damage. Yeah, SoS is not even in the same league as MoP; but neither is anything else ritualists have; so it's not a fair comparison. Among the children-of-a-lesser-god non-leveraged damage skills available to rits, SoS is pretty good. That was my point.

In case you were curious what those exceptions are, the totality of armor-ignoring leveraged damage available to ritualists includes: Destruction (too slow), GwK (too slow), Brutal Weapon (nasty restriction), SpiritLeech Aura (only for spirits that did low damage to start with), VwK (only for farming), Painful Bond, and SoGM. Even without my comments, you can probably tell that Painful Bond and SoGM are the only ones with any promise.

(Before anyone mentions it, no, Splinter Weapon is not leveraged. Since it was nerfed, it does a fixed amount of damage, reduced if you fail to meet the conditions. What makes it remain a passable skill is that the fixed amount of damage is quite high.)

(Also, while it's not a ritualist skill, GDW is a superb source of armor-ignoring leveraged damage that rits are well suited for. A 30-sec GDW is really quite a lot. It's probably better than anything in the native rit skillset.)

And that brings me to the second point: SoS has an interplay with Painful Bond. Painful Bond's damage is multiplied by how many spirit attacks your party can generate. Fitting 3 spirits into one skillslot has a big effect on your ability to generate spirit attacks.

Sum: Leverage is great. Rits don't really have any. SoS is a very strong choice out of what rits do have.

Keira Nightgale · Jul 05, 2009, 07:42 PM // 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

I'm getting the impression that you don't understand what the term "leveraged" means. Let's start there.

"Leveraged" does not mean "subject to a precondition," which is what you seem to think it means. "Leveraged" means "subject to multiplication in proportion to a certain condition." Like a lever arm that multiplies force in proportion to its length, a leveraged skill in GW gets its damage multiplied in proportion with a certain condition.

GW offers a handful of leverage mechanics. The most basic is simple AoE (damage is multiplied by how many monsters you can make clump up). Others include +damage buffs like Orders (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do within the time limit), +damage hexes like Barbs (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit), reactive hexes like Empathy (damage is multiplied by how many times the monster tries to attack). There's even a small handful of doubly-leveraged skills like Mark of Pain (damage is multiplied by how many packets of physical damage your team can do to one target within the time limit, and then multiplied again by how many monsters you can make clump up).

Now, that I've defined leverage what's so special about it? It's how you win at PvE in GW, that's what. All excellent damage sources in GW PvE share two things in common: First, they ignore armor. Second, they are leveraged. A less-fundamental, but very important, third criterion is that the condition on the leverage is something that your party controls and can arbitrarily increase (see Moloch's epic post Why Reactive Hexes Are Bad).

So, if leverage is so damned great, why was I specifically excluding it from the discussion? And why am I saying SoS is a good skill if it's not leveraged at all? Two points:

First, Ritualists are sorely lacking in armor-ignoring leveraged damage options. With a couple exceptions, it's just not possible to build a rit damage build around armor-ignoring leveraged damage. So, to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, I narrowed the topic of discussion to exclude leveraged damage. Yeah, SoS is not even in the same league as MoP; but neither is anything else ritualists have; so it's not a fair comparison. Among the children-of-a-lesser-god non-leveraged damage skills available to rits, SoS is pretty good. That was my point.

In case you were curious what those exceptions are, the totality of armor-ignoring leveraged damage available to ritualists includes: Destruction (too slow), GwK (too slow), Brutal Weapon (nasty restriction), SpiritLeech Aura (only for spirits that did low damage to start with), VwK (only for farming), Painful Bond, and SoGM. Even without my comments, you can probably tell that Painful Bond and SoGM are the only ones with any promise.

(Before anyone mentions it, no, Splinter Weapon is not leveraged. Since it was nerfed, it does a fixed amount of damage, reduced if you fail to meet the conditions. What makes it remain a passable skill is that the fixed amount of damage is quite high.)

(Also, while it's not a ritualist skill, GDW is a superb source of armor-ignoring leveraged damage that rits are well suited for. A 30-sec GDW is really quite a lot. It's probably better than anything in the native rit skillset.)

And that brings me to the second point: SoS has an interplay with Painful Bond. Painful Bond's damage is multiplied by how many spirit attacks your party can generate. Fitting 3 spirits into one skillslot has a big effect on your ability to generate spirit attacks.

Sum: Leverage is great. Rits don't really have any. SoS is a very strong choice out of what rits do have.

It's nice how splinter weapon fits your own description of leveraged damage but you exclude it. In terms of skill balance splinter's weapon "uses" limit is the counterpart of MoP being an hex with 20seconds damage (oh, and MoP can be removed, the hexed foe can die before the others or flee, etc). Splinter weapon is less "leveraged" I'll give you that, but it's still one of the most reliable aoe sources.

P.S. exponential

Now in terms of uselfusness, we are discussing SoS, you said AoE is the way to win in pve and yet you defend this elite, forgive me but I see a contradiction, the thread is called "signet ofs pirits, worth it?" you agree on AoE being the best choice and yet you think SoS is worthy? Even with painful bond you still won't achieve an AoE effect. Now I'd agree on your discussion about how unreliable nerfs made ritualist skills but there is a reason why we got subclasses, you're not forced to run a rit elite at all, why would you bring SoS over OoS or MoP (non elite heh) or Promise, unless you want to gimp yourself.

So the question is easy. We got SoS, is this great? If you like spirits you will love it, if you want to be fast and reliable you better take a sub elite or OoS. I'm not comparing SoS to the rest of ritualist skills but to the other elites you should be running instead of it and it's why it sucks.

Allow me this last point. You speak about "bar compression" as if a ritualist was obliged to carry spirits at all. The bar compression becomes useful when you want to carry offensive spirits and it's only a single build out of how many combinations? I for example find spirits useless at best, therefore this compression you seem so fond of matters very little, especially when It's faster to spam splinter and ancestor and let heroes do their job instead of waiting for 10-15 spirits to pickup the correct target.

Chthon · Jul 05, 2009, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keira Nightgale

It's nice how splinter weapon fits your own description of leveraged damage but you exclude it.

Splinter weapon is not leveraged. It does a fixed amount of damage. For example, at rank 14 it does 5*3*47 = 705 damage. That's a lot of damage to be sure (even if actually getting it all is quite hard), but it's by no means ** potentially unlimited** damage, which is what leverage gets you. Please re-read the first two paragraphs of my previous post several times until you are able to comprehend the difference.

Let me give you a helpful rule of thumb. Ask the question: "What is the maximum amount of damage this skill can do in one activation?" If you are able to answer that question (like I just did for Splinter Weapon), then it is not leveraged. If you find yourself saying that "it's potentially unlimited, and what you actually get depends because it's X times Y damage and Y depends on something," then it is leveraged. Look for the multiplication by an extrinsic variable.

Quote:

Now in terms of uselfusness, we are discussing SoS, you said AoE is the way to win in pve and yet you defend this elite

1. I said that armor-ignoring+leverage+control over the leverage is the way to win at PvE. AoE is a form of leverage, not the only one.

2. Let me hit this point again: Ritualists (still) suck at offense. The skillset is so weak we are basically left out of the "armor-ignoring+leverage+control over the leverage" paradigm. Starting from the premise that we're going to have to settle for second-best anyway, SoS is very solid direct damage.

Quote:

Allow me this last point. You speak about "bar compression" as if a ritualist was obliged to carry spirits at all.

1. It is bar compression as compared to SoGM, which seems to be the other skill in the discussion here.

2. Once you step outside of spirit spam, ritualists are left with nothing but armor-sensitive lightning damage skills, which are even worse.

Keira Nightgale · Jul 05, 2009, 10:00 PM // 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Splinter weapon is not leveraged. It does a fixed amount of damage. For example, at rank 14 it does 5*3*47 = 705 damage. That's a lot of damage to be sure (even if actually getting it all is quite hard), but it's by no means ** potentially unlimited** damage, which is what leverage gets you. Please re-read the first two paragraphs of my previous post several times until you are able to comprehend the difference.

Let me give you a helpful rule of thumb. Ask the question: "What is the maximum amount of damage this skill can do in one activation?" If you are able to answer that question (like I just did for Splinter Weapon), then it is not leveraged. If you find yourself saying that "it's potentially unlimited, and what you actually get depends because it's X times Y damage and Y depends on something," then it is leveraged. Look for the multiplication by an extrinsic variable.

1. I said that armor-ignoring+leverage+control over the leverage is the way to win at PvE. AoE is a form of leverage, not the only one.

2. Let me hit this point again: Ritualists (still) suck at offense. The skillset is so weak we are basically left out of the "armor-ignoring+leverage+control over the leverage" paradigm. Starting from the premise that we're going to have to settle for second-best anyway, SoS is very solid direct damage.

1. It is bar compression as compared to SoGM, which seems to be the other skill in the discussion here.

2. Once you step outside of spirit spam, ritualists are left with nothing but armor-sensitive lightning damage skills, which are even worse.

And again you take things out of context, while splinter gives a fixed amount of damage and MOP is virtually unlimited you take out of the equation two facts

MOP never fulfills his unlimited potential because you're never going to get more than 40 foes at once (and 40 foes are already a huuuuuge group) and even then the hexed targed would simply die before the hex ends. In the end there is no "unlimited" in this game but just big numbers (ie: 8minion masters can fulfill MOP's damage potential), for example SH on a group of 300Mobs would fulfill your description of leveraged which seems to just be "big numbers". So to answer your question using your logic. Is MOP leveraged? No it isn't, it has a high damage potential but it's not "unlimited". It would be if you had infinite stacked mobs or an infinite amount of people to trigger it, as of now it's max potential would be something like 600 (max amount of mobs) * the amounts of minions+melee able to trigger it. Impressive but doesn't fulfill "unlimited". This is just to retort your own argument against you, the point of the discussion is another.

We exit the damage argument, splinter is a 5e skill and not a hex, with lower recharge allowing for it to be spammed even nerfed splinter is still a very reliable source of damage, I wouldn't dismiss it even if MoP is superior, besides you can always use splinter + barrage + MOP while spirits can't work with it.

For last, you say spirit are the only way for a rit to deal damage. A splinter barrager can deal armor ignoring damage and it's good in its role. Besides who said that ritualists should be damage dealers? Channeling suffers from a nerf syndrome and on top of that from the same illness Elementalist caught, HM armor boost. Add nerf+HM armor buff and you got a useless attribute but again like any HM ele you could switch to utility or go hybrid (which is what ritualist has always excelled at) or even get a secondary and find your own source of armor ignoring damage.
I agree on the fact that there is no single powerful ritualist skill left in this game (not on par with other classes at least) but this doesn't make SOS any better, spirits, at least in their current version are not as powerful as the other alternatives. Maybe their 2 years ago incarnation could hold a candle but even then I got doubts, defensively speaking you got paragons, offensive wise you got a whole lot of pve only skills.
A big step in the right decision would be to make offensive spirits stackable and defensive spirits affect themselves, not going to happen.

Chthon · Jul 05, 2009, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keira Nightgale

...your description of leveraged which seems to just be "big numbers"....

It's becoming apparent that you haven't comprehended a word I've said. At this point I give up.

Keira Nightgale · Jul 06, 2009, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

It's becoming apparent that you haven't comprehended a word I've said. At this point I give up.

read the rest before shouting sentences :S

Tenebrae · Jul 06, 2009, 11:46 AM // 11:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by draxynnic

You consider VoR to still be a good PvE elite now that it antisynergises in some fashion with practically the entire Mesmer line? Throw another hex? VoR does half damage (less per activation than Empathy, in fact). Throw an interrupt? Whatever skill you just interrupted didn't trigger VoR. Build a bar around not interfering with it? At that point you probably might as well be a curses necro instead.

You nailed it. Totally right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by draxynnic

However, Cthon does make a good point - SoS is good for bar compression (and for a player Ritualist, you want a compressed bar to fit PvE skills in), while SoGM pretty much forces you to squeeze in as many spirits as you can. Furthermore, SoGM requires speccing Communing, while as mentioned earlier in the thread, a SoS Ritualist can go hybrid between Channeling and Restoration.

Yep , if SoGM could work on all allied spirits ( not only the ones you control ) it would be awesome but also overpowered .... i guess that skill needs some rework

Quote:

Originally Posted by draxynnic

So, all things considered, I'm probably inclined to go the SoS route for the added versatility, although SoGM is probably still a better option when you just want single-target damage. Even then, though, the fact that Anguish has downtime on all but the highest levels of Communing is... unfortunate.

+1 , nuff said.

AngeliqueSynner · Jul 06, 2009, 03:06 PM // 15:06

It's pretty good for pressure relief, party healing, and body blocking.
I use them for powerheal in emergencies and energy mangement more than using them for their attack capabilities.

Lhim · Jul 06, 2009, 05:36 PM // 17:36

PUGs want me to bring SoS these days....

I was running:
Xinrae's Weapon, Mend Body & Soul, Great Dwarf Weapon, Spirit Siphon, Weapon of Warding, Protective Was Koalai, Life, Death Pact Signet

The monk of course was running a standard HB build, which are just awful...no prot in HM is pretty bad. But like I said, they wanted SoS.....

Carnivorous Cupcake · Jul 08, 2009, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Yes!

It is worth it, great skill, great attribute line.

dean81

I think that HB Monks are overrated. They lack proper damage mitigation, Monks shouldnt be just healbots.
HB was effective when UB was in play simply because teddies had enough damage mitigation by default.

Painbringer · Jul 09, 2009, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Yeah I like it a tough little spirit group that can be respwaned in 20 sec feeding me energy and healing my spirits. The AI bug is annoying but they are still killing things

False Maria · Jul 09, 2009, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Totally worth it. It's bug is only mildly annoying in the worst cases and unnoticeable in the best. The fact that it's a signet (and therefore free energy when you use it with Boon of Creation) makes it very energy efficient in any Rit build.

I mean, before it existed as it does now, could you have imagined creating up to 8 spirits in 5 seconds with no way to manage your energy? Of course it's worth it.

And to add: Anguish really is a great spirit; the ''QQ it dies too soon!" crowd just don't know how to keep any spirit alive.

Gigashadow · Jul 09, 2009, 05:27 PM // 17:27

SoS is great with Mend Body & Soul as you can remove 3-4 conditions easily. On the N/Rt hero healer I think it is a viable alternative to Xinrae's.

Painful Bond the AI doesn't cast well (even if there is a cluster of mobs) and you often have to micro it, but works great on a human.

Feast of Souls you have to be within "nearby" range (which is a few steps away) of the spirits for it to do anything. Ok on a human, doesn't work so well on a hero. A decent way to get party healing if you want to do channeling/spawning instead of channeling/resto for pwk/life.

AtomicMew · Jul 12, 2009, 01:17 AM // 01:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

SoS is great with Mend Body & Soul as you can remove 3-4 conditions easily. On the N/Rt hero healer I think it is a viable alternative to Xinrae's.

Painful Bond the AI doesn't cast well (even if there is a cluster of mobs) and you often have to micro it, but works great on a human.

Feast of Souls you have to be within "nearby" range (which is a few steps away) of the spirits for it to do anything. Ok on a human, doesn't work so well on a hero. A decent way to get party healing if you want to do channeling/spawning instead of channeling/resto for pwk/life.

Agreed with this. SoS can be useful as a defensive elite, but offensively, it's pretty damn weak.

For offensive purposes, I wouldn't even consider taking it because of the amount of micro involved to make it worthwhile. On a human, there are better elites doing way more DPS, like SoGM.