Curse

Dr Strangelove · Aug 24, 2007, 04:48 PM // 16:48

I've been playing around with the new rit skills, and I've been sorta underwhelmed. It seems like Izzy is really wary of bringing ritspike back, and thus made a lot of the new skills kinda weak. So, here goes...

Agony - Terrible. The damage isn't that great, it dies after about 3-4 procs if you have a significant amount of enemies around, and it seems to have a bug where it randomly dies. Recommendation: Do not bring

Weapon of Aggression: It's a bit too expensive and low duration to maintain effectively on a spirit's strength guy, especially when it pulls points away from weapon mastery and spawning power. Could be useful on a physical class with energy to burn. Recommendation: Might be useful for dervishes and assassins, not much point on rit primary

Ghostly Weapon: Absolutely godly with zealot's fire and wielder's zeal if you need to break through heavy blocking. This is probably going to be all over PvP with a wielder's zeal smiter sitting in the midline making SoD and aegis worthless. Recommendation: Great skill for support, not that awesome for for PvE

Sundering Weapon: It's got kind of a long recharge for a relatively small effect. I played around with throwing it on melee, but no one really noticed a big boost in damage. Recommendation: Maybe throw it on a ghostly weapon bar if you have space, otherwise, don't bother.

Mending grip: Meh, there's better ways to pull conditions with a rit. The heal is pretty small, the recharge is long, and it's conditional. Comapre it to dismiss conditions or mend body and soul, and it looks pretty awful. Recommendation: Don't bother

Pure was Li Ming: It ends up working sort of like extinguish for a rit, but with more conditions pulled and the ability to precast it. It also costs less energy. The condition reduction on yourself doesn't really matter. It's a pretty good skill for dealing with disease, searing flames, and condition bombing dervishes. It really helps a lot vs. mandragors. Remember, this + recovery is probably redundat, though. Recommendation: Bring it if mass conditions are a problem, it's good. Make sure you don't need protective was kaolai more, though.

Rejuvenation: Terrible. Same problems as agony, heals for a tiny amount, all around sucks. If you want party heals, bring life, PwK, recuperation, or just an LOD Recommendation: DO NOT WANT

Spiritleech aura: Might be useful for a build with destruction, bloodsong, or life. Honestly though, you're probably better off with spirit light for a bigger, more controlled heal that doesn't kill your spirits. Recommendation: Play with as a toy, probably don't use it if you actually need solid healing.

Energetic was Lee Sa: At 12 spec, it's a net gain of 6 energy/20 seconds, or .3 energy/second. Kinda crappy compared to stuff like essence strike. Heck, even spirit siphon will probably give you more. Recommendation: You could use it if you need a generic item spell, but the duration is low and the cast time long. Honestly, it's useless.

Weapon of Renewal: Another interesting skill for that ghostly weapon guy. It's most valuable put on a dervish, since they'll plow through their energy faster. Honestly though, most melee classes don't have that many energy problems, and it'll be really hard to gauge when they'll need the energy boost instead of something else. Recommendation: Might be worth using to buff physicals, really clunky to use, though. Weapon of fury is probably a better choice if you care about giving your physicals extra energy.

Goldleader · Aug 24, 2007, 05:21 PM // 17:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Rejuvenation: Terrible. Same problems as agony, heals for a tiny amount, all around sucks. If you want party heals, bring life, PwK, recuperation, or just an LOD Recommendation: DO NOT WANT

Damn it! I was looking forward to this skill too...

Tony Malketh · Aug 24, 2007, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Why have rits got a tough deal with new skills again???

Sazgo · Aug 24, 2007, 07:31 PM // 19:31

That rejuve is a really big joke i dunno if it was even tested. I think it heals maybe 6 times with 16 resto 13 sp so thats 60 health to the party for 10 energy 3 sec cast 30 sec recharge, come on. A heal party heals for more with a fraction of the recharge time and not stupid 3 sec cast.
My suggestion is to make it heal for like 5 a tick and make it last atleasdt 15-20 sec or even more. 5-6 secs of 10 health is pointless it should be 5 energy cost 1-2 sec cast 15 sec recharge for that.

Calen The Civl · Aug 26, 2007, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Sounds like the ritualist spirits would be better if they could be bound to a target instead of blanket effects.

I will reserve my judgment until I have a chance to test them in some perhaps quirky builds.

TGgold · Aug 27, 2007, 02:50 AM // 02:50

Weapon of Aggression works great in my Rt/P build. The energy has never been a problem since most skills (sans my interrupt) don't use energy.

I'm assuming it will be great on my Rt/D too, who uses a +20% Scythe, the PvE derv skills (+20% dmg with scythes), and Spirit's Strength. Just the normal attacks hit 60-80 per swing. Once the new Shout that deals +dmg for X hits gets to a more respectable level, I'll throw that on too. Currently the shout it only 5 attacks at +13. Even then, those hits should be between 70-90 dmg per swing. Not too bad...

Agony and Rejuvination are rubbish.

JoeKnowMo · Aug 27, 2007, 08:01 AM // 08:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

<snip>

I have to agree with most of your assessments. The only worthwhile skill is Pure was Li Ming. It trumps Extinguish in terms of cost and number of conditions removed. Has a 10s longer recharge vs Martyr and 5s longer vs Cautery Sig, but it's not elite... an doesn't have their ill-effects of conditions being transferred or burning.

Weapon of Renewal is pretty weak compared to Zealous Anthem, so I'd put this one in the trash heap too.

Spiritleech Aura may have some utilty if you go Resto Rit + Orders Necro, otherwise I don't see much use for it.

Bear in mind that my assessments are for PvE. Some of these skills might actually have some use in PvP, but that's not my forte.

I'm hoping the pve-only skills will add some fun to the mix and resurrect some of the ignored Rit skills. Summon Assassin + Ghostly Might for one sounds promising.

Aethon · Aug 27, 2007, 09:45 PM // 21:45

I have to agree with Dr Strangelove, too, for the most part. However, if I may comment on a few:

For Agony, I would prefer that it be changed so that the spirit take less damage than it delivers; it's like taking the health of a level 7 spirit (190 health) and dividing it amongst all the enemies in the form of damage (for 5 enemies, 190/5=38), over time (21.1 seconds at most). It's weak against mobs of foes, but then the point of area effect skills are to hit lots of foes. To at least make it useful, damage received must either be reduced (9 dmg out, but 4 dmg in), constant (9 damage per second, regardless of the # foes), or it receives conditional healing (it gains 4 health for successful attacks by allies). Just something. And of course, the same principles apply for Rejuvenation. At the very least, this should cost and recharge as fast as destruction; I'd say it should cost even less & recharge even faster, but I'm not sure if that's reasonable. Speaking of which, Destruction owns Agony (and Life owns Rejuvenation) in almost every situation I can think of, except those in which the enemy does NOT attack the spirit, ending it's effect early.

Spiritleech Aura has limited use for spirit-users themselves, in general. Like an Aura of Restoration for Ritualists, except this one has the "bonus" of killing your livelihood. It seems to have been designed for anti-spirit players, or else just badly.

Ghostly Weapon is a spam-version of Guided Weapon. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why one would use the former instead of the latter. I can see it with some spike planning, maybe in PvP, but for a PvE oriented campaign, I just don't get it.

If one can't spring for Attuned, or they use high cost non-spells (shouts?), Energetic might find a use. Pure looks pretty good on it's own, though, and is easily my favorite of the new skills. And I don't even run urns that much.

Dr Strangelove · Aug 28, 2007, 01:38 AM // 01:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aethon

Ghostly Weapon is a spam-version of Guided Weapon. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why one would use the former instead of the latter. I can see it with some spike planning, maybe in PvP, but for a PvE oriented campaign, I just don't get it.

[skill]wielder's zeal[/skill][skill]zealot's fire[/skill] make ghostly weapon berserk. Also, it's a little more flexible in use - you can maintain it 100% on whoever you choose. Could be usable in PvE for a "get off me" button in PvE by using the combo to exploit AoE panic, but defender's zeal smiters are really a better choice for that. Anyway, blocking just isn't a big problem in PvE.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aethon

If one can't spring for Attuned, or they use high cost non-spells (shouts?), Energetic might find a use.

Energetic is clunky, with a long cast time, short uptime, and it's an item spell. All that, and it provides a failarious amount of energy (6 energy/20 seconds at 12 spec. For comparisn, essence strike will provide 12.5 energy/20 seconds, does damage, and isn't clumsy. Glyph of lesser energy provides 10 energy every 20 seconds, and is easy to use.). Zero point in it IMO.

I've played around with Rt/P weapon of aggression builds, and I'm underwhelmed. Yes, it provides steady single target DPS, but it has zero utility. The build really is just dumb DPS with maybe an interrupt thrown in. A Warrior can deal better damage, and leave a slot free for watch yourself or somesuch. Personally, if I'm bringing a rit, I want a big bag of tricks that can patch up holes in my team. However, in normal mode PvE, who cares.

Agony and rejuvenation need a big boost in health for me to care about them. Even bringing signet of binding, they just don't do enough. They at least need a shorter recharge to reflect that the thing dies in a few seconds.

Epinephrine · Aug 28, 2007, 11:02 PM // 23:02

One nice thing about Agony: it can deal the 10% damage needed to have Edge of Extinction trigger. But yes, far too weak, if the damage dealt scaled up while the damage received scaled down, maybe. Given that no elementalist AoE skills deal their damage by dividing it up among enemies it is easy to see why this is outclassed so easily; a level 10 spirit with 15 spawning power allows you to deal 400 damage, spread out, with a 3 second casting time and 30 second recharge. On 5 foes that's 80 damage each, in 8 seconds - a single fireball can out do that. It's far too weak.

DeBron · Aug 28, 2007, 11:10 PM // 23:10

This is why my warrior gets to go through EoTN.