Curse

Viade · May 04, 2006, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Seriously? Mend body and soul is fantastic, potentially the single best condition remover available.

Jagan Vastary · May 04, 2006, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viade

Seriously? Mend body and soul is fantastic, potentially the single best condition remover available.

If you really like this for condition removal, you don't need many points in restoration. I certainly wouldn't use it as a primary healing skill. You can drop it on a communing/spawning guy if you want to clean up a lot of conditions.

icemonkey · May 05, 2006, 02:08 PM // 14:08

mend body and soul is good, but it doesnt save the entire attribute. Overall its still pretty lame, 1 skill out of 20-30 or so that even has a chance. And you pretty much have to go communing for that skill because restoration does not have that many spirits, communing has much more.,

TheTrueTroop · May 05, 2006, 02:39 PM // 14:39

My guild's build is a degen/pressure build, designed with the ability to split 5/3 and go head on 8v8 in both balanced and spike situations, this is the ritualist we use.

We add a bit more war hate by running shadow of fear and faint on the necro, and the shadow song adds nice blinding as well as protection for the other spirits.

We have the me and the n both with /r secondaries running fertile season.

I could see boon of creation being switched for cry of frustration as the mesmer is already running cof and diversion

It comes equipped with both a spammable buff and a spammable degen, which adds nicely to our curses and degen mesmer.

Ritualist/Mesmer
Level: 20

Spawning Power: 13 (11+2)
Communing: 11 (10+1)
Illusion Magic: 10

Weapon of Quickening [Elite] (Communing)
For 12 seconds, target ally has a Weapon of Quickening, and spells and Binding Rituals recharge 25% faster.
Energy:10 Cast:2 Recharge:5

Mighty was Vorizun (Communing)
Hold Vorizun's ashes for up to 48 seconds. While you hold his ashes, you gain +15 armor and +20 maximum Energy.
Energy:5 Cast:2 Recharge:30

Boon of Creation (Spawning Power)
For 54 seconds, whenever you create a creature, you gain 44 Health and 7 Energy.
Energy:10 Cast:2 Recharge:45

Shadowsong (Communing)
Create a level 5 spirit. The spirit's attacks cause Blindness for 5 second(s). This spirit dies after 30 seconds.
Energy:10 Cast:5 Recharge:45

Soothing (Communing)
Create a level 8 spirit. All foes within its range take twice as long to build adrenaline. This Spirit dies after 37 seconds.
Energy:10 Cast:5 Recharge:60

Shelter (Communing)
Create a level 6 spirit. Allies within its range cannot lose more than 10% maximum Health from a single attack. When this Spirit prevents damage, it loses 38 Health. This spirit lasts 52 seconds.
Energy:10 Cast:5 Recharge:60

Images of Remorse (Illusion Magic)
For 8 seconds, target foe suffers -4 Health degeneration. If that foe was attacking, that foe takes 38 damage.
Energy:5 Cast:2 Recharge:5

Res Sig

Patrograd · May 06, 2006, 10:02 AM // 10:02

Last night we have played against a ritualist spike group in GvG (rank 180ish IIRC). Interesting concept, but not really best suited to GvG, at least in the way it was implemented. They were spamming spirits to allow them to spike using skills like doom (there was another spike skill too, but I dont recall at the moment what it was).

Effectively this meant that you could play it in the same sort of way that you would play IWAY, push forwards, get them to drop their spirits, then withdraw, and use the window when they push forwards to put their spirits down again to get your disruption and kills in. I suppose on a tighter map (we played them on Imperial) it might be a problem, but generally I think the space on a typical GvG map makes this sort of build pretty hard to pull off, even though they all had Ritual lord (I think)

A bit like Blood spike this was a very strong build in turtle, but in Vod with all the AoE flying around they went down pretty quick.

nice build for HoH though i should think

shadex · May 08, 2006, 06:20 PM // 18:20

Mend body and soul is actually not that good in gvg. You have to be right next to your spirits for it to pull of conditions. This in turn means you have to always heal from the same place, unless you use draw spirits, which again causes alot of problems. It's good verse condition heavy teams, but still cant take place of the e/mo yet, since you still have to setup to remove any conditions. Now, union and shelter are as good as it comes. Shelter does go down quickly, but union only actives on high damage attacks. It pretty much cuts it down to around 33 damage.

As far as a rit build, it would be wise to keep them far far away from the main fighting. It seems that the best way is to throw the spirits in the back field, where there huge range will still effect your party. This means interupts are next to useless, as the casting is out of spell range and will force over extending. It also makes it near imposable to damage the spirits. The main problem is that the ritualist is narrows down to only putting up spirits and posably healing the back field. I personally think that i would gladly take one player out of action for constant blind/prot spirit/shielding hands for my whole party.

I think, which will be more evadent after everyone settles down from factions, that rit's will be very popular, as the single handedly distroy every type of spike build in the game, which is 99% of the GvG meta game. Even balance builds use adrenaline spikes. I think you will also see more ways to counter the spirits, such as shutdown mez'ers and aoe casters to distroy the spirits. Only build i see that wouldn't get screwed by union or shelding hands is perhaps a necro spike and or a mass hex/degen team.

TeeGee · May 08, 2006, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Quote:

also, skip restoration, its pretty much garbage.

No, that's not true. Restoration line has some rubbish spells, but also have some decent ones. Mend body and soul is great (conditional though), spirit transfer is one of best healing spells in game (instant 237 heal for 10 energy) and generous was Tsungrai is great for self defence and for using infuse health, works with soothing memories too.

I've made Rt restoration build and its pretty succesfull (although best suited for HA, not GvG - in GvG mobility is a key and Rt lacks that).

Check it out...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3026383

Ensign · May 08, 2006, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Union and Shelter are very good against bad spike teams, and are pretty good against common toolbox setups. Against better spike teams the spirits, while still good, aren't nearly as awesome, because they are able to spike much more often than the spirits can refresh. A bad team might be spiking every 30 seconds, but good teams spike every 7-8 seconds, or even faster in some cases (iGi, for starters).

The thing I've noticed about ritualists is that the number of effective standalone guys you can build is very limited. There are quite a few ways to build them in a build with two or more ritualists, but when there's only one you're basically pushed into a subset of attributes and skills that aren't dependent upon a bunch of other ritualist stuff. It's difficult to get multiple ritualists into a GvG build without going all-in on ritualist spike, but I would not be surprised at all to see ritualist heavy builds in HA in the near future (if they aren't there already)

Peace,
-CxE

glenn_rolfe · May 09, 2006, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Conceptually, I can still see the ritualist runner being a viable build. Maybe as an R/Rt for survivability. Flag capping and dropping spirits back after the cap (similar to the way blood spike operates in GvG) seems like viable party support to me.

Any build that relies on spirits to make it function as a threat is not really going to get too far.

carbajac · May 09, 2006, 06:16 AM // 06:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Against better spike teams the spirits, while still good, aren't nearly as awesome, because they are able to spike much more often than the spirits can refresh.

Just a thought. What about Soul Twisting?

Soul Twisting: Destroy target allied spirit. The next Binding Ritual you perform cast 66% faster and recharges instantly.

With this, a quick Ritualist can keep Shelter up almost constantly. If he can destroy Shelter before the spiking kills it, he can bring it back for the next volley. With this spell, Shelter will never have to recharge and it goes up real quick. Also, a Ritualist can carry Shelter around with the team. Bring Mantra of Concentration and he's good to go. I capped this the other day and am really liking it for my Ritualist.

Patrograd · May 09, 2006, 06:56 AM // 06:56

The main issue I have found with playing ritualists is that for the spirits to survive any significant time they need to be cast way in the backline making that character less useful utility wise than for example another e/mo. It is very difficult to maintain these spirits due to them taking damage whenever they do anything useful. You can easily dispose of shelter by just wanding whoever is nearest to you, same with displacement etc. Even with Ritual lord, you basically have to spend 100% of your time casting spirits, and the long cast time makes you very vulnerable. is it worth having a character who's sole role in the team is to maintain shelter and union? Seems debateable to me. Perhaps if you gave them other area team effects they might have a use - Aegis, heal Party, orders for example.

Wasteland Squidget · May 09, 2006, 07:14 AM // 07:14

When used effectively, Soul Twisting solves some of the issues with spirits. The cast time reduction doesn't make the spirits uninterruptable, but it allows you to keep moving around. The downside is the great focus required to keep your Soul Twisting working with the spirits. It's much tougher than just using Ritual Lord to keep your recharge times going.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

The main issue I have found with playing ritualists is that for the spirits to survive any significant time they need to be cast way in the backline making that character less useful utility wise than for example another e/mo. It is very difficult to maintain these spirits due to them taking damage whenever they do anything useful. You can easily dispose of shelter by just wanding whoever is nearest to you, same with displacement etc. Even with Ritual lord, you basically have to spend 100% of your time casting spirits, and the long cast time makes you very vulnerable. is it worth having a character who's sole role in the team is to maintain shelter and union? Seems debateable to me. Perhaps if you gave them other area team effects they might have a use - Aegis, heal Party, orders for example.

I think the biggest problem with this kind of character is that you can't use him for a lot of the things you'd normally want such a character to do. The great thing about the skills you mention is that they work well from long range, so they're ideal for someone who's running the flag or soloing in one way or another.

With a Rit, you can't do this. You have to be at the flagstand constantly spamming your spirits, or they're going to go down. It takes a lot of time and energy to constantly put them back up, and if the spirits aren't staying up this character isn't very useful on the team.

Likewise, the Rit doesn't have the self sufficency you want on a lot of GvG characters. You have to keep him in the group because he'll get owned in any kind of 1v1, which is a significant disadvantage compared to the E/Mo when you're trying to split.

There are some useful spirits to spam besides Shelter, Union, and Displacement (Shadowsong and Soothing are both very nice choices.) As you say though, this character has a lot of disadvantages to overcome if he wants to be useful on a team.

Parkerbsb · May 09, 2006, 04:34 PM // 16:34

I've been toying around with the idea of a Rt runner for awhile now... my main issues with that idea are how slow it is in getting the flag (long casts mean if you want to lay 3 spirits you've killed about 20 seconds off before you even start back for base).

Just this morning I thought up a Me/Rt build that uses fast casting to help reduce the time needed... still untested just for the record
Me/Rt: Runner
Fast Casting: 10 (8+2)
Illusion Magic: 8 (7+1)
Communing: 12
Inspiration Magic: 9 (8+1)
Illusion of Haste (Illusion Magic)
Distortion (Illusion Magic)
Shadow Song (Communing) {5sec = 3.26sec}
Shelter (Communing) {5sec = 3.26sec}
Union (Communing) {3sec = 1.95sec}
*Energy Drain [Elite] (Inspiration Magic)
Drain Enchantment (Inspiration Magic) or Displacement (Communing)
Resurrect Signet () or Mantra of Resolve (Inspiration Magic).

Granted - can't solo at all (as has been mentioned), but I think if you are going to have a rit splitting is not high priority anyways :P

Wasteland Squidget · May 09, 2006, 06:49 PM // 18:49

IIRC, Fast Casting does not affect Binding Rituals. The only way I can think of to reliable fast-cast binding rituals is Soul Twisting.

And even if you get around the cast time issues, you have to ask - is it really worth this character slot to have a Shelter + Union up at the flagstand once every 60 seconds or so? How fast are those spirits going to go down while the runner's away? Is it more or less useful than having something like a Flashbot runner who can solo and provide skills like Heal Party and Extinguish from long range?

Parkerbsb · May 09, 2006, 07:34 PM // 19:34

Heh hadn't even thought about FC not working with binds... I do agree the more I look at it the less I like it.

So the next question that begs awnsering... is a Communing Ritualist a better protector than a Protection Monk?

I'll post my thoughts in a few days after I test somethings out - but for now I'm saying it's not likley

Mr Urthadar · May 09, 2006, 08:01 PM // 20:01

FWIW, I saw iGi using a rt/n flag runner last night. I believe they had an assassin too. The assassin didn't seem to be very effective, but maybe I just did not watch him enough.

Of course, I can't recall the skills (didn't have a notepad handy) the flagger used. But I do recall the flagger using order of pain. Not sure about spirits and such. Anyone else see that match?

ju