The Channeling machine-gun - who said channeling is worthless in PvP ? :)

This is a build I posted already on the « channeling » thread. Some reports of success and intense personal testing convinced me it’s worth a separate thread for discussions.

Everyone knows ritualists (except for spirit spammers) are useless in PvP. They heal less than a monk and damage less than an ele…..or do they ?

Let’s check three skills (at 12 channeling):


Essence strike Spell. Target foe is struck for 41 lightning damage. If any spirits are in the area around you, you gain 7 energy. 5 energy 1 cast 8 recharge

Spirit burn Spell. Target foe is struck for 60 lightning damage. If any spirits are in the area around you, Spirit Burn deals 45 damage. 5 energy 1 cast 5 recharge

Gaze from beyond. Spell. The spirit nearest you loses 34 Health. Target foe is struck for 3 lightning damage for each point of health lost. 5 energy 1 cast 10 recharge


Assuming a easy controllable condition (presence of a spirit near) these spells have stats and effects that no ele spell can match. Cheap, high damage, short cast times, relatively short recharge times – and even energy engine while still doing damage ???? what’s not to like here ?….If you mix these with a mesmer's Fast Casting and Mantra of recovery, you can turn him into an effective machine-gun, dishing a sustainable 30-40 damage per second on a single target with almost no energy cost overall…Hard to believe, isn’t it ?

Here is the build :

Mesmer/Ritualist

Channeling – 12
Fast casting – variable between 12-16, depending on runes, the spirit you take and the eight support skill
Communing (for Pain or Anguished was Lingwah)

Skills
1. Mantra of Recovery (Elite)
2. Essence strike
3. Spirit burn
4. Gaze from beyond
5. Spirit boon strike (mostly a skill to use to finish a target or when energy is less important)
6. Various spirit (Destruction, Pain or Anquished was Lingwah are my current options – can be debated)
7. Res Signet
8. Optional – you can go for a protective skill (distortion, weapon of warding etc) , another binding spell, another energy skill (power drain, spirit syphon)


Tactic is simple : go near the fight, drop the spirit (easier with AwL and lasts longer), pop MoR and start spamming. Even without fast cast/fast recharge channeling gear I was able to cast the following during the 18 secs of MoR :
4 Essence strikes
4 Spirit burns
2 Gazes
1 Spirit boon strike.

The math is done in the channeling thread but overall you could consistently dish 30-40 DPS with very low mana cost – you’ll empty your mana pool only after 2 minutes of constant spamming.

I’m waiting for comments and suggestions.

Small note - most testing was done before the recent update. The update buffed most of the skills used so the build is to become even more powerful. The simple passage of essence strike from 7e to 9e is incredible and makes the use of something like channeled strike too...

Well, the problem with Channeling wasn't the spammability or energy costs... It was the damage. True, it has been buffed, but Elementalists still have the huge advantage of most of their lightning spells have inate armor penetration of 25%, which gives quite a bit of oomph; Ritualist Channeling still doesn't have this.

Your average squishy has 60 AL... 40 AL halves damage, so that already reduces Spirit Burns (example spell) damage to 50 with conditions met. The extra 20 AL will reduce the damage by an additional 22% (roughly, not too good at the AL calculations), bringing your measly 50 damage down to 35-40 damage; and that's when the conditions are met.
Also, any decent caster will have some kind of armor but and some eles wear armor with extra AL vs. Lightning damage, so there goes even more damage.

True, you can spam these forever but the damage is minute and easy for any caster to heal; warriors and rangers are untouchable.

Cool build, but the DPS of 40 is just way too low and you can't spike either. Not sure how to make it better though, Channeling rits just aren't viable as of yet.

Good luck getting a good build out of it though.

PS: I think possibly this belongs in the Mesmer department; I mean, with you being primary Mesmer and all...

I think you do not understand correctly how armor works. The damage indicated in the skill description is the damage you deal against a 60 AL opponent of your level. Thats almost everything except warriors, rangers and some lit resist gear on eles. Spirit burn will do 105 damage to a monk, necro, mesmer etc. The armor issues are the same for this damage dealer like for any other (except the few sorts of damage that ignore the armor)

The 25% armor penetration of lightning spells is a lot less important than you seem to think of. Bottom line, lightning damage spells cost more, do less damage per sec or damage per mana, have longer recharges and/or cause exhaustion. There is no lightning spamming build for ele that could even get close to this ritualist build.

As for spike....Well, it could get included in a Rainbow type spike, having two spells that do over 200 damage together with fast casting time and fast recharge. But that's not the point - its not a spike damage build (which are kinda common) but its a damage pressure build (only wars, and condition/hex spammers are included into this category - and maybe smiters). High pressure damage is a lot harder to defend against.

As for why it's here and not the mesmer....It looks pretty obvious to me this is a ritualist build. It's organised around ritualist attributes, tactics and spells and has only one mesmer spell. A "pure" ritualist build could even be imagined with the hasting weapon elite.

quickening weapon got a boost. I think i'll try this out. You can use quckening weapon as your fast casting and teh -25% recharge will help alot.

Its possible there s gonna be alot of testing for me to do friday in AB

not to metion the fact of double AB
im get my 15k kurzuck this weekend i hope

so many buffs, the rit is gonna be fun as hell.
restoration got buffed alot as well. Some may compain that recup got nerfed"
the the lowere recharge time means you can keep it up infinatly and life as well. This is a huge halp as we can now use life transfer, one of the best single target heals in the game 225 hp

Your sugested build has a very low survivability level. Me primaries generally count on Distortion and stuff like Ether Feast to survive. Surely you have the spike skills but a stable build has more than spiking. For example, when you FC Air you can utilize stuff like Blinding Flash to keep pesky physicals at bay. I would definitely take at least one proto/heal Weapon spell or a self-heal of some sorts. Better nrg management, too. Why do you want to fast cast these again? There are other alternatives for fast recharge, too.

Quote: Bottom line, lightning damage spells cost more, do less damage per sec or damage per mana, have longer recharges and/or cause exhaustion. There is no lightning spamming build for ele that could even get close to this ritualist build. that makes two of us^^. I've been testing chanelling builds since factions came out, and ive been on par with lightning eles with ever since (contrary to peoples disbelief), now with the latest buff, I'm just shuddering at the amount of damage I can do (I got 30 consec with a group last night with my rit^^)

Quote: Originally Posted by Hella Good

All good points there Earendril, but I have to agree with Hella... Get some defense in there.

But given that I didn't know that damage description was based of a 60 AL target, I might wanna try this one out... It looks interesting now.

What can I say....

I really dislike it when I hear "yes but your build cannot do this or that..." No build in the world can do everything. Sure a FC lit ele will be good at shutting warriors. A domination mesmer at shutting down monks. And a trapper will spread conditions. But when you judge a build you have to keep in mind its' declared functions, not the functions you expect it to fulfill.


The machine gunner is a damage dealer. Period. His main strenght is to be capable to output a huge amount of damage per second without pause for a long time, hoping to outdamagel the enemy's healing. Self heal is only an issue in RA for a pure damager - and RA are too "random" anyway. Other forms of PvP will not have a pure caster damager worry too much about self healing. And besides, there are 1-2 flexible skill slots that could be used for self defence skills - I even mentioned Distortion and Weapon of warding as options in my suggested build but people seem to have missed that.

I personally think that this machine gunner should not take the 5-6 seconds off his damage cycle to cast a self heal or self protect spell...it would ruin his purpose by cutting his damage output. It's the monk's job to keep him alive. But that is a matter of opinion.

Also, to ask for an energy management skills means you have not understand the build. There are absolutely no energy issues if the build is correctly played. none. Did some maths on the "channeling" thread and assuming a continual spamming of 35-40 DPS, the energy loss would be of about 15 per minute (maybe even less now). Essence strike under MoR is a very effective energy engine.


As for fast cast...its not the fast cast I want (though it helps) - its the fast recharge. The other options I considered were Quickening Zephyr (and using the QZ spirit to fuel the spells- dies faster and ups ) and the Weapon of Quickness ritualist skill (only 25% faster and 2 second cast time). Also did some math models for arcane echo but all were less effective that the Mantra of Recovery version.

Anyway, while you can analize and comment a build based only on the description, I strongly suggest you people try it before commenting....it helps a lot to understand some aspects like the conditional damage and the energy management.

Earendil

Quote: Originally Posted by Rancour

actually channaling does decent dmg vs all classes except warriors, rangers and paragons ( minus well admit it, yet antoher class against which elemental dmg is useless)

pure channeling is difficult t owork with, it needs a few skills to round it out. such as other spirits, ther are quite a few AOE and single target auto nuke options i could think off. also some form of heal would be excellent.

ooo, I thought that the paragons just had 80AI and nothing more... we'll have to wait and see again.

MB&S works wonders in a chanelling build. But it's easier to go pure chanelling than it would be to go a pure communer or a restoration rit, so, it works well on its own.

pargons do have 80 AL. but like a warriorior they have numerous ways to increase defense and self heal

Something a little on the less important side of things:

Quite a few air ele skills require a projectile to hit a target. Things like lightning orb and lightning javelin (if you wanted to use that) require a projectile to connect.

None of these skills have that requirement, and thus they offer a little more versatility. Not to mention pesky monks can't hide .

i don't have any comment regarding the build except to approve it from personal experience, been with a team of 2 Rit/Me, 1 Mes/(forgot) and a crippling ranger (me) very good build for random arena, we have 14 flawless consecutives wins beaten team with 2 monks, beats R/N etc etc, and 4 teams out of the 14 were from team arena, so i think Rit/Me are very good. it also depends on how good and experinece the Rit/Me players are.