Character Animation Question (Total Newb)

Hello There Guildwarzians!

I am one of those people who loved the GW2 beta and wanted to check out the original and I have to say that I am having a blast! I am disappointed that I have only now discovered this game. There is only one thing that really bugs me, which I hope you can help me with.

Is there a way to change the character casting animation? In testing out the various classes I noticed that I kept making a "Any/Rt". So, I figured I really should just make a Rt. Unfortunately the casting animations of the Ritualist really, really, really, bug me. (It's the blindfolded, head down, back snapping.) I hunted around the forum and even checked out mods, but no dice. Is the only option to make a E/Rt or N/Rt? Or is there some magic voodoo that you can do?

Thanks!!

BTW awesome forum! Between this forum and the wiki I have been able to hunt down answers to all my other questions.

I'm glad you're enjoying GW1. Unfortunately the answer to your question is no. The animations are what they are and there is no changing them. Sorry!

Though SoS is the best meta build for a rit, any/rt works NEARLY as good, so id just go with w/e char u think has the coolest animations :-)

Thanks! Bummer. But Thanks!

Back when binding rituals had a like 3-second casting time, the animations made more sense -- they were kind of like exotic interpretive dance as you communed with the spirit realm. But having such long casting time sucked and I don't think any of us want to go back to those dark times (hence the explosion in popularity of rits since then). But unfortunately they didn't fix the cast animations when they reduced cast times and now, yeah, they're rather spastic.

But I think choosing your primary profession based on casting animations is a bit short-sighted. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things that go into character creation -- appearance has a lot to do with it -- and you should be happy with your choice. And Olle is right in saying that most other professions currently have no problem running a spirit spam build. In fact, my ranger currently runs around with spirits instead of a bow because I like the R/rt energy management and extra armor. That said, I also have a primary rit.

However, there are drawbacks to doing that: Mainly runes. You cannot equip profession-specific runes for your secondary profession. So you will be limited to 12 natural points in any of your secondary attributes (where a rit primary could get up to 16). This will make your spirits weaker and limit the spread of your points. You also will have little benefit from Spawning Power skills, since you won't be able to spec into it.
Lastly, you will always be vulnerable to any game updates that limit/nerf the use of certain skills by non-primary professions. We've seen a lot of PvE skill updates lately that make it harder for other professions to exploit certain overpowered secondary skills. Since Signet of Spirits is already under an amount of scrutiny by the community as being too overpowered (though I honestly can't understand why, it's not a "wow! numbers!" insta-win skill), it could get hit by this at any time.

By all means, play around. Just bear the above in mind when making your decision. You may decide to play it safe and just go ahead with a ritualist -- the character animations will probably start to fade from your notice after a while. Or you may make another character to run spirit spam on and discover other builds for them that you like even better. The beauty of Guild Wars is that it's easy and fun to experiment.

Welcome to the game.

although I do agree that any/rt is okayish, It depends on the primary class how good. The reason is the first profession primairy attribute

So to compare different combo's of professions and their primairy attribute in a sos build.

RT/Any: primary attribute spawning power: increased health of spirits. So on a rt/any your spirits are harder to be killed by foes and therefore last longer. Most professions can't counteract that.

W/RT: primary attribute strenght. No bonus for sos build. You risk running out of energy

mo/rt: divine favor = more healing, so no bonus for your sos build. you risk running out of energy.

me/rt: fast casting, though this is good cause you setup spirits quicker, you still have the energyproblem when your spirits are gone too soon.

a/rt: critical srikes. though this is an energy management attribute, you need criticals to get the bonus, so no good

p/rt: same as a/rt but now you miss the shouts needed for energy management.

d/rt: again no energy bonus when using spirits.

Then the three that do compensate the lack of spirit health:

r/rt: expertise lowers the cost of energy when putting up spirits leaving you more then enough energy to set them back up as soon skills have recharged

n/rt: soul raping gives you energy back whenever an enemy is killed. Though this is a huge advantage, your spirits need to have the time to kill one or two foes to have this advantage.

e/rt: energy storage makes your max energy pool a lot bigger so you have enough energy to setup your spirits 2-3 times.

keep in mind that all builds need to have a very good investment in the primairy attribute

If you really don't like the casting animations you can always use one of the tonics =) I like using the ranger animations so I got a salma and jin tonic =) also the most of the tonics (especially the white ones) are really cheap now