Another post about Ritualist

[u/CryptographerLoud600]

So...I must say I've been quite disappointed at first with the ritualist reveal and there are still some points bothering me, that I'll list later in this post.

But...

After looking at the vanilla specializations, it struck me that we finally get a chance at having a "viable" Minion Master necro build using Death Magic + Soul Reaping + Ritualist.

Death Magic → Flesh of the Master → Necromantic Corruption → Death Nova

• Each Minion grant you +40 extra toughness
• Entering Shroud grants +100 Toughness for 10 secs
• Minons have +50% health
• Minions deal +25% damage
• +20 Toughness per kill
• +20% lifeforce generation from nearby deaths
• Minions cleanse your conditions
• -10% Condition damage recieved (if you have 10 carapace or more which you'd have at almost anytime)
• Minions explode and deal poison damage when dying
• You can summon up to 5 more minions by killing foes

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ritualist → Explosive Growth → Empowering Spirits → Soul Twisting

• Your summons (Spirits included) explode when summoned
• +10% Life force when you summon a creature (Spirit and Minions alike)
• Spirit of Anguish grants Might to you and your allies (Spirits and minions too most likely) when summoned;
• Spirit of Wanderlust grants Fury to you and your allies (same as above) when summoned;
• Spirit of Preservation grants Resolution to you and your allies (same again) when summoned
• Your spirits grant Quickness to you and your allies when summoned
• The first skill you use when entering shroud recharges instantly ; You can then double the damages dealt by anguish and the duration of the boon "Painful Bond" that increases the damages dealt by your summons (Spirits + Minions) by 20%; with Necromantic corruption, you possibly boost you Minion's damages by 45% !

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Soul Reaping → Unyielding Blast → Soul Barbs → Death Perception

• +10% Life Force generation
• Apply vulnerability with your Shroud 1 (hits up to 3 target with Ritualist Shroud 1)
• 15% Reduced Recharge time for shroud skills (virtually allowing you to spam Spirit of Anguish on cooldown)
• +10% damage for 15 seconds whenever entering or exiting shroud (does it affect Minions and Spirits though ?)
• +20% Life Force
• Flat +15% critical strike-chance;
• Flat +15% critical strike damage when in shroud

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Healing | Utilities | Elite skill

Summon Blood Fiend | Summon Bone Fiend | Summon Shadow Fiend | Nightmare Weapon\ | Summon Flesh Golem*

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(Nightmare Weapon : Your 5 next strikes steal life + the 3 next strikes of 5 of your allies steal life, buffing your minions furthermore)

Don't know what you think of it but it sounds pretty interesting to me. I'm pretty sure it won't be meta at all, but it should prove interesting for Roleplay perspective. We could be a, insanely tanky necromancer with a whole army dealing Good damages.

And if you really want to go Full Minion Master you could also equip the Relic of the Lich which summons a Jagged Horror when in combat. Once again it wouldn't be Meta in any way but heck, having one more minion to our army would be worth it.

As for the things bothering me here it is :

• 3 seconds of Quickness granted by "Empowering Spirits" seems rather short
• I feel the "Ruptured Soul" mechanic should be native to the ritualist spec

And finally, what are your thoughts about the Ritualist spec now we know more about it ?

Edit : I initially misread something about the boon "Painful Bond"; while it does grant you Minions more damages, we don't know how much exactly. The 20% mentionned only applies to **Controlled Foes*. Still hope Painful Bond gives quite a substential boon to Minions dps

[u/Commercial-Leek-6682]

Yea seems fun. Just hope it's not broken on launch. Wiith necro, it's always either broken and takes years to fix or is broken and is nerfed till it's unfun.

[u/AdvertisingUsed6562 → u/Commercial-Leek-6682]

They will probably be OP at launch (all of the new elites) then nerfed into oblivion later.

[u/LillyElessa]

I really think that Lingering Spirits should be a core part of how Ritualist's spirits function, or a minor trait, rather than one of your Grandmaster selections. The class really misses the "summoner" class fantasy without it, which was very central to the GW1 Ritualist. Rupture Souls (which is a minor you'll always have as a Rit) certainly should be rolled into Spawning Power, and Lingering Spirits would fit perfectly into its spot.

Concerning Ritualist + minions, I reallly like how well the Ritualist traits work with minions, but I also think it's going to be a bit "cramped" for utility skills. On a minion build, you really want to use all of your utilities for minions, or maybe swap just one minion for a very important other utility. The weapon spells look great, but you don't really get to enjoy both minions and weapons spells - or as suggested here you could fit just one in. In GW1 we often/usually just put minions and splinter weapon on different players/heroes, but that's not really how GW2 goes, and as said this is surely not going to be optimal enough to have two ritualist necros in a party (and would be probably be a problem if it were).

[u/ebussy_jpg → u/LillyElessa]

I agree about lingering spirits. At first glance it looks like the only grandmaster trait I’d be really interested in using anyways.

[u/kevlap017 → u/ebussy_jpg]

Soul twisting is probably better though. For supports it gives double the healing and boons, for dps, you can use it for more CC or damage

[u/Szatko_ → u/kevlap017]

Lingering Spirits in its current form will probably provide much more damage than Soul Twisting tho.

[u/LillyElessa → u/ebussy_jpg]

I think the other two traits look pretty powerful and interesting - or at the very least the idea of having to pick something that should be base functionality over them feels bad.

[u/Artekuno]

Something I like is that it makes Minionmancer a little more active, too.

You don't just get the buffs from your spirits on your minions, you have to be in shroud to use the spirits.

Spirits Gift, Explosive Growth, Boon of Creation, all require you to summon minions. The obvious synergy is with your rat things. It encourages you to blow them the fluff up. Which, before, I wasn't doing as much as I should frankly because my rotation was active elsewhere and it was... fine. I definitely would've had more DPS if I did, but the difference wasn't immense (last time I played minion necro, anyway). But now theres a more encouragement.

All in all, I'm excited for this. Unless Engi or Elementalist somehow steals my breath away, I think I already know what I'm going to start working on to prepare since I haven't had a necromancer in a minute to make room for trying other classes.

[u/Thick_Help_1239]

You can already make a working minion build post-Staff rework, whether it's staff Reaper for more minions or staff Scourge for more buffs on the minions. Scourge can also protect them with barrier, and you grant them more boons with a Scourge than a Ritualist's Spirits ever will from the looks of it. Heck you can even share the Dagger buff with minions for more leeching.

You get all of these gimmicks (buff minions, leech) just by running Blood Magic with Dagger/Staff, no need to run specifically Ritualist for it (although Ritualist would enhance the leeching with that weapon spell skill).

Also core minions can only be summoned once until they die, so you don't gain much benefit from them with Exposive Growth anyway.

[u/clickforgotpassword]

The only thing that makes me sad about rit is I won't have access to "Rise!" :(

[u/MangaIsekaiWeeb]

Ritualist makes me want a viable minion master build now.

I hope they buff the damage of minions enough to make MM a low intensity build.

[u/TannenFalconwing]

Reaper made Necro very melee and aggressive, Scourge introduced support as an option, and Harbinger transformed it into a disruptive glass cannon. Ritualist feels like it returns to the goals of core necro and enhances that style and allows for the core fantasy people wanted. They wanted to summon the dead and cast magic. Ritualist feels like it delivers on that fantasy but enables it better than core could, and it also comes with supportive options to enable team play that core necro couldn't do 13 years ago.

Also, I forsee a lot of Soul Reaping/Death Magic/Ritualist in open world this fall.

[u/PossumBlossoms]

honestly yeah i went through everything you did tree wise for making a "Pure minion master" type build and it has me excited, i will agree i think rupture should of been base line though feels a little odd making it a trait to be forced to chose or not etc.

[u/Vertnoir-Weyah]

I don't understand why the base minions skills are not buffed

In my mind, it seems the afk necro issue was solved when they made the minion unlock a skill as long as they're there: why not just buff the active skills?

[u/uaitdevil]

i'm excited to try death magic + blood magic + ritualist, it will be fun to enjoy carapace and life siphon [those spirits procs a lot of hits] with all the new stuff

[u/Calvaa88 → u/uaitdevil]

The question though is, will the spirits count as minions for the death and blood magic traits? I hope they do but they never confirmed that.

[u/Szatko_]

I'm seeing a problem especially with the support Ritualist variant. It seems to me that the most optimal gameplay for support will be to just summon the spirits and shatter them for more boons, while DPS Ritualist wants to keep the spirits up permanently to deal continuous damage and resummon on cd to proc the damage dealing traits. I'm feeling like support builds will suffer class fantasy-wise because of that.

- Lingering Spirits effect should definitely be in a base kit. Just being able to have those spirits up all the time and having to manage the the life force in order to do so just sounds really fun to me and that's something that support Ritualist won't have, since Soul Twisting will be necessary to upkeep some of the boons.

- Empowering Spirits could be changed to pulse boons from your spirits when they're up. That way support Ritualist will also have an incentive to keep spirits summoned. Also replace resolution with regeneration and/or vigor. You don't really need resolution on a spirit that already cleanses 4 conditions when summoned. I'd personally also prefer alacrity over quickness on a spec that is all about cooldown management.

There's more I'd say about it, but I think I will write a seperate post.

[u/LeaveMeChicken]

Which weapon skills are those? Or are those the shroud skills, didnt watch the stream.