The Ritualist

[Lurker Wyrm]

I've noticed, both in-game and on forums, that a lot of people are really dissatisfied with the ritualist as a primary class. After having tried various combinations of Rt/Mo, Rt/N, Rt/R, etc., I have to say that a ritualist primary is (believe it or not) pretty nifty. Not because spawning power is actually useful as an attribute, but because it can combine with the summoning to make itself useful. The devs didn't provide enough spirits with the out-of-the-box ritualist to actually make it useful, so I went and bought 2 of my own, Bloodsong and Dissonance, to use in addition to the provided Pain and Shadowsong. And using those 4, was I ever able to notice a difference in power.

For starters, ritualist spirits work in much the same way ranger spirits do, in that you can't have multiple instances of the same spirit, even if they're both from different summoners. This means that, at most, a team needs 2 ritualists, 1 defensive (restoration), 1 offensive (communing). You're also going to need to devote pretty much your entire skill bar to it (4 spirits, 3 spirit enhancers/related skills), so bringing along a pet or minions isn't exactly an option. If you want to go those routes, you're going to need to spec for them (speccing for pet as a non-ranger primary isn't the most efficient thing to do either); you can't have a mix of both (just as warriors shouldn't spec for both hammer and axe).

Secondly, your elite is an even more important choice than before. Whereas with the other classes you've got 3-4 choices for which elite to bring, a spirit summoner really only has 2. Ritual Lord and Soul Twisting. If you're going the heal route, Preservation is also a possibility, but since my experience comes purely from the offensive spectrum, I'll ignore that for now. Soul Twisting is my personal choice of elite for spirit use. Why? Well, let's look at the skill to begin with:

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

While this may look somewhat awkward to begin with (since you have to destroy a spirit to activate it), it becomes incredibly helpful later on, and specifically for use with spirits that don't last very long (Dissonance being a primary example). Once you get a chain started, you can have it going for as long as you want. In other words, you can use Soul Twisting on a spirit that has a fast recharge (Pain, in my case) and then summon Dissonance. Now, when Dissonance gets near the end of its duration (or it's being attacked), you use Soul Twisting on that spirit and you're ready to put the spirit back up again in a hurry (the 66% boost in casting speed means it's ready in less than 2.5 seconds). You can keep doing this over and over to have a virtually never ending Dissonance (Dissonance is the spirit that interrupts with each attack, in case you were wondering why I like it so much). The best part of Soul Twisting, to top it all off, is that it doesn't expire until you summon a spirit with it. So you can walk around for an hour and still have it ready, which takes a lot of pressure off having to cast something right away, even if you're not ready or near the next fight.

The other elite of choice is Ritual Lord, which is a skill that, while in effect, will speed up the recharge time of spirits. This, too, is a great utility for always having access to a spirit. However, I didn't have access to it, so I can't really comment on its usefulness. I would imagine, however, that it can be quite nice if you plan to move at a faster pace than the spirits would normally be recharging at.

The other elites that might seem useful at first really fall short in practicality. Attuned was Songkai is a good example. When you think about it, all it does is reduce the energy cost for summoning a spirit, which is pointless if you've got Boon of Creation on your skillbar (which you should). The other choices, Consume Soul and the elite spirit Wanderlust... well... I'm hoping I don't need to explain why those are lackluster and should be ignored (Consume has potential on a healer, but Perservation looks better). There's also always the choice of going ranger primary and using Oath Shot to keep the spirits up, but that's not always an option, especially if someone will be using spirits with just Factions and not Prophecies (thereby not being able to use Oath at all).

As far as using spirits for combat, they will generally follow your target, so you're going to have to use a bit of brainpower there (i.e. is it really necessary to have Shadowsong up if you're going to be attacking mages, or to have Dissonance up so you can attack a warrior?). I will say this, however, at 12 Communing, the spirits were dealing ~15 damage each (some higher, some lower, so that's where it balanced out to). When you take into account the fact that you've got 4 spirits attacking at once, you've got 60 damage being added to the 11-21 from your staff/wand. At that point, you're pretty much outdamaging everyone else on the field (even if your staff was dealing minimum damage, that's still 70+ damage every 2 seconds or so) making you a very valuable asset to the team (esp. when you consider all the other effects of the attacks: Shadowsong causes Blind, Dissonance interrupts, Bloodsong does life stealing damage so it'll go through protection). Generally speaking, spirits are ignored by most combatants (players and ai alike) so keeping them alive isn't too much of an issue. Even if they are targets, they can usually stay alive well enough with enough points in their attribute and in spawning power, both of which should be 10 at minimum, and the spirit-related attribute should be a 12.

So, how does this all tie back to the spawning power attribute (and the reason you're taking ritualist primary instead of ranger)? Simple, Boon of Creation, your energy management skill, and Ritual Lord, your skill to keep spirits ready, are both tied to spawning power. Also, in the event that your spirits are attacked, that extra 52% health (at 13 spawning) will really make a difference in keeping it alive (if only to buy you the second or two you'll need to summon a new version of the spirit that's being attacked). Also, if you want to be a serious spirit summoner, you're going to need the runes to do so. As has been noticed before with the other classes, there's a big difference between an attribute at 12 and an attribute at 16. At 16, your spirits can potentially (again, I didn't get an attribute that high so this is hypothetical) be level 10 and dealing ~20 damage instead of ~15 (~80 vs. ~60 combined force), which is worth it all on its own, even if you completely ignore the primary attribute.

In case anyone is interested, my spirit summoner wound up with the following build:
Communing: 12
Spawning: 12
Restoration: 3
Soul Twisting [E]
Shadowsong
Dissonance
Pain
Bloodsong
Boon of Creation
Draw Spirit
Flesh of my Flesh

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Edit: After gaining another skill point, I found this gem of a skill tucked away in the channeling line: Painful Bond. What this skill does that makes it perfect for the offensive spirit summoner is it deals additional damage to whatever gets hit by a spirit's attack. At 8 channeling, it's 14 damage. Seeing the absolute pain this can potentially inflict, I switched the attributes around to 12 communing, 10 spawning, 8 channeling (and, to be honest, I could probably switch spawning and channeling). This skill, for damage purposes, basically doubles the damage a spirit deals, so that ~15 goes up to ~30, hinting at some incredible results. The only spirit this has no effect on is Bloodsong, which doesn't deal damage, but rather steals life. But still, with 4 spirits up and ~30 each (the number is in actuality higher (moreso with runes), but ~15 for base is easy to work with), that winds up around ~105, at which point you're outdamaging everything else in the game.

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Edit 2: After experimenting a bit with Painful Bond, it appears to add the damage with each attack from a spirit, not just damage (ergo, it's good to read the skill description), meaning the life stealing effect of Bloodsong will trigger it as well (that ~105 from above becomes a ~120). Granted, this is all in an ideal situation and you can't count on having all 4 up at the same time on a regular basis (I usually have 2-3 up each fight though).

Also, with points invested in channeling, there's another skill worth taking the time to experiment with (on release, of course) called Spirit Boon Strike. This one hits an enemy for lightning damage and heals nearby spirits. Unfortunately, my bar has no more room for skills, unless I take out the res (which may be possible depending on who else brings one). Even so, here's a build thought I might try in the future, attributes uncertain: Ritual Lord, Painful Bond, Spirit Boon Strike, Pain, Bloodsong, Shadowsong, Dissonance (or Disenchantment, depends on what you're going into), Flesh of my Flesh. Right now I would put the attributes at 12 communing, 10 spawning (for the Rit Lord), 8 channeling, modified to 16/11/9 or possibly 15/11/10. That's something I'll have to experiment with.

[Zed-F]

Thanks for the update on the Ritualist.

I find myself thinking that if the Ritualist build you mentioned has high damage output if everything is going well, that's only fair. It's a heavily back-loaded damage build, all single target damage and it's pretty slow to get going (even with Soul Twisting to help, if you use that instead of Ritual Lord.) By the time the Ritualist has all their spirits up, a front-loaded damage build (e.g. Assassin) will have killed her first target and at least be working on a second.

I also find myself wondering if a Ranger primary couldn't do a pretty good job as a ritualist as well, using Oath Shot and/or Serpent's Quickness to recharge those spirits (and everything else!) even more quickly. Especially if you use cheap spirits and those spells that sacrifice spirit life to some benefit. Energy could be an issue as I don't think binding rituals are affected by expertise (why not? IIRC nature rituals are...) but there seems to be some potential for a build there... and there's always Energizing Wind if you want to cast big spells and don't mind annoying your teammates.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Binding Rituals aren't lowered by expertise because they're considered different types of skills than Nature Rituals. While in the current game Expertise works on everything except spells, the description is still specific about what it effects (i.e. stances, etc.). The devs might include them in the expertise effect at a later point in the game's release, but until then, oh well.

The main reason I don't want to use ranger primary as a summoner is because it gets rid of the option to use ritualist runes. Spirit damage goes up by very small amounts (1 per point) so it's important to have as many points in them as possible to maximise their effectiveness. Trying to get by with just a 10 or 12 in the attribute is like trying to use Spiteful Spirit at 12 curses. It's still plenty effective, but at 16 it becomes ever so much better. There's also the slight problem of getting Oath Shot to go off when you want it. It's usually not a problem, but since you're spending so much of your time summoning, you can occasionally miss your chance to use it, especially if you fire at something that dies before the arrow hits. wasting energy you probably don't really have at that point.

You're right about getting spirits up in time for them to actually do good. That was a bit of a problem for me and the reason why, after a while, I would only have a couple out during a fight, not bothering with the others. However, there are a few tricks you can use to circumvent this:
- You can precast outside aggro range and then use Draw Spirit to bring them into the fight. This can get most of them into the battle quickly and early. The downsides are that it won't work very well on spirits with short durations (i.e. Dissonance, Disenchant, Shadowsong, etc.) and if you're in a party with people who are impatient and/or unwilling to sit there while you cast (i.e. Drasca) it just won't work.
- There is an item spell that will summon a spirit of Pain, identical to the one you would normally summon, when dropped. This can be precast before battle and used to get the spirit up in a hurry. It also won't used up Soul Twisting if you have that in effect, so you can still cast another spirit quickly. The downsides to this are that the skill costs more, takes longer to cast and recharges more slowly than the actual spirit, so it will definitely need to be cast before battle. Holding an item is also not a very good idea in battle if you're not a warrior because of the auto-aggro and especially if you're with no other players (henches only), because you won't be able to get them to target the way you want them to. A positive end to this, is that if you're patient, you can summon the spirit right when you leave town and then use Soul Twisting on it to have that available early on, and then by the time you get to a battle, chances are it'll be ready again and you can use Soul Twisting on it again to get the other spirit out fast.

Right now the biggest problem to spirit users is that they choose their own targets. I had previously thought they would target based on your call, but further testing proved that to not be the case. That's probably the biggest roadblock to an effective spirit summoner that exists right now.

Oh yeah, one nice thing about spirits, however, is that they have longbow range, so they don't need to be right in the middle of the fight to be useful.

[Zed-F]

The main reason I don't want to use ranger primary as a summoner is because it gets rid of the option to use ritualist runes. Spirit damage goes up by very small amounts (1 per point) so it's important to have as many points in them as possible to maximise their effectiveness. Trying to get by with just a 10 or 12 in the attribute is like trying to use Spiteful Spirit at 12 curses. It's still plenty effective, but at 16 it becomes ever so much better.

The nice thing about doing it as Ranger primary is that you don't have to go all spirits all the time, since Oath Shot has several good combos that only require Oath Shot and one or two other skills. Toss on Choking Gas and you suddenly become a good interrupter as well as a spirit summoner, and can switch roles mid-combat depending on what's needed. You probably won't be as good a summoner as a Rit primary would be... but you might still be effective in that role, and potentially more versatile to boot. (This doesn't just apply to Rt secondary either, but the slow-recharge rituals are one example of a skill that benefits from Oath Shot.)

Actually I'm more interested in developing a R/A; I tried one out briefly in the preview event and it was fun. With 13-14 expertise, a lot of your energy worries as an assassin more-or-less go away. This opens up a lot of potential for different skill combos that an assassin might normally shy away from due to energy issues, and generally lets you pull off quick-recharging skill combos more frequently. (Not that primary assassins don't have their own ways of doing energy management, it's just that being R primary will let you go off the beaten path in that regard much more easily.)