Guild Wars 2

Many ppl, including me, would like to see a return of the Ritualist. One decisive role of the GW1 Ritualist was healing, but since there won’t be dedicated healers in GW2, the Ritualist would have to be reworked for GW2. With this profession concept i tried to replace the healer aspect, while maintaining the overall Ritualist’s feel. I also tried to provide a concept which might attract other classic hybrid fans, like Druid or Shaman players. Since the result is quite a bit different to the GW1 Ritualist, I renamed the profession to:

The Evocator!

The spirit realm is here and now, just not for everybody.

Profile

Studying the ways of the ritualists for centuries taught the evocators to commune with the souls of the fallen, forge alliances with them, but also subdue some of the grim souls. Even in case you get close to them they know very well how to take advantage of your strength and enhance their allies, in case they don’t cut you in pieces themselves. So don’t mess with someone who got access to a whole dimension you don’t know anything about!

Playstyles

Similar the WoW Druid’s forms, the Evocator can choose between different evocations, which technically stands for different playstyles. Since this adds complexity similar to the Elementalist’s attunements, the Evocator can only use one weapon at a time. The Evocator can switch the evocation at will as long as the healing skill is not on cooldown, however, when the Evocator switches his evocation the healing skill is set on cooldown. This is not an issue for the player when he’s not fighting, but in pvp it prevents getting the Evocator an unfair advantage compared to the other professions. The player has to decide whether he wants to heal up or switch to a different evocation which provides him buffs, a pets or a companion. The Evocator can fulfil all roles (control, damage, support) with each evocation and weapon combination. Some weapons may be better for a certain role, but the evocations only affect the playstyle, not the role.

F1 key – Evocation of Spirits (summoner playstyle: inspired by the SoS Ritualist! and the City of Heroes Controller!)
Unlike the Necromancer minion master, this is a very indirect, but yet active playstyle. By clicking the f1 key the Evocator summons 3 spirits which last 2m, until they get killed or until he changes the evocation. The f1 key got a cooldown of 1m, so you can summon max. 6 spirits. The spirits deal magical ranged damage and, unlike the GW1 spirits, are mobile (we all used Summon Spirits! anyway, didn’t we?). In this playstyle the Evocator doesn’t deal damage himself. All he does is summoning his minions, making sure the enemy doesn’t kill him or the minions by control skills, debuffing the enemy and buffing the minions and team mates with weapon and possession spells (I will explain possession spells later on). In order to encourage the player to buff his spirits, his boons add a significant amount of damage to the spirits damage (maybe something like 50%). Since it would break the balance if the Evocator’s allies would get the same boost, they are affected a lot less (maybe 5% or whatever the equivalent of the other cross profession combos is). The Evocator in summoner playstyle has to rely on his spirits. That’s why they can’t be one-shotted, like the mesmer clones.

F2 key – Evocation of Wraith (caster playstyle: inspired by the WoW Warlock!, the Allods Warden! and the Warhammer White Lion!)
With the F2 key the Evocator got access to the classic ranged caster hybrid playstyle (e.g. Elemental Shaman in WoW). To set it appart from the already existing casters, he gets a wraith as companion. The F2 key does not only switch to this evocation, but it also toggles between a defensive and a passive stance of the companion. The weapon skills or at least some of them also affect the companion directly. It is a very direct and active playstyle, where the Evocator and the wraith boost eachother. The wraith may die, but it automatically regenerates when it’s dead, so killing it is only a temporary advantage. In this evocation the Evocator got damage spells (spells like Spirit Rift!, Ray of Judgement! or maybe spells which look like little pets, like the fire energy or wind servant of the Aion Spiritmaster!), possession spells and weapon spells as weapon skills. The possession spells and weapon spells support him and his companion. Compared to the summoner playstyle the position of the boons are different though. The Evocator applies boons at the enemy’s location and the wraith applies boons at the Evocators location. Since the wraith is melee, it benefits from boons the Evocators applies. The Evocator’s weapon skills affect himself and his companion. With the 1 key of every weapon in this evocation the Evocator starts to cast a spell and simultaniously the wraith gets a speed boost and charges. Player and companion boost each other for optimal performance. E.g. the player applies bleeding with a skill and the companion deals extra damage to bleeding targets with another skill or the companion stuns the target and the player applies weaken to stunned targets. In this playstyle the Evocator might have some blink, teleport or “travel back in time” weapon skills.

F3 key – Evocation of Phantom (melee playstyle: inspired by the wow feral druids, enhancement shamans and the dervish)
Similar to the Dervish! the Evocator got increased health when choosing the melee playstyle. Like in the summoner and caster playstyles the Evocator takes possession of the enemies’ power and buffs his allies. In order to be able to deal damage, control and support with only one weapon, the Evocator gets some chain skills in melee playstyle. Since the Evocator doesn’t have shadowstep he needs to have other skills to accomplish the same effect. so one chain could e.g. temporarily reduce the movement speed of the enemies and increase the movement speed of the allies (step 1), hit them with an attack (step 2) and reduces the boon duration of the enemies while increasing it for the allies (step 3). Some of the skills or steps in their chain could work similar to Destructive was Glaive!, Mystic Sandstorm! (modified to deal ghost damage instead of earth), drop a “block the next attack” aoe boon or drop a Splinter Weapon! aoe weapon spell at the Evocator’s position. So in this playstyle the Evocator is like the eye of a hurrican. Allies may want to stay close to him (and therefore provide good targets for the enemy’s aoe spells) while the enemy might want to stay away from him or kill him. The longer the Evocator is active, the stronger he becomes, at least till he reaches the max amount of boons, which he would want to maintain. As reminiscence to the Dervish there might be a utility skill which summons a (temporary) scythe with different skills (e.g. you hit 3 foes instead of 1 since you spend 1 utility slot).

Mechanics

Spirits – ranged minions when using the summoner playstyle which primarily deal damage.

Wraith – melee companion when using the caster playstyle.

Damage Mitigation – in pvp the enemies usually ignore the pets and just go for the player. In the summoner playstyle the player itself is quite vulnerable, since he can’t deal damage himself. The spirits are the tools he works with. To encourage the enemy to attack the pets/companion first, the spirits and the wraith mitigate damage the Evocator takes (attacker hits a pet/companion -> pet/companion takes full damage, attacker hits the Evocator, who got an active pet/companion -> the damage is split between evocator and the pets/companion, therefore the Evocator doesn’t take the full amount of damage and might be able to handle the incoming damage, attacker hits the Evocator without active pet/companion -> the Evocator takes full damage). So if the enemy kills the pets/companion first, he reduces the damage he takes, since the Evocator himself does not deal damage in this evocation, but if he goes for the Evocator first, he’ll notice that the Evocator is quite durable and he has to soak up more damage.

Possession Spells (inspired by City of Heroes Kinetics power set!) – applying conditions to enemies and simultaneously boons to minions and/or allies which influence stats like e.g. power/damage, precision/crit chance, toughness/armor, vitality/health, energy (for dodging), attack speed/cast time, duration (incl. the duration of the pets) and movement speed (the last ones are sort of manipulating time as reminiscence to the Chronomancer). The conditions affect the target and the surrounding enemies (incl. minions) and the boons affect the Evocator and the surrounding minions and players. The possession conditions and boons stack up to 3 times and one Evocator is able to apply and maintain up to 3 lvls of conditions and boons himself. So you don’t need 2 Evocators to max out the conditions/buffs, but you might want to have a second Evocator for different conditions/buffs.

Alteration – negating the enemy’s positive effects (e.g. expire), turning them into negative effects or into positive effects for yourself.

Items Spells – conjured urns which trigger an effect when the player trops them. Well known from the Ritualist from GW1.

Weapon Spells – cone, drop or ground targeted aoe spells.

Control Skills – stuns, knockbacks, blinds etc..

Utility Skills

Item spells should be available to each playstyle of the Evocator, but there might be some item spells reserved for certain playstyles. Therefore item spells could be used as weapon and utility skills. The other skills are only useful in certain situations, so it wouldn’t make sense to tie them to weapon skills.

Item Spells – like the Ritualist item spells in GW1, they deal damage, control enemies, buff allies etc.

Skills which alter or nullify the enemy’s ground targeted aoe spells, like symbols, wards, wells etc.

Anti-minions skills – skills which kill minions, temporarily take over a enemy minion (any profession incl. Engineer turrets and Warrior banners), prevent the secondary effect of minions.

Anti-stealth skills – skills which prevent stealth, skills which mark stealthed people, skills which damages stealthed people or skills which prevents stealthed people to use any skills.

Traits

The five traitlines improve the following aspects of the Evocator.

Traitline which boosts damage and helps while using a melee playstyle.

Traitline which boosts damage and helps while using a caster playstyle.

Traitline which boosts damage of companion and minions and supports them.

Traitline which improves possession spells.

Traitline which improves the survivability.

Weapons

This professions also only got access to one weapon set at a time, since it got access to the different playstyles. Which weapons it gets tecnhnically doesn’t really matter, since it’s only for flavour and immersion. All of the available weapons are available in each playstyle. Just as an example:

Main hand – sword, mace, scepter.

Off-hand – sword, shield, torch.

Two-hand – staff.

Aquatic – spear.

Armor

Medium armor, just because hybrids usually use medium armor.

Theme

The theme is a very important part for a new profession. In GW2 each profession of the same armor class can use the same armor, but still armors are inspired by a profession’s theme. The Ritualist’s theme is very popular, but can’t just be copied into GW2, since tattoos are now a Norn racial feature, not a profession specific feature. Instead of the Ritualist’s tattoos the Evocator could use Dervish-like hoods, which makes the Evocator’s theme a combination of the Ritualist! and the Dervish!. Maybe some hoods could be made of transparent material, like that Aeon Flux hood. This would emphazise the mystic and ghostly appearance nicely.

The Evocator’s theme could be similar to this Ritualist in norn armor wearing a shining blade hood!, but with GW2 graphics it would look quite a bit better.

The spirits in summoner playstyle look pretty much like the Ritualist’s spirit, except that they are mobile and therefore have no or different chains!.

In caster playstyle the companion got more presence than the spirits in summoner playstyle. Maybe a little bit smaller than this fellow here and not a demon!. Maybe this size!, but, unlike those examples, the wraith theme should be used!.

In melee playstyle the Evocator is (maybe temporarily) surrounded with a ghostly appearance, like trapped within a spirit. That way the character and gear, the player spent a lot of time on, is still visble, but it still got some transformation touch. The style could be like this!, except for the horns and the size should be more like this! though.

The Evocator could also have some nature/restoration based skills, like using the power of gaia! like in the final fantasy! games and movies!.

alternative 1

alternatively to the concept in the op, the wraith in the caster playstyle could be deleted completely. that way the evocator would have the playstyle of a pure caster in this evocation, like the elementalist or an elemental shaman in wow, but i think the ability to choose and significantly change the playstyle with the other evocations would still attract fans of traditional hybrids (ritualists, druids, shamans etc.) and make it unique enough to be added.

alternative 2

alternatively to giving the caster playstyle a companion, the companion could go to the melee playstyle. that way the char wouldn’t need to have an increased amount of health, since the companion soaks up damage as well, especially since the damage mitigation mechanic would stay the same. this would be somewhat similar to the white lion in warhammer, but would prolly fit less for former dervish players.

TLDR: A profession where the F1-3 keys (toggles) define the playstyle, not the weapon:

F1 – Summoner, where spirits are the damage dealers
F2 – Caster
F3 – Melee

I hope there are some experienced players who can help me refine that concept further with their appreciated suggestions, ideas and criticisms.