Guild Wars 2

Background
Traditional Canthan Ritualism has faded from popular use because of its inefficiency compared to more modern methods of channeling magic. Rytlock’s journey through the Mists, however, has allowed him to discover a new form of magic. This new iteration of the Ritualist, popularly dubbed the “Mistblade,” attunes their weapons and armor to the Mists to draw massive amounts of ambient, other-worldly magic without disrupting their martial techniques.

Armor Type
Heavy – Ritualists excel at binding steel to the Mists, and thus prefer to use Heavy armor.

Weapons

The general guidelines behind the Ritualists preferred weapons are an emphasis on steel, as they do not utilize traditional magic.

Two-hand
Greatsword
Hammer
Longbow
Rifle

One-hand
Sword
Axe
Mace
Dagger
Pistol

Off-hand
Sword
Axe
Mace
Dagger
Pistol
Shield

Underwater
Spear

Profession Mechanic – Bindings

Like the Elementalist and the Engineer, the Ritualist cannot swap weapons, and are thus locked into a single weapon set. Unlike these, the Ritualist only has five weapon skills. Yes, you heard me right. Five.

In exchange for this sacrifice, however, Ritualists get a large increase in the efficiency of their weapon. They tend to have somewhat lower cooldowns than other professions, making them highly reliable with their weapon set of choice.

Their real claim to fame, however, is their F1-F4 skills – Bindings. These useful self-buffs grant them temporary bursts of power while also adding effects to their skills. Bindings work on a cooldown, meaning that each Binding is a resource that you want to use efficiently.

While traditional Ritualists were only capable of utilizing one weapon spell at a time, Mistblades can choose to utilize multiple spells at once, granting them tremendous bursts of strength at the cost of long-term effectiveness.

Bindings are directly slotted into the F1-F4 slots, allowing a Ritualist player to significantly change how they utilize each weapon set.

Activating a Binding triggers on Swap sigils.

The Ritualists Bindings include, but are certainly not limited to:

Preservation – Focuses on healing and supportive capabilities.

Destruction – Focuses on dealing AoE damage.

Pain – Focuses on improved damage and might-generation.

Bloodsong – Focuses on health steal.

Earthbind – An excellent combination of defense and offense, this Binding couples stability and stun breaks with weapon skills that deal additional effects to cc’d foes.

Shadowsong – Focuses on frustrating foes with conditions, including Blindness and Weakness.

Displacement – Focuses on evasion and blocking.

Enchantment – Focuses on condition removal and boon removal.

Wanderlust – Focuses on mobility and crowd control.

Empowerment – Grants miscellaneous offensive supportive effects.

Union – Grants miscellaneous defensive support effects.

Illustration of the Binding System (Ritualist Greatsword Skill)

Channeled Strike (Skill 5) –
Charge your weapon with energy from the Mists and then slam your blade to deal massive damage in a cone.
(Preservation) Heal allies in the cone.
(Destruction) The cone leaves behind a conal Lightning field that continues to damage enemies in the area.
(Pain) This skill’s damage is significantly increased. Gain Might for each foe struck.
(Bloodsong) Steal health from each struck foe.
(Earthbind) Knocks down all foes that are suffering from a control effect.
(Displacement) Evade attacks while charging energy.
(Enchantment) Remove a boon from all struck foes.
(Wanderlust) You move at 50% increased speed while charging energy.
(Empowerment) Pulse Might to nearby allies while channeling energy.
(Union) Pulse healing to nearby allies while channeling energy.
Etc.

Each skill has its own effects (which are, in large part, dictated by the nature and cooldown of the skill), but this helps to illustrate the basics of the system.

Utilities

Signet

Shout – Ritualist shouts invoke the aid of fallen heroes from the Mists, imbuing allies with unique, unstrippable benefits for a short duration.

Ritual – Summons a Spirit that is tied to your own armor. It manifests itself around your body while attacking foes or supporting allies. Unlike other summons, these are tied to your health and disappear when you take a certain amount of damage (or when their duration expires).

Rift – Tears a rift into the Mists at the target location, causing certain effects to happen at it.

Unique Attribute – Spawning Power

Reduces the cooldown of your Bindings.

nah i dont like dat idea

I love thought gone into this. My main comment would be the number of weapons being used. At the moment you have almost all possible combinations. That in itself isnt a bad thing, but its out of balance with other professions.

Won’t happen.
Way too much wish thinking in my opinion in this concept just to solve several points in one go, that a last heavy class gets implemented with his most loved class.

The best thing that will just happen for this game is, that the game will see in the future somewhen for more horizontal progression an implementation of Sub Classes, together with the feature of giving all classes through this more weapons to use.

Necromancer + Ritualist Sub Class + Ritualist Sub Class unlocking for the Character the Ability to wield Greatswords and et voila, you will exactly have what you want, without much effort.

I think you based this whole concept on the living story moment, where Marjory gets by her dead sister’s that infused spiritual katana, am I right???

So I ask you, why not simple stay at what we already have and improve that and add more horizontal progression on what we already have, (cause currently the game basically has no horizontal progression at all) instead of wanting to implement for every tiny stuff always directly complete new seperate classes???

Ritualists are occultic Scholars (and not Soldiers in heavy armors)
Necromancers are occultic Scholars

Do the math! 1+1 It shouldn’t be hard to think about, what would be the obvious better choice what to do with the Aspects of the Ritualist here in regard of GW2, as somethign like Bindings or Ash Urns, the other only missing gameplay mechanic from Ritualists, that hasn’t found its way somehow into the game, not even as environmental items would be great systems to improve the Necromancer together with giving them Greatswords (what would please also those people, that want stuff like Dark/Death Knights, because the only thing that is missing for that is givign Necromancers a Melee Cleave Weapon, that would be perfectly the Greastword and with a Sub Class System, with Ritualists it would be no problem to change or improve existing Class F-Mechanics on new added aspects, like your Bindings, that an as a Ritualist advanced Necromancer would receive new Binding Skils for example, when going into Death Shroud, or that the Death Shroud Mechanic would get then replaced by the Binding System, so that the as Ritualist specialized Necromancer has to sacrifice somethign of his survivability, therefore that he gains with Bindings alot more universality!
Under these Bindings could be then different Types.
Weapon Bindings and Ash Bindings as the new term for Ash Urn Skills.

While Weapon Bindings would be spiritual links from souls to a weapon, would be Ash bindings spiritual links from souls to an environmental item, that changes your Weapon Skills while you hold it, and changes the environment, around you, if you don’t hold it, as long as either its duration holds, or until the ash urn gets destroyed, which would also remove the environmental effect then.

I absolutely believe, improvign all classes with far more horizontal progression through adding Sub Classes and giving Ritualists to the necromancer as one of their options would be a far better homage to the Ritualists and overall improvement for the whole game, than to add them as a single seperate class the game and completely deform their class design into a heavy class, just so that they find somewhere a place, where currently is just luckily a slot free for them basically.

This especially also due to the Engineers already being too similar to how the Ritualist was in GW1 from the whole gameplay.
ANet already gave the Necromancer also more Ritualist Aspect,s as they have now, what they had not before in GW1 Spectral Magic, in other words, Spirit Magic.
So Necromancers already have advanced themself more into the other occultic spezialization of Necromancy that goes more into the direction of communing with the undeads and souls, instead of just only summoning them and bind the souls to dead flesh as a vessel for the soul that they can manipulate and command then as their minions.
Death Shroud in itself is already the visual proof of it, that Necromancers are already partwise Ritualists and have learned alot from them in the past 250 years, as the Death Shroud in itself is Phase Shifting, in which the body of the Necromancer phase shifts between the mist and the world of the living and becomes in the spiritual form in that time immune to physical harm as long the necromancer has enough life force from souls of killed creatures to maintain this state.

So seriously, in my humple opinion, sub classes that give all classes more horizontal progression with Necromancers becoming able to specialize themself into Ritualists is, what i think is what GW2 needs rather, than just Ritualists as a complete own seperate into a soldier shoehorned class, what Ritualists never were and should never be.

well besides that your class would be quite similar to a guardian.. sure its not called the same way and a weapon set more but there fore a f4…
these would work kinda simmillar so… mhmh.. probably not

i had a few days ago the idea of aches from gw1 ritualists
so that they would be something compeltely new aoes that are around yourself (like those fire rings in soe (p3 i guess) that damages your allies if u go too clsoe to them

this added with a long cooldown… the ability to drop the asches (similaritys to gw1) to either have a aoe effect.. meh..
or to make it so the aoe will stand at that point instead of continouly following you…

this way the ritualist would get a uniqe set of skills (sure asches should not be the only thing) and that wont be ritualists uniqe class mechanik…

but i guess if anet are planing on adding a ritualist.. they should use the asches from gw1 somehow^^
and pls make them diefferent from guardians consecrations that are always bound to an area u sommon them
and still be different to nature spirits from ranger or warrior banners that can be moved

sure ghosts that the ritualist can summon but… please anet we dont need MORE ai
we already have plenty and if that argument is not viable then how about they are too simmilar to engineer turrets?
kay.. so no ghosts!!^^