I played Guildwars 1 and I can not express my love for the Ritualist class.
I enjoy a lot of “in and out” play style. But I also enjoy being durable.
I’ve always leaned towards casters- so during the first beta weekend, I made an ele and stuck with it all the way through launch. I made it to about 52 on live servers though and couldn’t keep up with him. Took hiatus from GW2
Came back and instantly made a Thief and honestly. This class would be my love if I didn’t hate playing them in PvE… I also only find dagger/dagger fun. So gameplay gets stale for me after a while.
I read that somewhere.
And this is going to probably sound stupid.
But I guess the fact that engineer is more mechanical where the ritualist was still “mage” tier, make them less appealing than my aforementioned GW1 ritualist.
I’d say Necromancer is closest, and is pretty durable (the Light armor professions in GW2 keep astounding me with non-squishiness). While a minion build is considered weak, if I’m solo I do use the bloodfiend heal because that little guy pulls aggro amazingly well.
Lots of darkness and decay, conditions, aoe’s (via staff), etc. I haven’t played GW1; I’m going on inference as to what a Ritualist was like.
Ritualist was basically kind of like a necromancy that worked with spirits instead of the bodies/flesh of the dead (from what I saw of it. I only played ele back then so I’m not 100% sure on this) You could summon various types of spirits for different effects. Hence the engi turrets being a mechanical similarity.
Learning to fly is easy. Just make sure you miss when you fall.
Ritualist was basically kind of like a necromancy that worked with spirits instead of the bodies/flesh of the dead (from what I saw of it. I only played ele back then so I’m not 100% sure on this) You could summon various types of spirits for different effects. Hence the engi turrets being a mechanical similarity.
They used the ashes of the dead in quite a few skills. All the “<name> was ____” skills.
I played a rit in gw1, no there is no class that can pull 30 mobs and deal dmg them, while that dmg heals them almost the same amount if that’s what your asking. Yes I remember the rit shenanigans quite well….
Also to add to it, if the Rit of gw1 was added, I could go ahead and unbind dodge, since u would want to get hit as much as possible…..it would break the mechanics of this game.
This just makes me want to go back and play rit in gw1. Sigh. . .
Anyway, there is no real equivalent in gw2, I will say though that the necro and the mesmer are both a lot of fun, I’ve enjoyed them both. With a mesmer using phantasms could be a little bit like playing a rit in that they do some damage and can pull agro and you can make them explode before they die on their own. But really the play style isn’t much like the rit. The necro doesn’t have anything really to compare, but it is quite sturdy and pretty fun. The Ele requires all kinds of tricks to stay alive, the necro has a large health pool and then a second health bar on top of that with death shroud.
Anyway, don’t know how much that helps, but I’d give Mesmer or Necro a try.
To people who were saying I played them for broken reasons. Meh- I never saw them as overpowered. I just really enjoyed the concept of them. They weren’t just “fireball fireball”. It was something really unique to guildwars 1 (in my opinion).
They had a lot of great things going in that game and I’m sad they changed it so much when making GW2. Guess that’s why picking a class is hard. Lol.
Like everyone is saying, you may enjoy Necromancer. You have the minions that all have different effects, and while they really aren’t the /best/ Necro build, they’re slowly getting better with each patch. Where for a long time they almost weren’t playable in PVE, you can get by with them now. It’s a bit of a challenge, but a fun one I think. : D
Another option could be a Spirit Weapon Guardian. They wear heavy armor, but go with something like Scepter/Focus and Staff using spirit weapons… I could definitely see that fitting the bill. Your little “pets” (the spirit weapons) I guess you could call them are all shimmery and spectral, and running with Scepter/Focus and Staff, it feels much more like a caster than some heavy fighter. There are even some sets of heavy armor that look pretty light weight that you can use to lessen the feel of the soldier theme even more.
