Guild Wars 2

The Ritualist (necromancer version) supports allies with powerful rituals to empower weapons with special enchantments. This spec is meant to allow necromancers to fill the team utility and support role. This ritualist uses a mainhand sword to deal direct damage on the front line while supporting allies.

• The new skill type is Weapon Spells which work similar to venoms, but have a duration (5-10 sec) instead of a set number of charges.
• Weapon spells grant a special effect such as life steal for the healing skill, or a chance to block attacks or chance to deal extra damage.
• Through traits there will be an effect to increase the damage of allies for a certain duration after a weapon spell ends. This is meant to be something akin to druids grace of the land.
• Death shroud becomes Spirit shroud and the skills allow you to summon spirits which damage and debilitate your foes (up to 5 spirits). The spirits are pretty strong but they die once you leave shroud. Also the spirit shroud is a ghostly blue/cyan instead of black.
• Through traits you can reduce the cooldown of weapon spells the longer you stay in spirit shroud.
• You can also use traits to empower allies that stand near your spirits.

Overall the spec is not meant to be a full on dps spec. You can either use traits to make your allies more tanky, or you can buff your team’s damage output.

Here’s the list of GW1 weapon spells to give you some ideas for the way they used to work. Obviously they would work a lot different in GW2 to be balanced.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_spell

Interestingly Splinter Weapon already exists in GW2 and is used by the Jade Bow enemies added in recent patches. I really loved that skill and it was a bread and butter DPS ability back in the day.

Also here are the spirits.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Binding_ritual

There’s a LOT of them so we can never really get them all in GW2. We can get some of the main ones though like Bloodsong. I think shroud skill 5 should be Call to the Spirit Realm which was Master Togo’s skill in the bonus mission pack.

Love it! More thematic than freaking sand….

While the mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are indeed much better than GW 1, GW 1’s skills/spells where far more vibrant and open to customisation. You genuinely felt like the profession you were playing.

Two things I have a problem with.
1: Seems like ritualist would be more of a Revenant thing, considering their whole setup is communing with spirits of legendary figures and using them to empower themselves.
2: More AI skills. Something anet really needs to avoid because they encourage lazy gameplay.

On a positive note, I do love the weapon spells idea. Necro is in dire need of decent party support and it seems like a good direction to go. Personally I’d call them Orders (after the gw1 necro skill set) but whatever their name is, they’d both give us some nice party buffs.

Methuselah.4376:

Love it! More thematic than freaking sand….

While the mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are indeed much better than GW 1, GW 1’s skills/spells where far more vibrant and open to customisation. You genuinely felt like the profession you were playing.

I’d argue that a sand/mummy theme could actually work quite well for necromancers. Perhaps something dealing with desiccating one’s foes through application of bleed/burn effects? I wouldn’t mind a slightly… faster spec, either.

Lahmia.2193:

1: Seems like ritualist would be more of a Revenant thing, considering their whole setup is communing with spirits of legendary figures and using them to empower themselves.

Yeah a lot of people say this and I agree with that side as well which is why I actually made 2 versions of the spec. I posted the revenant version in their subforum.

I have some minor reservations about the rev being the ritualist, but I can imagine it becoming such. I mained ritualist in GW1 and to me it always had stronger ties to necromancy through the spawning power attribute.

For each rank of Spawning Power you have, creatures you create (or animate) have 4% more Health, and weapon Spells you cast last 4% longer. Some Ritualist skills, especially those related to Spirit creatures, become more effective with higher Spawning Power.

Also keep in mind what necromancy actually is historically. From wikipedia:

Necromancy is a supposed practice of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily

Furthermore, the actual method of reanimating bones and dead flesh involves using a spirit. The spirit is the magical driving force which makes the dead thrall move. I think there’s a lot of compelling evidence both inside and outside GW2 to show the connection between necromancers and ritualists.

Revenant’s on the other hand have a pvp title, and 5 really famous spirits (ritualists had a lot more… and could summon non-famous spirits…) Otherwise I don’t think the revenant has much in common with the original ritualist. The ritualist had to study all their life at Shing Jea monestary to be able to commune with the dead. Revenants on the other hand are just people who died and came back from the Mists infused with new powers. (hopefully one day we will get to see what happened to Rytlock in the mists to better explain revenants…)

I don’t think Revenants and Ritualists have anything to do with each other. Revenants call on aspects of a legendary figure, not the spirit itself. They use mist energy not spectral energy.

I always thought of Ritualists as a form of specialized necromancer that deals more with spirits and the spectral rather than curses, rot and death.

This is why GW1 skills far trump GW2: you had a myriad of themed spells to choose from (they are actually called spells) and almost every skill had a use depending on build. Yes you had your metas such as Spiteful Spirit build, MM, Spoil Victor, and Blood is Power, but I enjoyed a lot of Faction battles using Vampiric Spirit and a bunch of life steal spells that made me invincible as long as the energy held, which with Soul Reaping it normally did. As I said before, you FEEL like a necromancer rather than a generic fighting model with a few effects.

I like the idea of a Ritualist, but I would think they would want to be in the back lines, not the front. You have it designed to be a support type anyways, not a big dps spec. Therefore, I see it more as a Chronomes to be in the back with a shield, not the front with a sword. Conceptually, why would a clothy support be in the front lines where the warriors and guardians are smashing skulls?

Additionally, for a necromancer to conduct rituals, they would likely perform many rituals through the use of sacrifices. It would be more interesting to me to have the skill tree work with the minion tree, particularity to gain additional boons or apply more conditions for when you sacrifice your minions. Currently, they only explode or heal you. But for that to work, gaining the elite spec would need to also reduce the cooldown on summoning/resummoning your minions.

Methuselah.4376:

This is why GW1 skills far trump GW2: you had a myriad of themed spells to choose from (they are actually called spells) and almost every skill had a use depending on build. Yes you had your metas such as Spiteful Spirit build, MM, Spoil Victor, and Blood is Power, but I enjoyed a lot of Faction battles using Vampiric Spirit and a bunch of life steal spells that made me invincible as long as the energy held, which with Soul Reaping it normally did. As I said before, you FEEL like a necromancer rather than a generic fighting model with a few effects.

The homogenization of effects did this to be honest. I do miss all the unique enchantments and hexes.
That said I do prefer the fluid combat of gw2.

tongpo.3184:

I like the idea of a Ritualist, but I would think they would want to be in the back lines, not the front. You have it designed to be a support type anyways, not a big dps spec. Therefore, I see it more as a Chronomes to be in the back with a shield, not the front with a sword. Conceptually, why would a clothy support be in the front lines where the warriors and guardians are smashing skulls?

Additionally, for a necromancer to conduct rituals, they would likely perform many rituals through the use of sacrifices. It would be more interesting to me to have the skill tree work with the minion tree, particularity to gain additional boons or apply more conditions for when you sacrifice your minions. Currently, they only explode or heal you. But for that to work, gaining the elite spec would need to also reduce the cooldown on summoning/resummoning your minions.

Chronomancer is a frontline spec (at least in raids…) it’s a tank that spreads quickness. Generally the game is set up in a way that if you want boons or want to share boons you need to stack up next to your team. And if half of you team is melee, then by default your whole team stacks in melee range. The only exception is when the fight requires you to spread out like at vale guardian. Besides that, the squishiest clothy character in the game is elementalist and they stand right on the front line for dps and might stacking.

tl;dr I see no problem making a support character go frontline.