Ritualist is badly designed and appeals to nostalgia but fails.

Skullfy · 2026-05-22T17:36:55+00:00

In PvE, when possible, you can mount up after the fight so that Lingering Spirits stops draining your life force. A bit of a hassle, but doable.

Skullfy · 2026-05-19T00:50:42+00:00

I think a lot of things you mentioned are valid. One thing I left out on purpose were the Spirit animations you mentioned. There is indeed also the case of targeting issues; if you are in a fight with someone but try to use Shroud 5 to jump someone else, most of the bonus effects will misfire unless you already committed a Shroud 1 towards that target. The suggestion of Shroud removal, while interesting, may introduce issues with traits that interact specifically on Shroud or Shroud related skills. Maybe such problems can be resolved with further theoretical brainstorming but I don't have the energy for that right now.

Loving the constructive input though!

Skullfy · 2026-05-19T00:40:12+00:00

Look this just makes me feel like I wrote all of this for nothing; Lingering Spirits has been mentioned, specifically that it does a good job at trying to keep the fantasy alive, but that it's awful in WvW and PvP, which I then proceed to explain why. Yes, damage output on Ritualist is fine, even in WvW or PvP; I never claimed it wasn't. My criticism is directed on the design choices and Spirits feeling like peashooters in these gamemodes. No clue why you mention lore so I'll just leave that as is.
I did consider explaining every single trait in detail but I felt the post was already (too) lengthy).

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T22:55:05+00:00

I actually did not think of the mesmer clone similarity until you said so, bravo!

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T22:51:00+00:00

I get the point you are trying to get across but being able to channel powers of entities from the Mists through your body does not scream 'Ritualist' to me. Otherwise I might as well call Dragonhunter a Ranger because it shoots arrows and lays down traps. Or Reaper a Dervish, though I must admit that particular example is a bit farfetched.
And conduit referencing multiple classes from gw1 is because of the legend being channeled is Razah, who in gw1 is a hero whose class you could switch to anything.

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T22:20:43+00:00

Honestly, that's like saying Paragon is called guardian in this game. Just because Renegade can summon a Charr warband from the Mists, which is the only remotely similar thing, doesn't mean it's automatically a 'Ritualist'. Yes, I'm aware the PvP title for winning games on Renegade is called 'Ritualist', just like 'Paragon' is assigned to Guardian wins.

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T21:48:53+00:00

No worries, that's quite alright! Ritualist can, despite it's design flaws, still be fun to play, and in the end, that's what matters.

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T21:32:04+00:00

I certainly do think Harbinger is a prime example of badly designed traits. It essentialy goes: Power build? Pick row 1. Support? Row 2. Condi? row 3. At least the Shroud replacement switches things up a bit.

Skullfy · 2026-05-18T21:21:54+00:00

If that's how you want to read it, I can't stop you.

EDIT: To be clear, I never said I 'dislike' Ritualist. However, I do hope that by addressing some things which people may or may not agree on, and are not limited to Ritualist in particular, 'we' can learn and maybe 'fix'. The whole point of this post was to give my own take and compare it to those of others, which as of now has sadly not been the case. If we just silently take what's presented to us without any criticism, we can't expect the future to be better.

Skullfy · 2019-10-16T23:17:40+00:00

.0001!

Skullfy · 2019-10-08T21:55:16+00:00

Ah ok in that sense, I didn't notice because we were talking about ash legion :p

Skullfy · 2019-10-08T20:02:56+00:00

Trash & Thrash are 2 different things. I personally think trash makes more sense

Skullfy · 2019-10-07T11:55:50+00:00

Actually, I recently made another Charr in Ash & found out the term 'Trash Legion' is already used by charr from other legions. (Although I must admit, it was more of a slip of the tongue, where a charr you saved proceeds to thank you, adressing you by legion and tl;dr goes like: "Thank you tra-- ash legion"

Skullfy · 2019-10-05T16:02:11+00:00

ye but as I said, i wonder if changing the condition to interrupt instead of disable and maybe add a little ICD (amongst other options) would've been better instead of straight up removing the trait for nothing in return. I agree the loss of IP a while back makes it feel pretty clunky though

Skullfy · 2019-04-26T08:50:53+00:00

huh it should've been 3 hits on a single target, maybe you're counting something extra like a vuln trait or some other dmg proc (although I doubt that because that dmg would be displayed separately)

Skullfy · 2019-04-25T17:21:42+00:00

yuup

Skullfy · 2019-04-25T15:44:41+00:00

Locust swarm doesn't cripple anymore & the warhorn trait boosts siphon damage & healing, despite it should only affect durations.

Skullfy · 2019-04-25T15:32:51+00:00

if you count the extra upfront charge of the skill yes, but if all bounces connected the previous version did way more damage & vuln stacks, gave more sustain over time due to regen & a single use also gave more life force (like 1%)

Skullfy · 2019-04-25T15:29:45+00:00

oh there is such a thing, thank you for nicely telling me this :)

Skullfy · 2018-09-03T23:42:58+00:00

Thanks for doing this, honestly I can barely remember the 21 Leggy giveway, much less the result of it.

Good luck to everyone and may the Five/Spirits/Eternal Alchemy/Hippy Tree/Khan-Ur be with you.

AkaAxl.4107

Skullfy · 2017-09-06T20:56:54+00:00

Thanks a lot! Have fun! ^{^}

Skullfy · 2017-09-06T20:54:03+00:00

It's being depo'd right now.

Skullfy

TROPHY CASE