Connecting with the Spirit World
Originally Published by Inde
Connecting with the Spirit World
By Makkert; Servants of Fortuna [SoF]
§ 1 Introduction
After Factions was released, I made a ritualist. The skills were interesting, and I spammed my spirits like any other ritualist. The ritualist’s contribution to the party isn’t as obvious as the Assassin. Like the ranger with his spirits, its influence is often much more subtle. Even worse, sometimes a spirit's impact on gameplay isn’t as clear as the global ranger spirits, which were pretty clear in comparison. Thus I started to explore what exactly ritualist spirits brought to the table.
§ 2 The Basics
These statistics apply to each spirit.
Energy
Although the spirits each have an energy pool of 31 energy, they don’t tend to use this energy. The attack skills the spirits use don’t require any energy. This means the energy of spirits is basically an untapped resource, which could be used by players. I.e. Spirit Siphon, Energy Drain (opposing team), etc.. The energyregeneration of spirits is 4 pips.
Hitpoints
The equation provided by Guildwiki is:
50 + (Spirit Level * 20) * (1 + Spawning Power * .04)
Armor level
Doing some tests with a 16 Axe Mastery, 0 Strength Wild Blow gave the following numbers:
This lead to the following equation:
Armorlevel = 5.8909 * spiritlevel + 2.9273 with a R-square of 0.9998.
As a rule of thumb, I think we can simplify this by saying it should be:
Armorlevel = 6 * spiritlevel + 3
Other
Spirits can’t be affected by conditions, enchantments, or hexes, nor can they be healed with area effects such as Heal Area. If damaged, they will regenerate themselves like a player if not attacked for a while. On death, Soul Reaping is triggered for half the attribute score. Binding Rituals are affected by Expertise. Spirits count as 'foes', so for instance Channeling triggers on spirits. An exception to this rule seems to be Aura of Displacement, which can't target spirits.
To give this article some structure, I’ll continue by dividing spirits into 3 groups:
§ 3 Global Spirits
These spirits are the simplest type of spirits and most closely resemble ranger spirits. An effect that takes place in the range that they work in. Recuperation shows up on your team’s condition bar, while Soothing shows up on the opposing team’s condition bar. Destruction, Life and Restoration don’t show up on either team. The range of Life is around 2/3 of the radar. Because of this long range, it is best placed in the rear lines to keep them as safe as possible.
Soothing cuts adrenaline effectively in half, this includes adrenaline gain from To The Limit. On the other side spirits do count towards the number of enemies that give adrenaline from To The Limit.
Destruction, Life and Restoration seem hard to manage to get the maximum effect at the right time. They are probably best used with skills that kill spirits, such as Soul Twisting, Feast of Souls, etc. Their immobility combined with the fact that most of them need to be alive for a while to have a real effect makes them quite rigid to utilise. One could use Draw Spirit to solve the immobility, but that is another skillslot sacrificed then. Recuperation ‘mini-mending’ might have limited use against degen teams. I wouldn’t know how else to utilise this spirit.
Destruction has a very distinctive look compared to other spirits:
On the left: 'normal' ritualist spirit. On the right: Destruction
Destruction is by far the most spammable (ritualist) spirit in the game, at a 3 second casttime and a 20s recharge. Considering many spells and skills require or improve with spirits in range of the ritualist, it provides an easily replaceable spirit for these purposes. The most popular application is as a dummy spirit for Soul Twisting: rather than Soul Twisting the important spirits themselves, a Ritualist can use the dummy spirit to reactivate Soul Twisting in order to have more flexibility in putting up and keeping up the important spirits. Because of the low recharge it's pretty much the only spirit you can rely on (assuming opponents may attempt to kill your spirits) if your elite is not dedicated to spirit management (Ritual Lord/Soul Twisting/Oath Shot).
Some use ranger spirits such as Frozen Soil on a Rit/R as dummy spirit for Sould Twisting instead of Destruction, which has synergy with the ability to kill your own spirit.
§ 4 Spirits with health penalty effects
The range of these spirits is also around 2/3 radar range and are therefore also best placed in the rear lines of the team. Union & Shelter show up on the status bar of your team, the other spirits on the opposing team. The big question that remains is how many triggers of the spirit you get from your Binding Ritual.
The options to heal your spirit are limited, so the amount of triggers is mainly related to your respective attribute level. Heal Area, Healing Touch and other healing spells won't work. Signet of Creation, Well of Blood and Spirit Boon Strike are about the only ways to influence the amount of triggers you can get from a single spirit. So what is your spirit actually bringing to the field? I’ve made some tables to make this easier to see, with the help of the Health equation of guildwiki.
As one can see, not every increase in attribute will increase the number of times the spirit triggers. Also, this raises the question of which attribute combinations with the same amount of spirit triggers is the most efficient in attribute points. The most efficient use of attribute points are bolded and color-coded in the above picture.
The bold red numbers are the efficiency points up to level 12 of the attributes. Beyond that point, runes are necessary. This means assumptions would need to be made to find the most efficient spot. I made two different assumptions. The Dark Blue color-coded numbers are efficiency points with the assumption that levels 13-16 would each require 20 attribute points. The Purple color-coded numbers are efficiency points with the assumption that levels 13-16 would require respectively 24, 28, 32 and 36 attribute points. If both the assumptions came to the same conclusion, the table shows only the Dark Blue number.
Of course by no means will I claim this method to be perfect. It can however give you a feeling for how to distribute your attribute points at higher levels. When looking at most of these tables, you'll see that in general Communing has a bigger impact on the spirits than Spawning Power. So when in doubt, I'd suggest investing more in Communing over investing in Spawning Power.
Note that Ritual Lord asks for an investment in Spawning Power to be able to spam spirits, so a balance will need to be sought when using this elite. Spamming enables this type of spirit to have a more continuous effect as opposed to a long downtime. This type of spirit also works nicely with skills that destroy a spirit for benefit such as Soul Twisting, Rupture Soul or Feast of Souls. This is espcially true if used at the moment the spirit would die anyway.
Displacement triggers even if you would be blocking or evading without Displacement. It seems the spirit effect is taken into account before evasion stances such as Escape or block enchantments such as Aegis and Guardian. In any case, Displacement will usually have a short life because it will trigger on any attack.
Displacement doesn't trigger if the attacking foe is blinded or hexed with a spell that makes them miss (e.g., blurred vision) only if they're missing due to the hex/condition. Meaning Blinding Flash, Shadowsong, Blurred Vision, Price of Failure, Reckless Haste, etc. will help displacement last longer.
If you should take less then 15 damage, Union will take that amount of damage instead of 15.
Although Shelter clearly states that it triggers on Attacks, it also triggers on spells like Lightning Orb.
Shelter and Union have interesting synergy. Similar to ranger spirits, one must be aware of the casting order. Lets presume a Lightning Orb of 100 damage, and a target with 480 hp.
If Union is cast before Shelter = 48 damage
If Shelter is cast before Union = 33 damage
If we add some Protection Prayer skills in the mix:
Shelter --> Union --> Shielding Hands = 33 damage, no effect of Shielding Hands
Shelter --> Union --> Spirit Bond = Heal of Spirit Bond triggers
Shelter --> Union --> Protective Spirit = The shelter will still self-inflict damage
Shelter --> Union --> Reversal of Fortune = 33 Heal
§ 5 Spirits with AI
These spirits will attack enemies once they entered aggro bubble range (with exception of Preservation). Once locked in on its target, it also can attack a little bit outside aggro bubble range. Their shorter range means that they will need to be placed closer to the battle than other spirits. The damage of the attack spirits ignore armor. Some of the descriptions on the spirits are incomplete. Shadowsong does 5...17...21 damage although it doesn't say so in the skill description.
Tests on Spirit AI were mostly done with Shadowsong. After various tests, the AI seems to act according to the following checklist as far as I could tell:
The implications of this AI are various.
The attacks of spirits can be dodged like any other ranged attack. If the players are constantly kiting back and forth in range of the spirit, the spirit will have a really hard time hitting them, to the point of not attacking at all anymore.
The fact that the damage ignores armor makes the preference for lower Armor targets questionable. I guess having pressure on soft targets is a good thing, although this backfires on Shadowsong.
When facing Shadowsong, you could position one of your casters within aggro bubble range to have your warriors free of blind as long as they aren't adjacent to the spirit. On the other side, monks could position themselves adjacent to Shadowsong and have some protection from adrenaline spikes. If shadowsong is placed slightly in the back, it means that either the warriors will be blinded, or a caster will need to go in an unfavourable position if it wants to use this tactic of keeping Shadowsong off the warriors.
The attackspeed of the spirits is as follows:
- Bloodson 1.75s
- Pain 2s
- Shadowsong 2s
- Disenchantment 2s
- Dissonance 2s
- Wanderlust 2s
These observations on attackspeeds were made without the use of FRAPS, so should be taken with any precaution.
Preservation has its own rules. Or rather, no rules. It seems to be completely random in selection of targets, not affected by health status, armor or proximity. This means that the healing potential of this spirit is often greatly diminished by heals landing on targets that were already at full health. One would need to be the only target in the area to have a reliable heal from this spirit. An order spammer that lingers in the back is someone that could perhaps utilise this spirit. It is not be easy to use this spirit to it's full potential.
The difference between Pain and Bloodsong is, besides the attackspeed, minimal. Since the damage from Pain is armorignoring, the lifestealing of Bloodsong only makes a slight difference when the spirit is taking damage.
§ 6 Spirit Spamming
Because of the long recharge time on spirits, ways are being explored to be able to shorten the recharge time. After all, if your spirit is taken out quickly by an enemy team, you lose the control on the battlefield you were trying to accomplish at first place with this spirit. Often this leads to spamming of spirits. Soul Twisting, Ritual Lord and Oath Shot come to mind when spamming spirits.
§ 7 Conclusion
When examining the spirits, the spirits with a global constant effect such as Soothing or Shelter will do what you expect from them. Other spirits will require more planning. Be it either due the nature of the spirit (i.e. Destruction/ Life); the dependancy on AI that is influenced by your opponents actions (attack spirits) or your positioning as a team (Preservation). Those spirits would need some extra thinking before considering adding them to your skillbar.
Remember that this article was not written to convince you to take any particular spirit on your bar. It was written to give a more detailed view on what each spirit does, so you can make a more informed decision. I hope this article has succeeded in this.
CREDITS
My guildmates of Servants of Fortuna, without them this would not be possible!
guildwiki - the health equation of spirits
Team-iq & guildwarsguru forums - general information sources & feedback
By Makkert; Servants of Fortuna [SoF]
§ 1 Introduction
After Factions was released, I made a ritualist. The skills were interesting, and I spammed my spirits like any other ritualist. The ritualist’s contribution to the party isn’t as obvious as the Assassin. Like the ranger with his spirits, its influence is often much more subtle. Even worse, sometimes a spirit's impact on gameplay isn’t as clear as the global ranger spirits, which were pretty clear in comparison. Thus I started to explore what exactly ritualist spirits brought to the table.
§ 2 The Basics
These statistics apply to each spirit.
Energy
Although the spirits each have an energy pool of 31 energy, they don’t tend to use this energy. The attack skills the spirits use don’t require any energy. This means the energy of spirits is basically an untapped resource, which could be used by players. I.e. Spirit Siphon, Energy Drain (opposing team), etc.. The energyregeneration of spirits is 4 pips.
Hitpoints
The equation provided by Guildwiki is:
50 + (Spirit Level * 20) * (1 + Spawning Power * .04)
Armor level
Doing some tests with a 16 Axe Mastery, 0 Strength Wild Blow gave the following numbers:
This lead to the following equation:
Armorlevel = 5.8909 * spiritlevel + 2.9273 with a R-square of 0.9998.
As a rule of thumb, I think we can simplify this by saying it should be:
Armorlevel = 6 * spiritlevel + 3
Other
Spirits can’t be affected by conditions, enchantments, or hexes, nor can they be healed with area effects such as Heal Area. If damaged, they will regenerate themselves like a player if not attacked for a while. On death, Soul Reaping is triggered for half the attribute score. Binding Rituals are affected by Expertise. Spirits count as 'foes', so for instance Channeling triggers on spirits. An exception to this rule seems to be Aura of Displacement, which can't target spirits.
To give this article some structure, I’ll continue by dividing spirits into 3 groups:
- global spirits
- spirits with health penalty effects
- spirits with AI
§ 3 Global Spirits
- Destruction
- Life
- Soothing
- Restoration
- Recuperation
These spirits are the simplest type of spirits and most closely resemble ranger spirits. An effect that takes place in the range that they work in. Recuperation shows up on your team’s condition bar, while Soothing shows up on the opposing team’s condition bar. Destruction, Life and Restoration don’t show up on either team. The range of Life is around 2/3 of the radar. Because of this long range, it is best placed in the rear lines to keep them as safe as possible.
Soothing cuts adrenaline effectively in half, this includes adrenaline gain from To The Limit. On the other side spirits do count towards the number of enemies that give adrenaline from To The Limit.
Destruction, Life and Restoration seem hard to manage to get the maximum effect at the right time. They are probably best used with skills that kill spirits, such as Soul Twisting, Feast of Souls, etc. Their immobility combined with the fact that most of them need to be alive for a while to have a real effect makes them quite rigid to utilise. One could use Draw Spirit to solve the immobility, but that is another skillslot sacrificed then. Recuperation ‘mini-mending’ might have limited use against degen teams. I wouldn’t know how else to utilise this spirit.
Destruction has a very distinctive look compared to other spirits:
On the left: 'normal' ritualist spirit. On the right: Destruction
Destruction is by far the most spammable (ritualist) spirit in the game, at a 3 second casttime and a 20s recharge. Considering many spells and skills require or improve with spirits in range of the ritualist, it provides an easily replaceable spirit for these purposes. The most popular application is as a dummy spirit for Soul Twisting: rather than Soul Twisting the important spirits themselves, a Ritualist can use the dummy spirit to reactivate Soul Twisting in order to have more flexibility in putting up and keeping up the important spirits. Because of the low recharge it's pretty much the only spirit you can rely on (assuming opponents may attempt to kill your spirits) if your elite is not dedicated to spirit management (Ritual Lord/Soul Twisting/Oath Shot).
Some use ranger spirits such as Frozen Soil on a Rit/R as dummy spirit for Sould Twisting instead of Destruction, which has synergy with the ability to kill your own spirit.
§ 4 Spirits with health penalty effects
- Displacement
- Earthbind
- Wanderlust [E]
- Union
- Shelter
The range of these spirits is also around 2/3 radar range and are therefore also best placed in the rear lines of the team. Union & Shelter show up on the status bar of your team, the other spirits on the opposing team. The big question that remains is how many triggers of the spirit you get from your Binding Ritual.
The options to heal your spirit are limited, so the amount of triggers is mainly related to your respective attribute level. Heal Area, Healing Touch and other healing spells won't work. Signet of Creation, Well of Blood and Spirit Boon Strike are about the only ways to influence the amount of triggers you can get from a single spirit. So what is your spirit actually bringing to the field? I’ve made some tables to make this easier to see, with the help of the Health equation of guildwiki.
As one can see, not every increase in attribute will increase the number of times the spirit triggers. Also, this raises the question of which attribute combinations with the same amount of spirit triggers is the most efficient in attribute points. The most efficient use of attribute points are bolded and color-coded in the above picture.
The bold red numbers are the efficiency points up to level 12 of the attributes. Beyond that point, runes are necessary. This means assumptions would need to be made to find the most efficient spot. I made two different assumptions. The Dark Blue color-coded numbers are efficiency points with the assumption that levels 13-16 would each require 20 attribute points. The Purple color-coded numbers are efficiency points with the assumption that levels 13-16 would require respectively 24, 28, 32 and 36 attribute points. If both the assumptions came to the same conclusion, the table shows only the Dark Blue number.
Of course by no means will I claim this method to be perfect. It can however give you a feeling for how to distribute your attribute points at higher levels. When looking at most of these tables, you'll see that in general Communing has a bigger impact on the spirits than Spawning Power. So when in doubt, I'd suggest investing more in Communing over investing in Spawning Power.
Note that Ritual Lord asks for an investment in Spawning Power to be able to spam spirits, so a balance will need to be sought when using this elite. Spamming enables this type of spirit to have a more continuous effect as opposed to a long downtime. This type of spirit also works nicely with skills that destroy a spirit for benefit such as Soul Twisting, Rupture Soul or Feast of Souls. This is espcially true if used at the moment the spirit would die anyway.
Displacement triggers even if you would be blocking or evading without Displacement. It seems the spirit effect is taken into account before evasion stances such as Escape or block enchantments such as Aegis and Guardian. In any case, Displacement will usually have a short life because it will trigger on any attack.
Displacement doesn't trigger if the attacking foe is blinded or hexed with a spell that makes them miss (e.g., blurred vision) only if they're missing due to the hex/condition. Meaning Blinding Flash, Shadowsong, Blurred Vision, Price of Failure, Reckless Haste, etc. will help displacement last longer.
If you should take less then 15 damage, Union will take that amount of damage instead of 15.
Although Shelter clearly states that it triggers on Attacks, it also triggers on spells like Lightning Orb.
Shelter and Union have interesting synergy. Similar to ranger spirits, one must be aware of the casting order. Lets presume a Lightning Orb of 100 damage, and a target with 480 hp.
If Union is cast before Shelter = 48 damage
If Shelter is cast before Union = 33 damage
If we add some Protection Prayer skills in the mix:
Shelter --> Union --> Shielding Hands = 33 damage, no effect of Shielding Hands
Shelter --> Union --> Spirit Bond = Heal of Spirit Bond triggers
Shelter --> Union --> Protective Spirit = The shelter will still self-inflict damage
Shelter --> Union --> Reversal of Fortune = 33 Heal
§ 5 Spirits with AI
- Pain
- Blood Song
- Shadowsong
- Disenchantment
- Dissonance
- Preservation [E]
- Wanderlust [E]
These spirits will attack enemies once they entered aggro bubble range (with exception of Preservation). Once locked in on its target, it also can attack a little bit outside aggro bubble range. Their shorter range means that they will need to be placed closer to the battle than other spirits. The damage of the attack spirits ignore armor. Some of the descriptions on the spirits are incomplete. Shadowsong does 5...17...21 damage although it doesn't say so in the skill description.
Tests on Spirit AI were mostly done with Shadowsong. After various tests, the AI seems to act according to the following checklist as far as I could tell:
- Movement
Spirits will choose a non-moving target over a moving target - Self preservation
If a foe is standing adjacent to the spirit, the spirit will target this foe. - Health of Foes
Foes beneath 50% of their maximum health are targeted by spirits before foes above 50% of their maximum health. - Armor
Spirits tend to target the lower armor targets. Effects like Healing Signet or Frenzy are irrelevant here. - Proximity
When having similar targets, it will target the closest one
The implications of this AI are various.
The attacks of spirits can be dodged like any other ranged attack. If the players are constantly kiting back and forth in range of the spirit, the spirit will have a really hard time hitting them, to the point of not attacking at all anymore.
The fact that the damage ignores armor makes the preference for lower Armor targets questionable. I guess having pressure on soft targets is a good thing, although this backfires on Shadowsong.
When facing Shadowsong, you could position one of your casters within aggro bubble range to have your warriors free of blind as long as they aren't adjacent to the spirit. On the other side, monks could position themselves adjacent to Shadowsong and have some protection from adrenaline spikes. If shadowsong is placed slightly in the back, it means that either the warriors will be blinded, or a caster will need to go in an unfavourable position if it wants to use this tactic of keeping Shadowsong off the warriors.
The attackspeed of the spirits is as follows:
- Bloodson 1.75s
- Pain 2s
- Shadowsong 2s
- Disenchantment 2s
- Dissonance 2s
- Wanderlust 2s
These observations on attackspeeds were made without the use of FRAPS, so should be taken with any precaution.
Preservation has its own rules. Or rather, no rules. It seems to be completely random in selection of targets, not affected by health status, armor or proximity. This means that the healing potential of this spirit is often greatly diminished by heals landing on targets that were already at full health. One would need to be the only target in the area to have a reliable heal from this spirit. An order spammer that lingers in the back is someone that could perhaps utilise this spirit. It is not be easy to use this spirit to it's full potential.
The difference between Pain and Bloodsong is, besides the attackspeed, minimal. Since the damage from Pain is armorignoring, the lifestealing of Bloodsong only makes a slight difference when the spirit is taking damage.
§ 6 Spirit Spamming
Because of the long recharge time on spirits, ways are being explored to be able to shorten the recharge time. After all, if your spirit is taken out quickly by an enemy team, you lose the control on the battlefield you were trying to accomplish at first place with this spirit. Often this leads to spamming of spirits. Soul Twisting, Ritual Lord and Oath Shot come to mind when spamming spirits.
- Soul Twisting
After it's recent nerf, it's recharge time was upped to 15 seconds. This could probably still enable spamming of one key spirit. The reduced casting time is quite nice, and Soul Twisting will stay active indefinitely until you cast a spirit again. This means you can easily use it pre-battle. - Ritual Lord
This zero second cast skill should enable one to spam several spirits without too much effort. With an investment of 13 in Spawning Power, a 60 second recharge spirit will recharge in around 20 seconds. Spamming several spirits will require some attention to energy management. If energy management is deemed necessary, solutions can be sought in the form of Boon of Creation in example. - Oath Shot
Limited to primary rangers. The expertise investment will make sure that energy problems will never arise, especially considering that while putting down spirits that have 5 second casts your energy will regenerate. The downside is that Oath Shot generates weaker spirits, since Spawning Power and runes are missing. This has a greater impact on the self-damaging spirits where the amount of triggers matter than on global rituals that are time based. An advantage is that it allows some splashing with (boosted by runes) ranger spirits.
§ 7 Conclusion
When examining the spirits, the spirits with a global constant effect such as Soothing or Shelter will do what you expect from them. Other spirits will require more planning. Be it either due the nature of the spirit (i.e. Destruction/ Life); the dependancy on AI that is influenced by your opponents actions (attack spirits) or your positioning as a team (Preservation). Those spirits would need some extra thinking before considering adding them to your skillbar.
Remember that this article was not written to convince you to take any particular spirit on your bar. It was written to give a more detailed view on what each spirit does, so you can make a more informed decision. I hope this article has succeeded in this.
CREDITS
My guildmates of Servants of Fortuna, without them this would not be possible!
guildwiki - the health equation of spirits
Team-iq & guildwarsguru forums - general information sources & feedback
MMO Guru Network
