Solo Ritualist guide

Description
A Solo Ritualist, "solo rit," or "vengeful rit," is a type of ritualist that takes advantage of the powerful life-stealing capabilities of the Restoration Magic line of skills, and the ability to maintain weapon spells and held items without fear of Mesmer or Necromancer stripping skills, as a means destroying mobs of enemies.

This build is not to be confused with being similar to a Solo Monk. While Ritualists and Monks are similar in that they both function well as support characters and solo characters, the method by which they each go about it is completely different in both instances. The main differences here being that a Solo Ritualist instead prefers to have the most health possible, and focuses on taking as many hits as possible to deal the most damage as possible.

There are many kinds of Solo Ritualists, but most builds use either the Rt/Me or Rt/R combination of professions, and all make use of the elite skill, Vengeful Was Khanhei. Additional skills usually consist of a means of regaining energy (as holding Khanhei's ashes unequips wands/foci and staves as well as their benefits), a means self-healing (Restoration Magic can give health just as well as it steals), a means of reducing the damage you take, or a means of increasing the damage you inflict.

Because of the build's reliance on Vengeful Was Khanhei, players will usually wear the Oracle's Armor type for the armor bonus while holding an item. The player's weapon, however, is unimportant, as any weapon the player is carrying becomes useless while holding an item.

This build is primarily meant for farming and the occasional tanking, but related builds that use the elite have proven useful for deterring warrior and assassin enemies in both PvP and PvE, as double strikes and increased attack speed only quickens their death and heals the ritualist.

How It Works
The basic goal is to simply cancel out all the damage you take by stealing health from the enemy. The more hits a player takes, the more health they steal.

But Vengeful Was Khanhei does not last forever, and does not last until its next recharge, even at 16 Restoration Magic. So in order to keep sucking up damage, a player must either utilize their secondary profession and other Restoration Magic skills to keep their health up until the next recharge, or use their secondary profession to speed up or echo Vengeful Was Khanhei.

Another problem that arises is trying to get spell caster enemies to use their physical attacks instead of spells. The only way to do that would be to reduce their energy, heighten the energy costs of their spells, or disable their skills altogether.

One way to solve these problems is Rt/Me:


 * Use Physical Resistance, Elemental Resistance or Mantra of Resolve in the optional slot.

This particular build is meant primarily for enemies that will not be tempted to strip enchantments, and works beautifully on large groups of melee enemies. While it is normally a good idea to avoid spell casters while using this build, Elemental Resistance is there just in case a player is brave enough to take on some elementalists.

Before engaging the enemy, the first step is to activate the stance. Depending on what kind of enemies the player plans on encountering, the player will bring a different stance. For instance, if the player expects a lot of interrupts, Mantra of Resolve is the best choice. If the player is expecting a lot of warriors, rangers, or assassins, Physical Resistance would be better.

The second step is to activate Channeling and either Ancestor's Visage or Sympathetic Visage. The player should then activate Arcane Echo, rush in, and cast Vengeful Was Khanhei just before the enemies start attacking.

As the enemies start grouping around the player, they will quickly lose all their energy due to Ancestor's and Sympathetic Visage, making them resort to physical attacks. And as the player casts spells, they regain energy from Channeling, which can be used to activate Vengeful Weapon for extra health and damage.

In case of an emergency, Soothing Memories has been included, which both heals the player and grants energy if they are holding an item.

Now some groups might be full of warriors that enjoy using Healing Signet. And perhaps the enemy groups are full of the same types of creatures. Maybe these creatures go by the name of Yeti. Well, there is also a particular build that solves the signet problems as well, and takes advantage of the enemies all being the same type.

This time, the player starts by summoning the spirits. Edge of Extinction will do extra damage to the Yetis when they are bunched together, which lessens the need to echo Vengeful Was Khanhei. Primal Echoes makes it harder for the warrior Yetis to use Healing Signet, and Quickening Zephyr will make things harder for the spell caster Yetis.

Once the player gets the battle started, Serpent's Quickness and Quickening Zephyr should allow them to cast VWK at a decent rate, and Troll Unguent and Soothing Memories again are included in case of emergency.

Again, these builds provide only a small example of Solo Ritualists. Because a Solo Ritualist can afford to rely very little on its primary profession, there are more than a few good Solo Ritualist builds.

Farming
The Farmland

Solo Ritualists have been proven to farm best in areas where enemies lack the ability to do immense amounts of damage in single spells, and often resort to physical attacks. However, with skills like Ancestor's Visage that bring enemies' energy down to where they have to resort to physical attacks anyway, a player can farm in all kinds of areas.

Tips for Farming


 * Do your homework on the enemies you plan on facing. Make sure you are going to be able to withstand whatever they throw at you.


 * When using Vengeful Was Khanhei, usually bigger groups are better. More enemies means more damage to the enemies, and more health to you. Provided that you can negate most or all of the damage you take via Vengeful Was Khanhei, you can take out a large group as easily and quickly as a small group.


 * Keep things simple. Focus on keeping Vengeful Was Khanhei up as long as possible, or having a means of staying alive until its next recharge. Switching your focus to other skills can make farming harder than it needs to be.


 * Do not be discouraged by failure. Many places were thought to be impossible to solo farm, until someone with a different strategy came along to prove it wrong. For the majority of solo farming, timing is all that lies between failure and success.

Green Farming

Because of the high demand for unique items dropped off of Ranger, Warrior, and Assassin bosses, and because of the general advantages Solo Ritualists have when fighting Rangers, Warriors, and Assassins, unique item farming is a common use for this build. Other unique items, like Kepkhet's Refuge are also reasonably simple to farm with a Solo Ritualist because surrounding enemies rely so much on physical attacks.

Green farming is, of course, usually a bit more difficult than regular farming. Bosses often take a lot longer to kill than anything else, due to their increased health, their increased damage, and their natural ability to regenerate health without the help of spells or spirits. Some even spawn all alone, but have large groups of bodyguards that spawn when a player gets close.

Despite the high risk of farming certain unique items, the large profit from success easily makes the trip worthwhile.

Related Articles

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