ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Ritualist/Vocal Was Sogolon

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Vocal Was Sogolon

Painted Bird's Issue

• Issue: Poor function when used as W/Rt and P/Rt.

Paragons and Warriors require adrenaline for many of their skills, including many shouts and chants. While holding ashes, you cannot attack to gain adrenaline, making several skills unusable unless you use other means to gain adrenaline (such as through the use of "Make Your Time!" and "To The Limit!"). This constrains a lot of builds that would benefit from this skill's effect.

In the case of Paragons, many shouts and chants gain no benefit from having their duration lengthened. Such is the case for many motivation chants that trigger only once and end when an event happens such as casting a spell or activating a skill.

• Suggestion: I propose changing how this skill works to do one of the following:

• Make shouts recharge faster rather than last longer:

Hold Sogolon's ashes for up to x.....y..z seconds. Shouts and Chants you use while holding his ashes recharge 33% (or 25%) faster. When you drop his ashes, all your shouts and chants are disabled for x.....y..z seconds (this might not be necessary, but I can forsee potential abuse if there isn't a measure like this in place.)

• Yield an energy return for using a shout/chant:

Hold Sogolon's ashes for up to 30 seconds. Whenever you use a Shout or Chant, you gain 1....3..4 energy.

• Provide healing on use of a shout/chant:

Hold Sogolon's ashes for up to 30 seconds. Whenever you use a Shout or Chant, you gain x....y..z health.

• Provide condition removal on use of a shout/chant:

Hold Sogolon's ashes for up to x.....y..z seconds. Whenever you use a Shout or Chant, you lose 1 condition if within earshot of a spirit.

• Provide a means of adrenaline gain:

Hold Sogolon's ashes for up to x.....y..z seconds. Whenever you use a Shout or Chant, you gain 1 energy and 1 shot of adrenaline if within earshot of a spirit. When you drop his ashes, you lose all adrenaline.

I think if any one of these techniques (or some variation of them) were implemented, the skill would be more useful and support more options for builds. Both as Ritualist primary or as Ritualist secondary.

Painted Bird 20:18, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Underpowered for its drawbacks

Issue

Currently this skill looks great for perhaps a P/Rt build which holds these ashes while shouting out shouts and chants et.c. but when you consider that you have to give up your weapons (normally losing at least 16 armour and 60 health, maybe 5 energy too and whatnot) and the fact that you can't get adrenaline to power your shouts and chants as easily it doesn't really seem worth it.

Another major point is that many paragon chants in particular are single-shot and so often end before their duration is up. Thus, making them last 50% longer isn't going to help much.

Suggestion

Making them recharge faster, as suggested above, sounds like a good idea, but it could potentially lead to abusing builds and also it gives no benefit to adrenaline-based ones with no recharge (though admittedly these are becoming less and less).

The energy return and adrenaline suggestions above sound good because they will allow you to use those shouts more often (so it fits the theme as well as being a useful buff), and the healing would be useful too. One other thing I would suggest though is making it harder for your shouts and chants to be prevented. Maybe something like:

5 1 18

Item Spell. For 20...36...40 seconds, all Shouts and Chants you use last 25...53...60% longer and gives you 1...3...3 Energy for each spirit within earshot. Whenever a Chant you use is interrupted, it recharges three times as fast.

-=OR=-

5 2 20

Item Spell. (60 seconds.) Shouts and Chants last 20...44...50% longer and recharge 20...44...50% faster. If you are under the effects Echo, you gain 1...3...3 Energy for each spirit within earshot.

The duration, recharge and cost have been roughly halved (the duration has been made scaling too) which means that if it gets interrupted you don't have as long to wait before you can use it again. It also means that you might be able to drop them, wand people, then use them again more often, if you ever need extra adrenaline. It's also now slightly more powerful (25-60%) and protects you from interrupts. The Energy boost would also give it a lot more strength.

FalconEye's Proposal

• Vocal Was Sogolon -

10 1 20 - (Restoration Magic) - Elite Item Spell. "Hold his ashes for 15...51...60 seconds. While you hold his ashes, all Shouts and Chants you use last 33% longer, and also activate and recharge 33% faster. When you drop his ashes, you gain 2 energy for each party member within earshot."

-=OR=-

• Vocal Was Sogolon -

10 1 20 - (Restoration Magic) - Elite Item Spell. "Hold Sogolon's ashes for 15...51...60 seconds. While you hold his ashes, all Shouts and Chants used by earshot party members activate and recharge 25% faster. When you drop his ashes, you gain 2 energy for each party member within earshot. (Maximum 4...10...12 energy)." --Falconeye 06:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Cornflakeboy's issue

Issue

• Most of chants are one time triggered once applied, 10 seconds are enough.
• very few interesting synergy

Suggestion

The best thing would be to change chants functionnality and make them scalable towards affecting time and number of use...but this won't probably never happen so here I go:

• Vocal Was Sogolon -

10 1 30 Item Spell (60 seconds.) Shouts and chants you use cost 10...28...33% less energy. Drop effect : you gain 1...2...2 energy points for each ally on earshot (maximum 2...8...10). Of course there is still the problem of adrenaline chants and shouts... but having ashes in hands makes it difficult to build adrenaline anyway.Cornflakeboy 09:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)