GW2 Ritualist WvW Builds

Ritualist takes the same melee slot as Reaper — Greatsword into the pile, Axe/Focus to peel back out — but the damage arrives differently.

Spawning Power replaces Death Shroud with Ritualist's Shroud, and the spirits its skills create persist until you leave shroud: after their first attack they keep striking on their own. Charged Souls adds innervation skills, so you can channel energy into a spirit for an extra effect and get life force back for doing it. The line also unlocks weapon spells, which is where Xinrae's Weapon comes from — a stun break for you that also breaks the allies around you out of stuns.

Read Spirit's Strength carefully before you commit to the spec: it increases the damage your creatures deal, not yours. The build only pays out if the spirits get to attack something, which makes Explosive Growth — damage on the summon itself — the floor under it, and Soul Twisting refunding your first spirit skill on entry the thing that keeps the cycle going.

One build lives here: a power zerg Ritualist on the same Spite and Soul Reaping backbone every power Necromancer runs.

1 Ritualist build

Playing Ritualist in WvW

The spec asks you to be in melee and to think one step ahead of where the pile will be, because a spirit summoned into the last fight does nothing in this one. Spirits do not follow you; they stay where you made them and they die to incidental AoE.

That is also where it struggles. In a fight that never holds still, Spirit's Strength is scaling damage that never lands, and you are left with the summon hits from Explosive Growth and the same Greatsword anyone else could swing. Reaper gets the same job done with fewer moving parts when the fight is that fast.

On defence you have Xinrae's Weapon to break a stun for yourself and the group, and nothing else — no Stability on the bar. Like every Necromancer melee build, you go where the squad's bubble goes, and you leave when it does.