Critique my general PvE build

I'm usually running with Koss as triple chop warrior and Melonni as reaper's sweep dervish, so the splinter weapon is exclusively for them. But... splinter wanding Al Capwns! ...

Seriously? Awesome stuff, I'd probably do something similar if I had a PvE Rt... Which I don't

I've toyed around with other elites than offering of spirit, but to be honest, rit elites kinda suck. WoR is a nice skill, but it has synergy issues with the other weapons up there. Once that and spirit light weapon is out, you're pretty much stuck with offering, since everything else is shit. Still, might be worth a shot.

As for recovery vs pure was li ming, I'm kinda torn on it. The mass condition removal really is sexy, but the recharge is a pain. With offering of spirit recovery probably is better just for the spirit anchor, but the effect on pure is just so sexy when it goes down. *poof*, everyone's clean. I waffle between them tbh.

New ancestor's is sex. Spamming it on a dervish with high mysticism is even sexier. It's nice to see the yellow, but it's just so ridiculously good now that I couldn't ever part with it. I will never, ever take this or splinter weapon off my bar. They're just too good.

I'm really, really unsure on spirit rift. Like you said, in GWEN it just doesn't do that much through armor, and thanks to splinter mobs die really quickly anyway. Definitely doesn't feel worth the 10e and a slot, but not much else fits there well.

Looking at your bar, I don't really see the point of those spirits, especially when GoLE could fit there too.

I like nightmare weapon, but it's never really been quite the "money" spell I'd like it to be.

How about this?

[skill]ancestors' rage[/skill][skill]splinter weapon[/skill][skill]spirit rift[/skill][skill]glyph of lesser energy[/skill][skill]nightmare weapon[/skill][skill]weapon of remedy[/skill][skill]protective was kaolai[/skill][skill]death pact signet[/skill]

Skills are a little out of order, general idea is just putting all the really, really good rit skills on one bar, with the exception of warmonger's weapon since you can only have so many weapon spells. BloodSong is just a turret that deals some very consistent hurt in protracted fights. I don't always drop it, but it's life-steal works great over-time. It really mounts up impressively especially on bosses. Life is also there for similar reasons. Protracted fights in pve always seems to be against enemies that just drain the teams hp as a whole quite efficiently (heroes and hench are stupid). Every time Life goes off, people are usually back to full hp. I like that.

I see you replaced it with Kaolai but I really don't like item spells, and the heal is just LoD lite at the end of the day. the 140 from Life even at silly half-radar range is pretty nice. The armour is cool, but I use a +5 focus and Ghost Forge of a Weapon bar .

This build doesn't give me energy probs at all, so I have very little use for GoLE. Also since I use mostly 5 energy spells anyway, Essence Strike is far better for EM if I ever needed it.

Spirit Rift is your basic janitor spell. Cleans up the crap Splinter leaves behind. Nightmare is actually great for indirectly healing warriors while doing good offense.
WoR is never an issue as it's usually a personal reserve or for the team casters. I may use it on the physicals when Splinter/Nightmare wares off if things get hairy (Life I love ya) but it's a rare thing. I've never been a fan of Death Pact Signet. Gave me GvG (back in the day) and TA nightmares. It's pretty ok of course.

Warmonger's is great but this is PvE at the end of the day. I'd sooner things were dead than interrupted. Splinter is just too good on Rit primary. Besides I often run Power Drain or similar crap on the monks. Shame they're crap at understanding EM (Don't use it at full energy you moron...), but that and Zho in your team is all you need in that department.

Gwen is really a nice break from pvp ^_^.

So I've been playing around with pretty much the same build for a while now in GWEN, and I've pretty much hit the wall on how much I can refine it. So... tear this to pieces and make it better .

[skill]spirit rift[/skill][skill]ancestors' rage[/skill][skill]splinter weapon[/skill][skill]weapon of shadow[/skill][skill]recovery[/skill][skill]recuperation[/skill][skill]offering of spirit[/skill][skill]death pact signet[/skill]

I'm usually running with Koss as triple chop warrior and Melonni as reaper's sweep dervish, so the splinter weapon is exclusively for them.

Variants:
-Swap weapon of shadow for warmongers weapon if interrupts are a must. I usually bring along the interrupt henchie or a BHA ranger, so this is often overkill.
-Swap weapon of shadow for pure was li ming, and recovery for [skill]life[/skill], giving more "on demand" condition removal

Issues:
-Weapon of shadow is kinda weak for melee shutdown, but I still need some area of effect physical shutdown spell. The only other options I see are [skill]weapon of warding[/skill] and [skill]blind was mingson[/skill], neither of which are all that attractive.
-Spirit rift is great damage - when it hits. Everything dies so fast that it usually ends up going off and hitting nothing. Not sure what else to put here, though.
-No super-fun PvE only skills I use many variations of a Channeling build, with OoS... Here is one i use similar to yours, but tweaked a bit::

[skill]spirit rift[/skill][skill]ancestors' rage[/skill][skill]splinter weapon[/skill][skill]essence strike[/skill][skill]Ghostly Haste[/skill][skill]Life[/skill][skill]offering of spirit[/skill][skill]Flesh of My Flesh[/skill]

I know i only have 3 direct damage spells now, but with a descent amount of points in Spawning, you can keep Ghostly Haste up about 85% of the time, meaning you can spam Spirit Rift, Ancestor's Rage, and Essence Strike 25% faster...

Any other under 10 second recharge dmg spell is usable in place of Ancestors, Splinter Weapon and Essence. And the recharge on Life is now 25% faster, just in case it gets killed before its natural death. Just keep up a Life spirit as much as possible (pre-battle setup too), and you will consistently have the 25% faster recharge bonus from Ghostly, as well as a support heal in pressure situations, all the while spamming Rift all over the place. Real fun having multiple Rifts pop up all over the place (target switching ftw!).

Try it out, its not uber, but its fun and effective!
cheers.

that looks uber to me. O_O

i'd just drop the resto line and add in bloodsong In my mind the whole point of running a rit is the piles of utility you can bring. If you spec 100% channeling, you're nothing but a half-assed elementalist. I selected the first three skills on that bar ([skill]spirit rift[/skill][skill]ancestors' rage[/skill][skill]splinter weapon[/skill]) first because they actually do something useful, and second because I can spend 100% of my time on them, leaving the rest of the bar open for toys.

On batou's build-

The only things on that bar particulary limited by recharge time are ancestor's rage and essence strike. Everything else is really limited by cast time, and will usually be recharged before you can get around to using it. I'd suggest going two ways with it.

First, you could bring [skill]weapon of quickening[/skill] to turbocharge rift, rage, and essence strike. I tried it out briefly after the exhaustion nerf a while back, it worked ok, and was actually pretty good in a party full of eles since you can buff them up too. The downside is that you're speccing communing, and the only utility of note in there is [skill]dulled weapon[/skill] (actually a pretty good spell).

Second, you could drop ghostly haste for arcane echo, and then use that to squeeze out more rages. I'm unsure if you'd need essence strike there, I tend to be bad at figuring out the energy burden of builds until I run them.

On my own build, I cut out the second spirit, and now just take recovery, life, or recuperation depending on the area. It makes everything move a lot faster, and makes energy a little easier to manage. That slot, and the slot for weapon of shadow are extremely variable. I've run everything from wards to resto heals to PvE skills there. I've actually tossed splinter weapon for great dwarf weapon a few times too, when mobs just weren't big enough to require it, e.g. in a FoW clearance run.

As for Ensign's smiting stuff-

I screwed around with it and was vastly underwhelmed. Strength of honor is the big ticket skill there, but it just doesn't have enough of a "money" effect that I'm comfortable using half my att points and skillbar for it. PvE warriors spamming dslash and the like already do 50+ damage per hit, an extra 13 just doesn't do anything gamebreaking.

As a final thing in this rambling post from hell, I've heard flag runner rits are getting some attention in GvG. I'd be curious what they're running, if anyone knows.

Second, you could drop ghostly haste for arcane echo, and then use that to squeeze out more rages. I'm unsure if you'd need essence strike there, I tend to be bad at figuring out the energy burden of builds until I run them. That would make the build highly highly inefficient. Using Arcane Echo + Ancestors: 5-6 seconds and 35 energy later you can get 2 Ancestor Rages off, or using my build (Ghostly + Ancestors): 6 seconds and 30 energy (easily recovered from OoS) 2 Ancestors Rage also achieved (via ghostly haste). In the end, you can spam Rift so often in my build that any other AoE isn't essential, i usually just bring other high dmg single target nukes, or utility nukes...

You may want to take your own advice to heart, and try my build before you critique . You yourself admit you can't really gauge good energy management... By no means am i calling my build perfect, but as it stands, it is a build that is very cohesive where each skill (aside from the 2 optional nukes) has a very specific role/purpose in making the build efficient.

This build with a few defense modifications, is great in HM too. anyway, its nice to discuss builds for an under appreciated class...

I wanna see more builds too!
cheers!