Talk:Agony

I currently run a boon of creation + 6 spirits + painful bond. this spirit should nicely replace Anguish, as it is cheaper, and has a better recharge. depends on how well the dmg works. Also, it might not work, because I'm not sure if it fire a weapon. However, it will make it possible to make a dual ritualist spirit team, before there were not enough spirits to do so effectively. Kyle van der Meer

I just wanted to say I really like this skill (and Rejuvenation). Both add an interesting and powerful new dynamics to Ritualists, and it helps them in an area they weren't that good before in PvE, AoE damage. Erasculio 00:51, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, it's not overpowered because it's earshot range. Likewise, Rejuvenation does not outclass Recuperation for the same reason. Agony and Rejuvenation are two useful but not overpowered skills in my opinion. --Heelz 01:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

They are super fun with Signet of Binding too. ~Izzy @-'---- 01:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a problem with the second progression? The more channeling magic you have, the more you spirit looses health? Wouldn't it be more logical to work the opposite way (10..3 instead of 3..10). Otherwise your spirit lifetime won't increase with your channeling attribute. It will just deal damage quicker but the final amount of damage dealt by the spirit will remain exactly the same (and equal to the spirit's base health if my math is correct). Chriskang 02:06, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

That seems to be the intent. However, this combos well with things like Signet of Creation, which allow you to effectively extend the base health of the spirit, making the DPS more of the limiting factor. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 02:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Spirit base health increases with level. A level 1 spirit has 70 Health at 0 Spawning Power, a level 8 spirit has 210 Health at 0 Spawning Power. -- Gordon Ecker 02:21, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like prefect spirit to lay down and I like eficiency of damage it seems it would do (no foes - stays alive, one foe - equivalent of handly counterable 5 degen for long time, lots of foes - flash of yellow numbers :-) ) Zweistein 09:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

While I commented on Rejuvenation that it needed to effectively have it's health loss capped, this spirit is great as it is, simply because you won't have so many foes over-extended in the first place to over-load it in like 3-4 seconds. Incidentally, neither this skill nor Rejuvenation will convince me to spec into Resto, Spawning Power as well as Communing. Channeling is just so much more attractive. Even for a resto rit. Fro 11:02, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This and Rejuvenation really need to have the health loss of the spirit, per foe damaged, lowered with increasing attribute levels.--Redfeather 13:12, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Spirits become stronger at higher levels anyway, if you reversed the effect it can potentially last its full duration, 90 seconds of agony is pretty painful, lol. It's a weirdly operating spirit, almost like a ward... (Terra Xin 02:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC))

Yeah, it's tricky. But if Agony has 300 health (15 channeling/11 spawning)and there are 3 enemies in the area. You are doing 100 damage to each before it dies. If there a 6 enemies, the damage is 50 to each before it dies. I guess it's okay for only a 10 energy cost.--Redfeather 03:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, signet of creation can keep up spirit for whole 30 seconds if there is single foe around (ande can make max hp of spirit non issue) and can double spirit life expectancy with two foes. Not mentioning that there is signet of binding around too ... Id say it is great for fights as damage is cosntant and by looks of it it would get throught any existing protection - shaddowform and such would be inefective. Zweistein 07:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I could see this as a good skill if anyone goes farming with a spirit spammer build. You would pre cast most of your spirits, run up to the enemy and cast Summon spirits, fall back and cast Painful bond, followed by agony.

This looks like a skill designed to make PvE life horrible (no fun if this is used by lvl 26 Rt mobs). --Xeeron 10:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a very interesting spirit overall, nice concept imo. Benefits from Spawning Power and has an effect that's not lame or useless. This + Rejuv actually seem like they -might- be worth using some of the Spawning skills with like Sig of Binding, Sig of Creation, Rupture Soul, etc. Might even be worth something like Soul Twisting if they work well enough. Patccmoi 19:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Within earshot? Does this spirit make blood-curdling spreams? That'd be cool, call it "Deldrimor Banshee" or something similar, and possibly drown out or reduce the effectiveness of shouts chants or echoes, for it's short lifespan perhaps. Gwynna Vive 12:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

A thought about usefulness, in PvE this would be ideal to keep a mob away from your other spirits... Gwynna Vive 12:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a anti-55 monk skill.

Lol, just realised a few things: 30 x 10 = 300, not deadly but combined with other area degen it should keep monks busy. Also, -10 health per second should match -5 degen, right? Signet of Creation should be able to keep the spirit alive for the whole 30 seconds. Nice! :) - IH 23:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Took me a few minutes to notice that that's for one foe. On a GvG area that would be 80 damage per second to the spirit if full team is present, it's still nice but does require more attempt to keep it alive for a great damage (Spirit Boon Strike finally found its use :>). Also as a side note, should Izzy or any other dev read this, something could be done to help the ritualists keep spirits alive a bit longer, at least in PvE. Mostly what I'm hoping is a buff for Shelter (it dies pretty fast in certain Hard Mode areas/missions). It's pretty good now but could use a little buff :> - IH 23:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Some data about this spirit: @ 16 Channeling, 13 Spawning Power, it will have 344 Health (see Spirit Health chart: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Spirit_health_chart ). Now if we have 3 foes around, it will live 11 seconds and deal 110 damage to each over these 11 seconds (maybe one more burst, as 14 Health are still left). This is considerably less than Firestorm, Searing Heat or almost any other DoT-AoE can dish out, to an unlimited number of foes. The advantage is the range, it cannot be dodged and that it does not cause AoE panic. In PvP it might also cause some initial confusion about what is causing the damage. But what happens when say 8 foes are affected? Quite a realistic number given the mass battle nature of PvE in the latest chapters, and also the number of an enemy player team. You have 4 seconds of damage and deal 40 damage over time to 8 foes. Which is still quite nice. Plus it can be comboed with this signet. Wow, a Spirit that might be worth a skill slot. --Longasc 09:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Favorite skill out of all the new ones, besides energetic.Streetp 00:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments after testing

Alright, i really like Agony. The damage is good and works great especially if there's other degen on top to stack it with. There's a couple of issues though:

1) It triggers on spirits and pets. For a spirit like this, this is REALLY not a good thing. If you face a spirit spammer, his spirits will eat your Agony. I'd suggest at least not letting it hit summoned creatures. Pets are debatable, but at least you don't really risk to fight 5-6 pets at a time. 5-6 spirits or minion is actually incredibly common in the meta

2) The health loss is a little too high. The only way for this to have even a remotely good uptime is to Soul Twist it. And i don't really have an issue with that. But even with Soul Twisting AND Signet of Binding it still dies really fast. I mean, the total damage done by the skill doesn't really match 10/3/30 stats imo, especially if you wanna think of 8v8 with extremely efficient party healings. Like suggested before, switching the health loss to 10..5 instead of 5..10 would be a BIG help on that and would likely make it GvG worthy. Atm in 8v8 it just vanishes without really having time to pressure.

If those 2 changes are made, this is the kind of spirit i could see widely used. It's a very interesting one with great effect and it DOES make Spawning and stuff like Soul Twisting and Signet of Binding meaningful. And since you have to use it in Earshot, it's some annoying passive stuff. They have a chance to interrupt it or kill hit once it's up (any damage dealt to it translates directly in less damage dealt to their team, so it's worth it). Patccmoi 05:26, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

preasure version of destruction??

thats cool, i really like this and rejuvenation.

skill icon

he looks maori(nz)

lol. ohhh that's mean. I'm Maori :S (Terra Xin 11:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC))

Noo, no.. It' looks like Fred Flintstone singing karaoke -- Nox Coma 23:01, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks more like this.--68.7.252.237 09:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

AB Build

I am so making an AB build with this skill! Mass AoE dmg for Mobs, hehehe, should provide some nice pressure...

Attributes 12+1+3 Channeling 11+2 Spawning Power 6+1 Communing 1. Agony 2. Ritual Lord 3. Signet of Creation 4. Signet of Binding 5. Destruction 6. Draw Spirit 7. Optional 8. Optional 68.226.80.7 03:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Paragon Synergy

I just remembered testing out a build as a Rt/P because I wanted to try and find any kind of use for Vocal was Sogolon - but that didn't come out successful (I mean come on, you're gimped because you have to carry those ashes so no adrenaline based shouts can be used :S). Anyway I switched to P/Rt and thought what it would be like if I used Angelic Bond and Angelic Protection. For those of you who don't know, these two skills can be used on spirits. The damage I suffered from the upkeep of spirits like Shelter and Union was tremendous, and yeah you pretty much see a whole bunch of numbers popping out of nowhere. I think that with an organized team, taking Agony with a Paragon's support may lengthen the life of that spirit. I'm thinking three other rits with Spirit Boon Strike and you basically have a damage ward. :D (Terra Xin 11:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC))

You can also use Signet of Synergy to heal spirits (and yourself) and unless it was nerfed, well of blood can heal spirits too, still, you propably would be better off letting spirit die naturally and use elite like souls twisting to simply get new one up. Zweistein 08:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Agony a good skill? Its a joke

I tried it out, its simply not worth the skill slot to bring. Channelers are already strapped for skills and this one is simply patethic. Dies too fast from selfinflicted damage, and far too long recharge. It will never get to live out it's full duration.

I would love to see Agony as a viable alternative to bloodsong, you can plop down every battle, and or soultwist/draw spirit it with you to the next. And how to do that? Remove the self inflicted health loss from it, then it would suddenly be interesting and worth keeping with you. But as it is now, junk, it will die long before the cooldown recycles.

Same should happen to Rejuvenation, that likewise suffers from the selfinflicted health loss that makes these 2 spirits unreliable. They may die before you can use soul twisting to recycle them and reset their duration and health.

Remove the self inflicting damage? o.O So you would have a spirit that does 900 armor ignoring damage in earshot range? I somehow don't think that's going to happen. If you use Soul Twisting on this skill, you'll lose more than you would by using it with, say, Bloodsong - I don't think those two skills combine well together. Erasculio 16:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

You're a joke for not realizing this does 480 damage divided equally among all the foes within earshot. The cost and type justify the damage. Lightblade 18:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

This skill is very good. Armor ignoring damage is always a plus in my book. The damage is not minuscule as other people think. Ten armor ignoring damage each second plus everything that is going on (poison, bleeding, fire, damage, etc), this skill is very strong. When the spirit is out you should take it out, the thing with every spirit is that all that time and energy you wasted on the spirit you could've used it on a player, but if you concentrate on your foe this spirit will be taking away ten health, is not damage but health loss. Whenever my party in RA is hit with this the party moves so that we don't waste energy on the spirit and not lose health, and moving causes loss of position advantage. Good skill."Just set it and forget it"--Wealedout 01:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Most spirits die with 1 melee attack, if you spec so that this spirit has some crazy 400hp then youre probably going to be too weak, and sacrifice a lot for a spirit that dies in 2-3 melee attacks, which is like 1-5 secs... Good job you stalled them for as long as guardian does 76.26.189.65 21:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Weak skill. The spirit goes to level 8, so at maxed Channeling with a strong investment in Spawning Power (say 10+1) you get 230 or so damage, spread out over people and time. With 4 opponents in range that's ~60 damage each, over 6 seconds, with a further 27 seconds or so downtime till the next 60 damage. It's not horrible efficiency, but it's certainly not incredible, and it requires a strong investment in two attributes to get that much efficiency. Sure, you can use Signet of Binding with it, but the synergy is weak because of the necessity of investing in Communing, Channeling, and Spawning Power (plus we are talking about 2 skills at that point). For PvE the spirit does laugable damage when compared with AoE damage skills, for PvP the efficiency is not horrible, but damage over time needs to be high efficiency and provide continual pressure, and the limits of the 3 second casting time and immobility of the spirit make it less than ideal. If Agony were in the Communing line the synergy with Signet of Binding might be stronger. --Epinephrine 19:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It's ok in the mobile spirits type build just for something to cast when your using the offense spirits and painful bond, but I guess it doesn't really matter what you use past those 4 skills. I was actually hoping it would cause enemies to kite away so I could use it to protect my spirits and backline.

The biggest use this skill has is in 4v4 PvP, because you will more than likely only have 4 foes, unless someone brings a pet. The same with Rejuvenation, the smaller your party is, the better. This really isn't a PvE geared spirit. RitualDoll 17:23, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

would work in HA with a team filled with Ele's who cast Glimmering Mark on separate targets.- 69.115.13.91 20:47, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you kidding? This a good spirit, while the spirit put a -5 degen to the foe keep pommeling the foe with the rest of your Channeling skill bar. Even perfect with degen teams(hexes and/or Conditions), while they max the degen, summon this baby at 14 attribute for an additional -5 degen. Don't be a mentally retarded idiot and summon this in a mob area or near the frontliner, stay as backliner.--ShadowFog 16:37, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Lol. U r funny gai. -Auron 16:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Pretty pathetic troller, troll another website and do us a favor, keep this page for skill discussion.--ShadowFog 16:46, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I second that, yep he is trolling.Some people need to get off the trolley and play the damn game.--Wealedout 16:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Painful Bond

Does this trigger the extra damage from Painful Bond? - Elder Angelus 15:31, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Nope, cause Painful Bond say: "whenever hit by a Spirit's attack." -- Nox Coma 23:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

If it did, this skill would be useful. Euphoracle 21:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh man

Has anyone else noticed that this spirit REALLY fucks with enemy AI in PvE? It's like they can't tell where the damage comes from and it confuses the hell out of them. Kirenne Starfire [Kw] 21:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

lolfarm

Echo chain-->agony x3, max spawning power and channeling. can farm casters/rangers/blocked foes, altho you might just be better off with Conjure Nightmare+Phantasm and Lyssa's aura :]78.20.153.111 16:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't tell if you're joking or not ._. You can't have multiple Agonies active at the same time. Zoe 06:06, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Well it dies pretty fast so just cast one after another dur. One thing about this skill...doesnt cause scatter and isnt a hex/condtion. Would have to check but I dont think smite crawlers would be able to do anything about this skill. Still way too slow for farming--Justice 08:39, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Armor of Unfeeling

Does it stack? --Falconeye 06:24, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

This spirit looses health. So, no. →[ »Halogod (talk)« ]← 17:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Karaoke

The icon looks like someone whos singing Karaoke... It also makes sense that its named agony and is causing pain to everyone's ears... also makes sense that if there are enough people in pain from hearing you sing that someone is going to quickly take the microphone away from you Talamare 10:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Being Objective

This is actually a very powerful skill. It is just easy to misunderstand, let us look at the skill objectively. There are reasons why this skill does not appear to be powerful. Unlike many other skills, there are no numbers that flash up on the screen that add to your instant gratification that you are killing things or visibly displaying how many things you are attacking. This in itself makes the skill a problem for people, since they have no idea what the skill is actually doing. At level 12 Channeling and Spawning, when you cast this spell you create a spirit with 296 hp. That means that when you cast this spell, you deal 296 damage evenly divided amongst the enemies in range. This is a huge amount of armour ignoring damage that as a previous poster pointed out, is not a hex, is not a condition, and can only be stopped by killing the spirit.

So the spell at this point deals 296 damage, that in itself is amazing even given its cast and recharge. Let us now consider those. It takes 22 seconds for the spell to cast and recharge so that you can cast it again. If you divided the damage by this time, you get 13.5 damage per second. A decent typical skill will do 7 dps by itself. This skill does nearly twice that. Also, if you combined this with Soul Twisting as another poster has suggested, you would do 592 damage. This is a huge amount of damage! Think of this, when you combine this skill with Edge of Extinction you have a higher probability of EoE triggering.

Lastly, increasing the damage done while reducing the damage to the spirit would actually make this skill over powered. Even if it was an elite at this point, there would be a fine line between this skill being powerful, and this skill being broken.98.124.27.250 20:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Being Even More Objective

With a typical attribute spread of 16 Channeling and 13 Spawning Power, the Spirit of Agony will have 395 health. As stated above, this correlates to 395 unpreventable damage done to foes in earshot divided equally amongst them, so long as the spirit does not receive damage. Additionally, as the spirit may have a duration far longer than its recharge time, it is easy to have a Spirit of Agony up on the field with a second one ready to recast. Under perfect conditions, this would correspond to 790 unpreventable damage.

Being that Agony is a binding ritual, there are a number of skills that can either enhance its effect or make it more efficient. Spirit Siphon can entirely negate the energy cost of Agony, while Boon of Creation can reduce it to as low as 4 under usual scenarios. Agony, like other spirits, can be used to exploit skills which require binding rituals, like Rupture Soul or Feast of Souls. If you have other Ritualists in your party, Agony may help with spells that are improved when in earshot of a spirit, such as Mend Body and Soul. Soldier198-2 (talk) 14:28, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Strange choice of targets

I'm not sure if this info has any practical application but thought it was interesting anywa. Agony will drain those grey cows in Factions, in spite of the fact that players can't even select them (I actually thought they were part of the scenery like some smaller animals and not NPCs of any kind). It will also affect charmable animals before they become hostile, but does not affect rabbits, including the evil one in EOTN, unfortunately. 86.178.161.176 15:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The gray cows are water buffaloes :-). They aren't targetable but they are also vulnerable to AoE damage, such as from PbAoE like flame burst etc. In essense it seems that Agony drains health from anything neutral or hostile that can take damage. --Lania Elderfire 17:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)