[Ritual Sacrifice Is All Style, No Substance — Looks Powerful, Plays Miserably]
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I had two ascendancy points left and didn’t want to go with the +1 ring slot — that Spirit reserve penalty just didn’t seem worth it for my build. Then I saw Ritual Sacrifice, and honestly? It sounded incredible.
Kill a rare monster, consume the corpse, and gain all of its modifiers for 20 seconds? That looked like it had serious power potential. I was genuinely excited to try it out. But after using it in actual gameplay… I dropped it. It sounds great on paper, but in practice, it’s frustrating, clunky, and punishing. --- What Went Wrong At first, I thought it was bugged. I’d kill a rare, try to activate Ritual Sacrifice, and nothing would happen. Turns out Herald of Blood was consuming the elite’s corpse before I could use the skill. GGG has said this is being fixed soon — which is great — but that’s just one part of the issue. Even when it does work: The 5-second cast time locks you in place and leaves you wide open. I died multiple times just trying to activate it mid-fight. If you clear the area and then use it, the 20-second buff is almost gone by the time you get to another pack. It's completely useless in boss fights, since most bosses don’t spawn rares, and the buff doesn’t last long enough to carry over. Trying to use it feels like a trap — you get punished for engaging with your own ascendancy mechanic. --- Compared to Other Ritualist Paths Choosing Ritual Sacrifice gives you: A node with +3% movement speed A risky, situational skill with poor uptime Meanwhile, if you go with the Blood Boil path instead: You get +20% physical damage (always active) You get Blood Boil, which provides consistent passive damage in both mapping and bossing No setup or channeling, and it works 100% of the time The difference in power, ease-of-use, and flexibility is huge. --- Even Headhunter Does This Better Let’s be real — Headhunter (a belt) gives you rare monster modifiers passively, just by killing them. No channeling. No setup. No danger. Just straight power. Ritual Sacrifice is an ascendancy skill — it’s supposed to be one of the most powerful choices in your build. And yet, it’s slower, clunkier, more situational, and harder to use than a belt. That comparison really highlights the problem. Even if you build around it with supports or uniques, the base skill still feels terrible. Compared to Blood Boil or even the ring slot (despite the reserve cost), it simply doesn’t hold up. --- Please GGG — Ritual Sacrifice has so much potential. I loved the idea when I first saw it. But right now, in actual gameplay, it’s punishing, awkward, and offers very little reward for the effort required. I really hope this ascendancy skill gets more attention — it deserves to be worth using. Last bumped on Apr 10, 2025, 2:30:10 PM
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Agreed. It's absolutely horrible and I wish I had picked a different Ascendancy.
Even when you can sacrifice your HP to gain a random modifier, there's no visual indication of what the modifier is, what it's doing, nothing. Sometimes if you look at your sheet DPS it will go up, but who knows what the actual modifier is unless I'm missing some sort of tell somewhere else. Also, and maybe this is a given, shattered rare enemies from frozen, cannot be sacrificed either. Last edited by anatomyhorror#2878 on Apr 9, 2025, 12:34:00 PM
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" Yeah, I felt the exact same way. The lack of any clear visual feedback or indicator for what modifier you actually got makes it really underwhelming — you activate this long, risky cast and then... what? You’re left guessing if it even worked unless you pause mid-fight to dig through your character sheet (and sometimes there’s barely even a change). Also thanks for pointing out that shattered rares can’t be sacrificed either — I didn’t realize that early on, and that definitely explains a few moments where I was standing over a pile of nothing wondering why the skill wasn’t activating. It just adds to the list of frustrating edge cases that make the skill feel unreliable. |
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" Blood Boil does exactly nothing if the boss has no adds (or they die too fast/not near the boss). I agree with you though that ritual sacrifice needs to be better. Overall ritualist seems really weak and is a disappointment (until you might eventually get a very good jewellery setup going). |
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" Many bosses spawn minions so it would at least give a small advantage, but yes they are both more for map clearing. But taking blood boil gives you flat 20% physical vs the 3% move speed which makes it much better for bosses, unless you can kite an elite into a boss on a map and survive 5 sec to cast ritual lol. |
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It must be like headhunter - active aura.
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" 100% agree it should also be stronger than headhunter its your ascendency node it should be build defining and impactful. Instead of niche. |
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haven't test it but i would never unless it is change to passive like HH, they should definitly considere that. It's like the Anvil for smith of kitava, who the hell want to stop to hammer a dam anvil mid fight :D
Last edited by BigBeuss#5956 on Apr 10, 2025, 1:04:14 PM
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" 100% agree i saw clips of that anvil ability and was like wow! This is what GGG's "vision" of meaningful combat looks like? 5 sec animations? Nothing meaningful about it other than its absolutely terrible. |
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I feel this could be easily solved by making it a 70% modifier on cast time and remove the 5 seconds.
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