back to guild wars I guess

I tried all last week to get 15 Naga Skins for Nick the Traveler.  He was taking them 3:1 for gifts of the traveler, max 5 gifts per account per week.  Doing as many runs through Boreas Seabed which has a fairly high concentration of them as I could, I only managed seven all week.  I took my two gifts and went to sleep.

This week seems to be easier, this time it's 3:1 Dredge Incisors.  The main thing is that there aren't any enemies in the zone hostile to Dredge, whereas there were groups of humans that would fight off the Naga in Boreas Seabed and take kills and drops.  My first run through the ones in Ferndale I got 5 incisors and killed several bosses, one of whom dropped two of the incisors.

I had a secondary goal for being in Ferndale.  I recently came across this team build for speedbooking with heroes and I want to set it up, since it will make getting the EotN reputation titles easy.  Naturally I don't have everything necessary to set it up, so I set out getting the three elite skills it needs that I didn't have.  The first two have been easy caps so far.  Moebius Strike was only tough because the boss with it also has Dancing Daggers and Factions bosses deal double damage, so it spikes people down really quickly.  The other one, Signet of Spirits, was the entire reason I was in Ferndale.  Secondary to that was that Ferndale contains tons of Dredge.

Anyway, being a ritualist skill, I needed to change my secondary to ritualist so I could cap it.  I figured I might as well run an old favorite build of mine, called Splinter Barrage.  It takes advantage of a ritualist weapon spell called Splinter Weapon that deals damage to foes nearby your target whenever you attack your target.  Barrage is an elite bow attack shoots arrows at multiple targets.  So if you picture me using Splinter Weapon and then Barrage and seeing a massive cloud of damage numbers pop up on screen, you're on the right track.

Anyway, as it turns out, Signet of Spirits is linked to the same attribute that Splinter Weapon is, so I had points in it and essentially had a second elite skill while I cleared out the rest of the Dredge.  Normally you're limited to only one elite skill on your bar, but if you do what I did and capture a second one, you can use both until you leave the zone you captured it in, then one will disappear.

What exactly does Signet of Spirits do that makes it elite?  It summons three ritualist attack spirits.  They can pump out the damage, and will attract the enemy AI since they're low armor targets, resulting in the party having an easier time clearing things.  Between the damage they put out and the reduced aggro it was a breeze clearing the rest of the Dredge.  Did I also mention that the spirits stay alive for 60 seconds and the skill recharges in 30, and being a signet it has no energy cost?  If it was a spell that costs 25 energy, activates in three seconds instead of one, and takes 60 seconds to recharge (or the spirits only lasted 30 seconds), it wouldn't be elite.  But then it would suck, and the name would be wrong since all signets in Guild Wars don't have an energy cost.  Some of them take energy from the caster as a part of their effect, but they cost nothing to activate.

So now I'm off to get the third elite skill I need, Signet of Ghostly Might.  It boosts the attack damage of spirits within earshot.  Then it'll be back to genociding Dredge until I have 15 incisors.  Since I'm already 33% of the way there after one run, hopefully it should go better than Naga Skins did.

Wait, was the rit elite my primary reason for being in Ferndale, or was it the Dredge?  I'm confused.

Edit: got enough Incisors for my five gifts, in as many runs.  Why can't they all be like this?