Guild Wars 2

Hi Anet and PvP community,

I just want to express my support to the posts that asked for the removal or the nerf of sigil of air and fire. It has been an issue in the game for the past year but has been overshadowed by the celestial amulet and turret engineer demands. Sigil of air and fire has always been broken and made zerker-oriented classes extremley powerful.

Some concerns might be towards rangers and necros but they are already getting buffed after patch! A lot of people complained about the mindless gameplay of Spinal Shivers proccing with air and fire leading to a medium class going from 80% health to 1% health because of it! On crit sigils should not support more damage, as it is already ON CRITICAL HITS. (They already hurt a ton why ON EARTH would u try and make crits hurt more??) It also nullifies the effect of ferocity. Every high tier PvPer knows that Power scales best in this game, and that is partially because of the sigils of air and fire!

Tl;DR: Air and Fire sigils have caused imbalances in this system and needs to be either removed or reworked. On crit sigils , in my opinion, should not promote more damage unless it was something like sigil of force (5% extra damage really isnt a killer but a 2k follow by a 1.4k air and fire proc every 5 seconds is a HUGE deal.)

Last but not least, sigil of doom and intelligence need a serious revision as well as they are also BS. (Looking at celestials with under 20% crit chance just because they have intel…a well practiced engineer knows how to utilized it to make that broken.)

Just my 2 cents.
Would love to read your opinion.

Nerf all of those sigils that you mentioned, then Energy becomes top again. If there are going to be nerfs, then nerf to balance must happen.

At the moment, sigils aren’t the real problem when there are greater evils that exist such as instant cast easy to land DPS mechanics from Guardians as an example. Combine that with fire/air? It’s annoying to deal with.

I kinda have to agree.

Yes, they could be reworked, but why bother? They are inherently not fun, not skill-based, too luck-based, too bursty etc. They would need a complete overhaul. And all the classes that use them would still be viable without them, you might have to change the playstyle a bit.

Throw ’em in the dumpster ANet, or if the PvE community somehow still wants ’em, just get rid of them in PvP!

Doom and Int can simply be toned down, they aren’t as hopeless as Air/Fire.

Patchi.9061:

Hi Anet and PvP community,

Some concerns might be towards rangers and necros but they are already getting buffed after patch!

wat

Laraley.7695:

Patchi.9061:

Hi Anet and PvP community,

Some concerns might be towards rangers and necros but they are already getting buffed after patch!

wat

No no don’t disturb this nerf thread. Also what about crit OP?

Yeah, zerkers need to be nerfed and celestials need to be buffed so no one will EVER be able to compete with them again. Mwahahahaha!

Remove all sigils and runes actually. Your build is defined by your traits and weapon. Why add a variable to the equable to make balancing difficult?

Oh wait we nee dto please the pve crowd.

no thank you as much as they are broken I like having fire and air to help kill those pesky cele eles/engis/wars faster rather than watch them press everything and kite in circles till regaining full health.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

no thank you as much as they are broken I like having fire and air to help kill those pesky cele eles/engis/wars faster rather than watch them press everything and kite in circles till regaining full health.

A broken mechanic shouldn’t justify another broken mechanic. Both should be fixed.

BlackTruth got it right.

Fire air is never a problem on zerker warrior for example.

because warrior does not have easy damage application and does not have random kitten proc that does incredible amount of damage, rip 3 boons and proc fire air.

No ty, not a fan of a bunker meta.

To answer your concerns about this making celestial stronger let me update you on upcoming updates that were announced:

Celestial will be shaved by 10%.
Thief will have executioner AND panic strike in THE SAME trait line.
D/d Eles and Cele engi WILL get nerfed as stability classes have gotten a well-deserved buff to make it able to compete.
Mesmer has INSANE amount of increased DPS AND survivabilty after patch.
Ranger is gettin a damage buff same for power necro and the new Greatsword specialization.
DPS eles actually got a buff to its damage.
Hammer medi guard is gettin a slight nerf with glacial heart being removed and the buff of stability classes.

As I listed above those are shaves that are happening to most celestial classes except shoutbow which is actually gettin a buff which is justified as it can get 100-0d with Crowd Control (might be scary we stability tho..). All zerker classes except Hammer medi guards are getting buffed which answers your concern on the Blink-Burst.

However, Zerker classes might OUT WEIGH the bunker/celestials in the upcoming meta…and important conditions such as burn and poison appear to be getting a nerf as well… Can you notice the trend? Next meta might just become the Zerker meta…and that would only lead to more RNG issues from air and fire that’s why i suggest they are removed..

Too many speculations but if it’s true…then yikes.

If you don’t want a bunker meta, you nerf the bunkers, not add stronger sigils for the dps classes. Makes no sense.

Yes … there are already 2 posts about it. Let’s make another one! It sounds like a great idea! … NOT.

I guess this is what ANet deserves for listening to crybabies and nerfing turret engineers into oblivion after that. Now crybabies want to nerf the next thing that kills them.
And this circle will continue until there is only 1 playable build on 1 profession. Thus skill. AmIrite?
GG.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Yes … there are already 2 posts about it. Let’s make another one! It sounds like a great idea! … NOT.

I guess this is what ANet deserves for listening to crybabies and nerfing turret engineers into oblivion after that. Now crybabies want to nerf the next thing that kills them.
And this circle will continue until there is only 1 playable build on 1 profession. Thus skill. AmIrite?
GG.

Ignorant like always

Quadox.7834:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Yes … there are already 2 posts about it. Let’s make another one! It sounds like a great idea! … NOT.

I guess this is what ANet deserves for listening to crybabies and nerfing turret engineers into oblivion after that. Now crybabies want to nerf the next thing that kills them.
And this circle will continue until there is only 1 playable build on 1 profession. Thus skill. AmIrite?
GG.

Ignorant like always

The ignorant is the guy proposing this change. And every supporter they may have.
Turret engies needed a change, not a kill, because they had access to some sick mechanics.

However! runes/sigils/amulets are accessible by anyone. Thus that makes them a fair game. You are just complaining that you don’t proc as often. I don’t see how this is game breaking.

Maybe I’m too used to old school MMOs where you had RNG whether you hit or miss with each attack, or you guys are too spoiled. Can’t figure out which it is. The worst that can happen in Gw2 is “glance”….

You could express support by keeping it in one thread. -.-

Imo I don’t think sigils are an issue right now, the grand scheme of balance lies within the classes themselves, sigils are merely just adjustments that make the base build excel further. When one nerf comes there will be only one thing left to blame and it will be the classes themselves. So why come up with a small issue that will get in the way of class balancing progress? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Jelzouki.4128:

You could express support by keeping it in one thread. -.-

Imo I don’t think sigils are an issue right now, the grand scheme of balance lies within the classes themselves, sigils are merely just adjustments that make the base build excel further. When one nerf comes there will be only one thing left to blame and it will be the classes themselves. So why come up with a small issue that will get in the way of class balancing progress? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Give this man a cookie! Well said my friend, well said!

Air/Fire are pretty broken tbh. If you look at the Abjured comp they literally just focus on camping stealth and then one shotting people with air fire and immob from panic strike… Coming from someone that’s faced The Abjured twice, their comp is pretty freaking broken. At least with the cele meta teamfights lasted long enough to make plays, with a Zerker meta it would basically be who camps stealth longer cuz the first team to get out of stealth would have someone get instakilled then they would lose fight due to being outnumbered.

Also RIP Necro

Make all on crit sigil proc on hit instead of crits and reduce fire and air dmg.

How about we start by cleaning up the on-swap sigils?
Specifically geomancy and hydromancy.

Geomancy can instantly apply sigil of doom. All of that with a single button press, happening at instant speed. Doom procs, geomancy procs, geomancy applies doom, enemy has both poison and bleed without having any chance to dodge anything.
How about removing the physical damage part from hydromancy and geomancy? It removes the synergy with many other on-swap sigils.

About Fire+Air: How about giving one of them a new role?
I’d say, increase the cooldown on sigil of air, lower the damage significantly and make it apply weakness to the target.

Nothing wrong with Fire & Air

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Nothing wrong with Fire & Air

I’d respect your opinion but im not sure if i can call this an opinion or just straight up disagreeing without any reason to do so. To counter that powerful argument u gave, everything is wrong with fire and air, since i replied i am obviously correct hence, gg wp l0l 1337.

the whole game has so many ‘x on crit’ things i doubt these ones will change. sure it’s rng, but isn’t that the point of rpgs? isn’t 70% crit chance just rng?

there seem to be a group of people who want all instant casts and procs removed, alongside a nerf to all meta builds. sounds like they are in denial that they want to be playing another game. rpgs and random procs go hand in hand.

How are people seriously this naive? Do they just want the game to not become better? “random procs go hand in hand.” for example. Just what?

Quadox.7834:

How are people seriously this naive? Do they just want the game to not become better? “random procs go hand in hand.” for example. Just what?

it’s an rpg dude, based off table top rpgs where you literally roll dice. the random element is intended.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Nothing wrong with Fire & Air

No there is nothing wrong with high RNG damage. It’s totally chock full of skill and counterplay.

“High RNG damage” lol, you guys probably forgot that engineers exist and have a passive trait called Incendiery Powder and that does more dmg than air/fire combined together.

Same with guard’s burn on block and terror necro that fears you and deals damage whenever you CC them.

If you gonna cry about air/fire then you will also have to cry about many other things.

Sigils are fine because people are upset not about the sigils but about the mechanics that abuse the sigils. Engineers using kit swaps to trigger on swap sigils is a different mechanic than the rest of the classes who have swap cool downs. Fire/Air sigils are put on zerk builds because the downside is they have no defense. However on celestial classes they are better because they don’t sacrifice as much.

However I will say that I see quite a lot of zerk thief hate which I normally hard counter with Guardian bunker. Everyone complains that 111111 is an issue when you can counter it with blocks, blind, and weakness. My point would be, to review engineer swap and celestial and then complain about procs. I doubt that would change much for some.

It’s funny to me that everyone is upset about the pew pew meta but I don’t see ANYONE bringing anti pew pew. It does exist which will then change the meta back to melee…circles..

glock.6590:

“High RNG damage” lol, you guys probably forgot that engineers exist and have a passive trait called Incendiery Powder and that does more dmg than air/fire combined together.

Same with guard’s burn on block and terror necro that fears you and deals damage whenever you CC them.

If you gonna cry about air/fire then you will also have to cry about many other things.

What suggesting? Don’t fix one problem because there are other problems? That doesn’t make sense. Following that logic we would never change anything.

Btw, you know that they are making IP a grandmaster trait and moving it to firearms traitline right?

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/25/gw2-core-specializations/#Engineer

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

There is passive stability to counter passive CC. ( last stand vs reaper’s prot)
There is passive condi clear to counter passive condi application. ( IP vs shadows embrace)

Etc… This game will never be 100% about skill . This is not mortal kombat where you dodge attacks and then counterattack.

The only passives that should never be dominating are the AI passives cuz in that case it becomes player vs AI. Every other passive is fine imo. If you don’t like passives then I don’t know why you are even playing this game.

glock.6590:

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

There is passive stability to counter passive CC. ( last stand vs reaper’s prot)
There is passive condi clear to counter passive condi application. ( IP vs shadows embrace)

Etc… This game will never be 100% about skill . This is not mortal kombat where you dodge attacks and then counterattack.

The only passives that should never be dominating are the AI passives cuz in that case it becomes player vs AI. Every other passive is fine imo. If you don’t like passives then I don’t know why you are even playing this game.

Give this man a cookie. And to the guy reminding you that all RPGs are heavily RNG oriented.

What really bothers me about you crybabies is that you are not complaining about a skill, or a trait, or an armor stat (e.g. the celestial complaining), you dumwits are complaining about sigils that every single profession and every single build could use. I mean, I’d understand if fire/air was exclusive to thieves and mesmers and rangers for example but sheesh …… you guys make zero sense.

Why not remove amulets while we are at it hm?

Ravenmoon.5318:

What really bothers me about you crybabies is that you are not complaining about a skill, or a trait, or an armor stat (e.g. the celestial complaining), you dumwits are complaining about sigils that every single profession and every single build could use. I mean, I’d understand if fire/air was exclusive to thieves and mesmers and rangers for example but sheesh …… you guys make zero sense.

So complaining about an armor stat that any class can use is ok but complaing about a sigil is not. Double standards.

Nerf/rework is not the same as remove.

glock.6590:

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

There is passive stability to counter passive CC. ( last stand vs reaper’s prot)
There is passive condi clear to counter passive condi application. ( IP vs shadows embrace)

Etc… This game will never be 100% about skill . This is not mortal kombat where you dodge attacks and then counterattack.

The only passives that should never be dominating are the AI passives cuz in that case it becomes player vs AI. Every other passive is fine imo. If you don’t like passives then I don’t know why you are even playing this game.

I respect your opinion and understand your point. HOWEVER, the fact is you’re in A and i’m in B. You’re suggesting a change in passive procs (ip, fear) , I’m suggesting a change in passive procs (air/fire).

That being said, we are both suggesting the removal of passive procs. HOWEVER, IP is a grand master trait on a 10 second cooldown CAN be condi cleared especially in this meta. Reaper Protection comes with a great cost, first of it is easily triggered by any ranged stun, second of all it is an adept trait, third of all you sacrifice greater marks for it which in most cases NOT WORTH, last but not least 60 second cooldown.

Now let us look at sigil of air/fire. They do NOT require a trait, they scale GREAT with zerker (power), they are ON CRIT so undodgeable, are respectivley 3 and 5 seconds cooldown so weapon swap should not really effect it that much. They deal overall more damage than IP and Reaper’s combined.

My point is, both of our arguements are valid. We are both on the same page in terms of reducing passive procs. You cannot possibly trait your build for a single specific passive. Air and Fire sigils are in a much more “dangerous” spot than the passive procs that actually require traiting. The only other issue is nightmare runes and balthazar but that is still not as threatning as the potential of air/fire in the upcoming meta especially now that every zerker is going to have a huge power spike, celestials are getting a shave, and bunkers won’t be able to sustain that much spike combined with air/fire.

Note: I might be over exagerating a bit, but air/fire is DEFINATLEY a problem that needs to be solved, no matter how many problems you believe exists. It is a problem, it requires to be fixed. Case Closed.

glock.6590:

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

Wrong. Some builds/classes don’t rely on passives to save them (mesmer for example) except for vampirism rune at most. Also, the game is NOT built around how fire/air or geo/doom works right now. For the majority of the game’s lifetime, we couldn’t stack 2 proc sigils and we couldn’t even use 2 sigils on twohanded weapons like the greatsword.

Ravenmoon.5318:

What really bothers me about you crybabies is that you are not complaining about a skill, or a trait, or an armor stat (e.g. the celestial complaining), you dumwits are complaining about sigils that every single profession and every single build could use.

We make a thousand percent sense actually. While you might be complaining about a single skill or trait in this game, we are complaining about something that ALL professions use. Why? Because it is that strong. Not everyone is playing incendiary powder engi (a trait which is by the way being moved and changed) but so many players are using sigils like air/fire/geo/doom. To have these mechanics completely changes the game, something a single trait or skill can’t do.

More or less completely agree with the OP. Pure power builds have been far too effective for so long largely due these two sigils.

Quite honestly if the devs can’t manage to balance the sigils, which is fair there’s a lot of them, I’d rather they just all be removed.

glock.6590:

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

There is passive stability to counter passive CC. ( last stand vs reaper’s prot)
There is passive condi clear to counter passive condi application. ( IP vs shadows embrace)

Etc… This game will never be 100% about skill . This is not mortal kombat where you dodge attacks and then counterattack.

The only passives that should never be dominating are the AI passives cuz in that case it becomes player vs AI. Every other passive is fine imo. If you don’t like passives then I don’t know why you are even playing this game.

The problem is, that a single damage tick from some random AoE field, which would usually tick for about 300 can suddenly turn into a 14k damage spike, if it procs fire and air, dropping you below 50% and triggering spinal shivers.
The game was built around a lot of active defense with evades, blocks, blinds, interrupts, etc.
You can’t evade or block everything. You can’t keep the opponent permanently locked down or permanently blinded. Somewhere, somehow a little damage instance will slip through, even if you take great care to interrupt or evade all the big hits.
If you want to know, why interrupt builds or control builds have fallen heavily out of favor: You can control the normal attacks, but if more than half of the enemy’s damage output is not tied to any specific attack, but rather happens incidentally from any small scratch, it becomes meaningless.
A similar thing goes for weapon swap sigils: They amount to a lot of a cindition build’s damage output, but there is just no counterplay other than having a lot of short cd cleanse ready. blinding or evading an instant speed condition application doesn’t work.

If I eat an earthshaker, a lich autoattack or a full rapid fire and die to a random damage proc… Fine, I took a high damage attack and rng killed me, no biggie… The sigils caused the attacks to deal about three times the expected damage, I can live with this.
But let’s say, I block the entire rapid fire, jump in to attack, the ranger uses hunter’s shot to stealth and I suddenly lost 8k hp to a double proc? That’s just silly. The sigils increased the damage of that single attack by more than ten times.

The problem with proc sigils is that they cause any little scratch to have the potential to deal lethal damage. And there’s no way to defend against it other than playing cat and mouse in stealth.

If you guys have a valid way to replace the RNG aspect of fire and air sigils with skill-based versions that you’d feel less inclined to complain about, then let’s hear it. I’m all for skillful play.

I am not, however, for thinly veiled “Zerkers do too much DPS, my cele build should survive everything” complaints. I know some of that mind are hiding somewhere.

If there’s a problem, suggest a fix. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know how to improve a sigil that literally says “This skill probably will go off if you crit, lol”. If you want to start guaranteeing flame blasts and lightning strikes in exchange for them proccing at “Random” times, I’m all ears.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

If you guys have a valid way to replace the RNG aspect of fire and air sigils with skill-based versions that you’d feel less inclined to complain about, then let’s hear it. I’m all for skillful play.

I am not, however, for thinly veiled “Zerkers do too much DPS, my cele build should survive everything” complaints. I know some of that mind are hiding somewhere.

If there’s a problem, suggest a fix. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know how to improve a sigil that literally says “This skill probably will go off if you crit, lol”. If you want to start guaranteeing flame blasts and lightning strikes in exchange for them proccing at “Random” times, I’m all ears.

There are defensive traits, which proc, when an attack takes more than 10% of your health in a single hit.
If you want to remove some portions of rng, you could start by making some of the sigils proc on that. Deal more than 10% of the targets hp in a single hit —> proc fire. It means, fire sigil can only proc on important hits. However, it also means, fire sigil is useless against the hp sponges in PvE.

I’m still for nerfing the damage on passive procs entirely and making them more utility based. This game was advertised as being based on active defense. We don’t need Proc Wars 2.

naphack.9346:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

If you guys have a valid way to replace the RNG aspect of fire and air sigils with skill-based versions that you’d feel less inclined to complain about, then let’s hear it. I’m all for skillful play.

I am not, however, for thinly veiled “Zerkers do too much DPS, my cele build should survive everything” complaints. I know some of that mind are hiding somewhere.

If there’s a problem, suggest a fix. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know how to improve a sigil that literally says “This skill probably will go off if you crit, lol”. If you want to start guaranteeing flame blasts and lightning strikes in exchange for them proccing at “Random” times, I’m all ears.

There are defensive traits, which proc, when an attack takes more than 10% of your health in a single hit.
If you want to remove some portions of rng, you could start by making some of the sigils proc on that. Deal more than 10% of the targets hp in a single hit —> proc fire. It means, fire sigil can only proc on important hits. However, it also means, fire sigil is useless against the hp sponges in PvE.

I’m still for nerfing the damage on passive procs entirely and making them more utility based. This game was advertised as being based on active defense. We don’t need Proc Wars 2.

This.