Guild Wars 2

Okay so I have been using Signet of restoration and it seemed to be really, really weak. I’m at lvl 14 and I also happen to have a lvl 14 warrior so I compared Signet of Restoration to the Warriors healing Signet.

Signet of Restoration: with daggers spamming the first skill I heal about 14 a second
Signet of Healing: 52 healing a second

Signet of Restoration: Heals for 161 when used
Signet of Healing: Heals for 220 when used

Signet of Restoration: 25 second CD
Signet of Healing: 20 second CD

As you can see, Healing Signet is clearly far better. These facts just seem really unfair to me and I suggest some balance to these skills

Well Signet of Restoration has the written in stone trait which make you not lose the passive when you use the active heal. Signet of Restoration is base off you the amount of time you attack while, Healing signet is just a passive regen. Both passives heal for the same amount at lvl 80 according to wiki. Also it show that the signet of restoration’s passive gain more from healing power than healing signet.

Don’t try to compare Warrior skills to any other class. They’re just not on a the same level.

In all seriousness though, Signet of Restoration gives you a heal for everything you do. Including switching Attunements, Dodging with Evasive Arcane, using a Utility. All of that. It can provide better burst healing then SoH even if you don’t use it.

It is weak.

It is not weak if you’re specced for high healing and toughness with low vit.

I use a Staff as my weapon on my Ele, so I can’t really spam skills with enough speed for SoR to pay off. I use Ether Renewal as my self-heal instead. It’s a different story underwater, as I typically use Air for the quick spamming of the first skill, which makes SoR a lot more effective.

Zaxares.5419:

I use a Staff as my weapon on my Ele, so I can’t really spam skills with enough speed for SoR to pay off. I use Ether Renewal as my self-heal instead. It’s a different story underwater, as I typically use Air for the quick spamming of the first skill, which makes SoR a lot more effective.

I use mostly staff in pve, and i tend to keep SoR on my bar anyway…i just like it that way and barely ever need to use the active anyhow. Staff offers plenty of healing for your whole team as is, SoR is little bit of extra for yourself without needing to stop combat.

Elementalist heals in general are kinda… crappy. The glyph isn’t terrible, but all of them are kinda mediocre compared to other classes heals. I’m unsure why popping it has such a long cooldown base or why the heal per attack is so low.

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

Caffynated.5713:

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…

TWMagimay.9057:

Caffynated.5713:

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…

Would be nightmare to balance.

Strang.8170:

TWMagimay.9057:

Caffynated.5713:

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…

Would be nightmare to balance.

Thives have a signet identical to SoR that works on hit instead… so the precedent is already there. The ele one is literally just an inferior version of the thief signet…

Strang.8170:

Would be nightmare to balance.

Not really… The more targets you fight, the faster you die. And actually hitting smth with your skills requires more effort than just randomly casting… Staff has an easier time to aoe enemies, but the spells are slower. They can lower the heal per by a bit(~150) if needed and it shouldn’t be a problem….

signet of restoration is weak during the lower levels.

once you hit higher levels, it definitely scales much better. mine is healing for almost 300 per attack as D/D with a mix of carrion, soldier and cleric gear. i have around… idk, +700 healing power of the top of my head.

plus, you have to also consider that everything you do counts as a spell cast: dodging heals you, swapping attunements heals you, etc.

plus, elemenetalsits have a lot more skills to work with and use. you should be constantly switching out spells and shizz. you’ll heal for a lot more.

nvmvoidrays.2158:

do counts as a spell cast: dodging heals you, swapping attunements heals you, etc.

plus, elemenetalsits have a lot more skills to work with and use. you should be constantly switching out spells and shizz. you’ll heal for a lot more.

This, this, a thousand times this.

Elementalists have a lot of actions that you’d think wouldn’t count for spell casting, but they do, including receiving damage from confusion.

Signet of Restoration is pretty much the PvP staple unless you’re running a staff bunker build. In PvE, it can work with any weapon set (except maybe sceptre) so long as you’re constantly casting and swapping attunements. High Arcane investment and dagger/dagger usually receives the most payoff.

From a pvp perspective I find it to be rather good even when running with low healing (around 340). I rarely use the active heal, though. It suits an agressive playstyle where you keep attacking.

TWMagimay.9057:

Caffynated.5713:

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…

That would be so insanely overpowered =D

Imagine spamming fast cast AoE with stacked healing. 350 × 5 for one spell that might have taken 1/2 second to cast.

It just needs to be a little better for weapons that don’t have 1/2 second cast and instacast abilities.

Caffynated.5713:

That would be so insanely overpowered =D

Imagine spamming fast cast AoE with stacked healing. 350 × 5 for one spell that might have taken 1/2 second to cast.

It just needs to be a little better for weapons that don’t have 1/2 second cast and instacast abilities.

How many fast-castable, spammable aoes can you think of that constantly hit 5 targets? Oh, and how many “5 targets” can you think of whose combined dps is less than 2k?

Depending on spec/weapon:

fire attunement, drake’s breath, fire stride, ring of fire, phoenix, fire grab, earth attunement, lightning whip (3 targets), earthquake, frozen burst, cone of cold, ring of earth, water trident, arcane wave, cleansing fire and probably some others that I’m not thinking of right now are all <1 second casts or AoE channels that hit fast.

I love your idea, but it’s potentially more healing per second than Ether Renewal with no cooldown.

Glyph of storms, meteor shower, lavafont, burning retreat. Easy enough to get all those 4 ticking at the same time. In pve easy enough to gather 5 targets. In wvw too.
Bad side is that even if they split it pvp/pve, it´s still needs to be balanced with 5 max targets in mind, so fighting anything less it would be rather useless skill.
Another problem is the amount of skills ele can fire in rapid succession. For example channel churning earth, lightning flash in, arcane wave, lightning swap, lightning strike, blinding flash, rtl, backdraft, fire swap, phoenix, fire grab. That´s 10 (backdraft doesn´t hae damage) spells within few seconds, some of them possible hitting 1-5 opponents. And the overall effectiveness of the skill would need to be balanced with this kind of chains, abundance of aoe and multiple ways to stack fields in mind.

Why is it ok for thieves then?
Well the initiative system makes sure that they have much larger gaps between aoe skill uses, they have far lesser amount of aoe skills in first place, and their field spells are nearly non-existent compared to eles.

But at the end of the day there´s one thing that stops this from happening even more. Bunkers.
This would be a huge buff for bunkers, and anet has shown that bunkers will certainly not be buffed, no sir. Bunkers will atmost be nerfed further.

Strang.8170:

Glyph of storms, meteor shower, lavafont, burning retreat. Easy enough to get all those 4 ticking at the same time. In pve easy enough to gather 5 targets. In wvw too.
Bad side is that even if they split it pvp/pve, it´s still needs to be balanced with 5 max targets in mind, so fighting anything less it would be rather useless skill.
Another problem is the amount of skills ele can fire in rapid succession. For example channel churning earth, lightning flash in, arcane wave, lightning swap, lightning strike, blinding flash, rtl, backdraft, fire swap, phoenix, fire grab. That´s 10 (backdraft doesn´t hae damage) spells within few seconds, some of them possible hitting 1-5 opponents. And the overall effectiveness of the skill would need to be balanced with this kind of chains, abundance of aoe and multiple ways to stack fields in mind.

Glyph of storms is on 1+s cast time, Meteor shower is on 4+s cast time, Lava Font has a delay between cast and dmg And if you manage to get 5 players in BR, I’ll be very surprised. Most ele aoes either cast slowly(thus giving the enemy time to move out) or a close range(thus reducing the expected amount of targets). Which basically means that it can only be OP against mobs but then again…karka(main reason I started feeling meh about SoR…when a mob can hit me for 10k in 2s and I’m regenerating 250 hp/sec…it just isn’t fun…). The skill could be tweaked to decrease heal based on targets. Like, if you have one opponent, it does 250 per hit, on 5 it does 100 per target per hit…

Oh, and if bunkers are the problem…it could also work as a life leech. 10% of dmg goes to hp…or 5% or w/e. So a class cannon would benefit most while a bunker wouldn’t. Which could fix the common belief that bunker=best for ele.

signet of restoration is actually one of the best heals as an elementalist. You just need to learn to stack vigor properly, and attunement swap properly. I usually dodge roll 4/5ths of the way through with my spells, in order to reduce my total effective cast times and put out more spells per given time frame.

Also try learning to use spells while running away. I still have trouble doing this properly, as this requires you to cancel all targets and auto attack nothing while running. Swap attunements at the beginning of channeling spells, and learn to use evasive arcana to its maximal effect.

GeneralFreedom.2540:

Elementalist heals in general are kinda… crappy. The glyph isn’t terrible, but all of them are kinda mediocre compared to other classes heals. I’m unsure why popping it has such a long cooldown base or why the heal per attack is so low.

Because you can buff the signet through traits so much it’ll outclass just about any healing skill in the game.

Or do you think ‘Healing+Protection+Swiftness+Fire Shield+Fury+still get healing on skill use’ isn’t worth a skill slot?

Purely skill-to-skill, its true that Signet of Renewal is lackluster. But by doing that you’re ignoring other factors, such as signet-buffing traits, the fact that Elementalists have other supplemental healing skills / traits (many traits in the Water line including minor traits are heal-related, most weapon sets except D/F have at least 1 healing ability, ect), and the fact that Warriors have a much larger health pool so a larger heal is nessicary to have it heal a meaningful percentage of total health.

Just play a guardian and get regen for free.
/clap

ThiBash.5634:

GeneralFreedom.2540:

Elementalist heals in general are kinda… crappy. The glyph isn’t terrible, but all of them are kinda mediocre compared to other classes heals. I’m unsure why popping it has such a long cooldown base or why the heal per attack is so low.

Because you can buff the signet through traits so much it’ll outclass just about any healing skill in the game.

Or do you think ‘Healing+Protection+Swiftness+Fire Shield+Fury+still get healing on skill use’ isn’t worth a skill slot?

sory for been noob but how do you buff this signet?
ty

Earth II – Signets recharge 20% faster
Earth XII – Maintain the passive efects of signets when you activate them
Fire IX – When you activate a signet, you gain a fiery shield for 3 seconds
Water II – Arcane and signet skills cause vulnerability when activated
Arcana X – Arcane and signet skills restore 25% endurance when used

With Fire IX you gain an aura which will proc your aura traits -

Air I – Auras grant fury and swiftness
Earth V – Auras grant protection
Water XII – Auras are applied to nearby allies

with fire’s embrace, zephyr’s boon, elemental shielding and written in stone. pretty bad idea because you need to take at least 1 more signet or god forbid 3 more…

haviz.1340:

with fire’s embrace, zephyr’s boon, elemental shielding and written in stone. pretty bad idea because you need to take at least 1 more signet or god forbid 3 more…

Are you seriously implying that the signet/aura build is a bad idea? The earth and water signets are pretty decent snares in addition to their passive effects. Combined with said traits, they make excellent duelling skills.

sangvinu.3218:

sory for been noob but how do you buff this signet?
ty

No need to apologize. That’s what the forums are for.

ThiBash.5634:

haviz.1340:

with fire’s embrace, zephyr’s boon, elemental shielding and written in stone. pretty bad idea because you need to take at least 1 more signet or god forbid 3 more…

Are you seriously implying that the signet/aura build is a bad idea? The earth and water signets are pretty decent snares in addition to their passive effects. Combined with said traits, they make excellent duelling skills.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If you don’t believe me and you are on EU serv we could scrim to try out that.

Seeing as how I’m not overly full of myself, I don’t doubt that you could beat me in PvP. However, that’s just anecdotical evidence that doesn’t really say anything about the skills themselves.

Signet builds aren’t bad. They give decent passive effects and, with traits, great active effects as well.

So basically this skill is good if you have a bunch of signet traits, and sucks if you don’t?

reikken.4961:

So basically this skill is good if you have a bunch of signet traits, and sucks if you don’t?

In a nutshell, yes. If you’re gonna use a skill, then it’ll be better if it compliments your playstyle, traits and other skills.

There will always be players and builds that prefer certain skill choices. I for one cannot fathom using Ether Renewal, but from what I’ve read, it’s quite popular to some players.

ThiBash.5634:

There will always be players and builds that prefer certain skill choices. I for one cannot fathom using Ether Renewal, but from what I’ve read, it’s quite popular to some players.

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

I use ether renewal when I’m expecting conditions and I have 0 in water
otherwise glyph all day every day

Indeed. I do so too, especially since the cooldown reduction trait also affects Glyph of Elementals. All I’m saying about the signet is that it’s not all bad. Just depends on your build.

ThiBash.5634:

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

There are many issues with utilities, traits and overall skills on the Elementalist, but our heals are actually quite well balanced. All 3 of them are worth using at different points which is quite a feat.

haviz.1340:

ThiBash.5634:

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

I don’t understand this
How can a trait line be falling short? If you’re investing in it specifically to get a trait, the trait you’re getting is obviously useful. And all of the trees give good attributes.

reikken.4961:

haviz.1340:

ThiBash.5634:

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

I don’t understand this
How can a trait line be falling short? If you’re investing in it specifically to get a trait, the trait you’re getting is obviously useful. And all of the trees give good attributes.

If you’re putting points in fire line just for attack (because most fire traits are completely ridiculous) it’s a waste of trait points. You need 20 points in fire to get fire’s embrace, not just 10.

how can someone judge a skill by traits? if you want to use these traits, you must sacriface something else, thats the point… so i dont have any idea why you count traits when comparing two skills…

haviz.1340:

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

The Fire trait line may be somewhat weak, but the combined effects of the signet build can be quite solid. And since you’ll be using more than one signet, you will likely get Signet of Earth which mitigates the loss of defense somewhat.

The signet build may not be your ultimate choice, and I’ll admit it isn’t mine either. But the build as a whole, does work, and is quite viable at least in dungeons and PvE.

ThiBash.5634:

The Fire trait line may be somewhat weak, but the combined effects of the signet build can be quite solid. And since you’ll be using more than one signet, you will likely get Signet of Earth which mitigates the loss of defense somewhat.

The signet build may not be your ultimate choice, and I’ll admit it isn’t mine either. But the build as a whole, does work, and is quite viable at least in dungeons and PvE.

Don’t get me wrong, this build is solid, the theory behind it is pretty decent, but there are builds far outperforming that particular build.

You can’t really compared things at low levels since they’re balanced around lvl 80. At level 80;
Healing signet: base 200hp a second +3.25% healing power. 3320 active heal, 20 sec cool down.

Signet of Restoration:202hp a cast + 10% healing power. 3275 active heal, 25sec cooldown.

SoR is basically only good on daggers since other weapons don’t attack fast enough. If you spec for healing power, ele signet is actually better (assuming you never stop using skills).

haviz.1340:

reikken.4961:

haviz.1340:

ThiBash.5634:

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

I don’t understand this
How can a trait line be falling short? If you’re investing in it specifically to get a trait, the trait you’re getting is obviously useful. And all of the trees give good attributes.

If you’re putting points in fire line just for attack (because most fire traits are completely ridiculous) it’s a waste of trait points. You need 20 points in fire to get fire’s embrace, not just 10.

The power and the condition duration. Condition duration is kind of awesome.

reikken.4961:

The power and the condition duration. Condition duration is kind of awesome.

12 seconds of burning off of Drake’s Breath is plenty for me.

If you use Signet of Restoration and Written in stone trait , Healing Power will be the best survivability stat to focus on specially when wielding a dagger. Which will increase it’s passive healing perfectly.

Leuca.5732:

reikken.4961:

The power and the condition duration. Condition duration is kind of awesome.

12 seconds of burning off of Drake’s Breath is plenty for me.

If all it did was give you an extra tick of burning, indeed it wouldn’t be that awesome, but condition duration also affects chill, immobilize, cripple, etc.

reikken.4961:

Leuca.5732:

reikken.4961:

The power and the condition duration. Condition duration is kind of awesome.

12 seconds of burning off of Drake’s Breath is plenty for me.

If all it did was give you an extra tick of burning, indeed it wouldn’t be that awesome, but condition duration also affects chill, immobilize, cripple, etc.

The only other condition that it will significantly improve is bleeding, since the others have such a short duration that a decent investment into fire magic will not be worth it, given the mediocre major traits. Somebody who really wants conditions to last longer without kittening their build should invest in runes/sigils.

Is different and bester for elem is bester because you can spam on D/? 2 or 3 skill per secondes :

1 air 1 fire is 0,5 secondes spam .
swap is instant .
3 air is instant
can trip is instant
2 earth is instant
esquive with esquive arcane is instant
4 fire is 0,25 secondes .
+ passif skills or passif shield on trait or on signets or on rune .

on war is just all one seconde ……

so one war = 200/seconde
so one elem = 200×2 seconde + all instant swap , dodge , skill instant and passif skill or shield .
…..

war = 10/20
elem = 20/20