Guild Wars 2

Regardless of traits, apart from Signet of Air, signets are just useless. It’s useless to make a build around signets (in other words: use traits related to signets) because the signets themselves just don’t work properly. Signet of Earth, Fire, and Ice don’t work 9/10 times because the enemy has to be in a precise angle. In PvP with you and the enemy moving around constantly, this just isn’t going to work.

Anyone else have this frustration?

Yes. I use air, water and earth signets in my main build. And air and earth in my current test build.

What annoys me is that the enemy has to be right in front of you, so not using the signets on approach can mean they are waisted latter in the fight. The c/ds on some are so high as well.

The air signet is one of my favorites. The earth signet is second best (when it works) long duration immobilize for those dragons teeth.

Btw you made 2 posts.

I like signets for a 20/10/10/30/0 build – activating a signet will give you and your party a fire aura, swiftness, fury, and protection. I think it’s a very underutilized support build.

I disagree entirely. I primarily run a Conditimentalist build (with -20% Earth Timers).

The primary advantage to Conditions on the Elementalist is that we have some of the highest base durations of any other class. Even condition focused classes, such as Necro or Engineer, all have extremely short duration Bleeds while under this build we can easily stack up to 25 bleeds with little to no effort. For example Eruption lasts 25+ seconds with 6 stacks of bleed with a 4 second cool down for a listed damage of over 15000. Honestly I see us getting nerfed if more people ever pick up on this because the base duration of our conditions are just outrageous when you compare them to any other class.

That said Signets also benefit greatly from this build. Most base Signet Durations are obscenely long. Signet of Earth provides a massive (nearly 6s) immobilize that will get just about anyone killed in WvW if they don’t break it. A 7s Chill on demand is nothing to scoff at either.

The biggest advantage of these is that they plug a gap in certain Elementalist play styles. Fire is one of our hardest hitting attunements either as Scepter or Staff but so much of is ground targeted that without some form of CC it is lucky to for a few ticks let alone at all. Enter Signets and their on demand crowd control. You can easily pull off combos such as Chill (they break), Immobilize, Dragon’s Tooth, Ring of Fire, Phoenix, Fire Grab, Earthquake and lead into Bleeds with Earth after stacking all that Burning on them. Even with staff you can pull off combos like Immobilize, Eruption, Shockwave, Lava Font, Flameburst and that’s a crapload of bleed and burn again.

Personally only time I have trouble landing signets is when the target is actually out of range or out of line of sight because the signet will let me fire it off regardless (target or not). I have no issues even standing on walls, finding one guy, targeting him and just ruining his day with the above staff combo.

Kodiak.3281:

Personally only time I have trouble landing signets is when the target is actually out of range or out of line of sight because the signet will let me fire it off regardless (target or not). I have no issues even standing on walls, finding one guy, targeting him and just ruining his day with the above staff combo.

Issue is not from a wvw point of view, but from a sPvP point of view, where the battles are smaller and everyone exploits weaving.

Kodiak.3281:

I disagree entirely. I primarily run a Conditimentalist build (with -20% Earth Timers).

The primary advantage to Conditions on the Elementalist is that we have some of the highest base durations of any other class. Even condition focused classes, such as Necro or Engineer, all have extremely short duration Bleeds while under this build we can easily stack up to 25 bleeds with little to no effort. For example Eruption lasts 25+ seconds with 6 stacks of bleed with a 4 second cool down for a listed damage of over 15000. Honestly I see us getting nerfed if more people ever pick up on this because the base duration of our conditions are just outrageous when you compare them to any other class.

That said Signets also benefit greatly from this build. Most base Signet Durations are obscenely long. Signet of Earth provides a massive (nearly 6s) immobilize that will get just about anyone killed in WvW if they don’t break it. A 7s Chill on demand is nothing to scoff at either.

The biggest advantage of these is that they plug a gap in certain Elementalist play styles. Fire is one of our hardest hitting attunements either as Scepter or Staff but so much of is ground targeted that without some form of CC it is lucky to for a few ticks let alone at all. Enter Signets and their on demand crowd control. You can easily pull off combos such as Chill (they break), Immobilize, Dragon’s Tooth, Ring of Fire, Phoenix, Fire Grab, Earthquake and lead into Bleeds with Earth after stacking all that Burning on them. Even with staff you can pull off combos like Immobilize, Eruption, Shockwave, Lava Font, Flameburst and that’s a crapload of bleed and burn again.

Personally only time I have trouble landing signets is when the target is actually out of range or out of line of sight because the signet will let me fire it off regardless (target or not). I have no issues even standing on walls, finding one guy, targeting him and just ruining his day with the above staff combo.

problem is that the only damage conditions we can do are burn and bleed. Less conditions (diversity) means they can get removed quite easily. And what good pvp player won’t bring condition removal?

TGSlasher.1458:

Kodiak.3281:

Personally only time I have trouble landing signets is when the target is actually out of range or out of line of sight because the signet will let me fire it off regardless (target or not). I have no issues even standing on walls, finding one guy, targeting him and just ruining his day with the above staff combo.

Issue is not from a wvw point of view, but from a sPvP point of view, where the battles are smaller and everyone exploits weaving.

This.

Even when I dodge roll away, and turn around to try to cast my earth signet, I didn’t actually turn around until a split second later and the signet goes on a 4 second mini cooldown.It would’ve saved me from a 5k heartseeker or kept the thief in my lava font countless times in a hotjoin. Other times, when I turn away just before the signet cast finishes, the signet fires going on full cooldown, but there’s no effect as if I had nothing targeted. I find the signets’ arc which you can cast is the same as the staff auto attacks. Turn around too much and it won’t cast.

Signet of fire can be really nice just for the precision bonus (8% crit chance). As I mentioned above, I like to use lava font -> signet of earth to keep them standing inside lava font. As a glassy staff ele, it’s also a nice source of toughness since my runes and traits are all occupied with the scaling damage attributes.

All of our signets’ effects are kind of plain compared to other signets but they can work in some builds. The only one I find kind of lacking is water due to its inherent randomness.

In general nearly no class make use of several signets. The maximum is ONE (excluding warrior). Since they buffed signets in the last patch, we can expect more buffs for them to make them viable in PvP. Also the synergy in traitlines for signets is not existing. Normally we have 20% CD-Reduction and that’s it.

The point I’m trying to make is that I’d like to have a skillbar full of signets, but because the signet activation themselves just don’t work properly it’s not worth it, which is a shame. Elementalist has some decent traits related to signets (like Written in Stone), but they’re not worth using because of the bad signet activation (yes I realize I’m repeating myself :p ). My plea therefore is for signets to be activated more easily.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

problem is that the only damage conditions we can do are burn and bleed. Less conditions (diversity) means they can get removed quite easily. And what good pvp player won’t bring condition removal?

First of all I should say I do PvE and WvW PvP. If we were talking SPvP then my bad.

Second the conditional removal thing gets brought up each time but honestly that argument has been hyped to infinity. When I’m applying 3 bleeds every 2 seconds no condition removal in the game can keep up even just spamming that one ability. Once their condition removal has been blown you are now free to use your more powerful conditions like Signets for their big durations.

The usual counter to that is in a zerg (30 vs 30) there’s so much condition removal it wouldn’t matter but they also tend to ignore the fact there’s so many conditions being applied it kinda works itself out. There’s a 5 target cap both ways (removal and application) meaning you have to roll pretty lucky or bring way more than is needed to counter it. Even then most vids I see and most engagements I’m part of there’s always huge stacks of conditions on people because the amount of application usually greatly outweighs the amount of removal (both on myself and others).

Signets need to all fire regardless of arc. It’s not a projectile, it shouldn’t act like one.

That being said, I think signets are all actually pretty useful right now. Air just got the stunbreak buff. Fire is the single best passive DPS boost we have for PvE while also being a conditionmancer’s go-to in WvW. Earth is hard-cc for combos. Really the only one with a problem is water, which sort of has a niche for kiters or people who don’t want to spec water for condition removal.

Linnael.1069:

Signets need to all fire regardless of arc. It’s not a projectile, it shouldn’t act like one.

That being said, I think signets are all actually pretty useful right now. Air just got the stunbreak buff. Fire is the single best passive DPS boost we have for PvE while also being a conditionmancer’s go-to in WvW. Earth is hard-cc for combos. Really the only one with a problem is water, which sort of has a niche for kiters or people who don’t want to spec water for condition removal.

Actually as a Conditimentalist Fire Signet is pretty useless.

The Crit provides you nothing really since you’ll never have enough stat points to spread into Crit Damage without sacrificing strength elsewhere. Even if you wanted to go Crit Dmg by sacrificing Condition Duration (cause you could use Signet + perma Fury from 30 in Fire for Fire Fields) you’d need some sort of way to get mass amounts of crit dmg while not sacrificing Vitality, Power or Condition Damage. The only way to get Condition Duration was Runes, so that’d lead to ruby jewels which at 6 is still only around 18% crit dmg plus whatever from food.

The Burn on command is easily done with Fire either as Staff (Flame Burst) or Scepter (Auto, Dragon’s Tooth, Ring of Fire) which in both weapons can stack permanent burn without ever needing Signet of Fire.

Kodiak.3281:

Linnael.1069:

Signets need to all fire regardless of arc. It’s not a projectile, it shouldn’t act like one.

That being said, I think signets are all actually pretty useful right now. Air just got the stunbreak buff. Fire is the single best passive DPS boost we have for PvE while also being a conditionmancer’s go-to in WvW. Earth is hard-cc for combos. Really the only one with a problem is water, which sort of has a niche for kiters or people who don’t want to spec water for condition removal.

Actually as a Conditimentalist Fire Signet is pretty useless.

The Crit provides you nothing really since you’ll never have enough stat points to spread into Crit Damage without sacrificing strength elsewhere. Even if you wanted to go Crit Dmg by sacrificing Condition Duration (cause you could use Signet + perma Fury from 30 in Fire for Fire Fields) you’d need some sort of way to get mass amounts of crit dmg while not sacrificing Vitality, Power or Condition Damage. The only way to get Condition Duration was Runes, so that’d lead to ruby jewels which at 6 is still only around 18% crit dmg plus whatever from food.

The Burn on command is easily done with Fire either as Staff (Flame Burst) or Scepter (Auto, Dragon’s Tooth, Ring of Fire) which in both weapons can stack permanent burn without ever needing Signet of Fire.

Burning and Bleeding duration can both be capped out with only 20 in fire. Going 30 in both fire and earth is asking to get eaten alive by any decent burst build before your conditions actually do anything.

The crit, I agree, is not really useful. Some people run on-crit sigils and burn on crit, but I don’t like random procs either.

The burn, you are highly underrating. If you are staying in fire attunement to stack burns, you are not stacking bleeds. If you engage in fire and leave, you run the risk of condition removal denying you burn damage until you can swap back. This doesn’t even go into the utility of having a 1200 range harassment move that you can use to force a condition removal before engaging. (Throw it on another elementalist and they either need to swap to water, heal, or blow a cantrip before you’ve even started really working on them.)

It’s also hilariously fun to use. Traited with burning fire its 24 seconds of burn. Toss it a warrior after you see them blow their heal and shake it off, and just walk away. Everybody loses their minds XD

^Stop counting food buffs, that’s cheating :p

First of all – staff ele is complete failure in any form for PvP, it requires insane
controls where any guardian, or atleast S/D ele builds are like god-mode
compare to this. Staff ele has pretty much skills that are completely useless
in modes, where players aren’t bots and they can evade/move away.
Signets may only be good for their passives in PvP, but it’s still not worth it,
I’d rather go with anything else.

I don’t think signets are worthless. I’ll make two points:

(1) As someone else has already said, Signet of Earth is a great immobilize. I’m running S/D these days, and many of my biggest skills are tough to land. But using SoE I can immobilize a single target and then wreck him with all my fire skills in succession, killing most players. So single signets can be a critical part of a viable build. Also, the extra 170 toughness is awesome.

(2) I think there are viable signet bunker builds that use 3-4 signets. Trait earth, use Written in Stone and signet recharge reduction. First, this gives you much better healing power because you gain the active and passive benefits of signet of restoration. And all the other signet passive/active effects are great too. I’ve played around with builds like this and they can be absolute tanks that retain killing power. Its just going to take people a little while to warm up to the signet potential because signets have been disfavored for so long, and many of the buffs are really recent.

My current fresh air build uses signet of restoration heal and signet of fire (which gives me 38% crit chance before fury).

I’ve also tried to make this work – http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;2B2-Y0-5wM-Z0;9;59T-T;10;019B;145ALJ;4sV2DsV2D5kY

The idea is quite decent damage traded for sustain. Bare in mind that you can heal on cd and maintain the passive. You can immobilise often in earth and chain it with the signet for 5s immob. You have a bunch of other low cd cc’s too.

It works best tagging along with someone else who can help sustain you. Obviously it was way better pre-patch but I havent really looked into a post-patch revamp since I got addicted to fresh air.

Linnael.1069:

Burning and Bleeding duration can both be capped out with only 20 in fire. Going 30 in both fire and earth is asking to get eaten alive by any decent burst build before your conditions actually do anything.

This is all on the player. In my build I have 1726 Toughness, 2646 armor and 18845 HP with rock barrier on. I’ve run other builds with less and survive both in smaller engagements and large group engagements. I find the extra power, condition duration, and might stacks I gain (5 from using all 5 fire skills before rotating out due to Puissance) to be worth more than any paltry amount of survivability I’d pick up going 10 more into Arcane or Water instead of Fire. This means, if I’m standing on my Fire field, I’m usually rotating into Earth with 14 stacks (6 blasts, 3 sigil, 5 puissance) of Might before Earthquake OR if I can’t get close enough that’s still 8 stacks.

Linnael.1069:

The crit, I agree, is not really useful. Some people run on-crit sigils and burn on crit, but I don’t like random procs either.

The burn, you are highly underrating. If you are staying in fire attunement to stack burns, you are not stacking bleeds. If you engage in fire and leave, you run the risk of condition removal denying you burn damage until you can swap back. This doesn’t even go into the utility of having a 1200 range harassment move that you can use to force a condition removal before engaging. (Throw it on another elementalist and they either need to swap to water, heal, or blow a cantrip before you’ve even started really working on them.)

It’s not that I’m underrating it, I certainly used it for quite a while and it was fun to basically outright kill anyone who didn’t remove the burn as you mention, it’s that I value the other advantages that Water and Earth bring over it (assuming Air is “required”).

I’ve gotten a lot more kills in WvW due to kitten Immobilize (not to mention passive survivability with a huge Toughness increase) and a 8s Chill (again more passive condi removal which helps since there’s so few points in Water) compared to a massive burn (with no real passive advantage).

Dont forget the best signet ever is soe which gives an additional 180tuff

#signetsactivesareauras

Benji.9203:

#signetsactivesareauras

Yuck.

If they made Signets into Auras that would utterly destroy my build. I totally rely on the Immobilize and Chill to wreck people. You could instead petition for that 20 point Fire trait instead of always granting Fire Aura on Signet use to instead grant the Aura of the type with Restoration defaulting to Fire. That would give Fire tree more love.

The Great Al.2546:

I like signets for a 20/10/10/30/0 build – activating a signet will give you and your party a fire aura, swiftness, fury, and protection. I think it’s a very underutilized support build.

I’ve been kicking around a 30/10/30/0/0 idea as well – permanent burning basically for the +10% from that, plus 10% for stone splinters, constant swiftness/fury from fire aura, etc.

Signets isn’t impossible. Elementalists are pretty good about being able to pick a skill type to build around. What isn’t possible right now is a single-attunement build (there’s not enough traits for one – if water spells were more powerful base, you might be able to do it for that with the vulnerability damage bonus and cooldowns, and I’ve considered a conjure build using attunement buffs since you can switch attunement while conjuring, but… it’s not viable atm)

Writ in Stone just demands that you build around it – it’s an incredibly powerful trait.

Polaritie.4851:

The Great Al.2546:

I like signets for a 20/10/10/30/0 build – activating a signet will give you and your party a fire aura, swiftness, fury, and protection. I think it’s a very underutilized support build.

I’ve been kicking around a 30/10/30/0/0 idea as well – permanent burning basically for the +10% from that, plus 10% for stone splinters, constant swiftness/fury from fire aura, etc.

Signets isn’t impossible. Elementalists are pretty good about being able to pick a skill type to build around. What isn’t possible right now is a single-attunement build (there’s not enough traits for one – if water spells were more powerful base, you might be able to do it for that with the vulnerability damage bonus and cooldowns, and I’ve considered a conjure build using attunement buffs since you can switch attunement while conjuring, but… it’s not viable atm)

So I thought about the exact same thing with my 30/0/30/0/0 build where I use Earth/Water/Air Signets.

The problem is the base Boon Duration of Swiftness/Fury from Zephyr isn’t enough that even if you rotated all your signets on cool down (which you don’t want to do) it’d never be enough to keep 100% up time because you have 0% boon duration from Arcane.

In the end I found the 20% cool down on Fire abilities much more useful because I’m almost always in Fire or Earth on this build (and I have 20% cool down on Earth too) coupled with 10 in Water for additional Condition management (can swap to Water to remove a Condition and also use Cleansing Wave for dual condition removal).

All in all I love the build if only because it’s viable in the face of all the claims of what is mandatory for an Elementalist.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

In general nearly no class make use of several signets. The maximum is ONE (excluding warrior). Since they buffed signets in the last patch, we can expect more buffs for them to make them viable in PvP. Also the synergy in traitlines for signets is not existing. Normally we have 20% CD-Reduction and that’s it.

Signet synergy is lacking, it is found in auras when going 20 fire. You also have 25% endurance on use and 3x vun on use. Both 25% endurance and 3x vun also work with arcane allowing for a mix. Changing the 10% crit damage on arcane use to also work with signets would be a nice boost.

Kodiak.3281:

Polaritie.4851:

The Great Al.2546:

I like signets for a 20/10/10/30/0 build – activating a signet will give you and your party a fire aura, swiftness, fury, and protection. I think it’s a very underutilized support build.

I’ve been kicking around a 30/10/30/0/0 idea as well – permanent burning basically for the +10% from that, plus 10% for stone splinters, constant swiftness/fury from fire aura, etc.

Signets isn’t impossible. Elementalists are pretty good about being able to pick a skill type to build around. What isn’t possible right now is a single-attunement build (there’s not enough traits for one – if water spells were more powerful base, you might be able to do it for that with the vulnerability damage bonus and cooldowns, and I’ve considered a conjure build using attunement buffs since you can switch attunement while conjuring, but… it’s not viable atm)

So I thought about the exact same thing with my 30/0/30/0/0 build where I use Earth/Water/Air Signets.

The problem is the base Boon Duration of Swiftness/Fury from Zephyr isn’t enough that even if you rotated all your signets on cool down (which you don’t want to do) it’d never be enough to keep 100% up time because you have 0% boon duration from Arcane.

In the end I found the 20% cool down on Fire abilities much more useful because I’m almost always in Fire or Earth on this build (and I have 20% cool down on Earth too) coupled with 10 in Water for additional Condition management (can swap to Water to remove a Condition and also use Cleansing Wave for dual condition removal).

All in all I love the build if only because it’s viable in the face of all the claims of what is mandatory for an Elementalist.

I have been running something similar for a long time. With my old runes water earth monk you could get the boons to almost 100% with exact changes. Atm I run melendrus due to conditions. I run 20 10 30 0 10 with Scepter Focus. Heal, Air, Water, Earth in pvp and fire instead of water in pve (edit). The reason you had almost 100% protection (I mean very very close) was due to Airs previous C/D with Fire C/D, gaining ~10 sec off the total c/d of the signet summon. This patch gave me a stun break, but also nerfed my build (I count losing 100% protection a nerf over a lowsie stun break). With Water Monk Earth you get around 50% protection duration, that’s almost 5 sec of protection on each signet + about the same for earth swap.

I do not use condition damage for this build for several reasons: 1. I don’t like getting hit, so I dodge appropriately + use the focus’s defences. 2 I like big numbers (should probably play a different class lol) but when you imob someone into a dragons tooth / phoenix combo then switch to air for a KD and poison (poison on switch attunement) by they time they get up they have blown 1 stun break, and used a crappy heal (or blow a condition removal) and I haven’t even started on the defensive moves (2 sec daze, spell reflect / blast finisher / condition removal, invun – used only when not on point, projectile destroy, heal for half my actual heal lol). If I were to use condition damage it would be Rabids (for toughness) or Rampagers (for crit)

The Signet of Water is probably the least useful, not because it only removes one condition each ten seconds, but because the active skill is almost pointless. People will not pick it for the passive as it is too weak, and not the active for the same reason.

TGSlasher.1458:

I have been running something similar for a long time. With my old runes water earth monk you could get the boons to almost 100% with exact changes. Atm I run melendrus due to conditions. I run 20 10 30 0 10 with Scepter Focus. Heal, Air, Water, Earth in pvp and fire instead of water in pvp. The reason you had almost 100% protection (I mean very very close) was due to Airs previous C/D with Fire C/D, gaining ~10 sec off the total c/d of the signet summon. This patch gave me a stun break, but also nerfed my build (I count losing 100% protection a nerf over a lowsie stun break). With Water Monk Earth you get around 50% protection duration, that’s almost 5 sec of protection on each signet + about the same for earth swap.

I do not use condition damage for this build for several reasons: 1. I don’t like getting hit, so I dodge appropriately + use the focus’s defences. 2 I like big numbers (should probably play a different class lol) but when you imob someone into a dragons tooth / phoenix combo then switch to air for a KD and poison (poison on switch attunement) by they time they get up they have blown 1 stun break, and used a crappy heal (or blow a condition removal) and I haven’t even started on the defensive moves (2 sec daze, spell reflect / blast finisher / condition removal, invun – used only when not on point, projectile destroy, heal for half my actual heal lol). If I were to use condition damage it would be Rabids (for toughness) or Rampagers (for crit)

That’s a cool alternative that you made work.

Personally tend to either go with Power with Precision (Crit) with Crit Damage or Power with Condition Damage with Condition Duration. Either build get a source of Toughness and Vitality (such as one from gear, one from spec). Not a huge fan of mixing and matching the two because Crit needs Crit damage to really pop out and Conditions really benefit from Duration.

max out chill duration and get the trait that gives you regen and cleanses you when getting regen for mistform, signet of water and frostbow.
Now you have a passive condi removal and 3 active ones, a looooong chill, an invulnerability spell and a conjured weapon that can give even more chill, some vulnerability, decent aoe dmg and the no. 5 freeze skill.
That’s what I enjoy playing in pve nowadays on my zerker ele when I don’t wanna run triple cantrips.

Kodiak.3281:

That’s a cool alternative that you made work.

Personally tend to either go with Power with Precision (Crit) with Crit Damage or Power with Condition Damage with Condition Duration. Either build get a source of Toughness and Vitality (such as one from gear, one from spec). Not a huge fan of mixing and matching the two because Crit needs Crit damage to really pop out and Conditions really benefit from Duration.

TY. Condition duration isn’t all that useful in pvp where everyone removes conditions. My friend once put a 25 sec burn on someone, and watched them wonder off and die though, that was pretty cool. The default with this build is 20 fire, 20% condition duration, makes that imob long enough to not need the kd first. When not using fire I usually go Air 5 (kd) then switch to fire, start dragons tooth then imob then phoenix.

You are right, crit does need crit damage tough. That’s why I like zerkers. With the current meta I use melendrus runes (due to the lack of condition removal in the build itself) but if their weren’t conditions flying left right and centre it would be divinities for boosts everywhere and more crit damage.

I have also run this build with rabids (10k hp :/ each heal [heal + trident] is almost all my health). Problem is, without having a on crit get bleeds sigil you kind of lack in the condition department unless spaming earth auto attack (not usually the best idea). To be an absolute horride condition man, replace sig of water with sig of fire, imob your target, wall of fire (finally fixed) then earth auto threw it to pile up the burning. When they clear the burning hit them with your fire signet.

Playing a S/F ele, each skill counts, the only ones you can afford to smash are dragons tooth (6sec cd, good to put on some dodge pressure), fire aura (when not wanting to use a signet) and your autos. If going water to air, remember to use shatterstone one your way, as Air 2 and 3 are instants. Running away is not really an option, you either kill the enemy or choose to run before they attack you (hoping they go for point cap and not your soul).