Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen people say before that the reason engineers don’t have signets is because engineers have turned their back on magic, and signets are magical, so no signets for engineers.

It’s a reasonable rationale, but I think signets are a pretty interesting GAME MECHANIC, even if the game lore prevents engineers from partaking. A passive effect that lasts until you use some active effect, then you lose the passive until the ability is back off cooldown. A choice between a constant, baseline buff or an on-demand, make-or-break, fight-altering effect!

I really dig the mechanic, even if signet builds are often looked down on as the “lol noob” or levelling builds for some classes (bearbow, 5sig warrior, signet thief… they’re not necessarily bad, but what is your first thought when someone joins your PUG and there’s just a huge buff-bar of signets on someone?)

At the same time, I think gadgets are pretty underwhelming effects, considering some of their cooldowns. The patch today is doing something to address that, but what if we could do even more to make gadget builds a possibility?

Gadgets as signets! Give the gadgets a passive effect until they’re on cooldown. Some of the gadgets ALREADY make sense with some of the “usual” signet effects we see… utility goggles give you better visibility of an enemy’s weakpoints, so +precision (until you “burn out the batteries” by activating them and putting them on cooldown). Slick shoes… they’re shoes. Most classes have a movement speed signet. AED sucks, but I think giving it some kind of passive effect would make it more viable… maybe a ticking heal (pacemaker?) or a “thorns” kind of effect (small damage electrocute when you’re hit— does any other class have a unique (i.e. not retaliation) version of this effect?). Battering Ram could be +power, rocket boots could be +condition damage, throw mine could be a ticking condi remove like other classes have (for the same… whatever contrived reason a mine removes a boon) or boon duration

Does anyone have any other cool ideas for what effects gadgets could reasonably have?

Well I dunno, That’d have to compete with the new “boons from gadgets” Tools GM trait so if they instituted something like that, it would be another GM trait in that line otherwise people might call the combination OP. Heck, even I might. It’d be cool to have gadgets as signets to take advantage of some of the runes that work with signets though.

We get so much from activating gadgets and their toolbelt counterparts that I don’t want to push it, but having a 25% speed buff signet effect for say slick shoes would save me the effort of traiting or including speedy kits or power shoes if I didn’t want to. And let’s face it, outside of Elixir Gun’s version, Kit refinement isn’t really that strong or useful. I’d really want something like a passive signet effect for gadgets to replace that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/They-should-make-gadgets-a-form-of-signet

I find signets to be mind-numbingly boring, so I’d rather they not. If you want to use signets, there are plenty of classes that have them.